13109	----	Proofreaders ABOUT IRELAND BY _E. LYNN LINTON._ LONDON: METHUEN & CO., 18, BURY STREET, W.C. 1890. EXPLANATORY. I am conscious that I ought to make some kind of apology for rushing into print on a subject which I do not half know. But I do know just a little more than I did when I was an ardent Home Ruler, influenced by the seductive charm of sentiment and abstract principle only; and I think that perhaps the process by which my own blindness has been couched may help to clear the vision of others who see as I did. All of us lay-folk are obliged to follow the leaders of those schools in politics, science, or religion, to which our temperament and mental idiosyncracies affiliate us. Life is not long enough for us to examine from the beginning upwards all the questions in which we are interested; and it is only by chance that we find ourselves set face to face with the first principles and elemental facts of a cause to which, perhaps, as blind and believing followers of our leaders, we have committed ourselves with the ardour of conviction and the intemperance of ignorance. In this matter of Ireland I believed in the accusations of brutality, injustice, and general insolence of tyranny from modern landlords to existing tenants, so constantly made by the Home Rulers and their organs; and, shocking though the undeniable crimes committed by the Campaigners were, they seemed to me the tragic results of that kind of despair which seizes on men who, goaded to madness by oppression, are reduced to masked murder as their sole means of defence--and as, after all, but a sadly natural retaliation. I knew nothing really of Lord Ashbourne's Act; and what I thought I knew was, that it was more a blind than honest legislation, and did no vital good. I thought that Home Rule would set all things straight, and that the National Sentiment was one which ought to find practical expression. I rejoiced over every election that took away one seat from the Unionists and added another vote to the Home Rulers; and I shut my eyes to the dismemberment of our glorious Empire and the certainty of civil war in Ireland, should the Home Rule demanded by the Parnellites and advocated by the Gladstonians become an accomplished fact. In a word I committed the mistakes inevitable to all who take feeling and conviction rather than fact and knowledge for their guides. Then I went to Ireland; and the scales fell from my eyes. I saw for myself; heard facts I had never known before; and was consequently enlightened as to the true meaning of the agitation and the real condition of the people in their relation to politics, their landlords, and the Plan of Campaign. The outcome of this visit was two papers which were written for the _New Review_--with the editor of whom, however, I stood somewhat in the position of Balaam with Balak, when, called on to curse the Israelites, he was forced by a superior power to bless them. So I with the Unionists. The first paper was sent and passed, but it was delayed by editorial difficulties through the critical months of the bye-elections. When published in the December number, owing to the exigencies of space, the backbone--namely the extracts from the Land Acts, now included in this re-publication--was taken out of it, and my own unsupported statements alone were left. I was sorry for this, as it cut the ground from under my feet and left me in the position of one of those mere impressionists who have already sufficiently darkened counsel and obscured the truth of things. As the same editorial difficulties and exigencies of space would doubtless delay the second paper, like the first, I resolved, by the courteous permission of the editor, to enlarge and publish both in a pamphlet for which I alone should be responsible, and which would bind no editor to even the semblance of endorsement. I, only half-enlightened, write, as has been said, for the wholly blind and ignorantly ardent who, as I did, accept sentiment for fact and feeling for demonstration; who do not look at the solid legal basis on which the present Government is dealing with the Irish question; who believe all that the Home Rulers say, and nothing that the Unionists demonstrate. I want them to study the plain and indisputable facts of legislation as I have done, when I think they must come to the same conclusions as those which have forced themselves on my own mind--namely, that the Home Rule desired by the Parnellites is not only a delusive impossibility, but is also high treason against the integrity of the Empire, and would be a base surrender of our obligations to the Irish Loyalists; that, whatever the landlords were, they are now more sinned against than sinning; and that in the orderly operation of the Land Acts now in force, with the stern repression of outrages[A] and punishment of crimes, for which peaceable folk are so largely indebted to Mr. Balfour, lies the true pacification of this distressed and troubled country. E. LYNN LINTON. ABOUT IRELAND. I. Nothing dies so hard as prejudice, unless it be sentiment. Indeed, prejudice and sentiment are but different manifestations of the same principle by which men pronounce on things according to individual feeling, independent of facts and free from the restraint of positive knowledge. And on nothing in modern times has so much sentiment been lavished as on the Irish question; nowhere has so much passionately generous, but at the same time so much absolutely ignorant, partisanship been displayed as by English sympathisers with the Irish peasant. This is scarcely to be wondered at. The picture of a gallant nation ground under the heel of an iron despotism--of an industrious and virtuous peasantry rackrented, despoiled, brutalised, and scarce able to live by their labour that they may supply the vicious wants of oppressive landlords--of unarmed men, together with women and little children, ruthlessly bludgeoned by a brutal police, or shot by a bloodthirsty soldiery for no greater offence than verbal protests against illegal evictions--of a handful of ardent patriots ready to undergo imprisonment and contumely in their struggle against one of the strongest nations in the world for only so much political freedom as is granted to-day by despots themselves--such a picture as this is calculated to excite the sympathies of all generous souls. And it has done so in England, where "Home Rule" and "Justice to Ireland" have become the rallying cries of one section of the Liberal party, to the disruption and political suicide of the whole body; and where the less knowledge imported into the question the more fervid the advocacy and the louder the demand. It is worth while to state quite quietly and quite plainly how things stand at this present moment. There is no need for hysterics on the one side or the other; and to amend one's views by the testimony of facts is not a dishonest turning of one's coat--if confession of that amendment is a little like the white sheet and lighted taper of a penitent. Things are, or they are not. If they are, as will be set down, the inference is plain to anyone not hopelessly blinded by preconceived prejudice. If they are not, let them be authoritatively contradicted on the basis of fact, not sentiment--demonstration, not assertion. In any case it is a gain to obtain material for a truer judgment than heretofore, and thus to be rid of certain mental films by which colours are blurred and perspective is distorted. No one wishes to palliate the crimes of which England has been guilty in Ireland. Her hand has been heavy, her whip one of braided scorpions, her rule emphatically of blood and iron. But all this is of the past, and the pendulum, not only of public feeling but of legal enactment, threatens to swing too far on the other side. What has been done cannot be undone, but it will not be repeated. We shall never send over another Cromwell nor yet another Castlereagh; and there is as little good to be got from chafing over past wrongs as there is in lamenting past glories. Malachi and his collar of gold--the ancient kings who led forth the Red Branch Knights--State persecution of the Catholics--rack-rents and unjust evictions, are all alike swept away into the limbo of things dead and done with. What Ireland has to deal with now are the enactments and facts of the day, and to shake off the incubus of retrospection, as a strong man awaking would get rid of a nightmare. Nowhere in Europe, nor yet in the United States, are tenant-farmers so well protected by law as in Ireland; nor is it the fault of England if the Acts passed for their benefit have been rendered ineffectual by the agitators who have preferred fighting to orderly development. So long ago as 1860 a Bill was passed providing that no tenant should be evicted for non-payment of rent unless one year's rent in arrear. (Landlord and Tenant Act, 1860, sec. 52.) Even then, when evicted, he could recover possession within six months by payment of the amount due; when the landlord had to pay him the amount of any profit he had made out of the lands in the interim. The landlord had to pay half the poor rate of the Government Valuation if a holding was £4 or upward, and all the poor rate if it was under £4. By the Act of 1870 "a yearly tenant disturbed in his holding by the act of the landlord, for causes other than non-payment of rent, and the Government Valuation of whose holding does not exceed £100 per annum, must be paid by his landlord not only full compensation for all improvements made by himself or his predecessors, such as unexhausted manures, permanent buildings, and reclamation of waste lands, but also as compensation for disturbance, a sum of money which may amount to seven years' rent." (Land Act of 1870, secs. 1, 2, and 3.) Under the Act of 1881 the landlord's power of disturbance was practically abolished--but I think I have read somewhere that even of late years, and with the ballot, certain landlords in England have threatened their tenants with "disturbance" without compensation if their votes were not given to the right colour--while in Ireland, even when evicted for non-payment of rent, a yearly tenant must be paid by his landlord "compensation for all improvements, such as unexhausted manures, permanent buildings, and reclamation of waste land." (Sec. 4.) And when his rent does not exceed £15 he must be paid in addition "a sum of money which may amount to seven years' rent if the court decides that the rent is exorbitant." (Secs. 3 and 9.) (_a_) Until the contrary is proved, the improvements are presumed to have been made by the tenants. (Sec. 5.) (_b_) The tenant can make his claim for compensation immediately on notice to quit being served, and cannot be evicted until the compensation is paid. (Secs. 16 and 21.) A yearly tenant when voluntarily surrendering his farm must either be paid by the landlord (_a_) compensation for all his improvements, or (_b_) be permitted to sell his improvements to an incoming tenant. (Sec. 4.) In all new tenancies the landlord must pay half the county or Grand Jury Cess if the valuation is £4 or upward and the whole of the same Cess if the value does not exceed £4. (Secs. 65 and 66.) Thus we have under the Land Act of 1870 (i) Full payment for all improvements; (2) Compensation for disturbance. The famous Land Act of 1881 gave three additional privileges, (1) Fixity of tenure, by which the tenant remains in possession of the land for ever, subject to periodic revision of the rent. (Land Act, 1881, sec. 8.) If the tenant has not had a fair rent fixed, and his landlord proceeds to evict him for non-payment of rent, he can apply to the court to fix the fair rent, and meantime the eviction proceedings will be restrained by the court. (Sec. 13.) (2) Fair rent, by which any yearly tenant may apply to the Land Commission Court (the judges of which were appointed under Mr. Gladstone's Administration) to fix the fair rent of his holding. The application is referred to three persons, one of whom is a lawyer, and the other two inspect and value the farm. _This rent can never again_ be raised by the landlord. (Sec. 8.) (3) Free sale, by which every yearly tenant may, whether he has had a fair rent fixed or not, sell his tenancy to the highest bidder whenever he desires to leave. (Sec. 1.) (_a_) There is no practical limit to the price he may sell for, and twenty times the amount of the annual rent has frequently been obtained in every province of Ireland. (_b_) Even if a tenant be evicted, he has the right either to redeem at any time within three months, _or to sell his tenancy within the same period to a purchaser who can likewise redeem_ and thus acquire all the privileges of a tenant. (Sec. 13.) Even more important than this is the Land Purchase Act of 1885, commonly called Lord Ashbourne's Act, by which the whole land in Ireland is potentially put into the hands of the farmers, and of the working of which much will have to be said before these papers end. This Act, in its sections 2, 3, and 4, sets forth this position, briefly stated: If a tenant wishes to buy his holding, and arranges with his landlord as to terms, he can change his position from that of a perpetual rent-payer into that of the payer of an annuity, terminable at the end of forty-nine years--the Government supplying him with the entire purchase-money, to be repaid during those forty-nine years at 4 per cent. This annual payment of £4 for every £100 borrowed covers both principal and interest. Thus, if a tenant, already paying a statutory rent of £50, agrees to buy from his landlord at twenty years' purchase (or £1,000) the Government will lend him the money, his rent will at once cease, and he will not pay £50, but £40, yearly for forty-nine years, and then become the owner of his holding, free of rent. It is hardly necessary to point out that, as these forty-nine years of payment roll by, the interest of the tenant in his holding increases rapidly in value. (Land Purchase Act, 1885, secs. 2, 3, and 4.) Under the Land Act of 1887, the tenants received the following still greater and always one-sided privileges, (i) By this Act leases are allowed to be broken by the tenant, but not by the landlord. All leaseholders whose leases would expire within ninety-nine years after the passing of the Act have the option of going into court and getting their contracts broken and a judicial rent fixed. No equivalent power is given to the landlords. (Land Act of 1887, secs, 1 and 2.) (2) The Act varies rent already judicially fixed for fifteen years by the Land Courts in the years 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, and 1885. (Sec. 29.) (3) It stays evictions, and allows rent to be paid by instalments. In the case of tenants whose valuation does not exceed £50, the court before which proceedings are being taken for the recovery of _any_ debt due by the tenant is empowered to stay his eviction, and may give him liberty to pay his creditors by instalments, and can extend the time for such payment as it thinks proper. (Land Act of 1887, sec. 30.) By these extracts, which do not exhaust the whole of the privileges granted to the Irish tenant, it may be seen how exceptionally he has been favoured. Nowhere else has such wholesale interference with the obligations of contract, such lavish protection of the tenant, such practical persecution of the landlord been as yet demanded by the one-half of the nation; nor, if demanded, would such partiality have been conceded by the other half. Yet, in the face of these various Acts, and all they embody, provide for, and deny, our hysterical journal _par excellence_ is not ashamed to publish a wild letter from one of those ramping political women who screech like peacocks before rain, setting forth how Ireland could be redeemed by the manufacture of blackberry jam, were it not for the infamous landlords who would at once raise the rent on those tenants who, by industry, had improved their condition. And a Dublin paper asserts that anything will be fiction which demonstrates that "Ireland is not the home of rackrenters, brutal batonmen, and heartless evictors"; while political agitation is still being carried on by any means that come handiest, and the eviction of tenants who owe five or six years' rent, and will not pay even one to clear off old scores, is treated as an act of brutality for which no quarter should be given. If we were to transfer the whole method of procedure to our own lands and houses in England, perhaps the thing would wear a different aspect from that which it wears now, when surrounded by a halo of false sentiment and convenient forgetfulness. The total want of honesty, of desire for the right thing in this no-rent agitation, is exemplified by the following fact:--When Colonel Vandeleur's tenants--owing several years' rent, refused to pay anything, and joined the Plan of Campaign, arbitration was suggested, and Sir Charles Russell was accepted by the landlord as arbitrator. As every one knows, Sir Charles is an Irishman, a Catholic, and the "tenants' friend." His award was, as might have been expected, most liberal towards them. Here is the result:--"We learn that the non-fulfilment by a number of the tenants of the terms of the award made by Sir C. Russell is likely to lead to serious difficulties. They refuse to carry out the undertaking which was given on their behalf, having so much bettered the instruction given to them that they insist upon holding a grip of the rent, and not yielding to even the advice of their friends. About thirty of them have not paid the year's rent, which all the Plan of Campaign tenants were to have paid when the award was made known to them. This is the most conspicuous instance in which arbitration has been tried, and the result is not encouraging, although landlords have been denounced for not at once accepting it instead of seeking to enforce their legal rights by the tribunal appointed by the Legislature." With a legal machinery of relief so comprehensive and so favourable to the tenant, it would seem that the Plan of Campaign, with its cruel and murderous accompaniments, was scarcely needed. If anyone was aggrieved, the courts were open to him; and we have only to read the list of reduced rents to see how those courts protected the tenant and bore heavily on the landlord. Also, it would seem to persons of ordinary morality that it would have been more manly and more honest to pay the rents due to the proprietor than to cast the money into the chest of the Plan of Campaign--that _boite à Pierrette_ which, like the sieve of the Danaïdes, can never be filled. The Home Rule agitators have known how to make it appear that they, and they alone, stand between the people and oppression. They have ignored all this orderly legal machinery; and their English sympathisers have not remembered it. Nor have those English sympathisers considered the significant fact that this agitation is literally the bread of life to those who have created and still maintain it. Many of the Home Rule Irish Members of Parliament have risen from the lowest ranks of society--from the barefooted peasantry, where their nearest relations are still to be found--into the outward condition of gentlemen living in comparative affluence. It is not being uncharitable, nor going behind motives, to ask, _Cui bono?_ For whose advantage is a certain movement carried on?--especially for whose advantage is this anti-rent movement in Ireland? For the good of the tenants who, under the pressure put on them by those whom they have agreed to follow, refuse to pay even a fraction of rent hitherto paid to the full, and who are, in consequence, evicted from their farms and deprived of their means of subsistence?--or is it for the good of a handful of men who live by and on the agitation they created and still keep up? Do the leaders of any movement whatsoever give a thought to the individual lives sacrificed to the success of the cause? As little as the general regrets the individuals of the rank and file in the battalions he hurls against the enemy. The ruined homes and blighted lives of the thousands who have listened, believed, been coerced to their own despair, have been no more than the numbers of the rank and file to the general who hoped to gain the day by his battalions.[B] The good in this no-rent movement is reaped by the agitators alone; and for them alone have the chestnuts been pulled out of the fire. Furthermore, whose hands among the prominent leaders are free from the reflected stain of blood-money? These leaders have counselled a course of action which has been marked all along the line by outrage and murder; and they have lived well and amassed wealth by the course they have counselled. From proletariats in their own persons they have become men of substance and property. These assertions are facts to which names and amounts can be given; and that question, _Cui bono_? answers itself. The inference to be drawn is too grave to be set aside; and to plead "charitable judgment" is to plead imbecility. The plain and simple truth is--the protective legislation that was so sorely needed for the peasantry is fast degenerating into injustice and oppression against the landlords. Thousands of the smaller landowners have been absolutely beggared; the larger holders have been as ruthlessly ruined. For, while the rents were lowered, the charges on the land, made on the larger basis, were kept to their same value; and the fate of the landlord was sealed. Between the hammer and the anvil as he was and is placed, his times have not been pleasant. Families who have bought their estates on the faith of Government sales and Government contracts, and families who have owned theirs for centuries and lived on them, winter and summer--who have been neither absentees nor rack-renters, but have been friendly, hospitable, open-handed after their kind, always ready to give comforts and medicine to the sick and a good-natured measure of relief to the hard pressed--they have now been brought to the ground; and between our own fluid and unstable legislation and the reckless cruelty of the Plan of Campaign their destruction has been complete. Wherever one goes one finds great houses shut up or let for a few summer months to strangers who care nothing for the place and less than nothing for the people. One cannot call this a gain, look at it as one will. Nor do the tenantry themselves feel it to be a gain. Get their confidence and you will find that they all regret the loss of their own--those jovial, frank, and kindly proprietors who did the best they knew, though perhaps, judged by present scientific knowledge that best was not very good, but who at least knew more than themselves. Carrying the thing home to England, we should scarcely say that our country places would be the better for the exodus of all the educated and refined and well-to-do families, with the peasantry and an unmarried clergyman left sole masters of the situation. In the desire of Parliament to do justice to the Irish peasant, whose condition did once so loudly demand amelioration, justice to the landlord has gone by the board. For we cannot call it justice to make him alone suffer. His rents have been reduced from 25 to 30 per cent. and over, but all the rent charges, mortgages, debts and dues have been retained at their full value. The scheme of reduction does not pass beyond the tiller of the soil, and the landlord is the sole loser.[C] Beyond this he suffers from the want of finality in legislation. Nothing is left to prove itself, and the tinkering never ends. A fifteen years' bargain under the first Land Act is broken up under the next as if Governmental pledges were lovers' vows. When, on the faith of those pledges, a landlord borrowed money from the Board of Works for the improvement of his estate, for stone cottages for his tenantry, for fences, drainage, and the like, suddenly his income is still further reduced; but the interest he has to pay for the loan contracted on the broader basis remains the same. Which is a kind of thing on all fours with the plan of locking up a debtor so that he cannot work at his trade, while ordering him to pay so much weekly from earnings which the law itself prevents his making. If the sum of misery remains constant in Ireland, its distribution has changed hands. The small deposits in the savings-banks have increased to an enormous extent, and in many places where the tenants have for some years refused to pay their rents, but have still kept the land, the women have learned to dress. But the owners of the land--say that they are ladies with no man in the family--have wanted bread, and have been kept from starvation only by surreptitious supplies delivered in the dead darkness of the night. These supplies have of necessity been rare and scanty, for the most honest tenant dared not face the vengeance of the League by openly paying his just due. Did not Mr. Dillon, on August 23rd, 1887, say, "If there is a man in Ireland base enough to back down, to turn his back on the fight now that Coercion has passed, I pledge myself in the face of this meeting, that I will denounce him from public platform by name, and I pledge myself to the Government that, let that man be whom he may, his life will not be a happy one, either in Ireland or across the seas." With such a formidable organisation as this, what individual would have the courage to stand out for abstract justice to a landlord? It would have been, and it has been, standing out for his own destruction. Hence, for no fault, no rack-renting, have proprietors--and especially ladies--been treated as mortal enemies by those whom they had always befriended--for no reason whatever but that it was an easy victory for the Campaigners to obtain. Women, with never a man to defend them, could be more easily manipulated than if they were so many stalwart young fellows, handy in their turn with guns and revolvers, and man for man a match even for Captain Moonlight. If these ladies dared to evict their non-paying tenants they would be either boycotted or "visited," or perhaps both. Besides, who would venture to take the vacant land? And how could a couple of delicate ladies, say, till the ground with their own hands? The old fable of the dog in the manger holds good with these Campaigners. Those who will not pay prevent others who would; and the hated "landgrabber," denounced from altar and platform alike, is simply an honest and industrious worker, who would make his own living and the landlord's rent out of a bit of land which is lying idle and going to waste. All through the disturbed districts we come upon facts like this--upon the ruin and humiliation of kindly and delicately-nurtured ladies, of which the English public knows nothing; and while it hysterically pities the poor down-trodden peasant and goes in for Home Rule as the panacea, the wife of a tenant owing five years' rent and refusing to pay one, dresses in costly attire--and the lady proprietor knows penury and hunger; not to speak of the agonies of personal terror endured for months at a stretch. Let us, who live in a well-ordered country, realize for a moment the mental condition of those who dwell in the shadow of assassination--women to whom every unusual noise is as the sentence of death, and whose days are days of trembling, and their nights of anguish for the fear of death that encompasses them. Is this according to the law of elemental justice? Are our sympathies to be confined wholly to one class, and are the sorrows and the wrongs done to another not to count? Surely it is time for some of the sentimental fog in which so many of us have been living to be dispelled in favour of the light of truth! Here is an instructive little bit on which we would do well to ponder:-- A certain authority gives the following anecdote:--He says that he "has just had a long conversation with one of the leading Galway merchants. 'A farmer of this county,' said he, 'told me yesterday that he had let his meadowing at £8 an acre. I bought all his barley, and he confessed that on this crop too he had made £8 an acre. Now the judicial rent of this man's holding is 10s. the acre. He said, "I have nothing to complain of."' This man was a tenant of Lord Clanricarde; one of those people who decline to pay a farthing in the way of rent to the lawful owner of the soil. The case we have cited may be an extreme one, but it is generally admitted by those who are acquainted with the facts, and who speak the truth that the rents on the Clanricarde property, speaking generally, are low rents, and yet not only is it impossible to collect these rents, but the agent who represents Lord Clanricarde, and whose only fault is that he tries to do his duty to his employer without unnecessary harshness to the tenantry, dare not go outside his house without an escort of police, and every time he leaves his house, he risks his life. Referring to this agent, Mr. Tener, the correspondent says:-- "No one would think from looking at him that he literally carries his life in his hand, and that if he were not guarded as closely as he is he would be shot in twenty-four hours. He never goes outside the walls of the Portumna demesne without an escort of seven policemen--two mounted men in front, two behind, and three upon his car. He, too, as well as the driver, is armed, so the would-be assassins must reckon with nine armed men. In the opinion of those who know the neighbourhood his escort is barely strong enough. He was fired at a few weeks ago, and the horse which he was driving shot dead. The police who were with him on the car were rolled out upon the road, and before they could recover themselves and pursue the Moonlighters had escaped.' And this is supposed to be a civilised country, and is a part of the United Kingdom! "Whereas it seems to us Lord Clanricarde is to blame is in not living, at any rate for some part of the year, upon his Irish property. This nobleman represents one of the most ancient families in Ireland. He is the representative of the Clanricarde Burkes, who have been settled upon this property for 700 years. He draws, or rather drew, a very large income from it, and there can be little question that his presence would encourage and sustain smaller proprietors who are fighting a losing battle in defence of their rights. These proprietors may fairly claim that the leading men of their order should stand by them in the time of trial. Unfortunately, this assistance has not been invariably, or even as a rule, rendered by the great Irish landowners. It is, indeed, largely because they have failed in their duty that the present troubles have come upon Irish landlords as a body. If only in the past the great landowners had lived in Ireland and spent at least a portion of the incomes they derived from Ireland upon their estates, the present agitation against landlordism would never have reached the point at which it has arrived. The absence of the landlords, and in many cases their refusal to recognise the legitimate claims of their districts upon them, has made it possible for the agitators who have now the ear of the people to bring about that severance of classes, and that embittered feeling of class against class, which is doing Ireland more injury at the present time than all the rack-renters put together." Those who plead for the landlords who have been so cruelly robbed and ruined are weak-voiced and reticent compared to the loudly crying advocates for the peasantry. English tourists run over for a fortnight to Ireland, talk to the jarvies, listen to the peasants themselves, forbear to go near any educated or responsible person with knowledge of the facts and a character to lose, and accept as gospel everything they hear. There is no check and no verification. Pat and Tim and Mike give their accounts of this and that, bedad! and tell their piteous tales of want and oppression. The English tourist swallows it all whole as it comes to him, and writes his account to the sympathetic Press, which publishes as gospel stories which have not one word of truth in them. In fact, the term "English tourist" has come to mean the same as _gobemouche_ in France; and clever Pat knows well enough that there is not a fly in the whole region of fable which is too large for the brutal Saxon to swallow. Abject poverty without shoes to its feet, with only a few rags to cover its unwashed nakedness, and an unfurnished mud cabin shared with the pigs and poultry for its sole dwelling-place--abject poverty begs a copper from "his honour" for the love of God and the glory of the Blessed Virgin, telling meantime a heartrending story of privation and oppression. Abject poverty points to all the outward signs and circumstances of its woe; but it forgets the good stone house in which live the son and the son's wife--the dozen or more of cattle grazing free on the mountain side--that bit of fertile land where the very weeds grow into beauty by their luxuriance--and those quiet hundreds hidden away for the sole pleasure of hoarding. And the English tourist takes it all in, and blazes out into wrath against the tyrannous landlord who has reduced an honest citizen to this fearful state of misery; knowing nothing of the craft which is known to all the residents round about, and not willing to believe it were he even told. For the dramatic instinct is strong in human nature, and in these later days there is an ebullient surplusage of sympathy which only desires to find an object. Across the Bristol Channel, the English tourist finds these objects ready-made to his hand; and the question is still further embroiled, and the light of truth still more obscured, that a few impulsive, credulous, and non-judicially-minded young people may find something whereon to excite their emotions, and give vent to them in letters to the newspapers when excited. Only the other day a young Irishman who has to do with the land question was mistaken for a brutal but credulous Saxon by the jarvey who had him in tow. Consequently, Pat plied his fancied victim with the wildest stories of this man's wrongs and that lone widow's sufferings. When he found out his mistake he laughed and said: "Begorra, I thought your honour was an English tourist!" And at a certain trial which took place in Cork, the judge put by some absurd statement by saying, half-indignant, half amused: "Do you take me for an English tourist?" Nevertheless the race will continue so long as there are excitable young persons of either sex whose capacity for swallowing flies is practically unlimited, and an hysterical Press to which they can betake themselves. The following authoritative instance of this misplaced sympathy may suffice. The _Westminster Review_ published a certain article on the Olphert estate, among other things. Those who have read it know its sensational character. At Cork the other day the priest concerned had to confess on oath that only three of the Olphert tenants had received relief.[D] In the famous Luggacurren evictions the poor dispossessed dupes lost their all at the bidding of the Campaigners, on the plea of inability to pay rents voluntarily offered by Lord Lansdowne to be reduced 20 per cent. After these evictions the lands were let to the "Land Corporation," which had some short time ago four hundred head of cattle over and above the full rent paid honestly down; but the former holders are living on charity doled out to them by the Campaigners, and in huts built for them by the Campaigners on the edge of the rich and kindly land which once gave them home and sustenance. How bitterly they curse the evil counsels which led to their destruction only they and the few they dare trust know. Take, too, these two authoritative stories. They are of the things one blindly believes and rages against--with what justice the dénouement of the sorry farce, best shows:-- "The correspondents of the _Freeman's Journal_, in response to the circular some time ago addressed to them continue to supply fictitious and exaggerated statements of events alleged to have happened 'in the country,' nearly every day some example is afforded. One of the latest is a pathetic tale of the 'suicide of a tenant.' It represents that Andrew Kelly, of Cloonlaugh, 'one of the three tenants against whom A.W. Sampey, J.P., landlord, obtained ejectments,' became demented from the fear of eviction, and drowned himself in a bog hole in consequence. The account is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. Andrew Kelly was not a tenant of Mr. Sampey's, nor had he been for the last five years. His son, it is true, is one of the tenants against whom a decree was obtained, but this did not apparently trouble the father much, as he had been living away from his son for a long time, although he had come to see him a few days before he was drowned. There was no suspicion either of foul play or suicide, and the coroner's jury returned no such verdict as that given in the _Freeman_. The veracious correspondent of that journal stated that the jury found that 'Andrew Kelly came by his death through drowning on the 22nd October while suffering under temporary insanity brought about by fear of eviction.' The following is the verdict which the coroner's jury actually arrived at:--'We find that Andrew Kelly's death was caused by suffocation; that he was found dead in the townland of Clooncriur, on the 24th day of October, 1889.' This is the way in which sensational news is manufactured for the purpose of promoting an anti-landlord crusade and prejudicing the owners of property in the eyes of the country." "Speaking at Newmarch, near Barnsley, last month, Mr. Waddy drew a heartrending picture of the tyranny practised in Ireland, and illustrated his theme and moved his audience to the execration of Mr. Balfour by the artistic recital of a horrible tale. He declared that a little child had been barbarously sentenced by resident magistrates to a month's imprisonment for throwing a stone at a policeman. Some hard-headed or hard-hearted Yorkshireman, however, would not believe Mr. Waddy offhand, and challenged him to declare names, place, and date. On the 15th of November, Mr. Waddy gave the following particulars in writing. He stated that the magistrates who had imposed the brutal punishment were Mr. Hill and Colonel Bowlby, that the case was tried at Keenagh on the 23rd of April, 1888, that the child's name was Thomas Quin, aged nine, and that the charge was throwing stones at the police. "The clue thus afforded has been followed up. It is grievous that cool and calculating investigation should spoil a pretty story, but here is the truth. "On the 20th of April, before Colonel Stewart and Colonel Bowlby, resident magistrates, Thomas Quin, aged 19 years, was convicted of using intimidation towards William Nutley, in consequence of his having done an act which he had a legal right to do--viz., to evict a labourer, Michael Fegan, of Clearis, who refused to work for him. Thomas Quin was sentenced to one month's imprisonment. "I am quite sure that Mr. Waddy will publicly acknowledge that he played upon the feelings of his hearers with a trumped-up tale of woe, but I wonder whether anything will teach the British political tourist that a great number of my countrymen unfortunately feel a genuine delight in hoaxing them. "Your obedient servant, "AN IRISH LIBERAL." As for the assertion of poverty and inability to pay, so invariably made to excuse defaulting tenants, I will give these two instances to the contrary. "Writing on behalf of Mr. Balfour to Mr. E. Bannister, of Hyde, Cheshire, Mr. George Wyndham, M.P., recounts a somewhat remarkable circumstance in connection with the position and circumstances of a tenant on Lord Kenmare's estate who declined to pay his rent on the plea of poverty:--'Irish Office, Nov. 28, 1889. Dear Sir,--In reply to your letter of the 22nd inst., I beg to inform you that I have made careful inquiries into the case of Molloy, a tenant on Lord Kenmare's estate. I find that so far from exaggerating the scope of this incident, you somewhat understate the case. The full particulars were as follow:--The estate bailiffs visited the house of Molloy, a tenant who owed £30 rent and arrears. They seized his cows, and then called at his home to ask him if he would redeem them by paying the debt. Molloy stated that he was willing to pay, but that he had only £7 altogether. He handed seven notes to the bailiff, who found that one of them was a £5 note, so that the amount was £11 instead of £7. On being pressed to pay the balance he admitted that he had a small deposit of £20 in the bank, and produced a document which he said was the deposit receipt for this sum. On the bailiff examining this receipt he found it was for £100 and not for £20. On being informed of his mistake, Molloy took back the £100 receipt and produced another, which turned out to be for £40. A further search on his part led to the production of the receipt for £20, with which and £10 in notes he paid the rent. You will observe that this tenant, refusing to pay £30, and obliging his landlord to take steps against him, possessed at the time £171, besides having stock on his land.--Yours faithfully, GEORGE WYNDHAM.'" And I have it on the word of honour of one whose word is his bond, that certain defaulting tenants lately confessed to him that they had in their pockets as much as the value of three years' rent for the two they owed, but that they dared not, for their lives, pay it. They would if they dared, but they dared not. The plea of inability to pay the reduced scale of rent is for the most part simple moonshine; and the terrorism imported into this question comes from the Campaigners, not from the landlords, nor yet from the police. If these paid political agitators were silenced, and if the laws already passed were suffered to work by themselves according to their intent, things would speedily settle. But then the agitators would lose their means of subsistence, their social status, and their political importance. As things are these men are ruining the country they affect to defend; while the worst enemies of the peasant are those who call themselves his friends, and the blind-eyed sympathisers who bewail the wrongs he does not suffer and the misery he himself might prevent. All that Ireland wants now is rest from political agitation, the orderly development of its resources;--and especially finality in legislation;[E]--so that the one side may know to what it has to trust, and the other may be freed from those illusive dreams and demoralising hopes which destroy the manlier efforts after self-help in the present for that universal amelioration to be found in the coming of the cocklicranes in the future. There is, however, a good work quietly going on which will touch the evil root of things in time, but not in the sense of the Home Rulers and Campaigners. This good work will render it unnecessary to follow the advice of that rough and ready politician who saw no way out of the wood save to "send to Hell for Oliver Cromwell"; also that of the facetious Dove who winked as he offered his olive branch:--"Shure the best way to pacify Oireland is for the Queen to marry Parnell." A more practicable method than either is silently making headway against the elements of disorder; and in spite of the upsetters and their opposition the rough things will be made smooth, and, the troubled waters will run clear, if only the Government of order may be allowed time to do its beneficent work of repression and re-establishment thoroughly and to the roots. II. In politics, as in nature, beneficent powers work quietly, while destructive agencies sweep across the world with noise and tumult. The fruit tree grows in silence; the tempest which uproots it shakes the earth to its centre. The gradual evolution of society in the development of art, the softening of manners, the equalization of justice, the respect for law, the purity of morals, which are its results and correlatives, comes about as silently as the growth of the tree; but the wars which desolate nations, and the revolutions which destroy in a few months the work of many centuries, are as tumultuous as the tempest and as boisterous as the storm. In Ireland at the present moment this rule holds good with surprising accuracy. Where the tranquilizing effect of Lord Ashbourne's Act attracts but little attention outside its own immediate sphere, the Plan of Campaign has everywhere been accompanied with murder, boycotting, outrage, and the loud cries of those who, playing at bowls, have to put up with rubbers. Where men who have retained their sense of manly honesty and commercial justice, buy their lands in peace, without asking the world to witness the transaction--those tenants who, having for years refused to pay a reduced rent or any portion of arrears, are at last evicted from the land they do not care to hold as honest men should, make the political welkin ring with their complaints, and call on the nation at large to avenge their wrongs. And the analogy holds good all through. The Irish tenant yearns to possess the land he farms. Lord Ashbourne's Act enables him to do this by the benign way of peace, fairness, and self-respect. The Plan of Campaign, on the other hand, teaches him the destructive methods of dishonesty and violence. The one is a legal, quiet, and equitable arrangement, without personal bitterness, without hysterical shrieking, without wrong-doing to any one. The other is an offence against the common interests of society, and a breach of the law accompanied by crimes against humanity. The one is silent and beneficent; the other noisy, uprooting, and malevolent. But as the powers of growth and development are, in the long run, superior to those of destruction--else all would have gone by the board ages ago--the good done by Lord Ashbourne's Act will be a living force in the national history when the evil wrought by the Plan of Campaign is dead and done with. By Lord Ashbourne's Act the Irish tenant can buy his farm at (an average of) seventeen years' purchase. He borrows the purchase money from the Government, paying it back on easy terms, so that in forty-nine years he becomes the absolute owner of the property--paying meantime in interest and gradual diminution of the principal, less than the present rent. The landlord has about £68 for every £100 he used to have in rent. This Act is quietly revolutionizing Ireland, redeeming it from agrarian anarchy, and saving the farmer from himself and his friends. Thousands and thousands of acres are being constantly sold in all parts of the country, and good prices are freely given for farms whereof the turbulent and discontented tenants professed themselves unable to pay the most moderate rents. Large holdings and small alike are bought as gladly as they are sold. Those who buy know the capabilities of the land when worked with a will; those who sell prefer a reduced certainty to the greater nominal value, which might vanish altogether under the fiat of the Campaigners and the visits of Captain Moonlight. The Irish loyal papers, which no English Home Ruler ever sees--facts being so inimical to sentiment--these Irish papers are full of details respecting these sales. On one estate thirty-seven farmers buy their holdings at prices varying from £18 to £520, the average being £80. On another, six farms bring £5,603, one fetching £2,250. In the west, small farmers are buying where they can. In Sligo the MacDermott, Q.C., has sold farms to forty-two of his tenants for £3,096, the prices varying from £32 to £70 and £130; and the O'Connor Don has sold farms in the same county to fifteen tenants for £1,934. The number of acres purchased under this Act for the three years ending August, 1888, are a trifle over 293,556. The Government valuation is £171,774,000. The net rent is £190,181 12s. 9d. The purchase-money is £3,350,933. The average number of years' purchase is 17.6. Perhaps the most important of all these sales are those on the Egmont estate in the very heart of one of the gravely-disturbed districts. The rent-roll of this estate was £16,000 a year; and it was estimated that successive landlords had laid out about £250,000 in improvements--which was just the sum expected to be realized by the sales. All this land has passed into the hands of farmers who, from agitators and No Renters have now become proprietors on their own account, with a direct interest in maintaining law and order, and in opposing violence and disorder all round. Other important sales have been effected. A hundred and fifty tenants on the Drapers' estate in county Derry have bought their farms from the London Company at a total of £57,980. These, with others (197 in all), reached a sum total of purchase-money of £63,305, as set forth in the _Dublin Gazette_, of November 5th, 1889. Lord Spencer, whose political _volte face_ is one of the wonders of the hour, does not hesitate to say that this Act has not been a success. Can he give counter figures to those quoted above? And Mr. Michael Davitt does not approve of the sales in general and of those on the Egmont estates in especial, "He hates the Ashbourne Act worse than he hates the idea of an endowed Roman Catholic University, which is saying a great deal. He hates it because it renders impossible his visionary scheme of land nationalization, but more because it wrests from his hands the weapons of Separatist rebellion. And what he openly says, all the more cautious members of his party think. Every purchaser under the Ashbourne Act is a soldier lost to the cause of sedition. More than one of the ringleaders have indeed said this formerly, but of late they have grown more reticent. The Parnellite, it has been said, is essentially an Opportunist. Mr. Davitt is hardly a Parnellite, but the real Parnellite items have discovered that their seats in Parliament and their future hopes would be endangered, if they openly fell foul of the Act under which so many Irish tenants are becoming freeholders. They do not bless the Act, but they leave it alone." There is another misstatement that had better be frankly met. The objectors to the Land Courts say that the applicants are so many and the process is so slow, it is almost useless and worse than heartbreaking to apply for relief. One thing, however, must be remembered--during the interim of application and hearing, a tenant cannot be disturbed in his holding, and if he refuses to pay his rent the landlord cannot evict him. The following correspondence is instructive:-- "Braintree, Nov. 14. "Sir,--Will you be good enough to inform me whether the statement I give below is correct? It was made by an Irish lecturer (going about with magic-lantern views) for the purpose of showing how unjustly the Irish tenants are treated. The lecturer was Mr. J. O'Brady, and he was delivering the lecture at Braintree on Saturday, November 9:--'There are now 90,000 cases awaiting the decision of the Land Courts to fix a "fair rent" on their holdings, and as only 15,000 cases can be heard in one year, do you wonder at the tenants refusing to pay their present rent?' "Your faithful servant, "G. THORPE BARTRAM." "The Right Hon. A.J. Balfour, M.P." "Irish Office, Great Queen Street, Nov. 22. "Dear Sir,--I have made special inquiry into the subject of your letter of the 14th inst., and find that on the 31st of the last month the number of outstanding applications to have fair rents fixed was 44,295, and that the number of cases disposed of in the months of July and August (the latest month for which the figures are made up) was 5,380. You will see, therefore, that the arrear is less than one-half of the amount stated by the Separatist lecturer to whom you refer, and the rate of progression in disposing of it is considerably higher than that alleged by him. It may reasonably be hoped also (though the statistics are not yet available) that this rate has since been increased, as several additional Sub-Commissioners have been appointed to hear the cases. I would observe also that under the provisions of the Land Act, passed by the present Government in 1887, the tenant gets the benefit of the judicial rent from the date of his application, an advantage which he did not possess under Mr. Gladstone's Act. Such unavoidable delay as may occur, therefore, does not, under the existing law, involve the serious injury to the tenant implied by the lecturer. I enclose a printed paper, which will give you further information on this subject. In conclusion, I would point out that the suggestion that the agrarian trouble in Ireland arises from the difficulty experienced by the tenants in getting judicial rents fixed is not warranted by the facts. Take as illustrations the cases of two estates which have lately been prominently before the public--namely, the Ponsonby and the Olphert. In the former case the landlord is anxious, I believe, to get the tenants to go into Court, and offers to give retrospective effect to the decisions, though not bound by law to do so, but under the influence of the agitators the tenants refuse to go into Court. In the latter instance judicial rents have long since been fixed in the great majority of cases. "Yours faithfully, "ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR." Together with this easy mode of purchase by which the quiet and industrious are profiting, rents are reduced all over the country, though still the Home Rulers reiterate the old charge of "rack-renting," as if such a thing were the rule. These unscrupulous misstatements, indeed, make half the difficulties of the Irish question; for lies stick fast, where disclaimers, proofs, facts, and figures, pass by like dry leaves on the wind. But for all the fact of past extortion the present reductions are not always a proof of over-renting. What Mr. Buxton says has common sense on the face of it:-- "Very serious reductions of rents are being made all through Ireland by the Land Sub-Commissioners, who are supposed to be in some extent guided by the appearance of the farms. Now it should be remembered that at the interview that took place in London on July 3rd, between Mr. Smith-Barry and some of his tenants, in reference to that gentleman's support of the evictions on the Ponsonby estate, one of the arguments for forgiveness of arrears was that when eviction was threatened 'the tenants gave up their industry,' and 'how could they get the rents out of the land when they were absolutely idle?' To admit such a plea for granting a reduction of rent is most dangerous. Tenants have but to neglect their land, get into arrears of rent, and claim large reductions because their farms do not pay. An ignorant, or slovenly, or idle farmer, under such circumstances, is likely to have a lower rent fixed by the Sub-Commissioners than his more industrious neighbour, and thus a great injustice may be done to both the good farmer and the landlord, the--perhaps cunningly--idle farmer receiving a premium for neglecting his farm. A comparison of the judicial rents with the former rents and the Poor Law valuation is truly startling, and must lead one to imagine that the system by which so much valuable property is dealt with is most unjust." Thus, the famous reductions in County Clare, where the abatements granted averaged over 30 per cent., and in some cases exceeded 50 per cent., were not perhaps all a sign of the landlord's iniquity, but also may be taken to show something of the tenant's indifference. Poverty is pitiable, truly, and it claims relief from all who believe in the interdependence of a community; but poverty which comes from idleness, unthrift, neglect, and which then falls on others to relieve--these others having to suffer for sins not their own--how about that as a righteous obligation? Must I and my children go foodless because my tenants will neither till the land they hold from me, so as to make it yield their own livelihood and that profit over which is my inheritance, nor suffer others to do what they will not? If we are prepared to endorse the famous saying: "La propriété c'est le vol," well and good. Meanwhile to spend all our sympathy on men who reduce themselves and others to poverty by idleness and unthrift, seems rather a bad investment of emotion. The old-fashioned saying about workers and eaters had a different ring; and once on a time birds who could sing, and would not, were somehow made. Co-incident with these conditions of no rent at all--reduction of rent all round--and the free purchase of land by those who yesterday professed pauperism, is the startling fact that the increase in Bank deposits for the half-year of 1889 was £89,000--in Post Office Savings Bank deposits £244,000--in Trustee Savings Banks, £16,000. Mr. Mitchell Henry, writing to the _Times_, says:--"If any one will tell the exact truth as to Irish matters at this moment, he must confess that landlords are utterly powerless to coerce their tenants; that the pockets of the tenants themselves are full of money formerly paid in rent; that the price of all kinds of cattle has risen largely; that the last harvest was an excellent one; and that the banks--savings banks, Post Office banks, and ordinary banks--are richer than they have ever been, whilst the consumption of whisky--that sure barometer of Irish prosperity--is increasing beyond all former experience. In addition to this, I venture to say that, with certain local exceptions, the Irish peasant is better clothed than any other peasants in the world. The people are sick of agitation and long to be let alone; but they are a people of extraordinary clannishness, and take an intellectual delight in intrigue, especially where the Saxon is concerned. British simplicity is wonderful, and the very people who have put on this cupboard love for Mr. Gladstone and his lieutenants, whom they formerly abused beyond all decent license of abuse, laugh at them as soon as their backs are turned." These savings do not come from the landlords, so many of whom are hopelessly ruined by the combined action of our own legislature and the Plan of Campaign. Of this ruin Colonel Lloyd has given a very graphic account. Alluding to Mr. Balfour's answer in the House on the 21st of June, to the question put by Mr. Macartney on Colonel Lloyd's letter to the _Times_ (10th of June), the Colonel repeats his assertions, or rather his accusations against the Court. These are:--"First, that the percentage of reductions now being given is the very highest yet made, notwithstanding that prices of agricultural produce and cattle have considerably increased; secondly, that the Sub-Commissioners have no fixed rule to guide them save one--viz., that existing rents, be they high or low, must be cut down, although they may not have been altered for half a century; thirdly that it was reported the Commissioners had instructions to give all-round reductions of 33 per cent.; fourthly, that in the Land Court the most skilled evidence of value is disregarded, as also the Poor Law valuation; fifthly, that the Sub-Commissioners assign no reasons for their decisions; and, sixthly, that the machinery of the Court is faulty and unfair in the following instances:--_(a)_ If a landlord appeals and fails, he must pay costs, but if he appeals and succeeds he will not get costs; _(b)_ tenants' costs are taxed by the Court behind the landlord's back; _(c)_ their rules are constantly changing without any proper notice to the public; and _(d)_ appeals are accumulating with no prospect of their being disposed of in any reasonable time." Colonel Lloyd disposes of Mr. Balfour's denials to these statements, but at too great length to copy. It may be taken for granted here that they are disposed of, and that he proves up to the hilt his case of crying injustice to the landlords--as indeed every fair-minded person who looks honestly into the question, must acknowledge. As one slight corroboration of what he says he adduces the following instances:-- "The following judicial rents were fixed by the Assistant-Commissioners in the West of Ireland:-- Poor Law Judicial Tenants' Names. Old Rent. Valuation. Rent £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. Tom Regan 9 9 10 12 0 0 5 15 0 J. Manlon 9 2 6 11 10 0 5 15 0 C. Kelly 9 12 10 11 5 0 6 0 0 J. Kenny 4 11 4 6 5 0 2 15 0 £32 16 6 £41 0 0 £20 5 0 "The landlord appealed, and the appeals were heard a few days ago by the Chief Commissioners in Roscommon. Two skilled valuers were employed, who valued within a few shillings of the Government valuation, and in the face of this evidence the decisions of the Assistant-Commissioners were confirmed. These are not by any means isolated instances. In fact they are the rule in the Land Court." And he ends by this remarkable assertion:-- "The whole machinery of the Court must be remodelled if it is to possess the confidence of the public. As it is at present composed, it is too much subject to political influence and to the clamour of one set of litigants to be independent. There are few of your readers, I believe, who will not admit that it is a very alarming thing to find a Court so constituted having the control of millions. The only officials ever connected with the Court in which there was any degree of confidence were the Court valuers attached to the Appeal Court. They were men of independence and impartiality, but they were dispensed with in a vain attempt to satisfy Mr. Parnell. I see by Mr. Balfour's statement in the House of Commons on the 25th ult. that the Chief Commissioners are again engaged in framing new rules with regard to appeals. One would think that at the end of eight years they would have had their rules complete, and that an alteration every three months during that period ought to have brought them to perfection. How long is this farce to continue? These are serious complaints against a public body intrusted with the administration of justice. They do not deserve to be lightly passed over, and I am confident that, even should it suit the convenience of the present Government to follow the example of their predecessors and ignore them, the English people, with their strong sense of justice, will eventually insist on the unfair treatment and glaring injustice and abuses complained of being set right, and that those who have from political motives and influence been placed in honourable and responsible judicial positions shall give place to impartial men, who will deal out even-handed justice to the landlord as well as to the tenant.--I remain your obedient servant, "JESSE LLOYD, Lieutenant-Colonel and J.P., "Agent for Lord Rossmore. "Rossmore Agency Office, Monaghan." Here, then, is the reverse of the medal. Hitherto the outcry has been all for the tenant, and I do not say for a moment that this outcry was not just. It was. The Irish peasant has had his wrongs, deep and shameful; but now justice has been done to him so amply that the overflow has gone to the other side. It is time to look at things as they are, and to let well alone. Justice to the one has broadened out into persecution of the other, and an Irish landlord is for the moment the favourite cock-shy for aggressive legislation. But, as I have said before, prejudice dies hard, and sentimental pity is often only prejudice in a satin cloak. The Irish peasant is still assumed to be a helpless victim, the Irish landlord a ruffianly tyrant; and a state of things as obsolete as the Ogham language itself still rouses active passion as against a living wrong. I go back to that statement in the _Pall Matt Gazette,_ to which I have before alluded, as an instance of the way in which the very froth of prejudice and falsehood is whipped up into active poison by the short and easy way of imagination and assertion. It is a fair sample of all the rest; but these are the things which find credit with those who do not know and do not enquire. Advocating the making of blackberry wine as the short cut from poverty to prosperity in Ireland, the scheme being parallel to Mr. Gladstone's famous remedy of jam, this sapient "B.O.N." says:-- "The blackberry harvest would be over in the sunny Rhine country before it began in Ireland. Why should not some practical native, go over from home and see how it is all done? I quite know that any plan for bettering the physical condition of our people is open to the objection that as soon as they seem a little 'comfortable' the landlord would raise the rent in many a case; but perhaps in a still larger number of cases he would now be afraid to do so. And I know, too, that even a blackberry wine industry will not be quite safe till we have Home Rule; but is not that coming fast?" This mischievous little word is in the very teeth of the fact that rents cannot be raised on any plea whatsoever--certainly not because the tenant makes himself better off by an industry other than his farming--and that the whole machinery of Government had been put in motion to protect the land tiller from the land-owner. Yet the _Pall Mall Gazette_ is not ashamed to lend itself to this lie on the chance of catching a few fluttering minds and nailing them to the mast of Home Rule on the false supposition that this means justice to the oppressed tenant and wholesome restraint of the brutal proprietor. Professor Mahaffy, in a long letter to the _New York Independent,_ speaks of the same kind of thing still going on in America--this bolstering up a delusion by statements as far removed from the truth as that of "B.O'N.'s," to which the _Pall Mall Gazette_ gives sanction and circulation. That part of the American press which is under the influence or control of the Irish Home Rulers still goes on talking of the oppression to which the Irish tenant is subjected, just as the speeches of the Agitators (_vide_ the astounding lies, as well as the appalling nonsense talked, when Lady Sandhurst and Mr. Stansfeld were made citizens of Dublin, and it was asserted that the Government turned tail and fled before these "delegates") teem with analogous assertions wherein not so much as one grain of truth is to be found. Let it be again repeated in answer to all these falsehoods:--No tenant can be evicted except for non-payment of one year's rent; that rent can be settled by the courts, and if he has signed an agreement for an excessive payment, his agreement can be broken; and he must be compensated for all the improvements he has made or will swear that he has made. Also, he can borrow money from the Government at the lowest possible interest, and become the owner of his farm for less yearly payment than his former rent. He, the Irish tenant, is the most protected, the most favoured of all leaseholders in Europe or America, but the old cries are raised, the old watch-words are repeated, just as if nothing had been done since the days when he was as badly off as the Egyptian fellah, and was, in truth, between the devil and the deep sea. Let me repeat the legal and actual condition of things as summarized by Mr. Montagu Crackanthorpe, Q.C. These six propositions ought to be learned by heart before anyone allows himself to talk of Home Rule or the Irish question:-- 1. That every yearly tenant of agricultural land valued at less than £50 a year can have his rent judicially fixed, and that the existence of arrears of rent creates no statutory obstacle whatever, nor any difficulty in procedure, if he is desirous of availing himself of the Acts. 2. That every such agricultural tenant, whether he has had a fair rent fixed or not, may sell his tenancy to the highest bidder whenever he desires to leave; and that, if he be evicted, he has the right either to redeem within six months, or to sell his tenancy within the same period to a purchaser, who can likewise redeem, and thus acquire all the privileges of the tenant. 3. That in view of the fall in agricultural produce, the Land Commission is empowered and directed to vary the rents fixed by the Land Court during the years 1881 to 1885, in accordance with the difference in prices of produce between those years and the years 1887 to 1889. 4. That no tenant in Ireland can be evicted by his landlord unless his rent is twelve months in arrear, and that the yearly tenant who is so evicted must be paid full compensation for all improvements not already compensated for by enjoyment, such, for instance, as unexhausted manure, permanent buildings, and reclamation of waste land. He may, it is true, be evicted on title after judgment obtained against him for his rent, and in that case his goods and interest (including his improvements) may be put up to auction by the Sheriff. This is a matter which seems to require amendment; but it is to be observed that the same consequences would follow if the judgment creditor were a shopkeeper who had given the tenant credit or the local money-lender or gombeen man. A compulsory sale under these circumstances is not peculiar to landlordism, and it is a method to which landlords seldom resort. 5. That if a tenant falls into arrear for rent, and becomes liable to eviction, whether on title or not, the Court can stay process, if satisfied that his difficulty arises from no fault of his own, and can give him time to pay by instalments. 6. That if a tenant wishes to buy his holding, and comes to terms with his landlord, he can borrow money from the Government at 4 per cent., by the help of which he may change his rent into an annuity, the amount of the annuity being less than the rent, and the burden of the annuity altogether ceasing at the end of forty-nine years. The result by the way of this peasant proprietorship will be twofold. On the one side it will create a greater uniformity of comfort and a larger class of peaceable, self-respecting, law-abiding citizens. On the other it will lower the general standard by doing away with that better class of resident gentry and capitalized landowners, who in their way are guides, teachers and helps to the peasantry. The absence of this better class of resident gentry is one of the misfortunes of French agricultural life and the justification of M. Zola; their presence is one of the blessings of England. How will it be in Ireland when the exodus is more complete than it is even now, and when the villages and rural districts are left solely to peasant proprietors and a celibate clergy? The Romish Church has never been famous for teaching those things which make for intellectual enlightenment and social improvement. The difference between the Protestant north and the rest of Roman Catholic Ireland, as between the Protestant and Romish cantons in Switzerland; is a truism almost proverbial. And without the little leaven of such influence as the better educated and more enlightened gentry may possess, the Irish peasant will be even more superstitious, more blinded by prejudice and ignorance than he is now. As it is, the old landlords are sincerely deplored, and the good they did is as sincerely regretted. Those grand old hunting days, now things of the past, still linger in the memory of the men who participated in the fun and had their full share of the crumbs--and the times when a grand seigneur paid a hundred pounds a week in wages alone seem something like glimpses into a railed and fenced off El Dorado, which the Plan of Campaign has closed for ever. So that the sunshine has its shadow, for all the good to be had from the light. It ought to be that peasant proprietorship will make the holder more industrious and a better farmer than he has been as tenant. Whether it will or not remains to be seen. As things are--always excepting Ulster and the North generally--farming could scarcely be more shameful in its neglect than it is--domestic life could scarcely be more squalid, more savage, more filthy. Even rich farmers live like pigs and with their pigs, and the stone house is no better kept than the mud cabin--the forty-acre field no better tilled than the miserable little potato patch. Had the farming been better, there would never have been the poverty, the discontent, the agitation by which Ireland had been tortured and convulsed. Had the men been more industrious, the women cleaner and more deft, the Plan of Campaign would have failed for want of social nutriment, where now it has been so disastrously triumphant. Physical well-being is a great incentive to quiet living--productive industry checks political unrest. Those who have something to lose are careful to keep it; and we may be sure that Captain Moonlight would not risk his skin if he had a good coat to cover it. Also there is another aspect in which this land question may be viewed, and ought to be viewed--in reference to the manner in which the Irish farmer treats the property by which he lives:--that is the aspect of his duty to the community in his quality of producer for the community. We must all come down to the land as the common property of the human race. Parcelled out as it may be--by the mile or the square yard--it is the common mother of all men. We can do without everything else, from lace to marble--from statues to carriages--but food we must have; and the holders of land all the world over are really and rightfully trustees for the race. The Irish peasant has no more right to neglect the possibilities of produce than had William Rufus, or his modern representative in Scotland, to evict villages for the making of a deer forest. The principle of trusteeship in the land holds good with small holders and great alike; but imagine what would be the effect of a law which required so much produce from a given area on an average for so long a period! The principle is of course conceded in the rent, rates and taxes; but a direct application to produce would set the kingdom in a blaze. But in Ireland fields of thistles and acres of ragwort, with tall purple spikes of loose strife everywhere, seem to be held as valid crops, fit for food and good at rent-paying. These are to be found at every step from Dublin to Kerry, and the most unpractised eye can see the waste and neglect and unnecessary squalor of both land and people. As an English farmer said, with indignation: "The land is brutally treated." So it is--idleness, unthrift, and bad farming generally, degrading it far below its possibilities and natural standard of production. Cross the Channel, and Wales looks like a trim garden. Go over to France, and you find every yard of soil carefully tilled and cultivated. Even in comparatively ramshackle Sicily, among the old lava beds of Etna, the peasants raise a handful of grain on the top of a rock no bigger than a lady's work-table. In Ireland the cultivated portion of a holding is often no bigger relatively than that work-table on an acre of waste. Will the tiller, now the owner and no longer only the leaseholder, go back from his evil ways of thriftlessness and neglect, and instead of being content to live just above the line of starvation, will he educate himself up to those artificial wants which only industry can supply? Will the women learn to love cleanliness, to regard their men's rags and their children's dirt as their own dishonour, and to understand that womanhood has its share of duties in social and domestic life? Will the sense of beauty grow with the sense of proprietorship, and the filth of the present surroundings be replaced by a flower garden before the cottage--a creeper against the wall--a few pots of more delicate blooms in the window? Will the taste for variety in garden produce be enlarged, and plots of peas, beans, carrots, artichokes, pot-herbs, and the like, be added to the one monotonous potato-patch, with a few cabbages and roots for the baste, and a strip of oats as the sole cereal attempted? Who knows? At present there is not a flower to be seen in the whole of the West, save those which a luxuriant Nature herself has sown and planted; and the immediate surroundings of the substantial farm-house, like those of the mud cabin, are filth unmentionable, savage squalor, and bestial neglect. These things are signs of a mental and moral condition that goes deeper than the manifestation. They do not show only want of the sense of beauty--want of the sense even of cleanliness; they show the absence of all the civilizing influences--all the humanizing tendencies of modern society. By this want Ireland is made miserable and kept low in the scale of nations. Had the race been self-respecting, sturdy, upright, stubbornly industrious, all this savage neglect would have mended itself. Being what it is--excitable, imaginative, spasmodic, given over to ideas rather than to facts, and trusting to Hercules in the clouds rather than to its own brawny shoulders--this squalor continues and is not dependent on poverty. Time alone will show whether changed agrarian conditions will alter it. So far as his power goes, the priest does nothing to touch it. The Church uses up its influence for everything but the practical purposes of work-a-day-life. It teaches obediences to its ordinances, but not civic virtues. It encourages boys and girls to marry at an age when they neither understand the responsibilities of life nor can support a family; but in its regard for the Sacrament it forgets the pauperization of the nation. It enforces chastity, but it winks at murder; it demands money for masses for the souls of the dead, but it leaves on one side the homes and bodies of the living; it breeds a race of paupers to drag the country lower and lower into the depths of poverty, and thinks it has done a meritorious work, and one that calls for praise because of the paucity of numbers in the percentage of illegitimate births. Thus in Ireland, where everything is set askew, even morality has its drawbacks, and less individual virtue would be a distinct national gain. The Home Rule enthusiasts say all that is wanted to remedy these ingrained defects is a Parliament; all that is wanted to make Irishmen perfect and Ireland a paradise is a Parliament chosen by the people and sitting in College Green. Human nature will then be changed, and the lion and the lamb will lie down together. The Papist will love the Protestant, and the moral of the story about those two Scotch Presbyterian boys, whose presence at the Barrow House National School so seriously disturbed both priest and people, is one that will read quite the other way. All the bitter hatred poured out against England, against Protestants, against the law and its administrators, will cease so soon as Catholics come to the place of power and the supremacy of England is at an end. The Church which burned Giordano Bruno and is affronted because his memory has been honoured--which placed the Quirinale under the ban of the lesser excommunication, and withstood the national impulse towards freedom and unity as represented by Garibaldi--the Church which has ever been on the side of intolerance and tyranny will suddenly, in Ireland under Home Rule, become beneficent, just, and liberal, and heretics will no longer herd with the goats but will take their place among the sheep. If, as Mr. Redmond says, it is the duty of Irishmen to make the Government of England an impossibility, it will then be their pleasure to make her alliance both close and easy. Ulster and Kerry will march shoulder to shoulder, and Leaguers and Orangemen will form an unbroken phalanx of orderly and law-abiding citizens. In a word the old Dragon will be chained and the Millenium will come. The prospect seems too good to be true. Were we to follow after it and put the loyal Protestant minority into the power of the anti-imperial Catholic majority in the hope of seeking peace and ensuing it, we might perchance be like the dog who let fall that piece of meat from between his teeth--losing the substance for shadow. We do better, all things considered, with our present arrangements--trusting to the imperfect operations of human law rather than shooting Niagara for the chance of the clear stream at the bottom. The whirligig of Time has changed the relative positions of the two great parties in Ireland. Formerly it was the Catholics who desired the abolition of Home Rule, and the Protestants who held by the National Parliament. That Parliament was exclusively Protestant, and the powerful minority ground the helpless majority to the very ground. Catholics were persecuted from shore to shore, and all sorts and conditions of Protestant bullies and tyrants sent up petitions to forbid the iniquity of Catholic trade rivalry. What was then would be now--changing the venue and putting the Catholics where the Protestants used to be. We do not believe that the "principle of Nationality" is the working power of this desire for Home Rule, as Mr. Stansfeld asserts--unless indeed the principle of Nationality can be stretched so as to cover the self-aggrandizement of a party, the bitterness of religious hatred, and the tyranny of a cruel and coercive combination. The grand and noble name of Nationality can scarcely be made so elastic as this. Respect for law lies at the very heart of the principle, and the Irish Home Rulers are of all men the most conspicuous for their contempt of law and their bold infraction of the very elementary ordinances of civilized society. As for tyranny, no coercion established by Government--not even that proclaimed by Mr. Gladstone--has been more stringent than the coercion exercised by the Plan of Campaign. What happened in Tipperary only the other day when certain rent-paying tenants, who had been boycotted, did public penance in the following propositions? They offered:--"Firstly, to come forward to the subsequent public meeting and express public contrition for having violated their resolution to hold out with the other tenants; secondly, not to pay the next half-year's rent, due on the 10th of December, but to in future act with the general body of the tenantry; and thirdly, to pay each a pecuniary sum, to be halved between the Ponsonby tenants and the Smith-Barry Tipperary tenantry in the fight which is to come on." Surely no humiliation was ever greater than this!--no decree of secret council or pitiless Vehmgericht were ever more ruthlessly imposed, more servilely obeyed! Can we say that the Irish are fit to be called freemen, or able to exercise the real functions of Nationality, when they can suffer themselves to be hounded like sheep and rated like dogs for the exercise of their own judgment and the performance of their duties as honest men and good citizens? If the mere presence in Ireland of Lady Sandhurst and Mr. Stansfeld dismayed Mr. Balfour and scattered his myrmidons as the forces of the Evil One fly before the advent of the angels, could they not have used their semi-divine power for these humiliated rent-payers? Instead of complacently listening to bunkum--which, if they had had any sense of humour would have made them laugh; any of modesty would have made them blush--could they not have brought their inherited principles of commercial honesty and manly fidelity to an engagement to bear on these irate Campaigners, and have reminded them that the very core of Liberalism is the right of each man to unrestricted action, provided he does not hurt his neighbour? But Home Rulers are essentially one-sided in their estimate of tyranny, and things change their names according to the side on which they are ranged. To boycott a man, to mutilate his cattle,[F] to commit outrages on his family, and finally to murder him outright for paying his rent or taking an evicted farm, are all justifiable proceedings of righteous severity. But for a landlord to evict a tenant from the farm for which he will not pay the covenanted rent--will not, but yet could, twice over--is a cowardly, a brutal, a damnable act, for which those slugs from behind a stone-wall are the well-deserved reward. Here is an instance of the vengeance sought to be taken by wealthy tenants evicted for non-payment of rent. "Lord Clanricarde writes to the _Times_ to corroborate the statement that an infernal explosive machine had been found in a cottage at Woodford, in Ireland. His lordship quotes as follows from the account of an eye-witness:-- 'When possession was taken of the sub-tenant's house, No. 1, there was the usual crowd crowding as close to our party as the police would allow; but it was remarked that on our approach to houses Nos. 2 and 3, close together, and which concealed the infernal machine, the crowd kept well away out of hearing, while the Woodford leaders were on a car on the road, but out of danger like the others; but all well in sight of any destruction that might befall the officers of the law. This house, No. 3, when last examined in June, was found vacant, door not locked, but open, and used as a shelter for cattle. Finding it locked now, X. detached the lock, pushed the door open, and he and I and others went inside. The house was empty, but a pile of stones was heaped up in the doorway, some of them had been displaced by the door when opened, and the top of a box 6 in. square was seen embedded in a barrel containing 25 lbs. of 'excellent gunpowder,' a bottle full of sulphuric acid, and other explosives, as well as a number of detonators, and the blade of a knife (apparently) with a spring attached by a coil of string to the door, the machine being so arranged as to be liable to explode in two ways. The expert who examined the machine said that had the sulphuric acid been liberated, as meant, all our party, twenty in all, must have been destroyed, as there were enough explosives to destroy any living thing within 100 yards. Neither on that day, nor on the 22nd (date of sale) did either the tenant or the Woodford leaders--R. and K.--utter one word of surprise, much less of abhorrence!' The tenant proceeded against (says Lord Clanricarde, owed four and a-half years' rent, at £47 8s. per annum) much below the taxation valuation of £67 19s., for a mill, with the sole use of the water-power, a valuable privilege, and 440 statute acres, a considerable part of them arable land. He had ten sub-tenants, was reported to make £500 per annum from mill and farm, and though he had removed part of his stock, there were still cattle on the land on the day of eviction enough to cover two years' arrears. If he had paid even those two years on account he would have received an abatement, and saved his farm. The judge in Dublin who gave the decree against him, gave also costs against him to mark his sense of the tenant's bad conduct." And to think that good, honest, noble-hearted, and sincere Englishmen, who in their own persons are law-abiding, just, honourable, and faithful, should uphold a state of things which strikes at the root of all law, all commercial honesty--blinded as they are by the glamour of a generous, unreal, and unworkable sentiment! If only they would go over to Ireland to judge for themselves on the basis of facts, not fancies--and to be informed by truths not lies! I know that we cannot all see alike, and that every shield has its two sides. In this matter, on the one side stand Earl Spencer, now converted to Home Rule, since his Viceroyalty; on the other is the example of Mr. Forster, who went to Ireland an ardent Home Ruler and came back as strong a Unionist. The Quaker became a fighting man, and the idealist a practical man, believing in facts as he had seen them and no longer in sentiments he could not realise--in measures grounded on the necessities of good government, and not like so many epiphytes with their roots in the air. Let Lord Spencer bring to this test his late utterances. He goes in now for Home Rule, and the right of Ireland to appoint her own police and judges. He is out of the wood and can hallo; but where would he have been if the Irish had appointed their police when he was at the Castle?--with Lord Frederick and Mr. Burke! And if the judges were appointed by the Irish, we should have, in all probability, Mr. Tim Harrington, barrister-at-law, on the bench; and a few years ago Mr. Tim Harrington crumpled up the Queen's writ and flung it out of the Court House window. And what power over the fortunes of others can be given to men who boycott a railway for political spite?[G] So many things have conspired to make this Irish question a Gordian-knot which no man can untie, and but few would dare to cut. The past extravagance of the landlords, absenteeism, rack-renting, injustice of all kinds; the past jealousy of England and her over-shadowing all native industries and productions; difference of religion, racial temperament, and the irreconcilable enmity of the conquered towards the conquerors; ignorance and idleness; the morality which marries too early, when the land, which was just enough to support one family, is expected to keep three or four; want of self-respect in the dirt and disorder of domestic life; want of all communal life or amusement, save in heated politics and drink; bogs here, unthrift there, small holdings everywhere--all these things help to complicate a question which passion has already made too difficult for even the most radical kind of statesmanship to adjust. All the panaceas hitherto tried have been found ineffectual. The repeal of Catholic disabilities, the establishment of national schools, the disestablishment of the Protestant Church, the Maynooth grant, the various Land Acts--all have done but little towards the settlement of the question, which, like certain fabulous creatures, has increased in strength and the extensions of its demands by every concession made. The best chance yet offered seems to be in the quiet working of Lord Ashbourne's Act, by which the tenant becomes the owner and the landlord is not despoiled. And certainly the crying need of the moment is legislative finality and political rest. Existing machinery is sufficient for all the agrarian ameliorations demanded. To do much more would be to act like children who pluck up their seeds to see how they are growing, leaving nothing sufficient time for development or reproduction. No one would deny such a measure of Home Rule to Ireland as should give her the management of her own internal affairs, in the same manner and degree as our County Councils are to manage ours. But this is not the Home Rule demanded by the leaders of the party. That for which they have taken off their coats means the loss of the country as an integral part of the Empire; the oppression and practical annihilation of the Protestant section; the opening of the Irish ports to all the enemies of England; or the breaking out of civil war in Ireland and its reconquest by England. The alternative scheme of federation is for the moment unworkable. But to hand over the whole conduct of Irish affairs to the Roman Catholic majority would be one of those ineffaceable political crimes the greatness of which would be equalled only by the magnitude of its mistake. The language of the indigenous Home Rulers and their Transatlantic sympathisers--as well as the things they have done and are still doing--ought to be warnings sufficiently strong to prevent such an act of folly and wickedness on our part. Even our men--men of light and leading like Mr. John Morley--seem to lose their heads when they approach the Irish question and to become as rabid in their accusations as the paid political agitators themselves. I will give these two short extracts, the one from Mr. Morley's speech at Glasgow, and the other from Lord Powerscourt's temperate and rational commentary:-- "Mr. Morley says," quotes Lord Powerscourt, "that the Irish people are more backward than the Scotch or English, which I venture to doubt, at least as regards intelligence, and gives as the reason:-- "'It is because the landlords, who have been their masters, have rack-rented them, have sunk them in poverty, have plundered their own improvements, have confiscated the fruits of their own industry, have done all that they could to degrade their manhood. That is why they are backward. (Cheers.) Will anybody deny that the Irish landlords are open to this great accusation and indictment? If anybody here is inclined to deny it, let him look at the reductions in rent that have been made since 1881 in the Land Court.' "Well, have not rents in England and Scotland been reduced quite as much, nay, more, than Irish rents since 1881? And have not the economic causes which have lowered the prices of all farm produce all over Europe caused the same depreciation in the value of land in Germany or France, for instance, in the same ratio as in Ireland? And has not the importation of dead meat from America, Australia, or New Zealand had something to do with it? "These facts are well known. But to return to the Irish landlords. Does not every one who is resident in Ireland, and therefore conversant with the state of affairs there for the last twenty or thirty years, know that the discontent and uprising against the land system is due to the action of a very few unjust persons, now mostly dead, but whose names are well known to any one who really knows Ireland, as I venture to maintain Mr. Morley does not? The principal actors in the drama could be counted on the fingers of one hand. And Mr. Morley, _ex uno disce omnes_, accuses the whole of the Irish proprietors of these cruel and unjust practices which we should scorn to be guilty of. And he is an ex-Cabinet Minister, and late Chief Secretary for Ireland for a few months, and a very popular one he was! "He says, again: 'Public opinion would have checked the Irish landlords in their infatuated policy towards their tenants,' &c. He challenges denial of these charges. Well, I deny them most emphatically, and am quite willing to abide by the verdict of the respectable tenants. I throw back in his face the accusation that the Irish landlords as a body have rack-rented or plundered their tenants or confiscated their improvements. "Far be it from me to taunt the Irish population. No, they have been tempted very sorely by prospects being held out to them of getting the land for nothing, and, all things considered, it is wonderful how they have behaved. But Mr. Morley is like many another politician who comes to Ireland for a few months or a few weeks, and goes about the few disturbed districts and listens to all the tales told him by cardrivers and those very clever people who delight in gulling the Saxon, and goes back to England, full of all sorts of horrors and crimes alleged to have been perpetrated by landlords, and takes it all as gospel, making no allowance for the great intelligence and inventive genius of his informers, and says, 'Oh! I went to the place, and saw it all.' And this he takes to represent the normal state of the whole of Ireland, and makes it a justification of the Plan of Campaign!" Take too the Irish Home Rule press, and read the floods of abuse--some spreading out into absolute obscenity--published by the principal papers day after day against all their political opponents, and we can judge of the temper with which the Irish Home Rulers would administer affairs. Of their statesmanlike provision--of their patriotism and care for the well-being of the country at large--the local war now ruining Tipperary is the negative proof--the damnatory evidence that they are utterly unfit for practical power. Governed by hysterical passion, by mad hatred and the desire for revenge, not one of the modern leaders, save Mr. Parnell, shows the faintest trace of politic self-control or the just estimate of proportions. To spite their opponents they will ruin themselves and their friends, as they have done scores of times, and are doing now in Tipperary. History holds up its hands in horror at the French Terror--was that worse than the system of murder and boycotting and outrage and terrorism in the disturbed districts in Ireland? And would it be a right thing for England to give the supreme power to these masked Couthons and Robespierres and Marats, that they might extend their operations into the now peaceable north, and reproduce in Ulster the tragedies of the south and west? Mr. Parnell puts aside the tyrannous part of the business, and cleverly throws the whole weight of his argument at Nottingham into the passionless economic scales. All that the Nationalist party desires, he says, "is to be allowed to develope the resources of their own country at their own expense," "without any harm to you (English), without any diminution of your resources, without any risk to your credit, or call upon you," all to be done "at our own expense and out of our own resources." Yet Mr. Parnell in another breath describes Ireland as "a Lazarus by the wayside"--a country "where unfortunately there is no manufacturing industry." "Ex nihilo nihil fit," was a lesson we all learned in our school days. Mr. Parnell has evidently forgotten his. I will give a commentary on these brave words which is better put than I could put it. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "STANDARD." "Sir,--People in England, whatever political party they belong to, should glance at what is now going on in the town of Tipperary before finally making up their minds to hand over Ireland body and soul to the National League. No country town in Ireland--I think I may add or in England either--was more prosperous three months ago than Tipperary. The centre of a rich and prosperous part of the country, surrounded by splendid land, it had an enormous trade in butter and all agricultural produce, and a large monthly pig and cattle fair was held there. It possessed (I use the past tense advisedly) a number of excellent shops, doing a splendid business, and to the eyes of those who could look back a few years it was making rapid progress in prosperity every year. "All is changed now. Many of the shops are closed and deserted, others will follow their example shortly; the butter market has been removed from the town, the cattle fairs have fallen to half their former size. One sees shopkeepers, but a short time back doing capital business, walking about idle in the streets, with their shops closed; armed policemen at every corner are necessary to prevent a savage rabble from committing outrages, and many people avoid going near the town at all. All this is the result of William O'Brien's speech in Tipperary and the subsequent action of the National League. The town and whole neighbourhood were perfectly quiet till one day Mr. O'Brien descends on it like an evil spirit, and tells the shopkeepers and surrounding farmers that they are to dictate to their landlords how to act in a case not affecting them at all. For fear, however, of not sufficiently arousing them for the cause of others, he suggests that, in addition to dictating to the landlord what his conduct shall be elsewhere, all his tenants, farmers and shopkeepers alike, shall demand a reduction of 25 per cent, on their own rents. As to the farmers' reduction I will say nothing; if they wished it, they could go into the Land Court, and if rented too high could get a reduction, retrospectively from the day their application was lodged. The reduction, however, that the shopkeepers were advised--nay, ordered--to ask for must have surprised them more than their landlord. Many of them, at their existing rents, had piled up considerable fortunes in a few years; others had enlarged their premises, doubled their business, and thriven in every way; nevertheless, they had to obey. The landlord naturally refused to be dictated to by his tenants in matters not affecting them; he also refused to reduce the rents of men who in a few years had made fortunes, and some of whom were commonly reputed to be worth thousands. Legal proceedings were then commenced, and the tenants' interests were put up to auction. Some of the most thriving shopkeepers declined to let their tenancies, out of which they had done so well, be sold; others, in fear of personal violence and outrage, not unusual results of disobeying the League, did allow them to be knocked down for nominal sums to the landlord's representative. Let lovers of liberty and fair-play watch what followed. All the shopkeepers who bought in their interests were rigorously boycotted; men who had had a large weekly turnover now saw their shops absolutely deserted. Plate-glass windows that would not have shamed Regent Street, were smashed to atoms by hired ruffians of the League, and the shopkeepers themselves and their families had to be protected from the mob by armed police, placed round their houses night and day. All this because they desired to keep their flourishing businesses, instead of sacrificing them in a quarrel not their own. "Let us follow still further what happened. The shopkeepers, finding their trade quite gone, for it was almost worth a person's life to go into their shops, watched as they were by paid spies, had to capitulate to the League. An abject apology and a promise to let themselves be evicted next time were the price they had to pay to be allowed in a free country to carry on their trade. Ruin faced them both ways. After having the ban of boycotting taken off them, with eviction not far distant, most of them held clearance sales, at tremendous sacrifices, so as to be prepared for moving. One man is reputed to have got rid of seven thousand pounds' worth of goods under these circumstances. Of the other division, who allowed their places to be sold, most of them are now evicted. Dozens of shop assistants, needlewomen, and others connected with the trade of a thriving town, are thrown out of employment, and a peaceful neighbourhood has been changed into a scene of bloodshed and violence. "I appeal to the English people not to encourage or support a vile system of intimidation and violence, a system which not only pursues and ruins its enemies, but refuses to allow peaceably-inclined people to remain neutral. A case like this should not be one of Party politics, but should be looked upon as the cause of all who wish to pursue their lawful vocations peaceably against those who wish to tyrannise by terror over the community at large. "I am, Sir, your obedient servant, "FOEDI FOEDERIS ADVERSARIUS." "December 12." My private letters strengthen and confirm every word of this account; and the following letter is again a proof of personal tyranny and political malevolence not reassuring as qualities in the governing power:-- "TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'TIMES.' "Sir,--I have received a letter from my friend Mr. Edward Phillips, of Thurlesbeg House, Cashel, and the round, unvarnished tale that he delivers throws more light upon Ireland than any amount of the windy rhetoric which is so plentifully displayed on Parnellite and Gladstonian platforms. Mr. Phillips writes as follows:-- "'I hold 270 acres from Mr. Smith-Barry at a rent of £340 under lease and tenant-right, which, with my improvements, I valued at £1,000. The Land League have decided, thinking to hurt Mr. Smith-Barry, that all tenants must prepare to give up their farms by allowing themselves to be evicted. They are clearing off everything, and because I refuse to do this, and forfeit my £1,000, I am boycotted in the most determined manner. I am refused the commonest necessaries of life, even medicine, and have to get all from a distance. Blacksmiths, &c., refuse to work, and labourers have notice to leave, but have not yet done so. "'Heretofore people were boycotted for taking farms; I am boycotted for not giving up mine, which I have held for 25 years. A neighbour of mine, an Englishman, is undergoing the same treatment, and we alone. We are the only Protestant tenants on the Cashel estate. The remainder of the tenants, about 30, are clearing everything off their land, and say they will allow themselves to be evicted.' "I think this requires no comment. Public opinion is the best protection against tyranny, and your readers can judge how far the above narrative is consistent with the opinions expressed by Mr. Parnell and others as to the liberty and toleration which will be accorded to the loyal minority when the Land-National League becomes the undisputed Government of Ireland. "Your obedient servant, "R. BAGWELL." "Clonmell, December 27th." Again an important extract:-- "This is Mr. Parnell's language at Nottingham, but would he venture to use the same arguments in this country? Would he enumerate clearly to an Irish audience the countless advantages they derive from Imperial funds and Imperial credit, and tell them that the first step to Home Rule is the sacrifice of all these advantages? Our great system of national education is provided out of Imperial funds to the extent of about a million a year; so are the various institutions for the encouragement of science and art which adorn Dublin and our other large towns. The Baltimore School of Fishery and other technical training places, the piers and harbours on the Irish Coast, the system of light railways, and the draining of rivers and reclamation of waste lands, are all supported out of the Imperial Exchequer. The Board of Works alone has been the medium of lending almost five millions of money on easy terms under the Land Improvement Acts in the country. Nor have the agricultural interests been neglected. For erecting farmhouses alone over £700,000 has been given, while immense sums have been spent in working the Land Acts. For drainage over two millions have been lent, and a sum of over one million has been remitted from the debt. A debt of eight and a-half millions appears in the last return as outstanding from the Board of Irish Public Works, besides three millions and a-half from the corresponding board in England. In fact, there is not a project enumerated by Mr. Parnell as necessary, under a new _régime_, to promote the 'Nationality of Ireland,' which is not at present being helped on by the funds or the credit of the 'alien Government.' All these national advantages the supporter of a shadowy Home Rule bids us give up." If ever there was a case of the spider and the fly in human affairs this mild and perfectly equitable reasoning of Mr. Parnell is the illustration. How about the djinn crying inside the sealed jar, and the fate of the credulous fisherman who obeys that voice and breaks the seal which Solomon the Wise set against him? In writing this pamphlet I have not cared for graces of literary style or dramatic strength of composition; and I have largely supported myself by quotations as a proof that I am not a mere impressionist, but have a solid back-ground and a firm foothold for all that I have said. Judged by these extracts it would seem that, outside the right of full communal self-government, the cry for Home Rule is either interested and fictitious--or when sincere--save in certain splendid exceptions, of whom Mr. Laing is the honoured chief, and the only Home Ruler who makes me doubt the rightness of my own conversion--it is a mere sentimental impulse shorn of practical power and working capacity. In any case it is a one-sided thing, leaving out of court Ulster, the integrity of the Empire, and the obligations of historic continuity. It is a cry that has been echoed by violence and murder, by outrage and ruin, and that has in it one overwhelming element of weakness--exaggeration. It is the cry at its best of enthusiasts whose ideas of human life and governmental potentialities are too generous for every-day practice--at its worst but another word for self. For the men who raise it and hound on these poor dupes to their own destruction are men who would be rulers of the country in their own persons, or members of a Gladstonian ministry, were the Home Rule party to come to the front. With neither section does the strength, the glory, the integrity, and the continuance of the Empire count; and the honour of England, like the true well-being of Ireland, is the last thing thought of by either party. The motto of the one is: "_Fiat justitia ruat caelum_"--of the other: "_Après moi le déluge._" The one abjures the necessities of statesmanship, the other the self-restraints of patriotism. Surely the good, wholesome, working principles of sound government lie with neither, but rather with the steady continuance of things as they are--modified as occasion arises and the needs of the case demand. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: Lord Hartington's statistics--and Lord Hartington is a man whose word not his bitterest enemies have dared to question or to doubt--are these: 1880 (No coercion) 2,585 agrarian crimes. 1881 (Partial and weak coercion) 4,439 " " 1883 (Vigorous coercion) 834 " " 1888 (Vigorous coercion) 660 " " ] [Footnote B: Mr. Hurlbert, a Roman Catholic, an American, and a personal friend of Mr. Davitt--all which circumstances give a special weight to his testimony, now borne after frequent and lengthened and recent visits to Ireland, and after close converse with men of all classes and of all political and religious views, says in his _Ireland under Coercion_: "An Irish gentleman from St. Louis brought over a considerable sum of money for the relief of distress in the north-west of Ireland, but was induced to entrust it to the League, on the express ground that, the more people were made to feel the pinch of the existing order of things, the better it would be for the revolutionary movement."--_The Irish Question_, I., 193. By Dr. Bryce.] [Footnote C: Some time after the Great Famine, the Government brought in an Act called the Encumbered Estates Act. A judge was appointed to act as auctioneer. The income of the estate was set out in schedule form, and a man purchased that income by competition in open court. He got with his purchase what was supposed to be the best title then known, commonly called "A Parliamentary title." If he wanted to sell again, that was enough. Many years after the bargain was made by the court, Mr. Gladstone dropped in and upset it. A friend of mind purchased a guaranteed rental of £600 a year, subject to £300 annuity, as well as other charges, head rent, &c., &c. Now the Government may have been said to have pledged its honour to him, speaking by the mouth of a judge in open court, that it was selling him £600 a year. Surely it was a distinct breach of faith to swoop down on the purchaser, years after, and reduce the £600 to £500 without reducing the charges also in due proportion, or giving back one-sixth of the purchase money. Mr. Gladstone and his party say the land was rented too high. Does that (if true) get over the dishonesty of selling for £600 a year what was really worth only 500? Such a transaction as that between man and man would be actionable as a fraud. But this excuse is not true, for when any tenant wants to sell his tenant-right he gets a large price for it, far larger than the normal proportion to his rent. When a nation sanctions such absolute dishonesty as this on the part of its Prime Minister, it is not surprising that the shrewd Irish peasant profits by the lesson and improves the example.] [Footnote D: The following in reference to the Olphert estate evictions under the Plan of Campaign is from the _Freeman's Journal_. Will Mr. Spencer when exhibiting his photos, state the facts about this case--which reason and common-sense show to be altogether in the landlord's favour? "Mr. Spencer, Trowbridge, England, arrived in Falcarragh to-day, visited the scenes of the late evictions, and took photographs of several of the demolished houses in the townland of Drumnatinny. Mr. Spencer intends, on his return to England, to bring home to the minds of the English people by a series of illustrative lectures, the misery and hardships to which the Irish peasantry are subjected."] [Footnote E: On this question of further legislation I will quote part of a letter from a correspondent which shows the views of a singularly able, impartial, and fair-minded Irishman. "The breaking of leases was another risky thing to do, for it shook all faith in the sovereignty of the law and the finality of its _dicta_. Till Mr. Gladstone made himself the champion of the tenants and the oppressor of the landlords, Parliament never dreamed of revising rents paid under leases. Mr. Gladstone began by breaking these leases when held for a certain term defined by him. But we cannot stop there now. If another Land Bill is to be brought in by the present Government it must, to really and finally settle matters, _break all leases_. If it stops short of this the trouble will crop up again. If a man now with a thirty-nine years' lease can go into the Land Court, the man with a lease of a hundred years, or a hundred and fifty, or two hundred, should not be shut out. This point cannot be put too strongly to this Government. If the thing is to be done let it be done thoroughly, and let every man who holds a lease--no matter for what term--go into the Land Court, and also purchase under Lord Ashbourne's Act. Lord Ashbourne's Act is the real cure if made to apply all round."] [Footnote F: The Irish have always been cruel to animals. It is a curious fact that most Roman Catholic peasants are. In the time of Charles I. an Act was passed to prevent the Irish farmers from ploughing by their oxens' tails. Even now they pluck their geese alive.] [Footnote G: The boycott against the Great Northern Railway line between Carrickmacross and Dundalk is now in full swing. It was begun at Friday's fair in the former town, intimation having been given to all dealers in cattle and pigs that not an animal was to leave by the Great Northern line. Not a hackney car was permitted to attend the railway station, and commercial travellers had to leave their samples at the station. Many of the cattle and pigs purchased at the fair were driven by road to Kingscourt, where there is a station of the Midland Great Western Company, a local National League branch having published a resolution recommending all goods to be sent and received _viâ_ Kingscourt. It has also been resolved to do no business with commercial travellers from Belfast, or other parts of the North of Ireland, whose goods had been carried over the Great Northern system. Travellers from Scotland, England, and Dublin are only to be dealt with under guarantees that they do not use the Great Northern line. BOYCOTTING IN COUNTY WATERFORD. THE LEAGUE'S BLACK LIST. There has been issued by the National League in the county Waterford a "list of objectionable persons, with whom it is expected that no true man will have any dealings whatever"--cattle dealers, butter merchants, grain and hay merchants, brokers, and farmers being specially enjoined to refrain from any dealings with them, the farmers being told that they "must carefully avoid" the sale of milk or stock to agents of objectionable persons, and evicted tenants that they "must deem it their strict and imperative duty to follow to the markets all stock and produce reared upon their farms." Look, too, at the abuse poured out on all the Government leaders and officials. In the _Freeman's Journal_, of December 5th, is one of the most disgraceful attacks on Mr. Balfour ever made by journalism. It reads like a filthy outpour of a Yahoo rather than the utterance of a sane and responsible man. Are these the minds to govern a great and honest country?] 
36842	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) NEW IRELAND PAMPHLETS · NUMBER THREE PRICE TWOPENCE THE ISSUE The Case for Sinn Fein BY LECTOR AS PASSED BY CENSOR. NEW IRELAND PUBLISHING COMPANY, Limited 13 FLEET STREET, DUBLIN 1918 THE ISSUE =INDEPENDENCE.= Does Ireland wish to be free? Do we alone among the ancient Nations of Europe desire to remain slaves? That, and that alone, is the question which every Irish elector has now to answer. Let us put everything else out of our minds as irrelevant claptrap. Let nothing distract us from this single issue of Liberty. We must turn a deaf ear to sentimental whining about what this or that man did, his length of service, his "fighting on the floor of the House," and so on. Whatever may have been done in the way of small doles, petty grants, and big talk, the =fact= is that we are not Free and the =issue= is, Do we want to be Free? Why should we be afraid of Freedom? Would any sane adult voluntarily prefer to be a slave, to be completely in the control and power of another? Men do not willingly walk into jail; why, then, should a whole people? The men who are =afraid= of national liberty are unworthy even of personal liberty; they are the victims of that slave mentality which English coercion and corruption have striven to create in Ireland. When Mr. John Dillon, grown tremulous and garrulous and feeble, asked for a national convention this autumn "to definitely forswear an Irish Republic," he was asking Ireland to commit an act of national apostasy and suicide. Would =you= definitely forswear your personal freedom? Will Mr. John Dillon hand his cheque-book and property over to some stranger and indenture himself as a serf or an idiot? When he does, but not till then, we shall believe that the Irish Nation is capable of sentencing itself cheerfully to penal servitude for all eternity. It was not always thus. "I say deliberately," said Mr. John Dillon at Moville in 1904, "that I should never have dedicated my life as I have done to this great struggle, if I did not see at the end of it the crowning and consummation of our work--A FREE AND INDEPENDENT IRELAND." It is sad that, fourteen years later, when the end is in sight, Mr. Dillon should be found a recreant and a traitor to his past creed. The degeneration of such a man is a damning indictment of Westminsterism. Parnell, too save for one short moment when he tried by compromise to fool English Liberalism but was foiled, proclaimed his belief in Irish Independence. This is what Parnell said at Cincinatti on 23rd February, 1880:-- "When we have undermined English misgovernment, we have paved the way for Ireland to take her place among the nations of the earth. And let us not forget that that is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen aim. None of us, whether we be in America or in Ireland, or wherever we may be, will be satisfied =until we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England=." Were he alive to-day, when the last link is snapping, on what side would Parnell be? Would he forswear an Irish Republic or would he proclaim once more, as he said in Cork (21st Jan., 1885): "No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a Nation. No man has a right to say: Thus far shalt thou go and no farther. And we have never attempted to fix the _ne plus ultra_ to the progress of Ireland's nationhood and we never shall." =IRELAND AND SMALL NATIONS.= At New York 31st August, 1904, John Redmond declared:-- "If it were in my power to-morrow by any honourable means to absolutely emancipate Ireland, I would do it and feel it my duty to do it. (1904, not 1914!) I believe it would be just as possible for Ireland to have a prosperous and free separate existence as a nation as Holland, Belgium, or Switzerland, or other small nationalities. And if it were in the power of any man to bring that result about to-morrow by honourable and brave means, he would be indeed a coward and a traitor to the traditions of his race did he not do so." If Holland and Poland and all the other little lands, why not Ireland? Put that straight question to yourself and you must answer it as John Redmond did in 1904. Are we alone among the nations created to be slaves and helots? Are we so incompetent and incapable as not to be able to manage our own country? Is a people of four millions to be in perpetual bondage and tutelage to a solicitor and a soldier? Did God Almighty cast up this island as a sandbank for Englishmen to walk on? Is it the sole mission of Irish men and women to send beef and butter to John Bull? Look at the other nations and ask yourself, Why not? Why is not Ireland free? Are we too small in area? We are double Switzerland or Denmark, nearly three times Holland or Belgium. Is our population too small--though it was once double? We are as numerous as Serbia, our population is as large as that of Switzerland and nearly double that of Denmark or Norway. Does the difficulty lie in our poverty? Are we too poor to exist as a free people? The revenue raised =per head= in Ireland is double that of any other small nation, seven times that of Switzerland! The total revenue of Ireland is ten times that of Switzerland, three times that of Norway, four times that of Denmark, Serbia or Finland. Yet all these countries have their own armies, consuls, etc.; they run themselves as free nations at far below the cost of servile Ireland. Why? Because there is no other country pocketing their cash. Here are some figures:-- Area Population Revenue (thousands of (Millions) (Millions £) sq. miles) Ireland 32-1/2 4-1/3 30 Belgium 11-1/2 7-1/2 32 Holland 12-1/2 6-1/2 18-3/4 Denmark 15-1/2 2-3/4 7-1/2 Norway 125 2-1/2 10 Switzerland 16 4 3 Rumania 53-1/2 7-1/2 24 Serbia 34 4-1/2 8-1/2 Finland 126 3-1/4 8-1/2 These figures would suggest that Ireland is a strong military and naval power among the small nations. And so we are--only the army and navy we support are not our own; they exist to keep us in slavery, not in freedom. It is about time we started business on our own. =DEPENDENT ON ENGLAND?= The most significant instance of English policy in Ireland is the creation of the widespread delusion that we are economically dependent on England. An elaborate network of fraud and deceit has been built up to hide the truth from our eyes. We are secretly and systematically robbed and we hardly notice it. The ordinary Irish worker pays at least four shillings a week to England, he is hardly aware of the fact, so nicely is it done whenever he buys tobacco or his wife gets tea and sugar, and so on. Though the average income in England is three times what it is in Ireland, the notoriously underfed Irish workers have to pay more than twice the English proportion of indirect taxes on food, etc. We pay England 1/- on every pound of tea, 1-1/2d. on every pound of sugar, 7d. on every oz. of tobacco. There is no fuss about it: it is accepted as part of the laws of nature that tea should be a shilling a pound dearer than it need be. As for direct taxation--well, even the farmers know what the English income-tax is. Where does it all go? To England as taxes, profits, rents, imperial contributions, and trade. As a going concern Ireland is now worth thirty million a year to its owner, John Bull. There are certain expenses of administration--police, Castle, secret service, prisons, tax collectors--and there are, of course, several items of hush-money, dodges necessary to fool the people, such as "education." But the fact is that a bigger and bigger profit is being made every year out of this island. More agricultural materials and products are shipped to England, more Irish brains are selected for running India, etc., more Irishmen are utilised for gun-fodder. Sometimes, after much beseeching by resolutions and deputations, we are graciously presented with a minute fraction of our own goods. Is it not about time that we recognised in English "grants" our own country's transmuted plunder? We are as dependent on England as a factory is on an absentee society lady who is shareholder. In 1663 began the long series of English laws against Irish trade. Charles II. closed the English markets to Irish cattle, meat, leather, butter, etc. Ireland built ships and opened direct trade with Flanders, France, Spain, the American Colonies. The Navigation Act and the Jacobite War once more destroyed our mercantile marine and ruined our industries. Ireland was practically confined by law to the English market. In 1782, 60,000 Volunteers, with arms in their hands, won Free Trade--i.e., the liberty of Ireland to trade direct with the world. In a few years, bad as our own Parliament was, the country prospered exceedingly. The Union once more destroyed our industries and even our tillage and turned Ireland into a cattle-ranch; our mercantile marine was destroyed. All our trade is in the hands of English middlemen and we have to sell and buy at England's price. We are dependent on England, not in the sense that we get anything out of her, but in the sense that we have allowed her to capture our trade and cut us off from the world. We have allowed England to become a parasitic bloodsucker. And because we have done so, we fancy that England is our sole customer. As if the whole world is not clamouring for meat and butter and other foodstuffs! In 1912, when England placed her cattle embargo on Ireland, the prices in the markets of Hamburg and Genoa--after deducting import duty and the extra cost of transit--were more than 11/- per cwt. higher than the price paid in England. Had Irishmen then had enough Sinn Fein spirit, they would soon have discovered who was dependent on whom! There is no possible argument, moral or economic, against Irish freedom. "Is Ireland fit to be an independent sovereign nation?" asks Dr. Cohalan, Bishop of Cork. "Why should it not be, if Belgium is fit to be a sovereign nation, if Serbia is so fit, if Montenegro--whose King is not much more than a strong farmer in this country--is fit, all fit to be independent nations? Then, when putting the question as to Ireland, I would really ask everyone, men and women, in this country to cease speaking slightingly of their own race and their own country. I would like every Irishman and woman, Catholic and Protestant, to answer that question in the affirmative." We are fit to be free, we have a God-given right to be free, we mean to be free. But how are we going to get our freedom? =HOW TO GET THINGS.= Let us see how we ever got anything from England. Parnell is much quoted just now. What was his view? This is what he said at Manchester, 15th July, 1877:-- "For my part I must tell you that I do not believe in a policy of conciliation of English feeling or English prejudices. I believe that you may go on trying to conciliate English prejudice until the day of judgment, and that you will not get the breadth of my nail from them. What did we ever get in the past by trying to conciliate them? Did we get the abolition of tithes by the conciliation of our English taskmasters? No; it was because we adopted different measures. Did O'Connell in his time gain emancipation for Ireland by conciliation? I rather think that O'Connell in his time was not of a very conciliatory disposition, and that at least during a part of his career he was about the best-abused Irishman living." There is no mistaking the view of Charles Stewart Parnell. Two years later he repeated his assertion (Tipperary, 21st Sept., 1879):-- "=It is no use relying upon the Government, it is no use relying upon the Irish members, it is no use relying upon the House of Commons.= You must rely upon your own determination, that determination which has enabled you to survive the famine years and to be present here to-day; and, if you are determined, I tell you, you have the game in your own hands." And at the St. Patrick's Day celebration in London in 1884:-- "I have always endeavoured to teach my countrymen, whether at home or abroad, the lesson of =self-reliance=.... Do not rely upon any English Party; do not rely even upon the great English democracy, however well-disposed they may be to your claims. But rely upon yourselves." Sinn Fein means self-reliance. According to Parnell, then, the Irish people secured nothing through Irish talk at Westminster. Whatever they got, they got by direct action. It is easy to convince ourselves that Parnell is right. We got Free Trade and legislative independence in 1782, without any Irish Party at Westminster, with the help of 60,000 Volunteers. In 1829 Catholic Emancipation was won by O'Connell in Clare, before he ever set foot in Westminster, because he had the Irish people and the Catholic Association behind him. Yet a few months before the English Government had rejected a Catholic Relief Bill with scorn. Here are Peel's words:-- "In the course of the last six months, England, being at peace with the whole world, has had five-sixths of the infantry force of the United Kingdom occupied in maintaining the peace and in police duties in Ireland. I consider the state of things which requires such an application of military force much worse than open rebellion. If this be the state of things at present, let me implore of you to consider what would be the condition of England in the event of war. Can we forget in reviewing the state of Ireland what happened in 1782?" The Prime Minister was evidently unmoved by all the eloquent appeals for justice to Irish Catholics; he moved very rapidly when Irishmen showed signs of =doing= something. The Duke of Wellington, in May, 1829, made a similar confession:-- "If you glance at the history of Ireland during the last ten years, you will find that agitation really means something short of rebellion; that and no other is the exact meaning of the word. It is to place the country in that state in which its government is utterly impracticable except by means of an overawing military force." Not such a far cry after all from the Iron Duke to the Tin Viscount! Tithes were abolished in 1838, again not by a Parliamentary Party, but by the people themselves after a bloody seven years' war. Then came Disestablishment in 1869. How did that come? When in 1868 Gladstone proposed his Church resolution, a hundred Irish members voted--fifty-five for and forty-five against! Obviously Disestablishment was not carried by Irish representation at Westminster. Let Gladstone himself tell us what carried it:-- "Down to the year 1865 and the dissolution of that year, the whole question of the Irish Church was dead. Nobody cared about it, nobody paid attention to it in England. Circumstances occurred which drew attention of the people to the Irish Church. I said myself in 1865, and I believed, that it was out of the range of practical politics." In other words, Fenianism secured Irish Church Disestablishment. Lord Derby, writing from the opposite camp, agreed with Gladstone:-- "A few desperate men, applauded by the whole body of the Irish people for their daring, showed England what Irish feeling really was, made plain to us the depth of a discontent whose existence we had scarcely suspected, and =the rest followed, of course=." Let us hear the same two unimpeachable witnesses concealing the Land Question. "I must make one admission," said Gladstone, "and that is that without the Land League the Act of 1881 would not at this moment be on the Statute Book." "Fixity of tenure," said Lord Derby, "has been the direct result of two causes: Irish outrage and parliamentary obstruction. The Irish know it as well as we. Not all the influence and eloquence of Mr. Gladstone would have prevailed on the English House of Commons to do what has been done in the matter of Irish tenant right, if the answer to all objections had not been ready: How else are we to govern Ireland?" In plain English, every concession wrung from England has been secured simply by making the English Government otherwise impossible in Ireland. =THE FAILURE OF PARLIAMENTARIANISM.= If this be so, what is the use of sending Irishmen over to talk at Westminster? That is the question which we have to face squarely. In the hand of a genius like Parnell, the parliamentary policy secured a temporary success, because, with the help of Joe Biggar, the Fenian, he played the game in his own way--by parliamentary obstruction--and because he secured the co-operation of the anti-parliamentary Nationalists. But even he only looked upon the experiment as a temporary expedient. "Have patience with me," he said to a Fenian in 1877; "give me a trial for three or four years; then if I cannot do anything, I will step aside." He made a very striking declaration in November, 1880, when the freedom of Limerick was conferred on him:-- "I am not one of those who believe in the permanence of an Irish Party in the English Parliament. I feel convinced that sooner or later the influence which every English Government has at its command--the powerful and demoralising influence--sooner or later--will sap the best Party you can return to the House of Commons. I don't think we ought to rely too much on the permanent independence of an Irish Party sitting at a distance from their constituencies and legislating, or attempting to legislate, for Ireland at Westminster. But I think it possible to maintain the independence of our Party by great exertions and by great sacrifices on the part of the constituencies of Ireland--while we are making a short, sharp, and I trust decisive, struggle for the restoration of our legislative independence." There could not be a more striking condemnation of Westminsterism from the lips of Ireland's greatest parliamentary leader. What would he not have said could he have foreseen the Liberal alliance, the pledge-breaking, the jobbing, the £400 a year! "If the young men of Ireland have trusted me," said Parnell at Kilkenny, December, 1890, "it is because they know that I am not a mere Parliamentarian." Ireland, young and old, has since then had good cause to distrust mere Parliamentarianism. The test of any policy is its practical result. What has Westminsterism got for us? For 47 years we have had an Irish Party, for 118 years Ireland has been represented in the English Parliament. We have given the experiment a fair trial; it is high time to take stock. When the Party started in 1871 our population was 5-1/2 millions; since then over 2-1/4 millions have emigrated; there are now only 4-1/3 millions in the country. In 1871 there were 5,620,000 acres in tillage; now there are less than 4,900,000. In 1871 the poor rate was 2s. 6d. per head, now it is over 5s. In 1871 the taxation of Ireland was £1 5s. 7d. per head; to-day it is about £7. Apply any rational test you like, and find if you can any single good we have got by sending Irish talkers to Westminster. The Irish Party, of course, attribute everything to themselves. But this electioneering dodge--never used by Parnell--is getting a trifle thin. Even Mr. Redmond wrote in 1902: "Despite the efforts made by Isaac Butt and other Irish members between 1871 and 1876, nothing was done in the direction of land reform until the Land League came." The Local Government Act of 1898 was drafted secretly by the Government and came as a surprise to the Party; it was even opposed by John Redmond. The Party never asked for Old Age Pensions, and when these were proposed they confined themselves to the remark that if extended to Ireland half-a-crown a week would be enough. Parliament has spent thirty-three years drafting Home Rule Bills; they have all come to nothing. In three weeks Irish Conscription was passed in spite of the Party. Where was Conscription defeated--in Ireland or in Westminster? And if the organised opposition and resistance of the Nation, especially of Labour, made Conscription impossible, does it not teach us that our real power is here at home in Ireland? The Party made vain efforts to secure justice for the Irish teachers. The teachers took the matter into their own hands and won at once; had they been more determined, they would have done better still. In 1847-'48, while Irishmen talked in Parliament, Mitchel proposed to =do= something here in Ireland, to keep our own food here for our own people. Ireland did not realise her true salvation then, and the consequences were terrible. Seventy years later the same gospel is being preached under a new name. Are we going to listen to-day? Why, indeed, argue against Parliamentarianism at all? Its very adherents have abandoned all defence of it. On 3rd December, 1917, Mr. Dillon said in the English House of Commons: "Our position in this House is made futile, we are never listened to." Next day Mr. Devlin declared: "I do not often come to this House, because I do not believe it is worth coming to." These men are merely re-echoing from their own experience the parting words of Michael Davitt as he left the English Parliament (Oct., 1899):-- "I have for four years tried to appeal to the sense of justice in this House of Commons on behalf of Ireland. I leave, convinced that no just cause, no cause of right, will ever find support from this House of Commons unless it is backed up by force." =THE FUTILITY OF TALK.= Let us consider the whole policy in a sane, business-like way. John Bull runs his Other Island purely as a lucrative investment; he makes a good profit by the concern. Ireland is simply an Area for supplying beef and mutton, oats and butter, timber and men. We, Irish men and women, exist merely to be exploited. Well, we know it; what have we done? How have we striven to oust this big profiteer who sweats and coerces us? We were once an independent concern, we managed our own affairs. Then John Bull annexed us; by means of bribes and promises and threats he turned out the Irish directors. Arrangements were made by which 100 Irishmen were admitted to the English Employers' Federation 600 strong. And for 118 years these Irishmen have been talking there, making speeches and petitions and harangues. And we? What have we been doing? Oh, yes, now and then the Irish--that is, John Bull's workingmen--got restive and made things unpleasant. So they got some concessions: Emancipation, Land Acts, etc. But still they always turned again to talk; with 80 Irishmen talking to 600 Englishmen they were told that they would be quite safe. Weren't we "represented" at Westminster? Whenever these, our representatives, definitely proposed anything, they were, of course, beaten; but if the majority against them was less than 200, they always raised a deafening cheer. It is so nice to be beaten by only 150, whereas if we were not "represented" we should be beaten by 230--which would be dreadful. Then we were told that what was said in Parliament reached the world--as if Mr. King had not told more truth about us in Parliament than the whole Irish Party, as if Hansard is not censored, as if Dr. McCartan, Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington and others have not said more in America than twenty Westminsters could convey--not to mention T. P. O'Connor's performances! To what depths are we reduced, when Westminsterism is excused only as a means of getting into Hansard! Do we really think that a handful of Irishmen by merely talking can persuade eight times their number of Englishmen to take their grip off this country, to cease exploiting us, to give up their fat profits? Is it not, to say the least, more likely that the English majority, far cleverer and more powerful, will succeed in cajoling, bribing and fooling the few Irish flies who walk into the spiders' parlour? =In fact, was not the Act of Union specially designed for this very purpose?= To swallow a powerless Irish minority in an English Parliament, to give them facilities for talking and letting off steam that thereby the Irish people might be beguiled into doing nothing else. By providing a sham outlet for our energies, by diverting our attention into wordy warfare, the English Parliament has succeeded for 118 years in preventing us from seeing the obvious truth that the English Government can only be made unworkable =in Ireland=. The very genius of Parnell has done us harm by intensifying the illusion. He succeeded for a while, where Butt failed, because he adopted unparliamentary methods in Parliament. For a time, by persistent obstruction, Parnell made Government unworkable, even in England. He was beaten in the end; obstruction is no longer possible; we have reverted to the mock debates of Isaac Butt. Things are even much worse; for the whole Party system has made Parliament a fraud and a farce. The House of Commons has lost its independence to a caucus which controls the jobs and the party funds. The latest development, whereby Messrs. Lloyd George and Bonar Law have arranged to wipe out the Opposition, makes the further presence of a few Irish Nationalists a jocose anachronism. The English Coalition would, however, still like the eighty Irishmen to come and hobnob with them. England is far keener on their attendance than Ireland ever was. Those who oppose the Westminster policy are mostly in English prisons; absenteeism is treason felony. English aeroplanes drop leaflets printed (at our expense) by the English Government to denounce the policy of abstention, to show that it is folly. The English foreign propaganda tirelessly advertises the presence of Mr. Dillon and Co. in Westminster as the surest proof of England's kindness to us, and of Irish loyalty to the Empire. The Irish Party think that their attendance is good for Ireland, the English Government is quite certain that it is good for England, everyone agrees that it cannot be good for both. Which, do you think, knows the situation best: the English Government, whose policy of exploiting us has been hitherto so eminently successful, or the Irish Party which has been so often taken in, outwitted, bribed and duped? It is worth pondering over. =THE ALTERNATIVE.= Undoubtedly in most minds the great objection to the Abstention Policy is that it seems a mere negation; it seems to leave a horrible blank. What! No Irish Representatives at Westminster? Are we to allow Carson to represent us? And so on. Let us look at the thing calmly. Why do we want to be "represented" at all? We must first answer that question. For instance, we have no desire to be "represented" in Timbuctoo or in the Moon; but some Irish people find it consoling to feel that they are represented in England. If not, they feel something dreadful will happen: the income-tax will be trebled, we shall all be coerced and conscripted. Well, as things have hitherto been, the Irish Party have never succeeded in staving off a penny of our taxation. Twenty-four years ago an Anglo-Irish Commission found that England was plundering Ireland of two and three-quarter millions a year in excess of the amount of plunder sanctioned by the Union. From that day to this we have never secured the remission of one penny of this plunder; on the contrary, it has been increased tenfold. And all this time we have been strongly "represented" at Westminster. We have been paying heavily for the privilege! As for coercion--did the Party ever prevent it? For years past they might have got the Crimes Act abolished, they didn't or couldn't. Conscription was passed swiftly in spite of our "representatives"--but somehow it did not come off. Now, that is worth thinking on. Conscription, like Coercion Acts and Budgets, danced through our representatives, yet we ourselves beat it. How? By electing our own little parliament in Dublin (we called it the Mansion House Conference, of course, for decency's sake), by voting taxes to it (we called them the Defence Fund), by organising the country so effectively that the English-made law was seen to be impossible and unworkable. What an object-lesson if only we will learn from it. The anti-conscription campaign is Sinn Fein in a nutshell. Even the Party developed a momentary backbone; the members came back to Erin and actually left us "unrepresented" in London--and we hardly noticed the dreadful fact! The Abstention Policy means, therefore, that we give up the sham battle and take up the real struggle in grim earnest. We cease to rely on talk as an effective economic or political defence, we begin to DO something, to rely on ourselves. There is only one way of putting an end to English tyranny in Ireland, and that is, not by scolding at it from the other side of the Irish Sea, but by making it unworkable over here. Do we mean the use of physical force? This is a difficulty which at once arises in discussing the abstention policy. This is chiefly due to the hysterical asseveration of Mr. John Dillon, whose chief electioneering argument--apart from abuse--is that the only alternative to Westminster is Rebellion. It seems rather curious, doesn't it, that we cannot sit tight here in our own country and win independence as Hungary did under Deak. But perhaps Mr. Dillon means that if we were not distracted and bamboozled by the fighting on the floor of the House, we would not so tamely acquiesce in our oppression; and probably Mr. Dillon is right. But, after all, conscription was beaten without rebellion, and Mr. Dillon's adherence (however lukewarm) to the Mansion House Committee showed that he believed it could be beaten without physical force. And when Mr. Dillon signed the No-Rent Manifesto he was, though he knew it not, a staunch upholder of Sinn Fein:-- "Against the passive resistance of an entire population, military power has no weapons.... No power on earth except faint-heartedness on your own part, can defeat you.... The world is watching to see whether all your splendid hopes and noble courage will crumble away at the first threat of a cowardly tyranny.... Stand together in the face of the brutal and cowardly enemies of your race.... Stand passively, firmly, fearlessly by, while the armies of England may be engaged in their hopeless struggle against a spirit which their weapons cannot touch.... The Government will learn in a single winter how powerless is armed force against the will of a united, determined and self-reliant nation." Would to God that this was the message which Mr. Dillon had for Ireland to-day! Michael Davitt's comment on the No-Rent Manifesto is interesting:-- "While I admit its great success as far as results were concerned, I think that it dulled a weapon which could have been used to give the final blow to landlordism in Ireland. Had the League waited until two or three hundred thousand tenant-farmers were ready to obey it, it would have involved the eviction of a million of people. That would have been a measure which the Government could not have faced, and the result would have been the downfall of the system of landlordism. Still, the results were immediate. The landlords offered the largest possible reduction of rents, and Mr. Gladstone offered to release the suspects and bring forward the Arrears Bill." There, in Davitt's words, you have the central belief of Sinn Fein: reliance on the moral solidarity and economic power of a Nation. Even a small determined minority, if prepared to suffer, can effect enormous reforms. The English Suffragettes have won the franchise for women. It was certainly not by physical force--even the militant suffragettes did not rebel, though they burnt houses, broke statues, and harried politicians. A handful of determined women made government extremely difficult and thus they won the vote =in spite of Parliament=. If such is the power of a minority, how irresistible would be an entire nation. Secure even only one million determined adherents of Sinn Fein, and in six months English government will be at an end. That is our belief, and it is based on solid facts of history--Hungarian Independence, English suffrage struggle, Irish victory over conscription. There are limits to the possibilities of brute force. At this stage of the world it is impossible to slaughter a nation, it is impossible to cope with a nation of passive resisters. What is to be done with a million or so of people who refuse to pay taxes, who combine to secure the products of their own country, who repudiate the authority of the intruders? That is the problem which England does not want to face in this country. The only way for Irishmen to secure a government based on the consent of the governed is to withdraw all practical consent and concurrence from the present usurpation. There is no other way. To go on accepting the English government, co-operating with it as farmers, workers, tax-payers, policemen, etc., and at the same time to keep whining and petitioning--this is despicable folly. John Bull is our boss, Ireland is his food-producing factory. The old idea of the workers was to do nothing, to form no combination, but merely to cringe for charity from their employers. That is the stage in which the Irish Party want to keep us; they are a century behind-hand. The workers now rely on themselves, on trade union organisation, on direct action; they have even lost faith in parliamentary tactics. At any rate, they never complain that they are not "represented" (by a small minority) on the Employers' Federation! The modern Labour movement is based on self-reliance, on the power and cohesion of large numbers, on the slowly built-up economic strength of great unions. Sinn Fein is merely the transfer of this faith from Labour to Nationality. That is what we are aiming at in Ireland: the formation of One Big Union, which will ask nothing from England =until it is ready to strike=. That is the task which lies before us: the organisation of the Irish People into a National Union. We must put ourselves into the position of taking over the whole national business of Ireland. The first step is the capture of the existing organisations--the parliamentary constituencies, the county and district and municipal councils, the boards of guardians, every single body which has a share in directing the national life. =THE MORAL PRINCIPLE.= Even from the purely practical standpoint, the case for abstention from the Westminster talking shop would be irresistible. But there is more than that at stake. We maintain that attendance at Westminster is immoral and dishonest, it would be a national lie and apostacy. The members of the Irish Party, when seeking re-election, have always indulged in an orgy of sedition and disloyalty. They talk of Emmet and Tone, they celebrate the Manchester Martyrs, they are not afraid to speak of Ninety-Eight, they are proud of the felons of our land, they sap every moral claim of the English Government in Ireland. (Had they not done so, they would never have been elected in the past.) And then they are carried off by mail-boat and express-train, and within a few hours they swear allegiance to the English King and draw their first instalment of £400 a year. What a bastard nationalism, what a monstrous Anglo-Irish mongrel mentality! English loyalty veneered with Irish martyrs' blood, damnable casuistry juggling with oaths and playing with rebellion, blood and thunder paid by a cheque. Listen to what John Redmond said on 9th August, 1902:-- "Never for one single hour since the Union was passed has Ireland been a constitutionally governed country.... Never for one hour has the English Government of Ireland obtained the assent or approval or confidence of the people of Ireland.... Never for one hour since then has the English Government of Ireland rested upon anything but =naked force=. =No single reform, large or small, has ever been obtained by purely constitutional means....= We submit to the English usurpation of the government of Ireland, but we do so =only because we have no adequate means of successful resistance=." On 4th September, 1907, John Redmond described the Act of Union, which gave him his seat in the English Parliament, as "a great criminal act of usurpation carried by violence and fraud," which "no lapse of time and no mitigation of its details can ever make binding upon our honour or our conscience." Resistance to this Union, he continued, is "a sacred duty, and the methods of resistance will remain for us merely a question of expediency," physical force "would be absolutely justifiably if it were possible." Pretty strong, is it not? The English Government is merely an alien usurper with no moral authority whatever, to be resisted and fought by every effective means. Yet how did the same John Redmond take his seat at Westminster and draw his £400 a year? By taking the following oath:-- "I, John Redmond, do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to his Majesty, King George V., his heirs and successors, according to law, so help me God." And so by means of this oath of loyalty to the "unconstitutional" usurpation of "naked force," the Irish member avails himself of that "great criminal act of usurpation carried by violence and fraud," he takes his seat with men from Lancashire or Bucks, he gets his cheque. Is this playing the game? Is it honest and honourable? If the English occupation of Ireland is immoral and tyrannical, can we swear loyalty to it? If the Act of Union is a criminal fraud, can we accept and acknowledge it, by going to Westminster? Let every lover of truth answer this question with an emphatic No! Let us as a Nation answer No with an unanimous defiant shout. To go to Westminster is not only unpractical and futile, it is a betrayal of the sacred cause of Irish Nationality and =it has been advertised as such by the English Government=. The great argument for deceiving the world with regard to Ireland is the presence of Irishmen in the English Parliament--why we are "over-represented" there! There is, therefore, only one way of making Ireland cease to be a "domestic" problem and of bringing it out into the full light of international affairs; and that is by making a full and final repudiation of the English Parliament. That would be an unmistakeable manifesto to the whole world, a proclamation that Ireland demands her full rights from a world which has definitely recognised the autonomy of small nationalities. =THE PEACE CONFERENCE.= That is how we can appeal to the Peace Conference, by fearlessly proclaiming our refusal to be swallowed up in England's Empire. There is no need, thank God, of arguing that we should strive to make the most of the Peace Conference. Even Mr. Dillon has come to admit the idea, though he is unfortunately so intent on scoring off opponents that he has tried to degrade the Conference into a contemptible set of unscrupulous Powers. Sinn Fein is in no way built exclusively on the hopes of the Peace Conference; the movement was founded by Arthur Griffith years before the war, if indeed it is not coeval with the Irish age-long struggle for freedom. Nor are we such sentimental fools as to rely merely on gush. We do indeed hope for the triumph of moral principles in international affairs, and especially we hope that democracy is coming into its rightful inheritance. But meantime we rely primarily on ourselves and our own determination. Still, we will see that no high-sounding principles shall be paraded before the world unless the voice of Ireland is heard. We will see to it that pharisaism shall be confronted by an Ireland clamouring for independence. And we shall not be friendless. Our race has power in America, in Australia. Ireland's freedom, too, is essential for the American conception of the freedom of the seas. The issue is now before us. We are in the birth-time of big changes. Let us not lose the great chance of freedom. Let the Irish Democracy once and for all declare that Ireland is a Nation entitled to sovereign independence. Mr. Dillon's attempt to degrade the Peace Conference to the level of the Westminster Assembly, where everything is settled by party pressure, bribes and private arrangements, is most astonishing testimony to the corrupting and demoralising influence of London on Irish members. His mind is still moving in the old rut of political trickery, huckstering and chicanery; instinctively and as the result of long experience, he reduces Ireland's claims to the condition of a man looking for a job or a vote. He regards our case not as a question of right and justice, but as one to be compromised and pared down in the good old Westminster fashion. Something like real Democracy, however, is coming to stay. Great and sacred principles have been invoked, and the workers of the world are not going to let them be quietly buried. Nor will Ireland. We are determined to apply the acid test to these noble professions of faith. The President of the American Republic, who has espoused the cause even of little Schleswig, will be confronted with the case for an Irish Republic. There can be no League of Nations, no firm foundation of international justice, so long as Ireland is denied that freedom which Letts, Finns, Slavs and Poles have won. On behalf of His Holiness, Cardinal Gasparri, Papal Secretary of State, issued a statement (24th August, 1918) in which we read:-- "History teaches us that a form of government imposed by arms does not and cannot live." On 6th November, 1918, Pope Benedict XV. wrote to the Archbishop of Warsaw:-- "Thanks be to God, the resurrection of Poland is now finally dawning. Now that Poland has regained her Full Independence, it is our most fervent prayer that she may once more take her place in the community of nations and resume her career as a champion of civilisation and Christianity." Surely our Holy Father is looking forward to the day when he can address similar congratulations to Ireland, the Island of Saints and Scholars. Let every Irish man and woman who reads this vote for Ireland's Independence. =FOR THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE HONOUR OF ERIN.= Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. 
13132	----	Distributed Proofreaders PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM by TERENCE MACSWINEY Late Lord Mayor of Cork 1921 [Illustration: TERENCE MACSWINEY (Late Lord Mayor of Cork)] [Illustration] TO THE SOLDIERS OF FREEDOM IN EVERY LAND PREFACE It was my intention to publish these articles in book form as soon as possible. I had them typed for the purpose. I had no time for revision save to insert in the typed copy words or lines omitted from the original printed matter. I also made an occasional verbal alteration in the original. One article, however, that on "Intellectual Freedom," though written in the series in the place in which it now stands, was not printed with them. It is now published for the first time. RELIGION I wish to make a note on the article under this heading to avoid a possible misconception amongst people outside Ireland. In Ireland there is no religious dissension, but there is religious insincerity. English politicians, to serve the end of dividing Ireland, have worked on the religious feelings of the North, suggesting the danger of Catholic ascendancy. There is not now, and there never was, any such danger, but our enemies, by raising the cry, sowed discord in the North, with the aim of destroying Irish unity. It should be borne in mind that when the Republican Standard was first raised in the field in Ireland, in the Rising of 1798, Catholics and Protestants in the North were united in the cause. Belfast was the first home of Republicanism in Ireland. This is the truth of the matter. The present-day cleavage is an unnatural thing created by Ireland's enemies to hold her in subjection and will disappear entirely with political Freedom. It has had, however, in our day, one unhappy effect, only for a time fortunately, and this is disappearing. I refer to the rise of Hibernianism. The English ruling faction having, for their own political designs, corrupted the Orangemen with power and flattery, enabled them to establish an ascendancy not only over Ulster, but indirectly by their vote over the South. This becoming intolerable, some sincere but misguided Catholics in the North joined the organisation known as THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS. This was, in effect, a sort of Catholic Freemasonry to counter the Orange Freemasonry, but like Orangeism, it was a political and not a religious weapon. Further, as a political weapon, it extended all through Ireland during the last years of the Irish Parliamentary Movement. In Cork, for example, it completely controlled the city life for some years, but the rapid rise of the Republican Movement brought about the equally rapid fall of Hibernianism. At the present moment it has as little influence in the public life of Cork as Sir Edward Carson himself. The great bulk of its one-time members have joined the Republican Movement. This demonstrates clearly that anything in the nature of a sectarian movement is essentially repugnant to the Irish people. As I have pointed out, the Hibernian Order, when created, became at once a political weapon, but Ireland has discarded that, and other such weapons, for those with which she is carving out the destinies of the Republic. For a time, however, Hibernianism created an unnatural atmosphere of sectarian rivalry in Ireland. That has now happily passed away. At the time, however, of the writing of the article on Religion it was at its height, and this fact coloured the writing of the article. On re-reading it and considering the publication of the present work I was inclined to suppress it, but decided that it ought to be included because it bears directly on the evil of materialism in religious bodies, which is a matter of grave concern to every religious community in the world. T. MacS. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE BASIS OF FREEDOM II. SEPARATION III. MORAL FORCE IV. BROTHERS AND ENEMIES V. THE SECRET OF STRENGTH VI. PRINCIPLE IN ACTION VII. LOYALTY VIII. WOMANHOOD IX. THE FRONTIER X. LITERATURE AND FREEDOM--THE PROPAGANDIST PLAYWRIGHT XI. LITERATURE AND FREEDOM--ART FOR ART'S SAKE XII. RELIGION XIII. INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM XIV. MILITARISM XV. THE EMPIRE XVI. RESISTANCE IN ARMS--FOREWORD XVII. RESISTANCE IN ARMS--THE TRUE MEANING OF LAW XVIII. RESISTANCE IN ARMS--OBJECTIONS XIX. THE BEARNA BAOGHAIL--CONCLUSION +PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM+ CHAPTER I THE BASIS OF FREEDOM I Why should we fight for freedom? Is it not strange, that it has become necessary to ask and answer this question? We have fought our fight for centuries, and contending parties still continue the struggle, but the real significance of the struggle and its true motive force are hardly at all understood, and there is a curious but logical result. Men technically on the same side are separated by differences wide and deep, both of ideal and plan of action; while, conversely, men technically opposed have perhaps more in common than we realise in a sense deeper than we understand. II This is the question I would discuss. I find in practice everywhere in Ireland--it is worse out of Ireland--the doctrine, "The end justifies the means." One party will denounce another for the use of discreditable tactics, but it will have no hesitation in using such itself if it can thereby snatch a discreditable victory. So, clear speaking is needed: a fight that is not clean-handed will make victory more disgraceful than any defeat. I make the point here because we stand for separation from the British Empire, and because I have heard it argued that we ought, if we could, make a foreign alliance to crush English power here, even if our foreign allies were engaged in crushing freedom elsewhere. When such a question can be proposed it should be answered, though the time is not ripe to test it. If Ireland were to win freedom by helping directly or indirectly to crush another people she would earn the execration she has herself poured out on tyranny for ages. I have come to see it is possible for Ireland to win her independence by base methods. It is imperative, therefore, that we should declare ourselves and know where we stand. And I stand by this principle: no physical victory can compensate for spiritual surrender. Whatever side denies that is not my side. What, then, is the true basis to our claim to freedom? There are two points of view. The first we have when fresh from school, still in our teens, ready to tilt against everyone and everything, delighting in saying smart things--and able sometimes to say them--talking much and boldly of freedom, but satisfied if the thing sounds bravely. There is the later point of view. We are no longer boys; we have come to review the situation, and take a definite stand in life. We have had years of experience, keen struggles, not a little bitterness, and we are steadied. We feel a heart-beat for deeper things. It is no longer sufficient that they sound bravely; they must ring true. The schoolboy's dream is more of a Roman triumph--tramping armies, shouting multitudes, waving banners--all good enough in their way. But the dream of men is for something beyond all this show. If it were not, it could hardly claim a sacrifice. III A spiritual necessity makes the true significance of our claim to freedom: the material aspect is only a secondary consideration. A man facing life is gifted with certain powers of soul and body. It is of vital importance to himself and the community that he be given a full opportunity to develop his powers, and to fill his place worthily. In a free state he is in the natural environment for full self-development. In an enslaved state it is the reverse. When one country holds another in subjection that other suffers materially and morally. It suffers materially, being a prey for plunder. It suffers morally because of the corrupt influences the bigger nation sets at work to maintain its ascendancy. Because of this moral corruption national subjection should be resisted, as a state fostering vice; and as in the case of vice, when we understand it we have no option but to fight. With it we can make no terms. It is the duty of the rightful power to develop the best in its subjects: it is the practice of the usurping power to develop the basest. Our history affords many examples. When our rulers visit Ireland they bestow favours and titles on the supporters of their regime--but it is always seen that the greatest favours and highest titles are not for the honest adherent of their power--but for him who has betrayed the national cause that he entered public life to support. Observe the men who might be respected are passed over for him who ought to be despised. In the corrupt politician there was surely a better nature. A free state would have encouraged and developed it. The usurping state titled him for the use of his baser instincts. Such allurement must mean demoralisation. We are none of us angels, and under the best of circumstances find it hard to do worthy things; when all the temptation is to do unworthy things we are demoralised. Most of us, happily, will not give ourselves over to the evil influence, but we lose faith in the ideal. We are apathetic. We have powers and let them lie fallow. Our minds should be restless for noble and beautiful things; they are hopeless in a land everywhere confined and wasted. In the destruction of spirit entailed lies the deeper significance of our claim to freedom. IV It is a spiritual appeal, then, that primarily moves us. We are urged to action by a beautiful ideal. The motive force must be likewise true and beautiful. It is love of country that inspires us; not hate of the enemy and desire for full satisfaction for the past. Pause awhile. We are all irritated now and then by some mawkish interpretation of our motive force that makes it seem a weakly thing, invoked to help us in evading difficulties instead of conquering them. Love in any genuine form is strong, vital and warm-blooded. Let it not be confused with any flabby substitute. Take a parallel case. Should we, because of the mawkishness of a "Princess Novelette," deride the beautiful dream that keeps ages wondering and joyous, that is occasionally caught up in the words of genius, as when Shelley sings: "I arise from dreams of thee"? When foolish people make a sacred thing seem silly, let us at least be sane. The man who cries out for the sacred thing but voices a universal need. To exist, the healthy mind must have beautiful things--the rapture of a song, the music of running water, the glory of the sunset and its dreams, and the deeper dreams of the dawn. It is nothing but love of country that rouses us to make our land full-blooded and beautiful where now she is pallid and wasted. This, too, has its deeper significance. V If we want full revenge for the past the best way to get it is to remain as we are. As we are, Ireland is a menace to England. We need not debate this--she herself admits it by her continued efforts to pacify us in her own stupid way. Would she not ignore us if it were quite safe so to do? On the other hand, if we succeed in our efforts to separate from her, the benefit to England will be second only to our own. This might strike us strangely, but 'tis true, not the less true because the English people could hardly understand or appreciate it now. The military defence of Ireland is almost farcical. A free Ireland could make it a reality--could make it strong against invasion. This would secure England from attack on our side. No one is, I take it, so foolish as to suppose, being free, we would enter quarrels not our own. We should remain neutral. Our common sense would so dictate, our sense of right would so demand. The freedom of a nation carries with it the responsibility that it be no menace to the freedom of another nation. The freedom of all makes for the security of all. If there are tyrannies on earth one nation cannot set things right, but it is still bound so to order its own affairs as to be consistent with universal freedom and friendship. And, again, strange as it may seem, separation from England will alone make for final friendship with England. For no one is so foolish as to wish to be for ever at war with England. It is unthinkable. Now the most beautiful motive for freedom is vindicated. Our liberty stands to benefit the enemy instead of injuring him. If we want to injure him, we should remain as we are--a menace to him. The opportunity will come, but it would hardly make us happy. This but makes clear a need of the human race. Freedom rightly considered is not a mere setting-up of a number of independent units. It makes for harmony among nations and good fellowship on earth. VI I have written carefully that no one may escape the conclusion. It is clear and exacting, but in the issue it is beautiful. We fight for freedom--not for the vanity of the world, not to have a fine conceit of ourselves, not to be as bad--or if we prefer to put it so, as big as our neighbours. The inspiration is drawn from a deeper element of our being. We stifle for self-development individually and as a nation. If we don't go forward we must go down. It is a matter of life and death; it is out soul's salvation. If the whole nation stand for it, we are happy; we shall be grandly victorious. If only a few are faithful found they must be the more steadfast for being but a few. They stand for an individual right that is inalienable. A majority has no right to annul it, and no power to destroy it. Tyrannies may persecute, slay, or banish those who defend it; the thing is indestructible. It does not need legions to protect it nor genius to proclaim it, though the poets have always glorified it, and the legions will ultimately acknowledge it. One man alone may vindicate it, and because that one man has never failed it has never died. Not, indeed, that Ireland has ever been reduced to a single loyal son. She never will be. We have not survived the centuries to be conquered now. But the profound significance of the struggle, of its deep spiritual appeal, of the imperative need for a motive force as lofty and beautiful, of the consciousness that worthy winning of freedom is a labour for human brotherhood; the significance of it all is seen in the obligation it imposes on everyone to be true, the majority notwithstanding. He is called to a grave charge who is called to resist the majority. But he will resist, knowing his victory will lead them to a dearer dream than they had ever known. He will fight for that ideal in obscurity, little heeded--in the open, misunderstood; in humble places, still undaunted; in high places, seizing every vantage point, never crushed, never silent, never despairing, cheering a few comrades with hope for the morrow. And should these few sink in the struggle the greatness of the ideal is proven in the last hour; as they fall their country awakens to their dream, and he who inspired and sustained them is justified; justified against the whole race, he who once stood alone against them. In the hour he falls he is the saviour of his race. CHAPTER II SEPARATION. I When we plead for separation from the British Empire as the only basis on which our country can have full development, and on which we can have final peace with England, we find in opponents a variety of attitudes, but one attitude invariably absent--a readiness to discuss the question fairly and refute it, if this can be done. One man will take it superficially and heatedly, assuming it to be, according to his party, a censure on Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien. Another will take it superficially, but, as he thinks, philosophically, and will dismiss it with a smile. With the followers of Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien we can hardly argue at present, but we should not lose heart on their account, for these men move _en masse_. One day the consciousness of the country will be electrified with a great deed or a great sacrifice and the multitude will break from lethargy or prejudice and march with a shout for freedom in a true, a brave, and a beautiful sense. We must work and prepare for that hour. Then there is our philosophical friend. I expect him to hear my arguments. When I am done, he may not agree with me on all points; he may not agree with me on any point; but if he come with me, I promise him one thing: this question can no longer be dismissed with a smile. II Our friend's attitude is explained in part by our never having attempted to show that a separatist policy is great and wise. We have held it as a right, have fought for it, have made sacrifices for it, and vowed to have it at any cost; but we have not found for it a definite place in a philosophy of life. Superficial though he be, our friend has indicated a need: we must take the question philosophically--but in the great and true sense. It is a truism of philosophy and science that the world is a harmonious whole, and that with the increase of knowledge, laws can be discovered to explain the order and the unity of the universe. Accordingly, if we are to justify our own position as separatists, we must show that it will harmonise, unify and develop our national life, that it will restore us to a place among the nations, enable us to fulfil a national destiny, a destiny which, through all our struggles, we ever believe is great, and waiting for us. That must be accepted if we are to get at the truth of the matter. A great doctrine that dominates our lives, that lays down a rigid course of action, that involves self-denial, hard struggles, endurance for years, and possibly death before the goal is reached--any such doctrine must be capable of having its truth demonstrated by the discovery of principles that govern and justify it. Otherwise we cannot yield it our allegiance. Let us to the examination, then; we shall find it soul-stirring and inspiring. We must be prepared, however, to abandon many deeply-rooted prejudices; if we are unwilling, we must abandon the truth. But we will find courage in moving forward, and will triumph in the end, by keeping in mind at all times that the end of freedom is to realise the salvation and happiness of all peoples, to make the world, and not any selfish corner of it, a more beautiful dwelling-place for men. Treated in this light, the question becomes for all earnest men great and arresting. Our friend, who may have smiled, will discuss it readily now. Yet he may not be convinced; he may point his finger over the wasted land and contrast its weakness with its opponents' strength, and conclude: "Your philosophy is beautiful, but only a dream." He is at least impressed; that is a point gained; and we may induce him to come further and further till he adopts the great principle we defend. III His difficulty now is the common error that a man's work for his country should be based on the assumption that it should bear full effect in his own time. This is most certainly false; for a man's life is counted by years, a nation's by centuries, and as work for the nation should be directed to bringing her to full maturity in the coming time, a man must be prepared to labour for an end that may be realised only in another generation. Consider how he disposes his plans for his individual life. His boyhood and youth are directed that his manhood and prime may be the golden age of life, full-blooded and strong-minded, with clear vision and great purpose and high hope, all justified by some definite achievement. A man's prime is great as his earlier years have been well directed and concentrated. In the early years the ground is prepared and the seed sown for the splendid period of full development. So it is with the nation: we must prepare the ground and sow the seed for the rich ripeness of maturity; and bearing in mind that the maturity of the nation will come, not in one generation but after many generations, we must be prepared to work in the knowledge that we prepare for a future that only other generations will enjoy. It does not mean that we shall work in loneliness, cheered by no vision of the Promised Land; we may even reach the Promised Land in our time, though we cannot explore all its great wonders: that will be the delight of ages. But some will never survive to celebrate the great victory that will establish our independence; yet they shall not go without reward; for to them will come a vision of soul of the future triumph, an exaltation of soul in the consciousness of labouring for that future, an exultation of soul in the knowledge that once its purpose is grasped, no tyranny can destroy it, that the destiny of our country is assured, and her dominion will endure for ever. Let any argument be raised against one such pioneer--he knows this in his heart, and it makes him indomitable, and it is he who is proven to be wise in the end. He judges the past clearly, and through the crust of things he discerns the truth in his own time, and puts his work in true relation to the great experience of life, and he is justified; for ultimately his work opens out, matures, and bears fruit a hundredfold. It may not be in a day, but when his hand falls dead, his glory becomes quickly manifest. He has lived a beautiful life, and has left a beautiful field; he has sacrificed the hour to give service for all time; he has entered the company of the great, and with them he will be remembered for ever. He is the practical man in the true sense. But there is the other self-styled practical man, who thinks all this proceeding foolish, and cries out for the expedient of the hour. Has he ever realised the promise of his proposals? No, he is the most inefficient person who has ever walked the earth. But for a saving consideration let him go contemplate the wasted efforts of the opportunist in every generation, and the broken projects scattered through the desert-places of history. IV Still one will look out on the grim things of the hour, and hypnotised by the hour will cry: "See the strength of the British Empire, see our wasted state; your hope is vain." Let him consider this clear truth: peoples endure; empires perish. Where are now the empires of antiquity? And the empires of to-day have the seed of dissolution in them. But the peoples that saw the old empires rise and hold sway are represented now in their posterity; the tyrannies they knew are dead and done with. The peoples endured; the empires perished; and the nations of the earth of this day will survive in posterity when the empires that now contend for mastery are gathered into the dust, with all dead, bad things. We shall endure; and the measure of our faith will be the measure of our achievement and of the greatness of our future place. V Is it not the dream of earnest men of all parties to have an end to our long war, a peace final and honourable, wherein the soul of the country can rest, revive and express itself; wherein poetry, music and art will pour out in uninterrupted joy, the joy of deliverance, flashing in splendour and superabundant in volume, evidence of long suppression? This is the dream of us all. But who can hope for this final peace while any part of our independence is denied? For, while we are connected in any shape with the British Empire the connection implies some dependence; this cannot be gainsaid; and who is so foolish as to expect that there will be no collision with the British Parliament, while there is this connection implying dependence on the British Empire? If such a one exists he goes against all experience and all history. On either side of the connection will be two interests--the English interest and the Irish interest, and they will be always at variance. Consider how parties within a single state are at variance, Conservatives and Radicals, in any country in Europe. The proposals of one are always insidious, dangerous or reactionary, as the case may be, in the eyes of the other; and in no case will the parties agree; they will at times even charge each other with treachery; there is never peace. It is the rule of party war. Who, then, can hope for peace where into the strife is imported a race difference, where the division is not of party but of people? That is in truth the vain hope. And be it borne in mind the race difference is not due to our predominating Gaelic stock, but to the separate countries and to distinct households in the human race. If we were all of English extraction the difference would still exist. There is the historic case of the American States; it is easy to understand. When a man's children come of age, they set up establishments for themselves, and live independently; they are always bound by affection to the parent-home; but if the father try to interfere in the house of a son, and govern it in any detail, there will be strife. It is hardly necessary to labour the point. If all the people in this country were of English extraction and England were to claim on that account that there should be a connection with her, and that it should dominate the people here, there would be strife; and it could have but one end--separation. We would, of whatever extraction, have lived in natural neighbourliness with England, but she chose to trap and harass us, and it will take long generations of goodwill to wipe out some memories. Again, and yet again, let there be no confusion of thought as to this final peace; it will never come while there is any formal link of dependence. The spirit of our manhood will always flame up to resent and resist that link. Separation and equality may restore ties of friendship; nothing else can: for individual development and general goodwill is the lesson of human life. We can be good neighbours, but most dangerous enemies, and in the coming time our hereditary foe cannot afford to have us on her flank. The present is promising; the future is developing for us: we shall reach the goal. Let us see to it that we shall be found worthy. VI That we be found worthy; let this be borne in mind. For it is true that here only is our great danger. If with our freedom to win, our country to open up, our future to develop, we learn no lesson from the mistakes of nations and live no better life than the great Powers, we shall have missed a golden opportunity, and shall be one of the failures of history. So far, on superficial judgment, we have been accounted a failure; though the simple maintenance of our fight for centuries has been in itself a splendid triumph. But then only would we have failed in the great sense, when we had got our field and wasted it, as the nations around us waste theirs to-day. We led Europe once; let us lead again with a beautiful realisation of freedom; and let us beware of the delusion that is abroad, that we seek nothing more than to be free of restraint, as England, France and Germany are to-day; let us beware of the delusion that if we can scramble through anyhow to freedom we can then begin to live worthily, but that in the interval we cannot be too particular. That is the grim shadow that darkens our path, that falls between us and a beautiful human life, and may drive us to that tiger-like existence that makes havoc through the world to-day. Let us beware. I do not say we must settle now all disputes, such as capital, labour, and others, but that everyone should realise a duty to be high-minded and honourable in action; to regard his fellow not as a man to be circumvented, but as a brother to be sympathised with and uplifted. Neither kingdom, republic, nor commune can regenerate us; it is in the beautiful mind and a great ideal we shall find the charter of our freedom; and this is the philosophy that it is most essential to preach. We must not ignore it now, for how we work to-day will decide how we shall live to-morrow; and if we are not scrupulous in our struggle, we shall not be pure in our future state, I know there are many who are not indifferent to high-minded action, but who live in dread of an exacting code of life, fearing it will harass our movements and make success impossible. Let us correct this mistake with the reflection that the time is shaping for us. The power of our country is strengthening; the grip of the enemy is slackening; every extension of local government is a step nearer to independent government; the people are not satisfied with an instalment; their capacity for further power is developed, and they are equipped with weapons to win it. Even in our time have we made great advance. Let one fact alone make this evident. Less than twenty years ago the Irish language was despised; to-day the movement to restore it is strong enough to have it made compulsory in the National University. Can anyone doubt from this sign of the times alone that the hour points to freedom, and we are on the road to victory? That we shall win our freedom I have no doubt; that we shall use it well I am not so certain, for see how sadly misused it is abroad through the world to-day. That should be our final consideration, and we should make this a resolution--our future history shall be more glorious than that of any contemporary state. We shall look for prosperity, no doubt, but let our enthusiasm be for beautiful living; we shall build up our strength, yet not for conquest, but as a pledge of brotherhood and a defence for the weaker ones of the earth; we shall take pride in our institutions, not only as guaranteeing the stability of the state, but as securing the happiness of the citizens, and we shall lead Europe again as we led it of old. We shall rouse the world from a wicked dream of material greed, of tyrannical power, of corrupt and callous politics to the wonder of a regenerated spirit, a new and beautiful dream; and we shall establish our state in a true freedom that will endure for ever. CHAPTER III MORAL FORCE I One of the great difficulties in discussing any question of importance in Ireland is that words have been twisted from their original and true significance, and if we are to have any effective discussion, we must first make clear the meaning of our terms. Love of country is quoted to tolerate every insidious error of weakness, but if it has any meaning it should make men strong-souled and resolute in every crisis. Men working for the extension of Local Government toast "Ireland a Nation," and extol Home Rule as independence; but while there is any restraint on us by a neighbouring Power, acknowledged superior, there is dependence to that extent. Straightway, those who fight for independence shift their ground and plead for absolute independence, but there is no such thing as qualified independence; and when we abandon the simple name to men of half-measures, we prejudice our cause and confuse the issue. Then there is the irreconcilable--how is he regarded in the common cry? Always an impossible, wild, foolish person, and we frequently resent the name and try to explain his reasonableness instead of exulting in his strength, for the true irreconcilable is the simple lover of the truth. Among men fighting for freedom some start up in their plea for liberty, pointing to the prosperity of England, France, and Germany, and when we debate the means by which they won their power, we find our friends draw no distinction between true freedom and licentious living; but it would be better to be crushed under the wheels of great Powers than to prosper by their example. And so, through every discussion we must make clear the meaning of our terms. There is one I would treat particularly now. Of all the terms glibly flung about in every debate not one has been so confused as Moral Force. II Since the time of O'Connell the cry Moral Force has been used persistently to cover up the weakness of every politician who was afraid or unwilling to fight for the whole rights of his country, and confusion has been the consequence. I am not going here to raise old debates over O'Connell's memory, who, when all is said, was a great man and a patriot. Let those of us who read with burning eyes of the shameless fiasco of Clontarf recall for full judgment the O'Connell of earlier years, when his unwearied heart was fighting the uphill fight of the pioneer. But a great need now is to challenge his later influence, which is overshadowing us to our undoing. For we find men of this time who lack moral courage fighting in the name of moral force, while those who are pre-eminent as men of moral fibre are dismissed with a smile--physical-force men. To make clear the confusion we need only to distinguish moral force from moral weakness. There is the distinction. Call it what we will, moral courage, moral strength, moral force; we all recognise that great virtue of mind and heart that keeps a man unconquerable above every power of brute strength. I call it moral force, which is a good name, and I make the definition: a man of moral force is he who, seeing a thing to be right and essential and claiming his allegiance, stands for it as for the truth, unheeding any consequence. It is not that he is a wild person, utterly reckless of all mad possibilities, filled with a madder hope, and indifferent to any havoc that may ensue. No, but it is a first principle of his, that a true thing is a good thing, and from a good thing rightly pursued can follow no bad consequence. And he faces every possible development with conscience at rest--it may be with trepidation for his own courage in some great ordeal, but for the nobility of the cause and the beauty of the result that must ensue, always with serene faith. And soon the trepidation for himself passes, for a great cause always makes great men, and many who set out in hesitation die heroes. This it is that explains the strange and wonderful buoyancy of men, standing for great ideals, so little understood of others of weaker mould. The soldier of freedom knows he is forward in the battle of Truth, he knows his victory will make for a world beautiful, that if he must inflict or endure pain, it is for the regeneration of those who suffer, the emancipation of those in chains, the exaltation of those who die, and the security and happiness of generations yet unborn. For the strength that will support a man through every phase of this struggle a strong and courageous mind is the primary need--in a word, Moral Force. A man who will be brave only if tramping with a legion will fail in courage if called to stand in the breach alone. And it must be clear to all that till Ireland can again summon her banded armies there will be abundant need for men who will stand the single test. 'Tis the bravest test, the noblest test, and 'tis the test that offers the surest and greatest victory. For one armed man cannot resist a multitude, nor one army conquer countless legions; but not all the armies of all the Empires of earth can crush the spirit of one true man. And that one man will prevail. III But so much have we felt the need of resisting every slavish tendency that found refuge under the name of Moral Force, that those of us who would vindicate our manhood cried wildly out again for the physical test; and we cried it long and repeatedly the more we smarted under the meanness of retrograde times. But the time is again inspiring, and the air must now be cleared. We have set up for the final test of the man of unconquerable spirit that test which is the first and last argument of tyranny--recourse to brute strength. We have surrounded with fictitious glory the carnage of the battlefields; we have shouted of wading through our enemies' blood, as if bloody fields were beautiful; we have been contemptuous of peace, as if every war were exhilarating; but, "War is hell," said a famous general in the field. This, of course, is exaggeration, but there is a grim element of truth in the warning that must be kept in mind at all times. If one among us still would resent being asked to forego what he thinks a rightful need of vengeance, let him look into himself. Let him consider his feelings on the death of some notorious traitor or criminal; not satisfaction, but awe, is the uppermost feeling in his heart. Death sobers us all. But away from death this may be unconvincing; and one may still shout of the glory of floating the ship of freedom in the blood of the enemy. I give him pause. He may still correct his philosophy in view of the horror of a street accident or the brutality of a prize-fight. IV But war must be faced and blood must be shed, not gleefully, but as a terrible necessity, because there are moral horrors worse than any physical horror, because freedom is indispensable for a soul erect, and freedom must be had at any cost of suffering; the soul is greater than the body. This is the justification of war. If hesitating to undertake it means the overthrow of liberty possessed, or the lying passive in slavery already accomplished, then it is the duty of every man to fight if he is standing, or revolt if he is down. And he must make no peace till freedom is assured, for the moral plague that eats up a people whose independence is lost is more calamitous than any physical rending of limb from limb. The body is a passing phase; the spirit is immortal; and the degradation of that immortal part of man is the great tragedy of life. Consider all the mean things and debasing tendencies that wither up a people in a state of slavery. There are the bribes of those in power to maintain their ascendancy, the barter of every principle by time-servers; the corruption of public life and the apathy of private life; the hard struggle of those of high ideals, the conflict with all ignoble practices, the wearing down of patience, and in the end the quiet abandoning of the flag once bravely flourished; then the increased numbers of the apathetic and the general gloom, depression, and despair--everywhere a land decaying. Viciousness, meanness, cowardice, intolerance, every bad thing arises like a weed in the night and blights the land where freedom is dead; and the aspect of that land and the soul of that people become spectacles of disgust, revolting and terrible, terrible for the high things degraded and the great destinies imperilled. It would be less terrible if an earthquake split the land in two, and sank it into the ocean. To avert the moral plague of slavery men fly to arms, notwithstanding the physical consequence, and those who set more count by the physical consequences cannot by that avert them, for the moral disease is followed by physical wreck--if delayed still inevitable. So, physical force is justified, not _per se_, but as an expression of moral force; where it is unsupported by the higher principle it is evil incarnate. The true antithesis is not between moral force and physical force, but between moral force and moral weakness. That is the fundamental distinction being ignored on all sides. When the time demands and the occasion offers, it is imperative to have recourse to arms, but in that terrible crisis we must preserve our balance. If we leap forward for our enemies' blood, glorifying brute force, we set up the standard of the tyrant and heap up infamy for ourselves; on the other hand, if we hesitate to take the stern action demanded, we fail in strength of soul, and let slip the dogs of war to every extreme of weakness and wildness, to create depravity and horror that will ultimately destroy us. A true soldier of freedom will not hesitate to strike vigorously and strike home, knowing that on his resolution will depend the restoration and defence of liberty. But he will always remember that restraint is the great attribute that separates man from beast, that retaliation is the vicious resource of the tyrant and the slave; that magnanimity is the splendour of manhood; and he will remember that he strikes not at his enemy's life, but at his misdeed, that in destroying the misdeed, he makes not only for his own freedom, but even for his enemy's regeneration. This may be for most of us perhaps too great a dream. But for him who reads into the heart of the question and for the true shaping of his course it will stand; he will never forget, even in the thickest fight, that the enemy of to-day and yesterday may be the genuine comrade of to-morrow. V If it is imperative that we should fix unalterably our guiding principles before we are plunged unprepared into the fight, it is even more urgent we should clear the mind to the truth now, for we have fallen into the dangerous habit of deferring important questions on the plea that the time is not ripe. In a word, we lack moral strength; and so, that virtue that is to safeguard us in time of war is the great virtue that will redeem us in time of servility. It need not be further laboured that in a state enslaved every mean thing flourishes. The admission of it makes clear that in such a state it is more important that every evil be resisted. In a normal condition of liberty many temporary evils may arise; yet they are not dangerous--in the glow of a people's freedom they waste and die as disease dies in the sunlight. But where independence is suppressed and a people degenerate, a little evil is in an atmosphere to grow, and it grows and expands; and evils multiply and destroy. That is why men of high spirit working to regenerate a fallen people must be more insistent to watch every little defect and weak tendency that in a braver time would leave the soul unruffled. That is why every difficulty, once it becomes evident, is ripe for settlement. To evade the issue is to invite disaster. Resolution alone will save us in our many dangers. But a plea for policy will be raised to evade a particular and urgent question: "People won't unite on it"; that's one cry. "Ignorant people will be led astray"; that's another cry. There is always some excuse ready for evasion. The difficulty is, that every party likes some part of the truth; no party likes it all; but we must have it all, every line of it. We want no popular editions and no philosophic selections--the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. This must be the rule for everything concerning which a man has a public duty and ought to have a public opinion. There is a dangerous tendency gaining ground of slurring over vital things because the settlement of them involves great difficulty, and may involve great danger; but whatever the issue is we must face it. It is a step forward to bring men together on points of agreement, but men come thus together not without a certain amount of suspicion. In a fight for freedom that latent suspicion would become a mastering fear to seize and destroy us. We must allay it now. We must lead men to discuss points of difference with respect, forbearance, and courage, to find a consistent way of life for all that will inspire confidence in all. At present we inspire confidence in no one; it would be fatal to hide the fact. This is a necessary step to bringing matters to a head. We cannot hope to succeed all at once, but we must keep the great aim in view. There will be objections on all sides; from the _blasé_ man of the world, concerned only for his comfort, the mean man of business concerned only for his profits, the man of policy always looking for a middle way, a certain type of religious pessimist who always spies danger in every proposal, and many others. We need not consider the comfort of the first nor the selfishness of the second; but the third and fourth require a word. The man of policy offers me his judgment instead of a clear consideration of the truth. 'Tis he who says: "You and I can discuss certain things privately. We are educated; we understand. Ignorant people can't understand, and you only make mischief in supposing it. It's not wise." To him I reply: "You are afraid to speak the whole truth; I am afraid to hide it. You are filled with the danger to ignorant people of having out everything; I am filled with the danger to _you_ of suppressing anything. I do not propose to you that you can with the whole truth make ignorant people profound, but I say you must have the whole truth out for your own salvation." Here is the danger: we see life within certain limitations, and cannot see the possibly infinite significance of something we would put by. It is of grave importance that we see it rightly, and in the difficulties of the case our only safe course is to take the evidence life offers without prejudice and without fear, and write it down. When the matter is grave, let it be taken with all the mature deliberation and care its gravity demands, but once the evidence is clearly seen, let us for our salvation write it down. For any man to set his petty judgment above the need for setting down the truth is madness; and I refuse to do it. There is our religious pessimist to consider. To him I say I take religion more seriously. I take it not to evade the problems of life, but to solve them. When I tell him to have no fear, this is not my indifference to the issue, but a tribute to the faith that is in me. Let us be careful to do the right thing; then fear is inconsistent with faith. Nor can I understand the other attitude. Two thousand years after the preaching of the Sermon on the Mount we are to go about whispering to one another what is wise. VI To conclude: Now, and in every phase of the coming struggle, the strong mind is a greater need than the strong hand. We must be passionate, but the mind must guide and govern our passion. In the aberrations of the weak mind decrying resistance, let us not lose our balance and defy brute strength. At a later stage we must consider the ethics of resistance to the Civil Power; the significance of what is written now will be more apparent then. Let the cultivation of a brave, high spirit be our great task; it will make of each man's soul an unassailable fortress. Armies may fail, but it resists for ever. The body it informs may be crushed; the spirit in passing breathes on other souls, and other hearts are fired to action, and the fight goes on to victory. To the man whose mind is true and resolute ultimate victory is assured. No sophistry can sap his resistance; no weakness can tempt him to savage reprisals. He will neither abandon his heritage nor poison his nature. And in every crisis he is steadfast, in every issue justified. Rejoice, then good comrades; our souls are still our own. Through the coldness and depression of the time there has lightened a flash of the old fire; the old enthusiasm, warm and passionate, is again stirring us; we are forward to uphold our country's right, to fight for her liberty, and to justify our own generation. We shall conquer. Let the enemy count his dreadnoughts and number off his legions--where are now the legions of Rome and Carthage? And the Spirit of Freedom they challenged is alive and animating the young nations to-day. Hold we our heads high, then, and we shall bear our flag bravely through every fight. Persistent, consistent, straightforward and fearless, so shall we discipline the soul to great deeds, and make it indomitable. In the indomitable soul lies the assurance of our ultimate victory. CHAPTER IV BROTHERS AND ENEMIES I Our enemies are brothers from whom we are estranged. Here is the fundamental truth that explains and justifies our hope of re-establishing a real patriotism among all parties in Ireland, and a final peace with our ancient enemy of England. It is the view of prejudice that makes of the various sections of our people hopelessly hostile divisions, and raises up a barrier of hate between Ireland and England that can never be surmounted. If Ireland is to be regenerated, we must have internal unity; if the world is to be regenerated, we must have world-wide unity--not of government, but of brotherhood. To this great end every individual, every nation has a duty; and that the end may not be missed we must continually turn for the correction of our philosophy to reflecting on the common origin of the human race, on the beauty of the world that is the heritage of all, our common hopes and fears, and in the greatest sense the mutual interests of the peoples of the earth. If, unheeding this, any people make their part of the earth ugly with acts of tyranny and baseness, they threaten the security of all; if unconscious of it, a people always high-spirited are plunged into war with a neighbour, now a foe, and yet fight, as their nature compels them, bravely and magnanimously, they but drive their enemy back to the field of a purer life, and, perhaps, to the realisation of a more beautiful existence, a dream to which his stagnant soul steeped in ugliness could never rise. II On the road to freedom every alliance will be sternly tried. Internal friendship will not be made in a day, nor external friendship for many a day, and there will be how many temptations to hold it all a delusion and scatter the few still standing loyally to the flag. We must understand, then, the bond that holds us together on the line of march, and in the teeth of every opposition. Nothing but a genuine bond of brotherhood can so unite men, but we hardly seem to realise its truth. When a deep and ardent patriotism requires men of different creeds to come together frankly and in a spirit of comradeship, and when the most earnest of all the creeds do so, others who are colder and less earnest regard this union as a somewhat suspicious alliance; and, if they join in, do so reluctantly. Others come not at all; these think our friends labour in a delusion, that it needs but an occasion to start an old fear and drive them apart, to attack one another with ancient bitterness fired with fresh venom. We must combat that idea. Let us consider the attitude to one another of three units of the band, who represent the best of the company and should be typical of the whole; one who is a Catholic, one who is a Protestant, and one who may happen to be neither. The complete philosophy of any one of the three may not be accepted by the other two; the horizon of his hopes may be more or less distant, but that complete philosophy stretches beyond the limit of the sphere, within which they are drawn together to mutual understanding and comradeship, moved by a common hope, a brave purpose and a beautiful dream. The significance of their work may be deeper for one than for another, the origin of the dream and its ultimate aim may be points not held in common; but the beautiful tangible thing that they all now fight for, the purer public and private life, the more honourable dealings between men, the higher ideals for the community and the nation, the grander forbearance, courage and freedom, in all these they are at one. The instinctive recognition of an attack on the ideal is alive and vigilant in all three. The sympathy that binds them is ardent, deep and enduring. Observe them come together. Note the warm hand grasp, the drawn face of one, a hard-worker; of another, the eye anxious for a brother hard pressed; of the third, the eye glistening for the ideal triumphant; of all the intimate confidence, the mutual encouragement and self-sacrifice, never a note of despair, but always the exultation of the Great Fight, and the promise of a great victory. This is a finer company than a mere casual alliance; yet it makes the uninspired pause, wondering and questioning. These men are earnest men of different creeds; still they are as intimately bound to one another as if they knelt at the one altar. In the narrow view the creeds should be at one another's throats; here they are marching shoulder to shoulder. How is this? And the one whose creed is the most exacting could, perhaps, give the best reply. He would reply that within the sphere in which they work together the true thing that unites them can be done only the one right way; that instinctively seizing this right way they come together; that this is the line of advance to wider and deeper things that are his inspiration and his life; that if a comrade is roused to action by the nearer task, and labours bravely and rightly for it, he is on the road to widening vistas in his dream that now he may not see. That is what he would say whose vision of life is the widest. All objectors he may not satisfy. That what is life to him may leave his comrade cold is a difficulty; but against the difficulty stand the depth and reality of their comradeship, proven by mutual sacrifice, endurance, and faith, and he never doubts that their bond union will sometime prove to have a wise and beautiful meaning in the Annals of God. III But the men of different creeds who stand firmly and loyally together are a minority. We are faced with the great difficulty of uniting as a whole North and South; and we are faced with the grim fact that many whom we desire to unite are angrily repudiating a like desire, that many are sarcastically noting this, that many are coldly refusing to believe; while through it all the most bitter are emphasising enmity and glorifying it. All these unbelievers keep insisting North and South are natural enemies and must so remain. The situation is further embittered by acts of enmity being practised by both sides to the extreme provocation of the faithful few. Their forbearance will be sorely tried, and this is the final test of men. By those who cling to prejudice and abandon self-restraint, extol enmity, and always proceed to the further step--the plea to wipe the enemy out: the counter plea for forbearance is always scorned as the enervating gospel of weakness and despair. Though we like to call ourselves Christian, we have no desire for--nay even make a jest of--that outstanding Christian virtue; yet men not held by Christian dogma have joyously surrendered to the sublimity of that divine idea. Hear Shelley speak: "What nation has the example of the desolation of Attica by Mardonius and Xerxes, or the extinction of the Persian Empire by Alexander of Macedon restrained from outrage? Was not the pretext for this latter system of spoliation derived immediately from the former? Had revenge in this instance any other effect than to increase, instead of diminishing, the mass of malice and evil already existing in the world? The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward." Shelley writes much further on retaliation, which he denounces as "futile superstition." Simple violence repels every high and generous thinker. Hear one other, Mazzini: "What we have to do is not to establish a new order of things by violence. An order of things so established is always tyrannical even when it is better than the old." Let us bear this in mind when there is an act of aggression on either side of the Boyne. There will not be wanting on the other side a cry for retaliation and "a lesson." We shall receive every provocation to give up and acknowledge ancient bitterness, but then is the time to stand firm, then we shall need to practise the divine forbearance that is the secret of strength. IV But with only a minority standing to the flag we cry out for some hope of final success. Men will not fight without result for ever; they ask for some sign of progress, some gleam of the light of victory. Happily, searching the skies, our eyes can have their reward. We shall, no doubt, see, outstanding, dark evidence of old animosity; we shall hear fierce war-cries and see raging crowds, but the crowds are less numerous, and the wrath has lost its sting. Men who raged twenty years ago rage now, but their fury is less real; and young men growing up around them, quite indifferent to the ideal, are also indifferent to the counter cries: they are passive, unimpressed by either side. Rightly approached, they may understand and feel the glow of a fine enthusiasm; they are numbered by prejudice, they will become warm, active and daring under an inspiring appeal. Remember, and have done with despair. Think how you and I found our path step by step of the way: political life was full of conventions that suited our fathers' time, but have faded in the light of our day. We found these conventions unreal and put them by. This was no reflection on our fathers; what they fought for truly is our heritage, and we pay them a tribute in offering it in turn our loyalty inspired by their devotion. But their errors we must rectify; what they left undone we must take up and fulfil. That is the task of every generation, to take up the uncompleted work of the former one, and hand on to their successors an achievement and a heritage. Youth recognises this instinctively, and every generation will take a step in advance of its predecessor, putting by its prejudices and developing its truth. Every individual may know this from his own experience, and from it he knows that those who are now voicing old bitter cries are ageing, and will soon pass and leave no successors. Not that prejudice will die for ever. Each new day will have its own, but that which is now dividing and hampering us will pass. Let the memory of its bitterness be an incentive to checking new animosities and keeping the future safe; but in the present let us grasp and keep in our mind that the barrier that sundered our nation must crumble, if only we have faith and persist, undeterred by old bitter cries, for they are dying cries, undepressed by millions apathetic, for it is the great recurring sign of the ideal, that one hour its light will flash through quivering multitudes, and millions will have vision and rouse to regenerate the land. V Happily, it is nothing new to plead for brotherhood among Irishmen now; unhappily, it is not so generally admitted, nor even recognised, that the same reason that exists for restoring friendly relations among Irishmen, exists for the re-establishing of friendship with any outsider--England or another--with whom now or in the future we may be at war. Friendliness between neighbours is one of the natural things of life. In the case of individuals how beautifully it shows between two dwellers in the same street or townland. They rejoice together in prosperity; give mutual aid in adversity; in the ordinary daily round work together in a spirit of comradeship; at all times they find a bond of unity in their mutual interests. Consider, then, the sundering of their friendship by some act of evil on either side. The old friendship is turned to hate. Now the proximity that gave intimate pleasure to their comradeship gives as keen an edge to their enmity; they meet one another, cross one another, harass one another at every point. The bitterness that is such a poison to life must be revolting to their best instincts; deep in their hearts must be a yearning for the casting out of hate and the return of old comradeship. Still the estranged brothers are at daggers drawn. Sometimes the evil done is so great and the bitterness so keen that the old spirit can apparently never be restored; but while there is any hope whatever the true heart will keep it alive deep down, for it must be cherished and kept in mind if the whole beauty of life is to be renewed and preserved for ever. It is so with nations as with individuals. Once this is recognised we must be on guard against a new error, which is an old error in new form, the taking of means for end. The end of general peace is to give all nations freedom in essentials, to realise the deeper purpose, possibilities, fulness and beauty of life; it is not to have a peace at any price, peace with a certain surrender, the meaner peace that is akin to slavery. No, its message is to guard one nation from excess that has plunged another into evil, to leave the way open to a final peace, not base but honourable; it is to preserve the divine balance of the soul. It may be further urged that we are engaged in a great fight; that to try to rouse in men the more generous instincts will but weaken their hands by removing a certain driving bitterness that gives strength to their fight. Whatever it removes it will not be their strength. In a war admittedly between brothers, a civil war, where different conceptions of duty force men asunder, father is up against son, and brother against brother; yet they are not weakened in their contest by ties of blood and the deeper-lying harmony of things that in happier times prevail to the exclusion of bitterness and hate. When, therefore, you teach a man his enemy is in a deep sense his brother, you do not draw him from the fight, but you give him a new conception of the goal to win and with a great dream inspire him to persevere and reach the goal. VI If, then, beyond individual and national freedom there is this great dream still to be striven for, let us not decry it as something too sublime for earth. It must be our guiding star to lead us rightly as far as we may go. We can travel rightly that part of the road we now tread on only by shaping it true to the great end that ought to inspire us all. We shall have many temptations to swerve aside, but the power of mind that keeps our position clear and firm will react against every destroying influence. In the first stage of the fight for internal unity, when blind bigotry is furiously insisting that we but plan an insidious scheme for the oppression of a minority, our firmness will save us till our conception of the end grow on that minority and convince all of our earnestness. Then the dream will inspire them, the flag will claim them, and the first stage in the fight will be won. When internal unity is accomplished, we are within reach of freedom. Yes, but cries an objector, "Why plead for friendship with England, who will have peace only on condition of her supremacy?" And an answer is needed. If it takes two to make a fight, it also most certainly takes two to make a peace, unless one accepts the position of serf and surrenders. But this we do not fear; we can compel our freedom and we are confident of victory. There is still the step to friendship. Many will be baffled by the difficulty, that while we must keep alive our generous instincts, we must be stern and resolute in the fight; while we desire peace we must prosecute war; while we long for comradeship we must be breaking up dangerous alliances: literary, political, trades and social unions formed with England while she is asserting her supremacy must be broken up till they can be reformed on a basis of independence, equality and universal freedom. While we are prosecuting these vigorous measures it may not seem the way to final friendship; but we must persist; independence is first indispensable. Here again, however, while insisting among our own ranks on our conception of the end, it will grow on the mind of the enemy. They may put it by at first as a delusion or a snare, but one intimate moment will come when it will light up for them, and a new era is begun. In such a moment is evil abandoned, hate buried and friendship reborn. There is one honest fear that our independence would threaten their security: it will yet be replaced by the conviction that there is a surer safeguard in our freedom than in our suppression; the light will break through the clouds of suspicion and a star of stars will glorify the earth. For this end our enemy must have an ideal as high as our own; if thus an objector, he is right. But if in the gross materialism and greed of empire that is now the ruling passion with the enemy there is apparently little hope of a transformation that will make them spiritual, high-minded and generous, we must not abandon our ideal: while the meanness and tyranny of contemporary England stand forward against our argument and leave our reasoning cold, we can find a more subtle appeal in spirit, such an appeal as comes to us in a play of Shakespeare's, a song of Shelley's, or a picture of Turner's. From the heart of the enemy Genius cries, bearing witness to our common humanity, and the yearning for such high comradeship is alive, and the dream survives to light us on the forward path. We must travel that path rightly. We can so travel whatever the enemy's mind. More difficult it will be, but it can be done. That is the great significance and justification of Nationalism: it is the unanswerable argument to cosmopolitanism. If the greatness and beauty of life that ought to be the dream of all nations is denied by all but one, that one may keep alive the dream within her own frontier till its fascination will arrest and inspire the world. If this ultimate dream is still floating far off, in its pursuit there is for us achievement on achievement, and each brave thing done is in itself a beauty and a joy for ever. For the good fighter there is always fine recompense; a clear mind, warm blood, quick imagination, grasp of life and joy in action, and at the end of day always an eminence won. Yes, and from the height of that eminence will come ringing down to the last doubter a last word: we may reach the mountaintops in aspiring to the stars. CHAPTER V THE SECRET OF STRENGTH I To win our freedom we must be strong. But what is the secret of strength? It is fundamental to the whole question to understand this rightly, and, once grasped, make it the mainstay of individual existence, which is the foundation of national life. So much has the bodily power of over-riding minorities been made the criterion of absolute power, that to make clear the truth requires patience, insight, and a little mental study. But the end is a great end. It is to reconnoitre the most important battlefield, to discover the dispositions of the enemy, to measure our own resources and forge our strength link by link till we put on the armour of invincibility. II We have to grasp a distinction, knowledge of which is essential to discerning true strength. It can be clearly seen in the contrast between two certain fighting forces; first, a well-organised army, capably led, marching forward full of hope and buoyancy; second, a remnant of that army after disaster, a mere handful, not swept like their comrades in panic, but with souls set to fight a forlorn hope. Let us study the two: in the contrast we shall learn the secret. The courage of the well-organised army is not of so fine a quality as that nerving the few to fight to the last gasp. Consider first the army. What is its value as a force? Its discipline, its consolidation, the absolute obedience of its units to its officers, with the resulting unity of the whole; added to this is the sense of security in numbers, buoyancy of marching in a compact body, confidence in capable chiefs--all these factors go to the making of the courage and strength of the army. It is because their combination makes for the reliability of the force that discipline is so much valued and enforced, even to the point of death. Let us keep this in our mind, that their strength lies in their numbers, concentration, unity, reliance on one another and on their chiefs. A sudden disaster overtakes that army--the death of a great general, the miscarriage of some plan, a surprise attack, any of the chances of war, and the strength of the army is pierced, the discipline shaken, the sense of security gone. There is an instinctive movement to retreat; the habit of discipline keeps it orderly at first; the fear grows; all precaution and restraint are thrown aside--the retreat is a rout, the army a rabble, the end debacle. External discipline in giving them its strength left them without individual resource; internal discipline was ignored. When their combined strength was gone there was individual helplessness and panic. Consider, now, a remnant of that army, the members of which have the courage of the finer quality, individually resolute and set on resistance, clearly seeing at once all the possible consequences of their action, yet with that higher quality of soul accepting them without hesitation, pledging all human hopes for one last great hope of snatching victory from defeat, or, if not to save a lost battle, to check an advancing host, rally flying forces, and redeem a campaign. This is the heroic quality. In a crisis, the mind possessed of it does not wait for instructions or to reason a conclusion. It sees definite things, and swift as thought decides. There are flying legions, a flag down, a conquering army, and flight or death--to all eyes these are apparent; but to a brave company between that flight and death there is a gleam of hope, of victory, and for that forlorn hope flight is put by with the acceptance of death in the alternative if they fail. That is the quality to redeem us. Because it is witnessed so often in our history we are going to win; not for our prowess in more fortunate war on an even field or with the flowing tide, not for many victories in many lands, but for the sacred places in this our brave land that are memorable for fights that registered the land unconquerable. Why a last stand and a sacrifice are more inspiring than a great victory is one of the hidden things; but the truth stands: for thinking of them our spirits re-kindle, our courage re-awakens, and we stiffen our backs for another battle. III We have, then, to develop individual patience, courage, and resolution. Once this is borne in mind our work begins. In places there is a dangerous idea that sometime in the future we may be called on to strike a blow for freedom, but in the meantime there is little to do but watch and wait. This is a fatal error; we have to forge our strength in the interval. There is a further mistake that our national work is something apart, that social, business, religious and other concerns have no relation to it, and consequently we set apart a few hours of our leisure for national work, and go about our day as if no nation existed. But the middle of the day has a natural connection with the beginning of the day and the end of the day, and in whatever sphere a man finds himself, his acts must be in relation to and consistent with every other sphere. He will be the best patriot and the best soldier who is the best friend and the best citizen. One cannot be an honest man in one sphere and a rascal in another; and since a citizen to fulfil his duty to his country must be honourable and zealous, he must develop the underlying virtues in private life. He must strengthen the individual character, and to do this he must deal with many things seemingly remote and inconsequential from a national point of view. Everything that crosses a man's path in his day's round of little or great moment requires of him an attitude towards it, and the conscious or unconscious shaping of his attitude is determining how he will proceed in other spheres not now in view. Suppose the case of a man in business or social life. He has to work with others in a day's routine or fill up with them hours of leisure they enjoy together. Consider to what accompaniment the work is often done and with what manner of conversation the leisure is often filled. In a day's routine, where men work together, harmonious relations are necessary; yet what bickerings, contentions, animosities fill many a day over points never worth a thought. You will see two men squabble like cats for the veriest trifle, and then go through days like children, without a word. You will see something similar in social life among men and women equally--petty jealousies, personalities, slanderings, mean little stories of no great consequence in themselves, except in the converse sense of showing how small and contemptible everything and everyone concerned is. A keen eye notes with some depression the absence from both spheres of a fine manliness, a generous conception of things, a large outlook, that prevents a squabble with a smile, and because of a consciousness of the need for determination in a great fight for a principle, holds in true contempt the trivialities of an hour. For in all the mean little bickerings of life there is involved not a principle, but a petty pride. One has to note these things and decide a line of action. In the abstract the right course seems quite natural and easy, but in fact it is not so. A man finds another act towards him with unconscious impudence or arrogance, and at once flies into a rage; there is a fierce wrangle, and at the end he finds no purpose served, for nothing was at stake. He has lost his temper for nothing. In his heat he may tell you "he wouldn't let so-and-so do so-and-so," but on the same principle he should hold a street-argument with every fish-wife who might call him a name. He may tell you "he will make so-and-so respect him," but he offends his own self-respect if he cannot consider some things beneath him. One must have a sense of proportion and not elevate every little act of impudence into a challenge of life to be fought over as for life and death. It may be corrected with a little humour or a little disdain, but always with sympathy for the narrow mind whose view of life cannot reach beyond these petty things. Yet, to repeat, it is not easy. An irritable temper will be on fire before reason can check it; the process of correction will prove uncomfortable--the reasons will be there, but the feelings in revolt. Still, little by little, it is brought under, and in the end the nasty little irritability is killed just like a troublesome nerve; and, by and by, what once provoked a fierce rage becomes a subject for humorous reflection. Let no one fear we kill the nerve for the great Battle of Life; this we but strengthen and make constant. Every act of personal discipline is contributing to a subconscious reservoir whence our nobler energies are supplied for ever. And so, little things lead to great; and in an office wrangle or a social squabble there is need for developing those very qualities of judgment, courage, and patience which equip a man for the trials of the battlefield or the ruling of the state. IV We have considered the individual in business and social life. Let us now follow him into a political assembly. We find the same conditions prevail. Again, men fight bitterly but most frequently for nothing worth a fight; and again those rightly judging the situation must resolve not to be tempted into a wrangle even if their restraint be called by another name. What in a political assembly is often the first thing to note? We begin by the assumption, "this is a practical body of men," the words invariably used to cover the putting by of some great principle that we ought all endorse and uphold. But, first, by one of the many specious reasons now approved, we put the principle by, and before long we are at one another's throats about things involving no principle. It is not necessary to particularise. Note any meeting for the same general conditions: a chairman, indecisive, explaining rules of order which he lacks the grit to apply; members ignoring the chair and talking at one another; others calling to order or talking out of time or away from the point; one unconsciously showing the futility of the whole business by asking occasionally what is before the chair, or what the purpose of the meeting. This picture is familiar to us all, and curiously we seem to take it always as the particular freak of a particular time or locality; but it is nothing of the kind. It is the natural and logical result of putting by principle and trying to live away from it. Yet, that is what we are doing every day. It means we lack collectively the courage to pursue a thing to its logical conclusion and fight for the truth realised. If we are to be otherwise as a body, it will only be by personal discipline training for the wider and greater field. We must get a proper conception of the great cause we stand for, its magnitude and majesty, and that to be worthy of its service we must have a standard above reproach, have an end of petty proposals and underhand doings, be of brave front, resolute heart, and honourable intent. We must all understand this each in his own mind and shape his actions, each to be found faithful in the test. In fine, if in private life there is need for developing the great virtues requisite for public service, even more is it necessary in public life to develop the courage, patience and wisdom of the soldier and the statesman. V A concrete case will give a clearer grasp of the issue than any abstract reasoning. Our history, recent and remote, affords many examples of the abandoning by our public men of a principle, to defend which they entered public life; and our action on such an occasion is invariably the same--to regard the delinquent as simply a traitor, to load him with invective and scorn and brand him for ever. We never see it is not innate wickedness in the man, but a weakness against which he has been untrained and undisciplined, and which leaves him helpless in the first crisis. Ireland has recently been incensed by the action of some of her mayors and lord mayors in connection with the English Coronation festival; the feeling has been acute in the metropolis. Certain things are obvious, but how many see what is below the surface? Let me suggest a case and a series of circumstances; the more pointed the case, the more interesting. I will suppose a particular mayor is an old Fenian: let us see how for him a web is finely woven, and in the end how securely he is netted. First a mayor is a magistrate, and must take the judicial oath, but the old Fenian has taken an oath of allegiance to Ireland--clash number one. It is not simply a question of yes or no; there are attendant circumstances. Around a public man in place circulates a swarm of interested people, needy friends, meddling politicians, "supporters" generally. The chief magistrate will have influence on the bench which they all wish to invoke now and then, and they all wish to see him there. They don't approve of any principle that stands in the way. They group themselves together as his "supporters," and claiming to have put him into public life, they act as if they had acquired a lease of his soul. Not what he knows to be right, but what they believe to be useful, must be done; and before the first day is done the first fight must be made. However, the old Fenian has enough of the spirit of old times to come safe through the first round. But the second is close on his heels: Dublin Castle has been attentive. The mayor, as chief magistrate, has privileges on which the Castle now silently closes. There are private and veiled remonstrances by secret officials: "The mayor is acting illegally; he must not do so-and-so; such is the function of a magistrate; he has not taken the oath," etc. All this renewing the fight of the first day, for the Castle, too, wants the mayor on the bench to brand him as its own and alienate him from the old flag. It puts on the pressure by suppressing his privileges, weakening his influence, and disappointing his "supporters." All this is silently done. Still, the mayor holds fast, but he has not counted on this, and is beginning to be baffled and worried. Meanwhile a sort of guerilla attack is being maintained: invitations arrive to garden parties at Windsor, lesser functions nearer home, free passages to all the gay festivals, free admissions everywhere, the route indicated, and a gracious request for the presence of the mayor and mayoress. Genuine business engagements now save the situation, and the invitations are put by, but our chief citizen is now bewildered. These social missiles are flying in all directions, always gracious and flattering, never challenging and rude--who can withstand them? Still he is bewildered, but not yet caught. A new assault is made: the great Health Crusade Battery is called up. Here we must all unite, God's English and the wild Irish, the Fenian and the Castleman, the labourer and the lord. Surely, we are all against the microbes. There is a great demonstration, their Excellencies attend--and the mayor presides. Under the banner of the microbe he is caught. It is a great occasion, which their Excellencies grace and improve. His Excellency is affable with the mayor; her Excellency is confidential and gracious with the mayoress--we might have been schoolchildren in the same townland we are so cordial. Everything proceeds amid plaudits, and winds up in acclamation. Their Excellencies depart. Great is the no-politics era--you can so quietly spike the guns of many an old politician--and keep him safe. The social amenities do this. Their Excellencies have gone, but they do not forget. There is a warm word of thanks for recent hospitality. Perhaps the mayor has a daughter about to be married, or a son has died; it is remembered, and the cordial congratulation or gracious sympathy comes duly under the great seal. What surly man would resent sympathy? And so, the strength of the old warrior is sapped; the web is woven finely; in its secret net the Castle has its man. You who have exercised yourselves in Dublin recently over mayoral doings, note all this--not to the making light of any man's surrender, but to the true judging of the event, its deeper significance and danger. Whoever fails must be called to account. When a man takes a position of trust, influence, and honour, and, whatever the difficulty, abandons a principle he should hold sacred, he must be held responsible. A battle is an ordeal, and we must be stern with friend and foe. But there is something more sinister than the weakness of the man: remember the net. VI The concrete case makes clear the principle in question. The man whom we have seen go down would have been safe if he had to fight no battle but one he could face with all his true friends, and in the open light of day. Having to fight a secret battle was never even considered: threats direct or vague or subtle, blandishments, cajolery, graciousness, patronage, flattery, plausible generalities, attacks indirect and insidious--all coming without pause, secret, silent, tireless. He who is to be proof against this, and above threat or flattery, must have been disciplined with the discipline of a life that trains him for every emergency. You cannot take up such a character like a garment to suit the occasion: it must be developed in private and public by all those daily acts that declare a man's attitude, register his convictions, and form his mind. It gives its own reward at once, even in the day where nothing is apparently at stake; where men scramble furiously over the petty things of life; for he who sees these things at their proper value is unruffled. His composure in all the fury has its own value. But the mind that held him so, by the very act of dismissing something petty, gets a clearer conception of the great things of life; by intuition is at once awake to a hovering and fatal menace to individual or national existence, unseen of the common eye; and in that hour proves, to the confusion of the enemy, clear, vigorous and swift. Let us, then, for this great end note what is the secret of strength. Not alone to be ready to stand in with a host and march bravely to battle--the discipline that provides for this is great and valuable and must be always observed and practised. This gives, however, only the common courage of the crowd, and can only be trusted on an even field where the chances of war are equal. But when there is a struggle to restore freedom, where from the nature of the case the chances are uneven and the soldiers of liberty are at every disadvantage, then must we seek to adjust the balance by a finer courage and a more enduring strength. The mustering of legions will not suffice. The general reviewing this fine array who would rightly estimate the power he may command, must silently examine the units, to judge of this brave host how large a company can be formed to fight a forlorn hope. If this spirit is in reserve, he is armed against every emergency. If the chances are equal, he will have a splendid victory; if by any of the turns of war his legions are shaken and disaster threatened, there is always a certain rallying-ground where the host can re-form and the field be re-won, and the flag that has seen so many vicissitudes be set at last high and proudly in the light of Freedom. CHAPTER VI PRINCIPLE IN ACTION I Our philosophy is valueless unless we bring it into life. With sufficient ingenuity we might frame theory after theory, and if they could not be put to the test of a work-a-day existence we but add another to the many dead theories that litter the History of Philosophy. Our principles are not to argue about, or write about, or hold meetings about, but primarily to give us a rule of life. To ignore this is to waste time and energy. To observe and follow it is to take from the clouds something that appeals to us, work it into life, by it interpret the problems to hand, make our choice between opposing standards, and maintain our fidelity to the true one against every opposition and through every fitful though terrible depression; so shall we startle people with its reality, and make for it a disciple or an opponent, but always at once convince the generation that there is a serious work in hand. II If our philosophy is to be worked into life the first thing naturally is to review the situation. If we are to judge rightly, we must understand the present, draw from the past its lesson, and shape our plans for the future true to the principles that govern and inform every generation. Let us survey the past, taking a sufficiently wide view between two points--say '98 and our own time--and we see certain definite conditions. Great luminous years--'98, '03, '48, '67, rise up, witness to a great principle, readiness for sacrifice, unshaken belief in truth, valour and freedom, and a flag that will ultimately prevail. In these years the people had vision, the blood quickened, a living flame swept the land, scorching up hypocrisy, deceit, meanness, and lighting all brave hearts to high hope and achievement--for, the whimperers notwithstanding, it was always achievement to challenge the enemy and stagger his power, though yet his expulsion is delayed. Between the glorious years of the living flame there intervened pallid times of depression, where every disease of soul and body crept into the open. True hearts lived, scattered here and there, believing still but disorganised and bewildered--the leaders were stricken down and in their place, obscuring the beauty of life, the grandeur of the past, and our future destiny, came time-servers, flatterers, hypocrites, open traffickers in honour and public decency, fastening their mean authority on the land. These are the two great resting-places in our historic survey: the generation of the living flame and the generation of despair; and it is for us to decide--for the decision rests with us--whether we shall in our time merely mark time or write another luminous chapter in the splendid history of our race. III Let us consider these two generations apart, to understand their distinctive features more clearly for our own guidance. Take first the years of vision and the general effort to replant the old flag on our walls. With the first enthusiasts breathing the living flame abroad, the kindling hope, the widening fires, the deepening dream, there grows a consciousness of the greatness of the goal, of the general duty, of the individual responsibility for higher character, steadier work, and purer motive; and gradually meanness, trickeries, and treacheries are weeded out of the individual and national consciousness: there is a realisation of a time come to restore the nation's independence, and with passion and enthusiasm are fused a fine resolve and nerve. All the excited doings of the feverish or pallid years are put by as unworthy or futile. The great idea inspires a great fight; and that fight is made, and, notwithstanding any reverse, must be recorded great. Whatever concourse of circumstances mar the dream and delay the victory, those brave years are as a torch in witness to the ideal, in justification of its soldiers and in promise of final success. IV Let us examine now the deadening years that intervene between the great fights for freedom. We have known something of these times ourselves, have touched on them already, and need not further draw out the demoralising things that corrupt and dishearten us. But what we urgently require to study is the kind of effort--more often the absence of effort--made in such years by those who keep their belief in freedom and feel at times impelled in some way or other to action. They have followed a lost battle, and in the aftermath of defeat they are numbed into despair. They refuse to surrender to the forces of the hour, but they lack the fine faith and enthusiasm of the braver years that challenged these forces at every point and stood or fell by the issue. They lie apathetic till, moved by some particular meanness or treachery, they are roused to spasmodic anger, rush to act in some spasmodic way--generally futile, and then relapse into helplessness again. They lack the vision that inspires every moment, discerns a sure way, and heightens the spirit to battle without ceasing, which is characteristic of the great years. They tacitly accept that theirs is a useless generation, that the enemy is in the ascendant, that they cannot unseat him, and their action, where any is made, is but to show their attitude, never to convince opponents that the battle is again beginning, that this is a bid for freedom, that history will be called on to record their fight and pay tribute to their times. Their action has never this great significance. When stung to fitful madness by the boastful votaries of power, their occasional frantic efforts are more as relief to their feelings than destructive to the tyranny in being. Let us realise this to the full; and seeing the futility in other years of every pathetic makeshift to annoy or circumvent the enemy, put by futilities and do a great work to justify our time. V We have, then, to consider and decide our immediate attitude to life, where we stand. There are errors to remove. The first is the assumption that we are only required to acknowledge the flag in places, offer it allegiance at certain meetings at certain times that form but a small part of our existence; while we allow ourselves to be dispensed from fidelity to our principles when in other places, where other standards are either explicitly or tacitly recognised. That we must carry our flag everywhere; that there must be no dispensation: these are the cardinal points of our philosophy. Life is a great battlefield, and any hour in the day a man's flag may be challenged and he must stand and justify it. An idea you hold as true is not to be professed only where it is proclaimed; it will whisper and you must be its prophet in strange places; it is insistent of all things--you must glory in it or deny it; there is no escaping it, and there is no middle way; wherever your path lies it will cross you and you must choose. Beware lest on any plea you put it by. You cannot elect to do nothing; the concourse of circumstances would take you to some side; to do nothing is still to take a side. Priest, poet, professor, public man, professional man, business man, tradesman--everyone will be called to answer; in every walk of life the true idea will find the false in conflict and the battle must be fought out there--the battle is lost when we satisfy ourselves with an academic debate in our spare moments. This is a debating club age, and a plea for an ideal is often wasted, taken as a mere point in an argument; but to walk among men fighting passionately for it as a thing believed in, is to make it real, to influence men never reached in other ways; it is to arrest attention, arouse interest and quicken the masses to advance. And wherever the appeal for the flag is calling us the snare of the enemy is in wait. Our history so bristles with instances that a particular concrete case need not be cited. We know that priests will get more patronage if they discourage the national idea; that professors will get more emoluments and honours if they can ban it; that public men will receive places and titles if they betray it; that the professional man will be promised more aggrandisement, the business man more commerce, and the tradesman more traffic of his kind--if only he put by the flag. Most treacherous and insidious the temptation will come to the man, young and able, everywhere. It will say, "You have ability; come into the light--only put that by; it keeps you obscure. And what purpose does it serve now? Be practical; come." And you may weaken and yield and enter the light for the general applause, but the old idea will rankle deep down till smothered out, and you will stand in the splendour--a failure, miserable, hopeless, not apparent, indeed, but for all that, final. You may stand your ground, refuse the bribe, uphold the flag, and be rated a fool and a failure, but they who rate you so will not understand that you have won a battle greater than all the triumphs of empires; you will keep alive in your soul true light and enduring beauty; you will hear the music eternally in the heart of the high enthusiast and have vision of ultimate victory that has sustained all the world over the efforts of centuries, that uplifts the individual, consolidates the nation, and leads a wandering race from the desert into the Promised Land. VI If we are to justify ourselves in our time we must have done with dispensations. Many honest men are astray on this point and think attitudes justifiable that are at the root of all our failures. What is the weakness? It is so simple to explain and so easy to understand that one must wonder how we have been ignoring it quietly and generally so long. A man, as we have seen, acknowledges his flag in certain places; in other places it is challenged and he pulls it down. He is dispensed. He believes in his heart, may even write an anonymous letter to the paper, will salute the flag again elsewhere, but he will not carry his flag through every fight and through every day. When a particular crisis arises, which involves our public boards, public men, and business men in action, that requires a decision for or against the nation, he will find it in his place in life not wise to be prominent on his own side, and he is silently absent from his meetings--he gives a subscription but excuses himself from attendance. He satisfies himself with private professions of faith and whispered encouragement to those who fill the gap--words that won't be heard at a distance--and, worst of all, he thinks, because some stake in life may be jeopardised by bolder action, he is justified. The answer is, simply he is not justified. Nor should anyone who is prepared to take the risk himself take it on himself to absolve others--nor, least of all, openly preach a milder doctrine to lead others who are timid to the farther goal, believed in at heart. Encourage them by all means to practise their principles as far as they go; never restrict yours, or you will find yourself saying things you can't altogether approve; and if you tell a man to do things you can't altogether approve, and keep on telling him, it wears into you, and a thing you once held in abhorrence you come to think of with indifference. You change insensibly. Old friends rage at you, and because of it you rage at them--not knowing how you have changed. You dare not let what you believe lie in abeyance or say things inconsistent with it, else to-morrow you'll be puzzled to say what you believe. You will hardly say two things to fit each other. Let us have no half policies. Our policy must be full, clear, consistent, to satisfy the restless, inquiring minds; when we win all such over, the merely passive people will follow. It should be clear that no man can dispense himself or his fellow from a grave duty; but for all that we have been liberal with our dispensations, and it has left us in confusion and failure. On the understanding that we will be heroes to-morrow, we evade being men to-day. We think of some hazy hour in the future when we may get a call to great things; we realise not that the call is now, that the fight is afoot, that we must take the flag from its hidden resting-place and carry it boldly into life. So near a struggle may touch us with dread; but to dread provoking a fight is to endure without resistance all the consequences of a lost battle--a battle that might have been won. And if we are to be fit for the heroic to-morrow we must arise and be men to-day. VII At times we find ourselves on neutral ground. The exigencies of the struggle involve this; and unfortunately we have in our midst sincere men who do not believe in restoring Ireland to her original independence. Perhaps, from a tendency to lose our balance at times, it is well to have near by these men whose obvious sincerity may serve as a correcting influence. We have to make them one with us; in the meantime we meet them on neutral ground for some common purpose. Yet, we must take our flag everywhere? Yes, that is fundamental. What then of the places where men of diverging views meet; do we abjure the flag? By no means. The understanding here is not to force our views on others, but we must keep our principles clear in mind that no hostile view be forced on us. We must see to it that neutrality be observed. One of the pitfalls to be aware of is, that something which on our principles we should not recognise, is assumed as recognised by others because to attack it would be to violate neutrality. But if it may not be resisted, it may not be recognised; this is neutrality; it is to stand on equal terms. And since grave matters divide us--not directly concerned in our national struggle for freedom--let the dangerous idea be banished, that in entering on common ground we decry all opposing beliefs. For men who hold beliefs as vital it would not be creditable to either side to put them easily by. No, we do not ask them to forget themselves, but to respect one another--an entirely greater and more honourable principle. On neutral ground a man is not called on to abjure his flag; rather he and his flag are in sanctuary. VIII When we find the national idea touches life at every point, we begin to realise how frequent the call is to defend it without warning. It is not that men directly raise the idea purposely to reject it, but that their habit of life, to which they expect all to conform, is unconsciously assuming that our ruling principle can have no place now or in the future. Their assumption that the _status quo_ cannot be changed will be the cause of most collision at first; and we must be quietly ready with the counter-assumption, stand for the old idea and justify it. We must realise, too, that the number of people who have definite, strong, well-developed views against ours are comparatively small. This small number embraces the English Government that commands forces, obeying it without reason, and influencing the general mass of people whose general attitude is indecision--adrift with the ruling force. It is this general mass of men we must permeate with the true idea, and give them more decision, more courage, more pride of race, and bring them to prove worthy of the race. They will begin to have confidence in the Cause when they begin to see it vindicated amongst them day by day; and that vindication must be our duty. That duty will not be to seek; it will offer itself and we shall have our test. How? Consider when men come together for any purpose where different views prevail and general things of no great moment form the subject of debate--suddenly, unconsciously or tentatively, one will raise some idea that may divide the company--say, acknowledging the English Crown in Ireland, putting by the claim for freedom, in the foolish hope of some material gain. There is much nonsense talked and confusion abroad on this head, and it is quite possible a man, believing in Ireland's full claim, will find himself in a large company who ought to stand for Ireland, yet who have lost a clear conception of her rights. But he will find that they have no clear conception the other way, either; they are confused and generally pliable; and so, when the challenging idea is introduced, if he is quick and clear with the vital points, he can tear the surface off the many nostrums of the hour and prove them mean, worthless, and degrading; and, doing so, he will be forming the minds about him. He must be ready; that is the great need. Understand how a conversation is often turned by a chance word, and how governed by one man who has passionate, well-defined views, while others are cold and undecided. Be that one man. You do not know where the circumstances of life will take you; your flag may be directly challenged to your face, and you must reveal yourself. These are things to avoid. Be firm, rather than aggressive; but be always quietly prepared for the aggressive man; that is to inspire confidence in the timid. Avoid vituperation as a disease, but have your facts clear and ready for friend or foe. Whenever, and wherever least expected, a false idea comes wandering forth, put in at once a luminous word or two to clear the air, hearten friends and keep them steady. If you find yourself alone in the midst of opponents, who assume you are with them and expect your co-operation, you put them right with a word. This will arrest them; they will understand where you stand, and that you are ready; and they will generally yield you respect. But whether it involve a fight or not, thus do you declare your attitude. We may conveniently call it--putting up the flag. IX It is well to consider something of the opposition that confronts a man who tries to fill his life with a brave purpose. He will be told it is an illusion; he is a dreamer, a crank, or a fool. And it may serve a purpose to see if our critics are blinded by no illusion, to contrast our folly with their wisdom. Here is one pushing by who will not be a fool, as he thinks--he's for the emigrant-ship. Ask yourself if the people who go out from the remote places of Ireland, quiet-spoken and ruddy-faced, and return after a few years loud-voiced and pallid, have found things exactly as their hope. They protest, yes; but their voice and colour belie them. Take the other man who does not emigrate but who has his fling at home, who "knocks around" and tells you to do likewise and be no fool--mark him for your guidance. You will find his leisure is boisterous, but never gay. Catch him between whiles off his guard and you will find the deadening lassitude of his life. This votary of pleasure has a burden to carry in whatever walk of life, high or low. On the higher plane he may have a more fastidious club or two, a more epicurean sense of enjoyment, more leisure and more luxury; but the type wherever found is the same. Life is an utter burden to him; in his soul is no interest, no inspiration, no energy, and no hope. Let him be no object of envy. Here a friend pats you on the shoulder: "Quite right; be neither an emigrant nor a waster; but be practical; have no illusions; deal with possibilities--who can say what is in the future? We must face these facts." Our confident friend lacks a sense of humour. He would put your plan by for its bearing on the future, but he proposes one himself that the future must justify. He tells you circumstances will not be in your favour: he assumes them in his own. But we only claim that our principles will rule the future as they have ruled the past; for the circumstances no man can speak. He calls you a dreamer for your principles, but he can't show, now nor in history, that his exemplars were ever justified. We are all dreamers, then; but some have ugly dreams, while the dreams of others are beautiful worlds, star-lighted and full of music. X Let the newborn enthusiast, just come eagerly to the flag, be warned of hours of depression that seize even the most earnest, the boldest and the strongest. Our work is the work of men, subject to such vicissitudes as hover around all human enterprise; and every man enrolled must face hard struggles and dark hours. Then the depression rushes down like a horrible, cold, dark mist that obscures every beautiful thing and every ray of hope. It may come from many causes: perhaps, a body not too robust, worn down by a tireless mind; perhaps, the memory of long years of effort, seemingly swallowed in oblivion and futility; perhaps contact with men on your own side whose presence there is a puzzle, who have no character and no conception of the grandeur of the Cause, and whose mean, petty, underhand jealousies numb you--you who think anyone claiming so fine a flag as ours should be naturally brave, straightforward and generous; perhaps the seemingly overwhelming strength of the enemy, and the listlessness of thousands who would hail freedom with rapture, but who now stand aloof in despair--and along with all this and intensifying it, the voice of our self-complacent practical friend, who has but sarcasm for a high impulse, and for an immutable principle the latest expedient of the hour. Through such an experience must the soldier of freedom live. But as surely as such an hour comes, there comes also a star to break the darkened sky; let those who feel the battle-weariness at times remember. When in places there may be but one or two to fight, it may seem of no avail; still let them be true and their numbers will be multiplied: love of truth is infectious. When progress is arrested, don't brood on what is, but on what was once achieved, what has since survived, and what we may yet achieve. If some have grown lax and temporise a little, with more firmness on your part mingle a little sympathy for them. It is harder to live a consistent life than die a brave death. Most men of generous instincts would rouse all their courage to a supreme moment and die for the Cause; but to rise to that supreme moment frequently and without warning is the burden of life for the Cause; and it is because of its exhausting strain and exacting demands that so many men have failed. We must get men to realise that to live is as daring as to die. But confusion has been made in our time by the glib phrase: "You are not asked now to die for Ireland, but to live for her," without insisting that the life shall aim at the ideal, the brave and the true. To slip apologetically through existence is not life. If such a mean philosophy went abroad, we would soon find the land a place of shivering creatures, without the capacity to live or the courage to die--calamity, surely. All these circumstances make for the hour of depression; and it may well be in such an hour, amid apathy and treachery, cold friends and active enemies, with worn-down frame and baffled mind, you, pleading for the Old Cause, may feel your voice is indeed a voice crying in the wilderness; and it may serve till the blood warms again and the imagination recover its glow, to think how a Voice, that cried in the wilderness thousands of years ago, is potent and inspiring now, where the voice of the "practical" man sends no whisper across the waste of years. XI What, then, to conclude, must be our decision? To take our philosophy into life. When we do that generally, in a deep and significant sense our War of Independence will have begun. Let there be no deferring a duty to a more convenient future. It is as possible that an opening for freedom may be thrust on us, as that we shall be required to organise a formal war with the usual movements of armies; in our assumptions for the second, let us not be guilty of the fatal error of overlooking the first. As in other spheres, so in politics we have our conventions; and how little they may be proven has been lately seen, when England went through a war of debate,[Footnote: Debate over House of Lords.] largely unreal, over her constitution and her liberties, even while foreign wars and complications were still being debated; and in the middle of it all, suddenly, from a local labour dispute, putting by all thought of the constitution, feeling as comparatively insignificant the fear of invasion, all England stood shuddering on the verge of frantic civil war;[Footnote: The Railway strike.] and all Ireland, when the moment of possible freedom was given, when England might have been hardly able to save herself, much less to hold us--Ireland, thinking and working in old grooves, lay helpless. Let us draw the moral. We cannot tell what unsuspected development may spring on us from the future, but we can always be prepared by understanding that the vital hour is the hour at hand. Let the brave choice now be made, and let the life around be governed by it; let every man stand to his colours and strike his flag to none; then shall we recover ground in all directions, and our time shall be recorded, not with the deadening but with the luminous years. In all the vicissitudes of the fight, let us not be distracted by the meanness of the mere time-server nor the treachery of the enemy, but be collected and cool; and remembering the many who are not with us from honest motives or unsuspected fears, live to show our belief beautiful and true and, in the eternal sense, practical. Then shall those who are worth convincing be held, and our difference may reduce itself to what is possible; then will they come to realise that he who maintains a great faith unshaken will make more things possible than the opportunist of the hour; then will they understand how much more is possible than they had ever dared to dream: they will have a vision of the goal; and with that vision will be born a steady enthusiasm, a clear purpose, and a resolute soul. The regeneration of the land will be no longer a distant dream but a shaping reality; the living flame will sweep through all hearts again; and Ireland will enter her last battle for freedom to emerge and reassume her place among the nations of the earth. CHAPTER VII LOYALTY I To be loyal to his cause is the finest tribute that can be paid to any man. And since loyalty to the Irish cause has been the great virtue of Irishmen through all history, it is time to have some clear thinking as to who are the Irish rebels and who the true men. When a stupid Government, grasping our reverence for fidelity, tried to ban our heroes by calling them felons, it was natural we should rejoin by writing "The Felons of our Land" and heap ridicule on their purpose. But once this end was achieved we should have reverted to the normal attitude and written up as the true Irish Loyalists, Brian the Great, and Shane the Proud, the valiant Owen Roe and the peerless Tone, Mitchel and Davis--irreconcilables all. When men revolt against an established evil it is their loyalty to the outraged truth we honour. We do not extol a rebel who rebels for rebellion's sake. Let us be clear on this point, or when we shall have re-established our freedom after centuries of effort it shall be open to every knave and traitor to challenge our independence and plot to readmit the enemy. Loyalty is the fine attribute of the fine nature; the word has been misused and maligned in Ireland: let us restore it to its rightful honour by remembering it to be the virtue of our heroes of all time. In considering it from this view-point we shall find occasion to touch on delicate positions that have often baffled and worried us--the asserting of our rights while using the machinery of the Government that denies them, the burning question of consistency, our attitude towards the political adventurer on one hand, and towards the honest man of half-measures on the other. Loyalty involves all this. And it shows that the man who revolts to win freedom is the same as he who dies to defend it. He does not change his face and nature with the changing times. He is loyal always and most wonderfully lovable, because in the darkest times, when banned as wild, wicked and rebelly, he is loyal still as from the beginning, and will be to the end. Yes, Tone is the true Irish Loyalist, and every aider and abettor of the enemy a rebel to Ireland and the Irish race. II When you insist on examining the question in the light of first principles your opportunist opponent at once feels the weakness of his position and always turns the point on your consistency. It is well, then, in advance to understand the relative value and importance of argument as argument in the statement of any case. A body of principles is primarily of value, not as affording a case that can be argued with ingenuity, but as enshrining one great principle that shines through and informs the rest, that illumines the mind of the individual, that warms, clarifies and invigorates--that, so to speak, puts the mind in focus, gets the facts of existence into perspective, and gives the individual everything in its right place and true proportion. It brings a man to the point where he does not dispute but believes. He has been wandering about cold and irresolute, tasting all philosophies, or none, and drinking deep despair. He does not understand the want in his soul while he has been looking for some panacea for its cure till the great light streams on him, and instead of receiving something he finds himself. That is it. There is a power of vision latent in us, clouded by error; the true philosophy dissipates the cloud and leaves the vision clear, wonderful and inspiring. He who acquired that vision is impervious to argument--it is not that he despises argument; on the contrary, he always uses it to its full strength. But he has had awakened within him something which the mere logician can never deduce, and that mysterious something is the explanation of his transformed life. He was a doubter, a falterer, a failure; he has become a believer, a fighter, a conqueror. You miss his significance completely when you take him for a theorist. The theorist propounds a view to which he must convert the world; the philosopher has a rule of life to immediately put into practice. His spirit flashes with a swiftness that can be encircled by no theory. It is his glory to have over and above a new penetrating argument in the mind--a new and wonderful vitality in the blood. The unbeliever, near by, still muddled by his cold theories, will argue and debate till his intellect is in a tangle. He fails to see that a man of intellectual agility might frame a theory and argue it out ably, and then suddenly turn over and with equal dexterity argue the other side. Do we not have set debates with speakers appointed on each side? That is dialectic--a trick of the mind. But philosophy is the wine of the spirit. The capacity then to argue the point is not the justification of a philosophy. That justification must be found in the virtue of the philosophy that gives its believer vision and grasp of life as a whole, that warms and quickens his heart and makes him in spirit buoyant, beautiful, wise and daring. III Let us come now to that burning question of consistency. "Very well, you won't acknowledge the English Crown. Why then use English coins and stamps? You don't recognise the Parliament at Westminster. Why then recognise the County Councils created by Bill at Westminster? Why avail of all the Local Government machinery?"--and so forth. The argument is a familiar one, and the answer is simple. Though no guns are thundering now, Ireland is virtually in a state of war. We are fighting to recover independence. The enemy has had to relax somewhat in the exigencies of the struggle and to concede all these positions of local government and enterprise now in question. We take these posts as places conceded in the fight and avail of them to strengthen, develop and uplift the country and prepare her to carry the last post. Surely this is adequate. On a field of battle it is always to the credit of a general to capture an enemy's post and use it for the final victory. It is a sign of the battle's progress, and tells the distant watchers on the hills how the fight is faring and who is going to win. There would be consternation away from the field only if word should come that the soldiers had gone into the tents of the enemy, acknowledging him and accepting his flag. That is the point to question. There can be no defence for the occupying of any post conceded by the enemy. It may be held for or against Ireland; any man accepting it and surrendering his flag to hold it stands condemned thereby. That is clear. Yet it may be objected that such a clear choice is not put to most of those undertaking the local government of Ireland, that few are conscious of such an issue and few governed by it. It is true. But for all that the machinery of local government is clearly under popular control, and as clearly worked for an immediate good, preparing for a greater end. Men unaware of it are unconsciously working for the general development of the country and recovering her old power and influence. Those conscious of the deeper issue enter every position to further that development and make the end obvious when the alien Government--finding those powers conceded to sap further resistance are on the contrary used to conquer wider fields--endeavours to force the popular government back to the purposes of an old and failing tyranny. That is the nature of the struggle now. At periods the enemy tries to stem the movement, and then the fight becomes general and keen around a certain position. In our time there were the Land Leagues, the Land War, fights for Home Rule, Universities, Irish; and these fights ended in Land Acts, Local Government Acts, University Acts, and the conceding of pride of place to the native language in university life. Every position gained is a step forward; it is accepted as such, and so is justified. For anyone who grasps the serious purpose of recovering Ireland's independence all along the line, the suggestion that we should abandon all machinery of local government and enterprise--because they are "Government positions"--to men definitely attached to the alien garrison is so foolish as not to be even entertained. When our attitude is questioned let it be made clear. That is the final answer to the man who challenges our consistency: we are carrying the trenches of the enemy. IV Even while dismissing a false idea of consistency we have to make clear another view still remote from the general mind. If we are to have an effective army of freedom we must enrol only men who have a clear conception of the goal, a readiness to yield full allegiance, and a determination to fight always so as to reflect honour on the flag. The importance of this will be felt only when we come to deal with concrete cases. While human nature is what it is we will have always on the outskirts of every movement a certain type of political adventurer who is ready to transfer his allegiance from one party to another according as he thinks the time serves. He has no principle but to be always with the ascendant party, and to succeed in that aim he is ready to court and betray every party in turn. As a result, he is a character well known to all. The honest man who has been following the wrong path, and after earnest inquiry comes to the flag, we readily distinguish. But it is fatal to any enterprise where the adventurer is enlisted and where his influence is allowed to dominate. It may seem strange that such men are given entry to great movements: the explanation is found in the desire of pioneers to make converts at once and convince the unconverted by the confidence of growing numbers. We ignore the danger to our growing strength when the adventurer comes along, loud in protest of his support--he is always affable and plausible, and is received as a "man of experience"; and in our anxiety for further strength we are apt to admit him without reserve. But we must make sure of our man. We must keep in mind that an alliance with the adventurer is more dangerous than his opposition; and we must remember the general public, typified by the man in the street whom we wish to convince, is quietly studying us, attracted perhaps by our principles and coming nearer to examine. If he knows nothing else, he knows the unprincipled man, and when he sees such in our ranks and councils he will not wait to argue or ask questions; he will go away and remain away. The extent to which men are ruled by the old adage, "Show me your company and I'll tell you what you are," is more widespread than we think. Moreover, consistency in a fine sense is involved in our decision. We fight for freedom, not for the hope of material profit or comfort, but because every fine instinct of manhood demands that man be free, and life beautiful and brave, and surely in such a splendid battle to have as allies mean, crafty profit-seekers would be amazing. Let us be loyal in the deep sense, and let us not be afraid of being few at first. An earnest band is more effective than a discreditable multitude. That band will increase in numbers and strength till it becomes the nucleus of an army that will be invincible. V The fine sense of consistency that keeps us clear of the adventurer decides also our attitude to the well-meaning man of half-measures. He says separation from England is not possible now and suggests some alternative, if not Home Rule, Grattan's Parliament, or leaving it an open question. In the general view this seems sensible, and we are tempted to make an alliance based on such a ground; and the alliance is made. What ensues? Men come together who believe in complete freedom, others who believe in partial freedom that may lead to complete freedom, and others who are satisfied with partial freedom as an end. Before long the alliance ends in a deadlock. The man of the most far-reaching view knows that every immediate action taken must be consistent with the wider view and the farther goal, if that goal is to be attained; and he finds that his ultimate principle is frequently involved in some action proposed for the moment. When such a moment comes he must be loyal to his flag and to a principle that if not generally acknowledged is an abiding rule with him; but his allies refuse to be bound by a principle that is an unwritten law for him because the law is not written down for them. This is the root of the trouble. The friends, thinking to work together for some common purpose, find the unsettled issue intrudes, and a debate ensues that leads to angry words, recriminations, bad feeling and disruption. The alliance based on half measures has not fulfilled its own purpose, but it has sown suspicion between the honest men whom it brought together; that is no good result from the practical proposal. There is an inference: men who are conscious of a clear complete demand should form their own plans, equally full of care and resolution, and go ahead on their own account. But we hear a plaintive cry abroad: "Oh, another split; that's Irishmen all over--can never unite," etc. We will not turn aside for the plaintive people; but let it be understood there can be an independent co-operation, where of use, with those honest men who will not go the whole way. That independent co-operation can serve the full purpose of the binding alliance that has proved fatal. Above all, let there be no charge of bad faith against the earnest man who chooses other ways than ours; it is altogether indefensible because we disagree with him to call his motives in question. Often he is as earnest as we are; often has given longer and greater service, and only qualifies his own attitude in anxiety to meet others. To this we cannot assent, but to charge him with bad faith is flagrantly unjust and always calamitous. In getting rid of the deadlock we have too often fallen to furiously fighting with one another. Let us bear this in mind, and concern ourselves more with the common enemy; but let not the hands of the men in the vanguard be tied by alien King, Constitution, or Parliament. All the conditions grow more definite and seem, perhaps, too exacting; remember the greatness of the enterprise. Suppose in the building of a mighty edifice the architect at any point were careless or slurred over a difficulty, trusting to luck to bring it right, how the whole building would go awry, and what a mighty collapse would follow. Let us stick to our colours and have no fear. When all these principles have been combined into one consistent whole, a light will flash over the land and the old spirit will be reborn; the mean will be purged of their meanness, the timid heartened with a fine courage, and the fearless will be justified: the land will be awake, militant, and marching to victory. VI This is, surely, the fine view of loyalty. Let us write it on our banners and proclaim it to the world. It is consistent, _honourable_, fearless and immutable. What is said here to-day with enthusiasm, exactness and care, will stand without emendation or enlargement, if in a temporary reverse we are called to stand in the dock to-morrow; or if, finely purged in the battle of freedom, we come through our last fight with splendid triumph, our loyalty is there still, shining like a great sun, the same beautiful, unchanging thing that has lighted us through every struggle--perhaps now to guide us in framing a constitution and giving to a world, distracted by kings, presidents and theorists, a new polity for nations. A waverer, half-caught between the light, half fearful with an old fear, pleads: "This is too much--we are men, not angels." Precisely, we are not angels; and because of our human weakness, our erring minds, our sudden passions, the most confident of us may at any moment find himself in the mud. What, then, will uplift him if he has been a waverer in principle as well as in fact? He is helpless, disgraced and undone. Let him know in time we do not set up fine principles in a fine conceit that we can easily live up to them, but in the full consciousness that we cannot possibly live away from them. That is the bed-rock truth. When the man of finer faith by any slip comes to the earth, he has to uplift him a staff that never fails, and to guide him a principle that strengthens him for another fight, to go forth, in a sense Alexander never dreamed of, to conquer new worlds. 'Tis the faith that is in him, and the flag he serves, that make a man worthy; and the meanest may be with the highest if he be true and give good service. Let us put by then the broken reed and the craft of little minds, and give us for our saving hope the banner of the angels and the loyalty of gods and men. CHAPTER VIII WOMANHOOD "And another said: I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come." Yes, and we have been satisfied always to blame the wife, without noticing the man who is fond of his comfort first of all, who slips quietly away to enjoy a quiet smoke and a quiet glass in some quiet nook--always securing his escape by the readiest excuse. We are coming now to consider the aspect of the question that touches our sincere manhood; but let no one think we overlook that mean type of man who evades every call to duty on the comfortable plea: "I have married a wife." I When the mere man approaches the woman to study her, we can imagine the fair ones getting together and nudging one another in keen amusement as to what this seer is going to say. It is often sufficiently amusing when the clumsy male approaches her with self-satisfied air, thinking he has the secret of her mysterious being. I have no intention here of entering a rival search for the secret. But we can, perhaps, startle the gay ones from merriment to gravity by stating the simple fact that every man stands in some relationship to woman, either as son, brother, or husband; and if it be admitted that there is to be a fight to-morrow, then there are some things to be settled to-day. How is the woman training for to-morrow? How, then, will the man stand by that very binding relationship? Will clinging arms hold him back or proud ones wave him on? Will he have, in place of a comrade in the fight, a burden; or will the battle that has too often separated them but give them closer bonds of union and more intimate knowledge of the wonderful thing that is Life? II I wish to concentrate on one heroic example of Irish Womanhood that should serve as a model to this generation; and I do not mean to dwell on much that would require detailed examination. But some points should be indicated. For example, the awakening consciousness of our womanhood is troubling itself rightly over the woman's place in the community, is concentrating on the type delineated in "The Doll's House," and is agitating for a more honourable and dignified place. We applaud the pioneers thus fighting for their honour and dignity: but let them not make the mistake of assuming the men are wholly responsible for "The Doll's House," and the women would come out if they could. We have noticed the man who prefers his ease to any troubling duty: he has his mate in the woman who prefers to be wooed with trinkets, chocolates, and the theatre to a more beautiful way of life, that would give her a nobler place but more strenuous conditions. Again, the man is not always the lord of the house. He is as often, if not more frequently, its slave. Then there are the conventions of life. In place of a fine sense of courtesy prevailing between man and woman, which would recognise with the woman's finer sensibility a fine self-reliance, and with the man's greater strength a fine gentleness, we have a false code of manners, by which the woman is to be taken about, petted and treated generally as the useless being she often is; while the man becomes an effeminate creature that but cumbers the earth. Fine courtesy and fine comradeship go together. But we have allowed a standard to gain recognition that is a danger alike to the dignity of our womanhood and the virility of our manhood. It is for us who are men to labour for a finer spirit in our manhood: we cannot throw the blame for any weakness over on external conditions. The woman is in the same position. She must understand that greater than the need of the suffrage is the more urgent need of making her fellow-woman spirited and self-reliant, ready rather to anticipate a danger than to evade it. When she is thus trained, not all the men of all the nations can deny her recognition and equality. III For the battle of to-morrow then there is a preliminary fight to-day. The woman must come to this point, too. In life there is frequently so much meanness, a man is often called to acknowledge some degrading standard or fight for the very recognition of manhood, and the woman must stand in with him or help to pull him down. Let her understand this and her duty is present and urgent. The man so often wavers on the verge of the right path, the woman often decides him. If she is nobler than he, as is frequently the case, she can lift him to her level; if she is meaner, as she often is, she as surely drags him down. When they are both equal in spirit and nobility of nature, how the world is filled with a glory that should assure us, if nothing else could, of the truth of the Almighty God and a beautiful Eternity to explain the origin and destiny of their wonderful existence. They are indispensable to each other: if they stand apart, neither can realise in its fulness the beauty and glory of life. Let the man and woman see this, and let them know in the day that is at hand, how the challenge may come from some petty authority of the time that rules not by its integrity but by its favourites. We are cursed with such authority, and many a one drives about in luxury because he is obsequious to it: he prefers to be a parasite and to live in splendour than be a man and live in straits. He has what Bernard Shaw so aptly calls "the soul of a servant." If we are to prepare for a braver future, let us fight this evil thing; if we are to put by national servitude, let us begin by driving out individual obsequiousness. This is our training ground for to-morrow. Let the woman realise this, and at least as many women as men will prefer privation with self-respect to comfort with contempt. Let us, then, in the name of our common nature, ask those who have her training in hand, to teach the woman to despise the man of menial soul and to loathe the luxury that is his price. IV I wish to come to the heroic type of Irish Womanhood. When we need to hearten ourselves or others for a great enterprise, we instinctively turn to the examples of heroes and heroines who, in similar difficulties to ours, have entered the fight bravely, and issued heroically, leaving us a splendid heritage of fidelity and achievement. It is little to our credit that our heroes are so little known. It is less to our credit that our heroines are hardly known at all; and when we praise or sing of one our selection is not always the happiest. How often in the concert-hall or drawing-room do we get emotional when someone sings in tremulous tones, "She is far from the Land." There is a feeling for poetry in our lives, a feeling that patriotism will not have it, a melting pity for the love that went to wreck, a sympathy for ourselves and everybody and everything--a relaxing of all the nerves in a wave of sentiment. This emotion is of the enervating order. There is no sweep of strong fire through the blood, no tightening grip on life, no set resolve to stand to the flag and see the battle through. It is well, then, a generation that has heard from a thousand platforms, in plaintive notes, of Sarah Curran and her love should turn to the braver and more beautiful model of her who was the wife of Tone. V When we think of the qualities that are distinctive of the woman, we have in mind a finer gentleness, sensibility, sympathy and tenderness; and when we have these qualities intensified in any woman, and with them combined the endurance, courage and daring that are taken as the manly virtues, we have a woman of the heroic type. Of such a type was the wife of Tone. We can speak her praise without fear, for she was put to the test in every way, and in every way found marvellously true. For her devotion to, and encouragement of, her great husband in his great work, she would have won our high praise, even if, when he was stricken down and she was bereft of his wonderful love and buoyant spirits, she had proved forgetful of his work and the glory of his name. But she was bereft, and she was then found most marvellously true. Her devotion to Tone, while he was living and fighting, might be explained by the woman's passionate attachment to the man she loved. It is the woman's tenderness that is most evident in these early years, but there is shining evidence of the fortitude that showed her true nobility in the darker after-years. It was no ordinary love that bound them, and reading the record of their lives this stands out clear and beautiful. Tone, whom we know as patient organiser, tenacious fighter, far-seeing thinker, indomitable spirit--a born leader of men--writes to his wife with the passionate simplicity of an enraptured child: "I doat upon you and the babes." And his letters end thus: "Kiss the babies for me ten thousand times. God Almighty for ever bless you, my dearest life and soul." (This from the "French Atheist." I hope his traducers are heartily ashamed of themselves.) Nor is it strange. When, in the beginning of his enterprise, he is in America, preparing to go to France on his great mission, he is troubled by the thought of his defenceless ones. In the crisis how does his wife act? Does she wind clinging arms around him, telling him with tears, of their children and his early vows, and beseeching him to think of his love and forget his country? No; let the diary speak: "My wife especially, whose courage and whose zeal for my honour and interests were not in the least abated by all her past sufferings, supplicated me to let no consideration of her or our children stand for a moment in the way of my engagements to our friends and my duty to my country, adding that she would answer for our family during my absence, and that the same Providence which had so often, as it were, miraculously preserved us, would, she was confident, not desert us now." It is the unmistakable accent of the woman. She is quivering as she sends him forth, but the spirit in her eyes would put a trembling man to shame--a spirit that her peerless husband matched but no man could surpass. Her fortitude was to be more terribly tried in the terrible after-time, when the Cause went down in disaster and Tone had to answer with his life. No tribute could be so eloquent as the letter he wrote to her when the last moment had come and his doom was pronounced: "Adieu, dearest love, I find it impossible to finish this letter. Give my love to Mary; and, above all, remember you are now the only parent of our dearest children, and that the best proof you can give of your affection for me will be to preserve yourself for their education. God Almighty bless you all." That letter is like Stephens' speech from the dock, eloquent for what is left unsaid. There is no wailing for her, least of all for himself, not that their devoted souls were not on the rack: "As no words can express what I feel for you and our children, I shall not attempt it; complaint of any kind would be beneath your courage and mine"--but their souls, that were destined to suffer, came sublimely through the ordeal. When Tone left his children as a trust to his wife, he knew from the intimacy of their union what we learn from the after-event, how that trust might be placed and how faithfully it would be fulfilled. What a tribute from man to wife! How that trust was fulfilled is in evidence in every step of the following years. Remembering Tone's son who survived to write the memoirs was a child at his father's death, his simple tribute written in manhood is eloquent in the extreme: "I was brought up by my surviving parent in all the principles and in all the feelings of my father"--of itself it would suffice. But we can follow the years between and find moving evidence of the fulfilment of the trust. We see her devotion to her children and her proud care to preserve their independence and her own. She puts by patronage, having a higher title as the widow of a General of France; and she wins the respect of the great ones of France under the Republic and the Empire. Lucien Buonaparte, a year after Tone's death, pleaded before the Council of Five Hundred, in warm and eloquent praise: "If the services of Tone were not sufficient of themselves to rouse your feelings, I might mention the independent spirit and firmness of that noble woman who, on the tomb of her husband and her brother, mingles with her sighs aspirations for the deliverance of Ireland. I would attempt to give you an expression of that Irish spirit which is blended in her countenance with the expression of her grief. Such were those women of Sparta, who, on the return of their countrymen from the battle, when with anxious looks they ran over the ranks and missed amongst them their sons, their husbands, and their brothers, exclaimed, 'He died for his country; he died for the Republic.'" When the Republic fell, and in the upheaval her rights were ignored, she went to the Emperor Napoleon in person and, recalling the services of Tone, sought naturalization for her son to secure his career in the army; and to the wonder of all near by, the Emperor heard her with marked respect and immediately granted her request. She sought only this for her surviving son. She had seen two children die--there was moving pathos in the daughter's death--and now she was standing by the last. Never was child guarded more faithfully or sent more proudly on his path in life. One should read the memoirs to understand, and pause frequently to consider: how she promised her husband bravely in the beginning that she would answer for their children, and how, in what she afterwards styled the hyperbole of grief, she was called to fulfil to the letter, and was found faithful, with an unexampled strength and devotion; how she saw two children struck down by a fatal disease, and how she drew the surviving son back to health by her watchful care to send him on his college and military career with loving pride; how, when a Minister of France, irritated at her putting by his patronage, roughly told her he could not "take the Emperor by the collar to place Mr. Tone"--she went to the Emperor in person, with dignity but without fear, and won his respect; how the suggestion of the mean-minded that her demand was a pecuniary one, drew from her the proud boast that in all her misfortunes she had never learned to hold out her hand; how through all her misfortunes we watch her with wonderful dignity, delicacy, courage, and devotion quick to see what her trust demanded and never failing to answer the call, till her task is done, and we see her on the morning when her son sets out on the path she had prepared, the same quivering woman, who had sent her husband with words of comfort to his duty, now, after all the years of trial, sending her son as proudly on his path. It is their first parting. Let her own words speak: "Hitherto I had not allowed myself even to feel that my William was my own and my only child; I considered only that Tone's son was confided to me; but in that moment Nature resumed her rights. I sat in a field: the road was long and white before me and no object on it but my child.... I could not think; but all I had ever suffered seemed before and around me at that moment, and I wished so intensely to close my eyes for ever, that I wondered it did not happen. The transitions of the mind are very extraordinary. As I sat in that state, unable to think of the necessity of returning home, a little lark rushed up from the grass beside me; it whirled over my head and hovered in the air singing such a beautiful, cheering, and, as it sounded to me, approving note, that it roused me. I felt in my heart as if Tone had sent it to me. I returned to my solitary home." It is a picture to move us, to think of the devoted woman there in the sunshine, bent down in the grass, utterly alone, till the lark, sweeping heavenward in song, seems to give a message of gentle comfort from her husband's watching spirit. Our emotion now is of no enervating order. We are proud of our land and her people; our nerves are firm and set; our hearts cry out for action; we are not weeping, but burning for the Cause. How little we know of this heroic woman. We are in some ways familiar with Tone, his high character, his genial open nature, his daring, his patience, his farsightedness, his judgment--in spirit tireless and indomitable: a man peerless among his fellows. But he had yet one compeer; there was one nature that matched his to depth and height of its greatness--that nature was a woman's, and the woman was Wolfe Tone's wife. VI It is well this heroic example of our womanhood should be before not only our womanhood but our manhood. It should show us all that patriotism does not destroy the finer feelings, but rather calls them forth and gives them wider play. We have been too used to thinking that the qualities of love and tenderness are no virtues for a soldier, that they will sap his resolution and destroy his work; but our movements fail always when they fail to be human. Until we mature and the poetry in life is wakening, we are ready to act by a theory; but when Nature asserts herself the hard theorist fails to hold us. Let us remember and be human. We have been saying in effect, if not in so many words: "For Ireland's sake, don't fall in love"--we might as well say: "For Ireland's sake, don't let your blood circulate." It is impossible--even if it were possible it would be hateful. The man and woman have a great and beautiful destiny to fulfil together: to substitute for it an unnatural way of life that can claim neither the seclusion of the cloister nor the dominion of the world is neither beautiful nor great. We have cause for gratitude in the example before us. The woman can learn from it how she may equal the bravest man; and the man should learn to let his wife and children suffer rather than make of them willing slaves and cowards. For there are some earnest men who are ready to suffer themselves but cannot endure the suffering of those they love, and a mistaken family tenderness binds and drags them down. No one, surely, can hold it better to carefully put away every duty that may entail hardship on wife and child, for then the wife is, instead of a comrade, a burden, and the child becomes a degenerate creature, creeping between heaven and earth, afraid to hold his head erect, and unable to fulfil his duty to God or man. Let no man be afraid that those he loves may be tried in the fire; but let him, to the best of his strength, show them how to stand the ordeal, and then trust to the greatness of the Truth and the virtue of a loyal nature to bring each one forth in triumph, and he and they may have in the issue undreamed of recompense. For the battle that tries them will discover finer chords not yet touched in their intercourse; finer sympathies, susceptibilities, gentleness and strength; a deeper insight into life and a wider outlook on the world, making in fine a wonderful blend of wisdom, tenderness and courage that gives them to realise that life, with all its faults, struggles, and pain is still and for ever great and beautiful. CHAPTER IX THE FRONTIER I Our frontier is twofold, the language and the sea. For the majesty of our encircling waters we have no need to raise a plea, but to give God thanks for setting so certain a seal on our individual existence and giving us in the spreading horizon of the ocean some symbol of our illimitable destiny. For the language there is something still to be said; there are some ideas gaining currency that should be challenged--the cold denial of some that the unqualified name Irish be given to the literature of Irishman that is passionate with Irish enthusiasm and loyalty to Ireland, yet from the exigencies of the time had to be written in English; the view not only assumed but asserted by some of the Gael that the Gall may be recognised only if he take second place; the aloofness of many of the Gall, not troubling to understand their rights and duties; the ignoring on both sides of the fine significance of the name Irishman, of a spirit of patriotism and a deep-lying basis of authority and justice that will give stability to the state and secure its future against any upheaval that from the unrest of the time would seem to threaten the world. II Consider first the literature of Irishmen in English. From the attitude commonly taken on the question of literary values, it is clear that the primary significance of expression in writing is often lost. What is said, and the purpose for which it is said, take precedence of the medium through which it is said. But from our national awakening to the significance of the medium so long ignored we have grown so excited that we frequently forget the greater significance of the thing. The utterance of the man is of first importance, and, where his utterance has weight, the vital need is to secure it through some medium, the medium becoming important when one more than another is found to have a wider and more intimate appeal; and then we do well to become insistent for a particular medium when it is in anxiety for full delivery of the writer's thought and a wide knowledge of its truth. But we are losing sight of this natural order of things. It is well, then, the unconvinced Gall should hear why he should accept the Irish language; not simply to defer to the Gael, but to quicken the mind and defend the territory of what is now the common country of the Gael and Gall. Davis caught up the great significance of the language when he said: "Tis a surer barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress or river." The language is at once our frontier and our first fortress, and behind it all Irishmen should stand, not because a particular branch of our people evolved it, but because it is the common heritage of all. One who has a knowledge of Irish can easily get evidence of its quickening power on the Irish mind. Travel in an Irish-speaking district and hail one of its old people in English, and you get in response a dull "Good-day, Sir." Salute him in Irish and you touch a secret spring. The dull eyes light up, the face is all animation, the body alert, and for a dull "good-day," you get warm benedictions, lively sallies, and after you, as you pass on your road, a flood of rich and racy Irish comes pouring down the wind. That is the secret power of the language. It makes the old men proud of their youth and gives to the young quickened faculties, an awakened imagination and a world to conquer. This is no exaggeration. It is not always obvious, because we do not touch the secret spring nor wander near the magic. But the truth is there to find for him who cares to search. You discover behind the dullness of a provincial town a bright centre of interest, and when you study the circle you know that here is some wonderful thing: priests, doctors, lawyers, teachers, tradesmen, clerks--all drawn together, young and old, both sexes, all enthusiasts. Sometimes a priest is teaching a smith, sometimes the smith is teaching the priest: for a moment at least we have unconsciously levelled barriers and there is jubilation in the natural life re-born. Out of that quickened life and consciousness rises a vivid imagination with a rush of thought and a power of expression that gives the nation a new literature. That is the justification of the language. It awakens and draws to expression minds that would otherwise be blank. It is not that the revelation of Davis is of less value than we think, but that through the medium of Irish other revelations will be won that would otherwise be lost. Again, in subtle ways we cannot wholly understand, it gives the Irish mind a defence against every other mind, taking in comradeship whatever good the others have to offer, while retaining its own power and place. The Irish mind can do itself justice only in Irish. But still some ardent and faithful spirits broke through every difficulty of time and circumstance and found expression in English, and we have the treasures of Davis, Mitchel, and Mangan; yet, the majority remained cold, and now, to quicken the mass, we turn to the old language. But this is not to decry what was won in other fields. In the widening future that beckons to us, we shall, if anything, give greater praise to these good fighters and enthusiasts, who in darker years, even with the language of the enemy, resisted his march and held the gap for Ireland. III On this ground the Gael and Gall stand on footing of equality. That is the point many on both sides miss and we need to emphasise it. Some Irishmen not of Gaelic stock speak of Irish as foreign to them, and would maintain English in the principal place now and in the future. We do well then to make clear to such a one that he is asked to adopt the language for Ireland's sake as a nation and for his own sake as a citizen. If he wishes to serve her he must stand for the language; if he prefers English civilisation he should go back to England. There only can he develop on English lines. An Irishman in Ireland with an English mind is a queer contradiction, who can serve neither Ireland nor England in any good sense, and both Ireland and England disown him. So the Irishman of other than Gaelic ancestors should stand in with us, not accepting something disagreeable as inevitable, but claiming a right by birth and citizenship, joining the fine army of the nation for a brave adventurous future, full of fine possibility and guaranteed by a fine comradeship--owning a land not of flattery and favouritism, but of freedom and manhood. This saving ideal has been often obscured by our sundering class names. This is why we would substitute as common for all the fine name of Irishman. IV But in asking all parties to accept the common name of Irishman, we find a fear rather suggested than declared--that men may be asked in this name to put by something they hold as a great principle of Life; that Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter will all be asked to find agreement in a fourth alternative, in which they will not submit to one another but will all equally belie themselves. There is such a hidden fear, and we should have it out and dispose of it. The best men of all parties will have no truck with this and they are right. But on what ground, then, shall we find agreement, the recognition of which Irish Citizenship implies? On this, that the man of whatever sincere principles, religious or civic, counts among his great duties his duty as citizen; and he defends his creed because he believes it to be a safe guide to the fulfilling of all duties, this including. When, therefore, we ask him to stand in as Irish Citizen, it is not that he is to abandon in one iota his sincere principles, but that he is to give us proof of his sincerity. He tells us his creed requires him to be a good citizen: we give him a fine field in which he can be to us a fine example. V In further consideration of this we should put by the thought of finding a mere working agreement. There is a deep-lying basis of authority and justice to seek, which it should be our highest aim to discover. Modern governments concede justice to those who can compel justice--even the democracy requires that you be strong enough to formulate a claim and sustain it; but this is the way of tyranny. A perfect government should seek, while careful to develop its stronger forces and keep them in perfect balance, to consider also the claims of those less powerful but not less true. A government that over-rides the weak because it is safe, is a tyranny, and tyranny is in seed in the democratic governments of our time. We must consider this well, for it is pressing and grave; and we must get men to come together as citizens to defend the rights as well of the unit which is unsupported as of the party that commands great power. So shall we give steadiness and fervour to our growing strength by balancing it with truth and justice: so shall we found a government that excesses cannot undermine nor tyranny destroy. VI We have to consider, in conclusion, the unrest in the world, the war of parties and classes, and the need of judging the tendencies of the time to set our steps aright. With the wars and rumours of wars that threaten the great nations from without and the wild upheavals that threaten them within, it would be foolish to hide from ourselves the drift of events. We must decide our attitude; and if it is too much to hope that we may keep clear of the upheavals, we should aim at strengthening ourselves against the coming crash. We cannot set the world right, but we can go a long way to setting things in our own land right, by making through a common patriotism a united people. What if we are held up occasionally by the cold cries shot at every high aim--"dreamer--Utopia"; cry this in return: no vision of the dreamer can be more wild than the frantic make-shifts of the Great Powers to vie in armaments with one another or repress internal revolts. Consider England in the late strike that paralysed her. It was only suspended by a step that merely deferred the struggle; the strife is again threatening. All the powers are so threatened and their efforts to defer the hour are equally feverish and fruitless; for the hour is pressing and may flash on the world when 'tis least prepared. Let who will deride us, but let us prepare. We may not guide our steps with the certainty of prophets, nor hope by our beautiful schemes to make a perfect state; but we can only come near to perfection in the light of a perfect ideal, and however far below it we may remain, we can at least, under its inspiration, reach an existence rational and human: our justification for a brave effort lies in that the governments of this time are neither one nor the other. He who thinks Ireland's struggle to express her own mind, to give utterance to her own tongue, to stand behind her own frontier, is but a sentiment will be surprised to find it leads him to this point. Herein is the justification and the strength of the movement. Men are deriding things around them, of the significance of which they have not the remotest idea. Ireland is calling her children to a common banner, to the defence of her frontier, to the building up of a national life, harmonious and beautiful--a conception of citizenship, from which a right is conceded, not because it can be compelled, but because it is just: to the foundation of a state that will by its defence of the least powerful prove all powerful, that will be strong because true, beautiful because free, full of the music of her olden speech and caught by the magic of her encircling sea. CHAPTER X LITERATURE AND FREEDOM--THE PROPAGANDIST PLAYWRIGHT I A nation's literature is an index to its mind. If the nation has its freedom to win, from its literature may we learn if it is passionately in earnest in the fight, or if it is half-hearted, or if it cares not at all. Whatever state prevails, passionate men can pour their passion through literature to the nation's soul and make it burn and move and fight. For this reason it is of transcendent importance to the Cause. Literature is the Shrine of Freedom, its fortress, its banner, its charter. In its great temple patriots worship; from it soldiers go forth, wave its challenge, and fight, and conquering, write the charter of their country. Its great power is contested by none; rather, all recognise it, and many and violent are the disputes as to its right use and purpose. I propose to consider two of the disputants--the propagandist playwright and the art-for-art's-sake artist, since they raise issues that are our concern. It is curious that two so violently opposed should be so nearly alike in error: they are both afraid of life. The propagandist is all for one side; the artist afraid of every side. The one lacks imagination; the other lacks heart; they are both wide of the truth. The service of the truth requires them to pursue one course; in their dispute they swerve from that course, one to right, one to left. Because they leave the path on opposite sides, they do not see how much alike is their error; but that they do both leave the path is my point, and it is well we should consider it. It would be difficult to deal with both sides at once; so I will consider the propagandist first. What I have to charge against him is that his work is insincere, that he is afraid to do justice to the other side, that he makes ridicule of our exemplars, that he helps to keep the _poseur_ in being; and to conclude, that only by a saving sense of humour can we find our way back to the truth. II When we judge literature we do so by reference to the eternal truth, not by what the writer considers the present phase of truth; and if literature so tested is found guilty of suppression, evasion or misinterpretation, we call the work insincere, though the author may have written in perfect good faith. That is a necessary distinction to keep in mind. If you call a man's work insincere, the superficial critic will take it as calling the man himself insincere; but the two are distinct, and it needs to be emphasised, for sincere men are making these propagandist plays, of which the manifest and glaring untruth is working mischief to the national mind. A type of such a play is familiar enough in these days when we like to ridicule the West Briton. We are served up puppets representing the shoneen with a lisp set over against the patriot who says all the proper things suitable to the occasion. Now, such a play serves no good purpose, but it has a certain bad effect. It does not give a true interpretation of life; it enlightens no one; but it flatters the prejudices of people who profess things for which they have no zeal. That is the root of the mischief. Many of us will readily profess a principle for which we will not as readily suffer, but when the pinch comes and we are asked to do service for the flag, we cover our unwillingness by calling the man on the other side names. Where such a spirit prevails there can be no national awakening. If we put a play before the people, it must be with a hope of arresting attention, striking their imagination, giving them a grip of reality, and filling them with a joy in life. Now, the propagandist play does none of these things; it has neither joy nor reality; its characters are puppets and ridiculous; they are essentially caricatures. This is supposed to convert the unbeliever; but the intelligent unbeliever coming to it is either bored or irritated by its extravagant absurdity, and if he admits our sincerity, it is only at the expense of our intelligence. III A propagandist play for a political end is even more mischievous--at least lovers of freedom have more cause for protest. It makes our heroes ridiculous. No man of imagination can stand these impossible persons of the play who "walk on" eternally talking of Ireland. Our heroes were men; these are _poseurs_. Get to understand Davis, Tone, or any of our great ones, and you will find them human, gay, and lovable. "Were you ever in love, Davis?" asked one of his wondering admirers, and prompt and natural came the reply: "I'm never out of it." We swear by Tone for his manly virtues; we love him because we say to ourselves: "What a fine fellow for a holiday." A friend of Mitchel's travelling with him once through a storm, was astonished to find him suddenly burst out into a fine recitation, which he delivered with fine effect. He was joyous in spirit. For their buoyancy we love them all, and because of it we emulate them. We are influenced, not by the man who always wants to preach a sermon at us, but by the one with whom we go for a holiday. Our history-makers were great, joyous men, of fine spirit, fine imagination, fine sensibility, and fine humour. They loved life; they loved their fellow man; they loved all the beautiful, brave things of earth. When you know them you can picture them scaling high mountains and singing from the summits, or boating on fine rivers in the sunlight, or walking about in the dawn, to the music of Creation, evolving the philosophy of revolutions and building beautiful worlds. You get no hint of this from the absurd propagandist play, yet this is what the heart of man craves. When he does not get it, he cannot explain what he wants; but he knows what he does not want, and he goes away and keeps his distance. The play has missed fire, and the playwright and his hero are ridiculous. Let us understand one thing: if we want to make men dutiful we must make them joyous. IV It is because we must talk of grave things that we must preserve our gaiety; otherwise we could not preserve our balance. By some freak of nature, the average man strikes attitudes as readily as the average boy whistles. We know how the _poseur_ works mischief to every cause, and we can see the _poseur_ on every side. In politics, he has made the platform contemptible, which is a danger to the nation, needing the right use of platform; in literature--well, we all know bourgeois, but who has done justice to the artist who gets on a platform to talk about the bourgeois?--in religion, the _poseur_ is more likely to make agnostics than all the Rationalist Press; and the agnostic _poseur_ in turn is very funny. Now all these are an affliction, a collection of absurdities of which we must cure the nation. If we cannot cure the nation of absurdity we cannot set her free. Let it be our rule to combine gaiety with gravity and we will acquire a saving sense of proportion. Only the solemn man is dull; the serious man has a natural fund of gaiety: we need only be natural to bring back joy to serious endeavour. Then we shall begin to move. Let us remember a revolution will surely fail when its leaders have no sense of humour. V But our humour will not be a saving humour unless it is of high order. A great humorist is as rare as a great poet or a great philosopher. Though ours may not be great we must keep it in the line of greatness. Remember, great humour must be made out of ourselves rather than out of others. The fine humorist is delightfully courteous; the commonplace wit, invariably insulting. We must keep two things in mind, that in laughter at our own folly is the beginning of wisdom; and the keenest wit is pure fun, never coarse fun. We start a laugh at others by getting an infallible laugh at ourselves. The commonplace wit arranges incidents to make someone he dislikes ridiculous; his attitude is the attitude of the superior person. He is nearly always--often unintentionally--offensive; he repels the public sometimes in irritation, sometimes in amusement, for they often see point in his joke, but see a greater joke in him, and they are often laughing, not at his joke, but at himself. Let us for our salvation avoid the attitude of the superior person. Don't make sport of others--make it of yourself. Ridicule of your neighbour must be largely speculation; of the comedy in yourself there can be no doubt. When you get the essential humour out of yourself, you get the infallible touch, and you arrest and attract everyone. You are not the superior person. In effect, you slap your neighbour on the back and say, "We're all in the same boat; let us enjoy the joke"; and you find he will come to you with glistening eye. He may feel a little foolish at first--you are poking his ribs; but you cannot help it--having given him the way to poke your own. By your merry honesty he knows you for a safe comrade, and he comes with relief and confidence--we like to talk about ourselves. He will be equally frank with yourself; you will tell one another secrets; you will reach the heart of man. That is what we need. We must get the heart-beat into literature. Then will it quiver and dance and weep and sing. Then we are in the line of greatness. VI It is because we need the truth that we object to the propagandist playwright. Only in a rare case does he avoid being partial; and when he is impartial he is cold and unconvincing. He gives us argument instead of emotion; but emotion is the language of the heart. He does not touch the heart; he tries to touch the mind: he is a pamphleteer and out of place. He fails, and his failure has damaged his cause, for it leaves us to feel that the cause is as cold as his play; but when the Cause is a great one it is always vital, warm and passionate. It is for the sake of the Cause we ask that a play be made by a sincere man-of-letters, who will give us not propagandist literature nor art-for-art's-sake, but the throbbing heart of man. The great dramatist will have the great qualities needed, sensibility, sympathy, insight, imagination, and courage. The special pleader and the _poseur_ lack all these things, and they make themselves and their work foolish. Let us stand for the truth, not pruning it for the occasion. The man who is afraid to face life is not competent to lead anyone, to speak for anyone, or to interpret anything: he inspires no confidence. The one to rouse us must be passionate, and his passion will win us heart and soul. When from some terribly intense moment, he turns with a merry laugh, only the fool will take him as laughing at his cause; the general instinct will see him detecting an attitude, tripping it up, and making us all merry and natural again. In that moment we shall spring up astonished, enthusiastic, exultant--here is one inspired; we shall enter a passionate brotherhood, no cold disputes now--the smouldering fire along the land shall quicken to a blaze, history shall be again in the making. We shall be caught in the living flame. CHAPTER XI LITERATURE AND FREEDOM--ART FOR ART'S SAKE I Art for art's sake has come to have a meaning which must be challenged, but yet it can be used in a sense that is both high and sacred. If a gifted writer take literature as a great vocation and determine to use his talents faithfully and well, without reference to fee or reward; if prosperity cannot seduce him to the misuse of his genius, then we give him our high praise. Let it still not be forgotten that the labourer is worthy of his hire. But if the hire is not forthcoming, and he knowing it, yet says in his heart, "The work must still be done"; and if he does it loyally and bravely, despite the present coldness of the world, doing the good work for the love of the work and all beautiful things; and if with this meaning he take "art for art's sake" as his battle-cry, then we repeat it is used in a sense both high and sacred. II But there are artists abroad whose chief glory seems to be to deny that they have convictions--that is, convictions about the passionate things of life that rouse and move their generation. Now that they should not be special pleaders is an obvious duty, but unless they have a passionate feeling for the vital things that move men, heart and soul, they cannot interpret the heart and soul of passionate men, and their work must be for ever cold. When literature is not passionate it does not touch the spirit to lift and spread its wings and soar to finer air. That is the great want about all the clever books now being turned out--they often give us excitement; they never give us ecstasy. Then there is an obvious feeling of something lacking which men try to make up with art; and they produce work faultless in form and fastidious in phrase, but still it lacks the touch of fire that would lift it from common things to greatness. III If we are to apply art to great work we must distinguish art from artifice. We find the two well contrasted in Synge's "Riders to the Sea" and his "Playboy." The first was written straight from the heart. We feel Synge must have followed those people carrying the dead body, and touched to the quick by the _caoine_, passed the touch on to us, for in the lyric swell of the close we get the true emotion. Here alone is he in the line of greatness. This gripped his heart and he wrote out of himself. But in the other work of his it was otherwise. He has put his method on record: he listened through a chink in the floor, and wrote around other people. It is characteristic of the art of our time. Let it be called art if the critics will, but it is not life. IV No, it is not life. But there is so much talk just now of getting "down to fundamentals," of the poetry of the tramp "walking the world," and the rest of it, that it would be well if we _did get_ down to fundamentals; and this is one thing fundamental--the tramp is a deserter from life. He evades the troubled field where great causes are fought; he shuns the battle because of the wounds and the sacrifice; he has no heart for high conflict and victory. Let him under the cover of darkness but secure his share of the spoils and the world may go to wreck. Yes, he is the meanest of things--a deserter. On the field of battle he would be shot. If we let him desert the field of life, go his way and walk the world, let us not at least hail him as a hero. The Repertory Theatre is the nursery of this particular art-cult, and 'twould relieve some of us to talk freely about it. The Repertory Theatre has already become fashionable, and is quite rapidly become a nuisance. Men are making songs and plays and lectures for art's sake, for the praise of a coterie or to shock the bourgeois--above all shock the bourgeois. A certain type of artist delights in shocking the bourgeois--a riot over a play gives him great satisfaction. In passing, one must note with exasperation, perhaps with some misgiving, how men raise a riot over something not worth a thought, and will not fight for things for which they ought to die. But he likes the bourgeois to think him a terrible person; in his own esteem he is on an eminence, and he proceeds to send out more shock-the-bourgeois literature; and 'tis mostly very sorry stuff. Sometimes he tries to be emotional and is but painfully artificial; sometimes he tries to be merry and gives us flippancy for fun. And we feel a terrible need for getting back to a standard, worthy and true. Great work can be made only for the love of work; not for money, not for art's sake, not for intellectual appeal nor flippant ridicule, but for the pure love of things, good, true and beautiful. With the best of intentions we may fail; and this should be laid down as a safe guiding principle; a dramatist should be moved by his own tragedy; the novelist should be interested in his own story; the poet should make his song for the love of the song and his comedy for the fun of the thing. VI We naturally think of the Abbey Theatre when we speak of these things, and as the Abbey work has certainly suffered from overpraise we may correct it by comparison with Shakespeare. Before the Abbey we were so used to triviality that when clever and artistic work appeared we at once hailed it great. We _did_ get one or two great things, a fact to note with hearty pleasure and pride. But the rest was merely clever; and now that we are getting nothing great we must insist, and keep on insisting, that 'tis merely clever. But let us remember that value of the word great. Let it be kept for such names as Shakespeare and Molière; and lesser men may be called brilliant, talented or able--anything you will but great. Consider the scenes from the supreme plays of Shakespeare and compare with them the innumerable plays now coming forth and note a vital difference. These give us excitement, where Shakespeare gave us vision. We may be reminded of Shakespeare's duels and brawls and battles and blood; his generation revelled in excitement. Yes, they craved it, and he gave it to them, but shot through with wonder, subtlety, ecstasy; and his splendid creations, like mighty worlds, keep us wondering for ever. We must get back that supreme note of blended music and wonder, that makes the spirit beautiful and tempts it to soar, till it rise over common things and mere commotion, spreading its wings for the finer air where reason faints and falls to earth. VII A dramatist cannot make a great play out of little people. His chief characters at least must be great of heart and soul--the great hearts that fight great causes. When such are caught, in the inevitable struggle of affections and duties and the general clash of life their passionate spirits send up all the elements that make great literature. The writer who cannot enter into their battles and espouse their cause cannot give utterance to their hearts; and we don't want what he thinks about them; we want what they think about themselves. He who is in passionate sympathy with them feels their emotion and writing from the heart does great things. The artist who is in mortal dread of being thought a politician or suspected of motives cannot feel, and will as surely fail, as the one who sits down to play the rôle of politician disguised as play-right. That is what the artist has got to see; and he has got to see that while the Irish Revolution for centuries has attracted the greatest hearts and brains of Ireland, for him carefully to avoid it is to avoid the line of greatness. For a propagandist to sit down to give it utterance would be as if a handy-man were to set out to build a cathedral. The Revolution does not need to be argued; it justifies itself--all we need is to give it utterance--give it utterance once greatly. Then the writer may proceed to give utterance to every good thing under the sun. But our artists are making, and will continue to make, only second-class literature, for they are afraid of the Revolution, and it is all over our best of life; they are afraid of that life. But to enter the arena of greatness they must give it a voice. That is the vocation of the poet. VIII Yes, and the poet will be unlike you, gentlemen of the fastidious phrase. He will not be careless of form, but the passion that is in him will make simple words burn and live; never will he in the mode of the time go wide of the truth to make a picturesque phrase; his mind rapt on the thing will fix on the true word; his heart warm with the battle will fashion more beautiful forms than you, O detached and dainty artist; his soul full of music and adventure will scale those heights it is your fate to dream of but not your fortune to possess. Yet, you, too, might possess them would you but step with him into the press of adventurous legions, and make articulate the dream of men, and make splendid their triumph. He is the prophet of to-morrow, though you deny him to-day. He is not like to you, supercilious and aloof--he would have you for a passionate brother, would raise your spirit in ecstasy, flood your mind with thought, and touch your lips with fire. Because of his sensitiveness he knows every mood and every heart and gives a voice and a song to all. You might know him for a good comrade, where freedom is to win or to hold, over in the van or the breach; able to deal good blows and take them in the fine manner, a fine fighter; not with darkened brow crying, "an eye for an eye"--for who _could_ give him blow for blow or match his deed with a deed?--but one of open front and open hand who will count it happiness to have made for a victory he may not live to enjoy, as ready to die in its splendour as he had been to live through the darkness before the dawn; remembering with soldier tenderness the comrades of old battles, forgetting the malice of old enemies; a high example of the magnanimous spirit, happily not yet unknown on earth; with fine generosity and noble fire, full of that great love the common cry can never make other than humanising and beautiful, not without a gleam of humour more than half divine, he will pass, leaving to the foe that hated him heartily equally with the friend that loved him well, the wonder of his thought and the rapture of his melody. CHAPTER XII RELIGION I It ought to be laid down as a first principle that grave questions which have divided us in the past, and divide us still with much bitterness, should not be thrust aside and kept out of view in the hope of harmony. Where the attitude is such, the hope is vain. They should be approached with courage in the hope of creating mutual respect and an honourable solution for all. Religion is such a question. To the majority of men this touches their most intimate life. Because of their jealous regard for that intimate part of themselves they are prepared for bitter hostilities with anyone who will assail it; and because of the unmeasured bitterness of assaults on all sides we have come to count it a virtue to bring together in societies labelled non-sectarian, men who have been violently opposed on this issue. It will be readily allowed that to bring men together anyhow, even suspiciously, is somewhat of an advance, when we keep in mind how angrily they have quarrelled. But 'tis not to our credit that in any assembly a particular name hardly dare be mentioned; and it must be realised that, whatever purpose it may serve in lesser undertakings, in the great fight for freedom no such attitude will suffice. No grave question can be settled by ignoring it. Since it is our duty to make the War of Independence a reality and a success, we must invoke a contest that will as surely rouse every latent passion and give every latent suspicion an occasion and a field. That is the danger ahead. We must anticipate that danger, meet and destroy it. Perhaps at this suggestion most of us will at once get restive. Some may say with irritation: Why raise this matter? Others on the other side may prepare forthwith to dig up the hatchet. Is not the attitude on both sides evidence of the danger? Does anyone suppose we can start a fight for freedom without making that danger a grimmer reality? Who can claim it a wise policy merely for the moment to dodge it? For that is what we do. Let us have courage and face it. At what I have to say let no man take offence or fright--it commits no one to anything. It is written to try and make opponents understand and respect one another, not to set them at one another, least of all to make them "liberal," that is, lax and contemptible, ready to explain everything away. We want primarily the man who is prepared to fight his ground, but who is big enough in heart and mind to respect opponents who will also fight theirs. In the integrity and courage of both sides is the guarantee of the independence of both. That should be our guiding thought. But as on this question most people abandon all tolerance, it is quite possible what may be written will satisfy none; still, it may serve the purpose of making a need apparent. To repeat, we must face the question. But whoever elects to start it, should approach the issue with sympathy and forbearance. These are as necessary as courage and resolution; yet, since many often sacrifice firmness to sympathy, others will take the opposite line of riding roughshod over everyone, a harshness that confirms the weakling in his weakness. To note all this is but to note the difficulty; and if what is now written fails in its appeal, it need only be said to walk unerringly here would require the insight of a prophet and the balance of an angel. II What everyone should take as a fair demand is that all men should be sincere in their professions, and that we should justify ourselves by the consistency of our own lives rather than by the wickedness of our neighbours: which is nothing new. It is our trouble that we must emphasise obvious duties. To approach the question frankly with no matter what good faith will lead to much heart-burning, perhaps, to no little bitterness; but if we realise that all sides are about equally to blame, we may induce an earnestness that may lead to better things. It is in that hope I write. Catholics and Protestants, instead of saying to one another the things with which we are familiar, should look to their own houses; and if in this age of fashionable agnosticism, they should conclude that the general enemy is the atheist, socialist, and the syndicalist, they should still be reminded to look to their own houses; and if the agnostic take this to justify himself, he should be reminded he has never done anything to justify himself. It may seem a curious way for inducing harmony to set out to prove everyone in the wrong; but the point is clear, not to attack what men believe but to ask them to justify their words by their deeds. The request is not unreasonable and it may be asked in a tone that will show the sincerity of him who makes it and waken a kindred feeling in all earnest men. The world will be a better place to live in, and we shall be all better friends when every man makes a genuine resolve to give us all the example of a better life. III A development that would require a treatise in itself I will but touch on, to suggest to all interested a matter of general and grave concern--the growing materialism of religious bodies. On all sides self-constituted defenders of the faith are troubling themselves, not with the faith but with the numbers of their adherents who have jobs, equal sharers in emoluments, and so forth. A Protestant of standing writes a book and proves his religion is one of efficiency; a Catholic of equal standing quickly rejoins with another book to prove his religion is also efficient; each blind to the fact that the resulting campaign is disgraceful to both. When religion ceases to represent to us something spiritual, and purely spiritual, we begin to drift away from it. "Where thy treasure is, there thy heart is also." "No man can serve God and Mammon." The modern rejoinder is familiar: "We must live." This, our generation is not likely to forget. The grave concern is that well-meaning men are accustoming themselves to this cry to sacrifice all higher considerations for the "equal division of emoluments." Let us as citizens and a community see that every man has the right and the means to live; but when self-interested bodies start a rivalry in the name of their particular creeds, we know it ends in a squalid greed and fight for place, in a pursuit of luxury, the logical outcome of which must be to make the world ugly, sordid and brutal. It would be a mistake to overlook that high-minded men are allowing themselves to be committed by plausible reasons to this growing evil. It is misguided enthusiasm. There is a divine authority that warns us all: "Be zealous for the better gifts." IV I wish to examine the attitude of the average Christian to the Agnostic. "The world is falling away from religion," he will cry when depressed, without thinking how much he himself may be a contributing cause. Let him study it in this light. What is his attitude? When he comes to speak of the tendency of the age he will indulge in vague generalities about atheism, socialism, irreligion, and the rest; always the cause is outside of him, and against him; he is not part of it. I ask him to pass by the atheist awhile and take what may be of more concern. There is a type of Catholic and Protestant who has as little genuine religion in him as any infidel, who does not deny the letter of the law, but who does not observe its spirit, whose only use for the letter is to criticise and harass adversaries. Observe the high use he has for liberty--drinking, card-playing, gambling, luxury; he has no place in his life for any worthy deeds, nay, only scorn for such. Still he passes for orthodox. If he is a Catholic, he secures that by putting in an appearance at Mass on Sundays. His mind is not there; he arrives late and goes early. His Protestant fellow in his private judgment finds more scope: "Let the women go listen to the parson." This is the sort of saying gives him such a conceit of himself. We have the type on both sides, so all can see it. Now it is not in the way of the Pharisee we come to note them, but to note that, strange as it may appear, either or both together will come to applaud the denouncing of the atheist. We gather such into our religious societies, and flatter them that they are adherents of religion and the bulwark of the faith, and they forthwith anathematise the atheist with great gusto. The one so anathematised is often as worthless as themselves with a conceit to despise priest and parson alike. But it sometimes happens he is a fine character who has no religion as most of us understand it, but who has yet a fine spiritual fervour, ready to fight and make sacrifices for a national or social principle that he believes will make for better things, a man of integrity and worth whom the best of men may be glad to hold as a friend. Yet we find in the condition to which we have drifted such a one may be pilloried by wasters, gamblers, rioters, a crew that are the curse of every community. We lash the atheist and the age but give little heed to the insincerity and cant of those we do not refuse to call our own. What an example for the man anathematised. He sees the vice and meanness of those we allow to pass for orthodox, and when he sees also the complacency of the better part, he is unconvinced. We praise the sweetness of the healing waters of Christ-like charity, but despite our gospel he never gets it, never. We give him execration, injustice; if we let him go with a word, it is never a gentle word, but a bitter epithet; and we wonder he is estranged, when he sees our amazing composure in an amazing welter of hypocrisy and deceit. There is, of course, the better side, the many thousands of Catholics and Protestants who sincerely aim at better things. But what has to be admitted is that most sincerely religious people adopt to the man of no established religion the same attitude as does the hypocrite: they join in the general cry. They should look to their own houses; they should purge the temple of the money-lender and the knave; they should see that their field gives good harvest; they should remember that not to the atheist only but to the orthodox was it written: "Every tree therefore that doth not yield good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire." V There is a word to be said to the man for whom was invented the curious name agnostic. I'm concerned only with him who is sincere and high-minded. Let us pass the flippant critics of things they do not understand. But all sincere men are comrades in a deep and fine sense. What the honest unbeliever has to keep in mind is that the darker side is but one side. If he stands studying a crowd of the orthodox and finds therein the drunkard, the gambler, the sensualist; and if he says bitter things of the value of religion and gets in return the clerical fiat of one who is more a politician than a priest; and if he rejoins contemptuously, "This is fit for women and children," let him be reminded that he can also study the other side if he care. If he has the instinct of a fighter he must know every army has in its trail the camp-follower and the vulture, but when the battle is set and the danger is imminent, only the true soldier stands his ground. Because some who are of poor spirit are in high place, let him not forget the old spirit still exists. Not only the women but the best intellects of men still keep the old traditions. Newman and Pascal, Dante and Milton, Erigena and Aquinas, are all dead, but in our time even they have had followers not too far off. In the same spirit Gilbert Chesterton found wonder at a wooden post, and Francis Thompson, in his divine wandering, troubled the gold gateways of the stars. Let our friend before he frames his final judgment pause here. He may well be baffled by many anomalies of the time, his eye may rest on the meaner horde, his ear be filled with the arrogance of some unworthy successor of Paul; and if he says: "Why permit these things?" he may be told there are some alive in this generation who will question all such things, and who, however hard it go with them, have no fear for the final victory. VI Perhaps the conventional Christian and conventional non-Christian may rest a moment to consider the reality. Between the bitter believer and the exasperated unbeliever, Christianity is being turned from a practice to a polemic, and if we are to recall the old spirit we must recall the old earnestness and simplicity of the early Martyrs. We do not hear that they called Nero an atheist, but we do hear that they went singing to the arena. By their example we may recover the spirit of song, and have done with invective. If we find music and joyousness in the old conception, it is not in the fashion of the time to explain it away in some "new theology," for he to whom it is not a fashion, but a vital thing, keeps his anchor by tradition. To him it is the shining light away in the mists of antiquity; it is the strong sun over the living world; it is the pillar of fire over the widening seas and worlds of the unknown; it is the expanse of infinity. When he is lost in its mystery he adverts to the wonder about him, for all that is wonderful is touched with it, and all that is lovely is its expression. It is in the breath of the wind, pure and bracing from the mountain top. It is in the song of the lark holding his musical revel in the sunlight. It is in the ecstasy of a Spring morning. It is in the glory of all beautiful things. When it has entered and purified his spirit, his heart goes out to the persecuted in all ages and countries. None will he reject. "I am not come to call the just but sinners." He remembers those words, and his great charity encompasses not only the persecuted orthodox, but the persecuted heretics and infidels. VII I will not say if such an endeavour as I suggest can have an immediate success. But I think it will be a step forward if we get sincere men on one side to understand the sincerity of the other side; and if in matters of religion and speculation, where there is so much difficulty and there is likely to be so much conflict of opinion, there should be no constraint, but rather the finest charity and forbearance; then the orthodox would be concerned with practising their faith rather than in harassing the infidel, and the infidel would receive a more useful lesson than the ill-considered tirades he despises. He may remain still unconvinced, but he will give over his contempt. This question of religion is one on which men will differ, and differing, ultimately they will fight if we find no better way. We must remember while freedom is to win we are facing a national struggle, and if we are threatened within by a civil war of creeds it may undo us. That is why we must face the question. That is why I think utter frankness in these grave matters is of grave urgency. If we approach them in the right spirit we need have no fear--for at heart the most of men are susceptible to high appeals. What we need is courage and intensity; it is gabbling about surface things makes the bitterness. If in truth we safeguard the right of every man as we are bound to do we shall win the confidence of all, and we may hope for a braver and better future, wherein some light of the primal Beauty may wander again over earth as in the beginning it dawned on chaos when the Spirit of God first moved over the waters. CHAPTER XIII INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM I It will probably cause surprise if I say there is, possibly, more intellectual freedom in Ireland than elsewhere in Europe. But I do not mean by intellectual freedom conventional Free-thought, which is, perhaps, as far as any superstition from true freedom of the mind. The point may not be admitted but its consideration will clear the air, and help to dispose of some objections hindering that spiritual freedom, fundamental to all liberty. II I have no intention here of in any way criticising the doctrine of Free-thought, but one so named cannot be ignored when we consider Intellectual Freedom. This, then, has to be borne in mind when speaking of Free-thought, that while it allows you latitude of opinion in many things, it will not allow you freedom in all things, in, for example, Revealed Religion. I only mention this to show that on both sides of such burning questions you have disputants dogmatic. A dogmatic "yes" meets an equally dogmatic "no." The dogmas differ and it is not part of our business here to discuss them: but to come to a clear conception of the matter in hand, it must be kept in mind, that if you, notwithstanding, freely of your own accord, accept belief in certain doctrines, the freethinkers will for that deny you freedom. And the freethinkers are right in that they are dogmatic. (But this they themselves appear to overlook.) Freedom is absolutely dogmatic. It is fundamentally false that freedom implies no attachment to any belief, no being bound by any law, "As free as the wind," as the saying goes, for the wind is not free. Simple indeterminism is not liberty. III We must, then, find the true conception of Intellectual Freedom. It is the freedom of the individual to follow his star and reach his goal. That star binds him down to certain lines and his freedom is in exact proportion to his fidelity to the lines. The seeming paradox may be puzzling: a concrete example will make it clear. Suppose a man, shipwrecked, finds himself at sea in an open boat, without his bearings or a rudder. He is at the mercy of the wind and wave, without freedom, helpless. But give him his bearings and a helm, and at once he recovers his course; he finds his position and can strike the path to freedom. He is at perfect liberty to scuttle his boat, drive it on the rocks or do any other irrational thing; but if he would have freedom, he must follow his star. IV This leads us to track a certain error that has confused modern debate. A man in assumed impartiality tells you he will stand away from his own viewpoint and consider a case from yours. Now, if he does honestly hold by his own view and thinks he can put it by and judge from his opponent's, he is deceiving both himself and his opponent. He can do so _apparently,_ but, whatever assumption is made, he is governed subconsciously by his own firm conviction. His belief is around him like an atmosphere; it goes with him wherever he goes; he can only stand free of it by altogether abandoning it. If his case is such that he can come absolutely to the other side to view it uninfluenced by his own, then he has abandoned his own. He is like a man in a boat who has thrown over rudder and bearings: he may be moved by any current: he is adrift. If he is to recover the old ground, he must win it as something he never had. But if instead of this he does at heart hold by his own view, he should give over the deception that he is uninfluenced by it in framing judgment. It is psychologically impossible. Let the man understand it as a duty to himself to be just to others, and to substitute this principle for his spurious impartiality. This is the frank and straightforward course. While he is under his own star, he is moving in its light: he has, if unconsciously, his hand on the helm: he judges all currents scrupulously and exactly, but always from his own place at the wheel and with his own eyes. To abandon one or the other is to betray his trust, or in good faith and ignorance to cast it off till it is gone, perhaps, too far to recover. V If we so understand intellectual freedom, in what does its denial consist? In this: around every set of principles guiding men, there grows up a corresponding set of prejudices that with the majority in practice often supersede the principles; and these prejudices with the march of time assume such proportions, gather such power, both by the numbers of their adherents and the authority of many supporting them, that for a man of spirit, knowing them to be evil and urgent of resistance, there is needed a vigour and freedom of mind that but few understand and even fewer appreciate or encourage. The prejudices that grow around a man's principles are like weeds and poison in his garden: they blight his flowers, trees and fruit; and he must go forth with fire and sword and strong unsparing hand to root out the evil things. He will find with his courage and strength are needed passion and patience and dogged persistence. For men defend a prejudice with bitter venom altogether unlike the fire that quickens the fighter for freedom; and the destroyer of the evil may find himself assailed by an astonishing combination--charged with bad faith or treachery or vanity or sheer perversity, in proportion as those who dislike his principles deny his good faith; or those who profess them, because of his vigour and candour denounce him for an enemy within the fold. But for all that he should stand fast. If he has the courage so to do, he gives a fine example of intellectual freedom. VI It will serve us to consider some prejudices, free-thinking and religious. First the free-thinker. He has a prejudice very hard to kill. If I believe in the beginning what Bernard Shaw has found out thus late in the day, that priests are not as bad as they are painted, the free-thinker would deny me intellectual freedom. The fact of my right to think the matter out and come to that conclusion would count for nothing. On the other hand, if I were known to have professed a certain faith and to have abandoned it, he would acclaim that as casting off mental slavery. This is hopelessly confusing. If a man has ceased to hold a certain belief he deserves no credit for courage in saying so openly. If he thinks what he once believed, or is supposed to have believed, has no vitality, surely he can have no reason for being afraid of it, and to speak of dangerous consequences from it to him, can be _for him_ at least only a bogey. His simple denial is, then, no mark of courage. Courage is a positive thing. Yet he may well have that courage. Suppose him in taking his stand to have taken up some social faith that for him has promise of better things. He will find his new creed surrounded by its own swarm of prejudices, and if he refuse to worship every fetish of the free-thinker, declaring that this stands to him for a certain definite, beautiful thing, and fighting for it, he will find himself denied and scouted by his new friends. He may find himself often in company with some supposed enemies. He will surely need in his sincere attitude to life a freedom of mind that is not a name merely but a positive virtue that demands of him more than denunciation of obscurantism, the recognition of a personal duty and the justification of personal works. VII The religious prejudice will be no less hard to kill. Indiscriminate denunciation of unbelievers as wicked men serves no good purpose and leads nowhere. There are wicked men on all sides. Our standard must be one that will distinguish the sincere men on all sides; and our loyalty to our particular creeds must be shown in our lives and labours, not in the reviling of the infidel. We are justified in casting out the hypocrite from every camp, and when we come to this task we can be sure only of the hypocrites in our own; and we should lay it as an injunction on all bodies to purge themselves. The burden will be laid on all--not one surely of which men can complain--that they shall prove their principles in action and lay their prejudices by. Christians might well find exemplars in the early martyrs, those who for their principles went so readily to the lions. One may anticipate the complacent rejoinder: "This is not so exacting an age; men are not asked to die for religion now"--and one may in turn reply, that, perhaps our age may not be without occasion for such high service, but that we may be unwilling to go to the lions. Our time has its own trial--by no means unexacting let me tell you--but we quietly slip it by: it is much easier to revile the infidel. This as a test of loyalty should be pinned: we shall shut up thereby the hypocrite. And the earnest man, more conscious of his own burden, will be more sympathetic, generous and just, and will come to be more logical and to see what Newman well remarked, that one who asks questions shows he has no belief and in asking may be but on the road to one. If to ask a question is to express a doubt, it is no less, perhaps, to seek a way out of it. "What better can he do than inquire, if he is in doubt?" asks Newman. "Not to inquire is in his case to be satisfied with disbelief." We should, acting in this light, instead of denouncing the questioner, answer his question freely and frankly, encourage him to ask others and put him one or two by the way. Men meeting in this manner may still remain on opposite sides, but there will be formed between them a bond of sympathy that mutual sincerity can never fail to establish. This is freedom, and a fine beautiful thing, surely worth a fine effort. What we have grown accustomed to, the bitterness, the recriminations, the persecutions and retaliations, are all the evil weeds of prejudice, growing around our principles and choking them. They are so far a denial of principle, a proof of mental slavery. Our freedom will attest to faith: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty." VIII This, in conclusion, is the root of the matter: to claim freedom and to allow it in like measure; rather than to deny, to urge men to follow their beliefs: only thus can they find salvation. To constrain a man to profess what we profess is worse than delusion: should he give lip service to what he does not hold at heart, 'twere for him deceitful and for us dangerous. Where his star calls, let him walk sincerely. If his creed is insufficient or inconsistent, in his struggle he shall test it, and in his sincerity he must make up the insufficiency or remove the inconsistency. This is the only course for honourable men and no man should object. To repeat, it puts an equal burden on all--the onus of justifying the faith that is in them. Life is a divine adventure and he whose faith is finest, firmest and clearest will go farthest. God does not hold his honours for the timid: the man who buried his talent, fearing to lose it, was cast into exterior darkness. He who will step forward fearlessly will be justified. "All things are possible to him who believeth." Many on both sides may be surprised to find suddenly proposed as a test to both sides the readiness to adventure bravely on the Sea of Life. The free-thinker may be astonished to hear, not that he goes too far, but does not go far enough. He may gasp at the test, but it is in effect the test and the only true one. The man who does not believe he is to be blotted out when his body ceases to breathe, who holds all history for his heritage and the wide present for his battle-ground, believes also the future is no repellent void but a widening and alluring world. If in his travel he is scrupulous in detail, it is in the spirit of the mariner who will neither court a ship-wreck nor be denied his adventure. He cannot deny to others the right to hesitate and halt by the way, but his spirit asks no less than the eternal and the infinite. Yes, but many good religious people are not used to seeing the issue in this light, and those who make a trade of fanning old bitterness will still ply their bitter trade, crying that anarchists, atheists, heretics, infidels, all outcasts and wicked men, are all rampant for our destruction. It may be disputed, but, admitting it, one may ask: Is there no place among Christian people for those distinctive virtues on which we base the superiority of our religion? When the need is greatest, should the practice be less urgent? It is not evident that the free-thinker is obliged by any of his principles to give better example. It is evident the Christian is so obliged. Why is he found wanting? If human weakness were pleaded, one could understand. It is against the making a virtue of it lies the protest. How many noble things there are in our philosophies, and how little practised. No violent convulsions should be needed to make us free, if men were but consistent: we should find ourselves wakening from a wicked dream in a bloodless and beautiful revolution. We are in the desert truly and a long way from the Promised Land. But we must get to the higher ground and consider our position; and if one by one we are stripped of the prejudices that too long have usurped the place of faith, and we find ourselves, to our dismay, perhaps lacking that faith that we have so long shouted but so little testified, and tremble on the verge of panic, there is one last line that gives in four words with divine simplicity and completeness a final answer to all timidity and objections: "Fear not; only believe." CHAPTER XIV MILITARISM I To defend or recover freedom men must be always ready for the appeal to arms. Here is a principle that has been vindicated through all history and needs vindication now. But in our time the question of rightful war has been crossed by the evil of militarism, and in our assertion of the principle, that in the last resort freemen must have recourse to the sword, we find ourselves crossed by the anti-militarist campaign. We must dispose of this confusing element before we can come to the ethics of war. Of the evil of militarism there can be no question, but a careful study of some anti-militaristic literature discloses very different motives for the campaign. I propose to lay some of the motives bare and let the reader judge whether there may not be an insidious plot on foot to make a deal between the big nations to crush the little ones. For this purpose I will consider two books on the question, one by Mr. Norman Angell, "The Great Illusion," and one by M. Jacques Novikow, "War and Its Alleged Benefits." In the work of Mr. Angell the reader will find the suggestion of the deal, while in the work of M. Novikow is given a clear and honest statement of the anti-militarist position, with which we can all heartily agree. Those of us who would assert our freedom should understand the right anti-militarist position, because in its exponents we shall find allies at many points. But with Mr. Angell's book it is otherwise. These points emerge: the basis of morality is self-interest; the Great Powers have nothing to gain by destroying one another, they should agree to police and exploit the territory of the "backward races"; if the statesmen take a different view from the financiers, the financiers can bring pressure to bear on the statesmen by their international organisation; the capitalist has no country. Well, our comment is, the patriot has a country, and when he wakens to the new danger, he may spoil the capitalist dream, and this book of Mr. Angell's may in a sense other than that the author intended be appropriately named "The Great Illusion." II The limits of this essay do not admit of detailed examination of the book named. What I propose to do is make characteristic extracts sufficiently full to let the reader form judgment. As we are only concerned for the present with the danger I mention, I take particular notice of Mr. Angell's book, and I refer the reader for further study to the original. But the charge of taking an accidental line from its context cannot be made here, as the extracts are numerous, the tendency of all alike, and more of the same nature can be found. I divide the extracts into three groups, which I name: 1. The Ethics of the Case. 2. The Power of Money. 3. The Deal. Where italics are used they are mine. 1. THE ETHICS OF THE CASE.--"The real basis of Social Morality is self-interest." ("The Great Illusion," 3rd Ed., p. 66.) "Have we not abundant evidence, indeed, that the passion of patriotism, as divorced from material interest, is being modified by the pressure of material interest?" (p. 167.) "Piracy was magnificent, doubtless, but it was not business." (Speaking of the old Vikings, p. 245.) "The pacifist propaganda has failed largely because it has not put (and proven) the plea of interest as distinct from the moral plea." (p. 321.) 2. THE POWER OF MONEY.--"The complexity of modern finance makes New York dependent on London, London upon Paris, Paris upon Berlin, to a greater degree than has ever yet been the case in history." (p. 47.) "It would be a miracle if already at this point the whole influence of British Finance were not thrown against the action of the British Government." (On the assumed British capture of Hamburg, p. 53). "The most absolute despots cannot command money." (p. 226.) "With reference to capital, it may almost be said that it is organised so naturally internationally that _formal organisation is not necessary_." (p. 269.) 3. THE DEAL.--"France has benefited by the conquest of Algeria, England by that of India, because in each case the arms were employed not, properly speaking, for conquest at all, but _for police purposes_." (p. 115.) "While even the wildest Pan-German has never cast his eyes in the direction of Canada, he has cast them, and does cast them, in the direction of Asia Minor.... _Germany may need to police Asia Minor_." (pp. 117, 118.) "_It is much more to our interest to have an orderly and organised Asia Minor under German tutelage than to have an unorganised and disorderly one which should be independent_." (p. 120.) "Sir Harry Johnston, in the 'Nineteenth Century' for December, 1910, comes a great deal nearer to touching the real kernel of the problem.... He adds that the best informed Germans used this language to him: '_You know that we ought to make common cause in our dealings with backward races of the world_!'" The quotations speak for themselves. Note the policing of the "backward races." The Colonies are not in favour. Mr. Angell writes: "What in the name of common sense is the advantage of conquering them if the only policy is to let them do as they like?" (p. 92.) South Africa occasions bitter reflections: "The present Government of the Transvaal is in the hands of the Boer Party." (p. 95.) And he warns Germany, that, supposing she wishes to conquer South Africa, "she would learn that the policy that Great Britain has adopted was not adopted by philanthropy, but in the hard school of bitter experience." (p. 104.) We believe him, and we may have to teach a lesson or two in the same school. It may be noted in passing Mr. Angell gives Ireland the honour of a reference. In reply to a critic of the _Morning Post_, who wrote thus: "It is the sublime quality of human nature that every great nation has produced citizens ready to sacrifice themselves rather than submit to external force attempting to dictate to them a conception other than their own of what is right." (p. 254.) Mr. Angell replied: "One is, of course, surprised to see the foregoing in the _Morning Post_; the concluding phrase would justify the present agitation in India, or in Egypt, or in Ireland against British, rule." (p. 254.) Comment is needless. The reading and re-reading of this book forces the conclusion as to its sinister design. Once that design is exposed its danger recedes. There is one at least of the "backward races" that may not be sufficiently alive to self-interest, but may for all that upset the capitalist table and scatter the deal by what Ruskin described in another context as "the inconvenience of the reappearance of a soul." III We must not fail to distinguish the worth of the best type of anti-militarist and to value the truth of his statement. It is curious to find Mr. Angell writing an introduction to M. Novikow's book, for M. Novikow's position is, in our point of view, quite different. He does not draw the fine distinction of policing the "backward races." Rather, he defends the Bengalis. Suppose their rights had never been violated, he says: "They would have held their heads higher; they would have been proud and dignified, and perhaps might have taken for their motto, _Dieu et mon droit_." ("War and Its Alleged Benefits," p. 12.) He can be ironical and he can be warm. Later, he writes; "The French (and all other people) should vindicate their rights with their last drop of blood; so what I write does not refer to those who defend their rights, but to those who violate the rights of others." (Note p. 70.) He does not put by the moral plea, but says: "Political servitude develops the greatest defects in the subjugated peoples." (p. 79.) And he pays his tribute to those who die for a noble cause: "My warmest sympathy goes out to those noble victims who preferred death to disgrace." (p. 82.) This is the true attitude and one to admire; and any writer worthy of esteem who writes for peace never fails to take the same stand. Emerson, in his essay on "War," makes a fine appeal for peace, but he writes: "If peace is sought to be defended or preserved for the safety of the luxurious or the timid, it is a sham and the peace will be base. War is better, and the peace will be broken." And elsewhere on "Politics," he writes: "A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom or conquest can easily confound the arithmetic of the statists and achieve extravagant actions out of all proportions to their means." Yes, and by our unanimity for freedom we mean to prove it true. CHAPTER XV THE EMPIRE I With the immediate promise of Home Rule many strange apologists for the Empire have stepped into the sun. Perhaps it is well--we may find ourselves soon more directly than heretofore struggling with the Empire. So far the fight has been confused. Imperialists fighting for Home Rule obscured the fact that they were _not_ fighting the Empire. Now Home Rule is likely to come, and it will serve at least the good purpose of clearing the air and setting the issue definitely between the nation and the Empire. We shall have our say for the nation, but as even now many things, false and hypocritical, are being urged on behalf of the Empire, it will serve us to examine the Imperial creed and show its tyranny, cruelty, hypocrisy, and expose the danger of giving it any pretext whatever for aggression. For the Empire, as we know it and deal with it, is a bad thing in itself, and we must not only get free of it and not be again trapped by it, but must rather give hope and encouragement to every nation fighting the same fight all the world over. II One candid writer, Machiavelli, has put the Imperial creed into a book, the examination of which will--for those willing to see--clear the air of illusion. Now, we are conscious that defenders of the Empire profess to be shocked by the wickedness of Machiavelli's utterance--we shall hear Macaulay later--but this shocked attitude won't delude us. Let those who have not read Machiavelli's book, "The Prince," consider carefully the extracts given below and see exactly how they fit the English occupation of Ireland, and understand thoroughly that the Empire is a thing, bad in itself, utterly wicked, to be resisted everywhere, fought without ceasing, renounced with fervour and without qualification, as we have been taught from the cradle to renounce the Devil with all his works and pomps. Consider first the invasion. Machiavelli speaks:--"The common method in such cases is this. As soon as a foreign potentate enters into a province those who are weaker or disobliged join themselves with him out of emulation and animosity to those who are above them, insomuch that in respect to those inferior lords no pains are to be omitted that may gain them; and when gained, they will readily and unanimously fall into one mass with the State that is conquered. Only the conqueror is to take special care that they grow not too strong, nor be entrusted with too much authority, and then he can easily with his own forces and their assistance keep down the greatness of his neighbours, and make himself absolute arbiter in that province." Here is the old maxim, "Divide and conquer." To gain an entry some pretence is advisable. Machiavelli speaks with approval of a certain potentate who always made religion a pretence. Having entered a vigorous policy must be pursued. We read--"He who usurps the government of any State is to execute and put in practice all the cruelties which he thinks material at once." Cromwell rises before us. "A prince," says Machiavelli, "is not to regard the scandal of being cruel if thereby he keeps his subjects in their allegiance." "For," he is cautioned, "whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself; because whenever the citizens are disposed to revolt they betake themselves, of course, to that blessed name of Liberty, and the laws of their ancestors, which no length of time nor kind usage whatever will be able to eradicate." An alternative to utter destruction is flattery and indulgence. "Men are either to be flattered and indulged or utterly destroyed." We think of the titles and the bribes. Again, "A town that has been anciently free cannot more easily be kept in subjection than by employing its own citizens." We think of the place-hunter, the King's visit, the "loyal" address. To make the conquest secure we read: "When a prince conquers a new State and annexes it as a member to his old, then it is necessary your subjects be disarmed, all but such as appeared for you in the conquest, and they are to be mollified by degrees and brought into such a condition of laziness and effeminacy that in time your whole strength may devolve upon your own natural militia." We think of the Arms Acts and our weakened people. But while one-half is disarmed and the other half bribed, with neither need the conqueror keep faith. We read: "A prince who is wise and prudent cannot, or ought not, to keep his parole, when the keeping of it is to his prejudice and the causes for which he promised removed." This is made very clear to prevent any mistake. "It is of great consequence to disguise your inclination and play the hypocrite well." We think of the Broken Treaty and countless other breaches of faith. It is, of course, well to seem honourable, but Machiavelli cautions: "It is honourable to seem mild, and merciful, and courteous, and religious, and sincere, and indeed to be so, provided your mind be so rectified and prepared, that you can act quite contrary upon occasion." Should anyone hesitate at all this let him hear: "He is not to concern himself if run under the infamy of those vices, without which his dominion was not to be preserved." Thus far the philosophy of Machiavelli. The Imperialist out to "civilise the barbarians" is, of course, shocked by such wickedness; but we are beginning to open our eyes to the wickedness and hypocrisy of both. To us this book reads as if a shrewd observer of the English Occupation in Ireland had noted the attending features and based these principles thereon. We have reason to be grateful to Machiavelli for his exposition. His advice to the prince, in effect, lays bare the marauders of his age and helps us to expose the Empire in our own. III There is a lesson to be learnt from the fact that this book of Machiavelli's, written four centuries ago in Italy, is so apt here to-day. We must take this exposition as the creed of Empire and have no truck with the Empire. It may be argued that the old arts will be no longer practised on us. Let the new supporters of the Empire know that by the new alliance they should practise these arts on other people, which would be infamy. We are not going to hold other people down; we are going to encourage them to stand up. If it means a further fight we have plenty of stimulus still. Our oppression has been doubly bitter for having been mean. The tyranny of a strong mind makes us rage, but the tyranny of a mean one is altogether insufferable. The cruelty of a Cromwell can be forgotten more easily than the cant of a Macaulay. When we read certain lines we go into a blaze, and that fire will burn till it has burnt every opposition out. In his essay on Milton, Macaulay having written much bombast on the English Revolution, introduces this characteristic sentiment: "One part of the Empire there was, so unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its misery was necessary to our happiness and its slavery to our freedom." For insolence this would be hard to beat. Let it be noted well. It is the philosophy of the "Predominant Partner." If he had thanked God for having our throats to cut, and cut them with loud gratitude like Cromwell, a later generation would be incensed. But this other attitude is the gall in the cup. Macaulay is, of course, shocked by Machiavelli's "Prince." In his essay on Machiavelli we read: "It is indeed scarcely possible for any person not well acquainted with the history and literature of Italy to read without horror and amazement the celebrated treatise which has brought so much obloquy on the name of Machiavelli. Such a display of wickedness, naked, yet not ashamed, such cool, judicious, scientific atrocity, seemed rather to belong to a fiend than to the most depraved of men." But, later, in the same essay, is a valuable sidelight. He writes of Machiavelli as a man "whose only fault was that, having adopted some of the maxims then generally received, he arranged them most luminously and expressed them more forcibly than any other writer." Here we have the truth, of course not so intended, but evident: Machiavelli's crime is not for the sentiments he entertained but for writing them down luminously and forcibly--in other words, for giving the show away. Think of Macaulay's "horror and amazement," and read this further in the same essay: "Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim. If it be very moral and very true it may serve for a copy to a charity boy." So the very moral and the very true are not for the statesman but for the charity-boy. This perhaps may be defended as irony; hardly, but even so, in such irony the character appears as plainly as in volumes of solemn rant. To us it stands out clearly as the characteristic attitude of the English Government. The English people are used to it, practise it, and will put up with it; but the Irish people never were, are not now, and never will be used to it; and we won't put up with it. We get calm as old atrocities recede into history, but to repeat the old cant, above all to try and sustain such now, sets all the old fire blazing--blazing with a fierceness that will end only with the British connection. IV Not many of us in Ireland will be deceived by Macaulay, but there is danger in an occasional note of writers, such as Bernard Shaw and Stuart Mill. Our instinct often saves us by natural repugnance from the hypocrite, when we may be confused by some sentiment of a sincere man, not foreseeing its tendency. When an aggressive power looks for an opening for aggression it first looks for a pretext, and our danger lies in men's readiness to give it the pretext. Such a sentiment as this from Mill--on "Liberty"--gives the required opening: "Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with Barbarians, provided the end be their improvement"; or this from Shaw's preface to the Home Rule edition of "John Bull's Other Island": "I am prepared to Steam-roll Tibet if Tibet persist in refusing me my international rights." Now, it is within our right to enforce a principle within our own territory, but to force it on other people, called for the occasion "barbarians," is quite another thing. Shaw may get wrathful, and genuinely so, over the Denshawai horror, and expose it nakedly and vividly as he did in his first edition of "John Bull's Other Island," Preface for Politicians; but the aggressors are undisturbed as long as he gives them pretexts with his "steam-roll Tibet" phrase. And when he says further that he is prepared to co-operate with France, Italy, Russia, Germany and England in Morocco, Tripoli, Siberia and Africa to civilise these places, not only are his denunciations of Denshawai horrors of no avail--except to draw tears after the event--but he cannot co-operate in the civilising process without practising the cruelty; and perhaps in their privacy the empire-makers may smile when Shaw writes of Empire with evident earnestness as "a name that every man who has ever felt the sacredness of his own native soil to him, and thus learnt to regard that feeling in other men as something holy and inviolable, spits out of his mouth with enormous contempt." When, further, in his "Representative Government" Mill tells the English people--a thing about which Shaw has no illusions--that they are "the power which of all in existence best understands liberty, and, whatever may have been its errors in the past, has attained to more of conscience and moral principle in its dealing with foreigners than any other great nation seems either to conceive as possible or recognise as desirable"--they not only go forward to civilise the barbarians by Denshawai horrors, but they do so unctuously in the true Macaulayan style. We feel a natural wrath at all this, not unmingled with amusement and amazement. In studying the question we read much that rouses anger and contempt, but one must laugh out heartily in coming to this gem of Mill's, uttered with all Mill's solemnity: "Place-hunting is a form of ambition to which the English, considered nationally, are almost strangers." When the sincerest expression of the English mind can produce this we need to have our wits about us; and when, as just now, so much nonsense, and dangerous nonsense, is being poured abroad about the Empire, we need to pause, carefully consider all these things, and be on our guard. V In conclusion, we may add our own word to the talk of the hour--the politicians on Home Rule. It should raise a smile to hear so often the prophecy that Ireland will be loyal to the Empire when she gets Home Rule. We are surprised that any Irishman could be so foolish, though, no doubt, many Englishmen are so simple as to believe it. History and experience alike deny it. Possibly the Home Rule chiefs realise their active service is now limited to a decade or two, and assume Home Rule may be the limit for that time, and speak only for that time; but at the end of that time our generation will be vigorous and combative, and if we cannot come into our own before then, we shall be ready then. We need say for the moment no more than this--the limit of the old generation is not the limit of ours. If anyone doubt the further step to take let him consider our history, recent and remote. The old effort to subdue or exterminate us having failed, the new effort to conciliate us began. Minor concessions led to the bigger question of the land. One Land Act led to another till the people came by their own. Home Rule, first to be killed by resolute government, was next to be killed by kindness, and Local Government came. Local Government made Home Rule inevitable; and now Home Rule is at hand and we come to the last step. Anyone who reads the history of Ireland, who understands anything of progress, who can draw any lesson from experience, must realise that the advent of Home Rule marks the beginning of the end. CHAPTER XVI RESISTANCE IN ARMS--FOREWORD I The discussion of freedom leads inevitably to the discussion of an appeal to arms. If proving the truth and justice of a people's claim were sufficient there would be little tyranny in the world, but a tyrannical power is deaf to the appeal of truth--it cannot be moved by argument, and must be met by force. The discussion of the ethics of revolt is, then, inevitable. II The ubiquitous pseudo-practical man, petulant and critical, will at once arise: "What is the use of discussing arms in Ireland? If anyone wanted to fight it would be impossible, and no one wants to fight. What prevents ye going out to begin?" Such peevish criticism is anything but practical, and one may ignore it; but it suggests the many who would earnestly wish to settle our long war with a swift, conclusive fight, yet who feel it no longer practical. Keeping to the practical issue, we must bear in mind a few things. Though Ireland has often fought at odds, and could do so again, it is not just now a question of Ireland poorly equipped standing up to England invincible. England will never again have such an easy battle. The point now to emphasise is this--by remaining passive and letting ourselves drift we drift into the conflict that involves England. We must fight for her or get clear of her. There can be no neutrality while bound to her; so a military policy is an eminently practical question. Moreover, it is an urgent one: to stand in with England in any danger that threatens her will be at least as dangerous as a bold bid to break away from her. One thing above all, conditions have changed in a startling manner; England is threatened within as without; there are labour complications of all kinds of which no one can foresee the end, while as a result of another complication we find the Prime Minister of England going about as carefully protected as the Czar of Russia.[Footnote: The militant suffragette agitation.] The unrest of the times is apt to be even bewildering. England is not alone in her troubles--all the great Powers are likewise; and it is at least as likely for any one of them to be paralysed by an internal war as to be prepared to wage an external one. This stands put clearly--we cannot go away from the turmoil and sit down undisturbed; we must stand in and fight for our own hand or the hand of someone else. Let us prepare and stand for our own. However it be, no one can deny that in all the present upheavals it is at least practical to discuss the ethics of revolt. III We can count on a minority who will see wisdom in such a discussion; it must be our aim to make the discussion effective. We must be patient as well as resolute. We are apt to get impatient and by hasty denunciation drive off many who are wavering and may be won. These are held back, perhaps, by some scruple or nervousness, and by a fine breath of the truth and a natural discipline may yet be made our truest soldiers. Emerson, in his address at the dedication of the Soldiers' Monument, Concord, made touching reference in some such in the American Civil War. He told of one youth he knew who feared he was a coward, and yet accustomed himself to danger, by forcing himself to go and meet it. "He enlisted in New York," says Emerson, "went out to the field, and died early." And his comment for us should be eloquent. "It is from this temperament of sensibility that great heroes have been formed." The pains we are at to make men physically fit we must take likewise to make them mentally fit. We are minutely careful in physical training, drill regulations and the rest, which is right, for thus we turn a mob into an army and helplessness into strength. Let us be minutely careful, too, with the untried minds--timid, anxious, sensitive in matters of conscience; like him Emerson spoke of, they may be found yet in the foremost fighting line, but we must have patience in pleading with them. Here above all must we keep our balance, must we come down with sympathy to every particular. It is surely evident that it is essential to give the care we lavish on the body with equal fulness to the mind. IV At the heart of the question we will be met by the religious objection to revolt. Here all scruples, timidity, wavering, will concentrate; and here is our chief difficulty to face. The right to war is invariably allowed to independent states. The right to rebel, even with just cause, is not by any means invariably allowed to subject nations. It has been and is denied to us in Ireland. We must answer objectors line by line, leading them, where it serves, step by step to our conclusions; but this is not to make freedom a mere matter of logic--it is something more. When it comes to war we shall frequently give, not our promises, but our conclusions. This much must be allowed, however, that, as far as logic will carry, our position must be perfectly sound; yet, be it borne in mind, our cause reaches above mere reasoning--mere logic does not enshrine the mysterious touch of fire that is our life. So, when we argue with opponents we undertake to give them as good as or better than they can give, but we stake our cause on the something that is more. On this ground I argue not in general on the right of war, but in particular on the right of revolt; not how it may touch other people elsewhere ignoring how it touches us here in Ireland. A large treatise could be written on the general question, but to avoid seeming academic I will confine myself as far as possible to the side that is our concern. For obvious reasons I propose to speak as to how it affects Catholics, and let them and others know what some Catholic writers of authority have said on the matter. One thing has to be carefully made clear. It is seen in the following quotation from an eminent Catholic authority writing in Ireland in the middle of the last century, Dr. Murray, of Maynooth: "The Church has issued no definition whatever on the question--has left it open. Many theologians have written on it; the great majority, however (so far as I have been able to examine them), pass it over in silence." (_Essays chiefly Theological_, vol. 4). This has to be kept in mind. Theologians have written, some on one side and some on the other, but the Church has left it open. I need not labour the point why it is useful to quote Catholic authorities in particular, since in Ireland an army representative of the people would be largely Catholic, and much former difficulty arose from Catholics in Ireland meeting with opposition from some Catholic authorities. It may be seen the position is delicate as well as difficult, and in writing a preliminary note one point should be emphasised. We must not evade a difficulty because it is delicate and dangerous, and we must not temporise. In a physical contest on the field of battle it is allowable to use tactics and strategy, to retreat as well as advance, to have recourse to a ruse as well as open attack; but _in matters of principle there can be no tactics, there is one straightforward course to follow, and that course must be found and followed without swerving to the end_. CHAPTER XVII RESISTANCE IN ARMS--THE TRUE MEANING OF LAW I When we stand up to question false authority we should first make our footing firm by showing we understand true authority and uphold it. Let us be clear then as to the meaning of the word law. It may be defined; an ordinance of reason, the aim of which is the public good and promulgated by the ruling power. Let us cite a few authorities. "A human law bears the character of law so far as it is in conformity with right reason; and in that point of view it is manifestly derived from the Eternal Law." (_Aquinas Ethicus,_ Vol. 1, p. 276.) Writing of laws that are unjust either in respect to end, author or form, St. Thomas says: "Such proceedings are rather acts of violence than laws; because St. Augustine says: 'A law that is not just goes for no law at all.'" (_Aquinas Ethicus_, Vol. 1, p. 292.) "The fundamental idea of all law," writes Balmez, "is that it be in accordance with reason, that it be an emanation from reason, an application of reason to society" (_European Civilisation_, Chap. 53). In the same chapter Balmez quotes St. Thomas with approval: "The kingdom is not made for the king, but the king for the kingdom"; and he goes on to the natural inference: "That all governments have been established for the good of society, and that this alone should be the compass to guide those who are in command, whatever be the form of government." It is likewise the view of Mill, in _Representative Government_, that the well-being of the governed is the sole object of government. It was the view of Plato before the Christian era: his ideal city should be established, "that the whole City might be in the happiest condition." (_The Republic_, Book 4.) Calderwood writes: "Political Government can be legitimately constructed only on condition of the acknowledgment of natural obligations and rights as inviolable." (_Handbook of Modern Philosophy, Applied Ethics_, Sec. 4.) Here all schools and all times are in agreement. Till these conditions are fulfilled for us we are at war. When an independent and genuine Irish Government is established we shall yield it a full and hearty allegiance: the law shall then be in repute. We do not stand now to deny the idea of authority, but to say that the wrong people are in authority, the wrong flag is over us. II "We must overthrow the arguments that might be employed against us by the advocates of blind submission to any power that happens to be established," writes Balmez, on resistance to _De Facto_ Governments. (_European Civilisation_, Chap. 55.) We could not be more explicit than the famous Spanish theologian. To such arguments let the following stand out from his long and emphatic reply:--"Illegitimate authority is no authority at all; the idea of power involves the idea of right, without which it is mere physical power, that is force." He writes further: "The conqueror, who, by mere force of arms, has subdued a nation, does not thereby acquire a right to its possession; the government, which by gross iniquities has despoiled entire classes of citizens, exacted undue contributions, abolished legitimate rights, cannot justify its acts by the simple fact of its having sufficient strength to execute these iniquities." There is much that is equally clear and definite. What extravagant things can be said on the other side by people in high places we know too well. Balmez in the same book and chapter gives an excellent example and an excellent reply: "Don Felix Amat, Archbishop of Palmyra, in the posthumous work entitled _Idea of the Church Militant_, makes use of these words: 'Jesus Christ, by His plain and expressive answer, _Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's_, has sufficiently established that the mere fact of a government's existence is sufficient for enforcing the obedience of subjects to it....' His work was forbidden at Rome," is Balmez' expressive comment, and he continues, "and whatever may have been the motives for such a prohibition, we may rest assured that, in the case of a book advocating such doctrines, every man who is jealous of his rights might acquiesce in the decree of the Sacred Congregation." So much for _De Facto_ Government. It is usurpation; by being consummated it does not become legitimate. When its decrees are not resisted, it does not mean we accept them in principle--nor can we even pretend to accept them--but that the hour to resist has not yet come. It is the strategy of war. III We stand on the ground that the English Government in Ireland is founded in usurpation and as such deny its authority. But if it be argued, assuming it as Ireland's case, that a usurped authority, gradually acquiesced in by the people, ultimately becomes the same as legitimate, the reply is still clear. For ourselves we meet the assumption with a simple denial, appealing to Irish History for evidence that we never acquiesced in the English Usurpation. But to those who are not satisfied with this simple denial, we can point out that even an authority, originally founded legitimately, may be resisted when abusing its power to the ruin of the Commonwealth. We still stand on the ground that the English government is founded in usurpation, but we can dispose of all objections by proving the extremer case. This is the case Dr. Murray, already quoted, discusses. "The question," he writes, "is about resistance to an established and legitimate government which abuses its power." (_Essays, Chiefly Theological_, Vol. 4.) He continues: "The common opinion of a large number of our theologians, then, is that it is lawful to resist by force, and if necessary to depose, the sovereign ruler or rulers, in the extreme--the very extreme--case wherein the following conditions are found united: "1. The tyranny must be excessive--intolerable. "2. The tyranny must be manifest, manifest to men of good sense and right feeling. "3. The evils inflicted by the tyrant must be greater than those which would ensue from resisting and deposing him. "4. There must be no other available way of getting rid of the tyranny except by recurring to the extreme course. "5. There must be a moral certainty of success. "6. The revolution must be one conducted or approved by the community at large ... the refusal of a small party in the State to join with the overwhelming mass of their countrymen would not render the resistance of the latter unlawful." (_Essays, Chiefly Theological_; see also Rickaby, _Moral Philosophy_, Chap. 8, Sec. 7.) Some of these conditions are drawn out at much length by Dr. Murray. I give what is outstanding. How easily they could fit Irish conditions must strike anyone. I think it might fairly be said that our leaders generally would, if asked to lay down conditions for a rising, have framed some more stringent than these. It might be said, in truth, of some of them that they seem to wait for more than a moral certainty of success, an absolute certainty, that can never be looked for in war. IV When a government through its own iniquity ceases to exist, we must, to establish a new government on a true and just basis, go back to the origin of Civil Authority. No one argues now for the Divine Right of Kings, but in studying the old controversy we get light on the subject of government that is of all time. To the conception that kings held their power immediately from God, "Suarez boldly opposed the thesis of the initial sovereignty of the people; from whose consent, therefore, all civil authority immediately sprang. So also, in opposition to Melanchthon's theory of governmental omnipotence, Suarez _a fortiori_ admitted the right of the people to depose those princes who would have shown themselves unworthy of the trust reposed in them." (De Wulf, _History of Medieval Philosophy,_ Third Edition, p. 495.) Suarez' refutation of the Anglican theory, described by Hallam as clear, brief, and dispassionate, has won general admiration. Hallam quotes him to the discredit of the English divines: "For this power, by its very nature, belongs to no one man but to a multitude of men. This is a certain conclusion, being common to all our authorities, as we find by St. Thomas, by the Civil laws, and by the great canonists and casuists; all of whom agree that the prince has that power of law-giving which the people have given him. And the reason is evident, since all men are born equal, and consequently no one has a political jurisdiction over another, nor any dominion; nor can we give any reason from the nature of the thing why one man should govern another rather than the contrary." (Hallam--_Literature of Europe_, Vol. 3, Chap. 4.) Dr. Murray, in the essay already quoted, speaks of Sir James Mackintosh as the ablest Protestant writer who refuted the Anglican theory, which Mackintosh speaks of as "The extravagance of thus representing obedience as the only duty without an exception." Dr. Murray concludes his own essay on _Resistance to the Supreme Civil Power_ by a long passage from Mackintosh, the weight and wisdom of which he praises. The greater part of the passage is devoted to the difficulties even of success and emphasising the terrible evils of failure. In what has already been written here I have been at pains rather to lay bare all possible evils than to hide them. But when revolt has become necessary and inevitable, then the conclusion of the passage Dr. Murray quotes should be endorsed by all: "An insurrection rendered necessary by oppression, and warranted by a reasonable probability of a happy termination, is an act of public virtue, always environed with so much peril as to merit admiration." Yes, and given the happy termination, the right and responsibility of establishing a new government rest with the body of the people. V We come, then, to this conclusion, that government is just only when rightfully established and for the public good; that usurpation not only may but ought to be resisted; that an authority originally legitimate once it becomes habitually tyrannical may be resisted and deposed; and that when from abuse or tyranny a particular government ceases to exist, we have to re-establish a true one. It is sometimes carelessly said, "Liberty comes from anarchy," but this is a very dangerous doctrine. It would be nearer truth to say from anarchy inevitably comes tyranny. Men receive a despot to quell a mob. But when a people, determined and disciplined, resolve to have neither despotism nor anarchy but freedom, then they act in the light of the Natural Law. It is well put in the doctrine of St. Thomas, as given by Turner in his _History of Philosophy_ (Chap. 38): "The redress to which the subjects of a tyrant have a just right must be sought, not by an individual, but by an authority temporarily constituted by the people and acting according to law." Yes, and when wild and foolish people talk hysterically of our defiance of all authority, let us calmly show we best understand the basis of Authority--which is Truth, and most highly reverence its presiding spirit--which is Liberty. CHAPTER XVIII RESISTANCE IN ARMS--OBJECTIONS I Having stated the case for resistance, it will serve us to consider some objections. Many inquiring minds may be made happy by a clear view of the doctrine, till some clever opponent holds them up with remarks on prudence, possibly sensible, or remarks on revolutionists, most probably wild, with, perhaps, the authority of a great name, or unfailing refuge in the concrete. It is curious that while often noticed how men, trying to evade a concrete issue, take refuge in the abstract, it is not noticed that men, trying to avoid acknowledging the truth of some principle, take refuge in the concrete. A living and pressing difficulty, though transient, looms larger than any historical fact or coming danger. Seeing this, we may restore confidence to a baffled mind, by helping it to distinguish the contingent from the permanent. Thus, by disposing of objections, we make our ground secure. II To the name of prudence the most imprudent people frequently appeal. Those whose one effort is to evade difficulties, who to cover their weakness plead patience, would be well advised to consider how men passionately in earnest, enraged by these evasions, pour their scorn on patience as a thing to shun. The plea does not succeed; it only for the moment damages the prestige of a great name. Patience is not a virtue of the weak but of the strong. An objector says: "Of course, all this is right in the abstract, but consider the frightful abuses in practice," and some apt replies spring to mind. Dr. Murray, writing on "Mental Reservation," in his _Essays, chiefly Theological_, speaks thus: "But it is no objection to any principle of morals to say that unscrupulous men will abuse it, or that, if publicly preached to such and such an audience or in such and such circumstances, it will lead to mischief." This is admirable, to which the objector can only give some helpless repetitions. With Balmez, we reply: "But in recommending prudence to the people let us not disguise it under false doctrines--let us beware of calming the exasperation of misfortune by circulating errors subversive of all governments, of all society." (_European Civilisation_, Chap. 55.) Of men who shrink from investigating such questions, Balmez wrote: "I may be permitted to observe that their prudence is quite thrown away, that their foresight and precaution are of no avail. Whether they investigate these questions or not, they _are_ investigated, agitated and decided, in a manner that we must deplore." (Ibid. Chap. 54.) Take with this Turner on France under the old _régime_ and the many and serious grievances of the people: "The Church, whose duty it was to inculcate justice and forbearance, was identified, in the minds of the people, with the Monarchy which they feared and detested." (_History of Philosophy_, Chap. 59.) The moral is that when injustice and evil are rampant, let us have no palliation, no weakness disguising itself as a virtue. What we cannot at once resist, we can always repudiate. To ignore these things is the worst form of imprudence--an imprudence which we, for our part at least, take the occasion here heartily to disclaim. III There is so much ill-considered use of the word revolutionist, we should bear in mind it is a strictly relative term. If the freedom of a people is overthrown by treachery and violence, and oppression practised on their once thriving land, that is a revolution, and a bad revolution. If, with tyranny enthroned and a land wasting under oppression, the people rise and by their native courage, resource and patience re-establish in their original independence a just government, that is a revolution, and a good revolution. The revolutionist is to be judged by his motives, methods and ends; and, when found true, his insurrection, in the words of Mackintosh, is "an act of public virtue." It is the restoration of, Truth to its place of honour among men. IV Balmez mentions Bossuet as apparently one who denies the right here maintained; and we may with profit read some things Bossuet has said in another context, yet which touches closely what is our concern. Writing of _Les Empires_, thus Bossuet: "Les révolutions des empires sont réglées par la providence, et servent à humilier les princes." This is hardly calculated to deter us from a bid for freedom; and if we go on to read what he has written further under this heading, we get testimony to the hardihood and love of freedom and country that distinguished early Greece and Rome in language of eloquence that might inflame any people to liberty. Of undegenerate Greece, free and invincible: "Mais ce que la Grece avait de plus grand était une politique ferme et prévoyante, qui savait abandonner, hasarder et défendre, ce qu'il fallait; et, ce qui est plus grand encore, un courage que l'amour de la liberté et celui de la patrie rendaient invincible." Of undegenerate Rome, her liberty: "La liberté leur était donc un trésor qu'ils préferoient à toutes les richesses de l'univers." Again: "La maxime fondamentale de la république était de regarder la liberté comme une chose inséparable du nom Roman." And her constancy: "Voila de fruit glorieux de la patience Romaine. Des peuples qui s'enhardissaient et se fortifiaient par leurs malheurs avaient bien raison de croire qu'on sauvait tout pourvu qu'on ne perdit pas l'esperance." And again: "Parmi eux, dans les états les plus tristes, jamais les faibles conseils n'ont été seulement écoutés." The reading of such a fine tribute to the glory of ancient liberties is not likely to diminish our desire for freedom; rather, to add to the natural stimulus found in our own splendid traditions, the further stimulus of this thought that must whisper to us: "Persevere and conquer, and to-morrow our finest opponent will be our finest panegyrist when the battle has been fought and won." V In conclusion, in the concrete this simple fact will suffice: we have established immutable principles; the concrete circumstances are contingent and vary. It is admirably put in the following passage: "The historical and sociological sciences, so carefully cultivated in modern times, have proved to evidence that social conditions _vary_ with the epoch and the country, that they are the resultant of quite a number of fluctuating influences, and that, accordingly, the science of Natural Right should not merely establish _immutable_ principles bearing on the moral end of man, but should likewise deal with the _contingent_ circumstances accompanying the application of those principles." (De Wulf, _Scholasticism, Old and New_, Part 2, Chap. 2, Sec. 33.) Yes, and if we apply principles to-morrow, it is not with the conditions of to-day we must deal, but "with the contingent circumstances accompanying the application of those principles." Let that be emphasised. The conditions of twenty years ago are vastly changed to-day; and how altered the conditions of to-morrow can be, how astonishing can be the change in the short span of twenty years, let this fact prove. Ireland in '48 was prostrate after a successful starvation and an unsuccessful rising--to all appearances this time hopelessly crushed; yet within twenty years another rising was planned that shook English government in Ireland to its foundations. Let us bear in mind this further from De Wulf: "Sociology, understood in the wider and larger sense, is transforming the methods of the science of Natural Right." In view of that transformation he is wise who looks to to-morrow. What De Wulf concludes we may well endorse, when he asks us to take facts as they are brought to light and study "each question on its merits, in the light of these facts and not merely in its present setting but as presented in the pages of history." It can be fairly said of those who have always stood for the separation of Ireland from the British Empire, that they alone have always appealed to historical evidence, have always regarded the conditions of the moment as transient, have always discussed possible future contingencies. The men who temporised were always hypnotised by the conditions of the hour. But in the life-story of a nation stretching over thousands of years, the British occupation is a contingent circumstance, and the immutable principle is the Liberty of the Irish People. CHAPTER XIX THE BEARNA BAOGHAIL--CONCLUSION I But when principles have been proved and objections answered, there are still some last words to say for some who stand apart--the men who held the breach. For, they do stand apart, not in error but in constancy; not in doubt of the truth but its incarnation; not average men of the multitude for whom human laws are made, who must have moral certainty of success, who must have the immediate allegiance of the people. For it is the distinguishing glory of our prophets and our soldiers of the forlorn hope, that the defeats of common men were for them but incentives to further battle; and when they held out against the prejudices of their time, they were not standing in some new conceit, but most often by prophetic insight fighting for a forgotten truth of yesterday, catching in their souls to light them forward, the hidden glory of to-morrow. They knew to be theirs by anticipation the general allegiance without which lesser men cannot proceed. They knew they stood for the Truth, against which nothing can prevail, and if they had to endure struggle, suffering and pain, they had the finer knowledge born of these things, a knowledge to which the best of men ever win--that if it is a good thing to live, it is a good thing also to die. Not that they despised life or lightly threw it away; for none better than they knew its grandeur, none more than they gloried in its beauty, none were so happily full as they of its music; but they knew, too, the value of this deep truth, with the final loss of which Earth must perish: the man who is afraid to die is not fit to live. And the knowledge for them stamped out Earth's oldest fear, winning for life its highest ecstasy. Yes, and when one or more of them had to stand in the darkest generation and endure all penalties to the extreme penalty, they knew for all that they had had the best of life and did not count it a terrible thing if called by a little to anticipate death. They had still the finest appreciation of the finer attributes of comradeship and love; but it is part of the mystery of their happiness and success, that they were ready to go on to the end, not looking for the suffrage of the living nor the monuments of the dead. Yes, and when finally the re-awakened people by their better instincts, their discipline, patriotism and fervour, will have massed into armies, and marched to freedom, they will know in the greatest hour of triumph that the success of their conquering arms was made possible by those who held the breach. II When, happily, we can fall back on the eloquence of the world's greatest orator, we turn with gratitude to the greatest tribute ever spoken to the memory of those men to whom the world owes most. Demosthenes, in the finest height of his finest oration, vindicates the men of every age and nation who fight the forlorn hope. He was arraigned by his rival, �schines, for having counselled the Athenians to pursue a course that ended in defeat, and he replies thus: "If, then, the results had been foreknown to all--not even then should the Commonwealth have abandoned her design, if she had any regard for glory, or ancestry, or futurity. As it is, she appears to have failed in her enterprise, a thing to which all mankind are liable, if the Deity so wills it." And he asks the Athenians: "Why, had we resigned without a struggle that which our ancestors encountered every danger to win, who would not have spit upon you?" And he asks them further to consider strangers, visiting their City, sunk in such degradation, "especially when in former times our country had never preferred an ignominious security to the battle for honour." And he rises from the thought to this proud boast: "None could at any period of time persuade the Commonwealth to attach herself in secure subjection to the powerful and unjust; through every age has she persevered in a perilous struggle for precedency and honour and glory." And he tells them, appealing to the memory of Themistocles, how they honoured most their ancestors who acted in such a spirit: "Yes; the Athenians of that day looked not for an orator or a general, who might help them to a pleasant servitude: they scorned to live if it could not be with freedom." And he pays them, his listeners, a tribute: "What I declare is, that such principles are your own; I show that before my time such was the spirit of the Commonwealth." From one eloquent height to another he proceeds, till, challenging �schines for arraigning him, thus counselling the people, he rises to this great level: "But, never, never can you have done wrong, O Athenians, in undertaking the battle for the freedom and safety of all: I swear it by your forefathers--those that met the peril at Marathon, those that took the field at Platæa, those in the sea-fight at Salamis, and those at Artimesium, and many other brave men who repose in the public monuments, all of whom alike, as being worthy of the same honour, the country buried, �schines, not only the successful and victorious." We did not need this fine eloquence to assure us of the greatness of our O'Neills and our Tones, our O'Donnells and our Mitchels, but it so quickens the spirit and warms the blood to read it, it so touches--by the admiration won from ancient and modern times--an enduring principle of the human heart--the capacity to appreciate a great deed and rise over every physical defeat--that we know in the persistence of the spirit we shall come to a veritable triumph. Yes; and in such light we turn to read what Ruskin called the greatest inscription ever written, that which Herodotus tells us was raised over the Spartans, who fell at Thermopylæ, and which Mitchel's biographer quotes as most fitting to epitomise Mitchel's life: "Stranger, tell thou the Lacedemonians that we are lying here, having obeyed their words." And the biographer of Mitchel is right in holding that he who reads into the significance of these brave lines, reads a message not of defeat but of victory. III Yes; and in paying a fitting tribute to those great men who are our exemplars, it would be fitting also, in conclusion, to remember ourselves as the inheritors of a great tradition; and it would well become us not only to show the splendour of the banner that is handed on to us, but to show that this banner _we_, too, are worthy to bear. For, how often it shall be victorious and how high it shall be planted, will depend on the conception we have of its supreme greatness, the knowledge that it can be fought for in all times and places, the conviction that we may, when least we expect, be challenged to deny it; and that by our bearing we may bring it new credit and glory or drag it low in repute. We do well, I say, to remember these things. For in our time it has grown the fashion to praise the men of former times but to deny their ideal of Independence; and we who live in that ideal, and in it breathe the old spirit, and preach it and fight for it and prophesy for it an ultimate and complete victory--we are young men, foolish and unpractical. And what should be our reply? A reply in keeping with the flag, its history and its destiny. Let them, who deride or pity us, see we despise or pity their standards, and let them know by our works--lest by our election they misunderstand--that we are not without ability in a freer time to contest with them the highest places--avoiding the boast, not for an affected sense of modesty but for a saving sense of humour. For in all the vanities of this time that make Life and Literature choke with absurdities, pretensions and humbug, let us have no new folly. Let us with the old high confidence blend the old high courtesy of the Gaedheal. Let us grow big with our cause. Shall we honour the flag we bear by a mean, apologetic front? No! Wherever it is down, lift it; wherever it is challenged, wave it; wherever it is high, salute it; wherever it is victorious, glorify and exult in it. At all times and forever be for it proud, passionate, persistent, jubilant, defiant; stirring hidden memories, kindling old fires, wakening the finer instincts of men, till all are one in the old spirit, the spirit that will not admit defeat, that has been voiced by thousands, that is noblest in Emmet's one line, setting the time for his epitaph: "_When_ my country"--not _if_--but "_when_ my country takes her place among the nations of the earth." It is no hypothesis; it is a certainty. There have been in every generation, and are in our own, men dull of apprehension and cold of heart, who could not believe this, but we believe it, we live in it: _we know it_. Yes, we know it, as Emmet knew it, and as it shall be seen to-morrow; and when the historian of to-morrow, seeing it accomplished, will write its history, he will not note the end with surprise. Rather will he marvel at the soul in constancy, rivalling the best traditions of undegenerate Greece and Rome, holding through disasters, persecutions, suffering, and not less through the seductions of milder but meaner times, seeing through all shining clearly the goal: he will record it all, and, still marvelling, come to the issue that dauntless spirit has reached, proud and happy; but he will write of that issue--_Liberty; Inevitable_: in two words to epitomise the history of a people that is without a parallel in the Annals of the World. 
41194	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) Transcriber's note This text contains punctuation inconsistencies and misspellings which have been retained. A list of unresolved printer's errors can be found at the end of the book. THE SPEECHES (IN FULL) OF RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M. P., AND WILLIAM O'BRIEN, M. P., ON HOME RULE, DELIVERED IN PARLIAMENT, FEB. 16 AND 17, 1888. NEW YORK: AMERICAN NEWS CO. MR. GLADSTONE'S SPEECH. MR. GLADSTONE. In following the right honorable gentleman, I shall only touch those portions of his speech which go the heart of the question. In my opinion, they constituted a very small part of his address (_cheers_), the rest being criminatory and incriminatory matter, which, however amusing to a portion of the House, really assists us very little in getting at the root of the great question before us. I do this particularly because there is a great difficulty, owing to the enormous range of the question, in confining the debate within the narrow limits to which we all desire to confine it. My honorable and learned friend, the member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay), last night, when no member of the Government seemed in a condition to follow the speech of the honorable member for Northeast Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien), (_Opposition cheers_), gallantly stepped into the breach, and performed that office on behalf of ministers, which has so often been performed by those who are sometimes termed "Dissenting Liberals"; namely, that of finding expedients of defence for the Government which they and their adherents behind them have been unable to discover. (_Opposition cheers._) My honorable and learned friend said he thought it high time that the debate should draw to a close. I can perfectly understand reasons why he should desire that there might be no debate at all on this subject (_laughter and cheers_), but when he says that the discussion has extended to unreasonable length, I point to the speech of the Attorney-General last night, of the length of which I am far from complaining, but which was evidently in sharp contradiction with the view of my honorable and learned friend. Why, sir, it has not been possible to include in this debate a number of questions which deserve, and may yet have to receive detailed criticism. For example, the law of public meetings has hardly been touched, and yet it is gravely involved in the proceedings of the recess. ("_Hear, hear._") The relations between landlord and tenant have hardly been touched, and to that notwithstanding a similiar observation will apply. ("_Hear, hear._") The treatment given to prisoners of a particular class has not been the subject of discussion, and I will make none of these three matters subject of discussion; but at the same time no one can doubt that all of them, and many more besides, are fit for the attention of the House. ("_Hear, hear._") I must proceed by the method of selection, and I am bound to say that so far as I am personally concerned, if it had not been for the pointed references to me, and the perfectly fair and just challenges delivered against certain portions of my speeches in the recess, I should gladly have remained out of sight. I am of opinion that such speeches as have been made by the honorable member for the city of Cork in moving his amendment, and by the honorable member for East Cork on the memorable occasion of the opening of last night's debate (_Home Rule cheers_), go more to the heart of the matter, and more to the mind of the country, than anything that can be said or urged by those who, whatever else may be said of them, cannot deny that they stand in the position of leaders of a party, and are liable to the imputation of party interests. On the other hand, these gentlemen are in a position to say that they have shown us independence of party. They have dealt a death blow to Liberal administrations, and the members of those Liberal administrations never have complained, and would not have been justified in complaining. They are the advocates and the organs of a nation. (_Opposition cheers._) They are in a condition to speak with an effect to which they cannot make any just pretension when they address themselves to the heart and to the understanding of another nation on whose judgment they are content to rely. (_"No," from the Ministerial benches, and counter cheers._) But, sir, there was a part of the speech of the right honorable gentlemen which he introduced with an apology, and which I think it right hriefly to follow. He referred to the communication between Lord Carnarvon and the member for Cork, and I cannot question for a moment the denials he has made. But what were those denials? I attended as well as I could to his statement, and his denials were three. In the first place, he denied that any engagement or agreement had been made. Sir, I am not aware of its having been asserted. He denied, secondly, that it ever had been stated to be the intention of a Conservative Government to grant a measure of Home Rule. I am not aware, sir, that that has ever been stated. Thirdly, he denied on the part of Lord Carnarvon, and I accept the denial with all my heart, that Lord Carnarvon had ever used any words inconsistent with the maintenance of the Union. (_Ministerial cheers._) But these three denials leave entirely untouched the material parts of the case. What are these material parts? If the right honorable gentleman wishes to dispose of them, I can only say that they are not disposed of by what he has said to-night, and he must set about with a new set of statements and denials in order to get rid of them. (_Opposition cheers._) It was stated by the honorable member for the city of Cork, that he found himself in substantial--I might say, in entire agreement with Lord Carnarvon on the question of Home Rule. That has not been denied. (_Home Rule cheers._) It has been stated that Lord Carnarvon spoke for himself, and that I do not question, in so far as a Lord Lieutenant can speak for himself. (_Opposition cheers._) The right honorable gentleman, the Chief Secretary, did not deny in the speech he has just made, and certainly there was space in that speech for such denial, that Lord Carnarvon and the honorable member for Cork were in substantial agreement on the policy of Home Rule. MR. BALFOUR. I may say that, from the abstract I read, Lord Carnarvon clearly, in my idea, did not express his opinion about the Home Rule policy. MR. GLADSTONE. The honorable member for Cork declared that he had an interview with Lord Carnarvon, and that he found himself in agreement with Lord Carnarvon on the subject. The right honorable gentleman has not denied that. (_Home Rule cheers._) MR. BALFOUR. I interpreted Lord Carnarvon's statement as distinctly denying that. MR. GLADSTONE. I ask for the words of Lord Carnarvon's statement which contains that denial. (_Cheers._) MR. BALFOUR. I will obtain them as quickly as I can, but it would take me out of the House to do so now. (_An honorable member: "Send for them."_) Mr. GLADSTONE. It is a very dangerous practice to make statements of that kind and importance without the material on which they are founded. (_Ministerial cries of "Oh."_) I affirm that I am in the recollection of the House that whatever inference or interpretation the right honorable gentleman made upon the declarations of Lord Carnarvon, there was not a word in the passage he read which contained, or which approached to containing, a denial of the statement of the honorable member for Cork, that he and Lord Carnarvon were in substantial agreement on the policy of Home Rule. Now I ask the right honorable gentleman what he thinks of another statement made by Lord Carnarvon in the House of Lords, and within the memory of all of us, in which, speaking of the measure of entended government that ought to be granted to Ireland, he said that they ought to meet all the just demands of that country for local self-government, and likewise ought to be directed in some degree towards giving reasonable satisfaction to national aspirations? Does the right honorable gentleman say that he is in favor of giving reasonable satisfaction to national aspirations? On the contrary, it is the very phrase and the very idea which, on no consideration, will he recognize, and it is the phrase and the idea which form the basis of the views of Lord Carnarvon, and here the right honorable gentleman cannot contradict me. Well, I think, having got so far, I may go farther. Lord Carnarvon, being Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and being a member of the Cabinet, or whether he was a member of the Cabinet or not, was absolutely bound to make kown his views to Lord Sailsbury, if not to the Cabinet at large. He did make known his views to Lord Salisbury in the fulfilment of a primary duty. Lord Salisbury continued to repose his confidence in Lord Carnarvon. For months afterwards Lord Carnarvon continued to be Lord Lieutenant. When he retired he did so professedly on account of his health and amid the expressed regrets of his colleagues. Now, sir, we are called separatists. (_Ministerial cheers._) We are denounced as such. (_Renewed Ministerial cheers._) I am glad to have any of my assertions supported by honorable gentlemen opposite, whose approval is conveyed in that semi-articulate manner which they find so congenial. (_Opposition cheers and laughter._) But we are called separatists, and because we wish to give effect to the national aspirations of Ireland within the limits of the Constitution and with supreme regard to the unity of the Empire. (_Ministerial cries of "Oh," and Opposition cheers._) Lord Salisbury, as the head of a Conservative Government, was content to stand before the country, having in Ireland a Lord Lieutenant who was prepared to give satisfaction, reasonable satisfaction, as we are, to national aspirations, and at the same time to give Ireland everything in the way of local self-government that ought to be conceded consistently with the unity of the Empire. (_Opposition cheers._) Now, it appears then that a Tory Lord Lieutenant may dally as he pleases with the sirens of Home Rule. It appears that when a general election is pending, the Prime Minister may regard the entertainment of a Home Rule policy as no object whatever to placing unbounded confidence in a Tory Lord Lieutenant. But when the election is over (_Home Rule cheers_), when the Lord Lieutenant is gone, and when Liberals declare that they desire to meet the national aspirations of Ireland with a reasonable and safe satisfaction, then, forsooth, they are to be denounced as separatists. (_Opposition cheers._) I must say a word upon the entertaining speech of the honorable and gallant member for North Armagh. I was struck, I confess, when, after all his assaults upon us, the honorable gentleman gravely concluded with an argument in favor of law and order, but with an insinuation that his countrymen would not be very much disposed to adopt that doctrine. Well, I don't agree with him about his countrymen, but if we were engaged in an endeavor to show that Irishmen were not sufficiently good to recognize the principles of law and order, undoubtedly the instance to which I should refer would be the honorable gentleman himself. The honorable and gallant gentleman is here, forsooth, to instruct and to educate us on the subject of law and order, while he reserves to himself the right of declaring, and more than once declaring, in this House, as far as I remember--(_Col. Saunderson: "Yes."_) So much the better. All right. (_Laughter and cheers._) He declared that "if Parliament passed ant act for granting to Ireland a carefully guarded portion of the independence she once possessed, he will be the man to resist and to recommend resistance." (_Opposition cheers._) He is dealing with gentlemen below the gangway, and he has the consummate art and the consummate courage to advertise himself as the apostle of law and order. (_Cheers._) Then the honorable member referred to a speech of mine in which I referred to the lamentable murder of Constable Whelehan in the county of Clare. The Chief Secretary was not ashamed in this House, where he could not be answered, to say that I had made adverse comments on the conduct of Whelehan, a man who had lost his life in the service of his country. Mr. BALFOUR. I said it in this House on Friday last, and I say it again. (_Ministerial cheers._) Mr. GLADSTONE. I have no intention of charging the right honorable gentleman with anything which is not true in fact. I am glad he has contradicted me. I did not recollect, for I did not hear it. But it was totally and absolutely untrue. (_Opposition cheers._) Either he had not read what I said, or if he has read it, and the same applies to the honorable and gallant member for North Armagh, they have absolutely misrepresented the purport of the speech they professed to quote. I never named Whelehan except to deplore his death, and to express the hope that his murderers would be punished. In my reference to that speech, there is not a word to show that Whelehan was the man who was the unhappy organ of the police in ministering pecuniary payment to the infamous informer, nor is there one word in all that reference of blame to her Majesty's Government. On the contrary, there is an express declaration that I laid no blame upon her Majesty's Government with reference to the case of Whelehan. Why, then, did I refer to it? On this account: The honorable and gallant gentleman, in the careless way in which he refers to these things, said I must be cognizant of the fact that prices were paid for obtaining information I said at Nottingham; I made no reference at all to the rather difficult question of payment of prices for obtaining information: but what I referred to was the payment of prices, not for obtaining information, but for concocting and concerting crimes. (_Cheers._) After the gradual revelations that were made to us of the mode in which Ireland is administered, according to the traditions of that country, it is perfectly possible that such things may have been done, though I have never heard of them. But when I did learn in that particular instance of that foul and loathsome practice of paying money for such a purpose to a man, as far as we are yet informed, who was to attend a meeting of the criminals for the purpose of putting a hand to the arrangement and the execution of it (_loud cheers_), then I did think it was time to protest in the name of the Liberal party, if not of the whole country, against the practice which, in my opinion, is in itself odious to the last degree, which would not be for a moment tolerated in England, and in reference to which I thought it wise and right to point out that it was dangerous as well as odious, that when in a similar case the population of England had become cognizant of similar practices, they themselves had resorted to the commission of crime for the purpose of marking the detestation with which they regarded it. ("_Hear, hear._") I pass on to the remarks of the right honorable gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and I feel bound to refer to the observation he made during the general debate on the address last week, to what he called the practice of members on this side of the House of making statements outside this House which they would not repeat within it, and especially to his adverse and rather angry comments on tne pacific tone of the speech which I had just delivered. The right honorable gentleman overflows with pugnacious matter. He is young and inexperienced in debate, and bold and able as I confess him to be, I think that when he has been fifty-six years in the service of his country, it is possible that his stock of contentious eagerness may be a little abated. (_Laughter and cheers._) I have many reasons, but if I must give a reason why I was particularly anxious to avoid the needless introduction of contentious or polemical or accusatory matter in speaking on the opening debate on the address. I felt that an Irish debate was pending; and in the second place, the great object I had in view was to assist and to promote the purpose of the Government,--to promote, I will also say, the honor, dignity, and efficiency of this House, by giving what I may call in homely language a good start to the business of the session, by detaching it from everything like controversy. But if the right honorable gentleman laments the uncombative character of that discussion, I think he will derive probably ample satisfaction in the future. There is no fear, I believe, that Irish debate will be wanting in animation, possibly in animosity, so long as the right honorable gentleman continues to be Chief Secretary. (_Opposition cheers and laughter._) The right honorable gentleman even on that occasion found in my pacific speech matter deserving of indignant rebuke. I repeat my lamentations that some of the most difficult and the nicest parts of the law are removed by the operation of the Coercion Act of last year from judges and juries to men whom I termed of an inferior stamp. That was the observation I ventured to make, and the right honorable gentleman was rather wrathful over it. I fully admit that he is a perfect master of _tu quoque_. He said, "Whoever they are, they are the men whom Lord Spencer appointed." In the first place, that is quite inaccurate; and in the second place, if inaccurate, it was totally irrelevant. It is perfectly inaccurate. Mr. BALFOUR. I said that sixty out of seventy-three were appointed mostly by Lord Spencer, or else were the appointments of previous Governments revived by him. Mr. GLADSTONE. And so the right honorable gentleman thinks that what he calls reviving--that is to say not dismissing--is the same thing as appointing. (_"Hear, hear," and laughter._) The gentlemen of whose conduct as resident magistrates I especially complained, were Mr. Eldon, Captain Seagrave, Mr. Cecil Roche, Mr. Meldon, and Mr. Carew. These five, and undoubtedly these are the gentlemen I had specially in view when I spoke of men of an inferior stamp, not one of these was appointed by Lord Spencer. (_Cheers._) But supposing they were, the statement of the right honorable gentleman was absolutely and ludicrously irrelevant. What I was speaking of was not the discharge by the resident magistrates of their ordinary and traditionary duties, but the extraordinary duties which the right honorable gentleman and the Government have insisted in putting upon them. The right honorable gentleman was especially indignant with me, because at a given date in the recess, or before the termination of the session, I telegraphed to some correspondent the words, "Remember Mitchelstown," and that in a speech at Nottingham I had developed my meaning of that phrase with all the force I could. The right honorable gentleman thought fit to point at me the reproach that I was not disposed to maintain here what I have said elsewhere. Now I have referred to my own statement at Nottingham about Mitchelstown, and I can only say I not only adhere to it, but I strengthen it. I never in my life uttered words, or sent words by letter or telegram, which I more rejoice to have used, and am better content to have used, than the words, "Remember Mitchelstown." (_Loud Opposition cheers._) It was not done inconsiderately. It was done considerately, for the sake of Ireland and the country, and for the sake of preventing the enormous mischiefs, probable sufferings, probable bloodshed, and the consequent resistance to the law that might arise in Ireland in consequence of what had occurred at Mitchelstown, and of its adoption and appropriation by the right honorable gentleman. (_Cheers._) What was it? It was this: A legal meeting ("_Hear, hear_") of 4,000 men assembled; the police, under the plea of the common practice of having an official reporter at the meeting, instead of prior communication with those who held it, instead of going to the platform at a point where it was open and accessible, formed a wedge of twenty men, and endeavored by force to drive that wedge into the middle of the crowd. I am here to say that a public meeting is an orderly assembly; that to observe order in a public meeting is part of the law of the land ("_Hear, hear_"); that the driving a wedge into the meeting was an illegality on the part of the police; and that the police who drove it into the crowd were themselves guilty of illegality, and ought to have been given into custody. (_Cheers._) On this deplorable occasion the agents of the law were the breakers of the law, and those breakers of the law, acting in the first instance under subordinate authority, were adopted and sanctioned by the right honorable gentleman, with the full authority of the Government. (_Cheers._) What was the second act of the police? Their wedge was not strong enough; they were pressed back out of the crowd, and it seems to me with perfect propriety and legality, whereupon they brought a large force of police and charged the crowd, because the crowd had not concurred and co-operated in the former illegality. That was a fresh illegality committed by the police. Then violence began; then began the use of batons; then began the use of sticks and cudgels; then began the sufferings of the men in the crowd, and of individual members of the police, on which the right honorable gentleman is eloquent, and which I regret as much as he does. But the police in these two illegalities of attacking and batoning the crowd were defeated. The crowd did not pursue them. (_Cheers._) According to all the information before us, the crowd were recalled, and again took their places in the square. A mere scattering and sprinkling of most probably boys, we know not how and to what extent, were in the street where the police barracks are to be found; and among them, those boys or others, succeeded in breaking three windows of the police barracks. (_Laughter._) Those three windows were exalted and uplifted by the right honorable gentleman into a general attack on the barracks, compelling the police, in self-defence, to fire on the people. In one sense I must say the police did not fire on the people, for no mass of people was there to fire on. I said at Nottingham, and it is the result of all the inquiry I have made, that there was not more than twenty people in the street opposite the barracks, and under these circumstances the police actually fired into the windows of the opposite house, where there were peaceful people, women, and children; and they fired deliberately at individuals, two old men and one boy, whom they destroyed. That I do not hesitate here to denounce--I think I did not use the words at Nottingham--as cruel, wanton, and disgraceful bloodshed (_Loud cheers._) It recalls the period of Lord Sidmouth, and was bloodshed which, so far as I know, has had no example in its wantonness and causelessness since the memorable occasion in Manchester, which is popularly known as the Massacre of Peterloo. (_Cheers._) Now, I have given the right honorable gentlemen my views about Mitchelstown. (_Opposition cheers and derisive Ministerial cheers._) It was time that I should say, "Remember Mitchelstown." Mitchelstown might have become what in one particular class of language is termed a "prerogative instance." The Mitchelstown police, commended by the right honorable gentleman, were held up to the police in Ireland as the pattern which they were to follow. (_Cheers._) They were told they had acted only in self-defence, and the measure and meaning of self-defence, as exhibited at Mitchelstown, I feared, and it was reasonable to fear, would be the meaning and the measure of self-defence on every other occasion, when, by legality or illegality, the police found an opportunity of coming into collision with the people. (_Cheers._) I tell the right honorable gentleman frankly that, in my opinion, he had become, by clear implication, a breaker of the law. (_Cheers._) He had given to the breaking of the law authoritative countenance and approval, and not only so, but he had done it under circumstances where that authoritative approval, conveyed to the mind of the police, would naturally, justly, and excusably, almost necessarily, have pointed out to them that that was to be the model and rule of their conduct in every example of the kind. (_Cheers._) Sir, it was in the interests of law and order that I denounced the conduct of the police. (_Opposition cheers and derisive Ministerial cheers, in which Mr. Balfour joined._) It will be a long time, I think, before he can discover an instance, either on this bench or among any of those who are our friends, in which the law and order of the country, and the security and the lives of the people, had been treated with such recklessness as they then were by the right honorable gentleman and his colleagues. (_Cheers._) I have done my best to inform myself, and in conformity with, I believe, uncontradicted and consentient statements, I contend that the inferences I have drawn from these facts are just inferences, and that it was not only natural but necessary to adopt precautions on the part, I will say, of England, against the fatal imitations which Mitchelstown might have produced, and to take securities for law and order in Ireland, first of all, as I pointed out to the people of England, that these things ought to be watched; and secondly, by making known to the Government, and to their agents and their organs beyond the the Channel, that if such occurrences did happen, they would not pass uncensured. (_Cheers._) I believe I never spoke more useful--I will go further, and say more fruitful--words than when I telegraphed, "Remember Mitchelstown." (_Loud Opposition cheers and derisive Ministerial cheers._) I now come to the statistics of the right honorable gentleman, with reference to boycotting. The Government are particularly stingy in their statistics, but they have given some figures as to boycotting. I do not recollect that boycotting was ever made a portion of Government statistics before. Mr. BALFOUR. We have made statistics before on boycotting. Mr. GLADSTONE. Yes; but I am speaking of the ancient and traditional practice which this Conservative Government are always so indisposed to follow. (_Opposition cheers and laughter._) Statistics of crime deal with facts and matter of record; statistics of boycotting, as far as I understand, are matter of opinion. ("_Hear, hear._") What amounts to boycotting,--what is the test of it? There must be, and will be, cases of harsh and unreasonable persecution under the name of boycotting. It is never to be forgotten, though it is very common to forget it, that when you have a state of things that prevails in Ireland,--old and sore relations of friction between class and class, the sense of still remaining suffering or grievance, and consequent instability of social order,--the criminal elements that will always subsist in every community (though I thank God to say that I believe they subsist in Ireland more narrowly than almost anywhere else), I will find their way into social questions, and undoubtedly you will have bad, and very bad, cases exhibited in matters such as these. Therefore the exhibition of particular instances is a very unsafe and insufficient test. They ought to be quoted with great accuracy. The right honorable gentleman has been defending to-night his chosen instruments of the present year. ("_Hear, hear._") Yes, but he was met immediately with point blank contradictions on matters of fact, and at present I shall enter no further into that question, which evidently must be made the subject of further examination. ("_Hear, hear._") But the right honorable gentleman gave us last year a case of boycotting which was touching to the last degree,--the case of the Galway midwife. (_Cheers and laughter._) Does the right honorable gentleman say that the instance he selected last year--the instance of the Galway midwife--was well founded? (_Cheers._) Mr. BALFOUR. Absolutely correct in every particular. (_Ministerial cheers._) Mr. GLADSTONE. All I can say is, that here likewise the right honorable gentleman has been met with a point blank contradiction. ("_Hear, hear._") But what are we to say of boycotting statistics as a basis for legislation or for congratulation on the rising felicity of a country, when the right honorable gentleman, out of the thousands of cases he has had before him, can only select for us two upon which he is at once met by having his facts challenged, and his conclusions falsified? (_Cheers._) Let me point out this. My right honorable friend, the member for Newcastle, well remarked on a former occasion, that there is a chapter of statistics which, if the right honorable gentleman had chosen to enter it, would have been far more to the purpose on this occsion than these he has laid before us, though they are not wholly without value; and that is the statistics of evicted or derelict land. ("_Hear, hear._") There could be no difficulty whatever for the right honorable gentleman to have called for returns of the acreage on farms, which, in different counties in Ireland, either all over Ireland or in selected counties, had been derelict a year, two years, or three years ago, in the time of Lord Spencer and down to the present date, and had shown us how, under the recovered liberty of the Irish people, about which he boasts, the acreage of these derelict farms had gradually been diminished. The right honorable gentleman has not only avoided but shirked that question (_cheers_), and he shirked it because he substituted for any attempt at a rational answer to my right honorable friend, a jeremiad upon the state of feeling which he thought might be produced in Ireland when he found my right honorable friend using language which, in his opinion, was capable of being interpreted into sympathy with the operations of the Land League. ("_Hear, hear._") A more unjust charge never was made. (_Opposition cheers_). But, just or unjust, it has nothing to do with the question. The right honorable gentleman found himself, and the Queen has been instructed to found herself in her speech, and the organs of the Government have based themselves in their articles, upon the assertion that liberty, as they phrase it, is returning to the people of Ireland. If that liberty were returning, it would be exhibited in a proportionate diminution of derelect farms. (_"Hear, hear," from Mr. Balfour._) Then why have you not shown it? (_Opposition cheers._) There is one part of the statistics that we have read with increased satisfacfaction, that is the diminution in the amount of crime, limited as that diminution is. I thought when the right honorable gentleman constructed his artificial return, he had some very special purpose in view. It is the first time that I have known the month of January do such good service, and when I look into the return, I find out the cause: The return of offences reported to the constabulary are reported under three major heads,--offences against the person, offences against property, and offences against the public peace. With regard to the offences against the person and property, I find that if I take the five months only of last year, after the passing of the Coercion Act, and compare them with the corresponding five months of the year before, there is no diminution whatever. ("_Hear, hear._") But in the month of January there was in offences against the person a sudden, a most well-timed, and fortunate, and rapid decline, for they fell from ten to three. The right honorable gentleman drew January into his service; by means of that declension, he was able to show a diminution of six per cent of offences against person and property. I am extremely glad of it, and wish there had been a great deal more. The offences which have sensibly and really diminished are those against the public peace, and I rejoice that they have diminished. But why? The right honorable gentleman stands up and says that the cause of the diminution is the Coercion Act, but I think I have shown that whereas the diminution of crime proper, as directed against person and property, is an exceedingly small diminution, the diminution of offences against the public peace is much larger. I make it out to be that that they fell in these six months from three hundred and twenty-four to two hundred and thirty-eight, or a diminution of about twenty-five per cent. These are exactly the offences that would diminish under the operation of a conciliatory Land Act. (_Opposition cheers._) The right honorable gentleman has the boldness to say that we, on this side of the House, never gave any credit to the Land Act. Why, sir, the Land Act, grossly imperfect as it was, culpably imperfect in the matter of arrears (_cheers_), contained a great and important provision which the member for Cork in vain had demanded in the September before, which, if it had then been granted, you probably never might have heard of the Plan of Campaign. (_Cheers._) It was denounced to the House by the Government of that day as being a provision totally incompatible with that morality, forsooth, on which right honorable gentlemen prided themselves. (_Laughter._) I speak of the provision which, under a great responsibility, her Majesty's Government, though far too late, introduced as a most valuable gift. It was quite evident that, so far as offences against the public peace were concerned, the reopening of the judicial rents, and the concession made to leaseholders, could not but operate in the most powerful manner in favor of that diminution. (_Cheers._) There are two other questions to be considered, viz., how the law has been administered, and how the administration of the law has succeeded. Has the administration of the law been of a character to reconcile, or has it been of a character to estrange, or has it been calculated to teach respect for the Government, or to bring the Government into increasing hatred or contempt? I am not going into details of prison treatment, but I am going to touch the case of two members of Parliament, with reference to a matter other than prison treatment. I am not cognizant by direct and personal knowledge of the facts, but I have received them from quarters thought to be thoroughly informed. Unless I had so received them, I would not think of laying them before the House. Mr. Sheehy, a member of this House, has been arrested and remanded without bail. It was a misfortune which might have been taken into consideration at the time that his wife was ill of a disease known as scarlatina, or scarlet fever. He was offered bail by the Government if he would promise not to open his lips in public. By Government--that, I presume, means the Executive Government. I want to know what title the resident magistrate had to make such a condition as that. (_Opposition cheers._) Most dangerous is this introduction of the new discretion of resident magistrates,--a discretion of imposing new restrictions upon prisoners. Why is it necessary to impose these conditions? If Mr. Sheehy chose to commit an offence while he was under bail, he could be taken up for that, and I want to hear from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or some member of the Government, a distinct account of the new doctrine that those conditions may be imposed, which are written, I believe, neither in law nor in custom, which have been set in action in Ireland, but which in England, we know, are not heard of, and would not be heard of or tolerated for a moment. (_Cheers._) Mr. Sheehy, I must say, very properly entirely declined to accede to that condition, and he was tried and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. He appealed, as he was entitled to do, and bail was accepted for his appearance at quarter sessions, so that he would have been able to obey the almost sacred domestic form of tie which was at the time incumbent upon him. But as he was going out of the door of the court he was arrested again on another charge, and brought away immediately to a distant part of the country, his wife being in the very crisis of her illness, and her life seriously threatened. On the second charge he was sentenced, not to three months, which would have enabled him to appeal, but to one months imprisonment, (_Nationalist cheers_), depriving him of the power of appeal. Mr. CHANCE. Which had been promised by the right honorable gentleman to the House. Mr. GLADSTONE. The right honorable gentleman, the Chief Secretary, is perfectly aware of that promise. He is perfectly aware that in the debate last year he was charged by my right honorable friend near me (Sir W. Harcourt) with breech of faith with regard to that promise, and to that charge of breach he has remained, I must say, very patiently silent. (_Opposition cheers._) Now, is that the sort of administration of the act of last year which her Majesty's Government are prepared to defend? (_Opposition cheers._) Is it thus that Ireland is to be reconciled? (_Nationalist cheers._) Is it thus that the Irish nation is to be converted? Is it in this House of Commons, the most ancient and the noblest of all the temples of freedom, that such operations as this are to be either passed over in silence or defended by those engaged in them? (_Loud Opposition cheers._) I cannot understand the extreme severity of treatment in certain particulars, if I am rightly informed, meted out to this gentleman; but I wish to keep for the present to what relates most distinctly to the administration of the law as apart from prison discipline, and in that view alone I would mention the case of Alderman Hooper and others. Alderman Hooper was sentenced for publishing reports of the National League branches that had been suppressed, although, as I understand, there are plenty of these reports published within the cognizance of the Government, with respect to which those who publish them have not been sentenced and have not been proceeded against. Well, Mr. Alderman Hooper was proceeded against, and was sentenced for publishing these reports for a term of one month. He would have had there no right of appeal, but was again simultaneously charged for publishing another report; another sentence of one month was pronounced upon him. These sentences, though cumulative with regard to him, were not cumulative with regard to the right to appeal. (_Cheers._) Therefore, while the right honorable gentleman professed to give the right of appeal for all sentences above a month, by this clever device he has contrived to inflict upon Alderman Hooper, a member of this House, an imprisonment of two months, and yet that Alderman Hooper should have no right of appeal. And there again, sir, I say I am sorry to use strong words, but I am tempted to do so outside this House, and I will do so in this House. (_Opposition cheers_) This was explained to be not only a constitutional violence, not only a clear evasion of the spirit of the law, but an incredible meanness (_loud Opposition cheers_), a meanness in the method of administering the Crimes Act, and a spirit is displayed which, if the Irish people had only a hundredth part of the courage, the pluck, and perseverance which they had shown through seven centuries, could only tend to alienate and estrange them from those who attempt so to govern them. (_Opposition cheers._) The word that I have thus used I am going to use again. (_Ministerial laughter._) I am very desirous to invite the concurrence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the propriety of my application of it, or whether he considers that nobleness would be a better description of the circumstances which I am about to describe. Without knowing what I am going to say, the right honorable gentleman accepts my challenge, and, therefore, I am justified in exhibiting a specimen of the nobleness with which this administration of Ireland is conceived and executed. I have before me a list of six people prosecuted, not for publishing reports of suppressed branches, but for selling them. Their names are: Macnamara, at Tralee; Mahony, Tralee; Molloy, Tralee; Brosman, Killarney; Green, at Killarney, also; and at Ennis, another Macnamara. (_Irish honorable members: "This same man twice."_) Two of the cases were dismissed, but four of them were sent to prison,--one for a month with hard labor, another for a month with hard labor, another for two months with hard labor, and another released on a promise not to do it again. Again this method of interfering with private freedom by arbitrary restriction, governed by no law, justified by no usage, devised by this spirit of Irish administration (_cheers_), and with respect to which I want to know how far this importation into the law and jurisprudence of the country is to be carried under the auspices of her Majesty's Government. Well, now, sir, I want to know from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he is to speak to-night, does he see nobleness in the prosecution of these men? ("_Hear, hear._") Does he think it rational to prosecute these men? (_Cheers._) Does he think it right to require of the vender of a newspaper that he should read its contents? Does he think it right to require that he should have formed his judgment of those contents, that he should have made up his mind whether the proceedings described in the newspaper were legal or illegal? and is that the responsibility which he thinks ought to be imposed on the vender of a newspaper under pain of being condemned to one month or two months' imprisonment? This administration of the Crimes Act, to which I must advisedly apply, until I am better instructed, the term "meanness," has yet, at any rate, had no defence offered in the course of this debate. (_Cheers._) The remaining point of the administration of the law on which I will comment is of a different character. It is with respect to exclusive dealing. It will be remembered that we, in our charges against the bill last year, did not say that it justified the proceedings of exclusive dealing. I do not believe the act does justify them; but this I am bound to say, that the interpretation of the act appears to be deliberately applied in a variety of instances for the punishment of simple exclusive dealing. The right honorable gentleman ought to know, if he does not, for I delivered the speech in his hearing, that when I spoke of the dismissal of curates by rectors and the deprivation of their daily bread, that men with wives and children were to be turned out upon the world, I was not, as the right honorable gentlemen charged me, comparing them with cases of conspiracy, but I was comparing them with cases of exclusive dealing, which, while they are practised freely both in Ireland by the opponents of the Nationalists, and in England by the party of the right honorable gentleman (_Opposition cheers_), unpunished by the law, I believe it is stretching and straining even the deplorable and shameful act of last session to make it include such cases. Now, sir, I wish to mention eight cases, but first I find I was quite wrong in saying that two of the cases for selling newspapers had been dismissed. They were not. The defendants were released upon promise, and the other four punished. I have now before me eight cases of exclusive dealing, two of which were dismissed, but in all of which the Government proceeded. In one of these cases a man was punished with a month's hard labor for refusing to shoe a horse for a boycotted person; another, for refusing to sell groceries to a boycotted person; a third, for refusing to shoe a horse; and a fourth, for declining to deal with emergency men. Those are all cases of exclusive dealing. They are not cases of conspiracy. In fact, these men have been punished for doing in Ireland that which would be perfectly lawful in England, and which, I believe, is perfectly lawful even in Ireland, under any fair interpretation of the act. Now, has the act succeeded, or it has failed? I do not think gentlemen will object to the proposition that its real object was to put down the National League and the Plan of Campaign. Now I come again to the speech of the honorable member for East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien) which, I venture to say, was a memorable speech. (_Cheers_). To him, as I have never had the privilege of private or personal communication, I will say publicly in this House that though, as he says, imprisonment under the condition he describes is a hard and severe thing, which drives the iron into the soul of a man and leaves him such that he hardly can be again what he was before, yet I trust that the right honorable gentleman has derived some consolation and encouragement to persevere, at least, in lawful and patriotic efforts for setting right the wrongs of his country. I hope he has derived it from the enthusiastic reception that he encountered in this House and out of it, and, I will add, for the credit of honorable gentlemen opposite, from the respectful, and, to some extent, I think, the symathetic silence with which they also accorded him a kindly reception. (_Cheers._) The speech of the honorable member was of an importance which has not in the smallest degree been appreciated by the Chief Secretary. The right honorable gentleman has argued the case in his old manner; and whereas the honorable gentleman charged him with having said that he pleaded ill-health against the prison dress, what appears is that the Chief Secretary says that the honorable member had sheltered himself by ill-health against the demand to wear prison dress. For that statement of the right honorable gentleman, as amended and admitted, there is not a shadow of foundation. (_Irish cheers._) That you cannot contradict, although you have plenty of myrmidons, and, perhaps, some minions. You cannot show that either by word or act, the honorable member entered this ignominious plea. Why has the right honorable gentleman passed by in silence another personal statement of the honorable member, which I tell him he had no right to pass by, and with respect to which I will now put it to him and the House, that after he has had an opportunity of making Lord Salisbury's defence, he has utterly failed to tender any defence at all? (_Cheers._) Mr. BALFOUR. He did not require any. Mr. GLADSTONE. That is just the matter I am going to argue, and we will see how it stands. The statement of the member for Cork was to this effect, that Lord Salisbury in one of his speeches, after some jocose references which exhibit the tase of the Prime Minister (_Opposition cheers_), and which are a great deal too common in speeches proceeding from such quarters, held up to British indignation the illegality of the conduct of the member for East Cork, and stated that it had led to disturbances, to attacks upon persons which even placed life in danger, and to gross outrages. In reply, the honorable gentleman stated that his intervention at Mitchelstown produced no act of violence whatever, but on the contrary averted it. The Chief Secretary has not been able to controvert that statement. (_Cheers._) Not being able to controvert it, he has passed it by. He has neither the courage to prosecute, nor the generosity to withdraw. (_Cheers._) Lord Salisbury made an allegation of a gross and grievous character, which his nephew in this House cannot say a word in support of. Now, however, he says that that allegation of Lord Salisbury, injurious as it is, and remaining without a shadow of defence, needs no apology. (_Cheers._) I hold that until Lord Salisbury can show that he was justified in the broad and most important statement that he made, a personal apology from him is due to the member for East Cork. (_Opposition cheers._) This is a personal matter, but it is no slight thing that charges of this kind should be made by the Prime Minister, and that then, forsooth, we should have a shuffling and a shrinking from any attempt to deal with them. With regard to the act for which the member for East Cork was put in prison, the honorable gentleman, has pointed out the attendant circumstances and the consequences of his act; but the right honorable gentleman instead of admitting the virtue of those pleas, generalized his charge, and said it was the habitual and settled practice of the Irish members to do these things. Why, then, did they select for prosecution this instance, in which the member for Cork is able to state, without contradiction, that his intervention, whatever judgment may be given on the naked question of its legality, not only saved tenants from distress, but the public peace from disorder and outrage? (_Cheers._) Now I wish to call attention to the most important part of the statement that I am presuming to make. When I heard the address read from the chair, I said that the heart of it was the challenging paragraph; and when I heard the speech of the member for East Cork last night, I said to myself, "Never did I hear so challenging a speech." The assertions of the member for East Cork opened up the whole question, and gave to the Government the opportunity by contradiction, by grappling with those assertions, of establishing their case and of showing that their designs against the National League and the Plan of Campaign were, at least, in process of accomplisment. Here I must say a word about the Plan of Campaign. It is an interference with the law. It has, no doubt, substituted its authority for the law. Far be it from me to assert that necessarily such a plan in the abstract is an evil. But it is something more. It is a sign that the law does not do its work. It is a sign that the conditions of legality do not exist. It is a warning to set about restoring them. This is not the only place where extra legal combinations and anti-legal combinations have been brought into existence for the purpose of mitigating social disorder. Having cited several of such organizations, such as the Swing organization, the Camorra society in Italy, and Lynch law in America, the right honorable gentleman said, these, all of them, are in their nature evils, but such is the imperfection of man and the imperfection of his institutions, that sometimes things that are evils in themselves are the cure of greater evils, and in respect of the Plan of Campaign, what has to be shown, is that without it Ireland would have been happier and more tranquil than it is at present. Having recapitulated Mr. O'Brien's six statements as to the beneficial effects of the plan, Mr. Gladstone continued: Now, whereas we now appear to know that there are about forty cases settled under the Plan of Campaign, there is no case in which payments made under the plan have been censured as rapacious or unreasonable by a single Land Commission. Now, be it recollected that I am not arguing upon the propriety of the plan. I am arguing upon its success. I have shown that there is not the smallest shred of contradiction against any one of those allegations, and that, taken as they stand, they show that at this moment, notwithstanding the boasts of the administration, the Plan of Campaign stands in Ireland entire, successful, and triumphant. Since it has been under the proscription of the right honorable gentleman for a certain time, it appears, according to the facts before us, to weigh considerably heavier than it did before he had anything to do with it, and well this illustrates the success of the right honorable gentleman's policy. (_Home Rule cheers._) There is one still more important point. The right honorable gentleman made no attempt to connect the National League or the Plan of Campaign with the commission of crime and outrage. The Attorney-General did make an attempt, and what was the narrow basis of that attempt? Why, it was one upon which a tight-rope dancer might perhaps have found a footing, but from which men with only ordinary means of locomotion must have fallen. (_Laughter._) He got hold of two crimes,--one of the Plan of Campaign, and one of the National League, and how did he establish the connection? Intuitively, out of his inner consciousness, for as he could not see the causes of the crimes, he thought it reasonable to put them down to these institutions, and, to prevent jealousy, he gave one crime to each. (_Laughter._) What course was open to the honorable and learned gentleman? What course remains open to the Government if they intend, as they ought deliberately and seriously, to show a connection between crime and outrage, and these considerable powers which they are laboring to put down? There are two courses they might pursue. If there were grounds for this imputation, the Attorney-General ought to have searched the evidence in all the numerous prosecutions the Government have instituted, and to have shown from that evidence that witnesses testified, and that judicial authority acknowledged, facts which tended to show that a connection existed between crime and the National League, and crime and the Plan of Campaign. Not the smallest attempt was made by the honorable and learned gentleman or by the Government to do anything of the kind. The reason was that they could find no such evidence, and I give no credit to the Plan of Campaign or to the National League for the absence of such evidence, because to encourage crime on the part of either, or to tolerate it, would be suicidal to them. (_Cheers._) The right honorable gentleman might have pursued the course which I took in 1881, when arguing the unhappy bill of that year (unhappy as to the nature of its provisions), which was designed to meet what was at the time a most threatening evil. I argued that the Land League, as i operated at that time, was an organization imparting danger to the country. I showed, or tried to show, that wherever you traced the footsteps of the League, you traced the increase of crime. The Attorney-General did not pursue that course, because he knew it would result in total failure. Therefore I think we have evidence before us, so far as it goes, and it goes pretty far, to show that as regards these great objects which the Government have had in view, of putting down the National League and the Plan of Campaign, their efforts have resulted in total failure. Whether it be the Land Act, with its beneficial or imperfect provisions, or whether it be that dawning of the rays of hope, that beginning of the knitting together of the heart of one nation to the heart of the other, the diminution of crime is a matter of rejoicing, and we wish it were greater, we congratulate the Government, and we heartily hope that in the hands of beneficial and benign causes it may continue to decrease. Well, such is the retrospect. What is the prospect? What is to come? Will the Government continue still to deal with signs, and never to look at the substance, to legislate against symptoms and manifestations and never to touch the disease, to try and prune off from the rankly luxurious vegetation, here a twig and there a leaf, and never to ask themselves whether the proper purpose and design is not to bring it out by the roots? There are many things which are said by the Government in debate, but there is one thing which they and their supporters most rarely say. I think, as far as my recollection and experience goes, I may almost venture to go further, and assert they never say,--I never had heard them express a confidence that they will be able to establish a permanent resistance to the policy of Home Rule. (_Opposition cheers._) I am glad not to be met with adverse challenges when I say this. If this be a question of time at all, then it is most important to consider what is the right time. I don't disguise any more than the honorable member for East Cork the strength of the combinations that are opposed to us. They are very strong indeed; they have nearly the whole wealth of the country; they have nearly the whole of the high station of the country; they have most of the elements of social strength which abound in them; they have with these all the things which belong to wealth, to rank, and to station in this country, which is vast in its amount, they are very strong, and by their strength they may secure delay, but delay in a subject of this kind, a controversy of nations, is not an unmixed good. It has its dangers and its inconveniences. You are happily free at this moment from the slighest shadow of foreign complications. You have at this moment the constitutional assent of Ireland, pledged in the most solemn form, for the efficacy of the policy which I am considering. But the day may come when your condition may not be so happy. I do not expect, any more than I desire, these foreign complications, but still it is not wise wholly to shut them out. What I fear is rather this, that if resistance to the national voice of Ireland be pushed too far, those who now guide the mind of that nation may gradually lose their power, and may be supplanted and displaced by ruder and more dangerous spirits. These very institutions, the National League and the Plan of Campaign, which would vanish into thin air upon a rational settlement of the Irish difficulty, might with their power drive such deep roots into the soil, they might acquire such a mastery, if not over the understandings, over the passions of the people, for passions in these cases will always be let loose, they might acquire a strength which may enable them hereafter to offer serious hindrances to government which is good. I venture to express a hope that there will be deeper reflection upon these matters. In the present administration of Ireland, it is too plain you are endeavoring to do what the language of Lord Salisbury shows is too clearly your intention, what has long been endeavored, but under circumstances wholly different. For seven hundred years, with Ireland practically unrepresented, with Ireland prostrate, with the forces of this great and powerful island absolutely united, you tried and failed to do that which you are now trying to do with Ireland fully represented in your Parliament, with Ireland herself raised to a position which is erect and strong, and with the mind of the people so devoted that if you look to the elections of the last twelve months you find that the majority of the people have voted in favor of the concession of Home Rule. If this is to continue, I would venture to ask gentlemen opposite under such circumstances as these, and with the experience you have, is your persistence in this system of administration, I will not say just, but is it wise, is it politic, is it hopeful, is it conservative? (_Cheers._) Now, at length, bethink yourselves of a change, and consent to administer, and consent finally to legislate for Ireland and for Scotland in conformity with the constitutionally expressed wishes and the profound and permanent convictions of the people; and ask yourselves whether you will at last consent to present to the world the spectacle of a truly and not a nominally United Empire. (_Loud Opposition cheers._) MR. O'BRIEN'S SPEECH. Mr. W. O'BRIEN rose amid loud and prolonged cheers from the Irish members, and speaking for the first time in this House since his release from Tullamore Jail, said: All the speeches which have been made in support of the Government have seemed to follow the keynote struck by the Chief Secretary. They all appeared to be more or less artfully designed to draw angry retorts from these benches. It is one of our national faults to be very ready to resent injustice, and a most generous use our opponents have made of that characteristic. ("_Hear, hear._") The whole policy of our opponents towards Ireland, and the whole object of the powerful London newspapers, seems to be to get at the worst side of Irish and of English character, and to sting and goad us into doing things which will put new life into national prejudices that are expiring in spite of you. (_Opposition cheers._) Irishmen and Englishmen are becoming only too united for your purpose. Yours is a noble ambition! But you have failed in Ireland, and you will fail, I promise you, in this House also. There was a time when we came here with our hand against every man's, and every man's hand against us. We expected no quarter, and to the best of our ability we gave none. It seemed to no purpose to struggle against the tremendous and cruel forces arrayed against us; but that is all at an end forever, thanks to the right honorable member for Mid-Lothian. (_Cheers._) We have come to this House no longer as enemies among enemies. We count ourselves Ishmaelites no longer in this House, nor in this land of England. We are now among allies and friends who were not ashamed nor afraid to stand by our side and by the side of our people in many a bitter hour of trial and calumny last year. (_Opposition cheers._) We come here now among a people whose consciences, I believe, have been deeply stirred by the sufferings of our unfortunate people; and though we are confronted by a hostile majority, callous to those sufferings, we know that that majority does not represent Scotland and Wales. (_Opposition cheers._) We believe that it does not even represent England. (_Renewed Opposition cheers, and counter Ministerial cheers._) It is a majority obtained by foul means and upon representations which have turned out to be utterly false. We know that it is a majority who, two years ago, were not ashamed to receive their offices at the hands of the men whom they are now libelling in England and torturing in Ireland. (_Loud Opposition cheers._) We have no respect for that majority. I doubt whether in their secret hearts many of them have much respect for themselves. ("_Hear, hear._") I know very well that they are extremely ill at ease. We believe, as I say, that we are winning. (_Cheers._) The right honorable gentleman opposite (the Chief Secretary) has failed in Ireland. (_Home Rule cheers._) He has failed to smash our organization. He has failed to break the spirit of our people. He has failed to degrade us, I won't say in the eyes of our countrymen, for that would be absurd, but in the eyes of every honest man within these three realms. He has failed in every one of those calculations in which he indulged so confidently last autumn. I shall prove before I sit down that failure is written on every clause and upon every provision of this act, abject failure, discomfiture, and disgrace. I shall be able to prove that sorely as our people have been tried and wronged, that they have managed to survive one of the most horrible Coercion Acts that has ever been directed against human liberty: that they have been able to crush and baffle it at every point, and that without one deed that they look upon with shame, but by sheer force of an incomparable national feeling. (_Cheers._) Now, in the first place, I shall try to deal very shortly with my own case; and if I refer to it at all, it is, not in order to notice the coarse sneers of the honorable member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell),--I do not think it would be as parliamentary as it is true to say malignant sneers ("_Hear, hear_"),--I think it possible that before very long those sneers may be answered in the only way they deserve, by the electors of South Tyrone,--it is because I recognize that I am the very worst parliamentary criminal under this act. I am the only one who could have been proceeded against under the ordinary common law, with the shadow of a chance of conviction. Every colleague of mine who has been punished is being punished for new and statutable offences for which no jury in the world would convict under the ordinary law. The point I press upon the House is that if I can justify my offence, then I say, with a thousand times more force, the conviction of every one of my colleagues is an outrage upon justice, and their treatment in prison is an indelible disgrace to the man who planned it. I find that foul misrepresentation has been resorted to to mislead and to deceive the English public as to the offence for which I was sentenced. Within the last week I have been reading the papers, and I am sorry to find that Lord Salisbury was not above stooping to encourage and to lead this attempt most unfairly and untruly to poison the English mind against me. He made a speech at Oxford, in which he indulged in flouts and gibes at my own humble expense. I do not complain of that. It is not the first time that he has been accused of making flouts and gibes at the expense of persons with whom he was more intimately allied than he is with me. (_Opposition cheers and laughter._) But here is how this great nobleman describes my case to an English audience. He says, "What is there in the case of Mr. O'Brien to make him a martyr?" And then he goes on with his creditable witticisms. He says, "I do not refer to his small clothes. (_Laughter._) Their vicissitudes would furnish a theme for an epic (_rewewed laughter_), and I hope an Irish bard will arise worthy of the subject. (_Continued laughter._) But taking the man apart from his clothes." (_Roars of laughter; Ministerial cheers._) I notice that your cheers do not rise to a roar. (_Opposition cheers._) I do not answer these remarks. The noble lord went on, "What is there to excite the sympathy of the loyal subjects of England? He broke the law; he incited others to break the law, and recommended that the men who were endeavoring to collect just debts should be met with violence. In consequence of his recommendation, they were met with violence. They were scalded with hot water, and some of them were brought next to death's door. What is there to excite the sympathy of the loyal subjects of England?" (_Cries of "Nothing."_) Now I shall tell you briefly the circumstances under which my advice was given, and the results of that advice. I will ask any candid man in England, after he has heard me, whether that speech of Lord Salisbury is not calculated to convey to the average Englishman an impression, so false, so misleading, that I am afraid I should be obliged to travel beyond the region of parliamentary epithets to characterize it. Now, on the 2d of August, this House had, practically speaking, passed the Land Bill, enabling over a thousand people of Mitchelstown, who were leaseholders, to have their rents revised. On the 8th of August, word reached me that the police and the military were gathering in Mitchelstown to carry out an eviction campaign. The effect of that campaign would have been to forestall all the operations of the Land Bill, and, practically speaking, to defeat the intentions of Parliament, and to fling these poor people naked upon the world before the relief, which was actually entering the door, could reach them. (_Opposition cheers._) That was technically legal for the landlord for a few days longer, but I hold that if ever there was a crime committed against society, it was that which was being attempted the day I went down to Mitchelstown. Well, but what was to be done? If the right honorable baronet, the late member for West Bristol (Sir M. Hicks-Beach), were still Chief Secretary, at all events, in his early manner, we might have had some hope that the Queen's troops would not have been made accomplices in such an act. On the day I reached Mitchelstown, on the appeal of these poor people, I found that evictions had already been carried out on the non-residential holdings, where there was no possibility of resistance. Ah! It is an old story in Ireland. No mercy for the weak who can make no resistance, no scruple about perpetrating a wrong when it can be done in the dark. (_Home Rule cheers._) That was the bitter thought which passed through my mind that day, when these poor people, my own constituents, came to me in helplessness and despair, to know what was to be done to save them from the ruin that was impending. There was just one hope for these people in all the world, and it was this. The Northwich election was pending (_Opposition cheers_), and the Irish evictions were an awkward topic for a Tory candidate. The stories of Glenbeigh and Bodyke were beginning to horrify the English mind. I knew that Tory statesmen would not scruple to lend troops if it could be done without commotion, but I thought they might hesitate, lest they should lose the Northwich election. I had not a moment to consult anybody, and absolutely on my own responsibility, and on the spur of the moment, I did there and then, in the open square of Mitchelstown, and in the hearing of a number of policemen, tell the people if, under these special circumstances, the evictions were carried out before the Land Bill, which was almost law, did become law, it would be no outrage of the law, and that they would be justified before God and man in defending their homes by every honest means. (_Cheers._) I might have been right, or I might have been wrong. I have no doubt that technically it was illegal for me to save the people, as it was legal for the landlords in a few days to ruin them. Technically speaking, I dare say, it would be an evasion of the law to hold the arm of an executioner if the executioner and I knew that a reprieve was actually arriving. That was precisely the case with these poor people. The reprieve was coming, and the reprieve has come. (_Cheers._) Whether I was right or wrong in law, the result proved that I did not miscalculate the statesmanship and the morality of the Tory Government. What happened? The moment that it became evident that those eviction scenes would ring throughout England, the eviction campaign was abandoned. The very day I made that speech in Mitchelstown, all was peace with the tenants. Not another eviction took place, and Captain Plunkett, who came down to superintend the eviction campaign, remained, I am glad to say, and proud to say, only to turn his energies to getting up a prosecution against me. Not a single eviction has taken place there from that day to this; not an act of violence has been committed; not a blow has been struck; not a single hair has been injured of any police officer or bailiff in consequence of that speech of mine. Not one; and yet Lord Salisbury is not ashamed to say what he did. What was the result? That those poor tenants, who but for our action--but for the action of John Mandeville and myself--would have been beggared and homeless men, were able to take advantage of the Land Act, such as it was, while we were in prison. A Land Sub-Commission, carefully chosen, was sent down to the Mitchelstown estate to prophesy against us, and to prove the guilt and the dishonesty of the Plan of Campaign. But they could not do it. These picked Tory officials, two of them convicted rack-renters, were obliged to declare that these poor tenants were entitled to remain in their homes, and on lower terms and at a lower rent than had been demanded. (_Loud cheers._) What has happened since? The landlord has actually taken refuge from the judgment of even a Tory Land Commission in the moderation of the Plan of Campaign. Three days ago my honorable friend and collegue, the member for South Tipperary, signed, sealed, and delivered a treaty which secures these poor people safely to their homes. This is the transaction as to which Lord Salisbury is not ashamed to say that I "recommended that the men who were employed by the Crown in the recovery of just debts should be met with violence, and that in consequence, some were maltreated and scalded and brought to death's door." (_Opposition, cries of "Shame."_) The fact is, that not a single act of violence took place in any way on the estate after my speech. But justice was secured to those people and their children in their homes. (_Cheers._) If there is anybody who has reason to blush at the name of Mitchelstown, and to remember Mitchelstown apart from the blood that was shed there, I should think it is not I, but her Majesty's Government. They had neither the humanity to forbid these evictions, nor the courage to persevere with them. They superintended and sanctioned them as long as there was any prospect of resistance; they had the cowardice to abandou them the moment they threatened to become inconvenient to a Tory candidate, and they had the incredible meanness, while my hands were bound in prison, to present a story to the English people, in a false and untruthful guise, in order to reconcile Englishmen to having me treated worse than a thief or a cutthroat, for saving my own constituents from the fate which now the Land Commissioners and everybody on this earth acknowledge would have been a most unmerited and a most awful calamity. I won't weary the House by going into all the miserable circumstances, all the foul play, and the violence and the indecencies that were resorted to against us. Unfortunately they are common-place and every-day occurrences in Ireland, through the infamous tribunals you have set up. I certainly am not going to enter into any recital of the miserable little prison torments and iniquities that were employed to give us pain and humiliation, and to besmirch the character of the Irish representatives in the eyes of the people of England and Ireland. I think we can afford to pass these things by. I believe that our opponents are not all so lost to generous and manly sentiments as not to feel ashamed rather than exultant about the Chief Secretary's exploits. There is another class of opponents. I am sorry to think that men who are capable of inflicting pain of this description are quite capable of deriving a still keener pleasure in knowing that the torments have told, and that their victims smart under their wounds. I cannot gratify them, for the simple reason that I do not feel wounded. I do not feel in the least degraded. I rather suspect that the right honorable gentleman, under his jaunty bearing, has his conscience not quite so easy as mine. I confess that I did feel keenly when in prison a letter which the right honorable gentleman published to a Mr. Armitage, not making any honest charge against me, but conveying a stealthy and loathsome insinuation that I sheltered myself under the plea of illness from being forced to wear prison dress. I challenge the right honorable gentleman to refer to any one of the three official doctors who examined me, for one tittle, I will not say of foundation, but even of countenance, for such an assertion. (_Loud cheers._) Here we are now face to face. (_Great cheering from the Opposition._) I challenge him in defence of his own character, for it is his own character that is at stake (_cheers_), to appeal to any one of those three officials to give him the slightest countenance. ("_Hear, hear._") I have said I was angry about it when in prison, but since reading the letter over fully, I am angry no longer; I confess it would be an ample vengeance, if I were a much more vindictive man than I am, for a statesman who had any reputation to lose, to pen such a letter. (_Cheers._) The letter conveyed a hideous and cowardly imputation against a man whose mouth was shut. (_Cheers._) That letter breathed in every sentence of it the temper of a beaten and an angry man (_cheers_),--I was going to say, of an angry woman (_laughter and cheers_), but I don't want to say it, because it would be a gross libel on a gentle and tender sex. ("_Hear, hear._") From all I have been able to learn in England since, I feel that it is no longer necessary for us to defend ourselves to the English people. (_Cheers._) I feel there is not a Tory of the fifth or sixth magnitude, who really in his heart believes for one instant that Irish members are such poor creatures as to cry out against the appearance of a prison. (_Cheers._) The honorable member for Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell) said that we attempted to set up a distinction between members of Parliament and the peasants, our comrades and friends who are convicted under the act. There is not a shadow or a tittle of foundation for that statement. ("_Hear, hear._") We have claimed nothing for ourselves as members of Parliament that we don't claim equally for every man convicted under the summary clauses of the act; for if he is a criminal, there is no reason why he should not be tried before the ordinary tribunal. ("_Hear, hear._") We do not ask poor men to make a hard fight harder by resistance to prison rules; but if we win, they shall win as well as ourselves. ("_Hear, hear._") Our position simply this: You are perfectly welcome to treat us to all the punishments that your courts of law prescribe for the very vilest miscreant in society,--the plank bed, or bread-and-water diet-solitary chnfinement, or deprivation of books and writing materials; you are perfectly welcome to heap every physical degradation on us, if that is your generous and chivalrous treatment of political prisoners, and you will never hear a word of complaint from us if you stick to that; but if you not only do that, but go further, and try and subject us to moral torture, from which criminals are altogether exempt, when you ask us to make a voluntary acknowledgement of our equality with criminals, then we say, "No; we will die first (_cheers from Irish members_), and you will have to learn the distinction between your criminal classes and Irish political prisoners, even if it should take a coroner's jury and their verdict to make the distinction." (_Loud cheers._) I can only say that if any one has reason to blush, it is not we. ("_Hear, hear._") I hope I am not detaining the House. (_Cheers._) The only thing I can plead is, that I shall not have an opportunity very soon of claiming your attention; but I should like to ask, "Where is all this to end?" What object has it accomplished? and if it is to go on for ever and for ever, what object can it ever possibly accomplish, except misery to a weak people and eternal worry and shame to yourselves? (_Cheers._) Is it the object of the right honorable gentleman to convert the Irish people, or to dragoon them out of the aspirations which are as deeply lodged in the breasts of millions of men as the blood in their hearts? Does the right honorable gentleman in his wildest hour imagine that he has made one single genuine convert through the length and breadth of Ireland? (_Cheers._) Even to take it on the lower and meaner sphere of brute force, I ask the right honorable gentleman to name one single village club that he has effectually stamped out. (_Cheers._) Can he produce a single man from our ranks that he has really frightened, as the result of all the terrific power that he has been wielding in Ireland? I ask honorable gentlemen opposite to remember with what a shout of exultation they passed the Crimes Act last session, and how they triumphed over us. I can well remember the shouts and peals of delight with which they welcomed the declaration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I think, when he said this was to be a duel to the death between the National League and the Government, and that they accepted the challenge. Well, are they satisfied with the results? (_Cheers and laughter._) I ask honorable gentlemen whether they would have yelled so loudly last autumn if they could have foreseen the results of the most terrible Coercion Act ever passsd, giving the most unchecked powers that ever a despot was armed with, would be so miserable and ignominious and mean? (_Cheers._) Did you or did you not expect that the act would crush the National League? Honorable gentlemen are silent. (_Cheers._) I remember the shout of derision which came from the other side of the House when I ventnred to intimate a doubt whether the act, terrific as it looked, would succeed in crushing the Plan of Campaign. Has it been crushed, or even crippled? (_Cheers._) Ask the deputation of Irish landlords (_laughter and cheers_) who waited on Lord Salisbury the other day with a begging letter,--ask them how many of them would be willing to try a fall with the Plan of Campaign in the morning. (_Cheers and laughter._) It has never had so uniform and unbroken a course of victories as it has had this winter. The greater number of the important struggles in which we were engaged when this act was passed has been brought to a victorious conclusion under the mouths of the right honorable gentleman's guns. (_Cheers._) And upon what terms? I could speak for an hour, giving you instances of the results; but the one thing that applies to them all is, that in every single instance at least the original demands of the tenants have been acceded to. ("_Hear, hear._") Every evicted tenant has been reinstated (_cheers_), and every shilling of law costs incurred in the struggle has been borne as an indemnity by the landlords. (_Cheers, and "No."_) You could have got as good a result as that without the act. On Lord de Freyne's estate, when the act was passing, the agent, Mr. M'Dougal, wrote this letter: "Spot the men in your district who are able to pay and won't; we will see, now that the Coercion Act is about to become law, whether we won't make them honest men." It turned out that the dishonest men beat Mr. M'Dougal and his master. They had confidence in the Crimes Bill and the right honorable gentleman last autumn. Where is Mr. M'Dougal to-day? He is gone, dismissed, and everything that the tenants were then demanding has been conceded. The very day after I came out of prison, I learned that the new agent had had an interview with two of the most prominent of the campaigners on the estate, and he not only agreed to the tenants' terms, but he agreed to refund the sum of over £1,700, which Mr. M'Dougal had dishonestly extorted from the tenants before the Plan of Campaign. (_Cheers._) This money was wrung from the tenants by terror, by serving one hundred and fifty writs of ejectment before they had the protection of the Plan of Campaign. Then as to the estate of Bodyke, where the proceedings last summer horrified England, and for which her Majesty's Government could provide no remedy; what is the result? Last year, Mr. O'Callaghan, one of the hardest rack-renters, refused an offer of £907 for a year and a half's rent of fifty-seven tenants; he has now accepted £1,000 to wipe off two years' rent of seventy-two tenants. (_Cheers and laughter._) That is to say, after losing all his money, and after costing the British taxpayer £40,000 for the expenses of his evictions (_cheers_), he has now come to the conclusion, and he is one of the most desperate of rack-renters, that the Crimes Act is no go, and he has struck his flag to the Plan of Campaign upon worse terms for him by far than he would have got before the passing of the Crimes Act. (_Cheers._) Only this very day a letter came to my honorable friend, the member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), from the principal man who stood almost between the living and the dead on that estate,--the Rev. Peter Murphy,--in which the writer said: "A thousand thanks for check. You have acted nobly by us, and we have every reason to thank and be grateful to you. What pleases me most of all is, that our victory over Colonel O'Callaghan is complete, and approved by all who understand the matter fully. He did his utmost to get the tenants to purchase. He would have sold on any terms rather than yield to the plan, but we absolutely refused to purchase as long as the rope remained round our necks. (_Cheers._) We would not entertain the idea of purchasing at all, until restored to our holdings and free as the mountain air to meet him on equal terms." (_Cheers._) "The next gale," the writer says, "is not to be asked until the end of June. Reductions suited to the different degrees of poverty, of fifteen per cent upwards to twenty-five and thirty per cent are secured." (_Cheers._) That is the way the right honorable gentleman is abating the power of the Plan of Campaign. (_Renewed cheers._) And remember that these poor tenants have won in spite of him, not merely by adhering to the Plan of Campaign, but also because every man of them who was evicted retook possession of his holding in defiance of the Crimes Act, and has held possession of his holding for the last six months. (_Cheers._) And the lesson the right honorable gentleman, this triumphant Cromwell (_laughter_), has taught them is that, thanks to their own pluck, and not to his mercy, they are more secure in their homes to-day,--well, than the right honorable gentleman was in his tenancy of the Treasury Bench. (_Cheers and laughter._) I am at this moment officially aware of several estates where the struggle is still proceeding. The landlords are placing their hopes, and are opening their negotiations, not with the right honorable gentleman, or with Dublin Castle, but with the man who sits there, my honorable friend, the honorable member for East Mayo (_loud cheers_), and with other members of this criminal and illegal conspiracy; a conspiracy as to whose dishonesty we have heard so many homilies from honorable gentlemen opposite. Why, I sometimes wonder that the homilies they address to us and to our suffering people upon the violations of the ten commandments do not blister the lips that utter them. ("_Hear, hear._") This dishonest conspiracy. No land court that has ever revised their demands has been able to pronounce them to be other than most just and moderate. ("_Hear, hear._") My honorable friend, the member for Cork, mentioned the other night that there were only three really great estates in Ireland on which the landlords are offering any resistance. One of them is the Brooke estate, in the county of Wexford, where the agent, Captain Hamilton, is an emergency man by profession. ("_Hear, hear._") The second is Lord Massareene's property, in the county of Louth, where the agents also are emergency men by profession; and the third is the estate of Lord Clanricarde. It must be a proud thing for Englishmen to know that the right honorable gentleman on that estate was exercising one of the most abominable systems of petty persecution that ever was practised, in order to strike down the defenders of those poor people, to smother their voices, and to tie their hands in their struggle with a man who in the Queen's own law courts has been branded as a monster of cruelty and avarice! (_Loud cheers._) I wish her Majesty's Government joy of all the credit that they will get out of their holy alliance with Lord Clanricarde (_"Hear, hear," and laughter_), and I wish him joy of all the rent he will get out of them. (_Cheers and laughter._) The fact is, and there is no use in blinking it, that, instead of overthrowing the Plan of Campaign, the right honorable gentleman has only made it more secure and more irrestible, by driving us to do our business with less publicity. ("_Hear, hear._") The machinery of the plan has been now perfected to such a degree that we find that one single campaign on an estate is sufficient to keep the peace of a whole county. (_Cheers._) Aye, and to settle the rents of a whole county more satisfactorily and more honestly than an army of land commissioners. ("_Hear, hear._") I will tell you why. It is a very simple reason. Because the penalties of such a struggle are so heavy as to intimidate any tenantry from putting forward an unjust demand, and they are also sufficiently great to terrify a landlord from resisting a just demand. ("_Hear, hear._") It may be a rough-and-ready method; no doubt it is; but what is the result? That in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred last winter it succeeded without any struggle at all. I challenge honorable gentlemen who speak of the immorality and dishonesty of the Plan of Campaign,--I challenge the right honorable gentleman to name any single deed of outrage or of crime that is traceable to the Plan of Campaign, from end to end of Ireland. (_Cheers._) I challenge him to name any one case in which the demands we have put forward have been declared by any land commissioner or judical tribunal in the country to be dishonest or exorbitant. I challenge him more than all to adduce to the House to-night one solitary case in which he has succeeded, with all his powers and his terrors, in breaking up a combination that was once formed on an estate. (_Cheers._) And remember always that this Plan of Campaign is the merest segment of the Irish difficulty. It is a mere rough-and-ready way, which has been found effective to cure the blunders of your legislation, and to cure your folly in not closing with the bill of my honorable friend, the member for Cork. (_Cheers._) My honorable friend and myself and others are the mere Uhlans and cadets to the army of millions of Irishmen who stand ranked under the standard of my honorable friend, the member for Cork. (_Cheers._) Now, as to the National League, I want to examine the right honorable gentleman. (_Laughter._) We have heard it stated over and over again in most portentious accents in this House, that the authority of the National League and of her Majesty's Government could not co-exist in Ireland; that either one or the other must pack up and go. What has all this tall talk come to? ("_Hear, hear._") Is the Leage gone, or does it show the slightest sign of going? There are eighteen hundred branches of the National League in Ireland; rather more, I believe now, because the right honorable gentleman's act has added some more. (_Cheers._) Not more than two hundred and fifty of those branches have been nominally grappled with. There are about fifteen hundred branches, or over five sixths of the whole organization, on which not a finger has been laid. Why? Is it that the right honorable gentleman has conceived a sudden affection for the National League? (_Laughter._) Is it that these branches are declining in power, or is it that they have abated their principles one jot in terror? No; but because the Government has made such a disastrous and grotesque mess of their attempt to suppress a couple of hundred branches that they dared not face the ridicule, the colossal collapse, that would attend any attempt to grapple with the whole of this organization. (_Cheers._) Everybody who knows the so-called suppressed counties of Kerry and Clare knows that the suppressed branches hold their meetings just as usual, under the noses of the police. We know it by the figures and by the cash which comes that the subscriptions, instead of falling off, are increasing. The resolutions are passed in the usual way, and I can tell you they are regarded with more sacredness and more efficacy than usual by the whole community. I will read an extract from a branch report in _United Ireland_ the week before last ("_Hear, hear_"), one of these suppressed branches which have, according to the local policeman, disappeared from view. It says: "A large representative meeting was held on Monday, Mr. George Pomeroy in the chair." No concealment of names. "Balloting for officers and committee took place with the following result, after a most vigorous competition for offices (_Nationalist cheers_), the only emolument for which will probably be a couple of months in jail: J. O'Callan, 60 votes; G. Pomeroy, 58; S. O'Keefe, 56; D. Hanlon, 50; O'Leary, 60; Power, 44; Fitzpatrick, 47"; and so on. "The first five are elected." (_Nationalist cheers._) There is no disguising the fact that your whole suppressive machinery, the whole machinery for effectually suppressing the League, has totally broken down, and for a very simple reason, because the act was conceived upon the theory that you were dealing with a people who were only pining to be delivered from the terrorism of the National League (_cheers_), whereas you find to your cost you are dealing with a people who are the League themselves, ready to guard it with their lives, and to undergo any amount of torture rather than betray it. (_Nationalist cheers._) Why do you not put the Secret Inquiry clauses in force for the purpose of suppressing branches of the National League? Why! Because you know you would have to send thousands of people to jail who would rather go there than let you wring one tittle of information out of them. Your only other source is informers, and it is our proudest boast that with an organization numbering upwards of 500,000 men, up to this time you have not been able to bring a single informer into the market, though no doubt the market price of the article was never higher. (_Cheers._) I want the right honorable gentleman to tell us here to-night what he has got by all his wild and vicious lunges against the Irish people. I have no patience with talking of "crime in Ireland," outside Kerry. The Moonlighters and the Government have had Kerry to themselves for the last five or six years. Between them be it, and let them divide the honors. (_Loud Nationalist cheers._) They tell us of a number of persons partially boycotted. I do not know what the local policeman may be pleased to call "persons partially boycotted"; but I am pretty sure the list would go up or down, according to the requirements of the Government. Let the right honorable gentleman give us a list of new land-grabbers who have taken farms (_cheers_), or let him give us a list, and I only wish he would, of the land-grabbers who, since this act has been put in force, have accepted their neighbors' farms. As to legitimate boycotting, I shall always hold with the perfect right of the community to exercise legitimate influence on men who for their own base and greedy purposes are the pests of society. I admit that there are two classes of victims at the mercy of the Chief Secretary,--public speakers and public newspapers Public speeches are the merest appendages of our organization. And why are public speakers at his mercy? Simply and solely because we do not choose to be driven away from our free right of public meeting, but choose to assert it, as Mr. Blunt chose to assert it in the light of day. (_Cheers._) If we choose to give our speeches in private, we could run a coach and four through the provisions of this act with absolute impunity. My friends here were for months engaged on the Plan of Campaign. We have no secrets we are afraid to acknowledge. ("_Oh, oh._") None. I only hope the honorable gentleman who says "Oh"--(_an honorable member: "Rochester"._) Certainly. They have actually been for months and months on the business of the Plan of Campaign, even with warrants over their heads. Talk of me in connection with Mitchelstown. I may be giving the right honorable gentleman a tip, but I do not object to say that my honorable friend, the member for South Tipperary (Mr. J. O'Connor), was far and away a more formidable person than I was in the Plan of Campaign; but because he happens to be a man of few words, he will be walking in this lobby to-morrow night instead of reposing on a plank bed, as he would if he had spoken. (_Cheers._) I do not mind telling it, and he will not mind it either, for his work, and he is victorious. I might say a good deal about the meanness of this policy of subjecting journalists to milk-and-water diet, for the simple fact that they recorded the right honorable gentleman's failure ("_Hear, hear_"), because that is the sting of their offence,--because the meetings are held, and held in spite of the Government. (_Loud Nationalist cheers._) You might as well issue a proclamation suppressing the sun in the heavens, and then go about smashing the faces of the sun-dials for recording that the sun is moving on its way in spite of you. (_Laughter and cheers._) Worse still is it to attack the humble news venders, and intimidate their wives and their little children. ("_Hear, hear._") The Chief Secretary might have remembered that the right honorable gentleman who sits next him (Mr. W. H. Smith) is a person who in former years might easily have come under the same category. (_Nationalist cheers._) The right honorable gentlemen sold _United Ireland_ in his day. ("_Hear, hear._") I mention it not as a reproach to him, for he was an extremely good customer; but if he had not parted with his Irish business as he did, under the subsequent legislation of this Government, the right honorable gentleman would have been liable at this moment to three months on a plank bed for having for six months sold the paper. (_Cheers._) I hope that chivalry on that side of the House has not died out, and that they will not resent in the case of a miserable shopkeeper at Killarney what they will condone in a Misister of England. I can speak of my own knowledge of that policy, and its absolute and downright failure, even against so vulnerable and perishable a property as we know a newspaper is. But the right honorable gentleman has not succeeded in suppressing a single newspaper, and he never will, although he has proceeded from the editors to the printers, and from the printers to the printer's devils. (_Cheers._) There is only one redeeming feature in the right honorable gentleman's policy, and that is its colossal and monumental failure. That fact actually softens in the hearts of the Irish people the memory of the atrocities he has committed against them. We feel that we have taken his measure now, and that we are a match for him. (_Irish cheers._) We feel that he has failed, and that he will go on failing as long as grass grows and water runs. We are almost grateful to him for what he has done to advance the Irish cause by awakening the consciences of Englishmen (_Opposition cheers_), by knitting the two peoples together in common human sympathy, and common abhorrence of the brutal and cruel system of terrorism which he is exhibiting in full working order in Ireland. The Chancellor of the Exchequer claimed at Hastings that at all events the Chief Secretary had held his own. This was rather a meek and unassuming claim, after the high and swelling boasts that we heard from the same lips in the palmy days of last session. (_Cheers._) But has he even held his own? He has demoralized every department of his own Irish government, and every class of his own officials. There is not an office in Dublin Castle that is not at this moment subjected to as much espionage and as many precations against betrayal as if it were the palace of the Czar. ("_Hear hear._") He has the distinction of having developed an entirely new phase of the Irish difficulty among her Majesty's soldiers. My friend Mandeville and myself were whirled away by special train in the middle of the night to Tullamore, and I confess I felt considerably consoled when I heard that the next use the right honorable gentleman had to make of a special train was to take her Majesty's soldiers away from Tullamore for cheering Mandeville and myself. (_Laughter and cheers._) Don't let him ride off on the statement that these were mere Irish soldiers. Some of them were, no doubt; but there were also his own countrymen, the Scottish Fusileers. (_Cheers._) By some unhappy accident they too had to be hurried off by special train for some awkward manifestations at Mitchelstown. The right honorable gentleman had to employ police patrols to watch the prison officials. He cannot even count on the Royal Irish Constabulary, for to my own knowledge he had to employ policemen to watch the police. (_Laughter and cheers._) That is what is called "holding his own in Ireland." He succeeded only in kicking out a few of the bonfires that were lighted on the occasion of our release; but the spirit of nationality that lighted them is beyond his power. It will burn when the memory of his unhappy time in Ireland will be a mere speck among the dark clouds of misgovernment, which are passing away into a forgotten and forgiven past. The right honorable gentleman and his friends plead for a little more time. There are in this House many members who can remember Mr. Forster's triumphant account of his experience at Tullamore; that he was winning; that the people were with him; that the followers of my honorable friend (Mr. Parnell) were a mere back of broken men and reckless boys, and that you had only to give him (Mr. Forster) a little more time to make his victory appear to all the world. That was seven years ago; but the triumph has not appeared. Does the wildest man in this House imagine that the second Tullamore experience will be more successful? Does the Chief Secretary's best friend claim that he is a cleverer man or a more profound statesman than Mr. Forster? He is no doubt in a position to inflict untold suffering on our poor people. I do not deny that it is no child's play for us. No man's health is exactly the same after imprisonment of the sort that some of my poor friends are enduring to-night; but the sufferings in the prison cell are only small compared with those that the Chief Secretary is bringing on many a humble family ("_Hear, hear_"), to say nothing of the petty persecution that is going on at the hands of every village constable who has a quarrel with the people, and of the confusion, uncertainty, and ruin into which the right honorable gentleman is plunging the whole business of the country. It is a burning shame that such an ordeal should be inflicted on a people whose only desire is to live in peace, and to rule in peace in their own land. ("_Hear, hear._") It is sometimes almost unbearable, but the Irish people will bear it. We are not cowed. We are not even embittered. The right honorable member for Mid-Lothian has accomplished in two years what seven hundred years of coercion had not accomplished previously (_Irish cheers_), and what seven hundred more would leave unaccomplished still. He has united the hearts of the two peoples by a more sacred and enduring bond than that of terror and brute force; and our quarrel with England, our bitterness toward England, is gone. (_Cheers._) And it will be your fault and your crime if it ever returns,--a crime for which history will stigmatize you forever. We, at all events, are not disruptionists. (_Cheers and counter cheers._) It is you who are the disruptionists and the exasperationists and the separatists. We have never made a disguise of our feelings. We say what we mean. The right honorable gentleman, the member for Newcastle, and many another good friend beside him, have been over in Ireland this winter, and they can tell you that when the name of England is uttered now in an Irish crowd, it is no longer uttered with hatred, but with hope and with gratitude to those awakening British hearts which have never authorized this policy of the Government in Ireland. You are the Separatists. We are for peace and for happiness, and for the brotherhood of the two nations. You are for eternal repression and eternal discord and eternal misery for yourselves, as well as for us. We are for appeasing the dark passions of the past. You are for inflaming them, whether for purposes of a political character I do not know, but for purposes in the interests of that wretched class of Mamelukes whom you support in Ireland, who are neither good Englishmen nor good Irishmen, and who are being your evil genius in Ireland, just as they have been the scourge of our unhappy people. That is the state of things; and in such a cause and between such forces, I believe the end is not far off, and to the God of justice and of liberty and of mercy, we leave the issue. So far as we ourselves are concerned, we shall be amply compensated, whatever we have suffered and may have to suffer in our grand old cause, if we can be sure that we are the last of that long and mournful line of men who have suffered for it. And, believe me, upon the day of our victory, we will grant an easy amnesty to the right honorable gentleman opposite for our little troubles in Tullamore, and we will bless his policy yet as one of the most powerful, though unconscious, instruments in the deliverance of Ireland. (_Loud Opposition cheers._) Mr. FINLAY (_who arose amid loud cries of "Balfour" from the Opposition and Home Rule benches_) said that the honorable member who had just spoken had charged the Unionist party with inflaming passions and animosity in Ireland that were in a fair way of dying out. He was not aware of any section of the party against which that charge could be made. It had always been the mission of the Unionist party to see that equal justice should be done in Ireland, and to appease those animosities which were the relics of past misgovernment and past misfortunes. They believed that in a country so divided as Ireland was, equal justice might best be done in an Imperial Parliament, and not by handing over one part of the country to the domination of another. The honorable member had said that there was no bitterness on the part of the Irish members towards England. But the party had three voices. One was the voice that spoke in the House of Commons, the second the voice that spoke in Ireland; but to get at the real springs of the movement, they must hear it on an American platform. (_Ministerial cheers._) He objected to that House being turned into a court of appeal from judicial sentences in Ireland, and he regretted to have heard the cheers which came from the Opposition side of the House when the honorable member for West Cork had said that he recommended the tenants at Mitchelstown to resist the law by force. (_Mr. Gladstone expressed dissent._) Errata The first line indicates the original, the second how it should read: p. 2: notwithstanding a similiar observation notwithstanding a similar observation think it right hriefly think it right briefly p. 4: bound to make kown bound to make known Lord Sailsbury continued Lord Salisbury continued p. 6: He declared that "if Parliament passed ant act for granting He declared that "if Parliament passed an act for granting p. 7: comments on tne comments on the p. 11: beyond the the Channel beyond the Channel p. 12: narrowly than almost anywhere else), I will find their way narrowly than almost anywhere else), will find their way p. 13: the purpose on this occsion the purpose on this occasion in a proportionate diminution of derelect farms. in a proportionate diminution of derelict farms. p. 14: we have read with increased satisfacfaction we have read with increased satisfaction p. 20: I think, the symathetic silence I think, the sympathetic silence exhibit the tase of the Prime Minister exhibit the taste of the Prime Minister p. 22: in process of accomplisment in process of accomplishment p. 24: I argued that the Land League, as i operated at that time I argued that the Land League, as it operated at that time p. 25: at this moment from the slighest shadow at this moment from the slightest shadow p. 29: has been resorted to to mislead has been resorted to mislead Their vicissitudes would furnish a theme for an epic (_rewewed laughter_) Their vicissitudes would furnish a theme for an epic (_renewed laughter_) p. 32: Three days ago my honorable friend and collegue Three days ago my honorable friend and colleague they had the cowardice to abandou they had the cowardice to abandon p. 34: the plank bed, or bread-and-water diet-solitary chnfinement the plank bed, or bread-and-water diet, solitary confinement p. 35: the most terrible Coercion Act ever passsd the most terrible Coercion Act ever passed the other side of the House when I ventnred the other side of the House when I ventured p. 39: has only made it more secure and more irrestible, has only made it more secure and more irresistible, by any land commissioner or judical tribunal by any land commissioner or judicial tribunal over and over again in most portentious accents over and over again in most portentous accents p. 40: Is the Leage gone Is the League gone p. 41: the Chief Secretary,--public speakers and public newspapers Public speeches are the merest appendages of our organization. the Chief Secretary,--public speakers and public newspapers. Public speeches are the merest appendages of our organization. p. 43: what they will condone in a Misister of England. what they will condone in a Minister of England. and as many precations against betrayal and as many precautions against betrayal p. 44: were a mere back of broken men and reckless boys were a mere pack of broken men and reckless boys 
