THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE

Home Rule, it is very generally assumed, has vanished into the domain of extinct politics. Unlike what had been the case from 1886 to 1895, when this was the main of our domestic questions, Home Rule was scarcely referred to at the late election; it will receive little countenance at the hands of the present House of Commons, however Irish Nationalists may persist in urging their demand. It would, nevertheless, be imprudent to believe that this policy, as has been said, ‘is as dead as Queen Anne,’ as impossible as a return to Protection or to an unreformed Parliament. Isaac Butt’s scheme of Home Rule was treated with scorn and ridicule by Mr. Gladstone during many years; Mr. Gladstone was the author of the Bills of 1886 and 1893, embodying Home Rule in forms few will now approve of; and he left nothing undone to convert them into law. At the General Election of 1880, Home Rule was regarded as a mere Irish craze, and hardly a candidate could be found, in England and Scotland, to consent to an inquiry upon the subject; within six years Home Rule was a Ministerial measure; and though the House of Commons pronounced against it, and its decision was emphatically ratified at the General Election of 1886, still, on this occasion, the votes in favour of Home Rule were not much less numerous than those cast against it.[19] In 1892 England condemned Home Rule, if not as decisively as six years before; but Ireland, Scotland, and Wales declared for it; and a Home Rule Bill received the sanction of the House of Commons, which, but for the resistance made by the House of Lords, would now be a fundamental law of these realms. It deserves notice, too, that not one of the Liberal leaders, although, as a rule, they avoided the subject, repudiated this policy at the late election; two or three, indeed, gave it a qualified support; and it is evident that they keep the question in reserve, in the hope of turning it to account at a more convenient season. Nor can it be denied, as long as Ireland can send more than eighty Nationalists into the House of Commons, pledged to insist on Home Rule as their country’s right, that the subject must command more or less attention; for many reasons it is impossible to ignore the claims of a representation so large in numbers. It must be added that, under our system of party government, especially as this has existed of late years, a considerable group of politicians, with a fixed purpose, can effect much by throwing its weight indifferently into the Ministerial or the Opposition scale, and giving its support to either side, in order to compass its own ends; it has, sometimes with successful results, swayed majorities by these means, and not in vain. This is the hope of the Irish Nationalist leaders; ‘let parties in the House of Commons,’ they cynically argue, ‘be equally divided, as must at some time happen,’ and ‘we shall gain Home Rule from either Tories or Whigs, if we assist either by our votes to keep them in office.’ It cannot be said, if we look back at some political events within the last twenty years, that this expectation is wholly groundless; and though I am convinced it will not be realised, its existence alone suffices to prove that Home Rule cannot yet be dismissed as outside the sphere of practical politics.

Home Rule, therefore, is a ‘Present Irish Question,’ and if not at this moment urgent, it remains the most important of Irish questions, for it directly affects the fortunes of the Three Kingdoms. It is necessary, accordingly, to examine it, in its principles at least; and an inquiry is opportune, at this juncture, for the subject can be fairly discussed in its different bearings, apart from the obscuring influences of national and party prejudice, and especially of political passion. Isaac Butt was the true author of the conception of Home Rule; for though a movement in favour of a Repeal of the Union had become dangerously active in 1843-44, and had been feebly intermittent since that period, this peculiar modification of the arrangements made at the Union, in fixing the relations between Great Britain and Ireland, was wholly an idea of that distinguished lawyer. The occasion, on which this scheme was put forward, was not a little remarkable for various reasons. Mr. Gladstone had just disestablished the Anglican Church in Ireland, and had disendowed it, to a considerable extent; this policy was angrily resented by a party of Irish Protestants; for the maintenance of the Established Irish Church had been made an essential condition of the Treaty of Union. These men, who were not without energy and parts, declared that a great international compact had been broken; and they gradually obtained the support of leaders of the ‘Young Ireland’ following, of survivors of the ‘Tail’ of O’Connell, and even of adherents of the Fenian cause, all, in different degrees, opposed to the Union. Butt became the head and spokesman of this curiously assorted band, composed of essentially discordant elements; but he endeavoured to combine it into a strong Parliamentary force, by propounding a plan of Home Rule for Ireland, which he had thought out with patience and care, his hope being that this would unite his followers, and that his project would at least be entertained in Parliament, and would not be as hopeless as an attempt to repeal the Union. His views are set forth in his ‘Irish Federalism,’ a long-forgotten work, but which, even now, may be read with profit. Butt professed, and I have no doubt sincerely, that he did not seek to disturb the Union, and that the Imperial Parliament was to remain as it was; but he proposed to give Ireland a Parliament of her own, with full powers of legislation on Irish affairs, and an Executive practically appointed by this, which would have the government of Ireland in its hands. Having thus called into existence an Irish State, possessing State rights of supreme importance, he sought to connect Ireland with Great Britain by a Federal tie; representatives from Ireland were to repair to the Imperial Parliament, and to vote in that assembly on Imperial questions, but not, as I believe Butt meant, on those which belonged to England and Scotland.[20]

The cry of Home Rule was welcomed in Ireland by her Catholic masses; at the General Election of 1874, sixty men were returned to the House of Commons to support this policy, a party formidable in numbers, if not in essential strength. Butt brought forward his plan, in outline, on three or four occasions; but the question was not discussed with the fulness of knowledge and the breadth of view it certainly required; on the whole, it was superficially treated. Neither Butt nor his opponents thoroughly perceived that his proposals virtually repealed the Union, for if the Imperial Parliament was, nominally, to be left intact, a real Parliament was to be placed in its stead, in Ireland, which would practically annul its effective authority, from the Giant’s Causeway to Cape Clear; and they seem not to have understood that ‘Irish Federalism’ implied Federalism for Great Britain to a great extent, and introduced into the Constitution the Federal principle with its far-reaching and dangerous effects. Butt’s scheme, however, was powerfully attacked in its details; by no one so powerfully as by Mr. Gladstone, who had lately announced, to an approving multitude, that Home Rule was sheer folly or worse, and had exultingly asked, ‘Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that, at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of the country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we possess for bestowing benefits, through legislation, on the country to which we belong?’[21] Little knowing what the future was to bring forth, Mr. Gladstone declared that Home Rule was not to be even thought of, until it could be proved that the Irish affairs, to which the Irish Parliament was to be confined, could be separated from Imperial and British affairs, a partition he evidently deemed impossible; and he insisted that the introduction of Irish members into the Imperial Parliament, which, according to this plan, was to have nothing to do with Ireland, was not only essentially unjust, but involved the absurdity that these men ‘were to judge as they might think fit of the general affairs of the Empire, and also of exclusively English and Scotch questions,’ an interpretation not, I believe, correct. Home Rule was rejected by overwhelming majorities in the Parliament of 1874-80; and at the General Election of the last-named year, it found no countenance, I have said, in England or Scotland. The subject was scarcely referred to by Mr. Gladstone, wholly preoccupied by his Midlothian campaign, and by his persistent efforts to deprive Lord Beaconsfield of power.

Butt had sincere reverence for the Constitution and the Law; the Home Rule movement, as long as he was at its head, was a constitutional and a lawful movement. But this eminent man had been supplanted, by degrees, by a politician of a very different nature; and when he had passed away in the spring of 1879, Parnell, and what was called the ‘active Irish party,’ which had baffled and incensed the House of Commons, became the directors of the Home Rule policy. The character of the movement was almost wholly changed; it became associated with a conspiracy hatched in the Far West, which aimed at the separation of Ireland from Great Britain; Butt’s moderate followers fell away from it, especially the band of Protestants who had first set it on foot. Meanwhile, American Fenianism, which had in vain attempted open rebellion in Ireland in 1865-67, had, at the instigation perhaps of Michael Davitt, made another effort to compass its ends; the ‘New Departure’ in treason was made; the Land League was formed with the avowed purpose of overthrowing ‘Irish Landlordism,’ as it was called, as being the mainstay of British power in Ireland, and then of wresting Ireland by force from her British rulers. But Davitt was not well fitted for his work; Parnell became the leader of the Home Rule and the Land League movements; and during a short visit to the United States, he openly professed that his ultimate aim was ‘to break the last link between Great Britain and Ireland,’ though he was still the chief of an apparently constitutional cause. Ere long the Land League, availing itself of a season of distress, and subsidised by Fenians across the Atlantic, had taken root in different parts of Ireland; and gradually a reign of terror, marked by detestable crime, and essentially of the Jacobin type, had acquired a frightful ascendency in ten or eleven counties. By this time, Mr. Gladstone had become Minister: how he denounced the League in passionate language; endeavoured, for a few months, to hold it in check; succumbed to it, when he made the ‘Kilmainham Treaty;’ and, finally, how, after declaring that Parnell and his adherents were ‘aiming at dismemberment through rapine,’ he became the author of the Land Act of 1881, and threw the Irish landed gentry as a sop to Cerberus,—is sufficiently known, but I shall recur to the subject. During these years, Parnell, artfully playing the double game, which this born conspirator especially made his boast, and linking what he called ‘a constitutional with an illegal movement,’ had more than once spoken on behalf of Home Rule in the House of Commons, his moderate and even statesmanlike language being in marked contrast with his treasonable harangues in Ireland. But Parliament had been otherwise engaged with Irish affairs; it had become more averse to Home Rule than ever; it had learned what the movement had begun to involve, veiled, if not open, rebellion against the State, and it voted down the question by immense majorities. Statesmen of all parties, Tory, Whig, and Radical, without exception, concurred in this view; Lord Salisbury, Lord Spencer, and John Bright alike condemned the very idea of Home Rule. Mr. Gladstone indeed asserted afterwards that he had a policy of this kind in his thoughts; but if he had, he kept it to himself; it cannot be gathered from his speeches of the time; he never breathed to his colleagues a word about it; he allowed them to pronounce against Home Rule with his full apparent sanction.[22]

Mr. Gladstone’s Ministry fell in 1885; Majuba, Gordon, and his Irish policy had set the best sense of the country against him. Lord Salisbury’s Government came in his place; for a short time the tendency, too often seen in British parties, to temporise with sedition and even crime in Ireland was exhibited with untoward results; the negotiations between Parnell and Lord Carnarvon have not yet been explained. At the General Election of 1885, Parnell openly took the Conservative side, denounced the Liberals in the bitterest language, and perhaps, through the influence of the Irish vote, deprived them of a few seats in England. His principal object certainly was to increase his own power and that of his band by weakening the strongest of British parties; but this association with the Conservatives probably lessened the antipathy of their opponents to Home Rule, and was not without effect on the events that followed. Ireland, however, was by no means a prominent question in this electoral contest; the Tory, Whig, and Radical leaders dealt, for the most part, with different topics; and though Mr. Gladstone dropped ambiguous phrases, which, he ere long contended, indicated his conversion to Home Rule, his lieutenants continued to declare against this policy, their chief remaining openly in accord with them; indeed, all that could be collected, from what he wrote and said, was that he called upon the country to give him such decisive support as would make him independent of all Irish factions. The result of this General Election, taken as a whole, was to gain for the Liberals a majority of some eighty seats in Great Britain; but in Ireland it effected a notable change in politics. By a recent, and, for Ireland, a most unwise statute, the electoral franchise had been assimilated in the Three Kingdoms; political ascendency had, for the first time, been secured for the masses of Catholic Ireland, largely an ignorant and superstitious multitude; property and intelligence were overwhelmed at the polls; and Parnell and his satellites, now called Nationalists, won more than eighty seats out of a total of one hundred and three. The Liberal majority, therefore, would be effaced should the Irish leader and his men give the Conservatives their votes; a weak Government would be the inevitable result; Mr. Gladstone, now in his seventy-sixth year, could hardly expect to return to office. In these circumstances, it became gradually known that Mr. Gladstone had accepted Home Rule in principle, and was even prepared to legislate upon the subject. It would be unfair to assert that personal motives alone determined this sudden resolve; though obviously should the Liberal chief retain the allegiance of his party, and draw Parnell and the Nationalists to his side, by inaugurating Home Rule as a practical measure, he would inevitably be restored to power with a great majority. Mr. Gladstone, ever ready to yield to a popular cry, may have believed that five-sixths of Ireland were passionately eager for Home Rule; he may have been convinced himself that, as affairs now stood, Parliament would well-nigh be reduced to a deadlock should nothing be done to redress the balanced state of parties, and that Home Rule was the condition of a stable Government; he may have thought that since the Conservative dalliance with Parnell, it had become impossible permanently to resist this policy; yet these considerations form no apology for the conduct of the aged, but most impulsive, statesman. Only a few years before large parts of Ireland had been in a state of frightful anarchy; a rebellious and socialistic movement against British rule and Irish landed property had acquired great force; even at the present time, the National League, replacing the Land League, kept disorder prevalent in many counties. Was this the moment to effect a revolution in Ireland, to tamper with, and to impair, the Union, to hand over the loyalty, the property, and the worth of the island to the classes and the men against whom but, as yesterday, it had been necessary to put the severest coercion in force?

Lord Salisbury resigned office in the first months of 1886; Mr. Gladstone became Prime Minister in his stead. Had parties in the House of Commons remained unchanged, the prospect for the old statesman would have been auspicious; the Liberals and Nationalists combined would have been supreme; Home Rule would have been the fruit of the new alliance. But the most distinguished men of the Liberal party, resenting a coalition far worse than that of Fox and North, and convinced that Home Rule would be ruinous to the State, fell off from their leader in large numbers; the powerful Press of Great Britain, with few exceptions, emphatically condemned the Minister’s conduct. Mr. Gladstone, however, did not pause in his violent course; he introduced his first Home Rule Bill in April, 1886. I can only glance at the main features of this famous measure, and devote to it a passing comment.[23] A Parliament was to be established in the Irish capital; this, subject to the limitations set forth in the Bill, was practically to exercise supreme power in Ireland. This Parliament was to be composed of two Orders, the first containing one hundred and three members, and formed of a few Irish peers and of men of some substance; the second comprising two hundred and four or two hundred and six members elected on the existing democratic franchise. The two Orders were ordinarily to sit together; but should differences in legislative measures arise, the first Order was, for a short time, to have a suspensive veto on the decisions of the second Order, which, however, possessing an immense majority, would almost necessarily in the long run completely prevail. The Irish Parliament was precluded from legislating on many subjects, for the most part Imperial, but partly domestic; it was notably to have no control over the Customs and Excise of Ireland, which were to be kept in the hands of the Imperial Parliament; and though it was permitted to impose any other taxes, the whole revenue of Ireland was to pass through the hands of a British official, who was to pay into the Imperial Treasury a sum of about four millions sterling, as a contribution from Ireland, for Imperial purposes, before the Irish Treasury could receive a farthing. Bills voted by the Irish Parliament might be annulled by the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant and perhaps of the British Ministry; and the Judicial Committee of the English Privy Council, reinforced by a small body of Irish judges, was to have the power to pronounce Acts of the Irish Parliament void, if inconsistent with its constitutional rights. Subject, however, to these restrictions and checks, the Irish Parliament was to be a sovereign power in Ireland; it could practically appoint or displace the Irish Executive Government; it could enact, change, or repeal any laws it should think fit; it could pass any resolutions it pleased; if an assembly partly subordinate, it would be largely supreme. Ireland was to have no representatives in the Imperial Parliament, though this could dispose of the Irish Customs and Excise; no Irish protest could be made at Westminster against unjust fiscal exaction, by no means impossible. For the rest, the Union was nominally not disturbed, and the Imperial Parliament was nominally left intact; but it was declared that the Irish Parliament was to possess the rights secured to it, unless these were annulled by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, to which the Irish had given its consent, or by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, in which representatives from Ireland should have a voice.