15277	----	THE OPEN SECRET OF IRELAND By T. M. KETTLE WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J. E. REDMOND, M.P. "Also it is a proverbe of olde date, 'The pride of Fraunce, the treason of Inglande, and the warre of Irelande, shall never have ende.' Which proverbe, touching the warre of Irelande, is like alwaie to continue, without God sette in men's breasts to find some new remedy that never was found before." _State Papers_, Reign of Henry VIII. LONDON W. J. HAM-SMITH 1912 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION BY J. E. REDMOND, M.P. vii PRELIMINARY. xi CHAP. I. AN EXERCISE IN HUMILITY. 1 II. HISTORY _(a) Coloured_. 17 III. HISTORY _(b) Plain_. 31 IV. THE OBVIOUSNESS OF HOME RULE. 47 V. THE RAVAGES OF UNIONISM (1). 65 VI. THE RAVAGES OF UNIONISM (2). 80 VII. THE HALLUCINATION OF "ULSTER". 98 VIII. THE MECHANICS OF HOME RULE. 120 IX. AFTER HOME RULE. 144 X. AN EPILOGUE ON "LOYALTY". 161 INTRODUCTION The object of Mr Kettle, in writing this book, is, I take it, to reveal to English readers what he not inaptly terms as "The Open Secret of Ireland," in order to bring about a better understanding between the two nations, and to smoothe the way to a just and final settlement of their old-time differences. Any work undertaken on such lines commends itself to a ready welcome and a careful study, and I feel sure that both await Mr Kettle's latest contribution to the literature of the Irish question. As the son of one of the founders of the Land League, and as, for some years, one of the most brilliant members of the Irish Party, and, later, Professor in the School of Economics in the new National University in Dublin, he has won his way to recognition as an eloquent exponent of Irish national ideas; whilst the novelty of his point of view, and the freshness, vigour, and picturesque attractiveness of his style ensure for his work a cordial reception on its literary merits, apart from its political value. Undoubtedly, one of the main sources of the Anglo-Irish difficulty has been mutual misunderstanding, generating mutual mistrust and hatred. But the root of the difficulty goes deeper. It is to be sought in the system of misgovernment and oppression which successive generations of British rulers have imposed upon what, with cruel irony, British historians and statesmen have been wont to call "the sister country." This is the real "open secret" of Ireland, a secret that all who run may read, and the effective bearing of which is: that tyranny begets hatred, and that freedom and justice are the only sure foundations of contentment and goodwill between nations. During the past thirty years, and especially since 1886, when Mr Gladstone threw the weight of his unrivalled genius and influence into the scale in favour of justice to Ireland, a great deal has been done to erase the bitter memories of the past, and to enable the English and the Irish peoples to regard each other in the light of truth, and with a more just appreciation of what is essential to the establishment of genuine and lasting friendly relations between them. But it would be idle to ignore the fact that, to a considerable section of the English people, Ireland is still a country of which they possess less knowledge than they do of the most insignificant and remote of the many islands over which the British flag floats. Mr Kettle's book ought to be of service in dispelling this ignorance, and in enabling Englishmen to view the Anglo-Irish question from the standpoint of an educated and friendly Irish opinion. The output of purely political literature on the Irish problem has been increasing during the past few years, and there is room for a book which aims at focussing attention upon some aspects of it which the mere politician is apt to pass lightly over or to ignore altogether. Like most of Mr Kettle's work, the book bears the impress of his individuality, and, to many of his readers, this will constitute much of its charm and merit. At the same time, in order to prevent misunderstanding, it is necessary for me to state that I do not commit myself to acceptance or endorsement of everything which the book contains. I content myself with stating, from personal experience, that nothing which Mr Kettle writes about Ireland can fail to be worthy of notice by everyone interested in the Home Rule controversy, and that I believe the circulation of this volume will serve to stimulate thought about Ireland, and so to hasten the advent of that brighter day when the grant of full self-government to Ireland will reveal to England the open secret of making Ireland her friend and helpmate, the brightest jewel in her crown of Empire. J. E. REDMOND. _12th December, 1911_. PRELIMINARY After an intermission of nearly twenty years Ireland once again blocks the way. "Finally rejected" by the House of Commons and the English electorate in 1886, "finally rejected" by the House of Lords in 1893, the Home Rule idea has not only survived but waxed stronger in the wilderness. Time and events have altered its shape only to clothe it with a richer significance. Will Great Britain decide wisely in the choice to which she is now put? Naturally, I do not speak of the Parliamentary future of the Home Rule Bill: that is safe. I have in mind rather that profound moral settlement, that generous reconciliation which we have seen in South Africa, and desire to see in Ireland. What of it? Did reason and the candid vision of things, as they are, control public affairs, there could be little doubt as to the issue in this choice between friendship and hatred, between the formula of freedom and that of domination. But, unhappily, we have no assurance that Philip sober rather than Philip drunk will sign the warrant. There exists in England, in respect of all things Irish, a monstrous residuum of prejudice. It lies ambushed in the blood even when it has been dismissed from the mind, and constitutes the real peril of the situation. No effort will be spared to reawaken it. The motto of militant Unionism has always been: When in doubt throw mud. Such a programme naturally begets a predilection for ditches, and when certain orators speak of the "last ditch" they must be taken to mean that which has most mud in it. The old methods are already once more in operation. The wicked lying of previous campaigns no doubt cannot be repeated: bigotry will make no further experiments in Pigottry. But a resolute attempt, lavishly financed and directed by masters of the art of defamation, will be made to blacken Ireland. Every newspaper in every remotest country-town in England will be deluged with syndicated venom. The shop-keeper will wrap up his parcels in Orange posters, and the working-man will, I hope, light his pipe for years to come with pamphlets of the same clamant colour. Irishmen, or at all events persons born in Ireland, will be found to testify that they belong to a barbarous people which has never ceased from barbarism, and that they are not fit to govern themselves. Politicians who were never known to risk a five-pound note in helping to develop Ireland will toss down their fifties to help to defame her. Such is the outlook. Against this campaign of malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness it is the duty of every good citizen to say his word, and in the following pages I say mine. This little book is not a compendium of facts, and so does not trench on the province of Mr Stephen Gwynn M.P.'s admirable "Case for Home Rule." It does not discuss the details, financial or otherwise, of a statesmanlike settlement. Such suggestions as I had to make I have already made in "Home Rule Finance," and the reader will find much ampler treatment of the whole subject in "The Framework of Home Rule," by Mr Erskine Childers, and "Home Rule Problems," edited by Mr Basil Williams. In general, my aim has been to aid in humanising the Irish Question. The interpretation of various aspects of it, here offered, is intended to be not exhaustive but provocative, a mere set of shorthand rubrics any one of which might have been expanded into a chapter. Addressing the English reader with complete candour, I have attempted to recommend to him that method of approach, that mental attitude which alone can divest him of his preconceptions, and put him in rapport with the true spirit of the Ireland of actuality. To that end the various lines of discussion converge:-- Chapter I is an outline of the pathology of the English mind in Ireland. Chapters II and III present the history of Ireland as the epic, not of a futile and defeated, but of an indomitable and victorious people. Chapter IV exhibits the Home Rule idea as a fundamental law of nature, human nature, and government. Chapters V and VI contain a very brief account of the more obvious economic crimes and blunders of Unionism. Chapter VII discusses the queer ideas of "Ulster," and the queer reasons for the survival of these ideas. Chapter VIII demonstrates that, as a mere matter of political technique, Home Rule must be conceded if any real government is ever to exist again, whether in Great Britain, in Ireland, or in the Empire. Chapter IX dips into the future, and indicates that a Home Rule Ireland will have so much interesting work to do as to have no time for civil war or religious oppression. Chapter X shows that everybody who values "loyalty" must of necessity be a Home Ruler. The only moral commended to the reader is that expressed by Browning in a firm and inevitable line, which has been disastrously forgotten in so many passages of English history:-- "It's fitter being sane than mad." I have tried also to convey to him, with what success others must judge, something of the "pride and passion" of Irish nationality. That is, in truth, the dream that comes through the multitude of business. If you think that Home Rule is a little thing which must be done in a little way for little reasons, your feet are set on the path to failure. Home Rule is one of those fundamental reforms that are not achieved at all unless they are achieved greatly. T.M.K. _December, 1911_. THE OPEN SECRET OF IRELAND CHAPTER I AN EXERCISE IN HUMILITY In order to understand Ireland we must begin by understanding England. On no other terms will that complex of facts, memories, and passions, which is called the Irish Question, yield up its secret. "You have always been," said a Lady Clanricarde to some English politician, "like a high wall standing between us and the sun." The phrase lives. It reveals in a flashlight of genius the historical relations of the two nations. It explains and justifies the principle adopted as the basis of this discussion, namely, that no examination of the Irish Problem is possible without a prior examination of the English mind. It used to be said that England dearly loved a Lord, a dictum which may have to be modified in the light of recent events. Far more than a Lord does the typical Englishman love a Judge, and the thought of acting as a Judge. Confronted with Ireland he says to himself: "Here are these Irish people; some maintain that they are nice, others that they are nasty, but everybody agrees that they are queer. Very good. I will study them in a judicial spirit; I will weigh the evidence dispassionately, and give my decision. When it comes to action, I will play the honest broker between their contending parties." Now this may be a very agreeable way of going about the business, but it is fatally unreal. Great Britain comes into court, she will be pained to hear, not as Judge but rather as defendant. She comes to answer the charge that, having seized Ireland as a "trustee of civilisation," she has, either through incompetence or through dishonesty, betrayed her trust. We have a habit, in everyday life, of excusing the eccentricities of a friend or an enemy by the reflection that he is, after all, as God made him. Ireland is politically as Great Britain made her. Since the twelfth century, that is to say for a great part of the Middle Ages and for the whole of the modern period, the mind of England and not that of Ireland has been the dominant fact in Irish history. This state of things--a paradox in action--carries with it certain metaphysical implications. The philosophers tell us that all morality centres in the maxim that others are to be treated as ends in themselves, and not as instruments to our ends. If they are right, then we must picture Ireland as the victim of a radical immoralism. We must think of her as a personality violated in its ideals, and arrested in its development. And, indeed, that is no bad way of thinking: it is the one formula which summarises the whole of her experience. But the phrasing is perhaps too high and absolute; and the decline and fall of Mr Balfour are a terrible example to those of us who, being young, might otherwise take metaphysics too solemnly. It will, therefore, at this stage be enough to repeat that, in contemplating the discontent and unrest which constitute the Irish difficulty, Great Britain is contemplating the work of her own hands, the creation of her own mind. For that reason we can make no progress until we ascertain what sort of mind we have to deal with. I do not disguise from myself the extremely unpleasant nature of this inquiry. It is as if a counsel were to open his address by saying: "Gentlemen of the Jury, before discussing the facts of the case I will examine briefly the mental flaws, gaps, kinks, and distortions of you twelve gentlemen." There is, however, this difference. In the analysis upon which we are engaged the mental attitude of the jury is not merely a fact in the case, it is the whole case. Let me reinforce my weaker appeal by a passage from the wisest pen in contemporary English letters, that of Mr Chesterton. There is in his mere sanity a touch of magic so potent that, although incapable of dullness, he has achieved authority, and although convinced that faith is more romantic than doubt, or even sin, he has got himself published and read. Summarising the "drift" of Matthew Arnold, Mr Chesterton observes: "The chief of his services may perhaps be stated thus, that he discovered (for the modern English) the purely intellectual importance of humility. He had none of that hot humility which is the fascination of saints and good men. But he had a cold humility which he had discovered to be a mere essential of the intelligence." Such a humility, purely hygienic in character, is for Englishmen the beginning of wisdom on the Irish Question. It is the needle's eye by which alone they can enter a city otherwise forbidden to them. Let there be no misunderstanding. The attitude of mind commended to them is not without its agreeable features. Closely scrutinised, it is seen to be a sort of inverted vanity. The student begins by studying himself, an exercise in self-appraisal which need not by any means involve self-depreciation. What sort of a mind, then, is the English mind? If there is anything in regard to which the love of friends corroborates the malice of enemies it is in ascribing to the English an individualism, hard-shelled beyond all human parallel. The Englishman's country is an impregnable island, his house is a castle, his temperament is a suit of armour. The function common to all three is to keep things out, and most admirably has he used them to that end. At first, indeed, he let everybody in; he had a perfect passion for being conquered, and Romans, Teutons, Danes, and Normans in succession plucked and ate the apple of England. But with the coming of age of that national consciousness, the bonds of which have never been snapped, the English entered on their lucky and courageous career of keeping things out. They possess in London the only European capital that has never in the modern period been captured by an invader. They withstood the intellectual grandeur of Roman Law, and developed their own medley of customs into the most eccentric and most equitable system in the world. They kept out the Council of Trent, and the Spanish Armada. They kept out the French Revolution, and Napoleon. They kept out for a long time the Kantian philosophy, Romanticism, Pessimism, Higher Criticism, German music, French painting, and one knows not how many other of the intellectual experiments that made life worth living, or not worth living, to nineteenth-century Europe. Their insularity, spiritual as well as geographical, has whetted the edge of a thousand flouts and gibes. "Those stupid French!" exclaims the sailor, as reported by De Morgan: "Why do they go on calling a cabbage a _shoe_ when they must know that it is a _cabbage?_" This was in general the attitude of what Mr Newbolt has styled the "Island Race" when on its travels. Everybody has laughed at the comedy of it, but no one has sufficiently applauded its success. The English tourist declined to be at the trouble of speaking any foreign tongue whatsoever; instantly every hotel and restaurant on the Continent was forced to learn English. He refused to read their books; a Leipsic firm at once started to publish his own, and sold him his six-shilling Clapham novels in Lucerne for two francs. He dismissed with indignation the idea of breakfasting on a roll, and bacon and eggs were added unto him. In short, by a straightforward policy of studying nobody else, he compelled everybody else to study him. Now it is idle to deny this performance the applause which it plainly deserves. The self-evolution of England, as it may perhaps be called, in its economic, political, and literary life, offers an admirable model of concentration and energy. Even where it is a case of obtuseness to other civilisations, at least as high but of a different type, the verdict cannot be wholly unfavourable. The Kingdom of Earth is to the thick-skinned, and bad manners have a distinct vital value. A man, too sensitive to the rights and the charms of others, is in grave danger of futility. Either he will become a dilettante, which is the French way, or he will take to drink and mystical nihilism, a career very popular in Russian fiction. Bad manners have indeed a distinct ethical value. We all experience moods in which we politely assent to the thing that is not, because of the fatigue of fighting for the thing that is. A temperament such as has been delineated is therefore, as human types go, an excellent type. But it has its peculiar perils. To ignore the point of view of those in whose country you eat, drink, sleep, and sight-see may breed only minor discords, and after all you will pay for your manners in your bill. But to ignore the point of view of those whose country you govern may let loose a red torrent of tragedy. Such a temper of mind may, at the first touch of resistance, transform your stolid, laudable, laughable Englishman into the beastliest of tyrants. It may drive him into a delirium of cruelty and injustice. It may sweep away, in one ruin of war, wealth, culture, and the whole fabric of civilisation. It may darken counsel, and corrupt thought. In fact, it may give you something very like the history of the English in Ireland. Now it is not denied that most Englishmen believe the English mind to be incapable of such excesses. This, they say, is the Russian in Warsaw, the Austrian in Budapest, the Belgian in the Congo, the blind fool-fury of the Seine. But it is not the English way. Nor is it suggested that this illusion is sheer and mere hypocrisy. It is simply an hallucination of jingoism. Take a trivial instance in point. We have all read in the newspapers derisive accounts of disorderly scenes in the French Chamber or the Austrian Reichstag; we all know the complacent sigh with which England is wont on such occasions to thank God that she is not as one of those. Does anybody think that this attitude will be at all modified by recent occurrences at Westminster? By no means. Lord Hugh Cecil, his gibbering and gesticulating quite forgotten, will be assuring the House next year that the Irish are so deficient in self-restraint as to be unfit for Home Rule. Mr Smith will be deploring that intolerant temper which always impels a Nationalist to shout down, and not to argue down an opponent. Mr Walter Long will be vindicating the cause of law and order in one sentence, and inciting "Ulster" to bloodshed in the next. This is not hypocrisy, it is genius. It is also, by the way, the genesis of the Irish Question. If anyone is disposed to underrate the mad passions of which race hatred can slip the leash, let him recall the crucial examples which we have had in our own time. We have in our own time seen Great Britain inflamed by two frenzies--against France, and against the Boer Republics. In the history of public opinion there are no two chapters more discreditable. In the days of Fashoda the Frenchman was a degenerate _tigre-singe,_ the sworn enemy of religion and soap. He had contributed nothing to civilisation except a loathsome science of sensuality, and the taint of decay was in his bones. In the days of Spion Kop the Boer was an unlaundered savage, fit only to be a target for pig-stickers. His ignorance seemed the most appalling thing in the world until one remembered his hypocrisy and his cowardice. The newspaper which led the campaign of denigration against France has come to another view. Its proprietor now divides his time between signing £10,000 cheques for triumphant French aviators, and delivering speeches in which their nation is hailed as the pioneer of all great ideas. As regards the Boers, the same reversal of the verdict of ten years ago has taken place. The crowd which in 1900 asked only for a sour appletree on which to hang General Botha, adopts him in 1911 as the idol of the Coronation. At this progress towards sanity we must all rejoice. But most of all we have to ask that these two sinister pageants of race hatred shall not be suffered to dissolve without leaving some wrack of wisdom behind. Writers on psychology have made many studies of what they call the collective illusion. This strange malady, which consists in all the world seeing something which in fact does not exist, wrought more potently on the mind of England than did reason and justice in the Home Rule controversies of 1886 and 1893. What has occurred may recur. And since we are to speak here with all the candour of private conversation I confess that I cannot devise or imagine any specific against such a recurrence except an exercise in humility of the kind suggested by Mr Chesterton. My own argument in that direction is perhaps compromised by the fact that I am an Irishman. Let us therefore fall back on other testimony. Out of the cloud of witnesses let us choose two or three, and in the first place M. Alfred Fouillée. M. Fouillée is a Platonist--the last Platonist in Europe--and consequently an amiable man. He is universally regarded as the leader of philosophy in France, a position not in the least shaken by Bergson's brief authority. In a charming and lucid study of the "Psychology of the Peoples of Europe" Fouillée has many pages that might serve for an introduction to the Irish Question. The point of interest in his analysis is this: he exhibits Irish history as a tragedy of character, a tragedy which flows with sad, inevitable logic from a certain weakness which he notes, not in the Irish, but in the English character. "'In the eyes of the English,' says Taine who had studied them so minutely, 'there is but one reasonable civilisation, namely their own. Every other way of living is that of inferior beings, every other religion is extravagant.' So that, one might add, the Englishman is doubly personal, first as an individual and again as a member of the most highly individualised of nations. The moment the national interest is involved all dissensions cease, there is on the scene but one single man, one single Englishman, who shrinks from no expedient that may advance his ends. Morality for him reduces itself to one precept: Safeguard at any cost the interest of England." Like all foreigners he takes Ireland as the one conspicuous and flaming failure of England. In that instance she has muddled, as usual, but she has not muddled through. "The Anglo-Saxons, those great colonisers of far-off lands, have in their own United Kingdom succeeded only in inflicting a long martyrdom on Ireland. The insular situation of England had for pendant the insular situation of Ireland; the two islands lie there face to face. The English and the Irish, although intellectually very much alike, have preserved different characters. And this difference cannot be due essentially to the racial element, for nearly half Ireland is Germanic. It is due to traditions and customs developed by English oppression." Having summarised the main lines of British policy in Ireland, he concludes: "It is not easy to detect here any sign of the 'superiority of the Anglo-Saxons.'" With Fouillée we may associate Emile Boutmy. In his "Political Psychology of the English" he declares that the haughty, taciturn, solitary, unassimilative temperament of England, so admirable from the point of view of self-development, shows its worst side and comes to a malign florescence in the history of Ireland. It explains why "the relations of Ireland with England have been, for so many centuries, those of a captive with his jailer, those of a victim with his torturer." I pass over De Beaumont, Von Raumer, Perraud, Paul-Dubois, Filon, Bonn. The considerations already adduced ought to be enough to lead the English reader to certain conclusions which are fundamental. For the sake of clearness they may be repeated in all their nudity: England has failed in Ireland. Her failure has been due to defects of her own character, and limitations of her outlook. The same defects which corrupted her policy in the past distort her vision in the present. Therefore, if she is to understand and to solve the Irish Question, she must begin by breaking the hard shell of her individualism, and trying to think herself into the skin, the soul, and the ideals of the Irish nation. Now the English reader is after all human. If he has endured so far the outrage on his most sacred prejudices perpetrated in this chapter he must at this moment be hot with resentment. He must feel as if, proposing to his imagination Pear de Melba, he had in truth swallowed sand. Let me end with a more comfortable word. We have seen that Irish history is what the dramatists call an internal tragedy, the secular disclosure and slow working-out of certain flaws in the English character. I am not to be understood as ascribing horns to England and a halo to Ireland. We Irish are not only imperfect but even modest; for every beam that we detect in another eye we are willing to confess a mote in our own. The English on the other hand have been not monsters or demons, but men unstrung. "In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be, passions spin the plot; We are betrayed by what is false within." Least of all am I to be understood as ascribing to modern Englishmen any sort of planned, aforethought malice in regard to Ireland. It is what Bacon might have called a mere idol of the platform to suppose that they are filled with a burning desire to oppress Ireland. The dream of their lives is to ignore her, to eliminate from their calculations this variable constant which sheds bewilderment upon every problem. Could they but succeed in that, a very Sabbath of peace would have dawned for them. The modern Englishman is too much worried to plan the oppression of anybody. "Did you ever," asked Lord Salisbury on a remembered occasion, "have a boil on your neck?" To the Englishman of 1911--that troubled man whose old self-sufficiency has in our own time been shattered beyond repair by Boer rifles, German shipyards, French aeroplanes--Ireland is the boil on the neck of his political system. It is the one _péché de jeunesse_ of his nation that will not sleep in the grave of the past. Like the ghost in "Hamlet" it pursues and plagues him without respite. Shunned on the battlements it invades his most private chamber, or, finding him in talk with friends, shames and scares him with subterranean mutterings. Is there no way out of a situation so troublesome and humiliating? There is. Ireland cannot be ignored, but she can easily be appeased. The boil is due to no natural and incurable condition. It is the direct result of certain artificial ligatures and compressions; remove these and it disappears. This spectre haunts the conscience of England to incite her not to a deed of blood but to a deed of justice; every wind is favourable and every omen. It is, indeed, true that if she is to succeed, England must do violence to certain prejudices which now afflict her like a blindness; she must deal with us as a man with men. But is not the Kingdom of Heaven taken by violence? CHAPTER II HISTORY _(a) Coloured_ Mendacity follows the flag. There never yet was an invader who did not, in obedience to a kindly human instinct, lie abundantly respecting the people whose country he had invaded. The reason is very plain. In all ages men delight to acquire property by expedients other than that of honest labour. In the period of private war the most obvious alternative to working is fighting, or hiring servants to fight; the sword is mightier than the spade. If we add that an expedition into a foreign country offers the additional advantages of escape from your exacting creditors, and your still more exacting king, we have something very like the economics of the Invasion of Anywhere in early feudal times. Had the leaders of these invasions, or rather their clerkly secretaries, written the plain tale of their doings they would have left some such record as this: "There were we, a band of able-bodied, daring, needy men. Our only trade was war; our only capital our suits of armour, our swords and battle-axes. We heard that there was good land and rich booty to be had in Anywhere; we went and fought for it. Our opponents were brave men, too, but badly organised. In some places we won. There we substituted our own law for the queer sort of law under which these people had lived; when they resisted too strongly we had, of course, no option but to kill them. In other places we got mixed up completely by alliances and marriages with the old stock, and lived most agreeably with them. In others again the natives killed us, and remained in possession. Such was the Invasion of Anywhere." But (I had almost said unhappily) the invaders were not content with having swords, they had also consciences. They were Christians, and thought it necessary to justify themselves before the High Court of Christian Europe. Consequently the clerks had to write up the record in quite a different fashion. They discovered that their bluff, hard-bitten, rather likeable employers, scarcely one of whom could read or write, had really invaded Anywhere as the trustees of civilisation. Now it may be said in general--and the observation extends to our own time--that the moment an invader discovers that he is the trustee of civilisation he is irretrievably lost to the truth. He is forced by his own pose to become not an unprincipled liar, but that much more disgusting object, a liar on principle. He is bound, in order to legitimise his own position, to prove that "the natives" are savages, living in a morass of nastiness and ignorance. All facts must be adapted to this conclusion. The clerks, having made this startling discovery, went on to supplement it by the further discovery that their masters had invaded Anywhere in order to please the Pope, and introduce true religion. This second role completes the dedication of the invaders on the altar of mendacity. It was Leo XIII. himself who, with that charming humour of his, deprecated the attitude of certain _a priori_ historians who, said he, if they were writing the Gospel story would, in their anxiety to please the Pope, probably suppress the denial of Peter. These things which might have happened anywhere did, in fact, happen in Ireland. Out of the footprints of the invaders there sprang up a legion of fictionists, professional cooks of history. Beginning with Giraldus Cambrensis they ought to have ended, but, as we shall see, did not end with Froude. The significance of these mercenaries of literature can hardly be exaggerated; it is not too much to say that they found Ireland a nation, and left her a question. It is not at all that they put on record the thing that was not as regards the events of their own period. That might be and has been amended by the labours of impartial scholarship. The real crime of the fabulists lies in this, that their tainted testimony constituted for honest Englishmen the only information about Ireland easily obtainable. The average Englishman (that is to say, the forty millions of him who do not read learned books of any kind) comes to the consideration of contemporary Ireland with a vision distorted almost beyond hope of cure. The treasured lies of seven hundred years are in his heart to-day. For time runs against the cause of truth as well as with it. Once create a Frankenstein of race hatred, and he will gather strength in going. The chronicler's fable of this century becomes the accredited historical fact of the next. Give it what billiard-players call "legs" enough and it will mature into a tradition, a proverb, a spontaneous instinct. There is a whole department of research concerned with the growth of myths, stage by stage, from a little nebulous blotch into a peopled world of illusion. The strange evolution there set forth finds an exact parallel in the development of English opinion on Ireland. And, indeed, the more you study "the Irish Question," as it is envisaged by the ruling mind of Great Britain, the more conscious are you of moving in the realm not of reason but of mythology. All this will seem obvious even to the point of weariness. But it is of interest as furnishing a clue to the English attitude towards Irish history; I should rather say attitudes, for there are two. The first is that of the Man of Feeling. His mode of procedure recalls inevitably an exquisite story which is to be found somewhere in Rousseau. During country walks, Jean Jacques tells us, his father would suddenly say: "My son, we will speak of your dear, dead mother." And Jean Jacques was expected to reply: "Wait, then, a moment, my dear father. I will first search for my handkerchief, for I perceive that we are going to weep." In precisely such a mood of deliberate melancholy does the sentimentalist address himself to the Confiscations and the Penal Laws. He is ready to praise without stint any Irish leader who happens to be sufficiently dead. He is ready to confess that all his own British forerunners were abominable blackguards. He admits, not only with candour but even with a certain enthusiastic remorse, that England oppressed Ireland in every phase of their relations. Then comes the conclusion. So terrible have been the sins of his fathers that he feels bound to make restitution. And in order to make restitution, to be kind and helpful and remedial, he must retain the management of Irish affairs in his benevolent hands. In order to expiate the crimes of the past he must repeat the basal blunder that was the cause and source of them. For this kind of sympathy we have only to say, in a somewhat vulgar phrase, that we have no use whatever. The Englishman who "sympathises" with Ireland is lost. But the more general attitude differs widely from this. Confronting us with a bluff and not unkindly demeanour, worthy of the nation that invented cold baths as a tonic against all spiritual anguish, the practical, modern Englishman speaks out his mind in straight-flung words and few. "You fellows," he says, "brood too much over the past. After all, this is the twentieth century, not the twelfth. What does it matter whether my ancestors murdered yours or not? Both would be dead now in any event. What does it matter whether yours were the saints and men of letters and mine the savages, or whether the boot was on the other leg? That's all over and done with. Imitate me. Let bygones be bygones." Now this is, in some respects, the authentic voice of health. Undoubtedly the most characteristic thing about the past is that it is not present, and to lavish on it too tragic and intense a devotion is to love death more than life. And yet our bluff Englishman can learn in two words how it comes about that his invitation represents a demand for the impossible. In the first place, the bygones have not gone by. Our complaint is made not against the crimes of his fathers, who are dead, but against the crimes of himself and his fellows, who are alive. We denounce not the repealed Penal Laws but the unrepealed Act of Union. If we recall to the memory of England the systematic baseness of the former, it is in order to remind her that she once thought them right, and now confesses that they were cruelly wrong. We Irish are realists, and we hold the problems of the present as of more account than any agonies or tyrannies of the past. But our realism has the human touch in it, and that constitutes the second impossibility in the invitation tendered us. _Que messieurs les assassins commencent!_ The anti-Irish legend is not dead nor even sleeping, nor are the resources of calumny yet exhausted. An instance is immediately at hand. I have, at this moment, on my desk a volume lately issued--"The School History of England." It is published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford; Mr Rudyard Kipling contributes twenty-three pieces of verse, and a Mr C. R. L. Fletcher, whose qualifications are not stated, appears to be responsible for the prose. The book has been praised in most of the papers, and it will no doubt go far. This is the picture of the coming to Ireland of the Cymro-Frankish adventurers which its pages will imprint on the minds of the youth of England: "One event of his reign (Henry II.'s) must not be forgotten, his visit to Ireland in 1171-2. St Patrick, you may have heard, had banished the snakes from that island, but he had not succeeded in banishing the murderers and thieves who were worse than many snakes. In spite of some few settlements of Danish pirates and traders on the eastern coast, Ireland had remained purely Celtic and purely a pasture country. All wealth was reckoned in cows; Rome had never set foot there, so there was a king for every day in the week, and the sole amusement of such persons was to drive off each other's cows and to kill all who resisted. In Henry II.'s time this had been going on for at least seven hundred years, and during the seven hundred that have followed much the same thing would have been going on, if the English Government had not occasionally interfered." The English whom Henry II. left behind him soon became "as wild and barbarous as the Irishmen themselves." Oxford, the home of so many other lost causes, apparently aspires to be also the home of the lost cause of mendacity. The forcible-feeble malice of Mr Fletcher calls for no serious discussion; submit it to any continental scholar, to any honest British scholar, and he will ask contemptuously, though perhaps with a little stab of pain, how the name of Oxford comes to be associated with such wicked absurdities. Every other reference to Ireland is marked by the same scientific composure and balanced judgment. And this document, inspired by race hatred, and apparently designed to propagate race hatred, is offered to the youth of these countries as an aid towards the consolidation of the Empire. It is a case not merely of the poisoning of a well, but of the poisoning of a great river at its source. The force of cowardice can no farther go. So long as it goes thus far, so long as the Froudes find Fletchers to echo them, Irishmen will inevitably "brood over the past." We do not share the cult of ancestor-worship, but we hold the belief that the Irish nation, like any other, is an organism endowed with a life in some sort continuous and repetitive of its origins. To us it does matter something whether our forerunners were turbulent savages, destitute of all culture, or whether they were valiant, immature men labouring through the twilight of their age towards that dawn which does not yet flush our own horizon. But we are far from wishing that dead centuries should be summoned back to wake old bitterness that ought also to be dead. Hand history over to the scholars, if you will; let it be marshalled as a multitudinous and coloured pageant, to incite imaginations and inspire literature. Such is our desire, but when we read the clotted nonsense of persons like Mr Fletcher we can only repeat: _Que messieurs les assassins commencent_! For the purpose of this inquiry it is inevitable that some brief account should be rendered of the past relations between England and Ireland. The reader need not shrink back in alarm; it is not proposed to lead him by the reluctant nose through the whole maze and morass of Irish history. The past is of value to political realists only in that residue of it which survives, namely, the wisdom which it ought to have taught us. Englishmen are invited to consider the history of Ireland solely from that point of view. They are prayed to purge themselves altogether of pity, indignation, and remorse; these are emotions far too beneficent to waste on things outside the ambit of our own immediate life. If they are wise they will come to Irish history as to a school, and they will learn one lesson that runs through it like the refrain of a ballad. A very simple lesson it is, just this: Ireland cannot be put down. Ireland always has her way in the end. If the opposite view is widely held the explanation lies on the surface. Two causes have co-operated to produce the illusion. Everybody agrees that Great Britain has acted in a most blackguardly fashion towards Ireland; everybody assumes that blackguardism always succeeds in this world, therefore Ireland is a failure. The only flaw in this syllogism is that it is in direct conflict with every known fact. For the rest we have to thank or blame the sentimentalism of Mr Matthew Arnold. His proud but futile Celts who "went down to battle but always fell" have been mistaken for the Irish of actual history. The truth is, of course, that the phrase is in the grand manner of symbolism. When Ecclesiastes laments that the eye is not filled with seeing nor the ear with hearing we do not argue him deaf and blind; we take his words as a proclamation of that famine and fierce appetite of the spirit which has created all the higher religions. Ireland agrees with Ecclesiastes. Perceiving that there is in matter no integral and permanent reality she cannot be content with material victories; her poets are subtle in what a French writer styles the innuendoes by which the soul makes its enormous claims. The formula of her aspiration has been admirably rendered by the late Mrs Nora Chesson: "He follows after shadows when all your chase is done; He follows after shadows, the King of Ireland's son." Were I to read the poem, of which these lines are the motif, to certain genial Englishmen of my acquaintance they would observe that the gentleman in question was a "queer cove, staying up late at night and catching cold, and that no doubt there was a woman in the case." But these are considerations a little remote from the daily dust of politics. In the sense in which every life is a failure, and the best life the worst failure, Ireland is a failure. But in every other sense, in all that touches the fathomable business of daylight, she has been a conspicuous success. A certain type of fanaticism is naive enough to regard the intercourse of England with Ireland as that of a superior with an inferior race. This is the sanction invoked to legitimise every adventure in invasion and colonisation. M. Jules Hormand, who has attempted, in his recent book, "Domination et Colonisation," to formulate a theory of the whole subject, touches bed-rock when he writes: "We must then accept as our point of departure the principle that there is a hierarchy of races and of civilisations, and that we belong to the higher race and civilisation.... The essential legitimation of conquest is precisely this conviction of our own superiority.... Nations which do not hold this belief, because incapable of such sincerity towards themselves, should not attempt to conquer others." The late Lord Salisbury was grasping at such a justification when he likened the Irish to Hottentots; it would be a justification of a kind if it chanced to be validated by the facts. But it does not. There is so much genuine humour in the comparison that, for my part, I am unable to take offence at it. I look at the lathe painted to look like iron, and I set over against him Parnell. That is enough; the lathe is smashed to fragments amid the colossal laughter of the gods. The truth is that in every shock and conflict of Irish civilisation with English, it is the latter that has given way. The obscuration of this obvious fact is probably to be ascribed to the military successes of the Norman, or rather the Cymro-Frankish invaders. If we were the higher race why did we not put them out? Replying on the same plane of thought we observe that if they were the higher race they would have put us down. But a more detailed assignment of qualities between the two peoples is possible. In general it may be said that the two stood on much the same level of mentality, but that they had specialised on different subjects, the Normans on war and politics, the Irish on culture. Of the many writers who help us to reconstruct the period we ought to signalise one, Mrs A.S. Green, who to a rare scholarship adds something rarer, the genius of common sense. This is not the place in which to recall the whole substance of her "Making of Ireland and its Undoing" and her "Irish Nationality"; but from borrowings thence and elsewhere we can piece together a plain tale of that first chapter of the Irish Question. CHAPTER III HISTORY _(b) Plain_ In those days war was the most lucrative industry open to a young man of breeding, courage, and ability. Owners of capital regarded it as a sound investment. What Professor Oman tells us of the Normans in 1066 was equally true of them in 1169: "Duke William had undertaken his expedition not as a mere feudal lord of the barons of Normandy but rather as the managing director of a great joint-stock company for the conquest of England, in which not only his own subjects but hundreds of adventurers, poor and rich, from all parts of Western Europe had taken shares." The Normans, then, came to Ireland with their eyes on three objects. In the first place, property. This was to be secured in the case of each individual adventurer by the overthrow of some individual Irish chieftain. It necessitated war in the shape of a purely local, and indeed personal grapple. In the second place, plunder. This was to be secured by raids, incursions, and temporary alliances. In the third place, escape from the growing power and exactions of the Crown. This was to be secured geographically by migration to Ireland, and politically by delaying, resolutely if discreetly, the extension in that country of the over-lordship of the King. Herein lies the explanation of the fact that for three and a half centuries the English penetration into Ireland is a mere chaos of private appetites and egotisms. The invaders, as we have said, were specialists in war, and in the unification of states through war. This they had done for England; this they failed to do for Ireland. The one ingredient which, if dropped into the seething cauldron of her life, must have produced the definite crystallisation of a new nationality, complete in structure and function, was not contributed. True, the Cymro-Franks proved themselves strong enough in arms to maintain their foothold; if that physical test is enough to establish their racial superiority then let us salute Mr Jack Johnson as Zarathustra, the superman. But in their one special and characteristic task they failed lamentably. Instead of conquest and consolidation they gave us mere invasion and disturbance. The disastrous role played by them has been unfolded by many interpreters of history, by none with a more vivid accuracy than we find in the pages of M. Paul-Dubois: "Had Ireland," he writes, "been left to herself she would, in all human probability, have succeeded, notwithstanding her decadence, in establishing political unity under a military chief. Had the country been brought into peaceful contact with continental civilisation, it must have advanced along the path of modern progress. Even if it had been conquered by a powerful nation, it would at least have participated in the progress of the conquering power. But none of these things happened. England, whose political and social development had been hastened by the Norman Conquest, desired to extend her influence to Ireland. 'She wished,' as Froude strangely tells us, 'to complete the work of civilisation happily begun by the Danes.' But in actual fact she only succeeded in trammelling the development of Irish society, and maintaining in the country an appalling condition of decadent stagnation, as the result of three centuries and a half of intermittent invasions, never followed by conquest." On the other hand the triumph of Irish culture was easy and absolute. Ireland, unvisited by the legions and the law of Rome, had evolved a different vision of the life of men in community, or, in other words, a different idea of the State. Put very briefly the difference lay in this. The Romans and their inheritors organised for purposes of war and order, the Irish for purposes of culture. The one laid the emphasis on police, the other on poets. But for a detailed exposition of the contrast I must send the reader to Mrs Green's "Irish Nationality." In a world in which right is little more than a secretion of might, in which, unless a strong man armed keeps house, his enemies enter in, the weakness of the Gaelic idea is obvious. But the Roman pattern too had a characteristic vice which has led logically in our own time to a monstrous and sinister growth of armaments. To those who recognise in this deification of war the blackest menace of our day the vision of a culture State is not without charm. The shattering possibilities enfolded in it would have fevered Nietzsche and fascinated Renan. But, be that as it may, Ireland played Cleopatra to the Antony of the invaders. Some of them, indeed, the "garrison" pure and simple, had all their interests centred not only in resisting but in calumniating her. But the majority yielded gaily to her music, her poetry, her sociability, that magical quality of hers which the Germans call _Gemütlichkeit_. In a few centuries a new and enduring phrase had designated them as more Irish than the Irish themselves. So far as any superiority of civilisation manifests itself in this first period it is altogether on the side of Ireland. This power of assimilation has never decayed. There never was a nation, not even the United States, that so subdued and re-fashioned those who came to her shores, that so wrought them into her own blood and tissue. The Norman baron is transformed in a few generations into an Irish chieftain, and as often as not into an Irish "rebel." The Jacobite planter of the first decade of the seventeenth century is in the fifth decade found in arms against Cromwell; the Cromwellian settler is destined in turn to shed his blood for James II. and Catholicity. Protestant colonists who, in the early eighteenth century, enforce and defend the abominable Penal Laws, will in 1782 demand, with drawn swords, that henceforth there shall be no longer a Protestant colony but in its place an Irish nation. The personal history of the captains of the Irish cause in modern times is no less remarkable. O'Connell begins his public career in the Yeomanry called out to put down the insurrectionary movement of Emmet. Isaac Butt comes first into note as the orator of the Orange Party in Dublin. Parnell himself steps out of a Tory milieu and tradition into the central tumult of agitation. Wave after incoming wave of them, her conquerors were conquered. "Once again," cried Parnell in the last public utterance of his life, "I am come to cast myself into the deep sea of the love of my people." In that deep sea a hundred diverse currents of blood have met and mingled; they have lost their individual drift to become part of the strong tide of national consciousness and national unity. If Irish history is to be regarded as a test of racial superiority then Ireland emerges with the crown and garlands of victory. We came, we the invaders, to dominate, and we remained to serve. For Ireland has signed us with the oil and chrism of her human sacrament, and even though we should deny the faith with our lips she would hold our hearts to the end. But let us translate her triumph into more concrete speech. The essential lesson of experience, then, is that no device, plan, or policy adopted by England for the subjugation of Ireland has ever been anything except an abject failure. And the positive of this negative is that every claim that ever formed part of the national programme of Ireland has won its way against all enmities. No plough to which she ever put her hand has been turned back or stayed eternally in mid-furrow. It does not matter what period you call to the witness-box; the testimony is uniform and unvarying. Until Tudor times, as has been noted, there cannot be said to have been in any strict sense an English policy in Ireland; there was only a scuffle of appetites. In so far as there was a policy it consisted of sporadic murder for the one half, and for the other of an attempt to prevent all intercourse that might lead to amalgamation between the two peoples. The Statute of Kilkenny--which is, all things considered, more important than the Kilkenny cats though not so well known in England--made it a capital offence for a settler to marry an Irishwoman or to adopt the Irish language, law, or costume. The Act no doubt provided a good many ruffians with legal and even ecclesiastical fig-leaves with which to cover their ruffianism, and promoted among the garrison such laudable objects as rape and assassination. But as a breakwater between the two races it did not fulfil expectation. The Statute was passed in 1367: and two centuries later Henry VIII. was forced to appoint as his Deputy the famous Garrett Fitzgerald whose life was a militant denial of every clause and letter of it. With the Tudors, after some diplomatic preliminaries, a very clear and business-like policy was developed. Seeing that the only sort of quiet Irishman known to contemporary science was a dead Irishman, English Deputies and Governors were instructed to pacify Ireland by slaughtering or starving the entire population. The record of their conscientious effort to obey these instructions may be studied in any writer of the period, or in any historian, say Mr Froude. For Mr Froude, in his pursuit of the picturesque, was always ready to resort to the most extreme measures; he sometimes even went so far as to tell the truth. The noblest and ablest English minds lent their aids. Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser were both rather circumambulatory on paper; the work of each is 'a long monotone broken by two or three exquisite immortalities. But they were both as concise in action as an Elizabethan headsman. Sir Walter helped Lord Grey, the recognised pattern in those days of the Christian gentleman, to put to death seven hundred prisoners-of-war at Smerwick. Spenser, being no soldier, leaned rather to famine. In his famous book he recommends the destruction of crops, houses, cattle, and all necessaries of life so that the Irish should "soon be compelled to devour each other." The Commanders-in-Chief and the Deputies specialised in poison, as became men whose wealth and learning enabled them to keep in touch with the Italian Renaissance. Bluff, straightforward troopers like Mountjoy, Malby, Wilmot, Bagenal, Chichester, and the rest, not pretending to such refinements, did their best in the way of hanging, stabbing, and burning. In those days as well as ours the children had their Charter. "Nits," said the trustees of civilisation, "will grow to lice." And so they tossed them on the points of their swords, thus combining work with play, or fed them on the roast corpses of their relatives, and afterwards strangled them with tresses of their mother's hair. I do not recall these facts in order to show that Elizabethan policy was a riot of blackguardism. That is obvious, and it is irrelevant. I mention them in order to show that the blackguardism under review was an unrelieved failure. At one time, indeed, it seemed to have succeeded. "Ireland, brayed as in a mortar, to use Sir John Davies' phrase," writes M. Paul-Dubois, "at last submitted. In the last years of the century half the population had perished. Elizabeth reigned over corpses and ashes. _Hibernia Pacata_--Ireland is 'pacified.'" * * * * * The blunder discloses itself at a glance. Only half the population had perished; there were still alive, according to the most probable estimate, quite two hundred thousand Irishmen. The next generation helps to illustrate not only the indestructibility of Ireland, but her all but miraculous power of recuperation. So abundant are the resources of his own vitality that, as Dr Moritz Bonn declares, an Irish peasant can live where a continental goat would starve. And not having read Malthus--Mr Malthus at that time being even less readable than since--the Irish remnant proceeded to develop anew into a nation. In forty years it was marching behind that _beau chevalier_ Owen Roe O'Neill to battle and victory. O'Neill, a general famous through Europe, the one man who might have measured equal swords with Cromwell, was removed by poison, and then came the massacres. In eleven years, Sir William Petty assures us, 616,000 out of a total population of 1,466,000 perished by the sword or by starvation. For the remainder the policy of root and branch extermination was abandoned in favour of a policy of State-aided migration and emigration. As an alternative to hell the Irish were deported to Connaught or the Barbadoes. Henceforth there were to be three provinces of loyal English, and one of rebelly Irish. This again was not a radiant success. The transformation of the Cromwellian settler has been indicated; if you were to search for him to-day you would probably find him President of the local branch of the United Irish League. The story repeats itself period after period. The Penal Laws did not protestantise Ireland. The eighteenth century may be said to mark the lowest ebb of national life, but the tide was to turn. After Aughrim and the Boyne, the new device of England was to sacrifice everything to the "garrison." "Protestant Ireland," as Grattan put it, "knelt to England on the necks of her countrymen." In one aspect the garrison were tyrants; in another they were slaves. They were at once oppressors and oppressed. There was a sort of "deal" between them and the English Government by which the public welfare was to be sacrificed to the English Government, the Irish Catholics to the "garrison." A vile programme, but subtle and adroit, it bore its unnatural fruit of legislation, passed by the Westminster Parliament and the Dublin Garrison Parliament alike, for the destruction of every manufacturing and commercial interest in Ireland that was thought to conflict with a similar interest in England. But another debacle has to be chronicled. Out of the very baseness of this regime a new patriotism was begotten. The garrison, awakening abruptly to the fact that it had no country, determined to invent one; and there was brought to birth that modern Ireland, passionate for freedom, which has occupied the stage ever since. In our own time it has knit, as a fractured limb knits, into one tissue with the tradition of the Gaelic peasantry. Hanging and burning, torture and oppression, poison and Penal Laws, bribes and blackguardism so far from exterminating the Irish people actually hammered them into a nation, one and indestructible, proud of its past and confident of its future. Take instances still more recent and particular--the struggle for religious freedom or the struggle for the land. Catholic emancipation is a leading case: obstinacy against obstinacy, the No! of England against the Yes! of Ireland, and the former sprawling in the ditch at the end of the tussle. "The Law," ran the dictum of an eighteenth-century Lord Chancellor, "does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." At this moment a Catholic holds the seals and purse of the Chancellorship. Never did ministers swallow their own stubborn words more incontinently than did Peel and Wellington. So late as 1828 Peel was loudly declaring that the continuance of these bars, which excluded the Catholics from the acquisition of political power, was necessary for the maintenance of the Constitution and the safety of the Church, and Wellington was echoing his words. A year later, utterly defeated by O'Connell, Peel was introducing the Catholic Relief Bill in the Commons. Wellington had it for his task to induce, or rather frighten the king to assent. Ireland not only emancipated the Catholics, she went on to emancipate the Dissenters, a service of freedom of conscience which is too often forgotten. The Tithe System was similarly declared to be part of the fabric of the Constitution, to be upheld at the point of the bayonet. Scythe in hand, the Irish peasant proclaimed that it must go. It went. Still more fundamental was the existence of the Protestant Established Church. To touch it was to lay hands on the Ark. Orange orators threatened civil war; two hundred thousand Ulstermen were to shoulder their Minie Rifles, and not merely slaughter the Catholics but even depose Queen Victoria. Ireland said that the Establishment too must go; and, with the echoed menace of Fenianism ringing in his ears, Mr Gladstone hauled down the official blazon of Ascendancy. "Ulster" did not fight. But the fierce struggle for the land affords the crucial test. Landlordism of that most savage type which held for its whole gospel that a man may do what he likes with his own was conceived to be the very corner-stone of British rule in Ireland. It controlled Parliament, the judiciary, the schools, the Press, and possessed in the Royal Irish Constabulary an incomparable watch-dog. It had resisted the criticism and attack loosened against it by the scandal of the Great Famine. Then suddenly Ireland took the business in hand. On a certain day in October 1879, some thirty men met in a small hotel in Dublin and, under the inspiration of Michael Davitt, founded the Land League. To the programme then formulated, the expropriation of the landlords at twenty years' purchase of their rents, England as usual said No! The proposal was thundered against as confiscation, communism, naked and shameful. To any student, with patience sufficient for the task, the contemporary files of such journals as the _Times_ will furnish an exquisite chapter in the literature of obtuseness. England sustained her No! with batons, bullets, plank-beds, Coercion courts, and an occasional halter; Ireland her Yes! with "agitation." Is it necessary to ask who won? Is it necessary to trace step by step the complete surrender of the last ditchers of those days? The fantastic and wicked dreams of the agitators have in thirty years translated themselves into Statute Law and solid fact. An English statesman of the period, say Mr Balfour or Mr Wyndham, is fortunate if, with a few odd rags pilfered from the Land League wardrobe, he can conceal from history his utter poverty of ideas. This, then, is the essential wisdom of Irish history: Ireland has won all along the line. The Normans did not normanise her. The Tudors did not exterminate her. She has undone the Confiscations, and drawn a cancelling pen through the Penal Laws. The Act of Union, so far from suppressing her individuality or overwhelming it, has actually brought it to that full self-consciousness which constitutes the coming of age of a nation. Tears, as we read in Wordsworth, to human suffering are due; if there be anyone with tears at command he may shed them, with great fitness, and with no profit at all, over the long martyrdom of Ireland. But let him, at least if he values facts, think twice before he goes on to apply to her that other line which speaks of human hopes defeated and overthrown. No other people in the world has held so staunchly to its inner vision; none other has, with such fiery patience, repelled the hostility of circumstances, and in the end reshaped them after the desire of her heart. Hats off to success, gentlemen! Your modern God may well be troubled at sight of this enigmatic Ireland which at once despises him, and tumbles his faithfullest worshippers in the sand of their own amphitheatre. Yet, so it is. The Confederate General, seeing victory suddenly snatched from his hands, and not for the first time, by Meagher's Brigade, exclaimed in immortal profanity: "There comes that damned Green Flag again!" I have often commended that phrase to Englishmen as admirably expressive of the historical role and record of Ireland in British Politics. The damned Green Flag flutters again in their eyes, and if they will but listen to the music that marches with it, they will find that the lamenting fifes are dominated wholly by the drums of victory. CHAPTER IV THE OBVIOUSNESS OF HOME RULE Ireland, then, has made it her foible to be not only right but irresistible in her past demands. What is it that she now claims, and on what grounds? She claims the right to enter into possession of her own soul. She claims the _toga virilis_, and all the strengthening burdens of freedom. Now it is difficult to represent such a demand in terms of argument. Liberty is no mere conclusion of linked logic long-drawn out: it is an axiom, a flaming avatar. The arguments by which it is defended are important, but they bear to it much the same relation that a table of the wave-lengths of various rays of light bears to the immediate glory of a sunrise. There is another obstacle. Self-government, like other spiritual realities, say love or civilisation, is too vast, obvious, and natural to be easily imprisoned in words. You are certainly in love; suppose you were suddenly asked "to state the case" for love? You are probably civilised; suppose you were suddenly asked "to state the case for civilisation"? So it is with the Home Rule idea. To ask what is the gate of entrance to it is like asking what was the gate of entrance to hundred-gated Thebes. My friend, Mr Barry O'Brien, in lecturing on Ireland, used to begin by recounting a very agreeable and appropriate story. A prisoner on trial was asked whether he would accept for his case the jury which had tried the last. He objected very vehemently. "Well, but," said the Judge, "what is the nature of your objection? Do you object to the panel or to the array?" "Ah!" replied the traverser, "if you want to know, I object to the whole damned business." That is approximately our objection to the present system of government in Ireland. But let me attempt to group under a series of somewhat arbitrary headings the "case for Home Rule," that is to say, the case for applying to Ireland the plain platitudes of constitutional freedom. The whole matter roots in the fact of nationality. Nationality is to political life what personality is to mental life, the mainspring, namely, of the mechanism. The two principles of organisation have this in common, that although by, through, and for them the entire pageant of our experience is unfolded, we are unable to capture either of them in a precise formula. That I am a person I know; but what is a person? That Ireland is a nation I know; but what is a nation? "A community of memories and hopes," says Anatole France; but that applies to a football club. Something for which a man will die, says Mr T. M. Healy: but men will die for strange reasons; there was a French poet who shot himself because the trees were always green in the spring and never, for a change, blue or red. A cultural unit, say the anthropologists; an idea of the divine mind, declare Mazzini and the mystics' of sociology. Each of these formulas possesses a certain relative truth, but all of them together come short of the whole truth. Nationality, which acts better perhaps than it argues, is one of the great forces of nature and of human nature that have got to be accepted. Nationality will out, and where it exists it will, in spite of all resistance, strain fiercely to express itself in some sort of autonomous government. German romance depicts for us the misery and restlessness of a man who had lost his shadow. Catholic theologians--if the masters of a wisdom too high and too austere for these days may be invoked--tell us that the departed soul, even though it be in Paradise, hungers with a great desire for the Resurrection that it may be restored to its life-long comrade, the body. "The crimson-throbbing glow Into its old abode aye pants to go." Look again at Ireland and you will discern, under all conflicts, that unity of memory, of will, of material interest, of temperamental atmosphere which knits men into a nation. You will notice the presence of these characteristics, but it is an absence, a void that will most impress you. You will see not a body that has lost its shadow, but something more sinister--a soul that has been sundered from its natural body. She demands restoration. She sues out a _habeas corpus_ of a kind not elsewhere to be paralleled. That is the "Irish Question." You may not like this interpretation of things. It may seem to you fantastic, nasty, perilous to all comfort. Life often does make on the tender-hearted an impression of coarse violence; life, nevertheless, always has its way. What other interpretation is possible? Lancashire, to take any random contrast, is much richer than Ireland in wealth and population; but Lancashire is not a "Question." Lancashire is not a "Question" because Lancashire is not a nation. Ireland is a "Question" because Ireland is a nation. Her fundamental claim is a claim for the constitutional recognition of nationality. We have seen that in almost every conflict between English and Irish ideas the latter have had the justification of success. This holds good also as regards our long insistence on nationality as a principle of political organisation. In various passages of the nineteenth century it seemed to be gravely compromised. Capital, its mobility indefinitely increased by the improved technique of exchange, became essentially a citizen of the world. The earth was all about it where to choose; its masters, falsely identifying patriotism with the Protectionism then dominant, struck at both, and the Free Trade movement philosophised itself into cosmopolitanism. Labour, like capital, showed a rapid tendency to become international or rather supernational. "The workers," proclaimed Marx, "have no fatherland." While this was the drift of ideas in the economic sphere, that in the political was no more favourable. Belgium seemed on the point of extinction, Italy was a mere geographical expression, Hungary was abject and broken. In the narrower but even more significant sphere of British colonial policy the passion for centralisation had not yet been understood in all its folly. Downing Street still functioned as the Dublin Castle of the Empire. The possibility of the overseas possessions developing that rich, strong individuality which characterises them to-day would have been dismissed with horror. The colour and texture of men's thought on these subjects has undergone a notable transformation. Cosmopolitanism of the old type is a slain hallucination. Capital in our time is not content to be a patriot, it is a Jingo. As to labour, if we turn to its politics we find Herr Bebel declaring that the German socialist is first of all a German, and Mr Ramsay MacDonald pledging his adherents to support any war necessary for the assertion of English prestige. If we turn to its theoretical sociology we find the national idea rehabilitated and triumphant. Such intellectual reconstructions do not, as a rule, begin in England, or find in English their characteristic formulæ. Mr Blatchford might indeed be cited, but it is in the brilliant literature of German Social Democracy that the most scientific expression of the new spirit is to be sought. Truly Marx has been indeed translated. His abstract and etiolated internationalism has been replaced by the warm humanity of writers like, say, David or Pernerstorfer. The principle of nationality is Vindicated by the latter in a noble passage. I quote it from Sombart's "Socialism and the Social Movement." "Nationality in its highest form is ... a precious possession. It is the highest expression of human civilisation in an individual form, and mankind is the richer for its appearance. Our purpose is not only to see to it that men shall be housed and fed and clothed in a manner worthy of human beings, but also that they may become humanised by participation in the culture of centuries, that they may themselves possess culture and produce it. All culture is national. It takes its rise in some special people, and reaches its highest form in national character.... Socialism and the national idea are thus not opposed to each other. Every attempt to weaken the national idea is an attempt to lessen the precious possessions of mankind.... Socialism wants to organise, and not disintegrate, humanity. But in the organisms of mankind, not individuals, but nations are the tissues, and if the whole organism is to remain healthy it is necessary for the tissues to be healthy.... The peoples, despite the changes they undergo, are everlasting, and they add to their own greatness by helping the world upward. And so we are at one and the same time good Socialists and good Germans." This might almost seem to be a rhapsody, but every movement of continental politics in recent times confirms and enforces its plain truth. "The spirit of resurgent nationality," as Professor Bury of Cambridge tells us, "has governed, as one of the most puissant forces, the political course of the last century and is still unexhausted." It has governed not only the West but the East; the twain have met in that demand for a constitutional national State which in our day has flamed up, a fire not to be put out, in Turkey, Persia, Egypt. But it is in Imperial politics that the bouleversement has been most complete. When critics now find fault with the structure of the Empire they complain not that there is too much Downing Street in it, but that the residual power of Downing Street-is not visible to the naked eye. To us Irish the blindness of England to the meaning of her own colonial work is a maddening miracle. A wit of the time met Goldsmith at dinner. The novelist was a little more disconcerting than usual, a result, let us charitably hope, of the excellence of the claret. Afterwards they asked his fellow-diner what he thought of the author. "Well," he replied, "I believe that that man wrote 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and, let me tell you, it takes a lot of believing." Similarly when we in Ireland learn that Great Britain has founded on the principle of local autonomy an Empire on which the sun never sets, we nerve ourselves to an Act of Faith. It is not inappropriate to observe that a large part of the "founding" was done by Irishmen. But the point of immediate interest lies in this. The foolishness of England in Ireland finds an exact parallel, although on a smaller scale and for a shorter period, in the early foolishness of England in her own colonies. In both cases there is an attempt to suppress individuality and initiative, to exploit, to bully, to Downing Street-ify. It was a policy of Unionism, the sort of Unionism that linked the destiny of the lady to that of the tiger. The fruits of it were a little bitter in the eating. The colonies in which under the Home Rule regime "loyalty" has blossomed like the rose, were in those days most distressingly disloyal. Cattle-driving and all manner of iniquities of that order in Canada; the boycott adopted not as a class, but as a national, weapon in Cape Colony; the Eureka stockade in Australia; Christian De Wet and the crack of Mausers in the Transvaal--such were the propædeutics to the establishment of freedom and the dawn of loyalty in the overseas possessions. But in this field of government the gods gave England not only a great pioneer, Lord Durham, but also the grace to listen to him. His Canadian policy set a headline which has been faithfully and fruitfully copied. Its success was irresistible. Let the "Cambridge Modern History" tell the tale of before and after Home Rule in the Dominion: "Provincial jealousies have dwindled to vanishing point; racial antipathies no longer imperil the prosperity of the Dominion; religious animosities have lost their mischievous power in a new atmosphere of common justice and toleration. Canada, as the direct outcome of Confederation, has grown strong, prosperous, energetic. The unhappy divisions which prevailed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and which darkened with actual revolt and bloodshed the dawn of the Victorian era, are now only a memory. The links which bind the Dominion to Great Britain may on paper seem slight, but they are resistless. Imperial Federation has still great tasks to accomplish within our widely scattered Imperial domains, but its success in Canada may be accepted as the pledge of its triumph elsewhere. Canada is a nation within the Empire, and in Kipling's phrase is 'daughter in her mother's house and mistress in her own.'" This is the authentic harvest of freedom. The "unity" of the old regime which, in a Bismarckian phrase, was like paper pasted over ever-widening cracks, was abandoned. The Separatist programme triumphed. And the outcome? The sham unity of government has been replaced by a real unity of interest, affection and cultural affinity. We find administrators like Mr Lyttleton, former Tory Secretary for the Colonies, engaged to-day not in suppressing but in celebrating the "varied individuality" of the overseas possessions. As for the political effects of the change, every English writer repeats of the Colonies what Grattan, in other circumstances, said of the Irish: Loyalty is their foible. There is indeed one notable flaw in the colonial parallel. I have spoken as if the claim of the Colonies on foot of the principle of nationality was comparable to that of Ireland. That of course was not the case. They were at most nations in the making; she was a nation made. Home Rule helped on their growth; in its benign warmth Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa have developed not only a political complexion characteristic of each but a literature, an art and even a slang equally characteristic. Ireland, on the other hand, has manifested throughout her whole history an amazing faculty of assimilating and nationalising everything that came to her from without. The will to preserve her nationality motived her whole life, especially in the modern period. The declared dream of Grattan was, as we have seen, to transform a Protestant colony into an Irish nation. Wolfe Tone confessed the same inspiration; Emmet's speech from the dock was that and nothing else. It was the whole of Davis in thought, and of O'Connell in action. Isaac Butt yielded to its fascination, and found for it the watchword, Home Rule. It was formulated by Parnell in a speech the capital passage of which forms the inscription on his monument. It echoes and re-echoes through the resolutions of every meeting, and constitutes for many orators their total stock of political ideas. It provides the title of the Irish delegation to Parliament, and is endorsed at General Election after General Election by a great and unchanging majority. A people such as this is not to be exterminated. An ideal such as this is not to be destroyed. Recognise the one, sever the ligatures that check the free flow of blood through the veins of the other, and enrich your federation of autonomous peoples with another rich individuality. Imitate in Ireland your own wisdom in dealing with the Colonies, and the same policy will bear the same harvest. For justice given the Colonies gave you friendship, as for injustice stubbornly upheld they had given you hatred. The analogy with Ireland is complete so far as the cards have been played. The same human elements are there, the same pride, the same anger, the same willingness to forget anger. Why should the augury fail? I can hear in imagination the sniff of the unimaginative reader; I can figure to myself his instant dismissal of all these considerations as "sentiment." Let the word stand, coloured though it is with associations that degrade it. But is "sentiment" to be ignored in the fixing of constitutions? Ruskin asks a pertinent question. What is it after all but "sentiment," he inquires, that prevents a man from killing his grandmother in time of hunger? Sentiment is the most respectable thing in human psychology. No one believes in it more thoroughly than your reactionary Tory. But he wears his heart on his sleeve with a difference. He is so greedily patriotic that he would keep all the patriotism in the world to himself. That he should love his country is natural and noble, a theme so high as to be worthy of Mr Kipling or even Mr Alfred Austin himself. That we should love ours is a sort of middle term between treason and insanity. It is as if a lover were to insist that no poems should be written to any woman except _his_ mistress. It is as if he were to put the Coercion Act in force against anyone found shedding tears over the sufferings of any mother except _his_ mother. In fact it is the sort of domineering thick-headedness that never fails to produce disloyalty. The national idea, then, is the foundation of the "case for Home Rule." It might indeed be styled the whole case, but this anthem of nationality may be transposed into many keys. Translated into terms of ethics it becomes that noble epigram of Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman's for which I would exchange a whole library of Gladstonian eloquence: "Good government is no substitute for self-government." In Ireland we have enjoyed neither. Political subjection has mildewed our destiny, leaf and stem. But were it not so, had we increased in wealth like Egypt, in population like Poland, the vital argument for autonomy would be neither weaker nor stronger. Rich or poor, a man must be master of his own fate. Poor or rich, a nation must be captain of her own soul. In the suburban road in which you live there are probably at least a hundred other house-holds. Now if you were all, each suppressing his individuality, to club together you could build in place of the brick-boxes in which you live a magnificent phalanstery. There you could have more air for your lungs and more art for your soul, a spacious and a gracious life, cheaper washing, cheaper food, and a royal kitchen. But you will not do it. Why? Because it profiteth a man nothing to gain the services of a Paris _maître d'hôtel_ and to lose his own soul. In an attic fourteen feet by seven, which he can call his own, a man has room to breathe; in a Renaissance palace, controlled by a committee on which he is in a permanent minority of one, he has no room to breathe. Home Rulers are fond of phrasing their programme as a demand on the part of Ireland that she shall control the management of her domestic affairs. The language fits the facts like a glove. The difference between Unionism and Home Rule is the difference between being compelled to live in an ostentatious and lonely hotel and being permitted to live in a simple, friendly house of one's own. Translated into terms of administration the gospel of autonomy becomes the doctrine of "the man on the spot." That is the Eleven Rule of Imperial Policy, and although it has sometimes been ridden to death, in fact to murder, as in the Denshawai hangings, it is a sound rule. A man who has gone to the trouble of being born, bred, and ordinarily domiciled in, say, Kamskatcka is more likely to understand the affairs of Kamskatcka than a man whose life oscillates daily like a pendulum between Clapham and the Strand. The old natural philosophers accepted the theory of _actio distans_, that is to say they assumed that a body could act effectively where it was not. This was Unionism in science, and needless to say it was wrong. In politics it is equally wrong, and it has been repudiated everywhere except in Ireland. Physical vision is limited in range; as the distance increases the vision declines in clearness, becomes subject to illusion, finally ceases. Now you in London, through mere limitations of human faculty, cannot see us in Dublin. You are trying to govern Ireland in the fashion in which, according to Wordsworth, all bad literature has been written, that is to say, without your eye on the object. But it is time to have done with this stern, long chase of the obvious. Translated into terms of economics the gospel of autonomy becomes the doctrine of a "stake in the country." England has, indeed, a stake in Ireland. She has the same interest in seeing Ireland prosperous that a bootmaker has in learning from his farmer client that the crops are good. Each country is in great measure the economic complement of the other. But if the bootmaker were to insist on having his finger in the farmer's pie, the pie, destined for the bootmaker's own appetite, would not be improved. If he were to insist on applying to the living cow those processes which he applies with such success to the dead leather, the cow would suffer and ultimately there would be no boots. Generally speaking, each of us improves his own business by declining to mind anybody else's. Home Rule will give England precisely this chance of sticking to her last. To Ireland it will come with both hands full of new opportunities and new responsibilities. To realise that the national idea in Ireland arouses an emotion, at once massive, intense, and enduring, is to understand many derivative riddles. We are all familiar with the complaint that there is in Ireland too much politics and too little business. Of course there is, and not only too little business but too little literature, too little philosophy, too little social effort, too little fun. We Nationalists have grasped this better and proclaimed it more steadily than any Unionist. There is as much truth in saying that life begins where politics end, as in saying that love begins where love-making ends. Constitutional freedom is not the fifth act of the social drama in modern times, it is rather the prologue, or, better still, the theatre in which other ideas that move men find an arena for their conflict. Ireland, a little exhausted by her intense efforts of the last thirty years, does assuredly need a rest-cure from agitation. But this healing peace is itself a gift of autonomy. A tooth-ache concentrates the whole mind on one particular emotion, which is a bad thing, and breeds profanity, which is worse. But it is idle to tell a man with a tooth-ache that what he needs in his life is less cursing and more business. He cannot work effectively so long as he suffers; the only way to peace is to cure the tooth-ache. And in order to get rid of politics in Ireland, you must give Ireland Home Rule. CHAPTER V THE RAVAGES OF UNIONISM (I) Ireland, as we have seen, has had the misfortune to provoke many worthy writers to a sad debauch of sentimentalism. It has pleased their fancy especially to picture her as a sphinx, mysterious, elusive, inscrutable. It is impossible to govern her, declare these theorists, because it is impossible to understand her. She is the _femme incomprise_ of modern politics. Her temperament is a magnet for disaster, her soul a sanctuary of inviolable secrets. So runs the rhapsody, and many of my own countrymen have thought it good strategy to accept and exploit it. They have this to urge, indeed, that failure to make oneself understood is commonly regarded as a sign of the superior mind. Lord Rosebery, for example, has told us that he himself, for all his honey-dropping tongue, has never been properly understood. And Hegel, the great German philosopher, who was so great a philosopher that we may without impropriety mention his name even in the brilliant vicinage of the Earl of Midlothian, used to sigh: "Alas! in the whole of my teaching career I had but one student who understood my system, and he mis-understood it." This is all very well in its way, and a climate of incomprehension may suit orators and metaphysicians admirably; but it will not do for politics. The party or people that fails to make its programme understood is politically incompetent, and Ireland is assuredly safe from any such imputation. She has her spiritual secrets, buried deep in what we may call the subliminal consciousness of the race, and to the disclosure of these secrets we may look with confidence for the inspiration of a new literature. But in politics Ireland has no secrets. All her cards are on the table, decipherable at the first glance. Her political demand combines the lucidity of an invoice with the axiomatic rectitude of the Ten Commandments. There is no doubt about what she wants, and none about why she ought to have it. In that sense the case for Home Rule is made, and this book, having justified its title, ought to come to an end. But convention prescribes that about the nude contour of principles there should be cast a certain drapery of details, and such conventions are better obeyed. Where we are to begin is another matter. We are, as has been so often suggested, in presence of a situation in which one cannot see the trees for the forest. The principle of the government of Ireland is so integrally wrong that it is difficult to signalise any one point in which it is more wrong than it is in any other. A timber-chaser, that is to say a pioneer for a lumber firm, in the Western States of America once found himself out of spirits. He decided to go out of life, and being thorough in his ways he left nothing to chance. He set fire to his cabin, and, mounting the table, noosed his neck to a beam, drank a large quantity of poison, and, as he kicked over the table, simultaneously shot himself through the head and drew a razor across his throat. Later on the doctor had to fill in the usual certificate. At "Cause of Death" he paused, pondered, and at last wrote, "Causes too numerous to specify." The fable possesses a certain suggestive value upon which we need not enlarge. How, one may well ask, are we to itemise the retail iniquities of a system of government which is itself a wholesale iniquity? But since we must begin somewhere let us begin with the Economics of Unionism. In this often-written, and perhaps over-written story there is one feature of some little comfort. Whatever quarrel there may be as to causes, the facts are not disputed. Pitt and his friends promised that the Union would be followed by general prosperity, development of manufacturers, and expansion of commerce. "Among the great and known defects of Ireland," he declared in a typical statement, "one of the most prominent features is its want of industry and of capital. How are these wants to be supplied but by blending more closely with Ireland the industry and capital of Great Britain?" It was a Witches' Promise making smooth the path to damnation. In every point in which Pitt had prophesied white the moving finger of history began, from the very day of the Union, to write black. The injury to the whole economic tissue of Ireland was immediate, cumulative, in the end crushing. We have at hand authoritative figures of the decline collected by various Commissions and private inquirers. Let us note some of these as summarised by Monsignor O'Riordan in his remarkable book, "Catholicism and Progress": "Again, in 1800 there were 91 woollen manufacturers in Dublin and 4938 hands employed; in 1840 there were only 12 manufacturers, and 682 hands employed; in 1880, only 3 manufacturers in Dublin and around it. In 1800 there were 56 blanket manufacturers in Kilkenny, and 3000 hands employed; in 1840 there were 12 manufacturers and 925 hands employed. In 1800 there were 900 hands employed on ratteens and friezes in Roscrea; in 1840 the industry had completely disappeared. In 1800 there were 1000 flannel looms in County Wicklow; in 1840 there was not one. In 1800 there were 2500 looms at work in Dublin for the manufacture of silk and poplin; in 1840 there were only 250. In 1800 there were 27,000 cotton workers in Belfast and around it; in 1840 there were only 12,000. In 1800 there were 61,075 tradesmen in Dublin for the woollen, silk, and cotton industries; in 1834 there were only 14,446, and of these 4412 were idle, showing a decrease of 51,041 in the employed." There was, we must add, an increase in other directions. For instance, whereas there had been only seven bankruptcies decreed in Dublin in 1799 there were 125 in 1810. The number of insolvent houses grew in seven years from 880 to 4719. These figures are not random but symptomatic. Mr Pitt had promised to blend Ireland with the capital and industry of Great Britain; he blended them as the edge of a tomahawk is blended with the spattered brains of its victim. We have glanced at the condition of manufacture. Lest it should be assumed that the tiller of land at least had profited by the Napoleonic Wars, with their consequent high prices, let me hasten to add that the Grey Commission, reporting in 1836, had to inform the Government that 2,385,000 persons, nearly one-third of the population, were "in great need of food." "Their habitations," the Report proceeds, "are wretched hovels; several of the family sleep together on straw, or on the bare ground, sometimes with a blanket, sometimes not even so much to cover them. Their food commonly consists of dry potatoes; and with these they are at times so scantily supplied as to be obliged to stint themselves to one spare meal in the day.... They sometimes get a herring or a little milk, but they never get meat except at Christmas, Easter, and Shrovetide." But a truce to these dismal chronicles. The _post hoc_ may be taken as established; was it a _propter hoc_? Was the Union the cause as well as the antecedent of this decay? No economist, acquainted with the facts, can fail to answer in the affirmative. The causal connection between two realities could not be more manifest. Let us examine it very briefly. I begin of necessity with the principle of freedom, for freedom is the dominating force in economic life. No instance can be cited of a modern people of European civilisation that ever prospered while held politically in subjection. "All history," writes Professor Marshall of Cambridge, the doyen of Political Economy in England, "is full of the record of inefficiency caused in varying degrees by slavery, serfdom, and other forms of civil and political oppression and repression." The Act of Union was, as has been said, one of those spiritual outrages which, in their reactions, are like lead poured into the veins. It lowered the vital resources of Ireland. It made hope an absentee, and enterprise an exile. That was its first-fruits of disaster. These commonplaces of the gospel of freedom "for which Hampden died in the field and Sidney on the scaffold" will possibly appear to their modern descendants mystical, sentimental, and remote from real life. For there is no one in the world so ready as your modern Englishman to deny that he is a man in order to prove that he is a business-man. Fortunately we can establish for this strange being, who has thus indecently stripped himself of humanity, and establish in very clear and indisputable fashion the cash nexus between Unionism and decay. The argument is simple. The Union came precisely in the period in which capital was beginning to dominate the organisation of industry. The Union denuded Ireland of the capital which would have enabled her to transform the technique of her manufactures, and so maintain the ground won under Grattan's Parliament. The channels through which this export of capital proceeded were absenteeism and over-taxation. The first statement in this paragraph of plaint calls for no elaboration. Arnold Toynbee took as the terminal dates of the Industrial Revolution the years 1760 and 1830. The last generation of the eighteenth century brought to birth the great inventions, but it was the first generation of the nineteenth that founded on them large scale production, and settled the structure of modern industry. Not without profound disturbance and incalculable suffering was the new system established in England; the story may be read in the pages of Marx, Cunningham, Cooke Taylor, or any of the economic historians. But, for all the blood and tears, it was established. Insulated from the continental turmoil, served by her Titanic bondsmen coal and iron, England was able to defeat the Titan, Napoleon. Now it is idle to deny that this period would under any government have strained Ireland, as the phrase goes, to the pin of her collar. But the Union made her task impossible. Lord Castlereagh was quite right in pointing to the accumulation of capital as the characteristic advantage of England. Through centuries of political freedom that process had gone on without interruption. Ireland, on the contrary, had been scientifically pillaged by the application to her of the "colonial system" from 1663 to 1779; I deliberately exclude the previous waste of war and confiscation. She had but twenty years of commercial freedom, and, despite her brilliant success in that period, she had not time to accumulate capital to any great extent. But Grattan's Parliament had shown itself extraordinarily astute and steady of purpose in its economic policy. Had its guidance continued--conservative taxation, adroit bounties, and that close scrutiny and eager discussion of the movements of industry which stands recorded in its Journal--the manufactures of Ireland would have weathered the storm. But the luck was as usual against her. Instead of wise leadership from Dublin the gods decreed that she should have for portion the hard indifference and savage taxation of Westminster. Reduced to the position of a tributary nation, stripped of the capital that would have served as a commissariat of advance in that crucial struggle, she went down. I am not to make here the case for Ireland in respect of over-taxation. It was made definitely in the Report of the Childers Commission, a document which no Englishman reads, lest in coming to the light he should have his sins too sharply rebuked. It has been developed and clarified in many speeches and essays and in some books. To grasp it is to find your road to Damascus on the Irish Question. But for the moment we are concerned with but one aspect, namely, the export of capital from Ireland as a result of the Union, and the economic reactions of that process. Since we are to use moderation of speech and banish all rhetoric from these pages, one is at a loss to characterise Union arrangements and post-Union finance. Let it suffice to say that they combined the moral outlook of Captain Kidd with the mathematical technique of a super-bucket-shop. From the first Great Britain robbed the Irish till; from the first she skimmed the cream off the Irish milk, and appropriated it for her own nourishment. One has a sort of gloomy pride in remembering that although cheated in all these transactions we were not duped. Mr Foster, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons--in those days the Speaker actually spoke, a whimsical Irish custom--tore the cloak off Lord Castlereagh's strutting statesmanship, and laid bare his real motives. Speaking on the first Union proposal in 1799 he said: "But the noble Lord has told us the real motives of this scheme of Union, and I thank him for stating them so fairly. Ireland, he says, must contribute to every war, and the Minister won't trust to interest, affection, or connection for guiding her conduct. _He must have her purse within his own grasp_. While three hundred men hold it in Ireland he cannot put his hand into it, they are out of his reach, but let a hundred of you carry it over and lay it at his feet, and then he will have full and uncontrolled power." So it came about. Even before the Union Grattan's Parliament had, of its own free will and out of an extravagant loyalty, run itself into debt for the first time to help England against France. But, as Foster indicated, the Irish members felt that they were coming to the end of their resources. They were about to call a halt, and so the Union became a necessary ingredient of Pitt's foreign policy. By it Ireland was swept into the vortex of his anti-French hysteria, and of what Mr Hartley Withers so properly styles his "reckless finance." In sixteen years she was brought to the edge of bankruptcy. Between 1801 and 1817 her funded debt was increased from £28,541,157 to £112,684,773, an augmentation of nearly 300 per cent. In the first fifteen years following the Union she paid in taxes £78,000,000 as against £31,000,000 in the last fifteen years preceding the Union. After the amalgamation of the Exchequers in 1817 the case becomes clearer. In 1819-20, for instance, the revenue contributed by Ireland was £5,256,564, of which only £1,564,880 was spent in Ireland, leaving a tribute for Great Britain of £3,691,684. For 1829-30 the tribute was £4,156,576. Let us now inquire how things stood with regard to absenteeism. This had existed before the Union'; indeed, if the curious reader will turn to Johnson's "Dictionary" he will find it damned in a definition. But it was enormously intensified by the shifting of the centre of gravity of Irish politics, industry, and fashion from Dublin to London. The memoirs of that day abound in references to an exodus which has left other and more material evidence in those fallen and ravaged mansions which now constitute the worst slums of our capital city. One figure may be cited by way of illustration. Before the Union "98 Peers, and a proportionate number of wealthy Commoners" lived in Dublin. The number of resident Peers in 1825 was twelve. At present, as I learn from those who read the sixpenny illustrateds, there is one. But when they abandoned Ireland they did not leave their rents behind. And it was a time of rising rents; according to Toynbee they at least doubled between 1790 and 1833. Precise figures are not easily arrived at, but Mr D'Alton in his "History of the County Dublin," a book quite innocent of politics, calculates that the absentee rental of Ireland was in 1804 not less than £3,000,000, and in 1830 not less than £4,000,000, an under-estimate. If we average these figures over the period we find that during the first thirty years of Union, that is to say during the most critical phase of the Industrial Revolution, not less than £105,000,000 of Irish capital was "exported" from Ireland to Great Britain through the channel of absenteeism. Averaging the figures of the taxation-tribute in similar fashion, and taking the lowest estimates, I am unable to reach a less total than £120,000,000 for the same period. In other words, the effect of the Union was to withdraw from Ireland during the thirty years that settled the economic structure of modern industry not less than _£_225,000,000. Let me draw the argument together in words which I have used elsewhere, and which others can no doubt easily better: "We have heard, in our day, a long-drawn denunciation of a Liberal government on the score that it had, by predatory taxation, driven English capital out of the country, and compromised the industrial future of England. We have seen in our own day gilt-edged securities, bank, insurance, railway, and brewery shares in Great Britain, brought toppling down by a Tory waste of _£_250,000,000 on the Boer War. We know that in economic history effects are, in a notable way, cumulative; so clearly marked is the line of continuity as to lead a great writer to declare that there is not a nail in all England that could not be traced back to savings made before the Norman Conquest. A hundred instances admonish us that, in industrial life, nothing fails like failure. When we put all these considerations together, and give them a concrete application, can we doubt that in over-taxation and the withdrawal of capital we have the prime _causa causans_ of the decay of Ireland under the Union?" In this wise did Pitt "blend Ireland with the industry and capital of Great Britain." Cupped by his finance she gave the venal blood of her industry to strengthen the predominant partner, and to help him to exclude for a time from these islands that pernicious French Democracy in which all states and peoples have since found redemption. Such was the first chapter in the Economics of Unionism. CHAPTER VI THE RAVAGES OF UNIONISM (2) If the reader cares to push forward the line of thought suggested in the preceding pages and to submit it to a concrete test he can do so without difficulty. He has but to compare the post-Union history of linen with that of cotton. Linen in Ireland had been a perfect type of the State-created, spoon-fed industry characteristic of the period of mercantilism. Within certain limits--such as the steady resolve to confine it, in point of religion, to Protestants, and, in point of geography, to Ulster--it had behind it at the Union a century of encouragement. It is calculated that between 1700 and 1800 it had received bounties, English and Irish, totalling more than,£2,500,000. In other words it had a chance to accumulate capital. Even linen declined after the Union partly from the direct effects of that measure, partly from the growing intensity of the Industrial Revolution. But the capital accumulated, the commercial good name established under native government carried the manufacturers through. These were able towards 1830 to introduce the new machinery and the new processes, and to weather the tempest of competition. Cotton, on the other hand, was a very recent arrival. It had developed very rapidly, and in 1800 gave promise of supplanting linen. But the weight of capital told more and more as changes in the technique of transportation and production ushered in our modern world. Lacking the solid reserves of its rival, involved in all the exactions that fall on a tributary nation, the cotton manufacture of Ireland lost ground, lost heart, and disappeared. But let us resume the parable. If the "business man" responds to capital, he will certainly not be obtuse to the appeal of coal. In this feeder of industry Ireland was geologically at a disadvantage, and it was promised that the free trade with Great Britain inaugurated by the Union would "blend" with her the resources of the latter country. Did she obtain free trade in coal? Miss Murray, a Unionist, in her "Commercial Relations between England and Ireland" tells the story in part: "Coals again had hitherto been exported from Great Britain at a duty of gd. per ton; this duty was to cease but the Irish import duty on coal was to be made perpetual, and that at a time when all coasting duties in England and Scotland had been abolished. Dublin especially would suffer from this arrangement, for the duty there on coals imported was is. 8-4/5d. per ton, while that in the rest of Ireland was only 9-1/2d. This was because a local duty of 1s. per ton existed in Dublin for the internal improvement of the city; this local duty was blended by the Union arrangements with the general duty on the article, and its perpetual continuance was thus enforced. All this shows how little Irish affairs were understood in England." But was it a failure of the English intellect or a lapse of the English will? Except through the Platonic intuition which reduces all sin to terms of ignorance I cannot accept the former explanation. What is certain is that there was no lack of contemporary protest. There existed in Dublin in 1828 a Society for the Improvement of Ireland, an active body which included in its membership the Lord Mayor (a high Tory, of course), Lord Cloncurry, and a long list of notable names such as Latouche, Sinclair, Houghton, Leader, Grattan, Smith O'Brien, George Moore, and Daniel O'Connell. In the year mentioned the Society appointed a number of committees to report on the state of Irish agriculture, commerce, and industry. One of these reports is full of information touching the drain of capital from the country, and its consequent decay, as registered by contemporaries; we shall learn from another how things stood with regard to coal. At the time of the Union the Irish Parliament granted a bounty of 2s. per ton on Irish coal carried coastwise to Dublin, and levied a duty of 10-1/2d. per ton on coal imported from Great Britain. The effect of the Union was to abolish the bounty and double the levy on imports. Writing twenty-eight years later the Committee summarise in a brief passage the disastrous effects of a policy, so foolish and so unjust. The last sentence opens up sombre vistas to any student of economic history: "Severe, however, as the operation of the coal duty in arresting the progress of manufacture may have been in other parts of Ireland, in Dublin, under the circumstances to which your Committee are about to call the attention of the Society, it has produced all the effects of actual prohibition, all the mischiefs of the most rigorous exclusion. It is a singular circumstance that, in the metropolis of the country, possessing local advantages in respect to manufactures and facilities for trade with the interior, superior, probably, to any other city or town in this portion of the empire, with a population excessive as to the means of employment, in a degree which probably has not a parallel in Europe, _there is not a factory for the production of either silk, linen, cotton, or woollen manufactures which is worked or propelled by a steam engine_." The writers go on to ask for the repeal of the local duty on coal in Dublin, and to suggest that the necessary revenue should be raised by a duty on spirits. This course Belfast had been permitted to follow--one of the numberless make-weights thrown into the scale so steadily on the side of the Protestant North. In my part of the country the people used to say of any very expert thief: "Why, he'd steal the fire out of your grate." Under the Union arrangements Great Britain stole the fire out of the grate of Ireland. And having so dealt with capital and coal the predominant partner next proceeded by a logical development to muddle transportation. The Drummond Commission, appointed in 1836 to consider the question of railway construction in Ireland, issued a report in 1838 which practically recommended public and not private enterprise as appropriate "to accomplish so important a national object." What came after is best related in the official terminology of the Scotter Commission of 1906-10: "This report was presented in July 1838, and early in the following year a great public meeting, held in Dublin, passed a resolution that inasmuch as an adequate system of railways could not be constructed by private capital, the Government should be urged to take the work into its own hands, thereby saving the cost of Private Bill legislation. Promises were also made that the lands necessary for railway construction would be given free of cost. Similar resolutions were adopted at another meeting held about the same time in the north of Ireland. In addition, an address to the Queen was presented by a number of Irish Peers, headed by the Duke of Leinster, praying that action might be taken on the Drummond Commission Report." The government saw the light, and proceeded to sin against it. They embodied the Dublin programme in resolutions which were adopted by the House of Commons in March 1839, and they then abruptly abandoned the whole business. The last chance was not yet lost. During the Great Famine of 1847 the Opposition proposed to raise, £16,000,000 by State loans for the construction of railways as relief works. A suggestion so sane could not hope to pass. It was in fact rejected; the starving peasants were set to dig large holes and fill them up again, and to build bad roads leading nowhere. And instead of a national railway system Ireland was given private enterprise with all its waste and all its clash of interests. The two most conspicuous gifts of Unionism to Ireland have been, as all the world knows, poverty and police. Soon after 1830, that is to say when the first harvest of government from Westminster was ripe to the sickle, Irish destitution had assumed what politicians call men-acing proportions. One person in every three of the population never had any other alimentary experience than the difference between hunger and starvation. In these circumstances a Royal Commission was appointed to consider the advisability of extending the English Poor Law to Ireland. Their report is a pioneer document in the development of economic thought. Just as the Railway Commission a few years later was to give the watchword of the future, nationalisation, so the Poor Law Commission gave within its province the watchword of the future, prevention before relief. They pointed the contrast between the two countries. I quote the words of the later Irish Poor Law Commission of 1903-6: "Having regard to the destitution and poverty that were prevalent in Ireland owing to want of employment, the Royal Commissioners in their Report of 1836 came to the conclusion that the English workhouse system would be unsuitable for Ireland, because after unchecked demoralisation by profuse out-door relief _in England, the Work-house system was devised in order to make the lazy and idle seek ordinary employment which could be got. The situation in Ireland was, on the contrary, one in which the able-bodied and healthy were willing and anxious to work for any wages, even for twopence a day, but were unable to obtain such or any employment_." Ireland at the end of a generation of Unionism was suffering, as the commissioners proceed to point out, not from over-population, but from under-development. They tabled two sets of recommendations. The relief programme advised compulsory provision for the sick, aged, infirm, lunatics, and others incapable of work; in all essential matters it anticipated in 1836 that Minority Report which to the England of 1912 still seems extravagantly humane. The prevention programme outlined a scheme for the development of Irish resources. Including, as it did, demands for County Fiscal Boards, agricultural education, better cottages for the labourers, drainage, reclamation, and changes in the land system, it has been a sort of lucky bag into which British ministers have been dipping without acknowledgment ever since. But the report itself was, like the Railway Report, too sane and too Irish to stand a chance. There was sent over from England a Mr Nicholls, who, after a six weeks flutter through the country, devised the Poor Law System under which we still labour. Mr Nicholls afterwards became Sir George, and when he died it is probable that a statue was erected to him. If that is so the inscription must always remain inadequate until this is added: "Having understood all about Ireland in six weeks he gave her, as the one thing needful to redeem her, the workhouse." But, of course, the capital exploit of the Economics of Unionism was its dealing with the problem of land tenure. I shrink from inviting the reader into the desert of selfishness and stupidity which constitutes English policy, in this regard, from the Union to the triumph of the Land League. Let him study it at large in Davitt's "Fall of Feudalism." We are not concerned here to revive that calamitous pageant. Our interest is of another kind, namely to signalise the malign influence introduced into the agrarian struggle by government from Westminster as against government from Dublin. Even had Grattan's Parliament remained, the battle for the land would have had to go forward; for that Parliament was an assembly controlled by landlords who, for the most part, believed as strongly in the sacredness of rent as they did in the sacredness of nationality. But by the Union the conflict was embittered and befouled. The landlords invented their famous doctrine of conditional loyalty. They bargained with Great Britain to the effect that, if they were permitted to pillage their tenantry, they would in return uphold and maintain British rule in Ireland. It was the old picture with which M. Paul-Dubois has acquainted us, that of the "Garrison" kneeling to England on the necks of the Irish poor. In this perversion, which under autonomy would have been impossible, we find the explanation of the extreme savagery of Union land policy in Ireland. Its extreme, its bat-eyed obtuseness is to be explained in another way. Souchon in his introduction to the French edition of Philippovich, the great Austrian economist, observes with great truth that England has not even yet developed any sort of _Agrarpolitik_, that is to say any systematic Economics of Agriculture. In the early nineteenth century her own land problems were neglected, and her political leaders were increasingly dominated by an economic gospel of shopkeepers and urban manufacturers. Forced into the context of agrarian life such a gospel was bound to manifest itself as one of folly and disaster. If we put these two elements together we are enabled to understand why the Union land policy in Ireland was such a portentous muddle and scandal. In 1829 the question assumed a fresh urgency, in consequence of the eviction campaign which followed the disfranchisement of the small holders under Catholic Emancipation. That Irish opinion, which in an Irish Parliament would have had its way, began to grapple with the situation. Between 1829 and 1858 twenty-three Irish Land Reform Bills were introduced in the House of Commons; every one was rejected. In the same period thirty-five Coercion Bills were introduced; every one was passed. So it began, so it continued, until at last Irish opinion did in some measure prevail. The Westminster Parliament clapped the "agitators" into prison, and while they were at work breaking stones stole their programme.... But I have promised to spare the reader the detailed hideousness of this Inferno, and this section must close without a word said about that miserable triad, famine, eviction, and emigration. What may be called the centre of relevancy lies elsewhere. We have been concerned to show how Unionism, having wrecked the whole manufacturing economy of Ireland, went on, at its worst, to wreck, at its best, to refuse to save, its whole agricultural economy. But why recall all this "dead history"? For two reasons: first, because it illustrates the fundamental wrongness of Unionism; secondly, because it is not dead. On the first point no better authority can be found than Mr W.A.S. Hewins, the intellect of Tariff Reform. The differences between England and Ireland, he writes in his introduction to Miss Murray's book, are of "an organic character." In that phrase is concentrated the whole biology of Home Rule. Every organism must suffer and perish unless its external circumstances echo its inner law of development. The sin of the Union was that it imposed on Ireland from without a sort of spiked strait-jacket which could have no effect but to squeeze the blood and breath out of every interest in the country. What was meat to England was poison to Ireland, and even honest Englishmen, hypnotised by the economists of the day, were unable to perceive this plain truth. Let me give another illustration. The capital exploit of Union Economics was, as has been said, its dealing with the land question, but perhaps its most pathetic fallacy was the policy with which it met the Great Famine. Now the singular thing about this famine is that during it there was no scarcity of food in Ireland; there was only a shortage of potatoes. "In 1847 alone," writes Mr Michael Davitt in his "Fall of Feudalism," "food to the value of £44,958,000 sterling was grown in Ireland according to the statistical returns for that year. But a million of people died for want of food all the same." The explanation is obvious: the peasants grew potatoes to feed themselves, they raised corn to pay their rents. A temporary suspension of rent-payments and the closing of the ports would have saved the great body of the people. But the logic of Unionism worked on other lines. The government opened the ports, cheapened corn, and made rents harder to pay. At the same time they passed a new Coercion Act, and reorganised the police on its present basis to ensure that rents should be paid. To the wisdom of this policy, history is able to call witnesses by the million--unhappily however it has to call them from famine graveyards, and the waste womb of the Atlantic. This essential wrongness of Unionism, so amply illustrated in every year of its working, continues. But at least, our bluff Englishman urges, the dead past can be suffered to bury those crimes and blunders of Unionism which you have enumerated. Let us start with a clean slate. Now, as will have been gathered from a previous chapter, we recognise in this invitation an accent of soundness. We modern Home Rulers desire above all to be loyal to the century in which we live. We are sick of that caricature which depicts Ireland as the mad heroine of a sort of perpetual suttee, in which all the interests of the present are immolated on the funeral-pyre of the past. But let us come closer to things. How do you clean a slate except by liquidating the debts of which it keeps the record? The late Vicomte de Voguë wrote an admirable novel, "Les Morts qui Parlent." The dead are always speaking; you cannot stop their strong eloquence with a mouthful of clay. The "business man" thinks no doubt that the Napoleonic War is no more than Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba. But he pays annual tribute to it, for he has to make annual provision for the £600,000,000 which it added to the National Debt. And just as Mr Pitt's foreign policy is in that respect a living reality of our own time, so also, but in a much graver form, are the past depredations and ineptitudes of Unionism living realities in the present economy of Ireland. The ruling fallacy of the English mind on these matters consists in the assumption that the mere repeal of an old oppression restores a people to the _status quo ante_. In the case of Ireland the old oppressions have not been repealed except in two or three points, but even if they had been wholly cancelled it would be absurd to expect immediate recovery from their effects. If you have been beating a man on the head with a bludgeon for half an hour, and then leave off, there is no sense in saying to him: "There, I have given over bludgeoning you. Why on earth don't you get up, and skip about like me?" If you have been robbing a man's till for ten years, and then decide--by the way you have not yet decided--to leave off, there is no sense in saying to him: "Why the devil are you always hard up? Look at me doing the same sort of business as you on absolutely equal terms, and I'm able to keep two motor-cars and six servants." But that is precisely what is said to us. You are eternally expecting from Ireland new miracles of renaissance. But although she does possess recuperative powers, hardly to be paralleled, even she must have time to slough the corruptions of the past. You cannot, as some Englishmen imagine, cancel six centuries before breakfast. Your Penal Laws, for instance, have been long since struck out of the Statute Book, but they have not yet been eliminated from social habitudes or from certain areas of commercial life. You began to tax Ireland beyond her capacity in 1801, and you are still overtaxing her. In the interval you withdraw from her economic life a tribute of not less than £325,000,000. You broke her industrial tradition, injured her credit, depressed her confidence. You forced upon her a fiscal system devised to suit your needs in utter contempt of hers. To clean that slate you must first, by some measure of restitution, clean your conscience. And when that has been done you will have to wait for the curative effects of time to undo the Economics of Unionism. You suffered landlordism to devastate Ireland unchecked. The capital that should have gone to enrich and develop the soil was squeezed out of it in rack-rents, largely absentee. The whole agricultural economy of the country was stricken with a sort of artificial anæmia. Then very late in the day you enact in shreds and fragments a programme of reform proposed half a century before by the leaders of the Irish people. To-day rural Ireland is convalescent, but it is absurd to rate her if she does not at once manifest all the activities of robust health. It is even more absurd to expect her to glow with gratitude. You muddled our whole system of transportation; your muddle stands to-day in all its ruinous largeness unamended, and, it may be, beyond amendment. You muddled the Poor Law; and, in the workhouses which you thrust upon us, 8000 children are year by year receiving on their lives the brand of degradation. You marred education, perverting it into a discipline of denationalisation, and that virus has not yet been expelled. What economic, what intellectual problem in Ireland have you not marred and muddled, England, my England (as the late Mr W.E. Henley used to say)? You have worsened the maledictions of the Bible. The sins of _your_ fathers will lie as a _damnosa hæreditas_, a damnable heritage, upon the mortgaged shoulders of _our_ children. It is better, as Plato taught, to suffer injustice than to inflict it. In the light of that ethical principle you are long since judged and condemned. But with the customary luck of England you are allowed what others were not allowed, the opportunity of penitence and reform. The messengers of the new gospel are at your doors, offering you in return for the plain rudiments of justice not only forgiveness but friendship. It is for you to accept or reject. We, the Irish, whom you have wronged, look to your decision with interest rather than with concern. Why should we be concerned? Our flag has been an Aaron's serpent to swallow yours. Your policies, your ambitions, your administrations have passed by us like the transient and embarrassed phantoms that they were. We remain. All the roads lead to Rome, and all the years to retribution. This is your year; you have met the messengers on your threshold. Your soul is in your own wardship. But yet we cannot wholly separate your destiny from ours. Dedicated as we are to the general progress of humanity and to all the generosities of life, we await expectantly your election between the good and the evil side. CHAPTER VII THE HALLUCINATION OF "ULSTER" Ulster Unionism, in the leaders, is not so much a programme of ideas as a demand for domination. In the rank and file it is largely a phenomenon of hysteria. I do not know whether my readers have ever participated in an agreeable game known as odd man out. Each player tosses a penny, and whoever disagrees with the rest, showing a head to their tails or vice versa, captures the pool. Such is in all essential particulars the "Ulster Question." We find ourselves there in presence of a minority which, on the sole ground that it is a minority, claims that in the government of Ireland it shall be not merely secure but supreme. Sir Edward Carson as odd man out (and I do not deny that he is odd enough for anything) is to be Dictator of Ireland. If eighty-four Irish constituencies declare for Home Rule, and nineteen against Home Rule, then, according to the mathematics of Unionism, the Noes have it. In their non-Euclidean geometry the part is always greater than the whole. In their unnatural history the tail always wags the dog. On the plane of politics it is not necessary to press the case against "Ulster" any farther than that. Even majorities have their rights. If a plurality of nine to two is not sufficient to determine policy and conduct business in a modern nation, then there is no other choice except anarchy, or rather an insane atomism. Not merely every party, but every household and, in last resort, every individual will end as a Provisional Government. Separatism of this type is a very ecstasy of nonsense, and none of my readers will think so cheaply of his own intelligence as to stay to discuss it. It is in other terms that we must handle the problem of "Ulster." The existence in certain nooks and corners of Ireland of a democratic vote hostile to Home Rule is, let us confess, a conundrum. But it is a conundrum of psychology rather than of politics. It may seem rude to say so, but Orangeism consists mainly of a settled hallucination and an annual brainstorm. No one who has not been present at a Twelfth of July procession can realise how completely all its manifestations belong to the life of hysteria and not to that of reason. M. Paul-Dubois, whom we may summon out of a cloud of witnesses, writes of them as "demagogic orgies with a mixed inspiration of Freemasonry and the Salvation Army." The Twelfth of July is, or rather was, for its fine furies are now much abated, a savage carnival comparable only to the corroborees of certain primitive tribes. "A monster procession," continues M. Paul-Dubois, "marches through Belfast, as through every town and village of Orange Ulster, ending up with a vast meeting at which the glories of William of Orange and the reverses of James II. are celebrated in song.... Each 'lodge' sends its delegation to the procession with banners and drums. On the flags are various devices: 'Diamond Heroes,' 'True Blues,' 'No Pope.' The participants give themselves over to character dances, shouting out their favourite songs: 'The Boyne Water' and 'Croppies Lie Down.' The chief part is played by the drummers, the giants of each 'lodge,' who with bared arms beat their drums with holy fury, their fists running with blood, until the first drum breaks and many more after it, until in the evening they fall half-dead in an excess of frenzy." Such is the laboratory in which the mind of Orange Ulster is prepared to face the tasks of the twentieth century. Barbaric music, the ordinary allowance of drum to fife being three to one, ritual dances, King William on his white horse, the Scarlet Woman on her seven hills, a grand parade of dead ideas and irrelevant ghosts called up in wild speeches by clergymen and politicians--such is Orangeism in its full heat of action. Can we, with this key to its intellectual history, be really astonished that Shankhill Road should move all its life in a red mist of superstition. The North of Ireland abounds in instances, trivial and tragic, of this obsession. Here it is the case of the women of a certain town who, in order to prevent their children from playing in a dangerous swamp close by, have taught them that there are "wee Popes" in it. There it is a case of man picked up, maimed and all but unconscious after an accident, screwing up his lips to utter one last "To Hell with the Pope!" before he dies. I remember listening in Court to the examination of an old Orangeman who had been called as a witness to the peaceable disposition of a friend of his. "What sort of man," asked the counsel, "would you say Jamie Williamson is?" "A quiet, decent man." "Is he the sort of man that would be likely to be breaking windows?" "No man less likely." "Is he the sort of man that you would expect to find at the head of a mob shouting, 'To Hell with the Pope'?" Witness, with great emphasis: "No. Certainly not. Jamie was never any ways a _religious_ man." These bewildering corruptions of sense and sanity overwhelm you at every turn. Ask your neighbour offhand at a dinner in Dublin: "What is so-and-so, by the way?" He will reply that so-and-so is a doctor, or a government official, or a stockbroker, as it may happen. Ask him the same question at a dinner in Belfast, and he will automatically tell you that so-and-so is a Protestant or a "Papist." The plain truth is that it would be difficult to find anywhere a more shameful exploitation, intellectual and economic, than that which has been practised on the Ulster Orangeman by his feudal masters. Were I to retort the abuse, with which my own creed is daily bespattered, I should describe him further as the only victim of clerical obscurantism to be found in Ireland. Herded behind the unbridged waters of the Boyne, he has been forced to live in a very Tibet of intellectual isolation. Whenever he moved in his thoughts a little towards that Ireland to which, for all his separatism, he so inseparably belongs, the ring of blockhouses, called Orange Lodges, was drawn tighter to strangle his wanderings. Mr Robert Lynd in his "Home Life in Ireland," a book which ought to have been mentioned earlier in these pages, relates the case of a young man who was refused ordination in the Presbyterian Church because he had permitted himself to doubt whether the Pope was in fact anti-Christ. And he writes with melancholy truth: "If the Presbyterian clergy had loved Ireland as much as they have hated Rome they could have made Ulster a home of intellectual energy and spiritual buoyancy long ago. They have preferred to keep Ulster dead to fine ideas rather than risk the appearance of a few unsettling ideas among the rest." It has not been, one likes to think, a death, consummated and final, but rather an interruption of consciousness from which recovery is possible. Drugged with a poisonous essence, distilled from history for him by his exploiters, the Orangeman of the people has lived in a world of phantoms. In politics he has never in his whole career spoken for himself. The Catholic peasant comes to articulate, personal speech in Davitt; the national aristocracy in Parnell. The industrial worker discovers within his own camp a multitude of captains. Even landlordism, although it has produced no leader, has produced many able spokesmen. Every other section in Ireland enriches public life with an interpreter of its mind sprung from its own ranks. Orange Ulster alone has never yet given to its own democracy a democratic leader. This is indeed the cardinal misfortune, as well as the central secret, of Ulster Unionism. The pivot on which it turns resides, not in the farms of Down or the factories of Belfast, but in the Library of the Four Courts. Of the nineteen representatives who speak for it in Parliament no fewer than seven are King's Counsel. In the whole list there is not one delegate of labour, nor one farmer. A party so constituted is bound to produce prodigies of nonsense such as those associated with Sir Edward Carson. The leaders of the orchestra openly despise the instruments on which they play. For followers, reared in the tradition of hysteria depicted above, no raw-head is thought to be too raw, and no bloody-bones too bloody. And so we have King's Counsel, learned in the law, devising Provisional Governments, and Privy Councillors wallowing in imaginative treason. As for the Bishops, they will talk daggers as luridly as the rest, but they will not even threaten to use any. And so does the pagan rage, and the heathen prophesy vain things. That such a farce-tragedy can find a stage in the twentieth century is pitiable. But it is not a serious political fact. It has the same relation to reality that the cap-hunting exploits of Tartarin of Tarascon had to the Franco-German war. It has been devised merely to make flesh creep in certain tabernacles of fanaticism in the less civilised parts of England and Scotland. So far as action goes it will end in smoke, but not in gunpowder-smoke. There will no doubt be riots in Belfast and Portadown, for which the ultimate responsibility will rest on learned counsel of the King. But there have been riots before, and the cause of Home Rule has survived all the blackguardism and bloodshed. It is lamentable that ministers of the gospel of Christ and leaders of public opinion should so inflame and exploit the superstitions of ignorant men; but not by these methods will justice be intimidated. And if "Ulster" does fight after all? In that event we must only remember how sorry George Stephenson was for the cow. The military traditions of the Protestant North are not very alarming. The contribution of the Enniskilleners to the Battle of the Boyne appears to have consisted in running away with great energy and discretion. Nor did they, or their associates, in later years shed any great lustre even on Imperial arms. I have never heard that the Connaught Rangers had many recruits from the Shankhill Road, or the Dublin Fusiliers from Portadown; consequently the present situation disgusts rather than terrifies us. If rifle-levers ever click in rebellion against a Home Rule government, duly established by statute under the authority of the Crown, it will be astonishing to find that every bullet in Ireland is a member of an Orange Lodge. If "Ulster" repudiates the arbitrament of reason, and the verdict of a free ballot, she simply puts herself outside the law. And she may be quite assured that the law, driven back on its ultimate sanction of force, will very sharply and very amply vindicate itself. But it is not courteous to the reader to detain him among such unrealities as Sir Edward Carson's Civil War. Treason, that is to say platform treason, is not so much an eccentricity as a habit of Orangeism. It is a way they have in the Lodges, and their past history supplies a corrective to their present outburst. Perhaps their most notable exploit in armed loyalty was their attempt to dethrone, or rather to defeat in succession to the throne, Queen Victoria. This is a chapter in their history with regard to which they are far too modest and reticent. But the leading case in recent years is of course the attitude of the Lodges towards the Disestablishment of the Irish Episcopal Church in 1869. The records are singularly rich in what I may perhaps call Carsonese. Dukes threatened to "fight as men alone can fight who have the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other." Learned counsel of the Queen covenanted to "seal their protest with their blood in martyrdom and battle." Ministers of the gospel were all for kicking the Crown into the Boyne, keeping their powder dry, shouldering Minié rifles, and finally joining the lawyers in the red grave of martyrdom. An Ulster poet (a satirist one fears) wrote a famous invocation to the statue of Mr Walker near Derry, beginning: "Come down out o' that, Mr Walker, There's work to be done by-and-by, And this is no time to stand glowerin' Betwixt the bog-side and the sky." But Mr Walker did not come down: he remained on his safe pinnacle of immortality. And of course there was no civil war. That period was wiser than our own in one respect: nobody of any common sense thought of spoiling such exquisite blague by taking it seriously. Its motive was universally understood in Ireland. The orators of the movement never for a moment dreamed of levying war on Mr Gladstone, but they were determined to levy blackmail. They saw that they could bluff English opinion into granting all manner of extravagant compensation for the extinction of their privileges and their ascendancy, if only the Orange drum was beaten loudly enough. It was a case of the more cry the more wool. And in point of fact they succeeded. They obtained financial arrangements of the most generous character, and, thereafter, the battle-flags were furled. Within five years of Disestablishment the Episcopalian Synod was praising it as the happiest event in the life of that Church. The lawyers, being denied the martyrdom of the battlefield, stolidly accepted that of promotion to the judicial bench, and a holy silence descended on the divines. This strategy having succeeded so admirably in 1868 is repeated in 1912. "Ulster" has not the least intention of raising war or the sinews of war; her interest is in the sinews of peace. Although she does not hold a winning card in her hand she hopes to scoop the pool by a superb bluff. By menaces of rebellion she expects to be able to insist that under Home Rule she shall continue encased in an impenetrable armour of privileges, preferences, and safeguards. She is all the more likely to succeed because of the tenderness of Nationalist Ireland in her regard. Short of the absolute surrender by the majority of every shred of its rights (which is, of course, what is demanded) there are very few safeguards that we are not prepared to concede to the superstition, the egotism, or even the actual greed of the Orangemen. But it may as well be understood that we are not to be either duped or bullied. If the policy of Ulster Unionism is unreal there is no word in any language that can describe the phantasmal nature of the grounds on which it professes to fear national freedom. Home Rule, declare the orators, will obviously mean Rome Rule. The _Ne Temere_ decree will de-legitimise every Protestant in the country. The Dublin Parliament will tax every "Ulster" industry out of existence. One is told that not only do many people say, but that some people even believe things of this kind. But then there are people who believe that they are made of Dresden china, and will break if they knock against a chair. These latter are to be found in lunatic asylums. It is indeed particularly worth noting that when a man begins to see in the whole movement of the world a conspiracy to oppress and injure him our first step is to inquire not into his grievance but into his sanity. One finds the same difficulty in discussing Irish politics in terms of the three hallucinations specified that one finds in discussing, say, Rugby football with a Dresden-china fellow-citizen. It is better not to make the attempt, but to substitute a plain statement of obvious facts. In the first place, even if any policy of oppression were in our minds, it is not in our power. The overlordship of the Imperial Parliament remains in any scheme of Home Rule unimpaired, and any man damnified because of his religion can appeal in last resort to the Imperial Army and Navy. Shankhill Road is mathematically safe. After all there are in England some forty millions of Protestants who, whatever their religious temperature may be, will certainly decline to see Protestantism penalised. The Protestants in Ireland have a million and a quarter, and they make noise enough for twice the number. There are about three and a quarter millions of Irish Catholics. History concedes to Catholic Ireland the cleanest record in respect of religious tolerance to be found anywhere in Europe. We never martyred a saint, and amid all the witch-hunting devilries of Scotland and England we burned only one witch, a namesake of my own. Deny or suppress all this. Imagine into the eyes of every Catholic neighbour the slumbering but unquenched fires of Smithfield. But be good enough to respect mathematics. Do not suggest that the martial qualities induced by the two religions are so dissimilar that two Catholics are capable of imposing Home Rule on twenty-five Protestants. The suggestion that we shall overtax "Ulster" is even more captivating. But how are we to do it? Of course we might schedule the sites given up to Protestant church buildings as undeveloped land. Or we might issue income-tax forms with an assessment printed on one side, and the decrees of the Council of Trent on the other. Or we might insist on every orator desirous of uttering that ennobling sentiment, "To Hell with the Pope!" taking out a licence, and charge him a small fee. Positive treason, such as the proclamation of Provisional Governments, would of course pay a higher rate. All these would be most interesting experiments, and would add a picturesque touch to the conventionality of modern administration. But if we were to overtax sugar or coffee, corn or butter, flax or wool, beer or spirits, land or houses, I fear that we should be beating ourselves rather severely with our own sticks. Our revenge on "Ulster" would be rather like that of Savage, the poet, who revenged himself on a friend by sleeping out the whole of a December night on a bridge. The whole suggestion is, of course, futile and fantastic. It is a bubble that has been pricked, and by no one so thoroughly as by Lord Pirrie, the head of Harland and Wolff, that is to say the leader of the industrial North. The clamour of the exploiters of "Ulster" is motived on this point by two considerations, the one an illusion, the other a reality. The illusion, or rather the pretence, consists in representing the Unionists as the sole holders of wealth in Ireland. It would be a sufficient refutation of this view to quote those other passages in which the same orators assert with equal eloquence that the Tory policy of land purchase and resolute government from Westminster has brought enormous prosperity to the rest of the country. On _per capita_ valuation the highest northern county ranks only twelfth in Ireland. It is the reality, however, that supplies the clue. While the masters of Orangeism do not represent the wealth of Ireland they do certainly represent the largest, or, at least, the most intense concentration of unearned incomes. What they fear is not unjust but democratic taxation. They cling to the Union as a bulwark against the reform movement which in every modern state is resuming for society a small part of certain vast fortunes which in their essence have been socially created. But even on the plane of their own selfishness they are following a foolish line of action. The Union did not save them from the Land Tax Budget, nor, as regards the future, is salvation of the English Tories. Should they ever return to power they will repeat their action respecting the Death Duties. Having in Opposition denounced the land taxes with indecent bitterness they will, when back in office, confirm and extend them. "Ulster" had far better cast in her lot with Ireland. She will find an Irish Assembly not only strikingly but, one might almost add, sinfully conservative in matters of taxation. As to the conflict between the agrarian and the manufacturing interests, that also exists in every nation on the earth. But neither has any greater temptation to plan the destruction of the other than a merchant has to murder his best customer. There remains the weltering problem of mixed marriages and the _Ne Temere_ decree. It is perhaps worth observing that marriages get mixed in other countries as well as in Ireland. It grieves one that men should differ as to the true religious interpretation of life. But they do in fact differ, and wherever two human beings, holding strongly to different faiths, fall in love there is tragic material. But they do in fact fall in love. The theme recurs, with a thousand reverberations, in the novel literature of England, France, and Germany. The situation occurs also in Ireland. But I am bewildered to know in what way it is an argument for or against Home Rule. Let us appeal once more to colonial experience and practice. There is a Catholic majority in Canada and an overwhelming Catholic majority in Quebec. The policy of the Catholic Church towards mixed marriages is precisely the same there as in Ireland. Does Protestantism demand that the constitutions of the Dominion and the Province respectively shall be withdrawn? Since no such claim is made we must conclude that the outcry on Orange platforms is designed not to enforce a principle but to awaken all the slumbering fires of prejudice. The _Ne Temere_ decree introduces no new departure. Now, as always, the Catholic Church requires simply that her members shall consecrate the supreme adventure of life with the Sacrament of their fathers before the altar of their fathers. It is strange that the Orangemen, believing as they do that the Pope is anti-Christ, should be so annoyed at finding that the Pope teaches a doctrine different from theirs on the subject of marriage. The Pope can inflict no spiritual penalties on them since they are outside his flock. He can inflict no civil penalties on anybody. There is undoubtedly in the matter of divorce a sharp conflict between Catholic ideas and the practice and opinion of Protestant countries. That exists, and will continue, under every variation of government. It is an eternal antinomy. But whom does it aggrieve? We Catholics voluntarily abjure the blessings of divorce, but we should never dream of using the civil law to impose our abnegation on those of another belief. If there is any doubt upon that point it can very easily be removed. The civil law of marriage can be conserved under one of the "safeguards." The truth is that in order to test our tolerance Orangeism proposes to us a series of exercises which are a very delirium of intolerance. "Sever yourselves," it says in effect to us, "from all allegiance to that Italian Cardinal. Consign him, as Portadown does, to hell. Bait your bishops. Deride the spiritual authority of your priests. Then shall we know that you are men and masters of your own consciences. Elect a Unionist Council in every county, a Unionist Corporation in Dublin, then shall we know that you are brothers. Disown your dead leaders. Spit on the grave of Emmet. Teach your children that every Fenian was a murderer. Erase from your chronicles the name of Parnell. Then shall we know that you are loyal." It has been occasionally urged by writers who prefer phrases to actualities that Home Rule must wait on the conversion of "Ulster." Therein the patient must minister to himself. Miracles of that order cannot be accomplished from without. Great is Diana of the Ephesians, and the servitude of tradition is at an end only when the hands that fashioned the idols shatter them on the altars of a new nobleness. Let us distinguish. The Orangeism which is merely an instrument of exploitation and domination will not yield to reason. The Orangeism which is an inherited hysteria will not yield to reason. It Bourbonises too much. It lives in the past, learning nothing and forgetting nothing. Argument runs off it like rain off a duck's back. These two types of thought we must leave to the grace of God, and the education of the accomplished fact. They represent a declining cause, and a decaying party. The Lodges once mustered more than 200,000 members; they have now less than 10,000. There is another kind of Orangeism, that which has begun to think, and the Orangeism that has begun to think is already converted. I said that Protestant "Ulster" had never given to its own democracy a leader, but to say that is to forget John Mitchel. Master in prose of a passion as intense as Carlyle's and far less cloudy, of an irony not excelled by Swift, Mitchel flung into the tabernacles of his own people during the Great Famine a sentence that meant not peace but a sword. He taught them, as no one since, that Orangeism was merely a weapon of exploitation. While the band played "The Boyne Water" and the people cheered it, the landlords were picking the pockets of the ecstatic crowd. "The Pope, we know, is the 'man of sin,'" wrote Mitchel, "and the 'Antichrist,' and also, if you like, the 'mystery of iniquity,' and all that, but he brings no ejectments in Ireland." Mitchel travelled too fast for co-religionists whose shoulders had not yet slipped the burden of old superstitions. The élan of genius and the call of freedom drew him out of the home of his fathers to consort with Papists, rebels, and transported convicts. But his failure was the seed of later success. In a few years the League of North and South was able to unite Protestant and Catholic on the plain economic issue that landlordism must go. That too failed, but the stream of democratic thought had been merely driven underground to reappear further on in the century. In the elections that shook the fortress of Toryism in Ulster in the seventies Catholic priests marched at the head of processions side by side with Grand Masters of Orange Lodges. In the first years of the Land League, Michael Davitt was able to secure the enthusiastic support of purely Orange meetings in Armagh. Still later, Mr T. W. Russell, at the head of a democratic coalition, smashed the old Ascendancy on the question of compulsory purchase, and Mr Lindsay Crawford founded his Independent Order, a portent if not yet a power. So much has been done in the country. But it is in the cities, those workshops of the society of the future, that the change is most marked. The new movement finds an apt epitome in the political career of Mr Joseph Devlin. The workers of Belfast had been accustomed to see labour problems treated by the old type of Unionist member of parliament either with cowardice or with contempt. _Enfin Malesherbes vint_. At last a man rose up out of their own class, although a Catholic and a Nationalist. He spoke with an awakening eloquence, and he made good his words. In every industrial struggle in that sweated city he interposed his strong word to demand justice for the wage-earner. This was a new sort of politics. It bore fruit where Ulster Unionism had been but a barren fig-tree. The democracy of Belfast accepted their leader. They gave him a majority of 16 in West Belfast in 1906 and in four years they had multiplied it by forty. The Boyne was bridged, and everything that has since happened has but added a new stay or girder to the strength of the bridge. And not only labour but capital has passed across that estranging river to firm ground of patriotism and national unity. Lord Pirrie, the head of the greatest manufacturing enterprise in Belfast, is an ardent Home Ruler. Business men, ministers of religion, even lawyers, are thinking out things quietly beneath the surface. The new "Ulster" is breaking its shell. Parties are forming on the basis of economic realities, not on that of "religious" phantasms. As for the old "Ulster," it remains a problem not for the War Office, but for the Department of Education. CHAPTER VIII THE MECHANICS OF HOME RULE The inevitableness of Home Rule resides in the fact that it is, as one might say, a biped among ideas. It marches to triumph on two feet, an Irish and an Imperial foot. If there were in Ireland no demand whatever for self-government it would, nevertheless, be necessary in the interests of the Empire to force it on her. The human, or as some people may prefer to call it, the sociological case for Home Rule, and the historical case for it have already been outlined. We now turn to consideration, of another order, derived from Political Mechanics, or rather bearing on the mere mechanism of politics. Let us approach the problem first from the Imperial side. On the whole, the most remarkable thing about the British Empire is that there is no British Empire. We are in presence of the familiar distinction between the raw material and the finished article. There are, indeed, on the surface of the globe a number of self-governing colonies, founded and peopled by men of Irish and English blood. In each of these the United Kingdom is represented by a Governor whose whole duty consists in being seen on formal occasions, but never heard in counsel or rebuke. The only other connecting links are those of law and finance. The Privy Council acts as a Court of Appeal in certain causes, and Colonial Governments borrow money in the London market. These communities widely seperated in geography and in temperament, have no common fiscal policy, no common foreign policy, no common scheme of defence, no common Council to discuss and decide Imperial affairs. Now this may be a very wise arrangement, but you must not call it an Empire. From the point of view of unity, if from no other, it presents an unfavourable contrast to French Imperialism, under which all the oversea colonies are represented in the Chamber of Deputies in Paris. In the English plan the oversea colonies are unrelated atoms. You may say that they afford all the materials for a grandiose federation; but if you have flour in one bag, and raisins in another, and candied peel in another, and suet in another you must not call them a Christmas pudding until they have been mixed together and cooked. Those areas of the globe, coloured red on the maps, may have all the resources requisite for a great, self-sufficing, economic unit of a new order. Their peoples may desire that new order. But until it is achieved you must remember that the British Empire belongs to the region of dream and not to that of fact. For many years now, apostles of reconstruction have been hammering out the details of a scheme that shall unify the Empire on some sort of Federal basis. For the new organism which they desire to create they need a brain. Is this to be found in the Westminster Assembly, sometimes loosely styled the "Imperial Parliament"? As things stand at present such a suggestion is a mere counter-sense. That body has come to such a pass as would seem to indicate the final bankruptcy of the governing genius of England. All the penalties of political gluttony have accumulated on it. Parliament, to put the truth a little brutally, has broken down under a long debauch of over-feeding. Every day of every session it bites off far more in the way of bills and estimates than it even pretends to have time to chew. Results follow which it would be indiscreet to express in terms of physiology. Tens of millions are shovelled out of the Treasury by an offhand, undiscussed, perfunctory resolution. The attempt to compress infinite issues in a space too little has altered and, as some critics think, degraded the whole tenor of public life. Parliament is no longer the Grand Inquest of the Nation, at least not in the ancient and proper meaning of the words. The declaration of Edmund Burke to the effect that a member has no right to sacrifice his "unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience" to any set of men living may be echoed by the judges in our day, but to anyone who knows the House of Commons it is a piece of pure irony. Party discipline cracks every session a more compelling whip; and our shepherded, regimented, and automatised representatives themselves realise that, whatever more desirable status they may have attained, they have certainly lost that of individual freedom. Out of their own ranks a movement has arisen to put an end altogether to Party government. This proposal I myself believe to be futile, but its very futility testifies to the existence of an intolerable situation. All this turns on the inadequacy of the time of the House of Commons to its business. But the distribution of such time as there is, is a revel of ineptitudes. It resembles the drawing of a schoolboy who has not yet learned perspective. A stranger dropping into the Chamber will find it spending two hours in helping to determine whether Russia is to have a Czar, and the next four hours helping to determine whether Rathmines is to have, let us say, a new sewer. The affairs of India, involving the political welfare of three hundred millions of human beings, get one day; Egypt, that test case in international ethics, has to be content with a few scattered hours. And, despite all this, local questions are not considered at sufficient length or with sufficient knowledge. The parish pump is close enough to spoil St Stephen's as an Imperial Council, and yet so far away as to destroy its effectiveness as an organ of local government. Such an assembly is clearly unfitted to function as the cerebrum of Empire. It must be relieved of burdens which in the complexity of modern politics it is no longer able to bear. How is this to be done? In one way and in one way only, by leaving local business to local bodies. But that is Home Rule, or, as the learned, envisaging the idea from another point of view, sometimes prefer to call it, Devolution. Through the principle of autonomy, incompletely applied, the British Possessions have so far evolved. Through the principle of autonomy, completely applied, and in no other wise, can they evolve into an ordered system worthy of the Imperial name. This is at first blush a singular development. Here lie Ireland and England separated by a mountain of misunderstanding. We Irish Nationalists have for a century been trying to bore a tunnel through from one side. And suddenly we become aware of the tapping of picks not our own, and encounter midway the tunnel which the Party of Imperial Reconstruction have driven through from the other side. Here are all the materials for a _tableau_. Justice falls on the neck of expediency. Imperialism recognises in nationality no rebel but a son of the house. Toryism rubs its eyes, and finds that it is Home Rule. But, sounded to its depths, this new current of thought appears not only not eccentric but inevitable. Ample explanation is to be found in the history of the Irish fight for self-government. On this subject there has been in Ireland a marked evolution of ideas. O'Connell began by demanding simple Repeal of the Union and the Restoration of Grattan's Parliament. But by 1844 he had advanced towards a Federal programme. "Beside the local Parliament in Ireland having full and perfect local authority," he writes in that year, "there should be, for questions of Imperial concern, colonial, military, and naval, and of foreign alliance and policy, a Congressional or Federal Parliament, in which Ireland should have a fair share and proportion of representation and power." The proposed change of programme came in a questionable shape to a suspicious time. It was not received with universal favour, and, to avert dissension, it was represented as a mere _ballon d'essai_ and was abandoned. O'Connell died, and Repeal and Federation alike were swallowed up in the Great Famine. But time was to renew its urgency. The essential facts, and the logic of the facts, remained unaltered. When Isaac Butt came to formulate his scheme at the Home Rule Conference in 1873 he renewed the Federal proposal in terms almost verbally the same. The Conference resolved: "That, in claiming these rights and privileges for our country, we adopt the principle of a Federal arrangement, which would secure to the Irish Parliament the right of legislating for and regulating all matters relating to the internal affairs of Ireland, while _leaving to the Imperial Parliament the power of dealing with all questions affecting the Imperial and Government, legislation regarding the colonies and other dependencies of the Crown, the relations of the Empire with Foreign States, and all matters appertaining to the defence and stability of the Empire at large; as well as the power of granting and providing the supplies necessary for Imperial purposes_." Parnell, who was a supreme master of the art of doing one thing at a time, naturally laid the emphasis on Ireland. But when he was asked by Mr Cecil Rhodes to agree to the retention of Irish representatives at Westminster in the interests of Imperial Federation, he declared himself in very definite terms: "It does not come so much within my province to express a full opinion upon the larger question of Imperial federation, but I agree with you that the continued Irish representation at Westminster immensely facilitates such a step, while the contrary provision in the Bill of 1886 would have been a bar. Undoubtedly this is a matter which should be dealt with largely in accordance with the opinion of the Colonies themselves, and if they should desire to share in the cost of Imperial matters, as undoubtedly they now do in the responsibility, and should express a wish for representation at Westminster, I certainly think it should be accorded to them, and that public opinion in these islands would unanimously concur in the necessary constitutional modifications." That is, if you will, thinking Imperially. Mr Redmond stands where Parnell stood. He claims for the Irish people "the legislative and executive control of all purely Irish affairs." But he is altogether friendly to a later and larger application of the principle of autonomy. But where, asks the triumphant critic not quite ingenuously, is the line to be drawn between local and Imperial affairs? Problems far more perplexed than this have been solved by the wit of man. The line was drawn by O'Connell and Butt, by Parnell and Gladstone. It can be drawn to meet the circumstances of to-day by men of goodwill, after discussion and mutual adjustment. But why not postpone the case of Ireland until a scheme of Home Rule all round either for the United Kingdom or for the whole Empire has been worked out? We answer that Ireland comes first on grounds both of ethics and of expediency. Through all the blackness of dismal years we have laboured to preserve the twin ideas of nationality and autonomy, and the labourer is worthy of his hire. But a Home Rule assembly, functioning in Dublin, may well furnish the germ of a reorganisation of the Empire. If so, let it be remembered that it was not Mr Chamberlain but Daniel O'Connell who first in these countries gave to Imperialism a definite and articulate form. In any event Home Rule is the only remedy for the present congestion of St Stephen's. It is the only tonic that can restore to English public life its old vigour of independence. Such are the necessities and such is the future of the Empire merely as a problem in what has been called Political Mechanics. We have now, from the same point of view, to examine very cursorily the present government of Ireland. The phrasing, let me interpose, is inaccurate. Ireland, in our day, is not governed; it is only administered. A modern government, if it wishes to be real, must above all else explain itself. For such luxuries, so far as Ireland is concerned, there is no time in the House of Commons. A modern government must exercise active control over every department of public business. For such an effort there is, so far as Ireland is concerned, no energy in the House of Commons. Once in a blue moon it does of course become necessary to pass an Irish Bill, a University or a Land Bill. The Party shepherds round up their flocks, and, for a reluctant day or two, they have to feed sparely in unaccustomed pastures. Or again, as in 1886, 1893, or 1912, Ireland dominates British politics, and the English members descend on her with a heavy flop of hatred or sympathy as it may happen. But at all other times the Union Parliament abdicates, or at least it "governs" Ireland as men are said sometimes to drive motor-cars, in a drowse. Three days--or is it two?--are given to Irish Estimates, and on each of these occasions the Chamber is as desolate as a grazing ranch in Meath. Honourable members snatch at the opportunity of cultivating their souls in the theatres, clubs, restaurants, and other centres of culture in which London abounds. The Irish Party is compelled by the elemental necessities of the situation to speak with one voice on matters regarding which there would properly be at least two voices in an Irish Parliament, precisely identical in personnel. Ulster Unionism presents a similar solidarity. Whenever a point of any novelty is made, the Chief Secretary's secretary slips over to one of the Irish Officials who on these occasions lie ambushed at the back of the Speaker's chair, and returns with all the elation of a honey-laden bee. His little burden of wisdom is gratefully noted on the margin of the typewritten brief which has been already prepared in Dublin by the Board under discussion, and, entrenched behind this, the Right Honourable gentleman winds up the debate. Sometimes his solemnity wrings laughter from men, sometimes his flippancy wrings tears from the gods, but it does not in the least matter what he says. The division bells ring; the absentees come trooping in, learn at the door of the lobby, each from his respective Whip, whether his spontaneous, independent judgment has made him a Yes! or a No! and vote accordingly in the light of an unsullied conscience. The Irish officials, with a sigh of relief or a shrug of contempt, collect their hats and umbrellas, and retire to their hotels to erase from their minds by slumber the babblings of a mis-spent evening. And the course of administration in Ireland is as much affected by the whole proceedings as the course of an 80 h.p. Mercédès is affected by a cabman's oath. So much for exclusively Irish affairs. When Ireland comes into some "general" scheme of legislation the parody of government becomes if possible more fantastic in character. Let me take just three instances--Old Age Pensions, Insurance, and the Budget. In regard to the first it was perhaps a matter of course that no attempt should be made to allow for the difference in economic levels between Great Britain and Ireland. This is the very principle of Unionism: to apply like methods to things which are unlike. But in the calculation of details an ignorance was exhibited which passed the bounds of decency. Mistakes of five or six per cent are, in these complex affairs, not only to be expected but almost to be desired; they help to depress ministerial cocksureness. But in this case there was an error of 200 per cent, a circumstance which incidentally established in the English mind a pleasing legend of Irish dishonesty. The Insurance Bill was ushered in with greater prudence. The "government," recognising its own inability to lead opinion, had the grace to refrain from misleading it. No special Irish memorandum was issued, and no attempt was made to adjust the scheme to Irish social and economic conditions. But Budgets afford on the whole the capital instance of what we may call legislation by accident. The Act of Union solemnly prescribes the principles on which these measures are to be framed, and points to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as the trustee of Irish interests. But nobody of this generation ever knew a Chancellor of the Exchequer who had even read the Act of Union; Mr Lloyd George, on his own admission, had certainly not read it in 1909. What has happened is very simple. The fulfilment of treaty obligations required differential taxation, but administrative convenience was best served by a uniform system of taxation. In the struggle between the two, conscience was as usual defeated. The Chancellor, according to the practice which has overridden the Act of Union budgets for Great Britain, drags the schedule of taxes so fixed through Ireland like a net, and counts the take. That, in the process, the pledge of England should be broken, and her honour betrayed, is not regarded by the best authorities as an objection or even as a relevant fact. In the more sacred name of uniformity Ireland is swamped in the Westminster Parliament like a fishing-smack in the wash of a great merchantman. But let one illusion be buried. If Ireland does not govern herself it is quite certain that the British Parliament does not govern her. Changing the venue of inquiry from London to Dublin we find ourselves still in regions of the fantastic. From the sober and unemotional pages of "Whitaker's Almanack" one learns, to begin with, that "the government of Ireland is semi-independent." The separatism of geography has in this case triumphed. The _de facto_ rulers of Ireland in ordinary slack times, and in the daily round of business, are the heads of the great Departments. Some of these are not even nominally responsible to Parliament. The Intermediate Board, for instance, has for thirty years controlled secondary education, but it has never explained itself to Parliament and, because of the source from which its funds are derived, it is not open to criticism in Parliament. But none of the heads are really responsible to any authority except their own iron-clad consciences and the officials of the Treasury, with whom, for the sake of appearances, they wage an unreal war. In theory, the Chief Secretary answers to Parliament for the misdeeds of them all. In practice, this fines itself down to reading typewritten sophistications in reply to original questions, and improvising jokes, of a well-recognised pattern, to turn the point of supplementary questions for forty minutes on one day in the week during session. In its own internal economy the government of Ireland is a form of Pantheism, with the Chief Secretary as underlying principle. He is the source of everything, good and evil, light and darkness, benignity and malignity, with the unfortunate result that he is in perpetual contradiction with himself. As we know, the equilibrium of modern governments is maintained by mutual strain between the various ministers. Sometimes, as in the case of Lord Randolph Churchill, a strong personality, moved by a new idea, tears the structure to pieces. But the Chief Secretary knows no such limitations from without. Theoretically, he may be produced to infinity in any direction; he is all in every part. But, as a matter of fact, through the mere necessity of filling so much space his control becomes rarefied to an invisible vapour; he ends by becoming nothing in any part. With its ultimate principle reduced to the status of a _Dieu fainéant_ political Pantheism is transformed into political Atheism. Responsible government is perceived not to exist in Ireland. Mr Barry O'Brien in his admirable book, "Dublin Castle and the Irish People," confesses himself unable to find a better characterisation of the whole system than is contained in a well-known passage from "The Mikado." I make no apology for conveying it from him. "One cannot help recalling the memory of Pooh-Bah, 'Lord High-Everything-Else' of the Mikado of Japan. Who forgets the memorable scene between him and Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, on an occasion of supreme importance? _Ko-Ko_. Pooh-Bah, it seems that the festivities in connection with my approaching marriage must last a week. I should like to do it handsomely, and I want to consult you as to the amount I ought to spend upon them. _Pooh-Bah_. Certainly. In which of my capacities? As First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chamberlain, Attorney-General, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Privy Purse, or Private Secretary? _Ko-Ko_. Suppose we say as Private Secretary. _Pooh-Bah_. Speaking as your Private Secretary, I should say that as the city will have to pay for it, don't stint yourself; do it well. _Ko-Ko_. Exactly--as the city will have to pay for it. That is your advice? _Pooh-Bah_. As Private Secretary. Of course you will understand that, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I am bound to see that due economy is observed. _Ko-Ko_. Oh, but you said just now, 'Don't stint yourself; do it well.' _Pooh-Bah_. As Private Secretary. _Ko-Ko_. And now you say that due economy must be observed. _Pooh-Bah_. As Chancellor of the Exchequer. _Ko-Ko_. I see. Come over here where the Chancellor can't hear us. _(They cross stage.)_ Now, as my Solicitor, how do you advise me to deal with this difficulty? _Pooh-Bah_. Oh, as your Solicitor, I should have no hesitation in saying chance it. _Ko-Ko_. Thank you _(shaking his head)_; I will. _Pooh-Bah_. If it were not that, as Lord Chief Justice, I am bound to see that the law isn't violated. _Ko-Ko_. I see. Come over here where the Chief Justice can't hear us. (_They cross the stage_.) Now, then, as First Lord of the Treasury? _Pooh-Bah_. Of course, as First Lord of the Treasury, I could propose a special vote that would cover all expenses if it were not that, as leader of the Opposition, it would be my duty to resist it, tooth and nail. Or, as Paymaster-General, I could so cook the accounts that, as Lord High Auditor, I should never discover the fraud. But then, as Archbishop of Jitipu, it would be my duty to denounce my dishonesty, and give myself into my own custody as Commissioner of Police." Under such arrangements as these the inevitable happens. The Chief Secretary accepts his rôle. He is, no doubt, consoled to discover that in one sphere, namely in that of patronage, his supremacy is effective. He discovers further that he can hamstring certain obnoxious Acts, as Mr Walter Long hamstrung the Land Act, by the issue of Regulations. The rest of his official career depends on his politics. If a Tory, he learns that the Irish Civil Service is a whispering gallery along which his lightest word is carried to approving ears, and loyally acted upon. Further "Ulster" expects law and order to be vindicated by the occasional proclamation of Nationalist meetings, and batoning of Nationalist skulls. And he absolutely must say from time to time in public that the Irish Question in essence is not political but economic. This is the whole duty of a Tory Chief Secretary. A Liberal Chief Secretary functions on somewhat different lines. Administration presents itself to him as a colossal heap of recalcitrant, wet sand out of which he has to fashion a statue of fair-play. Having, with great labour, left his personal impress on two or three handfuls, the weary Titan abandons his impossible task. He falls back in good order on the House of Commons, where his party majority enables him to pass an Irish Bill from time to time. His spare time he divides between commending Dublin Castle to the seven devils that made it, and praying for the advent of Home Rule. In either case the sovereignty of Ireland relapses into the hands of the permanent officials, that camarilla of Olympians. To the official lives of these gentlemen, regarded as works of art, I raise my hat in respectful envy. They have realised the vision of Lucretius. From the secure remoteness of their ivory towers they look down unmoved on the stormy and drifting tides below, and they enjoy the privilege, so rare in Ireland, of knowing the causes of things. To the ordinary man their political origins are shrouded in twilight. They seem to him to have come like water, but unhappily it cannot be said that they go like wind. While they are with us they are absolute, seen by nobody, felt by all the world, the Manchu mandarins of the West. They have been attacked on many foolish counts; let us in justice to them and ourselves be quite clear as to what is wrong with them. Some people say that there are too many Boards, but it is to be remembered that for every new function with which we endow the State it must have a new organ. Others say that they are over-staffed; but all government departments in the world are over-staffed. Still others say that they are stupid and corrupt. As for corruption, it certainly does exist under many discreet veils, but its old glory is fading. Incompetent the great officials never were. A poet tells us that there are only two people in the world who ever understand a man--the woman who loves him, and the enemy who hates him best. In one of these ways, if not in the other, Dublin Castle understands Ireland. Did it not know what the people of Ireland want, it could not so infallibly have maintained its tradition of giving them the opposite. Other critics again find the deadly disease of the Boards to reside in the fact that they are a bureaucracy. This diagnosis comes closer to the truth, but it is not yet the truth. Bureaucracies of trained experts are becoming more and not less necessary. What is really wrong with the Castle is that it is a bureaucracy which has usurped the throne of the nation. "In England," declared Mr Gladstone, "when the nation attends, it can prevail." In Ireland, though it should attend seven days in the week, it could never under present arrangements stamp the image of its will on public policy. The real sin of the Castle regime is that it is a sham, a rococo, a despotism painted to look like representative government. To quote a radiant commonplace, the rich significance of which few of us adequately grasp, it does not rest on the consent of the governed. "From whatever point of view we envisage the English Government in Ireland," writes Mr Paul-Dubois, "we are confronted with the same appearance of constitutional forms masking a state of things which is a compound of autocracy, oppression, and corruption." Such a system does not possess within itself the seed of continuance. Disraeli announced, somewhat prematurely, the advent of an age in which institutions that could not bear discussion would have to go. Matthew Arnold yearned for a time in which the manifestly absurd would be abandoned. In the flame of either dictum the present "government" of Ireland shrivels to ashes, and affairs are ripe for the application of both. Here, as in the Colonies, the people must enter into its heritage. The days are for ever dead in which a nation could be ruled in daily disregard of its history, its ideals, its definite programme. On the minutiae of administration I do not mean to touch. When the whole spirit, atmosphere, and ethos are anti-moral it is idle to chronicle any chance rectitude of detail. If a man is a murderer it is not much to his credit to observe that he has triumphed over the primitive temptation to eat peas with his knife. If a government is based on contempt for public opinion, as its fundamental principle, no useful purpose is served by a record of the occasions on which a policeman has been known to pass a citizen in the street without beating him. But there is one further confirmation of the view, here advanced, to omit which would be to ignore the most significant fact of our time. Certain departments such as the Congested Districts Board and the Department of Agriculture, recent creations, have been freshened by the introduction of a representative, non-official element. Others such as the Estates Commission have been under the control of officials of a new type, able men who do not conceal the fact that they believe in Ireland. All of these new Boards have struck root in the national life to a depth never reached by any of their predecessors. The lesson of this change is the lesson of freedom. In the precise degree in which government trusts the people will the people trust government. It remains to complete the process by a scheme of autonomy that shall make every administrator a trustee and executant of the will of the nation. There are other organs of "government" in Ireland of which the reader may reasonably expect to hear something. He will permit me to discharge my obligations by copying out certain paragraphs from an old note-book: "_Judges_.--It is a mistake to suppose that none of the Irish Judges know any law. Our judiciary includes many masterly lawyers, and many adroit men of the world. But all of them are political appointments. Hence in ordinary cases a man will get clean justice. But the moment politics flutter on the breeze, the masked battery on the Bench is uncurtained to bellow forth anti-Nationalist shrapnel. Irish Judges, in fact, are very like the horse in the schoolboy's essay: 'The horse is a noble and useful quadruped, but, when irritated, he ceases to do so." "_Police_.--The Royal Irish Constabulary was formerly an Army of occupation. Now, owing to the all but complete disappearance of crime, it is an Army of no occupation." "_Dublin Castle in general_.--Must be seen to be disbelieved." Since there does not exist a British Empire, it is necessary to invent one. Since there does not exist an Irish government, in any modern and intelligible sense of the word, it is necessary to invent one. The common creative mould out of which both must be struck is the principle of Home Rule. CHAPTER IX AFTER HOME RULE The advocates of Home Rule are invited to many ordeals by way of verifying their good faith; perhaps the heaviest ordeal is that of prophecy. Very well, people say, what are you going to do with Home Rule when you get it? What will Irish politics be like in, say, 1920? If we show embarrassment or offer conflicting answers, the querist is persuaded that we are, as indeed he thought, vapouring sentimentalists, not at all accustomed to live in a world of clear ideas and unyielding facts. The demand, like many others made upon us, is unreal and unreasonable. What are the English going to do with Home Rule when they get it? What will German or Japanese or American politics be like in 1920? These are all what Matthew Arnold calls "undiscovered things." The future resolutely declines to speak out of her turn. She has a trick of keeping her secrets well, better than she keeps her promises. Professor Dicey wrote a Unionist tract, very vehement and thunderous, in which he sought to injure Home Rule by styling it a leap in the dark. But the whole conduct of life, in its gravest and its lightest issues alike, is a perpetual leap in the dark. Every change of public policy is a raid across the frontiers of the unknown; or rather, as I prefer to put it, every fundamental reform is essentially an Act of Faith in to-morrow, and so it is with Home Rule. But while none of us can prophesy all of us can conjecture, and in this case with a great deal of confidence. On the one hand, Ireland is a country of very definite habits of thought; on the other, her immediate problems are obvious. These two circumstances facilitate the process which the learned describe as an attempt to produce the present curve of evolution into the future. First, then, as to the temper of mind in which an autonomous Ireland will face the world. The one clear certainty is that it will not be rhetorical or Utopian. Of all the libels with which we are pelted the most injurious to our repute is a kindly libel, that which represents us as a nation of orators. To the primitive Tory the Nationalist "agitator" appears in the guise of a stormy and intractable fiend, with futility in his soul, and a College Green peroration on his lips. The sources of this superstition are easily traced. The English have created the noblest literature in the world, and are candidly ashamed of the fact. In their view anybody who succeeds in words must necessarily fail in business. The Irishman on the contrary luxuriates, like the artist that he is, in that _splendor verborum_ celebrated by Dante. If a speech has to be made he thinks that it should be well made, and refuses altogether to accept hums and haws as a token of genius. He expects an orator not merely to expound facts, but to stimulate the vital forces of his audience. These contrary conceptions of the relation of art to life have, throughout the Home Rule campaign, clashed in the English mind much to our disadvantage. And there has been another agent of confusion, more widely human in character. Every idea strongly held and, on the other side, strongly challenged, kindles spontaneously into passion, and every great cause has its poetry as well as its dialetics. Men, forced to concentrate all their thought on one reform, come to see it edged with strange, mystical colours. Let justice only triumph in this one regard, and our keel will grate on the shore of the Fortunate Islands, the Earthly Paradise. All the harshness of life will be dulcified; we shall lie dreaming on golden sands, dipping full goblets out of a sea that has been transmuted into lemonade. This, the Utopian mood of humanity, is inextinguishable, and it has embroidered the Home Rule idea in common with all others. Before the complexity of modern economic organisation was as well understood as is now the case, there is no doubt that certain sections of opinion in Ireland did regard self-government as a sort of Aladdin's Lamp, capable of any miracle. The necessity of pressing all the energy of the nation into one channel had the effect of imposing on political life a simplicity which does not belong to it. But all that is over and past. The Ireland of to-day does not pay herself with words. She is safe from that reaction and disillusionment which some prophets have discerned as the first harvest of Home Rule, because she is already disillusioned. Looking into the future we see no hope for rhetoricians; what we do see is a strong, shrewd, indomitable people, at once clear-sighted and idealistic, going about its business "in the light of day in the domain of reality." No signs or wonders blaze out a trail for them. The past sags on their shoulders and in their veins, a grievous burden and a grievous malady. They make mistakes during their apprenticeship to freedom, for, as Flaubert says, men have got to learn everything from eating to dying. But a few years farther on we see the recuperative powers of the nation once more triumphant. The past is at last dead enough to be buried, the virus of oppression has been expelled. The creative impulse in industry, literature, social habit, working in an atmosphere of freedom, has added to the wealth of humanity not only an old nation renascent, but a new and kindlier civilisation. In other words, political autonomy is to us not the epilogue but the prologue to our national drama. It rings the curtain up on that task to which all politics are merely instrumental, namely the vindication of justice and the betterment of human life. From the first, the economic note will predominate in a Home Rule assembly, not only in the sense in which so much can be said of every country in the world, but in a very special sense. For the past decade Ireland has been thinking in terms of woollens and linens, turnips and fat cattle, eggs and butter, banks and railways. The conviction that the country is under-developed, and in consequence under-populated, has been growing both in area and in depth. With it there has been growing the further conviction that poverty, in the midst of untapped resources, is a national crime. The propagation of these two beliefs by journals of the newer school such as _The Leader, Sinn Fein,_ and _The Irish Homestead_ has leavened the whole mass of Irish life in our time. The Industrial Development Associations, founded on them as basis, have long ago "bridged the Boyne." At their annual Conferences Belfast sits side by side with Cork, Derry with Dublin. It is not merely that the manufacturers and traders have joined hands to advance a movement beneficial to themselves; the best thought of every class in the country has given enthusiastic support to the programme on grounds not of personal interest but of national duty. We may therefore take it that the watchword of the Second Empire, _Enrichissez-vous,_ will be the watchword of a self-governing Ireland. What Parliament and the State can do to forward that aim will naturally be a subject of controversy. To Free Traders and Tariff Reformers, alike, the power that controls the Customs' tariff of a country controls its economic destiny. Both would seem bound to apply the logic of their respective gospels to Ireland. But as it is not the aim of this book to anticipate the debates of next year, but rather to explain the foundations of the Home Rule idea, we may leave that burning question for the present untouched. Apart from it we can anticipate the trend of policy in Ireland. The first great task of a Home Rule Parliament would be above controversy; it would be neither more nor less than a scientific exploration of the country. No such Economic Survey has ever been made, and the results are lamentable. There has been no mapping out of the soil areas from the point of view of Agricultural Economics, and, for the lack of such impartial information, the fundamental conflict between tillage and grazing goes on in the dark. We know where coal is to be found in Ireland; we do not know with any assurance where it is and where it is not profitably workable. The same is true of granite, marble, and indeed all our mineral resources. The woollen industry flourishes in one district and fails in another, to all appearance as favourably situated; it seems capable of great expansion and yet it does not expand greatly. What then are the conditions of success? Here is a typical case that calls for scientific analysis. One can pick at random a dozen such instances. Ireland, admirably adapted to the production of meat, does not produce meat, but only the raw material of it, store cattle. Is this state of things immutable? Or is a remedy for it to be found, say, in a redistribution of the incidence of local taxation so as to favour well-used land as against ill-used land? Is the decline in the area under flax to be applauded or deplored? Can Irish-grown wool be improved up to the fineness of the Australian article? And so on, and so on. It is to be noted that of the statistics which we do possess many of the most important are, to say the least, involved in doubt. The Export and Import figures are little better than volunteer estimates; there is no compulsion to accuracy. As to the yield of crops, all that can be said is that our present information is not as bad as it used to be. But above all we have no comprehensive notion of the condition of the people. Whenever there has been an inquiry into wages, cost of living, or any other fundamental fact, Ireland has come in as a mere tail-piece to a British volume. All this we must change. The first business of an Irish Parliament will be to take stock; and this will be effected by the establishment of a Commission of a new kind, representative of science, industry, agriculture, and finance, acceptable and authoritative in the eyes of the whole nation, and charged with the duty of ascertaining the actual state of things in Ireland and the wisest line of economic development. Such an undertaking will amount to a unification of Irish life altogether without precedent. It will draw the great personalities of industry for the first time into the central current of public affairs. It will furnish them with a platform upon which they will have to talk in terms of the plough, the loom, and the ledger, and not in terms of the wolf-dog and the orange-lily, and will render fruitful for the service of the country innumerable talents, now unknown or estranged by political superstitions. It will do all that State action can do to generate a boom in Irish enterprises, and to tempt Irish capital into them in a more abundant stream. And the proceedings and conclusions of such a body, circulated broadcast somewhat after the Washington plan, will provide for all classes in the community a liberal education in Economics. Will "Ulster" fight against such an attempt to increase its prosperity? Will the shipbuilders, the spinners, and the weavers close down their works in order to patronise Sir Edward Carson's performance on a pop-gun? It is not probable. Work is the best remedy against such vapours, and an Ireland, occupied in this fashion-with wealth-producing labour, will have no time for civil war or "religious" riots. As for concrete projects, the Irish Parliament will not be able to begin on a very ambitious scale. But there are two or three matters which it must at once put in hand. There is, for instance, the drainage of the Barrow and the Bann. These two rivers are in a remarkable degree non-political and non-sectarian. Just as the rain falls on the just and the unjust, so do their rain-swollen floods spoil with serene impartiality Nationalist hay and Orange hay, Catholic oats and Presbyterian oats. Will "Ulster" fight against an effort to check the mischief? Then there is re-afforestation. As the result mainly of the waste of war, Ireland, which ought to be a richly wooded country, is very poor in that regard. In consequence of this, a climate, moister than need be, distributes colds and consumption among the population, without any religious test, and unchecked winds lodge the corn of all denominations. Re-afforestation, as offering a profit certain but a little remote, and promising a climatic advantage diffused over the whole area of the country, is eminently a matter for public enterprise. Are we to be denied the hope that fir, and spruce, and Austrian pine may conceivably be lifted out of the plane of Party politics? Further, to take instances at haphazard, the State, whatever else its economic functions may be, will be one of the largest purchasers of commodities in the country. It is thinkable that the Irish State may give its civil servants Irish-made paper to write on in their offices. It may even so arrange things that when Captain Craig comes to the House of Commons at College Green he shall sit on an Irish-made bench, dine off a cloth of Belfast linen, and be ruthlessly compelled to eat Meath beef, Dublin potatoes, and Tipperary butter. In such horrible manifestations of Home Rule I do not discern the material for a revolution. Again, it may be proposed that in order to develop manufactures, municipalities and county councils may be given power to remit local rates on newly established factories for an initial period of, say, ten years. It may occur to evil-minded people to increase the provision for technical instruction in certain centres for the same end. The Irish State may think it well to maintain agents in London, New York, and some of the continental capitals with a view to widening the external market for Irish products. I do not say that a Home Rule Parliament will do all these things, but they are the sort of thing that it will do. And the mere naked enumeration of them is sufficient to show that such an Assembly will have ample matter of economic development upon which to keep its teeth polished without devouring either priests or Protestants. There are other urgent questions upon which unanimity exists even at present, for example Poor Law Reform. I have outlined in an earlier chapter the honourable record of Ireland in this regard. We were agreed in 1836 that the workhouse should never have come; we are now agreed that it must go. Whether in Antrim or in Clare, the same vicious system has produced the same vicious results. Uniform experience has issued in unanimous agreement as to the lines upon which reform ought to proceed. At the same time there are differences as to detail, and the task of fusing together various views and hammering out of them a workable Bill will be an ideal task for a representative assembly. But it is difficult to believe that the discussion will be, in all particulars, governed either by the Council of Trent, or by the Westminster Confession. Then there is education. English public men have been brought up to assume that in Ireland education must be a battleground inevitably, and from the first. It would be a mere paradox to say that this question, which sunders parties the world over as with a sword, will leave opinion in Ireland inviolately unanimous. But our march to the field of controversy will be over a non-controversial road. Union policy has left us a rich inheritance of obvious evils. The position of the primary teachers is unsatisfactory, that of the secondary teachers is impossible. When we attempt improvement of both will "Ulster" fight? And there is something even more human and poignant. The National Schools of this country are in many cases no better than ramshackle barns. Unless the teacher and the manager, out of their own pockets, mend the broken glass, put plaster on the walls, and a fire in the grate, the children have got to shiver and cough for it. Winter in Ireland, like the King in constitutional theory, is above politics. When its frosts get at the noses, and fingers, and sometimes the bare toes, of the children it leaves them neither green nor orange but simply blue. Then again other schools, especially in Belfast, are shamefully over-crowded. Classes are held on the stairs, in the cloak-room, the hall, or the yard. For the more fortunate, class-rooms are provided with an air-space per individual only slightly less than that available in the Black Hole of Calcutta. All over the country, children go to school breakfastless and stupid with hunger, and the local authorities have no power to feed them as in England, and in most European countries. Then again, even where the physical conditions are reasonable, the programme lacks actuality. It is unpractical, out of touch with the facts of life and locality, a veritable castle hung absurdly in the air and not based on any solid foundation. The view still lingers in high places that the business of education is to break the spirit of a people, to put them down and not to lift them up. In token of this, the teachers are denied the civil rights of freemen. Now all these ineptitudes are contrary to the humane tradition of Ireland. Go they must, but, when an Irish Parliament starts to remove them, I cannot imagine Captain Craig, with a Union Jack wrapped around his bosom, straddling like Apollyon across the path. The Captain has far too much sense, and too much feeling in him. It will be observed that we are getting on. A nation so busy with realities will have no time to waste on civil war. _Inter leges arma silent_. But this is a mere outline sketch of the preliminary task of the initial sessions of an Irish Parliament. Problems with a far heavier fist will thunder at its doors, the problems of labour. The democratic group in Ireland, that group which everywhere holds the commission of the future, has long since declared that, to it, Home Rule would be a barren counter-sense unless it meant the redemption of the back streets. The Titanic conflict between what is called capital and what is called labour, shaking the pillars of our modern Society, has not passed Ireland by like the unregarded wind. We can no longer think of ourselves as insulated from the world, immune from strikes, Socialists, and Syndicalism. The problems of labour have got to be faced. But will they be solved by a grapple between the Orange Lodges and the Ancient Order of Hibernians? It is obvious that under their pressure the old order must change, yielding place to a new. Every Trade Union has already bridged the Boyne. Every strike has already torn the Orange Flag and the Green Flag into two pieces, and stitched them together again after a new and portentous pattern. What does it all come to? Simply this, that Ireland under Home Rule will be most painfully like every other modern country of western civilisation. Some Unionists think that, if they could only get rid of the Irish Party, all would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Why then are they not Home Rulers? For Home Rule will most assuredly get rid of the Irish Party. It will shatter the old political combinations like a waggon-load of dynamite. New groups will crystallise about new principles. The future in Ireland belongs to no old fidelity: it may belong to any new courage. Assuredly we must not seem to suggest that, in an autonomous Ireland, public life will be all nougat, velvet, and soft music. There will be conflicts, and vehement conflicts, for that is the way of the twentieth century, and they will no doubt centre, for the most part, about taxation and education. But the political forces of the country will have moved into totally new formations. One foresees plainly a vertical section of parties into Agrarian and Urban, a cross section into Labour and Capitalistic. Each of these economic groupings is indefinitely criss-crossed by an indefinite number of antagonisms, spiritual and material. In a situation so complicated it is idle to speculate as to the conditions of the future. A box of bricks so large, and so multi-coloured, may be arranged and re-arranged in an infinity of architectures. The one thing quite certain is that all the arrangements will be new. In taxation, as I have suggested, a highly conservative policy will prevail. In education the secularist programme, if advanced at all, will be overwhelmed by a junction of Catholic and Protestant. For religion, to the _anima naturaliter Christiana_, of Ireland is not an argument but an intuition. It seems to us as reasonable to prepare children for their moral life by excluding religion as to prepare them for their physical life by removing the most important lobe of their brains. The only other prognostication that appears to emerge is the probable predominance in a Home Rule Ireland of the present Ulster Unionist party. That group is likely, for many reasons, to retain its solidarity after ours has been dissipated. Should that prove to be the case, self-government will put the balance of power on almost all great conflicts of opinion into the hands of Sir Edward Carson and his successors. The "minority," adroitly handled, will exploit the majority almost as effectively after Home Rule as before it. Captain Craig will dictate terms to us not from the last ditch, but from a far more agreeable and powerful position, the Treasury Bench. And we undertake not to grumble, for these are the chances of freedom. CHAPTER X AN EPILOGUE ON "LOYALTY" According to precedent, well-established if not wise, no discussion of political Ireland must end without some observations on "loyalty." The passion of the English people for assurances on this point is in curious contrast with their own record. It is not rhetoric, but crude history, to say that the title-deeds of English freedom are in great part written in blood, and that the seal which gave validity to all the capital documents was the seal of "treason." No other nation in the world has so clearly recognised and so stoutly insisted that, in the ritual game of loyalty, the first move is with governments. With that premised, the difference between the two countries is very simple. England has developed from within the type of government that her people want. She expresses satisfaction with the fact. This is loyalty. Ireland, on the contrary, has had forced on her from without a type of government which her people emphatically do not want. She expresses dissatisfaction with the fact. This is disloyalty. Loyalty, in brief, is the bloom on the face of freedom, just as beauty is the bloom on the face of health. If we examine the methods by which England attained her very desirable position we are further enlightened. It is a study admirably adapted to inculcate liberty, not at all so well adapted to inculcate "loyalty." The whole burden of English history is that, whenever these two principles came in conflict, every man in England worth his salt was disloyal even to the point of war. Whenever the old bottle was recalcitrant to the new wine of freedom it was ignominiously scrapped. A long effort has been made to keep Irish history out of our schools in the interests of "loyalty." But it is English history that ought to be kept out, for it is full of stuff much more perilous. You teach Irish children the tale of Runnymede, covering with contempt the king of that day, and heaping praise on the barons who shook their fists under his nose. This is dangerous doctrine. It is doubly dangerous seeing that these children will soon grow up to learn that the Great Charter, which is held to justify all these tumultuous proceedings, has never even to our own day been current law in Ireland. You introduce them to the Wars of the Roses as a model of peaceful, constitutional development; to the slaying of Edward II., Richard II., and I know not how many more as object-lessons in the reverence which angry Englishmen accord to an anointed king when they really dislike him. Later centuries show them one Stuart beheaded outside his own palace, another dethroned and banished in favour of a Dutch prince. Of romantic loyalty to the person of a sovereign they find no trace or hint in the modern period. Lost causes and setting suns, whatever appeal they may have made to Ireland, do but rarely fire with their magical glimmer the raw daylight of the English political mind. As for that more facile, after-dinner attachment, in which it is charged that we do not join with sufficient fervour, it seems to us always fulsome, and often mere hyprocrisy. In the development of English ceremonial, "God Save the King!" gets to the head of the toast-list only when the king has been thoroughly saved from all the perils and temptations incidental to the possession of power. So long as he claims any shred of initiative his English subjects continue in a perpetual chafe and grumble of disloyalty; as soon as the Crown has been rasped and sand-papered down to a decorative zero their loyalty knows no bounds. The simple and honourable truth is that all through her history England strove after national freedom, and declined to be quiet until she got it. There could not be a better statement of the methods which she employed than Mr Rudyard Kipling's: "Axe and torch and tumult, steel and gray-goose wing, Wrung it, inch and ell, and all, slowly from the King." It is, of course, a pity that the liberty thus established was better fitted for the home market than for export. But this does not affect the fact that, at the end of the process, the English people were in the saddle. But the Irish people are not in the saddle, they are under it. Indeed, the capital sin of Dublin Castle is that it is a bureaucracy which has seized upon the estate of the people. In Ireland, under its _régime_, the nation has had as much to say to its own public policy as a Durbar-elephant has to say to the future of India. There is just this difference in favour of the elephant: at least he has riot to pay for the embroidered palanquins, and the prodding-poles, of his riders. We are all agreed that loyalty is a duty. It is the duty of every government to be loyal to the welfare, the nobler traditions, the deep-rooted ideals, the habit of thought of its people. It is the duty of every government to be loyal to the idea of duty, and to that austere justice through which the most ancient heavens abide fresh and strong. And until these prime duties have been faithfully performed, no government need expect and none can exact "loyalty" from its subjects. But it seems that we are compromised on other grounds. The inscription on the Parnell Memorial is trumpeted about the constituencies with equal energy by opponents wise and otherwise: "No man has a right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation. No man has a right to say to his country, 'Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.' We have never attempted to fix the _ne plus ultra_ to the progress of Ireland's nationhood, and we never shall." What the precise matter of offence may be one finds it difficult to discover. Mr Balfour very properly characterises as the utterance of a statesman, this passage in which Parnell declines to usurp the throne and sceptre of Providence. But Mr Smith complains that it deprives Home Rule of the note of "finality." With the suggestion that Home Rule is not at all events the end of the world we are, of course, in warm agreement. But if Mr Smith has entered public affairs in pursuit of static formulæ for dynamic realities, if he wants things fixed and frozen and final, he has come to the wrong world to gratify such desires. And even if he were to go to the next, he would have to be very careful in choosing his destination, for all the theologians tell us that, in Heaven, personalities continue to grow and develop. In fact, if anybody wants "finality," I am afraid that we can only recommend him to go to Hell. As for the world, in which we live, it is a world of flux. Physicists allow the earth a long road to travel before it tumbles into dissolution, and seers and prophets of various kinds foretell an equally long cycle of development for human nature, as we now know it. The fate of all our present political combinations is doubtful, and no nation has received absolute guarantees for its future. An All-Europe State with its capital at London, a Federation of the World with its capital at Dublin, a Chinese Empire with its capital at Paris--these are all possibilities. Australia may be annexed by Japan, Canada by the United States, or vice versa; South Africa may spread northwards until it absorbs the Continent, or shrink southwards until it expires on the point of the Cape. The Superman may, as I am informed, appear on the stage of history at any moment, and make pie of everything. And not one of these appalling possibilities disturbs Mr Smith in the least. But he is going to vote against justice for Ireland unless we can promise him that throughout all the æons, as yet unvouchsafed, and to the last syllable of recorded time, her political destiny is going to be in all details regulated by the Home Rule Bill of 1912. This is not an intelligent attitude. Of course the real innuendo is that we in Ireland are burning to levy war on Great Britain, and would welcome any foreign invasion to that end. On these two points one is happy to be able to give assurances, or rather to state intentions. As for foreign invasion, we have had quite enough of it. It is easier to get invaders in than to get them out again, and we have not spent seven hundred years in recovering Ireland for ourselves in order to make a present of it to the Germans, or the Russians, or the Man in the Moon, or any other foreign power whatever. The present plan of governing Ireland in opposition to the will of her people does indeed inevitably make that country the weak spot in the defences of these islands, for such misgovernment produces discontent, and discontent is the best ally of the invader. Alter that by Home Rule, and your cause instantly becomes ours. Give the Irish nation an Irish State to defend, and the task of an invader becomes very unenviable. As for levying war on Great Britain, we have no inclination in that direction. The best thought in Ireland has always preferred civilisation to war, and we have no wealth to waste on expensive stupidities of any kind. In addition we are handicapped on sea by the smallness of our official navy which, so far as I can gather, consists of the _Granuaile_, a pleasure-boat owned by the Congested Districts Board. In land operations, we are still more seriously hampered by the non-existence of our army. And although, in point of population, our numerical inferiority is so trivial as one to ten, even this slight disproportion may be regarded by an Irish Parliament as a fact not unworthy of consideration. But we must not suffer ourselves to be detained any longer among these unrealities. A Home Rule government will be loyal to the interests of its people, and actual circumstances demand, for the behoof of Great Britain and Ireland alike, an era of peace with honour, and friendship founded on justice. The magnitude of the commercial relations between the two countries is inadequately appreciated. Not merely is Great Britain our best customer, but we are her best customer. The trade of Great Britain with Ireland is larger than her trade with India, and nearly twice as large as that with Canada or Australia. And while these surprising figures are far from indicating the existence of a sound economic structure in Ireland, none the less, the industrial expansion that will follow Home Rule may be expected to alter the character rather than to diminish the value of the goods interchanged. For if the development of textile, leather, shipbuilding, and other manufactures lessens the British import under these heads into Ireland, it will increase that of coal, iron, steel, and machinery. And Ireland, without trenching on the needs of her home market, is capable of much more intensive exploitation as a food-exporting country. Economically the two nations are joined in relations that ought to be relations of mutual profit, were they not eternally poisoned by political oppression. With this virus removed, the natural balance of the facts of nature will spontaneously establish itself between the two countries. The true desire of all the loud trumpeters of "loyalty" is, as it appears to me, of a very different order. What they really ask is that Ireland should begin her career of autonomy with a formal act of self-humiliation. She may enter the Council of Empire provided that she enters on her knees, and leaves her history outside the door as a shameful burden. This is not a demand that can be conceded, or that men make on men. The open secret of Ireland is that Ireland is a nation. In days rougher than ours, when a blind and tyrannous England sought to drown the national faith of Ireland in her own blood as in a sea, there arose among our fathers men who annulled that design. We cannot undertake to cancel the names of these men from our calendar. We are no more ashamed of them than the constitutional England of modern times is ashamed of her Langtons and De Montforts, her Sidneys and Hampdens. Our attitude in their regard goes beyond the reach of prose, and no adequate poetry comes to my mind. The Irish poets have recently been so busy compiling catalogues of crime, profanity, and mania for the Abbey Theatre that they have not had time to attend to politics; and in attempting to suggest the spirit that must inform the settlement between Ireland and England, if out of it is to spring the authentic flower of loyalty, I am reluctantly compelled to fall back on a weaker brother, not of the craft: Bond, from the toil of hate we may not cease: Free, we are free to be your friend. But when you make your banquet, and we come, Soldier with equal soldier must we sit, Closing a battle, not forgetting it. This mate and mother of valiant rebels dead Must come with all her history or her head. We keep the past for pride. Nor war nor peace shall strike our poets dumb: No rawest squad of all Death's volunteers, No simplest man who died To tear your flag down, in the bitter years, But shall have praise, and three times thrice again, When, at that table, men shall drink with men. As political poetry, this may be open to amendment; as poetic politics, it is sound, decisive, and answerable. THE END THE NORTHUMBERLAND PRESS, THORNTON STREET, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE 
13157	----	Proofreaders IS ULSTER RIGHT? A STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION AT ISSUE BETWEEN ULSTER AND THE NATIONALIST PARTY, AND OF THE REASONS--HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, AND FINANCIAL--WHY ULSTER IS JUSTIFIED IN OPPOSING HOME RULE BY AN IRISHMAN LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1913 CONTENTS. Preface Chapter I. The Ulster Covenant. The Questions Stated. Ireland under the Celts and the Danes II. Ireland from the time of Henry II to the time of Henry VIII III. Ireland under the Tudors IV. The Seventeenth Century, until the end of the reign of James II V. The period of the Penal Laws VI. The earlier part of the reign of George III. The acquisition of independence by the Irish Parliament VII. The independent Parliament. The Regency Question. The commencement of the Rebellion VIII. The Rebellion IX. The Union X. The period from the Union until the rejection of the first Home Rule Bill XI. The Unionist Government of 1886 XII. The Gladstonian Government of 1892. The Political Societies XIII. Ireland under the present Government XIV. Criticism of the Bill now before the Country XV. The danger to the Empire of any form of Home Rule. The Questions answered Index PREFACE. In the following chapters I have endeavoured to lay before ordinary readers a simple statement of the present position of the Irish question. Following the maxim of Confucius that it is well "to study the Past if you would divine the Future," I have first shown that the tales which are told about the glories of the ancient Celtic Kingdom are foolish dreams, not supported by the accounts given by contemporary annalists or the investigations of modern writers, and that Ireland never was a nation in the political sense, with the possible exception of the few years between 1782 and 1800, during which the Irish Parliament was independent; that the charges made against the English government with reference to their action between the "Conquest" by Henry II and the assumption of the title of King by Henry VIII are baseless; and that though there is much which the historian must look back upon with regret in the period between the reign of Henry VIII and the passing of the Act of Union, it is mere waste of time now to dwell on the wrongs of a former age which have long since passed away and which in any other country would be forgotten. Then I have traced the brief history of the independent Parliament, and shown that whatever may have been its virtues or its failings, it would be impossible to revive it now; all the circumstances of the country have changed. I have striven also to make it clear that the Nationalists of to-day are not the representatives of the leaders of that Parliament but of the party which fought against it and brought on the horrors of the Rebellion; that the Union was a political necessity, if the connection between the British Islands was to be maintained at all; and that if the people of Ireland have not derived all the benefits from the Union which they might have done, it is their own fault, as the history of Ulster during the last century has shown. Next, I have explained the rise of the present Home Rule movement, and its dependence on agrarian agitation. I have analyzed some of the provisions of the present Bill, which independent writers consider to be hopelessly unworkable; and lastly I have stated why in my opinion Home Rule in any form must be fraught with disaster not only to Ireland but also to the Empire at large. I have no desire unnecessarily to wound the feelings of those who take a different view; if it can be shown that any of my statements are incorrect or my inference illogical, I shall be glad to correct them; but to mere abuse, such as the Nationalists are in the habit of pouring on Unionist writers, I shall pay no heed. I admit that it may be said that there are several matters which I ought to have gone into more fully; to that I can only reply that I wished to be as brief as possible, and that I have done my best to compress with fairness. What I am really anxious to do is to draw the attention of thoughtful readers, before it is too late, to the terrible dangers with which we are faced. As an Irish historian has said:-- "No political madness could be greater than to put the legislative machinery of an integral and essential portion of the Empire into the hands of men who are largely or mainly disaffected with that Empire, and who, in times of difficulty, danger and disaster are likely to betray it." * * * * * The following are the principal works of which use has been made in preparing this volume. They are cited here in order to avoid the necessity of constant footnotes:-- "Short History of the Irish People." By Professor Richey. "Irish Nationalism." By the late Duke of Argyll. "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century." By W.E.H. Lecky. "History of the Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland." By Dunbar Ingram. "Ireland and Her Fairy Godmother." By J. Warren. "The Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary Movement." By Prof. Brougham Leech. "A Fool's Paradise." By Professor Dicey. CHAPTER I. THE ULSTER COVENANT. THE QUESTIONS STATED. IRELAND UNDER THE CELTS AND THE DANES. "Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship and perilous to the unity of the Empire, We, whose names are underwritten, Men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V, humbly relying on the God whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in Solemn Covenant throughout this our time of threatened calamity to stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. And, in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us, we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognise its authority. In such confidence that God will defend the right, we hereunto subscribe our names." Such is the Solemn Covenant which 220,000 resolute, determined Ulstermen--of various creeds and of all sections of the community, from wealthy merchants to farm labourers--fully realizing the responsibility they were undertaking, signed on the 28th September, 1912. To represent that it was merely the idle bombast of ignorant rustics, or a passing ebullition of political passion coming from hot-headed youths excited by irresponsible demagogues, is folly. It expresses the calm resolution of earnest men who, having thought deeply over the matter had decided that it was better even to face the horrors of civil war rather than to submit to the rule of a Nationalist Government. The opinions of the Nationalists with regard to the Ulster Covenant can be gathered from many speeches and sermons. The following extract from one of their papers--the _Frontier Sentinel_--may be taken as a specimen:-- "It may not be out of place here to translate into simple English the terms of the Covenant. It denies the claim of Ireland to self-government and the capacity of Irishmen to govern Ireland. It asserts that the Catholics of Ireland are the spawn of the devil; that they are ruthless savages and dangerous criminals with only one object in life--the wiping out of Protestants. It claims for the Protestant Unionist majority of four Ulster counties a monopoly of Christianity, public and private morality, and clean successful business enterprise. In the name of God it seeks to stimulate the basest passions in human nature, and calls on God to witness a catalogue of falsehoods. Only a few of the local Protestant clergymen, it should be stated, signed this notoriously wicked document." It is well then to pause and consider calmly two questions: What are the real objects of the Nationalists; and, Are the men of Ulster justified in resisting them to the uttermost? It is a mere truism to remark that in every political question the main controversy is complicated by a number of side issues. Thus in the tangled skein of politics in South Eastern Europe there is not merely the great struggle between the Crescent and the Cross, but there are also jealousies between Greek and Bulgarian, between Servian and Austrian, which have to be considered. So in Ireland, if we take the religious question as the dominating one, we find ourselves involved in a maze of racial animosities, class prejudices, and trade disputes; by ignoring these we can arrive at a simple but unfortunately a totally erroneous solution of the question. And to weigh them all fairly involves more trouble than the average man cares to take. Irish history is at best a dismal subject. And those who ought to be historians are too often politicians; regarding themselves as advocates and not as judges they deliberately omit incidents which tell against their views, and enlarge on others, frequently without even examining the evidence in support of them. Then in arriving at the truth about any matter connected with Ireland there is the additional difficulty arising from the custom, almost universal amongst Irishmen, of talking in superlatives. The exaggerated expressions, both of praise and blame, which are constantly employed, at first puzzle a stranger coming to Ireland from another country; he soon, however, gets to realize that they are mere forms of speech, and are no more intended to be taken seriously than similar phrases are when used by an Oriental. They are therefore harmless. But it becomes a more serious matter when learned men employ inflated language in addressing ignorant and excitable audiences. Thus Bishop Gaughran, when recently preaching to a crowded congregation in Dublin a sermon which was reported in full in the Roman Catholic papers, said:-- "The persecution of the Catholics in Ireland had no parallel in the history of the Church save perhaps those of the early Christians in the Catacombs of Rome. Edicts were sent forth before which those of Nero might be said to pale into insignificance--the Edicts of Elizabeth and Cromwell, for example." Yet these words came from a man who was doubtless familiar with the histories of Spain, Portugal, France and the Netherlands; and who is a leader of a party which had not long before expressed the opinion that Catholics have no reason to be ashamed of the Inquisition, which was a coercive and corporally punitive force which had effected its ends splendidly! One of the many popular delusions under which English people labour with regard to Ireland is that all the population of the country at the present day are Celts, and that this is the key to the whole Irish question. Thus a review of Father Tyrrell's autobiography recently appeared in an English journal in which the reviewer said: "Probably no Englishmen could have written such a book; it needs a Latin like Rousseau, or a Celt like Tyrrell to lay bare his soul in this way." No doubt these words were written in perfectly good faith; but if the writer had cared to make any enquiry he could have found out in a moment that the Tyrrell family were thoroughly English and that none of them had gone to Ireland before the nineteenth century. The fact is that the inhabitants of Ireland, like the inhabitants of all other countries in Western Europe, are of mixed origin. The Celts were themselves immigrants, who conquered and enslaved a pre-existing race called the Firbolgs; then came the Scandinavian invasion; and then wave after wave of immigration from England and Scotland, so that Sir J. Davies, writing three hundred years ago--that was, before the Cromwellian settlement and the arrival of the French refugees who had escaped from the persecution of Louis XIV--said that if the people of Ireland were numbered those descended of English race would be found more in number than the ancient natives. This, however, is only one of many errors into which English writers have fallen. Mistakes of course will always be made; but unfortunately it is a charge from which Mr. Gladstone's admirers cannot clear him that when he wished to bring the English people round to the idea of Home Rule he deliberately falsified Irish history in order to make it serve his ends; and his misrepresentations have gained credence amongst careless thinkers who are content to shelter themselves under a great name without looking at what has been written in answer. The general idea of an average Englishman about Irish history seems to be that Ireland in Celtic times was a peaceful, orderly, united kingdom, famous for its piety and learning, where land was held by "tribal tenure"--that is, owned by the whole tribe who were closely related in blood--rent being unknown, and the chief being elected by the whole tribe in solemn assembly. Into this happy country came the Norman invaders, who fought against and conquered the king; drove the native owners out of their possessions, and introduced a feudal system and an alien code of law unsuited to the people; and the modern landlords are the representatives of the conquering Normans and the tenants the descendants of the ancient tribesmen who naturally and rightfully resist paying rent for the lands which by ancestral right should be their own. There could not be a more complete travesty of history. The Celtic Church no doubt had its golden age. It produced saints and men of learning. It sent out its missionaries to the heathen beyond the seas. So famous were its schools that students came to them from distant lands. But centuries before the Normans appeared in Ireland the salt had lost its savour. The Celtic Church had sunk into being a mere appendage of the wild tribes it had once tried to tame. The chiefs of one tribe would sack the colleges and shrines of another tribe as freely as they would sack any of their other possessions. For instance, the annals tell us that in the year 1100 the men of the south made a raid into Connaught and burned many churches; in 1113 Munster tribe burned many churches in Meath, one of them being full of people; in 1128 the septs of Leitrim and Cavan plundered and slew the retinue of the Bishop of Armagh; in the same year the men of Tyrone raided Down and a great number of people suffered martyrdom; four years later Kildare was invaded by raiders from Wexford, the church was burnt and many men slain; and so on with dreary monotony. Bishops and abbots fought in the incessant tribal wars as keenly as laymen. Worse still, it was not infrequent for one band of clergy to make war on another. In the ninth century, Phelim, who claimed to be both Bishop and King of Leinster, ravaged Ulster and murdered its monks and clergy. In the eleventh century the annals give an account of a fierce battle between the Bishop of Armagh and the Bishop of Clonard. Nor did time work any improvement; we read of bloody conflicts between abbots and bishops as late as the middle of the fifteenth century. What influence for good could such a church have had upon the mass of the people? And even in its noblest period the Celtic Church seems to have had but little power beyond the walls of its own colleges. The whole history of Celtic Ireland, as we learn from the annalists, was one miserable succession of tribal wars, murders and plunderings. Of course it may be said with perfect truth that the annals of other countries at the time tell much the same story. But there is this difference between them: wild and barbarous though the wars of other countries were, they were at any rate the slow and painful working up towards a higher civilization; the country became consolidated under the most powerful chief; in time peace was enforced, agriculture improved, and towns grew up. The tribal raids of Celtic Ireland, however, were merely for plunder and destruction. From such conflicts no higher state of society could possibly be evolved. The Irish Celts built no cities, promoted no agriculture, and never coalesced so as to form even the nucleus of a united kingdom. It was about the end of the eighth century that the first foreign influence was brought to bear on Celtic Ireland. The Danish invasion began. Heathen though the Danes were, they brought some ideas of settled government and the germs of national progress. They founded cities, such as Dublin, Waterford and Limerick. And when they, like their fellow-countrymen in England, accepted Christianity, they established bishoprics in the new towns, but took care that they should be wholly independent of the Celtic tribal episcopate; they looked to Canterbury and Rome. Much has been written and sung about the fame of Brian Boroo. No doubt he was in some ways a great man; and it seemed for a time that he might do for Ireland something like what Alfred the Great had done for England and Kenneth MacAlpine had done for Scotland--might consolidate the country into one kingdom. But the story of his life is a striking commentary on the wretchedness of the period. Forming an alliance with some of the Danes he succeeded in crushing the chiefs of several rival Celtic tribes; then in turn he attacked his former allies, and beat them at the battle of Clontarf in the year 1014, though they were aided by other Celtic tribes who hated Brian and his schemes even more than they hated the foreigners. Important though this battle was, its effect has been much exaggerated and misunderstood. It certainly did not bring the Danish power in Ireland to an end; Dublin was a flourishing Danish colony long afterwards--in fact it was thirty years after the battle that the Danish king of Dublin founded the Bishopric. But Brian was slain in the moment of victory. The soldiers of his army murdered his only surviving son, and began fighting amongst themselves. Brian's dream of a united Ireland came to an end, and the country relapsed into chaos. If the immediate result of the battle was a victory of Celt over Dane, the lasting effect was a triumph of anarchy over order. It was on the Celtic people that the ruin fell; and the state of things for the next two centuries was if possible worse than it had ever been before. It will be readily understood that throughout this terrible period of history anything like a peaceful cultivation of the soil or a regular election to the office of chief was out of the question. It was quite an ordinary thing for a chief to obtain his position by murdering his predecessor. The annalists give us a long list of Kings of Ireland dating from before the Christian era until the arrival of the Normans. Of course the word "king" can mean little more than "prominent chief," for no one man ever had real authority over the whole of the distracted land. Even of these prominent chiefs, however, according to the annalists, very few died natural deaths. Some fell in battle, others were assassinated; but the most common fate for a monarch was to be "slain by his successor." If this was true of the most powerful men in the country, to speak of the office of chief as elective is really absurd. But more than this: there is no evidence that the "tribal system," in the sense of all the tribe being related by blood and all owning their lands in common, ever existed in Ireland even in theory. At the earliest date of which we possess any distinct information on the subject, wealth, representing physical force, had become the acknowledged basis of political power and private right; and the richer members of the community were rapidly reducing the poorer freemen--many of whom were the descendants of an earlier race or of conquered tribes--to a state of serfdom. The system (if such a word can be applied at all) was in fact a bad form of feudalism without its advantages. There was no central overlord (like those in other countries who gradually developed into the sovereigns of mediæval kingdoms and thus became able to enforce peace and progress), each petty chief being independent; and on the other hand the dues payable by the retainers were not fixed by law or custom. We must probably reject the suggested derivation of the word "feodal" from the Celtic "Fiudir"; but if so, it is curious that two words accidentally resembling each other conveyed ideas so closely alike; for a Celtic "Fiudir" was practically a tenant at the will of the lord; and it must be admitted that the word "vassal" is of Celtic origin. Charters which date from before the Norman invasion show that the land was regarded as the private property of the chiefs; frequently the wretched occupiers, instead of paying fixed rents, were liable to unlimited exactions, one of them being the right of the lord to "coigne and livery"--that is, to quarter himself and his retainers as long as he pleased on any occupier who possessed a few cows (which were the only form of wealth in those days of universal poverty); in some cases, however, land was let for a term of years, on a fixed payment of cattle. On the death of a freeholder his land was divided amongst his sons equally, according to what is called "the custom of gavelkind." Whether primogeniture is a good or a bad thing in England or the British Colonies at the present day is of course a totally different question; the circumstances of the times are totally different. But it can hardly be doubted by a thoughtful student of history that the adoption of primogeniture in the early days of feudalism in other European countries was a social necessity if civilization was to rise to a higher state; and that its not being introduced in Ireland was if not a cause at least an evidence that civilization in that country did not progress. For in a condition not far removed from anarchy the connection between the ownership of land and political power is inevitable; hence if holdings are small their owners become an easy prey to stronger neighbours; whereas the possessors of larger areas can repel attacks and enable their dependents to live in some sort of security. It was the enormous number of petty independent chiefs that added to the miseries of Celtic Ireland. I shall probably be accused of having painted too dark a picture in the brief sketch that I have given of Ireland before the coming of the Normans. I admit that it is very different from the glowing accounts of "Irish Ireland" that may be found in the pages of Nationalist journals. But the question to me is not which account is more pleasant but which is true. And I defy anyone who has cared to look through the works of such writers as Richey, Stokes, and Sullivan, to prove that what I have said is incorrect or unfair. CHAPTER II. IRELAND FROM THE TIME OF HENRY II TO THE TIME OF HENRY VIII. In the last chapter I dealt with the long period during which the Celtic tribes of Ireland were free from foreign influence except for the comparatively brief time when a small part of the country was under the rule of the Danes; and I endeavoured to show that according to the evidence of their own annalists and in the opinion of modern writers of various political sentiments, the whole island throughout that period remained in a chronic state of anarchy, without any advance towards a higher civilization. As Dr. Richey, when describing the condition of Ireland about the year 1170, says, "The state of the Celtic people was beyond all hope of self-amendment. The want of law, order and justice, the absence of self-knowledge and self-control, paralysed their national action and reduced the power of their chief king to insignificance." I come now to what has been absurdly called the conquest of Ireland under Henry II. That the English king was instigated in his efforts by the Pope is perfectly clear. The Bull of Pope Adrian, issued in 1155, is still extant:-- "... There is indeed no doubt but that Ireland, and all the islands on which Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, hath shone, and which have received the doctrine of the Christian faith, do belong to the jurisdiction of St. Peter and the Holy Roman Church ... therefore we are the more solicitous to propagate the righteous plantation of faith in this land, and the branch acceptable to God, as we have the secret conviction of conscience that this is more especially our bounden duty. You then, our dear son in Christ, have signified to us your desire to enter into the island of Ireland, in order to reduce the people to obedience under the laws, and to extirpate the plants of vice, and that you are willing to pay from each house a yearly pension of one penny to St. Peter, and that you will preserve the rights of the churches whole and inviolate. We, therefore, do hold it good and acceptable that ... you enter this island and execute therein whatever shall pertain to the honour of God and welfare of the land; and that the people of the land receive you honourably and reverence you as their lord." And in 1172 Pope Alexander III ratified the action of his predecessor. "Forasmuch as these things which have been on good reasons granted by our predecessors, deserve to be confirmed ... and considering the grant of the dominion of the land by the venerable Pope Adrian, we ... do ratify and confirm the same (reserving to St. Peter and to the Holy Roman Church, as well in England as in Ireland the yearly pension of one penny from every house) provided that, the abominations of the land being removed, the barbarous people, Christians only in name, may by your means, be reformed, and their lives and conversations mended, so that their disordered Church being thus reduced to regular discipline, that nation may, with the name of Christians, be so in act and deed." Whether the description here given was literally correct, or whether the Pope's views were coloured by the fact that the Celtic Church did not acknowledge the supremacy of Rome and was heretical on certain points of doctrine, is a question outside the present subject. The Bulls are only quoted here as showing the part taken by Rome. And it must be admitted that in the succeeding century the power of the Pope became strong enough to enable him to levy taxes in Ireland for the purpose of carrying on his wars against the Emperor and the King of Aragon. But Henry did not conquer Ireland. He did not even pretend to do so. Previous to his arrival there had been some little fighting done by a few adventurous Norman knights who had been invited by a native chief to assist him in a domestic war; but Henry II fought no battle in Ireland; he displaced no ancient national government; the Irish had no national flag, no capital city as the metropolis of the country, no common administration of the law. The English, coming in the name of the Pope, with the aid of the Irish bishops, with a superior national organization which the Irish easily recognised, were accepted by the Irish. The king landed at Waterford; his journey to Dublin was rather a royal progress than a hostile invasion. He came as feudal sovereign to receive the homage of the Irish tribes; the chiefs flocked to his court, readily became his vassals, and undertook to hold the lands they already occupied as fiefs of the Crown. But Henry did not take the title, or assume the position of King of Ireland. He merely sought to establish a suzerainty in which he would be the overlord. And in fact a conquest of Ireland in the modern sense of the term would have been impossible. England possessed no standing army; the feudal levies of mediæval times were difficult and expensive. It might of course have been possible to have organized a wholesale immigration and an enslavement of the natives, something like that which the Normans had accomplished in England, and the Saxons had done centuries before; but nothing of the kind was attempted. Whether Henry's original intention was simply to leave the Irish chiefs in possession or not, it is useless now to enquire. But if it was, he appears to have changed his views; for not long afterwards he granted large fiefs with palatinate jurisdiction to various Normans who had made their way over to Ireland independently. It may be that Henry--knowing that the Conqueror, whilst taking care that no powerful seignories should grow up in the heart of his kingdom, as rivals to the throne, yet made exceptions in cases where the lands verged on hostile territory, such as Durham or Chester--thought that he could best follow the spirit of that policy by establishing what were practically semi-independent principalities in an island already inhabited by another race. But the result was disastrous. That the Normans were savage and brutal, dealing out no justice or mercy to their victims, is proved by the account of their conquest of England. Yet they possessed certain great qualities, which eminently fitted them to become rulers in those wild, unsettled times; as their successes, not merely in Britain, but also in Southern Italy and Syria, show. They had the idea of a strong, centralized Government; and more than that they had a marvellous capacity for receptivity. Thus we see that in England, after a period of rough tyranny, they blended the existing Anglo-Saxon Government--the strength of which lay in its local organization--with their own; and from the union of the two has come the British Constitution. So too in the Lowlands of Scotland it was the Norman knight Robert Bruce who, accepting the already existing Saxon and Roman civilization, raised Scotland into a powerful kingdom. But in Ireland all was different. The only state of society which the Normans found was Celtic barbarism. Political institutions did not exist. As the Normans in England had become Anglified, and in Scotland Scottified, so in Ireland they became Ersefied. It is true that they built stone castles which at any rate were better than the hovels of the Irish Chiefs, and (like the Danes before them) founded a few towns, such as Kilkenny, Galway and Athenry; but there their efforts ended. Scattered amongst the tribes, they learnt their ways. They sank to the position of the Celtic Chiefs around them; local wars went on the same as before; the only difference being that they were waged sometimes by Normans against Normans or against Celts, but more frequently by one body of Celts against another, each side being aided by Norman allies. One class of Nationalist writers has inveighed against the English kings for not having forcibly introduced English law and put an end to the barbarous Celtic customs. The simple answer is, How could they do so? Whilst England was being weakened by long continental wars or by struggles between rival Houses, what strength had she left to undertake the real conquest of Ireland? The English kings had turned to the only people who could have helped them--the Normans settled in Ireland; and they failed them. Other Nationalist writers have on the other hand declaimed with equal vehemence against the tyranny of England in forcing an alien system of law on an unwilling people. To this the answer is that nothing of the kind occurred. It is true that petitions were sent from Ireland to the King urging him to introduce English law; but these petitions came mainly from the poorer classes of English settlers who found that instead of attaining greater liberty in their new home they were being ground down to the miserable position of the native Irish. The King issued proclamations directing the English barons to permit the Irish to be governed by the law of England; but his orders were totally disregarded; many of the unhappy English settlers fled from the country and returned to England; the barons supplied their places with native retainers. Thus the Ersefication of the degenerate Normans became complete; they "donned the saffron"--that is, they adopted the yellow dress of the Celts--abandoned their original language, and gave themselves up to a life of constant plunder and rapine. Early in the fourteenth century the Irish septs united so far as to form a joint effort to expel the English. The incident is specially interesting, in the light of later history. Robert Bruce, a Norman knight, had recently consolidated the Scottish tribes into a kingdom and succeeded in shaking off the English yoke. The Irish Celts resolved to imitate his example. King Robert was shrewd enough to see that by aiding them he could attack his enemy at the most vulnerable point; consequently, when the chiefs offered the Crown of Ireland to his brother Edward if he would come and help them, he gladly accepted the invitation. For three years a devastating war raged over a large part of Ireland; the Scotch went from the North of Ulster almost to Limerick, burning, slaying, plundering, sacking towns, castles and churches; and a terrible famine ensued. But the Irish chiefs were no more energetic in supporting Edward Bruce than their ancestors had been in supporting Brian; he and his chief officers fell in a battle against the English near Dundalk, and the rest of his followers escaped to Scotland. The coalition fell to pieces; and the only result of the Scotch invasion was to increase the misery of the people, especially of the unhappy English settlers, who continued to flock back to England in greater numbers than before. As soon as the rebellion was put down, the great legislator Edward III made another effort at introducing order into the distracted land. Acts were passed by the English Parliament providing that the same law should be applicable to both English and Irish, and forbidding landowners to keep larger bands of armed men than were necessary for self-defence. But the Ersefied barons on whom he relied refused to obey the new laws; they renounced their allegiance and joined the rebellious Celtic tribes. Then the king, seeing the impossibility of carrying out his scheme for pacifying the whole of Ireland, was reduced to the expedient of dividing the country into two; leaving the larger part of it for the natives and degenerate English to misgovern as they pleased according to their own customs, and preserving only a mere fraction (the "English Pale") in allegiance to the Crown of England. This was the real meaning of the "Statutes of Kilkenny," which have been so often misrepresented by modern writers. The next king, Richard II, attempted to imitate the policy of his ancestor Henry II. He went to Ireland with great pomp. Again the Celtic chiefs flocked to Dublin to swear allegiance to their lord; and as soon as his back was turned commenced not only fighting amongst themselves but even attacking the English Pale. The result of all his efforts was that the limits of the Pale were still further contracted; the English power was confined to a small area in the neighbourhood of Dublin. But even within that narrow boundary the power of the king was far from being secure. When England was torn by the Wars of the Roses, the so-called Parliament (which was really an irregular assembly at best representing a territory about the size of a modern county) seized the opportunity of declaring itself independent. It is interesting, in view of present-day questions, to observe that Dr. Richey, writing in 1869, seems to consider their action as not only justifiable but inevitable. He says:-- "The Irish Parliament declared the complete independence of the Irish Legislature, and boldly affirmed those constitutional rights which, though involved in the existence of separate parliament, had not hitherto been categorically expressed. They asserted their rights to a distinct coinage, and their absolute freedom from all laws and statutes except such as were by the Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons of Ireland freely admitted and accepted in their Parliament. They declared that no Irish subject was bound to answer any writs except those under the great seal of Ireland, and enacted heavy penalties against any officer who should attempt to put English decrees in force in Ireland. They, in fact, took the same position and laid down the same principles as the celebrated Parliament of 1782." Whether they imagined that they could form a separate kingdom of Dublin, or dreamt of making an alliance with the tribes outside the Pale, it is useless now to conjecture; but we can see that though they had no chance of benefiting themselves they might have caused serious injury to England. Nor was it long before a difficulty arose. The inhabitants of the Pale remained attached to the House of York even after the Battle of Bosworth, and readily accepted Lambert Simnel as King of Ireland. He was crowned in the Cathedral of Dublin, and held a Parliament. After the defeat of this Pretender, the able and astute Henry VII saw that it was necessary without further delay to make the shadowy suzerainty of England over Ireland a reality. He accordingly persuaded the Irish Parliament to pass an Act which from the name of the Lord Deputy was known as "Poyning's Act." By this Act, all English statutes then existing in England were made of force in Ireland; the chief fortresses were secured to the Crown of England; and the Irish Parliament was relegated to the position of a subordinate legislature; for it was enacted that no Parliament should be held in Ireland unless the King's Lieutenant and Council should first certify the King, under the Great Seal of Ireland, the Acts which they considered should pass; then the King and his Council should approve the proposed Acts, and issue a licence under the Great Seal of England, summoning the Parliament. Though some writers have spoken of this as the most disgraceful Act ever passed by an independent legislature, the people in Ireland at the time considered it a boon and a favour; for it shielded them from the unauthorized power of a Lord Deputy supported by a Parliament of his own creatures. And so, with the close of the mediæval period, ended the second chapter of Irish history. It will be observed that there had been no religious persecution, unless indeed the conduct of the Norman--that is, the Roman--Church towards the ancient Celtic Church, or the burning of some heretics in the fourteenth century, could be so described; a view which the Nationalists of to-day will hardly care to put forward. Nor can the English Government be fairly blamed for the condition of affairs; for responsibility depends on power, and English power in Ireland hardly existed. The suzerainty of England, feeble at best, had gradually been limited to a mere fraction of the country. The Celtic tribes had long since thrown off even a nominal submission to the English Crown; the Anglo-Norman lords had become either avowedly or practically independent. But the inhabitants of Ireland did not constitute a nation or possess any common interest or bond of union. There was no trace of an organization by which the Irish tribes could be united into one people. The ceaseless civil wars had indeed supplanted the original tribesmen by the mercenary followers of another set of rival chiefs; but there had been no union; and the mass of the people, still under the influence of their native customs, were probably in a more wretched condition than they had ever been before. CHAPTER III. IRELAND UNDER THE TUDORS. We have seen that at the close of the Middle Ages Ireland was in the condition that some people in England now consider the panacea for all the woes of the country; it possessed a subordinate Parliament and England interfered as little as possible in its local affairs. Henry VIII attempted "to govern Ireland according to Irish ideas"; having no army of his own, he appointed the most powerful of the Norman barons his deputy. But this deputy used his authority precisely as an Ersefied Norman (who possessed no more patriotism or national feeling than a Celtic chief) might have been expected to use it,--that was, to aid him in a succession of family quarrels and tribal wars in which, allied with some of the native septs he attacked others. Even the towns outside the Pale fared little better than the remoter districts; there was actually a civil war between Cork and Limerick. The state of affairs in Celtic Ireland during the brief period from 1500 to 1534 as stated in the annals (which, however, only deal with a part of the country, hardly referring to what took place in Leinster or Munster) has been summed up by Dr. Richey in the following words:-- "Battles, plunderings, etc., exclusive of those in which the English Government was engaged, 116; Irish gentlemen of family killed in battle, 102; murdered, 168--many of them with circumstances of great atrocity; and during this period, on the other hand, there is no allusion to the enactment of any law, the judicial decision of any controversy, the founding of any town, monastery or church; and all this is recorded by the annalist without the slightest expression of regret or astonishment, as if such were the ordinary course of life in a Christian country." At length, in 1534, matters came to a head; the Lord Deputy broke out into open rebellion. We can learn from the State papers of the period what the condition of Ireland then was. The Pale--now but the remnant of a fraction--was constantly invaded and ravished by wild tribes, and was itself becoming Ersefied; for the poorer English settlers had either fled back to England, joined the Celtic tribes in despair, as their only way of escaping from the harshness of the English lords, or been crushed out of existence; and, as had already happened elsewhere, their place had been taken by Irish retainers. Then in the rest of the country there were some ninety chiefs, of whom about sixty represented ancient septs and the remainder degenerate Normans, all claiming independence and preying sometimes on one another and sometimes on their unfortunate followers. Not infrequently also a tribe was divided against itself, and a civil war was raging between the two factions. And one result of the Ersefication of the Norman barons was that, in addition to the regular feudal dues, they demanded every kind of Celtic tribute from the occupiers of the land. In fact, how the wretched tenants managed to support life at all seems a mystery. Whatever law there may at one time have been was now long extinct; and as King Henry himself pointed out, if the natives were to have any sort of law at all, the only possible law was the law of England. At this time also a new factor came into the already complicated problem--the Reformation. Henry VIII never was a Protestant, in the sense of adopting the doctrines which are now usually called Protestant; but he had renounced the authority of the Pope. In 1535 Pope Paul III passed sentence upon him, consigning his kingdoms to whoever might invade them, and commanding his nobles to take up arms against him. Both the Emperor and the King of France saw their opportunity, as Robert Bruce had done centuries before. They commenced a correspondence with the Irish chiefs with the object of bringing about an invasion of Ireland. Thereupon King Henry resolved to take the only course that seemed to him possible--to make the conquest of Ireland a reality and to enforce law and order in that distracted land. His letters, which are still extant, show the care with which he thought out the matter, and his earnest desire for the welfare of the people of both races; a perusal of them would astonish those who regard him merely as a savage sensualist. Strange to say, in their Irish policy, the character of Henry VIII shows itself at the best, and that of Elizabeth at its worst. When Henry had with difficulty succeeded in crushing the Geraldine rebellion and a series of others which broke out soon after, he got the Irish Parliament to pass an Act conferring on him the title of king; he was solemnly proclaimed as such, and his title was confirmed by the almost unanimous consent of the Irish princes. This was important in more ways than one: it was universally recognized that the word "king" meant much more than "lord"; and it gave him a title independent of the Pope's donation. It is one of the ironies of history that the renunciation of the Papal authority and the submission to the king's supremacy was far more rapid and general in Ireland than it was in England. For not only did all the lay chiefs readily yield their adhesion, but only two of the bishops refused to take the oath of supremacy. Rebellions such as that of Fitzgerald had no connection with religion; it was not until years afterwards when England had become identified with Protestantism and Spain with Catholicism that the Irish became intensely Papal. On the other hand, the Reformation, as a religious movement, made no headway in Ireland. It was purely negative and destructive, and emanated from the Government, not from the mass of the people. The monasteries were destroyed; hence there were no vicars to supply the parish churches, which fell into ruin; the king endeavoured rather to Anglify than to Protestantise the people by sending to them bishops and clergy from England--but they were mere state officials, not fathers in God; unable even to speak the Irish language; what real preaching there was was done by friars sent from Rome and Madrid. Henry's efforts at establishing parish schools were also a total failure. Had there not been later immigrations from England and Scotland, Irish Protestantism would probably have died out. Yet it is but fair to state, and to bear in mind, that there was no religious persecution as such in Ireland during the Tudor period. Elizabeth's policy was, without making any actual promise of freedom of conscience, to leave the question of religious opinions alone as far as possible. The real difficulty came from the political nature of the Church of Rome; when the Pope deposed Elizabeth and gave Ireland to Philip of Spain every Irish Roman Catholic had either to be false to his religion or to become a traitor--_in esse_ or _in posse_--to the queen. When Henry had resolved to do his utmost to bring Ireland to a state of civilization, there were not wanting advisers who urged upon him that his only safe course was absolutely to destroy the whole native population by sword and famine and re-people the vacant lands by immigrants from England. Such a course would have been quite in accordance with the ideas of the time. Not thirty years previously, the combined forces of Church and State had pursued the heretic population of the Loise into the mountain fastnesses to which they had fled, and had piled logs of wood at the mouths of the caves in which they had taken refuge, and set them on fire. Then, when all the unhappy people--men, women and children, numbering some thousands in all--had perished, their lands were distributed amongst strangers brought in from a distance to occupy them. And at a later date--in the middle of the sixteenth century--the native inhabitants of the Canary Islands were exterminated by the Spanish Inquisition, and their lands taken by the invading race. But to Henry it appeared that there was one milder course that might still be possible. Might not the native chiefs and the degenerate Normans who had shown that their only idea of independency was anarchy yet be brought together as nobles under a strong central government with a Parliament representing not merely the Pale, but all Ireland? Might not the mass of the people, whose native customs had been well nigh crushed out by civil wars, be persuaded to _adopt_ the law of England? This was the policy deliberately adopted by Henry and acted on by him during his life. It is easy for writers living in modern times to sneer at some of the details of his scheme; but it is not so easy for them to point out what other course would have been better; or indeed, whether any other course short of a policy of extermination, would have been possible. The remarkable thing, however, is that the change to a more severe line took place not under Henry or his Protestant son, but under the most Catholic Sovereigns Philip and Mary. It was by their orders that the first of the confiscations (which were to play so important a part in the later history of Ireland) was carried out. By an Act passed in their reign the lands occupied by the O'Moores, O'Connors and O'Dempseys were confiscated and formed into the King's and Queen's counties, Leix and Offaly being renamed "Philipstown" and "Maryborough"; and a "Plantation" of English settlers was established. And here it is well to pause for a moment and consider these confiscations, about which so much has been written. That confiscations have taken place in every country is a plain fact of history. There is probably no part of Western Europe where land is now held by the descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants. Forcible conquest and adverse occupation is nearly always the primary root of title. But it is part of the policy of every civilized country to recognize what lawyers call "Statutes of limitations." When centuries have elapsed and new rights have grown up, it is impossible to rectify the wrongs of times long gone by. Thus we cannot suppose that any future Government of Spain would ever recognize the title of the Moors in Africa to the properties from which their ancestors were driven by Philip IV; or that the Huguenots, now scattered over various countries, could ever succeed in recovering possession of the estates in France which were confiscated at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. And the only people who have a cause to complain, even on sentimental grounds, of the wrongs of past ages, are the lineal descendants of those who suffered ill-treatment. No Englishman to-day can feel aggrieved because Saxons drove out Britons, or Normans Saxons. But more than that: the confiscation of the lands of rebels stands on a different basis, and has been so regarded in every country in the world, even New Zealand. The lands confiscated by Philip and Mary were owned by the arch-rebel FitzGerald. Naturally fertile and capable if properly cultivated of supporting a large population, they were at this time a wild pathless tract of forest and bog. The ceaseless tribal wars had prevented their being drained and cleared; the miserable remnants of the Celtic tribes gained a precarious living by periodical raids on the more peaceful inhabitants of the Pale. During the whole of the reign of Edward VI fighting had gone on in Leix and Offaly with great loss of life and at enormous expense to the English Government. The object of the confiscation was not to drive out the few existing tribesmen; for the land, when cleared and drained, might well support them as well as the new settlers. Nor was it to confer great estates on absentee proprietors, but to establish a fairly thickly settled district which might be a source of strength rather than a constant cause of trouble to the dwellers in the Pale. Nor again was it to introduce feudalism; for as I have shown, the system already in existence was feudalism without its advantages; the substitution of fixed dues for the barbarous custom of "coigne and livery" was an unmixed benefit to the occupiers of land. And it cannot be denied that the first "Plantation" was a thorough success--thriving settlements and prosperous farms took the place of forest and swamp. If the position of Henry VIII had been one of difficulty, that of Elizabeth was far more critical. The separation of the Church of England from Rome was now complete. The great powers of the Continent were united in one supreme effort to stamp out the new heresy. The massacre of St. Bartholomew had taken place in France; Philip II had ordered a _Te Deum_ to be sung at Madrid, and the Pope had had a medal struck to commemorate the glorious event. The lowest computation of those put to death for heresy in the Netherlands by Charles V was 50,000; and his successor had, at the instigation of the Holy Office, issued a proclamation sentencing to death the whole population--men, women and children--with the exception of a few persons specially named. Alva boasted that he had put 18,000 Dutchmen to death on the scaffold, and the Pope presented him with a consecrated hat and sword, an honour which had previously been bestowed only on reigning sovereigns. In Spain it was regarded not only as a sacred duty but a pleasant amusement for the King and his Court to watch the torturing of heretics. England alone--then a comparatively weak and insignificant country--stood out against this overwhelming combination. And in attempting to realize the position of affairs we must remember that in the sixteenth century the Papacy was not merely a religious system but also a tremendous political power. We may now regard the claim of the Pope to depose princes as a harmless dream; but at that time it was a stern reality. Thus matters came to a crisis when the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth and all who remained loyal to her, released her subjects from their allegiance, offered plenary indulgence and remission of sins to all who would take up arms against her, promised a liberal supply of graces and indulgences to Irish chieftains who would rebel, and gave Ireland to Philip of Spain. It can hardly be denied therefore that England was engaged in a life and death struggle. And unless Elizabeth would consent to the annexation of Ireland by Spain and to the conquest of England by some power that would treat the people there much as the heretics of the Netherlands were being treated by Philip, it must be admitted that any measures, however violent, became a political necessity--a mere act of self-defence. But though Elizabeth had already on hand a war with France, Spain and Scotland, her difficulties did not end there. The North of Ireland was being invaded by Celts from Scotland, and the principal chief, Shan O'Neill (who was described by the Spanish Ambassador as "so good a Christian that he cuts off the head of any man who enters his country if he be not a Catholic") was in open rebellion with the avowed object of crushing out the English power, exterminating the rival tribes, and making himself King of Ulster. To so miserable a state had that part of Ireland been reduced by petty local wars between rival chiefs that hundreds of people had died of hunger. Can it be wondered that Elizabeth conceived the idea of imitating her sister's policy and forming a "plantation" in the North? Then came another formidable rebellion in Munster, headed by an Ersefied Norman, Desmond. These rebellions were fomented by the Pope, and in the South the rebels were aided by Spanish troops. In the amount of the aid sent from Spain, however, the Irish rebels were sadly disappointed. That has been one of the characteristic features of all Irish rebellions; the foreign powers on which they have relied have been liberal enough with promises of aid, but when the time for performance has come they have left the unfortunate Irish to their fate. (Thus in 1641 not only did the rebels fully expect that a powerful Spanish force would come to their assistance, but they even believed that 18,000 Spanish troops had actually landed at Wexford.) That these rebellions were crushed by the forces of Queen Elizabeth with a savage violence that is more suggestive of the government of the Netherlands by Spain than of what should have been the action of a Christian nation cannot be denied; but when reading the accounts of the terrible condition to which the country was reduced one cannot help thinking that the stories of outrages committed by the English troops must be exaggerated. In the first place, the writers, even when eye-witnesses, seem to have assumed that the country was peaceful and prosperous up to that time; whereas not only had the tribal wars which had gone on incessantly until a few years before reduced the people almost to a condition of famine, but the rebels themselves, such as O'Neill and Desmond, had ravaged the country anew. And if it was obvious that the object of Elizabeth was to exterminate the whole Irish population and the Roman Catholic religion, it seems impossible (even allowing for the eccentricity of human nature in general and of the Irish character in particular) to believe that a large part of the queen's forces should have been composed of Irish Roman Catholics; or that the inhabitants of the towns, most of whom were also Irish Roman Catholics, should have taken her side; but such was undoubtedly the case. Again, if nearly the whole native population had been exterminated by slaughter and famine it would have taken at least a century to recover. Yet--a few years after the commencement of the English settlement we find Spenser complaining that the new proprietors were acting as the Norman barons had done centuries before; instead of keeping out the Irish they were making them their tenants and thrusting out the English; and some of the proprietors were themselves becoming "mere Irish." Then, although no doubt a certain proportion of the Elizabethan settlers renounced their Protestantism and embraced the Roman Catholic religion, that can hardly have been the case with the mass of them; and yet before the middle of the seventeenth century we find that the great majority of the freeholders of Ireland and even of the members of the Irish Parliament were Roman Catholics; surely they must have represented the earlier population. And lastly, considering the wild exaggerations that occur in the accounts of every other event of Irish history, we cannot suppose that this period alone has escaped. Towards the end of the queen's reign occurred the last of the native rebellions. It too was crushed; and, by the "flight of the earls"--Tyrone and Tyrconnell--was completed the work which had been commenced by Henry II. And so the third chapter of Irish history was ended. CHAPTER IV. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, UNTIL THE END OF THE REIGN OF JAMES II. The seventeenth century is a terrible period of European history. It has been described as "the age of religious wars"; and those wars were waged with a savage ferocity which it is impossible even now to read of without a shudder. It is a plain matter of history that from the very commencement of the Reformation the idea of toleration never entered into the heads of any of the authorities of the Church of Rome. France, Spain, Portugal, Savoy and Germany all tell the same story. Except in countries such as England where the sovereigns adopted the new opinions, the only chance which the reforming party had of being able to exercise their religion was by means of rebellion and all the horrors of civil war. What that meant, the history of the rise of the Dutch Republic tells us. As Lord Acton has said: "In the seventeenth century the murder of a heretic was not only permitted but rewarded. It was a virtuous deed to slaughter Protestant men and women until they were all exterminated. Pius V held that it was sound Catholic doctrine that any man may stab a heretic; and every man was a heretic who attacked the papal prerogatives." And it is equally true that in those cases where the reforming party succeeded in gaining the upper hand, they did not show much more mercy than had been shown to them previously or was being shown to their co-religionists in other countries at the time. Yet it is only fair to add that when the idea of toleration did arise, it arose amongst the reformed churches. Probably the only Roman Catholic State in the world where toleration existed during the seventeenth century was the little English colony of Maryland, of which Lord Baltimore was the proprietor. And when at length the religious wars died out it was, as far as Catholic countries were concerned, because the lay mind had become thoroughly disgusted with the whole thing, and men's minds were turning in other directions--not because the clerical rulers showed the slightest desire to relax their efforts or change their policy. It would be well if the whole dreadful period could be buried in oblivion. But it is necessary to mention the subject here, for the Nationalist party are continually referring to the horrors of the Cromwellian massacres and the penal laws; and if such matters are to be gone into at all it is only fair, in order to make a just estimate of them, to glance at the great European struggle of which they formed an incident. In the century which saw Germany deluged with blood for thirty years, and which witnessed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the revival of vehement persecution in France, it was not likely that Ireland should remain unaffected. Soon after James I came to the throne he commenced his famous Scotch plantation in the desolated and half-emptied province of Ulster. That it was even a greater success than the plantation formed by Philip and Mary everyone is of course aware; it is the descendants of those immigrants who, though they live in a district not so highly favoured by nature as other parts of the country, form the only really prosperous and progressive section of the community at the present day. The native Irish do not seem to have looked on the Scotchmen with much disfavour, perhaps partly because there being plenty of room for all in the desolated tract, and lands being assigned to them, they realised that they were safer in the immediate neighbourhood of a peaceful settlement than they would have been had they remained a prey to unscrupulous adventurers like Shan O'Neill. A member of the legal profession must feel shame and sorrow in recording the fact that the chicanery of the lawyers added much to the harshness of the politicians. That, however, is only another way of saying that the humane policy of the nineteenth century was unknown in the seventeenth. Had courts been established in Ireland like the native land courts of New Zealand in which claims under customary law might be investigated, and equitable awards made, the later history of Ireland might have been very different. Yet one must remember that even in the reign of Queen Victoria there was a strong party in England and there were not a few people in New Zealand who argued that Maori customary claims should be disregarded and the treaty of Waitangi ignored. And in the seventeenth century such ideas were unheard of. Lawyers searched for every technicality of English law by which the titles of holders of land could be upset, in favour of English claimants. Then matters became strangely complicated, as they seem to be periodically throughout Irish history. The struggle between Charles I and the Parliament began, and it soon became evident that the Parliamentary party was the stronger of the two. To the Irish the Parliamentarians meant the Puritans; and they believed, not wholly without reason, that a determined attempt would be made not only to seize all their lands but also to stamp out their religion. (It must be observed that the Elizabethan anti-Roman Acts had never been strictly carried out in Ireland, and during the reign of James I their severity had been relaxed still further--a line of conduct which had no parallel in any Roman Catholic country in Europe at the time.) Thereupon in 1641 the Roman Catholics of Ulster broke into open rebellion, and soon afterwards they applied to the kings of France and Spain for aid; and the Pope issued a bull granting a full and plenary indulgence and absolute remission for all their sins to all who would do their utmost to extirpate and totally root out those workers of iniquity who in the kingdom of Ireland had infected and were always striving to infect the mass of Catholic purity with the pestiferous leaven of their heretical contagion. The stories told of the actual outbreak of the rebellion are interesting as an illustration of the universal habit of exaggeration about Irish affairs, to which I have already alluded. Clarendon affirms that 40,000 English Protestants were murdered before they suspected themselves to be in any danger; Temple states that in the first two months of the rebellion 150,000 Protestants had been massacred. The Jesuit, O'Mahony, writing in 1645, says "Persevere, my countrymen, in the path you have entered on, and exterminate your heretical opponents, their adherents and helpers. Already within four or five years you have killed 150,000 of them, as you do not deny. I myself believe that even a greater number of the heretics have been cut off; would that I could say all." He had doubtless obtained his information from the returns made by the priests engaged in the rebellion to the military leaders, the figures of which were much the same. Yet Lecky (who, though in certain passages of his history he shows himself to be somewhat biassed in favour of the Irish Roman Catholic party, is on the whole a remarkably fair and impartial historian) argues with much force that there is no evidence of anything like a general massacre, and brings down the number murdered to about 8,000. Still, that there was a widespread rebellion and all the consequent horrors of civil war, there can be no doubt. The rebels of Ulster at one time tried to identify their cause with that of Charles I by producing a forged commission from the king--which annoyed the Royalists and made the Parliamentary party all the more bitter. Charles certainly did his utmost to bring about a peace--no doubt being anxious to obtain the assistance of his Irish subjects in his Scotch and English wars. But his efforts were thwarted by the Papal Nuncio, whose instructions from Rome were that the Holy See could never by any positive Act approve of the civil allegiance of Catholic subjects to an heretical prince; and thus the Royalist cause became as completely lost in Ireland as it was in England. Before the peace was finally concluded, Charles was a prisoner in the hands of his enemies. Then came the terrible episode of the Cromwellian war, in which Romanist and Royalist alike went down before the Puritan force. Still, though he would be a bold man who could attempt to excuse--much less to justify--the barbarities that took place, it may be doubted whether all the Cromwellian outrages put together equalled a single one of those which the Imperial troops had committed during the war which had been raging for thirty years in Germany--such for instance as the sacking of Magdeburg. It is estimated, however, that about 600,000 people (of whom 500,000 were of the Irish race and 100,000 of the English) perished by the sword, pestilence or famine in the fearful years between 1641 and 1652--in other words, about a third part of the population was wiped out. And the war was followed by a wholesale confiscation--having fought for the king being considered as much an act of treason as having rebelled against him. The confiscated lands were allotted to soldiers, to persons who had supplied money to the Parliamentary forces, and to other supporters of the new Government. It is but just, however, to add that 700,000 acres of profitable land in Connaught were allotted to dispossessed Romanists, and that they were allowed to occupy 100,000 acres in other parts of the country; a striking contrast to the lot of the unhappy Waldenses who were at that time being driven from their homes and slaughtered without mercy for no crime but heresy; or to the treatment a few years later by Louis XIV of his Huguenot subjects whose lands were confiscated without compensation and who were only given the choice of death or the galleys. At the Restoration some effort was made to undo the injustice of the Cromwellian confiscations. But the matter was one of great difficulty. In many cases land had been allotted by Cromwell in payment for money received; in others the grantees had sold their holdings to purchasers who had paid in cash, regarding the original grant as indefeasible. A reconfiscation of such lands would obviously have worked a great injustice; and it is a common maxim of law that between two claimants each with a good title the one in possession is to be preferred. Still it cannot be said that the decisions of the Royal Commissioners were always equitable according to our ideas; for instance, the award of 80,000 acres to the Duke of York (afterwards James II) of land which had been forfeited under Cromwell because the owner had fought for his father, would be hard to justify on any possible grounds. Still, an Act of Settlement was passed, by which a certain amount of justice was done; it is difficult to arrive at the figures accurately, but it appears that after the passing of the Act nearly one-third of the Island was vested in Roman Catholic proprietors. Archbishop King estimated that at the time when he was writing--1689--two-thirds of the Protestant landowners held their estates under the Act of Settlement. And Lecky says, "Only an infinitesimal portion of the soil belongs to the descendants of those who possessed it before Cromwell." But Archbishop King was influenced by the fear he had felt as to what the effect of a repeal of the Act would be; and there can hardly be a doubt that his feelings led him to overestimate the number. With regard to Lecky's remark, one can only take it as a strange instance of a gross exaggeration having crept into a book which is usually careful and accurate. It may be that the statement was not very incorrect according to the evidence the author had before him; but if so, that only proves that the evidence was wrong; for the proceedings in the Land Courts which have been set up in Ireland during the last half century have shown that the proportion of titles to estates which date from an earlier period was far larger than people had supposed. During the peaceful and tolerant reign of Charles II the country made steady progress. Under James II, however, everything was reversed. That unhappy monarch, having ascended the throne tranquilly, with many protestations of toleration and justice to all, succeeded in less than two years in making it clear to the people of England that his object was to confine liberty to those who professed his own creed and that his idea of good government was something like that which was then existing in France and Savoy. Driven from Great Britain, on his arrival in Ireland he issued a proclamation declaring that his Protestant subjects, their religion, privileges and properties were his especial care; and he had previously directed the Lord Lieutenant to declare in Council that he would preserve the Act of Settlement inviolable. But the Protestants soon had reason to fear that his promises were illusory and that the liberty which might be allowed to them would be at best temporary. In a word, what the one party looked forward to with hope and the other with dread was "a confederacy with France which would make His Majesty's monarchy absolute." In order to understand what that meant, to Irish Protestants, it is well to glance at the condition of France at the time. Louis XIV had begun by directing that the Edict of Nantes was to be interpreted by the strictest letter of the law; and soon after that the condition of the Huguenots became more unhappy than that of the Irish Roman Catholics ever was during the penal laws. The terrible "Dragonnades" commenced in 1682; soldiers were billeted on heretics, and unfortunate women were insulted past endurance; Huguenots were restricted even as to holding family prayers; children at the age of seven were encouraged to renounce their faith, and if they did so they were taken from their parents who, however, were obliged to pay for their maintenance in convent schools. Protestant churches were closed, and their endowments handed over to Roman Catholic institutions. Huguenot children were forbidden all education except the most elementary. No heretic was allowed to sue a Catholic for debt. All this, however, did not satisfy the monarch or his ecclesiastical advisers. On the 18th of October 1685, he issued his famous Revocation of the Edict of Nantes:-- "We by the present Edict which is perpetual and irrevocable, revoke the Edict given at Nantes in 1583 together with every concession to the Protestants of whatever nature they be. We will that all temples of that religion be instantly demolished. We prohibit our Protestant subjects to assemble for worship in any private house. We prohibit all our lords to exercise that religion within their fiefs under penalty of confiscation of property and imprisonment of person. We enjoin all ministers of the said faith to leave the kingdom within fifteen days of the publication of this Edict, under penalty of the galleys. We enjoin that all children who shall be born henceforth be baptized by the Catholic curates. Persons awaiting the enlightening grace of God may live in our kingdom unhindered on account of their religion on condition that they do not perform any of its exercises or assemble for prayer or worship under penalty of body and wealth." This Edict met with cordial approval from the Catholic party in France. The famous Madame de Sevigné wrote: "I admire the king for the means he has devised for ruining the Huguenots. The wars and massacres of former days only gave vigour to the sect; but the edict just issued, aided by the dragoons, will give them the _coup de grace_." The Irish Protestants saw with alarm that amongst the soldiers who came from France to aid King James were some who had taken an active part in the dragonnades organized by Louis XIV in order to carry out his edict. Then one Act was passed by the Dublin Parliament repealing the Act of Settlement; and by another 2,461 persons were declared guilty of high treason unless they appeared before the Dublin authorities on a certain day and proved they were not guilty. What steps King James was prepared to take in order to subdue the rebels of Derry who held out against him can be gathered from the proclamation which he directed Conrade de Rosen, his Mareschal General, to issue. He warned the rebels that if they did not surrender immediately, all the members of their faction, whether protected or not, in the whole neighbourhood, would be brought close to the walls of the city and there starved to death; that he would ravish the countryside, and see that no man, woman or child escaped; and that if the city still held out he would give no quarter and spare neither age nor sex, in case it was taken by force. Even if there had been no Derry to relieve and no Protestants in other parts of the country, the conquest of Ireland was a political necessity to King William. England was at this time in much the same position that it had been in the days of Elizabeth, substituting the name France for Spain. The continental powers were again united in a supreme effort to stamp out Protestantism, and England once more stood almost alone. In Spain and Portugal, heresy was of course still punishable with death; the Pope had celebrated the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes with a triumphal _Te Deum_; a terrible persecution was raging not only throughout the Protestant districts of France but also on the Rhine, in Hungary, Savoy and the Alpine Valleys; if Ireland had remained a separate kingdom ruled by the ally and admirer of Louis XIV, the next step would certainly have been an invasion of England by the joint forces of France and Ireland. All that we in modern times include in the term "religious liberty" hung on the issue of the battle that was fought and won on the banks of the Boyne. CHAPTER V. THE PERIOD OF THE PENAL LAWS. The flight of James II brings us to the era of the "penal laws." To one who lives in the twentieth century and is embued with the spirit of modern thought, the whole subject is more than painful--it is detestable. But to pass it over in silence is impossible; and in order to get a clear view of the position it is necessary to examine what the penal laws were, what they were not, and what were the circumstances of the time during which they were in force. The penal laws were a series of enactments carefully planned so as to harass the Roman Catholics at every moment of their lives, in the hope of inducing them to abandon their religion. The unhappy people were prohibited from becoming or voting for members of Parliament; they were excluded from corporations, the army, the navy and the legal profession. They were forbidden to bear arms, or even to possess a horse worth more than £5. Education was denied to them, as they could not send their sons to the university and were forbidden either to have schools of their own in Ireland or to send their children abroad. They were not allowed to possess freehold estates in land, and even as to leaseholds they were seriously restricted. On the death of a Roman Catholic his estate was divided amongst his children equally, unless the eldest son became a Protestant, in which case he inherited the whole. And as no Roman Catholic was allowed to act as a guardian, a man never knew that if he should die his children might not be brought up in a faith that he detested. The performance of Roman Catholic worship was barely tolerated, as no bishops or other dignitaries were allowed to remain in Ireland, and the only priests authorized to say mass were those who were "registered" and had taken the oath of abjuration--that is, an oath declaring that the Pretender had no right to the throne. Such in brief were those terrible statutes. But without attempting to excuse them, there are various matters which must be taken into account if we are to judge them fairly. In the first place, the political aspect of the question should not be forgotten. The Protestant minority might justly fear that if the Roman Catholic party were as powerful as their numbers would naturally cause them to be, they would aid in bringing about a French invasion for the restoration of the Stuarts and the re-establishment of the system which had been in evidence under James II. An army was actually formed in France, and on more than one occasion was in readiness to start. The Stuarts were regarded by the Pope as the rightful sovereigns. The Roman Catholic prelates whose entry into Ireland was forbidden were appointed by the Pretender and were his political agents; it was that fact, and no doctrinal reason, that caused their expulsion. It is necessary to make this quite clear, as there has been as much exaggeration on this point as on most other subjects connected with Irish history. The words of the "oath of abjuration" were as follows: "I do solemnly and sincerely declare that I do believe in my conscience that the person pretended to be Prince of Wales during the life of the late King James and since his decease taking upon himself the style and title of King of England by the name of James III hath not any right or title whatever to the crown of this realm." A modern Roman Catholic writer has thus described the oath:-- "By the Oath of Abjuration the priest was ordered to swear that the sacrifice of the mass and the invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the saints were damnable and idolatrous. In other words, the priest was ordered to apostatize, or fly for his life." And even if Roman Catholics took the oath of allegiance, the old difficulty arose as to the papal right to depose princes and to order their subjects to rebel. So late as 1768, when a declaration was drawn up which it was hoped the leaders of the Roman Catholic party would sign, so that the penal laws might be finally done away with, the Papal Nuncio vetoed the proposal because the declaration contained a reprobation of the doctrines that faith need not be kept with heretics and that if the Pope banned a sovereign his subjects might depose and slay him. It is but fair to add, however, that a large number of Roman Catholics did sign the declaration; and the penal laws (which had been relaxed from time to time when it was seen that the Irish took no part in the Stuart rebellions of 1715 and 1745) were soon afterwards practically abolished. Then it must be borne in mind that the Irish penal laws, although to some extent modelled on the legislation of Louis XIV against the Huguenots, were absolutely insignificant compared with those which were in force at the time in every Roman Catholic country in Europe. Galling though the Irish laws were, they never went so far as to make the mere holding of heretical opinions criminal. Thus no one in Ireland was ever put to death for believing in transubstantiation; whereas in one diocese of Portugal 20,000 people were sent to the stake for denying it. As every one who has visited the Madrid picture gallery will recollect, it was still the custom in the eighteenth century for the King of Spain to preside in state at the burning of heretics; and it was not until that century was drawing to a close that it was for the first time enacted in Portugal that sentence of death for heresy when passed by the ecclesiastical court should not be carried into effect unless the order was countersigned by the king. In France, for two or three heretics to meet for worship anywhere (their churches had of course all been pulled down) was a crime punishable with death; and any Huguenot caught whilst attempting to escape from the country was sent to the galleys--a fate worse than mere death, for it meant death by slow torture. And every child was forcibly taken from its heretic parents at the age of five, and educated in a convent. But more than that: Roman Catholics who fled from the tyranny of the penal laws at home had no scruple, when they reached the Continent, in taking part in persecutions far more terrible than anything they had seen in Ireland. During the dragonnades in Languedoc, Louis XIV's Irish brigade joined eagerly in the butchery of old men, women and children and the burning of whole villages. The same heroes distinguished themselves by destroying everything they could find in remote Alpine valleys so that the unfortunate Waldenses might die of starvation. And the Irish troops under Lord Mountcashel aided in the burning of 1,000 villages in the Palatinate of the Rhine, in which all the inhabitants--men, women and children--were slain by the sword, burnt to death, or left to perish from hunger. These persecutions were practically brought to an end by the French Revolution and the rise of modern ideas; but the ecclesiastical authorities, though they have lost their power, have shown no sign of having changed their principles. Even in the middle of the nineteenth century King Victor Emmanuel was excommunicated by Pope Pius IX for allowing his Vaudois subjects to build a church for themselves at Turin. Of course it may be said with perfect truth that two blacks do not make one white. Still, the constant complaints about the tyranny of the penal laws have less force when they come from the representatives of a party who acted in the same way themselves whenever they had the opportunity. It is indeed frequently urged as a matter of aggravation that whereas other persecutions were those of a minority by a majority, this was of a majority by a minority. To me, so far as this makes any difference at all, it tells the other way. As a matter of morality, I fail to see any difference; putting all the inhabitants of an Alpine valley to death as heretics does not seem to me one whit the less horrible because the sovereign also ruled a large Catholic population on the plains. On the other hand, the fact that the Roman Catholics in Ireland formed the majority of the population prevented the persecution from being strictly carried out. It was comparatively easy for Louis XIV to surround a heretic district with a cordon of soldiers, and then draw them closer together searching every house as they went, seizing the clergy and taking them off to the galleys; but it was impossible to track unregistered priests through the mountains and valleys of Munster. Hence the law as to the registration of priests soon became a dead letter. There was indeed one great difference, between Irish and continental persecution. On the continent it was the holiest and best men who were the keenest persecutors. (This may seem strange to modern readers; but anyone who has studied the lives of Bossuet and San Carlo Borromeo will admit that it is true.) Hence the persecution was carried out with that vigour which was necessary to make it a success. In Spain, if a heretic under torture or the fear of it consented to recant, the Holy Office was not satisfied with a mere formal recantation; for the rest of his life the convert was watched day and night to see that there was no sign of back-sliding; and even the possession of a fragment of the New Testament was considered as sufficient evidence of a relapse to send the wretched man to the stake. Consequently, in a generation or two heresy became as extinct as Christianity did amongst the Kabyles of North Africa after the Mohammedan persecution. In Ireland, however, persecution was always against the grain with religiously-minded Protestants. Seven bishops protested against the first enactment of the Penal Laws; and during the period when they were in force, the bishops repeatedly spoke and voted in favour of each proposed mitigation of them. (With this one may contrast the action of the French bishops who on the accession of Louis XVI in 1774 presented an address to the new king urging him to increase the persecution of the Huguenots which had become somewhat slack during the later years of his predecessor. By the irony of fate the same men were a few years later pleading vainly for the mercy which they had never shown in the days of their power.) Nor was this tolerant feeling confined to the bishops. By the aid of the Protestant gentry, the laws were continually being evaded. Protestants appointed by the Court as guardians of Roman Catholic children, used to carry out the wishes of the Roman Catholic relations; Roman Catholic proprietors frequently handed over their estates to Protestant friends as Trustees, and, though such Trusts were of course not enforceable at law, there were very few instances in which they were not faithfully performed. Many strange stories are told of the evasions of the Acts. On one occasion whilst it was still illegal for a popish recusant to own a horse of a greater value than £5, a man met a Roman Catholic gentleman who was riding a handsome horse; he held out £5 in one hand, and with the other caught hold of the bridle. The rider, naturally infuriated at this, struck the man with his whip so heavily that he fell down dead. When he was tried for murder, the judge decided that as the man had laid a hand on the bridle, the rider had reason to suppose that he intended to take it as well as the horse, which would have been an illegal act; consequently he was justified in defending himself against highway robbery; and therefore the charge must be dismissed. Again, a Roman Catholic proprietor found out that an effort was likely to be made to deprive him of his estate. He rode up to Dublin on a Saturday; on Sunday he received the Holy Communion at a Protestant Church; on Monday he executed a deed transferring his estate to a Protestant friend as Trustee; on Tuesday he was received back into the Church of Rome; and on Wednesday he rode home again, to enjoy his estate free from further molestation. The schools which were founded in order to convert the rising generation were a strange contrast to the admirably conducted institutions established in France and Spain for a similar purpose. They were so disgracefully mismanaged that the pupils who had passed through them looked back on everything that had been taught them there with a lifelong disgust. It is needless to say that laws thus carried out were a dead failure as far as winning converts was concerned. On the other hand, they became in one sense the more galling as the enforcement of them fell into the hands of a low class of informers who had no object beyond making money for themselves. Still, public feeling was so strong that by the middle of the century the laws had almost fallen into abeyance. Brook, writing in 1762, says: "Though these laws are still in force, it is long since they have been in action. They hang like a sword by a thread over the heads of these people, and Papists walk under them in security and peace; for whoever should adventure to cut this thread would become ignominious and detestable." And in 1778 and 1782 (that is, when, as an Irish Roman Catholic writer has pointed out, there was still neither toleration nor peace for Protestant populations in any Catholic state in Europe) the Irish Protestant Parliament formally repealed nearly all the penal laws. Probably their most lasting effect was that relating to the tenure of land. If free purchase and sale regardless of religion had been allowed throughout the eighteenth century, one may conjecture that the effect of the Cromwellian confiscations would long since have died away. But these laws perpetuated that peculiar state of things which has been the cause of so much unhappiness in Ireland--the landlords generally belonged to one religion, and their tenants and dependents to another. It may be asked, As these odious laws all came to an end generations ago, what is the good of recalling the sorrows of the past which had much better be forgotten? I reply, None whatever; and very glad I should be if the whole subject were quietly dropped. But unfortunately that is just what the Roman Catholic party in Ireland will not do. One of the ways in which religious animosity is being kept alive (and I regret to say is being steadily increased) is by the teaching in the Roman Catholic schools of exaggerated accounts of the penal laws without referring to any of the mitigating circumstances. Even in the present year--1913--the Lenten pastoral of one of the bishops goes back to the same old subject. If other countries acted in a similar manner, how could the grievances of bygone centuries ever be forgotten? The Jews, cruelly treated though they were during the time of the Norman kings, do not harp on the subject in England to-day. It may be doubted whether all the religious persecutions of Europe put together were as great a disgrace to Christendom as the slave trade--in which, I am ashamed to say, England strove to obtain the pre-eminence amongst European nations and which she forced upon her colonies against their will. Yet I should regret it deeply if that were the one passage of history selected for study in the schools and colleges for coloured pupils in the West Indies at the present day. When a man who has suffered wrong in former years broods over it instead of thinking of his present blessings and his future prospects, one may be sure that he is a man who will not succeed in life; and what is true of individuals is true also of nations. The expression "Protestant ascendancy," although it never came into use during the period with which we are dealing, has so frequently since then been employed with reference to it, that it is necessary to explain its meaning. Probably no word in the English language has suffered more from being used in different senses than the word "Protestant." In Ireland it frequently used to be, and still sometimes is, taken as equivalent to "Anglican" or "Episcopalian"; to an Irishman of the last century it would have appeared quite natural to speak of "Protestants and Presbyterians," meaning thereby two distinct bodies. This is a matter of historical importance; for so far from the Presbyterian element being favoured during the period of the Penal Laws, the English Toleration Act had not been extended to Ireland; Presbyterians were by the sacramental test excluded from all municipal offices; their worship, though never in practice interfered with, remained technically illegal. Their share in "Protestant ascendancy" was therefore very limited. But if the Established Church was the one favoured body, it had to pay dearly for its privileges. In truth, the state of the Irish Church at this period of its history, was deplorable. All the positions of value--bishoprics, deaneries and important parishes--were conferred on Englishmen, who never resided in their cures, but left the duties either to be performed by half-starved deputies or not at all. Many of the churches were in ruins, and the glebes had fallen into decay; a union of half-a-dozen parishes would scarcely supply a meagre salary for one incumbent. A large proportion of the tithes had been appropriated by laymen; how small a sum actually reached the clergy is shown by the fact that the first-fruits (that is, the year's income paid by incumbents on their appointment) did not amount to more than £500 a year in all. It may be that the standard of religious life was not lower in Ireland than it was in England when the spiritually-minded non-Jurors had been driven out and Hanoverian deadness was supreme; but in England there was no other Church to form a contrast. In Ireland the apathy and worldliness of the Protestant clergy stood out in bold relief against the heroic devotion of the priests and friars; and at the time when the unhappy peasants, forced to pay tithes to a Church which they detested, were ready to starve themselves to support their own clergy and to further the cause of their religion, the well-to-do Protestant graziers and farmers were straining the law so as to evade the payment of tithes, and never thought of doing anything further to support the Church to which they were supposed to belong. (It is but fair, however, to state that this condition of things has long since passed away; the Evangelical revival breathed new life into the dry bones of Irish Protestantism.) But it was not merely in religious matters that Ireland suffered during this melancholy period. Students of modern history whose researches usually commence with the early part of the nineteenth century, are wont to gather from text-books the idea that the policy of the manufacturing party in England has always been liberal, progressive and patriotic; whereas that of the landed interest has been retrograde and selfish. There cannot be a greater delusion. English manufacturers have been just as self-seeking and narrow-minded as other people--no more and no less; they have been quite as ready to sacrifice the interests of others when they believed them to be opposed to their own, as the much-abused landowners. At this time every nation in Europe regarded the outlying portions of the Empire as existing only for the benefit of the centre; in fact, the English development of the "Colonial System" even then was more liberal than those of Spain or Holland. The English system, if perfectly carried out, was by no means unfair. The ground idea was that the mother country voluntarily restricted herself in matters of trade for the benefit of the Colonies, and the Colonies had to do the same for the benefit of the mother country. Thus, when England refused to admit timber from the Baltic in order to benefit the Canadian lumber trade; and placed a prohibitive duty on sugar from Cuba so as to secure the English market for Jamaica; it was but fair that the trade in other articles from Canada and Jamaica should be directed to England. To say that the whole thing was a mistake, as such restrictions really injured both parties, is no answer, as no one at that time dreamed of such a thing as free trade. The real answer is that it was impossible to keep the balance true; some slight change of circumstances might render that unfair which up to then had been perfectly equal. And as the English merchants were on the spot and commanded votes in Parliament, any injustice against them would be speedily rectified; the colonists living at a distance and having no means of making their voice heard, would be left to suffer. In applying the colonial system to Ireland, it is true that in theory England undertook to protect her by means of the British army and navy, from foreign foes; but beyond that, the system was to Ireland all loss and no gain. Every branch of Irish industry was deliberately ruined by the English Government. By the Navigation Act of 1663, trade between Ireland and the British Colonies was forbidden; soon after, the importation of Irish beef, mutton, pork and butter into England was prohibited; then, at the request of the English woollen manufacturers, the export of woollen goods from Ireland to any country was stopped; and finally, with a refinement of cruelty, the export of linen articles--the one industry that had hitherto been left to the unfortunate country--was restricted to the coarsest and poorest varieties, for fear of offending the Dutch. The result of all this wretched misgovernment was not merely destitution bordering on famine, but a wholesale emigration. Whilst the Roman Catholics were leaving the country to avoid the penal laws, the most skilful and industrious of the artizan class,--the very backbone of the nation--were being driven out by the prohibition of their trades. It is said that no less than 30,000 men were thrown out of employment by the destruction of the woollen industry alone. These were nearly all Protestants; to encourage them would have done more to Protestantize the country than all the penal laws and charter schools put together; but they were ruthlessly sacrificed to the greed of the English manufacturers. Some went to the Continent, many more to New England and the other American colonies, where they prospered, and they and their sons became some of Washington's best soldiers in the War of Independence. It was only natural that thoughtful men in Ireland should cast envious eyes on Scotland, which had recently secured the benefit of union with England, and consequently was able to develop her commerce and manufactures unhindered. But though the subject of a union was discussed, and even referred to in addresses from the Irish Parliament to Queen Anne, no active steps were taken. Still, in considering these commercial restrictions, as in the case of the penal laws, we must not lose sight of the fact that the state of circumstances we are dealing with has long passed away. It is necessary for a historian to refer to it, even if he finds it hard to do so in a perfectly dispassionate way; but it is waste of time and energy for the present generation to go on brooding over woes which had come to an end before their grandfathers were born. Yet that is what the Nationalists of to-day are doing. Not long ago, the Old Boys' Association of an Irish Roman Catholic College resolved, very laudably, to found an annual prize at their alma mater. The subject they selected was an essay on the treatment by England of Irish industries before the year 1800! Had it been a Scotch or a German College, the subject chosen would probably have been, The progress in scientific knowledge during the last century, or, Improvements in means of travel since 1820; and one must ask, which subject of study is likely to be most profitable to young men who have to make their way in the modern world? It may be asked, why did the Irish Parliament do nothing to stay this national ruin? The answer is that the Irish Parliament possessed very little power. The Bill of Rights of course did not apply to Ireland; general elections were very rare, and a large number of members were paid officers of the Government; the English Parliament had a co-ordinate power of legislating for Ireland; and since Poyning's Act (as explained by the declaratory Act of George I) was still in force, no Bill could be introduced into the Irish Parliament until it had been approved both by the Irish and the English Councils; and the Irish Parliament might then pass it or reject it but had no power to amend it. And the use which the English Government made of the Irish Parliament was as disgraceful as their treatment of Irish industries. Miserably poor though the country was, it was burdened by the payment of pensions of a nature so scandalous that the English Parliament even of that period would not have tolerated them. The conditions of land tenure also added to the miseries of the country. It is often said that the land belonged to wealthy English absentees, and the unfortunate occupiers, who had no security of tenure, were ground down by the payment of exorbitant rents. This is literally true; but, like most partial statements, misleading. Much of the land was owned by wealthy Englishmen--which of itself was a serious evil; but they let it in large farms at low rents on long leases, in the hope that the occupiers would execute their own improvements. Instead of that, however, their tenants sublet their holdings in smaller lots to others; and these subtenants did the same again; thus there were sometimes three or four middlemen, and the rent paid by the actual occupier to his immediate landlord was ten times the amount the nominal owner received. As the rate of wages was miserably low, and the rent of a cabin and a plot of ground scandalously high, how the wretched occupiers managed to keep body and soul together is a mystery. Much has been written about the useless, dissipated lives of these middlemen or "squireens"; and no doubt it is to a great extent true, although, like everything else in Ireland, it has been exaggerated. Travellers have told us of some landlords who resided on their estates, did their utmost to improve them, and forbade subletting (in spite of the unpopularity caused by their doing so). And one of the remarkable features of later Irish history is that whenever there was a period of acute difficulty and danger there were always country gentlemen to be found ready to risk their lives and fortunes or to undertake the thankless and dangerous duties of county magistrates. It is curious how close a parallel might be drawn between the way in which Norman Ireland was Ersefied and that in which Cromwellian Ireland was Catholicized. Many of those who became large landowners by the Cromwellian confiscations, having no religious prejudices (some might say, no religious or humane feelings), when the leases of their tenants fell in, put the farms up to auction regardless of the feelings of the occupiers. As the Roman Catholics were content with a simpler manner of life than the Protestants, they generally offered higher rents; the dispossessed Protestants, driven from their homes, joined their brethren in America. Then in the South, the poorer of Cromwell's settlers, in some cases, neglected by their own pastors, joined the religion of the majority; in others, intermarrying with the natives, allowed their children to be brought up in the faith of their mothers. Hence we arrive at the curious fact that at the present day some of the most ardent Romanists and violent Nationalists, who are striving to have the Irish language enforced all over the country, and pose as the representatives of ancient Irish septs, are really the descendants of Cromwell's soldiers. So passed the greater part of the eighteenth century; and the unhappy country seemed as far off from progress and prosperity as ever. CHAPTER VI. THE EARLIER PART OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE III. THE ACQUISITION OF INDEPENDENCE BY THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. When we come to the reign of George III we have arrived at a specially interesting period of Irish history. For we are no longer dealing with a state of society that has wholly passed away; the great events that occurred towards the close of the eighteenth century are continually referred to as bearing, at least by analogy, on the questions of the present day. It is for the honest historian to examine how far that analogy is real, and how far it is delusive. For some time after the accession of George III, the state of Ireland was almost as miserable as before. Trade and manufactures being nearly crushed out, want of employment brought the people in the towns to the brink of starvation. In the country, although the middle classes were on the whole becoming more prosperous, the condition of the labourers and cottiers was wretched in the extreme. It is not to be wondered at therefore that we now hear of the commencement of two movements which were destined later on to play so important a part in the history of Ireland--the agitation against the payment of tithes and the rise of secret societies. Few men at the present day could be found who would attempt to justify the tithe system as it prevailed in the eighteenth century. It was not merely that the starving peasantry were forced to contribute towards the maintenance of a religion in which they did not believe, but the whole manner of levying and collecting the tithes was bad; and what made them still more annoying was the fact that the clergy never thought of performing the duties for which tithes were supposed to exist; the large majority of the rectors did not even reside in their parishes. The principal secret societies were the Oakboys and the Steelboys of the north, and the Whiteboys of the south. The northern societies soon came to an end; but the organization of the Whiteboys continued to spread, and for a time it assumed alarming proportions. Commencing as a war against tithe proctors, the enclosure of commons, and the substitution of grazing land for tillage, they went on to commit outrages of various sorts, and something like a reign of terror spread over a large tract of country. But it may safely be said that generally speaking their conduct was not nearly so violent as that of other secret societies of a later date; and the evidence of any foreign influence being at work, or of religious animosity being connected with the movement, is slight. It is interesting to observe that, whenever there was a violent and abnormal outbreak of crime, the Irish Parliament did not hesitate to pass special laws to meet the case. Such measures as the Whiteboy Act of 1787, or the Insurrection Act and the Habeas Corpus Suppression Act of 1796, which were readily passed whilst the Irish Parliament was completely independent, are frequently referred to by modern agitators as amongst the brutal Coercion Acts which the tyranny of England has forced on an innocent people. The harshness of the Penal Laws was steadily being relaxed. All restrictions on worship, or the number of clergy allowed, had long since fallen into abeyance. Roman Catholic students were admitted into Trinity College, Dublin; and the authorities of the University expressed their readiness to appoint a Divinity Professor of their own faith for them if they wished it. The restrictions on property were becoming obsolete; and political restrictions were not felt so keenly since most of the Roman Catholics would have been ineligible for the franchise on the ground of their poverty even if the stumbling block of religion had been removed. And the loyal sentiments expressed by the Roman Catholics made the best of the Protestants all the more anxious to repeal the laws which they had never regarded with favour. Then amongst educated people not only in Ireland but elsewhere, religion was ceasing to be the great line of cleavage; other matters--political, social, and commercial--were occupying men's thoughts and forming new combinations. The political state of the country was peculiar. The real government was carried on by the Lord Lieutenant and his officials; but as the hereditary revenue did not supply funds sufficient for that purpose, it was necessary to have recourse to Parliament. And the constitution of that Parliament was as extraordinary as most things in Ireland. A session was usually held every second year, but a Parliament might last for a whole reign. The House of Commons consisted of 300 members, of whom only 64 represented counties, and most of the rest nominally sat for small boroughs, but really were appointed by certain individuals. It was at one time computed that 124 members were nominated by 53 peers, whilst 91 others were chosen by 52 commoners. A large number of the members--a third of the whole house, it is said--were in receipt of pensions, or held offices of profit under the Crown. Of course there was no such thing as party government--in fact, parties did not exist, though individuals might sometimes vote against the wish of the government. The Lord Lieutenant, however, managed to retain a majority by what would now be called flagrant and wholesale bribery. Peerages, sinecures and pensions were bestowed with a lavish hand; and every appointment, ecclesiastical or civil, was treated as a reward for political services. But history affords many instances of how assemblies constituted in what seems to be the most unsatisfactory way possible, have been remarkable for the ability and patriotism they have shown; and certainly this was the case with that unrepresentative collection of Protestant landlords, Dublin barristers, and paid officials, who composed the Irish Parliament. A "National" party arose (I shall presently explain what was the meaning attached to that word at the time) who strove to win for Ireland the laws which in England had been enacted long before and which were regarded as the very foundations of British liberty. Statutes were passed limiting the duration of Parliament to eight years; establishing the _Habeas Corpus_; and making judges irremoveable. Afterwards, most of the Penal Laws were repealed; and at the same time the disabilities of the Protestant Dissenters were abolished. But meanwhile foreign affairs were tending to bring about changes yet more sweeping. When England went to war with both France and Spain, the condition of Ireland was well-nigh desperate. The country was almost denuded of regular troops; steps had indeed been taken for the establishment of a militia, and arms had actually been purchased; but in the hopelessly insolvent condition of the Irish Exchequer, it was impossible to do anything further. And a French invasion might arrive at any moment. At this crisis the country gentlemen came forward. They formed their tenants and dependants into regiments of volunteers, of which they took command themselves, and strained their resources to the utmost in order to bear the expense of the undertaking. And the rank and file--farmers and labourers--seemed fired by the same enthusiasm. The movement spread rapidly over the country, but it possessed more vitality in Ulster than elsewhere. It soon became evident that Ulster volunteers may form a body not to be disregarded. The troubles of England, however, were not limited to the Continent. The American War broke out. We, who view the question impartially through the long vista of years, can see that there was much to be said for the English claim. The mother country had been brought to the verge of bankruptcy by a long and exhausting war waged with France for the protection of the American colonies; surely it was only fair that those colonies, who had taken but a very small part in the war, should at least bear a fraction of the cost. But the cry of "No taxation without representation" was raised; the Americans rebelled; and England was placed in the humiliating position of being defeated by her own colonists. During that period Ireland remained thoroughly loyal; the efforts of Franklin and his party to enlist Ireland on their side were as complete a failure as those of the French emissaries had been shortly before. But it was inevitable that the success of the American revolution should have a strong effect on Irish affairs. Amongst the northern Presbyterians there had always been a feeling somewhat akin to Republicanism; and (as we have seen) many of their relations were fighting in Washington's army. Then in Ireland there was something much worse than taxation without representation: the English Parliament, in which Ireland had no part, claimed to legislate for Ireland and was actually at that moment keeping the country in a state of semi-starvation by imposing severe restrictions on commerce. Irish politicians read the offers of conciliation made by the English Government to the revolted colonies, in which not only was the power of taxation given up and freedom of internal legislation established, but all power of the Parliament of Great Britain over America was renounced; and began to ask whether England could withhold from loyal Irishmen the boons which she offered to rebellious Americans. The claims were urged in Parliament and at meetings of the volunteers and other public bodies; the English Government for some time refused to grant any concession; but at length, fearing an Irish Revolution, gave way on every point. They granted, in fact, as an Irish statesman expressed it, "everything short of separation." First (in spite of the opposition of the English manufacturing classes) all restrictions on trade were swept away; then, in 1782, the Declaratory Act of George I, by virtue of which the English Parliament had claimed the right to legislate for Ireland, was repealed, and with it went the right of the English House of Lords to act as a court of final appeal for Ireland; the restrictions imposed by Poyning's Act on the legislative powers of the Irish Parliament were abolished; and the Irish Executive was made practically dependent on the Irish Parliament by the Mutiny Act, which had previously been perpetual, being limited to two years. Thus Ireland became a nation in a sense she had never been before. The only tie to any power beyond sea was that the King of England was also King of Ireland; Ireland could legislate for itself, and enter into commercial treaties with foreign powers; but, on the other hand, it had to pay its own debts and provide its own army and navy. As Grattan was not merely the most prominent politician of the period, but also the leader of the now triumphant "National" party, we may fairly take the views expressed by him as representative of those of the party that followed him. A study of his speeches and letters will show how utterly different were the ideas and aims of the National party of 1782 from those of the Nationalists of to-day. In the first place, Grattan was intensely loyal; that is to say, it never occurred to him that Ireland could ever wish to be independent in the sense of not being subject to the King of England, or could seek to be united to any other power. Secondly, he was intensely aristocratic. His idea was that Government should and would always be in the hands of the propertied and educated classes; that Parliament should consist of country gentlemen and professional men from the towns, elected on a narrow franchise. (It must be remembered that the country gentlemen had recently given evidence of their patriotic zeal by the inauguration of the Volunteer movement; and the ability and eloquence of the Irish Bar at that period is proverbial). Thirdly, he regarded Protestant ascendancy as a fundamental necessity. It is true that other politicians at the time saw that they were faced with a serious difficulty: the very principles to which they had appealed and by virtue of which they had obtained their legislative independence made it illogical that three-fourths of the community should be unrepresented; whereas if votes were given to the Roman Catholic majority it was inevitable that they would soon become eligible for seats in the Legislature; and if so, the Protestant minority must be swamped, and the country ruled by a very different class and according to very different ideas from those which prevailed in the Parliament of which Grattan was a member. And would a Roman Catholic Parliament and nation care to remain subject to a King of England whose title depended on his being a Protestant? Grattan, however, swept all such considerations aside with an easy carelessness. He believed that under the influences of perfect toleration large numbers of Roman Catholics would conform; and the remainder, quite satisfied with their position, would never dream of attacking the Church or any other existing institution. We may smile at his strange delusions as to the future; but he was probably not more incorrect than many people are to-day in their conjectures as to what the world will be like a hundred years hence; and if we try to place ourselves in Grattan's position, there is something to be said for his conjectures. At that time the influence of the Church of Rome was at its lowest; Spain had almost ceased to exist as a European power; and in France the state of religious thought was very different from what it had been in the days of Louis XIV. Irish Roman Catholic gentlemen who sent their sons to be educated in France found that they came back Voltaireans; even the young men who went to study for the priesthood in French seminaries became embued with liberalism to an extent that would make a modern Ultramontane shudder. Then in Ireland all local power was in the hands of the landlords; the Roman Catholic bishops possessed hardly any political influence. It would have required more keenness than a mere enthusiast like Grattan possessed to foresee that the time would come when all this would be absolutely reversed. What was there in the eighteenth century to lead him to surmise that in the twentieth the landlords would be ruined and gone, and that local government would have become vested in District Councils in which Protestants would have no power, but over which the authority of the bishops would be absolute? So Grattan and his party entered on the new conditions of political life with airy optimism. But there were, both in England and France, shrewder and more far-seeing men than he, who realised from the first that the new state of affairs could not possibly be a lasting one, but must lead either to union or complete separation. Of course so long as all parties happened to be of the same mind, no difficulties would arise; but it was merely a question of time when some cause of friction would occur, and then the inherent weakness of the arrangement would be apparent. A moment's thought will show that for Ireland to be subject to the English King but independent of the English Parliament was a physical impossibility. The king would act on the advice of his ministers who were responsible to the English Parliament; either the Irish Parliament must obey, or a deadlock would ensue. Then, suppose that England were to become engaged in a war of which the people of Ireland disapproved, Ireland might not only refuse to make any voluntary grant in aid, but even declare her ports neutral, withdraw her troops, and pass a vote of censure on the English Government. Again, with regard to trade; Ireland might adopt a policy of protection against England, and enter into a treaty for free trade with some foreign country which might be at the moment England's deadliest rival. The confusion that might result would be endless. Considerations such as these presented themselves at once to the master-mind of Pitt. He pointed out that as England had relinquished her right to limit Irish trade for the benefit of English, she was in fairness relieved from the corresponding duty of protecting Ireland against foreign foes; the two countries should therefore both contribute to their joint defence in proportion to their means. He proposed that regular treaties should be drawn up between the two countries, by which Ireland should contribute a certain sum to the navy, free trade between Ireland and England should be established, and regulations made whereby the duties payable on foreign goods should be assimilated. By such measures as these he hoped to make things run smoothly for a time at least; but when his projects were rejected by the Irish Parliament, he saw more clearly than ever that sooner or later the Gordian knot would have to be cut, and that the only way of cutting it would be the Union. CHAPTER VII. THE INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT. THE REGENCY QUESTION. THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE REBELLION. That Ireland increased in prosperity rapidly towards the end of the eighteenth century, there is no doubt. Politicians will say that this prosperity came from the increased powers gained by the Parliament in 1782; economists will reply that that had little if anything to say to it; far more important causes being the abolition of trade restrictions and the relaxation of the Penal Laws, which encouraged people to employ their money in remunerative works at home instead of having to send it abroad. It may sound somewhat Hibernian to mention the rise in rents, as another cause of prosperity; yet anyone who knows Ireland will admit that it is not impossible; and it was certainly put forward gravely by writers of the period who were by no means biassed towards the landlord interest. Thus McKenna, writing in 1793, says:-- "In several parts of Ireland the rents have been tripled within 40 years. This was not so much the effect as the cause of national prosperity; ... before the above-mentioned period, when rent was very low and other taxes little known, half the year was lavished in carousing. But as soon as labour became compulsory, fortunes have been raised both by the tenantry and landlords, and civilization has advanced materially." There was also another cause of prosperity, which modern economists cannot look on with much favour. It was the policy of the Irish Government to grant enormous bounties for the development of various industries, especially the growth of corn. This no doubt gave much employment, promoted the breaking up of grass lands, the subdivision of farms and the erection of mills; and so long as the price of corn was maintained, brought much prosperity to the country, and thus was indirectly one cause of the enormous increase of population, which rose from about 2,370,000 in 1750, to about 4,500,000 in 1797. But when, during the nineteenth century, prices fell, the whole structure, built on a fictitious foundation, came down with a crash. Not long after the Irish Parliament had acquired its independence, a controversy arose which, although it had no immediate result, yet was of vast importance on account of the principle involved. The king became insane. It was necessary that there should be a Regent, and it was obvious that the Prince of Wales was the man for the post. But the British constitution contained no provision for making the appointment. After much deliberation, the English Parliament decided to pass an Act appointing the Prince Regent and defining his powers, the Royal assent being given by Commission. The two houses of the Irish Parliament, however, without waiting for the Prince to be invested with the Regency in England, voted an address to him asking him to undertake the duties of Regent, without naming any limitations. As the king recovered almost immediately, the whole matter ended in nothing; but thoughtful men realized what was involved in the position which the Irish Parliament had taken up. Grattan's resolution was to the effect that in addressing the Prince to take upon himself the government of the country the Lords and Commons of Ireland were exercising an undoubted right and discharging an indispensable duty to which in the emergency they alone were competent. By the Act of Henry VIII the King of England was _ipso facto_ King of Ireland. An Irish Act of William and Mary declared that the Crown of Ireland and all the powers and prerogatives belonging to it should be for ever annexed to and dependent on the Crown of England. And the Act of 1782 made the Great Seal of Great Britain necessary to the summoning of an Irish Parliament and the passing of Irish Acts. Now did the words "King" and "Crown" merely refer to the individual who had the right to wear a certain diadem, or did they include the chief executive magistrate, whoever that might be--King, Queen or Regent? It was ably contended by Lord Clare that the latter was the only possible view; for the Regent of Great Britain must hold the Great Seal; and so he alone could summon an Irish Parliament; therefore the Irish Parliament in choosing their Regent had endangered the only bond which existed between England and Ireland--the necessary and perpetual identity of the executive. If the Irish Parliament appointed one person Regent and the English Parliament another, separation or war might be the result; and even as it was, the appointment of the Prince with limited powers in England and unlimited in Ireland, must lead to confusion. But more than that; suppose that the House of Brunswick were to die out, and another Act of Settlement were to become necessary, might not the Irish Parliament choose a different sovereign from the one chosen by England? Constitutional lawyers recollected that such a difficulty nearly arose between Scotland and England, but was settled by the Act of Union; and that it was the recognition of Lambert Simnel by the Irish Parliament that was the immediate cause of the passing of Poyning's Act; and saw what the revived powers of the Irish Parliament might lead to. Although the Parliament had now become independent, there was still nothing like a responsible ministry as we now understand it, and the government managed to maintain its control, partly by the peculiar composition of the Parliament (to which I have already referred), and partly by the disposal of favours. And it cannot be denied that the Parliament passed much useful legislation. Two questions, however, were now coming forward on which the whole political condition of the country depended, and which were closely entwined with one another. The first was the reform of the legislature, so as to make the House of Commons a really representative body; the second was the final abolition of the Penal Laws. As to reform, the Parliament was naturally slow (did any political assembly in the world ever divest itself of its own privileges without pressure from without?); but as to the abolition of the Penal Laws there was a cordiality which is remarkable, and which is seldom referred to by the Nationalist writers of the present day when they discourse about the Penal Laws. With regard to social matters--such as admission to Corporations, taking Degrees at the University, and holding medical professorships,--there was hardly any hesitation; the political question, however, was more difficult. In both England and Ireland at that time a forty-shilling freehold gave a vote. That was a matter of slight importance in England, as the number of small freeholders was limited, land being usually let for a term of years. In Ireland, however, the ordinary arrangement was for peasants to hold their scraps of land for life; and land having recently increased in value enormously, a large proportion of these were of the value of forty shillings. Hence, the whole constituency would be altered; thousands of new electors, all of them poor and illiterate, would be added in many constituencies; and the representation of the country would at once pass into Roman Catholic hands. To fix a higher qualification for Roman Catholics than for Protestants would be not to abolish but to perpetuate the Penal Laws; to deprive the existing voters of the franchise was out of the question; hence the franchise was granted but not without considerable hesitation on the part of the more thoughtful members. On the other hand it was urged with great force that to give these privileges to the uneducated mass but to continue the disabilities of the Roman Catholic gentry by not allowing them to sit in Parliament was absurd. The proposal to abolish the religious test in the case of Members of Parliament was, however, defeated. Looking back, with the light of later history to aid us, it is interesting to see how much more correct were Lord Clare's predictions of the future than Grattan's. Grattan (as I have already explained), taking his ideas from his lay friends among the cultured classes, and seeing the decline of the Papal influence on the continent, considered that anyone who regarded Popery as a political influence of the future totally misunderstood the principles which then governed human action; for controverted points of religion (such as belief in the Real Presence) had ceased to be a principle of human action. He maintained that the cause of the Pope, as a political force, was as dead as that of the Stuarts; that priestcraft was a superannuated folly; and that in Ireland a new political religion had arisen, superseding all influence of priest and parson, and burying for ever theological discord in the love of civil and religious liberty. Clare, who was not only a shrewder observer but a much more deeply read man, realized that in order to find out what would guide the Roman Catholic Church in the future one must look not at the passing opinions of laymen but at the constitution of the Church; he foresaw that if the artificial supports which maintained the Protestant ascendancy were removed, the mere force of numbers would bring about a Roman Catholic ascendancy; and in enumerating the results of that he even said that the time would come when the Church would decide on all questions as to marriage. In order to show how far Lord Clare's expectations have been verified, I will quote, not the words of an Orange speaker or writer, but of an eminent Roman Catholic, the Rev. J.T. McNicholas, O.P., in his recently published book on "The New Marriage Legislation" which, being issued with an _Imprimatur_, will be received by all parties as a work of authority. He says:-- "Many Protestants may think the Church presumptuous in decreeing their marriages valid or invalid according as they have or have not complied with certain conditions. As the Church cannot err, neither can she be presumptuous. She alone is judge of the extent of her power. Anyone validly baptised, either in the Church or among heretics, becomes thereby a subject of the Roman Catholic Church." But whilst politicians were amusing themselves with fervid but useless oratory in Parliament, stirring events were taking place elsewhere. To trace in these pages even a bare outline of the main incidents of those terrible years is impossible; and yet without doing so it is not easy to obtain a correct view of the tangled skein of Irish politics at the time. In studying any history of the period, we cannot but be struck by observing on the one hand how completely in some respects circumstances and ideas have changed since then; it is hard to realize that Ulster was for a time the scene of wild disorder--assassination, arson, burglary and every form of outrage--brought about mainly by a society which claimed to be, and to a certain extent was, formed by a union of the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic parties--whilst the south and west remained fairly orderly and loyal. And yet on the other hand we find many of the phenomena which have been characteristic of later periods of Irish political agitation, already flourishing. Boycotting existed in fact, though the name was not yet invented; also nocturnal raids for arms, the sacking of lonely farmhouses, the intimidation of witnesses and the mutilation of cattle. Again, we see all through the history of Irish secret societies that their organization has been so splendid that the ordinary law has been powerless against them; for witnesses will not give evidence and juries will not convict if they know that to do so will mean certain ruin and probable death; and yet those same societies have always possessed one element of weakness: however terrible their oaths of secrecy have been, the Government have never had the slightest difficulty in finding out, through their confidential agents, everything that has taken place at their meetings, and what their projects are. As early as 1785 there had been two societies carrying on something like civil war on a small scale in the north. How they originated, is a matter of dispute; but at any rate before they had long been in existence, the religious element became supreme--as it does sooner or later in every Irish movement; whatever temporary alliances may be formed for other reasons, religion always ultimately becomes the line of cleavage. In this case, the "Peep of Day Boys" were Protestants, the "Defenders" Roman Catholic. Some of the outrages committed by the Defenders were too horrible to put in print; many Roman Catholic families fled the country on account of the treatment which they received from the Peep of Day Boys, and took refuge among their co-religionists in the south. But now a greater crisis was at hand. The terrible upheaval of the French Revolution was shaking European society to its foundation. The teaching of Paine and Voltaire had borne fruit; the wildest socialism was being preached in every land. Ulster had shown sympathy with Republican ideas at the time of the American War of Independence; and now a large number of the Presbyterians of Belfast eagerly accepted the doctrines of Jacobinism. Nothing can sound more charmingly innocent than the objects of the United Irish Society as put forward publicly in 1791; the members solemnly and religiously pledged themselves to use all their influence to obtain an impartial and adequate representation of the Irish nation in Parliament; and as a means to this end to endeavour to secure the co-operation of Irishmen of all religious persuasions. Some writers have tried to make out that if the Relief Act of 1793 had been extended in 1795 by another Act enabling Roman Catholics to become Members of Parliament; and if a Reform Bill had been passed making the House of Commons really representative, the society would never have been anything but a perfectly legal and harmless association. Of course it is always possible to suggest what might have been; but in this case it is far more probable that if Parliament had been so reformed as to be a fair reflex of the opinion of the country, it would immediately have passed a resolution declaring Ireland a Republic and forming an alliance with France; for whatever objects were stated in public, the real guiding spirits of the United Irish Society from the beginning (as of other societies of a later date with equally innocent names) were ardent republicans, who joined the society in order to further those views; it is absurd to suggest that men who were actually in correspondence with the leaders of the Directory and were trying to bring about an invasion from France in order to aid them in establishing a Republic on Jacobin lines would have been deterred by the passing of a Bill making it lawful for Roman Catholics to sit in Parliament. Nor again is it reasonable to contend that earnest-minded Roman Catholics would, in consequence of the failure of such a Bill to become law, have rebelled against a Government under which they were able to exercise their religion in peace and which was at that moment founding and endowing a College for the training of candidates for the priesthood, in favour of one which had confiscated the seminaries and was sending the priests to the guillotine. The fact seems to have been that the society was formed by Presbyterians, for political reasons; they tried to get the Roman Catholics to join them, but the lower class Roman Catholics cared very little about seats in Parliament; so the founders of the society cleverly added abolition of tithes and taxes, and reduction of rents, to their original programme; this drew in numbers of Roman Catholics, whose principles were really the very antithesis of Jacobinism. It is a fair instance of the confusion which has always reigned throughout Irish politics, that after the Relief Act of 1793 had been passed, the Catholic Committee expressed their jubilation by voting £2,000 for a statue to the King, and presenting a gold medal to their Secretary, Wolfe Tone, who was at that moment scheming to set up a Jacobin Republic. This celebrated man, Wolfe Tone, was not unlike many others who have posed as Irish patriots. Hating the very name of England, he schemed to get one appointment after another from the English Government--at one time seeking to be put in command of a filibustering expedition to raid the towns of South America, at another time trying for a post in India; hating the Pope and the priests, he acted as Secretary to the Catholic Committee; then hating Grattan and the Irish Parliament and everything to say to it, he showed his patriotism by devoting his energies to trying to persuade the French Republican Government to invade Ireland. On the 21st of September, 1795, an incident occurred which, though apparently trivial at the time, was destined to be of great historical importance. Ulster had now for some time been in a state bordering on anarchy; not only were the secret societies constantly at war, but marauding bands, pretending to belong to one or other of the societies, were ravishing the country. Something like a pitched battle was fought between the Protestants and the Defenders, in which the Defenders, although they were the stronger party and made the attack, were utterly routed. In the evening, the victors agreed to form themselves into a society which should bear the name of William of Orange. There had previously been some societies called by that name; but this was the foundation of the Orange Society of the present day. The oath which at first was taken by every member of the society was to defend the king and his heirs so long as he or they support the Protestant ascendancy. (This conditional form of oath of allegiance has long since been abolished.) It was industriously circulated by the United Irishmen that the actual words of the oath were: "I will be true to the King and Government and I will exterminate as far as I am able the Catholics of Ireland." There is no evidence, however, that any words of the kind ever formed part of an oath prescribed by the Orange Society; and those who make the statement now must be aware that they are repeating a calumny. After this time, the quarrel gradually tended more and more to become a religious one; the Peep of Day Boys becoming merged in the Orange Society, and the Protestants slowly withdrawing from the United Irish Society; on the other hand, the Defenders ultimately coalesced with the United Irishmen and thus, by an illogical combination of inconsistent forces, formed the party which brought about the terrible rebellion. The close of the year 1796 was one of the most critical moments in the history of England. On the continent the power of republican France under the genius of Napoleon and his generals was sweeping all before it. England was in a state of bankruptcy, and almost as completely isolated as she had been in the time of Elizabeth. Wolfe Tone and his Irish plotters saw their opportunity as clearly as their predecessors had in the times of Edward Bruce and Philip II. They laid a statement of the condition of Ireland before the French Government which, though as full of exaggerations as most things in Irish history, was sufficiently based on fact to lead the French Government to believe that if a French force were landed in Ireland, the Irishmen in the British Army and Navy would mutiny, the Yeomen would join the French, and the whole of the North of Ireland would rise in rebellion. Accordingly a French fleet of forty-three sail, carrying about 15,000 troops, sailed from Brest for Bantry Bay. No human power could have prevented their landing; and had they done so, they could have marched to Cork and seized the town without any difficulty; the United Irishmen would have risen, and the whole country might have been theirs. But the same power which saved England from the Armada of Catholic Spain 200 years before now shielded her from the invasion of republican France. Storms and fogs wrought havoc throughout the French fleet. In less than a month from the time of their starting, Wolfe Tone and the shattered remains of the invading force were back at Brest, without having succeeded in landing a single man on the Irish shore. Had this projected invasion taken place fifty years before, amongst the French troops would have been the Irish brigade, who were always yearning for the opportunity of making an attack on their native land. But half a century had caused strange changes; the Irish brigade had fallen with the collapse of the French monarchy; and some of the few survivors were now actually serving under King George III. It was a remarkable fact that no one in the neighbourhood of Bantry showed the slightest sympathy with the Frenchmen. The few resident gentry, the moment the danger was evident, called together the yeomanry and organized their tenantry to oppose the foe--though the utmost they could have done would have been to delay the progress of the invaders for a little at the cost of their own lives; and the peasantry did all in their power to support their efforts. If it is possible to analyse the state of political feeling at this time, we may say that first there was a very limited number of thoughtful men who saw that after the Acts of 1782 and 1793 either separation or union was inevitable, and who consequently opposed all idea of parliamentary reform, because they thought it would tend to separation and make union more difficult. A second party (a leading member of which was Charlemont) approved of the existing state of things, and believed that it could be continued; a third (of which Grattan was one) fondly imagined that all would go smoothly if only a Catholic Relief Bill and a Reform Bill were carried, and so directed all their efforts towards those objects; and a fourth believed that no reform would be granted without pressure, and so were ready even to work up a rebellion in order to obtain it; but that was a very small party at best, and was soon carried away by the whirlwind of those revolutionists who cared nothing about the Parliament then sitting in Dublin, or about any other possible Parliament which might own allegiance to the King of England, for their real aim was to sever Ireland from England altogether and establish a separate republic. As Wolfe Tone wrote: "To break the connection with England and to assert the independence of my country were my objects." It is this party that is represented by the Nationalists of to-day, except that when they look for foreign aid, their hopes lie in the direction of Germany rather than France. I know that this remark may call forth a storm of denials from those who judge by the speeches which Nationalist leaders have made in England when trying to win the Radical vote, or in the Colonies when aiming at getting money from people who had not studied the question. But I judge not by speeches such as those, but by statements continually put forward by political writers and orators when they have cast off the mask and are addressing their sympathizers in Ireland and America:-- "The Nationalists of Ireland stand for the complete independence of Ireland, and they stand for nothing else. In the English Empire they have no part or lot, and they wish to have no part or lot. We stand for the Irish nation, free and independent and outside the English Empire."--(_Irish Freedom_.) "Our aim is the establishment of an Irish Republic, for the simple and sole reason that no other ending of our quarrel with England could be either adequate or final. This is the one central and vital point of agreement among all who are worthy of the name of Irish Nationalists--that Ireland is a separate nation--separate in thought, mind, in ideals and outlooks. Come what may, we work for Ireland as separate from England as Germany is separate."--(Ib.) "Year by year the pilgrimage to the grave of Theobald Wolfe Tone grows more significant of the rising tide of militant and uncompromising Nationalism, more significant of the fact that Young Ireland has turned away from the false thing that has passed for patriotism, and has begun to reverence only the men and the things and the memories that stand for Ireland an independent nation. Paying tribute to the memory of men like Tone, lifting up the language of Ireland from the mire, linking up the present with the old days of true patriotic endeavour--these are the doings that will eventually bring our land from the mazes of humbug into the clear dawn that heralds Nationhood."--(_The Leinster Leader_.) "The object aimed at by the advanced National party is the recovery of Ireland's national independence and the severance of all political connection with England."--(_J. Devoy_.) "In the better days that are approaching, the soil of Ireland will be populated by a race of Irishmen free and happy and thriving, owning no master under the Almighty, and owning no flag but the green flag of an independent Irish nation."--(_W. O'Brien, M.P._) "In supporting Home Rule for Ireland we abandon no principle of Irish nationhood as laid down by the fathers in the Irish movement for independence, from Wolfe Tone and Emmett to John Mitchell, and from Mitchell to Kickham and Parnell."--(_J. Redmond_.) "Our ultimate goal is the national independence of our country."--(Ib.) "In its essence the National movement is the same to-day as it was in the days of Hugh O'Niell, Owen Roe, Emmett, or of Wolfe Tone."--(Ib.) "We are as much rebels to England's rule as our forefathers were in '98."--(Ib.) "I remember when Parnell was asked if he would accept as a final settlement the Home Rule compromise proposed by Mr. Gladstone. I remember his answer. He said 'I believe in the policy of taking from England anything we can wring from her which will strengthen our hands to go for more.'"--(Ib.) "When we have undermined English misgovernment we have paved the way for Ireland to take her place among the nations of the earth. And let us not forget that that is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen aim. None of us, whether we be in America or in Ireland, or wherever we may be, will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England." (_C.S. Parnell_.) "I know there are many people in America who think that the means which we are operating to-day for the good of Ireland are not sufficiently sharp and decisive ... I would suggest to those who have constituted themselves the censors of our movement, would it not be well to give our movement a fair chance--to allow us to have an Irish Parliament that will give our people all authority over the police and the judiciary and all government in the nation, and when equipped with comparative freedom, then would be the time for those who think we should destroy the last link that binds us to England to operate by whatever means they think best to achieve that great and desirable end? I am quite sure that I speak for the United Irish League in the matter." (_J. Devlin, M.P._) "What was it, after all, that Wolfe Tone, and Fitzgerald, and Mitchell, and Smith O'Brien, and O'Meagher Condon, and Allen, Larkins and O'Brien, and all the other gallant Irishmen strove for, who from generation to generation were inspired with the spirit of revolution? ... In what respect does our policy differ from the purpose of these men?"--(Ib.) "In my opinion, and in the opinion of the vast majority of the advanced Nationalists of Ireland, the Repeal of the Union is not the full Nationalist demand; separation is the full Nationalist demand; that is the right on which we stand, the Nationalist right of Ireland."--(_J. Dillon, M.P._) "I should never have dedicated my life to this great struggle if I did not see at the end the crowning and the consummation of our work--a free and independent nation."--(Ib.) "We aim at nothing else than establishing a new nation upon the map of Europe."--(_Dr. Douglas Hyde_.) "If there is any man in this audience who says to us as representing that Parliamentary movement--'I don't believe in your Parliamentary ideas, I don't accept Home Rule, I go beyond it; I believe in an independent Irish nation'--if any man says this, I say that we don't disbelieve in it. These are our tactics--if you are to take a fortress, first take the outer works."--(_T.M. Kettle, M.P._) "We want to carry on the work that the Fenians tried to do to a triumphal issue. The Fenians stood for an Irish Republic, and so do we. No policy which left England in control of the Irish Nation could be regarded as final. There is only one way, and that is to get the absolute and complete independence of Ireland, free from English rule and English domination. The Fenians did not go to the Prime Minister for concessions. No: they started into arms, and if people of the present day believed in that they should arm themselves to get the independence of Ireland."--(_B. Hobson_, speaking at a demonstration at Cork, on the anniversary of the "martyrdom" of Allen, Larkins, and O'Brien.) "Should the Germans land in Ireland, they will be received with willing hearts and strong hands, and should England be their destination, it is to be hoped that they will find time to disembark 100,000 rifles and a few score of ammunition for the same in this country, and twelve months later this Ireland will be as free as the Lord God meant it should be."--(_Major McBride_, who organized an Irish force to aid the Boers against England, and has consequently been appointed to a municipal inspectorship by the Corporation of Dublin.) "I appeal to you most earnestly to do all in your power to prevent your countrymen from entering the degraded British army. If you prevent 500 men from enlisting you do nearly as good work, if not quite so exciting, as if you shot 500 men on the field of battle, and also you are making the path smoother for the approaching conquest of England by Germany."--(Ib.) CHAPTER VIII. THE REBELLION. Early in 1797 it became evident to all but the most shortsighted of politicians that a rebellion, of which none could foretell the result, was imminent. As one shrewd observer wrote: "I look upon it that Ireland must soon stand in respect to England in one of three situations--united with her, the Legislatures being joined; separated from her, and forming a republic; or as a half-subdued Province." The supporters of law and order were naturally divided in opinion as to the course to pursue. Some were in favour of a policy of conciliation. Grattan induced his friend Ponsonby to bring forward another Reform Bill, abolishing the religious test and the separate representation of boroughs, and dividing each county into districts; and when he saw that the motion could not be carried, delivered an impassioned speech, declaring that he would never again attend the House of Commons, and solemnly walked out. It was a piece of acting, too transparent to deceive anybody. Grattan was a disappointed man--disappointed not so much because his proposals were not adopted, as because his own followers were slipping away from him. They had begun to realize that he was an orator but not a statesman; his ideas were wild, fanciful dreams. Whilst vehemently upholding the English connection he was playing into the hands of England's opponents by reminding them that England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity; whilst hating the very idea of a Union, he was making the existing system impossible by preventing the passing of a commercial treaty; whilst passionately supporting Protestant ascendancy, he was advocating a measure which at that moment would have brought about the establishment either of a Roman Catholic ascendancy or more probably of a Jacobin Republic. He saw his supporters dwindling slowly from seventy-seven in 1783 to thirty in 1797. Men were now alive to the fact that the country was in an alarming condition. They saw what had happened in France but a few years before, and how little Louis XVI had gained by trying to pose as a liberator and a semi-republican; and, knowing that the rebellion with which they were faced was an avowed imitation of the French Revolution, they were coming to the opinion that stern measures were necessary. In almost every county of three Provinces conspirators were at work, trying to bring down on their country a foreign invasion, and stirring up the people to rebellion and crime by appealing to their agrarian grievances and cupidity, their religious passion, and the discontent produced by great poverty. For a second time it appeared that Wolfe Tone would succeed in obtaining aid from abroad--this time from Spain and Holland; and the rebel party in Ireland were now so well organized, and Jacobin feeling was so widespread, that had he done so, it was almost inevitable that Ireland would have been lost to England. But once more the unexpected was destined to occur. Early in February Jervis shattered the power of the Spanish Fleet off Cape St. Vincent; and in the summer, just when the Dutch ships, with 14,000 troops on board, were ready to start, and resistance on the part of England seemed hopeless, a violent gale arose and for weeks the whole fleet remained imprisoned in the river; and when at length they did succeed in making a start, the English were ready to meet them within a few miles of the coast of Holland; after a tremendous battle the broken remnant of the Dutch fleet returned to the harbour defeated. The rage and mortification of Wolfe Tone at his second failure knew no bounds. In the North of Ireland, however, the rebellion had practically begun. The magistrates were powerless; the classes who had supported the gentry during the Volunteer Movement were amongst the disaffected. The country was in a state of anarchy; murders and outrages of every sort were incessant. That the measures which the Government and their supporters took to crush the rising rebellion were illegal and barbarous, cannot be denied; that they in fact by their violence hurried on the rebellion is not improbable. But it is still more probable that they were the means of preventing its success; just as, had the Government of Louis XVI shown more vigour at the outset of the Revolution, the Reign of Terror would probably never have taken place. Through evidence obtained by torture, the Government got possession of vast stores of arms which the rebels had prepared; by twice seizing the directors of the movement they deprived it of its central organization; and if they were the cause of the rebellion breaking out sooner than had been intended, the result was that they were able to quell it in one district before it had time to come to a head in another. War at best is very terrible; and there were two circumstances which made the war in Ireland more terrible than others. It was a religious war, and it was a civil war. It often happens that when religion is turned to hatred it stirs up the worst and most diabolical passions of the human breast; and the evil feelings brought on by a civil war necessarily last longer than animosity against a foreign foe. The horrors of 1798 make one shudder to think what must happen in Ireland if civil war ever breaks out there again. From Ulster the United Ireland movement spread during 1797 to Leinster, as far south as Wexford, and began to assume a more decidedly religious character. As a contemporary historian wrote:-- "So inveterately rooted are the prejudices of religious antipathy in the minds of the lower classes of Irish Romanists, that in any civil war, however originating from causes unconnected with religion, not all the efforts of their gentry, or even priests, to the contrary could (if I am not exceedingly mistaken) restrain them from converting it into a religious quarrel." (Had he lived a century later, he might have used the same words.) But though this was generally the case, there were complications as embarrassing as they usually are in Irish affairs. The yeomanry were mainly Protestants, but the majority of the militia were Roman Catholics, and those commanded by Lord Fingall entirely so. There was much disaffection in both branches of the service; besides which, officers and men alike lacked the discipline and experience of regular troops; but as the supply of soldiers from England was wholly inadequate for the situation, the Government were obliged to rely on any forces they could obtain. As the rebellion drifted into being a Roman Catholic movement, the Orangemen became intensely loyal, and were eager to fight on the king's side, but the Government dreaded lest by employing them they might offend the militia. By 1798, when the rebellion in the south was at its height, the north had become comparatively calm. The severities of the previous year had had some salutary effect; the staunch Protestants had no desire to aid in what had become a Roman Catholic rebellion; and the republican party had seen that the universal fraternity of the Jacobin Government of France had turned into a military despotism which was engaged in crushing the neighbouring republics and was almost at war with the sister Republic of America. But whilst Ulster was growing calmer, the condition of the south was becoming daily more appalling. On the 23rd of May the rebellion actually broke out in the counties of Dublin, Kildare and Meath; and many skirmishes took place in which the losses on the king's side were comparatively few but those of the rebels enormous, in consequence of their ignorance of the use of firearms. The better-trained forces soon got to know that an Irish peasant when armed with a pike was a deadly foe; but when armed with a musket was almost harmless. This part of the campaign will always be specially memorable for the attack made on the little town of Prosperous, in the county of Kildare. It was cleverly made in the early morning; the garrison, taken unawares, were nearly all killed; the Commander, Captain Swayne, being amongst the victims. It was soon afterwards found out that the leader of the rebels was Dr. Esmonde, a gentleman of good family, and first lieutenant in a regiment of yeomanry stationed a few miles off, who had been dining with Captain Swayne the previous evening. He appeared in his regiment the next day, but was identified by a yeoman who had seen him at Prosperous; arrested, tried, and hanged as a traitor. A Nationalist has recently referred to him as a martyr to the cause of Irish liberty. By the month of June Wexford had become the centre of the rebellion. In that county it had assumed an essentially religious character (there being, however, a few exceptions on each side), and in no other part of Ireland was the war so terrible either on account of its magnitude or barbarity. The passions of the ignorant peasantry were inflamed by all Protestants being spoken of as Orangemen and a report being diligently circulated that all Orangemen had sworn to destroy the Catholic Faith--exactly the same course that was followed a hundred years later. Roman Catholic priests, wearing their sacred vestments and carrying crucifixes, led the rebel forces; and the ignorant peasants, believing them to be endowed with miraculous powers, followed them with the blind adherence that only fanaticism can inspire. And yet--so strangely contradictory is everything in Ireland--there is clear evidence that amongst those priestly agitators many were at heart deists, who were making use of religion in the hope of furthering Jacobinism. Many Protestants saved their lives by apostatizing, or by allowing their children to be rebaptized; it is but fair to add, however, that several of the older priests, shocked at the conduct of the rebels, concealed heretics in their houses and churches; and that all through the war many priests, in spite of the difficulty of their position, remained loyal and did what they could to aid the king's troops. The rebels for some weeks held command of the town and county of Wexford, their chief camp being at a place called Vinegar Hill. The country around was searched and plundered; the Protestants who were captured were brought into the rebel camp, and there deliberately butchered in cold blood. How many perished it is impossible to say; the number must have been at the least 400. I would willingly pass over this dreadful episode. I have no more desire to dwell on it than I have on Cromwell's conduct at Drogheda. I regard it merely as one of those terrible incidents which alas have taken place in almost every campaign. It was probably equalled in character if not in magnitude by several outrages committed by the other side; and certainly parallels could be found in the French invasion of Algeria fifty years later and in many other wars of the nineteenth century. When men have been fired with the diabolical passions that war arouses, and have grown accustomed to the ghastly sights on battlefields, they cease to be reasoning beings; they become fiends. But unfortunately it is necessary to explain what really occurred, as it is to Vinegar Hill and its terrible associations that the Nationalists of to-day refer with triumph. Songs in praise of the massacre are sung at Nationalist gatherings; and W. Redmond, speaking at Enniscorthy (close to the scene of the massacre) on the 110th anniversary of the outrages said: "The heroic action of the men who fought and died around Vinegar Hill was the heritage of all Ireland. Whatever measure of comparative freedom we now enjoy was entirely attributable to the Insurrection of '98. It was the pikemen of '98 who made the world and England understand that Irishmen knew how to fight for their rights, and it is to the knowledge of that fact by England that we may look for the real driving force of any effort we may make for our liberty. The Irish people are in no position to resort to arms, but the spirit is there, and by demonstrations like this we show our rulers that it is essential for any real and lasting peace that the aspirations of the patriots of '98 must be satisfied, and that a full measure of National freedom must be granted to Ireland." (It will be observed that in the opinion of this orator--a prominent Nationalist Member of Parliament, who was selected to go round the Colonies collecting money for the Home Rule cause--the possession of an Independent Parliament, of everything in fact short of separation, goes for nothing; it is only those who rebelled against that Parliament who are to be regarded as models for modern Nationalists to follow. It is interesting also to note the different views which have been put forward by Irish politicians with regard to the rebellion. In 1843 the leaders of the Repeal Association stated in one of their manifestoes, as an argument in favour of repeal, that England had resorted to the diabolical expedient of fomenting a rebellion in order to distract the country and give excuse for military violence and so bring about a Union. But the Nationalists of to-day have so completely identified themselves with the rebels of 1798 that within the last few years splendid monuments have been erected in all the towns of Wexford and the adjoining counties; some of these are bronze figures of patriots brandishing pikes, others are representations of the priestly leaders of the rebel forces. These monuments have been unveiled with great ceremony, impassioned speeches being made on the occasion by leading orators, both clerical and lay). In order to realize the terrible position in which the loyalists were placed, we must recollect that whilst the Wexford rebels were triumphant in that county, and the movement seemed to be spreading into Kilkenny and Carlow, there was a fresh outbreak in the north; it appeared probable that Dublin might rise at any moment; the French fleet was hourly expected, and the long looked-for aid from England was still delayed. But the Irish loyalist minority showed the same dogged determination that they had done in the time of James II, and that they will show again in the future. The numbers engaged in the different battles and skirmishes have been variously estimated; it seems that at the battle of Arklow the loyalists did not exceed 1,600, of whom nearly all were militia and yeomanry, with a few artillery; whilst the rebels, commanded by Father Michael Murphy, amounted to at least 20,000. Yet after a terrible afternoon's fighting the rebels, disheartened by the fall of their leader (whom they had believed to be invulnerable) retired, leaving more than 1,000 dead on the field. Soon, however, the reinforcements from England began to arrive; and the French invasion, on which the rebels were building their hopes, was still delayed. By July, although fighting was still going on in the Wicklow mountains and some other parts of the country, the worst of the rebellion in Wexford was crushed, and an Act of Amnesty was carried through Parliament. It is worthy of note that the trials of the rebels which took place in Dublin were conducted with a fairness and a respect for the forms of law which are probably unparalleled in the history of other countries at moments of such terrible excitement; we can contrast them for instance with the steps that were taken in putting down the outbreak of the Commune in Paris in 1871. It is easy now to argue that, as the force of the rebellion was being broken, it would have been more humane to have allowed those who had plotted and directed it to go unpunished. But as Lecky has pointed out, "it was scarcely possible to exaggerate the evil they had produced, and they were immeasurably more guilty than the majority of those who had already perished. "They had thrown back, probably for generations, the civilization of their country. They had been year by year engaged in sowing the seed which had ripened into the harvest of blood. They had done all in their power to bring down upon Ireland the two greatest curses that can afflict a nation--the curse of civil war, and the curse of foreign invasion; and although at the outset of their movement they had hoped to unite Irishmen of all creeds, they had ended by lashing the Catholics into frenzy by deliberate and skilful falsehood. The assertion that the Orangemen had sworn to exterminate the Catholics was nowhere more prominent than in the newspaper which was the recognised organ of the United Irish leaders. The men who had spread this calumny through an ignorant and excitable Catholic population, were assuredly not less truly murderers than those who had fired the barn at Scullabogue or piked the Protestants on Wexford Bridge." A strong party, however, led by Lord Clare were in favour of clemency wherever possible; and there seemed good reason for hoping that the rebellion would slowly die out. Cooke, the Under Secretary, wrote on the 9th of August: "The country is by no means settled nor secure should the French land, but I think secure if they do not." Suddenly, however, the alarming news came that the French were actually in Ireland. Wolfe Tone and his fellow-plotters, undaunted by their previous failures, had continued ceaseless in their efforts to induce Napoleon to make an indirect attack on England by invading Ireland; and if they had succeeded in persuading the French Government to send an expedition two months earlier when the rebellion was at its height and the English reinforcements had not arrived, Ireland must have been lost. Once again, however, fortune favoured the English cause. The first instalment of the French fleet, carrying 1,000 soldiers, did not start until the 6th of August, and only arrived on the 22nd. They landed at Killala, in Mayo, and were not a little surprised at the state of things existing there. They had expected to find a universal feeling of republicanism; but instead of this, whilst the Protestants refused to join them, the Roman Catholic peasantry received them with delight, and declared their readiness to take arms for France and the Blessed Virgin. "God help these simpletons," said one of the officers, "if they knew how little we care about the Pope or his religion, they would not be so hot in expecting help from us!" Arriving at the wrong time and the wrong place, the expedition was foredoomed to failure. The French were brave men and trained soldiers; but they found their Irish allies perfectly useless. They succeeded in capturing Castlebar, and routing a force of militia; but their campaign was brief; on the 8th of September the whole force surrendered. The Connaught rebellion was speedily and severely put down. The second instalment of the French invasion consisted of one ship. They landed on the Island of Arran on the 16th of September; but after spending eight hours on shore, re-embarked and sailed away to Norway. The third instalment was, however, more serious. It consisted of a ship of the line, eight frigates and a schooner, having on board an army of about 3,000 men. They arrived at Lough Swilly early in October, where they were met by a more powerful English fleet, and nearly all were destroyed or captured. Amongst the prisoners taken was Wolfe Tone; who soon afterwards in order to avoid a felon's death, ended his life by suicide.[See note at the end of the Volume] A fortnight later the fourth and last instalment arrived at Killala Bay; but the Admiral, hearing that the rebellion was over, promptly weighed anchor and returned to France. Thus ingloriously ended the French attempts at the invasion of Ireland. The calling-in of the foreigner had been of as little use to the cause of Irish rebellion as it had been two centuries before. By the end of the year the worst of the rebellion was over. But the evil it had wrought was incalculable. How many had perished during that terrible summer will never be known; the numbers have been variously computed at from 15,000 to 70,000. At the outset of the rebellion--in February 1798--Lord Clare had made a memorable speech in the House of Lords, which has been so often misquoted that it is well here to cite the passage in full:-- "If conciliation be a pledge of national tranquillity and contentment; if it be a spell to allay popular ferment; there is not a nation in Europe in which it has had so fair a trial as in the Kingdom of Ireland. For a period of nearly twenty years a liberal and unvaried system of concession and conciliation has been pursued and acted on by the British Government. Concession and conciliation have produced only a fresh stock of grievances; other discontents of Ireland have kept pace with her prosperity; for I am bold to say there is not a nation on the habitable globe which has advanced in cultivation and commerce, in agriculture and in manufactures with the same rapidity in the same period. Her progress is now retarded, and it is a heart-breaking spectacle to every man who loves the country to see it arrested only by the perverse and factious folly of the people, stimulated and encouraged by disappointed statesmen." Within a few months after that speech was made, Ireland was well-nigh ruined. All the progress in material prosperity which had taken place in the years immediately following 1782 was swept away. The national debt, which in 1791 had stood at £2,442,890, involving an annual charge of £142,716, had risen to £26,662,640, with an annual charge of £1,395,735; the exports of woollen goods had almost ceased, and those of linen gone down by more than a third; other industries showed a decay nearly as lamentable; public bankruptcy seemed inevitable. Though the violent outbreak of rebellion had been put down, many parts of the country were in a state of anarchy. In the west, armed bands went about every night houghing the cattle and murdering all who dared to oppose them. If any man prosecuted one of the offenders, he did it at the moral certainty of being murdered. The same fate hung over every magistrate who sent a hougher to gaol, every witness who gave evidence against him, every juryman who convicted him. In Limerick one man ventured on his own part and on that of eight others to prosecute an offender who had destroyed their property. All nine were murdered in one night. It was not safe to travel along the high road within six miles of Dublin. The militia had, from their misbehaviour in the field, and their extreme licentiousness, fallen into universal contempt and abhorrence; officers of English regiments declared that it would be impossible to maintain discipline amongst their troops if they remained in such a country. It was discovered that the rebels were forming another Directory, and, still expecting aid from France, planning a fresh outbreak. Religious animosities were more violent than ever. Government was becoming impossible; for the Roman Catholic population, now thoroughly disaffected, would not continue to submit to the rule of the Protestant oligarchy; but the only way to put an end to it would be by another rebellion which if successful would (as the Roman Catholic bishops and educated laymen fully realized) probably result in the establishment of a Jacobin republic; clear-headed men of all parties were beginning to think that there was but one solution of the problem; and that was--the Union. CHAPTER IX. THE UNION. We come now to the great turning point in the modern history of Ireland--the Union. It has been so constantly and so vehemently asserted that this momentous event was prompted by the wicked desire of England to ruin Ireland, and was carried out by fraud, bribery, intimidation, and every form of political crime, that not only ordinary readers, but even writers who are content to receive their information at second hand without investigating evidence for themselves, generally assume that no other view is possible. Thus O'Connell boldly asserted that the Irish Catholics never assented to the Union. Others have blindly repeated his words; and from those reiterated statements has been developed an argument that as the Catholics did not assent to the Union, they cannot be bound by it. I believe that there has been as much exaggeration about this as about most other episodes of Irish history; and that anyone who, fairly and without prejudice, takes the trouble to go through the history of the Union as it may be gathered from contemporary documents, will come to the conclusion that it was devised by great and earnest statesmen who had the good of both countries at heart. As to the means by which it was carried, there is much to be said on both sides of the question; Lecky has stated the case against the Union ably and temperately; other writers, equally honourable, have taken the opposite side. There is at any rate very much to be said for the opinion, that, considering the circumstances and the peculiar constitution of the Irish Parliament, there was nothing which the Government did that was not perfectly justifiable. As to whether it was in accordance with the wish of the people or not, there are several points which ought to be borne in mind but to which sufficient attention is not usually given. A very large part of the nation were ignorant peasants, who did not and could not properly understand the question; and as a matter of fact cared little about it. Then of those who were against the measure, many opposed it not because they wished the existing state of things to continue, but because they thought that the Union would prevent the one object of their ambition--total separation and the establishment of a republic; their opinion therefore has but little weight. When we come to the more educated and propertied classes, it seems that the majority were in favour of the measure; and as to the opinion of the Roman Catholic section (which after all was far the largest part of the nation) I think there can be no doubt whatever. Fortunately it is no longer necessary to wade through the mass of original papers; for the evidence has been so carefully investigated during recent years by various impartial writers, and has been presented to the general reader in so clear and concise a manner that no one now has any excuse for being led away by the impassioned statements of partisan orators. I refer specially to the "History of the Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland," by Dr. Dunbar Ingram, published in 1887. That careful writer commences his work by stating that, dissatisfied with endless assertions unaccompanied by proof, he had determined to investigate the subject for himself, examining closely the original and contemporary authorities. He soon found that there was no evidence to sustain the accusations made against the manner in which the Union was carried; and that all the charges against the Government rested finally on Harrington's worthless romances or the declamatory statements of the Opposition during the sessions of 1799 and 1800, which, when challenged, they declined to substantiate. Then, as he proceeded in his work, he discovered that, after its terms were known and the public had had time for reflection, the Union was thankfully accepted by the two communities which made up Ireland; that the Protestants, after the first burst of clamour, were as a body converted and became well-wishers to the measure; and that the Roman Catholics, after a short hesitation, gave the Union their hearty assent and support. And finally, the whole inquiry left a strong conviction on his mind that the Union was undertaken from the purest motives, that it was carried by fair and constitutional means, and that its final accomplishment was accompanied with the hearty assent and concurrence of the vast majority of the two peoples that dwelt in Ireland. I feel that I cannot do better than follow some of the lines of his argument. It is true that in the time of the Plantagenets representatives from Ireland were on several occasions summoned to attend the English Parliament; and that during the Commonwealth Ireland was incorporated with the rest of the Empire and sent members to the Parliaments of 1654 and 1657. These incidents, however, are unimportant; it is more to the purpose to point out that from the time of the Restoration onwards we find a long list of distinguished thinkers recommending such a Union; and in the beginning of the eighteenth century both Houses of the Irish Parliament twice petitioned Queen Anne to the same effect. It may be asked why the English politicians, who were so anxious to bring about the Union with Scotland, turned a deaf ear to these petitions. The answer is simple. The Scotch Parliament was independent, and the impossibility of having two independent Parliaments under one sovereign had become manifest. Trade jealousies had arisen; the action of the Scotch had nearly involved England in a war with Spain; the Scotch Parliament had passed an Act declaring that until provision was made for settling the rights and liberties of the Scotch nation independently of England the successor to the Scotch Crown should not be the same person that was possessed of the Crown of England. The Parliament of England commenced arming the militia and fortifying the towns near the Border. England being at war with France the Scotch Parliament passed an Act allowing Scotchmen to trade with that country; it therefore was a choice between Union and War; and the two countries wisely chose Union. In the case of Ireland, however, England saw no such danger; the Irish legislature was subordinate; Ireland was bound by English statutes; and the Irish Parliament represented not the whole people but only that one section of it which was necessarily bound to the English connection; the Irish petitions for Union therefore remained unheeded. The great Bishop Berkeley, writing in 1735, strongly advocated a union; at a later time Adam Smith wrote: "By a union with Great Britain Ireland would gain besides the freedom of trade other advantages much more important ... Without a union with Great Britain the inhabitants of Ireland are not likely for many ages to consider themselves as one people." But, as we have seen, by the Act of 1782, the Irish Parliament had become independent--that is, it was placed in the same position as the Scotch Parliament had been; and by the Act of 1893, the bulk of the constituencies in the counties had become Roman Catholic. Except in the opinion of thoughtless optimists like Grattan, matters were approaching a deadlock; for sooner or later the Roman Catholic electors would demand representation in Parliament; the borough members would most probably refuse it, in which case war might break out again; and if they granted it, the Irish Parliament, then almost entirely Roman Catholic, would be anxious to break the tie that bound Ireland to England. But apart from the religious question, it was evident that the constitution, as fixed by the Act of 1782, was fraught with dangers. And it is no answer to say that not many difficulties had arisen in the few years between 1782 and 1799; for, even though that is partially true, the question for a statesman to consider was whether they were likely to arise in the future; and the rebellion, which was still seething, had made this all the more probable. First, on a declaration of war by England, Ireland might refuse to take part in it; and her refusal would paralyse the Empire. As early as 1791, Wolfe Tone had pointed out that Ireland need not embark on the side of Great Britain in the contest which was then pending; and one of his followers had advocated an alliance with France. (This is of all the more importance at the present day, when the Nationalists state that their principles are the same as those of Wolfe Tone.) Secondly, during a war, Ireland might refuse supplies to England. This course was actually hinted at by Grattan. Thirdly, she might provoke a commercial war of rates with England. This course was proposed in the Irish House of Commons in 1784. Fourthly, she might put pressure on the Sovereign to declare war against a country with which England was at peace. This also was proposed in the Irish House, in the case of Portugal. Fifthly, she might differ from England in any international question in reference to the connection between them, as she did in the Regency question. Sixthly, she might refuse--as she did--to make a commercial treaty with Great Britain; and thus keep open the most fertile sources of mutual jealousies and discontent. Grattan's best friends had urged upon him in vain that refusing to assent to a commercial treaty made the permanent government by two independent legislatures impossible, and would bring about separation; he refused to be guided by their advice, and at that time he still had supreme power in the House. It is remarkable that even at a later date, whilst vehemently opposing the Union, he took a delight in pointing out how many ways there were in which an Irish Parliament might injure England; seeming not to realize that he was supplying a forcible argument in favour of the measure he was opposing. The dangers of the situation were summed up by Pitt in a few words:--"A party in England may give to the Throne one species of advice by its Parliament. A party in Ireland may advise directly opposite upon the most essential points that involve the safety of both; upon alliance with a foreign power, for instance; upon the army; upon the navy; upon any branch of the public service; upon trade; upon commerce; or upon any point essential to the Empire at large." And long afterwards Sir Robert Peel pointed out that within the short period of six years from the establishment of what is called the independence of the Irish Parliament--from 1782 to 1788--the foreign relations of the two countries, the commercial intercourse of the two countries, the sovereign exercise of authority in the two countries, were the subjects of litigation and dispute; and it was more owing to accident than to any other cause that they did not produce actual alienation and rupture. The idea of a Union was first brought before Parliament by the Lord Lieutenant (Lord Cornwallis) in his speech at the opening of the Session in January 1799. It appeared at first that a majority of the Peers were in favour of the proposal, but a small majority of the House of Commons hostile--some to the scheme altogether, others to its being brought forward at that time. This small majority, however, rapidly diminished; and before many weeks had passed, the Government possessed a majority in both Houses. The citizens of Dublin were naturally strongly against the measure, thinking that it would injure the prestige of the capital; as were also the proprietors of boroughs and the legal members of the House; and soon after the scheme had been proposed, several counties held meetings and passed resolutions against it; but as the year went on, when the details of the measure had been more carefully considered, there was a general change of feeling throughout the country. Lord Cornwallis went on tours both north and south, through both Protestant and Roman Catholic districts, everywhere receiving addresses in favour of the Union from corporations, grand juries, leading residents, and especially from Roman Catholic bodies. And, if we may believe Lord Cornwallis's own letters, these addresses were entirely spontaneous, and represented the real feelings of the community. Before Parliament met in March 1800, twenty-two counties had passed resolutions in favour of the Union; and Lord Castlereagh was able to say in the House that the great body of the landed property of Ireland, and all the great commercial towns except Dublin and Drogheda, were friendly to the measure. The Opposition attempted to meet this by presenting a number of petitions showing that the people of Ireland were against it. Of the fifty-four petitions presented, five were not against the Union at all, but merely requests for compensation in the event of its coming about; three were from individuals or commercial firms; and eight were from Dublin alone. The number therefore was much smaller than appears at first sight. Besides obtaining these petitions, the Opposition also collected a large sum of money for the purchase of seats; in the circumstances and according to the ideas of the time, I do not say that they were in the least morally wrong in doing so; but the fact takes away from the value of the votes given; and it neutralizes anything that was done by the Government in the same way--if it can be proved that the Government so acted. But as the Roman Catholics constituted three-fourths of the population of Ireland, it is more important to investigate what their feelings were than to scrutinize the division lists of the House, if we wish to ascertain what was really the wish of the nation. Fortunately we have an opportunity of testing whether there is any truth in the statement of O'Connell to which I have already referred--that the Irish Catholics did not assent to the Union. The evidence shows conclusively that the Roman Catholic peerage, episcopate, priesthood and laity all gave the movement their hearty concurrence and co-operation. Lords Kenmare and Fingall assured Lord Cornwallis that the Catholics were in favour of a Union; the entire episcopate--that is, the four archbishops and nineteen bishops, three sees being vacant--expressed the same view by their letters which are still extant or by resolutions signed by them; for instance, the Archbishop of Tuam wrote: "I have had an opportunity of acquiring the strongest conviction that this measure alone can restore harmony and happiness to our unhappy country." The Bishop of Cork wrote: "Nothing in my opinion will more effectively tend to lay these disgraceful and scandalous party feuds and dissensions, and restore peace and harmony amongst us, than the great measure in contemplation, of the legislative Union, and incorporation of this Kingdom with Great Britain. I am happy to tell you it is working its way, and daily gaining ground in the public opinion. Several counties which appeared most adverse to it have now declared for it, and I have no doubt but, with the blessing of God, it will be effected, notwithstanding the violent opposition of Mr. Foster and his party. The Roman Catholics in general are avowedly for the measure. In the south, where they are the most numerous, they have declared in its favour." The Bishop of Ferns presided at a meeting of Catholics of Wexford at which an address in favour of incorporation of both legislatures was signed by 3,000 persons; and throughout the country meetings, presided over by parish priests, were held to further the movement; and the laity were quite as eager as the clergy in the matter. Plowden, the Roman Catholic historian, says: "A very great preponderancy in favour of the Union existed in the Catholic body, particularly in their nobility, gentry and clergy." Thomas McKenna, the Secretary to the Catholic Committee, wrote two pamphlets in the same interest; whilst on the other hand not a single petition against it was presented by any Roman Catholic body. When the Session of 1800 commenced, a leading member of the Opposition sadly confessed that the people had deserted them. But the struggle in the House of Commons was tremendous. The Anti-Unionists had the advantage of the oratory of Grattan, who, though he had not been in Parliament since 1797, now purchased a seat for £2,400, and entered the House in a theatrical manner in the midst of the discussion. But his vehement and abusive style of declamation could not in debate be compared with the calm reasoning of Castlereagh. The most able speeches against the measure were not those of Grattan, but Foster. Many divisions were taken, the Government majority steadily rising from forty-two to sixty-five, and comprising an actual majority of the members of the House. In the House of Lords it was relatively much larger. But it is constantly affirmed that this majority was only brought about by bribery and intimidation. The word "bribery" has an ugly sound; and in such a case as this, it is only fair to examine what is exactly meant by the term. There is no doubt that compensation was given to the proprietors of boroughs which were not allowed representation in the United Parliament; and it is said that as the return of members to Parliament is a public trust and not a species of property, this was not a fair matter for pecuniary compensation; hence it amounted to bribery. But the ownership of boroughs had grown up insensibly; and they had long been looked upon and treated as private property, not only in Ireland but in England and Scotland also; and there were many honest men in all three countries who contended that the system worked well, as it was the means whereby a large number of distinguished men obtained their first introduction into public life--amongst them being Pitt, Canning, and Fox in England, Grattan, Flood and Plunkett in Ireland. Then in other cases when powers which had long been regarded as property have been abolished, compensation has been given. This was the case when the heritable jurisdictions in Scotland were abolished, and when by the disestablishment of the Irish Church the right of patrons to nominate to livings was taken away. And even granting for the sake of argument that this is wrong, is it fair to call it bribery? Eighty-four places were disfranchised, and a sum of £1,260,000 (which did not nearly amount to the price which the boroughs at that time fetched in the market) was paid. Of this, £67,500 was paid to Englishmen who owned seats in the Irish Parliament; £60,000 to boroughs who had no owners; £30,000 to the executors of a deceased owner; £18,750 to two ladies; and £1,100,000 to Irishmen who owned boroughs--of which £400,000 went to Anti-Unionists who opposed the Bill. In many cases, of course, the actual occupant of the seat was a different person from the owner who received the compensation; for instance, there is reason to believe that all the fifty barristers in the house had purchased their seats, but not one of them was the permanent owner. Now, if compensation is bribery, who was bribed? Really it must be admitted that on investigation the charge of bribery, so far as it refers to compensation to borough-owners, falls to the ground. Then it is said that the Government made actual payments to members for their votes. This charge was brought forward in a general way at the time in both Houses; the Government indignantly denied it, and called on the Opposition to prove their accusation; but they failed to do so. To repeat it now is therefore unjust. It may be admitted that amongst Lord Castlereagh's letters there is one which taken by itself looks as if a certain sum of money was to be used in bribery; but, as Dr. Ingram has pointed out, a careful investigation of the matter shows that it refers to proposed changes in the tariff, and not to bribery at all. Again, it is argued that the lavish distribution of titles amounted to bribery. If so, it is hard to find any Government in England or Ireland that has not been to some extent guilty of bribery--though it is true that no British Premier has ever created peerages or salaried offices on anything like the scale that Mr. Asquith has done. After the Bill had passed, Pitt created twenty new Irish peerages and four English ones; and promoted sixteen peers a step in their order; which after all is not very much more than Lord North had done in 1779, on no special occasion, when he had created eighteen Irish peerages and promoted twelve existing peers. As to the charges of intimidation, they may be dismissed at once; the very few that were brought forward were so completely answered at the time, that even the Opposition dropped them. The presence of such a large number of troops in Ireland was quite accounted for by the fact that the rebellion was still to some extent going on, and that there was again a danger of a French invasion. And I must contend further that even admitting that there were some acts on the part of the Government which will not bear strict investigation according to present ideas, it is only fair to remember the tremendous difficulties of the occasion. The English House of Commons was almost unanimously in favour of the Union--not more than thirty members ever voted against it; and in the opinion of Lord Cornwallis, who throughout his long and varied career showed himself to be a shrewd observer and an upright, honourable man, "This country could not be saved without the Union." But really the whole discussion is beside the mark. The Nationalists continually repeat the charge that the Union was carried by fraud; and so it must be answered; but it has no bearing on anything existing at the present day. For the old Irish Parliament has disappeared--merged in the greater and more honourable Assembly of the United Kingdom; and to revive it now would be a physical impossibility. The whole state of circumstances has changed; no assembly that could now be formed in Ireland would bear the faintest resemblance to that which met in the eighteenth century. As Lecky has well expressed it:-- "To an historian of the eighteenth century, however, few things can be more grotesquely absurd than to suppose that the merits or demerits, the failure or the successes of the Irish Parliament has any real bearing on modern schemes for reconstructing the Government of Ireland on a revolutionary and Jacobin basis; entrusting the protection of property and the maintenance of law to some democratic assembly consisting mainly of Fenians and Land-leaguers, of paid agitators and of penniless adventurers. The Parliamentary system of the eighteenth century might be represented in very different lights by its enemies and by its friends. Its enemies would describe it as essentially a government carried on through the instrumentality of a corrupt oligarchy, of a large, compact body of members holding place and pensions at the pleasure of the Government, removed by the system of rotten boroughs from all effectual popular control. Its friends would describe it as essentially the government of Ireland by the gentlemen of Ireland and especially the landlord class. "Neither representation would be altogether true, but each contains a large measure of truth. The nature of the Irish constituencies and the presence in the House of Commons of a body of pensioners and placemen forming considerably more than a third of the whole assembly, and nearly half of its active members, gave the Government a power, which, except under very rare and extraordinary circumstances, must, if fully exercised, have been overwhelming ... On the other hand, the Irish Parliament was a body consisting very largely of independent country gentlemen, who on nearly all questions affecting the economical and industrial development of the country, had a powerful if not a decisive influence ... and it was in reality only in a small class of political questions that the corrupt power of government seems to have been strained. The Irish House of Commons ... comprised the flower of the landlord class. It was essentially pre-eminently the representative of the property of the country. It had all the instincts and the prejudices, but also all the qualities and the capacities, of an educated propertied class, and it brought great local knowledge and experience to its task. Much of its work was of that practical and unobtrusive character which leaves no trace in history." CHAPTER X. THE PERIOD FROM THE UNION UNTIL THE REJECTION OF THE FIRST HOME RULE BILL. As soon as the Union had become law, the opposition to it died down rapidly. All the members who had voted for it who became candidates for the Imperial Parliament were elected, and Irish orators soon began to make their mark in the greater Assembly. In 1805, however, there was another slight rebellion, led by Robert Emmett. It never had a chance of success; the mass of the people, thoroughly tired of anarchy, refused to take part in it; and though the rebels succeeded in committing a few murders, the movement was speedily quelled, mainly by the yeomen of Dublin. At the trial of Emmett, Plunket, who had been a vehement opponent of the Union, was counsel for the prosecution, and in his speech bitterly denounced the conduct of those men who, having done their utmost to oppose the Irish Parliament, now made the abolition of that Parliament the pretext for rebellion. "They call for revenge," said he, "on account of the removal of the Parliament. These men, who, in 1798, endeavoured to destroy the Parliament, now call upon the loyal men who opposed its transfer, to join them in rebellion; an appeal vain and fruitless." It will be observed from statements already quoted, that the Nationalists of to-day claim that they are the successors of Emmett; he is counted amongst the heroes who fell in the cause of Ireland--thus making it all the more clear how wide is the gulf between the Parliamentary opponents of the Union and the modern Nationalists. During the early part of the century, Ireland had another period of prosperity. Travellers through Ireland at the present day cannot fail to notice how many of the country seats (now, in consequence of later legislation, mostly deserted and already beginning to fall into ruin) were built at that time. No doubt much of the prosperity was caused by the rebound which often takes place after a period of anarchy and desolation; and it would not be fair to attribute it wholly to the effect of the Union; but at least it proves that the melancholy prognostications of the opponents of the measure were happily unfulfilled. The total value of the produce and manufactures exported from Ireland between 1790 and 1801 amounted to £51,322,620; between 1802 and 1813 it amounted to £63,483,718. In 1800 the population of Ireland was under 5,000,000; in 1841 it was over 8,000,000. The tonnage in Irish ports in 1792 was 69,000; by 1797 it had fallen to 53,000; before 1852 it had risen to 5,000,000. The export of linen in 1796 was 53,000,000 yards; in 1799 it had fallen to 38,000,000; in 1853 it had risen to 106,000,000; and every other department of industry and commerce showed figures almost as satisfactory. There were, however, three important measures which the leading advocates of the Union had desired to see carried as soon as possible after the great change had been effected, but which--as many writers of various schools of thought to this day consider unfortunately--were postponed. The first was a provision by the State for the payment of the Roman Catholic clergy. The bishops had fully expected that this would be carried. Some modern Nationalists, wishing to win the favour of the English Nonconformists, have represented that the Roman Catholic Church refused to accept the money; but that is not the case. Whether the policy of "levelling up" would have been a wise one or not, it is useless now to conjecture; for once the policy of "levelling down" had been decided upon, and the Irish Church had been disestablished and disendowed, it became impracticable. The second measure was Roman Catholic emancipation. This had been intended by Pitt and other statesmen who helped to bring about the Union; but unforeseen difficulties arose; and unfortunately nothing was done until the agitation led by O'Connell brought matters to a crisis; and the emancipation which might have been carried gracefully years before, and in that case would have strengthened the Union, was grudgingly yielded in 1829. The third measure was a readjustment of tithes. All will now admit, and very many politicians and thinkers at the time fully realized, that the old law as to tithes was a cruel injustice; but no change was made until the opposition to the payment of tithes amounted to something like civil war, involving a series of murders and outrages. Then the fatal precedent was set of a successful and violent revolt against contracts and debts. In 1838 an Act was passed commuting the tithes into a rent-charge payable not by the occupiers but the landlords. Some modern writers have argued that the change was merely a matter of form, as the landlords increased the rents in proportion; and it seems such a natural thing to have happened that earlier writers may well be excused for assuming that it actually occurred. But there is no excuse for repeating the charge now; for in consequence of recent legislation it has been necessary for the Land Courts to investigate the history of rents from a period commencing before 1838; and the result of their examination has elicited the strange fact that in thousands of cases the rent remained exactly the same that it had been before the Tithe Commutation Act was passed. But ere long economic causes were at work which tended to check the prosperity of Ireland. It was soon found that the proportion which by the Act of Union Ireland was to contribute to the Imperial Government was too large for the country to bear. The funded debt of Ireland which amounted to £28,000,000 in 1800 rose by 1817 to £130,000,000; in that year the whole liability was taken over by the Imperial Government. Then the fall in prices which naturally resulted from the peace of 1815 pressed heavily on an agricultural community. Improvements in machinery and the development of steam power squeezed out the handlooms of Ulster and the watermills of other parts of the country. Wages were low; and the people who depended mainly on the potato were underfed and undernourished. In 1846 and 1847 came the two terrible blows to Ireland--first, the potato disease; and then the Repeal of the Corn Laws, which made the profitable growing of wheat with its accompanying industries, impossible. During the fearful years of the potato famine, it is only too probable that some of the efforts for relief were unwisely conducted and that some persons sadly failed in their duties; no measures or men in the world are ever perfect; and the difficulties not only of obtaining food but of getting it to the starving people in days when there were few railways and no motors were enormous. But when modern writers shower wholesale abuse over the landlords of the period, and even hint that they brought about the famine, it is well to turn to the writings of an ardent Home Ruler, who was himself an eye-witness, having lived as a boy through the famine time in one of the districts that suffered most--Mr. A.M. Sullivan. He says:-- "The conduct of the Irish landlords throughout the famine period has been variously described, and has been, I believe, generally condemned. I consider the censure visited on them too sweeping. I hold it to be in some respects cruelly unjust. On many of them no blame too heavy could possibly fall. A large number were permanent absentees; their ranks were swelled by several who early fled the post of duty at home--cowardly and selfish deserters of a brave and faithful people. Of those who remained, some may have grown callous; it is impossible to contest authentic instances of brutal heartlessness here and there. But granting all that has to be entered on the dark debtor side, the overwhelming balance is the other way. The bulk of the resident Irish landlords manfully did their best in that dread hour ... No adequate tribute has ever been paid to the memory of those Irish landlords--they were men of every party and creed--perished martyrs to duty in that awful time; who did not fly the plague-reeking work-houses or fever-tainted court. Their names would make a goodly roll of honour ... If they did too little compared with what the landlord class in England would have done in similar case, it was because little was in their power. The famine found most of the resident gentry of Ireland on the brink of ruin. They were heritors of estates heavily overweighted with the debts of a bygone generation. Broad lands and lordly mansions were held by them on settlements and conditions that allowed small scope for the exercise of individual liberality. To these landlords the failure of year's rental receipts meant mortgage fore-one and hopeless ruin. Yet cases might be named by the score in which such men scorned to avert by pressure on their suffering tenantry the fate they saw impending over them.... They 'went down with the ship.'" Soon after the famine, the Incumbered Estates Act was passed, by which the creditors of incumbered landlords could force a sale. This in effect worked a silent revolution; for whatever might have been said up to that time about the landed proprietors being the representatives of those who acquired their estates through the Cromwellian confiscations, after those proprietors had been forced to sell and the purchasers had obtained a statutory title by buying in the Court, the charge became obsolete. The motive of the Act was a good one; it was hoped that land would thus pass out of the hands of impoverished owners and be purchased by English capitalists who would be able to execute improvements on their estates and thus benefit the country as a whole. But the scheme brought with it disadvantages which the framers of the Act had not foreseen. The new purchasers had none of the local feelings of the dispossessed owners; they regarded their purchases as an investment, which they wished to make as profitable as possible, and treated the occupants of the land with a harshness which the old proprietors would never have exercised. Like most things in Ireland, however, this has been much exaggerated. It is constantly assumed that the whole soil of Ireland after this belonged to absentee proprietors who took no interest in the country. That absenteeism is a great evil to any country, and to Ireland especially, no one can deny; but a Parliamentary enquiry in 1869 elicited the fact that the number of landed proprietors in the rural area of Ireland then (and there is no reason to suppose that any great change had taken place in the previous eighteen years) was 19,547, of whom only 1,443 could be described as "rarely or never resident in Ireland"; and these represented 15.7 per cent. of the rural area, and only 15.1 per cent. of the total poor-law valuation of that area. Between 1841 and 1851 the population of the country fell from 8,200,000 to 6,574,000. The primary causes of this were of course the famine and the fever which broke out amongst the half-starved people; but it was also to a large extent caused by emigration. A number of devoted and noble-hearted men, realizing that it was hopeless to expect that the potato disease would disappear, and that consequently the holdings had become "uneconomic" (to use the phrase now so popular) as no other crop was known which could produce anything like the same amount of food, saw that the only course to prevent a continuation of the famine would be to remove a large section of the people to a happier country. In this good work the Quakers, who had been untiring in their efforts to relieve distress during the famine, took a prominent part; and the Government gave assistance. At the time no one regarded this as anything but a beneficent course; for the emigrants found better openings in new and rising countries than they ever could have had at home, and the reduced population, earning larger wages, were able to live in greater comfort. One evidence of this has been that mud cabins, which in 1841 had numbered 491,000 had in 1901 been reduced to 9,000; whilst the best class of houses increased from 304,000 to 596,000. In 1883 the Roman Catholic bishops came to the conclusion that matters had gone far enough, and that in future migration from the poorer to the more favoured districts was better than emigration from the country; but they did not say anything against the work that had been done up to that time. Yet a recent Nationalist writer, wishing to bring every possible charge against the landlords, has hinted that the total loss of population from 1841 to 1901 was caused by the brutality of the landlords after the famine, who drove the people out of the country! To show the fallacy of this, it is sufficient to point out that the powers of the landlords for good or evil were considerably reduced by the Land Act of 1870, and after that they were further diminished by each successive Act until the last shred was taken away by the Act of 1887; yet the population went down from 5,412,377 in 1871 to 4,453,775 in 1901--the emigration being larger in proportion from those counties where the National League was omnipotent than from other parts of Ireland. In the early thirties O'Connell commenced his famous agitation for the Repeal of the Union. After he had disappeared from the scene, his work was taken up by those of his followers who advocated physical force; and in 1848 an actual rebellion broke out, headed by Smith O'Brien. It ended in a ridiculous fiasco. The immediate cause of its failure, as A.M. Sullivan has pointed out, was that the leaders, in imitation of the movement of half a century before, endeavoured to eliminate the religious difficulty and to bring about a rising in which Orange and Green should be united; but their fight for religious tolerance exposed them to the charge of infidelity; the Roman Catholic priests (who now possessed immense political influence) denounced them; and their antagonism was fatal to the movement. But one of the most far-seeing of the party--J.F. Lalor--perceived that mere repeal would never be strong enough to be a popular cry--it must be hitched on to some more powerful motive, which could drag it along. As he clearly explained in his manifesto, his objects were the abolition of British government and the formation of a National one. He considered that neither agitation nor the attempt at military insurrection were likely to attain those objects, but that the wisest means for that end were the refusal of obedience to usurped authority; taking quiet possession of all the rights and powers of government and proceeding to exercise them; and defending the exercise of such powers if attacked. He saw that the motive power which would carry itself forward and drag repeal with it, was in the land. He held that the soil of the country belonged as of right to the entire people of that country, not to any one class but to the nation--one condition being essential, that the tenant should bear true and undivided allegiance to the nation whose land he held, and owe no allegiance whatever to any other prince, power or people, or any obligation of obedience or respect to their will, their orders, or their laws. The reconquest of the liberties of Ireland, he argued, would, even if possible by itself, be incomplete and worthless, without the reconquest of the land; whereas the latter, if effected, would involve the former. He therefore recommended (1) That occupying tenants should at once refuse to pay all rent except the value of the overplus of harvest produce remaining in their hands after deducting a full provision for their own subsistence during the ensuing year; (2) that they should forcibly resist being made homeless under the English law of ejectment; (3) that they ought further on principle to refuse _all_ rent to the present usurping proprietors, until they should in National Convention decide what rents they were to pay and to whom they should pay them; and (4) that the people, on grounds of policy and economy, should decide that those rents should be paid to themselves--the people--for public purposes for the benefit of the entire general people. In that way a mighty social revolution would be accomplished, and the foundation of a national revolution surely laid. But these views, though shared by J. Mitchel and other leaders, were not at the time generally adopted; and the next agitations were more distinctly political than agrarian. The Fenian movement of 1865--1867, the avowed object of which was the establishment of an independent republic, arose in America, where it was cleverly devised and ably financed. In Ireland it met with little sympathy except in the towns; and the attempted outbreaks, both there and in Canada, were dismal failures. Two of their efforts in England, however, led to important results. Gladstone made the remarkable statement that it was their attempt to blow up Clerkenwell prison that enabled him to carry the Act for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. Many years afterwards, when this encouragement to incendiarism had done its work, he denied that he had ever said so; but there is no doubt that he did. Here I must digress for a moment to refer to the position of the Irish Church. By the Act of Union it had been provided that the Churches of England and Ireland as then by law established should be united, and that the continuation and preservation of the United Church should be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union; and at the time of the agitation for Catholic emancipation the Roman Catholic Bishops of Ireland solemnly declared that their Church would never attempt to destroy the Protestant Establishment. This is interesting as showing how futile are the attempts of one generation to bind posterity by legislation; and how foolish it is to expect that men will regard themselves as bound by promises made by their ancestors. (The same remark may be made with reference to the promises now being made by Nationalists as to the Home Rule Bill.) The general provisions of the Disestablishment Act were simple. Existing clergy were secured in their incomes for life; the disestablished Church was allowed to claim all churches then in actual use, and to purchase rectory houses and glebes at a valuation; and a sum of £500,000 was given to the Church in lieu of all private endowments. Everything else--even endowments given by private persons a few years before the Act was passed--was swept away. The members of the Church showed a liberality which their opponents never anticipated. They bought the glebes, continued to pay their clergy by voluntary assessments, and collected a large sum of money towards a future endowment. Nationalist writers now state that the Act left the Irish Church with an income adequate to its needs and merely applied the surplus revenues to other purposes; and hint that the capital sum now possessed by the Church really came from the State, and that therefore the future Home Rule Government can deal with it as they please. The alarm felt by Irish Churchmen at the prospect can be understood. The other Fenian attempt in England which has historical importance was of a different kind. Two Fenian prisoners were being conveyed in a prison van at Manchester. Their friends tried to rescue them by force; and in the attempt killed the officer in charge. For this crime, three of them--Allen, Larkin and O'Brien--were tried, convicted and hanged in November 1867. These were the "Manchester Martyrs," in honour of whose unflinching fidelity to faith and country (to quote the words of Archbishop Croke) so many memorial crosses have been erected, and solemn demonstrations are held every year to this day. At the unveiling of the memorial cross at Limerick the orator said: "Allen, Larkin and O'Brien died as truly for the cause of Irish Nationality as did any of the heroes of Irish history. The same cause nerved the arms of the brave men of '98, of '48, of '65 and '67. For the cause that had lived so long they would not take half measures--nothing else would satisfy them than the full measure of Nationality for which they and their forefathers had fought." Meanwhile another movement was going on, which seems to have been at first wholly distinct from the Fenian conspiracy--the constitutional agitation for Home Rule or Repeal, led by Isaac Butt. It commenced its Parliamentary action in 1874; but was ere long broken up by the more violent spirits within its own ranks. As had so frequently happened in similar movements in Ireland, France and elsewhere, the moderate men were thrust aside, and the extremists carried all before them. Fenianism, though apparently crushed in Ireland, continued to flourish in America. Michael Davitt, who had been a prominent member both of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood and of the Fenian Society, had been convicted of treason felony, and sentenced to penal servitude. On his release in 1877, he was received as a hero, and amongst those who took part in the welcome to him were C.S. Parnell, J.G. Biggar, J. Carey, D. Curley and J. Brady. He went to America and there matured the plan of his operations on the lines laid down by Lalor, which he proceeded to carry out in Ireland in 1879 by means of a Society which was at first called the "Land League" but which has since been known by various other names. Amongst his allies were J. Devoy, O'Donovan Rossa, and Patrick Ford. Devoy and Rossa took an active part in establishing the Skirmishing Fund, which was subscribed for the purpose of levying war on England with dynamite. Rossa afterwards publicly boasted that he had placed an infernal machine onboard H.M.S. "Dottrell," and had sent it and all its crew to the bottom of the ocean. As a reward for his patriotic conduct he was some years later granted a pension by the County Council of Cork, payable out of the rates. Ford was the ablest and most powerful of the number, for by means of his paper--the _Irish World_--he collected vast sums for the Parliamentary party. In this paper he strongly advocated the use of dynamite as a blessed agent which should be availed of by the Irish people in their holy war; and elaborated a scheme for setting fire to London in fifty places on a windy night. After D. Curley and J. Brady had been hanged for the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke, he collected money for a testimonial to them as heroes, and prayed that God would send Ireland more men with hearts like that of J. Brady. Mr. Redmond has recently described him as "the grand old veteran, who through his newspaper has done more for the last thirty or forty years for Ireland than almost any man alive"; Mr. T.P. O'Connor has congratulated him on the great work he is doing for Ireland; and Mr. Devlin has eulogized him for "the brilliancy in the exposition of the principles inculcated in our programme." By 1880 the union between the Dynamite party in America (which bore many names, such as the Fenian Society, the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, the Invincibles, the Clan-na-gael, and the Physical Force party, but was essentially the same movement throughout), the constitutional agitators for Home Rule in Parliament, and the Land Leaguers in Ireland, was complete. It was but natural that it should be so, for their objects were the same, though their methods differed according to circumstances. The American party (according to their own statements) desired the achievement of a National Parliament so as to give them a footing on Irish soil--to give them the agencies and instrumentalities for a Government _de facto_ at the very commencement of the Irish struggle--to give them the plant of an armed revolution. Hence they gladly contributed large sums for the Parliamentary Fund. Parnell, the leader of the Parliamentary party, stated that a true revolutionary movement should partake of a constitutional and an illegal character; it should be both an open and a secret organization, using the constitution for its own purpose and also taking advantage of the secret combination; and (as the judges at the Parnell Commission reported) the Land League was established with the intention of bringing about the independence of Ireland as a separate nation. In the preceding autumn the agitation against the payment of rent had begun; and persons of ordinary intelligence could see that a fresh outbreak of anarchy was imminent. But Gladstone, when coming into power in March 1880, assumed that air of easy optimism which his successors in more recent times have imitated; and publicly stated that there was in Ireland an absence of crime and outrage and a general sense of comfort and satisfaction such as had been unknown in the previous history of the country. His Chief Secretary, Forster, however, had not been long in Ireland before he realized that this was the dream of a madman; and that the Government must either act or abdicate in favour of anarchy; but the Cabinet refused to support him. Before the end of the year the Government had practically abdicated, and the rule of the Land League was the only form of Government in force in a large part of the country. The name of the unfortunate Captain Boycott will be for ever associated with the means the League employed to enforce their orders. What those means were, was explained by Gladstone himself:-- "What is meant by boycotting? In the first place it is combined intimidation. In the second place, it is combined intimidation made use of for the purpose of destroying the private liberties of choice by fear of ruin and starvation. In the third place, that which stands in the rear of boycotting and by which alone boycotting can in the long run be made thoroughly effective is the murder which is not to be denounced." And a few years later--1886--the Official Report of the Cowper Commission stated it more fully:-- "The people are more afraid of boycotting, which depends for its success on the probability of outrage, than they are of the judgments of the Courts of Justice. The unwritten law in some districts is supreme. We deem it right to call attention to the terrible ordeal that a boycotted person has to undergo, which was by several witnesses graphically described during the progress of our enquiry. The existence of a boycotted person becomes a burden to him, as none in town or village are allowed, under a similar penalty to themselves, to supply him or his family with the necessaries of life. He is not allowed to dispose of the produce of his farm. Instances have been brought before us in which his attendance at divine service was prohibited, in which his cattle have been, some killed, some barbarously mutilated; in which all his servants and labourers were ordered and obliged to leave him; in which the most ordinary necessaries of life and even medical comforts, had to be procured from long distances; in which no one would attend the funeral, or dig a grave for, a member of a boycotted person's family; and in which his children have been forced to discontinue attendance at the National School of the district." This was the ordinary form of Government as conducted by the Nationalists; and any attempt to interfere with it and to enforce the milder laws of England, is now denounced as "coercion." In 1881 Gladstone carried another and a more far-reaching Land Act. To put it shortly, it may be said that all agricultural land (except that held by leaseholders, who were brought in under the Act of 1887) was handed over to the occupiers for ever (with free power of sale), subject only to the payment of rent--the rent not being that which the tenants had agreed to pay, but that which a Land Court decided to Be a "fair rent." This was to last for fifteen years, at the end of which time the tenant might again claim to have a fair rent fixed, and so _ad infinitum_. The Land Court in most cases cut down the rent by about 20 or 25 per cent.; and at the end of fifteen years did the same again. As tithes (which had been secularized but not abolished), mortgages and family charges remained unchanged, the result was that a large proportion of landlords were absolutely ruined; in very many cases those who appear as owners now have no beneficial interest in their estates. In examining the Act calmly, one must observe in the first place that it was a wholesale confiscation of property. Not of course one that involved the cruelty of confiscations of previous ages, but a confiscation all the same. For if A. bought a farm in the Incumbered Estates Court, with a Parliamentary title, and let it to B. for twenty years at a rent of £100; and the Act gave B. the right of occupying it for ever subject to the payment of £50 a year, and selling it for any price he liked, that can only mean the transfer of property from A. to B. Secondly, the Act encouraged bad farming; for a tenant knew that if his land got into a slovenly state--with drains stopped up, fences broken down, and weeds growing everywhere--the result would be that the rent would be reduced by the Commissioners at the end of the fifteen years; as the Commissioners did not go into the question of whose the fault was, but merely took estimates as to what should be the rent of the land in its actual condition. That farms were in many instances intentionally allowed to go to decay with this object, has been proved; and this pressed hard on the labouring class, as less employment was given. Thirdly, although the remission of debt may bring prosperity for a time, it may be doubted whether it will permanently benefit the country; for it will be noticed that the attempt to fix prices arbitrarily applied only to the letting and hiring and not to other transactions. To give a typical instance of what has occurred in many cases: a tenant held land at a rent of £1. 15s. 0d. per acre; he took the landlord into Court, swore that the land could not bear such a rent, and had it reduced to £1. 5s. 0d.; thereupon he sold it for £20 an acre; and so the present occupier had to pay £1. 5s. 0d. to the nominal landlord, and the interest on the purchase-money (about £1 per acre) to a mortgagee; in fact, he has to pay a larger sum annually than any previous tenant did; and this payment is "rent" in the economic sense though it is paid not to a resident landlord but to a distant mortgagee. In other words, rent was increased, and absenteeism became general. Fourthly, it sowed the seeds for future trouble; for it was the temporary union of two antagonistic principles. On the one hand it was said that "the man who tills the land should own it," and therefore rent was an unjust tax (in fact it was seriously argued that men of English and Scotch descent who had hired farms in the nineteenth century had a moral right to keep them for ever rent free because tribal tenure had prevailed amongst the Celts who occupied the country many hundreds of years before); on the other it was said that the land belonged to the people of Ireland as a whole and not to any individuals. If that is so, what right has one man to a large farm when there are hundreds of others in a neighbouring town who have no land at all? The passing of the Land Acts of 1881 and 1887 made it inevitable that sooner or later a fresh agitation would be commenced by "landless men." And fifthly, when an excitable, uneducated people realize that lawlessness and outrages will be rewarded by an Act remitting debts and breaking contracts, they are not likely in future to limit their operations to land, but will apply the same maxims to other contracts. The demoralizing of character is a fact to be taken into consideration. However, the Act was passed; and if Gladstone really imagined that it would satisfy the Nationalist party he must have been grievously disappointed. During 1881, 4,439 agrarian outrages were recorded. The Government declared the Land League to be illegal, and lodged some of the leaders in gaol. Thereupon Ford, carrying out the plan laid down by Lalor in 1848, issued his famous "No Rent" proclamation. It was not generally acted upon; but his party continued active, and in May 1882 Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke (the Chief and Under Secretary) were murdered in the Phoenix Park. This led to the passing of the Crimes Prevention Act, by which the detectives were enabled to secure evidence against the conspirators, many of whom (as is usual in Irish history) turned Queen's evidence. The Act was worked with firmness; and outrages, which had numbered 2,507 during the first half of 1882, fell to 836 in the latter half, to 834 in 1883, and to 774 in 1884. In the autumn of 1885, Gladstone, expecting to return to power at the ensuing election, besought the electors to give him a majority independent of the Irish vote. In this he failed; and thereupon took place the "Great Surrender." He suddenly discovered that everything he had said and done up to that time had been wrong; that boycotting, under the name of "exclusive dealing," was perfectly justifiable; that the refusal to pay rent was just the same as a strike of workmen (ignoring the obvious facts that when workmen strike they cease both to give their labour and to receive pay, whereas the gist of the "No Rent" movement was that tenants, whilst ceasing to pay, should retain possession of the farms they have hired; and that a strike arises from a dispute between employers and employed--usually about rates of pay or length of hours; whereas Ford's edict that no rent was to be paid was issued not in consequence of anything that individual landlords had done, but because Gladstone had put the leaders of the Land League in gaol); that the men whom he had previously denounced as "marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire" were heroes who deserved to be placed in charge of the government of the country; and introduced his first Home Rule Bill. Some of his followers went with him; others refused. His life-long ally, John Bright, said: "I cannot trust the peace and interests of Ireland, north and south, to the Irish Parliamentary party, to whom the Government now propose to make a general surrender. My six years' experience of them, of their language in the House of Commons and their deeds in Ireland, makes it impossible for me to consent to hand over to them the property and the rights of five millions of the Queen's subjects, our fellow-countrymen, in Ireland. At least two millions of them are as loyal as the population of your town, and I will be no party to a measure which will thrust them from the generosity and justice of the United and Imperial Parliament." The Bill was rejected; at the general election which ensued the people of England declared against the measure; Gladstone resigned, and Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister. CHAPTER XI. THE UNIONIST GOVERNMENT OF 1886. The Unionists, on returning to power in 1886, fully realized the difficulty of the problem with which they were faced. The Nationalists held a great Convention at Chicago, at which they resolved to make use of the Land League not merely for the purpose of exterminating landlords but as a means for promoting universal disorder and so bringing about a paralysis of the law. As J. Redmond stated at the Convention: "I assert that the government of Ireland by England is an impossibility, and I believe it to be our duty to make it so." And, as he afterwards explained in Ireland, he considered that if the Tories were able to carry on the government with the ordinary law, the cause of Home Rule might be set back for a generation; but if the Nationalists could succeed in making such government impossible, and the Tories were obliged to have recourse to coercion, the people of Great Britain would turn them out of office, and Gladstone would return to power and carry Home Rule. (This avowed determination on the part of the Nationalists to reduce the country to anarchy should be borne in mind when people now express their horror at the Ulstermen being guilty of such conduct as breaking the law.) With this object, the Nationalists in 1887 organized the "Plan of Campaign," which was in fact an elaboration of the "No Rent" manifesto of 1881, and a scheme for carrying out, step by step, the programme laid down by Lalor in 1848. One of Lalor's adherents had been a young priest named Croke. By 1887 he had become Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel. He had considered the "No Rent" manifesto inopportune; but now formally sanctioned the "Plan of Campaign," and in a violent letter urged that it should be extended to a general refusal to pay taxes. The Plan was also approved by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and the leaders of the Nationalist movement in Ireland and America, such as J. Dillon and Ford; but Parnell seemed doubtful, and in England the _Daily News_ denounced it. However, the Unionist Government had decided on their policy, which they were determined to carry through. The main items of their programme were (1) To enforce the law; (2) To facilitate land purchase; (3) To develop the industries of the country; and (4) To extend local government. It is well to examine these in detail, so as to arrive at a just estimate of the two rival policies. (i) The Crimes Prevention Act passed by Gladstone in 1882 had lapsed, having been limited to a period of three years. Mr. Balfour (who had become Chief Secretary) was of opinion that the continual passing of temporary measures was a mistake (as some one has said, it was like a man burning his umbrella every fine day and then complaining of the expense of buying so many new ones), as was shown by the fact that the Irish Parliament had passed fifty-four of such Acts in the seventeen years of its independent existence. He therefore, in spite of vehement opposition from the combined forces of the English Radicals and the Irish Nationalists, carried the Crimes Act of 1887, which was a permanent measure, to be put in force in disturbed districts by proclamation when necessary. This was the famous "Coercion Act" which has been the subject of so much violent denunciation. But in considering the matter, one must ask, What Government has there ever been in the world that did not employ force in the carrying out of the law? It is true that in the early days of New Zealand Mr. Busby was sent out as a Commissioner with no means of enforcing his orders; but the only result was that he was laughed at by the natives as "a man-of-war without guns"; and no one can say that the scheme was a success. In fact, how can a law be a law unless it is enforced? The Act does not make anything a crime that was not a crime before; it merely provides a shorter form of procedure when a district is so completely terrorized by an illegal association that injured persons dare not make complaints, witnesses dare not give evidence, and juries dare not convict. This, as we have seen, had been the case in parts of Ireland at the beginning of the rebellion of 1798; and the Nationalists, who claimed to be the modern representatives of the rebels of that time, had succeeded in bringing about the same state of things. In some of its most stringent provisions the Act is a copy of the Police Act permanently in force in London; yet ordinary residents in the Metropolis do not seem to groan much under its tyranny, nor do the Radicals propose to repeal it. And certainly the Act has worked satisfactorily from the point of view of those who desire to see the country in a state of peace and prosperity, though disastrously in the opinion of those who aim at making government impossible. Between July, 1887, when the Act came into force, and the end of the year, 628 persons were prosecuted, of whom 378 were convicted and 37 held to bail. In 1888 there were 1,475 prosecutions, 907 convictions, and 175 persons required to find bail. By 1891 (the last full year of Unionist Government) crime had sunk so rapidly that in that year there were only 243 persons prosecuted, of whom 105 were convicted, and 81 held to bail. In 1901 (when the Unionists were again in power) there were 29 prosecutions and 22 convictions. In 1902 there was a revival of crime; the Act was again brought into operation, with much the same result as before--there were 157 prosecutions, 104 convictions, and 17 persons were held to bail. In 1903 there were 3 prosecutions and 3 convictions. (2) _Land Purchase_. The Unionist Government considered that the dual ownership set up by the Act of 1881 would be a constant source of trouble, and that its working could not be for the benefit of the country. They believed that the best solution of the land question would be a system of purchase whereby the occupiers would become owners. This of course was entirely opposed to the wishes of the Nationalists; for if the land question was settled, the motive power which was to carry separation with it, would be gone. Some efforts in the direction of Land Purchase had been made in 1870 (at the instance of Mr. Bright) and in 1881; but nothing was done on a large scale until 1885, when the "Ashbourne Act" was passed; and various further steps were taken by the Unionist Government, culminating in the great "Wyndham Act" of 1903. By the earlier Acts, 73,858 tenants became owners; by the Wyndham Act, 253,625. As the total number of agricultural tenants of Ireland amounted to slightly under 600,000, it will be seen that more than half of them have now purchased their holdings. To explain the general principles of the Act, it is sufficient to say that when the landlord and tenants of an estate agree to a sale, the Government advance the money, and the tenant purchasers undertake to repay it by annual instalments extending over a period of 68 years. As these annual payments must be less than the existing rent as fixed by the Land Court under the Act of 1881, the purchasing tenant has no ground for complaint; and though the income of the landlord is reduced by the sale, he is freed from further anxiety; and besides, the Government give a bonus to the vendor from Imperial funds. It will be seen at once that the scheme would have been impossible under Home Rule; for the English Government had by the end of March 1911, agreed to advance the enormous sum of nearly £118,000,000; an amount which no Irish Government could have raised except at such an exorbitant rate of interest that it would have been out of the question. On the other hand, England has become the creditor of the new Irish landowners for this vast amount; and in the event of Separation a serious difficulty may arise as to its repayment. It may interest readers in the Colonies to learn that the Government thoughtfully passed a Registration of Titles Act in 1891; so that the Irish purchasers under the various Land Acts have the benefits which were first introduced in Australia by Sir Robert Torrens. The Act of 1903 had the cordial support of a small minority of Nationalists; but to the majority it was gall and wormwood. Hence Mr. Birrell, when he became Chief Secretary, threw every obstacle he could into the way of its working; and in 1909 he passed a new measure, under which land purchase has practically ceased. (3)_The development of the Industries of the Country_. That has of course taken various forms, of which only a few can be mentioned here. By the Light Railways (for which the country has to thank Mr. Balfour himself) remote and hitherto inaccessible districts have been brought into touch with the rest of the world; and by an expenditure of £2,106,000 the railway mileage of Ireland has been increased from 2,643 miles in 1890 to 3,391 in 1906. Then it is hardly too much to say that the Labourers' Cottages Act, and the grants made under it, have transformed the face of the country. By this Act, District Councils are enabled, in localities where accommodation for labourers is insufficient, to take land compulsorily and erect cottages, the money advanced by the Government for the purpose being gradually repaid by the ratepayers. The wretched hovels which were the disgrace of Ireland from the dawn of history until a period within living memory, have almost disappeared; and comfortable, sanitary and pleasing dwellings have taken their place. Even this excellent Act, however, is now used by the Nationalists to further their own objects. One instance may suffice. In 1907 a farmer fell under the ban of the League and was ordered to be boycotted. The District Council found that one occupant of a "Labourer's Cottage" disregarded the order and continued to work for the boycotted farmer. They promptly evicted him. What would be said in England if a Tory landlord evicted a cottager for working for a Radical farmer? But even more important than these measures has been the establishment of the Department of Agriculture. The success of this has been due to the ability, energy and unselfishness of Sir Horace Plunkett. The main object of the Department was to instruct the farming classes in the most effective methods of agriculture and the industries connected with it. This by itself would have been a great work; but Sir Horace has also founded the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, to encourage co-operative organization amongst farmers, based on the principle of mutual help; and the success of this, worked in conjunction with the Department, has been marvellous. More than nine hundred local societies have been established, for the promotion of industries such as dairying and poultry farming; co-operative credit banks have been formed, based on what is known in Germany as the Raffeisen system. The turnover of these societies in 1908 amounted to more than £2,250,000. Agricultural Organization Societies, in imitation of the Irish one, have been formed in England and Scotland; and so far did its fame reach that the Americans sent over an agent to enquire into its working. Of course it is unfair to attribute the prosperity or the decline of a country to any one measure; and more than that, it is only by taking into consideration a number of circumstances and a long term of years that we can decide whether prosperity is real or merely transitory. But that Ireland increased in prosperity under the influence of the Unionist Government, cannot be denied; indeed Mr. Redmond, when shepherding the Eighty Club (an English Radical Society) through Ireland in 1911, did not deny the prosperity of the country, and could only suggest that the same reforms would have been introduced and better carried out under an Irish Parliament--regardless of the facts that no Nationalist Government could have found the money for them; and that Nationalists are orators and politicians, not men of business. The combined value of exports and imports rose from 104,000,000 in 1904 to 125,000,000 in 1909; and the gross receipts on railways from £4,140,000 to £11,335,000. The deposits in savings banks rose from £3,128,000 in 1888 to £10,627,000 in 1908. The tonnage of shipping in Irish ports was 11,560,000 in 1900; in 1910 it was 13,475,000. Sir Horace had done his utmost to prevent the curse of political strife from entering into his agricultural projects. He had been careful to appoint Nationalists to some of the most important offices in his Department, and to show no more favour to one part of the country than another. But all in vain; the National League, when their friends returned to power, at once resolved to undo his labours, some of them openly saying that the increased attention devoted to trade and agriculture was turning men's thoughts away from the more important work of political agitation. Mr. T.W. Russell, a man totally ignorant of agricultural affairs, whose only claim to the office was that he was a convert to Nationalism, was appointed in place of Sir Horace. He promptly declined to continue to the Agricultural Organization Society the support which it had previously received from the Department; and, with the aid of the United Irish League, succeeded in preventing the Society from receiving a grant from the Board of Agriculture similar to those given to the English and Scotch societies; threw discredit on the Co-operative Credit Banks, and denounced the Co-operative Farming Societies as injurious to local shopkeepers. And thus he made it clear that it is impossible in Ireland to conduct even such a business as the development of agriculture without stirring up political bitterness. Another effort of Mr. Balfour's--the establishment of the Congested Districts Board--has had a strange and instructive history. It was established in 1891. Mr. Balfour decided to entrust to a small body of Irishmen, selected irrespective of party considerations, the task of making an experiment as to what could be done to relieve the poorest parts of Ireland; and with this object, the Board, though endowed with only small funds, were given the widest powers over the area within which they were to operate. They were empowered to take such steps as they thought proper for (1) Aiding migration or emigration from the congested districts, and settling the migrant or emigrant in his new home; and (2) Aiding and developing agriculture, forestry, and breeding of live stock and poultry, weaving, spinning, fishing (including the construction of piers and harbours, and supplying fishing boats and gear and industries subservient to and connected with fishing), and any other suitable industries. Both the powers and the revenues of the Board were increased from time to time, until by 1909 its annual expenditure amounted to nearly £250,000. It became clear almost at the beginning of its labours that amongst the many difficulties which the Board would have to face there were two pre-eminent ones; if it was desired to enlarge uneconomic holdings by removing a part of the population to other districts, the people to be removed might not wish to go; and the landless men in the district to which they were to be removed might say that they had a better right to the land than strangers from a distance, and the result might be a free fight. As the only chance of success for the labours of the Board was the elimination of party politics, Mr. J. Morley, on becoming Chief Secretary in the Gladstonian Government of 1892, appointed as Commissioners Bishop O'Donnell of Raphoe (the Patron of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and a Trustee of the Parliamentary Fund of the United Irish League); and the Rev. D. O'Hara, a leading Clerical Nationalist of a violent type. It is needless to say that under their influence the action of the Board has been conducted on strictly Nationalist lines. One instance may suffice. In 1900, the Board, having come into the possession of the Dillon estate, wished to sell it to the tenants; and when doing so, considering the sporting rights to be a valuable asset, decided to reserve them. A considerable number of the tenants expressed their readiness to purchase their holdings subject to the reservation. The Board received an offer of £11,000 for the mansion, demesne and sporting rights over the estate. The reservation of sporting rights when, taking the whole estate, they were of pecuniary value, had been the common practice of the Board in other sales; but an agitation was at once got up (not by the tenants) against the reservation in this case, on the ground that it was not right for the Board to place any burden on the fee simple of the holdings; the offer of £11,000 was refused, and soon afterwards the Board sold the mansion and the best part of the demesne to a community of Belgian nuns for £2,100. The sporting rights, which became the property of the purchasing tenants, ceased to be of any appreciable pecuniary value, though in a few cases the tenants succeeded in selling their share of them for small sums to local agitators. When a witness before the Royal Commission of 1906 ventured to point out that the taxpayers thus lost £8,900 by the transaction, he was severely rebuked by the Clerical members of the Commission for suggesting that the presence of the Belgian nuns was not a great benefit to the neighbourhood. This Royal Commission was appointed ostensibly for the purpose of enquiring into and reporting upon the operations of the Board since its foundation. After going through a mass of evidence, the Chairman (Lord Dudley) said that the Board had tried for twenty years to develop new industries and had failed; and another member (Lord MacDonnell) said that it had only touched the fringe of the question; and, considering that in spite of all its efforts at promoting local industries, emigration continued to be greater from the district subject to its control than from any other part of Ireland, it is hard to see what other view was possible. But the large majority of the Commission were ardent Nationalists--in fact, one of them a short time before his appointment had publicly advocated an absolute, rigorous, complete and exhaustive system of boycotting; and the witness who spoke for the United Irish League told the Commission that it was the strong view of the League that the Board should be preserved. It was only natural therefore that the Commission should report that in their opinion the powers and scope of its operations should be extended and its income largely increased. This was accordingly done by the Birrell Act of 1909. One of the most important functions of the Board was the purchase of land, for which they possessed compulsory powers. The witness who had appeared before the Commission as representing the United Irish League was Mr. FitzGibbon, Chairman of the Roscommon County Council, and now a Member of Parliament. He had previously been sent to prison for inciting to the Plan of Campaign, and for criminal conspiracy. He had also taken a leading part in the cattle-driving agitation (to which I shall refer later) and had announced that his policy was "to enable the Board to get land at fag-end prices." He was therefore appointed by Mr. Birrell to be a member of the Board, as being a suitable person to decide what compensation should be paid for land taken compulsorily. He publicly stated that his object was to carry out the great work of Michael Davitt. And he certainly has been active in doing so; and now the agitators, when they want to have an estate transferred to the Board, commence by preventing its being let or used, and so compelling the owner to leave it derelict and unprofitable; then, when by every description of villainy and boycotting it has been rendered almost worthless, the Congested Districts Board (who have carefully lain by until then) step in with a preposterous offer which the unfortunate owner has no choice but to accept. This may appear strong language to use with reference to a Government Department presided over by Roman Catholic bishops and priests; but the words are not mine; they are taken from the judgment of Mr. Justice Ross, in the case of the Browne Estate. At any rate, whatever else the Congested Districts Board may have achieved, they have done one good thing; they have shown to Unionists in Ireland what the principles of justice are by which the Nationalist Government will be conducted. (4) The fourth division of the Unionist policy was the extension of local government. By the Act of 1898 County and District Councils were formed, like those which had been existing in England for a few years previously; and the powers of the old Grand Juries (who it was admitted had done their work well, but were now objected to on principle as not being elected bodies) were abolished. The importance of the measure can hardly be overestimated; for not only did it re-organize local government on what would elsewhere be a democratic but is in Ireland a Clerical basis; but also it may be described as Home Rule on a small scale. By examining into the practical working of the scheme we may form an idea as to what Home Rule is likely to be; and both parties refer to it as a ground for their opinion. It is curious now to note that it was Gerald Balfour, the Unionist Chief Secretary, who, when introducing the measure, appealed to the Irish gentry not to stand aloof from the new order of things, but to seek from the suffrages of their fellow-citizens that position which no others were so well qualified to fill as themselves--in much the same way that English Radical orators now accuse the Ulstermen of want of patriotism when they declare that they will never take part in a Nationalist Government. The Nationalists were of course loud in their protestations that in the noble work of local government all narrow political and sectarian bitterness would be put aside, and all Irishmen irrespective of creed, class or party would be welcome to take part--just as they are now when they promise the same about the National Parliament. Thus J. Redmond said: "No man's politics or religion will be allowed to be a bar to him if he desires to serve his country on one of the new bodies. Men of different creeds, who have had an almost impassable gulf between them all their lives, will be brought together for the first time in the working of this scheme of Local Government.... On every one of the juries in Ireland there have been county gentlemen who have shown the greatest aptitude for business, the greatest industry, and the greatest ability; and I say it would be a monstrous thing if, by working the election of these County Councils on narrow sectarian or political lines, men of that class were excluded from the service of their country." And another Nationalist Member added: "We are anxious for the co-operation of those who have leisure, wealth and knowledge." Irish Unionists who refused to believe these assurances were denounced by Nationalists as bigots and humbugs. The value of the assurances of 1912 may be gauged by the manner in which those of 1898 have been fulfilled. At the election of 1899 a few Protestants and Unionists were returned. But the general feeling of the newly-formed Councils may be gathered from the following resolution which was passed by the Mayo County Council in that year: "That we, the members of the Mayo County Council, congratulate the gallant Boers on their brilliant defeats of the troops of the pirate Saxon. That we hope that a just Providence will strengthen the arms of these farmer fighters in their brave struggle for their independence. And we trust that as Babylon fell, and as Rome fell, so also may fall the race and nation whose creed is the creed of greed, and whose god is the god of Mammon." And by 1902, when the next triennial elections were coming on, the mask was thrown off. The _Freeman's Journal_ (the principal Nationalist organ) said:-- "In every County or District Council where a landlord, however amiable, or personally estimable, offers himself for election, the answer of the majority must be the same: 'No admittance here.'" And J. Redmond stated the case still more plainly: "We have in our hands a weapon recently won, the full force of which is not yet, I believe, thoroughly understood by the English Government or by ourselves. I mean the weapon of freely-elected County Councils and District Councils who to-day form a network of National organizations all over Ireland, and who to-morrow, I doubt not, if the other organizations were struck, would be willing to come forward and take their place, and, in their Council Chambers, carry on the National work." Pledges in the following form were presented for signature to all candidates by the United Irish League (except of course in north-east Ulster):-- "I ---- hereby pledge myself, if elected to represent the ---- Division on the County Council, to promote the interests of the United Irish League, and to resign my position whenever called upon to do so by the ---- Divisional Executive." So completely has the policy been carried out that by 1911, to quote the words of Mr. FitzGibbon, M.P. (to whom I have previously referred):-- "There was not a landlord in the country who could get his agent returned as District Councillor or County Councillor, or even his eldest son or himself. The Organization had emancipated the people; it had given them the power which their enemies had wielded; it had cleared the road for Ireland's freedom." At present Unionists and Nationalists are pretty evenly divided in the County Councils of Ulster; in the other three Provinces amongst 703 County Councillors there are only fifteen Unionists. In other words, the Act has enabled the Nationalist party to carry out the plan laid down by Lalor of taking quiet and peaceable possession of all the rights and powers of government, as a stepping-stone towards Independence. Of course it may be said with much truth that if the large majority of the people are Nationalists they are perfectly justified in choosing Nationalists as their representatives. But that is not the point. The real point is that in spite of the protestations of the Nationalists at the time of the passing of the Act, politics in their bitterest form have been brought in, and the Unionist minority have been deprived of all share in the local government of the country. To illustrate this still further, I may add that a General Council of County Councils was formed in 1900, for the purpose of promoting a fair and equitable administration of the Act. In order that the Ulster Councils might unite with the others, it was agreed that politics should be excluded. But after the election of 1902, that agreement was abandoned; and, rather than take part in what had become a mere political gathering, the Ulster representatives withdrew. Left to themselves, the Nationalist General Council in 1906 passed the following resolution:-- "That the Irish people are a free people, with a natural right to govern themselves; that no Parliament is competent to make such laws for Ireland except an Irish Parliament, sitting in Dublin; and that the claim by other bodies of men to make laws for us to govern Ireland is illegal, unconstitutional, and at variance with the rights of the people." If such a body as the General Council of County Councils pass a resolution like this, is there much probability that the Nationalist Parliament will refrain from doing the same, should the Imperial Parliament attempt to exercise the power given to it by the present Bill, and to legislate for Ireland? But again it may be said that though the Councils have thus become political bodies, they have conducted their business so admirably that their conduct is a powerful argument to show that a Nationalist Parliament will be equally practical and liberal. This is the view put forward by Nationalist orators and their humble follower Mr. Birrell, who in November 1911, informed his friends at Bristol that the Irish had shown a great capacity for local government and that from what people who had seen a great deal of the south and west of Ireland told him there was no fear of persecution or oppression by the Catholic majority of their Protestant fellow-subjects. In support of this, various facts are adduced, which it is well to examine in detail, remembering the poet's words that "A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies." One of the greatest powers possessed by the County Councils is the exercise of patronage. It would probably be generally admitted in any country but Ireland that there, if anywhere, religion and politics should be excluded, and men selected only for their qualifications. The Nationalists, wishing to demonstrate the fairness of the Councils which hold their views, contrast the bigotry shown by the Unionist Corporation of Belfast with the liberality of similar bodies in other parts of the country. And certainly the figures they adduce, when addressing audiences in England or writing for English readers, are very striking. Thus Mr. Birrell said at Skipton in November 1911 that he had been told that in the great Unionist City of Belfast there was only one Roman Catholic in the employment of the Corporation, and he was a scavenger. (It will be observed that here, as in many of his speeches, he carefully used the expression "he had been told"--so that what he said may be literally true, even though when he heard the statement he knew that it was false.) And Stephen Gwynn, M.P., in his "Case for Home Rule," says: "In Belfast, Catholics are a third of the population; but the Corporation pays £51,405 in a year in salaries, of which only £640 goes to Catholics." And about the same time as Mr. Birrell's oration, Mr. Redmond, speaking at Swindon, said that in Galway, Cork, Westmeath and King's County (where Roman Catholics form the large majority of the population) Protestants held 23 per cent. of the salaried appointments in the gift of the Councils. But when we descend from the airy height of Nationalist rhetoric to the prosaic region of fact, we find that the rates of the City of Belfast amount to about £342,000; of this sum, Roman Catholic ratepayers pay less than £18,000. There are nine hundred Roman Catholics in the employment of the Corporation, and they receive in salaries about £48,000 per annum. And as to the figures quoted by Mr. Redmond, we find that he omitted to state that not one of the 23 per cent. had been appointed by a County Council; they were all survivals of the system in force before 1899, whose positions were secured by statute; and in not one of the counties he mentioned has a Unionist been appointed to any salaried office since that date. To take the County of Cork as a specimen; there are ninety-four salaried offices in the gift of the County Council; of these nine are held by Protestants--but they were all appointed before 1899. Of the thirty-three salaried offices in the gift of the City Corporation, two are held by Protestants--but these also were appointed before 1898; and yet the Protestants pay nearly half the rates. And in Ireland there is not the slightest attempt at concealment in the matter; thus in one case a District Council adopted by formal resolution the request of the local priests not to support any candidate who did not produce a testimonial from the parish priest; as a Councillor remarked, it was the simplest way of stating that no Protestant need apply. But it is in the appointment of medical officers ("dispensary doctors" as they are technically called in Ireland) that the policy of the Nationalists has been most marked. Many years ago, the late Cardinal Cullen ruled that it was a mortal sin to vote for a heretic for such an office; now, however, the bishops have gone further. There are three medical schools in Dublin--Trinity College, the College of Surgeons, and the Catholic University School; and three in the provinces--at Belfast, Cork and Galway. The Medical School of Trinity College has a world-wide reputation. The students are required to complete their Arts course before specializing in medicine (thus ensuring that they shall be men of general culture and not merely of professional training); the professors and lecturers are amongst the ablest men of the day; the students have the advantage of the large city hospitals for their clinical studies; and the standard required for a degree is high. And not only is Trinity College open to all students without distinction of creed, but the College authorities have frequently offered a site within their grounds for a Roman Catholic Chapel and the salary of a Chaplain who would take spiritual care of his flock. Nevertheless the Roman Catholic bishops have ordered that no candidate who has been trained at any College except the Catholic University school shall be eligible for the post of Dispensary Doctor; and when an election takes place (as for instance that at Kiltimagh in 1905) the question of professional qualification is not taken into consideration--having been trained at a "godless college" is a fatal bar to any candidate, however able. In the Kiltimagh case, the resolution passed shortly after the election by the local branch of the United Irish League is instructive reading:-- "That we, the members of the Kiltimagh Branch of the United Irish League, take advantage of this our first meeting since the important Election of Medical Officer for the Kiltimagh Dispensary District, to express our appreciation of all the Guardians for the several divisions in this parish for the faithful honesty with which they represented us on that occasion. We feel proud to know that not one of our representatives voted for a Queen's College man against a Catholic University man. They voted for a man who is the stamp of man we want--a sound Catholic, a sound Nationalist, a Gaelic Leaguer, and a highly qualified medical man. We believe their action will meet with the approval of the Bishops and Priests of Ireland." To one who lives in Ireland it is sad enough to see year by year the most able and promising of the medical students being driven out of the country on account of their religion, and forced to look for openings elsewhere; but to a thoughtful observer it is even worse than that; it is the beginning of the new Penal Laws. And when we turn to other matters, where the marvellous efficiency of the County Councils exists, is hard for an unprejudiced enquirer to find. The old Grand Juries handed over the roads and bridges in excellent order; they are certainly not better now, and in many cases worse. In fact, one English theoretical Radical who paid a brief visit to Ireland, inhaled so much Hibernian logic during his hurried tour that he solemnly argued that the badness of the roads proved that the Councils had been governing too economically; and therefore what was needed was a central body--that is, an Irish Parliament--to stir up the local administration! Nationalist writers claim that the rates are going down; but that merely means that they are not so high now as they were soon after the Act came into force, not that they are lower than before 1898. It was expected that the rates would be reduced by the operation of the Old Age Pensions Act; but that has not proved to be the case. And the increase in local indebtedness is alarming. To sum up, therefore, I trust that I have, even in this brief sketch, made it clear that the policy of the Unionist Government, taken as a whole, has been of immense benefit to the social and material prosperity of Ireland; and that the points in which it has failed have been those where their reforms have fallen under the power of the Nationalists, who have either thwarted them, or made use of them to further their own ideas. I shall next proceed to examine the alternative policy, which is being carried out by the present Government. CHAPTER XII. THE GLADSTONIAN GOVERNMENT OF 1892. THE POLITICAL SOCIETIES. During the Gladstone-Rosebery Government--from 1892 to 1895--matters in Ireland were quiet. The Nationalists were at first on their best behaviour, in consequence of the promised introduction of the Home Rule Bill; and after its rejection by the Upper House, the time was too short for anything serious to happen. But the period was marked by the commencement of one great change in Irish administration. It must be admitted by impartial observers that the old landlord party, with all their faults, made as a rule excellent magistrates. A large proportion of them were retired military officers, who had gained some experience in duties of the sort in their regiments; others were men of superior education, who studied with care the laws they were to administer. Living in the locality, they knew the habits and feelings of the people; and yet they were sufficiently separated from them to be able to act as impartial judges; and no charges of bribery were ever made against them. And, the work being congenial, they gladly devoted their spare time to it. Gladstone's Chief Secretary (the present Lord Morley) determined to alter all this; he accordingly appointed to the Bench a large number of men drawn from a lower social stratum, less educated and intelligent than those previously chosen, but more likely to administer "Justice according to Irish ideas." Then the operation of the Local Government Act, by which Chairmen of Councils (all of course Nationalists) became _ex officio_ magistrates, completed a social revolution by entirely altering the character of the Bench. In some localities the magistrates previously appointed realizing that, being now in a minority, they could be of no further use on the Bench, withdrew; in others, though the old magistrates continued to sit, they found themselves persistently outvoted on every point; so what good they have done by remaining, it is hard to see. Amongst the men appointed under the new system, there have been several instances of justices who have continued to act without the slightest shame or scruple although they have been convicted of such offences as drunkenness, selling drink on unlicensed premises, or corrupt practices at elections. But worse than that: the new order of justices do not regard their duties as magisterial, but political; they give but little attention to ordinary cases, but attend in full strength to prevent the conviction of any person for an outrage organized by the United Irish League; and do not hesitate to promise beforehand that they will do so. If by any chance a sufficient number are not present to carry their purpose, the names of the absentees are published in the Black List of the League--and the result of that is so well known that they are not likely to offend again. Hence comes the contemptible exhibition--now not infrequent--of men being charged before the Bench, and no evidence being offered for the defence; yet the Stipendiary Magistrate being obliged to say that though he considers the case proved, the majority of the Bench have decided to refuse informations. Even a Roman Catholic Bishop has confessed that now magistrates too often have no respect for their obligations to dispense the law justly and without favour; and that the Bench is sometimes so "packed" that the culprits, though guilty, are certain to be acquitted. * * * * * Before discussing the policy of the present Government since it came into power in 1906, it is well to explain what the principal societies--secret or other--are which now conduct the Government of Ireland. In one sense indeed the names are immaterial; for, as in 1798, in whatever various ways the societies have commenced, they are all working towards the same end, and being controlled by the same forces. The Land League, which was founded in 1879 as a league for ruining landlords as a stepping-stone towards independence, having been suppressed by Gladstone in 1881, was reformed under the name of the Irish National League. This was in its turn suppressed in 1887, and in 1898 appeared once more under the name of the United Irish League with J. Redmond as President and J. Devlin as Secretary. In 1901 Mr. Redmond explained the objects of the League as follows:-- "The United Irish League is not merely an agrarian movement. It is first, last, and all the time a National movement; and those of us who are endeavouring to rouse the farmers of Ireland, as we endeavoured twenty years ago in the days of the Land League, to rouse them, are doing so, not merely to obtain the removal of their particular grievances, but because we believe by rousing them we will be strengthening the National movement and helping us to obtain our end, which is, after all, National independence of Ireland." And to make the exact meaning of the phrase "National Independence of Ireland" quite clear, he soon afterwards stated that their object was the same as that aimed at by Emmett and Wolfe Tone--in other words, to place Ireland in the scale of nations with a constitution resembling that of the United States. By March 1908 (that is, about two years after the present Government came into power), to quote the words of Mr. Justice Wright, "the only law feared and obeyed was the law not of the land but of the United Irish League"; and before the end of that year Mr. Redmond was able to report to his friends in America:-- "We have in Ireland an organization which is practically a government of the country. There is in O'Connell Street, Dublin, a great office managed by the real Chief Secretary for Ireland, J. Devlin, the Member for Belfast." The organization of the League is admirable. The country is covered with a network of branches, to which people in the district are obliged to contribute under penalty of being boycotted; these branches are united under provincial executives, whilst the Directory in Dublin controls the whole. The union between the League and the Roman Catholic Church is as complete as the union between that Church and some societies started on a non-sectarian basis became during the rebellion of 1798; as we have seen, a bishop is one of the trustees, and other bishops are amongst the subscribers; the Sunday meetings of the various branches, at which boycotting and other measures of the kind are arranged, are usually presided over by the parish priests. On the other hand, few laymen, whatever their religion may be, who have any stake in the country, can be got to join the League; in the words of A.J. Kettle, M.P.:-- "On its roll of membership there are no landlords or ex-landlords, few merchants, fewer Irish manufacturers. There are few of the men who are managing the business of Ireland in city or town, connected with the League. The bankers who regulate our finances, the railway or transit men who control our trade, internal and external, even the leading cattle men who handle most of our animal produce, are not to be found in its ranks." In further evidence of this it may be noted that in spite of all the efforts of the League at collecting money, the subscriptions to the Irish Parliamentary Fund do not amount to a halfpenny per head of the population; as J. Dillon has remarked: "The National cause in Ireland could not live for six months if it were deprived of the support of the Irish across the Atlantic." Closely allied with the League is the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a secret political and exclusively Roman Catholic association, of which J. Devlin, M.P. (the Secretary of the League), is President. It is also called the Board of Erin, to distinguish it from the American branch. The American branch, I may remark, is also known as the Molly Maguires, as it was under that name that it conducted the series of murders and outrages at the Pennsylvanian mines thirty years ago. Hence the Irish branch is sometimes nicknamed the "Molly Maguires." The Order is very religious, in the sense that part of its programme is to deprive heretics of every means of earning their livelihood; as a Nationalist who did not sympathize with the operations of the Order expressed it: "If Protestants are to be robbed of their business, if they are to be deprived of public contracts, and shut out of every office and emolument,--what is that but extermination?" The political principles of the Order can be gathered from the Address presented by them to Captain Condon on the occasion of his visit to Dublin in 1909. Captain Condon, I may explain, had been a prominent Fenian and member of the Irish Republican brotherhood, and had taken part in the riot at Manchester in 1867 which resulted in the murder of Sergeant Brett; he now resides in America. In 1909 he visited Ireland on the invitation of J. Redmond; and the address presented to him by the Ancient Order of Hibernians contained the following words:-- "In you, O'Meagher Condon, we recognize one of those connecting links with the past which all nations cherish, and you are ready to-day with voice and pen to give your unflagging support to Ireland's leaders with as much enthusiasm as you grasped the sword to lead Ireland in the dark but historic '67. We are sure it will interest you to know that the ranks of the Hibernians to-day are composed of the men and children of those who swore allegiance to the Irish Republic with you." The Order has lately acquired additional strength by becoming an "Approved Society" under the Insurance Act of 1911. In Ireland it is no more possible for life insurance than for anything else to exist without being dragged into the vortex of religious and political quarrels. The "Clan-na-gael"--that is, the Dynamite Club--still flourishes in America; but for obvious reasons it does not make any public appearance in Ireland; and the exact part which it takes in the movement at the present time, it is impossible to say. "Sinn Fein" (which means "Ourselves") is another Separatist Association, aiming at the establishment of Ireland as a Sovereign State, and teaching that the election of Irishmen to serve in the British Parliament is treason to the Irish State. As its name implies, it desires to make use of the revival of the Irish language as a means towards the end for which it is working. It was founded in 1905. Why this Society and the United Irish League, whose objects seem identical, should be ready to fly at one another's throats, is one of the things that those who are outside the Nationalist circle cannot understand. But the Clerical leaders, who do their utmost to further the operations of the League, look askance at Sinn Fein; its ultimate success therefore is very doubtful. Then, working in conjunction with these societies is the "Gaelic League," founded for the "de-Anglicizing" of Ireland, as helping towards separation. As J. Sweetman (who, besides being a prominent member of the Gaelic League, is also Vice-President of Sinn Fein and Vice-Chairman of the Central Council of Irish County Councils and may therefore be regarded as speaking with authority) has expressed it:-- "Out of the Gaelic League's de-Anglicizing propaganda have already grown a series of movements not only strongly political but each and all making for a separate independent Irish nation, freed from every link of the British connection." Were it not for its political object, the folly of this "revival of the Irish language" would be past belief. The language of Shakespeare and Milton, of Gibbon and Macaulay, ought surely to be good enough for ordinary people; and it must be obvious to every reasoning being that at the present moment of the world's history, English is one of the most useful languages in existence. It is spoken by 40,000,000 of people in Europe and twice that number in America, not to mention Australasia and South Africa. It is the language of commerce, of science, and of a vast amount of literature. Europeans of various nationalities learn it, for the sake of its convenience; although, as we all know, one of the difficulties of modern life is that boys and girls have too much to study; educationalists everywhere complain that the curriculum is overloaded. Its position in Ireland can be seen exactly by the census returns; for the papers contain a "language column," each person being required to state whether he speaks English or Irish or both. According to the returns of 1891, the total population was in round numbers 4,725,000; of whom 4,037,000 spoke English only, 643,000 both languages, and 44,000 Irish only. And that trifling minority existed only in certain localities, and was confined to the less educated classes. The only counties in which a majority of the population spoke Irish (including those who spoke both languages) were Mayo and Galway. Yet now it is solemnly said that Ireland, being an independent nation, must have a language of its own; even in counties where no language but English has been spoken for centuries, and where probably none of the ancestors of the present population ever spoke any other language, Irish is being taught in the Roman Catholic primary schools, and the unhappy children who might be studying arithmetic or elementary geography, are wasting their time over a totally useless language. I say "totally useless" deliberately; for the arguments usually brought forward in favour of the study, apart from the political one--that Irish is of use in the study of philology, and that the MSS. of centuries ago contain fine specimens of poetry--are too absurd to be worth discussing. The real object of the Nationalists in "encouraging the revival of the Irish language" is clearly set out in the following words of T. MacSeamus in a recent number of the _Irish Review_:-- "Most important of all, the Irish language is one of the things that distinguish us from England. It is a mark of that separateness which it is the business of every Nationalist to maintain and emphasise on every possible occasion. It is one of the signs--perhaps the chief sign--of nationality.... The Irish language is a weapon in our fight against England, and we cannot afford to throw away even the smallest weapon that may serve us in that struggle." And the policy of the League as regards the primary schools is made quite clear by the resolution passed unanimously at their annual meeting in 1912:-- "That we re-affirm the demand of the last Ard Fheis in regard to the position of Irish in the primary schools, viz., that Irish be the sole medium of instruction in the Irish-speaking districts; that it be the medium as far as possible in all other schools, and that it be a compulsory subject in every school throughout the country where parents are not opposed to it; furthermore, that a knowledge of Irish be required from all teachers entering for training as teachers, and that no certificate be issued to those who fail to qualify in Irish at the final examination, and that none but inspectors having a knowledge of Irish be employed to inspect schools where Irish is taught." It will be seen therefore that if the League carry their point (as no doubt they will under a Home Rule Government) no graduate of the Belfast University who wishes to become a teacher in a Belfast school will be allowed to do so unless he passes an examination in a language which not one of his pupils will ever wish to learn; and this, not for the purpose of ensuring general culture, but to further a political object with which he has no sympathy. The League leave no stone unturned in their efforts to substitute the Irish for the English language. For instance, it is usually considered in other countries that the names of the streets of a town are put up in order to help people who want to find their way, and not for political reasons. But in Dublin, where not one per cent. of the people can read Irish, the names have recently all been painted up in that language, in the hope of de-Anglicizing the rising generation. An incident occurred recently which will show how the movement is being taken up. There is in Dublin an excellent regulation that children may not become "street traders" without a licence. A bright little boy came to apply for one. The magistrate, being a kindly man, enquired of the lad what his circumstances were. The boy explained that part of his earnings went towards the support of his widowed mother; and that he was trying to keep up his education by attending a night school. "And what are you learning there?" said the magistrate. "Irish," replied the boy. Even the magistrate could not resist telling him that he thought his time would be better spent at Arithmetic. Yet from the boy's point of view, there is something to be said. Irish may be of use to him in obtaining a Government appointment, however small; for local bodies (such as the Dublin Boards of Guardians) now refuse to appoint clerks who cannot send out notices of meetings in Irish, though no member of the Board to whom they are sent can read them; and the League fully expect that the Home Rule Government will do the same with regard to every appointment in their gift. If the railways are taken over by the Government (as they probably will be) it can be seen what an immense impetus can be given to the movement. Then Secondary Schools have been established for the same object. The _Irish Educational Review_ recently contained the following account of one of them:-- "At Ring, in the County Waterford, there is already in existence an Irish secondary school where classics, modern languages and all the usual secondary school subjects are taught and where Irish and English fill their rightful places, the former being the ordinary language of the school, the latter a foreign language on no higher level than French or German." The Act of 1909, which founded the "National" University (to which I shall refer again), gave power to County Councils to levy a rate for scholarships. Immediately the Gaelic League saw their opportunity. They endeavoured to persuade the Councils to refuse to do so unless Irish were made compulsory at the University. The Councils generally (except of course in Ulster) agreed to the plan; but some of them (such as the Kildare Council) were faced by a difficulty. Not a single child in the county spoke Irish; and so if that language were made compulsory, no one could compete for the scholarships. So they compromised matters, by deciding that they would levy a rate if Irish were made compulsory after 1915, by which time some of the young people in the county would have been able to learn it; and the University agreed to do so. This rating power, I may remark, looks extremely liberal as it appears in the Act; for the scholarships are to be tenable at any University. The Irish Unionist members, knowing quite well how it would be worked, opposed the clause; and as usual were denounced as bigots and fanatics. It is needless to add that as soon as the Act came into force, County Councils and Corporations at once passed resolutions that scholarships derived from the rates should not be tenable at Trinity College, Dublin, or at Belfast, but only at the National University--thus practically saying that no Protestants need compete. Beyond forcing the children to acquire a smattering of Irish, it cannot be said that so far the efforts of the League as to the language have been very successful; for the census returns show that the proportion of the population who could speak Irish in 1891 was 14'5; in 1901, 14'4; and in 1911, 13'3; and the numbers who spoke Irish only fell from 20,953 in 1901 to 16,870 in 1911. But the efforts of the League are not confined to the language. English games, such as cricket, are forbidden; if football is played, it must be the Gaelic variety with rules totally different from those observed by the hated Saxon. Even the patients in asylums are forbidden to play cricket or lawn tennis. And some of the more enthusiastic members of the League have actually "donned the saffron," in imitation of the Ersefied Normans of 400 years ago. However, it is so hideously ugly, and so suggestive of the obnoxious Orange, that that phase of the movement is not likely to extend. Even the "Boy Scout" movement has been made use of for the same object. As soon as some corps had been established in Ireland, the Nationalists started a rival organization with an Irish name, in which all the boys solemnly undertake to work for the independence of Ireland, and never to join England's armed forces. The boys take a prominent part in the annual ceremonies in honour of Wolfe Tone, the Manchester martyrs, and other Nationalist heroes. The whole thing would be laughable if it were not so very sad. Even such matters as sports and education, where all creeds and parties might be expected to work together amicably, must be used as instruments to bring about separation; and the result already is not so much to widen the gulf between Ireland and England as the gulf between the two parties in Ireland; for the Protestant minority in the south, who know that most of their children will have to leave the country, are not likely to let them fritter away their youth in the study of a language which can be of no possible benefit to them in any part of the world to which they may go; and the idea that the Ulstermen will ever adopt a Celtic tongue is too ridiculous to be considered. But perhaps the most painful thought of all is that the Nationalists should be ready even to sacrifice the prospects in life of the rising generation of the country in order to satisfy their blind hatred of England. CHAPTER XIII. IRELAND UNDER THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT. I come now to the policy which has been pursued by the present Government since 1906. It must be remembered that the Radical party returned to power pledged to Home Rule as a principle, but with a sufficient majority to enable them to retain office without depending on the Irish vote. Hence there was no necessity for them to introduce a Home Rule Bill; but of course they set aside the policy of the Unionist Government, and resolved to govern Ireland according to their own ideas. What those ideas were, and what the result has been, I shall now proceed to show; but in doing so I shall as far as possible confine myself to quotations and statistics which can be verified, so that I may not be accused of giving an unfair report. The Chief Secretary for the first year was Mr. Bryce, who was afterwards appointed British Ambassador at Washington. The Government at once repealed the Act which forbade the carrying of arms without a licence; withdrew all proclamations under the Crimes Act of 1887; and resolved not to stop any political meetings. Accordingly the Nationalists commenced holding a series of demonstrations all over the country. A few specimens taken from the speeches made at them will suffice to show their general tenour. "Let them all be ready, and when England got into trouble with European Powers, they would pounce upon her with the ferocity of a tiger."--_T. Walsh, District Councillor._ "They must stand together as one man, and make it impossible for England to govern Ireland."--_P. White, M.P._ "If there had been 100,000 Fenians in Ireland at the time of the Boer War there might now have been a Republic in Ireland, and British supremacy would have been tumbled in the dust."--_J. Daly, formerly Mayor of Limerick._ And Mr. Bryce, when leaving Ireland at the end of the year, stated that he had not found any harm in any of the speeches delivered at the meetings. At this time the agitation began to assume a new form. One of the most important of Irish industries is the cattle trade with England, the annual value of which exceeds £14,000,000. In several parts of Ireland, notably in Meath and the central counties, the soil and climate are specially suited for cattle raising, and the land is generally held in large grazing farms. It was decided by the Nationalists in the autumn of 1906 that this industry must be destroyed. Bodies of men assembled night after night to break down the fences and gates of the farms and drive the cattle many miles away, in order that the farmers might be ruined and forced to leave the country; and then the derelict farms would be divided amongst the "landless men." L. Ginnell, M.P., explained the programme fully in a speech he made in October 1906:-- "The ranches must be broken up, not only in Westmeath but throughout all Ireland ... He advised them to stamp out the ranch demon themselves, and not leave an alien Parliament to do the duty ... He advised them to leave the ranches unfenced, unused and unusable ... so that no man or demon would dare to stand another hour between the people and the land that should be theirs." The agitation, commencing in Meath, was gradually extended, county by county, over a large part of Ireland where the Nationalists are supreme. Other measures were resorted to, in order to carry out their object. Arson, the burning of hayricks, firing into dwelling-houses, spiking meadows, the mutilation of horses and cows, the destruction of turf, the damaging of machinery, and various other forms of lawless violence began to increase and multiply. At the Spring Assizes in 1907, the Chief Justice, when addressing the Grand Jury at Ennis, in commenting on the increasing need for placing law-abiding people under special police protection, said:-- "In a shire in England, if it was found necessary, either by special protection or protection by patrol, to protect from risk of outrage thirty persons, what would be thought?" And Mr. Justice Kenny at Leitrim, after commenting upon the increased number of specially reported cases, as shown by the official statistics, and alluding to several cases of gross intimidation, said:-- "In these latter cases I regret to say no one has been made amenable; and when there is such a state of things, it justifies the observation made by the learned judge who presided at last Connaught Winter Assizes, that when the chain of terrorism was complete, no witness would give evidence and no jury would convict." Thereupon Mr. Birrell, who at the beginning of the year had succeeded Mr. Bryce as Chief Secretary, having no doubt studied these and similar reports, said in a speech at Halifax in the following month:-- "You may take my word for this, that Ireland is at this moment in a more peaceful condition than for the last six hundred years." Soon afterwards, Mr. Justice Ross, who, as Judge of the Land Judge's Court, Chancery Division, was in charge of many estates in Ireland, said: "He had known from other Receivers about this widespread and audacious conspiracy at present rampant in the West of Ireland ... This was actually a conspiracy which on ordinary moral grounds amounted to highway robbery, to seize on these grass lands, to drive away the stock of the people who had been in the habit of taking it; and then, when the owner had been starved out, the Estates Commissioners were expected to buy up the property and to distribute it amongst the very people who had been urging on the business, and who had been engaged in these outrages." When an Ulster member drew attention to this in the House of Commons, Mr. Birrell replied:-- "There is no evidence before the Government that a widespread conspiracy is rampant in the West of Ireland." And in reply to another question he said that:-- "The reports he received from the police and other persons revealed the condition of Ireland generally as to peace and order as being very satisfactory." During the month of October 1907, twenty-nine claims for compensation from the rates in respect of malicious injuries had been proved and granted in twelve counties, the amount levied from the ratepayers being about £900. The malicious injuries comprised destruction of and firing into dwelling houses, mutilation of horses and cattle, burning cattle to death, spiking meadows and damaging mowing machines, damages to fences and walls, burning heather and pasturage, damage to gates in connection with cattle driving, and injury to cattle by driving. And in November an attempt was made to assassinate Mr. White Blake and his mother when driving home from church in the County Galway. A few days after this occurred Mr. Redmond said at a meeting in North Wales:-- "Whilst there is no crime or outrage there is widespread unrest and impatience, and there are, over a certain section of the country, taking place technical breaches of the strict letter of the law in the shape of what is called cattle driving. Now let me say first of all that in no instance has any single beast been injured in the smallest degree in any of these cattle-drives; in no instance has any malicious injury been done to property, life or limb, or beast." All this time the Government adhered to their determination not to put the Crimes Act in force, but merely to place accused persons on trial before juries at the Assizes. The results were as follows: At the Summer Assizes in 1907, 167 persons were returned for trial; of these, 57 were actually tried, of whom three were convicted, 31 acquitted, and in 23 cases the juries disagreed. The trials of the remaining 110 were postponed. At the Michaelmas sittings, 94 persons were put on trial, of whom 5 were convicted and 2 acquitted; in 72 cases the juries disagreed, and in the remaining 15 the Crown abandoned proceedings. At the Winter Assizes 86 persons were tried for unlawful assembly, riot and conspiracy in connection with cattle-driving. None were convicted; 11 were acquitted; in 12 cases the prisoners were discharged on legal points; and in 63 the juries disagreed. I fully admit that there is much to be said for the juries who refused to convict. When a Government is doing its utmost to suppress anarchy and to enforce law and order, it is no doubt the duty of every loyal subject to render assistance even at the risk of his own life and property. But when a Government is conniving at anarchy, and deliberately refusing to put in force the Act which would put a stop to it, I say it is too much to expect of any man that he should face the prospect of being ruined and probably murdered, and his family reduced to beggary, in order to enable the Government to keep up the farce of pretending that they are trying to do their duty. During the first half of 1908, there were 418 reported cases of cattle-driving; and arson, outrages with firearms, meadow-spiking, and similar offences increased in proportion. The judges urged in vain that the law should be put in force. But the policy of the Government remained unchanged; the _Daily News_ (the Government organ) when cattle-driving was at its height said that thanks to the excellent government of Mr. Birrell cattle-driving now had practically become extinct even in those few parts of the country in which it had existed; and in July Mr. Birrell, addressing a political meeting at Port Sunlight, said that:-- "They were led to believe that the state of Ireland was of an appalling character, that crime predominated, and that lawlessness almost universally prevailed. All he could say was that a more cheerful land was nowhere to be found." In 1909 matters became somewhat quieter, chiefly because Mr. Birrell promised to introduce a Land Bill by which the cattle-drivers hoped to get all they wanted. Hence their leaders advised them to "give Birrell a chance," but Mr. Redmond warned the Government that if they did not carry out their pledge, they would speedily find Ireland ungovernable. In February 1909, Lord Crewe, speaking for the Government in the House of Lords, made the remarkable statement:-- "As regards intimidation, I have always shared the view that well-organized intimidation cannot be checked by law. I know no method of checking it." If this is not an admission that the Government had failed in their duty, it is hard to say what is. The result of their line of action will be seen by the following table, which has been taken from various returns which the Ulster members, by repeated questions in Parliament at last succeeded in forcing Mr. Birrell to make public:-- Agrarian outrages 1906 234 " " 1907 372 " " 1908 576 Cattle-drives 1905 Nil " " 1907-8 513 " " 1908-9 622 " " 1908 219 Cattle maiming, mutilating, etc. 1907 142 Persons boycotted 1907 196 " " 1908 270 " " 1909 335 Cost of extra police 1908 £47,000 1911. Agrarian outrages 581 Malicious injuries to property, Intimidating by threatening letters, etc. 285 Firing into dwelling houses 58 Rioting, robbery of arms, etc. 31 Killing and maiming cattle 83 It may be asked, why did not the Ulster members call the attention of Parliament to this state of things? The answer is, they did so again and again; Mr. Birrell gave stereotyped replies, much after this form, with hardly a variation:-- I have seen in the newspapers a report that a few shots were fired into a farmhouse in Galway. No one appears to have been seriously injured. The police are making enquiries. No arrests have been made. (He might as well have added that he knew perfectly well that no arrests ever would be made.) Then he would go to a political meeting and say that the peaceful condition of Ireland was shown by the small number of criminal cases returned for trial at the Assizes; and would bitterly denounce the "Carrion Crows" (as he designated the Ulster members) for trying to blacken the reputation of their country. One instance may be given more in detail, as typical of the condition to which Ireland had been brought. Lord Ashtown (a Unionist Peer residing in County Galway) began issuing month by month a series of pamphlets entitled "Grievances from Ireland." They contained little besides extracts from Nationalist papers giving reports of the meetings of the United Irish League, the outrages that took place, and the comments of Nationalist papers on them. His object was to let the people in England see from the accounts given by the Nationalists themselves, what was going on in Ireland. This, however, was very objectionable to them; and one of their members asked Mr. Birrell in the House of Commons whether the pamphlets could not be suppressed. Mr. Birrell made the curious reply that he would be very glad if Lord Ashtown were stopped, but that he did not see how to do it. What he expected would be the results of that remark, I do not know; but no one living in Ireland was much surprised when a few weeks afterwards a bomb outrage occurred at the residence of Lord Ashtown in the County Waterford. It was a clumsy failure. A jar containing gunpowder was placed against the wall of the house where he was staying and set on fire. The explosion wrecked part of the building, but Lord Ashtown escaped unhurt. He gave notice of his intention to apply at the next assizes for compensation for malicious injury. The usual custom in such cases is for a copy of the police report showing the injury complained of, to be sent to the person seeking compensation; but on this occasion the police refused to show Lord Ashtown their report, stating that they had received orders from the Government not to do so. But shortly before the case came on, a report, not made by the police authority in charge of the district, but by another brought in specially for the purpose, appeared in the Nationalist papers. This report contained the remarkable suggestion that Lord Ashtown had done it himself! When under cross-examination at the trial, the Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary who made the report was obliged to confess that he did not believe that he had, but had only inserted the suggestion in obedience to instruction received from the Government. Lord Ashtown proved his case and was awarded compensation. But the matter did not end there. He had employed a surveyor, Mr. Scully, to draw plans and take photographs showing the amount of the damage. Mr. Scully was surveyor to the Waterford Corporation. It was proposed at the next meeting of the Corporation that he should be dismissed from his office for having given evidence for Lord Ashtown. The motion was carried unanimously, eight councillors being present; and at the following meeting it was ratified by eight votes to two. A question was asked about the matter in the House of Commons; and Mr. Birrell, with the figures before him, replied that Mr. Scully had never been dismissed. Two other instances of this period must be briefly referred to. It has already been shown how the Irish Parliament endowed Maynooth as a College for Roman Catholic students both lay and theological; and how Trinity College, Dublin, opened its doors to all students, without distinction of creed. But the Roman Catholic Church turned Maynooth into a seminary for theological students only; and the bishops forbade young laymen to go to Trinity. In 1845 Sir Robert Peel attempted to supply the want by founding the Queen's University, with Colleges at Belfast, Cork and Galway, where mixed education should be given in secular subjects, and separate instruction in those appertaining to religion; but that again was denounced as a "satanic scheme for the ruin of faith in the rising generation"; and the crusade against the university was so successful that in 1879 it was destroyed and another--the Royal University--put in its place. This in its turn was abolished in 1909; the College at Belfast was raised to the status of a University, and a new University ominously called the "National University" was founded into which the existing Colleges at Cork and Galway were absorbed, with a new and richly endowed College in Dublin at the head. It may seem strange that the Radical Government who are pledged to destroy all religious education in England should found and endow a Denominational University in Ireland. But the matter could be arranged by a little judicious management and prevarication; it was represented in Parliament that the new University was to be strictly unsectarian; during the debate, Sir P. Magnus, the member for the London University, said that he had no reason to believe that there was any intention on the part of the Chief Secretary to set up denominational Universities in Ireland; he accepted his word that they were to be entirely undenominational. Then, when the Act was passed, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin was appointed Chancellor of the National University, with a number of Jesuits as Professors, and Cardinal Logue stated as follows:-- "No matter what obstacles the Nonconformists may have inserted in the Constitution of the University to keep it from being Catholic, we will make it Catholic in spite of them." Personally, I do not object to denominational Universities. I regret that young men who are going to live in the same country should not be able to study law and medicine together; but if that is their feeling and the feeling of their parents, I admit that having separate Universities may be the best solution of the difficulty. But if so, let it be openly avowed that the University is denominational; to "make it Catholic" and at the same time to say that it is no injustice to Protestants that County Scholarships paid for by the ratepayers should be tenable there and nowhere else, seems to me absurd. The other incident to which reference must be made was the great Convention held in Dublin in 1909. The Nationalists, believing that a Home Rule Bill would soon be introduced, devised the scheme of assembling a monster Convention, which would be evidence to the world of how admirably fitted the Irish people were to govern their own country. It was attended by 2,000 delegates from all parts of the country, who were to form a happy family, as of course no disturbing Unionist element would be present to mar the harmony and the clerical element would be strong. Mr. Redmond, who presided, said in his opening address:-- "Ireland's capacity for self-government will be judged at home and abroad by the conduct of this Assembly. Ireland's good name is at stake, and therefore every man who takes part in this Assembly should weigh his words and recognise his responsibility." The meeting ended in a free fight. At the end of 1909 Mr. Asquith did a very clever thing. A general election was pending, and he wished to avoid the mistake which Gladstone had made in 1885. He therefore, at a great meeting at the Albert Hall unfolded an elaborate programme of the long list of measures which the Government would introduce and carry, and in the course of his remarks said that Home Rule was the only solution of the Irish problem, and that in the new House of Commons the hands of a Liberal Government and of a Liberal majority would in this matter be entirely free. He and his followers carefully abstained from referring to the subject in their election addresses; and Mr. Asquith was thus free, if he should obtain a majority independent of the Irish vote, to say that he had never promised to make Home Rule part of his programme; but if he found he could not retain office without that vote, he might buy it by promising to introduce the Bill and refer to his words at the Albert Hall as justification for doing so. The latter happened; hence the "Coalition Ministry." The Irish party consented to please the Radicals by voting for the Budget, and the Nonconformists by voting for Welsh Disestablishment, on condition that they should in return vote for Home Rule. As Mr. Hobhouse (a Cabinet Minister) expressed it in 1911:-- "Next year we must pay our debt to the Nationalist Members, who were good enough to vote for a Budget which they detested and knew would be an injury to their country." But the people of England still had to be hood-winked. It was hardly likely that they would consent to their representatives voting for the separation of Ireland from Great Britain; so the Nationalists and their Radical allies went about England declaring that they had no wish for such a thing; that all they desired was a subordinate Parliament leaving the Imperial Parliament supreme. Thus Mr. Redmond suggested at one meeting that Ireland should be conceded the right of managing her own purely local affairs for herself in a subordinate Parliament, subject to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament; and at another meeting said: "We are not asking for a Repeal of the Union. We are not asking for the restoration of a co-ordinate Parliament such as Ireland had before the Union. We are only asking that there should be given to Ireland a subordinate Parliament. We therefore admit the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. That means that after this subordinate Parliament is created in Ireland, if the Parliament is foolish enough, rash enough, as it never will be, but if it were foolish enough and criminal enough to use the powers given to it for injustice or oppression of any class or creed, the Imperial Parliament would have the power to stretch forth the arm of its authority and to say 'you shall not do that.'" Of course it may be argued that they had changed their minds; that in former times they worked for separation, but now realised that a subordinate Parliament was all that Ireland required. But unfortunately for this theory, they have themselves repudiated it; when Mr. Redmond was accused of speaking with two voices, one in America and one in Great Britain, he passionately replied:-- "I indignantly deny that accusation. I have never in my life said one word on a platform in America one whit stronger than I had said in my place on the floor of the House of Commons. I have never in America or anywhere else, advocated the separation of Ireland from Great Britain." How far this is true, the quotations from his speeches which have already been given, will have shown. But the Government have kept up the farce; Mr. Winston Churchill said during the debate on the Bill of 1912:-- "The Home Rule movement has never been a separatist movement. In the whole course of its career it has been a moderating, modifying movement, designed to secure the recognition of Irish claims within the circuit of the British Empire." But not even the immediate prospect of Home Rule can be said to have made those parts of Ireland where the League is supreme a happy place of residence to any but advanced Nationalists. The following report of a case in the Magistrate's Court at Ennis in November 1912 will speak for the condition of the County Clare:-- Patrick Arkins was charged with knocking down walls on the farm of Mrs. Fitzpatrick in order to compel her to give up the farm. Inspector Davis gave evidence that from January 1910 to that date there were 104 serious outrages in his district. In 42 firearms were used, 27 were malicious injuries, 32 were threatening notices, 1 case of bomb explosion outside a house, 1 robbery of arms, and 1 attempted robbery. A sum of £268 had been awarded as compensation for malicious injury and there were claims for £75 pending for malicious injuries committed during the week ended 11th inst. There were two persons under constant police protection, and 16 receiving protection by patrol. Head Constable Mulligan said that Mrs. Fitzpatrick was under police protection. Since February 11th, 1912, there had been 12 outrages in the district, Mrs. Fitzpatrick was under almost constant police protection. Acting Sergeant Beegan deposed that there had been 12 outrages on the Fitzpatrick family during the last four years; these included driving cattle off the lands, threatening notices, firing shots at the house, knocking down walls, spiking meadows; the new roof of a hay barn was perforated with bullets, and at Kiltonaghty Chapel there were notices threatening death to anyone who would work for Mrs. Fitzpatrick. Timothy Fitzpatrick gave similar evidence as to the outrages, and said that his father had taken the farm twenty-one years ago, and had paid the son of the former tenant £40 for his goodwill. (I may add that Arkins was committed for trial, convicted at the Assizes and sentenced to seven years penal servitude; and was released by Mr. Birrell a few weeks afterwards.) In another Clare case, in February of the present year, the resident Magistrate said as follows:-- "It is a mistake to say that these outrages are arising out of disputes between landlord and tenant; nine out of ten arise out of petty disputes about land. What is the use of having new land laws? A case occurred not long ago in this county of a man who had bought some land twenty years ago, and paid down hard cash to the outgoing tenant. The man died, and left a widow and children on the land for fourteen years. But in 1908 a man who had some ulterior object got the man who had sold the farm to send in a claim under the Evicted Tenant's Act, which was rejected. That was what the advisers of the man wanted--they only wanted a pretext for moonlighting and other disgraceful outrages, and the woman was kept in a hell for four years. A man was caught at last and convicted, and one would think that this was a subject for rejoicing for all right-minded men in the county. But what was the result? A perfect tornado of letters was printed, and resolutions and speeches appeared in the public press, condemning this conviction of a moonlighter in Clare as an outrage against justice." The Roman Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, in a sermon preached in December 1912, referring to County Clare said:-- "That county had had an evil record in the matter of crime, and they were so accustomed to outrages of almost weekly occurrence around them that it was not easy to shock them. There was an inoffensive family sitting round the fireside with a couple of neighbours. They had given no offence, they had wronged no man, they had crossed no man's path. But that inhuman beast went to the door and lifted the latch, and there, at a few yards distance, fired into that innocent group of men, women and children, as if they were a flock of crows, killing the mother outright and almost blowing the forehead off a young girl. There was no denying the fact that that brutal murder was the natural outcome of the disgraceful system of intimidation and outrage that had been rampant for a long time in certain districts of that unhappy county and of the immunity from punishment enjoyed by the wicked and cowardly moonlighter. In addition to their other acts of savagery, they had shot out the eyes of two men within the last couple of years. A decent, honest man was shot on the road to Ennis. The people passed the wounded man by and refused to take him into their car through fear. Not one of these well-known miscreants was brought to justice. The murderers of poor Garvey, the cow-houghers, the hay-burners, were said to be known. In any other country, for instance in the United States, such ruffianism would be hunted down or lynched; but there, in the places he referred to, they had a curtain of security drawn round them by the cowardice or perverted moral sense on the part of the community amongst whom they lived.... It was only last Thursday night, before the county had recovered from the shock of Mrs. O'Mara's murder, that right over the mountain an unfortunate postman was shot on the public road between Crusheen and Baliluran for no other reason apparently than that another fellow wanted his job of one and six-pence a day! It has come to this, that if you differ with one of them for a shilling, or refuse to give him his way in everything the first thing that comes into his head is to moonlight you.... They have not elevation or social instinct to settle their petty disputes by process of law provided for the purpose by a civilized society, nor have they Christianity enough to bear a little wrong or disappointment for Christ's sake. No, nor the manliness even to meet an opponent face to face and see it out with him like a man; but with the cunning of a mean and vicious dog, he steals behind him in the dark and shoots him in the back, or murders the helpless woman of his family, or shoots out the eyes of the poor man's horse, or cuts the throat of his bullock and spikes his beast upon a gate." Nor has the present year brought much improvement. In May 1913, Mr. R. Maunsell was fired at and wounded close to the town of Ennis. His crime was that he managed a farm for a Mr. Bannatyne, whose family had been in possession of it for about sixty years, but who had recently been denounced by the United Irish League and ordered to surrender it. As he has refused to do so, he is now compelled to live under police protection. The abolition of landlordism and the acquisition of firearms can hardly be said to have brought peace and tranquillity to the County of Clare. And as to Galway, we may gather the state of affairs from the report of a case tried at the Winter Assizes of 1912. Three men were charged with having done grievous bodily harm to a man named Conolly. Conolly swore that he knew a man named Broderick who had become unpopular but he (Conolly) kept to him and this brought displeasure on him from the accused and others. On the night of the 11th September he went to bed; he was subsequently awakened and found 44 grains of shot in his left knee and four in his right. He then lay flat on the floor. Other shots were fired through the window but did not strike him. The judge said the district was a disgrace to Ireland. Day after day, night after night, heaps of outrages were committed there, and not one offender was made amenable to justice. The jury disagreed, and the accused were again put on their trial. The judge in charging the jury on the second trial said that then, and for some time, the district was swarming with police, and though outrages were frequent, it was impossible for them to bring anyone to justice. No one was sure he might not be fired at during the night; and people were afraid to give evidence. The jury again disagreed. During the autumn of 1912 an effort was made to hold a series of meetings throughout the south and west of Ireland to protest against Home Rule. The conduct of the Nationalists with regard to them supplies a striking commentary on Mr. Redmond's statement at Banbury not long before, that all through his political life he had preached conciliation towards those who differed from him on the question of Home Rule. The meetings were in some cases stopped by force; at Limerick the windows of the Protestant Church and of some houses occupied by Protestants were smashed; at Tralee the principal speaker was a large farmer named Crosbie; all his hay and sheds were burned down, and he was awarded £600 compensation by the County Court Judge. But an incident had occurred in the north which, though in a sense comparatively slight, has, in consequence of the circumstances connected with it, done more to inflame the men of Ulster than persons not living in Ireland can realise. In June of last year a party of Sunday School children from a suburb of Belfast went for a picnic to Castledawson (co. Derry) under the charge of a Presbyterian minister and a few teachers and ladies. On their way back to the railway station, they were met and assailed by a procession of men belonging to the Order of Hibernians armed with pikes who attacked the children with the pikes and with stones, seized a Union Jack which a small boy was carrying, and knocked down and kicked some of the girls and teachers. Worse might have happened had not some Protestant young men, seeing what was going on, come to the rescue. The minister was struck with stones whilst he was endeavouring to get some of the children to a place of safety. No Nationalist has ever expressed the slightest regret at the occurrence. Several of the aggressors were tried at the Winter Assizes and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. Before the end of the term they were released by order of the Government. Mr. Birrell, in justifying his action, said that the judge had remarked that there was no evidence before him of actual injury. This, like many of his statements, was literally true; but he omitted to mention that he had prevented the evidence from being given; the injured women and children were quite ready to give their testimony, but were not called by the counsel for the crown. It is unnecessary to say that this foretaste of Home Rule government has made the Presbyterians of Ulster more determined than ever to resist it to the bitter end. I shall next proceed to consider the Bill which the Government have introduced as a panacea for the woes of Ireland. CHAPTER XIV. CRITICISM OF THE BILL NOW BEFORE THE COUNTRY. That the maintenance of the Union is possible, and that complete separation is possible, are two indisputable facts. But the question is, was Wolfe Tone right when he said that these were the only two possibilities; or is there a third one, and if so, what? Residents in the Dominions will naturally be inclined to reply "Yes; place Ireland in the position of a colony possessing responsible government, such as New Zealand." It is a taking idea; but a little reflection will show the falseness of the analogy. The relations between the Mother Country and the self-governing colonies (now often called "Dominions") have grown up of themselves; and, like most political conditions which have so come about, are theoretically illogical but practically convenient. The practical convenience arises partly from the friendly spirit which animates both parties, but still more from the nature of the case. The distance which separates the Mother Country from the Dominions causes the anomalies to be scarcely perceptible. In theory the Sovereign, acting on the advice of British Ministers, can disallow any colonial statute, and the British Parliament is supreme--it can pass laws that will bind the colonies, even laws imposing taxes. But we all know that if the Home Government were persistently to veto laws passed by the large majority of the people in New Zealand, or the British Parliament were to attempt to legislate for the colonies, relations would at once become strained, and separation would be inevitable. The only important matters on which the Home Government attempts to bind the colonies are those relating to foreign countries (which are necessarily of an Imperial nature) and those as to which the colonies themselves wish to have an Act passed, such as the Act establishing Australian Federation. In other words, the "supremacy of Parliament," which is a stern reality in England, has very little meaning as regards New Zealand. Even if the people of New Zealand were to manage the affairs of their country in a manner contrary to English ideas--for instance if they were to establish State lotteries and public gambling tables--England would be but slightly affected, and certainly would never think of taking steps to prevent them. And those matters in which the Home Government is obliged to act are just those in which New Zealand has no desire to interfere; for instance, New Zealand would never want to appoint consuls of her own (which was the immediate cause of the separation between Norway and Sweden); in the very few cases in which New Zealand desires to make use of political or commercial agents abroad, she is content to employ the British representatives, for whom she is not called upon to pay. If New Zealand attempted to take part in a European war in which England was not concerned--the idea is almost too absurd to suggest--the only thing that England could do would be to break off the connection and repudiate New Zealand altogether. And if New Zealand desired to separate from the Mother Country, many people would think it a most grievous mistake, but England certainly would not seek to prevent her doing so by force; and though England would in some ways be the worse for it, the government of England and of the rest of the Empire would go on much the same as before. In certain points, it is true, thoughtful men have generally come to the conclusion that the present state of affairs cannot go on unchanged; the time is coming when the great Dominions must provide for their own defence by sea as well as by land; and whether this is to be done by separate navies working together or by joint contributions to a common navy, it will probably result in the formation of some Imperial Council in which all parts will have a voice. That however, is a matter for future discussion and arrangement. But when we turn to Ireland, everything is different. The two islands are separated by less than fifty miles. Ireland has for more than a century been adequately represented in the Imperial Parliament; the journey from Galway to London is shorter than that from Auckland or Dunedin to Wellington. So long as Europe remains as it is, Great Britain and Ireland must have a common system of defence--which means one army, one navy, and one plan of fortifications. Again, Irishmen, traders and others, will constantly have to make use of government agents in other countries. Now unless Great Britain is to arrange and pay for the whole of this, we are met at once by the insoluble problem of Irish representation in the British Parliament. If Ireland is not represented there, we are faced with the old difficulty of taxation without representation; if Ireland is represented there for all purposes, Ireland can interfere in the local affairs of England, but England cannot in those of Ireland; if we have what has been called the "in-and-out" scheme as proposed by Gladstone in 1893--that is, for the Irish members to vote on all questions of an Imperial nature, but to retire when matters affecting England only are under discussion--then, even if the line could be drawn (which is doubtful) we might have the absurdity of an English ministry which possessed the confidence of the majority of Englishmen and whose management of England met their approval, being turned out of office by the Irish vote, and England being governed according to a policy which the majority of Englishmen detested. Of course it may be said that there ought to be a number of small Parliaments in the British Isles, like those in the Provinces of Canada or the States of Australia, with one great Parliament supreme over them--in other words, Federation. That might be a good thing, although it would in its turn start many difficulties which it is unnecessary now to discuss, for it is not Home Rule nor does Home Rule lead to it. Federal systems arise by the union of separate States, each State giving up a part of its power to a joint body which can levy taxes and can overrule the local authorities. In fact, when Federation comes about, the States cease to be nations. (I must here remark in passing that constant confusion has been caused by the various senses in which the word "nation" is used. Thus it is often quite correctly employed in a sentimental sense--we speak of Scottish National character, or of the National Bible Society of Scotland, though Scotland has no separate Parliament or flag and would on a map of Europe be painted the same colour as the rest of Great Britain. Quite distinct from that is the political sense, in which the Irish Nationalists use the word when speaking of being "A Nation once again," or of "The National Independence of Ireland.") It might be possible for the United Kingdom to be broken up into a Federation (though it is strange that there is no precedent in history for such a course); but that would not be "satisfying the National Aspirations of Ireland." In fact, as Mr. Childers, one of the ablest of English advocates of Home Rule, has stated: "The term Federal, as applied to Irish Home Rule at the present time, is meaningless." But when we come to examine the existing Bill, which will become law in 1914 unless something unforeseen occurs, we find that it is neither the Colonial plan nor Federation but an elaborate system which really seems as if it had been devised with the object of satisfying nobody and producing friction at every point. England (by which of course I mean Great Britain; I merely use the shorter term for convenience) is not only to pay the total cost of the army, navy and diplomatic services, including the defences of Ireland, but is also to grant an annual subsidy to Ireland commencing with £500,000 but subsequently reduced to £200,000. Whether the English taxpayer will relish this when he comes to realise it, may be doubted. Certainly no precedent can be cited for a Federal system under which all the common expenditure is borne by one of the parties. And further, the present Government state freely that they hope to carry out their policy by introducing a Bill for Home Rule for Scotland and possibly also for Wales. Will the Scotch and Welsh consent to contribute towards the government of Ireland; or will they demand that they shall be treated like Ireland, and leave the people of England to pay all Imperial services and to subsidize Ireland, Scotland and Wales? Then again, Ireland is to send forty-two representatives to what is still sarcastically to be called the "Parliament of the United Kingdom," but will no doubt popularly be known as the English Parliament. They are to vote about the taxation of people in Great Britain, and to interfere in local affairs of that country, whilst the people of Great Britain are not to tax Ireland or interfere in any way with its affairs. This is indeed representation without taxation. Of course it is inevitable that the Irish members will continue to do what they are doing at present--that is, offer their votes to whatever party will promise further concessions to Irish Nationalism; and they will probably find no more difficulty in getting an English party to consent to such an immoral bargain than they do now. The provisions as to legislation for Ireland are still more extraordinary. The Irish Parliament is to have complete power of legislating as to Irish affairs, with the exception of certain matters enumerated in the Act; thus it may repeal any Acts of the Imperial Parliament passed before 1914. On the other hand, the English Parliament (in which Ireland will have only forty-two representatives) will also be able to pass laws binding Ireland (and in this way to re-enact the laws which the Irish Parliament has just repealed), and these new laws the Irish Parliament may not repeal or overrule. Now this power of the English Parliament will either be a reality or a farce; if it is a reality, the Irish Nationalists will be no more inclined to submit to laws made by "an alien Parliament" in which they have only forty-two representatives than they are at present to submit to those made by one in which they have 103; if it is a farce, the "supremacy of the Imperial Parliament" is a misleading expression. The Lord Lieutenant is to act as to some matters on the advice of the Irish Ministry, as to others on the advice of the English. Anyone who has studied the history of constitutional government in the colonies in the early days, when the governor was still supposed to act as to certain affairs independently of ministerial advice, will see the confusion to which this must lead. Suppose the Lord Lieutenant acts on the advice of the English ministers in a way of which the Irish Parliament do not approve, and the Irish Ministry resign in consequence, what can result but a deadlock? But most extraordinary of all are the provisions as to finance. The Government appointed a Committee of Experts to consider this question. The committee made their report; but the Government rejected their advice and substituted another plan which is so elaborate that it is only possible to touch on some of its more important features here. I have already said that the English Parliament will have no power to tax Ireland. That statement, however, must be taken subject to two reservations. The Bill provides that if ever the happy day arrives when for three consecutive years the revenue of Ireland has exceeded the cost of government, the English Parliament (with the addition of twenty-three extra members summoned from Ireland for the purpose) may make new provisions securing from Ireland a contribution towards Imperial expenditure. As this is the only reference to the subject in the Bill, the general opinion was that until those improbable circumstances should occur, the English Parliament would have no power to tax Ireland; but when the debates were drawing to a close, the Government astonished the House by stating that according to their construction of the Bill, should any new emergency arise at any time after the Bill becomes law (for instance, a great naval emergency requiring an addition to the Income Tax) it would be not merely the right but also the duty of the Imperial Chancellor of the Exchequer to see that the charge should be borne by the whole United Kingdom--in other words, the Parliament in which Ireland possesses only forty-two representatives may and ought to tax Ireland for Imperial purposes. The friction which will arise should any attempt of the sort be made, especially as the power is not stated in the Bill, is evident. In plain words, it will be impossible to levy the tax. But apart from these rights, which one may safely say will never be exercised, the financial arrangements will from their very complexity be a constant source of trouble. All taxes levied in Ireland are to be paid into the English Exchequer (or as it is called in the Bill "The Exchequer of the United Kingdom"). Some of the objects for which these taxes have been levied are to be managed by the Irish Government--these are called "Irish services"; others are to be managed by the English Government--these are called "Reserved services." The English Exchequer will then hand over to the Irish Exchequer:-- (a) A sum representing the net cost to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom of "Irish Services" at the time of the passing of the Act; (b) The sum of £500,000 a year, reducible to £200,000, above referred to; and (c) A sum equal to the proceeds of any new taxes levied by the Irish Parliament. Then the balance which the English Exchequer will retain, after handing over these three sums, will go to the "Reserved Services." But as, in consequence of the establishment of the Old Age Pensions and some other similar liabilities, the aggregate cost of governing Ireland at this moment exceeds the revenue derived from Ireland by about £1,500,000, the English taxpayer will have to make up this sum, as well as to give to Ireland an annual present of £500,000; and even if the Irish Government succeeds in managing its affairs more economically than the Government at present does, that will give no relief to the British taxpayer, for it will be observed that the first of the three sums which the Exchequer of the United Kingdom is to hand over is not a sum representing the cost of the "Irish Services" at any future date but the cost at the time of the passing of the Act. It is possible of course that the Irish revenue derived from existing taxes may increase, and so the burden on the English taxpayer may be lightened; but as it is more probable that it will decrease, and consequently the burden become heavier, the English taxpayer cannot derive much consolation from that. It will be seen from the foregoing remarks that a number of extremely intricate and difficult financial questions must arise; for instance, what sum really represents the net cost of "Irish Services" at the time of the passing of the Act; what sum equals the net proceeds of new taxes imposed by the Irish Parliament; and at what moment it can be said that the revenue of Ireland has for three consecutive years exceeded the cost of government. All such matters are to be decided by a Board of Five, of whom one is to be nominated by the King (presumably on the advice of the English Ministers), two by the English Government, and two by the Irish. From the decisions of this Board on matters of fact there is to be no appeal. It is needless to point out that every detail in which the three English members overrule the two Irish will be fought out again in the English Parliament by the forty Irish members. This again will show how vain is the hope that future English Parliaments will be relieved from endless discussions as to Irish affairs. Professor Dicey has well named the able work in which he has analysed the Bill and shown its impossibilities "A Fool's Paradise." The provisions concerning those matters as to which the Irish Parliament is to have no power to legislate are as strange as the other clauses of the Bill. For six years the Constabulary are to be a "reserved service"; but as they will be under the orders of the Irish Government, the object of this is hard to see--unless indeed it is to create an impression that the Ulstermen if they refuse to obey them are rebelling not against the Irish but the Imperial Government. The Post Office Savings Banks are "reserved" for a longer period; as to the postal services to places beyond Ireland, the Irish Parliament will have no power to legislate; but the Post Office, so far as it relates to Ireland alone, will be handed over at once to the Irish Parliament--although even in the case of Federal Unions such as Australia the Post Office is usually considered to be eminently a matter for the Federal authority. And the question whether an Irish Act is unconstitutional and therefore void will be decided by the Privy Council, which will be regarded as an essentially English body; hence if it attempts to veto an Irish Act, its action will be at once denounced as a revival of Poyning's Act and the Declaratory Act of George I. The Bill excludes the relations with Foreign States from the powers of the Irish Parliament, but says nothing to prevent the Irish Government from appointing a political agent to the Vatican. That is probably one of the first things that it will do; and as the Lord Lieutenant could never form a Government which would consent to any other course, he will be obliged to consent. This agent, not being responsible to the British Foreign Office, may cause constant friction between England and Italy. But quite apart from the unworkable provisions of the Bill, everything connected with its introduction and passing through Parliament has tended to increase the hatred which the Opposition feel towards it, and the determination of the Ulstermen to resist it if necessary even by force. Those who lived in Australia whilst Federation was under discussion will recollect how carefully the scheme was brought before the people, discussed in various Colonial Parliaments, considered over again line by line by the delegates in an Inter-Colonial Conference, examined afresh in the Colonial Office in London and in the Imperial Parliament and finally laid before each colony for its acceptance. Yet here is a matter which vitally affects the government not of Ireland only but of the whole United Kingdom, and thus indirectly of the Empire at large; it was (as I have shown) not fairly brought before the people at a general election; it has been introduced by what is admittedly merely a coalition Government as a matter of bargain between the various sections, at a time when the British Constitution is in a state of dislocation, as the power of the House of Lords has been destroyed and the new Upper Chamber not yet set up; and it has been passed without adequate discussion. This I say deliberately; it is no use to point out how many hours have been spent in Committee, for the way in which the discussion has been conducted has deprived it of any real value. The custom has been for the Government to state beforehand the time at which each batch of clauses is to be passed, and what amendments may be discussed (the rest being passed over in silence); when the discussion is supposed to begin, their supporters ostentatiously walk out, and the Opposition argue to empty benches; then when the moment for closing the discussion arrives, the Minister in charge gets up and says that the Government cannot accept any of the amendments proposed; the bell rings, the Government supporters troop back, and pass all the clauses unamended. As an instance of this contemptible way of conducting the debate, it is sufficient to point to the fact already mentioned, that so vital a matter as the power of the English Parliament to tax Ireland was not even hinted at until nearly the end of the debates. And now the Bill is to become law without any further appeal to the people. Are English Unionists to be blamed if they declare that an Act so passed will possess no moral obligation, and that they are determined, should the terrible necessity arise, to aid the Ulstermen in resisting it to the uttermost? CHAPTER XV. THE DANGER TO THE EMPIRE OF ANY FORM OF HOME RULE. THE QUESTIONS ANSWERED. In the last chapter I explained how hopelessly unworkable is the particular scheme of Home Rule which is contained in the present Bill. I now proceed to show why Home Rule in any form must lead to disaster--primarily to Ireland, ultimately to the Empire. Politicians who, like ostriches, possess the happy faculty of shutting their eyes to unpleasant facts, may say that there is only one nation in Ireland; but everyone who knows the country is quite aware that there are two, which may be held together as part of the United Kingdom, but which can no more be forced into one nation than Belgium and Holland could be forced to combine as the Kingdom of the Netherlands. And whatever cross-currents there may be, the great line of cleavage is religion. Of course I am aware of the violent efforts that have been made ever since the commencement of the Nationalist agitation to prove that this is not so. Thus Parnell, addressing an English audience, explained that religion had nothing to do with the movement, and as evidence stated that he was the leader of it though not merely a Protestant but a member of the Protestant Synod and a parochial nominator for his own parish. Of course everyone in Ireland knew perfectly well that he was only a Protestant in the sense that Garibaldi was a Roman Catholic--he had been baptised as such in infancy; and that he was not a member of the synod or a parochial nominator, and never had been one; but the statement was good enough to deceive his Nonconformist hearers. That Protestant Home Rulers exist is not denied. But the numbers are so small that it is evident that they are the rare exceptions that prove the rule. The very anxiety with which, when a Protestant Home Ruler can be discovered he is put forward, and the fact of his being a Protestant Home Ruler referred to again and again, shows what a rare bird he is. To mention one instance amongst many; a Protestant Home Ruler has recently been speaking on platforms in England explaining that he came in a representative capacity in order to testify to the people of England that the Irish Protestants were now in favour of Home Rule. He did not mention the fact that in the district where he resided there were about 1,000 Protestants and he was the only Home Ruler amongst them--in fact, nearly all the rest had signed a Petition against the Bill. And when we come to examine who these Protestant Home Rulers are, about whom so much has been said, we find first that there is in this as in every other movement, a very small number of faddists, who like to go against their own party; secondly a few who though they still call themselves Protestants have to all intents and purposes abandoned their religion, and therefore cannot fairly be reckoned; thirdly, a few who hold appointments from which they would be dismissed if they did not conform; fourthly, some who say openly that Home Rule is coming and that whatever their private opinions may be it is the wisest policy to worship the rising sun (bearing in mind that Mr. Dillon has promised that when the Nationalists attain their end they will remember who were their friends and who their enemies, and deal out rewards and punishments accordingly); and fifthly, those who have accepted what future historians will describe as bribes. For the present Government have showered down Peerages, Knighthoods of various orders, Lieutenancies of Counties, Deputy-Lieutenancies and Commissions of the Peace--not to speak of salaried offices both in Ireland and elsewhere--on Protestants who would consent to turn Nationalists, in a manner which makes it absurd to talk any more about bribery at the time of the Union. And yet with all this the Protestant Home Rulers are such an extremely small body that they may be disregarded. And indeed it is hard to see how an earnest, consistent and logically-minded Protestant can be a Nationalist; for loyalty to the King is a part of his creed; and, in the words of a Nationalist organ, the _Midland Tribune_, "If a man be a Nationalist he must _ipso facto_ be a Disloyalist, for Irish Nationalism and loyalty to the throne of England could not be synonymous." On the other hand, a large proportion of the educated Roman Catholics, the men who have a real stake in the country, are Unionists. Some of them, however earnest they may be in their religion, dread the domination of a political priesthood; others dread still more the union of the Church with anarchism. As has already been shown, they refuse to join the United Irish League; some in the north have actually subscribed the Ulster Covenant; many others have signed petitions against Home Rule throughout the country; and a still larger number have stated that they would gladly do so if they did not fear the consequences. It is probably therefore correct to say that the number of Unionists in Ireland decidedly exceeds the number of Protestants; in other words, less than three-fourths of the population are Nationalists, and more than one-fourth (perhaps about one-third) are Unionists. And more than that; if we are to test the reality of a movement, we must look not merely at numbers but at other matters. Violent language may be used; but the fact remains as I have previously stated that even if the Nationalists are taken as being only two-thirds of the population, their annual subscriptions to the cause do not amount to anything like a penny per head and that the agitation could not last for six months if it were not kept alive by contributions from America and the Colonies. But though the Nationalist movement has not brought about a Union between the Orange and the Green, it has caused two other Unions to be formed which will have an important influence on the future history of the country. In the first place it has revived, or cemented, the Union which, as we have seen, existed at former periods of Irish history, but which has existed in no other country in the world--the Union between the Black and the Red. That a Union between two forces so essentially antagonistic as Ultramontanism and Jacobinism will be permanent, one can hardly suppose; whether the clericals, if they succeed in crushing the heretics, will afterwards be able to turn and crush the anarchists with whom they have been in alliance, and then reign supreme; or whether, as happened in France at the end of the eighteenth century and in Portugal recently, the anarchists who have grown up within the bosom of the Church will prove to be a more deadly foe to the clericals than the heretics ever were--it is impossible to say; but neither prospect seems very cheerful. In the second place, the Nationalist movement has drawn all the Protestant bodies together as nothing else could. Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists have all joined hands in the defence of their common liberties. The Nationalists have left no stone unturned in their efforts to prove that the northern Protestants are disloyal. They have succeeded in finding one speech that was made by an excited orator (not a leader) forty-four years ago, to the effect that the Disestablishment of the Church might result in the Queen's Crown being kicked into the Boyne. As this is the only instance they can rake up, it has been quoted in the House of Commons and elsewhere again and again; and Mr. Birrell (whose knowledge of Ireland seems to be entirely derived from Nationalist speeches) has recently elaborated it by saying that when the Church was going to be disestablished "they used to declare" that the Queen's Crown would be kicked into the Boyne, and yet their threats came to nothing and therefore the result of Home Rule will be the same. The fact was that the Church establishment was the last relic of Protestant Ascendancy; and as I have already shown, that meant Anglican ascendancy in which Presbyterianism did not participate; hence, when the agitation for Disestablishment arose, though some few Presbyterians greatly disliked it, their opposition as a whole was lukewarm. But when in 1886 Home Rule became a question of practical politics, they rose up against it as one man; in 1893, when the second Home Rule Bill was introduced and actually passed the House of Commons, they commenced organising their Volunteer army to resist it, if necessary, by force of arms; and they are just as keen to-day as they were twenty years ago. They are certainly not disloyal; the republican spirit which permeated their ancestors in the eighteenth century has long since died out completely. Sir Walter Scott said that if he had lived at the time of the Union between Scotland and England, he would have fought against it; but, living a century later and seeing the benefit that it had been to his country, his feelings were all on the other side. That is what the Presbyterians of Ulster say to-day. They point to the way in which Ulster has, under the Union, been able to develop itself; with no richer soil, no better climate, and no greater natural advantages than other parts of Ireland, the energy, ability, and true patriotism of the people have enabled them to establish and encourage commerce and manufactures which have brought wealth and prosperity to Ulster whilst the other Provinces have been stationary or retrograde. There cannot be a better instance of the different spirit which animates the two communities than the history of the linen industry. Michael Davitt bitterly described it as "Not an Irish, but an Orange industry." And from his point of view, he was quite right; for it is practically confined to Ulster. In that Province it has during the nineteenth century developed so steadily that the annual export now exceeds £15,000,000 in value and more than 70,000 hands are employed in the mills. Not long ago, a Royal Commission was appointed to enquire whether it was not possible to grow flax in the south and west, and if so why it was not done. The Commission made careful enquiries, and reported that in both Munster and Connaught efforts had been made to establish the industry (notably by the late Lord Bandon, one of the much-abused landlord class, who had let land for the purpose at a nominal charge, obtained seed and brought experts from the north to instruct the people); that it had been proved that both soil and climate were quite as well adapted for it as in Ulster; but that after a few years the buyers refused any longer to purchase the flax as it was so carelessly and badly prepared that it was valueless; and so the industry had died out. In both south and west the people expressed their readiness to revive it if a large grant were made to them by the Government, but not otherwise. Then again we may take the growth of the cities. It seems hard now to realise that one reason why the people of Dublin opposed the Union was because they feared lest, when their city ceased to be the capital, Cork might grow into a great industrial centre and surpass it. Cork has remained stationary ever since; Belfast, then an insignificant country town, has become a city of 400,000 inhabitants, and the customs from it alone are more than double those from all the rest of Ireland put together. And what is true of Belfast is true also on a smaller scale of all the other towns north of the Boyne. This remarkable contrast between the progress of the north-east and the stagnation of the rest of the country is no new thing. It has been observed ever since the Union. So long ago as 1832 the Report of the Commission on the linen manufacture of Ireland contained the following words:-- "Political and religious animosities and dissensions, and increasing agitation first for one object and then for another have so destroyed confidence and shaken the bonds of society--undermined men's principles and estranged neighbour from neighbour, friend from friend, and class from class--that, in lieu of observing any common effort to ameliorate the condition of the people, we find every proposition for this object, emanate from which party it may, received with distrust by the other; maligned, perverted and destroyed, to gratify the political purposes of a faction.... The comparative prosperity enjoyed by that portion of Ireland where tranquillity ordinarily prevails, such as the Counties Down, Antrim, and Derry, testify the capabilities of Ireland to work out her own regeneration, when freed of the disturbing causes which have so long impeded her progress in civilization and improvement. We find there a population hardy, healthy and employed; capital fast flowing into the district; new sources of employment daily developing themselves; a people well disposed alike to the government and institutions of their country; and not distrustful and jealous of their superiors. Contrast the social condition of these people with such pictures as we have presented to us from other districts." This energetic, self-reliant and prosperous community now see before their eyes what the practical working of government by the League is. They see it generally in the condition of the country, and especially in the Dublin Convention of 1909, the narrow-minded administration of the Local Government Act wherever the power of the League prevails, and the insecurity for life and property in the west; they know also that a Home Rule Government must mean increased taxation (as the Nationalists themselves confess) which will probably--in fact, one may almost say must certainly, as no other source is available--be thrown on the Ulster manufactures; is it not therefore a matter of life and death to them to resist it to the uttermost? But as I have said, the great line of cleavage is religion. Here I know that I shall be accused of "Orange bigotry." But I am not afraid of the charge; first because I do not happen to be an Orangeman; and secondly because I regard bigotry as the outcome of ignorance and prejudice, and consider therefore that a calm examination of the evidence is the very antithesis of bigotry. In order to make this examination I desire in the first place to avoid the mistake that Grattan made in judging the probabilities of the future from the opinions of personal friends whom I like and respect, but who, as I know (and regret to think), possess no influence whatever. I consider that there are other data--such as works of authority, the action of the public bodies, statements by men in prominent positions, and articles in leading journals--from which it is safer to form an estimate. The Ulstermen are content that the country should be governed, as far as religion is concerned, on modern principles--that is to say, in much the same way that England, Australia and New Zealand are governed to-day. The Nationalists, whatever they may say in England or the Colonies, have never in Ireland from the commencement of the movement attempted to deny that their object is to see Ireland governed on principles which are totally different and which the Ulstermen detest. As long ago as 1886, the _Freeman's Journal_, the leading Nationalist organ, said:-- "We contend that the good government of Ireland by England is impossible ... the one people has not only accepted but retained with inviolable constancy the Christian faith; the other has not only rejected it, but has been for three centuries the leader of the great apostasy, and is at this day the principal obstacle to the conversion of the world." And as recently as December 1912, Professor Nolan of Maynooth, addressing the Roman Catholic students at the Belfast University, said:-- "Humanly speaking, we are on the eve of Home Rule. We shall have a free hand in the future. Let us use it well. This is a Catholic country, and if we do not govern it on Catholic lines, according to Catholic ideals, and to safe-guard Catholic interests, it will be all the worse for the country and all the worse for us. We have now a momentous opportunity of changing the whole course of Irish history." Then another of their papers, the _Rosary_, has said: "We have played the game of tolerance until the game is played out"; and has prophesied that under Home Rule the Church will become an irresistible engine before whom all opposition must go down. And whatever the educated laity may desire, no one who knows Ireland can doubt that it is the clerical faction that will be all-powerful. The leading ecclesiastics are trained at the Gregorian University at Rome; and one of the Professors at that institution, in a work published in 1901 with the special approval of Pope Leo XIII, enunciated the doctrine that it is the duty of a Christian State to put to death heretics who have been condemned by the Ecclesiastical Court. Of course no one supposes that such a thing will ever take place in Ireland; but what the Ulstermen object to is putting themselves under the rule of men who have been trained in such principles and believe them to be approved by an infallible authority. In 1904 some foreign merchants at Barcelona wished to build a church for themselves. Republican feeling is so strong in the municipality that permission was obtained without difficulty. But the bishop at once protested and appealed to the King. The King wrote back a sympathetic letter expressing his deep regret that he was unable to prevent this fresh attack on the Catholic faith. We are constantly being told that the tolerance and liberality shown by the majority in Quebec is sufficient of itself to prove how foolish are the apprehensions felt by the minority in Ireland. Well, I will quote from a journal which cannot be accused of Protestant bias, the _Irish Independent_, one of the leading organs of the Nationalist-clerical party in Ireland:-- "(From our own Correspondent.) "Montreal, Thursday. "In connection with the celebration of the anniversary of Wolfe's victory and death, which takes place in September, prominent members of the Anglican Church have inaugurated a movement for the erection of a Wolfe Memorial Chapel on the Plains of Abraham. The organisers of the movement hope ultimately to secure the transfer of the General's remains to the chapel for interment on the scene of his victory. "The population being largely French-Canadian Catholics, the Catholic Church organ of Quebec strongly protests against the erection of an Anglican chapel in the heart of a Catholic district." Now if this conduct on the part of the Roman Catholic authorities is quite right at Barcelona and Quebec, why is it "Orange bigotry" to suggest that the same people may act in the same way at Cork or Galway? Again, in 1910, a remarkable volume was published, written by Mrs. Hugh Fraser, the sister of the novelist, Marion Crawford, entitled "A Diplomat's Wife in Many Lands." The authoress was a very able woman, who had travelled much and mixed in cultured society wherever she had been; her book was highly reviewed by various English Magazines. She tells the story of a child of Jewish parents living at Rome in the days of Pope Pius IX, who was secretly baptized in infancy by a nurse, and at the age of seven was forcibly taken from his parents and placed in a Convent School. She explains that not only was this quite right, but that such a course is inevitable in every country in which the Church has power; and that the feelings of the heretic mother whose child is taken from her are a fair subject of ridicule on the part of good Catholics. Can Irish Protestants be accused of bigotry when they contend that these writers mean what they say? English Nonconformists argue that they ought to wait until the time comes and then either fight or leave the country; but the Irish Protestants reply that it is more sensible to take steps beforehand to ward off the danger. And whether they are right or wrong, the fact remains that those are their ideas, and that is their determination; and this is the situation which must be faced if Home Rule is forced upon the people of Ulster. By a striking coincidence, two meetings have recently been held on the same day--the 16th of May 1913--which form an apt illustration of the position adopted by the two parties. The first was a great demonstration of Unionists at Belfast, organised in order to make a further protest against the Bill and to perfect the organisation for opposing it by force, if the necessity arises; the second was a large meeting of the United Irish League at Mullingar. The Chairman, Mr. Ginnell, M.P. (who has gained prominence and popularity by his skill in arranging cattle-drives), said that the chief cause of the pressure last session was to get the Home Rule Bill through its first stage. It was still called a Home Rule Bill, though differing widely from what most of them always understood by Home Rule. Deeply though he regretted the Bill's defects and limitations, still he thought almost any Parliament in Ireland was worth accepting--first, because it was in some sense a recognition of the right to govern themselves; and secondly, because even a crippled Parliament would give them fresh leverage for complete freedom. No one could be silly enough to suppose that an intelligent Ireland, having any sort of a Parliament of its own, would be prevented by any promise given now by place-hunters, from using that Parliament for true national purposes. That no army which the Ulstermen can form will be able to stand against British troops supported by cavalry and artillery is evident; but it seems almost past belief that England should be ready to plunge the country into civil war; or that British troops should march out--with bands playing "Bloody England, we hate you still," or some other inspiring Nationalist air--to shoot down Ulstermen who will come to meet them waving the Union Jack and shouting "God save the King." And if they do--what then? Lord Wolseley, when Commander-in-Chief in Ireland in 1893, pointed out the probable effect on the British Army in a letter to the Duke of Cambridge:-- "If ever our troops are brought into collision with the loyalists of Ulster, and blood is shed, it will shake the whole foundations upon which our army rests to such an extent that I feel that our Army will never be the same again. Many officers will resign to join Ulster, and there will be such a host of retired officers in the Ulster ranks that men who would stand by the Government no matter what it did, will be worse than half-hearted in all they do. No army could stand such a strain upon it." And then England, having crushed her natural allies in Ulster, will hand over the Government of Ireland to a party whose avowed object is to break up the Empire and form a separate Republic. Dangers and difficulties arose even when the independent legislature of Ireland was in the hands of men who were loyal and patriotic in the noblest sense of the term, and when there were in every district a certain number of educated gentlemen of position who (as we have seen) were always ready to risk their lives and fortunes for the defence of the realm; what will happen when the loyal minority have been shot down, driven out of the country, or forced into bitter hostility to the Government who have betrayed and deserted them? As Lecky wrote years ago:-- "It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the danger that would arise if the vast moral legislative, and even administrative powers which every separate legislature must necessarily possess, were exercised in any near and vital part of the British Empire, by men who were disloyal to its interests. To place the government of a country by a voluntary and deliberate act in the hands of dishonest and disloyal men, is perhaps the greatest crime that a public man can commit: a crime which, in proportion to the strength and soundness of national morality, must consign those who are guilty of it to undying infamy." If English people are so blind that they cannot perceive this, foreigners, whose vision is clearer, have warned them. Bismarck said that England, by granting Home Rule to Ireland, would dig its own grave; and Admiral Mahan has recently written:-- "It is impossible for a military man or a statesman to look at the map and not perceive that the ambition of the Irish separatists, if realised, would be even more threatening to the national life of Great Britain than the secession of the South was to the American Union. "The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament against the assertion of which the American Colonists revolted and which to-day would be found intolerable in Canada and Australia cannot be yielded in the case of an island, where independent action might very well be attended with fatal consequences to its partner. The instrument for such action, in the shape of an independent Parliament, could not be safely trusted even to avowed friends." So then, having reviewed the evidence as calmly and dispassionately as I can, I answer the two questions which I propounded at the outset of the enquiry--That the real objects of the Nationalists are the total separation of Ireland from England and the establishment of an Independent Republic; and that the men of Ulster in resisting them to the uttermost are not merely justified on the ground of self-preservation, but are in reality fighting for the cause of the Empire. NOTE. The following Report of the Annual Pilgrimage in memory of Wolfe Tone, which took place on the 22nd of June last, and the article in the _Leinster Leader_ (a prominent Nationalist journal) will show how closely the Nationalists of to-day follow in the footsteps of Wolfe Tone. THE MEMORY OF WOLFE TONE. ANNUAL PILGRIMAGE TO BODENSTOWN. (_From our Reporter_.) On Sunday last the annual pilgrimage to the grave of Theobald Wolfe Tone took place to Bodenstown churchyard. This year the numbers who attended exceeded those of last year, about a thousand coming from Dublin and another contingent from Tullamore, Clare, and Athlone. The procession formed outside Sallins station was a most imposing one, being made up of St. James' Brass Band and the Lorcan O'Toole Pipers' Band and the Athlone Pipers' Band, the National Boy Scouts, the Daughters of Erin, and members of the Wolfe Tone Memorial Clubs. At the graveside demonstration, Mr. Thos. J. Clarke presided and said it was a gratifying thing that numbers of their fellow-countrymen were to-day swinging back to the old fighting line and taking pride in the old Fenian principles. He introduced Mr. P.H. Pearse, B.A. Mr. Pearse then came forward and delivered an eloquent and impressive oration, first speaking in Irish. Speaking in English, he said they had come to the holiest place in Ireland, holier to them than that sacred spot where Patrick sleeps in Down. Patrick brought them life, but Wolfe Tone died for them. Though many had testified in death to the truth of Ireland's claim to Nationhood, Wolfe Tone was the greatest of all that had made that testimony; he was the greatest of Ireland's dead. They stood in the holiest place in Ireland, for what spot of the Nation's soil could be holier than the spot in which the greatest of her dead lay buried. He found it difficult to speak in that place, and he knew they all partook of his emotion. There were no strangers there for they were all in a sense own brothers to Tone (hear, hear). They shared his faith, his hope still unrealised and his great love. They had come there that day not merely to salute this noble dust and to pay their homage to the noble spirit of Tone, but to renew their adhesion to the faith of Tone and to express their full acceptance of the gospel of which Tone had given such a clear definition. That gospel had been taught before him by English-speaking men, uttered half-articulately by Shan O'Neill, expressed in some passionate metaphor by Geoffrey Keating, and hinted at by Swift in some bitter jibe, but it was stated definitely and emphatically by Wolfe Tone and it did not need to be ever again stated anew for any new generation. Tone was great in mind, but he was still greater in spirit. He had the clear vision of the prophet; he saw things as they were and saw things as they would be. They owed more to this dead man than they should be ever able to repay him by making pilgrimages to his grave or building the stateliest monuments in the streets of his city. They owed it to him that there was such a thing as Irish Nationalism; to his memory and the memory of '98 they owed it that there was any manhood left in Ireland (hear, hear). The soul of Wolfe Tone was like a burning flame, a flame so pure, so ardent, so generous, that to come into communion with it was as a new optimism and regeneration. Let them try in some way to get into contact with the spirit of Tone and possess themselves of its ardour. If they could do that it would be a good thing for them and their country, because they would carry away with them a new life from that place of death and there would be a new resurrection of patriotic grace in their souls (hear, hear). Let them think of Tone; think of his boyhood and young manhood in Dublin and in Kildare; think of his adventurous spirit and plans, think of his glorious failure at the bar, and his healthy contempt for what he called a foolish wig and gown, think how the call of Ireland came to him; think how he obeyed that call; think how he put virility into the Catholic movement; think how this heretic toiled to make freemen of Catholic helots (applause). Think how he grew to love the real and historic Irish nation, and then there came to him that clear conception that there must be in Ireland not three nations but one; that Protestant and Dissenter must close in amity with Catholic, and Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter must unite to achieve freedom for all (applause). Let them consider the sacrifices Tone had made; he had to leave so much. Never was there a man who was so richly endowed as he was, he had so much love in his warm heart. He (speaker) would rather have known Tone than any other man of whom he ever read or heard. He never read of any one man who had more in him of the heroic stuff than Tone had; how gaily and gallantly he had set about the doing of a mighty thing. He (speaker) had always loved the very name of Thomas Russell because Tone so loved him. To be Tone's friend! What a privilege! for Tone had for his friends an immense love, an immense charity. He had such love for his wife and children! But such was the destiny of the heroes of their nation; they had to stifle in their hearts all that love and that sweet music and to follow only the faint voice that called them to the battlefield or to the harder death at the foot of the gibbet. Tone heard that voice and obeyed it and from his grave to-day he was calling on them and they were there to answer his voice; and they pledged themselves to carry out his programme to abolish the connection with England, the never-failing source of political evils and to establish the independence of their country, to abolish the memory of past dissensions, and to replace for the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, the common name of Irishman (applause). In that programme was to be found the whole philosophy of Irish Nationality; that programme included the philosophy of the Gaelic League and of later prophets, and it was to that programme they pledged their adhesion; they pledged it now at the graveside of Tone; they pledged themselves to follow in the steps of Tone, never to rest by day or night until this be accomplished, until Ireland be free (applause); fighting on, not in despondency, but in great joy as Tone fought; prizing it above all privileges, and hoping for the victory in their own day. And if it should be granted to them in this generation to complete the work that Tone's generation left unaccomplished! But if that was not their destiny, they should fight on still, hoping still, self-sacrificing still, knowing as they must know that causes like this did not lose for ever, and that men like Tone did not die in vain (applause). The address having concluded, wreaths were placed on the grave by the National Boy Scouts and the Inghanite Na h-Eireann. During the afternoon an aeridheacht was held in an adjoining field at which music, songs and recitations were contributed, and a thoroughly enjoyable Irish-Ireland evening was spent. AT THE GRAVE OF WOLFE TONE. The lifework of Theobald Wolfe Tone, for the subversion of English Government in Ireland, and the supreme sacrifice he made in the mighty effort to erect in its stead an independent Ireland free from all foreign denomination and control, was fittingly commemorated on Sunday last, when the annual pilgrimage took place to Bodenstown Churchyard, where all that is mortal of the great patriot lie buried. The pilgrimage this year was worthy of the cause and the man, and afforded some object lessons in what might be accomplished by a cultivation of those principles of discipline and devotion to duty, in the pursuit of a glorious ideal, which Tone taught and adhered to throughout his adventurous and brilliant career. The well-ordered procession, the ready obedience to the commands of the marshals, the intense earnestness of the multitude, and the display made by the youths--the national boy scouts--their military bearing, and the bands and banners which interspersed the procession as it marched from Sallins to Bodenstown was a spectacle which pleased the eye and stirred the emotions. Everything in connection with the pilgrimage was carried out with a close attention to detail, and military-like precision which must have been very acceptable to the great patriot in whose honour it was organised, were he but permitted to gaze from the great Unknown upon this practical demonstration of the perpetuation of the spirit which animated him and his time, in the struggle against English misrule, and the love and veneration in which he is still held, after the lapse of the century and more that has passed since he made the final sacrifice of his life in the cause of freedom. Tone done to death did not die in vain. The truth of this was evident in the character of the pilgrimage on Sunday last, when all that is best and purest in patriotism in the land assembled at his graveside, to renew fealty to the aims and ideals for which he suffered and died, and to hear the gospel of Irish nationality preached and expounded as he knew and inculcated it in his day. A fusion of forces, and the cultivation of a spirit and bond of brotherhood and friendship amongst Irishmen in the common cause, were his methods to attain the great ideal of a separate and distinct nationality, for then, as to-day, the chief obstacle to freedom and nationhood was not so much English domination in itself, as want of cohesion, faction, and the disruption caused by alien traditions and teachings. This was the prevailing spirit of Sunday's commemoration, and as the great mass of people filed past in orderly array and knelt, prayed, and laid wreaths on the lonely grave, the solemnity and impressiveness of the occasion was intensified. In the suppressed murmurs, and silent gaze on the tomb of the mighty dead, one could recognise the eagerness and the hope for another Tone to arise to complete the work which he promoted, and vindicate the purity of the motives which moved men like the leaders of '98 to do and dare for all, and to "substitute the common name of Irishman for Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenter." The promoters, too, were fortunate in their choice of orator for the occasion. Mr. P.H. Pearse did full justice to the occasion, and in language, beautiful and impressive, pictured the man and his movements and the lessons to be drawn by us to-day from the lifework of leaders in thought and action like Tone. Close and consistent adhesion to principles of patriotism and a readiness of self-sacrifice in the pursuit of those principles, were his distinguishing characteristics all through life, and if we in our time would emulate the example of Tone and his times, we must also be ready when the call came to meet any demand made upon us for the promotion of our national welfare. The orator of the day rightly, in our opinion, described that hallowed spot in Bodenstown as one of the holiest places in Ireland to-day, from the nationalist standpoint, holding as it does the ashes of the man who, without friends, money or influence to help him, and by sheer force of character, intensity of purpose and earnestness, prevailed upon the greatest emperor-general the world has ever seen Napoleon Bonaparte, to make a descent on Ireland, in order to aid our starved, tortured, and persecuted people to shake off the shackles that kept them in slavery, and elevate Ireland once more to the dignity of full, free, and untrammelled nationhood. We are all familiar with the events following this great effort of Tone's, and the dark chapters that closed a glorious career. All that is mortal of Tone is in the keeping of Kildare, and it is a trust that we feel sure is not alone felt to be a high honour, but which cannot fail to keep the cultivation of a high standard of nationality before the people in whose midst repose the remains of one of Ireland's greatest sons. Ireland, from the centre to the sea, was represented in Sunday's great gathering to commemorate the achievements of Wolfe Tone, and the occasion was honoured first by the large and representative character of the throng, secondly by the decorum observed all through the day's proceedings, and thirdly, by the regularity and precision which attended the entire arrangements. There was just one other feature which must have been very gratifying to those identified with the organisation of the pilgrimage, namely: the large proportion of ladies and young people, coming long distances, who made up the gathering. And they were by no means the least enthusiastic of the throng. This enthusiasm amongst our young people is one of the most encouraging and promising signs of the times, serving as it does to demonstrate the undying spirit of Irish nationality, and the perpetuation of those principles to which Tone devoted his time, talents, and eventually made the supreme sacrifice of his life in having inculcated amongst his people. It is a glorious legacy, and one that has ever been cherished with veneration for the men who left it. He died a martyr to the cause he espoused, but his memory and the cause live. The living blaze he and his co-workers, in the cause of Irish freedom, kindled has never been completely stamped out, and it still smoulders, and has occasionally burst into flame only to be temporarily extinguished in the blood and tears of our bravest and best who never forgot the teachings of Tone. And now, when the sky is bright once more, and every circumstance portends the dawn of a new era, full of hope and promise for the ultimate realisation of those ideals for which thousands of our race have sacrificed their lives, the spark of nationality which, even since Tone's death, has repeatedly leaped into flame, still glows fitfully to remind us that come what may it remains undying and unquenchable, a beacon to light us on the path to freedom should disappointment and dashed hopes again darken the outlook. INDEX Abjuration, oath of, 51. Absentees, 65, 138, 139. Acton, Lord, 37. Adrian, Pope, 13. Agrarian outrages, 152, 196-202, 210-215. Agriculture, Department of, 161, 163. Alexander, Pope, 14. Alfred the Great, 9. American War of Independence, 63, 72, 73, 83. Anglican Church in Ireland, 27, 28, 60, 143, 144, 236. Anne, Queen, 63. Arkins, P., 210, 211. Arklow, battle of, 109. Armagh, Bishop of, 7. Ashbourne Act, 159. Ashtown, Lord, 203, 204. Asquith, Rt. Hon. H.H., 129, 207. Athenry founded by Normans, 17. Balfour, Rt. Hon. Arthur J., 156, 160, 164. Balfour, Rt. Hon. Gerald, 168. Baltimore, Lord, 38. Bandon, Lord, 238. Bannatyne, Mr., 214. Barcelona, Church at, 243, 244. Belfast, growth of, 239; meeting at, 245; persons employed by Corporation of, 174, 175; University, 176, 193, 205. Berkeley, Bishop, 120. Biggar, J.G., 145. Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine, Chief Secretary, 160, 167, 173, 174, 197, 198, 200-205, 211, 216, 236. Bismarck, Prince, 248. Blake, W., 198. "Board of Erin," 184. Boers, Nationalist sympathy with, 170. Borromeo, San Carlo, 54. Bossuet, 54. Bounties granted by Irish Parliament, 80. Boy Scouts, 193. Boycotting, 86, 148, 149, 153. Boyne, battle of the, 48. Brady, J., 145, 146. Brian Boroo, 8, 9, 19. Bright, John, 154, 159. Brook, 57. Browne estate, 168. Bruce, Edward, invasion by, 19, 26, 91. Bruce, King Robert, 17, 19, 26. Bryce, Rt. Hon. James, Chief Secretary, 194, 195, 197. Bulls, Papal, 13-15. Burke, Mr., Under Secretary, murder of, 146, 153. Busby, Mr., 157. Butt, Isaac, advocates Home Rule, 145. Carey, James, 145. Carlow, rebellion in, 109. "Carrion Crows," 202. Castlebar, capture of by the French, 112. Castledawson outrage, 216, 217. Castlereagh, Lord, 126, 128. Catholic University Medical School, 176. Cattle driving, 167, 195-202. Cavan, raid by septs of, 7. Cavendish, murder of Lord F., 146, 153. Celts, 5-14, 20, 23, 24, 31. Charlemont, Lord, 93. Charles I, 40-42. Charles II, 44. Chicago Convention, 155. Childers, Erskine, 222. Church, Celtic. See Celts of Ireland. See Anglican Church. Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston, 209. Clan-na-gael, 147, 185. Clare, state of, in 1912, 210-214. Clare, Lord, 81, 84, 85, 111. Clerkenwell explosion, 143. Clontarf, battle of, 9. "Coalition Ministry," 208. "Coigne and livery," 11. College of Surgeons, Dublin, 176. Condon, O'Meagher, 96, 184, 185. Confiscations, 30, 42, 43, 57, 150. Congested Districts Board, 164-168. Connaught, Celtic raids into, 7; lands in, given to rebels, 42; rebellion in, 112. Conolly, Mr., 215. Convention in Dublin in 1909, 206, 207, 240. Cooke, Mr., Under Secretary, 111. Co-operative Credit Banks, 162, 163. Co-operative Farming Societies, 161-163. Cork, Medical School at, 176; persons employed by County Council of, 175. Corn Laws, repeal of the, 136. Cornwallis, Lord, 123, 129. County Councils, 168-178, 191, 193. Covenant, Ulster. See Ulster Covenant. Cowper Commission, 149. Crewe, Lord, 201. Crimes Act of 1887, 157, 158, 194. Crimes Prevention Act, 153, 157. Croke, Archbishop, 144, 156. Cromwell and Cromwellians, 38, 42, 44, 57, 66, 67, 106. Crosbie, Mr., 216. Curley, D., 145, 146. _Daily News_, 200. Daly, J., 195. Danes, 8, 9, 13. Davies, Sir, J., 5. Davitt, Michael, 145, 167, 238. Declaratory Act of George I, 74, 229. Defenders, 87. Department of Agriculture, 161, 163. Derry, siege of, 47. Desmond rebellion, 34. Devlin, J., 96, 146, 182. Devoy, J., 94, 146. Dicey, Professor A.V., 228. Dillon, John, 97, 156, 184, 234. Dillon estate, 165. Disestablishment of the Irish Church, 143, 144, 236. Dispensary doctors, appointment of, 176, 177. District Councils, 161, 168, 178. Down, Celtic raid into, 7. Dublin, founded by Danes, 8, 9; Bishopric of, 8, 9; Henry II at, 16; Simnel crowned at, 22; rebellion in neighbourhood of, 104, 109; Convention at, in 1909, 206, 207, 240. Dudley, Lord, 166. "Dynamite Party," 147. Edward III, 20. Edward VI, 29, 31. Eighty Club, 162. Elizabeth, Queen, 4, 27, 28, 33, 48, 91. Emancipation, Roman Catholic, 134. Emigration, 139, 140. Emmett, R., 95, 132, 182. Endowment of R.C. Church proposed, 134. Ersefied Normans, 18, 20. Esmonde, Dr., 105. Exchequers, amalgamation of, 135. "Fair rents," 150. Famine. See Potato famine. Fenianism, 142, 144, 145, 147. Feudal system, 14, 26. Firbolgs, 5. FitzGerald rebellion, 25, 27, 31. FitzGibbon, J., 167, 171. Fitzpatrick, case of Mrs., 210, 211. Fiudir, 11. Flax. See Linen. "Flight of the Earls," 36. Ford, Patrick, 146, 152, 154, 155. Forster, Rt. Hon. W.E., Chief Secretary, 148. Foster, Speaker, 126. France, persecution in, 30, 37, 38, 45-48; war with, 72, 73; religious thought in, 76; revolution in, 87, 101, 236; invasions by, 91, 92, 111, 112. Franklin, Benjamin, 73. Fraser, Mrs. Hugh, 244. _Freeman's Journal_, 170, 241. _Frontier Sentinel_, 2. Gaelic League, 186-193. Galway, founded by Normans, 17; Medical School at, 176; persons employed by County Council of, 175; state of, in 1912, 215. Games, English, forbidden, 193. Gaughran, Bishop, 4. Gavelkind, 11, 12. General Council of County Councils, 172, 173, 186. George III, 68. Germany, persecution in, 37, 38; Nationalist hopes of aid from, 93, 98, 99. Ginnell, L., 196, 245. Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W.E., 6, 95, 143, 148, 150, 152-155, 179. Grand juries, 178. Grattan, 74-77, 93, 100, 120, 126. "Grievances from Ireland," 203. Gwynn, Stephen, 174. Habeus Corpus, suppression of, 69. Henry II, 14, 15, 20, 36. Henry VII, 22. Henry VIII, 24, 26, 28, 29. Hibernians, Ancient Order of, 184, 216. Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. C.E., 208. Hobson, B., 98. Holland, intended invasion from, 101, 102. Home Rule, 145, 155. Home Rule Bill, of 1886, 154; of 1893, 179, 221; of 1912, 208, 218-231, 245. Huguenots, 30, 45, 47, 55. Hyde, Dr. Douglas, 97. Incumbered Estates Act, 138, 150. Independence of Ireland real object of Nationalists, 173,181, 182, 185, 186, 241, 242, 246-248. And see Republic. Ingram, Dr. Dunbar on the Union, 118-129. Insurance Act, 1911, 185. "Invincibles," the, 147. Irish Agricultural Organization Society, 161, 162. Irish brigade in France, 92. _Irish Freedom_, 94. _Irish Independent_, 243. Irish language, 186-193. _Irish Review_, 188. Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, 145, 147. "Irish services," 227. Jacobinism, 87, 89, 101, 236. James I, 38, 40. James II, 43, 44, 47, 49-51. Jews, persecution of the, 58. Kabyles, 55. Kenny, Mr. Justice, 197. Kettle, A.J., 183. Kettle, T.M., 97. Kickham, 95. Kildare, church burnt at, 7; rebellion in, 105. Kilkenny, founded by Normans, 17; statutes of, 20; rebellion in, 109. Killala, French landing at, 111. Killaloe, R.C. Bishop of, 212-214. Kiltimagh case, 177. King, title of, taken by Henry VIII, 27. Kings, Celtic, of Ireland, 10. King's County, plantation of, 29, 30; persons employed by County Council of, 175. Labourer's Cottages Act, 160, 161. Lalor, J.F., 141, 142, 153, 172. Land Acts from 1870 to 1887, 140, 150-152, 159. Land Court, 150, 197. Land League, 147, 148, 152, 181, 182. Land Purchase Acts, 158, 159. Land tenure, tribal, 6; primogeniture, 11, 12; gavelkind, 11, 12; in the 18th century, 65, 66. Laws of England, attempted introduction of, 18; made binding in Ireland, 22. Lecky, Dr. W.E.H., 41, 44, 110, 117, 130, 247. _Leinster Leader_, 95, 249. Leitrim, raid by septs of, 7. Leo XIII, Pope, 242. Light Railways Act, 160. Limerick, founded by Danes, 8; Scotch invasion of, 19; church windows broken at, 216. Linen industry, 62, 63, 238, 239. Local Government Act, 1898, 168-178, 180, 240. Loise, persecution in the, 28. Louis XIV, 43, 45-48, 53. Louis XVI, 101, 102. MacAlpine, Kennett, 9. McBride, Major, 98, 99. MacDonnell, Lord, 166. McKenna, Thomas, 79, 126. McNicholas, Rev. J.T., 85. MacSeamus, T., 188. Magdeburg, sacking of, 42. Magistrates, appointment of, 179, 180. Magnus, Sir P., 205. Mahan, Admiral, 248. "Manchester Martyrs," 96-98, 144, 145, 192. Maori customary claims, 39. Marriage, law of R.C. Church as to, 85. Maryborough, 30. Maryland, 38. Mayo County Council, 170. Maunsell, R., 214. Maynooth, foundation of, 88, 204. Metropolitan Police Act, 157. "Middlemen," 65. _Midland Tribune_, 234. Mitchell, J., 95, 97, 142. "Molly Maguires," 184. Morley, Rt. Hon. John, Chief Secretary, 165, 179. Mountcashel, Lord, 53. Munster, raid by men of, 7. Murphy, Father Michael, 109. Mutiny Act, 74. Nantes, revocation of Edict of, 30, 38, 45-48. Napoleon, 91. "Nation," meaning of word, 222. National University, 191, 192, 205, 206. Nationalists, real objects of, 3, 93-99, 248. And see Independence; Republic. Netherlands, persecution in the, 4, 33, 34. New Zealand, 39, 157, 218-220, 241. Nolan, Professor, 242. "No Rent" proclamation, 153, 156. Normans, character of, 17; adoption of Celtic customs by, 18; rebellions by, 23-25, 33, 34, 36. Oakboys, 69. O'Brien, Smith, 96, 140. O'Brien, William, 95. O'Connell, Daniel, misstatements by, as to the Union, 116; leads agitation for emancipation, 134; and for repeal, 140. O'Connor, T.P., 146. O'Donnell, Bishop, 165. O'Hara, Rev. D., 165. O'Mahony, Mr., 41. O'Mara, Mrs., 213. O'Neill, Shan, 33, 34, 39. Orange Society, foundation of, 90, 91. Outrages, Agrarian. See Agrarian outrages. Pale, the English, 20-22, 24, 25, 31. Parliament, Irish, 21-24, 35, 63-65, 69-71; becomes independent, 74, 77-79; disqualification of votes for, abolished, 84; religious test for, not abolished, 84, 87; proposed reform of, 87, 88; criticized, 130, 131. See also Regency question. Parnell, C.S., 95, 96, 145, 156, 232. Parnell Commission, 147. Paul III, Pope, 26. Peel, Sir Robert, 122, 205. "Peep of Day Boys," 87, 90. Penal Laws, the, 49-58, 63, 70, 72, 79, 82, 83. Persecution, 4, 23, 32, 37, 38, 40, 43, 45-48, 52-54, 242. Philip and Mary, 29, 39. Philip II of Spain, 28, 32, 33, 91. Philipstown, 30. "Physical Force Party," the, 147. Pitt, William, commercial treaty proposed by, 78; views of, on the Union, 122. Pius V, Pope, 37. "Plan of Campaign," the, 155. "Plantations," 30, 31, 33, 38. Plowden, F., 126. Plunket, Lord, 132. Plunkett, Rt. Hon. Sir Horace, 161. Portugal, persecution in, 37, 48, 53. Potato famine, 136, 137, 139. Poyning's Act, 22, 74, 229. Pretender, the, 50, 51. Primogeniture, 11, 12. Prosperous, attack on the, 105. "Protestant ascendancy," 59, 101. Protestant Home Rulers, 233, 234. Puritans, 40, 42. Queen's County, plantation of, 29, 30. Queen's University, 205. Quakers, emigration aided by, 139. Raffeisen system, 162. Rebellion of 1641, 40-42. Rebellions of 1715 and 1745, 52. Rebellion of 1798, rise of, in Ulster, 86, 102; becomes religious, 103, 105; in Leinster, 104, 105; in Wexford, 105-108, 110; in Kilkenny, Carlow and Wicklow, 109; in Connaught, 112; amnesty after, 109; effects of, 114. Rebellion of 1805, 132. Redmond, John, 95, 146, 162, 169, 171, 174, 175, 199, 201, 207-209, 215. Redmond, William, 107, 108. Reformation, 26-28. Regency question, 80-82. Registration of Titles Act, 1891, 160. Rent, agitation against, 148, 153, 154. Repeal Association, statement by, as to Rebellion, 108. "Reserved Services," 227. Republic, rebels of 1798 sought to establish, 93; object of Nationalists, 94-99, 147, 248. And see Independence. Richard II, 20. Richey, Professor, 12, 13, 21, 24. _Rosary, The_, 242. Rosen, Conrade de, 47. Ross, Mr. Justice, 168, 197. Rossa, O'Donovan, 146. Royal University, 205. Russell, Rt. Hon. T.W., 163. Saffron dress, 19, 192. St. Vincent, Cape, 102. Savoy, persecution in, 37, 45, 48, 54. Salisbury, Lord, 154. Scholarships, 191, 192. Scotland, Norman kingdom of, 17; invasion of Ireland from, 19, 33; Union of, with England, 63, 119, 120. Scott, Sir Walter, 237. Scullabogue barn, massacre at, 110. Scully, Mr., 204. Settlement, Act of, 43-45. Separation. See Independence; Republic. Sevigné, Madame de, 46, 47. Simnel, Lambert, 22, 82. Sinn Fein, 185, 186. Slave trade, 58. Smith, Adam, 120. Societies, secret, 68, 69, 181. Spain, 27, 28, 30, 32, 34, 37, 40, 48, 53, 55, 72, 76, 101. Spenser, Edmund, 35. "Steelboys," 69. Sullivan, A.M., 136, 137, 140. Swayne, Captain, 105. Sweetman, J., 186. Tithes, 68, 69, 134, 135. Tone, Wolfe, 89, 91-97, 101, 102, 111, 112, 121, 182, 193, 218, 249-258. Trade, restrictions on Irish, 63, 64; abolition of, 74, Tribal tenure of land, 6. Trinity College, Dublin, 70, 176. Tyrconnell, flight of Earl of, 36. Tyrone, raid by men of, 7. Tyrone, flight of Earl of, 36. Tyrrell, Father, 5. Ulster Covenant, 1, 235. Ulster, Scotch invasion of, 19, 33; plantation of, 39; rebellion of 1641 in, 41; volunteer movement in, 72, 102, 237; rebellion of 1798 in, 86, 102. Union, suggested in time of Queen Anne, 63; necessity of, seen by Pitt, 78; became probable in 1797, 100; rebellion made inevitable, 115; mis-statements as to, 116; feelings of people as to, 117, 118; previous efforts towards, 119; really caused by Parliament becoming independent, 120-123; proposed, 123; discussed, 124; approved by R.C. Church, 125; carried, 126; charges of bribery concerning, 127-129; cannot now be reversed, 130; prosperity of Ireland after, 133. United Irish League, 163, 166, 167, 171, 180-183, 203, 235, 245. United Irish Society, 87, 88, 91. Universities. See Trinity College, Dublin; Queen's University; Royal University; Belfast University; National University. University College, Cork, 205; Galway, 205. Victoria, Queen, 39. Vinegar Hill, massacre at, 105-107. Volunteer movement, 72, 102, 237. Waitangi, Treaty of, 39. Waldenses, persecution of, 43, 53. Walsh, T., 195. Waterford, founded by Danes, 8; Henry II lands at, 16. Waterford Corporation and Mr. Scully, 204. Westmeath, persons employed by County Council of, 175. Wexford, raid by men of, 7; landing of Spaniards at, 34; rebellion in, 105-107, 110; monuments of rebels in, 108. White, P., 195. Whiteboys, 69. William III, 47. Wolfe, memorial to General, 243, 244. Wolseley, letter from Lord, 246. Wright, Mr. Justice, 182. Wyndham Act, 159. _Sherratt and Hughes, Printers, London and Manchester._ 
20016	----	* * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this | | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this | | document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * On and after the appointed day there shall be in Ireland an Irish Parliament, consisting of his Majesty the King and two Houses, namely, the Irish Senate and the Irish House of Commons. Notwithstanding the establishment of the Irish Parliament, or anything contained in this Act, the supreme power and authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall remain unaffected and undiminished over all persons, matters, and things within his Majesty's dominions. THE HOME RULE BILL (1912). (THE GOVERNING CLAUSE.) "If we conciliate Ireland, we can do nothing amiss; if we do not we can do nothing well." SYDNEY SMITH. "The cry of disaffection will not, in the end, prevail against the principle of liberty." GRATTAN. HOME RULE BY HAROLD SPENDER WITH A PREFACE BY THE RT. HON. SIR EDWARD GREY, BART., M.P., SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS _SECOND EDITION_ _With Text of Home Rule Bill (1912)_ HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO "There can be no nobler spectacle than that which we think is now dawning upon us, the spectacle of a nation deliberately set on the removal of injustice, deliberately determined to break with whatever remains still existing of an evil tradition, and determined in that way at once to pay a debt of justice and to consult, by a bold, wise and good act, its own interests and its own honour." GLADSTONE (1893). PREFACE It must surely be clear to-day to many of those who opposed the Home Rule Bill of 1893 that there is a problem of which the solution is now more urgent than ever. We who were Gladstonian Home Rulers approached the problem originally from the Irish side: those who did not then approach it from that side refused to admit the existence of any problem at all. Since that time circumstances have made it necessary to approach the problem from the British as well as from the Irish side. The British Parliament has hitherto been regarded as a model to be imitated; if it continues to attempt the impossible task of transacting in detail both local and Imperial business, it will end as an example to be avoided. In the last fifty years the amount of work demanded for particular portions of the United Kingdom, for the United Kingdom as a whole, or for the Empire has increased enormously; in all three categories the work is still increasing and will increase: one Parliament cannot do it all. This is one new aspect of the Home Rule question. Mr. Spender states the case with force and sympathy from the Irish point of view, with which none of us, who were convinced supporters of Home Rule twenty years ago can ever lose sympathy, and with which the younger generation should make itself acquainted. He makes also a very valuable and opportune review of recent changes in the situation, and considers how Home Rule should be adapted to British and Imperial needs, and should serve them. The whole book is the result of his own reflection, observation and research; the conclusions to which he comes for the settlement of the financial and other details of Home Rule ought to receive most careful consideration as valuable contributions to the discussion of the subject. But, of course, they must not be assumed necessarily to be mine or to be those that will be adopted in the Government Bill. But I agree with him entirely that Home Rule is necessary to heal bitterness in Ireland, and to effect that reconciliation without which there cannot be real union: that it is necessary to relieve Parliament at Westminster and to set it free for work that concerns the United Kingdom as a whole or the Empire: in other words, that there is a problem to be solved, and that the first step in solving it must be Irish Home Rule in a form that opens the way for Federal Home Rule. In the autumn of 1910 a considerable part, at any rate, of the Conservative Party seemed ready to admit the need for some solution: to-day they have apparently drifted back to the barren position of opposing all proposals for Home Rule: if they were to render this solution impossible, they would but make the problem more urgent. EDWARD GREY. _February, 1912._ CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE HOME RULE CASE 3 The Case that Does Not Change: (i.) The Sea. (ii.) The Race. (iii.) The Creed. CHAPTER II. THE HOME RULE CASE 19 The Case that Has Changed and is Now Stronger: (i.) The Councils and (ii.) The Land. CHAPTER III. THE HOME RULE CASE 35 The Case that Has Changed--(_continued_): (i.) The Congested Districts. (ii.) The Board of Agriculture. (iii.) Old-Age Pensions. (iv.) The Universities. CHAPTER IV. THE HOME RULE PLAN 47 The Nineteenth Century Bills and the Bill of 1912. CHAPTER V. HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES 63 Ulster. CHAPTER VI. HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES 77 Rome Rule _or_ Home Rule? CHAPTER VII. HOME RULE IN HISTORY 89 Five Centuries of Limited Home Rule (1265-1780). CHAPTER VIII. HOME RULE IN HISTORY 99 Grattan's Parliament. CHAPTER IX. HOME RULE IN THE WORLD 113 The Case from Analogy. CHAPTER X. HOME RULE FINANCE 125 APPENDICES. A. The Home Rule Bill of 1912 143 B. The Shrinkage of Ireland 160 C. The Act of Union 163 D. The Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893 167 E. The Irish Board of Agriculture 184 F. The Reduction in Irish Pauperism 186 G. The Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881 187 H. The Congested Districts Board 188 J. Irish Canals and Railways 190 K. Home Rule Parliaments in the British Empire 191 THE HOME RULE CASE THE CASE THAT DOES NOT CHANGE i.--THE SEA. ii.--THE RACE. iii.--THE CREED. "Ireland hears the ocean protesting against Separation, but she hears the sea likewise protesting against Union. She follows her physical destination and obeys the dispensations of Providence." GRATTAN (First speech against the Union 15th January, 1800). CHAPTER I. THE HOME RULE CASE Very nearly a generation of time has elapsed since, in 1886, Mr. Gladstone expounded in the British House of Commons his first Bill for restoring to Ireland a Home Rule Parliament. Nearly twenty years have passed since that same great man, indomitably defying age and infirmities in the pursuit of his great ideal, passed the second Home Rule Bill (1893) through the British House of Commons. That Bill stands to-day unshaken in regard to all its vital clauses. Some of us still hold the faith that that Bill would, if it had become law in 1893, have saved Ireland from many years of wastage, and would have built up, to face our enemies in the gate, a stronger and stouter fabric of Empire. The Bill of 1893 only survived the perilous tempests of the House of Commons[1] to fall a victim to the House of Lords.[2] Nearly twenty years have elapsed since that day, and now the successors of Mr. Gladstone, the Progressives of the United Kingdom, Liberals, Labour Members and Nationalists, approach the same task with the Bill of 1912.[3] Some of them are veterans of the former strife. They can turn, like the present writer, to the thumbed diaries of that great combat,[4] and can recall the great scenes of that prolonged Parliamentary agony with a sense of treading again some well-worn road. Others are new to the issue, and can only hear, like "horns of Elf-land faintly blowing," some faint echo from the dawn of consciousness. But young or old, we must again set forth on our travels, and this time-- "It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles." It will be the memory of the "Great Achilles" that will sustain us. For this task comes to Liberals as a sacred trust from Mr. Gladstone. It is from him that they have learnt that race-hatred is poison, and that the only true union between nations is--in a phrase that has outlived the silly laughter of the shallow--the "Union of Hearts."[5] It is Mr. Gladstone's work that they design to accomplish. It is the memory of his passionate and sustained devotion through the last twenty years of that glorious life that has thrown a halo round this cause, and still gilds it with a "heavenly alchemy." But, before we "smite the sounding furrows," our first duty is to survey once more the seas over which we shall have to voyage. We have to consider again both the old and the new "case for Home Rule"--not merely the case of 1886 or 1893, but the still stronger case of 1912. For the world never stands still, and in every generation every great human problem presents different aspects, and shows new lights and shadows. Every great human question is like a great mountain which on a second or third visit reveals new and unsuspected depths and heights, new valleys and new peaks, slopes which new avalanches have furrowed, and glaciers which have receded or advanced. Not that the real, great, main outline ever changes. As with the mountains, so with the great human problems; there are always certain great features which remain permanent. THE SEA There are, for instance, in the Irish case the sixty-five miles of sea which, since the earliest dawn of human memory, have divided Ireland from Great Britain. A fact absurdly simple and obvious, but the greatest feature of all in this mighty problem of human government! "The sea forbids Union, and the Channel forbids Separation." There is no change in that great physical condition. Those sixty-five miles of sea have neither increased nor diminished since 1893. That sea is still too broad for "Union"--in the Parliamentary sense of that word--and too narrow for Separation. To anyone standing on the deck of one of those swift steamships which now cross to Ireland from so many points on the British coast, there must, if he has any imagination, come some vision of the vast impediment which this sea has placed in the way of direct control by England over Ireland's domestic affairs. Looking back down the vista of history, he must see a succession of fleets delayed by contrary winds, of sea-sick kings and storm-battered convoys, of conquest thwarted by the caprice of ocean, of peace messengers and high administrators brought to anchor in the midst of their proud schemes. The same causes still operate. In this respect, indeed, Ireland appears to be simply one instance of a general law. It may almost be laid down as an axiom that no nation can govern another across the sea. How often it has been tried, and how often it has failed! France has tried it with England, and England has tried it with France. Great Britain tried it with North America, and Spain tried it with South. In this matter even the great quickening of modern communications, even the miracles of steam and electricity, seem to have made little difference. For even at the present moment, if we look around, we shall see how great a part the sea has played as the deciding factor in forms of government. It is the sea which has made us give self-government to Canada, Australia, and South Africa. It is the sea which keeps Newfoundland apart from the Canadian Federation, and New Zealand apart from Australia. Even within the scope of these islands the same law prevails. It is the sea which makes us give self-government to the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Almost the only exception is Ireland. In Ireland we have defied this great law; and in Ireland that defiance is a failure. And yet not defied it completely; for the very facts of Nature forbade. While we have taken away the Irish Legislature, we have been obliged to leave the Irish their separate laws, their separate Administration and Estimates, and their separate Executive in Dublin. That Executive has been for a whole century practically uncontrolled by any effective Parliamentary check. The result is that it has grown, like some plant in the dark, into such quaint and eccentric shapes and forms as to defy the control of any Minister or any public opinion[6]. Perhaps the worst condemnation of the Act of Union has been that while we destroyed the Irish Parliament we have been obliged to leave Dublin Castle. THE RACE Then there is the permanent, abiding difference of Race. It is a truism of history that the Englishman who settles in Ireland becomes more Irish than the Irish. The records of the past are filled with great examples. The Norman adventurers who spread into Ireland after the Conquest have become in modern times the chiefs of great Irish communities, until names like Joyce and Burke have come to be regarded as typical Hibernian surnames. It is a commonplace of modern history that the counties settled by Cromwellian soldiers have become most typically Irish. Tipperary, Waterford, and Wexford--there were great Cromwellian settlements in those counties. And yet they have taken the lead in the fiercest insurrections of modern Irish democracy. It is only in the North of Ireland, within the confines of the province of Ulster, and there only in the extreme north-east corner, within the counties of Londonderry, Antrim, and Down, that the settlers have formed a distinct and definite racial breakwater against purely Irish influences. The plantation of Ulster in the reign of James I. took into Ireland some of the most dogged members of the Scotch race, men filled with the new fire of the Reformation, men stalwart for their race and creed. They went as conquerors and as confiscators, and for centuries they worked with arms in their hands. They slew and were slain, and were divided from the native Irish by an overflowing river of blood. That river is not yet bridged. It has been said that there is no human hatred so great as that felt towards men whom one has wronged. The planters of Ulster inflicted upon Ireland many grievous wrongs and endured some fierce revenges. The result is that even to-day there is a section of them that still stands apart from the other colonisers of Ireland--a race still distinct and apart. Is it impossible that even there the binding and unifying principle of Irish life may begin to work? That is the question of the future. But though Ireland thus contains at least one instance of a mixture of races not altogether dissimilar from that of England, it still remains true that, taken as a whole, Ireland is a country marked with the Celtic stamp. There, too, the power of the sea comes in. If there had been only a land frontier, it is possible that the Teutonic influence would have overpowered the Celtic. But the sea forms a sufficient barrier to cut off every new band of immigrants from the country of their origin. This isolation drives them into insular communion with the country of their invasion. Thus, however often invaded and "planted," Ireland has continued detached. This detachment has been apparent ever since the earliest dawn of Western civilisation. Right up to the Norman Conquest Ireland remained apart and aloof from Central European influences. For long ages she had been the rallying-place of the Celt as he was driven westward by the Teuton and the Roman. Even after Great Britain had been absorbed by the Roman Empire, Ireland still remained unconquered, the one home of freedom in Western Europe. This independence of Rome continued far into the Christian era. Ireland developed a separate Christianity of a peculiarly elevated and noble type, full of missionary zeal and inspired by high culture. That Christianity even swept eastward, and for a time dominated Scotland and England from its homes in Iona and Lindisfarne. This Irish Christianity brought upon itself the enmity of Rome by continuing the Eastern tonsure and the Eastern ritual, and finally, at the great Synod at Whitby in the year 664[7], Rome conquered in the struggle for Britain, and the Irish religion was driven back across the sea. But Rome and European Christianity, as it was represented in the Roman spirit, achieved a very slow victory over Ireland herself. The English Pope Adrian gave to Henry II. a full permission to conquer Ireland for the faith. But it was fated that Irish Catholicism should be built up not by submission to the Catholic Kings of England, but by resistance to the Protestant Kings from Henry VIII. onward. Thus it is that, even in religion, in spite of the passionate loyalty of the modern Irishman to the Roman See, Ireland still stands somewhat distinct and aloof from the rest of Europe. But if that be so in religion, still more is it so in customs and manners. Take the analogy of a mould. The Celtic civilisation of Ireland is like a mould, into which fresh metal has been always pouring; white-hot, glowing metal from all over the world, from England and Scotland, from France, from Rome, and even from far-off Spain. But though the metal has always been changing, the mould still remains unbroken, and as the metal has emerged in its fixed form it has always taken the Celtic shape. So that to-day, in face of the Imperialistic tendencies of the British Empire, Ireland remains more than ever passionately attached to her nationalism, and more than ever potent to influence all newcomers with her national ideas. It is in that sense that the question of race still remains a permanent feature in the Irish problem. It is precisely because the Irish nationality is so persistent that it is hopeless to expect a permanent settlement of her government problem within the scope of such an iron uniformity as the Act of Union. It is because Ireland nurses this "unconquerable hope" that the only golden key to these difficulties lies in some form of self-government. THE CREED But besides the sea and the race, there is yet one more feature of the Irish problem which remains practically unchanged. Ireland still remains predominantly Catholic, while Great Britain is still predominantly Protestant. The great movement of the sixteenth century, known as the Reformation, passed from Germany through Holland and France into Great Britain. It won Scotland completely. In England, after a prolonged struggle with a powerful Catholic tradition, it ended in the compromise still represented by the Anglican Church. But there the victory of the Reformation closed. The movement was checked at St. George's Channel. In Ireland Catholicism stood with its back against the Atlantic, and fought a stern, long fight against all the political and social forces of the British Empire. The attack of Protestantism was supported by the full power and authority of the conqueror. It lasted for two centuries. It began with Elizabeth and James as a simple imperative, mercilessly applied without regard to national conditions. It came under Cromwell as a scorching, devastating flame. It remained under William and the Georges as a slow, cruel torture applied through all the avenues of the law. The end of all that effort was, not to convert or destroy, but to weld the national and religious spirits into one common force, acting together throughout the nineteenth century as if identical. Purified by persecution, Catholicism in Ireland, almost alone among the religions of Western Europe, stands out still to-day as a great national and democratic force. But though the persecution failed, it built up, by a double process of immigration and monopoly, a very powerful Protestant population with all the stiff pride of ascendancy. For generations the Protestants of Ireland enjoyed all the offices of government, and had the sole right of inheritance. Thus both the land and the government slipped into their hands. Since no Catholic could inherit land under the penal laws, and since the penal laws lasted for nearly a century, it followed inevitably that the whole land of Ireland fell into the hands of the Protestants. That is why even at the present day the vast majority of the Irish landed and leisured classes are Protestants. The Catholics, during that dark period, became hewers of wood and drawers of water. Thus property in Ireland came to mean, not merely a division of classes, but also a division of creeds. In spite of all the great reforms, the descendants of these Protestants still retain most of the wealth and most of the Government offices in Ireland.[8] Their resistance to any change is not, therefore, altogether surprising; and we must remember amid all the various war-cries of the present agitation that these gentlemen are fighting, not merely for the integrity of the Empire, but also for position, income and power. This state of affairs has varied very little for the last half-century. The Census of 1911 contains, like most previous Irish Census returns, a schedule asking for a statement of religious faith. That enables us to tell with comparative accuracy the proportions between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland since 1861, when the schedule was first introduced, right up to the present day. The Preliminary Report shows that the variation has been very slight. The round figures for 1911 are:-- Roman Catholics 3,238,000 Protestant Episcopalians 575,000 Presbyterians 439,000 Methodists 61,000 The figures for 1861 were:-- Roman Catholics 4,500,000 Protestant Episcopalians 693,000 Presbyterians 523,000 Methodists 45,000[9] There has been an all-round decrease, corresponding to the decrease of the population. That decrease has been brought about by emigration, and that emigration has taken place mainly from the Catholic provinces of Munster and Connaught. It is inevitable, therefore, that the Catholics should have diminished more than the Protestants. The result of forty years' wastage of the Irish Catholic peasantry is that the proportions of Catholics to Protestants are now three to one, as against four to one in 1861. Allowing for the great fact of westward emigration, this means that the relations between these two forms of Christianity in Ireland are practically stationary. The Protestants, too, we must not forget, are divided into two sects--Episcopalian and Presbyterian--which in their history have been almost divided from one another as Catholicism and Protestantism, so much so that several times in Irish history--as, for instance, in 1798--the Catholic and Presbyterian have been brought together by a common persecution at the hands of the Episcopalian. We must also bear in mind that the Protestants are mainly concentrated in the two provinces of Ulster and Leinster. Ulster contains nearly all the Irish Presbyterians--421,000 out of 439,000--men who are rather Scotch by descent than actually native Irish. Ulster also contains 366,000 Episcopalians, making, with 48,000 Methodists, 835,000 Protestants in Ulster, out of 1,075,000 in the whole of Ireland. The rest of the Episcopalians are in Leinster--round Dublin--where 140,000 are domiciled. Munster contains less than 60,000 Protestants in all, and Connaught contains little over 20,000.[10] It is practically a Catholic province. The great fact about this religious situation in Ireland, therefore, is that you have a Catholic country with a strong Protestant minority. We are asked to believe that this presents an insuperable obstacle to the gift of self-government. But Ireland does not stand alone in this respect. There are many other countries in the world where the same difficulty has been faced and overcome. Take the German Empire. It has included since 1870 the great state of Bavaria, where the great struggle of the Reformation ended with honours divided. Modern Bavaria contains a population which, according to the Religious Census of December 1st, 1905, is thus divided:-- Roman Catholics 4,600,000 Protestants 1,844,000 Jews 55,000 Strangely enough, the proportions are almost precisely the same as in Ireland. But this state of affairs has not prevented the German Empire from leaving to Bavaria, not merely a king and parliament, but also an army subject to purely Bavarian control in time of peace, and a separate system of posts, telegraphs, and state railways.[11] Are we to say that trust and tolerance are German virtues, unknown to the British people? But they are not unknown to the British people. Our own colonists have set us a better example. Canada has a far more difficult religious problem than Great Britain. She has two provinces side by side--Quebec and Ontario--both with the same religious problem as Ireland. In both there are strong religious minorities. Quebec is predominantly Catholic, and Ontario is predominantly Protestant. Thus:-- _Quebec_-- Catholics 1,429,000 Protestants 189,000 _Ontario_-- Protestants 1,626,000 Catholics 390,000 How is this problem solved? Why, by Home Rule. For a long time--from 1840 to 1887--Canada made the experiment of governing these two provinces under one Parliament and from one centre. That experiment never succeeded. As long as they were under one government, the minority in each of these provinces insisted on appealing for help to the majority in the other. There arose the evil of "Ascendancy "--the government of a majority by a minority. At last the Canadians faced the problem. In 1867 they divided the provinces, and gave them each a Home Rule government of their own, subject to the Dominion Parliament. Since then there has been no more trouble about Ascendancy. Quebec and Ontario now settle their own affairs, including Education and all other local matters, and no one ever hears anything about the ill-treatment of minorities. So much, then, for the permanent factors--Sea, Race, and Religion. There is no insuperable obstacle there. Rather it is here--in these great dominating facts--that the strongest argument for Home Rule must ever be found. For it is those things that constitute nationality. The real difficulties in the way of Home Rule were found, both in 1886 and 1893, not in these permanent things, but in the changing facets of human laws. It was the Land Question that in all the speeches of 1886 provided the strongest argument. It was the absence of local government, and the presumed incapacity for local government, that filled so many Unionist speeches. It was the quarrel over University Education that provided the best evidence of incompatibility of temper between Irish Catholic and Irish Protestant. I shall show that in all these respects the problem has completely and radically changed since 1893. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [1] By a majority of 34 on the third reading--301 to 267--September 1st, 1893. [2] Friday, September 8th, 1893. 419 to 41; majority against the Bill of 378. [3] See Appendix A for this Bill. [4] "The Story of the Home Rule Session." (1893.) Written by Harold Spender, sketched by F. Carruthers Gould (now Sir Francis C. Gould). London: _The Westminster Gazette_ and Fisher Unwin. [5] This famous phrase was first coined by Grattan, but was so often said by Gladstone that it was, in 1886, regarded as his. [6] See a very interesting account of the present Irish Executive in "Home Rule Problems" (P.S. King and Son. London. 1s.) in a chapter (iv.) entitled "The Present System of Government, in Ireland," by G.F.H. Berkeley. There are 67 Boards, of which only 26 are under direct control of the Irish Secretary. No Parliamentary statute applies to Ireland, of course, unless that country is expressly included by name. [7] See, for a popular account of this Synod, Green's "History of the English People," Vol. I., p. 55. [8] The central Civil Service is predominantly Protestant, and in municipalities like Belfast the Catholics hold a very small proportion of the salaried posts. [9] Census for 1911. Preliminary Report. Page 6. [10] Census Summary. Preliminary Report. Page 6. [11] See "The Statesman's Year Book," 1911, pp. 877-8. THE HOME RULE CASE THE CASE THAT HAS CHANGED--AND IS NOW STRONGER i.--THE COUNCILS AND ii.--THE LAND. "They saved the country because they lived in it, as the others abandoned it because they lived out of it." GRATTAN. CHAPTER II. THE HOME RULE CASE Those who, like myself, visited Ireland last summer as delegates of the Eighty Club included some who had not thoroughly explored that country since the early nineties. They were all agreed that a great change had taken place in the internal condition of Ireland. They noticed a great increase of self-confidence, of prosperity, of hope. Many who entered upon that tour with doubts as to the power of the Irish people to take up the burden of self-government came back convinced that her increase in material prosperity would form a firm and secure basis on which to build the new fabric. What does this new prosperity amount to? The new Census figures leave us in no doubt as to its existence. For the first time there is a real check in that deplorable wastage of population that has been going on for more than half a century. The diminution of population in Ireland revealed by the 1901 Census amounted to 245,000 persons. The diminution revealed by the 1911 Census amounts to 76,000. In other words, the decrease of 1901-11 is 1.5 per cent., as against 5.2 per cent, for 1891-1901, or only one against five in the previous decade[12]. This is far and away the smallest decrease that has taken place in any of the decennial periods since 1841; and this decrease is, of course, accompanied by a corresponding decline in the emigration figures.[13] What is even more refreshing is the evidence which goes to show that the population left behind in Ireland has become more prosperous. For the first time since 1841, the Census now shows an increase--small, indeed, but real--of inhabited houses in Ireland, and a corresponding increase in the number of families[14]. It is the first slight rally of a country sick almost unto death. We must not exaggerate its significance. Ireland has fallen very low, and she is not yet out of danger. There is no real sign of rise in the extraordinarily small yield of the Irish income tax. That yield shows us a country, with a tenth of the population, which has only a thirtieth of the wealth of Great Britain--a country, in a word, at least three times as poor[15]. The diminution in the Irish pauper returns is entirely due to Old-age Pensions.[16] The much-advertised increase in savings and bank deposits, always in Ireland greatly out of proportion to her well-being, is chiefly eloquent of the extraordinary lack of good Irish investments. The birth-rate in Ireland, although the Irish are the most prolific race in the world, is still--owing to the emigration of the child-bearers--the lowest in Europe. The record in lunacy is still the worst, and the dark cloud of consumption, though slightly lifted by the heroic efforts of Lady Aberdeen, still hangs low over Ireland.[17] Finally, while we rejoice that the rate of decline in the population is checked, we must never forget that the Irish population is still declining, while that of England, Wales and Scotland is still going up.[18] But still the sky is brightening, and ushering in a day suitable for fair weather enterprises. Perhaps the surest and most satisfactory sign of revival in Irish life is to be found in the steady upward movement of the Irish Trade Returns.[19] That movement has been going on steadily since the beginning of the twentieth century.[20] It is displayed quite as much in Irish agricultural produce as in Irish manufactured goods; and in view of certain boasts it may be worth while to place on record the fact that the agricultural export trade of Ireland is greater by more than a third than the export of linen and ships.[21] Denmark preceded Ireland in her agricultural development, but it must be put to the credit of Irish industry and energy that Ireland is now steadily overhauling her rivals.[22] The mere recital of these facts, indeed, gives but a faint impression of the actual dawn of social hope across the St. George's Channel. In order to make them realise this fully, it would be necessary to take my readers over the ground covered by the Eighty Club last summer, in light railways or motor-cars, through the north, west, east and south of Ireland. Everywhere there is the same revival. New labourers' cottages dot the landscape, and the old mud cabins are crumbling back--"dust to dust"--into nothingness. Cultivation is improving. The new peasant proprietors are putting real work into the land which they now own, and there is an advance even in dress and manners. Drinking is said to be on the decline, and the natural gaiety of the Irish people, so sadly overshadowed during the last half-century, is beginning to return. It is like the clearing of the sky after long rain and storm. The clouds have, for the moment, rolled away towards the horizon, and the blue is appearing. Will the clouds return, or is this improvement to be sure and lasting? That will depend on the events of the next few years. * * * * * What has produced this great change in the situation since 1893? To answer that question we must look at the Statute Book. We shall then realise that defeat in the division lobbies was not the end of Mr. Gladstone's policy in 1886 and 1893. That policy has since borne rich fruit. It has been largely carried into effect by the very men who opposed and denounced it. Not even they could make the sun stand still in the heavens. The Tories and Liberal dissentients who defeated Mr. Gladstone gave us no promise of these concessions. The only policy of the Tory Party at that time was expressed by Lord Salisbury in the famous phrase, "Twenty years of resolute government." Although the Liberal Unionists were inclined to some concession on local government, Lord Salisbury himself held the opinion that the grant of local government to Ireland would be even more dangerous to the United Kingdom than the grant of Home Rule.[23] If we turn back, indeed, to the early Parliamentary debates and the speeches in the country, we find that Mr. Chamberlain in 1886 concentrated his attack rather on Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill[24] than on his Home Rule scheme. In his speech on the second reading of the 1886 Bill, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain proclaimed himself a Home Ruler on a larger scale than Mr. Gladstone--a federal Home Ruler. But in the country, he brought every resource of his intellect to oppose the scheme of land purchase. Similarly with John Bright. Lord Morley, in his "Life of Gladstone," describes Bright's speech on July 1st, 1886, as the "death warrant" of the first Home Rule Bill. But if we turn to that speech we find that Bright, too, based his opposition to Home Rule almost entirely on his hatred of the great land purchase scheme of that year. He called it a "most monstrous proposal." "If it were not for a Bill like this," he said, "to alter the Government of Ireland, to revolutionise it, no one would dream of this extravagant and monstrous proposition in regard to Irish land; and if the political proposition makes the economic necessary, then the economic or land purchase proposition, in my opinion, absolutely condemns the political proposition." In other words, John Bright held to the view that it was the necessity for the Irish Land Bill of 1886 which condemned the Home Rule Bill of that year. So powerfully did that argument work on the feelings of the British public that in the Home Rule Bill of 1893, not only was the land purchase proposition dropped, but in its place a clause was actually inserted forbidding the new Irish Parliament to pass any legislation "respecting the relations of landlord and tenant for the sale, purchase or re-letting of land" for a period of three years after the passing of the Act.[25] So anxious was Mr. Gladstone to show to the English people that Home Rule could be given to Ireland without the necessity of expenditure on land purchase, and with comparative safety to the continuance of the landlord system in Ireland! Such was the record on these questions up to the year 1895, when the Unionists brought the short Liberal Parliament to a close, and entered upon a period of ten years' power, sustained in two elections with a Parliamentary majority of 150 in 1895 and of 130 in 1900. But the biggest Parliamentary majorities have limits to their powers. Crises arise. Accidents happen. There is always a shadow of coming doom hanging over the most powerful Parliamentary Governments. With it comes an anxiety to settle matters in their own way, before they can be settled in a way which they dislike. Thus it is that we find that between 1895 and 1905, during that ten years of Unionist power, two great steps were taken towards a peaceful settlement of the Irish question. One was the Irish Local Government Act of 1898, which extended to Ireland the system of local government already granted in 1889 to the country districts of England. The other was the great Land Purchase Act of 1903, which carried out Mr. Gladstone's policy of 1886, and set on foot a gigantic scheme of land-transference from Irish landlord to Irish tenant. That scheme is still to-day in process of completion. It is these two Acts which have largely changed the face of Ireland. LOCAL GOVERNMENT Take first the Act of 1898. Up to that year the county government of Ireland was carried on entirely by a system of grand jurors, consisting chiefly of magistrates, and selected almost entirely from the Protestant minority. These gentlemen assembled at stated times, and settled all the local concerns of Ireland, fixing the rates, deciding on the expenditure, and carrying out all the local Acts. They formed, with Dublin Castle, part of the great machinery of Protestant Ascendancy. Very few Catholics penetrated within that sacred circle. These gentlemen, even now for the most part Protestants, still hold the power of justice. But the power of local government has passed from their hands. Every county of Ireland now has its County Council. Beneath the County Councils there are also District Councils exercising in Ireland, as in England, the powers of Boards of Guardians. Neither the Irish counties nor the corporations of Ireland's great cities have power over their police. There are no Irish Parish Councils. Otherwise Ireland now possesses powers of local government almost as complete as those of England and Scotland. How has this system worked? In the discussions that preceded the establishment of local government in Ireland we heard many prophecies of doom. So great was the fear of trusting Ireland with any powers of self-government that the Unionists actually proposed, in 1892, a Local Government Bill, which would have established local bodies subject to special powers of punishment and coercion.[26] It was with much fear and trembling, then, that the Protestant Party in Ireland entered upon the new period of local government. As a matter of fact, all these fears have been falsified. Instead of proving inefficient and corrupt, the Irish County Councils have gained the praises of all parties. They have received testimonials in nearly every report of the Irish Local Government Board. If, indeed, they possess any fault, it is that they are too thrifty and economical.[27] In one respect, indeed, these County and District Councils of Ireland have conspicuously surpassed the corresponding bodies that exist in England. One of the most important measures passed by the British Parliament during this period of Irish revival has been the Irish Labourers' Act. It was one of the first measures passed by the new Liberal Parliament of 1906, and it has been since often amended and supplemented. But its main provisions still stand. In this Act the Imperial Government grants to the local authorities in Ireland loans at cheap rates for the purpose of re-housing the Irish agricultural labourers. It places the whole administration of these loans in the hands of the Irish District Councils--a very delicate and difficult task. So efficiently have the District Councils done their work that more than half the Irish labourers have already been re-housed. It is fully expected that within a few years the whole Irish agricultural labouring population will have received under this Act good houses, accompanied always with a plot of land at a small rent. Compare with this the administration of the Small Holdings Act by the English local authorities. That Act, passed in 1908, placed the actual allocation of small holdings in the hands of the English County Councils. It is not necessary to dwell here upon the notorious failure of most of the high hopes with which that measure was passed through the British Parliament. The cause of that failure is obvious. The promise of the Small Holdings Act has been practically destroyed by the refusal of the County Councils to throw either goodwill or efficiency into its administration. LAND PURCHASE But the second of the two great renovating measures--the Irish Land Purchase Act of 1903--has contributed even more powerfully than the first to the recovery of Ireland during the last ten years. There again we have a great instance of the supremacy of the spirit of Parliament over the prejudices of Party. The whole tendency of democratic government is so rootedly opposed to coercion that it is difficult for any party to continue on purely coercive lines for any long period. And yet, as Mr. Gladstone always pointed out with such prescience, the only alternatives in Ireland were either coercion or government according to Irish ideas. Now, the most noted Irish idea was the desire for personal ownership of the soil by the cultivator himself. In the years 1901 and 1902, just when the Unionists were embarrassed with all the complications of the South African trouble, the Tory Government were faced again with this imperious desire. They found arising in Ireland a new revolt against the power of the landlords. The Land Courts of Ireland, set up under the Act of 1881, had given to the Irish tenant two revisions of rent--the first in 1882, and the second in 1896--amounting in all to nearly 40 per cent. But these sweeping reductions had produced a new trouble. They had brought about a state of acute hostility between landlord and tenant without any real control of the land by either. The landlords, deprived of their powers of eviction and rent-raising, were in a state of sullen fury. The tenants had made the fatal discovery that their best interest lay in bad cultivation. Both parties were opposed to the existing land administration, and the Irish people were on the eve of another great effort to attain their ideals. The Tory Government of 1902-3, then, either had to change the whole system, or they had to enter upon a new period of coercion with a view of suppressing the increased passion of the tenants for the full possession of the land. Looking down such a vista, the Irish landlords themselves could see nothing but ruin at the end. The Irish tenants might suffer, indeed, but they would be able to drag down their landlords in the common ruin along with them. The prospect facing the Irish landlord was nothing less than the entire, gradual disappearance of all rent. With such a black prospect ahead, the time was ripe for a remarkable new movement, started by two distinguished Irishmen--Mr. William O'Brien on the side of the tenants, and Lord Dunraven on the side of the landlords. The omens were auspicious. Lord Cadogan, one of the old guard, had retired from the Viceroyalty, and had been succeeded in 1902 by a younger and more open-minded man, Lord Dudley. A still more remarkable man, Sir Anthony MacDonnell (now Lord MacDonnell) had been appointed to the Under-Secretaryship of Dublin Castle under circumstances which have not even yet been clearly explained. Sir Anthony MacDonnell was known to be a Nationalist, although his Nationalist tendencies had been strongly modified by a prolonged and distinguished career in India. Mr. Wyndham, then Chief Secretary, made the remarkable statement that Sir Anthony MacDonnell was "invited by me rather as a colleague than as a mere Under-Secretary to register my will." There is, indeed, no doubt that if the full facts were known, it would be found that the new Under-Secretary was appointed on terms which practically implied the adoption of a new Irish policy by the Tory Government. In other words, the party which is at the present moment (1912) entering upon an uncompromising fight against Home Rule was, in 1903, contemplating a policy not far removed from that very idea. In the mind of Sir Anthony MacDonnell himself--and probably of several members of the Government--the policy took two forms. One was to settle the problem of Irish land, and the other was to settle the problem of Irish Government. The first of these great enterprises went through with remarkable smoothness. Both landlords and tenants were weary of the strife, and ready for peace on terms. The leaden, merciless pressure of the great Land Courts set up by Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1881 had gradually worn down the dour and obstinate wills of the Irish landlords. The very men who had denounced land purchase as the worst element in the scheme of 1886 were now enthusiastic on its behalf. The only opposition that could have come to such a scheme was from the House of Lords, and the opposition of the House of Lords, as we all know, did not exist in those blessed years. Mr. Wyndham was sanguine and enthusiastic, and both Irish tenants and Irish landlords found a common term of agreement in mutual generosity at the expense of the taxpayer. With the help of that taxpayer--commonly called "British," but including, be it remembered, the Irish taxpayer also--the landlords were able to go off with a generous bonus, and the tenants were able to obtain prospective possession of their farms, while paying for a period of years an annual instalment considerably less than their old rent. The terms to both landlords and tenants were so favourable that the Act of 1903 was, after a short period of pause, followed in Ireland by results which transcended the expectations of Parliament. There was a rush on one side to sell, and on the other to buy. From 1904 to 1909 the applications kept streaming in, and the Land Commissioners were kept at high pressure arranging the sale of estates. The pace, indeed, was so rapid that it laid too heavy a strain on the too sanguine finance of Mr. Wyndham's Act. The double burden of the war and Irish land proved too great. The British Treasury found that they could not pour out money at the rate demanded by the working of the Act. In 1909 it was found necessary to pass an amending Act, which has given rise to fierce controversy in Ireland. That Act slightly modified the generous terms of the Act of 1903, but not before under those terms a revolution had already been effected. Practically half the land of Ireland had passed before 1909 from the hands of the landlords into those of the tenants. Even on the new terms the process will go on. By voluntary means if possible, but if not, by compulsion, the land of Ireland will pass back within twenty years into the hands of the people. * * * * * Here, then--in land purchase and the new machinery of local government--are the two leading facts in the great change which had come over Ireland since 1893. What do they signify? Why, this. In 1886 and 1893 the Unionists pointed out, not without some heat and passion, two main difficulties in the path to Home Rule. One was the incompetence of the Irish people for local government. "They are by character incapable of self-rule," was the cry; and we all remember how Mr. Gladstone humorously described this incapacity as a "double dose of original sin." That incapacity has been disproved. The Irish have been shown to be fully as capable of self-government as the English, Scotch, and Welsh. The other great difficulty was the unsolved land question. "We cannot desert the English garrison--the Irish landlords," was the cry. "We cannot trust the Irish people to treat them justly." But the Irish land question is now settled. The Irish landlords are either gone or going. The Irish tenants are becoming peasant-proprietors. All that is required now is a national authority to stand as trustee and guardian of the Irish peasantry in paying their debt to the British people--or, perhaps, even if the material condition of Ireland under Home Rule should justify that course, to take over the debt. That is the new "felt want," and the only way to supply it is to create a responsible Irish self-governing Parliament. Thus the two principal changes in Ireland since 1893 have not weakened, but immensely strengthened, the case for Home Rule. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [12] See Appendix B. [13] Appendix B (4), 31,000 in 1911, the lowest figure since the Famine. There is a similar decline in the number of the Migratory Labourers, from 15,000 in 1907 to 10,000 in 1910 (Cd. 6019). [14] Appendix B (2) and (3). 2,000 families and nearly 3,000 inhabited houses. [15] The yield of Irish income tax is practically stationary at £1,000,000, as against £30,000,000 yielded by Great Britain. (Inland Revenue Report, 1910-11, page 100.) The assessment to income tax is £40,000,000 for Ireland, as against £93,000,000 for Scotland (with about the same population), and £878,000,000 for England. [16] See Appendix F. The diminution is from 99,000 to 80,000. [17] The deaths from consumption in Ireland declined from 10,594 in 1909 to 10,016 in 1910. (Irish Registrar-General's Report, 1911, p. xxvi.) [18] See Appendix B. [19] The most trustworthy thermometer of Irish trade is to be found in the volume now yearly issued by the Irish Government--the Report on the Trade in Imports and Exports at Irish Ports. In the absence of Irish Customs there must be some uncertainty in the tests, but the Government figures are collected from the "manifests" of exporters and importers. (The latest report comes up to the 31st December, 1910. Cd. 5965.) [20] The growth of Irish trade since 1900 can be seen at a glance in the following table (including exports and imports):-- £ 1904 103,790,799 1905 106,973,043 1906 113,208,940 1907 120,572,755 1908 116,120,618 1909 124,725,895 1910 130,888,732 [21] The export of manufactured goods increased from £20,000,000 in 1906 to £26,000,000 in 1910. Those goods consisted mostly of linen and ships from Belfast. The export of farm stuffs increased from £31,000,000 in 1905 to £35,000,000 in 1910. [22] Ireland now exports into England three times as much live stock as any other country. She imports more potatoes and poultry than any other. She also stands in butter only second to Denmark, in eggs only second to Russia, and in bacon and hams only third to the United States and Denmark (Cd. 5966). [23] "Local authorities are more exposed to the temptation of enabling the majority to be unjust to the minority when they obtain jurisdiction over a small area, than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and extends its jurisdiction over a wider area. In a large central authority the wisdom of several parts of the country will correct the folly and mistakes of one. In a local authority that correction is to a much greater extent wanting, and it would be impossible to leave that out of sight in any extension of any such local authority in Ireland."--Lord Salisbury (1885). [24] Proposing to buy out the Irish landlords at an estimated cost of £100,000,000. [25] See Appendix D for a summary of the 1893 Home Rule Bill. [26] It was named by Mr. Sexton the "Put 'em in the dock Bill," and that phrase practically killed it. [27] See the Local Government Board Reports _passim_:-- "Before concluding our reference to the Local Government Act we may be permitted to observe that the predictions of those who affirmed that the new local bodies entrusted with the administration of a complex system of County Government would inevitably break down have certainly not been verified. On the contrary, the County and District Councils have, with few exceptions, properly discharged the statutory duties devolving upon them. Instances have, no doubt, occurred in which these bodies have, owing to inexperience and to an inadequate staff, found themselves in difficulties and have had to receive some special assistance from us in regulating their affairs; but this has been of rare occurrence." (Annual Report of the Irish Local Government Board for year ending March, 1900.) "In no other matter have the Councils been more successful than in their financial administration. After the heavy preliminary expenses necessarily attending the introduction of a new system of local government had been provided for, and the Councils and their officers had succeeded in obtaining a satisfactory basis on which to make their estimates of future expenditure, they found it possible to effect considerable reductions in their rates, and there seems to be every reason to anticipate that, with extended experience, there will be a still further general reduction of county rates." (Annual Report of the Irish Local Government Board for year ending March, 1902.) Our impression as travellers was that the Irish County Councils do not yet spend enough money on their roads. THE HOME RULE CASE THE CASE THAT HAS CHANGED--(CONTINUED) i.--THE CONGESTED DISTRICTS ii.--THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE iii.--OLD-AGE PENSIONS iv.--THE UNIVERSITIES "Although while I live I shall oppose separation, yet it is my opinion that continuing the Legislative Union must endanger the connection." O'CONNELL (1834). CHAPTER III. THE HOME RULE CASE But Land Purchase and County Councils are only part of the great change that has come over Ireland since 1893. There are other great transformations. There is the redemption of the congested districts. There is the revival of agriculture. There is the Old Age Pensions Act. Finally, there is the reform of the Universities. THE CONGESTED DISTRICTS BOARD Take, first, the daring policy of social renovation by which the forlorn peasantry of the West are being saved from the grey wilderness into which they had been thrust by the landlordism of 1830 to 1880. It is the habit of the Unionist Press to claim the whole of this work as their own. That is rather bold of a party that lifted not a finger while these people--said by those who know them to be the best peasantry in Europe--were driven from the rich lands of Ireland to till the barren moorland and scratch the very rocks on the shores of the Atlantic. The Tories do not explain why they allowed the House of Lords for a whole half century to seal up the exile of these poor folk by rejecting every measure proposed for their welfare. As a matter of fact, of course, the policy of redeeming the congested districts was not first proposed either by the Tories or by the Liberals, but by the Irish members themselves. The Tory claim is based, of course, on the fact that the first step towards action by the British Government dates from the famous Western tour of Mr. Arthur Balfour in the early nineties. Perhaps Mr. Balfour was tired of the monotony of five years of coercion. At any rate, he took that journey, and it was the best act of his political life. He travelled along that misty fringe of the Atlantic. He saw--as we saw last summer, and I saw in 1891--the utter poverty of that unhappy land, where human life, sustained only by the charity of American exiles, still pays its doleful toll to far-off, indifferent landlords. Who can tell whether some touch of remorse did not enter into the heart of the man who up to that time had been the greatest of Irish coercionists since Castlereagh, when he saw with his own eyes the sorry plight of the poorest people in Europe--the people who, in the opinion of General Gordon, were, as a result of a century of British civilisation, more destitute and miserable than the savages of Central Africa? Mr. Balfour, at any rate, relented from his policy of more oppression. He even entered upon the first small beginnings of a policy of restoration. It was a very small beginning--that first Congested Board--and a Commission that reported on its work nearly twenty years after[28] decided that the Board had neither powers nor cash sufficient for its work. The Liberal Government of 1906-10 frankly accepted the opinion of the Commission, and gave the Board both new powers and new funds in the Irish Land Act of 1909. Under that Act the Congested Board is endowed with £250,000 a year, and has authority over half the area and a third of the population of Ireland.[29] Over these great regions[30] this authority now possesses extensive powers of purchase, rehousing, replanting, creation of fisheries, provision of seed and stocks--powers, in short, extending to the complete restoration, by compulsion if necessary, of a whole community. The Board is appointed by the Chief Secretary,[31] and already in two short years it has accomplished great work. Estates are being bought and replanted; holders are being migrated from bad land to good; villages are being rebuilt; industries encouraged; health safeguarded; fisheries revived. Those who examine its work as we did last summer will experience the feeling of men looking on at a splendid and gallant effort to salvage a race submerged. This work, indeed, is still in its infancy. There are many absentee landlords who are still holding out for heavy and extravagant prices as a reward for the poverty and misery which they have often in large part caused by their own neglect. The Board appears to be reaching the limits of voluntary action. Much of the hope for the future of Ireland rests on their courage and skill. THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE The passing of landlordism has produced a great revival of energy and life in the rural districts. That revival began in the nineties, and the credit for first realising its importance and significance must be given to Sir Horace Plunkett. But private organisation alone could not meet the needs of the situation. In 1899 the Government were persuaded by the Irish party to pass an Act founding a new Irish Board of Agriculture on broad and generous lines.[32] This Irish Board of Agriculture is a very remarkable body. It is practically a Home Rule authority for agricultural purposes only. The Irish Minister for Agriculture by no means rules as an autocrat. He has to submit his policy to a large "Advisory Council" of over 100 members elected by all the County Councils of Ireland. Out of this Council a committee is chosen which is practically a Cabinet. This Agricultural Parliament now plays a most important part in the life of Ireland. It speaks for the whole nation more than any other public body. Its discussions are practical and useful. It is a training ground for the rulers of the future, and it is playing a vital part in bringing together the best men of the North and South. The Ulster members are already, in agricultural matters, working in a friendly spirit side by side with the men from the South. Thus advised and kept in touch with public opinion, the Board of Agriculture is the most popular and effective Department in Dublin Castle. It gives us a foretaste of the new power that will be given to Irish administration by the Home Rule spirit. For it is just this central guidance that the other great new Irish developments chiefly lack. Take local government. There is not a County Council in Ireland which would not be stronger if it were directed--and sometimes, perhaps, even commanded--from the centre by a sympathetic national authority. There is not a Board in Ireland, whether it be the Congested Districts Board, or the Estates Commissioners, or the Land Commission, that would not be more wisely directed if there were some central arena in which the great principles of administration could be seriously and responsibly debated and settled. For, in spite of the popular notion that Irishmen are too talkative, there is really too little discussion in Ireland on practical affairs. The great unsolved political problem blocks the way. The block cannot be removed except by settlement. One of the strongest reasons for granting Home Rule is in order to free the mind of the nation for attention to the national housekeeping. OLD-AGE PENSIONS One of the most remarkable events of the last few years has been the unexpected side-share of Ireland in the great social legislation of Great Britain. Even the Irish members themselves have scarcely foreseen how immensely Ireland, being the poorest partner in the United Kingdom, would benefit by a policy "tender to the poor." The most conspicuous example of that effect has been Old-age Pensions. Old-age Pensions have fallen on Ireland as a shower of gold. Her share is already well over £2,000,000. The great new fact in Irish social welfare is that she now draws that great draught from the Imperial Exchequer. Travelling along the Atlantic coast last summer, I inquired in many local post-offices as to the amount of pensions given weekly in those little grey villages. I found that often the old-age pensioners would number between 100 and 200 in small villages of less than 2,000 people. The emigration of the youth has left a disproportionate number of the old, and it is not necessary to bring any railing accusation against the honesty of the Irish race in order to understand why it is that Old-age Pensions have done so much for Ireland. But the fact remains, and it carries with it a great and unexpected relief to the Irish ratepayer.[33] THE NEW UNIVERSITY ACT Last, but not least, we have the great stimulus given to higher education by the passage of Mr. Birrell's Irish University Act. For a whole generation the progress of higher education in Ireland has been held up by a barren and wearisome religious quarrel. Now that quarrel has vanished, and Ireland is organising a great system of University education for her Catholic as well as her Protestant youth. Not the least stimulating experience of the Eighty Club in Ireland was the day which we spent, under the guidance of the distinguished Principal, at Cork University College, where we saw Catholics and Protestants, men and women, young and old, working together in friendly harmony in the splendid buildings which have sprung up to house the undergraduates of the south-west. The same process is going on at Dublin, Galway, and Belfast. The machinery is being rapidly prepared for training up in the best possible atmosphere of mutual tolerance the new rulers of Home Rule Ireland. * * * * * Such have been the great Acts of Parliament which have created a changed situation in Ireland. But the crown is still wanting to the work. Those who travel in Ireland and make any close inquiry into the work of these Acts must feel that there is a great gap unfilled. It is a gap at the top. All these new roads of reform are well and truly laid--but they all lead nowhere. Take one startling fact. Two Commissions of late years have considered the great and glaring need of Ireland in the want of swift, cheap, and convenient transport both for persons and goods. One of these Commissions was on Canals, and the other on Railways. Both decided in favour of national control. But as there is no national authority which anyone trusts, both reports have been stillborn.[34] It was probably some such facts that led, as far back as August, 1903, to the uprising among the more moderate Unionist Irishmen of a remarkable movement which is still affecting Ireland. This movement took shape in a body; called the Irish Reform Association, presided over, like the Land Conference, by that remarkable Irish peer Lord Dunraven. That Conference put forward a set of proposals which are now historical, and which have since, in varying forms, inspired the movement for what is popularly known as "Devolution."[35] Mild as are the proposals of this new party, they do not differ in principle from the proposals of the Home Rulers. These proposals obtained the backing of a large section of the Unionist Party. They undoubtedly had the sympathy of Sir Anthony MacDonnell. It is difficult to say, at the present moment, what precise part was played by Mr. George Wyndham, then still the Irish Chief Secretary. But the eloquent fact remains that the ultimate triumph of the Ulster Unionists over the Devolution Party of 1903 was marked by his resignation. There would seem to be no substantial doubt that in 1903 there arose in the Unionist Party the same division in regard to Home Rule as arose in 1885, when Lord Carnarvon, the Tory Viceroy, met Mr. Parnell. For the moment the better spirits seriously contemplated removing once and for all the bitterness of the Irish grievance. There was a return of that feeling in the autumn of 1910, when, for the moment, at a period still known politically as the "age of reason," most of the Unionist Press admitted how much good reason and common-sense there was on the side of Home Rule. On each of these occasions the same result has occurred. At the critical moment the extreme faction of the Ulster Unionists has intervened and driven back the Tory Party to its fatal enslavement. But the great fact which produced these movements still remains as valid and potent as ever. It is that, whatever improvements you introduce into the Irish machine, it can never work properly until the central motive power is a self-governing authority. So deeply have the better Unionists been committed to that view in the past, in 1885, 1903, and 1910, that they are now shaping a new argument to face the situation of 1912. This argument is simple. It is that the new prosperity of Ireland is not a help, but a bar to Home Rule. "If Ireland can prosper so well without Home Rule," so runs this line of reasoning, "why give her Home Rule at all?" This is indeed a strange and cruel argument. We all know the people who used to say Home Rule was impossible because Ireland was disturbed. They are now occupied in saying that she must be denied Home Rule because she is so peaceful. But now it appears that this ingenious dilemma is to be applied to her material condition also. As with order, so with finance. In the old days Ireland was refused Home Rule because she was too poor. How could she get on without England? She would be bankrupt. But now that she is better off she is to be refused it because she is too prosperous! Is it not quite obvious that these are arguments after judgment? That the people who use them are merely seeking excuses for refusing Home Rule altogether and at all seasons? The British people, essentially a just and serious people, will not listen to these last desperate pleas, the coward fugitives of a routed case. They will rather believe that all these material improvements in the condition of Ireland only make the need for Home Rule stronger and more urgent. They will realise that Ireland requires not a material, but a moral cure to give her the full value of the new reforms. Her need is to be removed once and for all from the class of dependent communities. She wants the great tonic cure of self-reliance and self-responsibility. For it is as true to-day as it was when Mr. Gladstone spoke these wise and searching words in April, 1886[36]:-- "The fault of the administration of Ireland is simply this: that its spring and source of action, and what is called its motor muscle, is English and not Irish. Without providing a domestic Legislature for Ireland, without having an Irish Parliament, I want to know how you will bring about this wonderful, superhuman, and, I believe, in this condition, impossible result, that your administrative system shall be Irish and not English?" The greatest need is still this--to make the "motor-muscle" Irish. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [28] The Report of the Congested Districts Commission was issued in 1908. [29] See 19th Report (1911), Cd. 5712. The Act of 1909 more than doubled the area and population, bringing the area to 4,000,000 acres, and the population to 600,000. The former endowment was £86,000. [30] Comprising the whole of the counties of Donegal, Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, and parts of the counties of Clare and Cork. [31] The members of this admirable Board are Mr. Birrell, Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. O'Donnell, Dr. Mangan, Sir Horace Plunkett, Sir David Harrel, and six others. [32] For the governing clauses of that Act see Appendix E. [33] May not the Insurance Act do the same? It is very likely. [34] See Appendix J. [35] Private Bill legislation to be settled in Dublin. Irish internal expenditure to be handed to a financial council half elected and half nominated. An Irish Assembly to be created with a small power of initiative. [36] April 8th.--Second Reading Speech on 1886 Home Rule Bill. THE HOME RULE PLAN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BILLS AND THE BILL OF 1912. "Without union of hearts identification is extinction, is dishonour, is conquest--not identification." GRATTAN. "It would be a misery to me if I had forgotten or omitted, in these my closing years, any measure possible for me to take towards upholding and promoting the cause, not of one Party or another, of one nation or another, but of all Parties and of all nations inhabiting these islands; and to these nations, viewing them as I do with all their vast opportunities, under a living union for power and for progress, I say, let me entreat you to let the dead bury the dead, and to cast behind you every recollection of bygone evils, and to cherish, to love, and sustain one another through all the vicissitudes of human affairs in the times that are to come." Mr. GLADSTONE (First reading of 1893 Bill, 13th February). CHAPTER IV. THE HOME RULE PLAN The Home Rule Bill of 1912 is now before the country, both in the clear and simple statement of the Prime Minister and in the test of the Bill itself[37]. The Bill has already passed through the fire of one Parliamentary debate, and secured one great majority of 94 in the House of Commons. What are the general outlines of this great measure? Its central proposal is the creation of an Irish Parliament, responsible for the administration of Irish affairs. That Parliament is to consist of a Senate and a House of Commons, numbering respectively 40 and 164, guided by an Irish Executive, chosen in the same manner as the British Imperial Cabinet. Ireland, in other words, is to be governed by responsible Parliamentary chiefs, commanding a majority in the Irish House of Commons. In this honest recognition of facts and terms we have an advance on the vagueness of former proposals. Otherwise, both this Parliament and this Executive are to have the same liberty and are to be restrained by almost precisely the same checks and safeguards, in regard both to religious rights and Imperial sovereignty, as those which existed in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. Ireland is to retain at Westminster a representation of forty-two members. What is to happen if the two Irish Chambers differ? According to the Bill, the Senate is to be nominated, at first by the Imperial Government, and afterwards by the Irish Parliament, and the members are to sit by rotation for eight years. The Irish House of Commons, on the other hand, is to be elected by the same constituencies as at present, and the membership is to be distributed in proportion to the population--an arrangement which will give Ulster fifty-nine representatives.[38] It is clear that under those conditions a powerful Irish Government remaining in office beyond a certain period would have command of both Houses, as indeed happens at present under similar conditions both in Canada and New Zealand.[39] But if one Party should hold power for a prolonged period, and then give place to another, the new Government will find itself, as Mr. Borden finds himself in Canada at present, restrained from precipitate change by an Upper House nominated by his predecessors. What would happen in that case? To settle that problem, the Home Rule Bill contains a clause[40] adopting the provisions of the South Africa Act, enabling both Houses to hold a joint sitting, in which the majority will prevail. As long as that provision holds, it matters very little whether the Upper Chamber is nominated or is elected, as some propose, by proportional representation. In either case, the Irish House of Commons will be the real governing body, as indeed it must be if the Irish Executive is to be properly responsible, and the new Irish Constitution to work smoothly. So much for the general provisions of the present Bill. The details as to safe-guards and exclusions will be found in the full text of the Bill contained in Appendix A, and I shall leave the question of finance to the chapter specifically devoted to that subject. Let us turn now to the chief arguments against the measure as set forth in the recent debate, and as expressed with ability and power in a pamphlet entitled "Against Home Rule," to which practically all the chief leaders of the Unionist cause contribute articles[41]. Apart from the Ulster case, dealt with in a previous chapter, the main argument seems to be that the English people have not been sufficiently consulted. "It is all so sudden," said the elderly lady when she received a proposal from an elderly suitor who had been delaying his passion for a score or so of years. The same painful outcry comes from the Unionist Party twenty-seven years after the first beginning of the discussions of Home Rule in this country. One can imagine, indeed, that a foreign visitor, coming to this land in ignorance of the past of English politics, would suppose that the Home Rule controversy had now arisen for the first time. Attending Unionist meetings, he would hear an immense amount of eloquence devoted to the wrongs of the English people in being rushed into a premature decision, and being asked to give judgment without proper trial. The Home Rulers would be represented to him as men of rash and precipitate temper, who wanted to bring about in a few months a change which would affect the United Kingdom for centuries. And finally he would hear men thanking God that there existed a House of Lords which, in spite of the machinations of the Home Rulers, could still give the British public two more years to ruminate over the question of Home Rule. He would naturally gather from this that the proposal of Home Rule for Ireland had come upon this country with entire freshness, and had never before been discussed among rational men. Filled with this impression he might perhaps be surprised if he obtained the chance of hearing the "still, small voice" of truth through the clamour and the uproar, to discover that this plan of Home Rule was not born yesterday, but no less than twenty-five years ago. He would find that for a whole generation every nook and cranny of this proposal has been meticulously explored, and that there have been on this subject thousands, if not millions, of speeches and leading articles, hundreds of books, and dozens of Parliamentary debates. He would even learn from many politicians that their chief difficulty was the utter boredom of their constituents over a subject which has been worn down by argument to the very threads. But he would be more surprised than all to discover that this proposal had already been considered in at least four General Elections--1886, 1892, and the two elections of 1910.[42] "It has been deliberately rejected by the people on two occasions" would be the cry which he would hear most commonly from his Tory friends, and he would find that they referred to the elections of 1886 and 1895. Our friend the foreigner would naturally be impressed by that argument. But what would be his amazement to discover that his informants had forgotten to enlighten him on the equally important fact that Home Rule had been definitely accepted and approved by the British electorate, not in two, but in three elections--the election of 1892 and the two elections of 1910? He would discover that on all these three occasions the subject had been definitely placed before them, that on all three occasions the electorate had definitely supported Home Rule, by majorities varying from forty in 1892 to 124 in December, 1910. As to the other General Elections, might not our foreigner reflect that if an electorate were really to discover that its vote for the approval of a measure was treated--as in 1892--with indifference, it might naturally weary of well-doing? Might he not even, if he were a shrewd man, suspect that that was the very object and aim which his informants had in view? But perhaps his surprise would reach its highest point when he discovered that this Home Rule proposal, so far from appearing now for the first time in a definite form, had actually twice before taken the definite and statutory form of Home Rule Bills, both the specific and considered proposals of Liberal Governments, both fully drafted and laid before Parliament, and both still to be purchased at any Government printers. The first of these Bills, the Bill of 1886, was, indeed, rejected by the House of Commons on the second reading, and never ran the gauntlet of full Parliamentary debate. But the second, the Bill of 1893, occupied fully five months of Parliamentary time, and was carried successfully by Mr. Gladstone through all its stages in the House of Commons. It was amended on many points without the interference of Government authority. It presents a full scheme of self-government for Ireland, so clearly and minutely considered as to provide an efficient and reasoned basis for the measure of 1912. THE BILLS OF 1886 AND 1893 The aim of both these great measures--the Bills of 1886 and 1893--was to give the Irish control of their own local affairs and to distinguish as clearly as possible between those affairs and Imperial matters. The method chosen in both Bills is to follow the Parnell scheme of enumerating the subjects excluded from the legislative power of the Irish Parliament. The excluding clause became considerably enlarged in the Bill of 1893 as it was left by the House of Commons. The 1893 Bill also contains a far more definite and stronger assertion of Imperial authority, which is inserted twice--first in the Preamble, and then in the second clause of the Bill.[43] In both Bills there was a safeguarding clause as well as an excluding clause. The safeguarding clause also grew considerably between 1886 and 1893. It is almost entirely directed to preventing the Irish Legislature from establishing any new religious privileges, or interfering with any existing religious rights. The clause, as it emerged in 1893, not only forbade any new establishment or endowment of religion, but seemed to leave the claims of all denominations precisely as they stand at present. This safeguarding clause reappears in the Bill of 1912, but it has been shortened and redrafted by the Government. It contains very important additional safeguards to prevent the adoption by the Irish civil power of the principles contained in the recent Papal Decrees against mixed marriages, and in regard to the right of Catholic clergy to claim exclusion from the courts of justice. The Irish Parliament will be debarred from acting on these decrees, and thus the whole agitation against "Ne Temere" falls to the ground. THE TWO CHAMBERS The 1886 Bill established, as we have seen, an arrangement by which Ireland should be governed by one legislative body consisting of two orders, a first and a second. These orders were to deliberate and vote together, except in regard to matters which should come directly under the Home Rule Act, amendments of the Act, or Standing Orders in pursuance of the Act. In such cases the first order possessed the right of voting separately, and seemed to possess an absolute veto. The first order of the legislative body created by the 1886 Bill consisted of 103 members, of whom 75 were elected members and 28 peerage members. The elected members were to be chosen under a restricted suffrage, and the peerage members were to be the representative Irish Peers. The second order was to consist of 204 members, elected under the existing franchise. All this was rather complicated and confusing, and was, perhaps rightly, brushed aside by the framers of the 1893 Bill. They constituted the Irish Legislature on the model of an ordinary Colonial Parliament with two Chambers--a Legislative Assembly and a Legislative Council. The Legislative Council was to consist of 48 members, elected by large constituencies voting under a £20 property franchise. The Legislative Assembly was to consist of 103 members, elected by the existing constituencies under the existing franchise. In cases of disagreement between the two Houses, it was proposed that, either after a dissolution or after a period of two years, the Houses were to vote together, and that the majority vote should decide the matter. Since 1893 that provision, in almost precisely the same form, has been adopted by the Australian Commonwealth, and, in a more progressive form, by, the South African Parliament. In the Bill of 1912 these provisions of 1893 reappear, but in a broader and more liberal form. The Irish Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council--names which seem to give to Ireland a position of a subordinate--have given way, as we have seen, to the frank and generous titles of Senate and House of Commons, both forming the Irish Parliament. The machinery for settling disagreements has come back from its journey round the world refreshed by a new draft of democracy, imbibed from the climates of Australia and South Africa. In cases of differences between the Assemblies they will meet and decide by common vote, without the necessity of a dissolution. That is a great and important simplification, and for it the Irish have to thank the genius of the founders of the South African Constitution. IN OR OUT? Every student of the Home Rule question knows that Mr. Gladstone several times varied his proposals in regard to the Irish representation at Westminster. The Irish Party were, from the beginning, indifferent on the point; but it was quite clear that this was a matter vitally affecting Imperial interests. The first proposal grafted into the Bill of 1886 was that the Irish should cease to attend at Westminster altogether. But, after seven years of consideration, there grew up a general agreement that the entire absence of the Irish Party at Westminster might create a series of difficult relations between the Parliaments, and might even gradually lead to separation. The first proposal of the Bill of 1893 was that the Irish members should attend in slightly reduced numbers and vote at Westminster only on Irish concerns. But this proposal--known as the "In and Out" clause--found little favour in debate, and suffered severely at the hands of Mr. Chamberlain. Mr. Gladstone finally left the matter to the judgment of the House of Commons, and--after a severe Parliamentary crisis, in which the Government narrowly escaped destruction--it was decided that 80 Irish members should sit in the British House of Commons without any restriction of their power or authority. In the Bill of 1912 the solution finally reached in 1893 is again adopted, with one vital difference--that the Irish members to be summoned to Westminster will be reduced not to 80, but to 42. Those members will possess full Parliamentary powers, as indeed it is right and necessary they should, as long as the Parliament at Westminster continues to exercise such large powers over Ireland. But Mr. Asquith threw out the suggestion that the British House of Commons should, by its Standing Orders, arrange for a further delegation of Parliamentary power to national groups. The House of Commons has already a Scotch Committee, and to that might be added an English Committee and a Welsh Committee. It would be a serious thing for the central body to over-ride the opinions of these committees. But Mr. Asquith also threw out an even more important hint as to the future development of the Home Rule policy. It is clear that if the Irish Home Rule Bill is simply the first stage in a process which will lead to the creation of Home Rule Parliaments for local affairs in Scotland, England and Wales, then such slight control as the 42 Irish members may retain over British affairs will be only temporary. What, then, is the present Parliamentary relationship between Irish Home Rule and the Federal idea? THE NEW FEDERALISM Since the year 1893 there has been a great change of feeling in regard to the whole Home Rule question. The British Parliament has gone through a great crisis in its procedure, and it has, for the moment, accepted a temporary way out in the form of a drastic use of the closure, applied by Mr. Balfour, under Standing Orders, to so vital a matter as Supply. That violent remedy known as the "Compartment Closure" is now almost automatically extended by both parties, under the very thin veil of liberty left by a special resolution, to almost every great measure that comes before the House of Commons. This development of the British Parliamentary system has created a new outlook on the Home Rule question. The case of Ireland still stands by itself, with great grievances and strong historical claims behind it. Home Rule for Ireland will always have a peculiar urgency, arising from conditions of geographical position. But the passion for Irish liberty is now mingled in the average British mind with the passion for the liberty of the British House of Commons. It is recognised that unless Ireland is freed the British Parliament will remain in chains. This new attitude has widened the outlook of Home Rulers until Home Rule has ceased to be a merely Irish question. Nothing was more dramatic during the recent debates over the Insurance Bill than the sudden wave of federal feeling in the House of Commons which compelled the Government to grant a separate administrative insurance authority, not merely to Ireland, but also to Scotland and Wales. Similarly with Home Rule. What was in 1893 only a pale glimmer of foresight, is with many, in the year 1912, a passionate conviction. It is that after Home Rule has been given to Ireland it must be extended also to Scotland, Wales, and possibly England. Now it would be plainly useless to grant Home Rule to any of these countries until there is a wider and deeper demand for it. The issue of Home Rule for Ireland was definitely raised in both the elections of 1910, and when the people gave their votes they knew, and were actually warned by Mr. Balfour himself, and by most of the other Unionist chiefs, that the result would be the creation of a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. But it cannot be said that the same proposal was so definitely and effectively put forward in regard to Scotland and Wales. In both those countries there is a very widespread desire for Home Rule. But there has not yet been any definite democratic vote on that desire. It may be necessary, therefore, to delay the extension of Home Rule to those countries. But the desire is sufficiently strong both in Scotland and in Wales to justify the Government in so framing a Home Rule Bill as to enable those other parts of the United Kingdom to be brought under its provisions in due time. There is a strict analogy for that proceeding in the North America Act of 1867, which created the Dominion of Canada. That Act joined together three provinces at first, but left the door open for other provinces to come in. They have since come in, one by one--all except the island of Newfoundland--until the great federation of States which we now know as the Canadian Dominion has been gradually built up.[44] What follows from all this? Surely that a Home Rule Bill for Ireland must be so framed as to render it a possible basis of a federal Constitution in the near future. But if the Irish members were entirely excluded from the British Parliament, as in 1886, then we should be turning our backs on Federalism. The only analogy to such a Constitution would be that of Austria-Hungary, where two countries are united in one Government, but work through two Parliaments. Lord Morley tells us that Mr. Parnell was very anxious to imitate in the 1886 Bill the ingenious machinery of "Delegations," by which the relations of the Austrian and Hungarian Parliaments combine for common affairs.[45] There is much to be said for that machinery in Austria-Hungary, strongly binding together two countries which must otherwise have inevitably drifted asunder. But Mr. Parnell was thinking only of Ireland, and he was not a Federalist. We are thinking of the whole United Kingdom, and many of us are Federalists. The machinery of "Delegations" therefore would not suit our purpose. What seems to be required ultimately at Westminster is a small Parliament devoted to Imperial affairs--Imperial finance, Imperial legislation, and Imperial administration--and leaving to subordinate Parliaments the administration of local matters. Many are firmly convinced that in that way the United Kingdom would become a more successful and efficient country, with legislation better adapted to the needs of its inhabitants, and with a mind more free for the consideration of great Imperial affairs. This now seems to them the only way to produce order out of the present constitutional chaos. What, then, are the lines that should be followed if we are to go forward to that goal? An Imperial Parliament of that nature would probably be a smaller assembly than the present House of Commons, which is far too large for modern conditions. There is, therefore, good ground for reducing the representation of Ireland to 42, or 38 less than in 1893. That will clear the way for a future Imperial assembly of between 300 and 400, it being understood that as each section of the United Kingdom obtains its own Home Rule Parliament it will consent to have its representation at Westminster reduced in proportion. As long as the present system of Cabinet Government resting on majorities exists--and it is the only conceivable system for a completely self-governing democracy--it still seems, as it seemed to the men of 1893, impossible to agree to any "in and out" arrangement. Under such a plan the Government might possess a majority on Imperial or English affairs, while it could be out-voted on Irish affairs. Although such a situation might conceivably work for a time, it might come to a sudden deadlock in a moment of emergency. It seems best, therefore, that the 42 Irish members at Westminster should possess full voting powers. If any Liberal dreads the prospect of having 42 Irish members still possibly giving votes hostile to Liberal views--say, on education--I would ask him to remember that the Liberal Party will not have to mourn the loss of Irish votes still almost certain to be cast in their favour on behalf of many democratic measures. * * * * * The prospect of this larger federal settlement opens a larger vision than that of 1886 or 1893. Strangely enough, it is the same vision as that sketched by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain in the daring speech which he made on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill of 1886:-- "In my view the solution of this question should be sought in some form of federation, which would really maintain the Imperial unity, and which would, at the same time, conciliate the desire for a national local government which is felt so strongly in Ireland. I say I believe it is on this line, and not on the line of our relations with our self-governing Colonies, that it is possible to seek for and to find a solution of this difficulty."[46] * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [37] See Appendix A for the text of the 1912 Bill. [38] It is proposed that the representation be divided as follows:--Ulster, 59 members; Leinster, 41; Munster, 37; Connaught, 25; The Universities, 2; making a total of 164. [39] In Canada the Senators are selected for life. Since 1891 the New Zealand Senators are selected for seven years only. [40] See Appendix C. [41] "Against Home Rule." London: Warne and Co., 1/-net. [42] Home Rule was not properly debated in the General Election of 1895, which turned on other issues, and in the General Elections of 1900 and 1906 it was laid aside by common consent. [43] See Appendix D. [44] The 146th clause of the British North America Act (1867) reads as follows:-- ADMISSION OF OTHER COLONIES. "It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the advice of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, on Addresses from the Houses of Parliament of Canada, and from the Houses of the respective Legislatures of the Colonies or Provinces of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia, to admit those Colonies or Provinces, or any of them, into the Union, and on Address from the Houses of Parliament of Canada to admit Ruperts Land and the North Western Territory, or either of them, into the Union, on such terms and conditions in each case as are in the Addresses expressed, and as the Queen thinks fit to approve, subject to the provisions of this Act: and the provisions of any Order in Council in that behalf shall have effect as if they had been enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." [45] For a description of this machinery see Chap. IX., "Home Rule in the World," p. 121. [46] April 9th, 1886. HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES ULSTER "Violent measures have been threatened. I think the best compliment I can pay to those who have threatened us is to take no notice whatever of the threats, but to treat them as momentary ebullitions, which will pass away with the fears from which they spring, and at the same time to adopt on our part every reasonable measure for disarming those fears." * * * * * "Sir, I cannot allow it to be said that a Protestant minority in Ulster or elsewhere is to rule the question for Ireland. I am aware of no constitutional doctrine on which such a conclusion could be adopted or justified. But I think that the Protestant minority should have its wishes considered to the utmost practicable extent in any form which they may assume." GLADSTONE (1893). CHAPTER V. HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES "Sooner or later," said a wise man to me the other day, "always sooner or later in the Home Rule question you bump up against religion." That is, unhappily, still true, though not so true to-day as in 1886 or in 1893. No one who visits Ireland to-day can doubt that the religious hatreds of the past are being softened; but, unhappily, this process, as recent events have vividly shown us, is still fiercely resisted by a small minority. It may almost be said that in Ireland religious intolerance is a political vested interest. It would indeed be impossible to justify the immense preponderance of salaried power and place still given at the centre to the Protestant minority[47] unless you could maintain the idea that the Catholic is a dangerous man when in a place of power. That consideration, doubtless largely unconscious, may yet partly explain the immense amount of energy devoted in the north-east of Ireland to the encouragement of religious prejudice--honest in many of the rank-and-file, artificial, I fear, in many of the organisers. BELFAST Belfast, so like a great modern city in its magnificent outward aspect, is still largely mediæval at heart. Its chief social energies are thrown into that vast and powerful organisation known as the "Orange Society"--still wearing the badges of the seventeenth century, still uttering its war-cries, and still feeding on its passions. This immense religious club has to support in the modern age that theory of religious incompatibility which nearly every other community has long ago abandoned. It has to justify itself in excluding from the municipal honours of Belfast almost every Roman Catholic. It has to justify the majority of 300,000 Belfast Protestants in giving a small and inadequate representation among the rulers of this great wealthy town to the minority of 100,000 Catholics. To maintain this policy of Ulster ascendancy the Orange chiefs watch every document that comes from Rome with a lynx eye, and try to catch a glimpse of the "Scarlet Woman" behind every Latin rescript. All this may appear to some good politics; but surely it is past tolerance when these manufacturers of intolerance talk of the intolerance of others. In all these respects Belfast stands almost alone in Ireland. A canon of the Catholic Church--a man of winning manners and charming personality, who lives on quite friendly terms with his Protestant neighbours in the South of Ireland--told me that on the only occasion when he visited Belfast he was spat at in the streets. The story is quite credible to those who have watched the deliberate manipulation of the worst religious passions by the party organisers of Ulster, not always unassisted by their colleagues in London. One result is that if you ask any question as to the character of a man in the city of Belfast, the answer will always come to you in terms of religion. In the South the reply will be, "He is a Nationalist," or "He is a Unionist." But in Belfast it will be, "He is a Catholic," or "He is a Protestant." So fierce is this feeling in Belfast that until recently all political and social differences were submerged by it, and every fresh effort towards local progress was broken up by the revival of religious prejudice. Things have been somewhat changed by the wonderful social and political crusade, quite independent of all religious differences, carried on by that remarkable young citizen of Belfast, Mr. Joseph Devlin, who captured the constituency of West Belfast in 1906 and retained it in 1910 largely on a social reform policy. He has for the first time given Ulster a glimpse of something better than religious fanaticism--a social policy based on the unions of religions for the good of all.[48] This break in the dark clouds must surely spread until a better spirit prevails. For Belfast, perhaps, has more to gain than any other great Irish city by a policy that would pacify Ireland. If Belfast could once shake off the memory of her immigrant origin, and look to Ireland rather than Great Britain as her native country, she would perceive that the gain of Catholic Ireland must be her gain also. Her prosperity can never be sure or certain as long as it stands out against a background of Irish poverty. The linen industry can never rest secure as long as there are so few industries to support it. The linen merchants cannot really gain by their isolation. Belfast at present has a great export trade. She clothes Great Britain in fine linen. But what about her home trade? Would not Belfast be even more prosperous if she could clothe Ireland too?--if Ireland could afford to put aside her rags and replace them with "purple and fine linen" from the factories of the North? Might not Belfast, in that case, be able not merely to enrich her merchants but to raise the social conditions of her own people? For it is unhappily the case that the researches of the Women's Trade Unions have disclosed in Belfast conditions of sweated labour that have surprised and alarmed even the most hardened investigators. The lofty buildings and humming mills of Belfast are revealed to be resting on a swamp of social misery. Nor is this at all remarkable, for the mass of the people are kept helpless and divided by their religious divisions, which are too often used as a weapon to prevent them from combining for higher wages and shorter hours. Religious fanaticism is not quite so self-sacrificing in its commercial results as superficial observers might suppose. It is impossible, indeed, that Belfast can continue for ever in a prosperity isolated and aloof from the country in which she is situated. Either she must throw in her lot with Ireland or Ireland must drag Ireland down into one common pit of adversity. Lord Pirrie, the enterprising and fearless director of the great shipbuilding works on Queen's Island--works which maintained their pre-eminence and continued their output through the dark days of the shipbuilding trade on the Clyde and the Thames--has been converted to Home Rule. Other business men will follow his example, for Belfast, as much as any other town in Ireland, suffers in Private Bill legislation from the remoteness of the Legislature and the Administration. She, too, has too often to endure a financial policy not suited to her needs. She, like the rest of Ireland, has everything to gain and nothing to lose by a policy that will enable Ireland to obtain legislation better fitted to the needs of the Irish people. In spite, indeed, of her outcries, Ulster has already gained more from the policy of the Nationalists at Westminster than from that of the Orange reactionaries who represent half the province at Westminster. Those Orangemen have identified the robust Radicalism and Presbyterianism of Ulster with the narrowest demands of the Anglican landlords and Tories of England. Happily for Ulster, they have been defeated. The farmers of Ulster are at present buying their farms under the policy of Land Purchase which the Orange Ulstermen resisted. These farmers have freely used the Land Courts which their representatives denounced as revolution and the "end of all things." They are profiting by the triumphs of Nationalist policy even while they denounce the Nationalists in terms which are reserved by other people for criminals and wild beasts. The best men in Ulster will probably think twice before prolonging a campaign of rebellion. We have heard of late threats of refusal to pay taxes or rents to the Irish Parliament. But what could be more dangerous to a city like Belfast than a no-rent campaign under the guidance of English lawyers? If the farmers are advised not to pay their rents to Dublin, is it not likely that the working-class tenants of Belfast may refuse to pay their rents to their own landlords? At their own peril, indeed, will a class which largely lives on rent and interest strike a blow at the habits and customs which enforce such payments. The kid-glove revolution of linen merchants might suddenly and swiftly turn into something nearer to the real, red thing. It is dangerous to set examples in revolution. As Ulster gradually swings round to the inevitable, she will discover that there is a very bright silver lining to what seems to her so black a cloud. Ulster, while still represented at Westminster, will send 59 members to Dublin under the 1912 Bill. Thus she will have no small or mean representation in the future Irish Parliament. She may have far more power than she imagines, if she uses it with wisdom. A strong Progressive section from the industrial North may hold the balance between the parties of the South and centre. It would be rash to predict the future. But there are many causes--education, Free Trade, enlightened local government, to take a few--in which Ireland will gain immensely by a strong, clear progressive lead. "The best is yet to be." Why should not Belfast--Belfast Protestant united with Belfast Catholic--have in these matters a greater and nobler part to play under Home Rule than under the present system of distant, ignorant, absent-minded, rule? As for religious persecution, the thing would be absurdly impossible under any Home Rule Bill that possessed the guarantees and safeguards of the 1912 Bill. But, beyond those safeguards, Ulster will always have, in any such extreme and improbable event, an appeal to all the forces of the Empire--an appeal which would certainly not be in vain. The conviction of these truths will gradually penetrate the shrewd brain of Ulster and save her from the madness of rebellion or secession. The patience and moderation of the Government will gradually disarm these men. Who knows whether in the end the majority in Belfast, as in Ulster, as a whole may not voluntarily prefer to join rather than hold aloof from a great national restoration? * * * * * In one of his 1893 Home Rule speeches, Mr. Gladstone reminded the House of Commons, with impressive power, of the splendid reception given in 1793 to the Protestant delegates from Grattan's Parliament at Dublin, who had come to plead for the concession of their rights to the Catholics of Ireland. It was the Act of Union that destroyed all that generous feeling, and revived again the passions of ascendancy and fanaticism among the Orangemen of North-east Ulster. But the old, generous feelings may yet return again. SOUTHERN ULSTER The great majority of the Protestants in Ireland stand outside this ring. They have no more share in the good things than the average Catholic. Those men, Irishmen first and Protestants afterwards, are now taking their part in public life and earning their proper share in the rewards of public zeal. The delegates of the Eighty Club made a special public appeal for information as to cases of religious intolerance. They received a great many responses to this appeal, but it is hardly any exaggeration to say that they found no genuine cases of religious intolerance outside the North-east corner of Ulster, where they received some conspicuous examples of the religious persecution of Liberal Protestants by their Orange co-religionists.[49] Journeying southwards, however, the Eighty Club delegates passed with every mile into a serener atmosphere. They received deputations at every wayside station from the public bodies in the south of Ulster. These presented documents stating the bare facts as to the representation of these two forms of the Christian religion--so often, alas! belying the doctrine of Christian love by the practice of mutual hatred--on their public bodies. They found, for instance, in Monaghan, a predominantly Catholic town, that seven seats on the local Council went to the Unionist and Protestant Party, a considerable concession from a majority large enough in numbers to pack the whole of the council if they so desired. That little town might give a good lesson to some of the boroughs of our great county of London, where it is an almost universal practice for either party to seize the whole of the seats if they are capable of doing so. Take one more instance in that district--out of the many--in the town of Cavan, a preponderantly Catholic borough. There, out of twenty-three candidates at the last election standing for eighteen seats, four Unionists were elected by a similar method of compromise. Where is the evidence of the Orangemen in their strongholds meting out similar measure to the Catholics? Passing further south they found that although the great majority of the public bodies was naturally Nationalist and Catholic, there was no sign of that spirit of rigid exclusiveness extended towards the Catholics by the Protestants in the city of Belfast. Of course, a large number of the Protestant officials found so frequently in the service of these public bodies are appointed in Ireland by the Crown, and not, as in England, by the local authorities. But the Protestants are not confined to those offices. Dublin has several times freely elected a Protestant to the Lord Mayoralty of that city. In other parts of southern Ireland the Eighty Club found Protestants as masters in the county schools, surveyors of taxes, local registrars, clerks of the works, rate collectors, and public librarians. The Catholics on the local bodies recognise that the Protestants in the south possess, owing to their superior advantages in education, a great proportion of the brains, and they are not slow to do justice to this fact in filling public posts. In regard to elections, let us be quite candid. It is not to be expected that an Irish elector will return at the head of the poll men who hurl abuse and calumny at the Irish race and at the religion held by the great majority of the Irish race. Treachery to one's cause and one's faith is not required by any proper doctrine of tolerance. Surrender is not the same thing as compromise. We do not, for instance, expect in England that a Unionist constituency should return a Liberal, or a Liberal constituency should return a Tory. We expect men to live up to their faith, and even admire them for doing so. In Ireland, similarly, Nationalist voters, as a whole, prefer Nationalist members, and will continue to do so until this great issue of Home Rule is settled. CHANCES OF PEACE But when a Unionist or a Protestant comes forward with a single eye to the public good, and displays in public affairs a broad and generous spirit, he finds no difficulty in securing his place in public life. In county Cork and Tipperary we found Protestant landlords who had sold their estates. Having ceased to be rent collectors, they are becoming real leaders of their people. These landlords are reorganising co-operative societies, encouraging agricultural experiments, looking after schools, and helping generally in the regrowth of Ireland with a real good will. Many of these men are Devolutionists. Take, for instance, Sir Nugent Everard, the public-spirited squire who, with great enterprise, enthusiasm, and perseverance, is reviving that old Irish tobacco industry which once played so big a part in the prosperity of Ireland. Sir Nugent Everard is a Protestant, but he has been elected to his county council. On that council, too, he has been appointed chairman of several committees by his Catholic fellow county councillors. There is, indeed, at the present moment throughout the south of Ireland a new spirit of willingness, amounting almost to eagerness, to accept the services of all distinguished Protestants who will work for the common good of Ireland. That is not at all surprising when we remember that the Irish Party have, in the past, numbered among their leaders at least three distinguished Protestants--Grattan, Butt, and Parnell--and at the present day always return a steady percentage of Protestant representatives to the Imperial Parliament.[50] The plain fact is that, except in the north-east corner, religious intolerance is a dying cause in Ireland, and even in Belfast it is mainly kept alive by artificial respiration frequently administered by English Unionist leaders. Every phase of Irish life is expressed in Irish humour. Two Irish stories commonly related to-day in the south really throw some light on the change of feeling in Ireland. One is that of a Protestant parson in the south who found that the Bishop was about to visit his parish for a confirmation. But, unhappily, it so happened that there were no young people to confirm. The parson was in despair. After long reflection, he took a great decision. He went across to the Catholic priest and described his unhappy plight. "Indeed," he said, "I shall be a ruined man." "Sure," said the priest sympathetically, "I will lend you a congregation." "How will you do that?" said the parson. "Faith! I'll tell the boys and girls to go across." And the story relates that when the Bishop came down he actually found the church full of "boys and girls" who, for the moment, figured as Protestants. The second story comes from Ulster, and seems to show that there is some softening even in the rigour of that climate. It is said that "once upon a time," when July 11th came round one of the Orange drummers found that on the last occasion he had broken his drum, and could not get it mended. Finding himself faced with disgrace, he wandered through the town after a drum, and finally found himself looking at a very beautiful specimen of its kind standing in a Catholic schoolroom. After much heart-searching, the Orangeman at last went in, and timidly told the Catholic priest the extremity of his Protestant need. "You shall have the drum," said the priest; "but you must not break it this time." And so, on that condition, the drum was handed over. Perhaps if such relations were to become more common the drums would actually beat more softly in the north of Ireland. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [47] Take the facts given by Mr. John J. Horgan, in his interesting pamphlet entitled "Home Rule--A Critical Consideration":--"In a country of which three-fourths of the population are Catholic there has not been a Catholic Viceroy since 1688. There never was a Catholic Chief Secretary. There have been three Catholic Under-Secretaries. There have been two Catholic Chancellors. In the High Court of Justice there are seventeen Judges; _three_ of them are Catholics. There are twenty-one County Court Judges and Recorders; eight of them are Catholics. There are thirty-seven County Inspectors of Police; five of them are Catholics. There are 202 District Inspectors of Police; sixty-two of them are Catholics. There are over 5,000 Justices of the Peace; a little more than one-fifth of them are Catholics. There are sixty-eight Privy Councillors; eight of them are Catholics. "Let us now consider some of the large Government Departments. Take the Local Government Board. This body consists of two elements--the nominated and highly paid officials and those who secure admission through competitive examinations. From the latter class Catholics cannot, of course, be excluded. The permanent Vice-President is to all intents and purposes the Local Government Board. He is a Protestant and a Unionist. Of the three Commissioners, two are Protestants, one a Catholic. On the permanent staff we find forty-seven nominated officials, thirty-four of whom are Protestants: and the balance of thirteen Catholics. The thirty-four Protestants draw an average yearly salary of £653 13s., while the average yearly salary of the thirteen Catholic officials only amounts to £580. On the permanent staff created by competitive examination the story is very different. Here we find forty-three Catholics and twenty-five Protestants. Brains and ability could not be kept out. But what about their remuneration? The average salary of the forty-three Catholics amounts to £207 13s. 6d., while that of the twenty-five Protestants is £304 8s. Can any sensible man believe that there is no favour here?" [48] The result is that since 1906 Ulster has been half Nationalist in its Parliamentary representation. Taking the last three General Elections together, the Nationalists have nearly an average hold over half the seats in Ulster:--1906: Nationalist and Liberal, 17; Unionist, 16. 1910 (January): Nationalist and Liberal, 15; Unionist, 18. 1910 (December): Nationalist and Liberal, 16; Unionist, 17. And yet people talk as if Ulster was entirely Unionist! [49] Many of these experiences were narrated to me personally by the sufferers, and consisted of boycotting in religion, trade and social life. [50] There are now eight Protestants among the Nationalist Party. The directors of Maynooth College told us that the two best friends of their college were Burke and Grattan. A portrait of Grattan hangs in their hall. It was, too, a Catholic Corporation that re-gilded the statue of William III.--William of Orange--at Dublin. HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES ROME RULE _or_ HOME RULE? "There is a principle on our part which must ever prevent (Catholicism being established) in Ireland. It is this--that we are thoroughly convinced that it would be the surest way of de-Catholicising Ireland. We believe that tainting our Church with tithes and giving temporalities to it would degrade it in the affections of the people." O'CONNELL. "I want soldiers and sailors for the State; I want to make a greater use than I now can do of a poor country full of men. I want to render the military service popular among the Irish; to make every possible exertion for the safety of Europe ... and then you, and ten other such boobies as you, call out 'for God's sake, do not think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland....' They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner from what we do!" "'They eat a bit of wafer every Sunday, which they call their God!' ... I wish to my soul they would eat you, and such reasoners as you are!" SYDNEY SMITH (Peter Plymley's Letters). CHAPTER VI. HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES Those who watch closely the exploitation of the religious cry against Home Rule will have observed that its exploiters always endeavour to make the best of both worlds. One world is expressed in the phrase, "Home Rule means Rome Rule." The other by the watchword, "Priest-ridden Ireland." Those who use the first of these cries are always trying to persuade themselves that the gift of Home Rule will increase the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland and produce a kind of religious tyranny over the Protestant minority. How that could be done under a measure so carefully safeguarded as, for instance, the Bill of 1912,[51] they never condescend to tell us. It is part of their policy never to enter into details, but to produce a general atmosphere of distrust and unreason. But it is often these very same people who draw terrible pictures of the power of the Roman Catholic Church already existing in Ireland at the present moment. They do not explain how both of these propositions can be true--how, if Ireland is already "priest-ridden"--a superlative phrase--without Home Rule, there is any room for an increase of that evil under Home Rule. They never seem to contemplate the possibility that the proper and natural corrective to the power of the priest, if it be excessive, is the creation of a strong rival civil power. Is it, indeed, so certain that "Home Rule" would increase the power of Rome in Ireland? I have even heard it said that the Home Rule cause finds its headquarters at Rome, and that it is part of a gigantic conspiracy of the Vatican to break up a Protestant Empire. Do those who reason thus ever reflect how it is that the English Catholics are often among the most formidable opponents of the Home Rule cause? Why are the English Catholics so often opposed to Home Rule? The answer was given by Cardinal Manning in the famous phrase quoted by Lord Morley: "We want every one of their eighty votes." UNIONISM AS "ROME RULE" Those who fear Home Rule as "Rome Rule" in Ireland had better, indeed, examine themselves as to whether their action in defeating the Home Rule Bill of 1893 has not, so far as it goes, led to this very same effect in England. It must never be forgotten that it was with the help of the 80 Irish votes, pressed back to Westminster by the Irish Bishops in sympathy with the Catholic Bishops in England, that the British Parliament passed those clauses of the 1902 Education Act which are most offensive to English Nonconformists. Dr. Clifford has coined the expression "Rome on the rates." It is not, perhaps, a phrase that tells the whole story. We cannot forget how many of the poorer Catholics in our great cities are the descendants of the unhappy Irishmen who were evicted between 1840 and 1880 from the cabins of Ireland. Those poor exiles have a special call on our purses. But Anglicanism--rich Anglicanism--has also been placed on the rates. It has been placed there through a working alliance between the English Church and Rome, carrying out its aims by means of the votes of the Catholic Irish members. Those members only acted up to their principles in so voting. It was Great Britain that compelled them to remain as full voters in full strength at the British Parliament. As long as they are there the Irish must be expected to vote for the interests of their own religion and their own people. But what of the sincerity of the people who, after using the aid of the Irish to endow the Catholic and Anglican schools in England, now raise this outcry about "Rome Rule" in Ireland? It is vital, indeed, to point out that in these matters Home Rule for Ireland is the only possible road to Home Rule for England also. Under the 1912 Bill the Irish vote at Westminster is reduced to 42, and will, if English self-government be also extended, be excluded from education altogether. Thus the first plain and practical result of Irish Home Rule would be not so much to give the Roman Catholics more power in Ireland as to give the Protestants more liberty in England. But who can doubt that it would also introduce a new element of civil power into the schools of Ireland?[52] NATIONALISM AND RELIGION As to Ireland itself, indeed, there can be no doubt that the great national wrongs of the Irish people have immensely strengthened the hold of the Roman Catholic Church over that island during the last century. Let us look back for a moment at the historic relations between Roman Catholicism and the Irish National cause. No doubt the iron hammer of Cromwell--in England the rebel, in Ireland the conqueror--and the long torture of the penal laws both contributed to weld together the religious and political faith of Ireland. During those dark days, Nationalism and Catholicism were almost identical terms. It has been shrewdly remarked that Henry VIII. and Elizabeth might probably have converted Ireland to Protestantism if they had preached the reformed faith in the Irish language. However that may be, it is quite certain that Protestantism stood throughout the eighteenth century as the sign and uniform of the conqueror and the devastator. Catholicism remained as the hope and sign of the conquered. Any Irishman who became a Protestant was naturally suspected of being a traitor, not merely to his religion but also to his nation. Yet at the end of the eighteenth century the British Government had a great opportunity of dividing the national from the religious cause. Grattan's Parliament, with all its brilliancy and efficiency, was, after all, a Parliament from which every Catholic was excluded. That Parliament, indeed, as we have noted, granted the franchise to the Catholic peasant and abolished the penal laws. But it was part of the policy of the British Government to show that Grattan's Parliament could not grant Catholic emancipation in its full sense. The grant was to be kept as a bribe by which to achieve the policy of the Union. Anyone who reads the story in the pages of Lecky[53] must see how that motive ran like a sinister thread throughout the whole working of British policy from 1795 to 1800. Well, that policy succeeded only too thoroughly for the time. Among the various forms of bribery which induced the Irish Parliament to give a vote for the Union at the second time of asking, the gift of money and titles were, perhaps, less powerful than the offer of Catholic emancipation. Recent researches have shown that that offer led to the conversion of Bishops and their clergy throughout the whole of Ireland, besides winning over the great body of Catholic Peers. It is now known, indeed, to be the fact that the British Government actually induced the Vatican to bring pressure upon the Irish leaders and the Irish bishops in order to achieve their object. It is almost certain that unless that offer had been made, and unless the Catholic Party in Ireland had been informed that the Act of Union was the inevitable price for Catholic emancipation, Lord Castlereagh would never have succeeded in closing the Irish Parliament.[54] That bargain was broken. It is unhappily the case that the British Ministers must have given their pledge to the Catholic Party in Ireland with the conscious knowledge of their inability to carry it out. For over them all was their King, George III., still with the Royal privilege of dismissal for his Ministers, and resolutely, fiercely resolved not to grant Catholic emancipation. Pitt relieved his conscience by a two-years' resignation, but he returned to Parliament without achieving his pledge. For another thirty years the struggle went on. It is the Duke of Wellington himself who has handed down to history the testimony that Catholic emancipation was only finally granted in 1829 in order to save Ireland from a second rebellion. It is that record that has driven Ireland into the arms of Rome, and who can wonder? England has now only paid the price of that great betrayal of 1800--a betrayal almost as great as the broken treaty of Limerick. Those who read the story of 1800 to 1830, and especially the brilliant sketch of O'Connell's life in Lecky's "Leaders of Irish Public Opinion," will know that it was in the course of this prolonged struggle for Catholic emancipation that the forces of religion and politics were first thrown into close alliance in Ireland. It was not until after 1820 that the Catholic priest took the place of the Irish landlord, and became what he was throughout most of the nineteenth century, the political leader of his district. It was O'Connell who first carried out that great revolution in political strategy. It was he who first placed the flocks of the Irish people under the guidance of shepherds who carried the crook and not the rent-book. If the Home Rule movement has been assisted by religious fervour, that has been the fault of British statesmen. If the Irish have stood apart from the rest of Europe by a steadily deepening loyalty to their faith, the reason is largely to be found in the British policy of 1800. ROME AND HOME RULE What is the moral of all this? Some of the Unionists themselves give a shrewd though cynical comment on the situation when they suggest, in the intervals of crying "Home Rule means Rome Rule," that probably the Roman Catholic priests have no great zeal for Home Rule. I do not, myself, for a moment believe that that is the case. The Roman Catholic priests of Ireland have themselves been elevated and purified by the great struggle, both social and political, through which they have passed. They stand apart from the rest of the priesthood of Europe, distinguished above all others by their deep and strong democratic sympathies. When all others deserted the people of Ireland in the black times of the '98 Rebellion, in the dark and evil days of the famine of 1847, or through the murderous retaliations that followed, the Irish priesthood stood staunchly by Ireland. Those who remained faithful then are not likely to desert the cause of their people now that it is on the verge of success. A broader and more enlightened view of the future was expressed to me by that distinguished man the Vice-president of Maynooth College, when he said:--"We do not expect any direct gain for our faith, but as Irishmen we are with Ireland, and as Catholics we cannot but believe that the prosperity of a Catholic nation must redound to the glory of Catholicism." That is the view of a good Catholic who is also a good citizen. But though we may believe in their resisting power to this great temptation, we must remember that the failure to settle the Home Rule question would give to the bishops and priests a great power in Ireland. They would remain the great, pre-eminent centre of national authority. Look at their position now. They are public men; they are allowed, without envy or opposition, to maintain an unchallenged control over the schools; they have a voice in all great public decisions of policy, even in regard to such matters as old-age pensions, insurance, or agriculture. The present position plays into their hands. "Rome Rule" is far more powerful without "Home Rule." So much for the Irish clergy. But what of Rome itself? Looked at from the distance of the Seven Hills, and viewed from the standpoint of a Church that contemplates all forms of human government with equal indifference, always regarding only the good of their Church, is it not possible that the acute diplomatists of the Eternal City may think that they stand to gain more by prolonging than by satisfying the present hunger of Ireland? At present Rome holds Ireland in fee. As long as Ireland possesses no strong secular central power she must always lean on the authority of her bishops and archbishops. But Rome thinks probably more of the 40,000,000 people of Britain than of the 4,000,000 of Ireland. As long as England persists in holding Ireland in bondage she must pay to Rome some compensation. The eighty votes at Westminster are still doing the work which Cardinal Manning required of them. Is it likely that Rome is so beset with anxiety to drive them across the Channel? Is it altogether unlikely that some of the more shrewd Italian or Spanish diplomatists at the Vatican--advised, perhaps, by their English bishops and dukes--may hope to affect the issue rather in the Unionist than in the Home Rule direction? Such suspicions may be entirely baseless, but it will be impossible to disregard them entirely during the events of the next few years. It would not be the first time, nor the latest since Castlereagh, when the extreme Protestant Unionists of this country conspired with the Tory Ultramontanes of the Vatican to traffic away the liberties of Ireland.[55] Amid all these doubts and perplexities we shall be wise to stick fast to the central doctrine that civil liberty and religious liberty stand together. This is the one truth that emerges from the history of Europe during the last three centuries. Wherever we look--whether in Germany, France, Holland, Scotland, or England--we see that these two rights have always gone hand in hand. Is there, indeed, a single instance in human history when the grant of civil liberty has led to the forging of religious chains? Look to the West, and note how, in the freest countries of the world--in the United States and Canada, where there is not even a shadow of an establishment for any form of religion--every kind of human faith lives together in simple human brotherhood, and draws from that brotherhood new food for the refreshment of mankind. In Ireland the one reason why the religious quarrel has been maintained is to be found in the absence of civil liberty. At every crisis of Ireland's fate the passion of religious hatred has been worked--then as now--in order to prolong civil and political despotism. May we not be sure that Home Rule, instead of strengthening this evil tendency, will weaken it? May we not be equally sure that it will take no blood or muscle from the cause of true religion, certain to flourish with greater richness and power where Christian love prevails? Is it possible, in short, that in Ireland alone, of all countries, freedom should mean persecution? On the contrary, is it not far more likely that Home Rule for Ireland will mean neither Rome Rule nor Orange Rule, but the "rule of the best for the good of all"? * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [51] See Appendix A for the text of the Bill. [52] The priests have now practically complete power of dismissal over the elementary teachers in the Irish schools. The only appeal is to the Bishops. [53] In his "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century." That book is one of the most conscientious pieces of work in all modern historical literature. It should be read by all who wish to gain a thorough understanding of the Irish problem. [54] See a very interesting pamphlet entitled "The Closing of the Irish Parliament," by John Roche Ardill, LL.D. (Dublin). Dublin: Hodges, Figgis and Co. Price 1s. 6d. [55] For instance, it was by a Unionist intrigue at the Vatican that the Pope was induced to denounce the "Plan of Campaign," and to restrain the agitation among the Irish priests. HOME RULE IN HISTORY FIVE CENTURIES OF LIMITED HOME RULE (1265-1780) "You parade a great deal upon the vast concessions made by this country to the Irish before the Union. I deny that any voluntary concession was ever made by England to Ireland. What did Ireland ever ask that was granted? What did she ever demand that was not refused? How did she get her Mutiny Bill--a limited Parliament--a repeal of Poynings' Law--a Constitution? Not by the concessions of England, but by her fears. When Ireland asked for all these things upon her knees, her petitions were rejected with Percevalism and contempt; when she demanded them with the voice of 60,000 armed men, they were granted with every mark of consternation and dismay" SYDNEY SMITH. CHAPTER VII. HOME RULE IN HISTORY What is the fact of Irish history vital to our present cause? Surely it is this, that up to the year 1800--the year of the Act of Union--Ireland had possessed for practically five centuries a Home Rule Government in some shape or form. In other words, self-government had been the rule and not the exception throughout the centuries preceding 1800. This is a complete and sufficient answer to those who argue that the supporters of Irish Home Rule are making a proposal of a completely novel and revolutionary kind, without precedent in the history of the Western world. As a matter of plain fact, it was the framers of the Act of Union who were the revolutionaries, and it is the supporters of Home Rule who are returning to the ancient paths. The Home Rulers have five centuries behind them, as against the one century behind the Unionists. From the days of Simon de Montfort[56] the Irish Parliament developed side by side with the English, growing with the growth of English rule in Ireland, and varying with its limitations. Its powers, indeed, were placed under a grave and serious limitation by Poynings' Law, passed in the reign of Henry VII.,[57] and strengthened in the reign of Mary Tudor.[58] They were for a brief time entirely taken away by Oliver Cromwell, who was, strangely enough, the first great Unionist ruler of Ireland. Restored by Charles II., the Irish Parliament was again limited in power by the Government of George I.[59] But in 1782 it broke through all these limitations, and became for a short brilliant period a fully self-governing Parliament. We have thus the illuminating fact that, with one single exception--and that an example eminent in English affairs, but certainly not to be followed in Irish--every great English ruler and monarch governed Ireland under a distinct Irish Home Rule Parliament up to the year 1800. If Home Rule is so certain to be ruinous to Empire, how, we may well ask, did these rulers build up the British Empire? How did Marlborough and Clive, Chatham and Walpole, do their great world-work with an Irish Parliament behind them? The answer is, of course, that they did it better, and not worse, because Ireland was so far satisfied with her fortunes as to be willing to put her full force into the struggle for Empire. For as long as Ireland possessed a Parliament she always possessed hope. THE UNION CENTURY As against these five centuries, we have one century of Irish rule under a united Parliament--1800 to 1911. One against five. But as the one is more recent, we have here not a bad provision of material for an answer to the question: "Which has proved in the past the best way of governing Ireland--Union or Home Rule?" In regard to the century of Union, the record lies before us, open and palpable, a tale of disaster and tragedy almost without parallel in the modern history of the world. We see in the statistics of Irish population, of Irish disease, of Irish poverty during the nineteenth century[60] a black picture of material decay that literally "cries to Heaven" for redress. Side by side with these statistics, too, we have others to clinch the evidence which traces the cause to the Act of Union. For the nineteenth century was no century of decay. On the contrary, in almost every other Western country, and especially in countries of the same racial and religious fusion--in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and in the British Colonies--the nineteenth century was a period of rising population, advancing commerce, and abounding prosperity. Nor is it the fact that British Ministers had any deliberate malice against Ireland. On the contrary, many noble Englishmen worked themselves grey during the nineteenth century in their efforts to make the best of the Union system. Viceroy after Viceroy, and Chief Secretary after Chief Secretary, have gone to Ireland full of hope, and have come back converted reluctantly to the admission that their efforts have been in vain and their work wasted under the present form of Government.[61] "For forms of government let fools contest; Whate'er is best administered is best" sang Pope. But there are some forms of government so bad that they cannot be well administered. Among them is the form of government established under the Act of Union. Unionist writers who are honest enough to admit the decay of Ireland between 1800-1900 attempt to trace it to any other cause than the Act of Union--to over-population, to the Catholic religion, to the Irish character, or even to the potato. But they labour in vain. If Ireland stood alone, they might succeed. But it does not stand alone. Precisely at the time when Ireland was decaying, all other Western nations were flourishing. Precisely when the Irish race was withering in Ireland, the same race, with the same religion and the same national characteristics, was prospering exceedingly in America, and was even contributing much of the power, skill and value for building up the white British Colonies. Unvarying progress on one side--on the other, unvarying decline, until checked by the willingness of England to listen to the voice of Ireland. What evidence could you have more convincing, what witnesses more eloquent? Perhaps, indeed, the most convincing statement of this very case was given to the world, not by an Irishman or by any Liberal statesman, but by the great Lord Salisbury. Speaking in 1865 as Lord Robert Cecil, he uttered the following wise and statesmanlike summary of the policy of the Union up to that date:-- "What is the reason that a people with so bountiful a soil, with such enormous resources (as the Irish), lag so far behind the English in the race? Some say that it is to be found in the character of the Celtic race, but I look to France, and I see a Celtic race there going forward in the path of prosperity with most rapid strides--I believe at the present moment more rapidly than England herself. Some people say that it is to be found in the Roman Catholic religion; but I look to Belgium, and there I see a people second to none in Europe, except the English, for industry, singularly prosperous, considering the small space of country that they occupy, having improved to the utmost the natural resources of that country, but distinguished among all the peoples of Europe for the earnestness and intensity of their Roman Catholic belief. Therefore, I cannot say that the cause of the Irish distress is to be found in the Roman Catholic religion. An hon. friend near me says that it arises from the Irish people listening to demagogues. I have as much dislike to demagogues as he has, but when I look to the Northern States of America I see there people who listen to demagogues, but who undoubtedly have not been wanting in material prosperity. It cannot be demagogues, Romanism, or the Celtic race. What then is it? I am afraid that the one thing which has been peculiar to Ireland has been the Government of England."[62] Nothing has occurred since 1865 to vary that judgment. THE HOME RULE FIVE So much for the one century of Union. What about the five of Home Rule? "Were there no black centuries before 1800? Had Ireland no grievances? What of the 'curse of Cromwell,' the broken 'Treaty of Limerick,' and the penal laws?" Thus I shall be challenged. There were, indeed, black centuries before 1800, and black events. Ireland endured a special share of the agony inflicted upon Europe by the great religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She suffered, perhaps, more than any other country from the divisions of Christian Europe following on the revolt of Luther against Rome in 1520. The statutory limitations of the Irish Parliament during that period led to many interferences from England, and the gradual exclusion of Catholics divided the Parliament from the Irish nation. The artificial infusion of a fanatical Protestant population by James I. and Cromwell produced a terrible embitterment of the struggle. There were crimes on both sides, and calamities beyond telling. But, with all that, it is still to be doubted whether any of those centuries presents such a picture of national decay, both industrial and social, as is presented by the Ireland of the nineteenth century. For through the blackness of that night the Irish Parliament always shone like a star. Ireland grew with its growth, and withered with its decay. Precisely as she had more Home Rule she advanced, and precisely as she had less she fell back. But as long as the Parliament existed at all it could never be said that the final spark of liberty had been stamped out. Even in the eighteenth century, when Catholic Ireland seemed to be crushed, and Ireland lay supine beneath the double weight of the penal laws and the commercial restrictions of England--an Ireland pictured for all time by the keen, merciless pen of Dean Swift--still the vestal flame was not quite extinguished. Captured by ascendancy, dominated by fanaticism, narrowed to one faith, or even to one section of that faith, the Irish Parliament still always provided a framework and machinery for a possible moment of regeneration and recovery. That moment came in 1782--came, unhappily both for England and for Ireland, in such a form as to seem to justify the hard saying--"England's danger is Ireland's opportunity." The story of 1782 has been told with surpassing brilliancy in the greatest of all Mr. Lecky's books--the darling of his youth and the worry of his old age--his "Leaders of Irish Public Opinion."[63] The disastrous and wasting struggle against our own kith and kin in the American colonies--forced on England by the folly of the same type of statesmen now resisting Home Rule--had reduced these islands to an almost defenceless condition. The British Army, intended for the defence of Great Britain, had been sent away into the forests and prairies of Northern America to fight an invisible foe, and to meet with a disastrous and undeserved defeat. But in their blind passion to subdue the Americans the British Government had for the moment forgotten Ireland. In their eagerness to conquer their colonies they had forgotten to maintain their hold on the half-conquered country at their side. The British troops had been withdrawn from Ireland as well as from England. At that dramatic moment France came into the struggle with her fleet, and Ireland, with her great harbours and her accessible coastline, could not be left defenceless. As Ireland had no British troops to defend her, it was inevitable that she should be allowed to defend herself. Ireland, never slow in a fight, rose to this crisis. In a few months there sprang up throughout the country that wonderful movement of the Irish Volunteers. Ireland in a few weeks produced an army that kept Europe from her shores. Sixty thousand Irishmen stood to arms. Ireland could no longer be hectored or bullied. She was, for the moment--for the only time in her history--mistress of her own fate. The American War came to its only possible end with the grant of American Independence. Great Britain turned to look to her own domestic affairs, and found herself face to face with the possibility of a second war. For Ireland, having once armed to resist Europe, refused to disarm until she received her liberty. The Volunteers, in other words, would not disperse except on the conditions that the Irish Parliament should become a reality. Poynings' Law was to be repealed. The right of legislative initiative was to be given back to the Irish Parliament, and England was to admit solemnly and categorically the right of Ireland to make laws for herself. It was a tremendous demand, but the British Government had no choice except to yield. Exhausted with the American struggle, the British Ministers could not face a second war. The demands of Ireland were granted, and thus in a moment Grattan's Parliament, in the full panoply of armed strength, sprang into existence. Well might Grattan exclaim, at the opening of that Parliament, in words that still send a thrill through every true lover of freedom:-- "I found Ireland on her knees. I watched over her with an eternal solicitude. I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift! Spirit of Molyneux! Your genius has prevailed. Ireland is now a Nation! In that new character I now hail her! And, bowing to her august presence, I say, _Esto Perpetua_."[64] * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [56] The first real representative English Parliament, of course, was summoned by Simon de Montfort in 1265. Grattan was accustomed to claim "seven centuries" as the lifetime of the Irish Constitution; but in that, of course, he went back behind the days of a representative Parliament. [57] Poynings' Law was passed by the Irish Parliament, at Drogheda, in 1495, under the influence of Sir Edward Poynings, the Lord Deputy of Ireland to the Viceroy Prince Henry, afterwards King Henry VIII. The essential provision of Poynings' Law was that it secured all initiative in legislation to the English Privy Council, leaving to Ireland nothing but the simple power of acceptance or rejection. Ireland was thus left only a veto, though a veto is often a considerable weapon. [58] An Act in the reign of Mary forbade the Irish Parliament to alter or add to an Act of Parliament returned to her from England. [59] 6 of George I. made the Irish Parliament subordinate and dependent. [60] See Appendix B. [61] Among the Viceroys converted of later years to Home Rule by experience of the present system of Irish Government may be named Lord Spencer, Lord Dudley, and probably the last Lord Carnarvon. The resignation of Mr. George Wyndham was due to the suspicion of his conversion. [62] Quoted by Mr. Stephen Gwynn, M.P., in his brilliant book "The Case for Home Rule." (Maunsel & Co., Dublin.) [63] See the essays on Flood and Grattan. (Longmans, 2 vols., 1903.) [64] Grattan, 16th April, 1782. HOME RULE IN HISTORY GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT "To destroy is easy: the edifices of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, require an age to build, but ask only minutes to precipitate: and as the fall of both is an effort of no time, so neither is it a business of any strength. A pick-axe and a common labourer will do the one--a little lawyer, a little pimp, a wicked Minister the other." GRATTAN (1800.) "Yet I do not give up my country. I see her in a swoon, but she is not dead--though in her tomb she lies helpless and motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheeks a glow of beauty-- 'Thou art not conquered: Beauty's ensign yet Is crimson on thy lips and in thy cheeks, And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.'" GRATTAN (In the final debate on the Act of Union, May 26th, 1800). CHAPTER VIII. HOME RULE IN HISTORY Grattan's Parliament was the first Parliament with full legislative authority possessed by Ireland since the time of Henry VII. It existed for nearly twenty years, and in that brief time it did a great work for Ireland. If we look for its epitaph we shall find it, strangely enough, in the words spoken in 1798 by the man who pursued Grattan's Parliament with his venomous hate, and finally compassed its doom--the famous Irish Chancellor, Lord Clare:-- "=There is not a nation on the face of the habitable globe which has advanced in cultivation, in agriculture, in manufactures, with the same rapidity, in the same period, as Ireland.="[65] But, great and splendid as was Grattan's victory, there were two points of weakness in the settlement of 1782, soon to be revealed by experience. One was that although the Irish Parliament obtained the right of legislation, the appointment of the Government and the Executive was still placed in the hands of the Irish Privy Council, and therefore of the British Central Government. That meant, in the end, that the British Government still possessed the leverage for recovering the powers of legislative initiative and legislative veto. As far as Ireland possessed separate executive powers, she used them with loyalty and patriotism. Take, for instance, her finance. Ireland possessed, under the settlement, a separate Irish Exchequer, and the British Government could levy no war taxes in Ireland, except with the consent of the Irish Parliament. That gave to the Irish Parliament an immense power of checking and hampering England in her struggle against Napoleon. If we were to judge from some of the talk heard at the present moment, one would take for granted that Ireland must have refused all help to England in that struggle. On the contrary, the Irish Parliament voted sums freely to Pitt for the wars against France. The Irish statesmen would have no dealings with the English Whigs in their pro-French policy. Like that other great Irishman, Edmund Burke, Grattan was opposed to the spirit of the French Revolution. In that great European crisis Ireland showed herself what she really is--a nation inclined in all essentials to conservative rather than revolutionary ideas. "CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION" But it was the existence of a separate external executive, gradually limiting the legislative powers of the Irish Parliament, that finally brought out the gravity of the other signal defect in the settlement of 1782. That defect was the failure to effect a complete settlement of the Catholic question. For the Irish Parliament, even after 1782, was still confined to Protestants. Could any reasonable man call that a final solution of the problem of government in a country where four-fifths of the people were Catholics? With a truer foresight than Grattan, Flood desired that the Volunteers should refuse to lay down their arms until the Catholic question had been settled. But Grattan, still filled with that spirit of generous trust which has been the undoing of so many noble Irishmen, refused to use the military power for any further exaction of terms. He disbanded the Volunteers. Grattan trusted that once the Irish Parliament was endowed with full powers, the Catholic question would settle itself. He could rely with certainty on his own Protestant followers. He persuaded them to repeal the penal laws. He prevailed upon them to extend the franchise to the Catholic peasant. Both those great reforms were passed through the Irish Parliament in the fulness of its strength and power, and the British Government were compelled to acquiesce. But there Grattan reached the limit of his authority. There was one more great step which had to be taken before the Catholic claims could be satisfied. It was necessary to concede the right to a Catholic, as to a Protestant, to sit in the Irish Parliament. When Grattan made that proposal, he found himself faced with new forces. The British Government and the Ascendancy Party in Ireland had already begun to regain their hold over the Irish Parliament. The forces of patronage and corruption were already at work. If those had been the only powers Grattan might have defeated them. Neither he nor his admirers were perhaps wholly aware of what we now know to be the centre of this resistance--the dogged, almost insane, obstinacy of George III. Pitt indeed had already lost his earlier reforming zeal. The shadow of the French struggle had already fallen across his path, and had already shaken his early faith in freedom and progress. But if Pitt had been left alone he might still have done justice. It was George III. that lost us the soul of Ireland, as he lost us both the body and soul of North America. There were, indeed, moments in those difficult days when the British people seemed to realise dimly the wisdom of what Burke saw to be the wisest British fighting policy--the policy of rallying Catholic Ireland against revolutionary France. There was, for instance, the mission of Lord Fitzwilliam in 1795--a Whig mission extorted from Pitt against his will, due to a Parliamentary complication, and backed from London with but half-hearted support. That famous mission which sent through Ireland such a strange, sad thrill of hope, soon closed in mist and darkness. Lord Fitzwilliam went to Ireland, as many Englishmen have gone since, with the intention of doing justice. He was thwarted, like most others, by the resistance of the local Ascendancy Party, fighting doggedly for the remnants of its power. It was the place-holders of Ireland who, intriguing with the Ministry in London, led to the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam.[66] For that party was then playing the same part as it is attempting to play to-day. They were playing then, as ever since, on the nerves of Protestant England. They were conjuring up the dread of Catholic power, and the terror of Irish disloyalty. Unhappily, in the confusions of the moment--the confusions of the French wars--they succeeded. By compelling the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam they wrecked the hopes of the Grattan Parliament. For after 1795 that Parliament was practically doomed, and events moved rapidly to their climax. Grattan, thwarted in his policy, and unwilling to be responsible for a body over which he had no control, withdrew into retirement. The Irish Catholics, feeling themselves again betrayed and deserted, relapsed all over Ireland into sullen indifference and detachment. The Protestant Parliament, deprived of their leader, swung more and more towards the Ascendancy Party. Even so, indeed, the virtue of self-government continued to work. No Parliament has left a better record of good local work for the prosperity of its country than Grattan's Parliament. From end to end of Ireland new industries had sprung up, and new life had been put into old industries. Ireland then was prosperous. Her exports had doubled. Her wealth was increasing. Her towns overflowed with life, and Dublin for the moment almost rivalled London in its brilliancy and its wit.[67] THE GREAT REBELLION This prosperity might have saved Grattan's Parliament but for a new movement which had crossed the two channels from France. It is doubtful whether the Catholics alone could have wrecked Grattan's Parliament. It was, curiously enough, the Irish Presbyterians of Ulster--our friends, the Orangemen--who sowed the seeds of revolt against the Protestant Parliament of 1782. It was they, in the combination known as the "United Irishmen," who started the movement that culminated in the Irish Rebellion in 1798. These Presbyterian Nonconformists had all been deeply affected by the doctrines of the French Revolution. They had for years past been agitating for a reform of the Irish Parliament on the lines subsequently adopted in 1831--chiefly by the abolition of the rotten boroughs. Grattan was with them, but again he was powerless. He was opposed, both in Dublin and in London, by the existing executives. Those executives now rested their power almost entirely on the members returned by those very same rotten boroughs. For ever since 1782 bribery had been going on, and as early as 1790 England had been rapidly buying back the hold she had lost in 1782. These being her weapons, it was not likely that the Irish executive was going to yield to the claims of the Irish Presbyterians. The Government resisted, and the movement of the Irish Reformers became more and more formidable. All these causes of unrest culminated in the Irish Rebellion of 1798--a horrible event, beginning with the lawlessness of the revolutionary Presbyterians in the north--lawlessness so feebly checked as to raise grave suspicions in regard to the attitude of the Irish Government itself towards a possible revolution. But the outrages of the Orangemen on the Catholics in Ulster, and the Catholic feeling of desertion by the Government, soon produced a far more terrible outbreak in the south. That practically culminated in a religious war between Catholic and Protestant. From that moment the Rebellion was marked by atrocities on both sides almost as terrible as anything which occurred in the French Revolution. The Rebellion was extinguished in blood and fire. The period of exhaustion and despair that followed in Ireland was seized upon by Castlereagh and Pitt for destroying the Irish Parliament. An immense machinery of bribery and corruption, assisted by pledges that were broken and prophecies that failed, all working under the double shadow of rebellion and war, drove the Irish Parliament to reluctant suicide, and passed into law, both at Dublin and Westminster, the Union Act of 1800. That great light of the Irish Parliament thus passed suddenly into darkness. The Chamber which had resounded with the eloquence of Flood and Grattan passed over to the money-changers, and ever since the clink of coin has taken the place of the silver voices of the Irish orators.[68] AFTER THE UNION The events of 1800 left Ireland, for the moment, prostrate under the heel of Great Britain. The last remnants of self-government disappeared with the absorption of the two exchequers in 1817. Although Ireland still retained a separate administration, that administration was not under the control of any self-governing authority. Out of the Dragon's teeth of the Union rose the sinister army of a new bureaucracy, recruited almost entirely by the enemies of Ireland, and for the most part even working with its guns trained against the hopes and aspirations of the Irish race. The artificial stimulus given to agriculture by the French wars concealed for some years the greatness of the disaster. The population of Ireland continued to rise. The Irish landlords, indeed, had for the moment a strong motive to multiply their tenants, in the existence of the forty shilling freehold vote granted by the Irish Parliament. Holdings were sub-divided, and the cultivation of the potato encouraged an even larger population on a lower level of subsistence. This prepared the way for the great catastrophe of the Irish famine in 1847. It was that famine which brought out fully, for the first time, the tremendous calamity inflicted on Ireland by the destruction of her Parliament. For it was not that England showed any lack of sympathy in dealing with the Irish famine. It was indeed that event which finally converted Sir Robert Peel to the abolition of the Corn Laws, and, more even than the agitation of Richard Cobden or the speeches of John Bright, contributed to the final triumph of Free Trade. It was not want of sympathy that wrecked Ireland then. It was want of understanding. For it was only an Irish Government, living on the spot, and responsible to the people of Ireland itself, that could have risen to the great height of that tremendous emergency. The monstrous human disaster that followed--the loss of 2,000,000 of population in twenty years--was the direct result of the destruction of all the means of prompt salvage and repair which could have been brought to bear only by a Home Rule Government. During those calamitous decades another great evil emerged as a result of the Union. Many bad things have been said against the Irish land laws, and many of them are justified. But the Irish land laws in their old working were simply rather an exaggerated form of the very same laws that have survived in England right up to the present moment. Why is it that these laws proved intolerable in Ireland, and have yet survived up to the present moment in England? Simply because, after the passing of the Act of Union, they were aggravated by the great and terrible social evil of Absenteeism. Even those bad laws could be made to work as long as there was a human relationship between the landlords and their tenants. Up to 1830, at any rate, there was a strong motive for that relationship. The victory of Catholic emancipation was a colossal triumph for the genius of Daniel O'Connell. It removed one of the worst surviving religious injustices in this kingdom. But in Ireland it was a victory of the tenant over the landlord, and it was achieved by a new alliance between tenant and priest against the landlord. While giving emancipation to the Catholics, the Act of 1830 also raised the level of the franchise, and abolished the forty shilling freehold vote, thus removing the landlord's motive for preserving the small tenancies. The result was that the Irish landlords as a class--always, of course, with many conspicuous individual exceptions--entered from 1830 onwards upon a new career of hostility towards their tenants, amounting to little less than a passion for revenge. Being, for the most part, both Protestant and Absentee, they lost all interest in their tenantry, except that of rent collectors. The Irish famine made matters far worse. For the famine deprived the Irish tenant, for the moment, of the power of paying rent. Not only so, but by reducing him to pauperism it turned him into a distinct and definite burden on the rates. The Irish landlords then first conceived the idea that, by getting rid of the people, they could save their pockets. At the same time, they made the great discovery that beasts were more profitable than peasants. Hence the great clearances and evictions of the period between 1840-1870. Hence the cruel compulsory exodus of vast masses of the people of Ireland to the shores of America. Hence, finally, the bitter cleavage between landlords and tenantry which brought the whole land system of Ireland crashing into ruin. These disasters had one good effect. They roused the Irish people from their indifference. The bitter proofs of mis-government shown by the breakdown of their land system brought home to every cottager the need of a Home Rule Government. The great agitations for land reform and Home Rule went on side by side--sometimes taking a form of violence, but more and more of orderly constitutional pressure--until in the seventies there emerged at Westminster a powerful Irish Party, too strong either for the neglect or the indifference of any British Government. ENGLAND'S NEED It was impossible, indeed, for Great Britain to be indifferent, for she had suffered almost as much as Ireland. The hostility of the Irish Party formed a perpetual source of danger to her Governments, both Liberal and Tory, and a chronic source of instability in her administration. The democratic movement in England was continually weakened by the necessity of keeping Ireland down. That necessity largely broke the strength of the great reform movement of the thirties. It destroyed Sir Robert Peel's Government in the forties. It broke down the strength of Mr. Gladstone's Government in the eighties. Ireland and Irish affairs absorbed so much of the time of the British Parliament that the affairs of Great Britain herself were neglected. The old free and easy ways of the British Parliament were brought to a summary close by the obstruction of the Irish Party in the eighties, and the modern rules of compartment closure and strict limitation of debate were forced upon the Mother of Parliaments. It was these consequences, quite as much as the sufferings of Ireland, that gradually converted a great body of the British people to the cause of Home Rule. That process was going on throughout the seventies and the eighties, and was brought to a climax by the conversion of Mr. Gladstone in 1886. Since then the cause which was so despised in the days of O'Connell has had one of the great English parties behind it, and has so steadily made its way in the favour of the British nation that it now stands on the threshold of accomplishment. * * * * * What, then, emerges from this survey? It is that in returning to Home Rule as the mode of governing Ireland we are simply going back to the old and traditional method of Irish rule. It is also that, on surveying the past, we find not merely that Home Rule has often saved Ireland, but that always the wider and the more generous the form of Home Rule the more it has helped Ireland. The wiser course of accepting Irish advice in Irish affairs has always turned the tide of disaster, and brought the hope of a new happiness for Ireland. Surely here we have a convincing proof that the logical consummation of this policy by the restoration of Home Rule is the only means of bringing back Ireland to a full and secure enjoyment of lasting well-being. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [65] For confirmation of this see Lecky's "Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland," Vol. I., p. 120. [66] It is clear from Lecky's account that Lord Fitzwilliam's recall was due, not so much to any change of policy in London as to his action in dismissing Beresford, one of the most prominent figures of the Irish Protestant Party. [67] There is a very close and minute account of the growth of Irish prosperity under the Grattan Parliament in O'Connell's great Repeal speeches to the British Parliament in 1834. Between 1782 and 1797 the consumption of coffee in Ireland went up by 600 per cent., the consumption of tea by 84 per cent., of tobacco by 100 per cent., and wine by 74 per cent. All these figures ran down rapidly after 1800. [68] The Irish Parliament House, built in the eighteenth century, was, after the Act of Union, handed over to the Bank of Ireland. The House of Lords has been left intact, but special secret instructions were given that the Irish House of Commons should be divided into compartments in order that the memories of the Irish Parliament should be forgotten. Those instructions were carried out, and the Chamber of the Irish House of Commons ceased to exist. HOME RULE IN THE WORLD THE CASE FROM ANALOGY "I wish the Irish were negroes, and then we should have an advocate in the Hon. Baronet. His erratic humanity wanders beyond the ocean, and visits the hot islands of the West Indies, and thus having discharged the duties of kindness there, it returns burning and desolating, to treat with indignity and to trample upon the people of Ireland." O'CONNELL. CHAPTER IX. HOME RULE IN THE WORLD "Ah!" but I shall be told by Unionist critics who have followed me so far, "but the tendency of the world at present is all towards great empires and away from little states. You are reversing the process." This will probably be one of the most frequent arguments that we shall hear during the present discussions. We shall, perhaps, have thrown at our heads cases like the absorption of Persia by Russia, of Tripoli by Italy, of Morocco by France, and of the Congo by Germany. If we are to argue the matter on those lines it will be fair to point out, on the other side, that during the last decade Norway has separated from Sweden, new provincial and state governments have been created in Canada and the United States, new self-governing powers have been given to Cuba and the Philippines by the Americans in faithful and loyal adherence to their word at the time of the Spanish-American war, and, even more recently, new powers have been given to Alsace and Lorraine by the German Empire. So the argument might go on, to and fro, each party pelting one another with cases from other parts of the world. Perhaps at that point it might be well to remember the grave and wise warning given us by Lord Morley in his "Life of Gladstone"--that each case of political re-adjustment really stands by itself, and that often little light can be thrown, but rather darkness deepened, by studying too closely the analogies from other communities. Still, though the case of the relations between England and Ireland must always stand on its own merits, there are general tendencies in the world which come under law. There are certain lessons to be gathered from other countries which we should be unwise to ignore. The Greeks, who were great constitution builders, amused themselves in their later period by making immense collections of political specimens from among the Hellenic States. Doubtless their politicians derived some advantage from this practice of their philosophers. There are general tendencies, and those tendencies may be classified under the two familiar heads of (1) the tendency towards unity and (2) the tendency towards division. These two tendencies are always going on side by side in various parts of the world. But the puzzling part of political study is that very often what seems a tendency towards unity conceals a tendency towards division, and that what seems a tendency towards division is really a tendency to unity. THE BRITISH EMPIRE Take, for instance, the famous case of the British Empire. Any superficial observer from another clime or another planet might conclude from reading the records, that the tendency within the British Empire during the last century lay toward division. He would find on looking the matter up in any book of reference that the British Empire now includes nearly thirty Parliaments.[69] He would discover that the powers of the central authority have been gradually waning until practically every great white community outside the United Kingdom has now complete control over its own local affairs. He might even be excused some astonishment if he discovered also that these communities placed heavy taxes on the imports of the mother country, and were in no degree restrained from doing so, and that there even existed a party in the home country who contended that that act of filial attention ought to be rewarded by special preferences to colonial imports at home. Perhaps he would be most astonished when he discovered that these colonies were now engaged in raising their own navies and armies, which might possibly in the future be used for purposes independent of the central control. Pursuing his enquiries, he would discover that this country of Great Britain had conducted at great cost of life and money, less than ten years ago, a war to prevent the separation and secession of one great white community--that of South Africa--and that, having carried that war to a successful conclusion, the central government had followed up that war by granting to that great white community a strong central local government, with complete control of its local affairs. "You talk about the tendency to unity," he would say, "but have we not here a clear instance of division?" To all of which we should reply, and reply correctly--"Not at all! The secret of our Empire is that we have found unity in difference. We have achieved the miracle of combination by means of division of power." We should probably have some difficulty in persuading him of this truth. He might be some Rip Van Winkle, who had gone to sleep during the War of American Independence, and still derived from those days his notions of the right principles of colonial government. But if he conducted his enquiries further he would end by being fully persuaded. For what would he discover? He would find out that in spite of, or perhaps by means of, this principle of division the British Empire was now the most united Empire in the world. He would learn the amazing story, incredible to almost any other nation, of the great rally of colonial troops to the help of the Empire at the time of the Boer War. He would read of the periodical Imperial Conferences at the Centre in London. He would learn of the new drawing together now going on both in regard to foreign policy and military strategy. He would contrast all this with the spirit of the American Colonies between 1776 and 1782. He would look back, perhaps, to the beginning of this new era of self-government, and recall the memory of Canada in rebellion, of Australia in a state of permanent quarrel with Downing Street, and of South Africa in perpetual, recurring, chronic confusion and disorder. He would learn that before 1837 every white British colony was discontented,[70] and that now every colony was loyal. He would contrast these two pictures of Empire. Perhaps, then, he would realise that the true secret of the strength of the modern British Empire lay neither in militarism nor Imperialism, neither in swagger nor bounce nor boasting nor pride, but in the gradual development of that amazing policy of generosity and goodwill which is best typified in the phrase, "Home Rule." It is Home Rule that has saved the British Empire up to the present. Is it not likely that it is Home Rule that will save her in the future? "Ah! but"--again will come the cry of the critic of the narrow vision--"look at the South African Union. Is not that an instance of unionism as against Home Rule? Have we not there in this latest achievement a specimen of State authorities over-ruled by a central power?" In answer to that cry, I turn to the eighty-fifth clause of the South African Act, 1909. In that clause I find the following powers reserved for the local authorities of Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony:-- (1) Direct taxation within their provinces. (2) The right of borrowing money on their own credit. (3) All education other than higher education. (4) Agriculture. (5) Hospitals. (6) Municipal institutions. (7) All local works and undertakings within their provinces. (8) All roads and bridges within their provinces. (9) Markets and towns. (10) Fish and game preservation. (11) The right of fine and imprisonment, and (12) Generally all matters which, in the opinion of the Governor-General in Council, are of a merely local or private nature. Ireland would not very much mind that kind of unionism! The fact is, of course, that this instance of South Africa is a typical example of the principles of unity and division working at the same time. In regard to South Africa as a whole, the Union Act was a great and beneficent grant of Home Rule. It was the end of a long period of harassing interferences with the affairs of South Africa on the part of the Imperial Government at home, through its High Commissioner on the spot. That process is even now unfinished. It will probably in the end have to be brought to completion by the inclusion within the authority of the South African Parliament of countries like Rhodesia, and even, perhaps, of Basutoland. But in regard to South Africa itself, the same Act was a case of true unionism required and necessitated by the conditions of the country. Before 1909 the South African states were suffering within themselves from excessive division of functions. They were quarrelling over railways and tariffs. They were unable to pursue any common policy or common aim. That perpetual division of functions weakened them in the presence of the world, and rendered them unfit for local guidance. We should have a similar situation in this country if England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were all under separate governments, with separate tariffs and separate policy. In that case the doctrine we should be preaching to-day would not be Home Rule, but Unionism. For these two tendencies throughout the world are like a see-saw. Both are required for efficient government. Both may be carried to excessive and exaggerated lengths. Our case in regard to the United Kingdom is that unionism has been carried to excessive lengths, and requires to be tempered by Home Rule. For let any Unionist glance round the world outside the British Empire. He will find that the British do not stand alone in their trust in the Home Rule principle. Nearly every great Empire in the world rests upon Home Rule as its basis. Even Russia, perhaps the most centralised of all, has its provincial councils, known as the Zemstvos, and it was one of M. Stolypin's most daring actions that he even broke the letter of the Russian Constitution in order to strengthen the Zemstvos of Eastern Russia. Finland, too, a province of Russia, possesses a larger form of local government than is even being demanded by Ireland. It is a curious irony of the present situation that many of those Britons who refuse self-government to Ireland are most diligent in watching the action of Russia in relation to the powerful and--up to the present--almost independent Parliament of Finland. THE GERMAN EMPIRE If we pass from Russia to the other great human combinations, we shall find the principle of Home Rule far more extensively and powerfully developed. Take China, a combination of 400,000,000 of human beings, now changing before our eyes from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional republic. But whether as a monarchy or a republic, China has always rested her rule on gigantic and almost autonomous provinces, under separate Viceroys. Those provinces have doubtless been subject to the same autocratic control as China herself, but with the change in her central government they will probably pass by an easy transition into Home Rule provinces. Or come nearer home to an Empire which most Englishmen imagine to be the most centralised in the world--the German Empire. That Empire rests upon a basis of twenty-six autonomous governments, varying from autocracies at one end to republics at the other. The German Empire contains within it every form and shape of human community, varying from sheer mediævalism to extreme modernism. But whatever the form or shape of these separate governments, they are all alike in having control over their own local affairs. Most of the great states of Germany still possess control even over their own railways. They have their own Parliaments, their own judges, and, in many cases, their own reigning sovereigns. It was part of the wisdom of the founders of the German Empire that they made no attempt to interfere with these local powers. They contented themselves with combining all those forces for common defence, including them under a common tariff, and giving to them a common vote for a common assembly at the centre. In other words, Germany rests upon the two principles of unity and division, and in that combination lies its strength. THE UNITED STATES Or turn to the United States. There you have another of those powerful human governments resting on a basis of forty-six State authorities, each with its own legislature, and even with its own little army. Each of those state governments has control over such great matters as criminal and civil law, marriage and divorce, licensing, education, game laws, and the regulation of labour. They have the right to place a direct tax upon property. They have their own governors and their own ministries. And yet they all work harmoniously within the central authority of the Federal States. Probably by no other means could that great combination be held together. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY Or come back to Europe, and take the astonishing case of Austria and Hungary. There you have two countries of different race and different language, with different ideals, and with bitter memories of past strife lying between them. A generation ago it was a commonplace among all politicians that the Austrian Empire must break up. Yet it still holds together, and has recently shown itself capable even of aggressive action. The prophecy of decay is being pushed further and further forward, and Austria still remains the great Christian bulwark of Europe. How has that miracle been achieved after the terrible internecine struggles of the mid-nineteenth century? How is it that Hungary has forgotten the hangings and the butcheries of the sixties, and still works within the Austrian Empire? Why, simply by virtue of the principle of Home Rule. Austria and Hungary, indeed, represent a far more extreme and daring instance of this principle than it is necessary to put forward in regard to Ireland. They possess distinct Parliaments and distinct ministries. Those Parliaments sit apart and legislate apart and neither possess any representation in the other. But they have, as we have already seen, their link, not merely in a common Emperor and King, but in a common body called the Delegations. There is the Austrian Delegation and the Hungarian Delegation, both consisting of sixty members, twenty from each Upper House, and forty from each Lower House. The delegations sit alternately at Vienna and Buda Pesth, and they deliberately and independently communicate their decisions by writing. But if after three such interchanges no decision is arrived at, then the whole 120 meet together and settle the matter by vote without discussion. They possess a common Minister for Foreign Affairs, a common Minister of War, and a common Minister of Finance. Count Von Aehrenthal, who has in late years produced so startling an effect on European politics, is the common Minister for Foreign Affairs for Austria and Hungary, two countries with distinct Parliaments. INDIA I return from this tour of the world back to the British Empire. Here, too, the principle of Home Rule has been working, not merely in regard to our white dominions, but during the last ten years even more daringly in regard to the countries of our black subjects. The great Indian Reform Act of 1909 has created in India what are practically the first beginnings of Home Rule Councils. Seven great provinces of India have now each of them Legislative Councils of their own, and on nearly all of these Councils the unofficial members are in the majority.[71] The powers of these Legislative Councils are still very limited; but who can doubt that they will increase? We are, in other words, faced with the fact that while Ireland has been waiting for Home Rule we have taken the first great step in granting Home Rule to India. Surely this is a fact that presents a new challenge to the reactionary Unionist of the United Kingdom. Does he really contend that Ireland is incapable of receiving the same liberties as we are granting to India? Or will he make the wicked and dangerous suggestion that we are only conceding these things to India by force from fear of disorder, and in that way threaten the happy peace of Ireland? Surely the concession of Home Rule to India removes the last vestige of an Imperial argument against Home Rule for Ireland also! * * * * * Such are the results of a general survey at the present moment. They show that in proposing Home Rule for Ireland we are not rowing against the tide, but following the drift of a general law which is prevailing all over the world. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [69] See Appendix K. This figure includes, of course, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. [70] See the Letters of Lord Aberdeen quoted by Mr. Gladstone. [71] The Governors of Madras and Bombay and the five Lieutenant-Governors each have Legislative Councils. Under the new scheme the Legislative Councils of the provinces are constituted as follows:-- Madras 48 members. 20 official. 26 unofficial. 2 experts. Bombay 48 " 18 " 28 " 2 " Bengal 51 " 18 " 31 " 2 " United 49 " 21 " 26 " 2 " Provinces East Bengal 43 " 18 " 23 " 2 " and Assam Punjab 27 " 11 " 14 " 2 " Burma 18 " 7 " 9 " 2 " HOME RULE FINANCE "You gave £20,000,000 to the negroes or to their masters. Will you give £20,000,000 to the Irish?" O'CONNELL "The noble Lord, towards the conclusion of his speech, spoke of the cloud which rests at present over Ireland. It is a dark and heavy cloud, and its darkness extends over the feelings of men in all parts of the British Empire. But there is a consolation which we may all take to ourselves. An inspired King and bard and prophet has left us words which are not only the expression of a fact, but which we may take as the utterance of a prophecy. He says, 'To the upright there ariseth light in the darkness.' Let us try in this matter to be upright. Let us try to be just. That cloud will be dispelled. The dangers which surround us will vanish, and we may yet have the happiness of leaving to our children the heritage of an honourable citizenship in a united and prosperous Empire." JOHN BRIGHT (1868) CHAPTER X. HOME RULE FINANCE Home Rule finance is already the subject of a whole library of books and pamphlets, and there is some danger that the money question may occupy a place out of all perspective and proportion in the coming controversy. Men quarrel over money very easily, and some of the fiercest opponents of Home Rule still imagine that they can silence the Home Rulers by talking "money" at the top of their voices. But the Home Rulers must not be drawn into that net. They must refuse to view this matter as a question merely of book-keeping and accounts. They must remember always that the financial difficulty is simply another statement of the fact of Irish poverty, and that Irish poverty is due to the Act of Union. It is not any financial arrangement, but Home Rule itself, that will cure the difficulties of Irish finance. On the one side, the English are being told that they are going to be bled white in order to please Ireland. On the other side, the Irish are being warned by their extremists that England hopes to undo the effects of Home Rule by a dowry of impoverishment. On both sides of the Channel the enemies of Home Rule hope to use this as a weapon to defeat the cause. Let us, therefore, keep our heads, and look at the problem calmly and sanely. What is the present position in regard to Irish finance? It has totally changed since 1893. It follows, therefore, that the financial proposals of the 1886 and the 1893 Bills are of little value to us as a guide to the policy of 1912.[72] In those days the British Government could cheerfully propose a fixed contribution of over £4,000,000 from the new Irish Parliament, as in the Bill of 1886, or an allocation of one-third of the general revenue of Ireland, for Imperial expenditure, as in the Bill of 1893. Lord Morley has told us that in 1886 Mr. Parnell was gravely disturbed over the finance proposals of Mr. Gladstone. We thought him unreasonable at the time, and perhaps a little mean. I can remember Liberals saying hard things about the Irish attitude in those days. But the events that have occurred since prove that Mr. Parnell, on that occasion, was only exercising his customary shrewdness. He saw to the root of the matter. He was evidently possessed with the fear that he might be saddled with a poverty-stricken Home Rule Parliament, and the course of events since 1886 has somewhat justified his fear. THE NEW IRISH DEFICIT For since 1886, two events have happened. The first has been that Ireland instead of being the creditor is now the debtor of England. The most recent Treasury estimate, as given by Mr. Asquith in his first reading speech on the Home Rule Bill of 1912 gives the true deficit of Ireland for 1912-3 at £1,500,000. I am aware that the Treasury estimates are open to many criticisms, which have been brilliantly stated by Professor Kettle in his handbook on "Home Rule Finance,"[73] but for our present purposes we are bound to accept these figures. What do they show? In the first place, they fully bear out the forecast of the Financial Relations Commission that the position of Ireland under the Act of Union would become steadily worse. We have probably not yet reached the bottom of the hill. Ireland is so poor that each new Act for the relief of poverty increases the disproportion between the expenditure of Great Britain and Ireland. There is no way out of that vicious circle. If England were to increase Irish taxation she would simply increase the poverty which she has to relieve. During the last fifty years, in fact, the British Government has had to give back in some form of relief an equivalent for almost every increase of taxation enforced upon Ireland. If Ireland cannot pay, England must pay. That means that unless Home Rule is given during the next twenty years Ireland will become an increasingly heavy charge upon Great Britain. In face of these facts, it is clear that Great Britain will be wise to "cut the loss." Considerable scorn has been thrown on the suggestion made by Professor Kettle and others that Great Britain should present Ireland with a dowry of £20,000,000 on the occasion of setting up a Home Rule Parliament. Mr. Kettle called it a "wedding present," to which Mr. F.E. Smith retaliated with some humour that it was really a "separation allowance." Mr. Kettle has since replied with even better humour that as Home Rule is the only true marriage between the nations his description is the more correct. This is all a pretty play of wit, but we must not allow it to conceal from us the fact that if John Bull deals generously with Ireland at this present moment he will be playing the part, not merely of a philanthropist, but of a good business man. There are many ways in which this generosity can be shown. A big capital sum of money would probably be bad both for England and for Ireland. It would give Ireland a sense of dependence, and it would leave England with a sense of injury. There are many other better ways of making this financial adjustment. The charge which has turned Ireland into a debtor to England, for instance, is the £2,500,000 drawn from the Imperial Exchequer for Irish Old-age Pensions. The men and women who are receiving those pensions are the veterans of the famine period, and England has a special obligation towards them. The Home Rule Bill of 1912 provides that these old age pensions should be kept for the moment as an Imperial charge. That will be both a generous and humane provision. Another proposal made by Irish financial reformers is that the Royal Irish Constabulary, a force which costs £1,370,000 a year, should be regarded and paid for as an Imperial force. The argument is that the Royal Irish Constabulary was created in the interests of the English garrison--was, in fact, an army of occupation, which, since the new settlement of the Irish land question, has become, in Mr. Kettle's witty phrase, an "army of no occupation." That proposal is not adopted in the Home Rule Bill of 1912. The force is kept under the control of the British Government for six years, and it will then be handed over to Ireland. In the meantime, it will be paid for out of the money reserved from Irish revenue by the Imperial Government. We shall have to wait, therefore, for six years before the Irish Government is able to apply economy to what is perhaps the most expensive and most extravagant service in the whole administration of Ireland. The general financial proposals of the 1912 Bill are as follows:-- The British Treasury takes the Irish revenue and divides it into three portions. The first is the postal revenue, which will be both collected and controlled by the Irish Government, as the Post Office will be handed over immediately. The second is the "transferred" revenue, amounting to £6,350,000, which is the estimated cost of the services delegated to the Irish Parliament, such as the Civil Service, the payment of judges, and so forth. This revenue will still be collected by the Imperial Government, but handed over to Ireland. The third portion will be the "reserved" revenue, consisting of the amount retained by the British Treasury for the services over which it will retain control. Those services will be as follows:-- £ Old Age Pensions 2,660,000 National Insurance 190,000 Land Purchase 616,000 Constabulary (Royal Irish) 1,380,000 Collection of Revenue 300,000 --------- 5,146,000 --------- This leaves the profit and loss account for Great Britain as follows:-- Receipts. Expenditure. £9,485,000 On "Reserved Services" £5,046,000 On "Transferred Sum" 6,350,000 ----------- £11,396,000 ----------- The upshot is that the British deficit, which stands at present at £1,500,000, will rise to £1,911,000. That will be covered by a grant of £500,000 a year. That grant will be reduced annually by decrements of £50,000 until it reaches £200,000. There is no need for the British taxpayer to be alarmed at this balance-sheet. The essential fact is that Home Rule will work steadily on the side of thrift and saving. The substantial points are--(1) that pensions will from this time forward steadily decrease; (2) that the Royal Irish Constabulary will be diminished; and (3) that any increase in the prosperity of Ireland will result in an increasing yield of taxation collected by the British Treasury and devoted to the benefit of the British taxpayer. The British taxpayer, in a word, is thoroughly well looked after. Doubtless these proposals will be subjected to much criticism in committee, and no one would pretend that they could not be improved in detail. It might be argued, for instance, that it would be better for Great Britain to make herself responsible for the Royal Irish Constabulary as an Imperial charge, and therefore have a motive for reducing it. That action might be taken as a generous substitute for the bonus of £500,000 a year, which may possibly not produce favourable effects on the relations between the two countries. As against the extra charge to the British Treasury, you would have the fact that the British Government could immediately proceed to reduce the Constabulary. But once give Ireland a chance by some such settlement as this, and then the main problem of finance will solve itself. For we cannot ignore one very important aspect of that problem--the extravagance of Irish government. One of the most startling revelations of the Financial Commission Report was that Ireland, a poor country, cost twice as much to govern as Belgium, a country of nearly twice the population. Mr. Kettle has shown since that the Civil Service of Ireland is four times as great, and costs more than four times as much, as the Civil Service of Scotland.[74] Why is this? Because at the present moment two systems of government are existing in Ireland side by side--the old and the new. The old is for the most part an encumbrance and an impediment, but the new is required for doing the work of land purchase and agricultural development. Ireland is like a household into which a new staff of servants is being imported, while nobody dares to disturb the old. Could there be a more extravagant way of governing a country? The only way to put that house in order is to give it Home Rule. All the rights of existing civil servants must be respected, and therefore the saving on that account will only be gradual. Mr. Kettle estimates it at £700,000 within a reasonable time. That is probably even an under-estimate. For once this kind of saving begins, it soon tells on a nation's expenditure. Ireland is at present governed from the point of view of the place-hunters. Once Ireland begins to be governed from the point of view of the Irish people, then the reign of extravagance will be at an end. Once the Home Rule Parliament is set up we shall be able to distinguish clearly between Ireland's local and her Imperial obligations. We shall hear much indignant talk against any proposal that Ireland shall pay less than her full proportional contribution for Imperial Defence. Those who are so moved on this question seem to forget that the British Colonies pay practically nothing. Yet we have never heard that they are paupers on that account. They certainly derive more from the Empire than Ireland. Therefore, there would be nothing either degrading or unjust even if Ireland were relieved from all Imperial expenditure for a term of years. For Ireland requires time to recover from the impoverishment of the past, and it may be wise to give her that time. But once that time is over, the Irish Parliament will probably wish to follow in the steps of the Grattan Parliament, and contribute her honest due to the Empire of which she will be a part. But that due must be paid, not out of deficit, but out of surplus. As long as Ireland has a deficit produced by poverty, it is absurd to talk to her about Empire. Once she has a surplus--and a surplus will soon come with the working of Home Rule--then she will play her part in a manly way. For we must never forget that Home Rule in itself is a great financial asset. During the brief period of the Grattan Parliament, as we have seen, Ireland doubled her exports. During that time the Parliament carried out public works in every part of Ireland, and industry throve. Those things cannot be done by an absentee Parliament. They can only be done by a Parliament on the spot. They are intensely and earnestly needed by Ireland at present. For Ireland is largely an industrial derelict, waiting for the restoring hand of a central governing power. It is impossible to put this aspect of the matter into figures. Here we must move in faith. But we cannot see this matter clearly unless we believe firmly--as we have every justification for believing--that Home Rule means wealth to Ireland. THE FINANCIAL COMMISSION But we have to remember that since 1893 a great and authoritative Financial Commission has reported that England stands in debt to Ireland. The British public has never quite realised what the Report of 1896 signified, or quite understood the effect which it produced on the Irish nation. The Financial Relations Commission was a body created by the Liberal Government in 1894, soon after the defeat of the Home Rule Bill, and partly as a consequence of that defeat. It consisted of fifteen of the ablest financiers in the United Kingdom, including two great Treasury Chiefs, Lord Farrer and Lord Welby, Sir Robert Hamilton, Sir David Barbour, and that great Parliamentary financial expert Mr. W.A. Hunter. The chair was occupied by an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Childers.[75] The Commission sat for two years, and carried out a most searching investigation. They reported in 1896. Their united Report consists of only two pages in the Blue Book,[76] and the essence of it is contained in five short paragraphs, as follows:-- (1) That Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purpose of this inquiry, be considered as separate entities. (2) That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events showed, she was unable to bear. (3) That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 was not justified by the then existing circumstances. (4) That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of burden. (5) That whilst the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventh of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is very much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding one-twentieth. Now, what does this amount to? As worked out in the various minority reports, it means that, in the opinion of this Commission, Ireland has been over-taxed for many years at the rate of over £2,000,000 a year. As to the precise sum the Commissioners differ. Some went as high as £3,500,000, others down to £2,000,000, but all, except Sir Thomas Sutherland and Sir David Barbour, set it at about £2,000,000. Mr. Childers, unhappily, died before the close of the Commission. But he wrote an epoch-making Report, in which he estimated the excess of taxation at £2,250,000.[77] Now, it is useless to make light of this Report. It was the solemn judgment of the highest financiers of the day on the financial workings of the Act of Union. If we turn back to the debates in Parliament in 1800, especially to the speeches of Pitt, prophesying that the Act of Union would take the wealth of England across St. George's Channel, and apply it to Ireland, we cannot escape some sombre reflections on the short-sightedness of great statesmen. Pitt's judgment was disturbed by the existence of a war with France, which created in him an intense desire to unite the two countries. Otherwise he would probably have foreseen that for a rich partner to unite his finances with a poor partner certainly meant bankruptcy for the one, and probably, in the end, also ruin for the other. Taking the nineteenth century as a whole, the fundamental financial error has been this--that Ireland has been taxed on the theory of equality with England in point of wealth. That equality has not existed. What was a light burden for the one country has proved for the other a burden too heavy to be borne. The result has been that Ireland, being continually overtaxed, has sunk steadily in her resources, and has gradually become less and less of a taxable country. The taxes have returned less and less, and have had to be returned in the form of relief of poverty. A crisis in that situation is now reached, and it is quite clear that we stand at the parting of two roads. Now that the balance is beginning to work against England, it is certain that the only alternative to the restoration of Ireland is the gradual dragging down of England. It is useless and unjust to argue, in answer to this great Report, that Ireland ought not to have been regarded as a financial unit at all. Any country that is an island, and possesses a social organisation of its own, with a definite relationship between rich and poor, must necessarily be a financial unit. But even if that were not so, it is too late to argue the question with any honour. For we must never forget that the whole financial legislation of the United Kingdom in regard to Ireland is based upon the Act of Union, which was practically a solemn treaty between the two countries, passed--we will not say how--by both the British and the Irish Parliaments. It is the essence of that treaty that Ireland entered into it upon certain financial terms, and among those terms was the condition that she should be treated as a separate financial unit. This Report, therefore, immensely strengthens the claim of Ireland to more generous financial terms in 1912 than in 1886 or in 1893. We want to set up in Ireland a high and strong sense of financial responsibility. The control therefore, as well as the expenditure, must be placed as far as possible in Irish hands, and for that purpose the management, as well as the collection, of Irish taxes ought to be left as far as possible with the Irish Exchequer that must be set up. The tendency is started by the principle of the Bill of 1912, and the policy of the next decade will be to place in Irish hands as rapidly as possible both the collection and the administration of the finance for all the great Irish services, including those at present "reserved" as well as those at present "transferred." This brings us finally to the vexed problem of Customs and Excise. It is notorious that the greater part of the Irish revenue--the revenue of a poor country, derived for the most part through indirect taxation--is drawn from Customs and Excise.[78] It is not, perhaps, surprising, therefore, that the Bill of 1912 should go some way towards meeting the demand that has sprung up in various quarters, both in Ireland and in England, for the control of customs and excise by the Irish Parliament. The proposal of the Government is that we should extend to Ireland, with some variations, what is at present the financial arrangement in regard to customs and excise between the British Treasury and the Isle of Man. The first fact to be remembered quite clearly is that the Irish Parliament is absolutely debarred from creating any new duty. It will not be able to draw up any new set of tariffs. In other words, it will have to adapt its revenue to the general financial policy of the central government, whether that be a free trade policy or a tariff reform policy. But Ireland is to be allowed to vary her customs within certain limits. She may, for instance, reduce her customs to the lowest point, on the only condition that she loses thereby equivalent revenue. But on the main custom duties which fall on such articles as tea, sugar, cocoa, tobacco, and so forth, she cannot raise her customs beyond 10 per cent. The only exceptions will be beer and spirits, on which Ireland may raise her customs or her excise to any point that she desires. It will be necessary, of course, to have rebates or countervailing duties in regard to articles transferred from Great Britain to Ireland, or _vice versa_, and to that very slight extent alone will these proposals affect the trade relations between Ireland and England. I may add that the same power of reduction or addition will extend both to income tax and death duties up to the limit of 10 per cent. for increase--a provision which will safeguard the industries of the North from being sacrificed to the needs of the South.[79] Such are the proposals of the 1912 Home Rule Bill. They appear to present an ingenious compromise between the complete delegation of customs and excise and the complete centralisation. There are very serious objections to the complete separation of these duties. One is that separation of customs has been accepted everywhere as vitally inconsistent with the Federal idea. No State of the American Union has separate customs. Even Bavaria, a State of the German Empire which possesses, as we have seen, a separate army, post office, and national railways, has no separate customs. Such a plan could, therefore, hardly fit in with Federalism, as at present realised in any part of the world. The second objection would be the very grave offence given to the free trade sentiment of Great Britain, and the very grave injury to trade between Britain and Ireland, if we were to hand over to Ireland the right of placing taxes on English goods. Under such circumstances it would certainly be impossible to persuade the British public to grant a bonus to Ireland in order to give her the power of taxing British goods. That would clearly be too great a strain upon the Christian sentiment even of John Bull. Parnell, it is well known, felt a strong temptation to make a demand for separate customs. But he always put it aside as impolitic, probably on this very ground; and the rise of the Tariff Reform movement since his death has certainly not weakened those considerations, because it has led to a corresponding rise of free trade feeling among a large part of the British public on this side of the Channel. It is quite clear that the Government's compromise on customs and excise, ingenious as it is, will be subject to very close and shrewd criticism. But the first duty of Home Rulers, both in Great Britain and Ireland, is to avoid the carefully-baited trap of a quarrel on points of detail. That is the obvious game of the enemies of Home Rule. The proper policy of every true Home Ruler is to preserve through all the vicissitudes of those financial discussions a sane and steady perspective, well knowing that, after all, finance is not really the true heart of this problem. THE MIGHTY HOPE We must not reduce a great human problem to a squabble over pocket-money. We must in this, too, as in the religious and political sides of the question, have faith in the result of freedom. We must believe, as we have every right to believe, that liberty will bring to Ireland a new power over her resources, and a new skill in using them--that her magnificent harbours will no longer be silent, or her rivers empty; that her factories will hum once more with a new life and industry; that the grass will cease to grow in her streets and on her wharves, and that the rich and strong will cease to fly from her shores. All this must be taken into account in any reasonable calculation of the future. It is just as foolish to err from lack of faith as it is to blunder from excess of credulity. For here, indeed, we have an excellent precedent to give us hope. It was the common evidence of all experts at the time that Ireland grew greatly richer under the twenty years of Grattan's Parliament. The future Irish Parliament will, just as it will be more representative, so supply Ireland with a machine even more efficient than Grattan's Parliament. If so, we have every reason to suppose that within twenty years we shall have a richer Ireland, with a far greater taxable capacity. For can we doubt that the alchemy of liberty will here, too, even in this sordid realm of finance, repeat its ancient power? * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [72] For these proposals see Appendix D. [73] For instance, in the absence of Irish Customs the estimates of true Irish revenue can only be approximate. On the expenditure side, too, there are grave matters of consideration. For instance, should the vote for Irish Constabulary be regarded as a local or Imperial charge? Or Irish judges, or even Irish poverty? It was the definite opinion of the Financial Relations Commission that until Home Rule was set up there could be no possible way of distinguishing between local and Imperial expenditure in Ireland. [74] There are 4,397 civil servants in Ireland with incomes over £160 a year, as against 944 for Scotland. (Inland Revenue Report, 1909-1910.) [75] The members of this Commission were:--The Rt. Hon. Hugh Childers, Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, the Rt. Hon. O'Conor Don, Sir Robt. Hamilton, Sir Thomas Sutherland, K.C.M.G., Sir David Barbour, K.C.S.I., the Hon. Ed. Blake, M.P., Bertram W. Currie, Esq., W.A. Hunter, Esq., M.P., C.E. Martin, Esq., J.E. Redmond, Esq., M.P., Thomas Sexton, Esq., M.P., and added in June, 1894, Henry F. Slattery, Esq., and G.W. Wolff, Esq., M.P. [76] C. 8262, price 1s. 10d. [77] Lord MacDonnell has estimated the total over-payment of Ireland in the nineteenth century as exceeding £300,000,000. [78] Out of a total tax-revenue of £24,000,000 from 1906-9 Ireland paid no less than £18,000,000 in Customs and Excise. (Inland Revenue Report.) [79] See the Government Outline of Financial Provisions, Appendix A. HOME RULE APPENDICES A. THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912. B. THE SHRINKAGE OF IRELAND. C. THE ACT OF UNION. D. THE HOME RULE BILLS OF 1886 AND 1893. E. THE IRISH BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. F. THE REDUCTION IN IRISH PAUPERISM. G. THE LAND LAW (IRELAND) ACT, 1881. H. THE CONGESTED DISTRICTS BOARD. J. IRISH CANALS AND RAILWAYS. K. HOME RULE PARLIAMENTS IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE. APPENDIX A THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912. A BILL TO [Sidenote: A.D. 1912.] AMEND the PROVISION for the Government of Ireland. BE it enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:-- _Legislative Authority._ [Sidenote: Establishment of Irish Parliament.] 1.--(1) On and after the appointed day there shall be in Ireland an Irish Parliament consisting of His Majesty the King and two Houses, namely, the Irish Senate and the Irish House of Commons. (2) Notwithstanding the establishment of the Irish Parliament or anything contained in this Act, the supreme power and authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall remain unaffected and undiminished over all persons, matters, and things within His Majesty's dominions. [Sidenote: Legislative powers of Irish Parliament.] 2. Subject to the provisions of this Act, the Irish Parliament shall have power to make laws for the peace, order, and government of Ireland with the following limitations, namely, that they shall not have power to make laws except in respect of matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some part thereof, and (without prejudice to that general limitation) that they shall not have power to make laws in respect of the following matters in particular, or any of them, namely-- (1) The Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or a Regency; or the Lord Lieutenant except as respects the exercise of his executive power in relation to Irish services as defined for the purposes of this Act; or (2) The making of peace or war or matters arising from a state of war; or the regulation of the conduct of any portion of His Majesty's subjects during the existence of hostilities between Foreign States with which His Majesty is at peace, in relation to those hostilities; or (3) The navy, the army, the territorial force, or any other naval or military force, or the defence of the realm, or any other naval or military matter; or (4) Treaties, or any relations, with Foreign States, or relations with other parts of His Majesty's dominions, or offences connected with any such treaties or relations, or procedure connected with the extradition of criminals under any treaty, or the return of fugitive offenders from or to any part of His Majesty's dominions; or (5) Dignities or titles of honour; or (6) Treason, treason felony, alienage, naturalisation, or aliens as such; or (7) Trade with any place out of Ireland (except so far as trade may be affected by the exercise of the powers of taxation given to the Irish Parliament, or by the regulation of importation for the sole purpose of preventing contagious disease); quarantine; or navigation, including merchant shipping (except as respects inland waters and local health or harbour regulations); or (8) Lighthouses, buoys, or beacons (except so far as they can consistently with any general Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom) be constructed or maintained by a local harbour authority; or (9) Coinage; legal tender; or any change in the standard of weights and measures; or (10) Trade marks, designs, merchandise marks, copyright, or patent rights; or (11) Any of the following matters (in this Act referred to as reserved matters), namely-- [Sidenote: 8 Edw. 7. c. 40 1 & 2 Geo. 5. c. 16. 1 & 2 Geo. 5. c. 55. 9 Edw. c. 7.] (a) The general subject-matter of the Acts relating to Land Purchase in Ireland, the Old Age Pensions Acts, 1908 and 1911, the National Insurance Act, 1911, and the Labour Exchanges Act, 1909; (b) The collection of taxes; (c) The Royal Irish Constabulary and the management and control of that force; (d) Post Office Savings Banks, Trustee Savings Banks, and Friendly Societies; and (e) Public loans made in Ireland _before the passing of this Act_: Provided that the limitation on the powers of the Irish Parliament under this section shall cease as respects any such reserved matter if the corresponding reserved service is transferred to the Irish Government under the provisions of this Act. Any law made in contravention of the limitations imposed by this section shall, so far as it contravenes those limitations, be void. [Sidenote: Prohibition of laws interfering with religious equality, &c.] 3. In the exercise of their power to make laws under this Act the Irish Parliament shall not make a law so as either directly or indirectly to establish or endow any religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, or give a preference, privilege, or advantage, or impose any disability or disadvantage, on account of religious belief or religious or ecclesiastical status, or make any religious belief or religious ceremony a condition of the validity of any marriage. Any law made in contravention of the restrictions imposed by this section shall, so far as it contravenes those restrictions, be void. _Executive Authority._ [Sidenote: Executive power in Ireland.] 4.--(1) The executive power in Ireland shall continue vested in His Majesty the King, and nothing in this Act shall affect the exercise of that power except as respects Irish services as defined for the purposes of this Act. (2) As respects those Irish services the Lord Lieutenant or other chief executive officer or officers for the time being appointed in his place, on behalf of His Majesty, shall exercise any prerogative or other executive power of His Majesty the exercise of which may be delegated to him by His Majesty. (3) The power so delegated shall be exercised through such Irish Departments as may be established by Irish Act, or subject thereto, by the Lord Lieutenant, and the Lord Lieutenant may appoint officers to administer those Departments, and those officers shall hold office during the pleasure of the Lord Lieutenant. (4) The persons who are for the time being heads of such Irish Departments as may be determined by Irish Act, or, in the absence of any such determination, by the Lord Lieutenant, and such other persons (if any) as the Lord Lieutenant may appoint, shall be the Irish Ministers. Provided that-- (a) No such person shall be an Irish Minister unless he is a member of the Privy Council of Ireland; and (b) No such person shall hold office as an Irish Minister for a longer period than six months, unless he is or becomes a member of one of the Houses of the Irish Parliament; and (c) Any such person not being the head of an Irish Department shall hold office as an Irish Minister during the pleasure of the Lord Lieutenant in the same manner as the head of an Irish Department holds his office. (5) The persons who are Irish Ministers for the time being shall be an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland (in this Act referred to as the "Executive Committee"), to aid and advise the Lord Lieutenant in the exercise of his executive power in relation to Irish services. (6) For the purposes of this Act, "Irish services" are all public services in connexion with the administration of the civil government of Ireland except the administration of matters with respect to which the Irish Parliament have no power to make laws, including in the exception all public services in connexion with the administration of the reserved matters (in this Act referred to as "reserved services"). [Sidenote: Future transfer of certain reserved services.] 5.--(1) The public services in connexion with the administration of the Acts relating to the Royal Irish Constabulary and the management and control of that force, shall by virtue of this Act be transferred from the Government of the United Kingdom to the Irish Government on the expiration of a period of six years from the appointed day and those public services shall then cease to be reserved services and become Irish services. (2) If a resolution is passed by both Houses of the Irish Parliament providing for the transfer from the Government of the United Kingdom to the Irish Government of the following reserved services, namely-- (a) All public services in connexion with the administration of the Old Age Pensions Acts, 1908 and 1911; or (b) All public services in connexion with the administration of Part I. of the National Insurance Act, 1911; or (c) All public services in connexion with the administration of Part II. of the National Insurance Act, 1911, and the Labour Exchanges Act, 1909; or (d) All public services in connexion with the administration of Post Office Savings Banks, Trustee Savings Banks, and Friendly Societies; the public services to which the resolution relates shall be transferred accordingly as from a date fixed by the resolution, being a date not less than a year after the date on which the resolution is passed, and shall on the transfer taking effect cease to be reserved services and become Irish services: Provided that this provision shall not take effect as respects the transfer of the services in connexion with Post Office Savings Banks, Trustee Savings Banks, and Friendly Societies until the expiration of ten years from the appointed day. (3) On any transfer under or by virtue of this section, the transitory provisions of this Act (so far as applicable) and the provisions of this Act as to existing Irish officers shall apply with respect to the transfer, with the substitution of the date of the transfer for the appointed day, and of a period of five years from that date for the transitional period. _Irish Parliament._ [Sidenote: Summoning, &c., of Irish Parliament.] 6.--(1) There shall be a session of the Irish Parliament once at least in every year, so that twelve months shall not intervene between the last sitting of the Parliament in one session and their first sitting in the next session. (2) The Lord Lieutenant shall, in His Majesty's name, summon, prorogue, and dissolve the Irish Parliament. [Sidenote: Royal assent to Bills of Irish Parliament] 7. The Lord Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of His Majesty to Bills passed by the two Houses of the Irish Parliament, subject to the following limitations; namely-- (1) He shall comply with any instructions given by His Majesty in respect of any such Bill; and (2) He shall, if so directed by His Majesty, postpone giving the assent of His Majesty to any such Bill presented to him for assent for such period as His Majesty may direct. [Sidenote: Composition of Irish Senate.] 8.--(1) The Irish Senate shall consist of forty senators nominated as respects the first senators by the Lord Lieutenant subject to any instructions given by His Majesty in respect of the nomination, and afterwards by the Lord Lieutenant on the advice of the Executive Committee. (2) The term of office of every senator shall be eight years, and shall not be affected by a dissolution; one fourth of the senators shall retire in every second year, and their seats shall be filled by a new nomination. (3) If the place of a senator becomes vacant before the expiration of his term of office, the Lord Lieutenant shall, unless the place becomes vacant not more than six months before the expiration of that term of office, nominate a senator in the stead of the senator whose place is vacant, but any senator so nominated to fill a vacancy shall hold office only so long as the senator in whose stead he is nominated would have held office. [Sidenote: Composition of Irish House of Commons.] 9.--(1) The Irish House of Commons shall consist of one hundred and sixty-four members, returned by the constituencies in Ireland named in the First Part of the First Schedule to this Act in accordance with that Schedule, and elected by the same electors and in the same manner as members returned by constituencies in Ireland to serve in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. (2) The Irish House of Commons when summoned shall, unless sooner dissolved, have continuance for five years from the day on which the summons directs the House to meet and no longer. (3) After _three years from the passing of this Act_, the Irish Parliament may alter, as respects the Irish House of Commons, the qualification of the electors, the mode of election, the constituencies, and the distribution of the members of the House among the constituencies, provided that in any new distribution the number of the members of the House shall not be altered, and due regard shall be had to the population of the constituencies other than University constituencies. [Sidenote: Money Bills.] 10.--(1) Bills appropriating revenue or money, or imposing taxation, shall originate only in the Irish House of Commons, but a Bill shall not be taken to appropriate revenue or money, or to impose taxation by reason only of its containing provisions for the imposition or appropriation of fines or other pecuniary penalties, or for the payment or appropriation of fees for licences or fees for services under the Bill. (2) The Irish House of Commons shall not adopt or pass any resolution, address, or Bill for the appropriation for any purpose of any part of the public revenue of Ireland or of any tax, except in pursuance of a recommendation from the Lord Lieutenant in the session in which the vote, resolution, address, or Bill is proposed. (3) The Irish Senate may not reject any Bill which deals only with the imposition of taxation or appropriation of revenue or money for the services of the Irish Government, and may not amend any Bill so far as the Bill imposes taxation or appropriates revenue or money for the services of the Irish Government, and the Irish Senate may not amend any Bill so as to increase any proposed charges or burden on the people. (4) Any Bill which appropriates revenue or money for the ordinary annual services of the Irish Government shall deal only with that appropriation. [Sidenote: Disagreement between two Houses of Irish Parliament.] 11.--(1) If the Irish House of Commons pass any Bill and the Irish Senate reject or fail to pass it, or pass it with amendments to which the Irish House of Commons will not agree, and if the Irish House of Commons in the next session again pass the Bill with or without any amendments which have been made or agreed to by the Irish Senate, and the Irish Senate reject or fail to pass it, or pass it with amendments to which the Irish House of Commons will not agree, the Lord Lieutenant may during that session convene a joint sitting of the members of the two Houses. (2) The members present at any such joint sitting may deliberate and shall vote together upon the Bill as last proposed by the Irish House of Commons, and upon the amendments (if any) which have been made therein by the one House and not agreed to by the other; and any such amendments which are affirmed by a majority of the total number of members of the two Houses present at the sitting shall be taken to have been carried. (3) If the Bill with the amendments (if any) so taken to have been carried is affirmed by a majority of the total number of members of the two Houses present at any such sitting, it shall be taken to have been duly passed by both Houses. [Sidenote: Privileges, qualifications, &c. of members of Irish Parliament.] 12.--(1) The powers, privileges, and immunities of the Irish Senate and of the Irish House of Commons, and of the members and of the committees of the Irish Senate and the Irish House of Commons, shall be such as may be defined by Irish Act, but so that they shall never exceed those for the time being held and enjoyed by the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom and its members and committees, and, until so defined, shall be those held and enjoyed by the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom, and its members and committees at the date of _the passing of this Act_. (2) The law, as for the time being in force, relating to the qualification and disqualification of members of the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom, and the taking of any oath required to be taken by a member of that House, shall apply to members of the Irish House of Commons. (3) Any peer, whether of the United Kingdom, Great Britain, England, Scotland, or Ireland, shall be qualified to be a member of either House. (4) A member of either House shall be incapable of being nominated or elected, or of sitting, as a member of the other House, but an Irish Minister who is a member of either House shall have the right to sit and speak in both Houses, but shall vote only in the House of which he is a member. (5) A member of either House may resign his seat by giving notice of resignation to the person and in the manner directed by standing orders of the House, or if there is no such direction, by notice in writing of resignation sent to the Lord Lieutenant, and his seat shall become vacant on notice of resignation being given. (6) The powers of either House shall not be affected by any vacancy therein, or by any defect in the nomination, election, or qualification, of any member thereof. (7) His Majesty may by Order in Council declare that the holders of the offices in the Irish Executive named in the Order shall not be disqualified for being members of either House of the Irish Parliament by reason of holding office under the Crown, and except as otherwise provided by Irish Act, the Order shall have effect as if it were enacted in this Act, but on acceptance of any such office the seat of any such person in the Irish House of Commons shall be vacated unless he has accepted the office in succession to some other of the said offices. _Irish Representation in the House of Commons._ [Sidenote: Representation of Ireland in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.] 13. Unless and until the Parliament of the United Kingdom otherwise determine, the following provisions shall have effect:-- (1) After the appointed day the number of members returned by constituencies in Ireland to serve in the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall be forty-two and the constituencies returning those members shall (in lieu of the existing constituencies) be the constituencies named in the second Part of the First Schedule to this Act, and no University in Ireland shall return a member to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. (2) The election laws and the laws relating to the qualification of parliamentary electors shall not, so far as they relate to elections of members returned by constituencies in Ireland to serve in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, be altered by the Irish Parliament, but this enactment shall not prevent the Irish Parliament from dealing with any officers concerned with the issue of writs of election, and if any officers are so dealt with, it shall be lawful for His Majesty by Order in Council to arrange for the issue of any such writs, and the writs issued in pursuance of the Order shall be of the same effect as if issued in manner heretofore accustomed. * * * * * So far for the constitutional clauses. The clauses from 14 to 26 are occupied with finance. They are so technical that it will be more convenient to substitute the terms of the very clear Memorandum issued by the Government:-- OUTLINE OF FINANCIAL PROVISIONS. _Present Irish Revenue and Expenditure._ It is estimated that the revenue to be derived from Ireland in the year 1912-13 will be as follows:-- £ Customs 3,230,000 Excise 3,320,000 Income tax 1,512,000 Estate duties 939,000 Stamps 347,000 Miscellaneous 137,000 Post Office 1,354,000 ----------- Total 10,839,000 ----------- It is estimated that the expenditure for Irish purposes in the year 1912-13 will amount to £12,354,000. The expenditure may be divided for the purposes of this Memorandum as follows:-- £ All purposes not separately specified 5,462,000 Post Office 1,600,000 Old Age Pensions 2,664,000 Charges under the Land Purchase Acts 761,000 National Insurance and Labour Exchanges 191,500 Royal Irish Constabulary 1,377,500 Collection of revenue 298,000 ---------- Total 12,354,000 ---------- The expenditure therefore exceeds the revenue by £1,515,000. It is anticipated that in a period of ten or fifteen years the charges under the existing Land Purchase Acts will increase by £450,000, and under the National Insurance Act by £300,000. On the other hand, it is estimated that within twenty years the cost of Old Age Pensions will decrease by £200,000. _Charges upon the Irish Exchequer._ The Bill provides for the establishment of an Irish Exchequer and an Irish Consolidated Fund. From the Irish Exchequer will be defrayed the whole of the present and future cost of Irish government, with the exception of the expenditure on certain services, termed in the Bill Reserved Services. _Charges upon the Imperial Exchequer._ The Imperial Government will retain the control, and the Imperial Exchequer will continue to bear the cost, of the Reserved Services, namely, Old Age Pensions, National Insurance, Labour Exchanges, Land Purchase, and Collection of Taxes. For a period of six years the Royal Irish Constabulary will also be one of the Reserved Services. There are provisions for the transfer to the Irish Government of certain of the Reserved Services under the conditions stated below. _Revenue of the Irish Exchequer._ The Bill provides, in the first instance, for the period during which the yield of Irish taxes is less than the cost of Irish administration, and contemplates certain modifications after a financial equilibrium has been attained. During that period the revenue of the Irish Exchequer will consist of a sum transferred annually from the Imperial Exchequer, and termed in the Bill the Transferred Sum, together with the receipts of the Irish Post Office. The Transferred Sum will be fixed at the outset at such amount as will cover, with the addition of the Post Office revenue, the present expenditure on Irish Government, with the exception of the cost of the Reserved Services. Included in the Transferred Sum will also be a specified sum as surplus. The amount of this surplus will be £500,000 annually for a period of three years, then diminishing by £50,000 a year for six years till it reaches £200,000, at which sum it will remain. Subject to this variation in the amount of the surplus and to certain minor variations specified in the Bill, and subject also to any changes consequent upon the exercise by the Irish Parliament of the powers of increasing or reducing taxation which are defined below, the amount of the Transferred Sum, fixed in the first year after the passing of the Act, will remain the same until an equilibrium is reached between the total revenue derived from Ireland and the total expenditure on Irish purposes. _Revenue of the Imperial Exchequer from Ireland._ The Bill provides that until such equilibrium is established the whole of the proceeds of all Irish taxes shall be collected by the Treasury of the United Kingdom, and be paid into the Imperial Exchequer. (This provision does not apply to Post Office revenue.) The revenue so collected should be sufficient to cover the Transferred Sum and to provide a balance sufficient to defray a part of the cost of the Reserved Services. As the revenue from Ireland increases in the future, the receipts of the Imperial Exchequer will increase proportionately, and the yearly deficit which will fall at the outset upon the Imperial Exchequer will gradually be lessened and ultimately disappear. _Joint Exchequer Board._ The Bill establishes a Joint Exchequer Board of Great Britain and Ireland, consisting of two members appointed by the Imperial Treasury and two by the Irish Treasury, with a Chairman appointed by His Majesty the King. The duty of the Board will be to determine certain questions of fact arising from time to time under the financial provisions of the Bill. The figures given in this Paper are estimates only, and do not purport to be final. The Bill, therefore, does not rest upon these figures, but enables fuller returns to be obtained after the passing of the Act, and it provides that the amounts of Irish Revenue and Expenditure for the purposes of the Act shall be, not the figures given in this Paper, but such sums as may be determined after the passing of the Act, upon the basis of these fuller returns and of the more accurate figures of Revenue and Expenditure which will then be available, by the Joint Exchequer Board. _Revenue and Expenditure Accounts._ If, however, the estimates given above are assumed, for purposes of illustration, to be the figures finally determined, the Irish Government's Budget in the first year would balance as follows:-- ------------------------------+------------------------------ _Revenue._ | _Expenditure._ £ | £ Transferred Sum 6,127,000 | All purposes not Post Office 1,354,000 | separately | specified - 5,462,000 Fee Stamps 81,000 | Post Office - 1,600,000 | ---------- | 7,062,000 | Surplus - 500,000* ---------- | ---------- Total - 7,562,000 | Total - 7,562,000 ------------------------------+------------------------------- * Subject to subsequent reduction as stated above. The Imperial Government's receipts and expenditure on Irish account would balance as follows:-- ------------------------------+-------------------------------- _Revenue._ | _Expenditure._ £ | £ Irish Revenue | Transferred Sum 6,127,000 (excluding Post | Old Age Pensions 2,664,000 Office and fee | National Insurance stamps) 9,404,000 | and Labour Deficit 2,015,000 | Exchanges 191,500 | Land Purchase-- | (1.) Land | Commission 592,000 | (2.) Other | Charges 169,000 | Constabulary 1,377,500 | Collection of | Revenue 298,000 ---------- | ---------- 11,419,000 | Total 11,419,000 ------------------------------+-------------------------------- _Powers of Varying Taxation._ The Bill confers on the Irish Parliament the following financial powers:-- 1. It may add to the rates of Excise Duties, Customs Duties on beer and spirits, Stamp Duties (with certain exceptions), Land Taxes, or Miscellaneous Taxes, imposed by the Imperial Parliament. 2. It may add to an extent not exceeding 10 per cent, to the Income Tax, Death Duties, or Customs Duties other than the duties on beer and spirits, imposed by the Imperial Parliament. 3. It may levy any new taxes, other than new Customs Duties. 4. It may reduce any tax levied in Ireland, with the exception of certain Stamp Duties. The Imperial Treasury will collect the revenue arising from any increases in taxation enacted by the Irish Parliament in the exercise of these powers; and an addition will be made to the Transferred Sum of such amount as the Joint Exchequer Board may determine to be the produce of the additional taxation. Similarly, if taxation, is reduced by the Irish Parliament, a deduction will be made from the Transferred Sum corresponding to the loss of revenue due to the repeal of a tax or to collection at the lower rates. The Irish Exchequer will therefore gain or lose by any increase or decrease in taxation enacted by the Irish Parliament, and the net revenue of the Imperial Exchequer will remain unaffected by such changes. If Excise or Customs Duties are imposed at different rates in Great Britain and Ireland respectively, provision is made for the adjustment of the taxes paid in respect of articles passing from one country to the other. As administrative difficulties might arise in certain cases if the 10 per cent. limitation mentioned above were in terms to prohibit additions to the taxes in question to an extent of more than 10 per cent. of the rates of tax, the Bill effects the object in view by enacting that only such proceeds of the tax as do not exceed 10 per cent. of the yield of the Imperial tax shall be transferred to the Irish Exchequer. The Bill makes no specific reference to the powers of the Imperial Parliament to levy taxation in Ireland. The provision in clause 1 that the supreme power and authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall remain unaffected retains the existing powers of the Imperial Parliament in this regard. _Transfer of the Reserved Services to the Irish Government._ After six years, the control of the Royal Irish Constabulary will pass to the Irish Executive. The Irish Parliament is empowered to assume at any time, with twelve months' notice, legislative and executive control with respect to Old Age Pensions, to National Health Insurance, or to Unemployment Insurance, together with Labour Exchanges. When any such transfer of Reserved Services is effected, the financial burden will be assumed by the Irish Exchequer, and an addition will be made to the Transferred Sum corresponding to the financial relief given to the Imperial Exchequer. _Loans and Capital Liabilities._ Loans made for the purposes of land purchase and loans made before the passing of the Act for other Irish purposes will be among the Reserved Services, and the payment of interest and sinking fund charges will be made by the Imperial Exchequer. New loans may be raised by the Irish Parliament on the security of the Irish revenue. Provision is also made for enabling the joint Exchequer Board, if so authorised by the Irish Parliament, to issue the loans and to meet the interest and sinking fund charges by means of deductions from the Transferred Sum. The Bill provides for the apportionment between the two Exchequers of liability for existing loans raised for Irish services. _Readjustment when Financial Equilibrium is reached._ When the total revenue received from Ireland by the Imperial Treasury has been sufficient, during three consecutive years, to meet the total charges for Irish purposes, the Exchequer Board shall report the fact with a view to a revision of the financial arrangements. Since it is impossible now to foresee what services may remain at that time as Reserved Services, what loans may have been contracted during the intervening years, and what changes may have been made in the rates of taxation, the Bill does not attempt to enact the modifications which may then be desirable. It contemplates, however, as part of the present financial settlement, that Parliament will then consider, on the one hand, the fixing of such contribution by Ireland to the common expenses of the United Kingdom as may be equitable, and, on the other hand, the transfer to the Irish Legislature and Government of the control and collection of such taxes as may be deemed advisable. The remaining clauses--from 27 to 47--are concerned with readjustments as to judges, civil servants, police and other matters, and do not vary substantially from the corresponding clauses in the Bill of 1893 (published in Appendix D). The first meeting of the Irish Parliament is fixed for the first Tuesday in September, 1913. There are only two other clauses which require special notice, as adding fresh provisions to those laid down in the Bill of 1893. The first is the 26th clause, which gives to the Irish special powers of representation at Westminster in the case of a revision of the financial arrangements:-- "For the purpose of revising the financial provisions of this Act in pursuance of this section, there shall be summoned to the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom such number of members of the Irish House of Commons as will make the representation of Ireland in the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom equivalent to the representation of Great Britain on the basis of population; and the members of the Irish House of Commons so summoned shall be deemed to be members of the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom for the purpose of any such revision." The second--Clause 42--provides that Irish laws shall be interpreted always in legal subordination to Acts of the Imperial Parliament:-- "(2) Where any Act of the Irish Parliament deals with any matter with respect to which the Irish Parliament have power to make laws which is dealt with by any Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed after the passing of this Act and extending to Ireland, the Act of the Irish Parliament shall be read subject to the Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and so far as it is repugnant to that Act, but no further, shall be void." APPENDIX B THE SHRINKAGE OF IRELAND (1.) THE DECREASE IN POPULATION SINCE 1841. ------+--------------+-----------+-----------+------------------------ Year. | Population. | Decrease. | Decrease | Great Britain. | | | per cent. | Increase per cent. | | | +-----------+------------ | | | | England. | Scotland. ------+--------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ 1841 | 8,196,597 | -- | -- | -- | -- 1851 | 6,574,278 | 1,622,319 | 19.8 | 12.65 | 10.2 1861 | 5,798,967 | 775,311 | 11.8 | 11.9 | 6.0 1871 | 5,412,377 | 386,590 | 6.7 | 13.21 | 9.7 1881 | 5,174,836 | 237,541 | 4.4 | 14.36 | 11.2 1891 | 4,704,750 | 470,086 | 9.1 | 11.65 | 7.8 1901 | 4,458,775 | 245,975 | 5.2 | 12.17 | 11.1 1911 | 4,381,951 | 76,824 | 1.7 | 10.9 | 6.4 ------+--------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ N.B.--This Table is compiled from the Preliminary Reports of the Census of 1911, which give the population returns only as far back as 1841. There was, of course, a Census of the United Kingdom as early as 1801, but the official returns extended at first only to England and Scotland, and it was not until 1813 that there was any official census of Ireland. Even then it was far from correct. The first trustworthy Irish Census was that of 1821. For 1821 and 1831 the Census figures are given in "Whitaker" as follows:-- 1821 6,801,827 1831 7,767,401 It is probable that the apparent rise of the population from 1821 to 1841 amounts to little more than the more correct taking of the Census among an illiterate population. But on the whole subject of the rise of population between 1821 and 1841, see my remarks in Chapter VIII. p. 105. It was due of course very largely to the creation of faggot votes by Protestant landlords desirous of being returned to Parliament under the old law before the passing of Catholic Emancipation in 1829. It was an artificial rise in the poorest section of the population going along with a steady decline in the general material prosperity of Ireland. Hence the great collapse of the famine period. (2.) IRISH FAMILIES SINCE 1841. (From Preliminary Census Report, 1911.) ----------------+---------------------------------------- Year. | Number of Families. ----------------+---------------------------------------- 1841 | 1,472,787 1851 | 1,204,319 1861 | 1,128,300 1871 | 1,067,598 1881 | 995,074 1891 | 932,113 1901 | 910,256 1911 | 912,711 _First Increase since 1841._ ----------------+---------------------------------------- (3.) INHABITED HOUSES SINCE 1841. (From same source.) ----------------+---------------------------------------- Year. | Number of Inhabited Houses. ----------------+---------------------------------------- 1841 | 1,328,839 1851 | 1,046,223 1861 | 995,156 1871 | 961,380 1881 | 914,108 1891 | 870,578 1901 | 858,158 1911 | 861,057 _First Increase since 1841._ ----------------+---------------------------------------- (4.) EMIGRATION. For Decennial Periods, 1852-1910. ----------+----------------------+------------------- Period. | Average Number of | Per 1,000 of | Emigrants, per year. | Population. ----------+----------------------+------------------- 1852-9 | 115,842 | 15.2 1860-9 | 85,960 | 15.2 1870-9 | 60,327 | 11.2 1880-9 | 80,491 | 16.0 1890-9 | 44,955 | 9.7 1900-9 | 35,886 | 8.1 1910 | 32,457 | 7.4 1911 | 31,058 | 7. ----------+----------------------+------------------- APPENDIX C TEXT OF THE ACT OF UNION An Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland.--[2d July 1800.] WHEREAS in pursuance of His Majesty's most gracious Recommendation to the Two Houses of Parliament in _Great Britain_ and _Ireland_ respectively, to consider of such Measures as might best tend to strengthen and consolidate the Connection between the Two Kingdoms, the Two Houses of the Parliament of _Great Britain_ and the Two Houses of the Parliament of _Ireland_ have severally agreed and resolved, that, in order to promote and secure the essential Interests of _Great Britain_ and _Ireland_, and to consolidate the Strength, Power, and Resources of the _British_ Empire, it will be advisable to concur in such Measures as may best tend to unite the Two Kingdoms of _Great Britain_ and _Ireland_ into One Kingdom, in such Manner, and on such Terms and Conditions, as may be established by the Acts of the respective Parliaments of _Great Britain_ and _Ireland:_ And whereas, in furtherance of the said Resolution, both Houses of the said Two Parliaments respectively have likewise agreed upon certain Articles for effectuating and establishing the said Purposes, in the Tenor following: ARTICLE FIRST. [Sidenote: That _Great Britain_ and _Ireland_ shall, upon _Jan. 1, 1801_, be united into One Kingdom; and that the Titles appertaining to the Crown &c., shall be such as His Majesty shall be pleased to appoint.] That it be the First Article of the Union of the Kingdoms of _Great Britain_ and _Ireland_, that the said Kingdoms of _Great Britain_ and _Ireland_ shall, upon the First Day of _January_ which shall be in the Year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and one, and for ever after, be united into One Kingdom, by the Name of _The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland;_ and that the Royal Stile and Titles appertaining to the Imperial Crown of the said United Kingdom and its Dependencies; and also the Ensigns, Armorial Flags and Banners thereof, shall be such as His Majesty, by His Royal Proclamation under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, shall be pleased to appoint. ARTICLE SECOND. [Sidenote: That the Succession to the Crown shall continue limited and settled as at present.] That it be the Second Article of Union, that the Succession to the Imperial Crown of the said United Kingdom, and of the Dominions thereunto belonging, shall continue limited and settled in the same Manner as the Succession to the Imperial Crown of the said Kingdoms of _Great Britain_ and _Ireland_ now stands limited and settled, according to the existing Laws, and to the Terms of Union between _England_ and _Scotland_. ARTICLE THIRD. [Sidenote: That the United Kingdom be represented in One Parliament.] That it be the Third Article of Union, that the said United Kingdom be represented in One and the same Parliament, to be stiled _The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland._ ARTICLE FOURTH. [Sidenote: That the Number of Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and of Commoners herein specified, shall sit and vote on the Part of _Ireland_ in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.] That it be the Fourth Article of Union, that Four Lords Spiritual of _Ireland_ by Rotation of Sessions, and Twenty-eight Lords Temporal of _Ireland_ elected for Life by the Peers of _Ireland_, shall be the Number to sit and vote on the Part of _Ireland_ in the House of Lords of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; and One hundred Commoners (Two for each County of _Ireland_, Two for the City of _Dublin_, Two for the City of _Cork_, One for the University of _Trinity College_, and One for each of the Thirty-one most considerable Cities, Towns, and Boroughs), be the Number to sit and vote on the Part of _Ireland_ in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom: [Sidenote: That such Act as shall be passed in _Ireland_ to regulate the Mode of summoning and returning the Lords and Commoners to serve in the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall be considered as Part of the Treaty of the Union.] That such Act as shall be passed in the Parliament of _Ireland_ previous to the Union, to regulate the Mode by which the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons, to serve in the Parliament of the United Kingdom on the Part of _Ireland_, shall be summoned and returned to the said Parliament, shall be considered as forming Part of the Treaty of Union, and shall be incorporated in the Acts of the respective Parliaments by which the said Union shall be ratified and established: Here follow clauses making provision (1) that the House of Lords shall decide all questions of rotation or election in regard to Peers from Ireland, (2) that Irish Peers not sitting in the Lords may be elected to Commons, but loses thereby all privileges of Peerage, (3) that the Crown may create Irish Peerages in proportion of one for each three that become extinct until the Irish Peerage is reduced to 100, when they can go on creating enough to keep up to the 100. The rest of this article consists of machinery provisions. ARTICLE FIFTH. [Sidenote: The Churches of _England_ and _Ireland_ to be united into One Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Doctrine of the Church of _Scotland_ to remain as now established.] That it be the Fifth Article of Union, That the Churches of _England_ and _Ireland_, as now by Law established, be united into One Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called, _The United Church of England and Ireland_; and that the Doctrine, Worship, Discipline, and Government of the said United Church shall be, and shall remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by Law established for the Church of _England_; and that the Continuance and Preservation of the said United Church, as the established Church of _England_ and _Ireland_, shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental Part of the Union; and that in like Manner the Doctrine, Worship, Discipline, and Government of the Church of _Scotland_, shall remain and be preserved as the same are now established by Law, and by the Acts for the Union of the Two Kingdoms of _England_ and _Scotland_. ARTICLE SIXTH places Irish subjects under same laws and provisions in regard to trade and navigation prohibitions and bounties, imports and exports, and provides for the gradual abolition of customs duties between Great Britain and Ireland. ARTICLE SEVENTH provides that the Irish National Debt shall be kept distinct from the British National Debt. It fixes the proportions of contributions to revenue at 15 for Great Britain as to 2 for Ireland for 20 years. To be revised at the end of 20 years on a variety of alternative bases of calculation (Customs, trade, income, etc.). The contributions to be raised in both countries by taxes fixed by the United Parliament, and Parliament to have power to vary taxes, unify debt, and any Irish surplus to be reduced by reduction of taxation. Loans in future to be common. ARTICLE EIGHTH first recites that all present laws to remain in force till repealed. Provides also that these Articles not to become Act until passed by Parliament. Ends by reciting the measure to be passed through Irish Parliament regulating the representation of Ireland at Westminster after 1801. APPENDIX D THE HOME RULE BILLS OF 1886 AND 1893 (1) THE BILL OF 1886. [Sidenote: A.D. 1886] A Bill to Amend the provision for the future Government of Ireland. BE it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows: PART I. _Legislative Authority._ [Sidenote: Establishment of Irish Legislature.] 1. On and after the appointed day there shall be established in Ireland a Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and an Irish Legislative Body. [Sidenote: Powers of Irish Legislature.] 2. With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act mentioned, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty the Queen, by and with the advice of the Irish Legislative Body, to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland, and by any such law to alter and repeal any law in Ireland. [Sidenote: Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.] 3. The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws relating to the following matters or any of them:-- (1.) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or a Regency; (2.) The making of peace or war; (3.) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval forces, or the defence of the realm; (4.) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the relations between the various parts of Her Majesty's dominions; (5.) Dignities or titles of honour; (6.) Prize or booty of war; (7.) Offences against the law of nations; or offences committed in violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between Her Majesty and any foreign State; or offences committed on the high seas; (8.) Treason, alienage, or naturalization; (9.) Trade, navigation, or quarantine; (10.) The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this Act mentioned with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in Ireland; (11.) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea marks; (12.) The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal tender; or weights and measures; or (13.) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use or profits of any works or inventions. Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. [Sidenote: Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.] 4. The Irish Legislature shall not make any law-- (1.) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or (2.) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account of religious belief; or (3.) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain any place of denominational education or any denominational institution or charity; or (4.) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at that school; or (5.) Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty in Council first obtained on an address presented by the Legislative Body of Ireland, or the consent of the corporation interested, the rights, property, or privileges of any existing corporation incorporated by royal charter or local and general Act of Parliament; or (6.) Imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties of excise, as defined by this Act, or either of such duties or affecting any Act relating to such duties or any of them; or (7.) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared to be alterable by the Irish Legislature. [Sidenote: Prerogatives of Her Majesty as to Irish Legislative Body.] 5. Her Majesty the Queen shall have the same prerogatives with respect to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Irish Legislative Body as Her Majesty has with respect to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Imperial Parliament. [Sidenote: Duration of the Irish Legislative Body.] 6. The Irish Legislative Body whenever summoned may have continuance for _five years_ and no longer, to be reckoned from the day on which any such Legislative Body is appointed to meet. _Executive Authority._ [Sidenote: Constitution of the Executive Authority.] 7.--(1.) The Executive Government of Ireland shall continue vested in Her Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of Her Majesty with the aid of such officers and such council as to Her Majesty may from time to time seem fit. (2.) Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by Her Majesty, the Lord Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of Her Majesty to Bills passed by the Irish Legislative Body, and shall exercise the prerogatives of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning, proroguing, and dissolving of the Irish Legislative Body, and any prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty. [Sidenote: Use of Crown lands by Irish Government.] 8. Her Majesty may, by Order in Council, from time to time place under the control of the Irish Government, for the purposes of that Government, any such lands and buildings in Ireland as may be vested in or held in trust for Her Majesty. _Constitution of Legislative Body._ [Sidenote: Constitution of Irish Legislative Body.] 9.--(1.) The Irish Legislative Body shall consist of a first and second order. (2.) The two orders shall deliberate together, and shall vote together, except that, if any question arises in relation to legislation or to the Standing Orders or Rules of Procedure or to any other matter in that behalf in this Act specified, and such question is to be determined by vote, each order shall, if a majority of the members present of either order demand a separate vote, give their votes in like manner as if they were separate Legislative Bodies; and if the result of the voting of the two orders does not agree the question shall be resolved in the negative. [Sidenote: First order.] 10.--(1.) The first order of the Irish Legislative Body shall consist of one hundred and three members, of whom seventy-five shall be elective members and twenty-eight peerage members. (2.) Each elective member shall at the date of his election and during his period of membership be bonâ fide possessed of property which-- (a.) if realty, or partly realty and partly personalty, yields two hundred pounds a year or upwards, free of all charges; or (b.) if personalty yields the same income, or is of the capital value of four thousand pounds or upwards, free of all charges. (2.) For the purpose of electing the elective members of the first order of the Legislative Body, Ireland shall be divided into the electoral districts specified in the First Schedule to this Act, and each such district shall return the number of members in that behalf specified in that Schedule. (3.) The elective members shall be elected by the registered electors of each electoral district, and for that purpose a register of electors shall be made annually. (4.) An elector in each electoral district shall be qualified as follows, that is to say, he shall be of full age and not subject to any legal incapacity, and shall have been during the twelve months next preceding the _twentieth day of July_ in any year the owner or occupier of some land or tenement within the district of a net annual value of twenty-five pounds or upwards. (5.) The term of office of an elective member shall be _ten years_. (6.) In every fifth year thirty-seven or thirty-eight of the elective members, as the case requires, shall retire from office, and their places shall be filled by election; the members to retire shall be those who have been members for the longest time without re-election. (7.) The offices of the peerage members shall be filled as follows; that is to say,-- (a.) Each of the Irish peers who on the appointed day is one of the twenty-eight Irish representative peers, shall, on giving his written assent to the Lord Lieutenant, become a peerage member of the first order of the Irish Legislative Body; and if at any time within _thirty years_ after the appointed day any such peer vacates his office by death or resignation, the vacancy shall be filled by the election to that office by the Irish peers of one of their number in manner heretofore in use respecting the election of Irish representative peers, subject to adaptation as provided by this Act, and if the vacancy is not so filled within the proper time it shall be filled by the election of an elective member. (b.) If any of the twenty-eight peers aforesaid does not within _one month_ after the appointed day give such assent to be a peerage member of the first order, the vacancy so created shall be filled up as if he had assented and vacated his office by resignation. (8.) A peerage member shall be entitled to hold office during his life or until the expiration of _thirty years_ from the appointed day, whichever period is the shortest. At the expiration of such _thirty years_ the offices of all the peerage members shall be vacated as if they were dead, and their places shall be filled by elective members qualified and elected in manner provided by this Act with respect to elective members of the first order, and such elective members may be distributed by the Irish Legislature among the electoral districts, so, however, that care shall be taken to give additional members to the most populous places. (9.) The offices of members of the first order shall not be vacated by the dissolution of the Legislative Body. (10.) The provisions in the Second Schedule to this Act relating to members of the first order of the Legislative Body shall be of the same force as if they were enacted in the body of this Act. [Sidenote: Second order.] 11.--(1.) Subject as in this section hereafter mentioned, the second order of the Legislative Body shall consist of two hundred and four members. (2.) The members of the second order shall be chosen by the existing constituencies of Ireland, two by each constituency, with the exception of the city of Cork, which shall be divided into two divisions in manner set forth in the Third Schedule to this Act, and two members shall be chosen by each of such divisions. (3.) Any person who, on the appointed day, is a member representing an existing Irish constituency in the House of Commons shall, on giving his written assent to the Lord Lieutenant, become a member of the second order of the Irish Legislative Body as if he had been elected by the constituency which he was representing in the House of Commons. Each of the members for the city of Cork, on the said day, may elect for which of the divisions of that city he wishes to be deemed to have been elected. (4.) If any member does not give such written assent within _one month_ after the appointed day, his place shall be filled by election in the same manner and at the same time as if he had assented and vacated his office by death. (5.) If the same person is elected to both orders, he shall, within _seven days_ after the meeting of the Legislative Body, or if the Body is sitting at the time of the election, within _seven days_ after the election, elect in which order he will serve, and his membership of the other order shall be void and be filled by a fresh election. (6.) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the Legislature of Ireland at any time to pass an Act enabling the Royal University of Ireland to return not more than two members to the second order of the Irish Legislative Body in addition to the number of members above mentioned. (7.) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the Irish Legislature, after the first dissolution of the Legislative Body which occurs, to alter the constitution or election of the second order of that body, due regard being had in the distribution of members to the population of the constituencies; provided that no alteration shall be made in the number of such order. Clauses 12 to 20 are the Finance Clauses, which are dealt with at the end of this Appendix. _Police._ 21. The following regulations shall be made with respect to police in Ireland: (_a._) The Dublin Metropolitan Police shall continue and be subject as heretofore to the control of the Lord Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty for a period of _two years_ from the passing of this Act, and thereafter until any alteration is made by Act of the Legislature of Ireland, but such Act shall provide for the proper saving of all then existing interests, whether as regards pay, pensions, superannuation allowances, or otherwise. (_b._) The Royal Irish Constabulary shall, while that force subsists, continue and be subject as heretofore to the control of the Lord Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty. (_c._) The Irish Legislature may provide for the establishment and maintenance of a police force in counties and boroughs in Ireland under the control of local authorities, and arrangements may be made between the Treasury and the Irish Government for the establishment and maintenance of police reserves. Clause 22 reserves to the Crown the power of erecting forts, dockyards, etc. _Legislative Body._ [Sidenote: Veto by first order of Legislative Body, how over-ruled.] 23. If a Bill or any provision of a Bill is lost by disagreement between the two orders of the Legislative Body, and after a period ending with a dissolution of the Legislative Body, or the period of _three years_ whichever period is longest, such Bill, or a Bill containing the said provision, is again considered by the Legislative Body, and such Bill or provision is adopted by the second order and negatived by the first order, the same shall be submitted to the whole Legislative Body, both orders of which shall vote together on the Bill or provision, and the same shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority of the members so voting together. [Sidenote: Ceaser of power of Ireland to return members to Parliament.] 24. On and after the appointed day Ireland shall cease, except in the event hereafter in this Act mentioned, to return representative peers to the House of Lords or members to the House of Commons, and the persons who on the said day are such representative peers and members shall cease as such to be members of the House of Lords and House of Commons respectively. Clause 25 refers constitutional questions to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Clause 26 abolishes religious test for the Lord Lieutenant. Clauses 27-30 safeguards interests of Judges and Civil Servants. Clauses 31-36, transitory and miscellaneous. 37. Save as herein expressly provided all matters in relation to which it is not competent for the Irish Legislative Body to make or repeal laws shall remain and be within the exclusive authority of the Imperial Parliament save as aforesaid, whose power and authority in relation thereto shall in nowise be diminished or restrained by anything herein contained. Clause 38 continues existing laws, courts and officers. [Sidenote: Mode of alteration of Act.] 39.--(1.) On and after the appointed day this Act shall not, except such provisions thereof as are declared to be alterable by the Legislature of Ireland, be altered except-- (a.) by Act of the Imperial Parliament and with the consent of the Irish Legislative Body testified by an address to Her Majesty, or (b.) by an Act of the Imperial Parliament for the passing of which there shall be summoned to the House of Lords the peerage members of the first order of the Irish Legislative Body, and if there are no such members then twenty-eight Irish representative peers elected by the Irish peers in manner heretofore in use, subject to adaptation as provided by this Act; and there shall be summoned to the House of Commons such one of the members of each constituency, or in the case of a constituency returning four members such two of those members, as the Legislative Body of Ireland may select, and such peers and members shall respectively be deemed, for the purpose of passing any such Act, to be members of the said Houses of Parliament respectively. (2.) For the purposes of this section it shall be lawful for Her Majesty by Order in Council to make such provisions for summoning the said peers of Ireland to the House of Lords and the said members from Ireland to the House of Commons as to Her Majesty may seem necessary or proper, and any provisions contained in such Order in Council shall have the same effect as if they had been enacted by Parliament. Clause 40, definition clause. _Summary of Finance Provisions._ (Clauses 12-20.) Clause 13. The Irish Parliament is to have the right to impose all taxes except customs and excise. The Irish Parliament to pay annually to the British Exchequer these sums, fixed at the level for the following 30 years:-- £1,466,000 as interest on the Irish share in the National Debt. 1,666,000 towards the Army and Navy. 110,000 towards the Imperial Civil expenditure. 1,000,000 towards the Irish Constabulary. ---------- £4,242,000 in all. The Irish Exchequer to pay annually £360,000 towards the reduction of the National Debt, and their payment of interest to be reduced in proportion. If any reduction takes place in Army and Navy to the extent of reducing British proportions below 15 times the Irish, then the Irish to be reduced by 1-15th. The Irish Government to receive the revenues of Crown Lands in Ireland. If the Irish Constabulary is reduced, then the Irish contribution towards Constabulary to be reduced accordingly. Clause 14. The first charge for the Irish contributions to be on the customs and excise collected in Ireland. The rest to go to the Irish Government. The first charge on other Irish taxes to be (1) any deficit in Irish contribution to British Exchequer, (2) any interest on any Irish debt, (3) Irish public service, (4) Irish judges, etc. Duty laid upon Irish Government to raise taxes equal to paying these charges. Clauses 16 and 17. Provisions as to Irish Church Fund and Irish loans (now obsolete). Clause 18. In case of war Irish Government "_may_" contribute more money for the prosecution of war. Clauses 19 and 20. Machinery clauses. (2) THE BILL OF 1893. [Sidenote: A.D. 1893.] A Bill intitled an Act to amend the provision for the Government of Ireland. WHEREAS it is expedient that without impairing or restricting the supreme authority of Parliament, an Irish Legislature should be created for such purposes in Ireland as in this Act mentioned: Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows: _Legislative Authority._ [Sidenote: Establishment of Irish Legislature.] 1. On and after the appointed day there shall be in Ireland a Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and of two Houses, the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly. [Sidenote: Powers of Irish Legislature.] 2. With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act mentioned, there shall be granted to the Irish Legislature power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland in respect of matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some part thereof. Provided that, notwithstanding anything in this Act contained, the supreme power and authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland shall remain unaffected and undiminished over all persons, matters, and things within the Queen's dominions. [Sidenote: Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.] 3. The Irish Legislature shall not have power to make laws in respect of the following matters or any of them:-- (1.) The Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or a Regency; or the Lord Lieutenant as representative of the Crown; or (2.) The making of peace or war or matters arising from a state of war; or the regulation of the conduct of any portion of Her Majesty's subjects during the existence of hostilities between foreign states with which Her Majesty is at peace, in respect of such hostilities; or (3.) Navy, army, militia, volunteers, and any other military forces, or the defence of the realm, or forts, permanent military camps, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings, or any places purchased for the erection thereof; or (4.) Authorising either the carrying or using of arms for military purposes, or the formation of associations for drill or practice in the use of arms for military purposes; or (5.) Treaties or any relations with foreign States, or the relations between different parts of Her Majesty's dominions, or offences connected with such treaties or relations, or procedure connected with the extradition of criminals under any treaty; or (6.) Dignities or titles of honour; or (7.) Treason, treason-felony, alienage, aliens as such, or naturalization; or (8.) Trade with any place out of Ireland; or quarantine, or navigation, including merchant shipping (except as respects inland waters and local health or harbour regulations); or (9.) Lighthouses, buoys, or beacons within the meaning of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1854, and the Acts amending the same (except so far as they can consistently with any general Act of Parliament be constructed or maintained by a local harbour authority); or (10.) Coinage; legal tender; or any change in the standard of weights and measures; or (11.) Trade marks, designs, merchandise marks, copyright, or patent rights. Provided always, that nothing in this section shall prevent the passing of any Irish Act to provide for any charges imposed by Act of Parliament, or to prescribe conditions regulating importation from any place outside Ireland for the sole purpose of preventing the introduction of any contagious disease. It is hereby declared that the exceptions from the powers of the Irish Legislature contained in this section are set forth and enumerated for greater certainty, and not so as to restrict the generality of the limitation imposed in the previous section on the powers of the Irish Legislature. Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. 4. The powers of the Irish Legislature shall not extend to the making of any law-- (1.) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, whether directly or indirectly, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or (2.) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, advantage, or benefit, on account of religious belief, or raising or appropriating directly or indirectly, save as heretofore, any public revenue for any religious purpose, or for the benefit of the holder of any religious office as such; or (3.) Diverting the property or without its consent altering the constitution of any religious body; or (4.) Abrogating or prejudicially affecting the right to establish or maintain any place of denominational education or any denominational institution or charity; or (5.) Whereby there may be established and endowed out of public funds any theological professorship or any university or college in which the conditions set out in the University of Dublin Tests Act, 1873, are not observed; or (6.) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money, without attending the religious instruction at that school; or (7.) Directly or indirectly imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, benefit, or advantage upon any subject of the Crown on account of his parentage or place of birth, or of the place where any part of his business is carried on, or upon any corporation or institution constituted or existing by virtue of the law of some part of the Queen's dominions, and carrying on operations in Ireland, on account of the persons by whom or in whose favour or the place in which any of its operations are carried on; or (8.) Whereby any person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law in accordance with settled principles and precedents, or may be denied the equal protection of the laws, or whereby private property may be taken without just compensation; or (9.) Whereby any existing corporation incorporated by Royal Charter or by any local or general Act of Parliament may, unless it consents, or the leave of Her Majesty is first obtained on address from the two Houses of the Irish Legislature, be deprived of its rights, privileges, or property without due process of law in accordance with settled principles and precedents, and so far as respects property without just compensation. Provided nothing in this subsection shall prevent the Irish Legislature from dealing with any public department, municipal corporation, or local authority, or with any corporation administering for public purposes taxes, rates, cess, dues, or tolls, so far as concerns the same. Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. _Executive Authority._ 5.--(1.) The executive power in Ireland shall continue vested in Her Majesty the Queen, and the Lord Lieutenant, or other chief executive officer or officers for the time being appointed in his place, on behalf of Her Majesty, shall exercise any prerogatives or other executive power of the Queen the exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty, and shall, in Her Majesty's name, summon, at least once in every year, prorogue, and dissolve the Irish Legislature; and every instrument conveying any such delegation of any prerogative or other executive power shall be presented to the two Houses of Parliament as soon as conveniently may be. Provided always that the lieutenants of counties shall be appointed by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland as representing Her Majesty. (2.) There shall be an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland to aid and advise in the government of Ireland, being of such numbers, and comprising persons holding such offices under the Crown as Her Majesty or, if so authorised, the Lord Lieutenant may think fit, save as may be otherwise directed by Irish Act. (3.) The Lord Lieutenant shall, on the advice of the said Executive Committee, give or withhold the assent of Her Majesty to Bills passed by the two Houses of the Irish Legislature, subject nevertheless to any instructions given by Her Majesty in respect of any such Bill. 6. All the powers and jurisdiction to be exercised in accordance with the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment Act, 1870, and the Fugitive Offenders Act, 1881, by the Lord Lieutenant or Lord Justices, or other Chief Governor or Governors of Ireland, or the Chief Secretary of the Lord Lieutenant, shall be exercised by the Lord Lieutenant in pursuance of instructions given by Her Majesty. _Constitution of Legislature._ 7.--(1.) The Irish Legislative Council shall consist of forty-eight councillors. (2.) Each of the constituencies mentioned in the First Schedule to this Act shall return the number of councillors named opposite thereto in that schedule. (3.) Every man shall be entitled to be registered as an elector, and when registered to vote at an election, of a councillor for a constituency, who owns or occupies any land or tenement in the constituency of a rateable value of more than twenty pounds, subject to the like conditions as a man is entitled at the passing of this Act to be registered and vote as a parliamentary elector in respect of an ownership qualification or of the qualification specified in section five of the Representation of the People Act, 1884, as the case may be: Provided that a man shall not be entitled to be registered, nor if registered to vote, at an election of a councillor in more than one constituency in the same year. (4.) The term of office of every councillor shall be eight years, and shall not be affected by a dissolution; and one half of the councillors shall retire in every fourth year, and their seats shall be filled by a new election. 8.--(1.) The Irish Legislative Assembly shall consist of one hundred and three members, returned by the existing parliamentary constituencies in Ireland, or the existing divisions thereof, and elected by the parliamentary electors for the time being in those constituencies or divisions. (2.) The Irish Legislative Assembly when summoned may, unless sooner dissolved, have continuance for five years from the day on which the summons directs it to meet and no longer. (3.) After six years from the passing of this Act, the Irish Legislature may alter the qualification of the electors, and the constituencies, and the distribution of the members among the constituencies, provided that in such distribution due regard is had to the population of the constituencies. 9. If a Bill or any provision of a Bill adopted by the Legislative Assembly is lost by the disagreement of the Legislative Council, and after a dissolution, or the period of two years from such disagreement, such Bill, or a Bill for enacting the said provision, is again adopted by the Legislative Assembly and fails within three months afterwards to be adopted by the Legislative Council, the same shall forthwith be submitted to the members of the two Houses deliberating and voting together thereon, and shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority of those members present and voting on the question. _Irish Representation in House of Commons._ 10. Unless and until Parliament otherwise determines, the following provisions shall have effect-- (1.) After the appointed day each of the constituencies named in the Second Schedule to this Act shall return to serve in Parliament the number of members named opposite thereto in that schedule, and no more, and Dublin University shall cease to return any member. (2.) The existing divisions of the constituencies shall, save as provided in that schedule, be abolished. (3.) The election laws and the laws relating to the qualification of parliamentary electors shall not, so far as they relate to parliamentary elections, be altered by the Irish Legislature, but this enactment shall not prevent the Irish Legislature from dealing with any officers concerned with the issue of writs of election, and if any officers are so dealt with, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty by Order in Council to arrange for the issue of such writs, and the writs issued in pursuance of such Order shall be of the same effect as if issued in manner heretofore accustomed. Clauses 11-20 are the finance clauses, which are dealt with at the end of this Appendix. Clauses 21 and 22 substitute the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as Court of Appeal for Ireland in place of House of Lords. Clause 23 abolishes religious test for the Lord Lieutenant. Clauses 25-28 safeguard interests of Judges, Civil Servants. 29.--(1.) The forces of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police shall, when and as local police forces are from time to time established in Ireland in accordance with the Fifth Schedule to this Act, be gradually reduced and ultimately cease to exist as mentioned in that Schedule; and thereupon the Acts relating to such forces shall be repealed, and no forces organised and armed in like manner, or otherwise than according to the accustomed manner of a civil police, shall be created under any Irish Act; and after the passing of this Act, no officer or man shall be appointed to either of those forces; Provided that until the expiration of six years from the appointed day, nothing in this Act shall require the Lord Lieutenant to cause either of the said forces to cease to exist, if as representing Her Majesty the Queen he considers it inexpedient. Sections (2) to (5) safeguard interests of existing police. Clauses 30-33. Miscellaneous. 34.--(1.) During three years from the passing of this Act, and if Parliament is then sitting until the end of that session of Parliament, the Irish Legislature shall not pass an Act respecting the relations of landlord and tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of land generally: Provided that nothing in this section shall prevent the passing of any Irish Act with a view to the purchase of land for railways, harbours, waterworks, town improvements, or other local undertakings. (2.) During six years from the passing of this Act, the appointment of a judge of the Supreme Court or other superior court in Ireland (other than one of the Exchequer judges) shall be made in pursuance of a warrant from Her Majesty countersigned as heretofore. Clause 35. Transitory. Clause 39. Definitions, etc. _Summary of Finance Provisions._ (Clauses 11-20.) The General Revenue of Ireland to be kept apart as specified. One-third to be allocated to Imperial expenditure. Two-thirds to form the special revenue of Ireland and to be spent in purely Irish expenditure. War taxes to be imposed on Ireland simultaneously and identically with Great Britain and to be paid into the British exchequer. After six years all taxation except customs and excise to be transferred to Ireland and all these arrangements to be revised. APPENDIX E THE IRISH BOARD OF AGRICULTURE This Board was set up in 1899 by the Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Act. The constructive clauses of this Act are the following:-- Clause 1 establishes a Department of Agriculture, its powers to be exercised either by the President or Vice-President. Clauses 2, 3, 4 and 5 define its powers. Part II. creates the advisory machinery to which reference is made in the text, and they run as follows:-- _Consultative Council, Agricultural Board and Board of Technical Instruction, and Financial Provisions._ 7. For the purpose of assisting the Department in carrying out the objects of this Act there shall be established-- (a) a Council of Agriculture; (b) an Agricultural Board; and (c) a Board of Technical Instruction. 8.--(1.) The Council of Agriculture shall consist of the following members:-- (a) Two persons to be appointed by the county council of each county (other than a county borough) in each province; and (b) A number of persons resident in each province equal to the number of counties (exclusive of county boroughs) in the province, to be appointed by the Department with due regard to the representation on the council of any agricultural or industrial organisations in the province. (2.) For the purposes of this section the county of Cork shall be regarded as two counties, and four persons shall be appointed by the council of that county. (3.) The members representing each province shall constitute separate committees on the Council and shall be styled the provincial committees of the respective provinces. 9. The Agricultural Board shall consist of the following members:-- (a.) Two persons to be appointed by the provincial committee of each province; and (b.) Four persons to be appointed by the Department. 10. The Board of Technical Instruction shall consist of the following members:-- (a.) Three persons to be appointed by the county council of each of the county boroughs of Dublin and Belfast; (b.) One person to be appointed by a joint committee of the councils of the several urban county districts in the county of Dublin; such committee to consist of one member chosen out of their body by the council of each such district; (c.) One person to be appointed by the council of each county borough not above mentioned; (d.) One person to be appointed by the provincial committee of each province; (e.) One person to be appointed by the Commissioners of National Education; (f.) One person to be appointed by the Intermediate Education Board; and (g.) Four persons to be appointed by the Department. 11. The Council of Agriculture shall meet at least once a year for the purpose of discussing matters of public interest in connexion with any of the purposes of this Act. 12. The Agricultural Board shall advise the Department with respect to all matters and questions submitted to them by the Department in connexion with the purposes of agriculture and other rural industries. 13. The Board of Technical Instruction shall advise the Department with respect to all matters and questions submitted to them by the Department in connexion with technical instruction. APPENDIX F THE REDUCTION IN IRISH PAUPERISM OWING TO OLD AGE PENSIONS The Report of the Irish Local Government Board for 1911 shows a reduction in Irish pauperism between March, 1910, and March 26th, 1911, amounting to over 18,000:-- March 26th, 1910 99,607 March 25th, 1911 80,942 ------ 18,665 An analysis of the figures shows that the reduction is almost entirely due to the Old-age Pensions Act. There is little or no reduction in children, lunatics, or mothers, while there are the following reductions in aged and infirm paupers:-- -----------------------------------+---------+---------+------------ | 1910. | 1911. | Reduction. -----------------------------------+---------+---------+------------ Aged and infirm in work-houses | 13,478 | 11,291 | 2,187 | | | Aged and infirm on out-door relief | 51,304 | 35,681 | 15,623 -----------------------------------+---------+---------+------------ Total | 17,810 +------------ leaving only 855 of the reduction unaccounted for. APPENDIX G THE LAND LAW (IRELAND) ACT, 1881 The provisions which have revolutionised the land system of Ireland are contained in Clause 8 of the Land Act of 1881, which runs as follows:-- 8.--(1.) The tenant of any present tenancy to which this Act applies, or such tenant and the landlord jointly, or the landlord, after having demanded from such tenant an increase of rent which the tenant has declined to accept, or after the parties have otherwise failed to come to an agreement, may from time to time during the continuance of such tenancy apply to the court to fix the fair rent to be paid by such tenant to the landlord for the holding, and thereupon the court, after hearing the parties, and having regard to the interest of the landlord and tenant respectively, and considering all the circumstances of the case, holding, and district, may determine what is such fair rent. (2.) The rent fixed by the court (in this Act referred to as the judicial rent) shall be deemed to be the rent payable by the tenant as from the period commencing at the rent day next succeeding the decision of the court. (3.) Where the judicial rent of any present tenancy has been fixed by the court, then, until the expiration of a term of fifteen years from the rent day next succeeding the day on which the determination of the court has been given (in this Act referred to as a statutory term), such present tenancy shall (if it so long continue to subsist) be deemed to be a tenancy subject to statutory conditions, and having the same incidents as a tenancy subject to statutory conditions consequent on an increase of rent by a landlord. APPENDIX H THE IRISH CONGESTED DISTRICTS BOARD The present Congested Districts Board, so often referred to in the text, is constituted under the following clauses of the Irish Land Act of 1909:-- 45.--(1.) From and after the appointed day, the Congested Districts Board shall consist of the following members:-- (a.) The Chief Secretary, the Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, and the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, who shall be ex officio members: (b.) Nine members appointed by His Majesty (in this Act referred to as appointed members): (c.) Two paid members appointed by His Majesty (in this Act referred to as permanent members). (2.) An appointed member shall hold office for five years, and shall be eligible for re-appointment. On a casual vacancy occurring by reason of the death, resignation, or incapacity of an appointed member or otherwise, the person appointed by His Majesty to fill the vacancy shall continue in office until the member in whose place he was appointed would have retired, and shall then retire. 46.--(1.) For the purposes of the Congested Districts Board (Ireland) Acts, as amended by this Act, each of the following administrative counties, that is to say, the counties of Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway, and Kerry, shall be a congested districts county, the six rural districts of Ballyvaghan, Ennistymon, Kilrush, Scariff, Tulla, and Killadysert, in the county of Clare, shall together form one congested districts county, and the four rural districts of Bantry, Castletown, Schull, and Skibbereen, in the county of Cork, shall together form one congested districts county. (2.) No electoral division shall, after the passing of this Act, be or form part of a congested districts county, unless it is included in a congested districts county constituted under this section. The Act follows closely on the lines of the Report of the 1908 Commission, and places a third of Ireland under the Board. APPENDIX J (1.) RECOMMENDATION IN REGARD TO IRELAND OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON CANALS AND INLAND NAVIGATION (1.) That such waterways in Ireland as, on a review of all the facts, your Majesty's Government may deem of importance to the cause of cheap inland transport, should come under State control; and (2.) That a Controlling Authority should be constituted for the purpose of taking over those inland waterways which are already under the control of the State, of Local Authorities, or of a public trust, and of acquiring such other waterways as are determined to be of importance either to the drainage of the country, or to the cause of cheap inland transport. (2.) IN REGARD TO IRISH RAILWAYS The principal recommendation of the Majority Report of the Viceregal Commission on Irish Railways (1910) runs as follows:-- (1.) That an Irish Authority be instituted to acquire the Irish Railways and work them as a single system. (2.) That this Authority be a Railway Board of twenty Directors, four nominated and sixteen elected. (3.) That the general terms of purchase be those prescribed by the Regulation of Railways Act of 1844 (7 and 8 Vic. cap. 85. sec. 2), with supplementary provisions as to redemption of guarantees, and purchase of non-dividend paying or non-profit earning lines. (4.) That the financial medium be a Railway Stock; and that such stock be charged upon (1) the Consolidated Fund; (2) the net revenues of the unified Railway system; (3) an annual grant from the Imperial Exchequer; and (4) a general rate, to be struck by the Irish Railway Authority if and when required. APPENDIX K (1.) HOME RULE PARLIAMENTS IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE Canada 10 Australia 7 South Africa 5 Newfoundland 1 New Zealand 1 -- Total 24 -- Besides these Autonomous Parliaments-- (1.) India has also now seven "Legislative Councils," partly elective. (2.) The Isle of Man has "House of Keys," with almost complete legislative power. (3.) The Channel Islands have their own semi-independent governing Assemblies. (4.) The Crown Colonies have Assemblies possessing a considerable local representative element. WYMAN & SONS, LTD., Printers, Fetter Lane, London, E.C.; and Reading. * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | Page 146: etablished replaced with established | | Page 176: intituled replaced with intitled | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * 
15572	----	FIRST EDITION _June_ 1893 _Reprinted_ _June_ 1893 SECOND EDITION _July_ 1911 THIRD EDITION _January_ 1912 A LEAP IN THE DARK A CRITICISM OF THE PRINCIPLES OF HOME RULE AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE BILL OF 1893 By A.V. DICEY K.C., HON. D.C.L. FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE; FORMERLY VINERIAN PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD; AUTHOR OF 'ENGLAND'S CASE AGAINST HOME RULE,' 'THE VERDICT,' 'AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF THE CONSTITUTION' LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1912 TO IRISH UNIONISTS WHOSE NOBLE AND STRENUOUS DEFENCE OF THEIR OWN RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES AS CITIZENS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND WILL I TRUST PRESERVE THE POLITICAL UNITY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION This book is not a disquisition on the details of the Home Rule Bill. It is an examination into the leading principles of the Bill with a view to establishing two conclusions. The first is, that the Home Rule Bill, though nominally a measure for the government of Ireland, contains in reality a New Constitution for the whole United Kingdom. The second is, that this New Constitution must work injury both to England and to Ireland, and instead of 'closing a controversy of seven hundred years, opens a constitutional revolution. The whole aim, in short, of the book is by the collection together of arguments which separately have been constantly used by Unionist statesmen, to warn the people of England against a leap in the dark. A.V. DICEY. OXFORD: _May_ 1893. CONTENTS CHAPTER I OLD AND NEW CONSTITUTION Home Rule Bill a New Constitution for United Kingdom, p. 1.--The present constitution, p. 2: 1. Effective authority of Parliament throughout United Kingdom, p. 2: Distinction between supremacy of Parliament in United Kingdom and supremacy of Parliament in Colonies, p. 4: 2. Absence of federalism, p. 6: The New Constitution, p. 8: 1. Abolition in Ireland of effective authority of Imperial Parliament, ib.: 2. Introduction of federalism, p. 13.--Features of federalism, p. 15: Restrictions on Irish (State) Parliament, ib.: Imperial (federal) Parliament, ib.: Means for enforcement of federal compact, ib.: Recognition of federal spirit, p. 17.--Importance of change in constitution, p. 19.--The New Constitution an unknown constitution, p. 19. CHAPTER II THE NEW CONSTITUTION The four essential characteristics of the New Constitution, p. 21.--Supremacy of Parliament maintained, p. 22.--What is meaning of supremacy of Imperial Parliament? p. 23: What it does not mean, ib.: What it does mean, p. 24.--Real effect of reserved supremacy, p. 28.--Peril arising from ambiguity of supremacy of Parliament, p. 30.--Retention of Irish members at Westminster, p. 32.--Change of Gladstonian opinion, p. 33.--Presence of the Irish members involves ruin to Ireland, pp. 33, 34.--Mr. John Morley's opinion, p. 39.--Weakness of England, p, 41. Mr. Morley's opinion, p. 41.--Manner in which England weakened, p. 43: 1. Irish vote determines composition of British Cabinet, ib.: 2. System of Cabinet Government destroyed, p. 45: 3. Irish members changed into an Irish delegation, p. 46: 4. British Parliament not freed from Irish questions, p. 47.--Inducements to accept plan, p. 48.--Maintenance of Imperial supremacy, p. 49.--English management of English affairs, ib.--England does not really obtain management of English affairs, ib.--Minority tempted to unfairness, p. 51.--Minority, without intentional unfairness, may be oppressive, p. 52.--Plan of retaining Irish members for all purposes, p. 53.--Comparison with power hitherto held by or offered to Great Britain, p. 55.--Authority of England before 1782, p. 55.--Authority of England under Grattan's Constitution, p. 56.--Authority of England since the Union, p. 57.--Authority offered to England under Bill of 1886, p. 58.--Why should England accept in 1893 a worse bargain than was offered her in 1886? p. 59: Two alleged reasons, p. 60: First reason, Retention of Irish members concession to Unionists, p. 60: Futility of plea, ib.: Second reason, England will not suffer any greater evil than she does at present, p. 63: Answer. Fallacy of statement, ib.--Explanation of Gladstonian policy, p. 65.--Powers of Irish Government, p. 66: I. Irish Executive, ib.: Importance of Executive, p. 68: Powers of Irish Executive, p. 68: Position of military forces, p. 74: II. The Irish Parliament, p. 73: Its power to appoint the Irish Government, ib.: Its legislative power, p. 76.--Legislation in opposition to English policy, p 78.--Power to pass resolutions, p. 79.--The Restrictions, etc, p. 80: I. Their nature, ib.: 1. No restriction on power of Executive, p. 83: 2. No prohibition of Acts of Indemnity, ib.: 3. No prohibition of _ex post facto_ law, p. 84: 4. No safeguard against violation of contract, p. 85: II. Enforcement of Restrictions, p. 88.--The Veto, p. 88.--The Privy Council, p. 90.--Power to nullify Irish Acts, ib.--Power as final Court of Appeal to treat Irish Acts as void, p. 91.--How arrangement will work, p. 94.--Presumptions on which working of Constitutions depends false, p. 97: 1. Presumption that restrictions do not irritate, p. 98: Its falsehood, ib.--Financial arrangements certain to cause discontent, p. 100.--The Customs, ib.--Charges in favour of England on Ireland, p. 102.--Irish objection to financial proposals, p. 103.--Presumption that Ireland cannot nullify Restrictions. Its falsehood, p. 104.--Summary of criticism, p. 110. CHAPTER III WHY THE NEW CONSTITUTION WILL NOT BE A SETTLEMENT OF THE IRISH QUESTION New Constitution is intended to be final settlement of Irish Question, p. 112: But will not settle Irish Question for three reasons, p. 113: I. New Constitution does not satisfy Ireland or England, ib.: Ireland not satisfied, ib.: New Constitution detested by influential minority, p. 114: Irish Home Rulers not wholly satisfied, p. 115: New Constitution will cause discontent of whole Irish people, p. 118: England not satisfied, p. 119: 2. New Constitution rests on unsound foundation, p. 121: Belfast subjected to Dublin, p. 122: England subjected to Ireland, p. 123: 3. New Constitution based on ambiguity, p. 125.--The nature of the ambiguity, ib.--The result of the ambiguity, ib. The New Constitution cannot last, p. 127.--Irish discontent leading either to Federation or Separation, p. 128.--English discontent threatens reaction, p. 130. CHAPTER IV PLEAS FOR THE NEW CONSTITUTION Gladstonian apology, p. 132.--As to general considerations, ib.--General Gladstonian objections, ib.: I. Strictures are prophecy, p. 133: 2. Anomalies already exist in English Constitution, p. 135.--As to specific arguments for Home Rule, p. 138.--Necessity, p. 138.--Argument for necessity, ib.--Answer: argument invalid, 140.--Premises unsound, p. 141.--Premises do not support conclusion, p. 145.--No necessity for Home Rule, ib.--True meaning of necessity forgotten, p. 146.--No danger, p. 148: I. Safeguards, p. 149: Their unreality, ib.: 2. Grattan's Constitution, ib.: No precedent, p. 150: 3. Success of Home Rule in other countries, p. 152.--Instances of 'Home Rule' which need not be considered, ib.--Cases of 'Home Rule' which require consideration, p. 154.--Federal Government, p. 155.--Colonial independence, p. 156.--Neither federal government nor colonial independence compatible with the authority required in Ireland by Imperial Government, p. 157.--Weakness of law in case of federation, p. 158.--Weakness of law in case of colonies, pp. 161, 162.--Policy of trust, p. 163.--Trust in Irish leaders impossible, p. 164.--History of the Irish agitators, p. 164.--Gladstonian guarantee of trustworthiness worthless, p. 167.--Trust in teaching of power, 169.--Answer. Fallacy exposed by Mr. Bryce, ib.--Trust in the people and effect of Home Rule, p. 171.--Answer. Political changes do not ensure content, pp. 171, 172.--Gladstonian pleas are pleas for policy of Home Rule, but not pleas for new Constitution, p. 173. CHAPTER V THE PATH OF SAFETY The impending danger, p. 175.--Peril concealed by trust in Mr. Gladstone, ib.--Peril concealed by peculiar condition of opinion, p. 178.--The path of safety and true policy, p. 180.--Policy of seriousness, ib.--Seriousness of question at issue, ib.--Danger of civil war, p. 181.--Policy of simplicity, p. 183.--Strenuous opposition to Bill, ib.--Cry of obstruction futile, p. 184.--Details not to be made too prominent, p. 185.--No appearance of concession allowable, p. 186.--Policy of appeal to the nation, p. 187.--House of Lords must ensure dissolution, ib.--House of Lords may be called upon to enforce Referendum, p. 188.--Conclusion, p. 191. APPENDIX PAGES GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND BILL 195-223 ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES 195, 196 1. Establishment of Irish Legislature, p. 197--2. Powers of Irish Legislature, ib.--3. Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature, ib.--4. Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature, p. 198.--5. Executive power in Ireland, ib.--6. Composition of Irish Legislative Council, p. 199.--7. Composition of Irish Legislative Assembly, ib.--8. Disagreement between two Houses, how settled, p. 200.--9. Representation in Parliament of Irish counties and boroughs, ib.--10. As to separate Consolidated Fund and Taxes, p. 201.--11. Hereditary revenues and income tax, p. 202.--12. Financial arrangements as between United Kingdom and Ireland, p. 203.--13. Treasury Account (Ireland), ib.--14. Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund, p. 204.--15. Irish Church Fund, p. 205.--16. Local loans, ib.--17. Adaptation of Acts as to Local Taxation Accounts and Probate, etc., duties, ib.--18. Money bills and votes, p. 206.--19. Exchequer judges for revenue actions, election petitions, etc., ib.--20. Transfer of post office and postal telegraphs, p. 207.--21. Transfer of savings banks, p. 208.--22. Irish appeals, p. 209.--23. Special provision for decision of constitutional questions, ib.--24. Office of Lord Lieutenant, p. 210.--25. Use of Crown lands by Irish Government, ib.--26. Tenure of future judges, ib.--27. As to existing judges and other persons having salaries charged on the Consolidated Fund, ib.--28. As to persons holding civil service appointments, p. 211.--29. As to existing pensions and superannuation allowances, p. 212.--30. As to Police, ib.--31. Irish Exchequer Consolidated Fund and Audit, p. 213.--32. Law applicable to both Houses of Irish Legislature, ib.--33. Supplemental provisions as to powers of Irish Legislature, ib.--34. Limitation of borrowing by local authorities, p. 214.--35. Temporary restriction on powers of Irish Legislature and Executive, ib.--36. Transitory provisions, ib.--37. Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc., p. 216.--38. Appointed day, ib.--39. Definitions, ib.--40. Short title, p. 217. SCHEDULES 218-223 1. Legislative Council 218 2. Irish Members in the House of Commons 220 3. Finance 222 INTRODUCTION Irish Unionists have pressed for a republication of _A Leap in the Dark_. They hold that it will be of some service in their resistance to the Coalition of Home Rulers, Socialists, and Separatists formed to force upon the people of England and of Scotland a virtual dissolution of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland. It would in any case have been a pleasure to afford aid, however small, to the Irish Unionists, whether Protestants or Catholics, engaged in the defence at once of their own birthright and of the political unity of the United Kingdom. Yet for a moment I doubted whether the republication of a forgotten criticism of a forgotten Bill would be of essential service to my friends. On reflection, however, I have come to see that, though the Unionists of Ireland probably overrate the practical value of my book, yet their hope of its serving the cause whereof they are the most valiant defenders is based on sound reasons. _A Leap in the Dark_ is a stringent criticism of the Home Rule Bill, 1893.[1] But the book has little to do with the details and intricacies of that Bill. _A Leap in the Dark_ was published before the Home Rule Bill of 1893 had reached the House of Lords, or had assumed that final form, which made patent to the vast majority of British electors that a measure which purported to give a limited amount of independence to Ireland, in reality threatened England with political ruin. My criticism is therefore in truth an attack upon the fundamental principles of Home Rule, as advocated by Gladstone and his followers eighteen years ago. These principles, moreover, have never been repudiated by the Home Rulers of to-day. Some members of the present Cabinet, notably the Prime Minister and Lord Morley, were the apologists of the Bill of 1893. In that year _A Leap in the Dark, or Our New Constitution_, was, I venture to say, accepted by leading Unionists, such as Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Henry James (now Lord James of Hereford), as, in the main, an adequate representation of the objections which, in the judgment of such men and thousands of Unionists, were fatal to the acceptance of any scheme whatever of Home Rule for Ireland. The battle over Home Rule lasting, as it did for years, and ending with the complete victory of the Unionists, has been forgotten by or has never become known to the mass of the present electors. It is well that they should be reminded of the solid grounds for the rejection by the Lords of the Home Rule Bill of 1893. It is well that they should be reminded that this rejection was in 1895 ratified by the approval of the electorate of the United Kingdom _A Leap in the Dark_ will assuredly remind my readers that in 1893 the hereditary House of Lords, and not the newly elected House of Commons, truly represented the will of the nation. This is a fact never to be forgotten. It is of special import at the present moment. Another equally undoubted fact deserves attention. Home Rulers themselves despair of carrying a Home Rule Bill until they shall have turned the Parliament Bill into the Parliament Act, 1911, and my readers ought never to forget that the passing of the Parliament Bill into law destroys, and is meant to destroy, every security against the passing of any Home Rule Bill whatever which the present majority of the House of Commons choose to support. This gives an ominous significance to the obstinate refusal of the Government to alter or amend any of the material enactments contained in this ill-starred measure. _A Leap in the Dark_, combined with a knowledge of the Parliament Bill and the legislative dictatorship with which it invests the existing Coalition, suggests at least four conclusions which must at all costs be forced at this moment upon the attention of the nation. They may be thus summed up: _First_.--If the Parliament Bill passes into law the existing majority of the House of Commons will be able to force, and will assuredly in fact force, through Parliament any Home Rule Bill whatever (even were it the Home Rule Bill of 1893), which meets with the approval of Mr. Redmond, and obtains the acquiescence of the rest of the Coalition. The Coalition need not fear any veto of the House of Lords. There will be no necessity for an appeal to the electors, or in other words to the nation. The truth of this statement is indisputable. The legal right of the majority of the House of Commons to pass any bill whatever into law, even though the House of Lords refuse its assent, is absolutely secured by the very terms of the Parliament Bill. That the leaders of the Coalition, such as Mr. Asquith, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. John Redmond, will press their legal right to its extreme limits is proved to any man who knows how to read the teaching of history, by the experience of 1893. Mr. Gladstone used every power he possessed, and used it unscrupulously, to drive a Home Rule Bill through the House of Commons. He was a man trained in the historical traditions of Parliament. He assuredly did not relish the use of the closure and the guillotine. He was supported in the Commons by a very narrow majority, never I think exceeding forty-eight, and often falling below that number. The power of the party system, or as Americans say, the "Machine," was admittedly much less in 1893 than it has become in 1911. Yet Mr. Gladstone used such power as he possessed to the utmost. He hurried through the House of Commons a Bill which had not in fact received the assent of the nation. He made the freest use of every device for curtailing freedom of debate. A large and most important portion of the Home Rule Bill was not discussed at all in the Commons. And this Bill contained provisions, not appearing in its original form, for the retention of eighty Irish members at Westminster with full authority to take part in every kind of legislation which might be laid before Parliament; though Mr. Gladstone himself held the fairness to England of this provision dubious[2] and Mr. (now Lord) Morley had in 1886 demonstrated by reasoning which to my mind is absolutely conclusive that under a system of Home Rule the presence of Irish representatives in the Imperial Parliament at Westminster would work fatal injury to Ireland and gross injustice to England.[3] Can any man able to draw from political precedents their true meaning believe that Mr. Asquith, and the allies who are his masters, will be more scrupulous in forcing the next Home Rule Bill through the House of Lords than was Mr. Gladstone in forcing the Home Rule Bill of 1893 through the House of Commons? Mr. Asquith is supported by a large though incongruous majority. His almost avowed aim in pushing the Parliament Bill, unchanged and unchangeable, through the Houses of Parliament is to force the Home Rule Bill on the people of Great Britain against their will. Hesitation to make use of this dictatorial authority, should he ever obtain it, will to himself mean political ruin; to his English supporters it will seem political pusillanimity; by his Irish confederates it will be denounced as breach of faith and treachery. As certainly as night follows day the passing of the Parliament Act will be succeeded by the attempted passing of a Home Rule Act. _Secondly_.--Mr. Redmond and the Home Rulers, or Separatists, of whom he is the leader, will exact under any Home Rule Bill of say 1912 or 1913, at lowest, every advantage which was demanded by Irish Nationalists in 1893. Why, in the name of common sense, when Irish Nationalists are absolute masters of the situation, should they demand lower payment for their support than was offered to them twenty years ago when the Home Rule majority was every day losing strength, when every one knew that nothing but the show of moderation gave the slightest chance of a Home Rule Bill escaping the veto of the House of Lords, when every one, except perhaps Mr. Gladstone, foresaw that the next General Election would give to Unionists a crushing majority? Every advantage conceded in 1893 to Irish Separatists at the expense of England will assuredly reappear in one form or another in the next Home Rule Bill. Thus Ireland will, we may anticipate, under the next Home Rule Bill send to the Parliament at Westminster at least eighty members armed with the fullest legislative authority, so that, to revive the language current eighteen years ago, Ireland will govern and tax England whilst England will retain no right either to govern or to tax Ireland. _Thirdly_.--Every question to which in 1893 Gladstonians could discover no answer satisfactory to Unionists or to the electorate of Great Britain requires an answer in 1911 as much as in 1893. The answer favourable to Home Rule has not as yet been discovered. Is it possible to combine the effective supremacy of the Imperial Parliament with Home Rule or the substantial legislative independence of Ireland? Can Ireland, close to the shore of Great Britain, occupy the position of a self-governing colony, such as New Zealand, divided from Great Britain by thousands of miles of sea? Is it possible to create, or even to imagine, a Court which shall decide whether a law passed by the Irish Parliament violates the provisions of the proposed Home Rule Act? Above all, can the wit of man devise any scheme of constitution which shall at once satisfy the aspirations of Irish Nationalism and the patently just demand of Ulster that Protestants shall retain the freedom and the rights secured to them as citizens of the United Kingdom? Is there any form of Home Rule which will satisfy the desire of Irish Nationalists for something approaching national independence without the urgent peril of rousing civil war between Ulster and the Parliament at Dublin? All these inquiries, and others like them, harassed the Parliament of 1893; they were all answered by Unionists, that is by the majority of the British electors, with a decided negative; they will all be raised and will all need an answer when the leaders of the Coalition condescend to produce their next Home Rule Bill or even to reveal its fundamental principles. _Fourthly_.--England in the circumstances of to-day is threatened with two perils which did not exist in 1893, and yet are of stupendous gravity. The first is, that in the case of a measure of Home Rule the opportunities for discussing its provisions which are contained in the Parliament Bill may turn out nominal rather than real. It is not at all certain that for such a Bill, even though it be abhorred by the electorate of the United Kingdom, the House of Lords will be practically able to secure the delay and elaborate discussion to which Mr. Asquith professedly attaches immense importance. Unionists will believe that the measure passed by a large majority of the House of Commons is detested by the majority of the British electors. But how will it be possible to carry on the government of Ireland, to maintain order, or to save a loyal minority from gross oppression after a Home Rule Bill applauded by Separatists has been passed through the House of Commons, and for the first time has been rejected by the House of Lords? Every official in Ireland, down from the Lord Lieutenant to the last newly appointed member of the Irish Constabulary, every Irishman loyal or disloyal, will know that the Bill will within a year or two become law and that Irish Nationalists will control the Parliament and the government of Ireland. Will not the House of Lords be urged by every alleged consideration of good sense and humanity to close without delay a period of uncertainty which is threatening to turn into a reign of anarchy or of terror? The question supplies its own answer. The second peril is one whereof nobody speaks, but which must occur to any man who has studied the history of the past eighteen years or reflects upon the condition of public opinion. The peril, to put the matter plainly, is that Home Rulers will not stop at attaining Home Rule for Ireland, and that they may, and probably will, attempt to undermine the political predominance of England. Everything points in this direction. The agitation for Home Rule has fostered in Ireland, and to a very limited extent in certain other parts of the United Kingdom, a feeling approaching to jealousy of English power. England or Great Britain is the predominant partner. England is wealthy, England is prosperous. England, as the language of common life imports, is the leading member of the United Kingdom. Lord Rosebery announced with wise foresight that Home Rule in Ireland could hardly be established with benefit to the United Kingdom until the assent thereto of the predominant partner had been obtained by force of argument. The idea was grounded on common sense. Will it not suggest to Irish Nationalists that their moment of authority must be used for obtaining far greater privileges for Ireland than the extravagant political power offered by Gladstonians in 1893? Is it not natural for Home Rulers to think that the predominant partner ought to be deprived of his predominance? The conduct of the Coalition and some of its leaders points in this direction. They will have obtained through the Parliament Act temporary, but strictly unlimited and dictatorial, power. They will have obtained it by intrigue; they have rejected and treated with scorn the idea of an appeal to the people. They have claimed, not for Parliament but for the existing House of Commons, an absolute legislative power superior to that of the nation, a power which I assert with confidence is not possessed by the elected Assemblies of the United States, or of the French Republic, or of the Swiss Confederation: And by a strange combination of circumstances one method for depriving the predominant partner of legitimate authority may seem to a Home Ruler to lie near at hand. Raise the cry of 'Home Rule all round,' or of 'Federalise the British Empire.' Turn England into one State of a great federation, let Wales be another, Scotland a third, the Channel Islands a fourth, and for aught I know the Isle of Man a fifth. Let the self-governing Colonies, and British India, send deputies to the Imperial or Federal Parliament. You may thus for a moment, under the pretence of uniting the Empire, not only divide the United Kingdom, but deprive England or Great Britain, in form at least, of that political supremacy and predominance which is the real bond of union and peace not only throughout the United Kingdom, but also throughout the length and breadth of the British Empire. I do not tremble for the power--the lawful and legitimate power--of England. Political devices, however crafty, break down whenever they are opposed to the nature of things. I know that unity is increasing throughout the Empire not through the cunning or the statecraft of politicians, but through the whole course of events. One part of our Imperial system becomes daily under the effect of railways, steamers, telegraphs, and the like, nearer and nearer to every other part. The sentiment of unity which is more valuable than any law aiming at formal federation each year gains strength. What I do fear and insist upon is the danger that a legislative dictatorship conferred on a party, and therefore necessarily taken away from the nation, should be employed in the attempt, vain though it ultimately must be, to deprive the predominant partner of a predominance requisite for the maintenance both of the United Kingdom and of the British Empire. The four reflections at any rate which may be suggested by _A Leap in the Dark_ are well worth the consideration of the loyal citizens of the United Kingdom. A.V. DICEY. FOOTNOTES: [1] Its technical title as given in the Bill is the Irish Government Act, 1893. [2] See _Annual Register_, 1893 (New Series), p. 180. [3] See especially pp. 39, 40, 41-43 _post._ A LEAP IN THE DARK[4] FOOTNOTES: [4] My readers are earnestly recommended to study Mr. Cambray's _Irish Affairs and the Home Rule Question_. It brings the history of the Home Rule movement well up to date, and strengthens almost every argument against Home Rule to be found in _A Leap in the Dark._ The notes in square brackets are new. CHAPTER I OLD AND NEW CONSTITUTION The Home Rule Bill[5] contains a New Constitution for the whole United Kingdom.[6] The Bill bears on its face that its object is 'to amend the provision for the Government of Ireland'; it is entitled 'The Irish Government Act, 1893'; it is in popular language known as the Home Rule Bill. But all these descriptions are misleading. It is in truth a measure which affects the government alike of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland. It changes, to some extent the form, but to a far greater extent the working, and the spirit of all our institutions. It is a bold attempt to form a new constitution for the whole United Kingdom; it subverts the very bases of the existing constitution of England. The present constitution of the United Kingdom is marked and has long been marked by two essential characteristics, the one positive and the other negative. The positive characteristic is the absolute and effective authority of the Imperial Parliament throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. To this characteristic Englishmen are so accustomed that they hardly recognise its full importance. A government may make its power felt in three different ways--by the action of the Executive, including under that head all the agents of the Executive, such as the judiciary and the armed forces--by legislation--and by the levying of taxes. Take any of these tests of authority, and it will be found that the British Parliament is not only theoretically, but actually and effectively, supreme throughout the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. The Cabinet is virtually appointed by the Houses of Parliament; the army, the judges, the magistracy, all officials who throughout the country exercise executive power in any form whatever are directly or indirectly appointed by Parliament, and hold office subject to the will of Parliament Of the legislative authority of Parliament as regards the United Kingdom it is scarcely necessary to speak. Any law affecting the United Kingdom not only lawfully may, but can in fact, be changed by the Imperial Parliament. Of the unlimited legislative authority ascribed to, and exercised by, Parliament in the United Kingdom the Home Rule Bill itself is sufficient evidence; and the Gladstonian Ministry, at any rate, see no reason why Parliament should not within the course of a few weeks remodel the fundamental laws of the realm. The right to impose taxes is historically the source of Parliamentary power, and in all matters of taxation Parliament has absolute freedom of action from one end of the United Kingdom to the other; whether the income tax is to be lowered, raised, or abolished, whether some new duty, such as the cart and wheel tax, shall be imposed, whether the United Kingdom shall maintain free trade, or return to protection, how taxes shall be raised and how they shall be spent--all matters in short connected with revenue are throughout the United Kingdom determined and determinable in the last resort by Parliament alone. Hence, as things now stand, no kind of governmental action in any part of Great Britain and Ireland escapes Parliamentary supervision. The condition of the army, the management of the police, the misconduct of a judge, the release of a criminal, the omission to arrest a defaulting bankrupt, the pardon of a convicted dynamiter, the execution of a murderer, the interference of the police with a public meeting, or the neglect of the police to check a riot in London, in Skye, or in Tipperary, any matter, great or small, with which the executive is directly or indirectly concerned, is, if it takes place in any part of the United Kingdom, subject to stringent and incessant Parliamentary supervision, and may, at any moment, give rise to debates on which depend the fate of ministries and parties. If there be such a thing as supreme actual and effective authority, such authority is throughout the whole of the United Kingdom exercised by the Imperial Parliament, not occasionally and in theory, but every day and in the ordinary course of affairs. This exertion of actual and effective power by the Imperial Parliament throughout the United Kingdom is a totally different thing from the supremacy or sovereignty exercised by Parliament throughout the whole British Empire. As a matter of legal theory Parliament has the right to legislate for any part of the Crown's dominions. Parliament may lawfully impose an income tax upon the inhabitants of New South Wales; it may lawfully abolish the constitution of the Canadian Dominion, just as some years ago it did actually abolish the ancient constitution of Jamaica. But though Parliament does in fact exert a certain, or rather a very uncertain, amount of power throughout the whole Empire, we all know that the Imperial Parliament neither exercises, nor claims to exercise, in a self-governing colony such as New Zealand,[7] that kind of effective authority which Parliament exercises in the United Kingdom. The Cabinet of New Zealand is not appointed at Westminster; the action of a New Zealand Ministry as regards the affairs of New Zealand is not controlled by the English Government. Not a pennyworth of taxation is imposed on the inhabitants of New Zealand, or of any colony whatever, by the Imperial Parliament. Even the imposition of customs, though it has an important bearing on the interest of the Empire, is in a self-governing colony determined by the colonial, and not by the British, Parliament. It is the Parliament of New Zealand, and not the Parliament of England, which governs New Zealand. The Imperial Parliament, though for Imperial purposes it may retain an indefinite supremacy throughout the British Empire, has, as regards self-governing colonies, renounced, for all other than Imperial purposes, executive and legislative functions. To labour this point may savour of pedantry. But the distinction insisted upon, whilst often overlooked, is of extreme importance. We risk being deceived by words. The Imperial Parliament is supreme in the United Kingdom, it is also supreme in New Zealand. But the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is a misleading expression; it means one thing in the United Kingdom, and another thing in New Zealand or in Canada. In the United Kingdom it means the exercise of real, actual, effective and absolute authority. In New Zealand it means little more than the claim to regulate matters of a distinctly and exclusively Imperial character. The distinction is vital. The essential feature of the English constitution is the actual and direct government of the whole United Kingdom by the Parliament at Westminster. No change could be more fundamental than a change which, in England, Scotland, or Ireland, reduced this actual authority to the ultimate or reserved sovereignty exercised, or rather claimed, by Parliament in Canada or in New Zealand. The negative characteristic of the English constitution is the absence of federalism or of the federal spirit. The spirit of institutions is as important as their form, and the spirit of English Parliamentary government has always been a spirit of unity. The fundamental conditions of federal government are well known. They are first the existence of States such as the Cantons of Switzerland or the States of Germany, which are capable of bearing in the eyes of their inhabitants an impress of common nationality, and next the existence among the inhabitants of the federalised country of a very peculiar sentiment, which may be described as the desire for political union without the desire for political unity.[8] This condition of opinion leads to a division of powers between the federal or national government and the States. Whatever concerns the nation as a whole is placed under the control of the federal power. All matters which are not primarily of common interest remain in the hands of the States. Now each of these conditions upon which federalism rests has, as a matter of history, been absolutely unknown to the people of England. In uniting other countries to England they have instinctively aimed at an incorporative not at a federal union. This absence of the federal spirit is seen in two matters which may appear of subordinate, but are in reality of primary, consequence. Every member of Parliament has always stood on a perfect equality with his fellows; the representatives of a county or of a borough, English members, Scottish members, Irish members, have hitherto possessed precisely equal rights, and have been subject to precisely the same duties. They have been sent to Parliament by different places, but, when in Parliament, they have not been the delegates of special localities; they have not been English members, or Scottish members, or Irish members, they have been simply members of Parliament; their acknowledged duty has been to consult for the interest of the whole nation; it has not been their duty to safeguard the interests of particular localities or countries. Hence until quite recent years English parties have not been formed according to sectional divisions. There has never been such a thing as an English party or a Scottish party. Up to 1832 the Scottish members were almost without exception Tories; since 1832 they have been for the most part Liberals or Radicals; they have kept a sharp eye upon Scottish affairs, but they have never formed a Scottish party. The same thing has, to a great extent, held good of the Irish members. The notion of an Irish party is a novelty, and in so far as it has existed is foreign to the spirit of our institutions. Hence further, the Cabinet has been neither in form nor in spirit a federal executive. No Premier has attempted to constitute a Ministry in which a given proportion of Irishmen or Scotchmen should balance a certain proportion of Englishmen. English politicians have as yet hardly formed the conception of an English party. Not a single Prime Minister has claimed the confidence of the country on the ground that his colleagues were, or were not, English, Scottish, or Irish. That a Premier should glory in his pure Scottish descent is an innovation; it is an innovation ominous of revolution; it betrays a spirit of disintegration. If at the moment it flatters Scottish pride, Scotchmen and Irishmen would do well to recollect that it is a certain presage of a time when some Englishman will rise to power and obtain popular support on the ground of his staunch English sympathies and of his unadulterated English blood. Now place the new constitution side by side with the old. Assume, as I do assume throughout this chapter, that our new Gladstonian policy works in accordance with the intentions of its authors. The new constitution abolishes in Ireland the actual and effective control and authority of the Imperial Parliament. The government of Ireland is under the Home Rule Bill[9] placed in the hands of an executive authority, or, in plain terms, a Cabinet, undoubtedly to be appointed by the Irish Legislature, in the same sense in which an English Cabinet is appointed by the British Parliament, or a New Zealand Cabinet is appointed by the Parliament of New Zealand.[10] For the first time in the whole course of history the administration of Irish affairs is placed in the hands of an Irish Ministry, in the selection of which the Imperial Parliament has no hand or concern whatever. Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Healy, Mr. Redmond, Mr. Davitt, any leader, known or unknown, loyal or disloyal, who commands the confidence of the Irish Legislature, or, as I will venture to term it, the Irish Parliament,[11] will naturally become the Premier of Ireland, and, together with his colleagues, will possess all the authority which belongs to a Parliamentary Executive. On the action of this Irish Cabinet the Bill places, with rare exceptions, either no restrictions at all or restrictions which are only transitory.[12] Speaking generally, we may lay down that, except as to the control of the army, if that be an exception, the Irish Cabinet will, when the constitution gets into full working order, occupy in Ireland the position now occupied by the British Cabinet in regard to the whole United Kingdom. The appointment of officials, the conduct of Irish affairs, all the ordinary functions of government will, with certain exceptions meant for the most part to protect the rights of the Imperial Parliament, be exercised by Irish Ministers responsible to the Irish Parliament; and the British or Imperial Parliament will, in the ordinary course of things, have no more to do with the administration of affairs in Ireland than it has to do with the administration of affairs in New Zealand. The Irish, not the British, Cabinet will decide what are the steps to be taken for the protection throughout Ireland of the rights of property or of personal liberty; the Irish and not the English Cabinet will determine by what means the payment of rent is to be enforced; the Irish and not the English Cabinet will decide what persons are to be prosecuted for crime; the Irish and not the English Cabinet will determine whether the means for enforcing the punishment of crime are adequate, and whether Ireland, or some part of Ireland, say Belfast, requires to be governed by means of a Coercion Act; the Irish and not the English Cabinet will decide with what severity wrong-doers are to be punished, and whether, and under what circumstances, convicted criminals deserve either pardon or mitigation of punishment. It is patent that under the new constitution the Irish Parliament and, under ordinary circumstances, the Irish Parliament alone will legislate for Ireland. For the Irish Parliament can, subject to certain Restrictions,[13] pass any law whatever 'for the peace, order and good government of Ireland, in respect of matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some part thereof'[14]; and, subject to the same Restrictions, may repeal any law which, before the Home Rule Bill becomes law, is in force in Ireland. Under the new constitution the Irish Parliament and not the Imperial Parliament will, it is clear, as a rule legislate for Ireland. Under the new constitution the Irish Parliament may enact a Coercion Act, applying say to Ulster, or may repeal the existing Crimes Act. It may abolish trial by jury[15] altogether, put any restraints it sees fit on the liberty of the press, or introduce a system of administrative law like that which exists in France, but is totally foreign to English notions of jurisprudence. Under the new constitution, again, the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland are made the subject of an elaborate arrangement which may fairly be called a contract[16]. Ireland takes over certain charges[17], and speaking very generally, whilst all the duties of customs levied in Ireland are collected by and paid over to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, as Ireland's contribution to Imperial expenditure, all the other taxes are, as a general rule, paid over to the Irish Exchequer. The justice or the policy of these financial arrangements is for my present purpose immaterial. All that need be observed is that the ordinary taxation of Ireland passes from the hands of the Imperial Parliament into the hands of the Irish Parliament, and that under the new constitution this arrangement is a settlement which the Imperial Parliament is morally bound to respect for a period of at least fifteen years[18]. In Ireland therefore the new constitution abolishes the effective exercise of authority by the Imperial Parliament in matters of administration, in matters of legislation, in matters of finance; every concern which affects the daily life of Irishmen will be under the control of the Irish Cabinet and the Irish Parliament. The relation of the Imperial Parliament towards Ireland will not be the relation which it now occupies towards the whole United Kingdom, and which under the new constitution it will still occupy towards Great Britain. The Imperial Parliament, it is true, retains considerable reserved powers; what are the effect and nature of these powers shall be considered in its due place. The matter upon which I now insist is simply this: the new constitution does in any case transfer the effective government of Ireland from the Imperial Parliament to the Irish Parliament. The authority reserved to the Imperial Parliament may be termed supremacy, or sovereignty, or may be described by any other fine-sounding name which we are pleased to use, but the fact remains unaltered that, as long as the new constitution stands and works, the Imperial Parliament will not govern Ireland in the sense in which it governs England and Scotland, and that such authority as it exerts in Ireland will be analogous not to the power which it now exercises there, but to the influence which it possesses in Canada or in New Zealand.[19] The new constitution is at bottom a federalist or semi-federalist constitution; it introduces into English institutions many of the forms of federalism and still more of its spirit. The Parliament sitting at Westminster becomes for the first time a Federal Congress. Of its members, 567 will represent Great Britain; 80 will represent Ireland. The exact numbers are for the present purpose insignificant. The serious matter is that the Imperial Parliament undergoes an essential change of character. The British members will have, or are intended to have, no concern with the government of Ireland. The Irish members ought to have nothing to do with the government of Great Britain. On Imperial subjects the Imperial Parliament, or, to call it by its proper name, the Federal Congress, votes as a whole; on Irish subjects it does not vote at all; on British topics its British members only vote. The British and the Irish members, in short, alike represent, though in a very clumsy fashion, the States of a Confederacy. Though the fact be artfully concealed, we have under the new constitution already, in germ at least, a British State and an Irish State, a British Parliament and an Irish Parliament, and a third body consisting of these two Parliaments, which is the Imperial or Federal Parliament.[20] The different features of federalism make their appearance though under strange forms. The constitution imposes Restrictions on the powers of the State Governments and of the Federal Government. This appears unmistakably in the limitations placed upon the authority of the Irish Parliament. These Restrictions, be they wise or unwise, politic or impolitic, are perfectly in keeping with the constitutional arrangements of a Federal Government, but are absolutely unknown to the theory and practice of English parliamentary government. The powers of the Imperial Parliament, it may be said, are under the new constitution subject to no limitations. In words this assertion is true, in substance it is false. If the constitution works properly the Imperial Parliament will clearly be subject to the terms of the Government of Ireland Act, 1893, or, in other words, of the Federal Constitution. This subjection is not absolute; it is moral, not legal, still it exists. A breach of the federal compact will be no light matter. The constitution again, as one would expect under a federal scheme, provides for the enforcement of the compact. In the case of Ireland this is manifest. The royal veto,[21] the power of the Courts, and ultimately of the Privy Council, to pronounce on the constitutionality of any Irish Act, and treat it as void if it is in excess of the authority bestowed upon the Irish legislature, the provisions for the legal determination of constitutional questions,[22] the arrangements as to the payment of the Irish customs into the Imperial Exchequer, the special and very anomalous position of the Exchequer Judges, are all attempts, whatever be their worth, to restrain the Irish legislature and government, or in effect the Irish people, from the undue assertion of State rights. Restraints again are placed on the unconstitutional action of the Imperial or Federal Parliament. They are less obvious, but at least as real and effectual as the safeguards against the breach of the constitution by the Irish government or legislature. They are all summed up in the presence of the Irish representatives at Westminster. The only legitimate reason, if legitimate reason there be, for their presence is the guardianship of Irish rights under the constitution. It is for them to see that these rights are held sacred. No diminution thereof can take place without either the assent of the Irish members or else the existence of such a majority in the Parliament at Westminster as may override the protests of Ireland.[23] No doubt this is not an absolute security. But whoever considers the habits of English political life will conclude that, except in the event of the Imperial Parliament being resolved to suspend or destroy the constitution, there exists the highest improbability that any inroad should be made upon the privileges conferred under the new constitution upon Ireland. The security, though not absolute, is a good deal better than any safeguard given by the Bill that the State rights of Great Britain shall be duly respected by the representatives from Ireland. Assume, however, that the constitution works properly, and that all parties respect the spirit of its provisions. The result is that the new constitution forms a fundamental law, fixing the respective rights of Ireland, of Great Britain, of the Irish Parliament, and of the Imperial Parliament.[24] The federal arrangements which, utterly unknown as they are to our institutions, form the foundation of the new constitution, are as nothing compared with the recognition and fostering of the federal spirit. Great Britain and Ireland constitute for the first time in history a confederation. The difference or opposition of their interests receives legislative acknowledgment: each country is to possess in reality, though not in name, State rights; each must rely upon the constitution for the protection of these rights; each may suffer from the encroachments of the Imperial or central power. Ireland may complain that the Imperial Parliament by legislation, or the Privy Council by judicial interpretation, encroaches on her guaranteed rights. Great Britain may complain either that Irish members intermeddle in British affairs, and thus British rights are violated, or that the Privy Council so interprets the constitution that the prerogatives of the Central Government (which be it remembered must in practice be identified with the power of England) are unduly diminished. To imagine such complaints is not to assume that the constitution works badly. They are of necessity inherent in the federal system. There exists no federal government throughout the world where such complaints do not arise, and where they do not at times give rise to heart-burnings. It is well indeed, judging from the lessons of history, if they do not produce bitter conflicts, or even civil war. Let us take, however, the most sanguine view possible. Let us grant that both in England and in Ireland every minister, every legislator, every judge, is inspired with a spirit of perfect disinterestedness and absolute fairness. This concession, immense though it be, does not exclude vital differences of opinion. In our new confederacy, as in every other, there will arise the contest between State rights and federal rights, between the authority of the Central Government and of the State Government. In any case, a whole class of new difficulties and questions of a totally new description will make their appearance in the field of English politics, and call for the exercise on the part both of English and of Irish statesmen of extraordinary wisdom and extraordinary self-control. The new constitution in short, in virtue of its federal tendencies, will revolutionise the public life of the United Kingdom. From whatever side the matter be considered we arrive at the same result. The Home Rule Bill is a new constitution; it subverts the bases of the English constitution as we now know it, for it destroys throughout Ireland the effective authority of the Imperial Parliament, and turns the United Kingdom into a federal government of a new and untried form. The change may be necessary or needless, wise or unwise. The first and most pressing necessity of the moment is that every elector throughout the United Kingdom should, realise the immense import of the innovation. It is a revolution far more searching than would be the abolition of the House of Lords or the transformation of our constitutional monarchy into a presidential republic. The next point to which the attention of every man throughout the land should be directed is, that the new constitution offered to us for acceptance is unknown to any other civilised country. Parts of it are borrowed from the United States; some of its provisions are imported from the British colonies, whilst others are apparently the inventions of the unknown and irresponsible Abbé Siéyès, who is the ingenious constitution-maker of the Cabinet. But the new polity as a whole resembles in its essence neither the American Commonwealth nor the Canadian Dominion, nor the Government either of New Zealand or of any other self-governing colony. It is an attempt--its admirers may think an original and ingenious attempt--to combine the sovereignty of an Imperial Parliament with the elaborate limitation and distribution of powers which distinguish federal government. The whole thing is an experiment and an experiment without precedent. Its novelty is not its necessary condemnation, but neither on the other hand is innovation of necessity the same thing as reform. The institutions of an ancient realm are not exactly the _corpus vile_ on which theorists hard pressed by the practical difficulties of the political situation can be allowed to try unlimited experiments. We are bound to scrutinise with care every provision of this brand-new polity. We are bound to consider what will be their effect according to the known laws of human nature and under the actual circumstances of the time. It is vain to tell us that many of our institutions remain untouched. The introduction of new elements into an old political system may revolutionise the whole; the addition of new cloth to an old garment may, we all know, rend the whole asunder. There is no need for panic; there is the utmost need for prudence. FOOTNOTES: [5] References made in this treatise to the Home Rule Bill are, unless otherwise stated, made to the Bill as ordered to be printed by the House of Commons, February 17, 1893. _A Leap in the Dark_ was published months before the Bill was sent up as amended to the House of Lords. [6] This is true of both of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills, and must necessarily be true of any Bill which satisfies even for a time the wishes of Home Rulers. [7] I have substituted New Zealand for Victoria as the example of a typical self-governing colony; the position of Victoria has since 1900 been complicated by the country having become a State of the Australian Commonwealth or Confederation. [8] See Dicey, _Law of Constitution_ (7th ed.), ch. iii. pp. 136-140. Compare Mill, _Rep. Government_, ch. xvii. [9] For the sake of convenience I throughout this treatise refer to the 'Bill to amend the provision for the government of Ireland' under its popular name of the Home Rule Bill, 1893, or simply the Bill. See the Bill in Appendix. [10] Bill, clause 5. [11] (The constitutional history of Victoria affords a curious illustration of what will certainly happen in Ireland.) In Victoria the Legislature, though not termed a Parliament in the Constitution Act, 18 & 19 Vict, c. 54, has assumed, under a Victorian Act, the title of the Parliament of Victoria. See Jenks, _Government of Victoria_, p. 236. Who can doubt that the Irish Legislature will, by an Irish Act, give itself the title of the Parliament of Ireland? I have therefore throughout these pages called the Irish Legislature the Irish Parliament. Few things are more absurd and more noteworthy than the deliberate refusal of English Gladstonians to call the Irish Parliament by its right name. They are willing to create an Irish Parliament; they are not willing to admit that they have created it. See debates of May 9, in _The Times_, May 10, 1893. [12] See Bill, clauses 19, 27, 28, 30. [13] Bill, clauses 3, 4. [14] Bill, clause 2. [15] This will perhaps be disputed. Trial by jury, it will be said, is saved by the expression 'due process of law,' in clause 4, sub-clause (5). But this contention is, in my judgment, unfounded, and its validity must in any case be held open to extreme doubt. [16] See Bill, clauses 10-19, and note especially clause 12, sub-clause (I). [17] _Ibid_, clauses 14-16. [18] _Ibid_, clause 12, sub-clause (3). [19] I am aware that to this statement moderate Gladstonians may take exception. What may be the effect of the preamble which reserves the supreme authority of Parliament or of Bill, clause 33, which recognises the right of the Imperial Parliament to legislate for Ireland will be most conveniently considered in the next chapter. In this chapter, be it noted, I am concerned only with the constitution as it is intended to work, and most Gladstonians will admit that as long as the Government of Ireland, including in that expression both the Cabinet and the Parliament, keeps within the terms of the Act, it is not intended that the British Cabinet or Parliament shall, except in certain excepted cases, intervene in Irish affairs. [20] All the provisions which under clause 9 of the Home Rule Bill, 1893, in its earliest form, were intended to restrain Irish Peers, or members representing Irish constituencies, from deliberating or voting on any Bill or motion the operation of which should be confined to Great Britain, were swept away by the Gladstonian majority before the Home Rule Bill was sent up to the House of Lords. The unfairness of giving to Ireland a Parliament intended to legislate on all, or nearly all, Irish affairs, and at the same time retaining eighty Irish members at Westminster with full power to legislate on all English and Scottish affairs, secured in 1895 the enthusiastic approval by the British electorate of the rejection of the Home Rule Bill of 1893 by the House of Lords. [21] See Bill, clause 5 (1). [22] Bill, clauses 22, 23. [23] 'The Imperial Parliament was supreme, but he held the passing of the Home Rule Bill, reserving certain subjects to the Imperial Parliament and committing others to the Parliament of Ireland, as amounting to a compact which would be observed by men of common sense that there would be no capricious or vexatious interference by this Parliament with an action within the appointed sphere of the Parliament of Ireland. If such interference were attempted, the presence in this Parliament of eighty Irish members--a number which had been found to be sufficient to initiate an Irish constitution--would be found sufficient to protect an Irish constitution when it was given.'--Mr. Sexton, Feb. 13, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates,_ p. 318. [24] For evidence that the power of the Imperial Parliament is intended under the new constitution to be subjected to at any rate a moral limit, the reader should note particularly the terms of the Home Rule Bill, clause 12, sub-clause (3). CHAPTER II THE NEW CONSTITUTION A critic of the new constitution, intent on ascertaining how it affects the relation of Great Britain and Ireland, will do well to divert his attention from the numerous details of the Home Rule Bill, important as many of them are,[25] and fix his mind almost exclusively upon the four leading features of the measure. These are:-- _First_. The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. _Secondly_. The retention of the Irish members in the Parliament at Westminster. _Thirdly_. The powers of the Irish Government, in which term is here included both the Irish Executive and the Irish Parliament. _Fourthly_. The Restrictions (popularly known as the safeguards) and the obligations imposed upon the Irish Government. These features are primary and essential; everything else, however important in itself, is subsidiary and accidental. A. _The Supremacy of the Imperial Parliament_[26] The Home Rule Bill asserts in its preamble the inexpediency of 'impairing or restricting the supreme authority of Parliament'; and in clause 33, apparently[27] assumes the right of the Imperial Parliament after the passing of the Home Rule Bill to enact for Ireland laws which cannot be repealed by the Irish Parliament. The new constitution therefore maintains the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. What, however, is the true meaning of this 'supreme authority,' 'supremacy,' or 'sovereignty,' if you like, of the Imperial Parliament? The term, as already pointed out,[28] is distinctly ambiguous, and unless this ambiguity is cleared up, the effect of the Home Rule Bill, and the nature of our new constitution, will never be understood. The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament may mean the right and power of Parliament to govern Ireland in the same sense in which it now governs England, that is, to exercise effective control over the whole administration of affairs in Ireland, and for this purpose, through the action of the English Government, or, when necessary, by legislation, to direct, supervise and control the acts of every authority in Ireland, including the Irish Executive and the Irish Legislature. If this were the meaning of the expression, the Imperial Parliament would, after the passing of the Home Rule Bill, as before, be as truly supreme in Ireland as in England, in Scotland, in the Isle of Man, or in Jersey. The Irish Executive and the Irish Parliament would, of course, be bodies possessing large--and it might be very dangerous--delegated powers, but they would stand in the same relation to the Imperial Parliament as does the London County Council, which also possesses large delegated powers, which administers the affairs of a population as large as that of Scotland and which, very possibly, may receive from Parliament as time goes on larger and more extended authority than the Council now possesses. This is the sense which many Gladstonians, and some Unionists, attribute to the term 'supremacy of Parliament.' It is not the sense in which the expression 'supreme authority of Parliament' is used in the Home Rule Bill. The supremacy of Parliament may bear quite another sense; it may mean that Parliament, whilst completely giving up the management of Irish affairs (subject of course to the Restrictions contained in the Home Rule Bill) to the Irish Executive and the Irish Legislature, retains in Ireland, as elsewhere throughout the Empire, reserved sovereignty, or the theoretical right (which exceptionally though rarely may be put into practice) of passing laws for Ireland and of course, among other laws, an Act modifying or repealing the terms of the Home Rule Bill itself. If this is the meaning of the expression 'supreme authority of Parliament,' the Imperial Parliament will, after the passing of the Home Rule Bill, stand in substance in the relation to Ireland which Parliament occupies towards any important self-governing colony, such as is the Canadian Dominion or New Zealand. The Irish Executive and the Irish Parliament will on this view constitute the real substantial government of Ireland, just as the Ministry and the Parliament of New Zealand constitute the real and substantial government of New Zealand. No doubt the Imperial Parliament will retain the theoretical right to legislate for Ireland, _e.g._ to pass an Irish Coercion Act, just as Parliament retains the theoretical right to legislate for New Zealand or Canada. So the Imperial Parliament has the legal right to repeal or override any law passed by the New Zealand Parliament, to tax the inhabitants of New Zealand, or finally, by the repeal of the New Zealand Constitution Act, 1852, 15 & 16 Vict. c. 72, to abolish the constitution of New Zealand altogether. But these things Parliament will not, and to speak truly cannot, do in New Zealand. The inhabitants of New Zealand possess as regards their internal affairs for practical purposes complete independence. They are governed from Wellington, they are not governed from Westminster. If in short the supremacy of Parliament means under the Home Rule Bill in Ireland what it means under 15 & 16 Vict. c. 72 in New Zealand, the inhabitants of Ireland will, when the Home Rule Bill passes into law, be governed from Dublin, they will not be governed from Westminster. Every Irish Home Ruler, be he Parnellite or Anti-Parnellite,[29] believes that the supremacy of Parliament is intended to mean in Ireland what it means in New Zealand, and the Irish Home Rulers are right. Any one will see that this is so who reflects on the meaning of the policy of Home Rule, who studies the authoritative utterances of Gladstonian leaders, such as Mr. Gladstone[30] himself, Mr. Asquith,[31] or Mr. Bryce.[32] Gladstonian statesmen wrap up their meaning in vague generalities; they insist, and in one sense with truth, that the sovereignty of Parliament is reserved. They do not wish to alarm their English followers. It is possible that they conceal even from themselves how completely the Imperial Ministry and Parliament surrender the practical government of Ireland into the hands of the Irish Parliament and its leaders. But for all this, their own language and the Bill itself prove that the supreme authority of Parliament is under the new constitution to be taken in its limited, and what for the sake of distinction we may call its 'colonial' sense. This is proved, if evidence were wanting, by the provision[33] that after fifteen years from the time when the Bill passes into law the financial relations between England and Ireland may be revised in pursuance of an Address to the Crown from the House of Commons or from the Irish legislative assembly. If the Imperial Parliament retains an effective or practically unlimited supremacy, the provision is futile and needless. What necessity is there for enacting that a sovereign Parliament, which institutes, may alter a scheme of taxation? But the provision is intelligible enough on one supposition, and on one supposition only. It is both intelligible and in place if Parliament gives up the real right of governing Ireland and occupies towards what is now a part of the United Kingdom the position, or something very like the position, which Parliament occupies towards a self-governing colony. It then embodies a compact between England and Ireland, and institutes a regular method for revising their financial relations. But this very compact proves that as regards Ireland the Imperial Parliament, if it reserves to itself ultimate sovereignty, has for practical purposes surrendered the reality of control. There is no need to assert that this supremacy of the Imperial Parliament means nothing. The assertion would not be true. The reservation of sovereign authority means something, but it does not mean much. It does not mean the power or the right to govern Ireland; it means at most the legal and moral right to modify, or put an end to, the new constitution if ever it works badly. The power, indeed, to abolish the constitution can neither be given nor taken away by Acts of Parliament, by the declarations of English statesmen, or the concessions of Irish leaders, whether authorised or not to pledge the Irish people. It is given to Great Britain, not by enactments, but by nature; it arises from the inherent capacity of a strong, a flourishing, a populous, and a wealthy country to control or coerce a neighbouring island which is poor, divided, and weak.[34] This natural supremacy will, if the interests of Great Britain require it, be enforced by armies, by ironclads, by blockades, by hostile tariffs, by all the means through which national predominance can make itself felt. All reference to superior power is, in controversies between citizens, hateful to every man endowed with a sense of humanity or of justice. But in serious discussions facts must be faced, and if, for the sake of argument, I contrast, much against my will, the power of Great Britain with the weakness of Ireland, let it be remembered that the conception of a rivalry or conflict is forced upon Unionists by the mere proposal of Home Rule. As long as we remain a United Kingdom, there is no more need to think even of hypothetical or argumentative opposition between the resources or interest of England and of Ireland than there is to consider what in case of a contest may be the relative force of London and of the Orkneys. What, then, the new constitution secures is not the power, but the legal right to abolish the new constitution. It is a right to carry through a fundamental change by lawful means. The Bill legalises revolution. This is well, for it is desirable that in a civilised State every change of institutions should be effected by constitutional methods. But should the circumstances ever arise under which Great Britain is resolved, in spite of the wishes of the Irish people or a large portion thereof, to abolish Home Rule and exercise the right of reserved sovereignty, there is no reason to expect that Irishmen who oppose British policy will admit that her use of sovereign power is morally justifiable. By force, or the threat of force, the controversy will, we must expect, in the last instance, be decided. However this may be, we must now realise what the supremacy of Parliament, at any rate to the Irish leaders who accept it, really means. It means nothing but the right of the Imperial Parliament of its own authority to repeal the Home Rule Bill and destroy the new constitution. The right may be worth having. But it is not the right to govern Ireland or to control the Irish Government; it is not a means of government at all: it is a method of constitutional revolution, or reaction. Some critic will object that this supremacy of Parliament means to him a good deal more than the mere right to abolish the constitution. So be it. Let the objector then tell us in precise language what it does mean. If his reply is that the term is ambiguous, that its meaning must be construed in accordance with events, and may, according to circumstances, be restricted or extended, then he suggests that Parliamentary supremacy is not only an empty right, but an urgent peril. Nothing can be more dangerous than a compact between England and Ireland which the contracting parties construe from the very beginning in different senses. If by asserting the supreme authority of Parliament English statesmen mean that Parliament reserves the right to supervise and control the government of Ireland, whilst Irishmen understand that Parliament retains nothing more than such a kind of supremacy or sovereignty as it asserts, rather than exercises, in New Zealand, then we are entering into a doubtful contract which lays the sure basis of a quarrel. We are deliberately preparing the ground for disappointment, for imputations of bad faith, for recriminations, for bitter animosity, it may be for civil war. If there be, as is certainly the case, a fair doubt as to what is meant by the supremacy of Parliament, let the doubt be cleared up. This is required by the dictates both of expediency and of honour. Meanwhile we may assume that the supremacy of Parliament, or the 'supreme authority of Parliament,' means in substance the kind of sovereignty which Parliament exercises, or claims to exercise, in every part of the British Empire. For the maintenance of such supremacy, be it valuable or be it worthless, Great Britain pays a heavy price. For the sake of 'an outward and visible sign of Imperial supremacy' we retain eighty Irish members in the Imperial Parliament.[35] B. _The Retention of the Irish Members in the Imperial Parliament_ This is now[36] an essential, or at least a most important part of the ministerial policy for Ireland, yet it is a proposal which even its advocates must find difficult of defence. In 1886 every Gladstonian leader told us that it was desirable, politic, and just to exclude Irish members from the Parliament at Westminster; this exclusion was pressed upon England (plausibly enough) as a main advantage to be derived from the concession of Home Rule to Ireland. In 1893 every Gladstonian leader tells us that it is desirable, politic, and just to retain the Irish members at Westminster, and their presence is, for some reason not easy to explain, treated as removing every objection to the concession of Home Rule to Ireland. This astounding variation of opinion in the doctors of the State savours of empiricism, not to say quackery. A surgeon who tells a patient that he will not live unless his leg is amputated may be right, and may be worthy of trust; another surgeon who asserts that amputation is unnecessary may be right, and worthy of trust. But the surgeon who one moment insists that amputation is necessary to the preservation of his patient's life, and the next moment that it is unnecessary and may be fatal, is not the kind of adviser who inspires confidence in his wisdom. Let the ingenuity of Gladstonians reconcile, as best it can, the doctrine of 1886 with the doctrine of 1893. To a man of sense who weighs the matter without reference to considerations of party, one thing will soon become apparent: the retention at Westminster of eighty, or indeed of any Irish members at all, means under a scheme of Home Rule the ruin of Ireland and the weakness of England. As to Ireland.--The presence of Irish members at Westminster robs Ireland of the one advantage which Home Rule might by any possibility confer upon that country. Any man in order to see that this is so has only to consider, first, what may under favourable circumstances be the benefit of Home Rule to Ireland, and next what is the natural result of summoning Irish members to the Parliament at Westminster. The best conceivable result of Home Rule is that it may detach Irishmen from interest in English politics, and induce the most respected and respectable men in Ireland to take matters into their own hands and manage for themselves all strictly Irish affairs. For the last twenty years, at least, Ireland has been represented, or misrepresented, by eighty and more politicians, nominated in the main by Mr. Parnell. No one supposes for a moment that the Nationalist leaders who appeared before and were condemned by the Special Commission are fair samples of the Irish people. They are, take them at their best, reckless agitators. They were chosen by their patron, Mr. Parnell, not on account of their worth or talent, but because they were apt instruments for carrying out a policy of parliamentary intrigue, reinforced by a system of lawless oppression.[37] These men are the product of a revolutionary era; they no more represent the virtues and the genius of the Irish people than the demagogues or fanatics of the Jacobin Club represented the genius and the virtues of the French nation. We all know that Ireland abounds in citizens of a very different stamp. She has never lacked among her sons, and does not lack now, men of virtue, of vigour, and of genius. Throughout the length and breadth of the country you will find hundreds of men of merit--landlords whose lives have been honourable to themselves, and a blessing to their tenants; merchants as honest and successful as any in England or in Scotland; small landowners and tenant farmers who have paid their rent and paid their way, who have cultivated their land, who have never insulted or boycotted their neighbours, and have never been driven by intimidation into meanness and fraud. Add to these lawyers, thinkers, writers, and scholars, who rival or excel the best representatives of their class in other parts of the United Kingdom. These good men and true are not peculiar to any one creed or party; they are not confined to any one province, or to any one class; they are scattered through every part of the land; they are the true backbone of Ireland; they have saved her from utter ruin; they may still by their energy raise her to prosperity. But they have been thrust out of politics by the talkers, the adventurers, the conspirators. It is possible that if Home Rule compels Irishmen to turn their whole minds to Irish affairs, the so-called representatives who misrepresent their country may be dismissed from the world of politics, and the Parliament at Dublin be filled with members who, whether they come from the North or from the South, whether Unionists or Home Rulers, whether Roman Catholics or Protestants, whether landowners, tenant farmers, ministers of religion, merchants, or tradesmen, represent the real worth and strength of the country. If this should happen, Home Rule would still entail great evils on the whole United Kingdom. But even zealous Unionists might hope that for these evils Ireland at least will obtain some compensation. This hope, if the Irish members are retained at Westminster, will never be fulfilled. For even the occasional presence[38]--which will in practice be the frequent presence--of the Irish members at Westminster destroys every hope that Ireland will be governed by her best citizens. The reasons why this is so are various; some of them may be shortly stated. The system, in the first place, of double representation, under which members of the Irish Parliament must flit to and fro between Ireland and England, and debate one day about Irish matters in Dublin, and the next about Imperial, or in truth British, matters in England, makes it impossible for quiet hard-working Irishmen, who carry on the real business of Ireland, to take part in politics. The political centre of interest, in the second place, will after, as before, the passing of the Home Rule Bill, be placed in London and not in Dublin. The humdrum local business which under a system of Home Rule ought to be discussed in the Irish Parliament, may vitally concern the prosperity of every inhabitant of Ireland, but it will not in general lend itself to oratory, or arouse popular excitement. The questions, on the other hand, to be discussed in the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, as, for example, whether Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury shall be head of the British Cabinet, whether the royal veto on Irish legislation shall be exercised on the advice of the English or of the Irish Ministry, are matters which do not in reality greatly affect the happiness of ordinary Irishmen. But they give room for management, for diplomacy, for rhetoric, and are certain on occasions to arouse both the interest and the passions of the Irish people. We may take it for granted that the character of the Irish representation at Westminster will govern the character of the Parliament at Dublin.[39] Hence arises a third and fatal obstacle to the active participation in Irish public life of Irishmen who are not professional politicians. The Home Rule Bill of 1893 professes to restrain on every side the action of the Irish government and Parliament. These Restrictions are the comfort of English Gladstonians; they are thought to be safeguards, though in reality there is nothing which they make safe. But Restrictions which delight Gladstonians are hateful to Irish Home Rulers. Their watchword is, 'Ireland a nation.' To this cry every Home Ruler will rally, and so too will, if once the Union is broken up, many an ardent loyalist, converted by anger at England's treachery into an extreme Nationalist. Irishmen will wish for an Irish army; they will wish for a protective policy; they will desire that Ireland shall play a part in foreign affairs, and will claim for her at least the independence of such a colony as New Zealand. To all these wishes, and to many more, some of which under a system of Home Rule are quite reasonable, the terms of the Home Rule Bill are opposed. Home Rulers, and probably enough the whole Irish people, will insist that the Bill, which will then have become an Act, must be modified. How is the modification to be obtained? How is Home Rule to be made a reality? By one method only: that is, by the freest use of those arts Of intrigue and obstruction by which Home Rule will have been gained. But for the carrying out of such a policy the agitators and intriguers who for the last twenty years have weakened and degraded the Imperial Parliament are the proper agents. For this work they, and they alone, are fit. The quiet, industrious, stay-at-home merchants or lawyers, who might be sent to Dublin for a month or two in the year to manage Irish business on business-like principles, will not be sent to Westminster to hold the balance between English parties. They cannot leave their every-day work; were they willing to forsake their own business, they are not the men to conduct with success the parliamentary game of brag, obstruction, and finesse. Keep, in short, the Irish members at Westminster, and you ensure the supremacy in Ireland of professional politicians. By a curious fatality the Gladstonian policy which weakens England ruins Ireland. Let no one fancy that this is the delusion of an English Unionist. Sir Gavan Duffy is an Irish Nationalist of a far higher type than the men who have drawn money from the Clan-na-Gael. In '48 he was a rebel, but if he was disloyal to England, he was always careful of the honour and character of Ireland. He, at least, perceives the danger to his country of retaining Irish members in a Parliament where they had ceased to have any proper place. 'For my own part,' he says, 'I should not care if they did not attend [the Imperial Parliament] for a generation, which will be needed for the manipulation of their own affairs.' All this, I shall be told, is prophecy; Gladstonian hopes are as reasonable as Unionist fears. So be it. But in this matter my predictions have a special claim on the attention of the Ministry, they coincide with the forecast, or the foresight, of the present[40] Chief Secretary for Ireland. 'Let us suppose that these Irish representatives for Imperial purposes are not chosen by the legislative body, but are chosen directly by Irish constituencies. You have already, according to our plan, two sets of constituencies. You have the 103 constituencies that return the popular branch of the legislative body, and you have those other constituencies up to seventy-five which return the elective members of the other branch of the legislative body. You have, therefore, got already on our plan two sets of constituencies. Now, if you are going to send members to Westminster for Imperial purposes to the number of forty-five or to the number of ninety-five, you must mark out a third set of constituencies--you must have a third set of elections. A system of that kind does not strike me at least as being exactly the thing for a country of which we are assured that before everything else its prime want is a profound respite from political turmoil. There are plenty of other objections from the Irish point of view, which I am not now going to dwell upon. Depend upon it that an Irish Legislature will not be up to the magnitude of the enormous business that is going to be cast upon it unless you leave all the brains that Irish public men have got to do Irish work in Ireland. Depend upon this, too, that if you have one set of Irish members in London it is a moral certainty that disturbing rivalries, disturbing intrigues would spring up, and that the natural and wholesome play of forces and parties and leaders in the Irish Assembly would be complicated and confused and thrown out of gear by the separate representatives of the country. All this is bad enough.'[41] These are the words of my friend Mr. Morley.[42] They were spoken at Newcastle on April 21, 1886. He was then, as now, responsible for the government of Ireland. Nothing can add to their gravity; nothing can add to their force; they were true in 1886, they remain as true to-day as they were seven years ago.[43] As to England.--The presence of the Irish members at Westminster is on the face of it a gross and patent injustice to Great Britain. It is absurd, it is monstrous, that while the Irish Parliament and the Irish Parliament alone settle whether Mr. Healy, Mr. M'Carthy, Mr. Redmond, or Mr. Davitt is to be head of the Irish government, and England, though vitally interested in the character of the Irish Executive, is not to say a word in the matter, eighty Irishmen are to help in determining, and are often actually to determine, whether Lord Salisbury or Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Balfour or Mr. Chamberlain, is to be Prime Minister and direct the policy of England. Here again 1 can rely on the invaluable aid of Mr. Morley. He has denounced the effect on England of retaining Irish members at Westminster with a strength of language and a weight of authority to which it is impossible for me to make any pretension. 'But there is a word to be said about the effect on our own Parliament, and I think the effect of such an arrangement--and I cannot help thinking so till I hear of better arrangements--upon our own Parliament would be worse still. It is very easy to talk about reducing the number of the Irish members; perhaps it would not be so easy to do. It is very easy to talk about letting them take part in some questions and not in others, but it will be very difficult when you come to draw the line in theory between the questions in which they shall take a part and those in which they shall not take a part. But I do not care what precautions you take; I do not care where you draw the line in theory; but you may depend upon it--I predict--that there is no power on the earth that can prevent the Irish members in such circumstances from being in the future Parliament what they were in the past, and what to some extent they are in the present, the arbiters and the masters of English policy, of English legislative business, and of the rise and fall of British Administrations. You will have weakened by the withdrawal of able men the Legislature of Dublin, and you will have demoralized the Legislature at Westminster. We know very well what that demoralisation means, for I beg you to mark attentively the use to which the Irish members would inevitably put their votes--inevitably and naturally. Those who make most of the retention of the Irish members at Westminster are also those who make most of there being what they call a real and effective and a freely and constantly exercised veto at Westminster upon the doings at Dublin. You see the position. A legislative body in Dublin passes a Bill. The idea is that that Bill is to lie upon the table of the two Houses of Parliament in London for forty days--forty days in the wilderness. What does that mean? It means this, that every question that had been fought out in Ireland would be fought out over again by the Irish members in our Parliament. It means that the House of Lords here would throw out pretty nearly every Bill that was passed at Dublin. What would be the result of that? You would have the present block of our business. You would have all the present irritation and exasperation. English work would not be done; Irish feeling would not be conciliated, but would be exasperated. The whole efforts of the Irish members would be devoted to throwing their weight--I do not blame them for this--first to one party and then to another until they had compelled the removal of these provoking barriers, restrictions, and limitations which ought never to have been set up. I cannot think, for my part I cannot see, how an arrangement of that sort promises well either for the condition of Ireland or for our Parliament. If anybody, in my opinion, were to move an amendment to our Bill in the House of Commons in such a direction as this, with all these consequences foreseen, I do not believe such an amendment would find twenty supporters.'[44] This was the opinion of Mr. John Morley in 1886. A word in it here or there is inapplicable to the details of the present Bill; but in principle every syllable cited by me from his Newcastle address forms part of the Unionist argument against summoning as much as a single Irish member to Westminster. His language is admirable, it cannot be improved. All that any one who agrees with Mr. Morley can do in order to force his argument home is to point out in a summary manner the ways in which the Irish delegation at Westminster will enfeeble the Imperial Government. _First_. The Irish members, or rather the Irish delegation, will have a voice and often a decisive voice in determining who are the men that shall constitute the English Cabinet; on the Irish vote will depend whether Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals, or Socialists shall administer the government of England. It is vain to tell us Irish members will be restrained, whether by law or custom, from voting on British affairs when they will vote on the most important of all British affairs, the composition and the character of the body which is to govern England. That the Irish members will thus vote on a matter of special and vital importance to England is admitted. But things stand far worse than this. The vote of the Irish delegation will and must be swayed by an interest adverse to the welfare of Great Britain; for the interest of Great Britain, or, to use ordinary language of England, is that the English Government should be strong, and should represent the majority of the English or British electors. The direct interest of the Irish delegation is that the English Government should be weak, and represent the minority of English electors. That this is so is obvious. The weaker the British Government, the greater the weight of the Irish representatives. But if the English Cabinet represents a minority of the British people, and are kept in office only by the votes of their Irish allies, then the influence of the Irish representatives and the weakness of the English Government will have reached its extreme point. The effect therefore of the arrangement which brings Irish members to Westminster is to place the administration of English affairs in the hands of the party, whichever it be, that does not represent the wishes of the English people. This master stroke of Gladstonian astuteness ensures that Radicals shall be in office when the opinion of England is Conservative, and that Conservatives shall be in power when English opinion tends towards Radicalism. _Secondly_. The retention of the Irish members breaks up our whole system of Cabinet government. This system has some inherent defects, but it cannot work at all with any benefit to the country unless the Cabinet can depend on the support of a permanent majority. The result of what has happily been described as the 'in-and-out plan,' that is the scheme for allowing Irish members to vote on some subjects and not on others, will be the constitution of two majorities, and it is more than possible that the one majority may belong to one party and the other majority to another. Look at the effect on the transaction of public affairs. The Irish members and the English Liberals combined may put in office a Liberal Cabinet. On English matters, _e.g._ the question of Disestablishment, or of Home Rule for Wales, the British majority consisting of British members of Parliament only may constantly defeat the Gladstonian Cabinet, and thus force into office a Conservative Cabinet which could command a majority on all subjects of purely British interest, but would always be in a minority on all matters of Imperial policy, _e.g._ on the conduct of foreign affairs. Which Cabinet would have a right to retain power? The sole answer is--neither. The proposed plan, in short, undermines our whole scheme of government. _Thirdly_. The Irish members who are now simply Irish members of the Imperial Parliament will be transformed into a very different thing--an Irish delegation. The importance of this change cannot be over-rated. The essential merit of our present system of government is that the Executive, no less than the Parliament of the United Kingdom, represents the country as a whole. Our Premier may be a Scotsman, but we know of no such thing as a Scottish Premier. Englishmen may form the majority of the Cabinet, but we have never had an English Cabinet as contrasted with a Scottish or an Irish Cabinet. It has never been contended, hardly has it been hinted, that a Ministry ought to be made up of members taken in certain proportions from each division of the kingdom. But from the moment that sectional representation, and with it open advocacy of sectional interests, is introduced into the House of Commons, there will arise the necessity for the formation of sectional Cabinets. The demand will be made, and the demand will be granted, that in the administration no less than in the House there shall be a system of representation; that England, that Scotland, that Ireland shall each have their due share in the Ministry. But this state of things must be fatal both to the capacity and to the fairness of the government. The talent of the Cabinet will be diminished, because the Prime Minister will no longer be able to choose as colleagues the ablest among his supporters without reference to the now irrelevant question whether they represent English, Scottish, or Irish constituencies. The character of the Executive will be lowered because the Cabinet itself will represent rival interests. It may seem that I am advocating the special claims of England. This is not so. I am arguing on behalf of the efficiency of the government of the United Kingdom. My argument is one to which Scotsmen and Irishmen should give special heed. If once we have cabinets and parties based upon sectional divisions, if we have English ministries and English parties as opposed to Scottish ministries or Irish ministries, and Scottish parties and Irish parties, it is not in the long run the most powerful and wealthy portion of what is now the United Kingdom which will suffer. It is hardly the interest of Scotsmen or Irishmen to pursue a policy which suggests the odious but inevitable cry 'England for Englishmen.' _Fourthly_, as long as Irish members remain at Westminster the English Parliament will never be freed from debates about Irish affairs. This is a point there is no need to labour. Unless (what no honest man can openly propose) the 80 or 103 members from Ireland are to be taken from one Irish party only, they must represent different interests and different opinions. Some few at least will represent the wishes, the complaints, or the wrongs of Ulster. But if this be so, it is certain that the controversies which divide Ireland will make themselves heard at Westminster. Can any sane man fancy that if the Dublin Parliament passes an Act for the maintenance of order at Belfast, if the people of Belfast are suspected of intending to resist the Irish government, if Irish landlords, rightly or not, fear unfair treatment at the hands of the Irish Ministry or the Irish Parliament, none of these things will be heard of at Westminster? The supposition is incredible. Let Irish members sit at Westminster and Irish affairs will be debated at Westminster, and will often be debated when, under a system of Home Rule, it were much better they should be passed over in silence. Admit, what is not certain, that Home Rule in Ireland will occasionally withdraw a few Irish questions from discussion in England, it must be remembered that a new crop of Irish questions will arise. The federal character of the new constitution must produce in one form or another disputes and discussions as to the limits which bound the respective authority of the Imperial and of the Irish Governments. The Imperial Parliament will, for the first time, be harassed by the question of State rights. Add to this that at every great political crisis the House of Commons will have before it an inquiry which must produce interminable debates, namely whether a given bill is or is not a measure which concerns only the interest of Great Britain. Two inducements are offered to England for the adoption of a plan the evils whereof were so patent in 1886 that it then could not, if we are to believe Mr. Morley,[45] have commanded twenty supporters in the House of Commons. The first inducement is that the presence of eighty Irish members at Westminster is an outward and visible sign of the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament.[46] On this point it is needless to say much; few Englishmen will on consideration think it worth while to dislocate all our system of government in order that the British Parliament may retain in Ireland the kind of sovereignty which it retains in New Zealand. We are rightly proud of our connection with our colonies, but no one would seriously propose to retain nominal sovereignty in Canada at the price of a perilous and injurious change in the constitution of England. The second inducement is that Great Britain will be allowed the exclusive management of British affairs. This sort of spurious Home Rule for England turns out however to be as illusory a blessing as the maintenance of parliamentary supremacy. Great Britain is, under the new constitution, not allowed to appoint the British Cabinet. Great Britain is forbidden to determine for herself any matter of legislation or administration which, however deeply it concerns British interests, trenches in the least degree on any Irish or Imperial interest. Any matter of finance, which comes within the wide head of Imperial liabilities, expenditure, and miscellaneous revenue,[47] falls within the competence of the Irish members. Questions of peace or war, our foreign relations, every diplomatic transaction, is a matter on which the Irish delegation may pronounce a decision. The conjecture is at least plausible[48] that Irish members will have a right to discuss and vote upon any subject debated in the Parliament at Westminster which involves the fate of a British Cabinet. Let it be granted that, if the provisions of the Home Rule Bill be observed, no Irish representative can vote 'on any Bill, or motion in relation thereto, the operation of which Bill or motion is confined to Great Britain.'[49] But then when is the operation of a Bill confined to Great Britain, or, to use popular language, what is a British Bill? This is an inquiry in the decision whereof the Irish members will take part. The Irish members, therefore, at Westminster will be judges of their own rights, and in the only cases in which it is of practical importance to Great Britain that the Irish representatives should not vote, will be able with the aid of a British minority to fix the limits of their own jurisdiction.[50] Let the Irish members and a British minority boldly vote that the operation of a Bill, say for the Disestablishment of the English Church, is not confined to Great Britain, and they can boldly vote that the Bill do pass, and no Court in Great Britain or the British Empire can question the validity of a law enacted in open defiance of the spirit or even the words of the Constitution.[51] The right of British members to the management of even exclusively British affairs will depend not upon the law of the land, but upon the moderation and sense of equity which may restrain the unfairness of partisanship. For a parliamentary minority will, if only it throw scruples to the winds, be constantly able to transform itself into a majority by the unconstitutional admission of the Irish vote. This is not a power which any party, be it Conservative or Radical, English, Scottish, or Irish, ought to possess. Partisanship knows nothing of moderation. And the reason of this blindness to the claims of justice is that the spirit of party combines within itself some of the best and some of the worst of human passions. It often unites the self-sacrificing zealotry of religious fanaticism with the recklessness of the gambling table. Let an assailant of the Contagious Diseases Act, a fanatic for temperance, a protectionist who believes that free trade is the ruin of the country, an anti-vivisectionist who holds that any painful experiment on live animals is the most heinous of sins; let any man who has come to believe that his own credit, no less than the salvation of the country, depends on the success of a particular party, know that the triumph of his cause depends upon his voting that a particular measure operates beyond Great Britain, and we know well enough in which way he will vote. He will vote what he knows to be untrue rather than sacrifice a cause which he believes to be sacred. He will think himself both a fool and a traitor if he sacrifices the victory which is within his grasp to the maintenance of technical legality, or rather to respect for a rule of constitutional procedure. Suppose, however, that I have underrated the equity of human nature, and that no faction in the House of Commons ever attempts to violate the spirit of the Constitution. The supposition is bold, not to say absurd; but even if its reasonableness be granted, this does not suffice for the protection of England's rights. The question whether a given Bill does or does not operate exclusively in Great Britain may often give rise to fair dispute, and (what should be noted) this dispute will always be decided against Great Britain in the only instances in which its decision is to Great Britain of any importance whatever. An example best shows my meaning. Let a Bill be brought forward for establishing Home Rule in Wales. Is the operation of the Bill confined to Great Britain? An English member, unless he is a Home Ruler, will answer with an undoubted affirmative. An English, or Irish, or Welsh Home Ruler will with equal certainty, and equal honesty, give a negative answer. The question admits of fair debate, but we know already how the debate will be decided. If the Unionists constitute a majority of the House, the Irish vote will be excluded. But in this case its exclusion is of no practical importance. If the Unionists constitute indeed a majority of British representatives, but do not constitute a majority of the House, the Irish vote will be included. The Irish representatives will decide whether Wales shall constitute a separate State, and the right of Great Britain to manage British affairs will not prevent the dismemberment of England. Home Rule, such as it is for England, means at best a totally different thing from Home Rule for Ireland. In the case of England it means a limited and precarious control of legislation for Great Britain by British members of Parliament. In the case of Ireland it means the real and substantial and exclusive government of Ireland by an Irish Ministry and an Irish Parliament. But will the advantage of even this modified half-and-half Home Rule be really offered to England? Gladstonians, it is rumoured (and before these pages are in print the rumour may turn out to be a fact), have their own remedy for some of the only too-patent absurdities of the 'in-and-out system' embodied in clause 9 of the Home Rule Bill. A suggestion is made which would be amusing for its irony, were it not revolting for its cynicism, that the difficulty of the double majority should be removed by the allowing members not only to remain at Westminster in their full number, but also to vote there on all matters whatever, including those affairs which exclusively concern the interests of Great Britain. This is no doubt a remedy for some of the evils of an unworkable proposal. It is a cure which to any Englishman of sense or spirit will seem tenfold worse than the disease. It is a cure in that sense only in which a traveller may be said to be relieved from the fear of robbery by a highwayman shooting him dead. The irregular interference of the Irish delegation in the formation of the British Cabinet, and other matters which indirectly concern England, is to be regularised (if I may use the term) by allowing to Irish members permanent despotism over England in matters which, on a system of Home Rule, concern England alone. Irish members may disestablish the Church of England, though England is to have no voice in the pettiest of Irish affairs. Irish members are to be allowed to impose taxes on England, say to double the income tax, though of these taxes no inhabitant of Ireland will pay a penny; the Irish delegation--and this is the worst grievance of all--is to be enabled, in combination with a British minority, to detach Wales from England, or to vote Home Rule for Scotland, or to federalise still further the United Kingdom by voting that Man, Jersey, and Guernsey shall send members to the Imperial Parliament. Note that all this may be done by the Irish delegation, though, under the new Constitution, England will not have a word to say on such questions as whether the right of electing members for the Parliament at Dublin shall or shall not be extended to every adult, or whether Ulster shall, or shall not, be allowed Home Rule of its own. The absurdity of this policy ought to prevent its ever being adopted; but in these days absurdity seems to tell as little against wild schemes of legislation as their injustice. All this consideration of haggling and trafficking between Great Britain and Ireland is loathsome to every true Unionist who considers Englishmen and Irishmen as still citizens of one nation. But, when Gladstonians propose to divide the United Kingdom into two States, it is as essential as it is painful to weigh well what is the gain of Great Britain in the new scheme of political partnership. If the matter be looked at from this point of view, it is easy to see how miserable are the offers tendered to England. Compare for a moment the authority to be given her under the new constitution with the authority she has hitherto possessed or the authority tendered to her under the Home Rule Bill of 1886. Up to 1782 the British Parliament held in its own hands the absolute control not only of every British affair, but every matter of policy affecting either Ireland or the British Empire. The British Parliament, in which sat not a single representative of any Irish county or borough, appointed the Irish Executive. The British Parliament, whenever it thought fit, legislated for Ireland; the British Parliament controlled the whole course of Irish legislation; every Act which passed the Parliament of Ireland was inspected, amended, and, if the English Ministry saw fit, vetoed in England. The system was a bad system and an unjust system. It is well that it ended. But as regarded the control of the British Empire it corresponded roughly with facts. The Empire was in the main the outcome of British energy and British strength, and the British Empire was governed by Great Britain. The constitution of 1782 gave legislative independence to Ireland, but did not degrade the British Parliament to the position which will be occupied by the Imperial Parliament under the constitution of 1893. The British Parliament remained supreme in Great Britain; the British Parliament controlled the Imperial policy both of England and of Ireland. The British Parliament, or rather the British Ministry, virtually appointed the Irish Executive. The British Parliament renounced all rights to legislate for Ireland[52]; the British Parliament technically possessed no representatives in the Parliament at Dublin. But any one who judges of institutions not by words but by facts will perceive that in one way or another the influence and the wishes of the British Government were represented more than sufficiently in the Irish Houses of Parliament. Grattan's constitution, in short, left the British Parliament absolutely supreme in all British and Imperial affairs, and gave to the British Ministry predominating weight in the government of Ireland. This is a very different thing from the shadowy sovereignty which the English Parliament retains, but abstains from exercising, in our self-governing colonies. It is a very different thing from the nominal power to legislate for Ireland which the new constitution confers upon the Imperial Parliament. Since the Union England and Ireland have been politically one nation. The Imperial or British Government has controlled, and the Imperial Parliament has passed laws for, the whole country. Nor has the presence of the Irish members till recent days substantially limited the authority of Great Britain. Till 1829 the Protestant landlords of Ireland who were represented in the Imperial Parliament shared the principles or the prejudices of English landowners. Since the granting of Catholic emancipation Roman Catholic or Irish ideas or interests have undoubtedly perplexed or encumbered the working of British politics. But the representatives of Ireland have been for the most part divided between the two great English parties, and it was not till Mr. Parnell's influence united the majority of Irish representatives into a party hostile to Great Britain that any essential evil or inconvenience resulted from their presence at Westminster. This inconvenience, whatever its extent, has been the price of the Union. The gain has been worth the payment: the action of Parliament has been hampered, but its essential and effective authority throughout the realm has been maintained. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone framed a constitution which was meant to be a final and a just settlement of the questions at issue between England and Ireland. Under the constitution of 1886 Great Britain surrendered to Ireland about the same amount of independence as is offered her under the proposed constitution of 1893. But the difference in the position of Great Britain under the two constitutions is immense. Under the constitution of 1886 Great Britain was offered a position of the highest authority. To the British Parliament (in which was to sit not a single Irish member) was to fall the appointment of the British or Imperial Ministry. The British Parliament received absolute control of all British, colonial, Imperial, and foreign affairs. Perfect unity was restored to the spirit of her government, and predominance in the British, or, to use ordinary language, in the English, Parliament was given to the conservative elements of English society. Great Britain became mistress in her own home; she became much more than this; she was enthroned as undisputed sovereign of the British Empire.[53] Under the constitution, in short, of 1886, if Great Britain was weakened on one side she was strengthened on another. Her Parliament obtained an immense accession of authority, and was all but entirely freed both from the necessity for considering Irish questions and from the damage of Irish obstruction. Ireland surrendered to England all share in the government of the Empire, and the further dismemberment of Great Britain without the assent of the British people became difficult, if not impossible. It does not lie in the mouth of Gladstonians to say that the measure of 1886 was unjust. It was laid before the country as a compromise which was just to England and to Ireland. The Irish leaders, we were told, accepted the proposal, just as we are told that they accept the proposed constitution of 1893. If the acceptance was honest, then in 1886 they agreed to a bargain far more favourable to England than the contract now pressed on our acceptance. If their acquiescence was a mere pretence, what trust can we place in the assertion that they accept the arrangement of 1893? However this may be, it is clear that England is now offered a position of weakness and of inferiority such as she has never occupied during the whole course of her history. What is the meaning or justification of the proposed surrender by England of every compensation for Irish Home Rule which was offered her in 1886? For this surrender Gladstonians assign but two reasons. The presence of the Irish members at Westminster is, it is said, a concession to the wishes of Unionists. This plea, even were it supported by the facts of the case, would be futile. It might pass muster with disputants in search of a verbal triumph, but to any man seriously concerned for the welfare of the nation must appear childishly irrelevant. The welfare of the State cannot turn upon the neatness of a _tu quoque_; retorts are not reasons, and had every Unionist, down from the Duke of Devonshire to the present writer, pressed in 1886 for the retention of the Irish members at Westminster, the controversial inexpertness of the Unionists seven years ago would not diminish the dangers with which, under a system of Home Rule, the presence of the Irish members at Westminster actually threatens England. But the plea, futile as it is, is not supported by fact. It rests on a misrepresentation of the Unionist position in 1886. 'The case in truth stands thus:--Mr. Gladstone was [in 1886] placed in effect in this dilemma: "If you do not," said his opponents, "retain the Irish representatives at Westminster, the sovereignty of the British Parliament will be, under the terms of your Bill, no more than a name; if you do retain them, Great Britain will lose the only material advantage offered her in exchange for the local independence of Ireland." Gladstonians, in substance, replied that the devices embodied in the Government of Ireland Bill at once freed the British Parliament from the presence of the Parnellites and safeguarded the sovereignty of the British, or (for in this matter there was some confusion) of the Imperial Parliament. On the latter point issue was joined. The other horn of the dilemma fell out of sight, and some Unionists, rightly believing that the Bill as it stood did not preserve the supremacy of the British Parliament, pressed the Ministry hard with all the difficulties involved in the removal of the Irish members. In the heat of debate speeches were, I doubt not, delivered in which the argument that you could not, as the Bill stood, remove the Irish members from Westminster and keep the British Parliament supreme in Ireland, was driven so far as to sound like an argument in favour of, at all costs, allowing members from Ireland to sit in the English Parliament. Those who appeared to fall into this error were, it must be noted, but a fraction of the Unionist Party, and their mistake was little more than verbal. When the Ministry maintained that the removal of the Irish members from Westminster was a main feature of their Home Rule policy, opponents naturally insisted upon the defects of the scheme laid before them, and did not insist on the equal or greater defects of a plan which the Government did not advocate. Mr. Gladstone, we are now told, has changed his position, and assents to the principle that Ireland must be represented in the British Parliament. If this assent be represented as a concession to the demands of Unionists, my reply is that it is no such thing. It is merely the acceptance of a different horn of an argumentative dilemma. Grant for the sake of argument (what is by no means certain) that the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is really saved. The advantage offered to England in exchange for Home Rule is assuredly gone. My friend, Mr. John Morley, used to argue in favour of Home Rule from the necessity of freeing the English Parliament from Parnellite obstruction. As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know what he thinks of a concession which strikes his strongest argumentative weapon out of his hands. My curiosity will be satisfied on the same day which tells us Lord Spencer's reflections on the surrender of the policy represented by the Land Purchase Bill. Meanwhile, I know well enough the thoughts of every Unionist who is not tied by the exigencies of his political antecedents or utterances. To say that in the eyes of such a man the proposed concession is worthless, is to say far too little. It is not a concession which he rates at a low price; it is a proposal which he heart and soul condemns.'[54] These words were not written to meet the present condition of the controversy; they were published in 1887 at a time when no Gladstonian, except Mr. Gladstone (if indeed he were an exception), knew whether the retention in the Parliament at Westminster, or the exclusion from the Parliament at Westminster, of the Irish members, was an essential principle of Home Rule. England again, it is alleged, suffers without murmuring all the inconvenience caused by the Irish vote at Westminster; and she may well, under a system of Home Rule, bear without complaint evils which she has tolerated for near a century. The answer to this reasoning is plain. It is a sorry plea indeed for a desperate innovation that it leaves the evils of the existing state of things no worse than they now are. For the sake of the maintenance of the Union, which Unionists hold of inestimable value, England has borne the inconvenience caused to her by the Irish vote. It argues simplicity, or impudence, to urge that England should continue to bear the inconvenience when the national unity is sacrificed for the sake of which it was endured. But the reply does not stop here. The presence of Irish members at Westminster under the new constitution increases and stereotypes the evils, whatever their extent, now resulting from the existence of 103 Irish members in the House of Commons. The evils are increased because the Irish members are turned into a delegation from the Irish State, and their action ceases to be influenced, as it now is, by the consideration--a very important one--that the Imperial Parliament not only in theory but in fact legislates for Ireland, and that the English Cabinet controls the Irish administration and directs the course of political promotion in Ireland. The sentiment and the interest of the Irish members will be changed. Whether they come from North or South they will be representatives of Ireland, and will naturally and rightly consider themselves agents bound in every case to make the best bargain they can for Ireland as against the United Kingdom, or, in plain language, as against England. They will no longer feel it their interest to keep in power the English party which they think will best govern Ireland, for with the government of Ireland the Imperial Parliament will, as long as the new constitution stands, have no practical concern. No honest Home Ruler supposes that, if the Home Rule Bill passes into law, the Imperial Parliament will, even should the tragedy of the Phoenix Park be repeated in some more terrible form, pass a Crimes Act for Ireland; to the Irish Government will belong the punishment of Irish crime. No interest will therefore restrain the Irish delegation from swaying backwards and forwards between the two English parties, in order to obtain from the one or the other some momentary advantage, or some lucrative concession, to the Irish people. Intrigue will be pardonable, diplomatic finesse will become a duty. This evil no doubt in some degree exists, but under the present state of things it admits of diminution. A just redistribution of the franchise will undoubtedly lessen the number of Ireland's representatives, whilst it will increase the relative importance, if not the actual numbers, of loyalists in the representation of Ireland. The gradual settlement of the land question, as Unionists believe, will further strike at the true root of Irish discontent, and in removing the true grievance of the Irish tenants will diminish the strength of the party which depends for its power on the revolutionary elements in Irish society. But all chance of mitigating the inconvenience inflicted upon England by the presence of the Irish members vanishes for ever when they are changed into an Irish delegation, and are compelled by their position to be the mere mouthpiece of Ireland's claims against England. The alleged reasons for the weakening of England are untenable, and, were they tenfold stronger than they are, could not remove the flagrant contradiction between the Gladstonian policy of 1886 and the Gladstonian policy of 1893. But a contradiction which cannot be removed may be explained. The withdrawal of the Irish members from Westminster might give Ireland the chance of obtaining some of the benefits, and compensate England for some of the evils, of Home Rule. But however this may be, one result it would produce with certainty; it would dash the Gladstonian party to pieces. The friends of Disestablishment, the Welsh, or the Scottish, Home Rulers, the London Socialists, all the revolutionists throughout the country, know that with the departure of the Irish representatives from Westminster their own hopes of triumph must be indefinitely postponed. England is the stronghold of British conservatism, and an arrangement which leaves the fate of England in the hands of Englishmen may be favourable to reform, but is fatal to revolution. Has this fact arrested the attention of Gladstonians? I know not. It is an unfortunate coincidence that the least defensible portion of an indefensible policy should, while it threatens ruin to England, offer temporary salvation to the party who rally round Mr. Gladstone.[55] C. _The Powers of the Irish Government_ I. _The Irish Executive_. At the head of the Irish Executive will nominally stand the Lord Lieutenant; he will however in reality occupy the position of a colonial Governor, and be, for most purposes, little more than the ornamental figure-head of the Irish Administration. The real executive government of Ireland[56] must be a parliamentary Ministry or Cabinet[57] chosen in effect, though not in name, by the Irish Parliament, or rather by the Irish Legislative Assembly, or House of Commons, just as the English Cabinet is appointed in effect by the English House of Commons. Allowing then for the occasional intervention of the Lord Lieutenant as the representative of the Imperial Parliament to protect either the interests of the Empire or the special rights of the United Kingdom,[58] the Irish Ministry is to occupy in Ireland the position which the New Zealand Ministry occupies in New Zealand, and will for most purposes as truly govern Ireland as the New Zealand Ministry governs New Zealand, or as Mr. Gladstone's Ministry governs England. The Irish Ministry will be the true Government of Ireland. This is a fact to which the attention of the English public ought to be sedulously directed. The creation of an independent Irish Parliament strikes the imagination; it is seen to be an innovation of primary importance. The creation of an independent Irish Cabinet or Ministry is taken as a matter of course, and neither Unionists nor Gladstonians see its full import. Yet in Ireland, as elsewhere, the character of the Executive is of more practical consequence than the character of the Legislature. A country may dispense, for a long time, with legislation; no country can dispense with good government. This principle holds good even in an orderly country such as England, where the sphere of the administration is far less extended than it is in most States. We might get on for a good while prosperously enough without a Parliament, or without new laws, but if anything deprived us even for a week of an Executive, or if, for any reason, the whole spirit of the public administration were changed, every Englishman would feel this portentous revolution in every concern of his daily life. The protection of the Government, of the army, of the police, of the law courts, are with us so much matters of course, that we never realise how much the comfort and prosperity of our existence hang upon it, nor do we reflect that the aid we derive from the Courts is in the last instance dependent upon the decisions of the judges being actively supported by the forces at the command of the executive power. Again, we are so used to the preservation on the part of the Executive and the Courts of an attitude of perfect impartiality and to the extension of their aid to all citizens alike, that we can hardly even in imagination conceive what would be the condition of things if the public administration favoured particular classes and looked askance on the rights of one class, whilst it enforced with rigour the rights of another. Yet events which have been passing before our eyes may show any one how absolutely dependent we may be, at any moment, for our enjoyment of life, property, or freedom upon the authority and the equity of the Executive. Consider the strike at Hull. Practically the legal rights and personal freedom of every inhabitant of the city depend upon the action of the Government. It is as plain as day that if the Government had taken actively and unfairly the side of one party or the other to the contest, the party which the Government favoured would at once have won. Suppose, though the supposition is a very improbable one, that the Home Secretary had directed the police to put down every form of picketing and to arrest every one who counselled the free labourers to desert their employment, the strike would come at once to an end. Suppose on the other hand--the supposition is also a wild one--that the Home Secretary had declined to protect the rights of the free labourers, that the troops had been withdrawn, and that the police had been inactive; suppose, in short, that the Government had been careless to maintain order. The Trade Unionists would at once have become supreme, and freedom of contract, as well as liberty of person, would have been at once abolished. Even in England then the power to exercise our rights as citizens has its source in the constant, though unobserved, intervention of the executive power. What is true of England is truer still of countries where the sphere of the administration is more widely extended than with us, and what is true of every civilised country is truest of all of Ireland. Ireland is a country where the sphere of the administration is large, and where it will probably be increased. Ireland is divided by hostile factions not too much prone to respect the law. Even as things stand, the Irish Executive finds it hard enough to hold a perfectly even and level course, and the whole state of the country depends upon the spirit in which the law is enforced. One of the very gravest defects of our present system is that in Ireland a change of government means, to a certain extent, a change in the administration of the law. Yet both Mr. Balfour and Mr. Morley have enforced the law, and have meant, according to their lights, to act towards all citizens with equitable impartiality. And Mr. Balfour, Mr. Morley, or any statesman appointed by the Imperial Parliament, is likely to act with more fairness than at the present moment would any Executive chosen by any Irish Parliament. One thing, at any rate, is certain. An independent Irish Executive will possess immense power. It will be able by mere administrative action or inaction, without passing a single law which infringes any Restriction to be imposed by the Irish Government Act, 1893, to effect a revolution. Let us consider for a moment a few of the things which the Irish Cabinet might do if it chose. It might confine all political, administrative, or judicial appointments to Nationalists, and thus exclude Loyalists from all positions of public trust. It might place the Bench,[59] the magistracy, the police wholly in the hands of Catholics; it might, by encouragement of athletic clubs where the Catholic population were trained to the use of arms, combined with the rigorous suppression of every Protestant association suspected, rightly or not, of preparing resistance to the Parliament at Dublin, bring about the arming of Catholic and the disarming of Protestant Ireland, and, at the same time, raise a force as formidable to England as an openly enrolled Irish army. But the mere inaction of the Executive might in many spheres produce greater results than active unfairness. The refusal of the police for the enforcement of evictions would abolish rent throughout the country. And the same result might be attained by a more moderate course. Irish Ministers might in practice draw a distinction between 'good' landlords and 'bad' landlords, and might grant the aid of the police for the collection of reasonable, though refusing it for the collection of excessive rents, and might at last magnanimously recognise the virtues of Mr. Smith-Barry, whilst passing a practical sentence of outlawry on Lord Clanricarde. Is there anything absurd or unreasonable in the supposition that a Ministry of Land Leaguers chosen by a Parliament of Nationalists should attempt to enforce the unwritten law of the Land League? A Gladstonian who answers this question in the affirmative entertains a far lower opinion than can any candid Unionist of Mr. Gladstone's Irish allies. It would be the grossest unfairness to suggest that every man convicted of conspiracy by the Special Commission added to criminality and recklessness a monstrous form of hypocrisy, and that, whilst urging Irish peasants to boycott evictors and land-grabbers, he felt no genuine moral abhorrence of evictions and land-grabbing. But if, as is certainly the case, the founders of the Land League really detested the existing system of land tenure, and considered a landlord who exacted rent a criminal, and a tenant who paid it a caitiff, it is as certain as anything can be that they will be under the greatest temptation, not to say, in their own eyes, under a stringent moral obligation, to strain the power of an Irish Executive for the purpose of abolishing the payment of rent. Nothing, at any rate, will seem to an Irish Ministry more desirable than that within three years[60] from the passing of the Bill landlords and tenants should come to an arrangement, and nothing is more likely to produce this result than the withdrawal from the landlords of the aid, if not the protection, of the law. My argument, however, at the present point does not require the assertion or the belief that an Irish Ministry will be guilty of every act of oppression which it can legally commit. All that I insist upon is that an Irish Ministry will exercise immense power, and that without violating a letter of the constitution, and without passing a single act which any Court whatever could treat as void, the Ministry will be able to change the social condition of Ireland. The Irish Cabinet, remember, will not be checked by any Irish House of Commons, for it will represent the majority of that House. It will not need to fear the interposition of the Imperial Ministry or the Imperial Parliament, for if the authorities in England are to supervise and correct the conduct of the Irish Cabinet, Home Rule is at an end. Mr. Asquith has repudiated all idea of creating two Executives in Ireland[61] for the ordinary purposes of government, and from his own point of view he is right. The notion of a dual control is preposterous; the attempt to carry it out must involve anarchy or revolution. The Irish Ministry must in ordinary matters be at least as free as the Ministry of a self-governing colony. The independence of the Irish Executive is indeed a totally new phenomenon in Irish history, and is, as I have said, a far more important matter than the independence of the Irish Parliament, but it is an essential feature of Home Rule, and every elector throughout England should try to realise its import. One check, indeed, is placed upon the power of the Irish Cabinet. The military forces of the Crown, and the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police (as long as they exist[62]), are subject to the control of the Imperial or English Ministry.[63] The result is that the English Cabinet will have the means of using force in Ireland for the maintenance of order, for the execution of the law, or for the maintenance of the authority of the Imperial Parliament. But this advantage is after all purchased at the price of placing the country under the rule of something very like two Executives. If the policy of the Irish Cabinet, _e.g._ as to suppressing a riot at Dublin or Belfast, should differ from the policy of the English Cabinet, the ordinary police may be called into action whilst the army or the royal constabulary stand by inactive, or the army may disperse a meeting which the Irish Ministry hold to be a lawful assembly. II. _The Irish Parliament._ The authority of the Irish Parliament, whilst acting within the limits of the constitution, is extremely wide.[64] The Parliament appoints the Irish Government of the day; it will determine whether Mr. M'Carthy or Mr. Redmond, Mr. Healy or Mr. Davitt, directs the Irish Administration. In this matter the British Government will have no voice. The English Ministry are under the new constitution expected in many ways to co-operate with the Irish Ministry, yet it is quite conceivable that the Ministers of the Crown at Dublin may be men whose whole ideas of expediency, of policy, of political morality, may be opposed to the ideas of the Ministers of the Crown at Westminster. The Irish Parliament, again, even if every Restriction on its powers inserted in the Home Rule Bill should pass into law, will be found to have ample scope for legislative action.[65] It can repeal[66] any Act affecting Ireland which was enacted before the passing of the Home Rule Bill. Thus it can do away with the right to the writ of _habeas corpus_; it can abolish the whole system of trial by jury; it can by wide rules as to the change of venue expose any inhabitant of Belfast, charged with any offence against the Irish Government, to the certainty of being tried in Dublin or in Cork. If an Irish law cannot touch the law of treason or of treason-felony, the leaders of the Irish Parliament may easily invent new offences not called by these names, and the Parliament may impose severe penalties on any one who attempts by act or by speech to bring the Irish Government into contempt. A new law of sacrilege may be passed which would make criticism of the Irish priesthood, or attacks on the Roman Catholic religion, or the public advocacy of Protestantism, practically impossible. The Irish House of Commons may take the decision of election petitions into its own hands, and members nominated by the priests may determine the proper limits of spiritual influence. Thus the party dominant at Dublin can, if they see fit, abolish all freedom of election; nor is this all that the Irish Parliament can accomplish in the way of ensuring the supremacy of an Irish party. After six years from the passing of the Home Rule Bill--let us say in the year 1900--the Irish Parliament can alter the qualification of the electors and the distribution of the members among the constituencies. Parliament can in fact introduce at once universal suffrage, and do everything which the ingenuity of partisanship can suggest for diminishing the representation of property and of Protestantism. If, further, in any part of Ireland there be reason to fear opposition to the laws of the Irish Parliament, a severer Coercion Act may be passed than any which has as yet found its way on to the pages of the English or the Irish Statute Book. Worse than all this, the Irish Parliament has the right to legislate with regard to transactions which have taken place before the passing of the Home Rule Bill. An Act inflicting penalties on magistrates who have been zealous in the enforcement of the Crimes Act, an Act abolishing the right to recover debts incurred before 1893, an Act for compensation to tenants who had suffered from obedience to the behests of the Land League, are all Acts which, however monstrous, the Irish Parliament is, under the new constitution, competent to pass. My assertion is, be it noted, not that all or any of such laws would be passed, but that the passing of them would, under the new constitution, be legal. The Irish Parliament could further by its legislation pursue lines of policy opposed to the moral feeling and political judgment of Great Britain, and this too where Irish legislation practically affects Great Britain. State lotteries might be re-established, gambling tables might be re-opened at Dublin. If the imposition of protective duties on imported goods is forbidden, there is nothing apparently to prevent the reintroduction of Protection into Ireland by the payment of bounties; there is certainly nothing to prohibit the repeal or suspension of the Factory Acts, so that English manufacturers might be compelled to compete with Irish rivals who are freed from the limits imposed upon excessive labour by the humanity or the wisdom of England. The power of the Irish Parliament to pass laws which in the eyes of Englishmen are unwise or inequitable, is, it will be urged, an essential part of the policy of Home Rule. I admit that this is so. But this makes it the more necessary that English electors should realise what this essential characteristic of Home Rule means, or may mean. The Nonconformist conscience exposed Irish Home Rulers to painful humiliation and possible ruin by forbidding them to follow the political leader of their choice to whom they had deliberately renewed their allegiance. Is it certain that Englishmen who could not tolerate the official authority of Mr. Parnell will bear the official leadership, say of Mr. Healy, if employed to carry out the economical principles of Mr. Davitt? The legislative powers, ample as they are, of the Irish Parliament are in some respects restricted, but what the Parliament cannot accomplish by law it could accomplish by resolution. The expressed opinion of a legislature entitled to speak in the name of the people of Ireland must always command attention, and may exert decisive influence. Suppose that the Irish House of Commons asserts in respectful, but firm, language, the right of the Irish people to establish a protective tariff; suppose that when England is engaged in a diplomatic, or an armed, contest with France, the Irish House of Commons resolves that Ireland sympathises with France, that Ireland disapproves of all alliance with Germany, that she has no interest in war, and wishes to stand neutral; or suppose that, taking another line, the Irish Parliament at the approach of hostilities resolves that the people of Ireland assert their inherent right to arm volunteers, or raise an army in their own defence. No English Minister can allege with truth that these resolutions or a score more of the same kind are a breach of the constitution; yet such resolutions will not be without their effect in England; they cannot be without their effect abroad; in many parts of Ireland they will have more than the authority of an Act of Parliament. Assume, for the purpose of my argument, that the Irish Parliament always acts absolutely within the limits or the letter of the constitution, though to make this assumption is to substitute unreasonable hopes for rational expectations. What Englishmen should note, because they do not yet understand it, is that within the limits of the constitution the Irish Cabinet and the Irish Parliament possess and must possess the most extensive powers, and that these powers may be used in ways which would surprise and shock the British public, and impede and weaken the action of the Imperial, or English, Government. D. _The Restrictions (or Safeguards) and the Obligations_ I. _Their Nature_. The limitations on the power of the Irish Legislature are of a twofold character. The Restrictions contained in clause 3 of the Bill are intended to restrain the Irish Parliament from acting as the representative body of an independent nation. This clause invalidates for example acts with respect to the Crown or the succession to the Crown, with respect to peace or war, with respect to the naval or military forces of the realm, with respect to treaties or other relations with foreign states, and with respect to trade with any place out of Ireland, which apparently includes the imposition of a protective tariff. The Restrictions[67] contained in clause 4 may be roughly divided into three heads; first, prohibitions intended to ensure the maintenance of absolute religious equality[68]; secondly, prohibitions intended to prevent injustice to individuals, such as deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, denial of equal protection of the law, the taxing of private property without due compensation, or the unfair treatment of any existing corporation; thirdly, a provision prohibiting any law which deprives any inhabitant of the United Kingdom of equal rights to public sea fisheries.[69] On these Restrictions it were easy to write an elaborate treatise. Should our new constitution ever come into force, they will give rise to a whole series of judgments, and to lengthy books explanatory thereof. The language in which the Restrictions are expressed is in many cases exceptionable. No lawyer will venture to predict what for instance may be the interpretation placed by the Courts on such expressions as 'due process of law,' 'just compensation,' and the like, and it is more than doubtful whether the so-called safeguards are so expressed as to carry out the intention of their authors, or, even in words, adequately to protect either the authority of the Imperial Parliament or the rights of individuals. But it is not my purpose to criticise the Restrictions, or the Bill itself, in detail. The drafting of the Government of Ireland Bill needs much amendment, but at the present juncture it is waste of time to criticise defects removable by better draftmanship or by slight changes in the substance of the measure. My object is to dwell on such points relating to the Restrictions as show their bearing on the character of the new constitution.[70] _First._ The Restrictions are one and all of them limits upon the powers of the Irish Parliament; they are none of them limits upon the powers of the Irish Executive. The new constitution does not contain--from its nature it hardly could contain--a single safeguard against abuse of power by the Irish Ministry or its servants. Yet in all countries there is far more reason to dread executive than parliamentary oppression, and this is emphatically true of Ireland. _Secondly._ The Restrictions contain no prohibition against the passing of an Act of Indemnity. Yet of all the laws which a Legislature can pass an Act of Indemnity is the most likely to produce injustice. It is on the face of it the legislation of illegality; the hope of it encourages acts of vigour, but it also encourages violations of law and of humanity. The tale of Flogging Fitzgerald in Ireland, or the history of Governor Eyre in Jamaica, is sufficient to remind us of the deeds of lawlessness and cruelty which in a period of civil conflict may be inspired by recklessness or panic, and may be pardoned by the retrospective sympathy or partisanship of a terror-stricken or vindictive Legislature. Circumstances no doubt may arise in Ireland, as in other countries, under which the maintenance of order or the protection of life may excuse or require deviation from the strict rules of legality. But the question, whether these circumstances have arisen, will always be decided far more justly by the Parliament at Westminster than it can be decided by the Parliament at Dublin. Can any one really maintain that a Parliament in which Mr. Healy, or, for that matter, Col. Saunderson, might be leader, would be as fair a tribunal as a Parliament under the guidance of Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury for determining whether an officer who, acting under the direction of the Irish Government and with a view to maintain order at Belfast or at Dublin, should have put an agitator or conspirator to death without due trial, had or had not done his duty. _Thirdly._ There is among the Restrictions no prohibition against the passing of an _ex post facto_ law. Yet an _ex post facto_ law is the instrument which a legislature is most apt to use for punishing the unpopular use of legal rights. There is not a landlord, there is not a magistrate, there is not a constable in Ireland, who may not tremble in fear of _ex post facto_ legislation. There is no reason, as far as the Home Rule Bill goes, why the gaoler who kept Mr. William O'Brien in prison or the warders who attempted to pull off his breeches, should not be rendered legally liable to punishment for their offences against the unwritten law of Irish sedition. No such monstrosity of legal inequity will, it may be said, be produced. I admit this. But the very object of prohibitions is the prevention of outrageous injustice. The wise founders of the United States prohibited both to Congress and to every State legislature the passing of _ex post facto_ legislation. If any man hint that it be an insult to Ireland to anticipate the possible injustice of an Irish Parliament, my reply is simple. No Irishman need resent as an insult prohibitions which were not felt to be insulting either by the citizens of America or the citizens of Massachusetts. _Fourthly._ The Restrictions on the powers of the Irish Parliament do not contain any safeguard against legislation which sets aside contracts. This is remarkable, not to say ominous. The Gladstonian constitution has been drawn up by legislators who profess to profit by the experience of America. Under the Constitution of the United States[71] no State can pass any law 'impairing the obligation of a contract.' This provision has kept alive throughout the Union the belief in the sacredness of legal promises. It embodies a principle which lies at the bottom of all progressive legislation. It gives the best guarantee which a constitution can give against the most insidious form of legislative unfairness; it embodies a doctrine which all legislatures are likely to neglect and which an Irish Parliament is more likely to neglect than any other legislature, for in Ireland there exist contracts which do not command popular approval, and the Imperial legislation of twenty years and more has taught the Irish people that agreements which do not command popular approval may, without breach of good faith, be set aside by legislative enactment. We all know further that reforms, or innovations, are desired by thousands of Irishmen which cannot be carried into effect unless the obligation of contracts be impaired. Why, then, have statesmen who borrow freely from the Constitution of the United States omitted the most salutary of its provisions from our new constitution? The official reply is at any rate singular; it is apparently[72] that the section of the United States Constitution which invalidates any law impairing the obligation of a contract has given much occupation to the Courts of America. This answer is on the face of it futile; it urges the proved utility of a law as a reason for its not being enacted; as well suggest that because the criminal courts are mainly occupied with the trial of thieves there ought to be no law against petty larceny, or that because the labours of the Divorce Court increase year by year, the law ought not to permit divorce. The absurdity of the official reply suggests the existence of some reason which the defenders of this strange omission are unwilling clearly to allege. The true reason why the founders of the new constitution have omitted in this instance to copy a polity which they profess to admire is not hard to discover. An enactment which enjoined an Irish Parliament to respect the sanctity of a contract would be fatal to any remodelling of the Irish land law which tended towards the spoliation of landowners. Yet this very fact makes the matter all the more serious. That British statesmen should under these circumstances deliberately decline to insert an injunction to respect the sanctity of plighted good faith is much more than an omission. It amounts to the suggestion, almost to the approval, of legislative robbery; it is a proclamation that as against landlords, as against creditors, as against any unpopular class, the Imperial Parliament sanctions the violation of good faith. To the Irish Parliament the authors of the new constitution in effect say: 'You may raise no soldiers, you may not yourselves summon volunteers for the defence of your country, you shall not impose customs on foreign goods, and are therefore forbidden to follow a policy of protection approved of by every civilised State except England; you shall neither establish nor endow a church, you shall not by providing salaries for your priesthood at once lighten the burdens of the flock, and improve the position of the pastor; these things, not to speak of many others, you are forbidden to do, though there are many wise statesmen who deem that the courses of action from which you are debarred would conduce to the dignity and the prosperity of Ireland; but there is one thing which you may do, you may sanction breach of faith, you may encourage dishonesty, you may enjoin fraud, you may continue to teach the worst lesson which the vacillation of English government has as yet taught the Irish people, you may drive home the conviction that no man need keep a covenant when the keeping thereof is to his own damage.' This is the message of political morality which the last true Parliament of the United Kingdom hands over to the first new Parliament of Ireland. II. _Their Enforcement._ The nature of the Restrictions imposed upon the Parliament, and indirectly upon the Government of Ireland, is of far less importance than are the means provided for their enforcement. A law which is not enforceable is a nullity; it has in strictness no existence. The methods provided by the Home Rule Bill for keeping the Irish Parliament within its proper sphere of legislative activity are two in number--the veto of the Lord Lieutenant, and the action of the Courts. _The Veto._ This is little more than an empty sham, for it must in general be exercised on the advice of the Irish Cabinet; in other words it will never be exercised at all.[73] Were the matter not so serious there would be something highly amusing in the conduct of constitution-makers who, intending to provide against unconstitutional legislation on the part of the Irish Parliament, provide that the Irish Cabinet, who are practically appointed by the Irish Parliament, and who direct its legislation, shall have power to veto Bills passed by the Irish Parliament presumably on the advice of the Irish Cabinet. The English Ministry no doubt may, if they see fit, instruct the Lord Lieutenant to veto a given Bill. So also the Imperial Parliament has authority to repeal or override any Act, constitutional or unconstitutional, passed by the Irish Parliament. Each power stands on the same footing, neither is meant for ordinary use; either is a means of legal revolution. The veto of the Crown means little in New Zealand; it will at best mean no more in Ireland; but in truth it will mean a good deal less. New Zealand sends no member to Westminster to stay the hand of the Imperial Government whenever it attempts by way of veto or otherwise to put in force the reserved powers of the Imperial Parliament.[74] _The Privy Council and the Courts_. The English Privy Council[75] may nullify the effect of Irish legislation in two ways. It may as an administrative body give a decision that an Act is void.[76] This power can by exercised only upon the application of the Lord Lieutenant or a Secretary of State, and it is a power which we may expect will be but rarely employed, for its use would at once give rise to a direct conflict between the Irish Parliament and the English Privy Council. Let it be noted in passing that this provision for the decision of constitutional questions is foreign to the habits and traditions of English Courts; no judge throughout the United Kingdom ever pronounces a speculative opinion upon the extent, operation, or validity of an Act of Parliament. It is the inveterate habit of our judges to deal with particular cases as they come before them, and with particular cases alone. They will find themselves greatly perplexed when they come to pronounce judgment upon abstract questions of law. This is not all. The proposed arrangement is as foreign to the spirit of American Federalism as it is to the spirit of English law. The Supreme Court of the United States never in strictness pronounces an Act either of Congress or of a State Legislature void. What the Court does is to treat it as void in the decision of a particular case. Tocqueville and other critics have directed special attention to the care with which the Federal tribunals, by dealing only with given cases as they arise, avoid as far as possible coming into conflict with any State. They determine the rights of individuals; they do not determine directly what may be the legislative competence of the State, or for that matter of the Federal, Legislature.[77] The extraordinary power given to the Privy Council violates a fundamental principle of federalism, which by the way is violated in other parts of the Home Rule Bill. It brings, or tends to bring, the central power, represented in this case by the Privy Council, into direct conflict with one of the States of the Federation.[78] The English Privy Council, or, in strictness, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, is under the new constitution constituted a Final Court of Appeal from every Court in Ireland.[79] The Privy Council also is the Court of Appeal from a new kind of Imperial, or as one may say 'Federal,' judiciary, specially formed for the determination of matters having relation to the competence of the Irish Parliament. This Imperial or Federal judiciary consists of the two Exchequer Judges of the Supreme Court in Ireland; they are appointed under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, and therefore by the English Ministry. Their salaries are charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, and they are removable only on an address to the Houses of the Imperial Parliament. They constitute therefore an Imperial not an Irish Court. Before this Court may be brought on the application of any party thereto any legal proceedings in Ireland which _inter alia_ 'touch any matter not within the power of the Irish Legislature, or touch any matter affected by a law which the Irish Legislature has not power to repeal or alter.'[80] With the details of these arrangements I need not trouble my readers; the point to notice is that, whenever in any proceeding in Ireland the validity or constitutionality of an Irish Act can come into question, the matter may, at the wish of any party concerned, and in many cases apparently must be, brought before an Imperial or in effect British Court--the Exchequer Judges--and be determined by them subject to an appeal to another Imperial or British Court, viz. the Privy Council. Note further that to the Exchequer Judges are given special powers for the enforcement of any judgment of their Court. If the Sheriff does not give effect to their judgment, they may appoint any other officer with the full rights of a Sheriff to enforce it.[81] Here then we have the machinery of the Imperial, or Federal, Judicature. To put the matter simply, the Restrictions imposed on the Irish Parliament depend for their effectiveness on judgments of the Privy Council enforced by the Exchequer Judges. Consider how the whole arrangement will work.[82] The theoretical operation of the scheme is clear enough. _A_ sues _X_ in an Irish Court, say, to simplify matters, before the Exchequer Judges, for £1,000 due to _A_ for rent. _X_ bases his defence on an Act of the Irish Parliament, drawn by Irish statesmen, and approved presumably by Irish electors. _A_ questions the constitutionality of the Act. The Exchequer Judges are divided in opinion. The matter at last comes before the Privy Council. The Privy Council pronounce the Act void, and give judgment in _A's_ favour. He has a right to recover the £1,000 from _X_. The whole question in theory is settled. The law is unconstitutional, the law is void; _A_ has obtained judgment. But can the judgment be enforced? This is the essential question; for the object of a plaintiff is to obtain not judgment but payment or execution. What then are the means for enforcing the judgment of the Privy Council when it is not supported by Irish opinion, when it sets aside an Act of the Irish Parliament, and when it may possibly be opposed to the decision, in a similar case, of an Irish Court? The means are the action of the Sheriff. What if the Sheriff is a strong Nationalist, and makes default? The only thing to be done is to appoint an officer empowered to carry out the decree of the Court. Of course if the Irish Ministry are bent on enforcing the judgment, if the Exchequer Court, whose judgment, it may be, has been overruled, is zealous in supporting the authority of the Privy Council, if the Irish people are filled with reverence for tribunals which are really English Courts, all will go well. But Mr. Gladstone himself cannot anticipate that novel constitutional machinery will work with ease, or that on the passing of the Home Rule Bill the disposition, the traditional feelings, and the sympathies of the Irish populace will be changed. Suppose that _A_ is Lord Clanricarde; suppose that _X_ is an evicted tenant. It is not common sense to believe that the judgment in his lordship's favour will as a matter of course take effect. At the present moment the Irish Courts, backed by the whole authority of the Imperial Government and the Irish Executive, often find a difficulty in enforcing their judgments. Will English Courts find it easy to give effect to a judgment in Ireland if the Irish Executive and its servants stand neutral or hostile? What if the Irish House of Commons turn out as unwilling that force should be used for enforcing the decree of the Privy Council as are some English Radicals that force shall be employed for the protection of free labourers against Trades Unionists? What if the officer of the Court is in fact some bailiff trembling for his own life? He may, I am told, call in the military. Of his authority to do this I am not quite sure. He must, I suppose, in the first instance apply to the Irish Home Secretary. The Irish Minister pressed by the opposition turns a deaf ear to the appeal of the bailiff. Application must then be made in some form or other to the English Ministry. The Imperial Cabinet will think more than once before horse, foot, and artillery are, against the wish of the Irish Government, put in movement to enforce the judgment of a British Court, and to obtain £1,000 for Lord Clanricarde. The matter will have become serious; the dignity of the Irish nation will be at stake; the complaints of the plaintiff will be drowned by the indignant clamours of eighty members at Westminster. The essential principle of the new constitution is that there shall be but one Executive in Ireland. The moment that the British Government intervenes to support the judgment of British Courts, we have in Ireland two hostile Executives. We tremble on the verge either of legal revolution or of civil war. An English Cabinet, I suspect, will hardly enforce the unpopular rights of a hated plaintiff by use of arms. Why, it will be said, assume that the Irish Government and the Irish people will not enforce the law? The assumption, I answer, is justified not only by the history of Ireland, but by general experience. In all federations, even the best ordered, difficulties constantly arise as to the sphere of the Federal Government and the State Governments, and as to the enforcement of judgments delivered by Federal Courts. The authority of the federal tribunals has not always been easily enforced even in the United States. Serious difficulties hamper the action of the Swiss federal authorities. Even in England enthusiasm or conviction occasionally triumphs over legality. English clergymen are at least as reasonable as excited politicians, yet Ritualists have not invariably submitted to the authority of the Privy Council. Why should Irishmen be more reasonable than other men? In Ireland we are trying an entirely novel and dangerous experiment; we are fostering the spirit of nationality under the forms of federation. The Privy Council, hide the matter as you will, represents British power. If Ireland is a nation, the Government of Great Britain is an alien Government; the judgments of the Privy Council are the judgments of an alien Court, and reason forbids us to expect more submission to the decisions of an alien tribunal than to the laws of an alien legislature. Suppose, however, that British judgments are enforced by the British army. Is this a result in which any Englishman or Irishman could rejoice? Can we say that the new constitution works well when its real and visible sanction is the use of British soldiers? The plain truth is that arrangements for legally restraining the Irish Parliament within the due limits of its powers must be ineffective and unreal and, if the principle of Home Rule be once admitted, the widest must be the wisest form of it. Colonial independence is better for Ireland and safer for England than sham federalism.[83] Grant, however, that the judgments of the Privy Council can be enforced more easily than I suppose, still even Gladstonians would admit that the proper working of the new constitution depends on two presumptions. The one is that the Irish people are under no strong temptation to oppose the Restrictions or to throw off the obligations imposed upon the Irish Parliament or Government. The other that they possess no ready means for nullifying these Restrictions or obligations. Each of these assumptions is false. Restraints ineffective for the protection either of British interests or of individual freedom may be intensely irritating to national sentiment. The limitations imposed on the powers of the Irish Parliament, or, in other words, of the Irish people, are opposed to the spirit of nationality and independence which Home Rule, it is hoped, will appease or satisfy. They will be hateful therefore not only to that multitude whom Gladstonians call the Irish people, but to every Irishman who is bidden by Gladstonians to consider himself a member of the Irish nation. The Irish are a martial race; they excel in the practice, and delight in the pageantry, of warfare, but they are forbidden to raise a regiment or man a gunboat. They cannot legally raise a regiment of volunteers, they cannot save their country from invasion. Will they permanently acquiesce in restraints not imposed on the Channel Islands? Irishmen, Unionists no less than Home Rulers, are mostly Protectionists, and believe that tariffs may give to Ireland, not indeed a 'plethora of wealth,' for of this no man out of Bedlam except Mr. Gladstone dreams, but reasonable prosperity. Vain to argue that Protection is folly. Englishmen think so, and Englishmen are right. But English doctrine is not accepted in Germany, in France, in the United States, or in the British Colonies; why should Irishmen be wiser than the inhabitants of every civilised country, except England? The fact, in any case, cannot be altered that most Home Rulers are Protectionists, and that many of them desire Home Rule mainly because they desire Protection for Ireland. Yet Protection, at any rate in the form of a tariff, they cannot have.[84] Take again the Restrictions imposed on the endowment of religion. All English Nonconformists, and many English Churchmen, hold these Restrictions to be in themselves politic and just. But the one strong reason for the concession of Home Rule is that Irishmen disagree with English notions of policy and of justice. No one can assign any reason why Irish statesmen, Catholics or Protestants, might not feel it a matter of duty or of policy to endow the priesthood, to level up instead of levelling down, to enter into some sort of concordat with Rome. It is a policy which is distasteful to English Nonconformists and to most Irish Protestants. But under a system of Home Rule, at any rate, English Nonconformists have no right to dictate the policy of Ireland. There is not the remotest reason why Restrictions on the endowments of religion and the like should not be hateful to Irishmen. The limitations, in short, on the competence of the Irish Parliament are inconsistent with the fundamental principle of Gladstonian statecraft. It is a policy we are told of trust in the people, the limitations are dictated by distrust of the Irish people; Home Rule is to be granted in order that Irishmen may give effect to Irish ideas; the Restrictions are enacted to check the development of Irish ideas, and to impose English ideas upon the policy of Ireland. As though, however, the Restraints were not enough to cause first irritation and then agitation, the financial provisions contemplated by the Bill are in themselves certain to generate, not future, but immediate discord. Of the financial arrangements instituted under the new constitution, my purpose is to say very little. My object is not to show that Mr. Gladstone's financial calculations are wrong, or that they are ruinous to Ireland or unfair to England. All this is for my present purpose immaterial. My aim is to insist that, in their very nature, they are a cause of conflict; and that they bring the interest, and, even more, the sentiment, of Ireland into direct opposition with the power of England.[85] All the customs payable at every Irish port are to be regulated, collected, and managed by, and to be paid into, the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. Not a penny of these customs benefits Ireland; they are all--and this is certainly the light in which they will appear to most Irishmen--a contribution to the revenue of the United Kingdom, that is, of England. If every taxable article were smuggled into Ireland, so that not one pound of Irish customs were paid to the English treasury, the Imperial power would lose, but the Irish State would gain. Ireland would be delivered from a tax which will soon be called a tribute. If, moreover, Ireland continues to be treated as financially a part of the United Kingdom, then free smuggling, which is free trade, would make Ireland a free port, where might be landed untaxed the goods required by the whole United Kingdom. It is easy to see how the English revenue would suffer, but it is equally easy to see that Irish commerce might flourish. If I am told that the ruin of the British revenue may be averted by the examination of goods brought from Ireland to Great Britain--this, of course, is so. But then freedom of trade within the United Kingdom is at an end. We are compelled, in substance, to raise an internal line of custom houses; we abolish at one stroke one great benefit of the Treaty of Union. The mode, again, in which the customs are levied outrages every kind of national sentiment. Coast-guards, custom-house officers, and gaugers are never popular among a population of smugglers; they will not be the more beloved when every custom-house officer or coastguard is the representative of an alien power, and is employed to levy tribute from Ireland. Another leading feature of the financial arrangements is the charging upon the Irish Consolidated Fund of various sums rightly due and payable to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.[86] They are made a first charge upon the revenue of Ireland. They are to be paid in the last resort upon the order of the Lord Lieutenant, acting as an Imperial officer. The necessity for some arrangement of this kind is clear. Millions have been lent to Ireland, and these millions must be repaid. But if the need for some such arrangement be certain, its desperate impolicy is no less certain. England and Ireland, the English Government and the Irish Government, are brought into direct hostile collision. The rich English Government appears in the light of an imperious creditor the Irish Government stands in the position of a poverty-stricken debtor. Note, and this is the point which should be pressed home, that in all confederations the difficulty of exacting the money needed by the federal government from any state of the confederacy has been found all but insuperable. Study the history of the thirteen American colonies between the time of the acknowledgment of their independence by England and the formation of the United States. This has been termed 'the critical period' of American history. The colonies were united by recollections of common suffering and of common triumph, they were not divided by race or religion; no State aspired to separate nationality, yet they drifted rapidly towards anarchy; they were discontented at home, they were powerless abroad, above all, they nearly made shipwreck on the financial arrangements. Congress was never able, for the satisfaction either of national needs or of national honour, to obtain fair contributions from the different States.[87] Already, further, before the Home Rule Bill has passed from the hands of the House of Commons Mr. Gladstone's very moderate demands, as they seem to Englishmen, are held by some Irish Nationalists to be outrageous.[88] The difference, moreover, is not a matter of calculation, to be settled by accounts and balances, or disposed of by auditors. No one can read the statements of Nationalists such as Mr. Redmond or Mr. Clancy without seeing that the real difference of view lies very deep. These typical Nationalists do not regard the United Kingdom as a nation. Ireland is the nation. They doubt what is her interest in the British Empire; they believe, and already hint, that the financial arrangements between the two countries cannot be treated as a mere pecuniary transaction. Ireland has been overtaxed and overburdened. She has claims for compensation. All the feelings or convictions which inspired hatred of Irish landlords are already being aroused with regard to the Imperial power. A campaign against tribute may become as popular as a campaign against rent. The two campaigns indeed have a close affinity; a large portion of the tribute is in reality payment in respect of rent, and the instalments which an Irish farmer pays to buy his land will, to him at any rate, appear rent or tribute payable to Great Britain. The rent or tribute will be collected under the new constitution by the Irish Government.[89] No Irish Ministry will relish the position of collector. It would have been difficult for a landlord to collect rent after his agent had publicly announced that it was excessive and unjust. Yet a landlord could dismiss his agent; the English Cabinet cannot dismiss the Irish Government. It is certain too that the Irish Ministry will not find the collection of rent easy. Should the Irish Government state that the rent is iniquitously high, and refuse to collect it, what will be the position of the British Ministry? It must either set the constitution aside or undertake for itself the collection of rent in opposition to, or, at any rate, unaided by, the Irish Executive and the Irish Parliament. No more odious task was ever undertaken by a government. Suppose, however, that things do not come to the worst, the financial arrangements of the Bill ensure that Ireland will soon demand modifications of its provisions. Opposition is a probability, discontent is a certainty. Ireland is provided under the new constitution with the readiest means of nullifying the Restrictions. The Irish Cabinet and its servants can at any moment reduce an unpopular law to a nullity. Even in England a resolution of the House of Commons may be enough to turn a law into a dead letter. The Imperial Cabinet at this moment could go very near making the Vaccination Acts of no effect, and by declining to have troops sent to Hull could, as I have already pointed out, give victory to the Trades Unionists. Nor is it necessary that the Cabinet should decline sending forces to Hull for the support of the law. An intimation that persons accused of intimidation would either not be prosecuted at all, or if prosecuted and convicted, would be pardoned, would be sufficient of itself to make the strike successful. In no country could the Executive do more to render laws ineffectual than in Ireland. The Irish Cabinet might by mere inaction render the collection of rent impossible; they might, as I have already pointed out, give tacit encouragement to smuggling. If the people regarded a coastguard as an enemy, if he and his family were left severely alone, if he were often maltreated and occasionally shot, his position might be a difficult one, even if supported by the whole force of the state. But if smuggling were regarded as no crime, if the smuggler were looked upon as the patriot who deprived an alien power of a revenue to which England had no right, it is clear that nothing but the energetic support of all the central and local authorities in the country could give a revenue officer the remotest chance of victory in his contest with smugglers. But suppose the national government were apathetic, suppose that the Irish Ministry looked with favourable eye on the diminution of English revenue; suppose that no Irish official gave any aid to a custom-house officer; suppose that, if a British coastguardsman were murdered, Irish detectives made no effort to discover the wrong-doer; and that when the culprit was discovered the Irish law officers hesitated to prosecute; suppose that when a prosecution took place the Attorney-General showed that his heart was not in the matter, and that the jury acquitted a ruffian clearly guilty of murder, is it not as clear as day that smuggling would flourish and no customs be collected? In the same way the Irish Ministry might by mere apathy, by the very easy process of doing nothing, nullify the effect of judgments delivered by the Exchequer judges, and the Irish Ministry would show very little ingenuity if they could not without any open breach of the law impede the carrying out of executions against the goods of persons whom popular feeling treated as patriots. The Irish Executive might, as already pointed out,[90] easily raise an Irish army. Drilling countenanced or winked at by the Irish Ministry could never be stopped by the British Government. Prussia at the period of her extreme weakness, and under the jealous eye of Napoleon, sent every Prussian through the ranks. Bulgaria raised an army while pretending to encourage athletic sports. The value of the precedent is not likely to escape an Irish Premier. The Irish Parliament cannot legally repeal a single provision of the constitution, but an Irish Parliament might render much of the constitution a nullity. The Parliament might pass Acts which trenched upon the Restrictions limiting its authority. Till treated as void such statutes would be the law of the land. Such voidable Acts, and even parliamentary resolutions,[91] would go like a watchword through the country and encourage throughout Ireland popular resistance to Imperial law. A profound observer has remarked that people do not reckon highly enough the importance at a revolutionary crisis of any show or appearance of legality.[92] Revolution acquires new force when masked under the form of law. This is a point which Englishmen constantly overlook. They know the moral influence of leagues and combinations; they do not reflect that a Parliament or House of Commons in sympathy with resistance to Imperial demands would possess tenfold the moral authority of any National League. Note too that the Irish Ministry and the Irish Parliament would play into one another's hands, and would further be strengthened by their Irish allies at Westminster, as also by the Irish electoral vote in England. For the true stronghold of the Irish Government lies, under the new constitution, at Westminster.[93] There they would command at least eighty votes: the Irish members could still, as now, and far more effectively than now, coerce under ordinary circumstances any Ministry disposed to enforce the rights of the Imperial Government, or, in other words, of England. Take a concrete case to which I have already referred.[94] Irish farmers who have purchased under the Ashbourne Act grow weary of paying instalments which are equivalent to rent. The Irish Cabinet refuses to collect the rent; it urges its absolute inability to pay the sums due to the Imperial Exchequer and asks for remission. Meanwhile the Irish House of Commons passes a resolution supporting the conduct of the Irish Government. The British Ministers are stern, and reject the request of the Irish Cabinet. The Cabinet at Dublin retire from office. No successors can be appointed who command the support of the Irish Parliament. The Lord Lieutenant advises the Government at home that things have come to a deadlock and that a dissolution will change nothing. Thereupon the Irish members at Westminster begin to move; they threaten general hostility to the British Ministry. They proffer their support to the Opposition. It may of course happen that the British Ministry can, like the Unionist Government of 1886, defy the Opposition and the Irish members combined. If so the English Cabinet can risk a constitutional conflict in Ireland, though it is a conflict likely to end in disturbance or civil war. But judging the future by the past the eighty members will hold the balance of power. If so their course is clear. They expel from office the Ministers who have protected the rights of the Imperial Government. A weak Ministry depending on Irish votes rules, or rather is ruled, at Downing Street. Every one knows how, under the supposed conditions, the affair will end. There will be a transaction of some sort, and we may be certain that such a transaction will be to the advantage of the Irish Government, and will weaken or discredit Imperial or English authority. We come round here to the root of the whole matter. Were the Restrictions on the power of the Irish Parliament real and easily enforceable, were the obligations imposed upon or undertaken by the Irish people obligations of which an English Ministry could at once compel the fulfilment, Restrictions and obligations alike would be rendered futile and unreal by the presence of the Irish members at Westminster. Every Home Rule scheme which can be proposed is impolitic and is as dangerous as Separation; but the most impolitic of all possible forms of Home Rule is the scheme embodied in the Bill of 1893. Its special and irremediable flaw is the retention of the Irish members at Westminster. This governs and vitiates all the leading provisions of the new constitution. Under its influence every conceivable safeguard, the supreme authority of Parliament, the veto, the legal restrictions on the competence of the Irish legislature melt away into nothing. They are some of them capable of doing harm, they are none of them capable of doing good. Cast a glance back at the leading features of the new constitution. The Imperial Parliament remains in form unchanged, and retains the attribute of nominal sovereignty. But in Ireland the Imperial Parliament surrenders all, or nearly all, the characteristics of true and effective power; it retains in fact in Ireland nothing more than the right to effect under the semblance of a legal proceeding a revolution which after all must be carried out by force. For practical purposes it has no more power at Dublin than it has at Melbourne, _i.e._ it retains at Dublin scarcely any real power whatever. For the sake of this nominal and shadowy authority the Imperial Parliament is itself transformed into a strange cross between a British Parliament and the Congress of an Anglo-Irish Federation. The Irish Executive and the Irish Parliament become under the new constitution the true and real Government of Ireland. But the Irish Government and the Irish people are fettered by Restrictions which would not be borne by the Government or the people of a self-governing colony. These Restrictions are ineffective to bind, but they are certain to gall, and if taken together with onerous financial obligations to Great Britain, which whether just or not must have an air of hardness, and with the habitual presence in Ireland of a British army under the direction of the British Executive, lay an ample foundation for the most irritating of conflicts. The new constitution, lastly, places in the hands of the Irish people ample means for constitutional or extra-constitutional resistance to Imperial, or in fact to English, power, and almost ensures the success of Ireland in any constitutional conflict. The presence of the Irish members at Westminster saves, or proclaims, the nominal sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament; but their presence in truth makes this sovereignty unexercisable, and therefore worthless, and while increasing the apparent power ensures the real weakness of England. FOOTNOTES: [25] Thus little, if anything, is said in these pages on the constitution of the Irish Legislature, though it is in several points, and especially in the character of the Legislative Council, open to grave criticism. Little, again, is said of the financial arrangements in their fiscal character. The topic is of the highest importance, but it must be debated in the main by experts. My remarks upon these arrangements refer almost exclusively to the way in which they may affect the working of the constitution. The inclusion of Ulster within the operation of the Bill and the refusal to give weight to the demand of Ulster that the Act of Union should not be touched, are of course matters of primary importance. They ought never to be distant from the thoughts of any one concerned with the policy or impolicy of Home Rule; they dominate, so to speak, the whole political situation; they are constantly referred to in these pages; but they do not form part of the new constitution so much as conditions which affect the prudence or justice of creating the new constitution. [26] Bill, 1893, Preamble, and clauses 33, 37. [27] The language of clause 33 is vague, but, according to the best interpretation I can put upon it, its effect as to laws made for Ireland after the Home Rule Bill becomes law will be this: The Imperial Parliament will be able to pass enactments of any description whatever with regard to Ireland, and the Irish Legislature will not be able to repeal or alter any enactments so enacted by the Imperial Parliament which are expressly extended to Ireland. Thus the Irish Parliament might, it is submitted, on the Home Rule Bill passing into law repeal the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887, 50 & 51 Vict. c. 20. But if, after the Home Rule Bill passed into law, the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887, were continued, or after its repeal by the Irish Parliament were re-enacted, by the Imperial Parliament, then the Irish Parliament could not repeal the Act or any part of it. Still clause 33 of the Home Rule Bill is much too vaguely expressed. What, for example, is the effect of an Act of the Imperial Parliament which is 'impliedly' extended to Ireland? If my interpretation of the clause is the right one, the meaning of the clause ought to be made perfectly clear; ambiguity in such a matter is unpardonable. [28] See pp. 4-6 _ante_. This ambiguity underlies and vitiates almost every argument used by Home Rulers, whether English or Irish, in favour of Home Rule. English Home Rulers emphasise and exaggerate the extent of the control, or the so-called supremacy, which, after the establishment of an Irish Parliament, can and will be exerted in Ireland by the Imperial Parliament at Westminster. Irish Home Rulers, when addressing English electors, or the Imperial Parliament, often use language which resembles the phrases of their English allies. But assuredly Irish Home Rulers, when addressing Irishmen, or when collecting subscriptions from American citizens of Irish descent, speak the language of Irish Nationalists and cut down the effective supremacy of the Imperial Parliament after the granting of Home Rule so as to make it consistent with the war cry of 'Ireland a Nation.' (Compare Cambray's _Irish Affairs and the Home Rule Question_, pp. 48-65.) [29] Mr. Sexton, Feb. 13, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 319; Mr. Redmond, Feb. 14, 1893, _ibid_. pp. 350-52; and April 13, 1893, _ibid_. p. 414. Compare especially language of Mr. Redmond, _Irish Independent,_ Feb. 17, and note that all the arguments for Home Rule drawn from its success or alleged success in the British Colonies imply that the relation of the Imperial Parliament to Ireland shall resemble its relation to the Colonies. See generally, debate of May 16 in _The Times,_ May 17, pp. 6-8. [30] Feb. 13, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 303. [31] April 14, 1893, _ibid_. pp. 439, 440. [32] Feb. 14, 1893, _ibid_. pp. 340, 341, 343. [33] Bill, clause 12, sub-clause (3). [34] This is the only sense in which the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament is inalienable. This should be noted, because a strange and absurd dogma is sometimes propounded that a sovereign power such as the Parliament of the United Kingdom, can never by its own act divest itself of sovereignty, and it is thence inferred or hinted that there is no need for the Imperial Parliament to take measures for the preservation of its supremacy. The dogma is both logically and historically untenable. A sovereign of any kind can abdicate. A Czar can lay down his power, and so also can a Parliament. To argue or imply that because sovereignty is not limitable (which is true) it cannot be surrendered (which is palpably untrue) involves the confusion of two distinct ideas. It is like arguing that because no man can while he lives give up, do what he will, his freedom of volition, so no man can commit suicide. A sovereign power can divest itself of authority in two ways. It may put an end to its own existence or abdicate. It may transfer sovereign authority to another person, or body of persons, of which body it may, or may not, form part. The Parliaments both of England and of Scotland did at the time of the Union each transfer sovereign power to a new sovereign body, namely the Parliament of Great Britain. The British Parliament did in 1782 surrender its sovereignty in Ireland to the Irish Parliament. In 1800 both the British Parliament and the Irish Parliament alienated or surrendered their sovereign powers to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Compare Dicey, _Law of the Constitution_ (7th ed.), note 3, p. 65. [35] It may, I am quite aware, be argued that the presence of Irish representatives is not requisite for the maintenance of parliamentary supremacy. In theory it is not. An arrangement might quite conceivably be made (which if Home Rule were to be conceded might be the least objectionable method of carrying out a radically vicious policy) under which it should be distinctly agreed that Ireland should occupy the position of a self-governing colony with all the immunities and disadvantages thereof, and should cease to be represented at Westminster, whilst the British Parliament retained the right to abolish, or modify, the Irish constitution. Such an arrangement would, however, make it perfectly plain that the sovereignty of the British Parliament meant in Ireland what the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament now means in New Zealand. But 'the retention of the Irish members is a matter of great public importance' (at any rate in the opinion of Mr. Gladstone) 'because it visibly exhibits that supremacy' (_i.e._ the supremacy of Parliament) 'in a manner intelligible to the people.'--Mr. Gladstone, Feb. 13, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 306. See as to Home Rule in the character of colonial independence, _England's Case against Home Rule_ (3rd ed.), pp. 197-218. [36] _i.e._ at the moment when these pages are written. What parts of the Government of Ireland Bill may or may not be officially deemed essential by the time these pages appear in print, no sensible man will undertake to predict. Mr. Gladstone's own language is most extraordinary. On the retention of the Irish members, which in the eyes of any ordinary man affects the whole character of the new constitution, and essentially distinguishes the Home Rule policy of 1886 from the Home Rule policy of 1893, he uses (_inter alia_) these words: 'On the important subject of the retention of the Irish members I do not regard it, and I never have regarded it, as touching what may be called the principles of the Bill. It is not included in one of them. But whether it be a principle of the Bill or not, there is no question that it is a very weighty and, if I may say so, an organic detail which cuts rather deep in some respects into the composition of the Bill.'--Mr. Gladstone, Feb. 13, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, pp. 305, 306. This statement, with the whole passage of which it forms part, is as astounding as would have been a statement by Lord John Russell on introducing the great Reform Bill, that he could not say whether the disfranchisement of rotten boroughs did or did not form a principle of the measure. [37] Compare Report of Special Commission, pp. 18, 19. [38] Under the Home Rule Bill of 1893 as sent up to the House of Lords, it would have been the 'constant presence.' [39] The division of parties in an American State is governed not by questions concerning the internal affairs of the State, but by the questions which divide parties at Washington. State politics depend upon federal politics. 'The national parties have engulfed the State parties. The latter have disappeared absolutely as independent bodies, and survive merely as branches of the national parties, working each in its own State for the tenets and purposes which a national party professes and seeks to attain.' See Bryce, _American Commonwealth_, ii. p. 194. [40] _i.e._ in 1893. [41] Mr. Morley at Newcastle, _The Times_, April 22, 1886. [42] Now Lord Morley of Blackburn. [43] _i.e._ in 1893, and as they continue to be in 1911. [44] Mr. Morley at Newcastle, _The Times_, April 22, 1886. [Morley's argument applied primarily, no doubt, to the Home Rule Bill of 1886; its force, however, was infinitely strengthened as applied to the Home Rule Bill of 1893 by the change which retained eighty Irish members at Westminster with unrestricted powers of legislation. The tenor of his argument applies, I contend with confidence, to any Home Rule Bill which shall propose to give Ireland a real Irish Parliament led by an Irish Cabinet, and at the same time to retain representatives of Ireland as members of the British Parliament.] [45] See p. 43, _ante_. [46] See Motley's speech, _Times_, April _22_, 1886. [47] See Bill, Third Schedule. [48] This is at any rate the opinion of Mr. Redmond expressed in the _Nineteenth Century_, Oct. 1892. [49] Bill, clause 9, sub-clause (3). [50] The authors of the Home Rule Bill foresee the possibility of such an erroneous decision. They have carefully provided that such an error shall have no legal effect. Clause 9, sub-clause (4), 'Compliance with the provisions of this section shall not be questioned otherwise than in each House in manner provided by the House,' is in reality a provision sanctioning the grossest unfairness. Its effect is that a British Bill passed solely by virtue of the Irish vote is, on its becoming an Act, good law, in spite of its having been passed in violation of the constitutional rule laid down in clause 9, sub-clause (3), that an Irish member shall not be entitled to deliberate or vote on any Bill the operation of which is confined to Great Britain. [51] Compare Bill, clause 9, sub-clause (3), and sub-clause (4), which provides that 'compliance with the provisions of this section shall not be questioned otherwise than in each House in manner provided by the House.' [52] 23 Geo. III. c. 28. [53] The reader, in order to understand this account of the proposed constitution of 1886, should remember that under that constitution there were in effect, though not in name, constituted three different Parliaments, which must be carefully distinguished. 1. The British Parliament at Westminster, containing no Irish members, which was to legislate for Great Britain and for the whole British Empire except Ireland. 2. The Irish Parliament at Dublin, containing no British representatives, which was to legislate for Ireland, but which was not to legislate for England, Scotland, or for any other part of the British Empire, and was not to have any voice whatever in the general policy of the Empire. 3. The Imperial Parliament also sitting at Westminster, and comprising both the British and the Irish Parliament. This body would have corresponded nearly, if not exactly, with the existing Parliament of the United Kingdom, and was intended to come together only on special occasions and for a special purpose, namely the revision or the alteration of the Gladstonian constitution. For the fuller explanation of the whole of this subject see _England's Case against Home Rule_ (3rd ed.), pp. 234, 238 Note that England gains little or nothing (as compared with what was offered to her under the Home Rule Bill of 1886) by the Imperial Parliament retaining the power to legislate for Ireland, for even under that Bill the Imperial Parliament (_i.e._ the Parliament at Westminster when consisting both of British and of Irish members) could legislate for Ireland. [54] _Unionist Delusions_, pp. 6-9. [55] The following passage from the writings of a man whose words, whilst he was yet amongst us, Unionists and Gladstonians alike always heard with the respect due to sense, to ability, to knowledge, and to fairness, deserves attention:-- 'In Mr. Gladstone's proposed measure of Home Rule' _[i.e._ the Bill of 1886]' the Parliament sitting at Westminster was no longer to contain Irish members. I hold this to be an essential feature of the scheme, an essential feature of any scheme of Home Rule. By Mr. Gladstone's scheme, Ireland was formally to exchange a nominal voice, both in its own affairs and in common affairs, for the real management of its own affairs and no voice at all in common affairs. This is the true relation of Home Rule. As dependent Canada has no representatives in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, so neither would dependent Ireland have representatives in the Parliament of Great Britain. I am unable to understand why this provision, which seemed so naturally to follow from the rest of the scheme, awakened so powerful an opposition among Mr. Gladstone's own supporters. I believe the Irish have no wish to appear in the British Parliament. They wish to manage their own affairs, and are ready to leave Great Britain to manage its own affairs and those of the "Empire" to boot. It is very hard to see in what character the Irish members are to show themselves at Westminster. If they may vote on British affairs, while the British members do not vote on Irish affairs, surely too great a privilege is given to Ireland; it is Great Britain which will become the dependency. If they are to vote on "Imperial" affairs only, to say nothing of the difficulty of defining such affairs, it will be something very strange, very novel, very hard to work, to have members of Parliament who are only half-members, who must walk out of the House whenever certain classes of subjects are discussed.' (E.A. Freeman, 'Irish Home Rule and its Analogies,' _The New Princeton Review_, vi. pp. 194, 195.) Mr. Freeman's language proves that I have not overrated the essential difference or opposition between the Home Rule policy of 1886 and the Home Rule policy of 1893. [56] It is styled in the Home Rule Bill 'an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland.' [57] If there were reason to expect (which there is not) that the Home Rule Bill would pass into law, it would be worth while to consider carefully a question which has not yet engaged the attention of English statesmen: Is it desirable that under a system of Home Rule the Irish Executive should be a Parliamentry Ministry? The answer to this question is by no means clear. Both in the United States, and in every State of the Union, the executive power is lodged in the hands of an official who is neither appointed nor removable by the Legislature. The same remark applies to the Executive of the German Empire. In Switzerland the Ministry, or Council of State, is indeed appointed, but is not removable by the Federal Assembly or Parliament. Arguments certainly might be suggested in favour of creating for Ireland an Executive whose tenure of office might be independent of the will of the Irish Parliament. Ireland, in short, like many other countries, might gain by the possession of a non-parliamentary Executive. See as to the distinction between a parliamentary and a non-parliamentary Executive, _Law of the Constitution_ (7th ed.), App. p. 480. [58] See Bill, clause 14. [59] This would apparently approve itself to Dr. Nulty, Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath. Of Mr. Justice Andrews he seems to have written that 'this Judge is a Unitarian,' and that it appears to the Bishop that 'the man who denies the divinity of our Lord is as incompetent to form clear, correct, and reliable conceptions of the feelings, the instincts, the opinions, and the religious convictions of an intensely Irish population as if they were inhabitants of another planet.' See _The Times_, April 3, 1893, p. 8, where a correspondent from Ireland purports to give the effect of a pamphlet by Dr. Nulty. The Bishop wrote, I suppose, with a view to Mr. Justice Andrews' opinions as to priestly influence at elections, but the Bishop's words suggest the inference that the government of a Catholic country ought to appoint Catholic Judges. Why should we be surprised at this? Religious toleration is not a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. [60] See Home Rule Bill, 1893, clause 35, p. 214, _post_. [61] 'I am not suggesting for a moment that we are going to set up in Ireland two independent and separate Executives. I think the granting of Home Rule in any intelligible sense would be entirely incomplete if it were not supplemented by the granting of executive power, and in my judgment the Executive in Ireland is intended to be and must be dependent upon and responsible to the Irish Legislature in Irish affairs. But that does not in the least prevent the retention in the Crown of the executive government of the United Kingdom, as it provided in this Bill such executive authority as is necessary for the execution of the Imperial laws' (sic). Mr. Asquith, April 14, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 440. Compare _Hansard_, vol. xi. same date, p. 348. [62] Bill, clause 30. [63] This is technically expressed in the Bill by the provision that 'the two forces [viz. the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police] shall, while they continue, be subject to the control of the Lord Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty.' As to the military or naval forces of the Crown, the Bill contains no provision, but it cannot, it is submitted, be doubted that they will remain subject to the Imperial Government, and, except with the sanction of the Imperial Government, will not be subject to the control of the Irish Executive. [64] See Bill, clauses 1-5, and as to the Restrictions on its legislative power, see pp. 80-110, _post_. [65] See two excellent articles in the _Spectator_ of February 25 and March 4, 1893. [66] Of course all these statements are to be taken subject to the Restrictions placed on the powers of the Irish Legislature by Bill, clauses 3, 4, pp. 197, 198 _post_. [67] These Restrictions, or safeguards, deprive Ireland of powers in fact possessed by the Legislature of any self-governing colony, and I believe by the Isle of Man or Jersey. [Compare the Home Rule Bill 1893, clause 3, sub-clause (3) (p. 197, _post_,) as it appears in the original Bill, with the same clause as amended by the House of Commons and sent up to the House of Lords. The original clause forbids the Irish Parliament to make any law in respect (_inter alia_) of 'naval or military forces or the defence of the realm.' The clause as amended by the House of Commons forbids the Irish Parliament to make any law in respect of '(3.) Navy, Army, Militia, Volunteers, and any other military forces, or the defence of the realm, or forts, or permanent military camps, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings, or any places purchased for the erection thereof.' In 1893, Unionists and Gladstonians alike were determined that on no pretence whatever should an Irish Parliament be allowed to raise an Irish army, even of volunteers. The very name of 'volunteers,' and the history of 1780-82, explain and justify their prudence. [68] Clause 4, sub-clause (1) to (4). [69] For the details of the Restrictions contained in clauses 3 and 4 the reader should study carefully the terms of the Bill itself. See Bill, in Appendix. [70] In more than one case it is pretty clear that the Restrictions are in themselves ineffective. Take these instances:-- 1. The Restrictions do not really prevent the drilling of an armed force. The Act which makes drilling illegal is a statute of 1819, 60 Geo. III. 1 Geo. IV. c. 1. This Act applies to Ireland and cannot (it is submitted) be repealed by the Irish Parliament. But this statute of 1819 might easily be evaded, for by sec. 1 meetings for training and drilling may be allowed by any two Justices of the Peace. The Irish Executive might, and probably would, appoint plenty of justices who were willing to allow training and drilling. The men thus trained and drilled could not, I conceive, technically be made a volunteer force, but they might, for all that, be a very dangerous armed body. 2. It is not certain what is the real effect of the provisions whereby no 'person may be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.' Does it, for example, preserve a right to trial by jury? I doubt whether it does. American judgments on the same words in United States Constitution, Amendments, art. 14, would of course have no legal authority in the United Kingdom, and there is a special reason why they often could not be followed. No process would (it is submitted) be considered in an Irish or British Court as not a 'due' process, for which a parallel could be found in the legislation of the Imperial Parliament. But the Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act, 1882, sec. 1, to instance no other enactment, took away the right to trial by jury in cases of trial for treason, murder, etc. 3. Private property might still in fact be taken without just compensation. The Privy Council would not apparently have to consider whether in any given case property was taken without just compensation, but whether a particular law was a law whereby it might be taken without just compensation. Suppose, for example, Sir James Mathew and the commissioners who sat with him were constituted by an Irish Act a Court for determining what compensation should be given for the taking of certain property for public use, and the Act itself provided that just compensation must be given. It is very doubtful how far the Privy Council could treat the Act as invalid, or could in any way enter upon the question whether just compensation had been given. Yet it is plain that such a Court might give very far from just compensation, say to Lord Clanricarde. [71] Constitution, art. i sect. 10. [72] See Mr. J. Morley, April 18, 1893, _Times Parl. Deb._, p. 500. [73] See Bill, clause 5, sub-clause (3). The language of this clause disposes of the contention put forward by at least one Gladstonian candidate at the last general election [_i.e._ of 1892], that the veto must of necessity be exercised under the control of the British Cabinet; an arrangement too futile for an ardent Gladstonian to contemplate as possible is therefore actually enacted in the Government of Ireland Bill. [74] It is to be presumed that the Crown, or in effect the British Cabinet, does not in the case of Ireland retain the power of 'disallowance' under which the Crown occasionally annuls colonial Acts which have received the assent of a colonial Governor. The power to disallow an Irish Act which, though not unconstitutional, has worked injustice, might be of advantage. But in truth the parliamentary methods for enforcing the Restrictions or safeguards are utterly unreal; they do not repay examination; whether there be two sham modes of enforcement, or one, must be to a sensible man a matter of indifference. As to the disallowance of Acts see Rules and Regulations published for the use of the Colonial Office, chap. iii.; Legislative Councils and Assemblies, Rules 48-54; British North America Act, 1868, sections 55-57; _England's Case against Home Rule_ (3rd ed.), p. 33. [Compare Dicey, _Law of Constitution_ (7th ed.), pp. 111-114.] [75] The appeal to the English Privy Council, both under clauses 19, _22_, and 23 of the Bill, appears to be in each case an appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. [The particular provisions contained in the Home Rule Bill, 1893, as to an appeal to the Privy Council, etc., are now of little direct importance, but they are worth study as showing the extreme difficulty of providing any satisfactory body for acting as a Court called upon to decide the numerous constitutional questions, as to the legislative power of an Irish Parliament, which must be raised under any Home Rule Act whatever.] [76] See Bill, clause 23. [77] See Tocqueville, _Démocratie en Amérique_, i. chap. viii. pp. 231-250; Bryce, _American Commonwealth_, ii. (1st ed.) p. 45; _ibid._ i. ch. 23. [78] Compare _England's Case against Home Rule_ (3rd ed.), pp. 257, 258. [79] Compare Bill, clauses 19, 22, pp. 206, 209, _post._ [80] Bill, clause 19, sub-clause(4). [81] Clause 19, sub-clause (5). The whole of the provisions as to the Exchequer Judges are extremely obscure. The jurisdiction and the powers of the Court, should it ever be formed, will need to be defined by a special Act of Parliament. There are special laws regulating the action of the Federal Judiciary both in the United States and in Switzerland. As the matter at present stands the jurisdiction of the Exchequer Judges and of the Privy Council as a Court of Appeal from them may apparently be thus described. It extends to all legal proceedings in Ireland which (i) are instituted at the instance of or against the Treasury or Commissioners of Customs, or any of their officers, or (ii) relate to the election of members to serve in [the Imperial] Parliament, or (iii) touch any matter not within the powers of the Irish Legislature, or (iv) touch any matter affected by a law which the Irish Legislature have not power to repeal or alter. It is possible that sub-clause (4) gives the Exchequer Judges a much wider jurisdiction than is intended by the authors of the Home Rule Bill, and the strictures which have been made on this sub-clause deserve attention. My purpose, however, is not to criticise the details of the Home Rule Bill or to suggest amendments thereto. Its fundamental principle is, in the eyes of every Unionist, unsound, and the Bill itself therefore unamendable. My object is simply to describe and criticise the general constitutional provisions of the Bill and to show their bearing and effect. [82] Compare _England's Case_ (3rd ed.), pp. 258, 259. [83] See _England's Case_ (3rd ed.), pp. 214-218. [84] See Home Rule Bill, clause 3, sub-clause (7) (p. 198, _post_), and compare same clause slightly amended, in Bill, as sent up to the House of Lords, sub-clause (8). [85] These strictures on the financial arrangements which were to exist between England and Ireland apply directly to the Home Rule Bill as introduced into the House of Commons, but they are less applicable to the Bill as amended, more or less in favour of Ireland, before the Bill was sent up to the House of Lords. Compare clause 10 of the original Bill with clause 11 of the Bill as amended and brought up to the House of Lords. [86] Bill, clauses 14, 15, and 16. [Compare with these clauses of the original Bill clauses 13, 14, 15, and 16 of the Bill as amended before being sent to the House of Lords.] [87] See Fiske, _Critical Period of American History_, chs. iii. and iv. [88] See, _e.g._, letter of Mr. Clancy, M.P., on the Financial Clauses of the Home Rule Bill, _Manchester Guardian_, April 4, 1893. [89] Bill, clause 15. [90] See pp. 72 and 82, _ante_. [91] See pp. 79, 80, _ante_. [92] _Souvenirs de Alexis de Tocqueville_, p. 63. [93] The reader should note the history of the insurrection in Ticino during 1891. It is quite clear that the Liberals of Ticino who had distinctly broken the law were more or less comforted or protected by the Liberal party in the Swiss Federal Assembly. Compare Hilty, _Separatabdruck aus dem Politischen Jahrbuch der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft_ (_Jahrgang_ 1891). [94] See p. 103, _ante_. [The force of this illustration has been increased by every Land Act passed since 1893. 'The Imperial Exchequer [_i.e._ in effect Great Britain] has made a free grant of £17,000,000 towards furthering land purchase; moreover to that end it has expressed its willingness to pledge its credit to the amount of £183,000,000 of which over £35,000,000 has already been raised. The Imperial Exchequer looks to the Irish tenant purchaser for the interest and sinking fund on that loan.'--Cambray, _Irish Affairs_, p. 214.] CHAPTER III WHY THE NEW CONSTITUTION WILL NOT BE A SETTLEMENT OF THE IRISH QUESTION '_We believe that this measure [the Home Rule Bill] when improved in Committee will be, at all events in our time, a final settlement of the Irish question_.'[95] 'Five speeches were made from the Irish benches ... there was not one of those speeches which fell short of what we have declared to be in our opinion necessary for the acceptance of this Bill. That is where we look for a durable and solid statement as to finality. We find the word _finality_ not even eschewed by the generous unreserve of the honourable member for North Longford[96] who attached the character of finality to the Bill.... What said the honourable member for Kerry[97] last night? He said, "_This is a Bill that will end the feud of ages_" This is exactly what we want to do. That is what I call acceptance by the Irish members of this Bill.... _What we mean by this Bill is to close and bury a controversy of seven hundred years.'_[98] This hope of ending the feud of ages has been for years dangled by Gladstonians before the English electorate. It has gained thousands of votes for Home Rule. But it is doomed to disappointment. The new constitution will never be a settlement of the Irish question: and this for three reasons, which can be definitely stated and easily understood. _First._ The new constitution satisfies neither Ireland nor England. It does not satisfy Ireland. Ulster, Protestant Ireland, and indeed, speaking generally, all men of property in Ireland, whether Protestant or Catholic, detest Home Rule. They hate the new constitution, they protest against the new constitution, they assert that they will to the utmost of their ability resist the introduction and impede the working of the new constitution. Their abhorrence of Home Rule may be groundless, their threats may be baseless; their power to give effect to their menaces may have no existence. All that I now contend is that the strongest, and the most energetic, part of Irish society is in fact and in truth bitterly opposed, not only to the details, but to the fundamental principle, of the new polity. It avails nothing to urge that the Protestants and the educated Catholics are in a minority. This plea shows that in Parliament they can be outvoted; it does not show that they will, or can, be pacified by a policy which runs counter to their traditions, their interests, and their sentiment. You cannot vote men into content, you cannot coerce them into satisfaction. Let us look facts in the face. The measure which is supposed to gratify Ireland satisfies at most a majority of Irishmen. This may be enough for a Parliamentary tactician, it is not enough for a far-seeing statesman or a man of plain common sense. When we are told a minority are filled with discontent, we must ask who constitute the minority. When we find that the minority consists of men of all descriptions and of all creeds, that they represent the education, the respectability, the worth, and the wealth of Ireland, we must be filled with alarm. Wealth, no doubt, is no certain sign of virtue, any more than poverty can be identified with vice; a rich man may be a scoundrel, and a poor man may be an honour to the human race, but the world would be much worse constituted than it is, if the possession of a competence were not connected with honesty, energy, adherence to duty, and every other civic virtue. When it is said or admitted by Gladstonians that the propertied classes of Ireland are against Home Rule we know what this means; it means that the energy of Ireland is against Home Rule, that the honesty of Ireland is against Home Rule, that the learning of Ireland is against Home Rule, that all that makes a nation great is against Home Rule, and that the Irishmen most entitled to our respect and honour implore us not to force upon them the curse of Home Rule. This is no trifle. Let us at any rate have done with phrases; let us admit that the satisfaction of Ireland means merely the satisfaction of a class, though it may be the most numerous class of Irishmen, and that it also means the bitter discontent of the one class of Irishmen who are specially loyal to Great Britain. If we are closing one feud we are assuredly opening another feud which it may at least be as hard to heal. But is it true that even the Home Rulers of Ireland are satisfied? Their representatives indeed accept the new constitution. Their acceptance may well, as far as intention goes, be honest. Mr. Davitt, I dare say, when he sentimentalises in the House of Commons about his affection for the English democracy, is nearly, though not quite, as sincere as when he used to express passionate hatred of England.[99] But acquiescence is one thing, satisfaction is another. There is every reason why the Irish members should acquiesce in the new constitution. They obtain much, and they gain the means of getting more. Quite possibly they feel grateful. But their gratitude is not the gratitude of Ireland, and gratitude is hardly a sentiment possible, or indeed becoming, to a nation. England saved Portugal and Spain from the domination of France. Do we find that Portuguese and Spaniards gladly subordinate their interests to the welfare of England? France delivered Italy from thraldom to Austria; French blood paid the price of Italian freedom. Yet France is detested from one end of Italy to the other, whilst Italians rejoice in the alliance with Austria. In all this there is nothing unreasonable and nothing to blame. Policy is not sentimentality, and the relations of peoples cannot be regulated in the same manner as the relations of individuals. Thirty, twenty, ten, five years hence all the sentiment of the year 1893 will have vanished. Irish content and satisfaction must, if it is to exist at all, rest on a far more solid basis than the hopes, the words, the pledges, or the intentions of Mr. M'Carthy, Mr. Sexton, or Mr. Davitt. Note that their satisfaction is even now of a limited kind. It absolutely depends on the new constitution being worked exactly in the way which they desire. The use of the veto, legislation for Ireland by the Imperial Parliament, any conflict between the wish of England and the wish, I do not say of Ireland, but of the Irish Nationalists, must from the nature of things put an end to all gratitude or content. But we may go further than this: the new constitution contains elements of discord. It denies to Ireland the rights of a nation; it does not concede to her the full privileges of colonial independence. No genuine Nationalist can really acquiesce in the prohibition of Ireland's arming even in self-defence. Where, again, is the Nationalist who is prepared to say that he will not if the Bill is passed demand that every conspirator and every dynamiter, who is suffering for the cause of Ireland, shall be released from prison? Is it credible that the Land Leaguers have forgotten what is due to the wounded soldiers of their cause? Are they prepared to forget the imperative claims of evicted tenants or imprisoned zealots?[100] I cannot believe it. But if they are so base as to forget what is due to their friends and victims, what trust could England place in the permanence of any sentiment expressed by such men with however much temporary fervour and however much apparent honesty? If, as I am convinced, the Irish leaders are not prepared to betray the fanatics or ruffians who have trusted and served them, then with what content does England look on the prospect of a general amnesty for criminals or of lavish rewards for breach of contract and the defiance of law? But in truth the new constitution provides for the general discontent, not of one class of Irishmen, but of the whole Irish people. Home Rule is at bottom federalism, and the successful working of a federal government depends on the observation by its founders of two principles. The first is that no one State should be so much more powerful than the rest as to be capable of vying in strength with the whole, or even with many of them combined.[101] The second is that the federal power should never if possible come into direct conflict with the authority of any State. Each of these well-known principles has, partly from necessity and partly from want of skill, been violated by the constructors of the spurious federation which is to be miscalled the United Kingdom. The confederacy will consist of two States; the one, England, to use popular but highly significant language, in wealth, in population, and in prestige immensely outweighs the other, Ireland. And by an error less excusable because it might have been avoided, the power of the central government will be brought into direct conflict with the authority of the Irish State. Read the Bill as it should be read by any one who wishes to understand the working of the new constitution, and throughout substitute 'England' for the term 'United Kingdom.' Note then what must be the operation of the constitution in the eyes of an Irishman. The federal power is the power of England. An English Viceroy instructed by an English Ministry will veto Bills passed by an Irish Parliament and approved by the Irish people. An English court will annul Irish Acts; English revenue officers will collect Irish customs, and every penny of the Irish customs will pass into the English Exchequer. An English army commanded by English officers, acting under the orders of English ministers, will be quartered up and down Ireland, and, in the last resort, English soldiers will be employed to wring money from the Irish Exchequer for the rigorous payment of debts due from Ireland to England. Will any Irishman of spirit bear this? Will not Irishmen of all creeds and parties come to hate the constitution which subjects Ireland to English rule when England shall have in truth been turned into an alien power? The new constitution does not in any case satisfy England. That England is opposed to Home Rule is admitted on all hands; that England has good reason to oppose the new form of Home Rule with very special bitterness is apparent to every Unionist, and must soon become apparent to any candid man, whether Gladstonian or Unionist, who carefully studies the provisions of the new constitution, and meditates on the effect of retaining Irish representatives in the Parliament at Westminster. For my present purpose there is no need to establish that English discontent is reasonable; enough to note its existence. A consideration must be here noticed which as the controversy over Home Rule goes on will come into more and more prominence. We are engaged in rearranging new terms of union between England and Ireland; this is the real effect of the Home Rule Bill; but for such a rearrangement Great Britain and Ireland must in fairness, no less than in logic, be treated as independent parties. Whether you make a Union or remodel a Union between two countries the satisfaction of both parties to the treaty is essential. Till England is satisfied the new constitution lacks moral sanction. That the Act of Union could not have been carried without, at any rate, the technical assent both of Great Britain and Ireland is admitted, and yet the moral validity of the Treaty of Union is, whether rightly or not, after the lapse of ninety-three years assailed, on the ground that the assent of Ireland was obtained by fraud and undue influence. But if the separate assent of both parties was required for the making of the treaty, so the free assent of both must be required for its revision, and the politicians who force on Great Britain the terms of a political partnership which Great Britain rejects, repeat in 1893 and in an aggravated form the error or crime of 1800.[102] _Secondly_. The new constitution rests on an unsound foundation. It is a topsy-turvy constitution, it aims at giving weakness supremacy over strength. The main, though not the sole, object of a well-constituted polity is to place political power (whilst guarding against its abuse) in the hands of the men, or body of men, who from the nature of things, _i.e._ by wealth, education, position, numbers, or otherwise, form the most powerful portion of a given state. The varying forms of the English Constitution have, on the whole, possessed the immense merit of giving at each period of our history political authority into the hands of the class, or classes, who made up the true strength of the nation. Right has in a rough way been combined with might. Wherever this is not the case, and genuine power is not endowed with political authority, there exists a sure cause of revolution; for sooner or later the natural forces of any society must assert their predominance. No institution will stand which does not correspond with the nature of things. Vain were all the efforts of party interest or of philanthropic enthusiasm to give to the Blacks political predominance in the Southern States. Votes, ballot boxes, laws, federal arms, all were in vain. By methods which no man will justify, but which no power could resist, the Whites have re-acquired political authority. The nature of things could not be made obedient to the dogmas of democratic equality. Now the gravest flaw of the new constitution, the disease from which it is certain to perish, is that, in opposition to the forces which ultimately must determine the destiny of the United Kingdom, it renders the strong elements of the community subordinate to the weak. In Ireland Dublin is made supreme over Belfast, the South is made not the equal, but in effect the master of the North; ignorance is given dominion over education, poverty is allowed to dispose of wealth. If Ireland were an independent state, or even a self-governed British colony, things would right themselves. But the politicians who are to rule in Dublin will not depend upon their own resources or be checked by a sense of their own feebleness. They will be constitutionally and legally entitled to the support of the British army; they will constitute the worst form of government of which the world has had experience, a government which relying for its existence on the aid of an external power finds in its very feebleness support for tyranny. Murmurs are already heard of armed resistance. These mutterings, we are told, are nothing but bluster. It is at any rate that sort of "bluster" at which the justice and humanity of a loyal Englishman must take alarm. I have not yet learnt to look without horror on the possibility of civil war, nor to picture to myself without emotion the situation of brave men compelled by the British army to obey rulers whose moral claim to allegiance they justly deny and whose power unaided by British arms they contemn. Civil warfare created by English policy and despotism maintained by English arms must surely be to any Englishman objects of equal abhorrence. But in England no less than in Ireland our new constitution gives artificial power to weakness. At Westminster the Irish members, be they 80 or 103, will have no legitimate place. Mr. Gladstone on this point is, for aught I know, at one with the Unionists. In 1886 he without scruple, and therefore no doubt without any sense of injustice, expelled the representatives of Ireland from the British Parliament. In 1893 he brings them back to Westminster. But his words betray his hesitation. He expects, may we not say he hopes, that they will remain in Ireland and on their occasional visits to London have the good sense and good taste not to interfere in British affairs. Few are the persons who share these anticipations. If they are to be realised they must be embodied in the constitution; the Premier might at this moment without shame, and without regret, revert to the better policy of 1886. On his present policy we all know that his expectations will not be fulfilled. The voluntary absence of the Irish members from Westminster is as vain a dream as the fancy that Ireland under Home Rule may suffer from a plethora of money. To Westminster the Irish members will come. If they do not come of their own accord they will be fetched by allies who need their help. At Westminster they will hold the balance of parties, and will while the constitution lasts rule the destiny of England with a sole regard at best to the immediate interest of Ireland, at worst to the interests of an Irish faction. To Ireland will be given power without responsibility, to England will belong responsibility without power. Nor will the unnatural subjection of a great, a flourishing, a wealthy, and a proud country to a weaker and poorer neighbour be rendered the more bearable by the knowledge that the ill-starred supremacy of Ireland means, in England, the equally unnatural and equally ominous predominance of an English faction, which, since it needs Irish aid, does not command England's confidence. Radicals or revolutionists will in the long run have bitter cause to regret an arrangement which identifies their political triumph with England's humiliation. _Thirdly_. The new constitution is based on a play of words which conceals two contradictory interpretations of its character.[103] The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament means to Irish Home Rulers and to most Gladstonians that Ireland shall possess colonial independence.[104] It means to Unionists and to many electors who can hardly be called either Unionists or Gladstonians, that the British Parliament, or, in other words, England, shall retain the real, effective, and even habitual control of Irish affairs. In the one sense it means only that Ireland shall remain part of the British Empire, in the other that Ireland shall still be part of the United Kingdom. And, what is of great importance, the mass of Englishmen waver between these two interpretations of Imperial supremacy. When they think of Home Rule as satisfying Ireland, they hold that it gives Irishmen everything which they can possibly ask. When they think of Home Rule as not dismembering the United Kingdom, they fancy that it leaves to the British Parliament all the real authority which Parliament can possibly require. This difference of interpretation lays the foundation of misunderstanding, but it does far more harm than this. It must keep Irish Nationalists alarmed, and not without reason, for the permanence of the independence which they may have obtained. A change of feeling or a change of party may cause the Imperial Parliament to assert its reserved authority. England keeps her pledges.[105] Yes, but here it is not a mere question of good faith. When two contractors each from the beginning put _bona fide_ a different interpretation upon their contract, neither of them is chargeable with dishonesty for acting in accordance with his own view of the agreement. The spirit of Unionism and the spirit of Separation will survive the creation of the new constitution. Under one form or another Unionists will be opposed to Federalists and it is more than possible, should the Bill pass, that the division of English parties may turn upon their reading of the Irish Government Act, 1893. The possibility, again, that the Parliament at Westminster may assert its reserved authority, if it raises the fears of Irishman, may excite the hopes of English politicians. If at any time the supremacy of Ireland becomes unbearable to British national sentiment, or if the condition of Ireland menaces or is thought to menace English interests, the new constitution places in the hands of a British majority a ready-made weapon for the restoration of British power. The result might be attained without the necessity for passing any Act of Parliament, or of repealing a single section of the Irish Government Act, 1893. A strong Viceroy might be sent to Ireland; he might be instructed not to convoke the Irish Parliament at all; or, having convoked, at once to prorogue it. He might thereupon form any Ministry he chose out of the members of the Irish Privy Council. The Imperial Parliament would at once resume its present position and could pass laws for Ireland. This might be called revolution or reaction. For my argument it matters not two straws by what name this policy be designated. The scheme sketched out is not a policy which I recommend. My contention is not that it will be expedient--this is a matter depending upon circumstances which no man can foresee--but that it will be strictly and absolutely legal. The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, combined with the presence of the Irish members at Westminster, will thus by a curious fatality turn out a source at once of permanent disquietude to Ireland and of immediate, if not of permanent, weakness to England. Our New Constitution is not made to last Home Rule does not close a controversy; it opens a revolution. No one in truth expects that the new constitution will stand. Its very builders hesitate when they speak of its permanence,[106] and are grateful for the generous credulity of a friend who believes in its finality. Nor is it hard to conjecture (and in such a matter nothing but conjecture is possible) what are the forces or tendencies which threaten its destruction. If Ireland is discontented Irishmen will demand either the extension of federalism or separation. In every federal government the tendency of the States is to diminish as far as possible the authority of the federal power. But this tendency will be specially strong in the grotesque Anglo-Irish federation, since the federal power will be nothing but the predominance of England. The mode of weakening the federal authority is only too obvious. 'The more there is of the more,' says a profound Spanish proverb, 'the less there is of the less.' The more the number of separate States in the confederacy, the less will be the weight of England, and the greater the relative authority of Ireland. Let England, Scotland, and Wales become separate States, let the Channel Islands and Man, and, if possible, some colonies, be added to the federation, and as the greatness of England dwindles so the independence of Ireland will grow. Some seven years ago Sir Gavan Duffy predicted that before ten years had elapsed there would be a federation of the Empire.[107] Like other prophets he may have antedated the fulfilment of his prediction, but his dictum is the forecast of an experienced politician--it points to a pressing danger. Home Rule for Ireland menaces the dissolution of the United Kingdom, and the unity of the United Kingdom is the necessary condition for maintaining the existence of the British Empire. Home Rule is the first stage to federalism. But Irish discontent, should it not find satisfaction in a movement for federalism, will naturally take the form of the demand for colonial or for national independence. You cannot play with the spirit of political nationality. The semi-independence of Ireland from England, combined with the undue influence of Ireland in English politics, is certain to produce both unreasonable and reasonable grounds for still further loosening the tie which binds together the two islands. The cry 'Ireland a nation' is one of which no Irishman need be ashamed, and to which North and South alike, irritated by the vexations of a makeshift constitution, are, as I have already insisted, likely enough to rally. Nor is it certain that Irish Federalists or Irish Nationalists will not obtain allies in England. The politicians who are content with a light heart to destroy the work of Pitt may, for aught I know, with equal levity, annul the Union with Scotland and undo the work of Somers, or by severing Wales from the rest of England render futile the achievement of the greatest of the Plantagenets. Enthusiasts for 'Home Rule all round' would appear to regard their capacity for destroying the United Kingdom as a proof of their ability to build up a new fabric of Imperial power, and to fulfil their vain dreams of a federated Empire. Sensible men may doubt whether a turn for revolutionary destruction is any evidence that politicians possess the rare gift of constructive statesmanship. And should the working of the new constitution confirm these doubts, persons of prudence will begin to perceive that Irish independence is for both England and Ireland a less evil than the extension of federalism. The natural expression however of English discontent or disappointment is reactionary opposition. Reaction, or the attempt of one party in a state to reverse a fundamental policy deliberately adopted by the nation, is one of the worst among the offspring of revolution, and is almost, though not entirely, unknown to the history of England. Yet there is more than one reason why if the Home Rule Bill be carried, reaction should make its ill-omened appearance in the field of English public life. The policy of Home Rule, even should it be for the moment successful, lacks the moral sanctions which have compelled English statesmen to accept accomplished facts. The methods of agitation in its favour have outraged the moral sense of the community. Mr. Gladstone's victory is the victory of Mr. Parnell, and the triumph of Parnellism is the triumph of conspiracy, and of conspiracy rendered the more base because it was masked under the appearance of a constitutional movement. Neither the numbers nor the composition of the ministerial majority are impressive. The tactics of silence, evasion, and ambiguity may aid in gaining a parliamentary victory, but deprive the victory of that respect for the victors on the part of the vanquished which, in civil contests at any rate, alone secures permanent peace. But the pleas and justifications for reaction are rarely its causes. If Englishmen attempt to bring about the legal destruction of the new constitution, their action will be produced by a sense of the false position assigned to England. No device of statesmanship can stand which is condemned by the nature of things. The predominance of England in the affairs of the United Kingdom is secured by sanctions which in the long run can neither be defied nor set aside; the constitution which does not recognise this predominance is doomed to ruin. That its overthrow would be just no one dare predict; the future is as uncertain as it is dark. A main reason why a wise man must deprecate the weak surrender by Englishmen of rightful power is the dread that, if in a moment of irritation they reassert their strength, they may exhibit neither their good faith nor their justice. FOOTNOTES: [95] J. M'Carthy, April 10, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 354. No part of these quotations is italicised in the report. [96] J. M'Carthy. [97] Mr. Sexton. [98] Mr. Gladstone, April 21, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 565. [99] At Bodyke, June 2, 1887, Mr. M. Davitt said:--'Our people, however, who so leave Ireland are not lost in the Irish cause, for they will join the ranks of the Ireland of retribution beyond the Atlantic; and when the day shall again come that we have a right to manage our own affairs, the sun may some day shine down upon England when we here in Ireland will have the opportunity of having vengeance upon the enemy for its crimes in Ireland.'--_Freeman's Journal_, June 3, 1887. See 'Notes on the Bill,' published by the Irish Unionist Alliance, p. 368. These expressions were used after the union of hearts. [100] 'But all these matters are, as it were, minor details. They all sink into comparative insignificance before the one great demand--and I almost apologise for mentioning them--because I want you to concentrate your attention on the one great demand which we make, and the one unalterable statement we intend to adhere to, that whether guilty or innocent, these men, according to their lights and their consciences, were trying to serve Ireland; that any of them who were guilty were driven into this course by the misgovernment of Ireland, and the oppression of Ireland by an outside power, and that if we are asked to settle this Irish question, if we are asked to let peace reign where discord and hatred reign at present, there must be no victims--that if there is to be peace there must also be amnesty. I don't discuss the question of guilt or innocence. For the sake of argument I will say that there are some men in jail who are guilty. They must come out as well as the innocent, because their guilt is due to misgovernment in the past.'--Mr. Pierce Mahony, _Irish Independent_, April 5. See 'Notes on the Bill,' p. 423. 'There is no use in deceiving ourselves upon this matter; we would be fools if we thought that in the next few weeks, or within the next few months, we would succeed in getting our brethren out of prison. I don't believe we will; ... but I am convinced of this, that there is not a man amongst them who will ever be called upon to serve anything like the remainder of his sentence. I am convinced that in a short time--and the extent of its duration depends upon other circumstances--every one of these men will be restored to liberty if only we conduct this agitation with determination, with resolution, and I would say above all with moderation and with wisdom.'--Mr. John Redmond, M.P., _Dublin Irish Independent_, April 5. See 'Notes on the Bill,' p. 424. [101] See Mill, _Representative Government_, 1st ed. p. 300. [102] Of course I do not for a moment dispute the legal right of Parliament to repeal all or any of the articles of the Treaty of Union with Ireland. I am writing now not upon the law, but upon the ethics of the constitution. My contention is, that, as things stand, the undoubted assent of Great Britain (or even perhaps of England, in the narrower sense) is morally requisite for the repeal or at any rate for the remodelling of the Treaty of Union. Note that Ireland would stand morally and logically in a stronger position if demanding Separation than when demanding a revision of the Act of Union. An example shows my meaning. _A, B_, and _C_ form a partnership. _A_ is by far the richest, and _C_ by far the poorest of the firm. _C_ finds the terms of partnership onerous. He may have a moral right to retire, but certainly he cannot have a moral, and would hardly under any system of law have a legal, right to say, 'I do not want to leave the firm, but I insist that the terms of partnership be remodelled wholly in my favour.' Nor again is it conceivable that _B_ and _C_ by uniting together could in fairness claim to impose upon _A_ disadvantages the burden of which he had never intended to accept. [103] See pp. 22-31, _ante_. [104] 'But who proposed that Ireland should be anything else than an integral part of the United Kingdom (Ministerial cheers), or rather of the Empire?' (Opposition cheers).--Mr. Sexton, April 20, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 522. The confusion of ideas and the hesitation implied in Mr. Sexton's expressions are noteworthy. [105] England adhered with absolute fidelity to her renunciation of the right to legislate for Ireland. Whatever were the other flaws in the Treaty of Union, it was no violation either of 22 Geo. III. c. 63, or of 23 Geo. III. c. 28. The worst features of the method by which the Act of Union was carried would have been avoided had the English Parliament resumed the right to legislate for Ireland. The Treaty of Union depends on Acts both of the British and of the Irish Legislature. This is elementary but has escaped the attention of Mr. Sexton (see _Times Parliamentary Debates_, Feb. 13, 1893, p. 319), whose investigations into the history of his country are apparently recent. [106] "The plan that was to be proposed was to be such as, at least in the judgment of its promoters, presented the necessary characteristics--I will not say of finality, because it is a discredited word--but of a real and continuing settlement."--Mr. Gladstone, Feb. 13, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 303. [107] See Mr. Gladstone's Irish Constitution, _Contemporary Review_, May, 1886, p. 616. CHAPTER IV PLEAS FOR THE NEW CONSTITUTION Gladstonians when pressed with the manifest objections to which the new constitution is open rely for its defence either upon general considerations intended to show that the criticisms on the new constitution are in themselves futile, or upon certain more or less specific arguments, of which the main object is to establish that the policy of Home Rule is either necessary or at least free from danger, and that, therefore, this policy and the new constitution in which it is to be embodied deserve a trial. My object in this chapter is to examine with fairness the value both of these general considerations and of these specific arguments. The general considerations are based upon the alleged prophetic character of the criticisms on the new constitution or upon the anomalies to be found in the existing English constitution. Ministerialists try to invalidate strictures on the Home Rule Bill, such as those set forth in the foregoing pages, by the assertion that the objections are mere prophecy and therefore not worth attention. This line of defence may, as against Home Rulers, be disposed of at once by an _argumentum ad hominem_. No politicians have made freer use of prediction. Every Gladstonian speech is in effect a statement that is a prophecy of the benefits which Home Rule will confer on the United Kingdom. Gladstonian anticipations no doubt are prophecies of future blessings; but whoever foretells the future is equally a prophet, whether he announces the end of the world or foretells the dawn of a millennium. And history affords no presumption in favour of the prophet who prophesies smooth things. The prognostics of a pessimist may be as much belied by the event as the hopes of an optimist. But for one prophet to decry the predictions of another simply as prophecies is a downright absurdity. Even among rival soothsayers some regard must be had to fairness and common sense; when Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, smote Micaiah on the cheek, he struck him not on the ground that he prophesied but that his gloomy predictions were false. Zedekiah was an imposter, he was not a fool, and after all Micaiah, who prophesied evil and not good, turned out the true prophet. But an _argumentum ad hominem_ is never a satisfactory form of reasoning, and it is worth while considering for a moment what is the value of prophecy or foresight in politics. Candour compels the admission that anticipations of the future are at best most uncertain. Cobden and Bright foretold that Free Trade would benefit England; they also foretold that the civilised world would, influenced by England's example, reject protective tariffs. Neither anticipation was unreasonable, but the one was justified whilst the other was confuted by events. All that can be said is that on such anticipations, untrustworthy though they may be, the conduct no less of public than of private life depends. Criticism on anything that is new and untried, whether it be a new-built bridge or a new-made constitution, is of necessity predictive. But there is an essential difference between foresight and guessing. The prevision of a philosophic statesman is grounded on the knowledge of the past and on the analysis of existing tendencies. It deals with principles. Such, for example, was the foresight of Burke when he dogmatically foretold that the French Constitution of 1791 could not stand.[108] Guessing is at best based on acute observation of the current events of the day, that is of things which are in their nature uncertain. On January 29, 1848, Tocqueville analysed the condition of French society, and in the Chamber of Deputies foretold the approach of revolution. On February 21, 1848, Girardin said that the monarchy of July would not last three days longer. February 24 verified the insight and foresight of the statesman, and proved that the journalist was an acute observer. The difference is worth consideration. Tocqueville's prophecy would in all probability have been substantially realised had Louis Philippe shown as much energy in 1848 as in 1832, and had the Orleanist dynasty reigned till after his death. Girardin's guess would not have been even a happy hit if one of a thousand accidents had averted the catastrophe of February 24. The worth of the arguments against or for the new constitution depends upon the extent to which they are based upon a mastery of general principles and upon a sound analysis of the conditions of the time, and in these conditions are included the character of the English and of the Irish people. But to object to criticisms simply as prophecies is to reject foresight and to forbid politicians who are creating a constitution for the future to consider what will be its future working. Another Gladstonian argument is that because the English constitution itself is full of paradoxes, peculiarities, and anomalies, therefore the contradictions or anomalies which are patent in the new constitution (such for example as the retention of the Irish members at Westminster) are of no importance. The fact asserted is past dispute. Our institutions are based upon fictions. The Prime Minister, the real head of the English Executive, is an official unknown to the law. The Queen, who is the only constitutional head of the Executive, is not the real head of the Government. The Crown possesses a veto on all legislation and never exercises it; the House of Lords might, if the House pleased, reject year by year every Bill sent up to it by the House of Commons; yet such a course of action is never actually pursued and could not be dreamt of except by a madman. There is no advantage in exemplifying further a condition of things which must be known to every person who has the slightest acquaintance with either the law, or the custom, of the constitution. But the inference which Gladstonian apologists draw from the existence of anomalies is, in the strict sense of the word, preposterous. On the face of the matter it is a strange way of reasoning to say that because the constitution is filled with odd arrangements which no man can justify in theory, you therefore, when designing a new constitution, should take no care to make your arrangements consistent and harmonious. But the Gladstonian error goes a good deal deeper than is at first sight apparent. The anomalies or the fictions of the constitution are in reality adaptations, often awkward enough in themselves, of some old institution, and are preserved because, though they look strange, they are found to work well. Thus the King of England was at one time the actual sovereign of the State, or at any rate the most important member of the sovereign power, and the Ministers were in reality, what they are still in name, the King's servants. The powers of the Crown have been greatly diminished, and have been transferred in effect to the Houses of Parliament, or rather to the House of Commons, and the Ministers taken from the Houses are in fact, though not in name, servants of Parliament. This arrangement leaves an undefined and undefinable amount of authority to the Crown. It is not an arrangement which any man would have planned beforehand; but it is kept up, not because it is an anomaly, but because it has, as a matter of experience, turned out convenient. What even plausible argument can thence be drawn to show that a new constitutional arrangement, on the face of it awkward and inconvenient, will for some unknown reason turn out workable and beneficial? He who reasons thus, if reasoning it can be called, might as well argue that because an old shoe which has gradually been worn to the form of the foot is comfortable, therefore a shoemaker need not care to make a new shoe fit. These two general replies to strictures on the new constitution are in themselves of no worth whatever. They deserve examination for two reasons only. They are, in various shapes, put forward by politicians of eminence, they exhibit further in a clear form a defect which mars a good deal of Gladstonian reasoning. Ministerialists seem to think that arguments good for the purpose of conservatism are available for the purpose of innovation. This is an error. A conservative reasoner may urge the uncertainty of all prevision, or the fact that the actual constitution, though theoretically absurd or imperfect, works well, as reasons of some weight, though not of overwhelming weight, for leaving things as they are, but it must puzzle any sensible man to see how either the uncertainty of prevision or the fair working of existing institutions can be twisted into reasons for taking a political leap in the dark. Let us dismiss then objections which as they are fatal to all criticism are in reality ineffective against any criticism of our new constitution. When this is done it will be found that the Gladstonian pleas in favour of Home Rule, for such are in reality their apologies for the new constitution, may be brought under two heads. They are intended to show, first, that the concession of parliamentary independence to Ireland is a necessity, and, secondly, that at worst it involves no danger.[109] A. _Necessity for Home Rule_. That the concession of Home Rule to Ireland is a necessity, forms the implied, if not always the asserted, foundation of the case in favour of Gladstonian policy. Ireland, it is argued, has for generations been discontented and disloyal. Every sort of remedy has been tried. The rule of the ordinary law, coercion, Protestant supremacy, Catholic relief, the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, the maintenance of the English land tenure and English landlordism, the introduction of a new system of land tenure unknown to any other country in the world and more favourable to tenants than the land law of any other State in Europe, the removal of every grievance which could be made patent to the Imperial Parliament, every plan or experiment which could approve itself to the judgment of English politicians has been tried, and no scheme, however plausible, has ended in success. Concession has proved as useless as severity, and the existence in the Statute Book of a permanent Coercion Act is a standing proof of failure. He who asserts that Irish disloyalty or discontent has not declined understates the case. It has increased. Grattan was a statesman of a more exalted type than O'Connell, and Grattan was more zealous for connection with England than was the Roman Catholic tribune. And though in Grattan's time the grievances of Ireland were in every man's judgment far more intolerable than, even on the showing of Home Rulers, are the wrongs which Ireland now endures, the Ireland of Grattan was loyal to England. O'Connell was a nobler leader than Parnell, and it would be absurd to suppose that any Parnellite or Anti-Parnellite exerted a tenth of O'Connell's influence. Yet Parnell and Parnell's followers have achieved a feat which the hero of Catholic emancipation could never accomplish; O'Connell never obtained for Repeal more than half the votes of Ireland's parliamentary representatives; Parnell and his followers have rallied the vast majority of Irish members in support of Home Rule. Meanwhile year by year the government of England is weakened, and (though the argument comes awkwardly from the mouth of English constitutionalists who are allies and friends of conspirators and boycotters) the morality of English public life has been undermined, by the presence at Westminster of Irish members who, regarding the English Parliament as an alien power, weaken its action, despise its traditions, and degrade its character. One remedy for Irish miseries and for English dangers has not been tried. No English statesman before Mr. Gladstone (it is urged) has offered to Ireland the one thing which Ireland desires--the boon or right of parliamentary independence. Be the desire for Home Rule reasonable or not, it is Home Rule for which Ireland longs. Ireland feels herself a nation. Satisfy then Ireland's wish, meet the feeling of nationality, and Ireland will be at rest. This experiment must at least be tried; its perils must be risked. The present situation is intolerable, the concession of Home Rule to Ireland is a necessity. This, to the best of my apprehension, is the Gladstonian argument. My aim has certainly been to state it fairly and in its full force. Is the argument valid? Is the plea of necessity made out? The answer may be given without hesitation. It is not. The allegations on which the whole train of reasoning rests are tainted by exaggeration or misapprehension, and the allegations, even if taken as true, do not establish the required inference; the premises are unsound, and the premises do not support the conclusion. The premises are unsound. The Gladstonians are far too much of parliamentary formalists. Their imagination and their reason are impressed by the strength in the House of Commons of the Irish party. The eighty votes from Ireland daunt them. But wise men must look behind votes at facts. The eighty Irish Home Rulers are, it is true, no light matter, even when allowance is made for the way in which corruption and intimidation vitiate the vote of Ireland. But their voice is not the voice of the Irish people; it is at most the mutter or the clamour of a predominant Irish faction. It is the voice of Ireland in the same sense in which a century ago the shouts or yells of the Jacobin Club were the voice of France. To any one who looks behind the forms of the constitution to the realities of life, the voice of Irish wealth, of Irish intelligence, and of Irish loyalty is at least as important as the voice of Irish sedition or discontent. The eighty votes must in any case be reckoned morally at not more than sixty, for to this number they would be reduced by any fair and democratic scheme of representation. No one can be less tempted than myself to make light of Irish turbulence and Irish misery. But it must not be exaggerated. The discontent of 1893 is nothing to the rebellion, sedition, or disloyalty of 1782, of 1798, of 1829, or of 1848. If Irishmen of one class are discontented, Irishmen of another class are contented, prosperous, and loyal. The protest of Irish Protestants--the grandsons of the men who detested the Union--against the dissolution of the Union, is the reward and triumph of Pitt's policy of Union. The eighty Irish members ask for Home Rule, but the tenant farmers of Ireland ask not for Home Rule but for the ownership of the land; and the Irish tenant farmers will and may under a Unionist Government become owners of their land, and, what is no slight matter, may become owners by honest means. Vain for Mr. M'Carthy[110] to assert that Irish farmers would not have accepted even from Mr. Parnell the most favourable of land laws in exchange for Home Rule. Mr. M'Carthy believes what he says, but it is impossible for any student of Irish history or of Irish politics to believe Mr. M'Carthy. Facts are too strong for him. Mr. Lalor showed a prevision denied to our amiable novelist. Gustave de Beaumont understood political philosophy better than the lively recorder of the superficial aspects of recent English history. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt, and the whole line of witnesses before the Special Commission, tell a different tale. The very name of the _Land_ League is significant. Home Rule was a mere theme for academic discussion in the mouth of Mr. Butt. Repeal itself never touched the strongest passions of Irish nature, though advocated by the most eloquent and popular of Irish orators. Not an independent Parliament, but independent ownership of land, has always been the desire of Irish cultivators. It was a cry for the land which gave force to the demand for Home Rule; and an Irish agitator, if his strength fails, renews it by touching the earth. But why confine our observation to Ireland? We here come upon the passions, not of Irish nature, but of human nature. There is not a landowner in France who does not care tenfold more for the security of his land than for the form of the government. If peasants trembled for their property the Republic would fall to-morrow. This is no mere conjecture; the peasantry were Jacobins as long as the Jacobins gave them the land, they were Imperialists whilst Napoleon was their security against a restoration which to them meant confiscation of land purchased or seized during the Revolution. The country population of France heard with indifference of the fall of Louis Philippe, and possibly approved the proclamation of the second Republic. But the communism of 1848 roused every landowner against Paris. The peasant proprietors filled the benches of the National Assembly with Conservatives or Reactionists who would save them from plunder; fear became for once the cause of courage, and dread of loss of property sent thousands of peasant proprietors to Paris, that they might crush by force of arms the socialist insurrection of June. Perjury, fraud, and cruelty disgraced the _coup d'état_ of 1851. But, as Liberals now see, the second Empire, hateful though it was to every man who loved freedom or cared for integrity, did not owe the permanence of its power to cunning or to violence. It was the dread of the Red Spectre which drove the landowners of France into Imperialism; they may have liked parliamentary liberty, it was a pleasant luxury, but they loved their land and property, it was their life-blood, and by Socialism their land and property was they believed menaced. As to the Coercion Act, no sensible man, be he Radical or Tory, need trouble himself. The Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887, is neither a disgrace to England nor an injury to Ireland. Its permanence, which is the cause of its mildness, is its merit. Well would it have been had the Act been extended to the whole United Kingdom. Local laws are open to some of the same objections as temporary laws. The enactment contains some improvements in our criminal procedure. There is no more idle superstition than the belief that criminal procedure does not, like other human arrangements, require change. If incendiarism should become an element in the conduct of trade disputes, if dynamite is to be recognised as a legitimate arm in political conflicts, the criminal law of the United Kingdom will, we may be sure, need and receive several alterations and improvements. By far the strongest portion of the Gladstonian argument is the stress that can be laid on the demoralisation of Parliament, produced partly, though not wholly, by the Irish vote. This is a consideration which, as far as it goes, tells in favour of Home Rule. It is, however, a consideration of which the Gladstonian apologist for the new constitution of 1893 [can] make no use. His reasoning of necessity stands thus: The presence of 80 Irish members at Westminster has demoralised Parliament, therefore we must above all things retain 80 or possibly 103 Irish members at Westminster. He is placed in a hopeless dilemma; he dare not draw the only conclusion to which his argument points, namely, that the Irish members must be excluded from the Parliament at Westminster. By a strange fatality, the policy of 1823 retrospectively condemns the policy of 1886, whilst the very strongest argument in favour of the policy of 1886 condemns the policy of 1893. The premises, were they sound, do not support the conclusion. There exists undoubtedly such a thing in politics as necessity. When England acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, or when France surrendered Metz and Strasburg, no one could talk of imprudence of impolicy. The will of Englishmen and of Frenchmen was coerced by the force of events. When all Protestant Ireland was in arms, when the whole Irish nation demanded parliamentary independence, when England had been defeated in America, when France and Spain were allied against her, then the acceptance of Grattan's declaration of right was in truth a necessity. When Wellington became the supporter of Catholic Emancipation because he would not face civil war, when famine was at our gates and Peel repealed the corn laws--then again politicians could plead the excuse of necessity. In these and like crises the wisest men and the bravest men are forced to recognise the logic of facts; and necessity rather than prudence dictates the course of statesmanship. But no such crisis has now arisen. England and Ireland were as safe under the government of Lord Salisbury as under the government of Mr. Gladstone--perhaps safer. No one except an extremely excited and very rhetorical politician will venture to assert that, if Lord Salisbury instead of Mr. Gladstone had last summer gained a majority of forty, any man or woman throughout the United Kingdom would have trembled for the safety of the country. The sky is far less dark than on that fearful day eleven years back[111] when England stood aghast at the assassinations of the Phoenix Park. Irish discontent is an immense evil, of which every just man must deplore the existence; its removal would be the greatest benefit which statesmanship could by any possibility confer upon England. But the immediate dealing with it in a particular way is not a necessity. Were the Home Rule Bill, and every Home Rule Bill, rejected by Parliament, the United Kingdom would be as safe as it has been at any time for the last ninety years and more. In plain truth we have all of us forgotten the meaning of necessity. Gladstonians have come honestly to confuse the needs of a party with the necessities of the country. This is a delusion that at all times and in all lands affects great political connections which, having once rendered high services to the nation, have outlived the valid reasons for their existence. The Republicans saved the United States from disruption. Hence in 1888, when Secession was an historical memory, many of the most to be respected among Americans believed that the rule of an honest Democrat was a worse evil than the rule of a corrupt Republican. Thousands of Frenchmen, amidst the moral bankruptcy of Republican politicians, still hold that, because Republicans years ago saved France from ruin, even reconciled Conservatives cannot in the year 1893 be placed in office without danger to the commonwealth. So it is abroad; so it has been in England. In 1760 the best and wisest of English statesmen deemed it impossible that England should be rightly governed by any politicians but the representatives of the Revolution Families. In 1829 honest citizens trembled at the thought of power passing into the hands of the Whigs; for the Tories had ruled for nearly sixty years, and the Tories had preserved England from revolution and invasion. So at this moment to many well-meaning Liberals the long predominance of the Liberal party makes the possibility of a Cabinet containing politicians who may in any sense be called Tories seem a monstrous calamity, which it is a necessity to avert. Vain to point out that Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour are such Tories as Eldon would have called Jacobins and Lord Melbourne Radicals, and that, they are allied with the best and most trustworthy of living Liberal leaders. Their is no arguing with sentiment; it is necessary to keep the Gladstonian Liberals in office, and the constitution must be sacrificed in order that Lord Salisbury may not resume the Premiership. But there is a deeper cause than all this for our strange ideas of necessity. Habitual ease and unvarying prosperity have for a moment lowered the national spirit. Englishmen confuse inconveniences with dangers; they have forgotten what real peril is; they cannot understand the calmness with which, not a century ago, their fathers resisted at once insurrection in Ireland and the most powerful foreign enemy who has ever challenged the power of England, and this too at a time when the population of Great Britain was not above nine millions and the people of Ireland numbered more than four millions, when France was the leading military power of the world, and Ireland might at any moment receive the aid of a French army led by one of the best French generals. The men of 1798 or 1800 would mock at our ideas of necessity. Ireland has not an eighth of the population of the United Kingdom; our Home Rulers are not Ireland; they are a very different thing--the Irish populace. Let us yield everything which ought to be yielded to justice; let us obey the dictates of expediency, which is only justice looked at from another side; let us concede much to generosity; but in the name of common sense, of honesty, and of manliness, let us hear no more of necessity. Once in an age necessity may be the defence of statesmanship forced to confess its own blindness, but it is far more often the plea of tyranny, of ambition, of cowardice, or despair. B. _No danger in Home Rule_. The arguments which are employed to show that the policy of Home Rule and the new constitution which embodies it involve no danger for England are in the main drawn from the 'Safeguards' or Restrictions contained in the Bill--from the alleged precedent of Grattan's Constitution--from the success of Home Rule in other parts of the world--and, generally, from the expediency of trustfulness. i. _The Safeguards_. The Restrictions on the power of the Irish Parliament are, it is asserted, sufficient and more than sufficient to reassure Unionists, and an intimation is sometimes added that, if further security is wanted, further safeguards may be provided. This ground of confidence may be briefly dismissed; its answer is in effect supplied by the foregoing pages. On the action of the Irish Executive the Restrictions place, and from the nature of things can place, no restraint whatever, and yet both England and the Irish Loyalists have far more reason to dread the abuse of executive than of legislative authority. On the legal action of the Irish Parliament the Restrictions do place a certain restraint, but the Restrictions are, as already shown, not in reality enforceable. They are for good purposes a nullity; they are effective, if at all, almost wholly for evil; they exhibit the radical and fatal inconsistency of Gladstonian policy. The policy of Home Rule is a policy of absolute and unrestricted trust; the safeguards are based on distrust. There is something to be said for generous confidence, and something also for distrustful prudence; there is nothing to be said for ineffective suspicion. ii. _Grattan's Constitution_. From the asserted harmony between England and Ireland from 1782 to 1800 under Grattan's Constitution, the inference is drawn that there is no reason to fear discord between England and Ireland under the Gladstonian constitution of 1893. The fallacy underlying the appeal to this precedent has been, to use words of Mr. Lecky, 'so frequently exposed that I can only wonder at its repetition.'[112] Under Grattan's Constitution the Irish Executive was appointed, not by the Irish Parliament, but by the English Ministry; the Irish Parliament consisted solely of Protestants; it represented the miscalled 'English garrison,' and was in sympathy with the governing classes of England. With all this to promote harmony, the concord between the governing powers in England and in Ireland was dubious. The rejection of England's proposals as to trade, and the exaction of the Renunciation Act, betray a condition of opinion which at any moment might have produced open discord. When at last the parliamentary independence of Ireland had led up to a savage rebellion, suppressed I fear with savage severity, English statesmen knew that an independent Irish Parliament threatened the existence of England. I may be allowed, even by Gladstonians, to place the genius and patriotism of Pitt on at least a level with the genius and patriotism of the present Premier. I may be allowed to doubt whether Mr. Gladstone's studies, however profound, in the history of Ireland, can, in 1893, render his acquaintance with the circumstances and the dangers of 1800 equal to the knowledge of the Minister who, in 1800, carried the Act of Union. And Pitt then held that the Union with Ireland was necessary for the preservation of England. If moreover Grattan's Constitution be a precedent for our guidance, let us see to what the precedent points. The leading principles or features of Grattan's Constitution are well known. They are the absolute sovereignty of the Irish Parliament, and its independence of and equality with the Parliament of Great Britain; the renunciation by the British Parliament of any claim whatever to legislate for Ireland, and of any jurisdiction on the part of any British court to entertain appeals from Ireland; and, lastly, the absence of all representation of Ireland in the Parliament at Westminster. Each of these principles or features is denied or reversed by our new Gladstonian constitution. The Irish Parliament is to be, not a sovereign legislature, but a subordinate legislature created by statute, and a legislature of such restricted and inferior authority as to be unworthy of the name of a parliament. The Imperial Parliament, with its vast majority of British members, asserts its absolute supremacy in Ireland, and the right at its discretion to legislate for Ireland on any matter whatever; in Ireland there is to be founded an Imperial or British Court appointed by the Imperial Ministry, having jurisdiction on all matters affecting Imperial rights, and the final Court of Appeal from every tribunal in Ireland is to be the British Privy Council. Add to this that Irish members are to sit in the Parliament of Westminster as the 'outward and visible sign' of the Imperial Parliament's supremacy. But if every principle of Grattan's Constitution be contradicted by the Gladstonian constitution, if every principle which Grattan detested is a principle which Mr. Gladstone asserts, with what show of reason can the success, uncertain though it be, of the Constitution of 1782 be pleaded as evidence of the probable success of the Gladstonian constitution of 1893? That two arrangements are unlike is to ordinary minds no proof that they will have similar results; a parliamentary majority of forty-two may repeal the Act of Union, but it cannot repeal the laws of logic.[113] iii. _Success of Home Rule_. All over the world, we are told, Home Rule has succeeded; there are, under the government of the British Crown, at least twenty countries enjoying Home Rule, and their local independence causes no inconvenience to the United Kingdom or to the British Empire. It follows therefore that Home Rule in Ireland will be a success and will in no way disturb the peace or prosperity of the United Kingdom. The sole difficulty in meeting this argument is the extreme vagueness of its principal term. The words 'Home Rule' are in their signification so vague, at any rate as employed by Ministerialists, that they cover governments of totally different descriptions. Hungary, Norway, a State of the American Union, a Province of the Canadian Dominion, the Dominion itself, Man, Jersey, and Guernsey, every English colony with representative institutions, are each described, by one Gladstonian reasoner or another, as happy and prosperous under Home Rule. But there is no one who will deny that the dissimilarities between the governments existing in each of the countries referred to are at least as striking as are their similarities; that the contrast, for example, between the relation of Hungary to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the relation of New York to the United States is at least as obvious as its likeness. The analogy, moreover, between Home Rule in any of these countries and Home Rule in Ireland is at best distant and shadowy.[114] The crisis is too serious to permit us to waste words in examining the curiosities of the Home Rule controversy. Of Hungary, and its relation to the Empire of which it forms part, nothing at all will here be said. There is nothing in that relation analogous to Irish Home Rule. Nor need we trouble ourselves with the 'Home Rule' of Rhodes, of Samos, or of the Lebanon. Of these and any other States, if such there be, which enjoy 'Home Rule' under the supremacy of the Sultan, all that need be said is that it is satisfactory to learn on the authority of Mr. Gladstone that any part whatever of the Turkish Empire is well governed and happy. If any one can seriously suppose that the prosperity of Man and the Channel Islands, which reap all the benefits and bear none of the burdens of connection with Great Britain, and moreover have at no time been discontented, affords any reason for supposing that the secular miseries and discontent of Ireland will be cured by a system of government totally different from that which prevails either in Man, or Guernsey, or in Jersey, let him refer to these interesting islands.[115] For myself I shall leave them out of account. Of the cordial relations between Sweden and Norway we hear nothing; the goodwill generated by a system of Home Rule is bringing these countries to the brink of civil war.[116] There are two analogous cases or precedents on which serious reasoners rely in support of a policy of Home Rule for Ireland. The success of federal government in other countries, and especially in the United States, and the success of colonial independence throughout the British Empire, are adduced as presumptions that Home Rule would knit together Great Britain and Ireland, or, as the cant of the day goes, transform a paper union into a union of hearts. If New York be loyal to the United States, if New Zealand be loyal to the British Crown, why should not Ireland, when endowed with local independence resembling the independence of an American State or of a self-governing British colony, be a loyal member of the United Kingdom?[117] This is the suggested argument--let us consider its validity. As to federalism.--All the conditions which make a federal constitution work successfully in the United States, in Switzerland, and possibly in Germany, are wanting in England and Ireland. No man till the last five or six years has even suggested that Englishmen or Scotsmen desire a federal government for its own sake. Whether Mr. Gladstone himself has any wish to federalise the whole United Kingdom is at least open to doubt. Where federalism has succeeded, it has succeeded as a means of uniting separate communities into a nation; it has not been used as a means of disuniting one State into separate nationalities. The United States, it has been well said, is a nation under the form of a federal government. Gladstonians apparently wish to bind together two, or shall we say three or four, nations, or nationalities, under the reality of a federation and the name of a United Kingdom. While all the powerful countries of the world are increasing their strength by union, the advocates of the new constitution pretend to increase the moral strength of the United Kingdom by loosening the ties of its political unity. If any one ask why federalism which has succeeded in America should not succeed in the United Kingdom, the true answer is best suggested by another question: Why would not the constitutional monarchy of England suit the United States? The answer in each case is the same. The circumstances and wants of the two countries are essentially different; and if this be not a sufficient reply, the reflection is worth making that in the three great Confederacies of the world unity has been achieved, or enforced by armed conflict. As to colonial independence.--The plain and decisive reason why the loyalty of New Zealand to the Empire affords no presumption of the loyalty under our new constitution of Ireland to the United Kingdom is this: The whole condition of New Zealand is different from the condition of Ireland, and our new constitution is not intended to give Ireland the position of New Zealand. Thousands of miles separate New Zealand from Great Britain. Ireland is separated from us by not much more than twelve miles. New Zealand has never been hostile to England; her people are loyal to the British Crown. Ireland, or part of the Irish people, has been divided from England by a feud of centuries; it would be difficult among Irish Nationalists to obtain even the show of loyalty to the Crown. New Zealand is wealthy, and New Zealand pays not a single tax into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. Ireland is poor, and, if her taxation is lightened by Home Rule, the tribute which will be paid to England will be heavy, and far more galling than the taxes she now pays in common with the rest of the United Kingdom. The new constitution, again, is utterly unlike a colonial constitution. Its burdens would not be tolerated by any one of our independent colonies. The rights it gives, no less than the obligations it imposes, are foreign to our colonial system. The presence of the Irish representation at Westminster forbids all comparison between Ireland under Home Rule and New Zealand under a system of colonial independence. But the matter must be pressed further. Even were it possible to place Ireland in the position either of an American State or Swiss Canton, or of an independent colony, the arrangement would not meet the needs of the United Kingdom. This is a point which has not as yet arrested attention. For the safety of the United Kingdom it is absolutely necessary that the authority of the Imperial Government, or, in other words, the law of the land, should be enforced in Ireland in a sense in which the law of the land is rarely enforced in federations, and in which it is certainly not enforced by the Imperial Government in self-governing colonies. In federations the law of the land is nearly powerless when opposed to the will of a particular State. President Jackson's reported dictum, 'John Marshall[118] has delivered his judgment, let him now enforce it if he can,' and the fact that the judgment was never enforced,[119] are things not to be forgotten. They are worth a thousand disquisitions on the admirable working of federalism. But there is no need to rely on a traditional story, which, however, is an embodiment of an undoubted transaction. The plainest facts of American history all tell the same tale. No Abolitionist could in 1850 without peril to his life have preached abolition in South Carolina; difficult indeed was the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law and small the practical respect paid in Massachusetts to the doctrine of the Dred Scott Case. Unless all reports are false, the Negro vote throughout the Southern States is at this moment practically falsified, and little do the Constitutional Amendments benefit a Negro in any case where his conduct offends Southern principle or prejudice. For my present argument it matters nothing whether the oppression of individuals or the defiance of law was or was not, in all these cases, as it certainly was in some instances, a violation to the supreme law of the land. If the law was violated then, why should we expect Imperial law to be of more force in Ireland than federal law in South Carolina, or in Massachusetts? If the rights of individuals were not adequately protected by federal law against the injustice of a particular State, then why expect that the provisions of our new constitution, far less stringent as they are than the protective provisions of the United States Constitution, should avail to protect unpopular persons in Ireland against the legal tyranny of the Irish Executive or the Irish Parliament? Experience of federalism is not confined to the United States. The Swiss Confederation is in Europe the most successful both of democratic and of federal polities. The Swiss Executive exercises powers common to all continental governments but of a description which no English Cabinet could claim, and the Swiss Executive is made up of statesmen skilful beyond measure in what may be called the diplomacy of federalism. Yet in Switzerland, as in the United States, federal government means weak government. Ticino is a small Canton, but from the days of Athenian greatness small States have been the instructors of the world, and Englishmen, hesitating over a political leap in the dark, would do well to study the Ticinese revolution of September 11, 1890. The Radicals of the Canton rose in insurrection, and deposed the lawful government by violence; as Englishmen may remember, the contest though short involved at least one murder. The Swiss Executive (called the Federal Council) forthwith took steps to restore order and to reinstate the lawful Cantonal government. Their own commissioner, a military officer, in effect declined to put the overthrown government back in power. Order was restored, but the law was never vindicated. A strange set of negotiations, transactions, or intrigues took place. In the Federal Assembly at Berne, the Conservatives, a minority, urged the rights of the lawful government of Ticino. The Liberals defended or palliated the revolutionists. On the whole the advantage seems to have rested with the latter. A trial before a Federal Court took place, but the accused were acquitted. No one, if I am rightly informed, was punished for an act of manifest treason. It is even more noticeable that Professor Hilty, a distinguished and respected Swiss publicist, vindicates or palliates the admitted breach of law, in deference to the principle or sentiment, which if true has wide application, that 'human nature is not revolutionary, and that no revolution ever arises without a heavy share of guilt (Mitschuld) on the part of the government against which the revolution is directed.'[120] The instructiveness of this passage in Swiss history as regards the working of our new constitution is obvious; Englishmen should specially note the interconnection between lawlessness in Ticino and the balance of parties at Berne; it is easy to foresee an analogous connection between revolution, say in Dublin or Belfast, and the balance of parties at Westminster. But this is not my immediate point; my point is that the Federal Government at Berne cannot enforce obedience to law in Ticino in the way in which Englishmen expect that the Imperial Government shall, under any circumstances, enforce or cause the law to be enforced in Ireland. But Ireland, it will be said, is to occupy a position like that of a self-governing colony. In British colonies the Imperial power and the rule of law are respected; both therefore will be respected in Ireland. The plain answer to this suggestion is that in a British self-governing colony, no law is enforceable which is opposed to colonial sentiment and which the colonial Ministry refuse to put into execution. One well-ascertained fact is enough to dispose of a hundred platitudes about Imperial supremacy and the loyal obedience of our colonies. Victoria is as loyal to the Crown as any colony which England possesses, yet the submission to law of the Victorian Government and people is not by any means unlimited. Ten years ago three British subjects arrived at Melbourne and were about to land. Popular sentiment, or in other words the will of the mob, had decreed that they should not enter the colony. The Victorian Premier (Mr. Service) announced in Parliament that their landing should be hindered. The police, acting under the orders of the Ministry, boarded the ship which brought the strangers, went near to assaulting the captain, and forcibly prevented the hated travellers from setting foot on shore. By arrangement between the Melbourne Government, the captain, and the three men, who were by this time in terror of their lives, the victims of lawlessness were carried back to England. That the law had been grossly violated no one can really dispute. The violation was the more serious because it excited no notice. No appeal was apparently made to the Courts. The Governor--the representative of Imperial power and Imperial justice--knew presumably what was going on, yet he uttered not one word of remonstrance. The Agent-General for Victoria, when at last a private person in England called attention to the outrage at Melbourne, pleaded in effect the plea of necessity, and described the act of tyranny, whereby British citizens were in a British colony turned into outlaws, as 'an act of executive authority.' The Imperial Government did I believe--what was perhaps the wisest thing it could do--nothing. Imperial supremacy in the colonies was, as regards the protection of unpopular individuals, admitted to be a farce. What, however, rendered the three travellers unpopular? They were Irish informers who had aided, unless I am mistaken, in the conviction of the Phoenix Park murderers. Let us now in imagination conceive our new constitution to have come into being, and transfer the transactions at Melbourne in 1883 to Dublin in 1894. Will the Imperial supremacy which is supposed to be so effective in the colonies be of any more worth in Ireland than in Victoria?[121] Were it true, then, which it certainly is not, that the conditions exist in Ireland which conduce to the maintenance of federal power in the State of a well-arranged federation, and to the maintenance of Imperial power in a self-governing British colony, this would not be enough to support the argument in favour of the new constitution. For the Imperial Government needs that the law should be maintained, and the rights of individuals be protected, in Ireland with greater stringency than the law is enforced or the rights of individuals are protected either under a federal government or in a British colony. Miserable indeed would be the position of England were she forced in Ireland to wink at lawlessness such as but the other day disgraced New Orleans, or at mob law countenanced by the 'Executive,' such as in 1883 ruled supreme at Melbourne. Foreign powers at any rate would rightly decline to let the defects of our constitution excuse the neglect of international duties. If England cannot shuffle off her responsibilities, England is bound in prudence to maintain her power. iv. _The Policy of Trust_. 'I believe myself that suspicion is the besetting vice of politicians and that trust is often the truest wisdom.'[122] This sentiment is followed by curious and ambiguous qualifications. It is not cited for the sake of fixing Mr. Gladstone with any doctrine whatever; it is quoted because it neatly expresses the sentiment which, in one form or another, underlies most of the arguments in favour of Home Rule or of our new constitution. The right attitude for a politician, it is urged, is trust; he should trust the Irish leaders and their assurances or professions; he should trust in the training conferred upon men by the exercise of power; he should trust in the healing effects of a policy of conciliation, or, to put the matter shortly, he should trust in the goodness and reasonableness of human nature. Exercise only a little trustfulness and the policy of Home Rule, it is suggested, may be seen to be a wise and prudent policy.[123] How far, then, is trust in any of the three forms, which it may on this occasion take, a reasonable sentiment? We are told to trust the Irish leaders. My answer to this advice is plain and decided. Confidence is not a matter of choice. You cannot give your trust simply because you wish to give it. Men are trusted because they are trustworthy. The Irish Home Rule leaders as a body cannot inspire trust, for the simple reason that their whole policy and conduct prove them untrustworthy. Politicians, strange as the fact may appear to them, cannot get quit of their past. Look for a moment at the history--the patent, acknowledged history--of the agitators or the patriots (and I doubt not that many of them are, from their own point of view, patriotic) in whom we are asked to confide, and whose assurances are to form the basis on which to rest a dubious policy. They have been till recently the foes of England. This in itself is not much; many a rebel has been the enemy of England, and yet has been entitled to the respect of Englishmen. But there are deeds which neither hatred to England nor love of Ireland can justify. Even sedition has its moral code, and like war itself is subject to obligations which no man can neglect without infamy. The conspirators condemned by the Special Commission--and among them are to be found the most prominent of the Irish leaders[124]--have been guilty of conduct which no wise man ought to forget and no good man ought to palliate. They have for years excited Irish ignorance against England and against English officials by a system of gross incessant slander; witness the pages of _United Ireland_ when Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan were in power at Dublin. The men whom we are told to trust are men who did enter into a criminal conspiracy by a system of coercion and intimidation to promote an agrarian agitation against the payment of agricultural rents, for the purpose of impoverishing and expelling from the country the English landlords[125]; they are men found guilty of not denouncing intimidation which led to crime and outrage, but of persisting in it with a knowledge of its effect.[126] They are proved to have made payments to compensate persons injured in the commission of crime[127]; they are men who have solicited and taken the money of Patrick Ford, the advocate of dynamite; and have invited and obtained the co-operation of the Clan-na-Gael.[128] Their whole system of agitation has been utterly unlike that of honourable agitators, conspirators, or rebels; it would have excited the horror of O'Connell; it would have been repudiated with disgust by Davis, by Gavan Duffy, by Smith O'Brien, and the other Irish leaders of 1848. The men who now ask for our confidence have in their attack upon England forgotten what was due to Ireland; they have deliberately taught Irish peasants lessons of dishonesty, oppression, and cruelty, which the farmers of Ireland may take years to unlearn. Of the degradation which they have gradually inflicted upon the English Parliament one is glad to say little. It is, however, well that the House of Commons should recollect that parliamentary debates are open to all the world and that Englishmen and Englishwomen see no reason why brutalities of expression should be tolerated in the oldest representative Assembly of Europe which would be reproved in any respectable English meeting. But you can sometimes trust men's capacity where you cannot trust their moral feeling. Unfortunately the Irish Parliamentary party have given us examples of their ability in matters of government which are not reassuring. The scenes of Committee Room No. 15[129] are a rehearsal of parliamentary life under Home Rule at Dublin. But the Gladstonians, we shall be told, guarantee the good faith of their associates. Unfortunately, as judges of character the Gladstonians are out of court. The leader who first obtained their confidence was Mr. Parnell. If the Home Rule Bill of 1886 had become law Mr. Parnell would have become Premier of Ireland, and we should have been bidden to put trust in his loyalty and his integrity. There are no Gladstonians now who think Mr. Parnell trustworthy. Why should they be better judges of the trustworthiness of Mr. Dillon, Mr. M'Carthy, or Mr. Davitt, than they were of the character of the statesman who was the leader, friend or patron of the whole Irish Parliamentary party? Note, however--for in this matter it is essential to make one's meaning perfectly clear--I do not allege, or suppose, that the assurances of the Irish leaders are mendacious. They believe, I doubt not, what they say at the moment; but their words mean very little. In a sense they believed, or did not disbelieve, the slanderous accusations which filled the pages of _United Ireland_. In a sense they now believe that the Home Rule Bill is a satisfactory compromise. But the belief in each case must be considered essentially superficial. Men are the victims of their own career: it is absolutely impossible that leaders many of whom have indulged in virulence, in slanders, in cruelty, in oppression, should be suddenly credited with strict truthfulness, with sobriety, with respect for the rights of others. Even as it is, landlords are, in Mr. Sexton's eyes, criminals,[130] and he therefore cannot be trusted to act with fairness towards Irish landowners. Mr. Redmond holds that imprisoned dynamiters and other criminals should be released, whether guilty or not, and it is therefore reasonable not to put Mr. Redmond in a position where he can insist upon an amnesty for dynamiters and conspirators. Nor is it at all clear that as regards amnesty any Anti-Parnellite dare dissent from the doctrine of Mr. Redmond. It is odious, it will be said, to dwell on faults or crimes which, were it possible, every man would wish forgotten. But when we are asked to trust politicians who are untrustworthy, it is a duty to say why we must refuse to them every kind of confidence. Of the penalty for such plain speaking I am well aware. It will be said that to attack the Irish leaders is to slander the Irish people. This is untrue. In times of revolution men perpetually come to the front unworthy of the nation whom they lead. To treat distrust of the leaders of the Land League as dislike or distrust of the Irish people is as unfair as to say that the censor of Robespierre, of Marat, or of Barère denies that during the Revolution Frenchmen displayed high genius and rare virtues. There are thousands of Irishmen who will endorse every word I have written about the Irish leaders. Add to this that I am not called upon to pronounce any further condemnation upon the party than was pronounced upon the chief among them by the Special Commission. All I assert is that from the nature of things the men found guilty by the Commission cannot inspire trust. Power, it is often intimated, teaches its own lessons. Trust Irishmen with the government of their own country, and you may feel confident that experience will teach them how to govern justly. To this argument I need not myself provide a reply: it has been admirably given by my friend Mr. Bryce. Every word which in the following passage refers to the State legislatures of the United States applies in principle to the future Parliament at Dublin:-- 'The chief lesson which a study of the more vicious among the State legislatures teaches, is that power does not necessarily bring responsibility in its train. I should be ashamed to write down so bald a platitude were it not that it is one of those platitudes which are constantly forgotten or ignored. People who know well enough that, in private life, wealth or rank or any other kind of power is as likely to mar a man as to make him, to lower as to raise his sense of duty, have nevertheless contracted the habit of talking as if human nature changed when it entered public life, as if the mere possession of public functions, whether of voting or of legislating, tended of itself to secure their proper exercise. We know that power does not purify men in despotic governments, but we talk as if it did so in free governments. Every one would of course admit, if the point were put flatly to him, that power alone is not enough, but that there must be added to power, in the case of the voter, a direct interest in the choice of good men, in the case of the legislator, responsibility to the voters, in the case of both, a measure of enlightenment and honour. What the legislatures of the worst States show is not merely the need for the existence of a sound public opinion, for such a public opinion exists, but the need for methods by which it can be brought into efficient action upon representatives who, if they are left to themselves, and are not individually persons with a sense of honour and a character to lose, will be at least as bad in public life as they could be in private. The greatness of the scale on which they act, and of the material interests they control, will do little to inspire them. New York and Pennsylvania are by far the largest and wealthiest States in the Union. Their legislatures are confessedly the worst.'[131] The passage is the more impressive just because it is not written with a view to Ireland. No one doubts that the people of the United States, both in morality and in talent, equal if they do not excel the people of any other country in the world. But the warmest eulogist of America seeks throughout his work for the explanation of the fact which is really past dispute, that the political morality of the United States sinks below the general morality of the nation.[132] There is not the least reason why under a vicious constitution the government at Dublin should not reflect or exaggerate the vices, rather than represent the noble qualities and the gifts, of the Irish people. But the doctrine of trust takes another and more general form. You may place confidence, it is alleged, in the goodness of human nature, and should believe that the concession of Home Rule, just because it meets the wishes of the Irish people, will take away every source of discontent, and thereby remove any difficulty in making even an imperfect constitution work well. To this the answer may fairly be made, which I have made in the preceding pages, that Home Rule does not meet the wish of the most important part of the Irish people, but in truth arouses their abhorrence, and that even Home Rulers care much less than Gladstonians suppose about constitutional changes. To give a man a vote for a Parliament at Dublin when he is demanding an acre or two of land, comes very near giving him a stone when he asks for bread. But I assume for a moment that the Irishmen, who express no great enthusiasm for the Home Rule Bill, desire the new constitution as ardently as sixty years or so ago our fathers desired parliamentary reform. Yet even on this assumption the belief in Home Rule as a panacea for Irish ills is childish, and belongs to a bygone stage of opinion. We now know that changes in political machinery, however important, do not of themselves produce content. A poverty-stricken peasant in Connaught will not be made happy because a Parliament meets at Dublin. We now further know that the difficulty of satisfying popular aspirations often arises from the fundamental faults of human nature. Trust in the people may often be wiser than distrust, but to suppose that masses of men are wiser, more reasonable, or more virtuous than the individuals of which they consist, is as idle a political delusion as the corresponding ecclesiastical delusion that a church has virtues denied to the believers who make up the church. On this point an anecdote makes my meaning clearer than an argument. On May 15, 1848, the French National Assembly was invaded by an armed mob, who shouted and yelled for three hours and more, and threatened at any moment to slaughter the representatives of France. From June 22-26, 1848, there raged the most terrible of the insurrections which Paris has seen. For the first time in modern history the workmen of the capital rose against the body of the more or less well-to-do citizens. There was not a man in Paris who did not tremble for his property and his life. Householders feared the very servants in their homes. Between these days of ferocity intervened a day of sentiment. On May 21, 1848, the Assembly attended a Feast of Concord. There were carts filled with allegorical figures, there were processions, there were embraces; the whole town, soldiers, national guards, gardes mobiles, armed workmen, a million of men or more, passed in array before the deputies. The feast was a feast of concord, but every deputy had provided himself with pistols or some weapon of defence. This was the occasion when we are told by the reporter of the scene, 'Carnot said to me with a touch of that silliness (_niaiserie_) which is always to be found mixed up with the virtues of honest democrats, "Believe me, my dear colleague, you must always trust the people." I remember I answered him rather rudely, "Ah! why didn't you remind me of that on the day before May 15?"' The anecdote is told by the greatest political thinker whom France has produced since the days of Montesquieu. 'Trust in the people' did not appear the last word of political wisdom to Alexis de Tocqueville.[133] The Gladstonian pleas to which answer has been made are, it will be said, arguments not in favour of our new constitution, but in support of Home Rule. The remark is just; it points to a curious weakness in the reasoning of Gladstonians. They adduce many reasons of more or less weight for conceding some kind of Home Rule to Ireland. But few indeed are the reasons put forward, either in the House of Commons or elsewhere, in favour of the actual Home Rule Bill of 1893. As to the merits of this definite measure Ministerialists show a singular reticence. It may be that they wish to save time and hold that the measure commends itself without any recommendation by force of its own inherent merits. But to a critic of the new constitution another explanation suggests itself. Can it be possible that Ministerialists themselves are not certain what are the fixed principles of the new policy? Everything about it is indefinite, vague, uncertain. Who can say with assurance what Gladstonians understand by Imperial supremacy? Is there or is there not any idea of excluding Ulster from the operation of the Bill? Is it or is it not a principle that members from Ireland shall be summoned to Westminster? Are the Irish members, if summoned, to vote on all matters, or on some only? To each of these questions the only answer that can be given is--nobody knows. But in this state of ignorance it is natural and excusable that apologists should confine themselves to general lines of defence. No politician who respects himself would willingly risk a vigorous apology for the special provisions of a particular measure, when, for aught he knows, the provision which he thinks essential turns out to be an unimportant detail, and is liable to sudden variation. FOOTNOTES: [108] 'I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they are not likely to alter yours.... But hereafter they may be of some use to you, in some future form which your commonwealth may take. In the present it can hardly remain; but before its final settlement it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says, "through great varieties of untried being," and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood.'--_Burke's Works_, ii. (ed. 1872), p. 517, 'Reflections on the Revolution in France.' [109] As to the general causes of the strength of the Home Rule movement in England, and the general considerations in its favour, see _England's Case against Home Rule_ (3rd ed.), ch. iii. and iv. pp. 34-127. From the opinions expressed in these chapters I see no reason for receding. [110] Mr. M'Carthy, April 10, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debate_, 353. [111] [May 6, 1882. Now twenty-nine years back.] [112] Every one should read Mr. Lecky's letter of April 4, 1893, addressed to the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, and printed in the _Chamber's Reply_ to Mr. Gladstone's speech. It deals immediately not with the relations between England and Ireland, but with the alleged prosperity of Ireland under Grattan's Constitution. But in principle it applies to the point here discussed, and I venture to say that every page of Mr. Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ which refers to Grattan's Parliament bears out the contention, that no inference can be drawn from it as to the successful working, as regards either England or Ireland, of the legislature to be constituted under the Home Rule Bill. [113] Add also that steamboats and railways have practically, since the time of Grattan, brought Ireland nearer to England, and Dublin nearer to London. At the end of the last or the beginning of this century a Lord Lieutenant was for weeks prevented by adverse winds from crossing from Holyhead to Dublin. Mr. Morley can attend a Cabinet Council at Westminster one afternoon and breakfast next morning in Dublin. [114] With the conclusions as to Home Rule of my lamented friend Mr. Freeman it is impossible for me to agree. But for that very reason I can the more freely insist upon the merit of his paper on _Irish Home Rule and its Analogies_ as an attempt to clear up our ideas as to the meaning of Home Rule. He, for instance, points out that the relations between Hungary and Austria do not constitute the relation of Home Rule and afford no analogy to the relation which Home Rulers propose to establish between Great Britain and Ireland. See _The New Princeton Review_ for 1888, vol. vi. pp. 172, 190. [115] A Gladstonian who thinks the case of the Channel Islands in point, would do well to get up the facts of their history. They were no more 'given' a constitution by England than, as most Frenchmen believe, they were conquered from France. See Mr. Haldane, April 7, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 333. [116] They have now (1911) led to political separation, happily without the need for civil war. [117] See further on this point, Home Rule as Federalism, _England's Case against Home Rule_ (3rd ed.), pp. 160-197, and for Home Rule as Colonial Independence, _ib_. pp. 197-218. [118] Then the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. [119] See 'Andrew Jackson,' _American Statesmen Series_, p. 182. [120] Hilty, _Separatabdruck aus dem Politischen Jahrbuch der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft_ (_Jahrgang_ 1891), p. 377. [121] For the story of Kavanagh, Hanlon, and Smith, and their attempted landing at Melbourne, see _England's Case_ (3rd ed.), p. 207. [122] Mr. Gladstone, February 13, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 307. [123] An eminent and very able Gladstonian M.P. once said in my presence, in effect, for I cannot cite his actual words, that the difference between Gladstonians and Unionists was a difference in their judgment of character or of human nature. He touched I believe far more nearly than do most politicians the root of the differences which divide the authors and the critics of our new constitution. [124] Report of Special Commission, pp. 54, 55. [125] _Ibid_. pp. 53, 119. [126] _Ibid_. pp. 119, 120. [127] Report of Special Commission, p. 120. [128] _Ibid_. [129] This Committee Room was the scene of the desertion of Parnell by the majority of his former followers. [130] 'The crime of the Land League was a trifle compared to the crime of the landlords.'--Mr. Sexton, April 20, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 525. [131] Bryce, _American Commonwealth_ (1st ed.), ii. pp. 190, 191. [132] Compare _ibid_. ii. p. 618. [133] 'Carnot me dit avec cette niaiserie que les démocrates honnêtes ne manquent guère de mêler à leur vertu: "Croyez-moi, mon cher collègue, il faut toujours se fier au peuple." Je me rappelle que je lui répondis assez brusquement: "Eh! que ne me disiez-vous cela la veille du 15 mai?"'--_Souvenirs de Alexis de Tocqueville_, p. 196. CHAPTER V THE PATH OF SAFETY We stand on the brink of a precipice.[134] To say that Englishmen are asked to take a leap in the dark is far to understate the peril of the moment. We are asked to leave an arduous but well-known road, and to spring down an unfathomed ravine filled with rocks, on any one of which we may be dashed to pieces. The very excess of the peril hides its existence from ordinary citizens. Mr. Gladstone, they argue, is a wise man and a good man, his colleagues are partisans, they are not conspirators; it is incredible that they should recommend a measure fraught with ruin to England. But the matter is intelligible enough. Mr. Gladstone's weakness, no less than his strength, has always lain in his temporary but exclusive preoccupation with some one dominant idea. The one notion which possesses his mind--to judge from his public conduct and speeches--is that at any cost Home Rule, that is, an Irish Executive and an Irish Parliament, must be conceded to Ireland. Enthusiasm, pride, ambition, all the motives, good and bad, which can influence a statesman, urge him to achieve this one object. If he succeeds his political career is crowned with victory, if not with final triumph; if he fails his whole course during the last seven years turns out an error. But it has long been manifest that only with the greatest difficulty can English electors be persuaded to accept Home Rule. Hence it has been found essential that the principles of the measure should not be known before the time for passing it into law. Hence the ill-starred avoidance of discussion. Hence the ultimate framing of a scheme which is made to pass, but is not made to work, and which probably enough does not represent the real wishes or convictions of any one statesman. Where is the Minister who will tell us that this particular Government of Ireland Bill is according to his judgment--I will not say in its details, but in each and all of its leading principles--the best constitution which can be framed for determining the relations between England and Ireland? This Minister has not appeared--I doubt whether he exists. The Bill may be a model of artful provision for conciliating the prejudices or soothing the fears of English electors, but it is not a well-digested constitution. It is inferior to the Home Rule Bill of 1886. Another consequence of the circumstances under which the Bill has been framed is that its authors themselves have never had the benefit to be derived from the mature discussion of its principles. Mr. Gladstone himself cannot say what are and what are not the fundamental ideas of his scheme. He obviously held, at any rate when the Bill was introduced, that the presence of the Irish members at Westminster was a detail, whereas it is in reality the fact which governs the character of the new constitution. To imply that such a matter can be treated as subsidiary is, in the eyes of any student of constitutions, as ridiculous as it would seem to Mr. Gladstone for a Chancellor of the Exchequer, on introducing his budget, to assert that, whether he maintained or did not maintain the income tax, was an organic detail which did not fundamentally affect his financial proposals. The Ministry are as much at sea as their chief; nor is this wonderful. There are two things of which English statesmen have had little experience. The one is a revolutionary movement, the other is the construction of a constitution. But the Home Rule Bill is at once the effect and the sign of a revolutionary movement, and the task in which the Gladstonians are engaged is the formation of a new constitution. Blind leaders are leading a blind people, and our blind leaders, some of whom care more for Radical supremacy in England than for Imperial supremacy in Ireland, are like many other men of our time, the slaves of phrases, such as 'trust in the people,' which pass muster for principles. If the blind lead the blind, what wonder if they stumble over a precipice? The peril in which the country stands is concealed from us by a curious reaction of opinion. Good political institutions, it was at one time held, were the cause of a nation's happiness, and England, it was firmly believed, owed her prosperity wholly to her constitution. A century of revolutions has taught us all that a good form of government cannot of itself save a state from ruin, and many of us have come to think that forms of government are nothing, and that no constitutional changes can impair the strength of England. No delusion however is more patent or more noxious. Never was a country richer in the elements of strength than were the Thirteen Colonies when their independence was acknowledged by England. Yet the Confederation by the vices of its constitution filled the colonies with discord, and made them both weak at home and contemptible abroad, whilst the creation of the United States restored them to peace and opened for them the road to greatness. The predominance for more than fifty years of the Slave Power in the politics of the American Union, the struggle measured by centuries through which at last the Protestant and progressive Cantons of Switzerland asserted their rightful supremacy over the Catholic and unprogressive Cantons of Switzerland, the weakness of Prussia when, not much more than forty[135] years back, she could hardly maintain her rights and her dignity against Austria, the classical instance of Germany, which though possessed of every source of power lay for generations at the mercy of France, mainly on account of vicious political institutions, are proofs, if evidence were wanting, of the capacity of ill-designed constitutions to hamper the action and threaten the prosperity of great nations. A constitution in truth is a national garb. A good constitution will not make a weak country strong, but an unsuitable constitution may reduce a strong country to feebleness. A weakling does not become a strong man by putting on armour, but a giant can derive no advantage from his strength if once he be got by fraud or force into a strait waistcoat. Strength, it is true, will in the long run assert itself. The artificial supremacy of Ireland, or of a faction supported by Irish votes, will not last for ever; probably it will not last long. If the new constitution prove unbearable by England it will not be borne; it will be overthrown or evaded. Far am I from asserting that the breach or evasion will, when it shall occur, be justifiable. Englishmen's ideas of good faith are strict, but they are narrow. One main reason for dreading the new constitution is that it may try beyond measure the patience and the honesty of England. If, for instance, Ulster should resist the legal authority of the Parliament at Dublin, there may arise one of those terrible periods in which the observation of pledged faith seems inconsistent with the natural dictates of honour and humanity, and weak concession at the present moment will, at such a crisis, be found to have contained among its other perils the danger lest England, when at last she re-asserts her power in Ireland, should not re-establish her justice. Where then lies the path of safety? The road is difficult, but it is clearly marked; it is at any rate to be found, not by any exercise of subtlety or of extraordinary acuteness, but by obeying the plain dictates of common sense and sound public morality. The characteristics of Unionist policy must be seriousness, simplicity, and reliance upon an appeal to the nation. Seriousness is essential. The need of the time is to impress on the mass of the people the intense gravity of the crisis. Far too much was said before the general election about the weaknesses and the inconsistencies of the Gladstonians, and far too little about the causes of their strength and the absolute necessity for arduous efforts to defeat the Separatists at the polling-booths. The error must not be repeated. The people must be told, as they may be told with absolute truth, that the fate of England is in question, and that nothing but the efforts of every Unionist throughout the land can save the country from destruction. The contest has, without either party being aware of the change, shifted its character since 1886. Then the names of Unionists and Separatists expressed the whole difference between the opponents and supporters of the Home Rule Bill. The Gladstonians for the most part meant the Bill to affect, as far as possible, the condition of Ireland alone. They did not mean to change the constitution of the United Kingdom. It is now plain, as has been shown throughout these pages, that the measure of so-called Home Rule is a new constitution for the whole United Kingdom. In 1886 the Gladstonians _bona fide_ intended to close the period of agitation. In 1893 many Gladstonians see in Home Rule for Ireland only the first step towards an extended scheme of federalism. In 1886 no Gladstonian had palliated crime or oppression, no Gladstonian statesman had discovered that boycotting was nothing but exclusive dealing, no Gladstonian Chancellor had made light of conspiracy. All this is changed. Alliance with revolutionists or conspirators has imbued respectable English statesmen with revolutionary doctrines and revolutionary sentiment. The difference between Unionist and Separatist remains, but it is merged in the wider difference between Constitutionalists and Revolutionists. The question at issue is not merely, though this is serious enough, whether the Act of Union shall be repealed or relaxed, but whether the United Kingdom is morally a nation, and whether as a nation it has a right to insist upon the supreme authority belonging to the majority of its citizens. A similar question was some thirty-two years ago put to the people of the United States; it was decided by the arbitrament of battle. The terrible calamity of an appeal to the test of force Englishmen may avoid, but if it is to be avoided the national rights of the whole people of the United Kingdom must be asserted as strenuously by their votes as the rights of the citizens of the United States were vindicated by their arms. The people of England again must be solemnly warned that errors in policy or acts of injustice may snatch from us the power of determining a political controversy at the ballot-box instead of on the battle-field. It is folly to raise cases on the constitution; it is always of the most doubtful prudence to handle the casuistry of politics. Nothing will tempt me to discuss in these pages what are the ethical limits to the exercise of constitutionally unlimited sovereignty, or at what point legal oppression justifies armed resistance. Two considerations must at this crisis be kept in mind. The one is that, until oppression is actually committed, the maintenance of order is the duty of every citizen, and, like most political duties, is also a matter of the most obvious expediency; the other is that the compulsion of loyal citizens to forgo the direct protection of the government whose sovereignty they admit, and to accept the rule of a government whose moral claim to their allegiance they deny, is a proceeding of the grossest injustice. Let the people of England also be solemnly warned that the Gladstonian policy of 1893 repeats the essential error of the condemned policy of Protestant ascendency. Gladstonians hold that the democracy of England may ally itself with the democracy of Ireland, and may treat lightly the rights and the wishes of a Protestant and Conservative minority. In bygone times the aristocratic and Protestant government of England allied itself with the Protestant and aristocratic government of Ireland, and held light the rights and the wishes of the Catholic majority. Each policy labours under the same defect. The enforced supremacy of a class, be it a minority or a majority, is opposed to the equitable principle of the supremacy of the whole nation. There is no reason to suppose that Catholic ascendency will be found more tolerable than was Protestant ascendency. The policy of Unionism should be marked by simplicity. The Unionist leaders have a clear though a difficult duty to perform. Their one immediate function is resistance to a dangerous revolution. Logically and politically, there was a good deal to be said for the deliberate refusal to discuss, or to vote upon, any of the details of the Home Rule Bill. There is always a danger lest the attempt to amend a radically and essentially vicious measure should promote the delusion that it is amendable. And any success in debate would be dearly purchased if it led the electors to suppose that the Government of Ireland Bill, which in fact embodies a policy, so fundamentally perverse that no alteration of details can render it tolerable, is a measure which, though faulty in its execution, is sound in principle. The Unionists leaders, however, whom we can absolutely trust, have decided that abstention from debate would be an error. As far as the matter is to be looked at from a parliamentary point of view their judgment is decisive, and since the policy of combating the Bill point by point has been adopted it should be carried out, as it is being carried out, with the utmost stringency. Minute discussion of the clauses of the Bill is elaborate instruction for the mass of the nation. To the cry of obstruction no heed whatever need be paid. As long as there is real discussion obstruction becomes, when the matter in debate is the formation of a new constitution for the United Kingdom, an impossibility. The business needs the most careful consideration. Ministers themselves are uncertain as to what are the essential principles of their own scheme. Every detail involves a principle, and in a Bill where clearness is of vital importance, every clause involves an ambiguity. Each part moreover of the new constitution must be considered with regard to the rest, and the expression of different views as to the meaning of the Bill is of itself of utility, when it is of the greatest importance that Englishmen and Irishmen, Conservatives and Radicals, should be agreed as to the meaning of the new Fundamental Law. When, in short, a constitution for the country is being drawn up, no discussion which is rational can be obstructive. If a week or a fortnight of parliamentary time is expended in defining the meaning of the supreme authority of Parliament, or in deciding whether the Irish delegacy is or is not to be retained at Westminster, not a moment too much is devoted to points of such transcendent importance. 'But the debate,' it is urged, 'will at this rate last for months.' Why not? 'No other Bills,' it is added, 'can be passed.' What Bills, I answer, ought to be passed whilst the constitution of England is undergoing fundamental alteration? 'But the principles of the measure,' it is objected, 'might have been discussed and settled during the last seven years.' So, I reply, they might, if it had pleased the Gladstonians either to produce their Bill or to announce its general principles. Their silence was politic; it won them a majority at the general election, but you cannot from the nature of things combine the advantages both of reticence and of outspokenness. Silence may have been justified as a piece of clever party tactics; it is a very different question whether the concealment of seven years has turned out high statesmanship. Gladstonians, like other men, cannot, as the saying goes, have their cake and eat it. They have had the advantages, they are now paying the inevitable price of reserve. Unionists in any case are bound to turn this invaluable time to account. Discussion of the constitution is the education of the people. In order, however, that this political training may be effective, our parliamentary teachers must take care that the public are not confused by the prominence necessarily given to details. Minute criticism of the Bill is important, but at the present moment it is important only as enforcing the radical vice of its main principles. No effort must be spared to keep the mind of the nation well fixed upon these principles. The surrender by the British Parliament and the British Government of all effective part in the government of Ireland, the ambiguities of such a term as 'Imperial supremacy' and all that these ambiguities involve, the inadequacy and the futility of the Restrictions, the errors and impolicy of the financial arrangements, above all the injustice to England and the injury to Ireland of retaining, under a system of Home Rule, even a single Irish representative at Westminster, these broad considerations are the things which should be pressed, and pressed home, upon the electors. Minor matters are good topics for parliamentary discussion, but should not receive a confusing and illusory prominence. The electors again must be made to feel that it is the essential principle of Home Rule, the setting up of an Irish Government and an Irish Parliament, to which Unionists are opposed. The least appearance of concession to Home Rulers, or any action which gives increased currency to the delusion, certainly cherished by some moderate Gladstonians, that Home Rule can be identified with or cut down to extended local self-government,[136] will be fatal to the cause of Unionism. The concession to Ireland of a petty, paltry, peddling legislature, which dare hardly call itself a Parliament, and is officially designated say as a national council, combined with some faint imitation of a Cabinet, called say a committee, would disappoint and irritate Home Rulers; it would cheat their hopes, but it would afford them the means of gaining their end. It would not give assurance to Unionists, it would not be a triumph of Unionist policy, it would rather be the destruction of Unionism. The one course of safety is to take care that at the next general election the country has laid before it for determination a clear and unmistakable issue. The question for every elector to answer must be reducible to the form Aye or No; will you, or will you not, repeal the Union and establish an Irish Executive and an Irish Parliament in Dublin? If the question be so raised Unionists have no reason to fear an answer. The policy of Unionism has always relied on an appeal to the nation. The one desire of Unionists has always been to fight their opponents on the clear unmistakable issue of Home Rule. The policy of Separatists has been to keep Home Rule in the background whilst making its meaning indefinite, and to mix up all the multifarious issues raised by the Newcastle programme, as well as many others, with the one essential question whether we should or should not repeal or modify the Act of Union. To their policy of appeal to the people the Unionists will, of course, adhere. The House of Lords will, it may be presumed, as a matter not so much of right as of obvious duty, reject the present Home Rule Bill, so as to refer to the electors of the United Kingdom the question whether we shall, or shall not, have a new constitution. Even if such a reference to the electors should result in a Gladstonian majority, it is still possible that a further dissolution might be necessary. The majority for Home Rule might be much reduced. I doubt whether Mr. Gladstone himself would maintain that with a majority say of ten or twenty, a Minister would be morally justified in attempting a fundamental change in the constitution. As to such speculative matters there is no need to say anything. It is worth while, however, to repeat a statement which cannot be too often insisted upon, that the most important function of the House of Lords at the present day is to take care that no fundamental change in the constitution takes place which has not received the undoubted assent of the nation. The peers are more and more clearly awakening to the knowledge that under the circumstances of modern public life this protection of the rights of the nation, which is in complete conformity with democratic principle, is the supreme duty of the Upper House. The question, however, to be considered at the moment is whether for the performance of this duty something more may not be required than the compelling of a dissolution. This something more is a direct appeal to the electors in the nature of a Referendum. The question is still a theoretical one; it cannot (unfortunately as it will appear to many persons) be raised during the debates on the Bill in the House of Commons. When the Bill reaches the House of Lords, it will, we may suppose, be rejected, and all that a Unionist can wish for is, first, that before actual rejection its general principles should be subjected to complete discussion, and what is in this case the same thing, exposure, and next that the House of Lords should, if necessary, take steps which can easily be imagined, for providing that the rejection of the Bill shall entail a dissolution. If, however, the dissolution should result in a Gladstonian majority, and should lead to another Home Rule Bill being sent up to their lordships, the question then arises as to the Referendum. My own conviction, which has been before laid before the public, is that the Lords would do well if they appended to any Home Rule Bill which they were prepared to accept a clause which might make its coming into force depend upon its, within a limited time, receiving the approval of the majority of the electors of the United Kingdom. And in the particular case of the Home Rule Bill it is fair, for reasons already stated,[137] that the Bill before becoming law should receive the assent of a majority of the electors both of Great Britain and of Ireland. This course, it may be said, is unconstitutional. This word has no terrors for me; it means no more than unusual, and the institution of a Referendum would simply mean the formal acknowledgment of the doctrine which lies at the basis of English democracy--that a law depends at bottom for its enactment on the assent of the nation as represented by the electors. At a time when the true danger is that sections or classes should arrogate to themselves authority which belongs to the State, it is an advantage to bring into prominence the sovereignty of the nation. The present is exactly a crisis at which we may override the practices to save the principles of the constitution. The most forcible objection which can be made is that you ought not for the sake of avoiding a particular evil to introduce an innovation of dubious expediency. The objection itself is valid, but it is in the present instance inapplicable. My conviction is that the introduction of the Referendum, in one shape or another in respect of large constitutional changes, would be a distinct benefit to the country. It affords the one available check on the recklessness of party leaders; for the check is at once effective and in perfect conformity with democratic principle and sentiment. A second objection is that a Referendum renders any law which obtains the approval of the electors more difficult of alteration than an ordinary Act of Parliament. The allegation is true, but it really tells greatly in favour of an ultimate reference to the people of any Home Rule Bill passed in a Parliament. If such a Bill becomes law, it ought to be a law not admitting of easy repeal. No doubt reaction may be justifiable, but reaction is a great evil, and the Referendum puts a check as well on reaction as on hasty innovation. In any case the time has arrived when Unionist statesmen should consider the expediency of announcing that no Home Rule Bill will finally be accepted until it has undergone a reference to and received the approval of the electors. On no better issue could battle be joined with revolutionists than on the question whether the people of the United Kingdom should or should not be allowed to express their will. Unionists have every reason to feel confidence in their cause; their only policy, their one path of safety is to make it, as they can do, absolutely plain that they rely upon justice, and that they appeal from parties to the nation. We have now before us the essential features of the new constitution framed by Gladstonians for the whole United Kingdom. We know its inherent defects and inconsistencies; we have considered what may be said on its behalf, or rather of the policy of which it is the outcome. The proposed change in our form of government touches the very foundations of the State, and deeply, though indirectly, threatens the unity of the whole Empire. Never surely since the day when the National Assembly of France drew up that Constitution of 1791, which built to be eternal endured for not quite a year, has an ancient nation been so strangely invited to accept an untried and unknown polity. The position indeed of the French constitution-makers was in some respects stronger and more defensible than the position of our English innovators. The members of the National Assembly knew precisely what they were doing. They meant to alter the fundamental institutions of France. A change moreover in the whole scheme of French government was an admitted necessity. France might be uncertain as to the working of the new constitution, but France was absolutely certain that the _ancien régime_ was detestable. Individuals or nations may wisely risk much when they are escaping from a social condition which they detest, they may know that an innovation is in itself of doubtful expediency, yet may consider any alleged reform worth a trial when no change can be a change for the worse. In the France of 1791 confidence in the future meant abhorrence of the past. The authors of our new constitution can hardly be called the designers of their own handiwork; they have been the sport of accident. Their intention, or rather the intention of their leader, was in 1886 merely to grant some sort of Parliamentary independence to Ireland. The resolution to concede Home Rule was sudden; it may have been taken up without due weighing of its consequences. It has assuredly led to unexpected results. The statesmen who meant merely to give Home Rule to Ireland have stumbled into the making of a new constitution for the United Kingdom. What wonder that their workmanship betrays its accidental origin. It has no coherence, no consistency; nothing is called by its right name, and words are throughout substituted for facts; the new Parliament of Ireland is denied its proper title; the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is nominally saved, and is really destroyed; and the very statesmen who proclaim the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament refuse to assert the subordination of the Irish Parliament. The authors of the constitution are at sea as to its leading principles, and its most essential provision they deem an organic detail, which may at any moment be modified or removed. The whole thing is an incongruous patchwork affair, made up of shreds and tatters torn from the institutions of other lands. It is as inconsistent with the proposed and rejected Constitution of 1886 as with the existing Constitution of England. While however our constitution-makers tender for the acceptance of the nation a scheme of fundamental change, whereof the effect is uncertain, conjectural, and perilous, and the permanence is not guaranteed by its authors, Englishmen are well satisfied with their old constitution; they may desire its partial modification or expansion, they have never even contemplated its overthrow. Politicians, in short, who meant to initiate a moderate reform, are pressing a revolutionary change on a country which neither needs nor desires a revolution; they propose to get rid of grave, though temporary, inconveniences by a permanent alteration of which no man can calculate the results in our whole system of government. Never before was a nation so strangely advised by such bewildered counsellors to take for so little apparent reason so desperate a leap in the dark. FOOTNOTES: [134] The whole gist of this chapter applies to the state of England in 1911 with greater force than even to its condition in 1893. Home Rule will be carried, if at all, only by a House of Commons freed from the authority of the House of Lords, and from the need of an appeal to the people. [135] Now sixty-one years. [136] If any one wishes to see the difference between local self-government and Home Rule, let him compare the Bill for the extension of self-government in Ireland, brought in by the late Ministry, with the Home Rule Bill. The Local Government Bill went very far, some persons may even maintain dangerously far, in creating and in extending the authority of local bodies in Ireland. But it was not Home Rule, or anything like Home Rule. The most extended Local Government Bill and the most restricted Home Rule Bill differ fundamentally in principle. The one in effect denies, the other in effect concedes, a separate national government to Ireland. [137] See pp. 119-121, _ante_. APPENDIX GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND BILL ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES _Legislative Authority_ Clause. 1. Establishment of Irish Legislature. 2. Powers of Irish Legislature. 3. Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature. 4. Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature. _Executive Authority_ 5. Executive power in Ireland. _Constitution of Legislature_ 6. Composition of Irish Legislative Council. 7. Composition of Irish Legislative Assembly. 8. Disagreement between two Houses, how settled. _Irish Representation in House of Commons_ 9. Representation in Parliament of Irish counties and boroughs. _Finance_ 10. As to separate Consolidated Fund and taxes. 11. Hereditary revenues and income tax. 12. Financial arrangements as between United Kingdom and Ireland. 13. Treasury Account (Ireland). 14. Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund. 15. Irish Church Fund. 16. Local loans. 17. Adaptation of Acts as to Local Taxation Accounts and probate, etc., duties. 18. Money bills and votes. 19. Exchequer judges for revenue actions, election petitions, etc. _Post Office Postal Telegraphs and Savings Banks_ 20. Transfer of post office and postal telegraphs. 21. Transfer of savings banks. _Irish Appeals and Decision of Constitutional Questions_ 22. Irish appeals. 23. Special provision for decision of constitutional questions. _Lord Lieutenant and Crown Lands_ 24. Office of Lord Lieutenant. 25. Use of Crown lands by Irish Government. _Judges and Civil Servants_ 26. Tenure of future judges. 27. As to existing judges and other persons having salaries charged on the Consolidated Fund. 28. As to persons holding civil service appointments. 29. As to existing pensions and superannuation allowances. _Police_ 30. As to Police. _Miscellaneous_ 31. Irish Exchequer Consolidated Fund and Audit. 32. Law applicable to both Houses of Irish Legislature. 33. Supplemental provisions as to powers of Irish Legislature. 34. Limitation on borrowing by local authorities. _Transitory Provisions_ 35. Temporary restriction on powers of Irish Legislature and Executive. 36. Transitory provisions. 37. Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc. 38. Appointed day. 39. Definitions. 40. Short title. SCHEDULES A BILL TO AMEND THE PROVISION FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND[138] Whereas it is expedient that without impairing or restricting the supreme authority of Parliament, an Irish Legislature should be created for such purposes in Ireland as in this Act mentioned: Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows: _Legislative Authority_ 1. _On and after the appointed day_ there shall be in Ireland a Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and of two Houses, the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly. 2. With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act mentioned, there shall be granted to the Irish Legislature power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland in respect of matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some part thereof. 3. The Irish Legislature shall not have power to make laws in respect of the following matters or any of them:-- (1) The Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or a Regency; or the Lord Lieutenant as representative of the Crown; or (2) The making of peace or war or matters arising from a state of war; or (3) Naval or military forces, or the defence of the realm; or (4) Treaties and other relations with foreign States or the relations between different parts of Her Majesty's dominions or offences connected with such treaties or relations; or (5) Dignities or titles of honour; or (6) Treason, treason-felony, alienage, or naturalisation; or (7) Trade with any place out of Ireland; or quarantine, or navigation (except as respects inland waters and local health or harbour regulations); or (8) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea marks (except so far as they can consistently with any general Act of Parliament be constructed or maintained by a local harbour authority); or (9) Coinage; legal tender; or the standard of weights and measures; or (10) Trade marks, merchandise marks, copyright, or patent rights. Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. 4. The powers of the Irish Legislature shall not extend to the making of any law-- (1) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or (2) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account of religious belief; or (3) Abrogating or prejudicially affecting the right to establish or maintain any place of denominational education or any denominational institution or charity; or (4) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money, without attending the religious instruction at that school; or (5) Whereby any person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or may be denied the equal protection of the laws, or whereby private property may be taken without just compensation; or (6) Whereby any existing corporation incorporated by Royal Charter or by any local or general Act of Parliament (not being a corporation raising for public purposes taxes, rates, cess, dues, or tolls, or administering funds so raised) may, unless it consents, or the leave of Her Majesty is first obtained on address from the two Houses of the Irish Legislature, be deprived of its rights, privileges, or property without due process of law; or (7) Whereby any inhabitant of the United Kingdom may be deprived of equal rights as respects public sea fisheries. Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. _Executive Authority_ 5.--(1) The executive power in Ireland shall continue vested in Her Majesty the Queen, and the Lord Lieutenant, on behalf of Her Majesty, shall exercise any prerogatives or other executive power of the Queen the exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty, and shall, in Her Majesty's name, summon, prorogue, and dissolve the Irish Legislature. (2) There shall be an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland to aid and advise in the government of Ireland, being of such numbers, and comprising persons holding such offices, as Her Majesty may think fit, or as may be directed by Irish Act. (3) The Lord Lieutenant shall, on the advice of the said Executive Committee, give or withhold the assent of Her Majesty to Bills passed by the two Houses of the Irish Legislature, subject nevertheless to any instructions given by Her Majesty in respect of any such Bill. _Constitution of Legislature_ 6.--(1) The Irish Legislative Council shall consist of _forty-eight_ councillors. (2) Each of the constituencies mentioned in the First Schedule to this Act shall return the number of councillors named opposite thereto in the schedule. (3) Every man shall be entitled to be registered as an elector, and when registered to vote at an election, of a councillor for a constituency, who owns or occupies any land or tenement in the constituency of a rateable value of more than _twenty_ pounds, subject to the like conditions as a man is entitled at the passing of this Act to be registered and vote as a parliamentary elector in respect of an ownership qualification or of the qualification specified in section five of the Representation of the People Act, 1884, as the case may be: Provided that a man shall not be entitled to be registered, nor if registered to vote, at an election of a councillor in more than one constituency in the same year. (4) The term of office of every councillor shall be _eight_ years, and shall not be affected by a dissolution; and one _half_ of the councillors shall retire in every _fourth_ year, and their seats shall be filled by a new election. 7.--(1) The Irish Legislative Assembly shall consist of _one hundred and three_ members, returned by the existing parliamentary constituencies in Ireland, or the existing divisions thereof, and elected by the parliamentary electors for the time being in those constituencies or divisions. (2) The Irish Legislative Assembly when summoned may, unless sooner dissolved, have continuance _for five_ years from the day on which the summons directs it to meet and no longer. (3) After _six_ years from the passing of this Act, the Irish Legislature may alter the qualification of the electors, and the constituencies, and the distribution of the members among the constituencies, provided that in such distribution due regard is had to the population of the constituencies. 8. If a Bill or any provision of a Bill adopted by the Legislative Assembly is lost by the disagreement of the Legislative Council, and after a dissolution, or the period of _two years_ from such disagreement, such Bill, or a Bill for enacting the said provision, is again adopted by the Legislative Assembly and fails within three months afterwards to be adopted by the Legislative Council, the same shall forthwith be submitted to the members of the two Houses deliberating and voting together thereon, and shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority of those members present and voting on the question. _Irish Representation in House of Commons_ 9. Unless and until Parliament otherwise determines, the following provisions shall have effect-- (1) After _the appointed day_ each of the constituencies named in the Second Schedule to this Act shall return to serve in Parliament the number of members named opposite thereto in that schedule, and no more, and Dublin University shall cease to return any member. (2) The existing divisions of the constituencies shall, save as provided in that schedule, be abolished. (3) An Irish representative peer in the House of Lords and a member of the House of Commons for an Irish constituency shall not be entitled to deliberate or vote on-- (_a_) any Bill or motion in relation thereto, the operation of which Bill or motion is confined to Great Britain or some part thereof; or (_b_) any motion or resolution relating solely to some tax not raised or to be raised in Ireland; or (_c_) any vote or appropriation of money made exclusively for some service not mentioned in the Third Schedule to this Act; or (_d_) any motion or resolution exclusively affecting Great Britain or some part thereof or some local authority or some person or thing therein; or (_e_) any motion or resolution, incidental to any such motion or resolution as either is last mentioned, or relates solely to some tax not raised or to be raised in Ireland, or incidental to any such vote or appropriation of money as aforesaid. (4) Compliance with the provisions of this section shall not be questioned otherwise than in each House in manner provided by the House. (5) The election laws and the laws relating to the qualification of parliamentary electors shall not, so far as they relate to parliamentary elections, be altered by the Irish Legislature, but this enactment shall not prevent the Irish Legislature from dealing with any officers concerned with the issue of writs of election, and if any officers are so dealt with, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty by Order in Council to arrange for the issue of such writs, and the writs issued in pursuance of such Order shall be of the same effect as if issued in manner heretofore accustomed. _Finance_ 10.--(1) _On and after the appointed day_ there shall be an Irish Exchequer and Consolidated Fund separate from those of the United Kingdom. (2) The duties of customs and excise and the duties on postage shall be imposed by Act of Parliament, but subject to the provisions of this Act the Irish Legislature may, in order to provide for the public service of Ireland, impose any other taxes. (3) Save as in this Act mentioned, all matters relating to the taxes in Ireland and the collection and management thereof shall be regulated by Irish Act, and the same shall be collected and managed by the Irish Government and form part of the public revenues of Ireland: Provided that-- (_a_) the duties of customs shall be regulated, collected, managed, and paid into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom as heretofore; and (_b_) all prohibitions in connection with the duties of excise, and so far as regards articles sent out of Ireland, all matters relating to those duties, shall be regulated by Act of Parliament; and (_c_) the excise duties on articles consumed in Great Britain shall be paid in Great Britain or to an officer of the Government of the United Kingdom. (4) Save as in this Act mentioned, all the public revenues of Ireland shall be paid into the Irish Exchequer and form a Consolidated Fund, and be appropriated to the public service of Ireland by Irish Act. (5) If the duties of excise are increased above the rates in force on _the first day of March one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three_, the net proceeds in Ireland of the duties in excess of the said rates shall be paid from the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. (6) _If the duties of excise are reduced below the rates in force on the said day, and the net proceeds of such duties in Ireland are in consequence less than the net proceeds of the duties before the reduction, a sum equal to the deficiency shall, unless it is otherwise agreed between the Treasury and the Irish Government, be paid from the Exchequer of the United Kingdom to the Irish Exchequer_. 11.--(1) The hereditary revenues of the Crown in Ireland which are managed by the Commissioners of Woods shall continue during the life of Her present Majesty to be managed and collected by those Commissioners, and the net amount payable by them to the Exchequer on account of those revenues, after deducting all expenses (but including an allowance for interest on such proceeds of the sale of those revenues as have not been re-invested in Ireland), shall be paid into the Treasury Account (Ireland) hereinafter mentioned, for the benefit of the Irish Exchequer. (2) A person shall not be required to pay income tax in Great Britain in respect of property situate or business carried on in Ireland, and a person shall not be required to pay income tax in Ireland in respect of property situate or business carried on in Great Britain. (3) _For the purpose of giving to Ireland the benefit of the difference between the income tax collected in Great Britain from British, Colonial, and foreign securities held by residents in Ireland, and the income tax collected in Ireland from Irish securities held by residents in Great Britain, there shall be made to Ireland out of the income tax collected in Great Britain, an allowance of such amount as may be from time to time determined by the Treasury, in accordance with a minute of the Treasury laid before Parliament before the appointed day, and such allowance shall be paid into the Treasury Account (Ireland) for the benefit of the Irish Exchequer_. (4) Provided that the provisions of this section with respect to income tax shall not apply to any excess of the rate of income tax in Great Britain above the rate in Ireland or of the rate of income tax in Ireland above the rate in Great Britain. 12.--(1) The duties of customs contributed by Ireland and, save as provided by this Act, that portion of any public revenue of the United Kingdom to which Ireland may claim to be entitled, whether specified in the Third Schedule to this Act or not, shall be carried to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, as the contribution of Ireland to Imperial liabilities and expenditure as defined in that Schedule. (2) The civil charges of the Government in Ireland shall, subject as in this Act mentioned, be borne after the appointed day by Ireland. (3) After _fifteen_ years from the passing of this Act the arrangements made by this Act for the contribution of Ireland to Imperial liabilities and expenditure, and otherwise for the financial relations between the United Kingdom and Ireland, may be revised in pursuance of an address to Her Majesty from the House of Commons, or from the Irish Legislative Assembly. 13.--(1) There shall be established under the direction of the Treasury an account (in this Act referred to as the Treasury Account (Ireland)). (2) There shall be paid into such account all sums payable from the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, or from the latter to the former Exchequer, and all sums directed to be paid into the account for the benefit of either of the said Exchequers. (3) All sums which are payable from either of the said Exchequers to the other of them, or being payable out of one of the said Exchequers are repayable by the other Exchequer, shall in the first instance be payable out of the said account so far as the money standing on the account is sufficient; and for the purpose of meeting such sums, the Treasury out of the customs revenue collected in Ireland, and the Irish Government out of any of the public revenues in Ireland, may direct money to be paid to the Treasury Account (Ireland) instead of into the Exchequer. (4) Any surplus standing on the account to the credit of either Exchequer, and not required for meeting payments, shall at convenient times be paid into that Exchequer, and where any sum so payable into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom is required by law to be forthwith paid to the National Debt Commissioners, that sum may be paid to those Commissioners without being paid into the Exchequer. (5) All sums payable by virtue of this Act out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom or of Ireland shall be payable from the Exchequer of the United Kingdom or Ireland, as the case may be, within the meaning of this Act, and all sums by this Act made payable from the Exchequer of the United Kingdom shall, if not otherwise paid, be charged on and paid out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. 14.--(1) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund in favour of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom as a first charge on that fund all sums which-- (_a_) are payable to that Exchequer from the Irish Exchequer; or (_b_) are required to repay to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom sums issued to meet the dividends or sinking fund on guaranteed land stock under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, or (_c_) otherwise have been or are required to be paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom in consequence of the non-payment thereof out of the Exchequer of Ireland or otherwise by the Irish Government. (2) If at any time the Controller and Auditor-General of the United Kingdom is satisfied that any such charge is due, he shall certify the amount of it, and the Treasury shall send such certificate to the Lord Lieutenant, who shall thereupon by order, without any counter-signature, direct the payment of the amount from the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, and such order shall be duly obeyed by all persons, and until the amount is wholly paid no other payment shall be made out of the Irish Exchequer for any purpose whatever. (3) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund next after the foregoing charge: (_a_) all sums, for dividends or sinking fund on guaranteed land stock under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, which the Land Purchase Account and the Guarantee Fund under that Act are insufficient to pay; (_b_) all sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the Government of Ireland, whether for interest, management, or sinking fund; (_c_) an annual sum of _five thousand_ pounds for the expenses of the household and establishment of the Lord Lieutenant; (_d_) all existing charges on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom in respect of Irish services other than the salary of the Lord Lieutenant; and (_e_) the salaries and pensions of all judges of the Supreme Court or other superior court in Ireland or of any county or other like court, who are appointed after the passing of this Act, and are not the Exchequer judges hereafter mentioned. (4) Until all charges created by this Act upon the Irish Consolidated Fund and for the time being due are paid, no money shall be issued from the Irish Exchequer for any other purpose whatever. 15.--(1) All existing charges on the Church property in Ireland--that is to say, all property accruing under the Irish Church Act, 1869, and transferred to the Irish Land Commission by the Irish Church Amendment Act, 1881--shall so far as not paid out of the said property be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund, and any of those charges guaranteed by the Treasury, if and so far as not paid, shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. (2) Subject to the existing charges thereon, the said Church property shall belong to the Irish Government, and be managed, administered, and disposed of as directed by Irish Act. 16.--(1) All sums paid or applicable in or towards the discharge of the interest or principal of any local loan advanced before the appointed day on security in Ireland, or otherwise in respect of such loan, which but for this Act would be paid to the National Debt Commissioners, and carried to the Local Loans Fund, shall, after the appointed day, be paid, until otherwise provided by Irish Act, to the Irish Exchequer. (2) For the payment to the Local Loans Fund of the principal and interest of such loans, the Irish Government shall after the appointed day pay by half-yearly payments an annuity for _forty-nine_ years, at the rate of _four_ per cent, on the principal of the said loans, exclusive of any sums written off before the appointed day from the account of assets of the Local Loans Fund, and such annuity shall be paid from the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, and when so paid shall be forthwith paid to the National Debt Commissioners for the credit of the Local Loans Fund. (3) After the appointed day, money for loans in Ireland shall cease to be advanced either by the Public Works Loan Commissioners or out of the Local Loans Fund. 17.--(1) So much of any Act as directs payment to the Local Taxation (Ireland) Account of any share of probate, excise, or customs duties payable to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom shall, together with any enactment amending the same, be repealed as from the appointed day without prejudice to the adjustment of balances after that day; but the like amounts shall continue to be paid to the Local Taxation Accounts in England and Scotland as would have been paid if this Act had not passed, and any residue of the said share shall be paid into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. (2) The stamp duty chargeable in respect of the personalty of a deceased person shall not in the case of administration granted in Great Britain be chargeable in respect of any personalty situate in Ireland, nor in the case of administration granted in Ireland be chargeable in respect of any personalty situate in Great Britain; and any administration granted in Great Britain shall not, if re-sealed in Ireland, be exempt from stamp duty on administration granted in Ireland, and any administration granted in Ireland shall not, when re-sealed in Great Britain, be exempt from stamp duty on administration granted in Great Britain. (3) In this section the expression "administration" means probate or letters of administration, and as respects Scotland, confirmation inclusive of the inventory required under the Acts relating to the said stamp duty, and the expression "personalty" means personal or movable estate and effects. 18.--(1) Bills for appropriating any part of the public revenue or for imposing any tax shall originate in the Legislative Assembly. (2) It shall not be lawful for the Legislative Assembly to adopt or pass any vote, resolution, address, or Bill for the appropriation for any purpose of any part of the public revenue of Ireland, or of any tax, except in pursuance of a recommendation from the Lord Lieutenant in the session in which such vote, resolution, address, or Bill is proposed. 19.--(1) Two of the judges of the Supreme Court in Ireland shall be Exchequer judges, and shall be appointed under the great seal of the United Kingdom; and their salaries and pensions shall be charged on and paid out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. (2) The Exchequer judges shall be removeable only by Her Majesty on address from the two Houses of Parliament, and each such judge shall, save as otherwise provided by Parliament, receive the same salary and be entitled to the same pension as is at the time of his appointment fixed for the puisne judges of the Supreme Court, and during his continuance in office his salary shall not be diminished, nor his right to pension altered, without his consent. (3) An alteration of any rules relating to such legal proceedings as are mentioned in this section shall not be made except with the approval of Her Majesty the Queen in Council; and the sittings of the Exchequer judges shall be regulated with the like approval. (4) All legal proceedings in Ireland, which are instituted at the instance of or against the Treasury or Commissioners of Customs, or any of their officers, or relate to the election of members to serve in Parliament, or touch any matter within the powers of the Irish Legislature, or touch any matter affected by a law which the Irish Legislature have not power to repeal or alter, shall, if so required by any party to such proceedings, be heard and determined before the Exchequer judges or (except where the case requires to be determined by two judges) before one of them, and in any such legal proceeding an appeal shall, if any party so requires, lie from any court of first instance in Ireland to the Exchequer judges, and the decision of the Exchequer judges shall be subject to appeal to Her Majesty the Queen in Council and not to any other tribunal. (5) If it is made to appear to an Exchequer judge that any decree or judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid has not been duly enforced by the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to enforce the same, such judge shall appoint some officer whose duty it shall be to enforce the judgment or decree; and for that purpose such officer and all persons employed by him shall be entitled to the same privileges, immunities, and powers as are by law conferred on a sheriff and his officers. (6) The Exchequer judges, when not engaged in hearing and determining such legal proceedings as above in this section mentioned, shall perform such of the duties ordinarily performed by other judges of the Supreme Court in Ireland as may be assigned by Her Majesty the Queen in Council. (7) All sums recovered by the Treasury or the Commissioners of Customs or any of their officers, or recovered under any Act relating to duties of customs, shall, notwithstanding anything in any other Act, be paid to such public account as the Treasury or the Commissioners direct. _Post Office Postal Telegraphs and Savings Banks_ 20.--(1) As from _the appointed day_ the postal and telegraph service in Ireland shall be transferred to the Irish Government, and may be regulated by Irish Act, except as in this Act mentioned and except as regards matters relating-- (_a_) to such conditions of the transmission or delivery of postal packets and telegrams as are incidental to the duties on postage; or (_b_) foreign mails or submarine telegraphs or through lines in connection therewith; or (_c_) to any other postal or telegraph business in connection with places out of the United Kingdom. (2) The administration of or incidental to the said excepted matters shall, save as may be otherwise arranged with the Irish Post Office, remain with the Postmaster-General. (3) As regards the revenue and expenses of the postal and telegraph service, the Postmaster-General shall retain the revenue collected and defray the expenses incurred in Great Britain, and the Irish Post Office shall retain the revenue collected and defray the expenses incurred in Ireland, subject to the provisions of the Fourth Schedule to this Act; which schedule shall have full effect, but may be varied or added to by agreement between the Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office. (4) _The sums payable by the Postmaster-General or Irish Post Office to the other of them in pursuance of this Act shall, if not paid out of the Post Office moneys, be paid from the Exchequer of the United Kingdom or of Ireland, as the case requires, to the other Exchequer_. (5) Sections forty-eight to fifty-two of the Telegraph Act 1863, and any enactment amending the same, shall apply to all telegraphic lines of the Irish Government in like manner as to the telegraphs of a company within the meaning of that Act. 21.--(1) As from _the appointed day_ there shall be transferred to the Irish Government the post office savings banks in Ireland and all such powers and duties of any department or officer in Great Britain as are connected with post office savings banks, trustee savings banks or friendly societies in Ireland, and the same may be regulated by Irish Act. (2) The Treasury shall publish not less than six months' previous notice of the transfer of savings banks. (3) If before the date of the transfer any depositor in a post office savings bank so requests, his deposit shall, according to his request, either be paid to him or transferred to a post office savings bank in Great Britain, and after the said date the depositors in a post office savings bank in Ireland shall cease to have any claim against the Postmaster-General or the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but shall have the like claim against the Government and Consolidated Fund of Ireland. (4) If before the date of the transfer the trustees of any trustee savings bank so request, then, according to the request, either all sums due to them shall be repaid and the savings bank closed, or those sums shall be paid to the Irish Government, and after the said date the trustees shall cease to have any claim against the National Debt Commissioners or the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but shall have the like claim against the Government and Consolidated Fund of Ireland. (5) Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this section, if a sum due on account of any annuity or policy of insurance which has before the above-mentioned notice been granted through a post office or trustee savings bank is not paid by the Irish Government, that sum shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. _Irish Appeals and Decision of Constitutional Questions_ 22.--(1) The appeal from courts in Ireland to the House of Lords shall cease; and where any person would, but for this Act, have a right to appeal from any court in Ireland to the House of Lords, such person shall have the like right to appeal to Her Majesty the Queen in Council; and the right so to appeal shall not be affected by any Irish Act; and all enactments relating to appeals to Her Majesty the Queen in Council, and to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, shall apply accordingly. (2) When the Judicial Committee sit for hearing appeals from a court in Ireland, there shall be present not less than four Lords of Appeal, within the meaning of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 1876, and at least one member who is or has been a judge of the Supreme Court in Ireland. (3) A rota of privy councillors to sit for hearing appeals from courts in Ireland shall be made annually by Her Majesty in Council, and the privy councillors, or some of them, on that rota shall sit to hear the said appeals. A casual vacancy in such rota during the year may be filled by Order in Council. (4) Nothing in this Act shall affect the jurisdiction of the House of Lords to determine the claims to Irish peerages. 23.--(1) If it appears to the Lord Lieutenant or a Secretary of State expedient in the public interest that steps shall be taken for the speedy determination of the question whether any Irish Act or any provision thereof is beyond the powers of the Irish Legislature, he may represent the same to Her Majesty in Council, and thereupon the said question shall be forthwith referred to and heard and determined by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, constituted as if hearing an appeal from a court in Ireland. (2) Upon the hearing of the question such persons as seem to the Judicial Committee to be interested may be allowed to appear and be heard as parties to the case, and the decision of the Judicial Committee shall be given in like manner as if it were the decision of an appeal, the nature of the report or recommendation to Her Majesty being stated in open court. (3) Nothing in this Act shall prejudice any other power of Her Majesty in Council to refer any question to the Judicial Committee or the right of any person to petition Her Majesty for such reference. _Lord Lieutenant and Crown Lands_ 24.--(1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any Act, every subject of the Queen shall be qualified to hold the office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, without reference to his religious belief. (2) The term of office of the Lord Lieutenant shall be _six years_, without prejudice to the power of Her Majesty the Queen at any time to revoke the appointment. 25. Her Majesty the Queen in Council may place under the control of the Irish Government, for the purposes of that government, such of the lands and buildings in Ireland vested in or held in trust for Her Majesty, and subject to such conditions or restrictions (if any) as may seem expedient. _Judges and Civil Servants_ 26. A judge of the Supreme Court or other superior court in Ireland, or of any county court or other court with a like jurisdiction in Ireland, appointed after the passing of this Act, shall not be removed from his office except in pursuance of an address from the two Houses of the Legislature of Ireland, nor during his continuance in office shall his salary be diminished or right to pension altered without his consent. 27.--(1) All existing judges of the Supreme Court, county court judges, and Land Commissioners in Ireland and all existing officers serving in Ireland in the permanent civil service of the Crown and receiving salaries charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, shall, if they are removeable at present on address from both Houses of Parliament, continue to be removeable only upon such address, and if removeable in any other manner shall continue to be removeable only in the same manner as heretofore; and shall continue to receive the same salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and to be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore, or such duties as Her Majesty may declare to be analogous, and their salaries and pensions, if and so far as not paid out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom: Provided that this section shall be subject to the provisions of this Act with respect to the Exchequer judges. (2) _If any of the said judges, commissioners, or officers retires from office with the Queen's approbation before completion of the period of service entitling him to a pension, Her Majesty may, if she thinks fit, grant to him such pension, not exceeding the pension to which he would on that completion have been entitled, as to Her Majesty seems meet_. 28.--(1) All existing officers in the permanent civil service of the Crown, who are not above provided for, and are at the appointed day serving in Ireland, shall after that day continue to hold their offices by the same tenure and to receive the same salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and to be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore or such duties as the Treasury may declare to be analogous; _and the said gratuities and pensions, and until three years after the passing of this Act, the salaries due to any of the said officers if remaining in his existing office, shall be paid to the payees by the Treasury out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom_. (2) Any such officer may after _three years_ from the passing of this Act retire from office, and shall, at any time during those three years, if required by the Irish Government, retire from office, and on any such retirement may be awarded by the Treasury a gratuity or pension in accordance with the Fifth Schedule to this Act; Provided that-- (_a_) six months' written notice shall, unless it is otherwise agreed, be given either by the said officer or by the Irish Government as the case requires; and (_b_) such number of officers only shall retire at one time and at such intervals of time as the Treasury, in communication with the Irish Government, sanction. (3) If any such officer does not so retire, the Treasury may award him after the said three years a pension in accordance with the Fifth Schedule to this Act which shall become payable to him on his ultimate retirement from the service of the Crown. (4) _The gratuities and pensions awarded in accordance with the Fifth Schedule to this Act shall be paid by the Treasury to the payees out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom._ (5) All sums paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom in pursuance of this section shall be repaid to that Exchequer from the Irish Exchequer. (6) This section shall not apply to officers retained in the service of the Government of the United Kingdom. 29. Any existing pension granted on account of service in Ireland as a judge of the Supreme Court or of any court consolidated into that court, or as a county court judge, or in any other judicial position, or as an officer in the permanent civil service of the Crown other than in an office the holder of which is after the appointed day retained in the service of the Government of the United Kingdom, shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund, and if and so far as not paid out of that fund, shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. _Police_ 30.--(1) The forces of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police shall, when and as local police forces are from time to time established in Ireland in accordance with the Sixth Schedule to this Act, be gradually reduced and ultimately cease to exist as mentioned in that Schedule; and after the passing of this Act, no officer or man shall be appointed to either of those forces; Provided that until the expiration of _six_ years from the appointed day, nothing in this Act shall require the Lord Lieutenant to cause either of the said forces to cease to exist, if as representing Her Majesty the Queen he considers it inexpedient. (2) The said two forces shall, while they continue, be subject to the control of the Lord Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty, and the members thereof shall continue to receive the same salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and hold their appointments on the same tenure as heretofore, _and those salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and all the expenditure incidental to either force, shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom_. (3) When any existing member of either force retires under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule to this Act, the Treasury may award to him a gratuity or pension in accordance with that Schedule. (4) _Those gratuities and pensions and all existing pensions payable in respect of service in either force, shall be paid by the Treasury to the payees out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom_. (5) _Two-thirds of the net amount payable in pursuance of this section out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom shall be repaid to that Exchequer from the Irish Exchequer_. _Miscellaneous_ 31. Save as may be otherwise provided by Irish Act-- (_a_) The existing law relating to the Exchequer and Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom shall apply with the necessary modifications to the Exchequer and Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and an officer shall be appointed by the Lord Lieutenant to be the Irish Comptroller and Auditor General; and (_b_) The accounts of the Irish Consolidated Fund shall be audited as appropriation accounts in manner provided by the Exchequer and Audit Departments Act, 1866, by or under the direction of such officer. 32.--(1) Subject as in this Act mentioned and particularly to the Seventh Schedule to this Act (which Schedule shall have full effect) all existing election laws relating to the House of Commons and the members thereof shall, so far as applicable, extend to each of the two Houses of the Irish Legislature and the members thereof, but such election laws so far as hereby extended may be altered by Irish Act. (2) The privileges, rights, and immunities to be held and enjoyed by each House and the members thereof shall be such as may be defined by Irish Act, but so that the same shall never exceed those for the time being held and enjoyed by the House of Commons, and the members thereof. 33.--(i) The Irish Legislature may repeal or alter any provision of this Act which is by this Act expressly made alterable by that Legislature, and also any enactments in force in Ireland, except such as either relate to matters beyond the powers of the Irish Legislature, or being enacted by Parliament after the passing of this Act may be expressly extended to Ireland. An Irish Act, notwithstanding it is in any respect repugnant to any enactment excepted as aforesaid, shall, though read subject to that enactment, be, except to the extent of that repugnancy, valid. (2) An order, rule, or regulation, made in pursuance of, or having the force of, an Act of Parliament, shall be deemed to be an enactment within the meaning of this section. (3) Nothing in this Act shall affect Bills relating to the divorce or marriage of individuals, and any such Bill shall be introduced and proceed in Parliament in like manner as if this Act had not passed. 34. The local authority for any county or borough or other area shall not borrow money without either-- (_a_) special authority from the Irish Legislature, or (_b_) the sanction of the proper department of the Irish Government: and shall not, without such special authority, borrow; (i) in the case of a municipal borough or town or area less than a county, any loan which together with the then outstanding debt of the local authority, will exceed twice the annual rateable value of the property in the municipal borough, town, or area; or (ii) in the case of a country or larger area, any loan which together with the then outstanding debt of the local authority, will exceed one-tenth of the annual rateable value of the property in the county or area; or (iii) in any case a loan exceeding one-half of the above limits without a local inquiry held in the county, borough, or area by a person appointed for the purpose by the said department. _Transitory Provisions_ 35.--(1) During _three_ years from the passing of this Act, and if Parliament is then sitting until the end of that session of Parliament, the Irish Legislature shall not pass an Act respecting the relations of landlord and tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of land generally: Provided that nothing in this section shall prevent the passing of any Irish Act with a view to the purchase of land for railways, harbours, waterworks, town improvements, or other local undertakings. (2) During _six_ years from the passing of this Act, the appointment of a judge of the Supreme Court or other superior courts in Ireland (other than one of the Exchequer judges) shall be made in pursuance of a warrant from Her Majesty countersigned as heretofore. 36.--(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act Her Majesty the Queen in Council may make or direct such arrangements as seem necessary or proper for setting in motion the Irish Legislature and Government and for otherwise bringing this Act into operation. (2) The Irish Legislature shall be summoned to meet on the _first Tuesday in September, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four_, and the first election of members of the two Houses of the Irish Legislature shall be held at such time before that day, as may be fixed by Her Majesty in Council. (3) Upon the first meeting of the Irish Legislature the members of the House of Commons then sitting for Irish constituencies, including the members for Dublin University, shall vacate their seats, and writs shall, as soon as conveniently may be, be issued by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland for the purpose of holding an election of members to serve in Parliament for the constituencies named in the Second Schedule of this Act. (4) The existing Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and the senior of the existing puisne judges of the Exchequer Division of the Supreme Court, or if they or either of them are or is dead or unable or unwilling to act, such other of the judges of the Supreme Court as Her Majesty may appoint, shall be the first Exchequer judges. (5) Where it appears to Her Majesty the Queen in Council, before the expiration of _one year_ after the appointed day, that any existing enactment respecting matters within the powers of the Irish Legislature requires adaptation to Ireland, whether-- (_a_) by the substitution of the Lord Lieutenant in Council, or of any department or officer of the executive Government in Ireland, for Her Majesty in Council, a Secretary of State, the Treasury, the Postmaster-General, the Board of Inland Revenue, or other public department or officer in Great Britain; or (_b_) by the substitution of the Irish Consolidated Fund or moneys provided by the Irish Legislature for the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, or moneys provided by Parliament; or (_c_) by the substitution or confirmation by, or other act to be done by or to, the Irish Legislature for confirmation by or other act to be done by or to Parliament; or (_d_) by any other adaptation; Her Majesty, by Order in Council, may make that adaptation. (6) Her Majesty the Queen in Council may provide for the transfer of such property, rights, and liabilities, and the doing of such other things as may appear to Her Majesty necessary or proper for carrying into effect this Act or any Order in Council under this Act. (7) An Order in Council under this section may make an adaptation or provide for a transfer either unconditionally or subject to such exceptions, conditions, and restrictions as may seem expedient. (8) The draft of every Order in Council under this section shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament for not less than two months before it is made, and such Order when made shall, subject as respects Ireland to the provisions of an Irish Act, have full effect, but shall not interfere with the continued application to any place, authority, person, or thing, not in Ireland, of the enactment to which the Order relates. 37. Except as otherwise provided by this Act, all existing laws, institutions, authorities, and officers in Ireland, whether judicial, administrative, or ministerial, and all existing taxes in Ireland shall continue as if this Act had not passed, but with the modifications necessary for adapting the same to this Act, and subject to be repealed, abolished, altered, and adapted in the manner and to the extent authorised by this Act. 38. Subject as in this Act mentioned the appointed day for the purposes of this Act shall be the day of the first meeting of the Irish Legislature, or such other day not more than _seven_ months earlier or later as may be fixed by order of Her Majesty in Council either generally or with reference to any particular provision of this Act, and different days may be appointed for different purposes and different provisions of this Act, whether contained in the same section or in different sections. 39. In this Act unless the context otherwise requires--The expression 'existing' means existing at the passing of this Act. The expression 'constituency' means a parliamentary constituency or a county or borough returning a member or members to serve in either House of the Irish Legislature, as the case requires, and the expression 'parliamentary constituency' means any county, borough, or university returning a member or members to serve in Parliament. The expression 'parliamentary elector' means a person entitled to be registered as a voter at a parliamentary election. The expression 'parliamentary election' means the election of a member to serve in Parliament. The expression 'tax' includes duties and fees, and the expression 'duties of excise' does not include licence duties. The expression 'foreign mails' means all postal packets, whether letters, parcels, or other packets, posted in the United Kingdom and sent to a place out of the United Kingdom, or posted in a place out of the United Kingdom and sent to a place in the United Kingdom, or in transit through the United Kingdom to a place out of the United Kingdom. The expression 'telegraphic line' has the same meaning as in the Telegraph Acts, 1863 to 1892. The expression 'duties on postage' includes all rates and sums chargeable for or in respect of postal packets, money orders, or telegrams, or otherwise under the Post Office Acts or the Telegraph Act, 1892. The expression 'Irish Act' means a law made by the Irish Legislature. The expression 'election laws' means the laws relating to the election of members to serve in Parliament, other than those relating to the qualification of electors, and includes all the laws respecting the registration of electors, the issue and execution of writs, the creation of polling districts, the taking of the poll, the questioning of elections, corrupt and illegal practices, the disqualification of members and the vacating of seats. The expression 'rateable value' means the annual rateable value under the Irish Valuation Acts. The expression 'salary' includes remuneration, allowances, and emoluments. The expression 'pension' includes superannuation allowance. 40. This Act may be cited as the Irish Government Act, 1893. SCHEDULES FIRST SCHEDULE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL CONSTITUENCIES AND NUMBER OF COUNCILLORS Constituencies Councillors. -------------- ----------- Antrim county Three Armagh county One Belfast borough Two Carlow county One Cavan county One Clare county One Cork county-- East Riding Three West Riding One Cork borough One Donegal county One Down county Three Dublin county Three Dublin borough Two Fermanagh county One Galway county Two Kerry county One Kildare county One Kilkenny county One King's county One Leitrim and Sligo counties One Limerick county Two Londonderry county One Longford county One Louth county One Mayo county One Meath county One Monaghan county One Queen's county One Roscommon county One Tipperary county Two Tyrone county One Waterford county One Westmeath county One Wexford county One Wicklow county One ----------- Forty-eight The expression 'borough' in this Schedule means an existing parliamentary borough. Counties of cities and towns not named in this Schedule shall be combined with the county at large in which they are included for parliamentary elections, and, if not so included, then with the county at large bearing the same name. A borough named in this Schedule shall not for the purposes of this Schedule form part of any other constituency. SECOND SCHEDULE IRISH MEMBERS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS Constituencies. Number of Members for House of Commons Antrim county Three Armagh county Two Belfast borough (in divisions as mentioned below) Four Carlow county One Cavan county Two Clare county Two Cork county (in divisions as mentioned below) Five Cork borough Two Donegal county Three Down county Three Dublin county Two Dublin borough (in divisions as mentioned below) Four Fermanagh county One Galway county Three Galway borough One Kerry county Three Kildare county One Kilkenny county One Kilkenny borough One King's county One Leitrim county Two Limerick county Two Limerick borough One Londonderry county Two Londonderry borough One Longford county One Louth county One Mayo county Three Meath county Two Monaghan county Two Newry borough One Queen's county One Roscommon county Two Sligo county Two Tipperary county Three Tyrone county Three Waterford county One Waterford borough One Westmeath county One Wexford county Two Wicklow county One -------- Eighty (1) In this Schedule the expression 'borough' means an existing parliamentary borough. (2) In the parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Dublin, one member shall be returned by each of the existing parliamentary divisions of those boroughs, and the law relating to the divisions of boroughs shall apply accordingly. (3) The county of Cork shall be divided into two divisions, consisting of the East Riding and the West Riding, and three members shall be elected by the East Riding, and two members shall be elected by the West Riding; and the law relating to divisions of counties shall apply to those divisions. THIRD SCHEDULE FINANCE IMPERIAL LIABILITIES, EXPENDITURE, AND MISCELLANEOUS REVENUE _Liabilities_ For the purposes of this Act 'Imperial liabilities' consist of:-- (1) The funded and unfunded debt of the United Kingdom, inclusive of terminable annuities paid out of the permanent annual charge for the National Debt, and inclusive of the cost of the management of the said funded and unfunded debt, but exclusive of the Local Loans stock and Guaranteed Land stock and the cost of the management thereof; and (2) All other charges on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom for the repayment of borrowed money, or to fulfil a guarantee. _Expenditure_ For the purpose of this Act Imperial expenditure consists of expenditure for the following services:-- I. Naval and military expenditure (including Greenwich Hospital). II. Civil expenditure, that is to say-- (_a_) Civil list and Royal family. (_b_) Salaries, pensions, allowances, and incidental expenses of-- (i) Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; (ii) Exchequer judges in Ireland. (_c_) Building, works, salaries, pensions, printing, stationery, allowances, and incidental expenses of-- (i) Parliament; (ii) National Debt Commissioners; (iii) Foreign Office and diplomatic and consular service, including secret service, special services, and telegraph subsidies; (iv) Colonial Office, including special services and telegraph subsidies; (v) Privy Council; (vi) Board of Trade, including the Mercantile Marine Fund, Patent Office, Railway Commission, and Wreck Commission, but excluding Bankruptcy; (vii) Mint; (viii) Meteorological Society; (ix) Slave trade service. (_d_) Foreign mails and telegraphic communication with places outside the United Kingdom. _Revenue_ For the purposes of this Act the public revenue to a portion of which Ireland may claim to be entitled consists of revenue from the following sources:-- 1. Suez Canal shares or payments on account thereof. 2. Loans and advances to foreign countries. 3. Annual payments by British possessions. 4. Fees, stamps, and extra receipts received by departments, the expenses of which are part of the Imperial expenditure. 5. Small branches of the hereditary revenues of the Crown. 6. Foreshores. [The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Schedules are for the saving of space omitted.] FOOTNOTES: [138] The Bill is printed as it was originally presented to the House of Commons. INDEX _American Commonwealth_, by Rt. Hon. James Bryce, 37 _n_ _American History, Critical Period of_, by Fiske, 103 Andrews, Mr. Justice, a Unitarian, 71 _n_ Appeals under Irish Government Act, 209 Asquith, Rt. Hon. H.H., on the policy of Home Rule, 26, 74 _n_ Balfour, Rt. Hon. Arthur, on Ireland, 71 Beaumont, Gustave de, 142 Bright, John, on Free Trade, 134 Bryce, Rt. Hon. James, 26, _American Commonwealth_, 37, 169 Burke, Edmund, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_, 134 Cambray, Mr., _Irish Affairs and the Home Rule Question_, 1, 23 Canada as a self-governing colony, 20, 25 Civil servants under Irish Government Act, 210 Clancy, Mr., M.P., and the financial clauses of the Home Rule Bill, 103 Cobden and Free Trade, 134 Coercion Act, the, 144 Colonies, self-governing, _see_ New Zealand, Canada, Victoria _Constitution, Law of_, by Professor Dicey, 6 _n_, 29 _n_, 67 _n_ Constitution of Legislature under Irish Government Act, 199 Constitution, old and new, 1-20, 56; the new, 21 _et seq_., 191; no settlement of the Irish question, 112 _et seq_.; rests on an unsound foundation and contradictory, 125; pleas for, 132 _et seq._ Constitutional questions, decision of, under Irish Government Act, 209 Contracts, laws as to, 85, 86 Crown Lands under Irish Government Act, 210 Davitt, Michael, and the New Constitution, 115, 142, 167 Dicey, Professor A.V., _Law of the Constitution,_ 6 _n_, 29 _n_, 67 _n_ Duffy, Sir Gavan, Irish Nationalist, 39, 166; his prediction, 128 England, present constitution of, 2 _et seq_.; retention of Irish Members at Westminster, 32 _et seq_., 66, 123, 200, 218, 221; inducements to, 48; meaning of Home Rule to, 53 _et seq_.; result of helping Portugal and Spain, 116; opposition to Home Rule, 119 _et seq_.; Grattan's constitution, 149; the path of safety, 175 _et seq._ _England's Case against Home Rule_, 59 _n_, 91 _n_, 94 _n_, 97 _n_, 138 _n_, 155 _n_, 162 _n_ Executive authority under Irish Government Act, 198 Feast of Concord in France, 172 Federalism, 6; and Home Rule, 13 _et seq_., 96, 118; application to England, 155; how it works in other countries, 153 _et seq._ Finance, under Irish Government Act, 27, 100, 102, 201-207, 222, 223 Fiske, _Critical Period of American History_, 103 Ford, Patrick, 166 France, and Italy, 116; Feast of Concord, 172; the constitution of 1791, 191 Freeman, E.A., _Irish Home Rule and Its Analogies_, 67 _n_, 153 _n_ Germany, federalism in, 6 Girardin, M., on the French Revolution, 135 Gladstone, W.E., and Home Rule, 26, 113, 128 _n_, 140, 163, 175; on the retention of Irish Members at Westminster, 32 _n_, 39, 66, 123 Government, _see_ Parliament Government of Ireland Bill, _see_ Home Rule Bill Grattan's constitution, 139, 149-152 Hilty, Professor, Swiss publicist, 160 Home Rule, a new constitution for the United Kingdom, 1, 19; compared with the old constitution, 8 _et seq_.; four leading features of, 22; the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, 22-31; the retention of the Irish Members in the Imperial Parliament, 32 _et seq_., 66 _n_, 123, 200, 218-221; powers of the Irish Government, 66 _et seq_., 197 _et seq _.; the Veto, 88; Finance, 100-103, 201-207, 222, 223; as a settlement of the Irish question, 112 _et seq_.; is federalism, 118; reasons for, 132 _et seq_.; necessity for, 138; the safeguards, 149; Grattan's constitution, 149; success of, 152 _et seq_.; the policy of trust, 163 _et seq_.; a revolutionary movement, 177, 191 Imperial Parliament, _see_ Parliament Ireland, the old constitution, 1-8; the new constitution, 8 _et seq_.; the retention of Irish Members in the Imperial Parliament, 32 _et seq_., 66 _n_, 123, 200, 218-221; meaning of Home Rule to, 53; powers of the Irish Government under Home Rule Bill, 66 _et seq_., 197 _et seq_.; the Irish Parliament, 75; restrictions and obligations, 80 _et seq_.; the Veto, 88; the Privy Council and the Courts, 90 _et seq_.; Home Rule no settlement of the Irish question, 112 _et seq_.; arguments for the new constitution, 132 _et seq_.; her desire for parliamentary independence, 140 _Irish Affairs and the Home Rule Question_, by Cambray, 1, 23 _n_ Irish Constabulary under Home Rule Bill, 75 _n_, 212 Irish Executive, 66 Irish Government Act, _see_ Home Rule Bill _Irish Home Rule and its Analysis_, by E.A. Freeman, 67 _n_, 153 _n_ Irish Parliament, 75 Irish representation in the House of Commons, 32 _et seq_., 66, 123, 200, 218-221 Italy and France, 116 Jackson, Andrew, President of the United States, 158 Judges under Home Rule Bill, 210 Lalor, Mr., 142 Lecky, Mr., _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, 150 Legislative authority under Home Rule Bill, 197 _et seq_. Local Government Bill compared with Home Rule Bill, 186 Lord Lieutenant, office of, 66, 210 McCarthy, J., on the effect of the Home Rule Bill, 112, 142, 167 Mahoney, Pierce, _Irish Independent_ on the release of prisoners, 117 Marshall, John, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 158 Melbourne, Irish informers' reception at, 161, 162 Mill, John Stuart, _Representative Government_, 6 _n_, 118 _n_. Morley, John, Chief Secretary for Ireland, on retention of Irish Members at Westminster, 39-43, 49, 62; changes in administration, 71; safeguards against legislation setting aside contracts, 86 New Zealand as a self-governing colony, 4, 5, 9, 20, 25, 31; compared with Ireland, 156 Nulty, Dr., Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath, 71 _n_. O'Connell, Daniel, compared with Parnell, 139; 166 Parliament, British and Imperial, authority of, in the United Kingdom, 2 _et seq_.; in the Colonies, 4 _et seq_.; supremacy of, 22 _et seq_.; retention of Irish Members in, 32 _et seq_.; power up to 1782, 55; since the Union, 56 _et seq._ Parnell, 34; and Home Rule, 139, 142, 167 Phoenix Park murders, 146 Police under Home Rule Bill, 75 _n_, 212 Post Office and postal telegraphs under Home Rule Bill, 207, 208 Privy Council and the Courts, 90 Protection, 99, 198 Redmond, John, M.P., Home Rule, 26, 50, 103; and the imprisoned dynamiters, 117 _n_, 168 Referendum, Dicey on, 189, 190 Religion, restrictions on, 99 _Representative Government_, by John Stuart Mill, 118 _n._ Restrictions and obligations in Home Rule Bill, 80 _et seq_., 197, 198, 214 Retention of Irish Members in House of Commons, 32 _et seq_., 66, 123, 200, 218-221 Russell, Lord John, 32 _n_ Savings banks under Home Rule Bill, 207, 208 Sexton, Thomas, on Home Rule Bill, 16 _n_, 26, 112, 126 Siéyès, Abbé, 19 Switzerland an example of successful federalism, 6, 159 Taxes, right to impose, 2, 3 Ticino, insurrection in, 107, 160, 161 _Times Parliamentary Debates, 26 _n_, 32 _n_; Mr. Asquith on executive authority, 74 _n_; John Morley on legislation to set aside contracts, 86 _n_; J. McCarthy and W.E. Gladstone on Home Rule as a final settlement, 112 _n_, 113 _n_, 142 _n_; Gladstone on the policy of trust, 163 _n_. Tocqueville, Alexis de, and the French Revolution, 134, 173 Trust, the policy of, 163 Unionism, the policy for, 183 _et seq._ _Unionist Delusions, _62 _n_. United States of America, division of parties in, 37 _n_; no law allowed to impair the obligation of a contract, 85; Bryce on State Legislatures in, 169, 170 Veto, the, 15, 199; its uselessness, 88 Victoria as a self-governing colony, 4 _n_. _Victoria, Government of_, by Jenks, 9 _n_. 