The Bill was debated with great force of argument, but hardly in its high constitutional aspects. Like the plan of Butt, and every plan of the kind, it impliedly, if not expressly, repealed the Union, for the very creation of an Irish Parliament destroyed the real authority of the Imperial Parliament, the symbol and guarantee of the Union, in one of the main parts of the Three Kingdoms. It effected a radical change in our polity as a whole, for practically it gave birth to three Parliaments, the Irish sitting in College Green in Dublin, the British at Westminster without Irish members, and the Imperial, properly to be only so-called, when assembled upon one great occasion; and, even more distinctly than the scheme of Butt, it let the principle of Federation into the constitution of the State. And it did all this obscurely, indirectly, and, so to speak, with reserve; the hand of a veiled prophet appeared in his work; this must have led to endless controversies dangerous in the extreme. Nor did the Bill even attempt to mark out the distinction between Irish, British, and Imperial affairs, which its author had declared was a sine qu non; this distinction, in fact, cannot be drawn, as Mr. Gladstone acknowledged afterwards; Irish, British, and Imperial affairs so run into each other, that they cannot be divided into separate heads, to be under the jurisdiction of different Parliaments. The conditions, too, which Mr. Gladstone described, as essential to a measure of Home Rule, were, in no sense, fulfilled. ‘The Unity of the Empire,’ that is, of Great Britain and Ireland, as Mr. Gladstone no doubt had in his mind, was not secured, or, even in name, preserved; the subordinate Irish Parliament and its superior might, and probably would, come in serious conflict; this was absolutely inconsistent with the unity to be maintained. The ‘political equality of England, Scotland, and Ireland’ was not assured; the Bill placed Ireland in a degraded position, especially in all that dealt with taxation, and through the exclusion of Irish members from the British House of Commons. It did not ‘produce an equitable distribution of Imperial burdens,’ for the financial arrangements were thoroughly unjust, and subjected Ireland arbitrarily to a most galling tribute, without giving her the means of making a complaint. It did not ‘provide safeguards for the minority,’ that is, for the loyal classes of Protestant and Catholic Ireland; it handed them over to an Irish Parliament, certain to be for years an instrument of their avowed enemies; and its supplement, a Land Purchase Bill, did not furnish a third part of the funds required to buy out the Irish landlords, a class which, Mr. Gladstone declared, it was ‘an obligation of duty and honour’ to save harmless, and which he admitted an Irish Parliament would, probably, plunder and destroy. Lastly, the Bill did not secure ‘finality;’ it was in no sense in the nature of a ‘permanent settlement,’ as subsequent events have conclusively proved.[24]

It may be urged, however, that even if this measure made a fundamental change in the constitution of these realms, and did not satisfy the conditions its author laid down, still the real question was, would it bring peace to Ireland, and improve the relations in which she stood towards Great Britain? Mr. Gladstone and his followers assumed that this would be the case; the ‘Union of Hearts’ was to accomplish marvels; but this assumption was without the slightest warrant. The most favourable way to consider the subject, from the point of view of the Home Rule party, is to suppose that Great Britain and Ireland were two communities, in no sense estranged from each other, and that Ireland was not a widely divided people; and that both were not unwilling to accept the Bill, as a kind of modification of the partnership made by the Treaty of Union. This supposition would be obviously contrary to the facts; but, even on this supposition, the proposed measure would have completely failed to attain its objects, and, on any ordinary view of human nature, would have exasperated Great Britain and Ireland alike, and could not have been a ‘message of peace’ to Ireland. The Parliament at Westminster would soon have found out that its real sovereignty in Ireland had been practically destroyed; that the Irish Parliament could, in many ways, interfere with British and Imperial affairs; that most of the checks on its powers were of little avail; this would certainly deeply offend the deceived British nation. The Irish Parliament, on the other hand, would necessarily resent the harsh limitations by which it had been bound; yet as it had most of the powers of a real Parliament, it could very effectually evade or impair these; could, through its Executive, largely annul them; could, at least, make continual and powerful protests. Discord, and perhaps conflict, between Great Britain and Ireland, from the nature of the case, would be the result; and, besides, there were special provisions in the Bill which would be deemed intolerable by five-sixths of Irishmen. Even loyal Ireland would not endure the banishment of Irish representatives from the British House of Commons, which would have power to impose the Irish Customs and Excise; this would be taxation without representation, in the very worst sense. It was monstrous that Ireland was to contribute a large sum for the charge of the Empire and yet was to have no voice in the Empire’s affairs; it was humiliating that a British official was to have absolute control over the whole Irish revenue. All this was subjecting Ireland to a degrading tribute; it should be added that the prerogative of the English Privy Council, to set aside practically Acts of the Irish Parliament, would have provoked the deepest and most widespread discontent. The Bill, in a word, revealed strange ignorance of the feelings of mankind; it would have worked on the assumption only that human beings in Great Britain and Ireland were without passions and wills of their own; it would have been blown to the winds, when put to the test.

But ‘the circumstances,’ to adopt the words of Burke, ‘are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind;’[25] what were the circumstances in the present instance? England and Catholic Ireland had been long opposed; the Land and the National Leagues formed a conspiracy against our rule in Ireland; England had interests in Ireland of the first importance; she had a large community of her own blood and faith in Ireland, attached to the Union and the old mother country. Ireland had been distracted for ages by feuds of race and religion; Protestant and Catholic Ireland stood apart from each other; the Irish Parliament, created by the Bill, would certainly be an instrument of the heads of the Catholic masses, supported by Parnell and his band, and by Fenians across the Atlantic. Under these conditions, Home Rule would have been a fatal gift, ruinous to Great Britain and Ireland alike. Suppose, for example, that an Irish Parliament, established in College Green, since 1886, had ruled Ireland during the war in South Africa. It would unquestionably have taken the side of the Boers, as the Nationalist leaders have openly done; and it would have possessed the means of doing infinite mischief. It could have passed resolutions condemning the war; have called on Irishmen to keep aloof from the British army; have discouraged recruiting throughout Ireland; have sent messages of good will to the Boer Government. But probably it would have gone far beyond these, its constitutional, rights; it could have winked at the preparation of an armed force in Ireland to be despatched to the aid of the Boers; it could have invited Foreign Powers to put a stop to the conflict; nay, it could have laid hands on the Irish taxes, and refused to ‘pay tribute to an alien Government;’ and what, in these cases, would have been England’s means of obtaining redress, save by the power of the sword? In the instance of other wars, the same course would be followed; we cannot forget that at Nationalist meetings, the Mahdi, the Dervishes, nay, all our enemies, were the objects of the applause of shouting Irish multitudes. And as the Irish Parliament could injure England in war, so it could embarrass and annoy her, in a hundred ways, in peace. There was nothing in the Bill to prevent Protection in Ireland, for the Irish Parliament could vote bounties on Irish exports; there was nothing to prevent the issue of Irish assignats, to mask confiscation of different kinds; and recourse would not improbably be had to these very expedients. It is unnecessary to dwell on what would be the legislation of the Irish Parliament at home, and the administration of the Executive it would have a right to set up. Composed as it would be, it would abolish ‘landlordism’ by a stroke of the pen, or by merely preventing the recovery of rent; it would simply turn society upside down, and establish a Catholic ascendency by many degrees worse than Protestant ascendency ever was; it would, in a word, let revolution loose in the island. Protestant Ireland would, as a matter of course, resist; a savage war of race and creed would certainly follow; the scenes of 1690 and 1798 might well be repeated; and the struggle would end in general bankruptcy. England, in her own interest, and in that of her friends in Ireland, would assuredly intervene, under conditions like these; and the concession of Home Rule would probably lead to reconquest.

The Home Rule Bill of 1886—apart from the fatal evils it must have caused—placed Ireland in such an inferior position, that every Irishman of spirit ought to have treated it with contempt; it was so dangerous to Great Britain, and, indeed, to the Empire, that John Bright declared that not twenty English members approved of it at heart. Mr. Gladstone himself, it should be remarked, regarded it with no doubtful misgivings; he presented it to the House of Commons as ‘but a choice of evils;’ his measure itself, in many passages, revealed the profoundest distrust of the Parliament he proposed to create. Parnell, imposing his imperious will on his followers, accepted the Bill with professions of delight; this was effusively welcomed by the emotional statesman, deceived by an unscrupulous plotter, over and over again; it is now known this was a mere pretence; Home Rule, under the conditions of the scheme, would have been made a stepping-stone only for larger demands; and this, indeed, might have been easily foreseen. The Bill was rejected by a majority which did not express the true sense of the House of Commons, and showed how strong may be the ties of party; the great body of the Liberals, as, doubtless, they now bitterly regret, threw in their lot with Mr. Gladstone in his most reckless venture. It is of more importance to observe what the views on the subject were of the conspirators in America, who had set the Land and National Leagues on foot, and had supplied almost the whole of their funds; without their assistance the movement led by Parnell would probably have never struggled into life. The prospect opened by the Home Rule Bill was thus welcomed by the Clan na Gael, the most energetic and daring of the Fenian parties; it will be noted that it was to be a means only to a very decisive end. ‘The achievement of a National Parliament gives us a footing on Irish soil; it gives us the agencies and instrumentalities of a government de facto, at the very commencement of the Irish struggle. It places the government of the land in the hands of our friends and brothers. It removes the Castle’s rings, and gives us what we may well express as the plant of an armed revolution.’[26] And at a great Fenian meeting held after the rejection of the Bill, one of the leading speakers dropped these significant words: ‘We have no desire to force the hand of Parnell, or to drive the Irish people into war unprepared. All that we demand is this, and we will be satisfied with nothing less—that no leader of the Irish people, who is supposed to speak for them, shall commit himself, or them, to accepting as a final settlement, bills of relief unworthy of the dignity of Ireland’s national demand. We are perfectly willing to see them accept such bills as that of Gladstone, as a settlement on account, but that must not be accepted as closing the transaction. We see no wisdom in it. It lowers the tone of the national cause. It lowers the spirit of the true people. To ask them to subside to a species of mere provincialism is an outrage on their struggle of seven hundred years for liberty. We admit that it may be good policy on the part of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt to be what is called moderate in tone; but for us, who represent the national idea of the Irish people, it would be worse than folly to conceal our sentiments. We recognise that Ireland is incapable of fighting at present.’[27]