13998	----	IRELAND AND THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT by MICHAEL F. J. McDONNELL With a Preface by John Redmond, M.P. 1908 _Matri dilectissimae_ PREFACE Without agreeing with every expression of opinion contained in the following pages I heartily recommend this book, especially to Englishmen and Scotchmen, as a thoughtful, well-informed, and scholarly study of several of the more important features of the Irish question. It has always been my conviction that one of the chief causes of the difficulty of persuading the British people of the justice and expediency of conceding a full measure of National autonomy to Ireland was to be found in the deep and almost universal ignorance in Great Britain regarding Irish affairs present and past--an ignorance which has enabled every unscrupulous opponent of Irish demands to appeal with more or less success to inherited and anti-Irish prejudice as his chief bulwark against reform. It was this conviction that led Mr. Parnell and his leading colleagues, after the defeat of the first Home Rule Bill in 1886, to establish an agency in England for the express purpose of removing the ignorance and combating its effects, and no advocate of Irish claims in England or Scotland has failed to find traces down to this day of the good effects of the propaganda thus set on foot, the discontinuance of which was one of the lamentable results of the dissensions in the Irish National Party between 1890 and 1900. This book carries on the work of combating British ignorance of Irish affairs and the effects of that ignorance in a manner which seems to me singularly effective. The writer is no mere rhetorician or dealer in generalities. On the contrary, he deals in particular facts and gives his authorities. Nothing is more striking than the care he has obviously taken to ascertain the details of the subjects with which he has concerned himself and the inexorable logic of his method. It is perfectly safe to say that he neglected few sources of information which promised any valuable results, and that he has condensed into a few pages the more vital points of many volumes. It is not necessary to say anything of his style except that the cultured reader will most appreciate and enjoy it. I shall not anticipate what the author has to say except in respect of one particular matter to which it seems to me expedient that particular public attention should be directed, especially by English and Scotch readers. The study of Irish history throws an inglorious light on the character of many British statesmen, and one of the salient facts brought into prominence in this little volume is that, even since the conversion of Mr. Gladstone to Home Rule, more than one leader of each of the two great political parties in Great Britain have displayed an utter lack of political principle in their dealings with Ireland, and especially with the Irish National question. I cannot but think that if the facts, as told by the author of this volume, were universally, or even widely, known amongst Englishmen and Scotchmen there would be much less heard in the future regarding Home Rule eventuating in Rome Rule or endangering the existence of the Empire. This volume will, I hope, have a wide circulation not only in Great Britain, where such works are specially needed but in Ireland itself, where also it is well calculated to strengthen the faith of convinced Home Rulers and to bring light to the few who are still opposed to the Irish National demand for self-government, and to other important, though minor, reforms. J. E. REDMOND. December, 1907. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I THE EXECUTIVE IN IRELAND CHAPTER II THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND CHAPTER III THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF IRELAND CHAPTER IV THE LAND QUESTION CHAPTER V THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION CHAPTER VI THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM CHAPTER VII UNIONISM IN IRELAND CHAPTER VIII IRELAND AND DEMOCRACY CHAPTER IX IRELAND AND GREAT BRITAIN CHAPTER X CONCLUSION NOTES ADDENDUM "You desire my thoughts on the affairs of Ireland, a subject little considered, and consequently not understood in England." --JOHN HELY HUTCHINSON, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, in a letter written in 1779 to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. INTRODUCTION A decree of Pope Adrian IV., the only Englishman who has sat in the chair of St. Peter, in virtue of the professed jurisdiction of the Papacy over all islands, by a strange irony, sanctioned the invasion of Ireland by Strongbow in the reign of Henry II. Three years ago I stood in the crypt of St. Peter's in Rome, and the Englishman who was with me expatiated on the appropriate nature of the massive sarcophagus of red granite, adorned only with a carved bull's head at each of the four corners, which seemed to him to stand as a type of British might and British simplicity, and in which the sacristan had told us lay all that was mortal of Nicholas Breakspeare. Seeing that I took no part in this panegyric, he took me on one side and said that he had observed that all the English Protestants to whom he showed that tomb, situated as it is literally _ad limina Apostolorum_, waxed eloquent, but, on the other hand, the Irish Catholics whom he told that it contained the bones of the dead Pontiff invariably shook their fists at the ashes of the unwitting, but none the less actual, source of their country's ills. To this I replied by quoting to him a saying of Robert Louis Stevenson, who as a Scot viewed the matter impartially, and who declared "that the Irishman should not love the Englishman is not disgraceful, rather, indeed, honourable, since it depends on wrongs ancient like the race and not personal to him who cherishes the indignation." * * * * * The great tendency which has been so marked a feature of Irish life in the course of the last decade to turn the attention of the people towards efforts at self-improvement and the development of self-reliance without regard to English aid, English neglect, or English opinion, excellent though it has been in every other respect, has had this one drawback--that there has grown up a generation of Englishmen, well-intentioned towards our country, to whom the problems of Irish Government are an unknown quantity. The ignorance of Irish affairs in England is due partly to ourselves, but also to a natural heedlessness arising from distance and preoccupation with problems with which Englishmen are more intimately concerned. In view of the awakening of the democratic forces of Great Britain it is vital that Irish questions should be set before the eyes of the electorate of Great Britain, in order that, when for the first time the constitutional questions involved are placed before voters unprejudiced by class interests or a fellow-feeling for the pretensions of property wherever situate, there may be a body of electors who realise the gravity of the problems in question, and who have a full appreciation of the history of the case. The Irish question has at no time been brought before the English public less than at the present day. Fenianism in the seventies and the various agrarian agitations in the eighties served to keep it constantly before the English eyes, and after the acquittal of Mr. Parnell and his colleagues of the charges brought against them by the _Times_ much educative work was done for a short time by Irish Members of Parliament on English platforms. The demands of Ireland have always been met by an unjust dilemma. When she has been disturbed the reply has been that till quiet is restored nothing can be done, and when a peaceful Ireland has demanded legislation the absence of agitation has been adduced as a reason for the retort that the request is not widespread, and can, in consequence, be ignored. The remedy against such inaction proving successful in the future lies in the existence of a strong body of public opinion in Great Britain, educated to such a degree in the facts of the case as to brook no delay in the application of remedies. As for us, we cannot expect to be believed on our mere _ipse dixit_, and must state our case frankly and fully. The present moment seems timely, before the smoke of conflict has once again obscured the broad principles at issue. I propose to deal with reform in a plea of urgency, endeavouring at the same time to trace the evolution of things as they are to-day, quoting history as I go, with one aim only in view, to point a moral and adorn a tale. It will serve, I hope, to explain the past, to illustrate the present and to provide a warning for the future. The Irish question, as Lord Rosebery has said, has never passed into history, because it has never passed out of politics. M.F.J. McD. Goldsmith Building, Temple. CHAPTER I THE EXECUTIVE IN IRELAND "La 'Garnison' a occupée le pays sans le 'gouverner,' ou en ne le gouvernant que de son propre interet de classe: son hegemonie a été toute sa politique." --L. PAUL-DUBOIS, _L'Irlande Contemporaine_, 1907. "A regarder de près on percoit pourtant que cette imitation Irlandaise de la justice brittanique n'en est sur bien des points qu'une assez grossiere caricature, ce qui prouve une fois de plus que les meilleures institutions ne vaient que ce que valent les hommes qui les appliquent, et que les lois sent pen de choses quand elles ne sont pas soutenus par les moeurs."--Ibid. "What does Ireland want now; what would she have more?" asked Pitt of Grattan at the dinner table of the Duke of Portland in 1794, and Englishmen have echoed and re-echoed the question throughout the century which has elapsed. The mode in which it is asked reminds me, I must confess, of that first sentence in Bacon's Essays--"What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not wait for an answer." When, at the end of the nineteenth century, the nations of Europe devoted themselves to a retrospective study of the progress which the passing of a hundred years had brought in its train, Ireland alone was unable to join in the chorus of self-congratulation which arose on every side. To her it was the centenary of the great betrayal to which, as a distinguished writer has said, the whole of her unbribed intellect was opposed, and which formed the climax to a century of suffering. The ancients who held that when ill-fortune befell their country the gods must be asleep would have said so, I have no doubt, of Ireland at the end of the eighteenth century. The people, in a phrase which has become historic, had put their money on the wrong horse in their devotion to the Stuart cause, but, more than this, while they thereby earned the detestation of the Whigs, they were not compensated for it by the sympathy of the Tories, who feared their Catholicism even more than they liked their Jacobitism. In this way the country fell between two stools, and was not governed, even as English Statesmen professed to govern it, as a dependency, but rather it was exploited in the interest of the ruling caste with an eye to the commercial interests of Great Britain in so far as its competition was injurious. Religious persecution, aiming frankly at proselytism, and restrictions imposed so as to choke every industry which in any way hit English manufactures were the keynotes of the whole policy, and in the pages of Edmund Burke one may find a more searching indictment of English rule in Ireland in the eighteenth century than any which has since been drawn up. The concession of Parliamentary independence in 1782 was, as the whole world knows, yielded as a counsel of prudence in the panic fright resulting from the American war and the French revolution. Under Grattan's Parliament the country began to enjoy a degree of prosperity such as she had never known before, and the destruction of that Parliament was effected, as Castlereagh, the Chief Secretary, himself expressed it, by "buying up the fee-simple of Irish corruption"; in other words, by the creation of twenty-six peerages and the expenditure of one and a half million in bribing borough-mongers. In very truth, the Act of Union was one which, by uniting the legislatures, divided the peoples; and it has been pointed out as significant that when the legislatures of England and Scotland were amalgamated a common name was found for the whole island, but that no such name has been adopted for the three kingdoms which were united in 1800. The new epoch began in such a way as might have been expected from its conception. The bigotry of George III., undismayed by what he used to call Pitt's "damned long obstinate face," delayed for more than a quarter of a century the grant of Emancipation to the Catholics, by promises of which a certain amount of their hostility had been disarmed. The tenantry asked in vain for nearly three-quarters of the century for some alleviation of the land system under which they groaned, and for an equal length of time three-quarters of the population were forced to endure the tyranny of being bound to support a Church to which they did not belong. The cause of struggling nationality on the Continent of Europe, in Italy, in Hungary, in Poland, in the Slav provinces, has in each case gained sympathy in Great Britain, but the cause of Irish nationality has received far other treatment. That charity should begin at home may be a counsel of perfection, but in point of fact one rarely sees it applied. Sympathy for the poor relation at one's door is a rare thing indeed. Increasing prosperity makes nations, as it makes men, more intolerant of growing adversity, and the poor man is apt to get more kicks than half-pence from the rich kinsmen under the shadow of whose palace he spends his life, and to whom his poverty, his relationship, and his dependence are a standing reproach. When I hear surprise expressed by Englishmen at the fact that England is not loved in Ireland I wonder at the deep-seated ignorance of the mutual feelings which have so long subsisted, one side of which one may find expressed in the literature of England, from Shakespeare's references to the "rough, uncivil kernes of Ireland" down to the contemptuous sneers of Charles Kingsley, that most English of all writers in the language, each of whom provides, as I think, a sure index to the feelings of his contemporaries and serves to illustrate the inveterate sentiment of hostility, flavoured with contempt, which, as Mr. Gladstone once said, has from time immemorial formed the basis of English tradition, and in regard to which the _locus classicus_ was the statement of his great opponent, Lord Salisbury, that as to Home Rule the Irish were not fit for it, for, he went on to say, "nations like the Hottentots, and even the Hindoos, are incapable of self-government." A cynical Irish Secretary once asked whether the Irish people blamed the Government for the weather; but it must be conceded that the mode of government made the Irish people more dependent than otherwise they would have been on climatic conditions, for this reason, that the margin between their means and a starvation wage was extremely small, and thus it was that in the middle of the century an act of God brought sufferings in its train, the results of which have not yet been effaced. Through it all the country was governed not in the interests of the majority, but according to the fiat of a small minority kept in power by armed force, not by the use of the common law, but of a specially enacted coercive code applicable to the whole or any part of the country at the mere caprice of the chief of the Executive. The record, it must be admitted, is not edifying. Irish history, one may well say, is not of such a nature as to put one "on the side of the angels." Lecky's "History of the Eighteenth Century" has made many converts to Home Rule, and I venture to think that when another Lecky comes to write of the history of the nineteenth century the converts which he will make will be even more numerous. Among the anomalies of Irish government there is none greater than that of the Executive, the head of which is the Viceroy. The position of this official is very different from that of the governor of a self-governing colony. If the Viceroy is in the Cabinet his Chief Secretary is not; but the more common practice of recent years has been for the Chief Secretary to have a seat in the Cabinet to the exclusion of the Lord Lieutenant. Whether the latter be in the Cabinet or not he has no ministers as has a colonial governor, to whose advice he must listen because they possess the confidence of a representative body, and moreover, although the Lord Lieutenant is a Minister of the Crown, his salary is charged on the Consolidated Fund, with the result that his acts do not come before the House of Commons on Committee of Supply as do those of the Chief Secretary on the occasion of the annual vote for his salary. As early as 1823 Joseph Hume ventilated the question of the abolition of the Lord Lieutenancy, and a motion introduced by him to that effect in 1830 received a considerable measure of support. Lord Clarendon, who in 1847 succeeded Lord Bessborough as Viceroy, accepted the office on the express condition that the Government should take the first opportunity of removing the anomaly. In pursuance of this agreement Lord John Russell, in 1850, introduced a Bill, which was supported by Peel, with the abolition of the office for its object. On its second reading it was passed by the House of Commons by 295 votes to 70. In spite of this enormous majority in its favour the Bill was dropped in an unprecedented manner, and never reached the Committee stage owing, it is said, to the opposition of Wellington, who objected to the fact that it would deprive the Crown of its direct control over the forces in Ireland and to the fact that it would leave the Lord Mayor of Dublin, a person who was elected by a more or less popular vote, as the chief authority in that city. In 1857 the question was mooted once more, but no action ensued; and again, on the resignation of Lord Londonderry in 1889, a number of Irish Unionists, headed by the Marquis of Waterford, urged Lord Salisbury to consider the advisability of abolishing the office, together with the Viceregal Court, which a recent French observer has stigmatised as "peuplé de snobs, de parasites et de parvenus."[1] In the event Lord Salisbury, so far from acceding to the request, nominated the Marquis of Zetland to the vacant post, and the proposal to abolish it has not since been raised in public. Men like Archbishop Whately, in the middle of the nineteenth century, whose ambition it was to see what they called the consolidation of Great Britain and Ireland effected, were strongly in favour of the proposal, and its rejection on so many occasions has been doubtless due to the fact that to mix and confound the administration of Ireland with that of Great Britain would necessitate the abandonment of the extreme centralisation of Irish Government, and those who were most anxious, as the phrase went, to make Cork like York were the very people who were most opposed to any abdication of Executive powers which an assimilation of methods of government would have inevitably brought in its train. The government of Ireland is effected by more than forty boards--the forty thieves the late Mr. Davitt used to call them--and it will be for the reader, after he has studied the account which I propose to give of them, to say whether or not they deserve the name. It is nearly twenty years since Mr. Chamberlain, in a celebrated speech at Islington, made the following remarkable declaration:--"I say the time has come to reform altogether the absurd and irritating anachronism which is known as Dublin Castle, to sweep away altogether the alien boards of foreign officials and to substitute for them a genuine Irish administration for purely Irish business." Change of opinions, no one can refuse to admit, in a statesman any more than in other men, and as regards the latter part of the extract which I have quoted Mr. Chamberlain may have changed his views, but it is to the earlier part of the sentence that I would refer. There is in it a definite statement of facts which no change in opinion on the part of the speaker could alter, and which express, as well as they can be expressed, the views of the Nationalists as to the Castle, the alien boards of foreign officials in which remained undisturbed during the course of the seven years after the coalition of Unionists and Tories, in which Mr. Chamberlain was the most powerful Minister of the Crown. Of the purely domestic branches of the Civil Service in Great Britain, the Treasury, the Home Office, the Boards of Education, of Trade, and of Agriculture, the Post Office, the Local Government Board, and the Office of Works, are all responsible to the public directly, through representative Ministers with seats in the House of Commons, the liability of whom to be examined by private members as to minutiæ of their departmental policy is one of the most valuable checks against official incompetence or scandals, and is the only protection under the constitution against arbitrary rule. The whole administrative machinery of the forty-three boards in Ireland has been represented in Parliament by one member, the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, but he is supported since a few months ago by the Vice-president of the Department of Agriculture. The result is that, while in Great Britain a watchful eye can be kept on extravagance or mismanagement of the public services, the maintenance of a diametrically opposite system of government in Ireland, under which it is impossible to let in the same amount of light, leads to the bureaucratic conditions of which Mr. Chamberlain spoke in the speech from which I have quoted. In answer to these complaints it is usual to point to the case of Scotland as analogous, and to ask why Ireland should complain when the Scottish form of government arouses no resentment in that country. The parallel in no sense holds good, for Scotland has not a separate Executive as has Ireland, although she has, like Ireland, a separate Secretary in the House of Commons. Scottish legislation generally follows that of England and Wales, and in any case Scotland has not passed through a period of travail as has Ireland, nor have exceptional remedies at recurring periods in her history been demanded by the social conditions of the country; and last, but by no means least, one has only to look at a list of Ministers of the Crown in the case of this Government, or of that which preceded it, to see that the interests of Scotland are well represented by the occupants of the Treasury Bench, whichever party is in power, so that it is no matter for surprise that she is precluded by her long acquiescence from demanding constitutional change. More than half a century ago Lord John Russell promised O'Connell to substitute County Boards for the Grand Jury, in its capacity of Local Authority, but the latter survived until ten years ago. The members of the Grand Jury were nominated by the High Sheriffs of the Counties, and as was natural, seeing that they were the nominees of a great landlord, they were almost entirely composed of landlords, and the score of gentlemen who served on these bodies in many instances imposed taxation, as is now freely admitted, for the benefit of their own property on a rack-rented tenantry. A reform of this system of local government was promised by the Liberals in the Queen's Speech of 1881, but so far was the powerful Government at that time in office from fulfilling its pledges that not only was no Bill to that effect introduced, but, further, in April, 1883, a Bill to establish elective County Councils, which was introduced by the Irish Party, was thrown out in the House of Commons by 231 votes to 58. In his famous speech at Newport in 1885, when the Tories were, as all the world thought, coquetting with Home Rule, Lord Salisbury declared that of the two, popular local government would be even more dangerous than Home Rule. He based his view partly on the difficulty of finding thirty or forty suitable persons in each of the thirty-two counties to sit on local bodies, which would be greater than that of finding three or four suitable M.P.s for the same divisions of the country; but, even more than this, he insisted on the fact that a local body has more opportunity for inflicting injustice on minorities than has an authority deriving its sanction and extending its jurisdiction over a wider area, where, as he declared, "the wisdom of the several parts of the country will correct the folly or mistakes of one." In spite of this explicit declaration, when, in the following year, the Tories had definitely ranged themselves on the side of Unionism, the alternative policy to the proposals of Mr. Gladstone was nothing less than the establishment of a system of popular local government. Speaking with all the premeditation which a full sense of the importance of the occasion must have demanded, Lord Randolph Churchill, on a motion for an Address in reply to the Queen's Speech after the general election of 1886 had resulted in a Unionist victory, made use of these words in his capacity of leader in the House of Commons:-- "The great sign posts of our policy are equality, similarity, and, if I may use such a word, simultaneity of treatment, so far as is practicable in the development of a genuinely popular system of local government in all the four countries which form the United Kingdom." In 1888 this pledge was fulfilled so far as the counties of England and Wales were concerned, and in regard to those of Scotland in the following year. When the Irish members, in 1888, introduced an Irish Local Government Bill, Mr. Arthur Balfour, as Chief Secretary, opposed it on behalf of the Government, and Lord Randolph Churchill, who at that time, having "forgotten Goschen," was a private member, gave further effect to the solemnity of the declaration, which, as leader of the party, he had made two years before, by his strong condemnation of the line adopted by the Chief Secretary in respect of a measure, to which, as he said, "the Tories were pledged, and which formed the foundation of the Unionist Party." In 1892 the Unionist Government introduced, under the care of Mr. Arthur Balfour, a Bill purporting to redeem these pledges. By one clause, which became known as the "put them in the dock clause," on the petition of any twenty ratepayers a whole Council might be charged with "misconduct," and, after trial by two judges, was to be disbanded, the Lord Lieutenant being empowered to nominate, without any form of election, a Council which would succeed the members who were removed in this manner. The criticism which this provision aroused was, as was natural, acute. The _Times_ at this juncture declared that to attempt to legislate would be to court danger. The Local Government Bill was abandoned, and in this connection a sidelight is shed on the sincerity of the promises which had been made, in a letter from Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Justice FitzGibbon on this question, dated January 13th, 1892, at the time when the Government of 1886 was drawing to a close, and Mr. Balfour was about to introduce the unworkable Bill which was clearly not intended to pass into law. "My information," writes Lord Randolph, "is that a large, influential, and to some extent independent, section of Tories kick awfully against Irish Local Government, and do not mean to vote for it. This comes from a very knowledgable member of the Government outside the Cabinet. If the Government proceed with their project they will either split or seriously dishearten the party, and to do either on the verge of a general election would be suicidal. This is what they ought to do. They ought to say that Irish Local Government is far too large a question to be dealt with by a moribund Parliament; they ought to say that there is not sufficient agreement among their supporters as to the nature and extent of such a measure such as would favour the chances of successful legislation, and that they have determined to reserve the matter for a new Parliament when the mind of the country upon Irish administration has been fully ascertained."[2] The reflections suggested by this account of the evolution of a measure of party policy cannot be edifying to an Englishman or calculated to appeal as wise statesmanship to an Irishman. For what were the facts? A policy denounced as dangerous in the extreme in 1886 by the leader of the party was propounded as part of the policy of the same party in the following year with the acquiescence and, one must suppose, the imprimatur of its chief. Two years later pledges were thrown to the winds, and the excluded minister was provoked to criticism by the dropping of that line of action, of which he himself four years later is found in a private letter to be advising the abandonment on the most frankly avowed grounds of pure partisan tactics. Twelve years were allowed to elapse before the promises made by Unionist leaders in the campaign of 1886 were fulfilled by the Local Government Act of 1898, which, for the first time in the history of Ireland, established by law democratic bodies in the country. One feels inclined to quote, in reference to the history of this question, that phrase of the largest master of civil wisdom in our tongue, as some one has called Edmund Burke, "that there is a way of so withholding as to excite desire, and of so giving as to excite contempt." Under the provisions of the Act, County Councils, Urban District Councils, and Rural Councils were set up, and some notion of the revolution which it effected may be gathered from the fact that in a country which had hitherto been governed by the Grand Jury in local affairs the new Act at a sweep established a Nationalist authority in twenty-seven out of thirty-two counties. Under the old _régime_ the landlord used to pay one-half of the poor rate and the occupier the other half. The outcry of the landed interest, that under the County Councils they would be liable to be robbed by excessive poor rates, resulted in their share being made a charge on the Imperial Treasury, by which means they secured a dole of £350,000 a year out of the £725,000 concerned in the financial arrangements under the Act. Of the recipients of this _solatium_ it was pointed out by an observer that the family motto of the Marquis of Downshire, who was relieved under the Act of liabilities to the extent of more than £2,000, is--"By God and my sword have I obtained"; while that of Earl Fitzwilliam, who had to be content with one-half of that amount, is--"Let the appetite be obedient to reason." The best answer to the pessimists in whom one suspects the wish was father to the thought, who prophesied disaster from an Act which they declared would open the door to peculation and jobbery, is to be found in the Local Government Board Report for 1903, issued on the expiry of the first term of office of the County Councils. It expressly declares that in no matter have the Councils been more successful than in their financial administration, and goes on to say that the introduction of political differences in the giving of contracts and the appointment of officers has occurred only in quite exceptional cases, and it concludes by declaring its opinion that the conduct of their affairs by the various local authorities will continue to justify the delegation to them of large powers transferred to their control by the Local Government Acts. So much for the working of an Act, of which Lord Londonderry spoke as one "which the Loyalists view with apprehension and dismay." So far as certain loss of their supremacy was concerned they might indeed do so, but it is not for Englishmen to throw stones, since events have proved that it is not in the Irish local bodies, but in some of those of London itself, that financial scandals have been rife. The one important respect in which the system of local government in Ireland differs from that established in England, Scotland, and Wales is that in the first named country the control of the constabulary is ruled out of the functions of the local bodies, and is still maintained under the central executive. The plethora of police in the country is one of the most striking features that meet the eye of anyone visiting it for the first time. The observant foreigner who, after travelling in England, crosses to Ireland and there sees on every wayside station at least two policemen varying the _ennui_ of their unoccupied days by watching the few trains that pass through, feels homely pleasure at the thought that the _octroi_ system which he has missed in England is in force in Ireland, and supposes that the men in uniform whom he cannot fail to see are the officials of the municipal customs. The tradition in Ireland is that half a century ago Smith O'Brien, who was under warrant for arrest, was detained at the station at Thurles by a railway guard, and that atonement has been made ever since for the absence of police on that occasion. The Royal Irish Constabulary, than whom it would be difficult to find a physically finer lot of men, is a semi-military force living in barracks, armed with rifles, bayonets, swords, and revolvers. Well may a French writer exclaim--"Combien differents du legendaire et corpulent 'bobby,' cette 'institution populaire' de la Grande Bretagne," who goes without even a truncheon as a weapon of offence. The numbers of the Royal Irish Constabulary, which were largely increased in the days of widespread agitation, are still maintained with scarcely any diminution. The force, when established just seventy years ago, at a time when the population of the country was nearly eight millions, numbered only 7,400 men; the population of the island is to-day only half what it was then, but there are now on the force of the constabulary 12,000 men, and 8,000 pensioners are maintained out of the taxes. In addition to this, there is a separate body of Dublin Metropolitan Police, and smaller bodies in Belfast and Derry are also maintained. The Dublin police force costs nearly six times as much per head of population as does that of London. It comprises 1,200 men, and there has been a remarkable increase in cost in the last twenty years, rising to its present charge of £160,950, with no apparent corresponding increase in numbers or in pay. The total cost of the police system of Ireland is one and a half million pounds per annum; that of Scotland, with an almost equal population, is half a million sterling. To appreciate the point of this it must be realised that the indictable offences committed in Ireland in a year are in the proportion of 18 as compared with 26 committed in Scotland, while criminal convicts are in the ratio of 13 in Ireland to 22 in Scotland. Such a state of things as this, by which the cost of police per head of population is no less than 7s., has only been maintained by the busy efforts, which Lord Dunraven denounced a couple of years ago, of those who paint a grossly exaggerated picture of Ireland, so as "to suggest to Englishmen that the country is in a state of extreme unrest and seething with crime." The columns of the English Unionist Press show the manner in which these impressions are disseminated, and there is in London a bureau for the supply of details of examples of violence in Ireland for the consumption of English readers. The Chief Secretary, in the House of Commons last session, spoke of the fact that he received large numbers of letters of complaint, purporting to come from different sufferers from violence and intimidation in Ireland, but which, on close examination, turned out to be signed by one man. The recent disgraceful attempt to beat up prejudice on the part of the _Daily Graphic_, which reproduced what purported to be not the photograph of an actual moonlighting scene, but a photograph of "the real moonlighters, who obligingly re-enacted their drama for the benefit of our photographer," incurred the disgust which it deserved; but it was only one instance of an organised campaign of bruiting abroad invented stories of lawlessness in Ireland which constitutes the deliberate policy of the "carrion crows," whose action Mr. Birrell so justly reprobated, and of which the most flagrant instances were the purely fictitious plots to blow up the Exhibition in Dublin; an outrage at Drumdoe, which on investigation proved to be the work of residents in the house which was supposed to be attacked, and the allegation of a dynamite outrage at Clonroe, in County Cork, which the police reported had never occurred. One would have thought that the experience which the _Times_ and the Loyal Irish and Patriotic Union gained at the hands of Richard Pigott would at least have made people chary of this form of propaganda. The comparison of the criminal statistics of Ireland with those of Scotland which I have made shows how much truth there is in the imputations of widespread lawlessness, as does also the number of times on which in each year the Judges of Assize comment favourably on the presentment of the Grand Jury; and, moreover, the closing of unnecessary prisons which is going on throughout the country is a further proof, if any be needed, of the falsity of the charges which are so industriously spread abroad. The only gaol in the County of Wexford was closed a few years ago; that at Lifford, the only one in the County of Donegal, has since been closed as superfluous. Of the two which existed till recently in County Tipperary, that at Nenagh is now occupied as a convent, in which the Sisters give classes in technical instruction to the girls of the neighbourhood; but perhaps the most piquant instance is to be found in Westmeath, where an unnecessary gaol at Mullingar, having been for some time closed, is now used for the executive meetings of the local branch of the United Irish League. All these, it should be noted, are to be found in districts which are inhabited not by "loyal and law-abiding" Unionists, but by a strongly Nationalist population. Enough insistence has not been laid on one important fact in the administration of the criminal law in Ireland. In England anyone who alleges that he has been wronged can institute a criminal process, and this is a frequent mode of effecting prosecutions. In Ireland the social conditions in the past have brought it about that the investigation and prosecution of crime is left to the police, who, as a result, have attained something of the protection which _droit administratif_ throws over police and magistrates in France and other Continental countries, by which State officials are to a large extent protected from the ordinary law of the land, are exempted from the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals, and are subject instead to official law administered by official bodies. The principles on which it is based in countries where it forms an actual doctrine of the constitution are the privilege of the State over and above those of the private citizen, and, secondly, the _separation des pouvoirs_ by which, while ordinary judges ought to be irremovable and independent of the Executive, Government officials ought, _qua_ officials, to be independent to a great extent of the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, and their _actes administratifs_ ought not to be amenable to the ordinary tribunals and judges. The absorption by the constabulary of the conduct of prosecutions has tended towards such a state of things as this; but a far more potent factor in the same direction has been the confusion of administrative and judicial functions which the relations of the resident magistrates to the police have engendered, and to an even greater degree has this tendency been accentuated in the case of the special "removable" magistrates appointed in proclaimed districts under the Coercion Acts, for they are officials in whom the judicial and the constabulary functions are inextricably confounded. That this suspicion of officialism detracts from the authority of the police force in popular esteem is undoubted. Their complete dissociation from popular control, the fact that they receive extra pay for any work performed for local bodies, in addition to rewards received from the Inland Revenue for the detection of illicit stills, and the fact the only connection of police administration with local bodies occurs when any county is called upon to pay for the additional force drafted into it on account of local disturbance, all exert their influence in the same direction. That the same curse of extravagance extends to the judiciary in Ireland one would expect from the fact that the number of the High Court Judges is greater than in Scotland, though, as we have seen, the population is smaller and the crime is less. According to a statement made by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury a few months ago the salaries of the judges of the Superior Courts charged on the Consolidated Fund amount to 1s. 1d. per head of population in England and Wales, to 2s. 8d. per head in Scotland, to no less a sum than 3s. 3d. per head in Ireland. And this discrepancy in cost occurs at a time when the complaint in England is that there are not enough judges of the King's Bench, while in Ireland their numbers are excessive. The difference between the attitude of the judiciary in England and in Ireland is to be seen from the fact that M. Paul-Dubois, after quoting with approval the Comte de Franqueville's tribute to the fact that the summing up of a judge in England is a model of impartiality, goes on to say that in Ireland, "c'est trop souvent un acte d'accusation." The fact is that in Ireland, where the salaries of judges are higher than the incomes earned by even the most successful barristers, the judiciary has become to an extent far greater than in England a place of political recompense for Unionist Members of Parliament, who, unlike their English brethren, carry their political prejudices with them on appointment to the Bench. As recently as 1890 Mr. Justice Harrison, at Galway Assizes, asked why the garrison did not have recourse to Lynch law, and until his death Judge O'Connor Morris, unchecked by either party when in power, month by month contributed articles to the reviews, in which he denounced in unmeasured terms the provisions of Acts of Parliament which, in his capacity of Judge of a Civil Bill or County Court, he was called upon to apply. The jury system is discredited in Ireland by every possible means. Many crimes, which in England are classed as felonies, have been statutorily reduced to misdemeanours in Ireland so as to limit the right of challenge possessed by the accused from twenty jurors to six, and at the same time, after Lord O'Hagan's Act had withdrawn from the sheriff the power of preparing jury lists, which he used for political purposes; by resuscitating a common law right of the Crown which has not been used in England for fifty years, arbitrarily to order jurors to "stand aside," the provisions of O'Hagan's Act have been evaded, and a panel hostile to the accused is most frequently secured. The natural protection by which the balance is artificially redressed when the application of the laws has not the sympathy of those who are subject to them is a common symptom in every country and every age. When all felonies were capital offences in England, the wit of juries, by what Blackstone called "a kind of pious perjury," was engaged in devising means by which those who were legally guilty could escape from the penalty; and if it be true that an unpacked jury would possibly in many instances of political offences in Ireland have a prejudice in favour of the accused, the inference is not consequently to be drawn that the ends of justice can only be secured by substituting, as is done, a jury which has a prejudice against him. It is not by methods like these that are inspired sentiments, such as those which prompted Victor Hugo eloquently to describe a tribunal:--"Ou dans l'obscurité, la laideur, et la tristesse, se degageait une impression austère et auguste. Car on y sentait cette grande chose humaine qu'on appelle la loi, et cette grande chose divine qu'on appelle la justice." CHAPTER II THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND "It will not do to deny the obligation. The case (of Ireland's alleged over-taxation) has been heard before a competent tribunal, established and set up by England. The verdict has been delivered; it is against England and in favour of Ireland's contention. Until this verdict is set aside by a higher court, and a more competent tribunal, the obligation of England to Ireland stands proved." --T.W. RUSSELL, _Ireland and the Empire_. The contrast between the history of Great Britain and that of Ireland during the last century--in the one case showing progress and prosperity, advancing, it is not too much to say, by leaps and bounds, and in the other a stagnation which was relatively, if not absolutely, retrograde--is one of the most dismal factors in English politics. Those who would explain it by natural, racial, or religious considerations are probing too deep for an explanation which is in reality much closer at hand. If the external forces in the two countries throughout that period had been the same it would be right and proper to search for an explanation in such directions as have been named, but that these forces have not been so distributed it is my contention to prove. The closing years of the eighteenth century in Ireland, coinciding as they did with the achievement of Parliamentary independence, witnessed in that country a remarkable growth of national prosperity. Up to the year 1795 the taxation of the country never exceeded one and a half millions of pounds, and the National Debt was not more than one million. In the succeeding years the French war and the rebellion of '98 swelled the expenditure, as did the maintenance of an armed force in the country, which was the corollary of the rebellion, and that process which Lord Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant, described as "courting those whom he longed to kick," by which the Act of Union was passed, added another million and a half to the national expenditure. The result of the various causes was that in the year 1799-1800 the taxation of the country had risen to three millions, and the National Debt amounted to just under four millions of pounds. It is necessary to enter into these details, because it was on the basis of the years 1799-1800, and not on that of a year of normal expenditure, such as was 1795, that Pitt and Castlereagh framed the financial clauses of the Act of Union, which were to establish the taxable relations between Great Britain and Ireland. Having said so much we need not pause to consider how far the financial clauses were justified. It will suffice to say that they provided that Ireland should pay two-seventeenths of the joint expenditure of the United Kingdom, together with the annual charge upon her pre-union debt. One should add, however, that the Irish House of Lords protested that the relative taxable capacities of Ireland and England did not bear to each other the ratio which the Act enunciated of 1 to 7-1/2, but in reality of 1 to 18. It was no part of Pitt's scheme that there should be fiscal union. A separate Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, drawing up an Irish budget and regulating an Irish debt, remained after the union of the legislatures. Speaking in 1800 on this very point Lord Castlereagh declared that:-- "It must be evident to every man that if our manufactures keep pace in advancement for the next twenty years with the progress they have made in the last twenty, they may at the expiration of it be fully able to cope with the British, and that the two kingdoms may be safely left like any two countries of the same kingdom to a free competition." The seventh article of the Act of Union, which comprised the financial proposals of the Act, has been summarised as follows in the report of a Royal Commission, to which we shall have occasion to refer later:-- "Ireland and Great Britain had entered into legislative partnership on the clear understanding that they were still, for the purposes of taxation, to be regarded as separate and distinct entities. Ireland was to contribute to the common expenditure in proportion to her resources, so far as the same could be ascertained, and even after the imposition of indiscriminate taxation, if circumstances permitted, she might claim special exemptions and abatements." We have seen how the taxation of Ireland at the time of the Union was three millions. Five years later the figure had risen to four millions, and it went on increasing at this rate until in 1815 it amounted to no less than six and a half millions, having more than doubled in amount in a space of fifteen years, while during the same time the National Debt had risen from four and a half to ten and a half millions. To understand the significance of these figures it must be realised that the Napoleonic war was in progress, and that the supply, on the part of Ireland, of provisions at enhanced war prices was the only means by which she was able to cope with her increasing liabilities. The conclusion of the war and the consequent fall in prices accelerated a crisis in Irish finance. Even in the years of plenty not more than one-half of what the Act of Union proposed could be squeezed out of the country, and the balance, which was added to her debt, raised the ratio which it bore to that of Great Britain from the proportion of 1 to 15-1/2 in 1800 to that of 2 to 17 in 1817. One would have thought that such an increase of debt would have made Ireland less fitted to bear equal taxation with Great Britain, but the statesmen of the day thought otherwise, and in 1817 the Exchequers were amalgamated. Even then the fiscal systems of the two countries were not in all respects assimilated, though in regard to some taxes an equalisation was effected, as, for example, in the case of tobacco, the duty on the unmanufactured variety of which was raised from 1s. to 3s. per lb., while that on cigars and manufactured tobacco was raised from 1s. to 16s. per lb. The manner in which the change affected social conditions in Ireland at this time may best be illustrated by the fact that the taxes on commodities, which necessarily hit the poorest classes hardest, rose from 4s. a head per annum in 1790 to 11s. a head per annum in 1820. After the Consolidating Act of 1817 the annual taxation fell to about five millions, abatements and exemptions being made every year. The tobacco tax and the Stamp Duty of 1842, which realised about £120,000 a year, were, it is true, equalised in the two countries, but for many years the system of special treatment was pursued. To Sir Robert Peel credit is due for having refused in 1842 to extend to Ireland the Income Tax, which he re-imposed in England, and for reducing the duty on Irish whiskey to its original figure by the remission of an additional 1s. per gallon which he had imposed. Soon after this the country supped full of horrors in the famine of 1846-1847. In the decade from 1845 to 1855 more than a quarter of Ireland's population was lost. No sooner did she begin to recover from the effects of this visitation than the Repeal of the Corn Laws dealt her an almost equally disastrous blow. The absence of an industrial side which she might develop, as did England, the almost complete dependence on agriculture, joined to the enfeebled condition in which the lean years had left her, made the adoption at this moment of the principle of Free Trade--in her case--deplorable. Nor was this all. It was at this moment that the opportunity was taken by Mr. Gladstone, at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer, to reverse the discriminative policy upon which Peel had so strongly insisted. The Income Tax was applied to Ireland in 1853 at the rate of seven pence in the pound. Ten years later it had risen to seventeen pence. At the same time an additional duty of eight pence a gallon on Irish whiskey was exacted, which in two years was multiplied fourfold, while in 1858 Disraeli assimilated for the first time the whiskey duty in the two islands by raising it in Ireland to 8s. a gallon. The result of this new departure in taxation may be summarised by saying that the Irish revenue was raised from just under five millions in 1850 to nearly eight millions in 1860, and that, too, at a time when, of all others, her distress demanded special treatment and care. Although the process of assimilation was carried far in 1853 and the subsequent years, fiscal unity has never been completely effected. To this day Ireland secures exemption from the Land Tax, the Inhabited House Duty, the Railway Passenger Duty, and the tax on horses, carriages, patent medicines, and armorial bearings. It will be said, no doubt, that Ireland ought to show due gratitude for these exemptions, but though they raise collectively a sum of £4,000,000 by their incidence in England, Scotland, and Wales, it is calculated that if applied to Ireland they would bring in not more than £150,000 a year, a sum so small that one may ask whether it would bear the cost of collecting. By way of set-off to the imposition of income tax, which it should be noted was at the time said to be "temporary," Mr. Gladstone wiped out a capital debt of four millions, but it must be pointed out that, in the fifty years which have ensued, a sum of between twenty millions and thirty millions has been collected in Ireland as income tax. Objection cannot--beyond a certain point--be taken to the incidence of this tax, seeing that it does not fall upon the poorest classes, and that no country benefits more than does Ireland from the substitution of direct for indirect taxation. But what does call for censure is that its application was not made an occasion for the remission of other taxes. In 1864 the Conservative Government recognised the serious problem of the unequal incidence of taxation in the two islands, and appointed a committee to consider their financial relations. Sir Stafford Northcote, the chairman of this committee, declared that, notwithstanding the fact that they were both subject to the same taxation, "Ireland was the most heavily taxed and England the most lightly taxed country in Europe." Twenty-five years later Mr. Goschen, the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, consented to the appointment of another Committee on the same subject, but no report was ever issued. In 1895 a Royal Commission was appointed, comprising representatives of all political parties, and presided over by a man of commanding ability in the person of Mr. Childers, a former Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer. The terms of reference were "to inquire into the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland and their relative taxable capacity." The following extract will serve to show the conclusions of the Commissioners:-- "In carrying out the inquiry we have ascertained that there are certain questions upon which we are practically unanimous, and we think it expedient to set them out in this report. Our joint conclusions on these questions are as follows:-- "(1) That Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purposes of this inquiry, be considered as separate entities. "(2) That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events showed, she was unable to bear. "(3) That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 was not justified by the then existing circumstances. "(4) That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of burden. "(5) That whilst the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventh of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is very much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding one-twentieth." It is difficult to conceive a more damning indictment of English rule in Ireland. One cannot help recalling the glowing promises of Pitt in 1800:-- "But it has been said, 'What security can you give to Ireland for the performance of the conditions?' If I were asked what security was necessary, without hesitation I should answer 'None.' The liberality, the justice, the honour of the people of England have never yet been found deficient." One is reminded of Dr. Johnson's remark to an Irishman who discussed with him the possibility of the union of the Parliaments:-- "Do not make a union with us, sir; we should unite with you only to rob you." It is a striking testimony to the fact that the approach to some men's hearts is through their pockets; that the report of the Commissioners brought all Ulster into line with the Nationalists. Such a vision of the Protestant lion lying down with the Catholic lamb had not been seen since the Volunteers had mustered in 1778, and then, too, curiously enough, the common cause was financial, being the demand for the removal of the commercial restraints on the island. A conference was held in 1896, presided over by Col. Saunderson, the leader of the Orangemen, and was attended by all the Irish members, irrespective of party. The outcome was a resolution in the House of Commons, proposed by Mr. John Redmond, and seconded by Mr. Lecky. The rejoinder of the Government to the demands made was to the effect that the postulate of the Commissioners that Ireland and Great Britain must, for the purposes of the inquiry, be considered as separate entities stultified the report. One cannot characterise this attitude otherwise than as a piece of special pleading. The appointment, not merely of the Royal Commission, but of the Select Committees of 1865 and 1890, presupposed a disparity between the conditions in the two countries which not only existed in fact but were recognised by law. In regard to the Church, the kind, the police, education, and even marriage, the laws are different in the two countries; and we have seen how, in respect of such widely separate things as land, railway passengers, and armorial bearings, the systems of taxation are distinct. The position of the official Conservatives was well stigmatised by one of the most distinguished among their own body--Mr. Lecky--when he declared that-- "Some people seem to consider Ireland as a kind of intermittent personality--something like Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll--an integral part when it was a question of taxation, and, therefore, entitled to no exemptions, a separate entity when it was a question of rating, and, therefore, entitled to no relief." To the argument that Ireland has no greater claim to relief, on the score of her poverty, than have the more backward agricultural counties of England, the answer is that Wiltshire or Somersetshire--shall we say--have always received equal treatment with the rest of the country, and have never entered into a mutual partnership as did Ireland when she trusted to the pledges made to her by England, and expressed in these terms by Castlereagh:-- "Ireland has the utmost possible security that she cannot be taxed beyond the measure of her comparative ability, and that the ratio of her contribution must ever correspond with her relative wealth and prosperity." The attitude of Ireland in this matter is perfectly plain. While deprecating in the strongest terms the means by which the Union was carried, she is prepared, so long as it remains in force, to abide by its terms. It partakes of the nature of what lawyers call a bilateral contract, imposing duties and obligations on both sides, and these liabilities can only be removed--as in the case of the Disestablished Irish Church--by the consent of both the contracting parties to the treaty. The spectacle of the richest country in Europe haggling over shekels with the poorest is a sight to give pause, while Great Britain's insistence upon her pound of flesh is the more unpardonable because Ireland declares that it is not in the bond. That the highest estimate of the taxable capacity of Ireland arrived at by the Commissioners was one-twentieth, while the actual revenue contribution of Ireland was one-eleventh of the total for the United Kingdom, throws much light upon the social conditions of the smaller island. The rate of taxation per head per annum went up in the second half of the nineteenth century more than 250 per cent.--rising from about £1 in 1850 to more than £2 10s. in 1900. This occurred simultaneously with a diminution of population in the same period from seven millions to four and a half millions, a change which is in glaring contrast with the concurrent increase in Great Britain from twenty millions in 1850 to more than thirty-eight millions at the present day. Whatever may be the other causes which have led to the stream of emigration from Ireland it may certainly be claimed that not least among them is the ever-increasing incidence of taxation which is year by year laying a greater burden upon the privilege of living in that country. A recent Report, issued by the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, gives statistics with reference to the earnings of agricultural labourers throughout the three kingdoms. It concludes that on an average a labourer in England obtains 18s. 3d. a week, in Wales 17s. 3d., in Scotland 19s. 3d., and in Ireland 10s. 11d. It may be noted that in no English county is the average lower than 14s. 6d., while in Ireland in seven counties it is less than 10s., Mayo being the lowest with an average wage of 8s. 9d. The present writer has had occasion in the course of the last few months to hear old men on political platforms in a typical English agricultural constituency pointing a moral from their own or their fathers' recollections of the days before the Corn Laws when wages ran from 8s. to 9s. a week. What is recalled with horror in England as the state of affairs in the "hungry forties" is the present condition in several of the Irish counties. It would be idle to multiply proofs to show the desperate condition of the country. Even in the ten years which have elapsed since the issue of the Report of the Royal Commission the taxation of the country has increased by more than two and a half million pounds, while the population, it is estimated, has in the same period diminished by no less than 200,000. On the assumption arrived at by the Commissioners, that the proper share which Ireland should pay was one-twentieth of the contribution of Great Britain, the country was overtaxed ten years ago to the extent of two and three-quarter millions; yet in spite of that fact in the course of those ten years two millions of additional taxation has been imposed. Two years ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in answer to an inquiry, announced to the House of Commons that in the year 1903-4, the latest for which figures were available, the proportions of tax revenue derived from direct and indirect taxes were:-- Great Britain Ireland Direct Taxes 50.6 per cent. 27.8 per cent. Indirect Taxes 49.4 per cent. 72.2 per cent. These figures show very clearly to what an extent in Ireland taxation falls, not on the luxuries of the rich, but on the commodities which are to a great extent the necessaries of the poor. The manner in which this state of things is maintained was expressed by Sir Robert Giffen in his evidence before the Royal Commission:-- "It is only evident that in matters of taxation Ireland is virtually discriminated against by the character of the direct taxes which happen to be on articles of Irish consumption." The heavy duties on tea, tobacco, and alcohol--articles which form a larger part of the family budget of the Irish peasant than of the English labourer--are the causes of this burden. The reasons for the larger consumption of what may be roughly called stimulants by the Irishman is undoubtedly to be found in climatic conditions, and also in the smaller amount of nourishing food which he is able to afford. With regard to alcohol, the form in which it is most used in England--namely, beer--is subjected to a special exemption at the expense of the whiskey-drinking people of Ireland and Scotland. Cider is not taxed. The tax on whiskey is between two-thirds and three-fourths its price, while that on beer is one-sixth of its price; so that sixty gallons of beer bear the same weight of taxation as does one gallon of whiskey. The usual standard of taxation of liquor is its alcoholic strength, but the special treatment accorded to the Englishman's principal drink reduced--according to the Royal Commissioners--the taxation to which, in proportion to its alcohol it should be subjected, from 1s. to 2d. per gallon. Even in respect of tea and tobacco, the inequitable treatment of Ireland is obvious to any one who considers that what is spoken of as equality of taxation is, in reality, identical taxation on articles consumed in vastly different proportions in Great Britain and Ireland. The argument by which the charge that Ireland is overtaxed was rebutted by the late Unionist Government was that the balance is restored by the amount of money spent in the administration of that country. When the complaint is heard that she is contributing at this day no less a sum than,£9,750,000 to revenue, the answer is made that she has no grievance since the cost of Irish services amounts to more than £7,500,000, the balance, a paltry two and a quarter millions, forming her Imperial contribution. Ireland is being bled to death, and to her complaints the answer is that she is being expensively administered. To fleece a poor man of his pittance and to justify the action by telling him that it is on every appurtenance of a spendthrift to which he objects that it is being spent is scarcely to provide a satisfactory justification. The two cases are exactly parallel, and it is a weak position which has to entrench itself behind the fact that the cost of government per head is in Ireland double what it is in England. The country is against its will saddled with a Viceregal Court, of which the Lord Lieutenant enjoys a salary twice as great as that of the President of the United States. The government is conducted by more than forty boards, only one of which is responsible, through a Minister in the House of Commons, to the country. Official returns show that Scotland, with a population slightly larger than that of Ireland, possesses 942 Government officials as against 2,691 in Ireland. In Scotland the salaries of these public servants amount to less than £300,000, while in Ireland the corresponding cost is more than £1,000,000 per annum, showing that the average salaries in the poorer country are considerably higher than in the richer. Of the £7,500,000 devoted to Irish services, £1,500,000 goes to the Post Office and Customs, while one half of the remainder is consumed by the salaries and pensions of policemen and officials. To take a single example--the Prison Boards of Scotland and Ireland work under identical Acts, dating from 1877. It is instructive, therefore, to compare the conditions of the two. The estimates for the year 1905 were calculated on the assumption that there were 120 fewer prisoners a day in Irish prisons than in Scotland. In spite of this the cost of the Irish Board for the last year of which I have seen the figures was £144,597, and that of the Scottish Board was only £105,588. The ratio between these figures is as 1.3 to 1, which is in nearly the same proportion as is the number of the officials on the two boards--namely, 622 in Ireland and in Scotland 467, and this, too, in spite of the fact that further statistics show, namely, that there are five convicted criminals in Scotland for every three in Ireland. These are a few facts which show the value of the case for the present state of affairs, based on the assumption that over-taxation is balanced by profligate expenditure. The maintenance--to take only one point--of a police force about half the size of the United States army, when at the present time white gloves--the symbol of a crimeless charge--are being given to the judges on every circuit, is a state of affairs which is intolerable, while the small proportion which in the returns Ireland is shown to bear of the Imperial contribution is the result of the inclusion of the Viceregal and Civil Service charges, not, as should be the case, in the Imperial account, but in the separate Irish account. As an instance showing how exorbitant exactions defeat their own end by diminishing, and not raising, the available revenue, it should be noted that in 1853 an income tax of 7d. in the pound raised £200,000 more than did an income tax of 8d. in the pound at the date of the Royal Commission. Of the remedies which are suggested, the alteration of the Fiscal system, by making abatements in the Irish Excise and Customs, is not likely to be attempted. Reduction of expenditure, liberating money which may be made to serve a useful purpose, is obviously the first step, but any scheme of allocation of large sums for Irish development, without full and proper financial control, will undoubtedly fail to meet the case. The multiplication of irresponsible boards must be stopped, and to what extent anything, save economies in expenditure, can be effected without far larger changes remains a moot point. Of one thing, at any rate, one may be certain--the present Liberal Government when in Opposition joined forces with the Irish members in driving home the tremendous admissions of the Royal Commissioners, and it is impossible to think that, now they are in power, they will repudiate their obligations, the more so as the present Chancellor of the Exchequer last year announced the intention of the Government to see how far it is possible to adjust the financial relations between the two kingdoms on a fairer basis. Sir Hercules Langrishe, the friend and correspondent of Edmund Burke, is said to have accounted for the swampy condition of the Phoenix Park by saying--"The English Government are too much engaged in _draining_ the rest of the kingdom to find time to attend to it." Enough has been said to show that the process of which Sir Hercules spoke is still going on. One would have thought that counsels of prudence would have made an end of it. It remains to be seen whether the uncontestable facts to which they themselves have subscribed will prevail with the Government. "The liberality, the justice, the honour of the people of England" are concerned in it now, as truly as when Pitt spoke. Moreover, it is one of the instances in which the claims of justice and of expediency coincide. The findings of the Financial Relations' Commission fully justified the attitude of the Irish Party to the proposal, under Mr. Gladstone's Bill, that the Irish contribution to the Imperial Treasury should be one-fourteenth of that of Great Britain, while Mr. Parnell declared that it ought to have been one-twentieth. The population, since the publication of the Report of the Commission, has decreased by a quarter of a million, but taxation has increased from,£7,500,000 to £10,500,000. If Ireland had secured the fixed contribution, against the height of which she protested, she would nevertheless have been guarded from such a disproportionate rise of taxation. Whatever test be taken, be it population, a comparison of exports and of imports, the consumption of certain dutiable articles, relative assessments to death duties, income tax, or the estimated value of commodities of primary importance consumed, every one of them shows the relative backwardness of Ireland as compared with Great Britain, in view of which the fact that the cost of government per head of population is double in Ireland what it is in England, shows the extent to which the one is liable in damages to the other. The increased expenditure on the navy obviously does not benefit equally the two countries, of which the one only has dockyards and manufactories, and this is especially the case seeing that the country which lacks these things is also without a commerce needing defence; while any advantage resulting from a portion of the army being quartered in Ireland is minimised when it is found that arms and accoutrements are purchased in England. The attempt to stultify the findings of the Commission on the ground that its report was based on a fallacy, since Ireland has no more right to be considered as a separate entity than an English county, is remarkably disingenuous in view of the acknowledgment of this in the separate treatment which she received in the matter of grants made in relief of local taxation and for the establishment of free education in the years 1888 and 1890 and 1891. Moreover, it was impliedly admitted that she was a separate entity in the appointment of a Select Committee on taxation in 1864, and again by Lord Goschen in 1890, and the whole history of her separate legislation bears the same construction. One cannot give a better commentary on what has been seen of the economic condition of the island than by quoting the peroration of the speech of John Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, the "great father of the Union," speaking in the Irish House of Parliament:--"It is with a cordial sincerity and a full conviction that it will give to this, my native country, lasting peace and security for her religion, her laws, her liberty, and her property, an increase of strength, riches, and trade, and the final extinction of national jealousy and animosity, that I now propose to this grave assembly for their adoption an entire and perfect Union of the Kingdom of Ireland with Great Britain. If I live to see it completed, to my latest hour I shall feel an honourable pride in reflecting on the little share I may have in contributing to effect it." CHAPTER III THE ECONOMIC CONDITION OF IRELAND "When the inhabitants of a country leave it in crowds because the government does not leave them room in which to live, that government is judged and condemned."--JOHN STUART MILL, _Political Economy_. I have shown something of the incubus of taxation which overpowers Ireland from the fact that she--the poorest country in Western Europe--is bound to the richest in such a manner that the latter has not the common prudence to recognise the flagitious injustice which she is inflicting, while, by a refinement of cruelty, she repeats her assurances that Ireland is a spoilt child, and for this reason alone does not appreciate the blessings of British rule. In the light of the facts before us one may well ask whether it was an extreme hyperbole of which Grattan made use when he declared that "Ireland, like every enslaved country, will be compelled to pay for her own subjugation." When we are urged to put into practice the counsels of perfection and study the virtue of patience while we wait for the opportune moment for reform, from the point of view of English party politics, our reply is that things have reached so desperate a pass that to submit to the delays entailed by the exigencies of political strategy is a suicidal policy which we cannot afford to endure without protest. The inhabitants of Great Britain had their Imperial taxation cut down in the nineteenth century by one-half, that of the Irish people was doubled. Every year that passes without radical change in the relations between the two countries makes it more serious, and makes the changes more drastic which will be required when the need for them is at last fully realised. At the present day more than ten millions per annum are raised by taxation in Ireland. Of these seven and a half are spent on the _home_ government of the country, which in 1890 cost only just over five millions, while that of Scotland at this moment costs a little more--namely, five and a half millions. If one looks at the case of Denmark one finds a rich agricultural country with a population of six and a half millions, which is able to maintain her home and foreign government, a Royal Family, a debt, an army with a war strength of 70,000, a fleet, and the expense of three colonies, on an expenditure of four and a half millions. Sweden, to take another case, with a population of six and a half millions, a large commerce, and many industries, is able to support her whole government, army, navy, diplomatic and consular service on a budget of little more than five millions; and the cost of civil government of Belgium, with a greater population and four times the trade, is one-half that of Ireland. The relative cost of _home_ government per head of population, which amounts in Ireland to £1 14s. 3d., in England and Wales to £1 3s., and in Scotland to £1 3s. 3d., illustrates in a striking manner the ruinous condition of the present incidence in Ireland. If this administrative waste is palliated by the statement that it retains money in Ireland, the reply is that the excess of administrative expenditure which is included in this sum is enough to effect large measures of social reform in the country, the benefit of which is not to be named in the same breath with the present mode of maintaining an extravagant staff of highly-paid officials. As things are, however, all motives to secure economies in the Irish services are vitiated by the existing system by which any economies in Irish administration go, not to Ireland, but to the Imperial Treasury, and in this way economical government is not merely not encouraged but actually discouraged, and hence it is that one has such contrasts as that to be seen in each year's Civil Service Estimates, where, under the item of stationery and postage in respect of public departments, the amount for the last year which I have seen is, for Scotland £24,000, and for Ireland,£43,000, and that the Department of Agriculture, out of a total income from Parliamentary Grant of £190,000, spends no less than £80,000 on salaries and wages, and another £10,000 on travelling expenses. Sir Robert Giffen has calculated that the incomes of the wage-earning classes in Ireland are, man for man, one-half those of the members of the same classes in England. Statistics of every kind bear out the striking difference in the conditions of the two countries. The average poor law valuation in Ireland is about equal to that of the poorest East London Unions, where it is £3. Though the population is between one-seventh and one-eighth of that of England, the number of railway passengers is one-thirty-seventh, the tons of railway freight is one-seventeenth, the telegrams are one-eighteenth, the postal and money orders are one-nineteenth of those of England. Ireland, to take another test of prosperity, is the fourth meat-producing country in the world and the sixteenth meat-eating, while England, by a curious coincidence, is the sixteenth meat-producing, but the fourth meat-eating, country in the world. The one direction in which the extension of the powers and duties of the Executive has often been urged has not been pursued. I mean the matter of railways. Though in 1834 a Royal Commission recommended that Irish railways should be built with money from the British Treasury, and should be subject to State control, nothing was done in the matter. Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph Churchill were in 1886 in favour of the nationalisation of Irish railways, but at that date again no steps were taken. Mr. Balfour, it is true, when Chief Secretary, secured the passing of the Light Railways Act, under which powers were obtained to open up the Congested Districts by means of light railways, such as those which have been built to Clifden, in County Galway, and to Burtonport, in County Donegal. But the policy which was followed in this Act was to build the railway out of a Treasury grant, and after it had been built to hand it over to one of the existing railway companies. There are to-day 3,000 odd miles of railway in Ireland--a mileage scarcely exceeding that of a single company, the Great Western Railway, in England. They are owned by nearly thirty companies, each with a separate staff of directors and salaried officials, the directors alone being over 130 in number. The railways of the country are, without exception, notoriously bad, the delay and dislocation incident to the transfer of goods from one line to another, and the high rates which prevail, inevitably serve to impede any traffic in goods, especially if they are of a perishable character. It is not traffic that makes communications, but cheap communications that make traffic. The Belgian Government, fifty years ago, took over the railways of that country, and reduced the freights to such a degree that in eight years the quantity of goods carried was doubled, the receipts of the railways were increased fifty per cent., and the profits of the producers were multiplied five-fold. I am not quoting this instance by way of plea that the present remedy for the grave economic problems of Ireland lies in nationalisation of railways. I have said enough to show the extravagance and irresponsibility of the present Executive system, and in view of that no sane man would propose to endow it with further powers than those which it already possesses; but let me say this, that if the present state of diffusive impotence which rules in the matter of transit in the country continues, some very drastic remedies may before long have to be devised. The cheapest freights for grain in the world are those between Chicago and New York, and the reason why this is so is that there exists keen competition on the part of the inland waterways. Of the 580 miles of canals in Ireland a considerable part are owned by the railway companies, and their weed-choked condition shows the use to which they are put in the national economy. Whoever it was that said the carriers of freight hold the keys of trade was stating what appears almost an axiom, and an illustration is afforded of the results of reduced rates in an analogous business in the way in which the establishment of penny postage sent up the receipts of the General Post Office. The difference in the freights in the three kingdoms may be seen by a comparison of the average rate per ton of merchandise in the year 1900-- In England In Scotland In Ireland 4s. 10.26d. 4s. 11.64d. 6s. 7.90d. In the decade from 1890-1900 the figure in England and Wales decreased 8.79d., in Scotland 1.7d., and in Ireland increased by 1.92d. Again, the control of the great English railway corporations over the small companies in Ireland has led to a state of things by which freights for imported goods are relatively lower than are those for purely internal carriage, and by this means the railways of Great Britain maintain their grip of the carrying trade, and incidentally destroy the industry of Ireland. The trade of Ireland is not two per cent. of that of the three kingdoms, and this policy of swamping the Irish market with English-made goods at low rates to such an extent that over twelve million pounds' worth of imported goods are sold annually in Ireland shows the manner in which the principles of free trade are applied to that country; and so it has come to pass that the opening up of the country by railways has often tended to destroy local industries and to substitute for their products articles manufactured in England and Continental Europe at a cheaper cost, carried in either case by English railways, which, in consequence, reap the benefit of the freight. The carriage per ton paid by eggs to London, to take one example, is 16s. 8d. from Normandy, 24s. from Denmark, and no less that 94s. from Galway. The bearing of the transit question on the agricultural problem is seen by a consideration of the rates for every form of farm produce, which in Ireland are fifteen to twenty per cent. of their value. On the Continent the average is five to six per cent., and in the United States and Canada it is three per cent. The discouragement of such a tariff to agricultural enterprise has had a great bearing on the transformation of plough land into cattle ranches, and the extent to which this has occurred may be seen from the fact that there are to-day twelve million acres of pasture to three millions of arable land in the island, and fertile land, like that of the plains of Meath, is to be seen growing, not corn for men, but grass for cattle. The success of the country in stock-raising may very easily be rendered nugatory if the exclusion of Argentine and Canadian cattle from the English market be ended by the passing of an Act giving the Board of Agriculture a discretionary power to maintain or remove the embargo on their importation, according as the danger of an introduction of cattle disease exists or disappears. The enormous import trade which is done in Danish butter, Italian cheese, and even Siberian eggs, shows the commercial possibilities of farm produce when freights are low. As a tangible example of the discrimination which the railways pursue may be mentioned the fact that the freight for goods per ton from Liverpool to Cavan is 10s. 8d., while that from Cavan to Liverpool is 16s. 8d. The numbers employed on agriculture have diminished, not only in proportion to the population but also relatively to its decrease. According to Mr. Charles Booth land employs as many people to-day in England as it did in 1841, and it probably supports nearly as many, and though in that country, building and manufacture employ a vast number more, in Ireland there has been in the same time a decrease of nearly eleven per cent. of those so employed--the total decrease being 626,000. The population of England has in the last century been multiplied by four, that of Scotland has increased threefold, while that of Ireland has decreased by one-fourth. If we take the last sixty years it will be seen that the people of England have doubled their numbers, but those of Ireland have divided by two. It would be idle to pretend that the great exodus which took place after the famine was in all respects to be regretted. The abnormal increase in population which took place in the first forty years of the nineteenth century was in itself out of all proportion to the increase of productive capacity in the country, and was closely related to the unnatural inflation of prices, and consequent spurious appearance of prosperity, due to the great war. When the climax came this was rapidly followed by a reaction, and when emigration reduced the numbers of eight million people who were in the island in 1841, the modified competition in the labour market and in the land market tended to restore prices to a normal figure. Emigration was at one time a well-recognised remedy with English statesmen for Irish ills. Did not Michael Davitt once say that manacles and Manitoba were the two cures for Ireland which they could propose? Even then, no attempt was made to regulate emigration by the State. The ball which was thus set rolling at that date has been in motion ever since, and that which half a century ago was regarded as the hand of the _deus ex machina_ setting right a grave economic problem has continued, so that it has become at this day a problem no less grave, which to an equal degree presses for solution. Four million people in the last sixty-five years fled from the country, and though the figures, as they are published, seem to show a slight decrease each year, the apparent diminution is to a large extent fallacious, since the residue of population from which emigrants are drawn becomes each year less, and an apparent decrease may in truth be a relative increase. We heard much a few years ago in England of the evils of immigration into the British Isles of aliens, whom the Board of Trade returns show amount to eight thousand per annum--a figure which appears paltry when compared with the forty thousand people who leave Ireland every year. It is a cry which one is told should make the thirty-seven million inhabitants of England and Scotland burn with indignation that this number of foreigners land on their shores every year. Surely we Irishmen have a far greater cause of complaint in the fact that out of a population of four and a half millions, less than is that of London, a number greater than those of a town of the size of Limerick emigrate every year. Most of these emigrants are in the prime of life. Their average age is from twenty to twenty-five, and more than ninety per cent. are between the ages of ten and forty-five years. Here is the crucial fact, that it is the young, the active, and the plucky who are being tempted by promises of success abroad, to which they see no likelihood of attaining at home, and in this way is established a system of the survival of the unfittest, an artificial selection of the most malignant kind, which is leaving the old, the infirm, the poor, and the unadventurous behind to swell the figures of pauperism and to propagate the race. All the authorities are agreed in attributing to this cause the lamentable increase of lunacy, which is one of the most terrible factors in the economy of modern Ireland. The last Census report shows the total number of lunatics and idiots to have been in 1851 equal to a ratio of 1 in 637 of the population, and to be in 1901 equal to a ratio of 1 in 178. The proportion is, as one would expect, highest in the purely agricultural districts and lowest in the neighbourhood of cities, such as Dublin and Belfast, where industrial conditions imply better wages and food, and a less monotonous existence. It should be remembered that the proportion of imbeciles in Great Britain has risen in the period of fifty years as it has in Ireland--partly, no doubt, owing to a better system of registration of lunacy--but, at the same time, the fact remains that the average in Ireland is very much greater than in England and Wales, rising in some Irish counties to a proportion twice, and in another to a ratio thrice, as high as that of the average of the whole of England and Wales. If urban industrial conditions militate against an increase of lunacy, on the other hand it must be remembered that in most Irish towns there is an appalling amount of overcrowding. The death-rate of Dublin--the highest of any city in Europe--is, in consequence, no less than 25 per 1,000, as against 16 per 1,000 in Paris and New York, and 17 per 1,000 in London. The percentage of families, consisting on an average of four persons, living in one room is in London 14.6, in Edinburgh 16.9, in Glasgow 26.1, in Cork 10.6, in Limerick, 15.8, while in Dublin it reaches the appalling percentage of 36. In Belfast, which, unlike any other of the cities which I have mentioned, is for the most part modern, the percentage is not higher than 1, and this fact has a very great bearing on the industrial conditions in that city. Side by side with these figures may be placed those of the death-rate from tuberculosis, which from 1864 to 1906 in England decreased from 3.3 per 1,000 to 1.6, in Scotland decreased from 3.6 per 1,000 to 2.1, and in Ireland _increased_ from 2.4 to 2.7 per 1,000. The rate war of the steamship companies, which reduced the cost of passage across the Atlantic in 1904, caused the emigration returns to rise from 45,000 to 58,000 in a single year, and at the same time there were employed in Ireland two hundred emigration agents of one company alone--the Cunard--each of whom received six shillings a head for each banished Irishman and Irishwoman whom he got safely out of the country. It is easy for the Irishman to wax eloquent about the exiles who, from the time when O'Neil and O'Donnell weighed anchor in Lough Swilly at the very beginning of the seventeenth century, sailed from their country to seek their fortunes abroad in Church or State or camp, since proscription deprived them of the _carrière ouverte aux talents_ at home. The history of the "wild geese" in the service of France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Prussia, and of Russia; of the Irishmen who were respectively the first Quartermaster-General of the United States Army and the first Commodore of the United States Navy, or of the seven Irish Field Marshals of Austria, or of those who served as Viceroys to Chili, Peru, and Mexico, is the story of the citizens of no mean city. Catholic Europe is flecked with the white graves of the Irish exiles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; from Rome to Valladolid, from Douai to Prague, from Salamanca to Louvain, and from Tournai to Paris you will find their bones. But the pathos of this is, to my mind, as nothing compared with the pathos of what is occurring now. For one thing, it was only men in those days that went in any large numbers, while to-day it is both men and women. From the point of view of England the result has been in no small degree serious. Of the four million people who have emigrated since the great tidal wave began with the famine, nearly ninety per cent. have gone, not to British Colonies, but to the United States. Of the fifty thousand who emigrated in 1905 more than forty-four thousand went to the North-American Republic. _Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt_; the Ulster Protestants who were driven from their country by the commercial restrictions of the eighteenth century formed the nucleus of the most implacable enemies of Great Britain in the War of Independence--half Washington's army was recruited from Irishmen in America; and in the same way the exiles of the nineteenth century became, and have remained even to the second generation, irreconcilable adversaries of the system of government which, by affording for too long no relief to the conditions in Ireland, was responsible for the flight from their home to a land which was, by comparison, flowing with milk and honey. Side by side with emigration goes on another factor in the social life of the country which is very significant of the stress under which, in some districts, the Irish peasant ekes out an existence. I am referring to the migratory labourers, of whom nearly 18,000 leave their homes in Ireland every year to work in the harvest fields of England and Scotland, that they may there secure a wage by which they are able to make both ends meet in a manner which the uneconomic nature of their holdings does not permit. How small is the diminution in this annual migration is seen by the fact that the highest figures in connection with it recorded in the last quarter of a century are those of 1880, in which year nearly 23,000 migrated, while within the last six years--in 1901--the figures were as high as 19,700. More than three-quarters of these labourers come from Connacht, and of the total number more than one-half from County Mayo, from which every year 47.8 per thousand of the population migrate, and if one takes the adult male population--_i.e._, that of men over twenty years of age--one finds that the number of migratory labourers represents a proportion of 177.4 per thousand. Nearly three-quarters of them go to England, and the harvest fields of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire are in a large measure reaped by their hands. From February till June the migration occurs, and the labourers return in the late autumn to their homes. The fact that the sum brought back by them is, at the highest estimate, said to be about £18 after nine months of labour, and that the wages which they earn amount to an average of 17s. a week, while, in addition to the cost of living for three-quarters of the year, about £2 is spent on their railway fare, all serve to show the nature of the economic conditions in the West of Ireland which make such a migration for such a wage worth while on the part of nearly twenty thousand people. One factor in this connection which should be noted is that the number of girls who migrate every year is said to be increasing, and is estimated to amount to nearly half the total throughout the country. The precariousness of a dependence on such a means of subsistence as this, is seen from the fact that a bad harvest in England or a development in agricultural machinery would put an end to the source of livelihood which it provides. If from no other point of view the problem should be regarded seriously by Englishmen in the light of the depopulation of the English countryside, with its direct bearing upon the material for recruiting the army and navy, and the problem of unemployment in general. It is a surprising thing that the support of home industries, which was one of the foibles of Dean Swift, who advised Irishmen to burn everything that came from England except its coal, has only of very recent years been resuscitated. So much is this the case that the action of the South Dublin Board of Guardians, who in 1881 insisted that the workhouse inmates should be clothed in Irish produce, was conspicuous by its exceptional nature. At this day all are agreed, whatever be their religious or political opinions, on the advocacy of this form of exclusive dealing at which economists may scowl as at a deliberate attempt to fly in the face of the regular play of the forces of supply and demand, but the success which has so far attended the concerted policy of insisting upon being supplied with Irish produce, and the fact that it is, after all, the only mode of restoring to their natural functions the economic forces in a country where industrial conditions were, by artificial means, thrown out of their natural course, is the justification for its employment. If for no other reason, the activity displayed by "religious" in Ireland in the encouragement and development of local industries as a check on emigration should protect them from the attacks which have been made upon them, as tending to encourage the uneconomic aspect of the situation in Ireland. To name only a few that come into one's mind, the nuns' co-operative factories, which have revived Irish point lace at Youghal, Kenmare, Gort, Carrick-on-Suir, Carrickmacross, and Galway, are instances. Father Dooley, in Galway, has started a woollen factory, with a capital of £10,000, in which nearly two hundred girls are employed, of whom many earn £1 10s. a week. Father Quin, at Ballina, has founded a co-operative shoe factory, and at Castlebar Father Lyons has established an electric power station. The work of the Sisters of Charity at Foxford is well known, and stands in need of no praise, and at Kiltimagh, in Mayo, they employ a hundred and twenty girls at dress and lace making; while Father Maguire, at Dromore, in Tyrone, has established a lace and crochet factory on co-operative principles, which has over a hundred employees; and at Lough Glynn, in Connacht, a carpet and cheese making industry has been built up solely through the efforts of a religious order of nuns. These are random examples, and I do not claim that they are typical. They are, on the other hand, not exceptional. It is impossible to exaggerate the effect of the English commercial policy towards Ireland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Wool, cotton, sailcloth, sugar refining, shipping, glass, the cattle and provision trade, were all deliberately strangled. And besides the loss of wealth to Ireland which was the consequence, one must take into account the fact that traditions of commercial enterprise perished through desuetude, so that in the industrial revolution at the beginning of the nineteenth century Ireland was too severely crippled to derive any benefit from the new order, as to which she was still further handicapped by the poverty of her coal fields. The land system, which is only now disappearing, served, moreover, not to inculcate habits of thrift, but positively as a discouragement of economic virtues. Until the legal recognition of tenant-right had been secured, the tenant who made improvements was liable to have his rent raised, and was aware that he had no legal right to compensation for them on his removal from the holding. Further, the judicial fixing of rents, which, as the time for rent revision has approached, has presented to the tenant the temptation not to make the best of his land, and so run the risk of an augmentation of rent, has been a source of insidious demoralisation to the occupant of the soil. The social upheaval resulting from land purchase will nowhere be more marked than in this respect in the stability which it will produce in the financial conditions of the country, and it may be expected to do something to remedy the lamentable state of things which so far has but little altered from that of twenty years ago, when it was estimated that five-sixths of the total capital of the country was invested abroad. A great opportunity presents itself at the present moment. It was stated a few years ago that eleven millions of rent were spent out of the island. At this day when, under the Land Purchase Act, an immense amount of property is being realised, the patriotic Irish landlord seeking an investment for his money can, by starting industries in Ireland, at one and the same time do a patriotic work by providing against the stream of emigration, and can secure a safe and profitable investment for his purchase-money. There are very nearly eighty million pounds of capital to be set free under the Act, and it is scarcely too much to expect that a large proportion of it will be invested by the expropriated landlords in their own country. The possibility of an industrial revival in Ireland is well illustrated by the increase in the number of co-operative societies, in which there are at the present day 100,000 members, while less than twenty years ago there were only fifty. The effect of the Dairy, Agricultural, and Poultry Societies is very important, but perhaps of still greater importance are the Raffeisin banks, which aim at the promotion of farming by means of co-operative credit. The loans which they make, at an interest of five per cent. or six per cent., are dealing a death-blow at that curse of Irish life--the gombeen man, whose usury used to mount up to thirty per cent. The extremely rare cases of default in the repayment of these loans for agricultural purposes will not be surprising to those who recall the tribute paid by Mr. Wyndham, in connection with land purchase annuities, to the Irish peasant as a debtor whose reliability is unimpeachable. More than twenty years ago the Baroness Burdett Coutts made a loan of £10,000 to the fishermen of Baltimore, with a view to the development of their industry, and the unfailing punctuality with which payments were made afforded another instance of the reliability which is a characteristic of the Irish peasant. This brings one to note in passing that of all others the fishing industry has probably suffered most from the lack of proper means of transit. The 2,500 miles of coast line offer great scope, but the catch of fish off the Irish coast is only one-eighth of that off Scotland, and one-sixteenth of that off England and Wales, and Irish waters are to a very large extent fished by boats from the coasts of Scotland, the Isle of Man, France, and Norway. Oyster fisheries used to abound--the celebrated beds at Arcachon in the Landes were stocked from Ireland--but they have fallen into disuse, and with their disappearance a very remunerative business has been lost. The need for extensive and scientific forestry one may also note is obvious, from the fact that there are seven million acres of former woodland which are now reduced to a waste. The results of planting a shelter bed of pines on the north and west coasts, as a protection from the Atlantic winds, would be very great, while the industrial effect of systematised forestry would be immense. Bark for tanning, charcoal, moss, resin, manure from fallen leaves, litter, fuel, and mushrooms are some of the bye-products of this reproductive industry, while by planting willows, which yield a rapid return, along bogs a basket weaving industry might very rapidly be developed. The need, however, for planting on an extensive scale and the inevitable delay before any returns for expenditure accrue, make forestry essentially an object not for private but for public enterprise. It is not generally known that in 1831 Ireland grew one-fifth of the tobacco consumed in the three kingdoms, but that in that year the first Liberal Government which was in power for a generation put down a profitable industry for which the turfy soil of the country was particularly well adapted. With the help of a shilling rebate it is being shown, on an experimental area, that tobacco can be grown successfully in Ireland. At present the Treasury has refused to allow any extension of the area under cultivation, and it remains to be seen whether the united demands of Irish members--Unionist as well as Nationalist--will secure the removal of the prohibition against its growth, and so possibly lead to a re-establishment of its cultivation on a similar scale to that of three-quarters of a century ago. Perhaps the most important and, one may surmise, far-reaching step which has been taken in respect of Irish industries in the last few years is to be found in the registration, under the Merchandise Marks Act of 1905, of a national trade-mark, the property in which is vested in an association, which, on payment of a fee, grants the right to use it to manufacturers of the nature of whose credentials it is satisfied. The value of this is obvious as giving a guarantee of the country of origin of goods at a time when the increased demand for Irish produce has added to the number of unscrupulous traders who sell as "made in Ireland" goods which are not of Irish manufacture. It is said that twenty years ago most of the tweed which was placed upon the market which had been made in Ireland was sold as Cheviot, and that to-day the _rôles_ are reversed, and it is certain that for many years the great bulk of Irish butter masqueraded in English provision shops as Danish. The income of the association is devoted to the taking of legal action against traders who fraudulently sell as Irish, foreign including English made goods. If an instance is needed of the results which the protection of a national trade-mark gives in the encouragement of industry, by the guarantee of origin which it entails, it is to be found in the success of similar action in the cases of the butter industries of Sweden and Austria. It is a great tribute to the Trade-Mark Association that within two years of its incorporation the Congested Districts Board has applied for the use of the trade-mark for the products of its lace classes and for its homespuns. The task proposed by Henry Grattan to the Irish Parliament may well be taken to heart by the Irish people to-day:--"In the arts that polish life, the manufactures that adorn it, you will for many years be inferior to some other parts of Europe, but to nurse a growing people, to mature a struggling, though hardy, community, to mould, to multiply, to consolidate, to inspire, and to exalt a young nation, be these your barbarous accomplishments." CHAPTER IV THE LAND QUESTION "I can imagine no fault attaching to any land system which does not attach to the Irish system. It has all the faults of a peasant proprietary, it has all the faults of feudal landlordism, it has all the faults incident to a system under which the landlords spend no money on their property, and under which a large part of the land is managed by a Court; it has all the faults incident to the fact that it is to the tenant's interest to let his farm run out of cultivation as the term for revising the judicial rent approaches." --A.J. BALFOUR, on the Second Reading of the Land Bill, May 4th, 1903. The reason for the importance of the system of land tenure in the social conditions of Ireland is to be found in the manner in which the restrictions on Irish commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries drove the population to secure a livelihood in the only direction left open to them--namely, agriculture. The results of this are to be seen to-day in the fact that there are 590,000 holdings in the island, and that out of a total population of four and a half million people it is well within the mark to say that three and a half million are dependent, directly or indirectly, on the land for their means of existence. The system of tenure in Ireland was as different as possible from that existing in Great Britain. The gist of the difference lay in this, that in England and Scotland landlords let farms, while in Ireland they let land. "In Ireland," wrote an English observer more than a hundred years ago, "landlords never erect buildings on their property, nor expend anything in repairs." This feature, which was the result of historical reasons, was due to the fact that Irish land-owners were the descendants of settlers intruded on Irish land, who brought with them English notions of tenure, but had not the capital to render economic the numerous small holdings situated on their estates. Hence it came about that the provision of capital by an English landlord for the equipment of farms with cottages, outhouses, fencing, and a drainage system, which results in a sort of partnership between landlord and tenant, was, to a large extent, a thing unknown in Ireland, where, as was aptly said, tenants' improvements were landlords' perquisites, and where point was lent to the differences by the fact that the few properties on which the equipment of the holdings was provided by the landlord were known as "English-managed estates," and the number of these, Lord Cowper told the House of Lords in 1887, could be counted on one's fingers. Irish landlords have been compared, not to English squires, but to the ground landlords of London, bound to the occupiers only in so far as they received from their tenants a rent-charge liable to increase as the tenant improved the holding, or as competition arose with the growth of population. The reasons for this state of things are to be found in the number and the small size of the Irish holdings, but more than this in the fact that from the first landlords came there in a business capacity. "Les uns comme les autres," says a French writer, M. Paul-Dubois, "ils n'ont vu dans la terre Irlandaise qu'une affaire, et non une patrie. Ils sont restés conquérants en pays de conquête. De là cette conséquence que, conscients d'être des étrangers, des intrus, ils se sont crus libres et quittes de toute dette envers le pays, de tous les devoirs de la propriété."[3] Planted on land which was confiscated, and, as a result, insecurely held, to risk the expenditure of money would have been unnatural, the more so since the expenditure which, in the circumstances, fell upon the tenant in the matter of improvements, provided the best possible security to the landlord by making the tenant all the more anxious to remain on the holding on which he had sunk what little capital he possessed, and in consequence virtually obliged, at risk of ejection, to submit unwillingly to periodical enhancements of rent. In addition to the few English-managed estates it was only in Ulster that matters were otherwise, owing to the existence of the custom--an embryo copyhold, Lord Devon called it--known as tenant-right. On the various confiscations of land, grants of which had been made to the "undertakers," many of the latter were either public bodies, such as the great City Companies, others were landlords who, even if not resident at a distance, had neither the means nor the inclination to spend the necessary money on their estates. This was provided by the tenant, who, without aid from the landlord, made improvements on his holding by his own labour; and in Ulster, where the tenants were settlers from England and Scotland, there arose an equitable proprietorship vested in the occupier, by which, on quitting the farm, he was entitled to claim from the new tenant a sum of money partly in compensation for the money and labour he had invested in the holding and partly as a price paid for the goodwill or possession, which the new tenant would have no other means of acquiring. The nature of this "Ulster Custom," which, until 1870, had no sanction or protection from the law, was clearly defined by the Master of the Rolls, in the case of M'Elroy _v._ Brooke, in the following words:--"The essentials of the custom are the right to sell, to have the incoming tenant, if there be no reasonable objection to him, recognised by the landlord, and to have a sum of money paid for the interest in the tenancy transferred." The English system we see then, with its competitive rent fixed by contract, and subject to the laws of supply and demand, did not exist; the social and prescriptive ties which in England bound the owner and the occupier to each other never arose under this state of things, and in their absence did not arise one of the strongest inducements to a landed gentry to live on their estates and to concern themselves in the welfare of their tenants, a social system which, by the interchange of kindly offices wherever in England the proprietors live on their property, does much to make the countryside attractive to the poorer classes and to check migration. There is no more erroneous idea than to suppose, as do some people, that there was a large body of resident landed proprietors in Ireland until the land war drove them to seek safety across the Channel. As a matter of fact, long before this had begun there existed an absentee aristocracy dependent on middlemen or agents--"the vermin of the country," Arthur Young called them--who constituted a mere mechanical medium for the collection of rent, and as such were the worst exponents of the amenities which, in happier circumstances, are supposed to subsist between owners and occupiers of agrarian land. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the increase of population in the island and the high prices resulting from the war led to a very great sub-division of holdings, while the exercise of the franchise by the forty shillings freeholder until the year 1829 provided an additional inducement to the landlord to multiply the number of tenants on his land, since by doing so he increased the number of votes under his control, and, _pari passu_, his political influence. After the famine, when it was found that one-third of the Irish landlords were bankrupt, the Encumbered Estates Court Act was passed to cope with the situation which had arisen of a country full of numerous landlords saddled with land which, owing to mortgages, debts, and incumbrances, was inalienable. Under the Act the Court was empowered, on the petition of any person sufficiently interested, to sell the encumbered estate and give an indefeasible title, so that persons who before had a claim on the estate should now have a claim only on the purchase-money. It was a piece of strong legislation in its disregard of vested rights and in the manner in which it set aside express contracts under which creditors had a claim on the land which could only be disturbed by paying off that claim. In the event the rush of creditors to this Court--created to afford relief from the delays of Chancery in effecting alienation--was so great that, as a result of the consequent fall in prices, land became a drug in the market, and properties in many instances did not realise enough to meet the mortgages. To the landlords ruined in this manner succeeded a new class, who bought up bankrupt estates, often with borrowed money, as a commercial speculation, and caring nothing for the tenant or his welfare, looking only on the business side of the transaction, raised rents arbitrarily to such a pitch that the tenantry were unable to meet their liabilities. Wholesale evictions ensued, and in this wise arose the condition of things in which the _Times_--never an unfriendly critic of the landed interest--was constrained to admit in 1852 that "the name of an Irish landlord stinks in the nostrils of Christendom." By an Act of 1858 the Encumbered Estates Court was replaced by the Landed Estates Court, which had power to carry out the sale of, and give an indefeasible title to, any interests in land, whether hypothecated or not, and after the passing of the Judicature Act of 1877 the name of the Court became the Land Judges' Court. The disfranchising clauses of the Emancipation Act, and the consequent disappearance of the advantages accruing to the landlords from a multiplication of holdings on their estates, the miserable poverty resulting from the famine, the anxiety of the proprietors to escape the burdens of the remodeled Poor Law, and the demand by the new class of land speculators for large grazing or tillage farms, to form which the consolidation of existing holdings was demanded, were the factors which resulted in the clearances of 1849 and the subsequent years. "Notices to quit," in a historic phrase, "fell like snowflakes," at a time when it was truly said that an eviction was equal to a sentence of death. In a few months whole counties, such as those of Meath and Tipperary, were converted into prairies; cabins were thrown down, fences removed, and peasants swept off, and in ten years nearly 300,000 families were evicted from their homes, and a million and a half of the population fled across the Atlantic. "I do not think," said Sir Robert Peel--and his verdict has been endorsed by the judgment of history--"I do not think that any country, civilised or uncivilised, can offer similar scenes of horror." The Devon Commission, the Report of which was issued in 1845, recommended that in future compensation should be given to Irish tenants for permanent improvements effected by them. Bills to carry out the recommendation of the Commission were introduced in 1845 by Lord Stanley, in 1846 by Lord Lincoln, and in 1852 by Mr. Napier, the Attorney-General for Ireland. But it was not until the Act of 1870 was passed--a quarter of a century after the Report of the Commissioners had been issued--that its recommendations were embodied in an Act of Parliament. So far was this from being the case with the next statute dealing with Irish land--Deasy's Act, passed in 1860--that it aimed at the substitution of the commercial principles of contract for the equitable principles of custom in the relations between landlord and tenant, in this respect that it refused to allow compensation to the tenant for improvements other than those made with the landlord's consent. The object of this Act--the last word of the Manchester School on the Irish Land Question--was, therefore, to destroy any claim by a tenant in respect of future improvements, unless under the terms of some contract, express or implied. In point of fact, the Act proved almost a dead letter, and the one result which ensued from its passing into law was to make the position of the tenant less secure, in so far as it made the process of ejectment less costly and more simple, and enabled the landlord in many instances to confiscate improvements. Twenty-three Bills in favour of the tenants were thrown out in the forty years which followed Emancipation. The struggle between landlord and tenant was occupied with the attempts of the latter to enforce the custom of tenant-right in Ulster, and secure its application in the other provinces. The Land Act of 1870, for the first time, gave legal sanction to this principle by giving the tenant a claim to compensation for disturbance. It gave its imprimatur to the doctrine that an Irish tenant does not contract for the occupation of a farm, that Irish land is not the subject of an undivided ownership, but of a simple partnership. The pecuniary damages to which a landlord was liable under its provisions was a blow aimed at wanton evictions, and with the curtailment of the power arbitrarily to effect these, the threats by which landlords had been able unjustly to raise rents were robbed of much of their force. The tenant under the Act secured a recognition of his property in the land and of his right to occupy it, provided he complied with certain conditions, and, in addition, he obtained compensation, albeit inadequate, for disturbance for non-payment of rent, in cases in which the Court considered the rent exorbitant, and in which failure to pay was due to bad seasons. Thus tenant-right, which Lord Palmerston had dismissed with epigrammatic flippancy as landlord wrong only a few years before, received the sanction of law from his own party. In actual practice under the Act the landlords recouped themselves for the compensation which they had to pay to an evicted tenant by raising the rent on his successor in the tenancy in the comparatively few cases in which the evicted tenant could afford the legal costs which the filing of a claim for compensation entailed, but this much at least had been secured, that the virtual confiscation of the tenants' improvements had been stopped. The Act of 1870 had been passed to prevent arbitrary evictions and to secure to the tenant compensation for improvements, and in certain cases for disturbance. It succeeded only in making arbitrary evictions more costly for the landlord, it gave the tenant no fixity of tenure since the compensation for disturbance was inadequate. To remedy this Isaac Butt in 1876 introduced a Bill based on the "three F.s"--fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure--but it was rejected by 290 votes to 56, and several other amending Bills were thrown out by the House of Commons between 1876 and 1879. In 1880 the Government were at last stirred to action in the introduction of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which caused the retirement of Lord Lansdowne from the Cabinet, and was followed by threats of resignation on the part of the Duke of Argyll. Under the Act of 1870 only those occupiers were entitled to claim compensation for disturbance whose rents were not in arrear. By this Bill it was proposed to extend the right to that claim to all those who were unable to pay as a result of bad harvests, and who were willing to hold their farms on just and reasonable terms, which the landlord refused. After passing through the House of Commons, in spite of Lord Randolph Churchill's denunciation of it as the first step in a social war, the Bill, although there had been a large majority in its favour in the lower House, was thrown out by the House of Lords at a time when the need for remedial legislation was illustrated by the presence in Ireland of 30,000 soldiers and 12,000 policemen for the protection of life and property. The Royal Commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Bessborough, which was then appointed, reported in the following year that the Land Act of 1870 afforded no protection to the tenant who remained in his holding, since compensation for improvements could only be claimed on giving up a tenancy. The Commissioners, by a majority of four to one, declared themselves in favour of the "three F.s," which the leader of the Opposition denounced as "Force, Fraud, and Folly," and the Commissioners justified their attitude by this statement, which was echoed by the Richmond Commission, which reported soon after,--"freedom of contract, in the case of the majority of Irish tenants, large and small, does not really exist," the reason being that tenants in occupation were ready to pay any rent rather than sacrifice the capital and labour they had sunk in their holdings. The good seasons after 1870 had made this rise in rent possible, but with the bad winter of 1880 the results became disastrous. In this manner the "three F.s," which the Land League demanded, and which were secured by the Act of 1881, were conceded against the will of the Government by sheer force of circumstances. A rumour which gained currency early in 1880, that the Bessborough Commission would report in their favour, was stigmatised by Mr. Gladstone as incredible, and the adoption of the principle enunciated by the Commissioners resulted in the resignation from the Cabinet of the Duke of Argyll. The demands which had been made in 1850 by the Tenant League, the first concerted action of North and South since the Union, were repeated. They included a fair valuation of rent, the right of a tenant to sell his interest at the highest market value, and security from eviction so long as he paid his rent. Their claims were scouted in 1870, and it was not till eleven years had passed that in 1881 these "three F.s"--fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure, the notion of which had so recently been repudiated by Mr. Gladstone--were secured by the Land Act of that year, which recognised to the full the dual ownership of Irish land by occupier and landlord. Under this Act also was created a Court to fix fair rents for judicial periods of fifteen years. Mr. Gladstone himself had admitted that the Land Act of 1870, which a Conservative member, destined to be a future Chief Secretary--Mr. James Lowther--described as "pure Communism," together with the Church Act of 1869, was the outcome of the Fenian agitation of the sixties, which drew the attention of English statesmen to the Irish question. In the same way the passing of the Act of 1881, which made a far more active assault upon their prerogatives, secured from a house of landlords through fear that which they denied on grounds of equity. "In view of the prevailing agitation in Ireland," said Lord Salisbury of this measure which assailed every Tory principle as to the sacredness of property, "I cannot recommend my followers to vote against the second reading of the Bill." What Fenianism had effected in 1870 the Land League secured in 1881. "I must record my firm opinion," said Mr. Gladstone ten years later, "that the Land Act of 1881 would not have become the law of the land if it had not been for the agitation with which Irish society was convulsed." The Bill was denounced by the Tories as one of the most unquestionable and, indeed, extreme violations of the rights of property in the whole history of English legislation.[4] Lord Salisbury declared that it would not bring peace, and that henceforth the Irish landowner would look upon Parliament and the Imperial Government as their worst enemies. The Earl of Lytton declared that it was revolutionary, dangerous, and unjust; that it would organise pauperism and paralyse capital; yet for all that he warned their lordships that its rejection might be the signal for an insurrection, of which the whole responsibility would be thrown on the House of Lords. But perhaps Lord Elcho expressed the feeling which predominated in the Gilded Chamber when he expressed the opinion that the Bill was the product of "Brummagem girondists." In the event, as we have seen, Lord Lytton's warning bore fruit, and the Bill was passed. "There is scarcely a less dignified entity," as Disraeli had said in Coningsby thirty years before, "than a patrician in a panic." Under the Act, let me repeat, for the first time was frankly recognised the legal partnership between the tenant who provided the working gear and the landlord who provided the bare soil. The latter could only evict the tenant on default, the tenant was at liberty to sell his occupancy interest at will without the leave of the landlord, and the rent payable by the tenant to the landlord was to be fixed by a judicial tribunal--the Land Commission--the establishment of which was but the carrying out of a suggestion made three years before by Parnell. The results of the agitation which had brought about the passing of the Act were seen when the Court decreed an average reduction of Irish rents by 20 per cent., knocking off no less than £1,500,000 at one stroke from the rack-rentals of the country. The Act was not applicable to tenants whose rent was in arrear--those, that is to say, who were in the poorest circumstances--and a Bill introduced by Parnell in 1882 to wipe out these arrears by a grant of public money, was thrown out, being denounced by Lord Salisbury as a dangerous precedent of public plunder to mislead future generations. As ballast to lighten the Act of 1881 the leaseholders were thrown overboard. For this exclusion from the benefits of the Act there was, on principle, no excuse. A Bill of Parnell's to remedy it was thrown out in 1883 by a majority of four to one, and the 35,000 tenants who suffered from it were not entirely accorded the privileges of the other tenants until the passing of the Rent Redemption Act of 1890. The average reduction in rent effected for this class of tenant has amounted to 35 per cent. One further fact in connection with the Act of 1881 deserves mention as showing that though Parliament may propose a remedy for an admitted grievance, the Courts of law are able to dispose its application by their interpretation in direct contravention of the intentions of the legislature. Section 8, sub-section 9, of the Act of 1881 provided:--"No rent shall be allowed or made payable in any proceedings under this Act in respect of improvements made by the tenant or his predecessors in title, and for which, in the opinion of the Court, the tenant or his predecessors in title shall not have been paid or otherwise compensated by the landlord or his predecessors in title." In the case of Adams _v_. Dunseath, in February, 1882, it was held by the Court of Appeal, in the teeth of the obvious intention of Parliament, that the fact that a tenant had for a longer or shorter period of time enjoyed the benefit of his improvements might be taken into consideration by the judge as being an equivalent for compensation and as serving to limit the reductions in rent effected by the Commission on land which had been subjected to these improvements. By this interpretation many thousands of pounds were put into the landlords' pockets during the years which intervened before 1896, when it was superseded by a provision in the Act of that year which re-affirmed and established the principle, the enactment of which had been intended in 1881. We must now turn to the introduction of land purchase. In 1847 Lord John Russell, in a project which was subsequently dropped, advocated, as did J.S. Mill in later years, the solution of the land question by the establishment of a peasant proprietary. The nidus, however, out of which this policy germinated was the right of pre-emption which John Bright secured for the tenants of ecclesiastical land under the Church Act of 1869. A further step in the same direction was taken in the Land Act of 1870--not more than two-thirds of the purchase-money being advanced to the tenant under its provisions. Under the Church Act 6,000, and under the Act of 1870 1,000, tenants purchased their farms. In 1878 Parnell urged the establishment of peasant proprietorship, and under the Act of 1881 three-quarters of the purchase-money was to be advanced on such terms as to be repayable by instalments of five per cent, per annum for thirty-five years, but only 1,000 tenants took advantage of the facilities thereby offered. Four years later was passed the Ashbourne Act, so called from the Irish Lord Chancellor responsible for its introduction, and in it we have the first Act--purely for land purchase--which has been applied to Ireland. By it the Treasury found the whole of the purchase-money up to a total of five millions sterling out of the Irish Church Surplus Fund, and forty-nine years were allowed for repayment of the purchase-money to the State at 4 per cent., of which £2 15s. was interest on the advance and £1 5s. went to a sinking fund for the liquidation of the loan. Only 2,000 tenants took advantage of the terms of this Act, but it is nevertheless of importance as marking the point at which the principle of peasant proprietorship was recognised as the solution by both English parties. In this way was realised, not much more than twenty years ago, the importance of that change of ownership which, in Arthur Young's well-known phrase, turns sand into gold, and which has progressed ever since. A shrewd French observer--Gustave de Beaumont--saw in 1837 that this was the way out of the _impasse_ of the Irish land system, and half a century ago a great opportunity presented itself at the time of the Encumbered Estates Act of establishing a peasant proprietary, when more than two million acres--one-sixth of the whole soil of Ireland--were sold in ten years, and were bought in lots of 200 to 250 acres by some 8,000 to 10,000 land-jobbers. The Land Bill which Mr. Gladstone introduced as a pendant to the Home Rule Bill of 1886 offered to every Irish landlord the option of selling his estate to his tenants, who would thereby become occupying owners at once, paying an interest of 4 per cent. for forty-nine years on the price, which would be twenty years' purchase of the judicial rents, paid by the State issue of fifty million pounds of Consols with the revenues of Ireland as security. After the Unionist victory of 1886 Mr. Parnell brought in a Bill which also was destined never to receive the Royal Assent, but which again is of importance in view of subsequent legislation. He based his demand upon the fall in prices which prevented tenants from paying judicial rents. By this Bill it was proposed that the Land Court should have power to abate rents fixed prior to 1885 if it were proved that the tenants could not pay the whole amount, and would pay one half and arrears, and further, if these amounts were paid evictions and proceedings for the recovery of rent should be suspended, and, lastly, the Bill aimed at the inclusion of leaseholders under the Act of 1881. It was roundly denounced by the landlords.[5] Lord Hartington declared that were it to pass it would have the effect of stopping the payment of rent all over Ireland, and Sir Michael Hicks Beach spoke of it as "one which, though purporting to be a mere instalment of justice to the poor Irish tenant, is an act of gross injustice and confiscation to the landlords of Ireland." The Bill was thrown out by a majority of ninety-five, and the Plan of Campaign on the part of tenants against the payment of impossible rents was the result. A Royal Commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Cowper, was appointed to inquire into the administration of the Land Laws. The Commission reported in January, 1887, and bore out the grounds on which Parnell had based his Bill of the previous year. It felt "constrained to recommend an earlier revision of judicial rents on account of the straitened circumstances of Irish farmers." It recommended that the term of judicial rents should be lowered from fifteen years to five, that those rents already fixed should be revised, and that leaseholders should be brought under the Act of 1881. In reference to the Bill of the year before Lord Salisbury had said that the revision of judicial rents would not be honest and would be exceedingly inexpedient.[6] The Bill, which is known as Lord Cadogan's, which was introduced on the last day of March, 1887, and which purported to carry out the recommendations of the Cowper Commission, opened the Land Court to leaseholders, setting aside in this way the more solemn forms of agrarian contract. As regards authorising the reduction of judicial rents on the ground of the fall in prices, it did nothing, and the Prime Minister repeated his opinion that "to do so would be to lay your axe at the root of the fabric of civilised society."[7] Mr. Balfour, who, in the month of March, had become Chief Secretary, proclaimed with equal force that it would be folly and madness to break these solemn contracts.[8] In the Bill, as at first brought in, the Court had, in fact, power to vary contracts by fixing a composition for outstanding debts and determining the period over which payment should extend. In May the Government accepted the principle that the Court should not only do this (settle the sum due by an applicant for relief for outstanding debt), but also should fix a reasonable rent for the rest of the term. The Ulster tenants insisted on this, but, at the bidding of the landlords, it was subsequently withdrawn, and, finally, in July the Premier summoned his party and, telling them that if the Bill were not altered Ulster would be lost to the Unionist cause, passed into law a Bill sanctioning a general revision of judicial rents for three years, and in this way did the Tories lower rents in breach of a clause in the Act of 1881 that guaranteed rents fixed under its provisions for a term of fifteen years. As a speaker of the day put it--"You have the Prime Minister rejecting in April the policy which in May he accepts, rejecting in June the policy which he had accepted in May, and then in July accepting the policy which he had rejected in June, and which had been within a few weeks declared by himself and his colleagues to be inexpedient and dishonest, to be madness and folly, and to be laying an axe to the very root of the fabric of civilised society." When the advance of five millions for land purchase under the Act of 1885 was nearly exhausted, a further sum of equal amount was earmarked for the same purpose in 1888. Lord Randolph Churchill in 1889 expressed the opinion that something like £100,000,000 of credit should be pledged to effect purchase. In 1891 Mr. Balfour authorised the devotion of a further sum of £33,000,000 for this purpose. The whole of the purchase-money was to be advanced by the State by the issue of guaranteed land stock, limited to the amount stated, and giving a dividend at two and three-quarters per cent., repayment being effected in forty-nine years by the purchaser by the payment of an annuity on his holding of four per cent. The Act was too complicated to work well, but under its provisions 30,000 sales occurred, in comparison with 25,000 which had been effected under the Acts of 1885 and 1888. The passing of this Act marks the close of the experimental stage in land purchase. Under the Land Act of 1896 was asserted the principle of compulsory sale in the case of estates in the Landed Estates Court, whose duty it was to sell bankrupt property, if they came under certain specified conditions, and if a receiver had been appointed to them. This roused the fury of the landlords to the highest pitch. "You would suppose," said Sir Edward Carson, "the Government were revolutionists verging on socialism.... I ask myself whether they are mad or I am mad? I am quite sure one of us must be mad." In spite of denunciations of this order the clause respecting compulsory sale of the estates mentioned was passed, occupying tenants having in those cases the right of pre-emption. Under its provisions the period for the repayment of the money advanced was extended to sixty-eight years. The annuity payable by the tenant during the first decade was to be calculated and made payable upon the total purchase-money advanced, but at the end of each of the first three decennial periods, as the debt was reduced by the accumulation of sinking fund, the annuity was to be re-calculated and made payable on the portions of the advance remaining unpaid. Under the Act every purchaser was to start with a reduction of not less than 25 per cent. on the rent which he had hitherto paid, and this amount was to be still further reduced by not less than 10 per cent. at the end of each of the first three periods of ten years. This Act effected the sale of 37,000 holdings. The applications for sale under it numbered 8,000 in 1898, and in the succeeding years the number steadily diminished, so that they amounted in 1899 to 6,000, in 1900 to 5,000, and in 1901 to only 3,000. The reasons for this are not difficult to find. The payment in Consols was profitable so long as securities stood at a high figure, but the expenses arising from the South African war resulted in a fall of Stocks from 112 to 85, and as a result new terms for land purchase became imperatively needed. In consequence Mr. Wyndham brought in a Bill in 1902, which was, however, stillborn, but its withdrawal was accompanied with a promise of legislation in the following session. The situation in the winter of 1902 was critical. An Irish Land Trust had been formed by the landlords to oppose the United Irish League, and on the 1st of September there was issued a Viceregal proclamation, putting the Coercion Act in force in Dublin and Limerick. By a curious coincidence, the papers published the same day a letter from Captain Shaw Taylor, an Irish landlord, inviting representatives of tenants and landlords to meet in conference in Dublin and discuss a way out of the agrarian _impasse_. The proposal was scouted by the _Times_, the _Daily Express_, and the Dublin _Daily Express_, but was favourably received by the Press in other quarters. A motion by Lord Mayo at the Landowners' Convention, in favour of the conference, was rejected by 77 votes to 14. A poll on the question being demanded, 4,000 landlords, each with an estate of more than 500 acres, received voting papers, and of these 1,706 replied, 1,128 in favour and 578 against a conference, while the small landlords were almost unanimously in its favour. A second appeal was then made to the Landowners' Convention through its president, Lord Abercorn, but an answer in the negative was received, for it went on to say--"It would be merely to give long-discredited politicians a certificate of good sense and of just views, we might almost say of legislative capacity to sit in an Irish Parliament in Dublin, were we to accept Captain Shaw Taylor's invitation to join them." The criticism of an unbiassed foreign observer on this attitude of rigid cast-iron _non possumus_ is instructive. "Rappelons nous," writes M. Bechaux, "que le parti irlandais au Parlement, si grossièrement insulté represente 4/5 du peuple irlandais, nous avons un specimen de l'esprit réactionnaire et irréconciliable du landlordisme irlandais." In spite of this the Conference met at the end of the year. The landlords' representatives were:--Lord Dunraven, Lord Mayo, Col. Hutcheson Pöe, and Col. Nugent Everard; and those of the tenants were:--Mr. John Redmond, Mr. W. O'Brien, Mr. T.W. Russell, and Mr. T.C. Harrington. On the 3rd January, 1903, a joint report to serve as the basis of the new Bill was issued. The Report was in favour of purchase as the only possible policy to be carried out on such terms that the yearly payments of the tenants should be 15 to 25 per cent. lower than second term rents, while the sum received by the landlords was to be such as at 3 or 3-1/4 per cent. interest would yield them the same income as second term rents, less 10 per cent. deduction, as an equivalent for the cost of collection under the old system. The difference between these two sums was to be bridged by a bonus from the Treasury to the landlords in the interests of agrarian peace. The Report was further in favour of enlarging small holdings by dividing up grazing lands, and under it evicted tenants who, as such, were not entitled to have judicial rents fixed were to be given the option to purchase. Second term rents are those fixed for the second judicial period of fifteen years under the Act of 1881, and they were on an average 37 per cent. less than those before the passing of that Act. Under the Act which Mr. Wyndham introduced on March 25th, 1903, the Treasury may advance a sum up to one hundred millions at 2-3/4 per cent. interest, with another 1/2 per cent. sinking fund. The advances to the tenants, which are limited to £5,000 or, in exceptional circumstances, £7,000, are made in cash by the Land Commissioners, of whom three, serving as the Estates Commissioners, are expressly responsible for the working of the Act. A Treasury loan at 2-3/4 per cent. provides the necessary funds. Under the Act the issue of this Stock was limited to five million pounds a year for the first three years, but in January, 1905, this was changed to a sum of six million. By adding to the 2-3/4 per cent. interest which the tenants pay on the loan the further sum of 1/2 per cent. which they contribute to sinking fund for repayment, we arrive at 3-1/4 per cent. which they have to pay for sixty-eight and a half years to obtain the fee-simple of their land. The security which Mr. Wyndham produced for the repayment of interest was the credit of the Irish peasantry, of whom, out of more than seventy thousand purchasers owing an eighth of a million to the State under previous Purchase Acts, only two had incurred bad debts, which, as being irrecoverable, had fallen on the taxpayer. As a further safeguard the payment is secured by the annual grants-in-aid paid by the Treasury to the County Councils, which can be withheld on default to pay interest on purchase advances. In order to facilitate sales the system of "zones," which has been so much canvassed, was devised. Under it the Estates Commissioners are bound to make advances of purchase-money in all cases in which the total annuity paid by the tenant ranges from 10 to 40 per cent. less than the rent which he has hitherto paid. If it be a first term rent the reduction must be at least 20 and not more than 40 per cent. less, and if it be a second term rent there must be a reduction of not less than 10 and not more than 30 per cent. It will be, perhaps, clearer if put in this way. If a first term rent amounts to £100, then the tenant-purchaser has to pay at least £60, and at most £80, as annuity, while if the £100 represent second term rent the yearly payment varies from a minimum of £70 to a maximum of £90. If purchases are proposed outside the zones, in which, that is to say, the annuity proposed is under 10 or over 40 per cent. of the judicial rent, the estate must, before sales are effected, be surveyed by the Estates Commissioners in order that they may see whether the security is sound, and whether the equitable rights of all parties concerned seem to be safeguarded, and without this sanction advances will not be made in the case of sales in these circumstances. The amount received by the landlord, of course, does not, if invested in Trust Securities at 3-1/4 per cent., provide the same income as did his rent roll, even when one takes into account the 10 per cent. for collection to which we have referred. On the other hand, he is secured from the possibility of further reductions in rent in the future, and there is a likelihood that the securities in which he invests may rise, but, in addition to this, a sum of twelve millions of bonus is to be devoted to bridge the gap between his former rent from the tenant and his present income from his investments. Under this provision every landlord gets 12 per cent. bonus on his sale, and this sum is part of his life estate, and need not, therefore, be invested in trust securities, but may be invested in stock yielding a higher rate of interest. This point was not clear in the Act of 1903, but was explicitly enacted in an amending Act of 1904. In order further to accelerate sale an investigation of title deeds, documents which a great English lawyer--Lord Westbury--once described as "difficult to decipher, disgusting to touch, and impossible to understand," is not necessary prior to sale; for an enjoyment for six years of the rents of an estate brings with it the right to sell, and proof of title is needed only after purchase has been completed in order that the vendor may establish his right of disposal of the proceeds, and as further inducement he gets a sum not exceeding one full year's arrears of rent, or at most 5 per cent. of the purchase price. The good results which have accrued where a peasant proprietary has arisen are admitted on all sides. Mr. Long himself, in words which form an illuminating commentary on landlordism, confessed that the blessings and advantages of a change of ownership are obvious. Everyone is agreed that the happiness, bred of security on the part of the occupying owner, brings in its train sobriety and industry. The business of the gombeen man is going, and one may well hope to see arise before long that thrift and energy characteristic of the peasant proprietor, whether in France, Belgium, or Lombardy. It must not be forgotten, however, that land purchase to bring peace must be universal. In 1901 the De Freyne tenants rebelled against the payment to their landlord of a rent which was 25 to 30 per cent. higher than the purchase annuities paid by the neighbouring tenants on the Dillon estate, which had been bought up by the Congested Districts Board. Under the Wyndham Act there are in progress reductions of annual charges, ranging from 10 to 40 per cent., on holdings adjacent to those where either the landlord is recalcitrant and refuses to sell or where the slowness of administration has delayed progress and secured no sale, and, as a result, dissatisfaction reigns among the less fortunate tenants. According to the last report of the Estates Commissioners nearly 90,000 holdings had been sold in the period of the application of the Act, from November 1st, 1903, to March 31st, 1906. The total price of all the sales agreed upon was nearly forty millions, but the amount advanced by the Commission was less than ten millions. There is little doubt that the number of agreements for sale would have been half as many again but for the lack of money and administrative powers. One of the Estates Commissioners, in his evidence before the Arterial Drainage Commission, stated that under the Land Purchase Acts passed before that of 1903 in twenty-five years 75,000 tenants had purchased at a price of twenty-five millions, and if to these are added the ninety thousand purchasers under the Act of Mr. Wyndham the result is seen that nearly a third of the tenants have in the last quarter of a century become occupying owners. The immense acceleration in the rate of sale which these figures indicate, leads one to ask how far the sales under the Wyndham Act have been as advantageous to the tenants as those concluded under former statutes. In the first place, it must be noted that more than four-fifths of the direct sales which have occurred have taken place under the zones. When the price proposed is above the zones the reason why inspection is demanded is obviously that the solvency of the purchaser, with which the State, as creditor, is concerned, is in question. The minimum limit of the zones was said to be necessary to protect those with rights superior to those of the landlord, but, as was observed, the value of land does not depend on the mortgages with which it is charged. In view of the modern methods by which, on purchase, there is a Treasury guarantee, inspection before sale tends to reduce the price, and the absence of inspection under the zones has tended to enhance prices. It must be further noticed that the minimum price fixed by the zones is higher than the mean price of sales effected under Purchase Acts from 1885 to 1903, and by this method in the case of every sale brought about without the delay of inspection, the provisions of the Act have secured an artificial inflation of price for the benefit of the landlord, amounting to a minimum of one year's rent. The reduction of the annuity payable by the tenants from 4 per cent. to 3-1/4 per cent, of the capital has served to obscure the amount of purchase price paid by tenants who are apt to fail to appreciate the fact that the annuity is payable over a more extended period of years, and the provisions as to the sale and re-purchase of demesnes have at the same time secured for the landlords themselves facilities for obtaining advances of ready money on reasonable terms. These are the factors in the Wyndham Act which have made M. Paul-Dubois declare of it that--"Emaneé d'un gouvernment, ami des landlords, elle cache mal, sous un apparence d'impartialité d'adroits efforts pour faire aux landlords de la part belle pour hausser en leur faveur le prix de la terre." The average price per acre for the five years before 1903 was £8 9s.; since the Act it has been £13 4s., or taking into account the bonus £15. The prices before the Wyndham Act rarely exceeded eighteen years' purchase, and were, moreover, paid in Land Stock and without a bonus. Under this Act the reasons which I have tried to outline have brought it to pass that twenty-five years of second term rents are being paid in cash, which, with the bonus, makes the total purchase price amount to twenty-eight years. Hence it is that there is widespread anxiety in Ireland lest land is being sold under the zones at prices which the Land Commission, had it been entitled to inspect, would have been unable to sanction as offering a safe security, seeing that the purchaser must pay his annuity for sixty-eight years without hope of reduction--a danger, in the event of bad seasons, which might have been diminished if the sinking fund had been fixed at a higher rate and the decadal reductions of earlier Acts retained, so as to reduce the incidence of the burden in its later stages. This, be it noted, is one of the points in which the provisions of the Act differ from the recommendations of the Land Conference. I have referred already to the block in sales under the Act owing to the scarcity of money which is forthcoming to meet sales already effected. By the financial provisions of the statute, so as not to demoralise the market, a definite check was put upon the issue of the land stock, and just before the late Government resigned Mr. Long, as Chief Secretary, made a proposal, which was not received with enthusiasm by the parties concerned, that the landlords should in future be paid partly in stock at a nominal value and partly in cash. Nothing has since been done, and the only step taken so far has been the appointment of a judge in addition to those formerly so engaged, to accelerate the judicial inquiries necessitated by the process of transfer. The whole cost of the finance of the Act falls on the Irish taxpayer, and before the introduction of Mr. Wyndham's proposal the idea was mooted--only to be abandoned--of reviving a proposal made by Sir Robert Giffen in the _Economist_ twenty years ago, which would have made the annuities paid on purchase the basis of the funds from which the local bodies in Ireland would draw their revenue, while the Imperial Exchequer would be relieved to an equivalent amount by deductions from its grants to local services. The cost of the flotation of the Land Stock is borne by the Irish Development Fund of £185,000 per annum, which is the share of Ireland, equivalent to the grant for the increased cost of education in England under the Act of 1902. More than one-half of this fund has already been hypothecated for the costs of flotation of the twenty millions of Land Stock which have already been issued, and under the present system of finance, after a further issue of another twenty millions of stock, the whole loss will be thrown on the County Councils, and through them on the ratepayers, who have already been called upon to pay £70,000 to meet certain of the losses in this connection, which amount to twelve per cent. of the value of the stock floated. The breaking up of the grazing lands, which in many instances the landlords are keeping back from the market, has not met with much success under the Act, and it is difficult to see how compulsion is to be avoided if the country is to be saved from the economically disastrous position of having established in it a number of occupying owners on tenancies which are not large enough to secure to them a living wage. Under the Land Act of 1891 was created the Congested Districts Board, with an annual income of £55,000, for the purpose of promoting the permanent improvement of the backward districts of the West. The districts which come under its control are those which answer the following test, that more than twenty per cent. of the population of a county live in electoral divisions, of which the total rateable value gives a sum of less than 30s. per head of population. Such electoral divisions occur in the nine counties of Kerry, Cork, Galway, Mayo, Clare, Roscommon, Leitrim, Sligo, Donegal. In these counties there are 1,264 electoral divisions, of which 429 are congested. The setting up of particular districts as "congested" is, of course, quite arbitrary. There may be places outside the congested areas the condition of which is much worse than that of some of the congested districts, but if the population of these districts does not form one-fifth of that of the whole county they are ruled out of the scope of the Board's activities. The conditions which subsist in them have been ably described by M. Bechaux from personal observation, and he declares that the standard of living is lower than in any other country of Western Europe. Their inhabitants number more than half a million--that is to say, 10 per cent. of the total population of the island. Most of them have farms of two to four acres, and they pay from a few shillings to several pounds for rent. In many instances the rent which they pay is rather for a roof than for the soil. They eke out a precarious livelihood by migration to England, for there is but little demand for agricultural labour owing to the prevalence of pasture in the West. Fishing has served as a secondary source of income, and kelp burning was a profitable addition to their means until the discovery of iodine in Peru sent down the price to a marked extent. The right of turbary, which nearly every tenancy possesses, is the one thing which has kept this population from starvation, and in the case of seaside tenancies a further gain accrues from the use made of seaweed as manure, which, owing to the absence of stall-feeding, is only to be obtained in this way. Home industries, such as weaving, form another source of profit, and last, but not least, must be reckoned the money sent home by relatives who have emigrated to America. Calves, pigs, and poultry are maintained in these circumstances, and, owing to the sale of the best of the stock, the breed has steadily deteriorated. In the winter months potatoes, milk, and tea are the main articles of diet, and after the potato harvest is used up American meal, ground from maize, and American bacon of the worst possible kind take their place. The bacon of their own pigs is far too expensive for them to eat. The maize flour serves also as fodder for the live stock, and the oats which are grown are-eaten as gruel by the people as well as by the animals which they rear. The Congested Districts Board was established to remedy, as far as possible, this state of things--primarily by reorganising tenancies and amalgamating them into economic holdings, and at the same time enlarging them by the purchase of untenanted land, followed by its addition to existing tenancies. The slowness of its operations is seen from the fact that after fourteen years it had purchased less than 240,000 acres, of which three-quarters were untenanted land, while the whole extent of the congested districts is more than three and a half million acres. In justice to the Board, however, one must add that it has concerned itself with many other branches of rural economy--notably the improvement of the breed of horses, cattle, and pigs, the sale at cost price of chemical manures and seed, the making of harbours and roads, and the sale on instalment terms of fishing boats. It is impossible to exaggerate the work done by the Board on the Dillon estate in Counties Mayo and Roscommon and in Clare Island. But when one reads in the Report for 1906--the fifteenth annual report of the Board--that since its establishment the Board has enlarged 1,220 tenures, re-arranged 537, and created 220, and realises, further, that there are in Ireland 200,000 uneconomic holdings, one may well ask what are these among so many? Under the Act of 1903 the Board's purchases are financed by the Land Commission, and the results are to be seen in an acceleration of purchases, for while in the twelve years 1891 to 1903 the Board had bought about 200,000 acres, of which less than 45,000 were unlet land, in the three years from November, 1903, to the end of March, 1905, the acreage bought was over 160,000 acres, of which 48,000 were unlet, and negotiations were in progress for the transfer of another 100,000 acres, of which 20,500 were unlet. Under the Act, however, in the case of "Congested Estates," which are defined as those in which one-half at least of the holdings are of valuation of £5 or under, or which consist of mountain or bog, the Land Commission is empowered to purchase and re-sell to the tenants, even at a loss, so long as the total loss on the purchase and improvements of these holdings does not exceed 10 per cent. of the cost of the total sales effected in the course of the same year. The amendments of the House of Lords, however, made the part of the Act dealing with this question a dead letter, and the Land Commissioners have given up the attempt to put it in force. The landlords, having a choice between sale direct to their tenants and to the Land Commission, have refused to give their consent to the declaration of their estate as a congested estate, which is necessary for the application of this section, unless they receive a guarantee that the holdings shall not be sold to the tenants at a lower price than they themselves could have obtained. The result is that if the Commissioners were to pay these maximum prices there would be nothing left for them out of which to make the necessary improvements, and, in consequence, this provision of the Act has been a failure. As regards the evicted tenants, the first condition in the settlement arrived at by the Land Conference, and embodied in the Wyndham Act, was that they--the wounded soldiers in the land war, as they have been called--to whose sacrifices in the common cause is due the ameliorative legislation enacted by Parliament, should be restored to their holdings. In actual practice, by means of restrictive instructions issued by the late Government to the Commissioners, two of whom protested against this action in their report for 1906, the provisions of the Act which promised this reinstatement were made a dead letter--the Executive once again, in a historic phrase, driving a coach and four through the statute. With the advent to power of the Liberal Government these instructions were withdrawn, but a further serious obstacle was to be found in the refusal of some landlords--and those, too, the worst--to allow their estates to be inspected with a view to find holdings for evicted tenants. This was the condition of affairs to which Mr. Bryce--at that time Chief Secretary--referred, when he said--"If the remedy for this state of things is compulsion, then to compulsion for that remedy we must go." It is to be observed that the three Estates Commissioners were unanimous in thinking compulsion necessary, and that which was demanded was that the occupants, or planters, who in some cases have been _bona fide_ farmers, but whom the Land Commission inspectors reported had in many cases allowed the land to get into a bad and dirty state, should, on dispossession, be generously compensated or given their choice of other lands. It was originally thought that one thousand would be the limit of the number of applications which would be made for reinstatement, but, in the event, out of ten thousand tenants evicted in the last quarter of a century, such applications were made in 6,700 cases, and some notion of the poverty of these peasants who were turned out upon the roadside may be inferred from the fact that nearly one-half paid a rental of less than £10 a year. At the beginning of the session of 1907, out of the total number of applicants 1,300 had been rejected as not coming within the scope of the provisions relating to them, and 650, or less than 10 per cent. of the whole number who applied, had been reinstated. In the case of more than half the total number of applicants no report had been made, and in more than 450 cases, including, of course, those on the Clanricarde and Lewis estates, inspection of the property had been, as it is still, refused by the landlords. At this juncture Mr. Birrell declared that further legislation was imperatively needed, and to this announcement Mr. Walter Long replied that he accepted the view of his predecessor, Mr. Wyndham, as to the bargain which had been come to in regard to this question, and he went on to say:--[9] "There can be no doubt whatever that in the interest not merely of these unfortunate people, whatever their past history may have been, but in the interest of the successful working of the Land Purchase Act, their reinstatement is looked upon as an essential element and a thing promised by Parliament." The voluntary system, to which a tentative agreement was given under the Act of 1903, having broken down, the Evicted Tenants Bill was designed as a tardy act of justice to remove the cause for disaffection on the part of a tenantry to which Mr. T.W. Russell paid a notable tribute the other day as being not naturally lawless, but in point of fact the most God-fearing, purest-minded, and simplest peasantry on the face of the earth. That his diagnosis, that unrest is merely the product of suffering under cruel circumstances, is valid, is illustrated by the complete restoration of peace on the Massereene estate, when, on the death of the late peer, the planters were replaced by the tenants who had been evicted. The land which it was proposed to affect by the Bill was a mere matter of some 80,000 acres, a bagatelle to the landed interest of Ireland, but involving vital consequences to the poverty-stricken peasants of the West. It was a Bill, as the Lord Chancellor declared, to deal with the tail of an agrarian revolution, and to effect this with the minimum of suffering, compulsory powers and a simple and expeditious procedure were demanded, but in spite of the lip service which Unionists paid to the principles involved, in spite of their admissions that it proposed only to carry out their part of the agreement, arrived at no less than four years ago; by their amendments in the House of Lords, introducing limitations and appeals involving delays and costs, they succeeded in large measure in destroying the value of the measure. One can understand the attitude of Lord Clanricarde, who roundly denounced the whole proposal as "tainted with the callous levity of despotism," but it is difficult to speak charitably of the members of the Opposition, who, while repeatedly protesting their anxiety to see the evicted tenants restored, took care, through the agency of the House of Lords, to place every possible obstacle in the way of their speedy re-instatement. Many of the amendments designed by the House of Lords were proposed by two of the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, who sit in that House primarily as judges, and who are supposed to keep free from political entanglements. They aimed at an enhancement of the prices at which compulsory purchase should take effect, with a view, it was admitted by their organs in the Press, to afford a precedent for further schemes of land purchase at large. Of this nature was the compensation which they demanded--fortunately without success--in accordance with the provisions of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, which, if accepted by Government, would have given to the landlords on sale a douceur of 10 per cent. in addition to the 12 per cent. bonus which they already enjoy over and above the market value of the land, and the fixation of such a price would have prevented any reinstatement, for this reason, that the instalments of the tenants in those circumstances would have been too high to have been within the means of the tenants whom it was proposed to reinstate. There was a curious irony in the spectacle of the House of Lords standing out for the principle of fixity of tenure, and defending tooth and nail the tenant-right of a few hundred planters, when little more than thirty years ago this same body offered the most relentless opposition to any recognition of the right of compensation for disturbance on the part of four millions of Irish tenants. In this matter the Lords gained their point, and compulsory powers are not to be applied under the Act to the holdings on which the landlords have placed planters, who are held to be _bona fide_ farmers. An amendment to this effect was thrown out by the House of Commons, by a majority of more than four to one, on a division in which only 66 voted for the amendment, but although the Bill in its original form offered sitting tenants the fullest compensation ever offered to such persons, and although most of the planters would be only too glad to accept such terms, the Upper House insisted on over-riding the will of the great majority in the Commons. Lord Lansdowne, on the second reading, gave three reasons why the Bill should not be incontinently rejected by the Peers. In the first place, it came to them, he said, supported by an enormous majority in the other House, "and their Lordships always desired to treat attentively and respectfully Bills which came to them with such a recommendation." Secondly, the late Government, as well as the present, had pledged themselves to a measure of reinstatement of some kind, and if they threw out the Bill on a second reading "it would be said that they had receded from a kind of understanding arrived at in 1903," and lastly, "the summary rejection of the Bill might greatly increase the difficulties of the Executive Government in Ireland." One would have thought that the fact that the Bill was given a second reading did little to exonerate the Upper House from similar consequences as a result of their mutilation of the Bill in Committee. In its final form the Act allows an appeal on questions of value from the inspector, to two Estates Commissioners, and from them to Mr. Justice Wylie, sitting as Judicial Commissioner with a valuer. On questions of price there is no appeal from him. Other appeals, on questions of law and fact, are, by Section 6, to be heard by a Judge of the King's Bench, with whom rests the final decision whether a particular planter is or is not to be evicted. Demesne lands and other lands, purchase of which would interfere with the value of adjoining property, are omitted from the scope of the statute, and its operation is limited to the case of 2,000 tenants, whose claims must be disposed of within four years. The power vested in the Estates Commissioners compulsorily to acquire untenanted land, not necessarily their former holdings, for the reinstatement of the evicted tenants, is of no practical value in the case of the Clanricarde estate, since all the land on it is occupied, and the fact that on that plague-spot--the nucleus of the whole disturbance--no settlement will be possible under the Act, shows to what an extent was justified Mr. Birrell's declaration that the final form of the statute was a triumph for Lord Clanricarde, and affords a curious commentary on the repeated declarations of the Unionist leaders, that nothing was further from their desire than to effect the wrecking of the Bill.[10] Rejection of similar measures of relief--notably the Tenants' Compensation Bill of 1880--has led in the past to a recrudescence of strife in Ireland, and Mr. Balfour's unworthy retort to Mr. Redmond's deduction from every precedent in the history of the struggle for the land, that it was an incitement to lawlessness, was a mere partisan retort to an avowal of a danger which every unbiassed observer must see arises from the betrayal by the House of Lords of a confidence in a final settlement which was formerly encouraged by a Conservative Govern merit. One of the weapons used by the Orangemen in their attack on this Bill was to be found in their repeated insinuations as to the unfitness of the Estates Commissioners to exercise dispassionately the functions which would be demanded of them. In this the Unionists were hoist with their own petard, for the necessity recognised by the Government for placing the Estates Commissioners in a position other than that of mere Executive officers, by giving them a judicial tenure independent of ministerial pressure or party influences, was strongly shown by the incident of the Moore-Bailey correspondence of last session, which should provide food for reflection on the part of those who imagine that intimidation is to be found in Ireland in use only on the National side. Mr. Moore, the most active of the Orangemen, asked in a supplementary question whether it was not a fact that the delay in the Estates Commissioners' Office was due to Mr. Commissioner Bailey's continued presence in London. These visits, it should be noted, were paid to London by Mr. Bailey in the discharge of his official duties for the purpose of consultations with the Government in connection with the Evicted Tenants Bill. On reading in the papers Mr. Moore's question implying negligence to his duties on his part, Mr. Bailey wrote to Mr. Moore the following letter, marked private:-- "UNIVERSITY CLUB, "DUBLIN, March, 1907. "DEAR MOORE,--I see that as a supplemental question you asked the other day whether the delay in land purchase was due to the continued absence of Mr. Bailey. I do not know, of course, what was your object, but it may interest you to know that for the last year I attended more days in the office than either of my colleagues, and that, as a matter of fact, I did not take much more than half the vacation to which I was entitled. You will thus see that you have been strangely misinformed, and I can only surmise that another of my colleagues was meant. "Faithfully yours, "W.F. BAILEY." To this Mr. Moore replied:-- "ULSTER CLUB, "BELFAST, March 19th. "DEAR BAILEY,--You were appointed by a Unionist Government to see fair play between Wrench and Finucane, and you have sold the pass on every occasion. The first thing my colleagues and I will do when we come back, which will not be very far off, will be to press for an inquiry into the working of your department. You can destroy your evidence now, and show this to whom you please. "Yours truly, "W. MOORE." In reply the Estates Commissioner wrote:-- "Mr. Bailey desires to acknowledge receipt of Mr. Moore's letter of the 19th inst., and inasmuch as it contains grave statements of a threatening and unfounded character he will take an early opportunity of bringing the matter under notice in the proper quarter." The final letter was Mr. Moore's reply:-- "ULSTER CLUB, "BELFAST, March 25th. "Mr. Moore hopes that when Mr. Bailey publishes the correspondence he will make it clear that Mr. Moore's reply was directed to a disloyal attack by Mr. Bailey on one of his colleagues in his letter to Mr. Moore. This is all that was omitted from Mr. Moore's reply." The next step in this discreditable incident occurred on July 23rd, on which day Mr. Moore denounced Mr. Bailey in the House of Commons for his partisanship towards the Nationalists, and gave a graphic picture of the private letter which Mr. Bailey had written to him to protest against his personal attacks. Mr. Redmond rose and asked that Mr. Russell should read to the House Mr. Moore's reply, and Mr. Russell thereupon read the second of the letters given above, upon which Mr. Balfour, regardless of his own share in the partial suppression of the Wyndham-MacDonnell _dossier_ a few years before, demanded the production of the whole correspondence. This was done on July 26th, when Mr. Moore read the letters in the order given above. In his personal explanation he represented it as an extremely suspicious circumstance that Mr. Bailey had been seen in the Lobby in conversation with the Nationalists. "That may be legitimate," he said, "but I think it very undesirable," and in the very next breath he confessed that another of the Commissioners was a particular and personal friend of his own, to whom he would have shown the first letter from Mr. Bailey if it had not been marked private. The comment of the _Times_--in which Mr. Moore as a rule finds an active admirer of his political methods--is interesting:-- "Mr. Bailey is a public servant entrusted with certain quasi-judicial functions. That a member of Parliament, whatever may be his opinions of the conduct of such an official, should inform him that he had been appointed 'to see fair play' between his colleagues, and that he had not seen it, and should couple this charge with a promise to press for an inquiry into the working of the department whenever there should be a change of Government, is indefensible." The whole incident is worthy of attention as showing the atmosphere of suspicious hostility with which the Orange faction in Ireland surrounds every act even of Civil Servants and Executive Officers who are not as active supporters of the ascendancy as they would wish. Of further legislation dealing with the laws of tenure, the Town Tenants Act of 1906, which Mr. Balfour denounced as highway robbery, gives tenants in towns compensation for disturbance so as to prevent a landlord making a vexatious use of his rights. An attempt was made by the House of Lords to limit the compensation so paid to one year's rent, but the rejection of the amendment by the House of Commons was acquiesced in, and no such limitation exists in the Act. With regard to the question of the agricultural labourers, the fact that the last Census Report discloses that there are in Ireland nearly 10,000 "houses" with one room and one window apiece, wretched cabins inhabited by about 40,000 people, the peat smoke from the fire in which escapes through a hole in the thatch, gives some idea of the miserable conditions existing in parts of the West of Ireland. Of the quarter of a million of cottages in the second class of the Census--those, that is, with from one to four doors and windows--a large number also no doubt are quite unfit for habitation, and do much in the way of leading to the asylum or to emigration. It is to secure the replacement of these by cheap sanitary and comfortable cottages that the Labourers' Acts, ever since the first of the series introduced by the Irish Party in 1883, have been passed. By them Boards of Guardians, and by the Local Government Act, Rural District Councils, may build such cottages. In 1905, 18,000 cottages had been built under existing Acts, and they are let to tenants at rents of from 10d. to 1s. a week, but the difficulty had always been to effect the improvements sufficiently rapidly owing to the costly and elaborate procedure which involved an appeal to the Privy Council and a heavy burden on the rates of a poverty-stricken community. The Act of 1906 has simplified procedure by replacing the appeal to the Privy Council by an appeal to the Local Government Board, and that it was needful is seen from the fact that under Wyndham's Act only 25 cottages were built. It is hoped thereby to circumvent the apathy of District Councils, and their parsimony is to be appeased by the fact that the funds, which are largely derived from economics in the Irish Executive are advanced at a rate of interest, not as heretofore of 4-7/8 per cent., but, as in the case of land purchase advances, of 3-1/4 per cent., repayable in a period of 68-1/2 years. The urgency of the problem is obvious. The bearing of this state of affairs in rural housing on the fact that in 1904 two out of every thirteen deaths were due to tuberculosis shows that it is impossible to overestimate its importance, and I think that this condition of things, put side by side with the other economic facts with which I have dealt, are a sufficient reply to those who declare that conditions in Ireland would appear _couleur de rose_ were they not seen through the jaundiced eyes of a discontented people. If the catalogue of Acts of Parliament which have been found necessary to effect the transformation of the system of tenure in Ireland from the state in which it was forty years ago to that in which it is to-day is evidence of the pressing grievance under which the country has suffered; it is also proof that there cannot be legislation other than by shreds and patches on the part of a legislature which lacks sympathy for and knowledge of the country for which it is making laws. The need for exceptional and separate legislation in Ireland has been admitted, and the system which existed in fact, obtained legal sanction only in 1881, to be in its turn swept away by further legislation which will have a deeper economic bearing on the future of the country than any other change since the relaxation of the Penal Laws. For the rest I cannot do better than quote, in this connection, the opinion of the most dispassionate critic of Ireland of recent years--Herr Moritz Bonn. Speaking of the landlord who has sold his estate he says--"He has no further cause of friction with his former tenants, who now pay him no rent. He no longer regards himself as part of an English garrison. He will again become an Irish patriot. He no longer talks of the unity of the Empire, for Home Rule has few terrors for him now. He talks of 'Devolution,' of the concession of a kind of self-government for Ireland. He will struggle for a while against the designation Home Rule, because not so long ago he was declaring that he would die in the last ditch for the union of the three kingdoms, but he will soon be reconciled to it. It will not be very long till the former landlords, whose chief interests lie in Ireland, have become enthusiastic Nationalists." CHAPTER V THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION "I am convinced that if the void in the lay leadership of the country be filled up by higher education of the better classes among the Catholic laity, the power of the priests, so far as it is abnormal or unnecessary, will pass away." --DR. O'DEA, now Bishop of Clonfert, speaking in evidence before the Robertson Commission on University Education, as the representative of Maynooth College. Appendix to Third Report, p. 296. The scruples of George III., who although as King of Ireland he yielded to the claims of Catholics to the suffrage by giving the Royal consent to the enfranchising Act of Grattan's Parliament in 1793, were such that they made him declare that his coronation oath compelled him to maintain the Protestantism of the United Parliament of the three kingdoms and express himself to Dundas of opinion that Pitt's emancipation proposals were "the most Jacobinical thing ever seen." The continuance for thirty years of these political disabilities, and the obligation incumbent on Catholics to support an alien Church with the full weight of endowments and tithes, did more than anything else to maintain the wall of prejudice between the two creeds which the eighteen years of Grattan's Parliament had done much to destroy. It was James Anthony Froude who said that the absenteeism of her men of genius was a worse wrong to Ireland than the absenteeism of her landlords. This evil the Union accentuated by reducing Dublin from the seat of Government, which in the middle of the eighteenth century had been the second only to London in size and importance, to the status of a provincial city from which were drawn the leaders of that liberal school of Protestantism the rise of which was the marked feature of Irish politics at the end of the eighteenth century. The dividing line between parties in England has never been one of caste or of creed, still less of both combined. In the past the Whigs could claim as aristocratic and as exclusive a prestige as could the Tories. In point of wealth there was little to choose, and, most important of all, in respect of religion, though the minor clergy were very largely Tory and the Dissenters were allied to the Whigs, yet the Anglicanism of the great Whig families, and their appointments when in power to the Episcopal bench and to other places of preferment, saved the Church of England from being identified _in toto_ with either party in the State. In Ireland, unfortunately, the case was far different, for there property and the Established Church found themselves ranged side by side in the maintenance of their respective privileges against the democracy, which, as it happened, was Catholic, and which for many years after the Union did not recover from the long and demoralising persecution of the Penal Laws. The aristocracy resisted emancipation, in spite of the fact that it was advocated by all the greatest statesmen and orators of two generations, and it did so quite as much because it was emancipation of the masses as because it was emancipation of the Catholics. The Church of Ireland at the same time dreaded the reform since it had the foresight to perceive that the outcome would be an attack upon her prerogatives and an assault upon her position. The anticipations of both were well founded. Nine years after the Emancipation Act, tithe, which an English Prime Minister had declared was as sacred as rent, was by Act of Parliament commuted into a rent-charge no longer collected directly from the tenant, but paid by the landlord, who, however, compensated himself for its incidence on his shoulders by raising rents. Forty years later the Church Act was passed, and almost simultaneously was begun the assault on the land system which had given support to, and received it from, the Church Establishment. I have heard it said by Englishmen who have watched the course of politics for some years that the jingling watchword which Lord Randolph Churchill coined for the Unionists twenty years ago, that Home Rule would spell Rome Rule, if used again to-day would to a very great extent fall flat. They have based this view, not on the assumption that Englishmen love Rome more, but rather upon the opinion that they care for all religions less, and that hence the appeal to bigotry would make less play. The fact, however, remains that one meets men in England with every sympathy for Irish claims who shrink nevertheless from the advocacy of the principle of self-government through fear lest the Protestant minority should suffer. This fear for the rights of minorities serves always as the last ditch in which a losing cause entrenches itself, and timid souls have always been found who hesitate at the approach of every reform on the ground that the devil you know may turn out to be not so bad as the devil you do not know. The legislative history of the House of Lords during the last century, if examples of this were needed, would provide them in large numbers; and as to the question of whether it is better that the majority or the minority of a nation should be governed against its will, one need scarcely say which is the principle adopted in a normal system of Parliamentary government. The rapidity with which under Grattan's Parliament an emancipated Ireland ceased to be intolerant leads one to suspect that the bigotry of creeds which is attributed to us as a race is not a natural characteristic, but rather the outcome of external causes. This view is borne out by the opinion of Lecky, who declared that the deliberate policy of English statesmen was "to dig a deep chasm between Catholics and Protestants," and if proof of the allegation is needed it is to be found in the fact that in the middle of the eighteenth century the Protestant Primate, Archbishop Boulter, wrote to Government concerning a certain proposal that "it united Protestants and Papists, and if that conciliation takes place, farewell to English influence in Ireland." Under Grattan's Parliament Trinity College, Dublin, opened its doors, though not its endowments, to Catholics. In 1795 a petition from Maynooth, the lay college in which was not till twenty years later suppressed by Government for political reasons, was presented to the Irish House of Commons by Henry Grattan, protesting against the exclusion of Protestants from its halls. In the ranks of the Volunteers, who secured free trade in 1779 and Parliamentary Independence in 1782, Catholics and Protestants stood shoulder to shoulder, and the independent legislature, which was the outcome of their efforts, granted the franchise to the Catholics. It was of course natural, when Catholics were excluded from Parliament, that the leaders of the people should have been members of the Protestant Church, but in view of the alleged bigotry at the present day of the mass of the Irish people it is surely significant that Isaac Butt and Parnell were both members of the Church of minority, that to take three of the fiercest opponents of the maintenance of the Union John Mitchell was a Unitarian, Thomas Davis an Episcopalian Protestant, and Joseph Biggar a Presbyterian. At this moment of the Nationalist Members of Parliament nine, or more than ten per cent., are Protestants, and one may well ask if the Orangemen have ever had a like proportion of Catholic members of their party, and _à fortiori_ what would be thought of the suggestion that a member of that religion should lead them in the House of Commons. The difficulty experienced in Great Britain by would-be candidates of either party in securing their adoption by local associations if they are Catholics is so common as to make the excessive bigotry alleged against the Irish Catholics, one-tenth of whose representatives are Protestants, appear very much exaggerated. That bigotry exists among Catholics to some extent I should be the last, albeit regretfully, to deny, but I leave it to the reader to judge how far this is the result and the natural outcome of a policy the direct opposite of that pursued in Scotland, where shortly after the union of her Parliament with that of England, the Church of the majority of the people was for the sake of peace established and has remained in this privileged position ever since. In view of the use to which the "No Popery" cry has been put in its bearings on the Irish question, it is interesting to consider the relations of the English Government with the Catholic Church throughout the last century and to see how far it throws light on the justice and applicability of the taunt that Ireland is priest-ridden. In 1814 the Catholics of England, in spite of the opposition of the Irish people, secured from Mgr. Quarantotti, the Vice-Prefect of the Propaganda in Rome, who was acting in the absence of Pope Pius VII., at that date still a prisoner in France, a letter declaring that in his judgment the Royal veto should be exercised on ecclesiastical appointments in Ireland. Under O'Connell's leadership, the bishops, clergy, and people of Ireland refused to submit to the decree, and there, in spite of the indignation of the English Catholics as a whole and of the Catholic aristocracy of Ireland, the proposal was allowed to drop, which would have virtually given a right of _congé d'elire_ to the English ministry. In 1782 Edmund Burke had written in his letter to a peer of Ireland on the Penal Laws--"Never were the members of a religious sect fit to appoint the pastors of another. It is a good deal to suppose that even the present Castle would nominate bishops for the Irish Catholic Church with a religious regard for its welfare." If this was the case under Grattan's Parliament, its application thirty years later was very much more cogent. Behind the scenes, however, the wires continued to be pulled, as is seen by what Melbourne told Greville in 1835, after the latter had expressed the opinion that the sound course in Irish affairs was to open a negotiation with Rome.[11] "He then told me ... that an application had been made to the Pope very lately (through Seymour) expressive of the particular wish of the British Government that he would not appoint MacHale to the vacant bishopric--anyone but him. But on this occasion the Pope made a shrewd observation. His Holiness said that he had remarked that no place of preferment of any value ever fell vacant in Ireland that he did not get an application from the British Government asking for the appointment. Lord Melbourne supposed that he was determined to show that he had the power of refusal and of opposing the wishes of the Government, and in reply to my questions he admitted that the Pope had generally conferred the appointment according to the wishes of the Government." These facts must be borne in mind on the part of those by whom the admitted support given by the Whig Catholic "Castle Bishops" of the early part of the nineteenth century to the Government is urged as evidence of a consistent tendency on the part of the Church in Ireland, the political views of the prelates of which, so soon as in the second half of the nineteenth century Governmental lobbying ceased, were of an entirely different colour. At a later date Greville returned to the topic and noted that[12] "Palmerston said there was nothing to prevent our sending a minister to Rome; but they had not dared to do it on account of their supposed Popish tendencies. Peel might." Melbourne was not alone among Prime Ministers of the time in his appeals to the Holy See. In 1844 the Government of Sir Robert Peel, when troubled with the manifestations of sympathy which O'Connell was arousing, made an appeal to Gregory XVI. to discourage the agitation, and three years later, when the Whigs under Lord John Russell were in office, Lord Minto, Lord Privy Seal, who was Palmerston's father-in-law, was sent to Rome in the autumn recess to secure the adherence of Pius IX., then in the first months of his Pontificate, to the same line of action, and to bring to the notice of His Holiness the conduct of the Irish priesthood in supporting O'Connell. The fact that neither Gregory XVI. nor Pio Nono made any response to these appeals lends point to the sardonic comment of Disraeli on the Minto mission--that he had gone to teach diplomacy to the countrymen of Machiavelli. The views of Palmerston, on the other hand, are to be seen from a letter addressed to Minto, which is extant, in which, with characteristic bluntness, the Foreign Secretary wrote that public opinion against the Irish priests at home was so exasperated that nothing would give English people more satisfaction than to see a few of them hanged. "Can anything be more absurd," Greville had written concerning the relations which Melbourne revealed to him as subsisting between Downing Street and the Vatican, and the quotation is as appropriate to these later overtures. "Can anything be more absurd or anomalous than such relations as these? The law prohibits any intercourse with Rome, and the Government, whose business it is to enforce the law, establishes a regular, but underhand, intercourse through the medium of a diplomatic agent, whose character cannot be avowed, and the ministers of this Protestant kingdom are continually soliciting the Pope to confer appointments, the validity, even the existence, of which they do not recognise, while the Pope, who is the chief object of our abhorrence and dread, good humouredly complies with all or nearly all their requests." Two years after the Minto mission, and a few months before he succeeded to power in place of Peel, Lord John Russell told Charles Greville that the Government was "the greatest curse to Ireland," and he spoke of "their policy of first truckling to the Orangemen, insulting, and then making useless concessions to the Catholics, without firmness and justice."[13] It is only fair to Lord John to say that in the following year he ordered a Bill to be drawn up to legalise intercourse with the Pope and to put an end to these repeated acts of _præmunire_ on the part of Ministers of the Crown; for a large number of constitutional authorities believed that their action amounted to this offence, which has been defined as consisting of acts tending to introduce into the realm some foreign power, more particularly that of the Pope, to the diminution of the King's authority. The Diplomatic Relations with the Court of Rome Bill was introduced and passed into law, with one important amendment which we shall have occasion to notice later, in 1848, less than two years after Peel's ministry had been succeeded by that of Russell. The grounds upon which its acceptance by Parliament was demanded were that the complications resulting from the revolutionary crisis throughout the Continent made it essential that the Foreign Office should be in a position, in dealing with the chancelleries of Europe, to obtain direct recognition, and as a result first-hand information, as to the attitude of the Holy See in any situations which might arise; and the acceptance by Parliament of the change of policy which the Bill was intended to effect, on the understanding that diplomatic negotiations should be confined to foreign affairs, may be seen in the words of Earl Fitzwilliam in the House of Lords. In his speech in support of the Bill he declared that "the very last subject upon which the Government should communicate with the Court of Rome was that which had reference to relations which it should have with its own Roman Catholic subjects."[14] The Act was an enabling Act, and its proposals, like those as to concurrent endowment which Russell had made three years earlier, were forgotten in 1850, when, in the matter of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, the Prime Minister played the part which Leech immortalised as that of "the little boy who chalked up 'No Popery' and then ran away." Even in the interval before this occurred the provisions of the Act were not put in force. No appointment pursuant to the statute was ever made, but its object was indirectly secured by the fact that a Secretary of Legation, nominally accredited to the Court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was kept in residence in Rome, where he served as a _de facto_ Minister to the Vatican. This state of affairs was maintained until Lord Derby recalled Jervoise, who was then Secretary, from Rome, and from that date even this measure of diplomatic representation at the Vatican has ceased to exist. The Bill of 1848, as we have seen, was directed to the establishment of relations with "the Court of Rome." An amendment on the part of the Bishop of Winchester, which was accepted and passed into law, substituted for these words the phrase "Sovereign of the Roman States," and in consequence, after the loss of the Temporal Power, the Act was repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act, 1875, so that the law was restored to that condition, in regard to this subject, in which it had been before Lord John Russell introduced the Act of 1848. All this, it will be said, is ancient history, but the fact that it is fifty years old does not affect my point, which is this--that the maintenance of an unnatural polity can only be secured by means of a series of subterfuges such as these employed by Unionist Governments, both Whig and Tory, by which, while sympathy was extended to Orangemen in the open, the Ministry endeavoured to twitch the red sleeves of the Roman Curia in the back stairs of the Vatican. As Macaulay picturesquely put it, at any moment Exeter Hall might raise its war whoop and the Orangemen would begin to bray, and there was no choice, one must suppose, but that you should not let your right hand know what your left hand was doing. In 1881 Mr. Gladstone appealed to Cardinal Newman to apprise the Pope of the violent speeches which were being delivered by certain priests in Ireland, for whose language he said he held the Pope, if informed of it, morally responsible, and he asked the English Cardinal for his assistance. To this Newman replied that the Pope was not supreme in political matters, his action as to whether a political party is censurable is not direct, and, moreover, it lay with the bishops to censure the clergy for their language if they thought it intemperate, and the interposition of the Holy See was not called for by the circumstances of the case. The policy, however, which had been applied before was employed once more in another direction in the teeth of British sentiment if not of British law. A mortgage had been foreclosed on Parnell's estate, and the Irish newspapers having obtained knowledge of the fact raised a collection which became known as the Parnell Tribute, and which was headed by a subscription from the Archbishop of Cashel. If precedent were needed for this form of recognition of national services it was to be found in the grant of £50,000--which might, had he been willing, have been double that amount--which was made to Grattan by the emancipated Irish House of Commons, but more exact parallels perhaps are to be found in "O'Connel's Rent," which Greville described as "nobly paid and nobly earned," or in the great collection which marked the popular appreciation in Great Britain of Cobden's services in securing the repeal of the Corn Laws. In the autumn of 1881, when the Parnell Tribute was initiated, the Land League agitation was in full swing in Ireland, and about the same time Mr. George Errington, an English Catholic Whig Member of Parliament, who was about to spend the winter in Rome, called on Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary, and was given by him an introduction to the Cardinal Secretary of State. In this wise Mr. Errington went, in the phrase of the day, "to keep the Vatican in good humour," and if he was not the accredited representative of Her Brittanic Majesty--for that would have been illegal--at any rate he went with the sanction and under the ægis of the Foreign Office. The upshot was a Papal rescript, signed by Cardinal Simeoni, the Prefect, and Mgr. Jacobini, the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation De Propagatione Fide, which condemned the Tribute owing to the Land League agitation. "The collection called 'The Parnell Testimonial Fund,'" so ran the rescript, "cannot be approved, and consequently it cannot be tolerated that any ecclesiastic, much less a bishop, should take any part whatever in recommending or promoting it." The bishops and clergy withdrew from any further action in connection with the Tribute Fund, but the laity gave the lie to the suggestion that they are under the thumb of their priests in matters which are not within the sphere of faith or morals. The rescript was promulgated in May, and at this time the subscription list amounted to less than £8,000. Within a month it had doubled, and by the end of the year it amounted to £37,000. The amount of the mortgage was £13,000. As Parnell, in a characteristically laconic way, put it in his evidence before the Commission, "The Irish people raised a collection for me to pay off the amount of a mortgage. The amount of the collection considerably exceeded the amount necessary." The retort of the country to the document "_Qualecumque de Parnellio_," had been, in the phrase then current, to "make Peter's pence into Parnell's pounds." Two years after the Simeoni letter Mr. Errington was again in Rome, attempting this time to secure the exclusion from the successorship to Cardinal M'Cabe, of Dr. Walsh of Maynooth, as Archbishop of Dublin. A letter on the subject fell into the hands of the editor of _United Ireland_, who published it in his paper, and so in this way thwarted the objects of the second Errington mission. "If we want to hold Ireland by force," said Joseph Cowen, the Radical member for Newcastle, "let us do it ourselves; let us not call in the Pope, whom we are always attacking, to help us." A further instance may be recounted of the manner in which the people of what is, after Spain, the most Catholic country in Europe, while submitting to the Pope implicitly in matters which are _de fide_, refused to take their cue in purely political matters from Rome. The rejection of the Home Rule Bill and of the Land Bill of 1886, and the return of the Conservatives to power, led to a recrudescence of the land war, to which the hope of ameliorative legislation had temporarily put a truce. The Plan of Campaign, which was then launched--of which it has been said that no agrarian movement was ever so unstained by crime--was of the following nature:--The tenants of a locality were to form themselves into an association, each member of which was to proffer to the landlord or his agent a sum which was estimated by the general body as a fair rent for his holding. These sums, if refused by the landlord, were pooled and divided by the association for the maintenance of those tenants who were evicted. The wheels were set in motion in Rome to obtain a ruling from the Holy Office as to whether such action was justifiable or not. Mgr. Persico, the head of the Oriental rite in the Propaganda, who had had much experience of English speaking people in the East, was sent to Ireland in July, 1887, to investigate the question on the spot. In April, 1888, a rescript was issued by the Holy Office to the bishops of Ireland condemning the Plan of Campaign and boycotting on the ground that they were contrary to both natural justice and Christian charity. With the Decree was sent to the bishops a circular letter, signed by Cardinal Monaco, the Secretary of the Holy Office, which contained the following statement:--"The justice of the decision will be readily seen by anyone who applies his mind to consider that a rent agreed upon by mutual consent cannot, without violation of a contract, be diminished at the mere will of a tenant, especially when there are tribunals appointed for settling such controversies and reducing unjust rents within the bounds of equity after taking into account the causes which diminish the value of the land.... Finally, it is contrary to justice and to charity to persecute by a social interdict those who are satisfied to pay rents agreed upon, or those who, in the exercise of their right, take vacant lands." The _Tablet_, the organ of English Catholicism, speaking of the decision, said that happily there was no suspicion of politics about it, and as to the letter of Cardinal Monaco la Valetta, it wrote--"It adds certain reasons which perhaps may have led the Congregation to answer as they have done, but these constitute no part of the official reply." The next step in this episode should be well pondered by those who accuse the Irish of a blind Ultramontanism. The bishops, with one exception, omitted to publish the rescript to their flocks, and the Archbishop of Cashel went so far as to send £50 to the funds of the Plan of Campaign. Parnell, referring publicly to the rescript as "a document from a distant country," declared that his Catholic colleagues must decide for themselves what action to take. Mr. Dillon contradicted the statements in Cardinal Monaco's letter to the effect that the contracts were voluntary or that the campaign fund of the Land League had been collected by extortion. A meeting of forty Catholic members of Parliament assembled in Dublin, and in the Mansion House in that city signed a document denying the allegations about free contracts, fair rent, the Land Commission, and the rest, declared that the conclusions had been drawn from erroneous premises, and while asserting their complete obedience to the Holy See in spiritual matters, no less strongly repudiated the suggestion that Rome had any right to interfere in matters of a political nature. Mass meetings were held in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, and in Cork, which indorsed this position by popular vote. The Orangemen were delighted at the imminence of a schism, and the discomfiture of the Catholics under a decree, the result of internal division, was hailed with pleasure only by the enemies of the Church. In the event they were doomed to disappointment, for in the closing days of the year the Holy Father wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Dublin concerning his action, which had been "so sadly misunderstood," in which he wrote that "as to the counsels that we have given to the people of Ireland from time to time and our recent decree, we were moved in these things, not only by the consideration of what is conformable to truth and justice, but also by the desire of advancing your interests. For such is our affection for you that it does not suffer us to allow the cause in which Ireland is struggling to be weakened by the introduction of anything that could justly be brought in reproach against it." In this manner was closed an incident which was expected by its foes to threaten the allegiance of Ireland, and with it that of more than half the Catholics in England, to the Holy See. The Nationalist members at the Mansion House had flatly declared that the decree was an instrument of the unscrupulous enemies both of Ireland and of the Holy See. The _Tablet_, which declared that it had been promulgated with full and intimate knowledge of all the circumstances, retorted--"As a matter of fact we believe that the English Government has taken no steps, direct or indirect, to obtain the pronouncement, which is based solely on the reports of Mgr. Persico and the documents and evidence which accompanied them." And it went on to add that Persico was expected to return to Ireland to watch the application of the decree. Beyond this, until recently, nothing more was known except that it was remarked that negotiations between the Duke of Norfolk and the Vatican were broken off, and that the former left Rome suddenly for England without having an audience with the Pope, for which arrangements had been made. The forecast of the _Tablet_ as to Mgr. Persico's return to Ireland to see that the terms of the decree were enforced and applied, was not correct. The responsibility for the decree was everywhere laid on his shoulders, and the _Tablet_ for April 27th, 1889, records that an Address was presented to Mgr. Persico after his return to Rome "as an expression of respect, and in the fervent hope that his Excellency's mission might largely conduce to the glory of God, the increase of charity, and the restoration of peace and goodwill among men." It is only in the last couple of years, with the publications of Persico's correspondence with Cardinal Manning,[15] that the real facts of the case have been known. After spending six months in Ireland, the envoy was obliged, for reasons of health, to move to Devonshire in January, 1888. He had orders from Rome to remain in the British Islands, but further, so he told the Cardinal in his letter, "I must not reside in London so as to give not the least suspicion that I have anything to do with the British Government." As to the promulgation of the decree, it was done without his knowledge and, what is more, against his judgment. Having arrived in Ireland in July, 1887, he had concluded his investigations by the middle of the month of December of that year. His requests that the mission might be terminated were met by the reply that it was to continue indefinitely, and he was told that if he wished, for reasons of health, to leave Ireland during the winter months he might do so, but that he must remain in the British Isles. After the issue of the rescript he wrote to the English Cardinal in these words:--"It is known to your Eminence that I did not expect at all the said decree, that I was never so much surprised in my life as when I received the bare circular from Propaganda on the morning of the 28th ulto. And fancy, I received the bare circular, as I suppose every Irish bishop did, without a letter or a word of instruction or explanation. And what is more unaccountable to me, only the day before I had received a letter from the Secretary for the Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, telling me that nothing had been done about Irish affairs, and that my report and other letters were still _nell casetta del Emo. Rampolla!_ And yet the whole world thinks and says that the Holy Office has acted on my report, and that the decree is based upon the same! Not only all the Roman correspondents but all the newspapers _avec le Tablet en tête_ proclaim and report the same thing! I wish that my report and all my letters had been studied and seriously considered, and that action had been taken from the same! Above all, I had proposed and insisted upon it, that whatever was necessary to be done ought to be done with, and through, the bishops." Of this there is ample proof in the earlier letters, and the proposal which he made was that the four archbishops and one bishop for every province should be summoned to Rome to "prepare and settle things." Writing on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1888, he said to Manning:--"I agree fully with your Eminence that the true Nunciatura for England and Ireland is the Episcopate. If the bishops do not know the state of the country they are not fit to be bishops. If they do, what more can _una persona ufficiosa o ufficiale_ do for the Holy See?" And again--"I fully understand what your Eminence adds, the English people tolerate the Catholic Church as a spiritual body. The first sign of a political action on the Government would rekindle all the old fears, suspicions, and hostility. It is a great pity they do not realise this in Rome. And it is also a great pity that English Catholics do not understand all this. I am sure that His Holiness understands it well, but I share your fears that those about him may harass him with the fickle and vain glory that would accrue to the Holy See by having an accredited representative from England also." It is impossible not to infer from this that the English Catholics were engaged in an attempt to secure diplomatic recognition by Great Britain of the Holy See, and that their anxiety to secure this was in some measure connected with their desire to override the feelings and opinions of the Irish Episcopate, but the overtures of Lord Salisbury were as fruitless as those of Russell forty years before. The last letter from Mgr. Persico to the English Cardinal, which has been reprinted, reiterates the disclaimer of responsibility for the action of the Vatican, in these words:-- "I had no idea that anything had been done about Irish affairs much less thought that some questions had been referred to the Holy Office, and the first knowledge I had of the decree was on the morning of the 28th April, when I received the bare circular sent me by Propaganda. I must add that had I known of such a thing I would have felt it my duty to make proper representations to the Holy See." In view of this it is interesting to read the naïve record in the _Tablet_ of those who signed the address to Persico on the totally wrong assumption that he and his report were the _causa causans_ of the decree. "The signatures," says the _Tablet_, "comprise those of all the Catholic peers in Ireland (14 in number), four Privy Councillors, ten honourables, two Lords Lieutenants of counties, nineteen baronets, fifty-four deputy-lieutenants, two hundred and ninety-seven magistrates, and a large number of the learned and military professions." The remarkable thing about this memorial was the absence of the names of any clerics, regular or secular, parish priests or prelates. There are in Ireland a great many more Protestant Nationalists than the English Press allows its readers to suspect, and it is one of these who, in a recent novel, declares in a wild hyperbole that if the bishops can secure the continuance of English Government for the next half century Ireland will have become the Church's property. No one, of course, with any sense of proportion takes seriously such a statement as this, but I allude to it as showing, in its extreme anti-clericalism, the same tendency, very much magnified, as I have observed to a great extent in the Protestant Nationalist as a class, who has not, as I believe, had time to eliminate the last taint of No Popery feeling in which for generations he and his forbears have been steeped. The existence of this anti-clerical spirit, and, what is more to the point, its expression with the proverbial tactlessness of the political convert, for such a one the Protestant Nationalist usually is, make it very essential that the Catholic clergy should walk warily and avoid giving any handle to their detractors, for in Ireland, and perhaps most of all in the Church in Ireland, there is need to use the prayer of the faithful Commons--"that the best possible construction be put on one's motives." How small is the basis for the allegation that the clergy are playing only for the Church's hand and are prepared to sacrifice for this end the welfare of the country is shown, I think, by the evidence which I have adduced. But in spite of their ill success in the past there is a persistent notion on the part of both English parties that they can drag in ecclesiastical influence to redress the political balance in their favour. The exposure in the Life of Lord Randolph Churchill of the manner in which he proposed to Lord Salisbury to win over the Church to Unionism is an example of what I mean:--[16] "I have no objection to Sexton and Healy knowing the deliberate intention of the Government on the subject of Irish education, but it would not do for the letter or communication to be made public, for the effect of publicity on Lancashire would be unfortunate.... It is the bishops entirely to whom I look in future to mitigate or postpone the Home Rule onslaught. Let us only be enabled to occupy a year with the education question. By that time I am certain Parnell's party will have become seriously disintegrated. Personal jealousies, Government influences, Davitt and Fenian intrigues, will be at work upon the devoted band of eighty. The bishops, who in their hearts hate Parnell, and don't care a scrap for Home Rule, having safely acquired control of Irish education, will, according to my calculation, complete the rout. That is my policy, and I know it is sound and good, and the only possible Tory policy." And again he wrote--"My opinion is that if you approach the archbishops through proper channels, if you deal in friendly remonstrances and active assurances ... the tremendous force of the Catholic Church will gradually and insensibly come over to the side of the Tory Party." All this, of course, is perfectly consistent with the views which in 1884 the leader of the Fourth Party had expressed when, speaking on the Franchise Bill, he declared his opinion that "the agricultural peasant is much more under the proper and legitimate influence of the Roman Catholic priesthood than the lower classes in the towns."[17] But how is one to reconcile either of these declarations with his action in 1886, when, the tremendous force of the Catholic Church not having come over to the Tory side, he "decided to play the Orange card, which, please God, will prove a trump," and went, with his hands red from making overtures to what they considered the scarlet woman, to rally the Orangemen with the haunting jingle that Home Rule would be Rome Rule. This was before the general election of 1886. Seven years later, when another election was approaching, he returned to the charge, this time in a letter to Lord Justice FitzGibbon:--"What is the great feature," he wrote, "of the political situation in Ireland now? The resurrection in great force of priestly domination in political matters. Now I would cool the ardour of these potentates for Mr. G. by at once offering them the largest concessions on education--primary, intermediate, and university--which justice and generosity could admit of. I would not give them everything before the general election, but I would give a good lot, and keep a good lot for the new Parliament. I do not think they could resist the bribe, and the soothing effect of such a policy on the Irish vote and attitude would be marked. Of course the concessions would have to be very large--almost as large as what the bishops have ever asked for, but preserving intact Trinity College. It would assume the material shape of a money subsidy."[18] I have set down without omissions and with nothing extenuate the data on which is based the indictment that the clergy have been, and are, anti-national, and I ask the reader to say whether the charge is unsupported or not. That overtures have again and again been made _sub rosa_ to the clergy to wean them from the popular side is proved up to the hilt, but that in any single instance they have closed with the offers or been forced by the rigours of ecclesiastical discipline into compliance, appears to me not proven, as is also the imputation that the people have in any degree departed from the lines of O'Connell's dictum--that we take our theology from Rome, but our politics we prefer of home manufacture. If the action of Cardinal Cullen with regard to the Tenant League in 1855 be adduced as an argument in favour of the proposition, it must be remembered that though as Primate his voice was preponderant and his policy was affected, in Dr. MacHale, the Archbishop of Tuam, an exponent of opposite views was to be found, and that it is on the lines laid down by MacHale, and not those advocated by Cullen, that the policy of the Catholic Church in Ireland has as a rule been based. The clergy in the early part of the nineteenth century were brought up in foreign seminaries, where passive obedience to the established order was inculcated, and where, as was natural in such places, a horror of the Jacobinical principles of the French revolution created among them an antagonism to any violent agitation, which admittedly or not drew its inspiration from that source, but the names of Dr. Doyle of Kildare, of Dr. Duggan of Clonfert, of Dr. Croke of Cashel, of Dr. M'Cormick, to name only four, show how much support was given to the popular cause in Ireland by a considerable section of the higher clergy. To Protestant Nationalists I would commend that expression of opinion of the greatest of their number--Edmund Burke--who, speaking of the religion of the mass of his countrymen, declared that in his opinion "it ought to be cherished as a good, though not the most preferable good if a choice was now to be made, and not tolerated as an inevitable evil. It is extraordinary that there should still be need to emphasise the fact that the Catholicism of Ireland is inevitable and that there is no hope of making the country abjure it--but this is the case." Half a century ago, when proselytism was in full swing in a country weakened by famine, Protestants were sanguine on this point. Sir Francis Head, in a volume which bears the very naïve title of "A Fortnight in Ireland," declared that within a couple of years there can exist no doubt whatever that the Protestant population of Ireland will form the majority, and Rev. A.R. Dallas, one of the leading proselytisers in the country, borrowing a Biblical metaphor, announced that "the walls of Irish Romanism had been circumvented again and again, and at the trumpet blast that sounded in the wailings of the famine they may be said to have fallen flat. This is the point of hope in Ireland's present crisis." With the maintenance by the Church of her hold over the people governments have recognised the influence of the priests, and have tried to turn it to their own use by methods into which they have been afraid to let the light of day; and for the rest, with every trouble and every discontent, has arisen the parrot cry of _cherchez le prêtre_. Conscientious objections to certain forms of education are respected in England when they are emphasised by passive resistance. How many times have the same objections in Ireland been put down to clerical obscurantism? The priest in politics we have been told _ad nauseam_ is the curse of Ireland, but clerical interference is not unknown in English villages, and one has heard of dissenting ministers whose hands are not quite unstained by the defilement of political partisanship. It is not the habit that makes the monk, and it is possible for sacerdotalism to be as rampant among the most rigid of dissenters as in Church itself. An example of the falsehoods which have at intervals to be nailed to the counter was the one which declared that under the compulsion of their priests a considerable part of the Irish electorate falsely declared themselves to be illiterate, so that the secrecy of the ballot might be avoided and their votes might be regulated by the clergy. On a comparison of the statistics of illiterate voters and the Census of illiteracy a similar proportion was found to exist as that between the total number of voters and the whole population, in this way completely disproving the allegation. A great deal of capital has of late been made of the alleged excessive church building in Ireland during the last few years. In the light of the fact that less than forty years have passed since the money of these same peasants for the expenditure of which so much concern is now expressed, was devoted to the maintenance of what Disraeli admitted to be an alien Church, it is a little surprising to hear this taunt from Englishmen and Protestants. Relieved, as the people have been only in the last generation, from this obligation it is not strange that the work of providing churches for their own worship should have been undertaken. The Catholic churches have in large measure been built by the contributions of successful emigrants, subscribed in many instances with the secondary object of providing work in building during times of distress. There are 2,400 Catholic and 1,500 Protestant churches in Ireland at the present moment, and there is one Episcopalian Protestant church for every 320 members of that creed and one Catholic church for every 1,368 Catholics. Sir Horace Plunkett, who started this new fashion of attack by giving it the cachet of respectability in the first edition of "Ireland in the New Century," after declaring that he has "come to the conclusion that the immense power of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy has been singularly little abused," goes on to add in connection with the topic on which we are touching that "without a doubt a good many motives are unfortunately at work in the church-building movement which have but remote connection with religion." What is meant by this I cannot pretend to say. It seems to me unworthy of a gentleman in Sir Horace's position, and with his acknowledged good intentions to adopt an attitude which can only be compared to that which Pope satirised in the lines:-- "Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer, Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike." But the remarkable part of the facts about this unframed charge is that in the popular edition of Sir Horace's book, published in 1905, the passage which I have quoted is omitted, and in spite of the fact that nearly forty pages are devoted to an Epilogue containing answers to his critics, the author makes no mention of its omission, and gives no reason for the implied retractation of what may be interpreted as being a very grave charge. The books of one or two writers on the abuses of clericalism in Ireland, written in violent, unmeasured invective, and innocent--which is more important--of all notion of the value of evidence, are, I understand, eagerly snapped up and readily believed by pious Protestants in England, and it is from these books that many Englishmen have learnt all that they know to-day about the Church in Ireland. The picture which is presented of the Irish priest as a money-grabbing martinet, whom his flock regard with mingled sentiments of detestation and fear, is a caricature as libellous as it is grotesque. Even the high standard of sexual morality which prevails in the country is attacked as being merely the result of early marriages, inculcated by a priesthood thirsting for marriage fees, and virtue itself is in this way depicted as being nothing but the bye-product of grasping avarice. I would not have thought it necessary to have touched on this subject if I were not assured of the vast circulation of the type of books to which I refer, which are not worth powder and shot, more particularly in dissenting and evangelical circles in England. The reiterated assertion by their author that he is a Catholic produces the entirely false impression that he is the spokesman of a considerable body of Catholics in Ireland whose mouths are closed by the fear of consequences. One fact which shows how bitter is the hatred towards the religion of Ireland on the part of a section of the population of England is this--that there is no more certain method by which a book on that country can be assured of advertisement and quotation in the English party Press of the baser kind, which for partisan reasons plays on the bigotry of English people by the booming of such books, no matter how scurrilous or how vile are their innuendoes. The comment of M. Paul-Dubois on these attempts to foist on the Catholic Church responsibility for the evil case in which Ireland finds herself, deserves quotation:--"Cette thèse grossière et fanatique ne vaut l'honneur d'un devellopment ni d'une discussion: contentons nous de remarquer comme il est habile et simple de rejeter sur Rome la responsabilité des malheurs d'Erin en disculpant ainsi et l'Angleterre et la colonie anglaise en Irlande!" The energy of the Irish priesthood in the advocacy of temperance--an energy which in a climate like that of Ireland can never be excessive; their social work in the encouragement of the industrial revival by the starting of agricultural and co-operative societies, and, most of all at this time, of the Industrial Development Association; their whole-hearted assistance in the work of the Gaelic League, and their aid in the discouragement of emigration--all these, apart from their spiritual labours, are factors which have increased their claims to the affection of the people to whom they minister and the respect of their non-Catholic fellow-countrymen. They have discouraged violence, and the weight of their Church has always been directed against secret societies, and if their power has been great it is only because they have been in full sympathy with their flocks. In 1848 the clergy made such efforts to check the excesses of the abortive insurrection of that year that Lord Clarendon, the Viceroy, wrote to Lord John Russell to tell him that something must be done for the clergy, but the bigotry of the English and Scottish people stood in the way. The No Rent Manifesto of 1881 fell flat owing to the ecclesiastical condemnation which it incurred on the ground that it involved repudiation of debts. Every article in the Press of Europe and America on the problem of "race suicide" contained a well-deserved tribute to the moral influence of the Irish clergy on their flocks in this direction, and the figures of illegitimacy show the same results of their inculcation of sexual morality. In 1904 there were 3.9 per cent. of such births in England and Wales, in Scotland 6.46, and in Ireland 2.5. The highest rate in Ireland--3.4 in Ulster--is almost the same as the lowest in Scotland--in Dumbartonshire--and the contrast between the Scottish maximum of 14.3 in Kincardine and the Irish minimum of .7 in Connacht needs no comment. With regard to ecclesiasticism in the lower branches of education, while convinced that popular control over the secular branches, leaving the religious branches of such education completely in the hands of the clergy, is the ideal arrangement, one must admit that there is a striking testimony contained in the Report on Primary Education drawn up in 1904 by Mr. F.H. Dale, as to the efficiency and good management of the Convent Schools in Ireland, which, it should be noted, are at the same time those of least expense to the State. The cleanliness and neatness of the premises, the supervision and management on the part of the Community, the order and tone of the children, are all highly praised; and in a further Report on Intermediate Education, prepared by the same Inspector of Schools jointly with a colleague, will be found equally strong insistence on the well-known success and efficiency of the three hundred schools of the Christian Brothers, in which, without a penny of State aid, are educated some 30,000 pupils; and it was no doubt to the education given by the Christian Brothers that the Protestant Bishop of Killaloe referred when, in an address to his diocesan synod five years ago, he generously recognised the superiority of the Catholic over the Protestant schools in Ireland. It was Lord Lytton, I think, who described the Established Church in Ireland as the greatest bull in the language, since it was so called because it was a church not for the Irish. All who are acquainted with those masterpieces of Swift's satire--the Drapier Letters--and who appreciate the fact that Berkeley--the most distinguished of Irish Protestant bishops--was refused the Primacy of Ireland because he was an Irishman, and that to appoint any but an Englishman or a Scotsman would be to depart from the policy followed throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, will see that at that time, at any rate, it deserved the censure which it has received as a foreign body maintained for denationalising purposes. The maintenance until thirty-eight years ago of the Established Church, which raised its mitred head in a country where its adherents formed one-eighth of the population, but where its funds were extorted from those who regarded its doctrines as heresy, was, I verily believe, the _fons et origo_ of the sectarian bitterness which still persists among Catholics, "Lui demander," wrote a French observer of the position of the Catholic Church in the days before 1870, "de s'associer a une telle entreprise lui parait une injure; lui forcer est une violence; la continuance de cette violence est une persecution." You would find it hard to make me believe that had England been the scene of a similar anomaly, with the _rôles_, of course, exchanged, the feelings towards the Catholic Church, even forty years after its disestablishment, would be the most cordial. The proposals of Pitt for the State payment of the Catholic priesthood were constantly revived and advocated throughout the century. Lord Clarendon's views, which have just been quoted, were a mere echo of the opinion expressed by Lord John Russell in favour of concurrent endowment in 1844, and there is a significant allusion on the part of Charles Greville fourteen years earlier to the feeling of that time, in which, after speaking about Irish disaffection, he shows the results which were expected from concurrent endowment by commenting unfavourably on the policy which the Government pursued "instead of depriving him (O'Connell) of half his influence by paying the priests and so getting them under the influence of the Government."[19] The whole question was considered merely in the abstract until the Fenian outburst of the sixties--as Mr. Gladstone freely admitted--opened men's eyes to this among the other serious problems of Irish government. It required all the violence of desperate men to call, attention to a condition of things in which the Church which was established numbered less than one-eighth of the inhabitants of the country among its adherents. The part of the country in which the greatest proportion of Episcopalian Protestants was to be found was Ulster, and there they were only 20 per cent. of the people, while in Munster and Connacht they were only 5 and 4 per cent. respectively. In 199 out of 2,428 parishes in Ireland there was not a single member of the Established Church. The net revenue of the Church was £600,000, and of this two archbishops and ten bishops received one-tenth. The mode of solving the inequitable state of affairs which produced least resistance lay in the direction of concurrent endowment. Earl Russell suggested the endowment of Catholics and Presbyterians and the reduction of Episcopalian revenues to one-eighth of their existing amount. To the Presbyterians his plan would have entailed a gain, in so far as the Regium Donum would have been increased, but the opposition to it of the Catholics, in spite of the fact that levelling up rather than planing down appealed not only to Russell but to Grey and Disraeli, resulted in its abandonment, and the question of disestablishment became the recognised solution of the difficulty. With the introduction of the Bill in 1869 began those dire prophecies and grim forebodings which have formed a running accompaniment to every Irish reform, and Mr. Gladstone and the Liberals were denounced for having sanctioned sacrilege. In the end the Church saved from the burning more than in any equitable sense she was entitled to claim. The Representative Body, which was incorporated in 1870, received about nine millions for commuted salaries, half a million in lieu of private endowments, and another three-quarters of a million was handed over to lay patrons. The commutation paid to the Non-Conformists for the Regium Donum and other payments was nearly £800,000, and in lieu of the Maynooth grant the Catholic Church received less than £400,000, the income from which fund only covers about one-third of the annual cost of maintenance of Maynooth. The history of this grant dates from the £9,000 given to the College by the Irish Parliament, which was increased by Peel in 1844 to £26,000 a year. When in the following year he brought in a Bill to make it a vote of,£30,000 for building purposes, the _Times_, according to Greville, "kept pegging away at Peel in a series of articles as mischievous as malignity could make them, and by far the most disgraceful that have ever appeared on a political subject in any public journal." That on the purely financial side the Catholic Church in Ireland would have gained by concurrent endowment these figures, which represent the whole of her receipts from public funds, amply bear witness, but that she gained in a moral sense far more than in a material sense she might have secured, no one will for one moment deny. The glaring discrepancy between the amount of public funds at her disposal and the amount held by the other religious bodies from public sources did not abate the virulence with which the Church Act was assailed, but at this day what is of interest is that the jeremiads of the Protestants as to the consequences either to the country at large or to their Church in particular were in every respect uncalled for, as was acknowledged by no less a person than Lord Plunket, at a later time Archbishop of Dublin, who, when in that position, admitted that the Church Act had proved not a curse, as was expected, but a blessing to the Episcopalian Protestant Church. This body has at the present moment in Ireland 1,500 churches, to which 1,600 clergy minister, and as the population of that sect amounts to very little more than half a million it appears that there is one parson for every 363 parishioners, 800 Presbyterian ministers serve nearly a half million of people in the proportion of one for every 554 of that communion. 250 Methodist ministers are sufficient for 62,000 people in the ratio of one for every 248, and the 3,711 Catholic priests, who serve nearly four million of souls, are in the proportion of one for every 891, while in England the priests of the same communion amount to one for every 542. These figures show the measure of truth in the alleged swamping of Ireland with priests. In proportion to the number of their flocks all the other denominations have a much larger relative number of clergy in the country, and until the very much more flagrant drainage due to emigration has ceased, it is to be hoped that we shall hear a good deal less about the danger in an increase of celibates in Ireland, a danger--if it be one--which after all she shares with every other Catholic country in the world. The alleged extortion of money by the clergy from a poverty-stricken peasantry is scarcely borne out by the evidence before the Royal Commission on the Financial Relations, in which Dr. O'Donnell, Bishop of Raphoe, calculated that the average contribution to the clergy in the West of Ireland, including subscriptions for the building and maintenance of churches, is 6s. or 7s. a year per family. That strange accusation of Sir Horace Plunkett, that "the clergy are taking the joy--the innocent joy--from the social side of the home life," was, I think, sufficiently answered by the apposite reply of M. Paul-Dubois, that this is a strange reproach in the mouth of a Protestant who has undergone the experience of spending a Sunday in Belfast. The truth is that attacks on the Irish priesthood came ill from Englishmen or Anglo-Irishmen who have found in the Catholic Church the most powerful agent of social peace in the country. That Irishmen have on this ground any reason to blame the priesthood for lack of patriotism I as strongly deny, for though one may not think necessarily that God is on the side of the big battalions, armed resistance, which from the nature of things must be borne down by sheer force of weight, is as insensate as it is destructive. The figure of Father O'Flynn, drawn by the son of a bishop of the Protestant Church, professes to be as much a picture of a type as the French _curé_ whom Mr. Austin Dobson has so gracefully depicted, and it is difficult to see how such a figure of genial kindliness could have been portrayed in such a quarter or have received such general acceptance if there were to be found in any number worth considering the hard and worldly beggars on horseback whom their enemies allege constitute the characteristic type of the Irish clergy. If in the religious nature of the Irish people is to be found one reason for the influence of the clergy in secular matters, a far more potent factor is to be seen in the historical fact that the priest has for centuries been the only guide, counsellor, and friend of the Irish peasant. The absence of a well-educated middle class, which, failing a sympathetic aristocracy, would, in a normal condition of things, provide popular leaders, is the only thing which has maintained any such undue predominance on the part of the clergy in secular affairs as exists. With the development of an educated Catholic laity, among some members of which one may expect to see evolved that critical acumen and balanced judgment which are what the fine flower of a university culture is supposed to produce, this preponderance will disappear, but in the meanwhile, be it noted, it is the refusal of Englishmen to found an acceptable university which is maintaining the very state of affairs in this direction against which they protest. CHAPTER VI THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM "When I consider how munificently the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge are endowed ... when I remember from whom all this splendour and plenty is derived; when I remember what was the faith of Edward the Third, and of Henry the Sixth, of Margaret of Anjou, and Margaret of Richmond, of William of Wykeham, and of William of Waynefleet, of Archbishop Chicheley, and Cardinal Wolsey; when I remember what we have taken from the Roman Catholics, King's College, New College, Christ Church, my own Trinity; and when I look at the miserable Dotheboys Hall which we have given them in exchange, I feel, I must own, less proud than I could wish of being a Protestant and a Cambridge man."--T.B. MACAULAY, Speech on the Maynooth Grant, 1845. "What the Irish are proposing is nothing so enormous or chimerical. They propose merely to put an end to one very cruel result of the Protestant ascendancy, the result that they--the immense majority of the Irish people--have no University, while the Protestants in Ireland, the small minority, have one. For this plain hardship they propose a plain remedy, and to their proposal they want a plain, straightforward answer."--MATTHEW ARNOLD, _Mixed Essays_, 1880. The fact that the recurrent educational problem in England is that of the Elementary Schools, while as to Ireland the only question which is ever to any extent ventilated is that of University Education, has led to the totally wrong impression that everything in this sphere in Ireland, with the exception of Higher Education, is in a satisfactory condition. Nothing, in point of fact, could be further from the truth, and perhaps the strongest indictment against the present Executive system in the country is to be found in the chaos which exists in educational matters. The National system of Education in Ireland was started by Lord Stanley in 1833. Up to that date there had been no organised education in the country, and in fact there were still many living who could recall the time when for a Catholic to receive education from his co-religionists was a penal offence, involving legal and equitable disabilities. The main vehicles of elementary education up to this date were the Charter Schools and the Kildare Street Schools. The former, which were founded about 1730 by Primate Boulter, and lasted a hundred years, were frankly proselytising agencies--the address for the charter to the Crown specifically setting out that it was a society for teaching the Protestant religion to Papist children. John Howard, the philanthropist, condemned them as a disgrace to Protestantism and a disgrace to all society, but for all that, in the course of their career, they cost the public nearly two millions of money. The Kildare Street Schools, which were founded in 1811, and which secured a Government grant for the first time in 1814, professed to be non-sectarian, and so long as they kept to their professions were successful, but their subsequent association with proselytising agencies, such as the Hibernian Society, was their ruin, and in 1831 the public grant was withdrawn from them by the Chief Secretary, who two years later introduced the National System. On the establishment of the National Board all creeds and parties in Ireland were anxious that the basis of the system should be denominational, but in the teeth of this unanimity the principle adopted was that of united secular and separate religious instruction. One would have thought that on the establishment of the National System the danger of its capture by the Protestant ascendancy, which was very obviously anxious to secure its control, would have ensured the insistence on safeguards for the rights of the weaker section of the community at a time when no longer held good that _obiter dictum_ pronounced from the Bench in 1758, which was equally true for many years after, that "the law does not suppose a Papist to exist in the kingdom, nor can they breathe without the connivance of the Government." On its formation the National Board included among its members Dr. Murray, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin; Dr. Whately, the Protestant Archbishop of that city; and Dr. Carlisle, a Presbyterian Minister. No attempt was made to effect anything approaching a proportional representation of the creeds concerned, and the two Catholic members were outvoted by their five Protestant colleagues on the Board for the control of the education of the children of a population in which Catholics were to Protestants in the ratio of about 4 to 1. The English Archbishop and the Scottish Presbyterian, in whom power was in this way placed, set themselves by their regulations to effect the Anglicising of the Irish children in the schools of the country. The use of the English language was enforced for the education of children, thousands of whom spoke Gaelic, and though this may possibly be justified on grounds of its greater use in the transactions of everyday life, the same cannot be said of the manner in which the history books employed were of a kind in which the subjection of Ireland by Elizabeth, James I., and William of Orange were extolled, as was also the defection from Rome of England in the sixteenth century. Whately's policy was avowedly to Anglicise the children in the schools, to effect the "consolidation," as he called it, of Great Britain and Ireland, and in a reading book produced under his auspices occur the following lines, written with that aim in view:--"On the east of Ireland is England, where the Queen lives. Many people who live in Ireland were born in England, and we speak the same language, and are called one nation." From the reading-books as first published were expunged such verses as Campbell's "Downfall of Roland" and Scott's "Breathes There a Man with a Soul so Dead," owing to their tendency, one must suppose, to suggest emotions other than those which it was deemed fitting to inculcate, and in their place was inserted a verse from the Archbishop's own pen which is familiar to most Irishmen, but which is, I find, unknown to most Englishmen:-- "I thank the goodness and the grace which on my birth have smiled, And made me in these Christian days a happy English child." To appreciate fully the irony of the divergence between the sentiments expressed and the real facts, one must remember that these lines were written at a time when land reform and church disestablishment were regarded by those in authority as the proposals of unspeakable demagogues. The views of Whately on the value of the educational machine which he controlled, as an instrument of proselytism are very frankly set out in a conversation which he had with Nassau Senior, which is quoted from the diary of the latter in the Archbishop's biography:-- "I believe," he said, "that mixed education is gradually enlightening the mass of the people, and that if we give it up we give up the only hope of weaning the Irish from the abuses of Popery. But I cannot venture openly to profess this opinion. I cannot openly support the Education Board as an instrument of conversion. I have to fight its battles with one hand, and that my best, tied behind me."[20] This extract more than justifies the policy by which, when Dr. MacHale succeeded Dr. Murray in Dublin, a bland acquiescence in Governmental action began to be no longer the line of action of Catholic prelates. The system of National Education was, as I have said, founded at its inception on the principles of undenominationalism, but, as a matter of fact, the determined views of all creeds in Ireland prevailed to a very great extent, so that at the end of the nineteenth century out of a total of 8,700 schools in the country more than 5,000 were attended by children of one religion only; of these 4,000 were Catholic schools, the remaining 1,000 belonging to one or other of the Protestant denominations. Of the 3,700 schools which are not purely denominational, there are many in which the great majority of the pupils belong to one religion, but in these, of course, the minority is safeguarded by a conscience clause. The members of the National Board are appointed to-day--as they were in 1833--by Dublin Castle. They are nominees in no sense responsible to anyone, amateurs in educational matters, whose debates are carried on _in camera_, and when they have arrived at decisions their fiat goes forth without reason being given for changes of system or of policy, and without opportunity being afforded for revision or appeal. In these circumstances it is not surprising that the system of elementary education in Ireland does not meet with the popular attention that it should. There is no consultation on the part of the Board with those responsible for carrying on changes which it orders, and when innovations are introduced without reasons being offered, those who have to apply them are not likely to do so with good grace, still less with enthusiasm. When the arguments and reasons in favour of alterations are unknown to the public such changes almost invariably meet with opposition at the hands of those who have to effect them. The multiplication of schools arising partly from the denominationalism which so largely holds the field is accentuated by the financial system which is adopted by the National Board. In all the schools under its control, with the exception of the 300 convent and monastery schools, where the State-aid takes the form of a capitation grant, the grant is ear-marked for the payment of teachers' salaries, the largest charge incurred by the school; and in this way the responsibility on that account and the occasion for economy on that score of the managers is removed, leaving to them only the control of the school buildings. Moreover, the non-application of the capitation system of grants fails to bring into play what would be a direct financial inducement to the locality to improve the school attendance of the children, as would also any system of local control. The small size of existing school areas results in inevitable mischief, for under it the poorest districts are those in which the school accommodation is worst, and since more money has to be raised than in richer localities the poorer districts have to pay most and the richest least for elementary education. A primary effect of the larger number of schools is that the average attendance is much smaller than in Scotland, where conditions are in many respects similar, and side by side with the small size of the schools goes the very low standard of salaries paid to the teachers, which begin at £56 a year for men and £44 each for women, and advance by triennial increments to £172 for men and £140 for women. Two-thirds of the primary school teachers of Ireland have a salary of less than 30s. a week. The average payment to head teachers is in Scotland 75 per cent. and in England 48 per cent. higher than in Ireland. The general state of inefficiency of education in Ireland may be gathered from the fact that the Census of 1901 showed that of persons over five years of age no less than 13.7 per cent. could neither read nor write, the percentage of illiteracy being in the four provinces, 11.3 in Leinster, 12.5 in Ulster, 14 in Munster, and 20.7 in Connaught. The children in Scottish schools attend on 85 per cent. of the days on which the schools are open, in English on 84 per cent., and in Irish schools only on 65 per cent.; but in considering these figures allowance must be made for the fact that school attendance in Great Britain has been compulsory for just over thirty years, while in Ireland it was only in 1892 that an Act was passed sanctioning the formation of School Attendance Committees with power to enforce the attendance of children at school. In addition to the Board of National Education there are in Dublin the Intermediate Board, the Commissioners of Education, who deal with the few Educational endowments in the country, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, the Senate of the Royal University, the Local Government Board attending to the education of children in work-houses, industrial, and reformatory schools, all concerned with primary and secondary education in its administrative aspect, while the Board of Works is occupied with the erection of school buildings. The extravagance and inefficiency which results from this diffusion and consequent overlapping of power and duties on the part of officials scattered about in Tyrone House, in Hume Street, in Merrion Place, and three or four other parts of Dublin, is well illustrated by the fact that out of every 20s. given as Exchequer aid to education-- In England and Wales 17/- goes to Education and 3/- to Administration and Inspection. In Scotland 16/2 goes to Education and 3/10 to Administration and Inspection. In Ireland 13/6 goes to Education and 6/6 to Administration and Inspection. Administrative extravagance, it will be seen, is in inverse ratio to the quality of the educational service. If we take the three Irish Boards of National, Intermediate, and Technical Education, the total cost of administration and inspection is £120,000 per annum; the similar charge on Scotland is exactly half that sum, and yet Scotland prides herself on her education, and Ireland is taunted with her illiteracy. The state of secondary education in Ireland differs fundamentally from that of England in this--that the number of educational endowments in the country are extremely few. Practically the whole of the money spent on this branch of education comes from taxation and school fees. It is controlled by the Intermediate Board, which was established some thirty years ago, and is in its management entirely dissociated from the National Board, so that all arrangements with a view to the transfer of clever pupils from the schools of the one type to those of the other are made as difficult as possible. The Intermediate schools are, on the other hand, subject to the Department of Technical Instruction as well as to the Intermediate Board. Each of these awards grants, in some instances, for the same subjects, but dependent in many cases on different standards and conditions, so that it sometimes happens that schools earn grants twice over for the same subjects; and in other cases they enjoy aid from one Department of State which is refused for the same subject by another, owing to failure to comply with its conditions or to attain to its standard. Just as the connection of the Elementary schools with the Intermediate schools is very imperfect, so at the other end is the connection with the universities. The system of payment by results, under which the Intermediate schools are subsidised, is notoriously unsound from the point of view of education, since it leads to "cramming," and, moreover, under it the amount of grant earned by a school is subject to extreme variations. Lastly, if the pupils suffer from existing arrangements, the case of the teachers is no better, for from a recent report it will be seen that the average salary of lay teachers in Intermediate schools in Ireland is at least half what it is in corresponding schools in England. In a country where elementary and intermediate education are in so unsatisfactory condition as we have seen them to be, one would expect university education to be seriously crippled, but in Ireland there arise in this connection further complications from religious differences which serve to perpetuate a state of affairs which twenty years ago Mr. Balfour declared was an intolerable grievance, and which still remains one of the chief disabilities of Ireland. There are at the present moment two universities in the country, but since one of these is only an examining board let us begin by considering the status of the other. Trinity College, Dublin, was founded by Queen Elizabeth with the proceeds of confiscated Catholic lands, both monastic and lay, with the avowed intention of propagating the principles of the Protestant religion. During Grattan's Parliament, at the end of the eighteenth century, it threw open its gates to others than members of the Established Church--an example which was not followed by Oxford and Cambridge for three-quarters of a century. There could be no greater mistake than to imply from this that it thereby lost its strong sectarian character. After Mr. Gladstone's attempt in 1873 to solve the University question had failed, Fawcett's Act removed the religious tests which barred not only Catholics but also Presbyterians from its offices and scholarships, and thereby made the College, in theory, undenominational. In point of fact it is little less Episcopalian than it has ever been. Its chapel services are Protestant, as are also its Divinity schools. Its governing body, comprising the Provost and seven Senior Fellows, is entirely Protestant, while of the 4,200 names on its electoral roll 2,600 are those of Protestant clergymen. Of other institutions affording opportunities for higher education in Ireland, the three Queen's Colleges in Cork, Galway, and Belfast were destined by their founder, Sir Robert Peel, who established them in 1838, to supply the higher education which was lacking among the Catholics of the country. The Protestant "atmosphere" of Trinity being the great obstacle in the way of Catholics who wished for higher education for their sons, it was thought that by removing this and setting up undenominational colleges all would be well and the religious difficulty would be solved. It was as great a mistake as it was possible to commit. They were stigmatised by a leading Protestant of the time as godless colleges; they ran counter to all Catholic principles of education, which demand at least some connection between secular and religious teaching, and the taboo to which they have in large measure been subjected has to a great extent resulted in making a failure of Cork College, and still more of Galway College. The undenominationalism of Queen's College, Belfast, not being in opposition to the consciences of the Presbyterians of that city, has resulted in the fact that the College there has succeeded to a far greater extent than have the other two. The Royal University, founded in 1882, is, as I have said, nothing more than an examining body, established on the lines of the London University as it existed at that date, with power to award scholarships and fellowships. About fifty years ago John Henry Newman founded the Catholic University in St. Stephen's Green. Unendowed and depending on the voluntary contributions of the poorest people in Western Europe, it is not surprising that the venture failed. From it, however, rose the University College, controlled by the Jesuit Fathers, which occupies the same buildings, and the pupils of which compete for the degrees of the Royal University as those of the Queen's Colleges have done ever since, on the foundation of the Royal University, the Queen's University--of which the three colleges were components--was destroyed. The indirect mode in which the Catholic University College is endowed is worthy of attention. The Royal University, out of its income from the Irish Church Fund, maintains twenty-nine fellows, each with an income of £400 a year on condition that they should act as examiners in the Royal University, and in addition give their services as teachers in colleges appointed by the Senate (namely, the three Queen's Colleges, University College, Dublin, and the Magee College in Derry). Of these Fellows fifteen are allotted to University College. On the assumption that of their salary one-quarter represents the payment as examiners to the University--and the estimate is generous in view of the payment of only £30 to each examiner in the Cambridge Triposes--if this be assumed to be the case, the remaining £300 stands for the salary given as teacher in University College, which thus, albeit indirectly, is endowed to the extent of £4,500 a year--a fact which, though contrasting unfavourably with the £12,000 or £13,000 enjoyed by each of the Queen's Colleges, nevertheless would have seemed to cut the ground from under the feet of those who argued that the University question was insoluble since they would not countenance the application of public funds to a sectarian college. It is often alleged that the anxiety of the Irish for other facilities for higher education than are at present afforded arises from their priest-ridden condition, and that the clergy urge the demand only in order that they may obtain more power than they already possess. The conditions in University College are some answer to this charge. It is, as I have said, under the control of the Jesuits, and a very able member of that Society is its President. Founded though it was for Catholics, the proportion--namely, about 10 per cent.--of non-Catholic students has for the last twenty years been greater than that of Catholics attending Queen's College, Belfast. Of its professorial staff only five out of twenty-one are priests. There have always been some Protestants among them, and on the governing council only one member is a priest, and of the five laymen one is a Protestant. The history of the University question in recent years is instructive. In 1868 Lord Mayo, the Chief Secretary, endeavoured without success to formulate a scheme. In 1873 Mr. Gladstone brought in a Bill which risked the life of his Government, and failed to pass. Three years later a Bill of Isaac Butt's was introduced, but was unsuccessful, and after another three years, in 1879, was established the federal Royal University. In 1885 the Conservative Chief Secretary, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, expressed a hope on the part of the Government that in the following session they would be able to bring in a Bill in settlement of the question. The letter of Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Justice FitzGibbon, which has been quoted elsewhere, shows that at the end of the same year the Conservative Government was anxious to make an end of the matter by legislation. In 1889 Mr. Balfour, as Chief Secretary, on two occasions expressed in the House of Commons the intention of the Government to proceed to a solution, for the conditions in Ireland, he went on to say, were "such as to leave them no alternative but to devise a scheme by which the wants of the Roman Catholics would be met." We have seen in another connection the quotation from the Life of Lord Randolph Churchill urging legislation in 1892, and in 1896 Lord Cadogan, as Viceroy, explicitly spoke of it as "a question with which the present Government will have to deal." Eight years ago, in 1899, Mr. Balfour launched a manifesto on this question which proposed the maintenance of Dublin University with its Episcopalian atmosphere, while a St. Patrick's University was to be founded in Dublin with a Catholic atmosphere, and a University of Belfast with a Presbyterian atmosphere was to be founded on the basis of the existing Queen's College in that city. The reasons which Mr. Balfour gave for desiring a settlement of the question deserve quotation:-- "For myself I hope a University will be granted, and I hope it will be granted soon. I hope so, as a Unionist, because otherwise I do not know how to claim for a British Parliament that it can do for Ireland all, and more than all, that Ireland could do for herself. I hope so as a lover of education, because otherwise the educational interests both of Irish Protestants and of Irish Roman Catholics must grievously suffer, and suffer in that department of education, the national importance of which is from day to day more fully recognised. I hope so as a Protestant, because otherwise too easy an occasion is given for the taunt that in the judgment of Protestants themselves Protestantism has something to fear from the spread of knowledge." Two years after this declaration a Royal Commission on the whole question was mooted, and immediately the cry of "Hands off Trinity" was raised, in spite of the fact that no Royal Commission had sat on that College since 1853, an interval of time in which there had been four Commissions on Oxford and Cambridge, and three on the Scottish Universities. The terms of reference of the Commission of 1901 on its appointment under the chairmanship of Lord Robertson were vague. A Judge of the High Court in Ireland threatened to resign if Trinity College--the main centre of University education in the island--were included in the scope of the inquiry of a Commission on the means for obtaining such education in the country. The Commission sat in private, and it was not till the first volume of evidence was published that it was discovered that the terms of reference had been so interpreted as to exclude Trinity from the inquiry, and to retain the services of the learned Judge. After discussing the alternatives of a new Catholic University, or a reconstitution of the Royal University with the addition of a new Catholic College, the Commissioners decided in favour of the latter. Their plan comprised a federal teaching University with four constituent Colleges, the three Queen's Colleges and a new Catholic College to be situated in Dublin. Changes in the constitution of the Queen's Colleges, to remove the religious objections at present entertained towards them were proposed, and in reference to the endowment of the new Catholic College it was claimed that it was not truly open to the objection that it introduced denominational endowment into the University system of Ireland since the Jesuit University College receives, and has received for nearly a quarter of a century, a large annual sum out of moneys provided by Acts of Parliament for University purposes. The reason which the Commissioners gave fer not making this institution the basis of a new College was declared to be its meagre scale which makes it unsuitable for expansion. In January, 1904, Lord Dunraven propounded a scheme in a letter to the Press by which the question was to be solved by enlarging the University of Dublin so as to include the present Queen's College, Belfast, and a new College which should satisfy Catholic needs in Dublin, each of the Colleges being autonomous and residential, and on August 3rd, 1904, Mr. Clancy, in the House of Commons, read a telegram from the Archbishop of Dublin saying that the bishops would accept either the Dunraven scheme or that of the Robertson Commission. So matters were allowed to rest until, with the advent to power of the present Government, the lacuna, which owing to the recalcitrancy of Mr. Justice Madden, had been left in the public information on the problem by the omission of Trinity from the Robertson report, was filled up by the appointment of a new Royal Commission. Early this year their report was published. Five of the Commissioners are in favour of a modified Dunraven scheme, three follow the Robertson scheme, and one--the only Catholic Fellow of Trinity, one of the very few of that faith who had ever been elected to that office--is in favour of no change, an opinion which he expounds in three lines. It must be remembered in connection with the minority recommendation that the importance of its coincidence with that of the Robertson report may easily be exaggerated if sufficiently strong insistence be not laid upon the exclusion of the University of Dublin from the purview of the latter. The chief respect in which the majority recommendations differ from those of Lord Dunraven is in the inclusion in the new federal Dublin University of the present Queen's College in Cork, and possibly of that of Galway. It is important to study this proposal, because it is, according to Mr. Bryce's last words on resigning office, to be the means by which the Government hope to effect a solution. The fact that both the Robertson and the Fry Commissions reported against Mr. Balfour's plan, to the promotion of the success of which in the eight years which have elapsed he has done nothing, on the grounds of the difficulty of bringing it into play, show that for the moment opinion is set against the multiplication of Universities, and the choice for the present lies between the two methods of dealing with the two existing Universities, one of which does not teach, while to the other the students of the country cannot in conscience go to be taught. After Mr. Bryce's speech we can no longer ask British statesmen, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" That the plan adopted by the Government is the better of the two at present mooted I shall endeavour to show. In the first place, it is a mere accident that Trinity College has continued so long the sole College in the University of Dublin, Chief Baron Palles, in a very able note appended to the report, disentangles from a number of legal decisions and statutory declarations the distinctions between Trinity College and the University of Dublin which it is endeavoured to confound. The Charter of James I., conferring on Dublin the privilege of a University, foreshadowed the establishment of other Colleges. Both the Act of Settlement, 14 & 15 Car. II. (1660), and the Roman Catholic Relief Act, 1793, expressly authorise the erection of another College in the University--a fact which makes the proposed change which partisans are anxious to paint as revolutionary vandalism appear in truth merely the belated performance of a long-expressed intention. The advantages to Trinity in making it a part of a great National University are hard to exaggerate. She has long been described as the only successful British institution in Ireland, and in that may perhaps be found the comparatively evil days on which she has fallen, as her admission lists every year testify, and as was explained to me recently by a member of the very class from which she used to draw her undergraduates, when he said--"The respectable Protestant country gentry don't send their sons to Trinity now in the numbers in which they used to. They send them to Oxford and Cambridge." The last part of his remark I was able to indorse from my own personal observation. On two occasions advances have been made by the Board of Trinity College to the heads of the Catholic hierarchy, asking them what would be their attitude if Trinity were to allow Catholic students in the College the same facilities for religious teaching by the members of their own Church as are at present provided for undergraduate members of the Episcopalian Protestant Church. On the first occasion Cardinal Cullen, shortly after the passing of the University Tests Act, replied that he could be no party to such a proposal. When the process of sounding the Catholic bishops was repeated in November, 1903, the Provost and Senior Fellows expressed their willingness to consent to the erection of a Catholic chapel in the College grounds provided a sufficient sum of money was forthcoming for its erection. A similar advance was made to the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, and the reply in each case was the same--that the parties concerned could not accept the offers made by the College Board. The failure on the part of Presbyterians to make use of the College has been attributed by the Commissioners to the ancient alienation of the Presbyterians from Trinity, as well as to the existence of the useful work done for that body by the Queen's College, Belfast. That this ancient alienation exists in the case of Catholics far more than in that of the Presbyterians is but natural, seeing that the College was founded by Elizabeth to undermine the Catholicism of the people. For all that, however, the taunt is raised with some superficial measure of plausibility that in refusing the offer the Catholics and their bishops lay themselves open to a charge of narrowmindedness, seeing that they have not a College suitable to their needs as have the Presbyterians in Belfast. That the _genius loci_ is Episcopalian Protestant no one will deny. At an inaugural meeting of the College Historical Society a few years ago Judge Webb declared--"Their University was founded by Protestants, for Protestants, and in the Protestant interest. A Protestant spirit had from the first animated every member of its body corporate. At the present moment, with all its toleration, all its liberality, all its comprehensiveness, and all its scrupulous honour, the _genius loci_, the guardian spirit of the place, was Protestant. And as a Protestant he said, and said it boldly, Protestant might it evermore remain." To this exposition of the spirit of the College two of its most distinguished members--Lord Justice FitzGibbon and Professor Mahaffy--gave their assent. In the light of this frank admission the attitude of the Catholics takes a new complexion. No suggestion, it will be noted, is made in the overtures to the bishops to give Catholics any--not to speak of a proportionate--representation on the Councils of the College. As at present constituted, the Board, owing to the abolition of celibacy as a condition of Fellowship and the extinction of the advowsons belonging to the College by the Irish Church Act of 1869, has become a body of men, the average age of whom is over seventy and the average time since the graduation of whom is a little more than half a century. There is at present one Catholic Junior Fellow in the College, and from the above facts it will be seen that he may get on the governing board, if he survives, in about forty years from now. The government in a college by men whose undergraduate days were fifty years ago is not calculated to inspire hope for a liberality of treatment with which a more modern generation might be imbued. The suggestion that Catholics show narrowmindedness in refusing to throng the halls of a College admittedly envious of its Protestantism and maintaining automatically its purely Protestant government for three-quarters of a century more is very disingenuous. That if they were to comply, Protestantism would have by some special means to maintain its supremacy is obvious, for the Episcopalian Protestants are only thirteen per cent. of the population of Ireland, and if Catholics were to swamp Trinity and to succeed in obtaining a share in its councils proportionate to their numbers in the country, the body for which Trinity was founded would find themselves unable to obtain any dominant voice in its government. "Trinity College is quite free from clerical control," said the Vice-Provost in his statement to the Commissioners, regardless apparently of the fact that of the seven Senior Fellows who, together with the Provost, form the College Board, no less than four are clergymen. In this connection I cannot do better than quote from the statement submitted by the Committee on Higher Education of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland for the information of the last Royal Commission:-- "So long as Trinity College remains practically as it is there is a real grievance for all denominations except the Protestant Episcopalian, and the members of those denominations will still be able to say that the best education in the country--and whether it is the best academically or simply possesses a greater social acceptance and prestige it is needless here to discuss--is withheld from them, except on conditions that tempt their sons to abandon the faith of their fathers or to become weakened in their attachment to it." No one--least of all an Irishman--can deny the greatness of a College on the boards of which are such names as Berkeley, Swift, Grattan, Flood, and Burke, but it will be admitted by all that as far as the fame of her _alumni_ is concerned--and there is no other test for a collegiate foundation--Trinity reached the zenith of her greatness during the years in which a free Parliament served to break down the barriers of religion in the island. With the passing of that phase of political history she relapsed into her place as the "silent sister" in the country, but not of it, taking no part in national life other than to offer opposition to the legislative changes, which even she is now constrained to admit were reforms. As owner of some 200,000 acres, Trinity College has proved herself one of the worst landlords in Ireland. An estate belonging to the College in County Kerry gave rise to one of the bitterest struggles of the land war. In view of the cry which is being raised in England to-day as to the broad tolerance which is alleged to hold the field in the College to-day, the bitterly anti-Catholic spirit of the present Provost and of his predecessors deserves mention; but I must further call the reader's notice to a recent event which attracted much attention in Ireland, but was passed unnoticed in Great Britain. In a sonnet, written by a leading Fellow of the College in "T.C.D.," the College magazine, the writer spoke of the Catholic churches in Ireland as "grim monuments of cold observance, the incestuous mate of superstition," of which "to seeing eyes each tall steeple lifts its tall head and lies." Sentiments of this kind, expressed in such taste, are not calculated to encourage Catholic parents to send their sons to a college where they may come under influences of which the writer is an example. The idea of putting into practice the proposed expedient of swamping Trinity by the encouragement of all Catholics to send their sons to that College is to a member of an old university as attractive as on paper it appears easy, but there are drawbacks to its practical application other than the presence in the College of such a spirit as I have exemplified. In England, where there are public schools, and Oxford and Cambridge colleges, many of which have behind them a career of three or four hundred years, one is inclined to overestimate the value of tradition in a country where educational endowments are rare and ancient endowments are the exception. The traditions, moreover, of the origin and of the mission of Trinity are not such as to foster for her the same feelings as Oxford and Cambridge have the power of provoking in England. The part which Trinity has played in Irish history is in no sense analogous to that played by the English Universities in the history of that country. English Catholics make use of Oxford and Cambridge for the education of their sons because in view of their numbers the notion of a separate university or even a separate college would be ridiculous. In England Catholics are a small sect. In Ireland they form the great bulk of the nation. In Montreal, where Catholics form only forty per cent. of the population, a Catholic University was established by Royal Charter, and the same principle has been applied in the establishment of Catholic Universities in Nova Scotia, in Malta, in New South Wales, and in the founding of the Mahommedan Gordon College at Khartoum. As long as Trinity maintained tests, so long did the Catholics demand as of right a purely Catholic University on the grounds of civic equity, but in these days of open doors they have again and again expressed their demand for a college or university open to men of all creeds--Catholic in the sense that Oxford and Cambridge are Protestant, and are in consequence thronged with young Englishmen; Catholic in the way that the Scottish Universities are Presbyterian and that Trinity, Dublin, is Episcopalian. Not a rich man's college, but one to which all may go as they do to those in Scotland and like those racy of the soil, and for the rest, in Cardinal Newman's words--"Not a seminary, not a convent, but a place where men of the world may be fitted for the world." Everyone recognises to-day the grievance of the Dissenters in England and Wales in single school areas under the Education Act of 1902. Ireland may not unjustly be said to be a single university area, for to call an examining Board a university is a misnomer. It is surely not too much to assert that the conscientious scruples of the Irish Catholics to forms of education of which they do not approve are as strong as the feelings of the Non-conformist conscience. The attempt to force undenominationalism on the country has been an expensive failure. Recognising this, the denominational--nay, more, the Jesuit--University College has in a niggardly fashion and by a back door been subsidised by the State. The demand is for no more than a university which shall be Catholic in the sense that it shall be national, and this in a preponderatingly Catholic country implies Catholicism. The Irish Catholic bishops in 1897 declared they are prepared to accept a university without tests in which the majority of the governing body are laymen, with a provision that no State funds should be employed for the promotion of religious education. It is idle, in view of this, to protest that the demand is urged only on behalf of rampant clericalism, and that the only form of university which Catholics will accept is of such a kind as would serve to strengthen the hand of the priests, whose sole aim in this demand is to secure that increase of power. The shifts of intolerance are many, but I cannot believe that it will long continue to masquerade in this manner as the statesmanlike buffer between a priest-ridden country and an aggressive clergy. Granting, for the sake of argument, that this was the case, one would have thought that a well-educated laity was better able than one without education to withstand the encroaches of clericalism. We do not ask for a denominational college, but remember that the only colleges, Keble and Selwyn, founded in Oxford and Cambridge in the last eighty years are purely denominational. In the last forty years six new universities have been founded in England, and the number of university students has risen from 2,300 to 13,000. In Ireland, on the other hand, for three-fourths of the population knowledge must still remain a fountain sealed; it is as though one were applying literally to that country the text--"He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." In connection with what one may call the Bryce scheme it may be well to point out that as long ago as 1871 the hierarchy proposed a solution on the same lines. In a Pastoral letter of that year, after insisting on the principle of equality, the following passage occurred--"All this can, we believe, be attained by modifying the constitution of the University of Dublin, so as to admit the establishment of a second College within it, in every respect equal to Trinity College, and conducted on purely Catholic principles." On the motion to go into Committee on the Bill for the abolition of tests in 1873 an Irish member moved a motion to the effect that a Catholic College should be founded in the University of Dublin, in addition to Trinity College. Two years later Mr. Isaac Butt, the Protestant leader of the Irish Nationalists (himself a Trinity man), and The O'Conor Don, a Catholic Unionist, brought in a Bill on the same lines, but both motion and Bill were defeated. The advantages of this mode of dealing with the question are seen from its acceptance by the hierarchy and the general mass of the Catholic laity. The Senate of the Royal University have since its promulgation readily recognised its soundness and have given it their support, as have the Professors of University College, Dublin. It will serve to make an end of the underhand manner by which, as we have seen, that College, though not merely a denominational, but, moreover, a Jesuit institution, is subsidised by public money, though we are always told that State endowment of religious education is alien to all modern principles of government. One would have thought that the authorities of Trinity would have felt themselves estopped from refusing to accept this solution. The offer of facilities inside Trinity itself--if it is the generous concession it professes to be--must be made with a full recognition that, if accepted, the process of "capturing" the College would be effected before long, thus modifying the Protestantism which is its proudest boast. If, on the other hand, the expense of life in Trinity College would prove prohibitive to any but a small section of the four thousand matriculated students in the Royal University, the much-vaunted liberality of Trinity is seen to be very greatly restricted, since the results of acceptance of the offer would only touch the mere fringe of the educational demand. Last year, of the 1,114 students on the books of the College only 261 were resident within the College--there being accommodation for only 275. Of the 853 returned as residing outside the College, more than a hundred do not attend lectures or classes, and are entitled to call themselves members of the College though their only connection with it is in the examination hall--an evil system which the Commission has condemned, and which one must suppose was borrowed from the Royal University. Everyone is agreed that a university to be worth the name should, if possible, be residential. The absence of disciplinary control in Trinity on those residing out of College, the omission on the part of the authorities to enact rules which would allow terms to be kept only in licensed lodging-houses, subject to inspection and to a rigid "lock-up rule" at twelve o'clock, are absent in Dublin not only at Trinity, but at the University College, where one can only suppose its absence to be due to the unorganised condition of a small and temporary makeshift. Not only, however, for the exercise of disciplinary control, but also because of the close association of men with each other which residence ensures, is this to be regarded as the best means of getting the heart out of a university education. This being the case, if Trinity were to receive a new accession of numbers its accommodation would have to be largely increased, so that the line of least resistance, which leaves the very largely autonomous constitution of Trinity unimpaired, will be seen to lie in the direction of the establishment of a new college, in which, moreover, it will be possible to make expenses more economical than they are in Trinity. "It is not for us," said Mr. Balfour at Partick in December, 1889, "to consider how far the undoubtedly conscientious objections of the Roman Catholic population to use the means at their disposal are wise or unwise. That is not our business. What we have to do is to consider what we can do consistently with our conscience to meet their wants." The proposals of the Government, as outlined by Mr. Bryce and recommended by the Royal Commission, offend against no one's conscience. They assail no vested interest unless one so calls that of which Matthew Arnold spoke as one very cruel result of the Protestant ascendancy; they tend to establish something approaching equality between creeds; they make an end of the mischievous system by which the Royal University has encouraged a false ideal of success by making examination the end-all and the be-all of a so-called university education, and which, moreover, according to the final report of the Robertson Commission, "fails to exhibit the one virtue which is associated with a university of this kind--that of inspiring public confidence in its examination results." The advantages of the present proposal over a reorganised Royal University are that the size and poverty of the country are strong reasons against the creation of two universities when one would be equally efficient. The scheme will be readily accepted by the Presbyterians as well as by the Catholics, which would not be the case with a reconstituted Royal University, and it is the only solution of the question which will bring the young men of different creeds in the country together at an impressionable age when friendships are formed which may serve to break down the barrier between creeds. The objection of Trinity College to the inclusion on the roll of the University under the new conditions of the present M.A.s of the Royal University is scarcely consistent with its recent action in admitting to _ad eundem_ degrees women who have passed the final degree examinations at Oxford and Cambridge, and if the objection to the proposal is based on the change in political complexion which the electoral roll of the University would undergo, the answer is that University representation is an anomaly which in any circumstances is not likely to continue for many years more in the case, not merely of Dublin, but of the other universities of the three kingdoms. * * * * * Since the foregoing chapter was written the Provost of Trinity has announced to a meeting of Graduates of the College that he has received assurances from the Chief Secretary that in the forthcoming Bill the University of Dublin will be left untouched. I have said enough to show that Irish Nationalist opinion has not been committed to the Bryce scheme to the exclusion of every other solution, but it is to be regretted, in the interests of education, that the proposal which the majority of Irishmen regarded as the solution nearest approaching the ideal should have been launched by the Government merely as a _ballon d'essai_, to be withdrawn at the first breath of opposition, and to be replaced by what, at the best, can only prove to be a less hopeful compromise. One guarantee of a speedy solution the country at any rate holds--namely, that the Government is pledged to introduce legislation next session, and that the Chief Secretary has bound himself to stand or fall by the fate of the Bill. CHAPTER VII UNIONISM IN IRELAND "When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool. There are always a set of worthy and moderately gifted men who bawl out death and ruin upon every valuable change which the varying aspect of human affairs absolutely and imperiously requires ... I admit that to a certain extent the Government will lose the affections of the Orangemen ... but you must perceive that it is better to have four friends and one enemy than four enemies and one friend." --SYDNEY SMITH, _Letters of Peter Plymley_, 1807. From the outcry which arose in the last years of the late Government at the revelations which came to be known as the MacDonnell mystery one would have thought that Conservatives could look back to a record unstained by any traffic with the unclean thing for which they express such horror. I will try to show how small is the measure of truth in this belief, and in what manner it has proved impossible to maintain the _status quo_ in the teeth of democratic feeling without _pourparlers_ behind the scenes, even when in the open such dealings have had perforce to be denounced as impossible. Twenty-five years ago the rigid application of the Crimes Act by Lord Spencer, the Viceroy, after the Phoenix Park murders had put an end to the "Kilmainham Treaty," and the failure on the part of the Government to amend the Land Act of 1881, together with the sympathetic attitude of Lord Randolph Churchill, then conducting his guerilla tactics as leader of the Fourth Party, all served to make opposition on the part of the Irish members to the Liberal Government increase, and it was by their aid that in June, 1885, it was thrown out of office on a defeat by twelve votes on the Budget. Lord Salisbury then took office with his "ministry of care-takers," with a minority in the House of Commons, for a general election could not take place until the provisions of the new Franchise Act had come into force. Colour was lent to the general impression which was abroad that the Conservatives were flirting with Home Rule by the appointment to the Lord Lieutenancy with a seat in the Cabinet of Lord Carnarvon, the statesman who had established federation in Canada and had attempted to bring it about in South Africa, who was familiar with the machinery of subordinate legislatures and Colonial parliaments, and whose sympathies with the Irish people were to be inferred from the fact that he had voted for Disestablishment in 1869, and for the Land Bill of the following year, in a speech on which measure he had urged the House of Lords not to delay concession till it could no longer have the charm of free consent, nor be regulated by the counsels of prudent statesmanship. The defeat of the Liberals had been primarily due to the revolt on the part of the radical section over the question of whether a new Coercion Bill should be introduced. In the light of this fact special importance was attached to the declaration, made in the House of Lords, as to the Irish policy of the Government, the more so because in an unprecedented manner not the Premier but the Viceroy was the spokesman. He began by a repudiation of coercion, with which he declared the recent enfranchisement of the Irish people would not be consistent. "My Lords," he went on to say, speaking of the general question, "I do not believe that with honesty and singlemindedness of purpose on the one side, and with the willingness of the Irish people on the other, it is hopeless to look for some satisfactory solution of this terrible question. My Lords, these I believe to be the opinions and views of my colleagues." A further step in securing Irish support occurred at the end of July, and perhaps of all the strange events which have occurred in the government of Ireland it is the strangest. Lord Carnarvon solicited through one of his colleagues, and obtained, an interview with Mr. Parnell, and the circumstances under which this occurred between the Queen's Lord Lieutenant and the leader to whom men attributed treason and condoning assassinations is perhaps the most curious part of the whole story. The meeting took place at the very end of the London season, not in the Houses of Parliament nor in a club of which one or other of the parties was a member, but in an empty house in Grosvenor Square, from which all the servants had gone away. It is a piquant feature of the event, shrouded as it was with all these circumstances of mystery, that the gentleman who was in the secret and offered his house for the meeting was no other than that rigid Imperialist, Col. Sir Howard Vincent, who had only the year before retired from the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard. When the occurrence of this interview became known, nearly a year later, Mr. Parnell declared--and the fact was never denied by Lord Carnarvon--that the latter had pronounced himself in favour of an Irish Parliament with the power of protecting Irish industries. The insistence by the Viceroy that he spoke only for himself appeared to the Irish leader to be mere formality, but in truth the Cabinet knew nothing of the interview. Lord Salisbury was informed that it was going to take place, raised no objection to its occurrence, and on receiving afterwards, both _verbatim_ and in writing, accounts of what had occurred, praised the discretion of his Viceroy. In view of what had happened it was not surprising that in the month of August Mr. Parnell made an explicit demand for the restoration of Grattan's Parliament, with the right of taxing foreign and even English imports for the benefit of the Irish home trade--a proposal not so revolutionary as it would now appear, seeing that less than forty years had elapsed since the Irish Custom House had for the first time begun to admit all English goods duty free. Mr. Parnell's manifesto was followed by Lord Salisbury's speech at Newport, from which quotation has already been made, in which he expressed himself of opinion that Home Rule would be safer than popular local government, and further enhanced the impression that he was moving in the direction of the safer policy, by proceeding to frame what has been described as the nearest approach to an apologia for boycotting which has ever been made by an English statesman. The election address of Lord Randolph Churchill--the most popular and influential minister in the country--contained no allusion to the threatened "dismemberment of the Empire," and in his campaign his only allusion to Ireland was comprised in boasts of the success of the anti-coercion policy of Carnarvon; while Sir John Gorst, who had been Solicitor-General, referred in his election address in disparaging terms to "the reactionary Ulster members." All the symptoms pointed in the one direction of an alliance between Salisbury and Parnell on the basis of a scheme for self-government, and an additional point was given to the indications in that direction by the fact that Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Hartington, at variance on most points of policy, were united in opposition to Mr. Parnell's demand. The statesmanlike manner in which at this juncture Mr. Gladstone endeavoured, as he himself put it, to keep the strife of nations from forming the dividing line between parties, has become very apparent with the recent publication of documents of the period. Two years before, he had told the Queen that the Irish question could only be settled by a conjunction of parties, and on December 20th, 1885, he wrote to the Conservative leader on the urgency of the Irish question, and declared that it would be a public calamity if this great subject should fall into lines of party conflict. If Salisbury would bring forward a proposal for settling the whole question of future government in Ireland he would treat it in the same spirit as that which he had shown in the matters of Afghanistan and the Balkans, and he illustrated the advantages which such a spirit of concession could produce by the conferences on the Reform Bill, and the fact that the existing Conservative ministry had been maintained in office by Liberal forbearance. "His hypocrisy," wrote a minister to whom this letter had been shown, "makes me sick." In this connection a letter from Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury, written on the following day, is of interest:-- "Labouchere came to see me this morning.... He proceeded to tell me that, on Sunday week last, Lord Carnarvon had met Justin MacCarthy and had confided to him that he was in favour of Home Rule in some shape, but that his colleagues and his party were not ready, and asked whether Justin MacCarthy's party would agree to an inquiry which he thought there was a chance of the Government agreeing to, and which would educate his colleagues and his party if granted and carried through. I was consternated, but replied that such a statement was an obvious lie, but, between ourselves, I fear it is not, perhaps not even an exaggeration or a misrepresentation. Justin MacCarthy is on the staff of the _Daily News_, Labouchere is one of the proprietors, and I cannot imagine any motive for his inventing such a statement. If it is true Lord Carnarvon has played the devil."[21] With regard to the overtures which Mr. Gladstone had made, for which precedents in plenty were supplied by the repeal of the Test Act in 1828, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1848, and the extension of the franchise in 1867, Lord Salisbury saw in it only anxiety to take office on the part of his great opponent, and prophesied that if his hunger were not prematurely gratified he would be forced into some line of conduct which would be discreditable to him and disastrous, and when the Liberal leader on the 23rd again pressed for a definite answer to his approaches he was refused a communication of views. "Thus idly," says Mr. Winston Churchill, "drifted away what was perhaps the best hope of the settlement of Ireland which that generation was to see." The view which Mr. Gladstone took of the events of the winter of 1885-6 is illustrated by a memorandum which he wrote in 1897, in which he says:-- "I attached value to the acts and language of Lord Carnarvon and the other favourable manifestations. Subsequently we had but too much evidence of a deliberate intention to deceive the Irish with a view to their support at the election."[22] The attitude of the Tories and the rankling memory of the bitter debates on the Liberal Coercion Bill of 1882, coupled with the attitude of the Tories and the deception which they practised, resulted, not unnaturally, in the fact that Parnell threw his weight in favour of the Conservatives at the general election which ensued, and by this means, it is estimated, lost at least twenty seats to the Liberals. Immediately after the election the Viceroy and the Chief Secretary retired, but though their successors were appointed in the third week in December, it was not till the middle of January that the resignations were made public. The first act of the new Chief Secretary was to announce that, in spite of the emphatic disclaimers of the previous June, a Coercion Bill was to be introduced, and as a result of the Irish voting with the Liberals the Tories were defeated, and Mr. Gladstone took office. The Home Rule Bill which was introduced was thrown out in the month of June, the Government being in a minority of thirty. Had it not been for Parnell's manifesto, urging Irishmen in Great Britain to vote for Conservatives, the Government would have had a majority of between ten and twenty, and, moreover, if a general election had followed, the morale of the Liberals would have been much greater if they had been fighting for the second time within a few months shoulder to shoulder with the Irishmen, and not been in the position in which in fact they were--of enjoying the support in June of those who had opposed them in November. Let us now turn to the MacDonnell incident. One of the first acts of Mr. Balfour, on becoming Prime Minister in July, 1902, on the retirement of Lord Salisbury was to give Mr. Wyndham, the Chief Secretary, a seat in the Cabinet. In September Mr. Wyndham appointed as Under Secretary Sir Antony MacDonnell, a distinguished Indian Civil Servant and Member of the Indian Council, who had been in turn head of the Government of Burma, the Central Provinces, and the North-West Provinces, and who had with conspicuous ability carried on financial and agrarian reforms in the East. Lord Lansdowne, during his tenure of the Viceroyalty, formed a high estimate of his knowledge and ability, and it was on his recommendation that Mr. Wyndham appointed this official to the post. The correspondence between the two, which Mr. Redmond elicited from the Government two and a half years later, shows that it was with some reluctance that the Under Secretary yielded to the pressure brought to bear on him to accept the office. "I am an Irishman, a Roman Catholic, and a Liberal in politics," he wrote. "I have strong Irish sympathies. I do not see eye to eye with you in all matters of Irish administration, and I think that there is no likelihood of good coming from such a _régime_ of coercion as the _Times_ has recently outlined." For all that, being anxious to do some service to Ireland, he declared his willingness to take office provided there was some chance of his succeeding, which he thought there would be, "on this condition, that I should have adequate opportunities of influencing the policy and acts of the Irish administration, and subject, of course, to your control, freedom of action in Executive matters. For many years in India I directed administration on the largest scale, and I know that if you send me to Ireland the opportunity of mere secretarial criticism would fall short of the requirements of my position. If I were installed in office in Ireland my aims, broadly stated, would be:--(1) The maintenance of order; (2) the solution of the land question on the basis of voluntary sale; (3) where sale does not operate the fixation of rent on some self-acting principle whereby local inquiries would be obviated; (4) the co-ordination, control, and direction of boards and other administrative bodies; (5) the settlement of the education question in the general spirit of Mr. Balfour's views, and generally the promotion of general administrative improvement and conciliation." Mr. Wyndham's acceptance of these terms was explicit, and it was understood, as the Chief Secretary put it in the House of Commons when the whole subject came up for review, that Sir Antony was appointed rather as a colleague than as a mere Under Secretary to register Mr. Wyndham's will, and although in the House of Commons Mr. Balfour said that Sir Antony was bound by the rules applying to all Civil Servants, in the House of Lords Lord Lansdowne declared that, "it had been recognised that the Under Secretary would have greater freedom of action, greater opportunities of initiative, than if he had been a candidate in the ordinary way." One of the first results of the new departure was the withdrawal of the application of the Coercion Act, which had been in force since April, 1902, an action which roused angry protests from the Orangemen, as did also the words used, in what was almost his first speech, by Lord Dudley, the new Viceroy, who had succeeded Lord Cadogan, and who announced that, "the opinion of the Government was, and it was his own opinion, that the only way to govern Ireland properly was to govern it according to Irish ideas instead of according to British ideas." During 1903 interest was largely engrossed in the fate of the Land Act, and it was not till the autumn of 1904 that it became known that before drafting in its final form the programme of the Irish Reform Association Lord Dunraven had secured the assistance of the Under Secretary with the knowledge of the Chief Secretary and the Viceroy, the latter of whom, according to Lord Lansdowne's declaration in the House of Lords, "did not think that Sir Antony was exceeding his functions"--a fact to which colour was given by the circumstance that on several occasions the Under Secretary discussed the reforms with the Lord Lieutenant. Mr. Wyndham, on behalf of the Government, had taken the unusual course of repudiating the Dunraven scheme in a letter to the _Times_, but in spite of this, Irish Unionists wrote to the _Times_ to express their suspicions "whether in short the devolution scheme is not the price secretly arranged to be paid for the Nationalist acquiescence in a settlement of the land question on generous terms." Then it was that the _Times_ expressed its opinion that when a Unionist Lord Lieutenant and a Unionist Under Secretary are discussing reforms which the Cabinet condemn as Home Rule in a thin disguise, it is obviously time that they quitted their posts. Three weeks later Mr. Wyndham resigned, but Sir Antony, who had had the refusal of the Governorship of Bombay--the third greatest Governorship in the British Empire--retained his position, though his presence at Dublin Castle had been described by some fervent Orangemen as a menace to the loyal and law-abiding inhabitants of Ireland, and by the Irish Attorney-General as a gross betrayal of the Unionist position and an injury to the Unionist cause. Mr. Long, however, very rapidly won the hearts of those who had succeeded in securing the resignation of Mr. Wyndham by his description of devolution as "a cowardly surrender to the forces of disorder," and in the same strain the Earl of Westmeath spoke of "truckling to disloyalty and trying to conciliate those who will not be conciliated." At the opening of the session of 1905 the whole question was ventilated. The official explanations proving unsatisfactory, the Orangemen decided to withdraw their support from the Government on all questions affecting Ireland, and the leader of the party went so far as to utter the threat that "Ulster might have to draw upon her reserves," which was taken to mean that the Orangemen who were members of the Government would resign _en masse_--an action which, in the moribund condition of the Ministry, would have meant an instant dissolution. At the very beginning of the session Mr. Wyndham had announced that the matter of Sir Antony's dealings with Lord Dunraven had been considered by the Cabinet, and "the Government expressed through me their view that the action of Sir Antony MacDonnell was indefensible. But they authorised me to add that they were thoroughly satisfied that his conduct was not open to the imputation of disloyalty." The equivocal and ambiguous position in which the Unionists placed themselves in the course of this episode is a striking commentary on the impossibility of governing a country against its will. The Tories tried once again, in the historic phrase, to catch the Whigs bathing and steal their clothes, but this time they failed. When the Orangemen held a pistol at the Government's head and bade its members stand and deliver, Mr. Wyndham had perforce to resign, but the mystery, which has not yet been cleared up, is the reason why the Viceroy and the Under Secretary, who were tarred with the same brush, retained their posts. It should in frankness be stated, however, that when during the session of 1907 the Prime Minister remarked on a certain occasion that he always thought Mr. Wyndham resigned the Chief Secretaryship in consequence of criticisms from the Orangemen below the gangway on his own side, Mr. Balfour interrupted with the remark--"That is a complete mis-statement, and I think the right honourable gentleman must know it." One may well ask, in view of this, what was meant by Mr. Wyndham when, speaking on the reasons for his retirement, on May 9th, 1905, he accounted for it by the fact that "the situation in Ireland was complicated by personal misunderstandings," producing "an atmosphere of suspicion," which was an obvious reference, as most people supposed, to such denunciations as that of Mr. William Moore of the Chief Secretary's "wretched, rotten, sickening policy of conciliation." The disingenuousness marking the whole proceeding is well shown by the fact that although on announcing Mr. Wyndham's resignation Mr. Balfour said:--"The ground of his resignation is not ill-health,"[23] less than a year later, when asked during the election at Manchester by a heckler to state the reason why Mr. Wyndham retired, the reply of Mr. Balfour was--"He retired chiefly on account of health."[24] From the correspondence which passed in March, 1906, between Lord Dudley and Sir Edward Carson, and which was published in the Press, we have the express statement from the ex-Lord Lieutenant that Mr. Balfour "never conveyed to me any intimation that he or the Government disapproved strongly or otherwise of my conduct." The correspondence arose over a remark made by Sir Edward Carson, to the effect that Lord Dudley had made statements both ways as to the desirability of governing Ireland according to Irish ideas. Challenged to make good the assertion, which he declared was based on a private conversation, Sir Edward Carson went on to assert that the Viceroy had on another occasion expressed the opinion to him that Ireland should be governed through the agency of the Catholic priesthood. This Lord Dudley denied as vehemently as he did the imputation of facing both ways, and in reply went on to write:-- "That you should have formed an impression of that kind from any conversation with me confirms my belief that the violence of your opinions on Irish political questions make it quite impossible for you to estimate justly the standpoint of anyone whose views on such questions may be more moderate and tolerant than your own. It is not, however, by violence and intolerance that the cause of union is best served, and my experience in Ireland has shown me very clearly that the present system of government constantly receives from its most clamorous advocates blows as heavy and as effective as any that could be dealt to it by its avowed enemies." The Government tried to ride two horses abreast--to rule Ireland otherwise than by force, and to maintain itself in power with the help of Orange votes--two courses, each irreconcilable with the other. Their position reminds me of Alphonse Daudet's immortal creation, Tartarin de Tarascon, with a double nature, partly that of Don Quixote and partly of Sancho Panza, at one moment urged on by the glory, and at the next held back by the prospect of the hardships, of lion-hunting in Africa--"Couvre toi de gloire," dit Tartarin Quichotte, "Couvre toi de flanelle dit Tartarin Sancho." It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a government which does not recognise democratic principles to make any headway in the work of amelioration in Ireland. The moral is that those responsible for the administration of the country have found themselves by the force of circumstances, even against their will, driven to apply popular principles of government in order that they may secure fairness and efficiency, and my contention that this is so is borne out by the two incidents to which I have referred, in which the Conservatives escaped only by the skin of their teeth from committing themselves to a policy which would have won them the hostility of their Orange allies. The latter have in truth secured their own way to a remarkable extent. The promise has not been fulfilled which Mr. Chamberlain made after the Unionist victory of 1886, to the effect that Lord Salisbury and the Conservative leaders were prepared to consider and review the "irritating centralising system of administration which is known as Dublin Castle." At the time of the ill-fated Round Table Conference, which Sir William Harcourt convened, Mr. Chamberlain committed himself to the expediency of establishing some form of legislative authority in Dublin, and admitted that such a body should be allowed to organise the form of Executive Government on whatever lines it thought fit, and Sir West Ridgeway, as Under Secretary, subsequently carried out the behests of the same Government by outlining a scheme of self-government by means of Provincial Councils with a partly elected board to control finance. All these facts serve to show the injustice--in view of acknowledged facts--of the description by the late Attorney-General for Ireland of the Wyndham proposals as "mean and cruel desertion." There is no part of the Irish question in respect of which more has been said which is misleading than what is known as the problem of Ulster. I have already explained what a misnomer this is. In the Counties of Donegal, Tyrone, Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Cavan there are more Catholics than Protestants, while in the Counties of Armagh and Down the numbers of the two creeds are almost equally divided. What is known as the question of Ulster should in truth be known as that of Belfast, for it is only in that city and in the adjacent Counties of Antrim and Down that the religious question is most acute. The social conditions of the country, which have always been to some extent, though not to that existing in recent years, agricultural, lead one to seek a cause in the conditions of Land Tenure for the different degrees of prosperity pervading the North-East corner of Ulster and the rest of Ireland. It is impossible to doubt that the Ulster Custom of Tenant Right had an immense effect on the economic status of the province. Under it the system of tenure which held the field in the other three provinces was replaced by one in which the tenants had security against arbitrary eviction so long as they paid their rents, and, in addition, were entitled to sell their interest in the property to the incoming tenant, and this Tenant Right sold often for as much as half, and sometimes for as much as the full, fee-simple of the holding. The sum could be obtained on the tenant voluntarily vacating the holding or on his being unable to pay the rent, the landlord being entitled to be consulted with a view to approval by him of the incoming tenant. The importance of the custom can be recognised in the light of the fact that in England, where improvements are effected in nearly every case not by the tenant but by the landlord, it has been found necessary, nevertheless, to give legislative sanction to Tenant Right. This has been effected by the Agricultural Holdings Acts, 1875, 1883, and 1900, under which tenants are entitled to statutory compensation for improvements, whether permanent, as, for example, buildings; for drainage purposes; or, as in the case of manure, for the improvement of the soil. The result of the Ulster Custom on the industry of the Northern tenant-farmer, who enjoyed a freedom of sale and a fixity of tenure, and, further, a compensation for improvements long before the tenants of the South and West secured these advantages, are impossible to over-estimate. Again, in considering the relative economic positions of the members of the two religions, it is impossible to blink the fact that little more than a century has passed since the Irish Catholics were treated as helots under a penal code, and that, if they have been behind hand in the industrial race, account must be taken of the lead in the saddle to which in that way they were subjected. The resulting preponderance of Protestants among the landed gentry led to a further factor in the ostracism which in the past they exercised as employers of labour, whether agricultural or industrial, which, besides its direct effect of breeding and perpetuating sectarian hate, served in an economic sense to unfit Catholics for employment, and to persuade those who in fact were least unfitted and retained their perceptive faculties, that the scope for their energies was to be found only abroad, and so tended to leave behind a residue of labourers rendered unfit for employment as against the time when the prejudice of the richer classes was removed. The non-application in the more purely Protestant parts of Ulster of the principles which held the field in other parts of Ireland made for prosperity in that province by tending towards an economic condition of the labour market, unimpeded by artificial restrictions, arising from religious differences and imposed at the hands of employers of labour. Another factor in the contentment of the Ulster Presbyterians under the varying vicissitudes of Irish government is to be found in the history of the Regium Donum. The Scottish settlers in 1610 having brought with them their ministers, the latter were put in possession of the tithes of the parishes in which they were planted. These they enjoyed till the death of Charles I., but payments were stopped on their refusal to recognise the Commonwealth. Henry Cromwell, however, allowed the body £100, which Charles II. increased to £600, per annum, but towards the end of his reign, and during that of James II., it was discontinued. William III. renewed the grant, increasing it to £1,200, and it was still further augmented in 1785 and 1792. After the Union Castlereagh largely increased the amount of the Regium Donum, and completely altered its mode of distribution, making it in fact contingent on the loyalty of the parson to the Union. The spirit in which it was granted is well shown in a letter in Castlereagh's memoirs, in which the writer, addressing the Chief Secretary just after the votes had been passed by Parliament, declared--"Never before was Ulster under the dominion of the British Crown. It had a distinct moral existence before, and now the Presbyterian ministry will be a subordinate ecclesiastical aristocracy, whose feeling will be that of zealous loyalty, and whose influence on those people will be as purely sedative when it should be, and exciting when it should be, as it was the reverse before." Those who blame Pitt for not having carried through his schemes of concurrent endowment, and who see in his failure to do so, one reason for the ill success of his policy of Union, must admit the importance of the fact that the Presbyterian clergy were pensioners of the State. A notion of the extent to which they were subsidised may be inferred from the fact that by the Commutation Clauses of the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869, the Dissenters secured as compensation for the loss of the Regium Donum and other payments a sum of £770,000, while the equivalent amount paid in lieu of the Maynooth grant to the Catholics--numbering at least eight times as many--amounted to only £372,000. It was Froude who declared that if the woollen and linen industries had not been hampered there would now be four Ulsters instead of one. Even in the days before restrictions were placed on the production of Irish linen for the better encouragement of the English trade, the North of Ireland was far ahead of the rest of the country in the matter of flax-spinning, and this pre-eminence was mainly due to the fact that the climate there is more suited to that plant than in other parts of Ireland. Starting with this advantage, linen was able in that province to survive the impositions placed on its production, while in places less favoured by a suitable climate the industry went to the wall. To assume off-hand, without going into the innumerable causes which effect such movements of commerce, that innate thrift was responsible, apart from all other causes, for the progress of Belfast is an attitude similar to that of one who should hold that nothing but the stupidity of the East Anglian yokel has prevented that country from becoming as much a centre of industry as is Lancashire, for such a sweeping generalisation would take no account of other forces at work in the development of the great commercial centres of the North as, for example, the fact that the peculiar conditions of the Lancashire climate are such that the processes of cotton-spinning can be best effected in an atmosphere containing the amount of moisture which there prevails. In Belfast the interdependence of the linen and the ship-building trades--in one of which the men, while in the other the women, of many families are employed--is one of the most powerful instruments of social progress. The narrow sea which separates it from Scotland and the geographical conformation of Belfast Lough have, moreover, a great bearing on its prosperity. Independence of Irish railways with their excessive freights, crippling by their incidence all export trade, in a town like Belfast, nine-tenths of the industrial output of which goes across the sea, and the advantage which it has over all other Irish towns in its proximity, again independently of Irish railways, to the Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, and Cumberland coalfields, are very important considerations in view of the obstacle which the scarcity of coal is to all commercial enterprises in the island. Finally, it must not be forgotten, in reference to the greatest of the industries of the North of Ireland, that a very exceptional impetus was given to the development of the commercial enterprise of Belfast at a time which might otherwise have proved a critical period in her industrial career, by the fact that the American Civil War caused a slump in cotton which resulted in the failure of a very large number of Lancashire cotton mills, the place of which was taken by the linen mills of Belfast, which have profited ever since from the advantage gained in that crisis and the growth of their trade which it effected. I have said enough, I think, to show that the attempt to foist the blame for the backwardness--in an industrial sense--of the rest of the country as compared with the North-East corner, on the difference of religion, is to close one's eyes to half a dozen other factors which must in truth also be appreciated in order that one may arrive at a proper estimate of the real reason for the disparity which undoubtedly exists. The facts which I have mentioned serve to show the unwarrantable nature of the assumption which accounts for the prosperity of North-East Ulster by considerations of race and religion alone. That several generations of progress in the industrial field have had a great effect on the character of the people of Belfast in respect of thrift, energy, and industry I am not concerned to deny, but on what ground in this light is to be explained the decrease in population of Antrim and Down which has gone on concurrently with the enormous increase in that of Belfast? That extrinsic factors such as those of geographical situation have much to do with increase of prosperity is well illustrated by the industrial growth of Wexford, with its manufactories of agricultural implements and dairy machinery, which is largely attributable to the close proximity of that town to the coalfields and iron of South Wales. As to the argument that political preoccupation is responsible for national backwardness, in the case of Finland the convulsions of a bitter political agitation have not been found incompatible with an increase of wealth and of population. In this connection it is germane to ask what the Protestant people of Ulster have done for the rest of the country, and to inquire if, with all their commercial success, they have been in the van of progress. That they have never produced a great leader of men or framer of policy is a remarkable fact, and to every demand of their fellow-countrymen they have answered with a reiterated _non possumus_, backed by threats of their intentions in case they are ignored, which, in point of fact, they have never carried into effect. The Orangemen in turn opposed Emancipation, Tithe Reform, Land Reform, Church Disestablishment, the Ballot, Local Government, and the settlement of the University question. Their attitude to the Land Conference we have seen elsewhere, and in view of this record one may ask whether or not they deserve Mr. Morley's condemnation as "an irreconcilable junto, always unteachable, always wrong." That their loyalty is contingent on the maintenance of their ascendancy and the enforcement of their views, their reception of the Church Act of 1869 well shows, as does also the manner in which in 1886 they threatened armed resistance if the Bill to which they were opposed was carried. That they submitted to the Church Act without carrying out their threats is a matter of history, and there is at least a strong probability that in the latter event a similar effect would have been witnessed. The removal of religious tests in the public life of Great Britain has been accomplished so completely that it is difficult for Englishmen to realise the extent to which the spirit, if not the letter, of tests at this day persists in Ireland. We have recently seen the adjournment of the House of Commons moved by the Orangemen because a rate collector in Ballinasloe did not receive the appointment to a post for which he applied, and the demands of Catholics for a due share of position and of influence is denounced as a claim for monopoly. To show how much evidence there is to sustain the charge I will quote a Protestant writer on this question of preferment--"Three-quarters of the Irish people," she writes, "are Catholics. Of 23 Lords Lieutenant since 1832 not one has been a Catholic, nor ever by law can be a Catholic, and only 3 have been Irishmen, tame Irish, as the word goes in Ireland of the denationalised Irishman who has shaken off allegiance to his own people. Of 30 Chief Secretaries, almost all English, not one has been a Catholic. It is not necessary that the Chief Secretary or the Commander of the Forces should be Protestant, but no Catholic has ever yet been allowed to fill either of these exalted offices. Of the 173 Irish peers only 14 (including Viscount Taafe of Austria) are Catholics, and the 28 representative peers in the House of Lords are all free from the taint of the religion of the Irish people, and powerful to drive opinion against it. Out of 60 Privy Councillors in Ireland 4 only are Catholics, and 3 out of 17 judges. Eleven out of the 60 Sub-Commissioners are Catholics; 7 out of the 21 County Court Judges. The head of the police is a Protestant. One only of the 36 County Inspectors is a Catholic. Of 170 District Inspectors only 10 are of that faith, and of 65 Resident Magistrates only 15 are Catholics. If we take the Valuation Offices, the Registration Offices, the Inspectorship of Factories, the Board of Works, the Woods and Forests, the Ordnance Survey, and any and every public department, Protestants hold three places out of four, though they are but one-quarter of the whole population. The extreme party, as we have seen, have secured no less than seven offices in the Government, and their followers and friends hold about 90 per cent. of the higher salaried posts under the Crown in Ireland."[25] The same writer attributes the glaring discrepancy between the figures which have just been quoted and the ratio of Catholics and Protestants in the population of Ireland to "a union of Protestant fanaticism and place-hunting greed." That it is due to any lack of ability among Irish Catholics I scarcely think anyone will urge, and in this connection an amazing article, which I remember reading in an English paper, is of interest. The writer, a Unionist from Ulster, strove to show the manner in which the influence of the Vatican was making itself felt in English politics by pointing to the number of Catholics--mostly Irishmen--who held high posts in the British Diplomatic, Civil, Military, and Naval Services, the presence of whom, which he tried to indicate as a menace, but which most Englishmen view with equanimity, shows by contrast the extent to which a taboo is placed in Ireland on officials who adhere to the creed of the majority of their countrymen. Enough has been said as to the preference shown to one caste, religious and political, to explain the reason for the fact that in Ireland the _soi-disant_ loyalist has become synonymous with place-hunter. If Unionism in Ireland pervades the richer classes, it does so also in Great Britain, but in Ireland the inherent weakness of an established Church, by which its prestige and the cachet which it gives, make it a harbour of refuge for those who wish for advancement, and who think that if they creep and intrude and climb into the fold they will secure it, all these are factors, which are present in Dublin, where the Establishment is Unionism with Dublin Castle as its cathedral. Social ambition, anxiety for preferment or for an _entree_ into society, are all at work to bring it to pass that a large amount of wealth and influence are ranged on the side of the Union. It is a damaging indictment which has been drawn up against the Irish landlords by Mr. T.W. Russell in his recent book, where he declares of this class, with which he fought side by side against the two Home Rule Bills, that he has come to the conclusion, slowly but surely, "that in pretending to fight for the Union these men were simply fighting for their own interests, that Rent and not Patriotism was their guiding motive,"[26] and the same charge was formulated a few years ago by Lord Rossmore, a former Grand Master of the Orange Society, when he made a public declaration that the so-called Loyalist minority in Ireland were blindly following the lead of a few professional politicians, who felt that their salaries and positions depended on the divisions and antipathies of those who should be working together for the good of their common country. There is no aspect of the Irish question in regard to which more dust is thrown in Englishmen's eyes than that which is summed up in the one word disloyalty. The prestige of the Crown in Great Britain, where its functions are atrophied to a greater extent than in any other country in Europe, is one of the most striking features in contemporary English life. The loyalty of a nation is chiefly due to associations formed by events in its history. The extreme unpopularity of Queen Victoria in Great Britain in the earlier years of her reign, which arose from her retirement as far as possible from public life on the death of the Prince Consort, completely disappeared with the passage of years, when her age, her sex, and her private virtues overcame the antipathy which a very natural reticence on the part of a grief-stricken widow had aroused throughout Great Britain. The associations connected with the Crown in Ireland are not many. From the day on which Dutch William beat English James at the Boyne in circumstances not calculated to arouse the enthusiasm of Irish Catholics for either the lawful king or the usurper, no Sovereign set foot in Ireland till George IV. visited the country in 1824. The main function of Ireland as regards the monarchs of that time was that its pension list served to provide for the maintenance of Royal favourites as to whose income they wished no questions to be asked. Curran thundered against the Irish pension list as "containing every variety of person, from the excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney to the base situation of a lady who humbleth herself that she may be exalted." In saying this he was understating rather than overstating the case, since a very cursory inspection of the State papers will reveal the fact that the mistresses and bastards of every English King, from Charles II. to George II., drew their incomes from the Irish establishment free from the inquisitive prying of the English House of Commons. Although George III. had no need to conceal any palace scandals in this way, we have seen how the bigotry of "an old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king" postponed Emancipation for more than a generation, and one of the "princes, the dregs of their dull race," of whom Shelley went on to speak, the Duke of York, declared in the House of Lords in 1825--"I will oppose the Catholic claims whatever may be my situation in life. So help me God." The respectful reception accorded to Queen Victoria--whose dislike of Ireland was notorious--on the very rare occasions on which she visited the country serves to show the absence of hostility to the Crown on the part of the great mass of the people, but the small number of these visits during the course of the longest reign in English history lends point to a question asked by Mr. James Bryce in a book published more than twenty years ago--Why has the most obvious service a monarch can render been so strangely neglected? When the present King visited the South of Ireland as Prince of Wales in 1885, at a time when Mr. Charles Parnell's prestige was at its zenith, he was greeted with the half humorous sally--"We will have no Prince but Charley," which at any rate contrasts favourably with the shouts of "Popish Ned," which his alleged sympathy with the popular side evoked on his visit a few years later to Londonderry. The trivial fact that the English National Anthem was drowned at the degree day of the Royal University a few years ago by the fact that the students insisted on singing "God Save Ireland" at the end of a ceremony which even in the decorous surroundings of the Sheldonian and the Senate House is marked by a large amount of disrespectful licence, nevertheless provided the _Times_ and the Unionist Press in general, for several days with a text upon which they hung their leading articles in the exploitation of their favourite theme, but no attention has been drawn in these quarters to the periodical threat of Orange exponents of a contingent loyalty to "throw the Crown into the Boyne" as a protest against the various assaults which have been made upon their prerogative by Parliament, and no mention was made in the English Press of the fact that on the day of the postponement of the coronation, owing to the illness of the King, the organ of the "disloyalists"--the _Freeman's Journal_--ended its leading article with the words "God Save the King," which were a mere expression of the feelings of the bulk of its readers. Loyalty, said Swift, is the foible of the Irish people, and it is a remarkable fact, in spite of the detestable insult to their religious views which the law exacts from the Sovereign at his accession, that the popular welcome accorded to his Majesty, on the part of individuals, should remove any ground for the suggestion that the Crown, which Grattan always declared was an Imperial Crown, is viewed with any animus in Ireland. That public bodies as such refuse to offer addresses of welcome is due to a conviction that to do so would be interpreted as an abdication of the popular position, an acquiescence in the _status quo_, a recognition of the system of government of which the Sovereign is head; and it must not be forgotten in this connection that, if the Sovereign is neutral, his representative in Ireland is a strong party man, and that the tendency which his Majesty has so strongly deprecated in England on more than one occasion, of employing emblems of royalty as symbols of party, has been ineradicably established by the ascendancy faction in Ireland, where the Union Jack is a party badge and God Save the King has been monopolised as a party song. CHAPTER VIII IRELAND AND DEMOCRACY "A majority of Irish members turned the balance in favour of the great Reform Bill of 1832, and from that day there has been scarcely a democratic measure which they have not powerfully assisted. When, indeed, we consider the votes which they have given, the principles they have been the means of introducing into English legislation, and the influence they have exercised upon the tone and character of the House of Commons, it is probably not too much to say that their presence in the British Parliament has proved the most powerful of all agents in accelerating the democratic transformation of English politics." --W.E.H. LECKY, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, Vol. VIII., p. 483. In Ireland perhaps more than in most countries history repeats itself. The lament of Lord Anglesea, the Lord Lieutenant, in 1831, who, finding himself a _roi faineant_, declared that "Things are now come to that pass that the question is whether O'Connell or I shall govern Ireland," found its echo just fifty years later when Parnell enjoyed so powerful a position that writers were fain to draw a contrast between the coroneted impotence of the head of the Executive and the uncrowned power of the Irish leader. The history of Irish representation at Westminster is one of the most curious chapters in Parliamentary annals. It is only in the last thirty years that it has reached the importance which it now possesses, although of all Liberal Governments since the great Reform Bill, that of 1880 and that which is in power to-day are the only two which have had a majority independently of the Irish vote, and it is worth remembering that the Ministry of 1880 ended its career amid the pitfalls of an Irish Coercion Bill. The maxim to beware when all men speak well of you, there has been no need to impress on Irish members since the days of Parnell, as there was at the time when under Butt's leadership a punctilious observance of Parliamentary procedure earned for the Irish representatives a contumelious respect which laughed their demands out of court. If Parnell had not set out with the deliberate intention of making Ireland stink in the nostrils of the respectable English gentlemen who thronged the benches of the finest club in London, the protest against misgovernment would have taken the form of violence in Ireland and not of obstruction in the House of Commons. The orderly debates of Butt's time were as unproductive in showing the Irish representatives to be in earnest as were the wholesale suspensions of the later _régime_ profitable, and if proof of this be needed it is to be found in the fact that in 1877 there were but eight English Home Rulers in the House of Commons, and that to attempt to secure reforms was to knock one's head against a stone wall. Speaking of the Irish representation in 1880 Mr. Gladstone made this solemn declaration:--"I believe a greater calumny, a more gross and injurious statement, could not possibly be made against the Irish nation. We believe we are at issue with an organised attempt to override the free will and judgment of the Irish nation." That bubble was pricked after the Franchise Act of 1885, when Parnell returned to the House of Commons with nearly twenty more followers than he had had before. There is a quotation of Blackstone's from Lord Burghley to the effect that England could never be ruined but by a Parliament, and Englishmen must admit that they have paid a price, though by no means as we think too dearly, for insisting on the maintenance in their chamber, under existing conditions of a foreign body against its will and admittedly hostile to the traditions of which they are so proud. The closure, which Lord Randolph Churchill used to pronounce with elaborate emphasis as _clôture_, the curtailment of the rights of private members, the growth in the power of the Cabinet, and _pari passu_ the loss in power on the part of the House, all these are instances of the way in which the sand in the bearings has been able to thwart the Parliamentary machine. "If we cannot rule ourselves," said Parnell in 1884, "we can, at least, cause them to be ruled as we choose." In spite of the odium which it entailed, Parnell, once he had "taken his coat off," maintained this attitude regardless of the feelings it evoked, which are perhaps as well expressed as anywhere in a letter of Lord Salisbury to Lord Randolph Churchill when he declared "the instinctive feeling of an Englishman is to wish to get rid of an Irishman," to which one may reply--"What! did the hand then of the Potter shake?" Though abuse of the plaintiff's attorney has been indulged in so often, neither English party has scorned, as from its expressions one would have expected, to make use of the Irish vote when its own career has been in danger. The appeals which in spite of this one sees addressed at intervals to the Irish leaders to abandon their attitude of _Nolo episcopari_ and take Ministerial office, for which some, at any rate, of their number have by their ability been conspicuously fitted, is to ignore the fundamental protest on which this self-denying ordnance depends. The protest against the _status quo_ has been traditionally made in this manner; to waive it would be tantamount to an abdication of the claims which have been so consistently made. To accept office might be to curry favour with one party or the other, but its refusal--especially as compared with its acceptance by the Irish Unionists--does much to deprive the enemy of the occasion to suggest sordid motives as reasons for the continuance of the Parliamentary agitation. In urging his great reform, Lord Durham was wont to lay great stress on the evil effect of the English party system on Canadian politics. The party system in Great Britain acts as a corrective and an adjusting mechanism to a degree which is never known in Ireland, where the principle of government with consent of the governed has only been applied to one corner of the island. The supreme example of so many, in which concessions have been made to Ireland in times of public danger, which had been obstinately refused in times of public security is that of Emancipation, concerning which Peel in June, 1828, reaffirmed his determination never to surrender, but in January, 1829, on the ground that five-sixths of the infantry force of the three kingdoms was engaged in police work in Ireland, introduced the Bill which obtained the Royal consent in circumstances such as to rob it of its grace and to make gratitude impossible. I am not, however, here concerned with emancipation as such, but with the set-off for its concession, under which on the principle of taking away with one hand, while giving with the other, the forty shilling freeholders, who had returned O'Connell at the Clare election, were disfranchised to the number of 200,000, and in this way was gilded the pill for the purpose of placating the English governing classes. The same principle was followed in 1841, when the Corporations of Ireland were thrown open to Catholics, for out of some sixty-five all except ten or eleven were abolished. The results of the disfranchising clauses of the Act of 1829 are to be seen in the fact that in 1850, while in England the electors were twenty-eight per cent. of the adult male population, in Ireland they were only two per cent. A Bill introduced in that year would, if it had passed into law, have raised the percentage in Ireland to fifteen. The Lords amendments altered the percentage to eight, and in its final form it was left at about ten. Instead of imposing an £8 rental qualification one of £12 was imposed, and by this means were excluded 900,000 voters who would have secured the suffrage under the lower qualification. Speaking of the Franchise, Mr. Lecky, in "Democracy and Liberty," declared that--"The elements of good government must be sought for in Ireland, on a higher electoral plane than in England." This is a matter of opinion, and I find it interesting to reflect that the ablest Conservative of my acquaintance--a Tory of the school of Lord Eldon--has on several occasions expressed to me a deliberate opinion in exact contradiction of this, to the effect that owing to the relative mental calibres of the races there is need of a higher franchise qualification in England than in either Ireland or Scotland. Speculations of this kind, however, are unprofitable, seeing that the competency of the Irish peasants as citizens has been acknowledged by the grant of a wide household suffrage safeguarded by a careful system of ballot. When the last great extension of the franchise to householders in the country was made in 1884 there were those who asserted that its application to Ireland would be folly. Mr. W.H. Smith, the leader of the Conservatives in the House of Commons, declared that any extension of the suffrage in Ireland would lead to "confiscation of property, ruin of industry, withdrawal of capital, misery, wretchedness, and war"; the leading Whig statesman said the concession to Ireland of equal electoral privileges with those of England would be folly, but in spite of these gloomy prognostications the omission of Ireland from the scope of the Act was not proposed by Conservative statesmen, and Lord Hartington himself undertook the duty of moving the second reading of a Bill containing provisions which a few weeks before he had described as most unwise. By this Act the enfranchised inhabitants of Ireland were multiplied more than threefold, and the share of Ireland of the "two million intelligent voters" who were added to the electorate was 200,000. In the redistribution of seats which accompanied the Franchise Act of 1884 the representation of Ireland was, by an arrangement between parties, left unimpaired, and this leads me to a matter which serves, I think, to show with what speed events move and how true was that remark of Disraeli's to Lord Lytton that "in politics two years are an eternity." It is little more than two years since the burning political question was the redistribution of seats on the lines proposed by Mr. Gerald Balfour. The Unionist Press has for some years been endeavouring to rouse public opinion on this question of the alleged over-representation of Ireland in the House of Commons, and in view of the share of attention which the matter received in the closing days of the last Parliament it is as well to devote some attention to the topic. By the Act of Union, which our opponents hold so sacred, Ireland was given 100 members in the House of Commons, and in the House of Lords 28 representative Peers, together with Bishops of the then Established Church, and it was further enacted that this should be her representation "for ever." On the population basis, which to-day is urged by Unionists as the only fair mode of apportioning representatives, Ireland was entitled at the date of the Union to many more members than in fact she obtained. Her population at that time was nearly five and a half millions, that of Great Britain was less than ten and a half millions, and so, though she could claim more than a third of the inhabitants of the three kingdoms, her representation was less than one-sixth. By the Reform Bill of 1832 the Irish members were increased to 105. Two seats have since been disfranchised, and we thus arrive at 103--the figure at which the representation of the country stands to-day. The disproportion from which Ireland suffered at the time of the Union had become still more acute by the time of the great Reform Bill, and no one can seriously suggest that the addition of five seats redressed the inequality. According to the Census of 1831 the population of Great Britain was little over sixteen millions, and that of Ireland was seven and three-quarter millions. If these figures had formed the basis of a proportionate representation, Ireland would have had a little more than 200 members--just about double the number which she actually returned. By an agreement between parties, as I have said, in the last Redistribution of Seats Bill--that of 1885--the number of representatives of Ireland was left unchanged, and it is only since the Conservative Party has definitely thrown in its lot as an opponent of Irish demands as formulated to-day that this method of reducing the force of their political opponents has begun to find favour amongst its members: Under the Bill of Mr. Gerald Balfour, by an ingenious arrangement of raising the limits of population under which boroughs and counties should no longer have separate representation, the scheme secured the transfer of twenty-two seats from Ireland to Great Britain. The limit of population above which boroughs would have had to reach to maintain their separate existence was fixed at 18,500, and under this arrangement three boroughs in Ireland and six in Great Britain would have lost their seats. If the limit had been fixed at 25,000 a total of 19 seats in Great Britain and still only 3 in Ireland would have lost their member, while a minimum population of 35,000 would have disfranchised 25 boroughs in Great Britain and only 4 in Ireland. The actual proposal was elaborately calculated so as to produce the least possible disturbance to the small boroughs in Great Britain, while securing the maximum of disfranchisement in Ireland. At the same time the standard of population per member, which in the case of counties was fixed at 65,000, secured the disfranchisement of one Scottish county, the net disfranchisement of two English counties, and the deprivation of no less than 20 Irish counties of their member. The grant of a new member to Belfast would have made the net loss to Ireland 22 seats, and these were to be redistributed as between England, Scotland and Wales in the proportion of 17:4:1. These, then, are the data upon which we have to reckon. The Conservative Government, it should be added, greeted by a howl of disapproval even from its own supporters at the anomalies which it proposed to leave unredressed, appointed a Special Committee, the report of which was a posthumous child of the ministry which created it. It is true that according to the terms of this report the borough limit of population was raised to 25,000, and the rotten boroughs which for "historical reasons" Mr. Balfour had been loth to disfranchise, were to be swept away, but so far as we are concerned the results would have been much the same, for under its provisions Ireland would have suffered a net loss of 23 seats. O'Connell pointed out to the Corporation of Dublin in 1843 far greater inconsistencies than can be indicated to-day. The population of Wales at that day was 800,000, that of County of Cork was more than 700,000, but the former was represented by 28 members and the latter by two; and further, he was able to point to five English counties with a total population of less than a million having 20 members to represent them, while five Irish counties with a population of over two millions returned only ten members. If it is the mere passion for a representation proportionate to population which is evinced, it is remarkable that it has only arisen since the time at which it began to tell against Ireland, that when the boot was on the other leg there was no suggestion of redistribution on the part of Conservatives. The truth is that for Unionists the idea of paring the claws of the Irish Party offers a tempting prospect. Our position in the matter is quite plain: so long as Great Britain insists on maintaining the Act of Union she must do so consistently in the sense that it is a contract, albeit secured by chicanery, to the breach of any term of which the consent of the party which it trammelled at least is necessary. It will be answered that the Disestablishment of the Irish Church made a breach in a clause of as binding a solemnity as that which guaranteed 100 members in the Imperial Parliament "for ever." The difference is that in that case the consent of the two parties was given by their representatives in the House of Commons, and the consent and the sanction which it entails will never be secured--even possibly from Ulster Orangemen--to a proposal for the curtailment of representation in the Imperial Parliament under the present system of government. We do not pretend for one moment that according to the rule of three we are not represented in the House of Commons by a number of members greater than that to which our population at the present moment would, taking the three kingdoms as whole, entitle us, but one must point out that the system of electing representative peers robs us of even that modicum of democratic peers of Parliament which Great Britain is able to secure, and we repeat the argument of Mr. Gladstone that the distance of Dublin from Westminster and the consequent deafness of the House of Commons to Irish opinion is to a slight extent redressed by the small excess--calculated on lines of proportion--which Irish representation secures at Westminster. At any rate one has the satisfaction of knowing where one stands in the matter, and one is aware that one part of the Conservative programme to be applied whenever that party returns to power is that of which someone has spoken as the detestable principle that to keep Ireland weak is the most convenient way of governing her. And here let me in parenthesis remark on one fact in the conditions of Irish representation--namely, its solidarity. It is one of the commonplaces of politics that office is the best adhesive which a party can enjoy, and the cold shades of opposition are apt too often to dissolve a unity which in office appeared secure. We have seen it of late years in the demoralisation of the Liberals, who, after the retirement of Mr. Gladstone, fell to pieces as a party only on their resignation of office in 1895; we are seeing it now in the disintegration of the Unionists ever since the debacle of the general election. There is a term which the Unionist Press is never tired of using in connection with the Irish Party, the "fissiparous tendency" of which it is passionately fond of dinning into English ears, regardless of the many cleavages which have occurred in English parties in the last fifty or even twenty years. Those divisions which there have been in the Nationalist ranks have been for the most part concerned, not with measures, but with men, and even so it cannot be urged that they have been more than temporary in duration. The strength of wrist which has been displayed during the last eight years by Mr. John Redmond in leading the United Irish Party has been a source of admiration to all. "You need greater qualities," said Cardinal de Retz, "to be a party leader than to be Emperor of the Universe." Much wisdom is demanded of an Irish leader in deciding the tactical questions arising from the vicissitudes of British parties. That Irish Nationalists and British Liberals do not see eye to eye on several points of policy is well known. It may well be urged that no better proof of the unnatural form of the polity which holds the field can be adduced than is to be found in the political allies of the two parties in Ireland; for the Catholics, democratic though they may be, are not associated with the party to which the traditions of a Church, the most Conservative force in Europe, one might think would ally them, and the Orange Presbyterians, who are at heart Radicals, are divorced from their dissenting kinsmen in Great Britain and form the tail of the Conservative Party. Hence it is that we have fallen between two stools, and University reform, to the principle of which Lord Salisbury, Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Wyndham have been pledged, was shelved over and over again at the bidding of the Ulster Unionists, while the Conservative House of Lords thwarted the application of the principles of self-government to which a Liberal majority in the House of Commons gave its consent. Can anyone, in view of these facts, feel surprised that "a plague on both your Houses" expresses the feelings of the Irish people. Those nice people, to whom political barter is abhorrent, who at the time of the general election deprecated the "sale for a price" of the Nationalist vote, for so they were pleased to call what occurred, closed their eyes to the very obvious price of the Orange vote in the last Parliament, which took the form of the retirement from office of Mr. Wyndham, on failure to secure which, as the Orange leader declared--"Ulster would have to call upon her reserves," meaning, one must suppose, that the Irish Unionist office holders who were members of the Ministry in numbers altogether disproportionate to their strength would be called upon by the Orange Lodges to hand in their seals. English Catholics are apt to say that if the Irish people in England had been directed by the Nationalist Party to vote for Conservative candidates the safety of Catholic schools would thereby have been safeguarded, but they forget that to put a Conservative Party in power would be to give a blank cheque to a party pledged to cut down the Irish, and _pari passu_ the Catholic, representation in the House of Commons. That the fate of the Catholic voluntary schools in England is a direct concern of the Irish members is admitted by all who are aware how vast a majority of the Catholic poor in Great Britain are Irish, if not by birth, at any rate by origin. That the efforts in this connection of the Irish Party were appreciated by the head of the Catholic Church in England is seen by the very gracious letter which Archbishop Bourne addressed to Mr. Redmond at the end of the session of 1906, and it is significant that the letter of protest against the Archbishop's action in regard to the moderate counsels to secure a compromise on the part of the Irish, which was sent by certain English Catholic Peers to the Catholic bishops of Great Britain, was treated by the latter, with only two exceptions, with the contumelious neglect which its disloyalty, the outcome of Tory _intransigeance_, deserved. English Catholics, among whom knights harbingers and banneret bearers of the Primrose League are numerous, who have leant all their weight in the scale to maintain the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, have been ever ready when occasion arose to appeal to the religious loyalty of the Irish members to support their interests. Their position has not been very dignified, and its fruits will perhaps be seen if the reduction of the Irish representation enters the sphere of practical politics. Party loyalty will claim their support, but at the same time they will realise that if they give it they will be taking a step to reduce the only body in the House of Commons which can ever hope to represent Catholic principles and uphold Catholic interests. I do not know whether it struck many people in the course of the general election that the country in which the elections made the least difference was the one of the three kingdoms in which politics claim most public attention. There was a monotony in the unopposed returns, and, in the result, in the place of 80 Nationalists, 1 Liberal, and 22 Unionists, there appeared 83 Nationalists, 3 Liberals, and 18 Unionists, To appreciate the full force of these numbers one must realise, moreover, that of the Unionists in both cases, two out of the total represent University seats, the Conservative nature of which, whether in England, Ireland, or Scotland, is one of the features of political life which is, it appears, immutable. A study of the results shows that Unionism is in a minority in Ulster. There are in the present Parliament 15 Unionists as against 15 Nationalists, who, with 3 Liberals, go to make up the 33 members sitting at Westminster for that province. These figures relieve me from the necessity of entering a caveat against the use of the word Ulster as though the whole province were Unionist. Virtually, all that is Unionist in Ireland is in Ulster, but it is very far from the truth to say that all Ulster is Unionist. Not one of the Counties of Donegal, Tyrone, Monaghan, or Cavan, out of the whole nine of which the province consists, returns a Unionist. In the three Counties of Down, Armagh, and Fermanagh, the representation is divided, and as for the two Counties of Londonderry and Antrim, which are ordinarily the sole strongholds of the Orangemen, even in them a breach was effected in West Belfast, where the Labour vote returned a Nationalist for the first time since Mr. Sexton sat for it from 1886-1892. The obviousness and permanence of the Irish representation in Parliament is apt to cause its significance to be forgotten. "It doesn't matter what we say, but for God's sake _let_ us be consistent," Lord Palmerston is reported to have said concerning some question of policy at a Cabinet Council. The Irish people, its worst enemies must admit, have been consistent for the last thirty years in the demands which their representatives have made ever since Isaac Butt crystallised the Irish antagonism to the _status quo_ in the "Home Government Association," which he formed and on the programme of which he returned, after the general election of 1874, with 59 followers in the House of Commons, pledged to support the demand for Irish self-government. If we exclude the fact that the extension of the franchise in 1884 increased the number of the popular representatives to more than 80, it is true to say that since then there has been no change in the position of Irish representation, just as there has been none in Irish demands. The Liberalism of Non-conformist Wales, and to a lesser degree of Presbyterian Scotland, are traditional, but their adherence to one side or the other in politics appears vacillating if one studies the election figures, compared with the unwavering permanence of the Irish returns. When Lord Dudley declared that his aim as Viceroy would be to govern Ireland according to Irish ideas a shout of protest arose from the _Times_ and the Irish Unionists, whose organ the _Times_ has constituted itself. Let us clear our minds of cant on the matter, and ask in view of this open disclaimer of the democratic principles which are so much vaunted in England, for what reason is maintained the travesty of representative government, the decrees of which it is frankly avowed are to be ignored? Every English Liberal must be impressed by the fact that the party which has tried to arrogate to itself the sole claim to be thought Imperialist has scouted Home Rule resolutions passed again and again by the legislatures of every one of the self-governing colonies. It was at Montreal that Parnell was first hailed as the uncrowned king of Ireland, and what is more, that great apostle of Imperialism, Cecil Rhodes, so far from seeing in Home Rule the first step towards the dismemberment of the Empire, signified his sympathy with the movement in that direction by giving Mr. Parnell a cheque for £10,000 for the Irish Party funds on the one condition that he would support the retention of some of the Irish members in the Imperial Parliament, as tending in the direction of Imperial federation. Twenty years ago, when the present good feelings of England towards the United States were not in existence, it was easy, as it has been since on the occasions on which relations have been strained over the Venezuelan and Alaskan questions, to denounce the aid granted to the National movement by the Irish in America. To-day things are different; these denunciations are not heard, and, moreover, as much aid and encouragement has been forthcoming in a proportional degree from the colonies of the British Empire as from the Republic of North America. As a matter of fact there are twice as many people of Irish blood in the United States as there are in Ireland, and thus, when in 1880 Congress threw open its doors and invited Parnell to address it on the Irish question, it was acting in accordance with the sentiments of a vast number of the citizens of the United States. The Government of Lord North roused the American Colonies by attempts to rule them against their own wishes, and the result was that they secured their independence. Austria refused self-government to Italy, and in consequence lost its Italian territory, while Hungary, to which it granted the boon, was retained in the dual monarchy. Spain, by refusing autonomy to her colonies, suffered the loss of South. America, Cuba, Puerto Rica, and the Philippines, and the action of Holland in the same way led to the separation from it of the kingdom of the Belgians. All these are cases in point, but the most interesting parallel is that of Lower Canada, which, like Ireland, is Celtic and Catholic, and is, moreover, a French-speaking province. There, too, there was a struggle between races, and it was only by "merging"--as Lord Durham expressed it--"the odious animosities of origin in the feelings of a nobler and more comprehensive nationality" that peace was restored. The Tory Cabinet of Peel gave Canada Parliamentary Government, and proclaimed rebels became Ministers of the Crown, and who is there who will contend that the application of the maxim "trust in the people" of that great Imperial statesman, Lord Durham, was not justified by the results of the grant of self-government not to a peaceful and loyal colony, but to one which was boiling with discontent and rebellion. Twelve years after Lord Durham's experiment, the Government of Lord Derby gave Australia similar institutions, and that fact alone shows how successful the policy had proved. Great Britain has just given representative government to the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony. Within five years of the peace of Vereeniging the pledges of that compact were honourably fulfilled in spite of the forebodings of one of the political parties, and Louis Botha, the Premier of one of the new colonies, is the most distinguished of the generals who less than six years ago were leading their armies against those of Great Britain. England has realised that it is only by government with the consent of the governed that she can maintain her colonies, and the contrast between her treatment of Ireland and that of her colonies is to be seen in the fact that to them is extended the protection of the British fleet, while they are at the same time left free to legislate in the matter of trade, to deal with their own defence, and all the while contribute nothing to Imperial charges. The failure of the policy of North and the success of that of Durham are apparent. The former has been applied in Ireland, although the country has consistently cried out for the latter. How long do those with whom the last word in government is the policy applied to-day, imagine that they can govern a country at the bayonet's edge in such a way that she has neither the weight of an equal nor the freedom of a dependency? Lord Rosebery, whose liberalism may be described in the same terms as those in which Disraeli denounced the Conservatism of Peel--"the mule of politics which engenders nothing"--has more than once in the last few years declared his hostility to the principle of Irish self-government, and the explanation of his position which he offers is that the absence of loyalty on the part of Ireland is the obstacle which stands in the way of his advocacy of such a policy. One may well ask in reply whether Lord Rosebery is aware of the complete absence of loyalty at the time when Canada was granted self-government, and the state of feeling towards England in the new South African colonies two years ago is a further case in point; but the most pertinent question which can be asked of Lord Rosebery is on what ground he makes this his condition precedent, in view of the fact that the loyalty or disloyalty of Irishmen stands exactly as it did in 1886 and 1893, in both of which years Lord Rosebery was a member of the Ministries which introduced Home Rule Bills into Parliament. That hostility is evinced by large sections of Irishmen to England, as well as by Englishmen to Ireland, and that much sympathy was felt, as it was by the most distinguished of the members of the present Cabinet, for the South African Republics, which Irishmen regarded as struggling nationalities like their own, I am not concerned to deny. The same feeling of hostility, as I have already said, was rampant at the time of the Crimean war, and may be expected to continue till the end of the present system of government arrives; but to those who, for party purposes, declare that they see a risk that possible European complications would be accentuated for Great Britain to the point of danger by the proximity of an Ireland with a Parliament in Dublin, the answer is, that it is difficult to conceive a state of affairs more fraught with danger to England than would be found in the existence during a great war of an adjacent island which has been haughtily denied that mode of government which she claims, and which in the troubles of the other country will see an opportunity of extracting by threats and from fear in an hour of peril that which she was unable to secure by other means in the day of prosperity. One may well ask whether this prospect is one to which Great Britain can look forward with calmness, that she should have to legislate at fever heat to cope with the contingencies of the moment with no well-ordered scheme of things; not that way lies an end by which she will secure peace conceived in the spirit of peace. CHAPTER IX IRELAND AND GREAT BRITAIN "In reason all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery; but in fact eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one single man in his shirt.... Those who have used to cramp liberty have gone so far as to resent even the liberty of complaining, although a man upon the rack was never known to be refused the liberty of roaring as loud as he thought fit."--JONATHAN SWIFT. The loss of her language by Ireland was, politically, the worst calamity which could have befallen her, for it lent colour to the otherwise unsupported assertion that she was a mere geographical expression in no way differing from the adjoining island. The manner in which the revival of the Irish tongue has been taken up by the whole country with, literally, the support of peasant and peer is one of the most remarkable phenomena of modern Irish life. That it has any direct political significance is untrue, for the aim of its pioneers in the Gaelic League has been fulfilled, and it remains strictly non-sectarian and non-political. From the purely utilitarian point of view, no doubt a polytechnic could provide a dozen subjects in which a more profitable return could be made for the money and time invested than does the study of Gaelic, but book-keeping or shorthand would not have roused the enthusiasm which this revival of a half dead language has evoked and which is incidentally an educative movement in that the learning of a new language is of a direct value as a mental training, while as a social organisation it has done more in inculcating a public spirit and a proper pride than could otherwise possibly have been achieved. The revival of the Czech language when almost dead, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the eminent success of bi-lingualism in Flanders, are hopeful signs for the preservation of a National characteristic, the disappearance of which would have been welcomed only by those who hold that Ireland as a nationality has no existence apart from Great Britain, and the preservation of which will produce the mental alertness characteristic of a bi-lingual people. The temperance work done by the Gaelic League in providing occupation of a pleasant nature and social intercourse of a harmless kind is one of its chief titles to distinction, for in this aspect it has encouraged the preservation of Irish songs, music, dances, and games. One other thing it, and it alone, can do. One-half of the emigrants from Ireland go on tickets or money sent from friends in the United States, and in my opinion one of the most powerful influences in staying the present lamentable tide in that direction will be to foster in the branches in America the notion that the time has come when every Irishman and woman who can by any possible means do so should be persuaded to remain in Ireland, and not to emigrate. The ridiculous situation which was allowed by successive Governments to persist in the Gaelic-speaking districts of the West until a few years ago, in which teachers were appointed to the schools without any knowledge of the only language spoken by the children whom they purported to educate, is well illustrated by the statement on the part of one of their number to the effect that it took two years to extirpate, to "wring" the Irish speech out of the children and replace it, one must suppose, by English, and this process, it must be remembered, was gone through with the children of a peasantry whom a distinguished French publicist--M.L. Paul-Dubois--has described as perhaps the most intellectual in Europe. It is characteristic of English government that, whereas from 1878 onwards Irish figured in the programme of the National Board, and Government grants were made for proficiency therein as in other subjects, one of the last acts of the late Government was to withdraw these grants for the teaching of Irish. So long as there was no large number of people anxious to learn Gaelic in Ireland, Government gave help towards its study, but the very moment in which, with the rise of the Gaelic League, the number learning the language began to increase, Government put its foot down and proceeded to discourage it by a withdrawal of grants. The order effecting this was withdrawn by Mr. Bryce. The signal failure of the attempts made to kill the Gaelic movement with ridicule, on the part of those who saw in it an evil-disposed attempt to stop the Anglicising of the country, was as conspicuous as has been the ill success of the petty tyranny of the Inland Revenue authorities, who took out summonses against those who had their names engraved on their dogs' collars in Gaelic. Trinity College has had for half a century two scholarships and a prize in Gaelic attached to its Divinity School, and the fact that the ultimate trust of the fund of its Gaelic Professorship on cesser of appointment is to a Protestant proselytising society shows the interest which has actuated the study of Gaelic in that foundation, and its attitude towards the Gaelic League found expression in Dr. Mahaffy, one of its most distinguished scholars, who, having failed to kill the movement with ridicule, changed his line and declared that the revival of Gaelic would be unreasonable and dishonest if it were not impossible. In spite of this, the success of the League, which was only established in 1893, is astonishing. In 1900 it consisted of 120 branches; to-day there are more than 1,000. The circulation of Gaelic books published under its auspices is over 200,000 a year. In the year 1899 it was taught in 100 Primary Schools, it is now taught in 3,000. The number of people, including adults, learning Irish in evening continuation classes was in 1899 little over 1,000, and is to-day over 100,000. The circumstance that in London on the Sunday nearest St. Patrick's Day a service with Gaelic hymns and a Gaelic sermon is conducted every year, and has been conducted for the last three years, at the Cathedral at Westminster, and is attended by 6,000 or 7,000 Irish people, and that last year Dr. Alexander held a Gaelic service in a Protestant Cathedral in Dublin, should do much to show the manner in which the movement is spreading among all classes, and to indicate that it will in time demolish that false situation by which, for the greater part of the Continent, Ireland has been looked upon as merely an island on the other side of England to be seen through English glasses. That strange recuperative power which the country has evinced at intervals in her history is, without a doubt, once again asserting itself, and a new spirit of restlessness and of effort, which in no sense can be supposed to supplant, or to do more than to supplement, political aspirations, is making itself felt. It is doing so in a number of different directions, but the ultimate aim of all the forces which are at work may be said to be, in a cant phrase, to make it as much an object to desire to live in the country as hitherto it has been to die for it. The inculcation of a spirit of self-reliance, the discouragement among the poorer classes of the notion that emigration is an object at which one should aim, the destruction among the richer of that spirit which is known at "West British," and which implies an apologetic air on the part of its owner for being Irish at all, these are among the effects of the new movement. The desire to see Ireland Irish, and not a burlesque of what is English, is its _raison d'être_, and that it has made progress along the lines mapped out, the Gaelic League, from which it gains its driving force, the literary revival, and the movement for industrial development bear ample witness. From the impression made by a few wits, English people have jumped to the conclusion that as a people we are specially blessed with a sense of humour, a curious _non sequitur_ which the restraint, consciously or unconsciously inculcated by the Gaelic League, is likely to make more apparent, for it is killing that conception of the Irishman as typically a boisterous buffoon with intervals of maudlin sentimentality which the stage and the popular song have so long been content to depict without protest from us, and which left Englishmen with feelings not more exalted than those of their sixteenth and seventeenth century ancestors, to whom "mere Irish" was a term of opprobrium. In their appeals to sentiment, Englishmen have not been more successful. The appointment of Mr. Wyndham to the Irish Office was hailed by them as a certain success on the ground of his descent from Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a traitor, on their own showing, descent from whom one would have thought should have been rather concealed than advertised. They waxed sentimental over the bravery of the Irish soldiers in the South African war, among which the achievements of the Inniskillings at Pieter's Hill and the Connaught Rangers at Colenso were only surpassed by the Dublin Fusiliers at Talana Hill, out of a thousand of whom only three hundred survived. But the strange thing was that while English people in honour of these men wore shamrock on St. Patrick's Day, just as in the case of the Crimea, the sympathy of their own country was not on the side upon which they fought, and the people of their country looked upon the Irish soldiers as _condottieri_ fighting in an alien cause. One cannot draw up an indictment against a whole nation, and if this be treason in the opinion of Englishmen, one can only reply that to commit the unpardonable sin against the body politic there must be something more on the part of a people than a continuance of feelings towards a state of affairs against which they have always protested, and in which they have never acquiesced. Historically we have been the home of lost causes, and the fact that so many of the national heroes of Ireland have ended their lives in failure has had no small effect in bringing it to pass that there, at any rate, it is not true to say that nothing succeeds like success. Hugh O'Neill, Red Hugh O'Donnell, Owen Roe O'Neill, Sarsfield, Wolfe Tone, Grattan, the Young Irelanders, O'Connell, Butt, Parnell, not one of these ended his career amid the glamour of achieved success, and the result of this, I think, is an irresponsibility which looks not so much to the probability of the fruition of movements as to their inception; and, after all, a flash in the pan is apt to do more harm than good. To this fact I attribute the circumstance that there has always been a small section of the population to which the ordinary methods of constitutional agitation have appeared feeble and unavailing, but to understand to the full the reason for it one must realise that if there have been three insurrections in the history of the United Parliament, there has twelve times in the same course of time been famine, that parent of despairing violence, throughout the country. The ordinary Englishman seeing in the state a polity maintained by a long tradition, which has undergone change gradually and in measured progress, in which agitation, when it has been rife as it was before the first Reform Bill, has died down on redress of grievances, almost as soon as it has arisen has no conception of the relative, and indeed absolute, unstable state of equilibrium in the affairs of Ireland. The fact that one has to go back to the battle of Sedgemoor for the last occasion when in anything dignified by a higher name than riot, blood has been shed in England; the fact that when a retiring English Attorney-General appointed his son to a third-rate position in the legal profession an outcry arose in which the salient feature was surprise that so flagrant a job should have been perpetrated, are indications of what I mean when I say that English people are in every circumstance of their outlook precluded from eliminating in their view of Irish affairs that deep-seated conviction, which in the case of their own country is founded on indisputable fact, that radical change in the well-ordered evolution of the State is out of keeping with the sequence which has hitherto held sway, and in so far as it is so is a thing to be guarded against and avoided. In Ireland no one can claim to see a similar gradual metamorphosis in the light-of the history of the last one hundred, or even fifty, years, Radicalism, experimentalism, empiricism have been let loose on every institution of the country, and it is only when we take the greatest common measure of the results that we can see that the upshot has been on the whole rather good than bad. When Parnell declared that while accepting Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule proposals he must nevertheless state definitely that no one could set a limit to the march of a nation, he was stating an axiom which is every day illustrated by English statesmen of either party when they say, on the one hand, that the refusal, and on the other hand the concession, of certain fiscal proposals will lead to the dismemberment of the Empire. What can be stated in cold blood as a possible contingency in the case of, say, Canada or New Zealand has only to be adumbrated in that of Ireland to be denounced, not as a justifiable retort to the flouting of local demands, but as a treasonable aspiration to be put down with a strong hand. The new aspect of Imperial responsibility as entailing on the mother country a position not of contempt of, but rather of deference to, the wishes of the colonies cannot but have a direct bearing on Anglo-Irish relations. It is the greatest feature in Parnell's achievement that he succeeded in persuading ardent spirits to lay aside other weapons, while he strove what he could do by stretching the British Constitution to the utmost, linking up as he did all the forces of discontent to a methodical use of the Parliamentary machine. In the very depth of the winter of our discontent, in 1881, when he was in Kilmainham Gaol, crime became most rampant; in truth--as he had grimly said would be the case--Captain Moonlight had taken his place, and in the following year when he was let out of gaol it was expressly to slow down the agitation. More than one Prime Minister has had to echo those words of the Duke of Wellington of seventy years ago--"If we don't preserve peace in Ireland we shall not be a Government," and the periodic recrudescence of lawlessness which the island has seen has, it is freely admitted, forced the hands of Governments which were inflexible in the face of mere constitutional opposition. The latest aspect which this anti-constitutional movement has taken in Ireland is what is known as Sinn Féin, which adopts a rigid attitude of protest against the existing condition of things, and which declares that the recognition of the _status quo_ involved in any acquiescence in the present mode of government is a betrayal of the whole position. The existence of this spirit, which is entirely negligible outside two or three large towns, is not surprising; although it advocates a passive resistance it is the direct descendant of the party which advocated physical force in the past, and in so far as it proposes to use morally defensible weapons it is likely to have the more driving power. The consistent opposition which the Catholic Church offered to revolutionary violence and her sympathy with constitutionally-expressed Parliamentary agitation have resulted in an anti-clerical colour which this new movement has acquired, and to this, force is added by the measure of strength which it has gained among a certain number of young Protestants in Belfast, whose fathers must turn in their graves at this reversal of opinion on a question which was to them a _chose jugée_, a veritable article of faith. The proposals of Sinn Féin include a boycott of all English institutions in Ireland, educational and of other kinds, the abandonment of the attendance of Irish members in the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, elections to which Sinn Féin candidates are, if necessary, to contest on the undertaking that if elected they will not take the oath at Westminster, but will attend a self-constituted National Council in Dublin, under the control of which a system of National education and of National arbitration courts, in addition to a National Stock Exchange, will be established. To develop Irish industries this body, it is suggested, will appoint in foreign ports Irish Consuls, completely independent of the British Consular service, who will attend to the interests and the development of Irish trade. Lastly, the most practical of their proposals lies in the discouragement of recruiting, a movement which, if applied on a large scale, would have a remarkable effect on the resources of the three kingdoms under a voluntary system of military service. These proposals, which, until a Gaelic name was thought necessary for their acceptance in Ireland, were known as the Hungarian policy, are admittedly based on the success of the struggle for Hungarian autonomy which culminated in 1867, but the fact which the advocates of the application of this policy to Ireland omit to mention, is that Hungary was face to face with a divided and distracted Austria, defeated by the Prussians at Sadowa, while in the case of Ireland we are concerned with a united Great Britain, which has shown no great signs of diminution in her power. A closer parallel than that of Hungary is to be found in the case of Bohemia, which, in respect of general social conditions and the proportion of national to hostile forces, bore a much stronger resemblance to Ireland, and which adopted in 1867 a policy of withdrawal of its representatives from a hostile legislature with results so disastrous that after a few years she returned to the methods which the Sinn Féin party are anxious to make an end of in Ireland. All foreign parallels, however, are apt to be misleading, but Irishmen have only to remember the fact that the secession of Grattan and his followers from the Irish Parliament in 1797 paved the way for the passing of the Act of Union to find in it a warning against what is the main plank in the platform of Sinn Féin--"the policy of withdrawal"--which, moreover, would leave the control of Irish legislation to the tender mercies of such Irish members as Mr. Walter Long and Mr. William Moore, which would further involve the condemnation of the policy pursued by every Irish leader since the Union, and would mean the abandonment of the weapon by which every Irish reform has been wrested from English prejudice--namely, an independent party in the House of Commons, backed up by a vigorous organisation in Ireland. For the rest, those who have read the high-flown manifestoes of the Sinn Féin party will be concerned to look around for the result of the proposal which they have been preaching for the last three years, and if they find nothing but a ridiculous mouse in the matter of achievement will be inclined to declare that not a mountain but a molehill has been in labour. It is a singular fact that although since the general election there have been no less than ten by-elections in Ireland, of which only two were in "safe" Unionist seats, in no single instance have the advocates of the policy of abstention from attendance from Westminster had the courage to go to the polls with a candidate of their own. We are told by the exponents of the new policy that they are sweeping the country before them, but the only certain data which Irishmen have as to its popularity is that in ten per cent. of the constituencies in the country, the only ones to which any test has been applied, in no instance has Sinn Féin dared to show its face at the hustings. Two Irish members, it is true, resigned uncompromisingly from the Irish Party and joined the new organisation in disgust at the scope of the Irish Council Bill. Sir Thomas Esmonde, who expressed his intention of resigning, was, with what it must have come to regret as indecent haste, elected a member of the Sinn Féin organisation, but within a few weeks declared his willingness "to act with the Parliamentary Party, or any other set of men who put the National question in the forefront," and went on to express his opinion that the chances of a Sinn Féin candidate in his constituency of North Wexford would be nil. So far at any rate Sinn Féiners must admit that "_beacoup de bruit, pen de fruit_" sums up their action in regard to Irish affairs. Any success in propagandism which they may have achieved is to be traced to a natural impatience, especially among _dilletante_ politicians, whose experience is purely academic, at the slowness of the Parliamentary machine in effecting reforms, but any force which it possesses is discounted by the fact that men whose views are extreme in youth tend to become the most moderate with advancing years--a fact of which a classic example is to be found in the career of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, one of the most distinguished of the Young Irelanders, who, after a brilliant career in Australia, returned to European his old age and spent several years in the attempt to persuade Conservatives to adopt the policy of Home Rule--a propaganda on his part to which the episode of Lord Carnarvon bears witness, and which was advocated by him in the _National_ and _Contemporary Reviews_ in 1884 and 1885. It may well be that the political groundlings who are at present the backbone of the Sinn Féin movement will, when they gain political experience, alter their views in as complete a manner. One can draw an English parallel to this movement in Ireland. There are in the former, as in the latter, country a certain limited number of people who hold extreme political views, which in the case of the English are pure socialism. The English extremists have been so far successful as to secure the return of one Member of Parliament in full sympathy with their aspirations. The Irish extremists have not so far dared to put to the test their chance of obtaining even one Parliamentary ewe lamb. Without the advantage which the English _intransigeants_ possess, of a few weeks' knowledge on the part of one person of the inside working of Parliamentary government, in exactly the same manner as do the Englishmen of the same type, these Irishmen spend their time reviling popular representatives as ignorant, venal, and beneath contempt. A prophet who, on the basis of the election of Mr. Grayson, foretold an imminent dissolution of the democratic forces in Great Britain, would in truth have more ground on which to base his forecast than has one who from the nebulous movements of the Sinn Féin party, arrives at an analogous conclusion in the case of Ireland. That the political landmarks in Ireland have in the last few years shifted is obvious to the most superficial observer. The devolutionist secession from orthodox Unionism, the Independent Orange Lodge represented by Mr. Sloan, the "Russellite" Ulster tenant-farmers, and the rise of a democratic vote in Belfast regardless of the strife of sects, all serve as indications of this fact; but let it be noted that while we have evidences in these directions of the forces at work in the disintegration of the old Orange strongholds, we have no such obvious indications of the upheaval going on in the traditional Nationalist Party, save only the mere _ipse dixit_ of the very people who assure us that they themselves are making it felt. There is every reason to suppose that the Sinn Féin movement, in so far as it consists of passive resistance, will be regarded by the Irish people as merely doing nothing. They could understand a non-Parliamentary action were it replaced by physical force, and the weakness of passive resistance lies precisely in this, that the logical result of its failure is an appeal to armed revolt which no man in his senses can in modern conditions in Ireland think possible, or, if possible, calculated to be other than disastrous. The attempt which the Sinn Féin organisation has consistently, if unsuccessfully, made to arrogate to itself all credit for the progress of the Gaelic League and of the Industrial Revival, is singularly disingenuous in view of the assistance which both those movements have received and are receiving from the Parliamentary Party and its allies. The provisions of the Merchandise Marks Act, and the fact that through the agency of members of the Irish Party the Foreign Office has directed British Consuls abroad to publish separately the returns of Irish imports, which have hitherto been lost by their inclusion in the returns under the one head "British," will do far more for the development of the Irish export trade than the well-meaning but academic resolutions of their critics; and in the matter of social reform I have yet to learn that any body of men have done such good work for their country as have the Irish members by the passing into law, on their initiative, of the Labourers Act, by which nearly half a million of the Irish population will be rescued from conditions of life which, with a population lacking the religious sense of the Irish poor, would have resulted in absolute moral degradation. I have spoken throughout of the exponents of Sinn Féin as of a party, but it is difficult to find the common measure of agreement which such a term connotes in the heterogeneous elements which for the moment call themselves by the same name. We read of old Fenians, who have ever hankered after physical force, presiding over meetings to expound passive resistance in which young Republicans from Belfast rub shoulders with men whose ideal is vaguely expressed as repeal--a return one must suppose to that anomalous constitution of Grattan's Parliament in which, while the legislature was independent the Executive was not responsible thereto, but went out of office with the Ministry in the Parliament at Westminster. Irish Parliamentary candidates are selected under a system in which the party caucus has far less share than in any part of the three kingdoms. They have behind them the credentials of popular election which are not possessed by a single one of the self-constituted group of critics who assail them; and one need only say that vague, unfounded charges as to political probity, in no instance substantiated by a single shred of proof, do not redound to the credit of those who frame them. When the advocates of Sinn Féin can point to a record of services as disinterested and as consistent as those of the Irish Parliamentary Party, when they can produce evidence of work in the immediate past as fruitful for the good of their country as the Labourers Act, the Town Tenants Act, and the Merchandise Marks Act, they will have some ground upon which to claim a hearing from their countrymen. Till then they have no cause to throw stones at those who are honestly working for the good of their country, although they do not proclaim themselves on the housetops the only patriotic section of the Irish people. Not one of the advocates of this bloodless war which they propose has, so far as I am aware, in spite of three years spent in preaching on the subject, refused to pay income tax, the only tax resistance to which is possible in Ireland. Those who hold Civil Service appointments under the British Crown have not in a single instance, unless I am mistaken, handed in their resignations. These are the criticisms which they inevitably draw down on their heads by stooping to make imputations as to men whose services to the country should put them above reach of anything of the kind. Within the last few months two of the leaders of Sinn Féin appeared, in the course of a few weeks--the one as plaintiff, the other as defendant--represented by a Tory counsel, in the Four Courts in Dublin, before a member of a foreign judiciary, which on their fundamental axiom should be taboo. The reason is to be found, perhaps, in the fact that they have not yet devised a means by which attachment and committal for contempt of their proposed amateur tribunals will be made effectual. The method by which the resolutions of the National Council are to be carried into effect has not yet been explained, nor have the means by which they will acquire a sanction in so far as their breach will involve the offender in a punishment. We have yet to learn what guarantee there is that the consuls in foreign parts, whom they propose to establish and maintain by voluntary subscription, will be given any facilities by the countries in which they are stationed, without which their presence in those foreign countries would be of no service whatever. Half a century ago a great voluntary effort, which may well be called Sinn Féin, was made in the foundation of the Catholic University in Dublin. In spite of the glamour of John Henry Newman's name it was crippled from the fact of the poverty of the country on the voluntary contributions of which it had to depend. One may well ask if the exponents of the new policy have any confidence that the same obstacle will not stand in the way of more than a trivial fraction of their extensive, and as I think Utopian, proposals. The No Rent Manifesto fell flat in the midst of the very bitterest struggle of the land war. Does anyone think it likely that we shall see behind the doctrinaires of the Sinn Féin group a country united in cold blood to repudiate its obligations under the Land Purchase and Labourers' Acts? The Irish people are under no illusions as to the advocates of Sinn Féin, and will, I am convinced, refuse to judge it on its own valuation. If for no other reason its exponents would be suspect in that they have not scrupled to assure a sympathetic Orange audience of the fact that they are on the point of rending asunder the allegiance of Ireland to the National cause. While protesting aloud their patriotism they have not thought it incompatible with their declarations to flood the columns of the Unionist Press--the most hostile to the democracy of their country--with expositions of their views, coupled with strident denunciations of their Nationalist opponents. Their tirades have been received with open arms by the Orangemen as affording a weapon in the division of their common enemy, by which may be maintained that _de facto_, if not _de jure_, ascendancy, which in spite of the ballot, the extended franchise, and local government, persists in Ireland. But, on the other hand, as has been well said, the fact is not lost on the great bulk of the Irish people that it is from the Sinn Féin section--the little coterie which professes to stand for every sort of idealism--that all the imputations and innuendoes have come. This extreme school, of course, will in no sense be pleased by ameliorative legislation as applied by this or any other Government, because the worse England treats Ireland the stronger will be their position, and every concession gained by the country is so much ground cut from under their feet; but the policy of refusing all attempts at piecemeal improvement, on the ground that a complete reversal of the existing system is called for, may be magnificent, and on this there must be two opinions, but it is not practical politics which will commend itself to the ordinary Irishman. "Men," wrote Edmund Burke more than a hundred years ago, "do not live upon blotted paper; the favourable or the unfavourable mind of the rulers is of more consequence to a nation than the black letter of any statute." Irish people are not likely to fail to realise this, and the experience of the past is such as to show that remedial legislation has been powerless to stay the National demand, and concessions, so far from putting a period to the appeals of the people for the control of their own affairs, have rather increased the vehemence of their demand, for with democracy, as with most things, _l'appétit vient en mangeant_. As against the body which we have been considering one hears people speaking of the liberal school of Unionists--the rise of which is so marked a product of recent years in Ireland--as a body who represent the moderate section of opinion, the demands of which are reasonable and comprise all that the Liberal Party can be expected to concede; and among this section of recent writers on Irish politics three stand out prominently by reason of their position and of their proposals:--Mr. T.W. Russell, in "Ireland and the Empire," preached with cogent force the need for the last step in the expropriation of the Irish landlords, the one great obstacle, in his eyes, to a prosperous and contented Ireland. In the economic field Sir Horace Plunkett has pleaded, in "Ireland in the New Century," for the salvation of the Irish race by the development of industries; while in the political sphere Lord Dunraven, in "The Outlook in Ireland," has urged the pressing need for the closer association of Irishmen with the government of their own country. I am not concerned to deny the remarkable fact which these volumes indicate in the change of view on the part of three representative Protestant and Unionist Irishmen; but in this connection two things, on which sufficient stress has not so far been laid, must be recalled. In the first place the members of what is called the middle party are recruits not from Nationalism but from Unionism; it is some of the members of the latter party who have abated their vehemence, and not any of those of the former who have altered their orientation in respect of great democratic principles. To speak of the new school of opinion as a party, moreover, is to overstate the case as to the relative positions of three small groups of Unionist opinion, which have little or nothing in common except a joint denunciation of the present _régime_. The views of Mr. Russell with regard to compulsory purchase are not, one suspects, those of Lord Dunraven. Lord Dunraven's views as to Devolution, it may be surmised, are too democratic for Sir Horace Plunkett, and are not sufficiently democratic for Mr. Russell. It is impossible to conceive a plan of reform which would enjoy the support of all these three while the ideas of ameliorative work entertained by the body of Orangemen led by Mr. Sloan, who are disgusted by the attitude traditionally attached to their order, would, there is no doubt, differ from those of any others. It would be impossible to find a common denominator between the views of these modern converts from the old Unionism which presented an unbending refusal to every demand for reform and held as sacrosanct the existing state of affairs, constitutional and social. That the numbers of the moderate Unionists of all sections are at present small is not surprising. The country has too long been governed as a dependency, with the Protestant gentry as the _oculus reipublicae_, for the "garrison" readily to waive that which they have come to look upon as their inalienable heritage. That the numbers of Orangemen will grow small by degrees as a result of land purchase is the general belief; but it must not be forgotten that the more violent among them, in their efforts to rake the ashes; and blow up the cinders of dead prejudices and extinguished hate, will have the backing of a powerful Press, the eagerness of the greatest organ of which in this matter in the past led to the worst blow its prestige has ever endured. Liberal statesmen during the recent general election were constrained to call attention to the manner in which the power of the Press had been exploited by a few persons who had endeavoured to secure a "corner" in those sources of political education, and the obviousness of the policy, it was admitted, did something to defeat its own ends. Of one thing we may be certain, the Orange drum will be beaten once more, for the old ascendancy spirit will die hard; all the devices of artificial respiration will be called in to prolong its life, and when it does breathe its last one may expect it to do so in the arms of its friends in an attic in Printing House Square. One can only hope that the "ultras" will pitch their tone too high, and that their efforts to revive the old perverse antipathies will fail, so that Irish Unionists will realise, as some of them are doing already, that patriotism, like charity, begins at home, and that they cannot compound for distrust of their own countrymen by loud-voiced protestations of loyalty to the blessings of British rule. It was very generally admitted that the logical outcome of Mr. Wyndham's Land Act was an Irish authority to stand between the Irish tenant and the British Exchequer, which, under the Act, is left in the invidious position of an absentee landlord to people who dislike its ascendancy and distrust its administrative methods, while an Irish authority with a direct interest in the transaction would be able to see that payments were punctually made. In the not very likely contingency of failure to do this, under the Act as passed, the remedy which lies, is for the Treasury to stop administrative payments to local bodies, an action which would bring Government to a standstill and plunge the country into disaffection. Mr. T.W. Russell has long advocated the creation at Westminster of a Grand Committee of Irish members to deal with the Estimates and with Irish legislation; and, as if there were not a plethora of proposals for the modification of the present system of Government, the plans of the Irish Reform Association have for the last three years been before the country. The object of their first proposal is the creation of a Financial Council to which the control of Irish expenditure should be handed by the Treasury with the object of making it interested in economising in finance for Irish purposes. Their proposal with regard to Private Bill Legislation is merely that the principle adopted in 1899 in the case of Scottish Private Bills should apply to Ireland, and this has not met with much objection. Under it local inquiries, which are at present conducted at Westminster, would be carried out in the localities affected, with much saving of expense; and it is only necessary to add that as long ago as 1881 a Bill was introduced to transfer from Westminster to Ireland the semi-judicial and semi-legislative business entailed in the passage of Private Bills through Parliament. The statutory administrative council proposed by the Irish Reform Association was to consist of thirteen members, of whom six were to be elected by the County Councils, six were to be the nominees of the Crown, while the Lord Lieutenant, who was to preside as chairman, was to have the right to exercise the privilege of a casting vote. From a democratic point of view such a body would be an assembly _pour rire_, and would only serve to entrench the present bureaucracy more securely by the semblance of representation which it would offer, while retaining the power of the purse in the hands of a body carefully constituted in such a way that the small minority who comprise the ascendancy faction in the country would be permanently maintained in a majority on the council. A great deal more could be said in defence of another proposal which has been mooted--namely, that the principle of proportional representation should be adopted. In a country like Ireland, where the dividing line between the two great parties is unusually wide, with an ordinary system of small constituencies, the men of intermediate views like those of Mr. Sloan or of the members of the Reform Association would, even though they existed in much larger numbers than is the case, not secure any great measure of representation, but in comparatively large constituencies this would not be so. The attitude of the Nationalists in anticipation of the Government proposal of last session was expressed by Mr. Redmond, speaking on St. Patrick's Day at Bradford:-- "If the scheme gave the Irish people genuine power and control over questions of administration alone, if it left unimpaired the National movement and the National Party, and if it lightened the financial burden under which Ireland staggered, then very possibly Ireland might seriously consider whether such a scheme ought not to be accepted for what it was worth." The Irish Council Bill, as all the world knows, proposed to set up in Dublin an administrative Council, consisting of 82 elected, 24 nominated, members, with the Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant as an _ex officio_ member. This body was to have control over eight of the forty-five departments which constitute "Dublin Castle"--namely, those relating to Local Government, Public Works, National Education, Intermediate Education, the Registrar-General's Office, Public Works, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, Congested Districts, and Reformatory Schools. The nature of the departments excluded from its jurisdiction is of more consequence, including as they do the Supreme Court of Judicature, the Royal Irish Constabulary, the Dublin Metropolitan Police, the Land Commission, and the Prisons' Board. The Bill proposed that the Council should be elected triennially on the same franchise as that on which local authorities are at present elected, and its powers were to be exercised by four Committees--of Local Government, Finance, Education, and Public Works--the decisions of which were to come up before the Council as a whole, for alteration or approval. The Bill proposed to constitute an Irish Treasury with an Irish fund of £4,000,000, made up of the moneys at present voted to the departments concerned, together with an additional £650,000. The sums paid into this fund were to be fixed by the Imperial Parliament every five years. Finally, the resolutions of the Council, by Clause 3 of the Bill, were subject to the confirmation of the Lord Lieutenant, who, by the same clause, was to be empowered to reserve such resolutions for his own consideration, to remit them for further consideration by the Council, or, lastly, "if in the opinion of the Lord Lieutenant immediate action is necessary with respect to the matter to which the resolution relates, in order to preserve the efficiency of the service, or to prevent public or private injury, the Lord Lieutenant may make such order with respect to the matter as in his opinion the necessity of the case requires, and any order so made shall have the same effect and operate in the same manner as if it were the resolution of the Irish Council." These were the provisions of the measure which the Liberals introduced to the disappointment of their Unionist opponents, who had foretold that it would be a Home Rule Bill under some form of alias, intended to dupe the predominant partner. It is to be noted that in 1885 Mr. Chamberlain made a proposal which was on the same lines as this, but went further in one respect--that there was no nominated element on the Board which he proposed to create, and furthermore, the powers of the departments would under it have been transferred to a single elective Board, whereas under the Council Bill the departments were to be suffered to continue, albeit under control. Lord Randolph Churchill was prepared at the time of Mr. Chamberlain's proposal to give even more than the latter wished to concede, but both proposals were forgotten on the announcement by Mr. Gladstone of his intention to legislate on a comprehensive basis. The attitude of Mr. Redmond on the first reading of the Bill has been so grossly misrepresented by the English Press, both Liberal and Conservative, which published only carefully-prepared epitomes of his speech, that it is necessary that one should devote some attention to what he actually said. After asserting that no one could expect him or his colleagues--until they had the actual Bill in their hand and had time to consider every portion of the scheme, and to elicit Irish public opinion with reference to it--to offer a deliberate or final judgment, Mr. Redmond went on to reaffirm what the Irish people have long considered the minimum demand which can satisfy their aspirations, and declared that since the measure was introduced as neither a substitute nor an alternative for Home Rule, he would proceed to consider its terms. "Does the scheme," the Irish leader went on to ask, "give a genuine and effective control to Irish public opinion over those matters of administration referred to the Council? If not the scheme is worse than useless." After protesting strongly against the nominated element in the Council as being undemocratic, Mr. Redmond went on to express his willingness "to accept it or any other safeguard that the wit of man could devise, consistent with the ordinary principles of representative government, which is necessary to show the minority in Ireland that their fears are groundless." He then proceeded strongly to criticise the power of the Lord Lieutenant under Clause 3--a power not confined to a mere exercise of veto such as is possessed by a colonial governor, but something much more than this--"a power on the part of the Lord Lieutenant to interfere with and thwart every single act, so that a hostile Lord Lieutenant might stop the whole machine. If that was the intention of the Government it destroyed the valuable and genuine character of the power given to the Council." Having protested against the proposal that the Chairmen of Committees were to be the nominees of the Lord Lieutenant, and, therefore, not necessarily in sympathy with the majority of the Council, Mr. Redmond went on to say:--"The whole question hinges on whether the finance is adequate. The money grant is ludicrously inadequate. I fear that the £650,000 would be mortgaged from the day the measure passed, and that it would be impossible with such an amount to work the scheme." Mr. Redmond then concluded his speech with the paragraph to which most prominence was given in the English Press, with a view to suggest that he accepted, with only minor reservations, the proposals of the Government. I quote it _in extenso_ to show how slender is the ground for this imputation:-- "I am most anxious to find, if I can, in this scheme an instrument which, while admittedly it will not solve the Irish problem, will, at any rate, remove some of the most glaring and palpable causes which keep Ireland poverty-stricken and Irishmen hopeless and disaffected. It is in that spirit that my colleagues and I will address ourselves to the Bill. We shrink from the responsibility of rejecting anything which after the full consideration which this Bill will secure, seems to our deliberate judgment calculated to ease the suffering of Ireland, and hasten the day of full convalescence."[27] No one can suggest, in view of these words, that Mr. Redmond committed himself or his colleagues to anything further than to consider the Bill in a critical but not a hostile spirit. As to the suggestion that a vote for the first reading and the printing of the Bill in any sense involved the party in even a modified acceptance of the measure, in doing so the Irish members were acting in fulfilment of a pledge given by Mr. Redmond six months before, when, speaking on September 23rd, he said:-- "When the scheme is produced it will be anxiously and carefully examined. It will be submitted to the judgment of the Irish people, and no decision will be come to, whether by me or by the Irish Party, until the whole question has been submitted to a National Convention. When the hour of that Convention comes any influence which I possess with my fellow-countrymen will be used to induce them firmly to reject any proposal, no matter how plausible, which, in my judgment, may be calculated to injure the prestige of the Irish Party and disrupt the National movement, because my first and my greatest policy, which overshadows everything else, is to preserve a united National Party in Parliament, and a United powerful organisation in Ireland, until we have achieved the full measure of National freedom to which we are entitled." If the Irish Party had not voted for the first reading we should have been told by their critics that their action was a despotic attempt to override and smother the freely-expressed opinions of the Irish people, but it must not be forgotten that it is due to Mr. Redmond's own initiative that in the case of this Bill, as in the case of the Land Bill of 1903, the final decision has rested, not, as in the case of the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, with the members of the Parliamentary Party, but, by a sort of referendum, with a National Convention containing representative Irishmen elected for the purpose from every part of the country in the most democratic manner. It is worthy of attention that the very people who five years ago were declaring in Great Britain that Home Rule was dead and damned were those who were loudest during the general election in the attempt to raise latent prejudice on that score, and to bring it to pass that the condition of things existing twenty years ago was repeated when, as Lord Salisbury declared in a speech to the National Conservative Club, "all the politics of the moment are summarised in the one word--Ireland." In spite of these facts, Mr. Balfour, speaking on the first reading of the Council Bill, was constrained to admit that it bore no resemblance to any plan which the Irish people had ever advocated, and he went on to declare his inability to see how by any process of development it was capable of being turned into anything which the Nationalists ever contemplated. The unanimity with which the Bill was repudiated by Nationalist public opinion in Ireland is to be seen from the fact that not a single voice was raised on its behalf at the National Convention, comprising 3,000 delegates, which was the most representative meeting of any kind which has ever been held in Ireland. The reasons for its rejection are to be read in the light of the repeatedly expressed opinions of the more radical section of the Ministerial Party, to the effect that a bolder and more comprehensive scheme might have been well introduced without any infringement of the election pledges of the Government. Under Clause 3 the Lord Lieutenant, an officer under the new _régime_, as now, of a British Ministry, would have been empowered to act in defiance of the opinion of the Council either by modifying their resolutions as to Executive action or by overriding them by orders of his own, or rather of the Ministry of which he was a member. On points such as this dealing with the constitution of the assembly, Mr. Redmond was able to inform the Convention that no amendments would be accepted by the Government, and experience has taught Irishmen that although these powers might generally, under a Liberal Government, be exercised in a legitimate manner, under a Unionist Lord Lieutenant they would be exercised in a despotic fashion, just as, in the words of the Estates Commissioners themselves, the instructions issued by the Lord Lieutenant in February, 1905, were designed "seriously to impede the expeditious working of the Land Act of 1903." Great objection was taken to the fact that the resources of the Council would be such as to effect little administrative improvement, since the departments under its control were the very bodies which demanded increased expenditure, while it left untouched the Police, the Prisons' Board, and the Judiciary, the reckless extravagance of which afforded obvious sources from which, by modification of their wasteful expense, one could make large economies for the benefit of those portions of the Irish service which at the present moment are starved. Though it may be said that the acceptance of the Bill without prejudice would not have stultified the principles already vindicated in a long struggle by the Irish people, the body as constituted, it was felt, would have served the purpose of the Unionist party by dividing without a sufficient _quid pro quo_ the attention of the Irish people from their devotion to the cause for the broad principles of which they have been striving, and there was this further danger that a body so restricted in its scope and anti-democratic in its administration would have broken down in action, and would have in this way provided Unionists with the very strongest possible argument for opposition to a full autonomy. While a certain proportion of Liberals are prepared to admit that the Bill made havoc of Liberal principles there is a Laodicean section who have greatly blamed Irish Nationalists for having refused what was offered them, when having asked for bread they were given a stone. To such people as I have in mind I should like to quote what Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Hartington on November 10th, 1885:-- "If that consummation--the concession to Ireland of full power to manage her own local affairs--is in any way to be contemplated, action at a stroke will be more honourable, less unsafe, less uneasy than the jolting process of a series of partial measures."[28] The position of that section of Liberals is strange which is represented by the assertion that their party has already made enough sacrifices in regard to Irish affairs, and which is anxious to return to the _laissez faire_ policy of their mid-Victorian predecessors. The point I submit is this, either Liberals do or they do not believe in the principle of self-government as applied to Ireland, and if they do adhere to it no effort is too great, no difficulty too extreme, for them to face in the attempt to solve so serious a problem. Those who think that because in 1886, and again in 1893, the Liberals, with Irish support, unsuccessfully attempted to solve the Irish question, they have thereby contracted out of their moral obligation, take a very curious view of the responsibilities of popular government; but it is not so strange as the position of those who hold that because in 1907 the Irish people refused a particular form of change in the methods of government for which they never asked, they have in consequence closed every avenue to constitutional reform which can be opened for many years. In politics it is often the unexpected that happens, and he would be a bold prophet who should declare it impossible that within a few years Liberals may not return _in toto_ to the advocacy of sound principles in regard to Ireland, the abandonment of which is to be traced to the recrudescence of Whiggism after Mr. Gladstone's death and the desire to find some line of policy which might be pilloried as a scapegoat to account for the disgust of the country with a divided party in the years following 1895. Liberalism, for its part, if it is to settle the problem, must fully appreciate the fact that its proposals, if they are to succeed, must be accepted with the full concurrence of the Irish representative majority, and on the part of Irishmen what is demanded is a recognition of the results of the dispensation which has placed the two islands side by side; by these means only can a practicable policy be ensured, but it must be remembered with regard to those in Ireland who hold extreme views, that the continuance of the system of government which holds the field, and the financial burden at the expense of Ireland which it perpetuates, serve increasingly to obscure and at the same time to counteract the advantages accruing from the connection between the two countries, which one may hope would, in happier circumstances, be obvious. The Irish people still appreciate the force of that maxim of Edmund Burke's, that the things which are not practicable are not desirable. While they claim that as of right they are entitled to demand a separation of the bonds, to the forging of which they were not consenting parties, as practical men they are prepared loyally to abide by a compromise which will maintain the union of the crowns while separating the Legislatures. An international contract leaving them an independent Parliament with an Executive responsible to it, having control over domestic affairs, is their demand. Grattan's constitution comprised a sovereign Parliament with a non-Parliamentary Executive, in so far as the latter was appointed and dismissed by English Ministers. The constitution which is demanded to-day is the same as that enjoyed by such a colony as Victoria, with a non-sovereign Parliament, having, that is, a definite limit to its legislative powers, such as those under the Bill of 1886 referring to Church Establishment and Customs, but having an Executive directly responsible to it. The case of the Irish people has never been put with more clearness and frankness than it was by Mr. Redmond in the House of Commons two years ago. Having been accused by Unionists of adopting a more extreme line outside Parliament than that which he followed at St. Stephen's, the Irish leader in reply, after declaring that separation from Great Britain would be better than a continuance of the present method of government, and that he should feel bound to recommend armed revolt if there were any chance of its success, went on to say:-- "I am profoundly convinced that by constitutional means, and within the constitution, it is possible to arrive at a compromise based upon the concession of self-government--or, as Mr. Gladstone used to call it, autonomy--to Ireland, which would put an end to this ancient international quarrel upon terms satisfactory and honourable to both nations." An Orangeman described the late Government as being engaged in the useless task of trying to conciliate those who will not be conciliated. The words of Mr. Redmond indicate the one way in which a _Pacata Hibernia_ can be secured within the Empire. It is a compromise, but it has this one virtue which compromises rarely possess--that it will satisfy the great mass of the Irish people, and it concedes, as we hold, no vital principle. CHAPTER X CONCLUSION "Unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations." --EDMUND BURKE. The position of the mass of the Irish people with regard to the present form of government has nowhere been more cogently expressed than in the chapter on the Union in the "Cambridge Modern History," the writer of which describes it as a settlement by compulsion, not by consent; and the penalty of such methods is, that the instrument possesses no moral validity for those who do not accept the grounds on which it was adopted. If Englishmen get this firmly fixed in their minds they will understand that we regard all Unionist reforms, whether from Liberal or Conservative Governments, as instalments of conscience money, in regard to which, granting our premises, it would be sheer affectation to express surprise or to feign disgust at the lack of effusive gratitude with which we receive them. "Give us back our ancient liberties" has been the cry of the Irish people ever since George III. gave his assent to the Act of Union. The ties of sentiment which bind her colonies so closely to Great Britain are conspicuous by their absence in the case of Ireland. The ties of common interest which are not less strong in the matter of her colonial possessions are, albeit in existence as far as Great Britain and Ireland are concerned, obscured and vitiated by the system of taxation which makes the poorer country contribute to the joint expenses at a rate altogether disproportionate to her means, and which, while making her in this wise pay the piper, in no sense allows her to call the tune. Never has there been applied in Ireland that doctrine which the _Times_ enunciated so sententiously half a century ago in speaking of the Papal States--"The destiny of a nation ought to be determined not by the opinions of other nations but by the opinion of the nation itself. To decide whether they are well governed or not is for those who live under that government." If the _Times_ were to apply the wisdom of these words to the situation in Ireland instead of screaming "Separatism" at every breath of a suggestion of the extension of democratic principles in Ireland, it would take steps to secure a condition of things under which the people would not be alienated and would be a source of strength and not of weakness. Writing in that paper in 1880, at a time when Ireland was seething with lawlessness, Charles Gordon declared--"I must say that the state of our countrymen in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as we are, that they are patient beyond belief, loyal but broken-spirited and desperate; lying on the verge of starvation where we would not keep cattle." On the day after the murder of Mr. Burke in the Phoenix Park a permanent Civil Servant was sent straight from the admiralty to take his place as Under Secretary. Sir Robert Hamilton who served in Dublin in those trying conditions became a convinced Home Ruler, as did his chief, Lord Spencer; and it is generally said to have been Sir Robert who converted Mr. Gladstone to Home Rule. On the return to power of the Conservatives, after the defeat of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, Sir Robert Hamilton was retired, and in his stead Sir Redvers Buller was sent to rule Ireland _manu militari_. This officer, on being examined by Lord Cowper's Commission, expressed his opinion that the National League had been the tenants' best, if not their only, friend. "You have got," he said, "a very ignorant, poor people, and the law should look after them, instead of which it has only looked after the rich." To hold opinions so unconventional in the service of a Unionist Viceroy was impossible, and in a year other fields for Sir Redvers' activities were found. Sir West Ridgeway, who succeeded him, served as Mr. Balfour's lieutenant during the latter's efforts to "kill Home Rule with kindness," and it is significant to find him at this day writing articles in the reviews on the disappearance of Unionism, and pinning his faith to Dunravenism as the next move. It is assuredly a remarkable fact that the shrewdest of English statesmen have not been able to see the complication with which the Irish problem is entangled. Macaulay imagined that the religious difficulty was the crux of the Irish question, but Emancipation did not bring the expected peace and contentment in its train. John Bright imagined that the agrarian question was the only obstacle to reconciliation, but a recognition three-quarters of a century after the Union that the laws of tenure are made for man and not man for the laws of tenure, failed to put an end to Irish disaffection. Mr. Gladstone thought in 1870 that the Irish problem was solved. Complicated as the question has been in its various aspects--religious, racial, economic, and agrarian--our demands have too often and too long been met in the spirit of the Levite who passed by on the other side, until violence has forced tardy redress, acquiesced in with reluctance. If the action of Wellington and Peel was pusillanimous in granting Emancipation, for the express purpose of resisting which they were placed in power, backed as they were in their refusal by their allies in Ireland, the next great measures of reform forty years later were admitted by Mr. Gladstone himself to be equally the result of violence and breaches of the law. The Queen's Speech of 1880 contained but a passing reference to Ireland and of the intention of the Government to rule without exceptional legislation; the Queen's Speech of 1881 contained reference to little but Ireland and of the intention of the Government to introduce a Coercion Bill. In July, 1885, Lord Salisbury's Viceroy, on taking office, deprecated the use of Coercion, but in January, 1886, the same Government introduced a Coercion Bill, though less than six months before they had repudiated it, and had beaten the Liberal Government on this very issue with the aid of the Irish vote. The manner in which both English parties have eaten their words is warranted to inculcate political cynicism. If in 1881 the Liberals are declared to have jettisoned their principles and to have perpetrated that which a few months before they declared would stultify their whole policy, the same damaging admission must be made by the Tories as to their acquiescence in the Franchise Bill of 1884 and their conduct of the Land Bill of 1887. "Anyone," said Cavour, "can govern in a state of siege," but I do not think Englishmen realise the extent to which the ruling policy has been to accentuate the repressive to the exclusion of the beneficent side of government, and how ready they have been to make the government not one of opinion, as in their own country, but one of force. When Mr. Balfour introduced his perpetual Coercion Bill of 1887 it was estimated that there had been one such measure for every year of the century that was passing. In the first instance, the institutions of Ireland, being imposed by a conquering country, never earned that measure of respect bred partly of pride which attaches itself to the self-sown customs and processes of nations; but, having introduced her legal system, England superseded it and took steps to rule by a code outside the Common Law, so that respect was, therefore, asked for legal institutions which, on her own showing, and by her own admissions, had proved inadequate. In Ireland Government did not "meet the headlong violence of angry power by covering the accused all over with the armour of the law," as in Erskine's famous phrase it did in England with regard to those imbued with revolutionary principles. A rusty statute of Edward III., which was devised for the suppression of brigandage, was used to condemn the leaders of the Irish people, unheard, in a court of law. Trial by jury was suspended and the common right of freedom of speech was infringed. In 1901 no less than ten Members of Parliament were imprisoned under the Crimes Act, and it was not until the appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell to the Under Secretaryship that the proclamation of the Coercion Act was withdrawn. It is no small matter that Mr. Bryce, when reviewing his period of office, mentioned among the details of his policy that he had set his face against jury-packing, and had allowed juries to be chosen perfectly freely. The suspension of the most cherished Common Law rights of the subject from Habeas Corpus downwards has been the inevitable result of a failure to apply democratic principles of government. Jury-packing, forbidden meetings, summary arrests and prosecutions, and police reporters form a discreditable paraphernalia by which to maintain the conduct of government. As examples of the differential treatment meted out to Ireland which is not of a nature to impress her with confidence in English methods may be mentioned the fact that the Irish militia are drafted out of the country for their training, that no citizen army of volunteers is permitted, and the desire of one faction to preserve these discriminations is to be seen in the anger with which was greeted the omission the other day of the Irish Arms Act from the Expiring Laws Continuation Bill. Under every bad government there arise popular organisations bred of the wildness of despair which enjoy the moral sanction which the law has failed to secure "When citizens," said Filangieri long ago, "see the Sword of Justice idle they snatch a dagger." So long as the Government sate on the safety valve, so long did periodic explosions of revolutionary resentment arise, and one must appreciate the fact that in a country so devoutly Catholic as is Ireland the natural conservatism which attachment to an historic Church inculcates, and the direction on its part of anathemas at secret societies and at violence, served to make it more difficult by far to arouse revolutionary reprisals than it would be in similar circumstances in England. "When bad men combine," wrote Edmund Burke, "the good must associate, else they will fall one by one an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." No one can accuse Burke--the apostle of constitutionalism, the arch-enemy of the French revolution--of condoning violence, but even he admitted that there is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. England must blame herself for the war of classes with which the National struggle has been complicated. It was the Act of Union which made the landlord class look to England, and established it in the anomalous position of a body drawing its income from one country and its support from another; by this means it made them a veritable English garrison appealing to England as being the only loyal people. Let us hope it is not true to say at this date that like the Bourbons they have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. The rich, the proud, and the powerful have had their day, and can one deny that the attempt to govern Ireland in the sole interests of a minority has made Ireland what it is. An unbiased French observer three-quarters of a century ago declared that the cause of Irish distress was its _mauvaise aristocratic_. It was the interest of this class, as they themselves admit, which was allowed to dominate the policy of the Unionist Party, and to effect this, force was the only available instrument. With the recognition of the fact that the possession of property is no guarantee of intelligence has come the crippling of the policy of _laissez faire_, supported though it was by the brewers of Dublin and the shipbuilders of Belfast, for this reason--that rich men tend always to rally to the defence of property. The exercise of the duties which property imposes and the responsibility which it entails being the chief advantages of a landed gentry, and their main _raison d'être_ as a ruling caste having been conspicuous by its absence, with few exceptions, in Ireland, the passing of the landowner as a social factor is looked upon with complacency. English statesmen seem to have applied that maxim of Machiavelli--that benefits should be conferred little by little so as to be more fully appreciated. It is hard to realise that little more than thirty years have elapsed since the time when the landed interest was supreme in these islands. Their power was first assailed by the Ballot Act of 1873, and the Corrupt Practices Act of 1884 did much to put a term to a form of intimidation at which Tories did not hold up their hands in horror, while the Franchise Act of 1883 destroyed their power, so that in those years passed away for ever the time when, as Archbishop Croke put it, an Irish borough would elect Barabbas for thirty pieces of silver. Of one thing, indeed, we may be certain, and that is that we have touched bottom in the matter of Unionist concessions. The manner in which the programme mapped out between Mr. Wyndham and Sir Antony MacDonnell was rendered nugatory is evidence of that. The administration of the Land Act, under the secret instructions issued by Dublin Castle, was such as to cripple the Estates Commissioners in their application of its provisions. The proposals as to the settlement of the University question were nipped in the bud after advances had been made to the Catholic bishops to discover what was the minimum which they would accept, and this was done although Mr. Balfour had declared at Manchester in 1899--"Unless the University question can be settled Unionism is a failure." Mr. F.H. Dale, an English Inspector of Schools, who, in the last couple of years, has produced two comprehensive blue books on the state of primary and secondary education in Ireland, declared that he found the desire for higher education in Ireland greater than in England; but in spite of this, so far, neither British party has advanced one step in the direction of a permanent solution, pleading as excuse that the fear of strengthening the hands of the priests blocks the way, albeit a university under predominatingly lay control is all that even the hierarchy in Ireland demand; while to add to the groundlessness on which intolerance is based the only institution of a satisfactory kind which is endowed by the State is a Jesuit College supported by what one can only call circuitous means. Mr. Balfour himself has admitted that no Protestant parent could conscientiously send his son to a college which was as Catholic as Trinity is Protestant. If Oxford and Cambridge had been founded by foreign Catholics for the express purpose of destroying the Protestant religion in England, a thirty years' abolition of tests, which in no sense affected their "atmosphere," would not have overcome the prejudice and scruples persisting against them. The vicious circles round which Irish questions rotate is nowhere seen more clearly than in this connection. When complaint is made that a disproportionately small number of Catholics hold high appointments in the public offices in Ireland, the reply is made that the number of members of that Church with high educational qualifications is small; when demands are made for facilities for higher education, the reluctance of English people to publicly endow sectarian education is urged as an excuse, although Irishmen have not, since Trinity abolished tests, made any demands for a purely sectarian University or College. I have shown how, as a result of our aloofness from both English parties, we find ourselves between the upper and the nether millstones, and in what way in regard to the University question the old error which for so long obstructed the land question is at work--mean the error of denying reform for English reasons and endeavouring to force English doctrines into the law and government of Ireland and of suppressing Irish customs and Irish ideas. On the advent to power of the present Government the heads of the great departments in Whitehall excused their apparent dilatoriness in effecting those administrative changes which the country expected from a Liberal Government, by the fact that after twenty years of Conservative rule the permanent officials were so steeped in the methods of Toryism their habits were to such a degree tinged and coloured by its policy, that there was the greatest possible difficulty in making the necessary alterations. In the case of Ireland this is so to a much greater extent, and one must recognise the truth of that saying of some Irish member to the effect that a new Chief Secretary was like the change of the dial on a clock--the difference was not great, for the works remain the same. The main arguments against reform are founded on prophetic fears, and if one is impressed by the threats of a _jacquerie_ on the part of the Orangemen, led though they may be again, as they were twenty years ago, by a Minister of Cabinet rank, Nationalists, on the other hand, may remind Englishmen that the Irish volcanoes are not yet extinct, and that the history of reform is such as to show the value of violence on the failure of peaceful persuasion--a feature the most lamentable in Irish politics; and in this connection let it never be forgotten that "the warnings of Irish members," as Mr. Morley wrote in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ on the introduction of the Coercion Bill which followed the Phoenix Park murders, "have a most unpleasant knack of coming true." When the counsels of prudence coincide with the claims of justice, surely the last word had been said to disarm opposition. "Old Buckshot," said Parnell grimly enough in 1881, "thinks that by making Ireland a gaol he will settle the Irish question." Throwing over that theory Great Britain decided in 1884--in the phrase then current--that to count heads was better than to break them, but having counted them she ignored their verdict, and has continued so to do for more than twenty years. One would have thought that she would have applied the rigour of her theories and put an end to this travesty by which she has conceded the letter of democracy--a phantom privilege which she has rendered nugatory. It was the impossibility of ignoring the constitutionally-expressed wishes of the Irish people after he had extended the suffrage, which made Mr. Gladstone a Home Ruler, and Englishmen have to remember that this, the only remedy in the whole of their political materia medica which they have not tried, is the one which has effected a cure wherever else it has been applied. I ask, to what does England look forward in a prolongation of the present conditions? There is no finality in the politics of Ireland any more than in those of other countries. She cannot say to Ireland--"Thus far shalt thou go, and no further." As one burning question is solved another arises to take its place and to demand redress. The battle for the moment may seem to be to the strong, but in the long run might is unable to resist the advances of right. Time, we may well declare, is on our side; but one has to count the cost in the material damage to us, and in the moral damage to Great Britain, in the ultimate concession, perhaps under duress, of so much which has repeatedly been refused. Ever since, in 1881, Mr. Gladstone "banished to Saturn the laws of political economy," strong measures of State socialism have been enacted by both parties. It is not for nothing that the tenants in the West find themselves to-day paying less than half for their holdings of what they paid twenty years ago, and paying it, moreover, not by way of rent but as a terminable annuity. If there is one point which the events of the last generation have established in their eyes it is this--that Parnell was justified in telling them to keep a firm grip of their holdings, and that Great Britain has admitted the justice of the grounds on which their agitation was based, by the revolution in the social fabric which she has set in train by the Land Purchase Acts. Who was the witty Frenchman who declared that England was an island and that every Englishman was an island? It is not only because of this preoccupation with their own affairs that their _amour propre_ has been injured by their failure in Ireland. One cannot expect to gather figs from thistles or grapes from thorns, and when Englishmen appreciate to how small an extent the Union has enured to the advantage of Ireland, they will understand the feelings which actuate the desire for self-government. Is there anything which makes Englishmen believe that the extension of Land Purchase or the foundation of a university will make for a permanent settlement? The history of the last half century can scarcely make them sanguine that when the burning questions of to-day have been disposed of they will find in the Imperial Parliament the knowledge, the interest, or the time necessary for dealing with new questions as they arise--for arise they assuredly will. Great Britain may legislate with lazy, ill-informed, good intentions, as Mr. Gladstone admitted was done in the case of the Encumbered Estates Act, or she may grant concessions piecemeal, and the minority which thereby she maintains will denounce every reform as mere _panem et circenses_ by which she hopes to keep the majority subdued. The "loyal minority" have cried "wolf" too often. Nearly forty years ago, when Disestablishment was threatened, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin said--"You will put to Irish Protestants the choice between apostacy and expatriation, and every man among them who has money or position, when he sees his Church go, will leave the country. If you do that, you will find Ireland so difficult to manage that you will have to depend on the gibbet and the sword." The twenty-five attempts to settle by legislation the land question were in nearly every instance denounced as spoliation by the House of Lords, which was constrained to let them pass into law. The pages of Hansard are grey with unfulfilled forebodings as to what would be the effect of the extension of the Franchise and of the grant of popular Local Government. The results of the former took the wind out of the sails of those who declared that popular wishes in Ireland were overridden by a political caucus, the success of local government has given Orangemen occasion to blaspheme. The history of Irish legislation on all these points has been one of belated concession to demands repeatedly made, at first scouted and finally surrendered. And withal, English statesmen have not killed Home Rule with kindness. "Twenty years of resolute government" were confidently expected to give Irish Nationalism its _quietus. E pur si muove._ NOTES [1] L. Paul-Dubois. _L'Irlande Contemporaine_, p. 174. [2] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill," Vol. II., p. 455. [3] _L'Irlande Contemporaine_, p. 232. [4] Hansard, August 1, 1881. [5] _Ibid._, September 3, 1886. [6] _Ibid._, August 19, 1886. [7] _Ibid._, March 22, 1887. [8] _Ibid._, April 22, 1887. [9] _Ibid._, February 14, 1907. [10] The statement in the text, written shortly after the prorogation of Parliament, unexpectedly demands modification. Almost all the planters on the Clanricarde estate have expressed their readiness to clear out of the evicted lands and to accept re-settlement elsewhere. The Lords' amendments will in consequence not prove the obstacle which it was feared they would to the exercise of powers of compulsion by the Estates Commissioners against the owner. [11] "Greville Memoirs," Series I., Vol. III., p. 269. [12] _Ibid._, Series II., p. 217, December, 1843. [13] _Ibid._, Series II., Vol. II., March, 1846. [14] Hansard, February, 1848. [15] _United Irishman_, May 14, 1904. [16] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill," Vol. II., p. 4, October 14, 1885. [17] Hansard, May 20, 1884. [18] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill," Vol. II., p. 456, 1892. [19] "Greville," Series I., Vol. II., p. 76, November, 1830. [20] "Life of Whately," Vol. II., p. 246, 1852. [21] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill," Vol. II., p. 28, December, 1885. [22] Morley's "Life of Gladstone," Vol. II., Bk. IX., Cap. 4, p. 524. [23] Hansard, March 6, 1905. [24] _Times_, January 10, 1906. [25] Mrs. John Richard Green, _Independent Review_, June, 1905. [26] "Ireland and the Empire," p. 275. [27] Hansard, May 7, 1907. [28] Morley's "Life of Gladstone," Vol. II., Bk. IX., Cap. 1, p. 481. ADDENDUM PAGE 51.--A Bill introduced last session by Mr. William Redmond which passed through both Houses of Parliament without opposition or debate, will, when at an early date it comes into force, repeal the Tobacco Cultivation Act, 1831, which forbade the growth of tobacco in Ireland. Under the new Act there will be no obstacle in the way of its cultivation, provided the excise conditions which will be imposed are complied with. 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14443	----	_Sketches in The House_. The Story of a Memorable Session. By T.P. O'CONNOR, M.P. WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. London: Warwick House, Salisbury Square, E.C. New York and Melbourne. 1893. ESTABLISHED 1851. =BIRKBECK BANK,= SOUTHAMPTON BUILDINGS, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON, TWO AND A HALF per CENT. INTEREST allowed on DEPOSITS, repayable on demand. TWO per CENT. INTEREST on CURRENT ACCOUNTS, calculated on the Minimum Monthly Balances when not drawn below £100. STOCKS, SHARES, and ANNUITIES Purchased and Sold. =SAVINGS DEPARTMENT.= For the encouragement of Thrift the Bank receives small sums on Deposit, and allows Interest Monthly on each completed £1. =BIRKBECK BUILDING SOCIETY.= HOW TO PURCHASE A HOUSE FOR TWO GUINEAS PER MONTH. =BIRKBECK FREEHOLD LAND SOCIETY.= HOW TO PURCHASE A PLOT OF LAND FOR 5s. PER MONTH. THE BIRKBECK ALMANACK, with full Particulars, Post Free on Application. FRANCIS RAVENSCROFT, Manager. NOTE. _The Sketches contained in the following pages originally appeared in the _WEEKLY SUN_, under the title, "At the Bar of the House." Owing to the reiterated requests of many readers they are now republished in their present form._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE OPENING OF A HISTORIC SESSION 9 CHAPTER II. THE HOME RULE BILL 31 CHAPTER III. A SOBER AND SUBDUED OPPOSITION 40 CHAPTER IV. THE PERSONAL ELEMENT 49 CHAPTER V. OBSTRUCTION AND ITS AGENTS 67 CHAPTER VI. GLADSTONE AND THE SURVIVAL 82 CHAPTER VII. A FORTNIGHT OF QUIET WORK 96 CHAPTER VIII. THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM 111 CHAPTER IX. THE END OF A GREAT WEEK 131 CHAPTER X. THE BUDGET, OBSTRUCTION, AND EGYPT 146 CHAPTER XI. THE BILL IN COMMITTEE 164 CHAPTER XII. RENEWAL OF THE FIGHT 178 CHAPTER XIII. THE SEXTON INCIDENT 198 CHAPTER XIV. THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 207 CHAPTER XV. MR. DILLON'S FORGETFULNESS 219 CHAPTER XVI. REDUCED MAJORITIES 229 CHAPTER XVII. THE FIGHT IN THE HOUSE 242 CHAPTER XVIII. IRELAND'S CHARTER THROUGH 254 CHAPTER XIX. HOME RULE IN THE LORDS 269 CHAPTER I. OPENING OF A HISTORIC SESSION. [Sidenote: Memories.] There is always something that depresses, as well as something that exhilarates, in the first day of a Session of Parliament. In the months which have elapsed, there have been plenty of events to emphasize the mutability and the everlasting tragedy of human life. Some men have died; figures that seemed almost the immortal portion of the life of Parliament have disappeared into night, and their place knows them no more; others have met the fate, more sinister and melancholy, of changing a life of dignity and honour for one of ignominy and shame. [Sidenote: The irony of the seats.] But no such thought disturbed the cheerful souls of some of the Irish Members; in the worst of times there is something exuberant in the Celt that rises superior to circumstance. This was to be an Irish Session; and the great fight of Ireland's future government was to be fought--perhaps finally. But there was another circumstance which distinguished this Session from its predecessors. The question of seats is always a burning one in the House of Commons. In an assembly in which there is only sitting accommodation for two out of every three members, there are bound to be some awkward questions when feeling runs high and debates are interesting. But at the beginning of this Session, things had got to a worse pass than ever. The Irish Party resolved to remain on the Opposition side of the House, true to their principle, that until Ireland receives Home Rule, they are in opposition to all and every form of Government from Westminster. The result was the bringing together of the strangest of bedfellows in all sections in the House. There is none so fiercely opposed to Home Rule as the Irish Orangeman. But the Orangemen are a portion of the Opposition as well as the Irish Nationalists, with the inconvenient result that there sat cheek by jowl men who had about as much love for each other's principles as a country vicar has for a Northampton Freethinker. On the other hand, a deadlier hatred exists between the regular Liberal and the Liberal Unionist than between the ordinary Liberal and the ordinary Tory. But by the irony of fate, the action of the Irish Party compelled the Unionists to sit on the Liberal benches again, with the result that men were ranged side by side, whose hatreds, personal and political, were as deadly as any in the House. [Sidenote: Watchers for the dawn.] As a result of all this, there occurred in the House on Tuesday morning, January 31st, a scene unparalleled since the famous day when Mr. Gladstone brought in his Home Rule Bill in 1886. Night was still fighting the hosts of advancing morn, when a Tory Member--Mr. Seton-Karr--approached the closed doors of the House of Commons, and demanded admission to a seat. For nearly an hour he was left alone with the darkness, and the ghosts of dead statesmen and forgotten scenes of oratory, passion, and triumph. But as six o'clock was striking, there entered the yard around the House two figures--similar in purpose--different in appearance. Mr. Johnson, of Ballykilbeg, is by this time one of the familiar types of the House; and, from his evident sincerity, is, in spite of the terrible and mediæval narrowness of his creed, personally popular. Mr. Johnson is an Orangeman of Orangemen. Now and then he delivers a speech, in which he declares that rather than see Home Rule in Ireland, he and his friends will line the ditches with riflemen. The Pope disturbs his dreams by night and stalks across his speeches by day; and there is a general impression about him that he is resolved, some time or other, to walk through a good large stream of Papist blood. He is also a violent teetotaller; and is so strong on this point that he is ready to shake hands, even with the deadliest Irish opponent, across the back of a Sunday Closing Bill. Like most Parliamentary fire-eaters, he is a mild-mannered man. Time hath dealt tenderly with him. But still he is well on to the seventies: his hair, once belligerently red, is thin and streaked with grey; and he walks somewhat slowly, and not very vigorously. Dr. Rentoul is a man of a different type. What Johnson feels, Rentoul affects. He is a tall, common-looking, heavily-built, blustering kind of fellow; great, it is said, on the abusive Tory platform, almost dumb and utterly impotent in the House of Commons. These were the vanguard of the Orange army, and they proceeded to appropriate the first and best seats they could lay their hands upon. [Sidenote: Dr. Tanner and his waistcoat.] Dr. Tanner, soon after this, appeared blazing on the scene; and sorrow came upon him that any of the enemy should have forestalled him. Like Mr. Johnson, Tanner is a Protestant--but, unlike him, is as fiercely Nationalist as the other is Orange; and, whenever the waves are disturbed by the Parliamentary storm, Tanner is pretty sure to be heard of and from. Viewing the scene of battle strategically, Tanner struck on an idea which was certainly original. Accounts differ as to whether he was the possessor of one hat or several; but tradition would suggest that he had more than one. It is certain, however, that he did take off his coat and waistcoat; and stretching these across the unclaimed land of seats, did thereby signify to all mankind that the seats thus decorated were his. But the novel form of appropriation--it suggests a wrinkle to prospectors in mining countries--was held to be illegal; and the poor doctor had to content himself with using the hat, or hats, as a means of securing seats. [Sidenote: Colonel Saunderson.] Colonel Saunderson--another of the Orange army of fire-eaters--was early at the trysting-place; and this brought about one of the curiosities of the sitting. On the first seat below the gangway sat Dr. Tanner; on the very next seat, as close to him as one sardine to another in a box, sat Colonel Saunderson. Not for worlds would these two men exchange a syllable; indeed, it was a relief to most people to find that they did not break out into oaths and blows. What rendered the situation worse, was that Dr. Tanner has a fine exuberant habit of expressing his opinions for the benefit of all around him. At his back sat William O'Brien, with his keen thin face, his eyes full of latent fire, his stern, set jaw--his glasses suggesting the student and philosopher, who is always the most perilous and fierce of politicians; and to William O'Brien, Tanner made a running and biting commentary on the speeches--a commentary, as can easily be guessed, from the extreme National point of view. This was the music to which the Orange Colonel had to listen through the long hours that stretched between his early morning arrival and midnight. How men will consent to go through all this travail is, to easy-going people, one of the curiosities of political struggle. [Sidenote: The Chamberlain Party.] Meantime, there had been another and an equally important descent. Mr. Chamberlain made his son the Whip of the Unionist Party. The resemblance between father and son is something even closer than that usually noticed between relatives. The son looks a good deal more gentlemanly than the father. But the single eyeglass--which no man can wear without looking more or less of a snob--is even less becoming to the youthful Austen than to the parent; and gives him even a coarser air. There is a suspicion that young Chamberlain also came to the House armed with a goodly supply of hats; at all events, he and his friends managed to secure a large number of seats for the Unionists. Chamberlain and his friends sat together on the third bench below the gangway--a position of 'vantage in some respects--from which they could survey the House. The first seat was occupied by Mr. Chamberlain; next him was Sir Henry James, and then came Mr. Courtney, in a snuff-coloured coat and drab waistcoat; for all the world like an old-fashioned squire who has not yet learned to accommodate himself to the sombre garments of an unpicturesque age. The dutiful Austen left himself without a seat, and was content to kneel in the gangway, and there take sweet counsel from his parent. [Sidenote: Enter the G.O.M.] Mr. Gladstone, as everybody knows, was not technically a member of the House of Commons when it met at the beginning of the Session. He had to be sworn, and the first business of the House was to witness this ceremony. I remember the first day I was a member of the House, and saw a similar spectacle--it was in 1880. Then the House was crowded, and there was a tremendous demonstration; but on the opening day of the Session just ended, the ceremony came off a little earlier than had been expected, and the House was not as full as one would have anticipated. Then there was a great deal of work to be done; every section of the House was busy with the attempt to get an opportunity of bringing in Bills. The Irishmen are always to the front on these occasions, with the list of a dozen Bills, which they seek to bring forward on Wednesdays--the day that is still sacred to the private member anxious to legislate. The Welsh members have now taken up the same lesson; the London members are likewise on the alert. Now, in order to get a chance of bringing in a Bill, it is necessary to ballot--then it is first come, first served. To get your chance in the ballot, you must put your name down on what is called the notice paper, where a number is placed opposite your name. The clerks put into the balloting-box as many numbers as there are names on the notice paper--they approached 400 on the day in question--and then the number is drawn out, and the Speaker calls upon the member whose number has proved to be the lucky one. A whole crowd of members were standing waiting their turn to do this the very moment when the Old Man walked up the floor of the House to take the oaths, and there was a great deal of noise and confusion; but his advent was noted instinctively and rapidly, and there was a mighty cheer of welcome. [Sidenote: How he looked.] Mr. Gladstone walks down to the House, unless on great occasions. Then there would be an obvious danger, from the enthusiasm of his admirers, if he were on foot. Whenever there is any chance of a demonstration, accordingly, he comes down in an open carriage, with Mrs. Gladstone at his side. On that 31st of January, the enthusiastic love of which he was the object, had several times overflowed; it had brought a huge crowd to Downing Street, and it had dogged the footsteps of the Prime Minister wherever he was seen. With bare head--with eyes glistening--with a cheek whose wax-like pallor was touched with an unusual gleam of colour--the Grand Old Man came down to his greatest Session, amid a thicket of loving faces and cheering throats. I fancy one of Mrs. Gladstone's heaviest tasks is to look after the clothes of her illustrious husband. He manages to make them all awry whenever he gets the chance. He may be seen at the beginning of an evening with a neat black tie just in its proper place; and towards the end of the evening the same tie is away under his jugular--as though he were trying experiments in the art of expeditiously hanging a man. But on these great occasions he is always so dressed as to bring out in full relief all the strange and varied beauty of his splendid face and figure. For nature--in the richness and abundance of her endowment of this portentous personage--has made him not only the greatest man in the House of Commons, but also the handsomest. He was dressed in the solemn black frock coat which he always wears on great occasions, and in his buttonhole there was a beautiful little boutonnière of white roses and lilies of the valley. The waxen pallor was still relieved by the glow caused by his enthusiastic reception from the people, as, with his son Herbert on the one side and Mr. Marjoribanks, the chief Liberal whip, on the other, he walked up the floor of the House. [Sidenote: The new Ministry.] One after another, the new Ministers followed--their receptions varying with their popularity--and at last they were all seated on the Treasury Bench. In their looks there was ample indication of the intellectual supremacy which had raised them to that exalted position. Mr. Gladstone had Sir William Harcourt--his Chancellor of the Exchequer--on his right, and on his left sat Mr. John Morley, with his thin face and smile, half ascetic, half kindly. Then came the newest man of the Government, that fortunate youth to whom power and recognition have come, not in withered or soured old age, but in the full prime of his manhood. Mr. Asquith takes his seat next Mr. Morley; and it is, perhaps, the close proximity which suggests the strong physical likeness between the two. Both are clean shaven; both have the long narrow profile that is called hatchet-faced; in both there is the compression of lips that reveals depths of strength and tenacity; both have the slightly ascetic air of the philosopher turned politician; both look singularly young, not only for their years, but for the dazzling eminence of their positions. [Sidenote: Other groups.] Meantime, there are other groups in the House that are gradually forming, and that have since played a momentous part in this great Session. Mr. Labouchere sits in his old place below the gangway--a seat which has become his almost by right of usage, but which he has to secure still every day, by that regular attendance at prayers which is so sweet to a devout soul. Next him sits Mr. Philipps--one of the younger generation of Radicals; and then comes Sir Charles Dilke--very carefully dressed, looking wonderfully well--rosy-cheeked, and altogether a younger-looking and gayer-spirited man than the haggard and pale figure which used to sit on the Treasury Bench in the days of his glory. John Burns is up among the Irish and the Tories, in visible opposition to all Governments. There is something breezy about John Burns that does one good to look at. He wears a short coat--generally of a thick blue material, that always brings to one's mental eye the flowing sea and the mounting wave. A stout-limbed, lion-hearted skipper--that's what John Burns looks like. There is plenty of fire in the deep, dark, large eyes, and of tenderness as well; and all that curious mixture of rage and tears that makes up the stern defender of the hopeless and the forlorn and weak. On the opposite side, in the Liberal ranks, sits Sam Woods--the miners' agent, who was sent from the Ince Division of Lancashire instead of an aristocrat of ancient race; also a remarkable man, with the somewhat pallid face of the life-long teetotaller, and eyes that have the mingled expression of wrath and pity common among the leaders of forlorn hopes and new crusades. Mr. Wilson, the member for Middlesbrough, is restless, and moves about a good deal. He has resolved to bring in a Bill to improve the wretched condition of "Poor Jack," in whose company he spent many years of his own hard life; and there is a gleam of triumph as an Irish member, in accordance with a previous arrangement, gives notice of a Bill for that purpose when the hazard of the ballot gives opportunity. [Sidenote: Mover and Seconder.] It is an honourable but a painful distinction to have either to move or to second the reply to the Speech from the Throne. One of the silly survivals of a feudal past still obliges men who have to perform this duty to make perfect guys of themselves, by wearing some outlandish uniform. Even the sturdiest Radical has to submit to this process; though I hope when John Burns comes to figure in that honourable position he will insist on retaining his breezy pea-jacket and his billycock hat. It was very late in the evening when Mr. Lambert--the victor in the great South Molton fight--had the opportunity of rising; and it was even still later when Mr. Beaufoy rose. I must pass over their speeches by saying that both speakers did extremely well. Even Mr. Balfour had to compliment them; and the Old Man almost went out of his way to express his gratification. [Sidenote: Mr. Balfour.] It was everywhere remarked that most of the leaders of parties began the Session in excellent fighting trim. Mr. Morley has been living in the pleasant green meadows and fields of the Phoenix Park, and looks five years younger than he did last year. The Old Man astounded everybody by his briskness; and Mr. Balfour also entered on the fray with every sign of being in excellent health and spirits. There had been a great roar of triumph when he came into the House, and throughout his speech--clever, biting, and adroit--his party kept up a ringing and well-organized chorus of pointed cheers. The speech was a significant departure from the ordinary stamp--a fact which Mr. Gladstone, who is notably a great stickler for tradition, did not fail to notice. For the almost unbroken tradition of the House of Commons is that the first night shall be one of almost loving-kindness between the one side and the other. I remember well _Punch_ indicated this once by representing Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli beginning a Session by presenting each other with roses, while behind their backs was a thick bundle of whips. [Sidenote: The fray opens.] But Mr. Balfour is independent of tradition, and demonstrated it at once with a speech almost vehement, in part, in its attack. He had a whole host of flings at Mr. Justice Mathew and the Evicted Tenants' Commission--his hits, though sufficiently obvious, and almost cheap, being rapturously received. Altogether, it must be said the Opposition were in excellent form, and cheered their man with a lustiness which did them infinite credit. The Liberals, on the other hand, with forces somewhat scattered--the round Irish chorus being especially so, in the remote distance--did not seem equally well-organized from the point of view of the _claque_. With the dynamite prisoners Mr. Balfour dealt so gingerly that it was evident he knew the weakness of the Tory case, and was very apprehensive that Mr. Matthews would be found to have sold the pass. The ex-Home Secretary, meantime, was still disporting himself around the Red Sea or in the Straits of Bab-el-mandeb; and Mr. Balfour, who has notoriously a bad memory, was left groping in the cobwebs of his brain, trying to recollect which of the dynamitards it was Mr. Matthews intended to retain and which to release. Attacking the action of Mr. Morley with regard to the liberation of the Gweedore prisoners, Mr. Balfour brought upon himself a series of sharp interruptions from Mr. Morley; and there was some very pretty play, Mr. Balfour retorting now and then with considerable skill and readiness. Altogether it was an excellent fighting speech, and a good beginning. There were, in addition to what I have mentioned, plenty of shots about the foreign policy of the Government, especially in Uganda and Egypt; and it is needless to say that Mr. Balfour accused his successors of swallowing in office all the principles they had professed in Opposition. [Sidenote: The Old Man rises.] Mr. Gladstone had to stand silent for a few minutes in face of the thunderous welcome which he received from the Irish benches. Though the reception was gratifying, he seemed to be impatiently awaiting its termination, for he was full of vigour and eagerness for the attack, and never in his most youthful hours did he display a greater readiness to meet all assaults half-way. Those who are accustomed to the Old Man are in the habit of noting a few premonitory signs which will always pretty well forecast the kind of speech he will make. If he starts up flurried and excited, it is ten chances to one that the speech will not remain vigorous to the end; that there will be a break of voice and a weakening of strength, and that the close will not be equal to the opening. But when the voice is cold--though full of a deep underswell at the moment of starting--when Mr. Gladstone moves his body with the easy grace of perfect self-mastery, then the House is going to have an oratorical treat. So it was in this initial speech. There was just a touch of hoarseness in the voice, but it had a fine roll, the roll of the wave on a pebbly beach in an autumn evening; and he carried himself so finely and so flauntingly that there was no apprehension of anything like a loss or a waste of strength. [Sidenote: A pounce.] At once he pounced on a passage in the speech of Mr. Balfour, who had made the statement that such a policy as Home Rule had always led to the disintegration and destruction of empires. He rolled out the case of Austria, which had been preserved from ruin by Home Rule; and when there was a sniff from the Tory benches, Mr. Gladstone, in tones of thunder, referred to the speech of Lord Salisbury in 1885, when he was angling for the Irish vote, and when he pointed to Austria as perhaps supplying some indication of the method of settling the Irish question. This was good old party warfare; the Liberals cheered in delight, and the old warrior glowed with all his old fire. There was a softer and more subdued tone when the Prime Minister referred to Foreign Affairs, speaking of these things with the slowness and the gravity which such ticklish subjects demand. But again Mr. Gladstone was in all the full blast of oratorical vehemence when he took up the attack that had been made on the Irish policy of Mr. Morley. Now and then prompted by that gentleman, and with an occasional word from Mr. Asquith, the Old Man gave figure after figure to show that Ireland has vastly improved since coercion had been dropped as a policy. Altogether it was a splendid fighting speech, and dissipated in a few moments all prophecies of gloom and forebodings of dark disaster which have been prevalent for so many weeks with regard to the health of the old leader. Thus in fire and fury began the Session, the leaders on both sides fully equal to their reputation and at their best, and all the dark and slumbering forces that lie behind them as yet an undiscovered country of grim and strange possibilities. [Sidenote: Lord Randolph.] But the solid and united ranks of the Tories were broken by one figure that was once the most potent among them all. I had been strangely moved at a theatre, a week or so before, as I looked at Lord Randolph Churchill. I remembered him twelve years ago--a mere boy in appearance, with clean-shaven face, dapper and slight figure, the alertness and grace of youth, and a face smooth as the cheek of a maiden. And now--bearded, slightly bowed, with lines deep as the wrinkles of an octogenarian, he sometimes looks like the grandfather of his youthful self. It is in the deep-set, brilliant eyes that you still see all the fire of his extraordinary political genius, and the embers, that may quickly burst into flame, of all the passion and force of a violently strong character. For the moment he sits silent and expectant. He has even refused to take his rightful place among the leaders of the party on the Front Opposition Bench. Still he sits in the corner immediately behind, which is the spectral throne of exiled rulers. He has the power of all strong natures of creating around him an atmosphere of uncertainty, apprehension, and fear. Of all the many problems of this Session of probably fierce personal conflict, this was the most unreadable sphinx. [Sidenote: Reaction.] There came upon the House at the beginning of the following week a deadly calm, very much in contrast with the storm and stress of its predecessor. It is ever thus in the House of Commons. You can never tell how things are going to turn out, except to this extent--that passion inevitably exhausts itself; and that accordingly, when there has been a good deal of fire and fury one day, or for a few days, there is certain to come a great and deadly calm. Uganda is not a subject that excites anybody but Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Burdett-Coutts; and even on them it has a disastrous effect. Mr. Burdett-Coutts is always dull; but Uganda makes him duller than ever. Labby is usually brilliant; while he discoursed on Uganda he actually made people think Mr. Gladstone ought to have made him a Cabinet Minister--he displayed such undiscovered and unsuspected powers of respectable dulness. [Sidenote: Still the seats.] Nevertheless, there was still room for excitement and drollery in the perennial question of the seats. Mr. Chamberlain is not a man to whom people are inclined to make concessions; he is so little inclined to give up anything himself; and, accordingly, there arose a very serious question as to the first seat on the third bench below the Gangway, which he had taken all defiantly for his own. He counted without one of the oldest and most respected, but also one of the firmest, men in the House. Mr. T.B.--or, as everybody calls him, Tom Potter--sits for Rochdale; he was the life-long friend, and for years he has been the political successor of Cobden in the representation of Rochdale, and he is likewise the founder and the President of the Cobden Club. Every man has his weakness, and the weakness of Mr. Potter is to always occupy the first seat on the third bench above the Gangway. Everyone loves the good, kindly old man, the survivor of some of the fiercest conflicts of our time, and everybody is willing to give way to him. When the Liberals were in Opposition, there was a general desire among the Irish members to take possession of the third seat above the Gangway; and the first seat has enormous advantages--tactically--for anyone anxious to catch the Speaker's eye. But whenever the sturdy form of the member for Rochdale appeared, the fiercest of the Irishry were ready to give way; and from his coign of vantage, he beamed blissfully down on the House of Commons. [Sidenote: Strong, but Merciful.] Mr. Chamberlain had the boldness to challenge what hitherto had remained unchallenged; and Mr. Potter's wrath was aroused. He is not one of those people who require the spiritual sustenance of the Chaplain's daily prayers; and, accordingly, it was an effort to get down at three o'clock, when that ceremony begins; but his wrath upheld him; and thus it was that on a certain night, the thin form and sharp nose of Mr. Chamberlain peered out on the House from behind the massive form of the Member for Rochdale. It looked as if the unhappy Member for West Birmingham had undergone a sort of transformation, and had, like Mr. Anstey's hero in "Vice Versa," gone back to the tiny form and slight face of his boyhood. Mr. Potter, however, is merciful, and having asserted his rights, he surrendered them again gracefully to Mr. Chamberlain; and the perky countenance of the gentleman from Birmingham once more looked down from the heights of the third bench. It would take Mr. Chamberlain a long time to do so graceful an act to anybody else. [Sidenote: "Ugander."] But on the Monday night nobody need have been very particular as to what seat he occupied; for nothing could have been much more dull than the whole proceedings. I make only one or two observations upon Uganda. And first, why is it that so few members of the House of Commons can pronounce that word correctly? Mr. Chamberlain,--if there be anything illiterate to be done, he is always prominent in doing it--Mr. Chamberlain never mentions the word without pronouncing it "Ugand_er_." Mr. Courtney for a long while did not venture on the word; and therein he acted with prudence. It is a curious fact with regard to Mr. Courtney that when he first came into the House he had a terrible difficulty with his "h's." In his case it was not want of culture, for he was a University man, and one of the most accomplished and widely-read men in the House of Commons. But still there it was; he was weak on his "h's." He has, however, by this time overcome the defect. Mr. Labouchere talks classic English; was at a German university; has been in every part of the world; has written miles of French memorandums; has sung serenades in Italian; and, if he were not so confoundedly lazy, would probably speak more languages than any man in Parliament. But yet he cannot pronounce either a final "g" or allow a word to end in a vowel without adding the ignoble, superfluous, and utterly brutal "er." When he wishes to confound Mr. Gladstone, he assaults about "Ugand_er_"; when the concerns of our great Eastern dependency move him to interest, he asks about "Indi_er_"; and he speaks of the primordial accomplishments of man as "readin'" and "writin'." [Sidenote: Sir Edward Grey.] Ugand_er_ gave Sir Edward Grey his first opportunity of speaking in his new capacity of Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. There are some men in the House of Commons whose profession is written in the legible language of nature on every line of their faces. You could never, looking at Mr. Haldane, for instance, be in doubt that he was an Equity barrister, with a leaning towards the study of German philosophy and a human kindliness, dominated by a reflective system of economics. Mr. Carson--the late Solicitor-General for Ireland, and Mr. Balfour's chief champion in the Coercion Courts--with a long hatchet face, a sallow complexion, high cheek-bones, cavernous cheeks and eyes--is the living type of the sleuth-hound whose pursuit of the enemy of a Foreign Government makes the dock the antechamber to the prison or the gallows. Sir Edward Grey, with his thin face, prominent Roman nose, extraordinarily calm expression, and pleasant, almost beautiful, voice, shows that the blood of legislators flows in his veins; he might stand for the highest type of the young English official. He has not spoken often in the House of Commons--not often enough; but he is known on the platform and at the Eighty Club. He has the perfect Parliamentary style, with its virtues and defects, just as another young member of the House--Mr. E.J.C. Morton--has the perfect platform manner, also with _its_ virtues and defects. Sir Edward Grey speaks with grace, ease, with that tendency to modest understatement, to the icy coldness of genteel conversation, which everybody will recognize as the House of Commons style. This means perfect correctness, especially in an official position; but, on the other hand, it lacks warmth. It is only Mr. Gladstone, perhaps, among the members of the House of Commons--old or new--who has power of being at once, easy, calm, perfect in tone, and full of the inspiring glow of oratory. [Sidenote: Pity the poor farmer.] The agriculturists are not very happy in their representatives. A debate on agriculture produces on the House the same effect as a debate on the Army. It is well known that the party of all the Colonels is enough to make any House empty; and a debate on agriculture is not much better. The farmer's friends are always a dreadfully dull lot; and they usually lag some half-century behind the political knowledge of the rest of the world. It would have been impossible for anybody but the county members to attempt a serious discussion on Protection or Bimetallism as cures for all the evils of the flesh; but that is what the agricultural members succeeded in doing on a certain Monday and Tuesday night. Their prosings were perhaps welcome to the House; but it was a curious thing to see an assembly, as yet in its very infancy, so bored as to find refuge in every part of the building, except the hall appropriated to its deliberations. Mr. Chaplin is always to the front on such occasions; pompous, prolix, and ineffably dull. Mr. Herbert Gardner made his début as the Minister for Agriculture, and did it excellently. [Sidenote: Keir-Hardie.] Mr. Keir-Hardie is certainly one of the most curious forms which have yet appeared on the Parliamentary horizon. He wears a small cap--such as you see on men when they are travelling; a short sack coat; a pair of trousers of a somewhat wild and pronounced whiteish hue; and his beard is unkempt and almost conceals his entire face. The eyes are deep-set, restless, grey--with strange lights as of fanaticism, or dreams. He rather pleasantly surprised the House by his style of speech. Something wild in a harsh shriek was what was looked for; but the wildest of Scotchmen has the redeeming sense and canniness of his race--always excepting Mr. Cunninghame Graham, whose Scotch blood was infused with a large mixture of the wild tribe of an Arab ancestress; and Mr. Keir-Hardie--speaking a good deal like Mr. T.W. Russell--made a foolish proposal in a somewhat rational speech. But he was unlucky in his backers. The Liberal benches sate--dumb though attentive, and not unamiable. Mr. Gladstone gazed upon the new Parliamentary phenomenon with interest, but the only voices that broke the silence of the reception were the strident tones of Mr. Howard Vincent, of Sheffield, and Mr. Johnston, of Ballykilbeg. Now Howard Vincent is known to all men as one of the people who speak in season and out of season, when once they mount their hobby. The other day I heard of a bimetallist who was so fond of discussing bimetallism that the railway carriage, in which he went to town every morning, was always left vacant for him; nobody could stand him any longer. Similar is the attitude of the House of Commons to Howard Vincent. Fair Trade is his craze. He proposes it at Tory Conferences--much to the dismay of Tory wire-pullers; he gets it into the most unlikely discussions in the House of Commons; and all the world laughs at him as though he were to propose the restoration of slavery, or chaos come again. Poor Mr. Johnston only cares about the Pope, and cheers Mr. Hardie simply as a possible obstruction to Mr. Gladstone. Ill-omened welcomes these for a friend of Labour. [Sidenote: Sir John Gorst.] Sir John Gorst occupies a curious position in his own party. He is one of their very ablest debaters; always speaks forcibly and to the point; rarely makes a mistake; and has a wonderfully good eye for the weak points in the armoury of his opponents. He was the really strong man in the old Fourth Party combination; but somehow or other he does not get on with his friends, and has been left without Cabinet office at a time when many inferior men have been able to get ahead of him. He has a cold, cynical manner; suggests usually the clever lawyer rather than the sympathetic politician; and altogether seems at odds with the world and with himself. He made a bold bid, however, for labour legislation; placed himself in a different position from the rest of his colleagues; and altogether made one of those speeches which are listened to in amused curiosity by political opponents, and in ominous silence and with downcast looks by political friends. Mr. Balfour's face was a study; but it was a study in the impassibility which politicians cultivate when they desire to conceal their hatred of a political friend. It is on the same side of the House that the really violent and merciless animosities of the Parliamentary life prevail. I should think that Sir John Gorst is the object of about as bitter a hatred among his own gang as any man in the House. [Sidenote: Mr. George Wyndham.] In the happily-ended coercion days, letters constantly appeared in the newspapers, signed "George Wyndham." A certain flippancy and cynicism of tone, joined to a skilful though school-boyish delight in dialectics, suggested that though the name was George Wyndham, the writer was an eminent chief. When at last Mr. George Wyndham made his appearance in the House and delivered himself of his maiden speech, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman--one of the wittiest men in the House, though you would take him for a very serious Scotchman without a joke in him, at first sight--expressed his satisfaction to find that there was such a person as Mr. Wyndham, as he had been inclined to rank him with Mrs. 'Arris and other mythical personages of whom history speaks. Mr. Wyndham is a tall, handsome, slight fellow--with an immense head of black hair, regular features, hatchet but well-shaped face, and a fine nose, Roman in size, Norman in aquilinity and haughtiness. He is a smart rather than a clever man, but has plenty of vanity, ambition, and industry, and may go far. [Sidenote: Who said "Rats"?] Mr. Jesse Collings has changed from a respectable Radical, with good intentions and excellent sentiments, into a carping, venomous, wrong-headed hater of Mr. Gladstone and all the proposals which come from a Liberal Government. On the 8th of February, he gave an extremely ugly specimen of his malignant temper, by complaining that there was no care for the agricultural labourer on the part of a Government which has undertaken the largest scheme of agricultural reform ever presented to a House of Commons. This had the effect of rousing the Old Man to one of those devastating bits of scornful and quiet invective by which he sometimes delights the House of Commons. Jesse had spoken of the proposals of the Queen's Speech as a ridiculous mouse, and thereupon came the dread retort that mice were not the only "rodents" that infested ancient buildings; the words derived additional significance from the fact that, as he used them, the Prime Minister directed on Jesse those luminous, large, searching eyes of his, with all their infinite capacity for expressing passion, scorn, contempt, and disgust. The House was not slow to catch the significance of the phrase, and jumped at it, and yelled delightedly until the roof rang again. [Sidenote: A tumble for Joe.] This naturally called Joe, pliant creature, to the rescue of his beloved friend. That, however, was far from a lucky week with Joe; he had begun to look positively hang-dog, with baffled hate. He attempted to stem the splendid tide of enthusiasm on which the Grand Old Leader was swimming triumphantly, by stating that at one time Mr. Gladstone had separated himself from Mr. Collings's proposals for the reform of the position of the agricultural labourers. When anybody makes a quotation against Mr. Gladstone, the latter gentleman has a most awkward habit of asking for the date, the authority, and such like posers to men of slatternly memory, and doubtful accuracy. I have heard several of the wonderful Old Man's private secretaries declare that they had never been able to get over the dread with which this uncanny power of remembering everything inspired them--it was awe-inspiring, and produced a perpetual feeling of nervousness--as though they were in the presence of some extraordinary and incomprehensible great force of nature. It is rather unfortunate for Joe that nature did not endow him with any bump of veneration, and that he is thus ready to embark on hazardous enterprises, in which he oftens comes to grief. When he made this quotation against Mr. Gladstone, the Old Man at once pounced on him with a demand for the date and the authority. Joe was nonplussed, but he stuck to his point. But on the following day Mr. Gladstone got up and in the blandest manner declared that he had since looked into the speech to which Mr. Chamberlain had alluded, and he found that what he had really said was, that Mr. Collings had been supposed to have advocated "three acres and a cow" as a policy, and to that policy Mr. Gladstone had declared he had never given his adherence. This was turning the tables with a vengeance. Jesse grinned and Joe frowned--the rest of the House was delighted. [Sidenote: Mr. Asquith.] The Home Secretary delivered a speech, which in one bound carried him to the front rank of Ministerial speakers. It was a triumph from beginning to end: in voice, in delivery, in language--above all, in revelation of character, it was an intoxication and a delight to the House of Commons. He swept over the emotions of that assembly like a splendid piece of music, and there was no room, or time, for reflection. But there was an aftermath, and then it began to be hinted that it was the speech of an orator and an advocate rather than of a Minister, and that it was unnecessarily and unwisely harsh in tone; it uttered "no" and a "never"--which are the tombs of so many Ministerial declarations. The occasion was the motion of Mr. Redmond in reference to the release of the dynamitards. Mr. McCarthy, though he strongly disapproved of the motion, was forced to express regret that Mr. Asquith had closed the prison doors with a "bang;" and one or two of the supporters and friends of Mr. Asquith were also compelled to express their dissent, and to vote in the lobby against him. But undoubtedly that speech has immensely increased Mr. Asquith's reputation and strengthens his position. He is one of the strong and great men of the immediate future. [Sidenote: Obstruction, naked and unashamed.] When the debate on amnesty was concluded, there came a climax to that system of obstruction in which the Tories and the Unionists indulged during the first fortnight; and there was indication of the growing exasperation of the Ministerial and the Irish members. Midnight had struck; and Mr. Balfour, on the part of the Tories, had the face to declare that it was impossible, at such a late hour, to do justice to the next amendment. As the next amendment dealt with the Gweedore prisoners, and as the House has heard of little else but the Gweedore prisoners for the last fortnight, the majority received this announcement with a fierce outburst of impatience, the Irish Bench especially being delighted at the opportunity of paying back to Mr. Balfour some of the insults he had poured on them so freely during his six years of power. Meantime, the Liberal temper had been roused to still more feverish heat by the splendid news from Halifax, followed by the even more unexpectedly good tidings from Walsall; and there was a determination to stand no nonsense. But Obstruction was determined to go on, and when it was two o'clock in the morning Sir William Harcourt declared that he would not persevere further. There arose a fierce shout of disappointment from his supporters and from the Irishry; but Sir William beamed pleasantly, and the majority submitted to the tyranny of the minority. And thus debating impracticable proposals, barely listening to long speeches, doing absolutely nothing, the days succeeded each other; and legislators who wanted work, longed for the steady and mechanical regularity of their well-ordered offices, their vast factories, their sanely-conducted communications with all parts of the world, to which English genius, sense, and industry have brought the goods of England. The contrast between the Englishman at business and at politics is exasperating, woeful, tragic. CHAPTER II. THE HOME RULE BILL. [Sidenote: I remember.] When I saw Mr. Gladstone take his seat in the House of Commons on February 13th, I was irresistibly reminded of two scenes in my memory. One took place in Cork some twelve years ago. Mr. Parnell had made his entry into the city, and the occasion was one of a triumph such as an Emperor might have envied. The streets were impassable with crowds; every window had its full contingent; the people had got on the roofs. It almost seemed, as one of Mr. Parnell's friends and supporters declared, as if every brick were a human face. Men shouted themselves hoarse; young women waved their handkerchiefs till their arms must have ached; old women rushed down before the horses of the great Leader's carriage, and kissed the dust over which he passed. And, then, when it was all over, Mr. Parnell had to sit in a small room, listening to the complaints and most inconvenient cross-questionings of an extremely pragmatical supporter, who would have been an affliction to any man from the intensity and tenacity of his powers of boring. As I looked at poor Parnell, with that deprecatory smile of his which so often lit up the flint-like hardness, the terrible resolution of his face--as varied in its lights and shadows as a lake under an April sky--I thought of the contrast there was between the small annoyances, the squalid cares of even the greatest leaders of men and the brave outward show of their reception by the masses. And the other scene of which I thought, was the appearance of Mr. Irving on a first night in some big play, say, like "Lear." All the public know is that the actor is there, on the stage, to pronounce his kingly speech; but, before he has got there, Mr. Irving, perhaps, has had the sleepless nights which are required in thinking out the smallest details of his business; perchance, the second before he looks down on that wild pit, and up at that huge gallery, which are ready either to acclaim or devour him, he has been in the midst of a furious dispute about the price of tallow candles, or the delinquencies of the property-master. [Sidenote: Tired eyelids upon tired eyes.] So I thought, as I looked on Mr. Gladstone. For there was that in his face to suggest sleepless vigils, hard-fought fights--perhaps, small and irritating worries. Before that great moment, there had been consultations, negotiations, Cabinet Councils--perchance, long and not easy discussion of details, settlement of differences, composure of all those personal frictions and collisions which are inevitable in the treadmill of political life. Yes; it was the case of the actor-manager with the thousand and one details of outside work to attend to, as well as the great and swelling piece of magnificent work for which the great outside world alone cared--of which it alone knew. To anybody who knows politics from the inside comes ever some such haunting thought about the splendour and glory of popular receptions and public appearances. I must confess that I could not get rid of that impression when I looked on Mr. Gladstone on that Monday night. A deadlier pallor than usual had settled on that face which always has all the beautiful shade, as well as the fine texture of smooth ivory. There was a drawn, wearied look about the usually large, open, brilliant eyes--that rapt and far-off gaze which is always Mr. Gladstone's expression when his mind and heart are full. There are two kinds of excitement and excitability. The man who bursts into laughter, or shouts, or tears, suffers less from his overstrained nerves than he whose face is placid while within are mingled all the rage, and terror, and tumult of great thoughts, and passions, and hopes. It struck me that Mr. Gladstone was the victim of suppressed excitement and overstrained nerves, and that it was only the splendid masculine will, the great strength of his fine physique, which kept him up so well. [Sidenote: The sudden awakening.] Pallid, heavy-eyed, in a far-off dream--with all the world gazing upon him with painful concentration of attention and fixed stare--the Great Old Man sate, keeper still of the greatest and most momentous secret of his time, and about to make an appearance more historic, far-reaching, immortal, than any yet in his career. So, doubtless, he would have liked to remain for a long time still; but, with a start, he woke up, put his hands to his ear, as is his wont in these latter days when his hearing is not what it used to be, looked to the Speaker, and then to Mr. John Morley, and found that, all at once, without one moment's preparation, he had been called upon by the Speaker to enter on his great and perilous task. What had happened was this: The Irish members had put a number of questions on the notice-paper, but, anxious in every way to spare the Old Man, they quietly left the questions unasked; and so, when, as he thought, there was still a whole lot of preliminary business to go through, all was over, and the way was quite clear for his start. "The First Lord of the Treasury;" so spoke the Speaker--almost softly--and, in a moment, when he had realized what had taken place, the Old Man was upright, and the Liberal and Irish members were on their feet, waving their hats, cheering themselves hoarse. And yet an undercurrent and audible note of anxiety ran through all the enthusiasm. The honeymoon of Home Rule is over, and, curiously enough, the very sense of a great victory after a long struggle has always about it a solemnity too sad for tears, too deep for joy. The Liberals and the Irishry stood up; but, even at that hour, there were evidences of the fissures and chasms which the two great political disruptions-the disruption in the English Liberal and in the Irish party--have produced. On the third bench below the Gangway sate the Liberal Unionists, Mr. Gladstone's deadliest foes, with pallid-faced, perky-nosed, malignant Chamberlain at their head, the face distorted by the baffled hate, the accumulated venom of all these years of failure, apostasy, and outlawry. Not one of the renegade Liberals stood up, and there they sate, a solid mass of hatred and rancour. On the Irish side, Mr. Redmond and the few Parnellites kept up the tradition of their dead leader in his last years of distrust and dislike of Mr. Gladstone by also remaining seated. [Sidenote: The speech.] The first notes of the Old Man suggested he was in excellent form. It is always easy for those who are well acquainted with him to know when the Old Man is going to make a great, and when he will deliver only a moderately good speech. If he is going to do splendidly the tone at the start is very calm, the delivery is measured, the sentences are long, and break on the ear with something of the long-drawn-out slowness of the Alexandrine. So it was on this occasion. Sentence followed sentence in measured and perfect cadence; with absolute self-possession; and in a voice not unduly pitched. And yet there were those traces of fatigue to which I have alluded, and I have since heard that one of the few occasions in his life when Mr. Gladstone had a sleepless night was on the night before he introduced his second great Home Rule Bill. And it should be added that, stirring and eloquent as were the opening sentences, they were not listened to by the House with that extraordinary enthusiasm which, on other occasions, sentences of this splendid eloquence would have elicited. For what really the House wanted to learn was the great enigma which had been kept for seven long years--in spite of protests, hypocritical appeals, and, ofttimes, tedious remonstrance from over-zealous and over-fussy friends. [Sidenote: The Bill.] By the time Mr. Gladstone had got to the Bill, he had exhausted a good deal of his stock of voice, and yet he seemed to be less dependent than usual on the mysterious compound which Mrs. Gladstone mixes with her own wifely hand for those solemn occasions. It appeared that both she and her husband had somewhat dreaded the ordeal. The bottle which Mr. Gladstone usually brings with him is about the size of those small, stunted little jars in which, in the days of our youth, the young buck kept his bear's grease, or other ornament of the toilet. But on Monday Mr. Gladstone was armed with a large blue bottle--somewhat like one of those 8 oz. medicine bottles which stand so often beside our beds in this age of sleeplessness and worry. Nevertheless, Mr. Gladstone and his wife had miscalculated, for on two occasions only throughout the entire speech did he have to make application for sustenance to the medicine bottle. Another precaution which had been taken turned out also to be unnecessary. The Premier's eyesight is not as good as it was a few years ago; and he sometimes finds it difficult to read anything but the biggest print. For this reason, elaborate preparations had been made for helping his eyesight. On the table before the Speaker's chair there was a small lamp--somewhat like a student's lamp. This also turned out to be unnecessary, for the Old Man was able to read his notes without the smallest difficulty; and the speech had come to a conclusion long before the hour when the deepening shadows make it hard to read by the light from the glass roof of the House. [Sidenote: The peroration.] At last, the latest details had been given; the Old Man approached his peroration. By this time the voice had sunk in parts to a low whisper, and the deathly hue of the beautiful face had grown deeper. There was something that almost inspired awe as one looked at that strange, curious, solitary figure in the growing darkness. The intense strain on the House had finally exhausted it, and there had come a silence that had in it the solemnity, the strange stillness, the rapt emotion of some sublime service in a great cathedral rather than the beginning of one of the fiercest and most rancorous party conflicts of our time. To this mood Mr. Gladstone attuned the closing words of his speech. The words came slowly, quietly, gently, sinking at times almost to a whisper. What fantasies could not one's mind play as one listened to these words. There was underneath the language, the looks, the voice, the tragic thought that this was a message rather from the shadow-land beyond the grave than from this rough, noisy, material world. Imagine yourself in a country church, the sole visitor in the ghostly silence and the solemn twilight, with spectres all around you in the memorials of the dead and memories of the living, and then fancy the organist silently stealing, also alone, to the organ, and giving out to the evening air some beautifully solemn anthem with all the sadness of death, and none of the exultant joy of resurrection, and then you will get some faint idea of the pent-up emotion which filled every sympathetic heart in the great assembly as the Old Man finally came to the closing words of his great speech. It was not so much a peroration as an appeal, a message, a benediction. At first, when the Old Man sat down, the pause followed that speaks of emotion too deep for prompt expression, and then once again a rush to their feet by the Irishry and the Liberals, loud cheering, and the waving of hats, and all those other manifestations of vehement feeling which alone Mr. Gladstone is privileged to receive. The Tories had kept very quiet; had conducted themselves on the whole very well. Once or twice came a high sniff of disgust, and now and then a younger member could not restrain himself from an exclamation. But, altogether, the Opposition was under the same spell as the rest of the House, and listened patiently to the end. [Sidenote: Mr. Sexton.] I may pass over all that occurred on that Monday evening, with the single exception of the very remarkable speech of Mr. Sexton. It was well known that Mr. Sexton had taken a prominent part in laying before Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues the views of the Irish party as to what would constitute a satisfactory Bill to the Irish people; and Mr. Sexton was authorised by his colleagues to state their views to the House. This he did slowly, deliberately, without the least attempt at oratory, but in language extraordinarily lucid, delicately shaded, touching on points with exquisite art. And what he said came to this; that the Bill was a good Bill; that in his opinion it could be accepted by the Irish people as a satisfactory settlement of their demands; but that in two points it needed careful watching, and perhaps considerable amendment: the financial settlement and the future of the Land Question. [Sidenote: Mr. Balfour.] The Leader of the Opposition had not, so far, shone in his new position, and people were not slow in coming to the conclusion that he required the stimulus and the strength of a solid majority behind him to bring out his peculiar talents. At all events, his first speech following the introduction of the Home Rule Bill was a ghastly failure. It was listened to in almost unbroken silence from the beginning to the end--not that the speech had not plenty of cleverness in it, the small cleverness of small points--but it was badly delivered. It did not seem to rise to the heights expected on such an occasion; in short, it was a disappointment. Only once or twice did the Leader of the Opposition succeed in rousing his friends to even an approach to enthusiasm. Speaking of the amount of money put to the credit of Ireland, he declared the Government admitted they had been beaten in a conflict with the forces of law and order, and that this was the war indemnity which had to be paid--a hit that very much delighted Mr. Chamberlain. The portion of the speech which created sensation was that in which he alluded to the use of the veto. It had been contended by Mr. Sexton that the veto would never be used unless the Irish Parliament so abused its powers as to justify the use of it. This was an honourable bargain between the British Parliament and the Irish. To such a bargain Mr. Balfour declared he and his friends would be no parties. They would not let the weapon of veto rust in case it were put into their hands, and so on--a passage which excited some enthusiasm on the Tory benches and strong anger on the Irish. [Sidenote: Mr. Bryce.] The real framers of the Bill are understood to be Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Morley, and Mr. Bryce. No man in the House of Commons has so complete a knowledge as Mr. Bryce of the various forms of government in the world, especially in countries which have the complicated system that is about to be fashioned under the new Bill. Mr. Bryce is a professor and a student, and he has the manner of his calling and his pursuits. Arguing his case without passion, slowly, calmly, in excellently chosen language, he can speak on even the most violently contested measure as though it were a demonstration in anatomy. So he spoke on February 14th--making mince-meat with deadly tranquillity of manner of most of the objections of Mr. Balfour, and altogether strengthening the position of the Bill. [Sidenote: Mr. Redmond.] A speech which had been looked forward to with even greater curiosity was that of Mr. Redmond, the leader of the Parnellites. The Tories had settled themselves down in large numbers, counting on a great treat. And undoubtedly the opening of Mr. Redmond's speech was not auspicious. He thought that some recognition should have been given to the great dead Irishman as well as to the living Englishman who had brought the Home Rule question to its present position. The delighted Tories, not loving Mr. Parnell, but seeing in this the promise of a lively and unpleasant attack on the Bill, cheered lustily, and speeded Mr. Redmond on his way on the full tide of a splendid reception. But as time went on, their faces gradually grew longer, and when Mr. Redmond resumed his seat they had come to the conclusion that one of the strongest foundations on which they had built their hopes for wrecking the Bill had entirely gone. Summed up, what Mr. Redmond had to say came to this: that he saw many grave defects in the Bill; that he was especially dissatisfied with the financial arrangements; that he didn't approve of the retention of the Irish members in the Imperial Parliament; but that, nevertheless, it was a Bill to which he could give a general support. This speech was received with great though silent satisfaction on all the Irish benches; but the poor Tories were brought to a condition well nigh of despair. And thus, cheered heartily by both Irish sections and enthusiastically greeted by the Liberals, weakly fought, feebly criticised by the Opposition the Bill started splendidly on its perilous way. CHAPTER III. A SOBER AND SUBDUED OPPOSITION. I have always held that the present Government would first begin to fix its hold upon the country when it was face to face with Parliament. It was, during the vacation, like a great firm that is expected by everybody to do a vast amount of business, but that has been unduly and unexpectedly delayed in building its works. A visit to the House of Commons during the week ending February 24th would have exemplified what I say. It is true there would have been missed all the intense fury and excitement which characterised one of the most exciting and interesting weeks the House of Commons has seen for many a day. There was a calm, the deadliness of which it is impossible to exaggerate. But periods of calm are much more interesting to Governments than to the public. When there are the noise and tumult of battle; when the galleries are crowded--when peers jostle each other in the race for seats--when the Prince of Wales comes down to his place over the clock, then you may take it for granted that the business of the country is at a standstill; and that just so much of the public time is being wasted in mere emptiness and talk. But when the House is half empty--when the galleries are no longer full--when debates are brief and passionless, then you can reasonably conclude that things are going well with the Government; that useful business is in progress; and that something is being really added to the happiness of the nation. [Sidenote: The humbled Opposition.] So it was during the second week of the Home Rule Session. No great diplomats claimed their seats; the outer lobby was no longer besieged; there was no longer any ferocity of competition for seats; and the attendance at prayers visibly relaxed; but all the time more useful legislation was initiated in the course of the week than in any similar period for upwards of six or seven years of Parliamentary time. A good deal of the progress is due to the sober and subdued spirit of the Opposition. So long as Mr. Balfour was in power, the more democratic section of the Tory party was kept comparatively under; but with his fall came an outburst of freedom; and men like Sir Albert Rollit, who represent great constituencies, have been able to freely express their real opinions. Let me pause for a moment on Sir Albert Rollit, to say that he is a very remarkable type to those who have known the House of Commons for a number of years--as I have. It is rather hard to make a distinction between him and a moderate, and in some respects, even an advanced Liberal. He boasts, and rightly, that he represents as many working men as most of his Radical colleagues; and he certainly does sit for a place which is not inhabited by any large number of wealthy people. Disraeli, with his Household Suffrage; Lord Randolph Churchill, with his Tory Democracy, have brought this type of politician into existence, and now he is with us always. This is the answer to those who contend that because there will be always Tories and Whigs, it makes no difference what changes we make. The answer is Sir Albert Rollit; he is a Tory, but the Tory of to-day is pretty much the same as the Radical of a few years ago. [Sidenote: The Registration Bill.] The Government brought forward the first of their Bills, and at once the Tory Democrat showed what he was. For Mr. Fowler was able to quote opinions from Tories quite as favourable to reform of registration as from Radicals, and several Tories stood up to speak in favour of the measure. Opposition was really left to poor Mr. Webster, of St. Pancras; but, then, everybody knew what poor Mr. Webster meant, and nothing could better express the lowliness of the Tory party than that opposition to anything should be led by the hapless representative of St. Pancras. The consequence of all this was that the Registration Bill passed in the course of a few hours--the debate illumined by an excellent maiden speech from our John Burns--delivered in that fine, manly, deep voice of his--which always makes me think of a skipper on the hurricane deck in the midst of rolling seas and a crashing storm. Even a few briefer moments sufficed for the Scotch Registration Bill; and the House of Commons almost rubbed its eyes in astonishment to find that it had actually got through two great Bills and was about to listen to a third in the course of one evening. [Sidenote: Employer's Liability.] But so it was; and there verily stood Mr. Asquith at the box in front of the Speaker's chair introducing the third great Bill of the Government in the same evening. Mr. Asquith's grasp of Parliamentary method increases daily. He is really a born Parliamentarian. It is certain that he has made up his mind to go back to the bar when his time for retiring from office comes; it will be a tremendous pity if he does. Such a man is wasted before juries and in the pettiness of nisi prius. For the moment, however, he sails before the wind. With his youthful--almost boyish face--clean-shaven, fair and fresh--with his light brown hair carefully combed, school-boy fashion, and with no more trace of white than if he were playing football in a school gymnasium--he is a wonderful example of early and precocious political fortune. There is in his face a certain cheery cynicism--a combination of self-confidence and perhaps of self-mockery, the attitude of most clear-sighted men towards fortune, even when she is most smiling. At the outset Mr. Asquith had to encounter an amendment from Mr. Chamberlain. It is needless to say that, while the most Radical Government which ever existed is proposing Radical legislation, the cue of Mr. Chamberlain will be now and then to "go one better"--to use the American phrase; and accordingly here was an amendment from Birmingham which went even further than the Bill of Mr. Asquith. With gentle but effective ridicule Mr. Asquith, riddled the Chamberlain amendment; but for the moment the amendment served the purpose of delaying further progress with the Bill. [Sidenote: Another surprise.] And there was another surprise--actually a fourth Bill--also from the Government Bench; and also proposing to make a further beneficial change in the position of working men. Mr. Mundella wanted to get power for the Board of Trade to regulate the hours of labour among poor railway men. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach--who burnt his fingers over Stationmaster Hood--rushed up after Mr. Mundella had sate down--to claim a portion of the credit for this beneficial change. Here, again, the Opposition showed that meekness which has come over its temper. For six years the Tories were in office, but there was no Bill. The moment he was out, Sir Michael was full of the best intentions. But his attempt to get credit for other men's work was vain; for he counted without Mr. Bartley--the gentleman whom North Islington sends to Parliament for the purpose of impeding all useful legislation. And that Bill also was delayed. [Sidenote: The government and private members.] There is always something foredoomed about a night which ends in a count-out. You can almost feel its untimely end in the air at the very beginning of the sitting. There is always a great to-do about doing away with the privileges of the private member, but I have never really seen anything like a strong desire on the part of the House generally to keep the small quorum together which is necessary for giving the private member his opportunity. To the uninitiated, it is perhaps necessary to say that the sittings of the House are divided into two classes--what are called Government and what are called private members' nights. Government nights are Mondays and Thursdays. On these days, the Government is entirely master of the time of the House. They can bring on Government Bills and in whatever order they please. On Tuesdays and on Wednesdays the private member is master of the situation--that is to say, until the Government of the day get leave of the House to take all its time, and then the rights of private members disappear. On Fridays also the private member is in possession of most of the time of the sitting. That is the night on which the Government sets up Supply--that is to say, puts down the votes for the money required for the public service. It is a fundamental principle of the British Constitution that the demand for money involves the right to raise any grievance; and accordingly Supply on Friday night is always preceded by motions in reference to any subject which any member may desire to raise. These motions are put on the paper, but so inherent is the right to raise any grievance before giving money, that a member is entitled to get up, and without a moment's notice, raise any question which may appear to him desirable for discussion. As a rule, however, there is but one question fought out, and when that is decided the Government of the day is allowed to go on to the votes for money. [Sidenote: Parliamentary Wednesdays.] Wednesday is nearly always occupied with some Bill brought in by a private member, in which a large number of other members are interested. It used to be said that Wednesday was sacred to the churches and the chapels, and that only a religious debate could take place. This is still the case to a large extent; for instance, on Wednesday, February 22nd, they employed themselves at the House in discussing a Bill in which Dissenters are very much interested. Then, a division has to be taken at half-past five, and thus there is a good chance of a practical discussion with a practical result. The consequence is that Wednesday sittings are always looked forward to with a considerable interest, and it is always with a pang that the House gives up the right of the private member to them. A Wednesday sitting is rarely, if ever, counted out, and, indeed, I believe there is a rule which prevents them from being counted out before four o'clock, at which hour the late-comers find it possible to turn up. Friday sittings also rarely, if ever, end badly, for the Government is ever in want of money, and a Government has always forty staunch supporters who are ready to stay in the House in order to help it to get through its business. But Tuesday belongs to no man in particular. The Government don't bother themselves about it, because they don't have money to get at the end of it: instead of its being occupied with one Bill, which can raise a definite discussion, Tuesday has a number of motions on all sorts and kinds of subjects; and, in short, what's everybody's business is nobody's; and Tuesday constantly ends about eight or half-past eight o'clock in a count-out. The Government delightedly look on; it is an additional argument in favour of taking away the rights and privileges of private members and turning them into the voracious maw of the Government. [Sidenote: Wales in a rage.] A curious difference presented itself between the interior and the exterior of the House on the following day (February 23rd). Inside, there was for the most part a desert, yawning wide and drear, except on the benches which were occupied by the sons of Wales; while outside in the outer lobbies surged a wild, tumultuous, excited crowd, eagerly demanding admission from everybody who could be expected to have the least chance of giving it. Every Welshman in the world seemed to have got there. I saw Mr. Ellis Griffiths--an impassioned and brilliant Welsh orator who ought to be in the House; my friend, whom I used to know as Howell Williams, and I now have to call Mr. "Idris," as if he were an embodied mineral water, and many others. The secret was that the night was devoted to the Suspensory Bill for the Established Church in Wales, and anybody who knows Welshmen, will know that this is a question on which Welsh blood incontinently boils over. Terse, emphatic, business-like Mr. Asquith put the case for Disestablishment on the plain and simple ground that the Established Church was the church of the rich minority, and that the overwhelming majority of the Welsh representation had been returned over and over again to demand Disestablishment. [Sidenote: The cynical Gorst.] Sir John Gorst has an icy manner and generally the air of a man who has not found the world especially pleasant, and delights to take rather a pessimistic view of things. His great argument was that if this Bill were carried, young men would not find enough of coin to tempt them into the Church, and that accordingly it would languish and fade away. To such a prosaic view of the highest spiritual vocation, the unhappy Tories listened with ill-concealed vexation, and Gorst once more increased that distrust of his sincerity in Toryism which perhaps accounts for the small progress he has made in the ranks of his party. [Sidenote: Randolph again.] Throughout the night the debate languished, though there was an excellent speech from Mr. Stuart Rendel on behalf of the Welsh party. This was practically the only speech from that side; for perceiving that the game of the Tories was to talk against time, the Welshmen wisely declined to aid them, and sate dumb, unless when they snorted defiance at some absurd claim or fanciful exaggeration on the other side. At ten minutes past ten, however, quite a different complexion was given to the whole debate by the rise of Lord Randolph Churchill. He had not yet recovered his old mastery of himself or the House; but his appearance was very different from what it was a few nights earlier. There was no longer that constant trembling of the hands which made it almost painful to look at him; the voice did not shake painfully, and there was a certain recurrence of that old self-confidence. But still he was far from what he used to be. The once resonant voice was somewhat muffled and hoarse, accompanied by a certain tendency to feverish exaggeration of language--in fact, the old Fourth Party methods of almost conscious playing to the gallery. However, it was a good fighting speech, and the Tories had been so depressed by the bad speaking on their own side, and by the solid bench opposite of cheering, snorting, defiant, but distinctly practical Welshmen, that they were delighted, and cheered admiringly. [Sidenote: Olympian wrath.] The intimates of Mr. Gladstone declare that composure is perhaps the most remarkable of his many qualities. In the midst of a Cabinet crisis he would hand you a postage-stamp as though it were the sole matter that concerned him. But it is also said by his intimates that he has possibilities of Olympian wrath which almost frighten people. He was certainly roused to a passion by Lord Randolph--very much to the advantage and delight of the House of Commons; for during the earlier portion of the evening, and especially while the speech of Mr. Asquith was being delivered, there was an impression that he did not look very happy. It is known that he is still fondly devoted to the Church, and it was suspected that though his convictions were settled on the necessity of doing away with the Establishment in Wales, it was not the kind of work to which he went with any zest. But Lord Randolph roused the Old Lion within him, and with flashing eye, with a voice the resonance of which echoed through the House as though he were twenty years younger--with abundance of gesticulation, and sometimes with swinging blows that were almost cruel--he slew the young intruder and wound up the debate on the Church in a frenzy of excitement and delight among his followers. [Sidenote: Mr. Kenyon.] There came, then, a series of incidents which threw the House into convulsions of rancorous scorn and farcical laughter. Earlier in the evening there had been a speech by Mr. Kenyon. Words fail to describe the kind of speech Mr. Kenyon delivers. Sometimes one is doubtful as to the sex of the speaker, for he moans out his lamentations over "the dear old Church of England" exactly as one would imagine a sweet old lady with a gingham umbrella and a widow's cap to intone it. Meantime, the rest of the House is convulsed with laughter, so that there is the curious contrast of one man--Punch-like in complexion and face--reciting a dirge while the rest of the House are holding their universal sides with laughter. The anger came when Sir Henry James and Mr. T.W. Russell were seen to be fluctuating between the Liberal and the Tory lobby. Joe wisely found a convenient engagement at Birmingham. At last Toryism prevailed, and amid a tempest of ironical cheers, the Liberal renegades went into the Tory lobby. Then the Tories were beaten by a majority of 56, after which they tried a little obstruction. But it was promptly sat upon; the closure was moved; only the solitary and plaintive voice of Mr. Kenyon rose in protest against it, and so, amid shouts of laughter and triumph, the doom of the Welsh Establishment was pronounced. CHAPTER IV. THE PERSONAL ELEMENT. [Sidenote: Small jealousies and great questions.] It is one of the delights of Parliamentary life that you can never be sure of what is going to take place. The strongest of all possible Governments may be threatened, and even destroyed, in the course of a sunny afternoon, which has begun in gaiety and brightest hope; a reputation may grow or be destroyed in an hour; and an intrigue may burst upon the assembly in a moment, which has been slowly germinating for many weeks. Mr. Gladstone had a notice upon the paper on Monday, February 27th, the effect of which was to demand for the Government most of the time which ordinarily belongs to the private member. There is no notice which has more hidden or treacherous depths and cross-currents. For when you interfere with the private member, you suddenly come in collision with a vast number of personal vanities, and when you touch anything in the shape of personal vanity in politics you have got into a hornet's nest, the multitudinousness, the pettiness, the malignity, the unexpectedness of which you can never appreciate. I sometimes gaze upon the House of Commons in a certain semi-detached spirit, and I ask myself if there be any place in the whole world where you can see so much of the mean as well as of the loftiest passions of human nature as in a legislative assembly. Look at these men sitting on the same bench and members of the same party--perhaps even with exactly the same great purpose to carry out in public policy, and neither really in the least dishonest nor insincere. They are talking in the most amicable manner, they pass with all in the world--including themselves--for bosom friends; and yet at a certain moment--in a given situation--they would stab each other in the back without compunction or hesitation, to gain a step in the race for distinction. [Sidenote: The dearest foes.] Between two other men there intervenes not the space of even a seat; they are cheek by jowl, and touching each other's coat-tails; and yet there yawns between them a gulf of deadly and almost murderous hate which not years, nor forgiveness, nor recollections of past comradeship will ever bridge over. And look at the House as a whole, and what do you see but a number of fierce ambitions, hatreds, and antipathies, natural and acquired--the play of the worst and the deadliest passions of the human heart? Above all things, be assured that there is scarcely one in all this assembly whose natural stock of vanity--that dreadful heritage we all have--has not been maximised and sharpened by the glare, the applause, the collisions and frictions of public life. I have heard it said that even the manliest fellow, who has become an actor, is liable to be filled to a bursting gorge with hatred of the pretty woman who may snatch from him a round of applause; and assuredly every nature is liable to be soured, inflamed, and degraded by those appearances before the gallery of the public meeting, the watchful voters, the echoing Press, and all the other agencies that create and register public fame. [Sidenote: Blighted hopes.] Think of all this, and then imagine what a Prime Minister does who proposes a scheme which will deprive some dozens of men of an opportunity of public attention for which they have been panting and working perchance for years. Recollect, furthermore, that the private member may be interested in his proposal with the fanaticism of the faddist--the relentless purpose of the philanthropist, the vehement ardour of the reformer. Then you can understand something of the danger which Mr. Gladstone had to face. For his motion came to this, that every member--except one--who had a resolution on the paper which he desired to bring before the House had to be either silenced altogether or pushed into a horrid and ghastly hour when either he would not be listened to by a dozen members, or would perhaps be guillotined out of a hearing by the count out. Let me further explain, for I wish to make the whole scene intelligible to every reader. Tuesdays and Fridays belong to private members as well as Wednesdays, and on Tuesdays and Fridays accordingly private members bring forward motions on some subjects in which they are especially interested. In order to get these Tuesdays and Fridays, they have to ballot--so keen is the competition for the place--and if a member be lucky enough to be first called in the ballot, he gives notice of his motion, and for the Tuesday or the Friday the best part of the sitting is as much his as if it belonged to the Government. [Sidenote: Salaried Members--Railway Rates--Bimetallism.] Now several members are interested in the question of payment of members, and for Tuesday, March 21st, or some such day, there was a motion down for payment of members. Dr. Hunter is interested in the new railway rates, and for Tuesday, March 14th, he had a motion down in reference to railway rates. Finally, several members are interested in bimetallism, and for Tuesday, February 28th, a motion on this subject was designed. What, then, Mr. Gladstone proposed meant that Dr. Hunter could not propose his motion of railway rates; that the member interested in payment of members could not propose his motion; that the motion on bimetallism could not be proposed; in short, that these gentlemen, and their motions and their time, should be swallowed up by the voracious maw of the Government. This description will suffice to bring before the mind of any reader the difficulty and danger of the situation. [Sidenote: Disappointed Office-seekers.] I tread on somewhat delicate ground when I tell the story of the manner in which some members of the Liberal party utilised this situation. It is no secret that there are in this, as in every House of Commons, a number of gentlemen who do not think that their services have been sufficiently appreciated by the Minister to whom the unhappy task was given of selecting his colleagues in office. This is the case with every Government, and with every House of Commons--with every party and with every Ministry. You do not think that the favourite of fortune whom you envy has reached a period of undisturbed happiness when he sits on the Treasury Bench--even when he speaks amid a triumphant chorus of cheers, or drives through long lines of enthusiastically cheering crowds. He has to fight for his life every moment of its existence. He is climbing not a secure ladder on solid earth, but up a glacier with slipping steps, the abyss beneath, the avalanche above--watchful enemies all round--even among the guides he ought to be able to trust. Do you suppose that every member of the Liberal party loves Mr. Asquith, and is delighted when he displays his great talents? Do you think that none of the gentlemen below the gangway do not believe that in their mute and inglorious breasts, there are no streams of eloquence more copious and resistless? No, my friend, take this as an axiom of political careers, that you hold your life as long as you are able to kill anybody who tries to kill you, and not one hour longer. [Sidenote: Powerful malcontents.] It will be seen at once that a party of malcontents is especially powerful in a Parliament which has in hand the greatest task of our time, and which on the other side has a majority which revolt of even a small number can at any moment turn into a dishonoured and impotent minority. Such being the material, a nice little plot was concocted by which a certain number of young members, full of all that vague distrust of existing ministries which belongs to ardent young Radicalism, were to be induced to give a vote against Mr. Gladstone's proposal to take away the time of private members. And it is reported that one member of the Liberal party had begun operations as many as four weeks before Mr. Gladstone's Bill came on, and had tried to extort a number of pledges, the full meaning of which would only come upon the unhappy people who made them when they had endangered or destroyed the best of modern Ministries. [Sidenote: The out-manoeuvred Tories.] I think I have now said enough to explain what I am going to relate. Mr. Gladstone explained his proposal; which briefly was, that in order to get on with Home Rule it was necessary to take the time of private members. As will have been seen, the meaning of this would have been to have swept away at once all the private motions in which members were interested. When the motion came to be discussed, there was a very curious phenomenon. Everybody had been reading in the morning papers the chorus of disapproval in which the Tory press had been denouncing the leadership of the Tory party, liberals had been repeating to each other with delight the verdict of the chief Tory organ--the _Standard_ newspaper--that the Tory party had been out-manoeuvred and beaten at every point in the struggle, and that the portentous promises of the recess had been utterly baffled by the superior judgment, the better concerted tactics, and, above all, by the unexpected solidity and cohesion of the Liberal party. [Sidenote: Organized for obstruction.] That all this had produced its effect on the Tory party as well was soon evident. An old campaigner in the House of Commons can soon tell when a party has been organized for the purpose of Obstruction. There is a feverishness; there are ample notes; there is a rising of many members at the same time when the moment comes to catch the Speaker's eye. Other indications presented themselves. Mr. Seton-Karr is, personally, one of the kindliest of men--cheery, good-natured, full of the easy give-and-take of political struggle; but even he himself would not claim to be a Parliamentary orator. But on February 27th, he, as much as everybody else, must have been surprised to find that his utterances, which, in truth, were stumbling enough, should at every point be punctuated by a deep bellow of cheers such as might have delighted the most trained and the most accomplished orators in the House. The House itself was at first taken aback by this outburst of deep-throated and raucous cheers, and after it had sufficiently recovered from its surprise discovered that it all came from one bench--the front bench below the gangway. On this bench there were gathered together a number of the younger members of the Tory party. [Sidenote: The claque in Parliament.] At once it was seen what had taken place; the Tories, stung to action by the taunts of their own press, had concerted a new system of tactics. And one portion of these tactics was to introduce into the House of Commons a phenomenon new to even its secular and varied experience--namely, an organized claque. It was really just as if one were in a French theatre. Uniformly, regularly, with a certain mechanical and hollow effect underneath its bellowings, the group below the gangway uttered its war notes. Beyond all question, recognizable by the unmistakable family features, it was there--the organized theatrical claque on the floor of the British House of Commons. There were other indications of the transformation on which the Tories were determined. When Mr. Seton-Karr sate down after a palpably obstructive speech, Mr. Bartley got up, and several other Tories at the same time. Mr. Bartley is not an attractive personality. He has a very strong rather than pleasant or intellectual face. There is plenty of bulldog tenacity in it--plenty of animal courage, plenty of self-confidence; but it has none of the rays of a strong intelligence, and not many glimpses of kindliness or sweetness of nature. It is in the work of obstruction that one sees temperament rather than intellect in the House of Commons. Obstruction does not call for very high intellectual powers, though, undoubtedly, obstruction can at the same time display the highest powers. [Sidenote: Artists in obstruction.] For instance, Mr. Sexton made his first reputation in the House of Commons by a speech three hours in duration, which was regarded by the majority as an intentional waste of time and an obstruction of a hateful Bill, but which everybody had to hear from the sheer force of its splendid reasoning, orderly arrangement of material, and now and then bursts of the best form of Parliamentary eloquence. But the obstructionist wants, as a rule, strength of character rather than of oratory--as witness the extraordinary work in obstruction done by the late Mr. Biggar, who, by nature, was one of the most inarticulate of men. It was because Biggar had nerves of steel--a courage that did not know the meaning of fear, and that remained calm in the midst of a cyclone of repugnance, hatred, and menace. Mr. Bartley, then, has the character for the obstructive, and he rose blithely on the waves of the Parliamentary tempest. But he had to face a continuous roar of interruption and hostility from the Irish benches--those converted sinners who have abjured sack, and have become the most orderly and loyal, and steadfast of Ministerialist bulwarks. And now and then when the roar of interruption became loud and almost deafening, there arose from the Tory bench below the gangway that strange new claque which on that Monday night I heard for the first time in the House of Commons. [Sidenote: Mr. James Lowther.] One other figure rose out of the sea of upturned and vehement faces at this moment of stress and storm. When the Irish Members were shouting disapproval there suddenly gleamed upon them a face from the front Opposition bench. It was a startling--I might almost say a menacing exhibition. It was the face of Mr. James Lowther. I find that few people have as keen an appreciation of this remarkable man as I have. In his own party he passes more or less for a mere comedian--indeed, I might say, low comedian, in the professional and not in the offensive sense. His tenure of the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland is looked back upon, in an age that has known Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. John Morley, as a sublime and daring joke by Disraeli which belongs to, and could only happen in an epoch when sober England was ready to allow her Oriental juggler and master to play any kind of Midsummer's Night's Dream pranks even with the sternest realities of human life. Yet sometimes the thought occurs to me that if he were a little more articulate, or, perchance, if the time came when a democracy had to be met, not with bursts of Parliamentary eloquence, but with shot and shell, and the determination to kill or be killed, the leadership of the party of the aristocracy would fall from the effeminate hands of the supersubtle and cultivated Mr. Balfour into the firm and tight grip of the rugged, uncultured country gentleman who sits remote and neglected close to him. There are the tightness and firmness of a death-trap in the large, strong mouth, a dangerous gleam in the steady eyes, infinite powers of firmness, inflexibility, and of even cruelty in the whole expression, not in the least softened, but rather heightened and exalted by the pretty constant smile--the smile that indicates the absence alike of the heat of passion or the touch of pity, and that speaks aloud of the unquestioning and dogged resolve of the aristocrat to fight for privilege to the death. [Sidenote: What a cruel face!] "Ah, what a cruel face!" exclaimed an Irish Member by my side as Mr. Lowther turned back and shouted, "Order, order!" at the Irish benches--the good-humoured smile absent for a few moments, and revelations given into abyssmal depths. But Mr. Lowther soon recovered himself, smiled with his usual blandness, and once more dropped the hood over his inner nature. But it was a moment which brought its revelations to any keen observer; especially if he could have seen the answering looks from a pair of blazing Celtic eyes--also characteristic in their way of all the passion, rage, and secular intrepidity of the smaller and weaker race that has carried on a struggle for seven centuries--over battlefields strewn with the conquered dead--past gallows stained by heroic blood--past prisons and hulks where noble hearts ate themselves wearily and slowly to death. It was as in one glance all the contrast, the antipathies, the misunderstanding which had separated one type of Irishmen from one type of Englishmen through hundreds of years. [Sidenote: The bond of the Railway Rates.] These are somewhat remote reflections from the squat figure, the harsh and grating voice, and the commonplace rhetoric of Mr. Bartley--so far can fancy and insight lead one astray in that great stage of Titanic passions which is spread on the floor of the House of Commons. And what significance of great historic issues and reminiscences there were in the scene were likewise lost on Dr. Hunter. To him the universe at the moment--all the tremendous destinies on the knees of Mr. Gladstone--all the millionfold hopes and hungering longings that were involved--were as nought in comparison with the fact that the motion of Mr. Gladstone deprived him of the opportunity of raising a debate on Railway Rates. Coldly, calmly, self-confidently, Dr. Hunter attacked the Government in its weakest place, and drove the dagger home through the vulnerable side. The weakness of the position was this: there was a strong, vehement, and widespread revolt in the House against the exactions of the railway companies. Liberal members had on the subject exactly the same feelings as Tories; nightly a score of questions were asked on the subject. Altogether, indignation had broken down party lines, and against the railway companies Liberal and Tory made common cause. Unfortunately, Dr. Hunter's case had been strengthened by a somewhat weak yielding of Mr. Gladstone to a demand for a day on Bimetallism. This demand had, it is true, been urged upon him from various parts of the House, including his own, and he seemed to be yielding to a pretty universal demand. But Bimetallism was a craze with no chance of even distant success, while Railway Rates were at that very moment urgently calling for redress from hundreds of threatened industries. It would be seen then what a dexterous weapon for striking the Government the selection of the day for Railway Rates was. [Sidenote: No Tory Leader.] The Tories ought to have at once perceived the value of the weapon which a Liberal had thus placed in their hands. Some of them did so, and, undoubtedly, if a man with the Parliamentary instinct of Lord Randolph Churchill had been at their head, they would at once have made deadly and, haply, destructive use of the opportunity. But Mr. Balfour was away. Lord Randolph sate, dark and solitary, at a remote seat, and Mr. Goschen can always be confidently relied upon to do the wrong thing. It will be seen presently how he helped to save the Government it was his duty to destroy. No; the danger of the situation came not from the Tory, but from the Liberal benches. There are in the Liberal, as in every party of the House, a number of young and new members who have not yet learned the secret and personal springs of action, and who, moreover, do not at once realize the vast underlying issues on an apparently small question. To them the Liberal intriguers against the Government had steadily and plausibly addressed themselves, and many of them were under the impression that the question raised by Dr. Hunter would decide nothing more serious than the special purpose to which one day of the Session could be devoted. [Sidenote: A coming storm.] But anybody with the slightest acquaintance with the House of Commons would have soon perceived that matter of much greater pith and moment was at stake. The Senior Ministerial Whip is the danger-signal of the House of Commons; and the danger-signal was very much in evidence. Mr. Marjoribanks--of all Whips the most genial, even-tempered, and long-suffering, as well as the most effective--was to be seen, rushing backwards and forwards between the lobby and the Treasury bench, where, with Mr. Gladstone, he held whispered and apparently excited conversations. Meantime, there grew up in the House of Commons that mysterious sense of coming storm which its quick sensibilities always enable it to see from afar. There came a sudden murmuring, and then a strange stillness, and older members almost held their breaths. From the Irish benches not a sound escaped. In most Parliamentary frays--especially when the storm rages--there are certain Irish members who are certain to figure largely and eminently; but on these benches there was a silence, ominous to those who are able to note the signs of the Parliamentary firmament. Anyone looking on could have seen that the silence did not come from inattention or want of interest, for the looks betrayed keen and almost feverish excitement. [Sidenote: Ireland in danger.] For what was going on was a fight whether Ireland was to be lost or saved, and lost through the folly, desertion, or levity of some of the men that had sworn to save her. Fortunately, the strains of the most tragic situations have their relief in the invincible irony of life, and there was a welcome break in the appearance on the scene of him whom all men know as "Alpheus Cleophas"--the redoubtable Mr. Morton. Some men are comic by intention, some are comic unconsciously and unintentionally, some men are comic half by intention and half in spite of themselves. To this last class belongs our Alpheus Cleophas. He played his part of comic relief with a certain air of knowing what was expected of him--you see this demoralizing House of Commons makes everybody self-conscious, and one could see that he himself anticipated the roar of laughter with which the House received his statement, "I have now a majority"--by which, for the moment, Alpheus appeared as the leader of the Government, and a party which controlled the destinies of the House of Commons. [Sidenote: Mere comic relief.] Still, as I have said, this was only comic relief--the jokes, ofttimes mechanical, by which the young men and women downstairs prepare to pass the time which is required for the preparation of the great scene, in which their principals have to enact their great situation. Still, the _dénouement_ of the drama was uncertain. Mr. Marjoribanks rushed from lobby to Mr. Gladstone, from Mr. Gladstone to lobby--and still there hung in the air the fatal question: "Was the Government going out?" Ah! think of it. Was Gladstone going to end his days in baffled purpose, in melancholy retirement, with the great last solemn issue of his life ended in puerile fiasco and farcical anarchy, instead of in the picture of two nations reconciled, an empire strengthened and ennobled, all humanity lifted to higher possibilities of brotherhood and concord, by the peaceful close of the bloody and hideous struggle of centuries? Think of it all, I say, and then go also in imagination to the door of the House of Commons, and see a Scotch Liberal fighting for dear life to bring into the Tory lobby the necessary number of misguided and ignorant neophytes to bring down this disastrous catastrophe. [Sidenote: Why no signal?] Meantime, confusion still reigned on the Liberal benches. Men were confused, and bewildered, and irresolute, and frightened, conscience of calamitous danger, and yet unable to understand it all. And here let me say that this state of confusion was due partly to bad leadership. There is a want of cohesion--on this day in particular--on the Treasury bench. Mr. Gladstone, like all ardent natures, takes too much on himself. He is, of course, a tower of strength--twenty men are not such as he. But the burden cannot all be borne by one shoulder--especially at a portion of the sitting when, by a strict interpretation of the rules of the House, Mr. Gladstone is allowed to speak but once. Why were these scattered and young and inexperienced troops not told, by their leaders, of the vast issues involved in this coming vote? Why were not all the sophistries brushed away, by which the conspirators against the Government were hiding the real effect and purpose of the votes? Sir William Harcourt is an old Parliamentary hand; Mr. John Morley is excellent when a few words are required to meet a crisis; Mr. Asquith--keen, alert, alive to all that is going on--sits at Mr. Gladstone's side. Why were all these lips dumb? It made one almost rage or weep, to see the uncertain battle thus left unguided and uncontrolled. [Sidenote: Mr. Goschen to the rescue.] At last a saviour, but he came from the ranks of the enemy. Mr. Goschen swept away the network of cobwebs under which Liberals had hidden the issues, and boldly declared the real issue. And that issue was, that Mr. Gladstone wanted time to push forward his Home Rule Bill, and that the Tory party was determined to prevent him getting that time if they could manage it. Where be now the hysterics about private members and simple issues and small questions? The issue lies naked and clear before the House. But still victory isn't assured. Mr. Goschen with his thick utterance, his muffled voice, his loss of grip and point, has ceased to be listened to very attentively in the House of Commons; and this speech--the most significant yet delivered--passes almost unnoticed, except by those who know the House of Commons and watch its moods and every word. The last and decisive word has yet to come. [Sidenote: Mr. Storey's contribution.] At the same moment as Mr. Morton, Mr. Storey had risen from his seat, and demanded the word. There is a flutter of expectation. On this speech depended, at this moment, the fate of Home Rule and the Gladstone Government. What will it say? Mr. Storey always takes a line of his own; is a strong man with strong opinions, plenty of courage, not altogether free from the tendency of original natures, to break away from the mechanical uniformity of party discipline. Moreover, he is the chief among that sturdy little knot of Radicals below the gangway who are determined to make the Liberal coach go faster than the jog-trot of mere officialism. Will he call upon his friends to stand by the Government or to desert them--it is a most pregnant question. It is not easy, in the midst of cyclones, to collect one's thoughts--to choose one's words--to hit straight home with short, emphatic blow. But this feat Mr. Storey accomplished. I have never heard, in my thirteen years' experience of the House of Commons, a speech more admirable in form. Not a word too much, and every sentence linked tight to the other--reasoning, cogent, unanswerable, resistless. And the point above all other things laid bare--are you Liberals going to help the Tories to postpone, if not finally overthrow Home Rule, or are you not? This, it will be seen, is but the emphasizing of the lead already given by the maladroit speech of Mr. Goschen. But Mr. Storey, clear, resonant, resolute, speaks to a House that listens with the stillness of great situations. Every word tells. The issue is understood and knit; and now let us troop into the lobbies, and proclaim to the world either our abject unfitness to govern an empire and pass a real statute, or let us stand by our great mission and mighty leader. [Sidenote: John Burns's penetration.] Not even yet do levity and faction surrender the final hope of doing mischief. At the door of the House, as I have already said, stands a Scotch Liberal doing the work of Tory Whips, and attempting to capture young members who have smoked their pipes or drank their tea, or wandered up and down the terrace by the peaceful Thames--all unconscious of the great and grim drama going forward upstairs. He catches hold of John Burns, among others--a sturdy son of the soil ready to receive, as might be hoped, anything which calls itself sturdy and independent Radicalism. Over honest John's manly form there is a fight; but he has a strong, clear, practical head over his muscular body, and at once penetrates to the underlying issue, and walks into Gladstone's lobby. [Sidenote: The division.] At last the division is nearing its close, and the excitement--perhaps, because it is so painfully repressed--has grown until it has almost become unbearable. Whenever there is a close division like this, several things happen which never happen on other occasions. Members gather round the doors of the division lobbies, listening to the tellers as they count one, two, three, four, and so on, in the mechanical voice of the croupiers, bidding the gamblers to play with the dice of death. The Whips also are narrowly watched to see which return first to the House, for the first return means which lobby has been sooner exhausted, and the lobby sooner exhausted is necessarily the smaller lobby, and, therefore, the lobby of the minority. Mr. Marjoribanks, who has told for the Government at the door of the Tory lobby, has returned to the House first. That's a good sign. But still, if there be a majority, what is it going to be?--disastrously near defeat, or near enough to moral strength as to mean nothing? A few minutes more have to pass before this fateful question is settled. Mr. Thomas Ellis--light, brisk--walks up the floor to the clerk in front of the table. Then the numbers are whispered to Mr. Gladstone. The winning teller always takes the paper from the clerk. It is Mr. Marjoribanks who receives the paper, and the Government has won. A faint cheer, then an immediate hush; we want to know the exact numbers. Mr. Marjoribanks reads them out--a majority of thirty-one. We have won, and we who support the Ministry, cheer; but our majority has been reduced, so the Opposition burst their throats with defiant answer. Then, with fatuous folly, the Tories insist on another division. Two Irish members, driving straight from Euston station to the House--John Dillon and Mr. Collery--have meantime been added to the Ministerial ranks. Some of the mutineers have come back, and the majority rises to forty-two. And so ended the great intrigue of the Liberal malcontents against the Gladstone Government. [Sidenote: Obstruction rampant.] The word had gone forth--the Home Rule Bill was not to be allowed to pass the second reading before the Easter recess. The slings and arrows of the Tory press had at last begun to have their effect, and obstruction had now been entered upon thoroughly, fiercely, and shamelessly. The first specimen of it was on the following Thursday night, when Mr. T.W. Russell took advantage of an harangue by Mr. Justice O'Brien--those Irish judges are all shameless political partisans--to move the adjournment of the House. Mr. Morley was in excellent fighting form. T.W. Russell is a man peculiarly well calculated to draw out the belligerent spirit of any man, and the Chief Secretary, though he holds himself well under restraint, has plenty of fire and passion in his veins. He let out at T.W. Russell in splendid style, and the more the Tories yelled, the more determinedly did Mr. Morley strike his blows. Russell, he said, had spread broadcast phylacteries, and used his most pharisaical language. At this there were deafening shouts from the Tory benches of "Withdraw! Withdraw!" Mr. Morley's reply was to repeat the words "pharisaical language"--at which there was another storm. Then Mr. Morley quietly observed that if he were out of order, the Speaker was the proper person to call him to account; and as the Speaker made no sign, the Tories were reduced to silence. In a few sentences, Mr. Morley made mince-meat of the whole attack: showing that crime, instead of increasing, had actually diminished in Clare since he had come into office, and that Mr. Balfour and coercion had completely failed to do even as much as he had done. Mr. Balfour made a somewhat feeble reply. And finally, in spite of a strong whip, the Tories were beaten by forty-five--the normal Liberal majority. [Sidenote: The loosing of the winds.] But all this was but the preface to uglier and worse work which was to come later on. Supply is the happy hunting-ground of obstructives. The questions there are small, and so easily comprehended, that even the dullest man can talk about them, and it requires--as I have said above--not intellect, but temperament. For nearly four hours there was a discussion on an item of £100, which had been spent on improving the accommodation of the House of Commons. John Burns, disgusted at this palpable waste of time, four times moved the closure. Jimmy Lowther--who has come wonderfully to the front since obstruction and general rowdyism has become the order of the day with the Tories--instantly turned to John with the observation that this was not the County Council; whereupon John promptly retorted, "Nor are you on Newmarket Heath." At last, after the waste of these four mortal hours, the closure was moved, was resisted by the majority of the Tory party, but, at the same time, was so necessary and proper, that several Tories voted in its favour, and some disgusted Unionists actually left the House. [Sidenote: A criminal combination.] But even worse was still behind. Mr. Bowles--a new and clever Tory member--was anxious to raise the whole question of Egyptian policy on a small vote for meeting the expense of building a new consular house at Cairo. Thereupon, Mr. Mellor--as he was plainly bound to do--declared that a discussion of the entire Egyptian policy would not be in order on such a vote. Pale, excited, looking his most evil self, Mr. Chamberlain got up to base an attack on Mr. Mellor for this judgment. There was a delighted howl from the young Tory bloods who had been obstructing so shamelessly throughout the evening. Mr. Chamberlain's example was followed by Mr. Balfour, by Sir John Gorst--in short, the whole Tory and Unionist pack were in full cry after the Chairman. The inner meaning of all this, was the desire to discredit the new Chairman, and intimidate him, lest he should show a bold front against the shameless obstruction on which the Tories had resolved. Mr. Sexton put this point neatly. In view, he said, of the combined attempt and evident combination to intimidate and embarrass the Chair--but he could go no further: for at once there was a fierce hurricane of howls, "Withdraw! Withdraw!" and "Shame! Shame!" from the Tories and renegades, which drowned every voice. Tory after Tory got up; shouts deafening, passionate, ferocious, made everything inaudible; Mr. Chamberlain, paler even than usual, shouted with full mouth across the floor; altogether, the scene was one of almost insane excitement. Mr. Mellor--gentle, considerate, conciliatory--reasoned, explained, expostulated. What he should have done, was to have named half-a-dozen Tories, and showed the party of bullies that their day was past. CHAPTER V. OBSTRUCTION AND ITS AGENTS. [Sidenote: The younger Tories.] Obstruction is a thing rather of temperament than intellect. The occurrences of the early weeks of the Session of 1893 fully confirm this view. The Tory party and the Unionists vowed in their organs, and proved by their conduct in the House, that they determined to try and prevent, by obstruction, the second reading of the Home Rule Bill being taken before Easter. With this design they came down to the House every evening with a plan of attack. The consequences were somewhat serious to some members of the House. I saw young gentlemen suddenly developing activity whom I had beheld in the House for many years in succession without ever suspecting in them either the power or the desire to take any part in Parliamentary debate. The same gentlemen now rushed about with a hurried, preoccupied, and, above all, a self-conscious air that had its disgusting but also its very amusing side. For instance, Mr. Bromley-Davenport, during the six years of Tory Government, never spoke, and rarely even made his appearance in the House of Commons. His voice was as strange to the assembly as though he had never belonged to it. But this Session he is constantly getting up in his seat, and he rushes through the lobbies with the cyclonic movement of a youth bearing on juvenile shoulders a weight too heavy to bear. Mr. Bartley is about as dull a fellow as ever bored a House of Commons, and in the last Parliament even his own friends found him a trial and a nuisance. He has suddenly taken to making the House of Commons familiar with his voice at every sitting. Lord Cranborne has been remarkable for the boorishness and impertinence of his manners--or, perhaps, to be more accurate, want of manners. I have seen him interrupting Mr. Gladstone in the most impudent way with a face you would like to slap, and his hands deep down in the depths of his pockets. Lord Cranborne is now nightly in evidence, and leads the chorus of jeers and cheers by which the more brutal of the Tory youth signalize the opening of the new style of Parliamentary warfare. [Sidenote: Jimmy.] But of all the things which indicate the new state of affairs which has arisen, nothing is so significant as the change in the position of Jimmy Lowther. People think that I have attached too much importance to this extraordinary individual, and that he should be taken simply as the frank horse-jockey he looks and seems. I have given my reasons for believing that in a crisis Jimmy would develop a very different side of his character, and that he has in him--latent and disguised for the moment--all the terrible passions and possibilities of the aristocrat at bay. However, let that question rest with history and its future developments; his position at the present moment is very peculiar. There is a report that the desire of his heart is to sit on the first seat on the front bench below the gangway, which for seven years was occupied by Mr. Labouchere, and which for the five years of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry of 1880 to 1885 was occupied by Lord Randolph Churchill when he was the chief of the dead and buried Fourth Party. That seat is the natural point for a sharpshooter and guerilla warrior. Indeed, the first seat below the gangway seems just as marked out by fate for such a man as Jimmy Lowther, as one of the high fortresses on the Rhine for the work of the bold freebooter of the Middle Ages. But for some reason or other, Jimmy did not attain his heart's desire, and he is compelled to sit on the front Opposition bench. This would not seem an affliction to ordinary men. Indeed, the desire to sit on one of the front benches may be regarded as the root of all evil in Parliamentary nature--the desire to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge which is as fatal to nature born without original political sin as that disastrous episode in the annals of our first parents. [Sidenote: A recollection of Disraeli.] One of the most curious episodes in the career of Disraeli was that he insisted on sitting on the front Opposition bench before he had ever held office--an act of unprecedented and unjustifiable daring which throws a significant light on that habit of self-assertion to which he owed a good deal of his success in life. For what a seat on the front Opposition bench means is, that the holder thereof has once held office in an administration, and so is justified for the remainder of his days in regarding himself as above the common herd. But Jimmy isn't as ordinary men. A place on the front Opposition bench, with all its advantages, has the countervailing disadvantages of binding to a certain decency and decorum of behaviour, and nothing could be more galling to the free and full soul of the distinguished steward of the Jockey Club. It is said that in the same way his colleagues on the front Opposition bench would prefer Jimmy's room to his company. In Parliamentary politics, as in diplomacy, there is such a thing as having an agent whom you can profit by, and at the same time disavow--just as it may suit you. That is one of the many guileful methods of these crafty men who sit on front benches on both sides of the House. Obstruction is a thing too horrible to be practised by any man who has ever held responsible position, and it is delightful to see how Mr. Balfour repudiates the very idea of anything of the kind. It would, therefore, have suited Mr. Balfour a good deal better if Jimmy could have obstructed from some quarter of the House where his closeness of association would not so largely commit his more responsible colleagues to participation in his iniquities. However, it was not to be managed; and the leaders of the Opposition are bound to put up with the closeness of Jimmy's companionship. [Sidenote: Mr. Lowther's intellect.] Again I repeat, obstruction is a matter not of intellect, but temperament. Intellectually, I should put Jimmy in a very low place, even in the ranks of the stupid party. Temperamentally he stands very high. A brief description of his methods of obstruction will bring this home. First, it should be said that he is entirely inarticulate and, beyond rough common sense, destitute of ideas. He has nothing to say, and he cannot say it. There are men in the House of Commons who have plenty of thoughts, and who have plenty of words besides, and could branch out on any subject whatever into a dissertation which would command the interest even of political foes. But Jimmy is not of this class. He is capable, on the contrary, of bringing down the loftiest subject that ever moved human breasts to something stumbling, commonplace and prosaic. When he gets up, then, his speech consists rather of a series of gulps than of articulate or intelligible statements. But then mark the singular courage and audacity of the whole proceeding. There are traditions still in the House of Commons of the marvellously stimulating effect upon followers of leaders, who were proverbial for their oratorical impotence. Everybody remembers the scornful description of Castlereagh which Byron gave to the world; and yet it has been said in some memoirs that the moment Castlereagh stood up and adjusted his waistcoat, there was a thrill in the House of Commons, and his followers bellowed their exultation and delight. In a more recent day, Lord Althorpe was able to bear down the hostility of some of the most powerful orators of his time by a bluff manliness which no rhetoric could withstand. And so also with Jimmy--his sheer audacity carries him along the slow, dull, inept, muddy tide of his inarticulate speech. [Sidenote: An irrepressible nuisance.] And curiously enough, it is impossible to put him down. On March 6th he was commenting on some item which he supposed was in a Post-office Estimate. It was pointed out to him that the item to which he alluded was not in that particular vote at all, but in quite another vote, which came later on. Jimmy, nevertheless, went on to discuss the item as if nothing had been said. Then the long-suffering Chairman had to be called in, and he ruled--as every human being would have been bound to rule--that Jimmy was out of order. Was Jimmy put down? Not the least in the world. He made an apology, and, as the apology was ample and his deliverance is slow, the apology enabled him to consume some more minutes of precious Government time. And then, having failed to find fault with the estimate for what it did not contain, he proceeded to assail it for what it did contain. Here again he was out of order, for the estimate was prepared exactly as every other estimate had been prepared for years. This answer was given to him. But Jimmy went on--gulping and obstructing, obstructing and gulping. It is amusing, perhaps, to you who can read this description as part of an after-dinner's amusement, but what is one to think of a Parliamentary institution that can be so flouted, and nullified by mere beef-headed dulness? This is a question to make any one pause who has faith in Parliamentary institutions. [Sidenote: Mr. Balfour keeps away.] During all these performances, Mr. Balfour keeps steadily away from the House. He never was a good attendant, even in his best of days, and now that he is relieved of responsibility, he naturally seeks to take advantage of it. But he doesn't take so much advantage as one would expect. He who used to be so indolent, has developed a feverish activity. He seems during some portions of every sitting to be ready to rise to his feet at the smallest provocation, and to interfere in the smallest matter of detail. It is this tendency which has hurried him into some of those ridiculous errors, which he has made so frequently. The explanation of it all, is that curious figure that sits so silent, remote, and friendless on the front Opposition bench. Lord Randolph is still the riddle which nobody can read. Whenever Mr. Balfour appears Lord Randolph does his best to efface himself, even in the places which men select on the front bench. Here is a hint of that eternal conflict and play of ferocious appetites and passions which is going on in the House of Commons. Everybody who has ever visited the House of Commons must have observed that pair of boxes which stand on the table in front of the Speaker's chair. These boxes mark to the outward world the positions of the most important men in the House of Commons--the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition. Mr. Balfour, whenever he is in the House, sits opposite his box, and so proclaims to all the world the lofty post he holds. And when this is the case, it is in almost the very last seat--separated by half a dozen other individuals--Lord Randolph is to be seen. To turn to another part of the House, it is the men in whom Mr. Gladstone most confides who sit on either side of him--Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John Morley. If on any day it were seen that either of these two men had left the side of their leader, and was separated from him by several others, the rumour would run like wildfire through the House of Commons that the relations of the Premier and one of his chief lieutenants were strained. [Sidenote: Deadly foes.] So Mr. Balfour watches Lord Randolph and Lord Randolph watches Mr. Balfour, with the deadly vigilance of two men who stand opposite each other in a wood with drawn swords in their hands. There is another gentleman, besides, whom the Tory leader has to watch, and, perhaps, more keenly. Lord Randolph Churchill is not always in his place, and his movements in these days are leisurely--I remember when they were electric in their rapidity and frequency. But Mr. Chamberlain is a distinctly ready man. Whatever gifts he has, are always at his command. He is like the shopman who puts all his goods in the window. The goods are not very fine nor very good, but they are showy and cheap, and, above all things, take the eye. Mr. Chamberlain in his day has been a poor attendant in Parliament--a friend of his used to tell him, when he was supposed to have the reversion of the Liberal leadership, that his inability to remain for hours in succession in the House of Commons would always stand in the way of his being the leader of that assembly. But he turns up now usually after dinner, and from his seat on the third bench below the gangway, on the Liberal side, watches the progress of battle. It is known to the intimates of Mr. Balfour that he has not a particularly high opinion of his partner in the work of obstructing the cause of Home Rule. Indeed, it is impossible that the two men should be really sympathetic with each other. With all his faults, Mr. Balfour does represent the literary and cultured side of political life; while Mr. Chamberlain is illiteracy embodied. Then, Mr. Chamberlain has a knack of attributing every victory to himself--modesty isn't one of his many virtues--and this cannot be particularly agreeable to the real leader of the Opposition. There is thus a constant competition between the two men as to which shall give the marching orders to the enemies of the Government. [Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain's slatternly inaccuracy.] There was a singular scene on March 6th, which brought out the relations of the two in a singular manner. There appeared that day in the congenial columns of the _Times_ a letter, a column in length, and set forth with all the resources of leaded and displayed type which the office could afford. In this letter Joe had lamented the disappearance of those courteous manners of an elder and more Chesterfieldian time, to which he suggested he belonged. The origin of this delicious lament over a venerable and more courteous past by so flagrant a type of modernity, was a statement that Sir William Harcourt had played the dirty trick of putting down a notice to suspend the twelve o'clock rule at a shorter notice than usual. The suspension of the twelve o'clock rule simply means that the Tories shall not be allowed to obstruct by the mere fact that the House is compelled automatically to close at midnight under the existing rules. Joe appeared in his place swelling with visibly virtuous indignation; evidently he had come, ready to bear down on Sir William and the Government generally with the cyclone of attack. But this notable design was prevented by two accidents. First, Sir William Harcourt got up and explained that the notice he had given was exactly the same kind of notice that was always, and had been always, given in like circumstances. Everybody who knows anything about Parliamentary matters knows that this was the literal truth. The dirty trick which Mr. Chamberlain had attributed to Sir William Harcourt existed only in his own uninstructed and treacherous memory; and so he was crushed. Still he wanted to have a word in, and more than once he showed signs of rising to his feet. But he stopped half-way, and, when he did finally get up, Mr. Balfour was before him, and he had to sit down again. Then his opportunity was lost, for Mr. Balfour had declared that he was perfectly satisfied with what Sir William Harcourt had done, and that prevented Joe from entering on the filibustering tactics which apparently he contemplated. This appeared to the whole House to be a very distinct and unpleasant snub for Joseph. A short time afterwards he and Mr. Balfour were seen in the lobby, engaged in a conversation that was apparently vehement, and everybody jumped to the conclusion that they were having it out, and that Joseph was resenting the rejection of his advice with that haughtiness of temper which is so well-known a characteristic of the Radical whom wealth has converted into a leader of the aristocracy. The papers afterwards contained an announcement that the two conspirators against Mr. Gladstone's Government were in the heartiest accord. This was one of the semi-official denials which are generally regarded as the best testimony to the truth of the report denied. [Sidenote: Mr. Morley.] If one were on the look-out for dramatic and instructive contrast in the House of Commons, one could not do better than study Mr. Morley and Mr. Chamberlain for a week. Mr. Chamberlain--glib, shallow, self-possessed, well-trained by years of public life--debates admirably. Nobody can deny that--not even those who, like myself, find his speaking exasperatingly empty and superficial and foolish. He is master of all his resources; scarcely ever pauses for a word, and when he is interrupted, can parry the stroke with a return blow of lightning-like rapidity. But when he sits down, is there any human being that feels a bit the wiser or the better for what he has said? And who can get over the idea that it has all been a bit of clever special pleading--such as one could hear in half-a-dozen courts of law any day of the week? And, finally, who is there that can help feeling throughout all the speech that this is a selfish nature--full of venom, ambition, and passion--seeing in political conflict not great principles to advance--holy causes to defend--happiness to extend--but so many enemies' faces to grind to dust? Mr. Morley is a fine platform speaker, but as yet he is not nearly as good a debater as Mr. Chamberlain. He stumbles, hesitates, finds it hard often to get the exact word he wants. And yet who cannot listen to him for ten minutes without a sense of a great mind--and what to me is better, a fine character behind it all? This man has thought out--possibly in travail of spirit--and his creed--though it may not be the exultant cheerfulness of natures richer in muscle than in thought--is one for which he will fight and sacrifice, and not yield. In short, the thinness of Mr. Chamberlain--the depths of Mr. Morley--these are the things which one will learn from hearing them speak even once. I have said that Mr. Morley is not as good a debater as Mr. Chamberlain; but if Mr. Chamberlain be wise, he will call his watch-dogs off Mr. Morley, for he is being badgered into an excellent debater. Every night he improves in his answers to questions. Tersely, frigidly--though there is the undercurrent of scorn and sacred passion in most of what he says--Mr. Morley meets the taunts and charges of the Russells, and the Macartneys, and the Carsons, and never yet has he been beaten in one of those hand-to-hand fights. [Sidenote: Flagrant obstruction.] There was a curious but instructive little scene towards the end of a sitting early in March. The Tories--headed by Jimmy Lowther--had been obstructing in the most shameless way for a whole afternoon. Towards the end of the evening Mr. Chamberlain had come down and joined in the fray--lending his authority to tactics which usually had been left to the rag-tag and bobtail of all parties. As I have already said, this kind of intervention had seriously diminished Mr. Chamberlain in the respect of the House. And the way in which he did his work was venomous as well as petty. The vote under discussion was a Supplemental Estimate for Light Railways in Ireland. Everybody knows that light railways were the policy of the late and not of the present Government. A supplemental estimate means simply a smaller sum by which the original estimate has been exceeded. It ought to have been a matter of course that this supplementary estimate should have been agreed to by the Tories, seeing that it was money necessary to carry out the programme passed by their own friends in the previous administration. But the Tories were in no humour to listen to such trifles as these, and carried on lengthy discussions. Mr. Morley, having no responsibility for the policy which rendered such a vote necessary, was away in his room, attending to the duties of his laborious department. Mr. T.W. Russell assumed to be in a great pucker over this absence, and actually tried to stop the proceedings until Mr. Morley came back. [Sidenote: While a wronged nation waits.] Mr. Morley did appear in due course, and then there was an attempt to assail him for his absence. There was also an attempt to take advantage of his presence to resume the discussion of the very topics which had already been discussed for many hours in his absence. Mr. Morley refused to fall into the trap. Speaking quietly, but with a deadly blow between every word, he declined to be a party to obstruction by answering again questions which had already been answered many times over. At this, there was a loud shout of approval from the Liberal benches--exasperated almost beyond endurance by the shameless waste of time in which the Tories, aided by Mr. Chamberlain, had indulged in for so many hours. Mr. Chamberlain professed to be greatly shocked. But the House was not in a mood to stand any more nonsense. Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Lowther, and the rest of the obstructive gang, had to submit to have the vote taken. In the meantime there stood the business of the country to be done. All its needs, its pressing grievances, its vast chorus of sighs and wails from wasted lives--rose up and called for justice; but tricksters, and self-seekers, and horse-jockeys stopped the way. [Sidenote: Carlton Club echoes.] There were signs of the meeting at the Carlton when the House met on Thursday evening, March 9th. The Tory benches were crowded; the young bloods were fuller than ever of that self-consciousness to which I have adverted, and there were signs of movement, excitement, and the spirit of mischief and evil in all their faces and in their general demeanour. There were nearly one hundred questions on the paper--and questions had become a most effective weapon of Obstruction. But there was a certain peculiarity about the questioning on this Thursday evening. A stranger to the House would have remarked that all the questions addressed to Mr. Gladstone were asked last. This was not an accidental arrangement. It was done in the case of every leader of the House, so as to leave him more time before coming down to the House of Commons. It was done in the case of Mr. Balfour when he was leader of the House, with the result that that very limp and leisurely gentleman never came down to his place until the House had been one or two hours at work. There was, of course, much stronger reason for that little bit of consideration in the case of Mr. Gladstone, than in that of a young man like Mr. Balfour. [Sidenote: The epoch of brutality.] But the Tories, in the new and brutal mood to which they have worked themselves up, have taken means for depriving Mr. Gladstone of what small benefit he got from this postponement of the questions to him till the end of question time. The puniest whipster of the Tory or the Unionist party now is satisfied with nothing less, if you please, than to have his questions addressed to and answered by Mr. Gladstone himself. One of this impudent tribe is a Scotch Unionist named Cochrane. The Scotch Unionist is one of the most bitter of the venomous tribe to which he belongs. Mr. Gladstone is a man of peace and unfailing courtesy, but the old lion has potentialities of Olympian wrath, and when he is stirred up a little too much his patience gives way, and he has a manner of shaking his mane and sweeping round with his tail which is dangerous to his enemies and a delight and fascination to his friends. He took up the witless and unhappy Cochrane, shook him, and dropped him sprawling and mutilated, in about as limp a condition as the late Lord Wolmer--I call him late in the sense of a person politically dead--when that distinguished nobleman was called to account for his odious calumny on the Irish members. [Sidenote: Baiting the lion.] At last, however, the Cochranes and the rest of the gang that had thought it fine fun to bait an old man were silenced; but even yet the ordeal of Mr. Gladstone was only beginning. I have seen many disgusting sights in my time in the House of Commons; but I never saw anything so bad as this scene. Mr. Gladstone looked--as I thought--wan and rather tired. He had been down to Brighton; and I have a profound disbelief in these short hurried trips to the seaside. But Mr. Gladstone seems to like them, and haply they do him good. He looked as if the last trip had rather tired him out. Or was it that he had had to sit for several hours the day before at a Cabinet Council? These Cabinet Councils must often be a great trial to a leader's nerves; for all Councils in every body in the world mean division of opinion, personal frictions, ugly outbursts of temper, from which even the celestial minds of political leaders are not entirely free. Anyhow Mr. Gladstone looked pale, fagged, and even a little dejected. You--simple man--who are only acquainted with human nature in its brighter and better manifestations, would rush to the conclusion that the sight of the greatest man of his time in his eighty-fourth year, thus wan, wearied, pathetic, would appeal to the imaginations or the hearts of even political opponents. Simple man, you know nothing of the ruthless cruelty which dwells in political breasts, of the savagery which lies in the depths of the horse-jockey squire or the overdressed youth--anxious to distinguish himself, if it be only by throwing mud at a stately column--you have no idea of these things. [Sidenote: The lion lashes out.] Time after time--again and again--in this form and in that--the Tories, young and old, experienced and senseless, rose to try and corner Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Frank Lockwood, examining a hostile witness in the divorce court, could not have been more persistent than the Lowthers, and the Cranbornes, and even Mr. Balfour. But he was equal to them all--met them man after man, question after question, and, though he had to be on his feet a score of times in the course of a few minutes, was always ready, firm, alert. How we enjoyed the whole splendid display--a brilliant intellect playing with all the ease of its brightest and best powers; but, after all, what a flood of holy rage the whole thing was calculated to rouse in any but rancorous breasts. However, we had our revenge. The resurgence of Jimmy Lowther seems to be a phenomenon, as disturbing to his friends as to his foes. The ugly necessity for sharing responsibility for his vulgar and senseless excesses has come home to Mr. Balfour. There was something very like a scene this night between him and the Newmarket steward. Mr. Balfour was ready to accept the assurances which had been given to him by Mr. Gladstone--assurances which, if anything, erred on the side of conciliation--but Jimmy has entered on the frenzied campaign of obstruction to all and everything which his dull, narrow, and obstinate mind has mistaken for high policy. This led to a strange and striking scene. Mr. Balfour, speaking on some question, was interrupted by Mr. Lowther--and then, in front of the whole House--in words which everybody could hear, with gesture of his whole arm--sweeping, indignant, irritated--the gesture with which a master dismisses an importunate servant--the Tory leader rebuked the interruptions of Mr. Lowther. [Sidenote: Jimmy flouts Mr. Balfour.] But Mr. Lowther, in these days, is not to be put down, and doubtless he feels in his inner breast that wrong which has been done for years to his talents and his services; doubtless he remembers the silence and obscurity to which he has been condemned, while Mr. Balfour has been figuring largely before the general public, in the very situation which Jimmy held himself in days when Mr. Balfour stumbled and trembled from his place below the gangway. At all events, Jimmy has determined to revive; and in these sad days, when nothing but the sheer brutality of obstruction is required, he is not a man to be trifled with. And so he defied Mr. Balfour and insisted on a division. Mr. Balfour ostentatiously left the House, but the majority of the Tory party followed Jimmy. [Sidenote: The pity of it.] All this resuscitation of obstruction necessitated, on Mr. Gladstone's part, an extreme step. Before this time Mr. Gladstone was very rarely in the House after eight o'clock. About that hour, he silently stole away and left the conduct of the business of the House to Sir William Harcourt. He was thus able to get to bed at a reasonable hour, and to attend during the day to the business of the nation. But when the emergency arises, Mr. Gladstone is never able to listen to the dictates of prudence, or selfishness, or peril. He was determined to show the Tories that if they were going to play the game of obstruction, they would have to count with him more seriously than they imagine. To his friends--who doubtless were aghast at the proposition--he announced that he was going to break through those rules which had been imposed upon him by a watchful physician and by his age. At eleven o'clock he announced he would be in the House again, and accordingly, at eleven o'clock--quietly, unostentatiously, without the welcome of a cheer--he almost stole to his place on the Treasury Bench. Something about the figure of Mr. Gladstone compels the concentration of attention upon him at all times. He seems the soul, the inspiration, the genius of the House of Commons. He was not, as is usually the case with him in the evening, in the swallow-tail and large shirt-front of evening dress; he had the long, black, frock coat, which he usually wears on the great occasions when he has a mighty speech to deliver. Of course, Mr. Gladstone was immediately the observed of every eye; but, as I have said, there was no demonstration--the House of Commons is often silent at its most sublime moments. [Sidenote: He pounces.] But if there were silence, it was simply pent-up rage, fierce resolve. When, having brought the discussion down to past midnight, the Tories calmly proposed that the debate should be adjourned, the Old Man got up. He was very quiet, spoke almost in whispered lowliness; but he was unmistakable. The vote would have to be taken. An hour later--when the clock pointed to one--there was a second attempt. There was the same response in the same tone--its quietness, however, fiercely accentuated by Liberal cheers. And then, when the Tories still seemed determined to obstruct, came a division, then the closure, and at one o'clock in the morning Mr. Gladstone was able to leave the House. Thus was he compelled to waste time and strength, that Mr. Chamberlain might nightly hiss his hate, and Mr. Jimmy Lowther might gulp and obstruct, obstruct and gulp. CHAPTER VI. GLADSTONE THE SURVIVAL. [Sidenote: From the past.] What I like most about Mr. Gladstone is his antique spirituality. The modern politician is smart, alive, pert, up-to-date; knows everything about registration; hires a good agent; can run a caucus, and receive a deputation. With us, as yet, the modern politician has not wholly abandoned religious faith--as he has done among our neighbours on the Continent--and has not come to regard this solid earth of ours as the one standing-place in a universe alone worthy the consideration of intelligent men. But the English politician is so far suffused with the spirit of modernity as to prefer the newspaper to the book, to regard more closely registration records than the classics, and generally is wide awake rather than steeped in subtler and profounder forms of sagacity and knowledge. The Prime Minister is a Survival. With all his extraordinary adaptiveness, he stands in many respects in sharpest contrast to his environment. I can never forget, as I look at him, all those years he spent in that vanished epoch which knew nothing of evolution or of science at all, and was content to regard a knowledge of the classics as the beginning and the end of a gentleman's education. After reading the life of Lord Aberdeen, I was brought back in spirit to all those years during which Mr. Gladstone was a member of the Tory party, and lived in an atmosphere of proud, scholarly exclusiveness--of distrust of the multitude--of ecclesiasticism in the home, in the forum, and as the foundation of all political controversy. When, therefore, Mr. Gladstone is going through a crisis, it is intensely interesting to me to watch him and to see how he carries himself amid it all; and then it is that this thought occurs to me of how differently and clearly he stands out from all his colleagues and surroundings. [Sidenote: A reminiscence.] Different things suggest early associations to different people. Mrs. Solness, in the "Master Builder," could think only of her dolls when she was telling the story of the fire that left her childless for ever. I have heard of a great lady who cannot see a shell without recalling the scenes of her dead youth before her. Next to the railway bridge which spans the river in my native town, there is nothing which brings back the past to me so palpably and so vividly--I might sometimes say, so poignantly--as the echoes of books. One of my clearest recollections is of a little room, looking out on a sunny and, as it appeared to me then, a beautifully-kept garden, with a small but glistening river in the distance, and the air filled, not only with the songs of birds, but all the intoxicating and inaudible music of youth's dreams and visions. All this phantasmagoria of memory is accompanied by the echo of a melodious, rich voice, rising and falling, in the to me unfamiliar but delightful accent of an educated Englishman: and the story of Ancient Greece--sometimes her poetry with the loves of her gods, the fights, the shouts of battle, the exhortations and the groans of her heroes--rises once more before me. Or, again, I hear the tale told anew of that great last immortal day in the life of Socrates, as the great Philosopher sank to rest in a glory of self-sacrificing submission, serenity, and courage--a story which moves the world to tears and admiration, and will continue so to do as long as it endures. The voice of the teacher and the friend still survives, which had this extraordinary power of giving in the very different tongue of England all the glories of the poetry and the prose of Greece; and other youths, doubtless like me, look out under the spell of its music to that same green garden in far-off Galway, by the side of Corrib's stream. [Sidenote: Gladstone dreams.] Of all this I sate musing during some idle moments in the middle of March; for, as I looked at Mr. Gladstone, the whole scene was, by a curious trick of memory and association, brought back to me. Everyone who knew the great old Philosopher of Athens, will remember that he had his familiar _dæmon_, and that he believed himself to have constant communication with him. If I remember rightly, there is a good deal about that _dæmon_ in his "Phædo"--that wonderful story to which I have just alluded, and which lives so vividly in my memory. Sometimes I think that Mr. Gladstone has the same superstition. He has moments--especially if there be the stress of the sheer brutality of obstructive and knavish hostility--when he seems to retire into himself--to transfer himself on the wings of imagination to regions infinitely beyond the reach, as well as the ken, of the land in which the Lowthers, the Chamberlains, and the Bartleys dwell. At such moments he gives one the impression of communing with some spirit within his own breast--a familiar _dæmon_, whose voice, though still and silent to all outside, shouts louder than the roar of faction or the shouts of brutish hate. Then it is that I remember what depths of religious fervour there are in this leader of a fierce democracy, and can imagine that ofttimes his communings may, perchance, be silent prayer. [Sidenote: In contrast with Lowther.] As I have said, there have been many such moments in those days in Parliament. Mr. Gladstone can be severe--wrathful--even cruel. It is not often that he is so, but sometimes he has, in sheer self-defence, to notice the dogs that yelp at his heels, and to lash out and maul them so as to keep off the rest. Nobody will forget how, in a few words, Mr. Gladstone mercilessly and for ever crushed that impudent young gentleman, who is titled and considered to-day largely because Mr. Gladstone was the patron of his sanctimonious father. Mr. Jesse Collings hides under a painfully extorted smile the agonies he endures on the few occasions when Mr. Gladstone deems it worth his while to scornfully refer to his apostasy. But, speaking generally, Mr. Gladstone uses his giant powers with extraordinary benignity and mercifulness, and is almost tender with even his bitterest opponents. When, therefore, Mr. Gladstone was being baited by beef-headed Lowther, he for the most part looked simply pained; and took refuge in that far-off self-absorption which enabled him to forget the odious reality in front of him. And assuredly, if you looked at the face of Gladstone, and then at the face of Lowther, and thought of the different purposes of the two men, you could not be surprised that Mr. Gladstone should desire to forget the existence of Mr. Lowther. Mr. Lowther's face, with its high cheek-bones, its heavy underhung lip, like the national bulldog in size, and in its impression of brutal, dull, heavy tenacity--its grotesque good-humour--its unrelieved coarseness--brings out into higher contrast and bolder relief the waxen pallor, the beautifully chiselled features, the dominant benignity and refinement of the face of Mr. Gladstone. And, then, think that the one man is fighting to maintain, and the other to put an end, and for ever, to the hateful, bloody, and, it might almost be said, bestial struggle of centuries; and you can understand the feeling of overwhelming loathing which sometimes rises in the breasts of those who see the two men pitted against each other. [Sidenote: For Jimmy was leader.] For this was what it had come to in the House of Commons. It was Jimmy Lowther against Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Balfour occasionally dropped in a perfunctory word; now and then even tried to raise the standard of revolt against Mr. Lowther; and, of course, had finally to accept the consequences of Mr. Lowther's acts. Joe was there too; much more active in sympathy with Jimmy than Mr. Balfour. With all his faults, there is a certain saving refinement in Mr. Balfour--it is not a refinement that has restrained him from being cruel with the hysteric violence of the effeminate, but it is a refinement that preserves him from the mere Newmarket horseplay of Jimmy Lowther, and the thin rancour of a Brummagem drummer. Joe, I say, was there, ready to back up Jimmy in his worst exploits, but, after all, Jimmy was the leader. In this mighty struggle--not merely for the reconciliation of England and Ireland, but for the existence of Parliamentary institutions--the stakes are no smaller--the gentlemen of England were represented by Mr. Lowther, and the rude democracy by Mr. Gladstone. Democrats need not feel much ashamed of the contrast. [Sidenote: The apotheosis of Jimmy.] But there Jimmy Lowther was, gulping and obstructing, obstructing and gulping. The deadly and almost animal dulness of the performance I must insist on again and again. Mr. Lowther does not speak--he is as inarticulate as one of the prize bulls which, I doubt not, he delights to view at Islington what time the Agricultural Hall opens its portals to fat men and fat beasts. He cannot stand on his legs for five minutes together without saying half-a-dozen times, "I repeat what I have already said;" he has no ideas, no language, nothing except sheer bull-headed power of standing on his legs, and occupying a certain amount of time. Everybody knows that Lowtherism reached its climax on Saturday, March 11th. On that day, men, who had held high office, were not ashamed to resort to so mean and palpable an obstructive expedient as to put on paper twenty-two questions to their successors in office. The previous Friday had been bad enough. That was the day which tried Mr. Gladstone more, perhaps, than any day for many a year; and, indeed, it tried others as much as he, though not everybody bore it with the same iron and inflexible courage. There were large absences--some of the Irish away at conventions in Ireland, others without that legitimate excuse; there were Liberal absentees as well. Obstruction, meantime, stalked triumphantly; and when the divisions came, our strength sank down to almost invisible figures. Ah! it was saddening to look at Mr. Gladstone's face throughout that long morning sitting of Friday, March 10th. There are some days that live in one's memory, not so much as days as nights--with the ghastly spectres of darkness--nightmares--hauntings of a hideous past--anticipations of a joyless future. Such that Friday remains in my memory--with Mr. Gladstone's face standing out from the surrounding figures--pale, remote, pained. [Sidenote: The G.O.M. as a lecturer.] The announcement of the following Monday came only as a surprise to those who had not been fully behind the scenes. There were few, who knew the impression that the Friday had made, who did not feel sure that the game of pushing the Home Rule Bill on before Easy Easter was up, and that Mr. Gladstone had been beaten by the sheer brutality of Obstruction. But still hope springs eternal in the Irish breast, and there was still the lingering feeling that Mr. Gladstone would make a further and more desperate effort to break down one of the most shameless crusades of Obstruction on which a great party had ever entered. Indeed, Mr. Gladstone himself was responsible for a rise in the temperature of his own party on the very evening of that fateful and fatal Friday morning, when obstruction and the abandonment of their own friends had so nearly driven the Government out of office. I could scarcely believe my eyes when at nine o'clock on that day I came down to the almost empty House--in these evening sittings the House always looks about as cheerful as a theatre at mid-day--and saw Mr. Gladstone on the Treasury Bench, almost radiant, and evidently full of speech, go, and spirit. There wasn't really the smallest necessity for his presence. Nothing stood on the paper save one of those harmless, futile motions which are discussed with about as much interest by the House generally, as "abstract love"--to use a bold figure of Labby in a recent debate. It was a motion which complained that private members did not get sufficient time. Considering that private members had used their privileges for some two weeks previously to destroy the very foundation of all representative Government--namely, that the majority shall prevail--the complaint seemed a little audacious. Anyhow, a debate upon it could lead nowhere. But the moment the resolution was proposed, up stood the Grand Old Man, and delivered a bright, sparkling little academical address, for all the world like the lecture of a very _spirituel_ French professor to a parcel of boys from the Quartier Latin. For the moment you could actually imagine that the Old Man had forgotten that there were such things in the world as Home Rule, Obstruction, Newmarket Lowther, and Brummagem Joe. And all the time here were we, who could be his sons, grinding our hearts in despair--in futile anger--in melancholy retrospect. [Sidenote: An hour of gloom.] With the Monday, however, came a biting frost. The news that Mr. Gladstone had been struck down from the fray, was sufficient to prepare anybody for the final announcement. With him leading the Liberal hosts, one could feel that obstruction could finally be beaten, however obstinate might be its resistance--for he has the faith that moves mountains. Then came the announcement that the second reading of the Home Rule Bill had been postponed till after Easter. The Tories and the Unionists were apparently taken by surprise; so much so that they did not seem to have the power of yelling forth their delight at the triumph of their policy with that full chorus which one would have expected. Altogether, the announcement came upon the House, and passed the House, with a quickness and a greater quietness than one might have expected. The consequences were too serious to be grasped immediately; and men were almost anxious to get to the lobbies for the purpose of discussing it in all its bearings. The rest of the week was but a poor falling-off after the heroic and tragic fever of its opening, and of the week which preceded it. One could see that in the Liberal ranks there had succeeded to the fierce fighting spirit of the previous days a certain lassitude and disappointment. What their faces told in the House their lips more freely uttered in the lobbies. For a time, indeed, there was a feeling of almost unreasoning despair, and that full, frank, unsparing criticism to which every Government is subject from its friends when the winds blow and the waves are high. It was said that the Government had committed the mistake of making too many targets at once; that they had first infuriated the Church by the Welsh Suspensory Bill; that they had followed this up by infuriating the publicans and the brewers by the Veto Bill; that, meantime, there was very little chance of their being able to obtain the compensatory advantage of getting these Bills passed into law. There were grumblings about the Registration Bill; in short, nothing and nobody were spared in this hour of gloom and disaster. [Sidenote: "Herr Schloss."] But the House of Commons--as I have often remarked--is like a barometer in the promptitude of its reflection of every momentary phase, and all these things are duly discounted by old Parliamentary hands accustomed to panics when a check comes to what has been a most successful campaign on the whole. And in the meantime, if there had been any tendency to disintegration, it was soon restored by the conduct of the Tories. For, the old game of obstruction and vituperation went on just as strongly as if no concession had been made, and no victory gained. The Monday night had been reserved for a debate on the Evicted Tenants' Commission. And Mr. T.W. Russell, brimful of notes and venom, sate in his place, as impatient to rise as the captive and exuberant balloon which only strong ropes and the knotted arms of men hold tight to mother earth. Jimmy, however, has a passion for his ignoble calling; he sings at his work like the gravedigger in "Hamlet." And before the inflated Russell was able to explode, Jimmy had an hour or so to himself in the discussion of Mr. Mundella's efforts to deal with labour. It was on this occasion that Jimmy spread something like dismay in the bench on which he sate. Mr. Schloss, who had been appointed as a correspondent by Mr. Mundella, has a name which shows a German origin. Jimmy insisted on speaking of him accordingly as "Herr Schloss." And there, not a yard from Jimmy, sate the Baron de Worms, one of the most portentous and pretentious of English patriots, who bears not only a German name, but a German title. I don't know whether "Herr" Goschen was in the House at the same time; if so, his feelings must have been very poignant. Mr. Mundella doesn't know how to treat these Obstructives. The main thing is not to take them seriously. Jimmy, to tell the truth, makes no pretence of taking himself seriously, and grins through a horse-collar most of the time he is speaking. But the poor President of the Board of Trade is conscious of doing everything man can do to help to the solution of the vexed questions of the time. He cannot avoid allowing himself to be worked up into a frenzy by imputations which he ought to know are simply intended for the purpose of getting him out of temper, and so prolonging debate. [Sidenote: Sir John Gorst.] Sir John Gorst is one of the men who have again been brought much into evidence by the turn events have taken. I remember the time when he first made a Parliamentary figure. It was in the days when Lord Randolph Churchill started out on his great and meteoric career, at the beginning of the Parliament of '80. Sir John Gorst was, in many respects, the cleverest of the brilliant little group--at least, at the work which they were then doing. He is cold-blooded, quick, and dexterous, and, above all things, he has supreme pessimism and cynicism. To him, all political warfare is a somewhat squalid struggle, in which everybody is dishonest, and everybody playing for his own hand. It is an advantage in some respects to take that view; it saves a man from anything like unduly passionate convictions--enables him to keep cool even in trying circumstances. I have seen Sir John as cold as ice in the very height and ecstasy of the most passionate moments in the fierce Parliament of 1880 to 1885, and a man who remains so cool is sure to be able to strike his blows deliberately and home. My poor friend, Mr. Mundella, sometimes forgets this. When Sir John Gorst accused him of slighting somebody--I don't know who; and, really, it doesn't matter, for Sir John Gorst knew very well that the charge was entirely unfounded--when, I say, Sir John did this, up jumped honest Mr. Mundella to indignantly deny that he had ever done anything of the kind. Of course, he hadn't, and Sir John Gorst knew that as well as Mr. Mundella. But then, ten minutes were wasted in the encounter; and even ten minutes are not despised by Jimmy and his compeers. [Sidenote: T.W. Russell.] At last, this was got over, and the time came for T.W. Russell. There are few men in the House of Commons who excite such violent dislike on Liberal and Irish Benches as this pre-eminently disagreeable personality. The dislike is well founded. It is not because Mr. Russell is rancorous, or has strong opinions; it is because nobody has any faith in his sincerity. For many years of his life he was a paid teetotal lecturer. Teetotalism is a counsel of perfection, and teetotallers are estimable men, but the paid platform advocate of teetotalism is never a very attractive personality. This tendency to shout, and thump the table, and work up the agony--this eternal pitching of the voice to the scream that will terrify the groundlings, appal the sinner, and bring down the house--all these things produce a style of oratory which is about as disagreeable as anything in the shape of oratory can be. Above all things, it is difficult to take the itinerant lecturer seriously, with his smoking meal at home as a reward for his philanthropic efforts. The whole thing produces on the mind the impression of a clap-trap performance, with no heart or soul underneath all its ravings, bellowings, and dervish-like contortions. Mr. Russell has ceased to be a teetotal lecturer, and has become a stump orator for the Unionist party, but the scent of the teetotal platform hangs round him still. He yells, bellows, and twists himself about, puts all his statements with ridiculous exaggeration--altogether, so overdoes the part that it is only the wildest and emptiest Tory who is taken in by him. What spoils the whole thing to my mind is that it is all so evidently artificial--so palpably pumped up. Clapping his hand on his breast, lifting his shaky fingers to Heaven, Mr. Russell is always in a frenzied protestation of honesty, of rugged and unassailable virtue, of bitter vaticination against the wickedness of the rest of mankind. No man could be as honest as he professes to be, and live. The whole thing would be exquisite acting if, underneath all this conscious exaggeration, you did not see the mere political bravo. You turn sometimes, and sicken as though you were at the country fair, and saw the poor raucous-throated charlatan eating fire or swallowing swords to the hideous accompaniments of the big drum and the deafening cymbal. [Sidenote: Mr. Carson.] No--Mr. T.W. Russell is the mere play-actor. If you want one of the real actualities in the more sinister side of Irish life, look at and study Mr. Carson. It is he who winds up the debate on the commission of Mr. Justice Mathew--a debate made memorable by the ablest debating speech Mr. Morley has made in the whole course of his Parliamentary career. I see men talking to Mr. Carson that belong to an opposite side of politics. I confess that I never see him pass without an internal shudder. Just as the sight of an abbé gave M. Homais, in "Madame Bovary," an unpleasant whiff of the winding-sheet, there is something in the whole appearance of Mr. Carson that conveys to me the dank smell of the prison, and the suffocating sense of the scaffold. Do you remember that strange, terrible day in the "Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin," in which Balzac describes Vautrin's passage through the ranks of the gaol-birds and gaol officials among whom he had passed so much of his life? Above all, do you recall that final, and supreme, and awful touch in which, addressing consciously the handler of the guillotine, he professes to take him for the chaplain, and, bringing the poor executioner for once to confusion, is addressed with blushing face and trembling lips with the observation, "Non, Monsieur, j'ai d'autres fonctions"? [Sidenote: Green Street Court-House.] Mr. Carson, doubtless, has "autres fonctions" than that of Jack Ketch--who has always been so efficient and constant an instrument of Government in Ireland--but I am never able to regard one part of the official machinery by which wronged nations are held down as very different from the other. Above all, I am unable to make much distinction between the final agent in the gaol and those other actors who play with loaded dice the bloody game in the criminal court with the partisan judge and the packed jury. Doubtless, happy reader, you have never been in a place called Green Street Court-House, in Dublin. If you ever go to the Irish capital, pay that spot a visit. It will compensate you--especially if you can get some _cicerone_ who will tell you some of the associations that cling around the spot. It is in a back street--narrow, squalid, filthy--surrounded by all those signs of crumbling decay which speak more loudly to the visitor to Dublin of the decay and destruction of a nation than fieriest orator or solidest history. And in no part of Dublin have Death's effacing fingers worked with such destructiveness as in all the streets that surround the Green Street Court-House. Palatial mansions are windowless, grimy, hideous--with all the ghastly surroundings of tenement homes of the very poor. It is in Green Street Court-House that the political offenders in Ireland are tried. Within its narrow and grimy walls I saw many a gallant Irishman, when I was a young reporter, pass through a foregone and prearranged trial to torture, agony, madness, premature death. I can only think of it as of a shambles, or, perhaps, to put it more strongly, but more accurately, as I think of that wooden framework in which I saw the murderer, Henry Wainwright, hanged by the neck one foggy morning years ago, a gallows. The jury was packed, and the judges on the bench were as much a part of the machinery of prosecution as the Counsel for the Crown. The whole thing was a ghastly farce--as ghastly as the private enquiries that intervene between the Russian rebel and the hunger, and solitude, and death of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, or the march to Siberia. [Sidenote: The lawyer and the hangman.] In all such squalid tragedies, men of the Carson type are a necessary portion of the machinery, as necessary as the informer that betrays--as the warder who locks the door--as the hangman who coils the rope. Mark you, all the forms--all the precautions--all the outward seeming of English law and liberty--are in these Irish courts. The outside is just the same as in any court that meets in the Old Bailey; but it is all the mask and the drapery, behind which the real figures are the foregone verdict, the partisan judge--the prepared cell or constructed gallows. In the regime of coercion which has just expired, the whole machinery was in motion. The last sentence of the law was not resorted to in political offence, for the days of rebellion in the open field had passed. But there were the Resident Magistrates ready to do their master Balfour's bidding, and to send men to imprisonment, in some cases followed by bread-and-water discipline--by stripping of clothes and other atrocities, which made the court of the Resident Magistrate the antechamber to the cell, and the cell the antechamber to the tomb. In all these ghastly and tragic dramas, enacted all over Ireland, Mr. Carson was the chief figure--self-confident, braggart, deliberate--winding the rope around his victim's neck with all the assured certainty of the British Empire, Mr. Balfour and the Resident Magistrates behind him. [Sidenote: Mr. Carson's exterior.] Nature has stamped on Mr. Carson's exterior the full proclamation of his character and career. There is something about his appearance and manner that somehow or other seems to belong rather to the last than the present century. He is a very up-to-date gentleman in every sense of the word--clothes included. But the long, lantern, black-coloured jaws, the protruding mouth, the cavernous eyes, the high forehead with the hair combed straight back--all seem to suggest that he ought to be wearing the wig, the queue, and the sword of the eighteenth century. He looks as though he had come from consultation, not with Mr. Balfour, but Lord Castlereagh, and as if the work he were engaged in was the sending of the Brothers Sheares to Tyburn, not William O'Brien to Tullamore, and as though he had stopped up o' nights to go over again the list of the Irishmen that could be bought or bullied, or cajoled into the betrayal of Ireland's Parliament. Look at him as he stands at the box. You can see that he has been bred into almost impudent self-confidence, by those coercion tribunals, in which the best men of Ireland lay at the mercy of a creature like Mr. Balfour and the meaner creatures who were ready to do Mr. Balfour's work. Mr. Carson, not a year in the House, places his hands on the box, then on his hips, with all the airs of a man who had been in Parliament for a lifetime--attacks Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Morley, Mr. Justice Mathew--three of the highest-minded and ablest men of their time--as though he were at Petty Sessions, with Mr. Cecil Roche dispensing justice. It is an odious sight. It makes even Englishmen shudder. But it has its uses. It throws on to the floor of the House of Commons with all the illumination of those great times, the abysses and passions and sinister figures in Ireland's moving tragedy. CHAPTER VII. A FORTNIGHT OF QUIET WORK. [Sidenote: Dulness.] The House did very good work during the last fortnight in March. This has a corollary more satisfactory to the public than to the journalist; for, whenever business is progressing, it invariably means that the proceedings have been extremely dull. It is a well-known phenomenon of the House of Commons, that the moment there is a chance of anything like a personal scene--though the encounter be of the smallest possible moment and affect nothing beyond two personalities of no particular importance--it is well known that whenever such scene is promised, the benches of the House of Commons prove too small for the huge crowds that rush to them from all parts. Mr. Fowler introduced one of the most revolutionary measures ever brought into the House of Commons--revolutionary I mean, of course, in the good sense--and yet he delivered his new gospel of emancipation to a House that at no period was in the least crowded, and that was never excited. Happy is the country that has no annals, fruitful is the Parliament that has no scenes. [Sidenote: Uganda again.] But there were signs of something like storm at certain portions of the sitting on March 20th, for there stood on the paper the Estimate which raised the difficult question of Uganda, and on that question, as everybody knows, there is a yawning gulf between the opinions of Mr. Labouchere and a number of Radicals below the gangway, and the occupants of the Treasury Bench. Of Mr. Labouchere the saying may be used, which is often employed with regard to weak men--Mr. Labouchere is far from a weak man--he is his own worst enemy. His delight in persiflage, his keen wit--his love of the pose of the bloodless and cynical Boulevardier--have served to conceal from Parliament, and sometimes, perhaps, even from himself, the sincerity of his convictions, and the masculine strength and firmness of his will. Somehow or other, he is least effective when he is most serious. His speech on Uganda, for instance, was admirably put together, and chock full of facts, sound in argument, and in its seriousness quite equal to the magnitude of the issues which it raised. But no man is allowed to play "out of his part"--as the German phrase goes. Labby has accustomed the House to expect amusement from him, and it will not be satisfied unless he gives it. When, therefore, he does make a serious speech, the House insists on considering it dull, and rarely lends to him its attentive and serious ear. [Sidenote: Which is the buffoon?] Great and yet fatal is the power of oratory. In the course of this same night's debate, Mr. Chamberlain also made a speech. During portions of it he delighted the House, and it was extremely effective as a party speech. In the course of his observations, Mr. Chamberlain, alluding to some jokelet of Labby, declared that a great question like Uganda should not be treated in a spirit of "buffoonery." That observation was rude, and scarcely Parliamentary. But that is not the point--nobody expects gentlemanly feeling or speech from Mr. Chamberlain. The point is that the observation could have been applied with much more truth to the speech of Mr. Chamberlain than to that of Labby; for Mr. Chamberlain's speech consisted, for the most part, of nothing better than the merest party hits--the kind of thing that almost anybody could say--that hundreds of journalists nightly write in their party effusions, and for very modest salaries. But the heart and soul of the question of Uganda were not even touched by Mr. Chamberlain. Labby may have been right or wrong; but Labby's was a serious speech with a serious purpose. Mr. Chamberlain's speech was just a smart bit of party debating. The buffoonery--in the sense of shallowness and emptiness--was really in the speech that everybody took to be grave. The seriousness was in the speech which, amid the delighted applause of the Tories, Mr. Chamberlain denounced as buffoonery. [Sidenote: The grip of Labby.] In some respects Mr. Labouchere reminds me of the late Mr. Biggar. Underneath all his exterior of carelessness, callousness, and flippancy, there lies a very strong, a very tenacious, and a very clear-sighted man. There are times--especially when the small hours of the morning are breaking, and Labby is in his most genial mood--when he is ready to declare that, after all, he is only a Conservative in disguise, and that his Radicalism is merely put on for the purpose of amusing and catching the groundlings. As a matter of fact, Labby is by instinct one of the most thorough Radicals that ever breathed. His Radicalism, it is true, is of the antique pattern. He is an individualist without compromise or concession. Life to him is to the strongest; he has no faith save in the gospel of the survival of the fittest. Equable and even cheery, he does not take a particularly joyous view of human existence. I have heard him speak of the emptiness and futilities of human existence in tones, not of gloom, for he is too much of a philosopher to indulge in regrets, but with a hearty sincerity that would do credit to the Trappist monk who found everything vanity of vanities in a sinful world. Despising honours and dignities, he positively loathes outward show; he is a Radical by instinct and nature. Though one of the wealthiest men in the House of Commons, nobody has over known him guilty of one act of ostentation. Probably he loves power. I have not the smallest doubt that he would enjoy very well being a Cabinet Minister. But for social distinction, for the frippery and display of life, he has a positive dislike. He is like Mr. Biggar also in tenacity. [Sidenote: And the grit.] It must have been a disappointment to him--it was certainly a disappointment to his many friends--that he was not a member of the Ministry which he did so much to bring into existence. But the very day the House met after the formation of the Government, Labby was in his old place on the front bench below the gangway as if nothing had occurred--just as ready as ever to take his share in the proceedings of the House of Commons. And every succeeding evening saw him in his place--listening with commendable piety to the exhortations of Holy Writ--given forth in the fine resonant voice of Archdeacon Farrar--ready to seize a point--to take advantage of a situation, eagerly interested in everything that is going on. Some people may regard this as a very common gift. It is nothing of the kind. I know no place in the world which is a severer test of a man's tenacity of purpose, than the House of Commons. I suppose it is because we see the men more publicly there than elsewhere; but I know no place where there are so many ups and downs of human destiny as in the House of Commons--no place, at all events, where one is so struck with the changes, and transformations of human destinies. The man who, in one or two Sessions, is on his legs every moment--who takes a prominent part in every debate--who has become one of the notabilities of the House--in a year or two's time has sunk to a silent dweller apart from all the eagerness and fever of debate, sinks into melancholy and listlessness, and is almost dead before he has given up his Parliamentary life. Staying power is the rarest of all Parliamentary powers; Labby has plenty of staying power. [Sidenote: Sir Charles Dilke.] Another figure which the new House of Commons is gradually beginning to understand is Sir Charles Dilke. He is one of the men who seem to have no interest in life outside politics. When one thinks that he has wealth, an immense number of subjects in which he can find instruction and occupation, that he is familiar with the languages, literature, and life of several countries, it is hard to understand how he could have had the endurance to go through the hurricane of abuse and persecution which he has had to encounter in the last seven years. There are traces in his face of the intense mental suffering through which he has passed; there are more lines about the eyes than should be in the case of a man who is just fifty. But, otherwise, he positively looks younger than he did when he was a Cabinet Minister. There is colour where there used to be nothing but deadly pallor--freshness where the long and terrible drudgery of official life had left a permanent look of fag and weariness. Sir Charles Dilke has taken up the broken thread of his life just as if nothing had occurred in that long period of exile and suffering. He is never out of his place: attends every sitting as conscientiously as if he were in office and responsible for everything that is going on; and has his eye on subjects as wide apart as the parish councils and Newfoundland, army reform and the occupation of Uganda. It is curious to see, too, how he is regaining that ascendancy over the House of Commons which he exercised formerly. It is an ascendancy not due in the least to oratorical power. Sir Charles Dilke never made a fine sentence or a sonorous peroration in his whole life. It is that power of acquiring all the facts of the case--of being thoroughly up in all its merits--in short, of knowing his business--which impresses the House of Commons, which, after all, though it may cheer the gibes of a smart and pert debater like Mr. Chamberlain, is most happy when it hears a man talking of something which he understands thoroughly. [Sidenote: Joe as a Jingo.] Mr. Chamberlain spoke, as I have said, in the debate. It was a very characteristic speech. I know people think I am prejudiced about this gentleman. Not in the least. I recognize that he has many splendid qualities for political life. They are not qualities which I think highest either in the oratorical or the intellectual sense. He also has staying power, and has gone through seven terrible years. There is the trace of all the bitterness of that struggle in his face--which has lost in these years the almost boyish freshness of expression and outline, which bears in every deep line a mark of the ferocity of the passions by which his breast has been torn. He is one of the many men in the House of Commons that give one the impression of being hunted by the worst and most pitiless of all furies--violent personal passion--especially for power, for triumph, for revenge. But still, there he is--ready as ever to take part in the struggle--still holding the position he held seven years ago--with no sign of weakening or repentance, though there be plenty of the hunger of baulked revenge. [Sidenote: The tragedy of politics.] What a pity it is we can't see some of those great political figures in the nudity of their souls. They must have many a bitter moment--many an hour of dark and hopeless depression--probably far more than other men; for them emphatically life is a conflict and a struggle. And the conflict and the struggle often kill them long before their time. Was there ever anything much more tragic than the cry of M. Ferry for "le grand Repos," as he lay stifling from the weakening heart which the bullet of a political enemy and the slings and arrows of years of calumny and persecution had at last broken? To any man with ordinary sensitiveness of nerves, a political career is a crucifixion--many times repeated. But Mr. Chamberlain, probably, has not the ordinary sensitiveness of nerves. Combative, masterful, with narrow and concentrated purpose, he pursues the game of politics--not without affliction, but with persistent tenacity and a courage that have rarely shown any signs of faltering or failing. All these things must be granted to Mr. Chamberlain; but when I come to speak of him intellectually, I cannot see anything in him but a very perky, smart, glib-tongued "drummer," who is able to pick up the crumbs of knowledge with extraordinary rapidity, and give them forth again with considerable dexterity. He speech on Uganda, so far as its thought and its phraseology were concerned, was on the level of the profound utterances with which Sir Ashmead Bartlett tickles and infuriates the groundlings of provincial audiences. But it took the House--at least, it took the Tories; and, after all, what party orators who have not the responsibilities of office have to do, is to get cheers and embarrass the Government. [Sidenote: Another hymn to the G.O.M.] The reader must not be either exasperated or bored if he finds continuous mention of the G.O.M. in these pages, for he is, to a great extent, the House of Commons. I remember hearing Mrs. Gladstone once use of her distinguished husband a phrase which gave tersely and simply a complete idea of a side of his character. It was just before his historic visit to Birmingham, and there was anxiety as to the vast size of the great Bingley Hall in which it had been decided he was to speak. "He has such heart," said Mrs. Gladstone of her husband--meaning that whatever was the size of the hall, he would do his best, at whatever cost, to fill it with his voice. It is this mighty heart of his which carries him through everything, and which largely accounts for the hold he has over the imaginations and hearts of the masses. Well, one can see proof of this in his conduct whenever he is leader of a Government. Other Prime Ministers and leaders of the House are only too willing to leave as much of the work as possible to their subordinates. Disraeli used to lie in Oriental calm during the greater part of every sitting, leaving all his lieutenants to do the drudgery while he dosed and posed. Not so Gladstone. He is almost literally always on his legs. The biggest bore--the rudest neophyte--the most gulping obstructive is certain of an answer from him--courteous, considerate, and ample. No debate, however small, is too petty for his notice and intervention; in short, he tries to do not only his own work, but everybody else's. [Sidenote: His justification.] I have once or twice gently suggested that I thought the G.O.M. might leave a little more to his subordinates, and spare that frame and mind which bears the Atlantean burden of the Home Rule struggle. But Mr. Gladstone is able to unexpectedly justify himself when his friends are crying out in remonstrance; and it is, too, one of the peculiarities of this extraordinary portent of a man--extraordinary physically as much as mentally--that the more he works, the fresher and happier he seems to be. If you see him peculiarly light-hearted; if he be gesticulating with broad and generous sweep on the Treasury Bench; if he be whispering to Sir William Harcourt, and then talking almost aloud to Mr. John Morley--above all, if he be ready to meet all comers, you may be quite sure that he has just delivered a couple of rattling and lengthy speeches, in which, with his deadly skill and perfect temper, he has devastated the whole army of false arguments with which his opponents have invaded him. So, for instance, it was on March 28th. It was noticed that he was not in the House for some hours during the discussion of the Vote on Account. But, as evening approached, there he was in his place--fresh, smiling, happy, every limb moving with all the alertness of auroral youth. In the interval between his first appearance in the House and then later, he had delivered two lengthy speeches to two deputations of deadly foes; but he came down after this exertion just as if he had been playing a game of cricket, and had taken enough physical exercise to bring blitheness to his spirits and alacrity to his limbs. [Sidenote: His unending progress.] And then the best of it all is that Mr. Gladstone justifies his speech-making by improving every hour. It would scarcely seem credible that a man with more than half-a-century of speech-making and triumphs behind him would have been capable of making any change, and especially of making a change for the better. But the peculiarity of Mr. Gladstone is that even as a speaker he grows and improves every day. I have been watching him closely now for some sixteen years in the House of Commons, and I thought that it was impossible for him to ever reach again the triumphs of some of his utterances. I have heard people say, too, that they felt it pathetic to hear him deliver his speech on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, and to remember the vigour with which his utterances on that occasion stood in such a contrast. This was superficial and false criticism. It is quite true that the old resonance of the voice is not there, and it is true that now and then he shows signs of physical fatigue, and that recently after his cold there were some days when his voice was little better than a very distinct, but also a very pathetic, whisper. But there is another side. Age has mellowed his style, so that now he can speak on even the most contentious subject with a gentleness and a freedom from anything like venom--with an elevation of tone--that make it almost impossible for even his bitterest opponent to listen to him without delight and, for the moment at least, with a certain degree of assent. If anybody really wishes to find out what constitutes the highest and most effective form of House of Commons' eloquence, he should spend his days in listening to Mr. Gladstone in the most recent style he has adopted in the House of Commons. And the lessons to be derived are that House of Commons' eloquence should be easy, genial in temper, reserved in force--in short, that it should put things with the agreeable candour, and passionlessness want of exaggeration which characterise well-bred conversation. [Sidenote: To the slaughter.] A foredoomed sheep could not have been brought more unwillingly to the slaughter than was Mr. Balfour to the debate on the Vote of Censure. He had nothing new to say, and unfortunately he felt that as keenly as anybody else. Every single topic with which he had to deal had been discussed already, until people were positively sick of them--in short, poor Mr. Balfour was in the position of having to serve up to the House a dish that had been boiled and grilled and stewed, and yet stewed again, until the gorge rose at it in revolt and disgust. The late Chief Secretary has the susceptibility of all nervous temperaments. The men are indeed few who have equal power with all kinds of audiences--with an audience that is friendly and that is hostile. Still more rare is it to find a man who can face an audience even worse than a downright hostile one, and that is an audience which is indifferent, There are very few men I have known in my Parliamentary experience who could do it. [Sidenote: A memory of Parnell.] Mr. Parnell was one. I have seen him speak quite comfortably to an audience which consisted of himself, Mr. Biggar, the Minister in attendance, and the Speaker of the House--in all, four, including himself. Indeed, he often said to me that he rather liked to have such an audience. Speaking was not easy or agreeable to him, and his sole purpose for many years in speaking at all was to consume so much time. Parnell was a man who always found it rather hard to concentrate his mind on any subject unless he was alone and in silence. This was perhaps one of the many reasons why he kept out of the House of Commons as much as he could. Anything like noise or disturbance around him seemed to destroy his power of thinking. For instance, when he was being cross-examined by Sir Richard Webster in the course of the Forgeries Commission, his friends trembled one day because, looking at his face, with its puzzled, far-away look, they knew that he was in one of those moods of abstraction, during which he was scarcely accountable for what he said. And sure enough he made on that day the appalling statement that he had used certain language for the purpose of deceiving the House of Commons. He said to me that he liked to speak in an empty House because then he had time to collect his thoughts. Joe Biggar, his associate, was also able to speak in any circumstances with exactly the same ease of spirit. To him, speaking was but a means to an end, and whether people listened to him or not--stopped to hang on his words or fled before his grating voice and Ulster accent--it was all one to him. Two other men have the power of speaking always with the same interest and self-possession. These are Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. O'Connor Power. [Sidenote: The Sensitiveness of Mr. Balfour.] But Mr. Balfour is like none of these men. He requires the glow of a good audience--of a cheering party--of the certainty of success in the division lobby--to bring out his best powers. The splendid, rattling, self-confident debater of the coercion period now no longer exists, and Mr. Balfour has positively gone back to the clumsiness, stammering, and ineffectiveness of the pre-historic period of his life before he had taken up the Chief Secretaryship. That was bad enough; but what is worse is that the House is beginning to feel it. If you lose confidence in yourself, the world is certain to pretty soon follow your example. And so it is now with Mr. Balfour, for when he stood up to speak on March 27th there was the sight--which must have made his soul sink to even profounder depths of depression--of members leaving the House in troops and rushing to the lobby, the library, or the smoke-room, rather than listen to a debater whose rise a few months ago would have meant a general and excited incursion of everybody that could hear. Starting thus, Mr. Balfour made the worst of a bad case, his speech was a failure, and as the American would put it, a fizzle; in short, a ghastly business. [Sidenote: The G.O.M.'s outburst.] It was in the midst of this debate that Mr. Gladstone made his magnificent and unexpected outburst. He had been paying attention to the debate--but very quietly, and not at all in a way that suggested an idea of intervening in it. It was, too, about nine o'clock when Mr. Gladstone stood up, and anybody acquainted with the House of Commons knows that nine o'clock is in the very crisis of that dinner hour which nightly makes the House of Commons a waste and a wilderness. Nor, indeed, was there much in the opening sentences that seemed to indicate the fact--the great fact--that the House of Commons was about to listen to one of the most extraordinary manifestations of eloquence it has ever heard during its centuries of existence. For the Old Man was in his most benignant mood. He spoke of his opponents and their case in sorrow rather than in anger. Evidently, the House was about to listen to one of those delightful little addresses--half paternal, half pedagogic--to which it has become accustomed in recent years, since Mr. Gladstone threw off the fierce, warring spirit of earlier days, and became the honey-tongued Nestor of the assembly. But, as time went on, the House began to perceive that the Old Man was in splendid fighting trim, and seized with one of those moments of positive inspiration, in which he carries away an assembly as though it were floated into Dreamland on the waves of a mighty magician's magic power. Smash after smash came upon the Tory case--as though you could see the whole edifice crumbling before your eyes, as though it were an earthquake slitting the rocks and shaking the solid earth. And, all the time, no loss whatever of the massive calm, the imperturbable good-humour, the deadly politeness which the commercial gentlemen from Ulster have also found can kill more effectively than the shout of rhetoric, or the jargon of faction, or the raucous throat of bigotry. [Sidenote: In the Empyrean.] At last the Old Man had come to a contrast between the action of the Tory Government of 1885 and the Liberal with regard to the treatment of prisoners in Ireland. The history of that period is one upon which Mr. Gladstone is now able to speak without feeling; but he dragged out from that period and its hidden recesses the whole story of the negotiations between Parnell and Lord Carnarvon, and all the other circumstances that make that one of the most remarkable epochs in the history of English parties. He was now sweeping all before him. This Lord Randolph felt, and it was almost timorously he rose to make an interruption. The Old Man courteously gave way; but it was only to jump up again and pour on his young opponent a tide of ridicule and answer which overwhelmed him. Higher and higher he soared with every succeeding moment, and stranger and more impressive became the aspect of the House. There is nothing which becomes that assembly so much as those moments of exaltation during which it is under the absolute spell of some great master of its emotions. Then a death-like stillness falls upon it--you can almost hear the same heavy-drawn sighs as those that in a Paris opera-house tell of all the passion, the flood of memory and regret, and the dreams which are evoked by the voice of a Marguerite before her final expiation--of a Juliet before her final immolation. Laughter and cheers there were in abundance during this portion of Mr. Gladstone's speech; but the general demeanour was one of deadly stillness and rapt emotion--the stillness one can imagine on that Easter morning when De Quincey went forth and washed the fever from his forehead with the dew of early day. [Sidenote: An episode.] And in the midst of it all there came one of the most pathetic little episodes I have seen in the House of Commons of recent years. Mr. Gladstone has somewhat changed his habits in one respect. There was a time when he rarely came to the House to deliver a great speech without a little bottle--such as one sees containing pomade on the dressing-table of the thin-haired bachelor. Of late, the pomade-bottle has disappeared. The G.O.M. is now content to take the ordinary glass of water. It is very seldom that he requires even that amount of sustenance during his great speeches. However, he had been doing a good deal that day--he had already made a long speech to his supporters in the Foreign Office--and he required a glass of water. He called out for it, and, at once, there was a rush from the Treasury Bench to the lobby outside. But, before this could be done, the very pleasant little episode to which I have alluded took place. There stood opposite Mr. Jackson, the late Chief Secretary, an untouched glass of water. When he heard the cry of the Old Man, Mr. Jackson--who has plenty of Yorkshire kindliness, as well as Yorkshire bluffness--at once took up the glass that stood before him, and handed it across the table. With a bow, and a delighted and delightful smile, the Old Man took the glass, and drank almost greedily. And then, turning to his opponents, he said, "I wish the right hon. gentleman who uses me so kindly, were as willing to take from my fountainhead as I am from his." The grace, the courtesy, the readiness with which it was said, took the House by storm, and it was hard to say whether the delighted laughter and cheers came in greater volume from the Tory or the Liberal side of the House. [Sidenote: The peroration.] And Mr, Gladstone's power increased with his power over the House. It looked as if you were watching some mighty monarch of the air that rises and rises higher, higher into the empyrean on slow-poised, even almost motionless, wing. Leaving behind the narrow issues of the particular motion before the House, Mr. Gladstone entered on a rapid survey of the mournful and touching relations between English officialism and Irish National sentiment. From the dead past, he called up the touching, beautiful, and sympathetic figure of Thomas Drummond, and all his efforts to reconcile the administration of the law with the rights and sentiments of the Irish people. The time for cheering had passed. All anybody could do was to listen in spellbound silence, as sonorous sentence rolled after sonorous sentence. And then cams the end, in a softer and lower key. It was a direct personal allusion to Mr. Morley. It was the whole weight of the Government and of its head thrown to the side of the Chief Secretary in the new policy in Ireland. "We claim," said Mr. Gladstone, "to be partakers of his responsibility, we appeal to the judgment of the House of Commons, and we have no other desire except to share his fate." And then a hurricane of applause. [Sidenote: A first experience.] It was impossible not to feel sympathy for Lord Randolph Churchill in the difficult task of following such a speech. The first thing he had to do was to bear testimony to the extraordinary effect the speech had made upon the House of Commons. It was, he said, a speech "impressive and entrancing"--two most happily-chosen epithets to describe it. And then Lord Randolph told a little bit of personal history which was interesting. In all his Parliamentary career, this was the first time he had been called upon to immediately follow a speech of Mr. Gladstone. He would willingly have abandoned the opportunity, for it was a speech which no man in the House of Commons was capable of confronting. After it, everything else was bound to fall flat, dull, and unimpressive. Lord Randolph had the misfortune of having prepared a speech of considerable length--going into the dead past, forgotten things, and found himself--almost for the first time in his life--incapable of holding the attention of the House of Commons. Then the division followed, with 47 of a majority--and loud ringing cheers came from the friends of the Government--and especially from the Irish benches--represented in the division by every single member of the party, with the exception of one, absent on sick leave. CHAPTER VIII. THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM. [Sidenote: Still holiday-making.] The Easter holidays were slow in coming to an end. People who were fortunate enough to obtain pairs, lingered by the seaside or in the country house. Others were busy with the work which the recess now imposes as much as in the most feverish Parliamentary times on leading political men. Mr. Balfour was away in Ireland, among the Orangemen of Ulster and the Loyalists of Dublin; Lord Randolph Churchill was at Liverpool making silly and violent speeches; Mr. Chamberlain was _colloguing_--to use an excellent Irish phrase--with the publicans of the Midlands. The Irish were especially conspicuous by the smallness of their attendance. They had been months away from business, wives, children, and naturally they were anxious to take advantage of the brief breathing space which was left to them before that time came when they could not leave Westminster for a moment in the weeks during which the Home Rule Bill was in Committee! [Sidenote: Return of the G.O.M.] Mr. Gladstone, of course, was in his place. Down in Brighton, in a pot-hat, antediluvian in age and shape, he had been courting the breeze of the sea under the hospitable wing of Mr. Armitstead; escaping from the crowds of hero-worshippers, and attending divine service sometimes twice in the same day. He had not been idle in his temporary retreat. When the day comes to record his doings before the accurate scales of Omnipotent and Omniscient Justice, he will stand out from all other men in the absolute use of every available second of his days of life. It was clear that during his retreat, as during his hours of official work, his mind had been busy on the same absorbing and engrossing subject. He was armed with a considerable manuscript, and had evidently thought out his sentences, his arguments, his statements of facts with intense devotion and thought. This is one of the things which distinguishes him from other public men of his time. There are men I wot of--and not very big men either--who are nothing without their audience. They deem their dignity abused if there be not the crowded bench, the cheering friends, the prominent and ostentatious place. Not so Mr. Gladstone. Perhaps it is the splendid robustness of his nerves, perhaps the absorption in his subject to the forgetfulness of himself; whatever it is, he faces this small, _distrait_, perhaps even depressed, audience with the same zest as though he were once again before that splendid gathering which met his eyes on the memorable night when he brought in his Home Rule Bill. Who but he could fail to have noticed the contrast, and noticing, who but he could remain so loftily unobservant and unimpressed? [Sidenote: In splendid form.] But then Mr. Gladstone has too much of that splendid oratorical instinct not to fashion and shape his speech to the change in the surroundings. He has an impressionability--not to panic, not to depression, not to wounded vanity, but to the appropriateness and the demands of an environment, which is something miraculous. I have already remarked, that the infinite variety of his oratory is Shakespearian in its completeness and abundance. The speech on April 6th was an additional proof of this. Comparisons were naturally made between this speech and the speech by which he introduced the Bill, and everybody who was competent thought that the second speech was the finer and better of the two. Stories have trickled through to the public of the anxieties and worries with which Mr. Gladstone was confronted--not from the Irish side--on the very night before he had to bring forth this prodigious piece of legislative work. It is these small worries that to many Statesmen are the grimmest realities and the most momentous and effective events of their inner lives. It is reported that one of the few sleepless nights which have ever disturbed the splendidly even and sane and healthy tenor of this tempestuous and incessantly active life, was the night before the introduction of the Home Rule Bill. There are points to be finally settled--clauses to be ultimately fixed--phrases to be polished or pared at the eleventh hour in all human affairs. Measures finally settled and fixed for weeks before the last hour exist--like all perfection--only in the brains and pages of dramatists and novelists. [Sidenote: Sunburnt, vigorous, self-possessed.] It was not unnatural under these circumstances that when Mr. Gladstone made his speech introducing the Home Rule Bill there should have been on his cheek a pallor deadlier even than that which usually sits upon his brow. That pallor, by the way, I heard recently, has been characteristic of him from his earliest years. A schoolfellow from that far-off and almost pre-historic time when our Grand Old Man was a thin, slim, introspective and prematurely serious boy at Eton, tells to-day that the recollection he has of the young Gladstone is of a slight figure, never running, but always walking with a fast step, with earnest black eyes, and with a pallid face--the ivory pallor, be it observed, not of delicacy, but of robustness. Still there was on that Home Rule night, a pallor that had the deadlier hue of sleeplessness, worry, over-anxiety--the hideous burden of a great, weighty, and complex speech to deliver. On April 6th all this was gone. The fresh, youthful, cheerful man who stood up in his place had drunk deep of the breezes that sweep The Front at Brighton; his cheeks were burned by the blaze of a splendid spring sun; in the budding, blossoming vital air around him he had taken some of that eternal hopefulness with which the new birth of nature in the spring inspires every human being with any freshness of sensation left. Perchance from his windows in the Lion Mansion he had looked in the evening over the broad expanse of frontierless waters, and risen to the exaltation of the chainless unrest, the tireless and eternal youth, the illimitable breadth of the sea. At all events, he stood before the House visibly younger, brighter, serener than for many a day. The voice bore traces of the transformation of body and soul which this short visit to the sea has produced. It was soft, mellow, strong. There were none of the descents to pathetic and inaudible whispers which occasionally in the hours of fag and fatigue have painfully impressed the sympathetic hearer. As Mr. Gladstone subdued himself to the temper of the House, the House accommodated itself to the tone of Mr. Gladstone. I have heard his speech on the second reading described as a pleasant, delightful, historical lecture. Certainly, no stranger coming to the House would have imagined that these sentences, flowing in a beautiful, even stream, dealt with one of the conflicts of our time which excite the fiercest passion and bitterest blood. It is this calmness that is now part of Mr. Gladstone's strength. It soothes and kills at the same time. [Sidenote: The Nestor-patriot.] The evening was soft and sunny, the air of the House subdued, and the absence of anything like large numbers prevented outbursts of party passion. And yet all this seemed to heighten the effectiveness of the scene and the speech. Once again one had to think of Mr. Gladstone--as posterity will think of him at this splendid epoch of his career--not as the party politician, giving and receiving hard blows--riding a whirlwind of passion--facing a hurricane of hate--but as the Nestor-patriot of his country, telling all parties alike the gospel that will lead to peace, prosperity, and contentment. The Tories, doubtless, see none of this; but even they cannot help falling into the mood of the hour, and under the fascination of the speaker. Now and then they interrupt, but, as a rule, they sit in respectful and awed silence. Whenever they do venture on interruption, the old lion shows that he is still in possession of all that power for a sudden and deadly spring, which lies concealed under the easy and tranquil strength of the hour. He happens to mention the case of Norway and Sweden as one of the cases which confirm his contention that autonomy produces friendly relations. He has to confess, that in this case some difficulties have arisen; there is a faint Tory cheer. At once--but with gentle good humour--with an indulgent smile--Mr. Gladstone remarks that he doesn't wonder that the Tories clutch at the smallest straw that helps them to eke out a case against autonomy, and then he proceeds to show that even the case of Norway and Sweden doesn't help them a bit. [Sidenote: A vivid gesture.] There is another little touch which will bring out the perfection and beauty of the speech. One of the things which tell the experienced observer that Mr. Gladstone is in his best form, is the exuberance and freedom of his gesture. Whenever he feels a thorough grip of himself and of the House, he lets himself go in a way upon which he does not venture in quieter moods. He was dealing with the question of our colonies and of the difference which had been made in them by the concession of Home Rule. It was while thus engaged that he made one of those eloquent little asides, which bring home to the mind the vastness and extent of this great career. Nearly sixty years ago--just think of it, nearly sixty years ago--he had been associated with the Government of the Colonies--referring to the time when Lord Aberdeen was his chief, and he held office for the first time as an Under-Secretary. And then he made from Lord Aberdeen a quotation in which the Colonial Secretary calls delighted attention to the fact that Heligoland is tranquil--the single one of all the dependencies of the Crown of which that could be said at that moment. But it was not at this point that the significant gesture came in, to which I have alluded. Mr. Gladstone had another document to read. By the way--even over the distance which divides the Treasury Bench from the Opposition Benches below the gangway, where we Irishry sit--I could see that the document was written in that enormous hand-writing, which is necessary nowadays when the sight of the Prime Minister is not equal to the undimmed lustre of the eagle eye. This letter, said Mr. Gladstone, was not addressed to him. It was not addressed to a Home Ruler. By this time, curiosity was keenly excited. But Mr. Gladstone--smiling, holding the House in firm attention and rapt admiration--was determined to play with the subject a little longer. The letter was not directed even to the Commoner. It was directed to a "Peer;" and as he uttered this sacred word, with a delicious affectation of reverence, he raised the index finger of his hand to high heaven, as though only a reference to a region so exalted could sufficiently manifest the elevation of the personage who had been the recipient of the letter. The House saw the point, and laughed in great delight. It is on occasions like these that one sees the immense artistic power which lies under all the seriousness and gravity of Mr. Gladstone--the thorough exuberance of vitality which marks the splendid sanity of his healthy nature. [Sidenote: Mr. Birrell.] I always tremble when I see a literary man, and especially a literary man with a high reputation, rise to address the House of Commons. The shores of that cruel assembly are strewn with the wrecks of literary reputations. It was, therefore, not without trepidation that I saw Mr. Augustin Birrell--one of the very finest writers of our time--succeed in catching the Speaker's eye. My misgivings were entirely unnecessary. With perfect ease and self-possession--at the same time with the modesty of real genuine ability--Mr. Birrell made one of the happiest and best speeches of the debate. Now and then, the epigram was perhaps a little too polished--the wit perhaps a trifle too subtle for the House of Commons. But careful preparation always involves this; and every man must prepare until he is able to think more clearly on his legs than sitting down. It was just the kind of speech which was wanted at a moment when the general air is rent with the rhodomontade and tomfoolery of Ulster. Applying to these wild harangues the destructively quiet wit of _obiter dicta_, Mr. Birrell made the Orangemen look very foolish and utterly ridiculous. Mr, Gladstone was one of Mr. Birrell's most attentive and cordial hearers. Mr. Birrell is going to do great things in the House of Commons. [Sidenote: In penal servitude.] The keen, playful, and penetrating wit of Mr. Birrell did not do anything for Mr. Dunbar Barton. Mr. Barton is--as he properly boasted--the descendant of some of that good Protestant stock that, in the days of the fight over the destruction of the Irish Parliament, stood by the liberties of Ireland. He is a nephew of Mr. Plunket--he inherits the talent which is traditional in the Plunket family, and is said not to be without some of the national spirit that still hides itself in odd nooks and corners of estranged Irish minds. But he has none of the saving grace of his country or family. A solemn voice that seems to come from the depths of some divine despair, and from the recesses of his innermost organs, together with a certain funereal aspect in the close-shaven face, gives him an air that suggests the cypress and the cemetery. But with deadly want of humour, he spoke of the possibility of his spending the remainder of a blameless life in penal servitude, and was deeply wounded when the uproarious and irreverent House refused to take the possibility seriously. [Sidenote: Mr. Stansfeld.] The following Friday was made memorable by a fine speech from Mr. Stansfeld. Full of activity, with undimmed eye, with every mental faculty keen and alert, with every lofty and generous aspiration as fresh as in the days of hot and perilous youth, Mr. Stansfeld yet appears something of a survival in the House of Commons. His appearance, his style of speech, even the framework of his thought, seem to belong to another--in some respects a finer and more passionate period than our own. The long hair combed straight back--the strong aquiline nose--the heavy-lined and sensitive mouth--the subdued tenderness and wrath of the eyes--even the somewhat antique cut of the clothes--suggest the days when the storm and stress of the youthful century were still in men's souls, and were driving them to conspiracy, to prison, to scaffold, to barricades, to bloody fields. There is also a deliberation in the delivery--a sonorousness in the phraseology--that has something of a bygone day. But all this adds to the impressiveness of the address. The fervour is all there, the unalterable conviction, the lofty purpose. There is reason for the warm note of welcome which comes from the Irish benches; for this man--perhaps disappointed--perchance not too well used--stands up to defend his principles with the same utter forgetfulness of self which belongs only to the finest and the truest natures. [Sidenote: Commercial culture.] Mr. Chamberlain has not a wide range of ideas, and his small stock has not been increased by anything like extensive reading. The House was relieved to find after his return to Westminster on the 10th of April that he had just begun to read Tennyson. It is always easy to know when Mr. Chamberlain is making the acquaintance of an author for the first time. Strictly business-like in even his reading, he apparently first thinks of reading a book when he has somewhere seen a quotation from it which might be worked into a speech; the next and almost immediate process is to transfer it to one of his speeches. This is one of the many differences between him and the exhaustless brain and universal reading of Mr. Gladstone. It was, therefore, not much of a surprise to those who had watched Mr. Chamberlain for years, to see that he was making a very bad and poor speech on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill--a speech certainly far inferior to that which he had delivered on the first reading. He had exhausted the poor soil; he had really no more to say. He was unfortunately helped by Mr. Gladstone, who, instead of listening in silence to attacks grown stale by their infinite repetition, attempted to correct some of Mr. Chamberlain's statements. This was especially the case in reference to the famous speech in which Mr. Parnell is spoken of as passing "through rapine to dismemberment." Mr. Chamberlain wished to insist that the language had been applied to all the Irish leaders: Mr. Gladstone insisted that they were applied to Mr. Parnell alone. This controversy between the Prime Minister and Mr. Chamberlain gave a little life to a speech that hitherto had been falling desperately flat, and as such the interruption was a tactical mistake. [Sidenote: De mortuis.] But it brought with curious unexpectedness a scene not without pathos and significance. In the midst of the thrust and ripost of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain, a strange and yet familiar voice was heard to shout out, "They put all the blame on Parnell because he is dead." It was a startling--even an embarrassing interruption. The memory of Parnell is still dear to the vast majority of the old comrades who were compelled to separate themselves from him in the Great Irish Disruption. At the time when Mr. Gladstone made the speech quoted, Mr. Parnell was the loved leader of the whole Irish people and a united Irish party; and the speech was made at a moment particularly solemn and glorious in the strange life and career of Parnell. The great controversy between the English and the Irish leader, which Mr. Chamberlain had raked up from the almost forgotten past, took place at the moment when Mr. Parnell had gone from town to town and county to county in Ireland, in the midst of vast and enthusiastic receptions--imperial demonstrations--with salvoes of cheers, enthusiasm, and auroral hope such as have taken place so often in Irish history on the eve of some mighty victory or hideous disaster. And, then, immediately after came Parnell's imprisonment, which he bore so well--the suppression of the National Land League, and the era of unchecked and ferocious coercion in which the good intentions and kindly feelings of Mr. Forster finally were buried. To separate themselves from Mr. Parnell at that great moment in his and their life, was a thing which none of Parnell's old comrades could do; and when this startling interruption came, it was the spoken utterance of many of their thoughts brought back by Mr. Chamberlain's venomous tongue in painful reverie over a glorious but dead moment, and a tragically wrecked and superb career. [Sidenote: Crocodile tears.] There was a painful pause, and then came, however, an antidote. It was not in the Irish Nationalist party--it was not in even his own colleagues in the small band of Parnell's supporters, that Mr. Redmond's observation found a responsive echo. A tempest of cheers broke forth from the Tory Benches--from the backers of the _Times_ and the supporters of Piggott; and to add to the painful and almost hideous irony of the situation, Mr. Chamberlain made unctuous profession of sympathy with the vindication of Parnell's memory. To those who know that of all the fierce animosities and contempts of Parnell, Mr. Chamberlain's was perhaps the fiercest--to those who remember that strange and almost awful scene when Mr. Parnell--in one of those outbursts of concentrated rage which it was almost appalling to witness--turned and rent Mr. Chamberlain as first false to his colleagues and then false to Parnell himself--to those who remembered that deadly pallor that made even more ghastly the ordinarily pale cheek of Mr. Chamberlain beneath this withering attack--to those, I say, who remembered all this, nothing could be more grotesque than Mr. Chamberlain shedding a pious tear over Parnell's grave. [Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone and Parnell.] The situation passed off, but in many breasts it had left its sadness and its sting behind. And then it was that once more the Old Man brought back the House to the temper from which it had been carried by the malignities of Mr. Chamberlain. Very pale, very calm, and, at the same time, with evident though sternly repressed emotion--even in the very height and ecstasy of Parliamentary passion there is a splendid composure and self-command about Mr. Gladstone that conveys an overwhelming sense of the extraordinary masculinity and strength of his nature--very pale, and very calm, Mr. Gladstone stood up. Speaking in low and touching tones he asked to make an explanation, because he feared that some observations of his might have given pain to gentlemen who were deeply attached to the memory of Mr. Parnell. Then he stated that while he had formed an opinion, which might be right or wrong, with regard to Mr. Parnell before his imprisonment in Kilmainham, he had always believed, after his release, that Mr. Parnell was working honestly for the good of Ireland; that he had made a communication to Mr. Parnell to that effect through a friend; and that from that time forward no hard word could be found in his speeches with regard to the Irish leader. This little speech was uttered with exquisite dignity and kindliness, and Mr. Redmond received it with the handsomest acknowledgment of its gentleness and grace. [Sidenote: No manipulating.] This episode has made me anticipate a little, and almost tempted me to pass by one of the incidents in the speech of Mr. Chamberlain. But that would have been a mistake, for it is an incident that brings out fully the reason why he is so utterly disliked and distrusted even in those Tory circles which, for the moment, are making use of him. It is an incident that likewise throws a flood of light upon the inner, hidden, dark depths of his sinister nature. He was arguing on the financial aspects of Mr. Gladstone's Bill. Under this portion of the Bill the trader who has residences in both countries is entitled to make his return for his income-tax in either England or Ireland. Mr. Chamberlain proceeded to put the case of a trader in that position who wished to embarrass the Irish Government, and who would wish accordingly to give England, and not the Irish Exchequer, the advantage of his income-tax. This he could do, Mr. Chamberlain pointed out, in the easiest manner imaginable; he could "manipulate his books." There it stands; these are the very words he used. Incredible, everybody would say who didn't know Mr. Chamberlain, and wasn't told by the evidence of eyes and ears that the words had actually been uttered. The Irish members were not slow to seize the point, and to shout aloud at this revelation of Mr. Chamberlain's nature; and even his Tory friends shuddered at such a manifestation of the real kind of man that lies hidden under Mr. Chamberlain's oily and smooth exterior. At first, he seemed surprised at the visible shock and tremor and involuntary sense of repulsion which this odious suggestion awakened on all sides--then he slowly realized that he had made a mistake; and, for once, this readiest of debaters was nonplussed, and even a little abashed. [Sidenote: The Irish Members and the Bill.] Mr. MacCarthy followed Mr. Chamberlain; he spoke just from ten to fifteen minutes--plainly, simply, to the point, and what he had to say was that he and his friends did look on this Bill as a final settlement, which Ireland would be honourably pledged to carry out. Unselfish, straightforward, unpretentious, kindly, Mr. MacCarthy brought into more vivid contrast the personal venom--the ruthless hunger for vengeance and the humiliation of his enemies--which came out with almost painful vividness from the speech to which we had just ceased to listen. Mr. Gladstone, sitting opposite, attentive and watchful, was evidently much pleased at the heartiness of Mr. MacCarthy's acceptance of his great measure. [Sidenote: Sir George Trevelyan.] The night wound up with the very best speech I have ever heard Sir George Trevelyan deliver. Sir George had to answer violent, fierce, almost malignant assault; but he did so without ever uttering a harsh word--without losing one particle of his courteous and admirable self-control--he raised the debate of a great issue to the high place of difference of principles and convictions, instead of personal bickerings and hideous and revolting personal animosities. It is the vice of Sir George Trevelyan as a speaker that he over-prepares--writing out, as a rule, nearly every word he has to utter, and often some of the very best speeches I have heard him deliver have been spoiled by giving the fatal sense of being spoken essays. The speech was carefully prepared, and, so far as I could observe, was even written out; but its grace of diction, its fine temper, above all, its manly explanation of a change of view and its close-knit reasoning, made it really one of the very finest addresses I have heard in the course of many years' debating. [Sidenote: Toryism of the gutter.] And, then, if you wanted to appreciate Sir George Trevelyan the more, you had only to wait for a few moments to hear the man who followed him. I am told on pretty good authority that, next to Lord Randolph Churchill, the favourite orator of the Tory provincial platform is Sir Ashmead Bartlett. I can well believe it. The empty shibboleths--the loud and blatant voice--the bumptious temper--that make the commoner form of Tory--all are there. He is the dramatically complete embodiment of all the vacuous folly, empty-headed shoutings, and swaggering patriotism which make up the stock-in-trade of most provincial Tories. Poor Mr. Balfour was caught by Sir Ashmead before he had time to escape, and in sheer decency had to remain while his servile adulator was pouring on him buckets of butter, which must have appalled and disgusted him. Indeed, the effect of the bellowings of the man from Sheffield could be seen in the bent back, the depressed face, the general air of limpness which overcame the Tory leader--as helpless, dejected, bent double, he looked steadily at the green bench underneath him, and concealed from the House as much as possible the tell-tale horror of his face. [Sidenote: A portrait of Michael Davitt.] On an assembly which had been jaded and almost tortured by this tremendous display, it was Mr. Davitt's fortune to come with his first speech in Parliament. For hour after hour he had sate, very still, with deeply-lined face, but with a restless and frequent twist of the heavy dark moustache, that spoke of the intense nervous strain to which this weary waiting was subjecting him. Davitt is a man whose face would stand out in bold relief from any crowd of men, however numerous or remarkable. He has a narrow face, with high cheek-bones, and the thick, close black whiskers, beard and moustache, make him look almost as dark as a Spaniard. The eyes are deep-set, brilliant, restless--with infinite lessons of hours of agony, of loneliness, torture in all the million hours which filled up his nine years of endless and unbroken gloom in penal servitude. The frame is slight, well-knit--the frame of a sturdy son of the people--kept taut and thin by the restless nervous soul within. An empty sleeve hanging by his side tells the tale of work in the factory in childhood's years, and of one of the accidents which too often maim the children of the poor in the manufacturing districts of England. The voice is strong, deep, and soft; the delivery slow, deliberate, the style of the English or American platform rather than of the Irish gathering by the green hillside. [Sidenote: Dartmoor.] Altogether, never did there stand before this British assembly in all its centuries of history, a figure more interesting, more picturesque, more touching, above all, more eloquent of a mighty transformation--of a great new birth and revolution in the history of two nations. Go back in memory to the day, when with cropped hair--with the broad-arrowed coat, the yellow stockings--this man dragged wearily the wheelbarrow in the grim silences under the sinister skies of Dartmoor, with warders to taunt, or insult, or browbeat the Irish felon-patriot--with the very dregs and scum of our lowest social depths for companions and colleagues--and then think of this same man standing up before the supreme and august assembly where the might, sovereignty, power, and omnipotence of this world-wide empire are centred, and holding it for more than an hour and a half under a spell of rapt attention that almost suggested the high-strung devotion of a religious service in place of a raging political controversy--think of this contrast, and then bless the day and the policy that have made possible such a transformation. [Sidenote: Westminster.] I cannot attempt to give all the strong points of a speech which bristled with strong points at almost every turn. To the House its entire character must have come as a surprise. The mass of members that crowded every bench, and filled the vacancies which Ashmead Bartlett had made--Mr. Gladstone sitting attentive on the Treasury Bench--Mr. Balfour listening with evident friendliness and sympathy--all these were enough to transport any orator into the realms of high stirring rhetoric, and to attune the nerves to poetic and exalted flight. But Davitt's nerves stood the test. Slowly, deliberately, patiently, he developed a case for the Bill, of facts, figures, historical incident, pathetic and swift pictures of Irish desolation and suffering, which would have been worthy of a great advocate placing a heavy indictment. Now and then there was the eloquence of finely chosen language--of a striking fact--even of a touching personal aside--but, as a whole, the speech was a simple, weighty, careful case against the Union--based on the eloquent statistics of diminished population, exiled millions, devastated homesteads. [Sidenote: Tragic comedy.] There were plenty of lighter strains to relieve the deadly earnestness of a man who had thoroughly thought out his case. And, curiously enough, these pleasant sallies nearly all had allusion to those tragic nine years of penal servitude through which Davitt has passed. Mr. Dunbar Barton, one of the Orange lawyers, had spoken of himself as likely to spend the remainder of his days in penal servitude. Mr. Davitt put the threat gently aside, with the assurance that the hon. and learned gentleman would probably be one day on the bench, and that he would advise him not to try to reach the bench by the dock. The same gentleman had expressed a doubt whether any constitutional lawyer would hold that he was guilty either of treason or treason felony, if he took up arms against Home Rule after it had been passed by both Houses of Parliament. "Would," said Mr. Davitt, with quiet pathos, "I had met such a constitutional authority in the shape of a judge twenty-three long years ago." [Sidenote: A vulgar and caddish interruption.] And, finally, what contributed to the marvellous effect of this speech was its temper and one interruption. In all the speech there was not one trace of the bitterness that must often have corroded that poor soul during the nine years of living death--even the allusions to political opponents of to-day were kindly and gentle. Above all things, the speech was one--not merely of an Irish Nationalist, but of a true Democrat--as desirous of the happiness of other nationalities and other peoples as of his own. It was while every part of the House was listening to this beautiful and touching speech, that a gentleman called Brookfield--one of the most offensive of the narrow and malignant section of Tories--rose and tried to trip Davitt up, by alleging that he was reading his speech. I am told that Mr. Balfour sprang in anger from his seat--there was a significant and a pained silence on the Tory Benches--there was a loud shout of anger and disgust from the Liberal and the Irish seats--with William O'Brien's voice shouting hoarsely above the tempest, "The party of gentlemen!" The Speaker showed what he thought, in that deadly quiet way with which he can administer a snub, that will never be forgotten. It was all that was wanted to complete the success of this wonderful speech. [Sidenote: Sir John Rigby.] Then came hand-shakings and clappings on the back, and a light in the eyes of Irish members that told of a great step forward in the progress of their cause. To a house thinned by the endless rhodomontade of a dull Orangeman--with a style of elocution to which the House is unaccustomed, and which has almost every fault delivery could have--the speech of Sir John Rigby, the Solicitor-General, was one of the finest and weightiest utterances delivered on the Bill. The massive head, the fine face, the rugged sense and leonine strength in face and figure, lent force to a criticism of extraordinary effectiveness on the attacks levelled against the Bill. First, the Solicitor-General took up the wild and whirling statement of one of the opponents of the Bill, and then coolly--as though it were a pure matter of business--he put in juxtaposition the enactments of the Bill, and the contrast was as laughter provoking with all its deadly seriousness, as the conflict between the story of Falstaff and the contemptuously quiet rejoinder of Prince Hal. Lord Randolph was taken in hand; he was soon disposed of. Then Mr. Dunbar Barton was crumpled up and flung away. Sir Edward Clarke ventured an interruption; he was crushed in a sentence. It was an admirable specimen of destructive criticism, and it hugely and palpably delighted Mr. Gladstone. [Sidenote: Mr. Asquith.] Mr. Asquith had intended to speak on April 14th, evening, but the portentous and prolix Courtney had shut him out, and he had to wait till the following evening. The change was, perhaps, desirable, for Mr. Asquith had thus the opportunity of addressing the House when it was fresh, vital, and impressionable. In these long debates the evenings usually became intolerably dull and oppressive. Though Mr. Asquith was an untried man when he went into office, in two speeches he succeeded in placing himself in the very front rank of the debaters and politicians in the House. Let me say at once that the speech was a remarkable triumph, and placed Mr. Asquith at a bound amid not only the orators, but the statesmen of the House of Commons--the men who have nerve, breadth of view, great courage, enormous resource. [Sidenote: Joe's dustheap.] One of the discoveries of the speech must have been particularly unpleasant to Mr. Chamberlain. The gentleman from Birmingham has at last found a man who does not fear him--who has a much finer mind--wider culture--who has judgment, temper, and a vocabulary as copious and as ready as that of Mr. Chamberlain himself. One had only to look at Mr. Chamberlain throughout the speech to see how palpable, how painful this discovery was--especially to a man to whom politics is nothing but a mere conflict between contending rivalries and malignities. Mr. Asquith--calm, self-possessed, measured--put Joe on the rack with a deliberation that was sometimes almost cruel in its effectiveness and relentlessness; and Joe was foolish enough to point the severity and success of the attack by losing his self-control. When Mr. Asquith said that Joe could find no better employment than that of "scavenging"--here was a word to make Joe wince--"among the dustheaps" of past speeches, Joe was a sight to see. A "scavenger"--this was the disrespectful way in which those quotations were described which had often roused the Tory Benches to ecstasies of delight. Joe was so angered that he could not get over it for some time. "Dustheaps!" he was heard to be muttering several times in succession, as if the word positively choked him. Indeed, throughout Mr. Asquith's speech, whenever the allusions were made to him, Joe was seen to be muttering under his teeth. It was the running commentary which he made on the most effective attack that has been uttered against him; it was the highest tribute to the severity and success of the assailant. [Sidenote: Limp Balfour.] Badly as Mr. Chamberlain bore his punishment, Mr. Balfour was even worse. It is seldom that the House of Commons has seen a more remarkable or more effective retort than the happy, dexterous, delightful--from the literary point of view, unsurpassable--parody which Mr. Asquith made of Mr. Balfour's flagitious incitements to the men of Belfast. Mr. Asquith put the case of Mr. Morley going down to a crowd in Cork, and using the same kind of language. Mr. Balfour, in his speech, had over and over again used the name of the Deity. "I pray God," said the pious leader of the Tory party, as he addressed the Orangemen. When, in the imaginary speech which Mr. Asquith put into the mouth of Mr. Morley, he recurred again and again to the phrase, "I pray God," there was just the least lifting of the eyes and lowering of the voice to the sanctimonious level of the Pharisee which made this part of the speech not merely a fine piece of oratory, but a splendid bit of acting. Mr. Balfour's appearance during this portion of Mr. Asquith's speech was pitiable. His face, with its pallor--look of abashed pain--was tell-tale of the inner shame which he felt, as thus calmly, coldly, cruelly--with extraordinary art, and amid a tempest of cheers--he was brought by his opponent face to face with realities which lay underneath his bland and oily phrases. [Sidenote: Another unmannerly interruption.] In the midst of the calm and stately flow of Mr. Asquith's speech, while the House, spellbound, listened in awe-struck and rapt silence, suddenly, there was a commotion, a shout, then the roar of many voices. The whole thing came upon the House with a bewildering and dumbfounding surprise; it was as if someone had suddenly died, or some other sinister catastrophe had occurred. In a moment, several Irish members--Mr. Swift McNeill, Mr. Crilly, and others--were on their feet, shouting in accents hoarse with anger, inarticulate with rage. The Speaker was also on his feet, and, for a while, his shouts of "Order! Order!" failed to calm the sudden, fierce cyclone. Above the din, voices were shouting, "Name! Name!" with that rancorous and fierce note which the House of Commons knows so well when passion has broken loose, and all the grim depths of party hate are revealed. At last, it was discovered that Lord Cranborne was the culprit, and that when Mr. Asquith, amid universal sympathy and assent, was alluding to the beautiful speech of Mr. Davitt, this most unmannerly of cubs had uttered the word, "Murderer." [Sidenote: A whipped hound.] If he had not been so unspeakably rude, vulgar, odious, and impertinent, one might have almost felt sympathy for Lord Salisbury's son in the position in which he found himself. His face is usually pale, but now it had the deadly, ghastly, and almost green pallor of a man who is condemned to die. But, amid all the palpable terror, the Cecil insolence was still there, and Lord Cranborne declared that, though he had used the phrase, he had not intended it for the House, and that it was true. Since his relative, Lord Wolmer, made the lamest and meanest apology the House of Commons had ever heard, there never had been anything to equal this. The House groaned aloud in disgust and contempt; even his own side was as abashed as when Brookfield sought to interrupt Mr. Davitt. The Speaker, quietly, but visibly moved and disgusted, at once told the insolent young creature that this was not sufficient, and that an apology was due--to which the Cecil hopeling proceeded to do with as bad a grace and in as odious a style as it was possible for it to be done. Mr. Asquith's splendid self-control and mastery of the House bore the ordeal of even this odious incident, and he wound up the speech with one of the finest and most remarkable perorations which has ever been heard in that great assembly. Calm, self-restrained, almost frigid in delivery, chaste and sternly simple in language, Mr. Asquith's peroration reached a height that few men could ever attain. The still House sate with its members raised to their highest point of endurance, and it was almost a relief when the stately flow came to an end, and men were able to relieve their pent-up tide of feeling. CHAPTER IX. THE END OF A GREAT WEEK. [Sidenote: Mr. Goschen.] The Tories were not in good heart at the beginning of the week which saw the second reading of the Home Rule Bill carried on April 21st, and perhaps it was owing to this that they put up one of their very best men. Mr. Goschen I have always held to be one of the really great debaters of the House of Commons. It is true that he has almost every physical disadvantage with which an orator could be cursed. His voice is hoarse, muffled, raucous, with some reminiscences of the Teutonic fatherland from which he remotely comes. His shortness of sight amounts almost to a disability. Whenever he has anything to read he has to place the paper under his eyes, and even then he finds it very difficult to read it. His action is like that of a distracted wind-mill. He beats the air with his whirling arms; he stands several feet from the table, and moves backwards and forwards in this space in a positively distracting manner. And yet he is a great debater. [Sidenote: In Opposition.] But Mr. Goschen, like every other orator of the Opposition, has fallen on somewhat evil days, and is not at his very best now. "The world," said Thackeray long ago, "is a wretched snob, and is especially cold to the unsuccessful." This applies to that portion of the world which changes sides in the House of Commons according to the resolves of the popular verdict. Mr. Goschen, then, is not seen at his best in these days when all his arguments can receive the triumphant and unanswerable retort of a majority in the division lobbies. But still, the speech of Mr. Goschen on April 17th was an excellent one; it was really the first, since the beginning of this debate, which struck me as giving something to answer. Acute, subtle, a dialectician to his finger-tips, Mr. Goschen is best as a critic, and as a bit of criticism, his attack on the Bill was excellent. Mr. Morley found himself compelled for the first time for days to take serious notes; here at last were points which it was necessary to confront. After all the dreary platitudes of many days, this was a mercy for which to be thankful. [Sidenote: Randolph dull.] Lord Randolph Churchill, rising on the following evening, was not at his best. He has been passing through what Disraeli once called a campaign of passion in the provinces; and his speeches have been full of the wildest fury. But all the fire had become extinguished. When Lord Randolph Churchill makes up his mind to be rational, few people in the House of Commons can be more rational; but when he makes up his mind to throw prudence, sense, and reserve to the winds, nobody can rise to such heights and descend to such depths of wild, unreasonable, bellowing Toryism--always, of course, excepting Ashmead-Bartlett. But when he is rational he is often dull--when he is unreasonable he is often very entertaining. The speech of April 18th was a rational speech--it was, therefore, a dull one. Lord Randolph is not what he was. The voice which was formerly so resonant has become muffled and sometimes almost indistinct, and the manner has lost all the sprightliness which used to relieve it in the olden days. The House of Commons is like the Revolution--it often swallows its own children. [Sidenote: Father and son.] Mr. Chamberlain might have been seen in two very different characters in the course of that same evening. He is not a soft man--amid sympathetic sniggers from all the House, Mr. Morley at a later stage referred sarcastically to the "milk of human kindness" which flowed so copiously in his veins--but he is a man of strong and warm domestic affections. He has the proud privilege of having in the House of Commons not only a son, but one who, in many respects, seems the very facsimile of himself, for the likeness between Mr. Austen Chamberlain and his father is startlingly close. This likeness is heightened by the similarity of dress--by the single eyeglass that is worn perennially in both cases, and, to a certain extent, by the walk. When the son began to speak this Tuesday night, there was even a stronger sense of the resemblance between the two. The voice was almost the same, the gestures were the same--the diction was not unlike--nearly all the tricks and mannerisms of the elder man were reproduced by the younger. For instance, when he is going to utter a good point, Mr. Chamberlain makes a pause--the son does the same: when Mr. Chamberlain is strongly moved, and wishes to drive home some fierce thrust, there is a deep swell in his otherwise even voice, and there is the same in the voice of the son. Then there is the same crisp, terse succession of sentences--altogether the likeness is wonderful. [Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain pleased.] It was pleasant, even to those who do not love Mr. Chamberlain either personally or politically, to watch him during this episode. When the son first stood up, the pallor of the face, the unsteadiness of the voice, the broken and stumbling accents, told of the high state of nervous strain through which he was passing, and it was easy to see that the emotions of the son had communicated themselves to the father. Mr. Chamberlain had his hat low down on his forehead so as to conceal his face and its tell-tale excitement as much as possible. But it turned out that he need not have been in the least alarmed. The speech of young Mr. Chamberlain, for a maiden speech, was really wonderful. It was lucid, well knit, pointed, cogent. Its delivery was almost perfect; it had the true House of Commons air and manner. This young man will go far. I shouldn't be surprised if he became in time even a better debater than his father. His education, I should say, is broader and deeper, his mind finer, and his temper sweeter and more under control. During the latter portion of the speech his father's face had a smile, pleasant to behold; one could forgive him a great deal of his hardness, rancour, even ferocity, for this manifestation--open and frank--of kindly human-feeling. [Sidenote: And angry.] But, as I have said, there was another manifestation of Mr. Chamberlain in the course of this very evening. Shortly before ten o'clock Mr. Morley rose to make his reply. It was twenty minutes to ten when he rose. It was close upon midnight when he sate down. And yet there wasn't one word too many--indeed, Mr. Morley might have gone even longer without wearying the House, for it was a speech which, although not free from some of the besetting weaknesses of his oratory, was an eloquent, impressive and convincing addition to the great argument on the Irish question. Giving himself a certain freedom--departing from the over-severe self-restraint which he so often imposes upon himself--abandoning the frigidity of manner which conceals from so many people his warmth of heart and of temper, he spoke with a go, a fire and a force of attack not very common with him. Above all things the speech gave the impression of one who spoke from the inside--who knew the subjects of which he was talking, not merely in their general aspects, but in their dark recesses--in their latent passion--in their awful and appalling depths. It was while this fine speech was being delivered that the other and the darker side of Mr. Chamberlain's nature was to be seen. There are no such enmities as those between relatives or former friends; and so it apparently is between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Morley--though it should be said most of the bitterness of the hatred seems to be on the one side. While Mr. Morley is speaking there is a frown on the face of Mr. Chamberlain that never lifts. Now and then, the sulky and sullen and frowning silence was broken by an observation evidently of bitter scornfulness addressed to Sir Henry James, and once there seemed even to be an angry interchange between him and Mr. Courtney because Mr. Courtney had ventured to put a civil question to Mr. Morley. Mr. Morley had to address a few words of hearty congratulation to Mr. Austen Chamberlain on his very successful speech. He spoke with the slowness, hesitation, and effort that betrayed a certain glimpse of the pain and grief that the political separations of life produce in all but the hardest and coldest natures. It was a graceful, generous, feeling tribute, but it did not soften Mr. Chamberlain--the same steady unlifting frown was there--the same "puss"--and when Mr. Morley had finished, there was a repetition of the evidently scornful comment of Mr. Chamberlain. [Sidenote: A hit at Mr. Chamberlain.] But Mr. Morley may well bear all this, for he was able to strike some very effective blows at Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Chamberlain for a hard-hitter has a wonderfully keen appreciation and a very sensitive skin for anything like a dexterous hit at his own expense. Alluding to the favourite argument of Mr. Chamberlain, that the speeches of Irish members in the past may have been deplorable, Mr. Morley asked were they the only people who had made such speeches? They might be repentant sinners, but who so great a prodigal as the member for Birmingham? The loud and triumphant laughter which this produced at the expense of Mr. Chamberlain, was followed up by another even more victorious thrust. The Irish members had abandoned prairie value in the same way as the member for Birmingham had surrendered the doctrines of "ransom" and natural rights. Mr. Chamberlain was very uncomfortable, and soon showed it by an interrupting cheer. "Seriously," said Mr. Morley, passing from this lighter, but very effective vein. And then he was interrupted by his foe. "Hear, hear," shouted Mr. Chamberlain in that deep, raucous, fierce note, in which he reveals the fierceness of his hatred, as though to say that it was time for Mr. Morley to address himself to serious things. [Sidenote: Mr. Sexton.] So the debate proceeded during the earlier part of the week; as it neared its close it increased in brilliancy, until in the last night it went out in a blaze of splendour and glory. On the Thursday evening Mr. Sexton was the speaker. He made a speech which was two hours and a half in duration; it was in my opinion too long--I think that except in the most exceptional cases no orator ought to speak more than half an hour. And yet I would not have had the speech shorter by one second; and it is a singular proof of the extraordinary command which this man holds over the House of Commons that he kept its attention absolutely without a moment's pause or cessation, during every bit of this tremendous strain upon his attention. With the exception of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Sexton is the one man in the House who is capable of such a feat. This is largely due not merely to his oratorical powers but to the extraordinary range of his gifts. To the outside public--even to the House of Commons--he is chiefly known by his great rhetorical gifts; but this is only a part, and a small part, of his great mental equipment. His mastery over figures in its firmness of grasp, its lightning-like rapidity, its retentiveness, is almost as great as that of a professional calculator. He has a judgment, cold, equable, far-seeing, and he has a humour that is kindly but can also be scorching, and that has sometimes been deadly enough to leave wounds that never healed. [Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain's arithmetic.] Perhaps not even Mr. Gladstone--certainly not Mr. Goschen--though he, too, is a past master in figures--is as formidable and destructive a gladiator in a fight over figures as Mr. Sexton; I pity any mortal who gets into grips with him on that arena. Mr. Chamberlain was the unhappy individual whom Mr. Sexton took in hand. Mr. Chamberlain has the reputation of being a good man of business, he certainly was a most successful one; and one would expect from him some power, at least, of being able to state figures correctly. When the figures he had presented to the country in a recent speech at Birmingham came under analysis by Mr. Sexton, Mr. Chamberlain was exposed as a bungler as stupid and dense as one could imagine. Mr. Chamberlain's mighty fabric of a war indemnity of millions which the financial arrangements of this Bill would inflict on England, melted before Mr. Sexton's examination--palpably, rapidly, exactly as though it were a gaudy palace of snow which the midsummer sun was melting into mere slush. The cocksureness of Mr. Chamberlain makes his exposure a sort of comfort and delight to the majority of the House; but still, the sense of his great powers--of his commanding position as a debater--of his formidableness as a political and Parliamentary enemy--made the House almost unwilling to realize that he could be taken up and reprimanded, and birched by anybody in the House with the completeness with which Mr. Sexton was performing the task. Mark you, there was nothing offensive--there was nothing even severe in the language of Mr. Sexton's attack. It was simply cold, pitiless, courteous but killing analysis--the kind of analysis which the hapless and fraudulent bankrupt has to endure when his castles in the air come to be examined under the cold scrutiny of the Official Receiver in the Bankruptcy Court. [Sidenote: Johnston of Ballykilbeg.] A different tone was that which Mr. Sexton assumed to Mr. Johnston of Ballykilbeg. Mr. Johnston, known to the outer world as a fire-eater of the most determined order, inside the House is one of the most popular of men, and with no section of the House is he more popular than with those Irish Nationalists for whose blood he is supposed to thirst. With gentle and friendly wit Mr. Sexton dealt with the case of Mr. Johnston lining the ditch, declaring amid sympathetic laughter that the one object of any Irish Nationalist who should meet the Orangemen in such a position would be to take him out, even if he had to carry him to do so. This reduction of the militancy of Ulster down to the level of playful satire did much to relieve the House from the tension which the wild language of Ulsteria had been calculated to provoke. Finally, there came a beautiful peroration--tender, touching, well sustained--which was listened to with breathless attention by the House, and produced as profound a depth of emotion on the Liberal as even on the Irish Benches. It was a peroration which lifted the great issue to all the heights of solemnity, nobility, and supreme interest which it reaches in the mouth of an eloquent orator. This tremendous speech--in its variety, in its power--in its alternation of scathing scorn, copious analysis, playful and gentle wit--was perhaps the most remarkable example in our times of the sway which an orator has over the House of Commons. [Sidenote: Mr. Carson.] Mr. Carson was unfortunate in every sense in having to follow an oration of such extraordinary power, and in having to follow it at that dread hour when every member of the House of Commons is thinking of his long-postponed dinner. The audience of "the Sleuth Hound of Coercion"--as Mr. Carson is usually called--if it was select, was at the same time, enthusiastic and appreciative. The little band of Unionists, who get very cold comfort, as a rule, during these hard times, sate steadily in their seats and eagerly welcomed and warmly cheered Mr. Carson. Behind him, too, was a pretty strong band of Tories, and Mr. Balfour sate throughout his entire speech listening to it with the keenest and most evident appreciation. I have already described the appearance of Mr. Carson and the impression he makes upon me; curiously enough, this impression was confirmed by an experience that afternoon. I happened to stand at a point of the House where I saw Mr. Carson from profile as he was speaking. He had just got to the point where, with a hoarse and deep note in his usually cold voice, he said to Mr. Morley that if the Chief Secretary would move the omission of all the "safeguards" from the Bill, he would vote along with him. There was a tone almost of ferocity--the tone which conveyed all the rage and despair of the Ascendency party in Ireland at the prospect of departing power--the fury of the Castle official that saw the approaching overthrow of all the powerful citadel of fraud and cruelty and wrong, of which he had been one of the chief pillars. And as Mr. Carson was uttering these words, I saw his profile--which often reveals more of men's natures than the front face. [Sidenote: A curious reminiscence.] I suppose I shall be considered very fantastic--but do you know what I thought of at that very moment? Some years ago, I stood at Epsom close to the ropes and saw Fred Archer pass me as he swept like the whirlwind to the winning-post in the last Derby he ever rode. Between Mr. Carson and Mr. Fred Archer, especially in the profile, there is a certain and even a close resemblance; the same long lantern face, the same sunken cheeks, the same prominent mouth, the same skin dark as the gipsy's. Never shall I forget the look on Fred Archer's face at the moment when I saw it--it was but for a second--and yet the impression dwells ineffaceable upon my memory and imagination. There was a curious mixture of terror, resolve, hope, despair on the sunken cheeks that was almost appalling--that look represented, embodied, summed up, as though in some sudden glimpse of another and a nether world, all the terrible and awful passions that stormed at the hearts of thousands in the great gambling panorama all around. And there was something of the same look on the profile of Mr. Carson--I could almost have pitied him and the party and traditions and past which he represented as I saw its death-throes marked on his suffering and fierce face. But the speech of Mr. Carson was a clever one. Whatever the inner eye may see in the depths of Mr. Carson's soul, to the outward eye he has an appearance of a self-possession amounting almost to the offensive. He is dressed almost as well as Mr. Austen Chamberlain, but, unlike Mr. Chamberlain's promising lad--who still has much of the graceful shyness and unsteady nerve of youth--Mr. Carson has all the coolness, self-assertion, and hardness of the man who has passed through the fierce and tempestuous conflicts of Irish life. Mr. Carson stands at the box and leans upon it as though he had been there all his life; he shoots his cuffs--to use a House of Commons' phrase--as dexterously and almost as frequently as Mr. Gladstone; his points are stated slowly, deliberately, with that wary and watchful look of the man who has been accustomed to utter the words that consigned men to the horrors of Tullamore. The speech of Thursday evening was a clever speech. It wasn't broad--it wasn't generous--there was not a note in it above the tone of the Crown Prosecutor, but it was subtle, well-reasoned--the blows were happy, and told--and the Tories and Unionists were hugely and justly delighted. [Sidenote: The approach of the division.] At last we are within sight of the end. Friday had come, and everybody knew that this was the day which would see the division; and, after all, the division was the event of the debate. In moments such as these you can hear the quickened throb of the House of Commons, and if you fail to notice it you soon learn it from the public. In the lobbies outside stand scores of excited men and women begging, imploring, threatening--using every means to get admission into the galleries to witness a historic and immortal scene. Outside there is an even denser crowd--ready to hoot or cheer their favourites. The galleries are all crowded; peers stand on each other's toes, and patiently wait for hours. About ten o'clock a man rushes into the lobby, and there is a movement that looks most like a scare--as though the messenger were some herald of disaster. In a few minutes you see a great stir and a curious suppressed excitement in the lobby, and then you observe that the Prince of Wales has come down to pay the House one of his rare visitations, and to take that place above the clock which it is his privilege on these occasions to occupy. [Sidenote: Sir Henry James.] The evening began with a speech of Sir Henry James for the Unionist party--legal and dry as dust, but, towards the end, reaching a height--or shall I say a depth--of fierce party passion. In language more veiled, more deliberate, but as intelligible as Mr. Balfour's and Lord Randolph Churchill's, the ex-Attorney-General called upon the Orangemen to rise in rebellion. And, working himself up gradually from the slow and funereal tones which he usually employs, Sir Henry James wound up with a fierce, rude, savage gibe at Mr. Gladstone. Almost shouting out the word, "Betrayed!" he pointed a threatening and scornful finger at the head of Mr. Gladstone, and the Tories and Unionists frantically cheered. It was more than ten o'clock when Mr. Balfour rose. The assembly was brilliant in its density, its character, its pent-up emotion, and in many respects the speech was worthy of the occasion. He was wise enough not to entangle himself in the inextricable network of clauses and sub-sections. In broad, general lines he assailed the policy of the Bill and of the Government, and now and then worked up his party to almost frenzied excitement. The cheers of the Tories were taken up by the Unionists, who thronged their benches with unusual density of attendance. Now and then there were fierce protests from the Irish Benches; but, on the whole, they were patient, self-restrained, and silent. [Sidenote: Gladstone.] Mr. Gladstone, meantime, was down early, after but a short stay for dinner. His face had that rapt look of reverie which it wears on all these solemn and great occasions, and there was a slightly deadlier pallor on the cheek. Mr. Balfour persisted with his speech to the bitter end, and now and then Mr. Gladstone gave an impatient and anxious look at the clock. The hands pointed to ten minutes to midnight before this man of eighty-three was on his legs to address a crowded, hot, jaded assembly in a speech that would wind up one of the great stages in the greatest controversy of his life. [Sidenote: The opening.] We who love and follow him hold our breaths, and our nervous anxiety rises almost to terror. Can he stand the strain?