Mr. Gladstone dissolved Parliament when it had thrown the Bill out; he appears really to have believed that the nation would give its sanction to Home Rule. At the General Election of 1886, he exerted himself ‘in the sacred cause of Ireland,’ with the energy he had shown in his Midlothian Campaign; he associated his new Irish policy with appeals to the multitude; the opposition to him was that ‘of the classes against the masses;’ in a word, the enthusiastic, and perhaps sincere, convert played, with little scruple, the part of a mere demagogue. But England pronounced against him, with no uncertain voice; ‘men of education and property,’ as he sadly acknowledged, resisted him with the steadfastness of the English nature; a great majority was sent into the House of Commons pledged against Home Rule; Lord Salisbury’s Government came again into office. It deserves special notice that the rejection of the Bill did not, as was predicted would be the case, arouse anything like real discontent in Ireland, or cause her Catholic community to stir; this spectacle, which has been seen over and over again, proves how little the main body of the Irish people care for a political revolution of the kind; and how Home Rule, as Parnell and his band conceived it, was the work of a conspiracy of foreign origin, seeking, through it, to subvert British rule in Ireland. The real purpose of these men was very clearly shown at a Convention assembled at Chicago, in the summer of 1886; speeches of the most incendiary nature were made; and two of Parnell’s envoys, despatched to collect funds ‘for the cause,’ announced that, after the failure of Mr. Gladstone’s measure, their ‘duty was to make the government of Ireland by England impossible.’ Two or three years of trouble in Ireland followed; it is unnecessary to refer to these at any length. A season of agricultural distress and of a fall in prices made the payment of Irish rents difficult; the occasion was seized by the heads of the National League, which had gradually been acquiring formidable strength; the ‘Plan of Campaign’ was set afoot; and another attack was made on the Irish landed gentry, with the ultimate object of paralysing the Irish Government, as had been solemnly proclaimed at Chicago. The social disorder of this period was not so deeply marked with horrible deeds of blood, as the Saturnalia of the Land League were; but the movement was, perhaps, not less dangerous; the cruel practice of ‘boycotting’ was reduced to a system, and caused widespread misery and distress; an agrarian war was carried on in a few counties; judges, magistrates, and juries were terrorised in the administration of the law; and there were too numerous instances of atrocious crimes. But a firm hand was at the helm of the Irish Government; Mr. Balfour did not palter with sedition and treason; the conspiracy was before long put down; and it should be added that ‘boycotting’ and ‘the Plan of Campaign’ were unequivocally condemned at Rome.

In this struggle between the forces of disorder and law, the Rump of the Liberal party, which had accepted Home Rule, freely declared itself on the side of the National League and of anarchy. Mr. Gladstone, however, towered over his fellows; his vehement and, when aroused, unscrupulous nature, has never been more unfortunately displayed. He had been three times at the head of the State, charged with the administration of Irish affairs; the Government in office was engaged in a conflict with a conspiracy of no contemptible strength; yet Mr. Gladstone did not shrink from throwing his full weight into the scale against it, and giving his sanction to the movement led by Parnell and his creatures. His conduct was so flagrantly at odds with his former self, that, but for the gravity of the situation, it would have been ludicrous; it consisted in adoring what he had burned, and burning what he had adored; nothing like it had been seen since Fox, breaking away from the traditions of British statesmen, flung himself into the arms of Jacobin France, and rejoiced at every reverse that befell England.[28] A remarkable episode in the politics of the day was not without real effect on events that followed. The acts of the Land and, in part, of the National Leagues, and of the leaders of the revolutionary movements which had convulsed Ireland, were investigated by the judges of the Special Commission appointed by Parliament for the purpose; the inquiry, which lasted many months, was of supreme importance; such a damning sentence was never pronounced on a body of public men, as that pronounced on Parnell and his followers, though the accusation of treason was not brought into question.[29] This decision was sufficient for well-informed and sensible men; but Parnell was acquitted on a personal, but minor, charge, that of having been the author of the well-known forged letters all but approving of the assassinations in the Phoenix Park; Mr. Gladstone and his adherents welcomed him as an injured martyr; the House of Commons rang with their plaudits when he re-entered its walls. For a few months Parnell became a popular personage in democratic England; he had negotiations with Mr. Gladstone with respect to Home Rule, the tenor of which has not transpired; his satellites appeared at many public meetings, and split the ears of the groundlings with plausible talk about ‘self-government’ for Ireland and the ‘Union of Hearts.’ This mystification and falsehood were not without effect; the cause of Home Rule made a kind of progress in England; and, strange to say, the fall of Parnell which ere long followed—I shall not dwell on its squalid and grotesque incidents—had an influence in the same direction. Ireland had been brought into a state of comparative repose; the power of the National League appeared broken; the formidable leader of the conspiracy had left the stage; his adherents were scattered sheep, which had not a shepherd. With the ignorance of Irish affairs so common to Englishmen, and the desire, partly selfish, but partly generous, to ‘get rid of the Irish difficulty,’ by any tolerable means, thousands in the constituencies, even in England, lately bitterly hostile to it, were gradually won over to the idea of Home Rule.

The General Election of 1892 followed; a number of causes, in addition to that I have set forth, contributed to favour the Home Rule movement. The ‘swing of the pendulum,’ seen in British politics, since Democracy has gained the ascendant, very distinctly appeared; the ‘idea that each side ought to have its innings’ was widely spread; many Unionist seats were lost by these means. The extraordinary energy shown by Mr. Gladstone, at an age far beyond the ordinary span, had considerable influence on the masses; and though his real authority had been long on the wane, he was still the popular figure in England and, above all, in Scotland. He had, also, carefully kept his Home Rule scheme to himself; it was announced by his followers that his next measure for securing ‘self-government,’ as it was called, for Ireland, would be free from the manifest faults of that of 1886, and would finally, and happily, settle the question. A large part of the electorate was gained in this way; but the influence that most effectually assisted Mr. Gladstone was, essentially, of a very different kind. The Anti-Unionist Liberals had been out of power for many years; though they had long been split into separate groups, they resolved to combine against the common enemy, and to drive the Unionist Government from its seat, by appeals to the ideas they assumed were dominant in democratic England and Scotland. The Newcastle programme was ostentatiously published; the question of Home Rule was mixed up with projects for disestablishing the Church in England and Wales, for the destruction or the emasculation of the House of Lords, for enforcing temperance by the tyranny of the Local Veto, for extending the suffrage and raising the labourer’s status; in this way they satisfied themselves they ‘would sweep the country.’ They knew, indeed, that Mr. Gladstone had no heart for much of their policy; but his passionate eagerness to accomplish Home Rule was notorious; they believed that by giving him a cordial support on this question, they would secure his powerful aid for the others, and that by the process known as ‘log-rolling,’ they would attain their objects. The Unionist party was weakened at the election; but the sanguine hopes of its opponents were not fulfilled. Many of the Radical cries were far from popular; they nearly all combined large classes against them; England returned a large majority to the House of Commons pledged against Home Rule, if not so considerable as six years before; and though Scotland and Wales were, in the main, favourable to Mr. Gladstone’s policy, still the electorate of Great Britain, as a whole, pronounced against it. The election in Ireland presented features which, with respect to Home Rule, were of marked significance. In 1886, as in 1885, the educated and upper classes were swamped at the polls, by the flood of illiterate and indigent multitudes; the Irish Catholic Church used, nay, abused, its immense authority, to secure votes for Mr. Gladstone’s coming measure. The same spectacle was beheld in 1892; but an element of confusion and disorder came in; the leaders of the factions, divided by the fall of Parnell, though Nationalists, ferociously flew at each other’s throats; the election was marked by disgraceful scenes of lawlessness. These certainly prefigured what would be the character of a future Irish Parliament sitting in College Green.