--will he break down from sheer physical fatigue and the exhaustion of long waiting? The first few notes of the deep voice are reassuring. The opening sentences also have that full roll which nearly always is inevitable proof that the great swelling opening will carry him on to the end; and yet there is anxiety. Those who know him well cannot help observing that there is just a slight trace of excitement, nervousness, and anxiety in the voice and manner. He has evidently been put out by the lateness of the hour to which the speech has been postponed. There is beside him a vast mass of notes, and then, before he reaches that, there is the long speech to which he has just listened, many points of which it is impossible to leave unnoticed. And so the first ten minutes strike me as rather poor--poor, I mean, for Mr. Gladstone--and my heart sinks. In memory I go back to that memorable and unforgettable speech on that terrible night in 1886, when, with dark and disastrous defeat prepared for him in the lobbies the moment he sat down, Mr. Gladstone delivered a speech, the echoes of whose beautiful tones--immortal and ineffaceable--still linger in the ear. And now the moment of Nemesis and triumph has come, and is he going to fall below the level of the great hour? Ah! these fears are all vain. The exquisite cadence--the delightful bye-play--the broad, free gesture--the lofty tones of indignation and appeal--but, above all, the even tenderness, composure, and charity that endureth all things--all these qualities range through this magnificent speech. Thus he wishes to administer to Sir Henry James a well-merited rebuke for his terrible and flagitious incitements, and, with uplifted hands, and in a voice of infinite scorn, Mr. Gladstone turns on Sir Henry, and overwhelms him, amid a tempest of cheers from the delighted Irishry and Liberals. [Sidenote: Chamberlain touched.] But there is another and an even more extraordinary instance of the power, grace, and mastery of the mighty orator. The G.O.M. had made an allusion to that pleasant and promising speech of young Austen Chamberlain, of which I have spoken already. Just by the way, with that delightful and unapproachable lightness of touch which is the unattainable charm of Mr. Gladstone's oratory, he alluded to the speech and to Mr. Chamberlain himself. "I will not enter into any elaborate eulogy of that speech," said Mr. Gladstone. "I will endeavour to sum up my opinion of it by simply saying that it was a speech which must have been dear and refreshing to a father's heart." And then came one of the most really pathetic scenes I have ever beheld in the House of Commons--a scene with that touch of nature which makes the whole akin, and, for the moment, brings the fiercest personal and political foes into the holy bond of common human feeling. Mr. Chamberlain is completely unnerved--I should have almost said for the first time in his life. I have seen this very remarkable man under all kinds of circumstances--in triumph--in disaster--in rage--in composure--but never before--not even in the very ecstasy of the hours of party feeling--never before did I see him lose for a moment his self-possession. First, he bowed low to Mr. Gladstone in gratitude--and then the tears sprang to his eyes; his lips trembled painfully, and his hand sprang to his forehead, as though to hide the woman's tears that did honour to his manhood. And, curiously enough, the feeling did not pass away. I know not whether Mr. Chamberlain was out of sorts on this great night; but his manner was very different on this night of nights; indeed, from what it has been at every other period of this fierce, stormy Session. He cheered as loudly and as frequently as the best of the rank and file--interrupted--in short, manifested all the passions of the hour. But on that Friday night--specially after this allusion of Mr. Gladstone's to his son--he sate silent, and in a far-off reverie. But the Old Man still passes on his triumphant way--now gently, now stormy--listened to in delight from all parts; and when he is now and then interrupted by some small and rude Tory, dismissing the interruption with delightful composure and a good humour that nothing can disturb. It is only the marvellous powers of the man that can keep the House patient, for it is pointing to one o'clock, and the division has not yet come. But at last he is approaching the peroration. It has the glad note of coming triumph--subdued, however, to the gentle tone of good taste. It is delivered, like the whole of the speech, with extraordinary nerve, and without any abatement of the fire, the vehemence, the sweeping rapidity of the best days. And it ends in notes, clear, resonant--almost like a peal of joy-bells. [Sidenote: The division.] Then there are the shouts of "Aye" and "No," with "Agreed, agreed!" from some Irish Benches--a humorous suggestion that highly tickles everybody. Mr. Gladstone is almost the last to enter from the lobby of the majority. Alone, slowly, with pale face, he walks up the floor. The significance of the great moment, the long years of struggle, of heroic courage, of inflexible temerity, of patient and splendid hope, all this rushes tumultuously to the minds of his friends and followers, and, in a second, without a word of warning or command, the Liberals and the Irish have sprung to their feet, and, underneath their cheers--their waving hats, their uplifted forms--Mr. Gladstone passes through to his seat as under a canopy. At last, Tom Ellis, the Junior Liberal Whip, quickly comes up the floor--the paper is handed to Mr. Marjoribanks--this announces we have won--a good cheer, but short, for we want to know the numbers--and then they are read out. For the second reading 347 Against 304 The majority is 43. The Lord be praised! we have polled all our men! And then more cheers--taken up outside in the deeper bellow of the big crowd, and then more waving of hats and another great reception to Mr. Gladstone. And so, as the streaks of day rose on this hour of Ireland's coming dawn, we went to our several homes. CHAPTER X. THE BUDGET, OBSTRUCTION, AND EGYPT. [Sidenote: Sir William.] Sir William Harcourt, on April 24th, had the double honour of speaking before the smallest audience and making the best Budget speech for many years. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has two manners. He can be as boisterous, exuberant, and gay, as any speaker in the House, and he can also be as lugubrious as though his life had been spent in the service of an undertaker. He was in the undertaker mood this evening. Slowly, solemnly, sadly, he unfolded his story of the finances of the country. He had taken the trouble to write down every word of what he had to say--an evil habit to which he has adhered all his life. But, notwithstanding these two things--which are both, to my mind, capital defects in Parliamentary speaking--Sir William put his case with such extraordinary lucidity, that everybody listened in profound attention to every word he uttered; and when he sate down, he was almost overwhelmed with the chorus of praise which descended on his head from all quarters of the House. Sir William Harcourt imitated most Chancellors of the Exchequer, in keeping his secret to the latest possible moment. Like a good dramatist also, he arranged his figures and the matter of his speech so well that the final solution became inevitable, and the final solution, of course, was the addition of a penny to the income-tax. The debate which followed the Budget speech was quiet, discursive, friendly to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Picton is a formidable man to Chancellors of the Exchequer--for he has very strong ideas of reform--especially on the breakfast-table; but Mr. Picton is rational as well as Radical; and he cordially acknowledged the duty of postponing even the reforms on which Radicals have set their hearts until more convenient times and seasons. [Sidenote: Belfast.] It was after midnight when a very serious bit of business took place. The House gets to know beforehand when anything like serious debate is going to take place--even though there be no notice. Accordingly, in spite of the lateness of the hour, the House was pretty full, and there was a preliminary air of expectation and excitement. One of the iron rules of the House of Commons is that the Speaker cannot leave the chair until a motion for the adjournment of the House has been carried. This is always proposed by the senior Government Whip. The motion is usually carried in dumb show, and with that mumble in which business is carried through in the House when there is no opposition. But it is one of the ancient and time-honoured privileges of the House of Commons to raise almost any question on the motion for the adjournment of the House. The reason, I assume, is that the representatives of the people--when about to separate--thought in the olden days that it ought to be their right to raise any question whatsoever, lest the king in their absence should take advantage of the situation. Many of the rules of the House--including several which lend themselves to obstruction--are due to this feeling of constant vigilance and suspicion towards the Crown. Mr. Sexton is one of the men whose life is centred in the House of Commons. He will attend to no other business, except under the direst pressure--he has no other interests--though he used to be one of the greatest of readers, and still can quote Shakespeare and other masterpieces of English literature better than any man in the House except Mr. Justin McCarthy. Thus, when he rose after midnight, he had in his notes before him a perfectly tabulated account of the riots in Belfast, so that every single fact was present to his mind. The story he had to tell is already known--the attacks on Catholic workmen--on Catholic boys--on Catholic girls--by the sturdy defenders of law, loyalty, and order in Belfast. It was not an occasion for strong speech--the facts spoke with their silent eloquence better than any tongue could do. The business was all done very quietly--it had the sombre reticence of all tragic crises; everybody felt the importance of the affair too deeply to give way to strong manifestation of feeling. But there were significant and profound, though subdued, marks of feeling on the Liberal Benches; and everybody could see what names were in the minds of everybody. [Sidenote: Mr. Asquith as leader.] Mr. Asquith was for the moment the leader of the House. Though he has still some of the ingenuous shyness of youth--though he is modest with all his honours--though he has charmed everybody by the utter absence of swagger and side in his dazzling elevation--there is a ready adaptability about Mr. Asquith to a Parliamentary situation, which is as astonishing as it is rare in men who have spent their lives in the atmosphere of the law courts. The aptitude with which the right word always comes to his lips--his magnificent composure, and, at the same time, his power of striking the nail right on the head and right _into_ the head--all these things come out on an occasion such as that of April 24th. Very quietly, but very significantly, he told the story of the riots; and very quietly and very significantly he spoke of the responsibility of the Salisburys, and the Balfours, and the Jameses, whose wild and wicked words had led to this outburst of medieval bigotry. [Sidenote: Mr. Dunbar Barton.] Mr. Dunbar Barton made a valiant but vain attempt to stem the tide against him, but he, like every other Unionist, was weighted down by the feeling that the Orangemen were doing immense service to the cause of Home Rule by their brutality. However, the fumes of Unionist oratory seem to have ascended to the heads of all the excitable young men of the Tory party. Mr. Dunbar Barton, personally, is one of the gentlest of men; his manners are kind and good-natured enough to make him a universal favourite--even with his vehement Nationalist foes; and he speaks with evident sincerity. But he had so worked himself up that he babbled blithely of spending a portion of his days in penal servitude--talked big about a mysterious organization which was being got ready in Ulster, and declared that the day would come when he would stand by the side of the Orangemen in the streets of Belfast. He was listened to for the most part in silence, until he tripped into an unseemly remark about Mr. Gladstone, when the much-tried Liberals burst into an angry protest. [Sidenote: Mr. Arnold Forster.] Very different was Mr. Arnold Forster. I must be pardoned if, as an Irishman, I always see something genial and not wholly unlovely even in the most violent Irish enemy. We all like Johnston of Ballykilbeg--most of us rather like Colonel Saunderson, and Mr. Dunbar Barton is decidedly popular. But this Arnold Forster--with his dry, self-complacent, self-sufficient fanaticism--is intolerable and hateful. He never gets up without making one angry. There is no man whose genius would entitle him to half the arrogant self-conceit of this young member. Acrid, venomous, rasping, he injures his own cause by the very excess of his gall and by the exuberance of his pretension. He also saw that the riots would do no good, and he hinted darkly of what he called "ordered resistance," whatever that means. But, on the whole, the advocates of the Orangemen made a very poor show. [Sidenote: Tory obstruction.] The Tories thus early developed the policy of preventing the Government passing any Bill--English or Irish--good or bad. Whenever a good English Bill stood as the first order--a Bill which they did not dare to oppose--they found some excuse for moving the adjournment of the House. This is a privilege which was intended to be used very rarely, but in the course of the present Session it has been very freely resorted to--especially when it has afforded a chance of keeping off good Government business. On Tuesday, April 25th, the excuse given was that Mr. Bryce had been guilty of political partisanship in adding a batch of Liberals to the Bench in Lancashire over the head of Lord Sefton--the Tory or Unionist Lord-Lieutenant of the county. Mr. Legh, a young, silent, and retiring Tory member, began the attack, and did so in a very neat, well-worded, and pretty little speech. Mr. Hanbury--who is making his fame as a champion obstructive--followed this up, and Mr. Curzon addressed the House in his superior style. Mr. Bryce was able to blow to pieces the fabric of attack which had been so laboriously erected against him by stating a few facts, of which these may be given as a fair specimen. When Mr. Bryce came into office, of the borough magistrates in Lancashire 507 were Unionists and only 159 were Liberals. On the county bench there were 522 Unionists and 142 Liberals. This was a crushing reply, and an even more satisfactory retort came in the shape of the division, when 260 voted for the Government, and only 186 against. [Sidenote: Tommy "Burt."] Nearly three hours of precious public time had been wasted over this wretched business, and at last, for the third or fourth time, the debate was resumed on the second reading of the Employers' Liability Bill. An amendment of Mr. Chamberlain's had been the obstacle which stood in the way of the Bill all this time. After the debate had gone on for hours, Mr. Chamberlain got up and declared that his amendment had served its purpose--an awkward way of putting it, which the Liberals were not slow to take up. The debate was made remarkable by the first speech of any importance made by Mr. Burt since he became a member of the Ministry. Mr. Burt is the most popular of members, and there was a ring of genuine delight in the welcome given to the honest, modest, genuine working man standing at the Treasury Bench, and symbolising the revolution of the times. Mr. Burt spoke ably and well, but it was in a foreign tongue--which it takes a little time for even a quick linguist to understand. This Northumbrian burr is the strongest accent in the House; even the broadest Scotch is less difficult to catch. It is curious how the different parts of the country betray themselves by their speech. There are Scotchmen whom it is not easy to follow, and there are very few of them who speak with anything like an English accent. Even the most fluent of the Welshmen speak with a certain hesitation, betraying their bilingual infancy and youth. The Irish have as many accents nearly as there are members. The Northumbrian burr, however, is a tongue apart. It has the pleasantness of every foreign tongue, and since Mr. Joseph Cowen left Parliamentary life, Mr. Burt is the only member who speaks it in its pristine purity. The Tories were closured finally, though they had their revenge by preventing the Bill from going to the Grand Committee, and the work of justice is a little longer postponed. [Sidenote: Mr. Goschen playful.] On Thursday, April 27th, the debate began on Sir William Harcourt's Budget; and it found Mr. Goschen in an unusually playful mood. He had a task for which his talents eminently fitted him. Irresolute, timid, changeable, he is the very worst man in the world for constructive legislation; but give him the opportunity of criticising what somebody else has proposed, and he is in his real element, and is, perhaps, the very best man in the House of Commons. There wasn't much to criticise in the Budget of Sir William Harcourt from the Tory point of view. Finding himself with a deficit the Liberal leader was unable to go in for any startling novelty, especially in a Session when everything is to be opposed in order that Home Rule may be defeated. But one would have thought that this would have delighted the timid and conservative soul of Mr. Goschen. Not a bit of it. Taking cleverly the rather auroral promises of the election period, Mr. Goschen contrasted all these hopes and glowing prospects with the thin and meagre fare of Sir William's Budget. It was very well done--full of unwonted fire, of biting and effective raillery and of excellent party hits; it lit up for a brief space the sombreness which has fallen so completely on the Tory Benches in this year of wails and lamentations. [Sidenote: Sir William as an early Christian.] But the debate soon relapsed under a soporific speech from Sir John Lubbock, who made an insinuating proposal to open a discussion on Home Rule in the midst of the debate on the Imperial Budget. Sir William was a delight during these proceedings. Everybody knows that he has both a warm heart and a warm temper, and there have been times when the collisions between himself and Mr. Goschen have seemed to indicate a violence of personal as well as of party antagonism. But the duty of great ministers is to practise the scriptural principle of turning the other cheek to the smiter. It is wonderful, indeed, to see how humanity can attune itself to a situation. The most violent and vehement free-lance below the gangway sobers down in office to politeness, and peace with all men of good or bad will. Sir William, sitting on the Treasury Bench that night--beneath the wild tirade of Mr. Goschen--under the dreary drip of Sir John Lubbock--was a sight that a new Addison might show to his child; not that he might see how a Christian might die, but how a great Christian official could suffer with all the patience of silent and suffering merit. There was a look of almost dazzling and beatific sanctity on Sir William's face that was perfectly delightful to behold. And when he got up to reply to Mr. Goschen and to Sir John Lubbock, whither had departed that splendid rotundity of voice--that resonant shout of triumph or of defiance? Sir William coo'd gently as the white-feathered dove; and the Tory Benches, which had been ebullient with excitement a few moments before, could not find it in their hearts to do other than listen reverently to this good and holy man expostulating with heathen foes. And thus the first resolution of the Budget got quietly through, which was exactly what the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted; whereupon there might have been observed, perhaps, by a close looker-on, a sinking of one of Sir William's eyelids, which might have suggested in a lesser mortal the wink of the man who takes off the mask when the comedy is over. Sir William is a splendid artiste. [Sidenote: A great night.] It was probably under the influence of Sir William that this turned out to be the greatest and best night the Government had had so far. The Railway Servants' Bill got through its third reading amid cheers, and then, before it knew where it was, the House found itself actually in the same night discussing a third Ministerial measure--the Scotch Fisheries Bill. It is one of the privileges of Scotland that nobody takes the least interest in her measures outside her own representatives, and that even they are sombre and joyless in the expression of their delight. The demand for Scotch Home Rule does not come assuredly from the intervention of English or Irish speech. I have never seen the House with more than a score or two of members when a Scotch question is under discussion, and on the rare occasions on which a Southron does dare to intrude upon the sacred domain, it is with the most shamefaced looks. And so Sir George Trevelyan and his Scotch friends were allowed to have their nice little tea-party without any interruption, and the Bill got very nicely through. Thus ended a remarkable night. [Sidenote: The bullet in Downing Street.] And now I come to the point which, after all, had been the most interesting during the week, and which, though rarely mentioned, was in everybody's mind. It was on the Thursday evening that Mr. Sexton got up quietly to ask whether the reports published in the evening papers were true, that a man had been arrested the previous night in Downing Street, who had apparently intended to attempt the assassination of the Prime Minister. There was death-like stillness all over the House as Mr. Sexton put his question--picking his words slowly and deliberately. If men were not so anxious and so shocked there might have been some demonstration of the vehement anger which was felt in so many breasts as Mr. Sexton brought out the words which put in collocation in the mind of the unfortunate lunatic the idea of attempting to kill Mr. Gladstone, and the phrase of Sir Henry James during the debate on the Home Rule Bill. But feeling was too intense and solemn for outspoken or loud utterance, and Mr. Sexton was allowed to put his question to the end without any interruption from the intensely excited and profoundly thrilled assembly. This is one of the curiosities of Parliamentary and British nature--that the moments of tensest feeling are so often those which, to a stranger, would appear listless, indifferent, impassive. Mr. Asquith spoke in tones suitable to the temper of the assembly. This was a very grave matter, he said; but it was for the moment before the courts of law, and his lips were sealed. And so the subject dropped. [Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone.] The people were asking themselves what would happen, when Mr. Gladstone entered the House; but if there had been any desire to mark the occasion, he himself prevented it. He dropped more quietly into his seat than usual, and at the moment when, to a thin House, Sir William was giving one of those gentle and beatific answers to which I have already alluded. To judge by Mr. Gladstone's quietness of entrance, nothing unusual had happened to him, and he himself had declined even to talk about the matter. And yet there was a certain look as of reverie on his face--as though of a man who had looked into that dark and hideous abyss called Death. He had not been looking very well for some days, and perhaps there was not--though imagination saw it--a deadlier pallor than usual on the face. But it was only when he was sitting on the deserted bench beside Sir William Harcourt that one had an opportunity of detecting any difference between his usual appearance and his appearance at that particular moment. The minute he had any part to take in the proceedings of the House, he was just as alert, cheerful, self-composed as ever. This wonderful man is as much a miracle physically as mentally. The giant intellect is backed by a steady nerve, the perfect mind by the perfect body. And thus he is able to go through trials, dangers, fatigues, which would destroy any ordinary man, as though nothing had occurred. During this week, indeed, he was especially playful. On the Tuesday night, when the onslaught was being made on Mr. Bryce, Sir Henry James spoke of Lord Sefton as being a strong Liberal. Mr. Gladstone uttered a quiet, gentle, deprecatory "Oh!" whereupon Sir Henry James reiterated his statement with a look of surprise and shock. Mr. Gladstone didn't depart from his attitude of gentle and almost plaintive remonstrance. He waved his hand mildly, and with a smile, and Sir Henry James was allowed to proceed to the solemn end of his solemn harangue. [Sidenote: A visit to the Lords.] It is not often that a rational man takes the trouble of paying a visit to the House of Lords. But that assembly was certainly worth a visit on May 1st. When the fight in Woodford, County Galway, was at its height, and everybody was repeating the name of Lord Clanricarde, people began to ask if there were ever such a person, or if he were not merely the creation of some morbid imagination--desirous of conjuring up a human bogey for the purpose of demonstrating the iniquities of Irish landlordism. The story on the estate which he owned, and whose destinies he controlled, was that, on one occasion, a strange spectral figure had been seen following the coffin of the old Clanricarde to the tomb of his fathers; that the figure had disappeared as suddenly and as noiselessly as it had come; that it had not reappeared even on the solemn occasion when again the historic and century-old vaults of the family graveyard had opened to receive the late lord's wife and the existing lord's mother. Writing his missives from afar--invisible, unapproachable, unknown--or known, rather, only by harsh refusal--by dogged, obdurate rejection of all terms--save the full pound of flesh--not even rendered human by passionate and eloquent outburst of remonstrance, but represented by thin, brief, business-like and curt notes as of a very crusty solicitor--such Lord Clanricarde appeared to the imaginations of the people of the district of which he was almost the supreme master. There were riots--fierce conflicts extending over days--then dreary sentences of lengthy imprisonments, with gaol tragedies; but still this strange, dry, inarticulate, obstinate figure remained immutable, always invisible, unapproachable, obdurate, spectral. Even the Tory leaders were disgusted and wearied, and Mr. Balfour was careful, in the very crisis and agony of his fight with the National League, to disavow all sympathy with the strange being that was bringing to his assistance all the mighty resources of an Empire's army, an Empire's exchequer, and an Empire's overwhelming power to crush in blood, in the silence of the cell and the deeper silence of the tomb, all resistance to his imperious will. [Sidenote: Entry of a ghost.] It must have been with something of a shock that the House of Lords, with all its well-trained and high-bred self-control, found that this curious and fateful figure was within its gates. Probably, to scarcely half-a-dozen of his colleagues and fellow-peers, was this figure anything but a strange and unexpected incursion from the dim ghost-land, in which, hermit-like, he seems to dwell. Indeed, the Marquis of Londonderry was careful to explain that he had no personal acquaintance with the man whose case he was defending against the action of the Commission presided over by Mr. Justice Mathew. And it was easy to see, that Lord Clanricarde was a stranger, and a very lonely one, too, in that assembly in which he is entitled to sit and vote on the nation's destinies. On a back seat, on the Liberal side of the House, silent, forlorn, unspeaking and unspoken to, he sat throughout the long and tedious debate in which he was a protagonist. There was, indeed, something shocking to the sense--shocking in being so surprising--that this should be the figure around which one of the fiercest and most tragic political struggles of our time should have surged. He is a man slightly above the middle height, thin in face and in figure. Somehow or other, there is a general air about him that I can only describe by the word shabby--I had almost ventured on the term ragged. The clothes hang somewhat loosely--are of a pattern that recalls a half century ago--and have all the air of having been worn until they are positively threadbare. Altogether, there is about this inheritor of a great name--of vast estates--of a title that in its days was almost kingly--an air that suggests a combination between the recluse and the poor man of letters, who makes his home in the reading-room of the British Museum. It was also a peculiarity of the position that he seemed an almost unwelcome visitant, even to those who had to defend him. There was an awful pause when he rose, silently and so spectre-like, from his seat in the dim land of the back benches, and passed to the seat immediately behind the Marquis of Salisbury. Lord Salisbury made a very vivid and amusing speech in the course of the evening, in defence of Lord Clanricarde and in an attack on Mr. Justice Mathew; but observers thought they saw a look of palpable discomfort pass across his face at the approach of the Marquis of Clanricarde. The Lord of Woodford handed to Lord Salisbury a little bundle of papers; in the distance, the bundle had an inexpressibly shabby look--the look one might expect on the bundle which some Miss Flit of the Legislature would bring every day, as the record of her undetermined claim. Altogether, this appearance of Lord Clanricarde in the glimpses of the moon, rather added to the mysterious atmosphere in which he loves to live. [Sidenote: Sir Charles Dilke.] In the meantime, a very interesting debate was going on in the House of Commons. I have already remarked that Sir Charles Dilke has, in an extremely short time, re-established that mastery over the ear and the mind of the House of Commons which he used to exercise with such extraordinary power in the old days before misfortune overcame him. It is a power and mastery derived from a perfect House of Commons mind. Sir Charles Dilke, doubtless, has written on many subjects outside mere politics; but in politics his whole heart and soul are concentrated. There is no man in the House of Commons so thoroughly political. It would be bewildering to give even the heads of the subjects on which he has written and in which he is profoundly learned. He has written about our Army--he could tell you everything about every army corps in the German Army--he knows all about every fortress on the French frontier--he can convey to you a photographic picture of every great public man on the Continent--he would be able in the morning to take charge of the Admiralty, and over and on top of all this knowledge he could tell you every detail of the law of registration, of parochial rating, of vestry work, and all the rest of that curious technical, dry, detailed information which raises the ire of parish souls, and forms the fierce conflicts of suburban ratepayers. [Sidenote: Egypt.] It could be seen after he had been five minutes on his legs that Sir Charles Dilke was about to give on Egypt a speech which would suggest this sense of easy and complete mastery of all the facts, and that, therefore, the speech would be a thorough success. And so it was--so successful, indeed, that it was listened to with equal attention by the Tories as by the Liberals, though nothing could be more abhorrent to the Tory imagination than the proposal by Sir Charles Dilke of an early evacuation of Egypt. Perhaps their indignation was a little mitigated by the fact which Sir Charles Dilke brought out with such clearness, that Lord Salisbury was just as deeply committed to the eventual evacuation of Egypt as any other public man. [Sidenote: An awkward situation.] It was curious to watch the House of Commons during this debate. There is no doubt that a very awkward situation was before that assembly. On the one hand, there were the interests of the country--as they are understood by the Tory party; on the other, there was a very difficult party situation--a situation difficult enough to tempt even the most patriotic, self-denying, and impartial Tory to gaze on the Liberal leaders opposite with a certain amount of mischievous curiosity. How was Mr. Gladstone going to make a speech which would fulfil those extremely diverse purposes? First, leave the door open for a continued stay for some time longer, and at the same moment for final evacuation; secondly, please Sir Wm. Harcourt on the one side, and Lord Rosebery on the other; thirdly, keep together a party which ranges from the strong foreign policy of moderate men to the ultra-nonintervention of Mr. Labouchere. Mr. Gladstone had, however, to do a good deal more than this. For it was easy to see from the condition of the Tory seats, and especially from the attitude of the front Opposition Bench, that party instinct had suggested that this was just one of the occasions on which the Government might be put in a very tight place. Let Mr. Gladstone say something which would satisfy Mr. Labouchere, and immediately Mr. Goschen would be down upon him--the late Chancellor of the Exchequer had the air of a man who was thoroughly primed for damaging criticism and ardent attack--with a philippic charging him with abandoning the most sacred interests of the country. Indeed, it was quite evident that Mr. Gladstone had to face a very ugly little question, and that his political foes had come down in full force to enjoy the spectacle of a Christian flung to the lions. [Sidenote: A historic triumph.] I cannot tell you how it was done--I have read the speech in the _Times_ report--and I know that some people brought away from the speech no other impression than that it was delivered in a low tone of voice, and was not easily grasped; but the fact is, that judged by results this little speech, not much above half-an-hour in duration, was one of the most extraordinary triumphs of Mr. Gladstone's long oratorical life. What constitutes the greatest of all Parliamentary triumphs? It is that without abandoning your own principles, you shall so state a case that even your bitterest political opponents will rest contented with, and be ready to accept, your speech as the expression of their views. And this is just what occurred. Mr. Goschen, I have said, came down to the House chock-full of attack--I have, indeed, heard that he has confessed to having been prepared to make a speech of some length. On the other side of the House there sat Labby--full of that dogged, immutable Radicalism which will make no distinction between Liberal and Tory when his principles of foreign policy are at stake; and he was ready to pounce upon the Prime Minister if he had detected any departure from the narrow and straight path which leads to Radical salvation. In the background were the dim forces of Unionism, more eager--perhaps even more reckless--in readiness to attack Mr. Gladstone than his opponents on the opposite benches. And behind them and above them, in all parts of the House, was that countless host of busybodies, bores and specialists who see in Egypt an opportunity of airing fads, fanaticism, or vanities. [Sidenote: A great eirenicon.] The paper which contained the list of pairs for the night was crammed with the names of members from both sides, who, anticipating a debate of hours' duration, had wisely resolved to spend the interval between the motion and a division in the bosoms of their families--miles away from the floor of the House of Commons. The Whips had prepared their followers for a big division somewhere about midnight. And, lo! on all this vast and turbulent sea of conflicting waves the Prime Minister poured half an hour of oratorical oil, and the waters were stilled, and the great deep at perfect rest. In other words, Mr. Goschen threw away his notes; Labby advised Sir Charles Dilke not to go to a division; the debate had not begun and then it was over, and all that followed was addressed to a House empty of everybody. The Old Man--dexterous, calm, instinctive--had spoken the right word to meet every view, and there was nothing more for anybody to say. There is nobody else in the House who can do it; when his voice is stilled, the greatest of all Parliamentary secrets will die with him--the secret of saying the exact thing in the most difficult and embarrassing of situations. To the outside public, perhaps, this speech appeared nothing remarkable, and the allusions to it I have seen in the press have been few and perfunctory. You should hear House of Commons' opinion; you should listen to Unionists who hate him, to Tories who distrust him, to know what an estimate was formed of this marvellous speech by House of Commons' opinion. [Sidenote: The triumph of the miners.] On the Wednesday, again, Mr. Gladstone gave another example of his extraordinary dexterity. The miners had come down in full force to demand a legal eight hours. Sam Woods, of the Ince Division, on the one side, John Burns, of the Battersea Fields, on the other, frowned on the Old Man and bade him surrender. Behind him sat the great Princes of Industry--silent, but none the less militant, fierce, and minatory; opposite him was Lord Randolph Churchill, ready to raise the flag of Social Democracy and to wave it before the advancing masses against the Liberal party. Out of this difficulty, Mr. Gladstone rescued himself with all that perfect, that graceful ease which he most displays when situations are most critical. The debate was further made remarkable by a speech from Lord Randolph Churchill, who, amid the grim and ominous silence of the Tory Benches, thundered against Capital and Capitalists in tones for which Trafalgar Square or the Reformers' Tree would be the appropriate environment; and then came the remarkable division, with 279 for the Bill and 201 against. [Sidenote: Hull Again.] This was not the only victory which Labour was able to win in the course of this week. The House presented a very notable spectacle on May 4th. It was only by the aid of the Irish members, it is true, that Mr. Havelock Wilson was able to get the necessary forty to procure the adjournment of the House for the discussion of the Hull strike; but then, when Mr. Wilson was enabled to bring the subject before the House, he was listened to with an attention almost painful in its seriousness and gravity. Nothing, indeed, shows more plainly the vast social and political changes of our time, than this transformation in the attitude of the House of Commons towards labour questions. There was a time--even in our own memory--when such a question as the strike at Hull would have been promptly ruled out of order; and when the workmen who rose to call attention to it would have been coughed or even hooted down; and he would be certain to receive very rough treatment from the Tory party. The Tory party still remains the party of the monopolists and the selfish, but it has learned that household suffrage means a considerable weapon in the hands of working men, and, accordingly, though it may put its tongue in its cheek, it keeps that tongue very civil whenever it begins to utter opinion. To Mr. Wilson, then, the Tories, as well as the Liberals, listened with respectful and rapt attention as he made his complaint of employment of the military and naval forces of the Crown in--as he alleged--the buttressing of the case of the employers. And yet there was a something lacking. Mr. Asquith was able to show that he had done no more than he was compelled to do by the obligations of his office; and entirely repudiated any idea of allowing the forces of the Empire to be ranged on the one side or the other. Mr. Mundella was able to make a good defence of his officials against the charge which had been brought by Mr. Wilson. There was a good speech from John Burns, and it looked as if not another sympathetic word was going to be said for those starving men and women, who are making so heroic a fight for the right to live. Altogether, the situation was awkward and even distressing. The House, divided between the desire to remain neutral and to be sympathetic, was puzzled, constrained, and silent. It was at this moment that Mr. Lockwood made a most welcome and appropriate intervention. Gathering together the scattered and somewhat tangled threads of the debate, he put to Mr. Mundella several pertinent questions--among others, the very relevant one, whether or not the Shipping Federation had the right to employ sailors, whether they are not violating the law against "crimping" in so doing. Incidentally, Mr. Lockwood remarked, amid cheers from the Radical Benches--delighted at this opportunity of departing from its painful and embarrassed silence--that Liberal members had been returned to support the cause of labour, and that they ought to be true to their pledges. Mr. Gladstone at once grasped the situation with that unerring instinct which he has displayed so splendidly in the present Session, and at once undertook that the point raised by Mr. Lockwood should be considered; and so, with a word of sympathy and hope to the strikers, Mr. Gladstone rescued the House and himself from a painful situation. CHAPTER XL. THE BILL IN COMMITTEE. [Sidenote: The first fence.] Yes, there was something intoxicating to an Irish Nationalist--after all his weary years of waiting--in seeing the House of Commons engaged in Committee on the Bill which is to restore the freedom of Ireland. And as I looked across the House on May 8th, with every seat occupied--with galleries crowded--with that air of tense excitement which betokens the solemn and portentous occasion--there rose to my brain something of the exaltation of passion's first hour. The Unionists might rage--the Tories might obstruct--faction might bellow its throat hoarse--Orangemen swear that they would die rather than see Home Rule--for all that, nobody could get over this great fact, of which I saw the palpable evidence at that solemn and historic hour. But if for a few brief moments one was inclined to abandon oneself to the intoxication of this great hour, there was plenty to bring one very quickly back to solid earth, and to the sense of the long, dreary, and thorny road which Home Rule has yet to traverse. Time after time Mr. Chamberlain gets up to continue the obstructive debate. Gravelled for matter, he clutches any topic as a means of lengthening the thin chain of his discourse. Mr. Redmond--the Parnellite leader--happens to be for a few moments out of the House. Here at once, and with eager welcome, Mr. Chamberlain seizes upon this fact to string a few sentences together--something after this fashion:--"I observe that the hon. and learned member for Waterford is not in his place. This is very remarkable. Indeed, I may go further and say that this is a most sinister fact. For we all know what the hon. and learned gentleman has said with regard to the kind of Parliamentary supremacy which alone he will accept. Well, now we are discussing this very point of the Imperial supremacy, and the hon. and learned gentleman is not in his place. I repeat, Mr. Mellor, it is a very remarkable, a very significant, a very sinister, and instructive fact!" And so on and so on. [Sidenote: The stony silence of the Irishry.] This kind of speech had another object--it was to provoke Mr. Redmond into a speech. For it was all the same to the Obstructives who spoke--provided only there was a speech. For, first, the speech of the Irish or the Liberal member consumed so much time in itself--and then one speech justified another; and thus the speech by the Irishman, or the Liberal, would give an excellent excuse for another series of harangues by the Obstructives. And this brings me to describe one of the portents of the present House of Commons which has excited a great deal of attention and a great deal of unfeigned admiration. As speakers of eloquence--as Obstructives--as Parliamentarians of exhaustless resources--as gladiators, tireless, brave, and cool--and, again, as stormy Parliamentary petrels--fierce, disorderly, passionate--the Irish members have been known to the House of Commons and to all the world during all the long series of years through which they have been fighting out this struggle. In this Parliament, and at this great hour, they appear in quite another, and perfectly new character. Amid all the groups of this House they stand out for their unbroken and unbreakable silence, for their unshakable self-control. Taunts, insults, gentle and seductive invitations, are addressed to them--from the front, from behind, from their side; they never open their lips--the silent, stony, and eternal silence of the Sphinx is not more inflexible. And similarly men rage, some almost seem to threaten each other with physical violence; _they_ sit still--silent, watchful, composed. Not all, of course. There are the young, and the vehement, and the undisciplined; but that Old Guard which was created by Parnell--which went with him through coercion, and the wildest of modern agitations--which contains men that have lived for years under the shadow of the living death of penal servitude--men who have passed the long hours of the day--the longer hours of the night--in the cheerless, maddening, spectral silence of the whitewashed cells--the Old Parliamentary Guard is silent. I have been in the House of Commons for upwards of thirteen years; and in the course of that stormy time have, of course, seen many scenes of passion, anger, and tumult; but the scene which ensued on May 8th, after Mr. Morley's motion, was the worst thing I have ever beheld. I am a lover of the British House of Commons--with all its faults, and drawbacks, and weaknesses, it is to me the most august assembly in the world, with the greatest history, the finest traditions, the best oratory. And, verily, I could have wept as I saw the House that night. It was not that the passion was greater than I have ever seen, or the noise even, or the dramatic excitement, it was that for hours, there was nothing but sheer downright chaos, drivel, and anarchy. [Sidenote: The unloosing of anarchy.] It began when Mr. Mellor accepted the motion for closure. At once there arose from the Tory Benches wild, angry, insulting cries of "Shame! shame! scandalous! the gag! the gag!" This would have been all right if it had been addressed to Mr. Gladstone. Party leaders have to give and take, and in moments of excitement they must not complain if their political opponents denounce them. But closure is the act of the presiding officer of the House, and it has been an almost unbroken rule and tradition of Parliament that the presiding officer shall be safeguarded against even an approach to attack or insult. It is a tradition that has its weak side; but, on the whole, it is in accordance with that great national English characteristic of subordination to necessary authority and the maintenance of order, decency, and self-control as the trinity of public virtues and personal demeanour. If Mr. Peel had been in the chair he would have called those Tories to order; and if they had persisted as they did, he would have promptly named the highest among them. Mr. Chamberlain was not ashamed to join in those hoarse and disorderly shouts; and it was in this temper that the different sides walked slowly, silently, and frowningly to the division lobbies. The moment the division was over, the storm which had been stilled broke forth again, and with wilder fury. Lord Randolph Churchill, as I have several times remarked, is not the man he was. I remember the time when in such a scene he would have been perfectly at home; self-restrained, vigilant, and effective. But on this night it was nothing above mere inarticulateness--hoarse and ineffective fury--an almost painful exhibition. Sometimes his lisp became so strong that he was scarcely able to utter the words he desired to bring out. The Prime Minister became "The Primisther," the Chief Secretary the "Cheesesecry," and all this impotence was made the more manifest by thundering on the box with his open hand--in short, it was all inarticulate, painful, perplexing emptiness, weakened and not fortified by prolific tub-thumping. A poor--sad--nay, a tragic business. [Sidenote: The young man and the old.] Such was the young man; and then came the old. To all this inarticulate, hoarse, stammering passion, Mr. Gladstone opposed a speech gentle, persuasive, self-possessed; as admirable in its courtesy as in its reserve of gigantic strength. With the deadly pallor of his face more remarkable than ever--the white hair shining out, as it were, with the peaceful suggestion of calm and strong old age--in a voice, low, soft, gentle--Mr. Gladstone uttered a few words which revealed all the great depths. In completely quiet, almost inaudible tones, he uttered these pregnant words: "As to other passages in the noble lord's speech, I do not know whether he intended to intimidate me; but if he did, I do not think he will succeed." There they are--these few words--so simple, plain, even commonplace; but what a history--what a character--what a grandeur there is behind and beneath them! So splendid are they that even Lord Randolph is touched to the quick, and he rises to explain. The Old Man--suave, calm, unutterably courteous--hears him politely; and then puts the whole case of the Government in a few, dignified, and tranquil words. [Sidenote: In the depths.] But the House, exalted to a higher plane of feeling by this great little speech, was soon dragged down again to the arena of chaos let loose; and, of course, Mr. Chamberlain was the person to lead the way to the dusty pit. Mr. Mellor had very properly attempted to stop the disorderly discussion of the closure; but Mr. Chamberlain was not in the mood to respect the authority of the chair or the traditions of the House of Commons, and audaciously, shamelessly--with a perky self-satisfaction painful to witness--he proceeded to violate the ruling of the chair--to trample on the order of Parliament, and to flout the Chairman. And then the waters of the great deep were loosed. A hurricane of shouts, yells, protests arose. Member got up after member--here, there, everywhere--always excepting the sternly silent Irish Bench, where sate the Irish leaders. A half-dozen men were on their feet--all shouting, gesticulating, speaking at the same time. In short, it was utterly unlike anything ever seen before in the House of Commons; it brought vividly back to the mind the tumultuous French Convention in the days of the French Revolution. [Sidenote: Deeper and deeper still.] It was almost a welcome break in this passionate and scarcely civilized din that a personal encounter between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Byles for a moment interrupted the tempest. Mr. Chamberlain, in his characteristically genial way, had spoken of the Irish members as having been "squared." The Irish members, habituated to insult--conscious of Mr. Chamberlain's object--had allowed the observation to pass unnoticed; but Mr. Byles--ardent, sincere, an enthusiast on the Irish question--shouted out, "How much would it take to square you?" At once there rose a fierce tropical storm. There were loud shouts of approval--equally loud shouts demanding an instant withdrawal; members rose from every part of the House; in short, it was Bedlam let loose, and a scene impossible to describe. This was deep enough, but there was a lower depth still to be sounded; and again it was Mr. Chamberlain's plummet that descended down to the unfathomable bottom. "I do not," he said to Mr. Byles, "object to the question, and I will answer it by saying that it would take a great deal more than the hon. member for Shipley will ever be able to pay." There the words stand--in the immensity of their vulgarity, in their unsurpassable degradation, let them lie. [Sidenote: The first fence.] Finally, May 10th saw the first fence taken. The genial and gentle T.W. Russell proposed the removal from the Bill of the Second Chamber--the Chamber specially created for the protection of the loyal minority. With similar and strange unscrupulousness, the Tories all trooped into the lobby against their own principles. They were accompanied by a few foolish Radicals--indeed, it was the hope of detaching a sufficient number of Radicals to place the Government in a minority which produced the Tory apostasy from their own principles. There was a little uncertainty as to the result, and everybody expected that the Government majority would have been reduced to a dangerously low figure. When Mr. Marjoribanks read out a majority of 51--or a majority bigger than the usual one--there was a loud halloo of triumph and delighted surprise from the Liberal and the Irish Benches; and so the first big fence in the Home Rule Bill was easily taken. [Sidenote: Obstructive Chamberlain.] By the middle of the sitting on the following day the House of Commons stood face to face with the first clause. Under ordinary circumstances, the clause would have been passed after a few speeches--especially and definitely directed to the words of the clause; Mr. Chamberlain demanded the right on this clause to discuss, not only the whole Bill with all its other clauses, but the past and future of the whole Home Rule struggle. He quoted passage after passage from speeches delivered by Irish members years and years ago; in short, he entered upon a survey of the whole controversy. There were countless interruptions from the Irish Benches--not in the least because the Irish members cared for Joe's attacks, but because such a roundabout discussion was altogether a revolutionary departure from all previous precedents; and would have been held distinctly out of order by any of the predecessors of Mr. Mellor in the chair. That good-natured and easy-going official, however, gave Mr. Chamberlain his head; and so, for an hour, he poured forth a stream of clever, biting, but mean and irrelevant vituperation. [Sidenote: The G.O.M.'s greatest speech.] It was well that it should have been so; for to this speech the House of Commons owes one of the most remarkable and historic scenes in its long history. Every reader of Parliamentary reports knows what it means to speak at eight o'clock. By that time, three out of five at least of the members of the House have gone to their dinners in all quarters of London, and the assembly is given up to the faddists and the bores, who never get another opportunity of delivering themselves. Nothing, therefore, could have been more unexpected than a speech from Mr. Gladstone at such an hour, and especially a speech which, in the opinion of many, leaves far behind anything he ever did. But, indeed, it is probable that Mr. Gladstone himself had no notion when the sitting began, or even a few minutes before he rose, that he would say anything very special. It is one of the peculiarities of this extraordinary man to be always surprising you. His infinite variety, his boundless resource, seem to be without any limitations. By this time, you would have expected that one who had listened to him for nearly twenty years would imagine that he had no further oratorical worlds to conquer, and that he certainly would not have waited to his eighty-fourth year to do something better than ever he had done before. But so it was. In passion, in destructive sarcasm, in dramatic force, in the rush and resistless sweep of language, Mr. Gladstone was more potent in the dinner hour of that Thursday night than he was ever at any other single moment in his almost sixty years of triumphant oratory. [Sidenote: His powers as a mimic.] Observers are divided as to his temper when he rose. Some onlookers, observing the tremendous force of voice and language--the broad, ample, and frequent gestures--the tremulousness that sometimes underlies the swell of passion--the deadly and startling pallor of the face--thought that he was suffering from excitement almost touching and perhaps affrighting to behold; while others thought that the chief and most impressive feature of this perfect tornado of triumphant eloquence, was the perfect calm that lay in the heart and bosom of all that storm. There are two things which will tell you of the omnipotence of an orator--one is the effect of his speech on foes as well as friends, and the other is its effect upon himself. Both these evidences were present, for the Tories seemed to have been swept away by the cyclone as resistlessly as the Liberals and the Irish, and the Tory pæans in honour of the Old Man which were to be found in the Tory organs next day only echoed the bounteous and generous recognition of his matchless powers which one heard from Tories in the lobbies throughout the evening. And as to the effect of the speech on Mr. Gladstone himself, it was to bring out a dramatic and mimetic power on which he very rarely ventures, and which in anybody but a perfect master of the House of Commons might descend into bad taste and bad tact. I know that Mr. Gladstone is really triumphant when he brings these qualities into requisition. I remember the last time he used them with any approach to the abundance of this occasion was when he was making the great speech which preceded his defeat in 1885 and the fall of his Government. On that occasion I remember very well that the Old Man puckered up his forehead into a thousand wrinkles, turned and twisted that very wonderfully mobile mouth of his--with its lips so full with strength and at the same time so sensitive with all the Celtic passion of his Highland ancestry--until sometimes you almost thought it a pity he had not taken to the Lyceum and some of the great parts in which Mr. Henry Irving has made his fame. There was another occasion which dwells in my memory. It was on one of the nights of the debate on the Coercion Bill. He was describing the promises of equal laws to Ireland, with the restrictions on Irish liberty which were contained in the Bill, and as he described restriction he gradually raised the fingers on one hand, then turned them spiral fashion until he had pointed the index finger to the roof--- as though he were describing the ascent of a funambulist to the top of spiral stairs. It was at once eloquent and grotesque, and the House cheered and cheered yet again without any distinction of party--the friends in admiration of the splendid eloquence of the gesture, the foes in hearty admiration of the great and perennial spirit of the great Old Man. [Sidenote: Comedy.] But on May 11th there was a new and a bolder departure. Most of my readers have seen that remarkable little lay written by Mr. Gilbert for Miss Anderson to display the range and variety of her powers--"Comedy and Tragedy." Mr. Gladstone gave proof of powers of equally wide versatility; and all at the expense of poor Joe. First for the Comedy. I must quote the passage of the speech to explain what I mean:-- "My right hon. friend has a bundle of quotations. He says he has fortified himself. (Laughter.) He said he had fortified himself against me when I said there could be no supremacy without the presence of Irish members in this House. I never asserted anything of the kind. (Cheers.) 'Oh,' he said, 'I have got the papers'--(laughter)--and the party opposite cheered at the expected triumph. (Laughter.)" When Mr. Gladstone came to the words. "'Oh,' he said, 'I have got the papers,'" Mr. Gladstone began fumbling in his pockets, just as Mr. Chamberlain had done--with that air of distraction and coming despair which appears on everybody's face when he is anxiously seeking for an important but mislaid paper; and the resemblance, heightened by just the least imitation of Mr. Chamberlain's voice, was so striking, so startling, so melodramatic, that the whole House, Tories and all, joined in the wild delight of laughter and cheers--laughter at the comic power, delight at the splendid courage and exuberant spirit of the prancing old war-horse, delighted, exhilarated, and fortified by the joy of battle and by the richness of his own powers and courage. Even yet the comic vein was not exhausted. Mr. Chamberlain--as I have said--had made copious quotations from past Irish speeches, and asked that they should be retracted. "If the work of retraction were to begin, is my right hon. friend," asked Mr. Gladstone, with scorn in every tone, "willing to submit himself to the same process of examination? If the work of retraction were to begin he would have a lot to do." And then came the passage which has already passed into Parliamentary history. "If we are to stand in white sheets, my right hon. friend would have to wear that ornamental garment standing in a very conspicuous position." [Sidenote: and Tragedy.] And then came the other and the tragic note. Again I have to quote the exact words to convey the impression and explain the description:-- "If I were in the position of one of those gentlemen--if I had seen the wrongs and the sufferings of Ireland in former times, if the iron had entered into my soul as it had entered into theirs, it would have been impossible. I should not have been more temperate possibly than some of them under those circumstances of the language I used. (Cheers.)" It was when he uttered the words, "if the iron had entered into my soul," that Mr. Gladstone ventured on the bold gesture of striking his hand against his breast--a simple gesture, and not an uncommon gesture in itself--but you should have heard the resonant and thrilling voice--you should have been under the entrancing and almost bewildering spell beneath which at this moment all the imagination and emotion of the House lay supine, helpless, and drugged--to have understood the shiver of feeling which passed through everybody. And so he went on--rising higher and higher--a deeper harmony in every note--a more splendid strength in every sentence--till you almost thought you were looking at some great bird--with the strength and splendour of the eagle, the full-hearted and passionate melody of the lark--as it soared on, on its even and well-poised wing, higher and higher to the dim and blue ether of the upper air. [Sidenote: A strange scene.] Right to the last word, there was the same unbroken, passionate strength and fervour, so that when it was all ended the House gave a start as though it had to rouse itself from some splendid vision. And then came that rude and quick awakening which, in the world of actualities, always bursts in upon the most solemn and moving hours. At about half-past eight every evening the Speaker or Chairman--whichever is in the chair--gets up and goes out to tea. Before doing so the presiding officer calls upon the next speaker, and when the speaker has been named, cries "Order, order!" and promptly disappears into the room where his meal is laid. Scarcely had Mr. Gladstone sat down when Mr. Mellor called upon Sir Richard Temple, then cried "Order, order!" and, almost within a couple of seconds after Mr. Gladstone had concluded, had vanished from the House. This was immediately followed by the stampede of the rest of the House--for by half-past eight everybody was famished with hunger--and the Chamber was left empty, silent, and dim, with a suddenness that was startling, disconcerting, and a little disillusioning. And then it was that the strongest proof was given of the effect of the speech. [Sidenote: The outburst.] The House, I say, became empty--but not altogether. The Irish Benches, which had become crowded as the great apology for Ireland was being pronounced, remained still full--full, but silent. There was something strange, weird, startling in those benches, full and yet silent, amid all this emptiness and almost audible stillness; and some of the Liberal members, who had left the House in the mad rush to dinner, quietly stole back to see what was going to happen. The explanation of the mystery soon came. After he sat down, ghastly pale, almost painfully panting after this tremendous effort, Mr. Gladstone tarried a little to recover himself--to say a few words to Mr. John Morley--to scribble a note. At last he rose, and then came the moment for which those silent Irish Benches had been waiting. With one accord, with one quick and simultaneous spring, the Irish members were on their feet--hats and handkerchiefs were waved; there was the suggestion of tears under the swelling cheers. Nor were the Irish left alone. The Liberals who had slipped back joined in. The effectiveness of their cheers was heightened by the fact that they were not in their places, but standing on the floor. From out their cheering ranks stood the splendid figure--the broad shoulders, the massive head, the shaggy beard and hair, all the virility and sensitiveness that are found in the splendid form of Mr. Allen--manufacturer and workman, poet and Radical. The Old Man, splendidly composed, and yet profoundly moved, looked back, gave a courtly bow, and then went out. And here it was that a little scene took place of which the public prints have hitherto contained no mention. In her corner place in the gallery had sat throughout this dazzling speech that best of friends and truest of wives, who has been the guardian angel of Mr. Gladstone's life; and with outstretched hands and dim eyes, she received her triumphant husband in the corridor, where she had been waiting for him. [Sidenote: Deeper and deeper.] Friday, May 12th, I may dismiss in a few words. As the closure had been refused on Thursday night, the Obstructives started again on the first clause on Friday afternoon--Mr. T.W. Russell leading the van. He had nothing to say beyond what he had said a hundred times already, even in the course of the present Session; and his speech would have passed unnoticed had it not been for a brisk but odious and ignoble little storm which he and the Tories managed to raise between them. Mr. Russell declared that he heard the phrase across the floor, "What the devil are you saying?" and stopped as if the heavens and the earth must refuse to go round on their axes because of this introduction into Parliament of the negligences of private conversation. Mr. Gibbs--a very pestilent and very empty member of the young army of silly obstructives--moved that the words be taken down--an ancient formula not heard of for years till the present Session, when everything is turned to account for the purpose of occupying time and breaking down the House of Commons, and at the same time accused Mr. Swift McNeill of having used the words. Mr. McNeill indignantly denied the charge: then Mr. Macartney attributed them to Mr. Sexton--another and equally indignant denial; and then much uproar and contradictions and apologies--the lubberly and unmannerly interventions of Lord Cranborne as usual conspicuous--and, finally, the end of the storm in a teacup. Positively loathsome--the whole business methods of the Tories to grasp at everything to rouse a storm or provoke a scene; and altogether disheartening to those who don't wish to see the House of Commons reduced to the drivel and turbulence and anarchy of a French Convention. Finally, a little after six o'clock, the first clause of the Bill had passed, with a majority of 42. The House of Commons had decided that there shall be established in Ireland a Legislature of two Chambers. Then in a graceful, well-delivered, and pleasant little speech, Mr. Victor Cavendish opened the fight on the second clause. The evening was devoted to the Anti-vaccinationists--answered triumphantly in an admirable and unanswerable little speech by Sir Walter Foster--with as many as seventy men voting against vaccination. I had no idea previously that the proportion of lunatics in the Assembly was so large. CHAPTER XII. RENEWAL OF THE FIGHT. [Sidenote: A fresh start.] Nothing of memorable importance occurred during the week before the Whitsuntide holidays, but with Tuesday, May 30th, came the renewal of the great battle over Home Rule. The Old Man was first to be observed. He looked very fresh and sunny, but, at the same time, had that slightly deepened pallor which he always has on the first day of a Session--the result of the long day's journey which he has gone through in coming from his country house. Mr. Balfour was also in his place, looking as though the open rivalry of Lord Randolph Churchill had not much affected his spirits. Mr. Chamberlain nearly always looks the same. He has himself informed the world that he does not take exercise in any shape or form whatsoever, and there is never therefore, on his cheek that look of deep-drunk sunshine which marks the cheeks of more active men. But he was ready for the conflict, and as the night went on showed there was no decrease in either the venom or the vehemence with which he means to fight against the Home Rule Bill. On the Irish Benches nearly every man was in his place, and the Tories had so far benefited by their buffetings from the _Times_ as to make a braver show than they usually do in the early days after vacation. [Sidenote: Home Rule once more.] When the House separated, the subject under debate was an audacious proposal to postpone Clause 3. There was nothing whatever to be urged in favour of such a proposal; it was pure, unadulterated, shameless obstruction. But Sir Richard Temple is not gifted with a sense of humour, and on this amendment he wandered and maundered away for the better part of an hour. The House has yet no power to prevent a bore from consuming its time; but it is free to save itself from the yoke of attention. By a sort of general spontaneity, everybody left his seat; and though hapless Mr. Balfour was forced by the hard necessities of his official position to remain in his place, nobody else was compelled to do so; and Sir Richard addressed the general, void, encasing air. There was some more speech-making of the like kind--still to empty air--when suddenly and almost unexpectedly the debate was allowed to collapse. At first, this was unintelligible--for, senseless as was the amendment, it was no worse than scores of others which the Tories have made the pretext for endless debates. [Sidenote: A tight division.] However, the division revealed the secret. It is one of the peculiarities of this strangely interesting Session that nearly every division is a picturesque and portentous event. With a majority so small as forty, the turnover of a very few votes from one side to the other may mean the defeat of Home Rule, the downfall of Gladstone and his Government, and chaos come again. And these accidents are always possible. Death knocks at the door of the families of members of Parliament as of other people; and often, when one of the great divisions is pending, the Whips have to consider the grim and painful question whether they can allow a man to remain by the rack on which a wife lies tortured, or receive a loving mother's parting sigh. For some reason or other, Tuesday was a bad day for the Liberals, and there was a series of ugly and annoying little mishaps. Thus, in the first division, which was snatched quickly by the Tories, informed by their scouts of what was going on, the majority sank to thirty-three. This was a bad beginning, but worse, as will be seen, remained behind. [Sidenote: Lord Wolmer.] The Committee was now on Clause 3. This is the clause which contains the list of the subjects on which the Irish Legislature is not to have the right to legislate--such questions as the succession to the Crown, questions of peace and war, foreign treaties, coinage, copyright, trade, etc. The list is comprehensive enough, but it was not comprehensive enough for Lord Wolmer; for he had an amendment to the effect that the Irish Legislature should not be allowed to pass even resolutions on these subjects. But even his own amendment did not satisfy him. He amended the amendment by further proposing that the Irish Legislature should not be allowed even to "discuss" any of these questions. The speech in favour of these proposals started from the point of departure common to all the Unionists, namely, that the Irish people were hereditary and irreconcilable enemies, and that the moment they had a native Legislature, it would immediately proceed to make alliances with every Power in the world which was hostile to the British Empire. There was France; of course, the Irish Legislature would pass a resolution of sympathy with France in case there was a war between France and England. Then there was the United States; what was there to prevent the Irish Executive from sending an envoy to the United States? And so on, through all the possibilities and all the insanity and malignity of which an Irish Legislature could be held capable. [Sidenote: Sweet and low.] Mr. Gladstone on one or two points was able to overthrow the whole case so elaborately made up. The Irish Parliament could not send representatives to a foreign Power, because they could not vote the money for such a purpose under the Bill. "Ah, but"--interrupted the incautious Wolmer--"could they not send envoys who were unpaid?" "No," promptly responded the Old Man, "because they had no power under the Bill to 'accredit' envoys, and a foreign Power could not receive an envoy who was not accredited." All this argument--broad, acute, tranquil--was delivered in a voice that now and then was painfully low, and sometimes you had to strain your ears. But then it was worth your while to strain your ears, so that you might master all the supremacy of the art and skill and knowledge of the whole speech. For instance, he puts the question to Lord Wolmer, if he seriously means that the Irish Legislature is not to have the right to petition? Lord Wolmer answers that the Irish members will be in the Imperial Parliament. "Ah! that's an argument, not an answer," says the Old Man; and then, with the spring of a tiger, he pounces on the hapless Wolmer with the question: "Is the right of petition, then, to be taken away in every case where there is representation?"--a question which, with petitions pouring in by the thousand to the House of Commons from the Ulstermen and others, a Unionist like Lord Wolmer finds it impossible to answer. And it is in connection with this point a little scene occurs which brings out many of the points in this remarkable speech, which I have been trying to make clear. Mr. Bryce disappears from the House; then he returns: Mr. Gladstone asks him a question; the answer is apparently not satisfactory, for the Old Man lifts his hands to heaven in playful exaggeration of surprise. The House, puzzled, does not know what it means; but the Old Man soon explains. He had sent Mr. Bryce to the Library to get a copy of the recent Life of Lord Sherbrooke--Robert Lowe, that was--and Mr. Bryce had brought back the discomforting intelligence that the book was not there. However, with such a memory as Mr. Gladstone's, this does not matter, for he is able to point out that an Australian Legislature had at one time passed a resolution, and agreed on a petition to the Imperial Parliament, in reference to the Corn Laws. Just fancy the keenness, the omnivorousness, the promptitude of that marvellous Old Man, who had read one of the most recently published works, and had promptly seized on a point bearing reference to a detail in his Bill. [Sidenote: A pathetic scene.] And then came the pathetic scene, in which again Mr. Bryce figured, and which once more brought out the marvellous grasp, the tenacious and inevitable memory of the splendid Old Man. The amendment of Lord Wolmer was, declared Mr. Gladstone, against "the law of Parliament," and, by way of emphasizing this point, he wanted to have a quotation made from Sir Erskine May's Book on Parliament. But the eyesight of age is weak, and there is in the House of Commons, until the gas is lit, something of the dim, religious light of a cathedral, and, accordingly, Mr. Gladstone had to rely on the younger eyes of Mr. Bryce. The scene which followed might be described as out of order, for there were two members standing at the same time. But the vast ascendancy of Mr. Gladstone over the assembly--the profound reverence in which all, save the meanest, bow before his genius, character, and age--enable him to do things not permitted to common men. In the rapt and serious face, in the attentive look, in the fingers beating the table as word followed word in confirmation of this view--in the curious, almost weird and unusual sight of two men standing side by side, Mr. Gladstone silent, Mr. Bryce speaking--there was a scene, the impressiveness, poetry, and pathos of which will never pass from the memory of those who saw it. And the House--so quick, with all its passion, and fractiousness, and meannesses, at grasping the significance of a great and solemn moment--marked its sense of the scene by a stillness that was almost audible--a hush that spoke aloud. [Sidenote: And yet another.] There was just one other incident in this marvellous little speech which must be noted. I have remarked the ofttimes the voice of Mr. Gladstone was so low, that it was with difficulty one could hear him. The reason is curious, and is revealed in a little gesture that has only come in recent years, and that has a melancholy interest. Often now, when he is speaking, Mr. Gladstone puts his hand to his right ear, as men do who are making a laborious effort to catch and concentrate sound. The cause of this is that Mr. Gladstone's hearing has become defective, and he has to adopt this little stratagem to make his own voice audible to himself. You should see the Old Man with his hand to his ear, with the look of gentle anxiety on his face, to understand all this little gesture conveys; and how it exalts your sense of the mighty courage of this great Old Man, who is able to rise thus superior to all obstacles, to all foes, to all weaknesses of the flesh, all devices of the enemy. [Sidenote: Mr. Balfour.] Mr. Balfour, I have said more than once, does not display his talents best in Opposition. In his desire to be effective, he strains a not very strong voice until, it sounds almost like a shriek. I do not wish to be unfair to Mr. Balfour. There is, as I have often said in these columns, a certain distinction in all he does. I often think he is wanting in that consideration and reverence for the mighty old gladiator whom it is his duty to oppose; but for all this I make allowance, as it is his duty to oppose Mr. Gladstone, and in doing that, he may sometimes appear unintentionally irreverent. But the fact is, Mr. Balfour is thin, narrow, and does not get at the reality of things. Many people say he is very inferior to Mr. Chamberlain; but most assuredly I do not in the least agree with this opinion. To me the difference between the two men is the difference between a scholar and a counter-jumper--I mean a counter-jumper of the Senate, and not of the shop. But though that is my opinion, I cannot refrain from saying that Mr. Balfour contrasts very unfavourably with Mr. Gladstone in this struggle of giants. [Sidenote: An ugly moment.] It was during the speech of Mr. Balfour that a little incident took place, the full significance of which would probably not be grasped by the non-Parliamentarian. Mr. Balfour was arguing that it was impossible to properly discuss the amendment of Lord Wolmer until the House knew whether or not the Irish members were going to be retained in the Imperial Parliament. I do not know whether it was because there was something provocative in the manner in which Mr. Balfour referred to this subject, but it had the effect of rousing the once vulnerable, but now admirably controlled temper, which has played such a part in Mr. Gladstone's career. Rising with a certain deepened pallor, and with that feverish rush in his voice which those who watch him know so well he said that the Ministry meant to stick by the ninth clause, and would do their very best to get it accepted by the House. Here was a most portentous announcement--the portentousness of which the careful observer could see at once, by the sudden stillness which fell upon the House. Whenever a Minister, or even a politician of small importance who is not a Minister, makes a statement full of portentous possibilities as to the future, the House suddenly becomes still and tense, and you can hear a pin drop. It is the prompt and sometimes almost irresistible expression of the feeling that Destiny is throwing the die, and that you have to watch the grim and fateful result. [Sidenote: The Treasury Bench looks awkward.] And if you looked on the Treasury Bench, you could see that the feeling was not altogether comfortable. It was no secret that the ninth clause was the one which offered to the Government the one perilous fence they had still to take--that is to say, so far as their own followers were concerned. Hitherto the attitude of the Government was quite unknown; and, indeed, it was quite probable that the Government themselves had not finally decided what their attitude should be. But when Mr. Gladstone--pale, excited, and angry--jumped in with this outburst, it seemed all at once as if the fateful and final word of Destiny had been spoken, and as if the whole fate of Ireland, of Mr. Gladstone, of this great Ministry, and of this mighty Bill, had been definitely pledged to one throw of the dice. Imagine one of those contests which you find in the pages of Turgenieff or Tolstoi, which perchance you may have seen at Monte Carlo, which in the last few days may have been observed at Epsom Downs--in which life or death, ruin or halcyon fortune, depended on one throw--and you can have some sense of all that passed through the imagination of the House and that made it almost audibly shiver when Mr. Gladstone made this slight and terse interruption. Mr. Morley's face--serious, often sombre--cast in a mould and reflective of a soul inclined to the darker rather than the more cheerful view of life's tangled and unsatisfactory workings--grew black and troubled; the other Ministers who were present looked--not so eloquently, but still perceptibly--uncomfortable; Mr. Asquith--who had been a close observer--could not keep his keen anxiety from breaking through the mask of easy equanimity with which he is able to clothe his readiness to meet fortune in all her moods; in short, it was for Ministerialists one of those uncomfortable quarters of an hour in which life seems to concentrate all its bitterness, sorrow, and anxieties within a terribly brief space of time. And if you wanted to know further what was the full significance of what had taken place, you saw it in the open and almost indecent joy of Mr. Chamberlain's face; in the more subdued but a still unctuous look of Mr. Courtney; and you could hear it in the shriller pitch of Mr. Balfour's voice. [Sidenote: A false alarm.] But all the same, it was a false alarm. For if the Old Man had tripped, he was able to recover himself very soon. Mr. Balfour was foolish enough to try and dot the "I's," and to put into Mr. Gladstone's mouth that which his enemies hoped he had said. For Mr. Balfour, remarking that Mr. Gladstone had made a more explicit declaration than any which had yet come from his lips--this was all right, and was quite true--went on to the further statement that the Old Man had now committed himself to standing or falling by the ninth clause "in its present shape." This, you will see, was the whole crux of the situation. If Mr. Gladstone had said this, then, indeed, it might go hard with him by-and-bye, for whether the Liberal party would accept the ninth clause in its present shape was one of the questions yet to be decided. The Old Man, however his words might have been open to this construction, had not in reality said anything of the kind. And, at once, he was prompt to see how necessary it was to correct this error, for he immediately rose to his feet to say that he had never said anything of the sort. What he had said was that the Government intended to stand by the principle that the Irish members were to have a place in the Imperial Parliament, which, it will be seen, leaves open the perilous and perplexing question: what form that representation in the Imperial Parliament is to take. At once there was a heavy sigh of relief, and most of all on the Irish Benches. Among the Irishry, the declaration of Mr. Gladstone had produced a moment of something like panic; the only exhibition of which was a certain impatience with the attempt of Mr. Balfour to pin the Old Man down to the most literal interpretation of his words. The panic soon passed away. It was all, I say, a false alarm. Vulnerable though his temper--though there was in him still enough of the hot onrush of battle and of resistance under all the snow of advancing years--the great old tactician had not forgotten his cunning. He at once seized the opportunity of saying he was not finally committed to the ninth clause in its present shape, and so we once more breathed freely. [Sidenote: Joe comes back from dinner.] This was the end of the important part of the debate before the dinner hour. It is one of the peculiarities of Mr. Chamberlain that no stress of a Parliamentary situation induces him to seriously interfere with his habits. When the clock points to ten minutes to eight any evening of the week, he may be seen to rise from his place with the inevitableness of fate, and to disappear for a couple of hours. I have seen him do this even when the fortune of a most important amendment seemed to lie trembling in the balance--the one occasion on which I have known him to break through that rigid rule was when his son was about to make that maiden speech which started that promising young fellow on his Parliamentary career. Coming back like a giant refreshed about ten o'clock, Mr. Chamberlain contrived to once more set aflame the embers of dying passion; and he threw himself into the fight over Lord Wolmer's amendment at the moment when all life seemed to have gone out of it. His speech was full of cleverness--of what the Americans call smartness, and it had all that point, personal and party, which sets your friends in a roar. The Tories cheered him vociferously, and point after point of brilliant and effective invective pleased the House--always anxious with its jaded appetite for a sensation. But when you had time to compare, it with that little speech delivered by Mr. Gladstone earlier in the evening--when you contrasted its fitful and gaudy brilliancy with the sober and broad wisdom of Mr. Gladstone's utterance--then, indeed, you were able to see what a gulf there is between the smart debater and the genuine statesman. [Sidenote: A narrow shave.] At last the debate was over; and then came what was, perhaps, the most exciting and most momentous incident of the evening. I have already spoken of the interest with which every division is regarded. The interest in this particular division was fully justified when the numbers were told; for the Government majority had fallen to twenty-one. At once there was a wild outburst of cheering from the Tory Benches. Some wits ventured on the cry, "Resign! Resign!"--altogether, the Tories had the best quarter of an hour they have enjoyed since that hideous afternoon before the Easter vacation, when, after a prolonged fight, the Old Man had to announce that he could not propose the second reading of the Bill until after Easter. It was all more or less of an accident; there were plenty of things to account for it--a reception at the House of a prominent Liberal lady, and many other explanations: but, all the same, it was a very ugly little incident; and though Mr. Gladstone carried it off with that indomitable courage of his, which doesn't know what a confession of defeat means, one could see that he did not like it; and for the rest of the evening there was a visible gloom in the Liberal ranks. [Sidenote: Happy again.] But May 31st brought the Derby, and with the Derby there came upon the Tory Benches one of those moments of temptation which the natural man is utterly unable to resist. The amendments followed each other in rapid succession; division came on top of division; and in them all the Liberals jumped back to their old superiority of numbers. In the earlier part of the day, when the fortunes of Isinglass were still undetermined, the majorities were enormous; and though there was a certain falling off when sporting gentlemen began to get back from the dusty Downs, the average was well kept up; and it was with a distinct rise in the temperature of Liberal hopes and confidence that this stage was reached. On the following day the lowness of the voice in the Old Man was a little more perceptible, and when it got to midnight, he seemed painfully fagged and exhausted. It was, perhaps, because he was in that mood that he made some concessions to the Unionists, which have been somewhat resented. But as these concessions, according to Mr. Gladstone himself, only carried out what the Government had intended from the first, these things may be passed. They had reference chiefly to prohibition of raising in Ireland anything like a military force--even in the shape of a militia or volunteer force. On June 2nd, there was one of those transformations in which the Old Man is constantly surprising friends and foes. He was alert, vigorous, watchful of everything that went on, and the voice rose to its old strength and resonance. It was during that afternoon that there was a slight indication for the first time throughout the progress of the whole Bill of any dissatisfaction on the part of the Irish members. Mr. Byrne--one of the Unionist gang of lawyers--proposed a ridiculous amendment, the effect of which would have been that the Irish Legislature would not have had the right to give a license for a fowling-piece, or to arm their police to meet a rising of the Orangemen. [Sidenote: Mr. Sexton intervenes.] It was then that Mr. Sexton intervened with a word of warning against such a restriction. In burning though carefully restrained language, Mr. Sexton replied to a taunt of Mr. Chamberlain at the silence of the Irish members. Their silence, said Mr. Sexton, was due to their knowledge that Mr. Chamberlain and his confederates had entered into a conspiracy to destroy the power of the House of Commons, and to defeat the mandate of the nation by obstructing a Bill they could not otherwise defeat. Spoken with great fire--with splendid choice of language--with biting sarcasm, of which he is a master--the speech was an event. Mr. Gladstone promptly recognized its spirit; thanked the Irish members for their consideration; and then declared, amid a great sniff from Joe's upturned nose, that if the Irish members desired to express their opinions on any amendment, he and his colleagues would wait before expressing their own views. There seemed to be a slight hope among the Tories and the ever-venomous Joe that this meant a rift in the lute between the Irish members and the Government; but they were woefully disappointed--especially when the amendment was indignantly rejected by the House. [Sidenote: The "Daily News."] It is the outspoken, rather than the loudly uttered, that is often the important thing in a House of Commons discussion. This was the case with the curious little debate which Mr. Chamberlain initiated on June 6th. The _Daily News_ had published a little article describing the manner in which the Tories had shouted at--hooted--interrupted--Mr. Gladstone on the Thursday night previous. It may at once be asked why Mr. Chamberlain should have thought it necessary to notice the article. He boasted that he was not in the habit of noticing what appeared against him in the newspapers--which is not true to a certain extent, or at least is not generally so thought, for it is understood that no man reads more carefully the extracts sent to him by those press-cutting agencies which have added either a new luxury or a new terror to public life. But Mr. Chamberlain's action had many roots. First, like many others, very free in their comments and attacks, he is almost childishly sensitive. Watch him in the House of Commons when an attack is being made upon him which he does not like, and the fierce and domineering temper reveals itself in the fidgety movement, the darkened brow, the deeper pallor on the white-complexioned face. When he was a Cabinet Minister he could never, or rarely, be got to remain in the House of Commons during the whole of the evening; and one of the chief reasons, I have heard, he gave for thus absenting himself was that he could not stand the talk from the opposite side--it made him so angry. [Sidenote: Joe's motives.] But there were other and more immediate reasons for his anger with the _Daily News_. Joe was conscious of the growth of two feelings--either of which was very perilous to him. First, he began uneasily to feel that the country--watching the struggle between him and the Old Man--was getting a little disgusted at the business; and saw in it a want of that chivalry and fair play which it desires to see even in the fiercest political controversy. This was not a pleasant sentiment to have growing up against one; and Joe felt that it has serious perils to his future political position. And, secondly, he was conscious that the majority of the House of Commons was growing very restive under the desperate obstruction of which he had made himself the champion, and that this feeling might soon become strong enough to carry Mr. Gladstone and the Ministers off their feet, and compel drastic measures which had hitherto been steadily refrained from. This would not suit the book of Joe at all, whose object it was to keep the struggle going as long as he possibly could manage it, careless of the traditions of Parliament, of the dignity and decency of the House of Commons, of the life and strength of Mr. Gladstone, of everything except his own greedy desire for personal revenge and triumph. [Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone's gentleness.] This was what lay behind the plausible and honeyed words in which Mr. Chamberlain attacked the article in the _Daily News_. And here a curious difficulty arose which rather helped Joe, and almost enabled him to score a great triumph. Everybody knows that between the temper of Mr. Gladstone and that of his friends and supporters there is an impassable gulf. That mastery of a vulnerable temper, which accounted for many of the troubles of his earlier political career, which he himself has acknowledged in many a pathetic passage in his correspondence--that mastery of the vulnerable temper is now so complete that the Old Man glides through scenes of insult and passes over what the humblest member of the House would often find it hard to endure. There is something indeed strange, wistful, almost uncanny, in the unbreakable gentleness of that white figure, with the ivory complexion, the scant white hair, the large white collar and broad white shirt-front--there is something which becomes almost an obsession to the observer in watching the figure with its strangely tranquil and gentle expression in the heat and centre of all this fierce Parliamentary battle. [Sidenote: And eagerness.] And what makes it all the more peculiar is that this strange gentleness does not go side by side with want of interest in the struggle. On the contrary, all those around him and near him declare that never has Mr. Gladstone been more keen of any subject than he has been on this Home Rule Bill. He thinks of nothing else; he enjoys it all. I saw a curious instance of this intensity of his interest about that time. Having a word to say to one of the Ministers, I was seated for a moment on the Treasury Bench just beside the Chairman--Mr. Mellor. Mr. Gladstone had gone out for a few minutes. Sir William Harcourt was in charge of the Bill, and he was replying to some argument of the Unionists opposite. Sir William Harcourt has an excellent method of dealing with futile and dishonest amendments. He declines to argue them in detail. With that rich humour of which the public know less than his friends and intimates, Sir William airily dismisses the whole business, and with a laugh brings down shivering to the ground a whole fabric of laboriously constructed nonsense. Well, Sir William was in the middle of a sentence in which he was speaking of the absurd suspicion of the Irish people which was entertained by the Tories--and Mr. Gladstone, entering from behind the Speaker's chair at that very moment, just caught that one phrase. It was impossible for him to hear more than that one word "suspicion"; but at that word he pricked up his ears, and while he was still walking to his place--before he had seated himself--"Hear, hear," he cried. His eagerness would not let him wait till he had taken his seat. His absolute absorption in the Bill before the House was so complete that, as he walked to his seat, you could see the rapt and concentrated look, which showed that, even during the few minutes he had been away, the brain had never left for one second its absorbing theme. [Sidenote: The consolations of old age.] But--as I have indicated--this complete subjugation of temper which Mr. Gladstone has achieved, has its disadvantages when such a conflict is provoked as that with Mr. Chamberlain on the article in the _Daily News_. Mr. Gladstone himself spoke of the consolations of old age; there is one consolation he did not mention. His absorption in the Bill and the slight deafness in one of his ears do not allow him to perceive so plainly the rude noises and interruptions by which he is often assailed from the Tory Benches. Moreover, the native chivalry of his disposition, the curious simplicity which has remained his central characteristic, in spite of all the experiences of the baser side of human nature which must have been crowded into all that half a century of official and Parliamentary life--that unwillingness to see anything but deplorable error in his most rancorous, meanest, and most malignant opponent--all these things make it difficult for him to understand the ugly realities whose serpent heads show themselves plainly to almost every other eye but his. There is a dispute among the authorities as to the incidents of that Thursday night--some, even among those friendly to the Prime Minister, declaring that there was nothing unusual in the interruptions of that night. My own recollection is clear that there was a great deal of noise, and that it was so bad that Mr. Chamberlain tried to explain it away, and was careful to absolve himself and his friends from all responsibility for it. In the general body of the Liberal party there is no doubt whatsoever about that business. Liberal after Liberal came up to me afterwards, in allusion to a few remarks I felt it my duty to make, to declare their entire agreement with the view I had put forward--that the description of the _Daily News_, though consciously and obviously written in the vein of parody, was a fair and just description of what had taken place. Sir Henry Roscoe is not an excitable politician, though no man holds to the Liberal faith more firmly. He was met on the following Sunday by a friend, and when asked how he viewed the situation, declared that he was rather "low!" Why? he was asked. Because his heart was saddened and enraged by the treatment of the splendid Old Man by Mr. Chamberlain and the Tories. To a leading Liberal Minister, two Tories privately declared that their pain and shame and disgust with the conduct of their own side to Mr. Gladstone was so profound, that they had to get up and leave the House to control their feelings. [Sidenote: A complex situation.] When, therefore, Mr. Chamberlain came forward with his audacious complaint, this was the curious situation: that the bulk of the Liberal party, and many even of their opponents, were convinced that the comments of the _Daily News_ were more than justified. The frantic cheers with which each successive sentence of the scathing attack in the description was punctuated by the Liberal and Irish Benches, as Joe, with affected horror, read them out, sufficiently indicated what they thought. And, on the other hand, the man in whose defence this reply to his assailants was made was just as convinced that his enemies had been unjustly assailed, and that he himself had been well and courteously treated. In such a situation it was just possible that Mr. Chamberlain would escape from his position with flying colours; would have the _Daily News_ censured for falsehood by a House of Commons that believed in its truth; and have himself declared chivalrous by a Parliament that knows him to be malignant, unscrupulous, and merciless. To prevent such a catastrophe it was a painful but necessary duty to bring out the realities of the case; and not only a painful but also a thankless duty in face of what everybody knew would be the attitude of Mr. Gladstone himself. [Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone shakes his head.] For Mr. Gladstone did not delay long in indicating to the House what his attitude would be. When I was speaking and denouncing the rude interruptions of the eventful Thursday night, he shook his head ominously and in contradiction--though manifestations which came from Liberal and Irish Benches showed that he stood alone in his view of the events of that night. And it was no surprise to the House, therefore, when he stood up and said that he entirely disclaimed any feeling of resentment for anything that had been done to him, and that he confessed he had not perceived the interruptions to which the report of the _Daily News_ had called attention. After this, there seemed no more to be said; but the battle was not yet over. The Tories had been charged both by the _Daily News_ and by a speech in the House with want of courtesy to Mr. Gladstone. Nobody knew better than Mr. Balfour how much ground there was for such a charge; for often in the course of the present Session--with a dark frown on his face, with an almost violent gesture--he has called on his unruly followers behind him to conduct themselves. The effect of what had taken place was to extort from Mr. Balfour a tribute to the universal respect in which the Prime Minister was held--a tribute which the splendid Old Man acknowledged by a low bow; and, in short, the Tories had to bind themselves over to keep the peace by their professions of a chivalrous desire to respect the person and the feelings of the great Prime Minister. And thus it was that it ended for the moment in a drawn battle--Mr. Chamberlain having to withdraw his motion, and I my amendment. [Sidenote: Slow progress.] But in the meantime the progress with the Bill was terribly slow. We were now on the second week with the third clause. Amendments were disposed of one night only to find that the next day the number of amendments, instead of being diminished, had been increased. It would be a sheer waste of time and space to go into detail about these amendments. The third clause is the clause which deals with the questions that are to be excluded from the Irish Parliament. The list is sufficiently long--peace and war--the Crown--the Lord-Lieutenancy--trade and commerce--the coinage and the currency--copyright and navigation--treason and treason felony. But even this list was not sufficiently long for the Unionists. They propose to increase this list of exemptions until, if they succeeded, the Irish Legislature would have to shut up shop for want of business to attend to. One man gravely proposed that the Irish executive--being made responsible for the peace, order, and good Government of Ireland--should not have the right to settle the procedure in the Irish criminal courts. Another gentleman proposed that all cases referring to criminal conspiracy should be left to the Imperial Government and Parliament. The meaning of all this was that the Unionists wanted to draw a ring fence around the Orangemen of Ulster, who had been threatening rebellion. First, by one set of amendments the Irish Government was not to have a police able to put them down, and then the Irish courts were not to be able to convict them when they broke the law. [Sidenote: The hours of labour.] On June 9th the Unionists were on another line. They professed to think that if the Irish Legislature were not compelled to do so they would not prevent overwork and long hours. This led to the proposal that all legislation on hours of labour should be taken out of the hands of the Irish Parliament. Mr. Chamberlain argued this with his tongue in his cheek--professing to dread the unequal competition in which poor England would be placed if wealthy Ireland were allowed to compete unfairly by longer hours. He urged this in a speech directed to every absurd prejudice and alarm which the ignorant or the timid could feel--altogether made a most unworthy contribution. John Burns--breezy, outspoken--not friendly to all things done by the Liberals in the past, but firm in his Home Rule faith--went for Mr. Chamberlain in good, honest, sledge-hammer, and workmanlike fashion. The member for Battersea even dared to blaspheme Birmingham--the Mecca of the industrial world--for its notoriously bad record in industrial matters--an attack which Joe seemed in no way to relish. And all the time the Old Man--with his hand to his ear, and sitting on the very end of the Treasury Bench, so as to be nearer the speaker--listened attentively, sympathetically, occasionally uttering that fine leonine cheer of his. It was on this amendment that the Ministerial majority fell, owing to various accidents, to 30, and the Tories cheered themselves into a happy condition of mind for a few minutes. [Sidenote: The guillotine--but not yet.] Towards the end of the sitting there was a certain feverishness of expectation. Dr. McGregor, a Scotch Highland member, had announced that at half-past six he would move the closure of the third clause--on which we had now been working for a fortnight. But Mr. Mellor refused to put such a drastic proposal on the suggestion of a private member. There was, however, a very plain intimation that if a Minister were to make such a proposal it might be considered differently; all of which meant that we were approaching--slowly, patiently, forbearingly--but still approaching the moment when drastic steps would be taken to accelerate progress. CHAPTER XIII. THE SEXTON INCIDENT. [Sidenote: Mr. Sexton.] The resignation of Mr. Sexton, early in June, seemed to point to one of those disastrous splits in the Irish ranks which have always come at the wrong moment to spoil the chances of the Irish cause. There were many whose memories were brought back by the event to that trying and strange time when Mr. Parnell fought his desperate battle for the continuance of his leadership. But then there were many modifications of the position, and the chief of these was the much greater tranquillity with which the affair was regarded; and the general faith that the Irish members would be wise enough to settle their differences satisfactorily. Still there were some very ugly moments. [Sidenote: A Conservative opportunity.] Nothing could be more galling, for instance, to those who had charge of the Home Rule Bill, than to look across at the Irish Benches and see a vast and aching void in the places where the representatives of the people mainly concerned are accustomed to sit. The Tories were not slow to utilise the moment; and if things had been different--if the Home Rule cause had not got so far--they would probably have been able to stop progress with the measure altogether. But fortunately the Home Rule Bill was in committee--and whether men like it or not, it is impossible for them to avoid something like business discussion when a Bill is in committee. There is the clause under discussion; there are the amendments to it, which stand on the paper; the clause and the amendments have to be spoken to; and it is impossible, within the limits of a discussion so defined, to introduce a subject so extraneous as a domestic difficulty in the Irish ranks. But, at the same time, the opportunity was too tempting to be altogether passed without notice. Sir John Lubbock has taken a prominent part at times in opposing the Home Rule Bill. Sir John is a most estimable man, has written some very entertaining books, and in the City has appropriate rank as both an erudite and a rich banker. But he does not shine in the House of Commons. His voice is thin and feeble, and his arguments, somehow or other, always appear wire-drawn. And then the House of Commons is a place, above all others, where physical qualities go largely towards making success or failure. A robustious voice and manner are the very first essentials of Parliamentary success; and no man who is not gifted with these things has really much right to try Parliamentary life. However, Sir John Lubbock was not strong enough to withstand the temptation of making capital out of Irish misfortunes; and he pointed to the Irish Benches, with their yawning emptiness, as a proof that the Irish members took no interest whatsoever in the Home Bale Bill. [Sidenote: Irish objections to divorce.] Meantime, in the House itself the Home Rule Bill was crawling slowly along. The Unionists were at their sinister work of delaying its progress by all kinds of absurd and irrelevant amendments. For instance, one Unionist wished to restrict the Irish Legislature as to the law of marriage and divorce. Mr. Gladstone has over and over again pointed out that, as the Irish have one way of looking at these things, and the English another, it would be absurd not to allow the Irish Legislature to settle such a matter in accordance with Irish feeling. Curiously enough, the Unionists did not receive much encouragement on this point from the Irish branch of the enemies of Home Rule. Mr. Macartney, an Irish Orangeman, proclaimed on the part of his co-religionists that the Irish Protestants had nearly as much objection to divorce as the Irish Catholics; and, so far as that part of the amendment was concerned, he had no desire to see it pressed. What he apprehended was a change in the law for the purpose of prejudicing mixed marriages--marriages between Catholics and Protestants. Mr. Gladstone, it is well known, on the question of divorce is a very sound and very strong Conservative. The sturdy fight he made against divorce still lives in Parliamentary history, and has often been brought up--sometimes in justification of equally stubborn fights--against him. It is one of the points on which he does not seem to have much modified his opinions, in spite of the advance of time, and all that has taken place in the long stretch of years between now and the day when an unbelieving and pagan minister like Lord Palmerston enabled men and women to get rid of adulterous spouses. But Mr. Gladstone declined to be drawn. [Sidenote: Disestablishment.] On June 18th, Mr. Bartley proposed an amendment to a restriction in the Bill with regard to the establishment and endowment of any church. By the Bill--as is pretty well known--the Irish Parliament are forbidden to confer on any church the privilege of State establishment and State endowment. To this restriction no Irish member has ever raised the least objection. It was reserved for Mr. Bartley--one of the most vehement opponents of Irish nationality and an Irish Parliament--to declare that such a restriction would make the Parliament unworthy of the acceptance of a nation of freemen, and to propose that accordingly it should be removed. The position, then, in which the Irish opponents of the Bill were placed, was this--that while denouncing the supremacy and encroachments of the Catholic Church as one of the main objections against the Bill, they proposed that the Irish Parliament should have the right to establish and endow that very Church. Mr. Balfour perceived--under the light thus borne in upon him--that this was not an amendment which the Tory party could safely support; and he accordingly advised Mr. Bartley to withdraw it. Mr. Gladstone made a few scornful observations; and, without a division, the proposal was huddled out of sight. It was almost a pity. It would have been such an instructive spectacle to see the whole Tory party voting that the Catholic Church in Ireland should have the right to be endowed and established; and some of the Irish members felt this so much, that they were very much inclined to force the Tories to a division. But they let the incident pass. [Sidenote: The triumph of the tweed coat.] It is one of the curious things about Parliamentary life in England, that the smallest detail of personal habit attracts the all-searching gaze of the entire world. Let a man change the shape of his hat, the colour of his clothes, the style even of his stockings, and the world knows it all before almost he is himself conscious of the change. And then, though the House of Commons consists for the most part of men well advanced in middle life--men who have made their pile in counting-house or shop, before devoting themselves to a Parliamentary career--it is also a House where wealth and fashion are very largely represented. It is often a very well-dressed body; and in this House of Commons, in particular, there is a very large proportion of well-tailored and well-groomed young men--especially, of course, on the Tory side. The consequence is, that you are able to trace the transformations of fashion, the processions of the seasons, the variety of appropriate garbs which social and other engagements impose, as accurately in the House of Commons as in Rotten Row. [Sidenote: The old order.] The ordinary tendency of the Parliamentary man is towards the sombre black, and the solemnity of the long-tailed frock-coat. There have been times when if a member of Parliament did venture to enter the House of Commons in a coat prematurely ending in the short tails of the morning coat, or in the tail-less sack-coat, he would have been called up to the Speaker's chair and as severely reprimanded as though he had committed the most atrocious offence--in those far-off days--of wearing a pot-hat. But in these democratic times one can do anything; and low-crowned hats, sack-coats, homespun Irish tweeds, affright and shock the old aristocratic Parliamentary eye. When summer approaches, the whole aspect of the House changes. The sombre black is almost entirely doffed; and you look on an assembly as different in its outward appearance from its antecedent state as the yellow-winged butterfly is from the grim grub. Indeed, members of Parliament seem to take a delight in anticipating the change of dress which the change of season imposes. There are members of the House of Commons who can claim to wear the very first white hat of the season. Sir Wilfrid Lawson has a sombre creed and a Bacchanalian spirit; and, accordingly, the very first time a mere stray gleam of sunshine streaks the wintry gloom Sir Wilfrid wears an audaciously white hat. [Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone's rejuvenescence.] Mr. Gladstone is a curious mixture of splendour and carelessness. He nearly always wears a small, narrow black tie, which brings into greater relief the Alpine heights and the measureless width of his big shirt-collars, and the broad expanse of his shirt-front. But this tie--though it marks a pleasant and becoming individuality of dress--loses half its effect by nearly always getting out of its place; when night is advanced, the knot is always about half across Mr. Gladstone's neck. On the other hand, he is nearly always very carefully dressed; his black frock-coat--a little ancient in make, and always of the smooth black, which has given way with younger men to the diagonals--is a well-known feature of every great debate, and adds grace to his appearance and delivery. When summer comes, however, he bursts into an almost dazzling glory of white waistcoats, grey cashmere coats, and hats of creamy-yellow whiteness, ethereal and almost aggressively summery. The younger men are not slow to follow so excellent an example--though generally there is the tendency to the dark grey, which is a compromise between the black of winter and the fiery white tweed which the man in the street is wont to wear. Sir Charles Russell--who, returning from Paris on the same day as Mr. Sexton, received a very warm welcome--is also a child of his age in his clothes. Time was when a great legal luminary--especially if he were on the bench--was supposed to be violating every canon of good taste if he did not wear garments which might be described as a cross between the garb of a bishop, an undertaker, and a hangman. The judge on the bench, in fact, was always supposed to be putting on the black cap figuratively, and, therefore, was obliged to bear with him the outward sign of his damnable trade. The late Lord Cairns was the first to break through this tradition, and affect the style of the prosperous stockbroker. Sir Charles Russell is different, for he dresses in thorough taste; but when one saw him in the House of Commons in a grey suit and a deep-cut waistcoat, one might have taken him for a gentleman squire with a taste for study, varied by an occasional visit to Newmarket. [Sidenote: Mr. Morley's tweed suit.] All these observations have been suggested by the portentous fact that on June 15th Mr. John Morley startled the world of Parliament by appearing in a very neat, a very well cut, and a very light tweed suit. If Mr. Morley figures in many Tory imaginations as a modern St. Just, longing for the music of the guillotine and the daily splash of Tory and orthodox blood, it is much more due to his clothes than to his writings; for ordinarily he is dressed after the fashion which one can well suppose reigned in the days when the men of the Terror were inaugurating a reign of universal love, brotherhood, and peace through the narrow opening between the upper and the lower knife of the guillotine. His coat is blue: so is his waistcoat; and his nether garments are of a severe drab brown. It is impossible to imagine that any man who assumes such garments could be otherwise than a severe and sanguinary doctrinaire, anxious for his neighbours' blood. The genial smile with which the House of Commons has become familiar has invalidated the Tory estimate of Mr. Morley, but it was that memorable Thursday that completed the transformation of judgment. No man could be a lover of the guillotine who could wear so airy, so gay, and, above all, so juvenile and well-cut a suit of clothes. Mr. Morley himself was overwhelmed with the amount of attention which his new suit attracted. He, poor man, did not see the portentous political significance of the transaction, and almost sank under the multitude and variety of congratulations which he received from watchful friends. He has done many great and successful things in the course of his brilliant career--but he never achieved a triumph so complete and so prompt as he did when he put on his light tweed suit, and steered under its illuminating rays the Home Rule Bill through the rocks and shoals, the eddies and the cross-currents of the House of Commons. [Sidenote: A brilliant pas de deux.] On the following afternoon there was another scene in which clothes had their share. At about three o'clock there entered the House together two slight, alert figures--in both cases a little above the middle height, and both clothed in a suit of clothes the exact counterpart of each other in make, shape, and colour. There was a dominant and almost monotonous grey in their appearance; but there was little of grey in their looks. When at once there burst from the Tory and Unionists Benches a loud, wild, prolonged huzzah, it was seen that this theatrical little entrance at one and the same time of Joe and Mr. Balfour, was their method of accentuating the Tory triumph in Linlithgow. The two gentlemen seen entering together separated as they walked up the floor--the Tory going to his place on the front Opposition Bench, the Unionist to his corner seat on the Liberal side. It was a very skilfully arranged bit of business, though there were critics who thought its histrionic element a little out of place in the sombre and solemn realities of public life, and a great national controversy. In the midst of it all I looked at Mr. Gladstone. It is in such moments that you are able to get a glimpse into all the great depths of this extraordinary nature. And I have written more than once in these columns that the greatest of all his characteristics is composure. This mighty, restless, fiery fighter against wrong--this stalwart and unconquerable wrestler for right, this Titan--I might even say this Don Quixote--who has gone out with spear and sword to assault the most strongly-entrenched citadels of human wrongs--who has faced a world in arms--this man has, after all, at the centre of his existence, and in the depths of his nature, a gospel which sustains him in the hours of defeat and gloom, and makes him one of the most restless of combatants, and the most tranquil. [Sidenote: The grand old philosopher.] Devotional, almost pietistic, introspective, accustomed, I have no doubt, from that early training of domestic piety and sacerdotal surroundings, to see all this gay, vast phantasmagoria of life the antechamber to a greater, more enduring, and better world beyond those voices, Mr. Gladstone--at least that is my reading of his character--looks at everything in human existence with the power of self-detachment from its garish moments and its transient interests. Behind this constant warfare, underneath all this public passion and sweeping resolves, there is a nether and unseen world of thought, emotion, hope, and in that world there is ever calm. It is a tabernacle in his soul where only holy thoughts may enter. Outside its impenetrable and echoless walls are left behind the shouts of faction, the noise of battle, the rise and fall of the good and ever-enduring fight between wrong and right. Within that tabernacle Mr. Gladstone has the power of withdrawing himself at will, just as in the Agora of Athens, and on the last great day when he discoursed on immortality, and drank the mortal hemlock, Socrates could withdraw himself, and listen to the inner whisper of his dæmon. All this, I say, you could see in the abstracted, resigned and composed look of Mr. Gladstone at the moment when his triumphant enemies, in their summer garb, with their smiling faces, and strutting walk, entered the House of Commons. If you wanted to see at once the contrast, not only of the temper of the hour, but the still greater and more momentous contrast of temperaments, you had only to look from the face of Mr. Gladstone to that of Mr. Chamberlain. The contrast of their years--the deeper contrast of their natures--above all, the profounder contrast of their worlds of thought, training and environment--all were brought out. In that perky, retroussé-nosed, self-complacent, confidently smiling man you saw all the flippancy--so-called realism--the petty commercialism of the end of the middle of the nineteenth century. The mysticism, the poetry, the rich devotion, the lofty and large ideals of the beginning of the century--of the time that remembered Byron and produced Newman--all these things were to be seen in the rapt look of that noble, beautiful and refined face on the Treasury Bench. And yet there was something more. The brilliant light of the early days of our century has become dim and cold in those hearts and minds which have not had the power to grow and expand with their ages. But with that splendid sanity of body as well as mind which belongs to him, Mr. Gladstone is the creature of the ending of the nineteenth as of the beginning of the twentieth century. Like the man of Arctic climes, he stands almost at the same moment in the sunset of one great century and the heralding light of the sunrise of another. CHAPTER XIV. THE BURSTING OF THE STORM. [Sidenote: An Indian summer.] There is a striking description in one of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's stories of a night in an Indian city when the dog star rages. Luridly, but vigorously, the author brings home to you the odious discomfort, the awful suffering, and, finally, the morose anger and almost homicidal fury, which the sweltering light produces in the waking soldiers. This would have been something like the temper of the House of Commons on June 18th, if that assembly had not recently discovered methods of saving its temper and pleasantly spending its vacant hours. For the dog star--raging, merciless, sweltering--ruled everywhere within Westminster Palace. On the floor of the House itself, men sweltered and mopped their foreheads; in even the recesses of the still library they groaned aloud; then down on the Terrace, and with the river sweeping by, there was not a particle of air; and the heat of all the day had made even the stony floor of that beautiful walk almost like the tiles of a red-hot oven. In short, it was a day when one felt one's own poor tenement of clay a misery, a nuisance, and a burden; and the mind, morose, black, and despondent, had distracting visions of distant mirages by the seashore or under green trees. It was natural, under such circumstances, that everybody who could should desert the House of Commons. And this sudden desertion of the House will be always remembered as one of the many peculiarities of the Annus Mirabilis through which we are passing. It has not been unusual for some years for members to take a turn on the Terrace now and then. I have paced its floor at every hour of the night and the day--from the still midnight to the delightful moments before breaking day; and I still remember the beautiful summery morning when, after a hard night's fight, an Irish member rushed down to the Terrace to tell Mr. Sexton and myself that we were just being suspended--an operation not yet grown customary. But this Session the majority of the House of Commons is always on the Terrace; and woman--that sleuth-hound of every new pleasure--has discovered this great fact, and utilised it accordingly. [Sidenote: Tea on the Terrace.] The afternoon tea--the strawberries and cream which make a coolness and delight in the midst of the raging day--has been erected by woman into one of London's daily social events; and though the novelist has not discovered the fact up to this moment--Mr. McCarthy has made a very pretty love scene on the Terrace, but it is at the witching hour of night--though this discovery has yet to come, the respite is brief, and in a short time we shall have the hero and the heroine passing through all the agonies of three-volume suffering, to the accompaniment of the division bell and the small tea-table of the Terrace. But though woman has many slaves she has her watchful enemies. The great order of curmudgeon is wide and vigilant and crusty, and the curmudgeon has found that the vast crowds of ladies who have invaded the Terrace have at last begun to interfere with that daily constitutional along its stretching length, which is the only exercise most members of Parliament are able to take in these fierce days. Accordingly, there appeared an ominous notice-board with the words, "For members only," at a particular point in the Terrace. Within the space, before which this notice stood as a fiery sword, woman was not allowed to intrude; and from out its sacred enclosure--guarded by nothing but the line of the notice and the Speaker's wrath--the confirmed bachelor, the married cynic, smoked his cigarette, and looked lazily through at the chattering, tea-drinking, bright-coloured crowd immediately beyond. [Sidenote: Demos and dinner.] I regret to say that the great Demos had an opportunity of seeing the legislator at work and play, and that the remarks of that extremely irreverent person were not complimentary. Reading, doubtless, in the papers something of the fatiguing labours--of the stern attention to business--of the long and dreary hours which the patriots of the House of Commons were devoting to the work of the country, Demos was shocked and scandalised to behold this giddy, fashionable, and modish crowd. Demos, sweltering on the passing steamboat--able to see, and, at the same time, free from interference on his watery kingdom--jeered aloud as he passed close to the Terrace, and mocked with loud laughter that betokened not only the vacant but the insulting mind. The skippers of the steamboats--hardened Cockneys with an eye to business--knew what a delight this baiting of the august assembly would be to the most democratic and most sarcastic crowd in Europe; and accordingly it became the "mot d'ordre" with the steamboat skipper, when the tide was full, to bring his vessel almost to the very walls of the Terrace, and thus to give the tripper the opportunity of gazing from very near at the lions at food and play. If Demos could have come and seen as plainly at night in those days as during the afternoon, his shocked feelings would have been even more poignant and his language more irreverent. Tea is, after all, a simple drink that makes the whole world akin; and even strawberries in this great year were within reach of the most modest purse. But at night, entertainment is more costly. Along the Terrace there is now, as everybody knows, a series of small dining-rooms; and here every night you might have listened to the pleasant music of woman's laughter, punctuated by the pop of the champagne bottle. Time was--I remember it well--when a member of Parliament who knew that there was any place where a lady could get something to eat was pointed to as a Parliamentary marvel, who knew his way about in an uncanny fashion; when the room in which a lady could dine had been seen by but few eyes and, indeed, was little better than a coalhole, low-roofed, dimly lit, buried in dark and deep recesses of an underworld of the House of Commons, as little known to the general member as the sewage catacombs of London to the ordinary citizen. But all this has been changed; and now the dinner to ladies at the House of Commons has become, like the afternoon tea, one of the best recognized of London's social festivities. And so great is the run on these dinners that it takes a week's--or even two weeks'--notice to secure a table. Mr. Cobbe--a stern and unbending Radical, with a hot temper and unsparing tongue--might have been seen one of those June days with a menacing frown upon his rugged Radical forehead, and by-and-bye in serious converse with the Speaker. And the cause of his anger was that he had found all the dining-tables ordered for two weeks ahead. [Sidenote: A wild scene.] Speaking on the Freemasons, on June 22nd, Mr. Gladstone related the interesting autobiographical fact that he himself was not a Freemason, and never had been; and, indeed, having been fully occupied otherwise--this delicate allusion to that vast life of never-ending work--of gigantic enterprises--of solemn and sublime responsibilities, was much relished--he never had had sufficient curiosity to make any particular inquiries as to what Freemasonry really was. I don't know what came over Mr. Balfour--some people thought it was because he expected to detach some Freemason votes from the Liberal side; but he was guilty of what I admit is an unusual thing with him--an intentional, a gross, an almost shameful misrepresentation of Mr. Gladstone's words. Making the same interesting personal statement as Mr. Gladstone, that he was not himself a Freemason, he went on to suggest that Mr. Gladstone had made a comparison between a fraudulent Liberator Society and the Freemasons. At this thrust there was a terrible hubbub in the House, and that fanaticism with which the Mason holds to his institution was aroused; indeed, for a little while, the scene was Bedlam-like in its passion and anarchy. In the midst of it all, facing the violent howls of the excited Tories, pale, disturbed, hotly angry underneath all the composure of language and tone, Mr. Gladstone exposed the shameful and entirely groundless misrepresentation. Mr. Balfour's better angel intervened; he got ashamed of himself, and at once apologized. But the hurricane of passion which had been let loose was not to be so easily appeased; and when, presently, Mr. John Morley put an end to the ridiculous and irrelevant discussion which threatened to land the House of Commons into the consideration of the arcana of a Freemason's Lodge, there burst from the Tory benches one of the fiercest little storms of remonstrance I have ever heard. When the closure is proposed, there is but one way of expressing emotion. Under the rules of the House, the motion must be put without debate. So when the word of doom is pronounced by the Minister, all that remains is for the Speaker or Chairman to refuse or accept the motion; and if he accept the motion, he simply rises, and, uttering the fateful words, "The question is that the motion be now put," guillotines all further speech. But then he has to put the question, and in the answering words of "Aye" or "No," there can be put an immense fund of passion. So it was that night. The answering "Noes" reached the proportions of a cyclone; you could see men shrieking out the word again and again, almost beside themselves with rage, and with faces positively distorted by the intensity of their feelings. And the tempest did not end in a moment; again and again the Tories shouted their hoarse and tempestuous, and angry "No, no!"--the word sometimes repeated like a volley: "No, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o!"--this was the noise that rose on the Parliamentary air, and that gave vent to all the passion which had been excited. And then came the division and a restoration of calm. [Sidenote: Charwomen and ratcatchers.] The Whip is a cunning dog, especially if he be the Whip of the party in power; and you have to be a long time in Parliament before you know all his wiles, and fully appreciate their meaning. For instance, few innocent outsiders would understand why it is that the Whip always puts down Estimates for a day immediately after the end of a vacation. The reasons are two. First, because Estimates give more time and opportunity for the mere bore and obstructive than any other part of Parliamentary business. On the Estimates, as I have often explained, every single penny spent in the public service has to be entered. Whether that sum be large or small makes no difference. For instance, there is a charwoman at the Foreign Office; the charwoman's salary appears in the accounts just as bold and just as plain as the five thousand a year which the country has to pay for Lord Rosebery--who is cheap at the money, I must say, lest I be misunderstood. There is associated with Buckingham Palace a most worthy and useful individual called the ratcatcher. Everybody can see why in such a vast and generally untenanted barrack, there should be a ratcatcher. Well, Master Ratcatcher appears on the Estimates for Buckingham Palace just as regularly, as plainly, in as much detail, as my Lord High Chamberlain, Lord Carrington. There is no reason whatever why a whole evening should not be spent in the discussion of the ratcatcher's salary. Perhaps the reader may have heard that, in common with many sobered and middle-aged gentlemen, I have had a pre-historic period when I was accused--of course, unjustly--of interfering with the progress of public business. In that period, I remember very well, the ratcatcher of Buckingham Palace loomed largely, as well as many other strange and portentous figures now vanished into the void and the immensities. I don't know whether we were able to keep the Ministry going for a whole night on the subject or not; but still we managed to get some excellent change out of the business. [Sidenote: The wistful Whip.] This brief explanation will make the reader understand what it is you can do on the Estimates, and therefore bring home to your mind the wile of the Ministerial Whip. For his second reason for putting down the Estimates until after vacation is, that he knows there will be a very small attendance of members, and that thus he will be able to sneak through his Estimates more quickly than usual. When, therefore, you hear of a vacation in the House of Commons, you will always find that the members ask with peculiar anxiety what is to be the first business on the day on which the vacation concludes; and you will hear the audible sigh of relief which will rise from hundreds of oppressed bosoms when the Leader of the House for the time being announces that it will be Estimates. Members then know that they need be in no violent hurry to get back, and that things will go right, even though they should tarry that additional day, or even two days, longer by the sad sea waves or amid the tall grass. [Sidenote: To thy orisons.] It is one of the peculiarities of the House of Commons that the men who are most in want of spiritual assistance and providential guidance, never seek the assistance of prayer. However terrible the crisis, however crowded every other inch of space in the House of Commons may be, though the ungodliest member may be in his place listening to the rich resonance of Archdeacon Farrar's voice, the Treasury Bench is always empty. To an outsider the explanation may be here revealed; which is, that if you attend prayers you are entitled to a seat for the remainder of the evening, whereas if you are absent, you are liable at any moment to be turned out by your more pious brother. But Ministers are exempt from this general law, for their places are fixed for them on the Treasury Bench, whatever may happen, and, accordingly, they invariably--I had almost said religiously--keep away from prayers. Lest I should appear to do injustice, I may say that the leaders of the Opposition are just as ungodly, and for precisely the same reason; their seats also are secured to them by standing order; and, accordingly, they also never enter the House until its devotions for the day are over. There was just one exception to this. For some reason best known to himself, Sir John Gorst (he is usually at variance with his friends) had come down early on June 28th, and was in his place with edifying aspect to listen to the solemn exhortation and the soft responses. [Sidenote: The shout of battle.] At twenty minutes past twelve there is a roar in the House; the Old Man has arrived; and there ascends that bracing cheer with which in our still barbarous times we welcome our champions on the eve of a big fight. The Old Man has hurried, for he is out of breath; and the deadly pallor of his cheek is almost affrighting to see. But he soon recovers himself, though when he rises to speak the breathlessness is still very apparent, and he has to gasp almost now and then for more voice. Fortunately on this occasion we have not long to wait for the big announcement which everybody is so anxiously expecting. It is usually the fate of the House of Commons, whenever something very momentous is under weigh, to have a thousand trivialities in its path before it gets on to the real business. I have heard something like a hundred questions asked, most of them very trivial, on more than one night, when the whole of the civilized world was waiting for the Minister to develop some great plan of Governmental policy. The bore, the faddist, the empty self-advertiser, is as inevitable on such occasions as the reportorial dog that always rushes along the Derby course at that dread moment when you can hear the beating of the gamblers' hearts. [Sidenote: To business.] But on this fateful Wednesday there is no such ridiculous intervention. There are only two questions altogether on the paper; and both of those refer to the great issue of how obstruction is to be put down. Mr. Gladstone answers the questions very briefly; but there is hidden and fateful meaning in every syllable he utters; and the House of Commons, looking on, shows itself in one of those moments which bring out all its picturesqueness--its latent passions--its very human characteristics. There is the eager strain of curiosity. Every face is turned to that of the single pale white solitary figure that stands out from the Treasury Bench, dressed, I may add, in the sober but light grey suit of the summer season, in spite of his being a messenger of such doom to Tory obstruction. There is a hush, but a hush never lasts long in the House of Commons when a great party blow is going to be struck. The nerves of the House, raised to expectancy--tension, almost hysteria, by the joy of the one side, the anger and dread of the other, have a preternatural readiness in catching points, in producing outbursts of feeling. And so it is to-day. The Prime Minister has scarcely uttered the words which reveal the determination of the Government to resort to the most extreme measures, when there burst simultaneously from the Irish and the Tory Benches cheers and counter cheers--the cheer of pride, joy, and delirium almost, in the one case; the answering cheer and counter cheer of haughty and angered defiance in the other. [Sidenote: Balfour the unready.] The Old Man bears himself splendidly amidst all this. He is very excited and very resolute--you can see that by the very deadliness of tranquillity which he seeks to put in his voice, by the gentleness of his tone, by the almost deprecatory smile. All the same, the prevalent note of his voice and manner is composure. For the moment, either from surprise, relief, the joy they can badly conceal--whatever the reason, the Tories seem to be nonplussed. The audacious ally who is always ready to rush rashly into the breach on such occasions is away in Birmingham; and with all his excellent qualities, Mr. Balfour is not remarkable for readiness. Accordingly there is an awkward pause, and no one rises from the Opposition Benches. This is serious, for first blood tells in Parliamentary as in other prize fights. The Old Man, however, is all alive. He passes on from this mighty announcement as though he had said nothing in particular, and taking a bundle of notes--put together with characteristic care and neatness even in the very centre of all this storm--he proceeds to tell Mr. Goschen something about the currency question, and the state of the silver market in India. The currency--who cares about the currency now? Even the hardiest bimetallist cannot be got to think of his hobby in the face of the dread news just heard. By the time Mr. Gladstone has given his answers, Mr. Balfour has managed to slightly recover himself, and has framed a question to the Old Man. [Sidenote: The precedent of 1887.] When at last the question does come, it is of a very innocent character. The Old Man has declared that he had not the terms of the resolution ready, but that they would be announced to the House before its rising in the evening. All Mr. Balfour wishes to know is, what time it will be when these terms are given. Such is the simple question; but the reply is of a very different character. It was delivered in studiously moderate terms; the voice of Mr. Gladstone never rises above a sweet coo; but there is fire, defiance, inflexible determination in every syllable, and the first blow is struck when the wily Old Man announces--as though it were the merest business affair--that the closure resolution which the Government will introduce, is founded upon the principle of the resolution of 1887. He can go no further for several seconds. The Irish, with their ready wits--their fierce and keen memories--have caught the point at once; and they burst into a cheer--loud, fierce, and prolonged. What it means is this: In 1887, the Tories had carried a closure resolution for the purpose of forcing through the Coercion Bill of that year; and it was under the working of that closure resolution that the Bill had finally passed the House of Commons, with several of its clauses undebated. What, then, this fierce Irish cheer meant was that the chickens were coming home to roost; and that the Tories were now reaping the harvest of their own sowing. With grave face the Old Man waited until the storm had spent itself, and then he went on to make a little slip, which for the moment gave his enemies an excellent opening. [Sidenote: Revolution or resolution.] He spoke not of the resolution, but of the revolution. He corrected the slip with great rapidity, but he was not quick enough for his watchful enemies, and loudly--discordantly--triumphantly--they repeated the word after him--Revolution--Revolution. However, Mr. Gladstone, after his Socratic fashion, lowered his eyes for a moment and went off into one of those abstract reveries whither he always allows his fancy to wend its way whenever his opponents are particularly rancorous. Then he described the resolution--not the revolution--as in the interest of the convenience and liberty of the House. But he immediately added--with the sweetest smile--that Mr. Balfour would doubtless form his own judgment on that point; and then, still calm, sweet, with the tendency to the reverie of the good man grossly misjudged by sinful opponents, he sat him down. [Sidenote: An awkward moment.] In the midst of the exultation which the announcement of the Government had produced in the Liberal ranks, there came a difficulty and a humiliation. An amendment had been proposed, Mr. Gladstone had twice opposed it, everything pointed to its ignominious rejection, and, in view of the coming closure, everybody seemed to want rapid despatch. And thus a division was immediately called. The House was cleared; members rushed in, and, indeed, had already begun to pass through the lobby; when suddenly there was a complete change of tactics; Mr. Marjoribanks, rushing to the Treasury Bench, called upon the Government to capitulate. The fact got out; the Government were in a minority--their forces had not come in time, and the Tories would have beaten us if they had been allowed to go to a division. It was one of the narrowest shaves--one of the most uncomfortable quarters of a minute--we have had in the House of Commons for many a long day. [Sidenote: The fateful moment.] But half-past five comes at last; then the discussion on the Home Rule Bill has to come to an end, and the Speaker takes the chair. Members think there is a look of unusual excitement on his face, that its air is angry; and the Unionists take comfort from the idea that this step is against his judgment. But, then, it is a matter for the House itself and not for the decision of the chair, and so we go ahead. Mr. Morley is put up by Mr. Gladstone to read the words of the resolution. The Old Man himself is composedly writing that letter to the Queen which it is still his duty daily to indite. Mr. Morley's face betrays under all its studied calm, the excitement of the hour, and he reads every separate announcement with a certain dramatic emphasis that brings out all the hidden meaning; and the document is one, the reading of which lends itself to dramatic effect and to dramatic manifestations. For each clause winds up with the same words, at "ten of the clock," until these words come to sound something like the burden of a song--the refrain of a lament--the iteration of an Athanasian curse against sinners and heretics. The House sees all this; and each side manifests emotion according to its fashion. The Irish cheer themselves hoarse in triumph; the Tories answer back as defiantly and loudly; and so we enter, with clang of battle, with shouts and cheers, and hoarse cries of joy or of rage, into the second great pitched battle on Home Rule. CHAPTER XV. MR. DILLON'S FORGETFULNESS. [Sidenote: Mr. Dillon.] Everybody who has ever met Mr. Dillon knows that he has a singularly even and equable temper, except at the moments when he has been stung to passion by the sight of some bitter and intolerable wrong. When, therefore, Mr. Chamberlain made him the subject of a fierce attack on account of a past utterance, he was dealing with a man who was as little influenced by such attacks as anybody could well be. For days Mr. Chamberlain had been trying to bait Mr. Dillon into speech; and for days Mr. Dillon had positively refused to be drawn. At last it seemed to some friends of Mr. Dillon that if he did not speak his attitude might be misunderstood, and that he would be supposed to entertain, as part of a settled policy, what he had really uttered on the spur of the moment and under the influence of intolerable wrong and provocation. But when in the last days of June Mr. Chamberlain made his attack, and Mr. Dillon had listened to it and asked for dates, Mr. Dillon thought that the matter would not be worth further attending to, and relapsed into his old attitude of easy contempt. [Sidenote: The outbreak.] This will account for what would otherwise be inexplicable; namely, that, having had a week to prepare his defence, Mr. Dillon should on July 3rd have fallen into a dreadful, and, for the moment, disastrous blunder. The truth was, Mr. Dillon had never thought of the subject for more than a few moments between the date of the challenge and Mr. Chamberlain's renewal of the attack, and, if he had been left free to exercise his own judgment, would have allowed the whole thing to lapse into the nothingness into which every such charge finally falls. On this Monday night Mr. Chamberlain was in his most venomous mood. He had come down to the House with the set determination to get up a row somehow or other. There was evil in his eye; there was rancour in his voice; there was the hoarse rage which always shows in him whenever he feels that he has been beaten. His judgment is so shallow--his temper so rash and violent--that some people think he actually counted that the Government would never have dared to interfere with his obstructive plan of campaign, and that he would have been permitted to bury the Bill under the vast hedge of amendments. To him, then, the strong and drastic action of the preceding week had come as a painful and most exasperating surprise. [Sidenote: Joe's weakness.] It is one of the many bad turns that Joe's temper does him to always lead him into overdoing his part. The wild outbursts of his venom--the ferocity which he puts into his personal attacks--these things have the effect of producing a certain amount of reaction; and thus his blows often suffer from the very violence with which they are dealt. A real master of Parliamentary craft, like Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Sexton, has learned the lesson--the lesson which all orators of all ages have learned--that there is nothing so deadly as moderation; that he destroys the effectiveness of a passion by tearing it to pieces, and that you are really effective when you have complete control of your temper, your voice and your language. [Sidenote: Mitchelstown.] Mr. Dillon, rising--pale, high-strung, and nervous--was a sympathetic sight, and the House was ready to listen to him with the greatest attention. The Old Man was specially interested. Whenever nowadays, when his hearing has become somewhat defective, he wants particularly to hear a speech, he has to change his place; usually, as everybody knows, he sits exactly opposite the box on the Speaker's table. This evening he went to the last seat on the Treasury Bench--the seat nearest to the spot from which Mr. Dillon was about to speak, and with his hand to his ear he prepared himself to catch every word that Mr. Dillon was about to utter, and the speech of Mr. Dillon was--in spite of the halting tones which excitement, unpreparedness, the sense of his responsibility produced--singularly effective. The passionate and transparent sincerity of the man--the sense of all the years of suffering through which he passed--the recollection of all the risks he has run in the great contemporary Irish Revolution--all these things spoke in his favour. Especially was he effective when he described the circumstances under which he had delivered the speech, a passage from which had been incriminated by Mr. Chamberlain. He had been told just half-an-hour before he rose to speak, of how a poor mother had been torn from her babe; how the two had been taken over a long journey together, and had both been finally lodged in the same cell. And he asked with a passionate thrill in his voice, that carried away the House with him, whether anybody else under the same circumstances would not have protested in language of violence and vehemence against the cruelty and official brutality which allowed such things to be. Would not anybody have protested that the officials who were guilty of these things had not to look to reward or promotion from a popular Irish Government. [Sidenote: The fatal mistake.] So far, Mr. Dillon had the House completely with him. He also scored for a second or two. He went on to remark that he had been under the influence of the massacre at Mitchelstown; but scarcely had these words proceeded from his lips than a look of dismay passed over the faces of his Irish colleagues. Close beside him were several men who, like himself, had stood on the platform of the historic square when the police descended upon the meeting, and which ended in the death of three innocent men. They at once perceived that Mr. Dillon, by some break of memory, had made a mistake in his dates. The incriminating speech had been delivered in December, 1886, and the Mitchelstown massacre took place in September, 1887. If the Irish members had not perceived this blunder immediately they would soon have been brought to a sense of coming disaster by the movements on the opposite side. [Sidenote: Chamberlain on the spring.] Mr. T.W. Russell is always at the service of Mr. Chamberlain at such a moment. A platform speaker by training and by years of professional work, accustomed to make most of his case against Home Rule depend on the characters, the words, the acts of the Irish members, he has, of course, at his fingers' ends, all the useful extracts of the last thirteen years. At once he was seen to rush excitedly from the House. Every Irishman knew at once that he was going to the library to reinforce his memory with regard to the date of Mitchelstown. A murmur arose on the Irish Benches; slips of paper were passed up to Mr. Dillon to recall to him the facts of the case; but, either in the hurry and excitement, or because he did not appreciate the situation immediately, Mr. Dillon went on with his speech--unconscious of the abyss that opened up before him. Meantime, Mr. Chamberlain--pale, excited, his face torn with the workings of gratified hatred and coming triumph--sat forward in his seat, his eyeglass shining from afar, eagerness in every look, pose, movement. [Sidenote: Chamberlain pounces.] At last Mr. Russell was back in his place; it did not require much second sight to see that his quest had been successful, and that he had brought to Mr. Chamberlain the ammunition he required in order to slay John Dillon. The moment Mr. Dillon sat down, Mr. Chamberlain was on his feet. He worked up to the situation with some skill; but, after all, with that overdone passion which, as I have already said, spoils some of his greatest effects--he did not expose the mistake in his first few sentences. He worked up the agony, so to speak. First he recalled to the Liberals--whose hatred to him he feels and returns with interest--the fact that they had cheered Mr. Dillon's allusion to the effect Mitchelstown had had on him in provoking the violence of his speech. And then when he had created his situation, he pounced down on the House with the climax--the speech had been delivered in 1886, the Mitchelstown tragedy had taken place in the following year. It would be idle to deny that Mr. Chamberlain had then one of the most triumphant moments of his life. It was a small point, after all, and, as everybody soon knew, it was all the result of a natural and a perfectly honest mistake. But the House of Commons is not particular in weighing things in judicial scales at moments of intense political passion. There rose from the Tory and the Unionist Benches one of the longest, fiercest, most triumphant shouts that was ever heard in the House of Commons. But then, as I again must say, and as will soon be seen, the passion was overdone, and a swift retribution came by-and-bye. For the moment, however, it was giddily, dazzlingly triumphant, and Joe had one of the few moments of his life which were unrelieved by disaster. [Sidenote: A diversion.] It was at this moment--and, curiously enough, his victory was very soon dashed to the ground--that Mr. Harrington, one of the Parnellites, struck in with a blow. In Parliamentary, as in other tactics, one of the wisest expedients--especially if things are going rather wrong with yourself--is to carry the war into the enemies' country. And this is exactly what Mr. Harrington did. He turned upon Joe and denounced him for seeking at one time to obtain the alliance of these very Irish members whom now he was denouncing. He accused him of sending ambassadors to them when they were in prison, and, in short, brought Joe face to face with an almost forgotten period of his history. Then he was almost a Home Ruler in profession, and looked to the Irish members as a portion of the force he would by-and-bye marshal in his own army. [Sidenote: A quid pro quo.] Joe grew pale. It is a curious fact that, whenever any allusion is made to this special period of his life, Mr. Chamberlain becomes particularly disturbed; possibly, it is that he is conscious of the rash things he has said at this period; possibly, it is that it can be proved to the world that he was at this period in favour of the principles and the men he now so loudly denounces. Whatever the reason, it is perfectly certain, if you want to put Mr. Chamberlain into a rage, and what sailors call a funk, allude to the period of Parnell's imprisonment in Kilmainham, and Mr. Duignan's letter on the Irish question. The transformation from the exalted look a few moments before to the pale, cowed aspect which Mr. Chamberlain wore was one of the most sudden transformations I have ever seen in the House of Commons. He could scarcely sit in his seat while Mr. Harrington was speaking; again and again he rose to interrupt him altogether, and gave signs of unusual excitement and disturbance. But Mr. Harrington is a deft and tenacious combatant. In spite of all attempts to stop him, in spite of the tremendous uproar raised by the Unionists and Tories, he managed to get out what he had to say. He brought Mr. Chamberlain face to face with this spectre of his dead past. [Sidenote: Mr. Balfour does not score.] Meantime, Mr. Balfour made a great mistake. He had listened to the speech of Mr. Chamberlain, and had been one of those who had joined in the cheers at the exposure of Mr. Dillon's accidental mistake. There he should have left it, but, carried away by the hope of driving the point home against a political enemy, he needs must add something to what Mr. Chamberlain had said. Now Mr. Balfour is in many points very superior to Joe. He should leave personal vituperation to him: he is more active, defter, and more willing to do such dirty work. Moreover, it is in the recollection of the members that, in the Coercionist struggle, Mr. Balfour seemed to have towards Mr. Dillon an unusual amount of personal animosity. Speaking with want of grace and personal courtesy, which are things, I am bound to say, uncommon with him, he accused Mr. Dillon of deliberate and conscious hypocrisy. This also was a tactical blunder, and will largely account for the transformation following, to which I am going to refer. [Sidenote: The transformation.] The House on the following day, July 4th, was very still when Mr. Dillon rose--evidently to refer to the incident of the previous night. His address was quiet, brief, and graceful. With charming modesty, he acknowledged the mistake he had made, and explained how, in running over in memory the hundreds of speeches he had delivered, he had confounded one speech with another. He was unable to understand how his memory, which never before had played him false, had done him this ill turn, and he appealed to the House generally, and declared that there was not even amongst his bitter political foes one who would think him capable of trying to palm off on the House a speech which could be so palpably and so readily exposed. In these few sentences, Mr. Dillon brought before the House his strange, picturesque, and chequered career. His oratory was such that the explanation was considered the best ever given in the House of Commons. [Sidenote: Joe is absent.] This was a recovery of some ground lost on the previous night. But there was even better to come. Mr. Harrington's accuracy and veracity as to Mr. Chamberlain's dealings with the Irish members had been challenged, as I have said, by Mr. Chamberlain, and he now rose to read the historic letter of Mr. Duignan, which, he claimed, justified his account. Several attempts were made to stop Mr. Harrington, and the Tories during this were decidedly annoyed and embarrassed because Mr. Chamberlain happened not to be in his place. But doggedly and persistently Mr. Harrington held to his ground, and at last the Speaker allowed him to read the letter. The reading of the letter led to various scenes, because it was one of those balanced utterances in which Mr. Chamberlain used to try to hold one foot in the Unionist and to place the other in the Home Rule camp. There were speeches about the County Councils, and there had been Unionist and Tory cheers in relief; but when immediately afterwards there were allusions to Home Rule, very little different in scope or character from that proposed by Mr. Gladstone, there was a triumphant rejoinder from the Liberal and Home Rule Benches. Austen Chamberlain, excited, nervous, angered, flitted to and fro in the attempt to gather forces to defend his absent parent. At last Mr. Courtney took up his case. There was not very much in what he said, and while he was speaking Mr. Chamberlain entered the House. He was pale, excited, and unnerved. He endeavoured to carry the whole thing by a jauntiness which was too easy to see through. Mr. Courtney had been waving furiously a telegram towards the Speaker, and asked that he might have the privilege of reading it. Austen Chamberlain snatched the telegram from Mr. Courtney, and gave it to his father just as he had taken his seat. Mr. Chamberlain had not a moment to spare; he had just time to glance at the contents of the telegram when he rose to speak, and all he did was to read the telegram, which was a confirmation by Mr. Duignan of the general accuracy of the previous evening. This was a score for Joe, and his friends were delighted to recover something of their lost spirit. [Mr. Conybeare and the Speaker.] Mr. Conybeare had written a letter to the _Chronicle_ denouncing the Speaker. Mr. Tritton, a Tory member, insisted the letter should be read, and this gave the Speaker one of those few opportunities which his position allows him. In disclaiming this charge he showed his great powers of oratory and the splendid and thrilling notes of his fine voice. He defended himself at once from the charge of undue partiality with strong passion and deep emotion, which lie hidden beneath his deep reserve. With a face ghastly almost in its greyness, in its deepening glows and manifest passion, he repudiated the charge of unfairness; he vehemently struck his hand on the order paper which he held, and as he neared to the end of his little speech there was a ring in his voice dangerously near a sob or a tear. It is on such occasions that Mr. Gladstone's sonorous and splendid diction and delivery come most to the front; beginning a little awkwardly, hesitatingly, he warmed as he went along, and there came to him the strange power of collecting his thoughts and measuring his language which long years of Parliamentary training has made a second nature. The House listened--rapt, hushed, spellbound. And then there was no more to be said beyond a few perfunctory observations from Mr. Balfour and the dismissal of the whole subject. [Sidenote: Another scene.] And now we were once more in the thick of a fierce and passionate encounter. Mr. Arnold Forster had an amendment, the effect of which was to remove the exercise of the prerogative of mercy from the hands of the Irish members to those of the English Secretary of State. Into this innocent amendment he sought to drag discussion of the doings of the Land League twelve years ago, and concentrated on Mr. Sexton a violent attack. He was not allowed to proceed to the end of his chapter. The charge was heinous, vile, and such as has rarely been introduced in the House in such a fashion, and soon the temper rose to a fever heat. Mr. Sexton is a dangerous man to tackle in this guise. In justifiable rage, quivering with wrath, he yet managed to preserve that cold and even tenour of language so perfect to his heart and his words. Again and again the Tory and Unionist party cheer for Mr. Balfour, Mr. Courtney, and Mr. Chamberlain, but Mr. Sexton is not a man to suffer such a statement to go unchallenged, and he succeeded in grasping the whole thing and stamped the charge with the terms, base and infamous. This led to other scenes, men rising and talking together. Mr. Chamberlain turned fierce in fore front. Again and again Mr. Gladstone arose to try and end the scene, and again and again he was prevented by Mr. T.W. Russell at one point, Mr. Chamberlain at another, and Mr. Balfour at a third, to seek to bring the struggle back to the fierce temper it was about to leave. But the Old Man at last got up, and in measured language and tones which betrayed profound emotion, he scathingly denounced the attack of Mr. Forster as wanton and mischievous. Here again there was another uproar. The Old Man pursued his way, but Mr. Chamberlain again tried to get Mr. Sexton called to order, but the charge had been too coarse, and Mr. Mellor declined to interfere. CHAPTER XVI. REDUCED MAJORITIES. [Sidenote: The week before.] On Friday, July 7th, we just entered on the fringe of the ninth clause. The ninth clause had all along been held to be, perhaps, the very gravest rock ahead of the Government. This is the clause which regulates the position of the Irish members at Westminster after Home Rule has been passed. There were as many plans for settling this question as there were members of the House of Commons, and all plans were alike in being illogical, unsymmetrical, and, therefore, liable to attack from a dozen different quarters. Already within a few days of each other, there had been two divisions, on which everybody felt it to be quite possible that the Government would go down, and that we should once more go back face to face with the country and probably with a new and a stronger Tory Government than ever. The first occasion was the clause dealing with a Second Chamber. Then a certain number of irreconcilable Radicals, in their hatred of all Second Chambers, voted against the Government and reduced their majority to 15. This was a very tight squeeze; but, after all, everybody had been prepared for it, and when the hour came, we all knew pretty well where we should be. There might be one or two men more or less in the Tory lobby, but we had sized them up carefully. When, however, July 19th, and the ninth clause came we were face to face with a very different state of affairs. Then we had to face absolute uncertainty--and uncertainty not in one, but almost every part of the House. And the curious thing about it all was, that this uncertainty was aggravated by a little fact which had entered into nobody's calculations, and this was the highly technical rule with regard to the manner in which questions are put when the House is in committee. [Sidenote: Technicalities.] I despair of ever being able to make this matter clear to an outsider; and, indeed, to be quite honest, I am not always sure that I understand the affair myself. It will probably be sufficient for my purpose if I say that the chairman has to put an amendment in such a way that sometimes you find you are really precluded from voting on the direct question which you wish to challenge. You are within the ring-fence of a technical rule, which compels you to fight your issue there and not one inch outside of it. This often means that questions are raised in the most indirect way--that you seem to be voting for one thing while you really mean another, and that if you do not vote that way, you cannot vote any other. So it happened on this occasion. And we drifted about for the best way of raising the question of the presence of the Irish members, and the Government were for a while in a state of absolute and painful uncertainty. Then came one of those desultory conversations on points of order, in which so large a body as the House of Commons cannot shine--one man suggesting one method, one man another; half-a-dozen different methods proposed in as many minutes by half-a-dozen different members. [Sidenote: 103 v. 80.] At last Mr. Redmond seemed to hit off the situation by a proposal to omit a couple of sub-sections in the ninth clause. But Mr. Redmond had scarcely spoken when the House found itself in an extraordinary and most embarrassing dilemma. The object of Mr. Redmond was plain enough; what he desired to do was to retain the Irish members in the Imperial Parliament in their present, that is to say, in their full, strength--103 they are now, 103 he wanted them to remain. The position of the Government was equally clear. With emphatic language--with a superabundance of argument--Mr. Gladstone stated his conviction that the Irish members should not remain in such large numbers and that the number should be 80. This was all clear enough; but what about the position of all the other parties in the House? [Sidenote: Tot homines, tot sententiæ.] At first sight, it would appear that this ought to be very clear. The Tories and the Unionists had several amendments on the paper. One wanted the Irish members reduced to 48, one wanted to have them reduced to 40, and several of them desired that they should be reduced still further--in fact, should reach the irreducible minimum of none at all. It was assumed, of course, that gentlemen who had thus indicated their desire for the reduction of the Irish members, or for their disappearance altogether, would vote against a proposition which asked that they should remain in full force. If this course were adopted, Mr. Redmond would be crushed under a combination of the Liberals, who wanted the numbers to be 80, and the Tories who wanted the Irish members to disappear altogether; but in these days, and with such an Opposition as we have now in the House of Commons, it is not possible to make any calculations on what course we would adopt. To the amazement of the House--above all things to the amazement of Mr. Gladstone--who has not yet entirely got over the traditions of the past, and, therefore, over-sanguine expectations as to the scruples of his opponents--Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour both announced that they were ready to go into the same lobby as Mr. Redmond. And so those who wanted all the Irish members, and those who wanted none, were both going to vote exactly the same way. [Sidenote: A bolt from the blue.] For a moment everybody was staggered by this declaration; and it produced a combination which anybody could forecast, and for which nobody was prepared. There came accordingly something like a panic over the House. Here we were face to face with a Ministerial crisis, with doom and the abyss and the end of all things. Unexpectedly, in a moment, without a second's warning, this state of things led to a phenomenon which belongs to the House of Commons alone. Councils of war are usually held in the silence and secrecy and beneath the impenetrable walls of the council chamber. But sudden councils of war, called for by unexpected events, have to be held in the open in the House of Commons. The world--the world of strangers, of ambassadors, of peers, of ladies, of the constituents, and, above all, the world of watchful, scornful, vindictive enemies--can look on as though the leaders of the parties were bees working in a glass hive. And it is impossible for even the best trained men to keep their air and manners in such dread circumstances from betraying the seriousness and excitement and awe which the gravity of the events are exciting in them. [Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone's attitude.] On the Treasury Bench there was a good deal of excitement, but it was pretty well repressed: and in the midst of it all is the face of Mr. Gladstone, over-pale, with a strange glitter in the eyes that made them look unnaturally large, two jets of lambent and almost dazzling flame, but otherwise very composed, deadly calm. On the Irish Benches the excitement was more tense, for their course was even more difficult than that of the Government. The Government had stated their decision that they wanted only eighty members. But there was an Irish member, a leader of a party which seeks to claim Irish support as a better Irish party than the other, proposing that Ireland should have her full total of members. The Irish members naturally would be inclined to support their countrymen, if not to seek to keep the Irish representation as high as it could possibly be. [Sidenote: A splendid gambler.] On the other hand, if all the Irish members went the same way it was all up with the Government. Some fifty to seventy British Liberals adopt the same policy as the Irish members with regard to the Irish question and the Home Rule Bill, and if the Irish members only give the word, they also would vote with Mr. Redmond, and the Government would be "snowed under," to use an expressive Americanism, a majority of upwards of two hundred against them. Mr. Gladstone had evidently made up his mind that this was the situation he would have to face, and played his last, his supreme, his desperate card. You could see that he himself felt that this was the kind of card he was playing from his look as he played it. There was outward calmness in the face, there was the same evenness of tone in the voice; he built up his case with the same unbroken command of his language and ideas as is his usual characteristic. His statement of his position was admirable in its lucidity, its temper, and its courage. But he was excited. Just as he rose up, Sir William Harcourt jumped up, and in a state of impatience and excitement that was palpable, asked for something. It was a glass of water for Mr. Gladstone. The glass of water was brought in; it was put in front of Mr. Gladstone; he sipped it just as he was about to start on his perilous oratorical voyage, and then, clearing his throat, he made the fateful announcement which possibly was to wreck his measure and himself. And the statement came to this: If the Government were defeated, it would be by a combination of different parties, but they would all agree in supporting 103 as against 80 Irish members; and if they did that, why the House was master. This was ambiguous, and yet it was pretty plain. The Government declined to accept as a vote of want of confidence in them a majority which was obtained by so dishonest and treacherous a combination as men voting together who were at such opposite poles of thought; and the Government would just checkmate the little game by accepting the 103 members as what the House preferred to the Government plan of 80. [Sidenote: The fall of the flag.] There was a gleam of almost sardonic triumph in the Old Man's eye as he sat down, having shot this bolt; and he looked as if he had thoroughly discomfited his enemies. But his enemies were not so easily discomfited. Treacherous, base, unscrupulous, call it what he liked, they were not going to miss the opportunity of baiting him: and Mr. Chamberlain's pale face wore a deadlier pallor. There was even a colder and fiercer ring than usual in his clear, cruel voice; his always saturnine look deepened as he seemed to grasp beforehand his great and long delayed hour of vengeance. Mr. Balfour adopted the same tactics. In favour of 103 members? Not at all--the vote would mean nothing of that kind--it would simply mean that they were opposed to the plan of the Government; in short, there was the issue quite plain. The Tories and the Unionists would vote black was white, wrong was right. This way one moment, the other way the next--they would do anything, provided only they could turn the Government out, defeat the Bill, and humiliate the Old Man. And so the situation grew more difficult every moment. For it was now plain that the Government were most certain to be beaten, and that if they were beaten, there must be an end of Home Rule. It might be good Parliamentary tactics to say that the Government would accept the decision of the House, but everybody knows what moral authority, what reality of strength, there is in a Government which has been "snowed under" by a majority of 200. [Sidenote: Mr. Sexton makes the running.] It will now be understood what tremendous issues rested on the speech which Mr. Sexton rose to deliver. In moments of stress and difficulty he is the man always selected by his colleagues to state the Irish case. Never in his chequered and stormy early career did that wonderful Parliamentarian have a task more difficult than that by which he was now confronted. In front of him was the Government in the very panic of impending ruin. He had only to look across the floor of the House, and he could see the pallid face of that mighty statesman who lives so high in the hearts and affections of the people whom Mr. Sexton represents, and who at that moment was in his hour of agony, if not of final and irretrievable ruin. Behind the Prime Minister were other men--equally eager to hear what he had to say--that sturdy band of Radicals, mostly from Scotland, who only wanted the word to desert their own leader and follow the guidance of the Irish members. And behind Mr. Sexton was the grimmest enemy of all--the men from his own country, who were resolved, on this occasion, to push the demand of Ireland to the extreme point, and who held that he would betray the Irish cause if he backed, not them, but Mr. Gladstone and the British Government. [Sidenote: And takes the lead.] It required all the dexterity, all the coolness, all the splendid equanimity and courage of the man of genius at such a fateful hour to keep his head. Mr. Sexton was equal to the occasion. He spoke slowly, and there was a hush in the House to catch his every syllable, for his words were the harbingers of fate. As he spoke so would be decided one of the most momentous and indeed tragical of human issues. He spoke, I say, slowly--but at the same time it was evident that he had his mind well fixed on the end which he wished to reach. Nothing adds so much to the effectiveness of oratory as the sense that the man who is addressing you, is thinking at the very moment he is speaking. You have the sense of watching the visible working of his inner mind; and you are far more deeply impressed than by the glib facility which does not pause, does not stumble, does not hesitate, because he does not stop to think. Many people, reading so much about Mr. Sexton's oratory, will be under the impression that he is a very rapid and fluent speaker. He is nothing of the kind. He speaks with a great slowness, grave deliberation, and there are often long and sometimes even trying pauses between his sentences. He could not conceal on this great occasion the anxiety and the seriousness of the situation; but the mind was splendidly clear, the language as well chosen as though he were sitting in a room and holding discourse to a few admiring friends; and what Mr. Sexton had to say was, that he would not go into the same lobby with Chamberlain and Balfour in order to defeat the Government; in short, that he was going to vote with Mr. Gladstone. A long-drawn sigh of relief. The Government is saved. [Sidenote: The field unsteady.] But hush--not yet. There are still some of the hard Radicals from Scotland who have never wavered in the idea that the Irish members ought to remain at their full total. They have been partially relieved by what Mr. Sexton had said. But then Scotchmen are proverbially tenacious of opinion; and not even his appeal--joined to the appeal of their leader--will altogether change the purpose of those rugged sons of bonnie Scotland. And so, Mr. Shaw, the member for Galashiels, gets up to ask a question. He plainly declares that according to the answer given to this question, his vote would be given for or against the Government. So we are still in all the agonies of possible delay, for we know that seven Parnellites will go against the Government--that counts fourteen on a division; and if only seven or ten more go the same way, there is a majority against Mr. Gladstone, and we are lost. Mr. Mellor has to answer this fateful question, and everybody cries "Order, order," which is the House of Commons way of saying that people are very anxious to hear what is about to be said. Mr. Mellor gives an answer that satisfies Mr. Shaw. Mr. Dalziel--another sturdy Scotch Radical--is also satisfied; and so we have all the Liberal vote, with the single exception of Labby--who quickly--furtively--almost shamefacedly--rushes off into the Tory lobby. [Sidenote: Hoisting the numbers.] And now the division takes place. There have been several speeches--usually of a minute each--before the final hour comes; but we are all so anxious to know what fate is in store for us, that we cannot stand the strain any longer. The division--the division--let us know the worst. Be it good, or be it ill--let it come at once. The Whips from the two lobbies enter almost simultaneously--this shows plainly enough that it has been a very near thing; then a dreadful hush as the numbers are announced; we have won--aye, but we have by only fourteen! There is a burst of cheers from the Irish Benches; Sir William Harcourt laughs aloud in his triumph; the composure of the Old Man's face remains unchanged; you see he has gone through a great many things like this; and that great heart and sane mind are prepared for any fate. Mr. Chamberlain says nothing; but looking into the recesses of his amendment paper, attempts to hide the choking rage of disappointment that has come over him at this final defeat of his brightest hopes of trampling his former friend and his former chief in the dust. [Sidenote: A squabble.] And now comes the squalid sequel to all this glorious and splendid fight--the disorderly--the chaotic--the anarchic scene of the 11th of July. The whole thing began simply enough. Mr. Brodrick, the son of an Irish landlord--a very light, though very serious young man--managed in the course of his speech to speak of the people from whom he springs as "impecunious and garrulous." At first nobody took any notice of what was probably a mere mauvaise plaisanterie; and the incident would have passed altogether had not Mr. Brodrick immediately afterwards made a more direct appeal to the Irish Members. This elicited from Mr. Sexton the retort that he need not make any appeal to the Irish Benches after the "grossly rude" allusion he had made to the Irish people. On this there was a mild hubbub on the Tory Benches. The House was very thin and very listless, and really not in the mood to take anything very tragically. But Mr. Sexton resolutely refused to withdraw unless Mr. Brodrick gave the example. Mr. Mellor then--acting somewhat precipitately--ruled that Mr. Sexton was out of order, and should withdraw his words. [Sidenote: Mr. Sexton defies the chair.] This created a new situation. Mr. Sexton had now to fight, not Mr. Brodrick, not even Mr. Balfour--but the chair; and to fight the chair is to enter into a contest with the Grand Llama of the House of Commons. Meantime the House had filled; and every nook and cranny was occupied; a large number of members were standing up; and there was that intense thrill of excitement which always forecasts a great outburst, and the outburst came when Mr. Sexton--resolute and composed--gave it plainly to be understood that he would not obey the ruling of the chair; and that he must first get an apology from Mr. Brodrick, as the original offender, before Mr. Brodrick got any apology from him. Then was the cyclone let loose; and there began a series of the wildest, most violent, most angry, and disorderly scenes I have ever witnessed. Scores of members were on their legs at the same time; men hitherto quiet, composed, and good-natured, began to raise cries hoarse with rage, and finally four or five hundred voices were united in producing the deafening and discordant din of angry and contradictory voices. Nor was this all. In some parts of the House men began directly to assail each other--to exchange language of taunt, and insult, and defiance; and, in more than one corner, there were the signs of impending physical conflict. The one relief of the situation was that some men kept their heads and looked on in sadness, while others, seeing only the comic side of the situation, smiled upon it all. [Sidenote: Gladstone to the rescue.] Mr. Gladstone, who had been away to dinner, had meantime entered, and a look of pain and solicitude crossed his white face. There is so much of innate gentleness--of inexhaustible kindliness, and of high-bred and scholastic spirit beneath all the vehemence of his political temper and the frenzied energy of his political life--that for such scenes he has never any stomach; and they always bring to his face that same look of shock and pain and humiliation. And he it was who finally saved the situation. Several times Mr. Brodrick would have been willing to withdraw, but Mr. Balfour was resolved to get Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Sexton into a difficulty, to convict Mr. Sexton of disobeying the chair, to compel Mr. Gladstone to take action against his most useful friend and most powerful ally. Over and over again, then, he refused to allow Mr. Brodrick to get rid of the whole situation by withdrawing his language, and so enabling Mr. Sexton to follow the example. Meantime, Mr. Mellor had ruled that Mr. Sexton had been guilty of gross disorder, and had called upon him to leave the House. Mr. Sexton had steadily refused, basing his refusal on the demand that there had been no vote of the House. The point was this: There are two rules for dealing with disorder. Under the one a member is named, and then a division takes place, in which the House may refuse or consent to the suspension of a member. Under the other rule, the presiding officer has the right to suspend on his own motion, and without any appeal to the House. The latter rule was that under which Mr. Mellor acted. Mr. Sexton demanded that he should be treated under the other rule, believing that if a division had taken place the majority of the House, or at least a very big minority, would have refused to sanction the action of the Chairman. This would have meant that Mr. Mellor would have been censured, and thereby compelled to resign the Chairmanship. Mr. Gladstone, I say, saved the situation. In language of touching delicacy and grace, he appealed to Mr. Sexton to obey the chair. Mr. Sexton at first would not yield; but when the appeal was renewed--when it was backed by all the resources of that thrilling and vibratory voice of Mr. Gladstone, his stubborn resolve gave way. He rose from his seat--several Liberal members got up and waved their hats; the Irishmen followed their example. And then Mr. Brodrick was able to make his tardy apology, and the matter for the moment was ended. [Sidenote: The interfering Milman.] There had been one little scene fiercer almost than any of the others. When Mr. Mellor proceeded to call Mr. Sexton to order, Mr. Milman, the clerk at the table, handed to him, with some appearance of ostentation and of eagerness, the rule which allowed him to compel Mr. Sexton's withdrawal without an appeal to the House. This provoked some now fiercely excited Irishmen to an outburst of blind rage. They shouted at Mr. Milman fiercely, desperately--called upon him to leave the Chairman alone, to take the chair himself; and Mr. Sexton made a bitter little speech to the effect that it was Mr. Milman's malignant interference which had produced his suspension. It was thought that on Wednesday this matter would be again raised; and even as early as noon there was a big array of members, expecting another outburst. But Mr. Balfour held his peace. Mr. Sexton asked a formal question, and gave notice of a motion of censure on the Chairman. Mr. Mellor took the chair amid a wild outburst of Tory cheers; and we got back to the tranquil consideration of clause nine, and to a delightful, good-humoured historical speech by Mr. Swift McNeill on the representation of Trinity College, Dublin. [Sidenote: Divisions.] The old story came back to our minds on July 13th of the historic scene at Tyburn when all the traitors were hanged in succession. When the first head was held up there was an awful shudder; the shudder was less vivid when the second head was held up; and when the executioner accidentally dropped the third there was a loud and mocking shout of "Butter-fingers." So it was in the House that night until the dinner hour came; but as ten o'clock approached, the House filled and there was a rise in the excitement. The scene, however, bore no comparison to the frenzied excitement of the preceding Thursday--it was evident we were going to have an anti-climax, and the whole arrangement of the Opposition broke down in an important and essential point. On the previous occasion Mr. Balfour, by preconcerted plan, was speaking at the moment when the guillotine fell--with the idea, of course, of bringing into greater relief the wickedness of the Government. Mr. Goschen was marked out to perform the same task this Thursday, but who should get up but Atherley Jones. The delighted Liberals cheered him to the echo. Mr. Goschen had to sit down, and so the whole dénouement collapsed, and the curtain fell not on the lofty and eminent form of a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, but on the less imposing figure of the disgruntled Liberal, who is always anxious to strike his party a blow. Then comes the division. There is some excitement, though we know we have won. And then we cheer, as we hear that we have won by 27! Clause 9 is now put as a whole. Our majority rises to 29--we cheer even more loudly. [Sidenote: Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.] We go through the lobbies in eight more successive divisions. It is the dreariest performance. "That Clause so-and-so stand part of the Bill," says the Chairman. A shout of "Ayes!" followed by a shout of "Noes!"--then a cry of "Division!"--then the same thing over again--and again--and again. We stand at 85 majority in nearly every division. But we don't cheer, for it is too monotonous; and as for the poor Tories--where be the wild shouts of "Gag, gag!" with which they rent the general air--their hoarse cries of "Shame, shame"--their open and foul taunts in the face of the G.O.M.? Silent--sombre--dogged--we go through the dreary round. Tout casse--tout passe--tout lasse. CHAPTER XVII. THE FIGHT IN THE HOUSE. [Sidenote: The fatal Thursday.] By this time everybody has read to his heart's content all the proceedings of that historic and dreadful Thursday night. I have already published elsewhere an account of my experiences; and within my limits here I must somewhat curtail the story. But it is well to correct some of the many errors which have found their way into the press. In the slight reaction which has followed the first wild outburst, it is now seen that there were certain exaggerations in the accounts. For instance, though there was an exchange of blows, altogether not more than five people were concerned in this most odious part of the whole transaction. [Sidenote: Herod--Judas.] The row began in a curious kind of way; and, indeed, to properly understand the events of the night, it is necessary to make a perfectly complete separation between two distinct periods. The fall of the guillotine is always certain to be accompanied by a scene of some excitement and violence. The violence has been diminishing steadily, as the different compartments have succeeded each other; and though there were some ugly rumours, the general expectation was that things would not be so very bad. And, indeed, without any desire to make party or personal capital, I may state that undoubtedly they would not have been so bad if Mr. Chamberlain had not intervened at the last moment. Opinion is unanimous that up to the time he spoke the feeling in the House was, though boisterous, rather good humoured. There was a conflict of opinion, there were some shouts, there was that general din in the air which always marks the inspiration of a momentous event, but there was no ill-temper. In a few moments Mr. Chamberlain had, to a certain extent, changed this; but even as to the period when he was speaking, I feel bound to correct the general impression and to say that my own opinion was that the general spirit was one of frolicksome enjoyment rather than of the seriousness of real passion. Mr. Chamberlain himself, to do him justice--though he had elaborated a series of the most taunting observations, though sentence after sentence was intended to be an assault and a barbed taunt--Mr. Chamberlain, I say, seemed himself to regard the whole affair rather from a comic than a tragic point of view. Under the bitterness of his language, the tone was not that of seriousness--and, indeed, it is very hard for any man to be perfectly serious when he knows that he is speaking for a certain number of allotted minutes, and instead of addressing himself to the particular question before the House, he has to make something in the shape of a last dying speech and declaration. The speech, however, was admirable in form, and still more admirable in delivery; the cold, clear voice penetrated to every ear, and some of the sentences were uttered with that deep, though carefully subdued swell which adds intense force by its very reserve, to the rhetoric of passion. [Sidenote: Joe's beautiful elocution.] Indeed, if I were a professor of elocution, I should feel bound to say that if a pupil required a lesson in the highest art of delivery, he could do nothing better than listen to Mr. Chamberlain's delivery of this bitter little speech of his; and, above all, that he could nowhere and in nowise better learn the lesson of the extraordinary increase there is in the force of a speech by careful self-suppression on the part of the speaker. There were one or two marvellous examples of Mr. Chamberlain's extraordinary readiness in taking a point. I think Mr. Chamberlain an extremely shallow man. I believe his knowledge to be slatternly, his judgment to be rash, his temper to be dictatorial and uncertain, but as a debater he stands, in readiness, alertness, and quickness in taking and utilising a point, supreme over anybody in the House of Commons, with the one exception of Mr. Gladstone. Thus when one or two Liberals made somewhat foolish interruptions on July 27th he turned upon them and exploited their interruption with an art that was almost dazzling in its perfection. For instance, when he denounced the Liberals for accepting some clause as the best that could be proposed by man, some Liberals cried out, "Under the circumstances." "Under the circumstances," said Mr. Chamberlain, with that strange, eloquent, deep swell in his voice, which adds so much to its effectiveness, and then he took the phrase, repeated it, and reiterated it, and turned it upside down, until even his bitterest enemy could not help enjoying the perfection of the skill with which he played upon it. [Sidenote: Joe smiles.] Finally he came to the passage in which he drew an elaborate comparison between Mr. Gladstone and Herod. I had no doubt at the time, and my impression has since been corroborated by words reported to have been used by Mr. Chamberlain himself--that he used the word "Herod" in a moment of happy and almost impish inspiration with a view to provoking the retort which was so obvious. There was a self-conscious smile on his face when he uttered the words, and he seemed to be quite prepared, and almost delighted by the retort which followed so promptly. Furthermore, when several Tories rose to denounce the interruption he beckoned to them with his hand; there was a gratified smile on his face; and his whole air suggested that he was so delighted with the success of his little manoeuvre that he thought it a pity anybody should spoil it; and especially as the result was to create such a din as to prevent him from finishing his final sentence. And he wanted very badly to finish that sentence; for over and over again, with an obstinacy that suggested the delighted author, he sought to get the sentence out; and no doubt he was very disappointed that the guillotine finally fell upon him with that sentence still unuttered. And there is one other point about this moment which I see has been completely lost. It is supposed that I and the others who shouted "Judas, Judas," did so in pure provocation--with deliberate intent to apply the word to Mr. Chamberlain personally and with fierce political and personal passion. That was not my impression of what was meant; and that certainly was not what I meant. I took Mr. Chamberlain's mood as I think anybody looking at him could see that he meant it to be taken; that is to say, I did not regard his speech as in the least serious; and his allusion to Mr. Gladstone as "Herod" appeared to me a self-conscious joke, and not, as some earnest Liberals seemed to think, a gross, foul, and deliberate insult. Indeed, I believed--and subsequent events have confirmed that view--that Joe was thinking a good deal more of himself as the centre of a dramatic and historic scene than of wounding Mr. Gladstone. And, then, the use of the word "Judas" must be taken with the context. Mr. Chamberlain was talking of the "days of Herod," and when I called out "Judas," what I really meant was why not select Judas, and not Herod, who was his contemporary, if you will refer to this particular epoch of human history. I say all these things, not by way of extenuation; for really I regard the incident as closed; not by way of defending myself from rancour, for I felt none; but with a view to preventing an entirely incorrect view and impression of an historical evening from being stereotyped. [Sidenote: "I used it on purpose."] And I can call a very potent and trustworthy witness as to this being the proper view of the incident; for I understand that, almost immediately after the scene, a good-natured Liberal said to Mr. Chamberlain that he must confess that the use of the word "Herod" was calculated to produce the retort of "Judas"; and the report is that Mr. Chamberlain replied, "I used it on purpose," or "That was my intention," or some such phrase as that, which implied that he was neither surprised nor annoyed by the retort, but had rather invited it. I lost sight of Joe for a good time after this--there were other things which had to be looked after; but I am told by those who were able to watch him closely, that his face wore all through the scene which followed a look of almost beatific happiness--the happiness of an artist who saw slowly unfolding the drama to which he had given the impetus, and which he had fashioned out in his own reveries. [Sidenote: Opening of the row.] At all events, it was not either Mr. Chamberlain's use of the word "Herod," nor my use of the word "Judas," which really brought about the subsequent row--except in the most indirect and remote way. Mr. Vicary Gibbs seemed possessed by the idea that he should call the attention of the Chairman to the use of the word "Judas"; and he singled me out--although, of course, he knew that I was only one of many who had used the word. I don't complain of this--I merely state a fact--a fact which, laughingly, was admitted later in the evening; for here I may say in passing that such is the extraordinary volatility and such the real good-nature of the House of Commons, this terrible evening ended up in the exchange of hearty and friendly jokes between some of the fiercest combatants in the whole business. I had not the least idea of what Mr. Gibbs was saying--what his complaint really was I knew for the first time after the whole row was over; indeed, nobody could hear anything in the din that was almost deafening. Mr. Mellor made several attempts to catch Mr. Gibbs's statement; and only when, after straining his ears to the utmost, he failed to catch one single word, did Mr. Mellor resolve to take no notice of what Mr. Gibbs was trying to say. This seemed to drive Mr. Gibbs almost beside himself--he shouted angrily and wildly, at the top of his voice, with fierce and almost frenzied gesture; and, after a while, he rushed down with every appearance of passion to the Front Opposition Bench to renew his attempts to make his point of order. All this time his passion had been rising higher and higher--until, in the end, he was almost a painful sight to witness. His own friends were foremost in trying to bring him back to composure; and Lord Randolph Churchill expressed, with the fine, full-flavoured plainness of ancient speech, his opinion of the conduct of his friends. [Sidenote: Keeping the seats.] This plain-spoken opinion of Lord Randolph Churchill was induced by the fact that Mr. Gibbs and his friends had now resolved on a desperate step to secure attention to his complaint. This was no other than refusing to leave the House, and take part in the division. It is more than twelve years since this extreme, violent, and almost revolutionary step was adopted before. On the dreadful night--how well I remember it!--when the news came that Michael Davitt had been sent back to penal servitude, the information sent a thrill of such horror and almost despair amongst the Irish Benches, that some method of manifesting their feelings became inevitable. By a series of circumstances, into which I need not now go, the manifestation took the shape of refusing to go into the division lobby, and retaining our seats. We were all suspended in turn, and removed from the House by the Serjeant-at-Arms. [Sidenote: Logan.] Meantime, the unexpected and extraordinary delay in taking the division had brought back some members from the division lobbies; and some had actually recorded their votes, and were returning in the ordinary course to their seats. Among these was Mr. Logan. Mr. Logan peered somewhat curiously at the angry faces and the shouting figures on the Tory Benches, and approached them with the view of finding out what it was all about. His air, somehow or other, suggested--quite wrongly, as it turned out--to the Tories that he was meditating an assault upon some of them: and there rose angry cries from them of "Bar! Bar!" This, in Parliamentary language, means that the member is violating the rule against any member standing on the floor of the House, except in the narrow and short interspace which lies between the entrance door and the bar--a very small bit of free territory. Logan, in his turn, was exasperated by these remarks, and used some retort. Then there were renewed cries that he was not in order in standing up on the floor, together with a multitude of expletives at the expense of his party and himself. And Mr. Logan thereupon said he would put himself in order, and sat down on the Front Opposition Bench. In doing so, he certainly did put himself in order, for a member can take his seat where he likes during the progress of a division. But this step is what led to the violent and unprecedented scene which followed. For Mr. Hayes Fisher immediately caught hold of Mr. Logan by the collar, Ashmead Bartlett, I understand, followed suit, and thus the first blow was struck. [Sidenote: Colonel Saunderson hits out.] It was partly curiosity--it was partly, I have no doubt, indignation--it was partly the determination to rush to the assistance of a friend--that led to the moving of the Irishmen from their own seats to the benches above the gangway, which are occupied by their political opponents. In making this move they had no intention whatsoever, I believe, of striking or even hustling anybody, but the result of it was that Colonel Saunderson was violently pushed and his hat knocked off. I really believe that the person next him, who gave him the final push, must have been one of his own friends; but angry, excited, and hot-tempered, he jumped to his feet. Mr. Austin, an Irish member, was at that moment standing in the gangway, as innocent of offence as anybody in the House, and he it was who received the blow from Colonel Saunderson's clenched fist. Mr. Austin fell, and immediately Mr. Crean rushed forward, and in quick succession gave Colonel Saunderson two hard and resounding blows--one of which drew blood. [Sidenote: The bursting of the cyclone.] Then the cyclone burst. When the sound of blows was heard; when Colonel Saunderson was seen to be in grips with another member, anger--shame--horror, took possession of everybody; some men lost their heads, determined to have their share in the fray, and for a brief second or two a solid cohort on either side--the Tories on one side, the Irish on the other--stared and glared at each other, with pallid, passion-rent, and, at the same time, horror-stricken faces--ready to descend into the abyss, and yet standing in the full consciousness of horror at its brink. William O'Brien, John Burns, Mr. Bowles, Mr. Healy, Tom Condon, a stalwart and brave Tipperary man ready for peace, ready for war, and several others--myself included--rushed to separate and remonstrate, with the result that the scene came to an end in a space which was extraordinarily short, considering the circumstances, but terribly long to those who lived through its horror. Really only three people were in that scrimmage--Mr. Austin, Colonel Saunderson and Mr. Crean. There was, I believe, some hustling, but of even that I saw little. Whether it was at this moment, or when Mr. Hayes Fisher laid hands on Mr. Logan, the hissing came from the gallery, I do not know; but it was at either of these two moments--a sound hideous, unparalleled, sufficient to bring the maddest man back to reason. And then, thinking once more that it was all over, we went into the division lobbies again. [Sidenote: The Speaker appears.] In common with most people, I had by this time forgotten all about Mr. Chamberlain--all about Herod--all about Judas; thinking the whole affair was over and done with; that the incident had been submerged under the row; and all I expected we had now to do was to trudge drearily and wearily through the lobbies in the long series of divisions which would precede the final passage of the Bill through Committee. It was only the wild cheering which announced the advent of the Speaker that brought me back to the House, and gave me some idea of what had gone on. If you want to understand why France welcomed Napoleon after the Terror, you had only to be in the House at that moment, and understand the sense of relief, joy, and confidence which came over it when the presence of the Speaker brought it to the sense that at last the reign of Anarchy was over, and order was in the hands of one who could maintain it against all men, and against the whole House if needs be. And then, to my astonishment, Mr. Gibbs complained of my use of the term "Judas" to Mr. Chamberlain. As I have said, all this had passed from everybody's memory, it really had nothing to do with the awful scene which had just been enacted, and, in fact, it was like some sudden return to ancient and forgotten history. Moreover, it had the disadvantage of conveying an entirely wrong impression of what had really taken place; it shifted back the attention to what was after all more or less playfulness, or at the worst, mere verbal disorder, from the odious, brutal resort to physical violence which had just taken place. Moreover, it put a wrong complexion on even the verbal disorder, for it put the initiative with me instead of with Mr. Chamberlain, and, finally, it entirely removed from view the gross and scandalous breach of order which Mr. Gibbs and his friends had committed by retaining their seats and refusing to leave the House. [Sidenote: My apology.] But the great consideration with the Speaker--and, indeed, with everybody else who had the dignity and honour of the House of Commons at heart--was to shove underground as soon, as promptly, as roughly as possible, the corpse of its dignity and reputation; and without making any attempt to explain my conduct--to shift on the responsibility to where it really lay--to draw attention, except by a mere sentence, to that scene of physical violence--I made my apology. I cannot claim that it was all that I ought to have said; several people have blamed me for not calling attention to the use of the word "Herod" by Mr. Chamberlain. But really the Speaker was so generous; I entered so fully into his idea that recrimination would only prolong an odious, detestable, and degrading scene--that I could not haggle about terms; and was determined to do my part towards getting back the House to a sense of its honour, dignity, and self-respect. [Footnote: Mr. Hayes Fisher.] There were some allusions to the deplorable business of July 27, during the following week. But the allusions were few--very brief, and very shamefaced. Indeed, the House of Commons was so heartily ashamed of itself that it had not the strength nor the courage to face its own ill-doing, and wanted to get away from the horrid thing as soon as it possibly could. Yet there was a strong sense that an incident so unprecedented--so disgraceful, so utterly lowering to the dignity of a great, august and historic assembly--should not, and could not be allowed to pass as though nothing had occurred. It was also pretty clear, amid so many conflicting statements, that the responsibility for the passing over the gulf between mere verbal encounter and physical violence rested with Mr. Hayes Fisher, and that, therefore, it was on him any punishment should be visited which the House of Commons deemed necessary for the protection of its outraged dignity. However, as I have said, the House of Commons was so heartily ashamed of itself, and desired to get its shame out of sight and out of memory as soon as possible. [Footnote: A lame apology.] But Mr. Hayes Fisher did not act particularly well. It was he who had taken Mr. Logan by the collar, and therefore, it was he who had struck the first blow. There was some execrable haggling as to whether Mr. Hayes Fisher or Mr. Logan should make the first apology--execrable, I say, because a gentleman never ought to haggle over an apology if he feels that he has been in the wrong, and because nobody could deny that Mr. Fisher had been the original wrongdoer. The result was that when Mr. Gladstone came into the House on July 31st, and was asked questions about the business, the Old Man, for once, found himself in a difficulty. He had been told that apologies were going to be made; but Mr. Fisher made no sign, and, indeed, it looked very much as if he would do nothing at all. Labby intervened at this psychological moment by reading that extract from the account in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ which fixed Mr. Fisher's responsibility under his own hand, and it was seen that something would have to be done. Then--and not till then--did Mr. Fisher speak and make his apology. Mr. Logan--who had very properly refused to take the initiative--then made a very brief but a very handsome explanation of what he had done, and after a few lofty words from Mr. Gladstone and the Speaker the matter was allowed to drop into the dark abyss of oblivion. But we can't forget it. [Sidenote: Messrs. McCorquodale & Co.] On August 3rd there was a most instructive and important little debate on a Labour question. It had reference to the dismissal by the firm of the McCorquodales of several trade unionists. Suffice it to say, that the chief opposition to the claims of Labour came from Sir James Fergusson, whose remarks were ardently cheered by the Tories; and that Sir John Hibbert was finally pressed by Sir Charles Dilke into a promise which binds the Government practically to refuse contracts in future to any firm which acts like the McCorquodales. It was a great victory for Labour--not the less great because it was all so quietly done. [Sidenote: A Government defeat.] There was a curious little incident on the following day--nothing less than a defeat of the Government. It arose on a small local Irish Bill. Blackrock is a small seaside place just outside Dublin. The Tories, who occupy a good many of the villas, have kept the whole government of the place in their hands by maintaining a high property qualification for votes for the Town Commissioners. On this day they brought forward a Bill; but it was opposed until they had mended their ways with regard to the government of the town. Mr. Morley, acting on the official view, urged that the Bill might be passed and this other question dealt with separately, but the Irish refused to be pacified, they went to a division, and with the aid of the Radicals they managed to defeat the Government by nine votes. They celebrated the event by a hearty cheer. [Sidenote: And so to the end.] The penultimate week in August went on--wearily, tamely, and monotonously. It was, perhaps, the presence of the Speaker--it was, perhaps, the painful recollection of the scene of violence on a previous occasion--it was, perhaps, the universal exhaustion of the House; whatever the cause, the excitement on the night of August 25th was infinitely below what anybody would have expected. Throughout the whole evening there was exactly the same spectacle as on previous evenings--that is to say, there was the same old obstructive group discussing exactly the same topics; raising the same objections; going into the same subtleties as if the Bill were just in its first stage; and there was the same dreary and universal emptiness of the House generally. At last, as eleven o'clock approached, the Unionists prepared themselves for a dramatic effort. Mr. Chamberlain prepared an educational bombshell, but Mr. Healy hoisted the engineer with his own petard. Then, quietly and noiselessly, we went through a couple of divisions; and before we knew where we were, Mr. Morley was standing at the table, and moving that the third reading of the Bill should take place the following Wednesday. Nearly every one of the most prominent debaters had by this time cleared out. The Irish Benches, however, remained full, and from them came a triumphant cheer as, at a quarter to twelve, the motion was carried, and the second stage of the great measure of Irish emancipation was completed. CHAPTER XVIII. IRELAND'S CHARTER THROUGH. [Sidenote: A dull beginning.] Insipidity, weariness, and dulness marked the commencement of the concluding week of the Home Rule Bill in the House. There was no private business on the Monday, and accordingly for nearly a quarter of an hour--it seemed infinitely longer to the little group of members present--the House sat in sedate and solemn silence. Then commenced questions, and in a moment half-a-dozen members were buzzing with gnat-like pertinacity about the impassive figure of the Postmaster-General. Mr. Arnold Morley was continually on his legs. For instance, Mr. Bousfield wanted to know what rule there was which forbade Post Office employés to approach the House of Commons directly, or to sign a petition to the House with reference to any grievance, after having unsuccessfully petitioned the Postmaster-General. Mr. Morley replied laconically, "There is no such rule." Then several of the Tory members attempted to corner Sir U.K. Shuttleworth about the quantity of coals consumed in the "Majestic" while going at full speed. Sir Edward Harland was cautious, and Mr. Gibson Bowles, whose rising was the signal for derisive cheers, was pertinacious. The Secretary to the Admiralty, always dignified, was grave and serious. He was not to be tripped up, and discreetly declined to be drawn. [Sidenote: Our first line of defence.] It is one of the well-known peculiarities of the House of Commons that its attendance is usually in inverse line of proportion to the importance of the subject which it is discussing. On August 28th the House was engaged in debating the question which above all others ought to interest the people of this country--the state, namely, of our Navy. Yet the House was almost entirely empty throughout the whole evening, and the speeches were generally confined to the somewhat inarticulate representatives of the services, and to the dullest and smallest men in the whole assembly. It is obviously inconvenient--perhaps it is even perilous--that interests so grave and so gigantic should fall for their guardianship into hands so incompetent and so petty. It may be an inevitable accompaniment of our Parliamentary system that the naval debates should be so conducted; if so, one must put it down as one of the evils which must be taken as part of the price we pay for the excellences of a representative system. [Sidenote: Sir Edward Reed as an alarmist.] I may dismiss the debate on the Navy with one or two further observations. Sir Edward Reed, though he knows a good deal about ships--for he has had something to do with them all his life--is not an authority whom one can implicitly accept. He is not a politician who has prospered according to what he believes and what are doubtless his deserts, for he is a very clever man, and politicians who are a little disappointed have a certain tendency to ultra-censoriousness, which damages the effectiveness and prejudices the authority of their criticisms. Thus, Sir Edward has been always more or less of a pessimist with regard to the doings of other men. On August 28th he spoke in decidedly alarmist terms of the lessons which should be taught to us by the loss of the "Victoria." Speaking with the modesty of a mere layman on the subject, I should have been inclined to think that the chief moral to be drawn from that terrible and tragic disaster was the terribly important part which the mere personality of the individual in command still plays in deciding the fate of hundreds of lives; that, in short, the personal equation--as it has come to be called--- is still the supreme and decisive factor in all naval enterprises. But there may be some grounds for the alarmist views of Sir Edward Reed, and I see no reason why his views should not receive prompt, candid, and independent investigation. The officials may oppose such an investigation; but officials are always optimists, and the cold draught of outside criticism does them an immense deal of good. [Sidenote: The Grand Old Chieftain and his tactics.] At an early hour in the evening there was a very significant question, and an equally significant answer. Sir Charles Dilke called attention, with characteristic adroitness to a weapon which the Tories placed in our hands for dealing with such an emergency as that by which we were at the moment confronted. It was Lord Salisbury who made the most excellent suggestion that when a Bill had gone through all its stages in one Session of Parliament it should not be necessary to repeat the process in the next, but that a mere resolution should bring the Bill once again into the fulness of life. Would it not be possible for the Government, asked Sir Charles, to adopt the proposal with regard to their measures? The answer of the Old Man was cautious, vague, and dilatory. It is one of his well-known peculiarities not to arrive at the solution of a tactical difficulty one moment too soon; and this is a rule which, generally speaking, acts extremely well. I dare say Sir Charles Dilke did not expect any other answer; and nobody in the House was surprised that the Old Man answered as he did. But all the same, one could read between the lines, and it was pretty clear that the Old Man was preparing to face the situation by remedies drastic enough to meet even so revolutionary a situation. [Sidenote: A great Parliamentarian.] Everybody was delighted--that is to say, everybody on the Liberal side of the House--to see that the great old leader was displaying on this question the same unerring tactics, the same resources the same willingness to learn, and the same elasticity of mind as he has manifested throughout his whole life--or at least throughout all that part of it which dates from his escape from the shackles of his early and obscurantist creed. He has never concealed the fact that he departed from the old rules of the House of Commons with misgiving reluctance, and even repulsion. It would have been strange, indeed, if he could have felt otherwise after all his long years of glorious service in that august assembly. But then, when the time did come for taking the plunge, he took it boldly and unshrinkingly. It was a delight to watch him during this Session, and especially when it became necessary to use the guillotine against the revolutionary and iniquitous attempt to paralyse the House of Commons by sheer shameless obstruction. The "guillotine" was a most serious, a most momentous, and even portentous departure from all precedent, except, of course, the Tory precedent of 1887; but the Old Man, when the proper time came, proposed the experiment with the utmost composure--with that splendid command of nerve--that lofty and dauntless courage--that indifference to attack, which explains his extending hold over the imaginations and the hearts of men. [Sidenote: The plain duty of Liberals.] I have little doubt that he will be quite equal to any further steps which may be necessary to vindicate the authority of the majority in the House of Commons, and nobody doubts that such further steps may be necessary. The real and fundamental question--as I put it over and over again--is whether the Liberal party and the Liberal majority shall go before the country at the next election with the charge made good against them of lack of will, competence, and energy. If once that charge can be substantiated, I regard the Liberal cause as lost--and lost for many a year to come. Any Government almost is better than a Government which cannot govern; and the sentiment is so universal that I have no doubt the shifting ballast, which decides all elections, would go with a rush to the Tory side, and would enthrone in the place of power a strong Tory majority and an almost omnipotent Tory Government. The Tories know this, and calculate upon it, and will devote all their energies, therefore to reducing the present House of Commons and the present Ministry to discredited impotence, contemptible paralysis. Such a conspiracy must be met in the proper manner. Obstructive debate must be mercilessly closured; old rules must be abandoned without a sigh, and give way to others more adapted to the necessity of the time. Above all things the House of Lords must be flouted, humiliated, and defied. It is on the spring-tide of popular democratic and anti-aristocratic passion we shall have to float the next Liberal Government into power. [Sidenote: Nepotism in the army.] When business commenced on August 29th, there was a beggarly array of empty benches. For some time, the only Tory defenders of the Constitution were the ubiquitous George Christopher Trout Bartley and the valiant Howard Vincent. Questions showed more inclination than ever to wander into the purely parochial. Presently Mr. Burnie came along with an inquiry addressed to the War Minister whether it was correct the Duke of Connaught had been appointed to the chief command of the army at Aldershot; and, if so, on what grounds he had been selected for this important position. Several other vigorous Radicals were on the same scent. Mr. Campbell-Bannerman said it was quite true the Duke had become Commander-in-Chief. This was because of his fitness; because he was practically the senior officer available, and because he had gained experience in both regimental and staff duties, having filled with great credit the high office of Commander-in-Chief at Bombay. Herculean Mr. Allan, of Gateshead, sought for information how many months the Duke of Connaught was absent from his duties when he commanded at Portsmouth. Young Mr. Dalziel also came forward, wanting to know whether the Duke would receive the salary of a General or a Lieutenant-General. Mr. A.C. Morton, who had appropriated for the nonce Mr. T.W. Russell's usual seat, was anxious for a further explanation of what was meant by the Duke being practically the senior officer available. He also wanted to know what experience he had had in real fighting. The reply of the War Minister was conciliatory. There were, he explained, one or two generals senior to H.R.H., but who were at present discharging duties from which it was not desirable they should be removed. The pay would be that of a Lieutenant-General. Owing to domestic circumstances, the Duke lived out of Portsmouth, but he was little out of the district he commanded. He served in the Egyptian campaign, which was the only opportunity he had had during his career in taking part in active warfare. This did not satisfy either Mr. Allan or Mr. Morton. The member for Peterboro' wanted to be precise. How far was H.R.H. away from the real fighting? The War Minister could only smile and shake his head. Mr. Allan expressed his dissent, and Mr. Morton, derisively cheered by a handful of Tories, solemnly begged to give notice that on the Army Estimates he would again raise the question of this flagrant job. [Sidenote: A triumph for Mr. Burns.] The evening was notable for a splendid triumph achieved by that fine Democrat, John Burns. It arose out of the Navy Estimates. The conditions of labour in the Government dockyards have long been crying out for remedy, and Mr. Burns presented the case for the men with a force and lucidity that carried conviction home to the minds of a crowded House, among whose members his is one of the most magnetic personalities. The member for Battersea pointed out that, whilst he strongly approved of the attitude of the Government in adding £30,000 to the wages of the men, the real step they should have taken was to ignore the opinion of the permanent officials, those bugbears of all reformers, past, present, and to come--pay the trades union rates, and abolish classification altogether. A very excellent smack at Sir John Gorst, Mr. A.B. Forwood, and other standbacks on the Opposition side was the remark:--"I would rather have the rate of wages in dockyards regulated by trades unions than made the sport of party politicians and put up as a kind of Dutch auction." What have the Government to fear in this matter? The trade unions must always have to face competition and trade rivalry, and these elements alone are more than sufficient to keep down wages. So great was the impression made by Mr. Burns's speech, that official notice of it was inevitable, and Mr. E. Robertson was able to make an announcement which gave, if not absolute satisfaction, at least a measure of it to the champions of the artificers and labourers in our dockyards. [Sidenote: Home Rule again.] It was only the Old Man would have had the daring to begin the third stage of the greatest Bill of modern times at an hour so inauspicious--noon on a Wednesday sitting. Everybody knows that among all the dead hours of the House of Commons, there is no hour so utterly dead as that. Indeed, very often such is the disinclination of the natural man for unreasonable and unseasonable hours--it is very often extremely difficult for the Whips of the Government to get together the forty members who are necessary to form the quorum for the starting of business; and I have known cases where it was close upon two o'clock--if not even later--before there was a sufficient muster for the beginning of the day's business. However, Mr. Gladstone calculated correctly on the magic of his name and the witchery of his oratory; for by a few minutes past twelve, when he rose to make his speech, the House was crowded in almost every part, and he had an audience not only unprecedented in its fulness at such an hour, but also delightfully stimulating in its general responsiveness and sometimes even its ready enthusiasm. [Sidenote: A mighty speech.] The speech of the Old Man was worthy of the occasion. For some hours after it had ended nobody had anything to say about anybody or anything else; it was one of those speeches that create something like rapture; and that oft-repeated declaration that he had never done anything like it before--a declaration I have heard too many times to now altogether accept. The voice was splendid, the diction very fine, the argument close and well knit, the matter carefully prepared without any selfish adherence to the letter of a manuscript--a fidelity which always spoils anything like spontaneity of oratory. And the Old Man was in splendid physical condition and in the brightest of spirits. Indeed, I was never more struck with the extraordinary physical perfection which Mr. Gladstone's frame has maintained after his eighty-three years of full active and wearing life. The back was straight, the figure erect, the motions free, unconstrained, easy; the gestures those of a man whose every joint moved easily in a fresh and vigorous frame. And the face was wonderfully expressive, now darkened with passionate hatred of wrong, now bursting into the sunshine of genial and pleasant smiles. And--as is usual when he is in this mood--he was extraordinarily quick at taking interruptions; he was, indeed, almost boisterous in his manner, and seemed to positively invite those interjectional interventions from the other side, which, in less exuberant moods he is sometimes inclined to resent. Mr. Chaplin had quoted a portentous passage from Cavour to show that the great Italian statesman had declared against Home Rule. Mr. Gladstone was able to cap this with another passage--which, beginning with a strong indictment of English methods of government in Ireland, wound up with the declaration that Ireland ought to be treated with the same justice and generosity as Canada. While the Liberals were still cheering this thrust, Mr. Chaplin got up to make the remark that Cavour had said other things quite contradictory of this, whereupon the Old Man--still with a smile of deadly courtesy--pounced upon Mr. Chaplin with the remark, "Is it your case, then, that Cavour contradicted himself?"--a retort, the rapidity and completeness of which crushed Mr. Chaplin for the moment. [Sidenote: Cowed silence of the Tories.] When he dealt with the charge that the Government had unduly curtailed debate, the Old Man had made up his case very thoroughly, and as he read the damning indictment which showed the wild multitudinousness, the infinite variety and the prolonged duration of the speeches of the Opposition, there was plenty of encouraging cheers from the Liberal side; while on the Tory Benches they sat in dumb and stricken silence. Indeed, throughout the whole speech, the Tories were singularly quiet. Perhaps it was that they too were carried away by the witchery and the spell which the Old Man had cast over the rest of the House; and, while disagreeing with him, were still sufficiently wound up to the lofty and more empyrean heights which the orator reached to feel that there would be something jarring and even common in a note of dissent. Whatever the reason, they remained uncommonly silent throughout the whole speech; and, sometimes, when one or two of the more ebullient members spoke, the interjectors got very little change for their pains. [Sidenote: The readiness of the Old Man.] And this silence was the more remarkable in one or two of the most important passages of the Bill, for the Old Man challenged interruption. Thus he ranged the objections to the Bill under seven separate heads, and then he proceeded to read out these heads. They were all a perfectly faithful representation--in some cases even a repetition--of what the Tories had said; but stated baldly, nakedly, in the cold light of early day, they sounded intensely ridiculous. It was impossible, for instance, to take seriously the resounding proposition that the Bill "would break up the Empire"--that under the Bill the loyal minority would incur loss of life, liberty and property, and so on. As Mr. Gladstone read out these propositions there was a deadly chill, a disheartened silence, on the Tory Benches which had its importance, for it showed plainly that, however ready they were to mouth these things on platforms they felt a little ashamed of them in their more sober moments. Just once or twice, a stray Tory did venture to signify by a timid and faint cheer his acceptance of the ridiculous litany of prophecy and reprobation which Mr. Gladstone was repeating to him. And then the Old Man was delightful; he smiled all over his face until its features were one vast mass of corrugated wrinkles; then he waved his hand a little to the other side, and finally congratulated himself on being in the happy position of being even partially corroborated by gentlemen of opposite opinions, Whereupon, of course, the whole House laughed, including the very member whom the Old Man had thus toasted. In short, as will have been seen from my description, the Old Man was in his very best form, in full command of himself, of his friends, and even of his enemies. [Sidenote: A solemn peroration.] Finally, there came a peroration--lofty, almost inspired--splendidly delivered, rapturously applauded. It rang out a note of perfect confidence--of early and complete victory--of righteous trust in a righteous cause. And the House which had followed the great orator in rapt attention so long could not tire of cheering this glowing and inspiring end. For several minutes the cheers were given--and again given, and again. Meantime, poor Mr. Courtney had been standing--waiting for silence. To him had been entrusted the task of moving the rejection of the measure. He was dull, pedantic, and rather embarrassed after this great effort of Mr. Gladstone, and the House emptied. There was a certain stir of curiosity as the name of "Mr. Disraeli" was called by the Speaker; and then the bearer of one of the greatest names of our times, stood up. His speech was brightish, cleverish, and yet there was something wanting. Mr. Redmond was critical, cautious, severe on the financial clauses, but finally pronounced for the Bill. And so we started the first day of final debate on the Home Rule Bill. [Sidenote: The last lap.] There was no doubt about it; the House was thoroughly jaded, and it would have been beyond the power of the most Demosthenic orator to rouse it to anything like enthusiasm. Several of the speeches throughout the following evening were of a high order; but still there was no response--it was speaking from a rock to the noisy, unlistening, and irresponsive sea. The night of September 1st began with a brief, graceful, finely-phrased and finely-tempered speech by Mr. Justin McCarthy, which confirmed Mr. Dillon's frank expression of the Bill as a final measure of emancipation to the Irish people. The obvious sincerity of the speaker--the high character he has, his long consistency, and, above all, the sense of his thorough unselfishness, procured for Mr. McCarthy a respectful and even a sympathetic hearing from all parts of the House, and he had an audience silent, attentive, and admiring. [Sidenote: Joe's parting bolt.] The contrast between the kindliness, the sincere judgment, and the kindly disposition of Mr. McCarthy and the somewhat raucous and malevolent accents of Mr. Chamberlain, was very marked. Not that Mr. Chamberlain was by any means so nasty as usual; it looked as if he had been taught by the failure of his last utterance into learning at last that malevolence in the end defeats itself by its very excess, and he evidently had resolved to put a very severe restraint upon himself, and attuned his oratory to a very minor key. But this new tone was just as unsuccessful as the other, and there is a second unsuccessful and flat speech to be put to his credit. Many of the ideas, many of the phrases, were repetitions of things he had already said a hundred times over in the course of the previous debates; in short, the speech was a revelation of the fact, known to those who have watched Mr. Chamberlain carefully, that the soil is very barren and very thin; and that after a few oratorical crops it becomes exhausted. Perhaps the failure of the speech was also largely due to the fact that the Irish and the Liberal members, taught by previous experiences, resolved to also put restraint on themselves. They have learned by this time that interruptions do Mr. Chamberlain a great deal of good; and that his great nimbleness and readiness never come out so well as when he has suddenly to answer such an interruption. Addressing benches--blank, silent and irresponsive, he laboured rather heavily throughout the whole of his address; and there was a complete absence even from the Tory benches of that loud and frequent accompaniment of cheers to which Mr. Chamberlain is usually treated. In short, it was a dull, ineffective speech, mostly listened to in silence. [Sidenote: A coming man.] Sir Edward Grey delivered an admirable reply. In his case--as in that of Mr. Chamberlain--there was an immense disadvantage of a tired House, and the audience had thinned somewhat after Mr. Chamberlain had sat down. But those who remained were fortunate enough to hear one of the most perfect specimens of House of Commons eloquence that has been heard in Westminster for many a day. Indeed, there are few men in the House who have so perfect a command of what I might call the true, genuine, and even grand style of Parliamentary eloquence. Sir Edward Grey speaks with a perfectly unbroken, level tone; his language is moderate and reserved, and he has the great art of using language which implies and suggests more than it actually says. In short, his eloquence is that of perfect high-bred conversation, discussing questions with that complete self-command and composure of the man of the world who disdains to use, even of the greatest affairs, and of the strongest emotions, language of passion or exaggeration. Such a style is wonderfully effective in a business assembly, where men feel, even when they are under the glow of splendid eloquence, that there is behind the words a thinking, reflective, and composed mind. The speech gained enormously by the contrast of its composure--its fine temper, its calm and broad judgment--from the somewhat pettish, personal, and passionate utterances of Mr. Chamberlain. This young man will go very far--very far indeed. [Sidenote: Wearisome Wallace wit.] Then there was the interval of the dinner-hour--wound up with a speech from Mr. Wallace. The iniquity of the abandonment of the In-and-Out clause of the Bill was again the burden of his theme. He brought to the subject the same quaint, rich, but somewhat elaborate humour which made the success of his previous speech; and the Tories were more than delighted with some telling hits which he gave to Mr. Gladstone for the change of front. But Mr. Wallace made two mistakes. It is not given to any man to make a success twice over on the same theme; and he spoke at much too great a length. In the end he somewhat wearied the House, and altogether the second speech was not equal to the first, though it had a great deal of ability in it, and _The Sun_ was obliged next day to acknowledge with gratitude the great gratuitous advertisement which it received by numerous quotations from its columns. [Sidenote: Balfour at a disadvantage.] It was half-past ten o'clock when Mr. Balfour rose. By this time the heat, which had set in with quite tropical fervour, became almost overpowering, and the House, which began by being tired, had become almost exhausted. It was under these depressing circumstances that the Leader of the Opposition started on what must have been to him something of a corvée, and for a considerable time--although the speech was not wanting in some very telling hits and bright sayings--he laboured very heavily; he could not arouse the enthusiasm even of his own followers, and was thus wire-drawn and ineffective. [Sidenote: Honest John in fighting form.] If Mr. Balfour was at his worst, Mr. Morley was at his best. The speech which he delivered at Newcastle, during the previous week, placed Mr. Morley definitely in the very front rank of platform orators. After his speech of September 1st, he made a distinct and great advance in his position as a Parliamentary debater. His great defect as a speaker has been a certain want of nimbleness and readiness. He has infinitely wider and larger resources than Mr. Chamberlain, who, nevertheless, excels in the alertness which is often the accompaniment of shallowness. On this occasion Mr. Morley was rapid, prompt, crushing. As thus: Mr. Balfour had spoken of the people who denounced Dublin Castle as "third-rate politicians." "Who is the third-rate politician?" asked Mr. Morley, looking towards Mr. Chamberlain--everybody knows that he used to denounce Dublin Castle--and peal on peal of laughter and cheers followed from the Liberal and Irish Benches. Mr. Morley followed up his advantage by saying, with a comic air of despair, "It is very awkward to have coadjutors using this kind of language about each other." [Sidenote: A reminiscence of 1885.] This is just the kind of thing which rouses even the most tired of the House; there was an immediate rise the temperature; the Liberals and the Irish were ready to delightedly cheer; the Tories, who always get restive as they approach the final hour of defeat, grew noisy, rude, and disorderly. Then Mr. Morley turned to the charges against the Irish members, and asked the Tories if their own record was so white and pure that they could afford to throw stones. This brought an allusion to the Tory-Parnellite alliance of 1885, which always disturbs, distracts, and even infuriates the Tories. They became restless and noisy, and Mr. Balfour and Mr. Goschen began to rise and explain. Well would it have been for Mr. Goschen had he resisted this inclination. Mr. Morley was alluding to the Newport speech of Lord Salisbury, and Mr. Balfour was defending it. "Ah, but," said Mr. Morley, "did you not"--meaning Mr. Goschen--"did you not yourself attack Lord Salisbury for that very speech?"--a retort that produced a tempest of cheers. There were then some scornful and contemptuous allusions to Mr. Russell--to his stale vituperation, and, above all, to his grotesque charge against Mr. Morley of making himself the tool of clericalism. "There are more kinds of clericalism than one," said Mr. Morley, alluding to the violent partisanship of the Presbyterian clergymen of South Tyrone. Finally, the speech ended in a lofty, splendid, and impressive peroration. When tracing the progress of the cause for the last seven years, Mr. Morley spoke with the fine poetic diction in which he stands supreme, of "starless skies" and a "tragic hour"--meaning the Parnell crisis--and then he used the words which more than any other thrilled the House. "We have," he cried, "an indomitable and unfaltering captain," and cheer on cheer rose, while the Old Man sat, white, silent, with a composed though rapt look. There was the bathos of a poor speech from Colonel Nolan, and then the division. Everybody has the numbers now--34 majority--34 in spite of Saunders and Bolton, of absent Wallace, and unpaired Mr. Wilson. We cheer, counter cheer; we rise and wave our hats; and then quickly, quietly, even with a subdued air, we walk out and leave the halls of Parliament silent, dark, and echoless. CHAPTER XIX. HOME RULE IN THE LORDS. [Sidenote: A brilliant scene.] The brilliancy of the scene in the House of Lords on September 4th, when the fight over the Home Rule Bill began, was undeniable. Standing at the bar, in that small space which is reserved for members of the other Chamber, and looking out at the view, it was, I thought, one of the most picturesque and brilliant spectacles on which my eye had ever rested. The beauty of the House of Commons is great. But it is undoubtedly inferior in beauty to the House of Lords. In the House of Commons the roof is a false one, for the original loftiness of the ceiling was found too great to allow anyone to be properly heard. But in the House of Lords, where the acoustic properties are still extremely bad, the anxiety to hear its members has not yet proved great enough to induce them to make any change in the roof, with the result that the Chamber gives you an impression of loftiness, spaciousness, and sweep, such as you do not find in the other. And then the walls at the end obtain additional splendour from the fine pictures that there stand out and confront you--pictures full of crowded life, movement, and tragedy. The Throne, too, with all its gilded splendour, remains, even in its emptiness, a reminder of that stately and opulent lordship which our institutions give to a great personage above all parties and all classes. [Sidenote: Lovely woman.] In addition to all this, the House of Lords has made provision for the appearance of lovely woman, which contrasts most favourably with the curmudgeon and churlish arrangements of the House of Commons. In the House of Commons women have to hide themselves, as though they were in a Mahommedan country, behind a grille--where, invisible, suffocated, and crowded, they are permitted to see--themselves unseen--the gambollings of their male companions below. In the House of Lords, on the other hand, there is a gallery all round the house, in which peeresses and the relatives of peers are allowed to sit--observed of all men--prettily dressed, attentive--a beautiful flower-bordering, so to speak, to the male assemblage below. The variety and brilliancy of colour given by their fashionable clothes adds a great richness and opulence and lightness to the scene; in fact, takes away anything like sombreness, in appearance and aspect at least, from an assembly which otherwise is calculated to suggest sinister reminiscences of coming trouble and the approaching darkness of political agitation. The benches, too, have a richness which is foreign to the House of Commons, as the members of the popular assembly sit on benches covered with a deep green leather, which is dark, modest, and unpretentious. There is always something, to my eye at least, that suggests opulence in the colour crimson, and the benches of the Upper Chamber are all in crimson leather, and the crimson has all the freshness which comes from rarity of use. In the House of Commons, with all its workaday and industrious life, the deep and dark green has always more or less of a worn and shabby look. In the Upper Chamber the original splendour of the crimson cloth is undimmed; for most of the benches remain void and unoccupied for 999 nights of the thousand on which their lordships meet. [Sidenote: The two chambers--a contrast.] Whatever the cause I always associate the House of Lords in my mind with emptiness and silence, and the gloomy scenes of desertion. And, therefore, when I see it crowded as it was on this historic Monday evening, the effect it produces is heightened by the recollection and the sense of the contrast it presents to its ordinary appearance. The House of Commons has a certain impressiveness and splendour of air when it is very full; I always have a certain sense of exaltation by the mere looking at its crowded benches on these nights when the excitement of the hour brings everybody to his place. But then the House of Commons is frequently full, and there is no such sense of unusualness when you see it thus that you have when you look on the House of Lords with benches teeming with multitudinous life which you have seen so often empty, lifeless, and ghostly. Thus splendid was the scene, and yet it gave you a prevailing and unconquerable impression of gloom and lifelessness. In the House of Commons, the member addressing the assembly is like the wind which passes through an Æolian harp. You cannot utter a word which does not produce its full and immediate response. You say a thing which has the remotest approach to an absurdity in it, and the whole House laughs consumedly and immediately. You utter a phrase which excites party feeling, and at once--quick as lightning falls--comes back the retort of anger or approval; your way is studded and punctuated with some response or other, that signifies the readiness and the depth and amplitude of emotion in one of the most emotional, and noisy, and responsive assemblies in the world. It is a curious change from all this to look on all these crowded benches sitting in a silence that is unbroken more than once in the course of half an hour. [Sidenote: Spencer's serene courage.] I have often had to admire Lord Spencer--to admire him when he was a political foe as well as when he has been a political friend; but I don't think I ever admired him so much as when he stood up on September 4th to address this strange assembly. Hours he has passed through of all-pervading and all-surrounding gloom, danger, and assassination; but I do not suppose his nerve was ever put to a test more trying than when he confronted those large battalions of uncompromising and irresponsive foes. There were foes on all sides of him. They filled the many benches opposite to him; they filled, with equal fervour and multitudinousness, the benches on his own side. It was remarkable to see the thoroughness with which the Tories had mustered their forces; but the spectacle of the Liberal Unionists' Benches was even still more remarkable, for there was not a seat vacant; they had all come--those renegade and venomous deserters from the Liberal ranks--to do their utmost against the Liberal party and their mighty Liberal leader. And what support had Lord Spencer against all these foes--before him, around him--on all sides of him? On the benches immediately behind him there was a small band of men--not forty all told--looking strangely deserted, skeleton-like, even abashed in all their loneliness and isolation. These were the friends--few but faithful--amid all the hundreds, who alone had a word of cheer for Lord Spencer in a long and trying speech he had to address to his irreconcilable foes. But if there was any tremor in him as he stood up in surroundings so trying, I was unable to detect it. Indeed, at the moment he rose, there was something very fine and very impressive in his figure. He is, as most people know, a man of unusual height; hard exercise and the ride across country have kept him from having any of that tendency to _embonpoint_ which destroys in middle age so many a fine figure. On the contrary, there is not a superfluous ounce of flesh on that tall, alert figure; it is the figure of a trained athlete rather than the figure one would associate with a nobleman in the end of a self-indulgent and ever-eating and over-drinking century. The features, strong yet gentle, though far from regular, have considerable distinction, and the flowing red beard makes the face stand out in any assembly. Carefully but plainly dressed, erect, perfectly composed, and courteous in every word and look and gesture, Lord Spencer made his plea for justice to the nation where once his name was the symbol for hatred and wrong. [Sidenote: A man of deeds, not words.] Lord Spencer is not an orator. Simple, unadorned, straightforward, he speaks just as he feels; and this lent a singular fascination to a speech which from other lips might have sounded thin and ineffectual, for the speech was nothing less than a revelation into the depths of a nature singularly rich in courage and experience. One cannot help thinking of all that lay behind those plain and unadorned words in which Lord Spencer told the story of his conversion from the policy of coercion to that of self-government. Here was the man who had looked out one summer evening on the spot where his close friend--his chief subordinate--was hacked to death; this was the man who had brought to conviction and then to the narrow square of the execution yard the members of one of the most powerful and sanguinary of conspiracies; here was the man who for years had passed through the streets of Dublin and the towns of Ireland amid the rattle of cavalcade, as necessary for his protection against popular hate as the troops that protect the person of the Czar in the streets of Poland. Here was, indeed, a man not of words but of deeds; one who spoke not mere phrases coined from the imaginings of the brain, but one who had seen and heard and throbbed; had looked unappalled into the depths and the abysses of human life, and the dreadest political experiences; one who had visited the Purgatorio and conversed with the lost or the tortured souls, and come back from the pilgrimage with words of hope, faith, and charity. Altogether it was a fine speech--worthy of the man, worthy of his career, worthy of the great and historic occasion. [Sidenote: Funereal Devonshire.] I wish I could say as much of the speech of the Duke of Devonshire. It may be that his miserable failure was due to the fact that he is as yet unaccustomed to the House of Lords, and that the modesty which is undoubtedly one of his disadvantages as a public speaker has not yet been overcome; but his speech was a return to the very worst manner of his earlier days in the House of Commons. I have heard the Duke of Devonshire in his early manner and in his late; and his early manner was about as detestable as a man's manner could have been. He had a habit of sinking his voice as he approached the end of a sentence, so that a sentence beginning on a high note gradually sank to a moan, and a murmur, and a gulp. The whole effect was mournful in the extreme, and gave you a sense of the weariness and the worthlessness of all human life such as the most eloquent ascetic could never succeed in imparting. In the House of Lords, the Duke of Devonshire suddenly returned to his early and bad manner, and delivered a speech which was more like a funeral oration than a call to arms. [Sidenote: Lord Ribblesdale.] Of the remaining speeches I need say little. Lord Brassey, in a few manly and straightforward words, expressed his entire sympathy with the principle of the Bill; Lord Cowper gave another very melancholy and inaudible performance. And then came one of the most remarkable speeches the House of Lords has heard for some time. From the Treasury Bench there stood a tall, slight, and rather delicate figure. The face, long, large-featured, hatchet-shaped, was surmounted with a mass of curling-hair; altogether, there was a suggestion of what Disraeli looks like in that picture of him as a youth which contrasts so strangely and sadly with the figure and the face we all knew in his later days. This was Lord Ribblesdale. Lord Ribblesdale holds an office in the Royal Household in the present Administration. Up to a short time ago, he was unknown in even the teeming ranks of noble littérateurs; but an article he wrote on a conversation with the late Mr. Parnell gave indications of a bright and apt pen, a great power of observation, and a shrewd, impartial mind. On Sept. 4th, he surprised the House by showing also the possession of very rare and very valuable oratorical powers, His speech was excellent in diction, was closely and calmly reasoned, and produced an extraordinary effect, even on the Tory side, which, beginning by a stony silence, and a certain measure of curiosity--ended by giving an impression of being moved, and even awed a little by this speech. Altogether a very remarkable performance; we have not heard the last now that we have heard the first of Lord Ribblesdale in the fields of party oratory. [Sidenote: A striking personality.] The Duke of Argyll has changed a good deal in physical appearance during the last twenty years. There was a time when he was was robust and squat, a rather stout little man, with a slightly strutting manner, head thrown back, and very fine and spacious forehead; a head of hair as luxurious and drooping as that of Mary Magdalene. The form has considerably shrunk with advanced years, but not with any disadvantage, for the face, pinched and lined though it appears, has a finer and more intellectual look than that of earlier days. Wrong-headed--perhaps very self-conceited--at all events, entirely left behind by the advancing democratic tide, the Duke of Argyll is yet always to me a sympathetic and striking figure. If he thinks badly, at least he thinks originally. His thoughts are his own, and nobody else's; and though he is a bitter controversialist, at least he feels the weight and gravity of the vast questions on which he pronounces. Above all things, he has a touch of the divine in his oratory. He is, indeed, almost the last inspired speaker left in the House of Lords. There is another speaker, of whom more presently, with extraordinary gifts, with also true oratorical powers, capable of producing mighty effects; but with Lord Rosebery the light is very clear and very dry; there is none of the softness and brilliancy, and poetic and imaginative insight which are to be found in the speeches of the Duke of Argyll. On September 6th the Duke used very vehement and some very whirling language about Mr. Gladstone; his reading of history was all wrong; his policy for Ireland was--to put it plainly--brutal. But what cannot be forgiven to a man who has still such a beautiful voice--who still gesticulates so beautifully--and, above all, who is capable of rising to the height of some of the passages in the speech on this particular Wednesday? For instance, what could have been more beautiful than that passage in which he put the argument that Ireland was too near to be treated in the same way as a distant colony--the passage in which he spoke of seeing from the Scotch Highlands the sun shining on the cornfields and cottage windows of Antrim? [Sidenote: Rosebery's great triumph.] On September 7th a very great event happened in the House of Lords. The mental mastership of that assembly was transferred from one man to another, from the master of many legions to the captain of a few thin and almost despised battalions. I heard the whole of Lord Rosebery's speech, and I heard three quarters of the speech of the Marquis of Salisbury, and no impartial man could deny the contrast between these two speeches on this occasion, the one being no less fine and complete, the other no less monotonous than I have set forth. It was not merely that Lord Salisbury proved himself vastly inferior to Lord Rosebery in mere oratory, but the speech of the Foreign Secretary was that of a finer speaker, and of a more serious, intellectual, and sagacious politician. [Sidenote: A disadvantage conquered.] Lord Rosebery had the disadvantage of following upon a speaker who had reduced the House to a state of somnolent despair. Lord Selborne has an episcopal appearance, the manner of an author of hymns, and the unctuous delivery of a High Church speaker. But like most of the orators of the House of Lords, he considered two hours was the minimum which he was entitled to occupy, and though he spoke with wonderful briskness, for an octogenarian, at the beginning of his observations, his voice soon became so exhausted as to be a mere senile and inaudible whisper. Deeper and deeper it descended, and the House was in the blackest depths when the Foreign Secretary rose to speak. Everybody knows how embarrassing and distressing it is to an orator to have to begin by rousing an assembly that has been thus depressed; and the difficulty was increased in the case of Lord Rosebery by the fact that he had to address an audience in which four hundred men were against him and about forty in his favour; and there is no orator whose nerve is so steady, and whose self-confidence is so complete, as not to be depressed and weakened by such a combination of circumstances. This is partly the reason of the lighter tone of the earlier observations which offended some too sensitive critics. Indeed, it might have seemed for some time as if Lord Rosebery got up with the idea of treating the whole business as the merest unreality of comedy; and had resolved to signify this by refusing to treat either the House or the Bill or himself seriously. In face of the tragedies of the Irish sphinx--with all its centuries of brooding sorrow behind it, this was not a tone which commended itself to the judicious. But, then, this was a too hasty criticism. The light and almost chaffing introduction was necessary in the highest interests of art; for, as I have said, the House was depressed, and it was in no mood to listen to an orator whose creed appeared to it the merest rank treason. It was necessary to get the House into something like receptiveness of mood before coming to serious business; when that was done, it was time enough to seek to impress it. [Sidenote: An oratorical tour de force.] And this is just what happened. Everybody was in really good spirits by the time Lord Rosebery ten minutes on his legs; Lord Selborne's unctuous dronings had disappeared into the irrevocable and vast distances; in short, the moribund Chamber was alive, vivacious, and receptive. And when he had got them to this point Lord Rosebery took the serious part of his work seriously in hand. Not that he attempted lofty appeal. On the contrary, rarely throughout the speech did he raise his voice above that clear, penetrating, but eminently self-restrained tone which is the tone of a man of good society, discussing the loftiest and most complex problem with the easy and disillusioned composure of the experienced and slightly cynical man of the world. Nay, Lord Rosebery offended some of his critics by openly avowing the creed of the man of the world in dealing with the whole problem. He was careful to disown enthusiasm, or fanaticism, or even willingness in the service of Home Rule. It was with him simply a frigid matter of policy, a policy to which he had been driven by the resistless evidence of facts, the resistless logic of reason. [Sidenote: A deep-laid purpose.] This frankly was an attitude which grated slightly on the sensitive nerves of the many to whom Ireland's emancipation--with all the sobbing centuries which lie behind it--is a fanaticism, a faith, a great creed; but the point to be really considered is whether this was the tone to adopt for the purpose of carrying out the desired end. And I am inclined to think--and some of the hottest Irishmen I know agree with me--that this was the very way Lord Rosebery should have spoken. And after all it was wonderfully impressive--even to me with all I feel about the Irish question. For the image it presented--set forth by the physical aspect of the orator--was such as I can imagine to be wonderfully impressive to that dull, unimaginative, and unsentimental personage--the man of the shifting ballast, whose almost impenetrable brain has to finally decide this question. And the image presented to that very creature of clay was this: "Here is a man who is my Foreign Secretary; as such, he has every day of his life to deal with questions which affect my interests in the most direct way; to fight for my purse, my future, my Empire; and he has to do so with his brain matched against the brains of the astutest men in the world--the diplomatic representatives of other Powers. And all this he has to do with the sense that behind the smooth language of diplomacy, the unbroken and even voices of diplomatic representatives, there stand ironclads and mighty armies--bloodshed, wholesale, and hideous death--the tiger spirit and powers of war. And I see that the man who has all these complex problems to solve--these trained gamblers to watch--these sinister Powers to confront and think of--is a man of cold temper, of frigid understanding, of a power of calm calculation in face of all the perils and all the emotions and all the sentiment of the perplexing Irish problems; and to him Home Rule has come as a set, sober choice of possible policies for the interest of our Empire." Such an attitude--exalted by the even, though powerful, the cold, though penetrating voice--the face impassive and inscrutable--the eye, steady, unmoving, and unreadable--all this, I say, was just the kind of thing to produce an immense impression on those who are ready only to accept Home Rule as the policy that pays best. [Sidenote: Even the Peers impressed.] And certainly the House of Lords was wonderfully impressed by this attitude. There was no applause, except now and then from those skeleton ranks that lay behind Lord Rosebery, but then there was in the whole air that curious and almost audible silence--to use a conscious paradox--which conveys to the trained ear clearer sounds of absorption and attention than the loudest cheers. And then you began to forget the badinage of the earlier sentences--you forgave the frigidity and self-repression--you became strongly fascinated by the mobile face, inscrutable eyes, and the voice penetrated to your innermost ear; he gave you an immense sense of a clear, masterful, and resolute mind and character. And, finally, towards the end, when, to a certain extent, Lord Rosebery let himself go, there was a ring not of ordinary emotion, but of the passion of a great Minister who was fully conscious of the Imperial and supreme responsibility of a Foreign Minister, who was able to look great and even complex facts straight in the face, who had the courage to face the disagreeable solution of a troublesome and perilous problem. And, in spite of its lethargy, its hatred of his opinions, the House of Lords felt this also, and there was something of awe in the silence with which it listened to the ringing words of warning with which the speech concluded. And its attitude showed more. It was, so to speak, a soul's awakening; it was the discovery of having found at last a man who could sway, impress, and strike its imagination. [Sidenote: Salisbury's signal failure.] On Friday night, September 8th, Lord Salisbury had his opportunity of undoing this great effect--of reasserting that intellectual as well as mere voting dictatorship which he holds in the House of Lords; and he signally failed to rise to the occasion. I do not like the policy of Lord Salisbury, but there is a lucidity, a point, and sometimes a vigour in his speeches which make them usually charming reading. It was, therefore, with the full expectation of being interested that I listened to him, but he drove me out of the House by the impossibility of my keeping awake under the influence of his dull, shallow, and disappointing speech. He began with a little touch of nature that certainly was prepossessing. He had brought in with him a dark-brown bottle, like the bottle one associates with seltzer water. The fluid was perfectly clear; it was evidently not like the strong wine which Prince Bismarck used to require in the days when he used to make great speeches. And Lord Salisbury, as he poured out a draught--it looked very like Johannis water--lifted up the bottle to the Ministers opposite with a pleasant smile, as though to prove to them that he was not offending against even the sternest teetotal code. It was the first and the last bit of real human naturalness in the whole speech, for Lord Salisbury's manner and delivery are wooden, stiff, awkward and lumbering. He stands upright--except, of course, for that heavy stoop of the shoulders which is one of his characteristics--and rarely moves himself one-hundredth part of an inch. The voice--even, clear, and strong, and yet not penetrating, and still less inspiring--rarely has a change of note; it is delivered with the strange, curious air of a man who is thinking aloud, and has forgotten the presence of any listeners. The eyes--hidden almost amid the shaggy and black-grey hair which covers nearly the whole face--are never directed to any person around. They seem to gaze into vacancy; altogether there is something curious, weird, almost uncanny, in this great, big whale of a man, intoning his monologue with that curious detachment of eye and manner in the midst of a crowded, brilliant, and intensely nervous and restless assembly of men and women. [Sidenote: The pessimism of a recluse.] And it was not to be wondered at that a speech so delivered--a mere soliloquy--should fail to be impressive. It was too far and away unreal--had too little actuality to reach the poor humble breasts that were panting for excitement and exhortation. But once throughout it all was there a touch of that somewhat sardonic humour that sometimes delights even Lord Salisbury's political foes. Replying to the very clever speech of Lord Ribblesdale, Lord Salisbury described the speech as a confession, and all confessions, he added, were interesting, from St. Augustine to Rousseau, from Rousseau to Lord Ribblesdale. That, I say, was the solitary gleam. For the rest, it was an historical essay--with very bad history and worse conclusions; and the whole spirit was as bad as it could be. The Irish were still the enemy such as they appear in the bloody pages of Edmund Spenser, or in the war proclamations and despatches of Oliver Cromwell; and yet I cannot feel that Lord Salisbury's language could be resented as, say, the same language would be from Mr. Chamberlain. It all sounded so like the dreamings of a student and recluse--discussing the problem without much passion--without even malignity--but with that strange frankness of the unheard and unechoed musings of the closet. [Sidenote: A muttered soliloquy.] Finally, the speech also had the narrowness, shallowness, and unreality of the hermit's soliloquy. In the main, there was no insight. A logic-chopper, a dialectician--even in some respects a musing philosopher--such Lord Salisbury is; but breadth, depth, clear vision--of that there was not a trace in the whole speech. And then you went back in memory to the other speech--so clear, so broad-directed, yet uttered by a man who looked straight before him and all around him--who felt the presence in his every nerve of that assembly there which he was addressing; who lived and saw instead of dreaming--and you could come to no other conclusion than that of the two leaders of the House of Lords, the young man was the statesman and the man of action as well as the orator, and that it was worth the spending even all the weary hours of this past week in the House of Lords to learn so much of these great protagonists in our Parliamentary struggles. [Sidenote: Anti-climax.] Of other speakers I say but little. I came in during the dinner hour to see a very little man with what we call in Ireland a "cocked" nose, a conceited mouth, and a curious mixture of the unctuousness and benedictory manner of the pulpit and the limp twitterings of the curate at a ladies' tea-fight. This was the head of the Bishop of Ripon. I cannot stare for even a second at this tiny tomtit and artificial figure, with all those lawn sleeves and black gowns, and all the other fripperies and draperies of the parson-peer, who is to every rational man so grotesque and contemptible an intruder in a legislative chamber. In the grim and crowded gallery of the personages of an Irish Epic, such an intruder is like the thin piping note of a tiny bird mid the carnage and shouts and roars of a battle-field. Everybody knows the result of the division: for the Bill, 41; against, 419; majority, 378. It was a conclusion that was foregone, but the Lords themselves recognized the comic futility of it. The attempted cheers ended in one loud, mocking, universal laugh. And thus the curtain fell on the historic drama of the great Home Rule Session. T.P. THE END. INDEX. Address, the; 17-30 Agriculture; 24-28 Alarm, a false; 185-6 Anarchy, the unloosing of; 166-7 Allan, Mr.; 258 Apology, Mr. H. Fisher's; 250-1 ---- a lame; 251-2 Argyll, the Duke of; 275-6 Asquith, H.H.; 15, 42, 46, 52, 128-30, 185 ---- A splendid speech; 28-9 ---- Advocate rather than Minister; 28 ---- as Leader; 148 ---- and the miners; 162 Austin in the fight, Mr.; 249 Baiting the lion; 78 Bannerman, Campbell- (see Campbell-Bannerman). Balfour, A.J.; 29, 77, 86, 126, 141, 178, 183-6, 195, 204, 211, 224-5, 231, 234, 239, 266-7 ---- Independent of tradition; 17 ---- and Sir John Gorst; 26 ---- and Home Rule; 37 ---- attacks the chairman; 65 ---- and Churchill deadly foes; 72-3 ---- and Chamberlain unfriendly; 73 ---- and resident magistrates; 94 ---- and the Vote of Censure; 104-5 ----'s sensitiveness; 106 ---- limp; 128-9 ---- and Gladstone; 195, 196 ---- the unready; 215-6 Bartlett, Ashmead; 123-4 Bartley, G.T.C.; 55, 57, 200-1, 258 ----'s character; 54 Barton and Dunbar; 117, 148-9 Beach, Sir Michael Hicks (see Hicks-Beach). Beaufoy, M.H.; 17 Belfast Catholics, The attack on; 147-9 Biggar, Mr., a reminiscence; 98-9 Bills, bringing in; 13-4 Bimetallism; 55, 57, 200-1 Birrell, Augustin; 116-7 Bolton, T.; 268 Bowles, Gibson; 64, 258 ---- and the fight; 249 Brodrick, Mr. St. John; 237-9 Bryce Mr. J., and Home Rule; 38 ---- and Mr. Gladstone; 181-2 Bryne, Mr.; 189 Budget, The; 146-7, 151-2 Bullet in Downing Street, the; 153-5 Burnie, Mr.; 258 Burns, John; 163 ----'s appearance; 16, 62 ---- and Lowther; 65 ---- and Chamberlain; 196 ---- and the fight; 249 ---- A triumph for Mr.; 259-60 ---- in fighting form; 266-7 Bursting of the cyclone, the; 248-9 Burt, "Tommy"; 150-1 Byles, W.P.; 69 Calm before the storm, the; 111 Campbell-Bannerman, Mr.; 258-9 ----'s wit; 26 Carlton Club echoes; 77 Carson, E.; 92-3, 138-40 ---- in the Green Street Court-House; 93-5 ---- the lawyer and the hangman; 94 ---- and Fred Archer; 139 Cavendish, Victor; 177 Chamberlain, Austen; 135 ----'s resemblance to his father; 12 Chamberlain, Joseph; 13, 43, 66, 77, 81, 97, 101-2, 136-7, 178, 185-7, 189, 204, 228, 231, 234, 237, 264-5 ----'s party; 12 ---- and "Tom Potter"--an incident; 21-2 ---- A tumble for; 27 ---- attacks the chairman; 65 ---- and Balfour unfriendly; 73 ----'s inaccuracy; 73-4 ---- as a Jingo; 100-1 ---- and Gladstone; 118-9, 143-4 ---- and Parnell; 119-20 ---- abashed; 121 ----'s dustheap; 128 ---- pleased; 132-3, 143-4 ---- angry; 134-5 ---- disorderly; 167 ---- obstructive; 170 ---- inferior to Balfour; 183 ---- and the _Daily News_, 189-95 ---- and Burns; 196 ---- and Gladstone--a contrast; 206 ---- and Mr. Dillon's forgetfulness; 219-26 ---- and Harrington; 223-226 ---- and the fight in the House; 242-6 ----'s beautiful elocution; 243-4 Chambers, a contrast between the two; 271 Chaplin, Henry; 261 Charwomen and ratcatchers; 212-3 Churchill, Lord Randolph,; 58, 110, 132, 161, 167, 247 ---- his genius and fall; 20 ---- improving; 46 ---- and Balfour deadly foes; 72-3 ---- and Gladstone; 169-70 Clanricarde, Lord; 155-7 ---- entry of a ghost; 157-8 Claque in Parliament, The; 54 Clothes; 201-4 Cobbe, Mr.; 210 Cochrane left limp; 78 Collings, a "rodent," Jesse; 27 Comic relief; 18 Condon and the fight, Tom; 249 Consolations of old age, the; 192-3 Conservative opportunity, A; 188-9 Conybeare and the Speaker, Mr.; 226-7 Courtney, L.H.; 13, 185, 263 ----'s H's; 22 Cranborne's impudence, Lord; 68, 176 ---- interruption; 129-30 Crean in the Fight, Mr.; 249 Criminal combination, a; 65-6 Cunningham Graham (see Graham, Cunningham). Cyclone, the bursting of the; 249 _Daily News_ and Chamberlain, the; 189-95 Dalziel, Mr.; 236, 258 Davenport, Mr. Bromley; 67 Davitt, Michael--a portrait; 124 Deeper and deeper; 176-7 Defeat, a Government; 252-3 Demos and dinner; 209-10 Devonshire, funereal; 273-4 De Worms, Baron; 90 Dilke, Sir Charles; 16, 99-100, 252-56 ---- and Egypt; 158-9 Dillon and Chamberlain, Mr.; 218-26, 264 Disappointed office seekers; 52 Disestablishment; 200-1 Disraeli--an oriental juggler; 56 ---- A recollection of; 69 ---- Coningsby; 263 Division, a tight; 179-80 Divisions; 48, 110, 144-5, 150, 162, 169, 177, 179-80, 187-8, 236-7, 240-1, 253, 268, 282 Divorce, Irish objections to; 199-200 Duty of Liberals, the plain; 257-8 Dynamitards, release of; 29 Egypt; 158-61 Eirenicon, a great; 160-1 Ellis, Tom; 144 Employers' liability; 42-3, 150-1 Epoch of brutality, the; 78 Fall of the flag, the; 234 False alarm, a; 185-6 Farmer, pity the poor (see Agriculture) Fateful moment, the; 218 Fergusson, Sir James; 252 Field unsteady, the; 236 Fight in the House, the; 242-53 First fence, the; 164-5, 169 Fisher & the fight, Hayes; 251-2 Forster, Arnold; 149 ---- and Sexton; 227-8 Foster, Sir Walter; 177 Fowler, H.H.; 41-2 Freemasonry and Mr. Gladstone; 210-12 Gibbs, A.G.H.; 176 ---- and the fight, Vicary; 246-7, 250 Gladstone, Mrs.; 35 ---- and her husband; 176 Gladstone, William Ewart; 51, 60, 78-86, 102-4, 110-6, 144, 178, 180-6, 188-9, 191-5, 200-1, 205, 214-5, 228, 231-3, 237 ---- in 1880; 13 ----'s entrance and appearance; 18-9, 32-4 ---- on the Address; 18-20 ---- and Mr. Collings; 27 ---- and his secretaries; 28 ----'s speech on Home Rule; 32-6 ----'s great peroration; 35-6 ----'s Olympian wrath; 47 ---- indefatigable; 80-1 ---- the survival; 82-3 ---- dreams; 84-5 ---- and the Vote of Censure; 106-8 ---- An episode; 108-9 ---- and Chamberlain; 118-9, 143-4, 172-3 ---- and Parnell; 120-1 ---- a great speech; 141-4 ---- and the bullet; 154-5 ---- and Egypt; 159-61 ---- and the miners; 163 ---- and Churchill; 169-70 ---- his greatest speech; 169-70 ---- and Lord Wolmer; 180-1 ---- and Bryce; 181-2 ----'s hearing; 182-3 ---- and Balfour; 195-6 ----'s rejuvenescence; 202-3 ----'s dress; 202-3 ---- the Grand Old Philosopher; 205-6 ---- and Chamberlain, a contrast; 206 ---- and Freemasonry; 210-2 ---- a splendid gambler; 233-4 ---- to the rescue; 238-40 ---- and the fight; 252 ---- and his tactics; 256-7 ---- and the guillotine; 257 ---- a mighty speech; 260-3 Gorst, Sir John; 25-6, 90-1 ---- and Mr. Balfour's face; 26 ---- Tory distrust of; 46 Goschen, J.H.; 55, 241, 267 ---- to the rescue; 61 ---- attacks the Chairman; 65 ---- a good speech; 131-2 ---- playful; 151-2 Government and private Members, the; 153 Graham, Cunningham; 25 Great night, A; 35 Grey, Sir Edward; 23-4 ---- a coming man; 255-6 Griffiths, Ellis; 45 Guillotine, but not yet, the; 197 Haldane, Q.C., R.B.; 23 Halifax and Walsall, Liberal enthusiasm; 29 Harcourt, Sir William; 15, 74, 192, 233, 237 ---- beams pleasantly; 29 ---- and the Budget; 146-7 ---- as an Early Christian; 152-3 Hardie, Keir- (see Keir-Hardie) Harland, Sir E.; 254 Harrington and Chamberlain, Mr.; 223-6 Hayes-Fisher and the fight; 251-2 Healy and the fight, Mr.; 249 Herod--Judas!; 242-6 Hibbert, Sir John; 252 Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael; 43 Hissing in the gallery; 244 Home Rule; 31-41, 58-64, 111-44, 178-206, 227-52, 260-8 ---- and Gladstone (see Gladstone and Home Rule) ---- in Committee; 164-76 ---- in the Lords; 269-82 Hull; 162-3 Hunter, Dr.; 51, 57 Incidents; 21-2, 193-4 Incident, the Sexton; 198 Interruption, a vulgar and caddish; 126 ---- another unmannerly; 129-30 ---- My remarks on; 193-4 Ireland in danger; 59 ----'s Charter through; 260-8 Irony of seats, the; 9 Irish objections to Divorce; 199-200 Jackson and Gladstone; 108-9 James, Sir Henry; 13, 48, 141, 155 Jealousies and great questions, small; 47-50 Jesse Collings (see Collings, Jesse) Johnston of Ballykilbeg; 10-1, 25, 137-8 Jones, Atherley; 241 Judas!; 242-7 Keeping the seats; 247 Keir-Hardie; 24-5 Kenyon convulses the House; 47-8 Labouchere, Henry; 15, 97, 99, 236, 252 ----'s pronunciation; 22-3 ---- and Biggar; 98-9 Lambert, G.; 17 Liberals, the plain duty of; 257-8 Lion lashes out, the; 79 Lockwood, Frank; 163 Logan and the fight; 247-9, 251-2 Lords, Home Rule in the; 269-82 Lowther, James; 55-7, 68-71, 77, 81, 85-6, 89-90 ---- What a cruel face; 55 ---- and Burns; 65 ---- flouts Balfour; 80 Lubbock, Sir John; 199 Macartney, W.G.E.; 170, 199-200 Marjoribanks, E.P.C.; 58, 62 McCarthy, Justin; 29, 122, 264 McCorquodale & Co.; 252-3 McGregor, Dr.; 197 McNeill, Swift; 176-240 Mellor, J.W.; 65-6, 166, 197, 236-8, 246 ---- and Mr. Sexton; 238-40 Memories; 9 Milman, the interfering; 240 Miners, triumph of the; 161-2 Ministry, the new; 15 Mitchelstown, and Mr. Dillon; 219-23 Morley, Arnold; 254 Morley, John; 15, 64, 75, 185, 211, 218, 253, 267-8 ---- and Chamberlain; 134-5 ----'s tweed suit; 203-4 Morton, A.C.; 59, 259 Malcontents, powerful; 52 Morton, E.J.C.; 24 Mundella, A.J.; 43, 90-1, 163 My apology; 250-1 My remarks on interruption; 193-4 Narrow shave, a; 187-8 Nepotism in the army; 258-9 New ministry, the; 15 Ninth Clause, the; 230-7 Nolan, Colonel; 268 O'Brien, William; 12, 126 ---- and the fight; 249 Obstruction, naked and unashamed; 29 ---- sober and subdued; 40-1 ---- organized for; 53 ---- artists in; 55 ---- rampant; 64 ---- flagrant; 76 ---- Tory; 144-50 Old age, the consolations of; 192-3 Opening of Parliament; 9 ---- of the row; 246-7 Opposition in excellent form, the; 17 Outburst, the; 175-6 Parliamentary Wednesdays; 44-5 Parnell twelve years ago; 31-2 ---- a memory of; 105-6 ---- and Chamberlain; 119-20 ---- and Gladstone; 120-1 Pas de Deux, a brilliant; 204-5 Peers impressed, even the; 279-80 Philipps, J.W.; 16 Plain duty of the Liberals, the; 257-8 Potter and Mr. Chamberlain, T.B.; 21-2 Powerful malcontents; 52 Private Members and the Government; 153 Railway rates; 51 ---- Servants' Bill; 153 Redmond. J.E.; 29, 230-1, 263 ---- and Home Rule; 38-9 Reduced majorities; 229-30 Reed us an alarmist, Sir E.J.; 255-6 Registration Bill, the; 41 Release of the dynamitards; 29 Reminiscence of 1885, a; 267-8 Rendel, Stuart; 41 Renewal of the fight; 178 Rentoul, Dr.; 11 Ribblesdale, Lord; 274 Rigby, Sir John; 127 Ripon, the Bishop of; 282 Robertson, E.; 260 Rollit, the modern Tory, Sir Albert; 41 Roscoe, Sir Henry; 193 Rosebery's great triumph, Lord; 276-80 Russell, Sir Charles; 203 Russell, T.W.; 25, 45, 64, 89, 91-2, 176 ---- and the Second Chamber; 169 Salaried Members; 51 Salisbury's signal failure, Lord; 280-2 Saunderson, Colonel; 12 ---- & the fight; 248-9 Saunders, Mr.; 268 Scene, a strange; 174-6 ---- A wild; 210-12 ---- A brilliant; 269 "Scenes,"; 47-8, 65-6, 129-30, 166-9, 176, 227-8, 237-40, 242-53 ---- Pathetic; 182-3 Selborne, Lord; 276 Seton-Karr; 53 ---- demands admission; 10 Sexton, Thomas; 65, 136, 147-8, 237 ---- and Home Rule; 37 ---- and the bullet in Downing Street; 153-4 ---- Intervenes; 189 ---- incident, the; 198 ---- and Arnold Forster; 227-8 ---- makes the running; 234-5 ---- takes the lead; 235-6 ---- defies the Chair; 238-40 Shave, a narrow; 187-8 Shaw, Mr.; 236 Shout of battle, the; 214-5 Shuttleworth, Sir O.K.; 254 Silence of the Tories, cowed; 262 ---- of the Irishry, Stony; 165-6 Situation, an awkward; 159 Slow progress; 195-6 Small jealousies and great questions; 49-50 Speaker snubs Brookfield, the; 126 ---- and Lord Cranborne, the; 130 ---- and Mr. Conybeare, the; 226-7 ---- and the fight, the; 249-50 Speech from the throne, the; 16-7 Spencer's serene courage, Earl; 271-3 Squabble, a; 237-40 Stansfeld, Mr.; 117-8 Storey, S.; 61 ----'s fateful speech; 68-9 Storm, a coming; 58 Strange bedfellows; 10 Stuart Rendel; 46 Suspensory Bill for Wales, the; 45-8 Tanner, Dr.; 11 ----'s waistcoat, Dr.; 11 Tea on the Terrace; 207-9 Temple, Sir Richard; 179 _Times_ out-manoeuvred, the; 53 ---- organized for obstruction, the; 53 ---- Cowed silence of the; 262 To thy orisons; 213-4 Tory Leader, no; 58 Tragedy of politics, the; 101 Tramp, tramp, tramp; 241 Treasury Bench looks awkward, the; 184-5 Trevelyan, Sir George; 122-3 Triumph, a historic; 160 ---- for Mr. Burns, a; 259-60 ---- of the tweed coat, the; 201-40 Uganda; 21-4, 96-101 Ugand_er_; 22-3 Ugly moment, an; 184-5 Vaccinationists, the Anti-; 177 Vincent and fair trade, Sir H.; 25, 258 Visit to the Lords, a; 155 Vote of Censure, the; 104-10 Vulgar and caddish interruption, a; 126 Wales in a rage; 45-8 Wallace, Mr.; 268 ---- Wit, wearisome; 266 Walsall and Halifax; 29 Watchers for the dawn; 10 Welsh Suspensory Bill, the; 45-8 "Who said 'Rats'?"; 27 Wilson, J.H.; 162 Wistful Whip, the; 213 Wolmer, Lord; 180-1 Woods, Sam; 16 Wyndham, George; 26 Young Man and the Old, the; 167-8 *** Transcriber's notes, corrections *** p28 tyranny : was "tryanny" p59 ofttimes : was "oft-times" p87 Brummagem : was "Brummagen" p95 satisfactory : was "satifactory" p98 must : was "most" p108 spellbound : was "spell-bound" p128 cheers--he : was "cheer--she" p150 unusually : was "unusally" p191 airily : was "arily" p221 eyeglass : was "eye-glass" p226 spellbound : was "spell-bound" p250 shamefaced : was "shame-faced" (see HTML version for pagenumbers) *** End Transcriber's notes *** 
14886	----	ENGLAND'S CASE AGAINST HOME RULE by A. V. DICEY The Richmond Publishing Co. Ltd. Orchard Road, Richmond, Surrey, England 1886 PREFACE. An author who publishes a book having any reference to Irish affairs may, not unnaturally, be supposed either to possess some special knowledge of Ireland, or else to be the advocate of some new specific for the cure of Irish discontent. Of neither of these suppositions can I claim the benefit. My knowledge of Ireland is merely the knowledge--perhaps it were better to say the ignorance--of an educated Englishman. It is derived from conversation with better informed friends, from careful attention to the discussions on Irish policy which for the last eighteen years have engrossed public attention, and from books accessible to ordinary readers. If I can claim no special acquaintance with Ireland, still less have I the presumption or the folly to come forward as the inventor of any political nostrum. My justification for publishing my thoughts on Home Rule is that the movement in favour of the Parliamentary independence of Ireland constitutes, whether its advocates recognise the fact or not, a demand for fundamental alterations in the whole Constitution of the United Kingdom; and while I may without presumption consider myself moderately acquainted with the principles of Constitutional law, I entertain the firmest conviction that any scheme for Home Rule in Ireland involves dangerous if not fatal innovations on the Constitution of Great Britain. To set forth the reasons for this opinion is the object of this work. The opinion itself, whatever its worth, is not the growth of recent controversy; it has been entertained for years, and has been expressed by me in various publications. This book is much more than a reprint; its contents are, however, in part made up of articles which have already been published. My thanks are due to the owners of the _Contemporary Review_ and of the New York _Nation_ for their permission to make free use of my contributions to the pages of their periodicals; it is a pleasure to acknowledge the exceptional liberality with which my friend, Mr. E.L. Godkin, has allowed me to publish on my own responsibility in the columns of the _Nation_, opinions of which he is himself the strenuous and most able opponent. Nor are my acknowledgments due only to the living. Gustave de Beaumont's '_Irelande sociale et politique_' was placed in my hands by a friend after the plan of my argument was complete, and the writing of this book was in fact begun. From De Beaumont I learnt more than from any other writer on the subject of Ireland with whose works I am acquainted, and I found to my great satisfaction that his speculations curiously confirm the objections I was prepared to urge against the policy of Home Rule. It is a duty to insist upon the debt I owe to De Beaumont, because at the present moment no greater service can be rendered to Englishmen and to Irishmen alike than to press upon them the study of an author whose writings are far better known on the Continent than in England, and whose thoughts, though they may seem a little out of date, are full not only of profound wisdom but of practical guidance. A.V. DICEY. OCTOBER, 1886. CONTENTS CHAPTER I NATURE OF THE ARGUMENT CHAPTER II. MEANING OF HOME RULE CHAPTER III. STRENGTH OF THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND CHAPTER IV. ENGLISH ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE. Argument I.--From Foreign Experience " II.--From the Will of the Irish People " III.--From the Lessons of Irish History " IV.--From the Virtues of Self-Government " V.--From the Necessity for Coercion Acts " VI.--From the Inconvenience to England of Refusing Home Rule CHAPTER V. THE MAINTENANCE OF THE UNION CHAPTER VI. SEPARATION CHAPTER VII. HOME RULE--ITS FORMS. I.--Home Rule as Federalism II.--Home Rule as Colonial Independence III.--Home Rule as the Revival of Grattan's Constitution IV.--Home Rule under the Gladstonian Constitution CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION APPENDIX CHAPTER I. NATURE OF THE ARGUMENT. [Sidenote: Aim and line of argument] My aim is to criticise from a purely English point of view the policy of Home Rule, or the proposal to create a more or less independent Parliament in Ireland; and as a result of such criticism to establish the truth, and develop the consequences, of this proposition--namely, that any system of Home Rule, whatever be the form it takes, is less beneficial to Great Britain, or (to use popular language) to England, than is the maintenance of the Union, and is at least as much opposed to the vital interests of England as would be the national independence of Ireland. The train of reasoning by which it is sought to establish this principle, and the consequences which the principle involves, consists of the following steps: first, an examination into the causes which give strength to the Home Rule movement in England, and the nature of the arguments in its support used by English Home Rulers; secondly, a statement of the advantages and disadvantages, from an English point of view, on the one hand of maintaining the Union, and on the other of separation from Ireland; thirdly, a criticism of each of the principal forms[1] under which Home Rule has been actually presented to the attention of the public, the aim of such criticism being in each case to determine how far the particular form of Home Rule can compete as regards the interests of England with the alternative policies of Unionism and of Irish independence; and, fourthly, a summary of the conclusions arrived at by this survey of the policy of Home Rule. My endeavour will be to make this survey without any appeal to prejudice, passion, or sentiment, and with the calmness and fairness which a scientific constitutionalist should display in weighing the merits of any other proposed alteration in our form of government, such for example as the introduction of life peers into the House of Lords, or in estimating the value of some foreign constitutional invention, such for example as the Swiss Referendum or the Dual system which links together Hungary and the Austrian Empire. No citizen of the United Kingdom indeed can pretend to be an impartial critic of a policy which divides the whole nation into opposing parties. But during a period of revolutionary excitement it is well to remember that any legislative innovation, however keen the feelings of partisanship which it may arouse, is always in itself capable of being looked at from a logical or abstract point of view, and ought to be so looked at by jurists. To one class indeed among the advocates of Home Rule the fundamental principle contended for in these pages will appear irrelevant to the points at issue between such Home Rulers and their opponents. Nationalists, who still occupy the position held in 1848 by Sir Gavan Duffy and his friends, and who either openly contend for the right of Ireland to be an independent nation, or accept Home Rule (as they may with perfect fairness) simply as a step towards the independence of their country, are naturally and rightly unaffected by reasoning which shows, however conclusively, that Home Rule may be as injurious to England as a complete severance of the political connection between England and Ireland. A Nationalist may say with justice that he is no more bound to consider whether England will or will not be damaged by Ireland's becoming a nation, than an Italian patriot was bound, in 1859, to show that Austria would not suffer by being deprived of Lombardy or of Venetia; he accepts Home Rule on the maxim that half a loaf is better than no bread, but a starving man is not required to refuse the offer of food because the donor cannot make the gift without getting into debt; nor does the acceptance of half a loaf afford the least presumption that the recipient would not prefer a whole loaf if he could get it. Some indeed of the considerations which tell in the eyes of an Englishman against Home Rule may indirectly lead an Irish Nationalist to the belief that the boon of legislative independence, if granted to Ireland, would prove the present of a stone in reply to a prayer for bread. But should a Nationalist be convinced that no form of Home Rule would benefit Ireland, he would cling all the more firmly to the faith that her salvation depends upon her taking her place among independent states. To Nationalists, therefore, even though at present they may be fighting the cause of Irish nationality behind the vizor of Home Rule, these pages are not addressed; the position they occupy is one of which no man has any cause to feel ashamed. The opinion that, considering the misery which has marked the connection between England and Ireland, the happiest thing for the weaker country would be complete separation from the United Kingdom, is one which in common with most Englishmen, and, it may be added, in common with the wisest foreign observers, I do not share; but fairness requires the admission that it is an opinion which a man may hold and may act upon, without incurring the charge either of folly or of wickedness. To Nationalists, however, these pages, as I have said, are not addressed. The persons for whom they are intended are either Home Rulers, whether in Great Britain or in Ireland, who _bonâ fide_ advocate the policy of Home Rule as a policy good and wise in itself and for its own sake; or else Unionists, who firmly believe that the whole State will suffer by any attempt to tear up the Treaty of Union, but yet are unable to give for the faith that is in them as strong grounds of reason as they would desire. To such persons the importance of the principle (if true) which is contended for throughout these pages must appear undeniable; it strikes at the root of more than one half of the arguments by which Home Rulers from the time of Mr. Butt to the days of Mr. Parnell have attempted, fairly enough, and latterly with great success, to win over English opinion to their cause, and it undermines the whole position occupied by Mr. Gladstone and his English followers. They assume with undeniable truth that the English people will not at the present moment, except under compulsion, acquiesce in Irish independence; they further assume, and must from the nature of the case assume, that Home Rule under one shape or another presents a fair prospect at least of advantages not derivable from the maintenance of the Union, and is at the very worst so much less injurious to British interests than would be separation from Ireland, as to offer to England a reasonable compromise between the just claims of Englishmen to secure the prosperity of Great Britain and the greatness of the British Empire, and the legitimate desire of Irishmen for national independence. If the proposition which it is my object to maintain turn out to be sound, all these assumptions fall to the ground, together with a host of fallacies for which these assumptions form the necessary basis. The principle, in short, which it is my object to enforce--that Home Rule in Ireland is more dangerous to England than Irish independence--lies at the bottom of all the rational opposition made by Unionists to the creation of an Irish Parliament, and, together with the arguments by which the principle is maintained, and the conclusions to which it leads, forms the true and just and reasonable case of England against Home Rule. [Sidenote: Possible objections to method.] The whole spirit and method of my argument is open to at least three plausible objections, which deserve examination, both because if left unnoticed they are certain to occur to and perplex any intelligent reader, and because their removal brings into relief the strength of my line of reasoning. [Sidenote: 1. Too abstract.] _First objection._--To deal with a burning controversy in the abstract and logical manner suitable to the discussion of the problems of jurisprudence savours, it may be objected, of theoretic, academic, or pedantic disquisition more fit for a University class-room than for the living world of contemporary politics. The force of this criticism does not admit of denial. My method of treating the question of Home Rule is necessarily lifeless when compared with the vehement rhetoric or heated eloquence which characterises public or parliamentary discussion; it is also true that the argumentative treatment of matters affecting actual life always bears about it a certain air of unreality. If, however, systematic argument lacks the animation of political discussion or dispute, it possesses its own counterbalancing merits, and the mode of treating Home Rule purposely adopted in these pages has, it is conceived, two not inconsiderable advantages. The first of these advantages is that it diverts the mind from a crowd of personal, temporary, and in themselves trivial considerations, which, though they possess not only an apparent but also a real significance, are at bottom irrelevant to the final decision of the true points at issue. Whether, for example, Mr. Gladstone ought to have proclaimed himself a Home Ruler before the elections of 1885, whether Lord Salisbury's reference, or alleged reference, to twenty years of coercion was or was not judicious, and did or did not receive a fair interpretation from his opponents; whether Lord Carnarvon misled Mr. Parnell, or whether the Irish leader was a dupe to his own astuteness; whether Mr. Chamberlain ought to have joined the late Ministry, or, having gone into the Cabinet, ought never to have left it; what have been the motives consciously or unconsciously affecting Mr. Gladstone's course of action--these and a hundred other enquiries of the like sort, which engage the attention and distract the judgment of the public, possess, in the eyes of any serious thinker occupied in estimating the strength of the arguments for and against Home Rule, no material importance whatever. His concern is the merit or demerit of a legislative enactment. He is not concerned at all with the conduct or the character of legislators. Mr. Gladstone's motives may be the highest which can be ascribed to the Premier by the voice of admiring friendship, or the basest which can be imputed to him by the unfairness of political rancour. In any case they are irrelevant to the matter in hand. An unwise measure will not become a beneficial law because its author is a saint or a patriot; a statesmanlike law will not turn out a curse to the country because its defender is an intriguer or a traitor. We all see that this is so if we carry our view back to the controversies of the last generation; the personalities of fifty or sixty years ago are reduced before our eyes into their real pettiness. The first Reform Bill still retains its importance for as a measure which for good or bad revolutionised the constitution; its beneficial or pernicious effects are still traceable in the England of to-day; but its evils are not lessened by the acknowledged virtues of Lord Althorpe, nor are its good effects marred by the ambition of Brougham or the violence of O'Connell. It is no slight recommendation of any mode of reasoning if it suggests to us the prudence of judging the policy of 1886 in the spirit and by the standards which every man of sense applies to the policy of 1832. Academic disquisition has its faults, but ought to produce academic calmness; a class-room is after all a better place for quiet reflection than the House of Commons or the hustings. The second of the advantages which marks the proposed mode of argument is that a line of thought which fixes a reader's attention all but exclusively upon the probable effects of Home Rule is a preservative against the errors which arise from introducing into a dispute, bitter enough in itself, all the poisonous venom of historical recrimination, and all the delusions which are the offspring of the misleading tendency to personify nations. The massacres of 1641, the sack of Drogheda, the violated treaty of Limerick, the follies strangely mingled with the patriotism of Grattan's Parliament, the outrages which discredited the rebellion of 1798, and the cruelties which disgraced its suppression; the corruption which carried the Union, and the broken pledges which turned political union into a source of fresh sectarian discord; the calamities, the mistakes and the crimes which mark each scene in the tragedy of Irish history, afford to Protestants and to Catholics alike an exhaustless supply of recriminatory invective. But to evoke the spectres of past ages is not the way to assuage the animosities of the present day. The crimes of bygone generations are subjects for curious investigation, but the determination of historical problems, even when conducted in the spirit of the calmest enquiry, never removes the difficulties of practical statesmanship. Apologies, at any rate, or diatribes produced by the necessity for palliating or for denouncing the misdeeds of other times, only add a new element of confusion to the turmoil of political warfare. Whether the insurgents of 1641 massacred every Protestant on whom they could lay their hands, or bear only an indirect responsibility for the death of eight or nine thousand men and women ruthlessly expelled from the lands of which in Irish eyes they were wrongful occupiers, is a question to be settled by Mr. Froude, Mr. Lecky, and Mr. Gardiner; but the barbarities of insurgent Catholics, and the retaliatory severity of Protestant victors, which mark the fury of an internecine conflict removed from us by the lapse of more than two centuries have little to do with the practical question whether it be expedient at the present day that the local affairs of Ulster should be dealt with by a Parliament sitting at Dublin, or whether members from Ireland should have seats at Westminster. Recrimination, while it adds nothing to knowledge, disturbs the judgment of statesmen and of electors; but not even the reckless resuscitation of bitter memories, which ought to be forgotten, adds so much to the confusion of the day as does the habit fostered by the illusions of language, and by the falsely applied historical method, of speaking and thinking of England and Ireland as though they were two human beings, who, on closing a life-long quarrel, might be expected to entertain towards one another those sentiments of regret, generosity, or gratitude which are proper to men and women, but can only by the boldest of fictions be supposed to enter into the relations between classes or nations. To this delusion of personification is due the notion that Englishmen of to-day ought to make compensation and feel personal shame for the cruelties of Cromwell, or for Pitt's corruption of Irish patriots; that we are in some way liable and should feel compunction for crimes committed by (possibly) the ancestors of the very men to whom we are now supposed to owe reparation. To the same cause is to be attributed the absurd demand that the Irish Catholics should put on ashes and sackcloth for the massacres of 1641, or that living Irishmen should be grateful for the well-meant though most unsuccessful efforts made by the Parliament of the United Kingdom to govern one-third of the United Kingdom on sound principles of justice. A Sovereign's plainest duty is to rule his subjects for their good according to the best of his power and of his knowledge, and the mere discharge of duty does not entitle a ruler to gratitude from the persons who are benefited by his justice. A Parliamentary Sovereign being the representative and agent of its (so-called) subjects, is _à fortiori_ if there can be degrees in such matters--bound to govern for the benefit of the people whom it represents and ought to serve; and there is something strictly preposterous in the idea that Irish electors, who in common with the rest of the United Kingdom send representatives to Westminster, should glow with gratitude when the Parliament of the United Kingdom so far performs its duty as to enact laws from which Ireland derives benefit No one suggests that Englishmen or Scotchmen should feel grateful either to Parliament or to their Irish fellow-citizens for the maintenance of good government throughout England and Scotland. And it would puzzle the wit of man to show why one-third of the United Kingdom should be expected to entertain feelings never demanded from the other two-thirds thereof. [Sidenote: 2. Too much reference to interest.] _Second objection_.--The habitual reference made throughout these pages to national interest as the test or standard of national policy has (it may be suggested) a touch of sordidness and selfishness, and implies that statesmanship has nothing to do with morality. This impression may it is possible be conveyed to a careless reader by the form in which the case against Home Rule is stated; but no suggestion can in reality be more unfounded. It will be seen to be unfounded by any one who notes for a moment the meaning of the term "interest" as applied to matters of national policy. The interest or the welfare of a nation comprises many things which have nothing to do with trade or with wealth, and the value of which does not admit of being measured in money. The interest, welfare, or prosperity of England includes the maintenance of her honour, the performance of all her obligations, and, above all, the strict discharge of every engagement which she has undertaken towards countries or to individuals. The protection, for example, of law-abiding citizens in the enjoyment of rights secured to them by law; the maintenance of peace throughout the length and breadth of the Empire; the suppression of lawlessness; the strict performance of every promise which the State has made to every man or body of men, whether poor or rich, whether belonging to the class of labourers, of farmers, or even of landlords--the rendering, in short, to every man of his due--are things which without any improper extension of the term interest fall under the head of national interests. Utilitarianism, in truth, being a body of principles applicable primarily to legislation and only secondarily to ethics, its doctrines hold far more obviously true in the field of politics than in the field of morals. On any wide view of large public questions expediency will be found to be only another name for justice. It can be neither the interest nor the duty of any nation to legislate in a way which produces more of suffering than of happiness. A policy opposed to the interests or the welfare of the United Kingdom as a whole, even though it may appear for a moment to favour some particular portion of the State, is, we may be well assured, a policy opposed not only to wisdom, but to justice. [Sidenote: 3. Exclusively English point of view.] _Third objection._--To look at Home Rule mainly from an English point of view, to criticise it because of its bearing on the interests or welfare of England, is, it may perhaps be thought, to treat the whole matter from the wrong side, and to betray an indifference to the welfare of Ireland. Home Rule, the objector may say, is a scheme for the government of Ireland. It therefore concerns the people of Ireland alone, it should be subjected to examination from an Irish, not from an English point of view, and to consider it in any other light is to exhibit in a new form that callous disregard by England of Ireland's claims which has prevented the two countries from blending into one community. It is of primary importance that this objection should be stated with all the force which can be given to it, for were it valid it would assuredly be, in the judgment of all just persons, fatal to the line of reasoning which my readers are invited to pursue. The objection is, however, so far from being valid as to present my whole method of reasoning in a false light. A main reason why an Englishman does well to look at Home Rule from an English point of view is, that this mode of dealing with the adjustment of the possibly opposed interests of England and Ireland is (paradoxical though the assertion may sound) both the least irritating and in itself the fairest method of meeting the demands of Irish Home Rulers; though--and this is the one certainly good result which has arisen from the changed attitude towards Home Rule of Mr. Gladstone and his followers--these demands may now happily be dealt with as claims put forward not specially by Irishmen, but by a political party which includes large numbers of Scotchmen and Englishmen. The assertion, however, that to look at Home Rule from an English point of view is the way to minimise irritation, and to deal fairly with a topic specially requiring fair treatment, requires some explanation. Experience of the world teaches every man that in complicated affairs of private life, involving questions, say, both of money and of sentiment, nothing so surely prevents quarrels as to separate in the clearest manner possible matters of business from matters of feeling. In determining a dispute between _A._ and _B._, a great step is gained when a friend induces each of the parties first to state clearly his exact legal rights and his exact pecuniary interest, and only when these facts are made clear to consider what are the concessions fairly to be demanded from him as a matter, not of right, but of liberality. Nothing, again, is plainer in the conduct of controversies between man and man, than that if _A._ intends to exact his full legal rights from _B._, the most irritating defence of _A.'s_ conduct is his pretence of acting solely with a view to _B.'s_ own good; and that, on the other hand, no manner of enforcing _A.'s_ claims against _B._ causes so little unnecessary vexation to _B._ as for _A._ to say openly that he demands his rights because they are his rights, and because to demand them is his interest. Here, if nowhere else, the rules which apply to private disputes apply also to political controversies. If millions of Englishmen refuse a request made by millions of Irishmen, by far the least irritating form of refusal is open avowal that the reason for denying a separate Parliament to Ireland is the irreparable injury which Home Rule will work both to Great Britain and to the British Empire. This assertion has the merit, which even in politics is not small, of truth. If the Parliamentary independence of Ireland threatened as little damage to England as the Parliamentary independence of Victoria, an Irish legislature would meet in Dublin before the end of the year. Englishmen, it is true, do not believe that Ireland would in the long run gain by the possession of legislative independence. It is not, however, the doubt as to the reality of the blessing to be conferred on Ireland, but the certainty as to the injury to be done to England, which causes their opposition to Home Rule. To base this opposition upon the probable inconsistency between a Home Rule policy and the true interests of Ireland, involves the assumption that Englishmen are better judges of what makes for the true interest of Ireland than are the majority of Irishmen. The soundness of this assumption must seem to any man, who either recalls the most obvious facts of Irish history, or notes the depth of ignorance as to all things Irish which prevails even among our educated classes, to be open to reasonable question. What is not questionable is that the assertion, in whatever form it be made, that three millions of Irishmen do not understand what is good for themselves must arouse in their hearts deep and natural anger. If indeed the claim of Great Britain to look in this matter of Home Rule solely to the effect of Home Rule on British interests, were equivalent to the assertion that because England is strong she ought wherever her own interests are at stake to reck nothing of justice, such cynical scorn for all considerations except the possession of superior power would kindle just resentment in the soul of every man, whether in Ireland or in England, who believes that national morality is more than a mere phrase, though even in this case the open cynicism might excite less disgust than cynicism veiling itself under the mask of benevolence. Happily, however, there is in the present instance no opposition between truth and justice. Home Rule is no doubt primarily a scheme for the government of Ireland, but it is also much more than this: it is a plan for revolutionising the constitution of the whole United Kingdom. There is no unfairness, therefore, in insisting that the proposed change must not take place if it be adverse to the interests of Great Britain. This is merely to assert that the welfare of thirty millions of citizens must, if a conflict of interest arise, be preferred to the interest of five millions of citizens. Home Rulers, it must again and again be repeated, demand not the national independence of Ireland, but the maintenance of the connection between England and Ireland on terms different from the conditions contained in the Act of Union. To keep one's mind clear on this point is of importance, because the result follows that, as already intimated, a whole series of arguments or claims which may fairly be put forward by a Nationalist are not available to a Home Ruler. A Nationalist, for example, may urge that the will of the Irish people to be independent is decisive of their moral right to independence, and that the perils which a free Ireland may bring upon England need not in any way concern him or his country. Whether indeed the principle of "nationality," or the contention that any portion of a State which deems itself conscious of distinct national sentiment may, as a matter of absolute right, claim to become a separate nation, can be maintained, is an enquiry not so easily answered in the affirmative as is often assumed by modern democrats. What, however, is here insisted upon is not that the principle of nationality is unsound, but that this principle does not cover the demand for Home Rule. A Home Ruler asks not for the political separation, but for the political partnership of England and Ireland. He wishes not that the firm should be dissolved, but that the Articles of Association should be revised. There is not then the least unfairness in the answer that no modification can be allowed which in the judgment of his associates is fatal to the prosperity of the concern. To crowds excited by pictures of past greatness or of past struggles, by the hope of future prosperity to be brought about by miracles wrought by substituting the rule of love for the rule of law, there may appear to be something prosaic, not to say repulsive, in the comparison of the relation between Great Britain and Ireland to the relation between shareholders in a trading company. But at a period when a fundamental change in the constitution is advocated on grounds of faith, benevolence, or generosity, a good deal is gained by bringing into relief the business aspect of constitutional reforms. It can never be amiss to be reminded that, in the words of one of the most thoughtful among the advocates of Home Rule, "Government is a very practical business, and that those succeed best in it who bring least of sentiment or enthusiasm to the conduct of their affairs." It is at moments of revolutionary fervour, when men measure proposed policies rather by their wishes than by their experience, that every citizen needs to have impressed upon his mind that government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination. Nor let any one imagine that the expression of the belief constantly avowed or implied throughout these pages, that Home Rule would be as great an evil to England as Irish independence, shows a reckless and most unbusinesslike indifference to the perils and losses of separation. My conviction is unalterable that separation would be to England, as also to Ireland, a gigantic evil. This position is fully compatible with the belief that there are other evils as great, or greater. If a man says that he prefers the loss of his right hand to the loss of his life, he cannot reasonably be charged with making light of amputation. It is however perfectly true that the line of argument pursued in this work must, if it be sound, drive those to whom it is addressed to a choice between the maintenance of the Union and the concession to Ireland of national independence. FOOTNOTES: [1] These are-- i. Home Rule as Federalism. ii. Home Rule as Colonial Independence. iii. Home Rule as the Restoration of Grattan's Constitution. iv. Home Rule under the Government of Ireland Bill, or, to use a convenient name, under the Gladstonian constitution. Chap. vii. CHAPTER II. MEANING OF HOME RULE. "Home Rule" is a term which, like all current and popular phrases, is, though intelligible, wanting in precision. Hence it is well, before we investigate the different forms which schemes of Home Rule may assume, to fix in our minds precisely what Home Rule does mean and what it does not mean. [Sidenote: What Home Rule means.] "Home Rule"--or, to speak more accurately, the policy of Home Rule--means, if we may use language with which we are all familiar in relation to the Colonies, the endowment of Ireland with representative institutions and responsible government. It means, therefore, the creation of an Irish Parliament which shall have legislative authority in matters of Irish concern, and of an Irish executive responsible (in general) for its acts to the Irish Parliament or the Irish people. Hence every scheme of Home Rule which merits that name is marked by three features--_first_, the creation of an Irish Parliament; _secondly_, the right of the Irish Parliament to legislate within its own sphere (however that sphere may be defined) with habitual freedom from the control of the Imperial or British Parliament; and _thirdly_, the habitual responsibility of the Irish executive for its acts to the Irish people or to their representatives. These three characteristics, which I do not attempt to define with anything like logical precision, constitute the essence of Home Rule. Other things, however important in themselves, are matters of subordinate detail, and open to discussion or compromise. The limitations to the sphere within which the Irish Parliament is to exert independent authority, the definition of the term "Irish concerns," the constitution of the Irish Parliament, the nature and appointment of the Irish executive (which, though it is no doubt generally assumed to be a Cabinet chosen in effect like the Victorian Ministry, by the local Parliament, might well, and indeed far better, be a President or Council elected, like the Governor of New York, by popular vote), the occasions on which the British Parliament should retain the legal or moral right of legislation for Ireland--these and a score of other subjects which at once suggest themselves to a critic of constitutions are of supreme importance, but in whatever way they may be determined, they do not touch the principle of Home Rule. A scheme, on the other hand, however wise its provisions, which lacked the essential characteristics already enumerated, would not meet the demand for Home Rule; an Act which did not constitute a Parliament for Ireland could not possibly satisfy the sentiment of Irish nationality; an Irish Parliament which did not habitually, at any rate, legislate with independence of the Parliament at Westminster could not divest the law in Ireland of its "foreign garb"; an executive not responsible directly or indirectly to the Irish people could not give full effect to the legislation of an Irish Parliament, and the existence of such an executive would (if the true ground why law is hated in Ireland be its alien character) only divert popular hostility from the law to the government. [Sidenote: What Home Rule does not mean.] Home Rule does not mean Local Self-Government; Home Rule does not mean National Independence. Local Self-Government means the delegation by the Sovereign, and in England therefore by Parliament, to local bodies, say town councils, county boards, vestries, and the like, of strictly subordinate powers of legislation for definite localities. The authority possessed by such local bodies extends over definite and limited areas, (which themselves are often created by legislation); exists for definite purposes; is directly conferred or tolerated by Parliament; has no capacity of indefinite extension; and neither comes into competition with nor restrains, either legally or morally, the legislative authority of Parliament. Logically, indeed, there may be difficulty in drawing the precise line of demarcation between a plan for conferring on Ireland the minimum of legislative independence which could without absurdity be dignified with the name of Home Rule, and a plan for giving to the boroughs and counties of Ireland the maximum of law-making power which could, without fraud upon the intelligence of the English people, be comprehended within the elastic phrase "extension of Local Self-Government." But this logical puzzle need give us no trouble; it is based on the fact that every non-sovereign law-making body, whether it be the French National Assembly, the American Congress, or the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Co., belongs to one and the same genus.[2] The casuists of jurisprudence may quibble for ever over the confines between Home Rule and Local Self-Government; men of sense engaged in the consideration of affairs thrust aside such inopportune logomachy, and content themselves with the knowledge that were the Town Council, say, of Birmingham or of Belfast endowed with tenfold its present powers, it would differ essentially from any Irish Parliament which, even though denied the Parliamentary title, should represent the people of Ireland, and should have received the very smallest amount of authority which could by any possibility satisfy Mr. Parnell. Nor are differences which may not admit of easy definition difficult for a candid enquirer to discern. A town council, whatever its powers, does not represent a nation, and derives no prestige from the principle of nationality; the feeblest legislative assembly meeting at Dublin would rightly claim to speak for the Irish people. A town council, whether of Birmingham or of Belfast, springs from and is kept alive by the will of Parliament, and cannot pretend that its powers, however extensive, compete with the authority of its creator. Should a town council use even its strictly legal rights in a way not conducive to the public interest, Parliament would without scruple override the bye-laws of the council by the force of Parliamentary enactment. The authority of an Irish representative assembly would from the necessity of things be, if not a legal, at any rate a moral check, I will not say on Parliamentary sovereignty, but assuredly on Parliamentary legislation. Extended rights of self-government, though given to every local body in Ireland, would not affect the relation between the people of Ireland and the Parliament at Westminster. The very aim of Home Rule, even under its least pretentious form, is to introduce a new relation between the people of Ireland and the Parliament at Westminster. The matter may be summed up in one phrase: Local Self-Government however extended means the delegation, Home Rule however curtailed means the surrender, of Parliamentary authority. [Sidenote: Local Self-Government.] The distinction here insisted upon is of practical importance, for it is connected with a question so pressing as to excuse an apparent, though not more than an apparent, digression. English Radicals, and many politicians who are not Radicals, hold, whether rightly or not, that the sphere of Local Self-Government may with benefit to the nation be greatly extended in England. The soundness of this view in no way concerns us, and it is a matter upon which there is no reason, for our present purpose, to form or express an opinion; they also hope that by a similar extension of Local Self-Government to Ireland they may satisfy the demand for Home Rule. They conceive, in short, that it is possible to confer a substantial benefit upon the Irish people, and to close a dangerous agitation, by giving to Belfast and to Cork the same municipal privileges which they wish to extend to Birmingham or to Liverpool. The reasons for this belief are threefold: that Local Self-Government is itself a benefit; that Ireland ought, as of right, to have the same institutions as England; that Local or Municipal Self-Government will meet the real if not the nominal wish of the Irish people. This hope I believe to be delusive. The reasons on which it is grounded are--one of them probably, and two of them certainly--unsound. Local Self-Government is one of those arrangements which, like most political institutions, cannot be called absolutely good or bad. It is a good thing, I suppose, at Birmingham, and was some fifty years ago a good thing in Massachusetts, and it may prove (though this is speculation) a good thing in an English county. Local Self-Government is not admirable at New York; it works less well than it once did in New England; it does not produce very happy effects in London parishes; we may well doubt whether it be really suited for modern France. Local Self-Government where it flourishes is quite as much a result as a cause of a happy social condition; the eulogies bestowed upon it contain a curious mixture of truth and falsehood. What is true is, that where self-government flourishes, society is in a sound state; what is false is, that Local Self-Government produces a sound state of society. The primary condition necessary for the success of self-government is harmony between different classes. The rich must be the guides of the poor, the poor must put trust in the rich. Men who are placed above corruption must interest themselves in the laborious but important details of local administration; men who might be corrupted themselves, must desire to place power in the hands of leaders who are as a class incorruptible. High public spirit, a detestation of jobbery, trust and goodwill between rich and poor, are the feelings which make good local or municipal government possible. There are certain parts of England, there are larger parts of the United States, where these admirable and rare conditions exist. Do they exist in Ireland? I need not answer the question, for if they existed our difficulties in Ireland would be at an end. If, indeed, there were a genuine desire for Local Self-Government, expressed by Irishmen themselves, every sensible man would at once surrender _à priori_ theories in favour of the conclusions drawn by practical experience. But no such wish has been expressed, and until it is expressed, a thoughtful observer may fairly believe that Local Self-Government will not flourish in a country where are presented none of the conditions on which its prosperity depends, and he may conjecture that in Ireland, as in France, an honest centralised administration of impartial officials, and not Local Self-Government, would best meet the real wants of the people.[3] The notion that Ireland or any one part of the United Kingdom ought, or has a claim, to have the same institutions as every other part rests on a confusion of ideas, and is a false deduction from democratic principles. It is founded on the feeling which has caused half the errors of democracy, that a fraction of a nation has a right to speak with the authority of the whole, and that the right of each portion of the people to make its wishes heard involves the right to have them granted. This delusion has once and again made Paris the ruler of France, and the Parisian mob the master of Paris. The sound principle of democratic government--and England must, under the present state of things, be ruled on democratic principles--is, that all parts of the country must be governed in the way which the whole of the State as represented by the majority thereof deems expedient for each part, and that while every part should be allowed a voice to make known its wants, the decision how these wants are to be met must be given by the whole State, that is (in the particular instance) by the majority of the electors of Great Britain and Ireland. From this principle it does not follow either that every part of the kingdom should have those institutions which that part prefers, (though in so far as this end can be attained its attainment is desirable,) or, still less, that every part of the kingdom should have the same institutions as every other part. That this is so everybody in a general way admits. No one supposes that because the people of Leicester abominate vaccination the Vaccination Acts are not to be extended to that borough, or that the wish of the people of Birmingham in favour of free schools is decisive in favour of making education in Birmingham gratuitous. The will of a locality is admitted not to be the expression of the will of the nation. No one, again, fancies that the legal institutions of England ought of necessity to be extended to Scotland, or the law of Scotland to England. In Ireland recent legislation has, and with general approval, established institutions which no one alleges must, because they exist in Ireland, be applied of necessity or as a matter of justice to England. English tenants might in many cases, it is likely enough, think the provisions of the Irish Land Acts a boon, but no one would listen to the argument that simply because under the special circumstances of Ireland special privileges are given to Irish tenants, similar privileges ought to be conferred upon every English tenant farmer. The idea therefore that because English boroughs or counties receive an increased measure of self-government the same measure ought to be extended to Ireland, though it sounds plausible, is neither conformable to democratic principle nor to our habitual practice, grounded as that practice is on considerations of common sense and expediency. The true watchwords which should guide English democrats in their dealings with Ireland, as in truth with every other part of the United Kingdom, are not "equality," "similarity," and "simultaneity," but "unity of government," "equality of political rights," "diversity of institutions." Unless English democrats see this they will commit a double fault: they will not in reality deal with Ireland as with England, for to deal with societies in essentially different conditions in the same manner is in truth to treat them differently; they will not--and this is of even more importance--perform the true function of the democracy, which is to remove by special legislation, mainly in a democratic direction, the peculiar evils which are the result of Ireland's peculiar and calamitous history. Once realise that Local Self-Government is essentially different from Home Rule, and it becomes patent that the idea of satisfying the wish for Home Rule by increasing the municipal franchises of every township in Ireland is a dangerous delusion. Local Self-Government may be an excellent thing in its way--it is possibly (though I do not say it is) the thing which the inhabitants of Ireland ought to wish for; but it is not the thing which they do wish for, and it has not the qualities which, if Home Rule be really desired by the Irish people, make Home Rule desirable. It does not meet the feeling of nationality; it does not give the popular leaders authority to settle the land question; it does not free the law from its alien aspect. The very reasons which make English reformers favour the extension of Local Self-Government in Ireland prove that Local Self-Government, whatever its merits, is no substitute for Parliamentary independence. Englishmen recommend Local Self-Government because it does not check on the authority of the Imperial Parliament; Home Rulers desire Home Rule because it does check Imperial legislation. Brandy is good, and water is good; but when a neighbour asks for a glass of spirits, it is mockery to tender a glass of water on the ground that both spirits and water are drink. The benevolent person who makes the offer must not wonder if he receives no thanks. [Sidenote: National Independence.] Home Rule does not mean National Independence. This proposition needs no elaboration. Any plan of Home Rule whatever implies that there are spheres of national life in which Ireland is not to act with the freedom of an independent State. Mr. Parnell and his followers accept in principle Mr. Gladstone's proposals, and therefore are willing to accept for Ireland restrictions on her political liberty absolutely inconsistent with the principle of nationality. Under the Gladstonian constitution her foreign policy is to be wholly regulated by a British Parliament in which sit no Irish representatives; she is not to have the right either of raising an army or of endowing a church; she is in fact to surrender any claim to the rights of a nation in consideration of receiving a certain number of State-rights. In all this there is nothing unreasonable and nothing blameworthy. One part of the United Kingdom is prepared to accept new terms of partnership. But this acceptance, though reasonable and fair enough, is quite inconsistent with any claim for national independence. A nation is one thing, a state forming part of a federation is quite another. To ask for the position of a dependent colony like Victoria, or of a province such as Ontario, is to renounce the demand to be a nation. A _bonâ fide_ Home Ruler cannot be a _bonâ fide_ Nationalist. This point deserves attention, not for the sake of the miserable and ruinous advantage which is obtained by taunting an adversary in controversy with inconsistency till you drive him to improve his logical position by increasing the exactingness of his demands, but because the advocates of Home Rule (honestly enough, no doubt) confuse the matter under discussion by a strange kind of intellectual shuffle. When they wish to minimise the sacrifice to England of establishing a Parliament in Ireland, they bring Home Rule down nearly to the proportions of Local Self-Government; when they wish to maximise--if the word may be allowed--the blessings to Ireland of a separate legislature, they all but identify Home Rule with National Independence. Yet you have no more right to expect from any form of State-rights the new life which sometimes is roused among a people by the spirit and the responsibilities of becoming a nation, than you have to suppose that municipal councils will satisfy the feelings which demand an Irish Parliament. FOOTNOTES: [2] See Dicey, Law of the Constitution (2nd ed.), p. 80. [3] De Beaumont's opinions on this point are perfectly clear: they represent the judgment of an extremely able thinker, who approaches the problems presented by Irish society with an impartiality which from the nature of things is unattainable by any Englishman or Irishman. His utterances will moreover command the more respect from the consideration that De Beaumont, belonging as he did to the school of his intimate friend De Tocqueville, was inclined rather to overrate than to underrate the virtues of self-government; whilst as a Frenchman he possessed a knowledge which cannot fall to any Englishman of the benefits conferred upon the people by a good administration of the French type. The following extracts from a chapter too long for complete citation, which is written to show that Ireland needs a centralised government, deserve the most careful attention. The whole chapter, and indeed the whole work to which it belongs, ought at the present moment to be familiar to every English Liberal:-- "_Pour détruire le pouvoir politique de l'aristocratie, il faudrait lui ôter l'application quotidienne des lois, comme on l'a privée précédemment àdu pouvoir de les faire. Il faudrait, par conséquent, modifier profondément le système administratif et judiciaire qui repose sur l'institution des juges de paix et sur l'organisation des grands jurys, tels qu'ils sont constitués aujourd'hui. Et d'abord, pour exécuter cette réforme, il faudrait centraliser le pouvoir_. * * * * * "_Plus on considère l'état de l'Irlande, et plus il semble qu'à tout prendre un gouvernement central fortement constitué serait, du moins pour quelque temps, le meilleur que puisse avoir ce pays. Une aristocratie existe, qu'on veut réformer. Mais à qui remettre le pouvoir qu'on va retirer de ses mains? Aux classes moyennes?--Elles ne font que de naître en Irlande. L'avenir leur appartient; mats ne compromettront-elles pas cet avenir, si la charge de mener la société est confiée dès aujourd'hui à leurs mains inhabiles et à leurs ardentes passions?_ _"Telle est aujourd'hui en Irlande la situation des partis, que l'on ne peut obtenir quelque justice des pouvoirs politiques, si on les laisse à l'aristocratie protestante, et que l'on ne saurait guere en espérer davantage, si on les donne aussitôt à la classe moyenne catholique qui s'élève._ _"Ce qu'il faudrait à l'Irlande, ce serait une administration supérieure aux partis, à l'ombre de laquelle les classes moyennes pussent grandir, se développer et s'instruire, pendant que l'aristocratie perdrait son pouvoir._ * * * * * _"Il n'entre, du reste, ni dans mon désir, ni dans mon plan, d'expliquer la forme et le mécanisme de la centralisation qui conviendrait à l'Irlande, et dont je me borne à reconnaître en principe l'utilité passagère pour ce pays; je ne hasarderai, sur ce sujet, qu'une seule idée pratique._ _"C'est que, pour organiser en Irlande un gouvernement central puissant, il faudrait de plus en plus resserrer le lien d'union qui attache l'Irlande à l'Angleterre, rapprocher le plus possible Dublin de Londres, et faire de l'Irlande un comté anglais._ * * * * * _"On ne conteste point que l'Irlande ait besoin d'un gouvernement spécial; et s'il y a nécessité de la soumettre à un régime législatif autre que celui de l'Angleterre, il faut bien aussi des agents particuliers pour appliquer des règles différentes d'administration. Mais, ceci étant admis, l'on ne voit pas ce qui aujourd'hui empêcherait de placer le siége du gouvernement irlandais dans la première ville de l'empire britannique._ * * * * * _"La réforme de la vice-royauté et l'abolition des administrations locales d'Irlande ne sont, sans doute, que des changements de forme. Mais ce sont des moyens pratiques indispensables pour exécuter les réformes politiques dont ce pays a besoin. Il faut que, pendant la période de transition où se trouve l'Irlande, ceux qui la gouvernent soient placés absolument en dehors d'elle, de ses moeurs, de ses passions; il faut que son gouvernement cesse complétement d'être irlandais; il faut qu'il soit entièrement, non pas anglais, mais remis à des Anglais."_--2 De Beaumont, _l'Irlande, Sociale, Politique et Religieuse_, pp. 124-129 CHAPTER III. STRENGTH OF THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND. [Sidenote: Strength of movement.] A dispassionate observer will easily convince himself that in Great Britain the movement in favour of Home Rule is stronger than is believed by its opponents. Patent facts show that this is so. In 1880 no single English statesman had avowed himself its supporter; not fifty English or Scotch members of Parliament could have been found to vote for an enquiry into the admissibility of Mr. Parnell's policy. It may well be doubted whether at that date ten British constituencies would have returned to Parliament representatives pledged to grant Ireland a separate legislature. Contrast this state of things with the present condition of affairs. England has indeed pronounced decisively against any tampering with the Act of Union, but the leading statesman of the day has avowed himself a Home Ruler; he is supported by eminent colleagues, and by nearly two hundred representatives of British constituencies. Scotland and Wales on the whole favour the policy of separation, and if, as has been roughly computed, of the electors of the United Kingdom, 1,316,327 have voted in support of the Union, the same computation shows that 1,238,342 are, to say the least, indifferent to its maintenance. These are facts which tell their own tale. The Home Rule movement has waxed strong. What is in England the source of its strength, and what are the arguments in its support relied upon by its English advocates? [Sidenote: Source of its strength.] Nine persons out of ten will reply that the Home Rule movement in England owes its origin and force to the patronage of Mr. Gladstone. No one who has watched the ebb and flow of popular feeling will underrate that statesman's influence, and few persons, whatever their political bias, will deny that but for Mr. Gladstone's conversion Mr. Parnell's teaching would not at this moment have gained for him as many as fifty disciples among English politicians. It may even be conceded that but for Mr. Gladstone's action no English party would, during his lifetime, have adopted the Parliamentary independence of Ireland as a watchword. But here, as in other instances, there is grave danger of mistaking the occasion for the cause of events, and if Mr. Gladstone's conversion has determined the form and increased the momentum of the Home Rule movement, it would be an error to hold that the prevalence of doctrines unfavourable to the maintenance of the Union between England and Ireland were wholly or even in the main due to his conduct. His conversion itself remains to be accounted for. This would (except to those critics who ascribe the most important acts of public statesmanship to the pettiest forms of private selfishness) remain almost unaccountable unless it were regarded in the light, in which it ought no doubt to be looked upon, of an example of the facility with which a leader guided by keen sympathy with the real or supposed opinions or emotions of the moment follows, while apparently he guides, the phases of public opinion. Candour moreover compels the admission that, if Mr. Gladstone's action has led some politicians to "find salvation"--according to the miserable cant of the day--in the adoption of opinions which cannot be dignified with the name of convictions, many honest men both within and without the sphere of public life have under the countenance of a great name been encouraged to avow publicly sympathies with the demand for Home Rule which have been slowly matured, and have hitherto scarcely been acknowledged even in the convert's own mind. To any one who perceives that the force of a movement opposed to the traditions of English statesmanship must be attributed to some cause beyond the personal influence of a leader, the idea naturally suggests itself that the prevalence of conversions to the policy of Home Rule is due to the power of argument, and that the English people have been brought to see the expediency of conceding a legislature to Ireland by the same methods which induced them to abolish the policy of Protection. This notion does not correspond with known facts. Till a recent date hardly an argument was addressed to the English public in favour of Home Rule; no great writer or speaker even aimed at proving to the nation that a reform or innovation which has been rejected again and again as repeal had more to recommend it under a new name. Great changes in our institutions or policy have hitherto been preceded by lengthy, in general by too lengthy, discussion. The doctrines of Free Trade were established by Adam Smith seventy years before the abolition of the Corn Laws, and Protection was not vanquished till Cobden and Bright had, by laborious controversy, exposed its fallacies in every corner of Great Britain. The reasons in favour of Catholic Emancipation were stated in their full force by Burke more than forty years before a Roman Catholic was admitted to Parliament, and the whole case in favour of the Catholics had been argued out in the presence of the nation long before the passing of the Catholic Relief Bill. No movement ever appealed to keener popular sympathies than the movement for the abolition of slavery. Yet the Abolitionists made their case out--proved it, as lawyers say, "up to the very hilt," before a single slave was released from bondage. The Irish Church (it may be suggested) was abolished off-hand. This apparent exception to the regular course of long argumentative controversy which in England marks all great innovations has misled Home Rulers, yet the exception is only apparent. Long before 1869 the intelligence of England--one might say of the civilised world--had been convinced by the power of reason that the maintenance in a Roman Catholic country, and at the expense of a Roman Catholic population, of a Protestant ecclesiastical establishment was an indefensible anomaly. The walls fell at the first blast which sounded attack, because the foundations had been argumentatively sapped and undermined for more than a generation. With the cause of Home Rule it is far otherwise. Its sudden progress has been characterised by a singular absence of systematic discussion. No one supposes that its English advocates are deficient in talent or in zeal. Mr. Gladstone, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Bryce--to name no others--are as competent apologists for any opinion they entertain as can well be found. They have been put upon their mettle; they have addressed the nation in Parliament and out of Parliament; they have produced a certain number of reasons, which deserve respectful consideration, in support of their favourite innovation. But no candid critic can feel that these eminent men, and other less distinguished labourers in the same cause, have put forward arguments of strength enough to account for the undoubted conviction of the reasoners. Appeals to trust in the people, to confidence in human nature, to the strength of love as contrasted with the weakness of law, to shame for our past misgovernment of the Irish, to sanguine expectations of terminating a secular feud which has caused wretchedness to Ireland and has lessened the power of England, would appear in the judgment of orators addressing English electors likely to have much more weight with their audience than any attempt to prove that the establishment of a Parliament at Dublin will be conducive to the benefit of the Empire. Nor is this wonderful. The plain truth is that the strength of the Home Rule movement depends, as far as England is concerned, on a peculiar, though not of necessity a transitory, state of opinion. The arguments of Home Rulers, whatever their worth (and I have not the remotest intention of denying that they have weight), derive at least half their power from their correspondence with dominant sentiments. That this is so is admitted by the now celebrated appeal from the classes to the masses. It is in its nature an appeal from a verdict likely to be pronounced by the understanding or the prejudice of educated men, to the emotions of the uneducated crowd. The appeal may or may not be justifiable. This is not the point for discussion; but the making of such an appeal necessarily implies that the existence of certain widespread feelings is a condition requisite for full appreciation of the reasoning in support of Home Rule. The reasons may be good, but it is faith which gives them convincing power. They derive their cogency from a favouring atmosphere of opinion or feeling. Two features of recent controversy suffice of themselves (if proof were needed) to establish the truth of this assertion. The rhetorical emphasis laid by Home Rulers on the baseness of the arts which carried the Act of Union is, as an argument in favour of repealing the Act, little else than irrational. The assumed infamy of Pitt does not prove the alleged wisdom of Gladstone; and to urge the repeal of an Act which has stood for nearly a century, because it was carried by corruption, is in the eye of reason as absurd as to question the title of modern French landowners because of the horrors of the Reign of Terror. Even a Legitimist would not now base a moral claim to an estate on the ground that his grandfather was deprived of it through confiscation and murder. But rhetoric is not governed by the laws of logic, and insistence on the corruption or the criminality by which the Act of Union was carried is an effective method of conciliating popular sentiment to the cause of repeal. No notion again has been more widely circulated or put forward on higher authority than that past reforms have been due in the main to the enthusiasm of the masses. But no notion is more directly at variance with the lessons of history. In the eighteenth century the enlightenment of the Whig aristocracy was England's safeguard against the Jacobitism and the bigotry of the crowd. Every effort in favour of religious liberty was till recently the work of an educated minority who opposed popular prejudice. In the last century popular sentiment would have denied all rights to Jews; in 1780 Lord George Gordon was the hero of the people of England, and even more emphatically of the people of Scotland. And Burke was forced to present an elaborate defence to his constituents at Bristol for taking part in an attempt to mitigate the penal laws against the Roman Catholics. There is every reason to suppose that even in 1829 a _plébiscite_, had one been possible, would have negatived the Catholic Relief Bill. The mitigation again of the Criminal Law was the work of thinkers like Romilly and Bentham. These eminent reformers would have been much surprised to have been told that the uneducated masses were their staunch supporters. One of the greatest improvements ever effected by legislation was the reform in the administration of parochial relief. The new poor law was essentially unpopular; its principles were established by economists; its enactment was due to the Whigs, supported, as it should always be remembered to his credit, by the Duke of Wellington. It may be conjectured from recent legislation that at this very moment an indiscriminate renewal of outdoor relief would command the approval of the agricultural voters. Protection in the form of the corn laws was unpopular in England; this, however, cannot with fairness be put down to the moral or intellectual credit of the multitude. The corn laws were disliked because they enhanced the price of bread. Even as it was, the Chartists used to interrupt the meetings of the Anti-Corn Law League, and it is an idle fancy that the dangers of a protective tariff are in themselves more patent to the electors of England than to the democracy of France or of America. Trades Unionism is in many of its features a form of protectionism. If again we turn to foreign policy, we must read history with a strangely perverted eye if we hold that the people have in general condemned wars, whether just or unjust. There is hardly to be named a great war in which England has been engaged which has not engaged popular support. In the struggle with the American Colonies the warlike sentiment of the people was undoubtedly opposed to the prudence and justice of a small body of enlightened men, who found their representative in Burke. In England, it is true, no great change of law or of policy can in general be effected until it has in some sort been sanctioned by popular approval. But to attribute every advance, or even most advances, along the path of progress to the masses by whom a step forward is finally sanctioned, is hardly a more patent fallacy than the notion that because every statute is passed with the assent of the Crown, to the Queen may be ascribed the glory of every beneficial Act passed in her name. To maintain, as every man versed in history must maintain, that ignorance must from the necessity of the case be the ally of prejudice, is not to deny to the people their merits or virtues. If ignorance were wisdom as well as bliss, every effort in favour of popular education were folly. No doubt the rich or educated classes are slaves to delusions from which the crowd are free. This concession falls far short of the doctrine that legislative progress is mainly due to the soundness of popular feeling. That this doctrine should in one shape or another have been promulgated, and have formed the basis of an argument for a complicated change in the constitution, is a sign that the advocates of the innovation or reform feel instinctively that the strength of their case lies in its coincidence with dominant sentiment. Nor is it hard to see what is the condition of sentiment or opinion which favours the doctrine of Home Rule. The matter, however, is of such importance as well to repay careful examination. For the first time in the course of English history, national policy has passed under the sway, not so much of democratic convictions, but of a far stronger power--democratic sentiment. Every idea which can rightly or wrongly be called popular, commands, even among persons who deem themselves Conservatives, ready assent or superstitious deference. Hence flow (be it at once conceded) some of the best characteristics of the age, such as the detestation of inhumanity; the distrust in violent methods of government; the dislike to anything which savours of indifference to the wishes, or callousness to the wants, of the people. Hence the growth of the conviction that property has at least as many duties as rights, and of the faith inspired, rather by compassion than by reason, that the toiling multitudes can and must be made to share in the prosperity and the luxuries created in great part by their ceaseless labour. From the same source--from the prevalence of the democratic spirit--arise a crowd of dubious not to say ignoble ideas, as that the voice of the majority is the voice of God; that it is a folly, if not a crime, to resist any widespread phase of belief or of passion; that any body of persons claiming to be united by a sense of nationality possesses an inherent and divine right to be treated as an independent community. Many of these notions are radically inconsistent with one another. The dogma, for example, of the supremacy of the majority, or the conviction that legislation ought to aim at the greatest happiness of the greatest number, each belong to a different order of ideas from the principle of nationality, and may easily come into conflict with it. This inconsistency does not lessen the influence exerted by the mass of democratic feeling. We may, however, well note that democratic ideas at the present day produce their effect far less by exciting enthusiasm (for they now kindle nothing like the fiery fervour which the doctrines of popular sovereignty or of human equality excited a century ago throughout the length and breadth of Europe), than by their singular capacity for dissolving the convictions which oppose the claims of revolutionists. Of this solvent power recent events have given us more than enough examples. One may suffice. The argument that because Irish householders have received votes therefore the majority of the electors of the United Kingdom must concede to the majority of Irish householders anything whatever having reference to Ireland which Irish householders desire, is logically absurd. But (combined, no doubt, with other causes) it convinced the Conservative Government of 1885 that the executive in Ireland was bound to bow to the will of the Irish people, and was relieved from the obligation of enforcing at all costs the law of the land. Popular sympathies, moreover, blend in the minds of modern Englishmen with feelings of a much less generous and much less respectable order. Dislike of trouble, hatred to the performance of arduous public duties, a growing indifference to ordinary commonplace ideas of law and justice, contempt for the legal rights of individuals whenever these rights clash for a moment with the ease or interest of the public, exert an incalculable influence on the conduct, and in truth upon the convictions, both of Members of Parliament and of electors. It is not too much to say that the favour or acquiescence with which so-called practical politicians are prepared to accept Home Rule is grounded to a far greater extent than any one who respects the character of England likes to confess upon the _naïve_ but intense conviction that it is too much to expect from five hundred and more English gentlemen that they should take the trouble of withstanding the continuous pressure exerted by eighty-six Parnellites. Cowardice masks itself under the show of compromise, and men of eminent respectability yield to the terror of being bored concessions which their forefathers would have refused to the threat of armed rebellion. It is unnecessary to explain how this condition of opinion, under which the best and the lowest feelings of human nature are blended in a current of democratic sentiment, predisposes large bodies of Englishmen towards acquiescence in the Home Rule movement. My aim is not so much to analyse with precision the mode in which the cause of Home Rule is fostered by the moral atmosphere of the day, as to insist upon the all-important consideration that the progress of the Home Rule movement is due rather to the encouragement it derives from prevailing sentiment than to any intellectual conviction on the part of Englishmen that it is dictated by considerations of sound policy. CHAPTER IV. ENGLISH ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE. [Sidenote: Arguments by which Home Rule policy defended.] To lay stress upon the consideration that the Home Rule movement in England derives its force from the condition of public feeling is not, be it remarked, equivalent to showing that the policy of Home Rule is unwise; still less that the policy of defended. Home Rule is unlikely to be adopted by the nation. Masses of human beings must generally, as individuals must often, trust to the guidance of feeling. The difference between the sentiment which ought and the sentiment which ought not to determine national conduct is, that the one admits and the other does not admit of justification on grounds of reason or experience. Reasoning is the test, not the source of wise action. Slavery was abolished, the abuses of the _ancien regime_ were destroyed, Italian unity was created under the stress of emotions which carried away thousands who could not have logically defended the impulse which governed their acts. But in these, as in other cases in which humanity has been carried forward along the path of progress by the force of emotion, the enthusiasm of the time could, in so far as it worked for good, be justified on grounds of reason. Man is (difficult though it often be to believe the fact) a rational being, in so far at least that he is constrained to defend on argumentative grounds courses of action dictated by feeling. From this law of human nature Home Rulers have neither the power nor, in fairness be it added, the wish to escape. Their influence is due to the condition of public sentiment, but they justify their policy by arguments which are the intellectual equivalents for the moral feelings which go to constitute the opinion of the day. Of these arguments, those which require statement and examination can be conveniently summed up under six heads--the argument from foreign experience, the argument from the will of the Irish people, the argument from the lessons of Irish history, the argument from the virtues of self-government, the argument from the necessity for Coercion Acts, the argument from the inconvenience to England of refusing Home Rule to Ireland. [Sidenote: Argument 1. Foreign experience.] _The argument from foreign experience_.--Home Rule under one shape or another has been tried in a large number of foreign countries, and has (it is alleged) been found everywhere to solve the problem of combining into one State communities which, like England and Ireland, were not ready to coalesce into one united nation. Each State throughout the American Union, each Canton of Switzerland, has something like sovereign independence. Yet the United States are strong and prosperous, and the Swiss Confederacy, which was a land at one time torn by religious animosities, and divided by differences of race, is now a country so completely at harmony with itself that without a regular army it maintains its independence in the face of the armed powers of Europe. Canada or Victoria have more complete liberty of action than any one dreams of claiming for Ireland. Yet Canada and Victoria are loyal, and under the guidance of men who, it may be, were yesterday rebels in Ireland, support the supremacy of the British Parliament and contribute to the splendour of the English Crown. The German Empire contains not only separate States, but separate kingdoms, such as Bavaria, ruled by kings or princes who certainly value highly the independence of their countries and the dignity of their thrones. The despotism of Turkey has not forbidden the local independence of Crete, and self-government has, it is hinted, produced acquiescence in Turkish rule. The autocracy of the Czar is found compatible with Home Rule in Finland, and Finland is the most contented portion of Russia. Norway and Sweden are united in feeling because they are not by law a "united kingdom," and act in harmony just because each country has a different constitution, and each is governed by its own Parliament. Denmark has, with benefit to herself, given local independence to Iceland, and Iceland is content. Austria and Hungary, after centuries of misunderstanding and twenty years of bitter conflict, have finally composed the feud of ages by a compromise, which gives to the two parts of the Empire the practical blessings of Parliamentary independence, and concedes to Hungary at least the sentimental blessing of acknowledged nationality. The argument, in fact, from foreign experience, professes to be an induction based upon a foundation of instances as large as can support any conclusion of social science. In one land after another the existence of Home Rule, or, to use the curiously inaccurate phraseology of the day, of "autonomy," in one part of the State has been found consistent with the unity of the whole. An experiment which has succeeded in one set of cases ought to succeed in another, and England has no reason to dread a scheme of government which has been tried with success in other portions of the civilized world. Nor does the zealous advocate of Home Rule pause at the conclusion that the measure he recommends may, on the strength of foreign experience, be regarded as a tolerable evil or as a probable cure for a chronic disease. He suggests that it is a good in itself, and laments that ignorance led our ancestors to fuse Scotland and England into an United Kingdom, when they might, had they understood the principles of federalism, have left to each country the blessings of State sovereignty. [Sidenote: Criticism on argument.] There is some difficulty in treating with perfect seriousness a line of reasoning which, proceeding from the quarter whence it comes, holds up for our admiration the wisdom or lenity of Turkish rule in Crete, and extols the supreme justice of the system upon which rests the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which implies that the arts of government may be learnt from the Russian administration of Finland, and omits all reference to the disastrous results of the attempt to endow Poland with some sort of independence, which bases weighty inferences as to the proper relation between England and Ireland on the concession by Denmark to the scanty inhabitants of a desolate island lying 1100 miles from her coast of as much autonomy (if that be the right term) as under the Crown of England has been enjoyed for generations by Jersey or Man, and which suggests lamentations over the splendid triumph of constructive statesmanship embodied in the treaty of Union with Scotland. _De minimis non curat lex_ is a maxim of judicial procedure which in spirit applies to proposals for legislation. Arguments from Iceland and the like may be set aside as the ornaments or curiosities of debate, and may be allowed as much weight and no more as would be given to an argument in favour of petty states from the flourishing condition of Monaco, or to reasonings in support of Republicanism from the condition of Andorre. Though there is something slightly ridiculous in the zeal with which the advocates of Home Rule, using at least as much industry as discrimination, have scraped together every instance they can lay their hands upon of constitutions under which something which can be called Home Rule exists without producing palpable injury to the State, it would be unfair to deny some real weight to a kind of induction, which, if not convincing as argument, yet possesses undoubtedly a good deal of rhetorical effectiveness. Nor ought the concession to be refused that if there be any man dull or ill-informed enough to suppose that countries cannot be politically united unless they are subject to a common legislative power, the slightest knowledge of lands outside England is sufficient to make manifest his ignorance. When, however, the instances on which the induction is supposed to be founded are carefully scrutinised, it will be discovered that those examples which deserve attention are far less numerous than might be supposed from a glance over the lists now well known to the public of what may be termed successful experiments in Home Rule, and, further, that this limited number of instances do not go far to make out the conclusion in favour of which they are adduced. At the present stage of my argument I purposely omit all minute examination of the applicability to the relations between England and Ireland, either of the English Colonial system or of federalism as it exists in the United States or in Switzerland. Any scheme of Home Rule must follow in some degree one or other of these models. It will, therefore, be necessary to consider in subsequent chapters how far either of them may admit with advantage of imitation. Two observations, however, may even at this point not be out of place. An English colony, such as Victoria, is a virtually independent country, attached to England mainly by ties of loyalty or of well-understood interests, but placed at such a distance from the mother country that England could without inconvenience, and would without hesitation, concede to it full national independence when once it was clear that Victoria desired to be a nation. Victoria, in short, is a land which might at any moment be independent, but which desires to retain or strengthen the connection with England. Ireland, on the other hand, is a country lying so near to the English coast that, according to the views of most statesmen, England could not with safety tolerate her independence, and also a country, which, to put the matter in the least exaggerated language, feels the connection with England so burdensome that the greater part of her population desire at least the amount of independence conceded to a self-governing colony. The case of Victoria and the case of Ireland each constitute, so to speak, the antithesis to the other. There is, therefore, at any rate no _a priori_ ground for the assumption that the system which successfully regulates the relation of England to Victoria is equally adapted for regulating the relation between England and Ireland. The federalism, again, of America or of Switzerland is the consequence of the existence of the States which make up the Federation. The United Kingdom does not consist of States. The world has heard of the difficulty of forming a republic without republicans: this feat would appear to be easy of performance in comparison with the achievement of erecting federation without the States which form its natural members. In America or in Switzerland federalism has developed because existing States wished to be combined into some kind of national unity. Federalism in England would necessarily mean the breaking up of a nation in order to form a body of States. To the question constantly raised in one form or another, "Why should not the federalism which suits the United States suit England?" the true answer is suggested by the counter-inquiry, "Why should not the constitutionalism of England suit the United States?" The obvious and conclusive reply to both these inquiries is, that the circumstances of the two countries are totally different. There is, in short, no ground in the nature of things to presume that constitutional arrangements, which are well adapted for the condition of America, are well adapted for the totally different condition of the United Kingdom. To say this, be it noted, is not to prejudge the question reserved for subsequent consideration, whether some kind of federalism may not supply the solution of the problem how to adjust the political connection between England and Ireland. It is no more than noting the often-overlooked fact that the admitted success of federal government in the United States gives no presumption in favour of its suitability for Great Britain and Ireland. The experience of foreign countries to which Home Rulers confidently appeal resolves itself, if the matter be carefully sifted, and if the colonial system of England and the federalism of America be left for the moment out of account, into the fact that two powerful continental Empires maintain Imperial unity, and yet (as it is alleged without lessening their strength) contain within their limits States each of which enjoys a large amount of independence. That neither the German Empire nor the Austro-Hungarian monarchy suffer inconvenience from the looseness of the connection between the States which they each contain is one of those assertions more easily made than proved to be true; but supposing its truth to be, for the moment and purely for the sake of argument, admitted, there will still be found considerable difficulty in showing that either German Imperialism or the Dual system of Austria-Hungary contains lessons of practical value for the guidance of English statesmen. What indeed is the precise inference which one is to draw from the fact that the constitution of the German Empire leaves, for example, to Bavaria a large amount of independence it is not very easy to understand. The whole circumstances of the German Empire are as different from the circumstances of Great Britain as the position of one civilised European country can well be from the situation of another. The salient characteristic of German history is that Germany consists of States which until quite recently have never been politically consolidated into a nation. The United Kingdom has for nearly a century formed a political unit, and has now for something nearly approaching two centuries been subject in reality if not in name to one sovereign Parliament. The whole scheme of the Empire, with its independent or semi-independent sovereigns, with its kings, princes, and free towns, is something to which there is absolutely nothing to correspond in the present condition or in the historical development of England. The German Empire is the natural though strange growth of a special and strange history. The sober English statesmen who advocate Home Rule assuredly never dreamt any dream so wild as that the Imperial Federalism of Germany could in any way be reproduced in the United Kingdom. But if this be so, it is a little difficult to understand references to the lessons to be drawn from the position of such countries as Bavaria. For the difficulty of applying German precedents to proposed innovations in the English constitution lies far deeper than the unsuitability to England of the forms of German Imperialism. The condition which has given birth to the present German Empire is that in Germany the sentiment of nationality has overridden the political divisions which broke up Germany into almost disconnected and often hostile States. In Germany the popular passion for unity has compelled the formation of a United Empire. This sentiment, and not the cumbersome device of an ill-arranged constitution, prevents Bavaria from using her independence in a manner inconsistent with the unity of the Empire. The force which tends towards unity is constantly on the increase. The Empire has the legal means of diminishing or indeed of destroying the independence of the States, and should the independence of a State ever come into conflict with the unity of the nation State rights will not, we may be sure, win the day. Nor, further, is it any accident that Bismarck whilst tolerating the existence of Parliaments will not tolerate the introduction of Parliamentary government. The acquiescence of Liberals in the evils of personal rule is due to the consciousness that the real authority of the Emperor is necessary for the unity of the Empire. Contrast all this with the condition of things under which Englishmen are adjured to concede a Parliament to Ireland. The leading features of the case, according at any rate to Home Rulers, are that Parliament is too weak to withstand the pressure exercised by eighty-six obstructives, and that Ireland, no less, as we are now at last frankly told, than Scotland and Wales, desires to relax the bonds of national unity. We are advised to dissolve the United Kingdom into a confederacy because Germany, through a clumsy form of confederacy, is growing into a united empire. This counsel confuses the stages of imperfect development with the stage of incipient decay; it ascribes to the childishness of approaching senility the hopes which are proper to the childishness of early youth. The point is worth pressing. The considerations which govern a confederacy as it is developing into a nation are very different from the considerations applicable to a full grown nation when threatened with dismemberment into a confederacy. Deak's statesmanship undoubtedly found at any rate a temporary solution of the questions which kept Austria and Hungary at variance in a compromise which bears some analogy to the arrangement by which Home Rulers propose at once to loosen and to maintain the connection between England and Ireland. In the case of Austria-Hungary, the union which exists is not, on the face of it at least, a step towards unity, but rather the surrender of the endeavour to mould the two parts of the monarchy into a united empire. The Dual system is therefore the instance of the blessings attending Home Rule which is most sedulously thrust upon English attention. Let us see, then, what in outline this system is, and what are the causes which favour its existence.[4] German jurisprudence has taxed hard its boundless stores of ingenuity and obscurity in the endeavour to find a proper scientific definition of the nature of the anomalous union which binds together the monarchy of Austria-Hungary. With the inquiry, however, what may be the precise class of constitutions under which we ought to bring a political arrangement which is "singular" in the strictest sense of that word, English inquirers need not concern themselves. The broad outlines of the Dual system, invented by the ingenuity of Deák, and accepted under the stress of necessity by the sagacity of the Emperor, may, for our present purpose, be roughly sketched in short, and it is hoped in not unintelligible terms. The Dual system is a permanent alliance rather than a union between the kingdom of Hungary and the countries now represented in the Austrian Imperial Parliament, or (to use convenient though not quite accurate terms) between Austria and Hungary. The essential features of this alliance or compromise, which is in its nature a treaty far more than an act of legislation, may be thus summed up. At the head of the whole monarchy stands the Emperor-King. The rules for the succession to the throne indeed secure that the Imperial and the Hungarian Crown shall always devolve upon the same person. The Crowns, however, are distinct, the monarch on whose head they rest governs two distinctly different peoples, bound to him by different ties of allegiance. He has Hungarian subjects and Austrian subjects, but he can claim authority over no man as a subject or citizen of Austria-Hungary. The monarch (and this is a matter of supreme importance) is not only the nominal, but the real link connecting the two halves of his dominions. He is moreover a true ruler. Englishmen hear of a Parliament at Vienna and of a Diet in Hungary, of Austrian ministers and of Hungarian ministers, and they fancy that Francis Joseph is a constitutional king after the type of Queen Victoria of England, or King Humbert of Italy. No idea is more erroneous. He is the actual head of the State; he is the real commander of the army. In the Austrian Empire he exercises a predominant influence on the Government, and observers who look at the past exertions of Imperial prerogative, and who weigh well the immense power of temporary legislation reserved under the Imperial constitution to the Emperor, suspect that in his Austrian dominions, Francis Joseph might if he chose as easily suspend constitutional government, as he did in fact suspend it (though for a most legitimate object) in 1886. In Hungary the parliamentary constitution is a reality, but the King of Hungary's authority is a good deal more than nominal. The transactions between Deák and the Emperor become incomprehensible unless you allow for the influence conferred by Hungarian loyalty upon the King of Hungary. This real monarch rules the monarchy with the co-operation of what might roughly be called three Parliaments. The first Parliament is the Hungarian Diet sitting at Pesth, which constitutes the real and true legislature for Hungary, and which, in spite of the powers retained by or conferred upon the local legislature of Croatia, makes laws for the whole domain of the Hungarian Crown. The King of Hungary appoints the Hungarian ministers, who are responsible to the Hungarian Diet, and are kept in office by the Diet's support. The second Parliament is the Imperial Parliament, or _Reichsrath_, sitting at Vienna, legislating for the territories of the Austrian Empire which do not belong to the Hungarian Crown. The Emperor appoints the Austrian or Imperial Ministry, who are responsible to the Imperial Parliament, and need the support of the _Reichsrath_; it may well however be doubted whether an Austrian Premier does not depend for his authority far more on the will of the Emperor than on the votes of _Reichsrath_; the authority of the _Reichsrath_ is, moreover, considerably restricted by the powers conferred upon the subordinate assemblies of the different countries, e.g. Bohemia or the Tyrol, which make up the Empire.[5] Englishman should note that the Hungarian Diet has as such no legislative authority in Austria, and the _Reichsrath_ has no legislative authority in Hungary. The third Parliament consists of the so-called Delegations. These Delegations are two committees of sixty members each, elected by and from the members of the Hungarian Diet and the Imperial Parliament respectively, but though I have termed them "committees" they are committees which within their sphere have an authority independent of the bodies by whom they are appointed. The function of the Delegations is to determine the "common affairs" of the monarchy, that is to say a strictly limited number of matters, namely, common finance, common military matters, and foreign affairs. On these three topics, and on these alone, the Hungarian and the Austrian Delegations are (acting of course with the Emperor) supreme. They determine the common Budget of the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire; they determine as far as legislation is required all questions affecting the Imperial army as a whole; they also determine, as far as their intervention is required, questions of foreign policy. The function in short of the Delegations is to deal with matters, and with those matters only, which affect the Austro-Hungarian State as a united body, and in its relation to foreigners. Hence three Ministers, the Minister of War, the Minister of Finance, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who act for the whole monarchy, constitute what is called the Common Ministry, and are appointed by the Emperor-King, and are responsible neither to the Hungarian Parliament nor to the Imperial Parliament, but simply to the Delegations. It is natural for Englishman to conclude that the Delegations regulate matters, such for example as questions regarding customs, &c., which must affect every portion of the State, and must, if the two divisions of it are to be united at all, be regulated on common principles. But this is not so. The economical relations of the two parts of the Empire are determined by laws identical in substance, passed by the Hungarian and Imperial Parliaments respectively. These laws are enacted from ten years to ten years. It is therefore possible under the present arrangement that in '88 the existing customs union between Austria and Hungary may come to an end.[6] The position further of the Delegations is in reality that of two separate committees each representing a separate Parliament. Infinite pains have been taken to place the Hungarian and the Austrian Delegations on exactly equal footing. The Delegations meet alternately at Vienna and at Pesth, they debate in general separately, and come to an agreement through written negotiations; they may have a common meeting. In this case the number of deputies present on each side must be equal, and by a vote of the majority at such common meeting, any question in dispute is finally determined. The Austro-Hungarian system is therefore briefly this. Two separate States, each having a separate administration, a separate Parliament, and separate bodies of subjects or citizens, are each ruled by one and the same monarch; the two portions of the monarchy are linked together mainly as regards their relation to foreign powers by an assembly of delegates from each Parliament and by a Ministry which is responsible to the Delegations alone, and which acts in regard to a limited number of matters which are of absolute necessity the common concern of the monarchy. This is the Dual system held up for our imitation. Picture it for a moment as actually existing in what is still the United Kingdom. We should have an English Ministry and an English Parliament at Westminster which had not the least authority in Ireland; we should have an Irish Ministry and an Irish Parliament at Dublin which had not the least authority in England. Each Parliament would in point say of foreign policy be hampered by the superior authority of a third Parliament consisting of sixty English and sixty Irish members who sat alternately at Westminster and at Dublin to transact or perplex or obstruct the affairs common to the whole Empire. To imagine such an arrangement, to sketch out in one's fancy, for example, how the common budget decreed by the Delegations would be provided for by taxation imposed by the Irish Parliament, is enough to show that the Dual system is absolutely inapplicable to our circumstances. It could not last for a year, and if by any miracle it did last for that time, the whole British Empire would be reduced to confusion or ruin. The advocates of innovation exhibit the most singular mixture of despair and hopefulness. The presence in Parliament of eighty-six Parnellites makes them despair of the British constitution, which has existed for centuries. They hope or expect that three Parliaments, in two of which these very Parnellites, or men like them, would reappear, would harmoniously legislate for England, Ireland, and the British Empire, and this hope is based on the alleged success of that Dual system which has not without difficulty been kept going for not quite twenty years. The alliance of scepticism and credulity, of which we have often heard in the sphere of theology, is a startling phenomenon in the province of politics. The Dual system, however, it will be urged by its admirers, has worked well. Admit the fact, the success is clearly due to circumstances negative and positive totally absent in the case of England and Ireland. The bodies united by means of the compromise do not, like the United Kingdom, constitute the centre of a world-wide Empire. Hungary has taken up arms against the Austrian Emperor, yet there has never been in strictness a feud between the Hungarians and the other subjects of the Emperor. The compromise or alliance manifestly met the interest of both portions of the monarchy: it restored to Hungary a constitution which for eighteen years or more had been suppressed, but which had never been given up; it secured, or went far to secure, the new constitutional liberties of the Austrian Empire. Hungary could not stand alone, and she knew it. The compromise was in reality a politic alliance between the two leading races among the many races governed by Francis Joseph. The Germans and the Magyars came to terms; the alliance strengthened them each against other foes. But with every political advantage the Dual system, of which the permanence is not as yet at all secure, might have proved as undurable as Grattan's Constitution of 1782 but for one circumstance, to which I have already directed attention. At the head of Austria-Hungary stands not an absolute, but a powerful monarch. The authority of the Emperor is the spring which makes the cumbersome machinery of a complicated constitution keep going. The matter is worth attention The power of the Emperor William holds together the States of the German Empire; the power of Francis Joseph keeps alive the Dual system; where the Crown has a real authority trial may be made of experiments in the way of local independence, which are impossible in a State where, as in England, the true sovereign is an elective assembly. Foreign experience then affords but a very tottering foundation on which to raise pleas for Home Rule in Ireland. It may no doubt be read by those who are already convinced that Home Rule is desirable in favour of their views. It may confirm a faith based on other grounds, more it cannot do. Fairly looked at, foreign experience tells rather against than for the doctrines of Home Rule. If appealed to at all, it must be taken as a whole. It then shows that Federalism is when nourishing a stage towards, not a stage away from, national unity; it shows that a strong central power above Parliamentary control is almost a condition to the successful combination in one body of semi-independent States.[7] It shows that the whole tendency of modern civilization flows towards the creation of great States; national unity is, so to speak, the watchword of the age; this is scarcely a reason for breaking up the United Kingdom. The sagacity of Italian statesmanship rejected the plausible scheme of an Italian Federation. If Englishmen are to take lessons from foreigners they need not be ashamed of being instructed by Cavour. [Sidenote: Argument 2. Will of Irish people] _The argument from the will of the Irish people_.--Eighty-six representatives of the Irish people represent the wish of Ireland for Home Rule. We cannot under a Parliamentary system of government go behind the result of an election. It must be taken therefore that Ireland wishes for Home Rule; and since popular government as it exists in England means nothing else than government in accordance with the wishes of the people, the wish of the Irish people for the Parliamentary independence of their country proves their right to an Irish Parliament, and terminates, or ought to terminate, all opposition to Home Rule. [Sidenote: Criticism on argument] This simple argument, that because three millions of Irishmen, or for that matter three millions of Englishmen, wish for a thing, they are therefore absolutely entitled to have it, is not often put forward in its naked simplicity, but is constantly presented under various rhetorical disguises, such for example as the assertion that Irishmen have a right to manage their own affairs, that Ireland only wants to be left to herself, and the like; and impresses both the imagination and the conscience of the masses. There is a good deal to be said about the truth of the alleged fact on which the argument is based, namely the wish of the Irish people. It might be worth while to note that the "people" in this case meant only a majority of the electors, whose wish is notoriously opposed to the ardent desire of a respectable minority; and it might be well to suggest that the constitutional pedantry which refuses to "go behind an electoral return," _i.e._, to see things as they are, is not the same thing as either good sense or statesmanship. But for the present purpose it is better to admit that the majority of the inhabitants of Ireland would, if a fair vote were taken, express their wish for Home Rule, as they might, probably, under similar conditions express their wish for separation. The argument in hand, however, even when its basis is conceded, allows, according to the different meanings which it may bear, of different answers. If taken in its most obvious sense, as asserting the absolute right of a majority among Irish electors to any concession with regard to Ireland which they are pleased to claim, it may be met by another formula of equal cogency or of equal weakness. "The vast majority of the United Kingdom, including by the way a million or more of the inhabitants of Ireland, have expressed their will to maintain the Union. Popular government means government in accordance with the will of the majority, and therefore according to all the principles of popular government the majority of the United Kingdom have a right to maintain the Union. Their wish is decisive, and ought to terminate the whole agitation in favour of Home Rule." To any sensible person who has passed beyond the age of early manhood (for youths may without blame treat politics as a form of logic) neither of these formulas can present a sound ground from which to defend or impugn legislation which involves the welfare of millions. The contradiction however between two formulas each of which if propounded alone would command the assent of a democratic audience is noteworthy. This contradiction brings into prominence the consideration that the principle that the will of the majority should be sovereign cannot, whether true or false in itself, be invoked to determine a dispute turning upon the enquiry which of two bodies is the body the majority of which has a right to sovereignty. The majority of the citizens of the United States were opposed to Secession, the majority of the citizens of the Southern States were in favour of Secession; the attempt to determine which side had right on its side by an appeal to the "sovereignty of the majority" involved in this case, as it must in every case, a _petitio principii_, for the very question at issue was which of two majorities ought, as regarded the matter in hand, to be considered the majority. It would however be doing injustice to the argument from the will of the people to dispose of it by dwelling upon the logical inconsistencies inevitably involved in every attempt to determine a question of practical politics by the application to it of _à priori_ dogmatism. Formulas such as "the sovereignty of the people" often contain much solid truth hidden under an inaccurate and a too absolute form of expression. The assertion that the wish of the Irish people is decisive as to the form of constitution to be maintained in Ireland covers two genuine and in themselves rational convictions. The first is, that a body of human beings who feel themselves, in consequence of their inhabiting a common country, of their sharing a common history and the like, inspired with a feeling of common nationality, have, if not a right, at lowest a strong claim to be governed as a separate nation. This is the doctrine of nationality which, be it noted, though often confused with, is at bottom different from, the dogma of the supremacy of the majority. That the doctrine of nationality is, when reasonably put, conformable with obvious principles of utility may be readily admitted; but it is a doctrine which can only be accepted with considerable qualifications. Its validity was denied both theoretically and practically, and, in the judgment of most English democrats, not to say of most European Liberals, denied justly and righteously by the Northern States of America, when the Southern States claimed the benefit of its application. The argument moreover from the principle of nationality in reference to the present controversy proves too much. If the Irish people are a nation, this may give them a right to independence, but it can never in itself give them a moral claim to dictate the particular terms of union with England. The second conviction which underlies the argument from the will of the people is of far more serious import than any reasoning drawn from even so respectable a formula as the doctrine of nationality. The dogma that the will of the people must be obeyed often expresses the rational belief that under all polities, and especially under the system of popular government, institutions derive their life, and laws their constraining power, not from the will of the law-giver, or from the strength of the army, but from their correspondence with the permanent wishes and habits of the people. Home Rule, to put this matter in its strongest form, means, it may be said, the application to Ireland of the very principle on which the English constitution rests--that a people must be ruled in accordance with their own permanent ideas of right and of justice, and that unless this be done, law, because it commands no loyalty, ensures no obedience. The whole history of the connection between the two islands which make up the United Kingdom is a warning of the wretchedness, the calamities, the wickedness and the ruin which follow upon the attempt to violate this fundamental principle not only of popular, but of all good and just government. Home Rule may appear to be an innovation. It is in this point of view simply a return to the essential ideas of English constitutionalism, it is an attempt to escape from the false path which has been pursued for centuries, and to return to the broad highway of government in accordance with popular sympathy. At this point, however, the argument from the will of the people merges in the much stronger and more serious train of reasoning derived from the teaching of history. [Sidenote: 3. Argument from Irish history.] _The argument from Irish history._--Appeals to the lessons of the past are at times in the mouths of Home Rulers, as also of their opponents, a noxious revival of ancient passions, or (it may be) nothing better than the use of an unreal form of rhetoric; yet a supporter of Home Rule may use the argument from Irish history in a way which is at once legitimate and telling. On one point alone (it may be urged) all men of whatever party, or of whatever nation, who have seriously studied the annals of Ireland are agreed--the history of the country is a record of incessant failure on the part of the Government, and of incessant misery on the part of the people. On this matter, if on no other, De Beaumont, Froude and Lecky are at one. As to the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may and do differ; that England, whether from her own fault or from the fault of the Irish people, or from the perversity of circumstances, has failed in Ireland of achieving the elementary results of good government, is as certain as any fact of history or of experience. Every scheme has been tried in turn, and no scheme has succeeded, or has even (it may be suggested) produced its natural effects. Oppression of the Catholics has increased the adherents and strengthened the hold of Catholicism. Protestant supremacy while it lasted did not lead even to Protestant contentment, and the one successful act of resistance to English dominion was effected by a Protestant Parliament supported by an army of volunteers led by a body of Protestant officers. The independence gained by a Protestant Parliament led, after eighteen years, to a rebellion so reckless and savage, that it caused if it did not justify the destruction of the Parliament, and the carrying of the Union. The Act of Union did not lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on the face of it (though the appearance it must be admitted was delusive) to be a copy of the law which turned England and Scotland into a common country inspired by common patriotism, produced conspiracy and agitation, and has at last placed England and Ireland further apart morally than they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of Union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not combined with Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were emancipated, but emancipation instead of producing loyalty brought forth the cry for repeal. The repeal movement ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the attempted rebellion of 1848. Suppressed rebellion begot Fenianism, to be followed in its turn by the agitation for Home Rule. The movement relies, it is said, and there is truth in the assertion, on constitutional methods for obtaining redress. But constitutional methods are supplemented by boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of dynamite. A century of reform has given us Mr. Parnell instead of Grattan, and it is more than possible that Mr. Parnell may be succeeded by leaders in whose eyes Mr. Davitt's policy may appear to be tainted with moderation. No doubt in each case the failure of good measures admits, like every calamity either in private or in public life, of explanation, and after the event it is easy to see why, for example, the Poor Law when extended to Ireland did not produce even the good effects, such as they are, which in England are to be set against its numerous evils; or why an emigration of unparalleled proportions has diminished population without much diminishing poverty; why the disestablishment of the Anglican Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts have not contented Irish farmers. It is easy enough, in short, and this without having recourse to any theory of race, and without attributing to Irishmen either more or less of original sin than falls to the lot of humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship--and all statesmanship it should be remembered is imperfect--has failed of obtaining good results at all commensurate with its generally good intentions. Failure, however, is none the less failure because its causes admit of analysis. It is no defence to bankruptcy that an insolvent can, when brought before the Court, lucidly explain the errors which resulted in disastrous speculations. The failure of English statesmanship, explain it as you will, has produced the one last and greatest evil which misgovernment can cause. It has created hostility to the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work in Ireland, because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the action of the Courts are in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers. This fact, a Home Ruler may add, is for this purpose all the more instructive, if it be granted that the errors of British policy do not arise from injustice or ill-will to Irishmen. The inference, he insists, to be drawn from the lesson of history is, that it is impossible for the Parliament of the United Kingdom to understand or to provide for Irish needs. The law is hated and cannot be executed in Ireland because, as we are told on high authority, it comes before the Irish people in a foreign garb. The law is detested, in short, not because it is unjust, but because it is English. The reason why judges soldiers or policemen strive in vain to cope with lawlessness is, that they are in fact trying to enforce not so much the rule of justice as the supremacy of England. The Austrian administration in Lombardy was never deemed to be bad--it was very possibly better than any which the Italian kingdom can supply; the Austrian rule was hated not because the Austrians were bad rulers, but because they were foreigners. In Ireland, as in Lombardy, permanent discontent is caused by the outraged sentiment of nationality. Meet this sentiment, argues the friend of Home Rule, by the concession to Ireland of an independent Parliament. The law which comes from Ireland's own legislature will be obeyed because it is her own law, and will be enforced throughout Ireland by Irish officials supported by the sympathy of the Irish population. Let Ireland manage her own affairs, and England will be freed from a task which she ought never to have taken up because she cannot perform it, and you will lay upon Ireland duties which she can perform but which she has never yet been either allowed or compelled to take up. Irishmen for the first time will feel the full responsibility, because for the first time they have received the full power, of self-government. The argument, in short, on the Home Rule view stands thus: the miseries of Ireland flow historically from political causes, and are to be met by political changes. At the bottom of Irish disorder lies the sentiment of Irish nationality. The change, therefore, that is needed is such a concession to that sentiment as is involved in giving Ireland an Irish legislature. This is the reform by which the result of curing Irish discontent can be achieved, and it is a reform not incompatible with the interests of Great Britain. This is (in my judgment) a fair statement of the historical argument relied upon by the advocates of Home Rule, though, of course, it allows of infinite variety as to its form of expression. It is a line of reasoning which rests on premisses many of which (as any candid critic must admit) contain a large amount of truth. It is logically by far the strongest of the Home Rule arguments. It is one, moreover, in which authorities who on other points differ from each other are in agreement. Mr. Parnell asserts with emphasis that Ireland is a "nation," and apparently holds that the passing of a good law by the Parliament of the United Kingdom is less desirable than the existence of an Irish Parliament, even should that Parliament delay good legislation. Mr. Gladstone attributes the inefficacity of laws passed by the Imperial Parliament to their coming before Irishmen in a "foreign garb," and an author who is not in any way a supporter of the Liberal leader does not apparently on this point disagree with Mr. Gladstone. "If there was a hope that anything which we could give would make the Irish contented and loyal subjects of the British Empire, no sacrifice would be too great for such an object. But there is no such hope. The land tenure is not the real grievance: it is merely the pretext. The real grievance is our presence in Ireland at all. If there was a hope that by buying up the soil and distributing it among the tenantry we could make them, if not loyal, yet orderly and prosperous, even so the experiment would be worth trying; but, again, there is no such hope. The Land Bill of 1870 gave the tenants a proprietary right in their holdings. They have borrowed money on the security of that right at ruinous interest, and the poorest of them are already sinking under their debts to the local banker or tradesman. If we make them proprietors to-morrow, their farms in a few years will be sold or mortgaged. We shall have destroyed one set of landlords to create another who will not be more merciful."[8] [Sidenote: Criticism] The only way of meeting the historical argument, containing as it does admitted truth, and supported as it is by high authorities, is to survey the broad phenomena of Irish history, and see what are the inferences which they warrant.[9] Whoever wishes to derive instruction from the melancholy history of the kingdom of Ireland must, as has already been intimated, rid himself from the delusions caused in the domain of history by personification. He must dismiss the notion that England and Ireland are persons to be charged with individual and continuous responsibility for the crimes or follies of past ages. He must check the natural but misguiding tendency of the human mind to imagine that in national affairs when anything goes wrong you can always, or indeed generally, lay your finger upon some definite assignable wrong-doer, that is, upon some man or some men who can be held responsible for political calamities or errors, as a murderer may be held guilty of murder, or a robber of theft. A calm critic should also reflect on the profound truth of the dictum (attributed by the way to an Irishman) that "history is at best but an old almanack," and, while not entertaining any great hope that antiquarian research can afford much direct guidance as to the proper mode of arranging the future relations between England and Ireland, remember that the most salutary function of the study of the past is to tone down those historical animosities which derive their bitterness from the ignorant habit of trying the actors in bygone scenes by moral laws to which they are not justly amenable. The moral function of an historian is to diminish the hatreds which divide nation from nation and class from class; such as at the present moment do more to prevent real unity between the inhabitants of the two islands making up the United Kingdom than do unjust laws or vicious institutions. To a student who regards with philosophic calmness a topic which has mainly been dealt with by politicians or agitators, it easily becomes apparent that the crimes or failures of England, no less than the vices or miseries of England, have to a great extent flowed from causes too general to be identified with the intentional wrong-doing either of rulers or of subjects. One fact thrusts itself upon the attention of any serious student England and Ireland have from the commencement of their ill-starred connection been countries standing on different levels or at different stages of civilization; they have moreover been countries impelled by the force of circumstances towards a different development. Englishmen forget, or (more strictly speaking) have never understood, how exceptional has been the path pursued by English civilization; they do not realise to themselves that the gradual transformation of an aristocratic and feudal society into a modern industrial State which still retains the forms, and in many points of view the spirit of feudalism is a process which, although owing to the most special circumstances it has been accomplished with success in England, has hardly a parallel in any other European country. Ireland on the other hand has, despite the deviations from her natural course caused by her connection with a powerful nation, tended to follow the lines of progress pursued by continental countries, and notably by France. A foreign critic like De Beaumont finds it far easier than could any Englishman to enter into the condition of Ireland, and this not only because he is as a foreigner delivered from the animosities or partialities which must in one way or another warp every English judgment, but mainly because the phenomena which puzzle an Englishman, as for example the passion of Irish peasants for the possession of land,[10] are from his own experience familiar and appear natural to a Frenchman. What to the mind of a foreign observer needs explanation is the social condition of England rather than of Ireland. He at any rate can see at a glance that the relation between the two countries has planted and maintained in Ireland an aristocracy, aristocratic institutions, and above all an aristocratic land law, foreign to the traditions and opposed to the interests of the mass of the people. Let an observer for a moment take up the point of view natural to a continental critic, and admit, in the language of De Beaumont, that the primary radical and permanent cause of Irish misery has been the maintenance in Ireland by England of a "bad aristocracy,"[10] or, to put the same thing more generally, and it may be more fairly that the vice of the connection between the two countries has consisted in its being a relation of peoples standing at different stages of civilization and tending towards different courses of development. Here you find the original source of a thousand ills, and hence especially have originated four potent causes of the condition of things which now tries the patience and overtaxes the resources of English statesmanship. First,--The English constitution has both from its form and from its spirit caused in past times, and even at the present day causes as much evil to Ireland as it has conferred, or does confer, benefit upon England.[11] The assailants of popular government point to the misrule of Ireland as a proof that the Parliamentary system is radically vicious. They do not prove their point, because the calamities of Ireland afford no evidence whatever that England, which has been more prosperous for a greater length of time than any other nation in Europe, has essentially suffered from the power of the English Parliament. What these critics do prove is that a representative assembly is a bad form of government for any nation or class whom it does not represent, and they establish to demonstration that a parliamentary despotism may well be a worse government for a dependency than a royal despotism. This is so for two reasons. The rule of Parliament has meant in England government by parties; and whatever be the merits of party spirit in a free, self-governed country, its calamitous defects, when applied to the administration of a dependency, are patent. Down to 1782 Ireland was avowedly subject to the despotism or sovereignty of the British Parliament, and at every turn the interest of the country was sacrificed to the exigencies of English politics Between 1782 to 1800 the nominal independence of Ireland placed a check on the power of the English Parliament, yet in substance the English executive, controlled as it was by the Parliament at Westminster, remained the ultimate sovereign of the kingdom of Ireland. If Pitt could have carried the King and the English Parliament with him, he would, in spite of any opposition at Dublin by the adherents of Ascendancy, have emancipated the Catholics, just as, when backed by the King and the English Parliament, he did, in the face of strenuous opposition in Ireland, pass the Act of Union. And even at the present day the most plausible charge which can be brought against the working of the Act of Union is that Ireland under it fails to obtain the full benefit of the British constitution, and that in spite of her hundred representatives she is not for practical purposes represented at Westminster in the same sense as is Middlesex or Midlothian. A Parliament again is less capable than a King of compensating for the evils of tyranny by the benefit of good administration, and here we come across a matter hardly to be understood by any one who has not with some care compared the action and the spirit of English and of continental administrative systems. It is hardly an exaggeration to assert that even now we have in the United Kingdom nothing like what foreigners mean by an administration. We know nothing of that official hierarchy which on the Continent represents the authority of the State.[12] Englishmen are accustomed to consider that institutions under which the business of the country is carried on by unconnected local bodies, such as the magistrates in quarter session, or the corporations of boroughs, controlled in the last resort only by the law courts, ought to be the subject of unqualified admiration. Foreign observers might, even as regards England itself, have something to set off against the merits of a system which is, if the apparent contradiction of terms may be excused, no system at all, and might point out that in continental countries the administration may often be the intelligent guide and protector of the weak and needy. The system complimented by the name of self-government, even if as beneficial for England as Englishmen are inclined without absolute proof to believe, is absolutely unsuitable for a country harassed by religious and social feuds, where the owners of land are not and cannot be the trusted guides of the people. An impartial official is a better ruler than a hostile or distrusted landowner, and any one who bears in mind the benefits conferred by the humanity and justice of Turgot on a single province of France may, without being any friend of despotism, hold that in the last century Ireland suffered greatly from a scheme of government which did not allow of administration such as Turgot's. In some respects the virtues of Englishmen have been singularly unfavourable to their success in conciliating the goodwill of Ireland. It will always remain a paradox that the nation which has built up the British Empire (with vast help, it may be added, from Ireland) has combined extraordinary talent for legislation with a singular incapacity for consolidating subject races or nations into one State. The explanation of the paradox lies in the aristocratic sentiment which has moulded the institutions of England. An aristocracy respects the rights of individuals, but an aristocracy identifies right with privilege, and is based on the belief in the inequality of men and of classes. Privilege is the keynote of English constitutionalism; the respect for privileges has preserved English freedom, but it has made England slower than any other civilized country to adopt ideas of equality. This love of privilege has vitiated the English administration in Ireland in more ways than one. The whole administration of the country rested avowedly down to 1829, and unavowedly to a later period, on the inequality of Catholics and Protestants, and Protestant supremacy itself meant (except during the short rule of Cromwell)[13] not Protestant equality, but Anglican privilege. The spirit which divided Ireland into hostile factions prevented Englishmen who dwelt in England from treating as equals Englishmen who settled in Ulster. When the Volunteers claimed Irish independence, and the American colonists renounced connection with the mother country, similar effects were produced by the same cause. In each case English colonists revolted against England's sovereignty, because it meant the privilege of Englishmen who dwelt in Great Britain to curtail the rights and hamper the trade of Englishmen who dwelt abroad. For the iniquitous restrictions on the trade of Ireland, which are morally by far the most blameworthy of the wrongs inflicted by England upon Irishmen, were not precisely the acts of deliberate selfishness which they seem to modern critics. The grievance under which Ireland suffered was in character the same as the grievances in respect of trade inflicted on the American colonies. Yet but for the insane attempt to subject the colonists to direct taxation by the English Parliament the War of Independence might have been long deferred. Even the sufferers from a vicious commercial policy did not see its essential iniquity, and it is hardly a subject for wonder that a generation of Englishmen who supposed themselves to gain greatly by controlling or extinguishing the colonial or the Irish trade should not have recognised the full iniquity of a policy which in itself hardly seemed intolerable to many of those colonists who endured the wrong. Still less can we be surprised that Englishmen a century ago, amid a world where the idea of human equality was not as yet recognised, should have failed to perceive what many Englishmen it may be suspected will hardly admit at present, that to most men equality, i.e. the treatment of all subjects by their government on similar principles, seems a form of justice, and that the multitude will tolerate restrictions on their freedom far more easily than offences against their sense of equality. No one will care to deny that French Governments have at all periods been far more despotic than the Government of England; but few persons who have given the matter a thought can deny that France has shown a power quite unknown to Englishmen of attaching to herself by affection countries which she has annexed by force. Strasburg was stolen from Germany, yet Strasburg soon became French in heart. Belgium and the Rhine Provinces would gladly have remained parts of the Napoleonic Empire. Savoy annexed in 1859 showed no disposition to separate from France in 1870. The explanation of these facts is not far to seek. When France annexes a country she may govern it well or ill, but she governs it on the same principles as the rest of the French dominions. Englishmen found it for centuries impossible to govern Englishmen in Ireland or Englishmen in Massachusetts exactly as if they were Englishmen in Middlesex. It is not uninstructive that every French Assembly since the Revolution has included Deputies from the colonies; no colony has ever sent a member to the Parliament at Westminster. Secondly,--The English connection has inevitably, and therefore without blame to anyone, brought upon Ireland the evils involved in the artificial suppression of revolution. The crises called revolutions are the ultimate and desperate cures for the fundamental disorganisation of society. The issue of a revolutionary struggle shows what is the true sovereign power in the revolutionised state. So strong is the interest of mankind, at least in any European country, in favour of some sort of settled rule, that civil disturbance will, if left to itself, in general end in the supremacy of some power which by securing the safety, at last gains the attachment, of the people. The Reign of Terror begets the Empire; even wars of religion at last produce peace, albeit peace may be nothing better than the iron uniformity of despotism. Could Ireland have been left for any lengthened period to herself, some form of rule adapted to the needs of the country would in all probability have been established. Whether Protestants or Catholics would have been the predominant element in the State; whether the landlords would have held their own, or whether the English system of tenure would long ago have made way for one more in conformity with native traditions; whether hostile classes and races would at last have established some _modus vivendi_ favourable to individual freedom, or whether despotism under some of its various forms would have been sanctioned by the acquiescence of its subjects, are matters of uncertain speculation. A conclusion which, though speculative, is far less uncertain is, that Ireland if left absolutely to herself would have arrived like every other country at some lasting settlement of her difficulties. To the establishment of such a reign of order the British connection has been fatal; revolution has been suppressed at the price of permanent disorganisation, the descendants of colonists and natives have not coalesced into a nation, and a country which has never known independence has never borne the burdens or learnt the lessons of national responsibility. Disastrous as this result has been, it is impossible to say who it was that at any given point was to blame for it. Had France been attached to and dependent upon a powerful neighbour, this sovereign state must have checked the cruelties and the injustice of the Reign of Terror. But the forcible extinction of Jacobinism by an external power would, we can hardly doubt, have arrested the progress and been fatal to the prosperity of France. Ireland, in short, which under English rule has lacked good administration, has by the same rule been inevitably prevented from attempting the cure of deeply rooted evils by the violent though occasionally successful remedy of revolution. Thirdly,--From the original flaw in the connection between the two countries has resulted, almost as it were of necessity, the religious oppression, which, recorded as it has been in the penal laws, has become the opprobrium of English rule in Ireland. The monstrosity of imposing Anglican Protestantism upon a people who had not reached the stage of development which is essential for even the understanding of Protestant dogma, and who if left to themselves would have adhered to Catholicism, conceals from us the strength of the pleas to be urged in excuse of a policy which to critics of the nineteenth century seems at least as absurd as it was iniquitous. Till towards the close of the seventeenth century all the best and wisest men of the most civilised nations in Europe, believed that the religion of a country was the concern of the Government, and that a king who neglected to enforce the "truth"--that is, his own theological beliefs--failed in his obligations to his subjects and incurred the displeasure of Heaven. From this point of view the policy of the Tudors must appear to us as natural as to themselves it appeared wise and praiseworthy. That the people of England should have been ripe for Protestantism at a time when the people of Ireland had hardly risen to the level of Roman Catholicism was to each country a grievous misfortune. That English Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should in common with the whole Christian world have believed that the toleration of religious error was a sin, and should have acted on the belief, was a cause of immense calamities. But inevitable ignorance is not the same thing as wickedness.[14] Fourthly,--To the same source as religious persecution are due the whole crop of difficulties connected with the tenure of land. When James I. determined that the old Brehon law was to be abolished, and an appeal to the law of England to be brought within the reach of every Irishman, he and his ministers meant to introduce a beneficial reform. They hoped that out of the old tribal customs a regular system of landowning according to the English tenure would be developed. In forcing on this change, English statesmen felt convinced not only that they were reformers, but that they were promoters of justice. To a generation trained under the teaching of lawyers like Coke, and accustomed to regard the tenure which prevailed in England as good in itself, it must have appeared that to pass from the irregular dominion of uncertain customs to the rule of clear, definite law, was little less than a transition from anarchy and injustice to a condition of order and equity. They acted in precisely the spirit of their descendants, who are absolutely assured that the extension of English maxims of government throughout India must be a blessing to the population of the country, and shape their Egyptian policy upon their unwavering faith in the benefits which European control must of necessity confer on Egyptian fellahs. If, however, it is probable that King James meant well to his Irish subjects, it is absolutely certain that his policy worked gross wrong. His scheme only provided for the more powerful members of the tribes, and took no account of the inferior members, each of whom in their degree had an undeniable if somewhat indefinite interest in the tribal land. Sir John Davis, who carried out the plan, seems to have thought that he had gone quite far enough in erecting the sub-chiefs into freeholders. It never occurred to him that the humblest member of the tribe should, if strict justice were done, have received his allotment out of the common territory; and the result of his settlement accordingly was that the tribal land was cut up into a number of large freehold estates which were given to the most important personages among the native Irish, and the bulk of the people were reduced to the condition of tenants at will.[15] An intended reform produced injustice, litigation, misery, and discontent. The case is noticeable, for it is a type of a thousand subsequent English attempts to reform and improve Ireland. The rulers of the country were influenced by ideas different from those of their subjects. Ignorance and want of sympathy produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity. Bad administration, religious persecution, above all a thoroughly vicious system of land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping confiscations as to make it at any rate a plausible assertion that all the land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history been confiscated at least thrice over,[16] are admittedly some of the causes, if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy of England. This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the law of the land prevailing among large numbers of the Irish people. The existence of this disaffection, whatever be the inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. A series of so-called Coercion Acts passed both before and since the Act of Union give undeniable evidence, if evidence were wanted, of the ceaseless, and as it would appear almost irrepressible, resistance in Ireland offered by the people to the enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest inclination to underrate the lasting and formidable character of this opposition between opinion and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious and infinitely painful topic question for a moment that the ultimate strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at lowest the acquiescence, of the mass of the population. Judges, constables and troops become almost powerless when the conscience of the people permanently opposes the execution of the law. Severity produces either no effect or bad effects, executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs, and jurymen or witnesses meet with the execration, and often with the fate, of criminals. On such a point it is best to take the judgment of a foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions, from which no Englishman or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free: "_Quand vous en êtes arrivés à ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie de rigueurs tous vos efforts pour rétablir l'ordre et la paix seront inutiles. En vain, pour réprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez à votre aide toutes les sévérités du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez des lois cruelles pour arrêter le cours de révoltantes cruautés; vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre délit se rattachant à ces grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre impuissance, vous suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaires, proclamerez des comtés entiers en état de suspicion légale, violerez le principe de la liberté individuelle, créerez des cours martiales, des commissions extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur, multiplierez à l'excès les exécutions captiales._"[17] No advocate of Home Rule can find a clearer statement of the condition of things with which on his view the Imperial Parliament is morally incompetent to deal than in these words of De Beaumont's; but before we hastily draw any inference from an undoubted fact, let us examine into the exact nature of the fact. The opposition of Irish opinion to the law of the land is undoubted, but the opposition is not now, and if we appeal (as under the present argument we are appealing) to the teaching of history never has been general opposition to law, or even general opposition to English law. The statistics of ordinary crime are (it is said) no higher in Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. A pickpocket or a burglar is as easily convicted in Ireland as elsewhere; the persons who lamentably enough are either left unpunished, or if punished may count on popular sympathy, are criminals whose offences, atrocious and cruel as they constantly are, are connected in popular opinion with political, and at bottom, it must be added, with agrarian questions. For more than a century there has existed an hereditary conspiracy against the rights of the landowners. The White Boys of 1760, the Steel Boys of 1772, the Right Boys of 1785, the Rockites of a few years later, the Thrashers of 1806, the White Boys who re-appear in 1811, 1815, 1820, the Terralts of 1831, the White Feet of 1833, the Black Feet of 1837;[18] later Ribbon men under different names, the Boycotters or the assassins who have added a terrible sanction to the commands of the Land League or of the National League, have each and all been, in most cases avowedly and in every case in fact, the vindicators or asserters of the just or unjust popular aversion to the rights of landlords given by the law and enforced by the courts of the land. It would be folly to assert that all popular opposition to the law in Ireland had been connected with agrarian questions. But if we look either to the experience of past generations, or to the transactions passing before our eyes, we can hardly be mistaken in holding that the main causes of disaffection have been either questions connected with religion, or rather with the position of Roman Catholics, or disputes connected with the possession of land. The feeling of nationality has played a very subordinate part in fomenting or keeping alive Irish discontent. The Repeal agitation, in spite of O'Connell's legitimate influence, collapsed. No one can read Sir Gavan Duffy's most interesting account of the Young Ireland movement without perceiving that just because it was strictly a nationalist movement it took very little hold upon the people. The Home Rule movement never showed great strength till it became avowedly a Land League, of which the ultimate result should be, by whatever means, to make the tenants of Ireland owners of their land. To this add that in the judgment of foreign critics, and of thinkers like Mill, the popular protest against the maintenance in Ireland of a tenure combining the evils both of large estates and of minute subdivision of farms is founded upon justice. De Beaumont at any rate teaches that to transform Irish tenants into peasant proprietors would be the salvation of the country:-- _"Plus on considère l'Irlande, ses besoins et ses difficultés de toutes sortes, et plus on est porté à penser que ce changement dans l'état de sa population agricole serait le vrai remède à ses maux.... "J'aurais mille autres raisons pour appuyer cette opinion; je m'arrête cependant. Un lecteur anglais trouvera mes arguments incomplets. Tout autre qu'un Anglais les jugera peut-être surabondants."_[19] This opinion may be well-founded or ill-founded; but no wise statesman will reject it without the maturest consideration. History, then, if fairly interrogated, gives this result: Historical causes have generated in Ireland a condition of opinion which in all matters regarding the land impedes that enforcement of law which is the primary duty of every civilized government. From this fact Home Rulers draw the inference that the law is hated because it is foreign, and that England should surrender to Irishmen the effort to enforce legal rights, since this duty is one which can be performed by a native and cannot be performed by any English or foreign authority. This conclusion is clearly not supported by the premises. If the source of popular discontent be agrarian, then the right course is to amend the land laws while improving the administrative system, and enforcing justice between man and man. A Home Ruler may, however, if hard driven, say that my interpretation of history is erroneous, and that a hatred to English law, and to all things English, and not a special dislike to the land law, is the sentiment which prevails over every other feeling of the Irish people. It is difficult to me to see how this view can be seriously maintained. Let us grant however for a moment that Home Rulers are right, and that millions of Irishmen are inspired with the passion of nationality. Even on this supposition the Home Rule doctrine stands in a bad way. If the demand of the Irish people be like that of the Italian people--a demand for recognised nationality--then the demand must be satisfied, if at all, not by Home Rule, but by independence. The most eminent among English Home Rulers believes that the law is hated in Ireland because it comes before the Irish people in a foreign garb. Mr. Froude in substance agrees in this matter with Mr. Gladstone, since he holds that "the real grievance is our presence in Ireland at all." But the eminent statesman and the distinguished historian draw a different inference from the same premises. Mr. Gladstone infers that Ireland can be satisfied by semi-independence. Mr. Froude infers that if we are to meet Irish wishes we must let Ireland be free. Mr. Froude's logic will be to most persons far more intelligible than the logic of the Liberal leader. Here, at any rate, we come to the true issue suggested by the phenomena of Irish history. Is Irish discontent due in the main to agrarian or to political causes? On the answer to this enquiry depends, as far as the argument we have in hand goes, the line of right policy in Ireland. But neither answer favours the contention of Home Rulers.[20] The argument from Irish history gives rise to, or, more properly speaking, contains in itself two further distinct lines of reasoning in favour of Home Rule, each of which supplements the other. The first of these aims at showing that to leave Ireland to herself is the only method by which to restore order throughout the country. This I have termed "the argument from the good effects of self-government," the other deduces from the necessity for Coercion Acts the conclusion that England cannot maintain order in Ireland: this I have termed "the argument from the necessity for Coercion Acts." These two lines of reasoning are simply an amplification of points suggested by the Home Rule argument from Irish history, and are of necessity therefore open to the same criticisms to which that argument is obnoxious. They have, however, each a certain value of their own, and have made an impression on the English public: they can each also be met by more or less special replies. The argument, therefore, from the good effects of self-government and the argument from the necessity for Coercion Acts each deserve separate statement and consideration. [Sidenote: 4. Argument from self-government.] _The argument from the virtues of self-government._--Self-dependence is the source of self-reliance and of self-help. Leave Ireland to herself, and Ireland will (it is argued) develop the sense of responsibility and the power of self-government. Mr. Parnell or Mr. Davitt as Irish Prime Minister will be able to perform with ease feats beyond the reach of any English Cabinets. He will dare to be strong because he knows he is popular: he will punish conspirators with a severity unknown to modern English governments; he will feel that anarchy is the bane of his country, and he will not tolerate disorder. Boycotters, Moonlighters, Dynamiters or Assassins will find that they are called upon to meet a force of which they have had before no experience. They will discover that they are engaged in a contest with the will of the people, and deprived, as they will be, of the moral sympathy which has hitherto given them comfort and encouragement, will yield obedience to a law which is the expression of the national will. Self-government in Ireland means strong government, and strong government is the one cure for Irish misery. This train of reflection has, unless I am mistaken, convinced many English Radicals that the installation of an Irish Ministry at Dublin will be the dissolution of every secret society throughout Ireland, and thus gained over to the cause of Home Rule men who detest anarchy even more than they love liberty. This belief in the virtues of self-government is confirmed by the teaching of American critics, who hold that the recent experience of the United States presents a clue by which Englishmen may find a path out of the labyrinth of their present perplexities. Transactions known to every citizen of the States show conclusively that the hatred of law which in Ireland fills Englishmen with amazement has arisen among a people who, whatever their faults, cannot be charged with those inherited vices which English opinion freely and gratuitously imputes to Irish nature. In Connecticut, in New York, in Georgia, throughout all the Southern States, open or secret combinations, supported by public opinion and enforcing its decrees by violence and murder, have with success defied the law courts. Social conditions, and not the perversities of Irish character, are seen to be the true cause of phenomena which, if they are now a feature of Irish life, have appeared in countries where not an Irishman was to be found, and where the Irish had no appreciable influence. To this fact, which appears to me not to admit of question, Americans add the consideration that lawlessness when supported by public opinion has in America been successfully met, not by coercion, but by yielding to public sentiment. Hence they draw the conclusion that the proper mode of terminating the conflict between law and widespread sentiment is to yield to opinion, and, by conceding something of the nature of Home Rule, to turn law-breakers into law-makers. The application of this dogma to Ireland is obvious: the crucial instance by which its truth is supposed to be established is the treatment of the conquered South by the victorious North. From the termination of the War of Secession up to 1876 the fixed policy of the Northern Republicans was to maintain order in the South by the use of Federal troops. This policy began and ended in failure: in 1876 the troops were withdrawn; the endeavour to enforce law by means of the Federal armies was given up--as if by magic chaos gave place to order. Local self-government has given peace to the United States, why should it not restore concord to the United Kingdom?[21] [Sidenote: Criticism.] It has been freely admitted in the foregoing pages[22] that the historical connection between England and Ireland has brought upon the weaker country the evils involved in the suppression of internal revolution by external force. This admission contains the main ground for the argument in favour of Home Rule drawn from the good effects of self-government, but is not in reality a sound foundation on which to place the suggested conclusion. For the argument under consideration, even after the concession that Ireland has suffered from not having been left to herself, is vitiated by more than one flaw. Home Rule, as it is again and again necessary to point out, is not national independence, nor anything like independence. Home Rule gives Ireland at most semi-independence--that is to say, it leaves Ireland at least half dependent upon England. It is vain to argue that the position of the member of a confederacy or of a colonial dependency will give to Irishmen the sense of independence and responsibility which belongs to a self-governing nation. Grant, however (though the assumption is a hazardous one), that the creation of an Irish government and an Irish Parliament would of itself give to Ireland, even though she were still in many respects dependent on England, such a new sense of power and of responsibility as would enable her to create for herself a strong executive. This concession is not enough to make out the argument in favour of Home Rule. Laws ought to be not only strong but just, and Englishmen must consider whether rulers who had come to the head of affairs solely because they represented the strongest among many Irish factions or parties would he able to rule with justice. The "Jacobin Conquest" installed a strong executive in power, but England could not be an accomplice in inaugurating a reign of terror. The connection which under any form of Home Rule would bind together the parts of the present United Kingdom would be, it may be suggested, a guarantee against the supremacy of an Irish Robespierre or Danton. Granted: but if so, Home Rule would restrain an Irish revolution. The strongest, in other words the most reckless leaders, would be prevented from coming to the front. Ireland would not follow her own course, and since she would not be in truth self-governed, she would not reap the good fruits of self-government. Nor in truth does the American version of our argument give much help to Home Rulers. In more than one instance popular sentiment has in the United States defied the law of the land. Nothing can be a better example of such defiance than the anti-rent war which raged in New York between 1839 and 1846.[23] The struggle exhibited all the recklessness of a no-rent agitation in Ireland with none of the excuses which can be urged in palliation of outrage by half-starving tenants; it produced a "reign of terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law and the payment of rent throughout the district" which was the field of the anti-rent movement; it ended in a nominal compromise which was a real victory for the anti-renters. In this instance, be it remarked, no sentiment of nationality or State right came into play. The law was hated, not because it was "foreign," but because it enforced the obligation of an unpopular contract. Landlords, it is now all but admitted, are not entitled to the full rights of citizens. The triumph therefore of the anti-renters at New York may command a certain amount of sympathy. The popular sentiment which in 1833 induced the people of Connecticut to boycott Miss Prudence Crandall cannot be brought under the sanction of any "higher law." Her crime was that she chose, obeying the dictates of her conscience, to open a school for negro girls in Connecticut. She was subjected to every annoyance and insult which the most reckless boycotter could invent. Legislation itself was turned against her, and the State failed utterly in the duty of protecting one of the most meritorious, and now, one is happy to think, one of the most honoured among the women of America. The Lyman Riots at Boston, as indeed every stage in the noble struggle of the American Abolitionists against popular injustice, tell the same tale, namely, that law in the United States has once and again failed to assert its due supremacy over injustice backed by public approval. This melancholy failure may possibly support the proposition that England cannot enforce the law in Ireland. It far more conclusively shows that even in countries deeply imbued with the spirit of legality self-government has no necessary tendency to produce just government or just legislation. Let us, however, examine with care the lessons to be drawn from the treatment of the Southern States of America by the North. The natural and most obvious moral of modern American history is that the majority of a nation have both the right and power to coerce a minority who claim to break up the unity of the State. The most distinguished English Liberals, such as Bright and Mill, held, and as I conceive on sound grounds of reason and justice, that the Southern States were neither legally nor morally justified in their claim to secede from the Union; but no fair-minded man can deny that a plausible constitutional case could be made out in favour of Secession, nor that the citizens of the Southern confederacy demonstrated their wish and determination to secede by far more cogent evidence than the return of eighty-six Secessionists to Congress. The primâ facie arguments which may be alleged in favour of Secession were tenfold stronger--unfounded as I hold them to have been--than the primâ facie arguments in favour of Ireland's right to Home Rule. Moreover, in studying the history of the United States, an Englishman is at the present moment more concerned with the results than with the justification of the suppression of the Southern rebellion. The policy of the North attained its object: the Union was restored, and its existence is now placed beyond the reach of peril. The abolition of slavery took away the source of disagreement between the Northern and Southern States, and the tremendous exhibition of the power of the Republic has finally, it is supposed, destroyed the very idea of Secession. There is certainly nothing in all this which discourages the attempt to maintain the political unity of Great Britain and Ireland. We are told, however, to forget the force employed to suppress Secession, and to recollect only the policy of the Republicans after the close of the Civil War. That policy was a failure as long as it involved the denial to the Southern States of their State autonomy, and became a success from the moment when it recognised to the full the sacredness of State rights. This, or some statement like this, represents the mode in which the annals of the Union must be read if they are to be interpreted in favour of Home Rule. The reading is a strained interpretation of events which are known to every one. The North, once and for all, settled that the matters which lay at the bottom of the Civil War should be settled in the manner which conform to Northern notions of justice and of expediency. The abolition of slavery, and the final disposal of the alleged right to Secession, gave to the North, all the requisite securities against attacks on the unity of the Republic. The Republicans, influenced in part by considerations of party, but partly (it must in fairness be admitted) by the feeling that it was a duty to secure for Negro citizens the full enjoyment of the civil and political rights given them, under the constitutional amendments supported for years the so-called Carpet Bag Governments, that is to say, the rule of Northern adventurers who were kept in office throughout the South by the Negro vote. The Federal Government, in short, up to 1876 gave by its arms authority in the South to the unscrupulosity of Northern scoundrelism supported by the votes of Negro ignorance. Such a policy naturally produced bitter irritation among the Southern Whites. Its reversal as naturally restored to the Whites at once power and contentment. Whether this reversal was as satisfactory to the Blacks is less clear. In any case it is hard to see how the restoration of the Southern States to their natural place in the Union tells in favour of giving Ireland a position quite inconsistent with the existing constitution of the United Kingdom. The case stands thus: Northern Republicans insisted that every State in the South should submit to the supremacy of the United States on every point which directly or indirectly concerned the national and political unity of the American people. Having secured this submission the Republican party restored to the Southern States the reality as well as the name of State rights; and allowed the same and no more than the same independence to South Carolina as is allowed to New York. No doubt something was sacrificed; this "something" was a matter which did not greatly concern the citizens of the North. It was the attempt to secure to the Black citizens of the South the political rights given them by the constitution. The sacrifice may have been necessary; many of the wisest Americans hold that it was so. But we may suspect that even amongst those who, as a matter of policy, approve the course pursued by the Federal Government in the South since 1876, qualms are occasionally felt as to some of its results. The able writer who sets American Home Rule before Englishmen as an example for imitation says with the candour which marks his writings: "I do not propose to defend or explain the way in which" the Native Whites "have since then" (1876) kept the Government "in their hands by suppressing or controlling the Negro vote. This is not necessary to my purpose."[24] It is however necessary for the purpose of weighing the effect of American experience to bear this "suppression" constantly in mind; it has deprived the Negroes of political rights which possibly they had better never have received, and has falsified the result of Presidential elections. When we are told that the South votes solid for a Democratic President, we must remember that in the Southern States the Negro vote is "controlled"; and that in reckoning the number of votes to which a State is entitled in virtue of its population, the Negro voters of the South are counted for as much as the uncontrolled White voters of the North. Whether this state of things will always be contentedly borne by the Northern States is a matter on which a foreigner can form no opinion. It is a condition of affairs which does not conduce to respect for law, and the satisfaction with which thoughtful Americans regard a policy founded on the tolerance of illegality confirms the belief suggested by other circumstances, that deference to opinion tends in the United States to undermine respect for law; it certainly does not tend to show that self-government has much connection with justice. The argument, in short, from the good effects of self-government appears, when examined, either to be an argument which tells far more strongly in favour of Separation than of Home Rule, or else to be an argument which shows only that England might gain some immediate advantage from shutting her eyes to injustice committed by an Irish government. [Sidenote: 5. Argument from Coercion Acts.] _The argument from the necessity for Coercion Acts_.--Coercion Acts are (according to popular apprehension) enactments suspending the operation of the ordinary law, and conflicting therefore with the principles of the English Constitution. Order has been maintained in Ireland since the Union (we are told) mainly by means of Coercion Acts. The English democracy, it is argued, cannot acquiesce any longer in these violations of the Constitution; but since order must somehow be maintained in Ireland, and Coercion Acts must no longer be passed, the English democracy must surrender the duty of maintaining the law into the hands of the Irish people, who, as is assumed by Home Rulers, can exact obedience to the law of Ireland without the use of exceptional legislation. [Sidenote: Criticism.] A lawyer irritated by the folly of popular declamation is tempted to dismiss all objections to Coercion Acts, together with all arguments founded upon such objections, with one peremptory remark--namely, that since a law is merely a rule which men are compelled to obey by the power of the State, and Coercion is but another name for compulsory obedience to the law, to object to Coercion is in reality to object to law itself, or in effect to the existence of political society. The temptation to cut down a popular delusion by some such summary criticism as this is great, but it is a temptation which at all costs must be resisted. Vague ideas, which have obtained general currency, are, in spite of their inaccuracy, the outgrowth for the most part of reasonable feeling. Whoever wishes to meet, and, if need be, dispel the antipathy to Coercion Acts, must try to understand what is the meaning which sensible men attach to the word "Coercion," what is the conviction represented by the dislike to Coercion Acts, how this dislike may be lessened, and, for the purpose with which these pages are written, how far the disapproval of Coercion Acts provides a reason in favour of Home Rule. Of all the terms which at the present moment confuse public judgment, none is more vague and misleading than the word "Coercion" when applied to every stringent attempt to enforce in Ireland obedience to the law of the land. Coercion means and includes two different though closely connected ideas which the laxity of popular thought fails to distinguish. _First_.--Coercion means any attempt to enforce a law among people whose moral sympathies are at variance with the law itself. In this sense Coercion is opposed to that enforcement of ordinary law with which we are all familiar. Thus, to punish a Ritualist for not conforming to the judgment of the Privy Council, to enforce vaccination at Leicester, to compel a Quaker to pay tithes, to eject an Irish tenant from the farm he has occupied, to drag him into Court and seize his goods if he does not pay his rent, to punish severely resistance to the Sheriff's officer, or to the bailiff who gives effect to the rights of an Irish landlord, are in popular estimation proceedings which according to the nature of the law put in force are stigmatised as persecution or Coercion. They certainly differ from the compulsion by which common debtors are compelled to pay their debts, or thieves are prevented from picking pockets or breaking into houses. The difference lies in this. Where the enforcement of the law is called "Coercion," not only does the criminal think himself in the right, or at any rate think the law a wrongful law, but also the society to which he belongs holds that the law-breaker is maintaining a moral right against an immoral law. The anti-vaccinator is deemed a martyr at Leicester, the farmer who will not pay his rent is thought a patriot at Cork. Where the enforcement of the law is not popularly deemed coercion the law-breaker does not suppose himself to be in the right, and still less do his associates think him morally praiseworthy. A thief does not in general hold any theory about the rightness of larceny, and there is no society in the United Kingdom at least who deny the moral validity of the Eighth Commandment. _Secondly_.--Coercion means the enforcement of law by arbitrary and exceptional methods which tend to diminish the securities for freedom possessed by ordinary citizens. Thus the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the abolition of trial by jury, the introduction of peculiar rules of evidence to facilitate convictions for a particular class of crimes, a suspension (speaking generally) of what would be called in foreign countries "constitutional guarantees," in order to secure obedience to particular laws, would be called coercion. An enactment, then, which in ordinary language is called a Coercion Act, has one or both of the two following characteristics.[25] It is an Act which either enforces some rule of law (e.g., the law that tenants must pay their rent, or that trades unionists must not molest artisans who accept lower wages than the scale prescribed by the union), which does not command the moral assent of the society or people among whom it is enforced, or else constrains obedience to law by some exceptional and arbitrary mode of procedure. Now the general prejudice against an Act which has either or both of these characteristics is within certain limits justifiable on grounds of good sense. Laws derive three-fourths of their force not from the fears of law-breakers, but from the assent of law-keepers; and legislation should, as a rule, correspond with the moral sentiment of the people. The maxim _quid leges sine moribus_, though it should always be balanced by the equally important maxim _quid mores sine legibus_, is one which no legislator dares neglect with impunity, and a law permanently at variance with wide moral feeling needs repeal or modification. It is also true that exceptional and arbitrary legislation is, simply because it is exceptional and arbitrary, open to suspicion. If it be desirable that personal liberty should be protected by the writ of Habeas Corpus, a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act is on the face of it an evil. If it is not desirable that officers of the army should suddenly and without legal training exercise the power of judges, the establishment of martial law is in itself a great, though it may be a necessary calamity. Legislation, which has received the odious name of coercion, has frequently (though not always) exhibited one or both of the characteristics which render it fairly obnoxious to that designation. The objection, therefore, to Coercion Acts is on the face of it not unreasonable. What are the inferences which the objection supports is, of course, quite a different matter, and shall be considered in its due place. It is most important, however, to note that the valid opposition to so-called Coercion Acts may and ought to be greatly mitigated by careful adherence to two maxims which are obvious, but are often neglected. A Coercion Act in the first place, should be aimed, not at the direct enforcement of rules opposed to popular opinion, but at the punishment of offences which, though they may be indirectly connected with dislike of an unpopular law or with opposition to rights (for instance, of landowners) not sanctioned by popular opinion, are deeds in themselves condemned by the human conscience. Deliberate breaches of contract, insults to women and children, the murder or torture of witnesses who have given truthful evidence in support of a conviction for crime, brutal cruelty to cattle, may be methods of popular vengeance, or the sanctions which enforce an agrarian code; but one may feel certain that the man who breaks his word, who tortures or murders his neighbour or who huffs cattle, knows himself to be not only a criminal, but a sinner, and that the law, which condemns him to punishment, though it may excite temporary outcry, can rely on the ultimate sanction of the popular conscience. A Coercion Act, in the second place, should as far as possible be neither a temporary nor an exceptional piece of legislation. An Act which increases the efficiency of the criminal law should, like other statutes, be a permanent enactment. The temporary character of Coercion Acts has needlessly increased their severity, for members of Parliament have justified to themselves carelessness in fixing the limits of powers conferred upon the executive under the insufficient plea that these powers were intended to last but for a short time. It has also deprived them of moral weight. An Act which is a law in 1881, but will cease to be a law in 1882, has neither the impressiveness nor the certainty which gives dignity to the ordinary law of the land. Coercion Acts, again, should be general--that is, should apply, not to one part, but to the whole, of the United Kingdom. Powers needed by the Government for constant use in Ireland must occasionally be wanted in England, or, if they do not exist there, in Scotland. It were the strangest anomaly for the law to sanction a mode of procedure which convicts a dynamiter in Dublin, and not to give the Government the same means for the conviction of the same criminal for the same offence if he has crossed to Liverpool. The principle forbidding exceptional or extraordinary legislation suggests that Coercion Acts should in the main give new stringency to the criminal procedure, and should not invade the liberties of ordinary citizens. The object of a Coercion Act is to facilitate the punishment of wrongdoers, not to restrict the liberty of citizens who have not broken the law. This is a point legislators are apt to neglect. The distinction insisted upon will be understood by any one who compares the Act for the Better Protection of Person and Property in Ireland, 44 Vict. c. 4, of 1881, with the Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act, 1882, 45 & 46 Vict. c. 25. They were each denounced as Coercion Acts: the earlier enactment was in many ways the more lenient of the two; yet in principle the Act of 1881 was thoroughly vicious, whilst in principle the Act of 1882 was, as regards its most effective sections, thoroughly sound. The Act of 1881 in effect gave the Irish executive an unlimited power of arrest: it established in theory despotic government. The Act of 1882 was in principle an Act for increasing the stringency of criminal procedure. The one could not be made permanent, and applied to the whole United Kingdom, without depriving every citizen of security for his personal freedom. The main enactments of the other might extend through the whole of Great Britain and Ireland, and produce only the not undesirable effect of making the whole United Kingdom a less pleasant residence than at present for criminals or conspirators. An Act which should be permanent, which should apply to the whole United Kingdom, which should deal, not indeed exclusively but in the main, with criminal procedure, could hardly contain injudicious, harsh or tyrannical provisions. The passing of one such good Criminal Law Amendment Act would, though its discussion occupied a whole Session, save our representatives in Parliament an infinite waste of time, and would make unnecessary half-a-dozen Coercion Acts for Ireland. To enlarge the power of examining persons suspected of connection with a crime, even though no man is put upon his trial; to get rid of every difficulty in changing the venue; to give the Courts the right under certain circumstances of trying criminals without the intervention of a jury; to organise much more thoroughly than it is organised at present in England the whole system of criminal prosecutions; to enable the executive to prohibit public meetings which might provoke a breach of the peace, would in many cases be an improvement on the criminal law of England itself, and would in several instances be simply an extension to the whole United Kingdom of laws which exist without exciting any disapproval in some one division of it.[26] Without special experience it would be presumptuous to assert that these or similar changes in criminal procedure would suffice for the enforcement of the law in Ireland during a period of disturbance. That such improvements in procedure would go a good way to make special Coercion Acts unnecessary, is in the highest degree probable. There is, moreover, nothing objectionable or anomalous in increasing as time goes on the stringency of criminal procedure. The law against crimes is the protection of men who are not criminals. Civilisation raises our estimate of the protection which good citizens ought to receive from the State; it also places new means of attack in the hands of cheats and ruffians. An elaborate criminal code is as necessary for a civilised society as are elaborately trained armies and scientific arms both of defence and offence. No adherence, however, to sound maxims of criminal jurisprudence would, it must be frankly admitted, entirely take away, though it might greatly mitigate, the justifiable distaste for Coercion Acts. The necessity for these Acts points to discord in Ireland between the law of the land and the law of the people; they are the outward and visible sign of internal discontent and disloyalty; they give good ground for supposing that the law or some part of it requires amendment, and to many persons laws which admit the existence of a bad social condition will appear to be themselves odious. But the necessity for amending bad laws or vicious institutions is no reason why just laws, or any law which cannot rightly be repealed, should not be enforced. The fallacies of protection afforded no reason for not punishing smugglers, though the existence of smuggling gave good ground for considering whether the customs law did not require revision. There seems to the thoughtless crowd--whether rich or poor, and all men are thoughtless about most things, and many men about all things--to be a certain inconsistency between reform and coercion; there is something absurd in the policy of "cuffs and kisses." But the inconsistency or absurdity is only apparent. The necessity for carrying through by legal means an agrarian revolution--and the passing of the Irish Land Act was in effect an admission by the English Parliament, that this necessity exists--is a solid reason for the strict enforcement of justice. Reform tends, as its immediate result, to produce lawlessness. A wise driver holds his reins all the tighter because he is compelled to drive along the brink of a precipice. Whether Coercion Acts, which it must be remembered have been known before now in England, and were known in Ireland during the era of her Parliamentary independence, and which are the sign of the difficulty of enforcing the law, are or are not to be tolerated as a necessary evil, depends on the answer to the inquiry, whether the Government of the United Kingdom can by just administration, and by just legislation, remove the source of Irish opposition to the law? Answer the question affirmatively, and the outcry against coercion becomes unmeaning; answer the question negatively, and you produce an argument which tells with crushing power in favour not of Home Rule, but of Separation. [Sidenote: 6. The argument from inconvenience.] _The argument from the inconvenience to England._[27]--Apologies for Home Rule drawn from foreign experience, deference due to the popular will, from the historical failure of England to govern Ireland with success and the like, have about them when employed by English members of Parliament a touch of unreality; they are reasons meant to satisfy the hearer, but do not convince the speaker. When however we come to the argument for Home Rule drawn from the inconvenience of the present state of things to England generally, and to English members of Parliament in particular, we know at once that we are at any rate dealing with a real tangible serious plea which has (if anything) only too much weight with the person who employs it. There is nothing in the whole relation of England to Ireland about which politicians are so well assured, as that the presence of a body of Parnellites at Westminster is an unutterable nuisance, and works intolerable evil. Of the reality of their conviction we have the strongest proof. The sufferings of Irish tenants, the difficulties or the wrongs of Irish landlords, the evils of coercion, the terror of assassination, but slightly ruffled the composure with which English statesmen faced the perplexities of the Irish problem. They first began to think that the demand for Home Rule might have something in it when the refusal to erect a Parliament at Dublin meant the continuance of obstruction in the Parliament at Westminster. The terror of obstruction has to speak the plain truth, done more to effect the _bonâ fide_ conversion of English M.P.'s into advocates of Home Rule than any other single influence. What then is the harm which a body of eighty or ninety Irish members can work in Parliament? This is the answer. They may (it is said) in the first place delay, obstruct, and render impossible the carrying through of important measures; London may go without a municipality; widowers may wait for years without being able to marry their deceased wives' sisters; we may not during this generation get the blessing of a good criminal code, if Mr. Parnell and his followers sit in Parliament prepared to practice all the arts of obstruction. The Irish members, in the second place, perturb and falsify the whole system of party government. The majority of Great Britain wish to be ruled say by Lord Salisbury; the Parnellites do not care whether Lord Salisbury or Mr. Gladstone is Premier, but they do care for making the English executive feeble, and ridiculous. They can, therefore, by the practice of a very little art, seize some opportunity of putting Lord Salisbury in a minority, and turning him out of office. Mr. Gladstone comes back into what is ironically called power. The same game begins again. The Parnellites coalesce with the Tories, we have a change of Cabinet, and possibly a dissolution. Nor are changes of Ministry the whole of the evil. The high tone of party politics is degraded. English or Scottish members of Parliament are but men; they are liable to be tempted; the Parnellites have the means of offering temptation; and temptation, members of Parliament intimate to us, will in the long run be too great for their virtue. The presence, in short, at Westminster of eighty-six gentlemen who do not respect the dignity or care for the efficiency of Parliament is absolutely fatal to the success of Parliamentary government, and to the character of Parliamentary statesmanship. We must, it is inferred, let the Parnellites have a Parliament of their own in Ireland, or else we shall soon cease to have any Parliament worth keeping in England. [Sidenote: Criticism.] The force of this line of argument, as far as it goes, cannot be denied. The presence in the House of Commons of politicians disloyal to Parliament causes immense inconvenience; but to anyone not a member of the House of Commons, it appears singular that men of sense should think the inconveniences of obstruction a sufficient ground for breaking up the Constitution. The whole thing is a question of proportion. The nation suffers a good deal from obstruction, but the suffering is not of a kind to justify revolution. A toothache is a bad thing, but a severe toothache hardly suggests suicide; and though life might not be worth having, if toothache were to last for years, the thoughts of putting an end to one's existence are removed by the knowledge that an aching tooth can be drawn by a dentist. Now the more obvious evils of obstruction can clearly be removed by changes of procedure. Members of Parliament appear to think that to alter the rules of the House of Commons; to curtail and limit the power of debate; to confer, if necessary, upon the Speaker, or upon the bare majority of members present, authority to bring every debate summarily to a close, is something like overthrowing the monarchy, a thing not to be dreamt of by the wildest of innovators. Plain men outside the walls of Parliament can assure our representatives, that the world would bear with infinite calmness the imposition of stringent restrictions on the overflow of Parliamentary eloquence. If even the great debate on Home Rule had been finished say in a week, the outer world would have been well pleased; and measures such as the Government of Ireland Bill happily do not come before Parliament every year. The more subtle evils arising in part at least from the presence of the Irish members must be met by more searching remedies. Parnellite obstruction has revealed rather than caused the weakness of government by Parliament. The experience, not of England only, but of other countries, shows the great difficulty of working our present party system of government in a representative assembly which is divided into more than two parties. The essential difficulty lies in the immediate dependence of a modern ministry for its existence on every vote of the House of Commons. If you see the difficulty, you can also see various means by which it may be removed. In more than one country, and notably in the United States and in Switzerland--states, be it remarked, in which popular government flourishes--the executive, though in the long run amenable to the voice of the people, and though in Switzerland actually appointed by the legislature, is not like an English Cabinet dependent on the fluctuating will of a legislative assembly. If it were necessary to choose between modifications in the relation of the executive to Parliament, and the repeal of the Act of Union, most Englishmen would think that to increase the independence of the executive--a change probably desirable in itself--was a less evil than a disruption of the United Kingdom, which not only is in itself a gigantic evil, but may well lead to others. A modification, however, in the practice would, for the moment at least, save the real principles of Parliamentary government. Were it once understood that a Ministry would not retire from office except in consequence of a direct vote of want of confidence in the House of Commons, the political power of the Parnellite, or of any other minority, would be greatly diminished. Meanwhile, members of Parliament may be reminded that it is on them that the duty lies of removing the obstacles which from time to time impede the working of Parliamentary machinery, and that the existence of temptation to political turpitude is not an admitted excuse for yielding to it. In one way or another a majority of 584 members must, if they choose, be able to make head against the minority of 86. Their failure already excites astonishment; the time is coming when it will excite contempt. The English people, moreover, have the remedy in their own hands. By giving to either of the great parties an absolute majority they can terminate all the inconveniences threatened by Parnellite obstruction. The remedy is in their hands, and recent experience suggests that they will not be slow to use it. * * * * * A survey of the arguments in favour of Home Rule suggests the following reflections: The arguments, taken as a whole, do undoubtedly show that the present state of things is accompanied by considerable evils or inconveniences. They show what no one who has given a thought to the matter ever doubted, that the relation between England and Ireland is unsatisfactory. They are, as far as they go, objections to the maintenance of the Union, but neither the feelings which favour Home Rule, nor the reasons by which they are supported, tell in reality in favour of Home Rule policy. They scarcely tend to show that Home Rule would cure the evils complained of; they certainly do not show, they only assume, that Home Rule in Ireland would not be injurious to England. They are, in short, arguments in favour of Irish independence; every one of them would be seen in its true character if the Irish demand should take the form of a claim that Ireland should become an independent nation. Meanwhile, even on the Home Rule view, the case stands thus: the present condition of things excites Irish discontent, and involves great evils. We have before us but three courses:--Maintenance of the Union; the concession of Irish independence; the concession of Home Rule to Ireland. The Home Ruler urges that the last is the best course left open to us. To decide whether this be so or not requires a fair examination of the possibilities which each course presents to England. FOOTNOTES: [4] For the constitution of Austria-Hungary see Ulbrich's _Oesterreich-Ungarn_ in Marquardsen's _Handbuch des Oeffentlichen Rechts_; Francis Deák, with preface by M.E. Grant Duff; Home Rule in Austria-Hungary, by David King, in the _Nineteenth Century_, January 1886, p. 35. [5] Ulbrich, pp. 15, 76, 77. [6] See Marquardsen, 28-30. [7] This is, in my judgment, true even of such federations as the United States or the Swiss confederacy. [8] Froude's 'English in Ireland,' vol. 3, pp. 581, 582. [9] See especially on this subject 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande,' Partie Historique, pp. 15-207. [10] "On ne saurait considérer attentivement l'Irlande, étudier son histoire et ses révolutions, observer ses moeurs et analyser ses lois, sans reconnaître que ses malheurs, auxquels ont concouru tant d'accidents funestes, ont eu et ont encore de nos jours, pour cause principale, une cause _première_, radicale, permanente; et qui domine toutes les autres; cette cause, c'est une mauvaise _aristocratie_." 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande,' deuxième partie, p. 228. The only objection which may be fairly taken to De Beaumont's language, though not to his essential meaning, is, that the words he uses occasionally suggest the idea that he attributes some special vice of nature, so to speak, to the landed classes in Ireland, whilst there is, of course, no reason to suppose that the original Norman invaders of Ireland were a whit worse than the Normans they left behind them in England, or that the Cromwellian settlers did not possess the virtues which distinguished Puritan soldiers. What De Beaumont really means is that the aristocracy, or landed gentry, have been from first to last placed in a false position, which has led to their exhibiting the vices, with few of the virtues, of aristocratic government. [11] Compare 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande Sociale,' &c., pp. 253-256. [12] See Dicey, 'Law of the Constitution' (Second Edition), pp. 181-210; and compare 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande Sociale,' &c., pp. 253-299. [13] Cromwell's reputation as a statesman suffers even more than that of most great men from the indiscriminating eulogy of admirers. The merit of his Irish policy was not his severity to Catholics, but his equity to Protestants. If he did not acknowledge the equality of man, he at any rate acknowledged what English statesmanship before and after his time refused to admit--the equality of Englishmen, at least when Protestants. His policy handed down to us a legacy of justifiable hatred on the part of Irish Catholics. But it is the fault not of the Protector, but of his successors, that his policy did not ensure to England the loyalty of every Protestant in Ireland. [14] The penal laws against the Catholics in England were as severe as those in Ireland. Their practical effect and working was however very different in the two countries. See 1 Lecky,'History of England,' pp. 268-310. [15] See Walpole, 'Short History of the Kingdom of Ireland,' p. 176. [16] See a speech of Lord Clare made in defence of the Bill for Establishing the Union with England, and republished by the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union. [17] 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande Sociale,' p. 251. It is of primary consequence that Englishmen should realise the undoubted fact, that agrarian conspiracies and agrarian outrages, such as those which baffle the English Government in Ireland, are known to foreign countries. For centuries the question of tenant-right, in a form very like that in which it arises in Ireland, has been known in the parts of France near Saint-Quentin under the name of the _droit de marché_. In France, as in Ireland, tenants have claimed a right unknown to the law, and have enforced the right by outrage, by boycotting, by murder. The _Dépointeur_ is the land grabber, and is treated by French peasants precisely as the Irish land grabber is treated by Irish peasants. See Calonne, 'La Vie Agricole, sous l'Ancien Régime,' pp. 66-69. Precisely the same phenomena have appeared in parts of Belgium, where for centuries there has been, in respect of land, the conflict to which we are accustomed in Ireland, between the law of the Courts and the law of the people. "From the commencement of the year 1836 to the end of 1842 there had been" [in consequence of this conflict] "forty-three acts of incendiarism, eleven assassinations, and seven agrarian outrages entailing capital punishment," all within a limited part of Belgium. See Parliamentary Reports on Tenure of Land in Countries of Europe, 1869, p. 118-123. In Belgium decisive measures of punishment at last put an end to agrarian outrages. What should be specially noted is that in France and Belgium crimes in character exactly resembling the agrarian outrages which take place in Ireland had, it is admitted, no connection whatever with national, or even it would seem with general political feeling. [18] See 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande Sociale,' &c., p. 251. [19] 2 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande Sociale, Politique et Religeuse.' Septième édition, pp. 135 and 137. [20] A Home Ruler may in this matter take up one position which is consistent. He may say that England can allow to be carried out through the agency of an Irish Parliament a policy which no English Parliament could itself adopt. To put the matter plainly, an English Parliament which cannot for very shame rob Irish landlords of their property may, it is suggested, create an Irish Parliament with authority to rob them. This position is consistent, but it is disgraceful. To ascribe it to a fair opponent would be gross controversial unfairness. [21] A reader who wishes to see the American view put in its best and strongest form should read Mr. E.L. Godkin's article on "American Home Rule," _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1886, p. 793. I entirely disagree with the general conclusion to which the article is intended to lead, but I am anxious to acknowledge the importance of the information and the arguments which it contains. [22] See pp. 87-89, _ante._ [23] See 'American Home Rule,' _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1886, pp. 793, 803, 804. [24] _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1886, p. 801. [25] Contrast the Coercion Acts of 1881 and 1882 respectively. For list of Coercion Acts see "Federal Union with Ireland," by R.B. O'Brian, _Nineteenth Century_, No. 107, p. 35. [26] In England the Courts can change the venue for the trial of a criminal. In Scotland the Lord Advocate can always (I am told) bring any case he chooses to trial before the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, and the same thing could be done by the Court on the application of the prisoner. In Scotland, again, any Sheriff or Chief Magistrate of a Burgh could prohibit a meeting, however lawful, which he thought likely to endanger the peace. The provisions of the last Irish Coercion Act, Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act, 1882, 45 & 46 Vict. c. 25, s. 16, giving power to a magistrate where an offence had been committed to summon and examine witnesses, even though no person is charged with the offence, formed, I believe, part of the draft criminal code for England. [27] See for an admirable statement of this argument, "Alternative Policies in Ireland," in the _Nineteenth Century_ for February, 1886. CHAPTER V. THE MAINTENANCE OF THE UNION. [Sidenote: The failure of the Union; its nature.] Eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of the Treaty of Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do not yet form an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more wretched (for the whole European world has made progress, and Ireland with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness; and Irish disaffection to England is, if not deeper, more wide-spread than in 1800. An Act meant by its authors to be the source of the prosperity and concord which, though slowly, followed upon the union with Scotland, has not made Ireland rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the feud between Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of Irish tenants, has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and has therefore not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment which can fairly be brought against the Act of Union. It is, however, of importance to notice that the main charges to which the Act of Union is liable are negative. It has not removed (its foes, say that it has not mitigated) great evils; but the mass of ills for which the Union is constantly made chargeable were in existence before the days of Pitt or Cornwallis. Destitution, sectarian animosities, harsh evictions, met by savage outrages, the terror of secret societies, the stern enforcement of law which to the people represented anything but justice, are phenomena of Irish society, which, as they existed before the Volunteers established the Parliamentary independence of the country, and continued to exist when Ireland was subject to no laws but those passed by an Irish Parliament, cannot be attributed to the Act of Union. That enactment introduced a purely political change. It could not, except very indirectly, either increase or remove evils which it did not affect to touch. To two charges its authors are indeed, with more or less of justice, liable; they committed the intellectual error of supposing that a change or improvement in the form of the Constitution would remove evils due to social and economical causes; they committed the moral error of thinking that a beneficial enactment might allowably be passed by means which outraged all the best moral feeling of Ireland. Their mistakes are worth notice. England is again told that a Constitutional change is the remedy for Irish misery. Ethical considerations (in this case the moral rights of a loyal minority and the legal rights of Irish landlords) are, it is again intimated, to be held of slight account compared with the benefit to Ireland and to England which is to be expected from an experiment in Constitution-making. To impartial observers it may appear that the proposed policy of 1886 threatens to reproduce in its essence the errors and the vices of the policy of 1800. Be this as it may, the reflection that the ill results of the Act of Union are mainly negative suggests the conclusion that the good results (if any) of its repeal would probably be negative also, and clears the way for the question with which we are immediately concerned, namely, What are the actual and undoubted evils to England of maintaining a legislative union with Ireland? [Sidenote: The evils of maintaining the Union] The nature and extent of these evils has been considered in criticising the arguments in favour of Home Rule. A bare enumeration of them therefore may here suffice. [Sidenote: 1. Complication of English policy.] _First._--The Union hampers and complicates English policy, and this even independently of the existing agitation for Home Rule. The tenacity of England during the war with America, her triumphant energy during the revolutionary struggle, were due to a unity of feeling on the part, at any rate, of her governing classes, which even under the most favourable circumstances can hardly exist in a Parliament containing, as the Parliament of the United Kingdom always must contain, a large body of Irish Roman Catholics. If it be urged that the presence of Roman Catholics is due to the Catholic Emancipation Act, and not to the Act of Union, the remark is true but irrelevant. No maintainer or assailant of the Union is insane enough to propose the repeal of the Emancipation Act. [Sidenote: 2. Obstruction] _Secondly_.--The refusal of Home Rule involves a long, tedious, and demoralising contest with opponents will use, and from their own point of view have a right to use, all the arts of obstruction and of Parliamentary intrigue. The battle of the Constitution must be fought out in Parliament, and if it is to be won, Englishmen may be compelled to forego for a time much useful legislation, to modify the rules of party government, and, it is possible, even the forms of the Constitution. [Sidenote: 3. Strict government in Ireland.] _Thirdly_.--If the Union is to be maintained with advantage to any part of the United Kingdom, the people of the United Kingdom must make the most strenuous, firm, and continuous effort, lasting, it may well be, for twenty years or more, to enforce throughout every part of the United Kingdom obedience to the law of the land. This effort can only be justified by the equally strenuous determination (which must involve an infinity of trouble) to give ear to every Irish complaint, and to see that the laws which the Irish people obey are laws of justice, and (what is much the same thing) laws which in the long run the people of Ireland will feel to be just. To carry out this course of action is difficult for all governments, is perhaps specially difficult for a democratic government. To maintain the Union is no easy task, though it has yet to be proved that any form of Home Rule will give more ease to the people of England; nor can the difficulty be got rid of, though it may be somewhat changed, by abolishing the Irish representation in Parliament, or by treating Ireland as a Crown colony. Such steps, which could hardly be termed maintenance of the Union, might, as expedients for carrying through safely a course of reform, be morally and for a time justifiable. Their adoption is, however, liable to an almost insuperable objection. Democracy in Great Britain does not comport with official autocracy in Ireland. Every government must be true to its principles, and a democracy which played the benevolent despot would suffer demoralisation. [Sidenote: Good results of the Union.] The Act of Union has been the aim of so much random invective that its good fruits (for it has borne good no less than evil fruits) are in danger of being forgotten. It ended once and for all an intolerable condition of affairs, and its scope will never be understood unless its enactments are read in the lurid light cast upon them by the rebellion of 1798. The hateful means used to obtain an apparently good end have cast a slur on the reputation of more than one high-toned statesman. Humanity, in the case of Cornwallis at least, had far more share than ambition in his determination to abolish the Irish Parliament. His anxiety in 1798 to save Catholics and rebels from oppression was as keen and as noble as the anxiety of Canning in 1858 to protect the natives of India from the resentments excited by the Mutiny. Every reason which in our own day after the Gordon riots made it necessary to abolish the ancient constitution of Jamaica told in 1800 in favour of abolishing the still more ancient Parliament of Ireland. If statesmen, bent on restoring at least the rule of law and peace in a distracted country, fancied that the corruption of the legislature might be counted a low price to pay for protecting the mass of the population from the rule or the vengeance of a faction, they committed a grave moral error. But their mistake was more pardonable than it seems to modern critics, and the lesson which it teaches--that you cannot base a just policy upon a foundation of iniquity--is one which the modern censors of Pitt may well lay to heart. However this may be, the transactions which discredited the passing of the Act of Union give no ground for repealing it, and, except to a rhetorician in want of an _argumentum ad hominem_, it will never appear that the philosophic historian who maintains that the Treaty of Union was ill-conceived and premature, contradicts the political philosopher who contends that to repeal the Union would be not to cancel but to aggravate the evils of an historical error. The considerations which recommend or require the maintenance of the Union are often forgotten, but are obvious. [Sidenote: Reasons for maintaining the Union.] The support of the Union is, after all, let controversialists say what they like, the policy which in fact holds the field, and it is (strange though the assertion may appear) on the advocates of innovation, not on the supporters of things as they are, that lies the burden of making out their case. A fundamental alteration in the constitution of the realm is in itself no light matter, and any man who has eyes to see or ears to hear may easily convince himself that the creation of an Irish Parliament must be the beginning, not the end, of a revolution. Dublin is not the only city in the United Kingdom which has contained an Assembly which not only occasionally denied, but during the whole of its existence never admitted, the sovereignty of the Parliament at Westminster; and in the present state of the world it is inconceivable that Irish autonomy--if such be the proper term--should not excite or justify claims for local independence which would unloose the ties which bind together the huge fabric of the British Empire. [Sidenote: Strengthens the English Crown.] The Union again of England and Ireland has increased, as its relaxation would of necessity diminish, the power of the central government. That the Treaty of Union has, disappointing and even harmful as some of its results have been, formed a guarantee against successful rebellion, hardly admits of question. The difference between the abortive revolt of 1848 or the Fenian disturbances of 1866, and the desperate insurrection of 1798, affords some measure of the strength which the legislative unity of the kingdom has added to the English Crown. If it be suggested that the disloyalty which has prompted sedition during this century was less deep than the animosities which armed the insurgents of '98, the suggestion may be true, but it incidentally shows that under the Union some progress, however slight, has been made towards national harmony, and recalls the important fact that at the present day the wealth and the energy of Protestant Ireland firmly support the legislative unity of the kingdom. Consider again what are the facilities possessed, say, by the State of New York, by the kingdom of Bavaria, or by the Cape Colony for interfering with or arresting the action of the central power to which the State, kingdom, or dependency is subject, and you perceive at once how ample must, from the very necessity of the case, be the opportunities possessed by a semi-independent Irish executive representing a semi-independent Irish Parliament for embarrassing the action of the Government in London. This will appear more clearly from a detailed examination of the different forms which may be assumed by Home Rule. One remark, however, may with advantage be made at this point of our argument, since it holds good of every possible scheme for repealing or modifying the Union. Powers conferred upon an executive and a Parliament at Dublin must from the nature of things be a deduction from the powers which can be exercised by the Parliament and Ministry at Westminster. This is a principle the truth of which is independent of the wishes or fancies either of Englishmen or of Irishmen. "The more you have of the more," runs a quaint Spanish proverb, "the less you have of the less." The saying is of mathematical certainty, but the depth and variety of its application are constantly forgotten in the excitement of controversy. [Sidenote: Enables it to maintain freedom.] To the existence of the Union and to the power which it confers upon the executive, is due the possibility of curbing the violence of religious and political zealots by the interposition of an authority endowed at once with overpowering strength and obvious impartiality. In Belfast even a Nationalist must, if he is a peaceable citizen, feel that the withdrawal of the Queen's troops would not conduce to his comfort. Under a system of Home Rule, it will perhaps be said, one body of fanatics or the other would, with or without the aid of the army, gain the upper hand and restore order. Grant the truth, which may perhaps be a little doubtful of this suggestion, it is at best a plea not for Home Rule but for separation, since no civilised government could, whilst England and Ireland formed under any terms whatever parts of the same political community, suffer Belfast to become the scene of a free fight which should decide by the ordeal of battle whether Protestants should tyrannise over Catholics, or Catholics coerce Protestants by a reign of terror. A reign of order moreover is not equivalent to the reign of justice. Still less is it equivalent to the establishment of that personal freedom which can only exist under the equal rule of equal law, and is the blessing which every government worthy the name is bound to confer upon its subjects. An impartial foreigner again would probably hold, as indeed De Beaumont (unless I misunderstand his teaching) did to the end of his life actually hold, that the existing connection between England and Ireland is dictated by the state of the world, by the circumstances of the times, by the very nature of things. We are living in 1886, not in 1782: the nineteenth century is not the age for small States or for weak States. Such an observer, however, would also see much that is hidden by the dust of battle from the combatants in a desperate political conflict What is really needed to meet the real wants of which the cry for Home Rule is a more or less factitious expression is, he would note, much more a change in the spirit of Englishmen than an alteration in the constitution of England. If Englishmen could learn to speak and think of Irishmen with the respect and consideration due to fellow-citizens, if they could cease to jeer at Irishmen now as not much more than a century ago they used to jeer at Scotchmen, the Union would soon become something more than a mere work of legal ingenuity. A change of feeling would make it easy for English politicians and English voters to perceive that the local affairs of Ireland ought to be managed in the Parliament of the United Kingdom in accordance with the opinion of the Parliamentary representatives of Ireland, just as Scotch affairs are managed at Westminster in accordance with the opinions of Parliamentary representatives of Scotland. Towards this reform in the practice which need not change anything in the law of our constitution, Mr. Bright has already pointed the way, and Mr. Bright's moral intuitions have more than once given him a power denied to our other statesmen of prophetic insight into the future of English policy. Meanwhile those who urge the maintenance of the Union have a right to insist upon the possibilities which it contains of reconciling the strength of the Empire with due regard to the local interests and local sentiment of Ireland. [Sidenote: And carry out just reforms.] The Union, lastly, whilst it increases the power of the whole United Kingdom, provides the means of carrying out, and of carrying out with due regard to justice, any reform, innovation, or if you please revolution, required for the prosperity of the Irish people. The duty, it has been laid down, of an English Minister is to effect by his policy all those changes in Ireland which a revolution would effect by force. The maxim comes from a strange quarter, but the doctrine of Disraeli sums up on this matter the teaching of Mill and De Beaumont, and it is absolutely sound if you add to it the implied condition that an English Minister, whilst aiming at the ends of a wise revolutionist, must pay a respect to the demands of justice not always evinced by the revolutionary spirit. But to put in force a policy of just revolution, nothing is so necessary as the combination of resistless power with infinite wealth. This is exactly what the government of the United Kingdom can, and no Irish government could, supply. Mr. Gladstone and his followers fully admit this, and the Land Purchase Bill was the sign of their conviction that the policy of Home Rule itself needs for its success and justification the power to draw upon the wealth of the United Kingdom. Let the United Kingdom, it is said in effect, pay fifty millions, that without any injustice to Irish landlords Irish tenants may be turned into landowners, and may then enjoy the blessings of Home Rule, freed from all temptation to use legislative power for purposes of confiscation. The advice may in one sense be sound, but prudence suggests that if the fifty millions are to be expended, it were best first to settle the agrarian feud, and then to see whether the demand for Home Rule would not die a natural death. French peasants were Jacobins until the revolution secured to them the soil of France. The same men when transformed into landed proprietors became the staunch opponents of Jacobinism. It is in any case the interest of England to see whether, say in a generation, the existing or further changes in the tenure of land may not avert all necessity or demand for changes in the constitution. Interest here coincides with duty. No scheme whether of Home Rule or of Irish independence has been proposed, nor, it may be said with confidence, ever can be proposed, which, disguise the matter as you will, does not savour of treachery to thousands of Irishmen who have performed the duties and claim to retain the rights of citizens of the United Kingdom. The worst delusion of the revolutionary spirit is the notion that justice to the people may be based upon injustice to individuals. Protestants have not more, but neither have they less, claim to protection from the State than Catholics. Even landowners are not of necessity wrong-doers. Rent is a debt, and it may occasionally be the duty, even of a tenant, to pay his creditor. An insolvent debtor has, however excusable or pitiable his position, no absolute moral right to improve his own position by torturing or murdering any solvent neighbour who may be inclined to pay his own debts. To maintain the Union is to maintain the effort to perform the obligations of the country, and to compel all citizens of the country to perform the duties imposed by law. The effort is an arduous one, the more so since it must be combined with the equally strenuous endeavour to see that in Ireland, as in every part of the United Kingdom, the demands of the law be made to coincide with the demands of morality and of humanity. Still _pactum serva_ is a good maxim for nations no less than for individuals: there may be a higher law than the rule of keeping one's promise, but before a man or a government incurs even the appearance of bad faith, it were well to see whether the so-called higher law of conscience may not in reality be the lower dictates of indolence or cowardice. Neither nations nor individuals are bound in duty to do impossibilities. The limit of power is the limit of responsibility, but if England can no longer enforce justice in Ireland, there will still be the grave question whether this fearful result of past misdoing or error does not suggest and justify Separation rather than Home Rule. CHAPTER VI. SEPARATION. [Sidenote: Evils of Separation] Englishmen are so firmly and with such good reason convinced that the independence of Ireland would be fatal to the greatness and security of Great Britain, that they rarely attempt to weigh accurately the grounds of reason which may be adduced in support of a conviction which has acquired the character of a political instinct. The evils, however, to England which may be reasonably anticipated from the political separation of the two countries may be summed up under three heads. _First_.--The acquiescence by England in Irish independence would be a deliberate and complete surrender of the objects at which English statesmanship has, under one form or another, aimed for centuries. Such a surrender would, in addition to its material effects, inflict an amount of moral discredit on England which would itself be the cause of serious dangers. That a powerful nation should (except under the force of crushing defeat) assent to an arrangement which would decrease its resources and authority must inevitably appear to all the world to be, and probably would be in reality, such a sign either of declining strength or of declining spirit as would in a short time provoke the aggression of rivals and enemies. Abdication of royal or imperial authority is with States no less than with individuals the precursor of death. Loss of territory, indeed, in consequence of defeat, is in itself only in so far damaging as defeat may imply a want of capacity to resist attack, or as the diminution of territory may involve loss of resources. Thus the surrender of Lombardy by Austria, of Alsace by France, of Schleswig-Holstein by Denmark, the acquiescence of Holland in the independence of Belgium; or, to come nearer home, the treaty by which England acknowledged that the struggle to retain her American colonies had ended in failure, each and all of them brought only such discredit upon the defeated country as is the direct consequence of want of success. None, of these transactions had anything like the disastrous results which the concession of Irish independence would entail on England. The Austrians, the French, the Danes, and the Dutch had, as the whole world admitted, struggled manfully to maintain their power. They were beaten as one party or other to a fight must be beaten, but they did not betray any of those failings which encourage further attack. The close of the conflict with our colonies assuredly did not leave England disgraced before the world. The obstinacy of George III., the splendid resistance made by a nation assailed at once by a combination of enemies, any one of whom alone would have seemed a formidable foe, the victories of Rodney, the defence of Gibraltar, not only saved but increased the renown of England, and were warnings which no foreigner could disregard, that the loss of the American colonies, though it might diminish the Empire, had not quenched the spirit or undermined the strength of Great Britain. No one can suppose that a peaceful retreat from the difficulties and responsibility of providing for the Government of Ireland would leave to England that reputation for courage and endurance which, even in the midst of defeat, was retained by the generation who acknowledged the independence of America. Peaceable surrender may avert material loss; it cannot maintain moral character. One thing only would render the concession of Irish independence compatible with Englishmen's respect for themselves, or with the respect of other nations for England. This condition would be the obvious, and, so to speak, patent conviction on the part of the whole English people, that the grant of independence to Ireland was the fulfilment of a duty demanded by justice. No such conviction exists, nor is it ever likely to come into existence. Even were so great a change of English sentiment to take place that a majority of the people became ready, on grounds of expediency, to break up the connection between Great Britain and the neighbouring island, it would still be hard to persuade the nation that there was not vile treachery in refusing to stand by and support that part of the Irish people which wished to retain the connection with England. The treachery would approach to infamy if it should appear that England, for the sake of her own comfort, left English subjects who had always obeyed the law and relied on the honourable protection of the United Kingdom at the mercy of conspirators whose lawlessness had taken the form of cruelty and tyranny, and whose vindictiveness was certain to punish as criminality former acts of loyalty or obedience to English sovereignty. High-toned self-sacrifice which results in breach of faith to associates is considered by the world at large as a particularly odious form of hypocrisy. Nothing in the treaty between England and the American Colonies involved more just bitterness of feeling than the partial, and probably inevitable, desertion of the Loyalists. The national conscience would condemn rather than approve the prudential considerations which might, under certain circumstances, induce Englishmen to consent to see Ireland an independent nation; such consent would imply the adoption of views of national interest fundamentally inconsistent with the maintenance of Imperial power; the damage resulting from loss of character is difficult to estimate, but is none the less real because it does not admit of computation in the terms of the multiplication table. _Secondly_, the independence of Ireland means loss to Great Britain both in money and in men. The pecuniary loss is, indeed, not quite so serious as might at first sight be looked for.[28] The provisions of the rejected Government of Ireland Bill imply, it would seem, that the pecuniary gain of the United Kingdom from Ireland in the way of taxation may, in Mr. Gladstone's judgment, be estimated at about three and a half millions per annum, and this may presumably be taken as a not unfair estimate. The sacrifice of a seventh part of the population of the United Kingdom is no slight matter. Its importance is enhanced by the circumstance, never to be forgotten, that Great Britain is the centre of an Empire. The brutal and stupid jests by which respectable Englishmen often hint that the bravery, the capacity, and the genius of Irishmen are of little service to the Empire, and that their value is more than counterbalanced by the ill results of Irish discontent and sedition, conceal from unreflecting minds the extent to which every part of the United Kingdom has severally contributed to the fortune and power of the country. Irish labourers, Irish soldiers, Irish generals, and Irish statesmen have assuredly rendered no trifling services to the British Crown. There is, however, one valid ground for rating the loss in men to England, which would result from separation from Ireland somewhat lower than one would on first thoughts be inclined to place it. Even were Ireland an independent country there is nothing to prevent England from leaving all the advantages of English citizenship open to the inhabitants of the Irish State. In this matter much is to be learnt from Germany. Neither Stein, nor Niebuhr, nor Moltke, were by birth subjects of Prussia, yet Prussia did not lose the inestimable gains to be derived from their talents. A generous, a liberal, and a just extension of the privileges of citizenship might fill the English army and the English civil service with men drawn from a State independent of Great Britain. If the independence of Ireland were proclaimed to-morrow, there would not be a hundred Irish labourers the fewer in Liverpool or in London. Connections and relations depending upon community of language, community of interest, community of feeling, the ties of kindred, of business, of friendship, or of affection cannot, happily, be dissolved, or to any great extent affected, by political revolutions. In any case, it would depend on the wisdom of Great Britain whether separation from Ireland should or should not mean the estrangement of Irishmen. _Thirdly_, the independence of Ireland would give England a foreign, and possibly a hostile, neighbour along the western coast of Great Britain. We should, for the first time since the accession of the Stuarts, occupy a position something like that of a Continental nation, and know what it was to have a foe, or at best a very cold friend, upon our borders. In time of war Ireland would be the abettor or the open ally of, say, the United States, or of France; Dublin would, unless reconquered, be the outpost of the French Republic or of the American Union. In times of peace things would not stand much better; our diplomacy would be constantly occupied with the intrigues carried on in Dublin; the possibility of attack from Ireland would necessitate the increase of our forces; increased taxation would be drawn from a diminished population; we should be compelled to double our army when we had lost that part of the kingdom which used to form our best recruiting-ground. Sooner or later England would be driven, like every Continental State, to accept the burden of conscription, and with conscription would come essential changes in the whole habits of English life. Nor can we count upon this being the end of our calamities. The burden of conscription would deprive us of our one great advantage over competitors in the struggle for trade; an overtaxed and overburdened people could not long maintain their mercantile pre-eminence. This is the picture which is constantly drawn, in one shape or another, of the ruinous results to England of the free development of Irish nationality. No one can undertake to say that its main features are false. Still, it must be admitted that the prophets of evil neglect to notice several facts which ought not to be overlooked. Ireland is a poor country of about the population of Belgium; it is occupied by a people far less wealthy than the inhabitants of England; and, moreover, by a people divided among themselves by marked differences of race, religion, and historical tradition. Is it really to be feared that such a neighbour could, even if both independent and hostile, be half the peril to England that Germany is to France, or France to Italy? Money constitutes now more truly than ever the sinews of war, and it will be a long time before Ireland is a country abounding in money. There is, to say the least, something ignominious in the dread that Englishmen could not hold their own in the face of an Irish Republic, which would certainly be poor, and would probably be a prey to violent factions. Grant again--and this is granting a good deal--that Ireland might become a province of France, there is still some difficulty in seeing why Englishmen can live without fear within sight of Boulogne, and yet must tremble at the thought of French regiments assembling in Dublin. The command of the sea moreover would, whether Ireland were or were not aided by foreign allies, be a complete protection for England against invasion. If England's naval supremacy were lost, the power of the British Empire would in any case be gone. The vital matter for us is to retain command of the seas. Our capacity for doing this would not be greatly affected by Irish independence. America, further, and France are the only allies to whom Ireland could look for aid. The notion that the United States would consent to receive Ireland under any terms into the Union must appear to any one who has studied American politics the wildest of dreams. It supposes that the Americans would, without any gain to themselves, disarrange the whole balance of their constitution, and by involving themselves in all the complexities of European politics depart from the path which they have continuously pursued, and which is marked out to them by the plainest rules of common sense, and, it is hardly an exaggeration to say, by the laws of nature. A people who decline to annex Cuba, and are fully willing to wait till circumstances bring Canada into the Union and give America possession of Mexico, are not likely to incorporate Ireland. The alliance of France is a different matter. Reflection, however, mitigates the dread of its occurrence. Active alliance with Ireland would mean war with England, and now for seventy years France and England have been at peace. This state of things is the more remarkable because there have during that period arisen occasions for discord, and because no feeling of sentimental friendship forbids warfare. The true guarantee for peace between nations which were long deemed hereditary foes is the immense interest which each has in abstaining from war. Could the state of things which existed at the beginning of the century be revived, thousands of Englishmen and Frenchmen would be ruined. The security for peace depending upon national interest would not be diminished were Ireland to-morrow proclaimed an independent republic. That this independence would facilitate French attack is undeniable, but attack would not be the more likely to occur. Add to all this that Irish discontent or sedition would, during a war, help France as much as Irish independence. Ireland is no doubt the weak point in the defences of Great Britain. This no one denies. The only question is whether and to what extent the independence of that country would widen the breach in England's defensive system. [Sidenote: Possible advantages of Separation] Any one who attempts to forecast the probable evils to England of Irish independence should keep one recollection constantly before his mind. The wisest thinkers of the eighteenth century (including Burke) held that the independence of the American Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain. There were apparently solid grounds for this belief; experience has proved it to be without foundation. A calm observer can even now see that the complete dissolution of the connection between Great Britain and Ireland, disastrous as in many respects such an event would undoubtedly be, holds out to the larger country the possibility of two advantages. Loss of territory might be equivalent in some aspects to increase of power. There exists in Europe no country so completely at unity with itself as Great Britain. Fifty years of reform have done their work, and have removed the discontents, the divisions, the disaffection, and the conspiracies which marked the first quarter or the first half of this century. Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community of interests. The distraction and the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise, in part at least, from the connection with Ireland. Neither Englishmen nor Irishmen are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for communities differing in historical associations and in political conceptions to keep step together in the path of progress. For other evils arising from the connection the blame must rest on English Statesmen. All the inherent vices of party government, all the weaknesses of the Parliamentary system, all the evils arising from the perverse notion that reform ought always to be preceded by a period of lengthy and more than half-factitious agitation met by equally factitious resistance, have been fostered and increased by the inter-action of Irish and English politics. No one can believe that the inveterate habit of ruling one part of the United Kingdom on principles which no one would venture to apply to the government of any other part of it, can have produced anything but the most injurious effect on the stability of our Government and the character of our public men. The advocates of Home Rule find by far their strongest arguments for influencing English opinion, in the proofs which they produce that England, no less than Ireland, has suffered from a political arrangement under which legal union has failed to secure moral unity; these arguments, whatever their strength, are, however, it must be noted, far more available to a Nationalist than to an advocate of Federalism. English authority in Ireland would be increased by the possession of that freedom of action which every powerful State exercises in its dealings with a weaker though an independent nation. There is something so repulsive to the best feelings of citizenship in even the hypothetical contemplation of the advantages (such as they are) which would accrue to Great Britain from the transformation of thousands of our fellow-countrymen into aliens, that it is painful to trace out in clear language the strength of the position which England would occupy towards the Irish Republic. But in argument the strict following out of the conclusions flowing from facts is a form of honesty, and however repulsive these conclusions may be, their statement is a matter of duty. Were Ireland independent, England would possess three means far more effective for enforcing her will upon her weaker neighbour than are coercion acts, courts, or constables. England could deal not with individuals, but with the State, and she could compel respect for treaties or due regard to English interests by invasion, by a pacific blockade, or by a hostile tariff. There is a special reason for dwelling on the facility with which England could compel the observance of engagements. Morally the most serious of all the objections to England's conceding Irish independence is the indelible disgrace which would rightly fall upon any country which did not provide for the protection of men who had been loyal and faithful citizens. Now the point to be noted is that England's authority, resulting not from law but from power in an independent Ireland, would greatly enhance her capacity for ensuring the fair treatment of Irish Protestants. The treaty of independence would provide guarantees for their rights, and any breach of these guarantees would be a _casus belli_. The mere threat of a hostile tariff would of itself be a stronger sanction than the most strenuous provisions of an Act of Parliament backed only by the very hypothetical power of compelling a half-independent executive to obey the judgments of, say, the Privy Council The guarantees of a treaty are, it may be said, often worthless. This is so; but their worthlessness arises from the weakness of the country in whose favour they are made. In any event they may be worth a good deal more than provisions of an Act of Parliament. The deriders of a paper Union which has lasted for a century have no right to count on the validity of a paper Federation which still awaits creation. It is, again, possible that the severance of all political connection might open the way to friendship or alliance. This assertion is no unmeaning paradox. If one could anticipate with any confidence that the acknowledgment of Irish nationality would bring to Ireland happiness and prosperity, it would not be a very bold conjecture that as Ireland flourished and prospered, ill-will to England might rapidly decrease. With nations, as with individuals, to remove all causes of mutual irritation is much the same thing as removing the disposition to quarrel. Not twelve years have passed since the last Austrian soldier marched out of Italy, yet Austria is at this moment less unpopular with the Italians than France, and Garibaldi's death evoked tributes of respect at Vienna. For fifteen years the whole force of European law was employed to keep Belgium united to Holland; the obvious interests, moreover, of all the inhabitants of the kingdom of the Netherlands told in favour of union. Yet year by year the two divisions of one country became more and more hostile to each other. Fifty years of separation have, as far as appearances go, restored, or for the first time created, feelings of friendliness between the Belgians and the Dutch. There are to be found Belgian statesmen who regret the proclamation of Belgian independence. When in 1881 the Americans celebrated at Yorktown the centenary of British defeat, they went out of their way to display their goodwill towards Great Britain. Plaudits and toasts, it may be said, prove nothing except the existence of a sentiment which, even if it be genuine, is certain to be evanescent. This is true; but the matter for consideration is not whether the feeling of friendliness towards Great Britain which found expression daring the festivities at Yorktown would survive a conflict of interest between England and America, but whether a condition of feeling which allows the two nations to look calmly after their own interests, unblinded by passion or animosity, could possibly have been produced by the continuance of that connection between England and America which was terminated by the surrender of Cornwallis. There is at least no absurdity in the supposition that this question ought to be answered in the negative, and that Americans and Englishmen are at any rate not enemies just because a hundred years ago they ceased to be fellow-citizens. Let not, however, the gist of my argument be misunderstood. The possible increase of English power, and the possible growth of goodwill between England and Ireland, are not used as anything like reasons in favour of Separation. They are set down simply as deductions from the immense evils of a policy which no Englishman can regard as other than most injurious to the whole United Kingdom. The reason why it is wise to dwell on this kind of set-off against the ill effects of Separation is that Home Rule, while involving almost all the evils of Separation, will be found on examination not to hold out anything like the same hopes of compensating advantages. FOOTNOTES: [28] See 'Economic Value of Ireland to Great Britain,' by Robert Giffen, _The Nineteenth Century_, March, 1886, p. 229. CHAPTER VII. HOME RULE--ITS FORMS. [Sidenote: Forms of Home Rule.] The proposals for giving Ireland Home Rule, in so far as they have taken any definite shape whatever, have assumed four forms:-- I. Home Rule as Federalism. II. Home Rule as Colonial Independence. III. Home Rule as the revival of Grattan's Constitution. IV. Home Rule under the proposed Gladstonian Constitution. [Sidenote: Conditions to be satisfied by plan of Home Rule.] How far Home Rule under these forms, or any one of them, is compatible with the interests of the English people must be determined by considering what are the conditions which an acceptable plan of Home Rule must fulfil, and by then examining how far any given form of Home Rule satisfies them. Any scheme of Home Rule which can conceivably be accepted by England must, it is admitted, satisfy the following conditions.[29] It must in the first place be consistent with the ultimate supremacy of the British Parliament.[30] It must in the second place be just; it must provide that each part of the United Kingdom take a fair share of Imperial burdens; that the citizens of each part have equality of rights; that the rights both of individuals and of minorities be safely guarded.[31] It must in the third place promise finality; it must be in the nature of a final settlement of the demands made on behalf of Ireland, and not be a mere provocation to the revival of fresh demands. It must, in short, to sum up the whole matter, be, as already insisted upon, a scheme which promises to England at least not greater evils than the maintenance of the Union or than Irish independence. These conditions constitute the touchstone by which any given plan of Home Rule must be tested. No scheme, however ingenious, can be accepted which lacks any of these characteristics, namely, the maintenance of Parliamentary sovereignty--justice--finality. [Sidenote: General character of Federalism.] I. _Home Rule as Federalism._--Federal government is the latest invention of constitutional science. Several circumstances confer upon it at the present moment extraordinary prestige. It is a piece of political mechanism which has been found to work with success in three notorious instances. In its favour is engaged the pride--may we not say vanity?--of one of the leading nations of the earth. Americans regard Federalism with pardonable partiality. They are the original inventors of the best Federal system in the world, and Federalism has made them the greatest of all free communities. A polity under which the United States has grown up and flourished, and fought the biggest war which has been fought during the century, and come out of it victorious, and with renewed strength, must, it is felt, be a constitution suited for all nations who aspire to freedom. There is nothing therefore surprising in the fact that Federalism is supposed to be the panacea for all social evils, and all political perplexities, or that it should be thrust upon our attention as the device for bringing England and her colonies into closer connection, and (not perhaps quite consistently) for relaxing the connection and terminating the feud between England and Ireland. We should do well, therefore, to recollect what is the true nature of Federalism. Federal government, whatever be its merits, is a mere arrangement for the distribution of political power. It is an arrangement which requires for its application certain well-defined conditions.[32] There must, in the first place, exist a body of countries; such, for example, as the cantons of Switzerland, or the colonies of America, or the provinces of Canada, so closely connected by locality, by history, by race, or the like, as to be capable of bearing in the eyes of their inhabitants an impress of common nationality. There must, in the second place, be found among the people of the countries which it is proposed to unite in Federal union, a very peculiar state of sentiment. They must desire union; they must not desire unity. Federalism, in short, is in its nature a scheme for bringing together into closer connection a set of states, each of which desires, whilst retaining its individuality, to form together with its neighbours one nation. It is not, at any rate as it has hitherto been applied, a plan for disuniting the parts of a united state. It may possibly be capable of this application; experience, however, gives no guidance on this point,[33] and loyalty to the central government is to the working of a Federal system as necessary as loyalty on the part of individual citizens to their own separate State. When, therefore, it is suggested that Federalism may establish a satisfactory relation between England and Ireland, a doubt naturally suggests itself whether the United Kingdom presents the conditions necessary for the success of the Federal experiment. Whether in the case of two countries, of which the one has no desire for State rights and the other has no desire for union, the bases of a Federal scheme are not wanting, is an inquiry which deserves consideration. Politicians, however, may reject references to abstract theory, and the best way of testing the application of Federalism to the relations between England and Ireland, is to make clear to ourselves what are the aims proposed to himself by a genuine Home Ruler, and then trace in outline the characteristics of Federalism, and consider how the Federal system would work in reference to the interests of England. [Sidenote: Aim of Home Rule.] "My plan of Home Rule for Ireland," writes an eminent Home Ruler, "would establish between Ireland and the Imperial Parliament the same relations in principle that exist between a State of the American Union and the Federal Government, or between any State of the Dominion of Canada and that Central Canadian Parliament which meets in Ottawa." This statement exhibits both laxity of language and laxity of thought, but it gives a definition of the objects proposed to himself by a genuine Home Ruler which is sufficiently definite, for the ends of my argument. Home Rule is, for our present purpose, Federalism. We may therefore, assume that it involves the adoption throughout the present United Kingdom of a constitution in principle, though not in detail, like that of the United States. The United Kingdom would, if Mr. McCarthy's proposals were adopted, be transformed into a confederacy; the different States, say Great Britain and Ireland, or England, Scotland, and Ireland, would bear to the whole union the same relation which Virginia and New York bear to the United States; they would bear towards each other the same relation which Virginia bears to New York, or which they both bear towards Massachusetts. Such a constitution has, it must be at once admitted, no necessary connection with Republicanism. The King or Queen of England for the time being would occupy the position of a hereditary president; this arrangement would, as Mr. Butt seems to have perceived, increase rather than diminish the authority of the Crown. It must, on the other hand, be noted that Federalism necessarily involves the formation of a new constitution, not for Ireland only, but for the whole of the United Kingdom. It is necessary to insist upon this point. For half the fallacies of the arguments for Home Rule rest upon the idea that Home Rule is a matter affecting Ireland alone. 'Irish Federalism,' the title of a pamphlet by Mr. Butt, is a term involving something like self-contradiction. The misnomer is curious and full of instruction. Whoever wishes to understand the relation of Federalism to the English Constitution and to English interests must give some attention to the nature of a Federal Union. [Sidenote: Characteristics of Federalism.] A Federal constitution must, from its very nature, be marked by the following characteristics. It must, at any rate in modern days, be a written constitution, for its very foundation is the "Federal pact" or contract; the constitution must define with more or less precision the respective powers of the central government, and of the State governments of the central legislature and of the local legislatures; it must provide some means (e.g., reference to a popular vote) for bringing into play that ultimate sovereign power which is able to modify or reform the constitution itself; it must provide some arbiter, be it Council, Court, or Crown, with authority to decide whether the Federal pact has been observed; it must institute some means by which the principles of the constitution may be upheld, and the decrees of the arbiter or Court be enforced against the resistance (if need be) of one or more of the separate States. These are not the accidents but the essential features of any Federal constitution; and are found under the constitution of the Canadian Dominion and of the Swiss Confederacy, no less than under the constitution of the United States. They all depend on the simple, but often neglected fact, that a Federal constitution implies an elaborate distribution and definition of political powers; that it is from its very nature a compromise between the claims of rival authorities, the Confederacy and the States, and that behind all the mechanism and artifices of the constitution there lies, however artfully concealed, some sovereign power which must have the means both to support the principles of the constitution and, when occasion requires, to modify its terms. Hence almost of necessity flow some further results. Under a federation the law of the land must be divided into constitutional laws (or, in other words, articles of the constitution), which can be changed, if at all, only with special difficulty, say by an appeal to the popular vote or by a constituent assembly, and ordinary laws which may be changed by the central Congress or by the separate assemblies of the States. The powers both of the central Parliament and of the local parliaments, depending as they do upon the constitutional compact, must be limited. Neither the National Assembly of Switzerland nor the Congress of the United States have anything like the sovereign power of the British Parliament: the same thing is obviously true of the Cantonal or State Assemblies. Such are, under one form or another, the essential characteristics of a Federal Government. A confederation of which England and Ireland formed a part would further of necessity exhibit a feature not to be found in the United States. The authority of the Confederacy would in reality mean the power of one State--namely, Great Britain. No artificial distribution of the whole country into separate States would get rid of a fact depending upon laws or facts of nature beyond the reach of constitutional arrangements. [Sidenote: Advantages of Federalism to England.] It is now possible to perceive pretty clearly the relation of Federalism to British or English interests. It would, as compared with the independence of Ireland, present three advantages. There would not be the same obvious and patent failure in the efforts of British statesmanship to unite all the British isles into one country; the continuity of English history would be to a certain extent preserved; the break with the past would be lessened. The Federal Union might, in the eyes of foreign powers, be simply the United Kingdom under another form. The loss, again, to England in material resources would be somewhat less than that involved in separation. Ireland might possibly continue to contribute her share to the Federal Exchequer, though a critic who reflects upon the expectations expressed by Home Rulers of benefit to Ireland from the expenditure of Irish taxes on Irish objects, will wonder how, unless the taxation of a poverty-stricken country is to be greatly increased, the Irish people could support the expense both of the central and of the local governments. American experience hardly justifies the notion that Federalism is an economical form of Government. It would, and this is no small advantage, make it possible to guarantee, at any-rate in appearance, that the executive and legislative authority of the Irish Government should be exercised with due regard to justice. The Federal compact might, and probably would, contain articles which forbade any State Government or legislature to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, to bestow political privileges upon any church, to pass laws which infringe the obligation of contracts, to deprive any man of his property without due compensation. The Ten Commandments, in short, and the obvious applications thereof, might be embodied in the fundamental law of the land. Federalism would at lowest preserve a formal respect for justice, and if the system worked efficiently, would protect individuals and minorities from gross oppression at the hands of the Irish State Government. These are the benefits of Home Rule to Great Britain. Let us now examine what are the evils to Great Britain of the proposed constitutional revolution. For whoever either will meditate for a short time on the nature of Federalism, or will examine the mode in which the constitution of the United States--the most successful federation which the world has seen--actually works, will soon perceive that what is miscalled "Irish Federalism" is in reality "British Federalism," and amounts, as I am forced to reiterate again and again, to a proposal for changing the whole constitution of the United Kingdom It is, in fact, the most "revolutionary" proposal, if the word "revolutionary" be used in its strict sense, which has ever been submitted to an English Parliament, the abolition of the House of Lords, the disestablishment of the Church, the abolition of the monarchy, might leave the English constitution far less essentially changed than would the adoption of Federalism even in that apparently moderate form in which it was presented by Mr. Butt to the consideration of the English public. [Sidenote: Disadvantages of Federalism to England.] The definite disadvantages to England of the proposed revolution may be summed up under three heads:--First, the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament would be destroyed and all English constitutional arrangements would be dislocated; secondly, the power of Great Britain would be diminished; thirdly, the chance of further disagreement with Ireland would certainly not be diminished, and would probably be increased. _First._--Under all the formality, the antiquarianism, the shams of the British constitution, there lies latent an element of power which has been the true source of its life and growth. This secret source of strength is the absolute omnipotence,[34] the sovereignty, of Parliament. As to the mode in which King, Lords, and Commons were to divide the sovereign power between themselves there have been at different times disputes leading to civil war; but that Parliament--that is, the Crown, the Peers, and the Commons acting together--is absolutely supreme, has never been doubted. Here constitutional theory and constitutional practice are for once at one. Hence, it has been well said by the acutest of foreign critics that the merit of the English constitution is that it is no constitution at all. The distinction between fundamental articles of the constitution and laws, between statutes which can only be touched (if at all) by a constituent assembly, and statutes which can be repealed by an ordinary Parliament--the whole apparatus, in short, of artificial constitutionalism--is utterly unknown to Englishmen. Thus freedom has in England been found compatible at crises of danger with an energy of action generally supposed to be peculiar to despotism. The source of strength is, in fact, in each case the same. The sovereignty of Parliament is like the sovereignty of the Czar. It is like all sovereignty at bottom, nothing else but unlimited power; and, unlike some other forms of sovereignty, can be at once put in force by the ordinary means of law. This is the one great advantage of our constitution over that of the United States. In America, every ordinary authority throughout the Union is hampered by constitutional restrictions; legislation must be slow, because the change of any constitutional rule is impeded by endless difficulties. The vigour which is wanting to Congress, is indeed to a certain extent to be found in the extensive executive power left in the hands of the President; but it takes little acuteness to perceive that in point of pliability, power of development, freedom of action, English constitutionalism far excels the Federalism of the United States. Nor is it less obvious that the very qualities in which the English constitution excels that of the United States are essential to the maintenance by England of the British Empire. Home Rulers, whether they know it or not, touch the mainspring of the British constitution. For from the moment that Great Britain becomes part of a federation, the omnipotence of Parliament is gone. The Federal Congress might be called by the name of the Imperial Parliament. It might possibly be made up of the same elements, be elected by the same electors, and even in the main consist of the very same persons as the existing Parliament of the United Kingdom; but its nature would be changed, and its power would be limited on all sides. It might deal with Imperial expenditure, with foreign affairs, with peace and war, with other matters placed within its competence; on every other point the British Congress would, like the American Congress, be powerless. Nor would all the powers taken from the Congress be necessarily given to the local assemblies. Every analogy points the other way. If the example of the United States is to be followed, articles of the constitution would limit the power both of the Imperial Congress and of the local representative assemblies. This limitation of authority could not be measured by what appears on the face of the constitution. Some council, tribunal, or other arbiter--let us, for the sake of simplicity, call it the Federal Court--would have authority to determine whether a law was or was not constitutional, or, in other words, whether it was or was not a law. Let no one fancy that the restraint placed on the power of ordinary legislation by the authority of a Federal Court; which alone can interpret the constitution, is a mere form which has no practical effect. The history of the United States is on this point decisive. De Tocqueville, Story, and Kent are far safer and better instructed guides than authors who "cannot conceive how any conflict of authority could arise which could not be easily settled by argument, by conference, by gradual experience;" and who seem to hold that to deny the existence of a difficulty is the same thing as providing for its removal The following are a few of the instances in which the American judiciary have in fact determined the limits which bound the powers, either of Congress or of the State legislatures. The judiciary have ruled that a State is liable to be sued in the Federal Courts; that Congress has authority to incorporate a bank; that a tax imposed by Congress was an indirect tax, and therefore valid; that the control of the militia really and truly belongs to Congress, and not, as in effect contended by Connecticut and Massachusetts, to the governors of the separate States. The Federal judiciary have determined the limits to their own jurisdiction and to that of the State Courts. The judiciary have pronounced one law after another invalid, as contrary to some article of the constitution--e.g., either by being tainted with the vice of _ex post facto_ legislation, or by impairing the obligation of contracts. These are a few samples of the mode in which a Federal Court limits all legislative authority. If any one wishes to see the extent to which the power of such a Court has gone in fact, he should study the decisions on the Legal Tender Act, which all but overset or nullified the financial legislation of Congress during the War of Secession. If he wishes to see the effect of applying the constitution of the United States, or anything like that constitution, to Great Britain and Ireland, he should consider what is implied in the undoubted fact that the Land Act of 1870 and the Land Act of 1881 would, whether passed by the central or by any local legislature under such a constitution, be at once treated as void, as impairing the obligation of contracts. If I am told that we might adopt Federalism without adopting the details of the American constitution, my reply is, not only that the remark comes awkwardly from innovators who wish to place Ireland in the position of Massachusetts, but that the very gist of my argument is that the existence of some arbiter (whether it be named Crown, Council, or Court), who may decide whether the constitution has or has not been violated, is of the essence of Federalism, while the existence of such an arbiter absolutely destroys the sovereignty of Parliament. Nor do the inferences to be drawn from the action of the Federal Court, and a study of the American constitution as it actually exists, end here. In the decisions of the Court we may trace the rise of question after question--that is, of conflict after conflict--as to the respective rights of the Federation and the individual States. From the history and from the immobility of the constitution, we may perceive the extent to which the existence of a Federal pact checks change, or, in other words, reform. Every institution which can lay claim to be based upon an organic law acquires a sort of sacredness. Under a system of Federalism, the Crown, the House of Peers, the Imperial Parliament itself, when transformed into a Federal Assembly, would be almost beyond the reach of change, reform, or abolition. Nor is it the Legislature of Great Britain alone which would suffer a fundamental change. The relations between the Executive and the country would undergo immense modification. The authority of the Crown might be enhanced by the establishment of a Federal Union. The King would become, in a very special sense, the representative of national or Imperial unity, and the weakening of Parliament might lead to the strengthening of the monarch. However this might be, it has, it is submitted, been now shown that Federalism would dislocate every English constitutional arrangement. _Secondly._--The changes necessitated by Federalism would all tend to weaken the power of Great Britain. That this is so has been already to a great degree established, in considering the mode in which Federalism destroys the sovereignty of Parliament. But a system of Federalism would assuredly weaken the Government quite as much as the Legislature. The Executive, as the organ of the Federal Union, would be hampered by new conditions utterly unknown to an English Ministry. The language of Federalists exhibits a curious and ominous silence or ambiguity as to the disposal of the armed forces. Is the army to be a British army, with authority at the will of the Federal Government to enter every part of the new Union, or is Ireland to have an independent force of her own? This, again--and every specific criticism is open to the same retort--may be called a detail, but it is a detail which touches the root of the whole matter. If the Federal, that is in effect the English, Government is to retain the same control over the whole army as at present--if Ireland is not to have a local force under the control of local authorities--then the language as to Irish independence used by Irish Nationalists is singularly misleading. If, on the other hand, order is to be maintained, or not maintained, by a native army under the guidance of Irish commanders, then it passes the wit of man to see by what means the rights of the central government are to be enforced in any case of disagreement between the Imperial and the Irish Parliament. With the memory of the Irish volunteers before his mind, an historian, such, for example, as Mr. McCarthy, will hardly assert that the difficulty raised is one of which he cannot conceive the existence. For my part, I heartily join in the admiration he, no doubt, feels for the patriots of 1782, but no man in his senses will maintain that the moral of that year is that a local Irish army can, under no circumstances, prove an embarrassment to the central Government. The general tone, even more than the precise language of Irish Federalists, all but forbids the supposition that they are prepared to secure the supremacy of the Federal Government by giving it the sole control of the only armed force which is to exist in any part of the Union. They probably hope that some sort of compromise may be found with regard to a matter in which, as theory and experience alike prove, compromise is all but impossible. Under certain circumstances, and in certain cases, and subject to certain conditions, the use of the armed force throughout Great Britain and Ireland is, we may suppose, to be left in the hands of the Federal Executive; under other circumstances, and under other conditions, the local forces are probably to be controlled by the local or State Government. Whether such an arrangement would continue in working order for a year, is more than doubtful. Assume, however, that somehow it could be got to work, the fact still remains that a scheme, intended to secure local liberty, would certainly ensure Imperial weakness. The need, moreover, for bestowing some element of strength on a Federal Executive as a counterpoise to its many elements of weakness leads almost of necessity to a result which has scarcely received due notice. The executive authority must be placed beyond the control of a representative assembly. Neither in the United States, nor in Switzerland, nor in the German Empire, can the Federal administration be displaced by the vote of an assembly. Federalism is in effect incompatible with Parliamentary government as practised in England. The Canadian Ministry, it may be urged, can be changed at the will of the Dominion Parliament, and the common Ministry of Austria-Hungary is responsible to the Delegations. This is true; but these exceptions are precisely of the class which prove the rule which they are cited to invalidate. The Cabinet system of the Dominion is a defect in the Canadian Constitution, and could not work were not Canada, by its position as a dependency, under the guidance of a power beyond the reach of the Dominion Parliament. What may be the real responsibility to the Delegations of the common ministry of Austria-Hungary, admits of a good deal of doubt. No one, who will not be deceived by words, believes the responsibility to be at all like the liability of Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury to be dismissed from office by a vote of the House of Commons. The Emperor-King is, as regards the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the permanent and unchangeable head of the State. Turn the United Kingdom into a Federal State, and Parliamentary Government, as Englishmen now know it, is at an end. This may or may not be an evil, but it is a revolution which ought to give pause to innovators who deem it a slighter danger to innovate on the Act of Union than to remodel the procedure of the House of Commons. The central Government would again, merely from that division of powers which is of the essence of Federalism, be as feeble against foreign aggression as against local resistance. Home Rule, it is constantly said, has at least this advantage, as compared with Irish independence, that it prevents any alliance between Ireland and a foreign enemy. This gain might turn out rather nominal than real. Neither the United States nor France could, of course, send an Embassy to any State comprised within the British Union; but, if war impended, they might and would attempt to gain the favour of the Irish Ministry, or the Irish party who controlled the Irish Parliament, or exercised the authority of the local Government of Ireland. Suppose that when war was about to be proclaimed between the British Federation and France, the Irish Parliament objected to hostilities with the French Republic. Can it be denied that the local Parliament and the local executive could, by protests, by action, or even by inaction, give aid or comfort to the foreign enemy? The local legislature would, in the supposed case, be aided by a minority of the central Parliament or Congress. Obstruction would go hand in hand with sedition. Loyalty to the Union was strong throughout the Northern States during the War of Secession; but the tale used certainly to be told that had Meade been defeated at Gettysburg, the leaders of the New York democracy would have attempted "to carry the State out of the Union." Moreover, Great Britain would perhaps find it easier to control the action of an independent than of a confederated Ireland. Blockades and embargoes are, as already pointed out, modes of persuasion applicable to foreigners, but inapplicable to citizens; the Government of the Union found it harder to check the latent disloyalty of South Carolina than it would have found it to deal with the open enmity of Canada. This topic is too odious and too far removed from the realm of practical politics, to need more than the allusion required for the completeness of my argument. Federalism, in short, would mean the weakness of Great Britain, both at home and abroad. As the head of a Confederacy, England, as the head also of the British Empire, would meet undiminished responsibilities with greatly diminished power. _Thirdly._--Federalism is at least as likely to stereotype and increase the causes of division between England and Ireland as to remove them. A Federal Government is, of all constitutions, the most artificial. If such a government is to be worked with anything like success, there must exist among the citizens of the confederacy a spirit of genuine loyalty to the Union. The "Unitarian" feeling of the people must distinctly predominate over the sentiment in favour of "State rights." To require this is to require a good deal more than the mere general submission to the Government which is requisite for the prosperity of every State, whatever be the nature of its polity. In a Federation every citizen is influenced by a double allegiance. He owes fealty to the central Government; he owes fealty also to his Canton or State. National allegiance and local allegiance divide and perplex the feelings even of loyal citizens. Unless the national sentiment predominate, the Federation will go to pieces at any of those crises when the interest or wishes of any of the States conflict with the interest or wishes of the Union. So keen an observer and profound a critic as De Tocqueville believed that both the American and the Swiss Federations would make shipwreck on this rock. He was mistaken; he did not allow for the rapid development of national sentiment. But his error was pardonable. The leaders of the Sonderbund did prefer the interest of Lucerne to the unity of Switzerland. Lee and Jackson were disloyal to the Union, because they were loyal to Virginia. Leading officers of the United States army, soldiers educated at Westpoint, trained the armies of the Confederates. They were men of unblemished honour; they were, some of them, not originally zealous in the cause of secession, but they believed that their duty to their State--to Virginia, to South Carolina, or to Georgia--was paramount over their duty to the Government at Washington. If Virginia had stood by the Union, General Lee might, in all probability, have been the conqueror of the Confederate States, of which he was the hero. Ireland has had far graver causes for disaffection towards the English Government than any of the reasons alleged for the secession of Virginia; but Irish officers and Irish soldiers have always been perfectly loyal to England. The reason of the difference is obvious; the officers of the English army have never been distracted by the difficulties of divided allegiance. Make Ireland one of the States of a Confederacy, and these difficulties will at once arise. Irish officers and Irish soldiers, members of the Irish State--paid by and to a certain extent under the command of the Irish Government--can hardly be blamed if in times of civil differences, leading it may be to civil war, they should feel more loyalty to their State than to the Union. This Union, be it remembered, would in such a case be nothing but Great Britain under a new and less impressive title. The existence and nature of the Federal bond is calculated to supply both the causes and occasions of such differences. Home Rulers, it is clear, form already most exaggerated hopes of the benefits to be conferred on Ireland by Home Rule; and, further, in their own minds (naturally enough) confound Federalism with national independence. "Give Ireland," writes Mr. Finch,[35] "the management of her own affairs, and you will see called into her service the ablest and most capable of her sons; while, as things now stand, the intellect of Ireland is shut out from all share in the administration. With careers at home worthy of the best and ablest of the people, much of the wealth which is now drained off from Ireland without any return, will be expended in developing the industrial resources of the country; industry will revive, and with the revival of industry will come employment for the people. 'It is the difficulty of living by wages in Ireland,' says Sir G.C. Lewis, 'which makes every man look to the land for maintenance.' With employment for the people, half the difficulty of the land question will be solved. If, then, we wish to promote the moral and material welfare of the Irish people, let us make them masters of their own affairs." "I have indicated what I believe," writes Mr. O'Neill Daunt,[36] "to be the radical disease of Ireland: the want of a domestic legislature racy of the soil, and acting in harmony with the national sentiment. God has created Ireland with the needs of a separate nation, and with the needs are associated the rights. 'Our patent to be a State, not a shire,' said Goold in 1799, 'comes direct from Heaven. The Almighty has in majestic characters signed the great charter of our independence. The great Creator of the world has given our beloved country the gigantic outlines of a kingdom.' "If Ireland had been left the unfettered use of the natural materials of wealth in her soil and in her people, and of the facilities of internal and external commerce supplied by her physical configuration and her geographical position--if her interests were protected by a Parliament sitting in her capital, securing the expenditure at home of her annual revenue, both public and private, rendering impossible that destructive hæmorrhage of her income by which she is impoverished, aiding the development of her industries, and resisting all aggression on her commercial and political rights--in a word, if the Irish Constitution had not been treacherously undermined and overthrown, we should now have been the best support of the Empire, instead of being its scandal and its weakness." Politicians who write thus expect far more from national independence than nationality itself can give. More than fifty years have elapsed since Spain expelled the foreign invader; but Spain has not yet succeeded in expelling ignorance, prejudice, superstition, or oppression. But whatever be the miracles of nationality, Ireland would not, under Federalism, be a nation. Rhode Island has all the freedom demanded for his country by an eminent Home Ruler, whose expressions I have cited. He surely does not consider the inhabitants of Rhode Island to be a nation. Whatever else Home Rule might give to Ireland, one gift it assuredly would not bring with it. It would not endow the country with wealth. To Irish enthusiasm and patriotism illusions on this matter are pardonable. In the English advocate of Home Rule they are unpardonable. Ireland is, and must, under any form of government conceivable, for a length of time remain a poor country. Capital knows nothing of patriotism or sentiment. Commerce has no partiality for the masses. Credit cherishes no trust towards the people. The one prediction which we may make with confidence is that a measure of Home Rule would not increase Irish capital, and would shake Irish credit. The rumour of Home Rule has already, it is said, disturbed the course of business in Ireland. From the nature of things, then, the establishment of Federalism would lead to bitter disappointment. The country would not enjoy the dignity of independence; it would not enjoy the comfort of wealth. Every Irishman would feel that he had been cheated of his hopes, and this not because he is an Irishman, but because he is a man. It is human to expect far more from even the most beneficial of revolutions than any political change can bring. The unity of Italy was well worth all the price it cost. The unity of Germany gave intense gratification to natural feelings of national pride. Yet there are probably many even in the Italian Kingdom who sigh for the light taxes of the Bourbon or Papal rule, and Germans who glory in the greatness of the Empire flee by thousands to the United States that they may escape the burden of conscription. The disappointment which naturally attends a great change would in the case of Ireland be specially bitter. To what cause would the disappointment be attributed? The answer is easy to find. If taxation increased--as it probably would; if wealth did not increase--as it certainly would not; if the sense of semi-independence did not produce the hope, the energy, the new life, the regeneration which enthusiasts consider to be the natural result of nationality--if anything, in short, failed to go according to the hopes of men who had formed hopes which a miracle itself could hardly satisfy--the blame for the non-fulfilment of groundless anticipations would rest upon the Confederacy--that is in other words, upon England. To suppose this, is not to attribute special unreasonableness to Irishmen. If Italy had been forced to accept, instead of her longed-for independence, the local self-government which might be conceded to the State of an Austrian Federation, we may be quite sure that the Grist Tax, the Sicilian Banditti, the intrigues of France in Tunis, the perversity of the Pope, the poverty of Italian workmen, the factiousness of Italian politicians, every evil, in short, real or imaginary, under which Italy now suffers, or has suffered since 1870--would have been attributed to her connection with a Union presided over by the Austrian Emperor. National independence, like every other form of independence, has at least this merit, that it compels men to take their fate into their own hands, and to feel that they themselves or the circumstances of the world are the causes of their misfortunes. Semi-independence makes it easy for men to attribute every mishap to the absence of absolute freedom. If the existence of a Federal constitution would of itself supply the cause for discontent, it is of the very nature of such a constitution to supply the occasions of dispute. Nothing can prevent the rise of burning questions about Federal and State rights. Is nullification or secession, or the refusal to pay Federal taxes a State right? If these questions arise, by whom are they to be settled? Suppose they are referred to a Federal Court, say the Privy Council, is it reasonable to fancy that Irishmen or Englishmen, for that matter, will acquiesce in the decision of grave political issues (say the right of the Federal Government to proclaim martial law at Dublin, or the validity of the Land Act) by any tribunal? For when political issues are referred to the decision of a Court the difficulty is great of enlisting public opinion in favour of its decrees. The theory of the constitution and the expectation of the people is that references to the judges will be events of rare occurrence, and that the Bench, when it acts at all, will act only as interpreter of the constitutional pact. Things are certain to turn out far otherwise. The intervention of the tribunals will in one form or another be constantly evoked, and will be evoked to determine the most burning questions of the day. The Constitution of the United States would be unintelligible without reference to a long line of determined cases; its principles are to be found quite as much in the decisions of the Supreme Court as in its Articles. Swiss Constitutionalists have greatly increased as years have gone on the originally limited powers of the Federal tribunal. The statesmen who drafted the Act constituting the Canadian Dominion fancied they could in effect avoid the necessity for judicial interpretation, but a long series of reports proves the futility of their expectation. Each day increases the mass, and it must be added the importance, of the judgments by which the Privy Council determines questions of constitutional law for the Colonies. Moreover, even laymen soon perceive that interpretation means legislation. It is technically correct to say that the Supreme Court of the United States acts only as interpreter of the Constitution, but we must not be deceived by fictions. The Supreme Court has legislated as truly, and perhaps more effectively than Congress. It has achieved, and from the nature of things was compelled to achieve, a feat forbidden to Congress; it has added to or enlarged the Articles of the Constitution. The good fortune of the United States gave to them in Judge Marshall a profound and statesmanlike lawyer, and the judgments of the great Chief Justice have built up the existing Constitution. He may be counted, if not among its founders, at any rate as its main architect. In this instance judicial authority was combined with political wisdom, and Marshall's opinion was, it is said, rejected by the Court in but two cases, and had it in these instances been followed, would have improved the Constitution. Unfortunately, while one may often secure the fairness one cannot ensure the wisdom of the Bench. Judges err; a final Court of Appeal must often give decisions which are or are supposed to be erroneous, i.e., not a just deduction from the facts and principles which the Court is called upon to consider. No historian will, it is likely, now defend the doctrine of the House of Lords about marriage laid down in _Reg._ v. _Millis_. Competent authorities question some of the most important ecclesiastical judgments given by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The decision in the _Dred Scott Case_, whether right or wrong, did not approve itself to eminent lawyers in the United States. One of the decisions of the Supreme Court in the _Legal Tender Cases_ must have been wrong; whether the last was sound is open to debate. It is when a Court gives what is thought to be an erroneous decision on matters exciting the feelings of large classes that the difficulty of obtaining acquiescence in its judgments is palpable. The judges decided, and it is quite possible decided rightly, that Ship Money was a legal exaction, and that the Crown's dispensing power was authorized by law. Popular opinion branded the judges as sycophants and traitors. Chief Justice Taney and his colleagues decided in effect, and from a legal point of view may have been right in deciding, that slavery was recognised by the Constitution of the United States. Their decision was denounced by the best men in the Union as infamous. The Privy Council have laid down doctrines on matters of ritual which are held to be erroneous by a large body of the clergy, and Ritualists have gone to prison rather than treat the judgment of the Privy Council as of moral validity. Clergymen are not perhaps the most reasonable of mankind, but they are not more unreasonable than political enthusiasts. How then is it possible to expect that a Federal tribunal would command an obedience not yielded willingly to the laws of the Imperial Parliament? Englishmen, indeed, might, it is possible, acquiesce in the ruling of Federal judges, and this for two reasons: they are a legally-minded nation; and (what is of far more consequence) a Federal Court must represent in the main the opinions of the Federal Government--that is, of Great Britain. But it is idle to suppose that Mr. Parnell and Mr. Parnell's followers would find it easier to respect an Imperial or Federal tribunal than to bow to the will of the Imperial Parliament. Home Rulers would, moreover, soon discover a reason for resistance to the Federal Court or the Federal Government, which from their point of view would be a perfectly valid reason. The Federal Government would, in effect, be the Government of England; the Federal Court would in effect be a Court appointed by the English Government. In a Confederacy where there are many States, the Government of the Federation cannot be identified with even the most powerful of the States; it were ridiculous to assert that the Government at Washington is only the Government of New York under another name. Where a Confederacy consists in reality, if not in name, of two States only, of which the one has at least four or five times the power of the other, the authority of the Confederacy means the authority of the powerful State. "Irish Federalism," if in reality established, would soon generate a demand from Ireland, not unreasonable in itself, under the circumstances of the case, that the whole British Empire should be turned into a Confederacy, under the guidance of a general Congress. Thus alone could Ireland become a real State, the member of a genuine Confederation. Hence arises a new danger. Apply Federalism to Ireland and you immediately provoke demands for autonomy in other parts of the United Kingdom, and for constitutional changes in other parts of the British Empire. Federalism, which in other lands has been a step towards Union, would, it is likely enough, be in our case the first stage towards a dissolution of the United Kingdom into separate States, and hence towards the breaking-up of the British Empire. This is no future or imaginary peril; the mere proposal of Home Rule, under something like a Federal form, has already made it an immediate and pressing danger. Sir Gavan Duffy, by far the ablest among the Irish advocates of Home Rule, predicts that before ten years have elapsed there will be a Federation of the Empire.[37] A majority of Scotch electors support the policy of Mr. Gladstone, and forthwith a most respectable Scotch periodical puts forward a plan of Home Rule for Scotland. Canon MacColl already suggests that we should make tentatively an experiment capable of development into a permanent system on the lines of the American Constitution, and make it not only in Ireland, but also perhaps gradually in Scotland, and even in Wales.[38] It is unnecessary to discuss Canon MacColl's argument at length. When he tells his readers that "the Constitution which Mr. Gladstone desires to create in Ireland is modelled on the system existing in the great colonies of the Empire; there are certain variations and some novelties in the Irish scheme, but these are the lines on which it is drawn;" he ventures a statement on which, as a lawyer, I need make but one comment. It is a statement as erroneous and misleading as can be any assertion made in good faith by a writer who must be presumed to have studied the measure of which he is speaking. When the same authority asks why should a system which imparts strength to America, to Austria, and to Germany, disintegrate and ruin the British Empire, he raises an inquiry which does not admit of an answer, since it assumes the identity of things which are radically different. The system which may or may not impart strength to Austria is no more the system which imparts strength to America, than the system which imparts strength to England is the same as the system which does or does not impart strength to Russia. To lump under one head every policy which can by any straining of the terms be brought under the heads of "Federalism" or "Home Rule," is neither more nor less absurd than to classify together every Constitution which can be called a monarchy. But while I write these pages a more significant indication of this danger has appeared. Mr. Gladstone's own method of interpreting his own past utterances makes it the duty of his critics to weigh well not only his direct statements, but his suggestions; and there is, I think, no possible unfairness in construing the language of his pamphlet on the Irish Question as an intimation that he already entertains, if he does not favour, the idea of applying the Federal principle to Scotland and to Wales.[39] Federalism is the solvent which, if applied to one part of the United Kingdom, will undo the work not only of Pitt, but of Somers, of Henry VIII., and of Edward I. Meanwhile, the one prediction which may be made with absolute confidence is that Federalism would not generate that goodwill between England and Ireland which, could it be produced, would, in my judgment at least, be an adequate compensation even for the evils and the inconveniences of the Federal system. To the view of Federalism here maintained there exist one or two objections, so obvious that without some reference to them my argument would lack completeness. Federalism, it is urged, has succeeded in Switzerland and in America; it may, therefore, succeed in the United Kingdom. If the general drift of my argument does not sufficiently answer this objection, two special replies lie near at hand. In the case both of Switzerland and of America, a Federal Constitution supplied the means by which States, conscious of a common national feeling, have approached to political unity. It were a rash inference from this fact, that when two parts of one nation are found (as must be asserted by any Home Ruler) not to be animated by a common feeling of nationality, a Federal Constitution is the proper means by which to keep them in union. The more natural deduction from the general history of Federalism is, that a confederation is an imperfect political union, transitory in its nature, and tending either to pass into one really united State, or to break up into the different States which compose the Federation. If, again, the example either of America or of Switzerland is to teach us anything worth knowing, the history of those countries must be read as a whole. It will then be seen that the two most successful confederacies in the world have been kept together only by the decisive triumph through force of arms of the central power over real or alleged State rights. General Dufour in Switzerland, General Grant and General Sherman in America, were the true interpreters and preservers of the constitutional pact. This undoubted fact hardly suits the theories of Irish Federalists. Nor ought we to stop at this point. Citizens of the Union filled with justifiable pride at the success of the American Constitution assume that a Federal Government is in itself absolutely the best form of government, that in any country where it can be adopted it must be an improvement on the existing institutions of the land, and that as compared with the constitutional monarchy of England federalism exhibits no special faults from which English constitutionalism is free. This assumption is perfectly natural; it resembles that absolute faith in the virtues of the British Constitution which reached its culminating point when Burke's intimate friend and pupil, Gilbert Elliott, himself no mean statesman, went to Corsica to establish a miniature copy of English Parliamentary institutions. But in each case a faith which is natural will also be pronounced by any candid judge to be unfounded. Federalism has in its very essence, and even as it exists in America, at least two special faults. It distracts the allegiance of citizens, and what is even more to the present point, it does not provide sufficient protection for the legal rights of unpopular minorities. There is not, and never was, a word in the Articles of the Constitution forbidding American citizens to criticise the institutions of the State. An American Abolitionist had as much right to denounce slavery at Boston, or for that matter at Charlestown, as an English Abolitionist had to denounce slavery in London or Liverpool. It were ridiculous to maintain that the right was one which either Lloyd Garrison or his disciples were able to exercise. Mr. Godkin[40] has repeated with perfect fairness the tale of the persecutions suffered by Prudence Crandall in Connecticut because she chose in exercise of her legal and moral rights to educate young women of colour. Mr. Godkin apparently draws, as I have already pointed out, from the fact an inference--which I confess myself not well able to follow--against all attempts to enforce an unpopular law. The more natural conclusion is that the Federal Government was not able to protect the rights of individuals against strong local sentiment. This moral at any rate has an obvious application to any scheme of Federalism for Ireland. The experience of Canada, again, is adduced to prove that a Federal constitution is compatible with loyalty to the British Crown. Why should an arrangement which produces peace, prosperity, and loyalty across the Atlantic not be applied to Ireland? The answer is, that the case of Canada is as regards Federalism irrelevant. Canada is not part of a British Federation. The Dominion as a whole is simply a colony, standing essentially in the same relation to England as Victoria or New South Wales. The laws of the Parliament that meets at Ottawa need the Royal sanction, or, in other words, may be vetoed, or rather not approved, by the English Ministry of the day. The Act itself on which the existence of the Canadian constitution depends is an Act of the British Parliament, and cannot be modified by any other authority. The British Parliament is supreme in Canada as throughout the British dominions; and Canada sends no representatives to the British Parliament. The provinces, no doubt, which compose the Dominion are under an Act of Parliament a Federation; but the dangers and difficulties of Federalism are to a great extent avoided by the supremacy of the British Crown. These difficulties, however, do arise. If any one will study the "Letellier case," he will soon perceive that Canada has exhibited the germ of the conflict between the central authority of the Dominion and the "State right" of the provinces; he will also perceive that the conflict was determined by a reference to the English Ministry, who in effect gave judgment in favour of the Dominion. The example of Canada suggests, if anything, that Irish difficulties might be solved by turning Ireland into a colony without representatives in the Imperial Parliament. We have now the materials for comparing, as regards the interests of England, the effects of Irish independence with the effects of Home Rule as Federalism. The case as between the two stands thus:-- The national independence of Ireland entails on England three great evils--the deliberate surrender of the main object at which English statesmanship has aimed for centuries, together with all the moral loss and disgrace which such surrender entails; the loss of considerable material resources in money, and still more in men; the incalculable evil of the existence in the neighbourhood of Great Britain of a new, a foreign, and, possibly, a hostile State. For these evils there are, indeed, to be found two real though inadequate compensations--namely, the probability that loss of territory might restore to England a unity and consistency of action equivalent to an increase of strength, and the possibility that separation might be the first step towards gaining the goodwill, and ultimately the alliance of Ireland. It is, however, hardly worth while to calculate what might be the extent of the possible deductions from evils which no English statesman would knowingly bring on Great Britain. By men of all parties and of all views it is practically conceded that England neither will nor can, except under compulsion, assent to Irish independence. Federalism, on the other hand, has the appearance of a compromise. It does not avowedly break up the unity of Great Britain and Ireland; it does not wholly deprive England of Irish resources; it does not, directly at least, lay Great Britain open to foreign attack. Federalism has, however, special evils of its own. It revolutionizes the whole Constitution of the United Kingdom; by undermining the sovereignty of Parliament, it deprives English institutions of their elasticity, their strength, and their life; it weakens the Executive at home, and lessens the power of the country to resist foreign attack. The revolution which works these changes holds out no hope of reconciliation with Ireland. An attempt, in short, to impose on England and Scotland a constitution which they do not want, and which is quite unsuited to the historical traditions and to the genius of Great Britain, offers to Ireland a constitution which Ireland is certain to dislike, which has none of the real or imaginary charms of independence, and ensures none of the solid benefits to be hoped for from a genuine union with England. If this be the true state of the case, thus much at least is argumentatively made out: Federalism offers to England not a constitutional compromise, but a fundamental revolution, and this revolution, however moderate in its form or in the intention of its advocates, does not offer that reasonable chance of reconciliation with the mass of the Irish people which might be a compensation for a repeal of the Union, and is as much opposed to the interests of Great Britain as would be the national independence of Ireland. This conclusion is a purely negative one, but it is, as far as English statesmen are concerned, the _reductio ad impossibile_ of the case in favour of Home Rule in so far as Home Rule takes the form of Federalism. * * * * * II. _Home Rule as Colonial Independence._--The modern Colonial policy of England has, or is thought to have, achieved two results which impress popular imagination:--it has relieved English statesmanship from an unbearable burden of worry and anxiety; it has (as most people believe) changed Colonial unfriendliness or discontent into enthusiastic or ostentatious loyalty. Some politicians, therefore, who are anxious to terminate the secular feud between England and Ireland, and to free Parliament from the presence, and therefore from the obstructiveness, of the Home Rulers, readily assume that the formula of "Colonial independence" contains the solution of the problem how to satisfy at once the demand of Ireland for independence and the resolution of Great Britain to maintain the integrity of the Empire. This assumption rests on no sure foundation, but derives such plausibility as it possesses from the gross ignorance of the public as to the principles and habits which govern the English State system. A mere account of the constitutional relations existing between England and a self-governed colony is almost equivalent to a suggestion of the reasons which forbid the hope that the true answer to the agitation for Home Rule is to be found in conceding to Ireland institutions like those which satisfy the inhabitants of New South Wales or Victoria. To render such a statement at once brief and intelligible is no easy matter, for, among all the political arrangements devised by the ingenuity of statesmen, none can be found more singular, more complicated, or more anomalous than the position of combined independence and subordination occupied by the large number of self-governing colonies which are scattered throughout the British Empire. Victoria, which may be taken as a type of the whole class, is, for most purposes of local and internal administration, and for some purposes which go beyond the sphere usually assigned to local government, an independent, self-governing community. Victoria is at the same time, for all purposes in theory and for many purposes in fact, a merely subordinate portion of the British Empire, and as truly subject to the British Parliament as is Middlesex or the Isle of Wight. Let us try in the first place to realize--for this is the essential matter as regards my present argument--the full extent of Victorian independence. Victoria enjoys a Constitution after the British model. The Governor, the two Houses, the Ministry, reproduce the well-known features of our limited monarchy. The Victorian Parliament further possesses in Victoria that character of sovereignty which the British Parliament possesses throughout the dominions of the Crown, and is (subject, of course, to the authority of the British Parliament itself) as supreme at Melbourne as are Queen, Lords, and Commons at Westminster. It makes and unmakes Cabinets; it controls the executive action of the Ministry; who, in their turn, are the authorized advisers of that sham constitutional monarch, the Colonial Governor. The Parliament, moreover, recognizes no restrictions on its legislative powers; it is not, as is the Congress of the United States, restrained within a very limited sphere of action; it is not, as are both the Congress and the State Legislatures of the Union, bound hand and foot by the articles of a rigid Constitution; it is not compelled to respect any immutable maxims of legislation. Hence the Victorian Parliament--in this resembling its creator, the British Parliament--exercises an amount of legislative freedom unknown to most foreign representative assemblies. It can, and does, legislate on education, on ecclesiastical topics, on the tenure of land, on finance, on every subject, in short, which can interest the Colony. It provides for the raising of Colonial forces; it may levy taxes or impose duties for the support of the Victorian administration, or for the protection of Colonial manufactures. It is not forbidden to tax goods imported from other parts of the Empire; it is not bound to abstain from passing _ex post facto_ laws, to respect the sanctity of contracts, or to pay any regard to the commercial interests of the United Kingdom. It may alter the Constitution on which its own powers depend, and, for example, extend the franchise or remodel the Upper House. To understand the full extent of the authority possessed by the Victorian Parliament and the Victorian Ministry--which is, in fact, appointed by the Parliament--it should be noted that, while every branch of the administration (the courts, the police, and the Colonial forces) is, as in England, more or less directly under the influence or the control of the Cabinet, the Colonies have, since 1862, provided for their own defence, and, except in time of war, or peril of war, are not garrisoned by British troops.[41] It is, therefore, no practical exaggeration to assert that Victoria is governed by its own Executive, which is appointed by its own Parliament, and which maintains order by means of the Victorian police, supported, in case of need, by Victorian soldiers. An intelligent foreigner, therefore, might reside for years in Melbourne, and conceive that the supremacy of the British Government was little more than nominal. In this he would be mistaken. But should he assert that, as to all merely Colonial matters, Victoria was in practice a self-governed and independent country, his language would not be accurate, yet his assertion would not go very wide of the truth. The local independence, however, of an English colony is hardly more noteworthy than are the devices by which a colony is retained in its place as a subordinate portion of the British Empire, and anyone who would understand the English Colonial system must pay hardly less attention to the subordination than to the independence of a country like Victoria. The foundation of the whole scheme is the admission of the complete and unquestioned supremacy of the British Parliament throughout every portion of the royal dominions. No Colonial statesman, judge, or lawyer ever dreams of denying that Crown, Lords, and Commons can legislate for Victoria, and that a statute of the Imperial Parliament overrides every law or custom repugnant thereto, by whomsoever enacted, in every part of the Crown dominions. The right, moreover, of Imperial legislation has not fallen into disuse. Mr. Tarring[42] enumerates from sixty to seventy Imperial statutes, extending from 7 Geo. III. c. 50 to 44 & 45 Vict. c. 69, which apply to the Colonies generally, and to this list, which might now be lengthened, must be added a large number of statutes applying to particular colonies. The sovereignty of Parliament, moreover, is formally recorded in the Colonial Laws Act, 1865 (28 & 29 Vict. cap. 63), which itself may well be termed the charter of Colonial legislative authority. This essential dogma of parliamentary sovereignty, moreover, is not proclaimed as a merely abstract principle--it is enforced by two different methods. Every court, in the first place, as well in Victoria as elsewhere throughout the British dominions, is bound to hold void, and in fact does hold void, enactments which contravene an Imperial statute, and from Colonial courts there is an appeal to the Privy Council. The Colonial Governor, in the second place, though from one point of view he is a constitutional monarch acting under the advice given him by his Ministers, bears also another and a different character. He is an Imperial official appointed by the Crown--that is, by the English Cabinet, which represents the wishes of the Imperial Parliament--and he is, as such representative of the Imperial power, bound if possible to avert the passing of any Bill, and when he cannot avert the passing, then to veto any Act of the Colonial Legislature, which is disapproved of by the Home Government as opposed either to Imperial law or to Imperial policy. Thus, a Victorian Act, even when sanctioned by the Governor, must pass through another stage before it finally becomes law. It must receive the assent of the Crown, or, in other words, the assent of the English Secretary of State for the Colonies, and unless this assent be either actually or constructively given it does not come into force.[43] The matter to be carefully noted is that the Crown, or in other words the English Ministry, which represents the House of Commons, has, as far as law goes, complete power of controlling the legislation even of colonies like Victoria. This power is both positive and negative. If the Victorian Parliament fails to pass some enactment necessary in the opinion of the British Parliament for the safety of the Empire, then the Parliament at Westminster can pass an Act for Victoria supplying the needful provisions. If on the other hand the Victorian Legislature passes a bill, (e.g. expelling Chinese from the Colony,) which the Home Government representing the British Parliament deems opposed to Imperial interests, then the Government can either direct the Governor to refuse his assent to the law, or cause the Crown to disallow it, and thus in any case make it void. When we add to all this that there are many occasions, which we can here only allude to, on which a Colonial Governor can, and does, act so as to hinder courses of action which conflict with English interests or policy, it becomes clear enough that, as far as constitutional arrangements can secure the reality of sovereignty, the Imperial Parliament maintains its supremacy throughout the length and breadth of the British Empire. It is of course perfectly true that Parliament having once given representative institutions to a colony, does not dream of habitually overriding or thwarting Colonial legislation. But it were a gross error to suppose that Colonial recognition of British sovereignty is a mere form. It is in the main cheerfully acquiesced in by the people of Victoria, because they gain considerable prestige and no small material advantage from forming part of the Empire. They have no traditional hostility with the mother country; they have every reason to deprecate separation, and--a matter of equal consequence--they believe that if they wished for independence it would not be refused them. England stands, in short, as regards Victoria, in a position of singular advantage. She could suppress local riot, or cause it to be suppressed, and she would not try to oppose a national demand for separation. Hence a complicated political arrangement is kept in tolerable working order by a series of understandings and of mutual concessions. If either England or Victoria were not willing to give and take, the connection between England and the Colony could not last a month. The policy, in short, of Colonial independence is, like most of our constitutional arrangements, based on the assumption that the parties to it are willing to act towards one another in a spirit of compromise and good-will, and though at the present moment the pride of England in her Colonial empire, and the appreciation on the part of our colonies of the benefits, moral and material, of the supremacy of Great Britain, keep our scheme of Colonial government in working order, it is well to realize that this system is not so invariably successful as might be inferred from the optimism which naturally colours official utterances. The names of Sir Charles Darling and Sir George Bowen recall transactions which show that a community as loyal as Victoria may adopt a course of policy which meets with the disapproval of English statesmen. The recent and deliberate refusal of the citizens of Melbourne to endure the landing on their shores of informers whose evidence had procured the punishment of an outrageous crime, combined with the fact that the populace of Melbourne were abetted in a gross, indubitable, patent breach of law by Colonial Ministers who were after all, technically speaking, servants of the Crown, gives rise to serious reflection, and suggests that, even under favourable circumstances, Colonial independence is hardly consistent with that enforcement throughout the Crown's dominions of due respect for law which is the main justification for the existence of the British Empire.[44] A student, moreover, who turns his eyes towards dependencies less favourably situated than Victoria soon perceives how great may at any moment become the difficulty of working an artificial and complicated system of double sovereignty. In Jamaica the hostility of the whites and blacks led to riot on the part of the blacks, followed by lawless suppression of riot on the part of the Governor, who represented the feelings of the whites, and the restoration of peace and order ultimately entailed the abolition of representative government. At the Cape the pressure of war at once exposed the weak part of the constitutional machine. The pretensions of the Cape Ministry to snatch from the hands of the Governor the control of the armed forces met with successful resistance; but the question then raised as to the proper relation between the Colonial Ministry and the army, though for a time evaded, is certain sooner or later to re-appear, and will not always admit of an easy or peaceable answer.[45] Any reader interested in my argument should supplement this brief statement of the relation actually existing between England and her self-governing colonies by a perusal of Mr. Todd's most instructive 'Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies.' But the statement, brief and colourless though it be, is sufficient for its purpose; it shows that the proposal to give to Ireland the institutions of a colony is open to two fatal objections. 1st.--The concession to Ireland of Colonial independence would entail upon England probable peril and certain disgrace. The peril is obvious. An Irish Cabinet armed with the authority possessed by a Victorian Ministry would at once provide for the self-defence of Ireland, and an Irish army, obeying an Irish Executive and commanded by Irish officers, would be none the less formidable because it might in name be identified with an armed police, or, like the troops raised at the Cape or in Victoria, enjoy the ominous title of Volunteers. If the Colonial precedent were strictly carried out, British troops ought, from the time Ireland obtained an independent Parliament, to be withdrawn from the country. The acknowledged danger of foreign invasion, and the unavowed probability of Irish insurrection, would make the retirement of the English army impossible. But the presence of British forces--and forces, be it remarked, intended in reality as a check on the action of the local Government--would of itself place Ireland in a position utterly unlike the situation of Victoria, and would also involve both the Imperial and the local Government in endless difficulties and controversies. If any one doubts this, let him read the correspondence between Mr. Molteno[46] and Sir Bartle Frere, and substitute for the Premier of the Cape Colony the name of Mr. Parnell, and for Sir Bartle Frere the name of any Lord-Lieutenant who might be unfortunate enough to hold office in Ireland after Mr. Parnell became Premier of an Irish Cabinet. Suppose, however, that by some miracle of management or good luck the Irish and English forces acted well together, and that the satisfaction given by a state of things approaching to independence prevented for the moment all attempts at separation, England might escape peril, but she would assuredly not avoid deserved disgrace. An Irish Parliament, returned in the main by the very men who support the National League, would assuredly pass laws which every man in England, and many men throughout Ireland, would hold to be unjust, and which, whether in themselves unjust or not, would certainly set aside Imperial legislation, which England is bound by every consideration of honour and justice to uphold. There is no need to demonstrate here what has been demonstrated by one writer after another, and, indeed, hardly needs proof, that at the present day an Irish Parliament would certainly deprive Irish landlords, and possibly deprive Irish Protestants, of rights which the Imperial Parliament would never take away, and which the Imperial Government is absolutely bound to protect.[47] If the English Government were to be base enough to acquiesce in legislation which the Imperial Parliament would never itself have countenanced, then England would be dishonoured; if Bill after Bill passed by the Irish Legislature were prevented from becoming law by veto after veto, then English honour might be saved, but the self-government of Ireland would be at an end, nor would England gain much in credit. The English Ministry can, as long as the connection with a colony endures, arrest Colonial legislation. But the Home Government cannot for any effective purpose interfere with the administrative action of a Colonial Executive. Given courts, an army, and a police controlled by the leaders of the Land League, and it is easy to see how rents might be abolished and landlords driven into exile without the passing by the Irish Parliament of a single Act which a Colonial Secretary could reasonably veto, or which even an English court could hold void under the provisions of the Colonial Laws Act. It is indeed probable that wild legislation at Dublin might provoke armed resistance in Ulster. But a movement which, were Ireland an independent nation, might ensure just government for all classes of Irishmen would, if Ireland were a colony, only add a new element of confusion to an already intolerable state of affairs. Imagine for a moment what would have been the position of England if Englishmen had been convinced that Riel, though technically a rebel, was in reality a patriot, resisting the intolerable oppression of the Dominion Parliament, and you may form some slight idea of the feeling of shame and disgrace with which Englishmen would see British soldiers employed to suppress the revolt of Ulster against a Government which, without English aid, would find it difficult to resist or punish the insurgents. The most painful and least creditable feature in the history of the United States is the apathy with which for thirty years the Northern States tolerated Southern lawlessness, and even now indirectly support Southern oppression. 2nd.--If Colonial independence would be found in Ireland inconsistent with the protection of England's interests and with the discharge of England's duties, it would also fail to produce the one result which would be an adequate compensation for many probable or certain evils--namely, the extinction of Irish discontent. It is by no means certain, indeed, that Colonial independence would be accepted with genuine acquiescence by any class of Irishmen. Certainly the demand for Grattan's Parliament lends no countenance to the supposition that the people of Ireland would accept with satisfaction a political arrangement which is absolutely opposed in its character to the Constitution of 1782.[48] Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that the Irish leaders and the Irish people accepted the offer of Colonial independence; we may be well assured that this acceptance would not produce good-will towards England, and this not from the perversity of the Irish nature, of which we hear a great deal too much, but from difficulties in the nature of things, of which we hear a great deal too little. The restrictions on the authority of the Irish Parliament would, one cannot doubt, be, as safeguards for the authority of the Imperial Government, absolutely illusory. But they would be intensely irritating. Irish leaders would wish, and from their own point of view rightly wish, to carry through a revolutionary policy. The Imperial Government would attempt, and from an English point of view rightly attempt, to arrest revolution. Every considerable legislative measure would give ground for negotiation and for understandings--that is, for dissatisfaction and for misunderstanding. There would be disputes about the land laws, disputes about the army, disputes about the police, disputes about the authority of Imperial legislation, disputes about the validity of Irish enactments, disputes about appeals to the Privy Council. To say that all these sources of irritation might embitter the relation between England and Victoria, and that, as they do not habitually do so, one may infer that they will not embitter the relation between England and Ireland, is to argue that institutions nominally the same will work in the same way when applied to totally different circumstances. Victoria is prosperous; Ireland is in distress. Victoria takes pride in the Imperial connection; the difficulty in dealing with Ireland consists in the fact that large bodies of Irishmen detest the British Empire. Victoria has never aspired to be a nation; the best side of Irish discontent consists in enthusiasm for Irish nationality. Above all this, there has never been any lasting feud between England and her Australian dependencies; the main ground in favour of a fundamental change in the constitutional relations of Ireland and England is the necessity of putting an end at almost any cost to traditional hatred and misunderstanding generated by centuries of misgovernment and misery. If, as already pointed out, the source of this misery, so far as it can be touched by law at all, is a vicious system of land tenure, it is in vain to imagine that the misfortunes of Ireland can be cured by any mere change of constitutional forms. Grant, however, for the sake of argument, that the passion of nationality is the true ground of the demand for Home Rule; grant, also, in defiance of patent facts, that the autonomy of a dependency satisfies the sensibilities of a nation; still it is idle to fancy that a system based, like our scheme of Colonial government, on friendly understandings and the habitual practice of compromise, can regulate the relations of two countries which are kept apart mainly because they cannot understand one another, and can neither of them admit the necessity of mutual concessions. Moreover, a scheme of nominal subjection combined with real independence has the one great defect that it does not teach the lessons which men and nations learn by depending on their own unassisted and uncontrolled efforts. No one learns self-control who fancies he is controlled by a master.[49] The scheme, in short, of Colonial independence, though less absolutely impracticable than any form of Federalism,[50] has, as a solution of our Irish difficulties, two fatal defects: it gives Ireland a degree of independence more dangerous to England than would be the existence of Ireland as a separate nation; it bestows on Ireland a kind of self-government which presents neither the material advantages derived from the Union, nor the possible, though hypothetical, gains which might accrue to her from the self-control and energy supposed to flow from the inspiring sentiment of nationality. Still the Colonial system is, in spite of its immense defects as a scheme of Home Rule for Ireland, out and out the least objectionable of the models which have been proposed to us for our imitation, and this for several reasons. To grant to Ireland, if she be prepared to accept it, the position of Victoria is not to impair the supremacy of Parliament; if we copied faithfully the Victorian polity, every Irish member of Parliament would permanently depart from Westminster; there would be no more need for having at Westminster a representative of Dublin than there is for having a representative of Melbourne; the Irish Parliament would depend for its very existence on an Act of the Imperial Parliament, and the British Parliament would be able without consulting any Irish representative to modify, override, or abolish all or any part of the Act constituting the Irish Parliament. In this there would be no breach of faith, for the Constitution would bear on its face that the Act of Parliament on which it depended could be changed by the British Parliament as lawfully as can the Act 18 & 19 Vict. c. 55, which calls into existence the Victorian legislature. The undoubted legal authority and ease with which the British Parliament could suspend or abolish the Irish Constitution would have two good results: the one that Great Britain would have a sanction by which to enforce the adherence of the Irish government to just principles of legislation and of administration; the other that the readiness with which this sanction could be applied would, it is not unlikely, make its application needless. England, again, would not by the concession of Colonial independence dislocate her own Constitution: she would only be extending to Ireland a scheme of government already existing in other parts of the Empire, and would find herself possessed of officials accustomed to make a Colonial Constitution work. Nothing would be changed: there would only be one Colony the more, and the Colonial Office would find no insuperable difficulty in undertaking the government of Ireland in the same sense in which the Office undertakes the government of Victoria. The position, it may be objected, would be a very poor one for Ireland. With this objection I entirely agree: my very contention is that for Ireland, no less than for England, it is best that Ireland shall form part of the United Kingdom. Home Rulers think otherwise: they prefer the local autonomy of Victoria to a share in the United Kingdom. They may probably, however, say that taxation involves representation, and that if Ireland is to take the disadvantages she must also have the immunities of a colony. Here fair-minded men will hold that the Home Rulers are right. The maxim, indeed, that taxation involves representation need not deeply impress any one who remembers that throughout the United Kingdom the property of every woman is taxed, and that no woman has a share in Parliamentary representation. But a formula which is not logically defensible may yet be the embodiment of a just claim. If the very hazardous experiment of placing Ireland in the position of Victoria is to be tried, it must be tried fairly and with every circumstance which may increase its chances of success. Ireland on assuming the position of a colony should, like other colonies, be freed from Imperial taxation. England can afford the sacrifice of three or four millions a year, and she would obtain a valuable _quid pro quo_ in the increased homogeneity of the British Parliament. Ireland too would gain something. A country impoverished, in part at least through bad government, might think it no hard bargain to gain at once local independence and exemption from a heavy weight of taxation. The absence of anything like a tribute to Great Britain would be an immense advantage, for it would remove one cause of certain discontent, and would for once place England before the Irish people at any rate in the light of a liberal ally. Let me not be misunderstood. I do not recommend Home Rule under any form whatever: what I do assert is that of all its forms the Colonial form is the least injurious to British interests, and that the experiment of placing Ireland in the situation of Victoria can be carried out neither with fairness nor with any chance of success, unless Englishmen let Ireland, like Victoria, be exempt from Imperial taxation. If any English taxpayer says that the price is too high to pay for the success of an experiment of which I do not myself recommend the trial, I am not concerned to consider whether he is right. My only concern is to insist that the sacrifice of three or four millions per annum is an essential feature of this particular scheme of Home Rule, and that persons who say the sacrifice is too great have only added one to the many arguments which lead to the conclusion that under no form whatever can Irish Home Rule be accepted by England. * * * * * [Sidenote: Objection to Constitution of 1782, not faults of Irish Parliament.] III. _Home Rule as the revival of Grattan's Constitution._--The cry for Home Rule sometimes takes the form of a demand that Ireland should reacquire the Constitution of 1782. The true answer to this demand is not to be found where Englishmen often seek for it, in attacks on Grattan's Parliament. That body exhibited some grave defects common to the English Parliament of the day; it had also many faults of its own to answer for; but it had with all its demerits virtues which still cast a halo round its memory in the eyes of Irish patriotism, and which serve to redeem many of its admitted faults in the judgment of impartial history. It produced great men. Flood, Grattan, Curran, and Fitzgibbon were none of them faultless statesmen, but they were leaders of whom any people have a right to be proud. Grattan's Parliament, moreover, though it represented a class, represented a class of Irishmen, and we may even say the best class of Irishmen. It was lastly, with all its defects, a Parliament of men who knew and belonged to Ireland, and after its lights cared for the country. It was in a true sense a national Parliament. When we consider further that the Parliament was abolished against the wish of the best men in Ireland, that it was abolished by arts which have brought lasting and just discredit on the men who carried through the Act of Union, we can well understand why as calm and as well-informed judges as Mr. Lecky hold to the belief--certainly in nowise in itself unreasonable--that the Treaty of Union was, to say the least, premature, and that England and Ireland would have gained much if for a generation or two more the interest and repute of Ireland had been guarded by an Irish Parliament. The argument that the Irish Parliament because it was corrupt, or because it represented a class, was rightly abolished, proves too much. The English Parliament under Walpole was at least as open as the Irish Parliament in the time of Grattan to each of these charges, yet long before legislation had removed the flagrant anomalies of the unreformed House of Commons the English Parliament had cast off its worst vices, and few persons will maintain that England would have gained if during the time of Walpole Parliamentary government had been abolished. Be this as it may, vituperation of Grattan's Parliament is for our present purpose as irrelevant as it is unjust and injudicious. [Sidenote: True objection, restoration impossible.] The true reason for declining to consider the demand for the Constitution of 1782 is, that to concede it is in the strictest sense of the word an impossibility. Grattan's Constitution not only is dead, but can look for no resurrection. The social, the political, the religious, we might almost say the physical conditions under which Grattan's Parliament existed have vanished, never to return. "It cannot be too clearly understood," writes Mr. Lecky, "that the real meaning of the separate Irish Parliament of the eighteenth century was that the efficient government of the country was placed in the hands of its Protestant gentry, qualified by the fact that the English Government possessed a sufficient number of nomination boroughs to exercise a constant controlling influence over their proceedings. The existing Grand Juries and the Synod of the disestablished Church are the bodies which now represent most faithfully the independent elements in Grattan's Parliament. That Parliament consisted exclusively of men who were bound to the English connection by the closest ties of interest and sentiment [and] who were pre-eminently the representatives of property."[51] We may deplore that such a Parliament was doomed to destruction when it might possibly have been saved by reform. But to any one who has eyes to see it is as clear as day that with Protestant ascendancy, with the prestige of the Established Church, with the leading position of Irish landlords, with the submission of Irish tenants, with the power of control exercised by the English Government, with the necessary dependence of the English Colony upon the connection with England, Grattan's Constitution with all its possibilities or impossibilities has vanished for ever. You can no more restore the Parliament of 1782 in Ireland than you can restore the unreformed Parliament of 1832 in England. In either case to reproduce the form would not renew the spirit, and the attempted revival of an anomaly would turn out the creation of a monstrosity. One consideration suggested by the memory of Grattan's Parliament is well worth attention. With the curious laxity of thought about constitutional changes which marks modern British statesmanship, language is often used which implies that to ask for Grattan's Parliament is equivalent to asking for Colonial self-government as in Victoria. No two things are in reality more different. It is no exaggeration to say that the Constitution of 1782 presented in its principles the exact antithesis to the modern Constitution of Victoria. Grattan's Constitution rested on the absolute denial of British Parliamentary sovereignty. The keynote of his policy was the Parliamentary independence of Ireland; its aim was to make Ireland an independent nation connected with England only by goodwill, by common interest, and by what has been called the "golden link" of the Crown. The statement indeed that between the date of Irish Parliamentary independence and the date of the Union England and Ireland were governed under two crowns, is not much better than a piece of rhetorical antiquarianism.[52] It is, however, undoubtedly true that from 1782 to 1800 the British Parliament had no more right to legislate for Ireland than at the present day it has to legislate for New York, and no appeal lay from any Irish Court to any English tribunal. But if under the Constitution of 1782 Ireland was in one sense an independent nation, she could not under that Constitution be called a self-governed country. The Irish Executive was controlled by George the Third and his English Ministers, and the passing of the Act of Union was proof, if evidence were needed, that England possessed potent though unavowed means for controlling the decision of the Irish Legislature. The Constitution, it may be added, bore exactly the fruit to be expected from its anomalous character. It stimulated national feeling; this was its saving merit. It did not secure supremacy to the will of the Irish nation; this, as appeared in 1800, was its fatal flaw. Compare with this the Constitution of Victoria. The Victorian Constitution is based on complete acknowledgment of English Parliamentary sovereignty. But the amplest recognition of British authority is balanced by the unrestricted enjoyment of local self-government. Hence Victoria manages her own affairs, but Victorians are not inspired with the sense of constituting a nation. * * * * * [Sidenote: Gladstonian Constitution--its character.] IV. _Home Rule under the Gladstonian Constitution_[53]--No legislative proposal submitted to Parliament has ever received harder measure than the Government of Ireland Bill. Its introduction aroused the keenest political battle which during half a century has been fought in England. The Bill therefore became at once the mark of hostile and (what is nearly the same thing) of unfair criticism at the hands of opponents. This was to be expected; it is the necessary result of the system which makes tenure of office depend on success in carrying through or resisting proposed legislation. What did take place but was not to be expected was, that the Government of Ireland Bill met with harsh criticism at the hands of its friends. The Opposition wished to prove that the principle of the Bill was bad, by showing that it led to disastrous and absurd results. They therefore directed their assaults upon the details of a measure which they disliked in reality not because of the special provisions which they attacked, but because of the principle to which these provisions gave effect. Ministeralists on the other hand were only too ready to surrender any clause in the Bill as a matter of detail, provided only they could persuade Parliament to sanction the principle of the measure, and thereby affirm the policy of giving Ireland an Irish Executive and an Irish Parliament. Nor was this course of action dictated solely by the exigencies of Parliamentary strategy. Ministerialists saw the flaws in the Bill as plainly as did the Opposition, and no man (it may be conjectured), from the Premier who devised, down to the draughtsman who drew, the Government of Ireland Bill, would have wished it to become an Act in the form in which it stood on the 7th day of June, 1886. The supporters, moreover, of the Government emphasized their dislike to the details of the particular measure, because to attack a detail of the machinery by which it was proposed to give Ireland Home Rule countenanced in the critic's own mind the assumption that some mechanism could be invented which might carry out the principle of creating an Irish Parliament without violating the conditions on which alone the idea of any such measure could be entertained by any English statesman. Opponents, in short, of the Government of Ireland Bill attacked its details out of hostility to its principle; its defenders tried to win approval for its principle by conceding or insisting upon the defects of its details.[54] The result was unfortunate. The Bill was never either by its opponents or its friends regarded in the light in which it ought to be viewed by a constitutional lawyer. It was never criticised as a whole; it never therefore received full justice. Whoever examines the now celebrated Bill in the spirit of a jurist will see that it constitutes, in spite of many obvious blots both in its special provisions and in its language, a most ingenious attempt to solve the problem of giving to Ireland a legislature which shall be at once practically independent, and theoretically dependent, upon the Parliament of Great Britain; which shall have full power to make laws and appoint an executive for Ireland, and yet shall not use that power in a way opposed to English interests or sense of justice. The problem (it may be said) admits of no solution. This may be so, and is indeed my own conviction. But this conviction ought not to prevent the acknowledgment that the Bill is the rough outline of an ingeniously attempted solution. If the Bill fails in achieving its object, the failure arises not from mistakes of detail, but from the unsoundness of the principle on which the Bill rests, and shows that the conditions on which Englishmen can wisely give Home Rule to Ireland are conditions which no scheme of Home Rule can satisfy. The idea which lies at the basis of the plan sketched out in the Government of Ireland Bill is the combination of the Federal system and the Colonial system of Home Rule. The right mode of criticising this combination is first to trace in the barest outline the leading features of the Bill, treating it much as if it had become an Act, and had given to Ireland an actual Constitution; and next to examine how far this Constitution, which may with no unfairness be called the "Gladstonian Constitution," satisfies the conditions which a scheme of Home Rule is bound to fulfil. The Gladstonian Constitution establishes a new form of government in Ireland; it also modifies, or, to use plain and accurate language, repeals the main provisions of the Act of Union, and thus introduces a fundamental change into the existing Constitution of England.[55] The following are for our present purpose its principal features. [Sidenote: Its features as regards government of Ireland.] As regards the government of Ireland-- The Executive Government of Ireland is vested in the Queen, but is carried on by the Lord-Lieutenant and a Council.[56] Though the formation and powers of the Executive are under the Constitution left very much at large, we may fairly assume that the authors of the Constitution intend that the Lord-Lieutenant should occupy the position in substance of Colonial Governor, and rule Ireland through a ministry appointed nominally by the Lord-Lieutenant, but in reality selected by the Irish legislative body. In this manner the Irish Constitution is, like that of Victoria, a copy of the English original. There is created--and this, of course, is the vital provision of the Constitution--an Irish legislature, which I shall take leave hereafter to call by its proper name, the "Irish Parliament," consisting of the Queen and an Irish legislative body, which we may call a House of Parliament or a Chamber, made up itself of two orders.[57] The Irish Parliament, subject to certain restrictions, has authority to make or repeal any laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland; it is in fact in the strictest sense what I have termed it, an Irish Parliament. It is the body which indirectly appoints and controls the Executive, and directly legislates for Ireland. It can repeal laws which have been passed by the existing Parliament of the United Kingdom in so far as they are in force in Ireland. The powers of the Irish Parliament are, it should be noted, indefinite. The Parliament, that is to say, may pass any law which it is not, under the Constitution, forbidden to pass. In this respect it stands in the position not like that of the American Congress, which can legislate only on certain topics, which are expressly placed within the competence of Congress, but in a position like that occupied by the Parliament of the Canadian 1 Dominion, which can legislate on all topics not expressly excepted from its competence. The difference between a legislature of definite and a legislature of indefinite powers is important. In the one case changes of circumstances may diminish but cannot increase the authority of the legislature; in the other case changes of circumstances may increase but cannot diminish that authority. The Irish Parliament is a body whose authority will, from the necessity of things, tend constantly to increase. If the authority given to the Irish Parliament is indefinite, it is not unlimited. A large number of exceptions and restrictions are imposed upon its freedom of action. It is hard to point to any clear principle on which they rest. Their object undoubtedly is to guard against legislation about subjects such as the armed forces, the coinage, and the like, which are of Imperial rather than of local concern. But we can hardly say that the line between the things which the Irish Parliament can do, and the things which it cannot do, exactly coincides with the line which divides Imperial from local legislation. The Irish Parliament might lawfully pass laws opposed to the whole tenour of British legislation, such, for instance, as an Act preventing particular classes of foreigners, or even of Englishmen, from settling in Ireland. The Irish Parliament could not, on the other hand, pass any law for the establishment or the endowment of religion. Hence Ireland could not, in imitation of England and Scotland, provide herself with an established Church, nor could she again pass any law relating to volunteers. She could not therefore take steps for the defence of the country, which are permissible to Victoria or Canada. The observance of these limitations on the Parliament's power of legislation is enforced by a twofold method: first, by the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant;[58] secondly, by the special authority given to the Judicial Committee of the English Privy Council.[59] The Lord-Lieutenant can, after the manner of a Colonial Governor, refuse the Royal assent to any bill passed by the Irish House of Parliament.[60] It would rather appear (though this is by no means certain) that a Bill passed by the Irish Parliament might, even though the Lord-Lieutenant assented thereto, be like the Bill of a Colonial legislature, disallowed by the Crown, or in effect by the English Ministry.[61] The Judicial Committee of the English Privy Council, with the addition of certain members, who must be, or have been, Irish Judges, exercises under the Gladstonian Constitution a very peculiar authority in respect of Irish legislation. It becomes both an administrative and a judicial body. As an administrative body it can give a decision as to the constitutional validity of any Bill brought before or Act passed by, the Irish Parliament. In its judicial character it is a court of final appeal, with exclusive power to pronounce a decision upon the validity of an Act of the Irish Parliament whenever the validity thereof comes in question in the course of an action.[62] The decisions of the Privy Council are final; their twofold character as opinions and judgments deserve special attention. The result is that the Judicial Committee of the English Privy Council can always in one way or another pronounce void the proposed or actual legislation of the Irish Parliament if it is in the judgment of the Privy Council unconstitutional. Ireland in return for the advantages gained by her under the Gladstonian Constitution gives up the representation which she now has in each of the two Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. No Irish representative, either Peer or Commoner, sits under that Constitution at Westminster.[63] The present Parliament of the United Kingdom under whatever name it be described, and whatever be its powers, becomes therefore on the withdrawal of the Irish representatives a British Parliament, and is hereinafter termed by me, for the sake of distinction, the British Parliament. Ireland also contributes annually to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom a sum of over four millions. The Irish customs and excise are made the security for the payment of this contribution; they are, if I understand the Government of Ireland Bill rightly, to be collected by British officials and paid into the British Treasury, but the details of the financial arrangements intended to exist under the Gladstonian Constitution are not within the scope of this work. The Irish Parliament has no power to modify or alter the provisions of the Constitution under which it exists,[64] except in one or two cases provided for by the Constitution itself. The Constitution is alterable in a particular manner therein pointed out, namely by the co-operation of the British Parliament and the Irish Parliament. If we omit certain complications of detail, this co-operation takes place by the Irish representatives being summoned back, and thus added to the British Parliament. The body thus constituted for the alteration of the Gladstonian Constitution is formed of much the same elements as the existing Parliament of the United Kingdom, and is hereinafter called the Imperial Parliament.[65] [Sidenote: As regards the English Constitution.] As regards the Constitution of England-- The Gladstonian Constitution, as it will now be seen, does, whatever the intention of its authors, as a matter of fact seriously affect the Constitution of England, and this in more points than one. _First._--The withdrawal of the Irish representation from the Parliament of the United Kingdom constitutes in effect a new body, which in its composition is different from the present Parliament of the United Kingdom, and which since (allowing for changes introduced by the different Reform Acts which have been passed during the century) it corresponds with the Parliament of Great Britain as it existed before the Union with Ireland, may be rightly described by the name I have applied to it, of the British Parliament. This British Parliament has admittedly authority to legislate on every matter which comes within the competence neither of the Irish Parliament, nor of the body which I have distinguished as the Imperial Parliament, which, it will be remembered, consists of the British Parliament with the Irish representatives summoned thereto. Whether the British Parliament has or has not any further powers is a moot question which I purposely leave for the moment untouched. What is admitted on all hands is that a Parliament in which Irish representatives have no voice whatever can legislate on every matter affecting England, Scotland, or the British Empire, and also on the topics specially excluded from the competence of the Irish Parliament unless they belong to the one topic, namely, the alteration of the Gladstonian Constitution, reserved for the Imperial Parliament. _Secondly._--The British Parliament, whatever be its theoretical authority, will cease under the Gladstonian Constitution to pass laws for Ireland, and will not impose any taxation on Ireland in addition to the contribution which Ireland is compelled to pay under the Constitution. Hence, _Thirdly_,--and as a result of the various features in the Gladstonian Constitution which have been already noted, there exist under it three bodies with different functions which, by whatever name they may be each called, ought to be carefully distinguished. They are-- (i.) The British Parliament at Westminster, in which sit no Irish members, which legislates for Great Britain, and for the whole of the British Empire, except Ireland, but which does not in general at any rate legislate for Ireland. (ii.) The Irish Parliament at Dublin, in which sit no British representatives, which legislates for Ireland, but does not legislate for England, Scotland, or for any other part of the British Empire, and does not have any voice whatever in the general policy of the Empire. (iii.) The Imperial Parliament also sitting at Westminster, and comprising both the British and the Irish Parliament. This body, which in composition corresponds nearly if not exactly with the existing Parliament of the United Kingdom, comes together only on special occasions and only for a special purpose, namely the revision or alteration of the Gladstonian Constitution. That the existence of these three bodies, each normally exercising the different functions or powers I have attributed to them, constitutes an unmistakable, and I should myself say a fundamental, change in the existing English Constitution with its one sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom, hardly in my judgment requires or admits of proof. If the change be denied, I have no course but to leave the decision of the question whether such a change can be fairly ignored to the intelligence of my readers.[66] The Gladstonian Constitution, if it worked in the way contemplated by its authors--if everything, that is to say, went exactly as it was wished, and everybody acted exactly in the manner in which constitutionally they ought to act--would provide a complicated but, as I have already said, most ingenious solution of the problem before us. The British Parliament would sit at Westminster undisturbed by any Irish obstructives, and legislate for Great Britain and the whole British Empire in accordance with the wishes of the people of England and Scotland. Not only would Irish obstruction vanish, but what is even better, the necessity of considering Irish questions at all would disappear. English legislators would not be called upon to pay more attention to the affairs of Ireland than to the affairs of Canada or of New Zealand. The Irish Parliament would take the whole burden of legislation for Ireland off our hands, and Irishmen if they did not like Irish laws would have nobody to complain of but Irish legislators. But the Irish Parliament whilst it saved England from all trouble would, if the Constitution worked properly, give England no trouble whatever. If Bills were proposed or Acts passed at Dublin in violation of the Constitution they would be pronounced void by the Privy Council, and all Ireland would at once acquiesce in the final decisions of that exalted tribunal. If on the other hand the Irish House of Parliament were to pass enactments which though not unconstitutional were inexpedient, then foolish proposals would be nullified by the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant. The contribution from Ireland would be duly collected and be paid up to the day, since its collection would lie in the hands of British officials; and should any difficulty arise, the collectors would be aided by the Irish Court of Exchequer, the Judges of which would be appointed by the English Government, and the judgments of the Court of Exchequer could, if need were, be enforced by the British Army. This paper federation, in short, looks as promising as paper Constitutions generally do. It appears at first sight to combine the merits of American Federalism and of Colonial independence. To see, however, whether the Gladstonian Constitution gives any real promise of fulfilling the hopes which it seems to hold out, let us examine how far it really fulfils the conditions on which alone, as we have already pointed out, Home Rule can possibly be accepted by the people of Great Britain. [Sidenote: 1st Question.--Is sovereignty of Parliament preserved?] _1st Question._--Is the Gladstonian Constitution consistent with the sovereignty or ultimate legislative supremacy of the British Parliament?[67] It is well to make clear to ourselves the precise meaning of this enquiry. It is nothing else than this: Do or do not the provisions of the Gladstonian Constitution either legally or morally impair the right of the British Parliament when sitting at Westminster without having summoned a single representative from Ireland to legislate (e.g. pass a Coercion Act) for Ireland, and if need be to repeal of its own authority all or any of the provisions of the Gladstonian Constitution, including the very provision under which it is declared in substance that the Constitution shall not be alterable except by the Imperial Parliament, which consists, as already noted, of the British Parliament and the Irish Parliament? To put the same matter in another shape, the enquiry is whether, under the Gladstonian Constitution, the British Parliament does or does not retain the sovereignty now admittedly possessed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom.[68] Let us first consider the matter as a pure question of constitutional law. [Sidenote: As a question of constitutional law.] The inquiry then is whether a Judge in England or Ireland resolved to do his duty would or would not be bound to treat as invalid an Act passed by the British Parliament either inconsistent with or, to put the matter more strongly, actually repealing of such Parliament's own authority the provisions of the Gladstonian Constitution, or in other words of the Government of Ireland Bill, which would then, as we are assuming the Gladstonian Constitution to be in existence, have become the Irish Government Act. Such a Judge would have to consider a question to which English Courts are now quite unaccustomed as regards Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The reason why they are unused to solve the particular kind of question supposed to arise under the new Irish Constitution is, that as the Parliament of the United Kingdom is undoubtedly a sovereign body, the validity of its enactments is in any British Court beyond dispute. The reason why the problem might under the Gladstonian Constitution require an answer is, that the question might arise whether the British Parliament were or were not a sovereign body. Our Judge would find the question more difficult to answer than is readily admitted by English lawyers not versed in any constitution except their own. He would have to consider the language and effect of the Irish Government Act in the light of certain propositions which are now, and at the supposed passing of that Act must have been, true of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. These propositions may be thus stated, roughly indeed, but with sufficient accuracy for our purpose:-- The Parliament of the United Kingdom is admittedly the sovereign of the whole British Empire. The Parliament of the United Kingdom because it is a sovereign body can make laws for every part of the British Empire, and can legally make or unmake any law, and establish, alter, or abolish any institution (including in that term the Constitution of the Canadian Dominion or of Victoria) existing within the limits of any country subject to the British Crown. The Parliament of the United Kingdom just because it is a sovereign body cannot, whilst retaining its position as sovereign of the British Empire, be itself bound by any Act of Parliament whatever. To recur to an instance which is pre-eminently instructive, Parliament conferred in 1867 upon the Dominion of Canada as large a measure of independence as is compatible with a colony's maintaining its position as part of the British Empire. Yet the Parliament of the United Kingdom retains now, as ever, the indisputable legal power to change or abolish the Constitution of the Dominion. The Parliament of the United Kingdom, just because it is a sovereign body, though it cannot remain a sovereign and place a legal limit on its own powers, can, like any other sovereign, e.g. the Czar of Russia, abdicate its sovereignty in reference to the whole, or it may be to part of the Crown's dominions; and the Parliament of the United Kingdom can, just because it is a sovereign body, do what is at bottom the same thing as abdicate, namely, merge its own powers in those of another sovereign body, or, in other words, form, or aid in forming, a new sovereign for the British Empire. This proposition has during the Home Rule controversy been occasionally, in words at least, disputed or questioned by the supporters of Mr. Gladstone's policy, and language has been used which seems to imply that a sovereign power such as the Parliament of the United Kingdom can never by its own act divest itself of sovereignty. I can hardly think that the able controversialists who seem to maintain this doctrine really meant to contend for more than the admitted principle that a sovereign cannot while remaining a sovereign limit his sovereign powers. If, however, it be seriously suggested that the Parliament of the United Kingdom cannot divest itself of sovereignty, the suggestion is as a matter of argument untenable, and this for more than one reason. An autocrat, such as the Russian Czar, can undoubtedly abdicate; but sovereignty, whether it be the sovereignty of the Czar or of Parliament, is always one and the same quality. If the Czar can abdicate, so can Parliament. The Czar again could, instead of abdicating in the ordinary sense of the term, constitute a new sovereign body for the government of Russia, of which he might himself be a part. Thus he may undoubtedly give Russia a constitution like that of England, under which the Czar and two Houses of Parliament might together become the sovereign of the Russian State, and no constitutionalist would dream of maintaining that the new power thus constituted was the less supreme owing to the fact that one of its members, namely the Czar, had at one time been himself the real sovereign of Russia. Here again what is true of the Czar is true of Parliament. The Parliament of the United Kingdom certainly might become a part of another sovereign body, or might join in constituting a sovereign power supreme throughout the British Empire of which Parliament itself did not form a part. There is nothing in the theory of sovereignty to prevent the Parliament of the United Kingdom from forming a constitution for the whole British Empire under which the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Victorian Parliament, the Parliament of the Canadian Dominion and so forth should become simply State Parliaments, whilst the whole British Empire was ruled by some Imperial Congress sitting, say, either in London or in Victoria. Nor need we in this matter have recourse to theory. The present Parliament of the United Kingdom is itself a monument of the historical fact that sovereign Parliaments can divest themselves of sovereignty. For the Parliament of the United Kingdom is itself the result of the abdication of supreme power by sovereign Parliaments. The Union with Scotland was not, as Englishmen often, I suspect, fancy, the absorption of the Parliament of Scotland in the Parliament of England. The transaction bears, when carefully looked at, a quite different character. Up to the year 1707 there existed an English Parliament sovereign in England, and there existed a Scotch Parliament sovereign in Scotland. These two sovereign bodies in negotiating the Treaty of Union acted with scrupulous, and on the Scotch side with punctilious, independence. Neither sovereign body would consent to be absorbed in the other. What they did agree to was to constitute a new State, namely, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and each to surrender their separate sovereignty in favour of a new sovereign, namely, the sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom. The English Parliament no more became supreme in Scotland than the Scotch Parliament became supreme in England. The old Parliament of each country abdicated and lost its identity in the New Parliament of Great Britain. In theory the Treaty of Union between Great Britain and Ireland bore exactly the same character as the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland. But on this point I do not care strongly to insist, because at the present moment every part of Irish history excites controversy. When, however, the excitement of the day has passed by, no one will dispute that 22 Geo. III. c. 53 and 23 Geo. III. c. 28 constituted the renunciation by the British Parliament of sovereignty over Ireland. The difference between the limitation of sovereignty and the surrender of sovereignty has been pressed far enough for my present purpose; no principle of jurisprudence is more certain than that sovereignty implies the power of abdication, and no fact of history is more certain than that a sovereign Parliament has more than once abdicated or shared its powers. To argue or imply that because sovereignty is not limitable (which is true), it cannot be surrendered (which is palpably untrue) is to confuse together two distinct ideas, and is like arguing that because no man can while he lives give up, do what he will, his freedom of volition, therefore no man can commit suicide. The Parliament of the United Kingdom, further, whilst because it is a sovereign body it cannot impose any legal limit to the exercise of its own power, may so express an intention to use or not to use its power in a particular way as to excite expectations which it will be extremely difficult or hazardous to disappoint, and so may find itself morally fettered as to its subsequent legislative action. A notorious instance, taken from our constitutional history, illustrates this proposition. The statute 18 Geo. III. c. 12 declares in substance that Parliament will not impose any tax on any colony in North America or in the West Indies. The history of the statute is told by its date--1778. Now no constitutional lawyer will contend that the Parliament of the United Kingdom is legally bound by this Act. If Parliament were to impose an income tax on Jamaica to-morrow the impost would be legal, and could, no doubt, be enforced. But the Declaratory Act of 1778 makes it morally impossible for Parliament to tax any colony. That the impossibility does not arise from a law is clear, because it applies with as much strength to colonies which do not fall as to colonies which do fall within the terms of 18 Geo. III. c. 12. Victoria is not a colony in North America or in the West Indies, but Victoria is at least as well protected from Imperial taxation as is Barbadoes. The so-called Act establishes not a rule of law, but a precept of constitutional morality. It does not theoretically limit, but it practically impedes and interferes with the legislative sovereignty of Parliament. Our Judge with these propositions fully before his mind would scan the terms of the Gladstonian Constitution, or in other words of the Irish Government Act. He would certainly come to the conclusion that the point for his decision was one of great nicety. Against the validity of any Act passed by the British Parliament in contravention of the provisions of the Constitution could be adduced the precise and formal enactment, passed, be it noted, by the undoubtedly sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom, that the Constitution should be alterable in one way, and in one way only;[69] and if it were said that the body which passed this enactment could also repeal it, then the Judge might consider that that body, namely the Parliament of the United Kingdom, had in effect ceased to exist, and that the successor to its sovereign powers, if any, was not the British Parliament, but the Imperial Parliament, the body which, under any view, had legal authority to alter the Constitution. No doubt there would be a great deal to be urged on the other side. The attention of the Judge would be called to the singular and ambiguous use throughout the Constitution of the term Imperial Parliament, which it might be argued was meant to show that what I have called the British Parliament was to be identified with the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Reference would also be made to the ambiguous saving of powers contained in the 37th section of the Irish Government Act. The high and all-important enquiry as to the authority of the British Parliament sitting at Westminster would come to turn upon the studied ambiguities of one ill-drawn section of an Act of Parliament. There the legal question of the sovereignty of the British Parliament under the Gladstonian Constitution may well be left. It is not within the scope of this work to deal with the draughtsmanship of the Government of Ireland Bill. It is easy to anticipate what would be the practical result of that Bill's ambiguities if it passed into an Act. Irish Judges would honestly take one view, English Judges would as honestly take another. The Courts of Ireland would maintain that the Constitution could be altered only in the method provided by the Constitution, namely, by the Imperial Parliament. The English Courts would maintain that the Constitution could also be altered by the British Parliament, which was itself the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and possessed the sovereignty inherent in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. No Court in either country could satisfactorily terminate the dispute. Force would no doubt settle what law had left undecided, but to interpret a Constitution by power of arms is in reality to substitute revolutionary violence for constitutional discussion.