This election gave Mr. Gladstone a majority of some forty seats in the House of Commons, but a majority composed of not well-united elements; and the best opinion of England was strongly averse to his policy. But the veteran statesman—he was in his eighty-third year—did not pause for a moment in his headlong venture, though ominous sounds were being already heard; after the resignation of Lord Salisbury, through a weak adverse vote, his rival became Prime Minister for the fourth time. He had staked everything to obtain the success of the cause to which he had passionately devoted his declining years; he brought in his second Home Rule Bill in the first months of 1893. The measure had much in common with that of 1886; but in some respects it was very different, especially in one feature of supreme importance. An Irish Parliament was again to be set up in Dublin; but it was to be a much smaller body than that proposed by the previous Bill; it was to be composed of a Legislative Council of forty-eight members only, and of a Legislative Assembly of only a hundred and three; these were analogous to the First and Second Orders of 1886, but were not to be even half in numbers; and no Irish peers were to have a place in the new Parliament. The Legislative Council and Assembly, differing here from the original scheme, were to sit, not together, but apart; but the Legislative Council, like the First Order, was to have a temporary suspensive veto on the Assembly’s acts; the Assembly, too, like the Second Order, possessing a majority which would place real power in its hands; and both bodies, it should be added, being more democratic than the two which were to have been created in 1886. The new Irish Parliament, like that to be formed seven years before, was restricted by limitations—these much the same as those contained in the former Bill—in a number of Imperial and domestic matters; it was, like its predecessor, to be subjected to the same kind of veto, and to nearly the same authority of the English Privy Council. In finance, the ‘tribute,’ which had been loudly condemned by all parties in Ireland, was given up; there was to be no British official to lay his hands on Irish revenue, and to divert it from its legitimate uses; but the Irish Customs were to be appropriated to the Imperial charge, which Ireland was declared to be justly liable to pay; and this was a sum of about two millions and a half, with an addition for a time of one million, a sum less than the estimate made in 1886. The Irish Parliament, however, if thus made largely subordinate, was like the Parliament of the preceding Bill, to be in many, and most important, respects supreme. It was to rule Ireland as a sovereign power, subject to the limitations by which it was to be bound; it could make, change, and repeal laws, as regards the Irish community, almost as it pleased; it could, in a word, do nearly everything within the province of a real Parliament. Above all, it could appoint and control the Irish Executive Government, to which the administration of Irish affairs would belong; and it would thus have complete power over the most important machinery of the State.

The Bills of 1886 and of 1893 so far resembled each other, with some distinctions; but, in other respects, they markedly differed. The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, implied but not expressed in the first scheme, was unequivocally asserted in the second, though this supremacy could not be effective, as respects Ireland. The Imperial Parliament was nominally left untouched by both Bills, though this was a play on words only; but it was to hold a position in the second it was not to hold in the first; the Union was not in terms repealed by either measure, though virtually it was repealed by both, through the mere creation of an Irish Parliament. The Bill of 1886 had, as its complement, a Land Purchase Bill; in fact, both were made parts of the same policy; a sum of £50,000,000 was to be an indemnity for Irish landlords who should think fit to part with their estates; for Mr. Gladstone, we have seen, had declared that it was ‘an obligation of duty and honour’ to protect this order of men; and he asserted that Parliament would, doubtless, vote any further sums required, a singular exhibition of credulous hope, for these would have amounted to £150,000,000 at least; and he had himself, in a speech addressed to Lord George Hamilton, valued the lands of Ireland at £300,000,000. But what was to be deemed sacred, in 1886, had a very different aspect in 1893; the settlement of the Irish land was, indeed, withheld for three years from the Irish Parliament, but, after this brief space of time, this was to be certainly left to a body, which Mr. Gladstone had evidently thought would make short work of the Irish landed gentry, and would drive them, in beggary, out of their own country. These differences, however, between the two Bills, sank into insignificance compared to a vital distinction which made them essentially unlike each other, and made their projects of Home Rule completely dissimilar. The exclusion of Irish representatives from the House of Commons at Westminster, under the measure of 1886, was palpably unjust, and had been condemned with much force of argument. Mr. Gladstone proposed to redress this wrong by summoning eighty Irish members into the Imperial House of Commons; these were to have no cognisance of British questions, but were to have a right to vote on Imperial and even Irish questions, though the Imperial Parliament was to have little or no power in Ireland, and an Irish Parliament was practically to fill its place, and to have all but supreme authority over Irish affairs. This strange expedient obviously made the Home Rule schemes of 1886 and 1893 altogether different; but Mr. Gladstone never saw the essential distinction; he maintained that the inclusion of the Irish members was little more than a detail of the measure. It would be perhaps unfair to insist that he introduced this immense change in order only to strengthen his already enfeebled party, which would be greatly in want of Irish votes at Westminster; more probably his intellect, yielding to old age, did not thoroughly grasp all that was involved in his project.[30]The Bill of 1893, from a purely constitutional point of view, was infinitely more objectionable than that of 1886. It not only, I have said, virtually repealed the Union; it created a kind of Federalism in these realms to which there has never been a parallel. The Irish Parliament was practically to rule Ireland; no British members were to show their faces in it; it was to be all but the sovereign of the Irish State. The British Parliament was nominally to be sovereign of the British State; representatives from Ireland were not to appear in it, and, in theory, they were not to deal with British questions. The Imperial Parliament was to be analogous to a supreme Federal Council; this ought to have jurisdiction over Imperial affairs alone; but eighty Irish members were to have seats in it, and they were to have a right to vote on Imperial and Irish questions, though Ireland was to have a separate Parliament of her own. This arrangement, in conception, was simply monstrous; it gave Ireland powers to which she had no pretence to a claim; it really subjected Great Britain to her; it formed a Federation in which a weak and small State was to have immense authority over another tenfold as strong; it might be described as one-sided Federalism run mad. Passing from the main principles to the details of the Bill, this, like its predecessor, did not satisfy the conditions Mr. Gladstone had deemed to be essential. It did not separate British, Irish, and Imperial affairs; its author admitted at last that this was not possible. It asserted the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, and gave it a more imposing position than it had under the Bill of 1886; but it did not maintain the Unity of the Three Kingdoms; the mere creation of an Irish Parliament placed this in jeopardy. It did not provide for the ‘political equality’ of Great Britain and Ireland, for, in contradiction to the measure of seven years before, it practically gave Ireland a kind of ascendency; her representatives were to possess rights in no sense to be justified. It did not provide an ‘equitable distribution of Imperial burdens;’ in this province it would have done wrong to Great Britain; for, while it abandoned the odious Irish tribute of 1886, and an effective control over Irish revenue, its expedient of allocating the Irish Customs, and nothing else, as the only source for the payment of Imperial charges, would, in all probability, have caused the Imperial Treasury a great loss; the Customs would have been enormously reduced by smuggling, to which Irishmen have always been much addicted, which the Irish Parliament would have no interest to prevent, and which, very likely, it would directly encourage. Again, it did not create ‘safeguards for the minority;’ as we have seen, it threw the Irish landed gentry, after a brief respite, to the wolves, that is, to the tender mercies of the Irish Parliament; and, like the measure of 1886, it took no heed of Protestant and loyal Catholic Ireland, as a whole, though this assuredly was ‘a minority’ that required protection. Finally, it could not have effected a ‘permanent settlement’ of the affairs of Ireland; a ‘lopsided’ and iniquitous arrangement like this would certainly have had a very short existence.