[70] Let us next consider the matter before us, not as a question of constitutional law, but as a question of public morality. [Sidenote: As question of public morality.] The enquiry then is whether under the Gladstonian Constitution the legislative supremacy of the British Parliament is or is not morally and in fact impaired? It is extremely difficult to see how any candid person can answer this question except by the admission that for all practical purposes, and except on possible but very extreme occasions, the right of the British Parliament to legislate for Ireland is morally not only impaired but destroyed. The supporters of the Government of Ireland Bill have admitted again and again that it constitutes what they term a Parliamentary compact; it embodies, in other words, a solemn contract between Great Britain and the people of Ireland that the British Parliament, whatever be its legal power, shall not legislate about Irish affairs without summoning Irish representatives to share in its deliberations. This covenant is made for great and valuable consideration, namely, the withdrawal of the Irish representatives from the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and the consequent acquisition by the British Parliament of power to legislate not only on every British but on every Imperial concern without consulting the wishes of the Irish people. This is in a moral point of view little less than a treaty; it is an engagement which England could not break, or incur the imputation of breaking, without dishonour. With all this every man of sense and of honour agrees; but if this be so, it is impossible to see how any one can maintain that this Parliamentary compact does not morally impair, as far as Ireland is concerned, the sovereignty or legislative supremacy of the British Parliament. It may be doubted whether the most earnest Gladstonian really and seriously maintains that under the Gladstonian Constitution the British Parliament sitting at Westminster could or ever would legislate for Ireland in contravention at any rate of the patent and apparent meaning of the Constitution. All that is really maintained is that the British Parliament would retain a legal power of doing that which would never be done by it. There is, however, it is suggested, convenience in retaining a nominal sovereignty which is not intended for real use. Convenience there may be, but there is also immense danger. The Irish Parliament we will suppose acts in a way which is most annoying to England, but the Irish Parliament at the same time takes care not to violate a line of the Constitution. The temptation to use our sovereign authority is great, and likely enough may prove irresistible; yet if we use it every Irishman, and many Englishmen for that matter, will accuse England of bad faith. No doubt a breach of the Constitution by the Irish Parliament might be remedied by the use of the sovereignty reserved to the British Parliament. But it is difficult even then to see the great advantage of this reservation. In any case in which England would be morally justified in setting aside the terms of the high Parliamentary contract, she would be equally justified in suspending the Constitution by the use of force. The employment of power becomes the more not the less odious because it is allied, or seems to be allied, with fraud. The miserable tale of the transactions which carried the Treaty of Union teaches at least one indisputable lesson--the due observance of legal formalities will not induce a people to pardon what they deem to be acts of tyranny, made all the more hateful by their combination with deceit. For the British Parliament to renounce the exercise whilst retaining the name of sovereignty is the very course by which to run a great risk of damaging the character without any certainty of increasing the power of Parliament. The plain answer then to the enquiry on which we have been engaged is this:-- Under the Gladstonian Constitution, as foreshadowed in the Government of Ireland Bill, the sovereignty of the British Parliament is legally rendered doubtful, and is morally reduced to nothing. [Sidenote: Does Constitution secure justice?] _2nd Question._--Does the Gladstonian Constitution secure justice? The justice which the Constitution ought to secure is twofold--justice to Great Britain, and justice to all classes, including minorities, of Irishmen. The just claims of Great Britain may roughly be summed up under the one claim, that Ireland should contribute her fair share to Imperial expenditure. The Gladstonian Constitution, nominally at least, makes fair provision that this claim should be satisfied. But any one who looks into the matter with care will find reason to think that as regards the exaction of payments from Ireland, which are already known by the hateful name of "tribute," Great Britain will find herself involved in this dilemma. Either she must surrender the tribute, or else surrender all hope of attaining the main object for the sake of which it is proposed to grant Home Rule to Ireland. If the tribute is exacted, we may be sure that it will have to be exacted in the long run by British officials supported by a British army. Laws, we are told, which are otherwise just are hated in Ireland because they bear a foreign aspect, and come before the Irish people in a foreign garb. If this assertion be not true, then the whole case for Home Rule falls to the ground. If this assertion possess even partial truth, then it applies with far greater force to tribute than to law. It is almost an absurdity to suppose that people who hate good laws because they may be termed English will not detest a heavy tax which not only may be called, but in reality is, a tribute to England. It is well to remember that a "publican" was a tax-gatherer, and that Roman publicans were far more hated than Roman Judges or Roman law. If England gives Ireland semi-independence, and at the same time makes Ireland pay tribute, all the conciliatory effects of Home Rule will be lost. If Home Rule is to have even a bare chance of producing in Ireland the contentment of Victoria, Ireland, the poorest of all civilized countries, must be freed from Imperial taxation, which would not be tolerated by the richest of our colonies. To this conclusion the advocates and the opponents of Home Rule may, I think, both come without grave dissatisfaction. Of all the sacrifices by which Ireland might be benefited, that sacrifice which England should make with the least regret is sacrifice of revenue. If, however, it be assumed, as the supporters of the Government of Ireland Bill must assume, that justice requires the contribution by Ireland of three or four millions annually to Imperial expenditure, then the Gladstonian Constitution, if it provides for the satisfaction of the claims of Great Britain, does so at the cost of keeping alive Irish discontent. Nor is it at all certain that the payment of the tribute could in effect be easily secured. The practical working of the Constitution might well be that Great Britain were impoverished and Ireland were angered. Justice to individuals and to unpopular minorities is a matter of far greater importance and far more difficult to secure than the regular payment of Ireland's contribution to Imperial expenditure. The Gladstonian Constitution ought to provide securities against executive and legislative oppression. To provide however against the possible oppression of classes or individuals by an Irish Ministry and Irish officials is all but an impossibility, though, as every one knows, the grossest oppression may in any country arise from the wrongful action or inaction of the executive power. The assumption, indeed, is constantly made, though its truth is very hard to prove, that if Ireland were self-governed the law of the land would be enforced. In one sense this assumption may perhaps be well founded. A strong government, or, to put matters plainly, a popular despotism when installed in office at Dublin would, it may be suspected, stringently compel obedience to such laws as the Government approved. The Jacobin Club was no friend to anarchy when anarchy meant defiance of the mandates issued by the Club. But the energy of a strong Government in carrying out laws which it approves is a different matter from the zealous maintenance of even-handed justice. An Irish executive will immediately on coming into existence be called upon to deal with cases which will severely test its sense of justice. Landlords cannot at once be banished like vermin from Ireland; landlords, as long as they exist, must, I presume, have some rights. Is there any security under the Gladstonian Constitution, that the rights--rights, be it remembered, of British subjects, which ought to be neither more nor less sacred than the rights of a British subject in London or Calcutta--will be protected by an executive of Land Leaguers? There is, I answer, none whatever. To distrust the justice of an Irish Government is not, be it remarked, to show any special distrust of Irish nature. The Irish leaders are of necessity revolutionists, and, it must be added, revolutionists of no high character. Revolutionists on accession to power do not lay aside the revolutionary temperament, and this temperament may have every other virtue, but it knows nothing of the virtue of justice. The Gladstonian Constitution withdraws Ireland from the control of the Government of the United Kingdom, which with all its faults must of necessity possess more impartiality than can a Ministry formed out of the leaders of any Irish faction. The Gladstonian Constitution therefore does leave unpopular classes or individuals exposed to considerable risks of injustice at the hands of the Irish Government. [Sidenote: Methods for securing just government.] Though it is from the nature of things almost impossible to take effective steps for ensuring that an Irish executive shall make a right use of its powers, it is an essential feature of the Gladstonian Constitution that the Irish Parliament shall so far at least use its authority justly as to keep within the limits placed upon its competence. Whether these limitations have been wisely drawn, and whether they may not be in some respects too wide and in others too narrow, are inquiries which, though important in themselves, need hardly detain us. The question in comparison with which all matters of detail sink into insignificance is not what are the limitations which the Constitution imposes on the competence of the Irish Parliament, but what is the efficacity of the means provided by the Constitution for compelling the Irish Parliament to respect these limitations? This is the one vital inquiry, for upon the answer to it depends the reality of the constitutional provisions for the maintenance of just legislation. These methods are, as already pointed out, twofold. [Sidenote: 1. Veto of Lord-Lieutenant.] The first is the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant. Let us assume, though the truth of the assumption is not quite clear, that this veto is combined, as in the case of the colonies, with a further power of disallowance on the part of the Crown, or in effect of the British Ministry. The result is that the British Ministry, or, to put the thing plainly, the British House of Commons, can put a check on such Irish legislation as may be opposed to the letter or to the spirit of the Constitution. The check is in one sense real, but it must, as in the case of the colonies, be but rarely employed. Its constant use, or its use on occasions of great importance, would seem to Irishmen, and with good reason, to nullify the concession of Home Rule. Suppose, for example, the Irish Ministry carry a measure for artificially stimulating Irish commerce, and the Crown disallows it on the ground that it is contrary to the provision of the Constitution forbidding the Irish Parliament to make any law relating to trade. The Irish Cabinet thereupon resigns. What course is the Lord-Lieutenant to take? If he uses the veto he reintroduces in the most awkward form the interference of the British Parliament with Irish legislation. If he does not use the veto, or, what is in its effect the same thing, if the Act is not disallowed, then the right of veto comes to little or nothing. We may be quite sure that in general neither the Lord-Lieutenant nor the Crown will refuse assent to Bills approved of by the Irish Parliament. The veto in its different forms will, in short, be but a very slight check on unconstitutional or unjust legislation. [Sidenote: 2. Action of Privy Council.] The second method by which it is endeavoured to check unconstitutional legislation is the use of the authority vested in the English Privy Council. Privy This method is borrowed from Federalism, as the Lord-Lieutenant's veto is borrowed from the Colonial system. The Privy Council, it should be remembered, may nullify the effect of Irish legislation in two ways:--It may as an administrative body give a decision that a Bill or Act is void. It must, however, be hoped and expected that the Privy Council will rarely adopt this mode of exercising its powers, for such exercise would at once give rise to a direct conflict between the Irish Parliament and the English Privy Council. That body may, however, act simply as a Court of final appeal, and as a tribunal decide whether an enactment Of the Irish Parliament is or is not void. This, we may suppose, is the mode in which the Privy Council will usually put forth its authority. It is easy, bearing the experience of America and Canada in mind, to see how the whole arrangement will, in theory at least, work. _A._ sues _X._ in an Irish Court, _X._ bases his defence on some Act passed by the Irish Parliament. The Privy Council pronounce the Act void, as being opposed to some provision of the Constitution, and give a judgment in favour of _A._, under which he has a right to recover £10,000 against _X._ Here it will be said the whole matter is settled. The law was unconstitutional; the law has been treated as void; _A._ has obtained judgment; _A.'s_ rights are secured. This would be all that was required, but for one consideration. The object of the plaintiff in an action is to obtain not judgment, but payment or execution. What are the means by which judgments of the Privy Council may be put in force where they happen not to be supported by Irish opinion, and are opposed, it may be, to the decisions of the Irish Courts? The answer is simple: the Constitution provides no means whatever. The Federal tribunals of America possess in every State officials of their own, and are supported in the main by American opinion. The Americans are, moreover, to use their own expression, "a law-abiding people." Yet for all this the judgment of the Supreme Court may be worth little if it runs across State sentiment, and if the President should happen to sympathise with State rights. A citizen of colour was unlawfully imprisoned in Georgia; he applied for a habeas corpus. The application ultimately came before Chief Justice Marshall, and the writ was granted. The traditional comment of President Jackson is noteworthy: "John Marshall has given his judgment, let him enforce it if he can." The Executive would not assist the Court, and the Supreme Court was powerless. Switzerland, again, has a Federal tribunal: it is a Court, as would be the Privy Council, which cannot command officials of its own to execute its process; it depends for aid on the Cantonal authorities. This state of things, I am told on good authority, produces its natural result. The judgments of the Federal tribunal can be rendered almost ineffective by the opposition of a Canton. At this moment the statutes of the Imperial Parliament bind every man throughout the United Kingdom. The Courts in Ireland are bound to give effect to every statute, and the Irish Courts are supported by the Sheriff and his officers, and in the last resort by the power of the United Kingdom. Yet the very difficulty of the day is enforcing judgments which run against Irish popular opinion. Is it common sense to imagine that opposition which defies, often with success, the authority of the Irish Queen's Bench Division, or ultimately of the House of Lords, would not easily nullify the judgments of the Privy Council when not only unpopular in Ireland, but in contradiction to a law devised by the Irish Executive, passed by the Irish Parliament, supported by the Irish Judges? The truth must be spoken: the Gladstonian Constitution will, as regards the restrictions placed under it on the powers of the Irish Parliament, inevitably turn out a mere paper Constitution. The methods for compelling the observance of these limitations have neither of them any real efficacity. The veto can with difficulty and but rarely be used; the judgments or opinions of the Privy Council may have a speculative interest, but will possess no coercive power. If this be so the guarantees afforded by the Constitution for just legislation are nugatory; they are worth neither more nor less than the pompous securities for every kind of inalienable right which have adorned the most splendid and the most transitory among the Constitutions which have during a century been in turn created and destroyed in France--that is, they are worth nothing; nor is it unfair to conjecture that on this point my opinion agrees with the opinion of many English Home Rulers. They think the limitations on the independence of the Irish Parliament useless and destined to disappear; for their avowed belief is that legislation by an Irish Parliament will in the main be just, and that the laws of the Irish Parliament, because they represent the wishes of the Irish people, will obtain easy obedience in Ireland. If this conviction be sound--and it is the almost necessary basis for a policy of Home Rule--let us act upon it, and not impose restrictions which, if needless, must certainly be noxious. Meanwhile in any case let us dismiss the delusion that restrictions which cannot be enforced are any guarantee for justice. The Gladstonian Constitution admits on the face of it that guarantees are wanted. Most Englishmen agree in the opinion implied in this admission. But if I am right in asserting that the guarantees for justice are illusory, then the Gladstonian Constitution does not secure justice, and is therefore not just. [Sidenote: Does Constitution possess finality?] _3rd Question_.--Does the Gladstonian Constitution hold out fair hopes of finality? This is an enquiry which may be answered with some confidence. To any one who surveys the Constitution, not as a politician, but as a legist; to any one moderately versed in the study of comparative constitutionalism, few statements which savour of prediction will appear more certain than the assertion that the Gladstonian Constitution cannot be a final or even a lasting settlement of the constitutional relations between England and Ireland. The grounds of this opinion are, briefly, that the proposed Constitution will, while leaving alive elements of discord, cause disappointment and inconvenience to both countries, and that the mechanism of the Constitution, framed as it is upon a combination of Federalism and of Colonialism, has some of the defects of each system, and promises in its working to produce something like the maximum of irritation and friction. The two grounds for believing that the Gladstonian Constitution bears no promise of finality run into one another, but they admit of separate examination, and each requires explanation or justification. [Sidenote: Constitution will cause disappointment to England.] The Constitution will cause disappointment and inconvenience both to England and to Ireland, Englishmen will on the Gladstonian Constitution coming into operation find to their great disappointment that they have not attained the object which from an English point of view was the principal inducement to grant Home Rule to the Irish people, that is, freedom from the difficulty of governing Ireland. The difficulty no doubt will be diminished, or rather shifted; but the dream is vain that under the new Constitution Englishmen would be able to trouble themselves no more about the concerns of Ireland than they do about the affairs of Canada. Ireland would still be our immediate neighbour. Irishmen would still be divided by differences of class and religion, and England would still, disguise the fact as you may, be ultimately responsible for good government in Ireland. Home Rule is not Separation, and nothing short of Irish independence would greatly lessen English responsibility. This would be true under whatever form Home Rule were established, but it is emphatically true of Home Rule under the particular form contemplated by the Gladstonian Constitution. The army in Ireland--and no one supposes that England can withdraw her soldiers from the country--will be the British Army under the control of the British Government. But the power of the sword is, though we often forget the fact, the sanction by which law is maintained. Hence it follows that the British Ministry remains at bottom responsible for the maintenance of peace and order throughout Ireland. Note the results. If there are riots at Belfast; if unpopular officials are assassinated in Dublin; if evictions give rise to murder in Kerry, the British Army must in the last resort be called in to restore peace or punish crime. If the army are not under the control of the Irish Executive, then the English Cabinet become directly responsible for the government of Ireland. If British soldiers are placed at the disposal of the Irish Ministry, still the English Government must, shift the thing as you will, share the responsibility of the Irish Cabinet. During a riot at Belfast a hundred Protestants or Catholics are shot by British soldiers whilst restoring order. If any one fancies that such slaughter can take place without the English Ministry being called upon in the British Parliament for explanation and defence, he shows utter ignorance of English, or indeed of human nature. Nor is it for the action only of the troops that the English Executive will incur liability. If British subjects are killed by a mob in Belfast or in Dublin whilst British troops stand quietly by and under the direction of an Irish Home Secretary take no steps to prevent murder, we may rest assured that the Queen's Government in England will be asked whether it is decent that the Queen's forces should be trained to stand as indifferent spectators of outrageous breaches of the Queen's peace. Take again the question of pardoning crime. Suppose that the first Irish Ministry on their accession to power propose to inaugurate the new era by a free pardon of all the political offenders, dynamiters and others, whose misguided zeal placed them within the gripe of the law, but also in no small measure contributed to achieve the Parliamentary independence of Ireland. If the request is not granted, then the Irish Administration are refused the means of carrying on the government of the country after their own notions of sound polity. If the request is granted, can the English Government be held entirely irresponsible for the mode in which the Crown exercises its prerogative? Let it be settled that the prerogative of mercy must in Ireland be exercised in accordance with the wishes of the Irish Ministry. Even then the English Government will not really escape responsibility. British soldiers put down a riot at Belfast; they are indicted for the murder of a Catholic rioter, before a Catholic grand jury, convicted by a Catholic jury under the direction of a Catholic judge who has just been appointed by the new Irish Ministry. Popular opinion demands the execution of the convicted murderers, the Irish Ministry advise that the law should take its course. The general belief in England, shared we will suppose by the English Home Office, is that the convicted soldiers are about to be capitally punished for having simply discharged their duty. Is an English Minister to abstain from advising a pardon? The dilemma is difficult. If he recommends a pardon, the Irish Government are prevented by England from governing Ireland. If the soldiers are hanged, the English Ministry will not keep long in office, the British Army will hardly maintain its habit of absolute obedience to the civil power. Englishmen, in the next place, will soon discover that the creation of a statutory constitution for Ireland curiously hampers the working of our own institutions. Questions must arise whether Acts of the British Parliament do or do not trench upon the provisions of the Irish Constitution. Few persons are aware of the number of Imperial Acts which touch the Colonies. To such statutes there is no legal or moral objection, because the principle embodied in the Colonial Laws Act, 1865, that enactments passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom override any Colonial law with which they conflict, is universally admitted; but, as already pointed out, it is questionable as a matter of law whether the statutes of the British Parliament can repeal Acts duly passed by the Irish Parliament, and it is quite beyond question that for the British Parliament to infringe upon the province of the Irish legislature would involve a breach of good faith. Changes again in the formation of the British Parliament might under the Gladstonian Constitution become difficult. The abolition of the House of Lords would be hard to reconcile with the right of the Irish Peers to be summoned on occasion to the Imperial Parliament. An increase in the number of British representatives in the House of Commons would be objected to by Irishmen because it diminished the relative importance of the members from Ireland when recalled to take part in the deliberations of the Imperial Parliament. The reduction of the number of members of the House of Commons, though one of the most salutary reforms which could be carried out, would be opposed by every person interested in maintaining the present excessive number of the Lower House, on the ground that to reduce the numbers of the House of Commons, to say 400, would involve an increase in the authority of the Irish members whenever they reappeared on the scene. The moot question whether the British Parliament could on an emergency repeal of its own authority the articles of the Irish Constitution; the extent to which Ireland should be represented on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; above all, the vital question whether the reassembled Imperial Parliament were not the true representative of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and the ultimate sovereign power in the State, would in periods of excitement give rise to disputes hitherto quite alien to English politics, and involving elements of unknown danger. Ambiguity and obscurity, since they help to pass Bills, are in the judgment of Parliamentary draughtsmen and Parliamentary statesmen characteristics which promote the easy working of Acts. Knives which are made to sell are not knives which are made to cut. No delusion is more dangerous. The founders of the American Union knew their own minds, and were not well acquainted with the advantages to be derived from the obscurities of modern draughtsmanship. But on two points they tried the experiment of keeping real perils out of sight by omitting to refer to them. "Slave" and "slavery" are words not to be found in the Constitution of the United States. What (if any) was the right of a State to retire from the Union, was a matter purposely left open for the interpretation of future generations. The Abolition movement, the Fugitive Slave Law, the War of Secession tell the result of trying to ignore perils or problems which it is not easy to face or to solve. [Sidenote: And to Ireland.] The last disappointment of Englishmen would be to find that Home Rule had not satisfied Ireland. For to Irishmen no less than to Englishmen the Constitution must bring disappointment and inconvenience. That the Gladstonian Constitution cannot satisfy Ireland is all but certain. To say this is not to imply that its acceptance by Irish Home Rulers is dishonest. In their eyes it is a move in the right direction; they exaggerate, as their English allies underrate, the freedom of action which the Constitution offers to Ireland. It cannot, as already pointed out, by any possibility remove the admitted causes of Irish discontent. It cannot tempt capital towards Ireland, but it may easily drive capital away from her shores; it cannot diminish poverty; it cannot in its direct effect assuage religious bigotry; it cannot of itself remove agrarian discontent. The Land Purchase Bill, even when discarded, remains an involuntary exposure of the futility of the Gladstonian Constitution, and of the unsoundness of the principle on which the demand for Home Rule rests. No friend of Italy ever suggested that Italian independence should be accompanied by a loan from Austria to the Italian Kingdom. For the principle of nationality was the true source of Italian disaffection. If in dealing with Ireland we must calm agrarian misery before satisfying national aspirations, this necessity is all but a confession that Irish unrest is due far more to desire for a change in the land laws than to passionate longing for national independence. I do not doubt that the spirit of nationality has some, though probably a small, part in the production of Irish discontent. But the Gladstonian Constitution is unfortunately so devised as to outrage quite as much as it soothes national sentiment. The tribute will affect every Irishman in his pride no less than in his purse. Can any one suppose that Northerners indignant at recent treachery, and Catholics mindful of ancient oppression, will not join, and justly join, in denouncing as at once ignominious and ruinous the payment of a tribute raised for Imperial purposes at the moment when Ireland ceases to have any voice in the direction of Imperial policy? Irishmen again will find to their surprise that the Constitution intended to give them independence imposes annoying fetters on their freedom of action. They wish for a protective tariff, and they come across the prohibition to make laws affecting trade; they desire that the country shall defend herself, and they discover that they cannot raise even a body of volunteers; they wish to try the plan of concurrent endowment, and they are thwarted by the article of the Constitution prohibiting the endowment of religion. These restrictions are the more annoying because none of them are imposed upon the Colonies. Irishmen will further discover that great achievements of constructive legislation require for their success the command of large pecuniary resources, and that exemption from British control involves the withdrawal of all assistance from the British Treasury. [Sidenote: Constitution will cause friction.] The Constitution will produce irritation and friction. Every scheme for uniting into a political whole States which are intended to retain, even when connected together, a certain amount of independence, aims at minimising the opportunities for constitutional collision, or for friction between the different States which are connected together, and also between any State and the Central power. If we compare the mode in which this end is attained, either under the Federal system or under the Colonial system, with the arrangements of the Gladstonian Constitution, we shall easily see how little its authors have attended to the necessity for avoiding occasions of constitutional friction. Where Federalism, as in America, appears in its best form, the skill with which opportunities for collision or friction have been minimised is almost above praise. The Federal or Central power is so constructed as to represent the whole nation; its authority cannot by any misrepresentation be identified with the power of one State more than another. The Federal Government acts through its own officers, is represented by its own Judiciary, and levies its own taxes without recourse to State authorities. Every device which could be thought of has been taken to make it unnecessary for the National Government to come into direct collision with any State. It deals in general with the individual citizens of the United States; it does not deal with the particular States. The result is that on the one hand, whatever may be said against the taxes imposed by Congress, they cannot by any stretch of imagination be looked upon as tribute paid by one State to another, say by Massachusetts to New York, or by New York to Massachusetts. It is again unnecessary for the Federal Government to issue commands to a State. There is, therefore, little opportunity for a contest between a State and the National Executive. Whoever wishes to understand the elaborate devices necessary to make Federalism work smoothly should compare the clumsiness of the arrangements by which the Swiss Confederacy has at times been compelled to enforce obedience of the Cantons to the will of the Confederation, with the ingenuity of the methods by which the Federal authorities of the United States exert their authority over American citizens. The English Colonial system on the other hand, though far less elaborate than any form of Federalism, does, as a matter of fact, reduce within very narrow limits the chances of collision between England and her colonies. The system, however, succeeds, not because it is a model of constructive art, but because it attempts very little, and can, owing to favourable circumstances, leave to nominal dependencies something little short of complete self-government. Where collisions do arise they are disposed of by the habit of the Imperial Government always to give way. The Gladstonian Constitution is, as we have already pointed out, a combination between Federalism and Colonialism; it may possess some of the merits, but it much more certainly displays some of the demerits of each system. From Federalism is borrowed the idea of leaving the settlement of constitutional questions to a Court. But the conception is spoilt in the borrowing. All the difficulties which under a Federal system beset the enforcement of judgments pronounced by a Federal Court affect in an aggravated form the attempt to enforce in Ireland judgments affecting the validity of Irish Acts, which judgments are pronounced by a Committee of the English Privy Council sitting in England. The Privy Council, moreover, while it has every weakness of the Supreme Court of America, has more than one special weakness of its own. It lacks moral authority, for it is an English Court sitting in England and representing English opinion; it lacks jurisdiction, because while it can pronounce on the validity of Irish, it cannot pronounce on the validity of British Acts of Parliament; it does not possess a strictly judicial character, because it is not only a Court called upon to give judgments, but is also an administrative body called upon to deliver opinions upon the validity of Irish Bills and of Irish Acts. Hence its decrees come into direct collision with the proposals or enactments of the Irish Parliament, and the Privy Council is made to appear not as a body of Judges deciding cases between man and man, but as a body of officials whose duty it is to oppose any unconstitutional action on the part of the Irish Parliament. From Federalism again is borrowed the contribution by Ireland towards meeting the expenses of the Empire. But imposts which under a Federal system are a tax towards the payment of common expenditure are under the Gladstonian Constitution a tribute to a foreign power. From the Federal system again is taken that restriction of legislative authority which hardly affects Parliaments such as that of Victoria, and which under any circumstances is a source of irritation. From the Colonial system, on the other hand, is derived the theoretical supremacy of the British Parliament, the right of veto, and the fatal dependence of the Irish executive on every vote of the Irish legislature. From the colonies we therefore bring to Ireland sources of dispute, of friction, and of irritation, which are unknown to a true system of Federalism, whilst we do not give Ireland that practical independence, and that immunity from taxation, which prevent our ill-arranged connection with the colonies from causing real dissatisfaction. Federalism has its merits and its defects; English Colonialism works well enough; the sham Federalism and the sham Colonialism of the Gladstonian Constitution must create between Great Britain and Ireland all the causes of discontent which have from time to time tried the strength of the American Union, and all the causes of disturbance which from time to time reveal the weakness of the tie which binds together our Colonial Empire. Among the hypothetical virtues of the Gladstonian Constitution cannot assuredly be numbered the merit of finality. The Gladstonian Constitution therefore fails entirely to fulfil for any practical purpose the conditions it is meant to satisfy. It neither maintains the sovereignty of Parliament, nor makes adequate securities for justice, nor offers a prospect of finality. A criticism of Home Rule in its four forms gives then this result:-- [Sidenote: Result of criticism. 1. Home Rule as Federalism.] Home Rule as Federalism means the immediate dislocation and the ultimate rebuilding of the whole English Constitution; it involves the transformation of an old and tried polity which centuries of experience have admirably adapted to the wants of the English people, and which has fostered the growth of the British Empire, into a form of government in itself not free from defects, and successful where it has succeeded only under conditions which the United Kingdom does not present. [Sidenote: 2. Home Rule as Colonial independence.] Home Rule in the form of Colonial independence involves far less change in the institutions of Great Britain or in the complex arrangements of the British Empire than does Federalism. It appears at first sight to be an application to Ireland of institutions which, as they have been found to answer their purpose in such countries as Canada and Victoria, may also prove successful in Ireland. The appearance is delusive. The true reasons why the Colonial system, self-contradictory as it is in theory and unsatisfactory as it sometimes is in practice, has produced harmony between England and her dependencies, are that the colonies are far distant and are prosperous, that they feel pride in their relation to the mother-country, that whilst contributing not a penny towards meeting Imperial burdens they derive valuable and valued benefits from the connection with the Empire, and lastly that they are not in reality dependencies; the colonies willingly acquiesce in the supremacy of England, because England protects them gratis and does not govern them at all. It is not the Colonial system, but the conditions which make that system succeed, which ought to engross our attention. These conditions will not be found in any arrangement whatever between England and Ireland. It is in the strictest sense impossible that Ireland whilst forming part of the United Kingdom, or even of the British Empire, should enjoy or endure the independence of Victoria. If the Act which gives Victoria her constitution were reenacted with the necessary verbal changes for Ireland, the constitution which satisfies the Victorians would not satisfy the Irish, and for a good reason: the form would be the same, but the effect would be different. A suffering and discontented people will not accept words for facts. One condition indeed, which more perhaps than any other ensures the success of our Colonial system, Great Britain has in the case of Ireland the power to reproduce. Immunity from Imperial taxation is one source of Colonial loyalty to the Empire. If Ireland is to accept or to receive the mixed independence and subordination of a colony, she ought to enjoy the substantial advantage of a theoretically inferior position. The Colonial system, as I have already insisted, involves the renunciation of Imperial taxation. [Sidenote: 3. Home Rule as Constitution of 1782.] Home Rule as the revival of Grattan's Constitution is an impossibility. The Constitution of 1782 belongs to a past age, and cannot by any miracle of political art be at the present day restored to life. [Sidenote: 4. Home Rule as Gladstonian Constitution.] Home Rule under the Gladstonian Constitution means an artificial combination of Federalism and Colonialism. Its aim is to secure the advantages of two opposite systems; its result is to combine and intensify the disadvantages of both systems. It inevitably tends towards the dissolution of the United Kingdom into a Federation; it immediately disturbs the bases of the Constitution by creating the artificial bond of something like a Federal legislature between England and Ireland; it introduces into the relations between each of the different divisions of the United Kingdom elements of conflict which are all but inherent in Federalism; it requires that absolute deference for the judicial decisions of a Federal Court which if it exist anywhere can exist only among a people like the Americans, imbued with legal notions, and as it were born with innate respect for law. That this sentiment cannot exist in Ireland is certain; whether it exist in the required intensity even in England is problematical. The Gladstonian Constitution, again, because it contains some institutions borrowed from the Colonial system without the conditions requisite for their proper working so to speak falsifies them. The Imperial supremacy of Great Britain, the Imperial control over the army, the occasional interference with the Irish executive and the veto of the Crown on Irish legislation, are each and all of them under the Gladstonian Constitution certain to be the source of justifiable dissatisfaction. To the ingenuity of the plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone's Ministry hostile critics have given insufficient praise. But the essential unreality which this ingenuity has concealed has not even yet met with due condemnation. Since the day when the National Assembly of France presented the brand-new French Constitution to the acceptance of Louis XVI. no form of government has ever been seriously proposed for adoption by an intelligent people so radically unworkable as that Gladstonian Constitution which has been instinctively rejected by the good sense of the British Parliament. The Constitution of France lasted out two years; to a jurist it may appear conceivable, though hardly probable, that by the vigorous aid of the British Parliament the new Constitution for the United Kingdom might have lasted for as long a period. FOOTNOTES: [29] Compare Mr. Gladstone's speech of 8th April, 1886, '_The Times_ Parliamentary Debates,' pp. 130, 131; and Mr. Gladstone's speech of 13th April, _ibid._, pp. 255, 256. [30] Compare _ibid._, pp. 130, 132. [31] Compare the following expressions in Mr. Gladstone's speeches:--"The essential conditions of any plan that Parliament can be asked or could be expected to entertain are, in my opinion, these:--The unity of the Empire must not be placed in jeopardy; the safety and welfare of the whole--if there is an unfortunate conflict, which I do not believe--the welfare and security of the whole must be preferred to the security and advantage of the part. The political equality of the three countries must be maintained. They stand by statute on a footing of absolute equality, and that footing ought not to be altered or brought into question. There should be what I will at present term an equitable distribution of Imperial burdens. Next I introduce a provision which may seem to be exceptional, but which in the peculiar circumstances of Ireland, whose history unhappily has been one long chain of internal controversies as well as of difficulties external, is necessary in order that there may be reasonable safeguards for the minority. I am asked why there should be safeguards for the minority. * * * * * "I have spoken now of the essential conditions of a good plan for Ireland, and I add only this--that in order to be a good plan it must be a plan promising to be a real settlement of Ireland. (Speech of Mr. Gladstone, 8th April, 1886, '_The Times_ Parliamentary Debates,' pp. 130, 131.) "I laid down, I say, five essential conditions, from which it appeared to me we could under no circumstances depart. These were the essential conditions under which in our opinion the granting of a domestic Legislature to Ireland would be justifiable and wise--first, that it must be consistent with Imperial unity; secondly, that it must be founded upon the political equality of the three nations; thirdly, that there must be an equitable distribution of Imperial burdens; fourthly, that there should be safeguards for the minority; and, fifthly, that it should be in the nature of a settlement, and not of a mere provocation to the revival of fresh demands, which, according to the right hon. gentleman, exceeded all reasonable expectation and calculation." (Speech of Mr. Gladstone, 13th April, 1886, '_The Times_ Parliamentary Debates,' p. 256.) Let it be observed that when Mr. Gladstone speaks of the unity of the Empire he means the sovereignty of Parliament, for in the same speech from which these extracts are taken he says, "The unity of the Empire rests upon the supremacy of Parliament and on considerations much higher than considerations merely fiscal." ('_The Times_ Parliamentary Debates,' p. 132.) [32] Dicey, 'Law of the Constitution,' lecture iv. Parliamentary Sovereignty and Federalism. [33] A singular instance of the attempt to dissolve a country into States deserves notice. In 1852 a constitution was devised for New Zealand, under which the country was to be governed by a central legislature and subordinate provincial governments and councils. This artificial federation was of short duration; the provincial governments were in 1875 abolished by an Act of the General Assembly.--Todd, 'Parliamentary Government,' pp. 320-322. [34] See Dicey, 'Law of the Constitution,' 2nd ed., pp. 35-79. [35] _Contemporary Review_, vol. xii., p. 908. [36] _Contemporary Review_, vol. xli., p. 921. [37] 'Mr. Gladstone's Irish Constitution,' _Contemporary Review_, May, 1886, p. 616. [38] 'Arguments for and against Home Rule,' by the Rev. Malcolm MacColl, M.A., p. 71. [39] 'The Irish Question,' by the Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone, pp. 36, 37. [40] 'American Home Rule,' by E.L. Godkin, _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1886, pp. 793, 802. [41] See Todd, 'Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies,' pp. 274-303, and especially p. 281, as to the position of the colonial troops in Victoria. [42] See Tarring, 'Chapters on the Law relating to the Colonies,' pp. 79-85. [43] See Dicey, 'Law of the Constitution,' pp. 105, 106. The somewhat complicated principles which govern what is popularly called the right of veto on Bills passed by Colonial Legislatures, are thus stated in the 'Rules and Regulations' published for the use of the Colonial Office, Chapter III., Legislative Councils and Assemblies, Rules 48-55:-- "48. In every Colony the Governor has authority either to give or to withhold his assent to laws passed by the other branches or members of the Legislature, and until that assent is given no such law is valid or binding. "49. Laws are in some cases passed with suspending clauses; that is, although assented to by the Governor they do not come into operation or take effect in the Colony until they shall have been specially confirmed by Her Majesty, and in other cases Parliament has for the same purpose empowered the Governor to reserve Laws for the Crown's assent, instead of himself assenting or refusing his assent to them. "50. Every Law which has received the Governor's assent (unless it contains a suspending clause) comes into operation immediately or at the time specified in the Law itself. But the Crown retains power to disallow the Law; and if such power be exercised at any time afterwards, the Law ceases to have operation from the date at which such disallowance is published in the Colony. "51. In Colonies having Representative Assemblies the disallowance of any Law, or the Crown's assent to a reserved Bill, is signified by Order in Council. The confirmation of an Act passed with a suspending clause is not signified by Order in Council unless this mode of confirmation is required by the terms of the suspending clause itself, or by some special provision in the constitution of the Colony. "52. In Crown Colonies the allowance or disallowance of any Law is generally signified by despatch. "53. In some cases a period is limited, after the expiration of which Local Enactments, though not actually disallowed, cease to have the authority of Law in the Colony, unless before the lapse of that time Her Majesty's confirmation of them shall have been signified there; but the general rule is otherwise. "54. In Colonies possessing Representative Assemblies, Laws purport to be made by the Queen or by the Governor on Her Majesty's behalf or sometimes by the Governor alone, omitting any express reference to Her Majesty, with the advice and consent of the Council and Assembly. They are almost invariably designated as Acts. In Colonies not having such Assemblies, Laws are designated as Ordinances, and purport to be made by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council (or in British Guiana of the Court of Policy). "55. In West Indian Islands or African Settlements which form part of any general Government, every Bill or Draft Ordinance must be submitted to the Governor-in-Chief before it receives the assent of the Lieutenant-Governor or Administrator. If the Governor-in-Chief shall consider any amendment indispensable, he may either require that amendment to be made before the Law is brought into operation, or he may authorize the officer administering to assent to the Bill or Draft on the express engagement of the Legislature to give effect to the Governor-in-Chief's recommendation by a supplementary Enactment." The effect of these Regulations may be best understood by taking the following supposed case as an example of their operation. The Houses of the Victorian Parliament pass a Bill legalising the marriage of a widower with his deceased wife's sister. i. The Governor refuses his assent. The Bill is lost and never becomes law. ii. The Governor assents to the Bill on the 1st of January. It thereupon becomes an Act, and law in Victoria. iii. The Crown disallows the Act on the 1st of April. The disallowance is published in Victoria on the 1st of May. From the 1st of May the Act ceases to be law in any part of the British Dominions, but marriages made under it between the 1st of January and the 1st of May are valid. iv. The Crown allows the Bill. It thereupon becomes an Act which continues in force in Victoria until it be repealed either by the British Parliament or by the Victorian Parliament. v. The Bill contains a clause that it shall not come into force unless and until allowed by the Crown within two years of its passing. It is not so allowed, it never comes into force, or in other words never becomes law. The point to be noted is that the Crown, or in reality the Colonial Office, has and often exercises the power of placing a veto upon any Colonial law whatever. [44] Compare 'Victorian Parliamentary Paper,' 1883, 2 S., No. 22, and the _Times_ of September 27, October 2, 5, 10, 12, 15 and 18, 1883. [45] See Todd, 'Parliamentary Government in the Colonies,' p. 283. [46] Todd, p. 283. [47] See, e.g., a letter by Mr. Lecky in the _Times_ of January 13, 1886. [48] See pp. 221, 222, _post._ [49] See a letter in the _Spectator_ of January 2, 1886, on 'Home Rule or Separation,' by Mr. J. Cotter Morison. [50] See p. 197, _ante._ [51] _The Times_, May 5, 1886. [52] Under the political arrangements connecting the two countries, it was practically impossible that the two crowns could by legal means be separated without the assent of the English Parliament. George III. was necessarily a member both of the English and of the Irish Parliaments; and it is inconceivable that as King of Ireland he should have assented to a bill passed by the Irish Houses of Parliament which was strenuously opposed by the English Houses of Parliament. The madness of the King raised a case not provided for by the Constitution, and the accidental difference of opinion between the English and Irish Houses of Parliament, as to the Regency, has been treated as possessing more importance than from a constitutional point of view belonged to it. [53] See Appendix for the Government of Ireland Bill. It is there printed in extenso. The clauses which mainly concern the points discussed in the following pages are printed in italics. Readers who wish to understand my comments on the Gladstonian Constitution, should study the Bill itself. I am anxious to call attention to its words, because I am quite aware that on more than one point the interpretation put by me upon its provisions will be disputed by supporters of Mr. Gladstone's policy. My interpretation is, I believe, sound, but it would be unfair not to give my readers the opportunity of judging for themselves as to its soundness. [54] Criticism of particular provisions was made the easier by the fact that hesitations of statesmanship betrayed themselves throughout the Bill in blunders of draughtsmanship. The very heading of the Bill is a misdescription, and involves confusion of ideas. The expressions "status of the Crown," "Executive Government," "Imperial Parliament," are from a legal point of view open to severe criticism; and the substitution of the name "Irish legislature" or "Legislature of Ireland" for the plain intelligible term Irish Parliament, involves something like political cowardice. For errors of this kind, though in one sense errors of draughtsmanship, official draughtsmen are, it must in fairness be remembered, no more responsible than is an amanuensis for the erasures and blots which mar a letter written or re-written to suit the contradictory views of a writer who does not quite know his own meaning and is not anxious to put his meaning into plain words. (See for some excellent criticisms on the Government of Ireland Bill two letters in the _St. James's Gazette_ of 20th and 22nd April, 1880 signed II.) [55] My statement that the Government of Ireland Bill repeals the main provisions of the Act of Union is made, not because I anticipate that the Bill if passed would lead to a repeal of the Union, but because it is my opinion that the Bill if passed would, as a matter of law, repeal the provisions of that Act, under which the United Kingdom is represented in one and the same Parliament to be styled the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland. The effect of the Bill would be in very general terms that Ireland would be represented in a Parliament which contained no English or Scotch representatives, and Great Britain would be represented in a Parliament which contained no Irish representatives. Occasionally and for one definite purpose, and no other, namely for the purpose of modifying the terms of the Gladstonian Constitution, a Parliament might be convened which contained representatives from England, Scotland, and Ireland. By what name any one of these assemblies might be called is a matter of indifference; but that either the British Parliament which contained no Irish representatives, or the Irish Parliament which contained no English or Scotch representatives, or the exceptional and only occasionally convoked body whose one function is to modify a single Act of Parliament, could be considered by any lawyer the "one and the same Parliament" in which the United Kingdom is now represented, is in my judgment all but incredible. If, however, the term "repeal" causes offence or misunderstanding, let us substitute the word "modify," which, however, I believe to be less accurate. The lay reader ought to be reminded that "Statutes may be repealed either by express words contained in later Acts of Parliament, or by implication," and that "a repeal by implication is effected when the provisions of a later enactment are so inconsistent with, or repugnant to, the provisions of an earlier enactment that the two cannot stand together" (Wilberforce, 'Statute Law,' p. 310). My contention is that the Government of Ireland Bill would on becoming law be so inconsistent with portions of 39 & 40 Geo. III. cap. 67, as to amount to a repeal thereof. (For a statement of an opposite opinion, see Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet on the Irish Question pp. 38, 39.) [56] The Government of Ireland Bill, clause 7. [57] See the Government of Ireland Bill, clauses 1, 9. [58] See the Government of Ireland Bill, clause 7. [59] _Ibid_., clause 25. [60] _Ibid_., clause 7. [61] As to the disallowance of Colonial bills, see pp. 202-5, _ante_. [62] See the Government of Ireland Bill, clause 25, sub-clause (_a), (b_) and (_c_). [63] Government of Ireland Bill, clause 24. [64] Government of Ireland Bill, clauses 37, 39. On the whole question as to the mode in which the Gladstonian Constitution, or in other words the Government of Ireland Bill, is intended to be altered, readers are specially referred to the terms of the Bill itself. The whole matter is involved in so much controversy that one can hardly make any statement about it which an opponent will not question. The parts of the Bill to be studied are clauses 37 and 39. [65] See Government of Ireland Bill, clause 39. [66] I am quite aware that the account I have given of the proposed Gladstonian Constitution is likely not to be accepted as correct by some of the supporters of the Government of Ireland Bill. That measure by designating both what I have termed the British Parliament and the Imperial Parliament by the one name Imperial Parliament, conceals in my judgment the extent of the alteration which the Bill contemplates. For the sake of clearness of thought I must request my readers to distinguish carefully four different bodies:-- 1. The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This is the actually existing Parliament constituted by the Act of Union with Ireland. 2. The British Parliament; that is, the Parliament of the United Kingdom with the Irish representatives removed from it. This body is called under the Government of Ireland Bill the Imperial Parliament. It is a distinctly different body from the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Whether it does or does not inherit the legal powers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom is a separate question afterwards to be considered. All that I now insist upon is that it is a different body. 3. The Irish Parliament, a body admittedly constituted or to be constituted under the Government of Ireland Bill, and therein called the Irish Legislature. 4. The Imperial Parliament, a body in effect consisting of the British Parliament with the addition of the Irish representatives, or in other words of the British Parliament combined with the Irish Parliament. This body is convoked, as I have pointed out, only for the special purpose of altering the Gladstonian Constitution. It is termed in the Government of Ireland Bill the Imperial Parliament. What I am most anxious my readers should note is that the bodies 2 and 4 are each termed in the Bill the Imperial Parliament, and thereby not only confused together, but as far as possible each identified with the existing Parliament of the United Kingdom, with which neither really corresponds. The British Parliament differs from the Parliament of the United Kingdom certainly in constitution, if not also in authority. The so-called Imperial Parliament nearly corresponds with the Parliament of the United Kingdom in constitution, but differs from it in function and authority. [67] In reference to the legal effect of the Government of Ireland Bill on the sovereignty of Parliament, see on the one side the speeches of Sir Henry James of 13th May, 1886, '_The Times_ Parliamentary Debates,' p. 468; of Mr. Finlay, 21st May, 1886, '_The Times_ Parliamentary Debates,' p. 614; and an article by Sir William Anson on the Government of Ireland Bill and the Sovereignty of Parliament in the _Law Quarterly Review_ for October, 1886. See on the other side Mr. Gladstone's speeches in Parliament of 8th April, 1886, '_The Times_ Parliamentary Debates,' p. 125; of 13th April, 1886, _ibid._ 255; of 10th May, 1886, _ibid._ 404; and of 7th June, 1886, _ibid._ p. 861; of Mr. Parnell of 7th June, _ibid._ p. 847; and 'The Government of Ireland Bill,' being a speech delivered by Mr. James Bryce, M.P., on 17th May, 1886, and published as a pamphlet. My disagreement with Mr. Bryce's conclusions makes me anxious to express my great admiration for his speech, which is by far the best statement I have read of the view undoubtedly held by Mr. Gladstone and his followers, that the Bill did not affect the sovereignty of Parliament. The reader should notice that the question throughout between the late Government and its opponents was as to the effect of the Bill on the sovereignty of what I have called the "British Parliament," _i.e._ the body, by whatever name it be called, which consists of the representatives of England and Scotland only, and does not include representatives of Ireland. [68] As to the sovereignty of Parliament, see Dicey, 'Law of the Constitution,' pp. 35-79. [69] Government of Ireland Bill, clause 39. [70] I do not, of course, deny for a moment that an Act could be so drawn as to give Ireland an Irish Parliament, to remove the Irish members from the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and at the same time to reserve to the residue of the United Parliament, or Rump, the full sovereignty now possessed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. What I do insist upon is, that it is open to question whether the Government of Ireland Bill was so drawn as to achieve these results. Nor is the question unimportant. The fundamental ambiguity of the Bill obviously arose from the fact that its authors, whilst wishing to promise in appearance to Ireland that the new Irish constitution should not be changed by a body in which Ireland had no representatives, also wished to soothe the apprehensions of England by tacitly reserving to the British Parliament the power of altering or repealing the Irish constitution without recalling the representatives of Ireland. The consequence is that the Bill proclaims in so many words that its provisions shall be altered in one way only, but by implication, as its authors suppose, provides that its provisions may be altered in another and quite different way. If this is the intended effect of the Bill it ought to have been made patent on its face. In constitutional matters, as indeed in all the serious concerns of life, ambiguity and uncertainty of expression is the source both of misunderstanding and of danger. The question of the sovereignty of the British Parliament might, it should be noted, arise in another and more perplexing form, which received, unless I am mistaken, no attention during the debates on the Irish Government Bill. Admit for the sake of argument that the British Parliament can legislate for Ireland; is it equally certain that the Imperial Parliament (i.e. the British Parliament with the addition of Irish representatives) cannot claim to legislate for England or for the whole British Empire? No doubt the Gladstonian Constitution proposes that the Imperial Parliament should be convened only for a limited definite purpose; but is it certain that the Imperial Parliament, which would in its constituent parts be in effect the reunited Parliament of the United Kingdom, might not when convened claim to reassume sovereign power? The addition of a hundred Irish members might turn a minority in the British Parliament into a majority in the Imperial Parliament; can we feel sure that the English minority in the British Parliament would resist the temptation to exalt the authority of a body in which they would be supreme? The enquiry sounds to Englishmen a strange one; but the annals of foreign constitutions suggest that an assembly which, though convoked for a particular purpose, is able from any point of view to consider itself sovereign is with difficulty restrained from asserting supreme power. From this side the Gladstonian Constitution might prove a menace to the supremacy of the British Parliament. CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION. [Sidenote: Survey of argument.] Let us here review and summarise our argument. The demand for Home Rule is a demand for a change in the Constitution so fundamental as to amount to a legal and pacific revolution; such a demand requires for its support cogent, we may almost say conclusive, reasons. The positive arguments in favour of Home Rule are not easy to grasp. Their strength lies in their correspondence with the prevailing opinions of the day. But though public opinion under any form of government, and especially under the system of what is called popular government, deserves great consideration, still the value of a prevailing belief or conviction cannot be determined without examining the elements which have gone to its production. The state of opinion which favours Home Rule is found to result from various and even self-contradictory feelings, some of which belong to the highest and some to the lowest parts of human nature; humanity and a sense of justice are in this instance curiously combined with indolence and impatience. The arguments again for Home Rule rest upon one dubious assumption and one undoubted fact. The dubious assumption is that the root of Irish discontent is the outraged feeling of nationality. The undoubted fact is that in Ireland, on all matters either directly or even remotely connected with the tenure of land, the law of the Courts is opposed to the customs, to the moral sentiment, we may say to the law of the people; hence the Queen's tribunals are weak because they are not supported by that popular assent whence judges derive half their authority; the tribunals of the League are strong because their decisions commend themselves to the traditional feeling of the people. But the doubtful hypothesis and the undoubted fact, though one or other of them lies at the basis of all the strongest arguments in favour of Home Rule, each invalidate almost as much as they support the contention that an Irish Parliament will prove the specific for the diseases (due in the first instance to the original vice of the connection between England and Ireland) under which Irish society now suffers. If the passion of nationality is the cause of the malady, then the proposed cure is useless, for Home Rule will not turn the people of Ireland into a nation. If a vicious system of land tenure is the cause of lawlessness, then the restoration or re-creation of an Irish Parliament is needless, for the Parliament of the United Kingdom can reform, and ought to reform, the land system of Ireland, and ought to be able to carry through a final settlement of agrarian disputes with less injustice to individuals than could any Parliament sitting at Dublin. Reasoning, however, which fails to establish the expediency of creating an Irish Parliament may prove, and in fact does amply prove, that the task of maintaining peace order and freedom in Ireland is at the present juncture a matter of supreme difficulty. Any possible course, moreover, open to English statesmanship involves gigantic inconvenience, not to say tremendous perils. A man involved practically in the conduct of public affairs may easily bring himself to believe that the policy which he recommends is not only the best possible under the circumstances, but is also open to no serious objection. Outsiders, who in this matter are better because more impartial judges than the ablest of politicians, know that this is not so. We have nothing before us but a choice of difficulties or of evils. Every course is open to valid criticism. The maintenance of the Union must necessarily turn out as severe a task as ever taxed a nation's energies, for to maintain the Treaty of Union with any good effect means that while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every fair demand from Ireland, must strenuously and without either fear or favour assert the equal rights of landlords and tenants, of Protestants and Catholics, and must at the same time put down every outrage and reform every abuse. To carry out by peaceful means the political separation of countries which for good and for evil have for centuries been bound together by position and by history, is an operation so critical that in the judgment of statesmen it involves dangers too vast for serious contemplation. How, lastly, to devise a scheme of Home Rule which, while giving to Ireland as much of legislative independence as may satisfy her wants or wishes, shall leave to England as much supremacy as may be necessary for the prosperity of the United Kingdom, or for the continued existence of the British Empire, is a problem which jurists would find it hard to solve as a matter of speculative science, and which politicians may not without reason hold to admit of no practical solution. Yet Maintenance of the Union, Separation, Home Rule, are names which designate the only paths open to us. To one of these three courses we are absolutely tied down. Each path is arduous. To complain about the nature of things is childish. The course of wisdom is obvious. We must all of us look facts in the face. "Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be. Why then should we desire to be deceived?"[71] We must calmly compare the advantages of the three steep roads which lie open to the nation, and then on the strength of this comparison determine the course which the nation is bound to follow by motives of expediency and of justice. Such a comparison we have already instituted:[72] its results to any reader who assents to my train of reasoning must be obvious. The maintenance of the Union involves at the outset a strenuous and most regrettable conflict with the will of the majority of the Irish people. It necessitates at once the strict enforcement of law, combined with the resolute effort to strip law of all injustice. It may require large pecuniary sacrifices, and it certainly will require a constancy in just purpose which is supposed, and not without reason, to be specially difficult to a democracy. The difficulties on the other hand which meet us are not unprecedented, though some of them have assumed a new form. We have some advantages unknown to our forefathers: we can, more easily than they could, remodel the practices of the Constitution, modify the rules of party government, or, incredible as it may seem to members of Parliament, touch with profane hands the venerable procedure of the House of Commons. The English democracy, further, just because it is a democracy, may, like the democracy of America, enforce with unflinching firmness laws which, representing the deliberate will of the people, are supported by the vast majority of the citizens of the United Kingdom. The English democracy, because it is a democracy, may also with a good conscience destroy the remnants of feudal institutions, and all systems of land tenure found unsuitable to the wants of the Irish people. Nor, though the crisis be difficult, are there features lacking in the tendencies of the modern world which in the United Kingdom as in the United States and in the Swiss Confederacy favour every effort to uphold the political unity of the State. Whatever be the difficulties (and they are many) of maintaining the Union, not in form only but in reality, the policy is favoured no less by the current of English history, than by the tendencies of modern civilization. It preserves that unity of the State which is essential to the authority of England and to the maintenance of the Empire. It provides, as matters now stand, the only means of giving legal protection to a large body of loyal British subjects. It is the refusal not only to abdicate legitimate power, but (what is of far more consequence) to renounce the fulfilment of imperative duties. Nor does Union imply uniformity. Unity of Government--equality of rights--diversity of institutions,--these are the watchwords for all Unionists. To attain these objects may be beyond our power, and the limit to power is the limit to responsibility. Still, whatever may be the difficulties, or even the disadvantages, of maintaining the Union, it undoubtedly has in its favour not only all the recommendations which must belong to a policy of rational conservatism, but also these two decisive advantages--that it does sustain the strength of the United Kingdom, and that it does not call for any dereliction of duty. Separation, or in other words the national independence of Ireland, is an idea which has not entered into the practical consideration of Englishmen. The evils which it threatens are patent: it at the same moment diminishes the means of Great Britain and increases the calls upon her resources. It lowers the fame of the country, and plants by the side of England a foreign, it may be a hostile, neighbour; it involves the desertion of loyal fellow-citizens who have trusted in the good faith of England. Yet, on the other hand, the material losses and perhaps the dangers involved in the independence of Ireland are liable to exaggeration. Great Britain might find in her complete freedom of action and in restored unity of national sentiment elements of power which might balance the obvious damage resulting from Separation; she might also find it possible to make for the protection of Loyalists terms more efficacious than any guarantees contained in the articles of a statutory constitution. If, further, the spirit of nationality has the vivifying power ascribed to it by its votaries, then Ireland might gain from it blessings which cannot be conferred by any scheme of merely Parliamentary independence, since no form of Home Rule can transform Ireland into a nation. For Home Rule it may be pleaded that it offers two obvious advantages: it satisfies the immediate wish of millions of Irishmen, and it facilitates the adaptation of Irish institutions to Irish wants. These advantageous results are the best that can be hoped for from Home Rule. They are real, and to underrate them is folly; the moral gain indeed of meeting the wishes of the body of the Irish people is so incalculable, that did Home Rule involve no intolerable evils a rational man might think it wise to venture on the experiment. Home Rule, it may be suggested, has the further gain of lessening English responsibility for the government of Ireland. What it really might effect is to lighten England's sense of responsibility for misrule in Ireland. But this, so far from being a blessing, would in truth be one of the greatest of evils. The distinguished author of the Gladstonian Constitution denies in his recent pamphlet that the Government of Ireland Bill would, if passed, repeal the Act of Union. To follow the reasoning by which this denial is made good is beyond my powers. But there is one aspect in which the statement, paradoxical though it be, that the Union is not dissolved by the existence of an Irish Parliament, has a most serious meaning, which ought to command hearty and general assent. Under the Gladstonian Constitution, as under any form of Home Rule, the Government of the United Kingdom must still remain in the last resort responsible for the administration of justice throughout the whole realm. Admit for the sake of argument that the Act of Union, though affected in every section, is not repealed, then assuredly if men be wrongfully deprived of their property, if they be denied their lawful freedom, if they suffer unlawful injury to life or limb in any part of the United Kingdom, the responsibility for seeing that right be done falls on the executive, and in the last resort on the Parliament, of the United Kingdom. The delegated authority of a subordinate legislature will not free the principal from the liability inherent in the delegation of power; and if Home Rule in Ireland fosters, as it must foster, the notion that the United Kingdom is not as a whole responsible for misdeeds done in Ireland, this is one of the worst results of the proposed constitutional change. But putting this matter aside, an examination into the various forms which Home Rule may assume leads to the conclusion that whatever be its hypothetical benefits it threatens more than countervailing loss to England. There is no need to do more than refer in most general terms to evils which have already been set forth in detail. Home Rule under two of its three possible forms dislocates and weakens the whole English Constitution. Under its least objectionable form--that of Colonial independence--it brings upon England many of the perils which would follow upon the national independence of Ireland; it involves, if the experiment is to have a fair chance of success, large pecuniary sacrifice, and it does not present a reasonable hope of creating real harmony of feeling between Great Britain and Ireland. Home Rule, lastly, under whatever form, whilst not freeing England from moral responsibility for protecting the rights of every British subject, does virtually give up the attempt to ensure to these rights more than a nominal existence, and thus gives up the endeavour to enforce legal and equal justice between man and man. It must also be considered that an examination into the different forms of Home Rule, while it shows that no scheme of legislative independence for Ireland offers any promise of finality, also suggests that the form of Home Rule least injurious to England is the form which gives Ireland most independence. The inference from these facts cannot be missed. Home Rule is the half-way house to Separation. Grant it, and in a short time Irish independence will become the wish of England. If any thorough-paced Home Ruler admit this conclusion, and suggest that Home Rule is a desirable transition towards Separation, the answer is that Home Rule is such a transition, but assuredly that such a transition is not to be desired. If one country is destined to become independent of another it is better for each not to experience the disappointment and the heartburning which accompany a period of unwilling connection. This is the result of the comparison we have instituted between the three possible courses open to England. If the comparison be just the conclusion to which its leads is obvious. The maintenance of the Union is at this moment to England a matter of duty even more than of interest. If the time should come when the effort to maintain the unity of the State is too great for the power of Great Britain, or the only means by which it is found maintainable are measures clearly repugnant to the humanity or the justice or the democratic principles of the English people,--if it should turn out that after every effort to enforce just laws by just methods our justice itself, from whatever cause, remains hateful to the mass of the Irish people,--then it will be clear that the Union must for the sake of England, no less than of Ireland, come to an end. The alternative policy will then be not Home Rule but Separation. We shall save the unity at the expense of lessening the territory of the State; we shall escape self-reproach because having reached the limit of our powers we shall also have filled up the measure of our obligations. But if (as there is every reason to suppose) agrarian misery is the source of Irish discontent, and agrarian misery springs in part from bad administration, and in part from the law governing the tenure of land; if, in general terms, the undoubted ills of Ireland are curable by justice, even though justice proceed from the Parliament of the United Kingdom--an assembly, be it noted, in which the voice of Ireland is freely heard--then there is no need to indulge in speculations, always dangerous, upon a possible remedy which may never be necessary, and which, while the inhabitants of England and Ireland are still fellow-citizens of one State, it is painful even to contemplate. On the whole, then, it appears that whatever changes or calamities the future may have in store, the maintenance of the Union is at this day the one sound policy for England to pursue. It is sound because it is expedient; it is sound because it is just. [Sidenote: Character of England's case] This is the case of England against Home Rule; it is a case which, however feebly stated--and I may well have failed to state it with force--is founded on argument. It is a case which makes and need make no appeal to rhetoric; it is a case which indeed, like all sound views of national policy, is grounded on the interest of the greater number of the citizens of the State, but it is a case not grounded on any mere pride of power, a case not based on any disregard of justice, a case which above all involves no unfriendliness to Irishmen, and no assumption, either tacit or express, that there has fallen to Irishmen a greater amount of either original or acquired sin than falls to other human beings, it is a case which does not assume that real or supposed differences of race are a legitimate ground for inequality of rights. Any one, indeed, after having to the best of his power tried to state what can be said with fairness on one side of a question such as that now at issue between the majority and the minority of the citizens of the United Kingdom, may well call to mind the conclusion of the noblest statement ever made by genius of a case involving momentous national interests:-- "It would be presumption in me to do more than to make a case. Many things occur. But as they, like all political measures, depend on dispositions, tempers, means, and external circumstances for all their effect, not being well assured of these, I do not know how to let loose any speculations of mine on the subject. The evil is stated in my opinion as it exists. The remedy must be where power, wisdom, and information, I hope, are more united with good intentions than they can be with me. I have done with this subject, I believe for ever. It has given me many anxious moments for the two last years. If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hope, will forward it; and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate."[73] The sentiment of these words is one of eternal application. Still at this great crisis in the fortunes of our country, when every course is involved in undeniable perplexity, and surrounded by admitted danger, there are two principles to which we may confidently appeal; for it is by habitual adherence to them that England has grown to greatness. These two principles are the maintenance of the supremacy of the whole State, and the use of that supremacy for the purpose of securing to every citizen, whether rich or poor, the rights of liberty and of property conferred upon him by law. To maintain that any policy, however plausible, by which these principles are violated, must undermine the moral basis of the Constitution, and must therefore lead the nation to calamity and to disgrace, is at any rate to plead a cause which rests upon a firm foundation of plain morality. The case may be ill-stated, the arguments by which it is defended may admit of reply, but it is a case which a just man may put forward without shame, and a humane man may support without compunction. FOOTNOTES: [71] Butler's Sermons; vii., p. 136, ed. 1726. [72] See Chapters V., VI., & VII., _ante._ [73] Burke's Works, vol. vii., pp. 84, 85. APPENDIX. GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND BILL.[74] ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES. PART I. _Legislative Authority_. CLAUSE. 1. Establishment of Irish Legislature. 2. Powers of Irish Legislature. 3. Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature. 4. Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature. 5. Prerogatives of Her Majesty as to Irish Legislative Body. 6. Duration of the Irish Legislative Body. _Executive Authority_. 7. Constitution of the Executive Authority. 8. Use of Crown lands by Irish Government. _Constitution of Legislative Body_. 9. Constitution of Irish Legislative Body. 10. First order. 11. Second order. _Finance_. 12. Taxes and separate Consolidated Fund. 13. Annual contributions from Ireland to Consolidated Fund of United Kingdom. 14. Collection and application of customs and excise duties in Ireland. 15. Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund. 16. Irish Church Fund. 17. Public loans. 18. Additional aid in case of war. 19. Money bills and votes. 20. Exchequer divisions and revenue actions. _Police_. 21. Police. * * * * * PART II. SUPPLEMENTAL PROVISIONS. _Powers of Her Majesty_. 22. Powers over certain lands reserved to Her Majesty. _Legislative Body_. 23. Veto by first order of Legislative Body, how over-ruled. 24. Cesser of power of Ireland to return members to Parliament. _Decision of Constitutional Questions_. 25. _Constitutional questions to be submitted to Judicial Committee_. _Lord-Lieutenant._ 26. Office of Lord-Lieutenant. _Judges and Civil Servants_. 27. Judges to be removable only on address. 28. Provision as to judges and other persons having salaries charged on the Consolidated Fund. 29. As to persons holding civil service appointments. 30. Provision for existing pensions and superannuation allowances. _Transitory Provisions_. 31. Transitory provisions in Schedule. _Miscellaneous_. 32. Post Office and savings banks. 33. Audit. 34. Application of parliamentary law. 35. Regulations for carrying Act into effect. 36. Saving of powers of House of Lords. 37. Saving of Rights of Parliament. 38. Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, &c. 39. Mode of alteration of Act. 40. Definitions. 41. Short title of Act. SCHEDULES. * * * * * _A Bill to amend the provision for the future Government of Ireland_. [Sidenote: A.D. 1886] Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows: PART I. _Legislative Authority_. [Sidenote: Establishment of Irish Legislature.] 1. _On and after the appointed day there shall be established in Ireland a Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and an Irish Legislative Body._ [Sidenote: Powers of Irish Legislature.] 2. _With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act mentioned, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty the Queen, by and with the advice of the Irish Legislative Body, to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland, and by any such law to alter and repeal any law in Ireland._ [Sidenote: Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.] 3. _The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws relating to the following matters or any of them:--_ (1.) _The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or a Regency;_ (2.) _The making of peace or war;_ (3.) _The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval forces, or the defence of the realm;_ (4.) _Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the relations between the various parts of Her Majesty's dominions;_ (5.) _Dignities or titles of honour;_ (6.) _Prize or booty of war;_ (7.) _Offences against the law of nations; or offences committed in violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between Her Majesty and any foreign State; or offences committed on the high seas;_ (8.) _Treason, alienage, or naturalization;_ (9.) _Trade, navigation, or quarantine;_ (10.) _The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this Act mentioned with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in Ireland;_ (11.) _Beacons, lighthouses, or sea marks;_ (12.) _The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal tender; or weights and measures; or_ (13.) _Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use or profits of any works or inventions._ Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. [Sidenote: Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.] 4. _The Irish Legislature shall not make any law--_ (1.) _Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or_ (2.) _Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account of religious belief; or_ (3.) _Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain any place of denominational education or any denominational institution or charity; or_ (4.) _Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at that school; or_ (5.) _Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty in Council first obtained on an address presented by the Legislative Body of Ireland, or the consent of the corporation interested, the rights, property, or privileges of any existing corporation incorporated by royal charter or local and general Act of Parliament; or_ (6.) _Imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties of excise, as defined by this Act, or either of such duties, or affecting any Act relating to such duties or either of them; or_ (7.) _Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared to be alterable by the Irish Legislature._ [Sidenote: Prerogatives of Her Majesty as to Irish Legislative Body.] 5. _Her Majesty the Queen shall have the same prerogatives with respect to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Irish Legislative Body as Her Majesty has with respect to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Imperial Parliament._ [Sidenote: Duration of the Irish Legislative Body.] 6. _The Irish Legislative Body whenever summoned may have continuance for five years and no longer, to be reckoned from the day on which any such Legislative Body is appointed to meet._ _Executive Authority_. [Sidenote: Constitution of the Executive Authority.] 7.--(1.) _The Executive Government of Ireland shall continue vested in Her Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord-Lieutenant on behalf of Her Majesty with the aid of such officers and such Council as to Her Majesty may from time to time seem fit._ (2.) _Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by Her Majesty, the Lord-Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of Her Majesty to Bills passed by the Irish Legislative Body, and shall exercise the prerogatives of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning, proroguing, and dissolving of the Irish Legislative Body, and any prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty._ [Sidenote: Use of Crown lands by Irish Government.] 8. _Her Majesty may, by Order in Council, from time to time place under the control of the Irish Government, for the purposes of that Government, any such lands and buildings in Ireland as may be vested in or held in trust for Her Majesty._ _Constitution of Legislative Body._ [Sidenote: Constitution of Irish Legislative Body.] 9.--(1.) _The Irish Legislative Body shall consist of a first and second order._ (2.) _The two orders shall deliberate together, and shall vote together, except that, if any question arises in relation to legislation or to the Standing Orders or Rules of Procedure or to any other matter in that behalf in this Act specified, and such question is to be determined by vote, each order shall, if a majority of the members present of either order demand a separate vote, give their votes in like manner as if they were separate Legislative Bodies; and if the result of the voting of the two orders does not agree the question shall be resolved in the negative._ [Sidenote: First order.] 10.--(1.) The first order of the Irish Legislative Body shall consist of one hundred and three members, of whom seventy-five shall be elective members and twenty-eight peerage members. (2.) Each elective member shall at the date of his election and during his period of membership be bonâ fide possessed of property which-- (_a._) if realty, or partly realty and partly personalty, yields two hundred pounds a year or upwards, free of all charges; or (_b._) if personalty yields the same income, or is of the capital value of four thousand pounds or upwards, free of all charges. (2.) For the purpose of electing the elective members of the first order of the Legislative Body, Ireland shall be divided into the electoral districts specified in the First Schedule to this Act, and each such district shall return the number of members in that behalf specified in that Schedule. (3.) The elective members shall be elected by the registered electors of each electoral district, and for that purpose a register of electors shall be made annually. (4.) An elector in each electoral district shall be qualified as follows, that is to say, he shall be of full age, and not subject to any legal incapacity, and shall have been during the twelve months next preceding the _twentieth day of July_ in any year the owner or occupier of some land or tenement within the district of a net annual value of twenty-five pounds or upwards. (5.) The term of office of an elective member shall be _ten years_. (6.) In every fifth year thirty-seven or thirty-eight of the elective members, as the case requires, shall retire from office, and their places shall be filled by election; the members to retire shall be those who have been members for the longest time without re-election. (7.) The offices of the peerage members shall be filled as follows; that is to say,-- (_a._) Each of the Irish peers who on the appointed day is one of the twenty-eight Irish representative peers, shall, on giving his written assent to the Lord-Lieutenant, become a peerage member of the first order of the Irish Legislative Body; and if at any time within _thirty years_ after the appointed day any such peer vacates his office by death or resignation, the vacancy shall be filled by the election to that office by the Irish peers of one of their number in manner heretofore in use respecting the election of Irish representative peers, subject to adaptation as provided by this Act, and if the vacancy is not so filled within the proper time it shall be filled by the election of an elective member. (_b._) If any of the twenty-eight peers aforesaid does not within _one month_ after the appointed day give such assent to be a peerage member of the first order, the vacancy so created shall be filled up as if he had assented and vacated his office by resignation. (8.) A peerage member shall be entitled to hold office during his life, or until the expiration of _thirty years_ from the appointed day, whichever period is the shortest. At the expiration of such _thirty years_ the offices of all the peerage members shall be vacated as if they were dead, and their places shall be filled by elective members qualified and elected in manner provided by this Act with respect to elective members of the first order, and such elective members may be distributed by the Irish Legislature among the electoral districts, so, however, that care shall be taken to give additional members to the most populous places. (9.) The offices of members of the first order shall not be vacated by the dissolution of the Legislative Body. (10.) The provisions in the Second Schedule to this Act relating to members of the first order of the Legislative Body shall be of the same force as if they were enacted in the body of this Act. [Sidenote: Second order.] 11.--(1.) Subject as in this section hereafter mentioned, the second order of the Legislative body shall consist of two hundred and four members. (2.) The members of the second order shall be chosen by the existing constituencies of Ireland, two by each constituency, with the exception of the city of Cork, which shall be divided into two divisions in manner set forth in the Third Schedule to this Act, and two members shall be chosen by each of such divisions. (3.) Any person who, on the appointed day, is a member representing an existing Irish constituency in the House of Commons shall, on giving his written assent to the Lord-Lieutenant, become a member of the second order of the Irish Legislative Body as if he had been elected by the constituency which he was representing in the House of Commons. Each of the members for the city of Cork, on the said day, may elect for which of the divisions of that city he wishes to be deemed to have been elected. (4.) If any member does not give such written assent within _one month_ after the appointed day, his place shall be filled by election in the same manner and at the same time as if he had assented and vacated his office by death. (5.) If the same person is elected to both orders, he shall, within _seven days_ after the meeting of the Legislative Body, or if the Body is sitting at the time of the election, within _seven days_ after the election, elect in which order he will serve, and his membership of the other order shall be void and be filled by a fresh election. (6.) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the Legislature of Ireland at any time to pass an Act enabling the Royal University of Ireland to return not more than two members to the second order of the Irish Legislative Body in addition to the number of members above mentioned. (7.) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the Irish Legislature, after the first dissolution of the Legislative Body which occurs, to alter the constitution or election of the second order of that body, due regard being had in the distribution of members to the population of the constituencies; provided that no alteration shall be made in the number of such order. _Finance._ [Sidenote: Taxes and separate Consolidated Fund.] 12.--(1.) For the purpose of providing for the public service of Ireland the Irish Legislature may impose taxes, other than duties of customs or excise as defined by this Act, which duties shall continue to be imposed and levied by and under the direction of the Imperial Parliament only. (2.) On and after the appointed day there shall be an Irish Consolidated Fund separate from the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. (3.) All taxes imposed by the Legislature of Ireland and all other public revenues under the control of the Government of Ireland shall, subject to any provisions touching the disposal thereof contained in any Act passed in the present session respecting the sale and purchase of land in Ireland, be paid into the Irish Consolidated Fund, and be appropriated to the public service of Ireland according to law. [Sidenote: Annual contributions from Ireland to Consolidated Fund of United Kingdom.] 13.--(1.) Subject to the provisions for the reduction or cesser thereof in this section mentioned, there shall be made on the part of Ireland to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom the following annual contributions in every financial year; that is to say,-- (_a._) The sum of _one million four hundred and sixty-six, thousand pounds_ on account of the interest on and management of the Irish share of the National Debt: (_b._) The sum of _one million six hundred and sixty-six thousand pounds_ on account of the expenditure on the army and navy of the United Kingdom: (_c._) The sum _of one hundred and ten thousand pounds_ on account of the Imperial civil expenditure of the United Kingdom: (_d._) The sum of _one million pounds_ on account of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police. (2.) During the period of _thirty_ years from this section taking; effect the said annual contributions shall not be increased, but may be reduced or cease as hereinafter mentioned. After the expiration of the said _thirty years_ the said contributions shall, save as otherwise provided by this section, continue until altered in manner provided with respect to the alteration of this Act. (3.) The Irish share of the National Debt shall be reckoned at _forty-eight million pounds_ Bank annuities, and there shall be paid in every financial year on behalf of Ireland to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt an annual sum of _three hundred and sixty thousand pounds_, and the permanent annual charge for the National Debt on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom shall be reduced by that amount, and the said annual sum shall be applied by the said Commissioners as a sinking fund for the redemption of the National Debt, and the Irish share of the National Debt shall be reduced by the amount of the National Debt so redeemed, and the said annual contribution on account of the interest on and management of the Irish share of the National Debt shall from time to time be reduced by a sum equal to the interest upon the amount of the National Debt from time to time so redeemed, but that last-mentioned sum shall be paid annually to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt in addition to the above-mentioned annual sinking fund, and shall be so paid and be applied as if it were part of that sinking fund. (4.) As soon as an amount of the National Debt equal to the said Irish share thereof has been redeemed under the provisions of this section, the said annual contribution on account of the interest on and management of the Irish share of the National Debt, and the said annual sum for a sinking fund shall cease. (5.) If it appears to Her Majesty that the expenditure in respect of the army and navy of the United Kingdom, or in respect of Imperial civil expenditure of the United Kingdom, for any financial year has been less than _fifteen_ times the amount of the contributions above-named on account of the same matter, a sum equal to _one fifteenth_ part of the diminution shall be deducted from the current annual contribution for the same matter. (6.) The sum paid from time to time by the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom on account of the hereditary revenues of the Crown in Ireland shall be credited to the Irish Government, and go in reduction of the said annual contribution payable on account of the Imperial civil expenditure of the United Kingdom, but shall not be taken into account in calculating whether such diminution as above mentioned has or has not taken place in such expenditure. (7.) If it appears to Her Majesty that the expenditure in respect of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police for any financial year has been less than the contribution above named on account of such constabulary and police, the current contribution shall be diminished by the amount of such difference. (8.) This section shall take effect from and after the _thirty-first day of March, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven_. [Sidenote: Collection and application of customs and excise duties in Ireland.] 14.--(1.) On and after such day as the Treasury may direct all moneys from time to time collected in Ireland on account of the duties of customs or the duties of excise as defined by this Act shall, under such regulations as the Treasury from time to time make, be carried to a separate account (in this Act referred to as the customs and excise account) and applied in the payment of the following sums in priority as mentioned in this section; that is to say,-- First, of such sum as is from time to time directed by the Treasury in respect of the costs, charges, and expenses of and incident to the collection and management of the said duties in Ireland not exceeding four per cent. of the amount collected there; Secondly, of the annual contributions required by this Act to be made to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom; Thirdly, of the annual sums required by this Act to be paid to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt; Fourthly, of all sums by this Act declared to be payable out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account; Fifthly, of all sums due to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom for interest or sinking fund, in respect of any loans made by the issue of bank annuities or otherwise to the Government of Ireland under any Act passed in the present session relating to the purchase and sale of land in Ireland, so far as such sums are not defrayed out of the moneys received under such Act; (2.) So much of the moneys carried to a separate account under this section as the Treasury consider are not, and are not likely to be, required to meet the above-mentioned payments, shall from time to time be paid over and applied as part of the public revenues under the control of the Irish Government. [Sidenote: Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.] 15.--(1.) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund in priority as mentioned in this section:-- First, such portion of the sums directed by this Act to be paid out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account in priority to any payment for the public revenues of Ireland, as those moneys are insufficient to pay; Secondly, all sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the Government of Ireland, whether for interest, management, or sinking fund; Thirdly, all sums which at the passing of this Act are charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom in respect of Irish services other than the salary of the Lord-Lieutenant; Fourthly, the salaries of all judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature or other superior court in Ireland, or of any county or other like court, who are appointed after the passing of this Act, and the pensions of such judges; Fifthly, any other sums charged by this Act on the Irish Consolidated Fund. (2.) It shall be the duty of the Legislature of Ireland to impose all such taxes, duties, or imposts as will raise a sufficient revenue to meet all sums charged for the time being on the Irish Consolidated Fund. [Sidenote: Irish Church Fund.] 16.--(1.) Until all charges which are payable out of the Church property in Ireland, and are guaranteed by the Treasury, have been fully paid, the Irish Land Commission shall continue as heretofore to exist, with such Commissioners and officers receiving such salaries as the Treasury may from time to time appoint, and to administer the Church property and apply the income and other moneys receivable therefrom; and so much of the salaries of such Commissioners and officers and expenses of the office as is not paid out of the Church property shall be paid out of moneys carried to the customs and excise account under this Act, and if those moneys are insufficient, out of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and if not so paid, shall be paid out of moneys provided by Parliament. Provided as follows:-- (_a._) All charges on the Church property for which a guarantee has been given by the Treasury before the passing of this Act shall, so far as they are not paid out of such property, be paid out of the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, and if such moneys are insufficient, the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, without prejudice nevertheless to the guarantee of the Treasury; (_b._) All charges on the Church property, for which no guarantee has been given by the Treasury before the passing of this Act shall be charged on the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, but shall not be guaranteed by the Treasury nor charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. (2.) Subject to any existing charges on the Church property, such property shall belong to the Irish Government and any portion of the annual revenue thereof which the Treasury, on the application of the Irish Government, certify at the end of any financial year not to be required for meeting charges, shall be paid over and applied as part of the public revenues under the control of the Irish Government. (3.) As soon as all charges on the Church property guaranteed by the Treasury have been paid, such property may be managed and administered, and subject to existing charges thereon disposed of, and the income or proceeds thereof applied, in such manner as the Irish Legislature may from time to time direct. [Sidenote: 32 & 33 Vict. c. 42, 44 & 45 Vict. c. 71.] (4.) "Church property" in this section means all property accruing under the Irish Church Act, 1869, and transferred to the Irish Land Commission by the Irish Church Act Amendment Act, 1881. [Sidenote: Public loans.] 17.--(1.) All sums due for principal or interest to the Public Works Loan Commissioners or to the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland in respect of existing loans advanced on any security in Ireland shall on and after the appointed day be due to the Government of Ireland instead of the said Commissioners, and such body of persons as the Government of Ireland may appoint for the purpose shall have all the powers of the said Commissioners or their secretary for enforcing payment of such sums, and all securities for such sums given to such Commissioners or their secretary shall have effect as if the said body were therein substituted for those Commissioners or their secretary. (2.) For the repayment of the said loans to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, the Irish Government shall pay annually into that fund by half-yearly payments on the _first day of January_ and _the first day of July_, or on such other days as may be agreed on, such instalments of the principal of the said loans as will discharge all the loans within _thirty years_ from the appointed day, and shall also pay interest half-yearly on so much of the said principal as from time to time remains unpaid at the rate of _three_ per cent. per annum, and such instalments of principal and interest shall be paid out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account under this Act, and if those are insufficient, out of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland. [Sidenote: Additional aid in case of war.] 18. If Her Majesty declares that a state of war exists and is pleased to signify such declaration to the Irish Legislative Body by speech or message, it shall be lawful for the Irish Legislature to appropriate a further sum out of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland in aid of the army or navy, or other measures which Her Majesty may take for the prosecution of the war and defence of the realm, and to provide and raise money for that purpose; and all moneys so provided and raised, whether by loan, taxation, or otherwise, shall be paid into the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. [Sidenote: Money bills and votes.] 19.--(1.) It shall not be lawful for the Irish Legislative Body to adopt or pass any vote, resolution, address, or Bill for the raising or appropriation for any purpose of any part of the public revenue of Ireland, or of any tax, duty, or impost, except in pursuance of a recommendation from Her Majesty signified through the Lord-Lieutenant in the session in which such vote, resolution, address, or Bill is proposed. (2.) Notwithstanding that the Irish Legislature is prohibited by this Act from making laws relating to certain subjects, that Legislature may, with the assent of Her Majesty in Council first obtained, appropriate any part of the Irish public revenue, or any tax, duty, or impost imposed by such Legislature, for the purpose of, or in connection with, such subjects. [Sidenote: Exchequer Division and revenue actions.] 20.--(1.) On and after the appointed day, the Exchequer Division of the High Court of Justice shall continue to be a Court of Exchequer for revenue purposes under this Act, and whenever any vacancy occurs in the office of any judge of such Exchequer Division, his successor shall be appointed by Her Majesty on the joint recommendation of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. (2.) The judges of such Exchequer Division appointed after the passing of this Act shall be removable only by Her Majesty on address from the two Houses of the Imperial Parliament, and shall receive the same salaries and pensions as those payable at the passing of this Act to the existing judges of such division, unless with the assent of Her Majesty in Council first obtained, the Irish Legislature alters such salaries or pensions, and such salaries and pensions shall be paid out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account in pursuance of this Act, and if the same are insufficient shall be paid out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and if not so paid shall be paid out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. (3.) An alteration of any rules relating to the procedure in such legal proceedings as are mentioned in this section shall not be made except with the approval of the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, and the sittings of the Exchequer division and the judges thereof shall be regulated with the like approval. (4.) All legal proceedings instituted in Ireland by or against the Commissioners or any officers of customs or excise, or the Treasury, shall, if so required by any party to such proceedings, be heard and determined before the judges of such Exchequer division, or some or one of them, and any appeal from the decision in any such legal proceeding, if by a judge, shall lie to the said division, and if by the Exchequer division, shall lie to the House of Lords, and not to any other tribunal; and if it is made to appear to such judges, or any of them, that any decree or judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid, has not been duly enforced by the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to enforce the same, such judges or judge shall appoint some officer to enforce such judgment or decree; and it shall be the duty of such officer to take proper steps to enforce the same, and for that purpose such officer and all persons employed by him shall be entitled to the same immunities, powers, and privileges as are by law conferred on a sheriff and his officers. (5.) All sums recovered in respect of duties of Customs and Excise, or under any Act relating thereto, or by an officer of Customs or Excise, shall, notwithstanding anything in any other Act, be paid to the Treasury, and carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act. _Police_. 21. The following regulations shall be made with respect to Police, police in Ireland; (_a._) The Dublin Metropolitan Police shall continue and be subject as heretofore to the control of the Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty for a period of _two years_ from the passing of this Act, and thereafter until any alteration is made by Act of the Legislature of Ireland, but such Act shall provide for the proper saving of all then existing interests, whether as regards pay, pensions, superannuation allowances, or otherwise. (_b._) The Royal Irish Constabulary shall, while that force subsists, continue and be subject as heretofore to the control of the Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty. (_c._) The Irish Legislature may provide for the establishment and maintenance of a police force in counties and boroughs in Ireland under the control of local authorities, and arrangements may be made between the Treasury and the Irish Government for the establishment and maintenance of police reserves. * * * * * PART II. SUPPLEMENTAL PROVISIONS. _Powers of Her Majesty_. [Sidenote: Power over certain lands reserved to Her Majesty.] 22. On and after the appointed day there shall be reserved to Her Majesty-- (1.) The power of erecting forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other buildings for military or naval purposes; (2.) The power of taking waste land, and, on making due compensation, any other land, for the purpose of erecting such forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, or other buildings as aforesaid, and for any other military or naval purpose, or the defence of the realm. _Legislative Body._ [Sidenote: Veto by first order of Legislative Body, how over-ruled.] 23. If a Bill or any provision of a Bill is lost by disagreement between the two orders of the Legislative Body, and after a period ending with a dissolution of the Legislative Body, or the period of _three years_, whichever period is longest, such Bill, or a Bill containing the said provision, is again considered by the Legislative Body, and such Bill or provision is adopted by the second order and negatived by the first order, the same shall be submitted to the whole Legislative Body, both orders of which shall vote together on the Bill or provision, and the same shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority of the members so voting together. [Sidenote: Cesser of power of Ireland to return members to Parliament.] 24. On and after the appointed day Ireland shall cease, except in the event hereafter in this Act mentioned, to return representative peers to the House of Lords or members to the House of Commons, and the persons who on the said day are such representative peers and members shall cease as such to be members of the House of Lords and House of Commons respectively. _Decision of Constitutional Questions._ [Sidenote: Constitutional questions to be submitted to Judicial Committee.] 25. _Questions arising as to the powers conferred on the Legislature of Ireland under this Act shall be determined as follows_:-- (a.) _If any such question arises on any Bill passed by the Legislative Body, the Lord-Lieutenant may refer such question to Her Majesty in Council;_ (b.) _If, in the course of any action or other legal proceeding, such question arises on any Act of the Irish Legislature, any party to such action or other legal proceeding may, subject to the rules in this section mentioned, appeal from a decision on such question to Her Majesty in Council;_ (c.) _If any such question arises otherwise than as aforesaid on any Act of the Irish Legislature, the Lord-Lieutenant or one of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State may refer such question to Her Majesty in Council;_ (d.) _Any question referred or appeal brought under this section to Her Majesty in Council shall be referred for the consideration of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council;_ (e.) _The decision of Her Majesty in Council on any question referred or appeal brought under this section shall be final, and a Bill which may be so decided to be, or contain a provision, in excess of the powers of the Irish Legislature shall not be assented to by the Lord-Lieutenant; and a provision of any Act which is so decided to be in excess of the powers of the Irish Legislature shall be void;_ (f.) _There shall be added to the Judicial Committee when sitting for the purpose of considering questions under this section, such members of Her Majesty's Privy Council, being or having been Irish judges, as to Her Majesty may seem, meet._ (g.) _Her Majesty may, by Order in Council from time to time, make rules as to the cases and mode in which and the conditions under which, in pursuance of this section, questions may be referred and appeals brought to Her Majesty in Council, and as to the consideration thereof by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and any rules so made shall be of the same force as if they were enacted in this Act._ (h.) _An appeal shall not lie to the House of Lords in respect of any question in respect of which an appeal can be had to Her Majesty in Council in pursuance of this section_. _Lord-Lieutenant._ [Sidenote: Office of Lord-Lieutenant.] 26.--(1.) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any Act of Parliament, every subject of Her Majesty shall be eligible to hold and enjoy the office of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, without reference to his religious belief. (2.) The salary of the Lord-Lieutenant shall continue to be charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, and the expenses of his household and establishment shall continue to be defrayed out of moneys to be provided by Parliament. (3.) All existing powers vested by Act of Parliament or otherwise in the Chief Secretary for Ireland may, if no such officer is appointed, be exercised by the Lord-Lieutenant until other provision is made by Act of the Irish Legislature. (4.) The Legislature of Ireland shall not pass any Act relating to the office or functions of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. _Judges and Civil Servants_. [Sidenote: Judges to be removable only on address.] 27. A Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature or other superior court of Ireland, or of any county court or other court with a like jurisdiction in Ireland, appointed after the passing of this Act, shall not be removed from his office except in pursuance of an address to Her Majesty from both orders of the Legislative Body voting separately, nor shall his salary be diminished or right to pension altered during his continuance in office. [Sidenote: Provisions as to judges and other persons having salaries charged on the Consolidated Fund.] 28.--(1.) All persons who at the passing of this Act are judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature or county court judges, or hold any other judicial position in Ireland, shall, if they are removable at present on address to Her Majesty of both Houses of Parliament, continue to be removable only upon such address from both Houses of the Imperial Parliament, and if removable in any other manner shall continue to be removable in like manner as heretofore; and such persons, and also all persons at the passing of this Act in the permanent civil service of the Crown in Ireland whose salaries are charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, shall continue to hold office and to be entitled to the same salaries, pensions, and superannuation allowances as heretofore, and to be liable to perform the same or analogous duties as heretofore; and the salaries of such persons shall be paid out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account under this Act, or if these moneys are insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and if the same are not so paid, shall continue charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. (2.) _If any of these said persons retires from office with the approbation of Her Majesty before he has completed the period of service entitling him to a pension, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty, if she thinks fit, to grant to that person such pension, not exceeding the pension to which he would have been entitled if he had completed the said period of service, as to Her Majesty seems meet._ [Sidenote: As to persons holding civil service appointments.] 29.--(1.) All persons not above provided for and at the passing of this Act serving in Ireland in the permanent civil service of the Crown shall continue to hold their offices and receive the same salaries, and to be entitled to the same gratuities and superannuation allowances as heretofore, and shall be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore or duties of similar rank, but any of such persons shall be entitled at the expiration of _two years_ after the passing of this Act to retire from office, and at any time if required by the Irish Government shall retire from office, and on any such retirement shall be entitled to receive such payment as the Treasury may award to him in accordance with the provisions contained in the Fourth Schedule to this Act. (2.) The amount of such payment shall be paid to him out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account under this Act, or, if those moneys are insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, _and so far as the same are not so paid shall be paid out of moneys provided by Parliament_. [Sidenote: 34 & 35 Vict. c. 36.] (3.) The Pensions Commutation Act, 1871, shall apply to all persons who, having retired from office, are entitled to any annual payment under this section in like manner as if they had retired in consequence of the abolition of their offices. (4.) This section shall not apply to persons who are retained in the service of the Imperial Government. [Sidenote: Provision for existing pensions and superannuation allowances.] 30. Where before the passing of this Act any pension or superannuation allowance has been granted to any person on account of service as a judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature of Ireland or of any court consolidated into that court, or as a county court judge, or in any other judicial position, or on account of service in the permanent civil service of the Crown in Ireland otherwise than in some office, the holder of which is, after the passing of this Act, retained in the service of the Imperial Government, such pension or allowance, whether payable out of the Consolidated Fund or out of moneys provided by Parliament, shall continue to be paid to such person, and shall be so paid out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account under this Act, or, if such moneys are insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and so far as the same is not so paid, shall be paid as heretofore out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom or moneys provided by Parliament. _Transitory Provisions._ [Sidenote: Transitory provisions in schedule.] 31. The provisions contained in the Fifth Schedule to this Act relating to the mode in which arrangements are to be made for setting in motion the Irish Legislative Body and Government and for the transfer to the Irish Government of the powers and duties to be transferred to them under this Act, or for otherwise bringing this Act into operation, shall be of the same effect as if they were enacted in the body of this Act. _Miscellaneous._ [Sidenote: Post Office and savings banks.] 32. Whenever an Act of the Legislature of Ireland has provided for carrying on the postal and telegraphic service with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in Ireland, and the post-office and other savings banks in Ireland, and for protecting the officers then in such service, and the existing depositors in such post-office savings banks, the Treasury shall make arrangements for the transfer of the said service and banks, in accordance with the said Act, and shall give public notice of the transfer, and shall pay all depositors in such post office savings bank who request payment within _six months_ after the date fixed for such transfer, and after the expiration of such _six months_ the said depositors shall cease to have any claim against the Postmaster-General or the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but shall have the like claim against the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and the Treasury shall cause to be transferred in accordance with the said Act the securities representing the sums due to the said depositors in post office savings banks and the securities held for other savings banks. [Sidenote: Audit.] 33. Save as otherwise provided by the Irish Legislature,-- (_a._) The existing law relating to the Exchequer and the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom shall apply to the Irish Exchequer and Consolidated Fund, and an officer shall from time to time be appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant to fill the office of the Comptroller General of the receipt and issue of Her Majesty's Exchequer and Auditor-General of public accounts so far as respects Ireland; and [Sidenote: 29 & 30 Vict. c. 39.] (_b._) The accounts of the Irish Consolidated Fund shall be audited as appropriation accounts in manner provided by the Exchequer and Audit Departments Act, 1866, by or under the direction of the holder of such office. [Sidenote: Application of parliamentary law.] 34.--(1.) The privileges, immunities, and powers to be held, enjoyed, and exercised by the Irish Legislative Body, and the members thereof, shall be such as are from time to time defined by Act of the Irish Legislature, but so that the same shall never exceed those at the passing of this Act held, enjoyed, and exercised by the House of Commons, and by the members thereof. (2.) Subject as in this Act mentioned, all existing laws and customs relating to the members of the House of Commons and their election, including the enactments respecting the questioning of elections, corrupt and illegal practices, and registration of electors, shall, so far as applicable, extend to elective members of the first order and to members of the second order of the Irish Legislative Body. Provided that-- (_a._) The law relating to the offices of profit enumerated in Schedule H. to the Representation of the People Act, 1867, shall apply to such offices of profit in the government of Ireland not exceeding ten, as the Legislature of Ireland may from time to time direct; (_b._) After the first dissolution of the Legislative Body, the Legislature of Ireland may, subject to the restrictions in this Act mentioned, alter the laws and customs in this section mentioned. [Sidenote: Regulations for carrying Act into effect.] 35.--(1.) The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland may make regulations for the following purposes:-- (_a._) The summoning of the Legislative Body and the election of a Speaker, and such adaptation to the proceedings of the Legislative Body of the procedure of the House of Commons as appears to him expedient for facilitating the conduct of business by that body on their first meeting; (_b._) The adaptation of any law relating to the election of representative peers; (_c._) The adaptation of any laws and customs relating to the House of Commons or the members thereof to the elective members of the first order and to members of the second order of the Legislative Body; and (_d._) The mode of signifying their assent or election under this Act by representative peers or Irish members of the House of Commons as regards becoming members of the Irish Legislative Body in pursuance of this Act. (2.) Any regulations so made shall, in so far as they concern the procedure of the Legislative Body, be subject to alteration by Standing Orders of that Body, and so far as they concern other matters, be subject to alteration by the Legislature of Ireland, but shall, until alteration, have the same effect as if they were inserted in this Act. [Sidenote: Saving of powers of House of Lords.] 36. Save as is in this Act provided with respect to matters to be decided by Her Majesty in Council, nothing in this Act shall affect the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords in respect of actions and suits in Ireland, or the jurisdiction of the House of Lords to determine the claims to Irish peerages. [Sidenote: Saving of rights of Parliament.] 37. _Save as herein expressly provided all matters in relation to which it is not competent for the Irish Legislative Body to make or repeal laws shall remain and be within the exclusive authority of the Imperial Parliament, whose power and authority in relation thereto, save as aforesaid, shall in nowise be diminished or restrained by anything herein contained._[75] [Sidenote: Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, &c.] 38.--(1.) Except as otherwise provided by this Act, all existing laws in force in Ireland, and all existing courts of civil and criminal jurisdiction, and all existing legal commissions, powers, and authorities, and all existing officers, judicial, administrative, and ministerial and all existing taxes, licence, and other duties, fees, and other receipts in Ireland shall continue as if this Act had not been passed; subject, nevertheless, to be repealed, abolished, or altered in manner and to the extent provided by this Act; provided that, subject to the provisions of this Act, such taxes, duties, fees, and other receipts shall, after the appointed day, form part of the public revenues of Ireland. (2.) The Commissioners of Inland Revenue and the Commissioners of Customs, and the officers of such Commissioners respectively, shall have the same powers in relation to any articles subject to any duty of excise or customs, manufactured, imported, kept for sale, or sold, and any premises where the same may be, and to any machinery, apparatus, vessels, utensils, or conveyance used in connexion therewith, or the removal thereof, and in relation to the person manufacturing, importing, keeping for sale, selling, or having the custody or possession of the same as they would have had if this Act had not been passed. [Sidenote: Mode of alteration of Act.] 39.--(1.) _On and after the appointed day this Act shall not, except such provisions thereof as are declared to be alterable by the Legislature of Ireland, be altered except--_ (a.) _by Act of the Imperial Parliament and with the consent of the Irish Legislative Body testified by an address to Her Majesty, or_ (b.) _by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, for the passing of which there shall be summoned to the House of Lords the peerage members of the first order of the Irish Legislative Body, and if there are no such members then twenty-eight Irish representative peers elected by the Irish peers in manner heretofore in use, subject to adaptation as provided by this Act; and there shall be summoned to the House of Commons such one of the members of each constituency, or in the case of a constituency returning four members such two of those members, as the Legislative Body of Ireland may select, and such peers and members shall respectively be deemed, for the purpose of passing any such Act, to be members of the said Houses of Parliament respectively._ (2.) _For the purposes of this section it shall be lawful for Her Majesty by Order in Council to make such provisions for summoning the said peers of Ireland to the House of Lords and the said members from Ireland to the House of Commons as to Her Majesty may seem necessary or proper, and any provisions contained in such Order in Council shall have the same effect as if they had been enacted by Parliament._ [Sidenote: Definitions.] 40. In this Act-- The expression "the appointed day" shall mean such day after the _thirty-first day of March in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven_ as may be determined by order of Her Majesty in Council. The expression "Lord-Lieutenant" includes the lords justices or any other chief governor or governors of Ireland for the time being. The expression "Her Majesty the Queen," or "Her Majesty" or "the Queen," includes the heirs and successors of Her Majesty the Queen. The expression "Treasury," means the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury. The expression "Treaty" includes any convention or arrangement. The expression "existing" means existing at the passing of this Act. The expression "existing constituency" means any county or borough, or division of a county or borough, or a University returning at the passing of this Act a member or members to serve in Parliament. The expression "duties of excise" does not include a duty received in respect of any license whether for the sale of intoxicating liquors or otherwise. The expression "financial year" means the twelve months ending on the _thirty-first day of March_. [Sidenote: Short title of Act.] 41. This Act may be cited for all purposes as the Irish Government Act, 1886. * * * * * FIRST SCHEDULE. * * * * * FIRST ORDER OF THE IRISH LEGISLATIVE BODY. ----------------------+---------------------+------------ Electoral Districts. | Number of Members. | Rotation. ----------------------+---------------------+------------ | | | | | | | | ----------------------+---------------------+------------ * * * * * SECOND SCHEDULE. * * * * * PROVISIONS RELATING TO THE FIRST ORDER OF THE IRISH LEGISLATIVE BODY. * * * * * THIRD SCHEDULE. * * * * * BOUNDARIES OF DIVISIONS OF THE CITY OF CORK FOR THE PURPOSE OF RETURNING MEMBERS TO THE SECOND ORDER OF THE LEGISLATIVE BODY. * * * * * FOURTH SCHEDULE. * * * * * PROVISIONS AS TO SUPERANNUATION ALLOWANCES OF PERSONS IN THE PERMANENT CIVIL SERVICE. * * * * * FIFTH SCHEDULE. * * * * * TRANSITORY PROVISIONS. FOOTNOTES: [74] The clauses printed in italics are the clauses of the Bill which are specially referred to in the foregoing pages. [75] This clause is printed as I am informed that it ought to have been originally printed in the Bill. 
14518	----	Proofreading Team HANDBOOK OF HOME RULE BEING _ARTICLES ON THE IRISH QUESTION_ BY THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P. THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P., LORD THRING JAMES BRYCE, M.P., CANON MACCOLL E.L. GODKIN, AND R. BARRY O'BRIEN _WITH PREFACE BY_ THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G. EDITED BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P. SECOND EDITION LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., I, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1887 EDITOR'S NOTE. Of the articles contained in this volume, those by Mr. Gladstone, Mr. E.L. Godkin on "A Lawyer's Objections to Home Rule," and Mr. Barry O'Brien appear for the first time. The others are reprinted from the _Contemporary Review_, the _Nineteenth Century_, and the _New Princeton Review_, to the proprietors and editors of which periodicals respectively the thanks of the several writers and of the editor are tendered. In most of these reprints some passages of transitory interest have been omitted, and some few additions have been made. The object of the writers has been to treat the difficult questions connected with the Government of Ireland in a dispassionate spirit; and the volume is offered to the public in the hope that it may, at a time of warm controversy over passing events, help to lead thoughtful men back to the consideration of the principles which underlie those questions, and which it seeks to elucidate by calm discussion and by references to history. _October_, 1887. CONTENTS. PREFACE. BY THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G. AMERICAN HOME RULE. BY E.L. GODKIN HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS. BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P. HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY. BY LORD THRING THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL AND THE IRISH LAND BILL. BY LORD THRING THE "UNIONIST" POSITION. BY CANON MACCOLL A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE. BY E.L. GODKIN THE "UNIONIST" CASE FOR HOME RULE. BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES. BY LORD THRING THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION. BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P. SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED. BY THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P. LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. BY THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P. PREFACE. The present seems an excellent moment for bringing forward the arguments in favour of a new policy for Ireland, which are to be found in the articles contained in this volume. We are realizing the first results of the verdict given at the election of 1886. And this I interpret as saying that the constituencies were not then ready to depart from the lines of policy which, up to last year, nearly all politicians of both parties in Parliament had laid down for their guidance in Irish affairs. We have had the Session occupied almost wholly with Lord Salisbury's proposals for strengthening the power of the central Government to maintain law and order in Ireland, and for dealing with the most pressing necessities of the Land question in that country. It is well, before the policy of the Government is practically tested, that the views of thoughtful men holding different opinions should be clearly set forth, not in the shape of polemical speeches, but in measured articles which specially appeal to those who have not hitherto joined the fighting ranks of either side, and who are sure to intervene with great force at the next election, when the Irish question is again submitted to the constituencies. I feel that I can add little or nothing to the weight of the arguments contained in these papers, but I should like to give some reasons why I earnestly hope that they will receive careful consideration. The writers have endeavoured to approach their work with impartiality, and to free themselves from those prejudices which make it difficult for Englishmen to discuss Irish questions in a fresh and independent train of thought, and realize how widely Irish customs, laws, traditions, and sentiments differ from our own. We are apt to think that what has worked well here will work well in Ireland; that Irishmen who differ from us are unreasonable; and that their proposals for change must be mistaken. We do not make allowance for the soreness of feeling prevailing among men who have long objected to the system by which Ireland has been governed, and who find that their earnest appeals for reform have been, until recent times, contemptuously disregarded by English politicians. Time after time moderate counsels have been rejected until too late. Acts of an exceptional character intended to secure law and order have been very numerous, and every one of them has caused fresh irritation; while remedial measures have been given in a manner which has not won the sympathy of the people, because they have not been the work of the Irish themselves, and have not been prepared in their own way. Parliament seems during the past Session to have fallen into the same error. By the power of an English majority, measures have been passed which are vehemently opposed by the political leaders and the majority of the Irish nation, and which are only agreeable to a small minority in Ireland. This action can only succeed if the Irish can be persuaded to relinquish the national sentiments of Home Rule; and yet this was never stronger or more vigorous than at the present time. It is supported by millions of Irish settled in America and in Australia; and here I would say that it has often struck me that the strong feeling of dissatisfaction, or, I might say, of disaffection, among the Irish is fed and nurtured by the marked contrast existing between the social condition of large numbers of the Irish in the South and West of Ireland and the views and habits of their numerous relatives in the United States. The social condition of many parts of Ireland is as backward, or perhaps more backward, than the condition of the rural population of England at the end of last or the beginning of this century. The Irish peasantry still live in poor hovels, often in the same room with animals; they have few modern comforts; and yet they are in close communication with those who live at ease in the cities and farms of the United States. They are also imbued with all the advanced political notions of the American Republic, and are sufficiently educated to read the latest political doctrines in the Press which circulates among them. Their social condition at home is a hundred years behind their state of political and mental culture. They naturally contrast the misery of many Irish peasants with the position of their relatives in the New World. This cannot but embitter their views against English rulers, and strengthen their leaning to national sentiments. Their national aspirations have never died out since 1782. They have taken various forms; but if the movements arising from them have been put down, fresh movements have constantly sprung up. The Press has grown into an immense power, and its influences have all been used to strengthen the zeal for Irish nationality, while, at the same time, the success of the national movements in Italy, Hungary, Greece, and Germany have had the same effect. Lastly, the sentiment of Home Rule has gained the sympathy of large bodies of electors in the constituencies of Great Britain, and, under the circumstances, it is difficult to suppose that, even if the country remains quiet, constitutional agitation will vanish or the Irish relinquish their most cherished ambition. We hear, from men who ought to know something of Ireland, that if the Land question is once settled, and dual ownership practically abolished, the tenants will be satisfied, and the movement for Home Rule will no longer find active support in Ireland. Without going into the whole of this argument, I should like to say two things: first, that I do not know how a large scheme of Land Purchase can be carried through Parliament with safety to Imperial interests without establishing, at the same time, some strong Irish Government in Dublin to act between the Imperial Government and the tenants of Ireland; and, second, that the feeling for Home Rule has a vitality of its own which will survive the Land question, even if independently settled. Home Rule is an expression of national feeling which cannot be extinguished in Ireland, and the only safe method of dealing with it is to turn its force and power to the support of an Irish Government established for the management of local Irish affairs. There are those who think that this must lead to separation. I cannot believe in this fear, for I know of no English statesman who looks upon complete separation of Ireland from Great Britain as possible. The geographical position of Ireland, the social and commercial connection between the two peoples, renders such a thing impossible. The Irish know this, and they are not so foolish as to think that they could gain their independence by force of arms; but I do not believe that they desire it. They are satisfied to obtain the management of their own local affairs under the _ægis_ of the flag of England. The papers in this volume show how this can be done with due regard to Imperial interests and the rights of minorities. I shall not enlarge on this part of the subject, but I wish to draw attention to the working of the Irish Government, and the position which it holds in the country, for it is through its administration that the policy of the Cabinet will be carried out. At the outset I feel bound to deprecate the exaggerated condemnation which the "Castle" receives from its opponents. It has its defects. Notwithstanding efforts of various ministers to enlarge the circle from which its officials are drawn, it is still too narrow for the modern development of Irish society, and it has from time to time been recruited from partisans without sufficient regard to the efficiency and requirements of the public service. But, on the whole, its members, taken as individuals, can well bear comparison with those of other branches of the Civil Service. They are diligent; they desire to do their duty with impartiality, and to hold an even balance between many opposing interests in Ireland. Whatever party is in office, they loyally carry out the policy of their chiefs. They are, probably, more plastic to the leadership of the heads of departments than members of some English offices, and they are more quickly moved by the influences around them. Sometimes they may relapse into an attitude of indifference and inertness if their chiefs are not active; but, on the other hand, they will act with vigour and decision if they are led by men who know their own minds and desire to be firm in the government of the country. When speaking of the chiefs of the Irish Civil Service, who change according to the political party in office, we must not overlook the legal officers, who exercise a most powerful influence on Irish administration. They consist of the Lord Chancellor, the Attorney and Solicitor General, and, until 1883, there was also an officer called the Law Adviser, who was the maid-of-all-work of Castle administration. In England, those who hold similar legal offices take no part in the daily administration of public affairs. The Lord Chancellor, as a member of the Cabinet, takes his share in responsibility for the policy of the Government. The law officers are consulted in special cases, and take their part from time to time in debates in the House of Commons. In Ireland, however, the Chancellor is constantly consulted by the Lord-Lieutenant on any difficult matter of administration, and the Attorney and Solicitor General are in constant communication with the Lord-Lieutenant, if he carries out the daily work of administration, and with the Chief and the Under Secretary. Governments differ as to the use they make of these officials. Some Governments have endeavoured to confine their work to cases where a mere legal opinion has to be obtained; but, when the country is in a disturbed state, even these limited references become very frequent, and questions of policy as well as of law are often discussed with the law officers. It is needless to say that, with their knowledge of Ireland and the traditions of Castle government (it is rare that all the law officers are new to office, and, consequently, they carry on the traditions from one Government to another), they often exercise a paramount influence over the policy of the Irish Government, and practically control it. They are connected with the closest and most influential order in Irish society--the legal order, consisting of the judges and Bar of Ireland. This adds to the general weight of their advice, but it has a special bearing when cases of legal reform or administration are under consideration; it then requires unwonted courage and independence for the law officers of the Crown to support changes which the lay members of the Government deem necessary. I have known conspicuous instances of the exercise of these high qualities by law officers enabling reforms to be carried, but as a rule, particularly when the initiative of legal reform is left to them, the Irish law officers do not care to move against the feeling of the legal world in Dublin. The lawyers, like other bodies, oppose the diminution of offices and honours belonging to them, or of the funds which, in the way of fees and salaries, are distributed among members of the bar; and they become bitterly hostile to any permanent official who is known to be a firm legal reformer. It would be impossible for me not to acknowledge the great service often done to the Government by the able men who have filled the law offices, yet I feel that under certain circumstances, when their influence has been allowed too strongly to prevail, it has tended to narrow the views of the Irish Government, and to keep it within a circle too narrow for the altered circumstances of modern life. The chief peculiarity of the Irish Administration is its extreme centralization. In this two departments may be mentioned as typical of the whole--the police and administration of local justice. The police in Dublin and throughout Ireland are under the control of the Lord-Lieutenant, and both these forces are admirable of their kind. They are almost wholly maintained by Imperial funds. The Dublin force costs about £150,000 a year. The Royal Irish Constabulary costs over a million in quiet, and a million and a half in disturbed times. Local authorities have nothing to do with their action or management. Local justice is administered by unpaid magistrates as in England, but they have been assisted, and gradually are being supplanted, by magistrates appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant and paid by the State. This state of things arose many years ago from the want of confidence between resident landlords and the bulk of the people. When agrarian or religious differences disturbed a locality the people distrusted the local magistrates, and by degrees the system of stipendiary, or, as they are called, resident magistrates, spread over the country. To maintain the judicial independence and impartiality of these magistrates is of the highest importance. At one time this was in some danger, for the resident magistrates not only heard cases at petty sessions, but, as executive peace officers, to a very great extent took the control of the police in their district, not only at riots, but in following up and discovering offenders. Their position as judicial and executive officers was thus very unfortunately mixed up. Between 1882 and 1883 the Irish Government did their utmost to separate and distinguish between these two functions, and it is to be hoped that the same policy has been and will be now continued, otherwise grave mischief in the administration of justice will arise. The existence of this staff of stipendiary magistrates could not fail to weaken the influence of the gentry in local affairs, and, at the same time, other causes were at work to undermine still further their power. The spread of education, the ballot, the extension of the franchise, communication with America, all tended to strengthen the political leaning of the tenants towards the National party in Ireland, and to widen the political differences between the richer and poorer classes in the country. The result of this has been, that not only have even the best landlords gradually lost their power in Parliamentary elections and on elective boards, but the Government, which greatly relied on them for support, has become isolated. The system of centralization is felt all over the country. It was the cause of weakness in the disturbed years of 1880 and 1881, and, although the Irish Executive strengthened themselves by placing officers over several counties, on whom they devolved a great deal of responsibility, they did not by these steps meet the real difficulty, which was that everything that went wrong, whether as to police or magisterial decisions, was attributed to the management of the Castle. In this country, local authorities and benches of magistrates, quite independent of the Home Office, are held responsible for mistakes in police action or irregularities in local justice. The consequence is that there is a strong buffer to protect the character and power of the Home Office. The absence of such protection in Ireland obviously has a very prejudicial effect on the permanent influence and popularity of the Irish Government. But as long as our system of government from England exists, this centralization cannot be avoided, for it would not be possible to transfer the responsibility of the police to local representative bodies, as they are too much opposed to the landlords and the Government to be trusted when strong party differences arise; nor, for the same reason, would it be possible to fall back on local men to administer justice. The fact is, that, out of the Protestant part of Ulster, the Irish Government receives the cordial support of only the landed proprietors, and a part of the upper middle classes in the towns. The feeling of the mass of the people has been so long against them that no change in the direction of trust in any centralized government of anti-national character can be expected. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find any Municipal Council, Boards of Guardians, or Local Boards, in Leinster, Munster, or Connaught, whose members do not consist of a majority of Nationalists. At nearly all such assemblies, whenever any important political movement takes place in the country, or when the Irish Government take any action which is displeasing to the Nationalists, resolutions are discussed and carried in a spirit of sharp hostility to the Government. In Parliamentary elections we also find clear evidence of the strength of the Nationalists, and the extreme weakness of their opponents. This is a test which those who accept popular representative government cannot disregard, particularly at an election when for the first time the new constituencies were called upon to exercise the privileges entrusted to them by Parliament. Such was the election of 1885, followed in 1886 by another General Election. In 1885 contests took place in most of the Irish constituencies. They were between Liberals allied with Conservatives, and Parnellites. In 1886 the contests were between those who called themselves Unionists and Parnellites, and the Irish policy of Mr. Gladstone was specially referred to the electors. In regard to the number of members returned on the two sides, the result of each election was almost identical, but in 1886 there were fewer contests. We may, then, assume that the relative forces of Parnellites and Unionists were accurately represented at the election of 1885. If we take the votes at the election of 1885 for candidates standing as Nationalists, we shall find, roughly speaking, that they obtained in round numbers about 300,000 votes, and candidates who stood either as Liberals or Conservatives about 143,000. But the case is really stronger than these figures represent it, because in some constituencies the contests were between Liberals and Conservatives, and there can be no doubt that in those constituencies a number of Nationalist votes were given for one or both of such candidates--votes which, therefore, would have to be deducted from the 143,000, leaving a still heavier majority on the Nationalist side.[1] If we look at individual constituencies, we find that in South Kerry only 133 persons voted for the "Unionist" candidate, while 2742 voted for the Nationalist. In six out of seven constituencies in Cork where contests took place 27,692 votes were given for the Nationalists, and only 1703 for their opponents. In Dublin, in the division which may be considered the West End constituency of the Irish metropolis, the most successful man of commerce in Ireland, a leader of society, whose liberality towards those in his employment is only equalled by his munificence in all public works, was defeated by over 1900 votes. He did not stand in 1886, but his successor was defeated by a still larger majority. These elections show the numbers in Ireland on which the Government and those who oppose Mr. Parnell's policy can count for support. It is absurd to say that these results are caused by terrorism exercised over the minds of the electors by the agitators in Ireland; the same results occurred in every part of three provinces, and in part of Ulster, and the universality of the feeling proves the dominant feeling of the Irish electors. They show the extreme difficulty, the impossibility, of gaining that support and confidence which a Government needs in a free country. As it is, the Irish Government stands isolated in Ireland, and relies for support solely on England. Is a policy opposed to national feeling, which has been often, and by different Ministers, tried in Ireland, likely to succeed in the hands of a Government such as I have described, and isolated, as I think few will deny it to be? It is impossible in the long run to maintain it. The roots of strength are wanting. If we turn from Dublin to London, we do not find greater prospects of success. Twice within fourteen months Lord Salisbury has formed a Government. In 1885 his Cabinet, on taking office, deliberately decided to rule Ireland without exceptional laws; after a few months, they announced that they must ask Parliament for fresh powers. They resigned before they had defined their measures. But within six months Lord Salisbury was once more Prime Minister, and again commenced his administration by governing Ireland under the ordinary law. This attempt did not continue longer than the first, for when Parliament met in 1887, preparations were at once made to carry the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which occupied so large a portion of the late Session. This is not the action of men who have strong faith in their principles. Nor can it be shown that the continuous support so necessary for success will be given to this policy. No doubt it may be urged that the operation of the Act is not limited in duration; but, notwithstanding that, few politicians believe that the constituencies of Great Britain will long support the application of exceptional criminal laws to any part of the United Kingdom. This would be wholly inconsistent with past experience In relation to these measures, which points entirely the other way; and the publication in English newspapers and constant discussion on English platforms of the painful incidents which seem, unfortunately, inseparable from a rigid administration of the law in Ireland, together with the prolonged debates, such incidents give rise to, in Parliament, aggravate the difficulties of administration, and lead the Irish people to believe that exceptional legislation will be as short-lived in the future as it has been in the past. It was this evidence of want of continuity of policy in 1885, and the startling disclosure of the weakness of the anti-national party in Ireland at the election in the autumn of that year, which finally convinced me that the time had come when we could no longer turn to a mixed policy of remedial and exceptional criminal legislation as the means of winning the constituencies of that country in support of our old system of governing Ireland. That system has failed for eighty-six years, and obviously cannot succeed when worked with representative institutions. As the people of Great Britain will not for a moment tolerate the withdrawal of representative government from Ireland, we must adopt some new plan. What I have here written deals with but a fragment of the arguments for Home Rule, some of which are admirably set forth by the able men who have written the articles to which this is the preface. I earnestly wish that they may arrest the attention of many excellent Irishmen who still cling to the old traditions of English rule, and cause them to realize that the only way of relieving their country from the intolerable uncertainty which hangs over her commercial, social, and political interests and paralyzes all efforts for the improvement of her people, will be to form a Constitution supported by all classes of the community. I trust that they will join in this work before it is too late, for they may yet exercise a powerful and salutary influence in the settlement of this great question. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: There was one case--North Louth--in which two Nationalists opposed one another, and I have left that case out of the calculation.] AMERICAN HOME RULE BY E.L. GODKIN American experience has been frequently cited, in the course of the controversy now raging in England over the Irish question, both by way of warning and of example. For instance, I have found in the _Times_ as well as in other journals--the _Spectator_, I think, among the number--very contemptuous dismissals of the plan of offering Ireland a government like that of an American State, on the ground that the Americans are loyal to the central authority, while in Ireland there is a strong feeling of hostility to it, which would probably increase under Home Rule. The Queen's writ, it has been remarked, cannot be said to run in large parts of Ireland, while in every part of the United States the Federal writ is implicitly obeyed, and the ministers of Federal authority find ready aid and sympathy from the people. If I remember rightly, the Duke of Argyll has been very emphatic in pointing out the difference between giving local self-government to a community in which the tendencies of popular feeling are "centrifugal," and giving it to one in which these tendencies are "centripetal." The inference to be drawn was, of course, that as long as Ireland disliked the Imperial government the concession of Home Rule would be unsafe, and would only become safe when the Irish people showed somewhat the same sort of affection for the English connection which the people of the State of New York now feel for the Constitution of the United States. Among the multitude of those who have taken part in the controversy on one side or the other, no one has, so far as I have observed, pointed out that the state of feeling in America toward the central government with which the state of feeling in Ireland towards the British Government is now compared, did not exist when the American Constitution was set up; that the political tendencies in America at that time were centrifugal, not centripetal, and that the extraordinary love and admiration with which Americans now regard the Federal government are the result of eighty years' experience of its working. The first Confederation was as much as the people could bear in the way of surrendering local powers when the War of Independence came to an end. It was its hopeless failure to provide peace and security which led to the framing of the present Constitution. But even with this experience still fresh, the adoption of the Constitution was no easy matter. I shall not burden this article with historical citations showing the very great difficulty which the framers of the Constitution had in inducing the various States to adopt it, or the magnitude and variety of the fears and suspicions with which, many of the most influential men in all parts of the country regarded it. Any one who wishes to know how numerous and diversified these fears and suspicions were, cannot do better than read the series of papers known as "The Federalist," written mainly by Hamilton and Madison, to commend the new plan to the various States. It was adopted almost as a matter of necessity, that is, as the only way out of the Slough of Despond in which the Confederation had plunged the union of the States; but the objections to it which were felt at the beginning were only removed by actual trial. Hamilton's two colleagues, as delegates from New York, Yates and Lansing, withdrew in disgust from the Convention, as soon as the Constitution was outlined, and did not return. The notion that the Constitution was produced by the craving of the American people for something of that sort to love and revere, and that it was not bestowed on them until they had given ample assurance that they would lavish affection on it, has no foundation whatever in fact. The devotion of Americans to the Union is, indeed, as clear a case of cause and effect as is to be found in political history. They have learned to like the Constitution because the country has prospered under it, and because it has given them all the benefits of national life without interference with local liberties. If they had not set up a central government until the centrifugal sentiment had disappeared from the States, and the feeling of loyalty for a central authority had fully shown itself, they would assuredly never have set it up at all. Moreover, it has to be borne in mind that the adoption of the Constitution did not involve the surrender of any local franchises, by which the people of the various States set great store. The States preserved fully four-fifths of their autonomy, or in fact nearly all of it which closely concerned the daily lives of individuals. Set aside the post-office, and a citizen of the State of New York, not engaged in foreign trade, might, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, have passed a long and busy life without once coming in contact with a United States official, and without being made aware in any of his doings, by any restriction or regulation, that he was living under any government but that of his own State. If he went abroad he had to apply for a United States passport. If he quarrelled with a foreigner, or with the citizen of another State, he might be sued in the Federal Court. If he imported foreign goods he had to pay duties to the collector of a Federal Custom-house. If he invented something, or wrote a book, he had to apply to the Department of the Interior for a patent or a copyright. But how few there were in the first seventy years of American history who had any of these experiences! No one supposes, or has ever supposed, that had the Federalists demanded any very large sacrifice of local franchises, or attempted to set up even a close approach to a centralized Government, the adoption of the Constitution would have been possible. If, for instance, such a transfer of both administration and legislation to the central authority as took place in Ireland after the Union had been proposed, it would have been rejected with derision. You will get no American to argue with you on this point. If you ask him whether he thinks it likely that a highly centralized government could have been created in 1879--such a one, for example, as Ireland has been under since 1800--or whether if created it would by this time have won the affection of the people, or filled them with centripetal tendencies, he will answer you with a smile. The truth is that nowhere, any more than in Ireland, do people love their Government from a sense of duty or because they crave an object of political affection, or even because it exalts them in the eyes of foreigners. They love it because they are happy or prosperous under it; because it supplies security in the form best suited to their tastes and habits, or in some manner ministers to their self-love. Loyalty to the king as the Lord's anointed, without any sense either of favours received or expected, has played a great part in European politics, I admit; but, for reasons which I will not here take up space in stating, a political arrangement, whether it be an elected monarch or a constitution, cannot be made, in our day, to reign in men's hearts except as the result of benefits so palpable that common people, as well as political philosophers, can see them and count them. Many of the opponents of Home Rule, too, point to the vigour with which the United States Government put down the attempt made by the South to break up the Union as an example of the American love of "imperial unity," and of the spirit in which England should now meet the Irish demands for local autonomy. This again is rather surprising, because you will find no one in America who will maintain for one moment that troops could have been raised in 1860 to undertake the conquest of the South for the purpose of setting up a centralized administration, or, in other words, for the purpose of wiping out State lines, or diminishing State authority. No man or party proposed anything of this kind at the outbreak of the war, or would have dared to propose it. The object for which the North rose in arms, and which Lincoln had in view when he called for troops, was the restoration of the Union just as it was when South Carolina seceded, barring the extension of slavery into the territories. During the first year of the war, certainly, the revolted States might at any time have had peace on the _status quo_ basis, that is, without the smallest diminution of their rights and immunities under the Constitution. It was only when it became evident that the war would have to be fought out to a finish, as the pugilists say--that is, that it would have to end in a complete conquest of the Southern territory--that the question, what would become of the States as a political organization after the struggle was over, began to be debated at all. What did become of them? How did Americans deal with Home Rule, after it had been used to set on foot against the central authority what the newspapers used to delight in calling "the greatest rebellion the world ever saw"? The answer to these questions is, it seems to me, a contribution of some value to the discussion of the Irish problem in its present stage, if American precedents can throw any light whatever on it. There was a Joint Committee of both Houses of Congress appointed in 1866 to consider the condition of the South with reference to the safety or expediency of admitting the States lately in rebellion to their old relations to the Union, including representation in Congress. It contained, besides such fanatical enemies of the South as Thaddeus Stevens, such very conservative men as Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Grimes, Mr. Morrill, and Mr. Conkling. Here is the account they gave of the condition of Southern feeling one year after Lee's surrender:-- "Examining the evidence taken by your committee still further, in connection with facts too notorious to be disputed, it appears that the Southern press, with few exceptions, and those mostly of newspapers recently established by Northern men, abounds with weekly and daily abuse of the institutions and people of the loyal States; defends the men who led, and the principles which incited, the rebellion; denounces and reviles Southern men who adhered to the Union; and strives constantly and unscrupulously, by every means in its power, to keep alive the fire of hate and discord between the sections; calling upon the President to violate his oath of office, overturn the Government by force of arms, and drive the representatives of the people from their seats in Congress. The national banner is openly insulted, and the national airs scoffed at, not only by an ignorant populace, but at public meetings, and once, among other notable instances, at a dinner given in honour of a notorious rebel who had violated his oath and abandoned his flag. The same individual is elected to an important office in the leading city of his State, although an unpardoned rebel, and so offensive that the President refuses to allow him to enter upon his official duties. In another State the leading general of the rebel armies is openly nominated for Governor by the Speaker of the House of Delegates, and the nomination is hailed by the people with shouts of satisfaction, and openly endorsed by the press.... "The evidence of an intense hostility to the Federal Union, and an equally intense love of the late Confederacy, nurtured by the war is decisive. While it appears that nearly all are willing to submit, at least for the time being, to the Federal authority, it is equally clear that the ruling motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will be derived from a representation in Congress. Officers of the Union army on duty, and Northern men who go south to engage in business, are generally detested and proscribed. Southern men who adhered to the Union are bitterly hated and relentlessly persecuted. In some localities prosecutions have been instituted in State courts against Union officers for acts done in the line of official duty, and similar prosecutions are threatened elsewhere as soon as the United States troops are removed. All such demonstrations show a state of feeling against which it is unmistakably necessary to guard. "The testimony is conclusive that after the collapse of the Confederacy the feeling of the people of the rebellious States was that of abject submission. Having appealed to the tribunal of arms, they had no hope except that by the magnanimity of their conquerors, their lives, and possibly their property, might be preserved. Unfortunately the general issue of pardons to persons who had been prominent in the rebellion, and the feeling of kindliness and conciliation manifested by the Executive, and very generally indicated through the Northern press, had the effect to render whole communities forgetful of the crime they had committed, defiant towards the Federal Government, and regardless of their duties as citizens. The conciliatory measures of the Government do not seem to have been met even half-way. The bitterness and defiance exhibited towards the United States under such circumstances is without a parallel in the history of the world. In return for our leniency we receive only an insulting denial of our authority. In return for our kind desire for the resumption of fraternal relations we receive only an insolent assumption of rights and privileges long since forfeited. The crime we have punished is paraded as a virtue, and the principles of republican government which we have vindicated at so terrible a cost are denounced as unjust and oppressive. "If we add to this evidence the fact that, although peace has been declared by the President, he has not, to this day, deemed it safe to restore the writ of _habeas corpus_, to relieve the insurrectionary States of martial law, nor to withdraw the troops from many localities, and that the commanding general deems an increase of the army indispensable to the preservation of order and the protection of loyal and well-disposed people in the South, the proof of a condition of feeling hostile to the Union and dangerous to the Government throughout the insurrectionary States would seem to be overwhelming." This Committee recommended a series of coercive measures, the first of which was the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, which disqualified for all office, either under the United States or under any State, any person who having in any capacity taken an oath of allegiance to the United States afterwards engaged in rebellion or gave aid and comfort to the rebels. This denied the _jus honorum_ to all the leading men at the South who had survived the war. In addition to it, an Act was passed in March, 1867, which put all the rebel States under military rule until a constitution should have been framed by a Convention elected by all males over twenty-one, except such as would be excluded from office by the above-named constitutional amendment if it were adopted, which at that time it had not been. Another Act was passed three weeks later, prescribing, for voters in the States lately in rebellion, what was known as the "ironclad oath," which excluded from the franchise not only all who had borne arms against the United States, but all who, having ever held any office for which the taking an oath of allegiance to the United States was a qualification, had afterwards ever given "aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." This practically disfranchised all the white men of the South over twenty-five years old. On this legislation there grew up, as all the world now knows, what was called the "carpet-bag" _regime_. Swarms of Northern adventurers went down to the Southern States, organized the ignorant negro voters, constructed State constitutions to suit themselves, got themselves elected to all the chief offices, plundered the State treasuries, contracted huge State debts, and stole the proceeds in connivance with legislatures composed mainly of negroes, of whom the most intelligent and instructed had been barbers and hotel-waiters. In some of the States, such as South Carolina and Mississippi, in which the negro population were in the majority, the government became a mere caricature. I was in Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, in 1872, during the session of the legislature, when you could obtain the passage of almost any measure you pleased by a small payment--at that time seven hundred dollars--to an old negro preacher who controlled the coloured majority. Under the pretence of fitting up committee-rooms, the private lodging-rooms at the boarding-houses of the negro members, in many instances, were extravagantly furnished with Wilton and Brussels carpets, mirrors, and sofas. A thousand dollars were expended for two hundred elegant imported china spittoons. There were only one hundred and twenty-three members in the House of Representatives, but the residue were, perhaps, transferred to the private chambers of the legislators. Now, how did the Southern whites deal with this state of things? Well, I am sorry to say they manifested their discontent very much in the way in which the Irish have for the last hundred years been manifesting theirs. If, as the English opponents of Home Rule seem to think, readiness to commit outrages, and refusal to sympathize with the victims of outrages, indicate political incapacity, the whites of the South showed, in the period between 1866 and 1876, that they were utterly unfit to be entrusted with the work of self-government. They could not rise openly in revolt because the United States troops were everywhere at the service of the carpet-baggers, for the suppression of armed resistance. They did not send petitions to Congress, or write letters to the Northern newspapers, or hold indignation meetings. They simply formed a huge secret society on the model of the "Molly Maguires" or "Moonlighters," whose special function was to intimidate, flog, mutilate, or murder political opponents in the night time. This society was called the "Ku-Klux Klan." Let me give some account of its operation, and I shall make it as brief as possible. It had become so powerful in 1871 that President Grant in that year, in his message to Congress, declared that "a condition of things existed in some of the States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the carrying of the mails and the collecting of the revenue dangerous." A Joint Select Committee of Congress was accordingly appointed, early in 1872, to "inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrectionary States, so far as regards the execution of the laws and the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of the United States." Its report now lies before me, and it reads uncommonly like the speech of an Irish Secretary in the House of Commons bringing in a "Suppression of Crime Bill." The Committee say-- "There is a remarkable concurrence of testimony to the effect that, in those of the late rebellious States into whose condition we have examined, the courts and juries administer justice between man and man in all ordinary cases, civil and criminal; and while there is this concurrence on this point, the evidence is equally decisive that redress cannot be obtained against those who commit crimes in disguise and at night. The reasons assigned are that identification is difficult, almost impossible; that, when this is attempted, the combinations and oaths of the order come in and release the culprit by perjury, either upon the witness-stand or in the jury-box; and that the terror inspired by their acts, as well as the public sentiment in their favour in many localities, paralyzes the arm of civil power. * * * * * "The murders and outrages which have been perpetrated in many counties of Middle and West Tennessee, during the past few months, have been so numerous, and of such an aggravated character, as almost baffles investigation. In these counties a reign of terror exists which is so absolute in its nature that the best of citizens are unable or unwilling to give free expression to their opinions. The terror inspired by the secret organization known as the Ku-Klux Klan is so great, that the officers of the law are powerless to execute its provisions, to discharge their duties, or to bring the guilty perpetrators of these outrages to the punishment they deserve. Their stealthy movements are generally made under cover of night, and under masks and disguises, which render their identification difficult, if not impossible. To add to the secrecy which envelops their operations, is the fact that no information of their murderous acts can be obtained without the greatest difficulty and danger in the localities where they are committed. No one dares to inform upon them, or take any measures to bring them to punishment, because no one can tell but that he may be the next victim of their hostility or animosity. The members of this organization, with their friends, aiders, and abettors, take especial pains to conceal all their operations. * * * * * "Your committee believe that during the past six months, the murders--to say nothing of other outrages--would average one a day, or one for every twenty-four hours; that in the great majority of these cases they have been perpetrated by the Ku-Klux above referred to, and few, if any, have been brought to punishment. A number of the counties of this State (Tennessee) are entirely at the mercy of this organization, and roving bands of nightly marauders bid defiance to the civil authorities, and threaten to drive out every man, white or black, who does not submit to their arbitrary dictation. To add to the general lawlessness of these communities, bad men of every description take advantage of the circumstances surrounding them, and perpetrate acts of violence, from personal or pecuniary motives, under the plea of political necessity." Here is some of the evidence on which the report was based. A complaint of outrages committed in Georgia was referred by the general of the army, in June, 1869, to the general of the Department of the South for thorough investigation and report. General Terry, in his report, made August 14, 1869, says[2]-- "In many parts of the State there is practically no government. The worst of crimes are committed, and no attempt is made to punish those who commit them. Murders have been and are frequent; the abuse, in various ways, of the blacks is too common to excite notice. There can be no doubt of the existence of numerous insurrectionary organizations known as 'Ku-Klux Klans,' who, shielded by their disguise, by the secrecy of their movements, and by the terror which they inspire, perpetrate crime with impunity. There is great reason to believe that in some cases local magistrates are in sympathy with the members of these organizations. In many places they are overawed by them and dare not attempt to punish them. To punish such offenders by civil proceedings would be a difficult task, even were magistrates in all cases disposed and had they the courage to do their duty, for the same influences which govern them equally affect juries and witnesses." Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Merrill, who assumed command (in Louisiana) on the 26th of March, and commenced investigation into the state of affairs, says (p. 1465)-- "From the best information I can get, I estimate the number of cases of whipping, beating, and personal violence of various grades, in this county, since the first of last November, at between three and four hundred, excluding numerous minor cases of threats, intimidation, abuse, and small personal violence, as knocking down with a pistol or gun, etc. The more serious outrages, exclusive of murders and whippings, noted hereafter, have been the following:--" He then proceeds with the details of sixty-eight cases, giving the names of the parties injured, white and black, and including the tearing up of the railway, on the night before a raid was made by the Ku-Klux on the county treasury building. The rails were taken up, to prevent the arrival of the United States troops, who, it was known, were to come on Sunday morning. The raid was made on that Sunday night while the troops were lying at Chester, twenty-two miles distant, unable to reach Yorkville, because of the rails being torn up. Another witness said: "To give the details of the whipping of men to compel them to change their mode of voting, the tearing of them away from their families at night, accompanied with insults and outrage, and followed by their murder, would be but repeating what has been described in other States, showing that it is the same organization in all, working by the same means for the same end. Five murders are shown to have been committed in Monroe County, fifteen in Noxubee, one in Lowndes, by the testimony taken in the city of Washington; but the extent to which school-houses were burnt, teachers whipped, and outrages committed in this State, cannot be fully given until the testimony taken by the sub-committee shall have been printed and made ready to report." There are about eighty, closely printed, large octavo pages of this kind of testimony given by sufferers from the outrages. Something was done to suppress the Ku-Klux by a Federal Act passed in 1871, which made offences of this kind punishable in the Federal Courts. Considerable numbers of them were arrested, tried, and convicted, and sent to undergo their punishment in the Northern jails. But there was no complete pacification of the South until the carpet-bag governments were refused the support of the Federal troops by President Hayes, on his accession to power in 1876. Then the carpet-bag _régime_ disappeared like a house of cards. The chief carpet-baggers fled, and the government passed at once into the hands of the native whites. I do not propose to defend or explain the way in which they have since then kept it in their hands, by suppressing or controlling the negro vote. This is not necessary to my purpose. What I seek to show is that the Irish are not peculiar in their manner of expressing their discontent with a government directed or controlled by the public opinion of another indifferent or semi-hostile community which it is impossible to resist in open warfare; that Anglo-Saxons resort to somewhat the same methods under similar circumstances, and that lawlessness and cruelty, considered as expressions of political animosity, do not necessarily argue any incapacity for the conduct of an orderly and efficient government, although I admit freely that they do argue a low state of civilization. I will add one more illustration which, although more remote than those which I have taken from the Southern States during the reconstruction period, is not too remote for my purpose, and is in some respects stronger than any of them. I do not know a more orderly community in the world, or one which, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, when manufactures began to multiply, and the Irish immigration began to pour in, had a higher average of intelligence than the State of Connecticut. Down to 1818 all voters in that State had to be members of the Congregational Church. It had no large cities, and this, with the aid of its seat of learning, Yale College, preserved in it, I think, in greater purity than even Massachusetts, the old Puritan simplicity of manners, the Puritan spirit of order and thrift, and the business-like view of government which grew out of the practice of town government. A less sentimental community, I do not think, exists anywhere, or one in which the expression of strong feeling on any subject but religion is less cultivated or viewed with less favour. In the matter of managing their own political affairs in peace or war, I do not expect the Irish to equal the Connecticut people for a hundred years to come, no matter how much practice they may have in the interval, and I think that fifty years ago it was only picked bodies of Englishmen who could do so. Yet, in 1833, in the town of Canterbury, one of the most orderly and intelligent in the State, an estimable and much-esteemed lady, Miss Prudence Crandall, was carrying on a girls' school, when something happened to touch her conscience about the condition of the free negroes of the North. She resolved, in a moment of enthusiasm, to undertake the education of negro girls only. What follows forms one of the most famous episodes in the anti-slavery struggle in America, and is possibly familiar to many of the older readers of this article. I shall extract the account of it as given briefly in the lately published life of William Lloyd Garrison, by his sons. Some of the details are much worse than is here described. "The story of this remarkable case cannot be pursued here except in brief.... It will be enough to say that the struggle between the modest and heroic young Quaker woman and the town lasted for nearly two years; that the school was opened in April; that attempts were immediately made under the law to frighten the pupils away and to fine Miss Crandall for harbouring them; that in May an Act prohibiting private schools for non-resident coloured persons, and providing for the expulsion of the latter, was procured from the legislature, amid the greatest rejoicing in Canterbury (even to the ringing of church bells); that, under this Act, Miss Crandall was in June arrested and temporarily imprisoned in the county jail, twice tried (August and October) and convicted; that her case was carried up to the Supreme Court of Errors, and her persecutors defeated on a technicality (July, 1834), and that pending this litigation the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to isolate the school from the countenance and even the physical support of the townspeople. The shops and the meeting-house were closed against teacher and pupils, carriage in the public conveyances was denied them, physicians would not wait upon them, Miss Crandall's own family and friends were forbidden, under penalty of heavy fines, to visit her, the well was filled with manure and water from other sources refused, the house itself was smeared with filth, assailed with rotten eggs and stones, and finally set on fire" (vol. i. p. 321). Miss Crandall is still living in the West, in extreme old age, and the Connecticut legislature voted her a small pension two years ago, as a slight expiation of the ignominy and injustice from which she had suffered at the hands of a past generation. The _Spectator_ frequently refers to the ferocious hatred displayed toward the widow of Curtin, the man who was cruelly murdered by moonlighters somewhere in Kerry, as an evidence of barbarism which almost, if not quite, justifies the denial of self-government to a people capable of producing such monsters in one spot and on one occasion. Let me match this from Mississippi with a case which I produce, not because it was singular, but because it was notorious at the North, where it occurred, in 1877. One Chisholm, a native of the State, and a man of good standing and character, became a Republican after the war, and was somewhat active in organizing the negro voters in his district. He was repeatedly warned by some of his neighbours to desist and abandon politics, but continued resolutely on his course. A mob, composed of many of the leading men in the town, then attacked him in his house. He made his escape, with his wife and young daughter and son, a lad of fourteen, to the jail. His assailants broke the jail open, and killed him and his son, and desperately wounded the daughter. The poor lad received such a volley of bullets, that his blood went in one rush to the floor, and traced the outlines of his trunk on the ceiling of the room below, where it remained months afterwards, an eye-witness told me, as an illustration of the callousness of the jailer. The leading murderers were tried. They had no defence. The facts were not disputed. The judge and the bar did their duty, but the jury acquitted the prisoners without leaving their seats. Mrs. Chisholm, the widow, found neither sympathy nor friends at the scene of the tragedy. She had to leave the State, and found refuge in Washington, where she now holds a clerkship in the Treasury department. Let me cite as another illustration the violent ways in which popular discontent may find expression in communities whose political capacity and general respect for the law and its officers, as well as for the sanctity of contracts, have never been questioned. Large tracts of land were formerly held along the Hudson river in the State of New York, by a few families, of which the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons were the chief, either under grants from the Dutch at the first settlement of the colony, or from the English Crown after the conquest. That known as the "Manor of Rensselaerwick," held by the Van Rensselaers, comprised a tract of country extending twenty-four miles north and south, and forty-eight miles east and west, lying on each side of the Hudson river. It was held by the tenants for perpetual leases. The rents were, on the Van Rensselaer estate, fourteen bushels of wheat for each hundred acres, and four fat hens, and one day's service with a carriage and horses, to each farm of one hundred and sixty acres. Besides this, there was a fine on alienation amounting to about half a year's rent. The Livingston estates were let in much the same way. In 1839, Stephen Van Rensselaer, the proprietor, or "Patroon" as he was called, died, with $400,000 due to him as arrears from the tenants, for which, being a man of easy temper, he had forborne to press them. But he left the amount in trust by his will for the payment of his debts, and his heirs proceeded to collect it, and persisted in the attempt during the ensuing seven years. What then happened I shall describe in the words of Mr. John Bigelow. Mr. Tilden was a member of the State Legislature in 1846, and was appointed Chairman of a Committee to investigate the rent troubles, and make the report which furnished the basis for the legislation by which they were subsequently settled. Mr. Bigelow, who has edited Mr. Tilden's _Public Writings and Speeches_, prefaces the report with the following explanatory note:-- "Attempts were made to enforce the collection of these rents. The tenants resisted. They established armed patrols, and, by the adoption of various disguises, were enabled successfully to defy the civil authorities. Eventually it became necessary to call out the military, but the result was only partially satisfactory. These demonstrations of authority provoked the formation of 'anti-rent clubs' throughout the manorial district, with a view of acquiring a controlling influence in the legislature. Small bands, armed and disguised as Indians, were also formed to hold themselves in readiness at all times to resist the officers of the law whenever and wherever they attempted to serve legal process upon the tenants. The principal roads throughout the infected district were guarded by the bands so carefully, and the animosity between the tenants and the civil authorities was so intense, that at last it became dangerous for any one not an anti-renter to be found in these neighbourhoods. It was equally dangerous for the landlords to make any appeal to the law or for the collection of rents or for protection of their persons. When Governor Wright entered upon his duties in Albany in 1845, he found that the anti-rent party had a formidable representation in the legislature, and that the questions involved were assuming an almost national importance." The sheriff made gallant attempts to enforce the law, but his deputies were killed, and a legal investigation in which two hundred persons were examined, failed to reveal the perpetrators of the crime. The militia were called out, but they were no more successful than the sheriff. In the case of one murder committed in Delaware County in 1845, however, two persons were convicted, but their sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. Various others concerned in the disturbances were convicted of minor offences, but when Governor Young succeeded Governor Seward after an election in which the anti-renters showed considerable voting strength, he pardoned them all on the ground that their crimes were political. The dispute was finally settled by a compromise--that is, the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons both sold their estates, giving quit-claim deeds to the tenants for what they chose to pay, and the granting of agricultural leases for a longer term than twelve years was forbidden by the State Constitution of 1846. This anti-rent agitation is described by Professor Johnston of Princeton, in the _Cyclopædia of Political Science_, as "a reign of terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law and the payment of rent throughout the district." Suppose all the land of the State had been held under similar tenures; that the controversy had lasted one hundred years; that the rents had been high; and that the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons had had the aid of the Federal army in enforcing distraints and evictions, and in enabling them to set local opinion at defiance, what do you suppose the state of morals and manners would have been in New York by this time? What would have been the feelings of the people towards the Federal authority had the matter been finally adjusted with the strong hand, in accordance, not with the views of the people of the State, but of the landholders of South Carolina or of the district of Columbia? I am afraid they would have been terribly Irish. I know very well the risk I run, in citing all these precedents and parallels, of seeming to justify, or at all events to palliate, Irish lawlessness. But I am not doing anything of the kind. I am trying to illustrate a somewhat trite remark which I recently made: "that government is a very practical business, and that those succeed best in it who bring least sentiment or enthusiasm to the conduct of their affairs." The government of Ireland, like the government of all other countries, is a piece of business--a very difficult piece of business, I admit--and therefore horror over Irish doings, and the natural and human desire to "get even with" murderers and moonlighters, by denying the community which produces them something it would like much to possess, should have no influence with those who are charged with Irish government. It is only in nurseries and kindergartens that we can give offenders their exact due and withhold their toffee until they have furnished satisfactory proofs of repentance. Rulers of men have to occupy themselves mainly with the question of drying up the sources of crime, and often, in order to accomplish this, to let much crime and disorder go unwhipped of justice. With the state of mind which cannot bear to see any concessions made to the Irish Nationalists because they are such wicked men, in which so many excellent Englishmen, whom we used to think genuine political philosophers, are now living, we are very familiar in the United States. It is a state of mind which prevailed in the Republican party with regard to the South, down to the election of 1884, and found constant expression on the stump and in the newspapers in what is described, in political slang, as "waving the bloody shirt." It showed itself after the war in unwillingness to release the South from military rule; then in unwillingness to remove the disfranchisement of the whites or to withdraw from the carpet-bag State governments the military support without which they could not have existed for a day; and, last of all, in dread of the advent of a Democratic Federal Administration in which Southerners or "ex-rebels" would be likely to hold office. At first the whole Republican party was more or less permeated by these ideas; but the number of those who held them gradually diminished, until in 1884 it was at last possible to elect a Democratic President. Nevertheless a great multitude witnessed the entrance into the White House of a President who is indebted for his election mainly to the States formerly in rebellion, with genuine alarm. They feared from it something dreadful, in the shape either of a violation of the rights of the freedmen, or of an assault on the credit and stability of the Federal Government. Nothing but actual experiment would have disabused them. I am very familiar with the controversy with them, for I have taken some part in it ever since the passage of the reconstruction Acts, and I know very well how they felt, and am sometimes greatly impressed by the similarity between their arguments and those of the opponents of Irish Home Rule. One of their fixed beliefs for many years, though it is now extinct, was that Southerners were so bent on rebelling again, and were generally so prone to rebellion, that the awful consequences of their last attempt in the loss of life and property, had made absolutely no impression on them. The Southerner was, in fact, in their eyes, what Mr. Gladstone says the Irishman is in the eyes of some Englishmen: "A _lusus naturæ_; that justice, common sense, moderation, national prosperity had no meaning for him; that all he could appreciate was strife and perpetual dissension. It was for many years useless to point out to them the severity of the lesson taught by the Civil War as to the physical superiority of the North, or the necessity of peace and quiet to enable the new generation of Southerners to restore their fortunes, or even gain a livelihood. Nor was it easy to impress them with the inconsistency of arguing that it was slavery which made Southerners what they were before they went to war, and maintaining at the same time that the disappearance of slavery would produce no change in their manners, ideas, or opinions. All this they answered by pointing to speeches delivered by some fiery adorer of "the lost cause," to the Ku-Klux outrages, to political murders, like that of Chisholm, to the building of monuments to the Confederate dead, or to some newspaper expression of reverence for Confederate nationality. In fact, for fully ten years after the close of the war the collection of Southern "outrages" and their display before Northern audiences, was the chief work of Republican politicians. In 1876, during the Hayes-Tilden canvass, the opening speech which furnished what is called "the key-note of the campaign" was made by Mr. Wheeler, the Republican candidate for the Vice-Presidency, and his advice to the Vermonters, to whom it was delivered, was "to vote as they shot," that is, to go to the polls with the same feelings and aims as those with which they enlisted in the war. I need hardly tell English readers how all this has ended. The withdrawal of the Federal troops from the South by President Hayes, and the consequent complete restoration of the State governments to the discontented whites, have fully justified the expectations of those who maintained that it is no less true in politics than in physics, that if you remove what you see to be the cause, the effect will surely disappear. It is true, at least in the Western world, that if you give communities in a reasonable degree the management of their own affairs, the love of material comfort and prosperity which is now so strong among all civilized, and even partially civilized men, is sure in the long run to do the work of creating and maintaining order; or, as Mr. Gladstone has expressed it, in setting up a government, "the best and surest foundation we can find to build on is the foundation afforded by the affections, the convictions, and the will of men." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: Report of Secretary of War, 1869-70, vol. i. p. 89.] HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS. BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P. In the Home Rule contest of the last eighteen months no argument has been more frequently used against the Liberal party than the charge of sudden, and therefore, it would seem, dishonest change of view. "You were opposed to an Irish Parliament at the election of 1880 and for some time afterward; you are not entitled to advocate it in 1886." "You passed a Coercion Bill in 1881, your Ministry (though against the protests of an active section of its supporters) passed another Coercion Bill in 1882; you have no right to resist a third such Bill in 1887, and, if you do, your conduct can be due to nothing but party spite and revenge at your own exclusion from office." Reproaches of this kind are now the stock-in-trade, not merely of the ordinary politician, who, for want of a case, abuses the plaintiff's attorney, but of leading men, and, still more, of leading newspapers, who might be thought bound to produce from recent events and an examination of the condition of Ireland some better grounds for the passion they display. It is noticeable that such reproaches come more often from the so-called Liberal Unionists than from the present Ministry. Perhaps, with their belief that all Liberals are unprincipled revolutionaries, the Tories deem a sin more or less to be of small account. Perhaps a recollection of their own remarkable gyrations, before and after the General Election of 1885, may suggest that the less said about the past the better for everybody. Be the cause what it may, it is surprising to find that a section commanding so much ability as the group of Dissentient Liberals does, should rely rather on the charge of inconsistency than on the advocacy of any counter-policy of their own. It is not large and elevated, but petty, minds that rejoice to say to an opponent (and all the more so if he was once a friend), "You must either be wrong now, or have been wrong then, because you have changed your opinion. I have not changed; I was right then, and I am right now." Such an argument not only dispenses with the necessity of sifting the facts, but it fosters the satisfaction of the person who employs it. Consistency is the pet virtue of the self-righteous, and the man who values himself on his consistency can seldom be induced to see that to shut one's eyes to the facts which time develops, to refuse to reconsider one's position by the light they shed, to cling to an old solution when the problem is substantially new, is a proof, not of fortitude and wisdom, but rather of folly and conceit. Such persons may be left to the contemplation of their own virtues. But there are many fair-minded men of both political parties, or of neither, who, while acquitting those Liberal members who supported Home Rule in 1886 and opposed Coercion in 1887 of the sordid or spiteful motives with which the virulence of journalism credits them, have nevertheless been surprised at the apparent swiftness and completeness of the change in their opinions. It would be idle to deny that, in startling the minds of steady-going people, this change did, for the moment, weaken the influence and weight of those who had changed. This must be so. A man who says now what he denied six years ago cannot expect to be believed on his _ipse dixit_. He must set forth the grounds of his conviction. He must explain how his views altered, and why reasons which formerly satisfied him satisfy him no longer. It may be that the Liberal party have omitted to do this as they ought. Occupied by warm and incessant discussions, and conscious, I venture to believe, of their own honesty, few of its members have been at the trouble of showing what were the causes which modified their views, and what the stages of the process which carried them from the position of 1880 to that of 1886. Of that process I shall attempt in the following pages to give a sketch. Such a sketch, though mainly retrospective, is pertinent to the issues which now divide the country. It will indicate the origin and the strength of the chief reasons by which Liberals are now governed. And, if executed with proper fairness and truth, it may, as a study in contemporary history, be of some little interest to those who in future will attempt to understand our present conflict. The causes which underlie changes of opinion are among the most obscure phenomena in history, because those who undergo, these changes are often only half conscious of them, and do not think of recording that which is imperceptible in its growth, and whose importance is not realized till it already belongs to the past. The account which follows is based primarily on my own recollection of the phases of opinion and feeling through which I myself, and the friends whom I knew most intimately in the House of Commons, passed during the Parliament which sat from 1880 till 1885. But I should not think of giving it to the public if I did not believe that what happened to our minds happened to many others also, and that the record of our own slow movement from the position of 1880 to that of 1886 is substantially a record of the movement of the Liberal party at large. We were fairly typical members of that party, loyal to our leaders, but placing the principles for which the Liberal party exists above the success of the party itself; with our share of prepossessions and prejudices, yet with reasonably open minds, and (as we believed) inferior to no other section of the House of Commons in patriotism and in attachment to the Constitution. I admit frankly that when we entered Parliament we knew less about the Irish question than we ought to have known, and that even after knowledge had been forced upon us, we were more deferential to our leaders than was good either for us or for them. But these are faults always chargeable on the great majority of members. It is because those of whom I speak were in these respects fairly typical, that it seems worth while to trace the history of their opinions. If any one should accuse me of attributing to an earlier year sentiments which began to appear in a later one, I can only reply that I am aware of this danger, as one which always besets those who recall their past states of mind, and that I have done my utmost to avoid it. The change I have to describe was slow and gradual. It was reluctant--that is to say, it seemed rather forced upon us by the teaching of events than the work of our own minds. Each session marked a further stage in it; and I therefore propose to examine its progress session by session. Session of 1880.--The General Election of 1880 turned mainly on the foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government. Few Liberal candidates said much about Ireland. Absorbed in the Eastern and Afghan questions, they had not watched the progress of events in Ireland with the requisite care, nor realized the gravity of the crisis which was approaching. They were anxious to do justice to Ireland, in the way of amending both the land laws and local government, but saw no reason for going further. Nearly all of them refused, even when pressed by Irish electors in their constituencies, to promise to vote for that "parliamentary inquiry into the demand for Home Rule," which was then propounded by those electors as a sort of test question. We (_i.e._ the Liberal candidates of 1880) then declared that we thought an Irish Parliament would involve serious constitutional difficulties, and that we saw no reason why the Imperial Parliament should not do full justice to Ireland. Little was said about Coercion. Hopes were expressed that it would not be resorted to, but very few (if any) pledged themselves against it. When Mr. Forster was appointed Irish Secretary in Mr. Gladstone's Government which the General Election brought into power, we (by which I mean throughout the new Liberal members) were delighted. We knew him to be conscientious, industrious, kind-hearted. We believed him to be penetrating and judicious. We applauded his conduct in not renewing the Coercion Act which Lord Beaconsfield's Government had failed to renew before dissolving Parliament, and which indeed there was scarcely time left after the election to renew, a fact which did not save Mr. Forster from severe censure on the part of the Tories. The chief business of the session was the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which Mr. Forster brought in for the sake of saving from immediate eviction tenants whom a succession of bad seasons had rendered utterly unable to pay their rents. This Bill was pressed through the House of Commons with the utmost difficulty, and at an expenditure of time which damaged the other work of the session, though the House continued to sit into September. The Executive Government declared it to be necessary, in order not only to relieve the misery of the people, but to secure the tranquillity of the country. Nevertheless, the whole Tory party, and a considerable section of the Liberal party, opposed it in the interests of the Irish landlords, and of economic principles in general, principles which (as commonly understood in England) it certainly trenched on. When it reached the House of Lords it was contemptuously rejected, and the unhappy Irish Secretary left to face as he best might the cries of a wretched peasantry and the rising tide of outrage. What was even more remarkable, was the coolness with which the Liberal party took the defeat of a Bill their leaders had pronounced absolutely needed. Had it been an English Bill of the same consequence to England as it was to Ireland, the country would have been up in arms against the House of Lords, demanding the reform or the abolition of a Chamber which dared to disregard the will of the people. But nothing of the kind happened. It was only an Irish measure. We relieved ourselves by a few strong words, and the matter dropped. It was in this session that the Liberal party first learnt what sort of a spirit was burning in the hearts of Irish members. There had been obstruction in the last years of the previous Parliament, but, as the Tories were in power, they had to bear the brunt of it. Now that a Liberal Ministry reigned, it fell on the Liberals. At first it incensed us. Full of our own good intentions towards Ireland, we thought it contrary to nature that Irish members should worry us, their friends, as they had worried Tories, their hereditary enemies. Presently we came to understand how matters stood. The Irish members made little difference between the two great English parties. Both represented to them a hostile domination. Both were ignorant of the condition of their country. Both cared so little about Irish questions that nothing less than deeds of violence out of doors or obstruction within doors could secure their attention. Concessions had to be extorted from both by the same devices; Coercion might be feared at the hands of both. Hence the Irish party was resolved to treat both parties alike, and play off the one against the other in the interests of Ireland alone, using the questions which divide Englishmen and Scotchmen merely as levers whereby to effect their own purposes, because themselves quite indifferent to the substantial merits of those questions. To us new members this was an alarming revelation. We found that the House of Commons consisted of two distinct and dissimilar bodies: a large British body (including some few Tories and Liberals from Ireland), which, though it was distracted by party quarrels, really cared for the welfare of the country and the dignity of the House, and would set aside its quarrels in the presence of a great emergency; and a small Irish body, which, though it spoke the English language, was practically foreign, felt no interest in, no responsibility for, the business of Britain or the Empire, and valued its place in the House only as a means of making itself so disagreeable as to obtain its release. When we had grasped this fact, we began to reflect on its causes and conjecture its effects. We had read of the same things in the newspapers, but what a difference there is between reading a drama in your study and seeing it acted on the stage! We realized what Irish feeling was when we heard these angry cries, and noted how appeals that would have affected English partisans fell on deaf ears. I remember how one night in the summer of 1880, when the Irish members kept us up very late over some trivial Bill of theirs, refusing to adjourn till they had extorted terms, a friend, sitting beside me, said, "See how things come round. They keep us out of bed till five o'clock in the morning because our ancestors bullied theirs for six centuries." And we saw that the natural relations of an Executive, even a Liberal Executive, to the Irish members were those of strife. Whose fault it was we were unable to decide. Perhaps the Government was too stiff; perhaps the members were vexatious. Anyhow, this strife was evidently the normal state of things, wholly unlike that which existed between Scotch members, to whichever party they belonged, and the executive authorities of Scotland. Thus the session of 1880, though it did not bring us consciously nearer to Home Rule, impressed three facts upon us: first, that the House of Lords regarded Ireland solely from the point of view of English landlords, sympathizing with Irish landlords; secondly, that the House of Commons knew so little or cared so little about Ireland that when the Executive declared a measure essential to the peace of Ireland, it scarcely resented the rejection of that measure by the House of Lords; thirdly, that the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons were a foreign body, foreign in the sense in which a needle which a man swallows is foreign, not helping the organism to discharge its functions, but impeding them, and setting up irritation. We did not yet draw from these facts all the conclusions we should now draw. But the facts were there, and they began to tell upon our minds. SESSION OF 1881.--The winter of 1880-81 was a terrible one in Ireland. The rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill had borne the fruit which Mr. Forster had predicted, and which the House of Lords had ignored. Outrages were numerous and serious. The cry in England for repressive measures had gone on rising from November, when it occasioned a demonstration at the Guildhall banquet. Several Liberal members (of whom I was one) went to Ireland at Christmas, to see with our own eyes how things stood. We were struck by the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy information in Dublin, where the richer classes, with whom we chiefly came in contact, merely abused the Land League, while the Land Leaguers declared that the accounts of outrages were grossly exaggerated. The most prominent, Mr. Michael Davitt, assured me, and I believe with perfect truth, that he had exerted himself to discountenance outrage, and that if, as he expected, he was locked up by the Government, outrages would increase. When one reached the disturbed districts, where, of course, one talked to members as well of the landlord class as of the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged from the medley of contradictions was that, though there was much agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity, the disorders were not so bad as people in England believed, and might have been dealt with by a vigorous administration of the existing law. Unfortunately, the so-called "better classes," full of bitterness against the Liberal Ministry and Mr. Forster (whom they did not praise till it was too late), had not assisted the Executive, and had allowed things to reach a pass at which it found the work of governing very difficult. When the Coercion Bill of 1881 was introduced, many English Liberals were inclined to resist it. The great majority voted for it, but within two years they bitterly repented their votes. Our motives, which I mention by way of extenuation, not of defence, were these. The Executive Government declared that it could not deal with crime by the ordinary law. If its followers refused exceptional powers, they must displace the Ministry, and let in the Tories, who would doubtless obtain such powers, and probably use them worse. We had still confidence in Mr. Forster's judgment, and a deference to Irish Executive Governments generally which Parliamentary experience is well fitted to dissipate. The violence with which the Nationalist members resisted the introduction of the Bill had roused our blood, and the foolish attempts which the Radical and Irish electors in some constituencies had made to deter their members from supporting it had told the other way, and disposed these members to vote for it, in order to show that they were not to be cowed by threats. Finally, we were assured that votes given for the Coercion Bill would purchase a thorough-going Land Bill, and our anxiety for the latter induced us, naturally, but erringly, to acquiesce in the former. When that Land Bill went into Committee we perceived how much harm the Coercion Bill had done in intensifying the bitterness of Irish members. Although the Ministry was fighting for their interests against the Tory party and the so-called Whiggish section of its own supporters, who were seeking to cut down the benefits which the measure offered to Irish tenants, the Nationalist members regarded it, and in particular Mr. Forster, as their foe. They resented what they deemed the insult put upon their country. They saw those who had been fighting, often, no doubt, by unlawful methods, for the national cause, thrown into prison and kept there without trial. They anticipated (not without reason) the same fortune for themselves. Hence the friendliness which the Liberal party sought to show them met with no response, and Mr. Forster was worried with undiminished vehemence. In the discussions on the Bill we found the Ministry generally resisting all amendments which came from Irish members. When these amendments seemed to us right, we voted for them, but they were almost always defeated by the union of the Tories with the steady Ministerialists. Subsequent events have proved that many were right, but, whether they were right or wrong, the fact which impressed us was that in matters which concerned Ireland only, and lay within the exclusive knowledge of Irishmen, Irish members were constantly outvoted by English and Scotch members, who knew nothing at all of the merits of the case, but simply obeyed the party whip. This happened even when the Irish members who sat on the Liberal side (such as Mr. Dickson and his Liberal colleagues from Ulster) joined the Nationalist section in demanding some extension of the Bill which the Ministry refused. And we perceived that nothing incensed the Irish members more than the feeling that their arguments were addressed to deaf ears; that they were overborne, not by reason, but by sheer weight of numbers. Even if they convinced the Ministry, they could seldom hope to obtain its assent, because the Ministry had to consider the House of Lords, sure to reject amendments which favoured the tenant, while to detach a number of Ministerialists sufficient to carry an amendment against the Treasury Bench, the Moderate Liberals, and the Tories, was evidently hopeless. At the end of the session the House of Lords came again upon the scene. It seriously damaged the Bill by its amendments, and would have destroyed it but for the skill with which the head of the Government handled these amendments, accepting the least pernicious, so as to enable the Upper House without loss of dignity to recede from those which were wholly inadmissible. Several times it seemed as if the conflict would have to pass from Westminster to the country, and, in contemplating the chances of a popular agitation or a dissolution, we were regretfully obliged to own that the English people cared too little and knew too little about Irish questions to give us much hope of defeating the House of Lords and the Tories upon these issues. An incident which occurred towards the end of the session seems, though trifling in itself, so illustrative of the illogical position in which we stood towards Ireland, as to deserve mention. Mr. Forster, still Chief Secretary, had brought in a Bill for extinguishing the Queen's University in Ireland, and creating in place of it a body to be called the Royal University, which, however, was not to be a real university at all, but only a set of examiners plus some salaried fellowships, to be held at various places of instruction. Regarding this as a gross educational blunder, which would destroy a useful existing body, and create a sham university in its place, and finding several Parliamentary friends on whose judgment I could rely to be of the same opinion, I gave notice of opposition to the Bill. Mr. Forster came to me, and pressed with great warmth that the opposition should be withdrawn. The Bill, he said, would satisfy the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and complete the work of the Land Bill in pacifying Ireland. The Irish members wanted it: what business had an English member to interfere to defeat their wishes, and thwart the Executive? The reply was obvious. Not to speak of the simplicity of expecting the hierarchy to be satisfied by this small concession, what were such arguments but the admission of Home Rule in its worst form? "You resist the demand of the Irish members to legislate for Ireland; you have just been demanding, and obtaining, the support of English members against those amendments of the Land Bill which Irish members declare to be necessary. Now you bid us surrender our own judgment, ignore our own responsibility, and blindly pass a Bill which we, who have studied these university questions as they affect both Ireland and England, believe to be thoroughly mischievous to the prospects of higher education in Ireland, only because the Irish members, as you say, desire it. Do one thing or the other. Either give them the power and the responsibility, or leave both with the Imperial Parliament. You are now asking us to surrender the power, but to remain still subject to the responsibility. We will not bear the latter without the former. We shall prefer Home Rule." Needless to add that this device--a sample of the petty sops by which successive generations of English statesmen, Whigs and Tories alike, have sought to win over a priesthood which uses and laughs at them--failed as completely as its predecessors to settle the University question or to range the bishops on the side of the Government. The autumn and winter of 1881 revealed the magnitude of the mischief done by making a Coercion Bill precede a Relief Bill. The Land Bill was the largest concession made to the demands of the people since Catholic Emancipation. It was a departure, justified by necessity, but still a departure from our established principles of legislation. It ought to have brought satisfaction and confidence, if not gratitude, with it; ought to have led Ireland to believe in the sincere friendliness of England, and produced a new cordiality between the islands. It did nothing of the kind. It was held to have been extorted from our fears; its grace and sweetness were destroyed by the concomitant severities which the Coercion Act had brought into force, as wholesome food becomes distasteful when some bitter compound has been sprinkled over it. We were deeply mortified at this result of our efforts. What was the malign power which made the boons we had conferred shrivel up, "like fairy gifts fading away"? We still believed the Coercion Act to have been justified, but lamented the fate which baffled the main object of our efforts, the winning over Ireland to trust the justice and the capacity of the Imperial Parliament. And thus the two facts which stood out from the history of this eventful session were, first, that even in legislating for the good of Ireland we were legislating against the wishes of Ireland, imposing on her enactments which her representatives opposed, and which we supported only at the bidding of the Ministry; and, secondly, that at the end of a long session, entirely devoted to her needs, we found her more hostile and not less disturbed than she had been at its beginning. We began to wonder whether we should ever succeed better on our present lines. But we still mostly regarded Home Rule as a disagreeable solution. SESSION OF 1882.--Still graver were the lessons of the first four months of this year. Mr. Forster went on filling the prisons of Ireland with persons whom he arrested under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, and never brought to trial. But the country grew no more quiet. At last he had nine hundred and forty men under lock and key, many of them not "village ruffians," whose power a few weeks' detention was to break, but political offenders, and even popular leaders. How long could this go on? Where was it to stop? It became plain that the Act was a failure, and that the people, trained to combination by a century and a half's practice, were too strong for the Executive. Either the scheme and plan of the Act had been wrong, or its administration had been incompetent. Whichever was the source of the failure (most people will now blame both), the fault must be laid at the door of the Irish Executive; not of Mr. Forster himself, but of those on whom he relied. It had been a Dublin Castle Bill, conceived and carried out by the incompetent bureaucracy which has so long pretended to govern Ireland. Such a proof of incompetence destroyed whatever confidence in that bureaucracy then remained to us, and the disclosures which the Phoenix Park murders and the subsequent proceedings against the Invincibles brought out, proved beyond question that the Irish Executive had only succeeded in giving a more dark and dangerous form, the form of ruthless conspiracy, to the agitation it was combating. When therefore the Prevention of Crime Bill of 1882 was brought in, some of us felt unable to support it, and specially bound to resist those of its provisions which related to trials without a jury, and to boycotting. It was impossible, on the morrow of the Phoenix Park murders, to deny that some coercive measure might be needed; but we had so far lost faith in repression, and in the officials who were to administer it, as to desire to limit it to what was absolutely necessary, and we protested against enacting for Ireland a criminal code which was not to be applied to Great Britain. Our resistance might have been more successful but for the manner in which the Nationalist members conducted their opposition. When they began to obstruct--not that under the circumstances we felt entitled to censure them for obstructing a Bill dealing so harshly with their countrymen--we were obliged to desist, and our experience of the stormy scenes of the summer of 1882 deepened our sense of the passionate bitterness with which they regarded English members, scarcely making an exception in favour of those who were most disposed to sympathize with them. Many and many a time when we listened to their fierce cries, we seemed to hear in them the battle-cries of the centuries of strife between Celt and Englishman from Athenry to Vinegar Hill; many a time we felt that this rage and mistrust were chiefly of England's making; and yet not of England's, but rather of the overmastering fate which had prolonged to our own days the hatreds and the methods of barbarous times: hêmeis d' ouk aitioi esmen Alla Zeus kai Moira kai êerophoitis Herinus. So much of the session as the Crime Bill had spared was consumed by the Arrears Bill, over which we had again a "crisis" with the House of Lords. This was the third session that had been practically given up to Irishmen. The freshness and force of the Parliament of 1880--a Parliament full of zeal and ability--had now been almost spent, yet few of the plans of domestic legislation spread before the constituencies of 1880 had been realized. The Government had been anxious to legislate, their majority had been ready to support them, but Ireland had blocked the way; and now the only expedient for improving the procedure of the House was to summon Parliament in an extra autumn session. Here was another cause for reflection. England and Scotland were calling for measures promised years ago, but no time could be found to discuss them. Nothing was done to reorganize local government, to reform the liquor laws, to improve secondary education, to deal with the housing of the poor, or a dozen other urgent questions, because we were busy with Ireland; and yet how little more loyal or contented did Ireland seem to be for all we had done. We began to ask whether Home Rule might not be as much an English and Scotch question as an Irish question. It was, at any rate, clear that to allow Ireland to manage her own affairs would open a prospect for England and Scotland to obtain time to attend to theirs.[3] This feeling was strengthened by the result of the attempts made in the autumn session of 1882, to improve the procedure of the House of Commons. We had cherished the hope that more drastic remedies against obstruction and better arrangements for the conduct of business, might relieve much of the pressure Irish members had made us suffer. The passing of the New Rules shattered this hope, for it was plain they would not accomplish what was needed. Some blamed the Government for not framing a more stringent code. Some blamed the Tory and the Irish Oppositions (now beginning to work in concert) for cutting down the proposals of the Government. But most of us saw, and came to see still more clearly in the three succeeding sessions, that the evil was too deep-rooted to be cured by any changes of procedure, unless they went so far as to destroy freedom of debate for English members also. The presence in a deliberative assembly of a section numbering (or likely soon to number) one-seventh of the whole--a section seeking to lower the character of the assembly, and to derange its mechanism, with no further interest in the greater part of its business except that of preventing it from conducting that business--this was the phenomenon which confronted us, and we felt that no rules of debate would overcome the dangers it threatened. It is from this year 1882 that I date the impression which we formed, that Home Rule was sure to come. "It may be a bold experiment," we said to one another in the lobbies; "there are serious difficulties in the way, though the case for it is stronger than we thought two years ago. But if the Irishmen persist as they are doing now, they will get it. It is only a question of their tenacity." It was impossible not to be struck during the conflicts of 1881 and 1882 with the small amount of real bitterness which the conduct of the Irish members, irritating as it often was, provoked among the Liberals, who of course bore the brunt of the conflict. The Nationalists did their best to injure a Government which was at the same time being denounced by the Tories as too favourable to Irish claims; they lowered the character of Parliament by scenes far more painful than those of the session of 1887, on which so much indignation has been lately expended; they said the hardest things they could think of against us in the House; they attacked us in our constituencies. Their partisans (for I do not charge this on the leaders) interrupted and broke up our meetings. Nevertheless, all this did not provoke responsive hatred from the Liberals. There could not be a greater contrast than that between the way in which the great bulk of the Liberal members all through the Parliament of 1880 behaved towards their Irish antagonists, and the violence with which the Tory members, under much slighter provocation, conduct themselves towards those antagonists now. I say this not to the credit of our temper, which was no better than that of other men heated by the struggles of a crowded assembly. It was due entirely to our feeling that there was a great balance of wrong standing to the debit of England; that if the Irish were turbulent, it was the ill-treatment of former days that had made them so; and that, whatever might be their methods, they were fighting for their country. Although, therefore, there was little social intercourse between us and them, there was always a hope and a wish that the day might come when the Liberal party should resume its natural position of joining the representatives of the Irish people in obtaining radical reforms in Irish government. And the remarkable speech of February 9, 1882, in which Mr. Gladstone declared his mind to be open on the subject, and invited the Nationalists to propound a practicable scheme of self-government, had encouraged us to hope that this day might soon arrive. SESSION OF 1883.--Three facts stood out in the history of this comparatively quiet session, each of which brought us further along the road we had entered. One was the omission of Parliament to complete the work begun by the Land Bill of 1881, of improving the condition of the Irish peasantry and reorganizing Irish administration. The Nationalist members brought in Bills for these purposes, including one for amending the Land Act by admitting leaseholders to its benefits and securing tenants against having their improvements reckoned against them in the fixing of rents. Though we could not approve all the contents of these Bills, we desired to see the Government either take them up and amend them, or introduce Bills of its own to do what was needed. Some of us spoke strongly in this sense, nor will any one now deny that we were right. Sound policy called aloud for the completion of the undertaking of 1881. The Government however refused, alleging, no doubt with some truth, that Ireland could not have all the time of Parliament, but must let England and Scotland have their turn. Nor was anything done towards the creation of new local institutions in Ireland, or the reform of the Castle bureaucracy. We were profoundly disheartened. We saw golden opportunities slipping away, and doubted more than ever whether Westminster was the place in which to legislate for Irish grievances. Another momentous fact was the steady increase in the number of Nationalist members. Every seat that fell vacant in Ireland was filled by them. The moderate Irish party, most of whom had by this time crossed the floor of the House, and were sitting among us, had evidently no future. They were estimable, and, in some cases, able men, from whom we had hoped much, as a link between the Liberal party and the Irish people. But they seemed to have lost their hold on the people, nor were they able to give us much practical counsel as to Irish problems. It was clear that they would vanish at the next General Election, and Parliament be left to settle accounts with the extreme men, whose spirits rose as those of our friends steadily sank. Lastly: it was in this session that the alliance of the Nationalists and the Tory Opposition became a potent factor in politics. Its first conspicuous manifestation was in the defeat of the Government by the allied forces on the Affirmation Bill, when the least respectable privates in both armies vied with one another in boisterous rejoicings over the announcement of numbers in the division. I do not refer to this as ground for complaint. It was in the course of our usual political warfare that two groups, each hating and fearing the Ministry, should unite to displace it. But we now saw what power the Irish section must exert when it came to hold the balance of numbers in the House. Till this division, the Government had commanded a majority of the whole House. This would probably not outlast a dissolution. What then? Could the two English parties, differing so profoundly from one another, combine against the third party? Evidently not. We must, therefore, look forward to unstable Governments, if not to a total dislocation of our Parliamentary system. Session of 1884.--I pass over the minor incidents of this year, including the continued neglect of remedial legislation for Ireland to dwell on its dominant and most impressive lesson. It was the year of the Franchise Bill, which, as regards Ireland, worked an extension, not merely of the county but also of the borough franchise, and produced, owing to the economic condition of the humbler classes in that country, a far more extensive change than in England or Scotland. When the Bill was introduced the question at once arose--Should Ireland be included? There were two ways of treating Ireland between which Parliament had to choose. One was to leave her out of the Bill, on the ground that the masses of her population could not be trusted with the franchise, as being ignorant, sympathetic to crime, hostile to the English Government. This course was the logical concomitant of exceptional coercive legislation, such as had been passed in 1881 and 1882. It was quite compatible with generous remedial legislation. But it placed Ireland in an unequal and lower position, treating her, as the Coercion Acts did, as a dependent country, inhabited by a population unfit for the same measure of power which the inhabitants of Britain might receive. The other course was to bestow on Ireland the same extended franchise which the English county occupiers were to receive, applying the principle of equality, and disregarding the obvious consequences. These consequences were both practical and logical. The practical consequence was the increase in numbers and weight of the Irish party in Parliament hostile to Parliament itself. The logical consequence was the duty of complying with the wishes of the enfranchised nation. Whatever reasons were good for giving this enlarged suffrage to the Irish masses, were good for respecting the will which they might use to express it. If the Irish were deemed fit to exercise the same full constitutional rights in legislation as the English, must they not be fit for the same rights of trial by jury, a free press, and all the privileges of personal freedom? Of these two courses the Cabinet chose the latter, those of its members whom we must suppose, from the language they now hold, to have then hesitated, either stifling their fears or not apprehending the consequences of their boldness. It might have been expected, and indeed was generally expected, that the Tory party would refuse to follow. They talked largely about the danger of an extended Irish suffrage, and pointed out that it would be a weapon in the hands of disloyalty. But when the moment for resistance came, they swerved, and never divided in either House against the application of the Bill to Ireland. They might have failed to defeat the measure; but they would have immensely strengthened their position, logically and morally, had they given effect by their votes to the sentiments they were known to entertain, and which not a few Liberals shared. The effect of this uncontested grant to Ireland of a suffrage practically universal was immense upon our minds, and the longer we reflected on it the more significant did it become. It meant to us that the old methods were abandoned, and, as we supposed, for ever. We had deliberately given the Home Rule party arms against English control far more powerful than they previously possessed. We had deliberately asserted our faith in the Irish people. Impossible after this to fall back on Coercion Bills. Impossible to refuse any request compatible with the general safety of the United Kingdom, which Ireland as a nation might prefer. Impossible to establish that system of Crown Colony Government which we had come to perceive was the only real and solid alternative to self-government. To those of us who had been feeling that the Irish difficulty was much the greatest of all England's difficulties, this stood out beyond the agitation of the autumn and the compromise of the winter as the great political event of 1884.[4] Although this sketch is in the main a record of Parliamentary opinion, I ought not to pass over the influence which the study of their constituents' ideas exerted upon members for the larger towns. We found the vast bulk of our supporters--English supporters, for after 1882 it was understood that the Irish voters were our enemies--sympathetic with the Irish people. They knew and thought little about Home Rule, believing that their member understood that question better than they did, and willing, so long as he was sound on English issues, to trust him. But they pitied Irish tenants, and condemned Irish landlords. Though they acquiesced in a Coercion Bill when proposed by a Liberal Cabinet, because they concluded that nothing less than necessity would lead such a Cabinet to propose one, they so much disliked any exceptional or repressive legislation that it was plain they would not long tolerate it. Any popular leader denouncing coercion was certain to have the sentiment of the English masses with him, while as to suspending Irish representation or carrying out consistently the policy of treating Ireland as a subject country, there was no chance in the world of their approval. Those of us, therefore, who represented large working-class constituencies became convinced that the solution of the Irish problem must be sought in conciliation and self-government, if only because the other solution, Crown Colony Government, was utterly repugnant to the English masses, in whom the Franchise Bill of 1884, completing that of 1867, had vested political supremacy.[5] Session of 1885.--The allied powers of Toryism and Nationalism gained in this year the victory they had so long striven for. In February they reduced the Ministerial majority to fourteen; in June they overthrew the Ministry. No one supposed that on either occasion the merits of the issue had anything to do with the Nationalist vote: that vote was given simply and solely against the Government, as the Government which had passed the Coercion Acts of 1881 and 1882--Acts demanded by the Tory party, and which had not conceded an Irish Parliament. At last the Irish party had attained its position as the arbiter of power and office. Some of us said, as we walked away from the House, under the dawning light of that memorable 9th of June, "This means Home Rule." Our forecast was soon to be confirmed. Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, formed upon the resignation of Mr. Gladstone's, announced that it would not propose to renew any part of the Coercion Act of 1882, which was to expire in August. Here was a surrender indeed! But the Tory leaders went further. They did not excuse themselves on the ground of want of time. They took credit for their benevolence towards Ireland; they discovered excellent reasons why the Act should be dropped. They even turned upon Lord Spencer, whose administration they had hitherto blamed for its leniency, and attacked him in Parliament, among the cheers of his Irish enemies. From that time till the close of the General Election in December everything was done, short of giving public pledges, to keep the Irish leaders and the Irish voters in good humour. The Tory party in fact posed as the true friends of Ireland, averse from coercion, and with minds perfectly open on the subject of self-government. This change of front, so sudden, so unblushing, completed the process which had been going on in our minds. By 1882 we had come to feel that Home Rule was inevitable, though probably undesirable. Before long we had asked ourselves whether it was really undesirable, whether it might not be a good thing both for England, whose Parliament and Cabinet system it would relieve from impending dangers, while leaving free scope for domestic legislation, and for Ireland, which could hardly manage her affairs worse than we were managing them for her, and might manage them better. And thus, by the spring of 1885, many of us were prepared for a large scheme of local self-government in Ireland, including a central legislative body in Dublin.[6] Now when it was plain that the English party which had hitherto called for repression, and had professed itself anxious for a patriotic union of all parties to maintain order and a continuity of policy in Ireland, was ready to bid for Irish help at the polls by throwing over repression and reversing the policy it had advocated, we felt that the sooner Ireland was taken out of English party politics the better. What prospect was there of improving Ireland by the superior wisdom and fairness of the British Parliament, if British leaders were to make their Irish policy turn on interested bargains with Nationalist leaders? Repression, which we clearly saw to be the only alternative to self-government, seemed to be by common consent abandoned. I remember how, at a party of members in the beginning of July, some one said, "Well, there's an end for ever of coercion at any rate," and every one assented as to an obvious truth. Accordingly the result of the new departure of the Salisbury Cabinet in 1885 was to convince even doubters that Home Rule must come, and to make those already convinced anxious to see it come quickly, and to find the best form that could be given it. Many of us expected the Tory Government to propose it. Rumour declared the new Lord Lieutenant to be in favour of it. His government was extremely conciliatory in Ireland, even to the recalcitrant corporation of Limerick. Not to mention less serious and less respected Tory Ministers, Lord Salisbury talked at Newport about the dualism of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy with the air of a man who desired to have a workable scheme, analogous, if not similar, suggested for Ireland and Great Britain. The Irish Nationalists appeared to place their hopes in this quarter, for they attacked the Liberal party with unexampled bitterness, and threw all their voting strength into the Tory scale. As it has lately been attempted to blacken the character of the Irish leaders, it deserves to be remarked that whatever has been charged against them was said or done by them before the spring of 1885, and was, practically, perfectly well known to the Tory leaders when they accepted the alliance of the Irish party in the House of Commons, and courted their support in the election of 1885. To those who remember what went on in the House in the sessions of 1884 and 1885, the horror now professed by the Tory leaders for the conduct and words of the Irish party would be matter for laughter if it were not also matter for just indignation. Why, it may be asked, if the persuasion that Home Rule was certain, and even desirable, had become general among the Liberals who had sat through the Parliament of 1880, was it not more fully expressed at the election of 1885? This is a fair question, which I shall try to answer. In the first place, the electors made few inquiries about Ireland. They disliked the subject; they had not realized its supreme importance. Those of us who felt anxious to explain our views (as was my own case) had to volunteer to do so, for we were not asked about them. The Irish party in the constituencies was in violent opposition to Liberal candidates; it did not interrogate, but denounced. Further, it was felt that the issue was mainly one to be decided in Ireland itself. The question of Home Rule was being submitted, not, as heretofore, to a limited constituency, but to the whole Irish people. Till their will had been constitutionally declared at the polls it was not proper that Englishmen or Scotchmen should anticipate its tenour. We should even have been accused, had we volunteered our opinions, of seeking to affect the result in Ireland, and, not only of playing for the Irish vote in Great Britain, as we saw the Tories doing, but of prejudicing the chances of those Liberal candidates who, in Irish constituencies, were competing with extreme Nationalists. A third reason was that most English and Scotch Liberals did not know how far their own dispositions towards Home Rule were shared by their leaders. Mr. Gladstone's declaration in his Midlothian address was no doubt a decided intimation of his views, and was certainly understood by some (as by myself) to imply the grant to Ireland of a Parliament; but, strong as its words were, its importance does not seem to have been fully appreciated at the moment. And the opinions of a statesman whose unequalled Irish experience and elevated character gave him a weight only second to that of Mr. Gladstone--I mean Lord Spencer--had not been made known. We had consequently no certainty that there were leaders prepared to give prompt effect to the views we entertained. Lastly, we were not prepared with a practical scheme of self-government for Ireland. The Nationalist members had propounded none which we could either adopt or criticize. Convinced as we were that Home Rule would come and must come, we felt the difficulties surrounding every suggestion that had yet been made, and had not hammered out any plan which we could lay before the electors as approved by Liberal opinion.[7] We were forced to confine ourselves to generalities. Whether it would have been better for us to have done our thinking and scheme-making in public, and thereby have sooner forced the details of the problem upon the attention of the country, need not now be inquired. Any one can now see that something was lost by the omission. But those who censure a course that has actually been taken usually fail to estimate the evils that would have followed from the taking of the opposite course. Such evils might in this instance have been as great as those we have encountered. I have spoken of the importance we attached to the decision of Ireland itself, and of the attitude of expectancy which, while that decision was uncertain, Englishmen were forced to maintain. We had not long to wait. Early in December it was known that five-sixths of the members returned from Ireland were Nationalists, and that the majorities which had returned them were crushing. If ever a people spoke its will, the Irish people spoke theirs at the election of 1885. The last link in the chain of conviction, which events had been forging since 1880, was now supplied. In passing the Franchise Bill of 1884, we had asked Ireland to declare her mind. She had now answered. If the question was not a mockery, and representative government a sham, we were bound to accept the answer, subject only, but subject always, to the interests of the whole United Kingdom. In other words, we were bound to devise such a scheme of self-government for Ireland as would give full satisfaction to her wishes, while maintaining the ultimate supremacy of the Imperial Parliament and the unity of the British Empire. Very few words are needed to summarize the outline which, omitting many details which would have illustrated and confirmed its truth, I have attempted to present of the progress of opinion among Liberal members of the Parliament of 1880. 1. Our experience of the Coercion Bills of 1881 and 1882 disclosed the enormous mischief which such measures do in alienating the minds of Irishmen, and the difficulty of enlisting Irish sentiment on behalf of the law. The results of the Act of 1881 taught us that the repression of open agitation means the growth of far more dangerous conspiracy; those of the Act of 1882 proved that even under an administration like Lord Spencer's repression works no change for the better in the habits and ideas of the people. 2. The conduct of the House of Lords in 1880 and 1881, and the malign influence which its existence exerted whenever remedial legislation for Ireland came in question, convinced us that full and complete justice will never be done to Ireland by the British Parliament while the Upper House (as at present constituted) remains a part of that Parliament. 3. The break-down of the procedure of the House of Commons, and the failure of the efforts to amend it, proved that Parliament cannot work so long as a considerable section of its members seek to impede its working. To enable it to do its duty by England and Scotland, it was evidently necessary, either to make the Irish members as loyal to Parliament as English and Scotch members usually are, or else to exclude them. 4. The discussions of Irish Bills in the House of Commons made us realize how little English members knew about Ireland; how utterly different were their competence for, and their attitude towards, Irish questions and English questions. We perceived that we were legislating in the dark for a country whose economic and social condition we did not understand--a country to which we could not apply our English ideas of policy; a country whose very temper and feeling were strange to us. We were really fitter to pass laws for Canada or Australia than for this isle within sight of our shores. 5. I have said that we were legislating in the dark. But there were two quarters from which light was proffered, the Irish members and the Irish Executive. We rejected the first, and could hardly help doing so, for to accept it would have been to displace our own leaders. We followed the light which the Executive gave. But in some cases (as notably in the case of the Coercion Bill of 1881) it proved to be a "wandering fire," leading us into dangerous morasses. And we perceived that at all times legislation at the bidding of the Executive, against the wishes of Irish members, was not self-government or free government. It was despotism. The rule of Ireland by the British Parliament was really "the rule of a dependency through an official, responsible no doubt, but responsible not to the ruled, but to an assembly of which they form less than a sixth part."[8] As this assembly closed its ears to the one-sixth, and gave effect to the will of the official, this was essentially arbitrary government, and wanted those elements of success which free government contains. This experience had, by 1884, convinced us that the present relations of the British Parliament to Ireland were bad, and could not last; that the discontent of Ireland was justified; that the existing system, in alienating the mind of Ireland, tended, not merely to Repeal, but to Separation; that the simplest, and probably the only effective, remedy for the increasing dangers was the grant of an Irish Legislature. Two events clinched these conclusions. One was the Tory surrender of June, 1885. Self-government, we had come to see, was the only alternative to Coercion, and now Coercion was gone. The other was the General Election of December, 1885, when newly-enfranchised Ireland, through five-sixths of her representatives, demanded a Parliament of her own. These were not, as is sometimes alleged, conclusions of despair. We were mostly persons of a cautious and conservative turn of mind, as men imbued with the spirit of the British Constitution ought to be. The first thing was to convince us that the existing relations of the islands were faulty, and could not be maintained. This was a negative result, and while we remained in that stage we were despondent. Many Liberal members will remember the gloom that fell on us in 1882 and 1883 whenever we thought or spoke of Ireland. But presently the clouds lifted. We still felt the old objections to any Home Rule scheme, though we now saw that they were less formidable than the evils of the present system. But we came to feel that the grant of self-government was a right thing in itself. It was not merely a means of ridding ourselves of our difficulties, not merely a boon yielded because long demanded. It was a return to broad and deep principles, a conformity to those natural laws which govern human society as well as the inanimate world--an effort to enlist the better and higher feelings of mankind in the creation of a truer union between the two nations than had ever yet existed. When we perceived this, hope returned. It is strong with us now, for, though we see troubles, perhaps even dangers, in the immediate future, we are confident that the principles on which Liberal policy towards Ireland is based will in the long run work out a happy issue for her, as they have in and for every other country that has trusted to them. One last word as to Consistency. We learnt in the Parliament of 1880 many facts about Ireland we had not known before; we felt the force and bearing of other facts previously accepted on hearsay, but not realized. We saw the Irish problem change from what it had been in 1880 into the new phase which stood apparent at the end of 1885, Coercion abandoned by its former advocates, Self-government demanded by the nation. Were we to disregard all these new facts, ignore all these new conditions, and cling to old ideas, some of which we perceived to be mistaken, while others, still true in themselves, were out-weighed by arguments of far wider import? We did not so estimate our duty. We foresaw the taunts of foes and the reproaches of friends. But we resolved to give effect to the opinions we slowly, painfully, even reluctantly formed, opinions all the stronger because not suddenly adopted, and founded upon evidence whose strength no one can appreciate till he has studied the causes of Irish discontent in Irish history, and been forced (as we were) to face in Parliament the practical difficulties of the government of Ireland by the British House of Commons. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: I may mention here another fact whose significance impressed some among us. Parliament, which usually sinned in not doing for Ireland what Ireland asked, occasionally passed bills for Ireland which were regarded as setting very bad precedents for England. By some bargain between the Irish Office and the Nationalist members, measures were put through which may have been right as respects Ireland, but which embodied principles mischievous as respects Great Britain. We felt that if it was necessary to enact such statutes, it would be better that they should proceed from an Irish Legislature rather than from the Imperial Parliament, which might be embarrassed by its own acts when asked to extend the same principles to England. The Labourers' Act of July, 1885, is the most conspicuous example.] [Footnote 4: At Easter, 1885, I met a number of leading Ulster Liberals in Belfast, told them that Home Rule was certainly coming, and urged them to prepare some plan under which any special interests they conceived the Protestant part of Ulster to have, would be effectually safe-guarded. They were startled, and at first discomposed, but presently told me I was mistaken; to which I could only reply that time would show, and perhaps sooner then even English Liberals expected.] [Footnote 5: My recollection of a conversation with a distinguished public man in July, 1882, enables me to say that this fact had impressed itself upon us as early as that year. He doubted the fact, but admitted that, if true, it was momentous. The passing of the Franchise Bill made it, in our view, more momentous than ever.] [Footnote 6: Some thought that its functions should be very limited, while large powers were granted to county boards or provincial councils. But most had, I think, already perceived that the grant of a merely local self-government, while retaining an irresponsible central bureaucracy, would do more harm than good. It seemed at first sight a safer experiment than the creation of a central legislative body. But, like many middle courses, it combined the demerits and wanted the merits of each of the extreme courses. It would not make the country tranquil, as firm and long-continued repression might possibly do. Neither would it satisfy the people's demands, and divert them from struggles against England to disputes and discussions among themselves, as the gift of genuine self-government might do.] [Footnote 7: Some of us had tried to do so. I prepared such a scheme in the autumn of 1885, and submitted it to some specially competent friends. Their objections, made from what would now be called the Unionist point of view, were weighty. But their effect was to convince me that the scheme erred on the side of caution; and I believe the experience of other Liberals who worked at the problem to have been the same as my own--viz. that a small and timid scheme is more dangerous than a large and bold one. Thus the result of our thinking from July, 1885, till April, 1886, was to make us more and more disposed to reject half-and-half solutions. Some of us (of whom I was one) expressed this feeling by saying in our election addresses in 1885, "the further we go in giving the Irish people the management of their own affairs (subject to the maintenance of the unity of the empire) the better."] [Footnote 8: Quoted from an article contributed by myself to the American _Century Magazine_, which I refer to because, written in the spring of 1883, it expresses the ideas here stated.] HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY BY LORD THRING The principal charge made against the scheme of Home Rule contained in the Irish Government Bill, 1886, is that it is incompatible with the maintenance of the unity of the Empire and the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. A further allegation states that the Bill is useless, as agrarian exasperation lies at the root of Irish discontent and Irish disloyalty, and that no place would be found for a Home Rule Bill even in Irish aspirations if an effective Land Bill were first passed. An endeavour will be made in the following pages to secure a verdict of acquittal on both counts--as to the charge relating to Imperial unity and the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, by proving that the accusation is absolutely unfounded, and based partly on a misconception of the nature of Imperial ties, and partly on a misapprehension of the effect of the provisions of the Home Rule Bill as bearing on Imperial questions; and as to the inutility of the Home Rule Bill in view of the necessity of Land Reform, by showing that without a Home Rule Bill no Land Bill worth consideration as a means of pacifying Ireland can be passed. The complete partisan spirit in which Home Rule has been treated is the more to be deplored as the subject is one which does not lend itself readily to the trivialities of party debates. It raises questions of principle, not of detail. It ascends at once into the highest region of politics. It is conversant with the great questions of constitutional and international law, and leads to an inquiry into the very nature of governments and the various modes in which communities of men are associated together either as simple or composite nations. To describe those modes in detail would be to give a history of the various despotic, monarchical, oligarchical, and democratic systems of government which have oppressed or made happy the children of men. Such a description is calculated to perplex and mislead from its very extent; not so an inquiry into the powers of government, and a classification of those powers. They are limited in extent, and, if we confine ourselves to English names and English necessities, we shall readily attain to an apprehension of the mode in which empires, nations, and political societies are bound together, at least in so far as such knowledge is required for the understanding of the nature of Imperial supremacy, and the mode in which Home Rule in Ireland is calculated to affect that supremacy. The powers of government are divisible into two great classes--1. Imperial powers; 2. State powers, using "State" in the American sense of a political community subordinated to some other power, and not in the sense of an independent nation. The Imperial powers are in English law described as the prerogatives of the Crown, and consist in the main of the powers of making peace and war, of maintaining armies and fleets and regulating commerce, and making treaties with foreign nations. State powers are complete powers of local self-government, described in our colonial Constitutions as powers to make laws "for the peace, order, and good government of the Colony or State" in which such powers are to be exercised. Intermediate between the Imperial and State powers are a class of powers required to prevent disputes and facilitate intercourse between the various parts of an empire or other composite system of States--for example, the coinage of money, and other regulations relating to the currency; the laws relating to copyright, or other exclusive rights to the use and profits of any works or inventions; and so forth. These powers may be described as quasi-Imperial powers. Having arrived at a competent knowledge of the materials out of which governments are formed, it may be well to proceed to a consideration of the manner in which those materials have been worked up in building the two great Anglo-Saxon composite nations--namely, the American Union and the British Empire--for, if we find that the arrangements proposed by the Irish Home Rule Bill are strictly in accordance with the principles on which the unity of the American Union was based and on which the Imperial power of Great Britain has rested for centuries, the conclusion must be that the Irish Home Rule Bill is not antagonistic to the unity of the Empire or to the supremacy of the British Parliament. In discussing these matters it will be convenient to begin with the American Union, as it is less extensive in area and more homogeneous in its construction than the British Empire. The thirteen revolted American colonies, on the conclusion of their war with England, found themselves in the position of thirteen independent States having no connection with each other. The common tie of supremacy exercised by the mother country was broken, and each State was an independent nation, possessed both of Imperial and Local rights. The impossibility of a cluster of thirteen small independent nations maintaining their independence against foreign aggression became immediately apparent, and, to remedy this evil, the thirteen States appointed delegates to form a convention authorized to weld them into one body as respected Imperial powers. This was attempted to be done by the establishment of a central body called a Congress, consisting of delegates from the component States, and invested with all the powers designated above as Imperial and quasi-Imperial powers. The expenses incurred by the confederacy were to be defrayed out of a common fund, to be supplied by requisitions made on the several States. In effect, the confederacy of the thirteen States amounted to little more than an offensive and defensive alliance between thirteen independent nations, as the central power had States for its subjects and not individuals, and could only enforce the law against any disobedient State by calling on the twelve other States to make war on the refractory member of the union. A system dependent for its efficacy on the concurrence of so many separate communities contained in itself the seeds of dissolution, and it soon became apparent that one of two things must occur--either the American States must cease as such to be a nation, or the component members of that union must each be prepared to relinquish a further portion of the sovereign or quasi-sovereign powers which it possessed. Under those circumstances, what was the course taken by the thirteen States? They perceived that it was quite possible to maintain complete unity and compactness as a nation if, in addition to investing the Supreme Government with Imperial and quasi-Imperial powers, they added full power to impose federal taxes on the component States and established an Executive furnished with ample means to carry all federal powers into effect through the medium of federal officers. The government so formed consisted of a President and two elected Houses called Congress, and, as a balance-wheel of the Constitution, a Supreme Court was established, to which was confided the task of deciding in case of dispute all questions arising under the Constitution of the United States or relating to international law. The Executive of the United States, with the President as its source and head, was furnished with full authority and power to enforce the federal laws. The army and navy were under its command, and it was provided with courts of justice, and subordinate officers to enforce the decrees of those courts throughout the length and breadth of the Union. Above all, a complete system of federal taxation supplied the Central Government with the necessary funds to perform effectually all the functions of a supreme national government. The nature of the Constitution of the United States will be best understood by considering the position in which its subjects stand to the Central Government and their own State Governments. In effect, every inhabitant of the United States has a double nationality. He belongs to one great nation called the United States, or, as it would be more aptly called to show its absolute unity, the American Republic, having jurisdiction over the whole surface of ground comprised in the area of the United States. He is also a citizen of a smaller local and partially self-governing body--more important than a county, but not approaching the position of a nation--called a State. It is no part of the object of this article to enter into the details of the American government, its advantages or defects. This much, however, is clear--the American Constitution has lasted nearly one hundred years, and shows no signs of decay or disruption. It has stood the strain of the greatest war of modern times, and has emerged from the conflict stronger than before. Even during the war the antagonism of the rebels was directed, not against the Union, but against the efforts of the Northern States to suppress slavery, or, in other words, to destroy, as the Southern States believed (not unjustly as the event showed), their property in slaves, and consequently the only means they had of making their estates profitable. One conclusion, then, we may draw, that a nation in which the Imperial powers and the State powers are vested in different authorities is no less compact and powerful, as respects all national capacities, than a nation in which both classes of powers are wielded by the same functionaries; and one lesson more may be learnt from the American War of Secession--namely, that in a nation having such a division of powers, any conflict between the two classes results in the Supreme or Imperial powers prevailing over the Local governmental powers, and not in the latter invading or driving a wedge into the Supreme powers. In fact, the tendency in case of a struggle is towards an undue centralization of the nation by reason of the encroachment by the Supreme authority, rather than towards a weakening of the national unity by separatist action on the part of the constituent members of the nation. In comparing the Constitution of the United States with the Constitution of the British Empire, we find an apparent resemblance in form as respects the Anglo-Saxon colonies, but underlying the surface a total difference of principle. The United States is an aggregate of homogeneous and contiguous States which, in order to weld themselves into a nation, gave up a portion of their rights to a central authority, reserving to themselves all powers of government which they did not expressly relinquish. The British Empire is an aggregate of many communities under one common head, and is thus described by Mr. Burke in 1774, in language which may seem to have been somewhat too enthusiastic at the time when it was spoken, but at the present day does not more than do justice to an Empire which comprises one-sixth of the habitable globe in extent and population:-- "I look, I say, on the Imperial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which the colonies ought to enjoy under those rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the world. The Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of her extensive Empire in two capacities: one as the local legislature of this island, providing for all things at home immediately and by no other instrument than the executive power; the other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what I call her Imperial character, in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all the several Legislatures, and guides and controls them all without annihilating any. As all these provincial Legislatures are only co-ordinate with each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her, else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance."[9] The means by which the possessions of Great Britain were acquired have been as various as the possessions themselves. The European, Asiatic, and African possessions became ours by conquest and cession; the American by conquest, treaty, and settlement; the Australasian by settlement, and by that dubious system of settlement known by the name of annexation. Now, what is the link which fastens each of these possessions to the mother country? Surely it is the inherent and indestructible right of the British Crown to exercise Imperial powers--in other words, the supremacy of the Queen and the British Parliament? What, again, is the common bond of union between these vast colonial possessions, differing in laws, in religion, and in the character of the population? The same answer must be given: the joint and several tie, so to speak, is the same--namely, the sovereignty of Great Britain. It is true that the mode in which the materials composing the British Empire have been cemented together is exactly the reverse of the manner of the construction of the American Union. In the case of the Union, independent States voluntarily relinquished a portion of their sovereignty to secure national unity, and entrusted the guardianship of that unity to a representative body chosen by themselves. Such a union was based on contract, and could only be constructed by communities which claimed to be independent. Far different have been the circumstances under which England has developed itself into the British Empire. England began as a sovereign power, having its sovereignty vested at first solely in the Sovereign, but gradually in the Sovereign and Parliament. This sovereignty neither the Crown nor the Parliament can, jointly or severally, get rid of, for it is of the very essence of a sovereign power that it cannot, by Act of Parliament or otherwise, bind its successors.[10] This principle of supremacy has never been lost sight of by the British Parliament. Their right to alter or suspend a colonial Constitution has never been disputed. Contract never enters into the question. The dominant authority delegates to its subordinate communities as much or as little power as it deems advantageous for each body, and, if it sees fit, resumes a portion or the whole of the delegated authority. The last point of difference to be noted between the American Constitution and the Constitution of the British Empire is the fact that as Minerva sprang from the brain of Jupiter fully equipped, so the American Constitution came forth from the hands of its framers complete and, what is of more importance, practically in material matters unchangeable except by the agony of an internecine war or some overwhelming passions. The British Empire, on the other hand, is, as respects its component members, ever in progress and flux. An Anglo-Saxon colony, no less than a human being, has its infancy under the maternal care of a governor, its boyhood subject to the government of a representative council and an Executive appointed by the Crown, its manhood under Home Rule and responsible government, in which the Executive are bound to vacate their offices whenever they are out-voted in the Legislature. Changes are ever taking place in the growth, so to speak, of the several British possessions, but what is the result? Nobody ever dreams of these changes injuring the Imperial tie or the supremacy of the British Parliament, that alone towers above all, unchangeable and unimpaired; and, what is most notable, loyalty and devotion to the Crown--that is to say, the Imperial tie--so far from being weakened by the transition of a colony from a state of dependence in local affairs to the higher degree of a self-governing colony, are, on the contrary, strengthened almost in direct proportion as the central interference with local affairs is diminished. On this point an unimpeachable witness--Mr. Merivale--says: "What, then, are the lessons to be learnt from a consideration of the American Constitution and of our colonial system? Surely these: that Imperial unity and Imperial supremacy are in no degree dependent on the control exercised by the central power on its dependent members." Facts, however, are more conclusive than any arguments; and we have only to look back to the state some forty years ago of Canada, New Zealand, and the various colonies of Australia, and compare that state with their condition to-day, to come to the conclusion that the fullest power of local government is perfectly consistent with the unity of the Empire and the supremacy of the British Parliament. Under the old colonial Constitutions the Executive of those colonies was under the control of the Crown; and Mr. Merivale says "that the political existence consisted of a series of quarrels and reconciliations between the two opposing authorities--the colonial legislative body and the Executive nominated by the Crown." England resolved to give up the control of the Executive, and to grant complete responsible government--that is to say, the Governor of each colony was instructed that his Executive Council (or Ministry, as we should call it) must resign whenever they were out-voted by the legislative body. The effect of this change, this relaxing, as would be supposed, of the Imperial tie, was magical, and is thus described by Mr. Merivale:[11] "The magnitude of that change--the extraordinary rapidity of its beneficial effects--it is scarcely possible to exaggerate. None but those who have traced it can realize the sudden spring made by a young community under its first release from the old tie of subjection, moderate as that tie really was. The cessation, as if by magic, of the old irritant sores between colony and mother country is the first result. Not only are they at concord, but they seem to leave hardly any traces in the public mind behind them. Confidence and affection towards the home, still fondly so termed by the colonist as well as the emigrant, seem to supersede at once distrust and hostility. Loyalty, which was before the badge of a class suspected by the rest of the community, became the common watchword of all, and, with some extravagance in the sentiment, there arises no small share of its nobleness and devotion. Communities, which but a few years ago would have wrangled over the smallest item of public expenditure to which they were invited by the Executive to contribute, have vied with each other in their subscriptions to purposes of British interests in response to calls of humanity, or munificence for objects but indistinctly heard of at the distance of half the world." The Dominion of Canada has been so much talked about that it may be well to give a summary of its Constitution, though, in so far as regards its relations to the mother country, it differs in no material respect from any other self-governing colony. The Dominion consists of seven provinces, each of which has a Legislature of its own, but is at the same time subject to the Legislature of the Dominion, in the same manner as each State in the American Union has a Legislature of its own, and is at the same time subject to the control of Congress. The distinguishing feature between the system of the American States and the associated colonies of the Dominion of Canada is this--that all Imperial powers, everything that constitutes a people a nation as respects foreigners, are reserved to the mother country. The division, then, of the Dominion and its provinces consists only in a division of Local powers. It is impossible to mark accurately the line between Dominion and Provincial powers, but, speaking generally, Dominion powers relate to such matters--for example, the regulation of trade and commerce, postal service, currency, and so forth--as require to be dealt with on a uniform principle throughout the whole area of a country; while the Provincial powers relate to provincial and municipal institutions, provincial licensing, and other subjects restricted to the limits of the province. As a general rule, the Legislature of the Dominion and the Legislature of each province have respectively exclusive jurisdiction within the limits of the subjects entrusted to them; but, as respects agriculture and immigration, the Dominion Parliament have power to overrule any Act of the provincial Legislatures, and, as respects property and civil rights in Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, the Dominion Parliament may legislate with a view to uniformity, but their legislation is not valid unless it is accepted by the Legislature of each province to which it applies. The executive authority in the Dominion Government, as in all the self-governing colonies, is carried on by the Governor in the name of the Queen, but with the advice of a Council: that is to say, as to all Imperial matters, he is under the control of the mother country; as to all local matters, he acts on the advice of his local Council. The result of the whole is that the citizenship of an inhabitant of the Dominion of Canada is a triple tie. Suppose him to reside in the province of Quebec. First, he is a citizen of that province, and bound to obey all the laws which it is within the competence of the provincial Legislature to pass. Next, he is a citizen of the Dominion of Canada, and acknowledges its jurisdiction in all matters outside the legitimate sphere of the province. Lastly, and above all, he is a subject of her Majesty. He is to all intents and purposes, as respects the vast company of nations, an Englishman, entitled to all the privileges as he is to all the glory of the mother country so far as such privileges can be enjoyed and glory participated in without actual residence in England. One startling point of likeness in events and unlikeness in consequences is to be found in the history of Ireland and Canada. In 1798 Ireland rebelled. Protestant and Catholic were arrayed in arms against each other. The rebellion was quenched in blood, and measures of repression have been in force, with slight intervals of suspension, ever since, with this result--that the Ireland of 1886 is scarcely less disloyal and discontented than the Ireland of 1798. In 1837 and 1838 Canada rebelled. Protestants and Catholics, differing in nationality as well as in religion, were arrayed in arms against each other. The rebellion was quelled with the least possible violence, a free Constitution was given, and the Canada of 1886 is the largest, most loyal, and most contented colony in her Majesty's dominions. Assuming, then, thus much to be proved by the Constitution of the United States that national unity of the closest description is consistent with complete Home Rule in the component members of the nation, and by the history of Canada and the British colonial empire that an Imperial tie is sufficient to bind together for centuries dependencies differing in situation, in nationality, in religion, in laws, in everything that distinguishes peoples one from another, and further and more particularly that emancipation of the Anglo-Saxon colonies from control in their internal affairs strengthens instead of weakening Imperial unity, let us turn to Ireland and inquire whether there is anything in the circumstances under which Home Rule was proposed to be granted to Ireland, or in the measures intended to establish that Home Rule, fairly leading to the inference that disruption of the Empire or an impairment of Imperial powers would probably be a consequence of passing the Irish Government Bill and the Irish Land Bill. And, first, as to the circumstances which would seem to recommend the Irish Home Rule Bill. Ireland, from the very commencement of her connection with England, has chafed under the restraints which that connection imposed. The closer the apparent union between the two countries the greater the real disunion. The Act of 1800, _in words and in law_, effected not a union merely, but a consolidation of the two countries. The effect of those words and that law was to give rise to a restless discontent, which has constantly found expression in efforts to procure the repeal of the Act of Union and the reestablishment of a National Parliament in Dublin. How futile have been the efforts of the British Parliament to diminish by concession or repress by coercion Irish aspirations or Irish discontent it is unnecessary to discuss here. All men admit the facts, however different the conclusions which they draw from those facts. What Burke said of America on moving in 1775 his resolution on conciliation with the colonies was true in 1885 with respect to Ireland:-- "The fact is undoubted, that under former Parliaments the state of America [read for America, Ireland] has been kept in continual agitation. Everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was at least followed by an heightening of the distemper, until, by a variety of experiments, that important country has been brought into her present situation--a situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not name, which I scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of any description."[12] At length, after the election of 1885, Mr. Gladstone and the majority of his followers came to the conclusion that an opportunity had presented itself for providing Ireland with a Constitution conferring on the people of that country the largest measure of self-government consistent with the absolute supremacy of the Crown and the Imperial Parliament and the entire unity of the Empire. A scheme was proposed which was accepted in principle by the representatives of the National party in Ireland as a fair and sufficient adjustment of the Imperial claims of Great Britain and the Local claims of Ireland. The scheme was shortly this. A Legislative Assembly was proposed to be established in Ireland with power to make all laws necessary for the good government of Ireland--in other words, invested with the same powers of local self-government as a colonial Assembly. The Irish Assembly was in one respect unlike a colonial Legislature. It consisted of one House only, but this House was divided into two orders, each of which, in case of differences on any important legislative matter, voted separately. This form was adopted in order to minimize the chances of collision between the two orders, by making it imperative on each order to hear the arguments of the other before proceeding to a division, thus throwing on the dissentient order the full responsibility of its dissent, with a complete knowledge of the consequences likely to ensue therefrom. The clause conferring on the Irish Legislature full powers of local self-government was immediately followed by a provision excepting, by enumeration, from any interference on the part of the Irish Legislature, all Imperial powers, and declaring any enactment void which infringed on that provision. This exception (as is well known) is not found in colonial Constitutional Acts. In them the restriction of the words of the grant to Local powers only has been held sufficient to safeguard the supremacy of the British Parliament and the unity of the Empire. The reason for making a difference in the case of the Home Rule Bill was political, not legal. Separation was declared by the enemies of the Bill to be the real intention of its supporters, and destruction of the unity of the Empire to be its certain consequence. It seemed well that Ireland, by her representatives, should accept as a satisfactory charter of Irish liberty a document which contained an express submission to Imperial power and a direct acknowledgment of Imperial unity. Similarly with respect to the supremacy of the British Parliament. In the colonial Constitutions all reference to this supremacy is omitted as being too clear to require notice. In the case of the Irish Home Rule Bill instructions were given to preserve in express words the supremacy of the British Parliament in order to pledge Ireland to an express admission of that supremacy by the same vote which accepted Local powers. It is true that the wording by the draftsman of the sentence reserving the supremacy of Parliament was justly found fault with as inaccurate and doubtful, but that defect would have been cured by an amendment in Committee; and, even if there had not been any such clause in the Bill, it is clear, from what has been said above, that the Imperial Legislature could not, if it would, renounce its supremacy or abdicate its sovereign powers. The executive government in Ireland was continued in the Queen, to be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of her Majesty, with the aid of such officers and Council as to her Majesty might from time to time seem fit. Her Majesty was also a constituent part of the Legislature, with power to delegate to the Lord Lieutenant the prerogative of assenting to or dissenting from Bills, and of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving Parliament. Under these provisions the Lord Lieutenant resembled the Governor of a colony with responsible government. He was invested with a double authority--first, Imperial; secondly, Local. As an Imperial officer, he was bound to veto any Bill injuriously affecting Imperial interests or inconsistent with general Imperial policy; as a Local officer, it was his duty to act in all local matters according to the advice of his Council, whose tenure of office depended on their being in harmony with, and supported by, a majority of the Legislative Assembly. Questions relating to the constitutionality of any particular law were not left altogether to the decision of the Governor. If a Bill containing a provision infringing Imperial rights passed the Legislature, its validity might be decided in the first instance by the ordinary courts of law, but the ultimate appeal lay to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and, with a view to secure absolute impartiality in the Committee, it was provided that Ireland should be represented on that body by persons who either were or had been Irish judges. Not the least important provision of the Bill, as respects the maintenance of Imperial interests, was the continuance of Imperial taxation. The Customs and Excise duties were directed to be levied, as heretofore, in pursuance of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament, and were excepted from the control of the Irish Legislature, which had full power, with that exception, to impose such taxes in Ireland as they might think expedient. The Bill further provided that neither the Imperial taxes of Excise nor any Local taxes that might be imposed by the Irish Legislature should be paid into the Irish Exchequer. An Imperial officer, called the Receiver-General, was appointed, into whose hands the produce of every tax, both Imperial and Local, was required to be paid, and it was the duty of the Receiver-General to take care that all claims of the English Exchequer, including especially the contribution payable by Ireland for Imperial purposes, were satisfied before a farthing found its way into the Irish Exchequer for Irish purposes. The Receiver-General was provided with an Imperial Court to enforce his rights of Imperial taxation, and adequate means for enforcing all Imperial powers by Imperial civil officers. The Bill did not provide for the representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament on all Imperial questions, including questions relating to Imperial taxation, but it is fully understood that in any Bill which might hereafter be brought forward relating to Home Rule those defects would be remedied. An examination, then, of the Home Rule Bill, that "child of revolution and parent of separation," appears to lead irresistibly to two conclusions. First, that Imperial rights and Imperial powers, representation for Imperial purposes, Imperial taxation--in short, every link that binds a subordinate member of an Empire to its supreme head--have been maintained unimpaired and unchanged. Secondly, that, in granting Home Rule to discontented Ireland, that form of responsible government has been adopted which, as Mr. Merivale declares--and his declaration subsequent events have more than verified--when conferred on the discontented colonies, changed restless aspirations for separation into quiet loyalty. That such a Bill as the Home Rule Bill should be treated as an invasion of Imperial rights is a proof of one, or perhaps of both, the following axioms--that Bills are never read by their accusers, and that party spirit will distort the plainest facts. The union of Great Britain and Ireland was not, so far as Imperial powers were concerned, disturbed by the Bill, and an Irishman remains a citizen of the British Empire under the Home Rule Bill, with the same obligations and the same privileges, on the same terms as before. All the Bill did was to make his Irish citizenship distinct from his Imperial citizenship, in the same manner as the citizenship of a native of the State of New York is distinct from his citizenship as a member of the United States. Now it has been found that the Central power in the United States has been more than a match for the State powers, and can it be conceived for a moment that the Imperial power of Great Britain should not be a match for the Local power of Ireland--a State which has not one-seventh of the population or one-twentieth part of the income of the dominant community? One argument remains to be noticed which the opponents of Home Rule urge as absolutely condemnatory of the measure, whereas, if properly weighed, it is conclusive in its favour. Home Rule, they say, is a mere question of sentiment. "National aspirations" are the twaddle of English enthusiasts who know nothing of Ireland. What is really wanted is the reform of the Land Law. Settle the agrarian problem, and Home Rule may be relegated to the place supposed to be paved with good intentions. The Irish will straightway change their character, and become a law-abiding, contented, loyal people. Be it so. But suppose it to be proved that the establishment of an Irish Government, or, in other words, Home Rule, is an essential condition of agrarian reform--that the latter cannot be had without the former--surely Home Rule should stand none the worse in the estimation of its opponents if it not only secures a safe basis for putting an end to agrarian exasperation, but also gratifies the feeling of the Irish people as expressed by the majority of its representatives in Parliament? Now, what is the nature of the Irish Land Question? This we must understand before considering the remedy. In Ireland (meaning by Ireland that part of the country which is in the hands of tenants, and falls within the compass of a Land Bill) the tenure of land is wholly unlike that which is found in the greater part of England. Instead of large farms in which the landlord makes all the improvements and the tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the land and receives the produce, small holdings are found in which the tenant does the improvements (if any) and pays a fixed rent-charge to the owner. In England the tenant does not perform the obligations or in any way aspire to the character of owner. If he thinks he can get a cheaper farm, he quits his former one, regarding his interest in the land as a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Not so the Irish tenant. He has made what he calls improvements, he claims a quasi-ownership in the land, and has the characteristic Celtic attachment for the patch of ground forming his holding, however squalid it may be, however inadequate for his support. In short, in Ireland there is a dual ownership--that of the proprietor, who has no interest in the soil so long as the tenant pays his rent and fulfils the conditions of his tenancy; and that of the tenant, who, subject to the payment of his rent and performance of the fixed conditions, acts, thinks, and carries himself as the owner of his holding. A system, then, of agrarian reform in Ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of putting an end to this dual ownership--that is to say, of making the tenant the sole proprietor of his holding, and compensating the landlord for his interest in the ownership. The problem is further narrowed by the circumstance that the tenant cannot be expected to advance any capital or pay an increased rent, so that the means of compensating the landlord must be found out of the existing rent. The plan adopted in Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill was to commute the rent-charges, offering the landlord, as a general rule, twenty years' purchase on the net rental of the estate (that is to say, the rent received by him after deducting all outgoings), and paying him the purchase-money in £3 per cent. stock taken at par. The stock was to be advanced by the English Government to an Irish State department at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, and the Bill provided that the tenant, instead of rent, was to pay an annuity of £4 per cent. on a capital sum equal in amount to twenty times the gross rental. The notable feature which distinguished this plan from all other schemes was the security given for the repayment of the purchase-money: hitherto the English Government has lent the money directly to the landlord or tenant, and has become the mortgagee of the land--in other words, has become in effect the landlord of the land sold to the tenant until the repayment of the loan has been completed. To carry into effect under such a system any extensive scheme of agrarian reform (and if not extensive such a reform would be of no value in pacifying Ireland) presupposes a readiness on the part of the English Government to become virtually the landlord of a large portion of Ireland, with the attendant odium of absenteeism and alien domination. Under a land scheme such as that of 1886, all these difficulties would be overcome. The Irish, not the English, Government would be the virtual landlord. It would be the interest of Ireland that the annuities due from the tenants should be regularly paid, as, subject to the prior charge of the English Exchequer, they would form part of the Irish revenues. The cardinal difference, then, between Mr. Gladstone's scheme and any other land scheme that has seen the light is this--that in Mr. Gladstone's scheme the English loans would have been lent to the Irish Government on the security of the whole Irish revenues, whereas in every other scheme they have been lent by the English Government to the Irish creditors on the security of individual patches of land. The whole question, then, of the relation between Home Rule and agrarian reform may be summed up as follows:--Agrarian reform is necessary for the pacification of Ireland; agrarian reform cannot be efficiently carried into effect without an Irish Government; an Irish Government can only be established by a Home Rule Bill: therefore a Home Rule Bill is necessary for the pacification of Ireland. It is idle to say, as has been said on numerous platforms, that plans no doubt can be devised for agrarian reform without Home Rule. The Irish revenues are the only collateral security that can be obtained for loans of English money, and Irish revenues are only available for the purpose on the establishment of an Irish Government. Baronial guarantees, union guarantees, county guarantees, debenture schemes, have all been tried and found wanting, and vague assertions as to possibilities are idle unless they are based on intelligible working plans. The foregoing arguments will be equally valid if, instead of making the tenants peasant-proprietors, it were thought desirable that the Irish State should be the proprietor and the tenants be the holders of the land at perpetual rents and subject to fixed conditions. Again, it might be possible to pay the landlords by annual sums instead of capital sums. Such matters are really questions of detail. The substance is to interpose the Irish Government between the tenant and the English mortgagee, and to make the loans general charges on the whole of the Irish Government revenues as paid into the hands of an Imperial Receiver instead of placing them as special charges, each fixed on its own small estate or holding. The fact that Mr. Gladstone's land scheme was denounced as confiscation of £100,000,000 of the English taxpayers' property, while Lord Ashbourne's Act is pronounced by the same party wise and prudent, shows the political blindness of party spirit in its most absurd form. Lord Ashbourne's Act requires precisely the same expenditure to do the same work as Mr. Gladstone's Bill requires, but in Mr. Gladstone's scheme the whole Irish revenue was pledged as collateral security, and the Irish Government was interposed between the ultimate creditor and the Irish tenant, while under Lord Ashbourne's Act the English Government figures without disguise as the landlord of each tenant, exacting a debt which the tenant is unwilling to pay as being due to what he calls an alien Government. An endeavour has been made in the preceding pages to prove that Home Rule in no respect infringes on Imperial rights or Imperial unity, for the simple reason that the Imperial power remains exactly in the same position as it was before, the Home Rule Bill dealing only with Local matters. At all events, Burke thought that the Imperial supremacy alone constituted a real union between England and Ireland. He says-- "My poor opinion is, that the closest connection between Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the well-being--I had almost said to the very being--of the three kingdoms; for that purpose I humbly conceive that the whole of the superior, and what I should call Imperial politics, ought to have its residence here, and that Ireland, locally, civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look up to Great Britain in all matters of peace and war. In all these points to be joined with her, and, in a word, with her to live and to die."[13] How strange to Burke would have seemed the doctrine that the restoration of a limited power of self-government to Ireland, excluding commerce, and excluding all matters not only Imperial, but those in which uniformity is required, should be denounced as a disruption of the Empire! It remains to notice one other charge made against the Gladstonian Home Rule Bill, namely, that of impairing the supremacy of the British Parliament. That allegation has been shown also to be founded on a mistake. Next, it is said that the Gladstonian scheme does not provide securities against executive and legislative oppression. The answer is complete. The executive authority being vested in the Queen, it will be the duty of the Governor not to allow executive oppression; still more will it be his duty to veto any act of legislative oppression. Further, it is stated that difficulties will arise with respect to the power of the Privy Council to nullify unconstitutional Acts. But it is hard to see why a power which is exercised with success in the United States, where all the States are equal, and without dispute in our colonies, which are all dependent, should not be carried into effect with equal ease in Ireland, which is more closely bound to us and more completely under our power than the colonies are, or than the several States are under the power of the Central Government. To conclude: the cause of Irish discontent is the conjoint operation of the passion for nationality and the vicious system of land tenure, and the scheme of the Irish Home Rule Bill and the Land Bill removes the whole fabric on which Irish discontent is raised. The Irish, by the great majority of their representatives, have accepted the Home Rule Bill as a satisfactory settlement of the nationality question. The British Parliament can, through the medium of the Home Rule Bill and the establishment of an Irish Legislature, carry through a final settlement of agrarian disputes with less injustice to individuals than could a Parliament sitting in Dublin, and, be it added, with scarcely any appreciable risk to the British taxpayer. Of course it may be said that an Irish Parliament will go farther--that Home Rule is a step to separation, and a reform of the Land Laws a spoliation of the landlords. To those who urge such arguments I would recommend the perusal of the speech of Burke on Conciliation with America, and especially the following sentences, substituting "Ireland" for "the colonies:"-- "But [the Colonies] Ireland will go further. Alas! alas! when will this speculating against fact and reason end? What will quiet these panic fears which we entertain of the hostile effect of a conciliatory conduct? Is it true that no case can exist in which it is proper for the Sovereign to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects? Is there anything peculiar in this case to make it a rule for itself? Is all authority of course lost when it is not pushed to the extreme? Is it a certain maxim that the fewer causes of discontentment are left by Government the more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel?" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 9: Burke's Speech on American Taxation, vol. i. p. 174] [Footnote 10: This is the opinion of both English and American lawyers. See Blackstone's Comm., i. 90; Austin on Jurisprudence, i. 226. As to American cases, see Corley on Constitutional Limitations, pp. 2-149.] [Footnote 11: "Lectures on the Colonies," p, 641.] [Footnote 12: Burke, vol. i. p. 181.] [Footnote 13: "Letter on Affairs of Ireland," i. 462.] THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL AND THE IRISH LAND BILL BY LORD THRING A mere enumeration or analysis of the contents of the Irish Government Bill, 1886, and the Land (Ireland) Bill, 1886, would convey scarcely any intelligible idea to the mind of an ordinary reader. It is, therefore, proposed in the following pages, before entering on the details of each Bill, to give a summary of the reasons which led to its introduction, and of the principles on which it is founded. To begin with the Irish Government Bill-- The object of the Irish Government Bill is to confer on the Irish people the largest measure of self-government consistent with the absolute supremacy of the Crown and Imperial Parliament and the entire unity of the Empire. To carry into effect this object it was essential to create a separate though subordinate legislature; thus occasion was given to opponents to apply the name of Separatists to the supporters of the Bill--a term true in so far only as it denoted the intention to create a separate legislature, but false and calumnious when used in the sense in which it was intended to be understood--of imputing to the promoters of the Bill the intention to disunite or in any way to disintegrate the Empire. Indeed, the very object of the measure was, by relaxing a little the legal bonds of union, to draw closer the actual ties between England and Ireland, in fact, to do as we have done in our Colonies, by decentralizing the subordinate functions of government to strengthen the central supremacy of natural affection and Imperial unity. The example of the effects of giving complete self-government to our Colonies would seem not unfavourable to trying the same experiment in Ireland. Some forty years ago, Canada, New Zealand, and the various colonies of Australia were discontented and uneasy at the control exercised by the Government of England over their local affairs. What did England do? She gave to each of those communities the fullest power of local government consistent with the unity of the Empire. The result was that the real union was established in the same degree as the apparent tie of control over local affairs was loosened. Are there any reasons to suppose that the condition of Ireland is such as to render the example of the Colonies applicable? Let us look a little at the past history of that country. Up to 1760 Ireland was governed practically as a conquered country. The result was that in 1782, in order to save Imperial unity, we altogether relaxed the local tie and made Ireland legislatively independent. The Empire was thus saved, but difficulties naturally arose between two independent legislatures. The true remedy would have been to have imposed on Grattan's Parliament the conditions imposed by the Irish Government Bill on the statutory Parliament created by that Bill; the course actually taken was that, instead of leaving the Irish with their local government, and arranging for the due supremacy of England, the Irish Legislature was destroyed under the guise of Union, and Irish representatives were transferred to an assembly in which they had little weight, and in which they found no sympathy. The result was that from the date of the Union to the present day Ireland has been constantly working for the reinstatement of its National Legislature, and has been governed by a continuous system of extraordinary legislature called coercion; the fact being that between 1800, the date of the Act of Union, and 1832, the date of the great Reform Act, there were only eleven years free from coercion, while in the fifty-three years since that period there have been only two years entirely free from special repressive legislation. So much, therefore, is clear, that Irish discontent at not being allowed to manage their own affairs has gradually increased instead of diminishing. The conclusion then would seem irresistible, that if coercion has failed, the only practical mode of governing Ireland satisfactorily is to give the people power to manage their local affairs. Coming, then, to the principle of the Bill, the first step is to reconcile local government with Imperial supremacy, in other words, to divide Imperial from local powers; for if this division be accurately made, and the former class of powers be reserved to the British Crown and British Parliament, while the latter only are intrusted to the Irish Parliament, it becomes a contradiction in terms to say that Imperial unity is dissolved by reserving to the Imperial authority all its powers, or that Home Rule is a sundering of the Imperial tie when that tie is preserved inviolable. Imperial powers, then, are the prerogatives of the Crown with respect to peace and war, and making treaties with foreign nations; in short, the power of regulating the relations of the Empire towards foreign nations. These are the _jura summi imperii_, the very insignia of supremacy; the attributes of sovereign authority in every form of government, be it despotism, limited monarchy, or republic; the only difference is that in a system of government under one supreme head, they are vested in that head alone, in a federal government, as in America or Switzerland, they reside in the composite body forming the federal supreme authority. Various subsidiary powers necessarily attend the above supreme powers; for example, the power of maintaining armies and navies, of commanding the militia, and other incidental powers. Closely connected with the power of making peace and war is the power of regulating commerce with foreign nations. Next in importance to the reservations necessary to constitute the Empire a Unity with regard to foreign nations, are the powers required to prevent disputes and to facilitate intercourse between the various parts of the Empire. These are the coinage of money and other regulations relating to currency, to copyright or other exclusive rights to the use or profit of any works or inventions. The above subjects must be altogether excluded from the powers of the subordinate legislature; it ceases to be subordinate as soon as it is invested with these Imperial, or quasi-Imperial, powers. Assuming, however, the division between Imperial and local powers to be accurately determined, how is the subordinate legislative body to be kept within its due limits? The answer is very plain,--an Imperial court must be established to decide in the last resort whether the subordinate legislature has or has not infringed Imperial rights. Such a court has been in action in the United States of America ever since their union, and no serious conflict has arisen in carrying its decisions into effect, and the Privy Council, acting as the Supreme Court in respect to Colonial appeals, has been accepted by all the self-governing colonies as a just and impartial expositor of the meaning of their several constitutions. Next in importance to the right division of Imperial and local powers is a correct understanding of the relation borne by the executive of an autonomous country to the mother country. In every part of the British Empire which enjoys home rule the legislature consists of the Queen and the two local legislative bodies. The administrative power resides in the Queen alone. The Queen has the appointment of all the officers of the government; money bills can be introduced into the legislature only with the consent of the Queen. The initiative power of taxation then is vested in the Queen, the executive head, in practice represented by the Governor. But such a power of initiation is of course useless unless the legislative body is willing to support the executive, and grants it the necessary funds for carrying on the government. What, then, is the contrivance by which the governmental machine is prevented from being stopped by a difference between the executive and legislative authorities? It is the same in the mother country, and in every British home-rule country, with this difference only--that beyond the limits of the mother country the Queen is represented by a governor to whom are delegated such a measure of powers as is necessary for the supreme head of a local self-governing community. The contrivance is this in the mother country:--the Queen acts upon the advice of a cabinet council; in home-rule dependencies the Governor acts on the advice of a local council. If this cabinet council in the mother country, or local council in a dependency, ceases to command a majority in the popular legislative body, it resigns, and the Governor is obliged to select a council which, by commanding such a majority, can obtain the supplies necessary to carry on the government. The consequence then is, that in a home-rule community, if a serious difficulty arises between the legislative and executive authority, the head of the executive, the governor, refers the ultimate decision of the question to the general body of electors by dissolving the popular legislative body. It has been urged in the discussion on the Irish Government Bill that the powers of the executive in relation to the legislative body ought to be expressed in the Bill itself; but it is clear to anybody acquainted with the rudiments of legislation that the details of such a system (in other words, the mode in which a governor ought to act under the endless variety of circumstances which may occur in governing a dependency) never have been and never can be expressed in an Act of Parliament. But how little difficulty this absence of definition has caused may be judged from the fact that neither in England nor in any of her home-rule dependencies has any vital collision arisen between the executive and legislative authorities, and that all the home-rule colonies have managed to surmount the obstacles which the opponents of Home Rule argued would be fatal to their existence. The main principles have now been stated on which the Irish Government Bill is framed, and it remains to give a summary of the provisions of the Bill, the objects and bearing of which will be readily understood from the foregoing observations. The first clause provides that-- "On and after the appointed day there shall be established in Ireland a Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and an Irish legislative body." This is the first step in all English constitutional systems, to vest the power of legislation in the Queen and the legislative body. Such a legislature might have had conferred on it the independent powers vested in Grattan's Parliament: but the second clause at once puts an end to any doubt as to the subordination of the Irish legislative body; for while on the one hand it confers full powers of local self-government, by declaring that the Legislature may make any laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland, it subjects that power to numerous exceptions and restrictions. The exceptions are contained in the third clause, and the restrictions in the fourth. The exceptions are as follows:-- "The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws relating to the following matters or any of them:-- "(1.) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or a Regency; "(2.) The making of peace or war; "(3.) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval forces, or the defence of the realm; "(4.) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the relations between the various parts of Her Majesty's dominions; "(5.) Dignities or titles of honour; "(6.) Prize or booty of war; "(7.) Offences against the law of nations; or offences committed in violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between Her Majesty and any foreign State; or offences committed on the high seas; "(8.) Treason, alienage, or naturalization; "(9.) Trade, navigation, or quarantine; "(10.) The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this Act mentioned with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in Ireland; "(11.) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks; "(12.) The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal tender; or weights and measures; or "(13.) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use or profits of any works or inventions." Of these exceptions the first four preserve the imperial rights which have been insisted on above, and maintain the position of Ireland as an integral portion of that Empire of which Great Britain is the head. The remaining exceptions are either subsidiary to the first four, or relate, as is the case with exceptions 10 to 13, to matters on which it is desirable that uniformity should exist throughout the whole Empire. The restrictions in clause 4 are:-- "The Irish Legislature shall not make any law-- "(1.) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or "(2.) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account of religious belief; or "(3.) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain any place of denominational education or any denominational institution or charity; or "(4.) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at that school; or "(5.) Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty in Council first obtained on an address presented by the legislative body of Ireland, or the consent of the corporation interested, the rights, property, or privileges of any existing corporation incorporated by royal charter or local and general Act of Parliament; or "(6.) Imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties of excise, as defined by this Act, or either of such duties, or affecting any Act relating to such duties or either of them; or "(7.) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared to be alterable by the Irish Legislature." These restrictions differ from the exceptions, inasmuch as they do not prevent the Legislature of Ireland from dealing with the subjects to which they refer, but merely impose on it an obligation not to handle the specified matters in a manner detrimental to the interests of certain classes of Her Majesty's subjects. For example, restrictions 1 to 4 are practically concerned in securing religious freedom; restriction 5 protects existing charters; restriction 6 is necessary, as will be seen hereinafter, to carrying into effect the financial scheme of the bill; restriction 7 is a consequence of the very framework of the Bill: it provides for the stability of the Irish constitution, by declaring that the Irish Legislature is not competent to alter the constitutional act to which it owes its existence, except on those points on which it is expressly permitted to make alterations. Clause 5 is an exposition, so to speak, of the consequence which would seem to flow from the fact of the Queen being a constitutional part of the Legislature. It states that the royal prerogatives with respect to the summoning, prorogation, and dissolution of the Irish legislative body are to be the same as the royal prerogatives in relation to the Imperial Parliament. The next clause (6) is comparatively immaterial; it merely provides that the duration of the Irish legislative body is to be quinquennial. As it deals with a matter of detail, it perhaps would have more aptly found a place in a subsequent part of the Bill. Clause 7 passes from the legislative to the executive authority; it declares:-- (1.) The executive government of Ireland shall continue vested in Her Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of Her Majesty with the aid of such officers and such council as to Her Majesty may from time to time seem fit. (2.) Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by Her Majesty, the Lord Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of Her Majesty to bills passed by the Irish legislative body, and shall exercise the prerogatives of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning, proroguing, and dissolving of the Irish legislative body, and any prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty. Bearing in mind what has been said in the preliminary observations in respect of the relation between the executive and the legislative authority, it will be at once understood how much this clause implies, according to constitutional maxims, of the dependence on the one hand of the Irish executive in respect of imperial matters, and of its independence in respect of local matters. The clause is practically co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers to the Imperial Legislature. The governor is an imperial officer, and will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny, and to veto any bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided by the advice of the Irish executive council. The system is, as has been shown above, self-acting. The governor, for local purposes, must have a council which is in harmony with the legislative body. If a council, supported by the legislative body and the governor do not agree, the governor must give way unless he can, by dismissing his council and dissolving the legislative body, obtain both a council and a legislative body which will support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case is different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and in the last resort a determination of the executive council, backed by the legislative body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act of rebellion on the part of the Irish people, and be dealt with accordingly. The above clauses contain the pith and marrow of the whole scheme. The exact constitution of the legislative body, and the orders into which it should be divided, the exclusion or non-exclusion of the Irish members from the Imperial Parliament, indeed, the whole of the provisions found in the remainder of this Bill, are matters which might be altered without destroying, or even violently disarranging, the Home-rule scheme as above described. Clauses 9, 10, and 11 provide for the constitution of the legislative body; it differs materially from the colonial legislative bodies, and from the Legislature of the United States. For the purpose of deliberation it consists of one House only; for the purpose of voting on all questions (except interlocutory applications and questions of order), it is divided into two classes, called in the Bill "Orders," each of which votes separately, with the result that a question on which the two orders disagree is deemed to be decided in the negative. The object of this arrangement is to diminish the chances of collision between the two branches of the Legislature, which have given rise to so much difficulty both in England and the colonies. Each order will have ample opportunity of learning the strength and hearing the arguments of the other order. They will therefore, each of them, proceed to a division with a full sense of the responsibility attaching to their action. A further safeguard is provided against a final conflict between the first and second orders. If the first order negative a proposition, that negative is in force only for a period of three years, unless a dissolution takes place sooner, in which case it is terminated at once; the lost bill or clause may then be submitted to the whole House, and if decided in the affirmative, and assented to by the Queen, becomes law. The first order of the Irish legislative body comprises 103 members. It is intended to consist ultimately wholly of elective members; but for the next immediate period of thirty years the rights of the Irish representative peers are, as will be seen, scrupulously reserved. The plan is this: of the 103 members composing the first order, seventy-five are elective, and twenty-eight peerage members. The qualification of the elective members is an annual income of £200, or the possession of a capital sum of £4000 free from all charges. The elections are to be conducted in the electoral districts set out in the schedule to the Bill. The electors must possess land or tenements within the district of the annual value of £25. The twenty-eight peerage members consist of the existing twenty-eight representative peers, and any vacancies in their body during the next thirty years are to be filled up in the manner at present in use respecting the election of Irish representative peers. The Irish representative peers cease to sit in the English Parliament; but a member of that body is not required to sit in the Irish Parliament without his assent, and the place of any existing peer refusing to sit in the Irish Parliament will be filled up as in the case of an ordinary vacancy. The elective members of the first order sit for ten years; every five years one half their number will retire. The members of the first order do not vacate their seats on a dissolution of the legislative body. At the expiration of thirty years, that is to say, upon the exhaustion of all the existing Irish representative peers, the whole of the upper order will consist of elective members. The second order consists of 204 members, that is to say, of the 103 existing Irish members (who are transferred to the Irish Parliament), and of 101 additional members to be elected by the county districts and the represented towns, in the same manner as that in which the present 101 members for counties and towns are elected--each constituency returning two instead of one member. If an existing member does not assent to his transfer, his seat is vacated. A power is given to the Legislature of Ireland to enable the Royal University of Ireland to return two members. The provisions with respect to this second order fall within the class of enactments which are alterable by the Irish Legislature. After the first dissolution of parliament the Irish Legislature may deal with the second order in any manner they think fit, with the important restrictions:--(1) That in the distribution of members they must have due regard to population; (2) that they must not increase or diminish the number of members. The transfer to the Irish legislative body of the Irish representative peers, and of the Irish members, involves their exclusion under ordinary circumstances from the Imperial Parliament, with this great exception, that whenever an alteration is proposed to be made in the fundamental provisions of the Irish Government Bill, a mode of procedure is devised for recalling both orders of the Irish legislative body to the Imperial Parliament for the purpose of obtaining their consent to such alteration (clause 39). Further, it is right to state here that Mr. Gladstone in his speech on the second reading of the Bill proposed to provide, "that when any proposal for taxation was made affecting the condition of Ireland, Irish members should have an opportunity of appearing in the House to take a share in the transaction of that business." Questions arising as to whether the Irish Parliament has or not exceeded its constitutional powers may be determined by the ordinary courts of law in the first instance; the ultimate appeal lies to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. An additional safeguard is provided by declaring that before a provision in a Bill becomes law, the Lord Lieutenant may take the opinion of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as to its legality, and further, that without subjecting private litigants to the expense of trying the constitutionality of an Act, the Lord Lieutenant may, of his own motion, move the judicial committee to determine the question. With a view to secure absolute impartiality in the committee, Ireland will be represented on that body by persons who are or have been Irish judges (clause 25). The question of finance forms a separate portion of the Bill, the provisions of which are contained in clauses twelve to twenty, while the machinery for carrying those enactments into effect will be found in Part III. of the Land Bill. The first point to be determined was the amount to be contributed by Ireland to imperial expenses. Under the Act of Union it was intended that Ireland should pay 2/17ths, or in the proportion of 1 to 7-1/2 of the total expenditure of the United Kingdom. This amount being found exorbitant, it was gradually reduced, until at the present moment it amounts to something under the proportion of 1 to 11-1/2. The bill fixes the proportion at 1/15th, or 1 to 14, this sum being arrived at by a comparison between the amount of the income-tax, death-duties, and valuation of property in Great Britain, and the amount of the same particulars in Ireland. The amount to be contributed by Ireland to the imperial expenditure being thus ascertained, the more difficult part of the problem remained to provide the fund out of which the contribution should be payable, and the mode in which its payment should be secured. The plan which commended itself to the framers of the Bill, as combining the advantage of insuring the fiscal unity of Great Britain and Ireland, with absolute security to the British exchequer, was to continue the customs and excise duties under imperial control, and to pay them into the hands of an imperial officer. This plan is carried into effect by the conjoint operation of the clauses of the Irish Government Bill and the Irish Land Bill above referred to. The customs and excise duties are directed to be levied as heretofore in pursuance of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament, and are excepted from the control of the Irish Legislature, which may, with that exception, impose any taxes in Ireland it may think expedient. The imperial officer who is appointed under the Land Bill bears the title of Receiver-General, and into his hands not only the imperial taxes (the customs and excise duties), but also all local taxes imposed by the Irish Parliament are in the first instance paid. (See Clauses 25-27 of the Land Bill.) The Receiver-General having thus in his hands all imperial and local funds levied in Ireland, his duty is to satisfy all imperial claims before paying over any moneys to the Irish Exchequer. Further, an Imperial Court of Exchequer is established in Ireland to watch over the interests of the Receiver-General, and all revenue cases are to be tried, and all defaults punished in that court. Any neglect of the local authorities to carry into effect the decrees of the Imperial Court will amount to treason, and it will be the duty of the Imperial Government to deal with it accordingly. Supposing the Bill to have passed, the account of the Exchequer in Ireland would have stood thus:-- RECEIPTS. 1. _Imperial Taxes_: (1) Customs . . . . . . . . . . £1,880,000 (2) Excise . . . . . . . . . . 4,300,000 --------- £6,180,000 2. _Local Taxes_: (1) Stamps . . . . . . . . . . . £600,000 (2) Income-Tax at 6_d_. in £ . . 550,000 --------- £1,150,000 3. _Non-Tax Revenue_: (Post Office, Telegraph, etc.) . . . . . £1,020,000 ---------- £8,350,000 EXPENDITURE. 1. _Contribution to Imperial Exchequer_ on basis of 1/15th of Imperial Expenditure, viz.: (1) Debt Charge . . . . . . . . £1,466,000 (2) Army and Navy . . . . . . . 1,666,000 (3) Civil Charges . . . . . . . 110,000 --------- £3,242,000 2. _Sinking Fund_ on 1/15th of Capital of Debt . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360,000 3. _Charge for Constabulary_[14] . . . . . . . 1,000,000 4. _Local Civil Charges_ other than Constabulary . . . . . . . . . 2,510,000 5. _Collection of Revenue_: (1) Imperial Taxes . . . . . . £170,000 (2) Local Taxes . . . . . . . . 60,000 (3) Non-Tax Revenue . . . . . . 604,000 ------- 834,000 6. _Balance_ or Surplus . . . . . . . . . . . . 404,000 -------- £8,350,000 The Imperial contribution payable by Ireland to Great Britain cannot be increased for thirty years, though it may be diminished if the charges for the army and navy and Imperial civil expenditure for any year be less than fifteen times the contribution paid by Ireland, in which case 1/15th of the diminution will be deducted from the annual Imperial contribution. Apart from the Imperial charges there are other charges strictly Irish, for the security of the payment of which the Bill provides. This it does by imposing an obligation on the Irish legislative body to enact sufficient taxes to meet such charges, and by directing them to be paid by the Imperial Receiver-General, who is required to keep an imperial and an Irish account, carrying the customs and excise duties, in the first instance, to the imperial account, and the local taxes to the Irish account, transferring to the Irish account the surplus remaining after paying the imperial charges on the imperial account. On this Irish account are charged debts due from the Government of Ireland, pensions, and other sums due to the civil servants, and the salaries of the judges of the supreme courts in Ireland. Some provisions of importance remain to be noticed. Judges of the superior and county courts in Ireland are to be removable from office only on address to the Crown, presented by both orders of the Legislative body voting separately. Existing Civil servants are retained in their offices at their existing salaries; if the Irish Government desire their retirement, they will be entitled to pensions; on the other hand, if at the end of two years the officers themselves wish to retire, they can do so, and will be entitled to the same pensions as if their office had been abolished. The pensions are payable by the Receiver-General out of the Irish account above mentioned. The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament over all parts of the Empire is an inherent quality of which Parliament cannot divest itself, inasmuch as it cannot bind its successors or prevent them from repealing any prior Act. In order, however, to prevent any misapprehension on this point clause 37 was inserted, the efficacy of which, owing in great measure to a misprint, has been doubted. It is enough to state here that it was intended by express legislation to reserve all powers to the Imperial Parliament, and had the Bill gone into Committee the question would have been placed beyond the reach of cavil by a slight alteration in the wording of the clause. This summary may be concluded by the statement that the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords over actions and suits arising in Ireland (except in respect of constitutional questions reserved for the determination of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as explained above), and with respect to claims for Irish Peerages, is preserved intact. The object of the Land Bill was a political one: to promote the contentment of the people, and the cause of good government in Ireland, by settling once and for ever the vexed question relating to land. To do this effectually it was necessary to devise a system under which the tenants, as a class, should become interested in the maintenance of social order, and be furnished with substantial inducements to rally round the institutions of their country. On the other hand, it was just and right that the landlords should participate in the benefits of any measure proposed for remedying the evils attendant upon the tenure of land in Ireland; and should be enabled to rid themselves, on fair terms, of their estates in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the responsibilities of ownership. Further, it was felt by the framers of the Bill that a moral obligation rested on the Imperial Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a question so fraught with danger, and so involved in difficulty, to be determined by the Irish Government on its first entry on official existence. Such were the governing motives for bringing in the Land Bill. To understand an Irish Land Bill it is necessary to dismiss at once all ideas of the ordinary relations between landlord and tenant in England, and to grasp a true conception of the condition of an Irish tenanted estate. In England the relation between the landlord and tenant of a farm resembles, with a difference in the subject-matter, the relation between the landlord and tenant of a furnished house. In the case of the house, the landlord keeps it in a state fit for habitation, and the tenant pays rent for the privilege of living in another man's house. In the case of the farm, the landlord provides the farm with house, farm-buildings, gates, and other permanent improvements required to fit it for cultivation by the tenant, and the tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the farm, receiving the proceeds of that cultivation. The characters of owner and tenant, however long the connection between them may subsist, are quite distinct. The tenant does no acts of ownership, and never regards the land as belonging to himself, quitting it without hesitation if he can make more money by taking another farm. In Ireland the whole situation is different: instead of a farm of some one hundred or two hundred acres, the tenant has a holding varying, say, from five to fifty acres, for which he pays an annual rent-charge to the landlord. He, or his ancestors have, in the opinion of the tenant, acquired a quasi-ownership in the land by making all the improvements, and he is only removable on non-payment of the fixed rent, or non-fulfilment of certain specified conditions. In short, in Ireland the ownership is dual: the landlord is merely the lord of a quasi-copyhold manor, consisting of numerous small tenements held by quasi-copyholders who, so long as they pay what may be called the manorial rents, and fulfil the manorial conditions, regard themselves as independent owners of their holdings. An Irish Land Bill, then, dealing with tenanted estates, is, in fact, merely a Bill for converting the small holders of tenements held at a fixed rent into fee-simple owners by redemption of the rent due to the landlord and a transfer of the land to the holders. Every scheme, therefore, for settling the Land question in Ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of paying off the rent-charges due to the landlord. The tenant cannot, of course, raise the capital sufficient for paying off the redemption money; some State authority must, therefore, intervene and advance the whole or the greater part of that money, and recoup itself for the advance by the creation in its own favour of an annual charge on the holding sufficient to repay in a certain number of years both the principal and interest due in respect of the advance. The first problem, then, in an Irish Land Bill, is to settle the conditions of this annuity in such a manner as to satisfy the landlord and tenant; the first, as to the price of his estate; the second, as to the amount of the annuity to be paid by him, at the same time to provide the State authority with adequate security for the repayment of the advance, or, in other words, for the punctual payments of the annuity which is to discharge the advance. Next in importance to the financial question of the adjustment of the annuity comes the administrative difficulty of investigating the title, and thus securing to the tenant the possession of the fee simple, and to the State authority the position of a mortgagee. Under ordinary circumstances the investigation of the title to an estate involves the examination of every document relating thereto for a period of forty years, and the distribution of the purchase-money amongst the head renters, mortgagees, and other encumbrancers, who, in addition to the landlord, are found to be interested in the ownership of almost every Irish estate. Such a process is costly, even in the case of large estates, and involves an expense almost, and, indeed, speaking generally, absolutely prohibitory in the case of small properties. Some mode, then, must be devised for reducing this expense within manageable limits, or any scheme for dealing with Irish land, however well devised from a financial point of view, will sink under the burden imposed by the expense attending the transfer of the land to the new proprietors. Having thus stated the two principal difficulties attending the Land question in Ireland, it may be well before entering on the details of the Sale and Purchase of Land (Ireland) Bill, to mention the efforts which have been made during the last fifteen years to surmount those difficulties. The Acts having this object in view are the Land Acts of 1870, 1872, and 1881, brought in by Mr. Gladstone, and the Land Purchase Act of 1885, brought in by the Conservative Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Lord Ashbourne). The Act of 1870, as amended by the Act of 1872, provided that the State authority might advance two-thirds of the purchase-money. An attempt was made to get over the difficulties of title by providing that the Landed Estates Court or Board of Works shall undertake the investigation of the title and the transfer and distribution of the purchase-money at a fixed price. The Act of 1881 increased the advance to three-quarters, leaving the same machinery to deal with the title. Both under the Acts of 1870 and 1881 the advance was secured by an annuity of 5 per cent., payable for the period of thirty-five years, and based on the loan of the money by the English Exchequer at 3-1/2 per cent. interest. These Acts produced very little effect. The expense of dealing with the titles in the Landed Estates Court proved overwhelming, and neither the Board of Works, under the Act of 1872, nor the Land Commission, under the Act of 1881, found themselves equal to the task of completing inexpensively the transfer of the land; further, the tenants had no means of providing even the quarter of the purchase-money required by the Act of 1881. In 1885 Lord Ashbourne determined to remove all obstacles at the expense of the English Exchequer. By the Land Act of that year he authorized the whole of the purchase-money to be advanced by the State, with a guarantee by the landlord, to be carried into effect by his allowing one-fifth of the purchase-money to remain in the hands of the agents of the State Authority until one-fifth of the purchase-money had been repaid by the annual payments of the tenants. The principal was to be recouped by an annuity of 4 per cent., extending over a period of forty-nine years, instead of an annuity of 5 per cent. extending over a period of thirty-five years. The English Exchequer was to advance the money on the basis of interest at 3-1/8 per cent., instead of at 3-1/2 per cent. Though sufficient time has not yet elapsed to show whether the great bribe offered by the Act of 1885, at the expense of the British taxpayer, will succeed in overcoming the apathy of the tenants, it cannot escape notice that if the Act of 1885 succeeds better than the previous Acts, it will owe that success solely to the greater amount of risk which it imposes on the English Exchequer, and not to any improvement in the scheme in respect of securing greater certainty of sale to the Irish landlord, or of diminishing the danger of loss to the English taxpayer. Such being the state of legislation, and such the circumstances of the land question in Ireland in the year 1886, the Irish Government Bill afforded Mr. Gladstone the means and the opportunity of bringing in a Land Bill which would secure to the Irish landlord the certainty of selling his land at a fair price, without imposing any practical liability on the English Exchequer, and would, at the same time, diminish the annual sums payable by the tenant; while it also conferred a benefit on the Irish Exchequer. These advantages were, as will be seen, gained, firstly, by the pledge of English credit on good security, instead of advancing money on a mere mortgage on Irish holdings, made directly to the English Government; and, secondly, by the interposition of the Irish Government, as the immediate creditor of the Irish tenant. The scheme of the Land Purchase Bill is as follows:--The landlord of an agricultural estate occupied by tenants may apply to a department of the new Irish Government to purchase his estate. The tenants need not be consulted, as the purchase, if completed, will necessarily better their condition, and thus at the very outset the difficulty of procuring the assent of the tenants, which has hitherto proved so formidable an obstacle to all Irish land schemes, disappears. The landlord may require the department to which he applies (called in the Bill the State Authority) to pay him the statutory price of his estate, not in cash, but in consols valued at par. This price, except in certain unusual cases of great goodness or of great badness of the land, is twenty years' purchase of the _net_ rental. The _net_ rental is the _gross_ rental after deducting from that rent tithe rent-charge, the average percentage for expenses in respect of bad debts, any rates paid by the landlord, and any like outgoings. The _gross_ rental of an estate is the gross rent of all the holdings on the estate, payable in the year ending in November, 1885. Where a judicial rent has been fixed, it is the judicial rent; where no judicial rent has been fixed, it is the rent to be determined in the manner provided by the Bill. To state this shortly, the Bill provides that an Irish landlord may require the State Authority to pay him for his estate, in consols valued at par, a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount of the annual sum which he has actually put into his pocket out of the proceeds of the estate. The determination of the statutory price is, so far as the landlord is concerned, the cardinal point of the Bill, and in order that no injustice may be done the landlord, an Imperial Commission--called the Land Commission--is appointed by the Bill, whose duty it is to fix the statutory price, and, where there is no judicial rent, to determine the amount of rent which, in the character of gross rental, is to form the basis of the statutory price. The Commission also pay the purchase-money to the landlord, or distribute it amongst the parties entitled, and generally the Commission act as intermediaries between the landlord and the Irish State Authority, which has no power of varying the terms to which the landlord is entitled under the Bill, or of judging of the conditions which affect the statutory price. If the landlord thinks the price fixed by the Land Commission, as the statutory price inequitable, he may reject their offer and keep his estate. Supposing, however, the landlord to be satisfied with the statutory price offered by the Land Commission, the sale is concluded, and the Land Commission make an order carrying the required sum of consols (which is for convenience hereinafter called the purchase-money, although it consists of stock and not of cash) to the account of the estate in their books after deducting 1 per cent. for the cost of investigation of title and distribution of the purchase-money, and upon the purchase-money being thus credited to the estate, the landlord ceases to have any interest in the estate, and the tenants, by virtue of the order of the Land Commission, become owners in fee simple of their holdings, subject to the payment to the Irish State Authority of an annuity. The amount of the annuity is stated in the Bill. It is a sum equal to £4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount of the gross rental of the holding. The illustration given by Mr. Gladstone in his speech will at once explain these apparently intricate matters of finance. A landlord is entitled to the Hendon estate, producing £1200 a year gross rental; to find the net rental, the Land Commission deduct from this gross rental outgoings estimated at about 20 per cent., or £240 a year. This makes the net rental £960 a year, and the price payable to the landlord is £19,200 (twenty years' purchase of £960, or £960 multiplied by 20), which, as above stated, will be paid in consols. The tenants will pay, as the maximum amount for their holdings, £4 per cent. for forty-nine years on the capitalized value of twenty years' purchase of the gross rent. This will amount to £960 instead of £1,200, which they have hitherto paid; a saving of £240 a year will thus be effected, from which, however, must be deducted the half rates to which they will become liable, formerly paid by the landlord. This £4 per cent. charge payable by the tenants will continue for forty-nine years, but at the end of that time each tenant will become a free owner of his estate without any annual payment. Next, as to the position of the State Authority. The State Authority receives £960 from the tenants; it pays out of that sum £4 per cent., not upon the gross rental, but upon the net rental capitalized, that is to say, £768 to the Imperial Exchequer. The State Authority, therefore, receives,£960, and assuming that the charge of collecting the rental is 2 per cent., that is to say, £19 4_s._, the State Authority will, out of £960, have to disburse only £787 4_s._, leaving it a gainer of £172 16_s._, or nearly 18 per cent. The result then between the several parties is, the landlord receives £19,200; the tenantry pay £240 a year less than they have hitherto paid, and at the end of forty-nine years are exempt altogether from payment; the gain of Irish State Authority is £172 16_s._ a year. Another mode of putting the case shortly is as follows: The English Exchequer lends the money to the Irish State Authority at 3-1/8 per cent. and an annuity of 4 per cent. paid during forty-nine years will, as has been stated above, repay both principal and interest for every £100 lent at 3-1/8 per cent. On the sale of an estate under the Bill, the landlord receives twenty years' purchase; the tenant pays £4 per cent. on twenty years' purchase of the gross rental; the Irish State Authority receives £4 per cent. on the gross rental; the English Exchequer receives 4 per cent. on the net rental only. The repayment of the interest due by the Irish Authority to the English Exchequer is in no wise dependent on the punctual payment of their annuities by the Irish tenants, nor does the English Government in any way figure as the landlord or creditor of the Irish tenants. The annuities payable by the tenants are due to the Irish Government, and collected by them, while the interest due to the English Government is a charge on the whole of the Irish Government funds; and further, these funds themselves are paid into the hands of the Imperial officer, whose duty it is to liquidate the debt due to his master, the Imperial Exchequer, before a sixpence can be touched by the Irish Government. It is not, then, any exaggeration to say that the Land Purchase Bill of 1886 provides for the settlement of the Irish Land question without any appreciable risk to the English Exchequer, and with the advantage of securing a fair price for the landlord, a diminution of annual payments to the tenant with the ultimate acquisition of the fee simple, also a gain of no inconsiderable sum to the Irish Exchequer. In order to obviate the difficulties attending the investigation of title and transfer of the property, the Bill provides, as stated above, that on the completion of the agreement for the sale between the landlord and the Commission, the holding shall vest at once in the tenants: it then proceeds to declare that the claims of all persons interested in the land shall attach to the purchase-money in the same manner as though it were land. The duty of ascertaining these claims and distributing the purchase-money is vested in the Land Commission, who undertake the task in exchange for the 1 per cent. which they have, as above stated, deducted from the purchase-money as the cost of conducting the complete transfer of the estate from the landlord to the tenants. The difficulty of the process of dealing with the purchase-money depends, of course, on the intricacy of the title. If the vendor is the sole unencumbered owner, he is put in immediate possession of the stock constituting the price of the estate. If there are encumbrances, as is usually the case, they are paid off by the Land Commission. Capital sums are paid in full; jointures and other life charges are valued according to the usual tables. Drainage and other temporary charges are estimated at their present value, permanent rent-charges are valued by agreement, or in case of disagreement, by the Land Commission; a certain minimum number of years' purchase being assigned by the Bill to any permanent rent-charge which amounts only to one-fifth part of the rental of the estate on which it is charged, this provision being made to prevent injustice being done to the holders of rent-charges which are amply secured. It remains to notice certain other points of some importance. The landlord entitled to require the State to purchase his property is the immediate landlord, that is to say, the person entitled to the receipt of the rent of the estate; no encumbrancer can avail himself of the privilege, the reason being that the Bill is intended to assist solvent landlords, and not to create a new Encumbered Estates Court. The landlord may sell this privilege, and possibly by means of this power of sale may be able to put pressure on his encumbrancers to reduce their claims in order to obtain immediate payment. The Land Commission, in their character of quasi-arbitrators between the landlord and the Irish State Authority, have ample powers given to enable them to do justice. If the statutory price, as settled according to the Act, is too low, they may raise it to twenty-two years' purchase instead of twenty years' purchase. If it is too high, they may refuse to buy unless the landlord will reduce it to a proper price. In the congested districts scheduled in the Bill the land, on a sale, passes to the Irish State Authority, as landlords, and not to the tenants; the reason being that it is considered that the tenants would be worsened, rather than bettered, by having their small plots vested in them in fee simple. For the same cause it is provided that in any part of Ireland tenants of holdings under £4 a year may object to become the owners of their holdings, which will thereupon vest, on a sale, in the Irish State Authority. Lastly, the opportunity is taken of establishing a registry of title in respect of all property dealt with under the Bill. The result of such a registry would be that any property entered therein would ever thereafter be capable of being transferred with the same facility, and at as little expense, as stock in the public funds. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 14: Any charge in excess of one million was to be borne by Imperial Exchequer.] THE "UNIONIST" POSITION. BY CANON MACCOLL Is it not time that the opponents of Home Rule for Ireland should define their position? They defeated Mr. Gladstone's scheme last year in Parliament and in the constituencies; and they defeated it by the promise of a counter policy which was to consist, in brief, of placing Ireland on the same footing as Great Britain in respect to Local Government; or, if there was to be any difference, it was to be in the direction of a larger and more generous measure for Ireland than for the rest of the United Kingdom. This certainly was the policy propounded by the distinguished leader of the Liberal Unionists in his speech at Belfast, in November, 1885, and repeated in his electoral speeches last year. In the Belfast speech Lord Hartington said: "My opinion is that it is desirable for Irishmen that institutions of local self-government such as are possessed by England and Scotland, and such as we hope to give in the next session in greater extent to England and Scotland, should also be extended to Ireland." But this extension of local self-government to Ireland would require, in Lord Hartington's opinion, a fundamental change in the fabric of Irish Government. "I would not shrink," he says, "from a great and bold reconstruction of the Irish Government," a reconstruction leading up gradually to some real and substantial form of Home Rule. His Lordship's words are: "I submit with some confidence to you these principles, which I have endeavoured to lay down, and upon which, I think, the extension of Local Government in Ireland must proceed. First, you must have some adequate guarantees both for the maintenance of the essential unity of the Empire and for the protection of the minority in Ireland. And, secondly, you must also admit this principle: the work of complete self-government of Ireland, the grant of full control over the management of its own affairs, is not a grant that can be made by any Parliament of this country in a day. It must be the work of continuous and careful effort." Elsewhere in the same speech Lord Hartington says: "Certainly I am of opinion that nothing can be done in the direction of giving Ireland anything like complete control over her own affairs either in a day, or a session, or probably in a Parliament." "Complete control over her own affairs," "the work of complete self-government of Ireland, the grant of full control over the management of its own affairs:" this is the policy which Lord Hartington proclaimed in Ulster, the promise which he, the proximate Liberal leader, held out to Ireland on the eve of the General Election of 1885. It was a policy to be begun "in the next session," though not likely to be completed "in a day, or a session, or probably in a Parliament." Next to Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington the most important member of the Liberal party at that time was undoubtedly Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Chamberlain's Irish policy was proclaimed in the _Radical Programme, which was published before the General Election as the Radical leader's manifesto to the constituencies. This scheme, which Mr. Chamberlain had submitted as a responsible minister to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone in June, 1885, culminated in a National Council which was to control a series of local bodies and govern the whole of Ireland. "His National Council was to consist of two orders; one-third of its members were to be elected by the owners of property, and two-thirds by ratepayers. The National Council also was to be a single one, and Ulster was not to have a separate Council. As the Council was to be charged with the supervision and legislation about education, which is the burning question between Catholics and Protestants, it is clear that Mr. Chamberlain at that time contemplated no special protection for Ulster."[15] Moreover, in a letter dated April 23rd, 1886, and published in the _Daily News_ of May 17th, 1886, Mr. Chamberlain declared that he "had not changed his opinion in the least" since his first public declaration on Irish policy in 1874. "I then said that I was in favour of the principles of Home Rule, as defined by Mr. Butt, but that I would do nothing which would weaken in any way Imperial unity, and that I did not agree with all the details of his plan.... Mr. Butt's proposals were in the nature of a federal scheme, and differ entirely from Mr. Gladstone's, which are on the lines of Colonial independence. Mr. Butt did not propose to give up Irish representation at Westminster." It is true that Mr. Butt did not propose to give up Irish representation at Westminster; but it is also true that he proposed to give it up in the sense in which Mr. Chamberlain wishes to retain it. Mr. Butt's words, in the debate to which Mr. Chamberlain refers, are, "that the House should meet _without Irish members_ for the discussion of English and Scotch business; and when there was any question affecting the Empire at large, Irish members might be summoned to attend. He saw no difficulty in the matter."[16] There is no need to quote Mr. Gladstone's declarations on the Irish question at the General Election of 1885, and previously. He has been accused of springing a surprise on the country when he proposed Home Rule in the beginning of 1886. That is not, at all events, the opinion of Lord Hartington. In a speech delivered at the Eighty Club in March, 1886, his Lordship, with his usual manly candour, declared as follows: "I am not going to say one word of complaint or charge against Mr. Gladstone for the attitude which he has taken on this question. I think no one who has read or heard, during a long series of years, the declarations of Mr. Gladstone on the question of self-government for Ireland, can be surprised at the tone of his present declarations.... When I look back to those declarations that Mr. Gladstone made in Parliament, which have not been unfrequent; when I look back to the increased definiteness given to those declarations in his address to the electors of Midlothian, and in his Midlothian speeches; I say, when I consider all these things, I feel that I have not, and that no one has, any right to complain of the tone of the declarations which Mr. Gladstone has recently made upon this subject." So much as to the state of Liberal opinion on the Irish question at the General Election of 1885. The leaders of all sections of the party put the Irish question in the foreground of their programme for the session of 1886. We all remember Sir Charles Dilke's public announcement that he and Mr. Chamberlain were going to visit Ireland in the autumn of 1885, to study the Irish question on the spot, with a view to maturing a plan for the first session of the new Parliament. What about the Conservative party? Lord Salisbury's Newport speech was avowedly the programme of his Cabinet. It was the Conservative answer to Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian manifesto. He dealt with the Irish question in guarded language; but it was language which plainly showed that he recognized, not less clearly than the Liberal leaders, the crucial change which the assimilation of the Irish franchise to that of Great Britain had wrought in Irish policy. His keen eye saw at once the important bearing which that enfranchisement had on the traditional policy of coercion: "You had passed an Act of Parliament, giving in unexampled abundance, and with unexampled freedom, supreme power to the great mass of the Irish people--supreme power as regards their own locality.... To my mind the renewal of exceptional legislation against a population whom you had treated legislatively to this marked confidence was so gross in its inconsistency that you could not possibly hope, during the few remaining months that were at your disposal before the present Parliament expired, to renew any legislation which expressed on one side a distrust of what on the other side your former legislation had so strongly emphasized. The only result of your doing it would have been, not that you would have passed the Act, but that you would have promoted by the very inconsistency of the position that you were occupying--by the untenable character of the arguments that you were advancing--you would have produced so intense an exasperation amongst the Irish people, that you would have caused ten times more evil, ten times more resistance to law than your Crimes Act, even if it had been renewed, would possibly have been able to check." Lord Salisbury went on to say that "the effect of the Crimes Act had been very much exaggerated," and that "boycotting is of that character which legislation has very great difficulty in reaching." "Boycotting does not operate through outrage. Boycotting is the act of a large majority of a community resolving to do a number of things which are themselves legal, and which are only illegal by the intention with which they are done." Next to Lord Salisbury the most prominent member of the Conservative party at that date was Lord Randolph Churchill. On the 3rd of January, 1885, when it was rumoured that Mr. Gladstone's Government, then in office, intended to renew a few of the clauses of the Crimes Act, Lord Randolph Churchill made a speech at Bow against any such policy. The following quotation will suffice as a specimen of his opinion: "It comes to this, that the policy of the Government in Ireland is to declare on the one hand, by the passing of the Reform Bill, that the Irish people are perfectly capable of exercising for the advantage of the Empire the highest rights and privileges of citizenship; and by the proposal to renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously declare, on the other hand, that the Irish people are perfectly incapable of performing for the advantage of society the lowest and most ordinary duties of citizenship.... All I can say is that, if such an incoherent, such a ridiculous, such a dangerously ridiculous combination of acts can be called a policy, then, thank God, the Conservative party have no policy." Within a few months of the delivery of that speech a Conservative Government was in office, with Lord Randolph Churchill as its leader in the House of Commons; and one of the first acts of the new leader was to separate himself ostentatiously from the Irish policy of Lord Spencer and from the policy of coercion in general. Lord Randolph Churchill, as the organ of the Government in the House of Commons, repudiated in scornful language any atom of sympathy with the policy pursued by Lord Spencer in Ireland; and Lord Carnarvon, the new Viceroy, declared that "the era of coercion" was past, and that the Conservative Government intended to govern Ireland by the ordinary law. Lord Carnarvon, in addition, and very much to his credit, sought and obtained an interview with Mr. Parnell, and discussed with him, in sympathetic language, the question of Home Rule. In his own explanation of this interview Lord Carnarvon admitted that he desired to see established in Ireland some form of self-government which would satisfy "the national sentiment." It is idle, therefore, to assert that the question of Home Rule for Ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the country as a surprise by Mr. Gladstone in the beginning of 1886. The question was brought prominently before the public in the General Election of 1885 as one that must be faced in the new Parliament. All parties were committed to that policy, and the only difference was as to the character and limits of the measure of self-government to be granted to Ireland; whether it was to be large enough to satisfy "the national sentiment," as Lord Carnarvon, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Gladstone, and others desired; or whether it was to consist only of a system of county boards under the control of a reformed Dublin Castle. There was a general agreement that the grant to Ireland of electoral equality with England necessitated equality of political treatment, and that, above all things, there was to be no renewal of the stale policy of Coercion until the Irish people had got an opportunity of proving or disproving their fitness for self-government, unless, indeed, there should happen to be a recrudescence of crime which would render exceptional legislation necessary. The election of 1886 turned almost entirely on the question of Irish government, and it is not too much to say that Conservatives and Liberal Unionists vied with Home Rulers in repudiating a return to the policy of coercion until the effect of some kind of self-government had been tried. Of course, there were the usual platitudes about the necessity of maintaining law and order; but there was a _consensus_ of profession that coercion should not be resorted to unless there was a fresh outbreak of crime and disorder in Ireland. Such were the professions of the opponents of Home Rule in 1885 and in 1886. They have now been in office for eighteen months, and what do we behold? They have passed a perpetual Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the question of any kind of self-government has been relegated to an uncertain future. In his recent speech at Birmingham (Sept. 29), Mr. Chamberlain has declared that the question is not ripe for solution, and that the question of disestablishment, in Wales, Scotland, and England successively, as well as the questions of Local Option, local government for Great Britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take precedence of it. That means the postponement of the reform of Irish Government to the Greek Kalends. What justification can be made for this change of front? No valid justification has been offered. So far from there having been any increase of crime in the interval, there has been a very marked decrease. When the Coercion Bill received the royal assent last August, Ireland was more free from crime than it had been for many years past. Nothing had happened to account for the return to the policy of coercion in violation of the promise to try the experiment of conciliation. The National League was in full vigour in 1885-1886, when the policy of coercion was abandoned; boycotting was just as prevalent, and outrages were much more numerous. Under these circumstances it is the opponents of Home Rule, not its advocates, who owe an explanation to the public. They defeated Mr. Gladstone's Bill, but promised a Bill of their own. Where is their Bill? We hear nothing of it. They have made a complete change of front. They now tell us that the grievance of Ireland is entirely economic, and that the true solution of the Irish question is the abolition of dual ownership in land combined with a firm administration of the existing law. England and Scotland are to have a large measure of local government next year; but Ireland is to wait till a more convenient season. A more complete reversal of the policy proclaimed last summer by the so-called Unionists cannot be imagined. Still, however, the "Unionists" hope to be able some day to offer some form of self-government to Ireland. For party purposes they are wise in postponing that day to the latest possible period, for its advent will probably dissolve the union of the "Unionists." Lord Salisbury, Lord Hartington, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Chamberlain cannot agree upon any scheme which all can accept without a public recantation of previous professions. Mr. Bright is opposed to Home Rule "in any shape or form." Mr. Chamberlain, on the other hand, is in favour of a great National Council, on Mr. Butt's lines or on the lines of the Canadian plan; either of which would give the National Council control over education and the maintenance of law and order. Latterly, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain has advocated a separate treatment for Ulster. But the first act of an Ulster Provincial Assembly would probably be to declare the union of that Province with the rest of Ireland. Ulster, be it remembered, returns a majority of Nationalists to the Imperial Parliament. To exclude Ulster from any share in the settlement offered to the other three Provinces would therefore be impracticable; and Mr. Bright has lately expressed his opinion emphatically in that sense. In any case, Lord Hartington could be no party to any scheme so advanced as Mr. Chamberlain's. For although he declared, in his Belfast speech, that "complete self-government" was the goal of his policy for Ireland, he was careful to explain that "the extension of Irish management over Irish affairs must be a growth from small beginnings." But this "growth from small beginnings" would be, in Lord Salisbury's opinion, a very dangerous and mischievous policy. The establishment of self-government in Ireland, as distinct from what is commonly known as Home Rule, he pronounced in his Newport speech to be "a very difficult question;" and in the following passage he placed his finger upon the kernel of the difficulty:--"A local authority is more exposed to the temptation, and has more of the facility for enabling a majority to be unjust to the minority, than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and extends its jurisdiction over a wide area. That is one of the weaknesses of local authorities. In a large central authority the wisdom of several parts of the country will correct the folly or the mistakes of one. In a local authority that correction to a much greater extent is wanting; and it would be impossible to leave that out of sight in the extension of any such local authority to Ireland." This seems to me a much wiser and more statesmanlike view than a system of elective boards scattered broadcast over Ireland. A multitude of local boards all over Ireland, without a recognized central authority to control them, would inevitably become facile instruments in the hands of the emissaries of disorder and sedition. And, even apart from any such sinister influences, they would be almost certain to yield to the temptation of being oppressive, extravagant, and corrupt, if there were no executive power to command their confidence and enforce obedience. Without the previous creation of some authority of that kind it would be sheer madness to offer Ireland the fatal boon of local self-government. It would enormously increase without conciliating the power of the Nationalists, and would make the administration of Ireland by constitutional means simply impossible. The policy of the Liberal Unionists is thus much too large or much too small. It is too small to conciliate, and therefore too large to be given with safety. All these proposed concessions are liable to one insuperable objection; they would each and all enable the Irish to extort Home Rule, but under circumstances which would rob it of its grace and repel gratitude. Mill has some admirable observations bearing on this subject, and I venture to quote the following passage: "The greatest imperfection of popular local institutions, and the chief cause of the failure which so often attends them, is the low calibre of the men by whom they are almost always carried on. That these should be of a very miscellaneous character is, indeed, part of the usefulness of the institution; it is that circumstance chiefly which renders it a school of political capacity and general intelligence. But a school supposes teachers as well as scholars; the utility of the instruction greatly depends on its bringing inferior minds into contact with superior, a contact which in the ordinary course of life is altogether exceptional, and the want of which contributes more than anything else to keep the generality of mankind on one level of contented ignorance.... It is quite hopeless to induce persons of a high class, either socially or intellectually, to take a share of local administration in a corner by piecemeal as members of a Paving Board or a Drainage Commission."[17] Mr. Mill goes on to argue that it is essential to the safe working of any scheme of local self-government that it should be under the control of a central authority in harmony with public opinion. When the "Unionists" begin, if they ever do begin, seriously to deliberate on the question of self-government for Ireland, they will find that they have only two practicable alternatives--the maintenance of the present system, or some scheme of Home Rule on the lines of Mr. Gladstone's much misunderstood Bill. And the ablest men among the "Unionists" are beginning to perceive this. The _Spectator_ has in a recent article implored Mr. Chamberlain to desist from any further proposal in favour of self-government for Ireland, because the inevitable result would be to split up the Unionist party; and Mr. Chamberlain, as we have seen, has accepted the advice. Another very able and very logical opponent of Home Rule has candidly avowed that the only alternative to Home Rule is the perpetuation of "things as they are." Ireland, he thinks, "possesses none of the conditions necessary for local self-government." His own view, therefore, is "that in Ireland, as in France, an honest, centralized administration of impartial officials, and not local self-government, would best meet the real wants of the people." "The name of 'Self-government' has a natural fascination for Englishmen; but a policy which cannot satisfy the wishes of Home Rulers, which may--it is likely enough--be of no benefit to the Irish people, which will certainly weaken the Government in its contest with lawlessness and oppression, is not a policy which obviously commends itself to English good sense."[18] Well may this distinguished "Supporter of things as they are" declare: "The maintenance of the Union [on such terms] must necessarily turn out as severe a task as ever taxed a nation's energies; for to maintain the Union with any good effect, means that, while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every fair demand from Ireland; must strenuously, and without fear or favour, assert the equal rights of landlords and tenants, of Protestants and Catholics; and must, at the same time, put down every outrage and reform every abuse." What hope is there of this? Our only guide to the probabilities of the future is our experience of the past And what has that been in Ireland? In every year since the Legislative Union there have been multitudes of men in England as upright, as enlightened, as well-intentioned towards Ireland, as Professor Dicey, and with better opportunities of translating their thoughts into acts. Yet what has been the result? _Si monumenlum requiris circumspice_. Behold Ireland at this moment, and examine every year of its history since the Union. Do the annals of any constitutional Government in the world present so portentous a monument of Parliamentary failure, so vivid an example of a moral and material ruin "paved with good intentions"? Therein lies the pathos of it. Not from malice, not from cruelty, not from wanton injustice, not even from callous indifference to suffering and wrong, does our misgovernment of Ireland come. If the evil had its root in deliberate wrong-doing on the part of England it would probably have been cured long ago. But each generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish problem. The generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had become of the prosperity and contentment which the promoters of the Union had promised to Ireland. The next generation made vicarious penance, and preferred the enactment of Catholic emancipation to the alternative of civil war; and then wondered in its turn that Ireland still remained unpacified. Then came a terrible famine, followed by evictions on a scale so vast and cruel that the late Sir Robert Peel declared that no parallel could be found for such a tale of inhumanity in "the records of any country, civilized or barbarous." Another generation, pluming itself on its enlightened views and kind intentions, passed the Encumbered Estates Act, which delivered the Irish tenants over to the tender mercies of speculators and money-lenders; and then Parliament for a time closed its eyes and ears, and relied upon force alone to keep Ireland quiet. It rejected every suggestion of reform in the Land laws; and a great Minister, himself an Irish landlord, dismissed the whole subject in the flippant epigram that "tenant-right was landlord-wrong." Since then the Irish Church has been disestablished, and two Land Acts have been passed; yet we seem to be as far as ever from the pacification of Ireland. Surely it is time to inquire whether the evil is not inherent in our system of governing Ireland, and whether there is any other cure than that which De Beaumont suggested, namely, the destruction of the system. It is probable that there is not in all London a more humane or a more kind-hearted man than Lord Salisbury. Yet Lord Salisbury's Government will do some harsh and inequitable things in Ireland this winter, just as Liberal Governments have done during their term of office. The fault is not in the men, but in the system which they have to administer. I see no reason to doubt that Sir M. Hicks-Beach did the best he could under the circumstances; but, unfortunately, bad is the best. In a conversation which I had with Dr. Döllinger while he was in full communion with his Church, I ventured to ask him whether he thought that a new Pope, of Liberal ideas, force of character, and commanding ability, would make any great difference in the Papal system. "No," he replied, "the Curial system is the growth of centuries, and there can be no change of any consequence while it lasts. Many a Pope has begun with brave projects of reform; but the struggle has been brief, and the end has been invariably the same: the Pope has been forced to succumb. His _entourage_ has been too much for him. He has found himself enclosed in a system which was too strong for him, wheel within wheel; and while the system lasts the most enlightened ideas and the best intentions are in the long run unavailing." This criticism applies, _mutatis mutandis_, to what may be called the Curial system of Dublin Castle. It is a species of political Ultramontanism, exercising supreme power behind the screen of an official infallibility on which there is practically no check, since Parliament has never hitherto refused to grant it any power which it demanded for enforcing its decrees. There is, moreover, another consideration which must convince any dispassionate mind which ponders it, that the British Parliament is incompetent to manage Irish affairs, and must become increasingly incompetent year by year. In ordinary circumstances Parliament sits about twenty-seven weeks out of the fifty-two. Five out of the twenty-seven may safely be subtracted for holidays, debates on the Address, and other debates apart from ordinary business. That leaves twenty-two weeks, and out of these two nights a week are at the disposal of the Government and three at the disposal of private members; leaving in all forty-four days for the Government and sixty-six for private members. Into those forty-four nights Government must compress all its yearly programme of legislation for the whole of the British Empire, from the settlement of some petty dispute about land in the Hebrides, to some question of high policy in Egypt, India, or other portions of the Queen's world-wide empire; and all this amidst endless distractions, enforced attendance through dreary debates and vapid talk, and a running fire of cross-examination from any volunteer questioner out of the six hundred odd members who sit outside the Government circle. The consequence is, that Parliament is getting less able every year to overtake the mass of business which comes before it. Each year contributes its quota of inevitable arrears to the accumulated mass of previous Sessions, and the process will go on multiplying in increasing ratio as the complex and multiform needs of modern life increase. The large addition recently made to the electorate of the United Kingdom is already forcing a crop of fresh subjects on the attention of Parliament, as well as presenting old ones from new points of view. Plans of devolution and Grand Committees will fail to cope with this evil. To overcome it we need some organic change in our present Parliamentary system, some form of decentralization, which shall leave the Imperial Parliament supreme over all subordinate bodies, yet relegate to the historic and geographical divisions of the United Kingdom the management severally of their own local affairs. I should have better hope from governing Ireland (if it were possible) as we govern India, than from the present Unionist method of leaving "things as they are." A Viceroy surrounded by a Council of trained officials, and in semi-independence of Parliament, would have settled the Irish question, land and all, long ago. But imagine India governed on the model of Ireland: the Viceroy and the most important member of his Government changing with every change of Administration at Westminster;[19] his Council and the official class in general consisting almost exclusively of native Mussulmans, deeply prejudiced by religious and traditional enmity against the great mass of the population; himself generally subordinate to his Chief Secretary, and exposed to the daily criticism of an ignorant Parliament and to the determined hostility of eighty-six Hindoos, holding seats in Parliament as the representatives of the vast majority of the people of India, and resenting bitterly the domination of the hereditary oppressors of their race. How long could the Government of India be carried on under such conditions? Viewing it all round, then, it must be admitted that the problem of governing Ireland while leaving things as they are is a sufficiently formidable one. Read the remarkable admissions which the facts have forced from intelligent opponents of Home Rule like Mr. Dicey, and add to them all the other evils which are rooted in our existing system of Irish government, and then consider what hope there is, under "things as they are," of "sedulously doing justice to every demand from Ireland," "strenuously, and without fear or favour, asserting the equal rights of landlords and tenants, Protestants and Catholics," "putting down every outrage, and reforming every abuse;" and all the "while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen" for a fundamental change in a political arrangement that has for centuries produced all the mischief which the so-called Unionist party are forced to admit, and much more besides, while it has at the same time frustrated every serious endeavour to bring about the better state of things which they expect from--what? From "things as they are!" As well expect grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles. While the tree remains the same, no amount of weeding, or pruning, or manuring, or change of culture, will make it bring forth different fruit. Mr. Dicey, among others, has demolished what Lord Beaconsfield used to call the "bit-by-bit" reformers of Irish Government--those who would administer homoeopathic doses of local self-government, but always under protest that the supply was to stop short of what would satisfy the hunger of the patient. But a continuance of "things as they are," gilded with a thin tissue of benevolent hopes and aspirations, is scarcely a more promising remedy for the ills of Ireland. Is it not time to try some new treatment--one which has been tried in similar cases, and always with success? One only policy has never been tried in Ireland--honest Home Rule. Certainly, if Home Rule is to be refused till all the prophets of evil are refuted, Ireland must go without Home Rule for ever. "If the sky fall, we shall catch larks." But he would be a foolish bird-catcher who waited for that contingency. And not less foolish is the statesman who sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has been mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild prediction falsified by the event; for that would ensure his never moving at all. _Sedet æternumque sedebit_. A proper enough attitude, perhaps, on the part of an eristic philosopher speculating on politics in the silent shade of academic groves, but hardly suitable for a practical politician who has to take action on one of the most burning questions of our time. Human affairs are not governed by mathematical reasoning. You cannot demonstrate the precise results of any legislative measure beforehand as you can demonstrate the course of a planet in the solar system. "Probability," as Bishop Butler says, "is the guide of life;" and an older philosopher than Butler has warned us that to demand demonstrative proof in the sphere of contingent matter is the same kind of absurdity as to demand probable reasoning in mathematics. You cannot confute a prophet before the event; you can only disbelieve him. The advocates of Home Rule believe that their policy would in general have an exactly contrary effect to that predicted by their opponents. In truth, every act of legislation is, before experience, amenable to such destructive criticism as these critics urge against Home Rule. I have not a doubt that they could have made out an unanswerable "case" against the Great Charter at Runnymede; and they would find it easy to prove on _à priori_ grounds that the British Constitution is one of the most absurd, mischievous, and unworkable instruments that ever issued from human brains or from the evolution of events. By their method of reasoning the Great Charter and other fundamental portions of the Constitution ought to have brought the Government of the British Empire to a deadlock long ago. Every suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, every Act of Attainder, every statute for summary trial and conviction before justices of the peace, is a violation of the fundamental article of the Constitution, which requires that no man shall be imprisoned or otherwise punished except after lawful trial by his peers.[20] Consider also the magazines of explosive materials which lie hidden in the constitutional prerogatives of the Crown, if they could only be ignited by the match of an ingenious theorist. The Crown, as Lord Sherbrooke once somewhat irreverently expressed it, "can turn every cobbler in the land into a peer," and could thus put an end, as the Duke of Wellington declared, to "the Constitution of this country."[21] "The Crown is not bound by Act of Parliament unless named therein by special and particular words."[22] The Crown can make peace or war without consulting Parliament, can by secret treaty saddle the nation with the most perilous obligations, and give away all such portions of the empire as do not rest on Statute. The prerogative of mercy, too, would enable an eccentric Sovereign, aided by an obsequious Minister, to open the jails and let all the convicted criminals in the land loose upon society.[22] But criticism which proves too much in effect proves nothing. In short, every stage in the progress of constitutional reform has, in matter of fact, been marked by similar predictions falsified by results, and the prophets who condemn Home Rule have no better credentials; indeed, much worse, for they proclaim the miserable failure of "things as they are," whereas their predecessors were in their day satisfied with things as they were.[23] It is, high time, therefore, to call upon the opponents of Home Rule to tell us plainly where they stand. They claim a mandate from the country for their policy. They neither asked nor received a mandate to support the system of Government which prevailed in Ireland at the last election, and still less the policy of coercion which they have substituted for that system. Do they mean to go back or forward? They cannot stand still. They have already discovered that one act of repression leads to another, and they will find ere long that they have no alternative except Home Rule or the suppression of Parliamentary Government in Ireland. Men may talk lightly of the ease with which eighty-six Irish members may be kept in order in Parliament. They forget that the Irish people are behind the Irish members. How is Ireland to be governed on Parliamentary principles if the voice of her representatives is to be forcibly silenced or disregarded? Could even Yorkshire or Lancashire be governed permanently in that way? Let it be observed that we have now reached this pass, namely, that the opponents of Home Rule are opposed to the Irish members, not on any particular form of self-government for Ireland, but on any form; in other words, they resist the all but unanimous demand of Ireland for what "Unionists" of all parties declared a year ago to be a reasonable demand. No candidate at the last election ventured to ask the suffrages of any constituency as "a supporter of things as they are." Yet that is practically the attitude now assumed by the Ministerial party, both Conservatives and Liberal Unionists. It is an attitude of which the country is getting weary, as the bye-elections have shown. But the "Unionists," it must be admitted, are in a sore dilemma. Their strength, such as it is, lies in doing nothing for the reform of Irish Government. Their bond of union consists of nothing else but opposition to Mr. Gladstone's policy. They dare not attempt to formulate any policy of their own, knowing well that they would go to pieces in the process. Their hope and speculation is that something may happen to remove Mr. Gladstone from the political arena before the next dissolution. But, after all, Mr. Gladstone did not create the Irish difficulty. It preceded him and will survive him, unless it is settled to the satisfaction of the Irish people before his departure. And the difficulty of the final settlement will increase with every year of delay. Nor will the difficulty be confined to Ireland. The Irish question is already reacting upon kindred, though not identical, problems in England and Scotland, and the longer it is kept open, so much the worse will it be for what are generally regarded as Conservative interests. It is not the Moderate Liberals or Conservatives who are gaining ground by the prolongation of the controversy, and the disappearance of Mr. Gladstone from the scene would have the effect of removing from the forces of extreme Radicalism a conservative influence, which his political opponents will discover when it is too late to restore it. Their regret will then be as unavailing as the lament of William of Deloraine over his fallen foe-- "I'd give the lands of Deloraine Dark Musgrave were alive again." The Irish landlords have already begun to realize the mistake they made when they rejected Mr. Gladstone's policy of Home Rule and Land Purchase. It is the old story of the Sibyl's books. No British Government will ever again offer such terms to the Irish landlords as they refused to accept from Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand, Home Rule is inevitable. Can any reflective person really suppose that the democracy of Great Britain will consent to refuse to share with the Irish people the boon of self-government which will be offered to themselves next year? Any attempt to exclude the Irish from the benefits of such a scheme, after all the promises of the last general election, would almost certainly wreck the government; for constituencies have ways and means of impressing their wills on their representatives in Parliament even without a dissolution. If, on the other hand, Ireland should be included in a general scheme of local Government, the question of who shall control the police will arise. In Great Britain the police, of course, will be under local control. To refuse this to Ireland would be to offer a boon with a stigma attached to it. The Irish members agreed to let the control of the constabulary remain, under Mr. Gladstone's scheme, for some years in the hands of the British Government; but they would not agree to this while Dublin Castle ruled the country. Moreover, the formidable difficulty suggested by Lord Salisbury and Mr. John Stuart Mill (see pp. 115, 116) would appear the moment men began seriously to consider the question of local government for Ireland. The government of Dublin Castle would have to go, but something would have to be put in its place; and when that point has been reached it will probably be seen that nothing much better or safer can be found than some plan on the main lines of Mr. Gladstone's Bill. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 15: Speech at Manchester, May 7, 1886, by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, who was a member of the Cabinet to which Mr. Chamberlain's scheme was submitted.] [Footnote 16: _Hansard_, vol. 220, pp. 708, 715.] [Footnote 17: _Considerations on Representative Government_, p. 281.] [Footnote 18: Dicey's _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 25-31, and Letter in _Spectator_ of September 17th, 1887.] [Footnote 19: From the beginning of 1880 till now there have been six Viceroys and ten Chief Secretaries in Dublin--namely, Duke of Marlborough, Earls Cowper and Spencer, Earls of Carnarvon and Aberdeen, and the Marquis of Londonderry; Mr. Lowther, Mr. Forster, Lord F. Cavendish, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Campbell Bannerman, Sir W. Hart Dyke, Mr. W.H. Smith, Mr. J. Morley, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, and Mr. A. Balfour. A fine example, truly, of stable government and continuous policy!] [Footnote 20: Creasy's _Imperial and Colonial Constitutions of the Britannic Empire,_ p. 155.] [Footnote 21: May's _Const. Hist._, i. 313.] [Footnote 22: Blackstone's _Commentaries_, by Stephen, ii. 491, 492, 497, 507.] [Footnote 23: We need not go far afield for illustrations. A few samples will suffice. "It was natural," says Mill (_Rep. Gov._, p. 311), "to feel strong doubts before trial had been made how such a provision [as the Supreme Court of the United States] would work; whether the tribunal would have the courage to exercise its constitutional power; if it did, whether it would exercise it wisely, and whether the Government would consent peaceably to its decision. The discussions on the American Constitution, before its final adoption, give evidence that these natural apprehensions were strongly felt; but they are now entirely quieted, since, during the two generations and more which have subsequently elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify them, though there have at times been disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became the badges of parties respecting the limits of the authority of the Federal and State Governments." The Austrian opponents of Home Rule in Hungary predicted that it would lead straight to separation. The opponents of the Canadian Constitution prophesied that Canada would in a few years be annexed to the United States; and Home Rule in Australia was believed by able statesmen to involve independence at an early date. Mr. Dicey himself tells us "that the wisest thinkers of the eighteenth century (including Burke) held that the independence of the American Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain. There were apparently solid reasons for this belief: experience has proved it to be without foundation." The various changes in our own Constitution, and even in our Criminal Code, were believed by "men of light and leading" at the time to portend national ruin. All the judges in the land, all the bankers, and the professions generally, petitioned against alteration in the law which sent children of ten to the gallows for the theft of a pocket-handkerchief. The great Lord Ellenborough declared in the House of Lords that "the learned judges were unanimously agreed" that any mitigation in that law would imperil "the public security." "My Lords," he exclaimed, "if we suffer this Bill to pass we shall not know where we stand; we shall not know whether we are on our heads or on our feet." Mr. Perceval, when leader of the House of Commons in 1807, declared that "he could not conceive a time or change of circumstances which would render further concessions to the Catholics consistent with the safety of the State." (_Croker Papers_, i. 12.) Croker was a very astute man; but here is his forecast of the Reform Act of 1832: "No kings, no lords, no inequalities in the social system; all will be levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers and small farmers: this, perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly by confiscations and persecutions." "There can be no longer any doubt that the Reform Bill is a stepping-stone in England to a Republic, and in Ireland to separation." Croker met the Queen in 1832, considered her very good-looking, but thought it not unlikely that "she may live to be plain Miss Guelph." Even Sir Robert Peel wrote: "If I am to be believed, I foresee revolution as the consequence of this Bill;" and he "felt that it had ceased to be an object of ambition to any man of equable and consistent mind to enter into the service of the Crown." And as late as 1839, so robust a character as Sir James Graham thought the world was coming to an end because the young Queen gave her confidence to a Whig Minister. "I begin to share all your apprehensions and forebodings," he writes to Croker, "with regard to the probable issue of the present struggle. The Crown in alliance with Democracy baffles every calculation on the balance of power in our mixed form of Government. Aristocracy and Church cannot contend against Queen and people mixed; they must yield in the first instance, when the Crown, unprotected, will meet its fate, and the accustomed round of anarchy and despotism will run its course." And he prays that he may "lie cold before that dreadful day." (_Ibid._, ii. 113, 140, 176, 181, 356.) Free Trade created a similar panic. "Good God!" Croker exclaimed, "what a chaos of anarchy and misery do I foresee in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing an _average_ duty of 8_s._ into a _fixed_ duty of 8_s._, the fact being that the fixed duty means _no duty at all_; and _no duty at all_ will be the overthrow of the existing social and political system of our country!" (_Ibid._, iii. 13.) And what have become of Mr. Lowe's gloomy vaticinations as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate Reform Bill of 1866, followed as it was by a much more democratic measure?] A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE. BY E.L. GODKIN. Mr. Dicey in his _Case against Home Rule_ does me the honour to refer to an article which I wrote a year ago on "American Home Rule,"[24] expressing in one place "disagreement in the general conclusion to which the article is intended to lead," and in another "inability to follow the inference" which he supposes me to draw "against all attempts to enforce an unpopular law." Now the object of that article, I may be permitted to explain, was twofold. I desired, in the first place, to combat the notion which, it seemed to me, if I might judge from a great many of the speeches and articles on the Irish question, was widely diffused even among thoughtful Englishmen that the manner in which the Irish have expressed their discontent--that is, through outrage and disorder--was indicative of incapacity for self-government, and even imposed upon the Englishmen the duty, in the interest of morality (I think it was the _Spectator_ who took this view), and as a disciplinary measure, of refusing to such a people the privilege of managing their own affairs. I tried to show by several noted examples occurring in this country that prolonged displays of lawlessness, and violence, and even cruelty, such as the anti-rent movement in the State of New York, the Ku-Klux outrages in the South, and the persecution of Miss Prudence Crandall in Connecticut, were not inconsistent with the possession of marked political capacity. I suggested that it was hardly adult politics to take such things into consideration in passing on the expediency of conceding local self-government to a subject community. There was to me something almost childish in the arguments drawn from Irish lawlessness in the discussion of Home Rule, and in the moral importance attached by some Englishmen to the refusal to such wicked men as the Irish of the things they most desire. It is only in kindergartens, I said, that rulers are able to do equal and exact justice, and see that the naughty are brought to grief and the good made comfortable. Statesmen occupy themselves with the more serious business of curing discontent. They concern themselves but little, if at all, with the question whether it might not be manifested by less objectionable methods. The Irish methods of manifesting it, I endeavoured to show, were not exceptional, and did not prove either inability to make laws or unwillingness to obey them. I illustrated this by examples drawn from the United States. I might, had I had more time and space, have made these examples still more numerous and striking. I might have given very good reasons for believing that, were Ireland a state in the American Union, there probably would not have been any rent paid in the island within the last fifty years, and that the armed resistance of the tenants would have had the open or secret sympathy of the great bulk of the American people. In truth, the importance of Irish crime as a political symptom is grossly exaggerated by English writers. I venture to assert that more murders unconnected with robbery are committed in the State of Kentucky in one year than in Ireland in ten, and the condition of some other Southern and Western States is nearly as bad. All good Americans lament this and are ashamed of it, but it never enters into the heads of even the most lugubrious American moralists that Kentucky or any other State should be disfranchised and remanded to the condition of a Territory, because the offences against the person committed in it are so numerous, and the punishment of them, owing to popular sympathy or apathy, so difficult. There are a great many Englishmen who think that when they show that Grattan's Parliament was a venal and somewhat disorderly body, which occasionally indulged in mixed metaphor, they have proved the impossibility of giving Ireland a Parliament now. But then, as they are obliged to admit, Walpole's Parliament was very corrupt, and no one would say that for that reason it would have been wise to suspend constitutional government in England in the eighteenth century. It is only through the pernicious habit of thinking of Irishmen as exceptions to all political rules that Grattan's Parliament is considered likely, had it lasted, to have come down to our time unreformed and unimproved. Those have misunderstood me who suppose that I draw from the success of the anti-rent movement in this State between 1839 and 1846 an inference against "all attempts to enforce an unpopular law." Such was not by any means my object. What I sought to show by the history of this movement was that there was nothing peculiar or inexplicable in the hostility to rent-paying in Ireland. The rights of the New York landlords were as good in law and morals as the rights of the Irish landlords, and their mode of asserting them far superior. Moreover, those who resisted them were not men of a different race, religion, or nationality, and had, as Mr. Dicey says, "none of the excuses that can be urged in extenuation of half-starved tenants." Their mode of setting the law at defiance was exactly similar to that adopted by the Irish, and it was persisted in for a period of ten years, or until they had secured a substantial victory. The history of the anti-rent agitation in New York also illustrates strikingly, as it seems to me, the perspicacity of a remark made, in substance, long ago by Mr. Disraeli, which, in my eyes at least, threw a great deal of light on the Irish problem, namely, that Ireland was suffering from suppressed revolution. As Mr. Dicey says, "The crises called revolutions are the ultimate and desperate cures for the fundamental disorganization of society. The issue of a revolutionary struggle shows what is the true sovereign power in the revolutionized state. So strong is the interest of mankind, at least in any European country, in favour of some sort of settled rule, that civil disturbance will, if left to itself, in general end in the supremacy of some power which by securing the safety at last gains the attachment of the people. The Reign of Terror begets the Empire; even wars of religion at last produce peace, albeit peace may be nothing better than the iron uniformity of despotism. Could Ireland have been left for any lengthened period to herself, some form of rule adapted to the needs of the country would in all probability have been established. Whether Protestants or Catholics would have been the predominant element in the State; whether the landlords would have held their own, or whether the English system of tenure would long ago have made way for one more in conformity with native traditions; whether hostile classes and races would at last have established some _modus vivendi_ favourable to individual freedom, or whether despotism under some of its various forms would have been sanctioned by the acquiescence of its subjects, are matters of uncertain speculation. A conclusion which, though speculative, is far less uncertain, is that Ireland, if left absolutely to herself, would have arrived, like every other country, at some lasting settlement of her difficulties" (p. 87). That is to say, that in Ireland as in New York the attempt to enforce unpopular land laws would have been abandoned, had local self-government existed. For "revolution" is, after all, only a fine name for the failure or refusal of the rulers of a country to persist in executing laws which the bulk of the population find obnoxious. When the popular hostility to the law is strong enough to make its execution impossible, as it was in New York in the rent affair, it is accepted as the respectable solution of a very troublesome problem. When, as in Ireland, it is strong enough to produce turbulence and disorder, but not strong enough to tire out and overcome the authorities, it simply ruins the political manners of the people. If the Irish landlords had had from the beginning to face the tenants single-handed and either hold them down by superior physical force, or come to terms with them as the New York landlords had to do, conditions of peace and good will would have assuredly been discovered long ago. The land question, in other words, would have been adjusted in accordance with "Irish ideas," that is, in some way satisfactory to the tenants. The very memory of the conflict would probably by this time have died out, and the two classes would be living in harmony on the common soil. If in New York, on the other hand, the Van Rensselaers and Livingstons had been able to secure the aid of martial law and of the Federal troops in asserting their claims, and in preventing local opinion having any influence whatever on the settlement of the dispute, there can be no doubt that a large portion of this State would to-day be as poor and as savage, and apparently as little fitted for the serious business of government, as the greater part of Ireland is. There is, in truth, no reason to doubt that the idea of property in land, thoroughly accepted though it be in the United States, is nevertheless held under the same limitations as in the rest of the world. No matter what the law may say in any country, in no country is the right of the landed proprietor in his acres as absolute as his right in his movables. A man may own as much land as he can purchase, and may assert his ownership in its most absolute form against one, two, or three occupants, but the minute he began to assert it against a large number of occupants, that is, to act as if his rights were such that he had only to buy a whole state or a whole island in order to be able to evict the entire population, he would find in America, as he finds in Ireland, that he cannot have the same title to land as to personal property. He would, for instance, if he tried to oust the people of a whole district or of a village from their homes on any plea of possession, or of a contract, find that he was going too far, and that no matter what the judges might say, or the sheriff might try to do for him, his legal position was worth very little to him. Consequently a large landlord in America, if he were lucky enough to get tenants at all, would be very chary indeed about quarrelling with more than one of them at a time. The tenants would no more submit to wholesale ejectment than the farmers in Missouri would submit some years ago to a tax levy on their property to pay county bonds given in aid of a railroad. The goods of some of them were seized, but a large body of them attended the sale armed with rifles, having previously issued a notice that the place would be very "unhealthy" for outside bidders. The bearing of this condition of American opinion on the Irish question will be plainer if I remind English readers that the Irish in the United States numbered in 1880 nearly 2,000,000, and that the number of persons of Irish parentage is probably between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000. In short there are, as well as one can judge, more Irish nationalists in the United States than in Ireland. The Irish-Americans are to-day the only large and prosperous Irish community in the world. The children of the Irish born in the United States or brought there in their infancy are just as Irish in their politics as those who have grown up at home. Patrick Ford, for instance, the editor of the _Irish World_, who is such a shape of dread to some Englishmen, came to America in childhood, and has no personal knowledge nor recollection of Irish wrongs. Of the part this large Irish community plays in stimulating agitation--both agrarian and political--at home I need not speak; Englishmen are very familiar with it, and are very indignant over it. The Irish-Americans not only send over a great deal of American money to their friends at home, but they send over American ideas, and foremost among them American hostility to large landowners, and American belief in Home Rule. Now, to me, one of the most curious things in the English state of mind about the Irish problem is the apparent expectation that this Irish-American interference is transient, and will probably soon die out. It is quite true, as Englishmen are constantly told, that "the best Americans," that is, the literary people and the commercial magnates, whom travelling Englishmen see on the Atlantic coast, dislike the Irish anti-English agitation. But it is also true that the disapproval of the "best Americans" is not of the smallest practical consequence, particularly as it is largely due to complete indifference to, and ignorance of, the whole subject. There are probably not a dozen of them who would venture to express their disapproval publicly. The mass of the population, particularly in the West, sympathize, though half laughingly, with the efforts of the transplanted Irish to "twist the British lion's tail," and all the politicians either sympathize with them, or pretend to do so. I am not now expressing any opinion as to whether this state of things is good or bad. What I wish to point out is that this Irish-American influence on Irish affairs is very powerful, and may, for all practical purposes, be considered permanent, and must be taken into account as a constant element in the Irish problem. I will indeed venture on the assertion that it is the appearance of the Irish-Americans on the scene which has given the Irish question its present seriousness. The attempts of the Irish at physical resistance to English authority have been steadily diminishing in gravity during the present century--witness the descent from the rebellion of 1798 to Smith O'Brien's rebellion and the Fenian rising of 1867. On the other hand the power of the Irish to act as a disturbing agency in English politics has greatly increased, and the reason is that the stream of Irish discontent is fed by thousands of rills from the United States. Every emigrant's letter, every Irish-American newspaper, every returned emigrant with money in his pocket and a good coat on his back, helps to swell it, and there is not the slightest sign, that I can see, of its drying up. Where Mr. Dicey is most formidable to the Home Rulers, as it seems to me, is in his chapter on "Home Rule as Federalism," which is the form in which the Irish ask for it. He attacks this in two ways. One is by maintaining that the necessary conditions for a federal union between Great Britain and Ireland do not exist. This disposes at one blow of all the experience derived from the working of the foreign federations, on which the advocates of Home Rule have relied a good deal. The other is what I may call predictions that the federation even if set up would not work. Either the state of facts on which all other federations have been built does not exist in Ireland, or if it now exists, will not, owing to the peculiarities of Irish character, continue to exist. In other words, the federation will either fail at the outset, or fail in the long run. No one can admire more than I do the force and ingenuity and wealth of illustration with which Mr. Dicey supports this thesis. But unfortunately the arguments by which he assails Irish federalism might be, or might have been, used against all federations whatever. They might have been used, as I shall try to show, against the most successful of them all, the Government of the United States. I was reminded, while reading Mr. Dicey's account of the impossibility of an Anglo-Irish federation, of Mr. Madison's rehearsal in the _Federalist_ (No. 38) of the objections made to the Federal Constitution after the Convention had submitted it to the States. These objections covered every feature in it but one; and that, the mode of electing the President, curiously enough, is the only one which can be said to have utterly failed. A more impressive example of the danger of _à priori_ attacks on any political arrangement, history does not contain. Mr. Madison says: "This one tells me that the proposed Constitution ought to be rejected, because it is not a confederation of the states, but a government over individuals. Another admits that it ought to be a government over individuals to a certain extent, but by no means to the extent proposed. A third does not object to the government over individuals, or to the extent proposed, but to the want of a bill of rights. A fourth concurs in the absolute necessity of a bill of rights, but contends that it ought to be declaratory not of the personal rights of individuals, but of the rights reserved to the states in their political capacity. A fifth is of opinion that a bill of rights of any sort would be superfluous and misplaced, and that the plan would be unexceptionable but for the fatal power of regulating the times and places of election. An objector in a large state exclaims loudly against the unreasonable equality of representation in the Senate. An objector in a small state is equally loud against the dangerous inequality in the House of Representatives. From one quarter we are alarmed with the amazing expense, from the number of persons who are to administer the new government. From another quarter, and sometimes from the same quarter, on another occasion the cry is that the Congress will be but the shadow of a representation, and that the government would be far less objectionable if the number and the expense were doubled. A patriot in a state that does not import or export discerns insuperable objections against the power of direct taxation. The patriotic adversary in a state of great exports and imports is not less dissatisfied that the whole burden of taxes may be thrown on consumption. This politician discovers in the constitution a direct and irresistible tendency to monarchy. That is equally sure it will end in aristocracy. Another is puzzled to say which of these shapes it will ultimately assume, but sees clearly it must be one or other of them. Whilst a fourth is not wanting, who with no less confidence affirms that the Constitution is so far from having a bias towards either of these dangers, that the weight on that side will not be sufficient to keep it upright and firm against the opposite propensities. With another class of adversaries to the Constitution, the language is, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments are intermixed in such a manner as to contradict all the ideas of regular government and all the requisite precautions in favour of liberty. Whilst this objection circulates in vague and general expressions, there are not a few who lend their sanction to it. Let each one come forward with his particular explanation, and scarcely any two are exactly agreed on the subject. In the eyes of one the junction of the Senate with the President in the responsible function of appointing to offices, instead of vesting this power in the executive alone, is the vicious part of the organization. To another the exclusion of the House of Representatives, whose numbers alone could be a due security against corruption and partiality in the exercise of such a power, is equally obnoxious. With a third the admission of the President into any share of a power which must ever be a dangerous engine in the hands of the executive magistrate is an unpardonable violation of the maxims of republican jealousy. No part of the arrangement, according to some, is more inadmissible than the trial of impeachments by the Senate, which is alternately a member both of the legislative and executive departments, when this power so evidently belonged to the judiciary department. We concur fully, reply others, in the objection to this part of the plan, but we can never agree that a reference of impeachments to the judiciary authority would be an amendment of the error; our principal dislike to the organization arises from the extensive powers already lodged in that department. Even among the zealous patrons of a council of state, the most irreconcilable variance is discovered concerning the mode in which it ought to be constituted." Mr. Madison's challenge to the opponents of the American Constitution to agree on some plan of their own, and his humorous suggestion that if the American people had to wait for some such agreement to be reached they would go for a long time without a government, are curiously applicable to the opponents of Irish Home Rule. They are very fertile in reasons for thinking that neither the Gladstone plan nor any other plan can succeed, but no two of them, so far as I know, have yet hit upon any other mode of pacifying Ireland, except the use of force for a certain period to maintain order, and oddly enough, even when they agree on this remedy, they are apt to disagree about the length of time during which it should be tried. Mr. Dicey, in conceding the success of the American Constitution, seems to me unmindful, if I may use the expression, of the judgments he would probably have passed on it had it been submitted to him at the outset were he in the frame of mind to which a prolonged study of the Irish problem has now brought him. The Supreme Court, for instance, which he now recognizes as an essential feature of the Federal Constitution, and the absence of which in the Gladstonian arrangement he treats as a fatal defect, would have undoubtedly appeared to him a preposterous contrivance. It would have seemed to him impossible that a legislature like Congress, with the traditions of parliamentary omnipotence still strong in the minds of the members, would ever submit to have its acts nullified by a board composed of half a dozen elderly lawyers. Nor would he have treated as any more reasonable the expectation that the State tribunals, which had existed in each colony from its foundation, and had earned the respect and confidence of the people, would quietly submit to have their jurisdiction curtailed, their decisions overruled, causes torn from their calendar, and prisoners taken out of their custody by new courts of semi-foreign origin, which the State neither paid nor controlled. He would, too, very probably have been most incredulous about the prospect of the growth of loyalty on the part of New-Yorkers and Massachusetts men to a new-fangled government, which was to make itself only slightly felt in their daily lives, and was to sit a fortnight away in an improvised village in the midst of a Virginian forest. He would, too, have ridiculed the notion that State legislatures would refrain, in obedience to the Constitution, from passing any law which local sentiment strongly favoured or local convenience plainly demanded, such as a law impairing the obligation of obnoxious contracts, or levying duties on imports or exports. The possibility that the State militia could ever be got to obey federal officers, or form an efficient part of a federal army, he would have scouted. On the feebleness of the front which federation would present to a foreign enemy he would have dwelt with emphasis, and would have pointed with confidence to the probability that in the event of a war some of the states would make terms with him or secretly favour his designs. National allegiance and local allegiance would divide and perplex the feelings of loyal citizens. Unless the national sentiment predominated--and it could not predominate without having had time to grow--the federation would go to pieces at any of those crises when the interests or wishes of any of the states conflicted with the interests or wishes of the Union. That the national sentiment could grow at all rapidly, considering the maturity of the communities which composed the Union and the differences of origin, creed, and manners which separated them, no calm observer of human nature would believe for one moment. The American Constitution is flecked throughout with those flaws which a lawyer delights to discover and point out, and which the framers of a federal contract can only excuse by maintaining that they are inevitable. It is true that Mr. Dicey does not even now acknowledge the success of the American Constitution to be complete. He points out that if the "example either of America or of Switzerland is to teach us anything worth knowing, the history of these countries must be read as a whole. It will then be seen that the two most successful confederacies in the world have been kept together only by the decisive triumph through force of arms of the central power over real or alleged State rights" (p. 192). It is odd that such objectors do not see that the decisive triumph of the central power in the late civil war in America was, in reality, a striking proof of the success of the federation. The armies which General Grant commanded, and the enormous resources in money and devotion from which he was able to draw, were the product of the Federal Union and of nothing else. One of the greatest arguments its founders used in its favour was that if once established it would supply overwhelming force for the suppression of any attempt to break it up. They did not aim at setting up a government which neither foreign malice nor domestic treason, would ever assail, for they knew that this was something beyond the reach of human endeavour. They tried to set up one which, if attacked either from within or from without, would make a successful resistance, and we now know that they accomplished their object. Somewhat the same answer may be made to the objection, which is supposed to have fatal applicability to the case of Ireland, that among the "special faults of federalism" is that it does not provide "sufficient protection of the legal rights of unpopular minorities," and that "the moral of it all is that the [American] Federal Government is not able to protect the rights of individuals against strong local sentiment" (p. 194 of Mr. Dicey's book). He says, moreover, if I understand the argument rightly, that it was bound to protect free speech in the States because "there is not and never was a word in the Articles of the Constitution forbidding American citizens to criticize the institutions of the State." It would seem from this as if Mr. Dicey were under the impression that in America the citizen of a State has a right to do in his State whatever he is not forbidden to do by the Federal Constitution, and in doing it has a right to federal protection. But the Federal Government can only do what the Constitution expressly authorizes it to do, and the Constitution does not authorize it to protect a citizen in criticizing the institutions of his own State. This arrangement, too, is just as good federalism as the committal of free speech to federal guardianship would have been. The goodness or badness of the federal system is in no way involved in the matter. The question to what extent a minority shall rely on the federation for protection, and to what extent on its own State, is a matter settled by the contract which has created the federation. The settlement of this is, in fact, the great object of a Constitution. Until it is settled somehow, either by writing or by understanding, there is, and can be, no federation. If I, as a citizen of the State of New York, could call on the United States Government to protect me under all circumstances and against all wrongs, it would show that I was not living under a federation at all, but under a centralized republic. The reason why I have to rely on the United States for protection against some things and not against others is that it was so stipulated when the State of New York entered the Union. There is nothing in the nature of the federal system to prevent the United States Government from protecting my freedom of speech. Nor is there anything in the federal system which forbids its protecting me against the establishment of a State Church, which, as a matter of fact, it does not do. Nor is there anything in the federal system compelling the Government to protect me against the establishment of an order of nobility, which, as a matter of fact, it does do. The reason why it does not do one of these things and does the other is simply and solely that it was so stipulated, after much discussion, in the contract. Most thinking men are to-day of opinion that the United States ought to have exclusive jurisdiction of marriage, so that the law of marriage might be uniform in all parts of the Union. The reason why they do not possess such jurisdiction is not that Congress is not fully competent to pass such a law or the federal courts to execute it, but that no such jurisdiction is conferred by the Constitution. In fact it seems to me just as reasonable to cite the ease of divorce in various States of the Union as a defect in the federal system, as to cite the oppression of local minorities in matters not placed under federal authority by the organic law. If one may judge from a great deal of writing on American matters which one sees in English journals and the demands for federal interference in America in State affairs which they constantly make, the greatest difficulty Irish Home Rule has to contend with is the difficulty which men bred in a united monarchy and under an omnipotent Parliament experience in grasping what I may call the federal idea. The influence of association on their minds is so strong that they can hardly conceive of a central power, worthy of the name of a government, standing by and witnessing disorders or failures of justice in any place within its borders, without stepping in to set matters right, no matter what the Constitution may say. They remind me often of an old verger in Westminster Abbey during the American civil war who told me that "he always knew a government without a head couldn't last." Permanence and peace were in his mind inseparably linked with kingship. That even Mr. Dicey has not been able to escape this influence appears frequently in his discussions of federalism. He, of course, thoroughly understands the federal system as a jurist, but when he comes to discuss it as a politician he has evidently some difficulty in seeing how a government with a power to enforce _any_ commands can be restrained by contract from enforcing _all_ commands which may seem to be expedient or salutary. Consequently the cool way in which the Federal Government here looks on at local disorders seems to him a sign, not of the fidelity of the President and Congress to the federal pact, but of some inherent weakness in the federal system. The true way to judge the federal system, however, either in the United States or elsewhere, is by observing the manner in which it has performed the duties assigned to it by the Constitution. If the Government at Washington performs these faithfully, its failure to prevent lawlessness in New York or the oppression of minorities in Connecticut is of no more consequence than its failure to put down brigandage in Macedonia. Possibly it would have been better to saddle it with greater responsibility for local peace; but the fact is that the framers of the Constitution decided not to do so. They did not mean to set up a government which would see that every man living under it got his due. They could not have got the States to accept such a government. They meant to set up a government which should represent the nation worthily in all its relations with foreigners, which should carry on war effectively, protect life and property on the high seas, furnish a proper currency, put down all resistance to its lawful authority, and secure each State against domestic violence on the demand of its Legislature. There is no common form for federal contracts, and no rules describing what such a contract must contain in order that the Government may be federal and not unitarian. There is no hard and fast line which must, under the federal system, divide the jurisdiction of the central Government from the jurisdiction of each State Government. The way in which the power is divided between the two must necessarily depend on the traditions, manners, aims, and needs of the people of the various localities. The federal system is not a system manufactured on a regulation model, which can be sent over the world like iron huts or steam launches, in detached pieces, to be put together when the scene of operation is reached. Therefore I am unable to see the force of the argument that, as the conditions under which all existing federations were established differ in some respects from those under which the proposed federal union between England and Ireland would have to be established, therefore the success of these confederations, such as it is, gives them no value as precedents. A system which might have worked very well for the New England States would not have worked well for a combination which included also the middle and southern States. And the framers of the American Constitution were not so simple-minded as to inquire, either before beginning their labours or before ending them--as Mr. Dicey would apparently have the English and Irish do--whether this or that style of constitution was "the correct thing" in federalism. Assuming that the people desired to form a nation as regarded the world outside, they addressed themselves to the task of discovering how much power the various States were willing to surrender for this purpose. That was ascertained, as far as it could be ascertained, by assembling their delegates in convention, and discussing the wishes and fears and suggestions of the different localities in a friendly and conciliatory spirit. They had no precedents to guide them. There had not existed a federal government, either in ancient or modern times, whose working afforded an example by which the imagination or the understanding of the American people was likely to be affected in the smallest degree. They, therefore, had to strike out an entirely new path for themselves, and they ended by producing an absolutely new kind of federation, which was half Unitarian, that is, in some respects a union of states, and in others a centralized government; and it was provided for a Territory one end of which was more than a month's distance from the other. It is not in its details, therefore, but in the manner of its construction, that the American Constitution furnishes anything in the way of guidance or suggestion to those who are now engaged in trying to find a _modus vivendi_ between England and Ireland. The same thing may be said of the Swiss Constitution and of the Austro-Hungarian Constitution. Both of them contain many anomalies--that is, things that are not set down in the books as among the essentials of federalism. But both are adapted to the special wants of the people who live under them, and were framed in reference to those wants. The Austro-Hungarian Delegations are another exception to the rule. These Delegations undoubtedly control the ministry of the Empire, or at all events do in practice displace it by their votes. It is made formally responsible to them by the Constitution. All that Mr. Dicey can say to this is that "the real responsibility of the Ministry to the Delegations admits of a good deal of doubt," and that, at all events, it is not like the responsibility of Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury to the British Parliament. This may be true, but the more mysterious or peculiar it is the better it illustrates the danger of speaking of any particular piece of machinery or of any particular division of power as an essential feature of a federal constitution. We are told by the critics of the Gladstonian scheme that federalism is not "a plan for disuniting the parts of a united state." But whether it is or not once more depends on circumstances. Federalism, like the British or French Constitution, is an arrangement intended to satisfy the people who set it up by gratifying some desire or removing some cause of discontent. If that discontent be due to unity, federalism disunites; if it be due to disunion, federalism unites. In the case of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for instance, it clearly is a "plan for disuniting the parts of a united state." Austria and Hungary were united in the sense in which the opponents of Home Rule use the word for many years before 1867, but the union did not work, that is, did not produce moral as well as legal unity. A constitution was therefore invented which disunites the two countries for the purposes of domestic legislation, but leaves them united for the purposes of foreign relations. This may be a queer arrangement. Although it has worked well enough thus far, it may not continue to work well, but it does work well now. It has succeeded in converting Hungary from a discontented and rebellious province and a source of great weakness to Austria into a loyal and satisfied portion of the Empire. In other words, it has accomplished its purpose. It was not intended to furnish a symmetrical piece of federalism. It was intended to conciliate the Hungarian people. When therefore the professional federal architects make their tour of inspection and point out to the Home Ruler what flagrant departures from the correct federal model the Austro-Hungarian Constitution contains, how improbable it is that so enormous a structure can endure, and how, after all, the Hungarians have not got rid of the Emperor, who commands the army and represents the brute force of the old _régime_, I do not think he need feel greatly concerned. This may be all true, and yet the Austro-Hungarian federalism is a valuable thing. It has proved that the federal remedy is good for more than one disease, that it can cure both too much unity and too little. The truth is that there are only two essentials of a federal government. One is an agreement between the various communities who are to live under it as to the manner in which the power is to be divided between the general and local governments; the other is an honest desire on the part of all concerned to make it succeed. As a general rule, whatever the parties agree on and desire to make work is likely to work, just as a Unitarian government is sure to succeed if the people who live under it determine that it shall succeed. If a federal plan be settled in the only right way, by amicable and mutually respectful discussion between representative men, all the more serious obstacles are certain to be revealed and removed. Those which are not brought to light by such discussions are pretty sure to be comparatively trifling, and to disappear before the general success of arrangement. But by a "mutually respectful discussion" I mean discussion in which good faith and intelligence of all concerned are acknowledged on both sides. In what I have said by way of criticism of a book which may be taken as a particularly full exposition of the legal criticism that may be levelled at Mr. Gladstone's scheme, I have not touched on the arguments against Home Rule which Mr. Dicey draws from the amount of disturbance it would cause in English political habits and arrangements. I freely admit the weight of these arguments. The task of any English statesman who gives Home Rule to Ireland in the only way in which it can be given--with the assent of the British people--will be a very arduous one. But this portion of Mr. Dicey's book, producing, as it does, the distinctively English objections to Home rule, is to me much the most instructive, because it shows the difficulty there would be in creating the state of mind in England about any federal relation to Ireland which would be necessary to make it succeed. I do not think it an exaggeration to say that two-thirds of the English objections to Home Rule as federalism are unconscious expressions of distrust of Irish sincerity or intelligence thrown into the form of prophecy, and prophets, as we all know, cannot be refuted. For instance, "the changes necessitated by federalism would all tend to weaken the power of Great Britain" (Dicey, p. 173). The question of the command of the army could not be arranged; the Irish army could not be depended on by the Crown (p. 174); the central Government would be feeble against foreign aggression, and the Irish Parliament would give aid to a foreign enemy (pp. 176-7). Federalism would aggravate or increase instead of diminishing the actual Irish disloyalty to the Crown (pp. 179-80); the Irish expectations of material prosperity from Home Rule are baseless or grossly exaggerated (p. 182); the probability is, it would produce increased poverty and hardship; there would be frequent quarrels between the two countries over questions of nullification, secession, and federal taxation (p. 184); neither side would acquiesce in the decision either of the Privy Council or of any other tribunal on these questions; Home Rulers would be the first to resist these decisions (p. 185). Irish federation "would soon generate a demand that the whole British Empire should be turned into a Confederacy" (p. 188). Finally, as "the one prediction which may be made with absolute confidence," "federalism would not generate the goodwill between England and Ireland which, could it be produced, would be an adequate compensation even for the evils and inconveniences of a federal system" (p. 191). Now I do not myself believe these things, but what else can any advocate of Home Rule say in answer to them? They are in their very nature the utterances of a prophet--an able, acute, and fair-minded prophet, I grant, but still a prophet--and before a prophet the wisest man has to be silent, or content himself by answering in prophecy also. What makes the sceptical frame of mind in which Mr. Dicey approaches the Home Rule question so important is not simply that it probably represents that of a very large body of educated Englishmen, but that it is one in which a federal system cannot be produced. Faith, hope, and charity are political as well as social virtues. The minute you leave the region of pure despotism and try any form of government in which the citizen has in the smallest degree to co-operate in the execution of the laws, you have need of these virtues at every step. As soon as you give up the attempt to rule men by drumhead justice, you have to begin to trust in some degree to their intelligence, to their love of order, to their self-respect, and to their desire for material prosperity, and the nearer you get to what is called free government the larger this trust has to be. It has to be very large indeed in order to carry on such a government as that of Great Britain or of the United States; it has to be larger still in order to set up and administer a federal government. In such a government the worst that can happen is very patent. The opportunities which the best-drawn federal constitution offers for outbreaks of what Americans call "pure cussedness"--that is, for the indulgence of anarchical tendencies and impulses--is greater than in any other. Therefore, to set it up, or even to discuss it with any profit, your faith in the particular variety of human nature, which is to live under it, has to be great. No communities can live under it together and make it work which do not respect each other. I say respect, I do not say love, each other. The machine can be made to go a good while without love, and if it goes well it will bring love before long; but mutual respect is necessary from the first day. This is why Mr. Dicey's book is discouraging. The arguments which he addressed to Englishmen would not, I think, be formidable but for the mood in which he finds Englishmen, and that this mood makes against Home Rule there can be little doubt. I am often asked by Americans why the English do not call an Anglo-Irish convention in the American fashion, and discuss the Irish question with the Irish, find out exactly what they will take to be quiet, and settle with them in a rational way. I generally answer that, in the first place, a convention is a constitution-making agency with which the English public is totally unfamiliar, and that, in the second place, Englishmen's temper is too imperial, or rather imperious, to make the idea of discussion on equal terms with the Irish at all acceptable. They are, in fact, so far from any such arrangement that--preposterous and even funny as it seems to the American mind--to say that an English statesman is carrying on any sort of communication with the representatives of the Irish people is to bring against him, in English eyes, a very damaging accusation. When a man like Mr. Matthew Arnold writes to the _Times_ to contend that Englishmen should find out what the Irish want solely for the purpose of not letting them have it, and a journal like the _Spectator_ maintains that the sole excuse for extending the suffrage in Ireland, as it has lately been extended in England, was that the Irish as a minority would not be able to make any effective use of it; and when another political philosopher writes a long and very solemn letter in which, while conceding that in governing Ireland a sympathetic regard for Irish feelings and interests should be displayed, he mentions, as one of the leading facts of the situation, that in "the Irish character there is a grievous lack of independence, of self-respect, of courage, and above all of truthfulness"--when men of this kind talk in this way, it is easy to see that the mental and moral conditions necessary to the successful formation of a federal union are still far off. No federal government, and no government requiring loyalty and fidelity for its successful working, was ever set up by, or even discussed between, two parties, one of which thought the other so unreasonable that it should be carefully denied everything it asked for and as unfit for any sort of political co-operation as mendacity, cowardice, and slavishness could make it. Finally let me say that there is nothing in Mr. Dicey's book which has surprised me more, considering with what singular intellectual integrity he attacks every point, than his failure to make any mention or to take any account of the large part which time and experience must necessarily play in bringing to perfection any political arrangement which is made to order, if I may use the expression, no matter how carefully it may be drafted. Hume says on this point with great wisdom, "To balance the large state or society, whether monarchical or republican, on general laws, is a work of so great difficulty, that no human genius, however comprehensive, is able by the mere dint of reason or reflection to effect it. The judgments of many must unite in the work, experience must guide their labour, time must bring it to perfection, and the feeling of inconveniences must correct the mistakes which they inevitably fall into in their first trial and experiments."[25] This has proved true of the American and Swiss federations; it will probably prove true of the Austro-Hungarian federation and of any that may be set up by Great Britian [Transcriber: sic.] and her colonies. It will prove still more true of any attempt that may be made at federation between Great Britain and Ireland. No corrections which could be made in the Gladstonian or any other constitution would make it work exactly on the lines laid down by its framers. Even if it were revised in accordance with Mr. Dicey's criticism, it would probably be found, as in the case of the American Constitution, that few of the dangers which were most feared for it had beset it, and that some of the inconveniences which were most distinctly foreseen as likely to arise from it were among the things which had materially contributed to its success. History is full of the gentle ridicule which the course of events throws on statesmen and philosophers. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 24: Printed in the earlier part of this volume.] [Footnote 25: Essay on the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences.] THE "UNIONIST" CASE FOR HOME RULE. BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN. I am often asked, What are the best books to read on the Irish question? and I never fail to mention Mr. Lecky's _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_ and the _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_; Mr. Goldwin Smith's _Irish History and Irish Character, Three English Statesmen, The Irish Question_, and Professor Dicey's admirable work, _England's Case against Home Rule_. Indeed, the case for Home Rule, as stated in these books, is unanswerable; and it redounds to the credit of Mr. Lecky, Mr. Goldwin Smith, and Mr. Dicey that their narrative of facts should in no wise be prejudiced by their political opinions. That their facts are upon one side and their opinions on the other is a minor matter. Their facts, I venture to assert, have made more Home Rulers than their opinions can unmake. To put this assertion to the test I propose to quote some extracts from the works above mentioned. These extracts shall be full and fair. Nothing shall be left out that can in the slightest degree qualify any statement of fact in the context. Arguments will be omitted, for I wish to place facts mainly before my readers. From these facts they can draw their own conclusions. Neither shall I take up space with comments of my own. I shall call my witnesses and let them speak for themselves. I.--MR. LECKY. In the introduction to the new edition of the _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, published in 1871--seventy-one years after Mr. Pitt's Union, which was to make England and Ireland one nation--we find the following "contrast" between "national life" in the two countries:-- "There is, perhaps, no Government in the world which succeeds more admirably in the functions of eliciting, sustaining, and directing public opinion than that of England. It does not, it is true, escape its full share of hostile criticism, and, indeed, rather signally illustrates the saying of Bacon, that 'the best Governments are always subject to be like the finest crystals, in which every icicle and grain is seen which in a fouler stone is never perceived;' but whatever charges may be brought against the balance of its powers, or against its legislative efficiency, few men will question its eminent success as an organ of public opinion. In England an even disproportionate amount of the national talent takes the direction of politics. The pulse of an energetic national life is felt in every quarter of the land. The debates of Parliament are followed with a warm, constant, and intelligent interest by all sections of the community. It draws all classes within the circle of political interests, and is the centre of a strong and steady patriotism, equally removed from the apathy of many Continental nations in time of calm, and from their feverish and spasmodic energy in time of excitement. Its decisions, if not instantly accepted, never fail to have a profound and calming influence on the public mind. It is the safety-valve of the nation. The discontents, the suspicions, the peccant humours that agitate the people, find there their vent, their resolution, and their end. "It is impossible, I think, not to be struck by the contrast which, in this respect, Ireland presents to England. If the one country furnishes us with an admirable example of the action of a healthy public opinion, the other supplies us with the most unequivocal signs of its disease. The Imperial Parliament exercises for Ireland legislative functions, but it is almost powerless upon opinion--it allays no discontent, and attracts no affection. Political talent, which for many years was at least as abundant among Irishmen as in any equally numerous section of the people, has been steadily declining, and marked decadence in this respect among the representatives of the nation reflects but too truly the absence of public spirit in their constituents. "The upper classes have lost their sympathy with and their moral ascendency over their tenants, and are thrown for the most part into a policy of mere obstruction. The genuine national enthusiasm never flows in the channel of imperial politics. With great multitudes sectarian considerations have entirely superseded national ones, and their representatives are accustomed systematically to subordinate all party and all political questions to ecclesiastical interests; and while calling themselves Liberals, they make it the main object of their home politics to separate the different classes of their fellow-countrymen during the period of their education, and the main object of their foreign policy to support the temporal power of the Pope. With another and a still larger class the prevailing feeling seems to be an indifference to all Parliamentary proceedings; an utter scepticism about constitutional means of realizing their ends; a blind, persistent hatred of England. Every cause is taken up with an enthusiasm exactly proportioned to the degree in which it is supposed to be injurious to English interests. An amount of energy and enthusiasm which if rightly directed would suffice for the political regeneration of Ireland is wasted in the most insane projects of disloyalty; while the diversion of so much public feeling from Parliamentary politics leaves the Parliamentary arena more and more open to corruption, to place-hunting, and to imposture. "This picture is in itself a very melancholy one, but there are other circumstances which greatly heighten the effect. In a very ignorant or a very wretched population it is natural that there should be much vague, unreasoning discontent; but the Irish people are at present neither wretched nor ignorant. Their economical condition before the famine was, indeed, such that it might well have made reasonable men despair. With the land divided into almost microscopic farms, with a population multiplying rapidly to the extreme limits of subsistence, accustomed to the very lowest standard of comfort, and marrying earlier than in any other northern country in Europe, it was idle to look for habits of independence or self-reliance, or for the culture which follows in the train of leisure and comfort. But all this has been changed. A fearful famine and the long-continued strain of emigration have reduced the nation from eight millions to less than five, and have effected, at the price of almost intolerable suffering, a complete economical revolution. The population is now in no degree in excess of the means of subsistence. The rise of wages and prices has diffused comfort through all classes. ... Probably no country in Europe has advanced so rapidly as Ireland within the last ten years, and the tone of cheerfulness, the improvement of the houses, the dress, and the general condition of the people must have struck every observer.[26] ... If industrial improvement, if the rapid increase of material comforts among the poor, could allay political discontent, Ireland should never have been so loyal as at present. "Nor can it be said that ignorance is at the root of the discontent. The Irish people have always, even in the darkest period of the penal laws, been greedy for knowledge, and few races show more quickness in acquiring it. The admirable system of national education established in the present century is beginning to bear abundant fruit, and, among the younger generation at least, the level of knowledge is quite as high as in England. Indeed, one of the most alarming features of Irish disloyalty is its close and evident connection with education. It is sustained by a cheap literature, written often with no mean literary skill, which penetrates into every village, gives the people their first political impressions, forms and directs their enthusiasm, and seems likely in the long leisure of the pastoral life to exercise an increasing power. Close observers of the Irish character will hardly have failed to notice the great change which since the famine has passed over the amusements of the people. The old love of boisterous out-of-door sports has almost disappeared, and those who would have once sought their pleasures in the market or the fair now gather in groups in the public-house, where one of their number reads out a Fenian newspaper. Whatever else this change may portend, it is certainly of no good omen for the future loyalty of the people. "It was long customary in England to underrate this disaffection by ascribing it to very transitory causes. The quarter of a century that followed the Union was marked by almost perpetual disturbance; but this it was said was merely the natural ground swell of agitation which followed a great reform. It was then the popular theory that it was the work of O'Connell, who was described during many years as the one obstacle to the peace of Ireland, and whose death was made the subject of no little congratulation, as though Irish discontent had perished with its organ. It was as if, the Æolian harp being shattered, men wrote an epitaph upon the wind. Experience has abundantly proved the folly of such theories. Measured by mere chronology, a little more than seventy years have passed since the Union, but famine and emigration have compressed into these years the work of centuries. The character, feelings, and conditions of the people have been profoundly altered. A long course of remedial legislation has been carried, and during many years the national party has been without a leader and without a stimulus. Yet, so far from subsiding, disloyalty in Ireland is probably as extensive, and is certainly as malignant, as at the death of O'Connell, only in many respects the public opinion of the country has palpably deteriorated. O'Connell taught an attachment to the connection, a loyalty to the crown, a respect for the rights of property, a consistency of Liberalism, which we look for in vain among his successors; and that faith in moral force and constitutional agitation which he made it one of his greatest objects to instil into the people has almost vanished with the failure of his agitation."[27] Few Irish Nationalists have drawn a weightier indictment against the Union than this. After a trial of seventy years, Mr. Lecky sums up the case against the Union in these pregnant sentences:-- "The Imperial Parliament allays no discontent, and attracts no affection;" "The genuine national enthusiasm never flows in the channel of imperial politics;" the people have "an utter scepticism about constitutional means of realizing their ends," and are imbued with "a blind, persistent hatred of England." Worse still, neither the material progress of the country, nor the education of the people, has reconciled them to the Imperial Parliament. Indeed, their disloyalty has increased with their prosperity and enlightenment. This is the story which Mr. Lecky has to tell. But why are the Irish disloyal? Mr. Lecky shall answer the question. "The causes of this deep-seated disaffection I have endeavoured in some degree to investigate in the following essays. To the merely dramatic historian the history of Ireland will probably appear less attractive than that of most other countries, for it is somewhat deficient in great characters and in splendid episodes; but to a philosophic student of history it presents an interest of the very highest order. In no other history can we trace more clearly the chain of causes and effects, the influence of past legislation, not only upon the material condition, but also upon the character of a nation. In no other history especially can we investigate more fully the evil consequences which must ensue from disregarding that sentiment of nationality which, whether it be wise or foolish, whether it be desirable or the reverse, is at least one of the strongest and most enduring of human passions. This, as I conceive, lies at the root of Irish discontent. It is a question of nationality as truly as in Hungary or in Poland. Special grievances or anomalies may aggravate, but do not cause it, and they become formidable only in as far as they are connected with it. What discontent was felt against the Protestant Established Church was felt chiefly because it was regarded as an English garrison sustaining an anti-national system; and the agrarian difficulty never assumed its full intensity till by the repeal agitation the landlords had been politically alienated from the people."[28] Let those who imagine that the Irish question can be completely settled by the redress of material grievances take those words to heart. But, it is said, Scotch national sentiment is as strong as Irish, why should not a legislative union be as acceptable to Ireland as to Scotland? Mr. Lecky shall answer this question too. "It is hardly possible to advert to the Scotch Union, without pausing for a moment to examine why its influence on the loyalty of the people should have ultimately been so much happier than that of the legislative union which, nearly a century later, was enacted between England and Ireland. A very slight attention to the circumstances of the case will explain the mystery, and will at the same time show the extreme shallowness of those theorists who can only account for it by reference to original peculiarities of national character. The sacrifice of a nationality is a measure which naturally produces such intense and such enduring discontent that it never should be exacted unless it can be accompanied by some political or material advantages to the lesser country that are so great and at the same time so evident as to prove a corrective. Such a corrective in the case of Scotland, was furnished by the commercial clauses. The Scotch Parliament was very arbitrary and corrupt, and by no means a faithful representation of the people. The majority of the nation were certainly opposed to the Union, and, directly or indirectly, it is probable that much corruption was employed to effect it; but still the fact remains that by it one of the most ardent wishes of all Scottish patriots was attained, that there had been for many years a powerful and intelligent minority who were prepared to purchase commercial freedom even at the expense of the fusion of legislatures, and that in consequence of the establishment of free trade the next generation of Scotchmen witnessed an increase of material well-being that was utterly unprecedented in the history of their country. Nothing equivalent took place in Ireland. The gradual abolition of duties between England and Ireland was, no doubt, an advantage to the lesser country, but the whole trade to America and the other English colonies had been thrown open to Irishmen between 1775 and 1779. Irish commerce had taken this direction; the years between 1779 and the rebellion of 1798 were probably the most prosperous in Irish history, and the generation that followed the Union was one of the most miserable. The sacrifice of nationality was extorted by the most enormous corruption in the history of representative institutions. It was demanded by no considerable section of the Irish people. It was accompanied by no signal political or material benefit that could mitigate or counteract its unpopularity, and it was effected without a dissolution, in opposition to the votes of the immense majority of the representatives of the counties and considerable towns, and to innumerable addresses from every part of the country. Can any impartial man be surprised that such a measure, carried in such a manner, should have proved unsuccessful?"[29] In the _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_ Mr. Lecky traces the current of events which have led to the present situation. He shows how the Treaty of Limerick was shamelessly violated, and how the native population was oppressed and degraded. "The position of Ireland was at this time [1727] one of the most deplorable that can be conceived.... The Roman Catholics had been completely prostrated by the battle of the Boyne and by the surrender of Limerick. They had stipulated indeed for religious liberty, but the Treaty of Limerick was soon shamelessly violated, and it found no avengers. Sarsfield and his brave companions had abandoned a country where defeat left no opening for their talents, and had joined the Irish Brigade which had been formed in the service of France.... But while the Irish Roman Catholics abroad found free scope for their ambition in the service of France, those who remained at home had sunk into a condition of utter degradation. All Catholic energy and talent had emigrated to foreign lands, and penal laws of atrocious severity crushed the Catholics who remained."[30] Mr. Lecky's account of these "penal laws" is upon the whole, I think, the best that has been written. "The last great Protestant ruler of England was William III., who is identified in Ireland with the humiliation of the Boyne, with the destruction of Irish trade, and with the broken Treaty of Limerick. The ceaseless exertions of the extreme Protestant party have made him more odious in the eyes of the people than he deserves to be; for he was personally far more tolerant than the great majority of his contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted under his successors. It required, indeed, four or five reigns to elaborate a system so ingeniously contrived to demoralize, to degrade, and to impoverish the people of Ireland. By this code the Roman Catholics were absolutely excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from the corporations, from the bench, and from the bar. They could not vote at Parliamentary elections or at vestries; they could not act as constables, or sheriffs, or jurymen, or serve in the army or navy, or become solicitors, or even hold the positions of gamekeeper or watchman. Schools were established to bring up their children as Protestants; and if they refused to avail themselves of these, they were deliberately assigned to hopeless ignorance, being excluded from the university, and debarred, under crushing penalties, from acting as schoolmasters, as ushers, or as private tutors, or from sending their children abroad to obtain the instruction they were refused at home. They could not marry Protestants, and if such a marriage were celebrated it was annulled by law, and the priest who officiated might be hung. They could not buy land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from Protestants, or hold life-annuities, or leases for more than thirty-one years, or any lease on such terms that the profits of the land exceeded one-third of the rent. If any Catholic leaseholder by his industry so increased his profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did not immediately make a corresponding increase in his payments, any Protestant who gave the information could enter into possession of his farm. If any Catholic had secretly purchased either his old forfeited estate, or any other land, any Protestant who informed against him might become the proprietor. The few Catholic landowners who remained were deprived of the right which all other classes possessed of bequeathing their lands as they pleased. If their sons continued Catholics, it was divided equally between them. If, however, the eldest son consented to apostatize, the estate was settled upon him, the father from that hour became only a life-tenant, and lost all power of selling, mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of it. If the wife of a Catholic abandoned the religion of her husband, she was immediately free from his control, and the Chancellor was empowered to assign to her a certain proportion of her husband's property. If any child, however young, professed itself a Protestant, it was at once taken from the father's care, and the Chancellor could oblige the father to declare upon oath the value of his property, both real and personal, and could assign for the present maintenance and future portion of the converted child such proportion of that property as the court might decree. No Catholic could be guardian either to his own children or to those of another person; and therefore a Catholic who died while his children were minors had the bitterness of reflecting upon his death-bed that they must pass into the care of Protestants. An annuity of from twenty to forty pounds was provided as a bribe for every priest who would become a Protestant. To convert a Protestant to Catholicism was a capital offence. In every walk of life the Catholic was pursued by persecution or restriction. Except in the linen trade, he could not have more than two apprentices. He could not possess a horse of the value of more than five pounds, and any Protestant, on giving him five pounds, could take his horse. He was compelled to pay double to the militia. He was forbidden, except under particular conditions, to live in Galway or Limerick. In case of war with a Catholic power, the Catholics were obliged to reimburse the damage done by the enemy's privateers. The Legislature, it is true, did not venture absolutely to suppress their worship, but it existed only by a doubtful connivance--stigmatized as if it were a species of licensed prostitution, and subject to conditions which, if they had been enforced, would have rendered its continuance impossible. An old law which prohibited it, and another which enjoined attendance at the Anglican worship, remained unrepealed, and might at any time be revived; and the former was, in fact, enforced during the Scotch rebellion of 1715. The parish priests, who alone were allowed to officiate, were compelled to be registered, and were forbidden to keep curates or to officiate anywhere except in their own parishes. The chapels might not have bells or steeples. No crosses might be publicly erected. Pilgrimages to the holy wells were forbidden. Not only all monks and friars, but also all Catholic archbishops, bishops, deacons, and other dignitaries, were ordered by a certain day to leave the country; and if after that date they were found in Ireland they were liable to be first imprisoned and then banished; and if after that banishment they returned to discharge their duty in their dioceses, they were liable to the punishment of death. To facilitate the discovery of offences against the code, two justices of the peace might at any time compel any Catholic of eighteen years of age to declare when and where he last heard Mass, what persons were present, and who officiated; and if he refused to give evidence they might imprison him for twelve months, or until he paid a fine of twenty pounds. Any one who harboured ecclesiastics from beyond the seas was subject to fines which for the third offence amounted to confiscation of all his goods. A graduated scale of rewards was offered for the discovery of Catholic bishops, priests, and schoolmasters; and a resolution of the House of Commons pronounced 'the prosecuting and informing against Papists' 'an honourable service to the Government.' "Such were the principal articles of this famous code--a code which Burke truly described as 'well digested and well disposed in all its parts; a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.'"[31] The effects of these laws Mr. Lecky has described thus: "The economical and moral effects of the penal laws were, however, profoundly disastrous. The productive energies of the nation were fatally diminished. Almost all Catholics of energy and talent who refused to abandon their faith emigrated to foreign lands. The relation of classes was permanently vitiated; for almost all the proprietary of the country belonged to one religion, while the great majority of their tenants were of another. The Catholics, excluded from almost every possibility of eminence, deprived of their natural leaders, and consigned by the Legislature to utter ignorance, soon sank into the condition of broken and dispirited helots. A total absence of industrial virtues, a cowering and abject deference to authority, a recklessness about the future, a love of secret illegal combinations, became general among them. Above all, they learned to regard law as merely the expression of force, and its moral weight was utterly destroyed. For the greater part of a century, the main object of the Legislature was to extirpate a religion by the encouragement of the worst, and the punishment of some of the best qualities of our nature. Its rewards were reserved for the informer, for the hypocrite, for the undutiful son, or for the faithless wife. Its penalties were directed against religious constancy and the honest discharge of ecclesiastical duty. "It would, indeed, be scarcely possible to conceive a more infamous system of legal tyranny than that which in the middle of the eighteenth century crushed every class and almost every interest in Ireland."[32] But laws were not only passed against the native race and the national religion. Measures were taken to destroy the industries of the country, and to involve natives and colonists, Protestants and Catholics, in common ruin. Mr. Lecky shall tell the story. "The commercial and industrial condition of the country was, if possible, more deplorable than its political condition, and was the result of a series of English measures which for deliberate and selfish tyranny could hardly be surpassed. Until the reign of Charles II. the Irish shared the commercial privileges of the English; but as the island had not been really conquered till the reign of Elizabeth, and as its people were till then scarcely removed from barbarism, the progress was necessarily slow. In the early Stuart reigns, however, comparative repose and good government were followed by a sudden rush of prosperity. The land was chiefly pasture, for which it was admirably adapted; the export of live cattle to England was carried on upon a large scale, and it became a chief source of Irish wealth. The English landowners, however, took the alarm. They complained that Irish rivalry in the cattle market was reducing English rents; and accordingly, by an Act which was first passed in 1663, and was made perpetual in 1666, the importation of cattle into England was forbidden. "The effect of a measure of this kind, levelled at the principal article of the commerce of the nation, was necessarily most disastrous. The profound modification which it introduced into the course of Irish industry was sufficiently shown by the estimate of Sir W. Petty, who declares that before the statute three-fourths of the trade of Ireland was with England, but not one-fourth of it since that time. In the very year when this Bill was passed another measure was taken not less fatal to the interest of the country. In the first Navigation Act, Ireland was placed on the same terms as England; but in the Act as amended in 1663 she was omitted, and was thus deprived of the whole Colonial trade. With the exception of a very few specified articles no European merchandise could be imported into the British Colonies except directly from England, in ships built in England, and manned chiefly by English sailors. No articles, with a few exceptions, could be brought from the Colonies to Europe without being first unladen in England. In 1670 this exclusion of Ireland was confirmed, and in 1696 it was rendered more stringent, for it was enacted that no goods of any sort could be imported directly from the Colonies to Ireland. It will be remembered that at this time the chief British Colonies were those of America, and that Ireland, by her geographical position, was naturally of all countries most fitted for the American trade. "As far, then, as the Colonial trade was concerned, Ireland at this time gained nothing whatever by her connection with England. To other countries, however, her ports were still open, and in time of peace a foreign commerce was unrestricted. When forbidden to export their cattle to England, the Irish turned their land chiefly into sheep-walks, and proceeded energetically to manufacture the wool. Some faint traces of this manufacture may be detected from an early period, and Lord Strafford, when governing Ireland, had mentioned it with a characteristic comment. Speaking of the Irish he says, 'There was little or no manufactures amongst them, but some small beginnings towards a cloth trade, which I had and so should still discourage all I could, unless otherwise directed by His Majesty and their Lordships. It might be feared that they would beat us out of the trade itself by underselling us, which they were able to do.' With the exception, however, of an abortive effort by this governor, the Irish wool manufacture was in no degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned with special favour in many Acts of Parliament; and it was in a great degree on the faith of this long-continued legislative sanction that it was so greatly expanded. The poverty of Ireland, the low state of civilization of a large proportion of its inhabitants, the effects of the civil wars which had so recently convulsed it, and the exclusion of its products from the English Colonies, were doubtless great obstacles to manufacturing enterprise; but, on the other hand, Irish wool was very good, living was cheaper, taxes were lighter than in England, a spirit of real industrial energy began to pervade the country, and a considerable number of English manufacturers came over to colonize it. There appeared for a time every probability that the Irish would become an industrial nation, and, had manufactures arisen, their whole social, political, and economical condition would have been changed. But English jealousy again interposed. By an Act of crushing and unprecedented severity, which was introduced in 1698 and carried in 1699, the export of the Irish woollen manufactures, not only to England, but also to all other countries, was absolutely forbidden. "The effects of this measure were terrible almost beyond conception. The main industry of the country was at a blow completely and irretrievably annihilated. A vast population was thrown into a condition of utter destitution. Several thousands of manufacturers left the country, and carried their skill and enterprise to Germany, France, and Spain. The western and southern districts of Ireland are said to have been nearly depopulated. Emigration to America began on a large scale, and the blow was so severe that long after, a kind of chronic famine prevailed."[33] Mr. Lecky relates with pride how the penal code was relaxed, and the commercial restrictions were removed, while the Irish Parliament, essentially a Protestant and landlord body, still existed, and shows how the cause of Catholic Emancipation was retarded by the Union. "The Relief Bill of '93 naturally suggests a consideration of the question so often agitated in Ireland, whether the Union was really a benefit to the Roman Catholic cause. It has been argued that Catholic Emancipation was an impossibility as long as the Irish Parliament lasted; for in a country where the great majority were Roman Catholics, it would be folly to expect the members of the dominant creed to surrender a monopoly on which their ascendency depended. The arguments against this view are, I believe, overwhelming. The injustice of the disqualification was far more striking before the Union than after it. In the one case, the Roman Catholics were excluded from the Parliament of a nation of which they were the great majority; in the other, they were excluded from the Parliament of an empire in which they were a small minority. Grattan, Plunket, Curran, Burrowes, and Ponsonby were the great supporters of Catholic Emancipation, and the great opponents of the Union. Clare and Duigenan were the two great opponents of emancipation, and the great supporters of the Union. At a time when scarcely any public opinion existed in Ireland, when the Roman Catholics were nearly quiescent, and when the leaning of Government was generally liberal, the Irish Protestants admitted their fellow-subjects to the magistracy, to the jury-box, and to the franchise. By this last measure they gave them an amount of political power which necessarily implied complete emancipation. Even if no leader of genius had arisen in the Roman Catholic ranks, and if no spirit of enthusiasm had animated their councils, the influence possessed by a body who formed three fourths of the population, who were rapidly rising in wealth, and who could send their representatives to Parliament, would have been sufficient to ensure their triumph. If the Irish Legislature had continued, it would have been found impossible to resist the demand for reform; and every reform, by diminishing the overgrown power of a few Protestant landholders, would have increased that of the Roman Catholics. The concession accorded in 1793 was, in fact, far greater and more important than that accorded in 1829, and it placed the Roman Catholics, in a great measure, above the mercy of Protestants. But this was not all. The sympathies of the Protestants were being rapidly enlisted in their behalf. The generation to which Charlemont and Flood belonged had passed away, and all the leading intellects of the country, almost all the Opposition, and several conspicuous members of the Government, were warmly in favour of emancipation. The rancour which at present exists between the members of the two creeds appears then to have been almost unknown, and the real obstacle to emancipation was not the feelings of the people, but the policy of the Government. The Bar may be considered on most subjects a very fair exponent of the educated opinion of the nation; and Wolf Tone observed, in 1792, that it was almost unanimous in favour of the Catholics; and it is not without importance, as showing the tendencies of the rising generation, that a large body of the students of Dublin University in 1795 presented an address to Grattan, thanking him for his labours in the cause. The Roman Catholics were rapidly gaining the public opinion of Ireland, when the Union arrayed against them another public opinion which was deeply prejudiced against their faith, and almost entirely removed from their influence. Compare the twenty years before the Union with the twenty years that followed it, and the change is sufficiently manifest. There can scarcely be a question that if Lord Fitzwilliam had remained in office the Irish Parliament would readily have given emancipation. In the United Parliament for many years it was obstinately rejected, and if O'Connell had never arisen it would probably never have been granted unqualified by the veto. In 1828 when the question was brought forward in Parliament, sixty-one out of ninety-three Irish members, forty-five out of sixty-one Irish county members, voted in its favour. Year after year Grattan and Plunket brought forward the case of their fellow-countrymen with an eloquence and a perseverance worthy of their great cause; but year after year they were defeated. It was not till the great tribune had arisen, till he had moulded his co-religionists into one compact and threatening mass, and had brought the country to the verge of revolution, that the tardy boon was conceded. Eloquence and argument proved alike unavailing when unaccompanied by menace, and Catholic Emancipation was confessedly granted because to withhold it would be to produce a rebellion."[34] Many people will think that this is a sufficiently weighty condemnation of the Union, but what follows is a still graver reflection on that untoward measure. "In truth the harmonious co-operation of Ireland with England depends much less upon the framework of the institutions of the former country than upon the dispositions of its people and upon the classes who guide its political life. With a warm and loyal attachment to the connection pervading the nation, the largest amount of self-government might be safely conceded, and the most defective political arrangement might prove innocuous. This is the true cement of nations, and no change, however plausible in theory, can be really advantageous which contributes to diminish it. Theorists may argue that it would be better for Ireland to become in every respect a province of England; they may contend that a union of Legislatures, accompanied by a corresponding fusion of characters and identification of hopes, interests, and desires, would strengthen the empire; but as a matter of fact this was not what was effected in 1800. The measure of Pitt centralized, but it did not unite, or rather, by uniting the Legislatures it divided the nations. In a country where the sentiment of nationality was as intense as in any part of Europe, it destroyed the national Legislature contrary to the manifest wish of the people, and by means so corrupt, treacherous, and shameful that they are never likely to be forgotten. In a country where, owing to the religious difference, it was peculiarly necessary that a vigorous lay public opinion should be fostered to dilute or restrain the sectarian spirit, it suppressed the centre and organ of political life, directed the energies of the community into the channels of sectarianism, drove its humours inwards, and thus began a perversion of public opinion which has almost destroyed the elements of political progress. In a country where the people have always been singularly destitute of self-reliance, and at the same time eminently faithful to their leaders, it withdrew the guidance of affairs from the hands of the resident gentry, and, by breaking their power, prepared the ascendency of the demagogue or the rebel. In two plain ways it was dangerous to the connection: it incalculably increased the aggregate disloyalty of the people, and it destroyed the political supremacy of the class that is most attached to the connection. The Irish Parliament, with all its faults, was an eminently loyal body. The Irish people through the eighteenth century, in spite of great provocations, were on the whole a loyal people till the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and even then a few very moderate measures of reform might have reclaimed them. Burke, in his _Letters on a Regicide Peace_, when reviewing the elements of strength on which England could confide in her struggle with revolutionary France, placed in the very first rank the co-operation of Ireland. At the present day, it is to be feared that most impartial men would regard Ireland, in the event of a great European war, rather as a source of weakness than of strength. More than seventy years have passed since the boasted measure of Pitt, and it is unfortunately incontestable that the lower orders in Ireland are as hostile to the system of government under which they live as the Hungarian people have ever been to Austrian, or the Roman to Papal rule; that Irish disloyalty is multiplying enemies of England wherever the English tongue is spoken; and that the national sentiment runs so strongly that multitudes of Irish Catholics look back with deep affection to the Irish Parliament, although no Catholic could sit within its walls, and although it was only during the last seven years of its independent existence that Catholics could vote for its members. Among the opponents of the Union were many of the most loyal, as well as nearly all the ablest men in Ireland; and Lord Charlemont, who died shortly before the measure was consummated, summed up the feelings of many in the emphatic sentence with which he protested against it. 'It would more than any other measure,' he said, 'contribute to the separation of two countries the perpetual connection of which is one of the warmest wishes of my heart.' "In fact, the Union of 1800 was not only a great crime, but was also, like most crimes, a great blunder. The manner in which it was carried was not only morally scandalous; it also entirely vitiated it as a work of statesmanship. No great political measure can be rationally judged upon its abstract merits, and without considering the character and the wishes of the people for whom it is intended. It is now idle to discuss what might have been the effect of a Union if it had been carried before 1782, when the Parliament was still unemancipated; if it had been the result of a spontaneous movement of public opinion; if it had been accompanied by the emancipation of the Catholics. Carried as it was prematurely, in defiance of the national sentiment of the people and of the protests of the unbribed talent of the country, it has deranged the whole course of political development, driven a large proportion of the people into sullen disloyalty, and almost destroyed healthy public opinion. In comparing the abundance of political talent in Ireland during the last century with the striking absence of it at present, something no doubt may be attributed to the absence of protection for literary property in Ireland in the former period, which may have directed an unusual portion of the national talent to politics, and something to the Colonial and Indian careers which have of late years been thrown open to competition; but when all due allowances have been made for these, the contrast is sufficiently impressive. Few impartial men can doubt that the tone of political life and the standard of political talent have been lowered, while sectarian animosity has been greatly increased, and the extent to which Fenian principles have permeated the people is a melancholy comment upon the prophesies that the Union would put an end to disloyalty in Ireland."[35] Mr. Lecky's views as to what ought to have been done in 1800 deserve to be set forth. "While, however, the Irish policy of Pitt appears to be both morally and politically deserving of almost unmitigated condemnation, I cannot agree with those who believe that the arrangement of 1782 could have been permanent. The Irish Parliament would doubtless have been in time reformed, but it would have soon found its situation intolerable. Imperial policy must necessarily have been settled by the Imperial Parliament, in which Ireland had no voice; and, unlike Canada or Australia, Ireland is profoundly affected by every change of Imperial policy. Connection with England was of overwhelming importance to the lesser country, while the tie uniting them would have been found degrading by one nation and inconvenient to the other. Under such circumstances a Union of some kind was inevitable. It was simply a question of time, and must have been demanded by Irish opinion. At the same time, it would not, I think, have been such a Union as that of 1800. The conditions of Irish and English politics are so extremely different, and the reasons for preserving in Ireland a local centre of political life are so powerful, that it is probable a Federal Union would have been preferred. Under such a system the Irish Parliament would have continued to exist, but would have been restricted to purely local subjects, while an Imperial Parliament, in which Irish representatives sat, would have directed the policy of the empire."[36] MR. GOLDWIN SMITH. None of the recent opponents of Home Rule have written against that policy with more brilliance and epigrammatic keenness than Mr. Goldwin Smith. But no one has stated with more force the facts and considerations which, operating on men's mind for years past, have made the Liberal party Home Rulers now. His _coup d'oeil_ remains the most pointed indictment ever drawn from the historical annals of Ireland against the English methods of governing that country. Twenty years ago he anticipated the advice recently given by Mr. Gladstone. In 1867 he wrote:-- "I have myself sought and found in the study of Irish history the explanation of the paradox, that a people with so many gifts, so amiable, naturally so submissive to rulers, and everywhere but in their own country industrious, are in their own country bywords of idleness, lawlessness, disaffection, and agrarian crime."[37] He explains the paradox thus: "But it is difficult to distinguish the faults of the Irish from their misfortunes. It has been well said of their past industrial character and history,--'We were reckless, ignorant, improvident, drunken, and idle. We were idle, for we had nothing to do; we were reckless, for we had no hope; we were ignorant, for learning was denied us; we were improvident, for we had no future; we were drunken, for we sought to forget our misery. That time has passed away for ever.' No part of this defence is probably more true than that which connects the drunkenness of the Irish people with their misery. Drunkenness is, generally speaking, the vice of despair; and it springs from the despair of the Irish peasant as rankly as from that of his English fellow. The sums of money which have lately been transmitted by Irish emigrants to their friends in Ireland seem a conclusive answer to much loose denunciation of the national character, both in a moral and an industrial point of view.... There seems no good reason for believing that the Irish Kelts are averse to labour, provided they be placed, as people of all races require to be placed, for two or three generations in circumstances favourable to industry."[38] He shows that the Irish have not been so placed. "Still more does justice require that allowance should be made on historical grounds for the failings of the Irish people. If they are wanting in industry, in regard for the rights of property, in reverence for the law, history furnishes a full explanation of their defects, without supposing in them any inherent depravity, or even any inherent weakness. They have never had the advantage of the training through which other nations have passed in their gradual rise from barbarism to civilization. The progress of the Irish people was arrested at almost a primitive stage, and a series of calamities, following close upon each other, have prevented it from ever fairly resuming its course. The pressure of overwhelming misery has now been reduced; government has become mild and just; the civilizing agency of education has been introduced; the upper classes are rapidly returning to their duty, and the natural effect is at once seen in the improved character of the people. Statesmen are bound to be well acquainted with the historical sources of the evil with which they have to deal, especially when those evils are of such a nature as, at first aspect, to imply depravity in a nation. There are still speakers and writers who seem to think that the Irish are incurably vicious, because the accumulated effects of so many centuries cannot be removed at once by a wave of the legislator's wand. Some still believe, or affect to believe, that the very air of the island is destructive of the characters and understandings of all who breathe it."[39] Elsewhere he adds, referring to the land system: "How many centuries of a widely different training have the English people gone through in order to acquire their boasted love of law."[40] Of the "training" through which the Irish went, he says-- "The existing settlement of land in Ireland, whether dating from the confiscations of the Stuarts, or from those of Cromwell, rests on a proscription three or four times as long as that on which the settlement of land rests over a considerable part of France. It may, therefore, be considered as placed upon discussion in the estimation of all sane men; and, this being the case, it is safe to observe that no inherent want of respect for property is shown by the Irish people if a proprietorship which had its origin within historical memory in flagrant wrong is less sacred in their eyes than it would be if it had its origin in immemorial right."[41] The character which he gives of Irish landlordism deserves to be quoted: "The Cromwellian landowners soon lost their religious character, while they retained all the hardness of the fanatic and the feelings of Puritan conquerors towards a conquered Catholic people. 'I have eaten with them,' said one, 'drunk with them, fought with them; but I never prayed with them.' Their descendants became, probably, the very worst upper class with which a country was ever afflicted. The habits of the Irish gentry grew beyond measure brutal and reckless, and the coarseness of their debaucheries would have disgusted the crew of Comus. Their drunkenness, their blasphemy, their ferocious duelling, left the squires of England far behind. If there was a grotesque side to their vices which mingles laughter with our reprobation, this did not render their influence less pestilent to the community of which the motive of destiny had made them social chiefs. Fortunately, their recklessness was sure, in the end, to work, to a certain extent, its own cure; and in the background of their swinish and uproarious drinking-bouts, the Encumbered Estates Act rises to our view."[42] Mr. Goldwin Smith deals with agrarian crime thus: "The atrocities perpetrated by the Whiteboys, especially in the earlier period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew somewhat less inhuman), are such as to make the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small. In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 crimes, 627 were Whiteboy, or agrarian, and even of the remainder, many, being crimes of violence, were probably committed from the same motive. "In plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered the Whiteboy code were to the people the organs of a wild law of social morality by which, on the whole, the interest of the peasant was protected. They were not regular tribunals; neither were the secret tribunals of Germany in the Middle Ages, the existence of which, and the submission of the people to their jurisdiction, implied the presence of much violence, but not of much depravity, considering the wildness of the times. The Whiteboys 'found in their favour already existing a general and settled hatred of the law among the great body of the peasantry.'[43] We have seen how much the law, and the ministers of the law, had done to deserve the peasant's love. We have seen, too, in what successive guises property had presented itself to his mind: first as open rapine; then as robbery carried on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code; finally as legalized and systematic oppression. Was it possible that he should have formed so affectionate a reverence either for law or property as would be proof against the pressure of starvation?"[44] "A people cannot be expected to love and reverence oppression because it is consigned to the statute-book, and called law."[45] These extracts are taken from _Irish History and Irish Character_, which was published in 1861. But in 1867 Mr. Goldwin Smith wrote a series of letters to the _Daily News_, which were republished in 1868 under the title of _The Irish Question_; and these letters form, perhaps, the most statesmanlike and far-seeing pronouncement that has ever been made on the Irish difficulty. In the preface Mr. Goldwin Smith begins: "The Irish legislation of the last forty years, notwithstanding the adoption of some remedial measures, has failed through the indifference of Parliament to the sentiments of Irishmen; and the harshness of English public opinion has embittered the effects on Irish feeling of the indifference of Parliament. Occasionally a serious effort has been made by an English statesman to induce Parliament to approach Irish questions in that spirit of sympathy, and with that anxious desire to be just, without which a Parliament in London cannot legislate wisely for Ireland. Such efforts have hitherto met with no response; is it too much to hope that it will be otherwise in the year now opening?"[46] The only comment I shall make on these words is: they were penned more than half a century after Mr. Pitt's Union, which was to shower down blessings on the Irish people. Mr. Goldwin Smith's first letter was written on the 23rd of November, 1867, the day of the execution of the Fenians Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien. He says-- "There can be no doubt, I apprehend, that the Irish difficulty has entered on a new phase, and that Irish disaffection has, to repeat an expression which I heard used in Ireland, come fairly into a line with the other discontented nationalities of Europe. Active Fenianism probably pervades only the lowest class; passive sympathy, which the success of the movement would at once convert into active co-operation, extends, it is to be feared, a good deal higher. "England has ruin before her, unless she can hit on a remedy, and overcome any obstacles of class interest or of national pride which would prevent its application, the part of Russia in Poland, or of Austria in Italy--a part cruel, hateful, demoralizing, contrary to all our high principles and professions, and fraught with dangers to our own freedom. Our position will be worse than that of Russia in this respect, that, while her Poland is only a province, our Fenianism is an element pervading every city of the United Kingdom in which Irish abound, and allying itself with kindred misery, discontent, and disorder. Wretchedness, the result of misgovernment, has caused the Irish people to multiply with the recklessness of despair, and now here are their avenging hosts in the midst of us, here is the poison of their disaffection running through every member of our social frame. Not only so, but the same wretchedness has sent millions of emigrants to form an Irish nation in the United States, where the Irish are a great political power, swaying by their votes the councils of the American Republic, and in immediate contact with those Transatlantic possessions of England, the retention of which it is now patriotic to applaud, and will one day be patriotic to have dissuaded. " ... That Ireland is not at this moment, materially speaking, in a particularly suffering state, but, on the contrary, the farmers are rather prosperous, and wages, even when allowance is made for the rise in the price of provisions, considerably higher than they were, only adds to the significance of this widespread disaffection. "The Fenian movement is not religious, nor radically economical (though no doubt it has in it a socialistic element), but national, and the remedy for it must be one which cures national discontent. This is the great truth which the English people have to lay to heart."[47] Mr. Goldwin Smith then dispels the notion that the Irish question is a religious one. "When Fenianism first appeared, the Orangemen, in accordance with their fixed idea, ascribed it to the priests. They were undeceived, I was told, by seeing a priest run away from the Fenians in fear of his life."[48] Neither was it a question of the land. "The land question, no doubt, lies nearer to the heart of the matter, and it is the great key to Irish history in the past; but I do not believe that even this is fundamental." He then states what is "fundamental."[49] "The real root of the disaffection which exhibits itself at present in the guise of Fenianism, and which has been suddenly kindled into flame by the arming of the Irish in the American civil war, but which existed before in a nameless and smouldering state, is, as I believe, the want of national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects of national reverence and attachment, and consequently of anything deserving to be called national life. The English Crown and Parliament the Irish have never learnt, nor have they had any chance of learning, to love, or to regard as national, notwithstanding the share which was given them, too late, in the representation. The greatness of England is nothing to them. Her history is nothing, or worse. The success of Irishmen in London consoles the Irish in Ireland no more than the success of Italian adventurers in foreign countries (which was very remarkable) consoled the Italian people. The drawing off of Irish talent, in fact, turns to an additional grievance in their minds. Dublin is a modern Tara, a metropolis from which the glory has departed; and the viceroyalty, though it pleases some of the tradesmen, fails altogether to satisfy the people. 'In Ireland we can make no appeal to patriotism, we can have no patriotic sentiments in our schoolbooks, no patriotic emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything patriotic is rebellious.' These were the words uttered in my hearing, not by a complaining demagogue, but by a desponding statesman. They seemed to me pregnant with fatal truths. "If the craving for national institutions, and the disaffection bred in this void of the Irish people's heart, seem to us irrational and even insane, in the absence of any more substantial grievance, we ought to ask ourselves what would become of our own patriotism if we had no national institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence, even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in intention, by a neighbouring people whom we regarded as aliens, and who, in fact, regarded us pretty much in the same light. Let us first judge ourselves fairly, and then judge the Irish, remembering always that they are more imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of national feeling and affection more than ourselves."[50] And all this was written sixty-seven years after the Union of 1800. Mr. Goldwin Smith then deals with the subject of the Irish and Scotch unions much in the same way as Mr. Lecky. "The incorporation of the Scotch nation with the English, being conducted on the right principles by the great Whig statesman of Anne, has been perfectly successful. The attempt to incorporate the Irish nation with the English and Scotch, the success of which would have been, if possible, a still greater blessing, being conducted by very different people and on very different principles, has unhappily failed. What might have been the result if even the Hanoverian sovereigns had done the personal duty to their Irish kingdom which they have unfortunately neglected, it is now too late to inquire. The Irish Union has missed its port, and, in order to reach it, will have to tack again. We may hold down a dependency, of course, by force, in Russian and Austrian fashion; but force will never make the hearts of two nations one, especially when they are divided by the sea. Once get rid of this deadly international hatred, and there will be hope of real union in the future."[51] Mr. Goldwin Smith finally proposes a "plan" by which the "deadly international hatred" might be got rid of, and a "real union" brought about. Here it is. "1. The residence of the Court at Dublin, not merely to gratify the popular love of royalty and its pageantries, which no man of sense desires to stimulate, but to assure the Irish people, in the only way possible as regards the mass of them, that the sovereign of the United Kingdom is really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for and honoured with the other subjects of the realm. This would also tend to make Dublin a real capital, and to gather and retain there a portion of the Irish talent which now seeks its fortune elsewhere. "2. An occasional session (say once in every three years) of the Imperial Parliament in Dublin, partly for the same purposes as the last proposal, but also because the circumstances of Ireland are likely to be, for some time at least, really peculiar, and the personal acquaintance of our legislators with them is the only sufficient security for good Irish legislation. There could be no serious difficulty in holding a short session in the Irish capital, where there is plenty of accommodation for both Houses. "3. A liberal measure of local self-government for Ireland. I would not vest the power in any single assembly for all Ireland, because Ulster is really a different country from the other provinces. I would give each province a council of its own, and empower that council to legislate (subject, of course, to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament) on all matters not essential to the political and legal unity of the empire, in which I would include local education. The provincial councils should of course be elective, and the register of electors might be the same as that of electors to the Imperial Parliament. In England itself the extension of local institutions, as political training schools for the masses, as checks upon the sweeping action of the great central assembly, and as the best organs of legislation in all matters requiring (as popular education, among others, does) adaptation to the circumstances of particular districts, would, I think, have formed a part of any statesmanlike revision of our political system. Here, also, much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing the present business of quarter sessions, other than the judicial business, together with such other matters as the central legislative might think fit to vest in local hands, to an assembly elected by the county."[52] Thus it will be seen that twenty years ago Mr. Goldwin Smith anticipated Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of provincial councils, and got a good way on the road to an Irish Parliament. * * * * * MR. DICEY. A fairer controversalist, or an abler supporter of the "paper Union," than Mr. Dicey there is not; nevertheless no man has fired more effective shots into Mr. Pitt's unfortunate arrangement of 1800. How well has the "failure" of that arrangement been described in these pithy sentences--"Eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of the Treaty of Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do not yet form an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more wretched (for the whole European world has made progress, and Ireland with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness, and Irish disaffection to England is, if not deeper, more widespread than in 1800. An Act meant by its authors to be a source of the prosperity and concord which, though slowly, followed upon the Union with Scotland, has not made Ireland rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the feud between Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of Irish tenants, has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and has, therefore, not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment which can fairly be brought against the Act of Union."[53] What follows reflects honour on Mr. Dicey as an honest opponent who does not shrink from facts; but what a wholesale condemnation of the policy of the Imperial Parliament! "On one point alone (it may be urged) all men, of whatever party or of whatever nation, who have seriously studied the annals of Ireland are agreed--the history is a record of incessant failure on the part of the Government, and of incessant misery on the part of the people. On this matter, if on no other, De Beaumont, Froude, and Lecky are at one. As to the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may and do differ; that England, whether from her own fault or the fault of the Irish people, or from perversity of circumstances, has failed in Ireland of achieving the elementary results of good government is as certain as any fact of history or of experience. Every scheme has been tried in turn, and no scheme has succeeded or has even, it may be suggested, produced its natural effects. Oppression of the Catholics has increased the adherents and strengthened the hold of Catholicism. Protestant supremacy, while it lasted, did not lead even to Protestant contentment, and the one successful act of resistance to the English dominion was effected by a Protestant Parliament supported by an army of volunteers, led by a body of Protestant officers. The independence gained by a Protestant Parliament led, after eighteen years, to a rebellion so reckless and savage that it caused, if it did not justify, the destruction of the Parliament and the carrying of the Union. The Act of Union did not lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on the face of it (though the appearance, it must be admitted, was delusive) to be a copy of the law which bound England and Scotland into a common country inspired by common patriotism, produced conspiracy and agitation, and at last placed England and Ireland further apart, morally, than they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of Union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not combined with Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were emancipated, but emancipation, instead of producing loyalty, brought forth the cry for repeal. The Repeal movement ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the attempted rebellion in 1848. Suppressed rebellion begot Fenianism, to be followed in its turn by the agitation for Home Rule. The movement relies, it is said, and there is truth in the assertion, on constitutional methods for obtaining redress. But constitutional measures are supplemented by boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of dynamite. A century of reform has given us Mr. Parnell instead of Grattan, and it is more than possible that Mr. Parnell may be succeeded by leaders in whose eyes Mr. Davitt's policy may appear to be tainted with moderation. No doubt, in each case the failure of good measures admits, like every calamity in public or private life, of explanation, and after the event it is easy to see why, for example, the Poor Law, when extended to Ireland, did not produce even the good effects such as they are which in England are to be set against its numerous evils; or why an emigration of unparalleled proportions has diminished population without much diminishing poverty; why the disestablishment of the Anglican Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts have not contented Irish farmers. It is easy enough, in short, and this without having any recourse to theory of race, and without attributing to Ireland either more or less of original sin than falls to the lot of humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship--and all statesmanship, it should be remembered, is imperfect--has failed in obtaining good results at all commensurate with its generally good intentions. Failure, however, is none the less failure because its causes admit of analysis. It is no defence to bankruptcy that an insolvent can, when brought before the Court, lucidly explain the errors which resulted in disastrous speculations. The failure of English statesmanship, explain it as you will, has produced the one last and greatest evil which misgovernment can cause. It has created hostility to the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work in Ireland because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the actions of the courts, are in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers."[54] No Home Ruler has described the evils of English misrule in Ireland with such vigour as this. "Bad administration, religious persecution, above all, a thoroughly vicious land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping confiscations as to make it, at any rate, a plausible assertion that all land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history been confiscated at least thrice over, are admittedly some of the causes, if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy of England. This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the law of the land prevailing among large numbers of Irish people. The existence of this disaffection, whatever be the inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. A series of so-called Coercion Acts, passed both before and since the Act of Union, give undeniable evidence, if evidence were wanted, of the ceaseless and, as it would appear, almost irrepressible resistance in Ireland offered by the people to the enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest inclination to underrate the lasting and formidable character of this opposition between opinion and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious and infinitely painful topic, question for a moment that the ultimate strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at the lowest the acquiescence, of the mass of the population. Judges, constables, and troops become almost powerless when the conscience of the people permanently opposes the execution of the law. Severity produces either no effect or bad effects; executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs; and jurymen and witnesses meet with the execration and often with the fate of criminals. On such a point it is best to take the opinion of a foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions from which no Englishman or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free. "'Quand vous en êtes arroês à ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie de regueurs tous vos efforts pour rétabler l'ordre et la paix seront inutiles. En vain, pour réprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez à votre aide toutes les sévérités du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez des lois cruelles pour arrêter le cours de révoltantes cruautés; vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre délit se rattachant à ces grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre impuissance, vous suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaries proclamerez des comtés entiers en état de suspicion légale, voilerez le principe de la liberté individuelle, créerez des cours martiales, des commissions extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur, multiplierez à l'excès les exécutions capitales.'"[55] The next passage is a trenchant condemnation of the "Union." "There exists in Europe no country so completely at unity with itself as Great Britain. Fifty years of reform have done their work, and have removed the discontents, the divisions, the disaffection, and the conspiracies which marked the first quarter, or the first half of this century. Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community of interests. The distraction and the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise, in part at least, from the connection with Ireland. Neither Englishmen nor Irishmen are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for communities differing in historical associations and in political conceptions to keep step together in the path of progress. For other evils arising from the connection the blame must rest on English Statesmen. All the inherent vices of party government, all the weaknesses of the parliamentary system, all the evils arising from the perverse notion that reform ought always to be preceded by a period of lengthy and more than half factitious agitation met by equally factitious resistance, have been fostered and increased by the interaction of Irish and English politics. No one can believe that the inveterate habit of ruling one part of the United Kingdom on principles which no one would venture to apply to the government of any other part of it, can have produced anything but the most injurious effect on the stability of our Government and the character of our public men. The advocates of Home Rule find by far their strongest arguments for influencing English opinion, in the proofs which they produce that England, no less than Ireland, has suffered from a political arrangement under which legal union has failed to secure moral union. _These arguments, whatever their strength, are, however, it must be noted, more available to a Nationalist than to an advocate of federalism_."[56] The words which I have italicised are an expression of opinion; but nothing can alter the damning statement of fact--"legal union has failed to secure moral union." Nevertheless, Mr. Dicey advocates the maintenance of this legal union as it stands. "On the whole, then, it appears that, whatever changes or calamities the future may have in store, the maintenance of the Union is at this day the one sound policy for England to pursue. It is sound because it is expedient; it is sound because it is just."[57] I shall not discuss the question of Home Rule with the eminent writers whose works I have cited. It is enough that they demonstrate the failure of the Union. So convinced was Mr. Lecky, in 1871, of its failure, that he suggested a readjustment of the relations of the two countries on a federal basis;[58] and Mr. Goldwin Smith, in 1868, contended that the Irish difficulty could only be settled by the establishment of Provincial Councils, and an occasional session of the Imperial Parliament in Dublin. Mr. Dicey clings to the existing Union while demonstrating its failure, because he has persuaded himself that the only alternative is separation. Irishmen may be pardoned for acting on Mr. Dicey's facts, and disregarding his prophecies. The mass of Irishmen believe, with Grattan, that the ocean protests against separation as the sea protests against such a union as was attempted in 1800.[59] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 26: Omissions here and elsewhere are merely for purposes of space. In some places the omitted parts would strengthen the Irish case; in no place would they weaken it.] [Footnote 27: Lecky, _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, new edit. (1871), Introduction, pp. viii., xiv.] [Footnote 28: Lecky, _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, new edit. (1871), Introduction, pp. xiv., xv.] [Footnote 29: Lecky, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. ii. pp. 59, 60.] [Footnote 30: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 33, 34.] [Footnote 31: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 120-123.] [Footnote 32: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 125, 126.] [Footnote 33: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 34-37.] [Footnote 34: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 134-137.] [Footnote 35: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 192-195.] [Footnote 36: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 195, 196.] [Footnote 37: Goldwin Smith, _Three English Statesmen_, p. 274.] [Footnote 38: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 13, 14.] [Footnote 39: Ibid., p. 194.] [Footnote 40: Ibid., p. 142.] [Footnote 41: _Irish History and Irish Character_, p. 101.] [Footnote 42: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 139, 140.] [Footnote 43: Sir George Cornewall Lewis, _Irish Disturbances_, p. 97.] [Footnote 44: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 153-157.] [Footnote 45: Ibid., pp. 70, 71] [Footnote 46: _The Irish Question_, Preface, pp. iii., iv.] [Footnote 47: _The Irish Question_, pp. 3-5.] [Footnote 48: Ibid., p. 6.] [Footnote 49: Ibid., p. 7.] [Footnote 50: _The Irish Question_, pp. 7-9.] [Footnote 51: _Irish Question_, p. 10.] [Footnote 52: _The Irish Question_, pp. 16-18.] [Footnote 53: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, p. 128.] [Footnote 54: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 72-74.] [Footnote 55: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 92-94.--The foreigner is De Beaumont.] [Footnote 56: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 151, 152.] [Footnote 57: Ibid., p. 288.] [Footnote 58: I hope I am not doing Mr. Lecky an injustice in this statement. I rely on the extract quoted from the _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland,_ at p. 176 of this volume; but see Introduction, p. xix.] [Footnote 59: Irish House of Commons, January 15th, 1800.] IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES. BY LORD THRING.[60] Ireland is a component member of the most complex political body the world has yet known; any inquiry, then, into the fitness of any particular form of government for that country involves an investigation of the structures of various composite nations, or nations made up of numerous political communities more or less differing from each other. From the examination of the nature of the common tie, and the circumstances which caused it to be adopted or imposed on the component peoples, we cannot but derive instruction, and be furnished with materials which will enable us to take a wide view of the question of Home Rule, and assist us in judging between the various remedies proposed for the cure of Irish disorders. The nature of the ties which bind, or have bound, the principal composite nations of the world together may be classified as-- 1. Confederate unions. 2. Federal unions. 3. Imperial unions. A confederate union may be defined to mean an alliance between the governments of independent States, which agree to appoint a common superior authority having power to make peace and war and to demand contributions of men and money from the confederate States. Such superior authority has no power of enforcing its decrees except through the medium of the governments of the constituent States; or, in other words, in case of disobedience, by armed force. A federal union differs from a confederate union in the material fact that the common superior authority, instead of acting on the individual subjects of the constituent States through the medium of their respective governments, has a power, in respect of all matters within its jurisdiction, of enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding directly on the individual citizens. The distinguishing characteristics of an imperial union are, that it consists of an aggregate of communities, one of which is dominant, and that the component communities have been brought into association, not by arrangement between themselves, but by colonization, cession, and by other means emanating from the resources or power of the dominant community. The above-mentioned distinction between a Government having communities only for its subjects, and incapable of enforcing its orders by any other means than war, and a Government acting directly on individuals, must be constantly borne in mind, for in this lies the whole difference between a confederate and federal union; that is to say, between a confederacy which, in the case of the United States, lasted a few short years, and a federal union which, with the same people as subjects, has lasted nearly a century, and has stood the strain of the most terrible war of modern times. The material features of the Constitution of the United States have been explained in a previous article.[61] All that is necessary to call to mind here is, that the Government of the United States exercises a power of taxation throughout the whole Union by means of its own officers, and enforces its decrees through the medium of its own Courts. A Supreme Court has also been established, which has power to adjudicate on the constitutionality of all laws passed by the Legislature of the United States, or of any State, and to decide on all international questions. Switzerland was till 1848 an example of a confederate union or league of semi-independent States, which, unlike other confederacies, had existed with partial interruptions for centuries. This unusual vitality is attributed by Mill[62] to the circumstance that the confederate government felt its weakness so strongly that it hardly ever attempted to exercise any real authority. Its present government, finally settled in 1874, but based on fundamental laws passed in 1848, is a federal union formed on the pattern of the American Constitution. It consists of a federal assembly comprising two Chambers--the Upper Chamber composed of forty-four members chosen by the twenty-two cantons, two for each canton; the Lower consisting of 145 members chosen by direct election at the rate of one deputy for every 20,000 persons. The chief executive authority is deputed to a federal council consisting of seven members elected for three years by the federal assembly, and having at their head a president and vice-president, who are the first magistrates of the republic. There is also a federal tribunal, having similar functions to those of the supreme court of the United States of America, consisting of nine members elected for six years by the federal assembly. The Empire of Germany is a federal union, differing from the United States and Switzerland in having an hereditary emperor as its head. It comprises twenty-six States, who have "formed an eternal union for the protection of the realm, and the care of the welfare of the German people."[63] The King of Prussia, under the title of German Emperor, represents the empire in all its relations to foreign nations, and has the power of making peace and war, but if the war be more than a defensive war he must have the assent of the Upper House. The legislative body of the empire consists of two Houses--the Upper, called the Bundesrath, representing the several component States in different proportions according to their relative importance; the lower, the Reichstag, elected by the voters in 397 electoral districts, which are distributed amongst the constituent States in unequal numbers, regard being had to the population and circumstances of each State. The Austro-Hungarian Empire is a federal union, differing alike in its origin and construction from the federal unions above mentioned. In the beginning Austria and Hungary were independent countries--Austria a despotism, Hungary a constitutional monarchy, with ancient laws and customs dating back to the foundation of the kingdom in 895. In the sixteenth century the supreme power in both countries--that is to say, the despotic monarchy in Austria and the constitutional monarchy in Hungary--became vested in the same person; as might have been anticipated, the union was not a happy one. If we dip into Heeren's _Political System of Europe_ at intervals selected almost at random, the following notices will be found in relation to Austria and Hungary:--Between 1671 and 1700 "political unity in the Austrian monarchy was to have been enforced especially in the principal country (Hungary), for this was regarded as the sole method of establishing power; the consequence was an almost perpetual revolutionary state of affairs."[64] Again, in the next chapter, commenting on the period between 1740 and 1786: "Hungary, in fact the chief, was treated like a conquered province; subjected to the most oppressive commercial restraints, it was regarded as a colony from which Austria exacted what she could for her own advantage. The injurious consequences of this internal discord are evident." Coming to modern times we find that oppression followed oppression with sickening monotony, and that at last the determination of Austria to stamp out the Constitution in Hungary gave rise to the insurrection of 1849, which Austria suppressed with the assistance of Russia, and as a penalty declared the Hungarian Constitution to be forfeited, and thereupon Hungary was incorporated with Austria, as Ireland was incorporated with Great Britain in 1800. Both events were the consequences of unsuccessful rebellions; but the junction which, in the case of Hungary, was enforced by the sword, was in Ireland more smoothly carried into effect by corruption. Hungary, sullen and discontented, waited for Austria's calamity as her opportunity, and it came after the battle of Sadowa. Austria had just emerged from a fearful conflict, and Count Beust[65] felt that unless some resolute effort was made to meet the views of the constitutional party in Hungary, the dismemberment of the empire must be the result. Now, what was the course he took? Was it a tightening of the bonds between Austria and Hungary? On the contrary, to maintain the unity of the empire he dissolved its union and restored to Hungary its ancient constitutional privileges. Austria and Hungary each had its own Parliament for local purposes. To manage the imperial concerns of peace and war, and the foreign relations, a controlling body, called the Delegations, was established, consisting of 120 members, of whom half represent and are chosen by the Legislature of Austria, and the other half by that of Hungary; the Upper House of each country returning twenty members, and the Lower House forty.[66] Ordinarily the delegates sit and vote in two Chambers, but if they disagree the two branches must meet together and give their final vote without debate, which is binding on the whole empire.[67] The question arises, What is the magnetic influence which induces communities of men to combine together in federal unions? Undoubtedly it is the feeling of nationality; and what is nationality? Mr. Mill says,[68] "a portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others; which make them co-operate with each other more willingly than other people; desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be a government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively." He then proceeds to state that the feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the identity of race and descent; community of language and community of religion greatly contribute to it; geographical limits are one of its causes; but the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents: the possession of a national history and consequent community of recollections--collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret--connected with the same incidents in the past. The only point to be noted further in reference to the foregoing federal unions, is that the same feeling of nationality which, in the United States, Switzerland, and the German Empire, produced a closer legal bond of union, in the case of Austria-Hungary operated to dissolve the amalgamation formed in 1849 of the two States, and to produce a federal union of States in place of a single State. One conclusion seems to follow irresistibly from any review of the construction of the various States above described: that the stability of a nation bears no relation whatever to the legal compactness or homogeneity of its component parts. Russia and France, the most compact political societies in Europe, do not, to say the least, rest on a firmer basis than Germany and Switzerland, the inhabitants of which are subjected to the obligations of a double nationality. Above all, no European nation, except Great Britain, can for a moment bear comparison with the United States in respect of the devotion of its people to their Constitution. An imperial union, though resembling somewhat in outward form a federal union, differs altogether from it both in principle and origin. Its essential characteristic is that one community is absolutely dominant while all the others are subordinate. In the case of a federal union independent States have agreed to resign a portion of their powers to a central Government for the sake of securing the common safety. In an imperial union the dominant or imperial State delegates to each constituent member of the union such a portion of local government as the dominant State considers the subordinate member entitled to, consistently with the integrity of the empire. The British Empire furnishes the best example of an imperial union now existing in the world. Her Majesty, as common head, is the one link which binds the empire together and connects with each other every constituent member. The Indian Empire and certain military dependencies require no further notice in these pages; but a summary of our various forms of colonial government is required to complete our knowledge of the forms of Home Rule possibly applicable to Ireland. The colonies, in relation to their forms of government, may be classified as follows:-- I. Crown colonies, in which laws may be made by the Governor alone, or with the concurrence of a Council nominated by the Crown. 2. Colonies possessing representative institutions, but not responsible government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, but the Home Government retains the control of the executive. 3. Colonies possessing representative institutions and responsible government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, and the Home Government has no control over any public officer except the Governor. The British Colonial Governments thus present an absolute gradation of rule; beginning with absolute despotism and ending with almost absolute legal independence, except in so far as a veto on legislation and the presence of a Governor named by the Crown mark the dependence of the colony on the mother country. It is to be remembered, moreover, that the colonies which have received this complete local freedom are the great colonies of the earth--nations themselves possessing territories as large or larger than any European State--namely, Canada, the Cape, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania. And this change from dependence to freedom has been effected with the good-will both of the mother country and the colony, and without it being imputed to the colonists, when desiring a larger measure of self-government, that they were separatists, anarchists, or revolutionists. Such are the general principles of colonial government, but one colony requires special mention, from the circumstance of its Constitution having been put forward as a model for Ireland; this is the Dominion of Canada. The Government of Canada is, in effect, a subordinate federal union; that is to say, it possesses a central Legislature, having the largest possible powers of local self-government consistent with the supremacy of the empire, with seven inferior provincial Governments, exercising powers greater than those of an English county, but not so great as those of an American State. The advantage of such a form of government is that, without weakening the supremacy of the empire or of the central local power, it admits of considerable diversities being made in the details of provincial government, where local peculiarities and antecedents render it undesirable to make a more complete assimilation of the Governments of the various provinces. Materials have now been collected which will enable the reader to judge of the expediency or inexpediency of the course taken by Mr. Gladstone's Government in dealing with Ireland. Three alternatives were open to them-- 1. To let matters alone. 2. To pass a Coercion Bill. 3. To change the government of Ireland, and at the same time to pass a Land Bill. The two last measures are combined under the head of one alternative, as it will be shown in the sequel that no effective Land Bill can be passed without granting Home Rule in Ireland. Now, the short answer to the first alternative is, that no party in the State--Conservative, Whig, Radical, Unionist, Home Ruler, Parnellite--thought it possible to leave things alone. That something must be done was universally admitted. The second alternative has found favour with the present Government, and certainly is a better example of the triumph of hope over experience, than even the proverbial second marriage. Eighty-six years have elapsed since the Union. During the first thirty-two years only eleven years, and during the last fifty-four years only two years have been free from special repressive legislation; yet the agitation for repeal of the Union, and general discontent, are more violent in 1887 than in any one of the eighty-six previous years. In the name of common-sense, is there any reason for supposing that the Coercion Bill of 1887 will have a better or more enduring effect than its numerous predecessors? The _primâ facie_ case is at all events in favour of the contention that, when so many trials of a certain remedy have failed, it would be better not to try the same remedy again, but to have recourse to some other medicine. What, then, was the position of Mr. Gladstone's Government at the close of the election of 1885? What were the considerations presented to them as supreme supervisors and guardians of the British Empire? They found that vast colonial empire tranquil and loyal beyond previous expectation--the greater colonies satisfied with their existing position; the lesser expecting that as they grew up to manhood they would be treated as men, and emancipated from childish restraints. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were contented with their sturdy dependent independence, loyal to the backbone. One member only stood aloof, sulky and dissatisfied, and though in law integrally united with the dominant community, practically was dissociated from it by forming within Parliament (the controlling body of the whole) a separate section, of which the whole aim was to fetter the action of the entire supreme body in order to bring to an external severance the practical disunion which existed between that member and Great Britain. This member--Ireland--as compared with other parts of the empire, was small and insignificant; measured against Great Britain, its population was five millions to thirty-one millions, and its estimated capital was only one twenty-fourth part of the capital of the United Kingdom. Measured against Australia, its trade with Great Britain was almost insignificant. Its importance arose from the force of public opinion in Great Britain, which deemed England pledged to protect the party in Ireland which desired the Union to be maintained, and from the power of obstructing English legislation through the medium of the Irish contingent, willing and ready on every occasion to intervene in English debates. The first step to be taken obviously was to find out what the great majority of Irish members wanted. The answer was, that they would be contented to quit the British Parliament on having a Parliament established on College Green, with full powers of local government, and that they would accept on behalf of their country a certain fixed annual sum to be paid to the Imperial Exchequer, on condition that such sum should not be increased without the consent of the Irish representatives. Here there were two great points gained without any sacrifice of principle. Ireland could not be said to be taxed without representation when her representatives agreed to a certain fixed sum to be paid till altered with their consent; while at the same time all risk of obstruction to English legislation by Irish means was removed by the proposal that the Irish representatives should exercise local powers in Dublin instead of imperial powers at Westminster. On the basis of the above arrangement the Bill of Mr. Gladstone was founded. Absolute local autonomy was conferred on Ireland; the assent of the Irish members to quit the Imperial Parliament was accepted; and the Bill provided that after a certain day the representative Irish peers should cease to sit in the House of Lords, and the Irish members vacate their places in the House of Commons. Provisions were then made for the absorption in the Irish Legislative Body of both the Irish representative peers and Irish members. The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament was maintained by an express provision excepting from any interference on the part of Irish Legislature all imperial powers, and declaring any enactment void which infringed that provision; further, an enactment was inserted for the purpose of securing to the English Legislature in the last resource the absolute power to make any law for the government of Ireland, and therefore to repeal, or suspend, the Irish Constitution. Technically these reservations of supremacy to the English Legislature were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of constitutional law that a sovereign Legislature, such as the Queen and two Houses of Parliament in England, cannot bind their successors, and consequently can repeal or alter any law, however fundamental, and annul any restrictions on alteration, however strongly expressed. Practically they were never likely to be called into operation, as it is the custom of Parliament to adhere, under all but the most extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances, to any compact made by Act of Parliament between itself and any subordinate legislative body. The Irish Legislature was subjected to the same controlling power which has for centuries been applied to prevent any excess of jurisdiction in our Colonial Legislatures, by a direction that an appeal as to the constitutionality of any laws which they might pass should lie to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This supremacy of the imperial judicial power over the action of the Colonial Legislatures was a system which the founders of the American Constitution copied in the establishment of their supreme Court, and thereby secured for that legislative system a stability which has defied the assaults of faction and the strain of civil war. The Executive Government of Ireland was continued in her Majesty, and was to be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on her behalf, by the aid of such officers and such Council as her Majesty might from time to time see fit. The initiative power of recommending taxation was also vested in the Queen, and delegated to the Lord Lieutenant. These clauses are co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers to the Imperial Legislature. The Governor is an imperial officer, and will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny, and to veto any Bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided by the advice of the Irish Executive Council. The system is self-acting. The Governor, for local purposes, must have a Council which is in harmony with the Legislative Body. If the Governor and a Council, supported by the Legislative Body, do not agree, the Governor must give way, unless he can, by dismissing his Council, and dissolving the Legislative Body, obtain both a Council and a Legislative Body which will support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case is different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and in the last resort a determination of the Executive Council, backed by the Legislative Body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act of rebellion on the part of the Irish people, and be dealt with accordingly. In acceding to the claims of the National Party for Home Rule in Ireland another question had to be considered: the demands of the English garrison, as it is called--or, in plain words, of the class of Irish landlords--for protection. They urged that to grant Home Rule in Ireland would be to hand them over to their enemies, their tenants, and to lead to an immediate, or to all events a proximate, confiscation of their properties. Without admitting the truth of these apprehensions to the full extent, or indeed to any great extent, it was undoubtedly felt by the framers of the Home Rule Bill that a moral obligation rested on the Imperial Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a question so fraught with danger, so involved in difficulty, to be determined by the Irish Government on its first entry on official existence. Hence the Land Bill, the scheme of which was to frame a system under which the tenants, by being made owners of the soil, should become interested as a class in the maintenance of social order, while the landlords should be enabled to rid themselves on fair terms of their estates, in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the responsibilities of ownership. Of the land scheme brought into Parliament in 1886, it need only here be said that it proposed to lend the Irish Government 3 per cent. stock at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, the Irish Government undertaking to purchase, from any Irish landlord desirous of selling, his estate at (as a general rule) twenty years' purchase on the net rental. The money thus disbursed by the Irish Government was repaid to them by an annuity, payable by the tenant for forty-nine years, of 4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times the gross rental; the result being that, were the Bill passed into law, the tenant would become immediate owner of the land, subject to the payment of an annuity considerably less than the previous rent--that the Irish Government would make a considerable profit on the transaction, inasmuch as it would receive from the tenant interest calculated on the basis of the _gross_ rental, whilst it would pay to the English Government interest calculated on the basis of the _net_ rental--and that the English Government would sustain no loss if the interest were duly received by them. The effect of such a plan appears almost magical: Ireland is transformed at one stroke from a nation of landlords into a nation of peasant proprietors--apparently without loss to any one, and with gain to everybody concerned, except the British Government, who neither gain nor lose in the matter. The practicability, however, of such a scheme depends altogether on the security against loss afforded to the British tax-payer, for he is industrious and heavily burdened, and cannot be expected to assent to any plan which will land him in any appreciable loss. Here it is that the plan of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill differs from all other previous plans. Act after Act has been passed enabling the tenant to borrow money from the British Government on the security of the holding, for the purpose of enabling him to purchase the fee-simple. In such transactions the British Government becomes the mortgagee, and can only recover its money, if default is made in payment, by ejecting the tenant and becoming the landlord. In proportion, then, as any existing purchase Act succeeds, in the same proportion the risk of the British taxpayer increases. He is ever placed in the most invidious of all lights; instead of posing as the generous benefactor who holds forth his hand to rescue the landlord and tenant from an intolerable position, he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the still more hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant of his holding, is seeking to introduce another man into property which really belongs to the ejected tenant. Such a position may be endurable when the number of purchasing tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform in Ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable difference in the relations of landlord and tenant; still more, if it become general. Now, what is the remedy of such a state of things? Surely to interpose the Irish Government between the Irish debtor and his English creditor, and to provide that the Irish revenues in bulk, not the individual holdings of each tenant, shall be the security for the English creditor. This was the scheme embodied in the Land Act of 1886. The punctual payment of all money due from the Government of Ireland to the Government of Great Britain was to have been secured by the continuance in the hands of the British Government of the Excise and Customs duties, and by the appointment of an Imperial Receiver-General, assisted by subordinate officers, and protected by an Imperial Court. This officer would have received not only all the imperial taxes, but also the local taxes; and it would have been his duty to satisfy the claims of the British Government before he allowed any sum to pass into the Irish Exchequer. In effect, the British Government, in relation to the levying of imperial taxes, would have stood in the same relation to Ireland as Congress does to the United States in respect to the levying of federal taxes. The fiscal unity of Great Britain and Ireland would have been in this way secured, and the British Government protected against any loss of interest for the large sums to be expended in carrying into effect in Ireland any agrarian reform worthy of the name. The Irish Bills of 1886, as above represented, had at least three recommendations: 1. They created a state of things in Ireland under which it was possible to make a complete agrarian reform without exposing the English Exchequer to any appreciable risk. 2. They enabled the Irish to govern themselves as respects local matters, while preserving intact the supremacy of the British Parliament and the integrity of the Empire. 3. They enabled the British Parliament to govern the British Empire without any obstructive Irish interference. To the first of these propositions no attempt at an answer has been made. The Land Bill was never considered on its merits; indeed, was never practically discussed, but was at once swept into oblivion by the wave which overwhelmed the Home Rule Bill. The contention against the second proposition was concerned in proving that the supremacy of the British Parliament was not maintained: the practical answer to this objection has been given above. Pushed to its utmost, it could only amount to proof that an amendment ought to have been introduced in Committee, declaring, in words better selected than those introduced for that purpose in the Bill, that nothing in the Act should affect the supremacy of the British Parliament. In short, the whole discussion here necessarily resolved itself into a mere verbal squabble as to the construction of a clause in a Bill not yet in Committee, and had no bottom or substance. It was also urged that the concession of self-government to Ireland was but another mode of handing over the Loyalist party--or, as it is sometimes called, the English garrison--to the tender mercies of the Parnellites. The reply to this would seem to be, that as respects property the Land Bill effectually prevented any interference of the Irish Parliament with the land; nay, more, enabled any Irishman desirous of turning his land into money to do so on the most advantageous terms that ever had been--and with a falling market it may be confidently prophesied ever can be--offered to the Irish landlord; while as respect life and liberty, were it possible that they should be endangered, it was the duty of the imperial officer, the Lord Lieutenant, to take means for the preservation of peace and good order; and behind him, to enforce his behests, stand the strong battalions who, to our sorrow be it spoken, have so often been called upon to put down disturbance and anarchy in Ireland. Competing plans have been put forward, with more or less detail, for governing Ireland. The suggestion that Ireland should be governed as a _Crown_ colony need only be mentioned to be rejected. It means in effect, that Ireland should sink from the rank of an equal or independent member of the British Empire to the grade of the most dependent of her colonies, and should be governed despotically by English officials, without representation in the English Parliament or any machinery of local self-government. Another proposal has been to give four provincial Governments to Ireland, limiting their powers to local rating, education, and legislation in respect of matters which form the subjects of private Bill legislation at present; in fact, to place them somewhat on the footing of the provinces of Canada, while reserving to the English Parliament the powers vested in the Dominion of Canada. Such a scheme would seem adapted to whet the appetite of the Irish for nationality, without supplying them with any portion of the real article. It would supply no basis on which a system of agrarian reform could be founded, as it would be impossible to leave the determination of a local question, which is a unit in its dangers and its difficulties, to four different Legislatures; above all, the hinge on which the question turns--the sufficiency of the security for the British taxpayer--could not be afforded by provincial resources. Indeed, no alternative for the Land Bill of 1886 has been suggested which does not err in one of the following points: either it pledges English credit on insufficient security, or it requires the landowners to accept Irish debentures or some form of Irish paper money at par; in other words, it makes English taxes a fund for relieving Irish landlords, or else it compels the Irish landowner, if he sells at all, to sell at an inadequate price. Before parting with Canada, it may be worth while noticing that another, and more feasible, alternative is to imitate more closely the Canadian Constitution, and to vest the central or Dominion powers in a central Legislature in Dublin, parcelling out the provincial powers, as they have been called, amongst several provincial Legislatures. This scheme might be made available as a means of protecting Ulster from the supposed danger of undue interference from the Central Government, and for making, possibly, other diversities in the local administration of various parts of Ireland in order to meet special local exigencies. A leading writer among the dissentient Liberals has intimated that one of two forms of representative colonial government might be imposed on Ireland--either the form in which the executive is conducted by colonial officials, or the form of the great irresponsible colonies. The first of these forms is open to the objection, that it perpetuates those struggles between English executive measures and Irish opinion which has made Ireland for centuries ungovernable, and led to the establishment of the union and destruction of Irish independence in 1800; the second proposal would destroy the fiscal unity of the empire--leave the agrarian feud unextinguished, and aggravate the objections which have been urged against the Home Rule Bill of 1886. A question still remains, in relation to the _form_ of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, which would not have deserved attention but for the prominence given to it in some of the discussions upon the subject. The Bill of 1886 provides "that the Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland," but subjects their power to numerous exceptions and restrictions. The Act establishing the Dominion of Canada enumerates various matters in respect of which the Legislature of Canada is to have exclusive power, but prefaces the enumeration with a clause "that the Dominion Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Canada in relation to all matters not within the jurisdiction of the provincial Legislatures, although such matters may not be specially mentioned." In effect, therefore, the difference between the Irish Bill and the Canadian Act is one of expression and not of substance, and, although the Bill is more accurate in its form, it would scarcely be worth while to insist on legislating by exception instead of by enumeration if, by the substitution of the latter form for the former, any material opposition would be conciliated. What, then, are the conclusions intended to be drawn from the foregoing premises? 1. That coercion is played out, and can no longer be regarded as a remedy for the evils of Irish misrule. 2. That some alternative must be found, and that the only alternative within the range of practical politics is some form of Home Rule. 3. That there is no reason for thinking that the grant of Home Rule to Ireland--a member only, and not one of the most important members, of the British Empire--will in any way dismember, or even in the slightest degree risk the dismemberment of the Empire. 4. That Home Rule presupposes and admits the supremacy of the British Parliament. 5. That theory is in favour of Home Rule, as the nationality of Ireland is distinct, and justifies a desire for local independence; while the establishment of Home Rule is a necessary condition to the effectual removal of agrarian disturbances in Ireland. 6. That precedent is in favour of granting Home Rule to Ireland--_e.g._ the success of the new Constitution in Austria-Hungary, and the happy effects resulting from the establishment of the Dominion of Canada. 7. That the particular form of Home Rule granted is comparatively immaterial. 8. That the Home Rule Bill of 1886 may readily be amended in such a manner as to satisfy all real and unpartisan objectors. 9. That the Land Bill of 1886 is the best that has ever been devised, having regard to the advantages offered to the new Irish Government, the landlord, and the tenant. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 60: Reprinted by permission, with certain omissions, from the _Contemporary Review_, August, 1887.] [Footnote 61: "Home Rule and Imperial Unity:" _Contemporary Review_, March, 1887.] [Footnote 62: Mill on _Representative Government_, p. 310.] [Footnote 63: See _Statesman's Year-Book_: Switzerland and Germany.] [Footnote 64: Heeren's _Political System of Europe_, p. 152.] [Footnote 65: _Memoirs of Count Beust_, vol. i., Introduction, p. xliii.] [Footnote 66: _Statesman's Year-Book._] [Footnote 67: The Emperor of Austria is the head of the empire, with the title of King in Hungary. Austria-Hungary is treated as a federal, not as an imperial union, on the ground that Austria was never rightfully a dominant community over Hungary.] [Footnote 68: _Representative Government_, p. 295.] THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION[69] BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P. For half a century or more no question of English domestic politics has excited so much interest outside England as that question of resettling her relations with Ireland, which was fought over in the last Parliament, and still confronts the Parliament that has lately been elected. Apart from its dramatic interest, apart from its influence on the fortune of parties, and its effect on the imperial position of Great Britain, it involves so many large principles of statesmanship, and raises so many delicate points of constitutional law, as to deserve the study of philosophical thinkers no less than of practical politicians in every free country. The circumstances which led to the introduction of the Government of Ireland Bill, in April, 1886, are familiar to Americans as well as Englishmen. Ever since the crowns and parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland were united, in A.D. 1800, there has been in Ireland a party which protested against that union as fraudulently obtained and inexpedient in itself. For many years this party, led by Daniel O'Connell, maintained an agitation for Repeal. After his death a more extreme section, which sought the complete independence of Ireland, raised the insurrection of 1848, and subsequently, under the guidance of other hands, formed the Fenian conspiracy, whose projected insurrection was nipped in the bud in 1867, though the conspiracy continued to menace the Government and the tranquillity of the island. In 1872 the Home Rule party was formed, demanding, not the Repeal of the Union, but the creation of an Irish Legislature, and the agitation, conducted in Parliament in a more systematic and persistent way than heretofore, took also a legitimate constitutional form. To this demand English and Scotch opinion was at first almost unanimously opposed. At the General Election of 1880, which, however, turned mainly on the foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government, not more than three or four members were returned by constituencies in Great Britain who professed to consider Home Rule as even an open question. All through the Parliament, which sat from 1880 till 1885, the Nationalist party, led by Mr. Parnell, and including at first less than half, ultimately about half, of the Irish members, was in constant and generally bitter opposition to the Government of Mr. Gladstone. But during these five years a steady, although silent and often unconscious, process of change was passing in the minds of English and Scotch members, especially Liberal members, due to their growing sense of the mistakes which Parliament committed in handling Irish questions, and of the hopelessness of the efforts which the Executive was making to pacify the country on the old methods. The adoption of a Home Rule policy by one of the great English parties was, therefore, not so sudden a change as it seemed. The process had been going on for years, though in its earlier stages it was so gradual and so unwelcome as to be faintly felt and reluctantly admitted by the minds that were undergoing it. In the spring of 1886 the question could be no longer evaded or postponed. It was necessary to choose between one of two courses; the refusal of the demand for self-government, coupled with the introduction of a severe Coercion Bill, or the concession of it by the introduction of a Home Rule Bill. There were some few who suggested, as a third course, the granting of a limited measure of local institutions, such as county boards; but most people felt, as did Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, that this plan would have had most of the dangers and few of the advantages of either of the two others. How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into the House of Commons on April 8th, amid circumstances of curiosity and excitement unparalleled since 1832; how, after debates of almost unprecedented length, it was defeated in June, by a majority of thirty; how the policy it embodied was brought before the country at the General Election, and failed to win approval--all this is too well known to need recapitulation here. But the causes of the disaster have not been well understood, for it is only now--now, when the smoke of the battle has cleared away from the field--that these causes have begun to stand revealed in their true proportions. Besides some circumstances attending the production of the Bill, to which I shall refer presently, and which told heavily against it, there were three feelings which worked upon men's minds, disposing them to reject it. The first of these was dislike and fear of the Irish Nationalist members. In the previous House of Commons this party had been uniformly and bitterly hostile to the Liberal Government. Measures intended for the good of Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been ungraciously received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no thanks were due--inadequate concessions, which must be made the starting-point for fresh demands. Obstruction had been freely practised to defeat not only bills restraining the liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other measures. Some few members of the Irish party had systematically sought to delay all English and Scotch legislation, and, in fact, to bring the work of Parliament to a dead stop. Much violent language had been used, even where the provocation was slight. The outbreaks of crime which had repeatedly occurred in Ireland had been, not, indeed, defended, but so often passed over in silence by Nationalist speakers, that English opinion was inclined to hold them practically responsible for disorders which, so it was thought, they had neither wished nor tried to prevent. (I am, of course, expressing no opinion as to the justice of this view, nor as to the excuses to be made for the Parliamentary tactics of the Irish party, but merely stating how their conduct struck many Englishmen.) There could be no doubt as to the hostility which they, still less as to that which their fellow-countrymen in the United States, had expressed toward England, for they had openly wished success to Russia while war seemed impending with her, and the so-called Mahdi of the Soudan was vociferously cheered at many a Nationalist meeting. At the Election of 1885 they had done their utmost to defeat Liberal candidates in every English and Scotch constituency where there existed a body of Irish voters, and had thrown some twenty seats or more into the hands of the Tories. Now, to many Englishmen, the proposal to create an Irish Parliament seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand over to these Irish members the government of Ireland, with all the opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would contain different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr. Parnell's nominees. Neither of these arguments could overcome the suspicious antipathy which many Englishmen felt, nor dissolve the association in their minds between the Nationalist leaders and the forces of disorder. The Parnellites (thus they reasoned) are bad men; what they seek is therefore likely to be bad, and whether bad in itself or not, they will make a bad use of it. In such reasonings there was more of sentiment and prejudice than of reason, but sentiment and prejudice are proverbially harder than arguments to expel from minds where they have made a lodgment. The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial grounds for alarm. As everybody knows, she is not, either in religion or in blood, or in feelings and ideas, a homogeneous country. Three-fourths of the people are Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant fourth subdivided into bodies not fond of one another, who have little community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish colony in Ulster, many English families have settled here and there through the country. They have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and many of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since they came, still look on themselves as rather English than Irish. The last fifty years, whose wonderful changes have in most parts of the world tended to unite and weld into one compact body the inhabitants of each part of the earth's surface, connecting them by the ties of commerce, and of a far easier and swifter intercourse than was formerly possible, have in Ireland worked in the opposite direction. It has become more and more the habit of the richer class in Ireland to go to England for its enjoyment, and to feel itself socially rather English than Irish. Thus the chasm between the immigrants and the aborigines has grown deeper. The upper class has not that Irish patriotism which it showed in the days of the National Irish Parliament (1782-1800), and while there is thus less of a common national feeling to draw rich and poor together, the strife of landlords and tenants has continued, irritating the minds of both parties, and gathering them into two hostile camps. As everybody knows, the Nationalist agitation has been intimately associated with the Land agitation--has, in fact, found a strong motive-force in the desire of the tenants to have their rents reduced, and themselves secured against eviction. Now, many people in England assumed that an Irish Parliament would be under the control of the tenants and the humbler class generally, and would therefore be hostile to the landlords. They went farther, and made the much bolder assumption that as such a Parliament would be chosen by electors, most of whom were Roman Catholics, it would be under the control of the Catholic priesthood, and hostile to Protestants. Thus they supposed that the grant of self-government to Ireland would mean the abandonment of the upper and wealthier class, the landlords and the Protestants, to the tender mercies of their enemies. Such abandonment, it was proclaimed on a thousand platforms, would be disgraceful in itself, dishonouring to England, a betrayal of the very men who had stood by her in the past, and were prepared to stand by her in the future, if only she would stand by them. It was, of course, replied by the defenders of the Home Rule Bill, that what the so-called English party in Ireland really stood by was their own ascendency over the Irish masses--an oppressive ascendency, which had caused most of the disorders of the country. As to religion, there were many Protestants besides Mr. Parnell himself among the Nationalist leaders. There was no ill-feeling (except in Ulster) between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ireland. There was no reason to expect that either the Catholic hierarchy or the priesthood generally would be supreme in an Irish Parliament, and much reason to expect the contrary. As regards Ulster, where, no doubt, there were special difficulties, due to the bitter antagonism of the Orangemen (not of the Protestants generally) and Catholics, Mr. Gladstone had undertaken to consider any special provisions which could be suggested as proper to meet those difficulties. These replies, however, made little impression. They were pronounced, and pronounced all the more confidently the more ignorant of Ireland the speaker was, to be too hypothetical. To many Englishmen the case seemed to be one of two hostile factions contending in Ireland for the last sixty years, and that the gift of self-government might enable one of them to tyrannize over the other. True, that party was the majority, and, according to the principles of democratic government, therefore entitled to prevail. But it is one thing to admit a principle and another to consent to its application. The minority had the sympathy of the upper classes in England, because the minority contained the landlords. It had the sympathy of a part of the middle class, because it contained the Protestants. And of those Englishmen who were impartial as between the Irish factions, there were some who held that England must in any case remain responsible for the internal peace and the just government of Ireland, and could not grant powers whose possession might tempt the one party to injustice, and the other to resist injustice by violence. There was another anticipation, another forecast of evils to follow, which told most of all upon English opinion. This was the notion that Home Rule was only a stage in the road to the complete separation of the two islands. The argument was conceived as follows: "The motive passions of the Irish agitation have all along been hatred toward England and a desire to make Ireland a nation, holding her independent place among the nations of the world. This design was proclaimed by the Young Irelanders of 1848 and by the Fenian rebels of 1866; it has been avowed, in intervals of candour, by the present Nationalists themselves. The grant of an Irish Parliament will stimulate rather than appease this thirst for separate national existence. The nearer complete independence seems, the more will it be desired. Hatred to England will still be an active force, because the amount of control which England retains will irritate Irish pride, as well as limit Irish action; while all the misfortunes which may befall the new Irish Government will be blamed, not on its own imprudence, but on the English connection. And as the motives for seeking separation will remain, so the prospect of obtaining it will seem better. Agitation will have a better vantage-ground in an Irish Parliament than it formerly had among the Irish members of a British Legislature; and if actual resistance to the Queen's authority should be attempted, it will be attempted under conditions more favourable than the present, because the rebels will have in their hands the machinery of Irish Government, large financial resources, and a _prima facie_ title to represent the will of the Irish people. As against a rebellious party in Ireland, England has now two advantages--an advantage of theory, an advantage of fact. The advantage of theory is that she does not admit Ireland to be a distinct nation, but maintains that in the United Kingdom there is but one nation, whereof some inhabit Great Britain and some Ireland. The advantage of fact is that, through her control of the constabulary, the magistrates, the courts of justice, and, in fine, the whole administrative system of Ireland, she can easily quell insurrectionary movements. By creating an Irish Parliament and Government she would strip herself of both these advantages." I need hardly say that I do not admit the fairness of this statement of the case, because some of the premises are untrue, and because it misrepresents the nature of the Irish Government which Mr. Gladstone's Bill would have created. But I am trying to state the case as it was sedulously and skilfully presented to Englishmen. And it told all the more upon English waverers, because the considerations above mentioned seemed, if well founded, to destroy and cut away the chief ground on which Home Rule had been advocated, viz. that it would relieve England from the constant pressure of Irish discontent and agitation, and bring about a time of tranquillity, permitting good feeling to grow up between the peoples. If Home Rule was, after all, to be nothing more than a half-way house to independence, an Irish Parliament only a means of extorting a more complete emancipation from imperial control, was it not much better to keep things as they were, and go on enduring evils, the worst of which were known already? Hence the advocates of the Bill denied not the weight of the argument, but its applicability. Separation, they urged, is impossible, for it is contrary to the nature of things, which indicates that the two islands must go together. It is not desired by the Irish people, for it would injure them far more than it could possibly injure England, since Ireland finds in England the only market for her produce, the only source whence capital flows to her. A small revolutionary party has, no doubt, conspired to obtain it. But the only sympathy they received was due to the fact that the legitimate demand of Ireland for a recognition of her national feeling and for the management of her own local affairs was contemptuously ignored by England. The concession of that demand will banish the notion even from those minds which now entertain it, whereas its continued refusal may perpetuate that alienation of feeling which is at the bottom of all the mischief, the one force that makes for separation. It is no part of my present purpose to examine these arguments and counter arguments, but only to show what were the grounds on which a majority of the English voters refused to pronounce in favour of the Home Rule Bill. The reader will have observed that the issues raised were not only numerous, but full of difficulty. They were issues of fact, involving a knowledge both of the past history of Ireland and of her present state. They were also issues of inference, for even supposing the broad facts to be ascertained, these facts were susceptible of different interpretations, and men might, and did, honestly draw opposite conclusions from them. A more obscure and complicated problem, or rather group of problems, has seldom been presented to a nation for its decision. But the nation did not possess the requisite knowledge. Closely connected as Ireland seems to be with England, long as the Irish question has been a main trouble in English politics, the English and Scottish people know amazingly little about Ireland. Even in the upper class, you meet with comparatively few persons who have set foot on Irish soil, and, of course, far fewer who have ever examined the condition of the island and the sources of her discontent. Irish history, which is, no doubt, dismal reading, is a blank page to the English. In January, 1886, one found scarce any politicians who had ever heard of the Irish Parliament of 1782. And in that year, 1886, an Englishman anxious to discover the real state of the country did not know where to go for information. What appeared in the English newspapers, or, rather, in the one English newspaper which keeps a standing "own correspondent" in Dublin, was (as it still is) a grossly and almost avowedly partisan report, in which opinions are skilfully mixed with so-called facts, selected, consciously or unconsciously, to support the writer's view. The Nationalist press is, of course, not less strongly partisan on its own side, so that not merely an average Englishman, but even the editor of an English newspaper, who desires to ascertain the true state of matters and place it before his English readers, has had, until within the last few months, when events in Ireland began to be fully reported in Great Britain, no better means at his disposal for understanding Ireland than for understanding Bulgaria. I do not dwell upon this ignorance as an argument for Home Rule, though, of course, it is often so used. I merely wish to explain the bewilderment in which Englishmen found themselves when required to settle by their votes a question of immense difficulty. Many, on both sides, simply followed their party banners. Tories voted for Lord Salisbury; thorough-going admirers of Mr. Gladstone voted for Mr. Gladstone. But there was on the Liberal side a great mass who were utterly perplexed by the position. Contradictory statements of fact, as well as contradictory arguments, were flung at their heads in distracting profusion. They felt themselves unable to determine what was true and who was right. But one thing seemed clear to them. The policy of Home Rule was a new policy. They had been accustomed to censure and oppose it. Only nine months before, the Irish Nationalists had emphasized their hostility to the Liberal party by doing their utmost to defeat Liberal candidates in English constituencies. Hence, when it was proclaimed that Home Rule was the true remedy which the Liberal party must accept, they were startled and discomposed. Now, the English are not a nimble-minded people. They cannot, to use a familiar metaphor, turn round in their own length. Their momentum is such as to carry them on for some distance in the direction wherein they have been moving, even after the order to stop has been given. They need time to appreciate, digest, and comprehend a new proposition. Timid they are not, nor, perhaps, exceptionally cautious, but they do not like to be hurried, and insist on looking at a proposition for a good while before they come to a decision regarding it. It is one of the qualities which make them a great people. As has been observed, this proposition was novel, was most serious, and raised questions which they felt that their knowledge was insufficient to determine. Accordingly, a certain section of the Liberal party refused to accept it. A great number, probably the majority, of these doubtful men abstained from voting. Others voted against the Home Rule Liberal candidates, not necessarily because they condemned the policy, but because, as they were not satisfied that it was right, they deemed delay a less evil than the committal of the nation to a new departure, which might prove irrevocable. It must not, however, be supposed that it was only hesitation which drove many Liberals into the host arrayed against the Irish Government Bill. I have already said that among the leaders there were some, and those men of great influence, who condemned its principles. This was true also of a considerable, though a relatively smaller, section of the rank and file. And it was only what might have been expected. The proposal to undo much of the work done in 1800, to alter fundamentally the system which had for eighty-six years regulated the relations of the two islands, by setting up a Parliament in Ireland, was a proposal which not only had not formed a part of the accepted creed of the Liberal party, but fell outside party lines altogether. It might, no doubt, be argued, as was actually done, and as those who understand the history of the Liberal party have more and more come to see, that Liberal principles recommended it, since they involve faith in the people, and faith in the curative tendency of local self-government. But this was by no means axiomatic. Taking the whole complicated facts of the case, and taking Liberalism as it had been practically understood in England, a man might in July, 1886, deem himself a good Liberal and yet think that the true interests of both peoples would be best served by maintaining the existing Parliamentary system. Similarly, there was nothing in Toryism or Tory principles to prevent a fair-minded and patriotic Tory from approving the Home Rule scheme. It was a return to the older institutions of the monarchy, and not inconsistent with any of the doctrines which the Tory party had been accustomed to uphold. The question, in short, was one of those which cut across ordinary party lines, creating new divisions among politicians; and there might have been and ought to have been Liberal Home Rulers and Tory Home Rulers, Liberal opponents of Home Rule and Tory opponents of Home Rule. But here comes in a feature, a natural but none the less a regrettable feature, of the English party system. As the object of the party in opposition is to turn out the party in power and seat itself in their place, every Opposition regards with the strongest prejudice the measures proposed by a ruling Ministry. Cases sometimes occur where these measures are so obviously necessary, or so evidently approved by the nation, that the Opposition accepts them. But in general it scans them with a hostile eye. Human nature is human nature; and when the defeat of Government can be secured by defeating a Government Bill, the temptation to the Opposition to secure it is irresistible. Now, the Tory party is far more cohesive than the Liberal party, far more obedient to its leaders, far less disposed to break into sections, each of which thinks and acts for itself. Accordingly, that division of opinion in the Tory party which might have been expected, and which would have occurred if those who composed the Tory party had been merely so many reflecting men, and not members of a closely compacted political organization, did not occur. Liberals were divided, as such a question would naturally divide them. Tories were not divided; they threw their whole strength against the Bill. I am far from suggesting that they did so against their consciences. Whatever may be said as to two or three of the leaders, whose previous language and conduct seemed to indicate that they would themselves, had the election of 1885 gone differently, have been inclined to a Home Rule policy, many of the Tory chiefs, as well as the great mass of the party, honestly disapproved Mr. Gladstone's measure. But their party motives and party affiliations gave it no chance of an impartial verdict at their hands. They went into the jury-box with an invincible prepossession against the scheme of their opponents. When all these difficulties are duly considered, and especially when regard is had to those which I have last enumerated, the suddenness with which the new policy was launched, and the fact that as coming from one party it was sure beforehand of the hostility of the other, no surprise can be felt at its fate. Those who, in England, now look back over the spring and summer of 1886 are rather surprised that it should come so near succeeding. To have been rejected by a majority of only thirty in Parliament, and of little over ten per cent. of the total number of electors who voted at the general election, is a defeat far less severe than any one who knew England would have predicted. That the decision of the country is regarded by nobody as a final decision goes without saying. It was not regarded as final, even in the first weeks after it was given. This was not because the majority was comparatively small, for a smaller majority the other way would have been conclusive. It is because the country had not time enough for full consideration and deliberate judgment. The Bill was brought in on April 14th, the elections began on July 1st; no one can say what might have been the result of a long discussion, during which the first feelings of alarm (for alarm there was) might have worn off. And the decision is without finality, also, because the decision of the country was merely against the particular plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and not in favour of any alternative plan for dealing with Ireland, most certainly not for the coercive method which has since been adopted. One particular solution of the Irish problem was refused. The problem still stands confronting us, and when other modes of solving it have been in turn rejected, the country may come back to this mode. We may now turn from the past to the future. Yet the account which has been given of the feelings and ideas arrayed against the Bill does not wholly belong to the past. They are the feelings to which the opponents of any plan of self-government for Ireland still appeal, and which will have to be removed or softened down before it can be accepted by the English. In particular, the probability of separation, and the supposed dangers to the Protestants and the landlords from an Irish Parliament, will continue to form the themes of controversy so long as the question remains unsettled. What are the prospects of its settlement? What is the position which it now occupies? How has it affected the current politics of England? It broke up the Liberal party in Parliament. The vast numerical majority of that party in the country supported, and still supports, Mr. Gladstone and the policy of Irish self-government. But the dissentient minority includes many men of influence, and constitutes in the House of Commons a body of about seventy members, who hold the balance between parties. For the present they are leagued with the Tory Ministry to resist Home Rule, and their support insures a parliamentary majority to that Ministry. But it is, of course, necessary for them to rally to Lord Salisbury, not only on Irish questions, but on all questions; for, under our English system, a Ministry defeated on any serious issue is bound to resign, or dissolve Parliament. Now, to maintain an alliance for a special purpose, between members of opposite parties, is a hard matter. Agreement about Ireland does not, of itself, help men to agree about foreign policy, or bimetallism, or free trade, or changes in land laws, or ecclesiastical affairs. When these and other grave questions come up in Parliament, the Tory Ministry and their Liberal allies must, on every occasion, negotiate a species of concordat, whereby the liberty of both is fettered. One party may wish to resist innovation, the other to yield to it, or even to anticipate it. Each is obliged to forego something in order to humour the other; neither has the pleasure or the credit of taking a bold line on its own responsibility. There is, no doubt, less difference between the respective tenets of the great English parties than there was twenty years ago, when Mr. Disraeli had not yet completed the education of one party, and economic laws were still revered by the other. But, besides its tenets, each party has its tendencies, its sympathies, its moral atmosphere; and these differ so widely as to make the co-operation of Tories and Liberals constrained and cumbrous. Moreover, there are the men to be considered, the leaders on each side, whose jealousies, rivalries, suspicions, personal incompatibilities, neither old habits of joint action nor corporate party feeling exist to soften. On the whole, therefore, it is unlikely that the league of these two parties, united for one question only, and that a question which will pass into new phases, can be durable. Either the league will dissolve, or the smaller party will be absorbed into the larger. In England, as in America, third parties rarely last. The attraction of the larger mass is irresistible, and when the crisis which created a split or generated a new group has passed, or the opinion the new group advocates has been either generally discredited or generally adopted, the small party melts away, its older members disappearing from public life, its younger ones finding their career in the ranks of one of the two great standing armies of politics. If the dissentient, or anti-Home Rule, Liberal party lives till the next general election, it cannot live longer, for at that election it will be ground to powder between the upper and nether millstones of the regular Liberals and the regular Tories. The Irish struggle of 1886 has had another momentous consequence. It has brought the Nationalist or Parnellite party into friendly relations with the mass of English Liberals. When the Home Rule party was founded by Mr. Butt, some fifteen years ago, it had more in common with the Liberal than with the Tory party. But as it demanded what both English parties were then resolved to refuse, it was forced into antagonism to both; and from 1877 onward (Mr. Butt being then dead) the antagonism became bitter, and, of course, specially bitter as toward the statesmen in power, because it was they who continued to refuse what the Nationalists sought. Mr. Parnell has always stated, with perfect candour, that he and his friends must fight for their own hand unhampered by English alliances, and getting the most they could for Ireland from the weakness of either English party. This position they still retain. If the Tory party will give them Home Rule, they will help the Tory party. However, as the Tory party has gained office by opposing Home Rule, this contingency may seem not to lie within the immediate future. On the other hand, the Gladstonian Liberals have lost office for their advocacy of Home Rule, and now stand pledged to maintain the policy they have proclaimed. The Nationalists have, therefore, for the first time since the days immediately following the Union of A.D. 1800 (a measure which the Whigs of those days resisted), a great English party admitting the justice of their claim, and inviting them to agitate for it by purely constitutional methods. For such an alliance the English Liberals are hotly reproached, both by the Tories and by the dissentients who follow Lord Harrington and Mr. Chamberlain. They are accused of disloyalty to England. The past acts and words of the Nationalists are thrown in their teeth, and they are told that in supporting the Irish claim they condone such acts, they adopt such words. They reply by denying the adoption, and by pointing out that the Tories themselves were from 1881 till 1886 in a practical, and often very close, though unavowed, Parliamentary alliance with the Nationalists in the House of Commons. The student of history will, however, conceive that the Liberals have a stronger and higher defence than any _tu quoque_. Issues that involve the welfare of peoples are far too serious for us to apply to them the same sentiments of personal taste and predilection which we follow in inviting a dinner party, or selecting companions for a vacation tour. If a man has abused your brother, or got drunk in the street, you do not ask him to go with you to the Yellowstone Park. But his social offences do not prevent you from siding with him in a political convention. So, in politics itself, one must distinguish between characters and opinions. If a man has shown himself unscrupulous or headstrong, you may properly refuse to vote him into office, or to sit in the same Cabinet with him, because you think these faults of his dangerous to the country. But if the cause he pleads be a just one, you have no more right to be prejudiced against it by his conduct than a judge has to be swayed by dislike to the counsel who argues a case. There were moderate men in America, who, in the days of the anti-slavery movement, cited against it the intemperate language of many abolitionists. There were aristocrats in England, who, during the struggle for the freedom and unity of Italy, sought to discredit the patriotic party by accusing them of tyrannicide. But the sound sense of both nations refused to be led away by such arguments, because it held those two causes to be in their essence righteous. In all revolutionary movements there are elements of excess and violence, which sober men may regret, but which must not disturb our judgment as to the substantial merits of an issue. The revolutionist of one generation is, like Garibaldi or Mazzini, the hero of the next; and the verdict of posterity applauds those who, even in his own day, were able to discern the justice of the cause under the errors or faults of its champion. Doubly is it the duty of a great and far-sighted statesman not to be repelled by such errors, when he can, by espousing a revolutionary movement, purify it of its revolutionary character, and turn it into a legitimate constitutional struggle. This is what Mr. Gladstone has done. If his policy be in itself dangerous and disloyal to the true interests of the people of our islands, let it be condemned. But if it be the policy which has the best promise for the peace, the prosperity, and the mutual good will of those peoples, he and those who follow him would be culpable indeed were they to be deterred by the condemnation which they have so often expressed, and which they still express, for some of the past acts of a particular party, from declaring that the aims of that party were substantially right aims, and from now pressing upon the country what their conscience approves. However, as the Home Rule Liberals and Nationalists, taken together, are in a minority (although a minority which obtains recruits at many bye-elections) in the present Parliament, it is not from them that fresh proposals are expected. They will, of course, continue to speak, write, and agitate on behalf of the views they hold. But practical attempt to deal with Irish troubles must for the present come from the Tory Ministry; for in the English system of government those who command a Parliamentary majority are responsible for legislation as well as administration, and are censured not merely if their legislation is bad, but if it is not forthcoming when events call for it. Why, it may be asked, should Lord Salisbury's Government burn its fingers over Ireland, as so many governments have burnt their fingers before? Why not let Ireland alone, giving to foreign affairs and to English and Scottish reforms all the attention which these too much neglected matters need? Well would it be for England, as well as for English Ministries, if Ireland could be simply let alone, her maladies left to be healed by the soft, slow hand of nature. But Irish troubles call aloud to be dealt with, and that promptly. They stand in the way of all other reforms, indeed of all other business. Letting alone has been tried, and it has succeeded no better, even in times less urgent than the present, than the usual policy of coercion followed by concession, or concession followed by coercion. There are three aspects of the Irish question, three channels by which the troubles of the "distressful island" stream down upon us, forcing whoever now rules or may come to rule in England to attempt some plan for dealing with them. I will take them in succession. The first is the Parliamentary difficulty. In the British House of Commons, with its six hundred and seventy members, there are nearly ninety Irish Nationalists. They are a well-disciplined body, voting as one man, though capable of speaking enough for a thousand. They have no interest in English or Scotch or colonial or Indian affairs, but only in Irish, and look upon the vote which they have the right of giving upon the former solely as a means of furthering their own Irish aims. They are, therefore, in the British Parliament not merely a foreign body, indifferent to the great British and imperial issues confided to it, but a hostile body, opposed to its present constitution, seeking to discredit it in its authority over Ireland, and to make more and more palpable and incurable the incompetence for Irish business whereof they accuse it. Several modes of doing this are open to them. They may, as some of the more actively bitter among them did in the Parliaments of 1874 and 1880, obstruct business by long and frequent speeches, dilatory motions, and all those devices which in America are called filibustering. The House of Commons may, no doubt, try to check these tactics by more stringent rules of procedure, but the attempts already made in this direction have had but slight success, and every restriction of debate, since it trenches on the freedom of English and Scotch no less than of Irish members, injures Parliament as a whole. They may disgust the British people with the House of Commons by keeping it (as they have done in former years) so constantly occupied with Irish business as to leave it little time for English and Scotch measures. They may throw the weight of their collective vote into the scale of one or other British party, according to the amount of concession it will make to them, or, by always voting against the Ministry of the day, they may cause frequent and sudden changes of Government. This plan also they have followed in time past; for the moment it is not so applicable, because the Tories and dissentient Liberals, taken together, possess a majority in the House of Commons. But at any moment the alliance of those two sections may vanish, or another General Election may leave Tories and Liberals so nearly balanced that the Irish vote could turn the scale. Whoever reflects on the nature of Parliamentary Government will perceive that it is based on the assumption that the members of the ruling assembly, however much they may differ on other subjects, agree in desiring the strength, dignity, and welfare of the assembly itself, and in caring for the main national interests which it controls. He will therefore be prepared to expect countless and multiform difficulties in working such a Government, where a large section of the assembly seeks not to use, but to make useless, its forms and rules--not to preserve, but to lower and destroy, its honour, its credit, its efficiency. In vain are Irish members blamed for these tactics, for they answer that the interests of their own country require them to seek first her welfare, which can in their view be secured only by removing her from the direct control of what they deem a foreign assembly. Now that the demand for Irish self-government has obtained the sympathy of the bulk of English Liberals, they are unlikely forthwith to resume the systematic obstruction of past years. But they will be able, without alienating their English friends, to render the conduct of Parliamentary business so difficult that every English Ministry will be forced either to crush them, if it can, or to appease them by a series of concessions. The second difficulty is that of maintaining social order in Ireland. What that difficulty is, and whence it arises, every one knows. It is chronic, but every second or third winter, when there has been a wet season, or the price of live stock declines, it becomes specially acute. The tenants refuse to pay rents which they declare to be impossible. The landlords, or the harsher among them, try to enforce rents by evictions; evictions are resisted by outrages and boycotting. Popular sentiment supports those who commit outrages, because it considers the tenantry to be engaged in a species of war, a righteous war, against the landlord. Evidence can seldom be obtained, and juries acquit in the teeth of evidence. Thus the enforcement of the law strains all the resources of authority, while a habit of lawlessness and discontent is transmitted from generation to generation. Of the remedies proposed for this chronic evil the most obvious is the strengthening of the criminal law. We have been trying this for more than one hundred years, since Whiteboyism appeared, and trying it in vain. Since the Union, Coercion Acts, of more or less severity, have been almost always in force in Ireland, passed for two or three years, then dropped for a year or two, then renewed in a form slightly varying, but always with the same result of driving the disease in for a time, but not curing it. Mr. Gladstone proposed to buy out the landlords and then leave an Irish Parliament to restore social order, with that authority which it would derive from having the will of the people behind it; because he held that when the people felt the law to be of their own making, and not imposed from without, their sentiment would be enlisted on its side, and the necessity for a firm Government recognized. This plan, has, however, been rejected, so the choice was left of a fresh Coercion Act, or of some scheme, necessarily a costly scheme, for getting rid of the source of trouble by transferring the land of Ireland to the peasantry. The present Government, while guided by Sir M. Hicks-Beach, who had some knowledge of Ireland, did its best to persuade the landlords to accept reduced rents, while the Nationalist leaders, on their side, sought to restrain the people from outrages. But the armistice did not last. The Ministry yielded to the foolish counsels of its more violent supporters, and entrusted Irish affairs to the hands of a Chief Secretary without previous knowledge of the island. An unusually severe Coercion Act has been brought in and passed by the aid of the dissentient Liberals. And we now see this Act administered with a mixture of virulence and incompetence to which even the dreary annals of Irish misgovernment present few parallels. The feeling of the English people is rising against the policy carried out in their name. So far from being solved, the problem of social order becomes every day more acute. There remains the question of a reform of local government. For many years past, every English Ministry has undertaken to frame a measure creating a new system of popular rural self-government in England. It is the first large task of domestic legislation which we ask from Parliament. When such a scheme is proposed, can Ireland be left out of it? Should she be left out, the argument that she is being treated unequally and unfairly, as compared with England, would gain immense force; because the present local government of Ireland is admittedly less popular, less efficient, altogether less defensible, than even that of England which we are going to reform. If, therefore, the theory that the Imperial Parliament is both anxious and able to do its duty by Ireland is to be maintained, Ireland, too, must have her scheme of local government. And a scheme of local government is a large project, the discussion of which must pass into a discussion of the government of the island as a whole. Since, then, we may conclude that whatever Ministry is in power will be bound to take up the state of Ireland--since Parliament and the nation will be occupied with the subject during the coming sessions fully as much as they have been during those that have recently passed--the next inquiry is, What will the tendency of opinion and legislation be? Will the reasons and forces described above bring us to Home Rule? and if so, when, how, and why? There are grounds for answering these questions in the negative. A majority of the House of Commons, including the present Ministry and such influential Liberals as Mr. Bright, Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain, stand pledged to resist it, and seem--such is the passion which controversy engenders--more disposed to resist it than they were in 1885. But this ground is less strong than it may appear. We have had too many changes of opinion--ay, and of action too--upon Irish affairs not to be prepared for further changes. A Ministry in power learns much which an Opposition fails to learn. Home Rule is an elastic expression, and some of those who were loudest in denouncing Mr. Gladstone's Bill will find it easy to explain, should they bring in a Bill of their own for giving self-government to Ireland, that their measure is a different thing, and free from the objections brought against his. Nor, if such a conversion should come, need it be deemed a dishonest one, for events are potent teachers, and governments now seek rather to follow than to form opinion. Although a decent interval must be allowed, no one will be astonished if the Tory leaders should move ere long in the direction indicated. Toryism itself, as has been remarked already, contains nothing opposed to the idea. Far greater obstacles exist in the aversion which (as already observed) so many Englishmen of both parties have entertained for any scheme which should seem to leave the Protestant minority at the mercy of the peasant and Roman Catholic majority, and to carry us some way toward the ultimate separation of the islands. These alarms are genuine and deep-seated. One who (like the present writer) thinks them, if not baseless, yet immensely overstrained, is, of course, convinced that they may be allayed. But time must first pass, and the plan that is to allay them may have to be framed on somewhat different lines from those of Mr. Gladstone's measure. It is even possible that a conflict more sharp and painful than any of recent years may intervene before a settlement is reached. Nevertheless, great as are the obstacles in the way, bitter as are the reproaches with which Mr. Gladstone is pursued by the richer classes in England, there is good reason to believe that the current is setting toward his policy. In proceeding to state the grounds for this view, I must frankly own that I am no longer (as in most of the preceding pages) merely setting forth facts on which impartial men in England would agree. The forecast which I seek to give may be tinged by my own belief that the grant of self-government is the best, if not the only method, now open to us of establishing peace between the islands, relieving the English Parliament of work it is ill fitted to discharge, allowing Ireland opportunities to learn those lessons in politics which her people so much need. The future, even the near future, is more than usually dim. Yet, if we examine those three branches of the Irish question which have been enumerated above, we shall see how naturally, in each of them, the concession of self-government seems to open, I will not say the most direct, but the least dangerous way, out of our troubles. The Parliamentary difficulty arises from the fact that the representatives of Ireland have the feelings of foreigners sitting in a foreign assembly, whose honour and usefulness they do not desire. While these are their feelings they cannot work properly in it, and it cannot work properly with them. The inconvenience may be endured, but the English will grow tired of it, and be disposed to rid themselves of it, if they see their way to do so without greater mischief. There are but two ways out of the difficulty. One is to get rid of the Irish members altogether; the other is to make them, by the concession of their just demands, contented and loyal members of a truly united Parliament. The experience of the Parliament of 1880, which was mainly occupied with Irish business, and began, being a strongly Liberal Parliament, with a bias toward the Irish popular party, showed how difficult it is for a House of Commons which is ignorant of Ireland to legislate wisely for it. In the House of Lords there is not a single Nationalist; indeed, up till 1886, that exalted chamber contained only one peer, Lord Dalhousie (formerly member for Liverpool), who had ever said a word in favour of Home Rule. The more that England becomes sensible, as she must become sensible, of the deficiencies of the present machinery for appreciating the needs and giving effect to the wishes of Irishmen, the more disposed will she be to grant them some machinery of their own. As regards social order, I have shown that the choice which lies before the opponents of Home Rule is either to continue the policy of coercing the peasantry by severe special legislation, or to remove the source of friction by buying out the landlords for the benefit of the tenants. The present Ministry have chosen the former alternative, but they dangle before the eyes of their supporters some prospect that they may ultimately revert to the latter. Now, the only way that has yet been pointed out of buying out the landlords, without imposing tremendous liabilities of loss upon the British Treasury, is the creation of a strong Home Rule Government in Dublin. Supposing, however, that some other plan could be discovered, which would avoid the fatal objections to which an extension of the plan of the (Salisbury) Land Purchase Act of 1885 is open, such a plan would remove one of the chief objections to an Irish Parliament, by leaving no estates for such a Parliament to confiscate. As for coercion every day, I might say, every bye-election shows us how it becomes more and more odious to the British democracy. They dislike severity; they dislike the inequality involved in passing harsher laws for Ireland than those that apply to England and Scotland. They find themselves forced to sympathize with acts of violence in Ireland which they would condemn in Great Britain, because these acts seem the only way of resisting harsh and unjust laws. When the recoil comes, it will be more violent than in former days. The wish to discover some other course will be very strong, and the obvious other course will be to leave it to an Irish authority to enforce social order in its own way--probably a more rough-and-ready way than that of British officials. The notion which has possessed most Englishmen, that Irish self-government would be another name for anarchy, is curiously erroneous. Conflicts there may be, but a vigorous rule will emerge. Lastly, as to local government. If a popular system is established in Ireland--one similar to that which it is proposed to establish in England--the control of its assemblies and officials will, over four-fifths of the island, fall into Nationalist hands. Their power will be enormously increased, for they will then command the machinery of administration, and the power of taxing. What with taxing landlords, aiding recalcitrant tenants, stopping the wheels of any central authority which may displease or oppose them, they will be in so strong a position that the creation of an Irish Parliament may appear to be a comparatively small further step, may even appear (as the wisest Nationalists now think it would prove) in the light of a check upon the abuse of local powers. These eventualities will unquestionably, when English opinion has realized them, make such a Parliament as the present pause before it commits rural local government to the Irish democracy. But it could not refuse to do something; and if it tried to restrain popular representative bodies by the veto of a bureaucracy in Dublin, there would arise occasions for quarrel and irritation more serious than now exist.[70] Those who once begin to repair an old and tottering building are led on, little by little, into changes they did not at starting contemplate. So it will be if once the task is undertaken of reforming the confessedly bad and indefensible system of Irish administration. We may stop at some half-way house on the way, but Home Rule stands at the end of the road. Supposing, then, that the Nationalist party, retaining its present strength and unity, perseveres in its present demands, there is every prospect that these demands will be granted. But will it persevere? There are among the English Dissentients those who prophesy that it will break up, as such parties have broken up before--will lose hope and wither away. Or the support of the Irish peasantry may be withdrawn--a result which some English politicians expect from a final settlement of the land question in the interest of the tenants. Any of these contingencies is possible, but at present most improbable. The moment when long-cherished aims begin to seem attainable is not that at which men are disposed to abandon them. There are, however, other reasons which suggest the likelihood of a change in English sentiment on the whole matter. The surprise with which the Bill of last April was received has worn off. The alarm is wearing off too. Those who set their teeth at what seemed to them a surrender to the Parnellites and their Irish-American allies, having relieved their temper by an emphatic No, have begun to ponder things more calmly. The English people are listening to the arguments from Irish history that are now addressed to them. They will be moved by the solid grounds of policy which that history suggests; will understand that what they have deemed insensate hatred is the natural result of long misgovernment, and will disappear with time and the removal of its causes. Many of the best minds of both nations will be at work to discover some method of reconciling Irish self-government with imperial supremacy and union free from the objections brought against the Bills of 1886. It is reasonable to expect that they may greatly improve upon these measures, which were prepared under pressure from a clamorous Opposition. What Mr. Disraeli once called the historical conscience of the country will appreciate those great underlying principles to which Mr. Gladstone's policy appeals. It has been accused of being a policy of despair; and may have commended itself to some who supported it as being simply a means of ridding England of responsibility. But to others it seemed, and more truly, a policy of faith; not, indeed, of thoughtless optimism, but of faith according to the definition which calls it "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith, by which nations as well as men must live, means nothing less than a conviction that great principles, permanent truths of human nature, lie at the bottom of all sound politics, and ought to be boldly and consistently applied, even when temporary difficulties surround their application. Such a principle is the belief in the power of freedom and self-government to cure the faults of a nation, in the tendency of responsibility to teach wisdom, and to make men see that justice and order are the surest sources of prosperity. Such a principle is the perception that national hatreds do not live on of themselves, but will expire when oppression has ceased, as a fire burns out without fuel. Such a principle is the recognition of the force of national sentiment, and of the duty of allowing it all the satisfaction that is compatible with the maintenance of imperial unity. Such, again, is the appreciation of those natural economic laws which show that nations, when disturbing passions have ceased, follow their own permanent interests, and that an island which finds its chief market in England and draws its capital from England will prefer a connection with England to the poverty and insignificance of isolation. It is the honour of Mr. Gladstone to have built his policy of conciliation upon principles like these, as upon a rock; and already the good effects are seen in the new friendliness which has arisen between the English masses and the people of Ireland, and in the better temper with which, despite the acrimony of some prominent politicians, the relations of the two peoples are discussed. When one looks round the horizon it is still far from clear; nor can we say from which quarter fair weather will arrive. But the air is fresher, and the clouds are breaking overhead. * * * * * POSTSCRIPT. What has happened since the above paragraphs were written, ten months ago, has confirmed more quickly and completely than the writer expected the forecasts they contain. Home Rule is no longer a word of terror, even to those English and Scotch voters who were opposed to it in July, 1886. Most sensible men in the Tory and Dissentient Liberal camps have come to see that it is inevitable; and, while they continue to resist it for the sake of what is called consistency, or because they do not yet see in what form it is to be granted, they are disposed to regard its speedy arrival as the best method of retreat from an indefensible position. The repressive policy which the present Ministry are attempting in Ireland--for in the face of their failures one cannot say that they are carrying out any policy--is rendering Coercion Acts more and more detested by the English people. The actualities of Ireland, the social condition of her peasantry, the unwisdom of the dominant caste, the incompetence of the bureaucracy which affects to rule her, are being, by the full accounts we now receive, brought home to the mind of England and Scotland as they never were before, and produce their appropriate effect upon the heart and conscience of the people. The recognition by the Liberal party of the rights of Ireland, the visits of English Liberals to Ireland, the work done by Irishmen in English constituencies, are creating a feeling of unity and reciprocal interest between the masses of the people on both sides of the Channel without example in the seven hundred years that have passed since Strongbow's landing. This was the thing most needed to make Home Rule safe and full of promise, because it affords a guarantee that in such political contests as may arise in future, the division will not be, as heretofore, between the Irish people on the one side and the power of Britain on the other, but between two parties, each of which will have adherents in both islands. We may now at last hope that national hatreds will vanish; that England will unlearn her arrogance and Ireland her suspicion; that the basis is being laid for a harmonious co-operation of both nations in promoting the welfare and greatness of a common Empire. Many of the Irish patriots of 1798 and 1848 desired Separation, because they thought that Ireland, attached to England, could never be more than the obscure satellite of a greater State. When Ireland has been heartily welcomed by the democracy of Great Britain as an equal partner, the ground for any such desire will have disappeared, and Union will rest on a foundation firmer than has ever before existed. Ireland will feel, when those rights of self-government have been secured for which she has pleaded so long, that she owes them, not only to her own tenacity and courage, but to the magnanimity, the justice, and the freely given sympathy of the English and Scottish people. _October_, 1887. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 69: This article, which originally appeared in the American _New Princeton Review_, has been added to in a few places, in order to bring its narrative of facts up to date.] [Footnote 70: The experience of the last few months, which has shown us rural Boards of Guardians and municipal bodies over four-fifths of Ireland displaying their zeal in the Nationalist cause, has amply confirmed this anticipation, expressed nearly a year ago.] SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.[71] BY JOHN MORLEY. It is a favourite line of argument to show that we have no choice between the maintenance of the Union and the concession to Ireland of national independence. The evils of Irish independence are universally reckoned by Englishmen to be so intolerable that we shall never agree to it. The evils of Home Rule are even more intolerable still. Therefore, it is said, if we shall never willingly bring the latter upon our heads, _à fortiori_ we ought on no account to invite the former. The business in hand, however, is not a theorem, but a problem; it is not a thesis to be proved, but a malady to be cured; and the world will thank only the reasoner who winds up, not with Q.E.D., but with Q.E.F. To reason that a patient ought not to take a given medicine because it may possibly cause him more pain than some other medicine which he has no intention of taking, is curiously oblique logic. The question is not oblique; it is direct. Will the operation do more harm to his constitution than the slow corrosions of a disorder grown inveterate? Are the conditions of the connection between England and Ireland, as laid down in the Act of Union, incapable of improvement? Is the present working of these conditions more prosperous and hopeful, or happier for Irish order and for English institutions, than any practicable proposal that it is within the compass of statesmanship to devise, and of civic sense to accept and to work? That is the question. Some people contend that the burden of making out a case rests on the advocate of change, and not on those who support things as they are. But who supports things as they are? Things as they are have become insupportable. If you make any of the constitutional changes that have been proposed, we are told, parliamentary government, as Englishmen now know it, is at an end; and our critic stands amazed at those "who deem it a slighter danger to innovate on the Act of Union than to remodel the procedure of the House of Commons." As if that were the alternative. Great changes in the rules may do other good things, but no single competent authority believes that in this particular they will do the thing that we want. We cannot avoid constitutional changes. It is made matter of crushing rebuke that the Irish proposals of the late Government were an innovation on the old constitution of the realm. But everybody knows that, while ancient forms have survived, the last hundred years have witnessed a long succession of silent but most profound innovations. It was shortsighted to assume that the redistribution of political power that took place in 1884-5 was the last chapter of the history of constitutional change. It ought to have been foreseen that new possessors of power, both Irish and British, would press for objects the pursuit of which would certainly involve further novelties in the methods and machinery of government. Every given innovation must be rigorously scrutinized, but in the mere change or in the fact of innovation there is no valid reproach. When one of the plans for the better government of Ireland is described as depriving parliamentary institutions of their elasticity and strength, as weakening the Executive at home, and lessening the power of the country to resist foreign attack, no careful observer of the events of the last seven years can fail to see that all this evil has already got its grip upon us. Mr. Dicey himself admits it. "Great Britain," he says, "if left to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community of interests. The obstruction and the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise in part at least from the connection with Ireland." So then, after all, it is feebleness and inconsistency, not elasticity and strength, that mark our institutions as they stand; feebleness and inconsistency, distraction and uncertainty. The supporter of things as they are is decidedly as much concerned in making out a case as the advocate of change. The strength of the argument from Nationality is great, and full of significance; but Nationality is not the whole essence of either the argument from History or the argument from Self-government. Their force lies in considerations of political expediency as tested by practical experience. The point of the argument from the lessons of History is that for some reason or another the international concern, whose unlucky affairs we are now trying to unravel, has always been carried on at a loss: the point of the argument from Self-government is that the loss would have been avoided if the Irish shareholders had for a certain number of the transactions been more influentially represented on the Board. That is quite apart from the sentiment of pure nationality. The failure has come about, not simply because the laws were not made by Irishmen as such, but because they were not made by the men who knew most about Ireland. The vice of the connection between the two countries has been the stupidity of governing a country without regard to the interests or customs, the peculiar objects and peculiar experiences, of the great majority of the people who live in it. It is not enough to say that the failures of England in Ireland have to a great extent flowed from causes too general to be identified with the intentional wrong-doing either of rulers or of subjects. We readily admit that, but it is not the point. It is not enough to insist that James I., in his plantations and transplantations, probably meant well to his Irish subjects. Probably he did. That is not the question. If it is "absolutely certain that his policy worked gross wrong," what is the explanation and the defence? We are quite content with Mr. Dicey's own answer. "Ignorance and want of sympathy produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity. An intended reform produced injustice, litigation, misery, and discontent. The case is noticeable, for it is a type of a thousand subsequent English attempts to reform and improve Ireland." This description would apply, with hardly a word altered, to the wrong done by the Encumbered Estates Act in the reign of Queen Victoria. That memorable measure, as Mr. Gladstone said, was due not to the action of a party, but to the action of a Parliament. Sir Robert Peel was hardly less responsible for it than Lord John Russell. "We produced it," said Mr. Gladstone, "with a general, lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good intention of taking capital to Ireland. What did we do? We sold the improvements of the tenants" (House of Commons, April 16). It is the same story, from the first chapter to the last, in education, poor law, public works, relief Acts, even in coercion Acts--lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good intention. That is the argument from history. When we are asked what good law an Irish Parliament would make that could not equally well be made by the Parliament at Westminster, this is the answer. It is not the will, it is the intelligence, that is wanting. We all know what the past has been. Why should the future be different? "It is an inherent condition of human affairs," said Mill in a book which, in spite of some chimeras, is a wholesome corrective of the teaching of our new jurists, "that no intention, however sincere, of protecting the interests of others can make it safe or salutary to tie up their own hands. Still more obviously true is it, that by their own hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their circumstances in life be worked out" (_Repres. Government_, p. 57). It is these wise lessons from human experience to which the advocate of Home Rule appeals, and not the wild doctrine that any body of persons claiming to be united by a sense of nationality possesses _an inherent and divine right_ to be treated as an independent community. It is quite true that circumstances sometimes justify a temporary dictatorship. In that there is nothing at variance with Liberalism. But the Parliamentary dictatorship in Ireland has lasted a great deal too long to be called temporary, and its stupid shambling operations are finally and decisively condemned by their consequences. That is a straightforward utilitarian argument, and has nothing whatever to do with inherent and divine rights, or any other form of political moonshine. There are some who believe that an honest centralized administration of impartial officials, and not Local Self-Government, would best meet the real wants of the people. In other words, everything is to be for the people, nothing by the people--which has not hitherto been a Liberal principle. Something, however, may be said for this view, provided that the source of the authority of such an administration be acceptable. Austrian administration in Lombardy was good rather than bad, yet it was hated and resisted because it was Austrian and not Italian. No rational person can hold for an instant that the source of a scheme of government is immaterial to its prosperity. More than that, when people look for success in the government of Ireland to "honest centralized administration," we cannot but wonder what fault they find with the administration of Ireland to-day in respect of its honesty or its centralization. What administration ever carried either honesty or centralization to a higher pitch than the Irish administration of Mr. Forster? What could be less successful? Those who have been most directly concerned in the government of Ireland, whether English or Irish, even while alive to the perils of any other principle, habitually talk of centralization as the curse of the system. Here, again, why should we expect success in the future from a principle that has so failed in the past? Again, how are we to get a strong centralized administration in the face of a powerful and hostile parliamentary representation? It is very easy to talk of the benefits that might have been conferred on Ireland by such humanity and justice as was practised by Turgot in his administration of the Generality of Limoges. But Turgot was not confronted by eighty-six Limousin members of an active sovereign body, all interested in making his work difficult, and trusted by a large proportion of the people of the province with that as their express commission. It is possible to have an honest centralized administration of great strength and activity in India, but there is no Parliament in India. If India, or any province of it, ever gets representative government and our parliamentary system, from that hour, if there be any considerable section of Indian feeling averse from European rule, the present administrative system will be paralyzed, as the preliminary to being revolutionized. It is conceivable, if any one chooses to think so, that a body of impartial officials could manage the national business in Ireland much better without the guidance of public opinion and common sentiment than with it. But if you intend to govern the country as you think best--and that is the plain and practical English of centralized administration--why ask the country to send a hundred men to the great tribunal of supervision to inform you how it would like to be governed? The Executive cannot set them aside as if they were a hundred dummies; in refusing to be guided, it cannot escape being harassed, by them. You may amend procedure, but that is no answer, unless you amend the Irish members out of voice and vote. They will still count. You cannot gag and muzzle them effectually, and if you could, they would still be there, and their presence would still make itself incessantly felt. Partly from a natural desire to lessen the common difficulties of government, and partly from a consciousness, due to the prevailing state of the modern political atmosphere, that there is something wrong in this total alienation of an Executive from the possessors of parliamentary power, the officials will incessantly be tempted to make tacks out of their own course; and thus they lose the coherency and continuity of absolutism without gaining the pliant strength of popular government. This is not a presumption of what would be likely to happen, but an account of what does happen, and what justified Mr. Disraeli in adding a weak Executive to the alien Church and the absentee aristocracy, as the three great curses of Ireland. Nothing has occurred since 1844 to render the Executive stronger, but much to the contrary. There is, and there can be, no weaker or less effective Government in the world than a highly centralized system working alongside of a bitterly inimical popular representation. I say nothing of the effect of the fluctuations of English parties on Irish administration. I say nothing of the tendency in an Irish government, awkwardly alternating with that to which I have just adverted, to look over the heads of the people of Ireland, and to consider mainly what will be thought by the ignorant public in England. But these sources of incessant perturbation must not be left out. The fault of Irish centralization is not that it is strong, but that it is weak. Weak it must remain until Parliament either approves of the permanent suspension of the Irish writs, or else devises constitutional means for making Irish administration responsible to Irish representatives. If experience is decisive against the policy of the past, experience too, all over the modern world, indicates the better direction for the future. I will not use my too scanty space in repeating any of the great wise commonplaces in praise of self-government. Here they are superfluous. In the case of Ireland they have all been abundantly admitted in a long series of measures, from Catholic Emancipation down to Lord O'Hagan's Jury Law and the Franchise and Redistribution Acts of a couple of years ago. The principle of self-government has been accepted, ratified, and extended in a hundred ways. It is only a question of the form that self-government shall take. Against the form proposed by the late Ministry a case is built up that rests on a series of prophetic assumptions. These assumptions, from the nature of the case, can only be met by a counter-statement of fair and reasonable probabilities. Let us enumerate some of them. 1. It is inferred that, because the Irish leaders have used violent language and resorted to objectionable expedients against England during the last six years, they would continue in the same frame of mind after the reasons for it had disappeared. In other words, because they have been the enemies of a Government which refused to listen to a constitutional demand, therefore they would continue to be its enemies after the demand had been listened to. On this reasoning, the effect is to last indefinitely and perpetually, notwithstanding the cessation of the cause. Our position is that all the reasonable probabilities of human conduct point the other way. The surest way of justifying violent language and fostering treasonable designs, is to refuse to listen to the constitutional demand. 2. The Irish, we are told, hate the English with an irreconcilable hatred, and would unquestionably use any Constitution as an instrument for satisfying their master passion. Irrational hatred, they say, can be treated by rational men with composure. The Czechs of Bohemia are said to be irreconcilable, yet the South Germans bear with their hatred; and if we cannot cure we might endure the antipathy of Ireland. Now, as for the illustration, I may remark that the hatred of the Czechs would be much too formidable for German composure, if the Czechs did not happen to possess a provincial charter and a special constitution of their own. If the Irish had the same, their national dislike--so far as it exists--might be expected to become as bearable as the Germans have found the feeling of the Czechs. But how deep does Irish dislike go? Is it directed against Englishmen, or against an English official system? The answers of every impartial observer to the whole group of such questions as these favour the conclusion that the imputed hatred of England in Ireland has been enormously exaggerated and overcoloured by Ascendency politicians for good reasons of their own; that with the great majority of Irishmen it has no deep roots; that it is not one of those passionate international animosities that blind men to their own interests, or lead them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of injuring their foe; and, finally, that it would not survive the amendment of the system that has given it birth.[72] 3. It is assumed that there is a universal desire for Separation. That there is a strong sentiment of nationality we of course admit; it is part of the case, and not the worst part. But the sentiment of nationality is a totally different thing from a desire for Separation. Scotland might teach our pseudo-Unionists so much as that. Nowhere in the world is the sentiment of nationality stronger, yet there is not a whisper of Separation. That there is a section of Irishmen who desire Separation is notorious, but everything that has happened since the Government of Ireland Bill was introduced, including the remarkable declarations of Mr. Parnell in accepting the Bill (June 7), and including the proceedings at Chicago, shows that the separatist section is a very small one either in Ireland or in America, and that it has become sensibly smaller since, and in consequence of, the proposed concession of a limited statutory constitution. The Irish are quite shrewd enough to know that Separation, if it were attainable--and they are well aware that it is not--would do no good to their markets; and to that knowledge, as well as to many other internal considerations, we may confidently look for the victory of strong centripetal over very weak centrifugal tendencies. Even if we suppose these centrifugal tendencies to be stronger than I would allow them to be, how shall we best resist them--by strengthening the hands and using the services of the party which, though nationalist, is also constitutional; or by driving that party also, in despair of a constitutional solution, to swell the ranks of Extremists and Irreconcilables? 4. Whatever may be the ill-feeling towards England, it is at least undeniable that there are bitter internal animosities in Ireland, and a political constitution, our opponents argue, can neither assuage religious bigotry nor remove agrarian discontent. It is true, no doubt, that the old feud between Protestant and Catholic might, perhaps, not instantly die down to the last smouldering embers of it all over Ireland. But we may remark that there is no perceptible bad blood between Protestant and Catholic, outside of one notorious corner. Second, the real bitterness of the feud arose from the fact that Protestantism was associated with an exclusive and hostile ascendency, which would now be brought to an end. Whatever feeling about what is called Ulster exists in the rest of Ireland, arises not from the fact that there are Protestants in Ulster, but that the Protestants are anti-National. Third, the Catholics would no longer be one compact body for persecuting, obscurantist, or any other evil purposes; the abatement of the national struggle would allow the Catholics to fall into the two natural divisions of Clerical and Liberal. What we may be quite sure of is that the feud will never die so long as sectarian pretensions are taken as good reasons for continuing bad government. It is true, again, that a constitution would not necessarily remove agrarian discontent. But it is just as true that you will never remove agrarian discontent without a constitution. Mr. Dicey, on consideration, will easily see why. Here we come to an illustration, and a very impressive illustration it is, of the impotence of England to do for Ireland the good which Ireland might do for herself. Nobody just now is likely to forget the barbarous condition of the broad fringe of wretchedness on the west coast of Ireland. Of this Lord Dufferin truly said in 1880 that no legislation could touch it, that no alteration in the land laws could effectually ameliorate it, and that it must continue until the world's end unless something be contrived totally to change the conditions of existence in that desolate region. Parliament lavishly pours water into the sieve in the shape of Relief Acts. Even in my own short tenure of office I was responsible for one of these terribly wasteful and profoundly unsatisfactory measures. Instead of relief, what a statesman must seek is prevention of this great evil and strong root of evil; and prevention means a large, though it cannot be a very swift, displacement of the population. But among the many experts with whom I have discussed this dolorous and perplexing subject, I never found one of either political party who did not agree that a removal of the surplus population was only practicable if carried out by an Irish authority, backed by the solid weight of Irish opinion. Any exertion of compulsory power by a British Minister would raise the whole country-side in squalid insurrection, government would become impossible, and the work of transplantation would end in ghastly failure. It is misleading and untrue, then, to say that there is no possible relation between self-government and agrarian discontent, misery, and backwardness; and when Mr. Dicey and others tell us that the British Parliament is able to do all good things for Ireland, I would respectfully ask them how a British Parliament is to deal with the Congested Districts. Nearly as much may be said of the prevention of the mischievous practice of Subdivision. Some contend that the old disposition to subdivide is dying out; others, however, assure us that it is making its appearance even among the excellent class who purchased their holdings under the Church Act. That Act did not prohibit subdivision, but it is prohibited in the Act of 1881. Still the prohibition can only be made effective, if operations take place on anything like a great scale, on condition that representative, authorities resident on the spot have the power of enforcing it, and have an interest in enforcing it. Some of the pseudo-Unionists are even against any extension of local self-government, and if it be unaccompanied by the creation of a central native authority they are right. What such people fail to see is that, in resisting political reconstruction, they are at the same time resisting the only available remedies for some of the worst of agrarian maladies. The ruinous interplay between agrarian and political forces, each using the other for ends of its own, will never cease so long as the political demand is in every form resisted. That, we are told, is all the fault of the politicians. Be it so; then the Government must either suppress the politicians outright, or else it must interest them in getting the terms of its land settlement accepted and respected. Home Rule on our scheme was, among other things, part of an arrangement for "settling the agrarian feud." It was a means of interposing between the Irish tenant and the British State an authority interested enough and strong enough to cause the bargain to be kept. It is said that the Irish authority would have had neither interest nor strength enough to resist the forces making for repudiation. Would those forces be any less irresistible if the whole body of the Irish peasantry stood, as Land Purchase _minus_ Self-Government makes them to stand, directly face to face with the British State? This is a question that our opponents cannot evade, any more than they can evade that other question, which lies unnoticed at the back of all solutions of the problem by way of peasant ownership--Whether it is possible to imagine the land of Ireland handed over to Irishmen, and yet the government of Ireland kept exclusively and directly by Englishmen? Such a divorce is conceivable under a rule like that of the British in India: with popular institutions it is inconceivable and impossible. 5. It is argued that Home Rule on Mr. Gladstone's plan would not work, because it follows in some respects the colonial system, whereas the conditions at the root of the success of the system in the Colonies do not exist in Ireland. They are distant, Ireland is near; they are prosperous, Ireland is poor; they are proud of the connection with England, Ireland resents it. But the question is not whether the conditions are identical with those of any colony; it is enough if in themselves they seem to promise a certain basis for government. It might justly be contended that proximity is a more favourable condition than distance; without it there could not be that close and constant intercommunication which binds the material interests of Ireland to those of Great Britain, and so provides the surest guarantee for union. If Ireland were suddenly to find herself as far off as Canada, then indeed one might be very sorry to answer for the Union. Again, though Ireland has to bear her share of the prevailing depression in the chief branch of her production, it is a great mistake to suppose that outside of the margin of chronic wretchedness in the west and south-west, the condition not only of the manufacturing industries of the north, but of the agricultural industry in the richer parts of the middle and south, is so desperately unprosperous as to endanger a political constitution. Under our stupidily [Transcriber: sic] centralized system, Irishmen have no doubt acquired the enervating trick of attributing every misfortune, great or small, public or private, to the Government. When they learn the lessons of responsibility, they will unlearn this fatal habit, and not before. I do not see, therefore, that the differences in condition between Ireland and the Colonies make against Home Rule. What I do see is ample material out of which would arise a strong and predominant party of order. The bulk of the nation are sons and daughters of a Church which has been hostile to revolution in every country but Ireland, and which would be hostile to it there from the day that the cause of revolution ceased to be the cause of self-government. If the peasantry were made to realize that at last the land settlement, wisely and equitably made, was what it must inexorably remain, and what no politicians could help them to alter, they would be as conservative as the peasantry under a similar condition in every other spot on the surface of the globe. There is no reason to expect that the manufacturers, merchants, and shopkeepers of Ireland would be less willing or less able to play an active and useful part in the affairs of their country than the same classes in England or Scotland. It will be said that this is mere optimist prophesying. But why is that to be flung aside under the odd name of sentimentalism, while pessimist prophesying is to be taken for gospel? The only danger is lest we should allot new responsibilities to Irishmen with a too grudging and restrictive hand. For true responsibility there must be real power. It is easy to say that this power would be misused, and that the conditions both of Irish society and of the proposed Constitution must prevent it from being used for good. It is easy to say that separation would be a better end. Life is too short to discuss that. Separation is not the alternative either to Home Rule or to the _status quo_. If the people of Ireland are not to be trusted with real power over their own affairs, it would be a hundred times more just to England, and more merciful to Ireland, to take away from her that semblance of free government which torments and paralyzes one country, while it robs the other of national self-respect and of all the strongest motives and best opportunities of self-help. The _status quo_ is drawing very near to its inevitable end. The two courses then open will be Home Rule on the one hand, and some shy bungling underhand imitation of a Crown Colony on the other. We shall have either to listen to the Irish representatives or to suppress them. Unless we have lost all nerve and all political faculty we shall, before many months are over, face these alternatives. Liberals are for the first; Tories at present incline to the second. It requires very moderate instinct for the forces at work in modern politics to foresee the path along which we shall move, in the interests alike of relief to Great Britain and of a sounder national life for Ireland. The only real question is not Whether we are to grant Home Rule, but How. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 71: The following pages, with one or two slight alterations, are extracted, by the kind permission of Mr. James Knowles, from two articles which were published in the _Nineteenth Century_ at the beginning of the present year, in reply to Professor Dicey's statement of the English case against Home Rule.] [Footnote 72: The late J.E. Cairnes, after describing the clearances after the famine, goes on to say, "I own I cannot wonder that a thirst for revenge should spring from such calamities; that hatred, even undying hatred, for what they could not but regard as the cause and symbol of their misfortunes--English rule in Ireland--should possess the sufferers.... The disaffection now so widely diffused throughout Ireland may possibly in some degree be fed from historical traditions, and have its remote origin in the confiscations of the seventeenth century; but all that gives it energy, all that renders it dangerous, may, I believe, be traced to exasperation produced by recent transactions, and more especially to the bitter memories left by that most flagrant abuse of the rights of property and most scandalous disregard of the claims of humanity--the wholesale clearances of the period following the famine."--_Political Essays_, p. 198.] LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. BY W.E. GLADSTONE. Ireland for more than seven hundred years has been part of the British territory, and has been with slight exceptions held by English arms, or governed in the last resort from this side the water. Scotland was a foreign country until 1603, and possessed absolute independence until 1707. Yet, whether it was due to the standing barrier of the sea, or whatever may have been the cause, much less was known by Englishmen of Ireland than of Scotland. Witness the works of Shakespeare, whose mind, unless as to book-knowledge, was encyclopædic, and yet who, while he seems at home in Scotland, may be said to tell us nothing of Ireland, unless it is that-- "The uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms."[73] During more recent times, the knowledge of Scotland on this side the border, which before was greatly in advance, has again increased in afar greater degree than the knowledge of Ireland. It is to Mr. Lecky that we owe the first serious effort, both in his _Leaders of Public Opinion_ and in his _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, to produce a better state of things. He carefully and completely dovetailed the affairs of Ireland into English History, and the debt is one to be gratefully acknowledged. But such remedies, addressing themselves in the first instance to the lettered mind of the country, require much time to operate upon the mass, and upon the organs of superficial and transitory opinion, before the final stage, when they enter into our settled and familiar traditions. Meantime, since Ireland threatens to absorb into herself our Parliamentary life, there is a greatly enhanced necessity for becoming acquainted with the true state of the account between the islands that make up the United Kingdom, and with the likelihoods of the future in Ireland, so far as they are to be gathered from her past history. That history, until the eighteenth century begins, has a dismal simplicity about it. Murder, persecution, confiscation too truly describe its general strain; and policy is on the whole subordinated to violence as the standing instrument of government. But after, say, the reign of William III., the element of representation begins to assert itself. Simplicity is by degrees exchanged for complexity; the play of human motives, singularly diversified, now becomes visible in the currents of a real public life. It has for a very long time been my habit, when consulted by young political students, to recommend them carefully to study the characters and events of the American Independence. Quite apart from the special and temporary reasons bearing upon the case, I would now add a twin recommendation to examine and ponder the lessons of Irish history during the eighteenth century. The task may not be easy, but the reward will be ample. The mainspring of public life had, from a venerable antiquity, lain _de jure_ within Ireland herself. The heaviest fetter upon this life was the Law of Poynings; the most ingenious device upon record for hamstringing legislative independence, because it cut off the means of resumption inherent in the nature of Parliaments such as were those of the three countries. But the Law of Poynings was an Irish Law. Its operation effectually aided on the civil side those ruder causes, under the action of which Ireland had lain for four centuries usually passive, and bleeding at every pore. The main factors of her destiny worked, in practice, from this side the water. But from the reign of Anne, or perhaps from the Revolution onwards, "Novus sæcorum nascitur ordo." Of the three great nostrums so liberally applied by England, extirpation and persecution had entirely failed, but confiscation had done its work. The great Protestant landlordism of Ireland[74] had been strongly and effectually built up. But, like other human contrivances, while it held Ireland fast, it had also undesigned results. The repressed principle of national life, the struggles of which had theretofore been extinguished in blood, slowly sprang up anew in a form which, though extremely narrow, and extravagantly imperfect, was armed with constitutional guarantees; and, the regimen of violence once displaced, these guarantees were sure to operate. What had been transacted in England under Plantagenets and Stuarts was, to a large extent, transacted anew by the Parliament of Ireland in the eighteenth century. That Parliament, indeed, deserves almost every imaginable epithet of censure. It was corrupt, servile, selfish, cruel. But when we have said all this, and said it truly, there is more to tell. It was alive, and it was national. Even absenteeism, that obstinately clinging curse, though it enfeebled and distracted, could not, and did not, annihilate nationality. The Irish Legislation was, moreover, compressed and thwarted by a foreign executive; but even to this tremendous agent the vital principle was too strong eventually to succumb. Mr. Lecky well observes that the Irish case supplied "one of the most striking examples upon record"[75] of an unconquerable efficacy in even the most defective Parliament. I am, however, doubtful whether in this proposition we have before us the whole case. This efficacy is not invariably found even in tolerably constructed Parliaments. Why do we find it in a Parliament of which the constitution and the environment were alike intolerable? My answer is, because that Parliament found itself faced by a British influence which was entirely anti-national, and was thus constrained to seek for strength in the principle of nationality. Selfishness is a rooted principle of action in nations not less than in single persons. It seems to draw a certain perfume from the virtue of patriotism, which lies upon its borders. It stalks abroad with a semblance of decency, nay, even of excellence. And under this cover a paramount community readily embraces the notion, that a dependent community may be made to exist not for its own sake, but for the sake of an extraneous society of men. With this idea, the European nations, utterly benighted in comparison with the ancient Greeks, founded their transmarine dependencies. But a vast maritime distance, perhaps aided by some filtration of sound ideas, prevented the application of this theory in its nakedness and rigour to the American Colonies of England. In Ireland we had not even the title of founders to allege. Nay, we were, in point of indigenous civilization, the junior people. But the maritime severance, sufficient to prevent accurate and familiar knowledge, was not enough to bar the effective exercise of overmastering power. And power was exercised, at first from without, to support the Pale, to enlarge it, to make it include Ireland. When this had been done, power began, in the seventeenth century, to be exercised from within Ireland, within the precinct of its government and its institutions. These were carefully corrupted, from the multiplication of the Boroughs by James I. onwards, for the purpose. The struggle became civil, instead of martial; and it was mainly waged by agencies on the spot, not from beyond the Channel. When the rule of England passed over from the old violence into legal forms and doctrines, the Irish reaction against it followed the example. And the legal idea of Irish nationality took its rise in very humble surroundings; if the expression may be allowed, it was born in the slums of politics. Ireland reached the nadir of political depression when, at and after the Boyne, she had been conquered not merely by an English force, but by continental mercenaries. The ascendant Protestantism of the island had never stood so low in the aspect it presented to this country; inasmuch as the Irish Parliament, for the first time, I believe, declared itself dependent upon England,[76] and either did not desire, or did not dare, to support its champion Molyneux, when his work asserting Irish independence was burned in London. It petitioned for representation in the English Parliament, not in order to uplift the Irish people, but in order to keep them down. In its sympathies and in its aims the overwhelming mass of the population had no share. It was Swift who, by the _Drapier's Letters_, for the first time called into existence a public opinion flowing from and representing Ireland as a whole. He reasserted the doctrine of Molyneux, and denounced Wood's halfpence not only as a foul robbery, but as a constitutional and as a national insult. The patience of the Irish Protestants was tried very hard, and they were forced, as Sir Charles Duffy states in his vivid book, to purchase the power of oppressing their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen at a great price.[77] Their pension list was made to provide the grants too degrading to be tolerated in England. The Presbyterians had to sit down under the Episcopal monopoly; but the enjoyment of that monopoly was not left to the Irish Episcopalians. In the time of Henry VIII. it had been necessary to import an English Archbishop Browne[78] and an English Bishop Bale, or there might not have been a single Protestant in Ireland. It was well to enrich the rolls of the Church of Ireland with the piety and learning of Ussher, and to give her in Bedell one name, at least, which carries the double crown of the hero and the saint. But, after the Restoration, by degrees the practice degenerated, and Englishmen were appointed in numbers to the Irish Episcopate in order to fortify and develop by numerical force what came to be familiarly known as the English interest. So that the Primate Boulter, during his government of Ireland, complains[79] that Englishmen are still less than one-half the whole body of Bishops, although the most important sees were to a large extent in their hands. The same practice was followed in the higher judicial offices. Fitzgibbon was the first Irishman who became Lord Chancellor.[80] The Viceroy, commonly absent, was represented by Lords Justices, who again were commonly English; and Primate Boulter, a most acute and able man, jealous of an Irish Speaker in that character, recommends that the commander of the forces should take his place.[81] When, later on, the Viceroy resided, it was a rule that the Chief Secretary should be an Englishman. On the occasion when Lord Castlereagh was by way of exception admitted to that office, an apology was found for it in his entire devotion to English policy and purposes. "His appointment," says Lord Cornwallis, "gives me great satisfaction, as he is so very unlike an Irishman!"[82] Resources were also found in the military profession, and among the voters for the Union we find the names of eight[83] English generals. The arrangements under Poynings's Law, and the commercial proscription, drove the iron ever deeper and deeper into the souls of Irishmen. It is but small merit in the Irish Parliament of George I. and George II., if under these circumstances a temper was gradually formed in, and transmitted by, them, which might one day achieve the honours of patriotism. It was in dread of this most healthful process, that the English Government set sedulously to work for its repression. The odious policy was maintained by a variety of agencies; by the misuse of Irish revenue, a large portion of which was unhappily under their control; by maintaining the duration of the Irish House of Commons for the life of the Sovereign; and, worst of all, by extending the range of corruption within the walls, through the constant multiplication of paid offices tenable by members of Parliament without even the check of re-election on acceptance. Thus by degrees those who sat in the Irish Houses came to feel both that they had a country, and that their country had claims upon them. The growth of a commercial interest in the Roman Catholic body must have accelerated the growth of this idea, as that interest naturally fell into line with the resistance to the English prescriptive laws. But the rate of progress was fearfully slow. It was hemmed in on every side by the obstinate unyielding pressure of selfish interests: the interest of the Established Church against the Presbyterians; the interest of the Protestant laity, or tithe-payers, against the clergy; the bold unscrupulous interest of a landlords' Parliament against the occupier of the soil; which, together with the grievance of the system of tithe-proctors, established in Ireland through the Whiteboys the fatal alliance between resistance to wrong and resistance to law, and supplied there the yet more disastrous facility of sustaining and enforcing wrong under the name of giving support to public tranquillity. Yet, forcing on its way amidst all these difficulties by a natural law, in a strange haphazard and disjointed method, and by a zigzag movement, there came into existence, and by degrees into steady operation, a sentiment native to Ireland and having Ireland for its vital basis, and yet not deserving the name of Irish patriotism, because its care was not for a nation, but for a sect. For a sect, in a stricter sense than may at first sight be supposed. The battle was not between Popery and a generalized Protestantism, though, even if it had been so, it would have been between a small minority and the vast majority of the Irish people. It was not a party of ascendency, but a party of monopoly, that ruled. It must always be borne in mind that the Roman Catholic aristocracy had been emasculated, and reduced to the lowest point of numerical and moral force by the odious action of the penal laws, and that the mass of the Roman Catholic population, clerical and lay, remained under the grinding force of many-sided oppression, and until long after the accession of George III. had scarcely a consciousness of political existence. As long as the great bulk of the nation could be equated to zero, the Episcopal monopolists had no motive for cultivating the good-will of the Presbyterians, who like the Roman Catholics maintained their religion, with the trivial exception of the _Regium Donum_, by their own resources, and who differed from them in being not persecuted, but only disabled. And this monopoly, which drew from the sacred name of religion its title to exist, offered through centuries an example of religious sterility to which a parallel can hardly be found among the communions of the Christian world. The sentiment, then, which animated the earlier efforts of the Parliament might be _Iricism_, but did not become patriotism until it had outgrown, and had learned to forswear or to forget, the conditions of its infancy. Neither did it for a long time acquire the courage of its opinions; for, when Lucas, in the middle of the century, reasserted the doctrine of Molyneux and of Swift, the Grand Jury of Dublin took part against him, and burned his book.[84] And the Parliament,[85] prompted by the Government, drove him into exile. And yet the smoke showed that there was fire. The infant, that confronted the British Government in the Parliament House, had something of the young Hercules about him. In the first exercises of strength he acquired more strength, and in acquiring more strength he burst the bonds that had confined him. "Es machte mir zu eng, ich mussie fort."[86] The reign of George IV. began with resolute efforts of the Parliament not to lengthen, as in England under his grandfather, but to shorten its own commission, and to become septennial. Surely this was a noble effort. It meant the greatness of their country, and it meant also personal self-sacrifice. The Parliament which then existed, elected under a youth of twenty-two, had every likelihood of giving to the bulk of its members a seat for life. This they asked to change for a _maximum_ term of seven years. This from session to session, in spite of rejection after rejection in England, they resolutely fought to obtain. It was an English amendment which, on a doubtful pretext; changed seven years to eight. Without question some acted under the pressure of constituents; but only a minority of the members had constituents, and popular exigencies from such a quarter might have been bought off by an occasional vote, and could not have induced a war with the Executive and with England so steadily continued, unless a higher principle had been at work. The triumph came at last; and from 1768 onwards the Commons never wholly relapsed into their former quiescence. True, this was for a Protestant House, constituency, and nation; but ere long they began to enlarge their definition of nationality. Flood and Lucas, the commanders in the real battle, did not dream of giving the Roman Catholics a political existence, but to their own constituents they performed an honourable service and gave a great boon. Those, who had insincerely supported the measure, became the dupes of their own insincerity. In the very year of this victory, a Bill for a slight relaxation of the penal laws was passed, but met its death in England.[87] Other Bills followed, and one of them became an Act in 1771. A beginning had thus been made on behalf of religious liberty, as a corollary to political emancipation. It was like a little ray of light piercing its way through the rocks into a cavern and supplying the prisoner at once with guidance and with hope. Resolute action, in withholding or shortening supply, convinced the Executive in Dublin, and the Ministry in London, that serious business was intended. And it appeared, even in this early stage, how necessary it was for a fruitful campaign on their own behalf to enlarge their basis, and enlist the sympathies of hitherto excluded fellow-subjects. It may seem strange that the first beginnings of successful endeavour should have been made on behalf not of the "common Protestantism," but of Roman Catholics. But, as Mr. Lecky has shown, the Presbyterians had been greatly depressed and distracted, while the Roman Catholics had now a strong position in the commerce of the country, and in Dublin knocked, as it were, at the very doors of the Parliament. There may also have been an apprehension of republican sentiments among the Protestants of the north, from which the Roman Catholics were known to be free. Not many years, however, passed before the softening and harmonizing effects, which naturally flow from a struggle for liberty, warmed the sentiment of the House in favour of the Presbyterians. A Bill was passed by the Irish Parliament in 1778, which greatly mitigated the stringency of the penal laws. Moreover, in its preamble was recited, as a ground for this legislation, that for "a long series of years" the Roman Catholics had exhibited an "uniform peaceable behaviour." In doing and saying so much, the Irish Parliament virtually bound itself to do more.[88] In this Bill was contained a clause which repealed the Sacramental Test, and thereby liberated the Presbyterians from disqualification. But the Bill had to pass the ordeal of a review in England, and there the clause was struck out. The Bill itself, though mutilated, was wisely passed by a majority of 127 to 89. Even in this form it excited the enthusiastic admiration of Burke.[89] Nor were the Presbyterians forgotten at the epoch when, in 1779-80, England, under the pressure of her growing difficulties, made large commercial concessions to Ireland. The Dublin Parliament renewed the Bill for the removal of the Sacramental Test. And it was carried by the Irish Parliament in the very year which witnessed in London the disgraceful riots of Lord George Gordon, and forty-eight years before the Imperial Parliament conceded, on this side the Channel, any similar relief. Other contemporary signs bore witness to the growth of toleration; for the Volunteers, founded in 1778, and originally a Protestant body, after a time received Roman Catholics into their ranks. These impartial proceedings are all the more honourable to Irish sentiment in general, because Lord Charlemont, its champion out of doors, and Flood, long the leader of the Independent party in the Parliament, were neither of them prepared to surrender the system of Protestant ascendency. In order to measure the space which had at this period been covered by the forward movement of liberality and patriotism, it is necessary to look back to the early years of the Georgian period, when Whiggism had acquired a decisive ascendency, and the spirits of the great deep were let loose against Popery. But the temper of proscription in the two countries exhibited specific differences. Extravagant in both, it became in Ireland vulgar and indecent. In England, it was Tilburina,[90] gone mad in white satin; in Ireland it was Tilburina's maid, gone mad in white linen. The Lords Justices of Ireland, in 1715, recommended the Parliament to put an end to all other distinctions in Ireland "but that of Protestant and Papist."[91] And the years that followed seem to mark the lowest point of constitutional depression for the Roman Catholic population in particular, as well as for Ireland at large. The Commons, in 1715, prayed for measures to discover any Papist enlisting in the King's service, in order that he might be expelled "and punished with the utmost severity of the law."[92] When an oath of abjuration had been imposed which prevented nearly all priests from registering, a Bill was passed by the Commons in 1719 for branding the letter P on the cheek of all priests, who were unregistered, with a red-hot iron. The Privy Council "disliked" this punishment, and substituted for it the loathsome measure by which safe guardians are secured for Eastern harems. The English Government could not stomach this beastly proposal; and, says Mr. Lecky,[93] unanimously restored the punishment of branding. The Bill was finally lost in Ireland, but only owing to a clause concerning leases. It had gone to England winged with a prayer from the Commons that it might be recommended "in the most effectual manner to his Majesty," and by the assurance of the Viceroy in reply that they might depend on his due regard to what was desired.[94] In the same year passed the Act which declared the title of the British Parliament to make laws for the government of Ireland. On the accession of George II., a considerable body of Roman Catholics offered an address of congratulation. It was received by the Lords Justices with silent contempt, and no one knows whether it ever reached its destination. Finally, the acute state-craft of Primate Boulter resisted habitually the creation of an "Irish interest," and above all any capacity of the Roman Catholics to contribute to its formation; and in the first year of George II. a clause was introduced in committee into a harmless Bill[95] for the regulation of elections, which disfranchised at a single stroke all the Roman Catholic voters in Ireland who up to that period had always enjoyed the franchise. It is painful to record the fact that the remarkable progress gradually achieved was in no way due to British influence. For nearly forty years from the arrival of Archbishop Boulter in Ireland, the government of Ireland was in the hands of the Primates. The harshness of administration was gradually tempered, especially in the brief viceroyalty of Lord Chesterfield; but the British policy was steadily opposed to the enlargement of Parliamentary privilege, or the creation of any Irish interest, however narrow its basis, while the political extinction of the mass of the people was complete. The pecuniary wants, however, of the Government, extending beyond the hereditary revenue, required a resort to the national purse. The demands which were accordingly made, and these alone, supplied the Parliament with a vantage-ground, and a principle of life. The action of this principle brought with it civilizing and humanizing influences, which had become clearly visible in the early years of George III., and which were cherished by the war of American Independence, as by a strong current of fresh air in a close and murky dungeon. The force of principles, and the significance of political achievements, is to be estimated in no small degree by the slenderness of the means available to those who promote them. And the progress brought about in the Irish Parliament is among the most remarkable on record, because it was effected against the joint resistance of a hostile Executive and of an intolerable constitution. Of the three hundred members, about two-thirds were nominated by individual patrons and by close corporations. What was still worse, the action of the Executive was increasingly directed, as the pulse of the national life came to beat more vigorously, to the systematic corruption of the Parliament borough pensions and paid offices. In the latter part of the century, more than one-third of the members of Parliament were dismissible at pleasure from public emoluments. If the base influence of the Executive allied itself with the patriotic party, everything might be hoped. For we must bear in mind not only the direct influence of this expenditure on those who were in possession, but the enormous power of expectancy on those who were not. Conversely, when the Government were determined to do wrong, there were no means commonly available of forcing it to do right, in any matter that touched either religious bigotry or selfish interest. With so miserable an apparatus, and in the face of the ever-wakeful Executive sustained by British power, it is rather wonderful how much than how little was effected. I am not aware of a single case in which a measure on behalf of freedom was proposed by British agency, and rejected by the Irish Parliament. On the other hand, we have a long list of the achievements of that Parliament due to a courage and perseverance which faced and overcame a persistent English opposition. Among other exploits, it established periodical elections, obtained the writ of Habeas Corpus, carried the independence of the judges, repealed the Test Act, limited the abominable expenditure on pensions, subjected the acceptance of office from the crown to the condition of re-election, and achieved, doubtless with the powerful aid of the volunteers, freedom of trade with England, and the repeal of Poynings's Act, and of the British Act of 1719.[96] All this it did without the manifestation, either within the walls or among the Roman Catholic population, of any disposition to weaken the ties which bound Ireland to the empire. All this it did; and what had the British Parliament been about during the same period, with its vastly greater means both of self-defence and of action? It had been building up the atrocious criminal code, tampering in the case of Wilkes with liberty of election, and tampering with many other liberties; driving, too, the American Colonies into rebellion, while, as to good legislation, the century is almost absolutely blank, until between 1782 and 1793 we have the establishment of Irish freedom, the economical reform of Mr. Burke, the financial reforms of Mr. Pitt, the new libel law of Mr. Fox, and the legislative constitution of Canada, in which both these great statesmen concurred. But we have not yet reached the climax of Irish advancement. When, in 1782 and 1783, the legislative relations of the two countries were fundamentally rectified by the formal acknowledgment of Irish nationality, the beginning of a great work was accomplished; but its final consummation, though rendered practicable and even easy, depended wholly on the continuing good intention of the British Cabinet. The Acts of 1782 and 1783 required a supplemental arrangement, to obviate those secondary difficulties in the working of the two Legislatures, which supplied Mr. Pitt with his main parliamentary plea for the Union. What was yet more important was the completion of the scheme in Ireland itself. And this under three great heads: (1) The purification of Parliament by a large measure of reform; (2) the abolition of all Roman Catholic disabilities; (3) the establishment of a proper relation between the Legislative and the Executive powers. It is often urged, with cynical disregard to justice and reason, that with the Grattan Parliament we had corruption, coercion, discontent, and finally rebellion. But the political mischiefs, which disfigure the brief life of the Grattan Parliament, and the failure to obtain the two first of the three great purposes I have named, were all in the main due to the third grand flaw in the Irish case after 1782. I mean the false position, and usually mischievous character, of the Irish Executive, which, with its army of placemen and expectants in Parliament, was commonly absolute master of the situation. Well does Mr. Swift MacNeill,[97] in his very useful work, quote the words of Mr. Fox in 1797: "The advantages, which the form of a free Government seemed to promise, have been counteracted by the influence of the Executive Government, and of the British Cabinet." There were five Viceroys between 1782 and 1790. Then came a sixth, Lord Westmoreland, the worst of them all, whose political judgment was on a par with his knowledge of the English language.[98] The great settlement of 1782-3 was in the main worked by men who were radically adverse to its spirit and intention. But they were omnipotent in their control of the unreformed. Parliament of Ireland, more and more drenched, under their unceasing and pestilent activity, with fresh doses of corruption. Westmoreland and his myrmidons actually persuaded Pitt, in 1792, that Irish Protestantism and its Parliament were unconquerably adverse to the admission of Roman Catholics to the franchise; but when the proposal was made from the Throne in 1793, notwithstanding the latent hostility of the Castle, the Parliament passed the Bill with little delay, and "without any serious opposition."[99] The votes against it were one and three on two divisions[100] respectively. A minority of sixty-nine supported, against the Government, a clause for extending the measure to seats in Parliament. That clause, lost by a majority of ninety-four, might apparently have been carried, but for "Dublin Castle," by an even larger majority. I shall not here examine the interesting question, whether the mission of Lord Fitzwilliam was wholly due to the action of those Whig statesmen who were friendly to the war, but disinclined to a junction with Mr. Pitt except on condition of a fundamental change in the administration of Ireland. Nor shall I dwell upon his sudden, swift, and disastrous recall. But I purpose here to invite attention to the most remarkable fact in the whole history of the Irish Parliament. When the Viceroy's doom was known, when the return to the policy and party of ascendency lay darkly lowering in the immediate future, this diminutive and tainted Irish Parliament, with a chivalry rare even in the noblest histories, made what can hardly be called less than a bold attempt to arrest the policy of retrogression adopted by the Government in London. Lord Fitzwilliam was the declared friend of Roman Catholic Emancipation, which was certain to be followed by reform; and he had struck a death-blow at bigotry and monopoly in the person of their heads, Mr. Beresford and Mr. Cooke. The Bill of Emancipation was introduced on the 12th of February,[101] with only three dissentient voices. On the 14th, when the London Cabinet had declared dissent from the proceedings of their Viceroy without recalling him, Sir L. Parsons at once moved an address, imploring him to continue among them, and only postponed it at the friendly request of Mr. Ponsonby.[102] On the 2nd of March, when the recall was a fact, the House voted that Lord Fitzwilliam merited "the thanks of that House, and the confidence of the people."[103] On the 5th the Duke of Leinster moved, and the House of Peers carried, a similar resolution.[104] At this epoch I pause. Here there opens a new and disastrous drama of disgrace to England and misery to Ireland. This is the point at which we may best learn the second and the greatest lesson taught by the history of Ireland in the eighteenth century. It is this, that, awful as is the force of bigotry, hidden under the mask of religion, but fighting for plunder and for power with all the advantages of possession, of prescription, and of extraneous support, there is a David that can kill this Goliath. That conquering force lies in the principle of nationality. It was the growing sense of nationality that prompted the Irish Parliament to develop its earlier struggles for privilege on the narrow ground into a genuine contest for freedom, civil and religious, on a ground as broad as Ireland, nay, as humanity at large. If there be such things as contradictions in the world of politics, they are to be found in nationality on the one side, and bigotry of all kinds on the other, but especially religious bigotry, which is of all the most baneful. Whatever is given to the first of these two is lost to the second. I speak of a reasonable and reasoning, not of a blind and headstrong nationality; of a nationality which has regard to circumstances and to traditions, and which only requires that all relations, of incorporation or of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to the laws of Nature's own enactment. Such a nationality was the growth of the last century in Ireland. As each Irishman began to feel that he had a country, to which he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood, and into the sense of brotherhood, with those who shared the allegiance and the property, the obligation and the heritage. And this idea of country, once well conceived, presents itself as a very large idea, and as a framework for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a common life. Hence it was that, on the coming of Lord Fitzwilliam, the whole generous emotion of the country leapt up with one consent, and went forth to meet him. Hence it was that religious bigotry was no longer an appreciable factor in the public life of Ireland. Hence it was that on his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his recall, it became necessary to divide again the host that had, welcomed him--to put one part of it in array as Orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed; and to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger mass by repulsion and proscription, by stripping Roman Catholics of arms in the face of licence and of cruelty, and, finally, by clothing the extreme of lawlessness with the forms of law. Within the last twelve months we have seen, in the streets of Belfast, the painful proof that the work of Beresford and of Castlereagh has been found capable for the moment of revival. To aggravate or sustain Irish disunion, religious bigotry has been again evoked in Ireland. If the curse be an old one, there is also an old cure, recorded in the grand pharmacopoeia of history; and if the abstract force of policy and prudence are insufficient for the work, we may yet find that the evil spirit will be effectually laid by the gentle influence of a living and working Irish nationality. _Quod faxit Deus._ FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 73: _2 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 1.] [Footnote 74: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, chap, vii. vol. ii, p. 205.] [Footnote 75: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. ii. p. 227.] [Footnote 76: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 164.] [Footnote 77: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 166.] [Footnote 78: See Ball's _History of the Church of Ireland_, a valuable work, deserving of more attention than it seems to have received.] [Footnote 79: Boulter's _Letters_, i. 138, _et alibi_.] [Footnote 80: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, ii.] [Footnote 81: Boulter's _Letters_, vol. ii.] [Footnote 82: Cornwallis's _Correspondence_, ii. 441.] [Footnote 83: Grattan's _Life and Times_, v. 173.] [Footnote 84: Lecky, ii. 430.] [Footnote 85: Duffy, p. 177.] [Footnote 86: Schiller's _Wallenstein_.] [Footnote 87: Lecky, iv. 489.] [Footnote 88: Lecky, iv. 477-479; Brown, _Laws against Catholics_, pp. 329-332.] [Footnote 89: Lecky, pp. 499-501.] [Footnote 90: Sheridan's _Critic_, act iii. sc. I.] [Footnote 91: Plowden's _History_ (1809), ii. 70.] [Footnote 92: Brown, _Laws against Catholics_, p. 289.] [Footnote 93: Lecky, i. 297.] [Footnote 94: Plowden, i. 297.] [Footnote 95: 1 Geo. II. c. ix. sect 7.] [Footnote 96: See Lecky, vi. 521.] [Footnote 97: _The Irish Parliament_, p. 64. Cassell: 1885.] [Footnote 98: See Lecky, vi. 492, 493.] [Footnote 99: Lecky, vi. 567.] [Footnote 100: Plowden's _Historical Review_, ii. 335.] [Footnote 101: Ibid., ii. 353.] [Footnote 102: Plowden's _Historical Review_, ii. 498.] [Footnote 103: Ibid., ii. 357.] [Footnote 104: Ibid., ii. 505.] PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. 
15450	----	AGAINST HOME RULE THE CASE FOR THE UNION BY ARTHUR J. BALFOUR, M.P.; J. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN, M.P.; WALTER LONG, M.P.; GEORGE WYNDHAM, M.P.; LORD CHARLES BERESFORD, M.P.; J.H. CAMPBELL, K.C., M.P.; GERALD W. BALFOUR; THOMAS SINCLAIR; MARQUIS OF LONDONDERRY; EARL PERCY; L.S. AMERY, M.P.; GEORGE CAVE, K.C., M.P.; GODFREY LOCKER LAMPSON, M.P., &c. WITH INTRODUCTION BY SIR EDWARD CARSON, K.C., M.P. AND PREFACE BY A. BONAR LAW, M.P. EDITED BY S. ROSENBAUM LONDON FREDERICK WARNE & CO, AND NEW YORK 1912 IRISH ESSAYS COMMITTEE Chairman. THE RT. HON. SIR EDWARD CARSON, M.P. Vice-Chairman. GODFREY LOCKER LAMPSON, M.P. Committee. L.S. AMERY, M.P. GEORGE CAVE, K.C., M.P. THE RT. HON. J.H. CAMPBELL, K.C., M.P. A.L. HORNER, K.C., M.P. A.D. STEEL-MAITLAND, M.P. A.W. SAMUELS, K.C. P. CAMBRAY Secretary & Editor. S. ROSENBAUM, M.SC., F.S.S. PREFACE BY THE RIGHT HON. A. BONAR LAW, M.P. This book, for which I have been asked to write a short preface, presents the case against Home Rule for Ireland. The articles are written by men who not only have a complete grasp of the subjects upon which they write, but who in most cases, from their past experience and from their personal influence, are well entitled to outline the Irish policy of the Unionist Party. Ours is not merely a policy of hostility to Home Rule, but it is, as it has always been, a constructive policy for the regeneration of Ireland. We are opposed to Home Rule because, in our belief, it would seriously weaken our national position; because it would put a stop to the remarkable increase of prosperity in Ireland which has resulted from the Land Purchase Act; and because it would inflict intolerable injustice on the minority in Ireland, who believe that under a Government controlled by the men who dominate the United Irish League neither their civil nor their religious liberty would be safe. To create within the United Kingdom a separate Parliament with an Executive Government responsible to that Parliament would at the best mean a danger of friction. But if we were ever engaged in a great war, and the men who controlled the Irish Government took the view in regard to that war which was taken by the same men in regard to the Boer War; if they thought the war unjust, and if, as under the last Home Rule Bill they would have the right to do, they passed resolutions in the Irish Parliament in condemnation of the war, and even sent embassies carrying messages of good-will to our enemy, then this second Government at the heart of the Empire would be a source of weakness which might be fatal to us. The ameliorative measures originated by Mr. Balfour when he was Chief Secretary, and which culminated in the Wyndham Purchase Act, have created a new Ireland. Mr. Redmond, speaking a year or two ago, said that Ireland "was studded with the beautiful and happy homes of an emancipated peasantry." It is a true picture, but it is a picture of the result of Unionist policy in Ireland, a policy which Mr. Redmond and his friends, including the present Government, have done their best to hamper. The driving power of the agitation for Home Rule has always been discontent with the land system of Ireland, and just in proportion as land purchase has extended, the demand for Home Rule has died down. The Nationalist leaders, realising this, and regarding political agitation as their first object, have compelled the Government to put insurmountable obstacles in the way of land purchase--not because it had not been successful, but because it had been too successful. The prosperity and the peace of Ireland depend upon the completion of land purchase, and it can only be completed by the use of British credit, which in my belief can and ought only to be freely given so long as Ireland is in complete union with the rest of the United Kingdom. In the present deplorable position of British credit the financing of land purchase would be difficult; but it is not unreasonable to hope that the return to power of a Government which would adopt sane financial methods would restore our credit; and in any case, the object is of such vital importance that, whatever the difficulties, it must be our policy to complete with the utmost possible rapidity the system of land purchase in Ireland. It will also be our aim to help to the utmost, in the manner suggested in different articles in this book, in the development of the resources of Ireland. The Nationalist policy, which is imposed also on the Radical Party, is in fact more politics and less industry. Our policy is more industry and less politics. The strongest objection, however, and, in my opinion, the insurmountable obstacle to Home Rule, is the injustice of attempting to impose it against their will upon the Unionists of Ulster. The only intelligible ground upon which Home Rule can now be defended is the nationality of Ireland. But Ireland is not a nation; it is two nations. It is two nations separated from each other by lines of cleavage which cut far deeper than those which separate Great Britain from Ireland as a whole. Every argument which can be adduced in favour of separate treatment for the Irish Nationalist minority as against the majority of the United Kingdom, applies with far greater force in favour of separate treatment for the Unionists of Ulster as against the majority of Ireland. To the majority in Ireland Home Rule may seem to be a blessing, but to the minority it appears as an intolerable curse. Their hostility to it is quite as strong as that which was felt by many of the Catholics of Ireland to Grattan's Parliament. They, too, would say, as the Catholic Bishop of Waterford said at the time of the Union, that they "would prefer a Union with the Beys and Mamelukes of Egypt to the iron rod of the Mamelukes of Ireland." The minority which holds this view is important in numbers, for it comprises at the lowest estimate more than a fourth of the population of Ireland. From every other point of view it is still more important, for probably the minority pays at least half the taxes and does half the trade of Ireland. The influence and also the power of the minority is enormously increased by the way in which its numbers are concentrated in Belfast and the surrounding counties. The men who compose this minority ask no special privilege. They demand only--and they will not demand in vain--that they should not be deprived against their will of the protection of British law and of the rights of British citizenship. CONTENTS. PREFACE _By the Rt. Hon. A. Bonar Law, M.P._ INTRODUCTION _By the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Carson, K.C., M.P._ HISTORICAL I. A NOTE ON HOME RULE _By the Rt. Hon. A.J. Balfour, M.P._ II. HISTORICAL RETROSPECT _By J.R. Fisher_ CRITICAL III. THE CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION _By George Cave, K.C., M.P._ IV. HOME RULE FINANCE _By the Rt. Hon. J. Austen Chamberlain, M.P._ V. HOME RULE AND THE COLONIAL ANALOGY _By L.S. Amery, M.P._ VI. THE CONTROL OF JUDICIARY AND POLICE _By the Rt. Hon. J.H. Campbell, K.C., M.P._ VII. THE ULSTER QUESTION _By the Marquis of Londonderry, K.G._ VIII. THE POSITION OF ULSTER _By the Rt. Hon. Thomas Sinclair._ IX. THE SOUTHERN MINORITIES _By Richard Bagwell, M.A._ X. HOME RULE AND NAVAL DEFENCE _By Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, M.P._ XI. THE MILITARY DISADVANTAGES OF HOME RULE _By the Earl Percy._ XII. THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY UNDER HOME RULE (i.) The Church View _By the Rt. Rev. C.F. D'Arcy, Bishop of Down._ (ii.) The Nonconformist View _By Rev. Samuel Prenter, M.A., D.D. (Dublin)._ CONSTRUCTIVE XIII. UNIONIST POLICY IN RELATION TO RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN IRELAND _By the Rt. Hon. Gerald Balfour._ XIV. THE COMPLETION OF LAND PURCHASE _By the Rt. Hon. George Wyndham, M.P._ XV. POSSIBLE IRISH FINANCIAL REFORMS UNDER THE UNION _By Arthur Warren Samuels, K.C._ XVI. THE ECONOMICS OF SEPARATISM _By L.S. Amery, M.P._ XVII. PRIVATE BILL LEGISLATION _By the Rt. Hon. Walter Long, M.P._ XVIII. IRISH POOR LAW REFORM _By John E. Healy, Editor of the "Irish Times."_ XIX. IRISH EDUCATION UNDER THE UNION _By Godfrey Locker Lampson, M.P._ XX. THE PROBLEM OF TRANSIT AND TRANSPORT IN IRELAND _By an Irish Railway Director._ INTRODUCTION BY THE RIGHT HON. SIR EDWARD CARSON, M.P. The object of the various essays collected in this book is to set out the case against Home Rule for Ireland, and to re-state Unionist policy in the light of the recent changes in that country. The authors are not, however, to be regarded as forming anything in the nature of a corporate body, and no collective responsibility is to be ascribed to them. Each writer is responsible for the views set out in his own article, and for those alone. At the same time, they are all leaders of Unionist thought and opinion, and their views in the main represent the policy which the Unionist Government, when returned to power, will have to carry into effect. Among the contributors to the book are an ex-Premier, four ex-Chief Secretaries for Ireland, an ex-Lord Lieutenant, two ex-Law officers, and a number of men whose special study of the Irish question entitles them to have their views most carefully considered when the time comes for restoring to Ireland those economic advantages of which she has been deprived by political agitation and political conspiracy. At the present moment the discussion of the Irish question is embittered by the pressing and urgent danger to civil and religious liberties involved in the unconditional surrender of the Government to the intrigues of a disloyal section of the Irish people. It is the object of writers in this book to raise the discussions on the Home Rule question above the bitter conflict of Irish parties, and to show that not only is Unionism a constructive policy and a measure of hope for Ireland, but that in Unionist policy lies the only alternative to financial ruin and exterminating civil dissensions. We who are Unionists believe first and foremost that the Act of Union is required--in the words made familiar to us by the Book of Common Prayer--"for the safety, honour and welfare, of our Sovereign and his dominions." We are not concerned with the supposed taint which marred the passing of that Act; we are unmoved by the fact that its terms have undergone considerable modification. We do not believe in the plenary inspiration of any Act of Parliament. It is not possible for the living needs of two prosperous countries to be bound indefinitely by the "dead hand" of an ancient statute, but we maintain that geographical and economic reasons make a legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland necessary for the interests of both. We see, as Irish Ministers saw in 1800, that there can be no permanent resting place between complete Union and total separation. We know that Irish Nationalists have not only proclaimed separatist principles, but that they have received separatist money, on the understanding that they would not oppose a movement to destroy whatever restrictions and safeguards the Imperial Parliament might impose upon an Irish Government. The first law of nature with nations and governments, as with individuals, is self-preservation. It was the vital interests of national defence that caused Pitt to undertake the difficult and thankless task of creating the legislative union. If that union was necessary for the salvation of England and the foundation of the British Empire, it is assuredly no less necessary for the continued security of the one and the maintenance and prestige of the other. Mr. J.R. Fisher, in his historical retrospect, shows us how bitter experience convinced successive generations of English statesmen of the dangers that lay in an independent Ireland. One of the very earliest conflicts between the two countries was caused by the action of the Irish Parliament in recognising and crowning a Pretender in Dublin Castle. Then the fact that the Reformation, which soon won the adherence of the English Government and the majority of the English people, never gained any great foothold in Ireland, caused the bitter religious wars which devastated Europe to be reproduced in the relations of the two countries. When England was fighting desperately with the Spanish champions of the Papacy, Spanish forces twice succeeded in effecting a landing on the Irish coast, and were welcomed by the people. Later on, by the aid of subsidies from an Irish Parliament, Strafford raised 10,000 men in Ireland in order to support Charles I. in his conflict with the English people. Cromwell realised that the only remedy for the intrigues and turbulence of the Irish Parliament lay in a legislative union. But, unfortunately, his Union Parliament was terminated by the Restoration. Then, again, when France became the chief danger that England had to face, Tyrconnel, with the aid of French troops and French subsidies, endeavoured to make Ireland a base for the invasion of England. Under the Old Pretender again, another effort was made to make the Irish Parliament a medium for the destruction of English liberties. In these long-continued and bitter struggles we see the excuse, if not the justification, for the severe penal laws which were introduced in order to curb the power of the Irish chieftains. We see also the beginning of the feud between Ulster and the other provinces in Ireland, which has continued in a modified form to the present day. Strafford found that, in order to bolster up the despotism of the Stuarts, he had not only to invade England, but to expel the Scottish settlers from the Northern province. The Irish Parliament in the time of Tyrconnel again began to prepare for the invasion of England by an attempt to destroy the Ulster plantation. The settlers had their estates confiscated, the Protestant clergy were driven out and English sympathisers outlawed by name, in the "hugest Bill of Attainder which the world has seen." Admiral Lord Charles Beresford points out the danger from a naval point of view of the French attempts to use Ireland as a base for operations against England, both under Louis XIV. and under the Republican Directory. He quotes Admiral Mahan as saying that the movement which designed to cut the English communications in St. George's Channel while an invading party landed in the south of Ireland was a strictly strategic movement and would be as dangerous to England now as it was in 1690. When Grattan extorted from England's weakness the unworkable and impracticable constitution of 1782, the danger which had always been present became immensely increased. In less than three years from the period of boasted final adjustment, Ireland came to a breach with England on the important question of trade and navigation. Then, again, at the time of the Regency, the Irish Parliament was actually ready to choose a person in whom to rest the sovereign executive power of the nation, different from him whom the British Parliament were prepared to designate. In 1795, when the French had made themselves masters of Brabant, Flanders, and Holland, the rebel government of United Irishmen was so well-established in Ireland that, as Lord Clare, the Irish Chancellor, subsequently admitted in the House of Lords, Ireland was for some weeks in a state of actual separation from Great Britain. When the great Rebellion of 1798 broke out, the French Directory sent assistance to the Irish rebels in order to facilitate the greater scheme--the conquest of England and of Europe. When we come to estimate the danger which the grant of Home Rule to Ireland would bring to the safety of England, we are faced with two considerations. In the first place, the movements of the French in the past were, as we have said, strategic. Given an Irish Parliament that was hostile to England, or at least dubious in her loyalty to this country, the movement of a hostile fleet against our communications would be as dangerous now as it was in the past. When we try to estimate what would be the feelings of an Irish Government when England was at war, we have to consider not only the speeches of avowed enemies of the Empire like Major McBride and the Irish Americans, but we have also to remember the attitude adopted upon all questions of foreign policy by the more responsible Nationalists of the type of Mr. Dillon. Not only have the Irish Nationalist party consistently opposed every warlike operation that British Governments have found to be necessary, but they have also fervently attacked the Powers on the Continent of Europe that have been suspected of friendship to England. We have only to imagine the element of weakness and disunion which would be introduced into our foreign policy by an Irish Parliament that passed resolutions regarding the policy of the Governments, say, of Russia and of France, in order to realise the immense dangers of setting up such a Parliament when we are again confronted with a mighty Confederation of opponents in Europe. It is admitted that the next European war will be decided by the events of the first few days. In order to succeed, we shall have to strike and strike quickly. But in order that there should be swift and effective action, there should be only one Government to be consulted. The Irish Ministry that was not actively hostile, but only unsympathetic and dilatory, might, in many ways, fatally embarrass Ministers at Westminster. Moreover, another complication has been introduced by the dependence of England upon Irish food supplies. Lord Percy points out that there are two stages in every naval war; first, the actual engagement, and then the blockade or destruction of the ships of the defeated country. He points out that, even after the destruction of the French Navy at Trafalgar, the damage done to British oversea commerce was very great. Modern conditions of warfare have made blockade an infinitely more difficult and precarious operation, and we must therefore face the certainty that hostile cruisers will escape and interfere with our oversea supplies of food. Since Ireland lies directly across our trade routes, it is probable that the majority of our food supplies will be derived from Ireland or carried through that country. But Irish Ministers would not have forgotten the lesson of the famine, when food was exported from Ireland though the people starved. Curious as it may seem, Ireland, though a great exporting country, does not under present conditions feed herself, and therefore an Irish Ministry would certainly lay in a large stock of the imported food supplies before they were brought to England, in order first of all absolutely to secure the food of their own people. It would be open for them at any time, by cutting off our supplies, our horses and our recruits, to extract any terms they liked out of the English people or bring this country to its knees. "England's difficulty" would once again become "Ireland's opportunity." The experience of 1782 would be repeated. Resistance to Ireland's demands for extended powers would bring about war between the two countries. In the striking phrase of Mr. Balfour's arresting article, "The battle of the two Parliaments would become the battle of the two peoples." It is only necessary to refer briefly to the fact that the active section of the Nationalist party has continually and consistently opposed recruiting for the British Army. It is perfectly certain that, under Home Rule, this policy would be accentuated rather than reversed. We now draw recruits from Ireland out of all proportion to its population. Under Home Rule, the difficulties of maintaining a proper standard of men and efficiency must be immensely increased. If there were no other arguments against Home Rule, the paramount necessities of Imperial defence would demand the maintenance of the Union. But the opposition to the proposed revolution in Ireland is based not only on the considerations of Imperial safety, but also on those of national honour. The historical bases of Irish nationalism have been destroyed by the arguments summarised in this book by Mr. Fisher and Mr. Amery. It was the existence of a separate Parliament in Dublin that made Ireland, for so many centuries, alike a menace to English liberty and the victim of English reprisals. Miss A.E. Murray has pointed out[1] that experience seemed to show to British statesmen that Irish prosperity was dangerous to English liberty. It was the absence of direct authority over Ireland which made England so nervously anxious to restrict Irish resources in every direction in which they might, even indirectly, interfere with the growth of English power. Irish industries were penalised and crippled, not from any innate perversity on the part of English statesmen, or from any deliberate desire to ruin Ireland, but as a natural consequence of exclusion from the Union under the economic policy of the age. The very poverty of Ireland, as expressed in the lowness of Irish wages, was a convenient and perfectly justifiable argument for exclusion. Mr. Amery shows that the Protestant settlers of Ulster were penalised even more severely than the intriguing Irish chieftains against whom they were primarily directed. It was the consciousness of the natural result of separation that caused the Irish Parliament, upon two separate occasions, to petition for that union with England which was delayed for over a century. The action of Grattan and his supporters in wresting the impossible Constitution of 1782, from the harassed and desperate English Government, began that fatal policy of substituting political agitation for economic reform which has ever since marred the Irish Nationalist movement. John Fitzgibbon[2] pointed out in the Irish House of Commons that only two alternatives lay before his country--Separation or Union. Under Separation an Irish Parliament might be able to pursue an economic policy of its own; under Union the common economic policy of the two countries might be adjusted to the peculiar interests of each. Pitt, undoubtedly, looked forward to a Customs Union with internal free trade as the ultimate solution of the difficulty, but a Customs Union was impossible without the fullest kind of legislative unity. It is true that the closing years of the eighteenth century were years of prosperity to certain classes and districts in Ireland, but Mr. Fisher has shown beyond dispute that this prosperity neither commenced with Grattan's Parliament nor ended with its fall. It was based upon the peculiar economic conditions which years of war and preparations for war had fostered in England; it was bound in any case to disappear with the growing concentration of industrial interests which followed the general introduction of machinery. The immediate result of the passing of the Act of Union was to increase the Irish population and Irish trade. But to a certain extent that prosperity was fictitious and doomed to failure so soon as peace and the introduction of scientific methods of industry had caused the concentration of the great manufactures. Then came the great economic disaster for Ireland--the adoption of free trade by England. The Irish famine of 1849 was not more severe than others that had preceded it, but its evil effects were accentuated by the policy of the English Government. The economists decided that the State ought to do nothing to interfere with private enterprise in feeding the starving people, and as there was no private enterprise in the country, where all classes were involved in the common ruin, the people were left to die of hunger by the roadside. The lands the potato blight spared were desolated by the adoption of free trade. The exploitation of the virgin lands of the American West gradually threw the fertile midlands of Ireland from tillage into grass. A series of bad harvests aggravated the evil. The landlords and the farmers of Ireland were divided into two political camps, and, instead of uniting for their common welfare, each attempted to cast upon the other the burden of the economic catastrophe. To sum up in the words of Mr. Amery-- "The evils of economic Separatism, aggravated by social evils surviving from the Separatism of an earlier age, united to revive a demand for the extension and renewal of the very cause of those evils." The political demand for the repeal of the Act of Union, which had lain dormant for so many years, was revived by the energies of Isaac Butt. He found in the Irish landlords, smarting under the disestablishment of the Irish Church, a certain amount of sympathy and assistance, but the "engine" for which Finton Lalor had asked in order to draw the "repeal train," was not discovered until Parnell linked the growing agrarian unrest to the Home Rule Campaign. This is not the place to tell again the weary story of the land war or to show how the Irish Nationalists exploited the grievances of the Irish tenants in order to encourage crime and foment disloyalty in the country. It is sufficient to say that this conflict--the conduct of which reflects little credit either upon the Irish protagonists or the British Government which alternately pampered and opposed it--was ended, for the time at least, by the passing of Mr. Wyndham's Land Act. We look forward in perfect confidence to the time when that great measure shall achieve its full result in wiping out the memory of many centuries of discord and hatred. But the Separatist movement, which has always been the evil genius of Irish politics, has not yet been completely exorcised. The memory of those past years when the minority in Ireland constituted the only bulwark of Irish freedom and of English liberty, has not yet passed away. The Irish Nationalist party since Parnell have spared no exertions to impress more deeply upon the imaginations of a sentimental race the memory of those "ancient weeping years." They have preached a social and a civil war upon all those in Ireland who would not submit their opinions and consciences to the uncontrolled domination of secret societies and leagues. The articles upon the Ulster question by Lord Londonderry and Mr. Sinclair show that the Northern province still maintains her historic opposition to Irish Separatism and Irish intrigue. She stands firmly by the same economic principles which have enabled her, in spite of persecution and natural disadvantages, to build up so great a prosperity. She knows well that the only chance for the rest of Ireland to attain to the standard of education, enlightenment and independence which she has reached, is to free itself from the sinister domination under which it lies, and to assert its right to political and religious liberty. Ulster sees in Irish Nationalism a dark conspiracy, buttressed upon crime and incitement to outrage, maintained by ignorance and pandering to superstition. Even at this moment the Nationalist leagues have succeeded in superseding the law of the land by the law of the league. We need only point to the remarks which the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland and Mr. Justice Kenny have been compelled to make to the Grand Juries quite recently, to show what Nationalist rule means to the helpless peasants in a great part of the country. But the differences which still sever the two great parties in Ireland are not only economic but religious. The general slackening of theological dispute which followed the weary years of religious warfare after the Reformation, has never brought peace to Ireland. In England the very completeness of the defeat of Roman Catholicism has rendered the people oblivious to the dangers of its aggression. The Irish Unionists are not monsters of inhuman frame; they are men of like passions with Englishmen. Though they hold their religious views with vigour and determination, there is nothing that they would like more than to be able to forget their points of difference from those who are their fellow Christians. It is perhaps necessary to point out once again that the Roman Catholic Church is a political, as well as a religious, institution, and to remind Englishmen that it is by the first law of its being an intolerant and aggressive organisation. All Protestants in Ireland feel deep respect for much of the work which is carried on by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. They gladly acknowledge the influence of its priesthood in maintaining and upholding the traditional morality and purity of the Irish race. They venerate the memories of those brave Irish priests who defied persecution in order to bring succour to their flocks in time of need. But they are bound to deal with the present political situation as they find it. They are determined that no Church, however admirable, and no creed, however lofty, should be forced upon them against their wills. There is a dark side to the picture, on which it is unnecessary to dwell. We have only to ask the Nonconformists of England what would be their feelings were a Roman Catholic majority returned to the British House of Commons. In most of the articles in this book which deal with the religious question; special stress is laid upon recent Papal legislation. The _Ne Temere_ and the _Motu Proprio_ decrees have constituted an invasion of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the minority in Ireland, and they are even more significant as an illustration of the policy of the Roman curia. Those who have watched the steady increase of Roman aggression in every Roman Catholic country, followed as it has been by passionate protest and determined action by the civil Governments, must realise the danger which Home Rule would bring to the faith and liberty of the people of Ireland. It is not inconsistent to urge, as many of us have urged, that Home Rule would mean alike a danger to the Protestant faith and a menace to Catholic power. The immediate result of successful Papal interference with civil liberties in every land has been a sweeping movement among the people which has been, not Protestant, but anti-Christian in its nature. If we fear the tyranny which the Roman Catholic Church has established under British rule in Malta and in Quebec, may we not fear also the reaction from such tyranny which has already taken place in France and Portugal. But we are told that there are to be in the new Home Rule Bill safeguards which will protect the minority from any interference with their civil and religious liberties. It is not necessary for me to go over again in detail the ground which is so admirably covered by Mr. George Cave and Mr. James Campbell. They show clearly that the existence of restrictions and limitations upon the activities of a Dublin Parliament, whether they are primarily intended to safeguard the British connection or to protect the liberties of minorities, cannot be worth the paper on which they are printed. Let us take, for instance, an attempt to prevent the marriages of Irish Protestants from being invalidated by an Irish Parliament. We may point out that an amendment to the 1893 Home Rule Bill, designed to safeguard such marriages, was rejected by the vote of the Irish Nationalist party. But even were legislation affecting the marriage laws of the minority to be placed outside the control of a Dublin Parliament, the effect would not be to reassure the Protestant community. Mr. James Campbell mentions a case which has profoundly stirred the Puritan feelings of Irish Protestantism. A man charged with bigamy has been released without punishment because the first marriage, although in conformity with the law of the land, was not recognised by the Roman Catholic Church. However justifiable that course may have been in the exceptional circumstances of that particular case, the precedent obviously prepares the way for a practical reversal of the law by executive or judicial action. We must remember that, since the _Ne Temere_ decree has come into force, the marriages of Protestants and Roman Catholics are held by the Roman Catholic Church to be absolutely null and void unless they are celebrated in a Roman Catholic Church. We have also to bear in mind that these marriages will not be permitted by the priesthood except under conditions which many Irish Protestants consider humiliating and impossible. No more deadly attack upon the faith of the Protestant minority in the three provinces in Ireland can be imagined than to make a denial of their faith the essential condition to the enjoyment of the highest happiness for which they may look upon this earth. The second decree prohibits, under pain of excommunication, any Roman Catholic from bringing an ecclesiastical officer before a Court of Justice. Even under the Union Government this decree is a danger to the liberty of the subject. Under an independent Irish Government, nothing except that vast anti-clerical revolution which some people foresee could possibly reassure the people as to the attitude of the Executive Government in dealing with a large and privileged class. These considerations make one more reason for refusing the Colonial analogy which is so ingeniously pressed by such apologists for Home Rule as Mr. Erskine Childers. Mr. Amery analyses the confusion of thought between Home Rule as meaning responsible Government and Home Rule as meaning separate government which underlies the arguments of Liberal Home Rulers. Ireland has Home Rule in the sense of having free representative institutions. She is prevented by geographical and economic conditions from enjoying separate government under the same terms on which the Colonies possess it. As Mr. Amery points out, the United Kingdom is geographically a single island group. No part of Ireland is so inaccessible from the political centre of British power as the remoter parts of the Highlands, while racially no less than physically Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom. Economically also the two countries are bound together in a way which makes a common physical policy absolutely necessary for the welfare of both countries. The financial arguments which might have made it possible to permit an independent fiscal policy for Ireland under free trade, have disappeared with the certain approach of a revision of the tariff policies of England. There can be no separate tariffs for the two countries, or even a common tariff, without a common Government to negotiate and enforce it. If there were no other objection to the establishment of a separate Government in Dublin, it would be impossible because legislative autonomy can only be coupled with financial independence. The financial difficulties in the way of any grant of Home Rule are fully explained by Mr. Austen Chamberlain. Three attempts at framing schemes for financing Home Rule were made by Mr. Gladstone in the past. All the powers of this great and resourceful dialectician were employed in defending these various schemes in turn. He was not deterred from pressing any scheme by the fact that in important details it was inconsistent with or even opposed to what had been previously recommended. But if there was one principle on which Mr. Gladstone never turned his back it was in demanding a contribution from Ireland for Imperial services. At one time he demanded a cash payment, at another the assignment of the Customs, and on yet another occasion the payment to the Imperial Exchequer of a quota--one-third--of the tax-revenue in Ireland. The effect of recent social legislation, such as Old Age Pensions, Labour Exchanges, and Sickness and Unemployment Insurance has been to confer on Ireland benefits much greater in value than the Irish contribution in respect of the new taxation imposed. In consequence of this change the present Irish revenue falls short of the expenditure incurred for Irish purposes in Ireland. Mr. Chamberlain shows that if any scheme even remotely resembling any of those put forward on previous occasions by Mr. Gladstone is embodied in the new Bill, and if a moderate contribution for Imperial services is included, the Irish deficit must range from £2,500,000 to £3,500,000. If by any process of juggling with the figures the Irish Parliament is again to be started with a surplus the deficit must have been made good by charging it against the Imperial taxpayer. But again there is no permanence in such a surplus. It must disappear if the ameliorative measures which are long overdue in Ireland are undertaken by an Irish Parliament; and previous experience has already illustrated that even without the adoption of any such new schemes surpluses would long ago have made room for deficits. It will be the duty of the Nationalists party to say definitely what are the fiscal reserves upon which they can draw in order to establish permanent equilibrium between revenue and expenditure in Ireland. Not only does Unionist policy for Ireland involve considerations of national safety and national honour, but it is also necessary for the economic welfare of both countries. The remarkable success which has attended Mr. Wyndham's Land Act of 1903 has alarmed the political party in Ireland, which depends for its influence on the poverty and discontent of the rural population of Ireland. Mr. Wyndham in his article upon Irish Land Purchase shows clearly the blessings which have followed wherever his Act has been given fair play, and the evils which have resulted in the suppression of Land Purchase by Mr. Birrell's Act of 1909. The dual ownership created by Mr. Gladstone's ill-advised and reckless legislation led to Ireland being starved both in capital and industry and brought the whole of Irish agriculture to the brink of ruin, and under these circumstances, Conservative statesmen determined, in accordance with the principles of the Act of Union, to use a joint exchequer for the purpose of relieving Irish distress. Credit of the State was employed to convert the occupiers of Irish farms into the owners of the soil. The policy of the Ashbourne Acts was briefly that any landlord could agree with any tenant on the purchase price of his holding. The State then advanced the credit sum to the landlord in cash, while the tenant paid an instalment of 4 per cent. for forty-nine years. It is important to notice that the landlord received cash and that the tenants paid interest at the then existing rate of interest on Consols, namely, 3 per cent. The great defect in these Acts was that they applied only to separate holdings and not to estates as a whole; but their success can be estimated by the fact that under them twenty-seven thousand tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over ten million pounds. Under Mr. Balfour's Acts of 1891 and 1896, the landlord was paid in stock instead of cash, and the tenants still paid 4 per cent., the interest being reduced to the then rate on Consols--2-3/4 per cent.--and the Sinking Fund being proportionately increased. It will be noticed that these Acts began the practise of paying the landlord in stock, though at that time Irish Land Stock with a face value of £100 became worth as much as £114. The exchequer was, moreover, permitted to retain grants due for various purposes in Ireland and to recoup itself out of them in case of any combined refusal to repay on the part of tenants. The Irish Land Act of 1903 was the product of the experience gained during eighteen years of the operation of the preceding Purchase Acts. It was founded upon an agreement made in 1902 between representatives of Irish landlords and tenants. Cash payments were resumed to the landlords, the tenants' instalments were reduced to 3-1/4 per cent., and a bonus, as it was called, of twelve millions of money was made available to bridge the gap between the landlords and the tenants at the rate of 12 per cent, on the amount advanced. That Act possessed the additional advantage of dealing with the estates as a whole instead of with individual holdings, and it substituted the principle of speedy purchase for that of dilatory litigation. This remarkable and generous measure initiated a great and beneficent revolution, but every popular and useful feature of the Act of 1903 was distorted or destroyed in the Land Act which the present Government passed at the instigation of the Irish Nationalist Party in 1909. In Mr. Wyndham's words "a solemn treaty framed in the interest of Ireland was torn up to deck with its tatters the triumph of Mr. Dillon's unholy alliance with the British Treasury." Under the Act of 1909, landlords, instead of cash payments, are to receive stock at 3 per cent. issued on a falling market. This stock cannot possibly appreciate because owing to the embarrassment of Irish estates a large proportion of each issue is thrown back upon the market at the redemption of mortgages. The tenant's annuity is raised from 3-1/4 per cent, to 3-1/2 per cent., a precedent not to be found in any previous experiment under Irish Land Purchase finance. The bonus is destroyed and litigation is substituted for security and speed. The results of the two Acts are instructive. Under the 1903 Act the potential purchasers amounted to nearly a quarter of a million; under the 1909 Act the applications in respect of direct sales being less than nine thousand. It is hardly necessary to go into the reasons advanced for this disastrous change. It has been brought about not in order to relieve the British Treasury, but in order to rescue from final destruction the waning influence of Irish Nationalism. Mr. Wyndham has the authority of the leader of the Unionist Party for his statement that the first constructive work of the Unionist Party in Ireland must be to resume the Land policy of 1903 and to pursue the same objects by the best methods until they have all been fully and expeditiously achieved. Unionist policy cannot, however, be confined to the restoration of Land Purchase. The ruin which Free Trade finance has inflicted upon Irish agriculture can only be remedied, as Mr. Childers saw at the time of the Financial Relations Commission in 1895, by a readjustment of the fiscal system of the United Kingdom. Mr. Gerald Balfour shows us in one of the most able papers in the book the extraordinary development which has been seen in recent years in Irish agricultural methods. The revival of Irish rural industries dates from Mr. Balfour's chief-secretaryship. The Parliament which set up in Ireland the Congested Districts Board and sanctioned the building of light railways at the public expense, also witnessed the formation in Ireland of a Society which was destined to work great changes in the social conditions of the country. The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society represents the fruit of a work begun in the face of incredible difficulties and remorseless opposition by Sir Horace Plunkett in 1889. "Better farming, better business, better living"--these were the principles which he and Mr. Anderson set out to establish in Ireland. Their representatives were described as monsters in human shape, and they were adjured to cease their "hellish work." Now the branches of the Society number nearly 1000, with an annual turnover of upwards of 2-1/2 millions, and they include creameries, village banks, and societies for the purchase of seeds and manure and for the marketing of eggs. It is not necessary to tell again the story of the Recess Committee and the formation of the Department of Agriculture. The result of its work, crowned as it was by Mr. Wyndham's Purchase Act, is shown by the fact that Irish trade has increased from 103 millions in 1904 to 130 millions in 1910. The steady object which Sir Horace Plunkett has set before him is to counteract the demoralising effect of paternal legislation on the part of the Government, by reviving and stimulating a policy of self-help. The I.A.O.S. has done valuable work in enabling the Irish farmers, by co-operating, to secure a more stable position in the English market, to secure themselves against illegitimate and fraudulent competition and to standardise the quality of their product, but even more important has been the work of the Society in releasing the farmers from the bondage of the "Gombeen" man who has for so many years been the curse of Irish agriculture. The "Gombeen" man is alike trader, publican, and money-lender, and he is the backbone of official Nationalist influence. By lending money to the peasant proprietors at exorbitant rates, by selling inferior seeds and manures and by carrying on his transactions with the farmers chiefly in kind, the "Gombeen" man has grown fat upon the poverty and despair of the farmer. It is not surprising that he views the liberating work of the I.A.O.S. with the bitterest hostility--an hostility which has been translated into effective action by the Nationalist Party in Parliament. Sir Horace Plunkett was driven from office on the pretext that it should be held by a member of Parliament. His successor, Mr. T.W. Russell, lost his seat in the General Election of 1910, but he was retained in power since he was willing to lend himself to the destructive intrigues of the "Molly Maguires." The Unionist Party does not intend to interfere with the independence of the I.A.O.S. which constitutes in their eyes its greatest feature, but they are determined that it shall have fair play, and that the hundred thousand Irish farmers which constitutes its membership shall be enabled to increase their prosperity by co-operative action. The Unionist Party will also have to undertake more active measures in order to restore to Irish agriculture the position of supremacy for which it is naturally fitted. Mr. Amery and Mr. Samuels both discuss in outline the effects of Tariff Reform upon the future of Ireland. I do not intend at the present moment to go further into the details of the policy which the Unionist Government will be likely to adopt on this question. I think, however, it would be desirable to point out that in dairy produce and poultry, in barley and oats, in hops, tobacco, sugar-beet, vegetables and fruit, in all of which Ireland is especially interested, Irish products would have free entry into the protected markets of Great Britain, Canadian and Australian products would of course have such a preference over foreign competitors as a Home Rule Ireland might claim, but it is only under the Union that Ireland could expect complete freedom of access to our markets. Mr. Amery sees in the train ferry a possible bridge over the St. George's Channel and looks forward to the time when the west coast of Ireland will be the starting point of all our fast mail and passenger steamers across the Atlantic. Two schemes with this object have received the attention of Parliament. How far the present practical difficulties can be surmounted it is not very easy to say, but it is certain that if Home Rule were granted the Blacksod Bay and the Galway Bay Atlantic routes would have to be abandoned. These conditions naturally raise the whole transport problem in Ireland. Mr. Arthur Samuels suggests a scheme of State assistance to a cheap transport which may require attention later on, though it can only form part of a larger scheme of traffic reorganisation. The Nationalist Party seems definitely to have pledged itself to a scheme of nationalisation. This policy has been urged in season and out of season upon an apathetic Ireland by the _Freeman's Journal._ The cost of the nationalisation of Irish railways could not be less than fifty millions, while the annual charge on the Exchequer was assessed by the Irish Railways Commission at £250,000, and it was anticipated that a further recourse to Irish rates might be required. It would be obviously impossible to ask the British Treasury to advance such an enormous sum of money to an independent Irish Government. At what rate could an Irish government raise the money? The present return on Irish Railway capital is 3.77 per cent., and thus, to borrow fifty millions at 4 per cent, will involve an annual loss of over £300,000 a year, even without a sinking fund. It is extremely doubtful whether the credit of an Irish Government would be better than that of Hungary or Argentina. If anything more surely led an Irish Government to financial disaster it would be the working of railways. As the Majority Report of the Railway Commission recommended on other than commercial lines, the 25 per cent. reduction in rates and fares suggested by Nationalist witnesses would involve a loss of more than half a million a year. We see, therefore, immediately, that if anything is to be done at all to improve Irish transport it must be done by a Government that has the confidence of the money market. The railway director who contributes the principal article on this subject in the book calculates that a public grant of two millions, and a guaranteed loan of eight millions would suffice to carry out all the reforms that are necessary in order to place Irish railways in a thoroughly sound position. It is obvious that with the development of trade which will follow on the adoption of Tariff Reform by England, Irish companies will be in a better position to help themselves, and the increase in the wealth and prosperity of Ireland must soon enable the railways to carry out constructive works which they all admit to be necessary. Mr. Locker Lampson's article on education undoubtedly shows the Irish Government in its less favourable light. The neglect and starvation of Irish education has been a reproach to the intelligence and humanity of successive Irish administrations. Mr. Locker Lampson shows, however, that financially and politically it would be impossible for any Irish administration to carry out the great and sweeping reforms in Irish education as are still necessary. The mischievous principle of paying fees by results, although it has disappeared from the National schools, still clings to intermediate education in Ireland. Before any other kind of reform is even considered the intermediate system in Ireland should be placed upon a proper foundation. The secondary system is also deficient because--what Mr. Dillon called "gaps in the law"--there is no co-ordination between the primary and the secondary schools. The establishment of higher grade schools in large centres and the institution of advanced departments in connection with selected primary schools in rural districts would only cost about £25,000 a year, and would go far to meet the disastrous effects of the present system. But no system of education can possibly be successful that does not place the teachers in a position of dignity and comfort. At the present moment the salaries of the secondary teachers are miserable; lay assistants in secondary schools are paid about £80 a year. They have no security of tenure; they have no register of teachers as a guarantee of efficiency. The other problems which immediately confront the Irish government are the establishment of a private bill legislation and a reform of the Irish Poor Law. With regard to the private bill legislation I will say no more than that it has always formed part of the Unionist policy for Ireland, and that I agree fully with the arguments by which Mr. Walter Long shows the necessity and justice for such a reform. Finally, having given to the Irish farmers the security of a freehold in their holdings at home, and a free entrance into the protected markets of Great Britain; having assisted the development of rural industries of the country; having placed Irish education on a sound and intelligible basis, it would be necessary for the Unionist Party to undertake a reform of the Poor Law in Ireland. Whether this reform will be undertaken the same time as the larger social problems of England, with which the party is pledged to deal, may be a matter of political expediency, but there is no reason why the reform which is so urgently required in Ireland should have to await the adoption of a scheme for England. In outlining the problems, the supreme necessity is the abolition of the present workhouse system. The Vice-Regal Commission and the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws are in agreement as to the guiding principles of reform. They recommend classification by institutions of all the present inmates of the workhouses; the sick in the hospital, the aged and infirm in alms-houses; the mentally defective in asylums. They suggest the bringing together into one institution of all the inmates of one class from a number of neighbouring workhouses. The sick should be sent to existing Poor Law or County hospitals, strengthened by the addition of cottage hospitals in certain districts, while children must be boarded out. The able-bodied paupers, if well conducted, might be placed in labour colonies; if ill conducted, in detention colonies. If these are established, they must be controlled by the State and not by County authorities. Of course, the resources of the existing Unions are much too limited to undertake such sweeping reforms, and the county must be substituted for the Union as the area of charge. The establishment of the Public Assistance authority will relieve us from the greatest scandal which now mars the administration of the Poor Law reform in Ireland--the corrupt appointment of officers in the Poor Law medical service. If we cannot have a State medical service, we can at all events ensure that appointments under the Poor Law shall be placed in incorruptible hands. It is not to be assumed that this short sketch of policy is exhaustive, or that it touches even in outline upon all that the Unionist Party might fairly hope to do in Ireland. It is designed to show only that financially and politically, every step which can be taken to relieve the poverty and oppression which has too long continued in Ireland must be taken by a Unionist Parliament and a Government pledged to secure the administration of law and order in Ireland. I desire on behalf of the Committee under whose auspices this work has been prepared to thank Mr. S. Rosenbaum for the ability and zeal he has shown in editing the book and in preparing it for publication. I wish also to acknowledge my personal debt to Mr. G. Locker Lampson, M.P., who, as Vice-Chairman of the Committee, has shown so much zeal and assiduity in connection with this important work. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: "Commercial Relations Between England and Ireland." By Miss A.E. Murray (P.S. King & Sons).] [Footnote 2: Attorney General in the Irish Parliament, and later Earl of Clare.] HISTORICAL I A NOTE ON HOME RULE BY THE RIGHT HON. A.J. BALFOUR, M.P. The greater part of the present volume is devoted to showing why this country should not adopt Home Rule; but it is perhaps worth while for the ordinary British citizen to ask himself a preliminary question, namely, why he should be pressed even to consider it. That the establishment of an Irish Parliament must involve doubtful and far-reaching consequences is denied by no one. What then is the _primâ facie_ case which has induced many Englishmen and Scotchmen to think that it ought to be seriously debated? If we could erase the past and approach the problem of framing representative institutions in their most practicable shape for the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, who would think it wise to crowd into these small Islands two, or, as some would have it, three, four, or five separate Parliaments, with their separate elections, their separate sets of ministers and Offices, their separate party systems, their divergent policies? Distances are, under modern conditions, so small, our population is so compact, the interests of its component parts are so intimately fused together, that any device at all resembling Home Rule would seem at the best cumbersome, costly, and ineffective; at the worst, perilous to the rights of minorities, the peace of the country, and the unity of the Kingdom. If, then, these common-sense considerations are thrust on one side by so many well-meaning persons, it must surely be because they think that for the destruction of our existing system there is to be found a compelling justification in the history of the past: I am well aware that many of the persons of whom I am thinking profess to base their approval of Home Rule on purely administrative grounds. The Parliament of the United Kingdom, they say, is overweighted; it has more to do than it can manage; we must diminish its excessive burdens; and we can only do so by throwing them in part upon other and subordinate assemblies. But this, if it be a reason at all, is certainly a most insufficient one. Would any human being, anxious merely to give relief to the House of Commons, adopt so illogical a scheme as one which involves a provincial Parliament in Ireland, and no provincial Parliaments anywhere else; which puts Ireland under two Parliaments, and left the rest of the country under one; which, if Irishmen are to be admitted to the Imperial Parliament, would give Ireland privileges and powers denied to England and Scotland, and, if they are to be excluded from the Imperial Parliament, would deprive Ireland of rights which surely she ought to possess? Again, if the "administrative" argument was really more than an ornament of debate, would any one select Ireland as the administrative district in which to make trial of the new system? Would any one, in his desire to relieve the Imperial Parliament of some of its functions, select as an area of self-government a region where one part is divided against another by passions, and, if you will, by prejudices, more violent, and more deeply-rooted than those which afflict any other fraction of the United Kingdom, choose that other fraction where, and how, you will? I take it, then, as certain that in the mind of the ordinary British Home Ruler the justification for Home Rule is not administrative but historical. He pictures Ireland before the English invasion as an organised and independent State, happy in the possession of a native polity which Englishmen have ruthlessly destroyed, now suffering under laws and institutions forced upon her by the conquerors, suitable it may be to men of Anglo-Saxon descent, but utterly alien to the genius and temper of a Celtic population. To him, therefore, Home Rule presents itself as an act of National restitution. Personally, I believe this to be a complete misreading of history. It is not denied--at least I do not deny--that both the English and British Governments, in their dealings with Ireland have done many things that were stupid, and some things that were abominable. But among their follies or their crimes is not to be counted the destruction of any such State as I have described; for no such State existed. They did not uproot one type of civilisation in order to plant another. The Ireland with which England had to deal had not acquired a national organisation, and when controversialists talk of "restoring" this or that institution to Ireland, the only institutions that can possibly be "restored" are in their origin importations from England. This does not, of course, mean that the English were a superior race dealing with an inferior one. Indeed, there is, in my view, no sharp division of race at all. In the veins of the inhabitants of these Islands runs more than one strain of blood. The English are not simply Teutonic--still less are the Irish Celtic. We must conceive the pre-historic inhabitants both of Britain and of Ireland as subject to repeated waves of invasion from the wandering peoples of the Continent. The Celt preceded the Teuton; and in certain regions his language still survives. The Teuton followed him in (as I suppose) far greater numbers, and his language has become that of a large fraction of the civilised world. But in no part of the United Kingdom is the Teutonic strain free from either the Celtic or pre-Celtic strain; nor do I believe that the Celtic strain has anywhere a predominance such as that which, speaking very roughly, the Teutonic strain possesses in the East of these Islands, or the pre-Celtic strain in the West. There is, therefore, no race frontier to be considered, still less is there any question of inferiority or superiority. The Irish difficulty, historically considered, arises in the main from two circumstances. The first of these, to which I have just referred, is that when England began to intervene in the welter of Irish inter-tribal warfare, she was already an organised State, slowly working its way through feudal monarchy to constitutional freedom. The second is that while the religious revolution of the sixteenth century profoundly and permanently affected the larger Island, it left the smaller Island untouched. The result of the first of these has been that Irish institutions, Irish laws, Irish forms of local government, and Irish forms of parliamentary government are necessarily of the English type. The result of the second has been that while no sharp divisions of race exist, divisions of religion have too often taken their place; that in the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century Ireland was not the partner but the victim of English factions; and that civil war in its most brutal form, with the confiscations and penal laws which followed in its train, have fed, have indeed created, the bitter fiction that Ireland was once a "nation" whose national life has been destroyed by its more powerful neighbour. To all this it will perhaps be replied that even if the general accuracy of the foregoing statement be admitted (and nothing about Ireland ever _is_ admitted), it is quite irrelevant to the question of Home Rule; because what is of importance to practical statesmanship is not what did actually happen in the past, but what those who live in the present suppose to have happened. If, therefore, to the imagination of contemporary Irishmen, Ireland appears a second Poland, statesmen must act as if the dream were fact. In such a contention there is some element of truth. But it must be observed in the first place that dreams, however vivid, are not eternal; and, in the second place, that while this particular dream endures it supplies a practical argument against Home Rule, the full force of which is commonly under-rated. For what are the main constitutional dangers of creating rival Parliaments in the same State? They are--friction, collision of jurisdiction, and, in the end, national disintegration. Of these, friction is scarcely to be avoided. I doubt whether it has been wholly avoided in any State where the system, either of co-equal or of subordinate Parliaments, has been thoroughly tried. It certainly was not avoided in the days past when Ireland had a Parliament of its own. It is incredible that it should be avoided in the future, however elaborate be the safeguards which the draughtsman's ingenuity can devise. But friction, in any case inevitable, becomes a peril to every community where the rival assemblies can appeal to nationalist sentiment. The sore gets poisoned. What under happier conditions might be no more than a passing storm of rhetoric, forgotten as soon as ended, will gather strength with time. The appetite for self-assertion, inherent in every assembly, and not likely to be absent from one composed of orators so brilliantly gifted as the Irish, will take the menacing form of an international quarrel. The appeal will no longer be to precedents and statutes, but to patriotism and nationality, and the quarrel of two Parliaments will become the quarrel of two peoples. What will it avail, when that time comes, that in 1912 the Irish leaders declared themselves content with a subordinate legislature? It is their earlier speeches of a very different tenour that will be remembered; and it will be asked, with a logic that may well seem irresistible, by what right Irish "nationality" was ever abandoned by Irish representatives. On these dangers I do not in this brief note propose to dwell, though it seems to me insane either to ignore them or to belittle them. The point on which I desire to insist is that they arise not from the establishment of a subordinate Parliament alone, nor from the existence of a "nationalist" sentiment alone, but from the action and reaction of the sentiment upon the institution, and of the institution upon the sentiment. Let me conclude by asking whether Irish history does not support to the full these gloomy prognostications. The Parliament that came to an end at the Union was a Parliament utterly antagonistic to anything that now goes by the name of Irish Nationalism. In every sphere, except the economic sphere, it represented the forces, political and religious, which the Irish Nationalist now regards as English and alien, and against which, for many years, he has been waging bitter warfare. Yet this Parliament, representing only a small minority of the inhabitants of Ireland, found its position of subordination intolerable. It chose a moment of national disaster to assert complete equality, and so used its powers that at last the Union became inevitable. It is surely no remedy for the ancient wrongs of Ireland--real, alas! though they were--that we should compel her again to tread the weary round of constitutional experiment, and that, in the name of Irish Nationalism, we should again make her the victim of an outworn English scheme, which has been tried, which has failed, which has been discarded, and which, in my judgment, ought never to be revived. II HISTORICAL RETROSPECT BY J.R. FISHER (Author of "The End of the Irish Parliament"; Editor of the _Northern Whig_) When Pitt commended his proposals for the Union to "the dispassionate and sober judgment of the Parliament of Ireland," he argued that such a measure was at once "transcendently important" to the Empire, and "eminently useful" to the true interests of Ireland. Lord Clare, as an Irishman, naturally reversed the order, but his compelling points were the same:--To Ireland the Union was a "vital interest," which at the same time "intimately affected the strength and prosperity of the British Empire." From that day to this the two fundamental arguments for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland have remained unchanged, and they apply with ever-growing force to the existing situation at home and abroad. But the argument from history has, perhaps, been a little neglected of late, and calls for at least a passing notice. Popular oratory will have it that England has always been keen and aggressive in regard to the incorporation of Ireland within the Empire, but as a matter of fact, the very opposite has been the case. From the time of Pope Adrian's Bull, _Laudabiliter_, in 1154, which granted to Henry II. the Lordship of Ireland, but which Henry left unemployed for seventeen years, to that of the Irish petition for a legislative Union in 1703, which remained unanswered for nearly a century, vacillation and hesitation rather than eagerness for aggression have been the characteristic marks of English policy in Ireland. Far-sighted statesmen could point out the benefits to Ireland from such a connection, but as a rule it was the presence of actual foreign danger that forced the British Parliament to act. For four centuries the Lordship of the English Kings over Ireland was largely nominal. It was only when the religious quarrels of the sixteenth century became acute that the Tudors--already alarmed at the action of the Irish Parliament in recognising and crowning a pretender in Dublin Castle--found themselves compelled to assert direct Kingship. From that time till the legislative Union every enemy of England could safely count on finding a foothold and active friends in Ireland. It is much too late in the day to indulge in any recriminations on this score. The issues were the most tremendous that have divided Europe; each side was passionately convinced of the rightness and justice of its cause. There were, in Pitt's words relating to a later day, "dreadful and inexcusable cruelties" on the one side, and "lamentable severities" upon the other, just as there were all over Europe. But in the case of Ireland every evil was exaggerated and every danger intensified by the system of dualism which encouraged resistance from within and invited interference from without. For England and English liberty it was more than once a question of existence or extinction, and the knowledge of the constant danger from the immediate west did not tend to sweeten the situation. In Elizabeth's time the menace was from Spain; Spanish forces twice succeeded in effecting a landing on the Irish coast, and were welcomed by the inhabitants. Spain was then the most powerful enemy of England and of civil and religious liberty all the world over; Elizabeth was declared by the Pope to have forfeited the crown of England, and if the Armada had been successful at sea, the Spanish army in England would have found enthusiastic supporters in Ireland. Later on it was in Ireland, and by the aid of subsidies from an Irish Parliament, that Strafford raised 10,000 men to invade Scotland and England in support of Charles I. against his Parliament, and, incidentally, to drive the Scottish settlers out of Ulster. As the Articles of Impeachment put it, his object in raising the Irish army was "for the ruin and destruction of England and of his Majesty's subjects, and altering and subverting the fundamental laws and established Government of this Kingdom." Strafford fell, but the insurrection and massacre of 1641 were the natural result of his intrigues with the Irish Parliament and the Irish chiefs. It was under the impression of this manifest danger that Cromwell--a century and a half before his time--abolished the Dublin Parliament and summoned Irish representatives to the first United Parliament at Westminster. As the power of Spain declined, France came to be the chief menace to England and to the peace of Europe. Again Ireland instinctively allied herself with the enemy. Tyrconnel now played the part of Strafford, and with the aid of French troops and French subsidies, and a sympathetic Irish Parliament, endeavoured to destroy the Ulster Plantation, and make Ireland a jumping-off place for the invasion of England. The Irish Parliament, in the meantime, did its part by confiscating the estates of the settlers, driving out the Protestant clergy, and outlawing English sympathisers by name in "the hugest Bill of Attainder which the world has seen."[3] It was the successful defence of Derry and Enniskillen by the Scotch and English colonists that saved Ireland and gave King William and his troops the foothold that enabled them to save England, too, in the Irish campaign of the following year. Not the least remarkable instance of the use to which separate Parliaments within the Kingdom could be put for the ruin of England occurred during the activity of James the Second's son, the so-called "Old Pretender." In 1723 his chief adviser, the Earl of Mar, presented to the Regent of France a memorial setting out in detail a project for betraying Britain into the power of France by dismembering the British Parliament.[4] The Irish Parliament, in close alliance with a restored Scottish Parliament, was to be used to curb the power of England. "The people of Ireland and Scotland," according to Mar, "are of the same blood and possess similar interests," and they should thus always be allied against England and oppose their "united strength"--backed, of course, by that of France--to any undue growth of the English power. The scheme came to nothing, but if the Pretender had possessed a little more energy and capacity; if the French Court had been in earnest, and if Ireland and Scotland had each possessed a separate Parliament, "with an executive responsible to it," and with the control of a national militia, the story of 1745 might have ended differently. It is necessary that these facts should be kept in mind when complaint is made of the oppressive and demoralising Irish Penal Code. That Code no one defends now, although it was lauded at the time by Swift as a bulwark of the Church against the Catholics on the one hand, and the Presbyterians on the other. It was the product of a cruel and bigoted age, and at its worst it was less severe than similar laws prevailing against Protestants in those parts of the Continent where the Roman Church held sway.[5] Spain and France were at that time vastly more powerful, populous, and wealthy countries than England: England was never free from the dread of foreign invasion, and to the would-be invader Ireland always held a guiding light and an open door. Finally, it must also be remembered that at a time when the chances seemed fairly even, as between William and England on the one hand, and James and France on the other, the Prince of Orange, accustomed to the German way of settling such differences, had made formal offer to Tyrconnel of a working compromise--the free exercise of their religion to the Irish Catholics: half the Churches of the Kingdom: half the employments, civil and military, if they pleased, and even the moiety of their ancient properties. "These proposals," says the Chevalier Wogan, Tyrconnel's nephew and confidant, who is our informant, "though they were to have had an English Act of Parliament for their sanction, were refused with universal contempt." In other words, the party which with the assistance of France still hoped to obtain all, refused to be content with half. It is true that Wogan, in the letter from which we have quoted,[6] after stating that the exiles, "in the midst of their hard usage abroad, could not be brought to repent of their obstinacy," justifies their refusal by the way in which the Articles of Limerick were afterwards disregarded by the Irish Parliament. But this is evidently an argument of retrospective invention, and it may fairly be argued that the position would have been very different if peace on equal terms had been made on the direct authority of the King before Aughrim rather than by his deputies after Limerick. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. And if the separatist theory has involved, as we have seen, such external dangers to the Empire, the case for the old Irish Parliament from the point of the "vital interests" of Ireland itself is even weaker. By it the bulk of the Irish people were treated for a century in a fashion described by an Irish Chief Secretary as "ingrafting absurdity on the wisdom of England and tyranny on the religion that professes humanity." It was conspicuous for its corruption even in a corrupt age, and, as was inevitable, it involved Ireland in constant conflicts with England, conflicts that were vexatious and injurious to both countries. Swift, who, amongst those who have not read his works, passes for an Irish patriot, is at his savagest when inveighing against this sham Parliament.[7] Its members are, he says-- "...three hundred brutes All involved in wild disputes, Roaring till their lungs are spent Privilege of Parliament'!" And if only the Devil were some day to come "with poker fiery red," and-- "When the den of thieves is full, Quite destroy the harpies' nest, How might then our Isle be blest!" Capable observers, from Swift to Arthur Young, bear continuous testimony to the systematic and habitual corruption of the Irish Parliament. Offices were multiplied and were distributed among clamorous applicants on the ground of family or personal influence, or political support--never by any chance on the ground of merit or capacity. Public money was squandered for private purposes. Sir George Macartney, himself an Irishman and a Member of Parliament, in his "Account of Ireland," speaking of the year 1745, says--[8] "The House of Commons now began to appropriate a considerable part of the additional duties to their own use. This was done under pretence of encouraging public works such as inland navigation, collieries, and manufactories of different kinds; but the truth is that most of these public works were private jobs carried on under the direction and for the advantage of some considerable gentlemen in the House of Commons." Arthur Young, whose careful and impartial study of the state of affairs in Ireland under the Dublin Parliament has become a classic, speaks of the same class of transaction,[9] "The members of the House of Commons at the conclusion of the sessions met for the purpose of voting the uses to which this money should be applied: the greater part of it was amongst themselves, their friends or dependants, and though some work of apparent use to the public was always the plea, yet under the sanction there were a great number of very scandalous jobs." Young admits that some useful public work was done, but that most of the money was misappropriated was matter of common report. After a reference to the construction of a certain canal he adds-- "Some gentlemen I have talked with on this subject have replied, 'It is a job: 'twas meant as a job: you are not to consider it as a canal of trade, but as a canal for public money!' ... Sorry I am to say that a history of public works in Ireland would be a history of jobs." Money was voted, he says elsewhere, for-- "Collieries where there is no coal, for bridges where there are no rivers, navigable cuts where there is no water, harbours where there are no ships, and churches where there are no congregations." And when the Union was finally on its way, Hamilton Rowan, one of the founders of the United Irishmen, then in exile in America, wrote home to his father: "I congratulate you on the report which spreads here that a Union is intended. In that measure I see the downfall of one of the most corrupt assemblies, I believe, that ever existed."[10] It is little wonder that men of good will in Ireland prayed to be delivered from such a Parliament. Molyneux, the first of the Irish Parliamentary patriots, whose book, "The Case of Ireland's being Governed by Laws made in England Stated," was burnt by the common hangman, pleaded indeed for a reformed and independent Parliament, but only because fair representation in the English Parliament was at the time "a happiness they could hardly hope for." And a few years later the Irish House, in congratulating Queen Anne on the Union of England and Scotland, added, "May God put it into your royal heart to add greater strength and lustre to your Crown by a yet more comprehensive Union." The English Parliament, through sheer lethargy and carelessness, missed at this time an opportunity which would have peacefully launched Ireland on her career on an equality with Scotland and England, and must have profoundly modified the relations of the two countries. Immediate prosperity, in the case of a land wasted by a century of strife and bloodshed, was not indeed to be hoped for any more than in the case of Scotland, which had still two armed rebellions, and much bickering and jealousy in store before settling down to peaceful development. But if Ireland had been granted her petitions for Union in 1703 and 1707, and had thus secured equal laws and equal trading privileges, she would at any rate have emerged from her period of trial and discord not later than Scotland, and would have anticipated the economic and social advantages predicted by Adam Smith,[11] when he says-- "By a union with Great Britain, Ireland would gain, besides the freedom of trade, other advantages much more important, and which would much more than compensate any increase of taxes that might accompany that union. By the union with England, the middling and inferior ranks of people in Scotland gained a complete deliverance from the power of an aristocracy which had always before oppressed them. By a union with Great Britain, the greater part of the people of all ranks in Ireland would gain an equally complete deliverance from a much more oppressive aristocracy, an aristocracy not founded, like that of Scotland, in the natural and respectable distinctions of birth and fortune, but in the most odious of all distinctions, those of religious and political prejudices.... Without a union with Great Britain, the inhabitants of Ireland are not likely, for many ages, to consider themselves as one people." Pitt, who was proud to proclaim himself the pupil of Adam Smith in politics and in economics, found himself, a quarter of a century after these words were written, in a position to carry out, in face of great difficulties and dangers at home and abroad, the beneficent reform advocated by his great master--a reform which, as we have seen, could have been carried a century earlier without any difficulty whatever. But the century that had been wasted involved many concurrent miseries and misfortunes: social and economic stagnation, an intensification of religious and racial bitterness, conspiracy, and invasion; savage outbreaks savagely repressed. When the time comes to measure up the rights and wrongs of those dark days, the judgment on England will assuredly be that her fault was not the carrying of the Union, but the delaying of that great measure of reform and emancipation until it was almost too late. The story of the Union has been told and retold in the utmost detail throughout the century. The present writer has attempted quite recently to summarise it,[12] and there is little to add. The charge that it was carried by corruption is simply another way of saying that it had, constitutionally, to be passed through the Dublin Parliament, that body which, from the days of Swift's invective to those of its final condemnation, lived and moved and had its being solely in and by corruption. As Lord Castlereagh, who had charge of the Bill in the Irish House of Commons, put it, the Government was forced to recognise the situation and its task was "to buy out and secure to the Crown forever the fee simple of Irish corruption, which has so long enfeebled the power of Government and endangered the connection." THE UNION. The Irish Parliament had run its course, and had involved the unhappy country in chaos, bankruptcy, revolution, and bloodshed. Lord Clare--a late and reluctant convert to the policy of the Union--said in the Irish House of Lords (Feb. 10, 1800)-- "We have not three years of redemption from bankruptcy, intolerable taxation, nor one hour's security against the renewal exterminating civil war. Session after session have you been compelled to enact laws of unexampled rigour and novelty to repress the horrible excesses of the mass of your people: and the fury of murder and pillage and desolation have so outrun all legislative exertions that you have been at length driven to the hard necessity of breaking down the pale of municipal law, and putting your courage under the ban of military government--and in every little circle of dignity and independence we hear whispers of discontent at the temperate discretion with which it is administered.... Look to your civil and religious dissensions. Look to the fury of political faction and the torrents of human blood that stain the face of your country, and of what materials is that man composed who will not listen with patience and good will to any proposition that can be made to him for composing the distractions and healing the wounds and alleviating the miseries of this devoted nation?" Lord Clare's words--unanswered and unanswerable then and now--constitute a sufficient comment on the foolish fable of later invention, that Ireland was a land of peace and harmony, of orderly government and abounding prosperity, when a wicked English minister came and "stole away the Parliament House"--since which all has been decay and desolation. The halcyon period is generally made to coincide with that of "Grattan's Parliament"--of the semi-independent and quite unworkable Constitution of 1782, which had been extorted from England's weakness when Ireland was denuded of regular troops, and at the mercy of a Volunteer National Guard, when Cornwallis had just surrendered at Yorktown, and Spain and France were once more leagued with half Europe for the destruction of the British Empire. It is quite true that the latter part of the eighteenth century was, on the whole, a time of considerable prosperity to certain classes in Ireland--a prosperity varied by periods of acute depression and distress. But that prosperity, such as it was, neither began with Grattan's Parliament nor ended with it--had, indeed, no more connection with the Irish Parliament in any of its phases than had the Goodwin Sands with Tenterden steeple. With the exception of the respite between the Treaty of Versailles and the outbreak of the French Revolution, England was almost constantly at war, or feverishly preparing for war. Simultaneously came the unprecedented increase of urban industry, following on the invention of the steam-engine and spinning machinery. The result was an enormous and growing demand for corn, beef, and pork, sailcloth, stores of all kinds for our armies and fleets, a demand which England, owing to the growth of her town population and the consequent growth of the home demand, was unable adequately to meet. Ireland reaped the benefit. As a largely agricultural country, she was as yet little influenced by the discoveries of Watt, of Hargreaves, of Arkwright, or of Crompton. But her long-rested soil could produce in apparently unlimited quantities those very products of which the British forces stood most in need. The fleets were victualled and fitted out at Cork, and they carried thence a constant stream of supplies of all sorts for our armies in the field. Indeed, so keen was the demand that it was soon discovered that not only our own troops, but those of the enemy, were receiving Irish supplies, and smugglers on the south and west coasts reaped a rich harvest. The result was obvious. Cattle graziers and middlemen made enormous profits, rents were doubled and trebled. Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Limerick and Belfast flourished exceedingly on war prices and war profits. But there is no evidence that the mass of the people in their degraded and debased condition shared to any extent in this prosperity. It was at this very period that Arthur O'Connor spoke of them as "the worst clad, the worst fed, the worst housed people in Europe." Whiteboyism, outrage and lawlessness spread over the face of the country, and, as Lord Clare reminded Parliament, "session after session have you been compelled to enact laws of unexampled rigour and novelty to repress the horrible excesses of the mass of your people." It has been made a charge against the Union that during some disturbed periods of the nineteenth century the United Parliament had to pass "Coercion" Acts at the rate of nearly one every session. The complainants should look nearer home and they would find from the records of the Irish Legislature that during the "halcyon" days of "Grattan's Parliament"--the eighteen years between 1782 and the Union--no less than fifty-four Coercion Acts were passed, some of them of a thoroughness and ferocity quite unknown in later legislation. The close of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth were, in reality, in spite of a certain amount of agrarian crime, organised and subsidised from abroad, a period of much greater peace and more widespread prosperity than the bloodstained years that marked the close of the eighteenth century--and of the Irish Parliament. Another fiction regarding the Union may perhaps be worth notice. It has sometimes been suggested that it was carried by a venal oligarchy in opposition to the will of the great mass of the population, of the Roman Catholic population in particular. This is precisely the reverse of the truth. The oligarchy controlled the Parliament, and it therefore followed that the uniformly corrupt traditions of the Irish Parliament had to be observed in carrying the Union as in carrying every other Government Bill throughout the century. But, so far from the Act of Union being carried by landowners and Protestants against the will of the Catholics, it was, as a matter of fact, carried with the ardent and unanimous assent and support of the Catholic hierarchy, and against the embittered opposition of the old ascendancy leaders, who feared the loss of their influence of power. The evidence on this point is documentary and precise. Indeed, no one thought of doubting or challenging it at the time; Grattan contented himself with denouncing the Catholic Bishops as "a band of prostituted men." Dr. Troy, Archbishop of Dublin, was, as his correspondence shows, a warm, consistent and active supporter of the Union. Dr. Dillon, Archbishop of Tuam, wrote in September, 1799, that he had had an opportunity during his recent visitation "of acquiring the strongest conviction that this measure alone can restore harmony and happiness to our unhappy country." His neighbour, Dr. Bodkin, Bishop Galway, wrote that the Union was the only measure to save "poor infatuated Ireland" from "ruin and destruction." Dr. Moylan, Bishop of Cork, was equally emphatic. "I am perfectly satisfied," he says, "that it is impossible to extinguish the feuds and animosities which disgrace this Kingdom, nor give it the advantages of its natural local situation, without a Union with Great Britain. God grant that it may soon take place!" As for the feeling of the rank and file of the electors--under a very widely extended franchise--two examples will suffice. In two cases--in the County of Kerry and the borough of Newry--both open constituencies--by-elections occurred during the passing of the Union legislation. In both instances the Roman Catholic vote predominated, and in both the feeling was so strong in favour of the Union that no opponent dared to face the poll. In after years Mr. Maurice Fitzgerald, the Knight of Kerry, recounted his experiences. "Having accepted office," he says, "as a supporter of the Union, I went to two elections pending the measure and was returned without opposition in a county where the Roman Catholic interest greatly preponderated, and a declaration almost unanimous in favour of the Union proceeded from the County of Kerry. One of my most strenuous supporters in bringing forward that declaration was Mr. Maurice O'Connell, uncle of Mr. Daniel O'Connell, and my most active partisan was Mr. John O'Connell, brother of Mr. Daniel O'Connell." In Newry an attempt was made to put up an anti-Unionist candidate, but the Roman Catholic Bishop, Dr. Lennan, met and repulsed the intruder in militant fashion. "Mr. Bell," he reports to Archbishop Troy, "declined the poll, and surrendered yesterday. The Catholics stuck together like the Macedonian phalanx, and with ease were able to turn the scale in favour of the Chancellor of the Exchequer." To the Irish Catholic at the time of the Union, the Dublin legislature was, indeed, in the words of Mr. Denys Scully, a leading Catholic layman, "not our Parliament, for we had no share in it, but their Club-house." The summing up of the whole matter is perhaps best expressed in the measured judgment of Mr. John Morley in his study of the life of Edmund Burke. Burke, in an evil moment for himself and for Ireland, had lent himself in 1785 to what Mr. Morley called the "factious" and "detestable" course of Fox and the English Whig leaders in destroying Pitt's Commercial Propositions. "Had it not been for what he himself called the delirium of the preceding session" (writes Burke's biographer)[13] "he would have seen that Pitt was in truth taking his first measures for the emancipation of Ireland from an unjust and oppressive subordination and for her installation as a corporate member of the Empire--the only position permanently possible for her.... A substantial boon was sacrificed amid bonfires and candles to the phantom of Irish Legislative Independence. The result must have convinced Pitt more firmly than ever that his great master, Adam Smith, was right in predicting that nothing short of the Union of the two countries would deliver Ireland out of the hands of her fatuous chiefs and of their too worthy followers." What would Mr. John Morley, the historian who wrote those words in the prime of his intellectual strength and judgment, have said if any one had told him that in his old age Lord Morley, the politician, would have been actively engaged in assisting another generation of "fatuous chiefs" and still more worthy followers to sacrifice the true interests of Ireland in the pursuit of "the phantom of Irish Legislative Independence"? AFTER THE UNION. That the Union to some extent failed in the beneficent effects which it was calculated to produce in Ireland is only another instance of the working of the "curse of mis-chance" which has so often, before and since, interposed to thwart the intentions of statesmen in their dealings with the two countries. Pitt, Castlereagh, and Cornwallis, the three men chiefly concerned in planning the change, were all agreed in explaining that the Union was not a policy complete in itself, but was only the necessary foundation upon which a true remedial policy was to be based. As Lord Cornwallis said at the time, "the word 'Union' will not cure the ills of this wretched country. It is a necessary preliminary, but a great deal more remains to be done." Catholic Emancipation, a series of parliamentary, educational, financial, and economic reforms, and the abolition of the Viceroyalty, the visible symbol of separatism and dependence, were all essential portions of Pitt's scheme. But Pitt was destined to sink into an early grave without seeing any of them materially furthered. Treacherous colleagues and the threatened insanity of the King blocked the way of some of them: England's prolonged struggle for existence against the power of Napoleon, involving as it did financial embarrassment and a generation of political reaction, accounted for the rest. Pitt and Castlereagh resigned on the King's refusal to accept their advice, "and so," as Lord Rosebery says,[14] "all went wrong." It was "like cutting the face out of a portrait and leaving the picture in the frame. The fragment of policy flapped forlornly on the deserted mansions of the capital." A generation of agitation, strife, and discontent was to pass before Emancipation was carried, and the reforms had to wait still longer. Meanwhile a wonderful change of front had taken place. The leading opponents of the Union--Plunket, Foster, Beresford--even Grattan himself--came to accept it, and, in some cases, figured as its warmest defenders. And the Catholic Party, whom we have seen so strongly supporting the Union, gradually grew into opponents. Daniel O'Connell, whose brother and uncle were the leading supporters of the Union candidate for Kerry, started a formidable agitation first for Emancipation and then for Repeal of the Union. In the former he succeeded because enlightened public opinion in both countries was on his side: in the latter he failed utterly, both parties in Great Britain and a large section in Ireland being inflexibly opposed to any such reactionary experiment. In the end O'Connell died disillusioned and broken-hearted, and the Repeal movement disappeared from the field of Irish politics till revived many years later in the form of Home Rule. But whilst recognising the fact that the Union, owing to the causes stated, failed partially, and for a time, to respond to all the anticipations of its authors, readers must be warned against accepting the wild and woeful tales of decay and ruin that were recklessly circulated for propagandist purposes by O'Connell and the Repealers. Many people who are content to take their facts at second hand have thus come to believe that the legislative Union changed a smiling and prosperous Kingdom into a blighted province where manufactures and agriculture, commerce and population fell into rapid and hopeless decline. Needless to say, things do not happen in that way: economic changes, for better or for worse, are slow and gradual and depend on natural causes, not on artificial. Ireland has not, as a whole, kept in line with nineteenth-century progress, and her population, after a striking increase for over forty years, showed under peculiar causes an equally striking decrease; but to assert that her course has been one of universal decay and of decay dating from the Union is to say what is demonstrably untrue. It was inevitable that a city of very limited industry like Dublin should suffer from the disappearance of its Parliament, which brought into residence for some months in every year some hundreds of persons of wealth and distinction. It was also inevitable that the mechanical inventions to which we have already alluded--the steam-engine, the "spinning jenny," and the "mule"--which revolutionised the world's industry, should have their effect in Ireland also. Under primitive conditions, with lands almost roadless and communications slow, difficult and costly, the various districts of any country had of necessity to produce articles of food and clothing to satisfy their requirements, or they had to go without. With the progress of invention, and with the opening up of the world by roads and canals, a totally different state of things presents itself. Industries tend to become centralised--the fittest survive and grow, the unfit wither away. This is what occurred in many districts of England and Scotland, and the course of events was naturally the same in Ireland. When we read of small towns now lying idle, which in the eighteenth century produced woollen cloth, linen, cotton, fustian, boots, hats, glass, beer, and food products, it simply means that a more highly organised system of industry has in its progress left such districts behind in the race. The woollen manufacture has centred in Yorkshire, cotton in Lancashire, linen in Belfast, and so forth--one district dwindled as others advanced and tended to monopolise production, without the legislature having anything to say to it. To say that this or that manufacture is not so prosperous in Ireland as it was a century ago before power looms, spindles, steamships, and railways came to revolutionise industry, is simply to say that Ireland, like other countries, has had its part, for better or for worse, in the great world-movement of nineteenth-century industry. The figures of Irish exports and imports lend no countenance to the story of decay setting in with the Union. Taking the two decennial periods, before and after the Union, the figures are as follows:--[15] Total value Total value of imports. of exports. 1790-1801 ... ... £49,000,000 £51,000,000 1802-1813 ... ... £74,000,000 £63,000,000 ----------- ----------- Increase ... £25,000,000 £12.000,000 an increase of over fifty per cent. in imports, and over twenty-three per cent. in exports in the ten years after the Union as compared with the ten years before it. Taking single years the result is similar. The amalgamation of the two Exchequers and the financial re-arrangements that followed, put an end to the accurate record of exports and imports until quite recently, but the increase during the early years of the Union and also over the whole country is unmistakable. The average annual value of Irish exports at the time of the Union was, according to Mr. Chart.[16] £4,000,000. In 1826 they had increased to £8,000,000, a corresponding increase being recorded in imports. Coming down to the period of the Financial Relations Commission (1895), that very cautious and painstaking statistician, the late Sir Robert Giffen,[17] roughly estimated Irish imports at £25,000,000 and exports at £20,000,000. Since that time the Irish Agricultural Department has been created, and has undertaken the collection and tabulation of such statistics. Turning to their latest report we find that the imports had in 1910 attained the relatively enormous figure of £65,000,000, and the exports £65,800,000, a total of over £130,000,000 in place of nine or ten millions, at the very outside, of the time of the Union. And it is worth noting in addition that, for the first time in these recorded tables, Ireland's exports exceed her imports. But we are assured with triumphant and invincible despondency that population has decreased alarmingly. The movements of population since the time of the Union have been, it may be admitted, very remarkable, but the figures are double-edged and require a more careful handling than they generally receive. If we are to assume, as the prophets of gloom will have it, that increase and decrease of population are an infallible test of a country's growth or decay, then Ireland for nearly half a century after the Union must have been the most prosperous country in Europe. The population of Ireland, which in 1792 was estimated at 4,088,226, had increased in 1814 to 5,937,856, in 1821 to 6,801,827, and in 1841 to 8,196,597. In other words, the population, like the trade, of the doomed island had more than doubled since the Union. We doubt if any European country could say as much. Then came the great disaster, the potato famine of 1846-47, which, undoubtedly, dealt a stunning blow to Irish agriculture. It was not the first, nor the worst, of Irish famines--there is evidence that the famines of 1729 and 1740 were, proportionately, more widespread and more appalling in their effects. But, occurring as it did, in the middle of the nineteenth century, with the press of the world as witnesses, it attracted immense attention, and the nations, whom England, then high and mighty in the undisputed supremacy of the doctrines of _laissez faire_ and free trade, were not slow in retorting on their mentor. The State, it was laid down dogmatically by the economists, must not do anything to feed the starving people, because that would interfere with the principle of private enterprise; and as there was naturally no private enterprise in wide stretches of country where landlord and tenant, shopkeeper and labourer, were involved in common ruin, the people starved. For the same reason, the sufferers must not be paid to do useful work, so they were set to make roads that led to nowhere--and that have been grass-grown ever since--and to build walls that had to be pulled down again. It was a ghastly specimen of doctrinaire dogmatism run mad, and though it was not the fault of the Government so much as of the arid doctrines of ill-understood economics which then prevailed in the schools, it did more than anything to embitter the relations between the Irish people and the Imperial Government. The death-rate from famine and famine-fever was appalling. The poor law system--then a new experiment in Ireland--broke down hopelessly, and agitators were not slow to improve the occasion by denouncing the "callousness" of the Imperial Government. Nations, as a rule, recover from such calamities as famine, war, and pestilence with surprising quickness; but there were certain incidents connected with the famine of 1846-47 that intensified and perpetuated the evil in the case of Ireland. We have already referred to the high-and-dry doctrines of _laissez faire_ then in the ascendant, and any real or permanent recovery of Irish agriculture was rendered practically impossible by England's adhesion to the doctrine of free imports, by the abolition of the Corn Laws, and by the crushing increase of taxation under Mr Gladstone's budgets of 1853 and the succeeding years. Ireland was entitled under the Act of Union to "special exemptions and abatements" in taxation, in consideration of her backward economic condition. All Chancellors of the Exchequer till Mr. Gladstone's time respected these exemptions, and although no one could suggest, in view of Ireland's recent progress, that she could have been permanently exempted from the burdens imposed on the British taxpayer, it will be admitted that the time chosen by Mr. Gladstone for abruptly raising the taxation of Ireland from 14_s._ 9_d._ per head to 26_s._ 7_d._ was inopportune, not to say ungenerous. Sir David Barbour, in his minority report on the Financial Relations Commission, perhaps the most carefully thought out and the most practical of all the many reports emanating from that heterogeneous body, gives a table of the "estimated true revenue" extracted from Great Britain and Ireland respectively from 1819 to 1894. This table shows that the revenue raised from Ireland was increased between 1849-50 and 1859-60 from £4,861,465 to £7,700,334, and he adds: "It will be observed that a great and rapid rise took place in the taxation of Ireland during the decade 1850-1860. This great increase was due to the equalisation of the spirit duties in the two countries, and the extension of the Income Tax to Ireland. The special circumstances of Ireland do not appear to have received due consideration at this time. Many arguments of a general character might be employed to justify the equalisation of the spirit duties, and the imposition of an Income Tax, but Ireland was entitled under the Act of Union to such exemptions and abatements as her circumstances might require, and the time was not opportune for imposing additional burdens upon her." Irish Agriculture was thus almost simultaneously struck down by the greatest famine of the century, which swept away two million of the population, disabled for resuming the competition by the free admission of foreign grain, which in the long run rendered successful corn-growing in Ireland impossible, and saddled with an additional two and a quarter millions of taxation. When remonstrated with, Mr. Gladstone retorted flippantly that he could not see that it was any part of the rights of man that an Irishman should be able to make himself drunk more cheaply than the inhabitant of Great Britain. The taunt would have possessed more relevance if whisky had been an article of importation. Seeing, however, that it was an article of manufacture and export, employing directly or indirectly much capital and labour, the injury to Irish industry was very serious, many distilleries and breweries being obliged to close their doors. As Miss Murray says in her masterly work on Irish commerce[18]:-- "Just as the country was thoroughly exhausted from the effects of the famine, the whole financial policy adopted towards Ireland changed, and Irish taxation began to be rapidly assimilated to British at a time when great prosperity had come to Great Britain, and the reverse to Ireland. The repeal of the Corn Laws had stimulated the commercial prosperity of Britain; large cities were expanding, railways were developing, and the foreign trade of the country was increasing by leaps and bounds. But Ireland had just passed through the awful ordeal of famine: her population had suddenly diminished by one fourth, there had been a universal decline in Irish manufactures, the repeal of the Corn Laws had begun the destruction of the Irish export trade in cereals, and the extension of the Poor Law system to Ireland had greatly increased the local rates. Just as the famine subsided the results of free trade began to take effect. Wheat-growing decayed; local industries were destroyed by the competition of large manufacturing towns in Great Britain; every class of Irish producers saw ruin staring him in the face, while landlords and farmers were further impoverished by the huge poor-rates, which sometimes reached 20_s._ in the £. The misery and poverty of the country could hardly have been greater, and to us at the present day it seems extraordinary that just at this inopportune time the Government should have thought fit to go back from the conciliatory fiscal policy which had existed since 1817." It is not to be wondered at that Gladstonian finance was ever after looked at with well-grounded suspicion in Ireland. Another circumstance that has had a serious and lasting effect on Irish population has still to be mentioned. At first the emigration movement was largely a flight from starvation, a movement that would have come to an end under normal circumstances with the end of the famine crisis. But as we have seen, the conditions were not normal; the crisis was artificially protracted by injurious financial legislation. And, in addition, although many of them perished by the way owing to the abominably insanitary conditions of the coffin ships employed for the journey, the emigrants arriving at New York or Boston soon found conditions unexpectedly favourable for the class of labour which they were best qualified to supply. America was just then opening up and turning to the new West, and the demand for unskilled labour for railway work was unlimited. The Irish emigrant seldom or never takes to the land when he goes to America, and navvy work just suited him. To a man accustomed to sixpence a day the wages offered seemed to represent unbounded wealth, and as the news spread in Ireland the move to America, which at the first seemed hopeless exile, presented itself as a highly desirable step towards social betterment. Emigration is now the result of attraction from America rather than of repulsion from Ireland, a fact which explains the failure of more than one well-meant attempt to check the movement by action on this side of the Atlantic. ULSTER'S DEVELOPMENT. A word should perhaps be given to the position of the industrial portion of Ulster, which has flourished so remarkably since the Union. This of itself affords sufficient proof that that Act, whatever its defects, cannot be held accountable for any lack of prosperity that may still exist in other parts of Ireland. It is sometimes stated that Ulster was favoured at the time when the commercial jealousy of certain English cities succeeded in securing a prohibition of the Irish woollen industry. The southern wool, it is alleged, was checked, and the Belfast linen was favoured--hence the prosperity of the northern capital. This is a really curious perversion of quite modern history. The linen industry was at the time in question in no sense confined to the North and was by no means prominent in Belfast. It was distributed over many districts of Ireland, for whilst Louis Crommelin was sent to Lisburn to look after the French colony settled there, and to improve and promote the industry, his brother William was sent on a similar errand to Kilkenny, and stations were also started at Rathkeale, Cork and Waterford. When, later on, the Irish Parliament distributed bounties through the Linen Board, the seat of that Board was in Dublin, and its operations included every county in Ireland. At the time of the Union, indeed, the linen manufacture was almost unknown in Belfast, the "manufacturers" or handloom weavers in the North, as elsewhere, living mostly in the smaller country towns and bringing their webs in for sale on certain market days. From Benn's "History of the Town of Belfast," published early in the century, we learn that at that time the principal manufacture of the town was "cotton in its various branches." This industry had been introduced in 1777, we are told, to give employment in the poorhouse, but it caught on and spread amazingly. "In many of the streets and populous roads in the suburbs of the town, particularly at Ballymacarrett, the sound of the loom issues almost from every house, and all, with very few exceptions, are employed in the different branches of the cotton trade. In the year 1800 this business engaged in Belfast and its neighbourhood 27,000 persons." In 1814 there were eight cotton mills at work with steam power driving 99,000 spindles. On the other hand, "there is very little linen cloth woven in this town or parish. In 1807 Belfast contained 723 looms, only four of which were for weaving linen." The story of the sudden change from cotton to linen is an instructive one. Cotton appears to have forced itself to the front because cotton spinning could be carried on by machinery whilst the linen weavers were still dependent on the spinning wheel for their yarn. It was Andrew Mulholland, the owner of the York Street cotton mill, who first took note of the fact that while the supply of hand-made linen yarn was quite insufficient to justify the manufacture of linen on a large scale in Belfast, quantities of flax were shipped from Belfast to Manchester to be spun there and reimported as yarn. Mulholland determined to try if he could not spin yarn as well as the Manchester people, and accordingly in 1830, "the first bundle of linen yarn produced by machinery in Belfast was thrown off from the York Street mill." That, and not legislation nor any system of State bounties or State favour, was the beginning of the Belfast linen industry in which the York Street mill still maintains its deserved pre-eminence. When the critical moment arrived, as it does in the case of all industries, when manufacturers must adapt themselves to new methods or succumb, the Belfast leaders of industry rose to the occasion and secured for themselves the chief share in the linen trade. In the rest of Ireland, it is true, the manufacture dwindled and disappeared, but whatever may have been the cause of that disappearance, it was certainly not the Act of Union. THE LAND QUESTION. The agrarian problem has caused more trouble in Ireland than any other, and statesmen have long recognised that on its definite settlement depends the hope of permanent peace and progress over the greater part of the country. It is not, and never has been, the real cause of rural depopulation, for, as we have seen, the increase of the rural population was most rapid at the time when agrarian conditions were at their very worst, whilst on the other hand emigration continues almost unchecked in counties where the question has been virtually settled. And in 1881 the late Mr. J.H. Tuke discovered by an analysis of the census returns that the only "townlands" in which the rural population was actually increasing were those scattered along the western seaboard of Ireland, where the tenure and the conditions of existence seemed most hopeless. But, as the Devon Commission announced in 1845, it was an essentially defective system of land tenure that lay at the root of the perennial discontent with which Ireland was troubled, and things went from bad to worse until the Party organised for the defence of the Union and the social betterment of Ireland took up the task of settling the question by the transfer on fair terms of the ownership of the soil from the large landowners to the tenants. The system of land tenure in England has been the growth of custom gradually hardening into law; in Ireland the traditional custom was suddenly abolished, and English law substituted in its place. The English law was no doubt a better law, and one more fitted to a progressive community; but in Ireland it violently upset the traditional law of the country, and, consequently, was met with sullen and unremitting hostility. By Irish law, the tribe was owner; the tribesmen were joint proprietors, and the forfeiture of the chief did not involve the forfeiture of the land occupied by the tribesmen. By English law, however, these latter, such of them as were not expelled or exiled, suddenly found themselves transformed from joint-owners into tenants at will. Further, the difficulty of dealing direct with tenants, experienced by landlords who were in very many cases absentees, led to the abominable "middleman" system by which the owner leased great stretches of land to some one who undertook to "manage" it for him, and who in turn sub-let it in smaller patches at rack-rents to those who, to get back their money, had to sub-let again at still higher rents. The result was, as an official report in the eighteenth century states: "It is well known that over the most part of the country, the lands are sub-let six deep, so that those who actually labour it are squeezed to the very utmost." And Lord Chesterfield, when Viceroy, complained of the oppression of the people by "deputies of deputies of deputies." The eighteenth-century policy of checking or suppressing the industrial enterprises of the English colony aggravated the evil until, as Lord Dufferin expressed it: "Debarred from every other industry, the entire nation flung itself back upon the land, with as fatal an impulse as when a river whose current is suddenly impeded, rolls back and drowns the valley it once fertilised." In time the middleman tended to die out, but the evil results of the system in preventing direct and friendly and helpful relations between landlord and tenant remained. Here and there, even in Arthur Young's time, enterprising and devoted landlords had established something like the "English system" on their estates, but, as a rule, the landlord remained a mere rent charger. The report of the Devon Commission says:-- "It is admitted on all hands that, according to the general practice in Ireland, the landlord neither builds dwelling-houses nor farm offices, nor puts fences, gates, etc., in good order before he lets his land to a tenant. The cases where a landlord does any of these things are the exception. In most cases, whatever is done in the way of building or fencing is done by the tenant, and in the ordinary language of the country, dwelling-houses, farm buildings, and even the making of fences, are described by the general word, 'improvements,' which is thus employed to denote the necessary adjuncts of a farm without which in England or Scotland no tenant would be found to rent it." In a word, as one who owned land both in England and in Ireland put it, "In England we let farms, in Ireland we let land." And by law an unjust landlord had the power at any moment to expel a tenant or a group of tenants, although no rent was owing, and without giving any compensation for the "improvements" which were the sole work of the tenant. Most landlords acted reasonably and equitably in such matters, but, especially among the new class of purely mercantile purchasers who came in under the Landed Estates Court after the great famine of 1846, there were too many who insisted on their extreme legal rights, thus disturbing the peace of the country and producing the Irish Land Question in an acute form that called for State interference. The systems of "compensation for improvements" (1870), and of rent fixing by itinerant tribunals (1881), were tried in turn, but each was found to raise more difficulties than it settled, until finally Mr. Parnell and his Land League set the whole country in a flame, and produced a series of strikes against the payment of any rent. For some years it is hardly too much to say that the law of the League, with its purely revolutionary propaganda, supplanted the law of the land and reduced large areas to a condition of chaos, the decrees of the "village ruffians," who ruled the situation, being enforced by systematic outrage and assassination. The first statesman who made a really serious attempt to meet this appalling state of things was Mr. Arthur Balfour, who, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, resolutely took up the task, first of repressing crime and enforcing the law, and then of recasting the whole land system in such a way that the tenant, transformed into an owner, would for the first time feel it his interest to range himself on the side of the law and of orderly government. At the same time, a systematic attempt was made to deal with the question of perennial poverty in the extreme West of Ireland in what came to be known as the "Congested Districts." The construction of railways and piers, the draining of land, and the provision of instruction in agriculture, fisheries, etc., speedily gave promise of a new era in the economic history of a hitherto helpless and hopeless population. All this was done by Mr. Balfour and his successors in spite of opposition and obstruction of a kind such as no Chief Secretary had ever before had to encounter. Formerly, all through the centuries, whenever a Viceroy or Chief Secretary was face to face with an organised outbreak of crime and sedition in Ireland, both British parties united in supporting and strengthening the hands of the executive as representing the Crown. Mr. Gladstone's extraordinary reversal of policy and principle in the winter of 1885-86 put an end to all this, and gravely increased the difficulties of the Irish Government. When Mr. Gladstone was first confronted with the demand for Home Rule, even in the mild and constitutional form advocated by Mr. Isaac Butt, and his Home Government Association, founded in the autumn of 1870, he promptly declared, like Mr. John Morley, that legislative Union with Great Britain was the only position permanently possible for an island situated as Ireland is. In a speech at Aberdeen[19] he indignantly asked-- "Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind and crippling any powers we possess for conferring benefits on the country to which we belong." And for fifteen years, in power or in opposition, Mr. Gladstone preached and acted upon the same doctrine. When the Land League was founded he denounced it as an organisation whose steps were "dogged with crime," and whose march was "through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire." The League was finally "proclaimed" by his Government as a criminal conspiracy and its members, from Mr. Parnell downwards, arrested and imprisoned without trial as being "reasonably suspected" of criminal practices. This continued until in an unfortunate moment for himself Mr. Gladstone discovered, in November, 1885, that the votes of Mr. Parnell and his eighty-six colleagues were necessary for his own return to power as Prime Minister, whereupon he entered into negotiations which resulted, on the one hand, in his securing the necessary votes, and on the other in his accepting the principles and the policy of those whom until then he had denounced and imprisoned as instigators to crime and sedition. He rightly recognised that there was no half-way house, and that he could not become a Home Ruler without accepting and defending the actions of the Home Rulers. He worshipped what he had formerly burnt, and he burned what he had hitherto worshipped. The result was that for several years England beheld for the first time the scandalous spectacle of men who had held high office under the Crown openly defending--and even instigating--lawlessness and disorder, shielding and excusing criminals, proved such before the courts, and thwarting, misrepresenting, and obstructing those whose duty it was to restore order and legality in Ireland. Such were the difficulties that confronted Mr. Arthur Balfour as Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1887 to 1891, difficulties which he surmounted with such resolution and such statesmanship that he retired from an office that has been called "the grave of reputations" with a reputation so much enhanced as to ensure him the leadership of his party and the gratitude of Irishmen of all classes for generations to come. And yet his method was a supremely simple one--to reassert the supremacy of the law, to neglect, almost ostentatiously, all merely political cries, and to set himself seriously to deal with the real Irish question, that of conferring some measure of security and prosperity on a population which over wide districts had known too little of such things. Occupying ownership of Irish land by means of State credit was not, of course, a new policy in Mr. Balfour's day. The Bright clauses (1869) had introduced the principle into the Statute-book, and Lord Ashbourne's Act (1885) had carried it several steps further. But it was Mr. Arthur Balfour and his successors, Mr. Gerald Balfour and Mr. George Wyndham, who carried it by a series of boldly conceived steps almost within sight of completion. So thorough was the success of this policy of land purchase, and so marked was the cessation of crime and outrage and seditious agitation in every district into which it was carried, that those who made their living by agitation grew alarmed, and did all in their power to stop the working of the Purchase Acts. One Nationalist member declared that the process had gone "quite far enough," and that he wished it could be stopped. The farmers who had purchased their holdings were declared to have become selfish, and "as bad as the landlords." In other words, they had become orderly and industrious, and had ceased to subscribe for the upkeep of the United Irish League and its salaried agitators. The unhappy result of this outcry on the part of those whose occupation would be gone, and who would be compelled to resort to honest industry should Ireland become peaceful and prosperous, was the passing of Mr. Birrell's "amending" Bill, which has practically stopped for the present the beneficent working of the Wyndham Act of 1903. Under the various purchase Acts over 180,000 Irish farmers have become the owners of their holdings, thanks to over one hundred millions of public money advanced on Imperial credit for the purpose. The first task of a Unionist government, when again in power, must be the resumption of this policy of State-aided land-purchase--the only completely and unquestionably successful and pacifying piece of agrarian legislation in the history of English rule in Ireland. Other writers will give, later on, a more detailed account of various branches of Unionist practical policy in Ireland. The story of the Congested Districts Board, Mr. Arthur Balfour's special work, is a romance in itself. So well, in fact, has it accomplished its immediate task that the time has probably come when it could with advantage be merged in the later-created Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. This department, which has been linked up with the County or Borough Councils, by the legislation of Mr. Gerald Balfour, has done an immense amount of educational and practical work in connection with agriculture in all its branches, including dairying, poultry rearing, fruit-growing, and other rural industries, not to speak of technical instruction in matters suited for artisans and town workers. These remarkable achievements, the work of successive Unionist Governments from 1896 to 1906, have revolutionised the face of the country, and are bringing about a new Ireland. The chief danger now lies in the intrigues of discredited politicians, whose object is to divert the eyes of the people from practical, remedial, and constructive legislation, and to keep them fixed upon what Mr. John Morley has called "the phantom of Irish legislative independence." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: J.R. Green, "Short History," chap. ix. sec. 8.] [Footnote 4: "Dict. Nat. Biog.," sub.-tit. "Erskine, John, Earl of Mar," p. 430.] [Footnote 5: "England," says Mr. James Bryce in his Introduction to "Two Centuries of Irish History," "acted as conquering nations do act, and better than some nations of that age."] [Footnote 6: Wogan to Swift, Feb. 27th, 1732.] [Footnote 7: Swift, "The Legion Club."] [Footnote 8: "Life of Macartney," vol. ii, p. 136.] [Footnote 9: "Tour in Ireland," vol. ii., p. 123 ff.] [Footnote 10: Hamilton Rowan's "Autobiography," p. 340.] [Footnote 11: "Wealth of Nations," Book V., Chap. III.] [Footnote 12: "The End of the Irish Parliament," 1911, Edward Arnold.] [Footnote 13: "Edmund Burke, a Historical Study," by John Morley, pp. 286 ff.] [Footnote 14: "Pitt," by Lord Rosebery, p. 155.] [Footnote 15: From the official returns embodied in "A Statement to the Prime Minister," Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, Dublin, 1886.] [Footnote 16: "Ireland from the Union to Catholic Emancipation," by D. A. Chart, M.A. A most valuable and instructive work.] [Footnote 17: It is, I hope, no reflection on the memory of an eminent public servant to suggest that in this, as in too many of the estimated figures contained in his evidence before the Commission, and upon which the Majority Report of the Commission was largely based, Sir Robert seriously under-estimated the resources of Ireland. It is obvious when the ascertained figures of 1910 are compared with the estimated figures of 1895 that Sir Robert Giffen must have been several millions below the truth. The steady nature of the growth of Irish commerce is shown by the following figures taken from the Official Report for the year ended December 31, 1910. Imports, Exports, Total, Mill. £. Mill. £. Mill. £. 1904 54 49 103 1905 55 51 106 1906 57 56 113 1907 61 59 120 1908 59 57 116 1909 63 61 124 1910 65 65 130 ] [Footnote 18: "A History of the Commercial Relations between Great Britain and Ireland," by Alice E. Murray, D.Sc.] [Footnote 19: Sept. 26, 1871.] CRITICAL III THE CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION BY GEORGE CAVE, K.C., M.P. INTRODUCTORY Few things are more remarkable in the Parliamentary history of the Home Rule movement than the complete absence from the counsels of the English advocates of Home Rule of any definite and settled policy as to the form of self-government to be offered to Ireland, and their consequent oscillation between proposals radically differing from one another. Since the "new departure" initiated by Davitt and Devoy in 1878,[20] it has been the deliberate practice of Irish Nationalists to abstain from defining the Nationalist demand and to ask in general terms for "self-government," doubtless with the object of attracting the support of all who favour any change which could be described by that very elastic term. Such a policy has its advantages. But confusion of thought, however favourable to popular agitation, is a disadvantage when the moment for legislation arrives; and uncertainty as to the aim goes far to explain the vacillation in Home Rule policy. Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill of 1886 would have given to Ireland the substance of "responsible" or colonial self-government, subject only to certain reservations and restrictions, the value of which will be considered later in this chapter, and would have excluded the Irish members and representative peers from the Parliament of the United Kingdom. By the Bill of 1893 the reservations and restrictions were increased, and representatives of Ireland were to be permitted to sit at Westminster--by the Bill as introduced for some purposes, and by the Bill as passed by the House of Commons for all purposes. After the defeat of this second Bill, a "cold fit" appears to have seized the Liberal Party. Lord Rosebery, in 1894, declared that before Home Rule could be carried England, as the predominant partner, must be convinced. Sir Edward Grey in 1905 declared that his party on its return to power would "go on with Sir Anthony MacDonnell's policy," which he rightly described as a policy of large administrative reforms; and Mr. Asquith "associated himself entirely and unreservedly with every word" of Sir Edward Grey's speech.[21] Accordingly the Irish Council Bill proposed by Mr. Asquith's Government in 1907 was purely a measure of devolution, certain administrative functions only being put under the control of an Irish Council, subject to the veto of the Lord Lieutenant, and the whole legislative power remaining in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. This proposal, having been condemned by a National Convention at Dublin, was incontinently withdrawn. In the years succeeding this fiasco the Liberal policy for Ireland appeared to be at the mercy of shifting winds. For some time Liberal speakers contented themselves with vague declarations in favour of Federalism or "Home Rule all round"--phrases which may mean much or little according to the sense in which they are used. More recently an able writer,[22] while admitting that "there is no public opinion in Ireland as to the form of the Irish Constitution," has argued in a work of 350 pages in favour of the grant to Ireland of full legislative, administrative and financial autonomy; while a member of the Government[23] declared that fiscal autonomy for all practical purposes means separation and the disintegration of the United Kingdom. In a publication recently issued by a committee of Liberals, comprising several members of the present Government,[24] two views directly contrary to one another are put forward, one writer arguing for a devolution to an Irish body of "definite and defined powers only," and another for the grant of the widest possible form of Home Rule and the exclusion from Westminster of all Irish representation. The latest official pronouncements indicate that the Government have it in their minds to revert to the Gladstonian form of Home Rule; but even now[25] no one outside the Cabinet, and possibly few inside that inner circle, would venture on a confident prophecy even as to the broad lines of the measure which in a few days may be submitted to Parliament as representing the urgent and considered demand of public opinion. Franklin said truly that-- "those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects." But surely on a question of such vital moment to the Empire as the revision of the constitution of the United Kingdom, the bases, if not the details, of the contemplated change are deserving of prolonged consideration and even of some public and ordered discussion. The British North America Act, 1867, by which the relation of the Dominion of Canada to its provinces is regulated, was the result, not only of years of preliminary debate in the provincial Legislatures and elsewhere, but of a formal conference at Quebec in 1864, followed by the appointment of delegates to confer with the Imperial Government on the matter. In Australia the proposal for union, agitated at intervals since 1846, was canvassed in every detail at inter-colonial Conferences or Conventions in 1883, in 1891, and in 1897-8, as well as in the several colonial Legislatures, before it was embodied in the Australia Constitution Act, 1900. And although in the case of South Africa, owing to the urgency of the question of union, the time occupied in the discussion was less than in the other great dominions, yet in the Convention of 1908-9 the best brains in the country were occupied for months in considering every detail of the proposal for union before it was submitted to the Colonial and Imperial Parliaments for their sanction.[26] And yet in the Mother Country, where centuries of military and political conflict have given us the Union, it is considered that a few weeks' consideration by a committee of the Cabinet, without advice from independent constitutional experts,[27] and without formal consultation even with the Government's own supporters outside the Ministry, is sufficient to determine both the general form and the details of a proposal for its dissolution. In the confusion so engendered it may be useful to consider in some detail the different proposals which have been or may be made under the name of Home Rule, their special qualities and dangers, and the results to which they may severally lead. RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. A proposal to give to Ireland full "responsible" government, without any other limitations than such as are imposed on our self-governing Colonies, would find few supporters in this country. Under such a constitution an Irish Government would have power to forbid or restrict recruiting for the Imperial forces in Ireland, and to raise and train a force of its own. It might establish or subsidise a religion, make education wholly denominational, levy customs duties on imports from Great Britain and give fiscal advantages to a foreign power, confiscate or transfer property without payment, and deprive individuals of nationality, franchise, liberty, or life without process of law. However improbable some of these contingencies may appear, it is right on a matter of so much moment to consider possibilities and not probabilities only. Such powers as these could not without serious risk be conceded to any part of the kingdom, and in the case of Ireland there would be a special danger in granting them to a popularly elected body. In the first place, the national safety would be involved. Englishmen were at one time too fond of saying that the great Colonies might, if they chose, sever the link which binds them to the Mother Country. Happily, in their case, no such catastrophe need now be considered. But it would be folly to shut our eyes to the fact that to many Irishmen national independence appears to be the only goal worth striving for. If the concession of full responsible government should be followed (at whatever interval) by an assertion of complete independence, we may assume that Great Britain would follow the example of Federal America and re-establish the Union by force of arms, but at how great a cost! Those who deny the possibility of a serious movement towards separation would do well to remember Mr. Gladstone's reference[28] to the position of Norway and Sweden, then united under one crown:-- "Let us look to those two countries, neither of them very large, but yet countries which every Englishman and every Scotchman must rejoice to claim his kin--I mean the Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Norway. Immediately after the great war the Norwegians were ready to take sword in hand to prevent their coming under the domination of Sweden. But the Powers of Europe undertook the settlement of that question, and they united those countries upon a footing of strict legislative independence and co-equality.... And yet with two countries so united, what has been the effect? Not discord, not convulsions, not danger to peace, not hatred, not aversion, but a constantly growing sympathy; and every man who knows their condition knows that I speak the truth when I say that in every year that passes the Norwegians and the Swedes are more and more feeling themselves to be the children of a common country, united by a tie which never is to be broken." The tie was broken within twenty years. It may be that the Nationalist leaders, or some of them, do not desire separation; but it by no means follows that a concession of their demands would not lead to that result. Franklin, in 1774, had an interview with Chatham, in which he says-- "I assured him that, having more than once travelled almost from one end of the continent (of America) to the other, and kept a great variety of company, eating, drinking, and conversing with them freely, I never had heard in any conversation from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation, or a hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America."[29] And yet independence came within ten years. In the case of the United Kingdom there is no need to consider in detail how serious would be the effects--naval, military, and economic--of separation, for the gravity of such a contingency is admitted by all. Admiral Mahan, the American naval expert, writes that-- "the ambition of the Irish separatists, realised, might be even more threatening to the national life of Great Britain than the secession of the South was to that of the American Union.... The instrument for such action in the shape of an independent Parliament could not safely be trusted even to avowed friends." Some Home Rulers are able to-- "rise superior to the philosophy, as fallacious in fact as it is base and cowardly in purpose, which sets the safety of a great nation above the happiness and prosperity of a small one,"[30] but to less lofty souls it appears that the safety of the nation is paramount, and that upon it depends the prosperity of each of its component parts. In the next place, in considering whether complete "colonial" self-government can be conceded to Ireland, it must not be forgotten that the island is bi-racial, that the two races differ widely in character, in politics, and in religion, and that the differences are apt to find vent in violent conflict or secret attacks. Further, Ireland has for generations been the scene of a revolt against one particular species of property, the ownership of land; and although under the operation of the Land Purchase Acts this cause of conflict tends to abate, it still breaks out from time to time in the form of cattle drives and attacks on "land grabbers."[31] Hitherto we have, broadly speaking, kept the peace. That we should now forsake this duty, and, washing our hands of Ireland, leave the Protestant and the landowner, at or small, to his fate is unthinkable. In connection with the question last-mentioned it may be necessary at some time to consider how far it is the constitutional right of this country to impose upon the minority in Ireland the new obligations implied in a grant to the whole island of colonial Home Rule. It may be that the Imperial Parliament can disallow the claim of a section of the population of Ireland to remain subject to its own control. But it is one thing to reject the allegiance of a community, it is quite another thing forcibly to transfer that allegiance to a practically independent legislature; and this is especially the case when the transfer may involve the use against a loyal population of coercion in its extreme form. CHECKS AND SAFEGUARDS. In every formal proposal for Home Rule in Ireland, weight has been given to the above considerations, and attempts have been made to meet them by qualifying the grant of responsible Government. The qualifications suggested have taken the form of _(a)_ the reservation of certain powers to the Imperial Parliament, or (_b_) the restriction of the powers granted to the Irish legislature by prohibiting their exercise in certain specific ways, or (_c_) the provision of some form of Imperial veto or control. It is important to consider whether and how far such checks or "safeguards" are likely to prove effective and lasting. The "safeguards" proposed by the Government of Ireland Bill, 1886, were somewhat extended by the Bill of 1893; and the proposals shortly to be submitted to Parliament, so far as they can be gathered from recent speeches of Ministers, will not in this respect differ materially from those contained in the latter Bill. It will therefore be convenient to take as a basis for discussion the provisions of the Bill of 1893, as passed by the House of Commons. The Bill of 1893, after stating in a preamble that it was "expedient that without impairing or restricting the supreme authority of Parliament an Irish Legislature should be created for such purposes in Ireland as in this Act mentioned," proposed to set up in Ireland a Legislature[32] consisting of the Sovereign and two Houses, namely a Legislative Council of 48 members to be returned under a restricted franchise by the Irish counties and the boroughs of Dublin and Belfast, and a Legislative Assembly of 103 members to be returned by the existing parliamentary constituencies in Ireland. A Bill introduced into the Irish Legislature was to pass both Houses; but in the event of disagreement the proposals of the Legislative Assembly were to be submitted, after a dissolution or a delay of two years, to a joint Session of the two Houses. The executive power was to remain in the Crown, aided and advised by an Irish Ministry (called an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland), and the assent of the Crown to Irish legislation was to be given or withheld on the advice of this Executive Committee subject to any instructions given by the Sovereign. The specific reservations and restrictions were contained in clauses 3 and 4 of the Bill, which were as follows:-- "3. The Irish Legislature shall not have power to make laws in respect of the following matters or any of them:-- "(1) The Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or a Regency; or the Lord Lieutenant as representative of the Crown; or "(2) The making of peace or war or matters arising from a state of war; or the regulation of the conduct of any portion of Her Majesty's subjects during the existence of hostilities between foreign States with which Her Majesty is at peace, in respect of such hostilities; or "(3) Navy, army, militia, volunteers, and any other military forces, or the defence of the realm, or forts, permanent military camps, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings, or any places purchased for the erection thereof; or "(4) Authorising either the carrying or using of arms for military purposes, or the formation of associations for drill or practice in the use of arms for military purposes; or "(5) Treaties or any relations with foreign States or the relations between different parts of Her Majesty's dominions, or offences connected with such treaties or relations, or procedure connected with the extradition of criminals under any treaty; or "(6) Dignities or titles of honour; or "(7) Treason, treason-felony, alienage, aliens as such, or naturalisation; or "(8) Trade with any place out of Ireland; or quarantine, or navigation, including merchant shipping (except as respects inland waters and local health or harbour regulations); or "(9) Lighthouses, buoys, or beacons within the meaning of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1854, and the Acts amending the same (except so far as they can consistently with any general Act of Parliament be constructed or maintained by a local harbour authority); or "(10) Coinage; legal tender; or any change in the standard of weights and measures; or "(11) Trade marks, designs, merchandise marks, copyright, or patent rights. "Provided always, that nothing in this section shall prevent the passing of any Irish Act to provide for any charges imposed by Act of Parliament, or to prescribe conditions regulating importation from any place outside Ireland for the sole purpose of preventing the introduction of any contagious disease. "It is hereby declared that the exceptions from the powers of the Irish Legislature contained in this section are set forth and enumerated for greater certainty, and not so as to restrict the generality of the limitation imposed in the previous section on the powers of the Irish Legislature. "Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. "4. The powers of the Irish Legislature shall not extend to the making of any law-- "(1) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, whether directly or indirectly, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or "(2) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, advantage, or benefit, on account of religious belief, or raising or appropriating directly or indirectly, save as heretofore, any public revenue for any religious purpose, or for the benefit of the holder of any religious office as such; or "(3) Diverting the property, or, without its consent, altering the constitution of any religious body; or "(4) Abrogating or prejudicially affecting the right to establish or maintain any place of denominational education, or any denominational institution or charity; or "(5) Whereby there may be established or endowed out of public funds any theological professorship, or any university or college in which the conditions set out in the University of Dublin Tests Acts, 1873, are not observed; or "(6) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at that school; or "(7) Directly or indirectly imposing any disability or conferring any privilege, benefit, or advantage upon any subject of the Crown on account of his parentage or place of birth, or of the place where any part of his business is carried on, or upon any corporation or institution constituted or existing by virtue of the law of some part of the Queen's dominions, and carrying on operations in Ireland, on account of the persons by whom or in whose favour, or the place in which any of its operations are carried on; or "(8) Whereby any person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law in accordance with settled principles and precedents, or may be denied the equal protection of the laws, or whereby private property may be taken without just compensation; or "(9) Whereby any existing corporation incorporated by Royal Charter or by any local or general Act of Parliament may, unless it consents, or the leave of Her Majesty is first obtained on address from the two Houses of the Irish Legislature, be deprived of its rights, privileges, or property without due process of law in accordance with settled principles and precedents, and so far as respects property without just compensation. Provided nothing in this sub-section shall prevent the Irish Legislature from dealing with any public department, municipal corporation, or local authority, or with any corporation administering for public purposes taxes, rates, cess, dues, or tolls, so far as concerns the same. Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void." The power to impose taxation other than duties of custom and excise was to be transferred, subject to a short delay as to existing taxes and to a special provision in respect of taxes for war expenditure, to the Irish Legislature (clause II). Two judges of the Supreme Court in Ireland, to be called "Exchequer Judges," were to be appointed under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, and to be removable only on an address from the Imperial Parliament; and proceedings relating to the reserved powers or to the customs or excise duties were to be determined by such judges (clause 19). Appeals from the Courts in Ireland were to lie to the Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council (clause 21); and any question as to the powers of the Irish Legislature could be referred to the same Committee (clause 22). The Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police Force were gradually to disappear, and police matters to be regulated by the Irish Legislature and Executive (clause 29). The Irish Legislature was to be prohibited from passing land legislation for a period of three years (clause 34). As to these proposals the first observation that occurs is that, in addition to the matters proposed to be reserved, there are others in which legislative uniformity throughout the kingdom is greatly to be desired. To mention but a few such matters, questions of status, contract and succession, of international trade and navigation, of the regulation of railways and of industrial labour, and of the criminal law, should not be differently determined in different parts of the kingdom; and as life becomes more complex, the number of subjects in which diversity of laws is a hindrance continues to increase. In the next place, it is to be noted that the checks proposed affect legislation only and not administration. If the Bill of 1893 or any similar Bill should become law, the whole executive power in Ireland will be in an Irish Ministry responsible to an Irish Assembly; and it is obvious that many of the wrongs against which the restrictive clauses of the Bill were directed may be inflicted by administrative act or omission as effectively as by legislation. To quote a work of authority[33]-- "An independent Irish Executive will possess immense power. It will be able by mere administrative action or inaction, without passing a single law which infringes any restriction to be imposed by the Irish Government Act, 1893, to effect a revolution. Let us consider for a moment a few of the things which the Irish Cabinet might do if it chose. It might confine all political, administrative, or judicial appointments to Nationalists, and thus exclude Loyalists from all positions of public trust. It might place the bench, the magistracy, the police, wholly in the hands of Catholics; it might, by encouragement of athletic clubs where the Catholic population were trained to the use of arms, combined with the rigorous suppression of every Protestant association suspected, rightly or not, of preparing resistance to the Parliament at Dublin, bring about the arming of Catholic, and the disarming of Protestant, Ireland, and, at the same time, raise a force as formidable to England as an openly enrolled Irish army. But the mere inaction of the executive might in many spheres produce greater results than active unfairness. The refusal of the police for the enforcement of evictions would abolish rent throughout the country. And the same result might be attained by a more moderate course. Irish Ministers might in practice draw a distinction between 'good' landlords and 'bad' landlords, and might grant the aid of the police for the collection of 'reasonable,' though refusing it for the collection of 'excessive,' rents." Irish Ministers might even refuse actively to oppose the "moral claim" of the Irish Catholics to the use of the cathedrals and of the accumulated capital of the Irish Church.[34] To contemplate the possibility of action or calculated inaction of the character above described is not to attribute to Irishmen any special measure of original sin. In every case where the executive power is divorced from the ultimate legislative authority such divergencies are likely to recur; and more than one instance may be found in our own recent history. In 1859 the Canadian Government warned the Home Government that any attempt to interfere with the customs policy of the Dominion was inadmissible, unless the home authorities were prepared to undertake the responsibility of administering the whole government of Canada. The Home Government gave way.[35] In 1878 the Governor of Cape Colony proposed to place the colonial forces under the control of the officer commanding the Imperial forces. The Cape Government resisted, and refused to resign; and eventually the Governor, on the advice of the Home Government, dismissed his ministers. In this case a change of government occurred after the general election, but in the end the claim put forward by the Imperial authorities had to be withdrawn.[36] In 1906 the Natal Government proclaimed martial law, and ordered the execution of twelve natives on charges of murder. The Imperial Government intervened, and suggested the suspension of the order pending further consideration. The Natal Ministry immediately resigned; and as there was no chance of the formation of a new Government, the Imperial authorities hastily withdrew.[37] Differences have arisen even on so grave a matter as the succession to the throne. The union of England and Scotland in 1707 was preceded and hastened by the so-called Act of Security, by which the Scottish Estates asserted the right to name a successor to the throne of Scotland, who should not (except under certain specified conditions) be the person designated as sovereign by the English law. And during the illness of King George III. in the year 1788, Grattan, in defiance of the views of Pitt and of the majority in both Houses of the Imperial Parliament, carried in the Irish Parliament an address to the Prince of Wales, calling upon him (without waiting for a Regency Bill) to assume the Government of the Irish nation, "and to exercise and administer all legal power, jurisdiction and prerogatives to the Crown and Government thereof belonging"--words borrowed from the address by which in the Revolution of 1688 William of Orange was requested to assume the Crown. Happily, the Viceroy declined to present the address, and a deputation sent from Ireland to present it found on their arrival that the king had recovered; but the incident might have led to a conflict upon a matter so important as the exercise of the royal power. The fact is that the word "supremacy," so often used in this controversy, is one of ambiguous meaning. Parliament is supreme in the United Kingdom, Parliament is likewise supreme in New Zealand; but the two supremacies are of widely different kinds. Supremacy consists of two ingredients--authority to enact and power to enforce; and without the latter the former is little more than a legal figment, which may have no more practical importance than the theoretical right of veto which is retained by the Crown. Mr. Balfour, speaking on the second reading debate of the 1893 Bill, referred to this matter as follows:-- "Legally, of course, the Imperial Parliament would be supreme: no one has doubted it. But what layman takes the slightest interest in these paper supremacies? For my part I take no more interest in the question of whether the Imperial Parliament is on paper superior to the Irish Parliament, than I do as to the order of precedence at a London dinner party. The thing is of no public interest or importance whatever. What we want to know is where the power lies. Who is going to exercise supremacy? Who is going to be the _de facto_ ruler of Ireland?" Special importance attaches to these considerations owing to the heavy liabilities undertaken by this country in respect of land purchase in Ireland. At the present time many millions of British money are sunk in Irish land, and the amount may increase to a sum approaching two hundred millions. The tenants now pay their annuities because, in the last resort, the Government can turn them out. Under Home Rule the powers of Government would rest with men who have led "no rent" agitations in the past, and who would be dependent upon the votes of those personally interested in repudiating the debt. The British Treasury can hardly run such a risk; and some sort of concurrent control, with all its evils and risks, seems to be necessary. And yet financial independence is the first essential to genuine autonomy. But, it may be said, if the Irish Government go beyond the law, the Irish Courts may be asked to interfere; and in the event of their refusal, the Bill provides an appeal to the Judicial Committee in London. No doubt it does, but in practice the person aggrieved might have very great difficulty in making the remedy effective. He must obtain a decision in his favour from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, at no small cost of money and personal odium; and the decision of that "alien" tribunal (as it would be called) must then be enforced under the jurisdiction of a Government which (on the hypothesis which we are considering) would be unfriendly, by judges and executive officers appointed and perhaps removable by that authority, and in the midst of a population hostile to "foreign" interference. Is it extravagant to suppose that the complainant would not gain much by his appeal to Cæsar? And even if we suppose the Irish Legislature and Executive to confine themselves within the letter of the Act, are the checks of any real value? The Irish Parliament might still interfere with contracts, or might validate contracts now held to be void as contrary to public policy. They might defeat the Mortmain Acts. They might deal as they thought fit with internal trade; and the great industries of Belfast and its neighbourhood might find their views on trade questions of no avail. The Irish Legislature might create new offences and institute new tribunals; and the reference in the Bill to "due process of law" would not necessarily secure trial by jury or by an impartial tribunal.[38] It is said that legislation of this character would be subject to the veto of the Crown. But that veto is to be exercised on the advice of the Irish Ministry subject to any instructions given by the Sovereign; and so long as an Irish Legislature is entitled to withhold Irish supply, a veto against the advice of the Irish ministry would surely tend to become impossible. Again, it is said that an unjust law passed by the Irish Parliament might be repealed by the Imperial Parliament. Doubtless the technical right would exist, as in the case of the Colonies; but no one dreams that, with "responsible" government existing in Ireland and Irish representatives at Westminster, it would in practice be used. The Imperial Government has never been known to interfere with the legislation of a self-governing colony except where Imperial interests are concerned, or where a fraud on the colony can be established;[39] and the same rule would obtain in the case of Ireland. Lastly, it is said that in the last resort there is the British Army. But if the civil power in Ireland does not call in the military force, how can the latter be used to enforce the law? Are the forces to be controlled from England, and what is this but a counter revolution? It is hardly worth while to liberate Ireland from the peaceful rule of the Imperial Government in order to govern her by military force. But in fact the so-called "safeguards" would not last. Professor Dicey[40] and Professor Morgan,[41] writing from opposite sides of the controversy, agree in holding that no colony would tolerate them for a moment; and it is incredible that Ireland, with a Parliament of her own, would submit to them for more than a few years.[42] Suppose the majority of the Irish Legislature to grow weary of the "safeguards," and to demand their repeal. The Imperial ministry might refuse, but the reply of the Irish ministry (if in command of a majority in the Irish House of Commons) would be to resign and to make the government of Ireland impossible except by force. And if Ireland were still represented in the Imperial Parliament, the new "sorrows of Ireland" would find eloquent and insistent expression there. What, then, would England do? What could she do, except, after a futile struggle, to give way? The truth is, that if you part with the executive power, all checks and "safeguards" are futile. Mr. Redmond[43] eagerly "accepts every one of them," and will accept others if desired; for he knows that they must prove ineffective. "If," said Lord Derby in 1887, "Ireland and England are not to be one, Ireland must be treated like Canada or Australia. All between is delusion or fraud." IRISH REPRESENTATION AT WESTMINSTER. The hybrid form of government proposed in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893 gave rise to a further difficulty, and one which went far towards wrecking them both. Should Ireland under Home Rule be represented at Westminster by its members and representative peers? Under a system of Gladstonian Home Rule there appear to be only three possible answers to this question. The Irish representatives may be excluded altogether, they may be retained altogether, or they may be retained in diminished numbers and with some limitation on their voting powers. The total exclusion clause in the Bill of 1886 was one of the most unpopular parts of an unpopular Bill. It was immediately urged that this arrangement was virtually equivalent to separation, and Mr. Gladstone admitted[44] that the argument had force. Since 1886 public sentiment has advanced in the direction of a closer Imperial unity, and it is unlikely that the country will recur in 1912 to a proposal which in 1886 was admitted to be intolerable. Moreover, if the British Parliament is to retain control of the whole foreign policy of the kingdom, and--what is likely to be of enormous importance in the future--of its whole fiscal policy, it would be manifestly unjust to deny to Ireland a voice and vote in such matters. How would it be possible, for instance, to discuss the effect upon agriculture of a Tariff Reform Budget in the absence of competent representatives of the Irish farmers, or to consider the yearly grant to be made (as it is said) in aid of Irish finance without the assistance of any representatives of Ireland? A recognition of the difficulties in the way of total exclusion led Mr. Gladstone to propose, in 1893, what was known as the "popping-in-and-out clause," under which Irish members would have sat at Westminster, but would have voted only on Imperial measures. The best criticism of this attempt to distinguish between local and Imperial matters was supplied on another occasion by Mr. Gladstone himself:-- "I have thought much, reasoned much, and inquired much with regard to that distinction, but I have arrived at the conclusion that it cannot be drawn. I believe it passes the wit of man." To distinguish between matters which might and those which could not affect Ireland was impossible to the ordinary man, and the device of committing all matters of special difficulty to the decision of Mr. Speaker had not then its present vogue. Further, it was obvious that under such a system a British Ministry might have on one day, when English or Scottish affairs were under discussion, a commanding majority; but on the next, when a vote possibly affecting the sister island was in question, might find itself labouring in the trough of the sea; while on the third day, that vote having been disposed of and the Irish members having taken their leave, it might rise once more on the crest of the wave. The proposal was too ludicrous to be long defended. The sense of humour of the House prevailed over Mr. Gladstone's earnestness, and he fell back on inclusion for all purposes. But inclusion for all purposes had its own difficulties. Under the Gladstonian system the Imperial Parliament would have considered, not only matters affecting the whole kingdom, but also purely English or purely Scottish affairs; and to give to the Irish representatives the control in their own Parliament of purely Irish affairs, and also a voice at Westminster on matters affecting England or Scotland only, was obviously unjust. Such a power would have been used, not for the benefit of England or Scotland, but as an instrument for wresting further concessions for Ireland. "I will never be a party," said Mr. Gladstone at one time, "to allowing the Irish members to manage their own affairs in Dublin, and at the same time to come over here and manage British affairs. Such an arrangement would not be a Bill to grant self-government to Ireland, but one to remove self-government from England; it would create a subordinate Parliament indeed, but it would be the one at Westminster, and not that in Dublin."[45] The problem seems insoluble because, under a hybrid (or Gladstonian) system of Home Rule, it is insoluble. If a clear line is taken, there is no difficulty under this head. If full "responsible" or colonial government is granted, clearly representation in the Imperial Parliament (I do not now speak of a federal assembly) is an anomaly. On the other hand, if nothing more is in question than the extension of local government generally known as Devolution, then adequate representation in the Imperial Parliament is a matter of course. If a federal government is established, each member of the Federation must needs be represented in the federal Parliament; but in that case there must be no attempt to entrust to the same assembly both the duties of the federal Parliament and those of a Legislature for one of the federating states. It was this attempt to treat the Imperial Parliament as the local or state Legislature for Great Britain, and also as the federal Parliament for Great Britain and Ireland, which was fatal to Mr. Gladstone's proposals. FEDERALISM. These considerations bring us face to face with Federalism, or, to use the phrase which to so many perplexed Liberals has seemed to point the way to safety, "Home Rule all round." The expression covers a wide field, and before any opinion can be pronounced upon the proposal, it is essential to know what its advocates in fact desire. To some the phrase means nothing less than Gladstonian Home Rule "all round," in other words that we should meet the objections to dissolving the legislative and executive Union with Ireland by dissolving also the older Union with Scotland, and even (for some do not shrink from the _reductio ad absurdum_) the yet older unity of England and Wales. Consider what this means. For more than two hundred years the English and Scottish races have been united by a constitutional bond strengthened by mutual respect and good feeling, and Scotsmen, like Englishmen, have taken their part in the government of these islands. If in the division of labour and of honours there has been a balance of advantage, it has not been against the virile Scottish race, from which have sprung so many of our great soldiers and administrators, so many leaders of the nation. And such a combination is to be broken up, and Scotland to become a colony, because Ireland, unwilling to bear her share in the duties of government, desires to be reduced to that status! To such a proposal Mr. Gladstone's phrase about Home Rule applies in all its force:-- "Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we possess for bestowing benefits through legislation on the country to which we belong?" The proposal would be incredibly stupid, if it were not recklessly mischievous. But to most advocates of the federal system the word means less than this; and the conception, usually vaguely expressed, is that the relations of England, Scotland, and Ireland, should be something like those of the communities which make up (to quote instances commonly given) the German Empire, the Swiss Federation, the United States of America, or the British self-governing dominions of Canada, Australia, and South Africa. So expressed, the aspiration for a federal union deserves respectful consideration. In the first place, it must not be forgotten that no proposal of this nature has yet been put forward, even in general terms, by any English or Irish Party. Mr. John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Nationalists, has indeed said that he and his friends "were only asking what had already been given in twenty-eight different portions of the Empire:"[46] and a speaker usually more careful in his language[47] lately suggested to his audience that they should "ask the twenty-eight Home Rule Parliaments if the Empire would be split in pieces if there were a twenty-ninth." But in order to make up the number of Parliaments and Legislatures within the Empire to twenty-eight it is necessary to include in one category the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the colonial Parliaments of Newfoundland and New Zealand, the federal Parliaments of Canada and Australia, the provincial or state Legislatures (widely differing from one another in their constitution and powers) comprised in those Federations, the Union of South Africa and its constituent provinces, and the tiny assemblies surviving in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. From a reference so vague and confused no inference as to the real meaning or desire of either speaker can safely be drawn.[48] But let us put aside, with the foreign confederacies (which have in most cases been achieved or maintained by armed conflict), the practically independent Parliaments within the British Empire, and confine ourselves to the Federations of Canada and Australia, and to the Union (sometimes incorrectly called a Federation) of South Africa. In the first place, it is not immaterial to observe that each of the Legislatures here referred to resulted, not from the dissolution of an existing union, but from the voluntary assumption by communities formerly independent of one another of a closer bond. In other words, there was in each case a real _Jædus_ or treaty, not imposed by the Imperial power, but having a local origin and springing from the need of common action. The operative force was centripetal; and as the force continues to operate, the tendency of the mass is towards a chemical in lieu of a mechanical fusion.[49] But in the case of the United Kingdom a change from organic union to Federation would be the beginning of dissolution; and the centrifugal force, once set in motion, might lead further in the same direction. Again, there can be no true federation without (1) provincial legislatures and executives, (2) a central Parliament and executive, (3) a careful definition of the powers of each, and (4) a federal court to which should be entrusted the duty of determining questions arising between the federal and provincial governments and legislatures. If, therefore, provincial or state Governments are created for Ireland and for Scotland, a like Government should logically be created for England. Are we prepared to see four (or, if Wales be added, five) legislatures, and four (or five) executives, in these islands? Have we considered the possible effect on our whole system of government, on the theory of Cabinet responsibility to Parliament, on the powers of the House of Commons over grievance and supply? Must not each unit in a Federation be put as regards financial matters upon a like footing; and, if so, can Ireland bear her share? Is federation consistent with the predominance of one state, England, in wealth and population? These questions are vital, and none of them have received consideration. By declaring in general terms for Federalism you go but a little way. And if we treat the proposal for Federation as indicating a desire to adopt a constitution under which the relations of the United Kingdom to each of its constituent parts would be as the relation of some one of the three self-governing Dominions to the states or provinces of which it is composed, the question remains, which of those Dominions should be adopted as a model? For they differ not only in form but in essence. Under the British North America Act, 1867, and the amending statutes, there is "one Parliament for Canada" (sect. 17), while each province has its Legislature. Each provincial Legislature is empowered exclusively to make laws in relation to certain specified subjects (including property and civil rights and the administration of justice), and also in relation to "all matters of a merely local or private nature in the province"; while the Dominion Parliament may "make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Canada in relation to all matters not coming within" the classes of subjects assigned exclusively to the provincial Legislatures. The division of functions has given rise to much confusion and litigation; but, speaking generally, the trend of judicial decision has been towards a wide interpretation of the provincial powers. The "residuary powers" are in the Dominion Parliament. The constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, as defined by the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, is of a different character. The Federal Parliament is entrusted with power to make laws with respect to a number of subjects divided into no less than 39 classes (sect. 51); the State Legislatures have concurrent powers of legislation, but in case of conflict the law of the Commonwealth is to prevail over the State law (sect. 109). The "residuary powers" are in this case left to the States. There is power to alter the Constitution with the consent of a majority of the electors in a majority of the States and of a majority of the electors of the Commonwealth (sect. 123)--a power which has been freely used. The case of South Africa is sometimes cited as a precedent for loosening the bonds in the United Kingdom. It is a strong precedent for closer union. The South Africa Act, 1909, created in fact as well as in name, not a Federation but a true Legislative Union. Under the Act, the South African colonies were "united in a legislative union under one government under the name of the Union of South Africa" (sect. 4). The legislative power is vested in the Parliament of the Union (sect. 19), which has full power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Union (sect. 59). In each province (formerly a colony) there is an administrator appointed by the Governor-General of the Union in Council (sect. 68), and a Provincial Council (sect. 70); but the powers of the Provincial Councils are confined within narrow limits (sect. 85), and their ordinances (they are not called laws) have effect within the province as long as and so far as they are not repugnant to any Act of the Union Parliament (sect. 86). The Supreme Courts of the old colonies become provincial divisions of the Supreme Court of South Africa (sect. 98), and the colonial property and debts are transferred to the Union (sects. 121-124). In fact, in South Africa, where, as in Ireland, the distinction in the past has been racial and not territorial, Union and not Federation has gained the day. It is safe to prophesy that the coming proposals of the Government will not follow the South African plan. DEVOLUTION. The South African precedent leads naturally to a few observations on the proposals for the extension of local self-government, usually classified under the head of Devolution. These proposals differ, not in degree only but in kind, from schemes for the granting of responsible government, or Gladstonian Home Rule. Under all devolutionary schemes, properly so-called, the central Parliament and executive remain the ultimate depositaries of power; and the powers entrusted to local bodies are administrative only, and can be resumed at will. The Acts by which County Councils were set up, first in Great Britain and afterwards in Ireland, were steps in this direction. The Welsh Intermediate Education Act, 1889, was another. The establishment by the Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Act, 1899, of a Council of Agriculture, as Agricultural Board, and a Board of Technical Instruction, was a third. By these statutes wide powers are delegated to representative bodies directly or indirectly elected by popular vote; but in each case the delegated powers are strictly defined, their exercise is made subject to central control, and the right of Parliament to modify or withdraw any of them is absolute and unquestioned. The appointment by the House of Commons of a Grand Committee for Scottish Bills is another experiment of a similar character, though on different lines. Such delegations of power are consistent with the maintenance in its entirety of the Union of the Kingdom, and there is no reason whatever why further progress should not be made in the same direction. The events of 1907 are evidence that Devolution, regarded merely as a means of satisfying the political cry for Home Rule, is indeed "dead." But when the din of political battle has once more passed by, it may be possible to obtain consideration for a moderate and clearly defined scheme of delegation which, if applied not exclusively to Ireland, but to the whole country, might relieve the House of Commons of much of its work, and strengthen the habit of local self-government throughout the United Kingdom. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 20: See "_Times_ Special Commission," vol. v. p. 175, and "Home Rule. What is it?" by A.W. Samuels, K.C. (Simpkin Marshall, 1911), p. 60.] [Footnote 21: See No. 213 of the Liberal League publications.] [Footnote 22: Erskine Childers, "The Framework of Home Rule" (Arnold, 1911).] [Footnote 23: See speech of J.M. Robertson, M.P., London, January 11, 1912.] [Footnote 24: "Home Rule Problems" (P.S. King & Son, 1911).] [Footnote 25: Written in March, 1912.] [Footnote 26: See Egerton, "Federations and Unions in the British Empire" (Clarendon Press, 1911). Introduction.] [Footnote 27: On the financial questions involved the Government have been advised by a Committee containing financial experts; but the Report of this Committee is withheld from publication, and it is believed that its advice will not be followed.] [Footnote 28: House of Commons, April 8, 1886.] [Footnote 29: Quoted in "The True History of the American Revolution," by S.G. Fisher (Lippincott, 1903).] [Footnote 30: Childers, p. 340.] [Footnote 31: See Cambray, "Irish Affairs and the Irish Question" (Murray, 1911), p. 146.] [Footnote 32: Mr. Gladstone always declined to call it a "Parliament," but some Ministers of to-day are less scrupulous.] [Footnote 33: Dicey, "A Leap in the Dark" (Murray, 1911), p. 71.] [Footnote 34: See "The Church of Ireland and Home Rule," by J.H. Bernard, D.D., Bishop of Ossory, 1911.] [Footnote 35: House of Commons Papers, 1864, xli. 79.] [Footnote 36: Parliamentary Papers, 2079.] [Footnote 37: Parliamentary Papers (Cd. 2905).] [Footnote 38: "Home Rule Problems," p. 124.] [Footnote 39: See the Newfoundland railway case of 1898 (Parliamentary Papers, Cd. 8867, 9137).] [Footnote 40: "A Leap in the Dark," p. 110.] [Footnote 41: "Home Rule Problems," p. 112.] [Footnote 42: Mr. Redmond rejected the provisions of the 1893 Bill, saying in the House of Commons on August 30, 1893, that "as the Bill now stands, no man in his senses can any longer regard it as a full, final, or satisfactory settlement of the Irish Nationalist question."] [Footnote 43: Speech at Belfast, February 8, 1912.] [Footnote 44: July 18, 1886, at Cockermouth.] [Footnote 45: See "The Perils of Home Rule," by P. Kerr-Smiley (Cassell, 1911), p. 45, where Lord Morley's opinion to the same effect is quoted.] [Footnote 46: Speech at Whitechapel (_Times_, October 11, 1911).] [Footnote 47: Sir John Simon at Dewsbury (_Times_, February 8, 1912).] [Footnote 48: No such charge of ambiguity applies to the forcible letters of "Pacificus" on "Federalism and Home Rule" (Murray, 1910).] [Footnote 49: The changes in the Australian Constitution have been in favour of greater unity.] IV HOME RULE FINANCE By THE RIGHT HON. J. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN, M.P. The financial problems connected with the grant of Home Rule in 1912 are among the most complicated that call for solution, and differ fundamentally from those which faced the Governments of 1886 and 1893. And by common consent, the problems are not merely different; they are immensely more difficult. No clauses in the earlier Bills lent themselves more readily to destructive criticism; and though the provisions of the new scheme are still shrouded in mystery, it is inherent in the conditions under which it must be framed that the financial clauses will prove to be even less defensible on the grounds of logic or equity than those of either of its predecessors. Since the first Home Rule Bill was introduced the interests of Ireland--social, economic, industrial, and political--have become increasingly identified with those of the other parts of the United Kingdom. The commercial, banking, and railway systems of Ireland are intimately associated with those of the greater and more firmly established systems of Great Britain. Irish railways are so largely controlled at the present time by British concerns, and there exist so many agreements and understandings between them and British companies as to facilities and rates, that they might be regarded as part of the same network of communications. Hardly less close are the relations which now exist between British and Irish banks. It is not, however, on the commercial side only that greater intimacy and more firmly established relations exist now than formerly. Irish industries are agricultural, dairying and manufacturing. In each of these branches the country is increasingly dependent on the markets of England and Scotland; while reciprocally the products of the factories and workshops of Great Britain find in Ireland one of their most important markets. We do not always sufficiently realise that on the other side of the St. George's Channel lies a country whose annual imports amount to sixty-five millions sterling. Even less do we realise that one-half (thirty-two millions sterling) is the value of the imports of manufactures, mainly British, into Ireland. This trade in manufactured goods is not only already enormous; it is rapidly growing. It has increased by more than four millions in four years. Any ill-considered legislative measure which interfered with or disturbed this great volume of trade would no doubt cause serious loss to Ireland; but it would bring bankruptcy and disaster to many British firms and their workmen. It is, nevertheless, in respect of the political changes and the legislative measures passed in the last quarter of a century that the most serious obstacles will be found in the way of framing any satisfactory scheme for financing a measure of Home Rule. The Irish Local Government system, framed on the British model by the Act of 1898, the Congested Districts Board, and the Department of Agriculture, have hitherto depended financially, either wholly or in part, on Imperial grants in aid. Local taxation payments alone from the Imperial Exchequer amounted in 1910-11 to £1,478,000. The financial scheme under Home Rule must obviously contemplate and provide for the continuance of those grants. Land Purchase schemes have been enacted which have already had the effect of converting a quarter of a million tenants into owners under a contingent liability of 120 millions sterling guaranteed by the Imperial Exchequer. No financial scheme can ignore the fact that the earliest of the annuities created under the Wyndham Act will not expire before 1972, so that the Imperial liability for the payment of the bulk of the annuities already created will continue for at least seventy years more. Finally, we are faced with the fact that in the last twenty-five years the relations of the State to its citizens have been completely reformed and extended. Social reform is now in the programme of all parties. Education costs several times as much as in 1885. The aged poor have been provided with pensions by the State, and the Insurance Act of last year will shortly call for additional subventions from the Imperial Treasury. In addition to the new duties thus undertaken by the State, the cost of Defence and of the Civil Services has grown by leaps and bounds. We need not look too closely into the apportionment of these charges whilst we remain partners in a United Kingdom, but if the partnership is to be dissolved at the suit of Irish Nationalism, a new balance must be struck, and on any fair basis the contribution of Ireland under present-day conditions should far exceed the amount under either of the schemes for which Mr. Gladstone made himself responsible. Both schemes recognised the equity of some contribution for these services from Ireland, and it must be assumed that the same broad principles will be applied in any scheme which may be framed hereafter. By way of introduction to any adequate discussion of the possible financial proposals of any Home Rule measure, it is desirable to set out in some detail the existing financial relations of Ireland and Great Britain. The Treasury calculations on this subject are embodied in two White Papers which have been prepared and published annually during the last eighteen years. It is true that doubts have from time to time been cast on the accuracy of these calculations and of the methods by which the materials on which they are based have been collected. As to this, it is only necessary to say that the information in the possession of the Treasury officials is infinitely more voluminous and likely to be more accurate than any in the possession of private individuals; and there is no reason to suppose the succession of eminent public servants, who have been in turn responsible for the preparation of these returns have been moved in one direction or the other by prepossessions or bias. Their one attempt has been throughout to present a statement, as accurate as it is possible to make it on the one hand of the cost of the existing administration in Ireland and the expenditure incurred there, and on the other of the revenue derived from persons or property living or situated in that country. As the Prime Minister said on November 27 of last year-- "The utmost pains have been taken to make the estimates of 'true' revenue approximately correct, and it is believed that the total revenue as given in the revised returns approximates closely to the facts."[50] So long as Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom, such an investigation has mainly an academic interest. The State is a homogeneous entity; the taxes imposed on individuals similarly circumstanced are the same (with some trifling exceptions--all in favour of Ireland) in whatever quarter of the United Kingdom the individual resides. But the case is wholly different when a proposal is made to split up the State into its constituent parts. It then becomes necessary to inquire if there is any prospect that the constituent parts will have resources sufficient for the various services, commitments and liabilities--present and contingent--which do or will belong to them. And the beginning of any such inquiry is, as has been already said, the present Irish revenue and expenditure. The essential figures for such an investigation are contained in the following statement. This shows separately the expenditure on the various items which have been the subject of discussion or special mention in the different financial schemes proposed in connection with Home Rule. On the revenue side the effect of the delayed collection of duties under the Budget of 1909-10 has been eliminated by taking the average revenue in the two years in certain items. The figures of expenditure relate to the year 1910-11. The corresponding figures for both collection and contribution are set out in this table in consequence of the suggestion made in some quarters that we should revert to the Gladstonian proposal of 1886 and credit Ireland with the full revenue as collected. Though any such proposal is patently absurd it is mentioned here for the sake of completeness. STATEMENT SHOWING ESTIMATED REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE IN IRELAND (BASED ON WHITE PAPERS 220 AND 221 OF 1911). Revenue As collected. As contributed. £ £ 1. Customs[A] 2,922,000 2,866,000 2. Excise (_ex._ licences)[A] 4,872,000 2,952,000 3. Licence Duties[A] 284,000 284,000 4. Estate, etc.[A] 914,000 914,000 5. General Stamps[A] 310,000 333,000 6. Income Tax[A] 1,106,000 1,307,000 7. Postal Services 1,155,000 1,155,000 8. Miscellaneous 139,000 139,000 Total £11,702,000 £9,950,000 [A] = Average of two years, 1909-10 and 1910-11. Expenditure. £ 1. Civil list and miscellaneous charges (_ex._ Lord-Lieutenant's salary) 118,500 2. Lord-Lieutenant's salary 20,000 3. Local Taxation Payments 1,477,500 4. Public Works 415,500 5. Civil Service Departments 289,500 6. Department of Agriculture 415,000 7. Police 1,464,500 8. Judiciary, etc. 924,000 9. Education, etc. 1,805,000 10. Old Age Pensions 2,408,000 11. Superannuation, etc. 103,000 12. Ireland Development Grant 191,500 13. Miscellaneous 12,000 14. Revenue Departments 298,000 15. Postal Services 1,404,500 Total £11,346,500 The first striking fact in the foregoing statement is the large difference between "contributions" and "collections," _i.e._ between the "true" revenue derived from Ireland and the sums merely collected there. During the last two financial years this difference amounted to an average of £1,752,000. The excise collections alone represent an excess of £1,920,000 over the actual contribution. This, of course, arises from the movements of duty-paid spirits and beer between different parts of the United Kingdom. The last Report of the Commissioners of Customs and Excise (Cd. 5827) gives the amount of home-made spirits on which duty has been paid in Ireland at 5,209,000 proof gallons, whereas the quantity retained for consumption was only 2,776,000 proof gallons. A similar but smaller difference exists in the case of beer. To credit Ireland with the full amounts of the duties collected in Ireland, as was done by Mr. Gladstone in 1886, and as is now proposed in some quarters, would, in effect, amount to a gift from the British Exchequer of £1,750,000 a year. And there is obviously no security that the Irish Exchequer could rely on this boon being continued for more than a short time. There would be nothing to prevent the British spirit merchant from removing his spirits to this country in bond and paying the duty here after arrival. It is obvious that the Treasury would be compelled to grant facilities for this course. The present system is merely one of book-keeping and administrative convenience, but as the withdrawal of this sum from the British Exchequer to which it properly belongs would have to be made good from other British sources, there would be every inducement for the British merchant to effect such slight changes of method as would transfer the whole of this sum from the Irish to the British Exchequer. Having regard to the fact that on the other sources of revenue the collections in Ireland are estimated to fall short of the actual contributions by nearly £200,000, and that these are in the main direct taxes paid by the individuals concerned, it is not unlikely that a scheme which gave to Ireland the full benefit of her revenues as collected would in a short time be converted from a gain of some £1,700,000 to a loss of £100,000 to £200,000 to the Irish taxpayer. Stability in the tax system and reliability upon the realisation of the estimated revenue could not be assumed if "collections" instead of "contributions" were to be made the basis of any financial arrangements. Turning next to the contributed revenue upon which alone an Irish Parliament could rely, we note first the large proportion of the revenue represented by Customs and Excise. Contrasted with the figures for Great Britain, it is seen by the following table that whereas in Ireland the revenue from Customs and Excise amounts to 60 per cent. of the total, in Great Britain the proportion was not more than 36 per cent. PERCENTAGE OF REVENUE FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES CONTRIBUTED BY IRELAND AND GREAT BRITAIN RESPECTIVELY IN TWO YEARS ENDING MARCH 31, 1911.[51] Ireland. Great Britain. Per cent. Per cent. Customs 29 18-1/2 Excise (_ex._ licences) 30 17-1/2 Estate, etc., duties 9 14-1/2 Income tax 13 23-1/2 Postal, etc. 11 15 Other sources 8 11 --- --- 100 100 Exclusive of the licence duties the average yield (contribution) of Customs and Excise in Great Britain amounted in the last two years to £55,900,000, or at the rate of £1 7_s._ 5_d._ per head; in Ireland the average yield was £5,800,000, or at the rate of £1 7_s._ 10_d._ per head. The incidence of our consumption taxes is thus seen to be at the present time practically the same in Ireland as in Great Britain; and the much larger proportion of the Irish revenue obtained from them is due to the smaller relative yield of direct taxes. Ireland being mainly an agricultural country, income tax, death duties, and stamps yield much less per head of the population there than in Great Britain. Such conditions are highly suggestive of inelasticity. An Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer will find no such fiscal reserves in direct taxes as does his more fortunate British colleague. This conclusion should give pause to those who think that if the Customs and Excise continued to be controlled from Westminster, it would be still possible to extract the larger revenue needed for the growing expenditure of Ireland by higher rates of income tax and death duties. Such a course would increase the burdens of the direct taxpayers of Ireland, but it would not fill the Irish Treasury. On the other hand, it is clear that there is no chance of relief being afforded to the Irish indirect taxpayer under Home Rule, supposing Customs and Excise were handed over to the Irish Parliament. Yet whenever a British Chancellor of the Exchequer has found it necessary to increase any of the taxes on consumption, the protests from the Irish benches have been invariably both loud and vehement. Irish members have pointed to the low wages earned in Ireland, the greater addiction of the people to tea and spirits, and the higher toll of their earnings consequently extracted by the Exchequer. The yield of existing taxes, therefore, whether direct or indirect, is not elastic in Ireland. Neither of them afford sufficient resources to meet the necessities of an Irish Parliament. There are, of course, other reasons why there should be no delegation of the power to impose Customs and Excise. The constitutional objections to such a course are overwhelming. It would involve the abandonment of the plea that Home Rule for Ireland was the prelude to Home Rule all round; in other words, that separation was the condition precedent to federalism. In every federal system in the world the control of Customs and Excise has been retained by the central authority. This is true not only of the quasi-federations within the British Empire; it is equally true of the United States, Germany, and Switzerland. One can scarcely be surprised at the emphatic repudiation which such a proposal received at the hands of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. J.M. Robertson) when, on February 7, 1912, in a speech at Lincoln, he said-- "There was, however, just one thing that must remain one for three kingdoms, and that was the fiscal system, Customs and Excise. _It was a federal union we want, a federal state._ If they were to do as some of his unreflecting Home Rule friends, Irish and English, have done, and demand that Ireland should not only have power to lay taxes but to fix Customs and Excise then they had no State left at all." Another obvious objection to such a course is that it necessitates the erection of a Customs barrier between Ireland and Great Britain. Tariff Reformers are ready to admit that the present fiscal system is at least as injurious to Ireland as to other portions of the United Kingdom. The power to impose Customs duties on British goods--and the proportion of British total imports is so large that if this power were limited to foreign goods it would be financially valueless--would no doubt provide the Irish Exchequer with considerable funds and might be used to develop her prosperity. But the separation of the Customs systems for the purpose of enabling Ireland to impose tariffs in her own interests would necessarily be followed by a demand for treaty-making powers such as have been successfully claimed and are now enjoyed by British Dominions overseas. Under a general tariff for the United Kingdom the same advantages would accrue to Ireland without any corresponding damage to British or Imperial interests. Thus, whether Customs and Excise are handed over to the Irish Parliament or retained by the Imperial Parliament, the consequences are equally embarrassing. In the one case Ireland would be deprived of the control of some 60 per cent. of her present revenue, and of all power of expansion; in the other, British trade with Ireland might be gravely injured by hostile legislation, and the union of the three kingdoms in financial and commercial policy would be destroyed. But this is not federation, nor is it a step towards it. It is separation pure and simple. Unless we are prepared to accept separation as the end of our policy the control of Customs and therefore of Excise, must remain an Imperial affair. There can, therefore, be no justification for taking the control of the Customs and Excise from the Imperial Parliament. The Irish Parliament would thus be left with some 40 per cent. of present revenue under her own control. But the power to raise further revenue within the limits legally reserved to the Irish Parliament would be even less than this figure would imply. For of the £4,100,000 of revenue other than Customs and Excise, nearly £1,200,000 comes from the Postal Services; and even if these services were controlled by Ireland, it may be taken that the rates charged will be the same as in Great Britain. Of the remaining £2,900,000 nearly one-half comes from income tax. It has already been pointed out that its yield cannot be materially increased. There are only two ways by which an Irish Chancellor might attempt such a task. He might raise the rate of income tax or he might lower the exemption limit. The former course would almost certainly be followed by two equally undesirable results. So far as the tax continued to be paid in Ireland it would fall with crushing force on the already heavily-burdened agricultural industry. Still, from the point of view of the Exchequer, there might be some additional revenue on this account. On the other hand, there would be a check to the investment of capital in Ireland--and no country needs capital more--and a powerful temptation to transfer it where the tax would be lower. It may be seriously questioned, therefore, whether any increase in the income tax above the British rate is practicable. The other alternative, namely, the lowering of the exemption limit, would be so unpopular that no Irish Chancellor is ever likely to consider it seriously. Passing from the consideration of revenue it is necessary to examine the relation of present revenue to present expenditure. The first table in the present article shows that the ascertainable expenditure for Irish purposes in 1910-11 was about £1,400,000 more than the revenue. To this expenditure must be added about £300,000 for the State Share of the benefits under Part I. of the National Insurance Act, about £50,000 in respect of Part II., and about £100,000 for cost of administration of both parts, increasing the immediate deficit to about £1,550,000. This calculation, moreover, includes no charge against Irish revenue on account of Imperial Services--navy and army; National Debt, interest and management; the diplomatic services, and so forth. The equity of such payments has been consistently recognised in the two Bills and the three financial schemes submitted by Mr. Gladstone. However moderate the scale of contribution it would in the present case double or treble the margin between Irish revenue and Irish expenditure for local purposes. If, for example, the precedent of the 1886 Bill were followed, and Ireland charged with a contribution for Imperial services in proportion to the estimated relative taxable capacities, the additional charges on the Irish Exchequer would amount to not less than about £4,000,000 on the 1910-11 figures if the taxable capacity of Ireland be taken at one-twenty-fifth, and to nearly £3,500,000 if it be taken at one-thirtieth. It may be worth while here to refer to the amazing statement that Great Britain has made a large "profit out of the Union." At the last meeting of the British Association, Prof. Oldham affected to prove that Ireland "in the course of one hundred years ... had sent across the Channel as her contribution to the British Exchequer a clear net payment of about 330 millions sterling." The same contention has been urged by Lord MacDonnell. This calculation ignores the fact that even the Irish Parliament between 1782 and 1800 acknowledged its obligation to contribute to Imperial services, and voted contributions for Imperial purposes, besides raising and maintaining in Ireland a force of 12,000 to 15,000 men, some of whom were available for foreign service. It makes no allowance also for the debt which Ireland brought into the Union when the Exchequers were amalgamated in 1817. The importance of the last item may be judged from the fact that if the whole of the so-called contribution to Imperial services, _i.e._ the excess of true revenue over local expenditure, had been employed since 1817 in paying interest at 3 per cent. on the old Irish debt and the whole of any balance remaining after payment of interest had been used for redemption of the capital, this debt would only have been extinguished in 1886. If a contribution of only 1 per cent. to the cost of Imperial services had been previously charged against this excess, there would be a large balance of the Irish debt still outstanding. As a matter of fact, in the same period that Ireland is said to have contributed £330,000,000, Great Britain may be shown by a precisely similar calculation to have contributed no less than £5,800,000,000 for Imperial purposes. The measure of "injustice to Ireland" meted out by unsympathetic Britons in respect to the Imperial contribution extracted from Ireland may be seen from the following comparison for different dates in the last century. RATIOS OF POPULATIONS AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO IMPERIAL SERVICES OF IRELAND AND GREAT BRITAIN AT DECENNIAL INTERVALS. Ratio of British to Ratio of British to Irish Populations. Irish Contributions. 1819-20 2·1 12·7 1829-30 2·1 10·9 1839-40 2·3 11·5 1849-50 3·2 17·6 1859-60 4·0 9·8 1869-70 4·8 12·3 1879-80 5·7 16·3 1889-90 7·0 22·6 1899-00 8·9 46·5 1909-10 9·3 [52] The truth is that from a financial point of view Ireland has no valid complaint to make on the score of her contributions for Imperial purposes. Between 1820 and 1840 the Irish population was a little less than one-half of the population of Great Britain; her contribution for Imperial Services varied from one-eleventh to one-thirteenth. In 1899-1900 the British contribution was 46-1/2 times the Irish, though the population was less than nine times as large. If any contribution for Imperial Services from Ireland is justified, and Mr. Gladstone at least acknowledged it, no one can say that the contribution actually taken from Ireland has been excessive. As already stated we are still without any information as to the financial proposals to be included in the Home Rule Bill of 1912. The Government have appointed a Committee to advise them upon this subject. Though the cost of the Committee has been met out of public funds, and sources of information were laid open to them which are not readily available to the public, the Prime Minister has steadily refused to supply to Parliament any information as to the results of their labours.[53] The terms of reference to the Commission; the witnesses examined by them; the information placed at their disposal; the character of the conclusions and recommendations; these have, all alike, been refused to the House of Commons. But while Parliament has been denied this information, there is every reason to believe that the leaders of the Nationalist Party have been taken fully into the confidence of the Government. We do not know whether, for example, the Customs or Excise or both will be imposed and collected by the future Irish Parliament. We do not know whether any contribution will be required for the Irish share of Imperial services. We are equally uncertain whether any and what purely Irish services will be retained by the Imperial Parliament, and charged on the Imperial Exchequer. And lastly, the intentions of the Government in regard to the payment of a subsidy from the Imperial Exchequer to the Irish Parliament, with which rumour is busy, are as yet unrevealed. In spite of this lamentable paucity of information as to the Government plan, I think it can be safely said that no scheme even remotely resembling any of those presented in connection with the two previous Bills can be put forward now. Each of those schemes would involve the Irish Parliament in a huge deficit from the very outset. Even if the schemes were adapted to the changed modern conditions the same impassable gap between available revenue and certain expenditure remains. Those schemes presumably embodied principles which the Governments of 1886 and 1893, and the Nationalist parties of those dates regarded as adequate. It would be strange if it were otherwise, seeing that an examination and comparison of the separate schemes can discover no other consistent principles except the solitary one of juggling with the revenues, expenditures, and contributions in such manner as would start the Irish Parliament with a small surplus. In view of the importance of these earlier attempts to secure an approximation to financial equilibrium, it appears desirable to examine how Ireland would fare in modern conditions under each of them. The essential features of the 1886 scheme were as follows:-- 1. Customs and Excise to be under the complete control of the Imperial Parliament. 2. Irish Parliament to have power to levy any other taxes. 3. Ireland to contribute annually to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. (_a_) £1,466,000 for interest and management of Irish share of National Debt. (_b_) £1,466,000 for contribution to Imperial Defence. (_c_) £110,000 for contribution to Imperial Civil Services. (_d_) £1,000,000 for Irish Constabulary. 4. Contributions 3 (_a_) to 3 (_d_) were not to be increased for thirty years, but might be diminished. 5. Irish share of National Debt to be reckoned at £48,000,000, and Irish Sinking Fund to begin at £360,000, increasing by amount of interest released on redeemed portion of debt. 6. Contribution to Imperial Defence and Civil Services not to exceed one-fifteenth of the total cost in any year. 7. Irish contribution to be credited with receipts on account of Crown Revenues in Ireland. 8. If expenditure on Constabulary fell below £1,000,000, contribution 3 (_d_) to be correspondingly reduced. 9. Customs and Excise _collected_ in Ireland were to be subject to following charges:-- (_a_) Cost of collection, not more than 4 per cent. (_b_) Contributions to Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. (_c_) Payments to National Debt Commissioners. (_d_) Any sums required under the Land Act of that Session the balance being paid over to the Irish Government. 10. The Lord Lieutenant's salary not to fall on the Irish Exchequer. Broadly the scheme gave to the Irish Government credit for the Customs and Excise _collected_ in Ireland and charged it with annual payments of £4,502,000 in addition to the cost of collection. It is clear that Mr. Gladstone, at the time when the Irish population was about one-eighth of the United Kingdom, assumed Ireland to have a taxable capacity of one-fifteenth. If such a scheme were introduced at the present moment it is obvious that, owing to the further decline in the population of Ireland, a smaller figure for taxable capacity must be taken. What that figure should be it is difficult, if not impossible, to decide satisfactorily. It is generally assumed that on the basis of the calculations made by the Financial Relations Commission in 1896, the present relative taxable capacity for Ireland would be about one-twenty-fifth that of the United Kingdom. In the last two financial years the Irish contribution to Income Tax has been one-twenty-eighth, and the contribution to Estate Duties one-twenty-sixth of the total collection in the United Kingdom. These proportions, taken as measures of taxable capacity must be exceptionally favourable to Ireland, where the proportion of Income Tax payers and of persons possessing property paying Death Duties is relatively to the total population smaller than in the United Kingdom as a whole. If, therefore, for the sake of the present calculations the mean of two proportions--_i.e._ one-twenty-seventh deducible from the Income Tax and Death Duty contributions is assumed, we employ a figure exceptionally favourable to Ireland. The financial statement on the next page showing the 1886 scheme applied to present conditions has been drawn up on this basis. The revenue is here assumed to come in at the average rate of the last two years (1909-10 and 1910-11) and the expenditure is taken as that of 1910-11. The state of the Irish Exchequer under the foregoing scheme would be indeed a parlous one. It would start with a deficit of £3,200,000, and with a prospective immediate increase by about £450,000 on account of the Insurance Act. The actual budget deficit would thus be about £3,650,000. The Imperial Parliament would collect about £7,794,000, and after deducting £5,346,000 would hand back to the Irish Exchequer the difference of £2,458,000. The revenues upon which the Chancellor in the Irish Parliament could rely would be, therefore, £6,366,000. Out of this an expenditure of £9,562,000 would have to be met. The postal services would probably not stand any increased charges; there is left, therefore, only £5,211,000 of free revenue, and only £2,753,000 under the unrestricted control of the Irish Parliament. With such resources it would be obviously impossible to make good a deficit of £3,206,000 by any increase of taxation. It must not be overlooked, also, that the effect of crediting Ireland with Customs and Excise as "collected" instead of as "contributed" is practically to make the Irish Parliament a further free gift of nearly £2,000,000. A totally different scheme accompanied the Home Rule Bill of 1893 as introduced. The principal features of the new scheme were as follows:-- 1. Customs, excise, and postage to be imposed by the Imperial Parliament. 2. Excise and postage to be collected and managed by the Irish Parliament. 3. Customs to be collected and retained by the Imperial Parliament in view of contribution to Imperial services. 4. Excise duties collected in Ireland on articles consumed in Great Britain to be handed over to Imperial Exchequer. 5. If Excise duties be increased the yield of the excess duties to be handed over to the Imperial Exchequer. 6. If Excise duties be reduced and Irish revenue diminished, the deficiency to be made good to Irish revenue. 7. Two-thirds of the cost of the Constabulary to be repaid to the Imperial Exchequer. Some of the provisions of this scheme are of exceptional interest. If it had ever been in operation the plan, for example, of adjusting the payments from one exchequer to the other in the event of changes being enacted by the Imperial Parliament in the Excise duties must have been fruitful of difficulties and created much friction. If the duties had been reduced there might have been an increased consumption. Who can say how much of the revenue lost to the Irish Exchequer in the event of a reduction of duties would have been due to the reduced rates of duty, and how much had been regained by increased consumption. Again, if the Excise duties had been increased, as in the Budget of 1909, to such a degree that the total revenue at the higher duty was less than the total revenue from the lower duty, who could have determined whether this was a case requiring a payment from the Irish to the British Exchequer, or from the British to the Irish Exchequer. Perhaps the most striking novelty of the first scheme of 1893 was the retention of the Customs duties in lieu of Ireland's contribution to Imperial Services. At that time the estimated value of the Customs contributed by Ireland was £2,400,000, and seeing that in 1886 her reasonable share of liability on account of Imperial Services was put at £4,600,000, the very large gift to Ireland represented by this scheme may be readily imagined. Even with the full advantage of this gift the estimated Irish surplus was put at £500,000. During the discussions of the Bill an error in the Excise contributions, reducing the revenue available to the Irish Exchequer by £356,000 was discovered. The reduced surplus of £144,000 was regarded by Mr. Gladstone as "cutting it too fine," and the financial scheme was completely recast. Before explaining the third scheme it might be well to examine as before how the original scheme of 1893 would work out at the present time. This is shown in the following balance sheet. SCHEME B (BASED ON BILL OF 1893, AS INTRODUCED). REVENUE. £ EXPENDITURE. £ 1. Excise (true revenue 1. Civil Government _ex._ licences) 2,952,000 charges (_ex._ Constabulary 2. Local Taxes-- and Lord (_a_) Stamps 333,000 Lieutenant's salary) 6,952,000 (_b_) Death Duties 914,000 2. Collection of Ireland (_c_) Income Tax 1,307,000 Revenues, etc. 298,000 (_d_) Excise licences 284,000 3. Postal Services 1,404,000 3. Postal Revenue 1,155,000 4. Contribution to Constabulary 4. Miscellaneous 150,000 (2/3rds of --------- £1,464,500) 976,000 7,095,000 Deficit 2,535,000 --------- --------- 9,630,000 9,630,000 The narrow surplus of £144,000 has disappeared, and instead there is on present-day figures the substantial deficit of £2,535,000. Here again it may be observed that the Excise duties are fixed by the Imperial Parliament, and the Postal charges are presumably also invariable. The first Budget deficit would, as before, be not less than £3,000,000. The taxes within the absolute control of the Irish Parliament would have been producing a revenue of £2,838,000. It is within this range of taxation, or by the imposition of new direct taxes, that the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer would have been compelled to raise an additional £3,000,000 in order to make the two sides of his account balance. Owing to the mistake already referred to, Mr. Gladstone prepared and presented a third scheme, whose principal features were as follows:-- 1. Ireland's contribution to Imperial expenditure to be one-third of the true revenue of taxes levied in Ireland. 2. Ireland to be credited with miscellaneous receipts and surplus (if any) arising from postal services. 3. Ireland to pay out of revenues credited to her, two-thirds of the cost of the Constabulary, all Civil Government charges and any deficit on postal services. 4. The Customs and Inland Revenue duties and the rates for Postal charges to be fixed and collected by Imperial Parliament. 5. After six years (1) Irish contribution to Imperial Services to be revised; (2) the collection of Inland Revenue duties to be undertaken by Irish Government; (3) Irish legislation to impose the stamp duties, income tax, and excise licences. The financial clauses as thus remodelled and simplified were expected to produce a surplus of £512,000. The characteristic feature of this arrangement was the provision for handing over to the Imperial Exchequer one-third of the Irish true tax revenue as Ireland's payment on account of Imperial Services. How matters would stand if this arrangement were applied to the present financial situation in Ireland may be seen from the following table. SCHEME C (BASED ON BILL OF 1893, AS AMENDED). REVENUE. £ EXPENDITURE £ 1. Customs 2,866,000 1. Civil Government 2. Excise (_ex._ licence Charges 6,952,000 duties) 2,952,000 2. Constabulary (2/3rds 3. Stamps 333,000 of £1,464,000) 976,000 4. Death duties 914,000 3. Estimated deficit on 5. Licence duties 284,000 Postal Services 249,000 6. Income Tax 1,307,000 7. Crown Lands, etc. 25,000 --------- 8,681,000 --------- 8. 2/3rds of £8,965,000 5,757,000 9. Miscellaneous Receipts 115,000 --------- 5,902,000 Deficit 2,275,000 --------- --------- Total 8,177,000 Total 8,177,000 --------- --------- The main Irish objection to a scheme of this description is that, whatever tax be imposed, the amount taken from the Irish taxpayer would be 50 per cent. greater than the amount going into the Irish Exchequer. It is easy to foresee that such an arrangement would have led to much friction and difficulty, and that it could not have lasted even the six years for which it was provisionally fixed. If applied to the present situation Ireland would have been contributing less than £3,000,000 for Imperial services, although a very moderate estimate of what her contribution should be would require her to pay at least £5,000,000. In spite of this modest payment, however, this scheme would have confronted the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer with a deficit of more than £2,250,000 rising at once to £2,700,000 in consequence of the Insurance Act. In reviewing the three financial schemes which have previously seen the light, the following facts stand out clearly:-- 1. Some contribution was expected from Ireland for Imperial services in each scheme. 2. The rates of customs, excise, and postage were in all cases to be controlled by the Imperial Parliament. 3. The customs were in every case to be collected by officers of the Imperial Exchequer. 4. In the two schemes of 1893 "true" revenue and not "collected" revenue was the basis of the financial arrangement. 5. Each of these schemes would involve the Irish Parliament from the outset in a huge deficit. In view of these facts it is certain that any arrangement which pretended to give a Budget surplus to the Irish Parliament would involve, overtly or covertly, the payment of a large subsidy to Ireland out of the Imperial Exchequer. Such a contingency is not likely to make Home Rule more acceptable, or the path of any Bill through Parliament more easy. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 50: See Parliamentary Debates.] [Footnote 51: Based on White Papers 233 (1910) and 220 (1911).] [Footnote 52: No contribution from Ireland in this year; local expenditure is estimated to have been in excess of revenue contributed.] [Footnote 53: Since the above was written, Mr. Birrell has promised (March 27, 1912) to publish the report "some time" after the introduction of the Home Rule Bill.] V HOME RULE AND THE COLONIAL ANALOGY. BY L.S. AMERY, M.P. There is no argument in favour of Home Rule for Ireland which is more frequently used to-day than that which is based on the analogy of our Colonial experience. In the history of every one of our Colonies--so runs one variant of the argument--from Lord Durham's report on Canada down to the grant of responsible government to the Transvaal, "Home Rule" has turned disaffection into loyalty, and has inaugurated a career of prosperity. Why should we then hesitate to apply to Irish discontent the "freedom" which has proved so sovereign a remedy elsewhere? Again, if our Dominions have been able to combine local Home Rule with national unity--so runs another variant--why should a policy which works successfully in Canada or Australia not work in the United Kingdom? Another suggestion freely thrown out is that Home Rule is only the beginning of a process of federalisation which is to bring us to the goal of Imperial Federation. In one form or another the Colonial Analogy occupies the foreground of almost every speech or article in favour of Irish Home Rule. The ablest, as well as the most courageous, piece of Home Rule advocacy which has so far appeared, Mr. Erskine Childers's "Framework of Home Rule," is based from first to last on this analogy and on little else. That the argument is effective cannot be gainsaid. It is the argument which appeals most strongly to the great body of thoughtful Liberals who from every other point of view look upon the project with unconcealed misgiving. It is the argument which has appealed to public opinion in the Dominions, and has there secured public resolutions and private subscriptions for the Nationalist cause. In one of its forms it appealed to the imagination of an Imperialist like Cecil Rhodes. In another it has, undoubtedly, in recent years attracted not a few Unionists who have been prepared to approach with, at any rate, an open mind the consideration of a federal constitution for the United Kingdom. And, indeed, if the analogy really applied, it would be difficult to resist the conclusion. If Ireland has really been denied something which has proved the secret of Colonial loyalty and prosperity, what Englishman would be so short-sighted as to wish to deprive her of it for the mere sake of domination? If Home Rule were really a stepping-stone towards Imperial Federation, how insincere our professions of "thinking Imperially," if we are not prepared to sacrifice a merely local sentiment of union for a great all-embracing ideal! But, as a matter of fact, there is no such analogy bearing on the question which, here and now, is at issue. On the contrary the whole trend of Colonial experience confirms, in the most striking fashion, the essential soundness of the position which Unionists have maintained throughout, that the material, social and moral interests, alike of Ireland and of Great Britain, demand that they should remain members of one effective, undivided legislative and administrative organisation. The whole argument, indeed, plausible as it is, is based on a series of confusions, due, in part, to deliberate obscuring of the issue, in part to the vagueness of the phrase "Home Rule," and to the general ignorance of the origin and real nature of the British Colonial system. There are, indeed, three main confusions of thought. There is, first of all, the confusion between "free" or "self-governing" institutions, as contrasted with unrepresentative or autocratic rule, and separate government, whether for all or for specified purposes, as contrasted with a common government. In the next place there is the confusion between the status of a self-governing Dominion, in its relations to the Imperial Government, and the status of a Colonial state or provincial government towards the Dominion of which it forms a part. A truly inimitable instance of this confusion has been provided by Mr. Redmond in a declaration made on more than one occasion that all that Ireland asks for, is, "What has already been given to twenty-eight different portions of the Empire."[54] Considering that the "portions" thus enumerated include practically sovereign nation states like Canada, provinces like those of the South African Union, with little more than county council powers, and stray survivals, like the Isle of Man, of an earlier system of government, based on the same principle of ascendency and interference as the government of Ireland under Poynings's Act, it is difficult to know which to admire most, Mr. Redmond's assurance, or his cynical appreciation of the ignorance or capacity for deliberate self-deception of those with whom he has to deal. The third confusion is that between Imperial functions and national or Dominion functions, due to the fact that the two are combined in the United Kingdom Parliament, which is also, under present conditions, the Imperial Parliament, and to the consequent habitual use of the word "Imperial" in two quite different senses. It is this last confusion which makes such a declaration as Mr. Asquith's about safeguarding "the indefeasible authority of the Imperial Parliament" a mere equivocation, for it affords no indication as to whether the supremacy retained is the effective and direct control maintained by Canada over Ontario, or the much slighter and vaguer supremacy exercised by the United Kingdom over the Dominions. It is this same confusion, too, which is responsible for the notion that the problem of creating a true Imperial Parliament or Council by a federation of the Dominions would be assisted, either by creating an additional Dominion in the shape of Ireland, or by arranging the internal constitution of the United Kingdom, as one of the federating Dominions, on a federal rather than on a unitary basis. The confusion of ideas between self-government and separate government pervades the whole argument that the granting of "Home Rule" to Ireland would be analogous to the grant of responsible institutions to the Colonies. The essence of Home Rule is the creation of a separate government for Ireland. The essence of our Colonial policy has been the establishment of popular self-government in the Colonies. That this self-government has been effected through local parliaments and local executives, and not by representation in a common parliament, is a consequence of the immense distances and the profound differences in local conditions separating the Dominions from the Mother Country. It is an adaptation of the policy to peculiar conditions, and not an essential principle of the policy itself. This is obvious from any consideration of the circumstances under which the policy of Colonial self-government originated. Under the old Colonial system which preceded it, the Governor not only controlled the executive government, whose members were simply his official subordinates, but also controlled legislation through a nominated Upper Chamber or Legislative Council. The object of this restrictive policy was not interference with local affairs, but the supposed necessity of safeguarding general Imperial interests. Local affairs were, in the main, left to the local government. But the peculiar constitution of that government rendered it almost inevitable that the practical control of those affairs should fall into the hands of a narrowly limited class, clustering round the Governor and his circle, and by its privileges and prejudices creating in those excluded from that class a spirit of opposition, which extended from its members to the whole Imperial system which they were supposed to personify. In each of the North American Colonies a small oligarchy, generally known as the "Family Compact," was able to "monopolise the Executive Council, the Legislative Council, the Bench, the Bar, and all offices of profit." It was against this system, and not against the Imperial connection or even against undue interference from England, that the Canadian rebellion of 1837 was directed. In 1838 Lord Durham made his famous report in which he attributed the troubles to their true cause, the disregard of public opinion, and proposed that the Governor should in future govern, in local affairs, in accordance with the advice given by Colonial Ministers enjoying the confidence of the popular Assembly. A few years later his policy was put into execution by Lord Elgin in Canada, and rapidly extended to other Colonies. Five years ago the same system of government was applied to the Transvaal and to the Orange River Colony.[55] From the foregoing brief summary, it is sufficiently clear that the really vital feature of the policy inaugurated by Lord Durham was the acceptance of responsible popular government in local affairs, and not the separation of Colonial government from Imperial control. The policy did not involve the setting up of new legislative machinery or a new definition of Imperial relations. For an existing system of separate government in local affairs, which created friction and discontent, it simply substituted a new system which has, in the main, worked smoothly up to the present. From the success of this policy, what possible direct inference can be drawn as to the effect of setting up in Ireland, not a similar system of government, for Ireland already enjoys political institutions as fully representative as those of any Colony, or of any other portion of the United Kingdom, but a separate centre of government? At the same time the success of responsible government in the Colonies is, on closer examination, by no means without bearing on the problem of Ireland. That system of Colonial responsible government which seems to us so simple and obvious is, on the contrary, one of the most artificial systems the world has ever known, based as it is upon conditions which have never been present before in the world's history, and which are now rapidly disappearing, never, perhaps, to recur. That a popular assembly in complete control of the executive, should respect an unwritten convention limiting its powers and rights to purely local affairs, and submit to a purely external control of its wider interests and destinies, seemed to most of Lord Durham's contemporaries almost unthinkable. Not only those who opposed the policy, but many of those who advocated it, were convinced that it would lead to complete separation. Nor were their fears or hopes by any means ill-grounded. That they were not justified by the event was due to an altogether exceptional combination of factors. The first of these was the overwhelming supremacy of the United Kingdom in commerce and naval power, and its practical monopoly of political influence in the outer world. Sheltered by an invincible navy, far removed from the sound of international conflict, the Colonies had no practical motive for concerning themselves with foreign affairs, or with any but purely local measures of defence. Even when, as in 1854, they were technically involved by the United Kingdom in war with a great Power, they were not so much as inconvenienced. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, incurred no serious expenditure for their defence beyond what was in any case required for the defence of its sea-borne commerce, nor was its foreign policy at any time seriously deflected by regard for Colonial considerations. Even when the Colonies encroached on the original limits set them, and began to establish protectionist tariffs against the Mother Country, British manufacturers could afford to disregard a handicap of which they were at first scarcely sensible, while British statesmen smiled condescendingly at the harmless aberrations of Colonial inexperience. Another factor was the very fact that it was colonies that the United Kingdom was dealing with, new countries where every other interest was secondary to that of opening up and developing the untamed wilderness, to creating the material framework which, in fulness of time, might support a complete national life. There was consequently little real interest in external policy in the Colonial assemblies, little leisure for criticism of the Imperial authorities, little desire to assert any particular point of view. Last, but not least, was the factor of distance, interposing a veil of obscurity between the different communities in the Empire; mitigating minor causes of friction, keeping Colonial politics free from being entangled in the British Party system. The British system of Colonial self-government has so far proved workable because of the exceptional circumstances in which it originated. But its success cannot be regarded as wholly unqualified. The failure to provide any direct representation of Colonial interests and aspirations in the Imperial Parliament may not have mattered as far as foreign policy and defence were concerned. But it did affect the colonies most seriously from the economic point of view, for it precluded them from pressing with any effect for the development of inter-Imperial communications, or from resisting the abolition of the system of preferential trade which meant so much to their prosperity. Under the influence of a narrowly selfish and short-sighted policy, inspired by English manufacturing interests, Canada saw the stream of commerce and population pass by her shores on its way to the United States. The relative progress of the British Colonies and of the United States since the abolition of preference is some measure of the economic weakness of a political system which has no common trade policy. In any case the British Colonial system, as we have known it is inevitably moving towards its crisis. The conditions under which it originated are fast disappearing. The commercial and political expansion of Europe, of America, of Asia, are bringing the Dominions more and more into the arena of international conflict. The growth of foreign navies is forcing them to realise the necessity of taking a larger part in their own defence. Their growing national self-consciousness demands not only that they should cease to be dependent on the Mother Country for their safety, but also that they should exercise control over the foreign policy of which defence is merely the instrument. There are only two possible solutions to the problem which is now developing: the one is complete separation, the other is partnership in an Imperial Union in which British subjects in the Dominions shall stand on exactly the same footing, and enjoy the same powers and privileges in Imperial affairs, as British subjects in the United Kingdom. The conditions--geographical, economic, political--which, in the Colonies, made the grant of free institutions, unaccompanied by some form of political federation or union, even a temporary success, were, indeed, exceptional. None of them were present in the circumstances of Ireland before the Union. They are not present to-day. Geographically the United Kingdom is a single compact island group, of which Ireland is by no means the most outlying portion. No part of Ireland is to-day, or ever was, as inaccessible from the political centre of British power as the remoter parts of the Highlands, not to speak of the Shetlands or Hebrides. Racially, no less than physically, Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom, peopled as it is with the same mixture of racial elements as the main island of the group. The blend of Celt with Dane, with Normans and English of the Pale, with English citizens of the seaports and Cromwellian settlers, which constitutes Celtic Ireland, so-called, is less Celtic both in speech and in blood than either Wales or the Highlands. Religion alone has maintained a difference between a predominantly Celtic and a predominantly Teutonic Ireland which would otherwise have disappeared far more completely than the difference between Celtic and Teutonic Scotland. Economically, the connection between Ireland and Great Britain, always close, has become such that to-day Ireland subsists almost wholly upon the English market. In these respects, at least, there is no resemblance between the conditions of Ireland and that of any of the Colonies. On the other hand, politically, Ireland was for centuries treated as a colony--"the first and nearest of the Colonies," as Mr. Childers puts it. The difficulties and defects of early Colonial government were intensified by the great conflict of the Reformation, which made Ireland a centre of foreign intrigue, and by the long religious and constitutional struggle of the seventeenth century, which fell with terrible severity upon a population which had throughout espoused the losing cause. Cromwell; realising that "if there is to be a prosperous, strong and United Kingdom there must be one Parliament and one Parliament only," freed Ireland from the Colonial status. Unfortunately, his policy was reversed in 1660, and for over a century Ireland endured the position of "least favoured Colony"--least favoured, partly because, with the possible exception of linen, all her industries were competitive with, and not complementary to English industries, and so were deliberately crushed in accordance with the common economic policy of the time, partly because the memories of past struggles kept England suspicious and jealous of Irish prosperity. Every evil under which the old colonial system laboured in Canada before the rebellion was intensified in Ireland by the religious and racial feud between the mass of the people and the ascendant caste. The same solvent of free government that Durham recommended was needed by Ireland. In view of the geographical and economic position of Ireland, and in the political circumstances of the time, it could only be applied through union with Great Britain. Union had been vainly prayed for by the Irish Parliament at the time of the Scottish Union. Most thoughtful students, not least among them Adam Smith,[56] had seen in it the only cure for the evils which afflicted the hapless island. Meanwhile, in 1782, the dominant caste utilised the Ulster volunteer movement to wrest from Great Britain, then in the last throes of the war against France, Spain, and America, the independence of the Irish Parliament. Theoretically co-equal with the British Parliament, Grattan's Parliament was, in practice, kept by bribery in a position differing very little from that of Canada before the rebellion. Still the new system in Ireland might, under conditions resembling those of Canada in 1840, have gradually evolved into a workable scheme of self-government. But the conditions were too different. A temporary economic revival, indeed, followed the removal of the crippling restrictions upon Irish trade. But, politically, the new system began to break down almost from the start. Its entanglement in English party politics, which geography made inevitable, lead to deadlocks over trade and over the regency question, the latter practically involving the right to choose a separate sovereign. The same geographical conditions made it impossible for Ireland to escape the influence of the French Revolution. The factious spirit and the oppression of the ruling caste did the rest. There is no need to dwell here on the horrors of the rising of 1798, and of its repression, or on the political and financial chaos that marked the collapse of an ill-starred experiment. England, struggling for her existence, had had enough of French invasion, civil war, and general anarchy on her flank. The Irish Parliament died, as it had lived, by corruption, and Castlereagh and Pitt conferred upon Ireland the too long delayed boon of equal partnership in the United Kingdom. The mistakes which, for a century, deprived the Union of much of its effect--the delay in granting Catholic emancipation, the folly of Free Trade, acquiesced in by Irish members, by which agrarian strife was intensified, and through which Ireland again lost the increase of population which she had gained in the first half century of Union--need not be discussed here. The fact remains that to-day Ireland is prosperous, and on the eve of far greater prosperity under a sane system of national economic policy. What is more, Ireland is in the enjoyment of practically every liberty and every privilege that is enjoyed by any other part of the United Kingdom, of greater liberty and privilege than is enjoyed by Dominions which have no control of Imperial affairs. The principle which in the case of the Colonies was applied through separate governments has, in her case, been applied through Union. It could only have been applied through Union in 1800. It can only be applied through Union to-day. Railways and steamships have strengthened the geographical and economic reasons for union; train-ferries and aircraft will intensify them still further. Meanwhile the political and strategical conditions of these islands in the near future are far more likely to resemble those of the great Napoleonic struggle than those of the Colonial Empire in its halcyon period. In one aspect, then, the Union was the only feasible way of carrying out the principle which underlay the successful establishment of Colonial self-government. In another aspect it was the last step of a natural and, indeed, inevitable process for which the history of the British Colonies since the grant of self-government has furnished analogies in abundance. It has furnished none for the reversal of that process. It is only necessary to consider the reasons which, in various degrees, influenced the several groups of independent Colonies in North America, Australia, and South Africa to unite under a single government, whether federal or unitary, thus wholly or partially surrendering the "Home Rule" previously enjoyed by them, in order to see how close is the parallel. The weak and scattered North American Colonies were at a serious disadvantage in all political and commercial negotiations with their powerful neighbour, the United States, a fact very clearly emphasised by the termination of Lord Elgin's reciprocity treaty in 1864. None of them was in a position to deal with the vast territories of the North-West, undeveloped by the Hudson's Bay Company, and in imminent danger of American occupation. A common trade policy, a common railway policy, and a common banking system were essential to a rapid development of their great resources, and only a common government could provide them. In Australia the chief factor in bringing about federation was the weakness and want of influence of the separate Colonies in dealing with problems of defence and external policy, impressed upon them by German and French colonial expansion in the Pacific, and by the growth of Japan. In South Africa, on the other hand, the factors were mainly internal. The constant friction over railway and customs agreements, continually on the verge of breaking down, embittered the relations of the different Colonies and maintained an atmosphere of uncertainty discouraging to commercial enterprise. Four different governments dealt with a labour supply mainly required in one colony. Four agricultural departments dealt with locusts and cattle plagues, which knew no political boundaries, and which could only be stamped out by the most prompt and determined action. Four systems of law and four organisations for defence secured, as Lord Selborne pointed out in a striking Memorandum (Blue Book Cd. 3564) a minimum of return for a maximum of expense. A native rising in Natal warned South Africans that the mistake of a single Colony might at any moment set the whole of South Africa ablaze with rebellion. In the absence of larger issues local politics in each Colony turned almost exclusively on the racial feud. A comprehensive union alone could bring commercial stability and progressive development, mitigate race hatred, and pave the way to a true South African nationality. All the weakness in external relations, all the internal friction and impediment to progress, all the bitterness and pettiness of local politics, which marked the absence of union among neighbouring colonies, also characterised the relations of Great Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth century. But there was this difference: the immense disproportion in wealth and power, and the political control exercised by the greater state, caused all the evils of disunion to concentrate with intensified force upon the smaller state. To undo the mischief of eighteenth century disunion required at least a generation. A series of political mistakes and mischances, and a disastrous economic policy, have left the healing task of union incomplete after a century. But renewed disunion to-day would only mean a renewal of old local feuds to the point of civil war, a renewal of old economic friction, in which most of the injury would be suffered by the weaker combatant, the indefinite postponing for Ireland of the prospect, now so hopeful, of national development and social amelioration, a weakening of the whole United Kingdom for diplomacy or for defence. It is a policy which no Dominion in the Empire would dream of adopting--a policy which every Dominion would most certainly resist by force, just as the United States resisted it when attempted, with more than a mere pretext of constitutional justification, by the Southern States. Now for the "exception which proves the rule": there is one Colonial analogy for what would be the position of Ireland under Home Rule, namely, the position of Newfoundland outside the confederation of the other North American Colonies.[57] The analogy is only partial, for this reason, that whereas Ireland is almost wholly dependent economically on Great Britain, Newfoundland has little direct trade with Canada, and moreover enjoys a virtual monopoly of one particular commodity, namely codfish, by which it manages to support its small population. Nevertheless, no one can doubt that with its favoured geographical position, and with its great natural resources, Newfoundland would have been developed in a very different fashion if for the last forty years it had been an integral part of the Dominion. Nor is the loss all on the side of Newfoundland, as the history of even the last few years has shown. In 1902, Newfoundland negotiated a commercial Convention with the United States which, in return for a free entry for Newfoundland fish into the United States, practically gave the Newfoundland market to American manufacturers, and explicitly forbade the granting of any trade preference to the United Kingdom or to Canada. When, fortunately, the American Senate rejected the Convention, Newfoundland embarked on a course of legislative reprisal against American fishing. But this involved the Imperial Government in a diplomatic conflict which, but for the excellent relations subsisting with the United States, might easily have led to a grave crisis. The inconveniences and dangers which Irish trade policy might lead to under Home Rule can easily be inferred from this single example, all the more if Irish policy should be influenced, as Newfoundland's policy certainly was not, by a bias of hostility to the Empire. So much for the first confusion, that which would base the case for a _separate government_ in Ireland on the success of _free institutions_ in the Colonies, entirely ignoring the whole movement for union, which has made every geographical group of Colonies follow the example of the Mother Country. We must now deal with the second confusion, that which is based on a hazy notion that Home Rule is only a preliminary step to endowing the United Kingdom as a whole with a working federal constitution like that of Canada or Australia. Ireland, in fact, so runs the pleasing delusion, is to be set up as an experimental Quebec, and the other provinces will follow suit shortly. Not all Home Rulers, indeed, are obsessed by this confusion. Mr. Childers, for instance, makes short work of what he calls the "federal chimera," dismissing the idea as "wholly impracticable," and pointing out that Home Rule must be "not merely non-federal, but anti-federal." But the great majority of Liberals to-day are busy deluding themselves or each other, and the Nationalists are, naturally, not unwilling to help them in that task, with the idea of Home Rule for Ireland followed by "Home Rule all round." The new Home Rule Bill has not yet appeared, but certain main features of it can be taken for granted. It will be a Bill which, save possibly for a pious expression of hope in the preamble, will deal with Ireland only. It will set up in Ireland an Irish legislature and executive responsible for the "peace, order, and good government" of Ireland, subject to certain restrictions and limitations. It will assign to Ireland the whole of the Irish revenues, though probably retaining the control of customs and excise, and in that case retaining some Irish representatives at Westminster. So far from fixing any contribution to Imperial expenditure from Ireland, it will, apparently, include the provision of an Imperial grant in aid towards Land Purchase and Old Age Pensions. Any such measure is wholly incompatible with even the loosest federal system. A federal scheme postulates the existence over the whole confederation of two concurrent systems of government, each exercising direct control over the citizens within its own sphere, each having its legislative and executive functions, and its sources of revenue, clearly defined. The Home Rule Bill will certainly not set up any such division of government and its functions in Great Britain. Nor will it, in reality, set up any such effective double system of government in Ireland. What it will set up will be a national or Dominion government in Ireland, separate and exclusive, but subject to certain restrictions and interferences which it will be the first business of the Irish representatives, in Dublin or Westminster, to get rid of. Long before Scotland or Wales, let alone England, get any consideration of their demand for Home Rule, if demand there be, the last traces of any quasi-federal element the Bill may contain will have been got rid of. In a federation every citizen, in whatever state or province he resides, is as fully a citizen of the federation as every other citizen. He not only has the same federal vote, and pays the same federal taxes, but he has the same access to the federal courts, and the same right to the direct protection of the federal executive. In what sense are any of these conditions likely to be true of, let us say, an Irish landlord under this Home Rule Bill? Again, federalism implies that all the subordinate units are in an equal position relatively to the federal authority. Is this Bill likely to be so framed that its provisions can be adapted unchanged to Scotland, Wales, or England? And if they could, what sort of a residuum of a United Kingdom government would be left over? Take finance alone: if every unit under "Home Rule all round" is to receive the whole product of its taxation, what becomes of the revenue on which the general government of the United Kingdom will have to subsist? The fact is that the creation of a federal state, whether by confederation or by devolution of powers, must be, in the main, a simultaneous act. Additional subordinate units may subsequently join the confederation under the conditions of the federal constitution. Backward areas which are unable to provide for an efficient provincial expenditure, over and above their contribution to federal expenditure, may be held back as territories directly controlled by the federal authorities till they are financially and in other respects ripe for the grant of provincial powers. If a federal scheme were really seriously contemplated by the present Government they would have to adopt one of two courses. They would either have to establish it simultaneously for the whole United Kingdom, and in that case limit the powers and functions of the provinces so narrowly as to make it possible for Ireland to raise its provincial revenue without undue difficulty, the rest of Ireland's needs being met by a substantial federal expenditure carried out by federal officials. Or else they might begin by the creation of a federal constitution with considerable provincial powers for England, Scotland, and Wales, keeping back Ireland as a federal territory till its economic and social conditions justified the establishment of provincial institutions. The converse policy of treating the case of Ireland as "prior in point of time and urgency,"[58] of giving the poorest and most backward portion of the United Kingdom the whole of its revenue and a practically unfettered control of its territory, is, indeed, "not merely non-federal, but anti-federal." The truth is that the federal element in this Home Rule Bill, as in that of 1893, will be merely a pretence, designed to keep timid and hesitating Home Rulers in line--a tactical manoeuvre of much the same character as the talk about a reformed Second Chamber which preceded the Parliament Act, and found due burial in the preamble to that Act. In essence the Bill will set up Ireland as an entirely separate state subject to certain restrictions which the Government have no serious intention of enforcing, and the Irish every intention of disregarding, or abolishing as the outcome of further agitation. For this policy of pretence there is one admirable parallel in our Colonial history--the policy by which "Home Rule" was "given" to the Transvaal after Majuba. It was the same policy of avoiding expense and trouble, political or military--the policy, in fact, of "cutting the loss"--tricked out with the same humbug about "magnanimity" and "conciliation," about trust in Boer (or Nationalist) moderation when in power, the same contemptuous passing over of the loyalists as persons of "too pronounced" views, or as "interested contractors and stock-jobbers."[59] It was embodied in a Convention by which the "inhabitants of the Transvaal territory" were "accorded complete self-government, subject to the suzerainty of Her Majesty" under a series of limitations which, if enforced, would have implied a measure of British control in many respects greater than that exercised over a self-governing Colony, and with a number of guarantees to protect the loyalists. The Government was able to "save its face," while its hesitating followers were able to quiet their consciences, by the reassuring phrases of the Convention. The Boer Volksraad frankly declared itself still dissatisfied, but ratified the Convention, "maintaining all objections to the Convention ... and for the purpose of showing to everybody that the love of peace and unity inspires it, for the time being, and provisionally submitting the articles of the Convention to a practical test." If any Nationalist Convention in Dublin should accept the new Home Rule Bill, we can take it for granted that it will be in exactly the same spirit, and possibly in almost the same phraseology.[60] From the first the limitations of the Convention were disregarded. Short of armed intervention there was no machinery for enforcing them, and the Boers knew perfectly well that there was no real desire on the part of an embarrassed Government to raise a hornet's nest by making the attempt. The British resident, with his nominally autocratic powers, was a mere impotent laughing stock. The ruined loyalists left the country, or remained to become the most embittered enemies of the British Government. In three years a new Convention was drafted--an even greater masterpiece of make-believe than the first--which could be expounded to Parliament as a mere modification of certain unworkable provisions, but which the Boers took as a definite surrender of all claims to suzerainty, and as a definite recognition of their position as an "independent sovereign state," bound temporarily by the provisions of a treaty, which could have no permanent force in "fixing the boundary to the march of a nation." So far from being reconciled they were only emboldened to embark on a policy of aggression, which in 1885 involved the British Government in military measures costing nearly as much as would have been required to suppress the whole rising in 1881. For the time being the stagnation and chronic bankruptcy which followed the removal of British rule and the exodus of the loyalists limited Transvaal ambitions. The gold discoveries both increased that ambition by furnishing it with revenue, and at the same time brought about a close economic intercourse with the neighbouring colonies which, under the political conditions of disunion, was bound to create friction. In the end the policy of make-believe and "cutting the loss" had to be redeemed at the cost of 20,000 lives and of £200,000,000. Reconciliation, in large measure, has come since. But it has only come because British statesmen showed, firstly, in the war, their inflexible resolution to stamp out the policy of separation, and secondly, after the war, their devotion to the real welfare of South Africa in a policy of economic reconstruction, and in the establishment of those free and equal British institutions under which--by the final dying out of a spurious nationalism based on racial prejudice and garbled history--South Africa may become a real, living nation. The reservations and guarantees which this Home Rule Bill may contain cannot possibly constitute the framework of a federal constitution. All they can guarantee is a period of friction and agitation which will continue till Ireland has secured a position of complete separation from the United Kingdom. At the best the Home Rule experiment would then reduce Ireland to the position of another Newfoundland; at the worst it might repeat all the most disastrous features of the history of "Home Rule" in the Transvaal. At the same time it may be worth inquiring how far there would really be any valid Colonial analogy for the introduction of a federal system of "Home Rule all round" if such a scheme had been honestly contemplated. The first thing to keep in mind is that the internal constitution of the Dominions presents a whole gradation of constitutional types. There is the loose federal system of Australia, in which the Commonwealth powers are strictly limited and defined, and all residuary powers left to the States. There is the close confederation of Canada in which all residuary powers are vested in the Dominion. There is the non-federal unitary government of South Africa with a system of provincial local governments with somewhat wide county council powers. There is, lastly, the purely unitary government of the two islands of New Zealand. Each of these types is the outcome of peculiar geographical, economic, and historical conditions. To understand the federal system of Australia it is essential to remember that till comparatively recent times Australia consisted, to all intents, of four or five seaport towns, each with its own tributary agricultural and mining area, strung out, at distances varying from 500 to 1300 miles, along the southern and eastern third of a coast line of nearly 9000 miles looped round an unexplored and reputedly uninhabitable interior. Each of these seaports traded directly with the United Kingdom and Europe in competition with the others. With economic motives for union practically non-existent, with external factors awakening a general apprehension rather than confronting Australia with any immediate danger, it was impossible to find the driving power to overcome local jealousies sufficiently to secure more than a minimum of union. The Commonwealth Constitution is a makeshift which, as the internal trade of Australia grows and as railway communications are developed, will inevitably be amended in the direction of increasing the power of the Commonwealth and diminishing that of the States. In Canada the economic link between Canada proper and the Maritime Provinces was, before Confederation, almost as weak as that of Australia. British Columbia, which it was hoped to include in the Confederation, was then separated by a journey of months from Eastern Canada, and was, indeed, much nearer to Australia or New Zealand. Quebec, with its racial and religious peculiarities, added another problem. That the Confederation was nevertheless such a close and strong one was due both to the menace of American power in the south, and to the terrible example of the weakness of the American constitution as made manifest by the Civil War. Yet even so, Sir John Macdonald, the father of Confederation, frankly declared the federal constitution a necessary evil-- "As regards the comparative advantages of a Legislative and a Federal Union I have never hesitated to state my own opinions.... I have always contended that if we could agree to have one government and one Parliament ... it would be the best, the cheapest, the most vigorous, the strongest system of government we could adopt." This also was the view of the framers of the South African Union. The circumstances of South Africa enabled them to carry it into effect. For all its extent, South Africa is geographically a single, homogeneous country with no marked internal boundaries. It is peopled by two white races everywhere intermixed in varying proportions and nowhere separated into large compact blocks. The immense preponderance and central position of the Rand mining industry makes South Africa practically a single economic system. The very bitterness of the long political and racial struggle which had preceded intensified the argument for really effective union. If we compare the conditions in the United Kingdom with those of the Dominions it is obvious at once that there is no possible analogy with the conditions of Canada or Australia, but a considerable analogy with South Africa and New Zealand. The British Isles are but little larger than the New Zealand group, and much more compact and homogeneous. Their close economic intercourse, the presence of two races with a history of strife behind them, but compelled by their inextricable geographical blending to confront the necessity of union, are reproduced in the conditions of South Africa. In so far then as the Colonial analogy bears upon the question at all, it cannot be said to be in favour of Federal Home Rule any more than of Separatist Home Rule. The most it can fairly be said to warrant is the establishment of provincial councils with powers akin to those of the South African Councils. For such councils, built up by the federation of adjoining counties and county boroughs, carrying out more effectively some of the existing powers of those bodies, and adding to them such other powers, legislative or administrative, as it may be convenient to bestow on them, a very strong case may be made on the grounds of the congestion of Parliamentary business. But that has nothing to do with Home Rule, either Separatist or Federal. But if the congestion of Parliamentary business might be appreciably relieved by some such provincial bodies--larger "national" bodies would only duplicate work, not relieve it--the true remedy for the confusion of principles and objectives which, rather than the mere waste of time, is the chief defect of our Parliamentary system, lies in a proper separation of the local affairs of the United Kingdom from the general work of the Empire, in other words, in some form of Imperial federation. What is needed is not the creation of separate parliaments _within_ the United Kingdom, but the creation of a separate Parliament _for_ the United Kingdom, a Parliament which should deal with the affairs of the United Kingdom considered as one of the Dominions, leaving the general problems of Imperial policy to a common Imperial Parliament or Council equally representative of the citizens of every Dominion. No form of Home Rule can in any sense advance that desirable solution of our Imperial problems. The creation of an additional Dominion in the shape of Ireland would merely add one to the number of units to be considered, and would be contrary to the spirit of the resolution passed at the 1897 Conference, that it was desirable "wherever and whenever practicable, to group together under a federal union those Colonies which are geographically united." The problem would be no more affected by the setting up of a federal constitution for the United Kingdom, than it would be if South Africa decided, after all, to give her provinces federal powers, or Australia carried unification by a referendum. The notion that the Dominions could simply come inside the United Kingdom federation, though it sometimes figures in Home Rule speeches, is merely a product of the third form of confusion of ideas previously referred to, and is a sheer absurdity. The terms and conditions of a United Kingdom federation would necessarily differ in almost every respect from those of an Imperial Federation, and a constitution framed for the one object would be unworkable for the other. Nor would it ever be acceptable to the Dominions, which regard themselves as potentially, if not actually, the equals of the United Kingdom as a whole. From their point of view the United Kingdom might almost as well be asked to step inside the Australian Commonwealth on the footing of Tasmania, as that they should be asked to join in, in the capacity of an additional Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, under any scheme of "Home Rule all round." It should be sufficiently clear from the foregoing analysis that the vague and confused claim that the success of British Colonial policy is an argument for the Home Rule Bill has no shadow of justification. It has been shown, first of all, that the factor of success in our Colonial policy was not the factor of separatism implied in Home Rule, but the factor of responsible government already secured for Ireland by the Union. It has been shown, secondly, that the experience of the Colonies since the establishment of responsible government has in every case forced union upon them, and union in the closest form which the facts of trade and geography permitted of. Colonial experience is thus no argument even for a federal scheme of "Home Rule all round," if such a scheme could possibly result from an Irish Home Rule Bill, which it cannot. The disadvantages and dangers of the contrary policy of disunion have been shown, in their least noxious form in the case of Newfoundland, which has simply remained outside the adjoining Dominion, and in their deadliest form in the case of the Transvaal, where "Home Rule" was given in 1881, as it would be given to Ireland to-day, if the Government succeeded, not from conviction and whole-heartedly, but as a mean-spirited concession, made to save trouble, and under the most disingenuous and least workable provisions. Lastly, it has been made clear that Home Rule cannot possibly assist, but can only obscure and confuse, the movement for the establishment of a true Imperial Union. Unionists and Imperialists can choose no better ground for their resistance to Home Rule than the wide and varied field of Colonial experience. But Colonial experience can give us more than that. It can provide us not only with an immense mass of arguments and instances against disruption, but with invaluable instances of what can be done to strengthen and build up the Union against all possible future danger of disruptive tendencies. The confederation of Canada was accomplished in the teeth of all the geographical and economic conditions of the time. Canadian statesmanship thereupon set itself to transform geography, and to divert the course of trade in order to make the Union a reality. The Intercolonial Railway, the Canadian Pacific, the Grand Trunk Pacific, the proposed Hudson Bay Railway, and the Georgian Bay Canal schemes, all these have been deliberate instruments of policy, aiming, first of all, at bridging the wilderness between practically isolated settlements scattered across a continent, and creating a continuous Canada, east and west; and, secondly, at giving that continuous strip depth as well as extension. Hand in hand with the policy of constructing the internal framework of transportation, which is the skeleton of the economic and social life of a nation, went the policy of maintaining a national tariff to clothe that skeleton with the flesh and blood of production and exchange, and, as far as possible, to clothe it evenly. Australia, too, is waking, though somewhat hesitatingly, to the need of transcontinental railways, for the protection of new industries and for the even development and filling up of all her territories. In South Africa the economic process preceded the political. It was the dread of the breakdown of a temporary customs union already in existence that precipitated the discussion of union. And it was the development of the Rand as the great internal market of South Africa, and the competitive construction of railway lines from the coast, that really decided the question of legislative union against federation. All three instances lead to the same conclusion that union to be really effective and stable needs three things: firstly, a developed system of internal communications reducing all natural barriers to social, political, and commercial intercourse to the very minimum; secondly, a national tariff, protective or otherwise, sufficient at least to encourage the fullest flow of trade along those communications rather than outside of them; thirdly, a deliberate use of the tariff and of the national expenditure to secure, as far as possible, the even development of every portion of the national territory. In the United Kingdom all these instruments for making the Union real are still unutilised. The system of _laisser faire_ in the matter of internal communications has allowed St. George's Channel still to remain a real barrier. A dozen train-ferries, carrying not only the railway traffic between Great Britain and Ireland, but enabling the true west coast of the United Kingdom to be used for transatlantic traffic, would obliterate that strip of sea which a British minister recently urged as an insuperable objection to a democratic union.[61] To construct them would not be doing as much, relatively, as little Denmark has long since done, by the same means, to unite her sea-divided territory. The creation of a tariff which shall assist not only manufactures, but agriculture and rural industries, is another essential step. In view of Ireland's undeveloped industrial condition the giving of bounties to the establishment in Ireland of new industries, such as the silk industry, would be a thoroughly justifiable extension of the Unionist policy carried out through the Congested Districts Board and the Department of Agriculture. The diversion to Ireland of a larger part of the general national and Imperial expenditure, whether by the establishment of a naval base, or the giving out of battleship contracts, or even only of contracts for Army uniforms, would also be of appreciable assistance to Ireland and to the Union. Ireland suffers to-day economically and politically, from the legacy of political separation in the eighteenth century, and of economic disunion in the nineteenth. It is the business of Unionists not only to maintain the legal framework of the Union, but to give it a vitality and fulness of content which it has never possessed. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 54: Speech at Whitechapel, Oct. 10, 1911. There is an almost identical passage in Mr. Redmond's article in _McClure's Magazine_ for October, 1910. Sir J. Simon, the Solicitor-General, has since perpetrated the same absurdity (Dewsbury, Feb. 6, 1912).] [Footnote 55: The usual rhetorical appeal to "What Home Rule has done in South Africa" presents, indeed, a most perfect specimen of the confusion of thought which it is here attempted to analyse. For no sooner had the Transvaal received "Home Rule" (_i.e._ responsible government) than it surrendered the "Home Rule" (_i.e._ separate government) which it had previously enjoyed in order to enter the South African Union. Stripped of mere verbal confusion the argument from the Transvaal analogy then runs somewhat as follows: "The Transvaal is now contented because it enjoys free representative institutions as an integral portion of a United South Africa; therefore, Ireland cannot be contented until she ceases to be a freely represented integral portion of the United Kingdom!"] [Footnote 56: Quoted on p. 54.] [Footnote 57: The position of New Zealand, outside the Australian Commonwealth, is no parallel. New Zealand is almost as far from Australia as Newfoundland is from the British Isles; it differs from Australia in every climatic and physical feature; there is comparatively little trade between them.] [Footnote 58: Mr. Asquith at St. Andrews, Dec. 7, 1910.] [Footnote 59: See "The _Times_' History of the South African War," vol. I. pp. 67 _et seq._] [Footnote 60: _Cf_. Mr. J. Redmond on the third reading of the Home Rule Bill of 1893. "The word 'provisional,' so to speak, has been stamped in red ink across every page of the Bill. I recognise that the Bill is offered as a compromise and accepted as such.... England has no right to ask from Irish members any guarantee of finality in its acceptance."] [Footnote 61: Colonel Seely at Newry, December 9, 1911.] VI THE CONTROL OF JUDICIARY AND POLICE BY THE RIGHT HON. J.H. CAMPBELL, K.C., M.P. The various forecasts, inspired and uninspired, of the new Home Rule Bill which have been given to us, have shed little light upon the future of the Irish Judiciary and Police. The two previous Bills contemplated the handing over of the control of the whole administration of justice in Ireland to the Irish Executive after an interval, in the first case of two years, and in the later Bill, of six years. We may assume that, whatever period of grace may be allowed to us under the coming measure, it will propose to vest this control in the Irish Government within six years. The interposition of any interval at all will probably be regarded by Ministers as a concession to Unionist fears and as one of the "safeguards" in which the minority will be urged to place its trust. It must be realised at once that, so far from this interval making the transition from British justice to Irish intrigue easier and more safe, it may have precisely the contrary effect. Once the Irish police are convinced that they are about to be delivered into the hands of the secret organisations who have been the most successful and relentless enemies of public order in Ireland, a paralysis must fall upon the force. During the closing years of the transition, at all events, the Royal Irish Constabulary will be given nominal responsibility for the peace of the country without any opportunity effectually to preserve it. It would be fairer and better to cast upon puppet nominees of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Irish Republican Brotherhood the responsibility and odium of controlling the passions that they have helped to raise. The present judges would of course continue to do their duty without fear or favour, but it is impossible that the sentence passed upon them and the system of law and government for which they stand could leave their authority unimpaired. We have recently seen in England how easy it may be to stir up popular clamour against judges who administer the law without regard to the prejudices of any political party. Directly the Irish Courts sought to translate the paper safeguards of the Home Rule Bill into practical effect, they would be faced by the violent hostility of an ignorant and excitable assembly stimulated by an irresponsible and inexperienced executive. The result would be recriminations and friction which must deplorably injure and lower the reputation and prestige of both the Executive and the Judiciary. The first thing necessary for securing public and private liberty in a country like Ireland, where party feeling runs high and internal disputes have a bitterness from which more fortunate countries are free, is a strong independent and impartial administration of the law. This can only be secured by freeing the Courts from any kind of interference or control on the part of the Executive, and by ensuring that the whole armed forces of the Executive should be at the disposal of the Courts for executing and enforcing their decrees. Let us only assume a case to arise after the statutory period had elapsed, such as is now of frequent occurrence in the Irish Courts. The Land Judge, for instance, or the Judge of the Court of Bankruptcy, finds it necessary to order the arrest of the chairman and secretary of a local branch of the United Irish League for interfering by gross intimidation with a sale under the order of his Court. The case excites a good deal of local feeling and the arrests can only be effected by the employment of a large force of armed police. The question is raised on a motion for adjournment in the Irish House of Commons. The majority of the members owe their seats to the intervention of the United Irish League, many of them--perhaps most--have themselves been in similar conflicts with the Court. The result is that Ministers have to choose between a refusal of the police and expulsion from office. Once the Government could decide which decrees of the Judiciary it would enforce and which it would not, the technical immovability of the Judges would be irrelevant, since the real control of justice would be vested, not in the courts but in the executive Ministers in Dublin Castle. The very existence of the limitations and safeguards foreshadowed in the coming Home Rule Bill would naturally tempt the Irish Government to adopt a policy which would reduce to a minimum the effective power of these restraints upon the popular will. The most obvious way of attaining this result would be to keep the police, and with them the judicature, in a position of greater dependence upon the Executive than is consistent with the supremacy of law and the safety of private rights and individual freedom. We must remember that the men who would have the control of the new Irish Government would be those who have spent the greater part of their lives in violent conflict with the attempts of the Irish Courts to secure respect for the elementary rights of property and of personal freedom in Ireland. Power which has been won by the open violation of every principle of English law, is not likely either to assert the authority it has lived by defying to maintaining the independence of the courts and institutions which have been its deadliest opponents. The corruption of judicial authority and prestige in Ireland will be accomplished by entrenching the Executive behind large and shadowy discretionary powers, and also by manipulating the personnel and jurisdiction of the judges and magistracy throughout the country. The most deplorable movement in modern Nationalism is the attempt to introduce into Irish politics the worst methods of American political corruption. There have recently sprung into prominence in Ireland two societies which are in some respects the most sinister, the most immoral, and the most destructive of those which have corrupted and infected public life in the country. These two--the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Irish Republican Brotherhood--have in common the secrecy of their operations and the destructiveness of their aims. Their influence is marked not only by despotic and tyrannical government, but, what may be even more mischievous from the point of view of the community, by the deliberate persecution and suppression of all independent thought. Those who have watched the proceedings of the Dublin Corporation have felt the increasing strength of an influence proceeding from Belfast--an influence which is threatening to control the whole course of Nationalist politics in Dublin and the south. The forces of influence, combination, and intimidation which forced the Budget on a reluctant Ireland and routed the Roman Catholic Hierarchy over the Insurance Bill will not be disbanded under Home Rule. On the contrary, they are now being exercised so as to enable the Board of Erin to absorb the older organisations and to place in the hands of its leaders--or rather in those of a single man--the nomination of most, if not all, the representatives of the Nationalist party in Ireland. Mr. Joseph Devlin, who seeks to build this vast power, is a politician of American ideals and sympathies, and under the guidance of his organisation politics in Ireland would be shaped after the model of Tammany Hall rather than that of St. Stephen's. The party which appoints the municipal officers of Dublin in secret caucus, meeting for reasons which are never avowed and after debates which are never published, is only waiting to extend its operations. Even now it is notorious that the magistrates' bench in Ireland is regularly and systematically "packed" whenever licensing or agrarian cases are under discussion. The scandalous inaction of the present Irish Executive in reference to cattle driving and other forms of organised intimidation, the failure to enforce the law and the absolute immunity which the present Chief Secretary has persistently allowed to Nationalist Members of Parliament and paid organisers in incitement to outrage and intimidation, have paralysed the administration of justice and disheartened and disgusted the Judiciary, the Magistrates, and the Police. But under Home Rule the measure of protection which is still afforded by a strong and independent Bench would be removed. The Resident Magistrate would be as much under the heel of the caucus as the local justice; the Recorder's Bench and even the High Court would be constantly subjected to influences of a mischievous and incalculable kind. Whatever may be said against the present occupants of the Judicial Bench, their integrity and fairness have never been seriously questioned. Since the days when the Irish judges issued a writ of _habeas corpus_ for the release of Wolfe Tone, while the Irish Rebellion was actually in progress, they have consistently held an even balance between the two parties. Their learning, their impartiality and their wit have rightly made Irish judges respected throughout the world. Their reputation and their services alike demand that they shall not be set aside wantonly or without consideration. But there is no doubt that Home Rule must mean the end of the Irish Bench as we have seen it in history. The men who have been proud to represent the British Crown would resent with indignation the idea that they should become the tools of the Hibernian caucus. They realise that the judges who oppose the lawless will of popular ministers will have to face obloquy and perhaps direct attack in the Irish Parliament. Even if the concurrence of both Houses in the Irish Parliament were made necessary for the removal of judges, it would not adequately safeguard their independence. The lower House would be composed of the men whom Nationalist constituencies already return to Parliament--excitable, fierce partisans, always ready to subordinate private convictions to the exigencies of party discipline. Nor would there be in Ireland under Home Rule any power or influence, either of property or station, sufficiently strong to furnish a constituency which would return a senate representing interests, opinions, or desires substantially distinct from those of the more powerful House elected upon the wider suffrage. The situation has been strongly complicated by the promulgation of the _Motu Proprio_ decree, and the refusal of the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church to say definitely whether it applies to Ireland or not. We may assume that, if Archbishop Walsh could have given a categorical denial to the statement that the decree must operate in Ireland under Home Rule, he would have done so. The decree _Motu Proprio_ forbids any Roman Catholic to bring his priest or bishop into court under pain of excommunication. The Roman Catholic Church has made many similar efforts during history to oust the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, and each attempt has had to be sharply and sternly resisted by the civil authorities of Roman Catholic countries. We need not discuss how much there may be said from a theological standpoint for the decree; we are only concerned to show that it raises pretensions which no State can possibly permit to be recognised. There have been too many attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to oust the jurisdiction of the King's Courts in Ireland, for this new attempt to be viewed with equanimity. The United Irish League has set up courts which try men for imaginary offences committed during the exercise of their ordinary civil rights, and pass illegal sentences and inflict illegal punishments. Under the reign of Liberal Governments the writ of these courts runs where the King's writ cannot run, and the law of the League has been allowed in great measure to supersede the law of the land. We have also an increasing force in Irish Nationalism which seeks to paralyse the government of Ireland by means of the general or sympathetic strike. This organisation seeks to establish courts in Ireland in opposition to the ordinary law courts, and to enforce their decrees by means of illegal intimidation and outrage. The people of Ireland have therefore been familiarised with the idea of courts competing in authority with those of the King's Government. Supposing under Home Rule the Judiciary proved less pliable than was expected or desired, the development of such competing authorities would be facilitated by a complaisant Cabinet in Dublin. But of all attempts to over-ride the authority of law this conspiracy to exempt ecclesiastical persons from its scope is the most insidious and dangerous. The existence of a class of men answerable for their actions, not to any domestic tribunal, but to a foreign ecclesiastical court, cannot now be tolerated by any self-respecting Government. Yet it is not easy to see how an Irish Cabinet could refuse to make, by executive if not by legislative action, what is now the law of the Church eventually the law of Ireland. Against this danger no safeguards can be devised. If the Administration refuses to put the law into effective operation against a certain class of offender or abuses the prerogative of mercy in his favour, there is no power in the constitution to coerce it. A few years ago we saw in Ireland the extraordinary spectacle of persons being prosecuted for cattle-driving and similar offences, while those who openly incited them to crime escaped with impunity. We saw judges from the Bench complaining in vain that the real offenders were not brought before them, and criticising openly the negligence and partiality of the Crown. If the Nationalists, whose influence then paralysed the aims of the Government, ever get supreme control of the Executive, we are certain to see these abuses revived on a still more shocking scale. The operation of the new decree places the Roman Catholic minister or law officer who is called upon to administer justice under the terms of his oath in a position of cruel embarrassment. As a law officer it might be his duty to order the prosecution of some clerical offender; as a Roman Catholic compliance with his duty to the State must entail the awful consequences of excommunication. It needs no elaboration to show that what may be a grave embarrassment under the rule of impartial British Ministers, must under a local Irish Government develop into a danger to the State. A case recently tried at the Waterford Assizes establishes a precedent which may prove most mischievous. Recent illustrations in Ireland of the working of the _Temere_ decree have secured for it a sort of quasi-legality and provided a great argument to those devout Churchmen who, under Home Rule, would naturally desire to carry the process a further step. We have proceeded on the assumption that the Irish Parliament would--formally, at least--confine itself within the limits prescribed by the law of its creation. But it is necessary at least to contemplate the possibility that it would prove less complaisant. The safeguards and limitations inserted in any Act of the kind must of necessity be couched in general terms. The constitutional history of the United States and other countries is full of cases showing how difficult it is to define in practice where the border line between _intra_ and _ultra vires_ comes. It is the custom of all Governments, if there is any possible room for debate as to their competence to take any particular line of action, to give themselves the fullest benefit of the doubt, and the Irish Government is unlikely to prove any exception to the rule. When the Judicature and all the forces of Executive Government, except the direct command of troops, is in their hands, the laws passed by the Irish Parliament could be put in force in Ireland. The British Government could not intervene except by acts which would amount to open war between the two countries. We must remember that this enforcement of Irish laws by Irish police in spite of the decisions of a "foreign" Government at Westminster is openly advocated and contemplated by the large and active section of the Nationalists who have adopted as their watchword the motto "Ourselves alone" (_Sinn Fein_). Nothing could be more futile than the idea that the judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council would ever be accepted as final by the Nationalist majority, or that the royal assent could ever be withheld from an Act constitutionally passed by the Irish Legislature, without precipitating a crisis. The result of applying the veto of the House of Lords in England to the measures of Liberal Ministers was the agitation for removing the veto. The Nationalists took part in that agitation and have learned its lesson. Directly the British Government asserts its technical right of veto, a similar agitation to get rid of all obnoxious restraints would arise in Ireland. If anything could increase the danger of friction, it would be the scheme favoured by Mr. Erskine Childers and other Liberals of submitting constitutional questions to the decision of the British Privy Council reinforced by Irish judges. Either these judges would concur in verdicts given against the pretensions of the Irish Parliament or they would not. If they did concur, there would be a fierce outcry against the right of judges appointed under the Union Government to nullify Acts of the Irish Legislature. But if they did not concur, the patriotic indignation with which a decision over the heads of the Irish representatives would be received is easy to foresee. It would be a matter of the greatest difficulty to enforce any such decision when the Irish Government, supported by an agitation in the country, refused to be bound by it. The situation thus created has no parallel in the case of the colonies. In Canada or Australia, where the legislative power is divided between federal and provincial Parliaments, a decision that the one legislature is incompetent affirms the competence of the other. Both legislatures have on the spot proper means of enforcing, by judicial and executive authority, decisions which are within their powers. The case of Ireland is fundamentally different. There can be no half-way house between keeping Ireland a partner in all our legislative and judicial activities, or giving to her with a separate Executive uncontrolled and unchecked rights of internal sovereignty. VII THE ULSTER QUESTION BY THE MARQUIS OF LONDONDERRY, K.G. In the Home Rule controversy to-day Ulster occupies the place of public interest. Lord Rosebery upon one occasion committed himself to the opinion that, before Home Rule was conceded by the Imperial Parliament, England, as the predominant member of the partnership of the three kingdoms, would have to be convinced of its justice.[62] He did not foresee that the party of which he was then the leader would, under duress, abandon even the pretence of consulting the "predominant partner," much less be guided by its wishes. But it has come to pass: and Ulster alone remains the stumbling-block to the successful issue of the plot against the Constitution. By Ulster we do not mean, as Mr. Sinclair points out, the geographical area, but the district which historical events have made so different in every respect from the rest of Ireland. In the Act of Union I have a personal interest from family connection. I am convinced that Lord Castlereagh was absolutely right on both Imperial and Irish grounds. I feel that so far as Ireland is concerned the conditions and position of Ulster to-day afford ample confirmation: and of Ulster I may claim to have some knowledge. I represented County Down in the Imperial Parliament at Westminster before it was divided into constituencies, and in my later days I have maintained my close interest in Ulster. At the least, then, I may say that the temperament, the political and religious convictions, and the character of Ulster Unionists are not unknown to me. I often read of "the Ulster bogey;" and I believe Mr. John Redmond once devoted an article in a Sunday paper to elaborate statistical calculations from which he drew the deduction that there was no Ulster question. Other Home Rulers, by an expert use of figures, show that there is a Home Rule majority in Ulster itself. To those who know Ulster their efforts fail to carry the slightest conviction. Figures, however skilfully chosen, articles in the press, however cleverly written, cannot destroy the facts of Ulster Unionist opposition to Home Rule, the intensity and seriousness of which is, I believe, only now beginning to be appreciated by His Majesty's Ministers. I hear of "Ulster bigots," "Ulster deadheads," and assertions made that the opposition only proceeds from a few aristocratic Tory landlords. Hard words do us no harm; but abusive epithets will not lessen Ulster opposition. Indeed the more we are reviled by our opponents, the more we believe they recognize the futility of persuading us to accept Home Rule. We read of the intense anxiety of Irish Nationalists on English platforms lest even the suspicion of intolerance should cloud their administration and legislation under Home Rule, with interest but without respect. We do not believe in these sudden repentances, and we have heard these professions time and again when the exigencies of the moment demanded them. The spirit of change has even affected the Government. At first Ulster was to be ignored; now it is to be conciliated. There is no safeguard that they will not insert in the Bill at our request. The First Lord of the Admiralty has a list already prepared; and they will welcome additions. Mr. Redmond accepts them all; and the fact that he does it readily raises our suspicions of their worth. Has not Mr. John Dillon said that artificial guarantees in an Act of Parliament were no real protection,[63] and for once it is possible to agree with him. Why should "bigots" be conciliated; or "deadheads" receive so much consideration? Why should the opposition of aristocratic Tory landlords be thought worthy of respect? Whenever have they been treated in this manner before by the Government in their schemes of legislation? That our views receive so much attention is indeed the proof of the falsity of these hard names. Opposition to Home Rule in Ulster proceeds not from "bigots" or "deadheads," not from "Tories," or "aristocrats," or "landlords" exclusively. It is neither party question, nor class question. It has destroyed all differences between parties and classes. I doubt if there are any more democratic organizations than those of the Ulster Unionist Council, the Unionist Clubs, and the Orangemen. Nor are the religious bodies less popularly organized--the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterians, and other Protestant denominations have no class restrictions in their government. And as for party distinctions, those of us who took part in the old political contests before Home Rule became an urgent danger are now side by side in this greater fight for our very existence. What stronger evidence that opposition to Home Rule in Ulster is no party question is to be found than in the disappearance of the Liberal Party. I can remember when it was powerful; but it has vanished before the threat of Home Rule. All attempts to resuscitate the corpse have failed, and a Liberal Party, independent of the Nationalists, representing Ulster constituencies in the House of Commons, in spite of repeated efforts, does not exist. Let me impress upon the people of Great Britain that Ulster opposition to Home Rule is no party matter. It is an uprising of a people against tyranny and coercion; against condemnation to servitude; against deprivation of the right of citizens to an effective voice in the government of the country. Mr. Birrell said recently at Bristol that Ulster would be right to fight if it were oppressed in its religion or despoiled of its property. We welcome his conversion. When he pleads for Ulster to wait until it is plain that oppression has come, we recall to mind the phrase so often on Liberal lips, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and we say that we should be false to ourselves and to our trust if we were unprepared for what the future will bring under Home Rule. For our opposition to Home Rule we are condemned by the Irish Nationalists as the enemies of our country. We believe ourselves to be its best friends. We believe Home Rule to be the greatest obstacle to Irish progress and prosperity. Irish Nationalists have made Home Rule their only idol and denounce every one who will not worship at its shrine. Every reform, unless they thought that it tended to advance Home Rule or magnify their powers, has received their hostility, sometimes open and avowed, at other times secret and working through devious ways. No one who reads the history of Ulster can doubt that its inhabitants have not as much love of Ireland and as much wish to see her prosperous as the Nationalists. They indeed attribute all Irish shortcomings to the Union. Ulstermen, bearing in mind their own progress since the Union, not unnaturally decline to accept so absurd an argument. The Union has been no obstacle to their development: why should it have been the barrier to the rest of Ireland? Ulstermen believe that the Union with Great Britain has assisted the development of their commerce and industry. They are proud of the progress of Belfast and of her position in the industrial and shipping world. Without great natural advantages it has been built up by energy, application, clearheadedness and hard work. The opposition to Home Rule is the revolt of a business and industrial community against the domination of men who have shown no aptitude for either. The United Irish League, the official organization of the Home Rule Party, is, as a Treasurer once confessed, remarkably lacking in the support of business men, merchants, manufacturers, leaders of industry, bankers, and men who compose a successful and progressive community.[64] In the management of their party funds, their impending bankruptcy but a few years ago, the mad scheme of New Tipperary, and the fiasco of the Parnell Migration Company there is the same monotonous story of failure. Can surprise be felt that Ulstermen refuse to place the control of national affairs in the hands of those who have shown little capacity in the direction of their own personal concerns. What responsible statesman would suggest that the City of London, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, or any advancing industrial and commercial centre in Great Britain should be ruled and governed and taxed, without the hope of effective intervention, by a party led by Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. Lansbury? Yet Home Rule means much like that for Ulstermen, and the impossibility of the scheme is emphasized in the example of Ireland by religious differences which have their roots in Irish history. Ulster's opposition to Home Rule is no unreasoning hate. It proceeds not from the few; it is not the outcome of political prejudice; it is the hostility of a progressive and advancing people who have made their portion of their country prosperous and decline to hand it over to the control of representatives from the most backward and unprogressive counties. They are actuated by love of their country. They yield to no one in their patriotism and their desire for Ireland's welfare. They have always given their support to movements which have had for their objects the improvement of Irish conditions and the increase of Irish well-being. Their sympathies are with Irish social reform--and the sympathies of many of them with social reform of an advanced character. Contrast their attitude with that of the Irish Nationalist Party in respect of reforms which have proceeded from the Imperial Parliament and movements within Ireland herself. Take the Irish Land Act of 1903, accepted by both political parties in Great Britain as affording the real solution of the Irish agrarian problem. What has been the Irish Nationalist attitude? Praise for it on platforms in the United States when it was essential to reach the pockets of subscribers by recounting a record of results gained from the expenditure of American donations; but in Ireland itself opposition to its effective working. Read Nationalist speeches and there is always running through them the fear that the Act by solving the land question would remove the real motive power which made Home Rule a living issue. Hence the interference to prevent landlords and tenants coming to an agreement over sales without outside assistance. So to-day Irish Nationalists are still endeavouring to keep alive the old bad feeling between landlord and tenant which they so successfully created in the seventies and eighties. What better proof of this deliberate attempt to prevent the success of a great reform is to be found than the frank utterance of Mr. John Dillon at Swinford.[65] "It has been said," he declared, "that we have obstructed the smooth working of the Act. I wish to heaven we had the power to obstruct the smooth working of the Act more than we did. It has worked too smoothly--far too smoothly to my mind.... Some men have complained with the past year that the Land Act was not working fast enough. For my part I look upon it as working a great deal too fast, and at a pace which has been ruinous to the people." What have the Ulster people done which can compare with this opposition to a measure that has admittedly effected a beneficial revolution in Irish agrarian life? Yet Mr. John Dillon is acclaimed as a true Irish patriot and we are denounced as the enemies of our country! What greater blow to the continuance of land purchase than the Birrell Act of 1909. Granted that some revision of the law was necessary in respect of finance; yet, the Act of 1909 went far beyond finance. Any one with a knowledge of land purchase law knows that the measure of 1909 contained innumerable provisions of a technical character calculated to make the free sale between landlord and tenant difficult, and in respect of a large portion of Ireland impossible. No wonder it was welcomed by the Irish Nationalist Party, since it did so much to restore them to their self-elected position of counsellors and arbiters in the affairs of the tenants. And Ulster Unionists for declining to accede to this re-establishment of the old supremacy of the agitators are regarded as the opponents of liberty and freedom! The same sad story of Nationalist opposition to Irish progress meets the student of the co-operative movement at every period of its existence. No one who knows Sir Horace Plunkett will believe for a moment that he was actuated by other than the sole desire to do something for Ireland's benefit. From the leaders of the Nationalist Party he has had no assistance, although they claim to be the only workers for Irish progress, and the co-operative movement was intended to complete the agrarian revolution. In more recent times the hostility of the Nationalist leaders has become bolder as they found a ready instrument in Mr. T. W. Russell in his official capacity as Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture. The co-operative movement is flourishing in spite of the opposition of the Nationalist leaders. From Ulster it has received considerable support for the reason that Ulstermen believed it to be for the benefit of Irish agriculture. Their support, unlike Nationalist hostility, has not arisen from political motives. They do not believe that Sir Horace Plunkett has given a moment's thought to politics in their relation to the co-operative movement, and they have appreciated his movement either as co-operators or as supporters and members of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society. Contrast the Ulster welcome with the Nationalist opposition, and ask why we should be denounced as bad Irishmen and the Nationalists receive praise as true lovers of Ireland. The co-operative movement has brought into existence another movement which has for its object the prosperity of Irish industries. The Industrial Development movement which seeks to bring before the people of Ireland and the Irish public bodies the excellence of Irish manufactures is as yet in its infancy. It has no political character, yet I should hesitate to say that official Irish Nationalism gives it hearty support. In Belfast, however, it has made great strides. It gains its support in Ulster not for any political reason, but simply and solely because the North of Ireland thinks that the industrial movement is to Ireland's advantage. Where in these instances is our "bigotry" or our hostility to Irish progress? Does not the balance of credit when the comparison is made with the Nationalists come on the side of Ulster? The Nationalists show their unreasoning opposition by proclaiming that they would rather see Ireland in rags and poverty than abate their demand for Home Rule. Ulster Unionists desire to see Ireland prosperous and contented. For that reason they welcome all reforms and movements from whatever quarter which have this excellent end in view. They intend to offer the strongest and most unrelenting opposition to Home Rule not as political partisans for party gain, but as Irishmen determined to resist so reactionary a measure which they firmly believe will prove of the greatest evil to their unhappy country. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 62: House of Lords, March 12, 1894.] [Footnote 63: Salford, November 21, 1911.] [Footnote 64: Mr. A.J. Kettle, _Freeman's Journal,_ July 18, 1907.] [Footnote 65: September 10, 1906.] VIII THE POSITION OF ULSTER BY THE RIGHT HON. THOS. SINCLAIR By Ulster, I mean the six counties, Antrim, Down, Londonderry, Armagh, Tyrone, Fermanagh, with the important adjacent Unionist sections of Monaghan, Cavan, and Donegal, in all of which taken together the Unionist population is in an unmistakable majority, and in which the commercial and manufacturing prosperity of the province is maintained by Unionist energy, enterprise, and industry. The relation of Ulster to a separate Irish Parliament, with an Executive responsible to it, is a question which demands the most serious consideration on the part of English and Scotch electors. The Ulster Scot is not in Ireland to-day upon the conditions of an ordinary immigrant. His forefathers were "planted" in Ulster in the troublous times of the seventeenth century. Although at the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth peace had been secured all over Ireland, war was renewed in the Northern province early in the seventeenth century. The uprising was speedily crushed, and the lands of several of the rebellious nobles forfeited to the Crown. In order to prevent a repetition of lawlessness, the forfeited estates were entrusted to undertakers, on whom the obligation rested of peopling them with settlers from Great Britain. This scheme was devised in the hope that through the industry, character, and loyalty of the new population, the Northern province at all events should enjoy peace and prosperity, and become an attached portion of the King's dominions; and that eventually its influence would be usefully felt throughout the rest of Ireland. This policy was carried out under the rule of an English King, himself a Scot--James VI. of Scotland and I. of England. Large numbers of settlers were brought over to Ulster, many of them English, but the majority Scotch. We Ulster Unionists who inhabit the province to-day, or at least the greater number of us, are descendants of these settlers. The overwhelming majority are passionately loyal to the British Throne and to the maintenance of the integrity of the United Kingdom. These things being so, it seems to Ulster Unionists that a grave responsibility rests on their English and Scottish fellow-citizens, with regard to our position, should any constitutional changes be imposed upon our country. We are in Ireland as their trustees, having had committed to us, through their and our forefathers, the development of the material resources of Ulster, the preservation of its loyalty, and the discharge of its share of Imperial obligations. It cannot be denied, on an examination of the history of the last three centuries, and especially of that of the one hundred and ten years since the establishment of the Legislative Union, that, through good report and ill report, and allowing for all our shortcomings, we have not unsuccessfully fulfilled our trust. Our forefathers found a province, the least favoured by nature of the four of which Ireland consists, and it is to-day the stronghold of Irish industry and commerce. Its capital, Belfast, stands abreast of the leading manufacturing centres in Great Britain; it contains the foremost establishments in Europe, in respect of such undertakings as linen manufacturing, ship-building, rope-making, etc. It is the fourth port in the United Kingdom in respect of revenue from Customs, its contributions thereto being £2,207,000 in 1910, as compared with £1,065,000 from the rest of Ireland. Ulster's loyalty to the British King and Constitution is unsurpassed anywhere in His Majesty's dominions. The North of Ireland has contributed to Imperial service some of its greatest ornaments. England owes to Ulster Governors-General like Lord Dufferin and Lord Lawrence; soldiers like John Nicholson and Sir George White; administrators like Sir Henry Lawrence and Sir Robert Montgomery; great judges like Lord Cairns and Lord Macnaghten. At the recent Delhi Durbar the King decorated three Ulster men, one of them being Sir John Jordan, British Ambassador at Pekin. Ulster produced Sir Robert Hart, the incomparable Chinese administrator, who might also have been our Ambassador to China had he accepted the position. The Ulster plantation is the only one which has fulfilled the purpose for which Irish plantations were made. The famous colonisation on both sides of the Shannon by Cromwell entirely failed of its design, the great proportion of its families having, through inter-marriage, become absorbed in the surrounding population. Ulster Unionists, therefore, having conspicuously succeeded in maintaining the trust committed to their forefathers, and constituting as they do a community intensely loyal to the British connection, believe that they present a case for the unimpaired maintenance of that connection which is impregnable on the grounds of racial sentiment, inherent justice, social well-being, and the continued security of the United Kingdom and of the Empire. They cannot believe that their British fellow-citizens will, at this crisis, turn a deaf ear to this claim. Three or four decades after the Ulster plantation, when, in the midst of the horrors of 1641, the Scotch colony in Ulster was threatened with extermination, it appealed for help to its motherland. It did not appeal in vain. A collection for its benefit was made in the Scottish churches, supplies of food and several regiments of Scottish soldiers were sent to its aid, and its position was saved. We are confident that the descendants of these generous helpers will be no less true to their Ulster kith and kin to-day. The history and present condition of Ulster throw an important light on what is currently described as the national demand of Ireland for Home Rule. There is no national Irish demand for Home Rule, because there never has been and there is no homogeneous Irish nation. On the contrary, as Mr. Chamberlain long ago pointed out, Ireland to-day consists of two nations. These two nations are so utterly distinct in their racial characteristics, in their practical ideals, in their religious sanctions, and in their sense of civic and national responsibility that they cannot live harmoniously side by side unless under the even-handed control of a just central authority, in which at the same time they have full co-partnership. Ireland, accordingly, cannot make a claim for self-government on the ground that she is a political unit. She consists of two units, which owe their distinctive existence, not to geographical boundaries, but to inherent and ineradicable endowments of character and aims. If, then, it is claimed that the unit of Nationalist Ireland is to be entitled to choose its particular relation to the British Constitution, the same choice undoubtedly belongs to the Unionist unit. But Mr. Birrell, for example, would tell us that the Nationalist unit in Ireland is three times as large as the Unionist unit, and that therefore the smaller entity should submit, because, as he has cynically observed, "minorities must suffer, for that is the badge of their tribe." But a minority in the United Kingdom is not to be measured by mere numbers; its place in the Constitution is to be estimated by its contribution to public well-being, by its relation to the industries and occupations of its members, by its association with the upbuilding of national character, by its fidelity to law and order, and by its sympathy with the world mission of the British Empire in the interests of civil and religious freedom. Tried by all these tests, Ulster is entitled to retain her full share in every privilege of the whole realm. Tried by the same tests the claim of 3,000,000 Irish Nationalists to break up the constitution of the United Kingdom, of whose population they constitute perhaps one-fifteenth, is surely unthinkable. Other writers in this volume have discussed Home Rule as it affects various vital interests in Ireland as a whole. It remains for me briefly to point out its special relation to the Northern province-- 1. _Home Rule, in the judgment of Ulster, would degrade the status of Ulster citizenship by impairing its relationship to Imperial Parliament._ This would be effected both by lessening or extinguishing the representation of Ulster in that Parliament, and by removing the control of Ulster rights and liberties from Imperial Parliament and entrusting it to a hostile Parliament in Dublin. Ulstermen would thus stand on a dangerously lower plane of civil privilege than their fellow-citizens in Great Britain. To place them in this undeserved inferiority, they hold to be unjust and cruel. 2. _Home Rule would gravely imperil our civil and religious liberties._ Ireland is pre-eminently a clerically controlled country, the number of Roman Catholic priests being per head greater than that of any country in Europe. Her staff of members of religious orders, male and female, is also enormous, their numbers having increased during the last fifty years 150 per cent., while the population has decreased 30 per cent. It is undeniable, therefore, that in a Dublin Parliament, the overwhelming majority of whose members would be adherents of the Roman Catholic faith, the Roman ecclesiastical authority, which claims the right to decide as to what questions come within the region of faith and morals would be supreme. Great stress has lately been laid in Nationalist speeches from British platforms on the tolerant spirit towards Protestants which animates Irish Roman Catholics. We gladly acknowledge that in most parts of Ireland Protestants and Roman Catholics, as regards the ordinary affairs of life, live side by side on friendly neighbourly terms. Indeed, that spirit, as a consequence of the growing prosperity of Ireland, had been steadily increasing, till the recent revival of the Home Rule proposal, with its attendant fears of hierarchical ascendency, as illustrated by the promulgation of the _Ne Temere_ decree, suddenly interrupted it. But the fundamental fact of the case is, that in the last resort, it is not with their Roman Catholic neighbours, or even with their hierarchy, that Irish Protestants have to reckon; it is rather with the Vatican, the inexorable power behind them all, whose decrees necessarily over-ride all the good-will which neighbourly feeling might inspire in the Roman Catholic mind. The _Ne Temere_ decree affords a significant premonition of the spirit which would direct Home Rule legislation. It is noteworthy that no Nationalist member has protested against the cruelties of that decree as shown in the M'Cann case, and Mr. Devlin, M.P., even defended what was done from his place in Parliament. This action is all the more significant in view of the fact that during the Committee stage of the 1893 Home Rule Bill Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Redmond, and his Irish Nationalist colleagues voted against, and defeated, an Ulster amendment which proposed to exempt marriage and other religious ceremonies from the legislative powers of the Dublin Parliament. It would be intolerable that such litigation as in the Hubert case at present in progress in Montreal, arising out of the Marriage Law of the Province of Quebec, should be made possible in Ireland. No paper safeguards in a Home Rule Bill could prevent it. Again, a most serious peril has just been disclosed in the publication of the _Motu Proprio_ Papal Decree, under which the bringing by a Roman Catholic layman of a clergyman of his Church into any civil or criminal procedure in a court of law, whether as defendant or witness, without the sanction previously ob tamed of his bishop, involves to that layman the extreme penalty of excommunication. The same penalty appears to be incurred _ipso facto_ by any Roman Catholic Member of Parliament who takes part in passing, and by every executive officer of the Government who takes part in promulgating, a law or decree which is held to invade the liberty or rights of the Church of Rome. This is a matter of supreme importance in our civil life. It was one of the questions which, in Reformation times, led to the breach between Henry VIII. and the Pope. In a Dublin Parliament no power could resist the provisions of this decree from becoming law. As a matter of fact, the liberty of speech and voting attaching to every member of the Roman Catholic majority in a Dublin Parliament would be under the absolute control of their hierarchy. Each Roman Catholic member would be bound to act under the dread of excommunication if he voted for or condoned any legislation contrary to the asserted rights of his Church, or which conflicted with its claims. Not only would the legislative independence of a Dublin Parliament be thus destroyed, but the administration of justice would be affected on every Bench in the country, from the Supreme Court of Appeal down to ordinary petty sessions. A grievous wrong would be inflicted on Roman Catholic judges and law officers, some of whom are unsurpassed for integrity and legal ability. It is contrary to every principle of justice to place these honourable men in a position in which they would have to choose between their oath to their King and their duty--arbitrarily imposed upon them--to their Church. Jurymen and witnesses would be equally brought under the sinister influences of the decree, and confidence in just administration of the law, which is at the root of civil well-being, would be fatally destroyed. 3. _Home Rule would involve the entire denominationalising, in the interests of the Roman Catholic Church, of Irish education in all its branches._ To secure this result has long been the great educational aim of the Irish hierarchy. How they have succeeded as regards higher education Mr. Birrell's Irish Universities Act (1908) gives abundant evidence. The National University of Ireland, created by that Act, which on paper was represented to Nonconformists in England as having a constitution free from religious tests, is now, according to the recent boast of Cardinal Logue, thoroughly Roman Catholic, in spite of all paper safeguards to the contrary. Persistent attempts have been made to sectarianise the Irish primary National School system, founded seventy years ago, and which now receives an annual State endowment of £1,621,921, with the object of safeguarding the faith of the children of minorities, on the principle of united secular and separate religious instruction. That system worked so satisfactorily through many decades that Lord O'Hagan, the eminent first Roman Catholic Lord Chancellor of Ireland, declared that under it, up till his time, no case whatever of proselytism to any Church had occurred. But gradually a sectarian system of education under the Roman Catholic Church was developed through the teaching order of Christian Brothers, whose schools are now to be found all over Ireland, and which in many places now supplant the non-sectarian schools of the National Board. The strongest efforts were made to bring these sectarian schools into the system of the National Board, and thus entitle them to a share of the State annual endowment. There is no greater peril to the religious faith of Protestant minorities in the border counties of Ulster and elsewhere in Ireland than the sectarianising of primary schools by Roman Catholics. A few years ago a Protestant member of a public service was transferred upon promotion from Belfast to a Roman Catholic district, in which his boys had no available school but that of the Christian Brothers, and his girls none but that of the local convent. I shall never forget the expression of that man's face or the pathos in his voice while he pressed me to help him to obtain a transfer to a Protestant district, as otherwise he feared his children would be lost to the faith of their fathers. Given a Parliament in Dublin, the management of education would be so conducted as gradually to extinguish Protestant minorities in the border counties of Ulster and in the other provinces of Ireland. It is here that a chief danger to Protestantism lies. 4. _Home Rule will seriously injure Ulster's material prosperity--industrial, commercial, agricultural._ The root of the evil will lie in the want of credit of an Irish Exchequer in the money markets of the world. The best financial authorities agree that if Ireland should be left to her own resources, there would be, on the present basis of taxation, and after providing for a fair Irish contribution towards Imperial defence, an annual deficit in the Irish Exchequer of £3,000,000 to £4,000,000. An Irish Government in such circumstances--consols themselves being now some £23 under par--could not borrow money at any reasonable rate of interest. Ever; if the British taxpayer were compelled to provide for the deficiency, either by an annual grant or by payment of a divorce penalty of £15,000,000 to £20,000,000, or by both, a prudent investor would fear that the annual dole might at any moment be withdrawn should, for instance, John Bull become irritated by the action of a Dublin Parliament, say, in declaring enlisting in His Majesty's forces a criminal act; or that the capital gift would soon be frittered away in the interests of agitators and their friends. He would simply refuse to invest in Irish stock. Now, a fundamental condition of commercial and industrial well-being is financial confidence. If the Public Exchequer of a country lacks confidence, it is a truism to say that consequently commercial confidence must be gravely impaired. The magnates of Lombard Street and Wall Street would view their Irish clients with unpleasant reserve. Irish bankers would in turn restrict advances to their customers, and these again would limit the credit of those with whom they transacted business. Curtailment of industrial enterprise, the shutting down of many manufacturing concerns, with consequent depreciation of buildings and plant, as well as increase of unemployment, would follow. Already, since the present Home Rule crisis has become acute, the handwriting on the wall has been made evident in the depreciation of leading Irish stocks to the extent of 15 to 20 per cent. Every one in trade would suffer from the diminution of purchasing power, capital would shrink, income and wages decrease, and the incentives to emigration, which is already depriving our population of some of its most hopeful elements, would be dangerously increased. All these tendencies would be stimulated by the social disorganisation which would certainly follow Home Rule. Unionist Ulster, from the Ulster Convention of 1892, to the Craigavon demonstration of 1911, has been consistent in her loyal determination that no Parliament but the Imperial Parliament shall control her destinies. It is an ignorant mistake to say that she is weakening in this resolve. The steadily increasing Unionist majorities in contested Ulster seats at both elections in 1910 conclusively prove that she is more staunch than ever in her Unionist faith. She would certainly resist the decrees of a Dublin Parliament and refuse to pay its taxes. The result of its passive resistance would be civil disorder, which would certainly gravely injure her industrial welfare, especially that of her artisan and working population. But Ulstermen ask, What is industrial prosperity without freedom? And if, in defence of freedom, they should suffer disaster, the responsibility would lie with their fellow-citizens in Great Britain who would impose a hostile yoke upon them. Under Home Rule, agricultural Ulster would also suffer. Very many Ulster farmers are now occupying owners. But a large number have not yet succeeded in purchasing, and these eagerly desire the privilege of doing so. Mr. Birrell's 1909 Act has already practically strangled further land purchase in Ireland, and if he intends that its completion should be the work of a Home Rule Parliament, the Ulster tenants ask where would the £75,000,000 to £100,000,000 necessary to accomplish the process, come from?[66] They know that the procuring of such a sum from an Irish Government would be hopeless, for they are aware that Englishmen have better judgment than to allow their Parliament to lend further money to a country over which they had relinquished direct Parliamentary authority, and whose Exchequer would be bankrupt. Home Rule would thus permanently relegate the agricultural population, not only of Ulster, but of Ireland generally, into two classes living side by side with each other--one consisting of occupying owners, the other of rent-payers without hope of ownership. The evil results in discontent, friction, deterioration of agricultural methods and lessened production would inflict serious injury on Ulster prosperity. Again, Home Rule would involve Ulster industry and commerce in excessive taxation. No one who is aware of the passionate desire amongst Irish agitators and their friends for lucrative jobs, of the efforts that would be made to subsidise industries with Government funds, of the determination of the clergy to have their monastic, Christian Brothers', monastic and convent schools largely supported by the State, and of the impossibility, in view of the social disorder all over Ireland that would follow Home Rule, of reducing further the police force or the Judiciary, entertains any doubt that retrenchment in Irish expenditure would be impossible. On the contrary, Irish taxation would increase, and as recent legislation has placed upon Irish farmers imposts greater than they think they can bear, the additional revenue would be sought for mainly from the industrial North. But with business disorganised, incomes decreased and unemployment increased, the yield of taxation would be much reduced, and the rate must therefore be made higher. All this would fortify Ulster in her determined refusal to pay Home Rule taxation, and the bankruptcy of the Dublin Exchequer would be complete. It is from having regard to considerations such as I have outlined, and of the validity of which she is profoundly convinced, that Ulster has registered the historic Convention declaration, "We will not have Home Rule." Her position is plain and intelligible. She demands no separation from her Nationalist countrymen. On the contrary, she wishes, under the protection of the Legislative Union, to live side by side with them in peaceful industry and neighbourly fellowship, with the desire that they and we may in common partake of the benefits conferred on Ireland by generous Imperial legislation and repay it by sympathetic and energetic contribution to the service of the Empire. But if Home Rule legislation should be passed contrary to Ulster's earnest and patriotic pleading, then she claims--not a separate Parliament for herself, but that she may remain as she is in the unimpaired enjoyment of her position as an integral portion of the United Kingdom and with unaltered representation in Imperial Parliament. She wishes to continue as an Irish Lancashire, or an Irish Lanarkshire. In this relationship to Great Britain she is confident she will best preserve, not only her own interests, but also those of her fellow loyalists, Roman Catholic as well as Protestants, whose lot is cast in the other provinces and whose welfare will always be her responsible and earnest concern. But if this demand--based on loyalty to the King and Constitution, and founded on the elementary right of British citizens to the unimpaired protection of Imperial Parliament--be refused, then the only alternative is the Ulster Provincial Government, which will be organised to come into operation on the day that a Home Rule Bill should receive the Royal Assent; and under that Provisional Government we shall continue to support our King, and to render the same services' to the United Kingdom and to the Empire as have characterised the history of Ulster during the past three hundred years. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 66: See Mr. Wyndham's article, p. 249.] IX THE SOUTHERN MINORITIES BY RICHARD BAGWELL, M.A. At the present moment no county or borough in the three southern provinces of Ireland returns a Unionist member. There are substantial minorities in many places, but very few in which there would be any chance of a successful contest. The University of Dublin sends two conspicuous Unionists to Parliament, who represent not only a constituency of graduates, but the vast majority of educated and thinking people. The bearing of the question on religious interests will be dealt with by others, but it may be said here that the Protestant community is Unionist. The exceptions are few, and are much more than counter-balanced by the Roman Catholic opponents of Home Rule, who for obvious reasons are less outspoken, but are quite as anxious to avert the threatened revolution. The great bone of contention has always been the land, the cause of various wars and of ceaseless civil disputes. Parnell saw and said that purely political Nationalism was weak by itself, and he took up the land question to get leverage. For many years it has been evident that the only feasible solution was to convert occupiers into owners, and a very long step was made by the Purchase Act of 1903. Progress has now been arrested, for the Act of 1909 does not work. The vendors or expropriated owners, whichever is the more correct term, are expected to take a lower price and to be paid in depreciated paper. The minorities to be most immediately affected by legislation consist of landlords who are unable, though willing, to sell, and of tenants who are unable but very anxious to buy. The present deadlock is disastrous, for many tenants think they ought not to pay more than their neighbours, and demand reductions of rent without considering that the owner has received no part of his capital and dares not destroy the basis on which he hopes to be ultimately paid. It has been an essential part of the purchase policy that the instalment due by the occupier to recoup the State advance should be less than the rent. This has been made possible by the magic of British credit, and if that is withheld the confusion in Ireland will be worse than ever. The Exchequer has lost little or nothing, and even at much greater cost it would be the cheapest money that England ever spent. More than half the tenanted land has now passed to the occupiers, and it would be the most cruel injustice to leave the remaining landlords without power either to sell their property or to collect rents judicially fixed and refixed. They would fare badly with an Irish legislature and an Irish executive. They are, for the most part, poor but loyal men, and have exercised a great civilising influence. Are they to be deserted and ruined to keep an English party in place by the votes of men who have never pretended to be anything but England's enemies? Irish Unionists laugh at the idea of a local Parliament being kept subordinate. It will have the power of making laws for everything Irish, that is, for everything that immediately concerns those that live in Ireland. There will be ceaseless efforts to enlarge its sphere of action, and if Irish members continue to sit at Westminster they will be as troublesome as ever there. If there are to be no Irish members Ireland will be a separate nation. Even candid Home Rulers confess that statutory safeguards would be of none effect. Hedged in by British bayonets the Lord Lieutenant may exercise his veto, but upon whose advice will he do it? If on that of an Irish Ministry the minority will have no protection at all, and does any one suppose it possible to go back to the practice of the seventeenth century, when all Irish Bills were settled in the English Privy Council, and could not be altered in a Dublin Parliament? Orators declaim about our lost legislature, but they take good care not to say what it was. In the penultimate decade of the eighteenth century the trammels were taken off, and a Union was soon found necessary. During the short interval of Independence there were two French invasions and a bloody rebellion. Protestant ascendency, though used as a catchword, is a thing long past. Roman Catholic ascendency would be a very real thing under Home Rule. The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament alone makes both the one and the other impossible. If a legislature is established it must be given the means of enforcing its laws. We do not know what the present Government propose to do with the Irish police, but whatever the law says in practice, they will be under the local executive. Unpopular people will not be protected, and many of them will be driven out of the country. Parliamentary Home Rulers draw rosy pictures of the future Arcadia; but they will not be able to fulfil their own prophecies. Apart from the agrarian question, there is the party of revolutionists in Ireland whose headquarters are in America. They have furnished the means for agitation, and will look for their reward. The Fenian party has less power in the United States than it used to have, but there will be congenial work to do in Ireland. A violent faction can be kept in order where there is a strong government, but in a Home Rule Ireland it would not be strong for any such purpose. Appeals to cupidity and envy would find hearers, and there could be no effective resistance. The French Jacobins were a minority but they swept all before them. In the end better counsels might prevail, but the mischief done would be great, and much of it irreparable. The justice dealt out by the superior courts in Ireland is as good as it is anywhere. A judge in the last resort has the whole force of the State behind him, and no one dreams of resistance. With an Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive this would hardly be the case. The judges would still be lawyers, but their power would be greatly impaired. In Ireland popular feeling is always against creditors, and it would be very hard indeed either to execute a writ of ejectment or a seizure of goods. If the sanction of the law is weakened, public respect for it is lessened, and the result will be a general relaxation of the bonds which draw society together. There is nothing in the antecedents of the Home Rule Party to make one suppose that it contains the materials of a good and impartial government. Home Rule politicians are talkative and pertinacious. As members of Parliament they are of course listened to, while Unionists outside Ulster make little noise; it is, therefore, constantly said that they acquiesce in the inevitable change. Unrepresented men cannot easily make themselves heard, but they have done what they could. An enormous meeting has been held in Dublin, and the building, which contains some 7000, was filled in a quarter of an hour. There has since been a large gathering of young men who wish to remain full citizens of the Empire in which they were born, and others are to follow. In rural districts it is almost impossible to collect people in winter. Days are short and distances are long. Unionist farmers cannot forget the outrages that prevailed some years ago, and are not yet unknown. In the native land of boycotting and cattle-driving it is not surprising that they do not wish to be conspicuous. The difficulty extends to the towns, in many of which it would be almost impossible to hire a room for Unionist purposes. Hotel keepers object to risking their business and their windows, for a mob is easily excited to riot on patriotic grounds. Shopkeepers also have to be cautious in a country which has been wittily described as a land of liberty where no one can do as he likes, but where every one must do exactly what everybody else likes. In the summer people can meet in the open air, and there will, no doubt, be abundant protests from Southern Unionists. There will then be something definite to talk about. It is often said that the County Councils have done well, and that therefore there is no danger in an Irish Parliament, but the two things are different in kind. County or District Councils, or Boards of Guardians, are constituted by Acts of the Imperial Parliament to administer Acts of the same, and are subject to constant supervision by the Local Government Board, and to the peremptory action of the King's Bench. A Parliament is by nature supreme within its sphere of action, and its constant effort would be to enlarge that field. The men who aim at independence would have the easy part to play, for no one in or out of Ulster, former Unionist or confirmed Nationalist, would have any interest in opposing them. In the meantime local councils have taught us what is likely to happen. Minorities are virtually excluded from them and from paid places in their gift. Of Protestants holding local office the great majority are survivals from the old Grand Jury system. Political discussions are frequent, but they are all among Nationalists. Intolerance of independent opinion and impatience of criticism are everywhere noticeable, and the Corporation of Dublin does not show a good example. It is intolerance of this kind rather than any approach to religious persecution that Protestants suffer from in the present and fear for the future. Men who have something to lose dread the idea of Home Rule, including farmers who have bought their holdings, but as yet this has not been allowed time to work. There is a long way between not caring to support a Nationalist and voting for a Unionist. The chief employers of labour are mostly for the Union, but few are in a position to help the Unionist cause effectively, for they have to deal with strike makers and possible boycotters. When Labour troubles come, Nationalist politicians try to make out that they are caused by English agitators, and that there would be none under Home Rule. The probability is all the other way. There could be nothing in the existence of an Irish Parliament to prevent English Socialists from crossing the Channel, and some Labour leaders in England are Irish. We have heard a great deal lately about the union of the two democracies, and that is the point where they would unite. Passing from labour to land, which is after all the great interest of Southern and Western Ireland, the danger is even greater. With the loss of British credit it would be almost impossible to carry out the plan of occupying ownership without the grossest injustice, and the mischief would not stop there. An Irish Government would be poor, but would be expected to do all and more than all that the united government has done. At first the gap might be stopped by extravagant super-income tax, by half-compensated seizures of demesne land, and by penalising the owners of ground rents and town property. Confiscation is not a permanent source of wealth, for it soon kills the goose that laid the golden egg. Then the turn of the large farmer would come. Most Unionists, and many who call themselves Home Rulers, are satisfied with the form of government they now have. The country has prospered wonderfully, and it will continue to prosper if the land purchase system is carried out to the end in a liberal spirit. The worst danger comes from the check given to the process by the present Ministry. But the national feelings of Ireland must not be ignored. Her far-back history, bad in itself, but represented worse by unscrupulous writers, makes it necessary to maintain an impartial power above the warring elements. In a pastoral country people have much time on their hands, and are apt to spend it in brooding over bygone wrongs. But over the past not Jove himself hath power, and it is for the future that we are responsible. From Wellington onwards Ireland has given many great soldiers to the British Army, and it is the classes from which they spring that it is now proposed to abandon. Under Home Rule the flag would be a foreign emblem, useless to protect the weak in Ireland, and perhaps available to oppress them. England would have cast off her friends and gained none in exchange. Nothing will conciliate the revolutionary faction in Ireland, and there is every reason to think that it would become the strongest. Modern Ireland is the creation of English policy, and many wrong things were formerly done, but for a long time amends have been making. If England, from weariness or for the sake of Party advantage, abandons her supporters, they will have no successors. Ireland will be more troublesome than ever, and the crime will receive its fitting punishment. X HOME RULE AND NAVAL DEFENCE BY ADMIRAL LORD CHARLES BERESFORD, M.P. Ireland under Home Rule must, in the event of war, be regarded as a potentially hostile country. In this statement resides the dominant factor of the situation viewed from the naval and military point of view. It is not asserted that the government of Ireland would be disloyal; but it is asserted that the authorities charged with the defence of his Majesty's dominions cannot afford to take risks when the safety of the country is at stake. That such risks must exist under the circumstances indicated, is obvious to all those who have studied the speeches of the leaders of the Irish Nationalist party, in which they have unequivocally declared their intention to rid Ireland of English rule, and in which they extol as heroes such men as Theobald Wolfe Tone, who intrigued with France against England in order to achieve Irish independence, and who took his own life rather than receive the just reward of his deeds. That some among the Irish Nationalist leaders have recently professed their devotion to the British Empire cannot be regarded by serious persons as a relevant consideration. The demand for Home Rule is in fact a demand for separation from the United Kingdom or it is nothing. Naval officers are accustomed to deal with facts rather than with words. In the great sea-wars of the past, Ireland has always been regarded by the enemy as providing the base for a flank attack upon England. Had King Louis XIV. rightly used his opportunities, the army of King William would have been cut off from its base in England, and would have been destroyed by reinforcements arriving from France to assist King James II. There is no more concise presentment of the case than the account of it given by Admiral Mahan in "The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783." "The Irish Sea, separating the British Islands, rather resembles an estuary than an actual division; but history has shown the danger from it to the United Kingdom. In the days of Louis XIV., when the French navy nearly equalled the combined English and Dutch, the gravest complications existed in Ireland, which passed almost wholly under the control of the natives and the French. Nevertheless, the Irish Sea was rather a danger to the English--a weak point in their communications--than an advantage to the French. The latter did not venture their ships-of-the-line in its narrow waters, and expeditions intending to land were directed upon the ocean ports in the south and west. At the supreme moment the great French fleet was sent upon the south coast of England, where it decisively defeated the allies, and at the same time twenty-five frigates were sent to St. George's Channel, against the English communications. In the midst of a hostile people the English army in Ireland was seriously imperilled, but was saved by the battle of the Boyne and the flight of James II. _This movement against the enemy's communications was strictly strategic, and would be just as dangerous to England now as in 1690_[67].... "There can be little doubt that an effective co-operation of the French fleet in the summer of 1689 would have broken down all opposition to James in Ireland, by isolating that country from England, with corresponding injury to William's power.... "The battle of the Boyne, which from its peculiar religious colouring has obtained a somewhat factitious celebrity, may be taken as the date at which the English crown was firmly fixed on William's head. Yet it would be more accurate to say that the success of William, and with it the success of Europe, against Louis XIV. in the war of the League of Augsburg, was due to the mistakes and failure of the French naval campaign in 1690; though in that campaign was won the most conspicuous single success the French have ever gained at sea over the English." Every great naval power has gone to school to Admiral Mahan; and this country can hardly expect again to profit by those mistakes in strategy which the gifted American writer has so lucidly exposed. Ireland, lying on the western flank of Great Britain, commands on the south the approaches to the Channel, on the west the North Atlantic; and on the east the Irish Sea, all sea-roads by which millions of pounds' worth of supplies are brought to England. On every coast Ireland has excellent harbours. There are Lough Swilly on the north, Blacksod Bay on the west, Bantry Bay, Cork Harbour and Waterford Harbour on the south, Kingstown Harbour and Belfast Lough on the east--to name but these--besides numerous lesser inlets which can serve as shelter for small craft and destroyers. It should here be noted that Belfast Harbour, owing to the enterprise of the Harbour Board, now possesses a channel and dock capable of accommodating a ship of the Dreadnought type[68]. There is no necessity to presuppose an actively hostile Ireland; but an Ireland ruled by a disloyal faction would easily afford shelter to the warships of the enemy in her ports, whence they could draw supplies, where they could execute small repairs, and could coal from colliers despatched there for the purpose or captured. Thus lodged, a fleet or a squadron would command the main trade routes to England; and might inflict immense damage in a short time. Intelligence of its position could be prevented from reaching England by the simple method of destroying wireless stations and cutting cables. These considerations would necessarily impose upon the Navy the task of detaching a squadron of watching cruisers charged with the duty of keeping guard about the whole of Ireland. Is the Admiralty prepared to discharge this office in the event of war? If not, there falls to be considered the further danger of the invasion of Ireland. That such a peril is not imaginary, is proved by the fact that Ireland has been invaded in the past. The attempt of Hoche and Grouchy to land in Bantry Bay in 1796 failed ignominiously; and the next expedition designed to invade Ireland was defeated at Camperdown. But in 1798, the year of the Great Rebellion in Ireland, three French frigates evaded the British cruisers, and on August 22 dropped anchor in Killala Bay. General of Brigade, Jean Joseph Amable Humbert, landed with his second in command, General Sarazin, several rebel Irish leaders, 1700 men and 82 officers. On August 27 Humbert defeated the British troops at Castlebar "Races." On September 8, his forces surrendered at Ballinamuck to Lord Cornwallis. General Humbert was carried to England; and it is worth noting that while he was on his way, Admiral Bompard set sail from Brest with a ship of the line and three frigates, carrying 2587 men and 172 officers, commanded by General Hardy and the notorious Wolfe Tone (called General Smith for the occasion). Bompard was turned back by an English fleet of forty-two sail. The obvious conclusion of the whole matter is that the fleet can stop an invasion, always provided that the ships thereof are the right number in the right place at the right time. The Irish Rebellion of 1798 is often discussed as though it was wholly bred of the corruption of Ireland itself. The fact was, of course, that it was an offshoot of the French Revolution, and that the condition of Ireland at the time was no more than a contributory cause. My Lords Cornwallis, Castlereagh, and Clare, in combating the forces of the Rebellion, were actually in conflict with the vast insurrections of the French nation. The design of the Irish rebels was to enlist the mighty destructive force of France to serve their own ends. Wolfe Tone and his colleague Lewens, in 1796, had succeeded in persuading Carnot and the French Directory to embrace the cause of Ireland. When the Rebellion of 1798 broke out, Lewens wrote to the Directory reminding them that they had promised that France should postulate the conferring of independence upon Ireland as the condition of making peace with England, and specifying five thousand troops of all arms, and thirty thousand muskets with artillery and ammunition, as sufficient to ensure the success of the Rebellion. The attitude of the Directory is defined in the despatch addressed to General Hardy (upon whom the supreme command of the Humbert expedition at first devolved) by Bruix, Minister of Marine, dated July 30, 1798. "The executive Directory is busily engaged in arranging to send help to the Irish who have taken up arms to sever the yoke of British rule. It is for the French Government to second the efforts of a brave people who have too long suffered under oppression." In other words, the Directory regarded the achievement of her independence by Ireland as an enterprise incidental to the greater scheme of the conquest of England and of Europe. It was further laid down in the despatch that "it is most important to take every possible means to arouse the public spirit of the country, and particularly to foster sedulously its hatred of the English name ... There has never been an expedition whose result might more powerfully affect the political situation in Europe, or could more advantageously assist the Republic...." Irish conspirators have never risen to play any part higher than the office of cat's-paw to a foreign nation. To-day, they are content--at present--to bribe with votes a political party in England. But it is none the less essential to remember that, as in 1688 and as in 1798 a great and militant foreign Power used the weapon of Irish sedition against England, so in 1912 the same instrument lies ready to hand. For the Home Rule conspiracy of to-day is nothing but the lees of the evil heritage bequeathed by the French Revolution. It is the business of the naval officer, who is not concerned with party politics, to estimate the posture of international affairs solely in relation to the security of the State. The condition of Ireland at this moment, when the Home Rule issue has been wantonly revived, would, in the event of a war occurring between Great Britain and a foreign Power, involve the necessity of regarding Ireland as a strategic base of essential value, a part of whose inhabitants might combine with the hostile forces by giving them shelter and supplies, and even by inviting them to occupy the country. Elsewhere in these pages, Lord Percy has pointed out that the necessity of holding a disaffected Ireland by garrisoning the country would totally disorganise our military preparations for war--such as they are. These considerations must materially affect strategical dispositions in the event of war, involving the establishment and maintenance of a separate force of cruisers charged with the duty of patrolling the sea routes which converge upon Ireland, and of watching the harbours of her coasts. As matters stand at present, such a force does not exist. It may, of course, be urged that a strategical plan designed for the double purpose of surveying the movements of a hostile battle-fleet and of guarding the trade-routes, must of necessity cover the coasts of Ireland, on the principle that the greater includes the less. The argument, however, omits the essential qualification that a part of the Irish population cannot be trusted. It is this additional difficulty which has been introduced into the problem of naval defence by the revival by politicians of the agitation of 1798, under another name. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 67: The writer's italics.] [Footnote 68: According to _The Daily Telegraph_ of January 22, 1912.] XI THE MILITARY DISADVANTAGES OF HOME RULE BY THE EARL PERCY The problems of Imperial defence have become of late years extremely complex, owing to the rise of a great European naval power, and also to the predominance of Japan in the Pacific. These two factors, combined with the invention of the Dreadnought type of ship which is now being built by other powers whose navies we could formerly afford to ignore, have rendered our position in the world more precarious, more dependent upon foreign alliances and _ententes_, and have rendered combination for defence far more essential. No Home Rule scheme can be judged without taking into consideration what its effect will be on this situation. It is proposed to consider it first in the light of the more pressing European danger, and next to examine how it will affect the wider problem of the future, namely, the co-operation of all parts of the British Empire for defence. But first it is of course necessary to find out what Home Rule means, and what the internal state of Ireland will be if it passes. On this point there is at present no certainty. We can dismiss at once Mr. Redmond's picture of a serenely contented and grateful Ireland, only desirous of helping her benefactor, and, under a strong and incorruptible government, engaged in setting its house in order. The presence of a strong Protestant community, the history of the Roman Catholic Church in all countries, and the deliberate fostering of separatist national ideals preclude the possibility of anything but a prolonged period of unrest, which, on the most favourable hypothesis, can only cease altogether when the present generation has passed away. This unrest may take two forms; either civil war, or a condition where the rousing of old animosities, religious and otherwise, leads to internal disturbances of all kinds. It is not proposed to deal here with the consequences involved by the calling in of troops to suppress by force of arms an insurrectionary movement against the Government of Ireland. In view of the present state of affairs in Ulster, such an event seems extremely probable, but the disastrous results of passing Home Rule in face of it are so patent to all that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon them here. We have, therefore, to consider a condition of things in which old mutual hatreds have re-awakened, in which Ireland will be governed by men who have up till now preached sedition, have done their best to check recruiting, who have deliberately set up an ideal of "complete separation" as their ultimate goal, and whose motto has always been "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity." It is conceivable, of course, though it is extremely improbable, that these aims and ideals may be abjured in course of time, but the gravity of these risks must be taken into account in examining Ireland's position in any scheme of national and Imperial defence both now and in the future. And in this connection it may be remarked that an almost exact analogy to the situation which will probably result from this measure may be seen in the events which preceded the Boer war, and it seems somewhat remarkable that those who endeavour to justify Home Rule by the supposed Colonial analogy should overlook a warning so evident and so recent in the history of our oversea dominions. A Separatist party in Ireland would be enabled to work for ultimate independence as did President Kruger, and by the same methods, the same secret acquisition of arms and implements of war, the same building of fortresses with a view to a declaration of independence when a suitable opportunity arrived; and this would be all the more likely to occur if Ulster were exempted from a Home Rule Parliament. In this case Ulstermen would occupy exactly the same position as did the Uitlanders from 1895 to 1899. The same arguments for granting independence to Ireland are used now, the same talk of injustice towards those who are disloyal with equal disregard of the loyalist section, and the results will be the same. Would independence have been granted to the Transvaal or Orange Free State had their use of it been foreseen? Taking the factors in both cases into account, is there anything to justify the doubt that a repetition of that situation will occur, with the only difference that eventual rupture will probably entail the dismemberment of the Empire? It is universally acknowledged that this country is at present faced with a more critical European situation than any we have experienced for a hundred years. It has tied our fleet to home waters, and has induced a very large and influential section of our people to advocate the necessity of compulsory military service. Our military organisation is on the face of it a makeshift, and the makeshift is not even complete, for in the Territorial Army and the Special Reserve alone there is a shortage of more than 80,000 men. Now, our foreign policy of _ententes_ and the needs of our oversea territories have necessitated a military organisation, the foundation of which is readiness to undertake an oversea expedition as well as to provide for home defence. The critical situation in Europe especially will demand the instant despatch of our Expeditionary Force on the outbreak of war, in which case there will be left in these islands the following forces after deducting 10 per cent, for casualties:-- About 55,000 Regulars, of whom 30,000 will be under 20 years of age. About 30,000 Reservists. These will be required to reinforce the Expeditionary Force. About 60,000 Special Reservists. Some 30,000 of these are under 20. This force is to be used to reinforce the troops abroad. About 245,000 Territorials. 72,000 of these are under 20. In all there are some 400,000 men, of whom 130,000 are boys and 60,000 will leave the country soon after war breaks out. This will leave some 210,000 men to provide for the defence of England, Scotland, and Ireland, supplemented by 130,000 boys. These troops will be deprived of practically all Regular and even Reserve officers, and will have to provide for coast defence, for the security of law and order, and for the numbers required for a central field force. By means of juggling with figures, by the registration of names in what is called the National Reserve, but has no organisation or corporate existence, and by similar means, the seriousness of this situation has been concealed to some extent, but it is generally recognised as being little short of a national scandal, and would not be tolerated were it not for the general ignorance of our people concerning the exigencies of war and their blind belief in the omnipotence of the navy. This defencelessness has two dangers: firstly, the chance of a successful raid or invasion. As long as our navy is not defeated, no invading force of more than 70,000 men is supposed to be capable of landing. The second danger is that the mere fear of such an event will prevent the despatch of the Expeditionary Force and the fulfilment of our oversea obligations. It must be obvious that in the precarious state of our national defence anything which renders either of these dangers more probable should be avoided at all costs. If, for instance, the condition of Ireland should demand the maintenance of a larger garrison in that country, the whole of our present organisation for defence falls to pieces. Looking only at the present foreign situation, and the ever-growing menace of increasing armaments, if the passing of Home Rule should require the retention of a single extra soldier in Ireland, it is perfectly certain that nothing could justify the adoption of such a measure. It is not intended to convey the impression that there is any fear of Ireland repeating the history of 1796 and welcoming a foreign invasion, although it is impossible to ignore the anti-English campaign of agitation, or to say to what length it will go; but the mere fact of internal dissension in that country will give an enemy exactly the chance he looks for. Many of those best qualified to judge are of opinion that Germany is only waiting to free herself of an embarrassing situation, until one power of the Triple Entente is for the time being too much occupied to intervene in a Continental struggle. We have had one warning when, in September, 1911, a railway strike at home coincided with a foreign crisis. Are we deliberately to take a step which will almost certainly involve us in a similar dilemma? This is the more immediate danger, but, apart from this, the strategical value of Ireland will be profoundly affected by its separation from England, and this constitutes a grave source of weakness, even if internal trouble be avoided, and a comparatively loyal government be installed. Ireland lies directly across all the trade routes by which nearly all our supplies of food and raw material are brought, and it covers the principal trade centres of the Midlands and the South of Scotland. In any attack by an enemy on our commerce, Ireland will become of supreme importance. There are two stages in every naval war: first, the engagement between the two navies; second, the blockade or destruction of the ships of the beaten side. This was the method by which we fought Napoleon, but even then we could not prevent the enemy's ships escaping from time to time; and even after we had destroyed their navy at Trafalgar, the damage to our oversea commerce was enormous. Nowadays, torpedoes, submarines, and floating mines have rendered blockade infinitely more precarious, and consequently we have to take into account the extreme probability, and indeed, certainty, of hostile cruisers escaping and menacing our oversea supplies. This danger will be increased tenfold if Germany has been able to defeat France, and use French, Dutch, and Belgian ports for privateering purposes. In the second, if not in the first, stage of European war, therefore, the closest co-operation between the governments of Ireland and England will be essential. In this case, Queenstown and Lough Swilly will be the bases for our own protecting cruisers, and on their success will depend the issues of life and death for our people. As the West of Ireland is the nearest point in these islands to America, it is probable that cargoes destined for English ports will reach them _via_ Ireland to avoid the longer sea-transit. Lord Wolseley has even gone so far as to minimise the dangers of blockade, because the Irish coast offered such facilities for blockade-running. It is certain that in our greatest need Ireland might well prove our salvation, provided we had not absolutely lost command of the sea, and this advantage a Liberal Government is prepared to jeopardise for reasons, which, compared with the interests at stake, are little less than sordid. But even if Ireland be less directly affected by war than in this case, and even if its internal condition should give little anxiety, the very nature of its resources should prevent us taking a step which may deprive us of them in emergency or, at least, render them less readily available. Not only do we draw a number of our soldiers from there, out of all proportion to the quotas provided by the populations of England and Scotland, but we are absolutely dependent for our mounted branches on Irish horses. For our supplies in time of stress, for our horses, and for a great and valuable recruiting area, we shall be forced to rely on a government whose future is wrapped in the deepest obscurity, and which at the best is hardly likely to give us enthusiastic support. Our whole military organisation is becoming more decentralised and more dependent on voluntary effort; it is devolving more and more upon Territorial Associations and local bodies of all kinds. We do not possess the reserves of horses and transport which continental nations hold ready for use on mobilisation, and, as a substitute, we have had to fall back on a system of registration which demands care, zeal, and energy on the part of these civilian bodies. How will an Irish Government and its officials fulfil a duty which will be distorted by every Nationalist into an attempt to employ the national resources for the sole benefit of England? War is a stern taskmaster, demanding long years of preparation and combination of effort for one end. The political separation of the two countries does not alter the fact that they are, in the military sense, one area of operations and of supply, and, at a time like the present, when the mutual dependence of all parts of the Empire is gradually being realised; when the dominions are building navies, and all our dependencies are co-operating in one scheme of defence for the whole; when the elaboration of the details of this scheme are the pressing need of the hour, the dissolution of the Union binding together the very heart of the Empire, is a strategic mistake, the disastrous significance of which it is impossible to exaggerate. For it must be remembered that here is no analogy to a federation of semi-independent provinces as in Canada, where national defence is equally the interest of the whole. Ireland has never recognised this community of interest with England. Quebec, it is true, stands aloof and indifferent to the ideals of the sister provinces; but there is no bitter religious hatred, no fierce, anti-national aims fostered by ancient traditions, life-long feuds and unscrupulous agitation, and every Canadian knows that Quebec would fight to the last against American aggression, if only to preserve her religious independence. There is no such bond here--or, at least, the Irish Nationalist has refused to acknowledge it. The year 1912 has opened amid signs of unrest and change, the meaning or the end of which no man can know. In the Far East and the Near East political and religious systems are disappearing, and chaos is steadily increasing. In Europe the nations have set out on the march to Armageddon, and there is no staying the progress of their armaments. In Great Britain alone the question of preparation for war is shirked on the plea that it is one for experts, and even soldiers and sailors, drawn into the political vortex, make light of our necessities, believing in the hopelessness of ever convincing the people of the truth until "a white calamity of steel and iron, the bearing of burdens and the hot rage of insult," fall upon us. It is for this reason that we see the extraordinary phenomenon of men denying the necessity for becoming a nation in arms, and yet urging our Government to contract no friendships abroad, and to interfere on behalf of every petty princedom oppressed by a powerful neighbour, and every downtrodden subject of some foreign power. It is these same men who wish to dissolve the Union, and to impose obligations at home upon an inadequate army which would leave us powerless abroad. And the longer war delays in coming, the greater will be the danger when it comes. With the increase in armaments, this country must undergo a proportionate sacrifice. If compulsory service should be adopted, it must apply to Ireland as well as the United Kingdom. But how will an independent government in Dublin view the compulsory enrolment of the manhood of Ireland, two-thirds of which have been taught to regard England as the national and hereditary enemy? The Irish are, above all, a military race. Had we been able to enforce such service within the Union, whatever temporary opposition it might have encountered, it might ultimately have proved an indissoluble bond of friendship. The future is very dark, and it is all important that we should face it with open eyes. War cannot long be delayed, and there is too little time left to put our house in order. Even if Home Rule could be shown to be an act of justice due to a wronged people who have proved themselves capable of self-government, even then it could not be justified in the present crisis abroad. But it is not so. Ulster will fight for the same cause as did the Northern States of America, and may well show the same self-sacrifice. It will be civil war in a country peculiarly adapted to the movements of irregular troops, well acquainted with its features; it will be accompanied by atrocities which will be remembered for centuries. And this is the tremendous risk we are deliberately running, when we only possess six divisions of regular troops to support our allies on the continent and to safeguard the interests of the whole British Empire. It is for the British people to decide whether the thin red line is to be still thinner in the day of battle, and whether those who should be fighting side by side shall be embittered and divided, or whether they will rather believe the words of the greatest naval expert living[69]: "It is impossible for a military man or a statesman with appreciation of military conditions, to look at the map and not perceive that the ambition of the Irish separatists, realised, would be even more threatening to the national life than the secession of the South was to that of the American Union." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 69: Admiral Mahan.] XII THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY UNDER HOME RULE (i) THE CHURCH VIEW BY THE RT. REV. C. F. D'ARCY, BISHOP OF DOWN Irish Unionists are determined in their opposition to Home Rule by many considerations. But deepest of all is the conviction that, on the establishment of a separate legislature and executive for Ireland, the religious difficulty, which is ever with us here, would be increased enormously. Occasionally, in English newspapers and in Irish political speeches, there occur phrases which imply that the Protestant ascendency, as it was called, still exists in Ireland. Those who know Ireland are well aware that this is not merely false: it is impossible. Even in Belfast, as a recent controversy proved, Roman Catholics get their full share of whatever is to be had. There are no Roman Catholic disabilities. The majority has every means of making its power felt. At the present moment, the most impossible of all things in Ireland is that Roman Catholics, as such, should be oppressed or unfairly treated. It used to be imagined that when this happy condition was attained there would be no more religious disagreement in Ireland. But events have shown the exact opposite to be the case. There never was a time when there was in the minds of Irish Protestants so deep a dread of Roman aggression, and so firm a conviction that the object of that aggression is the complete subjection of this country to Roman domination. Recalling very distinctly the events and discussions of 1886 and 1893, when Home Rule for Ireland seemed so near accomplishment under Mr. Gladstone's leadership, the writer has no hesitation in saying that the dread of Roman tyranny is now far more vivid and, as a motive, far more urgent than it was at those epochs. Protestants are now convinced, as never before, that Home Rule must mean Rome Rule, and that, should it be forced upon them, in spite of all their efforts, they will be face to face with a struggle for liberty and conscience such as this land has not witnessed since the year 1690. That such should be the conviction of one-fourth of the people of Ireland, and that fourth by far the most energetic portion of its inhabitants, is a fact which politicians may well lay to heart. Approaching this subject as one whose duties give him the spiritual oversight of more than 200,000 of the Protestants of Ireland--members of the Church of Ireland, and who has had twenty-seven years of experience as a clergyman in Ireland, both in the north and in the south, the writer may venture to speak with some confidence as to the mind of the people among whom he has worked for so long. In doing so, he feels at liberty to say that he is one who has always avoided religious controversy, and who has ever made it his endeavour to be tolerant and considerate of the feelings and convictions of others. He has a deep regard for his Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, and recognises to the full their many excellent qualities and the sincerity of their religion. It is possible to bring to a single point the reasons which make Irish Unionists so apprehensive as regards the religious difficulty under Home Rule. Their fears are not concerned with any of the special dogmas of the Roman Church. But they recognise, as people in England do not, the inevitable tendency of the consistent and immemorial policy of the Church of Rome in relation to persons who refuse to submit to her claims. They know that policy to be one of absolute and uncompromising insistence on the exacting of everything which she regards as her right as soon as she possesses the power. They know that, for her, toleration is only a temporary expedient. They know that professions and promises made by individual Roman Catholics and by political leaders, statements which to English ears seem a happy augury of a good time coming, are of no value whatever. They do not deny that such promises and guarantees express a great deal of good intention, but they know that above the individual, whether he be layman or ecclesiastic, there is a system which moves on, as soon as such movement becomes possible, in utter disregard of his statements. At the time when Catholic emancipation was in view, high Roman authorities gave the most emphatic guarantees that the position of the then Established Church in Ireland would never be endangered, so far as their Church and people were concerned. But when the time came, such promises proved absolutely worthless. Whether the disestablishment of the Irish Church was a good thing or not, is not the question here. The essential point, for our present purpose, is that the guarantees of individual Roman Catholics, no matter how positively or how confidently stated, are of no account as against the steady age-long policy of the Roman Church. It is well known to all students that, while other religious bodies have, both in theory and in practice, renounced certain old methods of persuasion, the Roman Church still formally claims the power to control states, to depose princes, to absolve subjects from their allegiance, to extirpate heresy. She has never accepted the modern doctrine of toleration. But there are many who think that these ancient claims, though not renounced, are so much out-of-date in the modern world that they mean practically nothing. Such is the opinion of the average Englishman, and the mild and cultivated form of Romanism which is to be met with usually in England lends colour to the opinion. In Ireland we know better. The recent Papal Decree, termed _Ne Temere_, regulating the solemnisation of marriages, has been enforced in Ireland in a manner which must seem impossible to Englishmen. According to this Decree, "No marriage is valid which is not contracted in the presence of the (Roman) parish priest of the place, or of the Ordinary, or of a priest deputed by them, and of two witnesses at least." This rule is binding on all Roman Catholics. It is easy to see what hardship and wrong must follow the observance of this rule in the case of mixed marriages. As a result, it is now the case that, in Ireland, marriages which the law of the land declares to be valid are declared null and void by the Church of Rome, and the children of them are pronounced illegitimate. Nor is this a mere academic opinion: such is the power of the Roman Church in this country that she is able to enforce her laws without deference to the authority of the State. The celebrated McCann case is the most notable illustration. Even in the Protestant city of Belfast we have seen a faithful wife deserted and her children spirited away from her, in obedience to this cruel decree. And we have seen an executive afraid to do its duty, because Rome had spoken and justified the outrage. Those who know intimately what is happening here are aware of case after case in which husband or wife is living in daily terror of similar interference, and also know that Protestants married to Roman Catholics, and living in the districts where the latter are in overwhelming majority, often find it impossible to stand against the odium arising from a bigoted and hostile public opinion. Nor does such interference stop here. Only a few weeks ago the kidnapping of a young wife by Roman Catholic ecclesiastics was prevented only by the brave and prompt action of her husband. In this case a sworn deposition, made in the presence of a well-known magistrate and fully attested, has been published, and no attempt at contradiction or explanation has been made. Let none imagine the _Ne Temere_ question is extinct in Ireland. It is at this moment a burning question. Under Home Rule it would create a conflagration. And surely there is reason for the indignation of Protestants. Here we see the most solemn contract into which a man or woman can enter broken at the bidding of a system which claims supreme control over all human relations, public and private; and this, not for the maintenance of any moral principle, but to secure obedience to a disciplinary regulation which is regarded as of so little moral value that it is not enforced in any country in which the Government is strong enough to protect its subjects. As if to define with perfect clearness, in the face of the modern world, the traditional claim of the Roman See, there has issued from the Vatican, within the last few weeks, a Decree which sets the Roman clergy above the law of the land. This ordinance, which is issued _motu proprio_ by the Pope, is the re-enactment and more exact definition of an old law. It lays down the rule that whoever, without permission from any ecclesiastical authority, summons any ecclesiastical persons to a lay tribunal and compels them to attend publicly such a court, incurs instant excommunication. The excommunication is automatic, and absolution from it is specially reserved to the Roman Pontiff. This fact adds enormously to the terror of it, especially among a people like the Irish Roman Catholics. Great discussion has taken place as to the countries in which this Decree is in force. No one was surprised to hear that Germany was exempt. Archbishop Walsh, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, in an elaborate discussion, gives the opinion that the Decree is abrogated under British law by the custom of the country, which has in the past rendered impossible the observance of the strict ecclesiastical rule in this matter, but is careful to add that this is only his opinion as a canonist, and is subject to the decision of the Holy See. When this plea is examined, it is found to mean simply this, that the law is not strictly observed in case of necessity. That this is the meaning of Archbishop Walsh's plea is proved by a quotation which he makes from Pope Benedict XIV. The principle laid down by Pope Benedict is that when it became impossible to resist the encroachment of adverse customs, the Popes shut their eyes to what was going on, and tolerated what they had no power to prevent. It is exactly the principle of toleration as a temporary expedient. The re-enactment of the law by the present Pope means surely, if it means anything, that such toleration is to cease wherever and whenever the law can be enforced. But, be it observed, this necessity is entirely dependent on the strength of the authority which administers the civil law. The moment the civil authority grows weak in its assertion of its supremacy, the plea of necessity fails, and the ecclesiastical law must be enforced. Those who know Ireland are well aware that this is exactly what would happen under Home Rule. Here is the crowning proof of the truth that, above all the well-intentioned persons who give assurances of the peace and goodwill that would flourish under Home Rule, there is a power which would bring all their good intentions to nothing. But what of the Church of Ireland under Home Rule? Formerly the Established Church of the country, and as such occupying a position of special privilege, she still enjoys something of the traditional consideration which belonged to that position, and is more than ever conscious of her unbroken ecclesiastical descent from the Ancient Church of Ireland. Her adherents number 575,000, of whom 366,000 are in Ulster. As part of her heritage she holds nearly all the ancient ecclesiastical sites and the more important of the ancient buildings which still survive. These possessions, thus inherited from an immemorial past, were secured to her by the Act of Disestablishment. For the rest, the endowments which she enjoys at the present time have been created since 1870 by the self-denial and generosity of her clergy and laity. Under British law, her position is secure. But would she be secure under Home Rule? Those of her advisers who have most right to speak with authority are convinced that she would not. The Bishop of Ossory, in an able and very moderate statement made at the meeting of the Synod of that Diocese, last September, showed that both the principal churches and the endowments now held by the Church of Ireland have been claimed repeatedly by prominent representatives of the Church of Rome. It is stated that the Church sites and buildings belong to the Roman Communion in Ireland because, on Roman Catholic principles, that communion truly represents the ancient Irish Church, and no lapse of time can invalidate the Church's title; and that the endowments belong to the same communion because they "represent moneys derived from pre-Disestablishment days, which were, in their turn, the alienated possessions of the Roman Church" (see Bishop of Ossory's Synod Address, p. 7). As regards this last statement, it must be noted that the only sense in which it can be truly said that the endowments represent moneys derived from pre-Disestablishment days is that the foundation of the new financial system was laid by the generosity of the clergy in office at the time. They entrusted to the Representative Body of the Church the capitalised value of the life-interests secured to them by the Act. The money was their private property, and their action one which involved great self-denial, for they gave up the security offered by the State. The money was so calculated that the whole should be exhausted when all payments were made. By good management, however, it yielded considerable profit, and meanwhile formed a foundation on which to build. It was, however, in no sense an endowment given by the State, nor was it a fund on which any but the legal owners (_i.e._ the clergy of the time) had a justifiable claim. The Bishop of Ossory's statement excited much discussion, but, though many Roman Catholic apologists endeavoured to laugh away his fears as groundless, not one denied the validity of his argument. The fact that, as he showed, the Church of Ireland holds her churches by exactly the same title as that by which the English Church holds Westminster Abbey, and that, for the Irish Church, there is the additional security of the Act of 1869, count for nothing in the eye of Roman Canon Law. In an Ireland ruled by a Parliament of which the vast majority would be Roman Catholics, devout and sincere, representing constituencies peopled by devout and sincere persons who believe that the laws of the Vatican are the laws of God, with a clergy lifted above the civil law by the operation of the recent _Motu Proprio_ Decree, an Ireland in which even the school catechisms (see the "Christian Brothers' Catechism," quoted by the Bishop of Ossory, _op. cit._ p. 8) teach that an alien Church unlawfully excludes "the Catholics" from their own churches, how long would it be before a movement, burning with holy zeal and pious indignation, against the usurpers, would sweep away every barrier and drive out "the heretics" from the ancient shrines? Irish Churchmen who know their country are aware that even the most stringent guarantees would be worthless in such a case, as they proved worthless in the Act of Union, and at the time of Catholic emancipation. Some English Liberals imagine that Home Rule would be followed by an uprising of popular independence which would destroy the power of the Roman Church in Ireland. Let those who think this consider that the more independent spirits among the Irish Roman Catholics go to America, and let them further consider what has happened in the Province of Quebec in Canada. The immense strength of the bonds--religious, social, and educational--by which the mass of the people in the South and West of Ireland are held in the grip of the Roman ecclesiastical system, and the power which would be exerted by the central authority of that system by means of the recent decrees, make it certain that clerical domination would, from the outset, be the ruling principle of an Irish Parliament. There is no desire nearer to the hearts of the clergy and people who form the Church to which the writer belongs than that they should be enabled to live at peace with their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, and work in union with them, for the good of their country and the promotion of that new prosperity which recent years have brought. They dread Home Rule, because they know that, instead of peace, it would bring a sword, and plunge their country once again into all the horrors of civil and religious strife. THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY UNDER HOME RULE (ii) THE NONCONFORMIST VIEW BY REV. SAMUEL PRENTER, M.A., D.D. (DUBLIN), _Moderator of General Assembly of Presbyterian Church in Ireland in_ 1904-5. For obvious reasons, the Religious Difficulty under Home Rule does not receive much attention on the political platform in Great Britain. But in Ireland a religious problem flames at the heart of the whole controversy. This religious problem creates the cleavage in the Irish population, and is the real secret of the intense passion on both sides with which Home Rule is both prosecuted and resisted. Irishmen understand this very well; but as Home Rule, on its face value, is only a question of a mode of civil government, it is almost impossible to make the matter clear to British electors. They say, What has religion got to do with Home Rule? Home Rule is a pure question of politics, and it must be solved on exclusively political lines. Even if this were so, might not Englishmen remember that the Nationalist Members of Parliament have been controlled by the Church of Rome in their votes on the English education question? I mention this to show that under the disguise of pure politics ecclesiastical authority may stalk in perfect freedom through the lobbies of the House of Commons. Is it, then, an absolutely incredible thing that what has been done in the English Parliament in the name of politics may be done openly and undisguised in the name of politics in a Home Rule Parliament? That such will be the case I shall now attempt to show. Let us begin with the most elementary facts. According to the official census of 1911 the population of Ireland is grouped as follows:-- Roman Catholics 3,238,656 Irish Church 575,489 Presbyterians 439,876 Methodists 61,806 All other Christian denominations 57,718 Jews 5,101 Information refused 3,305 I beg the electors of Great Britain to look steadily into the above figures, and to ask themselves who are the Home Rulers and who are the Unionists in Ireland. Irish Home Rulers are almost all Roman Catholics, and the Protestants and others are almost all stout Unionists. Does this fact suggest nothing? How is it that the line of demarcation in Irish politics almost exactly coincides with the line of demarcation in religion? Quite true, there are a few Irish Roman Catholics who are Unionists, and a few Protestants who are Home Rulers. But they are so few and so uninfluential on both sides that the exception only serves to prove the rule. These exceptions, no doubt, have been abundantly exploited, and the very most has been made of them. But the great elementary fact remains, that one-fourth of the Irish people, mostly Protestant, are resolutely, and even passionately, opposed to Home Rule; and the remarkable thing is that the most militant Irish Unionists for the past twenty years have not been the members of the Irish Church who might be suspected of Protestant Ascendency prejudices, but they are the Presbyterians and Methodists who never belonged to the old Protestant Ascendency party. It is of Irish Presbyterians that I can speak with the most ultimate knowledge. Their record in Ireland requires to be made perfectly clear. In 1829 they were the champions of Catholic Emancipation. In 1868 they supported Mr. Gladstone in his great Irish reforms. They have been at all times the advocates of perfect equality in religion, and of unsectarianism in education. They stand firm and staunch on these two principles still. But they are the sternest and strongest opponents of Home Rule, and their reason is because Home Rule spells for Ireland a new religious ascendency and the destruction of the unsectarian principle in education. I ask on these grounds that English and Scottish electors should pause for a moment, and open their minds to the fact that there is a great religious problem at the heart of Home Rule. Irish Presbyterians claim that they know what they are doing, and that they are not the blind dupes of religious prejudice and political passion. It is for a great something that they have embarked in this conflict; they are determined to risk everything in this resistance, and in proportion as the danger approaches, in like proportion does their hostility to the Home Rule claim increase. What, then, is the secret of this determination? It lies in a nutshell. A Parliament in Dublin would be under the control and domination of the Church of Rome. Two facts in Irish life render this not only likely and probable, but inevitable and certain. The first fact is that three-fourths of the members would be Roman Catholic, and the second fact is that the Irish people are the most devoted Roman Catholics at present in Christendom. No one disputes the first fact, but the second requires to be made clear to the electors of Great Britain. Let no one suppose that I am finding fault with Irishmen for being devoted Roman Catholics. What I wish to show is that the Church of Rome would be supreme in the new Parliament, and that she is not a good guardian of Protestant liberties and interests. Ireland has been for the last two generations brought into absolute captivity to the principles of ultramontanism. When Italy asserted her nationality, and fought for it in 1870, Ireland sent out a brigade to fight on the side of the Pope. When France, a few years ago, broke up in that land the bondage of Ecclesiasticism, the streets of Dublin were filled Sunday after Sunday for weeks with crowds of Irishmen, headed by priests, shouting for the Pope against France. The Church first, nationality afterwards, is the creed of the ultramontane; and it is the avowed creed of the Irish people. But this would be changed in an Irish Parliament, British electors affirm. Let us hear what Mr. John Dillon, M.P., says on the point. Speaking about a year ago in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, Mr. Dillon said-- "I assert, and it is the glory of our race, that we are to-day the right arm of the Catholic Church throughout the world ... we stand to-day as we have stood throughout, without abating one jot or tittle of that faith, the most Catholic nation on the whole earth." What Mr. Dillon says is perfectly true. The Irish Parliament would be constituted on the Roman model. If there were none but Roman Catholics in Ireland, Ireland would rapidly become a "State of the Church." But how would Protestants fare? Just as they fared in old Papal days in Italy under the temporal rule of the Vatican. But it may still be said that Irishmen themselves would curb the ecclesiastical power. This is one of the delusions by which British electors conceal from themselves the peril of Home Rule to Irish Protestants. They forget that Irishmen are, if possible, more Roman than Rome herself. I take the following picture of the Romanised condition of Ireland from a Roman Catholic writer-- "Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell, who 'believes in the Papal Church in every point, who accepts her teaching from Nicaea to Trent, and from Trent to the Vatican,' says, 'While the general population of Ireland has been going down by leaps and bounds to the abyss, the clerical population has been mounting by cent. per cent. during the same period....' A short time ago, when an Austrian Cabinet was being heckled by some anti-clerical opponents upon its alleged encouragement of an excessive number of clerical persons in Austria, the Minister replied, 'If you want to know what an excessive number of the clergy is like go to Ireland. In proportion to their population the Irish have got ten priests and nuns to the one who exists in Austria. I do not prejudge the question. They may be wanted in Ireland. But let not honourable members talk about over-clericalism in Austria until they have studied the clerical Statistics of Ireland.' A Jesuit visitor to Ireland, on returning to his English acquaintances, and being asked how did he find the priests in Ireland, replied, 'The priests in Ireland! There is nobody but priests in Ireland. Over there they are treading on one another's heels.' While the population of Ireland has diminished one-half, the population of the Presbyteries and convents has multiplied threefold or more. Comparisons are then instituted between the Sacerdotal census of Ireland, and that of the European Papal countries. I shall state results only. Belgium has only one Archbishop and five Bishops; but if it were staffed with prelates on the Irish scale it would have nine or ten Archbishops and some sixty Bishops. I suppose the main army of ecclesiastics in the two countries is in the same grossly incongruous proportions--ten or twelve priests in Ireland for every one in Belgium! The German Empire, with its 21,000,000 Roman Catholics, has actually fewer mitred prelates than Ireland with its 3,000,000 of Roman Catholics. The figures of Austria-Hungary with its Roman Catholic population of 36,000,000 are equally impressive. It has eleven Archbishops, but if it were staffed on the Irish scale it would have forty-eight. It has forty Bishops, but if it were like Ireland it would have 288. Mr. O'Donnell goes on: 'This enormous population of Churchmen, far beyond the necessities and even the luxuries of religious worship and service, would be a heavy tax upon the resources of great and wealthy lands. What must it be for Ireland to have to supply the Episcopal villas, the new Cathedrals, and handsome Presbyteries, and handsome incomes of this enormous and increasing host of reverend gentlemen, who, as regards five-sixths of their number, contribute neither to the spiritual nor temporal felicity of the Island? They are the despotic managers of all primary schools, and can exact what homage they please from the poor serf-teachers, whom they dominate and whom they keep eternally under their thumb. They absolutely own and control all the secondary schools, with all their private profits and all their Government grants. In the University what they do not dominate they mutilate. Every appointment, from dispensary doctors to members of Parliament, must acknowledge their ownership, and pay toll to their despotism. The County Councils must contribute patronage according to their indications; the parish committees of the congested districts supplement their pocket-money. They have annexed the revenues of the industrial schools. They are engaged in transforming the universal proprietary of Ireland in order to add materials for their exactions from the living and the moribund. I am told that not less than £5,000,000 are lifted from the Irish people every year by the innumerable agencies of clerical suction which are at work upon all parts of the Irish body, politic and social. Nor can it be forgotten that the material loss is only a portion of the injury. The brow-beaten and intimidated condition of the popular action and intelligence which is necessary to this state of things necessarily communicates its want of will and energy to every function of the community.'" Of course Mr. F.H. O'Donnell has been driven out of public life in Ireland for plain speaking like this; and so would every man be who ventured to cross swords with his Church. It aggravates the situation immensely when we take another fact in Irish life into account. In quite recent months Mr. Devlin, M.P., has brought into prominence a society called the Ancient Order of Hibernians (sometimes called the Molly Maguires) which, according to the late Mr. Michael Davitt, is "the most wonderful pro-Celtic organisation in the world." This is a secret society which at one time was under the ban of the Church; but quite recently the ban has been removed, and priests are now allowed to join the order. The present Pope is said to be its most powerful friend. It has branches in many lands, and it is rapidly gathering into it all the great mass of the Irish Roman Catholic people. This is the most wonderful political machine in Ireland. Mr. William O'Brien, M.P., has recently given an account of this society which has never been seriously questioned. "The fundamental object of the Hibernian Society is to give preference to its own members first and Catholics afterwards as against Protestants on all occasions. Whether it is a question of custom, office, public contracts, or positions on Public Boards, Molly Maguires are pledged always to support a Catholic as against a Protestant. If Protestants are to be robbed of their business, if they are to be deprived of public contracts, if they are to be shut out of every office of honour or emolument, what is this but extermination? The domination of such a society would make this country a hell. It would light the flame of civil war in our midst, and blight every hope of its future prosperity." And now we reach the core of the question. It is perfectly clear that Home Rule would create a Roman Catholic ascendency in Ireland, but still it might be said that the Church of Rome would be tolerant. On that point we had best consult the Church of Rome herself. Has she ever said that she would practise toleration towards Protestants when she was in power? Never; on the contrary, she declares most clearly that toleration of error is a deadly sin. In this respect the Church of Rome claims to differ _toto coelo_ from the churches of the Reformation. In Ireland she has passed through all the stages of ecclesiastical experience from the lowest form of disability to the present claim of supremacy. In the dark days of her suffering she cried for toleration, and as the claim was just in Protestant eyes she got it. Then as she grew in strength she stretched forth her hands for equality, and as this too was just, she gradually obtained it. At present she enjoys equality in every practical right and privilege with her Protestant neighbours. But in the demand for Home Rule there is involved the claim of exerting an ecclesiastical ascendency not only over her own members but over Irish Protestants, and this is the claim which is unjust and which ought not to be granted. Green, the historian, points out that William Pitt made the Union with England the ground of his plea for Roman Catholic emancipation, as it would effectually prevent a Romish ascendency in Ireland. Home Rule in practice will destroy the control of Great Britain, and, therefore, involves the removal of the bulwark against Roman Catholic ascendency. The contention of the Irish Protestants is that neither their will nor their religious liberties would be safe in the custody of Rome. In an Irish Parliament civil allegiance to the Holy See would be the test of membership, and would make every Roman Catholic member a civil servant of the Vatican. That Parliament would be compelled to carry out the behests of the Church. The Church is hostile to the liberty of the Press, to liberty of public speech, to Modernism in science, in literature, in philosophy; is bound to exact obedience from her own members and to extirpate heresy and heretics; claims to be above Civil Law, and the right to enforce Canon Law whenever she is able. There are simply no limits even of life or property to the range of her intolerance. This is not an indictment; it is the boast of Rome. She plumes herself upon being an intolerant because she is an infallible Church, and her Irish claim, symbolised by the Papal Tiara, is supremacy over the Church, supremacy over the State, and supremacy over the invisible world. Unquestioning obedience is her law towards her own subjects, and intolerance tempered with prudence is her law towards Protestants. It is a strange hallucination to find that there are politicians to-day who think that Rome will change her principles at the bidding of Mr. Redmond, or to please hard-driven politicians, or to make Rome attractive to a Protestant Empire. Rome claims supremacy, and she tells us quite candidly what she will do when she gets it. Here is our difficulty under Home Rule. Irish Protestants see that they must either refuse to go into an Irish Parliament, or else go into it as a hopeless minority, and turn it into an arena for the maintenance of their most elementary rights; in which case the Irish Parliament would be simply a cockpit of religio-political strife. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the religious difficulty is confined to Irish Protestants. It is a difficulty which would become in time a crushing burden to Roman Catholics themselves. The yoke of Rome was found too heavy for Italy, and in a generation or two it would be found too heavy for Ireland. But for the creation of the Papal ascendency in Ireland, the responsibility must rest, in the long run, on Great Britain herself. England and Scotland, the most favoured lands of the Reformation, by establishing Home Rule in Ireland, will do for Rome what no other country in the world would do for her. They would entrust her with a legislative machine which she could control without check, hand over to her tender mercies a million of the best Protestants of the Empire, and establish at the heart of the Empire a power altogether at variance with her own ideals of Government, fraught with danger, and a good base of operations for the conquest of England. Can this be done with impunity? Can Great Britain divest herself of a religious responsibility in dealing with Home Rule? Is there not a God in Heaven who will take note of such national procedure? Are electors not responsible to Him for the use they make of their votes? If they sow to the wind, must they not reap the whirlwind? In brief compass, I hope I have made it quite clear what the Religious Difficulty in Ireland under Home Rule is. It is not a mere accident of the situation; it does not spring from any question of temper, or of prejudice, or of bigotry. The Religious Difficulty is created by the essential and fundamental genius of Romanism. Her whole ideal of life differs from the Protestant ideal. It is impossible to reconcile these two ideals. It is impossible to unite them in any amalgam that would not mean the destruction of both. Under Imperial Rule these ideals have discovered a decently working _modus vivendi_. Mr. Pitt's contention that the union with Great Britain would be an effectual barrier against Romanism has held good. But if you remove Imperial Rule than you create at a stroke the ascendency of Rome, and under that ascendency the greatest injustice would be inflicted on the Protestant minority. Questions of public situations and of efficient patronage are of very subordinate importance indeed. Mr. Redmond demands that Irish Protestants must be included in his Home Rule scheme, and threatens that if they object they must be dealt with "by the strong hand," and his Home Rule Parliament would be subservient to the Church of Rome. Does any one suppose that a million of the most earnest Protestants in the world are going to submit to such an arrangement? Neither Englishmen nor Scotsmen would be willing themselves to enter under such a yoke, and why should they ask Irishmen to do so? It is contended, indeed, that the power of the priest in Ireland is on the wane. This is partly true and partly not true. It is true that he is not quite the political and social autocrat that he once was. But it is not true that the Church of Rome is less powerful in Ireland than she was. On the contrary, as an ecclesiastical organisation Rome was never so compact in organisation, never so ably manned by both regular and secular clergy, never so wealthy nor so full of resource, never so obedient to the rule of the Vatican, as at the present moment. Give her an Irish Parliament, and she will be complete; she will patiently subdue all Ireland to her will. Emigration has drained the country of the strong men of the laity, who might be able to resist her encroachments. Dr. Horton truly says: "The Roman Church dominates Ireland and the Irish as completely as Islam dominates Morocco." By Ireland and the Irish Dr. Horton, of course, means Roman Catholic Ireland. Are you now going to place a legislative weapon in her hand whereby she will be able to dominate Protestants also? It is bad statesmanship; bad politics; bad religion. For Ireland it can bring nothing but ruin; and for the Empire nothing but terrible retribution in the future. CONSTRUCTIVE XIII UNIONIST POLICY IN RELATION TO RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN IRELAND BY THE RIGHT HON. GERALD BALFOUR "_For the last two and twenty years, at first a few and now a goodly company of rural reformers with whom I have been associated, and on whose behalf I write, have been steadily working out a complete scheme of rural development, their formula being better farming, better business, better living."_--SIR H. PLUNKETT, letter to the _Times_, December, 1911. "_Ireland would prefer rags and poverty rather than surrender her national spirit."_--MR. JOHN REDMOND, speech at Buffalo, September 27, 1910. It should never be forgotten that the maintenance of the legislative Union between Ireland and Great Britain is defended by Unionists no less in the interests of Ireland than in that of the United Kingdom and of the Empire. That the ills from which Ireland has admittedly suffered in the past, and for which she still suffers, though in diminished measure, in the present, are economic and social rather than political, is a fundamental tenet of Unionism. Unionists also believe that economic and social conditions in Ireland can be more effectively dealt with under the existing political constitution than under any form of Home Rule. Ireland is a poor country, and needs the financial resources which only the Imperial Parliament can provide. She is, moreover, a country divided into hostile camps marked by strong racial and religious differences. As Sir George Trevelyan long ago pointed out, there is not one Ireland, there are two Irelands; and only so far as Ireland continues an integral part of a larger whole can the antagonism between the two elements be prevented from forming a dangerous obstacle to all real progress. Nationalist politicians, of course, diagnose the situation very differently. Apply suitable remedial measures, say the Unionists, to the social and economic conditions of the country, and it is not unreasonable to hope that political discontent--or, in other words, the demand for Home Rule--will gradually die away of itself. Give us Home Rule, say the Nationalists, and all other things will be added to us. The main object of the present paper is to give a bird's eye view of Unionist policy in relation to rural development in Ireland during the eventful years 1885-1905. It does not pretend to deal with the larger issue raised between Unionism and Nationalism; but incidentally, it will be found to throw some interesting side lights upon it. The Irish Question in its most essential aspect is a Farmers' Question. The difficulties which it presents have their deepest roots in an unsatisfactory system of land tenure, excessive sub-division of holdings, and antiquated methods of agricultural economy. Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to deal with the system of land tenure in the two important Acts of 1870 and 1881; but the system of dual ownership which those Acts set up introduced, perhaps, as many evils as they removed. It became more and more evident that the only effectual remedy lay in the complete transference of the ownership of the land from the landlord to the occupying tenant. The successful application of this remedy with anything like fairness to both sides absolutely demanded the use of State credit on a large scale. The plan actually adopted in a succession of Land Acts passed by Unionist Governments, beginning with the Ashbourne Act of 1885, and ending with the Wyndham Act of 1903, is broadly speaking as follows:--The State purchases the interest of the landlord outright and vests the ownership in the occupying tenant subject to a fixed payment for a definite term of years. These annual payments are not in the nature of rent: they represent a low rate of interest on the purchase money, plus such contribution to a sinking fund as will repay the principal in the term of years for which the annual payments are to run. The practical effect of this arrangement is that the occupier becomes the owner of his holding, subject to a terminable annual payment to the State of a sum less in amount than the rent he has had to pay heretofore. The successful working of the scheme obviously depends on the credit of the State, in other words, its power of borrowing at a low rate of interest. In this respect the Imperial Government has an immense advantage over any possible Home Rule Government: indeed, it is doubtful whether any Home Rule Government could have attempted this great reform without wholesale confiscation of the landlords' property. Here then in Land Purchase and the abolition of dual ownership, we have one of the twin pillars on which, on its constructive side, the Irish policy of the Unionist party rests. But to solve the problem of rural Ireland--which, as I have said, is _the_ Irish problem--more is required than the conversion of the occupying tenant into a peasant proprietor. The sense of ownership may be counted on to do much; but it will not make it possible for a family to live in decent comfort on an insufficient holding; neither will it enable the small farmer to compete with those foreign rivals who have at their command improved methods of production, improved methods of marketing their produce, facilities for obtaining capital adequate to their needs, and all the many advantages which superior education and organised co-operation bring in their train. Looking back to-day, the wide field that in these directions was open to the beneficent action of the State, and to the equally beneficent action of voluntary associations, seems evident and obvious. It was by no means so evident or obvious twenty years ago. At that time the traditional policy of _laisser faire_ had still a powerful hold over men's minds, and to abandon it even in the case of rural Ireland was a veritable new departure in statesmanship. The idea of establishing a voluntary association to promote agricultural co-operation was even more remote; and, as will be seen in the sequel, it was to the insight and devoted persistence of a single individual that its successful realisation has been ultimately due. So far as State action was concerned, a beginning was naturally made with the poorest parts of the country. Mr. Arthur Balfour led the way with two important measures. One of these was the construction of light railways in the most backward tracts on the western seaboard. These railways were constructed at the public expense, but worked by existing railway companies, and linked up with existing railway systems. The benefits conferred on those parts of the country through which they passed have been great and lasting. Mr. Balfour's second contribution to Irish rural development was the creation of the Congested Districts Board in 1891. The "congested districts" embraced the most poverty-stricken areas in the western counties, and the business of the Board was to devise and apply, within those districts, schemes for the amelioration of the social and economic condition of the population comprised in them. For this purpose, the Board was invested with very wide powers of a paternal character, and an annual income of upwards of £40,000 was placed at their free disposal, a sum which has been largely increased by subsequent Acts. The experiment was an absolutely novel one, but no one who is able to compare the improved condition of the congested districts to-day with the state of things that prevailed twenty years ago can doubt that it has been amply justified by results. Every phase of the life of the Irish peasant along the whole of the western seaboard has been made brighter and more hopeful by the beneficent operations of the Board. Its activities have been manifold, including the purchase and improvement of estates prior to re-sale to the tenants; the re-arrangement and enlargement of holdings; the improvement of stock; the provision of pure seeds and high-class manures; practical demonstration of various kinds, all educational in character; drainage; the construction of roads; improvement in the sanitary conditions of the people's dwellings; assistance to provide proper accommodation for the livestock of the farm, which too frequently were housed with the people themselves; the development of sea fisheries; the encouragement of many kinds of home industries for women and girls; the quarrying of granite; the making of kelp; the promotion of co-operative credit; and many other schemes which had practical regard to the needs of the people, and have contributed in a variety of ways to raise the standard of comfort of the inhabitants of these impoverished areas. It will be noticed that among the other activities of the Congested Districts Board, I have specially mentioned the work of promoting co-operative credit by means of village banks managed on the Raffeisen system. The actual work of organising these co-operative banking associations has not been carried out directly by the Board, but through the agency of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (generally known by the shorter title of the I.A.O.S.), to which the Board has for many years past paid a small subsidy--a subsidy which might well have been on a more generous scale, having regard to the immense advantages which co-operation is capable of conferring on the small farmer. The I.A.O.S. is a voluntary association of a strictly non-political character. "Business, not politics," has been its principle of action; and partly, perhaps, for this very reason it may claim to have contributed more than any other single agency towards the prosperity of rural Ireland. To its work I now turn. THE I.A.O.S. The movement which the I.A.O.S. represents was started by Sir Horace Plunkett, and he has remained the most prominent figure in it ever since. Sir Horace Plunkett bears an honoured name wherever the rural problem is seriously studied; but, like other prophets, he has received perhaps less honour in his own country than elsewhere. At all events, in the task to which he has devoted his life, he has had to encounter the tacit, and indeed at times the open opposition, of powerful sections of Nationalist opinion. Happily he belongs to the stamp of men whom no obstacles can discourage, and who find in the work itself their sufficient reward. Sir Horace Plunkett's leading idea was a simple one, and has become to-day almost a commonplace. He compared the backward state of agriculture in Ireland with the great advance that had been made in various continental countries, where the natural conditions were not dissimilar to those of Ireland, and asked himself the secret of the difference. That secret he found in the word _organisation_, and he set himself to organise. The establishment of co-operative creameries seemed to afford the most hopeful opening, and it was to this that Sir Horace Plunkett and a few personal friends, in the year 1889, directed their earliest missionary efforts. The difficulties to be overcome were at first very great. "My own diary," writes Sir Horace, "records attendance at fifty meetings before a single society had resulted therefrom. It was weary work for a long time. These gatherings were miserable affairs compared with those which greeted our political speakers." The experiences[70] of another of the little band of devoted workers, Mr. R.A. Anderson, now Secretary of the I.A.O.S., throw an interesting light upon the nature of some of the obstacles which the new movement had to encounter. "It was hard and thankless work. There was the apathy of the people, and the active opposition of the Press and the politicians. It would be hard to say now whether the abuse of the Conservative _Cork Constitution_, or that of the Nationalist _Eagle_ of Skibbereen, was the louder. We were 'killing the calves,' we were 'forcing the young women to emigrate,' we were 'destroying the industry.' Mr. Plunkett was described as a 'monster in human shape,' and was adjured to 'cease his hellish work.' I was described as his 'man Friday,' and as 'Roughrider Anderson.' Once when I thought I had planted a creamery within the town of Rathkeale, my co-operative apple-cart was upset by a local solicitor, who, having elicited the fact that our movement recognised neither political nor religious differences--that the Unionist-Protestant cow was as dear to us as her Nationalist-Catholic sister--gravely informed me that our programme would not suit Rathkeale. 'Rathkeale,' said he pompously, 'is a Nationalist town--Nationalist to the backbone--and every pound of butter made in this creamery must be made on Nationalist principles, or it shan't be made at all.' This sentiment was applauded loudly, and the proceedings terminated." Eventually, however, the zeal of the preachers, coupled with the economic soundness of the doctrine, prevailed over all difficulties. By 1894 the movement had outgrown the individual activities of the founders, and the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society was established in Dublin in order to promote and direct its further progress. That progress has been rapid and continuous, and to-day the co-operative societies connected with the I.A.O.S. number nearly 1000, with an annual turnover of upwards of 2-1/2 millions. They extend over the length and breadth of the land, and include creameries, agricultural societies (whose main business is the purchase of seeds and manure for distribution to the members), credit societies (village banks), poultry keepers' societies (for the marketing of eggs), flax societies, industries societies, as well as other societies of a miscellaneous character. In 1892 the Liberal Party came into power. During their three years' tenure of office a Home Rule Bill was introduced and passed through the House of Commons, but little or nothing was attempted by the Government for the economic regeneration of the country. The Unionist Party came back with a large majority in 1896, and the attention of the new Irish Government, in which the post of Lord Lieutenant was held by Lord Cadogan and that of Chief Secretary by the present writer, was from the first directed to the condition of the Irish farmer. The session of 1896 was largely devoted to the passing of a Bill for amending the Land Acts, and for further facilitating the conversion of occupying tenants into owners of their holdings. Time, however, was also found for a new Light Railways Act, under the provision of which railway communication has been opened up at the expense of the State in the poorest parts of North-West Ireland. It was in the following year that the first attempt was made to establish an Irish Department of Agriculture. The Bill was not carried beyond a first reading, because it was ultimately decided that a Local Government Act should have precedence of it. But the project was only put aside for a time, and it was always looked upon by me as an integral part of our legislative programme. In framing the Bill of 1897, and also the later Bill of 1899, which passed into law, we received the greatest assistance from the labours of a body known as the Recess Committee, concerning which a few words must now be said. THE RECESS COMMITTEE. To be the founder of agricultural co-operation in Ireland was Sir Horace Plunkett's first great achievement; the bringing together of the Recess Committee was his second. He conceived the idea of inviting a number of the most prominent men in Ireland, irrespective of religious or political differences, to join in an inquiry into the means by which the Government could best promote the development of the agricultural and industrial resources of Ireland. This idea he propounded in an open letter published in August, 1895. The proposal was a bold one--how bold no one unacquainted with Ireland will easily realise. Amongst Nationalist politicians the majority fought shy of it. Mr. Justin McCarthy, the leader of the party, could only see in Sir Horace's letter "the expression of a belief that if your policy could be successfully carried out, the Irish people would cease to desire Home Rule." "I do not feel," he added, "that I could possibly take part in any organisation which had for its object the seeking of a substitute for that which I believe to be Ireland's greatest need--Home Rule." Fortunately, then as now, the Irish party was divided into two camps, and Mr. Redmond, at the head of a small minority of "Independents," was at liberty to take a different line. "I am unwilling," he wrote, "to take the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful legislation in Ireland." Ultimately, Sir Horace Plunkett's strong personality, his manifest singleness of purpose, and the intrinsic merits of his proposal carried the day. A committee, truly representative of all that was best in Irish life, was brought together, and commissioners were despatched to the Continent to report upon those systems of State aid linked with voluntary organisation which appeared to have revolutionised agriculture in countries not otherwise more favoured than Ireland itself. A large mass of most valuable information was collected. In less than a year the committee reported. The substance of the recommendation was "That a Department of Government should be specially created, with a minister directly responsible to Parliament at its head. The Central Body was to be assisted by a Consultative Council representative of the interests concerned. The Department was to be adequately endowed from the Imperial Treasury, and was to administer State aid to agriculture and industries in Ireland upon principles which were fully described."[71] With the general policy of these recommendations the Irish Government were in hearty sympathy, and the Bill of 1897, already referred to, was a first attempt to give effect to it. But in the absence of popularly elected local authorities an important part of the machinery for carrying out the proposals was wanting. IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT. A reform of local government in Ireland had long been given a place in the Unionist programme, but the magnitude of the undertaking and the pressure of other business had hitherto stood in its way. It was now decided to take up this task in earnest, on the understanding that other measures relating to Ireland should be postponed in the meantime. The Irish Local Government Bill was accordingly introduced and passed in the following session (1898). Of this Act, which involved not merely the creation of new popular Authorities, but also an entire re-arrangement of local taxation, and some important changes in the system of poor relief, I will only say here that it must be counted as another of the great remedial measures which Ireland owes to the Unionist Party, and which it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to carry out in a satisfactory manner without assistance on a generous scale from the ample resources of the Imperial Exchequer. IRISH DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION. The way was now open for the measure to which I had looked forward from the first moment of my going to Ireland, and which was to constitute the final abandonment of the old _laissez faire_ policy in connection with Irish agriculture and industries. Great care and labour were devoted to the framing of the new Bill, and I was in constant touch throughout with members of the Recess Committee. It contained clauses dealing with urban as well as rural industries, but these lie outside my present subject, and I shall not refer to them further here. On the side of rural development the Bill embodied a novel experiment in the art of government--novel at all events in British or Irish experience, though something like it had already been tried with conspicuous success in various countries on the Continent. It was the continental example which had inspired the Report of the Recess Committee, and it was the recommendations of the Recess Committee which in their turn suggested the main features of the Bill of 1899. There was indeed one body in Ireland whose functions corresponded in some degree with those of the Authority it was now proposed to set up. This body was the Congested Districts Board; and it might be said with some approximation to the truth that the object we had in view was to do for the rest of Ireland, _mutatis mutandis_, what the Congested Districts Board was intended to do for the poverty-stricken districts of the West. But there was this very important difference. The operations of the Congested Districts Board were carried out, and necessarily carried out, on strictly "paternal" lines; the dominant note in the new departure was to be the encouragement of self-help. This difference carried with it an equally important difference in the constitution and methods of the administering Authority. Out of a total endowment of £166,000 a year, a sum of over £100,000 was placed at the disposal of the Department to be applied to the "purposes of agriculture and other rural industries." These "purposes" are defined in the Act as including-- "the aiding, improving, and developing of agriculture, horticulture, forestry, dairying, the breeding of horses, cattle, and other live stock and poultry, home and cottage industries, the preparation and cultivation of flax, inland fisheries, and any industries immediately connected with and subservient to any of the said matters, and any instruction relating thereto, and the facilitating of the carriage and distribution of produce." This part of the Endowment Fund was, in short, a grant to the Department to be applied to what may be described as rural development in the widest sense of the term. As to the methods, little or no restriction was imposed upon the scope of its powers; and in the expenditure of the money it was to be as free from Treasury control as the Congested Districts Board itself. On the other hand, the Congested Districts Board was not only free from Treasury control, it was free from any control whatever. It was an unpaid Board, and it could spend its money where it pleased and how it pleased, and there was nobody to say it nay. True, its members were appointed by Government, and the Chief Secretary was _ex-officio_ a member of the Board; but he had no greater authority given to him than any of his colleagues, and in case of any difference of opinion the decision was that of the majority of the Board. No single member of the Board could be held responsible for any of its acts; and accordingly, although the vote for the Board came annually before Parliament, of real Parliamentary responsibility there was none. Such an arrangement was not without its disadvantages even as regards the Congested Districts Board itself: its adoption in the case of the Authority to be created under the Agriculture and Industries Bill would have been open to yet greater objection. A further point was this. The Congested Districts Board was an unpaid body. An unpaid body consisting of busy men cannot be in perpetual session. The Congested Districts Board, as a matter of fact, met only once a month; and in the intervals of its meeting there was no one with full authority to act on its behalf. The problem, then, in connection with the expenditure of the Endowment Fund was to provide for its administration by an efficient and promptly-acting executive, responsible to Parliament on the one hand, and on the other hand brought by the very nature of its administrative machinery into the closest possible touch with the new local Authorities, as well as with the voluntary organisations which were now springing up all over the country. In order to satisfy these requirements, the Bill provided that the control of the Endowment Fund should be vested not in a Board attached to the new Department, but in the Department itself; that is to say, in a Minister appointed by the Government of the day. The Chief Secretary was to be the titular head of the Department, but it was not intended that he should intervene in its ordinary administrative business. The real working head was to be the Vice-President, a new Minister with direct responsibility to Parliament. So far as related to certain powers and duties transferred from existing departments of the Irish Government, and similar to the powers and duties of the English Board of Agriculture, the new Minister was to have complete executive authority. But as regards the administration of the Endowment Fund, a different arrangement was proposed--an arrangement without precedent, so far as I know, in any previous legislation in this country. In order to bring the Department into close touch with local bodies, the Bill attached to it a "Council of Agriculture" and an "Agricultural Board." One-third of the members of each of these bodies were to be nominated by the Department, and the intention was that in making these nominations due regard should be had to the representation of voluntary organisations. The remaining two-thirds were to be elected in the case of the "Council of Agriculture" by the newly created County Councils, in the case of the "Agricultural Board" by the "Council of Agriculture," divided for this purpose into four "Provincial Committees." In addition to the functions of an electoral college thus entrusted to its four provincial committees, the business of the "Council of Agriculture" as a whole was to meet together, at least once a year, for the discussion of questions of general interest in connection with the provisions of the Act; but its powers were only advisory. The "Board," on the other hand, was more than an advisory body; for it was given a veto on any expenditure of money out of the Agricultural Endowment Fund. The application of the Endowment Fund was thus made dependent on the _concurrence_ of the "Agricultural Board" and of the minister in charge of the Department--an entirely novel plan which, although it might clearly result in a deadlock as regards any particular application of money from the fund, has nevertheless, I believe, worked extremely well, and answered the purpose for which it was devised of reconciling ministerial and executive responsibility with a reasonable power of control given to local bodies. Finally, with a view to stimulating local effort and the spirit of self-help, a provision was inserted in the Bill to which I attached the greatest importance. Power was given to the Council of any county or of any urban district, or to two or more public bodies jointly, to appoint committees composed partly of members of the local bodies and partly of co-opted persons, for the purpose of carrying out such of the Department's schemes as were of local rather than of general interest. But in such cases, it was laid down that "the Department shall not, in the absence of any special considerations, apply or approve of the application of money ... to schemes in respect of which aid is not given out of money provided by local authorities, or from other local sources." To meet this requirement, the local authorities were given the power of raising a limited rate for the purposes of the Act. That the Act of 1899 has in the main answered the expectations formed of it by those who were responsible for its introduction there can, I think, be no doubt. The Act itself, as well as the methods of administration adopted in carrying out its provisions, have been the subject of a full inquiry by a Departmental Committee which reported in 1907. Their report must be regarded as on the whole eminently favourable. In one point only has any important change been recommended. The Committee suggest that the post of Vice-President of the Department should not be held by a Minister with a seat in Parliament, nor yet by a regular civil servant, but should be an office _sui generis_ tenable for five years with power of reappointment. No effect has so far been given to this proposal by legislation. THE UNIONIST ATTITUDE. In this brief sketch of the measures passed by Unionist Governments since 1886 with the object of promoting the material prosperity of Ireland, many points of interest have been necessarily omitted; but what has been said will suffice to show how baseless is the assertion, so frequently urged as an argument for Home Rule, that the Imperial Parliament is incapable of legislating successfully for Irish wants.[72] Nothing could be more futile than to represent Irish problems, and especially the problems of Irish rural life, as so unique that only a Parliament sitting in Dublin can hope to solve them satisfactorily. As a matter of fact, the rural question in Ireland is, in most of its essential features, very similar to the rural question in other countries, of which Denmark is perhaps the best example; and the methods which have been successful there are already proving successful here. Single ownership of the land by the cultivator; State aid, encouraging and supplemementing co-operation and self-help; co-operation and self-help providing suitable opportunities for the fruitful application of State aid--these are the principles by which Unionist legislation for Ireland has been guided, and they are the principles which any wise legislation must follow, whether it emanate from an Irish or from the Imperial Parliament. Indeed, if there is anything "unique" in the Irish case, it is the deep division of sentiment inherited from the unhappy history of the country and reinforced by those differences of race and creed to which I have already alluded as making two Irelands out of one. But the remedy for this is not to cut Ireland adrift and leave the two sections to fight it out alone, but rather to maintain the existing constitution as the best guarantee that the balance will be held even between them. Sir Horace Plunkett has well summed up the real needs of rural Ireland in the formula "better farming, better business, better living." He has himself done more than any other single man to bring the desired improvement about. I am not ashamed to acknowledge myself his disciple, and in the measures for which I was responsible during my time in Ireland, I ever kept the practical objects for which he has striven steadily in view. In a speech which I made shortly after taking office I used the phrase "killing Home Rule with kindness." This phrase has been repeatedly quoted since, as if it had been a formal declaration on the part of the incoming Irish Government that to "kill Home Rule" was the Alpha and the Omega of their policy. What I really said was that we intended to promote measures having for their object an increase in the material prosperity of the country; that if we could thereby kill Home Rule with kindness, so much the better; but that the policy stood on its own merits, irrespective of any ulterior consequences. In my view that is the only true attitude for a Unionist Government to take up. But in our efforts to improve material conditions and to remove grievances, how small is the encouragement or help that we have received from leaders of the Nationalist Party! "Their aim," said Goldwin Smith long ago, "has always been to create a Nationalist feeling, which would end in political separation, not the redress of particular wrongs and grievances, or the introduction of practical improvements." I should imagine that there has seldom, if ever, been an important political party which has exhibited so little constructive ability as the Irish Parliamentarians. Their own legislative proposals during the last thirty years have been a negligible quantity; and I think I am justified in saying that there is not one of the great measures passed by Unionist Governments since 1886 which has not been either opposed by the accredited leaders of the Party, or, at best, received with carping and futile, rather than helpful, criticism. I must personally acknowledge--and I do so gladly--that I received useful assistance and valuable criticism from the Messrs. Healy in conducting the Local Government Bill through the House of Commons; and credit must also be given to Mr. John Redmond for the part he took in aiding to bring together the Recess Committee. But the Messrs. Healy have always acted independently; and Mr. John Redmond was, at the time referred to, leader of only a small minority of the Irish Nationalists. The feeling of the majority, and certainly of the leaders of the majority, was reflected, as we have seen, in the refusal of Mr. Justin McCarthy to have anything to do with the movement. Mr. Dillon in particular has shown a disposition to regard minor political grievances, and even poverty and discontent, as so much fuel wherewith to stoke the lagging engine of Home Rule. Remedial measures short of Home Rule seem to take in his eyes the character of attempts to deprive the Irish Party of so many valuable assets. Nor is this spirit of tacit or open hostility confined to acts of the legislature. Of all the social and economic movements in Ireland during recent years, the spread of agricultural co-operation has been without doubt among the greatest and the most beneficial. It has never found a friend in Mr. Dillon. In the movement itself and in the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, founded expressly to promote it, he can only see a cunning device of the enemy to undermine Nationalism. In this matter Mr. Dillon's attitude is also the official attitude of the Irish Party. Thus Mr. Redmond (now reconciled with Mr. Dillon and become leader of the main body of Nationalists), in a letter to Mr. Patrick Ford, dated October 4, 1904, does not scruple to say of Sir Horace Plunkett's truly patriotic work:-- "I myself, indeed, at one time entertained some belief in the good intentions of Sir Horace Plunkett and his friends, but recent events have entirely undeceived me; and Sir Horace Plunkett's recent book, full as it is of undisguised contempt for the Irish race, makes it plain to me that the real object of the movement in question is to undermine the National Party and divert the minds of our people from Home Rule, which is the only thing that can ever lead to a real revival of Irish industries." Those who have read Sir H. Plunkett's "Ireland in the New Century" will hardly know which most to wonder at in these words, the extraordinary misdescription of the whole spirit of his book, or the total failure to realise the absolute necessity to Irish farming of a movement which not only has its counterpart all over the Continent of Europe, but has since inspired similar action in the United States, in India, and quite recently in Great Britain as well. NATIONALIST HOSTILITY. Nationalist hostility to the I.A.O.S. has not been confined to words. When the Agriculture and Technical Instruction Bill was passing through the House of Commons, Mr. Dillon endeavoured to secure an undertaking from me that public moneys should not be employed to subsidise the work of the Society. I naturally refused to give any such undertaking.[73] I had followed the efforts of the Society very closely; I was deeply impressed with the value of the results which it had accomplished; but its field of activity was limited by the narrowness of its resources. In my opinion, a subsidy to the Society from the Endowment Fund of the Department would be a useful and proper application of public money. At the same time I pointed out that if the Agricultural Board, which in the main represented the popularly-elected local authorities, thought differently, they had a power of veto and could use it in this case. Sir Horace Plunkett held the position of Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction from 1899 to 1907, and during his tenure of office, as I had always expected and intended, there was close co-operation between the Department and the I.A.O.S. During that period a sum amounting in all to less than £30,000 was paid by the Department to the I.A.O.S., of which more than half was for technical instruction, while the balance represented contributions to the work of co-operative organisation.[74] When Sir H. Plunkett was replaced by Mr. T. W. Russell, the pressure of the Irish Parliamentary Party immediately began to make itself felt. The new vice-president informed the Council of Agriculture that he had made up his mind to withdraw the subsidy, but he undertook to continue a diminishing grant for three years, £3000 for the first year, £2000 for the second, and £1000 for the third. The I.A.O.S. were not seriously opposed to the gradual withdrawal of the subsidy, the loss of which they hoped to be able to cover in course of time by increased voluntary subscriptions. The opposition of the Nationalist Party was, however, not yet exhausted. In the _Freeman's Journal _of January 21, 1908, there appeared a letter from Mr. John Redmond enclosing a copy of a letter from Mr. T. W. Rolleston to a correspondent at St. Louis. Mr. Rolleston accompanied his letter with a copy of a speech by Sir Horace Plunkett. In his letter he remarked plainly upon the antagonism displayed by the Irish Nationalists to the co-operative movement. Although Sir Horace Plunkett declared that he had nothing whatever to do with the letter, the Irish Parliamentarians professed to find in it abundant proof of an intention to destroy Nationalism. "That correspondence," said Mr. T. W. Russell,"[75] compelled me to take action. Mr. John Redmond made it imperative upon me by his letter--I mean a public letter to the Press--and as so much was involved, I took the precaution of convening a special meeting of the Agricultural Board." The Board decided that the subsidy should be withdrawn at the end of the year 1908. The last act in this drama of hostility to Sir Horace Plunkett and all his works is still in the course of being played. Under the provisions of the Development Fund Act of 1909, the Development Commissioners were empowered to make advances for the organisation of co-operation, either "to a Government Department or through a Government Department to a voluntary association not trading for profit." During the Report stage of the Development Fund Bill, Mr. Dillon tried to get a ruling from the Solicitor-General that the I.A.O.S. would be excluded from receiving grants from the fund, thus repeating the manoeuvre which he had already unsuccessfully attempted in connection with the Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Bill of 1899. In accordance with this provision, the three Agricultural Organisation Societies for England, Scotland, and Ireland, each applied for a grant in aid. The applications were referred in due course for report to the Government Departments concerned--that is to say, to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries for the English and Scottish applications, and to the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for that from the I.A.O.S. The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries reported favourably, and the British and Scottish Organisation Societies are to have their grant. But the I.A.O.S. had to reckon with Mr. T. W. Russell, behind whom stood Mr. Dillon and the politicians. The report of the Irish Department on the Irish application was adverse, but the Commissioners do not appear to have found the reasons given convincing. Much delay ensued, but, ten months after the application was sent in, the matter was submitted to the Council of Agriculture. The machinery of the United Irish League was brought into action to influence the votes of this body. Mr. Russell delivered an impassioned harangue, and eventually the Council was induced to endorse his action by a majority of 47 to 33. Any grant in aid of agricultural co-operation is to be administered, if Mr. Russell has his way, not by the society which has already been instrumental in establishing nearly a thousand co-operative associations in Ireland, and has served as a model on which the corresponding English and Scottish Organisation Societies, now in the enjoyment of a State subsidy, have been founded, but by the Department, which has hitherto had no experience whatever of such work. Moreover, the co-operation promoted by the Department is to be "non-competitive," by which I suppose is meant, that it is not to affect any existing trading interest. It is safe to say that agricultural co-operation, which has _no_ effect upon any trading interest, will have very little effect upon the farmers' interests either. So far as I know, the Development Commissioners have not decided what course to take in this strange situation. It may be that Ireland will lose the grant altogether; but in any case I can well believe that they must hesitate to reverse the policy already approved for England and Scotland, and in the face of all experience commit the work of organising agricultural co-operation to a State Department rather than to a voluntary association possessing such a record as the I.A.O.S. has placed to its credit. If now we ask what are the grounds of the hostility of the Nationalist Party to the most hopeful Irish movement of recent years, the answer appears to be twofold. The first is economic, or purports to be economic: the second is frankly political. 1. Co-operation, it is urged, injures the middleman and the small trader. To encourage farmers to do well and economically for themselves what is now done indifferently and expensively for them by the middleman, must of course act injuriously on some existing interests. This is not disputed. But the change is absolutely necessary for the regeneration of rural Ireland, and this objection cannot be allowed to stand in the way. Looked at in its broader and more enduring aspects, co-operation is bound to stimulate and improve general trade by increasing the spending power of the farmers. The Chambers of Commerce of Dublin and Belfast have not been slow to perceive this, and have warmly endorsed the Society's application for a grant from the Development Commissioners. 2. The political objection to the movement, so far as it takes the definite form of charging the I.A.O.S. with being a propagandist body aiming under the mask of economic reform at the covert spread of Unionist opinions, will not stand a moment's examination. There is not a particle of evidence in support of such a charge, and the presumption against it is overwhelming. To mix political propagandism with organisation would be the certain ruin of the movement. The Committee of the I.A.O.S. consists of men of all shades of political faith. These men could never have joined hands except on the basis that politics should be rigidly excluded from the work of the Society. The members of the co-operative societies founded by the I.A.O.S. number nearly 100,000. Probably at least three-fourths of these are Nationalists. In order, however, that all doubt on the subject might be finally removed, the I.A.O.S. issued a circular to all its societies, in which the following question was directly put:-- "Has the I.A.O.S., as a body, or the Committee acting for it, done, in your opinion, any act in the interest of any political party, or any act calculated to offend the political principles of any section of your members?" The answers received have been published and form very interesting reading. Not a single society, of the many hundreds that have replied from all parts of Ireland, has been found to assert that politics have ever been mentioned by the agents of the parent association. The hostility of the politicians to the co-operative movement rests, it is safe to surmise, upon some other foundation than these flimsy charges against the I.A.O.S. In itself the movement is vital to the prosperity of rural Ireland. The disfavour shown to it arises from apprehensions respecting its _indirect_ bearing upon the great issue between Unionism and Nationalism. Home Rulers who oppose the co-operative movement find themselves in this dilemma: either they hold that nothing in the way of material improvement could affect the demand for Home Rule, or else they are really afraid lest "better farming, better business, and better living," should weaken the attractions of their own political nostrum. In the former case, they are left without a shadow of justification for their attitude towards the I.A.O.S.; in the latter, they tacitly admit that the interests of the farming classes must suffer in order that the cause of Home Rule may be promoted. Unionists are in no such difficulty. Our policy is clear and consistent. Improvement in the social and economic condition of the people must be our first object. It is an end to be pursued for its own sake, whatever the indirect consequences may be. But the indirect consequences need cause us no anxiety. Increased material prosperity, and the contentment which inevitably accompanies it, whatever their other effects may be, are not likely to strengthen the demand for constitutional changes. Successful resistance to Home Rule at the present crisis may well mean the saving of the Union for good and all. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 70: Originally published in the _Irish Homestead_, and quoted in Sir Horace Plunkett's "Ireland in the New Century," p. 190.] [Footnote 71: "Ireland in the New Century," p. 220.] [Footnote 72: In this connection attention may be called to the remarkable increase of wealth in Ireland in the past twenty years. The deposits in the Joint Stock Banks have increased from £33,700,000 in 1891 to £56,011,000 in 1911, the balances in the Post Office Savings Banks in Ireland from £3,878,000 in 1891 to £12,253,000 in 1911, and the number of accounts from 261,352 in 1891 to 662,589 at the end of 1910. Irish investments in Government Funds, India Stocks, and Guaranteed Land Stock have increased from £26,609,000 in 1891 to £41,363,000 in 1911. But more noteworthy still, perhaps, is the increase in Irish trade. Figures are only available since 1904, but in that period Irish imports have increased from £54,078,399 to £65,044,477--an increase of £10,966,078 in seven years. Irish exports have increased in the same period from £49,712,400 to £65,844,255, or an increase of £16,131,155. Or, if we take the aggregate trade, there has been an increase from £103,790,799 in 1904 to £130,888,732 in 1910, an increase of £27,097,933. In other words, the aggregate import and export trade in Ireland in the year 1910 amounted to nearly £28 sterling per head of population, while the corresponding figure for Great Britain is just over £20. These figures are, I submit, eloquent testimony that the general policy of the Imperial Parliament in relation to Ireland during recent years has been wisely conceived, and that the successful solution of the "Irish Problem" is to be found in the steady pursuit of methods which have already achieved such striking results.] [Footnote 73: It appears that Mr. Dillon was under a misapprehension on this point. He thought he had obtained an amendment to the Bill which prevented the I.A.O.S. from getting a subsidy. This, however, was an entire mistake. See App. B. to the Report of the Committee on the Dept. of Agriculture. Cd. 3573 of 1907.] [Footnote 74: The _voluntary_ contributions to the I.A.O.S. for the work of organisation amounted to no less than £100,000.] [Footnote 75: See his evidence before the House of Lords Committee on the Thrift and Credit Bank Bill (Paper 96 of 1910).] XIV THE COMPLETION OF LAND PURCHASE BY THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE WYNDHAM, M.P. The case for resisting all attempts at impairing the Union between Great Britain and Ireland can be made unimpeachable without reference to the Irish Land Question. It would be our duty to defend the Union as a bulwark of national safety, an instalment of Imperial consolidation, and a protection to the freedom of minorities in Ireland, even if it could be shown that agriculture, the chief industry of Ireland, had little to gain under the Union and nothing to lose under Home Rule. Fortunately, this cannot be alleged except by those who shut their eyes to the results of State-aided Land Purchase in Ireland, and refuse to consider the consequences of tampering with the mainspring of that beneficent operation: I mean the credit of a joint exchequer under one Parliament for both countries. "England's Case against Home Rule" coincides with Ireland's need for retaining the prosperity that has come to her, after long waiting, under, and because of, the Union. It is, therefore, fitting that a place should be found in this book for a brief account of what Irish agriculture may hope from the Union and must fear from Home Rule. The history of Irish Agriculture until recent years differed from the history of English Agriculture at many points, and always to the marked disadvantage of Ireland. Dynastic and religious controversies which--if we except the suppression of monasteries and the exile of a few Jacobites--left English countrysides untouched, in Ireland carried with them the confiscation of vast territories and the desolating Influence of Penal Laws. Changes in economic theory contributed even more sharply to the decay of Irish enterprise. When England favoured Protection Irish industry was handicapped out of manufactures. When England adopted Free Trade Irish agriculture, on which the hopes of Ireland had perforce been fixed, suffered in a greater degree. The doctrine of _laisser faire_ wrought little but wrong when applied by absentee buyers of bankrupt estates to tracts hardly susceptible of development by capital, amid a peasantry wedded to continuity of tenure, and justified in that tradition by the fact that they and their forbears had executed nearly all the improvements on their holdings. Most of the nation were restricted to agriculture under conditions that spelt failure, and imposed exile as the penalty for failure, since other avenues to competence were closed. The climax of misfortune was reached a generation after the triumph of Free Trade. Ireland, being almost wholly an agricultural country, suffered as a whole, whereas England, an industrial country, suffered only in districts, from the collapse of agricultural prices in 1879. That catastrophe in rural life precipitated Mr. Gladstone's Land Law Act (Ireland), 1881. Being precluded by his political tenets from protecting Irish agriculture against foreign competition, or assisting it with the resources of the State, Mr. Gladstone aimed at alleviating the distress due to the decadence of a national industry by defining with meticulous nicety the respective shares which the two parties engaged in agriculture--landlord and tenant--were to derive from its dwindling returns. He believed that the proportion of diminishing profits due to the landlord, because of the inherent capabilities of his property, and to the tenant, because of his own and his predecessors' exertions, could be roughly determined by a few leading cases in the Land Court; and, further, that landlords and tenants throughout Ireland would conform to such guidance as these decisions might afford. In this anticipation he ignored the vital function of agriculture in Irish life, and the effect which the growing stringency of agricultural conditions would have on a population that loved the land and rejoiced in litigation. He created dual-ownership throughout Ireland, and this led, as Lord Dufferin and other far-seeing statesmen had foretold, to the land being starved of both capital and industry. Irish agriculture was brought to the brink of ruin. The misery of those involved in that pass was exploited to engineer an attack on the fabric of social order, and the lawlessness so engendered was adduced as an argument for dissolving the Union under which such tragedies could occur. The leaders of the Conservative Party, when confronted with this situation, determined that their duty, in accordance with the spirit of the Act of Union, demanded some use of the resources of a joint exchequer for ministration to the peculiar needs of Ireland. They decided that the credit of the State should be employed to effect the abolition of dual-ownership by converting the occupiers of Irish farms into owners of the soil. Let it be granted that this policy had been advocated by John Bright and enshrined in the Land Law Acts of 1870 and 1881. It must be added that these pious intentions remained a "dead letter" until adequate machinery for giving them effect was provided by the Land Purchase Acts, commonly called the Ashbourne Acts, of 1885 and 1889. The method pursued was as follows. Any individual landlord could agree with any individual tenant on the price which he would accept for the extinction of his interest in that tenant's holding. The State facilitated the transaction by advancing that amount to the landlord in _cash_ whenever the holding offered sufficient security, and accepting from the tenant an undertaking to pay an instalment of £4 a year for every £100 advanced over a period of forty-nine years. The instalment comprised £3 for interest, 2_s._ 6_d._ for expenses, and 17_s._ 6_d._ for sinking fund. The loan from the exchequer was secured against individual failures to pay by the realisable value of the holdings. The salient features in this procedure were that the landlord received cash and that the tenant paid interest at the then existing rate on Consols, viz. 3 per cent. Both these features are important. A payment in cash, or its equivalent, is preferable for such transactions to a payment in stock, with a fluctuating value, because, if the stock appreciates the landlord gets more than he bargained for, and this, by arousing the suspicions of other would-be tenant-purchasers, produces a disinclination on their part to buy. Again, if the stock depreciates, the landlord cannot carry out contemplated redemptions of mortgages on his property, and this produces a disinclination on the part of other landlords to sell. In the second place it is difficult to persuade Irish tenants that the State is assisting them if they, the poor, are asked to pay higher interest for the State's credit than the State pays for the credit of the rich. The chief defect in this procedure lay in its restriction to separate bargains in respect of single holdings. It made a patchwork, whereas the untoward results of the historic and economic causes on which I have touched demanded the wholesale treatment of convenient areas. Under these Acts, in the course of six years, more than 27,000 tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over £10,000,000. The largest number of applications for purchase in any one year was 6,195 for £2,271,569 in 1887, and the average price for all the holdings bought under these Acts was £396. When the sums provided by the Ashbourne Acts were exhausted, Mr. Arthur Balfour carried the Act of 1891, subsequently amended by the Act of 1896. Under these Acts the landlord was paid in stock instead of cash. The tenant still paid an instalment of £4, which was, ultimately, divided into £1 5_s._ for sinking fund and £2 15_s._ for interest. This large sinking fund, £1 5_s._ instead of 17_s._ 6_d._, was retained after interest had been reduced to the rate on Consols, 2-3/4 per cent., chiefly to avoid a discrepancy in the total of annual instalments as between purchasers under the Act of 1891 and purchasers under the Ashbourne Acts. Difficulties were feared if the earlier purchasers were to pay £4 and the later purchasers only £3 15_s._ for each £100 advanced, so the spare five shillings was put in the sinking fund. This speculative difficulty was afterwards discounted in order to deal with one of a more practical character. Under Mr. Gladstone's Land Law Act of 1881, which dealt with rent-fixing, statutory rents were revised every fifteen years, and the second term rents, beginning in 1896, seemed certain to reveal considerable reductions on the rents payable during the first period. It was felt that the security for the earlier advances would be endangered if rents throughout Ireland fell below the level of the purchase-instalments, and that purchase would be retarded if the purchaser did not obtain immediate relief by agreeing to buy. To meet this practical difficulty Mr. Gerald Balfour, in 1896, permitted the purchaser to write off the amount repaid by sinking fund during the first and two successive periods of ten years. These "decadal reductions" were optional. If the purchaser forewent them he paid £4 per £100, and extinguished his debt in 42-1/2 years. If he availed himself of them he paid £3 8_s. 7d._ per £100 after the first ten years, and continued to pay, with two further reductions in prospect, till the debt was extinguished in a period undefined, but estimated at about 72-1/2 years. But this privilege was made retrospective, so that purchasers under the Ashbourne Acts could also reduce their instalments of £4 to £3 11_s. 10d._ The salient features in the procedure of the Acts of 1891 and 1896 were that, (1) the landlord was paid in stock instead of cash. But owing to the rise in the value of gilt-edged securities, Irish Land Stock, with a face value of £100, became at one moment worth as much as £114; (2) the purchaser's interest was at 2-3/4 per cent. _i.e._ the existing rate on Consols; but (3) his instalment, prospectively fined down by decadal reductions, enabled him to offer an acceptable price and yet pay far less to the State, by way of instalment, after purchase than was due to his landlord, by way of rent, before purchase. The operation of purchase was still confined, almost wholly, to single bargains. But in Mr. Arthur Balfour's Act of 1891 a new departure was authorised which, after development in Mr. Gerald Balfour's Act of 1896, has led to important and far-reaching consequences. The Congested Districts Board was established to deal with scheduled areas in the West of Ireland that comprised a large number of holdings at once too limited in area, and too poor in soil, for any one of them to support a family by farming or to afford security to the State, under existing facilities for purchase, in the event of the occupier wishing to become the owner. A select committee of the House of Commons, so long ago as in 1878 (No. 249, pp. 4 and 5), when Disraeli was Prime Minister, had recommended that a properly constituted body should be empowered to purchase, not single farms, but whole estates, and to re-sell them after amalgamating, enlarging, and re-distributing what are now called "uneconomic" holdings. Provisions to this end had been inserted in earlier Acts, but, in the absence of administrative machinery and financial resources, they remained abortive. It had for long been evident that the small, impoverished holdings, which had supported a dense population before the famine, stood in need of fundamental remodelling if they were to support even a largely reduced population. The efforts made by wealthy Irish landlords in this direction were arrested by the Land Law Act of 1870 and rendered impossible by the Land Law Act of 1881. With the Purchase Acts of 1891 and 1896 a beginning was made. Another feature must be noted. In addition to the value of any one holding, as a security against individual failure, a further security was provided against the risk of a combined refusal to repay. The Exchequer was empowered to retain grants due for various purposes in Ireland and to recoup itself in proportion to the defalcation in any county. It should be added that individual failures have been rare to the point of insignificance, and that no combined refusal has been attempted, or advocated, even during periods of agricultural unrest. Under the Acts of 1891 and 1896 in the course of just over twelve years more than 44,000 tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over £13,000,000. Here we must note that the success of these Acts coincided with, and depended on, a rise in the price of gilt-edged securities. The number of applications rose from 1503 in the year ending March 31, 1896, to 6911 in the year ending March 31, 1900. But, with the fall in the price of stock, land purchase showed signs of coming to a standstill. By 1902 it was evident that new legislation was needed, and in the next year the Irish Land Act of 1903 was carried. The Irish Land Act of 1903 was not, as some suggest, a short cut to the millennium, evolved on the spur of the moment, and translated into fantastic finance. It had two bases, the one practical, the other moral. In the first place, it was founded on the ripe experience garnered during eighteen years from the operation of preceding purchase Acts. In the second place, it was founded on the historic agreement spontaneously arrived at in 1902 by accredited representatives of Irish landlords and tenants. They resolved that dual ownership ought to be abolished throughout Ireland, and that this primary policy should be accompanied by effective remedies for the uneconomic conditions prevalent in the West, but existing elsewhere, though sporadically, to a limited extent. This agreement, in itself unprecedented, was rendered the more remarkable by the fact that the signatories assumed the responsibility of telling the Government how the first object could be achieved. They advised that landlords could not be expected to sell, as a class, unless the price paid to them in cash would yield from sound securities 90 per cent. of their income in terms of a rent that had been twice revised under the Land Law Act of 1881; and that tenants could not be expected to buy, as a class, unless their instalments due to the Treasury after purchase were from 15 per cent. to 25 per cent. less than such rents so revised. They invited the Government to give effect to that agreement. The Government accepted and, in the Act of 1903, tendered the costly but, under the circumstances, not extravagant _imprimatur_ of the Treasury on a political treaty thenceforward to be binding on all three contracting parties: landlords, tenants, and the State. The Nationalist members, as spokesmen for the tenants, and the representatives of the landlords, subscribed to the provisions offered, and the reports of the Estates Commissioners prove that these have been fulfilled so exactly that, in the case of second term rents, landlords and tenants have obtained average incomes and reductions that differ only by a decimal from the mean advocated at the Conference. The objects of the Irish Land Act were, in conformity with the conclusions of the Conference, to abolish dual ownership rapidly and, at the same time, to deal systematically with "agricultural slums." Its salient features fall under four heads. A. _State assistance to voluntary bargaining._ For this purpose it was provided that (1) cash payments should be resumed to the landlords; (2) that the tenants' instalments should be £3 5_s._ for each £100 advanced, divided into £2 15_s._ (2-3/4 per cent.) for interest and 10_s._ for sinking fund. This was not, as the able and well-informed special correspondent of the _Times_ suggests (February 9, 1912) a sudden departure from an instalment of £4. "Decadal reductions" under the Act of 1896 had, as I have said, diminished the instalments of purchasers under the Act of 1891 to £3 8_s. 7d._ after ten years with further prospective diminutions, and subjected the instalments of purchasers under earlier Acts to a similar process. A wholesale expansion of purchase was impossible unless would-be purchasers were offered terms comparable to those accorded to their predecessors. For this reason the tenantry of Ireland were offered repayment at £3 5_s._ per £100 for a period of about 62 years, in lieu, under the Act of 1896, of repayment at £3 8_s. 9d._, with further reductions, for about 72-1/2 years, and their representatives accepted the offer. They would certainly have refused, and rightly, the offer substituted by Mr. Birrell in the Act of 1909, viz. an instalment of £3 10_s._ with the same sinking fund--10_s._--and interest increased to £3. The third feature to be noted under this head is, that the terms agreed to by representatives of landlords and tenants at the conference could not be ratified unless the State added some help by way of cash to the assistance of its credit. It was agreed by all parties that £12,000,000 should be available to bridge the gap, at the rate of 12 per cent. on the amount advanced, with the right to revise that rate after five years, but _only for the purpose of extending the bonus_--as it was called--_to all future transactions_. It was an integral part of a solemn covenant that the bonus should not be diverted to any object other than the abolition of dual ownership and the remedy of "congestion." B. _The substitution of speedy purchase for dilatory litigation._ To all members of the Conference of 1902 and of the House of Commons in 1903, with, I believe, the exception of Mr. Dillon, who was away in America while the Conference sat, it was evident that, if dual ownership was to be abolished, our choice was confined to two courses. We could, on the one hand, pursue, under the guise of purchase, the metaphysical and costly distinctions between landlord-right and tenant-right, which Mr. Gladstone had established under the guise of rent-fixing; or else, as the only alternative, we had "to cut the cackle" and get to business. Under this head the House of Commons--Mr. Dillon ingeminating dissent--decided in so far as landlords and tenants were concerned, two things: (1) It was agreed that where the tenant-purchaser's instalment, after purchase, was substantially less than his statutory rent revised at great cost--£140,000 a year for Land Courts--then, in those cases the State needed not to inquire at further cost and delay into either its own security in the holding, or the metaphysical distinction between value due to the landlord's ownership of the soil and value due to the tenant's improvement of the soil. This close approximation to unanimity will not surprise those who grasp that every landlord and tenant was to make a voluntary bargain on precisely those terms which the representatives of their classes had combined to obtain from the State. The alternative method of delay and litigation had been further discounted, for everybody except Mr. Dillon, by the fact that in the classic case--_Adams_ v. _Dunseath_--tried out in accordance with Mr. Gladstone's panacea, Adams, after repeated lawsuits, improved his financial position by an infinitesimal sum per annum without becoming an owner of his farm. It was also agreed that the Estates Commissioners appointed to administer the Act, should be administrative officials under the Government, and not amateur judges. This was essential, not only to substitute cheap speed for costly delay, but also to ensure that the benefits offered by the State should not be absorbed, say, in the rich province of Leinster to the detriment of the poorer province of Connaught, or--for who knows what may happen in Ireland?--absorbed in the Home Rule province of Connaught to the detriment of the Unionist province of Ulster. C. _Dealing with Estates as a whole instead of with single holdings._ This process, till then applied tentatively in the congested districts of the West, became the general method throughout Ireland, and was assisted by the provision of working capital for carrying out necessary amalgamations and improvements before resale. D. _Increase in the 'borrowing power and funds of the Congested Districts Board,_ for the purpose of dealing systematically with "agricultural slums." The features of the Irish Land Act (1903), founded, as they were, on experience and the consent of all parties concerned, became widely popular in Ireland. But, by Mr. Birrell's Act of 1909, they were all distorted or destroyed. A solemn treaty, framed in the interest of Ireland, was torn up to deck with its tatters the triumph of Mr. Dillon's unholy alliance with the British Treasury. The effect of this betrayal on the prospects of Irish agriculture will appear from a recital of the changes made by Mr. Birrell's Act, followed by a comparison of the results obtained under the two Acts. From that comparison I shall proceed to an examination of the reasons alleged for the breach of faith, and a statement of the Unionist party's pledge to continue their policy of 1903. I shall then conclude by inviting all who care for Ireland to weigh the prospects of Irish Agriculture under the Union against its prospects under Home Rule. _Changes made by the Act of _1909.--(1) Instead of cash payments landlords are to receive stock at three per cent. issued on a falling market, and this stock cannot appreciate because, owing to the embarrassment of Irish estates, about half of each issue must be thrown back on the market for the redemption of mortgages; a result fatal to land purchase and detrimental to the credit of the State. (2) Instead of paying £3 5_s._ per £100, tenants are to pay £3 10_s._ without any reduction in the period of repayment. The sinking fund remains at 10_s._ and the interest £3 is, for the first time since land purchase was attempted, placed at a higher rate than in the preceding Purchase Act, whilst the whole instalment of £3 10_s._ is raised, not only above the rate of the Act of 1903, but also above the rates, diminished by decadal reductions, of purchasers under still earlier Acts. This again, in view of these reductions and of periodic revisions of _rent_ under the Land Law Act of 1881, is fatal to purchase. (3) The bonus of £12,000,000--on the application of which all parties agreed in 1903--was diverted from the unanimous policy of that year and brought in aid of Mr. Dillon's hobby, which all parties then rejected. Mr. Dillon is at liberty to rejoice over the ruin of one landlord more than over the salvation of 99,000 tenants. The laws of lunacy do not, and ought not to, touch him. But there is no reason why taxpayers should minister to his peculiar pleasure, with the result of postponing indefinitely any settlement of the Irish land question. (4) By reverting to inspection for security delay is substituted for speed, and speed is necessary in the conclusion of bargains that are themselves the result of prolonged negotiations; the more so when, as now, owing to the substitution of stock for cash, the seller cannot know what his bargain will turn out to be; and the buyer, owing to the block in agreements under the Act of 1903, cannot know when his bargain will take effect. In most cases it will not do so for from six to eight years, which must be added to the period of repayment, although his instalment has been increased. (5) The reversion to attempts at defining the metaphysical rights of the landlords and tenants revives the social poison of litigation of which, in 1903, every one but Mr. Dillon was weary. (6) The revival of litigation in respect of single holdings defeats the policy of dealing with convenient areas. (7) By transforming the Estates Commissioners, much I imagine to their disgust, from administrative officers into amateur judges, a further premium is put on litigation and delay, whilst the interests of one province as against the interests of another, are left without protection from the State. (8) Although more than half the holdings of Ireland are valued at less than £10 a year, a presumption is created that all holdings below that value are to be deemed "uneconomic." The whole of Connaught with the counties of Donegal and Kerry and part of County Cork are branded as "congested," and the Board, charged with conducting purchase in that area, is swollen to unmanageable size, whilst three commissioners are held sufficient for the rest of Ireland, which is twice as large. To these eight changes, all inimical, and, as I believe, fatal to the abolition of dual ownership, two have been added of a more insidious effect. Compulsion has been adopted. This of itself checks voluntary purchase. It kills it when, as under this Act, compulsory purchases are to be paid for in cash and voluntary purchases in depreciated stock. Finally, the Act contemplates diverting the resources, applied under the treaty of 1903 to the abolition of dual ownership and the remedy of congestion, to a new purpose, for which Ireland can make no special claim. I mean the creation, over all Ireland, of new tenancies, to be sold to new men, who have never suffered from dual ownership or uneconomic conditions, and may be presumed to be ignorant of farming. This new policy amounts to a repeal of the policy sanctioned by all, viz. of giving special State aid to meet the peculiar needs of Ireland. _A comparison of the results obtained under the Acts of_ 1903 _and_ 1909.--In order to gauge the respective efficacy of these two Acts for the purpose of abolishing dual ownership, it is necessary to distinguish between applications for purchase, and advances actually made in respect of completed transactions. The applications exhibit the comparative popularity and convenience of the two Acts. The advances exhibit only the readiness of the Government to proceed with purchase. They pertain to the financial, rather than the political, aspect of the problem, and may be examined later together with the reasons alleged for the delay of its solution. The fact of the delay appears from the following figures:-- Under the Irish Land Act (1903) the number of purchase agreements lodged in respect of direct sales by landlords to tenants was 217,299 in the course of less than six years from November 1, 1903, to September 15, 1909. To these should be added proposed purchasers in other categories, viz. in respect of estates sold to the Land Commission for subsequent re-sale, or to the Congested Districts Board, or in the Court of the Land Judge, or in respect of offers to evicted tenants. These bring the total of potential purchasers up to 248,109. Under the Act of 1909, in two years from December 3, 1909, to December 1, 1911, the number of applications in respect of direct sales stands at 8,992. In the other categories the number of potential purchasers amounted to 373 up to March 31, 1911. Since then tentative negotiations have been essayed, under the threat of compulsion and the menace of Home Rule, which suggest a far larger figure. But these transactions--to which I shall return--are of an eminently dubious character. We are on safe ground if we compare the number of tenants who were ready under the two Acts to acquire their holdings. After discounting whatever may be claimed on the score that the operation of the Act of 1903 was expedited by the fear of its destruction, a comparision of 217,299 would-be purchasers in six years with 8,992 in two years demonstrates that the abolition of dual ownership has been thrown back to the conditions which called for the Treaty of 1903. Furthermore, it is proper to discount, in turn, even the meagre total of 8,992. For it includes the remainders of estates, other parts of which had been sold under the Act of 1903 and the spurt of applications expedited, in this case, by the revolution of last August. To the over-sanguine and the over-timid this seemed to foreshadow the rapid passage of Home Rule, and, bad as are the terms of the Act of 1909, they are estimated to be better than any obtainable after the Union has been thrown on the scrap-heap of the Constitution. One other comparison may be noted. It was part of the Treaty of 1903 that landlords should be encouraged to remain in their native land by assistance in the repurchase of their demesnes--that is, homes--after selling their properties. Under the Act of 1903 the advances on resale to owners sanctioned by the Land Commission numbered 205. Under the Act of 1909 they number two. It will readily be inferred, even by those unacquainted with Ireland; that a process for healing ancient wounds has been turned into a process for exasperating future conflicts. A blister has been substituted for a poultice on the sores of centuries. Existing agreements are blocked. Future agreements--for this is their appropriate, if cynical--designation, are relegated to a future which few can foresee. Landlords who have contracted to sell are threatened with bankruptcy by the foreclosure of mortgages. Tenants who have contracted to buy see their hopes deferred with sick hearts. Whilst to owners and occupiers who have not completed their bargains "no hope comes at all." The newly won prosperity of Ireland is doomed because the Nationalist party and British Government have not kept faith; and with prosperity peace is departing. The environment that breeds agrarian disorder and crime has been restored, and agitators, in expectation of Home Rule, are already at "their dirty work again." A new plan of campaign menaces the peace of Ireland in those districts whose past records are most darkly stained. _Examination of the reasons alleged for tearing up the Treaty of 1903_.--The Government defended their reversal of the policy of 1903, and departure from their pledges to carry out that policy, by making two assertions. They asserted (1) that the size of the problem, which all parties undertook to solve, would exceed by far the speculative estimate put forward in 1903; (2) that the credit of the British Exchequer, which they have depressed, would prove unequal to the burden foreshadowed by the new dimensions, which they have assigned. (1) _Size of the problem_. The first assertion, that much nearer £200,000,000 than £100,000,000 must be borrowed in order to complete purchase, is based on two assumptions explicitly stated in the Return presented to Parliament (Cd. 4412 of 1908) as follows: "It will be observed that the purchase money of the agricultural land not yet brought before the Commissioners for sale under the Land Purchase Acts has been estimated _on the assumption that it will be all sold_ and that _it will be sold on an average at the price for which lands had been sold up to 30th April last, under the Irish Land Act_ (1903)." The assumptions on which the Government proceeded are not, therefore, in doubt, but the validity of those assumptions, on which the whole case of the Government depends, is refuted by the ascertained facts of Irish agriculture. The census shows that the number of agricultural holdings in Ireland is about 490,000, including nearly 19 million acres. The whole area of Ireland includes some 21 million acres, apportioned to 3-1/2 million acres under crops, 6 million acres of waste, and 11-1/2 million acres under grass. The Return to which I have referred (Cd. 4412 of 1908) cavils at the figures given in the census on the ground that the 490,000 "holdings" are more accurately 490,000 "land-holders," since a tenant holding "half a dozen farms in the same county is returned as having a single holding." But it is right to take "holders" when, as under the Act of 1903, the limit on advances applies to the person who receives them. Again, the Return throws over the census for figures supplied by the Department of Agriculture. But it is wrong to use these figures, for they include holdings not exceeding one acre, of which there are 80,000 in Ireland, and many more that cannot be described as "in the main agricultural or pastoral." No special pleading on the part of the Government can alter the fact that the 490,000 holdings given by the census include all the lands under crops and grass and two-thirds of the waste. They embrace 19 million acres, and more than cover the ground. For the purpose of an estimate it is an outside figure, the more so since, in respect of grass lands the value of a single farm may exceed the limit of any one advance, and it is not uncommon for a large grazier to rent many grass farms. If the Government, by conferring a judicial status on the Estate Commissioners, surrendered their control over the amounts of single advances; and again, if the Government, at the dictation of Mr. Dillon, embarked on a new policy of creating tenancies in grass land and selling them to new men, they are debarred from increasing the estimate to cover their own misfeasance. In tendering the speculative estimate of 1903, it was clearly laid down that the amount of one advance was only to be increased in rare cases, and the sub-division of permanent pasture was denounced as a "form of economic insanity." It was also explained that deductions must be made from the 490,000 holdings in respect of small town plots, accommodation plots, and market gardens; nor are these insignificant, for to the 80,000 holdings not exceeding one acre we must add 62,000 of from 1 to 5 acres. In the face of these facts, the assumption that "all agricultural land"--as defined in the Return--will be sold, is not only unsound but preposterous. The second assumption, that the average price of future transactions will equal that of past transactions is opposed to the presumption that better, and therefore dearer farms, came into the market before worse and therefore cheaper farms. I am not referring to the number of years' purchase offered, a point on which I have never expressed an opinion, but to the value of the property which passes. It is with farms as with oranges, the good ones go first. The pertinence of this maxim to land purchase is proved by the reports of the Estates Commissioners. These contradict the Government's second assumption, for they exhibit a steady and continuous decline in the average of advances that have been made. The average amount of advances under the Act of 1903 to March 31, 1908, was in round numbers £361. On some such figures the second assumption rests. I ventured at the time to assert that the average in the future would not exceed £300. This estimate has been confirmed, for the average advances from March 31, 1908, to September 15, 1909--when the Act ceased to operate--was £287. A further reduction may be confidently expected, since the progress of purchase in the richer provinces has by far exceeded its progress in Connaught. In Leinster over 53,000 agreements have been lodged at an average price of over £481; in Munster over 58,000 at an average of over £420; in Ulster over 84,000 at an average of over £226; whilst in Connaught only some 26,000 at an average of just under £200. The reasons alleged in defence of the Act of 1909 failed to justify, or even to explain, the changes it imposed. An explanation must be sought in the real reasons, and they are not far to seek. The first was that the old methods of litigation and delay, abjured by all parties in 1903, were substituted for the new methods of speed and ease, because Mr. Dillon so willed it; and the second, that the policy of abolishing dual ownership, to which Mr. Redmond stood pledged, had to be ousted, again at Mr. Dillon's dictation, to make way for the folly of creating new tenancies, of symmetrical size, throughout all Ireland. The Treaty was torn up because Mr. Dillon, acting as deputy for Mr. Birrell (whose main argument for Home Rule is that it bores him to be Chief Secretary), ordered Mr. Redmond to eat his words. From this examination of the reasons for destroying the Act of 1903, the true size and nature of the financial problem emerges. From the total of some 490,000 holdings substantial reductions must be made in respect of waste lands, grass lands, and accommodation plots, and, again, in view of the limitation on the amount that may be advanced to one person. We ought probably to deduct 20 per cent., but if, to be on the safe side, we deduct only 15 per cent., 416,000 are left. These, however, include some 80,000 sold before the Act of 1903, or under the Land Commissioners as distinct from the Estates Commissioners. In respect of the 336,500 remaining, 257,474 agreements have been lodged under all categories in the Acts of 1903 and 1909. Indeed, a larger number have been lodged, for in most cases our information is only to March 31, 1911, leaving less than 79,000 holdings that may still come into the market. This is an outside figure, provided always that the policy of 1903 be adhered to, viz. that advances are made to _occupiers_ and not to new men, except as under the Act of that year (sect. 2 (I) _b_ and _d_, and sect. 75) in rare cases, rigidly defined, of the sons of tenants and of evicted tenants. If the average price remains at the figure for the period March 31, 1908, to September 15, 1909--viz. £287--a further sum of £22,673,000 may be required in excess of £84,099,818 already required under the Acts of 1903 and 1909; making £106,772,818. This total includes nearly £1,000,000 for re-sales to owners and some provision for evicted tenants. Under these heads it will not expand in a greater relative degree. It includes, also, purchase of whole estates and of untenanted land by the Estates Commissioners and Congested Districts Board, and these may involve larger sums than were originally contemplated. I promised to return to that point, and will now do so. Since the Return under these heads up to March 31, 1911, tentative negotiations have been made for the purchase of a number of estates and for supplying more evicted tenants with holdings. But this does not increase the money size of the problem by much, because many of these estates--if sold to the new Congested Districts Board--are subtracted from business that would have been done by the Estates Commissioners; again, it is, as we know, impossible to spend much money, or move many migrants, or even enlarge many holdings, in one year. If the new Congested Districts Board attempts to handle some millions' worth of land in a hurry, one of two things must happen, either their work will be indefinitely delayed, or else they will sell off "uneconomic" holdings without amending their defects. The business will not cost more. It will only be scamped, or shirked. I doubt if the additions, which do not conflict with the policy of 1903, will increase the amount to be borrowed in the market, though they may increase the sums needed for working capital. Let us add for these expansions, which are strictly limited by physical impediments, £2,000,000 or even twice that amount. It still remains obvious that, even after expansions, good, bad, or indifferent, of the policy of 1903, the total sum to be borrowed cannot exceed from £110,000,000 to £113,000,000, as the outside figure that need be contemplated, provided we refrain from the "economic insanity" of distributing eleven million acres of permanent pasture among shopkeepers and "Gombeen" men. This figure of £113,000,000, indeed, exceeds what may reasonably be expected. The average of advances fell from £426 on the earliest agreements, to £361 on all agreements to March 31, 1908, and to £287 on agreements between that date and September 15, 1909. We may count on a continuation of that fall until the average approaches £200, the price for Connaught, where purchase has proceeded most slowly. But let the total stand at £113,000,000. That sum neither warrants the breach of faith of which the Government and the Nationalist party have been guilty, nor does it present an insoluble problem to the resources of a united Exchequer. £41,097,939 has already been borrowed in the market, and advanced, in less than eight years. The policy to which the leaders of the Unionist party stand pledged may now be re-stated in the words which I was authorised to use by Mr. Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne after consultation with their colleagues. Speaking on July 9, 1909, I said:-- "Our attitude is, that it is necessary to deal effectively with the block of pending agreements, but in dealing with that block it is not necessary to prejudice the interests either of the landlords or tenants, who may come to terms on some future agreements. We think that the spirit of the Act of 1903 must be observed in the case of pending agreements, but it must not be departed from in the case of future agreements."--Hansard, 1909, vol. vii. No. 93, cols. 1542, 1543. Mr. Bonar Law confirms this pledge. He instructs me to say that the Unionist party will resume the land policy of 1903, and pursue the same objects by the best methods until all have been fully and expeditiously achieved. The prospects of Irish agriculture under the Union include a return to the land policy of 1903, with its fair hopes of reconciliation between classes and creeds, and its accomplished result of abounding prosperity. What are the prospects of Irish agriculture under Home Rule? Of what Home Rule may mean in this, as in other respects, we have been told so little that we are driven to consider its effect on Irish agriculture in the light of two contingencies. It may be that the extremists, with whom Mr. Dillon invariably ranges himself, as a preliminary to dragging Mr. Redmond after him, will have their way. In that case, Ireland will exact complete fiscal autonomy from a Government which invariably surrenders to Mr. Dillon's puppet. Should this occur, land purchase will cease abruptly in the absence of credit for borrowing the sums it requires. Take the other alternative, hazily outlined by Mr. Winston Churchill at Belfast. We glean from his pronouncement that the Government intend--if they can--to refuse fiscal autonomy, and to preserve control over land purchase. Can it be expected that this attempt, even if it succeeds, will produce better results for land purchase than the pitiable failure of the Act of 1909? Is it not certain that less money will be raised in England, for Ireland, after Home Rule? And if raised in driblets, on what will it be spent? Obviously, not on the policy of 1903, but on the policy substituted by Mr. Dillon in 1909. It will be spent on expelling landlords and graziers to make room for subscribers to the propaganda of extremists. We must judge of what will happen to agriculture after Home Rule by what has happened since the Treaty of 1903 was repudiated. Nor must we forget that Mr. Dillon's destructive activity has ranged beyond land purchase. That policy could have achieved little but for the untiring and generous patriotism of Sir Horace Plunkett. He established the Department of Agriculture and converted his countrymen to co-operation, in the absence of which no system of small ownership can succeed. He, too, based his efforts on a conference--the Recess Committee. How has he been met? Mr. Redmond, a member of that Committee, as later of the Land Conference, has, here again, succumbed to Mr. Dillon, who seeks to defeat co-operation between farmers, in the interests of his disciples; whilst Mr. Russell, with the hectic zeal of a pervert, has refused Ireland's share of the new Development Grant in order to spite Sir Horace Plunkett. Such signs of the times are read in Ireland more quickly than in England, and in several ways. To this man they spell speedy triumph for the form of economic insanity in which he vindictively believes; to that man, the retention of an office won by recanting his opinions. But there are others in the saddest districts of Ireland who must also be taken into account. To the few--for they are few--who thrive by deeds of darkness whenever the Union is attacked, these signs of coming change suggest a more tragic interpretation, from which the fanatic and the place-hunter would recoil--when too late. The blatant publican who strangles a neighbourhood in the toils of usury and illicit drink, and the bestial survivor of half-forgotten murder-rings take note of these signs. The atavism of cruelty returns. Emboldened by Mr. Birrell's bland acquiescence in milder prologues to Home Rule, a new plan of campaign is, even now, being devised, charged with sinister consequences from which all men in 1903 trusted that Ireland would be for ever absolved. The prospects of Irish Agriculture under Home Rule include the return, after a brief chapter of "hope, and energy the child of hope," to the old cycle of bitterness and listlessness and despair. A consideration of these alternatives leads to this dilemma. If the Government concede fiscal autonomy Land Purchase ends. If they refuse it, and Mr. Redmond accepts a "gas-and-water" Bill, that compromise, so accepted, will receive from Mr. Dillon the treatment accorded to the recommendations of the Recess Committee and of the Land Conference. The compromise will be repudiated and the millions already advanced for purchase will be used as a lever to extort complete autonomy. The lever is a powerful one. All depends upon who holds the handle. It may be said in conclusion that the Unionist policy of Land Purchase vindicates the Union, and that the treatment it has received demonstrates the futility, and the tragedy, of granting Home Rule. XV POSSIBLE IRISH FINANCIAL REFORMS UNDER THE UNION BY ARTHUR WARREN SAMUELS, K.C. THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION. The best possible system for Irish financial reform is adherence to the principles of the Act of Union. The constitution, as settled by the Act of Union and the Supplementary Act for the amalgamation of the Exchequer, contemplated that each of the three Kingdoms should contribute by "equal taxes" to the Imperial Exchequer. "Equal taxes" were to be those which would press upon each country equitably in proportion to its comparative ability to bear taxation. These taxes were to be imposed subject to such exemptions and abatements as Scotland and Ireland should from time to time appear to be entitled to. If their circumstances should so require, they should receive special consideration. All the revenues of England, Scotland and Ireland, wherever and however raised, when paid into the common Exchequer, form one consolidated fund. The Act for the consolidation of the Exchequers directs that there shall be paid out of the common fund "indiscriminately" under the control of Parliament all such moneys as are required at any time and in any place for any of the public services in England, Scotland, Ireland or elsewhere in the Empire.[76] Such payments are to be made without consideration of anything but necessity. They are to be without differentiation on the ground of the locality of the expenditure, or of the relative amount of the contributions to the common chest of England, Scotland or Ireland. All expenditure is alike "common"; whatever its object may be, civil, naval or military or foreign, it is all alike "Imperial," and all of it is under the constitution "indiscriminate." The whole United Kingdom forms one domain, and but one area for the purposes of expenditure. As long as the Act of Union lasts no one of the three Kingdoms can be said to be "run" either "at a loss" or "at a profit." They are all run together as one incorporate body. The common revenue balances the common expenditure, and they bear together one another's burden and the weight of Empire. THE VICE-TREASURERSHIP OF IRELAND. The Act for the amalgamation of the Exchequers of Great Britain and Ireland contained provisions for the continued representation of Ireland in fiscal matters at the Exchequer and in Parliament. Power was given to His Majesty by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of Ireland to appoint a Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. The Vice-Treasurer could sit in Parliament, and appointment to the office did not vacate a seat in the House of Commons. This office has been allowed to fall into abeyance. The Exchequer is only represented in Ireland by a Treasury Remembrancer. Most persons who know Ireland would concur in the view that the existing arrangement is not satisfactory, and that it would be of great advantage to Great Britain, as well as to Ireland, to have in Parliament a Minister specially responsible for Irish finance, acting under the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Vice-Treasurership should be revived, and the occupant of it should be a member in touch with Irish opinion, understanding Ireland and her real wants, which are often very different from the demands upon the Exchequer that are most loudly proclaimed. The restoration of the office would facilitate business, and tend to remove many misunderstandings, and prevent many mistakes. Personal interviews in Ireland with such a Minister would be worth reams of correspondence, and would save weeks of time. Promptitude, economy and efficiency would be secured. IRISH INTERESTS UNDER TARIFF REFORM. For the purposes of a system of Tariff Reform, the revival of the Irish Vice-Treasurership is expedient. The peculiar circumstances, conditions, aptitudes, and requirements of Ireland must be regarded, inquired into, discussed and weighed. Her commercial, industrial, and agricultural interests must be specially considered. They vary in many particulars from those of Scotland and England. This can only be done satisfactorily by a responsible Irish Minister charged with the duty of protecting and securing her interests and harmonising them with those of the sister Kingdoms in the framing of a scientific scheme of Tariff Reform. If Irish interests are properly provided for, she should gain greatly under Tariff Reform. The effect of the Whig finance, inaugurated by Gladstone in 1853, accompanied by a rigid application of the Ricardian theories of political economy, and the continuous narrowing of the basis of indirect taxation, told against Ireland most severely, depleted her resources and retarded her progress. Sir Stafford Northcote thus addressed the House of Commons after twelve years' experience of the Gladstone Budget:-- "The upshot of our present system of taxation has been to increase the taxation of the United Kingdom within the last ten or twelve years by 20 per cent., and they would find that whereas the taxation of England had increased by 17 per cent., that of Ireland had increased no less than 52 per cent, between 1851 and 1861. This disproportion had been brought about by laying upon Ireland the burden of the Income-tax and by heavily increasing the spirit duties, making use at the same time of these two great engines of taxation to relieve the United Kingdom, but more especially England, of particular fiscal impositions.... Taxation in these two parts have pressed so heavily on Ireland, it was incumbent upon the people of England to take into account the necessity of relieving Ireland in any way they could."[77] This plea of a great Conservative financial authority for that special consideration for Ireland to which she is entitled in fiscal matters under the Act of Union was not carried into effect until the Unionist administration of Lord Salisbury, in 1886. Then began, under the Chief Secretaryship of Mr. Arthur Balfour, that practical application of the "Exemptions and Abatements" clause of the Act of Union in the policy of Constructivism which has fructified so magnificently, and which, if allowed to continue uninterrupted by Home Rule, will lead Ireland to affluence. The Lloyd George Budget penalised Ireland still further by exaggerating those methods of Whig finance which persistently narrowed the basis of indirect taxation and heaped up disproportionate imposts on a few selected articles--articles which are either very largely produced or very largely consumed in Ireland. The effect of Gladstone's Budget of 1853 was to reduce the area under barley in Ireland by 134,000 acres in six years; the Lloyd George Budget has reduced the Irish barley crop by 10,000 acres in one year. Therefore in the framing of the Tariff Reform Budgets of the future, Ireland's equitable claim under the Act of Union should be recognised and given effect to. REFORM OF AGRICULTURAL LAND TAXATION. Agricultural land in the hands of the farmers who have bought their holdings under the Irish Land Acts has been made liable to extravagant burdens by the Lloyd George Budget. These peasant purchasers are treated as if they were "Dukes." When they discover their real position, their resentment will be bitter. Form IV. has not yet been circulated among them. It has been kept back deliberately. It would not suit Mr. Redmond or the Ministry, should the Irish farmer discover what the actual working of the new Land taxes means while the legislative logs are still being rolled by the Radical-Socialist-Nationalist combination. When Home Rule is defeated Unionist finance should provide that the burden imposed by these taxes on agricultural progress and national prosperity shall be removed, and that the benefits conferred by the great Unionist policy of State purchase on the peasant proprietors shall not be allowed to be filched away by the Socialist budget, though it was by that very Irish party, whose first duty should have been to protect them, that the Irish farmers' interests have been betrayed. CONSTRUCTIVISM. It was found by the Financial Relations Commission that Ireland contributed a revenue in excess of her relative capacity. Mr. Childers, in his draft report, suggested that practical steps might possibly be taken to give Ireland relief or afford her equitable compensation in three different ways--[78] (1) By so altering the general fiscal policy of the United Kingdom as to make the incidence of taxation fall more lightly on Ireland. It was suggested that the taxation upon tea, tobacco, and spirits, which weigh more heavily on Ireland in proportion to her relative capacity, because of the habits of the people, and the larger proportion in Ireland of the poorer classes, might be reduced and a part of the burden transferred to other commodities. It was, however, felt, he said, that this would open up questions of such magnitude--like Free Trade and the incidence of taxation as between different classes--that it would be inexpedient to urge it, when the object in view was the solution of a pressing difficulty with regard to Ireland taken apart from the rest of the United Kingdom. But that difficulty will be removed under Tariff Reform--one-sided Free Trade is no longer a sacrosanct fetish--and the case of Ireland must be taken not as apart from, but as part of, the United Kingdom. Irish interests, Agricultural and Industrial, can be far better promoted, furthered, and secured under a scientific tariff system than under the so-called free trade system, which insists on the fallacy that identity of imposts means equality of burden, and concentrates its pressure on the great Irish industries of brewing, distillery, and tobacco manufacturing; a system which taxes heavily tea--the great article of consumption--and has brought peculiar disaster on agriculture. Therefore, the remedy which Mr. Childers thought impracticable in 1896 will become eminently practicable with a Tariff Reform Ministry in power. (2) The second suggestion then made was that there should be a policy of distinct customs and excise for Ireland as apart from Great Britain. This would involve a customs barrier between the two islands. The inconvenience of such a course would be immeasurable and disastrous under modern conditions. It would certainly come sooner or later under Home Rule, but it would be a reversal of the policy of the Union. (3) The third method which most strongly recommended itself to Mr. Childers was to give compensation to Ireland by making an allocation of revenue in her favour, to be employed in promoting the material prosperity and social welfare of the country. This is the course which has been pursued by Unionist statesmen, and finds practical expression in their Constructive policy. The results cannot be better proved than by the fact that within the six years from 1904, during which the statistics of Irish Export and Import trade have been kept, her commerce has increased in money value by more than twenty-seven millions. At least four-fifths of that great increase represents a corresponding increase in British trade with Ireland. Mr. Childers wrote in 1896-- "Apart from the claim of Ireland to special and distinct consideration under the provisions of the Act of Union, and upon the ground that she has for many years been, and now is, contributing towards the public revenue a share much in excess of her relative taxable capacity; I think that Great Britain as a manufacturing and trading country would in the course of time be amply repaid by the increase of prosperity and purchasing power in Ireland for any additional burdens which this annual grant to Ireland might involve. Looked at simply as a matter of good policy, it would be that often advocated with regard to Crown Colonies of Imperial expenditure with a view to the development of a backward portion of the Imperial estate. Ireland is so much nearer to and more exclusively the customer of the trading and manufacturing districts of Great Britain than any Colony, that this argument in her case should have redoubled weight. It is at least probable that, if in place of the fitful method of casual loans and grants hitherto pursued, there was a steady, persevering, and well-directed application of public money by way of free annual grant towards increasing the productive power of Ireland, the true revenue derived from that country might in time be no longer in excess of its relative taxable capacity."[79] The wisdom of this Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer makes a strange contrast with the folly of the Radical Chief Secretary, who tells England to "cut the loss" at the moment of Ireland's rapid progress because Irish Old Age Pensions have exceeded in number the reckless anticipation of the Right Hon. Mr. Lloyd George. A SUGGESTION FOR STATE TRANSIT OF HOME-GROWN PRODUCE. The present writer ventures to suggest that under a general scheme of Tariff Reform, the home-grown food supply of the United Kingdom might be generally increased and cheapened, and Ireland, along with the other agricultural districts of the United Kingdom greatly developed, by an extension of the principle of the Parcel Post, and the constitution of a great Home-Grown Commodity Consignment Service worked through arrangements between the Post Office, the Railway Companies, the Agricultural Departments and Farmers' Co-operative Associations. The railways already provide special rates for farm produce. But if the system were organised by the State in connection with the Railways and Agricultural Associations, and the parcel post expanded from the carriage of parcels of eleven pounds weight to the carriage of consignments of a tonnage limit to be delivered on certain days at depots in the large cities and centres of population, great national interests might be served. The value of proximity to the Home Markets which has been so depreciated in favour of foreign supplies by modern transit methods and quick sea passages, would be restored to the British and Irish farmer. If this were accompanied by a tariff system which would secure a preference for home-grown cereals such as oats and barley, a direct effect in stimulating agriculture, and an indirect effect in increasing winter dairying, cattle feeding and poultry rearing, would be produced. The country would become more self-sustaining. The peace food supply would be cheapened and the food supply in time of war augmented. The defensive power of the realm would be increased. If, under the new Tariff system, it seems not inexpedient to reimpose the small registration duty on imported foreign as contrasted with colonial wheat and flour, the revenue thus produced might, without exactly earmarking it, be applied partly towards encouraging and advancing agriculture in the United Kingdom, and partly towards financing such a Commodity Post as above suggested. This subvention to domestic, agricultural and pastoral industries would balance the tariff on foreign manufactured goods, and the farmer of England, Scotland and Ireland would share amply in the stimulus of a new fiscal policy. Tariff Reform may assist the manufacturer and artisan by imposing duties at the ports, and the farmer and agricultural labourer by cheapening transit and encouraging food production within the United Kingdom. EQUIVALENT GRANTS IN AID. In 1888 a system was inaugurated by which Grants in Aid of Local Purposes have been made in the Three Kingdoms on the basis that England should get 80 per cent., Scotland 11 per cent., and Ireland 9 per cent., when such subventions are given from the Imperial Exchequer. The Legislation sanctioning this proportional allocation began with the English Local Government Act of 1888, when Grants in Aid were made out of the Probate Duties, and has been carried into several other Statutes relating to England, Scotland and Ireland. These proportions have become to a large extent stereotyped in the allocation of such grants. The new basis of contribution was originated by Mr. Goschen and was stated by him to depend upon the amount of the assumed contribution of each country to the Revenue for Common purposes. The method of calculation, he said, was a very complex one.[80] It was pointed out at the time that under the new system the party that would probably require the largest amount of the grant would be the poorest country, and yet the richer country would get the larger proportionate grants.[81] The method of segregation is as follows. The Revenue and Expenditure Returns divide public expenditure into four clauses: (a) "Imperial or Common Services," (b) "English Services," (c) "Scottish Services," and (d) "Irish Services"; and having treated the three latter as "local services" and charged the particular outlay on them against each of the three countries, they estimate the balance left in cash as "the Contribution" of England, Scotland and Ireland to the "Imperial" Expenditure. It is admitted that this division is absolutely arbitrary. It has no sanction by any Act of Parliament. It is opposed to the system of Finance under the Act of Union. All the revenues of England, Scotland or Ireland are contributed for "Common" purposes, and in which all expenditure of any kind in any portion of the United Kingdom is alike "Common" or "Imperial." The details of the division were never disclosed, when the proportions were originally fixed. The segregation of the services classified as "Imperial" is open to serious objections. The method of computation is empirical and unconstitutional, and if carried to its logical conclusion would now result in depriving Ireland of any share whatever in future Equivalent grants, as her contribution to the services thus classified as "Imperial" is practically a minus quantity, though the revenue actually raised in Ireland is much higher than it ever has been before. This method of Distribution of Grants in Aid has been condemned by a succession of the highest financial authorities. Lord Ritchie, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, said, "he did not think it possible really to defend in all its details distribution by contribution."[82] Mr. Wyndham said-- "It leads to results which all must hold to be illogical, and results which everybody in Ireland holds to be unjust because the greater the increase of taxation the less is the proportion that comes from Ireland, the poorer partner in the business, and so the less is the equivalent grant. As the evil increases the remedy diminishes, and you have only to force up taxation sufficiently high to extinguish the remedy altogether."[83] Mr. Asquith said-- "A more confused and illogical condition of things it is impossible to imagine. The House ought really to take the opportunity of threshing out the principle upon which these equivalent grants ought to be distributed between the three countries."[84] Lord St. Aldwyn said-- "That he always had a very strong objection to the system of Equivalent Grants, because when they had to make a grant for certain purposes to England, they were obliged to make proportionate grants to Ireland and Scotland quite irrespective of whether they needed them or not."[85] Neither the "Imperial" contribution basis nor the "Population" basis, which has in some instances been resorted to for grants in aid, is satisfactory, nor is the method desirable of setting aside a certain fund raised by some particular tax to finance a particular service. For instance, the subvention of Education in Ireland out of the "Whisky money" recently broke down owing to the diminution of the Revenue from this source. The more sober Ireland became, the less she got for Education. Chaos was imminent, and finally, after much friction, a special grant had to be made from the Treasury to save the situation. There are numerous instances in which great complications have been caused in dealing with local authorities owing to these methods of making grants in aid, and the system should be reformed. The true basis is the basis of each Kingdom's need.... England has her needs, let them be supplied. Scotland has hers, let them be supplied. Ireland has hers, and having regard to her present comparative poverty, let them be supplied "not grudgingly or of necessity," but by the Chancellor of the Exchequer "as a cheerful giver." This is the constitutional principle under the Act of Union, and the soundest financial principle to observe for the United Kingdom. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 76: 56 Geo. III. c. 98.] [Footnote 77: "Hansard," Feb. 27, 1865, vol. 177, p. 813.] [Footnote 78: "Financial Relations Report," 1896, c. 8262, vol. iii. p. 194.] [Footnote 79: 1896, c. 8262, p. 194.] [Footnote 80: "Hansard," 1888, vol. 327, p. 1287.] [Footnote 81: "Parl. Deb.," vol. 332, p. 790.] [Footnote 82: Ibid., vol. 120, p. 976.] [Footnote 83: "Parl. Deb.," vol. 120, p. 823.] [Footnote 84: Ibid., vol. 175, p. 1088.] [Footnote 85: Ibid., May 31, 1903.] XVI THE ECONOMICS OF SEPARATISM BY L. S. AMERY, M.P. The history of Ireland for the last two centuries and more is a continuous exposition of the disastrous consequences of political and economic separatism within an area where every natural condition, and the whole course of historical development, pointed to political and economic union. Geographically, racially and historically an integral part of a single homogeneous island group, Ireland has never really been allowed to enjoy the full advantages of political and economic union with the adjoining main island. Almost every misfortune which Ireland has suffered is directly traceable to this cause. In spite of this, it is now seriously proposed to subject her once again to the disadvantages of political separation, and that on the very eve of an inevitable change of economic policy, which, while it would restore real vitality and purpose to political union, would also once more intensify all the injury which economic disunion has inflicted upon Ireland in the past. In the long constitutional struggle of the seventeenth century her position as a separate political unit made Ireland a convenient instrument of Stuart policy against the English Parliament. Cromwell, with true insight, solved the difficulty by legislative union with England. But his work was undone at the Restoration, and for another 122 years Ireland remained outside the Union as a separate and subordinate state. Her economic position was that of a Colony, as Colonies were then administered. But it was that of a "least favoured Colony." This was due, in part, to a real fear of Ireland as a danger to British constitutional liberty and British Protestantism[86] which long survived the occasion which has seemed to justify it. But what was a more serious and permanent factor was the circumstance that Ireland's economic development could only be on lines which competed with England, and not like Colonial development on lines complementary to English trade. One after another Irish industries were penalised and crippled by being forbidden all part in the export trade. A flourishing woollen industry, a prosperous shipping, promising cotton, silk, glass, glove making and sugar refining industries were all ruthlessly repressed,[87] not from any innate perversity on the part of English statesmen, or from any deliberate desire to ruin Ireland, but as a natural and inevitable consequence of exclusion from the Union under the economic policy of the age. Whatever outlet Irish economic activity took there was always some English trade whose interests were prejudicially affected, and which promptly exercised a perfectly legitimate pressure upon the Government to put a stop to the competition. The very poverty of Ireland, as expressed in the lowness of Irish wages, was an ever convenient and perfectly justifiable argument for exclusion. The linen industry alone received a certain amount of toleration, and even encouragement. These regulations were so little animated by direct religious or racial antipathy that it was upon the Protestant Scotch and English settlers that they fell with the greatest severity, driving them into exile by thousands, to become, subsequently, one of the chief factors in the American Revolution. But if the direct economic effect of political separation weighed less heavily upon the Catholic majority, they suffered all the more from the utter paralysis of all industry and enterprise consequent upon the Penal Laws. These laws, monstrous as they seemed even to Burke, were in their turn a natural outcome of a political separation which made the security of Protestantism in Ireland rest upon the domination of a narrow oligarchy in instant terror of being swamped. Under Union they would never have been devised, or could certainly never have endured. The revolution by which the Irish Parliament, in 1782, asserted its constitutional equality with the British Parliament, subject only to the power of bribery, direct or indirect, retained by the Crown, brought out in still more glaring relief the utter unsoundness of the existing political structure under separation. After eighteen years of ferment within Ireland and friction without, British and Irish statesmen, face to face with civil war and French invasion, realised that the sorry farce had to come to an end. Meanwhile the immediate economic effect of liberation from the direct restrictions on Irish foreign trade, already conceded in 1779, and helped in various directions by judicious bounties, was undoubtedly to give a new impetus to production in Ireland. The first ten years of Grattan's Parliament were, on the whole, years of growing prosperity. Whether, even apart from civil war and increasing taxation, that prosperity would have continued to increase, if the Union had not come about, is, however, a more doubtful matter. The immense industrial development of England during the next half-century would probably, in any case, have crushed out the smaller and weaker Irish industries, while the existence of a separate tariff in Great Britain would have been a serious obstacle to the development of Irish agriculture. A full customs union, with internal free trade, was undoubtedly the best solution of the difficulty. But Pitt's Commercial Propositions of 1785 failed, partly, indeed, owing to political intrigues, but still more owing to the fundamental impossibility of securing an effective customs union without some form of political union. When finally Ireland entered the Union it was with the severe handicap of an industrial system artificially repressed for over a century. The removal of the last traces of internal protection in 1824 only accelerated the process, inevitable in any case, by which Irish industries, with the exception of linen, were submerged. But manufacturing industry was at the best a small matter in Ireland compared with agriculture. And to Irish agriculture the Union meant an immense development in every direction. Unfortunately the inheritance of the preceding century, a vicious agrarian system and a low standard of living, was not easily to be eliminated, and little attempt was made to eliminate it. The great increase of agricultural production was accompanied, not by a progressive and well-diffused rise in the standard of national well-being, but by high rents and extravagance on the one side, and, on the other, the rapid multiplication of a population living on the very margin of subsistence. The terrible year of famine was a warning to British statesmanship of the need of a constructive and Conservative policy for the reorganisation of Irish agricultural life and for the broadening of the economic basis in Ireland by the deliberate encouragement of new industries. Under a true conception of Union, political and economic--and there were not wanting men like Lord George Bentinck and Disraeli who entertained it--Ireland might within a generation have been levelled up to the general standard of the United Kingdom. But the evil effects of political and economic separatism in the eighteenth century were still unremedied when the whole economic policy of Union was abandoned. The very principle and conception of Free Trade is, inherently, as opposed to the maintenance of national as of Imperial Union. Ireland was deprived of that position of advantage in the British market which was one of the implied terms of the Union, and was not allowed to protect her own market. Incidentally, and as a consequence of the new fiscal policy, Ireland was saddled with a heavy additional burden of taxation which only handicapped her yet further in the struggle to recover from the famine and to meet foreign competition. The full severity of that competition was, however, not experienced till towards the end of the seventies, when the opening up of the American West, coupled with the demonetisation of silver, brought down prices with a run. A series of bad harvests aggravated the evil. The same conditions were experienced all over Europe, and were everywhere met by raising tariffs to the level required to enable agriculture to maintain itself. Even in England "Fair Trade" became a burning issue. Given normal agrarian conditions in Ireland the Irish vote would have gone solid with the Fair Traders, and the United Kingdom would in all probability have reverted to a national system of economics a generation ago. As things were, landlords and farmers in Ireland, instead of uniting to defend their common interest, each endeavoured to thrust the burden of the economic _débâcle_ on the other. The bitterness of the agrarian struggle which ensued was skilfully engineered into the channel of the Home Rule agitation. In other words, the evils of economic separatism, aggravated by the social evils surviving from the separatism of an earlier age, united to revive a demand for the extension and renewal of the very cause of these evils. Since then the underlying conditions of Irish economic life have undergone a complete transformation. The wealth and credit of the United Kingdom have been used to inaugurate a settlement of the agrarian question. The productive and competitive efficiency of Irish agriculture has been enormously increased both by Government advice and assistance and by patriotic private effort. Old Age Pensions have alleviated the burden of an excessive residue of older persons, and irrigated the poorer districts with a stream of ready money. In every direction there is a deliberate effort to raise the economic standard of Ireland to the British level. Last, but by no means least, the exclusion of all foreign live stock from the United Kingdom, though originally designed only as a precautionary measure against cattle disease, has in effect protected one most important branch of Irish agriculture and given it a vital interest in the maintenance of the Union. On the eve of the revival of a national policy of economic development Ireland stands on a far sounder basis, and in a far better position to take advantage of that development, than in 1800. The standard of life is rising, and will of itself put a check on a mere multiplication of beings living on the margin of subsistence. For the natural increase of population, which will once more come about, there will be provision not only through more intensive cultivation and in rural industries, but also in a real, though possibly gradual, development of new manufacturing industries. Incidentally the establishment of a protective tariff for the United Kingdom will, by lowering the excessive duties on tea and tobacco which weigh so heavily upon Ireland, increase still further the local excess of Government expenditure over revenue and facilitate the local accumulation of capital, already so noticeable a feature of recent years, and thus provide an essential factor in stimulating new enterprise, whether agricultural or industrial. Nor would it be in any way inconsistent with a national economic policy for the United Kingdom as a whole to devote special sums, through bounties and in other ways, towards the opening up of new fields for the economic activities of the Irish people. For the first time in her history Ireland will have a fair start, and, under the Union, the twentieth century may yet prove Ireland's century just as Canadians claim that it will prove Canada's century. Now let us turn to the other side of the picture. The establishment of Home Rule, in other words of political separatism, must inevitably be followed by active economic separatism, _i.e._ by the creation of a completely separate fiscal system in Ireland. The idea that an Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer can carry on in dependence on a British Budget, which may at any moment upset all his calculations of revenue, is absurd. So is the idea that there can be separate tariffs with mutual Free Trade, or a common tariff without a common government to frame it. If Free Trade, indeed, were to be maintained in England, fiscal separation would be no disadvantage to Ireland. On the contrary, she would continue to enjoy the same access to the British market while giving her own industries such protection as might be convenient. It is one of the glaring weaknesses of the policy of Free Imports that it actually puts a premium on separatism. But it is impossible to discuss the future on that assumption. Whatever the fate of the Home Rule Bill may be it is certain that Free Trade is doomed, and that the United Kingdom, whether united or divided, will revert to a policy of national protection and national development. What will be the effect upon Ireland? Assuming mutual good will, assuming that the Irish Government will be ready to grant a substantial preference to British trade over foreign trade, there can be no doubt that Great Britain would respond and give to Irish products the same preference as might be extended to Canadian or Australian products. But the first duty of the British Government would be to British producers. While Empire-grown wheat, and possibly meat, would come in free, the British farmer would receive a measure of protection against the rest of the Empire in dairy products and poultry, in barley and oats, in hops, tobacco, sugar beet, vegetables and fruit, in all those crops, in fact, in which the British production could meet the British demand without an undue effect upon prices. Now, it is precisely by these intensive forms of production that Ireland stands to gain most under Union. Under Home Rule she would lose this advantage and have to compete on an equality with the rest of the Empire both in respect to these products and in respect to wheat and meat. It is extremely doubtful, too, whether her special privileges with regard to store cattle would long survive. They could no longer be defended, as against Canada, by the arguments now used, and as a piece of pure protectionism there would be no reason for Great Britain to give them a separate fiscal entity. And if the hopes of Irish agriculture would be severely checked, still more would that be true of those hopes of new industries already referred to. Even the great linen industry might find a small duty enough to transfer a large part of its production within the British tariff zone. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether any tariff that Ireland could impose, consistently either with preference or with reasonable prices in so small a market and on so small a scale of production, could be of much effect against the competition of British industries, strengthened and made aggressive under the stimulus of a national trade policy. This is the most favourable hypothesis. But it is at least conceivable that a Nationalist Government, whether actuated by a laudable desire to hurry on Irish industrial development, or influenced by the tradition of animosity which still plays so strong a part in Nationalist politics, may refuse to enter upon the policy of Imperial preference. It might even be tempted by various considerations to give a preference to the United States or to Germany. Germany is a large importer of foodstuffs. The establishment of a British tariff may prove a serious blow to her manufacturing interests. A trade agreement with Ireland might be a very useful temporary business expedient from the German point of view. Incidentally a large increase of German merchant shipping in Irish harbours might, in the case of possible hostilities, be of no little service in providing commerce destroyers with a most convenient excuse for being in the most favourable area for their operations. Any fiscal excursions of that sort would inevitably be visited upon Ireland by severe economic reprisals of one kind or another on the part of Great Britain, from which Ireland would receive permanent injury far outweighing any temporary advantage which might be secured from foreign countries. In other words, Ireland under Home Rule would be in almost every respect thrust back into her eighteenth century position of "least favoured Colony." She would, at the best, be handicapped in the British market in respect of those products by which she could profit most, and in those which she is less fitted to produce would have to compete with the virgin soil and competitive energy and organisation of the great Dominions. At the worst, her fiscal policy might invite reprisals and make her "least favoured" not only by her circumstances but by the intention of those who would frame the British tariff. It is true that the British Government would no longer dream of directly interdicting Irish exports. But in that respect modern organised capital has an influence to promote or kill almost as great as that of governments in former times. And the influence of British capital, under such circumstances, would certainly not tend to be directed towards the economic development of Ireland. But the use of the customs tariff is by no means the only great instrument of a national economic policy. To promote the flow of trade in national channels, to secure the fullest development of the national territory and resources, the removal of natural internal barriers is often even more important than the setting up of artificial external barriers. Statesmen who have had to face the task of giving strength and solidity to weak political unions have always aimed at the development of internal communications. Washington's first concern after the success of the American War of Independence was to endeavour to create a system of internal river and canal navigation in order to help to bind the loosely allied States into a real union. Bismarck used the Prussian railways as well as the Zollverein to build up German unity. In the making of Canada the Intercolonial railway and the Canadian Pacific were essential complements to the national tariff. Railways forced South Africa into union, and will gradually give Australia real cohesion and unity. In the United Kingdom there has been no national policy with regard to communications, least of all any nationally directed or stimulated effort to cement the political union of 1800. But such a policy is essential to the reality of the Union. To get rid, as far as possible, of the barrier which the St. George's Channel presents to-day both to the convenience of passenger traffic and to the direct through carriage of goods between internal points in the two islands should be one of the first objects of Unionist policy in the future. In the train-ferry, which has bridged the channels of sea-divided Denmark, which in spite of the Baltic, has made Sweden contiguous with Germany, which for the purposes of railway traffic, has practically abolished Lake Michigan, modern developments have provided us with the very instrument required. To Irish agriculture the gain of being put into direct railway communication with all England and Scotland would be immense. From the tourist and sporting point of view Ireland would reap a doubled and trebled harvest. More than that, the bridging of St. George's Channel will for the first time enable the west coast of Ireland to become what it ought to be, the true west coast of the United Kingdom, the starting point of all our fast mail and passenger services across the Atlantic. But all this implies the Union, the existence of a single Government interested in the development of the United Kingdom as a whole. Separate governments in Great Britain and Ireland would not have the same inducement to give financial encouragement to such schemes. Irish manufacturers and British farmers alike might protest against being taxed to facilitate the competition of rivals in their own markets. An Irish Government would have neither sufficient money nor sufficient interest to give the subsidies necessary to secure a three days' service across the Atlantic. A British Government would naturally develop one of its existing ports, or some new port on the west coast of Scotland, rather than build up a new source of revenue and national strength in a separate State. No one could blame it, any more than we could blame the Canadian Government for wishing to subsidise a fast service from Halifax or some other port in the Dominion rather than one from St. John's, Newfoundland. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Navigation Acts deliberately destroyed Irish shipping. A policy of _laisser faire_ in matters of national communication has hitherto prevented its revival. To-day new ideas are in the air. Those ideas can be applied, either from the standpoint of the Union or from that of separatism. In the one case Ireland has the prospect of becoming, what her geographical position entitles her to be, the eastern bridge-head of the North Atlantic. In the other the immense power of the larger capital and larger subsidies of Great Britain will be as effective as any navigation laws of the past in leaving her a derelict by the wayside, continuing to wait idle and hungry, with empty harbours, while the great streams of commerce flow past her to north and south. And if the theory of _laisser faire_ is rapidly dying out in matters of trade and communications, it has already been largely superseded in regard to social questions. The duty of the State to expend money in order to level up the standard of life of its citizens, or to prevent their sinking below that standard, is to-day universally recognised. The methods by which that object is aimed at are various. There is the crudest form, that of direct money relief, such as is involved in Old Age Pensions. There is the subsidising of socially desirable economic operations, such as insurance against sickness or the acquisition of freehold by tenants. There is the expenditure of money on various forms of education, in the scientific assistance of industry and agriculture, in promotion of forestry, drainage, or the improvement of local communication. There is the enforcement of innumerable regulations to safeguard the health and safety of the working population. Nowhere has this conception of the duty of the State exercised a greater influence than in Ireland during the last twenty years. The Congested Districts Board, the Department of Agriculture, the Land Purchase Scheme, illustrate one phase of its carrying into effect. Old Age Pensions, cheap labourers' cottages, sickness insurance illustrate another. All these have been provided out of the United Kingdom exchequer. They could not be provided out of Irish revenues. Still less could Irish revenues provide for a continuous extension of this policy in order to keep on a level with English conditions. It has been stated by Mr. Churchill that under the Government scheme of Home Rule, Land Purchase and Old Age Pensions will be paid by Great Britain. Even if that were a workable arrangement it only covers a small part of the field. For the rest Home Rule would mean the complete abandonment of the attempt to level up the social conditions of Great Britain and Ireland to a common standard. The Irish Government would never have the means to carry out the same programme of social legislation as will be carried out in Great Britain. Handicapped in competition with British industries it would, moreover, naturally be disinclined, even apart from the question of cost, to apply any legislation or any regulations which might tend to raise the cost of production. There will thus not only be an inevitable falling back for want of means, but, in addition, a continual temptation to the weaker and more backward State to meet superior industrial efficiency by the temporary cheapness of inferior social conditions.[88] But such a policy would not only be disastrous in itself in its ultimate effect upon Irish national life. It would at once provide a fresh and valid excuse for effective fiscal differentiation against Ireland in Great Britain. Once again, as in the eighteenth century, Ireland would be penalised for being a poor and "sweated" country. So far the discussion of the economic results of separation has been confined to Ireland, because Ireland would undoubtedly be the chief sufferer. Her dependence on the English market, the smallness of her home market, her backward social condition, would all be insuperable obstacles to a really healthy development on independent lines. Great Britain, on the other hand, would suffer relatively much less from Home Rule. The immediate shrinkage of trade with Ireland, even with an Irish tariff to overcome, might not be very great. The real loss would be not so much any actual decrease of trade, as the loss judged by the standard of the possibilities of Irish development under the Union. The essence of the situation after all is that the United Kingdom is a single economic area. The exclusion of one part of that area from the political and economic life of the rest, while injurious to the rest, must prove disastrous above all to the part excluded. After centuries of alternate neglect and repression Ireland has at last been brought to a condition in which she is capable of taking the fullest advantage of a new era of progress and development for the United Kingdom as a whole. And this is the time which is chosen for seriously suggesting that she should once again be excluded from all the benefits of partnership in the United Kingdom and driven out into the wilderness of poverty and decay. The plea for this folly is an unreal sentiment which is itself merely the survival of the mistaken political or economic separatism of the past, and which is nothing to the real and justifiable sentiment of bitterness which would be roused in Ireland if the plea were accepted. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 86: This fear itself was the result of separatism. Miss A. E. Murray, in her work on "The Commercial Relations between England and Ireland" (p. 51), points out: "It was not so much jealousy of Ireland as jealousy and fear of the English Crown which influenced the English legislature. Experience seemed to show that Irish prosperity was dangerous to English liberty.... The difficulty was that Ireland was a separate kingdom, and that the English Parliament had no direct authority over her. It was this absence of direct authority which made England so nervously anxious to restrict Irish resources in all those directions in which they might even indirectly interfere with the growth of English power."] [Footnote 87: For details, see Miss Murray's "Commercial Relations between England and Ireland."] [Footnote 88: It is worth noting that in 1893 the Liberal Government rejected amendments moved by Mr. Whiteley to prevent existing laws for the protection of workers in factories, workshops, and mines, being repealed by the proposed Irish Legislature, and by Sir J. Gorst to reserve laws affecting the hours and conditions of labour to the United Kingdom Parliament.] XVII PRIVATE BILL LEGISLATION BY THE RIGHT HON. WALTER LONG, M.P. The argument so often and so plausibly presented in favour of Home Rule, which urges that the Imperial Parliament is overburdened with local affairs, contains an element of truth. It would, however, be more in accordance with the facts to put the case the other way round: for localities are much more seriously inconvenienced in certain respects by the necessity of referring local business to the Imperial Parliament, than the Imperial Parliament is inconvenienced by the transaction of such business, which, if we are to believe the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it neglects (vide _Nash's Magazine_, February, 1912). At the same time, to affirm that, in order to remedy what is no more than a defect in administration, it is necessary to overturn the British Constitution, and to build on its ruins four semi-independent Legislatures and one supreme Parliament, is merely to exemplify the cynical imposture of partisan misrepresentation: what Mr. Balfour described as "the dream of political idiots." There is no impartial person who does not clearly recognise that to constitute a separate Parliament for Ireland (to say nothing of England, Wales, and Scotland) must necessarily result, not in the more efficient despatch of legislative and administrative business, but in perpetual friction, clogging the mechanism alike of the subordinate and the predominate body. Ireland enjoyed--or endured--an independent Parliament during eighteen years, from 1782 to 1800; and, in the result, the greatest statesmen both in Ireland and in England were forced to acknowledge that the system had in practice failed utterly; and that there remained no alternative but the Union. To that view of the situation the great majority of the Irish people, irrespective of race or creed, were converted within a year before the passing of the Act, an event which was hailed with rejoicing. The experience of 112 years, fraught as they have been with occasional calamity and burdened with many blunders, has not produced a single valid objection to the principle of the Union, unless the survival among a diminishing section of the population of the old, bad tradition of hatred towards England, and its deliberate exploitation by pledge-bound politicians, is to be regarded as a reason for sacrificing the welfare and the prosperity of both countries. The framers of the Act of Union did not, and indeed could not, provide for every contingency. It is therefore the business of those who are determined to maintain the Union, to adjust its machinery to modern requirements. An omission of capital import was the failure to provide for the efficient promotion of private Bills. The matter was, indeed, actually considered by the authors of the Act of Union. The Duke of Portland wrote to Lord Cornwallis, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, under date December 24, 1798, as follows:-- "One of the greatest difficulties, however, which has been supposed to attend the project of union between the two kingdoms, is that of the expense and trouble which will be occasioned by the attendance of witnesses in trials of contested elections, or in matters of private business requiring Parliamentary interposition. It would, therefore, be very desirable to devise a plan (which does not appear impossible) for empowering the Speaker of either House of the United Parliament to issue his warrant to the Chairman of the Quarter Sessions in Ireland, or to such other person as may be thought more proper for the purpose, requiring him to appoint a time and a place within the County for his being attended by the agents of the respective parties, and reducing to writing in their presence the testimony (for the consents or dissents, as the case may be) of such persons as, by the said agents, may be summoned to attend, being resident within the County (if not there resident a similar proceeding should take place in the County where they reside), and such testimony so taken and reduced into writing may, by such Chairman or by the Sheriff of the County, be certified to the Speaker of either House, as the case may be. It seems difficult to provide a detailed Article of the Union for the various regulations which such a proceeding may require, but the principle might perhaps be stated there, and the provisions left to be settled by the United Parliament." According to Lord Ashbourne's "Life of Pitt," the Prime Minister himself framed a scheme for constituting a Court of Appeal in Ireland, with power to examine evidence and certify all preliminaries and other matters respecting private Bills. Why the provision was not included in the Act of Union is not clear. The fact of its omission, however, proves that the necessity of resorting to the Imperial Parliament for the transaction of private business was not an objection that hindered the passage of the Act of Union, although to-day the same omission is absurdly used as an argument in favour of the repeal of that measure. At the same time, it is true that the requirements have immensely increased in proportion as the resources of the country have been developed since 1800. The introduction of railways, telegraphs, telephones and electric appliances, together with the grant of compulsory powers to municipalities, has involved the promotion of numerous private Bills at vast expense to Ireland. Mr. A. W. Samuels, K.C., who contributed a paper on the subject to the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland in November, 1899, quoted some instances of the cost of private Bill legislation in Ireland:-- "The ratepayers of Dublin, of Rathmines, of Pembroke, of Clontarf, and other suburbs of the city, long will feel the burden added to their rates by the London litigation of the Session that has passed. The Dublin Boundaries Extension Bill of 1899 has cost the city, as I am informed on reliable authority, between £12,000 and £13,000. There were twenty-four separate sets of opponents. The cost to Rathmines of its opposition approaches, I am informed, £8,000. To meet it about one shilling in the pound must be added to the taxation of that township. The costs of Pembroke cannot be far short of the same sum. If we add those of the oppositions of Kilmainham, Drumcondra, Clontarf, and of the County of Dublin, and of private persons and public bodies, the total expense to the inhabitants and ratepayers of the city and its suburbs will not fall short of £45,000. "Mr. Pope, Q.C., stated before the Committee which considered the Irish Railways Amalgamation Scheme of last Session, that the Bill at hearing was costing £5 per minute. A high authority conversant with the proceedings in this case has informed me that this was an under-estimate rather than an over-estimate, having regard to the fact that there were twenty-seven separate oppositions. The Bill occupied twenty-seven working days of four hours each, and its cost to the shareholders of the promoting Company were calculated to amount to about £400 per day. What the loss was to the shareholders of other Companies, and to the ratepayers represented by public bodies, it would be impossible to say. The Bill probably cost at least £50,000. There was a Belfast Corporation Bill. There was an Armagh and Keady Railway Bill. There were several other Irish Bills before the Houses, exhausting thousands more of Irish capital, and diverting it from the material development of the country. So abnormal was the waste of Irish money on the Railway Bill that it excited general attention even in England, and became the subject of comment in Parliament. Mr. J. H. Lewis, the member for Flint Burghs, speaking on the 24th July, 1899, on the third reading of the Scotch Private Legislation Procedure Bill, said, 'I am sure everybody must have regarded with great dissatisfaction the enormous expenditure to which certain Irish Railway Companies were put during the last few weeks within the walls of the House. Surely a better system can be devised than that which drags over from different parts of the United Kingdom a host of witnesses, who could be examined on the spot. I am sure all honourable members deeply regret this great waste of public money.'" These disabilities have been the subject of frequent representations. Resolutions advocating reform have been repeatedly passed by the Irish Chambers of Commerce, by the Incorporated Law Society, and by local bodies. Leaders of the Unionist party have constantly urged the necessity of a provision for expediting and cheapening Private Bill procedure. In 1896 a deputation from the Dublin Chamber of Commerce laid the matter before Mr. Gerald Balfour, who was then Chief Secretary for Ireland. He expressed a hope that the Government would introduce a reform. In the Queen's speech of February, 1897, it was announced that Bills for amending the procedure with respect to Private Bills coming from Scotland and Ireland had been prepared. The opportunity for laying these measures before Parliament did not arise. But in 1899 a Bill amending the procedure of Scottish Private Bill Legislation was passed into law. The measure forms the precedent for future legislation. In the year 1900, Mr. Atkinson (now Lord Atkinson), speaking for the Government, said that the Government were-- "most favourable to the introduction and passing of a Bill dealing with private Bill legislation for Ireland. He thought the real and substantial difficulty was the creation of the tribunal which was to sit locally and to inquire into these matters. The Irish Government thought it wise to wait until they should see what would be the effect of the operation of the Scotch Act." Subsequent experience has proved that the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act of 1899 may well be taken for the model of a similar measure designed to apply to Ireland. The Scottish Act substituted for procedure by means of a Private Bill, procedure in the first instance by means of a Provisional Order. Instead of applying to Parliament by a petition for leave to bring in a Private Bill, any public authority or persons desirous of obtaining parliamentary powers now proceed by presenting a petition to the Secretary for Scotland, "praying him to issue a Provisional Order in accordance with the terms of a draft Order submitted to him, or with such modifications as shall be necessary." Before the Secretary for Scotland proceeds with the Provisional Order, the draft Order is considered by the Chairman of Committee of the House of Lords, and the Chairman of Ways and Means in the House of Commons; and they report to the Secretary for Scotland whether or not the matters proposed to be dealt with by the draft Order, or any of them, should be dealt with by Provisional Order or by Private Bill. Should the Chairmen report that these matters, or any of them, should be dealt with by a Private Bill, the Secretary for Scotland, without further inquiry, refuses to issue the Provisional Order so far as it is objected to by the Chairmen; but the advertisements and notices already given by the promoters of the scheme are regarded as fulfilling (subject to Standing Orders) the necessary conditions to be observed prior to the introduction of a Private Bill. Should the Chairmen report that the Provisional Order, or a part of it, may proceed, the procedure is as follows. If there is no opposition, the Secretary for Scotland may at once issue the Provisional Order, which is then embodied in a Confirmation Bill for the assent of Parliament. If there is opposition, or in any case where he thinks inquiry necessary, the Secretary for Scotland directs an inquiry, and the Order is then considered by the tribunal described below; and if passed by that tribunal, with or without modifications, it is brought up in a Confirmation Bill for the assent of Parliament. It follows that in the case of unopposed schemes brought in under the Act, there is a great saving of time and expense as compared with the former system. With regard to schemes which are opposed, the judicial functions of a Parliamentary Committee dealing with Private Bills were transferred by the Act of 1899 to a special tribunal, composed of two Panels, a Parliamentary Panel and an Extra-Parliamentary Panel, whose members shall have no local or personal interest in the questions at issue. From these is formed a Commission of four members. Mr. A. W. Samuels, K.C., thus describes the constitution of the Commission:-- "In the first instance it is provided that the members shall be taken--two from the Lords and two from the Commons. In the event of that being found impossible, three may be taken from one House and one from the other. In the next resort all may be from the same House. Finally--if members cannot be procured to serve--the extra Parliamentary Panel can be called upon, and the Commission manned from it. "The next great reform introduced by the measure is, that the inquiry is to be held at such place, in Scotland, as may be convenient. The inquiry is to be localised as far as possible. It is to be held in public. The Commissioners are to settle questions of _locus standi_--they can decide upon the preamble before discussing clauses--and persons having a _locus standi_ can appear before them in person or by counsel or agent. "When they have heard the evidence the Commissioners are to report to the Secretary of Scotland, and they can recommend that the Provisional Order should be issued as prayed for, or with such modifications as they may make. If there is no opposition to the Provisional Order as finally settled by the Commissioners, it is embodied in a Confirmation Bill by the Secretary of Scotland and passed through Parliament. "If there is opposition a petition must be presented to Parliament against the Order, and then, on the second reading of the Confirmation Bill, a member can move that the Bill be referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament, and if the motion is carried in the House a Joint Committee of Lords and Commons shall sit, at the peril of costs to the opponents, to hear and take evidence and decide upon the measure in the same way as in the case of a Private Bill." (Private Bill Procedure, pp. 9 and 10.) In 1904, the Select Committee appointed to consider the provisions of a similar measure to be applied to Wales, reported that in practice the Scottish Act had proved a success, which they attributed largely to the supervision of the Provisional Orders conducted by the Scottish Office. There would seem, then, every reason to believe that a measure framed upon the lines of the Scottish Act, to apply to Ireland, would be equally successful. The remarkable increase in the prosperity of Ireland, which has occurred during the last twenty years, demonstrates the necessity for providing every means of encouraging the further development of the country. All the available statistics amply confirm and corroborate the evidence of this prosperity, which is known to every man with the smallest direct acquaintance of Ireland in recent years. The figures of savings, bank deposits, external trade, all alike show the exceptional advances in prosperity now enjoyed by Ireland. The progress of Ireland under the Union thus indicated, was inaugurated by Mr. Balfour, the best Chief Secretary Ireland ever had; to this day his name is always mentioned with respect and gratitude by the people of Ireland, especially by the residents in the South and West, where his policy produced splendid and lasting results. Insufficient credit has been given to the work of agricultural and commercial development steadily pursued by Mr. Gerald Balfour; the results upon which we rejoice to-day are mainly due to the policy adopted by Mr. Balfour and his brother. This policy, coupled with the restitution of sales under the Land Act of 1903, is the one which Unionists intend resolutely to pursue. The figures on the next page show that the increase of population in some important centres in the south and west is very small, and that in other centres there is a decrease. Ireland being mainly an agricultural country, the population tends to decrease owing to emigration, although of late years, owing to the rise in prosperity, the tendency is rather to remain stationary. At the same time, the increase of the population in the provincial towns is not commensurate with the increase of material wealth in the country. With regard, for instance, to the increase in the number of tourists visiting Ireland, both private persons and local bodies desire to extend existing inducements and to improve the means of transit and to raise the standard of accommodation. It is clear that, under a reformed method of procedure in respect of Private Bill Legislation, enterprise would be freed from the restrictions which at present hinder its free exercise, and a substantial and a steadily increasing benefit would accrue to Ireland. INCREASE AND DECREASE OF POPULATION OF CITIES AND TOWNS IN IRELAND HAVING IN 1901 A POPULATION EXCEEDING 10,000. (_Census of Ireland_ 1911.) Cities, towns, etc. Percentage of increase since 1901. Rathmines and Rathgar 17·1 Portadown 16·2 Pembroke 13·4 Belfast 10·4 Belfast[A] 10·1 Dublin 6·4 Lisburn 6·2 Ballymena 4·5 Lurgan 3·0 Sligo 2·7 Dublin[A] 2·6 Wexford 2·6 Waterford 2·5 Cork[A] 2·3 Londonderry[A] 2·3 Limerick[A] 1·2 Clonmel 1·1 Cork 0·7 Limerick 0·7 Dundalk 0·4 Newry[A] 5·2 Newry 3·6 Drogheda 2·6 Galway[A] 2·0 Galway 1·3 Kilkenny[A] 1·0 Kingstown 0·9 Kilkenny 0·9 Waterford[A] 0·4 Those marked [A] are Parliamentary Boroughs. XVIII IRISH POOR LAW REFORM By JOHN E. HEALY (Editor of the _Irish Times_) An article on Irish Poor Law Reform written within the limits assigned to me can only be constructive in the broadest sense. It is a serious and tangled problem: the existing system has developed in a haphazard fashion; there is about it hardly anything that is logical, much that is anomalous, some things that are tragic. The present conditions of the Irish Poor Law system are set forth in the reports of various Royal and Viceregal Commissions. The most important are those of the Viceregal Commission on Poor Law Reform in Ireland (1906), the Departmental Commission on Vagrancy, the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded, and the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws (Majority Report). The study of all these reports is a rather distracting business. They establish between them an urgent need for reform; on the methods, and even principles, of reform there are wide differences of opinion. I propose to set out here, so far as may be possible, a summary of those reforms on which the various reports and Irish public opinion are nearly, or quite, unanimous. Such a summary may at least help to acquaint the rank and file of the Unionist Party with the primary conditions and necessities of a work which, for historical, moral, social and political reasons, must receive the Party's early and practical attention when it returns to power. The Unionist Party, as representing the best elements in British Government, owes in this matter a great act of reparation to Ireland. The present Poor Law system is based on the most fatal of all blunders--the deliberate disregard of educated opinion in Ireland. The story, a very remarkable and suggestive one, is told in the Viceregal Commission's report. The Royal Commission of 1836 came to the conclusion that the English workhouse system would be unsuitable for Ireland. The Irish Royal Commissioners, including the famous Archbishop Whately, made two sets of recommendations. One set involved a compulsory provision for the sick, aged, lunatic and infirm. The other proposed to attack poverty at the root by instituting a large series of measures for the general development of Ireland. Looking back over nearly eighty years of Irish history, we must be both humbled and astonished by the almost inspired precision and statesmanship of these proposals. They included reclamation of waste land and the enforcement of drainage; an increased grant to the Board of Works; healthy houses for the labouring classes; local instruction in agriculture; the enlargement of leasing powers with the object of encouraging land improvement, and the transfer of the fiscal powers of Grand Juries to County Boards. Here we have in embryo the Irish Labourers Acts from 1860 to 1906, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, the Irish Land Acts from 1860 to 1903, the Local Government Act of 1898--reforms which Ireland owes almost entirely to the statesmanship (though it seems a rather belated statesmanship) of Unionist Governments. These Irish recommendations were ignored by the Government of the day. It sent an English Poor Law Commissioner (Mr. Nicholls) to Ireland. He spent six weeks in the country. On his return he recommended the establishment of the English Poor Law system there, and it was accordingly established. The first Poor Law Act for Ireland was passed on July 31, 1838. Between that year and 1851 one hundred and sixty-three Poor Law Unions were created. The number is at present one hundred and fifty-nine, and they are administered by elected and co-opted Poor Law Guardians to the number of more than eight thousand. In every Union there is a workhouse, and in that workhouse all the various classes of destitute and poor persons are maintained. They include sick, aged and infirm, legitimate and illegitimate children, insane of all classes, sane epileptics, mothers of illegitimate children, able-bodied male paupers, and the importunate army of tramps. The mean number of such inmates in all the workhouses on any day is about 40,000, of whom about one-third are sick, one-third aged and infirm, one-seventh children, one-twentieth mothers of illegitimate children, and one-twelfth insane and epileptic. This awful confusion of infirmity and vice, this Purgatory perpetuating itself to the exclusion of all hope of Paradise, presents the vital problem of Irish Poor Law Reform. A radical solution must be found for it. On that point the reports of all the Commissions are unanimous. They differ, where they do differ, only as regards means to the end. The supreme reform which must be undertaken by any Government that seeks to remove this great blot on Irish administration is the abolition of the present workhouse system on some basis which, while effective, will make no addition to the rates. The two chief reports (those of the Viceregal Commission and the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws) are in agreement, not merely as to this necessity, but as to the guiding principles of reform. They recommend classification, by institutions, of all the present inmates of the workhouses--the sick in hospitals, the aged and infirm in almshouses, the mentally defective in asylums. Appalling evidence was given before the Viceregal Commission and the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded with regard to the present association of lunatics, epileptics, and imbeciles with sane women and children in the workhouse wards. The latter Commission recommended the creation of a strong central authority for the general protection and supervision of mentally defective persons. The reforms do not contemplate the amalgamation of Unions and the complete closing of only a certain number of workhouses. They suggest rather the bringing together into one institution of all the inmates of one class from a number of neighbouring workhouses, and the closing of all workhouses as such. The sick should be sent to existing Poor Law or County Hospitals, strengthened by the addition of Cottage Hospitals in certain districts. Children should be boarded out. The bulk of the remaining inmates, classified with regard to their defects and infirmities, should be segregated according to counties or other suitable areas. On the treatment of able-bodied paupers there are different opinions. It is suggested by the Philanthropic Reform Association, which includes some of the most earnest and disinterested philanthropists in Ireland, that the well-conducted of this class should be placed in labour colonies, and the ill-conducted in detention colonies--both classes of institutions to be maintained and controlled by the State, and not by the County authorities. The areas and resources of the existing Unions are in most cases too limited, and the numbers of necessitous persons too small, to warrant the present Boards of Guardians in erecting as many types of institutions as there are classes of inmates. The break-up of the workhouse system involves, of necessity, the establishment of larger areas of administration. It is clear that the County must be substituted for the Union in any radical scheme of reform. On this point the Royal Commissioners and the Viceregal Commissioners are agreed. County rating must take the place of Union rating, since the inmates of the different institutions would be drawn from all parts of each County or County Borough. Substantial economies in administration might be expected from this plan. Hospitals should be brought into a County Hospital System, with the County Infirmary as the central institution, and nurses should be trained there for the County District Hospitals (now Workhouse Infirmaries). About such a general scheme of decentralised reform there is little or no disagreement. There is, however, a good deal of disagreement concerning the control of the new institutions. The Viceregal Commission advocates the retention by the Poor Law Guardians of many of their existing functions. It suggests, for instance, that County Hospitals should be managed by a Committee consisting of all members of the present District Hospital Committees, strengthened by nine members appointed by the County Council; and that the Chairman of the Board of Guardians should be the Chairman of the District Hospital Committee. The Royal Commission, on the other hand, votes boldly for the abolition of the Boards of Guardians. It argues that, if we are to have a County system of institutions maintained by a County rate, we must adopt the logical consequence that the County Council which strikes and collects the rate should have the direct or indirect management of the institutions. It proposes that the Council should appoint a statutory Committee (one-half to be taken from outside its own members), to be called the Public Assistance Authority, and that this Authority should manage and control all the institutions in the County. The Philanthropic Reform Association, which has given much study to this question, suggests a _via media_ between the two official schemes. It recommends that all the institutions should be controlled by the County Council, through Committees directly responsible to it, to which persons of experience from outside should be added. Such committees need not be elected by the Poor Law Guardians, as recommended by the Viceregal Commission, or by the Statutory Committee of the County Council, as recommended by the Royal Commission. The Association desires, and it has a large volume of Irish opinion behind it in this, to minimise the existing powers, and reduce the numbers, of the Poor Law Guardians. It is also very earnestly impressed with the need of bringing women into the Poor Law administration. In this it is absolutely right. The Women's National Health Association and the United Irishwomen have demonstrated triumphantly the value of women's services in improving the social, economic, and sanitary conditions of rural life in Ireland. A recent Act of Parliament qualifies women for election to the Irish County and Borough Councils. No great reform of the Poor Law system can be effective without their aid. The Unionist Party will only be acting consistently with its social ideals if it encourages, by every means within its power, an Irish feminist movement, full of hope for the country and wholly dissociated from party politics. Any thorough reform of the Irish Poor Law system will demand an increased expenditure of Imperial funds. The growing severity of Irish taxation under recent Radical budgets forbids the possibility of addition to the ratepayer's burdens. The anomalous distribution of the grants in aid of Irish local taxation has done much to complicate the Poor Law question. The Royal Commission reported that "no account whatever is taken of the burden of pauperism, the magnitude of the local rates, or the circumstances of the ratepayers and their ability to pay rates in the different areas." Under this system the minimum of relief is extended to the districts in which the weight of taxation is most oppressive. The Commission proposed a scheme by which the old Union grants within each county would be pooled and credited to the common fund in aid of the poor rate in that county. The Viceregal Commission also complained of inequality of expenditure, and advised a reapportionment of the grants in aid of local taxation, on the basis of the recommendations of the minority of the Royal Commission on Local Taxation (1902). That Commission was unanimous in recommending increased grants for Poor Law service in Ireland. The distribution of such new grants would be a matter for discussion; of the necessity for them there is no doubt. The Unionist Party must not rest content with reforming the Irish Poor Law system; it must help the reformed system to pay its own way. No fair-minded Englishman who reads Sir George O'Farrell's evidence as to the distribution of the Irish Church surplus (Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded, page 468) will dispute his country's obligations in this matter. The cost of Irish Poor Law Reform is one of the strongest arguments against Home Rule. The Unionist Party's full and generous recognition of its duty to Ireland in this respect will establish a new argument for the Union. One vital factor in Poor Law Reform remains to be considered--the Poor Law Medical service. The 740 Dispensary districts of Ireland are now administered by a little more than 800 Medical Officers. The salaries of these doctors, amounting in all to nearly £100,000 per annum, are paid as to one half by the Poor Law Guardians, and as to the other half out of the Local Taxation (Ireland) account. Most of the doctors, in addition to their public duties as servants of the poor, engage in private practice, of which, in most of the rural areas, their official position gives them a monopoly. A large--perhaps, a surprisingly large--number of the Dispensary doctors are earnest and self-sacrificing men; but the system is corrupted by one radical defect. Owing to the security of private practice involved, there is a fierceness of competition for these appointments out of all proportion to their financial value. The elections are made by the Guardians, and it is a fact so notorious as even to be acknowledged by Mr. Birrell that flagrant canvassing and bribery are a common feature of these elections. Candidates have been known to distribute sums of £400 or £500 to Guardians, in order to secure appointments of £150 or £160 a year. Another serious and extending feature of the present system is the boycotting by the Guardians of all candidates who have not graduated at the new Roman Catholic University. The most highly qualified men from the University of Dublin have now practically abandoned competition for these Dispensary offices outside the Protestant counties of Ulster. Moreover, throughout the whole country local candidates are consistently preferred to superior men from outside. Both the Viceregal and Royal Commissions recognise the necessity of radical reform in this system, but they suggest different remedies. The Royal Commission proposes that the election and control of all the Dispensary Medical Officers of a County shall be vested in the Public Assistance Authority for that County; and that little or no change be made in the present financial basis of the payment of salaries. The Viceregal Commission suggests a bolder and more drastic remedy. It advocates the establishment of a State Medical service on the lines of the existing services in Egypt and India. This would require the payment by the State of the whole, instead of half, of the salaries of Medical Officers. The Commission regards it as proper and equitable that such a service should be, in the beginning, at any rate, restricted to candidates educated in Ireland. A representative Medical Council should elect the candidates by competitive examination, and deal with all important questions of promotion, removal and superannuation. The Commission maintains that the creation of a State Medical service in Ireland would mean a very small increase in the Parliamentary grant in comparison with the benefits involved. This I believe to be the ideal system, but one must recognise that its accomplishment is confronted with many difficulties. The Irish Local Authorities would not willingly relinquish a privilege which is a primary element in their influence and prestige. Irish medical opinion is acutely divided on the question, which is now further complicated by the prospect that the medical benefits under the National Insurance Act may soon be extended to Ireland. It would be outrageous to expect the Dispensary Officers to add the heavy medical duties under the Act to their present responsibilities without adequate payment. Indeed, the extension of the medical benefits to Ireland would make inevitable an early reform of the whole Poor Law system. This is one reason why the Unionist Party, when it returns to office, should be ready to tackle the subject without delay. To no department of the work will it be asked to apply greater sympathy, knowledge, tact and firmness, than to the problems of the Poor Law Medical service. During the last three years the Irish Unionist Party has made three vain attempts to bring the reform of the Irish Poor Law before Parliament. Its Bill, which now stands in the name of Sir John Lonsdale, asks for the appointment (as recommended by the Viceregal Commission) of a body of five persons with executive powers to carry out the recommendations made by that Commission. These temporary Commissioners would have authority to draft all necessary schemes, to consolidate or divide existing institutions, and generally to reform the whole administration of the Irish Poor Law service. The Bill assigns to them an executive lifetime of five years--hardly, perhaps, an adequate time for the establishment of reforms which, in their making, must affect nearly every aspect of Irish life, and, in their operation, may reconstitute the basis of Irish society. It is to be supposed that, when the whole Unionist Party addresses itself seriously to the question, it will give further and careful attention to the principles of reform before setting up this, or some other, executive machinery. I can think of no more thirsty or fruitful field in Ireland for the exercise of the highest constructive statesmanship that the Party may possess. The need is urgent, the time is ripe, all the circumstances are favourable. The Old Age Pensions Act and the Insurance Act, if not vitiated by further increases in Irish taxation, will greatly simplify the task of Poor Law Reform. The former Act has reduced the number of old inmates in the workhouses; the Insurance Act should lead to a reduction in expenditure on outdoor relief. Moreover, it may be hoped that the infirm and pauper classes will be henceforward, like the old age pensioners, a diminishing fraction of the population of Ireland. They are, to a large extent, flotsam and jetsam over the sea of Ireland's political troubles. Land agitation, with its attendant vices of restlessness and idleness, the emigration of wage-earners, the discouragement of industry under Governments indifferent to the administration of law and the development of national resources, have all contributed to the Dantean horrors of the Irish workhouse system. These poor people are an excrescence on the body of Ireland which good government, if it does not wholly remove, may reduce nearly to vanishing point. Hitherto the chief rewards and blessings of British administration in Ireland have gone to the hard voters and to the strong agitators. It is time for the Unionist Party to think of the hapless, the helpless, the voteless, and, therefore voiceless, elements in Irish life. Ireland, as she becomes better educated, gives more thought and truer thought than formerly to her social and economic problems. Her gratitude and loyalty will go in abundant measure to those who take counsel with her about these problems and help her to solve them. The Government which cleans up many sad relics of the past by a complete reform of the Irish Poor Law system will put all Irishmen and Irishwomen under a deep sense of obligation to it. Policy, not less than duty, should give this reform a place in the forefront of the Unionist Party's constructive programme for Ireland. XIX IRISH EDUCATION UNDER THE UNION[89] BY GODFREY LOCKER LAMPSON, M.P. Education is probably the most sorrowfully dull of all dull subjects. It is difficult to repress a yawn when the word is mentioned. Yet we owe everything to it that we value most. Through it we become emancipated citizens of the world. Through it we are able to appreciate what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is right and what is wrong, what is permanent and what is merely transitory. If the people of a country can make it their boast that they are truly educated, they need boast of little else, for all the rest will have been added unto them. It will be found next to impossible to draw any argument for Home Rule from the history of Irish Education during the last decade. Indeed, if a Nationalist Parliament were now to be established in College Green, it is more than probable that the progress made by educational reformers since 1900 would be largely thrown away, and the prospects of still further improvement endangered and perhaps destroyed. What has been done in the domain of Irish Education, and what still remains to be done? Leaving out of account the problem of the Universities, which, so far as can be seen, has at any rate been temporarily solved--and solved, let it be marked, under the Legislative Union, with the participation and consent of the Nationalist party--there are two broad branches of the educational tree which every year are growing in volume and putting forth finer leaves and fruit. Primary and Secondary Education, by far the most important parts of the Irish Educational system, if only allowed to continue their development, tended with care by those who have the interests of the younger generation at heart and left unmolested by the poisonous creepers of political prejudice, will be found to do more for the increase of Irish prosperity and the establishment of national and religious concord than any device for legislative separation that the wit of man can frame. Not that educational reform is not sorely needed. Far from it. There are few aspects of Irish life where reform is more urgently required. But let it be reform, as far as possible, along existing lines of progress, and in full recognition of religious susceptibilities and of certain stubborn facts which may be deplored, but which it would be unwise to ignore. Let it be reform undertaken and pursued on the advice of those who understand this question and are in sympathy with its peculiar difficulties, and let not the Treasury turn a deaf ear to the demands of reason, when a few extra thousand pounds might make all the difference between failure and success. Above all, let it be reform unembittered by the strife of creeds warring for supremacy in an Irish House of Commons. Let it reap the advantages of a continuous policy undisturbed by the rise and fall of local Ministries and the lobbying and log-rolling of sects and factions. Treat it, as it is being treated to-day, in a calm spirit of inquiry and recommendation, and the richest blessing of the Legislative Union will be an Ireland at peace within herself, honoured for her learning, distinguished by her refinement, and intellectually the equal of any nation upon earth. PRIMARY EDUCATION.[90] The National Board which presides over Primary Education has shown itself, under the Union, singularly free from prejudice, either political or religious. During the last few years it may be said to have changed the face of the National schools in Ireland, and in a large part of the country has contributed to make primary education what it ought to be--not a mere glut of random scraps of knowledge, not a mere conglomerate of facts, dates, and figures, undigested and unassimilated, of no practical use to the pupil in his later life, and stifling any constructive powers of thought with which he might have been born, but a system of self-development and self-expression, with the future of the pupil as a citizen in view, rather than his mere monetary value in the shape of school fees. This in itself is a remarkable stride in advance, which the Separatist will find difficult to explain away. Who will be so bold as to calculate the harm which was inflicted by the arid and artificial system of "cram," introduced in 1871, but now fortunately abandoned in the National Schools, which had only one object in view--the money grant that was made proportionate to the output of heterogeneous lumber that could be retained by the pupil until called for by the examiner? Surely, the great aim of education should be self-culture, the development of the mind, body, and character of the pupil, consideration being had to the career he is likely to pursue in the future. This the National Board has realised in time, and it is owing to its efforts and the co-operation of men and women of all shades of opinion who labour in the schools that such signal improvement has taken place during the last few years. Apart from this larger question, there are various other features of the National Schools that ought not to be excluded from this brief review. Some of them are evidence of progress made, others of grievances which still require redress. No one will deny that, taking Ireland as a whole, the structural character of the school buildings has been greatly improved in recent years, and that the cleanliness of school premises, which still leaves a good deal to be desired, is attended to with far more care than it used to be. In days gone by, the Board could grant only two-thirds of the estimated cost of a new building of the cheapest and shabbiest description. The result was that, for a whole generation, a low standard of school-house was stereotyped, and the requirement of a local contribution entirely prevented the erection of new school-houses in poor districts where they were most needed. The new plans, on the other hand, are designed according to the most modern ideas, and as a local contribution is not insisted upon in impecunious districts, where valuation is low, the Board can grant the whole of the cost where necessary. It is easy to appreciate what a difference this important reform must make, not merely to the landscape or to the comfort and health of the children, but to the general efficiency of pupils and teachers alike. There is, however, still much room for improvement. The grants hitherto given have been sadly inadequate, and in order to provide suitable school buildings, even in those cases alone where the present structures are actually a danger to the health of the children, it would be necessary to make grants at the rate of about £100,000 a year for the next 4 or 5 years, after which they might be reduced to £50,000. Another satisfactory development is the increase of teachers' salaries which has taken place during the last two decades. In 1895, the average income from State sources of principal teachers in primary schools was £94 in respect of men, and £79 in respect of women. By 1910, it had risen to £112 and £90 respectively. Notwithstanding this, their financial position, especially in large and important schools in centres where the cost of living is high, is not yet as good as it ought to be, if it be compared with that of similarly situated teachers in England and Scotland. As for the incomes of assistant teachers, they also have risen in the same period from £61 for men, and £49 for women, to £81 and £68 respectively, and the money, though still insufficient, is now being paid for a better article. Readjustment of numbers in the higher grades of national teachers is also required, so as to enable all efficient teachers who have complied with the conditions of service to receive the increases of salary to which they are entitled. The cost of such a readjustment would be about £1,000 a year for the present, but the expense would gradually increase, and might ultimately amount to £18,000 per annum. For the convenience of the profession, it is also desirable that salaries should be paid monthly, instead of quarterly, to the teaching staffs of the schools. The expenditure (non-recurring) required under this head would be about £280,000, with an additional yearly sum of £5,000, due to increased cost of administration. That a Dublin Parliament would welcome or even less be able to satisfy these various demands upon its purse without further taxation is extremely improbable, especially in view of Mr. Birrell's warning that the finances of Home Rule would be a very "tight fit." Since 1900, a period of training has been required from the principals, and this rule has recently been extended to assistant masters. In fact, the qualifications demanded of national teachers in Ireland are much higher than in England. When all the foregoing changes are considered, it will be quite evident that not only must the teachers benefit from them, but that the children cannot fail to benefit as well. Indeed, it is these various reforms which, in all probability, have conduced to a better school attendance than could be boasted of in the past. Many an educational reformer has had cause to wring his hands over the meagreness of attendance in days gone by. Even to-day it is not as it should be. It is lower than in England and in Scotland, but it has steadily risen, and continues to rise, and stands now at about 71 per cent., an advance of between 30 or 40 per cent. upon what it was less than 40 years ago; a fact which is certainly remarkable, when the poverty of the population and its scattered character are taken into account. Another evil which the Board has had to fight has been the mushroom-like multiplication of small schools. It is hardly necessary to emphasise what must be a manifest disadvantage for any authority which is trying to raise the standard of educational efficiency in a country. This multiplication was largely due to the fact that Protestant Schools were accustomed to receive grants when they could maintain an average attendance of 20 pupils, quite irrespective of how many other schools of the same or a similar denomination there might be in the immediate vicinity, and whether they were really wanted or not. How far these grants were conducive to unnecessary multiplication may be gauged from the fact that, whilst there were 6,500 schools in operation in 1871, when the population of Ireland was five and a half millions, there were 8,692 in 1901, or 2,000 more, when the population was a million less. This vast and unprofitable growth in the numbers of educational establishments could be stayed only by drastic regulation. Where neighbouring mixed Catholic or Protestant schools cannot show an average attendance of 25, they are now obliged to amalgamate, and the same result has to follow if neighbouring boys' and girls' schools fall below an average attendance of 30. These regulations have had the desired effect, and no less than 300 superfluous schools have been absorbed in this manner during the last five years. Before leaving the details of the National Schools, some mention should be made of the conspicuous improvement in the curriculum which has taken place in the first decade of the new century. Formerly, it was hidebound, bloodless, unintelligent, and useless. Now, it does what it can to cater for the practical side of the pupil's future life, and is designed with the object of helping him to think out problems for himself and of equipping him with any knowledge of the historic past which may serve him, not as a collection of antiquities, but as example and precept. During the last twelve years an astonishing advance has been made. In 1899, Hand and Eye training (including Kindergarten) was taught in 448 schools, in 1910 it was taught in 6,010. In 1899, Elementary Science was taught in 14 schools only, in 1910 it was taught in 2,400. In the former year Cookery was taught in 925 schools, in the latter year in 2,665. In 1899, Laundry Work was taught in 11 schools, in 1910 in 691. If this is not progression--and progression under the Legislative Union--to what can the predicate be more truthfully applied? Statistics are apt to be barren and uninforming and can be adapted, with almost equal plausibility, to support the arguments of either side; but these figures are eloquent and speak for themselves. They embody a large and vital portion of the history of Irish Primary Education, and are a proof of the interest which is being taken in it and of the activity of the architects behind the scenes. Long may this spirit of progress flourish and enlighten the generations that are yet to come! It is only fair to say that, amid a good deal of discouragement and not always intelligent criticism, the National Board has proved itself broad-minded and open to argument wherever the interests of Irish Education have been concerned. Although nominated by the Lord Lieutenant, and therefore not an elected body, it has never lagged behind public opinion. In the teaching of the Irish language, for example, it has shown itself peculiarly sympathetic. In fact, the experience of the Board has been, that the Irish parents are not quite so anxious that their children should be taught Irish as the Gaelic League would have us suppose. Indeed, the difficulty of the Board has been to maintain sufficient interest in the subject. Nevertheless, it has done its best. In 1899, teaching in Irish was provided in 105 schools for 1,825 children. In 1911, it was provided for 180,000 children in 3,066 schools, and during the same time bilingual instruction has been introduced into some 200 schools. In spite of what has been, and is being done, further reforms in primary education are still unquestionably required, and can, moreover, be easily effected without any of the convulsions of a constitutional revolution. The salaries of principals and assistants, especially in large and important schools, ought to be increased. In particular, the Pensions Act needs modification, for, under the present Act, teachers who retire before reaching the age qualifying for a pension receive gratuities considerably less than the Old Age Pensions. Even those who qualify for pensions are very shabbily treated if they retire before sixty years of age. Building grants also should be increased, so that the constant applications for the rebuilding of bad premises could be met.[91] The teaching of infants, greatly improved by the institution of junior assistant mistresses by Mr. Walter Long during his Chief Secretaryship, can be still further improved and brought up to the English standard; and the efficiency of primary education generally can be promoted in the direction of sympathetic appreciation of the real needs of the children, regarded from the point of view of thinking human beings, and not merely as recording machines. The following desirable improvements may also be mentioned:-- (_a_) Encouragement of the teaching of gardening in connection with country schools for boys, at a cost of about £2000 a year. (_b_) Provision for instruction in wood-work for pupils of urban districts, at central classes in technical schools, at a cost of about £4000 a year. (_c_) The provision of medical inspection and the treatment of school children, which would cost about £30,000 a year, and dental inspection and clinics, which would cost another £50,000. This expense should be defrayed largely out of the local rates, one third, say £25,000, to come out of the estimates. There would also be the cost of supervision, etc., by the Education Department, amounting to about £5000 a year. Committees, as for school attendance, composed partly of representatives of school managers and partly of local authorities, could be formed for administration. (_d_) A considerable impetus might be given to Evening Continuation Schools, on which about £10,000 a year is at present spent. A beginning could be made of compulsory attendance, and the amount of the grant doubled. Much might be done in all these directions. Much has been accomplished already. The worst that can happen is that a separate legislature should be set up in Dublin, devoid of the requisite means, as it would most certainly be (unless, indeed, it had recourse to the rates, or the taxpayer) of financing Irish Education; swayed from side to side by the exigencies of the party programme of the moment; and temperamentally unable to look at the educational problem from the standpoint alone of the needs of the country in the way that it is now regarded. At present, under the Union, Irish Education is fortunately liberated from all appeals to party passion, and organised with but one end in view, the upbringing of the infant race whose possession is the future. SECONDARY EDUCATION. The need for reform is more urgent and, in many respects, better defined in the system of Secondary than in that of Primary Education in Ireland. But the two ought to be closely interconnected, and in discussing one at least of the more important changes which it is desirable to introduce, the National Schools have as good a claim to be heard in the matter as their elder brethren. Since 1900 great efforts have been made by the Intermediate Board to promote the interests of Secondary Schools and to supply the educational needs of those who want to equip themselves for the struggle of life in its various departments. In 1900, the Board of Intermediate Education was empowered to appoint inspectors, but it was not until quite recently, after many fruitless applications and under a threat of resignation by the Board, that inspection was placed on a business-like footing and a permanent staff of six inspectors appointed. But this, after all, is a comparative detail, and reform will have to strike deep indeed if the secondary schools in Ireland are to take their place as a living part of a living body. The question of reform may be dealt with under three principal heads: (1) the abolition of the examination tests, (2) the inter-relationship between the Primary and Secondary systems, and (3) the position of teachers. Although there are other matters which will be briefly referred to, these are the three cardinal difficulties that beset the Intermediate Board to-day and obstruct the most public-spirited efforts to convert the Irish educational system into one organic whole. (1) Although the mischievous principle of fees by results has disappeared for ever from the National Schools, it still clings to Intermediate Education, numbing and constricting, like some remorseless ivy limb, the growth and free exercise of the central stem and its branches, and preventing the natural sap from rising and vitalising the whole. It is not as though the rest of the world had set the seal of its approval upon this kind of examination. The contrary is the fact. Almost every country in the world has rejected this system as wholly pernicious, injurious for the pupil, demoralising for the teacher, and wasteful for the State. To regard the youth of the Secondary Schools merely as the geese that lay the golden eggs when the examinations occur, is to destroy the true aims of education and pervert the principle of rational development. In fact, payments to Intermediate Schools ought to depend largely on the results of inspection, and much less on written examinations, a change which would involve the appointment of a larger number of inspectors than at present exist. It is all-important that this alteration should be undertaken without delay. The mechanical agglomeration of lifeless snippets of information which characterises the present method is an absurd and antiquated remnant of the bad old times, and the sooner this part of the system is hewn down the better it will be for the conscientious discharge of the teacher's duties and the self-respect of all concerned. (2) As for any proper official relationship between the Primary and Secondary systems, it may be said as yet to be practically non-existent. That co-ordination of the two is essential--nay, vital--if Irish education is to be placed on a sound footing, may be appreciated from the fact that a large proportion, or 57 per cent, of the membership of Intermediate Schools is recruited from the schools of the National Board. There seem to be only two ways in which this co-ordination can be satisfactorily effected. Either the pupils must transfer from the National to the Secondary Schools at an age when they will be young enough to profit by Secondary instruction, or some sort of higher instruction must be given in the National Schools so as to fit the children, when they leave the latter at rather a later age, for the curriculum awaiting them in the Secondary system. It is the Treasury at the present moment, and the Treasury alone, that blocks the way to this reform. Since 1902 it has been asked to sanction the establishment of higher grade schools in large centres; the National Board also has repeatedly pleaded for the institution of a "higher top," or advanced departments, in connection with selected Primary Schools in rural districts. But all these requests, founded though they have been on intimate knowledge of the requirements of Irish Education and a ripe experience ranging over many years, have been brushed aside by the officials at the Exchequer, although the cost would be only about £25,000 a year, on the very insufficient ground that the Development Grant has been depleted to defray the loss of flotation of stock for the purposes of land purchase. What, in the name of common sense, has land purchase to do with education? What indissoluble relationship is there between the two that the expenditure upon the one should be made dependent upon the requirements of the other? This niggardly and short-sighted attitude is hardly worthy of one of the richest countries in the world. It is but a matter of a few thousands, and surely the efficient training of the youth of Ireland is quite as important as buying out the Irish landlords and placing the Irish tenant in possession of the soil. The result of the present want of co-ordination is that the clever pupil is now kept far too long in the lower school. There he remains, kicking his heels until he is sent up to the Intermediate School at 15 or 16--much too late an age at which to begin the study of languages. The Primary teachers are, of course, only too pleased to retain the clever boys as long as possible in the National Schools, but it is unfair to the children, and is robbing the community of services which might be rendered to it by these pupils in the future if fair opportunities were afforded them of training themselves while there was yet time. Without higher grade schools, without scholarships, without at least some system of a "higher top" in connection with the Primary Schools, there can never be proper co-ordination of administration, and education in Ireland will never be able to progress beyond a certain point. The Christian Brothers have set the Treasury a good example in this matter. In their schools there is close co-ordination of primary and intermediate education. Promising boys in the fifth standard are removed when they are 11 or 12 years of age into the higher schools and thus given an opportunity, at the most receptive period of their lives, of acquiring knowledge which they will be able to turn to good account in after life. Over and over again has the National Board attempted to persuade the Treasury to adopt a similar system, but hitherto without avail. The crust of the official mind has been impervious to every appeal. There seems, indeed, to be now some chance of the establishment of scholarships for pupils in primary schools, but unless an intelligent mind is brought to bear upon it, and the scholarships limited, as in England and Scotland, to pupils under 12 or 13 years of age, the same unfortunate result will follow, as in the case of the Society for Promoting Protestant Schools and other similar bodies, where the scholarships have turned out to be a practical failure. An exception, however, as suggested by Dr. Starkie, and as allowed in Scotland, might be made in favour of the best Primary Schools. That is to say, where satisfactory Secondary teaching is given at a Primary School, the pupil might be relieved of one or two of the three years he is obliged to spend in the Secondary School before he can compete for the Intermediate Certificate which is awarded at 15 years of age. The argument is sometimes used that the establishment of higher grade schools would lead to unfair competition with the Intermediate Schools already in existence. No one desires to do this. Where the Intermediate Schools already hold the field, such overlapping can easily be avoided by proper administrative co-ordination between the National and Secondary systems. Where, on the other hand, there is a dearth of Intermediate Schools, as in Connaught and Kerry, higher grade schools can, and should be established without any risk either of overlapping or competition. They would supply a want which is deplored by all educational reformers, and make their influence felt far outside the mere circle of the schoolroom. A private commercial school has already been founded in Kerry and has continued for some time without State help, but, through want of encouragement, it has recently been compelled to adopt the programme of the Intermediate Board, which is entirely unsuited to its particular aims. Surely, private enterprise of this kind ought not only to be welcomed, but stimulated by a State grant, and everything possible done to encourage schools to develop along their own lines. At the present moment, they are bound hand and foot by the examination rules of the Intermediate Board, and it is quite impossible for any central authority, however eagle-eyed and sympathetic, to appreciate the peculiar atmosphere and wants of every locality. In such cases, local initiative is far more valuable than red tape, and more likely to result in an intelligent interest in his pupils and subject on the part of the teacher. (3) The position of the Secondary teachers, especially of lay assistant teachers, cries aloud for reform. In fact, their case is an acknowledged scandal. How can any one expect that the training of the youth in the Secondary Schools can be really satisfactory when the teachers are so miserably underpaid, when the elements of self-respect are given no room in which to develop, and the whole profession are treated rather as beasts of burden than as a noble and responsible body to whom is entrusted much of the destiny of the race? The question of reform is here largely a question of money. There are signs that this fact is becoming more appreciated as the years go by, and it is devoutly to be hoped that before long the teaching profession in the Secondary Schools will have no more to complain of than the Primary teachers, or than is usual in even the most cared-for and prosperous professions in this our imperfect world. Salaries, pensions, a register, security of tenure, opportunities of proper training--these may be said to embody the chief requirements of Secondary teachers at the present moment. In existing circumstances there is no attraction for competent men and women to enter the teaching profession so far as Intermediate education is concerned. The most incompetent crowd into it, although there are many exceptions, and teaching is regarded as a stop-gap during periods of impecuniosity rather than as a permanent career to be proud of and to be worked for. The salaries are beggarly--considerably lower than the incomes of the teachers in the Primary Schools. In 1908, the average salaries of principals in the Primary Schools were £112 for men and £90 for women, and in the County Boroughs £163 and £126 respectively, whilst in the Secondary Schools lay assistants were paid about £80 _per annum. _In view of this, surely the demand that is being made on behalf of highly qualified Secondary teachers is not exorbitant, namely, salaries of £100 to £300 for men and of £80 to £220 for women. If the maximum rate were £150 for men and £100 for women the cost would be £220,000 a year. Where is the money to come from? Will a Nationalist Parliament be prepared to find it, and if so, from what source? Ireland is a comparatively poor country and is not in a position to bear much more taxation. The Intermediate Board, with its present resources, cannot afford to step into the breach, and the only solution seems to be that the British Exchequer should come to the rescue and that the Board should be granted the means of dealing with this all-important matter, the neglect of which is having a most injurious effect upon the efficiency of the Intermediate Schools. It has been suggested that a half-way house might be found, that the Treasury should grant £60 for each assistant master and £40 for each assistant mistress, and that the remainder should be raised by the authorities of the schools under the direction of the Board. This alternative scheme would cost the State about £88,300 a year, but, like all makeshifts, would not effect a real settlement of the difficulty, creating, as it would, a patchwork system of payment which might break down at any moment. On the other hand, let the settlement be a generous one, and the return will be a hundredfold in added efficiency, a higher sense of duty, and an increased personal interest on the part of the teacher in the class of which he has charge. In close connection with the question of salaries are those of pensions and security of tenure. The pensions of the Primary teachers, inadequate though they be, would be looked upon as a provision of the most munificent kind by the poor men and women who enter service under the Intermediate system. The Primary teachers, moreover, can fall back upon subsidiary occupations if they find that their salaries are insufficient for their maintenance. They can run a little farm or keep a shop or do other remunerative work, but the assistants in Secondary Schools are debarred from these methods of supplementing their exiguous wage. Those terrible words might, without any extravagance, be inscribed for them over the doors of their schools: "All hope abandon ye who enter here." Something must be done. A starvation wage, with an adequate pension to follow, might be tolerable, a decent wage, without any pension, might be borne, but starvation at both ends is a disgrace to the Treasury while it lasts and one of the things which should be taken in hand without any further delay. Security of tenure is equally important. How can a teacher be expected to devote the whole of his mental energies to his scholastic duties, how can any one expect him to throw himself heart and soul into his work, if there is always lurking in his mind the haunting fear of dismissal through no fault of his own? It is unreasonable to suppose that any human being can give of his best under these distracting conditions. In the National Schools a system of appeal has been in force for some time, and has been carried out with fairness on the part of those in authority and to the apparent satisfaction of the teaching profession. The dismissal order of every Roman Catholic manager has to be countersigned by the Bishop of the Diocese, and in the case of all teachers an appeal is now allowed to the Board itself, and is often utilised by Protestants. In fact, so far as the National Schools are concerned, the tenure of the Primary teachers during good behaviour is practically secured. Why cannot similar safeguards be introduced into the Intermediate system? An appeal to the Board in this case is not proposed by those who know all the circumstances best; but teachers in Roman Catholic schools might have the right of appeal, in the case of Diocesan Colleges, to the Bishop of the Diocese, or in the case of schools under religious orders to the Provincials or Generals, and Protestant teachers might be allowed to appeal to the Board of Governors of their schools, or they might sign an agreement, providing for a referee, such as the No. 3 and 4 agreements under the National Board. A register of teachers is also required. Every existing teacher in the Intermediate Schools who satisfies the tests of efficiency should be placed upon it without delay. As far as future appointments are concerned, qualifications might be adopted similar to those which now obtain in the Scotch Department, _e.g._ (_a_) a degree in a University, or its equivalent; (_b_) a diploma following professional training for one year; and (_c_) two probationary years in a good school. Special terms would probably be demanded for those who, like Nuns, are precluded by their calling from attending lectures at a University. These are some of the reforms which could, and should be introduced to make the teaching profession more efficient, more attractive for competent and clever men and women, and more of a permanent and honourable career than it has been in the past. Once again, it is not unreasonable to ask--How will a Dublin Parliament be able to provide the necessary funds? An extra annual sum of roughly £300,000 is required, in addition to a further sum of about £330,000 to meet non-recurring expenditure. These are, admittedly, moderate estimates. The matter, anyway, is now ripe for settlement, and procrastination can only aggravate the financial difficulty. So far as the educational problem is concerned, it is a manifest obligation upon the Nationalist Party to outline their proposals for the redress of these grievances, and to indicate the means by which they can be carried out, before a separate Legislature is set up for the people of Ireland. Within the scope of these few pages it is not possible to comprise all the aspects of modern Irish Education which are worthy of discussion. What are most urgently needed to-day are the necessary funds to continue the good work which is being done, and to introduce the reforms that have been sketched above. Parsimony in educational matters is the most wasteful of all misplaced thrift. Let the reformers be dealt with wisely and generously, and the harvest will exceed even the expectations of those who are working most hopefully upon the problem. Withhold the funds on some niggardly and mistaken principle of petty economy, and the present progress will be discouraged and the educational tree become stunted in its growth. From an administrative point of view, nothing, finance apart, would contribute more to the efficiency of Irish Education than the amalgamation of the National and Intermediate systems, as well as of the Technical work at present administered by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Education, under one Board. The method of examination by the Department is far sounder than that which is forced upon the Intermediate Board by the Acts of Parliament under which it works. In the case of science, the two are to be seen working to-day side by side in the Secondary Schools, to the undoubted benefit of the scientific course, which enjoys a double subsidy from the State, and is subject to the superior method of examination by the Department, being treated as a detached subject and the candidates being passed _en bloc_. On the other hand, the obsolete method of examination by the Board tends to the serious disadvantage of the classical curriculum, the grants being made on the unprofitable results of a general examination of individual candidates, the class not being regarded as a whole, as is the case with the Department. By the repeal of the Intermediate Acts, and by the amalgamation of the various Boards into one, these anomalies would rapidly disappear, and for the first time a genuine system of co-ordination could be introduced into Irish Education, which would knit together the strength of all the parts and overcome many of the prevailing weaknesses, making the whole system what it ought to be, a living, growing, pulsating organism, developing and shaping itself with the life of the nation. Is it conceivable that all this can he accomplished if the Union between the countries is rent asunder? What chance will there be of effecting this great settlement, which requires money and, above all, requires peace, when Ireland is plunged once again into the old internecine struggles of the eighteenth century? The warning is writ very large upon the wall, so that he who runs may read. The best hope for education in Ireland are the resources of Great Britain and a uniform policy undisturbed by party feuds. Neither of these can be looked for under a separate Parliament. Under the Union Ireland can have both, for the welfare of her children and the building of a noble history. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 89: In writing the above I should like to acknowledge my indebtedness to the address published by Dr. Starkie in 1911 for many useful facts and figures.] [Footnote 90: See the 76th and 77th Reports of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland--Cd. 5340, 1910, and Cd. 5903, 1911.] [Footnote 91: The residential buildings of the Commissioners' Training College in Marlborough Street, Dublin, still require to be completed by the addition of a new residence for women students, at a cost of about £50,000 spread over three or four years.] XX THE PROBLEM OF TRANSIT AND TRANSPORT IN IRELAND BY AN IRISH RAILWAY DIRECTOR Any scheme giving self-government to Ireland must seriously affect the problem of local transit and transport, by rail and water, which all parties in Ireland agree to be pressing and important. Nor is it merely a local question. As recent returns show, the trade between Ireland and Great Britain has of late years enormously increased, to the great advantage of both; for if Irish farmers profit by the export of beef, mutton, milk, eggs, butter, bacon and other articles, Great Britain has the benefit of a near food supply within the United Kingdom. Nor does any one doubt that this trade is capable of enormous increase. The improvement of Irish agricultural methods, the growth in England of a town population, the increased price of the necessaries of life, are some of the factors pointing in this direction. If this trade is to expand, Irish traffic routes and facilities with Great Britain must be improved and increased, especially as the articles carried are largely of a perishable kind. Moreover, the internal traffic of Ireland, by rail, waterways, and canals is capable of and needs great development, as witness the recent Reports of the Viceregal Commission on Irish Railways, and of the Royal Commission on Canals and Waterways.[92] The problem of inland navigation is again intimately bound up with that of arterial drainage, as the Commissioners have reported. It is then strange to find, that on these pressing questions of first importance, there is an almost absolute silence on the part of those who advocate Home Rule in and out of Parliament. SOLUTION OF TRANSIT PROBLEM IMPOSSIBLE UNDER HOME RULE. It is true that the nationalisation of the Irish railways has in past years found the keenest advocates amongst individual members of the Home Rule Party; that the Majority Report of the late Viceregal Commission favouring State purchase of the Irish railways was formally approved of by the Parliamentary Party, and that Mr. Redmond has named "transit" as one of the special matters that should be left to be dealt with by an Irish Legislature. But there the matter ends. We are not given the slightest inkling what is proposed to be done on this matter, or how it will be done, or the slightest proof that under any system of Home Rule, the financial difficulties of the problem can be solved at all. The Reports of both the Commissions referred to are based, first on the continuance of the present system of laws and government, and secondly, on the use of Imperial credit to the tune of many millions. Yet amongst the shoals of literature on Home Rule problems and finance, I can find no enlightenment as to how the transit problem is to be solved under the new conditions; _i.e._ how any Home Rule Government, whether it has control of Customs and Excise or not, and however it economises, is to find the money necessary to buy out the Irish railways and canals. A Government that is faced with the problems of poverty and congestion, of housing, of increased educational grants, of afforestation, and of arterial land drainage, will have an almost impossible task in raising money for these purposes alone. And, let those who can, inform us how an Irish Parliament and Executive (with all else they will have in hand), will be able to raise even the £5,000,000 necessary to improve the Irish Light Railway System; not to speak of the sum at least tenfold greater which will be required for a complete purchase scheme. So far we are without that information. The Irish Parliamentary leaders have not touched upon the point. The pamphleteers are almost equally silent. Professor Kettle, in his "Home Rule Finance," mentions the "Nationalisation of Railways" in one line of print, merely stating that "the project will have to be financed by loans and not out of annual revenue" (p. 41); and he further remarks, generally (p. 72), "that for the development of any future policy, approved by her own people, Ireland relies absolutely on her own fiscal resources." What fiscal resources, and under what conditions are they obtainable? In the volume entitled "Home Rule Problems" issued by the Liberal Home Rule Committee, with a preface by Viscount Haldane, not one word is said on the subject, though there are chapters on Irish finance, and on Irish commercial and industrial conditions. Neither has Mr. Stephen Gwynn a single word on the subject in his "Case for Home Rule," though he makes the large assertion that "there is no country in the world where resources are more undeveloped than those of Ireland." Mr. Erskine Childers[93] merely refers to the Irish railway problem as one that is "obvious and urgent," "which no Parliament but an Irish Parliament can deal with, and which calls aloud for settlement." DETAILS OF RAILWAY TRANSIT PROBLEM. Let us now look at the problem in more detail; and first is the question of the railways. The property to be dealt with consists of 3411 miles of railway, representing a total capital of £45,163,000, of which, at the date of the Report of the Commission, £2,873,000 paid no dividend; the gross annual receipts of the whole system being £4,255,000 and the net receipts £1,690,000, representing a return on the whole capital of 3.77 per cent.[94] Of these lines, the railways constructed under the Tramways and Light Railways Acts cover 603 miles, of which 322 are narrow gauge, involving a liability on various baronies which have guaranteed interest on capital to the amount of £36,000 per annum. To bring these light railways up to a proper standard and equipment; to widen the gauge in many cases; to provide new sheds, stations, and rolling stock, and redeem the guarantees, a sum of about £5,000,000 would probably be necessary. In addition, projects for no less than eighty-three new railways were brought before the Commission;[95] and it is admitted on all hands, and the Commission find, that practically none of these railway extensions would be undertaken by private enterprise, and that these developments need the credit, help, and direction of the State. Even the necessary improvement of the existing light railways cannot now be undertaken, for under the system of legislation under which they were constructed, there is no means of raising new capital.[96] Now, what is advocated by the Majority Report is the-- "compulsory purchase by the State of these railway systems great and small, to be then worked and managed by an Irish elected authority as one concern, mainly with a view of developing Irish industries by reduction of rates and otherwise, and not strictly on commercial principles."[97] This was the scheme supported by the Parliamentary Party, written up unceasingly by the _Freeman's Journal_, and held out under the term "Nationalisation of Railways," as one of the special boons which Home Rule will bring to Irish traders and farmers. But mark how the operation is to be carried out. The Commission reported that the sum required should be raised by a railway stock charged primarily on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, with recourse to Irish rates to make up possible deficiencies, and further, that there should be an annual grant from the Exchequer of not less than £250,000 to the Irish railway authority. Seeing that the Commissioners refer to "the financial terms prescribed by the Act of 1844" (Regulation of Railways Act, 7 & 8 Vict. c. 85, ss. 2-4), and that a _cash_ payment to shareholders was provided for by that Act, it is to be presumed that the Commissioners intended Irish shareholders to be paid in cash. The Act of 1844 provided for payment to the companies of a sum in cash equal to twenty-five years' purchase of the previous three years' annual profits; but this was the minimum only, for it was provided that the companies could, under arbitration, claim additional payment in respect of future "prospects." Now twenty-five years' purchase of the divisible profits, which at the date of the Commission, were £1,690,000, would amount to over £42,000,000, and if in addition sums had to be raised for "prospects," purchase of lines paying no dividend, special provision for prior stocks standing at a premium, redemption of guarantees, and the large sums required for the extensions and improvements we have mentioned, a sum not less than £50,000,000, and probably nearer £55,000,000, would be required.[98] From the beginning to the end of the inquiry there was no suggestion that this immense operation could be carried out except by the use of Imperial credit, involving the two conditions: (1) that the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom be charged, and (2) that the British public be asked, and should be willing to find the money. Although the Majority Report contemplated an Irish elected authority to work the railways so purchased and amalgamated, it was never suggested that any such Irish authority could raise the necessary purchase capital, or, indeed, any portion of it. The whole scheme from beginning to end pre-supposed the continuance of the Union, with its advantages of credit and capital. Upset that Union, establish an Irish Parliament working out its own salvation, financially and otherwise, and the basis of the whole scheme of railway nationalisation vanishes. That the British Government should allow its credit to be used to the tune of fifty millions, after full legislative, executive and taxing powers were handed over to an Irish Parliament, is too fantastic to be considered seriously. Whether an Irish or English authority controlled the working of the railways would under such circumstances make little difference, with the Courts of Law, the Executive, and Police in other hands than that of the Government guaranteeing the interest. The security for the advance would be imperilled; and, indeed, it is doubtful whether a tenth of the money required would be advanced, even in London, on those terms. For a similar reason any formal pledge of Irish rates and taxes, to make up deficiencies in working, would be illusory. At any rate, if Irish Land Purchase is to be continued under British credit (and it certainly will be a prior claim and charge), it is idle to expect Parliament to undertake the vast additional obligations involved in Irish railway nationalisation. Parliament would pay the piper but could not call the tune. IRISH CREDIT NOT SUFFICIENT. There remains the alternative of the new Irish Parliament financing the operation. This it must do by means of payment in cash to the selling shareholders, for reasons which will be hereafter stated, unless it wishes to start its career by a scheme of spoliation, which would not merely rob the shareholders (who are mostly Irish), but would destroy the credit of the Irish Government. Mr. Redmond has recently acknowledged that a large number of Irish railway shareholders are good Nationalists; and it is certain that a great portion of the ordinary stock is held by Irish farmers and traders; and much of the preference and debenture stocks are also held by Irish charities, convents, diocesan trustees, and monastic institutions. These persons will expect, and justly expect, cash on a compulsory purchase, on basis of market value, or capitalisation of dividend, so as to secure the same return of interest. Could the Irish Government borrow £50,000,000, and at what rate? To borrow at a higher rate than the present return on Irish railway capital, namely, 3.77 per cent., would be to incur a loss on working the railways, from the outset, which Irish ratepayers or taxpayers would have to make up. The net receipts, at the time of the Commission's Report, were, in round figures, £1,600,000, and thus to borrow £50,000,000, even at 4 per cent., would mean an annual loss of £300,000 a year, even if there were no sinking fund. A 10_s._ per cent sinking fund would increase the total annual loss to £550,000. But, could an Irish Government Guaranteed Railway Stock be issued at 4 per cent.? Would Ireland's credit stand better than that of Hungary, whose 4 per cent. gold _rentes_ stand at 92, or of the Argentine, which has to borrow at nearly 5 per cent.? There are grave doubts whether the large sum required would be subscribed at all, at even 4 1/4 per cent, or 4 1/2 per cent. basis. It is not likely that English investors would take up such a loan, seeing that they have consistently fought shy of Irish investments, and they are not likely to change their views upon the break up of the Union. It may be said that the sum required could be raised in Ireland--that patriotic feeling would stimulate the operation, and the large sum of money (over £50,000,000), lying on deposit at the Irish banks may be referred to as available. Patriotism that has not financed the Irish Parliamentary Party will not be likely to finance a gigantic railway loan. Nor is the large sum appearing as banking deposits really free money available for investment. With increase of deposits, the items of loans and advances in banking accounts have also correspondingly increased, and they largely balance each other. Not only is the money deposited by one customer lent to another, and therefore already utilized, but, to a large extent well known to bankers, the deposits, _i.e._ the credits to particular accounts, represent money lent to the persons having these accounts, and are not, in fact, their own free balances. So also credits in the accounts of one bank, figure as debits on the balance sheet of another bank. There probably has been in recent years considerable saving in Ireland, but it is also certain that those savings have largely gone, and will continue rightly to go in improvements of farms, which the Land Acts and Land Purchase Acts have made worth improving for their possessors. Those who have not saved enough borrow, and the bank advances represent largely the capital required by farmers and traders. The deposits, therefore, are being well used, and are not dead money. Divert them to any large extent to another purpose, and there will probably be a contraction of banking credit, which Irish farming and industry will be the first to feel. PURCHASE BY STATE PAPER. It may be said that the nationalisation of railways could be carried out, not by a cash payment, but by a paper exchange of existing Railway Stocks into newly created Irish Government Stock, the amount of the existing net receipts being guaranteed. But, unless the Irish Government could actually borrow in cash the sum required, at a rate equal to that nominally put on the new stock, the shareholders would be robbed of a capital sum equal to the amount of the discount on the stock, _i.e._ the amount of the market quotation below par, or issue price. There will be sellers of the new stock from the beginning, and what the public will give for it, and not the nominal figure put upon it by the Irish Government, will be its real value. The Irish Government may issue the Railway Stock at 3-1/2 per cent., but if they could borrow the sum required only at 4-1/2 per cent., the new stock will at once find its level at about 77 instead of 100, and the capital value of Irish railways will be reduced from, say, £45,000,000 to £35,000,000, and the difference, £10,000,000, would come out of the pockets of Irish shareholders. The Irish Government would be, however, in this unpleasant dilemma, that if they issued the stock at a rate per cent, nominally higher than the present return in railway capital, namely, 3.77 per cent., the annual charge for interest would be greater than the net receipts, and so from the beginning there would be an annual loss; and the fact of this annual loss would be another factor tending to depreciate the new Railway Stock. The alternatives before an Irish Prime Minister, pressed to carry out a "Nationalisation" policy, are not enviable. He will either have to provide by taxation for the annual loss involved in taking over the railways on a fair basis, or to deprive the most thrifty and industrious classes of his fellow-countrymen of a large slice of their savings and investments. In either event, the new Government will have received a serious blow to its credit at the outset of its career. EFFECT OF REDUCTION OF RAILWAY RATES. There is, moreover, a special reason why such a stock, from its inception, would tend to depreciate in value; namely, that from the moment the Irish Government or their nominees became the owners, there would be almost irresistible pressure put upon them to reduce the railway rates, and generally (as indeed the Majority Report recommends) to work the railways on other than commercial lines.[99] A reduction of rates has been held out as the great resulting boon of nationalisation ever since the Irish Parliamentary Party specifically raised the question in Parliament in 1899. A 25 per cent. reduction in rates and fares (suggested by Nationalist witnesses) would involve an annual diminution of net receipts to the Government of over £1,000,000 per annum, and if the reduction were in goods rates alone, the loss would be £568,000 per annum. It would be years, if ever, before such a loss could be recouped, however the traffic was increased. Experience has shown that in recent years running expenses tend to increase nearly parallel with the gross receipts, and a large increase in gross traffic would involve enormous capital outlay for rolling stock, engines, sidings, etc. It is unnecessary to comment upon the suggestion that the railways should not be run on "commercial principles." The Irish ratepayers and taxpayers, who would have to bear the loss, would loudly call out for business management when it was too late. It is hardly necessary to add that another result of such an operation would be to prevent the Irish Government raising the very large sum necessary for improving and standardising the light railways and for extensions, except at an unremunerative rate of interest. Even if shareholders be put off with State paper, contractors will have to be paid with cash. Moreover the creation of such a large amount of debt at the beginning of the new regime would render it difficult, if not impossible, for the Irish Government to raise sums necessary for other public works and services of a pressing character, arterial drainage, canals, education, and other objects, not to speak of migration, congestion, and land purchase. The conclusion, in fact, is inevitable, that without the security of the United Kingdom, and the market of British investors willing to lend, it is idle to think that either State purchase of railways, or any other of the boons mentioned, are reasonably possible. Mr. Erskine Childers, though a Home Ruler, does not fail to perceive, to use his own words, "that financial independence will now mean a financial sacrifice to Ireland."[100] EFFECT OF NATIONALISATION ON TRADE RELATIONS. There are other important considerations which confirm the view that, if the control of Irish railways were taken away from the Imperial Parliament, and placed under a Parliament sitting in Dublin, and if the general code of railway legislation now binding on both countries could be altered by a Home Rule legislature, results disastrous to the trade between the two countries would probably follow, whether "Nationalisation" were carried out or not. The Majority Report recommends, as one of the chief objects of "Nationalisation" under an Irish authority, the reduction of _export_ rates, both local and through rates, on the Irish railways, as "essential to the development of Irish industry," and this seems the pet project of a large number of witnesses, and of Irish local authorities. Import and export railway rates are now the same for the same classes of produce, and no Irish railway company could now differentiate between them, without being pulled up by the Railway Commission at the suit of British traders, or British railway companies. The policy suggested is practically to use railway rates as a system of local protection, similar to the existing practice and policy on the continental, and notably the Prussian State Railways. It is easy to see that without any Customs barrier between the two countries, such a policy would inaugurate practically a tariff war between Ireland and Great Britain, which would be disastrous to both. That such a policy should be subscribed to by Free-traders, and that a Free-trade Government should advocate a change in the relations between the two countries, under which such a system could be possible, is indeed surprising. To use Imperial credit for such a purpose would be midsummer madness. Even without any scheme of nationalisation, the establishment of a separate Executive and Legislature in Ireland might have sinister effects on traffic arrangements between Great Britain and Ireland and on the harmonious administration of the railways. THE RIGHT SOLUTION. The truth of the matter, and the inference to be drawn from the above considerations and the whole trend of modern trade, is that to break up the railway systems of Great Britain and Ireland into two rival and hostile systems of transit, working for different objects and by different methods, would be to stop a natural and healthy process of uniform working and harmony, which has enormously advanced in the last decade, to the great advantage of Ireland. Almost every scheme of amalgamation in Ireland has been connected with the opening or development of a new cross-Channel route, as the history of the Fishguard and Rosslare and the new Heysham routes fully shows. As part of this process, English companies, like the Midland and the Great Western, are either acquiring Irish lines or making special traffic arrangements with them. Enormous sums have been spent on harbours and steamers by English companies for the purpose of developing traffic with Ireland, and the increased interchange of goods has been of great advantage to both countries. The ideal put forward by advocates of railway nationalisation and Irish independence, that in respect of trade and traffic Ireland should be a sort of watertight compartment, self-supporting and self-contained, is, I submit, a mischievous delusion which, if put into practice, would undo much of the good progress Ireland has recently made. Such an ideal would also be the exact contrary of the line of national development as based on transit and transport followed in almost every other civilized country. In Germany, Canada, the United States, and Australia, we see the policy consistently pursued of amalgamation, consolidation, and facilities for long-distance traffic, so that between all parts of each State and Empire there shall be the freest and most perfect interchange of traffic. Canada and the United States have been so far inspired by this principle as to spend countless millions first on East and West (and now on North and South) lines, even before there was traffic to carry, and in order to create traffic; and the principle has been justified in its results. From this point of view St. George's Channel and the Irish Sea should be a means of communication, constant and in every direction, between the two Islands, and not a sort of boundary ditch to be deepened and rendered difficult of passage. If Ireland wishes to share England's prosperity she must not build up a wall against the credit, trade, and special products of her richer sister. If England wishes to have and to foster a magnificent source of food supply, well and strategically secured against continental foes, she also must do all that can be done to encourage intercourse. To develop traffic between Great Britain and Ireland is the policy which both experience and theory point to as advantageous to both countries; to subvert this policy and make Ireland's commerce local and self-sufficing, seems to be the narrow and mistaken ideal of Nationalist aspirations. UNIONIST POLICY. It follows that the Unionist Party must oppose any plan for "nationalising" the Irish railways, whether by the credit of the United Kingdom, or otherwise. The policy we advocate is to be found in the Minority Report of the Viceregal Commission, signed by Sir Herbert Jekyll, Mr. W.M. Acworth, and Mr. John Aspinall, not as politicians, but experts; and in the Report of the Royal Commission on Canals and Inland Navigation dealing with the question of canals and water transport in Ireland. In the case of railways, the aim should be to amalgamate them into two or three large companies to standardise as far as possible the light railways, and level them in respect of gauge, gradients, works, and rolling stock with the larger companies. Unquestionably many of the smaller railways to be amalgamated, though not light railways, need large expenditure for the purpose of duplication of running lines, straightening of curves, stations, stores, and conveniences, and many extensions and cross-lines will also be needed to connect them with the trunk lines, and to open out districts now unprovided with railway facilities. Many of these projects, though industrially remunerative to Ireland and advantageous to England also as tapping new sources of food supply, would not be, in strictness, commercially remunerative in the sense of giving fair return on capital over working expenses, and it is idle to expect that private capital will ever be subscribed for these purposes. They can only be undertaken either directly by State funds, or by money provided by the State, and lent to the large amalgamated lines at low interest. This is the policy inaugurated by Mr. Arthur Balfour, which has been of untold benefit to many districts in Ireland. Probably a public grant of, say, £2,000,000, and loanable money available to the extent of £8,000,000, would largely solve the problem. For the reasons already given it is only by Imperial credit, and under the ægis of a united Parliament and Government, that capital on this large scale can be available for these purposes. CANALS AND NAVIGATION. The problem of canals and inland navigation in Ireland is a minor one, but the same principles largely apply. The Royal Commission[101] recommended that all the chief waterways, canals, and rivers necessary for inland transport should be purchased and remain under the control of the State, the controlling authority, however, not themselves, to become carriers on any waterways. At the same time, they strongly urged that the problem of arterial drainage and relief from floods should not be treated separately, but that the control of drainage works should be under the same central authority as that which is to control waterways and navigation. It is not necessary to refer in detail to the Report. Apart from the sum necessary to buy out the existing owners of canals and waterways, towards which £2,451,346 had been contributed from private sources, the Commissioners contemplated a further expenditure of about £200,000 on new works. In addition the sum of £500,000 would be required, on a moderate estimate for drainage and the prevention of floods. The pressing nature of the latter problem is once more emphatically evidenced by the wholesale injury to property and the public health by the recent flooding of the basins of the Shannon, Barrow, Bann, and other rivers. Here, again, we have problems which it is idle to expect an Irish Parliament to solve satisfactorily for years to come, or, indeed, ever. Ways and means must be an effectual bar. Drainage and navigation form only one problem out of a dozen facing a Home Rule Government needing the raising of enormous capital. Probably the Commissioners conducting the Canals inquiry, who were persons of all shades of political opinion, were well aware that only under the present system of State credit could the financial difficulties be overcome. According to their report, the State (_i.e._ the Government of the United Kingdom) were to acquire the control, which was to be carried out by an Act of Parliament, naming the Waterways Commissioners, "who should be persons disassociated from party politics." The one dissentient out of twenty-one signatories, Lord Farrer, significantly adds that he does not favour a "charge on the public purse and new Boards of Management _until a purely Irish elected authority has agreed to pay for them_." Precisely; Lord Farrer has looked ahead. Will an Irish elected authority agree to pay for these boons, and will they be able to pay? That is a question which will cause some searching of hearts amongst all interested in Ireland's welfare;--in these pages we have attempted to give an answer. CONCLUSION. The conclusion is in fact inevitable. Ireland cannot have it both ways. She cannot have financial independence and financial dependence at the same time. No Colony has ever claimed or been granted these inconsistent conditions. If Colonial precedents are cited, their essential limitations should also be borne in mind. Colonial loans are not charged on the Consolidated Fund. Nor have Colonial railways been nationalised with the money and credit of the United Kingdom, in order to favour local exports at the expense of imports from England. Our examination of the question brings us to the clear conclusion that it is only under the existing system of a single Parliament and Executive for the United Kingdom that the problems of transit and transport in Ireland, or between Great Britain and Ireland, can be satisfactorily solved, whether from the point of view of finance, justice to shareholders, or advantage to the trade and convenience of both countries. NOTE.--It has been suggested, since the above was written, that the balance in the Irish Post Office Savings Banks (now about £12,500,000) might be available to the new Irish Government, for advances to farmers and other public purposes. The suggestion involves the applicability of such advances for the purchase or amalgamation of the Irish railways under an Irish public authority. Such a proposal will not bear close examination. It is an essential condition of the existence of Savings Bank deposits that the deposits should be always available on the call of depositors; and this condition would no longer be fulfilled if the balances were locked up in Irish railways. In fact, if there was any suggestion that these balances should be used for the purpose of enabling the Irish Government to run the railways on uncommercial principles, the deposits would very soon diminish or disappear--and this apart from the question whether under Home Rule, the deposits would in any event remain at anything like their present high figure. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 92: Viceregal Commission on Irish Railways, Final Report, 1910 (Cd. 5247). Final Report on the Canals and Inland Navigations of Ireland, 1911 (Cd. 5626).] [Footnote 93: "The Framework of Home Rule," p. 174.] [Footnote 94: Figures are taken from Viceregal Commission Reports, p. 78, Report.] [Footnote 95: Page 78, Report.] [Footnote 96: Page 58, Report.] [Footnote 97: Final Report, pp. 76-83.] [Footnote 98: We have taken the Act of 1844 as the basis referred to by the Commissioners, though it is very doubtful (having regard to the great variety of railway share and loan capital), if the terms of sect. 2 are now suitable; moreover sect. 4 requires a special Act of Parliament to be passed to raise the money, and settle the special conditions of the purchase option.] [Footnote 99: Majority Report, p. 76.] [Footnote 100: "Framework of Home Rule," p. 281.] [Footnote 101: Final Report on the Canals and Navigations of Ireland. 1911. (Cd. 5626.)] 