The measure of 1893, in short, would have effected a complete revolution in the polity of these realms; it would have given the least important of the Three Kingdoms an iniquitous authority over the most important; it would unnaturally have placed weakness in superiority to power; it would have subjected the dominant to the lesser partner; all this, it will be observed, followed from the inclusion of Irish representatives in the Imperial Parliament, who, though a Parliament in Dublin was to rule Ireland, were to have a right to deal with Imperial and Irish questions. Mr. Gladstone, I repeat, seems never to have understood the strange and ruinous consequences this would involve; but this can be made manifest by one or two examples. The Irish members would be excluded from the British Parliament, and would have no right to vote on purely British questions, say upon the extension of the British railway system, or the disfranchisement of an English or Scottish borough. But they would have eighty seats in the Imperial Parliament; and as it was impossible to separate a number of British questions from those of an Imperial or Irish character, they would have a most potent influence over British affairs; for example, they could legitimately vote upon such subjects as the confidence to be placed in a British Ministry, the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland, or the validity of British incumbrances affecting Irish estates. The exclusion, however, of Irish members from the British Parliament, and their introduction into the Imperial Parliament, would have led to even more disastrous results; it must, in many instances, have caused a complete paralysis of the State. This in-and-out plan, as it was derisively called, must have made Parliamentary government well-nigh impossible; if Irish members were to have a right to vote in the same House of Commons on Imperial and Irish questions, but were not to have a right to vote on British questions, to vote, say, upon a war with a Foreign Power, and upon the domicile and status of Irish subjects, but not to vote on matters of purely British commerce, there might, and very often would be, two conflicting majorities in the leading House of Parliament; Parliamentary affairs would be brought to a stand; the tenure of even the strongest Ministry would be utterly insecure. It is needless to point out that the relations between Great Britain and Ireland would almost certainly have been more strained, under the Bill of 1893, than they would have been under that of 1886; and that the government of Ireland by the Irish Parliament, would, under both, have been much of the same character. The British nation would have been indignant at the humiliation of their ancient Parliament, which would be sometimes placed at the mercy of Irish members; it would have condemned the weakening in Ireland of its authority, through the mere establishment of an Irish Parliament; it would have been sorely vexed that Irish smuggling would filch away a large part of British revenue. It should be borne in mind, too, that the Irish members, who would have been let into the Imperial Parliament, would have been more difficult to deal with, by many degrees, more openly disloyal, more obstructive, than Irish Nationalists could be, as affairs stand at present; they would have the support of the Irish Parliament; the Imperial Parliament could hardly impose a check on them. As for the rule of the Irish Parliament, within its proper domain, it would have been the same, or much the same, under either measure; that is, it would have been a succession of angry wranglings with England and oppression in Ireland, leading to anarchy and general ruin.

The Home Rule Bill of 1886, in a word, bad measure as it was, was innoxious compared to the Home Rule Bill of 1893. The fatal tendency of the scheme was quickly perceived; the sound mind of England was profoundly stirred; the Bill was publicly burned in the City of London; innumerable petitions against it flowed in; an immense assembly, representing loyal Catholic and Protestant Ireland, met in the capital, and denounced this whole policy in most determined language. As had happened, too, seven years before, the Press of Great Britain, all but universally, condemned the new measure as hopelessly bad; it was significant that the Liberal Press was well-nigh silent, and that Mr. Gladstone was supported by very few petitions. The Opposition simply tore the Bill to shreds in the House of Commons; but the self-deluded Minister desperately held his course; the Radical groups servilely gave him their votes; the process of ‘log-rolling,’ never before so recklessly displayed, kept his petty majority almost intact, a crying disgrace to any party in the State. At last, whether afraid of the country rising against him or yielding to the instigation of his Irish allies—his subserviency to their truculence had been most painful—Mr. Gladstone forced the measure through the House of Commons by a method never employed before; ‘closure by compartments,’ rightly compared to the ‘guillotine,’ put an end to resistance by iniquitous means. The Bill passed the Lower House by thirty-four votes only; not half of it had been examined or discussed; the part that had, had been so completely transformed, that its parent could hardly have known his own offspring. The most notable of these changes was that the in-and-out plan was given up; its ruinous effects had been fully dragged into the light, but an arrangement, perhaps even worse, had been placed in its stead. Ireland was to retain her Parliament in College Green; but the eighty Irish members were to have a right to sit in the Imperial Parliament, and to vote on all questions, not only Imperial and Irish, but strictly British alike. A philosophic and calm-minded writer has indicated what this would involve: ‘Irish members may disestablish the Church of England, though England is to have no voice in the pettiest of Irish affairs. Irish members are to be allowed to impose taxes on England, say, to double the income tax, though of these taxes no inhabitant of Ireland will pay a penny; the Irish delegation, and this is the worst grievance of all, is to be enabled, in combination with a British minority, to detach Wales from England, or to vote Home Rule for Scotland, or to federalise still further the United Kingdom by voting that Man, Jersey, and Guernsey shall send members to the Imperial Parliament.’[31] To say that this proposal would be unconstitutional would be to do it too much honour; it was scandalous in the existing situation of affairs; it implied that heads of the National League, leaders of a rebellious and socialistic movement, would have the power, without restriction or check, to rule the Imperial Parliament, in many instances, with reference to exclusively English and Scottish questions; it practically bound Great Britain hand and foot in fetters to Ireland; it was rightly called ‘an absurd piece of infamy.’ It is unnecessary to say that the system it would have established could not have stood a trial of even three months; England, whenever crossed, would have indignantly swept it away. But Nemesis had commended the poisoned chalice to Mr. Gladstone’s lips; the project, on which he had staked his fortunes, was that which he had incorrectly ascribed to Butt, and had declared to be impossible and worse.

The Bill, it was notorious, could not have passed the House of Commons had not its rejection by the House of Lords been assured beforehand. It received its quietus, in that assembly, by a majority of about ten to one; the mind of England felt unquestionable relief; a great national peril had been averted. Exactly as had happened in 1886, scarcely a sound of discontent was heard in Ireland; the demand for Home Rule, in fact, is largely a fictitious cry, with which the great body of Irishmen has little or no sympathy; the evidence of this can be no longer doubtful. Mr. Gladstone retired, within a few months, from public life; one of his last acts was to shoot a Parthian arrow at the House of Lords, which, happily for these realms, had wrecked his policy; since that time he has disappeared from the scene; few eminent statesmen have been so soon forgotten. Home Rule was scattered to the winds at the General Election of 1895; it has not been a prominent question at that of 1900; but if Ireland has sent more than eighty of its supporters into the House of Commons, the best elements in her community remain angrily hostile; and the opinion of Great Britain is distinctly adverse. For many reasons, however, as I have remarked, it is impossible to ignore the subject; in the strange chances and changes of British politics, and under our system of party government, a minister may again become an advocate of Home Rule, though certainly not in the present Parliament. Mr. Gladstone’s Bills, it is likely, will not be heard of again; but Home Rule may be embodied in other forms; I may briefly refer to, and comment, on these. The project of restoring the Parliament of 1782-1800, an ideal of O’Connell during many years of his life, will hardly be revived in these times; the conditions in Great Britain and Ireland have so completely changed. The centripetal forces which, a hundred years ago, held the British and Irish Parliaments, in the main, together—they differed, however, on important questions—have long ago been all but completely destroyed; the present Irish Parliament could not be an assembly identified in race and faith with England; its House of Commons could not be elected by a small body of Protestants, and latterly by masses of Catholic peasants, the serfs of their landlords. The centrifugal forces, on the other hand, those which would keep the two Parliaments utterly apart, would probably be overwhelmingly strong; the Irish House of Commons would practically, at least for years, be ruled by the nominees of the National League and of the Irish Catholic priesthood; its electorate would, for the most part, be subject to these dominant powers; and Protestant Ireland would alike be swamped and incensed. Nevertheless, the restoration of what has been called Grattan’s Parliament, would, in my judgment, be a much better project than either of Mr. Gladstone’s schemes of Home Rule. The Irish Parliament would be bound by known and fixed precedents, which it would be difficult wholly to disregard; an Irish House of Lords would exist as a check on the House of Commons; above all—and this is of the very first importance—the Irish Executive would not be subject to the Irish Parliament; it would be appointed from Westminster by British statesmen. A Parliament of this type could hardly effect the ruinous mischiefs which Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Parliaments could certainly effect.Ireland, it has been urged, would obtain Home Rule, if she were assimilated to one of our self-governing colonies. These nations, as they may fitly be called, are by no means, as is commonly supposed, wholly independent of the Crown and the Imperial Parliament; they have Parliaments and Executives of their own; but these in theory, and partly in fact, are subordinate. No Act passed by the Parliament of a self-governing colony can in any way contravene an Imperial statute; the governor of a self-governing colony is a real governor; appeals run to the English Privy Council from colonial Courts of Justice. Nevertheless, self-governing colonies are practically all but independent; they pay no contribution to Imperial charges; they maintain their own garrisons, without a British army in their midst—at least, in a great many cases; they are hardly ever interfered with by the Imperial Parliament, or by the men in power at Westminster. Why, it may be argued, should not the same liberties belong to Ireland, for centuries the peccant part of these kingdoms; would not the concession make her as loyal as most of our self-governing colonies? The answer is short, but amply sufficient; the circumstances of our self-governing colonies and of Ireland are altogether different. In none of these settlements is there the profound estrangement which has long divided Great Britain from Ireland; in none is there a community in which a loyal minority is separated from a disaffected majority by long-standing discords of race and faith; Ireland is at our doors, our self-governing colonies distant. Give Ireland a Parliament like that of Victoria, and Ireland would break off from the British connection; the Irish Parliament would possess ample power to trample on and oppress hundreds of thousands of law-abiding men, of whom the protection was England’s duty; the Irish Parliament and Executive, within a few leagues of our coasts, could, in innumerable ways, do infinite mischief. The supposed analogy, therefore, completely fails; it would be treason to the State, and to loyal Irishmen, to make Ireland a self-governing colony; and no British politician has as yet countenanced this mode of Home Rule. It has been hinted again, but with bated breath and humbleness, that the relations of Great Britain and Ireland have been so long unfortunate, such a dreary record of disputes and miseries, that we should say to our intractable partner, ‘Depart in peace;’ in a word, separation is a conceivable Home Rule policy. This proposal has never been discussed in Parliament; the interest, the self-respect, the pride of Englishmen almost forbid the thought. Yet separation, strange as it may appear, would be a better and more safe expedient than either of Mr. Gladstone’s schemes of Home Rule. The Imperial Parliament would have complete liberty to exercise its sovereign power in Great Britain; it would have a free hand to prevent injustice in Ireland, either by the strong arm, or by fiscal and other expedients, say, by laying an embargo on Irish products; it would not be subject to the exasperating but often effective checks which Home Rule would in any form involve; and the Imperial Executive would possess ample means to protect the interests of England and of her friends in Ireland. Let it not be forgotten that in perhaps the ablest speech ever made, in the House of Commons, on this subject, Peel declared that he would infinitely prefer separation to a repeal of the Union, by no means so evil a policy as Home Rule.

A few politicians, however, have put the theory forward that ‘Home Rule all round’ will meet the ‘national demand’ of Ireland, and give her what they are pleased to call ‘self-government.’ England, Scotland, Ireland, and perhaps Wales are to have local Parliaments to deal with their own affairs; Imperial affairs are to be directed by an Imperial Council. I am willing to admit that a scheme of this kind would be better than Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill of 1893; it would be less illogical, possibly not more disastrous. But I must be permitted to doubt whether these sages understand what their project certainly involves; this, indeed, seems to be rather in the nature of a device to angle for Nationalist votes, without scruple, and then to propose a plan which England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales have never asked for, and which England and Scotland, at least, would indignantly reject. This scheme is pure Federalism, in the proper sense of the word; let us briefly consider what this means from the very nature of the case. England, Scotland, Ireland, and, I assume, Wales would form separate States; they would have separate Legislatures and Executives to manage their local affairs, separate local forces, separate Courts of Justice; they would be, essentially, separate countries. The Imperial Parliament and its Executive would be the only link between them; there would be an Imperial army, and navy, and Imperial tribunals; but the Imperial Parliament and its Executive would only have jurisdiction over Imperial affairs, and would be only the head of the separate States as respects Foreign Powers. But as it would be difficult in the extreme, under these conditions, to distinguish local from Imperial affairs, an arbiter of some kind, armed with sufficient powers, would be necessary to say what affairs were local and what Imperial, and decisively to pronounce on the subject, on the innumerable occasions when the question would arise; and it would be necessary, too, that there should be some means, perhaps a Referendum to a popular vote, to effect any constitutional change, to reform or to abolish the Constitution itself. This scheme obviously would be complex, intricate, and difficult to carry into effect; it would be a huge system of divided, and probably conflicting, powers, not easy to reconcile with each other; for this, and other reasons, it would require a formal Constitution reduced to writing, and setting forth, under distinct heads or articles, the conditions of the Federation that had been established, the spheres of the authority of the separate States, and the sphere of the authority of the Imperial Council. Is it possible to suppose that the Parliament of the United Kingdom would ever break up this ancient and undivided Monarchy; would tamely surrender its sovereign rights, and would substitute a new-fangled fabric of this kind for the venerable and unwritten constitution of these realms—a majestic temple that has grown up in silence; and that the British people, at all events, would not rise up in wrath at the very thought of such a change? For Federalism ‘amounts to a proposal for changing the whole constitution of the United Kingdom. It is, in fact, the most “revolutionary” proposal, if the word “revolutionary” be used in its strict sense, which has ever been submitted to an English Parliament. The abolition of the House of Lords, the disestablishment of the Church, the abolition of the Monarchy, might leave the English Constitution far less essentially changed than would the adoption of Federalism.’[32]

It should be observed, too, with respect to this subject, that the conditions, under which Federalism would have a chance of success, would be absolutely wanting in the present instance. England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales have long been moulded into a single sovereign State, and united under a supreme Monarchy; no Federation, I venture to assert, has been formed out of communities that have had a government of this kind. Federations, in fact, have almost always grown out of an association of existing States, which desire to remain separate, and yet to be a nation for some purposes; they have not been evolved out of the fragments of one State artificially rent asunder. Again, Federalism requires that no single State should be enormously more powerful than the other partners; there must be something like equality between the different States;[33] it is unnecessary to remark that England has tenfold the resources and strength of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; and, in truth, would annihilate the Federation were her will really crossed, and break through the arbitrary limitations imposed on her. Suppose, for example, that England had set her heart on a great foreign war, and had the support of her own Parliament; does any one suppose that, if she were outvoted, by deputies from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, in the Imperial Council, even though backed by their own Parliaments, the people of England would submit to be thwarted in this way; was Samson bound by the withs of the Philistines? Something like this, indeed, was seen in the great Civil War; the result was the subjugation of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and the complete ascendency of England, under Cromwell; an attempt to federalise the Three Kingdoms might lead to a similar issue. Let us assume, however, that, through some evil stroke of destiny, Federalism were made the constitution of these realms, and that this strange arrangement could be made to work even for a few years; the inevitable consequences, from the nature of the case, would follow. The omnipotence of the Imperial Parliament, the mainstay of the Empire, would be gone; so would the omnipotence of the Imperial Executive Government, the best security for justice and for equal liberties. Their powers would be parcelled out and subdivided; they would not survive anywhere in their complete fulness; they would be distributed in fractions between separate States, and would be transformed and impaired in the process; real Imperial unity and sovereignty could have no existence. General national weakness would be the probable result, leading, perhaps, to despotism within a short time; for Federalism is essentially weak; I have no sympathy with Jacobin France, but the Committee of Public Safety rightly put Federalism down, when they were engaged in their death-struggle with Europe; and Napoleon—perhaps the ablest ruler of the nineteenth century—approved of their conduct. But weakness would not be the only consequence; the dissemination of different powers would certainly produce disputes and conflicts between the Federal and the State authorities; above all, the very existence of separate States and of a Federal Government would divide allegiance, and powerfully tend to disruption, as was seen in the great Civil War in America. As regards Ireland, the establishment of ‘Home Rule all round’ would necessarily be attended by all the evils inseparable from Mr. Gladstone’s schemes; but Federalism, having been thus made manifest, would probably increase, and in some sense justify, the alienation of Ireland from the other parts of these kingdoms.

Home Rule, therefore, whatever the form it may assume, would be, it is my firm conviction, incompatible with the welfare of the Three Kingdoms, injurious to Great Britain, a curse to Ireland. In the peculiar circumstances which exist in Ireland, and to which I have adverted before, separation, I believe, would be an expedient less disastrous than Home Rule of any description, this involving the creation of an Irish Parliament, and of an Irish Executive, which would be its instrument. Home Rule, in fact, gloss it over as you please, has been forced to the front by an Irish faction, hostile to a man to the existence of British rule in Ireland, and depending on Fenianism in the United States; this party would be all-powerful in an Irish Parliament; and Home Rule would be made the means to a ruinous and disgraceful end. Thousands of Irishmen, indeed, honestly think Home Rule would do their country good, and have little or nothing to do with this bad conspiracy; this too, doubtless, is the case with the followers of Mr. Gladstone; but Home Rule is an Irish Nationalist movement, and Irish Nationalist movements are dangerous to the safety of the State. The Union, therefore, must be maintained in the interest of Great Britain and Ireland alike; and the Union is an international settlement that has endured for a century. But no candid student of Irish history, no impartial observer of Irish affairs, from 1800 to the present time, can deny that the Union has been in many respects a failure. It has been an incident, perhaps a result, of the Union, that Presbyterian Ireland, rebellious from 1795 to 1798, has, we have seen, become attached to the British connection, and is now devotedly attached to England. The power of the Imperial Parliament and of its Executive have kept lawlessness and disorder down in Ireland, and has restrained the evil passions of Irish factions more than was ever the case under the rule of the Irish Parliament. The Imperial Parliament, too, has accomplished reforms in Ireland, if often unwise, in the main beneficent; and, under the Imperial Executive, justice in Ireland has been administered, for many years, in a very different way from that which was seen a century ago; its tribunals are perfectly free and impartial. But the Union was, in itself, a bad half measure, tainted with iniquity and false promises; it did gross wrong to Catholic Ireland; the evil consequences are felt to this hour. The Union has not fulfilled the sanguine hopes of Pitt; Ireland, as I have pointed out, is far more behind Great Britain in wealth than she was sixty years ago; she is perhaps the poorest country in Europe at the door of the richest. The Union, too, has not reconciled the feuds of religion and race in Ireland; they are as marked as they were a century ago, if not attended with such deeds of violence; above all, the Union has not made the chief part of the Irish community attached to England, as Pitt confidently predicted would certainly happen. Nor can it be denied that the Irish reforms of the Imperial Parliament have too often been ill-designed and faulty, especially, as we shall see, as regards the land; and they have unfortunately, in many instances, been concessions to agitation and dangerous social movements, and have been effected too late to do real good. The administration of Ireland reveals the same defects; it has been marked by good intentions, which, sometimes, have proved gross mistakes; and notably it has, over and over again, been shifty, vacillating, without principle, and showing a curious disregard of sound Irish opinion. Unquestionably, too, Ireland has, on many occasions, to the indignation of true-hearted Irishmen, been made the mere plaything of British faction, with the worst results to her best interests; this has been perhaps the most pernicious incident that has followed the Union; and in the immense revolution which has transformed Ireland, within the last hundred years, the effects that may be traced to the Union have by no means been wholly on the side of good.

These evil consequences cannot be really questioned; it is very advisable to consider their causes, and if possible to see how they can be removed or lessened. They are partly to be ascribed to the fact that Great Britain and Ireland are countries differing from each other in most important respects, and standing, so to speak, on different planes of existence; this alone makes British rule in Ireland difficult, and perplexes and embarrasses British statesmen. They are partly due to defects in the English national character, essentially just in intention, and even generous, but with no sympathy with races of a character unlike its own, self-asserting, obstinate, sometimes rude and offensive; this has had marked and evil effects in the affairs of Ireland. They are largely to be attributed to the nature of Irish administration, seldom consistent, and changing with party changes: British statesmen appear at the Castle; rule for a few years; and then depart and give place to successors, who probably carry out a very different policy. They are largely due to the nature of the representation of Ireland, notably of late years; the Nationalist party—and the same remark applies, in some degree, to the ‘Tail’ of O’Connell—have shown such an aversion to England, have used such seditious and even criminal language, have been so extravagant and wild in their demands, and have been such a dangerous element in the House of Commons, that Englishmen and Scotchmen turn away from Irish questions with disgust, and Ireland unfortunately has often been the sufferer. But the most important of these causes, one which may be traced throughout Irish history, and has been scarcely less evident since the Union, has been the strange but signal ignorance of Irish affairs—of all, in a word, that relates to Ireland—which has been but too characteristic of the British people, and, in a lesser degree, of many British statesmen. This capital fault aroused the sÆva indignatio, of Swift; it was exposed by Grattan, O’Connell, even by Lord Clare; it was condemned in severe but thoughtful language by Burke; it has been conspicuous during the events of the last twenty years.[34] The resulting mischiefs have been numerous and grave in the extreme; can nothing be done to mitigate these and to make them less, consistently with maintaining the Union in its full completeness? I, for one, have long thought that much could be effected were the Imperial Parliament occasionally to hold its sessions in Dublin, and to govern Ireland directly, so to speak, on the spot. This very measure was proposed by many distinguished Irishmen, during the agitation for Repeal in 1843-44; it was made the subject of an eloquent eulogy by Sheil at O’Connell’s trial; it was seriously entertained by the Whig opposition of the day, as we know from a remarkable letter of Lord Waveney. This policy unfortunately passed out of sight; but even now, I believe, it would do the greatest good in Ireland. It would be something that the proposed change would cause the wealth of England and Scotland largely to flow into a poor country; that Irish absenteeism would be diminished; that Ireland would become, more than she is now, an attractive place of resort to the traveller. But it would be far more that the presence of the Imperial Parliament in College Green would necessarily largely remove the ignorance of Irish affairs I have just referred to; it would make English and Scotch members familiar with the requirements, the feelings, the wishes of Irishmen; as has happily been said, it would render our Irish legislation and administration ‘racy of the Irish soil.’ And probably more than any other expedient, it would exorcise the weak phantom of Home Rule by bringing Irishmen in contact with the majesty of the Sovereign Assembly of the British Empire. I shall not comment on the petty inconveniences the scheme might cause; really they are not worthy of serious attention.

The occasional presence of Royalty, too, in Ireland, as was made manifest during the late Queen’s visit, unquestionably would have beneficent results. It would gratify a sentiment of Celtic nature, always attached to persons rather than to institutions and laws, and especially attached to rulers and chiefs, which, in Ireland, has been scarcely gratified before; it would spread far and wide a happy and good influence; it would certainly improve the social life of Ireland, and add something to her scanty material wealth. The maintenance of the Union, however, is the first requirement of a sound Irish and Imperial policy; one means of strengthening that fundamental law of these realms, consistently with strict constitutional justice, nay, if constitutional wrong is not to continue, has long been apparent to impartial minds. The over-representation of Ireland, in the House of Commons, is a flagrant anomaly, acknowledged for years; as I have remarked, it was largely expected that this important subject would have been taken up before this by Lord Salisbury’s Government, and have been settled in the Parliament of 1895-1900. Taking the test of population alone, Ireland has, compared to England, Wales, and Scotland, an excess of twenty-three members; taking the test of population and property combined, she has an excess probably of from thirty to forty. I am willing to allow that, in this matter, we ought not to follow arithmetic only; Ireland, a poor country, far away from Westminster, may have a claim to a representation somewhat more numerous than mere figures would give her. But can anything be more unjust, nay, absurd, than that Ireland should have one hundred and three members, and that the world of London, with a population about the same as that of Ireland, and probably possessing tenfold wealth, should have little more than half that number? This excessive representation must be reduced, and Irish Nationalists cannot here appeal to the Union; the Union did not save the Established Church of Ireland, secured by the Treaty in emphatic terms; and the Union must not be wrested to work gross injustice. The anomaly can be only removed by a large scheme for the redistribution of seats, founded on sound constitutional principles; and should this become law, as I confidently hope will be one of the achievements of the existing Parliament, the Union will acquire a new security, for the Nationalist vote in the House of Commons would be greatly reduced, and the Irish Unionist vote would be greatly increased. A very few figures will prove this: the rural populations of the Unionist counties of Antrim and Down are upwards of four hundred and thirty thousand souls; the rural populations of the Home Rule counties of Kildare, Kilkenny, King’s, Longford, Wicklow, and Louth have a population less than three hundred and ninety-eight thousand;[35] yet Antrim and Down have only eight members, the other six counties have no less than twelve. The same disparity runs through all the Irish counties; in the boroughs of Ireland it is even more visible. Protestant and Unionist Ireland, in a word, has probably fifteen or sixteen members too few; Catholic and anti-Unionist Ireland fifteen or sixteen too many; it is high time this plain wrong should be redressed; it is unnecessary to point out how this would strengthen the Union. And what probably is not less important, it would make the representation of Ireland, not, what it is now, an utterly false index of Irish opinion, but a reasonably fair and trustworthy index; were the Irish representation cut down to eighty members, the Nationalists would probably command not more than fifty seats; the Unionists would command about thirty; and this, taking all things into account, would be a proportion approaching what is just. The ‘doing’ of right, in this matter, has been too long deferred; loyal Ireland feels strongly upon the subject; the reform would be altogether in the interest of the State.