15086	----	Proofreading Team. THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE BY ERSKINE CHILDERS AUTHOR OF "THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS," "WAR AND THE ARME BLANCHE," "GERMAN INFLUENCE ON BRITISH CAVALRY"; EDITOR OF VOL. V. OF THE _TIMES_ "HISTORY OF THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA," ETC. LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 1911 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGES INTRODUCTION vii-xvi I. THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA 1-20 II. REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND 21-41 III. GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT 42-59 IV. THE UNION 60-71 V. CANADA AND IRELAND 72-104 VI. AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND 105-119 VII. SOUTH AFRICA AND IRELAND 120-143 VIII. THE ANALOGY 144-149 IX. IRELAND TO-DAY 150-187 X. THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE 188-229 I. The Elements of the Problem 188-197 II. Federal or Colonial Home Rule 198-203 III. The Exclusion or Retention of Irish Members at Westminster 203-213 IV. Irish Powers and their Bearing on Exclusion 213-229 XI. UNION FINANCE 230-257 I. Before the Union 230-231 II. From the Union to the Financial Relations Commission of 1894-1896 232-239 III. The Financial Relations Commission of 1894-1896 239-257 XII. THE PRESENT FINANCIAL SITUATION 258-279 I. Anglo-Irish Finance To-day 258-264 II. Irish Expenditure 264-274 III. Irish Revenue 274-279 XIII. FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE 280-306 I. The Essence of Home Rule 280-281 II. The Deficit 281-286 III. Further Contribution to Imperial Services 286 IV. Ireland's Share of the National Debt 286 V. Ireland's Share of Imperial Miscellaneous Revenue 287 VI. Irish Control of Customs and Excise 287-294 VII. Federal Finance 294-300 VIII. Alternative Schemes of Home Rule Finance 300-306 XIV. LAND PURCHASE FINANCE 307-321 I. Land Purchase Loans 307-319 II. Minor Loans to Ireland 319-321 XV. THE IRISH CONSTITUTION 322-338 CONCLUSION 339-341 APPENDIX 342-347 INDEX 348-354 INTRODUCTION My purpose in this volume is to advocate a definite scheme of self-government for Ireland. That task necessarily involves an historical as well as a constructive argument. It would be truer, perhaps, to say that the greater part of the constructive case for Home Rule must necessarily be historical. To postulate a vague acceptance of the principle of Home Rule, and to proceed at once to the details of the Irish Constitution, would be a waste of time and labour. It is impossible even to attempt to plan the framework of a Home Rule Bill without a tolerably close knowledge not only of Anglo-Irish relations, but of the Imperial history of which they form a part. The Act will succeed exactly in so far as it gives effect to the lessons of experience. It will fail at every point where those lessons are neglected. Constitutions which do not faithfully reflect the experience of the sovereign power which accords them, and of the peoples which have to live under them, are at the best perilous experiments liable to defeat the end of their framers. I shall enter into history only so far as it is relevant to the constitutional problem, using the comparative method, and confining myself almost exclusively to the British Empire past and present. For the purposes of the Irish controversy it is unnecessary to travel farther. In one degree or another every one of the vexed questions which make up the Irish problem has arisen again and again within the circle of the English-speaking races. As a nation we have a body of experience applicable to the case of Ireland incomparably greater than that possessed by any other race in the world. If, from timidity, prejudice, or sheer neglect, we fail to use it, we shall earn the heavy censure reserved for those who sin against the light. For the comparative sketch I shall attempt, materials in the shape of facts established beyond all controversy are abundant. Colonial history, thanks to colonial freedom, is almost wholly free from the distorting influence of political passion. South African history alone will need revision in the light of recent events. When, under the alchemy of free national institutions, Ireland has undergone the same transformation as South Africa, her unhappy history will be chronicled afresh with a juster sense of perspective and a juster apportionment of responsibility for the calamities which have befallen her. And yet, if we consider the field for partisan bias which Irish history presents, the amount of ground common to writers of all shades of political opinion is now astonishingly large. The result, I think, is due mainly to the good influence of that eminent historian and Unionist politician, the late Professor Lecky. Indeed, an advocate of Home Rule, nervously suspicious of tainted material, could afford to rely solely on his "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," "Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland," and "Clerical Influences,"[1] which are Nationalist textbooks, and, for quite recent events, on "A Consideration of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century," by Mr. G. Locker-Lampson, the present Unionist Member for Salisbury. A strange circumstance; but Ireland, like all countries where political development has been forcibly arrested from without, is a land of unending paradox. It is only one of innumerable anomalies that Irish Nationalists should use Unionist histories as propaganda for Nationalism; that the majority of Irish Unionists should insist on ignoring all historical traditions save those which in any normal country would long ago have been consigned by general consent to oblivion and the institutions they embody overthrown; and that Unionist writers such as those I have mentioned should be able to reconcile their history and their politics only by a pessimism with regard to the tendencies of human nature in general, or of Irish nature in particular, with which their own historical teaching, founded on a true perception of cause and effect, appears to be in direct contradiction. The truth is that the question is one of the construction, not of the verification, of facts; of prophecy for the future, rather than of bare affirmation or negation. No one can presume to determine such a question without a knowledge of how human beings have been accustomed to act under similar circumstances. Illumination of that sort Irish history and the contemporary Irish problem incontestably need. The modern case for the Union rests mainly on the abnormality of Ireland, and that is precisely why it is such a formidable case to meet. For Ireland in many ways is painfully abnormal. The most cursory study of her institutions and social, economic, and political life demonstrate that fact. The Unionist, fixing his eyes on some of the secondary peculiarities, and ignoring their fundamental cause, demonstrates it with ease, and by a habit of mind which yields only with infinite slowness to the growth of political enlightenment, passes instinctively to the deduction that Irish abnormalities render Ireland unfit for self-government. In other words, he prescribes for the disease a persistent application of the very treatment which has engendered it. Whatever the result, there is a plausible answer. If Ireland is disorderly and retrograde, how can she deserve freedom? If she is peaceful, and shows symptoms of economic recuperation, clearly she does not need or even want it. In other words, if all that is healthy in the patient battles desperately and not in vain, first against irritant poison, and then against soporific drugs, this healthy struggle for self-preservation is attributed not to native vitality, but to the bracing regimen of coercive government. This train of argument, so far from being confined to Ireland, is as old as the human race itself. Of all human passions, that for political domination is the last to yield to reason. Men are naturally inclined to attribute admitted social evils to every cause--religion, climate, race, congenital defects of character, the inscrutable decrees of Divine Providence--rather than to the form of political institutions; in other words, to the organic structure of the community, and to rest the security of an Empire on any other foundation than that of the liberty of its component parts. If, in one case, their own experience proves them wrong, they will go to the strangest lengths of perversity in misreading their own experience, and they will seek every imaginable pretext for distinguishing the case from its predecessor. Underlying all is a nervous terror of the abuse of freedom founded on the assumption that men will continue to act when free exactly as they acted under the demoralizing influence of coercion. The British Empire has grown, and continues to grow, in spite of this deeply rooted political doctrine. Ireland is peculiar only in that her proximity to the seat of power has exposed her for centuries to an application of the doctrine in its most extreme form and without any hope of escape through the merciful accidents to which more fortunate communities owe their emancipation. Canada owes her position in the Empire, and the Empire itself exists in its present form to-day, owing to the accident that the transcendantly important principle of responsible government advocated by Lord Durham as a remedy for the anarchy and stagnation in which he found both the British and the French Provinces of Canada in 1838, did not require Imperial legislation, and was established without the Parliamentary or electoral sanction of Great Britain. Lord Durham was derided as a visionary, and abused as unpatriotic for the assertion of this simple principle. Far in advance of his time as he was, he himself shrank from the full application of his own lofty ideal, and consequently made one great, though under the circumstances not a capital, mistake in his diagnosis, and it was to that mistake only that Parliament gave legislative effect in 1840. By one of the most melancholy ironies in all history Ireland was the source of his error, so that the Union of the Canadas, dissolved as a failure by the Canadians themselves in 1867, was actually based on the success of the Anglo-Irish Union in repressing a dangerous nationality. Did the proof of the error in Canada induce Englishmen to question the soundness of the precedent on which the error was based? On the contrary, the lesson passed unnoticed, and the Irish precedent has survived to darken thought, to retard democratic progress, and to pervert domestic and Imperial policy to this very day. It even had the truly extraordinary retrospective effect of obliterating from the minds of many eminent statesmen the significance of the Canadian parallel; for it is only six years ago that a Secretary of State for the Colonies penned a despatch recommending for the Transvaal a form of government similar to that which actually produced the Canadian disorders of 1837, and supporting it by an argument whose effect was not merely to resuscitate what time had proved to be false in Durham's doctrine, but to discard what time had proved to be true. As for Ireland herself, I know no more curious illustration of the strong tendency, even on the part of the most fair-minded men, to place that country outside the pale of social or political science, and of the extreme reluctance to judge its inhabitants by the elementary standards of human conduct, than the book to which I referred above--Mr. Locker-Lampson's "A Consideration of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century." For what he admits to be the ruinous results of British Government in the past, the author in the last few pages of a lengthy volume has no better cure to suggest than a continuance of British government, and he defends this course by a terse enumeration of the very phenomena which in Durham's opinion rendered the grant of Home Rule to Canada imperative, concluding with a paragraph which, with the substitution of "Canada" for "Ireland," constitutes an admirably condensed epitome of the arguments used both by politicians at home, and the minorities in Canada, in favour of Durham's error and against the truth he established. Mr. Lecky represents a somewhat different school of thought, and reached his Unionism by reasoning more profound and consistent, but, on the other hand, wholly destructive of the Imperial theory as held by the modern school of Imperialists. His fear and distrust of democracy in all its forms and in all lands[2] was such that he naturally dreaded Irish Nationalism, which is a form of democratic revolt suppressed so long and by such harsh methods as to exhibit features easily open to criticism. But the gist of his argument would have applied just as well to the political evolution of the self-governing Colonies. Indeed, if he had lived to see the last Imperial Conference, the pessimism of so clear a thinker would assuredly have given way before the astounding contrast between those countries in which his political philosophy had been abjured, and the only white country in the Empire where by sheer force it had been maintained intact. If my only object in writing were to contribute something toward the dissipation of the fears and doubts which render it so hard to carry any measure, however small, of Home Rule for Ireland, I should hope for little success. Practical men, with a practical decision to make, rarely look outside the immediate facts before them. Extremists, in a case like that of Ireland, are reluctant to take account of what Lord Morley calls "the fundamental probabilities of civil society." Sir Edward Carson would be more than human if he were to be influenced by a demonstration that the case he makes against Home Rule is the same as that made by the minority leaders, not only in the French, but in the British Province of Canada. Most of the minority to which he appeals would now regard as an ill-timed paradox the view that the very vigour of their opposition to Home Rule is a better omen for the success of Home Rule than that kind of sapless Nationalism, astonishingly rare in Ireland under the circumstances, which is inclined to yield to the insidious temptation of setting the "eleemosynary benefits"--to use Mr. Walter Long's phrase[3]--derived from the British connection above the need for self-help and self-reliance. The real paradox is that any Irishmen, Unionist or Nationalist, should tolerate advisers who, however sincere and patriotic, avowedly regard Ireland as the parasite of Great Britain; who appeal to the lower nature of her people; to the fears of one section and the cupidity of both; advising Unionists to rely on British power and all Irishmen on British alms. A day will come when the humiliation will be seen in its true light. Even now, I do venture to appeal to that small but powerful group of moderate Irish Unionists who, so far from fearing revenge or soliciting charity, spend their whole lives in the noble aim of uniting Irishmen of all creeds on a basis of common endeavour for their own economic and spiritual salvation; who find their work checked in a thousand ways by the perpetual maintenance of a seemingly barren and sentimental agitation; who distrust both the parties to this agitation; but who are reluctant to accept the view that, without the satisfaction of the national claim, and without the national responsibility thereby conferred, their own aims can never be fully attained. I should be happy indeed if I could do even a little towards persuading some of these men that they mistake cause and effect; misinterpret what they resent; misjudge where they distrust, and in standing aloof from the battle for legislative autonomy, unconsciously concede a point--disinterested, constructive optimists as they are--to the interested and destructive pessimism which, from Clare's savage insults to Mr. Walter Long's contemptuous patronage, has always lain at the root of British policy towards Ireland. In the meantime, for those who like or dislike it, Home Rule is imminent. We are face to face no longer with a highly speculative, but with a vividly practical problem, raising legislative and administrative questions of enormous practical importance, and next year we shall be dealing with this problem in an atmosphere of genuine reality totally unlike that of 1886, when Home Rule was a startling novelty to the British electorate, or of 1893, when the shadow of impending defeat clouded debate and weakened counsel. It would be pleasant to think that the time which has elapsed, besides greatly mitigating anti-Irish prejudice, had been used for scientific study and dispassionate discussion of the problem of Home Rule. Unfortunately, after eighteen years the problem remains almost exactly where it was. There are no detailed proposals of an authoritative character in existence. No concrete scheme was submitted to the country in the recent elections. None is before the country now. The reason, of course, is that the Irish question is still an acute party question, not merely in Ireland, but in Great Britain. Party passion invariably discourages patient constructive thought, and all legislation associated with it suffers in consequence. Tactical considerations, sometimes altogether irrelevant to the special issue, have to be considered. In the case of Home Rule, when the balance of parties is positively determined by the Irish vote, the difficulty reaches its climax. It is idle to blame individuals. We should blame the Union. So long as one island democracy claims to determine the destinies of another island democracy, of whose special needs and circumstances it is admittedly ignorant, so long will both islands suffer. This ignorance is not disputed. No Irish Unionist claims that Great Britain should govern Ireland on the ground that the British electorate, or even British statesmen, understand Irish questions. On the contrary, in Ireland, at any rate, their ignorance is a matter for satirical comment with all parties. What he complains of is, that the British electorate is beginning to carry its ignorance to the point of believing that the Irish electorate is competent to decide Irish questions, and in educating the British electorate he has hitherto devoted himself exclusively to the eradication of this error. The financial results of the Union are such that he is now being cajoled into adding, "It is your money, not your wisdom, that we want." Once more, an odd state of affairs, and some day we shall all marvel in retrospect that the Union was so long sustained by a separatist argument, reinforced in latter days by such an inconsistent and unconscionable claim. In the meantime, if only the present situation can be turned to advantage, this crowning paradox is the most hopeful element in the whole of a tangled question. It is not only that the British elector is likely to revolt at once against the slur upon his intelligence and the drain upon his purse, but that Irish Unionism, once convinced of the tenacity and sincerity of that revolt, is likely to undergo a dramatic and beneficent transformation. If they are to have Home Rule, Irish Unionists--even those who now most heartily detest it--will want the best possible scheme of Home Rule, and the best possible scheme is not likely to be the half measure which, from no fault of the statesman responsible for it, tactical difficulties may make inevitable. If the vital energy now poured into sheer uncompromising opposition to the principles of Home Rule could be transmuted into intellectual and moral effort after the best form of Home Rule, I believe that the result would be a drastic scheme. Compromise enters more or less into the settlement of all burning political questions. That is inevitable under the party system; but of all questions under the sun, Home Rule questions are the least susceptible of compromise so engendered. The subject, in reality, is not suitable for settlement at Westminster. This is a matter of experience, not of assertion. Within the present bounds of the Empire no lasting Constitution has ever been framed for a subordinate State to the moulding of which Parliament, in the character of a party assembly, contributed an active share. Constitutions which promote prosperity and loyalty have actually or virtually been framed by those who were to live under them. If circumstances make it impossible to adopt this course for Ireland, let us nevertheless remember that all the friction and enmity between the Mother Country and subordinate States have arisen, not from the absence, but from the inadequacy of self-governing powers. Checks and restrictions, so far from benefiting Great Britain or the Colonies, have damaged both in different degrees, the Colonies suffering most because these checks and restrictions produce in the country submitted to them peculiar mischiefs which exist neither under a despotic régime nor an unnatural Legislative Union, fruitful of evil as both those systems are. The damage is not evanescent, but is apt to bite deep into national character and to survive the abolition of the institutions which caused it. The Anglo-Irish Union was created and has ever since been justified by a systematic defamation of Irish character. If it is at length resolved to bury the slander and trust Ireland, in the name of justice and reason let the trust be complete and the institutions given her such as to permit full play to her best instincts and tendencies, not such as to deflect them into wrong paths. Let us be scrupulously careful to avoid mistakes which might lead to a fresh campaign of defamation like that waged against Canada, as well as Ireland, between 1830 and 1840. The position, I take it, is that most Irish Unionists still count, rightly or wrongly, on defeating Home Rule, not only in the first Parliamentary battle, but by exciting public opinion during the long period of subsequent delay which the Parliament Bill permits. Not until Home Rule is a moral certainty, and perhaps not even then, do the extremists intend to consider the Irish Constitution in a practical spirit. Surely this is a perilous policy. Surely it must be so regarded by the moderate men--and there are many--who, if Home Rule comes, intend to throw their abilities into making it a success, and who will be indispensable to Ireland at a moment of supreme national importance. Irretrievable mistakes may be made by too long a gamble with the chances of political warfare. Whatever the scheme produced, the extremists will have to oppose it tooth and nail. If the measure is big, sound, and generous, it will be necessary to attack its best features with the greatest vigour; to rely on beating up vague, anti-separatist sentiment in Great Britain; to represent Irish Protestants as a timid race forced to shelter behind British bayonets; in short, to use all the arguments which, if Irish Unionists were compelled to frame a Constitution themselves, they would scorn to employ, and which, if grafted on the Act in the form of amendments, they themselves in after-years might bitterly regret. Conversely, if the measure is a limited one, it will be necessary to commend its worst features; to extol its eleemosynary side and all the infractions of liberty which in actual practice they would find intolerably irksome. Whatever happens, things will be said which are not meant, and passions aroused which will be difficult to allay on the eve of a crisis when Ireland will need the harmonious co-operation of all her ablest sons. If, behind the calculation of a victory within the next two years, there lies the presentiment of an eventual defeat, let not the thought be encouraged that a better form of Home Rule is likely to come from a Tory than from a Liberal Government. Many Irish Unionists regard the prospect of continued submission to a Liberal, or what they consider a semi-Socialist, Government as the one consideration which would reconcile them to Home Rule. No one can complain of that. But they make a fatal mistake in denying Liberals credit for understanding questions of Home Rule better than Tories. That, again, is a matter of proved experience. Compare the abortive Transvaal Constitution of 1905 with the reality of 1906, and measure the probable consequences of the former by the actual results of the latter. Let them remember, too, that every year which passes aggravates the financial difficulties which imperil the future of Ireland. The best hope of securing a final settlement of the Irish question in the immediate future lies in promoting open discussion on the details of the Home Rule scheme, and of drawing into that discussion all Irishmen and Englishmen who realize the profound importance of the issue. This book is offered as a small contribution to the controversy. For help in writing it I am deeply indebted to many friends on both sides of the Irish Channel, in Ireland to officials and private persons, who have generously placed their experience at my disposal; while in England I owe particular thanks to the Committee of which I had the honour to be a member, which sat during the summer of this year under the chairmanship of Mr. Basil Williams, and which published the series of essays called "Home Rule Problems." E.C. FOOTNOTES: [1] The two latter works were written by Mr. Lecky in his Nationalist youth the first and greater work after he had become a Unionist. They form a connected whole, however, and are not inconsistent with one another. [2] See "Democracy and Liberty." [3] "Did the people of Ireland understand that the destruction of the Union, so lightly advocated by Lord Haldane, must result in the cessation of those largely eleemosynary benefits to which the progress of Ireland is due, her 'dissatisfaction' would be unmistakably directed towards her false advisers?"--Letter to the _Belfast Telegraph_, October 7, 1911, criticizing Lord Haldane's preface to "Home Rule Problems." ERRATA Since this book went to press the Treasury has issued a revised version of Return No. 220, 1911 [Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland, and Ireland)], cancelling the Return issued in July, and correcting an error made in it. It now appears that the "true" Excise revenue attributable to Ireland from _spirits_ in 1910-11 (with deductions made by the Treasury from the sum actually collected in Ireland) should be £3,575,000, instead of £3,734,000, and that the total "true" Irish revenue in that year was, therefore, £11,506,500, instead of £11,665,500. In other words, Irish revenue for 1910-11 was over-estimated in the Return now cancelled by £159,000. The error does not affect the Author's argument as expounded in Chapters XII. and XIII.; but it necessitates the correction of a number of figures given by him, especially in Chapter XII., the principal change being that the deficit in Irish revenue, as calculated on the mean of the two years 1909-10 and 1910-11, should actually be £1,392,000, instead of £1,312,500. The full list of corrections is as follows: Page 259, line 9, _for_ "£1,312,500," _read_ "£1,392,000." Page 260, table, third column, line 6, _for_ "£10,032,000," _read_ "£9,952 500"; last line, _for_ "£1,312,500," _read_ "£1,392,000." Page 261, table, last column, last line but one, _for_ "£321,000," _read_ "£162,000"; last line (total), _for_ "£329,780,970," _read_ "£329,621,970." Page 262, line 7, _for_ "£10,032,000," _read_ "£9,952,500"; line 10, _for_ "£1,312,500," _read_ "£1,392,000." Page 275. table, last column, line 2, _for_ "£3,734,000," _read_ "£3,575,000"; line 7, _for_ "£10,371,000," _read_ "£10,212,000"; line 14, _for_ "£11,665,500," _read_, "£11,506,500"; in text, last line but one of page, _for_ "£10,032,000," _read_ "£9,952,500." Page 276, line 5, _for_ "£500,000," _read_, "£340,000"; table, last column, line 2, _for_ "£3,316,000," _read_ "£3,236,500"; line 3, _for_ "£6,182,000," _read_ "£6,102,500"; line 9, _for_ "£8,737,500," _read_ "£8,658,000"; last line, _for_ "£10,032,000," _read_ "£9,952,500." Page 277, line 2, _for_ "£1,672,500," _read_ "£1,752,000"; line 7, _for_ "£1,312,500," _read_ "£1,392,000"; line 8, _for_ "£10,032,000," _read_ "£9,952,500"; line 12, _for_ "£1,672,500," _read_ "£1,752,000"; footnote, line 1, _for_ "£1,793,000," _read_ "£1,952,000." Page 279, line 8, _for_ "70.75," _read_ "70.48." Page 282, sixth line from bottom, _for_ "£1,312,500," _read_ "£1,392,000." * * * * * Page 246, line 8 and footnote, and page 295, lines 21-31: A temporary measure has been passed (Surplus Revenue Act, 1910), under which the Surplus Commonwealth Revenue is returned to the States on a basis of £1 5s. per head of the population of each State. * * * * * Page 288, line 2, _omit_ "like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands." These islands have distinct local tariffs, but they cannot be said to be wholly under local control. THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE CHAPTER I THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA I. Ireland was the oldest and the nearest of the Colonies. We are apt to forget that she was ever colonized, and that for a long period, although styled a Kingdom, she was kept in a position of commercial and political dependence inferior to that of any Colony. Constitutional theory still blinds a number of people to the fact that in actual practice Ireland is still governed in many respects as a Colony, but on principles which in all other white communities of the British Empire are extinct. Like all Colonies, she has a Governor or Lord-Lieutenant of her own, an Executive of her own, and a complete system of separate Government Departments, but her people, unlike the inhabitants of a self-governing Colony, exercise no control over the administration. She possesses no Legislature of her own, although in theory she is supposed to possess sufficient legislative control over Irish affairs through representation in the Imperial Parliament. In practice, however, this control has always been, and still remains, illusory, just as it would certainly have proved illusory if conferred upon any Colony. It can be exercised only by cumbrous, circuitous, and often profoundly unhealthy methods; and over a wide range of matters it cannot by any method whatsoever be exercised at all. To look behind mere technicalities to the spirit of government, Ireland resembles one of that class of Crown Colonies of which Jamaica and Malta are examples, where the inhabitants exercise no control over administration, and only partial control over legislation.[4] Why is this? Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, always frank and fearless in his political judgments, gave the best answer in 1893, when opposing the first reading of the second of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills. "Does anybody doubt," he said, "that if Ireland were a thousand miles away from England she would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" Now this was not a barren geographical truism, which might by way of hypothesis be applied in identical terms to any fraction of the United Kingdom--say, for example, to that part of England lying south of the Thames. Mr. Chamberlain never made any attempt to deny--no one with the smallest knowledge of history could have denied--that Ireland, though only sixty miles away from England, was less like England than any of the self-governing Colonies then attached to the Crown, possessing distinct national characteristics which entitled her, in theory at any rate, to demand, not merely colonial, but national autonomy. On the contrary, Mr. Chamberlain went out of his way to argue, with all the force and fire of an accomplished debater, that the Bill was a highly dangerous measure precisely because, while granting Ireland a measure of autonomy, it denied her some of the elementary powers, not only of colonial, but of national States; for instance, the full control over taxation, which all self-governing Colonies possessed, and the control over foreign policy, which is a national attribute. The complementary step in his argument was that, although nominally withheld by statute, these fuller powers would be forcibly usurped by the future Irish Government through the leverage offered by a subordinate Legislature and Executive, and that, once grasped, they would be used to the injury of Great Britain and the minority in Ireland. Ireland ("a fearful danger") might arm, ally herself with France, and, while submitting the Protestant minority to cruel persecution, would retain enough national unity to smite Britain hip and thigh, and so avenge the wrong of ages. Even to the most ardent Unionist the case thus presented must, in the year 1911, present a doubtful aspect. The British _entente_ with France, and the absence of the smallest ascertainable sympathy between Ireland and Germany, he will dismiss, perhaps, as points of minor importance, but he will detect at once in the argument an antagonism, natural enough in 1893, between national and colonial attributes, and he will remember, with inner misgivings, that his own party has taken an especially active part during the last ten years in furthering the claim of the self-governing Colonies to the status of nationhood as an essential step in the furtherance of Imperial unity. The word "nation," therefore, as applied to Ireland, has lost some of its virtue as a deterrent to Home Rule. Even the word "Colony" is becoming harmless; for every year that has passed since 1893 has made it more abundantly clear that colonial freedom means colonial friendship; and, after all, friendship is more important than legal ties. In one remarkable case, that of the conquered Dutch Republic in South Africa, a flood of searching light has been thrown on the significance of those phrases "nation" and "Colony." There, as in Ireland, and originally in Canada, "national" included racial characteristics, and colonial autonomy signified national autonomy in a more accurate sense than in Australia or Newfoundland. But we know now that it does not signify either a racial tyranny within those nations, or a racial antipathy to the Mother Country; but, on the contrary, a reconciliation of races within and friendship without. Would Mr. Chamberlain recast his argument now? Unhappily, we shall not know. But it does seem to me that recent history and his own temperament would force him to do so. As in his abandonment of Free Trade, it was a strong and sincere Imperialist instinct that eventually transformed him from the advocate of provincial Home Rule into the relentless enemy of Home Rule in any shape. Take the Imperial argument, shaken to its foundations by subsequent events, from the case he stated in 1893, and what remains? Two pleas only--first, the abnormality of Irishmen; second, Ireland's proximity to England. The first expresses the old traditional view that Ireland is outside the pale of all human analogy; the exception to all rules; her innate depravity and perversity such that she would abuse power where others respect it, derive enmity where others derive friendship, and willingly ruin herself by internal dissension and extravagant ambitions in order, if possible, at the same time to ruin England. Unconnected, however loosely, with the high Imperial argument, I do not believe that this plea could have been used with sincerity by Mr. Chamberlain even in 1893. He was a democrat, devoted to the cause of enfranchising and trusting the people; and this plea was, after all, only the same anti-democratic argument applied to Ireland, and tipped with racial venom, which had been used for generations by most Tories and many Whigs against any extension of popular power. Lord Randolph Churchill, the Tory democrat, in his dispassionate moments, always scouted it, resting his case against Home Rule on different grounds. It was strange enough to see the argument used by the Radical author of all the classic denunciations of class ascendancy and the classic eulogies of the sense, forbearance and generosity of free electorates. It was all the stranger in that Mr. Chamberlain himself a few years before had committed himself to a scheme of restricted self-government for Ireland, and in the debates on Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill of 1886, when the condition of Ireland was far worse than in 1893, had declared himself ready to give that country a Constitution similar to that enjoyed by Quebec or Ontario within the Dominion of Canada. But politics are politics. Under the inexorable laws of the party game, politicians are advocates and swell their indictments with every count which will bear the light. The system works well enough in every case but one--the indictment of a fellow-nation for incapacity to rule itself. There, both in Ireland and everywhere else, as I shall show, it works incalculable mischief. Once committed irrevocably to the opposition of Mr. Gladstone's Bills, Mr. Chamberlain, standing on Imperial ground, which seemed to him and his followers firm enough then, used his unrivalled debating powers to traduce and exasperate the Irish people and their leaders by every device in his power. One other point survives in its integrity from the case made by Mr. Chamberlain in 1893, and that is the argument about distance. Clearly this is a quite distinct contention from the last; for distance from any given point does not by itself radically alter human nature. Australians are not twice as good or twice as bad as South Africans because they are twice as far from the Mother Country. "Does anybody doubt"--let me repeat his words--"that if Ireland were a thousand miles from England she would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" The whole tragedy of Ireland lies in that "if"; but the condition is, without doubt, still unsatisfied. Ireland is still only sixty miles away from the English shores, and the argument from proximity, for what it is worth, is still plausible. To a vast number of minds it still seems conclusive. Put the South African parallel to the average moderate Unionist, half disposed to admit the force of this analogy, he would nevertheless answer: "Ah, but Ireland is so near." Well, let us join issue on the two grounds I have indicated--the ground of Irish abnormality, and the ground of Ireland's proximity. It will be found, I think, that neither contention is tenable by itself; that a supporter of one unconsciously or consciously reinforces it by reference to the other, and that to refute one is to refute both. It will be found, too, that, apart from mechanical and unessential difficulties, the whole case against Home Rule is included and summed up in these two contentions, and that the mechanical problem itself will be greatly eased and illuminated by their refutation. II. Those sixty miles of salt water which we know as the Irish Channel--if only every Englishman could realize their tremendous significance in Anglo-Irish history--what an ineffectual barrier "in the long result of time" to colonization and conquest; what an impassable barrier--through the ignorance and perversity of British statesmanship--to sympathy and racial fusion! For eight hundred years after the Christian era her distance from Europe gave Ireland immunity from external shocks, and freedom to work out her own destiny. She never, for good or ill, underwent Roman occupation or Teutonic invasion. She was secure enough to construct and maintain unimpaired a civilization of her own, warlike, prosperous, and marvellously rich, for that age, in scholarship and culture. She produced heroic warriors, peaceful merchants, and gentle scholars and divines; poets, musicians, craftsmen, architects, theologians. She had a passion for diffusing knowledge, and for more than a thousand years sent her missionaries of piety, learning, art, and commerce, far and wide over Europe. For two hundred years she resisted her first foreign invaders, the Danes, with desperate tenacity, and seems to have absorbed into her own civilization and polity those who ultimately retained a footing on her eastern shores. With the coming of the Anglo-Normans at the end of the twelfth century the dark shadow begins to fall, and for the first time the Irish Channel assumes its tragic significance. England, compounded of Britons, Teutons, Danes, Scandinavians, Normans, with the indelible impress of Rome upon the whole, had emerged, under Nature's mysterious alchemy, a strong State. Ireland had preserved her Gaelic purity, her tribal organization, her national culture, but at the cost of falling behind in the march of political and military organization. Sixty miles divided her from the nearest part of the outlying dominions of feudal England, 150 miles from the dynamic centre of English power. The degree of distance seems to have been calculated with fatal exactitude, in correspondence with the degrees of national vitality in the two countries respectively, to produce for ages to come the worst possible effects on both. The process was slow. Ireland was near enough to attract the Anglo-Norman adventurers and colonists, but strong enough and fair enough for three hundred years to transform them into patriots "more Irish than the Irish"; always, however, too near and too weak, even with their aid, to expel the direct representatives of English rule from the foothold they had obtained on her shores, while at the same time too far and too formidable to enable that rule to expand into the complete conquest and subjugation of the realm. "The English rule," says Mr. Lecky, "as a living reality, was confined and concentrated within the limits of the Pale. The hostile power planted in the heart of the nation destroyed all possibility of central government, while it was itself incapable of fulfilling that function. Like a spear-point embedded in a living body, it inflamed all around it and deranged every vital function. It prevented the gradual reduction of the island by some native Clovis, which would necessarily have taken place if the Anglo-Normans had not arrived, and instead of that peaceful and almost silent amalgamation of races, customs, laws, and languages, which took place in England, and which is the source of many of the best elements in English life and character, the two nations remained in Ireland for centuries in hostility." From this period dates that intense national antipathy felt by the English for the Irish race which has darkened all subsequent history. It was not originally a temperamental antipathy, or it would be impossible to explain the powerful attraction of Irish character, manners, and laws for the great bulk of the Anglo-Norman colonists. Nor within Ireland, even after the Reformation, was it a religious antipathy between a Protestant race and a race exclusively and immovably Catholic. It was in origin a political antipathy between a small official minority, backed by the support of a powerful Mother Country struggling for ascendancy over a large native and naturalized majority, divided itself by tribal feuds, but on the whole united in loathing and combating that ascendancy. Universal experience, as I shall afterwards show, proves that an enmity so engendered takes a more monstrous and degrading shape than any other. Religion becomes its pretext. Ignorance makes it easy, and interest makes it necessary, to represent the native race as savages outside the pale of law and morals, against whom any violence and treachery is justifiable. The legend grows and becomes a permanent political axiom, distorting and abasing the character of those who act on it and those who, suffering from it, and retaliating against its consequences, construct their counter-legend of the inherent wickedness of the dominant race. If left to themselves, white races, of diverse nationalities, thrown together in one country, eventually coalesce, or at least learn to live together peaceably. But if an external power too remote to feel genuine responsibility for the welfare of the inhabitants, while near enough to exert its military power on them, takes sides in favour of the minority, and employs them as its permanent and privileged garrison, the results are fatal to the peace and prosperity of the country it seeks to dominate, and exceedingly harmful, though in a degree less easy to gauge, to itself. So it was with Ireland; and yet it cannot fail to strike any student of history what an extraordinary resilience she showed again and again under any transient phase of wise and tolerant government. Such a phase occurred in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII., when, after the defeat of the Geraldines, for the first time some semblance of royal authority was established over the whole realm; and when an effort was also made, not through theft or violence, but by conciliatory statecraft, to replace the native Brehon system of law and land tenure by English institutions, and to anglicize the Irish chiefs. The process stopped abruptly and for ever with the accession of Mary, to be replaced by the forcible confiscation of Irish land, and the "planting" of English and Scotch settlers. Ireland, for four hundred years the only British Colony, is now drawn into the mighty stream of British colonial expansion. Adventurous and ambitious Englishmen began to regard her fertile acres as Raleigh regarded America, and, in point of time, the systematic and State-aided colonization of Ireland is approximately contemporaneous with that of America. It is true that until the first years of the sixteenth century no permanent British settlement had been made in America, while in Ireland the plantation of King's and Queen's Counties was begun as early as 1556, and under Elizabeth further vast confiscations were carried out in Munster within the same century. But from the reign of James I. onward, the two processes advance _pari passu_. Virginia, first founded by Raleigh in 1585, is firmly settled in 1607, just before the confiscation of Ulster and its plantation by 30,000 Scots; and in 1620, just after that huge measure of expropriation, the Pilgrim Fathers landed in New Plymouth. Puritan Massachusetts--with its offshoots, Connecticut, New Haven and Rhode Island--as well as Catholic Maryland, were formally established between 1629 and 1638, and Maine in 1639, at a period when the politically inspired proscription of the Catholic religion, succeeding the robbery of the soil, was goading the unhappy Irish to the rebellion of 1641. While that rebellion, with its fierce excesses and pitiless reprisals, was convulsing Ireland, the united Colonies of New England banded themselves together for mutual defence. A few years later Cromwell, aiming, through massacre and rapine, at the extermination of the Irish race, with the savage watchword "To Hell or Connaught," planted Ulster, Munster, and Leinster with men of the same stock, stamp, and ideas as the colonists of New England, and in the first years of the Restoration Charles II. confirmed these confiscations, at the same time that he granted Carolina to Lord Clarendon, New Netherlands to the Duke of York, and New Jersey to Lord Berkeley, and issued fresh Charters for Connecticut and Maryland. Finally, Quaker Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1682, and in 1691 William III., after the hopeless Jacobite insurrections in favour of the last of the Stuarts, wrung the last million acres of good Irish land from the old Catholic proprietors, planted them with Protestant Englishmen, and completed the colonization of Ireland. Forty years passed (1733) before Georgia, the last of the "Old Thirteen Colonies," was planted, as Ulster had been planted, mainly by Scotch Presbyterians. During the greater part of this period we must remember that conquered Ireland herself was contributing to the colonization of America. Every successive act of spoliation drove Catholic Irishmen across the Atlantic as well as into Europe, and gave every Colony an infusion of Irish blood. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century this class of emigration was for the most part involuntary. Cromwell, for example, shipped off thousands of families indiscriminately to the West Indies and America for sale, as "servants" to the colonists. The only organized and voluntary expedition in which Irish Catholics took part was that to Maryland under Lord Baltimore. The distinction in course of time became immaterial. In the free American air English, Scotch, and Irish became one people, with a common political and social tradition. It is interesting, and for a proper understanding of the Irish question, indispensable, briefly to contrast the characteristics and progress of the American and Irish settlements, and in doing so to observe the profound effects of geographical position and political institutions on human character. I shall afterwards ask the reader to include in the comparison the later British Colonies formed in Canada and South Africa by conquest, and in Australia by peaceful settlement. Let us note, first, that both in America and Ireland the Colonies were bi-racial, with this all-important distinction, that in America the native race was coloured, savage, heathen, nomadic, incapable of fusion with the whites, and, in relation to the almost illimitable territory colonized, not numerous; while in Ireland the native race was white, civilized, Christian, numerous, and confined within the limits of a small island to which it was passionately attached by treasured national traditions, and whose soil it cultivated under an ancient and revered system of tribal tenure. The parallel, then, in this respect, is slight, and becomes insignificant, except in regard to the similarity of the mental attitude of the colonists towards Indians and Irish respectively. In natural humanity the colonists of Ireland and the colonists of America differed in no appreciable degree. They were the same men, with the same inherent virtues and defects, acting according to the pressure of environment. Danger, in proportionate degree, made both classes brutal and perfidious; but in America, though there were moments of sharp crisis, as in 1675 on the borders of Massachusetts, the degree was comparatively small, and through the defeat and extrusion of the Indians diminished steadily. In Ireland, because complete expulsion and extermination were impossible, the degree was originally great, and, long after it had actually disappeared, haunted the imagination and distorted the policy of the invading nation. In America there was no land question. Freeholds were plentiful for the meanest settlers and the title was sound and indisputable. In the "proprietary" Colonies, it is true, vast tracts of country were originally vested by royal grants in a single nobleman or a group of capitalists, just as vast estates were granted in Ireland to peers, London companies, and syndicates of "undertakers"; but by the nature of things, the extent of territory, its distance, and the absence of a white subject race, no agrarian harm resulted in America, and a healthy system of tenure, almost exclusively freehold, was naturally evolved. In Ireland the land question was the whole question from the first. If the natives had been exterminated, or their remnants wholly confined, as Cromwell planned, to the barren lands of Connaught, all might have been well for the conquerors. Or if Ireland had been, in Mr. Chamberlain's phrase, a thousand miles away, all might have come right under the compulsion of circumstances and the healing influence of time. That the Celtic race still possessed its strong powers of assimilation was shown by the almost complete denationalization and absorption of a large number of Cromwell's soldier-colonists in the south and south-east under what Mr. Lecky calls the "invincible Catholicism" of the Irish women. But the Irish were not only numerous, but fatally near the seat of Empire. The natives--Irish or Anglo-Irish--were still more than twice as numerous as the colonists; they were scattered over the whole country, barren or fertile, and that country was within a day's sail of England. The titles of the colonists to the land rested on sheer violence, sometimes aggravated by the grossest meanness and treachery, and these titles were not recognized by the plundered race. Even with their gradual recognition it would have been difficult to introduce the English system of tenure, which was radically different and repellent to the Irish mind. The bare idea of one man absolutely owning land and transmitting it entire to his heirs was incomprehensible to them. The solution for all these difficulties was unfortunately only too easy and obvious. England was near, strong, and thoroughly imbued with the policy of governing Ireland on the principle of antagonizing the races within her. It was possible, therefore, by English help, under laws made in England, to constitute the Irish outlaws from the land, labourers on it, no doubt, that was an economic necessity, precarious occupiers of plots just sufficient to support life; but, in the eyes of the law, serfs. The planters of the southern American Colonies imported African negroes for the same purpose, with irretrievably mischievous results to their own descendants. Nor is it an exaggeration to compare the use made of the Irish for a certain period to the use made of these negroes, for great numbers of the Irish were actually exported as slaves to Barbadoes, Jamaica, and even to Carolina. The outlawed multitude in Ireland were deprived, not only of all rights to the land, but, as a corollary, of all social privileges whatsoever. "The law," said an Irish Lord Chancellor, "does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." The instrument of ostracism was the famous Penal Code, begun in William's reign in direct and immediate defiance of a solemn pledge given in the Treaty of Limerick, guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Catholics, and perfected in the reign of Anne. This Code, ostensibly framed to extirpate Catholicism, was primarily designed to confirm and perpetuate the gigantic dislocation of property caused by the transference of Irish and Anglo-Irish land into English and Scotch ownership. Since the rightful owners were Catholic, and the wrongful owners Protestants, the laws against the Catholic religion--a religion feared everywhere by Englishmen at this period--were the simplest means of legalizing and buttressing the new régime. I shall not linger over the details of the Code. Burke's description of it remains classic and unquestioned: "A complete system full of coherence and consistency, well digested and composed in all its parts ... a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." The aim was to reduce the Catholics to poverty, ignorance, and impotence, and the aim was successful. Of the laws against priests, worship, education, and of the bars to commerce and the professions, I need not speak. In the matter of property, the fundamental enactments concerned the land, namely, that no Catholic could own land, or lease it for more than thirty years, and even then on conditions which made profitable tenure practically impossible. This law created and sustained the serfdom I have described, and is the direct cause of the modern land problem. It remained unaltered in the smallest respect for seventy years, that is, until 1761, when a Catholic was permitted to lease for sixty-one years as much as fifty acres of bog not less than four feet deep. Long before this the distribution of landed property and the system of land tenure had become stereotyped. This system of tenure was one of the worst that ever existed on the face of the globe. It has been matched in portions of India, but nowhere else in this Empire save in little Prince Edward Island, where we shall meet with it again. In Ireland, where it assumed its worst form, violent conquest by a neighbouring power not only made it politic to outlaw the old owners, but precluded the introduction of the traditional English tenures, even into the relations between the British superior landlord and the British occupying colonist. The bulk of the confiscated Irish land, as I have mentioned, had been granted in fee to English noblemen, gentlemen, or speculators, who planted it with middle or lower-class tenants. A number of Cromwell's private soldiers settled in Leinster and Munster, and, holding small farms in fee, formed an exception to this rule. But the greater part of Ireland, in ownership, as distinguished from occupation, consisted of big estates, and a large number of the English owners, being only a day's sail from England, became, by natural instinct, habitual absentees. Others lived in Dublin and neglected their estates. Absenteeism, non-existent in America, assumed in Ireland the proportions of an enormous economic evil. In England the landlord was, and remains, a capitalist, providing a house and a fully equipped farm to the tenant. In Ireland he was a rent receiver pure and simple, unconnected with the occupier by any healthy bond, moral or economic. The rent-receiving absentee involved a resident middleman, who contracted to pay a stipulated rent to the absentee, and had to extract that rent, plus a profit for himself, out of the occupiers, whether Catholic serfs, Protestant tenants, or both, and usually did so by subdivision of holdings and disproportionate elevation of rents. Over three of the four Provinces of Ireland--for a small part of Ulster was differently situated--the middleman himself frequently became an absentee and farmed his agency to another middleman, who by further subdivisions and extortions made an additional private profit, and who, in his turn, would create a subsidiary agency, until the land in many cases was "subset six deep."[5] The ultimate occupier and sole creator of agricultural wealth lived perpetually on the verge of starvation, beggared not only by extortionate rents, partly worked out in virtually forced labour, but by extortionate tithes paid to the alien Anglican Church, in addition to the scanty dues willingly contributed to the hunted priests of his own prescribed religion. His resident upper class--though we must allow for many honourable exceptions--was the Squirearchy, satirized by Arthur Young as petty despots with the vices of despots; idle, tyrannical, profligate, boorish, fit founders of the worst social system the modern civilized world has ever known. The slave-owning planters of Carolina were by no means devoid of similar faults, which are the invariable products of arbitrary control over human beings, but there the physiological gulf between the dominant and subject race was too broad and deep to permit of substantial deterioration in the former. In Ireland the ethnological difference was small; the artificial cleavage and deterioration great in inverse proportion. For the greater part of a century, in every part of Ireland, tenancies of land, whether held by Catholic or Protestant, by lease or at will, were alike in certain fundamental characteristics. The tenant had neither security of tenure nor right to the value of the improvements which were invariably made by his own capital and labour. Even a leaseholder, when his lease expired, had no prescriptive claim to renewal, but must take his chance at a rent-auction with strangers, the farm going to the highest bidder. If he lost, he was homeless and penniless, while the fruits of his labour and capital passed into other hands. The miserable Catholic cottier was, of course, in a similar case, though relatively his hardship was less, since his condition, being the lowest possible in all circumstances, could scarcely be worse. Obviously, in a case where the landlord was neither the capitalist nor the protector and friend of the tenant, the possession of those elementary rights, security of tenure and compensation for improvements, was the condition precedent to the growth of a sound agrarian system. Their denial was incompatible with social order. Yet they were denied, and for one hundred and eighty years an intermittent struggle to obtain them by violence and criminal conspiracy degraded and retarded Ireland. But a marked distinction grew up between a small portion of Ireland and the rest. James I.'s plantation of Ulster had been far more drastic and thorough than any operation of the kind before or since. Later immigrants had flowed in, and at the beginning of the eighteenth century in the north-eastern portion--the predominantly Protestant Ulster of to-day--Scotch Protestant tenants, mainly Presbyterian, were thickly settled, and formed an industrious community of strong and tenacious temper. In the original leases granted by the concessionaires in the seventeenth century, fixity of tenure was implied, and a nominal rent levied, somewhat after the American model; but under the example of other Provinces, and the economic pressure exerted by the growth in the Catholic population, these privileges seem to have been almost wholly obliterated. The absentee landlords, reckless of social welfare, exacted the rack or competitive rent. As in the south and west, tithes to the Established Church and oppressive and corrupt local taxation for roads and other purposes, aggravated the discontent. For agrarian reasons only--and there were others which I shall mention--many thousands of Protestants left Ireland for ever. It required a long period of outrage and conspiracy, attaining in 1770 the proportions of a small civil war, and at the end of the century, by the anti-Catholic passions it inspired, wrecking new hopes of racial unity, to establish what came to be known as the Ulster Custom of Tenant Right. If Protestant freemen had to resort to these demoralizing methods to obtain, and then only after irreparable damage to Ireland, the first condition of social stability, a tolerable land system, the effect of the agrarian system on Catholic Ireland, prostrate under the Penal Code, may be easily imagined. In addition to excessive subdivision of holdings and excessive tithes, rents, and local burdens, another agrarian evil, unknown in the vast and thinly populated tracts of America intensified the misery of the Irish peasantry of the eighteenth century. This was the conversion of the best land from tillage into pasture, with the resulting clearances and migrations, and the ultimate congestion on the worst land. Lecky quotes a contemporary pamphlet, which speaks of the "best arable land in the kingdom in immense tracts wantonly enjoyed by the cattle of a few individuals, and at the same time the junctions of our highways and streets crowded with shoals of mendicant fellow-creatures." This change from arable to pasture has been a common and often in the long run a healthy, economic tendency in many countries, England and Scotland included, though temporarily a fruitful source of misery. Under normal conditions the immediate evils right themselves in course of time. Nothing was normal in Ireland, and any breath of economic change in the outside world reacted cruelly on the wretched subject class, which produced, though it did not enjoy, the greater part of the wealth of the kingdom. Under an accumulation of hardships famine was periodic, and from 1760, when the first Whiteboys appeared, disorder in one degree or another was chronic. The motive, it is universally agreed now, was material, not religious. The Whiteboys of the south and west were the counterparts of the Protestant Steelboys and Oakboys of the north, and even in the south and west there were Protestant as well as Catholic Whiteboys. Lord Charlemont, the Protestant Irish statesman, denying this now well-ascertained fact, was nevertheless explicit enough about the cause of the disorders. "The real causes," he said, "were ... exorbitant rents, low wages, want of employment, farms of enormous extent let by their rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing land-jobbers, by whom small portions of them were again let and relet to intermediate oppressors, and by them subdivided for five times their value among the wretched starvers upon potatoes and water; taxes yearly increasing, and still more tithes, which the Catholic, without any possible benefit, unwillingly pays in addition to his priest's money ... misery, oppression, and famine."[6] Agrarian crime, operating through an endless succession of secret societies, Whiteboys and Rightboys in the eighteenth century; Terry Alts, Rockites, Caravats, Ribbonmen, Moonlighters, in the nineteenth, was rampant for nearly two centuries, long surviving the repeal of the Penal Code; and its last echoes may be heard at this moment. In the absence of all wholesome law, violence and terror were the only means of self-defence. The remedy applied was retaliatory violence under forms of law. Nothing whatsoever was done to remove the essential vices of agrarian tenure during the eighteenth century; nothing tentative even during the nineteenth century until the year 1870; nothing effective and permanent until 1881, when, as far as humanly possible, it was sought to give direct statutory expression to the Ulster Custom, with the addition of the principle of a fair judicial rent. Englishmen should realize this when they discuss Irish character. It is a very old story, but nine out of ten Englishmen, when talking vaguely of Irish discontent, disloyalty, and turbulence, forget, or have never learnt, this and other fundamental facts. As for the Irish landlords, we must remember that the founders of that class differed in no respect from other English landlords, or from the aristocratic American concessionaires, just as their compatriot tenants and lessees were identical in stock with the American colonists. Their descendants and successors have been the victims of circumstance. Each generation has inherited the vested interests of the last, and it is not in human nature to look far behind vested interests into the wrongful acts which created them and the bad laws that perpetuate them. Doubly victimized have been those resident landlords who at all periods, from the earliest era of colonization, in spite of temptation and bad examples around them, have acted towards their tenantry as humane and patriotic citizens. A bad agrarian system infects the whole body politic. Good landlords and contented tenants inevitably suffered with the rest. In commerce and industry, as in land, the Irish Colony stood at a heavy disadvantage by comparison with America. From the Restoration onward, English statesmen took the same view of both dependencies, namely, that their commercial interests should be wholly subordinate to those of the Mother Country, and the same Department, the Board of Trade and Plantations, made the fiscal regulations for Ireland and America. The old idea that for trade purposes Ireland counted as an integral part of the United Kingdom did not last longer than 1663. But it was not wholly abrogated by the great Navigation Act of that year, which, though it placed harsh restrictions on the Irish cattle trade with England, did not expressly exclude Irish ships from the monopoly of the colonial trade conferred upon English vessels, so that for seven years longer a tolerably prosperous business was carried on direct between Ireland and the American Colonies.[7] An Act of 1670, prohibiting, with a few negligible exceptions, all direct imports from the Colonies into Ireland, gave a heavy check to this business, arrested the growth of Irish shipping, and, in conjunction with subsequent measures of navigational, fiscal, and industrial repression, converted Ireland for a century into a kind of trade helot. She was treated either as a foreign country, as a Colony, or as something inferior to either, according to the dictation of English interests, while possessing neither the commercial independence of a foreign country nor the natural and indefeasible immunity which distance, climate, variety of soil, and unlimited room for expansion continued to confer, in spite of all coercive restraints, upon the American Colonies. Though the British trade monopoly was certainly a contributory cause in promoting the American revolution, it was never, any more than the British claim to tax, a severe practical grievance. The prohibition of the export of manufactures, and the compulsory reciprocal exchange of colonial natural products for British manufactured goods and the chartered merchandise of the Orient, were not very onerous restrictions for young communities settled in virgin soil; nor, with a few exceptions like raw wool, whose export was forbidden, were the American natural products of a kind which could compete with those of the Mother Country. The real damage inflicted upon the Colonies by the mercantile system--one which its modern defenders are apt to forget--was moral. To practise and condone smuggling was habitual in America, and some of the English Governors set the worst example of all by making a profit out of connivance at the illicit traffic. "Graft" was their creation. The moral mischief done was permanent, and it resembled in a lesser degree the mischief done in Ireland both by bad agrarian and bad commercial laws. Ireland, owing to her proximity, was in the unhappy position of being a competitor in the great staples of trade, both raw and manufactured, and she was near enough and weak enough to render it easy to stamp out this competition so far as it was thought to be inimical to English interests. The cattle and provision trade with England had been damaged as far back as 1663, and was killed in 1666, though the export of provisions to foreign countries survived, and became almost the sole source of Irish trade during the eighteenth century. The policy with raw wool was to admit just as much as would satisfy the English weavers without arousing the determined opposition of the competitive English graziers. The Irish manufactured wool trade, a flourishing business, for which Irishmen showed exceptionally high aptitude, and which in the normal course of things would probably have become her staple industry, was destroyed altogether, avowedly in the interests of the English staple industry, by prohibitory export duties imposed in 1698. Subsidiary industries--cotton, glass, brewing, sugar-refining, sail-cloth, hempen rope, and salt--were successively strangled. One manufacture alone, that of linen, centred in the Protestant North, was spared, and for a short period was even encouraged, not because it was a Protestant industry, but because at first it aroused no trade jealousy in England, and was in some respects serviceable to her. In 1708, when it was proposed to extend the industry to Leinster, considerations of foreign trade provoked an outburst of hostility, and harassing restrictions were imposed on this industry also. On the whole, however, it suffered less than the rest, and lived to become one of the two important manufacturing industries of present-day Ireland. English policy was as fatuous as it was cruel. Numbers of the Irish manufacturers and artisans, both Catholic and Protestant, emigrated to Europe, and devoted their skill and energy to strengthening industries which competed with those of England. Within Ireland, since industry and commerce formed the one outlet left by the Penal Code for Catholic brains and capital--though even here the Code imposed harassing disabilities--the commercial restrictions completed the ruin of the proscribed sect. But at this period the main source of weakness to Ireland, of strength to America, and of danger to the Empire as a whole, was the Protestant emigration. Lecky estimates that 12,000 Protestant families in Dublin and 30,000 in the rest of the country were ruined by the suppression of the wool trade. The great majority of these Protestants were Presbyterians belonging to North-East Ulster, and descendants of the men who had defended that Province with such desperate gallantry against the Irish insurgents under the deposed James II. Political power in Ireland was wielded in the interests of a small territorial and Episcopalian aristocracy, largely absentee. The Dissenters belonged to the middle and lower classes, and were for the most part tenants or artisans. Creed and caste antipathies were combined against them. Their value as citizens was ignored. Though their right to worship was legally recognized by an Act of 1719, they remained from 1704 to 1778 subject to the Test, were incapacitated for all public employment, and were forbidden to open schools. Under an accumulation of agrarian, economic, and religious disabilities, they naturally left Ireland to find freedom in America. And it is beyond question that they turned the scale against the British arms in the great War of Independence. FOOTNOTES: [4] Class C. in Sir William Anson's classification, "Law and Custom of the Constitution," p. 253. [5] J. Fisher, "End of the Irish Parliament" cited. [6] MS. Autobiography cited by Lecky, vol. ii., p. 35. [7] The best modern account of the commercial relations of Great Britain Mid Ireland is Miss Murray's "Commercial Relations between England and Ireland." CHAPTER II REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND In the Old World and in the New, therefore, two societies, composed of human beings similar in all essential respects, were growing up under the protection of the British Crown; the one servile, the other free; the one stagnant where it was not retrograde, the other prosperous, progressive, and, by the magnetism of its own freedom, progress, and prosperity, steadily draining its Irish fellow of talent, energy, and industrial skill. What was the ultimate cause of this glaring divergency? Religion, as a spiritual force, was not the root cause. The American Colonies, with three exceptions--the earliest Virginia, the latest Georgia, and the Catholic community of Maryland--were formed by Dissenters,[8] exiles themselves from persecution, but not necessarily forbearing to others, and, in the case of the New England Puritans, bitterly intolerant. It is interesting to observe that the Quakers and the Catholics, men standing at the opposite poles of theology, set the highest example of tolerance. Quaker Pennsylvania enforced absolute liberty of conscience, and Quakers in all the Provinces worked for religious harmony and freedom. Catholic Maryland, as long as its government remained in Catholic hands, and under the guidance of the wise and liberal Proprietary, Lord Baltimore, pursued the same policy, and attracted members of sects persecuted in New England.[9] The parallel with Ireland is significant. At the end of the seventeenth century, when a quarrel was raging between the Crown and Massachusetts over the persecution of Quakers in that Colony, and for a further period in the eighteenth century, Quaker missionaries and settlers were conducting a campaign of revivalism in Ireland with no molestation from the Catholics, though with intermittent obstruction from magistrates and Protestant clergy. Wesleyans received the same sympathetic treatment.[10] The tolerance shown by Irish Catholics, in spite of terrible provocation, is acknowledged by all reputable historians. Nor was Protestant intolerance, whether Anglican or Nonconformist, of a deeper dogmatic shade than anywhere else in the King's dominions. But in Ireland it was political, economic, and social, while in America it was purely theological, and, moreover, purely American. The Episcopalian ascendancy in Ireland represented foreign interests, and therefore struck against Dissent as well as against Popery, and estranged both. The root of the American trouble, leading to the separation of the Colonies, was political and wholly unconnected with religion. The root of the Irish trouble, adventitiously connected with religion, lay, and lies still, in the Irish political system. Other evils were transient and curable; this was permanent. The Penal Code was eventually relaxed; the disabilities of the Dissenters were eventually removed; the commercial servitude was abolished, but the political system _in essentials_ has never been changed. Let us see what it was and how it worked at the period we are considering, again by comparison with America. Though the word "plantation" was applied alike to the colonization of Ireland and America, Ireland was never called a Colony, but a Kingdom. The distinction was not scientific, and operated, like all other distinctions, to the injury of Ireland. Neither country was represented in the British Parliament. In both countries the representatives of the Crown were appointed by England, and controlled, in America almost completely, in Ireland absolutely, the Executive and Judges. In Ireland the Viceroy was always an Englishman; in America, the Governors of a few of the non-proprietary Colonies were colonials, but most Governors were English, and some of the proprietary class were absentees.[11] In the case both of Ireland and America the English Government claimed a superior right of control over legislation and taxation, and in both cases it was found necessary to remove all doubts as to this right by passing Declaratory Acts, for Ireland in 1719, for America in 1766. The great difference lay in the Legislature, and was the result of different degrees of remoteness from the seat of power. America was profoundly democratic from the beginning, outpacing the Mother Country by fully two centuries. There was no aristocracy, and in most Colonies little distinction between upper and middle classes. The popular Assemblies, elected on the broadest possible franchise, were truly representative. Some of the Legislative Councils, or Upper Chambers, were elective also. Most of them, although nominated, and therefore inclined to be hostile to the popular body, were nevertheless of identical social composition; so that there was often an official, but never a caste, ascendancy. From very early times there was occasional friction between the Home Government, represented by the Governors, and the colonial democracies, over such matters as taxation, official salaries, quartering of troops, and navigation laws. Writs of _quo warranto_ were issued against Connecticut, Carolina, New York, and Maryland, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and the Charter of Massachusetts, after long wrangles with the Crown, was forfeited in 1684, and not restored until 1692, after a period of despotic government under Sir Edmund Andros. But for a century or more the system worked well enough upon the whole. Under the powerful lever of the representative Assembly, neutralized by the ever-present need for military protection from the Mother Country, and with the wholesome check to undue coercion set by the broad Atlantic, civic freedom grew and flourished to a degree unknown in any other part of the civilized world. In Ireland civic freedom was unknown. There was no popular Assembly. A wealthy aristocracy of English extraction and of Anglican faith, partly resident, partly absentee, and wholly subservient to the English Government, constituted the Upper House of that strange institution known as Parliament, and to a great extent nominated and controlled the Lower House through means frankly corrupt. Representation was almost nominal; close pocket-boroughs predominated, and seats were bought and sold in the open market. In the year 1790 more than a third of the Members of the House of Commons were placemen, 216 Members out of 300 were elected by boroughs and manors, and, of these, 176 were elected by individual patrons. Fifty-three of these patrons, nominating 123 Members, sat as Peers in the Upper House. Cash, places, and peerages, were the usual considerations paid for maintaining a Government majority. The Catholics, from three-quarters to five-sixths of the population, had neither votes nor members; the Dissenters scarcely any members and an almost powerless vote. The Irish Legislature, by an Act as old as 1495, the famous Poynings' Law, could neither initiate nor pass a measure without the consent of the English Privy Council, and the Declaratory Act of 1719 confirmed the power of making English Acts applicable to Ireland. Government in England itself was, no doubt, unrepresentative and corrupt at that period, and the people paid the penalty in full; but it was a national government, under the aegis of the national faith, and resting, however remotely, on the ultimate sanction of the people, just as American opinion, more democratically ascertained, continued to control the major part of American affairs. In Ireland the Government was systematically anti-Irish. There was no career for Irishmen in Ireland. Both Catholics and Dissenters were excluded from all civil and military offices; the highest posts were generally given to Englishmen born and bred, and the country, Episcopalian only to a fractional extent, was ruled by a narrow Episcopalian oligarchy of wealthy landowners and prelates, who bartered Irish freedom for the place and power of their own families and dependents. The conditions of this sordid exchange were the ground of the first important Anglo-Irish political struggle in the eighteenth century, when the English Viceroy, Townshend, succeeded in 1770-71, at the cost of half a million, in transferring the bribing power, and therefore the controlling power, from the "Undertakers," as they were known, direct to the Crown. There seems to have been no continuous English policy beyond that of making Ireland completely subservient to English interests and purposes, and often to purposes of the most humiliating and degrading kind. The Irish Pension List has earned immortal infamy. Jobs too scandalous to pass muster in England were systematically foisted upon the Irish establishment. Royal mistresses, a host of needy Germans, a Danish Queen banished for adultery, lived in England or abroad upon incomes drawn from the impoverished Irish Exchequer. Nor was it only a question of pensions. Quantities of valuable sinecure offices were habitually given to Englishmen who never came near the shores of Ireland. In short, the English policy towards Ireland was similar to Spain's policy towards her South American Colonies, minus the grosser forms of physical cruelty and oppression. Yet Ireland, like the American Colonies until the verge of the revolutionary struggle, was consistently loyal to the Crown both in peace and war. The loyalty of Catholic Ireland, poverty-stricken, inarticulate, almost leaderless, and shamefully misgoverned, does not, from the human standpoint, appear worthy of admiration, but it was a fact. The few Catholic noblemen outdid the Protestants in expressions of devotion; the Whiteboy risings were as little disloyal as religious. Not a hand stirred for James or his heirs when Jacobite plots and risings were causing grave public danger in England and Scotland. Catholic Lord Trimleston offered exclusively Catholic regiments with Catholic officers to George III. for foreign service in 1762, though they were vetoed by what his Viceroy Halifax called the "ill-bred bigotry" of the Irish Parliament. Nor was it till thirty years after that date that Protestant discontent, under intolerable provocation, assumed an anti-dynastic and Republican form. To compare the Imperial spirit displayed by America and Ireland in their views and action is difficult, partly because the various American Colonies differed widely, partly because there existed in Ireland no organ of government which could express popular feeling. Neither country, of course, paid any cash contribution to Imperial expenses, though both could fairly claim that the English monopoly of trade imposed an indirect tribute of indefinite size, while Ireland, in pensions, rents to absentees, and sinecure appointments, was drained of many millions more. American patronage was an element of substantial value to England, but it was not on the Irish scale. America on the whole, perhaps, showed less patriotic feeling than Ireland. With full allowance for the lack of sympathy and understanding shown by the British regulars to the American volunteers in their co-operation in the French wars, it can scarcely be denied that the colonists, together with much heroism and public spirit, showed occasional slackness and parsimony in resisting the penetration of a foreign Power which threatened to hem in their settlements from the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi. Ireland during the Seven Years' War, and until the Peace of Paris in 1763, maintained a war establishment of 24,000 troops. She maintained a peace establishment of 12,000 troops, and from 1767 onwards of 15,000 troops. There never seems to have been a whisper of protest from the Catholic population against these measures, nor, except in the matter of the American War, to which we shall come presently, from the Protestants. It may be added that, after 1767, Catholics in considerable numbers were surreptitiously enlisted in the ranks, in spite of the Penal Code, and from then until the present day have fought for the Flag as staunchly as any other class of the King's subjects. It never occurred to responsible English statesmen that here was ground, firm as a rock in America, and firm enough in Ireland, on which, if only they obeyed the instincts and maxims upon which England herself had risen to greatness, they might build a mighty and durable Imperial structure. That loyalty, to be genuine and lasting, must spring from liberty was a truth they did not appreciate, and to this truth, strangely enough, in spite of the lessons of nearly a century and a half, a numerous school of English statesmen is still blind. It was no doubt a fatality that the smouldering discontent both of America and Ireland burst into flame in the reign of a monarch who endeavoured, even within the limits of Britain, to regain the arbitrary power which had cost their throne to the Stuarts; it was an additional fatality that the standard of public morals among the class through which he ruled during the period of crisis had fallen to lower depths than ever before or since. Even incorruptible men were either weak and selfish or subject to some cardinal defect of temper or intellect which, at times of crisis, neutralized their genius. Chatham and Burke were the noblest figures of the time, yet Chatham, in his highest mood a nobler and truer champion of American liberty than Burke, was Minister--nominally, at any rate--when the Revenue Duties imposed upon the American Colonies in 1867 destroyed in a moment the reconciliation brought about by the repeal of the Stamp Act. Burke was surely false to his political philosophy in founding his American argument on expedience rather than on principle. Chatham was a thorough democrat, trusting the people, poor or rich, rude or cultured, common or noble, American or British. Burke, at a time when the reflection of the genuine opinion of the nation in a pure and free Parliament might have saved us, as his splendid orations could not save us, from a disastrous war, scouted Parliamentary reform, and took his unconscious share in playing the game of the most narrow coercionist Tories like Charles Townshend and George III. Of the interminable chain of fatalities which sicken the mind in following every phase of Ireland's history, Burke's rigid temperamental conservatism always seems to me the most fatal and the most melancholy. It is not that he, the greatest intellect Ireland has ever produced, made his career in England. By the time one reaches the period in which he lived one gets used to the expatriation of Irish brains and vigour, not only to England and America, but to Spain, France, Russia, and Germany. It is that his intellect was so constituted as in the long run to be useless, and on some occasions absolutely harmful, to Ireland, sincerely as he loved her, and often as he supported measures for her temporary benefit, and rejoiced in their temporary success. An incident occurred in 1773 which tested his worth to Ireland, and incidentally threw into strong light English views of Ireland and America at the period immediately preceding the revolutionary epoch. The Irish Government, not with any high social aim, but in desperation at the growing Treasury deficit, proposed a tax upon the rents of absentee landlords, and the fate of the measure, like all Irish measures, had to be decided in the first instance in England. North's Tory Ministry actually consented to it. Chatham, far from the active world, and too broken in health to influence policy either way, wrote a powerful plea for it; but a strong group of Whig magnates, themselves wealthy absentee proprietors of Irish land, signed a vehement remonstrance which carried the day against it, and the author of this remonstrance, of all men in the world, was the Irishman Burke, who, owning not an acre of Irish land himself, devoted all his transcendent talents, all the subtlety and variety of his reasoning, to clothing the selfish greed of others with the garb of an enlightened patriotism. He was wrong fundamentally about Ireland, and only superficially right about America. In the terms of this celebrated remonstrance, as illuminated by his own private correspondence, his consistency is revealed. By the very nature of things, he maintained, the central Parliament of a great heterogeneous Empire must exercise a supreme superintending power and regulate the polity and economy of the several parts as they relate to one another, a principle which, of course, would have justified the taxation of America, and which, save on the ground of expediency alone, he would certainly have applied to America. The proximity of Ireland helped his logic, and surely logic was never distorted to stranger ends. The "ordinary residence" of the threatened Irish landowners was in England, "to which country they were attached, not only by the ties of birth and early habit, but also by those of indisputable public duties," as though these facts did not constitute in themselves a damning satire on the system of Irish Government. They were to be "fined" for living in England, as though that fine were not the most just and politic which could be conceived, if it went even an inch towards establishing the principle that Ireland's affairs were the business of responsible resident Irishmen, or towards the further principle, enshrined in Drummond's celebrated phrase of seventy years later in regard to the agrarian system which these Whig noblemen shared in founding, that "property has its duties as well as its rights." Finally, argued Burke, heaping irony upon irony, the tax would lead directly to the "separation" of the two Kingdoms both in interest and affection. The Colonies would follow the Irish example, and thus a principle of disunion and separation would pervade the whole Empire; the bonds of common interest, knowledge, and sympathy which now knit it together would everywhere be loosened, and a narrow, insulated, local feeling and policy would be proportionately increased.[12] Such was Burke's Imperialism, as evoked by an Irish measure which struck at the root of a frightful social evil and of a vicious political system. But the idea expressed by Burke--the spirit of his whole argument--went far beyond this particular absentee tax or any similar tax proposed, as happened in one instance, by a Colony. It was the superbly grandiose expression, and all the more insidiously seductive in that it was so grandiose, of a principle which all thinking men now know, or ought to know, is the negation of Empire, which lost us America, which came within an ace of losing us Canada, which might well have lost us South Africa, and which has in very fact lost us, though not yet irrevocably, the "affection," to use Burke's word, of Ireland. We may call local patriotism "narrow and insulated," if we please, but we recognize now, in every case save that of Ireland, that it is the only foundation for, and the only stimulant to, Imperial patriotism. Chatham, an Englishman of the English, was nevertheless a better Irishman than Burke, and therefore a better Imperialist. "The tax," he wrote, "was founded on strong Irish policy. England, it is evident, profits by draining Ireland of the vast incomes spent here from that country. But I could not, as a Peer of England, advise the King, on principles of indirect, accidental English policy, to reject a tax on absentees sent over here as the genuine desire of the Commons of Ireland acting in their proper and peculiar sphere, and exercising their inherent exclusive right by raising supplies in the manner they judge best." Chatham, in short, applied precisely the same argument to Ireland as, in his memorable speeches of the next year (1774), he applied to America, and in both cases he was right. The only mistake he made was in his estimate of that travesty of a representative assembly, the Irish House of Commons, which, at the secret instigation of the Viceroy, though without actual coercion, eventually threw out a tax so distasteful to its English patrons. But the argument for financial independence remained unassailable, and eventually the Irish Parliament itself summoned up the courage to adopt and act upon it. It may seem almost impossible that in a body so corrupt and exclusive a national sentiment should have arisen. But every elective assembly, however badly constituted, contains the seeds of its own regeneration, and, under even moderately favourable circumstances, moves irresistibly towards freedom. The pity was that circumstances, save for one brief and invigorating interlude, were persistently unfavourable to Ireland. The task was enormous, demanding infinitely more self-sacrifice than even the ablest and most prescient of her Parliamentarians realized. Until it was too late, in fact, they never awoke to the true nature of the task, dazzled by illusory victories. Rotten to the core as the Irish Parliament was, they sought, strengthened by popular influences, to make it the instrument for freeing Ireland from a paralyzing servitude; and up to a point they succeeded, but they did not see that the only security for real and permanent success was to reform the Parliament itself. There the inveterate spirit of creed and class ascendancy, resting in the last resort on English military power, survived long enough to nullify their efforts. The American Revolution and the Irish revolutionary renaissance--the one achieved by a long and bitter war, the other without bloodshed--originated and culminated together, were derived from the same sources, and ran their course in close connection. In Ireland the movement was exclusively Protestant, in America unsectarian; but in both cases finance was the lever of emancipation. America, resenting the commercial restrictions imposed by the Mother Country, but not, until passion had obscured all landmarks, contesting their abstract justice, and suffering no great material harm from their incidence, fought for the principle of self-taxation--a principle which did, of course, logically include, as the Americans instinctively felt, that of commercial freedom. Ireland, harassed by commercial restrictions far more onerous, naturally regarded their abolition as vital, and the control of internal taxation as subsidiary. Apart from concrete grievances, both countries had to fear an unlimited extension of British claims founded on the all-embracing Declaratory Acts of 1719 and 1766. Unfortunately for herself, Ireland for seventy years or more had been steadily supplying America with the human elements of resistance in their most energetic and independent form, and robbing herself proportionately Approximately, how many Protestants belonging mainly to Ulster, whether through eviction from the land, industrial unemployment, or disgust at social and political ostracism, left Ireland for America in the course of the eighteenth century, it is impossible to say; but the number, both relatively to population and relatively to the total emigration, Catholic and Protestant, to all parts of the world, was undoubtedly very large. Mr. Egerton, in his "Origin and Growth of the English Colonies," reckons that in 1775 a sixth part of the thirteen insurrectionary Colonies was composed of Scots-Irish exiles from Ulster, and that half the Protestant population of that Province emigrated to those Colonies between 1730 and 1770. As the crisis approached, emigration became an exodus. Thirty thousand of the farming class are said to have been driven west by the wholesale evictions of the early seventies, and ten thousand weavers followed them during the disastrous depression in the linen trade caused by interruption of commerce with America. The majority went to the northern Colonies, especially Pennsylvania, took from the first a vehement stand against the Royal claims, and supplied some of Washington's best soldiers. A minority went to the backwoods of Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina, and were little heard of until as late in the war as 1780, when Tarleton began his anti-guerilla campaign in the South. Then they woke up, and became, like their compatriots of the North, formidable and implacable foes. Ireland and America, therefore, embarked on their struggle with the English Parliament in close sympathy. The treatise of Molyneux on Irish liberty was read with wide approval in America. Franklin visited and encouraged the Irish patriots, and the Americans in 1775 issued a special address to them, asserting an identity of interest. Chatham, on the eve of war, dwelt strongly in the House of Lords upon the same identity of interest, and in doing so expressly coupled together Irish Catholics and Protestants. Although united by interest and sentiment, Ireland and America entered on the struggle under widely varying conditions. The American Colonies were thirteen separate units, with only a rude organization for common action, and in each of these units there existed a cleavage of opinion, based neither on class nor creed, between rebels and loyalists. In spite of this weakness, the revolt was thoroughly national in the sense that it was organized and maintained through the State Assemblies, resting on a broad popular franchise. In Ireland, unbought and unofficial opinion was united against England. On the other hand, there was no national Legislature; only an enslaved and unrepresentative Legislature, tempered by a band of exceptionally brilliant and upright men, and continually thrust forward in spite of itself into bold and independent action by unconstitutional pressure from the unrepresented elements outside. Success so won, as we shall see, was delusive. We may note two important additional circumstances: first, the dense mist of ignorance in which, and largely in consequence of which, England began her quarrel both with America and Ireland. The average Englishman was probably even more ignorant of Ireland, which was sixty miles away, than of America, which was three thousand miles away. I am not at all sure that that fact is not true still. At any rate, it was true then. Yet knowledge of Ireland was more necessary, because her condition was bad in ways unknown in America. In all the essentials of material well-being, America was supremely fortunate, while Ireland was in the depths of misery. It is not that this misery went undescribed or unlamented, or that it was not realized by a small number of Englishmen. Some of the most famous writings of the time, from the mordant satire of Swift to the learned and elaborate diagnosis of Arthur Young, laid bare the hideous ravages wrought by misrule in Ireland; but they had little or no effect upon English statesmen, and were unread by the only classes from which, if they had had knowledge, proper practical sympathy might have come. Until Townshend's Viceroyalty (1767-1772) most of the Irish Viceroys were absentees for the greater part of their term of office, leaving the conduct of Irish affairs to English Bishops and Judges, the wisest and most humane of whom could make little or no impression on English official indifference. American Governors were at any rate resident, or mainly resident, and a few were good and popular administrators, though the information which most of them supplied to the Home Government showed a blindness to what was going on under their very eyes which would be incomprehensible if we did not know by experience that it is the invariable result of irresponsible rule over white men, whether at home or abroad. If, without the presence of race distinctions, it needed Parliamentary reform in England itself to force the ruling class to study with real sympathy the needs, character, and desires of their own people, naturally the same ruling class, sending out its own members or dependents to America, obtained the most grotesquely distorted notions of what Americans were and what they wanted or resented. "Their office," wrote Franklin of the Governors,[13] "makes them indolent, their indolence makes them odious, and, being conscious that they are hated, they become malicious. Their malice urges them to continual abuse of the inhabitants in their letters to Administration, representing them as disaffected and rebellious, and (to encourage the use of severity) as weak, divided, timid, and cowardly. Government believes all, thinks it necessary to support and countenance its officers," etc. The same spirit pervades the official correspondence of even the best Irish Viceroys of the eighteenth century, and ultimately had a far more disastrous effect in that there were at all times in Ireland ancient elements of social dissension which needed only skilful fomentation by her English rulers to ruin all hopes of reconciliation and unity. That phase was to come after the first Irish victories. For the present the system--for it can scarcely be called a policy--was to irritate all Irishmen and all Americans alike, irrespective of creed, class, or sentiment, and thus to create on each side of the Atlantic that dangerous phenomenon, an united people. The other noticeable point, admirably described by Mr. Holland in his "Imperium et Libertas," is the confusion of political ideas in regard to the status of white dependencies--a confusion greatly augmented by loose and misleading analogies with India and the tropical Colonies. Even a genius like Burke, as I have already pointed out, was misled. Chatham came nearest to the truth, but, naturally, the actual outbreak of war with America checked his political thinking, and threw him back on the bare doctrine of supremacy, right or wrong. It was not fully understood that there must be a radical difference between the government of places settled and populated by white colonists and of places merely exploited by white traders. All the prerogatives of the Crown and Parliament were theoretically valid over both classes of dependency, and to abandon any of them seemed to most men of that day to be inconsistent with Imperial supremacy. Honest and fair-minded politicians and thinkers tried in vain to reconcile local freedom with Imperial unity. We have the key now, though we have made no use of it in Ireland; but most of our forefathers not only had no glimmering of the truth when the fratricidal war began, but learnt nothing from the war itself, and remained unenlightened for sixty years more. If the renunciation in 1778 of the right to tax the Colonies, and the negotiations founded thereon, had led to a peace, it is quite certain that friction would have subsequently arisen on other points. The idea of what we now know as "responsible government" was unknown. Short of coercive war, there seemed to be only two altogether logical alternatives--complete separation and legislative Union. America obtained the one, Ireland was eventually to undergo the other; but it is interesting to remember that suggestions, rejected by Franklin as useless, were made for the representation of the American Colonies in the English Parliament, just as suggestions for a legislative Union between Ireland and England appeared intermittently all through the eighteenth century, long before such a Union was a question of practical politics. I need only briefly summarize the incidents which ended in the year 1782 with the final loss of the American Colonies, and the simultaneous achievement by Ireland of an apparent legislative independence. To take America first, the Stamp Act was passed in 1765, and, thanks to the tumult it created, repealed by the Whigs in 1766, though the Declaratory Act which accompanied the repeal neutralized its good results. The new Revenue Duties on glass, paper, painters' colours, and tea were imposed in 1767, reviving the old irritation, and all but that on tea were removed, after a period of growing friction, in 1770. Another comparative lull was succeeded by fresh disorder when in 1773 the East India Company was permitted to send tea direct to America, and Boston celebrated its historic "tea-party." The coercion of Massachusetts followed, with Gage as despotic Military Governor, and, as a result, all the Colonies were galvanized into unity. In September, 1774, the Continental Congress met, framed a Declaration of Rights, and obtained a general agreement to cease from all commerce with Britain until grievances were redressed. Fresh coercion having been applied, war broke out in 1775. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, by John Hancock, President of Congress and the descendant of an Ulster exile, and was first read aloud in Philadelphia by Captain John Nixon, the son of an evicted Wexford farmer. Another Irishman, General Montgomery, led the invasion of Canada.[14] The war, with manifold vicissitudes, dragged on for eight years; but the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, virtually ended the physical struggle, while the resolution of the House of Commons on February 27, 1782, against the further prosecution of hostilities, ended the contest of principle. The turning-point had been the intervention of the French in 1778, and the same event was to turn the scale in Ireland. There, for many years past, the public finances had been sinking into a more and more scandalous condition. Taxation was by no means heavy, but pensions and sinecures multiplied, and the debt swelled. Inevitably there grew up within Parliament a small independent opposition which would not be bribed into conniving at the ruin of Ireland, while even bought placemen were stung into throwing their votes into the Irish rather than the English scale. Frequent efforts were made to use the insufficiency of the hereditary revenue as a lever for gaining control of finance and for obtaining domestic reform. An Octennial Act, passed in 1768, went a little way towards transforming Parliament from a permanent privileged Committee, under the control of the Executive, into the semblance at least of a free Assembly, and the first dissolution under this Act, in 1776, produced the famous Parliament which, though elected on the same narrow and corrupt basis as before, in the space of six years first admitted the principle of toleration for all creeds, and wrested from English hands commercial and legislative autonomy. It came too late to avert--if, indeed, it could ever have averted--the implication of Ireland in the American War, its predecessor of 1775 having, in defiance of Irish opinion, subscribed an Address to the Crown, expressing "abhorrence" of the American revolt and "inviolable attachment to the just rights" of the King's Government, and having obediently voted four thousand Irish troops for the war. Nor, for all the impassioned eloquence of Grattan and Hussey Burgh, did the real driving-power of the new Parliament come from within its own ranks, but from the unrepresented multitude outside. A clause removing the test from Dissenters was struck out of the Catholic Relief Act of 1778, mainly owing to dictation from England, but partly from resentment against Presbyterian sympathy with the American cause. It was only in 1780, when the Presbyterians were enrolled in that formidable revolutionary organization known as the Volunteers, that a test which had excluded them from all share in the government of their adopted country for seventy-four years was repealed. As for the Catholics, the small measure of legal relief granted to them excited no opposition anywhere. Parts of the Penal Code, especially the laws against worship and the clergy, had become inoperative with time and the sheer impossibility of enforcement. The religion, naturally, had thriven under persecution, so that in spite of the Code's manifold temptations to recant, only four thousand converts had been registered in the last fifty years. The laws designed to safeguard the wholesale confiscations of the previous century had long ago achieved their purpose, and men were beginning to perceive the fatal economic effects of keeping the great mass of the people poor and ignorant. The real spirit of toleration shown in the enactments of 1778, the most important of which enabled Catholics to obtain land on a lease of 999 years, was small enough if we consider the quiescence of the Catholics for generations past, the absence of all tendency in them towards counter-persecution, or even towards intolerance of Protestantism in any of its forms, Quaker, Huguenot, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Methodist, in spite of their own overwhelming numbers and of the burning grievance of the tithes. Politically they were a source of great strength to the Government. When the Presbyterians condemned the American War, the Catholic leaders memorialized the Government in favour of it as warmly as the tame majority in Parliament. Conservatives by religion, their devotion to authority annulled all instincts of revenge for the hideous wrongs of the past. The Government, now on the verge of a war with the two great Catholic Powers of Europe, began to realize this, and to feel the wisdom of some degree of conciliation. After all, only four years before they had not merely tolerated, but established, the Catholic Church in the conquered province of Quebec, with the result that the French Canadians remained loyal during the American War. But neither the Government nor the finest independent men in Parliament--not even Grattan--entertained the remotest idea of admitting Irish Catholics to any really effective share in the Government which their loyalty made stable. That noble but hopeless conception originated later, as the dynamic impulse for commercial freedom and legislative independence was originating now, outside the walls of Parliament. The rupture with France in 1778 denuded Ireland of troops, and called into being the Protestant Volunteers; a disciplined, armed body, headed by leaders as weighty and respectable as Lord Charlemont. This body, formed originally for home defence, by a natural and legitimate transition assumed a political aspect, and demanded from a dismayed and terrorized Government commercial freedom for Ireland. For once in her life Ireland was too strong to be coerced. Punishment like that applied to Massachusetts was physically impossible. The bitter protests of English merchants passed unheeded, and the fiscal claims of the Volunteers, with their cannon labelled "Free Trade or this," were granted in full early in 1780. The moral was to persist. From 40,000 the numbers of the Volunteers rose in the two succeeding years to 80,000, and they stood firm for further concessions. The national movement grew like a river in spate; it swept forward the lethargic Catholics and engulfed Parliament. In a tempest of enthusiasm Grattan's Declaration of Independence was carried unanimously in the Irish House of Commons on April 16, 1782, and a month later received legal confirmation in England at the hands of the same Whig Government and Parliament which broke off hostilities with America, and in the same session. America took her own road and worked out her own magnificent destiny. Most of us now honour Washington and the citizen troops he led. We say they fought, as Hampden and their English forefathers fought, for a sublime ideal, freedom, and that they were chips of the old block. But let not distance delude us into supposing that they were without the full measure of human weakness, or that they did not suffer considerable, perhaps permanent, harm from the ten years of smothered revolt and lawless agitation, followed by the seven years of open war which preceded their victory. Washington's genius carried them safely through the ordeal of the war, and the still more exacting ordeal of political reconstruction after the war, but it is well known how nearly he and his staunchest supporters failed. The Revolution, like all revolutions, brought out all the bad as well as all the good in human nature. Bad laws always deteriorate a people; they breed a contempt for law which coercion only aggravates, and which survives the establishment of good laws. As I have already indicated, the dislike and the systematic evasion by smuggling of the trade laws during the long period when the revolt was incubating harmed American character, and probably sowed the seed of future corruption and dissension. However true that may be, it is certainly true that the American rebels showed no more heroism or self-sacrifice than the average Englishman or Irishman in any other part of the world might have been expected to show under similar conditions. Historians and politicians, to whom legal authority always seems sacrosanct and agitation against it a popular vice, who mistake cause and effect so far as to derive freedom from character, instead of character from freedom, can make, and have made, the conventional case against Home Rule for the Americans as plausibly as the same case has, at various times, been made against Home Rule for Canada, South Africa, and Ireland. Since all white men are fundamentally alike in their faults as well as in their virtues, there is always abundant material for an indictment on the ground of bad character. The Americans of the revolutionary war, together with much fortitude, integrity, and public spirit, showed without doubt a good deal of levity, self-seeking, vindictiveness, and incompetence; and whoever chooses to amass, magnify, and isolate evidences of their guilt can demonstrate their unfitness for self-government just as well as he can demonstrate the same proposition in the case of Ireland. Mr. J.W. Fortescue, the learned and entertaining historian of the British Army, has done the former task as well as it can be done. He denounces the whole Colony of Massachusetts--men of his own national stock--as the pestilent offspring of an "irreconcilable faction," which had originally left England deeply imbued with the doctrines of Republicanism. Having gained, and by lying and subterfuge retained, some measure of independence, they sank from depth to depth of meanness and turpitude. They struggled for no high principle, and refused to be taxed from England, simply because they were too contemptibly stingy and unpatriotic to pay a shilling a head towards the maintenance of the Imperial Army. It is always the "mob," the "ruffians," the "rabble," of Boston who carry out the reprisals against the royal coercion, and, like the Irish peasants of the nineteenth century, they are always the half-blind, half-criminal tools of unscrupulous "agitators." It has been, and remains, an obsession with the partisans of law over liberty all the world over that the fettered community, wherever it may be and however composed, does not really want liberty, but that the majority of its sober citizens are dragged into an artificial agitation by mercenary scribes and sham patriots--a view which is always somewhat difficult to reconcile, as students of American and Irish history are aware, not only with the facts of prolonged and tenacious resistance, but with the other view, equally necessary to the argument for law, that the whole community is sinfully unfit for liberty; and Mr. Fortescue falls into the usual maze of self-contradiction and obscurity when he tries to give an intelligible account of a war which lasted seven long and weary years, and yet was "factitious," initiated by an hysterical rabble, stimulated and sustained by the basest and pettiest motives, and which, he contends, was "the work of a small but energetic and well-organized minority towards which the mass of the people, when not directly hostile, was mainly indifferent." Happily, Mr. Fortescue's candour as an historian of facts gives us the clue to this strange tangle. We find no evidence that the sober loyalist majority who sustain one side of his argument, and whom we should expect to find crushing the revolt with ease in co-operation with the British regular troops, were, in fact, a majority, nor that they were either better or worse men, or more or less ardent patriots, than the mutinous minority, or the British regular soldiers themselves. Their loyalty, like the disloyalty of the other side, is sometimes interested and evanescent, more often sincere and tenacious; they are given to desertion, like Washington's troops, like Lee's and Grant's troops nearly a century later, like the Boer troops and like all Volunteer levies, which have somehow to combine war with the duty of keeping their homes and business afloat. We find, too, that a counter-current of desertion flows from the British, and still more from the German, regulars, also a natural enough phenomenon in what was virtually a civil war for liberty; so that "General Greene was often heard to say that at the close of the war he fought the enemy with British soldiers, and that the British fought him with those of America." And then Mr. Fortescue, ignoring the British side of the case, exultingly quotes against the Americans "the cynical Benedict Arnold, who knew his countrymen," and who said: "Money will go farther than arms in America." Yet Arnold, whose opinion of his countrymen Mr. Fortescue accepts as correct and conclusive, was himself, not a plain deserter, but a perjured military traitor of the most despicable kind. We may conclude, perhaps, after taking a broad view of the whole Revolution, that Washington not only knew his countrymen, who were Mr. Fortescue's countrymen, better than Arnold, but was a better representative of their dominant characteristics.[15] Mr. Fortescue is peculiar in the violence of his prepossession, and we know the source of that prepossession, a passionate love of the British Army, which does him great honour, while it distorts his political vision. I should not refer at such length to his view of the American War were it not that, whenever a concrete case of Home Rule comes up for discussion, his philosophy is apt to become the typical and predominant philosophy. Historical sense seems to vanish, and the same savage racial bias supervenes, whether the unruly people concerned are absolutely consanguineous, closely related, or of foreign nationality. Instead of a general acceptance of the ascertained truth that men thrive and coalesce under self-government and sink into deterioration and division under coercion, we get the same pharisaical assumption of superiority in the dominant people, the same attribution of sordid and ugly motives to the leaders of an unruly people, the same vague idealization of the loyalist minority, the same fixed hallucination that the majority does not want what by all the constitutional means in its power it says it wants, and the correspondingly fatal tendency to gauge the intensity of a conviction solely by the amount of physical violence it evokes, while making that very violence an argument for the depravity of those who use it, and a pretext for denying them self-government. All this is terribly true in the case of Ireland, and when I next revert to the American continent, the reader will observe that the same ideas were entertained towards Canada, the only white Colony left to the British Empire after the loss of the thirteen States. FOOTNOTES: [8] The origin of North Carolina is, perhaps, debatable. Nearly all historians have represented it as settled by Dissenting refugees; but Mr. S.B. Weeks, a Carolina historian, has written an essay to prove that this was not the case ("Religious Development in the Province of North Carolina," Baltimore, 1892). The Charter contained a clause for liberty of conscience on the instructive ground that, "by reason of the remote distance of those places, toleration would be no breach of the unity and conformity established in this realm." [9] "Church and State in Maryland," George Petrie. Lord Baltimore, the Catholic founder and Proprietary, enforced complete tolerance from the first (1634), and secured the passage of an Act in 1649 giving legal force to the policy, with heavy penalties against interference with any sect. In 1654 Puritans gained control of the Assembly, and passed an Act against Popery. A counter-revolution repealed this Act, but finally in 1689 the Church of England was established by law. [10] Lecky, "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," vol. i., pp. 408-410. [11] Until 1692 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, elected their own Governors. Massachusetts continued to have Colonial Governors, and sometimes New Jersey and New Hampshire. Proprietary Governments were gradually abolished and converted into "Royal" Governments like the rest. At the period of the Declaration of Independence two only were left--Pennsylvania and Maryland (see "Origin and Growth of the English Colonies," H.E. Egerton). [12] Lecky, "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," vol. ii., pp. 124-126. [13] Trevelyan, "The American Revolution," vol. i., p. 16. [14] See "The Irish Race in America," by Captain Ed. O'Meagher Condore. [15] "History of the British Army," vol. iii. CHAPTER III GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT We left Ireland in 1782 apparently in possession of a triumph as great as that of America, though won without bloodshed and without the least tincture of sedition; for the Volunteers of 1782 were as loyal to the Crown as the most ardent American royalists. In the light of political ideas developed at a much later period, we know that the American Colonies might have remained within the Empire, even if their utmost claims had been granted. Had the idea of responsible government been understood, it would have been realized that their exclusive control of taxation and legislation was not inconsistent with Imperial Union, but essential to it. Grattan and his Irish friends, ignorant of the true solution, honestly thought, in the intoxication of the moment, that they had solved the problem so disastrously bungled for America. The facts of ethnology and geography seemed to have been recognized. Ireland and England, united by a Crown which both reverenced, stood together, like Britain and the Dominions of to-day, as sister nations, with the old irritating servitude swept away, and the bonds of natural affection and natural interest substituted. That the close proximity of the two nations, however marked the contrast between their natural characteristics, made these bonds far more necessary and valuable than in the case of America, stood to reason, and, again, the fact was recognized in Anglo-Irish relations. America had fought rather than submit to a forced contribution to Imperial funds. Nobody in Ireland, in or out of Parliament, had ever objected in principle to an indirect voluntary contribution in troops, and now that the American War was ended, non-Parliamentary objections to one particular application of the principle had no further substance. Nor, as was shortly to be shown in the reception given in Ireland to Pitt's abortive Commercial Propositions of 1785, was there any objection to a direct contribution in money on a fixed annual scale in return for a mutual free trade.[16] The sun had surely risen over a free yet loyal Ireland. Never was there a more complete delusion. It would have been far better for Ireland if she had never had a Parliament at all, but had had to seek her own salvation in the healthy rough-and-tumble of domestic revolution. The mere name of "Parliament" seems perpetually to have hypnotized even its best members, and the illusion was at its highest now. Nothing essential had been changed. Commercial freedom was the most real gain, because it involved the definite repeal of certain trade-laws and the permission to Ireland to make what she liked and send it where she liked; but it was a small gain without some means of finding out what Ireland really liked, and translating that will, without external pressure, into law. The Parliament was neither an organ of public opinion nor a free agent. It was even more corrupt and less representative than before. It was as completely under the control of the English Government as before. The modern conception of a Colonial Ministry serving under a constitutional Governor selected by the Crown, but acting with the advice of his Ministry, was unknown. The English Government, through its Lord-Lieutenant, still appointed English Ministers in Ireland, and in the hands of these Ministers lay not only that large portion of the national income known as the hereditary revenue, but the whole machinery of patronage and corruption. Even the legislative independence was unreal; for majorities still had to be bought, Irish Bills had still to receive the Royal Assent, that is, English ministerial assent; so that powerful English pressure could be, and was, brought to bear upon their policy and construction. And the worst of it was that English pressure here and elsewhere meant then what it meant in the next century, and what it too often means now, English party pressure exercised spasmodically and ignorantly, in order to serve sectional English ends. In short, Ireland, so far from being a nation, was still virtually a Colony, subjected to the worst conceivable form of colonial Government, groaning under economic evils unknown in the least fortunate of the Colonies, and without the numerous mitigating circumstances and the hope of ultimate cure due to remoteness from the seat of Empire. On the contrary, nearness to England, and, above all, nearness to France, where the misrule and miseries of ages were about to culminate in a fearful upheaval of social order, complicated immensely the problem of regeneration in Ireland. What was the remedy? Parliamentary reform. The Volunteers saw this instantly. Parliament itself scouted the idea of reform, because it threatened the Protestant ascendancy. Any weakening of the Protestant ascendancy was unthinkable to Irish statesmen, even to Grattan, who in 1778 had coined the grandiose phrase that "the Irish Protestant could never be free until the Irish Catholic had ceased to be a slave," and who afterwards explained what he meant by saying that the liberty of the Catholic was to be only such as was "entirely consistent with the Protestant ascendancy," and that "the Protestant interest was his first object." Ascendancy, then, in the mind of the ruling class in Ireland was fundamental. What was its corollary? Dependence on England. Ascendancies, whether based on creed or property, or, as in Ireland, on both, cannot last in any white community without external support, and the external support for ascendancy in Ireland was English force without and English bribes within. There was the chain of causation, the vicious circle rather; and yet Grattan, who never touched a bribe, thought he had freed his beloved Ireland from the English influences which were throttling her. He could not see that the more he wrestled for the independence of a sham Parliament, while resisting its transformation into a real Parliament, the more he strengthened those influences, because he inevitably widened the gulf between Parliament and the Irish people. The glamour his brilliant gifts had thrown over the Irish Parliament only served to divert his own mind and the minds of other talented and high-minded men from the seat of disease in Ireland. Time and talent were wasted from the first over points of pride, trivialities which seemed portentous to over-sensitive minds; metaphysical puzzles as to the exact nature of the relations now existing between Ireland and England; whether the repeal of the Poynings' Act and the Declaratory Act were sufficient guarantees of freedom; whether Ireland herself should nominate a Regent or accept the nomination from England. Meanwhile, the sands were running out, and Ireland was a slave to a minute but powerful minority of her sons and, only through them, to England. Yet the heart of Ireland was sound. All the materials for regeneration were there. The Catholics, whom by an old inherited instinct Grattan professed to dread, were the most Conservative part of the population, so Conservative as to be unaware of the source of their miseries, without the smallest leaning towards a counter-ascendancy, and without a notion of sedition or rebellion. Paradox as it seems, if they leaned in any political direction, it was dimly towards the constituted authority of the day, the Irish Parliament. But the truth is that they were without political consciousness, behind the times, unappreciative of the new forces operating round them. In sore need of courageous and enlightened guidance from men of their own faith, they were almost leaderless. The leeway to be made up after the destructive action of the penal laws was so enormous that Catholic philanthropists had no time or will for high politics, and devoted their whole energy to the further relaxation of those laws, to the education of their backward co-religionists, and to the mitigation of poverty. For relief they instinctively looked towards the only legal source of relief, though the source of secular oppression, Parliament. But this was habit. The Catholics at this time were like clay in the hands of the potter, open to any curative and ennobling impulse. That impulse came, as was right and natural, from the Protestant side. The only healthy political organization in Ireland in 1782 was that of the Volunteers of the North, with their headquarters at Belfast. They represented all that was best in the Protestant population. They had won the practical victory, such as it was, Parliament, with all its flaming rhetoric, only the titular victory. They grasped the essential truth that Parliament was rotten, and that Ireland's future depended on its reform. Numbering some 80,000 or 100,000, they at once began to press for reform, and, since they had no constitutional resources, to overawe Parliament. Parliament at once stood on its dignity and on its civil rights against the "Pretorian bands." "And now," said Grattan in his magnificent way, "having given a Parliament to the people, the Volunteers will, I doubt not, leave the people to Parliament, and thus close specifically and majestically a great work." But the work was not begun. Parliament was the enemy of the people, and the Volunteers knew it. Now, what was the "people" in the minds of the Volunteers? Undoubtedly they did not, after a century of racial ascendancy, perform the miracle of accepting at once in its entirety the principle of absolute political equality for all Irishmen, Catholic and Protestant alike. Such mental revulsions rarely occur among men, and when they do occur are apt to produce reactionary cataclysms. But they did from the first give a real meaning to Grattan's vague rhetoric about Catholic slaves; from the first they made overtures towards the Catholics, and ventilated proposals for the Catholic franchise as a part of their scheme of reform ten years before that enfranchisement, without Parliamentary reform and therefore valueless, became a practical issue. For the present these proposals were outvoted, and the effective demand of the Volunteers, as framed in the great Convention held at Dublin in November, 1783, was for a purification and reconstruction of Parliament on a democratic Protestant basis. The Catholic franchise had been strongly supported, but by the influence of Charlemont and Flood rejected. It is, of course, easy to maintain in theory that a democratic Protestant ascendancy so designed was as incompatible with Irish freedom as an aristocratic and corrupt ascendancy; but nobody with faith in human nature or any knowledge of history, will care to affirm that the process of reform would have ended with the enactment of the Volunteer Bill. No present-day Protestant Ulsterman should entertain such a dishonouring doubt. Mercifully, men are so made that, if left to themselves, they go forward, not backward. A pure Assembly, formed on the Volunteer plan, stimulated by the enlightened conscience which such an Assembly invariably develops, by the discovery of the fundamental identity of interests between the great bulk of Catholics and Protestants, and by the manly instinct of self-preservation against undue English encroachment, would have moved rapidly towards tolerance and equality. But the Assembly which might have saved Ireland never came into being. The Volunteers were in weak and incompetent hands. The metamorphosis they had undergone from a body formed for home defence into a militant political organization found them at the critical moment unprovided with the right stamp of leader. Flood, who helped to draft their Bill, was a brilliant but unscrupulous and discredited Parliamentarian, and a fanatical advocate of an unimpaired Protestant ascendancy. Lord Charlemont, one of the most influential founders of the movement, and a man of the highest integrity, was lukewarm for reform, an aristocrat and an ascendancy man to the finger-tips, dreading the mysterious forces he had helped to call into being, and desirous to keep them, as he said, "respectable." Was it respectable for armed men to dictate to a Parliament, however just their cause? As often happens in the ferment of popular movements, the one leader who spoke undiluted truth and sense spoke it in florid and unmeasured language and was himself of a figure and behaviour little likely to inspire permanent confidence. This was the famous Bishop of Derry, called by Charlemont a blasphemous Deist, by Wesley an exemplary Divine, by Fox a dishonest madman, and by Jeremy Bentham "a most excellent companion, pleasant, intelligent, well-bred, and liberal-minded to the last degree." He was certainly vain and ostentatious, certainly a democratic free-thinker, but a full knowledge of his character is not of much concern to us. The point is that he was right about Ireland's needs, though the wrong man at the moment to drive home her claims. Many finer agitators than he have failed in causes just as good. Many without half his merits have succeeded. We shall find his Canadian counterparts later in the figures of Mackenzie and Papineau. The crisis came on November 29, 1783, when the Reform Bill reached Parliament, and was introduced by Flood, wearing the Volunteer dress. It was rejected on the first vote. No doubt the circumstances were humiliating, and if there had been any serious inclination in Parliament towards self-reform and the relinquishment of an odious and mischievous monopoly, we should freely forgive rejection. But there was little or none, as after-events proved, and the real humiliation lay, not in the dictation of the Irish Volunteers, but in the fact that the Volunteers themselves were overawed by a strong body of British regular troops, mustered for the occasion under General Burgoyne. The vicious circle was complete. Forced to choose between reform and dependence on England, Parliament chose the latter. And only a year and a half before Grattan had dazzled his hears with the words: "Ireland is now a nation ... _esto perpetua_." There are very few critical dates in Irish history, and of those few the night of November 29, 1783, was the most critical of all. It marked the climax of a brief and bright renaissance from the long stagnation of the eighteenth, and heralded a decline into the long agony of the nineteenth century, a decline concealed by the fictitious lustre which still hangs over the first decade of Grattan's unreformed Parliament, but none the less already present. The Volunteers, their grand opportunity lost, slowly broke up. Should they have used force, even under the threat of Burgoyne's guns? It would have been infinitely better both for England and Ireland if they had. Nothing but force could avail. Never would force have been better justified, for the very soul of a people "rang zwischen Tod und Leben." It is hard, nevertheless, to blame the Volunteers for not appreciating the full magnitude of the crisis and acting accordingly. They were ahead of their time as it was in the political instinct which taught them the vital importance of a reformed Parliament. They were far ahead of England, where the younger Pitt had failed to carry Reform a few months before, and was to fail again two years later when he urged reform for Ireland. They were even ahead of their time in religious tolerance--witness the Gordon riots in London two years before. Their Parliament wore the crown and spoke the regal language of a patriot Assembly. For five years they themselves had glorified justifiably in the perfect discipline and sobriety with which they had used their irregular power. Their most trusted leaders suggested that they would yet achieve their ends without violence, while the large majority of the Volunteers themselves were still as loyal to the Crown as the Catholics, and were inclined, therefore, to shrink from action which, although in itself not in the remotest degree connected with dynastic questions, involved a theoretical conflict with the Crown, and perhaps an actual collision with Royal troops. One of the last acts of the Volunteer Convention, before its dissolution, was to pass an address to the King expressing fervent zeal for the Crown, reminding him of their quiet and dignified behaviour in the past, and praying that "their humble wish to have certain manifest perversions of the Parliamentary representation of this kingdom remedied by the Legislature in some reasonable degree, might not be imputed to any spirit of innovation in them, but to a sober and laudable desire to uphold the Constitution, to confirm the satisfaction of their fellow-subjects, and to perpetuate the cordial union of the two kingdoms." This document might have been copied _mutatis mutandis_ from the American petitions prior to the war, and was to be reproduced almost word for word in Canadian petitions dealing with less serious grievances whose neglect at the hands of the Government did actually lead to armed rebellion. It must be taken, as Mr. Lecky truly says, as the "defence of the Convention before the bar of history." Drawn up by the most moderate and least prescient leaders, it was a vindication of the past, not a pledge for the future; for "from that time," as Mr. Lecky writes, "the conviction sank deep into the minds of many that reform in Ireland could only be effected by revolution, and the rebellion of 1798 might be already foreseen." The story of that transition, with all its disastrous consequences in the denationalization of Ireland, in the arrest of healing forces, in the reawakening of slumbering bigotries and hatreds, in the artificial transformation of Catholics into anti-English rebels, and Protestants into anti-Irish Loyalists, in the long agony of the land war, the tithe war, the Church war, and the loathsome savageries of the rebellion itself, is one of the most repulsive in history. It is repulsive because you can watch, as it were, upon a dissecting-table the moral fibre of a people, from no inherent germ of decay, against reason, against nature, visibly wasting under a corrosive acid. Typical figures stand out: the strong figure of Fitzgibbon, voicing ascendancy in its crudest and ugliest form; at the other extreme the ardent but inadequate figure of Wolfe Tone, affirming in words which expressed the literal truth of the case that "to subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country--these were my objects." Midway stands Grattan, the defeated and disillusioned "Girondin," as Mr. Fisher aptly calls him,[17] blind until it was too late to the errors which plunged his country into anarchy, and retiring in despair when he saw that anarchy coming. And on the other side of the water, Pitt, dispassionately prescribing for Ireland in 1784, while there was yet time, the radical remedy, Reform, patiently turning, when that was refused, to palliatives like mutual free trade in 1785 and the Catholic franchise in 1793; and meanwhile, with an undercurrent of cool scepticism, preparing the ground for the only alternative to Reform, short of a revolutionary separation of the two countries, legislative Union, and remorselessly pushing that Union through by the only available means, bribery. In this wretched story we seek in vain for individual scapegoats. Tracing events to their source, we strike against two obstructions, proximity and ignorance, and we may as well make them our scapegoats. If proximity had implied knowledge and forbearance, all would have been well, but it implied just the reverse, and prohibited the kind of solution which, after very much the same sort of crisis, and in the teeth of ignorance and error, was afterwards reached in the case of Canada and South Africa. The immediate cause is clear. The failure of Reform is the key to the Rebellion and the Union. In a patriotic anxiety to idealize Grattan's Parliament, with a view to justifying later claims for autonomy, Irishmen have generally shut their eyes to this cardinal fact, and have preferred to dwell with exaggerated emphasis on the little good that Parliament did rather than on the enormous evils which it not only left untouched, but scarcely observed. We must remember that it was not only a Protestant body, but a close body of landlords, with an infusion of lawyers and others devoted to the interest of landlords. In that capacity it was incapable of diagnosing, much less of remedying, the gravest material ills of Ireland. In the very narrow domain where the landlord interest was not concerned, as in industrial and commercial matters, Parliament seems to have acted on the whole with wisdom. It endeavoured to encourage industries, while refusing to squander its newly won commercial powers in waging tariff wars with Great Britain, where prohibitive duties against Irish goods still continued to be imposed. But Ireland was no longer an industrial country. All the encouragement in the world could not replace lost aptitudes or bring back the exiled craftsmen who, during a century past, had left Ireland to enrich European countries with their skill. The favoured linen industry alone survived to reach its present flourishing condition. The revival in other manufactures, even in that of wool, which was remarkably rapid and strong, seems to have been artificial and transient. No wonder; for, while Ireland had been stagnant for a century, her great competitor, England, had been steadily building up that capacity for organized industry which, under the inventive genius of Arkwright, Hargreaves, and Watt, and the economic genius of Adam Smith, made the last twenty years of the eighteenth century such a marvellous period of industrial expansion, and eventually converted England from an agricultural into a manufacturing nation. Ireland was hopelessly late in the race. On the other hand, the fertile land of Ireland remained as the indestructible source of wealth and the prime means of subsistence for the great bulk of the four and a half million souls who inhabited the country. Parliament seems to have been almost indifferent to the miseries of the agricultural population, wholly indifferent, certainly, to their source, the vicious agrarian system which it was the interest of its own members to sustain. Foster's famous Corn Law without doubt increased tillage, and, in conjunction with the inflated prices for produce caused by the French War, gave a powerful though a somewhat unhealthy impulse to the trade in corn. But it enriched only the landlords, and left untouched the real abuses, absenteeism, middlemanism, insecurity of tenure, rack-rents, and tithes. The Whiteboy risings of the sixties and seventies recurred, and were met with Coercion Acts as stupid and cruel as those of the nineteenth century. The tithe grievance, which festered and grew into civil war in the nineteenth century, was never touched. While tenants in North-East Ulster were painfully and forcibly establishing their custom of tenant right in the teeth of the law, the inhuman system of cottier tenancy, which was to last until 1881, became more and more firmly rooted in other parts of Ireland. None but a democratic Assembly could possibly have grappled with these evils; nor is there any reason to suppose that in the existing condition of Ireland a Protestant democratic Assembly, even if temporarily it retained its sectarian character, would have grappled with them less boldly and drastically than an Assembly composed of Catholics and Protestants. The material interests of nineteen-twentieths of the people were the same, while the education and intelligence belonged mainly to the Protestants. Ulster tenants had as much need of good land laws as other tenants. Tithes were as much disliked in the north as in the south. The Established Church was the Church of a very small minority, and its clergy, numbers of whom were absentees, were as unpopular as the absentee landlords and the absentee office-holders and pensioners. But with no redress, and, what is more important, no prospect of redress for the primary ills of Ireland, the centrifugal forces of religion and race had full scope for their baneful influence. And it was at the very moment when tolerance was steadily gaining ground among all classes that these spectres of ancient wrong were summoned up to destroy the good work. How did this come about? Let us remember once more that everything hinged on Reform. Reform gained a little, but suffered far more, by its association with the question of Catholic franchise, which was useless without Reform, while it was the corollary of Reform. Nothing is more remarkable than the growth of academic tolerance during this period, doubtful and suspect as the motives sometimes were. It is true that the great Relief Act of 1793, giving Catholics the vote and removing a quantity of other disqualifications, would scarcely have been sanctioned by the Parliamentary managers without the stern dictation of Pitt, whose mind was strongly influenced by the violent anti-Catholic turn just taken by the French Revolution; but, once sanctioned, it passed rapidly, and was received with universal satisfaction in the country at large. Without "Emancipation," that is, the permission to elect Catholics to sit in Parliament and hold office, the franchise was illusory and even harmful. In the counties the forty-shilling "freehold" vote ("freehold" was an ironical misnomer) encouraged Protestant landlords for another generation, before and after the Union, still further to subdivide already excessively small holdings, while the benefits to be derived from the admission to power of propertied Catholics, with all their intensely Conservative instincts, were thrown away. Emancipation apart, the franchise without Reform was a complete farce, for the boroughs, which controlled the Parliamentary balance, were the personal property of Protestant landlords, and the 110 Parliamentary placemen were indirectly their tools. As usual, the men of light and leading contributed unconsciously to the strength of a system which, in their hearts, as honest men, they condemned. Each of them had some fatal defect of understanding. Grattan became a strong Emancipator, but remained an academic and ineffectual reformer striving in vain to reconcile Reform with a passionate abhorrence of democracy and a determination to keep power in the hands of landed property. In England, which was Protestant in the Established sense, he would have done no more harm than Burke, who for the same reason fought Reform as strongly as Pitt and his father Chatham had advocated it. But in Ireland, which was Catholic and Nonconformist, landed property signified Episcopalian landed property, that is, the narrowest form of ascendancy. Charlemont was an even stranger paradox. He was an academic Reformer before Grattan, but not an Emancipator, arriving at the same sterility as Grattan through a religious bias which Grattan ceased to feel, a bias inspired, not by a fanatical fear of democracy in itself, but by a fear of Catholic revenge for past wrongs. These men and their like, admirable and lovable as in many respects they were, were useless to Ireland in those terrible times. Whether Emancipation, unaccompanied by Reform, had any real chance of passing Parliament in 1795, when the Whig Viceroy Fitzwilliam, the one Viceroy in the eighteenth century who ever conceived the idea of governing Ireland according to Irish ideas, came over from England with the avowed intention of proposing it, is a matter of conjecture. Fitzwilliam was snuffed out by Pitt, and recalled under circumstances which still remain a matter of controversy. All we can say with certainty is that the opinion of Ireland at large was absolutely ignored, and that English party intrigues and English claims on Irish patronage had much to do with the result. On the whole, however, I agree with Mr. Fisher that too much importance has been given to this episode, especially by Mr. Lecky, who devotes nearly a volume to it. The anti-national Irish Parliament was past praying for. Long before 1795 the Irish aristocracy had lost whatever power for good it ever possessed, and most of the resolute reformers of Wolfe Tone's middle-class Protestant school had turned, under the enthralling fascination of the French Revolution, into revolutionaries. Reform had been refused in 1782; again, and without coercion from the Volunteers, in 1783. It was refused again in 1784, against the advice of Pitt and at the instigation of Pitt's own Viceroy, Rutland, whom Pitt had urged--what a grim irony it seems!--to give "unanswerable proofs that the cases of Ireland and England are different," and who answered with truth that the ascendancy of a minority could only be maintained "by force or corruption." Every succeeding year showed the same results. Wolfe Tone was more than justified, he was compelled, to convert his Society of United Irishmen, founded in 1791, into a revolutionary organization and to seek by forcible means to overthrow the Executive which controlled Parliament and, through it, Ireland. Since the symbol of the Irish Executive was the British Crown, he, of course, abjured the Crown, though he had no more quarrel with the Crown as such than had the American or Canadian patriots. He simply loved his country, and from the first saw with clear eyes the only way to save her. Tolerance to him was not an isolated virtue, but an integral part of democracy. He took little interest in the Parliamentary side of Catholic relief, realizing its hollow unreality, and, in the case of the Bill of 1793, actually ridiculing the absurd spectacle of the Catholic cottiers being herded to the poll by their Protestant landlords. Nor was he even an extreme Democrat, for he advocated a ten-pound, instead of a forty shilling franchise. His original pamphlet of 1791 contains nothing but the most sober political common sense. His aim was to unite Irishmen of all creeds to overthrow a Government which did not emanate from or represent them, and which was ruinous to them. It is not surprising that he failed. Ireland was very near England. French intervention had been decisive in distant America, and the French Revolution in its turn had been hastened by the American example. But the intervention in Ireland of Republican France, for purely selfish and strategic reasons, without effective command of the sea, and with the stain of the Terror upon her, was of little material value and a grave moral handicap to the Irish Revolutionists. It is the manner of Tone's failure and the consequences of his failure that have such a tragic interest. A united Ireland could have dispensed with the aid of France. What prevented unity? Tone laboured to bring both creeds together, and to a certain degree was successful. Until the very last it was the Catholics, not the Protestants, who shrank most from revolution. Yet, in the Rebellion of 1798, the North never moved, while Catholic Wexford and Wicklow rose. The root cause is to be found in those agrarian abuses whose long neglect by the Irish Parliament constituted the strongest justification for Reform. The Orange Society, founded under that name in 1795, originated in the "Peep o' Day Boys," a local association formed in Armagh in 1784 for the purpose of bullying Catholics. There is no doubt that the underlying incentive was economic. Even when the Penal Code had lost in efficacy, its results survived in the low standard of living of the persecuted Catholics. As I pointed out in a former chapter, the reckless cupidity of the landlords in terminating leases and fixing new rents by auction, with the alternative of eviction, threw those Protestant tenants who did not emigrate into direct competition with Catholic peasants of a lower economic stamp, who because they lived on little could afford to offer fancy rents. Hence much bitter friction, leading to sordid village rows and eventually to the organized ruffianism of the Peep o' Day Boys. The Catholic Franchise Act of 1793, unaccompanied by Emancipation, actually intensified the trouble by removing the landlord's motive to prefer a Protestant tenant on account of his vote. Under ill-treatment, the Catholics naturally retaliated with a society known as the "Defenders," and in some districts were themselves the aggressors. Defenderism, in its purely agrarian aspect, spread to other parts of Ireland, where Protestants were few, and became merged in Whiteboyism. This had always been an agrarian movement, directed against abuses which the law refused to touch, and without religious animus, although the overwhelming numbers of the Catholics in the regions where it flourished would have placed the Protestants at their mercy. In Ulster both the contending organizations necessarily acquired a religious form and necessarily retained it. But at bottom bad laws, not bigotry, were the cause. There was nothing incurable, or even unique, about the disorders. Analogous phenomena have appeared elsewhere, for example, in Australia, between the original squatters on large ranches and new and more energetic colonists in search of land for closer settlement. Under a rational system of tenure and distribution there was plenty of good land in Ireland for an even larger population. Tone, who was a middle-class lawyer, seems never to have appreciated what was going on. So far from healing the schism, he appears to have widened it by throwing the United Irish Committee of Ulster into the scale of the Catholics against the Orangemen. But, in truth, he was helpless. Good administration only could unite these distracted elements, and without the Reform for which he battled, good administration was impossible. The dissension, widening and acquiring an increasingly religious and racial character, paralyzed Ulster, which originally was the seat of the Revolution. The forces normally at work to favour law and order--loyalty to the Crown, dislike of the French Revolution, and resentment at Franco-Irish conspiracies--gathered proportionately greater strength. The Southern Rebellion of 1798--a mad, pitiful thing at the best, the work of half-starved peasants into whose stunted minds the splendid ideal of Tone had scarcely begun to penetrate--was a totally different sort of rebellion from any he had contemplated. It was neither national nor Republican. The French invasions had met with little support; the first with positive reprobation. Nor was it in origin sectarian, although, once aflame, it inevitably took a sectarian turn. Several of the prominent leaders were Protestants. Priests naturally joined in it because they were the only friends the people had had in the dark ages of oppression. In so far as it can be regarded as spontaneous, it was of Whiteboy origin, anti-tithe and anti-rack-rent. But it was not even spontaneous; that is another dreadful and indisputable fact which emerges. The barbarous measures taken to repress and disarm, prior to the outbreak, together with the skilfully propagated reports of a coming massacre by Orangemen, would have goaded any peasantry in the world to revolt, and the only astonishing thing is that the revolt was so local and sporadic. General Sir Ralph Abercromby retired, sickened with the horrors he was forbidden to avert. "Within these twelve months," he wrote of the conduct of the soldiery at the time of his resignation, "every crime, every cruelty that could be committed by Cossacks or Calmucks has been transacted here.... The struggle has been, in the first place, whether I was to have the command of the Army really or nominally, and then whether the character and discipline of it were to be degraded and ruined in the mode of using it, either from the facility of one man or from the violence and oppression of a set of men who have for more than twelve months employed it in measures which they durst not avow or sanction." Abercromby's resignation, in Mr. Lecky's opinion, "took away the last faint chance of averting a rebellion." Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare, was now supreme in the Government, and henceforth represents incarnate the forces which provoked the Rebellion and founded upon it the Union. He had bided his time for a decade, watching the trend of events, foreseeing their outcome, and smiling sardonically at the ineffectual writhings of the men of compromise. He stands out like a block of black granite over against the slender figure of Wolfe Tone, who was his anti-type in ideas and aims, his inferior in intellect, his superior in morals, but no more than his rival in sincerity, clarity, and consistency of ideas. Clare was a product of the Penal Code, the son of a Catholic Irishman who, to obtain a legal career, had become a Protestant. He himself was not a bigot, but a very able cynic, with a definite theory of government. Tolerance, Emancipation, Reform, were so much noxious, sentimental rubbish to him, and he had never scrupled to say so. Ireland was a Colony, English colonists were robbers in Ireland, and robbers must be tyrants, or the robbed will come by their own again; that was his whole philosophy,[18] his frigid and final estimate of the tendencies of human nature, and his considered cure for them. Racial fusion was a crazy conception not worth argument. Wrong on one side, revenge on the other; policy, coercion. As he put it in his famous speech on the Union, the settlers to the third and fourth generation "were at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island." "Laws must be framed to meet the vicious propensities of human nature," and laws of this sort for the case of Ireland should, he held with unanswerable logic, properly be made in England, not by the travesty of a Parliament in Ireland, which, in so far as it was in any degree Irish, had shown faint but ominous tendencies towards tolerance and the reunion of Irishmen. He never took the trouble to demonstrate the truth of his theory of revenge by a reasoned analysis of Irish symptoms. He took it for granted as part of a universal axiomatic truth, and, like all philosophers of his school, pointed to the results of misgovernment and coercion as proofs of the innate depravity of the governed and of their need for more coercion. Anticipating a certain limited class of Irishmen of to-day, often brilliant lawyers like himself, he used to bewail English ignorance of Ireland, meaning ignorance of the incurable criminality of his own kith and kin. He was just as immovably cynical about the vast majority of his own co-religionists as about the conquered race. If, as was obvious, so far from fearing the revenge of the Catholics, their unimpeded instinct was to take sides with them to secure good government, they were not only traitors, but imbeciles who could not see the doom awaiting them. Yet Fitzgibbon's admirers must admit that his consistency was not complete. He was perfectly cognizant of the real causes of Irish discontent. He was aware of the grievances of Ulster, and his description of the conditions of the Munster peasantry in the Whiteboy debates of 1787 is classical. If pressed, he would have answered, we may suppose, that it was impolitic to cure evils which were at once the consequence of ascendancy and the condition of its maintenance. That other strange lapse in 1798, when he described the unparalleled prosperity of Ireland since 1782 under a Constitution which, in the Union debates of 1800, he afterwards covered with deserved ridicule as having led to anarchy, destitution, and bankruptcy, must be attributed to the exigencies of debate; for he was an advocate as well as a statesman, and occasionally gave way to the temptation of making showy but unsubstantial points. These slips were rare, and do not detract from the massive coherence of his doctrine. He remains the frankest, the most vivid, and the most powerful exponent of a theory of government which has waged eternal conflict with its polar rival, the Liberal theory, in the evolution of the Empire. The theory, of course, extends much farther than the bi-racial Irish case, to which Fitzgibbon applied it. It was used, as we shall see, to meet the bi-racial circumstances of Canada and South Africa, and it was also used in a modified form to meet the uni-racial circumstances of Australia and of Great Britain itself. Anyone who reads the debates on the Reform Bill of 1831 will notice that the opposition rested at bottom on a profoundly pessimistic distrust of the people, and on the alleged necessity of an oligarchy vested with the power and duty of "framing laws to meet the vicious propensities of human nature." In a word, the theory is in essence not so much anti-racial as anti-democratic, while finding its easiest application where those distinctions of race and creed exist which it is its effect, though not its purpose, to intensify and envenom. Fitzgibbon is a repulsive figure. Yet it would be unjust to single him out for criticism. Like him, the philosophers Hume and Paley believed in oligarchy, and accepted force or corruption as its two alternative props. Burke thought the same, though the Pitts thought otherwise. Fitzgibbon's brutal pessimism was only the political philosophy of Paley, Hume, and Burke pushed relentlessly in an exceptional case to its extreme logical conclusion. But we can justly criticize statesmen of the present day who, after a century's experience of the refutation of the doctrine in every part of the world, still adhere to it. FOOTNOTES: [16] Pitt's original scheme was accepted in Ireland, but defeated in England, owing to the angry opposition of British commercial interests. The scheme, as amended to conciliate these interests, was deservedly rejected in Ireland. [17] J. Fisher, "The End of the Irish Parliament." The author is much indebted to this brilliant study, which appeared only this year (1911). [18] See Fitzgibbon's Speeches in the Irish House of Lords, on the Catholic Franchise Bill, March 13, 1793, and on the Union, February 10, 1800. CHAPTER IV THE UNION The worst feature of Fitzgibbonism is that it has the power artificially to produce in the human beings subject to it some of the very phenomena which originally existed only in the perverted imagination of its professors. Some only of the phenomena; not all; for human nature triumphs even over Fitzgibbonism. There has never been a moment since the Union when a representative Irish Parliament, if statesmen had been wise and generous enough, to set such a body up, would have acted on the principle of revenge or persecution. Nor, in spite of all evidences to the contrary, has there ever been a moment when Protestant Ulstermen, heirs of the noble Volunteer spirit, once represented in such a Parliament, would have acted on the assumption that they had to meet a policy of revenge. Nevertheless, Fitzgibbonism did succeed, as it was to succeed in Canada, in making pessimism at least plausible and in achieving an immense amount of direct ascertainable mischief. The rift between the creeds and races, just beginning to heal three generations after the era of confiscation, but reopened under the operations of economic forces connected with race and religion, yet perfectly capable of adjustment by a wise and instructed Government, yawned wide from 1798 onwards, when Government had become a soulless policeman, and scenes of frenzy and slaughter had occurred which could not be forgotten. Swept asunder by a power outside their control, Protestants and Catholics stood henceforth in opposite political camps, and it became a fixed article of British policy to govern Ireland by playing upon this antagonism. The flame of the Volunteer spirit never perished, but it dwindled to a spark under the irresistible weight of a manufactured reaction. Dissenters and Anglicans united, not to lead the way in securing better conditions for their Catholic fellow-countrymen, not for the interests of Ireland as a whole, but under the ignoble colours of religious fanaticism. Hence that strangely artificial alliance between the landlords of the South and West and the democratic tenantry, artisans, and merchants of the North; an alliance formed to meet an imaginary danger, and kept in being with the most mischievous results to the social and economic development of Ireland. Since the Protestant minority had made up its mind to depend once more on the English power it had defied in 1782, the old machine of Ascendancy, which had showed certain manifest signs of decrepitude under Grattan's Parliament, was reconstructed on a firmer, less corrupt, and more lasting basis. The Legislative Union is not a landmark or a turning-point in Irish history. It reproduced "under less assailable forms" the Government which existed prior to 1782. The real crisis, as I have said, came at the end of 1783, when the Volunteers tried, by reforming Parliament, to give Irish Government an Irish character. It is essential to remember--now as much as ever before--that Ireland has never had a national Parliament. She has never been given a chance of self-expression and self-development. It is useless, though Home Rulers frequently give way to the temptation, to advocate Home Rule by arguing from Grattan's Parliament. O'Connell, in the Repeal debate of 1834, devoted hours to praising that Parliament, and had his own argument turned against him with crushing force by the Secretary to the Treasury, who easily proved that it was the most corrupt and absurd body that ever existed. The same game of cross-purposes went on in the Home Rule debates of 1886 and 1893, and reappeared but this year in a debate of the House of Lords (July 4, 1911), when the Roman Catholic Home Ruler, Lord MacDonnell, eulogized Grattan's Parliament in answer to Lord Londonderry, the Protestant Unionist landlord, who painted it in its true colours. Yet Lord Londonderry springs from the class and school of Charlemont, who, by refusing to act as an Irishman, hastened the ruin of the Parliament which Lord Londonderry satirizes, and Lord MacDonnell from the race which was betrayed by that Parliament. The anomaly need not surprise us. It is not stranger than the fact that the Union would never have been carried without Catholic support in Ireland. The point we have to grasp is that Ireland was a victim to the crudity and falsity of the political ideas current at the time of the Union, persistent all over the Empire for long afterwards, and not extinct yet. Between Separation, personified by Tone, and Union, personified by Fitzgibbon, and carried by those milder statesmen, Castlereagh and Pitt, there seemed to be no alternative. Actually there was and is an alternative: a responsible Irish Parliament and Government united to England by sympathy and interest. The Parliamentary history of the Union does not much concern us. Bribery, whether by titles, offices, or cash, had always been the normal means of securing a Government majority in the Irish House of Commons. Corruption was the only means of carrying the vote for the Union, and the time and labour needed for securing that vote are a measure of the rewards gained by those who formed the majority. Disgusting business as it was, we have to admit that a Parliament which refused to reform itself at the bidding of all that was best and healthiest in Ireland did, on its own account, deserve extinction. The sad thing is that the true Ireland was sacrificed. Pitt and Castlereagh, though they plunged their hands deep in the mire to obtain the Union, quite honestly believed in the policy of the Union. They were wrong. They merely reestablished the old ascendancy in a form, morally perhaps more defensible, but just as damaging to the interests of Ireland. In addition to absentee landlords, an alien and a largely absentee Church, there was now an absentee Parliament, remote from all possibility of pressure from Irish public opinion, utterly ignorant of Ireland, containing within it, for twenty-nine years, at any rate, representatives of only one creed, and that the creed of the small minority. Pitt had virtually pledged himself to make Catholic Emancipation an immediate consequence of the Union, and his Viceroy, Cornwallis, had thereby obtained the invaluable support of the Catholic hierarchy and of many of the Catholic gentry. The King, half mad at the time, refused to sanction the redemption of the pledge, and Pitt, to his deep dishonour, accepted the insult and dropped the scheme. Fitzgibbonism in its extreme form had triumphed. It was a repetition of the perfidy over the Treaty of Limerick a century before. Indeed, at every turn of Irish history, until quite recent times, there seems to have been perpetrated some superfluity of folly or turpitude which shut the last outlet for natural improvement. It cannot be held, however, that the refusal of Emancipation for another generation seriously damaged the prospects of the Union as a system of government. After it was granted, the system worked just as badly as before, and in all essentials continues to work just as badly now. Inequalities in the Irish franchise were only an aggravation. In order to cripple Catholic power, Emancipation itself was accompanied in 1829 by an Act which disfranchised at a stroke between seven and eight tenths of the Irish county electorate, nor was it until the latest extension of the United Kingdom franchise, that is, eighty-five years after the Union, that the Irish representation was a true numerical reflection of the Irish democracy. But these were not vital matters. In the Home Rule campaigns of 1886 and 1893, Irish opinion, constitutionally expressed, was impotent. The vital matter was that the Union killed all wholesome political life in Ireland, destroyed the last chance of promoting harmony among Irishmen, and transferred the settlement of Irish questions to an ignorant and prejudiced tribunal, incapable of comprehending these questions, much less of adjudicating upon them with any semblance of impartiality. The Legislative Union was unnatural. The two islands, near as they were to each other, were on different planes of civilization, wealth, and economic development, without a common tradition, a common literature, or a common religion. Each had a temperament and genius of its own, and each needed a different channel of expression. Laws applicable to one island were meaningless or noxious in the other; taxation applicable to a rich industrial island was inappropriate and oppressive for a poor agricultural island. And upon a system comprising all these incompatibilities there was grafted the ruinous principle of ascendancy. There is nothing inherently strange about the difference between England and Ireland. Artificial land-frontiers often denote much sharper cleavages of sentiment, character, physique, language, history. A sea-frontier sometimes makes a less, sometimes a more, effective line of delimitation. Denmark and Sweden, France and England, are examples. Nor, on the other hand, did the profound differences between Ireland and England preclude the possibility of their incorporation in a political system under one Crown. We know, by a mass of experience from Federal and other systems, that elements the most diverse in language, religion, wealth, and tradition may be welded together for common action, provided that the union be voluntary and the freedom of the separate parts be preserved. The first conditions of a true union were lacking in the case of Ireland. The arrangement was not voluntary. It was accompanied by gross breach of faith, and it signified enslavement, not liberty. A true Union was not even attempted. The Government of Ireland, in effect, and for the most part in form, was still that of a conquered Colonial Dependency. It was no more representative in any practical sense after the Union than before the Union. The popular vote was submerged in a hostile assembly far away. The Irish peerage was regarded rightly by the Irish people as the very symbol of their own degradation, the Union having been purchased with titles, and titles having been for a century past the price paid for the servility of Anglo-Irish statesmen. But the peerage, in the persons of the twenty-eight representatives sent to Westminster, still remained a powerful nucleus of anti-Irish opinion, infecting the House of Lords with anti-Irish prejudice, and often opposing a last barrier to reform when the opposition of the British House of Commons had been painfully overcome. In truth the cardinal reforms of the nineteenth century were obtained, not by persuasion, but by unconstitutional violence in Ireland itself. There was still a separate Executive in Ireland, a separate system of local administration, and until 1817 a separate financial system, all of them wholly outside Irish control. The only change of constitutional importance was that the Viceroy gradually became a figure-head, and his autocratic powers, similar to those of the Governor of a Crown Colony, were transferred to the Chief Secretary, who was a member of the British Ministry. Gradually, as the activity of Government increased, there grew up that grotesque system of nominated and irresponsible Boards which at the present day is the laughing-stock of the civilized world. The whole patronage remained as before, either directly or indirectly, in English hands. If it was no longer manipulated in ways frankly corrupt, it was manipulated in a fashion just as deleterious to Ireland. Before, as after, the Union there was no public career in Ireland for an Irishman who was in sympathy with the great majority of his countrymen. To win the prizes of public life, judgeships, official posts, and the rest, it was not absolutely necessary to be a Protestant, though for a long time all important offices were held exclusively, and are still held mainly, by Protestants; but it was absolutely necessary to be a thoroughgoing supporter of the Ascendancy, and in thoroughgoing hostility to Irish public opinion as a whole. In other words, the unwritten Penal Code was preserved after the abolition of the written enactments, and was used for precisely the same pernicious purpose. It was a subtle and sustained attempt "to debauch the intellect of Ireland," as Mr. Locker-Lampson puts it, to denationalize her, and to make her own hands the instrument of her humiliation. The Bar was the principal sufferer, because now, as before, it was the principal road to humiliation. Fitzgibbons multiplied, so that for generations after the Union some of the ablest Irish lawyers were engaged in the hateful business of holding up their own people to execration in the eyes of the world, of combating legislation imperatively needed for Ireland, and of framing and carrying into execution laws which increased the maladies they were intended to allay. Let nobody think these phenomena are peculiar to Ireland. In many parts of the world where Ascendancies have existed, or exist, the same methods are employed, and always with a certain measure of success. Irish moral fibre was at least as tough as that of any other nationality in resisting the poison. But the results were as calamitous in Ireland as in other countries. No country can progress under such circumstances. The test of government is the condition of the people governed. Judged by this criterion, it is no exaggeration to say that Ireland as a whole went backward for at least seventy years after the Union. Even Protestant North-East Ulster, with its saving custom of tenant-right, its linen industry, and all the special advantages derived from a century of privilege, though it escaped the worst effects of the depression, suffered by emigration almost as heavily as the rest of Ireland, and built up its industries with proportionate difficulty. Over the rest of Ireland the main features of the story are continuous from a period long antecedent to the Union. A student of the condition of the Irish peasantry in the eighteenth and in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth centuries can ignore changes in the form or personnel of government. He would scarcely be aware, unless he travelled outside his subject, that Grattan's Parliament ever existed, or that subsequently a long succession of Whig and Tory Ministers, differing profoundly in their political principles, had alternately sent over to Ireland Chief Secretaries with theoretically despotic powers for good or evil. These "transient and embarrassed phantoms" came and went, leaving their reputations behind them, and the country they were responsible for in much the same condition. It is not my purpose to enter in detail into the history of Ireland in the nineteenth century, but only to note a few salient points which will help us to a comparison with the progress of other parts of the Empire. It is necessary to repeat that the basis upon which the whole economic structure of Ireland rested, the Irish agrarian system, was inconsistent with social peace and an absolute bar to progress. I described in Chapter I. how it came into being and the collateral mischiefs attending it. During the nineteenth century, by accident or design, these mischiefs were greatly aggravated. Until 1815 high war prices and the low Catholic franchise stimulated subdivision of holdings, already excessively small, and the growth of population. With the peace came evictions, conversions into pasture, and consolidation of farms. The disfranchisement of the mass of the peasantry which accompanied Emancipation in 1829 inspired fresh clearances on a large scale and caused unspeakable misery, with further congestion on the worst agricultural land. "Cottier" tenancy, at a competitive rent, and terminable without compensation for the improvements which were made exclusively by the tenant, was general over the greater part of Ireland. Generally it was tenancy-at-will, with perpetual liability to eviction. Leaseholders, however, were under conditions almost as onerous. The labourer, who was allowed a small plot, which he paid for in labour, was in the worst plight of all. In addition, burdensome tithes were collected by an alien Church and rents were largely spent abroad. If Irish manufactures had not been destroyed, and there had been an outlet from agriculture into industry, the evil effects of the agrarian system would have been mitigated. As it was, in one of the richest and most fertile countries in the world the congestion and poverty were appalling. Competition for land meant the struggle for bare life. Rent had no relation to value, but was the price fixed by the frantic bidding of hungry peasants for the bare right to live. The tenant had no interest in improving the land, because the penalty for improvement was a higher rent, fixed after another bout of frantic competition. "Almost alone amongst mankind," wrote John Stuart Mill,[19] "the cottier is in this condition, that he can scarcely be either better or worse off by any act of his own. If he were industrious or prudent, nobody but his landlord would gain; if he is lazy or intemperate, it is at his landlord's expense. A situation more devoid of motives to either labour or self-command, imagination itself cannot conceive. The inducements of free human beings are taken away, _and those of a slave not substituted_. He has nothing to hope, and nothing to fear, except being dispossessed of his holding, and against this he protects himself by the _ultima ratio_ of a defensive civil war. Rockism and Whiteboyism were the determination of a people, who had nothing that could be called theirs but a daily meal of the lowest description of food, not to submit to being deprived of that for other people's convenience. "Is it not, then, a bitter satire on the mode in which opinions are formed on the most important problems of human nature and life, to find public instructors of the greatest pretension imputing the backwardness of Irish industry, and the want of energy of the Irish people in improving their condition, to a peculiar indolence and insouciance in the Celtic race? Of all vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences." The "civil war" referred to by Mill as the _ultima ratio_ of the cottier tenant went on intermittently for ninety years of the nineteenth century, as it had gone on during the eighteenth century, and was met by coercive laws of the same general stamp. Until Mr. Gladstone took the question in hand in 1870, no reformer could get a hearing in Parliament. Bill after Bill, privately introduced, met with contemptuous rejection in favour of some senseless measure of semi-military coercion. There can, I believe, be no doubt that responsible Irish opinion, made effective, would have grappled with the evil firmly and conscientiously. Until the peasant class was driven to the last pitch of desperation, their leaders did not conceive, and, indeed, never wholly succeeded in implanting, the idea of a complete overthrowal of landlordism. The peasant was not unwilling to pay rent. He had, and still has, a deep, instinctive respect for a landed aristocracy, and was ready, and is still ready, to repay good treatment with an intensity of devotion difficult to parallel in other parts of the United Kingdom. In that veritably cataclysmic dispersion of the Irish race which ensued upon the great famine, rent continued to be paid at home out of sums remitted from relatives in America. No less than nineteen millions of money were thus remitted, according to the Emigration Commissioners of 1863, between 1847 and that date. The Roman Catholic Church, as in every part of the world, was strongly on the side of law and order, and, indeed, on many occasions stepped in to condemn disorder legitimately provoked by intolerable suffering. The wealthy and educated landlord class, face to face in a free Parliament with the tenant class, including, be it remembered, the Ulster Protestant tenants, with grievances less acute in degree, but similar in kind, would have consented to meet reform halfway under the stimulus of patriotism and an enlightened self-interest. Against the great majority of Irish landlords there was no personal charge. They came into incomes derived from a certain source under ancient laws for which they were not responsible. But, acting through the ascendancy Parliament far away in London, they remained, as an organized class--for we must always make allowance for an enlightened and public-spirited minority--blind to their own genuine interests and to the demands of humane policy. Their responsibility was transferred to English statesmen, who were not fitted, by temperament or training, to undertake it, and who always looked at the Irish land question, which had no counterpart in England, through English spectacles. We cannot attribute their failure to lack of information. At every stage there was plenty of unbiassed and instructed testimony, Whig and Tory, Protestant and Catholic, independent and official, as to the nature and origin of the trouble. Mill and Bright, in 1862, only emphasized what Arthur Young had said in 1772, and what Edward Wakefield, Sharman Crawford, Michael Sadler, Poulett Scrope, and many other writers, thinkers, and politicians had confirmed in the intervening period, and what every fair-minded man admits now to be the truth. Commission after Commission reported the main facts correctly, if the remedies they proposed were inadequate. The Devon Commission, reporting in 1845, on the eve of the great famine, condemned the prevalent agrarian tenure, and recommended the statutory establishment of the Ulster custom of tenant right. A very mild and cautious Bill was introduced and dropped. Next year came the famine, revealing in an instant the rottenness of the economic foundations upon which the welfare of Ireland depended. The population had swollen from four millions in 1788 to nearly eight and a half millions in 1846, an unhealthy expansion, due to the well-known law of propagation in inverse ratio to the adequacy of subsistence. What happened was merely the failure of the potato-crop, not a serious matter in most countries, but in Ireland the cause of starvation to three-quarters of a million persons, and the starting-point of that vast exodus which in the last half of the nineteenth century drained Ireland of nearly four million souls. The famine passed, and with it all recollection of the report of the Devon Commission. Hitherto most of the land legislation had been designed to facilitate evictions. Now came the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849, whose purpose was to facilitate the buying out of bankrupt Irish landlords, and whose effect was to perpetuate the old agrarian system under a new set of more mercenary landlords, pursuing the old policy of rack-rents and evictions. In the three years 1849-1852, 58,423 families were evicted, or 306,120 souls. Aroused from the stupor of the famine, the peasants had to retaliate with the same old defensive policy of outrage. Peaceful agitation was of no use. The Tenant League of North and South, formed in 1852, claimed in vain the simplest of the rights granted under pressure of violence in 1870 and 1881. Violence, indeed, was the only efficient lever in Ireland for any but secondary reforms until the last fifteen years of the century, when a remedial policy was spontaneously adopted, with the general consent of British statesmen and parties. Fear inspired the Emancipation Act of 1829, which was recommended to Parliament by the Duke of Wellington as a measure wrong in itself, but necessary to avert an organized rebellion in Ireland. Tithes, the unjust burden of a century and a half, were only commuted in 1838, after a Seven Years' War revolting in its incidents. Mr. Gladstone admitted, and no one who studies the course of events can deny, that without the Fenianism of the sixties, and the light thrown thereby on the condition of Ireland, it would have been impossible to carry the Act--again overdue by a century--for the disestablishment of the Irish Church in 1869, or the Land Act, timid and ineffectual as it was, of 1870. Without the organized lawlessness of the Land League it would have been equally impossible to bring about those more drastic changes in Irish land tenure which, amidst storms of protest from vested interests affected, were initiated under the great Land Act of 1881, and, after another miserable decade of crime and secret conspiracy, extended by the Acts of 1887, 1891, and 1896. Briefly, the effect of these Acts was to establish three principles: a fair rent, fixed by a judicial tribunal, the Land Commission, and revisable every fifteen years; fixity of tenure as long as the rent is paid; and free sale of the tenant-right. The remedy eventually brought widespread relief, but, from a social and economic standpoint, it was not the right remedy. There is no security for good legislation unless it be framed by those who are to live under it. Constructive thought in Ireland for the solution of her own difficulties and the harmonizing of her own discordant elements had been systematically dammed, or diverted into revolutionary excesses, which, in the traditional spirit of Fitzgibbonism, were made the pretext for more stupid torture. Thus, O'Connell, whose attachment to law was so strong that in 1843, when the Repeal agitation had reached seemingly irresistible proportions, he deliberately restrained it, was tried for sedition. So, too, were dissipated the brilliant talents of the Young Ireland group and the grave statesmanship of Isaac Butt. Fits intervened of a penitent and bungling philanthropy which has left its traces on nearly all Irish institutions. For example, it was decided in 1830 that the Irish must be educated, and a system was set up which was deliberately designed to anglicize Ireland and extirpate Roman Catholicism. Four years later, in defiance of Irish opinion, a Poor Law pedantically copied from the English model was applied to Ireland. The railway system also was grossly mismanaged. And so with the land. When reform eventually came, the evil had gone too far, and it was beyond the art of the ablest and noblest Englishmen, inheriting English conceptions of the rights of landed property, to devise any means of placing the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland, inhuman and absurd as they were, on a sound and durable basis. The dual ownership set up by the Land Acts was more humane, but in some respects no less absurd and mischievous. It exasperated the landlord, while, by placing before the tenant the continual temptation of further reductions in rent, it tended to check good cultivation. Men came to realize at last that the complete expropriation of the landlords through the State-aided purchase of the land was the only logical resource, and this process, begun tentatively and on a very small scale as far back as 1870, under the inspiration of John Bright, and extended under a series of other Acts, was eventually set in motion on a vast scale by the Wyndham Act of 1903. I leave a final review of Purchase and of other quite recent remedial legislation, as well as the far more important movements for regeneration from within, to later chapters. Meanwhile, let us pause for a moment and pronounce upon the political system which made such havoc in Ireland. All this havoc, all this incalculable waste of life, energy, brains, and loyalty, was preventable and unnecessary. Ethics and honour apart, where was the common sense of the legislative Union? Would it have been possible to design a system better calculated to embitter, impoverish, and demoralize a valuable portion of the Empire? Let us now turn our eyes across the Atlantic, and observe the effects of an Imperial policy founded on the same root idea. FOOTNOTES: [19] "Principles of Political Economy," vol. ii., p. 392. CHAPTER V CANADA AND IRELAND In comparing the history of Canada with the closely allied history of Ireland, we must bear in mind that in the last half of the eighteenth century the present British North America consisted of three distinct portions: Acadia, or the Maritime Provinces, which we now know as Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, colonized originally by a few Frenchmen and later by Scotch and Irish; Lower Canada, extensively colonized by the French, which we now know as the Province of Quebec; and Upper Canada, which we now know as Ontario, colonized last of all by Americans under circumstances to be described. In 1763, before the repeal of any part of the Penal Code against Irish Roman Catholics, the French Catholic Colony of Lower Canada, with a population of about seventy thousand souls and the two small towns of Quebec and Montreal, passed definitely into British possession under the Treaty of Paris, which brought to a conclusion the Seven Years' War. Fortunately, there was no question, as in Ireland, of expropriating the owners of the soil in favour of State-aided British planters, and hence no question of a Penal Code, even on the moderate scale current in Great Britain at the same period. On the contrary, it became a matter of urgent practical expediency to conciliate the conquered Province in view of the growing disaffection of the American Colonies bordering it on the South. This disaffection, assuming ominous proportions on the enactment of the Stamp Act in 1765, was itself an indirect result of the conquest of Canada a few years before; for the claim to tax the Americans for Imperial purposes arose from the enormous expense of the war of conquest and of the subsequent charges for defence and upkeep. It was forgotten that American volunteers had captured Louisburg in 1745, and had borne a distinguished part in later operations, and that to lay a compulsory tax upon them would banish glorious memories common to America and Britain. Henceforward, conquered French Canada was made a political bulwark against rebellious America. The French colonists, a peaceable, primitive folk, as attached to their religion as the Irish, and devoted mainly to agriculture, retained, as long as they desired it, the old French system of law known as the Custom of Paris and the free exercise of their religion. Like the Irish, they were strongly monarchical and strongly conservative in feeling, and as impervious to the Republican propaganda emanating from their American neighbours as the Catholic Irish always at heart remained to the revolutionary principles of Wolfe Tone's school. Unmolested in their habits and possessions, they philosophically accepted the transference from the Bourbon to the Hanoverian dynasty, and became an indispensable source of strength to George III. when that monarch was using his German troops to coerce his American subjects and his British troops to overawe the Ulster Volunteers. In 1774, immediately before the outbreak of a war against which Ireland was protesting, and in which, with the soundest justification, the Irish-Americans, Catholic and Protestant, took such a prominent part against the British arms, the Quebec Act was passed giving formal statutory sanction to the Catholic religion, and setting up a nominated legislative Council, whose members were subject to no religious test. In Ireland it was not till six years later, and, as we have seen, by means of precisely the same pressure--British fear of America--that the Irish Protestant Volunteers obtained the abolition of the test for Dissenters, while Catholics in Ireland were still little more than outlaws, and had to wait for nearly sixty years for complete emancipation. The result of the Quebec Act, together with the sympathetic administration of that great Irishman, Sir Guy Carleton, was the firm allegiance of the French Province in spite of an exceedingly formidable invasion, during the whole of the American War, and even after the intervention of European France. It is part of the dramatic irony of these occurrences that some of the invading army was composed of Morgan's Irish-American riflemen, and that one of the two joint leaders of the invasion was the Irish-American, General Richard Montgomery, who fell at the unsuccessful assault of Quebec on December 31, 1775. In spite of Burke's noble appeal in the House of Commons, toleration in the abstract had nothing to do with the treatment of the French Catholics. British Catholics in the neighbouring Prince Edward Island were denied all civil rights in 1770, and only gained them in 1830. In England, the Quebec Act with difficulty survived a storm of indignation, in which even Chatham joined. The small minority of British settled in Quebec and Montreal made vehement protests, while the American Congress itself in 1774 committed the irreparable blunder of making the establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Canada one of its formally published grievances against Great Britain. When war broke out, and the magnitude of the mistake was seen, efforts were made to seduce the Canadians by hints of a coming British tyranny, but the Canadians very naturally abode by their first impressions. The peace of 1783 and the final recognition of American Independence led to results of far-reaching importance for the further development of the British Empire. Out of the loss of the American Colonies came the foundation of Australia and of British Canada. Before the war it had been the custom to send convicts from the United Kingdom to penal settlements in the American Colonies. The United States stopped this traffic. Pitt's Government decided, after several years of doubt and delay, to divert the stream of convicts to the newly acquired and still unpopulated territory of New South Wales, made known by the voyages of Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks. At the same period a very different class of men, seeking a new home, were thrown upon the charity of the British Government. These were the "United Empire Loyalists," as they styled themselves, some 40,000 Americans, with a sprinkling of Irishmen among them, such as Luke Carscallion, Peter Daly, Willet Casey, and John Canniff,[20] who had fought on the Royalist side throughout the war, and at the end of it found their fortunes ruined and themselves the objects of keen resentment. Pitt, with a "total lack of Imperial imagination," as Mr. Holland Rose puts it,[21] does not seem to have considered the plan of colonizing Australia with a part of these men, 433 of whom were reported to be living in destitution in London three years after the war. No more alacrity was shown in relieving the distress of those still in America. In 1788, however, a million and a quarter pounds were voted by Parliament for relief, and large grants of land were made in Canada, whither most of the Loyalists had already begun to emigrate. Some went to the Maritime Provinces, notably to the region now known as New Brunswick; a few went to the towns of the Quebec Province, for the country lands on the lower reaches of the St. Lawrence were already monopolized by the French "habitants"; the rest, estimated at 10,000, to the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence and along the shores of the Lakes Ontario and Erie, in short, to what we now know as the Province of Ontario, and to what then became known as Upper Canada. From this moment the three Canadas gain sharp definition. To the west Upper Canada, exclusively American or, as we must now say, British in character; next to the east, and cutting off its neighbour from the sea, the ancient Province of Lower Canada, predominantly French, with a minority of British traders in the two towns Quebec and Montreal; last of all the Maritime Provinces, small communities with an almost independent history of their own, although, like Upper and Lower Canada, they eventually presented a problem similar fundamentally to the Irish problem on the other side of the Atlantic. Prince Edward Island is the closest parallel, for, besides the Catholic disabilities of 1770, in 1767 the whole of its land had been granted away by ballot in a single day to a handful of absentee English proprietors, who sublet to occupiers without security of tenure, with the result that a land question similar to that of Ireland arose, which inflamed society and retarded the development of the island for a whole century. Ultimately, moreover, statesmen were driven to an even more drastic solution--compulsory and universal State-aided land purchase.[22] Before the period we have now reached, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, which was carved out of it, had been given rude systems of representative Government, and New Brunswick, also at one time a part of Nova Scotia, received a Constitution in 1784. The great question after the American War was how to govern the two contiguous Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, the one newly settled by men of British race and Protestant faith, the other also under the British flag, but overwhelmingly French and Catholic, both, in the critical half-century to come, to be reinforced by immigrants from the Old World, and to a large extent from misgoverned Ireland. But let the reader once and for all grasp this point, that, once out of Ireland, there ceases, not immediately, but in course of time, to be any racial or political distinction between the different classes of Irishmen, whose antagonism at home, artificially provoked and fomented by the bad form of government under which they lived, so often made Ireland itself a very hell on earth. I want to dwell on this point in order to avoid confusion when I speak of the bi-racial conditions of Lower Canada and Ireland respectively. To return to the question of Government. The American Colonies were lost. Here in Canada was an opportunity for a new Imperial policy, better calculated to retain the affections of the colonists. Three distinct problems were involved: 1. Was French or Lower Canada, with its small minority of British, to be given representative Government at all? 2. If so, was it to be left as a separate unit, or was it to be amalgamated in a Union with its neighbour, Upper Canada? 3. Whichever course was taken, what was to be the relation between the Home Government and Canada? All these questions arise in the case of Ireland itself, and the parallel in each case is interesting. In Canada they were determined for the space of half a century by the Constitutional Act of 1791, passed at the period when Grattan's unreformed Parliament was hastening to its fall, and Wolfe Tone was founding his Society of United Irishmen. Let us take in turn the three questions posed above. 1. The British minority in Lower Canada, supported by a corresponding school in England, were strong for an undisguised British ascendancy, without any recognition of the French. They urged, what was true, that the French were unaccustomed to representative government, and implied, what was neither true nor politic, that they could not, and ought not to, be educated to it. If there was to be an Assembly at all, it should, they claimed, be wholly British and Protestant, or, in the alternative, the Protestant minority only should be represented at Westminster. In other words, they wished either for the pre-Union Irish system or for the post-Union Irish system, both of them, as time was just beginning to prove, equally disastrous to the interests of Ireland. We are not surprised to find these ideas supported by the Irishman Burke, in whom horror of the French Revolution had destroyed the last particle of Liberalism. If Pitt lacked "Imperial imagination," he knew more than most of his contemporaries about the elementary principles of governing white men. It was only a few years before that he had urged upon his Irish Viceroy, Rutland, a reform of the Irish Parliament which might have united the races and averted all the disasters to come, and in this very year (1791) he was pressing forward the Catholic franchise in Ireland. The French in Canada must, he said, be represented in a popular Assembly equally with the British, and on the broadest possible franchise, and they were. 2. The next question was that of the union or separation of Upper and Lower Canada. Here, and from the same underlying motive, the British minority in Lower Canada were for the Union, partly on commercial grounds, but mainly as a step in the direction of overcoming French influence. Upper Canada, wholly British, was, on the whole, neutral. Pitt, on high principle, again took correct ground. He did not, indeed, foresee that separation, for geographical reasons, would cause certain inconveniences; but he did understand--and experience in both Provinces ultimately proved him right--that it was absolutely hopeless to try and avert social and racial discord by artificially swamping the French element. He declared, then, for the separation of the two Canadas into two distinct Provinces. Note the beginnings of another, though a distant, analogy with the relations of Ireland and Great Britain, distant because the French at this time largely outnumbered the British of both Provinces, and in after-years maintained something very near a numerical equality. But the same underlying principle was involved. Pitt, in the Legislative Union of Ireland and Great Britain nine years later, constructed without geographical necessity, indeed, in defiance of geography and humanity, the very system which, in a form by comparison almost innocuous, he had condemned for Canada; but not, we must in fairness remember, before doing his part at an earlier date to arrive at a solution which, given a fair chance, would have rendered the Union of Ireland and England unnecessary. 3. So far, good. But there still remained a further question far transcending the other in importance--What was to be the relation between the Home Government and the new Colonies? Here all British intellects, that of Fox alone excepted, were as much at a loss as ever. One simple deduction was made from what had happened in America, namely, that the new Colonies must not be forced to contribute to Imperial funds by taxes levied from London. That claim had already been abandoned in 1778 by the Colonial Tax Repeal Act, which nevertheless expressly reserved the King's right to levy "such duties as it may be expedient to impose for the regulation of commerce," the sum so raised to be retained for the use of the Colony. No one made the more comprehensive deduction, even in the case of wholly British Upper Canada, that Colonial affairs should be controlled by Colonial opinion, constitutionally ascertained, and that the British Governor should act primarily through advisers chosen by the majority of the people under his rule. We must bear in mind that, had Grattan's Parliament been reformed, and the warring races in Ireland been brought into harmony, it would still have had to pass through the crucial phase of establishing its right to choose Ministers by whose advice the Lord-Lieutenant should be guided, that is, if it were to become a true Home Rule Parliament of the kind we aim at to-day. From the date of the Constitutional Act passed for Canada in 1791, it took fifty-six troubled years and an armed rebellion in each Province to establish the principle of what we call "responsible Government" for Canada, and, through Canada, for the rest of the white Colonies of the Empire. During these fifty-six years, which correspond in Irish history to a period dating from the middle of Grattan's Parliament down to the great Famine, ascendancies, with the symptoms of disease which always attended ascendancies, grew up in Canada, as they had in Ireland, in spite of conditions which were far more favourable in Canada to healthy political growth. Canada started with this great advantage over Ireland, that instead of a corrupt parody of a Parliament, each of her Provinces, under the Constitutional Act of 1791, had a real popular Assembly, elected without regard to race or religion. It was the Upper House or Legislative Council, as it was called, that interposed the first obstacle to the free working of popular institutions. In both Provinces this Council was nominated by the Governor, and could be used, and was naturally used, to represent minority interests and obstruct the popular assembly. Fox had correctly prophesied that it would soon come "to inspire hatred and contempt." But he did not mean that such a chamber was in itself an insuperable bar to harmony. Nominated or hereditary second chambers are not necessarily inconsistent with popular government, provided that the Executive Government itself possesses the confidence of the representative Assembly. Under that lever, obstruction eventually gives way. But this idea of a tie of confidence between the Governors and the governed was exactly what was lacking. The Executive Council in each Province was also chosen by the British Governor or Lieutenant-Governor, generally a military man, from persons representing either his own purely British policy or the ideas of a privileged colonial minority, and without regard to the wishes or opinions of the Colonial Assembly, just as the Executive officers in Ireland, both before and after the Union, were chosen out of corresponding elements by the Lord-Lieutenant or Chief Secretary, acting under the orders of the British Government, and without any regard to the wishes or opinions of the majority of Irishmen. Behind all, in remote Downing Street stood the British Government, in the shape of the Colonial Office for Canada and the Irish Office for Ireland, both working in dense ignorance of the real needs of the countries for which they were responsible, and permeated with prejudice and pedantry. To complete the parallel, there was now a foreign Power in the close neighbourhood of each dependency, the United States in the case of Canada, France in the case of Ireland, both of them Republican Powers, and both able and willing to take advantage of disaffection in the dependencies in order to further a quarrel with the Mother Country. We have seen the results in Ireland. Let us now observe the results in Canada, taking especial care to notice that an ascendancy Government gives rise to the same type of evil in a uni-racial as in a bi-racial community. Let us glance first at what happened in Upper Canada, which was uni-racial, that is, composed of settlers from the United Kingdom (including Ireland) and America. Here the original settlers, the "United Empire Loyalists" from America, formed from the first, and maintained for half a century, an ascendancy of wealth and religion over the incoming settlers, who soon constituted the majority of the population. As in Ireland, though in a degree small by comparison, there was a land question and a religious question, closely related to one another. Happily, it was not a case of robbery, but of simple monopoly. Excessively large grants of land, nine-tenths of which remained uncultivated, were obtained by the original settlers, most of whom were Episcopalian in faith, and, under the Act of 1791, further tracts of enormous extent, which for the most part lay waste and idle, were set apart in each township, under the name of "Clergy Reserves" for the Episcopalian Church. Since the majority of the incoming settlers were Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, or Roman Catholics, many of them from the Protestant and Catholic parts of Ireland, some from America, some even from Germany, these conditions caused intense irritation, checking both the development of the country and the growth of solid character among the colonists. Absentee ownership was a grave economic evil, though happily it was not complicated and embittered by a vicious system of tenure. Education suffered severely through the diversion of the income from public lands to private purposes. The ascendancy was maintained on lines familiar in Ireland--through the mutual dependence of the colonial minority and the Home Government acting through its Governor. A few leading Episcopalian families from among the United Empire Loyalists, installed at Toronto, with the support of a succession of High Tory Lieutenant-Governors, monopolized the Executive Council, the Legislative Council, the Bench, the Bar, and all offices of profit, denying a Canadian career to the vast majority of Upper Canadians, just as Irishmen were excluded from an Irish career. For a long time the Assembly itself, which retained its original Constitution long after the influx of immigrants had rendered necessary its enlargement on a new electoral basis, was a subject of monopoly also. Even when enlarged in 1821 it was helpless against the nominated Council and Executive, backed by Downing Street. The oligarchy came to be known by the name of the "family compact," and, as the reader will observe, it bore a close resemblance in form to the "undertaker" system in Ireland before the Union, and to the monopoly of patronage obtained by certain families, notably the Beresfords. While the Colony was still small, the system worked tolerably well; but from the second decade of the nineteenth century onwards, when the population grew from 150,000 to 250,000 in 1832, and to 500,000 a few years later, and the Episcopalians sank into a numerical minority as low as a quarter, troubles of the Irish type became proportionately acute. The Colony was in reality perfectly content with its position under the Crown, and in the war with America in 1812 all classes and creeds united to repel invasion with enthusiasm. One of the prominent leaders was an Irishman, James Fitzgibbon, and a poor Irish private, James O'Hara, won fame by refusing to surrender at the capture of Toronto Fort. As usual, however, a fictitious standard of "loyalty," which, in fact, meant privilege, was set up, obscuring those questions of good government which were the only real matters at issue in Canada, as in Ireland. There were Republican immigrants of many denominations from America, Radicals of Cobbett's school from England and Scotland, tenants of a democratic turn from Ulster, and a growing stream of Catholic cottiers flying from the "clearances" and tithe war in other Irish Provinces. All these classes of men made excellent settlers, and only wanted fair and equal treatment to make them perfectly peaceable citizens. To the official oligarchy, however, even their moderate leaders came to be viewed as rebels, and were often subjected to imprisonment or to banishment. Among others William Gourlay, a Scotsman, Stephen Willcocks and Francis Collins, Irishmen, all three perfectly respectable reformers, suffered in this way. Bidwell, the great Robert Baldwin, and other good men were rendered powerless for good. As invariably happens in any part of the world where a course is pursued which estranges moderate men and embitters extreme men, agitators came to the front lacking that self-control and sense of responsibility which the sobering education of office alone can give, and generally ruining themselves while they benefit humanity at large. Chief of these was W.L. Mackenzie, a Presbyterian Scot from Dundee. All this man really wanted was what exists to-day as a matter of course in all self-governing countries--responsible government. He even conceived that great idea of the Confederation of British North America, which came to birth in 1867. Thwarted in his attacks on the oligarchy, he degenerated into violent courses, and ultimately organized, or rather was provoked into organizing, the rebellion of 1837. The grievances which led to this outbreak were genuine and severe, and were all in course of time admitted and redressed. One, the powerlessness of the Assembly, owing to the control by the Executive of annual sums sufficient to pay the official expenses of Government, corresponded to a pre-Union Irish grievance, and was remedied by an Act of 1831. Most of the other grievances were incurable by constitutional effort. They may be found summarized in the "Seventh Report of Grievances," a temperate and truthful document drawn up by a Committee of the Assembly in 1835. The huge unsettled Clergy Reserves and Crown Lands were the worst concrete abuse, and matters had just then been aggravated by the sudden establishment of scores of sinecure rectories. Jobbery, maladministration, and the dependence of the judges on the Executive were other complaints; but the main assault was made quite rightly on the form of the Colonial Government, which rendered peaceful reform of any abuse as impossible as in Ireland, and the cardinal claim was that the Executive should act, not under the dictation of Downing Street, of an irresponsible Governor, or of a narrow colonial oligarchy, but in accordance with popular opinion. Mackenzie's rebellion of 1837 was a no more formidable affair than the similar efforts in Ireland made under incomparably greater provocation by Emmett in 1803 and Smith O'Brien in 1848, and was as easily suppressed; but, unlike the Irish outbreaks, and in conjunction with a revolt arising in the same year and from similar causes in the adjoining Province of Lower Canada, it led to a complete change of system. In Lower Canada the same preposterous system of government was aggravated by the presence of the two races, French and English. Yet there was nothing inherently dangerous or unwholesome about this situation. The French, like the Catholics in Ireland, never showed the smallest tendency towards religious intolerance, nor were they less loyal at heart than the Radicals of Upper Canada or the Tories of either Province. They took the same energetic part in repelling the American invasion of 1812, and produced at least one remarkable leader in the person of Colonel Salaberry, who commanded the French-Canadian Voltigeurs. Like their co-religionists in Ireland, they were temperamentally averse to Republicanism in any shape, whether on the American model over the border or on the model of revolutionary France, where Republicanism since 1793 was anti-Catholic and the result of miseries and oppressions as bad as those in Ireland; whence, moreover, many priests and nobles fled from persecution to Lower Canada. As in eighteenth-century Ireland, we find that the Roman Catholic clergy, the _seigneurs_ or aristocrats, and the _habitants_ or peasants, were of a Conservative cast, throwing their weight, often even against their own interests, into the scale of the established Government, while the lawyers and journalists alone produced determined agitators. The racial cleavage, moreover, as in Ireland, was artificially accentuated by the political system. There was in reality a strong community of interest between the British lower class and the French lower class against the tyranny of an official clique, and to the end a substantial number of Englishmen worked with the French for reform; but with the failure of their efforts came that inevitable tightening of the bonds of race, even against interest, which we have seen operating with such lamentable effect in Ireland. And, as in Ireland, we find the best instincts of the people withered and perverted into rebellion by "Fitzgibbonism," the policy of distrust and coercion. The British official ascendancy, supreme from the first, became extraordinarily rigid. The Executive Council and Legislative Council were almost entirely British, the Assembly overwhelmingly French. There were no regular heads of departments, so that the Governor had no skilled advice, much less responsible advice. The Councils blocked all legislation they disliked, and for more than forty years, by means of unrestricted control over a large part of the provincial revenues, were able to defy the Assembly. It will be observed that, although Ireland never had anything worth calling an Assembly, her structure both before and after the Union was essentially the same, in that Irish public opinion, whether voiced by the Volunteers against the unreformed Parliament or after the Union by the Nationalist party at Westminster, was powerless. The existence of a popular Assembly in Canada only made the anomalies more obvious. There were, of course, marked divergencies of character and less marked divergencies of interest between the French majority and the British minority in Canada. The French, by comparison, were a backward and conservative race, less well educated and less progressive and energetic both in agriculture and commerce than the British. On the other hand, subsequent experience showed that, under free constitutional government, British intelligence, wealth, and energy would, here as elsewhere, have preserved their full legitimate influence. Under a system which throttled French ideas and aspirations, and treated the most harmless popular movements as treasonable machinations, deadlock and anarchy were in the long run inevitable. The popular demands were much the same as those in Upper Canada: control of the purse, the independence of the judges, an elective Legislative Council, and a curtailment of the arbitrary powers and privileges of the Executive, which led to gross jobbery, favouritism, and extravagance. As in Upper Canada, the greatest practical grievance, though it assumed a somewhat different form, was the disposal of the public lands. Here, too, there were extensive and undeveloped Clergy Reserves for the Episcopalian Church, as well as free grants on a large scale to speculators. The estates of the Jesuit Order had been confiscated, so that disputes about their disposal were tinged with religious bitterness. But most of the friction over the land question came from the operations of a chartered land company, which, under the protection of the Government, and with financial and political support from England, dealt with the unsettled land in a manner very unfair and often corrupt, and promoted here, as in Upper Canada and Ireland, absentee ownership. The popular agitation ran the same course as in Upper Canada, reached its crisis at the same moment, threw into prominence the same types of men, moderate and extreme, and produced the same waste of good human material and distortion of human character, both in the ascendant and the subject classes. As Sir John Cockburn tells us in his "Political Annals of Canada" (p. 177), some of the most incendiary speakers and writers (in 1836) were "most able and worthy men, who in the subsequent days of tranquillity occupied most prominent and distinguished positions in the public service, revered as loyal, true, and able statesmen by all classes." The popular movement was by no means wholly French. A Scot, John Neilson; an Englishman, Wilfred Nelson; and an Irish journalist, Dr. O'Callaghan, were prominent members of a kind of Radical party; but the ablest and most influential among the agitators, and in every respect more admirable than Mackenzie, was the Frenchman, Louis Papineau, who first became Speaker of the Assembly in 1817, and retained that high position until the verge of the rebellion of 1837. By no means devoid of superficial faults, but eloquent, honest, accomplished and adored by his compatriots, here was a man who, if he had been given reasonable scope for his talents, and steadied by official responsibility, would have been a tower of strength to the Colony and the British connection. He corresponds in position and aims, and to a certain extent in character and gifts, to his great Irish contemporary, O'Connell. But O'Connell was too conservative to produce great results. Papineau, dashing himself in vain for twenty years against the entrenched camp of the ascendancy, finally degenerated, like Mackenzie, into a commonplace rebel. The phases through which the agitation passed before it reached this disastrous point need only a brief review. Naturally enough, owing to the bi-racial conditions, friction had arisen earlier in Lower than in Upper Canada, yet the first recognition of the flagrant defects of the Constitution was not made till 1828, when a Committee of the British House of Commons published a Report which, though its recommendations were mild and inadequate, was in effect a censure of the whole political system of the Province and an admission of the justice of the agitation. There was no result for four years, while matters went from bad to worse in the Colony. At last, in 1832, under an Act similar to that passed for Upper Canada, all the provincial revenues were placed under the control of the Assembly in return for the voting of a fixed Civil List. This well-meant half-measure made matters worse, because it left the Assembly just as powerless as before over the details of legislation and administration, while giving it the power to paralyze the Government by refusing all, instead of only part, of the supplies. This it proceeded to do, and in the next five years large deficits were piled up, and the Colony became insolvent. Meanwhile, in February, 1834, a year before the publication of the "Seventh Report of Grievances" in Upper Canada, and three months before O'Connell's celebrated motion in the House of Commons for the Repeal of the Union between England and Ireland, the Assembly of Lower Canada, at Papineau's instance, passed the equally celebrated "Ninety-two Resolutions." Bombastic and diffuse, like parts of O'Connell's speech, this historic document nevertheless was as true in all really essential respects as Mackenzie's manifesto and as O'Connell's tremendous indictment of the system of Government in Ireland. All three men, O'Connell with far the most justification, demanded the same thing, good government for their respective countries under a responsible Parliament and Ministry. They all occasionally used wild language, O'Connell the least wild. O'Connell, who nine years later deliberately quenched a popular revolt he could have headed, failed in his aim as completely as Tone, Emmett, and Smith O'Brien, who pressed their efforts to the point of violence. Mackenzie and Papineau, who took to arms, succeeded in their aim. The crisis in Lower Canada was precipitated, and, indeed, provoked, by a challenge thrown out in March, 1837, from the British House of Commons, where, at Lord John Russell's instance, the Ten Resolutions were agreed to, which amounted in effect to a denial of all the colonial claims and a declaration of war upon those who made them. Papineau had to eat his words or make them good, and he chose the latter course. His insurrection was arranged in concert with that of the Upper Province, broke out simultaneously in the winter of 1837, and was extinguished with little difficulty. The men who made it suffered. Canada and the Empire profited. Both Papineau and Mackenzie, following the precedent of Wolfe Tone with France, endeavoured with little success to engage American sympathy and the aid of her army, though Canada had as little desire for American rule as Ireland had for French rule. Let us remark, as an interesting fact for those who imagine that Irishmen are always instinctively on the side of turbulence and disorder, that the Irish immigrants who poured into Canada at the average annual rate of 20,000 in the years--terrible years in Ireland--preceding the rebellions,[23] acted much as we might expect. In the Lower Province, following the lead of the French Catholic hierarchy, they declared in November, 1837, against Papineau's party, and thus strengthened the hands of the Government when the crisis approached.[24] In the Upper Province Catholics were strongly on the side of reform, but took no part in the rebellion. Orangemen in both Provinces, as we might guess, sided as strongly with the ascendancy parties, but colonial air seems to have taken some of the theological venom out of Orangeism. If Charles Buller is to be trusted, some Catholics joined the societies in Upper Canada, which were more Tory than religious, and the healths of William of Orange and the Catholic Bishop Macdonnell were drunk in impartial amity.[25] In the meantime, three of the four outlying Provinces of North America--Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island--where the same form of Constitution prevailed as in Upper and Lower Canada, had been passing through a similar phase of misgovernment and agitation during the previous thirty years. Each suffered under a little monopolist ascendancy, called by the same name, "the family compact," and sustained, against the prevailing sentiment and interest, by the British Governor, and in each had arisen, or was arising, the same loud demand for responsible government. Samuel Wilmot in New Brunswick, Joseph Howe in Nova Scotia, were the best-known spokesmen. There was no violence, but a growing dislocation. In five Provinces of North America, therefore, the Colonial Government had broken down or was tottering, and from exactly the same cause as in Ireland, though under provocation infinitely less grave. For the moment, however, attention was concentrated upon the Canadas, where, as a result of the rebellion, the Constitution of Lower Canada was suspended early in 1838. In the summer of 1838 Lord Durham, the Radical peer, was sent out by Melbourne's Ministry as Governor-General, with provisionally despotic powers, and with instructions to advise upon a new form of government. Before we come to Durham's proposals, let us pause and examine the state of home opinion on the Irish and Colonial questions. The people of Great Britain at large had no opinion at all. They were ignorant both of Canada and Ireland, and had been engaged, and, indeed, were still engaged, in a political struggle of their own which absorbed all their energies. The Chartist movement in 1838 was assuming grave proportions. The Reform, won in 1832 under the menace of revolution and in the midst of shocking disorders, was in reality a first step toward the domestic Home Rule that Ireland and the five Provinces of North America were clamouring for. Tory statesmen were quite alive to this political fact, and condemned all the political movements, British, Irish, and Colonial, indiscriminately and on the same broad anti-democratic grounds. The Duke of Wellington, who was not a friend of the Reform Act, and had only adopted Catholic Emancipation in order to avoid civil war in Ireland, speaking about Canada in the House of Lords on January 18, 1838, coupled together the United States, British North America, and Ireland as dismal examples of the folly of concession to popular demands. Pointing to the results of the Canada Act of 1831, to which I have already alluded, and which gave the Assemblies control of the provincial revenue, and with an eye, no doubt, on the tithe war barely at an end in Ireland, he said: "Let noble lords learn from Canada and our other dominions in North America what it is to hold forth what are called popular rights, but which are not popular rights here or elsewhere, and what occasion is given thereby to perpetuate a system of agitation which ends in insurrection and rebellion." The Whig statesmen who, if we except Peel's short Administration of 1834-35, were in power from 1830 to 1841, though by no means democratic men, were clear enough about Reform for Great Britain, but nearly as ignorant and quite as wrong about Ireland and Canada as the Tories. The only prominent Parliamentarian who, as after events proved, correctly diagnosed and prescribed for the disease in both countries was O'Connell. Not fully alive to the Irish analogy, but correct from first to last about Canada, was a small group of independent Radicals, of whom Roebuck, Hume, Grote, Molesworth, and Leader were the principal representatives. After the insurrections in Canada came John Stuart Mill, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Charles Buller, and with them Lord Durham himself. No one can understand either Irish or Colonial history without reading the debates of this period in the Lords and Commons on Canada and Ireland. Alternating with one another with monotonous regularity, they nevertheless leave an impression of an extraordinary lack of earnestness, sympathy, and knowledge, and an extraordinary degree of prejudice and of bigotry in the Parliament to whose care for better or worse the welfare of nearly ten millions of British citizens outside Great Britain was entrusted. Save for an occasional full-dress debate at some peculiarly critical juncture, the debates were ill-attended. The prevailing sentiment seems to have been that Ireland and Canada, leavened by a few respectable "loyalists" and officials, on the whole, were two exceedingly mutinous and embarrassing possessions, which, nevertheless, it was the duty of every self-respecting Briton to dragoon into obedience. Both dependencies were assumed to be equally expensive, though, in fact, Ireland, as we know now, was showing a handsome profit at the time, whereas Canada was costing a quarter of a million a year. For the rest, the pride of power tempered a sort of fatalistic apathy. In the case of Ireland the element of pure selfishness was stronger, because the immense vested interests, lay and clerical, in Irish land were strongly represented. The proximity of Ireland, too, rendered coercion more obvious and easy. Otherwise, her case was the same as that of Canada. "The Canadas are endeavouring to escape from us, America has escaped us, but Ireland shall not escape us," said an English member to O'Connell just before the Repeal debate of 1834. Such was the current view. Yet, as in the case of Ireland and of the lost American Colonies, the materials for knowledge of Canada were considerable. Petitions poured in; Committees and Commissions were appointed, and made reports which were consigned to oblivion. Roebuck, one of the small Radical group, was himself a Lower Canadian by birth, and acted as agent at Westminster for the popular party in that Province. He was as impotent as O'Connell, the spokesman of the Irish popular party. If the Colonial Office was not quite the "den of peculation and plunder" which Hume called it in 1838,[26] it was an obscure and irresponsible department, where jobbery was as rife as in Dublin Castle. In the ten years of colonial crisis (1828-1838), there were eight different Colonial Secretaries and six Irish Chief Secretaries. Over and above all this apathy and arrogance was the perfectly genuine incapacity to comprehend that idea of responsible government which even the most hot-headed and erratic of the colonial agitators did instinctively comprehend. Until Durham had at last opened Lord John Russell's eyes, the great Whig statesman was as positive and explicit as the Tories, Wellington and Stanley, in declaring that it was utterly impossible for the Monarch's Representative overseas to govern otherwise than by instructions from home and through Ministers appointed by himself in the name of the King. One constitutional King ruled over Great Britain, Canada, and Ireland. He could not be advised by two sets of Ministers. The thing was not only an unthinkably absurd nullification of the whole Imperial theory, but, in practice, would destroy and dissolve the Empire. William IV. himself told Lord Melbourne that it was his "fixed resolution never to permit any despatch to be sent ... that can for a moment hold out the most distant idea of the King ever permitting the question even to be entertained by His Majesty's confidential servants of a most remote bearing relative to any change of the appointment of the King's Councils in the numerous Colonies." Lord Stanley said, in 1837, that the "double responsibility" was impossible, that there must either be separation or no responsible government, and that it was "no longer a question of expediency but of Empire." Lord John Russell, polished, sober, scorning to descend to the mere vulgar abuse of the colonials which disfigured the utterances of many of his opponents, struggling visibly to reconcile Liberalism with Empire, nevertheless arrived at the same conclusion. In a debate of March 6, for example, in the same year, in proposing the defiant Resolutions which provoked the rebellion in Canada, he argued at length that a responsible Colonial Ministry was "incompatible with the relations of a Mother Country and a Colony," and would be "subversive of the power of the British Crown," and again, on December 22, that it meant "independence." O'Connell rightly replied to the former speech that Russell and his followers were supporting "principles that had been the fruitful source of civil war, dissension, and distractions in Ireland for centuries." The Radical group pushed home the Irish parallel. Hume quoted, as applicable to Canada, Fox's saying: "I would have the whole Irish Government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices, and I firmly believe ... that the more she is under Irish Government the more she will be bound to English interests." Molesworth declared, what was perfectly true at that moment of passion and folly, that his extreme political opponents wanted to make the reconquest of Ireland a precedent for the reconquest of Canada. It would repay the reader to turn back from this debate to the Irish Repeal Debate of three years earlier, and listen to Sir Robert Peel stating as one of the "truths which be too deep for argument," that the Repeal of the Union "must lead to the dismemberment of this great Empire, must make Great Britain a fourth-rate Power, and Ireland a savage wilderness," which, as a matter of fact, it was at the very time he was speaking, after thirty years of the Legislative Union, and seven hundred years of irresponsible government. We must listen to him claiming that the beneficent and impartial British Government was "saving Ireland from civil war" between its own "warring sects," whereas, in fact, it was that Government which had brought those warring sects into being, which had fomented and exploited their dissensions, which had provoked the rebellion of 1798, and by its shameful neglect and partiality in the succeeding generation had flung Ireland into a social condition hardly distinguishable from "civil war." And we must realize that closely similar arguments, with special stress on the right of taxation, had been used for the coercion of the American Colonies, and that exactly the same arguments, founded on the same inversion of cause and effect, were used to defend the coercion of Canada. There, also, the Fitzgibbonist doctrine of revenge and oppression by a majority vested with power was freely used, even by Lord John Russell, in his speech of March 6, 1837, and of December 22 in the same year, when he spoke of the "deadly animosity" of the French and "of the wickedness of abandoning the British to proscription, loss of property, and probably of lives." He ignored the fact that the same state of anarchy had been reached in uni-racial Upper Canada as in bi-racial Canada, and that the "loyalists" in both cases were not only in the same state of unreasoning alarm for their vested rights, but, in the spirit of the Ulstermen of that day and ever since, were threatening to "cut the painter," and declare for annexation to the United States if their ascendancy were not sustained by the Home Government. Then, as to-day, the ascendant minority were supported in their threats by a section of British politicians. Lord Stanley's speech of March 8, 1837, where he boasted that the "loyal minority of wealth, education, and enterprise" would protect themselves, and, if necessary, call in the United States, is being matched in speeches of to-day. In all the debates of the period it is interesting to see the ignorance which prevailed about the troubles in Upper Canada. The racial question in Lower Canada, owing to the analogy with Ireland, was seized on to the exclusion of the underlying and far more important political question in both Provinces. Against the policy of the two great political parties in England the little group of Radicals struggled manfully, and in the long run not in vain, although for years they had to submit to insult and contumely in their patriotic efforts to expose the vices of the colonial administration and to avert the rebellion they foresaw in the Canadas. What they feared, with only too good cause, was that the American and Irish precedents would be followed, and war made for the coercion of the Canadas, to be followed, if successful, by a still more despotic form of government, which would in its turn provoke a new revolt. Rather than that such a catastrophe should take place, they went, rightly, to the extreme point of saying that an "amicable separation" should be arranged, maintaining, what is indisputable, that the claims of humanity should supersede the claims of possession. With Russell himself declaring till the eleventh hour that responsible government was out of the question because it meant "separation," they were quite justified in demanding that separation, if indeed inevitable, should come about by agreement, not as the possible result of a fratricidal war. For such a war, though Russell could not see it until Durham made him see it, was the only alternative to the grant of responsible government. But the Radicals never used this argument unless circumstances forced them to. Molesworth, in a debate of March 6, 1838, denounced the prevailing view of the Colonies, insisted that we should be proud of them and study their interests, that reform, not separation, should be our aim. The Radicals were fully aware of the alternatives, and were unwearied in pointing out the justice and policy, in the Imperial interests, of acceding to the colonial popular demands. Grote had expressed the truth in the December debate of 1837, when he implored the House "not to use a tone of triumph at the superior power of England," but to remember that the colonists, "though freemen, like ourselves," desired to remain, "if they could do so with honour, in connection with England as the Mother Country." He was followed by a gentleman named Inglis, who said that "it was in Canada as in Ireland," a faction called itself Canada, and that we must bring "back the colonists," like the Irish, "to subordination." Roebuck, who led the Radicals in Canadian matters, had some of the faults of Papineau and Mackenzie; yet posterity should give him and his comrades credit for a constructive Imperialism which the great men of his day lacked. It is now known that he and Sir William Molesworth powerfully influenced Durham's policy. In a paper he drew up at Durham's request on the eve of that nobleman's departure for Canada he sketched a plan, imperfect in some details, but wise in broad conception, for pacifying the Canadas, and went further in elaborating a scheme, also defective, for the Confederation of British North America under the Crown on the lines conceived by the despised demagogue, Mackenzie.[27] But the two men who, by influencing Durham, probably did most to save Canada for the Empire and to lay the foundations of the present Imperial structure, were Charles Buller, the Radical M.P., and Edward Gibbon Wakefield, both of whom accompanied the new Governor-General to Canada, and who are generally believed to have inspired, if they did not actually write, the greater part of the celebrated Report which became the Magna Charta of the self-governing Colonies of the Empire. A word about the events which ended in the publication of this Report. Durham reached Canada at the end of May, 1838, and in November was recalled in disgrace for exceeding--strange as it seems!--the almost absolute powers temporarily entrusted to him. He was an extraordinary mixture of a despot and a democrat, an extreme Radical in politics, an autocrat in manners, as vain and tactless as he was generous and sincere, making bitter enemies and warm friends in turn. He began by winning and ended by estranging almost every class in both Provinces of Canada, and returned to England to all appearances a spent and extinguished meteor. There is some truth, perhaps, in Greville's observation that, had he been "plain John Lambton," he would never have been chosen for Canada. It is certain that those who sent him there little dreamed of the consequences of their action. Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, in a letter to the Queen, charged him with magnifying the Canadian troubles "in order to give greater _éclat_ to his own departure."[28] Still, he did his work of investigation faithfully, and formed his conclusions sanely, and there were plain men of greater ability at his elbow in the persons of Wakefield and Buller, by whose advice he was wise enough to be guided. All opinion was against him when news came of his recall, and even Roebuck was denouncing him in the _Spectator_ for his autocratic excesses; but a brilliant article by John Stuart Mill in the _Westminster Review_, pleading for time and confidence, arrested the tide of obloquy. Durham's long Report, and the events which followed it, ought to be studied carefully by every voter, however lowly, who has a voice in deciding the fate of Irish Home Rule. After an exhaustive discussion of the causes of disorder in Canada, Durham made two recommendations, the first of incalculable importance, and proved by subsequent experience to be right; the second of minor consequence, and proved by subsequent experience to be wrong. The first was that responsible government should be inaugurated both in Canada and in the Maritime Provinces of North America, whose constitutional troubles Durham also discussed. His proposal was that the Governor should govern in accordance with advice given by Colonial Ministers in whom the popular Assembly reposed confidence, and who, through that Assembly, were in touch with popular opinion; for it was to the strangulation of popular opinion that Durham attributed all the disorders and disasters of the past. This recommendation was eventually adopted, not in the Act subsequently passed, but by instructions to the Governors concerned; instructions which were first interpreted in the full liberal spirit by Lord Elgin in 1847. The Maritime Provinces at various dates and under various Governors received full responsible government by 1854. Responsible government proved the salvation of Canada and the Empire, as it would have proved, if given the chance, the salvation of Ireland and a source of immensely enhanced strength to the Empire. The second and less important recommendation, afterwards embodied in the Act of 1840, was the Union of the two Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. Here Lord Durham, misled unhappily by the Irish precedent, fell into an error. During his visit to Canada he came near to accepting that higher conception of a Federal Union with local Home Rule for each Province, outlined by Roebuck and Mackenzie, and eventually consummated thirty years later. When he came home to London he made a _volte face_, rejecting the Federal idea and accepting its antitype, that Legislative and Administrative Union of the two Provinces which had been rejected by Pitt in 1791. There were, of course, economic arguments for Union apart from the racial factor; but they do not seem to have been decisive with Durham. At the last moment he gave way to a dread of predominant French influence in Lower Canada, similar at bottom to his dread of the unchecked influence of the British minority. While he feared that the latter, if let alone, would inaugurate a reign of terror, he added also: "Never again will the present generation of French-Canadians yield a loyal submission to a British Government." The argument is inconsistent with the whole spirit of the Report, which attributes the friction in both Provinces to bad political institutions. It is probable that Durham was really more influenced by the quite reasonable recognition that the French were relatively backward in civilization and ideas. He sought, therefore, both to disarm them politically and to anglicize them socially, by amalgamating their political system with that of wholly British Upper Canada. His calculation was that in a joint assembly the British would have a small but sufficient majority. The estimated population of Lower Canada was 550,000, of whom 450,000 were French, and 100,000 British and Irish; that of Upper Canada 400,000, all British and Irish. That is to say, that in both Provinces together there was a British and Irish majority of 100,000. The calculation over-estimated the British element, but in the event this mistake proved to be immaterial. Though Durham himself appears to have intended representation to be in strict accordance with population, the Union Act, passed in 1840, allotted an equal number of representatives in the Joint Assembly to each of the old Provinces. The assumption here was that the British Members from Upper Canada would unite with those of old Lower Canada to vote down the French, just as the Ulster Protestants voted with English members to vote down the Irish majority. In practice the Union, after lasting twenty-six years, eventually broke down. Durham's fear of French disloyalty proved to be as groundless as his ideal of complete anglicization was futile. It was neither necessary, sensible, nor possible to extinguish French sentiment, and human nature triumphed over this half-hearted effort to apply in dilution the medicine of Fitzgibbonism to the Colonies. Little harm was done, because the introduction of responsible government, far transcending the Union in importance, worked irresistibly for good. Parties did not run wholly on racial lines, but racialism was encouraged by the equal representation of the two Provinces in the Assembly, in spite of the greater growth of population in the Upper Province. The system was unhealthy, and at last produced a state of deadlock, in which two exactly equal parties were balanced, and a stable Government impossible. When that point was reached, men began to observe the strong and supple Constitution of the adjacent United States, and to recognize that a politically feeble Canada was courting an absorption from that quarter which all Canadians disliked. The Legislative Union was dissolved by the mutual consent of the Provinces with the approval of the Mother Country, and in 1867, under the British North America Act, the Federal Union was formed which exists in such strength and stability to-day. Fear of French disloyalty or tyranny was a night-mare of the past, even with the British minority in Lower Canada. It was realized that French national sentiment was perfectly consistent with racial harmony under the British flag. Upper Canada became Ontario, Lower Canada Quebec. Each Province reserved a local autonomy for itself, and each at the same moment voluntarily surrendered certain high powers to a supreme centralized Government, in which both had confidence. Such a political system is capable of indefinite expansion. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick joined the Federation at the outset, Prince Edward Island and British Columbia a little later, and were followed in turn by the successively developed Provinces which now form the united and powerful Dominion of Canada. Turn back to Ireland and weigh well the analogy. _Mutatis mutandis_, almost every paragraph of the Durham Report applied with greater force to the Ireland of his day. The ascendancy of a caste and creed minority in Upper Canada; of a race minority in Lower Canada; "the conflict of races, not of principles"; the consequent obliteration of natural political divisions, and the substitution of unnatural and vindictive antagonisms demoralizing both sides to every quarrel; the universal disgust with and distrust of the British Government, though for reasons diametrically opposite; the hopelessness of true reforms; the perpetuation of abuses; the stagnation of trade and agriculture; the re-emigration to America, and the abuses of a Church Establishment with endowments from sources by right public--all these phenomena and many others had their counterpart in Ireland. Some have disappeared. The Church is disestablished. The land question is on the way to settlement. The old ascendancy is mitigated. But many of the political, and all the psychological, features of the situation which Durham described do, alas! exist to-day in Ireland. Ireland, like the Canada of 1838, is a land of bewildering paradox. There is a similarly unwholesome arrest of free political life, the same unnatural division of parties, the same suppression of moderate opinion, and the same inevitable maintenance of a Home Rule agitation, harmful in itself, because it retards the country and accentuates for the time being the very divisions it seeks to cure, but absolutely necessary for the final salvation of Ireland. Durham, in the case of Canada, saw the truth, and swept into the limbo of discredited bogies the old figments of the coercionists. In a singularly noble and profound passage (p. 229), revealing the ethical basis on which his philosophy rested, he declared that even if the political freedom of the Colony were to lead in the distant future to her separation from the Empire, she nevertheless had an indefeasible moral right to the blessings of freedom; but he prophesied correctly that the connection with the Empire "would only become more durable and advantageous by having more of equality, of freedom, and of local administration." If only Irish and British Unionists would realize that these words came from a profound knowledge of human nature in the mass, and are applicable to Irishmen in Ireland just as much as to Irish, British, French, and Dutch in the Colonies! The tenacity of the old superstition is extraordinary, and we can see it in the case of Canada. It remains a wonder to this day how responsible government was ever introduced. There can be no question that the Act of 1840 only secured a smooth passage because, in providing for the Union of the French and British Provinces, it represented a superficial analogy to that Union of Britain and Ireland which had paralyzed Irish aspirations. Durham himself had actually quoted both the Irish and Scotch Unions as successful expedients for "compelling the obedience of a refractory population," and thus arrived at the outstanding and solitary defect of his otherwise noble scheme. And O'Connell, in a debate upon the Report on June 3, 1839, opposed the Canadian Union for Irish reasons, and in language which after-experience proved to be perfectly correct. Happily, as we have seen, the defect was small and curable, because the analogy with Ireland, where there was no responsible, but, on the contrary, a separate and wholly irresponsible Executive Government, and whose interests were upheld by only 100 Members in a House of 670, was exceedingly remote. On responsible government itself the Canadian Act of 1840 was entirely silent. We may thank Providence for the fact. Durham's cardinal proposals had received unbridled vituperation as sentimental rubbish where they were not treasonable poison, the whole controversy taking precisely the same form as in 1886 and 1893 over Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills for Ireland. The _Quarterly Review_ spoke of "this rank and infectious Report," though it is fair to say that Peel and Wellington did not join in such wild language. Five months after the issue of Lord Durham's Report, Lord John Russell, in the debate of June 3, was denying, with the approval of all but the Radicals, the possibility of responsible government as emphatically as ever. Durham seems to have partially converted him in the summer, for in introducing the Act itself in 1840 he cautiously committed himself to the plan of instructing the Canadian Governor to include in his Executive Council, or Cabinet, men expressly chosen because they possessed the confidence of the Assembly. But the Act as it stood, ignoring this vital change, was impeccably Conservative, and on that account went through. In some points it seemed, without good reason, to be even reactionary, and was regarded in that light with displeasure by the Radicals, with satisfaction by Whigs and Tories. While confirming the control of revenue by the Assembly, in return for a fixed civil list, it took away from the Assembly, and vested in the Executive, the power of recommending money votes, and it also retained the Legislative Council or Upper Chamber as a nominated, not as an elective, body. Provided that the Executive had the confidence of the representative Assembly or Lower House, the first point was perfectly sound, and the second was not vital; but there was no security for the condition precedent other than Russell's vague outline of subsequent policy. While the supreme power of the King, acting with or without the Governor, was reaffirmed in the most vigorous terms, there was not a word in the Act about the composition of the Executive Council or its relation to the Assembly. In Canada much the same misconceptions prevailed, and promoted the acceptance of the Act by the supporters of the old ascendancies. The question of the Union and the question of responsible government, both raised by Lord Durham's Report, became inextricably confused, and the various petitions and resolutions of the time reflect this confusion. The French opposed the Union and supported responsible government on the same grounds, and in almost identical terms, as the Irish opposed, and still oppose, their Union with Great Britain, and ask for responsible government in Ireland. Moderate Britishers supported both proposals, but the extremists of the old ascendancy bitterly denounced the whole theory of responsible government, Union or no Union. Their views are ably and incisively set forth by a Committee of the old Legislative Council of Upper Canada, that is, by the members of the "family compact," in a protest signed and transmitted to London, where it was quoted with approval by Lord John Russell. It may be found, together with other petitions of the time, in the "Canadian Constitutional Development" of Messrs. Grant and Egerton. With a few unessential changes and modifications, the whole document might be signed to-day by a Committee of Ulster Unionists, and I heartily wish that every Ulsterman would read it in a spirit of reason and generosity, and observe how every line of it was falsified by history, before he declares that the situation of Ulster is peculiar, and sets his hand or gives his adhesion to a similar document. The signatories, who, it must be remembered, were a small ruling minority of the colonists, whose power was artificially sustained by the British Governor, claim that they alone, in glorifying and in battling for "colonial dependence," are the true Imperialists. They hold dear the "unity of the Empire." Responsible government within their own Colony would lead to the "overthrowal" of that Empire, and the reduction of Britain to a "second-rate Power." A colonial Cabinet is absurd; the local and sectional interests are too strong; the British Government must remain as "umpire" to keep the parties from flying at one another's throats. The majority, who are themselves a prey to divisions (and one thinks of Nationalist splits), are seeking only for illegitimate power; the minority are for "justice and protection, and impartial government." Yet in the same breath we are told that all is happy and peaceable as it is. Why subject the Colony to the dissensions of party? Why foster a spirit of undying enmity among a people disposed to dwell together in harmony? The signatories argue from the history of Ireland and Scotland, "which never had responsible government, yet government became impracticable the moment it approached to equal rights." Hence a Union, because "government must be conducted with a view to some supreme ruling power, which is not practicable with several independent Legislatures." Finally, Loyalists and Imperialists as they are, they are not going to stand an attempt to "force independence" on them. They will take the matter into their own hands, and, if necessary, call in the United States to "replace the British influence needlessly overthrown." I do not quote this sort of thing in order to add any tinge of bitterness to present controversies. The signatories lived to see their errors and to be ashamed of what they wrote. They, like the Irish Unionist leaders of to-day, were able and sincere men, unconscious, we may assume, that their pessimism about the tendencies of their fellow-citizens was really due to the defective institutions which they themselves were upholding, and to the forcible suppression of the finer attributes of human nature; unconscious, we may also assume, of identifying loyalty with privilege, and "the supreme ruling power" with their own ruling power; unconscious that what they called "Imperial Unity" was in reality on the verge of producing Imperial disruption; and wholly unconscious, certainly, of the ghastly irony of their analogy drawn from the brutally misgoverned, job-ridden, tithe-ridden, rack-rented Ireland of their day, living, for no fault of its own, under a condition of intermittent martial law, and hurrying at that moment towards the agony of the famine years. Less severe in degree, analogous abuses perpetuated in their own interest existed in their own Colony, and were only abolished under the new régime which they attacked with such vehemence before it came, and which, because it transformed and elevated their own character and that of their fellow-citizens, while drawing them closer to the old country, they afterwards learned to regard with pride and thankfulness. As an effective contrast to the mistaken views of the Upper Canadian statesmen, the reader cannot do better than study the letters of Joseph Howe, the brilliant Nova Scotia "agitator," to Lord John Russell, in answer to that statesman's speech of June 3, 1839, when he argued against responsible government, and quoted the Upper Canadian manifesto as his text. These letters make a wonderful piece of sustained and humorous satire, of which every word was true and every word applicable to Ireland. Howe's portrait, for example, of the average Colonial Governor applies line for line to the average Chief Secretary, coming at an hour's notice to a country he has never seen, and knows nothing of, vested with absolute powers of patronage, and often pledged to carry out a policy in direct conflict with the wishes of the vast majority of the people whose interests he is supposed to guard. The Act of 1840 went through, but it had little to do with the regeneration and reconciliation of Canada. Poulett Thompson, the first Governor, peremptorily declined to admit the principle of Ministerial responsibility. Some good reforms were, indeed, made in the early years, but the Act was on the verge of breaking down when Lord Elgin, Durham's son-in-law, came to Canada as Governor-General in 1847. After many party changes and combinations, French influence was temporarily in the ascendant, and in 1849 a Bill was on the stocks for compensating French as well as British subjects for losses in the rebellion of 1837. Elgin, following the advice of his Ministers, of whom Baldwin was one, Lafontaine another, gave the Royal Assent to the Bill. The British, with the old cry of "loyalism," and with Orangemen in the van, rioted, mobbed the Governor, and burnt down the Parliament House at Montreal. Elgin, expostulating with Lord John Russell, who was as pessimistic as ever, and threatened with recall, stuck to his guns under fierce obloquy, and the principle of responsible government was definitely established. It was applied at about the same period to the other British Provinces of North America, with the ulterior results I have described, and in a few years to Australia. The great year, then, was 1847, the year of the Irish famine, and the year before the pitiful rebellion of Smith O'Brien, surrendering in the historic cabbage-garden. Our thoughts go back sixty-four years to 1783, when the American War of Independence ended; when, as a result of that war, British Canada and Australia were founded, and when, at the crisis--premature, alas!--of Ireland's fortunes, the Volunteers in vain demanded the Reform which might have saved their country. Look into historical details, read contemporary debates, and watch the contrast. Within five years of responsible government Canada solved all the great questions which had been convulsing society for so long, and turned her liberated energies towards economic development. In Ireland the abuses of ages lingered to a point which seems incredible. The Church was not disestablished, amid outcries of imminent ruin and threats of a Protestant rebellion, till 1869, when Canada had already become a Federated Dominion. The Irish land question, dating from the seventeenth century, was not seriously tackled until 1881, not drastically and on the right lines till 1903. Education languishes at the present day. Canada started an excellent system of municipal and local government in the forties. In Ireland, while the minority, in Greville's words, were "bellowing spoliation and revolution," an Act was passed in 1840 with the utmost difficulty, removing an infinitesimal part of the gross abuses of municipal government under the ascendancy system, and it was not till 1898 that the people at large are admitted to a full share in county and town government. Even this step inverted the natural order of things, for the new authorities are hampered in their work by the incessant political agitation for the Home Rule which should have preceded their establishment, as it preceded it in Great Britain and Canada. Home Rule, the tried specific, was resisted, as those who read the debates of 1886 and 1893 will recognize, on the same grounds as Canadian Home Rule, in the same spirit, and often in terms absolutely identical. Was it because Ireland, unlike Canada, was "so near"? Let us reflect. Did Durham advocate Canadian Home Rule because Canada was "so far"? On the contrary, it was a superficial inference, drawn not merely from Ireland, but from Scotland, and since proved to be false both in Canada and South Africa, that made him shrink from the full application of a philosophy which was already far in advance of the political thought and morality of his day. Is it to be conceived that if he had lived to see the Canadian Federation, the domestic and Imperial results of South African Home Rule, and the consequences of seventy more years of coercive government in Ireland, he would still have regarded the United Kingdom in the light of a successful expedient for "compelling the obedience of refractory populations"? In truth, Durham, like ninety-nine out of a hundred Englishmen of his day, knew nothing of Ireland, not even that her political system differed, as it still differs, _toto coelo_ from that of Scotland, and came into being under circumstances which had not the smallest analogy in Scotland. So far as his knowledge went, he was a student of human nature as affected by political institutions. Wakefield, who advised him, was a doctrinaire theorist who put his preconceived principles into highly successful practice both in Australia and Canada. They said: "Your coercive system degrades and estranges your own fellow-citizens. Change it, and you will make them friendly, manly, and prosperous." They were right, and one reflects once more on the terrible significance of Mr. Chamberlain's admission in 1893, that "if Ireland had been a thousand miles away, she would have what Canada had had for fifty years." FOOTNOTES: [20] "The Irishman in Canada" (N.F. Davin), a book to which the author is indebted for much information of the same character. [21] "William Pitt and the National Revival." [22] Canadian Archives, 1905; "History of Prince Edward Island," D. Campbell; "History of Canada," C.D.G. Roberts. In 1875, after a long period of agitation and discontent, the Land Purchase Act was passed, and the Dominion Government asked Mr. Hugh Childers to adjudicate on the land-sale expressly on the ground that he had been associated with the Irish Land Act of 1870 ("Life of Mr. Childers," by Lieut.-Col. Spencer Childers, vol. i., p. 232). [23] Canadian Archives, 1900. Note B. Emigration (1831-1834). Irish immigrants in 1829, 9,614; in 1830, 18,300; in 1831, 34,155; in 1832, 28,024; in 1833, 12,013; in 1834, 19,206: about double the immigration of English and Scottish together in the same period. [24] "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 96 _et seq_. [25] "Durham Report," p. 130. [26] Hansard, January 23. [27] "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 17. [28] "Letters of Queen Victoria," vol. i., November 22, 1838. CHAPTER VI AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND I have described the Canadian crisis at considerable length because it was the turning-point in Imperial policy. Yet policy is scarcely the right word. The Colonists themselves wrenched the right to self-government from a reluctant Mother Country, and the Mother Country herself was hardly conscious of the loss of her prerogatives until it was too late to regret or recall them. The men who on principle believed in and laboured for Home Rule for Canada were a mere unconsidered handful in the country, while most of those who voted for the Act of 1840 thought that it killed Home Rule. No general election was held to obtain the "verdict of the predominant partner" on the real question at issue, with the cry of "American dollars" (which had, in fact, been paid); with lurid portraits of Papineau and Mackenzie levying black-mail on the Prime Minister, and quotations from their old speeches to show that they were traitors to the Empire; with jeremiads about the terrors of Rome, the abandonment of the loyal minority, and the dismemberment of the Empire, to shake the nerves and stimulate the slothful conscience of an ignorant electorate. Had there been any such opportunity we know it would have been used, and we can guess what the result would have been; for nothing is easier, alas! than to spur on a democracy with such cries as these to the exercise of the one function it should refrain from--interference with another democracy, be it in Ireland or anywhere else. As it was, a merciful veil fell over Canada; Lord Elgin's action in 1849 passed with little notice, and a mood of weary indifference to colonial affairs, for which, in default of any Imperial idealism, we cannot be too thankful, took possession of Parliament and the nation. It was in this mood that the measures conferring self-government on the Australasian Colonies, 12,000 miles away from the Mother Country, and exciting proportionately less concern than Canada, were passed a few years later. From the landing of the first batch of convicts at Botany Bay in 1788, New South Wales, the Mother Colony, was a penal settlement pure and simple, under military Government, for some thirty years. The island Colony, Tasmania, founded under the name of Van Diemen's Land in 1803, was used for the same purpose. Victoria, originally Port Phillip, just escaped a like fate in 1803, and remained uncolonized till 1835, when the free settlers set their faces against the penal system, and in 1845, acting like the Bostonians of 1774 with the famous cargo of tea, refused to allow a cargo of convicts to land. South Australia, first settled in 1829, also escaped; so did New Zealand, which was annexed to the Crown in 1839. Western Australia, dating from 1826, proceeded on the opposite principle to that of Victoria. Free from convicts until 1849, when transportation to other Colonies was checked at their own repeated request, and came to an end in 1852, this Colony, owing to a chronic shortage of labour, actually petitioned the Home Government to divert the stream of criminals to its shores, with the result that in ten years' time nearly half the male adults in the Colony, and more than half in the towns, were, or had been, convicts. It was not until 1865, under strong pressure from the other Colonies, that the system was finally abolished which threw Western Australia forty years behind its sister Colonies in the attainment of Home Rule. The transportation policy has been unmercifully criticized, and with all the more justice in that Pitt, when the American war closed the traditional dumping-ground for criminals, had the chance of employing the exiled loyalists of America, many of whom were starving in London, as pioneers of the new lands in the Antipodes. "The outcasts of an old society cannot form the foundations of a new one," said a Parliamentary Report of July 28, 1785. But they could do so, and did do so. Ruskin's saying, _à propos_ of Australia, that "under fit conditions the human race does not degenerate, but wins its way to higher levels," comes nearer the truth. In an amazingly short time after the transportation policy was reversed the taint disappeared. We must remember, however, that, sheer refuse as some of the convicts were, especially in the later period, a large number of the earlier convicts were the product of that "stupid severity of our laws" which the Vicar of Wakefield deplored, and to this category belonged many an unhappy Irish peasant, sound in character, but driven into Whiteboyism, or into the rebellions of 1798 and 1803 by some of the worst laws the human brain ever conceived. Hundreds of these men survived the barbarous and brutalizing ordeal of a penal imprisonment to become prosperous and industrious citizens. It was not until 1825, or thereabouts, that free white settlers, many Irishmen among them, came in any substantial number to the Mother Colony of New South Wales, and not until 1832 that these men began to press claims for the management of their own affairs, under the inspiration of an Irish surgeon's son, William Wentworth, the Hampden of Australia. The later Colonies rapidly came into line, Western Australia, for the reason given above, remaining stationary. The first representative institutions were granted in 1842 to New South Wales, and in 1850 to Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania. At that date, therefore, these settlements stood in much the same constitutional position as the Canadas had stood in 1791 (although technically their Constitutions were of a different kind), but with this important difference, that the Act of 1850, "for the better Government of Her Majesty's Australian Colonies," gave power to those Colonies to frame new Constitutions for themselves. This they soon proceeded to do, each constructing its own, but all keeping in view the same model, the British Constitution itself, and aiming at the same ideal, responsible Government by a Colonial Cabinet under a Government representing the Crown. Since responsible Government in Great Britain itself was not a matter of legal enactment, but the product of slowly evolved conventions and precedents, to which political scientists had not yet given a scientific form, it is no wonder that the colonial Constitution-makers found great difficulty in expressing exactly what they wanted in legal terms, and, indeed, none of them came near succeeding; but time, their own political instinct, a succession of sensible Governors, and the forbearance of the Home Government solved the problem, and evolved home-ruled States legally subordinate to the Crown, but with a Constitution closely resembling our own. The Constitutions became law by Acts of the Imperial Parliament passed by a Liberal Ministry in 1855. They are of unusual interest because they represent the first rude attempt to put into legal language a small part of the theory of the British Constitution as applied to dependencies of the Crown. In the most vital point of all, the relation of the dependency to the Home Government (as distinguished from questions of internal political structure), they are almost as reserved as the Canadian Act of 1840, which, as we have seen, did not recognize by a word the duty of the Governor to govern through a Colonial Cabinet. In certain clauses they hint, by distant implication, at the existence of such a Cabinet, responsible to the colonial popular Legislature--the Canadian Act did not assume even that--but they do not anywhere imply that the Governor is bound normally to place himself in the hands of that Cabinet, while they expressly and rightly reaffirm the supreme power of the Crown, whether acting through the Governor or not, over colonial legislation. How far this reticence about responsible Government facilitated the passage of the Australian Acts in the British Parliament, as it certainly facilitated the Canadian Act of 1840, it is difficult to decide. It was probably a factor of some importance. At any rate, it is true to say that Home Rule, as in Canada, was mainly a result of practice rather than of statutory enactment. The case of New Zealand is a striking example of this. In 1852 New Zealand obtained from a Tory Government a Constitutional Act, which resembles the Canadian Act of 1840 in abstaining from any expression, direct or indirect which implies the existence of a Colonial Cabinet, and it is probable that the framers of the Act intended no such development, but on the contrary contemplated a permanent, irremovable Executive. But the Act was no sooner passed than an agitation began for responsible government, under the leadership of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, part-author of the Durham Report, and at that time a member of the New Zealand Assembly. By 1855, when the Australian Acts were passed, New Zealand, without further legislation, had obtained what she wanted. To complete the story, Queensland, carved out of New South Wales in 1859, entered upon full responsible government at once, and Western Australia, retarded for so long by the servile system of convict-labour, gained the same rights in 1890. Reading the debates of the middle of the nineteenth century, one is left with the impression that the Australasian Colonies obtained Home Rule by virtue of their distance, and because most politicians at home could not be bothered to fight hard against a principle which at bottom they disliked as heartily for the Colonies as for Ireland. The views of the various parties were not much changed since the days of the crisis in Canada. There were some able Colonial Secretaries who thoroughly understood and believed in the principle of responsible government. On the other hand, some Liberals were not yet converted, though Liberal Governments fathered the Constitutional Acts of 1850 and 1855. Disraeli's well-known saying in 1852 that "these wretched Colonies will all be independent, too, in a few years, and are a mill-stone round our necks," was typical of the Tory attitude.[29] Lord John Russell, in the same year, 1852, was complaining, as Lord Morley tells us,[30] that we were "throwing the shields of our authority away," and leaving "the monarchy exposed in the Colonies to the assaults of democracy." A group of Radicals, headed by Sir William Molesworth and Hume in Parliament, and by Wakefield from outside, still pushed the policy of emancipation energetically and persistently on the principle which they had urged in the case of Canada, that freedom was better both for the Colonies and the Mother Country. But Molesworth and Wakefield gained one illustrious convert and coadjutor in the person of Mr. Gladstone, whose speeches on the Colonies at this period, 1849 to 1855, placed him, in regard to that topic, in the Radical ranks, and in veiled opposition to the Whig leaders. Lord Morley quotes a minute from his hand, written in 1852 in answer to the view of Lord John Russell, referred to above, where he says "that the nominated Council and independent Executive were not 'shields of authority,' but sources of weakness, disorder, disunion, and disloyalty." His Parliamentary and platform speeches, passing with little notice at the time, nevertheless remain the most eloquent and exalted expression of wise colonial policy that is to be found in our language. If it was not till a generation later that he applied the same arguments to the case of Ireland, the arguments nevertheless did apply to Ireland almost word for word. Proximity to the Mother Country does not affect them. Mr. Gladstone attacks the problem on its human side, showing that coercive government is always and everywhere bad for those who administer it, and bad for those who live under it, expensive, inefficient, demoralizing, and that the longer it is maintained the more difficult it is to remove. He condemns the fallacy of preparing men by slow degrees for freedom, and the "miserable jargon about fitting them for the privileges thus conferred, while in point of fact every year and every month during which they are retained under the administration of a despotic Government renders them less fit for free institutions." As to cost, "no consideration of money ought to induce Parliament to sever the connection between any one of the Colonies and the Mother Country," but the greater part of the cost, he urged, was due to the despotic system itself. His words are more applicable to the Ireland of to-day than the Ireland of the middle of the nineteenth century, for it is one of the many painful anomalies of Irish history that that country, at the lowest point of its economic misery, was paying a relatively enormous contribution to Imperial funds, and, incidentally, to the colonial vote, while the Colonies were maintained at a loss correspondingly large, and at times even larger.[31] But cost is, after all, a very small matter. The first consideration is the character and happiness of human beings, and here Gladstone's words, like Durham's, have a universal application. If the reader cannot study them at length in Hansard, he should read the great speech on the New Zealand Bill in 1852, and Lord Morley's masterly summary of others. I conclude with a passage quoted by him from a platform speech at Chester in 1855, the year when the Australian Constitutions were sanctioned. "Experience has proved that if you want to strengthen the connection between the Colonies and this country, if you want to see British law held in respect, and British institutions adopted and beloved in the Colonies, never associate with them the hated name of force and coercion exercised by us at a distance over their rising fortunes. Govern them upon a principle of freedom." At that moment, after half a century of coercion and neglect under what was called the "Union," Ireland was bleeding, as it seemed, to death. Scarcely recovered from the stunning blow of the famine, she was undergoing in a fresh dose of clearances and evictions the result of that masterpiece of legislative unwisdom, the Encumbered Estates Act. Her people were leaving her by hundreds of thousands, cursing the name of England as bitterly as the evicted Ulster farmers and the ruined weavers of the eighteenth century had cursed it, and bearing their wrongs and hatred to the same friendly shore, America. For the main stream of emigration, which before the Union had set towards the American States, and from the Union until the famine towards Canada, reverted after the famine towards the United States, impregnating that nation with an hostility to Great Britain which in subsequent years became a grave international danger, and which, though greatly diminished, still remains an obstacle to the closer union of the English-speaking races. On the other hand, it is interesting to observe that among the Irish emigrants to countries within the Empire, and a very important part of this emigration was to Australasia, the anti-British sentiment was far less tenacious, though the affection for their own native country was no less passionate. Whatever we may conclude about the motives behind the concession of Home Rule to Australia and New Zealand, we may regard it as fortunate that they lay too far away for any close criticism from statesmen at home, whether before or after the attainment of self-government. Most of these statesmen would have been scandalized by the manner in which these vigorous young democracies, destitute of the patrician element, shaped their own political destiny by the light of nature and in the teeth of great difficulties. Almost to a man their leaders in this great work would have been regarded as "turbulent demagogues and dangerous agitators," and often were so regarded, when the rumour of their activities penetrated to far-off London. The old catchwords of revolution, spoliation and treason, consecrated to the case of Ireland, would have been applied here with equal vehemence, and were in fact applied by the official classes in the Colonies themselves, round whom small anti-democratic groups, calling themselves "loyal," crystallized, as in the Provinces of Upper Canada and in Ireland, and with whom the ruling classes at home were in instinctive sympathy. There were stormy, agitated times, there were illegal movements against the reception of convicts, struggles over land questions, religious questions, financial questions, the emancipation of ex-convicts, and the many difficult problems raised by the discovery of gold and the mushroom growth of digger communities in remote places. There was in the air more genuine lawlessness--irrespective, I mean, of revolt against bad laws--than ever existed in Ireland, though there was never at any time any practical grievance approaching in magnitude to the practical grievances of Ireland at the same period. But, could the spirit of English statesmanship towards analogous problems in Ireland have been maintained in Australasia, systematically translated into law and enforced with the help of coercion acts by soldiers and police, communities would have been artificially produced presenting all the lawless and retrograde features of Ireland. The famous affair of the Eureka Stockade in 1854 is an interesting illustration. A great mass of diggers collected in the newly discovered Ballarat goldfields had petitioned repeatedly against the Government regulations about mining licences, for which extortionate fees were levied. This was before responsible government. The goldfields were not represented in the Legislature, and there was no constitutional method of redress. The authorities held obstinately to their obsolete and irritating regulations, and eventually the miners revolted under the leadership of an Irishman, Peter Lalor, and with the watchword "Vinegar Hill." There was a pitched battle with the military forces of the Crown, ending after much bloodshed in the victory of the soldiers. Lalor was wounded, and carried into hiding by his friends. Other captured rioters were tried for "high treason" before juries of townsmen picked by the Crown on the lines long familiar in Ireland; but even these juries refused to convict, as they so often refused to convict in cases of agrarian crime in Ireland. The State trials were then abandoned, a Royal Commission reported against the licence system, and Parliamentary representation was given to the goldfields. It came to be universally acknowledged that the talk of "treason" was nonsense, that the outbreak had been provoked by laws which could not be constitutionally changed, and that the moral was to change them, not to expatriate and persecute those who had suffered under them. Lalor reappeared, entered political life, became Speaker of the reformed Assembly of 1856, and lived and died respected by everyone. He now appears as a prominent figure in a little book entitled "Australian Heroes," and it is admitted that the whole episode powerfully assisted the movement for responsible government in the Colony. Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Mitchell, and others concerned in the Irish rebellion of 1848 were at that moment languishing in the penal settlement of Tasmania for sedition provoked by laws fifty times worse; laws, too, that a Royal Commission three years earlier had shown to be inconsistent with social peace, and which others subsequently condemned in still stronger terms. From their first establishment far back in the seventeenth century it took two centuries to abolish these laws. In the Australian case it took one year. As for the Irishmen of all creeds and classes who took such an important part in the splendid work of building up these new communities, and who are still estimated to constitute a quarter of the population, one can only marvel at the intensity of the prejudice which declared these men "unfit" for self-government at home, and which is not yet dissipated by the discovery that they were welcomed under the Southern Cross, not only as good workaday citizens in town, bush, or diggings, but as barristers, judges, bankers, stock-owners, mine-owners, as honoured leaders in municipal and political life, as Speakers of the Representative Assemblies, and as Ministers and Prime Ministers of the Crown.[32] is true, and the fact cannot surprise us, that the intestinal divisions of race and creed in Ireland itself, stereotyped there by ages of bad government, were at first to a certain extent reproduced in Australia, as in Canada. Aggressive Orangeism was to be found sowing discord where no cause for discord existed. But the common sense of the community and the pure air of freedom tended to sterilize, though they have not to this day wholly killed, these germs of disease. A career was opened to every deserving Irishman, whether Catholic or Protestant. Hungry, hopeless, listless cottiers from Munster and Connaught built up nourishing towns like Geelong and Kilmore. Two Irishmen, Dunne and Connor, were the first discoverers of the Ballarat goldfields. An Irishman, Robert O'Hara Burke, led the first transcontinental expedition, and another Irishman, Ambrose Kyte, financed it; Wentworth was the father of Australian liberties. An Irish Roman Catholic, Sir Redmond Barry, founded the Public Library, Museum, and University of Melbourne. In the political annals of Victoria and New South Wales the names of Irish Catholics, men to whom no worthy political career was open in their own country, were prominent. Sir John O'Shanassy, for example, was three times Prime Minister of Victoria, Sir Brian O'Loughlen once. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, a member of O'Shanassy's Cabinets, and at last Prime Minister himself, is the colonial statesman whose career and personality are the best proof of what Ireland has lost in high-minded, tolerant, constructive statesmanship, through a system which silenced or drove from her shores the men who loved her most, who saw her faults and needs with the clearest eyes, and who sought to unite her people on a footing of self-reliance and mutual confidence. One of the ablest of O'Connell's young adjutants, editor and founder of the _Nation_, part-organizer of the Young Ireland Movement which united men of opposite creeds in one of the finest national movements ever organized in any country, Duffy's central aim had been to give Ireland a native Parliament, where Irishmen could solve their own problems for themselves. He saw the rebellion of 1848 fail, and Mitchell, Smith O'Brien, Meagher, McManus, and O'Donoghue transported to Tasmania; he laboured on himself in Ireland for seven years at land reform and other objects, and in 1855 gave up the struggle against such hopeless odds, and reached Melbourne early in 1856 in time to sit in the first Victorian Parliament returned under the constitutional Act of 1855. From the beginning to the end of an honourable political career which lasted thirty years, he made it his dominant purpose to ensure that Australia should be saved from the evils which cursed Ireland; from government by a favoured class, from land monopoly, and from religious inequality and the venomous bigotries it engenders, and he took a large share in bringing about their exclusion. His Land Act of 1862, for example, where he had another Roman Catholic Irishman, Judge Casey, as an auxiliary, put an end in those districts where it was fairly worked to the grave abuses caused by the speculative acquisition of immense tracts of land by absentee owners, and promoted the closer settlement of the country by yeoman farmers. In Australia, as in Canada, we see the vital importance of good land laws, and can measure the misery which resulted in Ireland from an agrarian system incalculably more absurd and unjust than anything known in any other part of the Empire. The stagnation of Western Australia was originally due to the cession of huge unworkable estates to a handful of men. South Australia was retarded for some little time from the same cause, and Victoria and New South Wales were all hampered in the same way. It was not a question, as in Ireland, and to a less degree in Prince Edward Island, of the legal relations between the landlord and tenant of lands originally confiscated, but of the grant and sale of Crown lands. Yet the after-results, especially in the check to tillage and the creation of vast pasture ranches, were often very similar.[33] Duffy was not the only colonial statesman to apply Irish experience to the problems of newly settled countries. An Englishman who became one of the greatest of colonial statesmen and administrators, the Radical Imperialist, Sir George Grey, began life as a Lieutenant on military service in Ireland in the year 1829, and came away sick with the scenes he had witnessed at the evictions and forced collections of tithes where his troops were employed to strengthen the arm of the law. "Ireland," his biographer, Professor Henderson, tells us,[34] "was to him a tragedy of unrealized possibilities." The people had "good capacities for self-government," but Englishmen "showed a vicious tendency to confuse cause and effect," and attributed to inherent lawlessness what was a revolt against bad economic conditions. "All that they or their children could hope for was to obtain, after the keenest competition, the temporary use of a spot of land on which to exercise their industry"; "for the tenant's very improvements went to swell the accumulations of the heirs of an absentee, not of his own." "Haunted by the Irish problem," Grey made it his effort first in South Australia, and afterwards in New Zealand, where he was both Governor and Premier at various times, to secure the utmost possible measure of Home Rule for the colonists, and, in pursuance of a policy already inaugurated by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, to establish a land system based, not on extravagant free grants, or on private tenure, but on sales by the State to occupiers at fair prices. The aim was to counteract that excessive accumulation of people in the large cities which, thanks to imperfect legislation, still exists in most of the Australian States. Subsequent New Zealand land policy has been generally in the right direction, and is acknowledged to be highly successful. In the Australian mainland States the absentee and the squatter caused constant difficulties and occasional disorder. The Commonwealth at the present day is suffering for past neglect, and has found itself within the last year compelled to imitate New Zealand in placing taxes on undeveloped land, with a higher percentage against absentees. Let us add that Grey, like Duffy and most of the strongest advocates of Home Rule for the Colonies, was a Federalist long before Federation became practical politics, seeing in that policy the best means of achieving the threefold aim of giving each Colony in a group ample local freedom, of binding the whole group together into a compact, coherent State, and of strengthening the connection between that State and the Mother Country. As Governor at the Cape from 1854 to 1861 he vainly urged the Home Government to promote a Federal Union of the various South African States, Dutch and British, in order, as he said, to create "an United South Africa under the British flag," a scheme which, it is generally agreed, could then have been carried out, and which would have saved South Africa from terrible disasters. And he wished to apply the same Federal principle to the Australian Colonies, and to the case of Ireland and Great Britain. He realized earlier than most men that the talk of "separation" and "disloyalty" was, in his own words already quoted, the result of a "vicious tendency to confuse cause and effect," and that to govern men by their own consent, to let them work out their own ideals in their own way, to encourage, not to repress, their sense of nationality, is the best way to gain their affection, or, if we choose to use that very misleading word, their loyalty. Australia and New Zealand present remarkable examples of this beneficent process, Australia in particular, because there, for a long time even after the introduction of responsible government and, indeed, until a dozen years ago, there was a large party of so-called "disloyalists" who were never weary of decrying British influences and upholding Australian nationality. Mr. Jebb, in his "Colonial Nationalism," gives an interesting account of this movement and of its organ, the widely circulated _Sydney Bulletin_, with its furiously anti-British views, its Radicalism, its Republicanism, and what not. He shows amusingly how entirely harmless the propaganda really was, and what a healthy effect it actually had in promoting an independence of feeling and national self-respect among Australians, to such a degree that when the South African War broke out, there was a universal outburst of patriotism and a universal desire, which was realized, to share to the full as a nation in the expense, danger, and hardships of the war. Mr. Jebb adds the interesting suggestion that the reluctance of New Zealand to enter the Australian Federation may be partly due to the strong individual sentiment of nationality evoked within her by the war and the exceptional exertions she made to aid the Imperial troops. His book is a psychological study of men in the mass. What he sets out to prove, and what he does successfully prove, is that the encouragement of minor nationalities is not merely consistent with, but essential to, the unity of the Empire. Yet he never mentions Ireland, not even for the purpose of proving her an exception to the rule, and I do not think I ever gauged the full extent of the prejudice against that country until I realized that in such a book such a topic did not receive even a line of notice; yet one would naturally suppose that it was as important to the Empire, morally and strategically, to possess the affection and respect of four and a half million citizens within 60 miles of the British coast as of the same number of citizens at the Antipodes. Mr. Jebb is a Unionist. How he reaches his conclusion I do not know. It would seem to be beyond human power to construct a case against Home Rule for Ireland, with its strongly marked individuality of character and sentiment, which did not textually stultify his case for the more distant dependencies. His party generally is in sympathy with the views expressed in his book, and has done much to further them. How do they reconcile them with opposition to Home Rule for Ireland? How do they explain away the support for that policy in the Dominions? It seems to me that their only resource would be to say: "We are bound to maintain, and we have the necessary physical force to maintain, the present political system in Ireland, because to alter it would impair the formal legislative 'unity' of the United Kingdom; but let us frankly admit that as long as we take this view there can be no 'Union' in the highest sense of the word. Ireland must be retarded and estranged. We cannot raise Territorial Volunteers within her borders; on the contrary, we must keep and pay for a standing army of police to preserve our authority there. Her population must diminish, her vital energy ebb away to other lands; as a market for our goods and as a source of revenue for Imperial purposes she must remain undeveloped and unprogressive. She will continue rightly to agitate for Home Rule, and this agitation will always be baneful both to her and to us. It will distract her energies from her own economic and social problems. It will embitter and degrade our politics, and dislocate our Parliamentary institutions. She must suffer, we must suffer, the Empire must suffer. It is sad, but inevitable." Morality aside, is that common sense? Is it strange that the Colonies themselves regard such logic, when applied to Ireland, as perverted and absurd? Before leaving Australia we have only to recall the fact that at the close of the last century, after a generation of controversy and negotiation, the Canadian example of 1867 was at length imitated, and the Federal Union formed which amalgamated all the mainland States, together with Tasmania, in the Commonwealth of Australia, and that the Union was sanctioned and legalized by the Imperial Act of 1900. New Zealand preferred to remain a distinct State. The Australians departed in some important respects from the Canadian model, the main difference being that a greater measure of independence was retained by the individual States, and smaller powers delegated to the central Government. This was a matter of voluntary arrangement as between the States themselves, the Home Government standing wholly aside on the sound principle that Australia knew its own interests best, and that what was best for Australia was best for the Empire. FOOTNOTES: [29] Letter to Lord Malmesbury, August 13, 1852 ("Memoirs of an Ex-Minister," by the Earl of Malmesbury, vol. i., p. 344). [30] "Life of Gladstone," vol. i., p. 363. [31] Annual Treasury Returns ["Imperial Revenue (Collection and Expenditure)"]. According to these returns, Ireland's Imperial contribution in 1839, before the famine, was £3,626,322; in 1849, after the famine, £2,613,778, and in 1859-60 no less than £5,396,000. At the latter date the Colonies were estimated to cost three and a half millions a year, of which nine-tenths were contributed by the taxpayers at home, British and Irish. [32] Full information may be found in "The Irish in Australia," by J.F. Hogan. [33] For an excellent historical description of the various Australian land systems, see the official "Year-Book of the Commonwealth," 1909. [34] "Life of Sir George Grey," Professor G.C. Henderson. CHAPTER VII SOUTH AFRICA AND IRELAND In the years 1836-37, when Wentworth was agitating for self-government in New South Wales, and when Canada was in rebellion for the lack of it, thousands of waggons, driven by men smarting under the same sort of grievance, were jolting northward across the South African veld bearing Dutch families from the British Colony of the Cape of Good Hope to the new realms we now know as the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal. The "Great Trek" was a form of protest against bad government to which we have no parallel in the Empire save in the wholesale emigrations from Ireland at various periods of her history--after the Treaty of Limerick, again after the destruction of the wool trade, again in 1770-1777, after the Ulster evictions, and lastly after the great famine. The trekkers, like the Irish emigrants, nursed a resentment against the British Government which was a source of untold expense and suffering in the future. Indeed, the whole history of South Africa bears a close resemblance to the history of Ireland. In no other part of the Empire, save in Ireland, was the policy of the Home Government so persistently misguided, in spite of constantly recurring opportunities for the repair of past errors. Fatality seems from first to last to have dogged the footsteps of those who tried to govern there. Before the British conquest the Dutch East India Company and the Netherlands Government were as unsuccessful as their British successors, whose legal claim to the Cape, established for the second time by conquest in 1806, was definitely confirmed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The Dutch colonists were a fine race of men, whose ancestors, like the Puritan founders of New England, had fled in 1652 from religious persecution, and who retained the virile qualities of their race. Though in many respects they resembled the backward and intensely conservative French-Canadian inhabitants, they differed from them, and resembled their closer relatives in race, the New Englanders, in an innate passion for free representative government. They had rebelled repeatedly against their Dutch oppressors, and had gone through a brief Republican phase. It is an example, therefore, of the thoughtless inconsequence of our old colonial policy that we gave the French-Canadians, who were the least desirous of it, the form, without the spirit, of representative institutions, while we denied, until it was too late to avert racial discord, even the form to the Cape Dutch. In truth, the Colony seems to have been regarded purely in the light of a naval station, while the British and Irish inflow of settlers, dating from about the year 1820, contemporaneously with the advent of free settlers in Australia, suggested the possibility of racial oppression by the Dutch majority. Yet if there was little real reason to fear oppression by the French in Canada, there was still less reason to fear such oppression in the Cape, where Dutch ideals and civilization were far more similar to those of the British. In America the absorption of the Dutch Colonies in the seventeenth century had led to the peaceful fusion of both races, nor was there any reason why, under wise rule, the same fusion should not have occurred in South Africa. Until 1834 authority was purely military and despotic. In that year was established a small Legislative Council of officials and nominated members, with no representative element. In 1837 came the Great Trek. No one disputes that the Dutch colonists had grievances, without the means of redress. As usual, we find a land question in the shape of enhanced rents charged by Government after the British occupation; the Dutch language was excluded from official use, and English local institutions were introduced with unnecessary abruptness; but the principal grievance concerned the native tribes. Slavery existed in the Colony, and its borders were continually threatened by these tribes. The Dutch colonists were often terribly brutal to the natives; nevertheless there is little doubt that a tactful and sympathetic policy could easily have secured for them a more humane treatment, and the abolition of slavery without economic dislocation. But a strong humanitarian sentiment was sweeping over England at the time, including in its range the negro slaves of Jamaica and the unconquered Kaffirs of South Africa, but absolutely ignoring, let us note in passing, the economic serfdom of the half-starved Irish peasantry at our very doors. Members of this school took too little account of the tremendous difficulties faced in South Africa by small handfuls of white colonists in contact with hordes of savages. The Colonial Government, with a knowledge of the conditions gained only from well-meaning but somewhat prejudiced missionaries, endeavoured from 1815 onwards to enforce an impracticable equality between white and coloured men, and abolished slavery at one sudden stroke in 1833 without reasonable compensation. A large number of the Dutch, unable to tolerate this treatment, deserted the British flag. Those that remained were under suspicion for more than thirty years, so that political progress was very slow. It was not till 1854 that the Colony received a Representative Assembly, and not until 1872, eighteen years later than in Australia, and twenty-five years later than in Canada, that full responsible government was established. Piet Retief, one of the leaders of the voluntary exiles, had published a proclamation in the following terms before he joined the trek: "We quit this Colony under the full assurance that the English Government has nothing more to require of us, and will allow us to govern ourselves without its interference in the future. We are now leaving the fruitful land of our birth, in which we have suffered enormous losses and continual vexation, and are about to enter a strange and dangerous territory; but we go with a firm reliance on an all-seeing, just, and merciful God, whom we shall always fear and humbly endeavour to obey." This was high language, yet after-events proved that a steady, consistently fair treatment on our part would even then have reconciled these men to a permanent continuance of British sovereignty. Unfortunately, our policy oscillated painfully between irritating interference and excessive timidity. First of all attempts were made to stop the trek by force, then to compel the trekkers to return by cutting off their supplies and ammunition, then to throttle their development of the new lands north of the Orange and Vaal Rivers by calling into being fictitious native States on a huge scale in the midst of and around them, then tardily to repair the disastrous effects of this policy; but not before it had led to open hostilities (1845). Hostilities, however, had this temporarily good result, in that it brought to the front one of the ablest and wisest of the Cape Governors, Sir Harry Smith, who defeated the Boers at Boomplatz in 1848, established what went by the name of the Orange River Sovereignty, and in a year or two secured such good and peaceful government within its borders as to attract considerable numbers of English and Scotch colonists. The malcontents retired across the Vaal. Then came an abrupt change of policy in the Home Government, a sudden desire actuated mainly by fear of more native wars, to cancel all that was possible of our commitments in South Africa. The Transvaal, by the Sand River Convention, was declared independent in 1852, the Orange Free State, by the Convention of Bloemfontein, in 1854. This was to rush from one extreme to the other. It was as though in 1847 we had erected Quebec into a sovereign State instead of giving it responsible government under the Crown, or as if in 1843 we had been so deeply convinced by O'Connell's second agitation for repeal that we had leapt straight from coercive government to the foundation of an independent Republic in Ireland, instead of giving her the kind of Home Rule which she was asking for. It was not yet too late to mend. In 1854, when the cession of the Free State had just been carried out, Sir George Grey, whom we have met with in Australia and New Zealand, came as High Commissioner to the Cape. In 1859 he made the proposal I alluded to in the last chapter for federating all the South African States, including the two new Republics. There is little doubt that the scheme was feasible then. The Orange Free State was willing to join, and, indeed, had initiated proposals for Federation. Its adhesion would have compelled the Transvaal, always more hostile to British rule, to come in eventually, if not at once; for the relations of the two Republics were friendly enough at the time to permit one man, Pretorius, to be President of both States. The scheme was rejected by Lord Derby's Tory Cabinet, and Grey, a "dangerous man," as Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, dubbed him, was recalled. Sixteen years later, in 1875, Lord Carnarvon himself, as a member of the Disraeli Ministry, revived the project. Converted in his views of the Colonies, like many of his Tory colleagues at this period, he had carried through Parliament the Federation of Canada in 1867, and hoped to do the same with South Africa. But it was too late. The Cape Parliament, now in possession of a responsible Ministry, was hostile, while twenty years of self-government, for the most part under the great President Brand, had changed the sentiments of the Free State. Federation, then, was impossible. On the other hand, the Transvaal was in a state of political unrest and of danger from native aggression, which gave a pretext for reversion to the long-abandoned policy of annexation, and to that extreme Carnarvon promptly went in April, 1877. He took this dangerous course without ascertaining the considered wishes of the majority of the Boers, acting through his emissary, Sir T. Shepstone, on the informal application of a minority of townsmen who honestly wished to come under British rule. Rash as the measure was, lasting good might have come of it had the essential step been taken of preserving representative government. The promise was given and broken. For three years the Assembly, or Volksraad, was not summoned. Once more home statesmanship was blind, and local administration blunderingly oppressive. Shepstone was the wrong man for the post of Administrator. Sir Owen Lanyon, his successor, was an arrogant martinet of the stamp familiar in Canada before 1840, and painfully familiar in Ireland. The refusal of an Assembly naturally strengthened the popular demand for a reversal of the annexation, and this demand, twice pressed in London through a deputation headed by Paul Kruger, obscured the whole issue, and raised a question of British national pride, with all its inevitable consequences, where none need have been raised. There was a moment of hope when Sir Bartle Frere, who stands, perhaps, next to Sir George Grey on the roll of eminent High Commissioners, endeavoured to pacify the Boer malcontents, and drafted the scheme of a liberal Constitution for the Transvaal. But one of the last acts of the Tory Government, at the end of 1879, was to recall Frere for an alleged transgression of his powers in regard to the Zulu War, and to pigeon-hole his scheme. Mr. Gladstone, who in opposition had denounced the annexation with good enough justification, though in terms which under the circumstances were immoderate, found himself compelled to confirm it when he took office in April, 1880. But he, too, allowed the liberal Constitution to sleep in its pigeon-hole. He was assured by the officials on the spot that there was no danger, that the majority were loyal, and only a minority of turbulent demagogues disloyal; and in December, 1880, the rebellion duly broke out, and the Transvaal Republic was proclaimed. What followed we know, war, Laing's Nek, Majuba, and one more violent oscillation of policy in the concession of a virtual independence to the Transvaal. Whatever we may think of the policy of this concession, and Lord Morley has made the best case that can be made for Mr. Gladstone's action, it is certain that it was only a link in a long chain of blunders for which both great political parties had been equally responsible, and of which the end had not yet come. The nation at large, scarcely alive until now to the existence of the Colonies, was stung into Imperial consciousness by a national humiliation, for so it was not unnaturally regarded, coming from an obscure pastoral community confusedly identified as something between a Colony, a foreign power, and a troublesome native tribe. The history of the previous seventy years in South Africa was either unknown or forgotten, and Mr. Gladstone, who in past years had preached to indifferent hearers the soundest and sanest doctrine of enlightened Imperialism, suddenly appeared, and for ever after remained in the eyes of a great body of his countrymen, as a betrayer of the nation's honour. Resentment was all the greater in that it was universally believed that Laing's Nek and Majuba were unlucky little accidents, and that another month or two of hostilities would have humbled the Boers to the dust. This illusion, which is not yet eradicated, and which has coloured all subsequent discussion of the subject, lasted unmodified until the first months of the war in 1899, when events took place exactly similar to Laing's Nek and Majuba, and were followed by a campaign lasting nearly three years, requiring nearly 500,000 men for its completion, and the co-operation of the whole Empire. It is impossible to estimate the course events would have taken in 1881 had the war been prolonged. If the Free State had joined the Transvaal, it may be reasonably conjectured that we should have been weaker, relatively, than in 1899. Though the Boers were less numerous, less well organized, and less united as a nation in 1881, they were even better shots and stalkers than in 1899, because they had had more recent practice against game and natives; nor was there a large British population in the Transvaal to counteract their efforts and supply magnificent corps like the Imperial Light Horse for service in arms against them. Our army, just as brave, was in every other respect, especially in the matter of mounted men and marksmanship, less fitted for such a peculiar campaign, and could have counted with far less certainty upon that assistance from mounted colonial troops without which the war of 1899-1902 could never have been finished at all. Our command of the sea was less secure; the Egyptian War of 1882 was brewing, and Ireland, where the Great Land Act of 1881 was not yet law, was seething with crime and disorder little distinguishable from war itself, and demanding large bodies of troops. If the further course of a war in 1881 is a matter of speculation, what we all know for certain is, first, that the conditions which led to war were produced by seventy years of vacillating policy, and, second, that war itself would have been a useless waste of life and treasure, unless success in it had been followed, as in 1906, by the grant of that responsible Government which all along had been the key to the whole difficulty, the condition precedent to a Federal Union of the South African States, and to their closer incorporation in the Empire. Few persons realized this at the time. The whole situation changed disastrously for the worse. Arrogance and mutual contempt embittered the relations of the races. Then came a crucial test for the Boer capacity for enlightened and generous statesmanship. Gold was discovered in the Transvaal, and a large British population flocked in. The same problem, with local modifications, faced the Boers as had been faced in Upper and Lower Canada, and for centuries past in Ireland. Were they to trust or suspect, to admit or to exclude from full political rights, the new-comers? Was it to be the policy of the Duke of Wellington or of the Earl of Durham, of Fitzgibbon or the Volunteers? They chose the wrong course, and set up an oligarchical ascendancy like the "family compact" of Upper Canada and Nova Scotia. Can we be surprised that they, a rude, backward race, failed under the test where we ourselves, with far less justification, had failed so often? Their experience of our methods had been bad from first to last. Their latest taste of our rule had been the coercive system of Lanyon, and they feared, with only too good reason, as events after the second war proved, that any concession would lead to a counter-ascendancy of British interests in a country which was legally their own, not a portion of the British dominions. We had suffered nothing, and had no reason to fear anything, from the Irish and French-Canadian Catholics, nor from the Nonconformist Radicals of Upper Canada. It would have been well if a small fraction of the abuse lavished on the tyrannical Boer oligarchy six thousand miles away had been diverted into criticism of the government of a country within sixty miles of our shores, where a large majority of the inhabitants had been for generations asking for the same thing as the Uitlander minority in the Transvaal--Home Rule--and were stimulated to make that demand by grievances of a kind unknown in the Transvaal. But the British blood was up; the Boer blood was up. Such an atmosphere is not favourable to far-seeing statesmanship, and it would have taken statesmanship on both sides little short of superhuman to avert another war. The silly raid of 1895 and its condonation by public opinion in England hastened the explosion. Can anyone wonder that public opinion in Ireland was instinctively against that war? Only a pedant will seize on the supposed paradox that a war for equal rights for white men should have met with reprobation from an Ireland clamouring for Home Rule. Irish experience amply justified Irishmen in suspecting precisely what the Boers suspected, a counter-ascendancy in the gold interest, and in seeing in a war for the conquest of a small independent country by a mighty foreign power an analogy to the original conquest of Ireland by the same power. It is hard to speak with restraint of the educated men--men with books and time to read them, with brains and the wealth and leisure to develop them--who to this very day abuse their talents in encouraging among the ignorant multitude the belief that the Irish leaders of that day were, to use the old hackneyed phrase, "traitors to the Empire." If we look at the whole of these events in just perspective, if we search coolly and patiently for abiding principles beneath the sordid din and confusion of racial strife, we shall agree that in some respects Irishmen were better friends to the Empire than the politicians who denounced them, and sounder judges of its needs. Yet there can be no doubt that the Transvaal complications, followed unhappily by the Gordon episode in the Soudan, reacted fatally on Ireland, and that the Irish problem in its turn reacted with bad effect on the Transvaal. When the statesman who refused to avenge Majuba in 1881 proposed his Irish Home Rule Bills in 1886 and 1893, it was easy for prejudiced minds to associate the two policies as harmonious parts of one great scheme of national dismemberment and betrayal. Boers, Irish, and Soudanese savages, all were confusedly lumped together as dangerous people whom it was England's duty to conquer and coerce. The South African War of 1899-1902 came and passed. People will discuss to the end of time whether or not it could have been avoided. Parties will differ to the end of time about its moral justification. For my own part, I think it is pleasanter to dwell on the splendid qualities it evoked in both races, and above all on the mutual respect which replaced the mutual contempt of earlier days. I myself am disposed to think that at the pass matters had reached in 1896 nothing but open war could have set the relations of the two races on a healthy footing. But bold and generous statesmanship was needed if the fruits of this mutual respect were to be reaped. The defeated Republics were now British Colonies, their inhabitants British subjects. After many vicissitudes we were back once more in the old political situation of 1836 before the Great Trek, and the policy which was right then was right now. Bitter awakening as it was to our proud people after a war involving such colossal sacrifices, it was still just as true as of old that in Ireland, Canada, Australia, South Africa, or anywhere else, it is utterly impossible for one white democracy to rule another properly on the principle of ascendancy. It was physically possible, thanks to Ireland's proximity, to deny that country Home Rule, but it would not have been even physically possible in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. Yet the idea was conceived and the policy strongly backed which could only have had the disastrous effect of bringing into being two Irelands in the midst of our South African dominions. It is not yet generally recognized that we owe the defeat of this policy in the first instance to Lord Kitchener. From the moment he took the supreme military command in South Africa at the end of 1900, while prosecuting the war with iron severity and sleepless energy, he insisted on and worked for a settlement by consent, with a formal promise of future self-government to the Boers. In this he was in sharp opposition to Lord Milner, who desired to extort an unconditional surrender. Of these two strong, able, high-minded men, the soldier, curiously enough, was the better statesman. In temperament he recalls the General Abercromby of 1797 on the eve of the Irish rebellion, still more perhaps General Carleton, who administered French Canada in the critical period after its conquest and during the American War. Lord Milner, in political theory, not in personality, corresponds to Fitzgibbon. His view was that British prestige and authority could only be maintained in the future by thus humbling the national pride of our adversaries, who, moreover, by the formal annexations of 1900, carried into effect when the war was still young, were by a legal fiction rebels, not belligerents. Lord Kitchener, besides seeing, as the responsible soldier in the field, the sheer physical impossibility of lowering the Boer national pride by any military operations he had the power to undertake, from the beginning of the guerilla war onwards, was a truer judge of human nature and a better Imperialist at heart in realizing that the self-respect of the Boers was a precious asset, not a dangerous menace to the Empire, and that the whole fate of South Africa depended on a racial reconciliation on the basis of equal political rights, which would be for ever precluded by compelling the Boers to pass under the Caudine Forks. Fortunately Lord Kitchener was supported by the Home Government, and the Peace of Vereeniging took the form of a surrender on terms, or, virtually, of a treaty, formally guaranteeing, among other things, the concession "when circumstances should permit" of "representative institutions leading up to self-government." The next ordeal of British statesmanship came when the time arrived in 1905 to redeem this promise. There were two distinctly defined alternatives: one, to profit by experience and to give responsible government at once; the other, for the time being, to copy one of the constitutional models which had long been obsolete curiosities in the history of all the white Colonies, which had never failed to produce mischievous results, whether in a bi-racial or a uni-racial community, and which were in reality suited only to groups of officials and traders living in the midst of uneducated coloured races in tropical lands. The Government, and we cannot doubt that their traditional policy toward Ireland warped their views, declared for the latter alternative, and issued under Letters Patent a Constitution which happily never came into force. Like the Act of Union with Ireland, it gave the shadow of freedom without the substance. It set up a single Legislative Chamber, four-fifths elective, but containing, as _ex-officio_ members, the whole of the Executive Council as nominated by the Crown. Executive power, therefore, together with the last word in all legislation, was to remain wholly in the hands of the Crown, acting through a Ministry not responsible to the people's representatives. It would have been difficult to design a plan more certain to promote friction, racialism, and an eventual deadlock, necessitating either a humiliating surrender by the Government under pressure of the refusal of supplies, or a reversion to despotic government which would have produced another war. With wide differences of detail and with the added risk of financial deadlock, it was sought to establish the kind of political situation prevalent in Ireland after the Act of Union. The executive power in that country, and, with the exception of the Department of Agriculture, the policy and personnel of the host of nominated Boards through which its affairs are administered, still stand wholly outside popular control, while legislation in accordance with Irish views is only possible when, in the fluctuation of the British party balance, a British Ministry happens to be in sympathy with these views, and only too often not even then. Statesmen who looked with complacency on the history of a century in Ireland under such a system naturally took a similar view of the Transvaal, deriving it from the same low estimate of human tendencies. The literature, despatches, and speeches of the period carry us straight back to the Canadian controversies of 1837-1840, and beyond them to the Union controversy of 1800. In one respect the parallel with the Irish Union is closer, because, while British opinion in Lower Canada was predominantly against responsible government, there was in Ireland a strong current of unbribed Protestant opinion against the Union. Similarly, in the Transvaal, there was a strong feeling among a section of the British population, coinciding with the general wishes of the Dutch population, in favour of full responsible government. In other words, the mere prospect of self-government lessened racial cleavage, brought men of the two races together, and began the evolution of a new party cleavage on the normal lines natural to modern communities. The whole question was keenly canvassed at public meetings and in the Press from November, 1904, to February 5, 1905, and in Johannesburg a British party of considerable strength took the lead in demanding the fuller political rights, and formed the Responsible Government Association. The controversy was embodied in a Blue-Book laid before Parliament,[35] and at every stage of its progress the facts were cabled home by Lord Milner to the Government, who thus had the whole situation before them when they came to their decision. It would be worth the reader's while to study with some care the terms of the despatch announcing that decision.[36] He will feel himself in contact with fundamental principles, undisturbed by individual bias; for no one could suspect Mr. Lyttelton, the genial and popular Secretary of State who penned the despatch, of any violent prejudices. Yet the spirit of the whole despatch, though gentle and persuasive in its terms, is the spirit of Fitzgibbon's brutally outspoken argument for the extinction of the Irish Parliament, and the complete exclusion of Irish Roman Catholics from influence over their country's affairs. The despatch begins, it is true, by explaining that the proposed Constitution is only intended to be temporary; that it had been the invariable custom to grant freedom to the Colonies by degrees, and that the custom must be followed; but the reasons adduced for following it, if we consider that they were adduced in the year 1905, instead of a century and a half back, constitute one of the strangest of all the strange inversions of historical cause and effect which a Home Rule controversy has ever suggested to the human brain. Instead of inferring from our bitter experiences in Upper and Lower Canada, which are mentioned in the despatch, and in Ireland, which is not, that race distinctions increase instead of lessening the necessity for responsible government, Mr. Lyttelton complacently quotes bi-racial Lower Canada as a precedent for his Transvaal Constitution. Quite frankly, though in curiously misleading terms,[37] he records the fact that a similar Constitution there led to deadlock and rebellion. Without intention to deceive, he ignores the fact that wholly British Upper Canada reached the same pass for the same reasons; and he appears to look forward with equanimity to the passage of the unfortunate Transvaal through an identically painful phase of history toward the same sanguinary climax. The radical error in the official version of events in Canada appears in the comparison between the rebellions of 1837 and the South African War of 1899-1902. To contrast the "brief armed rising" in Canada with the three years' war in South Africa, and to argue that a degree of freedom could safely be given after the former, which would involve great danger after the latter, was to show ignorance of the chain of historical events and blindness to their true moral. The underlying idea is the one applied to the old American Colonies and for centuries to Ireland, namely, that the more mutinous a dependency is, the less reason for giving it Home Rule, with the paradoxical corollary applied even to this day in Ireland, that if it is not disorderly it does not need Home Rule. So from age to age statesmen run their heads against facts, perpetuate the errors of their forefathers, and do their unconscious best to intensify the evils they deplore. It was erroneous to regard either the Canadian Rebellions or the Boer War as events which rendered responsible government more or less dangerous. Each of these events was itself the climax of a long period of irresponsible misgovernment dating from about the same period, the second decade of the nineteenth century, and demanding the same remedy. In the Boer case, continuity was twice broken by grants of independence, and the climax proportionally delayed, but the origin of the trouble was the same. If the Boers had not trekked _en masse_ from Cape Colony in order to escape from misgovernment, both movements--in the Cape and Canada--might have come to a head in exactly the same year, 1837. In sober, weighty, tactful phrases, carefully chosen to avoid giving needless offence to the Dutch, the despatch laboriously overthrows the Liberal theory of government, and works out the negation of all Imperial experience. It deplores the "bitter memories" of war, which free institutions, by tending to "emphasize and stereotype the racial line," will make more, not less bitter, and which can be effaced only by the "healing effect of time." We think of the Durham Report, of Ireland, and marvel. We recollect the bulky Blue-Book at Mr. Lyttelton's elbow as he wrote, full of speeches and articles by Englishmen, showing quite correctly, as has since been proved, that the "racial line" in Johannesburg was growing fainter daily with the mere prospect of responsible government. These men were not afraid of the Dutch, and said so. The answer was that they ought to be, or, in the persuasive language of diplomacy, as follows: "His Majesty's Government trust that those of British origin in the Transvaal who, with honest conviction, have advocated the immediate concession of full responsible government, will recognize the soundness and cogency of the reasons, both in their own interests and in those of the Empire, for proceeding more cautiously and slowly, and that under a political system which admittedly has its difficulties they will, notwithstanding a temporary disappointment, do their best to promote the welfare of the country and the smooth working of its institutions." Then came a chivalrous compliment to the Dutch for their "gallant struggle" in the war, coupled with a reminder that they are not to be trusted with political power, a reminder so courteously worded that it, too, becomes a compliment: "The inhabitants of Dutch origin have recently witnessed, after their gallant struggle against superior power, the fall of the Republic founded by the valour and sufferings of their ancestors, and cannot be expected, until time has done more to heal the wound, to entertain the most cordial feelings towards the Government of the Transvaal. But from them also, as from a people of practical genius, who have learned by long experience to make the best of circumstances, His Majesty's Government expect co-operation in the task of making their race, no longer in isolated independence, a strong pillar in the fabric of a world-wide Empire. That this should be the result, and that a complete reconciliation between men of two great and kindred races should, under the leading of Divine Providence, speedily come to pass, is the ardent desire of His Majesty the King and of His Majesty's Government." The tone recalls the tone of Pitt and Castlereagh in proposing the Union. But Fitzgibbon went more directly to the point in saying outright that, Ireland having been conquered and confiscated, the colonists "were at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island," and that laws must be framed by an external power to "meet the vicious propensities of human nature." Let us recognize unreservedly that the words of the Transvaal despatch were the outcome of deep and sincere conviction. That is the worst of it. From age to age Ireland has to suffer for the depth and sincerity of these convictions. There, too, the cleavage of race and religion, never complete, always defying the official efforts to "stereotype and emphasize it," to quote the despatch of 1905, grows fainter with time, and will grow fainter as long as the national movement lives to draw men together in the common interest of Ireland. The Volunteers, Wolfe Tone, Emmet, many of the Young Irelanders, Isaac Butt, Parnell, were Protestants. And there is a strong band of Protestant Home Rulers to-day in Ulster and out of it, landlords, tenants, capitalists, labourers, Members of Parliament, and clergymen, who declare that they are not afraid of Catholic oppression, and who are told by Unionists that they ought to be. And in Ireland, too, the Roman Catholic majority are told, rarely, it is true, in the courteous phrases of Mr. Lyttelton's despatch, that they "cannot be expected to entertain the most cordial feelings towards the Government." In Ireland, also, is a "political system which admittedly has its difficulties," ironical euphemism for a system whose analogue in the Transvaal could have been used by the subject race, had they so willed, to bring civil government to a standstill, without the means of furnishing anything better, and which under the Act of Union can be, and has been, used to dislocate the Parliamentary life of the United Kingdom. The Boers were asked "as a people of practical genius" to assist the "smooth working" of an unworkable Constitution, so as to promote the "reconciliation of two great and kindred races." The Irish are pursued with invective for legitimately using the constitutional power given them in order, while freeing Parliament from an intolerable incubus, to gain the right to elicit character and responsibility in themselves by shouldering their own burdens and saving their own souls. If the official view of the Transvaal was mistaken, the summit of error was reached in the view taken of the Orange River Colony. In that Colony, which was almost wholly pastoral and Dutch, and which until the war had enjoyed free institutions uninterruptedly for half a century, and had made remarkably good vise of them, representative government, even of the illusory kind designed for the Transvaal, was to be indefinitely postponed, postponed at any rate until the results of the "experiment" in the Transvaal had been observed. The Government "recognize that there are industrial and economic conditions peculiar to the Transvaal, which make it very desirable in that Colony to have at the earliest possible date some better means of ascertaining the views of the different sections of the population than the present system affords. The question as regards the Orange River Colony being a less urgent one, it appears to them that there will be advantage in allowing a short period to intervene before elective representative institutions are granted to the last-named Colony, because this will permit His Majesty's Government to observe the experiment, and, if need be, to profit by the experience so gained." What is the train of reasoning in this strange specimen of political argument? It was important to "ascertain the views" of the bi-racial Transvaal, but needless to ascertain the views of the practically homogeneous Orange River Colony. The "question" there is a "less urgent one." What question? Why less urgent? Is it that the British minority, being so very small, is more liable to oppression by the Dutch? That is a tenable point, though by parity of reasoning it would seem to make the question more, not less, urgent, and the importance of "ascertaining the views" of the different sections of the population, greater, not less. Or is it the diametrically opposite train of thought, namely, that an assumed improbability of disorder owing to the homogeneity of the population is a reason, not for giving Home Rule, but for withholding it? These contradictions and confusions are painfully familiar in anti-Home Rule dialectics all over the world. A quiet Ireland does not want Home Rule; a turbulent Ireland is not fit for it. If the Unionist element in Ireland is strong, that is clearly an argument for withholding Home Rule in deference to the wishes of a strong minority. If the minority, on the other hand, is proved to be small, all the greater reason for withholding it, because oppression by the majority will be easier. So the sterile argument swings back and forth, and men still talk of "experiments" and "profiting by experience," while the demonstration of their errors is written in the blood and tears of centuries, and while masses of facts accumulate, demonstrating the great truth that free democratic government, whatever its disadvantages and dangers--and it has both--is the best resource for uniting, strengthening, and enriching a community of white men. The Transvaal Constitution of 1905 was cancelled on the incoming of the Liberal Ministry at the end of that year, and in the following year full responsible government was granted both to the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, with the results that we know. Instantaneously there permeated the bi-racial urban society in the Transvaal a new sense of brotherhood. Men of different race, as far apart in spirit as the members of the Kildare Street Club, the Orange Societies, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, met and made friends because it was not only natural but necessary to make friends, since on all alike lay the burden of doing their best for their country on a basis of equal citizenship. Nobody out there called the new system an "experiment." The wrench once over, the thing once done, there was general unanimity that whatever the difficulties--and there were great difficulties--it was the right thing to be done under the circumstances, and if this unanimity was combined, rightly or wrongly, with a good deal of resentment against the Liberal attitude at home towards Chinese labour, nobody is any the worse for that. The day will come when even that burning question will be seen in its true perspective as an infinitesimally small point beside the great principle of responsible government, which includes the decision of labour questions, together with all other branches of domestic policy. Conservative opinion at home has been slower to change than British opinion in the Transvaal. But, again, this was natural. Parties had long been divided on the South African question. The abrupt reversal of policy was felt as a humiliation, and the ingrained mental habits engendered by the traditional policy towards Ireland yielded slowly, grudgingly, and fearfully to the proof of error in South Africa. It is not for the sake of opening an old wound, but solely because it is absolutely necessary for the completion of my argument, that I have to recall the angry and violent speeches which followed the announcement of the new policy; the dogmatic prognostications of Imperial disruption, of financial collapse, and of a cruel Boer tyranny in the emancipated Colonies; the charges of wanton betrayal of loyalists, of disgraceful surrender to "the enemy." Some of the leading actors in these scenes, notably Mr. Balfour and Mr. Lyttelton, have since acknowledged that they were wrong, while apparently feeling it their duty as honourable and loyal men to give a somewhat misleading turn to an old controversy in their praise of Lord Milner's services to South Africa. That Lord Milner, in his administration during and after the war, did, indeed, do a vast amount of sound and lasting work for South Africa is perfectly true, and he deserves all honour for it. Probably no public servant of the Empire ever laboured in its service with more unstinted devotion and a higher sense of duty. But good administration is not an adequate substitute for knowledge of men, and that knowledge Lord Milner lacked. He did no service to the British colonists of South Africa in telling them that they had been shamefully betrayed by the Home Government in 1906. It would have been wiser to advise them to rely on themselves and on the justice and wisdom of their Dutch fellow-citizens. His violent speeches in 1906-1908 about the calamitous results of permitting Dutch influences free play in South Africa--speeches breathing the essential spirit of Fitzgibbonism--would have wrought incalculable mischief had they coincided with effective British policy; while his view, as expressed in the House of Lords,[38] that a preparatory régime of benevolent despotism, showing "the obvious solicitude of the Government for the welfare of the people," and taking shape "in a hundred and one works of material advancement," would "win us friends and diminish our enemies," evinces an ignorance of the ordinary motives influencing the conduct of white men, which would be incredible if we had not Irish experience before us. "Twenty years of resolute government," said Lord Salisbury. "Home Rule will be killed by kindness," said many of his successors. In later chapters I shall have to show what well-meant kindness and resolute government have done for Ireland. If even at this late hour Lord Milner would frankly acknowledge his error, I believe he would enormously enhance his reputation in the eyes of the whole Empire. As practical men, let us remember that the Constitutions of 1906 would not have become law if, instead of being issued under Letters Patent, they had had to pass through Parliament in the form of a Bill. The whole Conservative party, following Lord Milner, was vehemently against the Letters Patent. Those who witnessed the debate upon them in the House of Commons will not forget the scene. I recall this fact without any desire to entangle myself in the current controversy about the Upper House, but with the strictly practical object of showing that because a Home Rule Bill is defeated in Parliament, as the Irish Bills of 1886 and 1893 were defeated, it does not necessarily follow that its policy is wrong. Nor does it follow that its policy is wrong if that defeat in Parliament is confirmed by a General Election. Home Rule for Canada never had to pass, and would not have passed even the Parliamentary test. Skilful and determined organization could have wrecked even the Australian Constitutions. No one, certainly, could have guaranteed a favourable result of a General Election taken expressly upon the Transvaal and Orange River Constitutions of 1906, with the whole machinery of one of the great parties thrown into the scale against them. We know the case made against Ireland on such occasions, and the case against the conquered Republics was made in Parliament with ten times greater force. If anyone doubts this, let him compare the speeches on Ireland in 1886 and 1893 with the speeches on South Africa in 1905-06. With the alteration of a name or two, with the substitution, for example, of Johannesburg for Ulster, the speeches against South African and Irish Home Rule might be almost interchangeable. For electioneering purposes, evidences, in word and act, of Boer treason, rapacity, and vindictiveness, could have been made by skilful orators to seem damning and unanswerable. All the arts for inflaming popular passion under the pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises. The material would have been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the Peace Conference, would have been ready for the hoardings and the fly-sheets, and they would have had an appreciable effect. Am I weakening the case for democracy itself in pressing this view? Surely not. One democracy is incapable of understanding the domestic needs and problems of another. Whenever, therefore, a democracy finds itself responsible for the adjudication of a claim for Home Rule from white men, it should limit itself to ascertaining whether the claim is genuine and sincere. If it is, the claim should be granted, and a Constitution constructed in friendly concert with the men who are to live under it. That way lies safety and honour, and, happily, the democracy is being educated to that truth. If this be a counsel of perfection; if the difficult and delicate task of settling the details of Irish Home Rule is to be hampered and complicated by the resuscitation of those time-honoured discussions over abstract principles which ought long ago to have been buried and forgotten, let every patriotic and enlightened man at any rate do his best to sweeten and mollify the controversy, to extirpate its grosser manifestations, and to substitute reason for passion. The grant of responsible government to the Transvaal and Orange River Colony reacted with amazing rapidity on South African politics as a whole. It took the Canadian Provinces twenty-seven years (if we reckon from 1840), and the Australian States forty-five years (if we reckon from 1855), to reach a Federal Union. Hardly a minute was wasted in South Africa. Under very able guidance, the scheme was canvassed almost from the first, and in two years trusted leaders of both races, representing Natal, Cape Colony, and two newly emancipated Colonies--men, some of whom had been shooting at one another only five years before--were sitting at a table together hammering out the details of a South African Union. Here, indeed, was shown the "practical genius" which the Government of 1905 had piously invoked for their abortive Constitution. In the spirit of forbearance, of sympathy, of wise compromise, which governed the proceedings of this famous Conference, was to be found the measure of the longing of all parties to extinguish racialism and make South Africa truly a nation. The Imperial Act legalizing the arrangements ultimately arrived at by the agreement of the colonists was passed in 1909. The political system constructed cannot be called Federal. The framers rejected the Australian model, and went much beyond the Canadian model in centralizing authority and diminishing local autonomy; nor can there be any doubt that the strongest motive behind that policy was that of securing the harmony of the two white races. All this was the result of trusting the Dutch in 1906. "We cannot expect you to trust us, and we shall not trust you," said the despatch of 1905. We know what the consequences of that policy would have been. It is not a question of imagination or hypothesis. It is a question of the operation of certain unchanging laws in the conduct of all white men. Good or bad, our government would have been detested. We should have manufactured sedition, lawlessness, and discord. Then the tendency would have been strong to follow the old Irish precedent, and make the evil symptoms we had ourselves educed the pretext for tightening the screw of anti-popular government. It would have been said that we must sustain our prestige to the end and at all costs, a phrase which often cloaks the obstinacy of moral cowardice. Or, too late to escape the contempt of the Boers, we might have abruptly surrendered to clamour. It would have taken a long time to reach union then. Contempt is a bad foundation. It brings one near despair to see the Union of South Africa used by men who should know better as an argument against Irish Home Rule. The chain of causation is so clear, one would think, as to be incapable of misconstruction. But there seems to be no limit in certain minds to the prejudice against the principle of Home Rule. If it is seen to work well, the phenomenon is hurriedly swept into oblivion, and its results attributed with feverish ingenuity to any cause but the true one. The very speed with which the antidote pervades the body politic and expels the old poison helps these untiring propagators of error to suppress the history of recuperation, and to ascribe the cure of the patient to a treatment which, if applied long enough, would have killed him. The Conservative party appear to have now reached this amazing conclusion: that they and Lord Milner were the authors of the South African Union, and that that Union is a weapon sent them by Providence for combating the Irish claims. This is what Ireland has to pay for being the sport of British parties. Individual statesmen may point at past mistakes; but a party, as a party, can never admit error: it is against the rules. To make things easier, there is that question-begging phrase, the "Union." If South Africa, like Australia, had been federalized, this windfall would have been lost, because the word "Federal" might have suggested some form of Federal Home Rule for Ireland. Labels mean an enormous amount in politics. There is not the slightest doubt that Mr. Walter Long, and even Lord Selborne, who, as High Commissioner, actually witnessed the whole evolution from responsible government in the two conquered States to the Union of South Africa, are perfectly sincere in their opposition to Irish Home Rule. But, I would respectfully suggest, it is their duty to use their knowledge and convictions in the right and fair way. Let them say, if they will, ignoring the intermediate and indispensable phase of Home Rule in South Africa: "Here are two Unions; never mind how they arose. Both are good: all Unions are good. The modern tendency to unify is sound; do not let us react to devolution." Let them, in other words, confine their argument to the domain of political science. What, I submit, they should refrain from, is the imputation of sordid motives to Nationalist leaders, the prognostications of religious and racial tyranny in Ireland, and all those inflammatory arguments against the principle of Home Rule which have been used all the world over, from time immemorial, for the maintenance of Unions based on legal, not on moral, ties, which were used against responsible government for the Transvaal, and which, I venture to affirm, degrade our public life. I am assuming for the moment that most Conservatives will elect to use the South African parallel in the way that Mr. Long and Lord Selborne have used it, that is, while tacitly approving in retrospect of the Home Rule of 1906, to argue from Union to Union. But it is of no use to blink the fact that there are pessimists who will put forward an antithetical case, boldly declaring that we were wrong ever to trust the Boers, that racialism is as bad as ever, that General Botha's loyalty is cant, the Cullinan diamond an insult, and that South Africa will go from bad to worse under a Dutch tyranny. Party propaganda is quite elastic enough to permit the two opposite views to be used to convince the same electorate at the same election. Pessimists are always active in these affairs, and they can always produce something in the nature of a plausible case, because it stands to reason that the evils of generations cannot be swept away in a moment, either in South Africa or Ireland. Miracles do not happen, and the pessimists, who are the curse of Ireland to-day, will be able to demonstrate with ease that the free Ireland of to-morrow will not enter instantaneously upon a millennium. It is useless to attempt to convert these extremists. For a century back, Hansard and the columns of daily papers have been full of their unfulfilled jeremiads about Canada, about Australia, and about the very smallest and most tardy attempts to give a little responsibility to the majority of citizens in Ireland. The vocabulary of impending ruin has been exhausted long ago; there is nothing new to be said. But those who care to study in a cool temper the course of recent South African politics in the columns of the _Times_, or, better still, in those of that excellent magazine for the discussion of Imperial affairs, the _Round Table_, will conclude that extraordinary progress has been made towards racial reunion, and that in this respect no serious peril threatens South Africa. The settlement, by friendly compromise at the end of the last session, of the very thorny question of language in the education of children, is a good example of what good-will can accomplish under free institutions. By a laboured construction of fragments of speeches culled from the utterances of exceptionally vehement partisans, it would be still possible to make up a theory of the "disloyalty" of the South African Dutch. It would have been equally possible for a painstaking British student of the _Sydney Bulletin_ within recent memory to start a panic over the imminent "loss" of Australia. Some people think that Canada is as good as "lost" now. Yet the Empire has never been so strong or so united as to-day. FOOTNOTES: [35] Cd. 2479, 1905. [36] Cd. 2400, 1905. [37] "It is true that in the case of Canada full responsible government was conceded, a few years after a troublous period culminating in a brief armed rising, to a population composed of races then not very friendly to each other, though now long since happily reconciled. But the Canadas had by that time enjoyed representative institutions for over fifty years, the French-Canadians had since the year 1763 been continuously British subjects, and the disorders which preceded Lord Durham's Mission and the subsequent grant of self-government could not compare in any way with a war like that of 1899-1902. It is also the fact that in the United Colony of Upper and Lower Canada, during the period of 1840-1867, parties were formed mainly upon the lines of races, and that, as the representatives of the races were in number nearly balanced, stability of Government was not attained, a difficulty which was not overcome until the Federation of 1867, accompanied by the relegation of provincial affairs to provincial Legislatures, placed the whole political Constitution of Canada upon a wider basis." Few would gather from the first sentence that the races were "not very friendly to each other" precisely because they lived under a coercive political system; and that, in the long-run, they were "happily reconciled" because they received responsible government. Nor could it be deduced from the obscure reference lower down to the union of the two Provinces that the Union was the one blot upon Durham's scheme, the one point in which, fearing the predominance of a French majority in Lower Canada, he shrank from his own principles and recommended an unworkable Union which tended to encourage the formation "of parties on the lines of races." From the further allusion to the Federal Union of 1867, no one would imagine that that great scheme was founded on a cessation of racial antipathy inside the Quebec Province, and on a voluntary recognition among all races and parties that it was best for that Province to have a local autonomy of its own, parallel with that of the Ontario Province and under the supreme central authority of the Dominion. [38] February 26, March 27, 1906. CHAPTER VIII THE ANALOGY Let the reader endeavour to see the closely related stories of Ireland and of these more distant communities as a whole, undistracted by the varying degrees of their proximity to the Mother Country, making his study one of men and laws, and remembering that Ireland was the first and nearest of the British Colonies. Does not she become a convex mirror, in which, swollen to unnatural proportions, the mistakes of two centuries are reflected? Principles of government universal in their nature, transcending geography, and painfully evolved in more distant parts of the Empire, we have thrown to the winds in Ireland. Economic evils, resembling, in however distant a degree, those of Ireland, have irritated and retarded every community in which they have been allowed to take root. A sound agrarian system has been the primary need of every country. To take the closest parallel, if absentee proprietorship and insecurity of tenure kept little Prince Edward Island, peacefully and legally settled, backward and disturbed for a century, it is not surprising that Ireland, submitted to confiscation, the Penal Code, and commercial rum, did not flourish under a land system beside which that of Prince Edward Island was a paradise. Tardy redress of the worst Irish abuses is no defence of the system which created them and sustained them with such ruinous results. No white community of pride and spirit would willingly tolerate the grotesque form of Crown Colony administration, founded on force, and now tempered by a kind of paternal State Socialism, under which Ireland lives to-day. Unionism for Ireland is anti-Imperialist. Its upholders strenuously opposed colonial autonomy, and but yesterday were passionately opposing South African autonomy. To-day colonial autonomy is an axiom. But Ireland is a measure of the depth of these convictions. There would be no Empire to idealize if their Irish principles had been applied just a little longer to any of the oversea States which constitute the self-governing Colonies of to-day. As it is, these principles have wrought great and perhaps lasting mischief which, in the righteous glow of self-congratulation upon what we are accustomed to call our constructive political genius, we are too apt to overlook. It was bad for America to pass through that phase of agitation and discord which preceded the revolutionary war. It was demoralizing for the Canadas to be driven into rebellion by the vices of ascendancy government. Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Australian autonomy, was right in satirizing the "miserable jargon" about fitting men for political privileges, and in demonstrating the harm done by withholding those privileges. And the Irish race all over the world, fine race as it is, would be finer still if Ireland had been free. The political habits formed in dealing with Ireland have disastrously influenced Imperial policy in the past. Cannot we, by a supreme national effort, reverse the mental process, and, if we have always failed in the past to learn from Irish lessons how not to treat the Colonies, at any rate learn, even at the eleventh hour, from our colonial lessons how to treat Ireland? Must we for ever sound the old alarms about "disloyalty" and "dismemberment" and "abandonment of the loyal minority to the tender mercies of their foes"; phrases as old as the Stamp Act of 1765? Must we carry the "gentle art of making enemies," practised to the last point of danger in the Colonies, to the preposterous pitch of estranging men at our very doors, while pluming ourselves on the friendship of peoples 12,000 miles away? These are anxious times. We have a mighty rival in Europe, and we need the co-operation of all our hands and brains. On a basis of mere profit and loss, is it sensible to maintain a system in Ireland which weakens both Ireland and the whole United Kingdom, clogs the delicate machinery of Parliamentary government, and, worked out in hard figures of pounds, shillings, and pence, has ceased even to show a pecuniary advantage? Have Unionists really no better prescription for the constitutional difficulties caused by the Union than to reduce the representation of Ireland in Parliament so as to give Ireland still less control than at present over her own affairs? Is that seriously their last word in statesmanship, to exasperate Nationalist Ireland without even providing in any appreciable degree a mechanical remedy for disordered political functions? The idea has only to be stated to be dismissed. It is not even practical politics. Some things are sheer impossibilities; and to leave the Union system as it is, while reducing representation, is one of them. We revert, then, to a contemplation of the well-tried expedient, "Trust, and you will be trusted." But then we have to meet pessimists of two descriptions, the honest and the merely cynical. The honest pessimist (often, unhappily, an educated Irishman) says: "The Irish in Ireland are an incurably criminal race. They differ from Irishmen elsewhere and from Anglo-Saxons everywhere. Air and soil are unaccountable. The Union policy has been, and remains, a painful but a quite inevitable necessity. It is sound, now and for all time." The cynical pessimist, on the other hand, admits the errors of past policy, but says frankly that it is too late to change. "We have gone too far, raised passions we cannot allay." I shall not try further to confute the honest pessimist. The preceding chapters have been written in vain if they do not shatter the theory of original sin. And to the cynical pessimist, who is a reincarnation of our old friend Fitzgibbon (for that clear-headed statesman frankly imputed original sin to the conquerors of Ireland, as well as to the conquered), I would only say: "Use your common sense." These panics over the vagaries and excesses of an Irish Parliament, always groundless, are beginning to look highly ridiculous. In 1893, when the last Home Rule Bill was being discussed, a Franco-Irish alliance was the fear. Now it is the other way, and the _Spectator_ has been writing solemn articles to warn its readers that Mr. Dillon, in a speech on foreign policy, has shown ominous signs of hostility to France. In the election of January, 1910, an ex-Cabinet Minister informed the public that Home Rule meant the presence of a German fleet in Belfast Lough--at whose invitation he did not explain, though he probably did not intend to insult Ulster. This wild talk has not even the merit of a strategical foundation. It belongs to another age. Ireland has neither a fleet nor the will or money to build one. Our fleet, in which large numbers of Irishmen serve, guarantees the security of New Zealand, and if it cannot maintain the command of home waters, including St. George's Channel, our situation is desperate, whether Ireland is friendly or hostile. We guarantee the independent existence of the kingdom of Belgium, which is as near as Ireland, with military liabilities vastly more serious than any which Ireland could conceivably entail; but we do not claim, as a consequence, to control the Executive of Belgium and remove her Parliament to Westminster, in order to be quite sure that the Belgians are not intriguing against us with Germany. Germany, our alarmists fear, is to invade Ireland, and Ireland is to greet the invaders with open arms. The same prophecy was being made not more than three years ago of the South African Dutch. After asking for a century and a half to manage her own affairs, the Irish are not likely to ask to be ruled by Germans. The German strategists are men of common sense. If they were fortunate enough to gain the command of the sea, they could make no worse mistake than to dissipate their energies on Ireland. Perhaps it is a waste of time to attempt to destroy these foolish myths. Let those that are sceptical about the effect of Home Rule in producing friendlier feelings between Ireland and Great Britain consider in a reasonable spirit the commonplace question of mutual interests. What is the really practical significance of Ireland's proximity to England? This, that their material interests are indissociably intertwined. If it is "safe," as the phrase goes, to entrust Australia with Home Rule, surely it is safer still to entrust Ireland with it. Has Ireland anything to gain by separation? Clearly nothing. Has she anything to lose? Much. Most of her trade is with Great Britain. British credit is of enormous value to her. The Imperial forces are of less proportionate value to her because her external trade is small; but she willingly supplies a large and important part of their personnel; she shares in their glorious traditions; and if it is a case of protection for her trade, she will get no protection elsewhere. How idle are these calculations of profit and loss! The truth is that Ireland has taken her full share in winning and populating the Empire. The result is hers as much as Britain's. Mr. Redmond spoke for his countrymen last May[39] in saying: "We, as Irishmen, are not prepared to surrender our share in the heritage [that is, the British Empire] which our fathers created." That is sound sentiment and sound sense. It is the view taken by the Colonies, where Irishmen are known, respected, and understood, and where the support for Home Rule, based on personal experience of its blessings, has been, and remains, consistent and strong. Indeed, we miss the significance of that support if we do not realize that Irish Home Rule is an indispensable preliminary to the closer union of the various parts of the Empire. Let us add the wider generalization that it is an indispensable preliminary to the closer union of all the English-speaking races. It may be fairly computed that a fifth of the present white population of the United States is of Irish blood.[40] American opinion, as a whole, so far as it is directed towards Ireland and away from a host of absorbing domestic problems, is favourable to Home Rule. Irish-American opinion has never swerved, although it has become more sober, as the material condition of Ireland has improved, and the interests of Irish-Americans themselves have become more closely identified with those of their adopted country. Fenianism is altogether extinct. The extreme claim for the total separation of Ireland from Great Britain is now no more than a sentimental survival among a handful of the older men, of the fierce hatreds provoked by the miseries and horrors of an era which has passed away.[41] Even Mr. Patrick Ford and the _Irish World_ have moderated their tone, and where that tone is still inflammatory it is not representative of Irish-American opinion. I have studied with a good deal of care the columns of that journal for some months back, smiling over the imaginary terrors of the nervous people on this side of the Atlantic who are taught by their party Press to believe that Mr. Patrick Ford is going to dynamite them in their beds. Any liberal-minded student of history and human nature would pronounce the whole propaganda perfectly harmless. But the sane instinct that Ireland should have a local autonomy of her own, an instinct common to the whole brotherhood of nations which have sprung from these shores, lasts undiminished and takes shape, quite rightly and naturally, as it takes shape in the Colonies, in financial support of the Nationalist party in Ireland. Anti-British sentiment in the United States, once a grave international danger, is that no longer; but it does still represent an obstacle to the complete realization of an ideal which all patriotic men should aim at: the formation of indestructible bonds of friendship between Great Britain and the United States. Nor must it be forgotten that the calm and reasonable character of Irish-American opinion is due in a large degree to confidence in the ultimate success of the constitutional movement here for Home Rule. Every successive defeat of that policy tends to embitter feeling in America. Oh, for an hour of intelligent politics! The old choice is before us--to make the best or the worst of the state of opinion in America; to disinter from ancient files of the _Irish World_ sentences calculated to inflame an ignorant British audience; or to say in sensible and manly terms: "The situation is more favourable than it has been for a century past for the settlement of just Irish claims." FOOTNOTES: [39] At Woodford, May 27, 1911. [40] This is a very general statement. No figures exist for an accurate computation. The Census of 1910 gives the total population of the United States, white and coloured, as 91,272,266, of whom nearly 9,000,000 are negroes. The figures about countries of origin are not yet available. The statistical abstract of the United States (1908) gives the total number of immigrants from Ireland from 1821 to 1908 as 4,168,747 (the large majority of whom must have been of marriageable age), but does not estimate the subsequent increase by marriage, and takes no account of the immigration prior to 1821, which was very large, especially in the period preceding the Revolutionary War of 1775-1782. At the Census of 1900 Irishmen actually _born in Ireland_ and then resident in the United States are stated to have been 1,618,567, as compared with 93,682 from Wales, 233,977 from Scotland, and 842,078 from England. [41] I am especially indebted for information to Mr. Hugh Sutherland, of the _North American_ (Philadelphia), to Mr. Rodman Wanamaker, of the same city, to Mr. Frank Sanborn, of Concord, and to Mr. John O'Callaghan, of Boston. CHAPTER IX IRELAND TO-DAY Why does present-day Ireland need Home Rule? I put the question in that way because I am not going to question the fact that she wants Home Rule. She has always said she wanted it: she says so still, and that is enough. There is a powerful minority in Ireland against Home Rule. There always have been minorities more or less powerful against Home Rule in all ages and places. That does not alter the national character of the claim. If once we go behind the voice of a people, constitutionally expressed, we court endless risks. National leaders have always been called "agitators," which, of course, they are, and non-representative agitators, which they are not. To deny the genuineness of a claim which is feared is an invariable feature of oppositions to measures of Home Rule. The denial is generally irreconcilable with the case made for the dangers of Home Rule, and that contradiction in its most glaring shape characterizes the present opposition to the Irish claims. But Unionists should elect to stand on one ground or the other, and for my part I shall assume that the large majority of Irishmen, as shown by successive electoral votes, want Home Rule. Precisely what form of Home Rule they want is another and by no means so clear a matter, on which I shall presently have a word to say. But they want, in the general sense, to manage their own local affairs. Her best friends would despair of Ireland if that was not her desire. What, in the Colonies, Ireland, and everywhere else, is the deep spiritual impulse behind the desire for Home Rule? A craving for self-expression, self-reliance. Home Rule is synonymous with the growth of independent character. That is why Ireland instinctively and passionately wants it, that is why she needs it, and that is why Great Britain, for her own sake, and Ireland's, should give it. If that is not the reason, it is idle to talk about Home Rule; but it is the reason. Character is the very foundation of national prosperity and happiness, and we are blind to the facts of history if we cannot discern the profound effect of political institutions upon human character. Self-government in the community corresponds to free will in the individual. I am far from saying that self-government is everything. But I do say that it is the master-key. It is fundamental. Give responsibility and you will create responsibility. Through political responsibility only can a society brace itself to organized effort, find out its own opinions on its own needs, test its own capabilities, and elicit the will, the brains, and the hands to solve its own problems. These are such commonplaces in every other part of the Empire, which has an individual life of its own, that men smile if you suggest the contrary. But ordinary reasoning is rarely applied to Ireland. There "good government" has been held to be "a substitute for self-government" and a régime of benevolent paternalism to be a full and sufficient compensation for cruel coercion and crueller neglect. In this paternal régime it is impossible to include those great measures of land reform passed in 1870, 1881, and 1887, which revolutionized the agrarian system, and converted the cottier tenant into a judicial tenant.[42] Although these measures, which fall into an altogether different category from the subsequent policy of State-aided Land Purchase,[43] were inspired by an earnest desire to mitigate frightful social evils, they cannot be regarded as voluntary. They were extorted, shocking as the reflection is, by crime and violence, by the spectacle of a whole social order visibly collapsing, and by the desperate efforts of a handful of Irishmen, determined at any cost, by whatever means, to save the bodies and souls of their countrymen. The methods of these men were destructive. They were constructive only in this, the highest sense of all, that while battling against concrete economic evils, they sought to obtain for Ireland the right to control her own affairs and cure her own economic evils. It is often said that Parnell gave a tremendous impetus to the Home Rule movement by harnessing it to the land question. True; but what a strange way of expressing a truth! Anywhere outside Ireland men would say that self-government was the best road to the reform of a bad land system. With the tranquillity which was slowly restored by the alterations in agrarian tenure and the immense economic relief derived from the lowering of rents, a change came over the spirit of British statesmanship. With the exception of the short Liberal Government of 1892-1895, which failed for the second time to carry Home Rule, Conservatives were responsible for Ireland from 1886 to 1905. They felt that opposition to Home Rule could be justified only by a strenuous policy of amelioration in Ireland, and the efforts of three Chief Secretaries, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Gerald Balfour, and Mr. George Wyndham--efforts often made in the teeth of bitter opposition from Irish Unionists--to carry out this policy, were sincere and earnest. The Act of 1891, with its grants for light railways, its additional facilities for Land Purchase, and its establishment of the Congested Districts Board to deal with the terrible poverty of certain districts in the west, may be said to mark the beginning of the new era. The Land Act of 1896 was another step, and the establishment of a complete system of Irish Local Government in 1898 another. In the following year came the Act setting up the Department of Agriculture, and in 1903 Mr. Wyndham's great Land Purchase Act. Then came the strange "devolutionist" episode, arising from the appointment of Sir Antony (now Lord) MacDonnell to the post of Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, the Government who selected him being fully aware that he was in favour of some change in the government of Ireland. He entered into relations with a group of prominent Irishmen, headed by Lord Dunraven, who were thinking out a scheme for a mild measure of devolution. When the fact became known, there was an explosion of anger among Irish Unionists. Mr. Wyndham, who had been a popular Chief Secretary, resigned office, and was succeeded by Mr. Walter Long; perhaps the most dramatic and significant example in modern times of the policy of governing Ireland in deliberate and direct defiance of the wishes and sentiments of the vast majority of Irishmen. The Liberal Government of 1906, coming into office under a pledge to refrain from a full Home Rule measure, confined itself to the introduction of the Irish Council Bill of 1907, which, rightly, in my opinion, was repudiated by the Irish people, and accordingly dropped. But the Government was in general sympathy with Nationalist Ireland, so that a number of useful measures were added to the statute books; for example, the Labourers (Ireland) Act of 1906, empowering Rural Councils, with the aid of State credit, to acquire land for labourers' plots and cottages; the Town Tenants Act, extending the principle of compensation for improvements at the termination of a lease to the urban tenant; the very important Irish Universities Act of 1908, which gave to Roman Catholics facilities for higher education which they had lacked for centuries, and, lastly, Mr. Birrell's Land Act of 1909, which was designed partly to meet the imminent collapse of Land Purchase, owing to the failure of the financial arrangements made under the Wyndham Act of 1903, and partly to extend the powers of the Congested Districts Board. To these measures must be added another which was not confined to Ireland, but which has exercised a most potent influence, and by no means a wholly beneficial influence, on Irish life and Irish finance, the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, under which the enormous sum of two and three-quarter millions is now allocated to Ireland.[44] The best that can be said of the legislation since 1881 is that it has laid the foundations of a new social order. Agrarian crime has disappeared and material prosperity has greatly increased. Government in the interests of a small favoured class has almost vanished. It survives to this extent, that civil administration and patronage, which are still, be it remembered, removed from popular control, remain, in fact, in Protestant and Unionist hands to an extent altogether disproportionate to the distribution of creeds, classes, and opinions. And, of course, in the major matter of Home Rule, the power of the Unionist minority, as represented in the Commons by seventeen out of the thirty-three Ulster representatives, and in the House of Lords by an overwhelming preponderance of Unionist peers, is still enormous. But within Ireland itself, central administration apart, the exceptional privileges and exceptional political power of Protestants and landlords, which lasted almost intact until forty years ago, is now non-existent. The Disestablishment Act of 1869, while immensely enhancing the moral power and religious zeal of the Church of Ireland, and even strengthening its financial position, took away its political monopoly, and through the final abolition of tithes, its baneful and irritating interference with economic life. The successive measures of land legislation, culminating in the transfer of half the land of Ireland from landlord to peasant proprietorship, and the Local Government Act of 1898, surrendering at a stroke the whole local administration of the country into popular control, destroyed the exceptional political privileges of the landlord class. Ascendancy, then, in the old sense, is a thing of the past. What has taken its place? What is the ruling power within Ireland? Is it a public opinion derived from the vital contact of ideas and interests, and taking shape in a healthy and normal distribution of parties? Is thought free? Has merit its reward? Is there any unity of national purpose, transcending party divisions? If it were necessary to give a categorical "Yes" or "No" to these questions, the answer would be "No." Sane energizing politics, and the sovereign ascendancy of a sane public opinion, are absolutely unattainable in Ireland or anywhere else without Home Rule. It is all the more to the credit of Irishmen that, in the face of stupendous difficulties, and in a marvellously short space of time since the attainment, barely twenty years ago, of the elementary conditions of social peace, they have gone so far as they have gone towards the creation of a self-reliant, independently thinking, united Ireland. The whole weight of Imperial authority has been thrown into the scale against them. Whatever the mood and policy of British upholders of the Union, whether sympathetic or hostile, wise or foolish, their constant message to both parties in Ireland has been, "Look to us. Trust in us. You are divided. We are umpires," and the reader will no doubt remember that the theory of "umpirage" was used in exactly the same way in the Colonies, notably in Upper Canada,[45] to thwart the tendency towards a reconciliation of creeds, races, and classes. Fortunately, there have been Irishmen who have laboured to counteract the effects of this enervating policy, and to reconstruct, by native effort from within, a new Ireland on the ruins of the old. Whether or not they have consciously aimed at Home Rule matters not a particle. Some have, some have not; but the result of these efforts has been the same, to pull Irishmen together and to begin the creation of a genuinely national atmosphere. It is not part of my scheme to describe in detail the various movements, agricultural, industrial, economic, literary, political, which in the last twenty years have contributed to this national revival. Some have a world-wide fame, all have been excellently described at one time or another by writers of talent and insight.[46] My purpose is to note their characteristics and progress, and to estimate their political significance. In the first place it must be remembered that some of the most important of the modern legislative measures have been initiated and promoted by Home Rulers and Unionists, Roman Catholics and Protestants, acting in friendly co-operation and throwing aside their political and religious antagonisms. Such was the origin of the great Land Purchase Act of 1903, which Mr. Wyndham drafted on the basis of an agreement reached at a friendly conference of landlords and representatives of tenants. But a far more interesting and hopeful instance of co-operation had taken place seven years earlier. One of the very few really constructive measures of the last twenty years, the Act of 1899 for setting up the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, was the direct outcome of the recommendations of the Recess Committee brought together in 1895 and 1896 by Sir Horace Plunkett; a Committee containing Nationalist and Unionist Members of the House of Commons, Tory and Liberal Unionist peers, Ulster captains of industry, the Grand Master of the Belfast Orangemen, and an eminent Jesuit.[47] In its reunion of men divided by bitter feuds, it was just the kind of Conference that assembled in Durban in 1908, six years after a devastating war, to discuss and to create the framework of South African Union. That Conference was the natural outcome of the grant of Home Rule to the defeated Boer States. The Irish Conference, succeeding a land-war far more destructive and demoralizing, was brought together in spite of the absence of Home Rule, and the prejudice it had to overcome,[48] is a measure of the fantastically abnormal conditions produced by the denial of self-government. There lay Ireland, an island with a rich soil and a clever population, yet terribly backward, far behind England, far behind all the progressive nations of Europe in agriculture and industry, her population declining, her land passing out of cultivation,[49] her strongest sons and daughters hurrying away to enrich with their wits and sinews distant lands. There, in short, lay a country groaning for intelligent development by the concentrated energies of her own people. "We have in Ireland," runs the first paragraph of the Report of the Committee, "a poor country practically without manufactures--except for the linen and shipbuilding of the north, and the brewing and distilling of Dublin--dependent upon agriculture, with its soil imperfectly tilled, its area under cultivation decreasing, and a diminishing population without industrial habits or technical skill." The leeway to make up was enormous. To go no farther back than the institution of the Penal Code and the deliberate destruction of the woollen industry, two centuries of callous repression at the hands of an external authority had maimed and exhausted the country whose condition the Committee had met to consider. These facts the members of the Committee frankly recognized in that part of the Report which is entitled with gentle irony "Past Action of the State." Here, then, was a purely Irish problem, intimately concerning every Irishman, poor or rich, Roman Catholic or Protestant, a problem of which Great Britain, though responsible both for its existence and its solution, knew and cared little. The really strange thing is, not that representative Irishmen should have met together to consider and prescribe for the deplorable economic condition of their country, but that they should not also, like the South African Conference, have drafted a Constitution for Ireland, on the sound ground that a system of government which had promoted and sustained the evils they described could never, with the best will in the world, become a good government for Ireland. Yet for a brief space of time these men actually had Home Rule, and by virtue of that privilege they did better work for Ireland in six months than had been done in two centuries. What is more, they used the Home Rule principle in their recommendations for the establishment of a Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. "We think it essential," they reported on p. 101, "that the new Department should be in touch with the public opinion of the classes whom its work concerns, and should rely largely for its success upon their active assistance and co-operation." Its chief, they added, should be a Minister directly responsible to Parliament, and on p. 103 they advocated a Consultative Council, whose functions should be--(1) To keep the Department in direct touch with the public opinion of those classes whom the work of the Ministry concerns; and (2) to distribute some of the responsibility for administration amongst those classes. Now these, in Ireland, were revolutionary proposals. The idea of any part of the Government "being in touch with public opinion" was wholly new. The idea of "distributing responsibility for administration" amongst the subjects of administration was startlingly novel. Ireland, both before and after the Union, had always been governed on a diametrically opposite principle. Since the Union, when Irish departmental Ministers, never responsible to the people, disappeared, not one of the host of nominated Irish Boards was legally amenable to Irish public opinion. Not one had a separate Minister responsible even to the Parliament at Westminster, which was not an Irish Parliament. _A fortiori_, not one relied on the co-operation and advice of the classes for whose benefit it was supposed to exist. Proposed, nevertheless, by a group of representative Irishmen, the scheme for a democratically constituted Department of Agriculture passed smoothly into law as soon as the machinery for ascertaining public opinion on the matters at issue had been brought into existence. Mr. Gerald Balfour, the Chief Secretary, was engaged at the time upon his measure for the extension of Local Government to Ireland. This measure became law in 1898, and the Department Act in 1899. Under that Act, the duty was laid upon each of the new County Councils of electing two members to serve upon a Consultative Council of Agriculture, to which a minority of nominated members was added, and this Council in its turn elects two-thirds of the members of an Agricultural Board, and supplies four representatives to a Board of Technical Instruction, which, like the Council and the Agricultural Board, has a predominantly popular character.[50] At the summit stands the Minister, or Vice-President, as he is called (for in accordance with ancient custom, the Chief Secretary is nominally in supreme control of this as of all other Irish Departments), and a large and efficient staff of permanent officials. He and his staff have a large centralized authority, but this authority is subject to a constitutional check in the shape of a veto wielded by the Boards over the expenditure of the Endowment Fund. What is more important, policy tends to be shaped in accordance with popular views by the existence of the Council and the Boards. Here, then, is the germ of responsible government. At first sight a critic might exclaim: "Why, here is democracy pushed to a point unknown even in Great Britain, where Government Departments are wholly independent of Local Councils." That is in a limited sense true, and it is quite arguable that British Departments would be the better for an infusion of local control. But we must not be misled by a false analogy. Great Britain reaches the Irish ideal by other means. Her departmental Ministers are directly responsible to a predominantly British House of Commons where a hostile vote can at any moment eject them from office.[51] There is no Irish Parliament, nor any kind of predominantly Irish body which is vested with the same power. The Vice-President of the Irish Department of Agriculture, an institution concerned exclusively with Irish affairs, whether he sits in the House of Commons or not (and for two years Mr. T.W. Russell had not a seat at Westminster), could not be ejected from office even by a unanimous vote of Irish Members of the House, with the moral backing of a unanimous Irish people.[52] That is one of the anomalous results of the Union, and it was a recognition, though rather a confused one, of this anomaly, that inspired the ingenious compromise invented by the Recess Committee for introducing an element of popular control. But what a light the compromise throws on the anomaly which evoked it! Is it common sense to make these elaborate arrangements for promoting an Irish Department on an Irish popular basis while recoiling in terror from the prospect of crowning them with a Minister responsible to ah Irish Parliament? The consequence is that even in this solitary example of an Irish Department under semi-popular control we see the subtle taint of Crown Colony Government. Popular opinion, acting indirectly, first through the Council and then through the Boards, can legally paralyze the Department by declining to appropriate money in the way it prescribes, while possessing no legal power to enforce a different policy or change the personnel of administration. This is only an object-lesson. I hasten to add that such a paralysis has never taken place, though some acrimonious controversy, natural enough under the anomalous state of things, has arisen over the office of Vice-President. There is now only one means by which Irish opinion can, if it be so disposed, displace the holder of the office, and that is a thoroughly unreliable and unhealthy means, namely, through pressure brought to bear by one or other of the Irish Parliamentary parties upon a newly elected British Ministry.[53] But why in the world should the British party pendulum determine an important Irish matter like this? Why, _a fortiori_, should it determine the appointment to the office of Chief Secretary, the irresponsible Prime Minister, or, rather the autocrat of Ireland? It is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the Union. The Department commands a large measure of confidence. It would command far greater confidence if it were responsible to an Irish Parliament; but Irishmen are sensible enough to perceive that as long as the Union lasts, everyone is interested in making the existing system work smoothly and well. The general policy as laid down in the first instance, by the first Vice-President, Sir Horace Plunkett, has been sound and wise;[54] to proceed slowly, while building up a staff of trained instructors, inspectors, organizers; to devote money and labour mainly to education, both industrial and agricultural, and to evoke self-reliance and initiative in the people by, so far as possible, spending money locally only where a local contribution is raised and a local scheme prepared. The last aim met with a fine response. Every County Council in Ireland raises a rate, and has a scheme for agricultural and technical instruction. I can only enumerate some of the multifarious functions which the Department evolved for itself or took over from various other unrelated Boards and concentrated under single control. It gives instruction in agriculture and rural domestic economy (horticulture, butter-making, bee-keeping, poultry-keeping, etc.) through schools, colleges, or agricultural stations under its own direction, through private schools for both sexes, and through an extensive system of itinerant courses conducted (in 1909) by 128 trained instructors. It gives premiums for the breeding of horses, cattle, asses, poultry, swine. It conducts original research, it experiments in crops, and, among other things, is slowly resuscitating the depressed industry of flax-growing, and starting a wholly new industry in the southern counties, that of early potatoes. It sprays potatoes, prescribes for the diseases of trees, crops, and stock, advises on manures and feeding-stuffs, teaches forestry, and gives scholarships at various colleges for proficiency in agricultural science. On the side of Technical Instruction it teaches and encourages all manner of small industries, such as lace-making. It superintends all technical instruction in secondary schools, and organizes and subsidizes similar instruction in a multitude of different subjects under schemes prepared by local authorities, while at the same time carrying on an important and extensive system of training teachers. It also superintends sea-fisheries and improves harbours. The material results have been great; the moral results perhaps even greater. Just as we should expect, wherever education goes, and wherever men work together for economic improvement, unnatural antagonisms of race and religion tend to disappear. This is not the result of any direct influence wielded by the Department, which never finds it necessary to lecture people on the duty of mutual tolerance; it is the result of common sense and a small experience in Home Rule. High officials of the Department have informed me that their work, for all intents and purposes, is unhampered by local religious prejudices. A spirit of keen and wholesome rivalry permeates the people. County and Borough Committees in districts almost wholly Roman Catholic, with large powers of patronage, almost invariably appoint the best men, regardless of creed and local influence. Anyone who wishes to gain a glimpse of the real Belfast of the present and the future, as distinguished from the ugly, bigoted caricature of a great city which some even of its own citizens perversely insist on displaying to their English friends, a Belfast as tolerant and generous as it is energetic and progressive, should visit the magnificent Municipal Technical Institute, where 6,000 boys and girls, Roman Catholic and Protestant, mix together on equal terms, and derive the same benefit from an extraordinary variety of educational courses in a building furnished with lecture-rooms, laboratories, experimental plant, and gymnasia, of a perfection hardly to be surpassed in any city of the United Kingdom. Here is something grand and fruitful accomplished in eleven years, and it is the outcome, be it remembered, of original, constructive thought devoted by Irishmen to the needs of their own country. Let us also remember that it represents the application of State-aid to economic development. But with the utmost caution, and the utmost efforts to elicit self-help, one may go too far in the direction of State-aid, and even in this sphere it is by no means certain that Ireland is free from danger. Let us pass to another movement whose essence is self-help: I mean the movement for Agricultural Co-operation. Here again Sir Horace Plunkett was the originator. Indeed, with him and his able associates and advisers, of whom Lord Monteagle and Mr. R.A. Anderson, the Secretary of the I.A.O.S., were the first, the twin aims of self-help and State-aid were combined as they should be, in one big, harmonious policy. Self-help must, indeed, they held, be antecedent to, and preparatory for, State-aid. The position confronting them was that half a million unorganized tenant farmers, for the most part cultivating excessively small holdings, and just beginning to emerge after generations of agrarian war from an economic serfdom, were face to face with the competition of highly organized European countries, and of vast and rapidly developing territories of North and South America. It was as far back as 1889 that the first propaganda was begun, and in 1894, a year before the Recess Committee met, the Irish Agricultural Organization Society was formed. By unwearied pains and patience, seemingly hopeless obstacles had been overcome, apathy, ignorance, and often contemptuous opposition from men of both political parties. For, with that ruinous pessimism always endemic in countries not politically free, and exactly paralleled in the Canada described by the Durham Report of 1839, extremists were inclined to suspect any movement which drew recruits from both political camps. Nevertheless, the island is now covered with a network of 886 co-operative societies, creameries, agricultural societies (for selling implements, foodstuffs, etc.), credit banks, poultry societies, and other miscellaneous organizations. The total membership is nearly 100,000, the total turnover nearly two and a half millions.[55] Nearly half the butter exported from Ireland is made in the 392 co-operative creameries, and at the other end of the scale extraordinarily valuable work is done by the 237 agricultural credit banks, which supply small loans, averaging only £4 apiece, for strictly productive purposes on a system of mutual credit. Moral and material regeneration go together. The aim is to build up a new rural civilization, to put life, heart, and hope into the monotony of country life and unite all classes in the strong bonds of sympathy and interest: a splendid ideal, applicable not to Ireland alone, but to all countries, and Ireland may truly be said to be pointing the way to many another country, Great Britain included. The Co-operative movement attracts the most intelligent and progressive elements of the rural population. Strictly non-political itself, it unites creeds and parties. It is as strong in predominantly Roman Catholic districts as in predominantly Protestant districts, strongest of all in Catholic Wexford. Probably two-thirds or more of the co-operators are Home Rulers, but that only accidentally reflects the distribution of Irish parties. On the local committees political animus is unknown. The governing body contains members, lay and clerical, of all shades of opinion. Step into Plunkett House, that hospitable headquarters of the Organization Society, and if you have been nurtured in legends about inextinguishable class and creed antipathies, which are supposed to render Home Rule impossible and the eternal "umpirage" of Great Britain inevitable, you will soon learn to marvel that anyone can be found to propagate them. Here, just because men are working together in a practical, self-contained, home-ruled organization for the good of the whole country, you will find liberality, open-mindedness, brotherhood, and keen, intelligent patriotism from Ulsterman and Southerners alike. The atmosphere is not political. But you will come away with a sense of the absurdity, of the insolence, of saying that a country which can produce and conduct fine movements like this is _unfit_ for self-government. I should add a word about a new organization which only came into being this year, and which also has its home at Plunkett House, the United Irishwomen, whose aim, in their own words, is to "unite Irishwomen for the social and economic advantage of Ireland." "They intend to organize the women of all classes in every rural district in Ireland for social service. These bodies will discuss, and, if need be, take action upon any and every matter which concerns the welfare of society in their several localities. So far as women's knowledge and influence will avail, they will strive for a higher standard of material comfort and physical well-being in the country home, a more advanced agricultural economy, and a social existence a little more in harmony with the intellect and temperament of our people." Anyone who wants to understand something of the spirit of the new self-reliant Ireland which is springing up to-day should read the thrilling little pamphlet (I cannot describe it otherwise) from which I quote these words, and which introduced the United Irish-women to the world, with its preface by Father T.A. Finlay, and its essays by Mrs. Ellice Pilkington, Sir Horace Plunkett, and Mr. George W. Russell, better known as "�," poet, painter, and Editor of the Co-operative weekly, the _Irish Homestead_. Nor can I leave this part of my subject without referring to that amazing little journal. No other newspaper in the world that I know of bears upon it so deep an impress of genius. There are no "politics," in the Irish sense, in it. It would be impossible to infer from its pages how the Editor voted. What fascinates the reader is the shrewd and witty analysis of Irish problems, the high range of vision which exposes the shortcomings and reveals the illimitable possibilities of a regenerated Ireland and the ceaseless and implacable war waged by the Editor upon all pettiness, melancholy, and pessimism. What the Agricultural Organization Society is doing for agriculture the Industrial Development Associations, formed only in quite recent years, are doing, in a different way, for the encouragement of Irish industries. The Associations of Belfast, Cork, and other cities work in harmony, and meet in an annual All-Ireland Industrial Conference. Their effort is to secure the concentration of Irish brains and capital on Irish industrial questions, to promote the sale of Irish goods, both in Ireland, Great Britain, and foreign countries, and to protect these goods against piracy and illicit competition.[56] Here again co-operation for Irish welfare brings together the creeds and races, and tends to extinguish old bigotries and antipathies. Here again the truth is recognized that Ireland is a distinct economic entity whose conditions and needs demand special study from her citizens. In a country of which that basal truth is recognized it would seem inexplicable that Protestants and Catholics who meet in committee-rooms and on platforms to promote, outside Parliament, the common interests of Ireland, should not unite as one man to demand an Irish Legislature in which to focus those interests and make them the subjects of direct legislative enactment, free both from the paternal and the coercive interference of a country differently situated, and absorbed in its own affairs. I pass from the agricultural and industrial movements to another powerful factor in the reconstruction of Ireland, namely, the Gaelic League, founded in 1893, whose success under the Presidency of Dr. Douglas Hyde in reviving the old national language, culture, and amusements, is attracting the attention of the world. Fortunately the League encountered some ridicule at the outset and prospered proportionately. Some of its work is not above criticism, but few persons--and none who have the least knowledge of such intellectual revivals elsewhere--now care to laugh at it. The League is non-political and non-sectarian. Strange, is it not, that such a movement should have to emphasize the fact? Strange paradox that in a country which is being re-born into a consciousness of its own individuality, which is regaining its own pride and self-respect, recovering its lost literature and culture, and vibrating to that "iron string, Trust thyself," the conflict for self-government, that elementary symbol of self-trust, should still retain enough intestinal bitterness to compel men to label national movements as non-political and non-sectarian! It would be idle, of course, to pretend that this national movement, like all others in Ireland, does not strengthen, especially among the younger generation, which grows increasingly Nationalist, the sentiment for Home Rule. If it did not, we should indeed be in the presence of something miraculously abnormal. Meanwhile the Celtic revival does visible good. The language is no longer a fad; it is an envied accomplishment, a mark of distinction and education. Wherever it goes, North and South, it obliterates race and creed distinctions, and all the terrible memories associated with them. There are Ulstermen of Saxon or Scottish stock in whom the fascination of Irish art and literature has extirpated every trace of Orangeism and all implied in it. The language revivifies traditions, as beautiful as they are glorious, of an Ireland full of high passions and stormy domestic feuds, but united in sentiment, breeding warriors, poets, lawgivers, saints, and fertilizing Europe with her missionary genius. However far those times are, however grim and pitiful the havoc wrought by the race war, it is nevertheless a fact for thinkers and statesmen to ponder over, not a phantasy to sneer at, that Celtic Ireland lives. Anglicization has failed, not because Celts cannot appreciate the noblest manifestations of English genius in art, letters, science, war, colonization, but because to repress their own culture and nationality is at the same time to repress their power of appreciation and assimilation. Until comparatively recent times, it was only the worst of English literature and music, the cheapest newspaper twaddle, the inanest music-hall songs, which penetrated beyond a limited circle of culture into the life of the country. The revolt against this sterilizing and belittling side of anglicization is strong and healthy. It affects all classes. Farmers, labourers, small tradesmen, who had never conceived the idea of learning for learning's sake, and who had grown up, thanks to the national system of education, in all but complete ignorance of their own country's history and literature, spend time on reading and study and in the practice of the old indigenous dances and music, which was formerly wasted in idleness or dissipation. Temperance and social harmony are irresistibly forwarded. Nor is it a question of a few able men imposing their will on the many, or of an artificial, State-aided process. Though the language has obtained a footing in more than a third of the State schools and in the National University,[57] the motive force behind it comes from the people themselves. In the country district, with which I am best acquainted, boys and girls from very poor families are clubbing together to pay instructors in the Irish language and dances, and the same thing is going on all over Ireland. The brilliant modern school of poets and playwrights who, steeped in the old Celtic thought and culture, have found for it such an exquisite vehicle in the English tongue, speak for themselves and are winning their own way to renown. The only criticism I venture to make is that some of them are too much inclined to look backward instead of forward, to idealize the far past rather than to illuminate the future, and to delineate the deformities of national character produced by ages of repression, rather than to aid in conjuring into being a virile, normal nation. The name of the last movement to be referred to sums up all the others, Sinn Fein. Unlike the others, it had a purely political origin, and for that reason, probably, never made the same progress. Yet the explanation is simple. In pursuance of the general purpose of inspiring Irishmen to rely on themselves for their own salvation, economic and spiritual, Sinn Feiners, like John Mitchel and others in the past, and like the Hungarian patriots, attacked, with much point and satire, the whole policy of constitutional and Parliamentary agitation for Home Rule. The policy, they said, had failed for half a century; it was not only negative and barren, but positively harmful. Nationalists should refuse to send Members to Westminster and abide by the consequences. Sensibly enough, most Irishmen, while recognizing that there was an element of indisputable and valuable truth in this bold diagnosis, decided that it was premature to adopt the prescription. Public opinion in Britain was slowly changing, and confidence existed that this opinion would be finally converted. If the Sinn Fein alternative meant anything at all, it meant complete separation, which Ireland does not want, and a final abandonment of constitutional methods. If another Home Rule Bill were to fail, Sinn Fein would undoubtedly redouble its strength. Its ideas are sane and sound. They are at bottom exactly the ideas which actuate every progressive and spirited community, and which in Ireland animate the Industrial Development Associations, the Co-operative movement, the thirst for technical instruction, the Gaelic League, the literary revival, and the work of the only truly Irish organ of government, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. Now, where do we stand? Are the phenomena I have reviewed arguments for Home Rule or against Home Rule? Do they tend to show that Ireland is "fitter" now for Home Rule, or that she manages very well without Home Rule? These are superfluous questions. They are never asked save of countries obviously designed to govern themselves and obstinately denied the right. Who would say now of Canada or Australia that they ought to have solved their economic, agrarian, and religious problems and have evolved an indigenous literature before they were declared fit for Home Rule, or--still more unreasonable proposition--that their strenuous efforts after self-help and internal harmony in the teeth of political disabilities proved, in so far as they were successful, that external government was a success? Yet these questions were, as a fact, asked of the Colonies, as they are asked of Ireland. And misgovernment increased, and passions rose, and blood flowed, while, in the guise of dispassionate psychologists, a great many narrow, egotistical, and bullying people at home propounded these arid conundrums. Where is our common sense? The Irish phenomena I have described arise in spite of the absence of Home Rule, and the denial of Home Rule sets an absolute and final bar to progress beyond a certain point. That is certain; one cannot live in Ireland with one's eyes and ears open without realizing it. All social and economic effort, successful as it is up to a certain point, and strong as its tendency is to promote nationalist feeling of the noblest kind, has to struggle desperately against the benumbing influence of abstract "politics." Suspicion comes from both sides. Both Unionists and Nationalists, for example, at one time or another have looked askance on the Co-operative movement and on the Department of Agriculture as being too Nationalist or too Unionist in tendency. Unionists caused Sir Horace Plunkett to lose his seat in Parliament in 1905; and Nationalists, though with some constitutional justification, secured his removal from office in 1907. At this moment there is friction and suspicion in this particular matter which seems to the impartial observer to be artificial, and which would not exist, or would be transmuted into something perfectly harmless, and probably highly beneficial, were there any normal political life in Ireland and a central organ of public opinion. As long as Great Britain insists, to her own infinite inconvenience, upon deciding Irish questions by party majorities fluctuating from Toryism to Radicalism, and thereby compels Ireland to send parties to Westminster whose _raison d'être_ is, not to represent crystallized Irish opinion on Irish domestic questions--that is at present wholly impossible--but to assert or deny the fundamental right for Ireland to settle her own domestic questions, so long will these dislocations continue, to the grave prejudice of Ireland and the deep discredit of Great Britain. Ireland, like Canada in 1838, has no organic national life. Apart from the abstract but paramount question of Home Rule, there are no formed political principles or parties. Such parties as there are have no relation to the economic life of the country, and all interests suffer daily in consequence. In a normal country you would find urban and agricultural interests distinctly represented, but not in Ireland. We should expect to rind clear-cut opinions on Tariff Reform and Free Trade. No such opinions exist. On the other hand, agreement on important industrial and agricultural questions finds not the smallest reflection in Parliamentary representation. Education, and other latent issues of burning importance, are not political issues. A Budget may cause almost universal dissatisfaction, but it goes through, and the amazing thing is that Unionists complain of its going through! Most of the Parliamentary elections are uncontested, though everybody knows that a dozen questions would set up a salutary ferment of opinion if they were not stifled by the refusal of Home Rule. The Protestant tenant-farmers of Ulster have identical interests with those of other Provinces, and have profited largely by the legislation extorted by Nationalists; but for the most part, though by no means wholly, they vote Unionist. The two great towns, Dublin and Belfast, are divided by the most irrational antagonism. Labourers, both rural and urban, have distinct and important interests; the rural labourers have no spokesman, the town-labourers only one. It was admitted to me by a Unionist organizer in Belfast that that city, but for the Home Rule issue, would probably return four labour members. Nor have parties any close relation to the distribution of wealth. In the matter of incomes the prosperous traders of Cork, Limerick, and Waterford are in the same case as regards taxation with those of Londonderry and Belfast. Publicans are Unionists in England, Nationalists in Ireland, both in Ulster and elsewhere. Before the Home Rule issue was raised, Ulster was largely Liberal. Ulster Liberalism is almost dead. Extreme Socialism may almost be said to be non-existent in Ireland, yet Ireland is not only administered on semi-collectivist principles, but continually runs the risk of being involved in legislation of a Socialistic kind, which, rightly or wrongly, she heartily dislikes. As for the landed aristocracy all over Ireland, their historic alliance with the intensely democratic tenant-farmers of one small corner of Ireland, North-East Ulster, against those of all the rest, presented strange enough features in the past, and is now becoming artificial in the highest degree. Thanks to Land Purchase, no landed aristocracy in the world now has a better chance of throwing its wealth and intelligence into public life for the good of the whole country, of thinking out problems, of conciliating factions, and of ennobling public life. The landlord who has sold his land is a free man, far freer than the English landlord from misgivings caused by divergency of interest. The opportunity is still there. Will they profit by it? One thing is essential: they must become Nationalists, and in breathing that phrase, one is conscious of all the misleading implications and the bitter historical feuds it suggests. Yet a small but powerful group of landlords is already leading the way. And the way, even before Home Rule, in reality is so simple. I speak from close observation. If a man is a good man, and worthy to represent a constituency, he has only to declare his belief that he thinks that he and his own fellow-citizens are fit to govern themselves. Irishmen, especially in Roman Catholic districts, and, indeed, as an indirect result of Catholicism, have never lost their belief in aristocracy. When a landlord, or any other Protestant, comes forward as a Nationalist, he is welcomed. His religion, whatever it may be, does not count. Parnell and Smith O'Brien were Protestant landlords. Many of the most trusted popular leaders, Tone, Robert Emmet, John Mitchel, Isaac Butt, and others in the past have been Protestants. Ten Members of the present Nationalist party are Protestants. The Home Rule issue would have lost some of its bitterness if a Unionist electorate had ever elected a Catholic to Parliament. Still, it is unfortunately true that the great bulk of the landlords and ex-landlords stand aloof from the Home Rule movement. The collateral result is that far too many of them instinctively stand aloof even from those purely economic and intellectual movements which tend to make a living united Ireland out of chaos. The national loss is heavy; the waste of talent and of driving-power, for Ireland needs driving-power from her leisured and cultured classes, is melancholy to contemplate. Everywhere one sees waste of talent in Ireland. The land abounds in men with ideas and potentialities waiting for those normal chances of development which self-governed countries provide. Much of this good material is crushed under unnatural political tyrannies caused by ceaseless agitation for and against an abstract aim which should have been satisfied long ago, so that the energies it absorbed might have been diverted into practical channels. There is too much moral cowardice, too little bold, independent thought and action. Nobody knows what Ireland really is, and of what she is capable. Nobody can know until she has responsibility for her own fate. Local government, where popular opinion is nominally free, suffers from the absence of free central government. Is it not on the face of it preposterous to give complete powers of local taxation and administration to a country while withholding from it, as unsafe and improper, central co-ordinating control? For any country but Ireland--at any rate, in the British self-governing Colonies and the United States--such a policy would be regarded as crazy. Still more unreasonable is it to complain that local authorities under such a system spend part of the energy which should be devoted wholly to local affairs in abstract politics. I forbear from engaging in the statistical war over the numbers of Catholics and Protestants employed and elected by local bodies. One must remember, what Unionists sometimes forget, that Ireland is, broadly speaking, a Roman Catholic country, and that until thirteen years ago local administration and patronage were almost exclusively in Protestant hands. We should naturally expect a marked change; but, with that reminder, I prefer to appeal to the reader's common sense. Deny national Home Rule, and give local Home Rule. What would one expect to happen? What would have happened in any Colony? What would Mr. Arthur Balfour himself have prophesied with certainty in the case of any other country but Ireland? Why, this, that each little local body would become an outlet for suppressed agitation, and that national or anti-national politics, not urgent local necessities, would enter into local elections and influence the composition of local bodies. And what would be the further consequence? That numbers of the best local men would stand aloof or be rejected, and that favouritism would find a congenial soil. In point of fact, Irish local authorities, under the circumstances, are wonderfully free from these evils, only another proof of the resilience and vitality of the country under persistent mismanagement. On the whole they bear comparison with British local authorities in thrift, purity, and efficiency. None of them has ever yet had a scandal like that of Poplar. All of them have shown sense and spirit in forwarding sanitation and technical education. They vary widely, of course, the lowest units in the scale being the least efficient, as in England. County Councils, for example, are better than Rural District Councils. On the other hand, Dublin Corporation, though not so bad as it is sometimes painted, occasionally sets a very bad example. The standard of efficiency is higher in the Protestant north than in the Catholic south, the standard of religious toleration lower. But at bottom it is not a question of theology, as every well-informed person knows, but a question of politics. The same causes that keep the landed gentry out of Parliament keep them, although not to the same degree, out of local politics. Sometimes this is their own fault, for declining to take part in them; for many of the Protestant upper class in Nationalist districts obtain election in spite of being Unionists. Tolerance is slowly growing in Nationalist, though not, it is to be feared, in Unionist, districts; again a quite intelligible fact.[58] But when all is said and done, it is an undeniable fact that Irish local authorities, especially those in the poverty-stricken west, where all social activities are more retrograde than elsewhere, are capable of great improvement, and that improvement can come only by allowing them to concentrate on local affairs, and obtain the co-operation of all classes and religions. The very existence of a central Government of which Irishmen were proud would influence the tone and standard of all minor authorities to the bottom of the scale. Meanwhile, obvious and urgent problems, which no Parliament but an Irish Parliament can deal with, cry aloud for settlement. The Poor Law, railways, arterial drainage, afforestation, are questions which I need only refer to by name, confining myself to the greater issues. Education, primary and intermediate, is perhaps the greatest. The present system is almost universally condemned, and its bad results are recognized. It has got to be reformed. By no possibility can it be reformed so long as the Union lasts, not only because the Boards, National and Intermediate, which control education, are composed of unelected amateurs, but because there is no means of finding out what the national opinion is as to the course reform is to take. Meanwhile the children and the country suffer. The Intermediate Board is a purely examining and prize-giving body, and its system by general agreement is imperfect. In the National or Primary schools the percentage of average daily attendance (71.1 per cent.), though slowly improving, is still very bad.[59] Many of the school-houses are, in the words of the Commissioners, "mere hovels," unsanitary, leaky, ill-ventilated. The distribution of schools and funds is chaotic and wasteful. Out of 8,401 schools (in 1909-10)[60] nearly two hundred have an average daily attendance of less than fifteen pupils. In 1730 the number is less than thirty, and it is not only in sparsely inhabited country districts, but in big towns, that the distribution is bad. The power of the Commissioners to stop the creation of unduly small schools, and even semi-bogus establishments which come into being in the great cities, is imperfect. Another example of the curious mixture of anarchy and despotism that the system of Irish government presents may be seen in the Annual Report of the Commissioners. With a mutinous audacity which would be laughable, if the case were one for laughing, the Commissioners openly rail at the Treasury for the parsimony of its grants, and, in order to stir its compassion, paint the condition of Irish education in black colours. Imagine the various Departmental Ministers in Great Britain publicly attacking in their Annual Reports the Cabinet of which they were members! The Treasury, needless to say, is not to blame. It pays out of the common Imperial purse all but a negligible fraction of the cost of primary education in Ireland. Nothing is raised by rates, and only £141,096 (in 1909-10) from voluntary and local sources, as compared with £1,688,547 from State grants. The Treasury has no guarantee that this money is well spent; on the contrary, it knows from the Reports of the Commissioners themselves that a great deal of it is very badly spent. The business is a comic opera, but it has a tragic significance for Ireland. Primary education is so bad that a great number of the pupils are absolutely unfit to receive the expensive and excellent technical instruction organized by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and contributed to by the ratepayers. The Belfast Technical Institute, for example, has to go outside its proper functions, and spend from its too small stock in providing introductory courses in elementary subjects, so as to equip children for the reception of higher knowledge.[61] All over the country the complaint is the same. No machinery whatever exists for co-ordinating primary, secondary, technical, and University education, and opportioning funds in an economical and profitable manner. Religion is the immediate cause of the trouble; absence of popular control the fundamental cause. The national system of primary education, designed originally in 1831 to be undenominational, has become rigidly denominational. Out of 8,401 primary schools, 2,461 only are attended by both Protestants and Roman Catholics. The rest are of an exclusively sectarian character. Even the Protestants do not combine. The Church of Ireland, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and other smaller denominations, frequently have small separate schools in the same parish. The management (save in the model schools, which are attended only by Protestants) is exclusively sectarian, the local clergyman, Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland, or Nonconformist having almost autocratic control over the school. This education question has got to be thrashed out by a Home Ruled Ireland, and the sooner the better. After Home Rule the Treasury grant will stop, and Ireland will have to raise and apportion the funds herself, and set her house in order. At whatever sacrifice of religious scruples, and, it is needless to add that to the Roman Catholic hierarchy the sacrifice will be the greatest, the Irish people must control and finance its schools, whether through a central department alone, or through local authorities as well. There is no reason in the world why a compromise should not be arrived at which would secure vastly increased efficiency and leave the teaching of denominational religion uninjured. Other countries, where the same religions exist side by side, have attained that compromise. Ireland will be judged by her success in attaining it. Another important question is the treatment of the Congested Districts. More than a third of Ireland is now under the benevolent jurisdiction of a despotic Board.[62] So long as its funds are raised from general Imperial taxation, the inevitable tendency is to shirk the thorough discussion of this grave subject, to lay the responsibility on Great Britain, to acquiesce in a policy of extreme paternalism, and to appeal for higher and higher doles from the Treasury. This cannot go on. Whoever, in the eyes of Divine Justice, was originally responsible for the condition of the submerged west, and for the ruin of the evicted tenants, Ireland, if she wants Home Rule, must shoulder the responsibility herself, and think out the whole question independently. The Congested Districts Board has done, and continues to do, good work in the purchase and resettlement of estates; but even in this sphere there are wide differences of opinion as to the proper methods and policy to be employed, especially with regard to the division of grasslands and the migration of landless men. Its other remedial work (part of which is now taken over by the Department of Agriculture under the Land Act of 1909), in encouraging fisheries, industries, and farm improvements out of State money, is open to criticism on the ground of its tendency to pauperize and weaken character. I do not care to pronounce on the controversy, though I think that there is much to be said for the view that money is best spent by encouraging agricultural co-operation. Many able and distinguished men have devoted their minds to the subject, but it is plain that Ireland as a whole has not thought, and cannot think, the matter out in a responsible spirit, and that the only way of reaching a truly Irish decision is through an Irish Parliament, which both raises and votes money for the purpose.[63] The reinstatement of evicted tenants teems with practical difficulties which can only be solved in the same way. As long as Great Britain remains responsible, errors are liable to be made which one day may be deeply regretted. The same observation applies to all future land legislation, not excepting Land Purchase, which I deal with fully in a later chapter.[64] That great department of administration must, for financial reasons, be worked in harmonious consultation with the British Government; but it ought to be controlled by Ireland, and a free and normal outlet given to criticisms like those emanating from Mr. William O'Brien, whatever the intrinsic value of these criticisms. Purchase itself settles nothing beyond the bare ownership of the land. It leaves the distribution and use of the land, except in the "resettled" districts, where it was, with a third or a quarter of the holdings so small as to be classed as "uneconomic." Ireland is not as yet awake to the possibilities of the silent revolution proceeding from the erection of a small peasant proprietorship. The sense of responsibility in these new proprietors will be quickened and the interests of the whole country forwarded by a National Parliament. Temperance will never be tackled thoroughly but by an Irish Parliament. All Irishmen are ashamed in their hearts of the encouragement given to drunkenness by the still grossly excessive number of licensed houses, which in 1909 was 22,591, and of the National Drink Bill, which in the same year was £13,310,469,[65] or £3 11d. per head of a population not rich in this world's goods. Temperance is not really a party or a sectarian question. All the Churches make noble efforts to forward reform, and in a rationally governed Ireland reform would be considered on its merits. At present it is inextricably mixed up with Nationalist and anti-Nationalist politics, and with irrelevant questions of Imperial taxation. The latest examples of the embarrassment into which Ireland without Home Rule is liable to drift from the absence of a formed public opinion and the means to give it effect, are the labour troubles and the National Insurance scheme. There are signs that English labour is thrusting forward Irish labour in advance of its own will and in advance of general Irish opinion. In all labour questions Ireland's position as an agricultural country is totally different from that of Great Britain. The same legislation cannot be applicable to both. Ireland should frame her own. Under present conditions it is impossible to know the considered judgment of Ireland. There is certainly much opposition to Insurance, and if all Irishmen thoroughly realized that the scheme might complicate the finance of Home Rule and involve a greater financial dependence on Great Britain than exists even at present, they would study it with still more critical eyes,[66] as they would certainly have studied the Old Age Pensions scheme with more critical eyes. Here I am led naturally to the great and all-embracing questions of Irish finance and expenditure, which lie behind all the topics already discussed and many others. The subject is far too important and interwoven with history to be dealt with otherwise than as an historical whole, and that course I propose to take in a later part of the book. It is enough to say that all the arguments for Home Rule are summed up in the fiscal argument. Every Irishman worth his salt ought to be ashamed and indignant at the present position. The whole machinery of Irish Government, and the whole fiscal system under which Ireland lives, need to be thoroughly overhauled by Irishmen in their own interests, and in the interests of Great Britain. Among many other writers, Mr. Barry O'Brien, in his "Dublin Castle and the Irish People," Lord Dunraven in "The Outlook in Ireland," and Mr. G.F.H. Berkeley in a paper contributed to "Home Rule Problems," have lucidly and wittily described the wonderful collection of sixty-seven irresponsible and unrelated Boards nominated by the Chief Secretary, or Lord-Lieutenant, which, with the official services beneath them, constitute the colonial bureaucracy of Ireland; the extravagance of the judicial and other salaries, and the total lack of any central control worthy of the name. By omitting a number of insignificant little bureaux, the figure 67, according to Mr. Berkeley's classification, may be reduced to 42, of which 26 are directly under Castle influence, and the rest either branches of British Departments or directly under the Treasury. In 1906, out of 1,611 principal official posts, 626 were obtained purely by nomination, and 766 by a qualifying examination only. In an able-bodied male population, which we may estimate at a million, there are reckoned to be about 60,000 persons employed by the State, or 1 in 18. If we add 180,000 Old Age Pensioners, we reach the figure of nearly a quarter of a million persons, out of a total population of under four and a half millions, dependent wholly or partially for their living on the State, exclusive of Army and Navy pensioners; again about 1 in 18. Four millions of money are paid in salaries or pensions to State employees, and two and three-quarter millions to Old Age Pensioners. It is so easy to make fun about Irish administration that one has to be cautious not to mistake the nature or exaggerate the dimensions of the evil. The great defect is that the expenditure is not controlled by Ireland and has no relation to the revenue derived from Ireland. The Castle is not the odious institution that it was in the dark days of the land war; but it is still a foreign, not an Irish institution, working, like the Government of the most dependent of Crown Colonies, in a world of its own, with autocratic powers, and immunity from all popular influence. Beyond the criticism that one religious denomination, the Church of Ireland, is rather unduly favoured in patronage, there is no personal complaint against the officials. They are as able, kindly, hard-working, and courteous as any other officials. Some of the principal posts are held by men of the highest distinction, who will be as necessary to the new Government as to the old. It is absolutely essential, but it will not be easy, to make substantial administrative economies at the outset, not only from the additional stress of novel work which will be thrown upon a Home Rule Government, but from the widespread claims of vested interests. It will require courageous statesmanship, backed by courageous public opinion, to overhaul a bureaucracy so old and extensive. Take the police, for example, the first and most urgent subject for reduction. Adding the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police together, we have a force of no less than 12,000 officers and men, a force twice as numerous in proportion to population as those of England and Wales, and costing the huge sum of a million and a half; and this in a country which now is unusually free from crime, and which at all times has been naturally less disposed to crime than any part of Great Britain. It is the forcible maintenance of bad economic conditions that has produced Irish crime in the past. Irishmen hotly resent that symbol of coercion, the swollen police force, which is as far removed from their own control as a foreign army of occupation. On the other hand, the force itself is composed of Irishmen, and is a considerable, though an unhealthy, economic factor in the life of the country. It performs some minor official duties outside the domain of justice; it is efficient, and its individual members are not unpopular. Reduction will be difficult. But drastic reduction, at least by a half, must eventually be brought about if Ireland is to hold up her head in the face of the world. The difficulty will extend through all the ramifications of public expenditure. Ireland, through no fault of her own, against her persistent protests, has been retained in a position which is destructive to thrifty instincts. A rain of officials has produced an unhealthy thirst for the profits of officialdom. No one feels responsibility for the money spent for national purposes, because no one in Ireland _is_, in any real sense, responsible. There is no Irish Budget or Irish Exchequer to make a separate Irish Government logically defensible. The people are heavily taxed, but, rightly, they do not connect their taxes with the expenditure going on around them. On the contrary, their mental habit is to look to Great Britain as the source of grants, salaries, pensions. And the worst of it is that they are now at the point of being financially dependent on Great Britain. After more than a century of Union finance, after contributing, all told, over three hundred and twenty millions of money to the Imperial purse over and above expenditure in Ireland, they have now ceased to contribute a penny, and are a little in debt. As we shall see, when I come to a closer examination of finance, the main factor in producing this result has been the Old Age Pensions. The application of the British scale, unmodified, to Ireland is the kind of blunder which the Union encourages. Ireland, where wages and the standard of living are far lower than in England, does not need pensions on so high a scale, and already suffers too much from benevolent paternalism. It was an unavoidable blunder, given a joint financial system, but it has gravely compromised Home Rule finance. For acquiescing in this and similar grants, beyond the ascertained taxable resources of the country; for the general deficiency of public spirit and matured public opinion in Ireland; for the backwardness of education, temperance legislation, and other important reforms, the Irish Parliamentary parties cannot be held responsible. They are abnormal in their composition and aims, and, beyond a certain limited point, they are powerless, even if they had the will, to promote Irish policies. That is the pernicious result of an unsatisfied claim for self-government. It is the same everywhere else. While an agitation for self-government lasts, a country is stagnant, retrograde, or, like Ireland, progressive only by dint of extraordinary native exertions. Read the Durham report on the condition of the Canadas during the long agitation for Home Rule, and you will recognize the same state of things. The leaders of the agitation have to concentrate on the abstract and primary claim for Home Rule, and are reluctant to dissipate their energies on minor ends. Yet they, too, are liable to irrational and painful divisions, like that which divides Mr. O'Brien from Mr. Redmond; symptoms of irritation in the body politic, not of political sanity. They cannot prove their powers of constructive statesmanship, because they are not given the power to construct or the responsibility which evokes statesmanship. The anti-Home Rule partisans degenerate into violent but equally sincere upholders of a pure negation. Many of the able men who belong to both the Irish parties will, it is to be hoped, soon be finding a far more fruitful and practical field for their abilities in a free Ireland. But the parties, as such, will disappear, on condition that the measure of Home Rule given to Ireland is adequate. On that point I shall have more to say later. If it is adequate, and Irish politicians are absorbed in vital Irish politics, the structure of the existing parties falls to pieces, to the immense advantage both of Ireland--including the Protestant sections of Ulster--and of Great Britain. At present both parties, divided normally by a gulf of sentiment, do combine for certain limited purposes of Irish legislation, but both are, in different degrees and ways, sterile. The policy of the Nationalist party has been positive in the past, because it wrung from Parliament the land legislation which saved a perishing society. It is essentially positive still in that it seeks Home Rule, which is the condition precedent to practical politics in Ireland. More, the party is independent, in a sense which can be applied to no other party in the United Kingdom. Its Members accept no offices or titles, the ordinary prizes of political life. But they themselves could not contend that they are truly representative of three-quarters of Ireland in any other sense than that they are Home Rulers. Half of the wit, brains, and eloquence of their best men runs to waste. Some of them are merely nominated by the party machine, to represent, not local needs, but a paramount principle which the electors insist rightly on setting above immediate local needs. The purpose of the Irish Unionist party in the Commons is purely negative, to defeat Home Rule. It does not represent North-East Ulster, or any other fragment of Ireland, in any sense but that. It is passionately sentimental and absolutely unrepresentative of the practical, virile genius of Ulster industry. The Irish Unionist peers, in addition to voicing the same negative, are for the most part the spokesmen of a small minority of Irishmen in whom the long habit of upholding landlord interests has begun to outlive the need. I have said little directly about the problem of modern Ulster, not because I underrate its importance, which is very great, but because I have some hope that my arguments up to this point may be perceived to have a strong, though indirect, bearing upon it.[67] The religious question I leave to others, with only these few observations. It is impossible to make out a historical case for the religious intolerance of Roman Catholics in Ireland, or a practical case for the likelihood of a Roman Catholic tyranny in the future. No attempt which can be described as even plausible has ever been made in either direction. The late Mr. Lecky, a Unionist historian, and one of the most eminent thinkers and writers of our time, has nobly vindicated Catholic Ireland, banishing both the theory and the fear into the domain of myth.[68] He has shown, what, indeed, nobody denies, that, from the measures which provoked the Rebellion of 1641, through the Penal Code, to the middle of the nineteenth century, intolerance, inspired by supposed political necessities, and of a ferocity almost unequalled in history, came from the Protestant colonists. In that brilliant little essay of his Nationalist youth, "Clerical Influences" (1861), he described the sectarian animosity which was raging at that period as "the direct and inevitable consequence of the Union," and wrote as follows: "Much has been said of the terrific force with which it would rage were the Irish Parliament restored. We maintain, on the other hand, that no truth is more clearly stamped upon the page of history, and more distinctly deducible from the constitution of the human mind, than that a national feeling is the only check to sectarian passions." He was himself an anti-Catholic extremist in the sense of holding (with many others) that "the logical consequences of the doctrines of the Church of Rome would be fatal to an independent and patriotic policy in any land." But he insists in the same passage "that nothing is more clear than that in every land where a healthy national feeling exists, Roman Catholic politicians are both independent and patriotic." He never recanted these opinions (which are confirmed by the subsequent course of events) even after his conversion to Unionism, but derived his opposition to Home Rule from a dread of all democratic tendencies,[69] the only ground on which, if men would be willing to confess the naked truth, it can be opposed. There the matter ought to rest. If the doctrines of the Church of Rome are, in fact, inconsistent with political freedom--I myself pronounce no opinion on that point--it is plain to the most superficial observer that the Church, as a factor in politics, stands to lose rather than to gain by Home Rule. British statesmen have often accepted that view, and have endeavoured to use the Roman Catholic hierarchy against popular movements, just as they enlisted its influence to secure the Union. The Roman Catholic laity have often subsequently rejected what they have considered to be undue political dictation from the seat of authority in Rome. If I may venture an opinion, I believe that both of these mutually irreconcilable propositions--that Home Rule means Rome Rule, and that Rome is the enemy to Home Rule--are wrong.[70] Such ludicrous contradictions only help to destroy the case against trusting a free Ireland to give religion its legitimate, and no more than legitimate, position in the State. Ireland is intensely religious, and it would be a disaster of the first magnitude if the Roman Catholic masses were to lose faith in their Church. The preservation of that faith depends on the political Liberalism of the Church. Corresponding tolerance will be demanded of Ulster Protestants. At present passion, not reason, governs the religious side of their opposition to Home Rule. It is futile to criticize Ulster Unionists for making the religious argument the spear-head of their attack on Home Rule. The argument is one which especially appeals to portions of the British electorate, and the rules of political warfare permit free use of it. It was pushed beyond the legitimate point, to actual violence, in the Orange opposition to responsible government in Canada in 1849. And it has more than once inflamed and embittered Australian politics, as it inflames the politics of certain English constituencies. But it is hardly to be conceived that Ulster Unionists really fear Roman Catholic tyranny. The fear is unmanly and unworthy of them. To anyone who has lived in an overwhelmingly Catholic district, and seen the complete tranquillity and safety in which Protestants exercise their religion, it seems painfully abnormal that a great city like Belfast, with a population more than two-thirds Protestant, should become hysterical over Catholic tyranny. It would be physically impossible to enforce any tyrannical law in Ulster or anywhere else, even if such a law were proposed, and many leading Protestants from all parts of Ireland have stated publicly that they have no fear of any such result from Home Rule.[71] "Loyalty" to the Crown is a false issue. Disloyalty to the Crown is a negligible factor in all parts of Ireland. Loyalty or disloyalty to a certain political system is the real matter at issue. At the present day the really serious objections to Home Rule on the part of the leading Ulster Unionists seem to be economic. They have built up thriving trades under the Union. They have the closest business connections with Great Britain, and a mutual fabric of credit. They cherish sincere and profound apprehensions that their business prosperity will suffer by any change in the form of government. To scoff at these apprehensions is absurd and impolitic in the last degree. But to reason against them is also an almost fruitless labour. Those who feel them vaguely picture an Irish Parliament composed of Home Rulers and Unionists, in the same proportion to population as at present, and divided by the same bitter and demoralizing feuds. But there will be no Home Rulers after Home Rule, that is to say, if the Home Rule conceded is sufficient. I believe that Ulster Unionists do not realize either the beneficent transformation which will follow a change from sentimental to practical politics in Ireland, as it has followed a similar change in every other country in the Empire, or the enormous weight which their own fine qualities and strong economic position will give them in the settlement of Irish questions. Nor do they realize, I venture to think, that any Irish Government, however composed, will be a patriotic Government pledged and compelled for its own credit and safety to do its best for the interests of Ireland. I have never met an Irishman who was not proud of the northern industries, and it is obvious that the industrial prosperity of the north is vital to the fiscal and general interests of Ireland, just as the far more wealthy mining interests of the Rand are vital to the stability and prosperity of the Transvaal, and were regarded as such and treated as such by the farmer majority of the Transvaal after the grant of Home Rule. Those interests have prospered amazingly since, and in that country, be it remembered, volunteer British corps raised on the Rand had been the toughest of all the British foes which the peasant commandos had to meet in a war ended only four years before. If the fears of Ulster took any concrete form, it would be easier to combat them; but they are unformulated, nebulous. Meanwhile, it is hard to imagine what measure of oppression could possibly be invented by the most malignant Irish Government which would not recoil like a boomerang upon those in whose supposed interests it was framed. I shall have to deal with this point again in discussing taxation, and need here only remind the reader that Ulster is not a Province, any part of which could possibly be injured by any form of taxation which did not hit other Provinces equally. It is the belief of Ulster Unionists that their prosperity depends on the maintenance of the Union, but the belief rests on no sound foundation. Rural emigration from Ulster, even from the Protestant parts, has been as great as from the rest of Ireland.[72] It is easy to point to a fall in stocks when the Home Rule issue is uppermost, but such phenomena occur in the case of big changes of government in any country. They merely reflect the fact that certain moneyed interests do, in fact, fear a change of government, and whether those fears are irrational or not, the effect is the same. It is an historical fact, on the other hand, that political freedom in a white country, in the long run invariably promotes industrial expansion and financial confidence. Canada is one remarkable example, Australia is another. The Balkan States are others. Not that I wish to push the colonial example to extremes. Vast undeveloped territories impair the analogy to Ireland; but it is none the less true that when a country with a separate economic life of its own obtains rulers of its own choice, and gains a national pride and responsibility, it goes ahead, not backward. Intense, indeed, must be the racial prejudice which can cause Ulstermen to forget the only really glorious memories of their past. Orange memories are stirring, but they are not glorious beside the traditions of the Volunteers. The Orange flag is the symbol of conquest, confiscation, racial and religious ascendancy. It is not noble for Irishmen to celebrate annually a battle in which Ireland was defeated, or to taunt their Catholic compatriots with agrarian lawlessness to which their own forefathers were forced to resort, in order to obtain a privileged immunity from the same scandalous land laws. Ulstermen reached spiritual greatness when, like true patriots, they stood for tolerance, Parliamentary reform, and the unity of Ireland. They fell, surely, when they consented to style themselves a "garrison" under the shelter of an absentee Parliament, which, through the enslavement and degradation of the old Irish Parliament, had driven tens of thousands of their own race into exile and rebellion. They cherish the Imperial tradition, but let them love its sublime and reject its ignoble side. It is sublime where it stands for liberty; ignoble--and none knew this better than the Ulster-American rebels--where it stands for government based on the dissensions of the governed. The verdict of history is that for men in the position of the Ulster Unionists, the path of honour and patriotism, and the path of true self-interest, lies in co-operation with their fellow-citizens for the attainment of political freedom under the Crown. It is not as if they had to create a tradition. The tradition lives. FOOTNOTES: [42] See pp. 13-17 and 66-71. [43] Dealt with fully in Chapter XIV. [44] In 1910-11, £2,408,000 (Treasury Return No. 220, 1911); plus £225,000 estimated increase owing to removal of Poor Law disqualification (Answer to Question in House of Commons, February 15, 1911). [45] See p. 101. [46] See particularly "Ireland in the New Century," Sir Horace Plunkett; "Contemporary Ireland," E. Paul-Dubois; "The New Ireland," Sydney Brooks. [47] "Report of the Recess Committee," New Edition (Fisher Unwin). [48] Colonel Saunderson, for example, the leader of the Irish Unionists in the Commons, refused publicly to be a member of a committee on which Mr. Redmond sat. Mr. John Redmond himself wrote that he could not take a very sanguine view of the Conference, but that he was "unwilling to take the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful legislation in Ireland." [49] Area under cultivation in 1875, 5,332,813 acres; in 1894, 4,931,011 acres (in 1899, 4,627,545 acres; in 1900, on a system of classification dividing arable land more accurately from pasture, there were only 3,100,397 acres arable, and in 1905 the figures were 2,999,082 acres) (Official Returns). Population in 1841, 8,175,124; in 1851, 6,552,385; in 1861, 5,798,976; in 1871, 5,412,377; in 1881, 5,174,836; in 1891, 4,704,750; in 1892, 4,633,808; in 1893, 4,607,462; in 1894, 4,589,260; in 1895, 4,559,936 (in 1901, 4,458,775; in 1905, 4,391,543).--Census Returns and _Thoms' Directory_. [50] _Council of Agriculture_: 68 members elected by County Councils; 84 appointed by the Department from the various provinces. Total 102. _Board of Agriculture_: 8 members elected by Council of Agriculture; 4 appointed by the Department. Total 12. _Board of Technical Instruction_: 10 members appointed by County Boroughs; 4 elected by Council of Agriculture; 6 appointed by the various Government Departments; 1 by a joint Committee of Dublin District Councils. Total 21. [51] I am not forgetting Scotland. Her few local departments are theoretically, but not practically, at the mercy of English votes and influence. Scotch opinion, broadly speaking, governs Scotch affairs. Precisely to the extent to which it does not so govern them, is a demand for Home Rule likely to grow. [52] Even the Recess Committee (and we cannot wonder) but dimly grasped the constitutional position when they laid stress on the necessity for an Agricultural Minister "directly responsible to Parliament." Logically, they should have first recommended the establishment of an Irish Parliament to which the Minister should be responsible. To make him responsible to the House of Commons was absurd; and a Departmental Committee of 1907 has, in fact, recommended that the Vice-President should not have a seat in Parliament, but should remain in his proper place, Ireland. Meanwhile, the original mistake has caused friction and controversy. Soon after the Liberal Ministry took office in 1906, Sir Horace Plunkett, the first Vice-President, as a Unionist, was replaced by Mr. T.W. Russell, a Home Ruler. On the assumption that such an Office was Parliamentary, its holder standing or falling with the British Ministry of the day, the step was quite justifiable, and even necessary. On the opposite assumption, confirmed by the Departmental Committee, the step was unjustifiable, that is, on the theory of the Union. An Irish Parliament alone should have the power of displacing Irish Ministers. [53] See footnote, p. 159. [54] "Organization and Policy of the Department," Official Pamphlet. [55] STATISTICS OF THE IRISH AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT TO DECEMBER 31, 1909, WITH NUMBER OF SOCIETIES IN EXISTENCE ON DECEMBER 31, 1910 (SUPPLIED BY THE I.A.O.S.): --------------------------------------------------------------------- Description. |Number of |Membership.|Paid-up |Loan |Turnover. |Societies. | |Shares. |Capital. | |-----------| | | | |1910.|1909.| | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Creameries | 392 | 380 | 44,213 | 138,354 | 111,365 | 1,841,400 Agricultural | 169 | 155 | 16,050 | 6,253 | 40,326 | 112,222 Credit | 237 | 234 | 18,422 | -- | 56,469 | 57,641 Poultry | 18 | 18 | 6,152 | 2,292 | 4,026 | 64,342 Industries | 21 | 21 | 1,375 | 1,267 | 1,450 | 7,666 Miscellaneous| 37 | 15 | 4,633 | 15,015 | 2,864 | 48,987 Flax | 9 | 9 | 589 | 482 | 5,796 | 2,286 Federations | 3 | 3 | 227 | 6,753 | 6,360 | 259,925 --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 886 | 835 | 91,661 | 170,416 | 228,656 | 2,394,469 --------------------------------------------------------------------- [56] An Irish Trademark has been secured, and has proved of great value "Irish Weeks," for the furtherance of the sale of Irish products, are held. The organ of the Association is the _Irish Industrial Journal_, published weekly in Dublin. [57] On December 31, 1909, Irish was taught as an "extra subject" in 3,006 primary schools out of 8,401, and in 161 schools in Irish-speaking districts in the West a bi-lingual programme of instruction was in force (Report of Committee of National Education, 1910). Forty-six thousand pupils passed the test of the inspectors. Irish in 1910 was made a compulsory subject for matriculation at the National University. [58] The election by Nationalist votes of Lord Ashtown, a militant Unionist peer of the most uncompromising type, in the spring of 1911 to one of the Galway District Councils is a good recent example of this tendency. [59] Permissive powers exist for County Councils to enforce compulsory attendance. [60] Including 342 convent, 54 monastery, 125 workhouse, and 71 model schools. [61] See "Prospectus of the Municipal Technical Institute, Belfast," 1910-11, pp. 55 and 57-58. Reading, Grammar, and Simple Arithmetic are taught. [62] See Report of the Congested Districts Board, 1909-11. [63] See Report of Royal Commission on Congestion in Ireland (Cd. 4097); especially a Memorandum by Sir Horace Plunkett, published as a separate pamphlet by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. [64] See Chapter XIV. [65] Annual Report (1910) of the "Irish Association for the Prevention of Intemperance." The estimate is that of Dr. Dawson Burns. By the Licensing (Ireland) Act of 1902, the issue of any new licenses was prohibited. [66] I write before the scheme has been fully discussed in Parliament. [67] It is scarcely necessary for me to remind the reader that the word "Ulster," as used in current political dialectics, is misleading. Part of Ulster is overwhelmingly Catholic; in part the population is divided between the two creeds, and in two counties it is overwhelmingly Protestant. In the whole province the Protestants are in a majority of 150,000, but since a number of Protestants vote Nationalist, the representation of the province is almost equal, the Unionists holding seventeen seats out of thirty-three. [68] "Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," "Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland," "Clerical Influences." [69] See "Democracy and Liberty." [70] Many Unionists are to be found in the same breath prophesying Catholic tyranny under Home Rule and averring without any evidence that clerical influence caused the repudiation in 1907 of the Council Bill, because it placed education under a semi-popular body. [71] "Religious Intolerance under Home Rule: Some Opinions of Leading Irish Protestants," pamphlet (1911) compiled by J. McVeagh, M.P. [72] The Census of 1911 shows that the population of Ireland is still falling. The province of Leinster, mainly Catholic, alone shows a small increase, derived from the counties of Dublin (including Dublin City) and Kildare. In Ulster, Down and Antrim, which include the city of Belfast, alone show an increase, but not so great as that of County Dublin. CHAPTER X THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE I. THE ELEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM. It was not only to support the principle of Home Rule for Ireland that I followed in some detail the growth of the Liberal principle of government as applied to outlying portions of the British Empire. The historical circumstances which moulded the form of each individual Colonial Constitution, the Constitutions themselves, and the modifications they have subsequently undergone, supply a mass of material rich in interest and instruction for the makers of an Irish Constitution. Nor is the analogy academical. Ireland is at this moment under a form of government unique, so far as I know, in the whole world, but resembling more closely than anything else that of a British Crown Colony where the Executive is outside popular control, and the Legislature is only partially within it; with this additional and crowning inconvenience, that the Irish Crown Colony can obstruct the business of the Mother Country. What we have to do is to liberate Great Britain and to give Ireland a rational Constitution--not pedantically adhering to any colonial model, but recognizing that, however closely her past history resembles that of a Colony, Ireland, by her geographical position, has a closer community of interest with Great Britain than that of any Colony. Three main difficulties have to be contended with: first, that the system to be overthrown is so ancient, and the prejudice against Home Rule so inveterate; second, the Irish are not agreed upon any constructive scheme; third, the confusion in the popular mind between "Federal" and other systems of Home Rule. A. With regard to the first of these obstacles, we have got to make a big national effort to take a sensible and dispassionate view of the whole problem. We must cease to regard Ireland as an insubordinate captive, as a "possession" to be exploited for profit, or as a child to be humoured and spoiled. All this is _vieux jeu_. It belongs to an utterly discredited form of so-called Imperialism, which might more fitly be called Little Englandism, masquerading in the showy trappings of Bismarckian philosophy. We have gone too far in the "dismemberment" of our historic Empire, and near enough to the dismemberment of what remains, to apply this worn-out metaphor to the process of making Ireland politically free. In Ireland we must build on trust, or we build on sand. What is best for Ireland will be best for the Empire. Let us firmly grasp these principles, or we shall fail. They may be carried to the extreme point. If it were for Ireland's moral and material good to become an independent nation, it would be Great Britain's interest to encourage her to secede and assume the position of a small State like Belgium, whose independence in our own interests we guarantee. Since nobody of sense, in or out of Ireland supposes that her interest lies in that direction, we need not consider the point; but it is just as well to bear in mind that a prosperous and friendly neighbour on a footing of independence is better than a discontented and backward neighbour on a footing of dependence. The corollary is this--that any restrictions or limitations upon the subordinate Irish Government and Parliament which are not scientifically designed to secure the easy working of the whole Imperial machinery, but are the outcome of suspicion and distrust, will serve only to aggravate existing evils. When the supreme object of a Home Rule measure is to create a sense of responsibility in the people to whom it is extended, what could be more perversely unwise than to accompany the gift with a declaration of the incompetence of the people to exercise responsibility, and with restraints designed to prevent them from proving the contrary? Centuries of experience have not yet secured general acceptation for this simple principle. In this domain of thought the tenacity of error is marvellous, even if we make full allowance for the disturbing effect on men's minds of India and other coloured dependencies where despotic, or semi-despotic, systems are in vogue. Since the expansion of England began in the seventeenth century, it cannot be said that the principle of trusting white races to manage their own affairs has ever received the express and conscious sanction of a united British people. It has been repeatedly repudiated by Governments in the most categorical terms, and repudiated sometimes to the point of bloodshed. In other cases it has met with lazy retrospective acquiescence on the discovery that powers surreptitiously obtained or granted without formal legislation had not been abused. The Australian Acts of 1850 and 1855 were the first approach to a spontaneous application of the full principle; but even then many statesmen were not fully alive to the consequences of their action, while there was no public interest, and very little Parliamentary interest, in the fate of these remote dependencies. The fully developed modern doctrine of comradeship with the great self-governing Dominions, a doctrine which we may date from the accession of Mr. Chamberlain to Colonial Secretaryship in 1895, was not the natural outcome of a belief in self-government, but a sudden and effusive acceptation of its matured results in certain definite cases. Irish Home Rule itself had, in the preceding decade, twice been rejected by the nation. With the first opportunity, after 1895, of testing belief in the principle, namely, in the Transvaal Constitution of 1905, the Government failed. Finally, in 1906, when, to redeem that failure, for the first time in the whole history of the Empire a Cabinet spontaneously and unreservedly declared its full belief in the principle, and translated that belief into law, the whole of the Opposition, representing nearly half the electorate, washed their hands of the policy, and, if the constitutional means had existed, would, admittedly, have defeated it, as they had defeated the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. The change of national opinion has, I believe, been considerable; but the circumstances remain ominous for the dispassionate discussion of the Irish Constitution. Patriotic people can only do their best to ensure that the grant of Home Rule shall not be nullified by restrictions and limitations which, if they are designed merely to appease opposition, are destined to create friction and discontent. I am far from implying that restrictions are bad things in themselves. All Constitutions, whether the sole work of the men who are to live under them, like that of the United States, or the gift of a Sovereign State to a dependency, or the joint work of a Sovereign and a dependent State, contain restrictions designed for the common good. The criterion of their value is the measure of consent they meet with from those who have to live under and work the Constitution, and it is that circumstance which makes it urgent that Irish opinion should be evoked upon their future Constitution, and that the Irish Nationalist party should think out its own scheme of Home Rule. The Constitution of the United States contains many self-imposed restrictions upon the powers both of the Central and the State Governments, in the interest of minorities; and nobody accuses the Americans of having insulted themselves. It will be no slur on Ireland, for example, if the most elaborate safeguards against the oppression of the Protestant minority are inserted in the Bill, provided that Nationalist Ireland, recognizing the fears of the minority, spontaneously recommends, or, at any rate, freely consents to their insertion--a consent which could not, of course, be expected if their tendency was to derange the functions of Government or cripple the Legislature. On the other hand, it would be a slur on Ireland which she would justly resent, besides being a highly impolitic step, to deny to the Irish Executive an important power, such, for example, as the control of its own police. B. It is a grave difficulty that there is no public opinion in Ireland as to the form of the Irish Constitution. That is an almost inevitable result of political conditions past and present. Violent intestinal antagonisms are not favourable to constructive thought. The best men of a country, working in harmony, are needed to devise a good Constitution, and if any Irishman could succeed in convening a Conference like that which created the South African Union, he would be famous and honoured for ever in the annals of the future Ireland. That Conference, we must remember, was itself the result of the grants of Home Rule two years previously, and these grants in their turn were greatly facilitated by the co-operation of Britons and Dutchmen.[73] Canada, in 1840, is a warning of the errors made in constructing a Constitution without such co-operation. Eventually it had to be torn up and refashioned. The best way of avoiding any such error in Ireland's case is to expel the spirit of distrust which animated the framers of the Canadian Union Act of 1840. C. So much for the spirit in which we should approach the problem, and I pass to the consideration of the problem itself. What is to be the framework of Home Rule? I take it for granted that there must, in the broad sense, be responsible government, that is to say, an Irish Legislature, with an Irish Cabinet responsible to that Legislature, and, through the Lord-Lieutenant, to the Crown. So much is common ground with nearly all advocates of Home Rule, for I take it that there is no question of reverting to anything in the nature of the abortive Irish Council Bill of 1907.[74] But agreement upon responsible government does not carry us far enough. What are to be the relations between the subordinate Irish Parliament and Government, and the Imperial Parliament and Government? We immediately feel the need of a scientific nomenclature. In popular parlance, two possible types of Home Rule are recognized--"Federal" and "Colonial." Both, of course, may be "Colonial," because there are Colonial Federations as well as Colonial Unitary States. But, nomenclature apart, the two possible types of Irish Home Rule correspond to two distinct types of subordinate Constitution. The "Colonial" type is peculiar to the British Empire, the other is to be found in many parts of the world--the United States, for example, and Germany, and Switzerland. Let us examine these types a little more closely, confining ourselves as far as possible to the British Empire, past and present, because within it we can find nearly all the instruction we need. As I showed in my sketch of the growth of Colonial Home Rule, all the Colonies now classed as self-governing, together with the American Colonies before their independence, were originally unitary States, subordinate to the Crown, each looking directly to Great Britain, possessing no constitutional relation with one another, and gradually obtaining their individual local autonomies under the name of "Responsible Government." New Zealand and Newfoundland alone have maintained their original individualities, and their Constitutions, from an historical standpoint, are the best examples of the first of the two types we are considering. Now for the Federal type. Very early in the history of the American Colonies (in 1643) the New England group formed amongst themselves a loose confederation, which was not formally recognized by the British Government, and which perished in 1684. In the next century the War of Independence produced the confederation of all the thirteen Colonies, but this was little more in effect than a very badly contrived alliance for military purposes, and it was a keen sense of the inadequacy of the bond that stimulated the construction of the Great Constitution of 1787, the first Federal Union ever devised by the English-speaking race. All the States combined to confer certain defined powers upon a Federal Parliament, to which each sent representatives, and upon a Federal Executive whose head, the President, all shared in electing. At the same time, each State preserved its own Constitution and the power to amend it, with the one broad condition that it must be Republican, and subject to any limitation upon its powers which the Federal Constitution imposed. Eighty years elapsed before any similar Federal Union was formed by Colonies within the British Empire. As we have seen, all the various North American Colonies which received Constitutions in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and all the Australasian Colonies similarly honoured in the nineteenth century, were placed in direct relation to the British Crown and in isolation from one another. Upper Canada had no political ties with Lower Canada, Nova Scotia none with New Brunswick, Victoria none with Tasmania. Several abortive schemes were proposed at one time or another for the Federation of the North American Colonies, but the first measure of amalgamation, namely, the union of the two Canadas in 1840, was a step in the wrong direction, and bore, as I have shown, a marked resemblance, particularly in the motives which dictated it, to the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. It was a compulsory Union, imposed by the Mother Country, and founded on suspicion of the French. So far from being Federal, it was a clumsy and unworkable Legislative Union of the two Provinces, which lasted as long as it did only because the principle of responsible government, established in 1847, covered a multitude of sins. The somewhat similar attempt in Australia in 1843 to amalgamate the two settlements of Port Phillip, afterwards Victoria, and New South Wales, at a time when each had evolved a distinct individuality of its own, was defeated by the strenuous opposition of the Port Phillip colonists, and revoked in 1850. Meanwhile, all aspirations after Federation in the outlying parts of the Empire were discouraged by the home authorities. The most practical plan of all, Sir George Grey's great scheme of South African Federation in 1859, was nipped in the bud. Canada eventually led the way. The failure of the Canadian Union brought about its dissolution in 1867 by the Provinces concerned, under the sanction of Great Britain (an example of really sensible "dismemberment"), and their voluntary Federation as Ontario and Quebec, together with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, under the collective title of the Dominion of Canada, and the subsequent inclusion in this Federation of all the North American Provinces with the exception of Newfoundland. Note, at the outset, that this Federation differed from that of the United States in being founded on the recognition of an organic relation with an external suzerain authority--an authority which the Americans had abjured in framing their independent Republic. In the matter of constitutional relations with Great Britain, the Dominion of Canada now assumed, in its collective capacity, the position formerly held by each individual Province, and still held by Newfoundland. Direct relations between the individual Provinces of the Federation and the Mother Country practically ceased, and were replaced by a Federal relation with the Dominion. Provincial Lieutenant-Governors are appointed by the Dominion Government acting in the name of the Governor-General, not directly by the British Government,[75] and, although in constitutional theory the Crown, as in every least fraction of the Empire, is the sole and immediate source of executive authority, and an indispensable agent in all legislation, not only in the Dominion, but in the Provinces,[76] in actual practice the only organic connection left between a Province and Great Britain is the right of appeal directly to the King in Council, that is, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, without the intervention of the Supreme Court of Canada. So much for the external relations of the Dominion. In respect to the domestic relations between the Provinces and the Dominion, the Federal principle used in Canada is fundamentally the same as that which obtains in the United States and in every true Federation in the world, whether Monarchical or Republican, whether self-contained, like the United States, Germany, and Switzerland, or linked, as in the British Empire, to a supreme and sovereign Government centred in London. Each Province, as in every genuine Federation, is an _imperium in imperio_, possessing a Constitution of its own, and delegating central powers to a Federal Government. The nature and extent of the powers thus delegated or reserved, and the character of the Federal Constitution itself, vary widely in different Federations, but we need not consider these differences in any detail. Let us remark generally, however, that the powers of the Canadian Province are much smaller than those of the American State, and that what lawyers call "the residuary powers"--that is, all powers not specifically allotted--belong to the Dominion, whereas in the United States and Switzerland they belong to the State or Canton. The Australian Commonwealth of 1900 came into being in the same way as the Dominion of Canada, by the voluntary act of the several Colonies concerned--Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland--under the sanction of the British Crown and Parliament. New Zealand stood out, and remained, like Newfoundland, a unitary State directly subordinate to Great Britain. Nor, in the matter of relations with the Mother Country, were the federating Colonies merged so completely in the Commonwealth as the Provinces of Canada in the Dominion. The Canadians had not only to construct the Dominion Constitution, but new Constitutions for two of the federating Provinces--Ontario and Quebec--and it was natural, therefore, that they should identify the Provinces more closely with the Dominion. The Australians, having to deal with six ready-made State Constitutions, left them as they were, subject only to the limitations imposed by the Commonwealth Constitution. One of the results is that the State Governors are still appointed directly by the British Government, not by the Commonwealth. This constitutional arrangement, however, has no very practical significance. The right of appeal direct from a State Court to the King in Council, without the intervention of the High Court of Australia, remains, as in Canada, the only direct link between the individual States and the British Government. The Federal tie between the States and the Commonwealth, as defined in the Act of 1900, is looser than that between the Provinces of Canada and the Dominion, and bears more resemblance to the relation between a State and the Federal Government of the United States. As in that country and in Switzerland, residuary powers rest with the State or Canton Governments, not with the Federal Government. The South African Union of 1909, comprising the Colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony, had a Federal origin, so to speak, in that the old Colonies agreed to abandon a great part of their autonomies to a central Government and Legislature; but the spirit of unity carried them so far as almost to annul State rights. The powers now retained by the provincial Legislatures are so small, and the control of the Union Government is so far-reaching, that the whole system is rightly described as a Union, not as a Federation. The Provinces, which are really little more than municipalities, have no longer any relation except in remotest constitutional theory with the Mother Country, their Administrators are appointed by the Union, and, unlike the Provinces of Canada and the States of Australia, they have not even an internal system of responsible government.[77] No direct appeal lies to the King in Council from the provincial Courts, which are now, in fact, only "divisions" of the Supreme Court of South Africa. The Provinces, in short, do not possess "Constitutions" at all. Their powers can be extinguished without their individual assent by an Act of the Union Parliament, whereas the Canadian Dominion has no power to amend either the Dominion or the Provincial Constitutions, and in Australia constitutional amendments must be agreed to by the States separately as well as by the Commonwealth Parliament. But these revolutionary changes in the status of the old South African Colonies were brought about, let us remember, by the free consent of the inhabitants of South Africa, after prolonged deliberation. The United States, the Australian Commonwealth, and the Canadian Dominion are, then, the three genuine Federations which the English-speaking races have constructed. The two last are included in the present British Empire, and they stand side by side with the three unitary Colonies--South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland. The constitutional relation of each of these five bodies to the Mother Country is precisely the same, although they differ widely in internal structure, as in wealth and population. Within each of the two Federations, as we have seen, there exists a nexus of minor Constitutions, State or Provincial, which have virtually no relations with the Mother Country, but are integral parts of the major Federation. II. FEDERAL OR COLONIAL HOME RULE? We are now in a position to pose our main question, and the simplest course is to pose it in an illustrative form. Broadly speaking, is the relation between Ireland and Great Britain to resemble that between the Province of Quebec and the Dominion of Canada, or that between the Dominion of Canada and the United Kingdom? One might equally well contrast the relation of Victoria to the Australian Commonwealth with the relation of New Zealand or Newfoundland to the United Kingdom. I choose the Canadian illustration because it is more compact and striking, and because it corresponds more closely to the history and to the realities of the case. Moreover, Quebec, although she had a no more stormy domestic history, owing to lack of Home Rule, than Ontario, is bi-racial, and on that account underwent in 1840 compulsory amalgamation with her wholly British neighbour, just as Ireland, originally bi-racial, was forcibly amalgamated with Great Britain in 1800. The Canadian partners agreed to break this bond, to fashion a better one on the Federal principle, in the manner vaguely adumbrated by advocates of the "Federal" principle for Irish Home Rule, and, as regards their relations with the Mother Country, to pool their interests and accept representation by the Dominion alone. Quebec Home Rule or Dominion Home Rule? Needless to say, these are only broad types chosen expressly to illustrate two possible types of relation between Ireland and Great Britain, which I shall henceforth refer to as "Federal" and "Colonial." There is no reason why we should not profit in other respects by both examples, nor is there any possibility of copying either faithfully. Both types fulfil the fundamental condition laid down at the beginning of our discussion--both, that is to say, are consistent with responsible government in Ireland. Quebec, in its inner working, is a microcosm of the Dominion, and the Dominion system of responsible government is almost an exact copy of the unwritten British Constitution. In Quebec (as in all the Provinces and States of Canada and Australia) there is a Cabinet, headed by a Prime Minister, composed of Members of the Legislature, and responsible at once to that Legislature and to the Lieutenant-Governor as representing the Crown. Ireland, under a similar system (and, _a fortiori_, if she were put in the position of the Dominion), would have a Cabinet responsible at once to the Irish Legislature and to the Lord-Lieutenant representing the Crown. The parallel is more apposite in the case of the Province of Quebec than in the case of an Australian State, because, as I noted above, the provincial Lieutenant-Governor is actually appointed by the Dominion Government, and is in his turn responsible in the first instance to that Government, just as the Irish Governor, or Lord-Lieutenant, who, under Home Rule, will for the first time justify his existence, is, and will still be, appointed by the British Government. But with the possibility of responsible government granted, it must be confessed that the arguments against "Quebec Home Rule" as a measure of practical politics at the present moment, are insuperable. In the first place there is no question in the coming Bill of federalizing the United Kingdom on the lines of the Dominion of Canada--that is, of constructing a new Federal Parliament elected by the whole realm, together with new local Legislatures elected by the various fractions of the realm. Scottish and Welsh Home Rule are in the air, but they are not practical issues. English Home Rule is not even in the air. I mean that Englishmen, whatever their views on the congestion of Parliamentary business owing to the pressure of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish affairs, have not seriously considered the idea of a subordinate Legislature exclusively English, which would be just as essential a feature of a completely federalized kingdom as subordinate Legislatures exclusively Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. Not that it is essential to the federalization of the United Kingdom that Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales, should all have separate Legislature. Any one of these fractions could coalesce with another or others in a joint Legislature. It would be technically possible, though highly unreasonable, to go to the extreme of giving Great Britain, regarded as one Province, a separate Legislature; Ireland, regarded as another Province, a separate Legislature; and, above these two subordinate bodies, a new Imperial Parliament representing the whole realm. Such a dual Federation was nearly coming about in Canada, when Ontario and Quebec dissolved their Union and resolved to federate. It became a quadruple Federation, owing to the adhesion of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; but in a dual form it would have worked just as well. It is scarcely necessary to say that the disparity in population, resources, and power between Ireland and Great Britain render a dual Federation, which, of course, involves three Legislatures, chimerical. What I want to insist on is that, whatever subdivisions are adopted, it is absolutely essential to every Federation that there should be a division of powers between a central and at least two local Legislatures--three altogether. That is the minimum. Other things are also essential, but for the moment we can confine ourselves to the outstanding requirement. Now, there is no question in the coming Bill of any such Federation. Later years may see such a development, whether from pressure of work on the Imperial Parliament or from irresistible demand for Home Rule from Scotland or Wales, or both, but not next year. The Bill will contemplate two Parliaments, not three, namely, the existing Imperial Parliament and the Irish Legislature. There is, therefore, no question of Federal Home Rule, and the term "Federal," as applied to Irish Home Rule at the present time, is meaningless. Nor can the coming Bill for Ireland make any preparation, technically, for a general Federation. Morally, as I shall show, it might have an important effect in stimulating local sentiment, not only in England, Scotland, and Wales, but in Ireland, towards a general Federation in the future, but in its mechanical structure it must be not merely non-Federal, but anti-Federal. One often hears it carelessly propounded that Irish Home Rule, so devised as to be applicable in later years, if they so desire, to Scotland, Wales, and England, will give us by smooth mechanical means a General Federation. This is a fallacy. At one stage or another, the earliest or the latest, we should have to create a totally new central Parliament, still elected by the whole people, but exclusively devoted to Imperial affairs, and wholly exempt from local business, before we possessed anything in the nature of a Federation. But, whatever the future has in store, it would be a scandal if Irish Home Rule were to be hampered or delayed by the existence of Scotch or Welsh claims, and it is earnestly to be hoped that no action of that kind will be taken. The case of Ireland is centuries old, and more urgent than ever. It differs radically from any case that can possibly be made for Scotland and Wales. The Bill, I repeat, must be anti-Federal, centrifugal. In the case of Ireland we have first to dissolve an unnatural union, and then to revive an old right to autonomy, before we can reach a healthy Federal Union. Such, exactly, was the history of Canada. If, in that case, the dissolution of the Legislative Union and the construction of the Federal Union were consummated simultaneously in the British North America Act of 1867, they were nevertheless two distinct phases, and of these two phases the first, implying the revival of the old separate autonomies, was the indispensable precursor of Federal Union. This antecedent recognition of autonomy was not peculiar to Canada. Every Federation in the world arose in the same way, by the voluntary act of States under one Crown or suzerainty, but independent of one another, and it is of the essence of Federalism that this psychological condition should exist. Compulsory Federation would not last a year. It would indeed be practicable to federalize the United Kingdom by one Legislative Act, but the prior right to and fitness for complete Home Rule on the part of each of the component parts would have to be implicitly recognized. It needs only a moment's consideration of Anglo-Irish history to see the special applicability of the psychological rule to Ireland. The evils of the Canadian Union, during the twenty-seven years of its duration, are infinitesimal beside the mischief, moral and material, which have been caused to both partners by the forcible amalgamation of Great Britain and Ireland; the waste of indigenous talent, industrial and political; the dispersion all over the globe of Irishmen; the conversion of friends into enemies, of peaceable citizens into plotters of treason, of farmers into criminals, of poets and statesmen into gaolbirds; the check to the production of wealth and Anglo-Irish commerce; the dislocation and demoralization of Parliamentary life; and, saddest results of all, the reactionary effect upon British statesmanship, domestic and Imperial, and the deterioration of Irish character within Ireland. The voluntary principle--at any rate, among the English-speaking races--is as essential to a true Union, like that of the South African Colonies or that of Scotland and England, as to a Federation. It is a sheer impossibility to create a perfect, mechanical Union on a basis of hatred and coercion; witness the strangely anomalous colonial features surviving in Irish Government--the Lord-Lieutenancy, the separate administration, and the standing army of police. Persons inclined to reckon the advantages, whether of Federation or of Union, in pounds, shillings, and pence, may regard the psychological requirement as fanciful. It is not fanciful; on the contrary, it is related in the clearest way to the concrete facts of the situation. Before there is any question of Federation Ireland needs to find herself, to test her own potentialities, to prove independence of character, thought, and action, and to discover what she can do by her own unaided will with her own resources. As I endeavoured to show in the last chapter, these are the true reasons for Home Rule. Home Rule is neither a luxury nor a plaything, but a tremendously exacting duty which must be undertaken by every country conscious of repression and valuing its self-respect, and which Ireland is praying to be allowed to undertake. When a people has learnt to understand the extent of its own powers and limitations, then it can safely and honourably co-operate on a Federal basis with other peoples, and, in the interests of efficiency and economy, can delegate to a central Government, partly of its own choice, functions hitherto locally exercised. Once more, that is the origin of all true Federations, British and foreign, in all parts of the world. If, then, the Home Rule Bill cannot in legal form be a federating or unifying measure, it must be one of a precisely opposite character, and a measure of devolution. It is a proof of the need for a scientific nomenclature that the word "devolution" has to Irish ears come to mean something similar in kind to "Federal" Home Rule, but less in degree, and something different in kind from "Colonial" Home Rule, and infinitely less in degree. What a tangle of truth and fallacy from the misuse of a single word! It is associated rightly with the ill-starred Irish Council Bill of 1907, and it has been universally but wrongly used to indicate a small measure of local government in contradistinction to the Home Rule Bills of Mr. Gladstone and, _a fortiori_, to any more liberal schemes. Nevertheless, the problem before us is one of devolution pure and simple, and the question is, how far is devolution to go? It may go to the full length of Colonial Home Rule, that is, Ireland may be vested with the full freedom now enjoyed by a self-governing Colony (for the grants of Colonial Home Rule were measures of devolution), or it might at the other extreme take the form of a petty municipal government. By hypothesis, however, we are precluded from considering any scheme which does not admit of responsible government in Ireland. That condition commits us to something in the nature of "Colonial" Home Rule, now enjoyed by States widely varying in size, wealth, and population, from the Dominion of Canada, with over seven million inhabitants, to Newfoundland, with under a quarter of a million inhabitants and very slender resources. It is worth notice also (to shift our analogy for the moment) that little Newfoundland, which, owing to divergency of interest, has declined both federation with the Dominion and union with any of the constituent parts of the Dominion, subsists happily and peacefully by the side of her powerful neighbour; and that New Zealand, for the same reason, prefers to occupy the same independent position by the side of Australia. III. THE EXCLUSION OR RETENTION OF IRISH MEMBERS AT WESTMINSTER.[78] We have discarded the "Federal" solution as wholly impracticable, and have arrived at the "Colonial" solution. And at this point I feel it necessary to plead for the reader's patient, if reluctant, attention to what follows. The solution I suggest is unpopular, mainly, I believe, because prejudice has so beclouded the issue in the past, and because for the eighteen years since the last Home Rule Bill, while prejudice has diminished, the subject of Irish Home Rule has ceased to be studied with scientific care. Where is the crux of the problem? In what provision of the coming Bill will the difference between Federal Home Rule and Colonial Home Rule arise? The answer is clear: in the retention or exclusion of Irish Members at Westminster. No Colony has representatives at Westminster. The Federal solution, on the other hand, whether it be applied to the whole Empire or to the United Kingdom alone, involves an exclusively Federal Parliament unconcerned with State or provincial affairs. That we have not got. What we have got is an absolutely supreme and sovereign Parliament which has legal authority, not only over all Imperial affairs within and without the United Kingdom, but over the minutest local affairs. Unrepresented though the Colonies are, they can legally be taxed, coerced, enslaved at any moment by an Act passed by a party majority in this Parliament. Such measures, though legal, would be unconstitutional; but, both by law and custom, and in actual daily practice, Parliament passes and enforces certain Acts affecting the self-governing Colonies, and wields potential and actual authority of all-embracing extent over the Empire and over the local affairs of the United Kingdom. When we set up an Irish Legislature, then, we have to contemplate four different classes of affairs in a descending scale: (1) Affairs of common interest to the whole Empire; (2) affairs of exclusive interest to the United Kingdom; (3) affairs exclusively British; (4) affairs exclusively Irish. With regard to (1), the prospects of Imperial Federation do not affect the Irish issue. It is no doubt illogical and sometimes highly inconvenient that the British Cabinet and Parliament, representing British and Irish electors only, should decide matters which deeply concern the whole Empire, including the self-governing Colonies, but it is the fact. In the meantime we are securing very effective consultation with the self-governing Colonies by the method of Imperial Conference. A Federal Parliament for the whole Empire is a possible though a remote alternative to that system. Colonial representation in the present Imperial Parliament is an altogether impracticable alternative. The suggestion had often been made for the American Colonies at the height of their discontent, later for Canada as an alternative to the Act of 1791, and in recent times also. The same fallacious idea underlay the Union of Ireland with Great Britain and her representation in Parliament, while retaining colonial institutions. At present the prospects of Imperial Federation seem to be indifferent. On the other hand, the affection between all branches of our race which is the indispensable groundwork of Federation becomes visibly stronger, and will become stronger, provided that we do not revert to the ancient and discredited policy either of dictating to the Colonies or taking sides with one or another of the parties within them, provided also that the Colonies in their growing strength do not dictate to us or take sides with one or other of our parties. But, whatever the prospects of Imperial Federation, so long as the present situation lasts, there is no reason for giving a self-governing Ireland more control over Imperial matters affecting the self-governing Colonies than the self-governing Colonies themselves possess. The present position is illogical enough; that would be to render it doubly illogical. Representation of Ireland, therefore, at Westminster, on the ground that she should take part in settling matters of the widest Imperial purport, is indefensible. The alternative and much more effectual method, as with the Colonies, is Conference. (2-4) But it is when we come to regard the United Kingdom as a self-contained entity that the difficulty of retaining Irish Members at Westminster appears most formidable. If we discard the Federal solution we must discard it wholeheartedly, not from a pedantic love of logic, but to avoid real, practical anomalies which might cause the whole political machine to work even worse than it does at present. From what I have written, it will be seen at once that to retain the Irish Members in the House of Commons, while giving Ireland responsible government, would be to set up a kind of hybrid system, retaining the disadvantages of the Union without gaining the advantages of Federalism. A Federal system needs a Federal Parliament, which we have not got, and shall not get for a long time yet. To introduce into it a quasi-Federal element is to mix oil with water. I state the proposition in this broad way at first in order to push home the truth that Irish representation at Westminster will involve anomalies and dangers which, beyond a certain very limited point, cannot be mitigated. Methods of mitigation I will deal with in a moment. Let me remark first upon the strange history of this question of Irish representation at Westminster. Obviously it is the most fundamental question of all in the matter of Home Rule. The whole structure of the Bill hangs on it. It affects every provision, and particularly the financial provisions. Yet Mr. Gladstone went no farther than to call it an "organic detail," and in popular controversy it is still generally regarded in that light, or even in a less serious light. As a matter of history, however, it has proved to be a factor of importance in deciding the fate of the Home Rule Bills. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone, in proposing to exclude Irish Members altogether, roused a storm of purely sentimental opposition. In 1893, in proposing to retain them--first with limited functions, then on the old terms of complete equality with British Members--he met with opposition even more formidable, because it was not merely sentimental, but unanswerably practical. On both occasions Mr. Chamberlain took a prominent part in the opposition: in 1886 because he was then a Federalist, advocating "Quebec" Home Rule for Ireland, and regarding the exclusion of Irish Members from Westminster as contravening the Federal principle; in 1893 because, having ceased to be a Home Ruler, he had no difficulty in showing that the retention of Irish Members, either with full or limited functions, was neither Federation nor Union, but an unworkable mixture of the two. These facts should be a warning to those who trifle thoughtlessly with what they call "Federal" Home Rule. It was through a desperate desire to conciliate that Mr. Gladstone caught at the Federal chimera in 1893, and produced a scheme which he himself could not defend. And it was one of the very statesmen that he sought to conciliate--a statesman, moreover, possessing one of the keenest and strongest intellects of the time--who snatched at the chimera in 1886, and argued it out of existence in 1893. We Home Rulers do not want a repetition of those events. We want Home Rule, and if we are to be defeated, let us be defeated on a simple straightforward issue, not on an indefensible complication of our own devising. Now to details. There are five ways of dealing with the question, and of these I will take first the four different ways of including Irish Members in the House of Commons, leaving their total _exclusion_ to the last. 1. Inclusion of Irish Members in their full numbers for all purposes--that is, with a right to vote upon all questions--British, Irish, and Imperial. [By "full numbers" I mean, not the existing figure of 103, but numbers fully, and no more than fully, warrantable according to the latest figures of population--say 70.] 2. Inclusion in full numbers for limited purposes. 3. Inclusion in reduced numbers for all purposes. [By "reduced numbers" I mean in numbers less than population would warrant.] 4. Inclusion in reduced numbers for limited purposes. Now (4) I only set out for symmetry. It has never been proposed by anybody, and hardly needs notice. The three others are alike in two respects--that they leave untouched the question of representation in the House of Lords, and that they directly infringe both the Federal principle and the Union principle by giving representation, both in a unitary and a subordinate Legislature, to one portion of the realm. Let us look at No. 1--inclusion in full numbers for all purposes. This was Mr. Gladstone's revised proposal of 1893, and it formed part of the Bill thrown out by the Lords. The number of Irish Members was to have been 80. But reduction, as Mr. Gladstone admitted, would scarcely affect the inherent difficulties of inclusion. Nor must it be forgotten that reduction from 103 to 70 can be justified only by the concession of a large measure of Home Rule. It is one of the paradoxes of an unnatural Union that, over-represented as Ireland is, she has not now power enough to secure her own will. To reduce her numbers, while retaining large powers over Irish affairs at Westminster, would be unjust. For the time being I shall defer the consideration of those powers, and argue the matter on broad principle, assuming that the powers retained in Imperial hands are small enough to warrant a reduction from 103 to 70. Now let us apply our touchstone to this question of inclusion in "full" numbers. Will it be good for Ireland? Surely not. (_a_) It will be bad for Ireland, in the first place, to have her energies weakened at the outset by having to find two complete sets of representatives, when she will be in urgent need of all her best men to do her own work. There is no analogy with Quebec, Victoria, Massachusetts, or Würtemburg, which had all been accustomed to self-government before they entered their respective Federations. Ireland has to find her best men, create her domestic policies, reconstruct her administration, and the larger the reservoir of talent she has to draw from the better. When true Federation becomes practical politics it will be another matter. By that time she will have men to spare. (_b_) More serious objection still, retention in full numbers will, it is to be feared, tend to counteract the benefits of Home Rule in Ireland by keeping alive old dissensions and bad political habits. If, after long and hot controversy, a system is set up under which Great Britain can still be regarded as a pacificator--half umpire and half policeman--of what Peel called the "warring sects" of Ireland, it is to be feared that the Members sent to London may fall into the old unnatural party divisions; a Protestant minority seeking to revoke or curtail Home Rule, and a Nationalist majority--paradoxical survival of a pre-national period--seeking to maintain or enlarge Home Rule. These unhappy results would react in their turn upon the Irish Legislature, impairing the value of Home Rule, and making Ireland, as of old, the cockpit of sectarian and sentimental politics. The same results would have happened if, simultaneously with the concession of Home Rule to Canada, Australia and South Africa, these Colonies had been given representation in the British Parliament. (_c_) Whatever the extent of the danger I have indicated, inclusion in full numbers will tend to keep alive the habit of dependence on Great Britain for financial aid, a habit so ingrained, through no fault of Ireland's, that it will be difficult to break if the Parliamentary leverage is left intact. If ever there was a country which needed, as far as humanly possible, to be thrown for a time--not necessarily for a long time--upon its own resources, it is Ireland. Every other self-governing Colony in the Empire has gone through that bracing and purifying ordeal, accepting from the Mother Country, without repayment, only the loan of military and naval defence, and Ireland can imitate them without dishonour. What is bad for Ireland is sure to be bad for Great Britain, too, and the bad effect in this case is sufficiently apparent. Imagine the result if Quebec, besides having her own Legislature and her own representatives in the Dominion Parliament, were to be represented also in the Ontario Legislature. Ireland, besides controlling her own affairs, free from British interference, would have a voice in British affairs, and sometimes a deciding voice. "If you keep the Irish in," said Mr. John Morley in 1886--and he meant in their full numbers--"they will be what they have ever been in the past--the arbitrators and masters of English policy, of English legislative business, and of the rise and fall of British administrations." That is a rather exaggerated account of the past, for had it been literally true Ireland would have had Home Rule long ago; and it was unduly pessimistic about the future, for it hardly made sufficient allowance for a change in Irish spirit as a result of Home Rule; but there is a truth in the words which everybody recognizes and whose recognition is one of the great motive forces behind Home Rule. Even a total change in Irish sentiments and parties would not remove the danger, and might intensify it by producing at Westminster a solid instead of, as at present, a divided, Irish vote. It would be truer, perhaps, to say what I said above, that retention of Members would tend to stereotype Irish parties and the mutual antipathy of Ireland and Great Britain. 2. Inclusion in full numbers (say 70) for limited purposes. This (with the figure of 80) was Mr. Gladstone's original proposal of 1893, and it took the form of a clause known as the "In and Out Clause," which purported to divide all Parliamentary business into Imperial, Irish, and non-Irish business, and to give Irish Members the right to vote only on Imperial and Irish subjects. Mr. Gladstone never disguised his view that a sound classification was impracticable, and put forward the clause, frankly, as a tentative scheme for the discussion of the House. Like its successor, the "Omnes omnia" Clause, it was riddled with criticism, and it was eventually withdrawn. Without investigating details, the reader will perceive at once the hopeless confusion arising from an attempt to inject a tincture of Federalism into a unitary Parliament, forming part of an unwritten Constitution of great age and infinite delicacy. It is not merely that it is absolutely impossible to distinguish rigidly between Imperial, Irish, and British business. The great objection is that there would be two alternating majorities in an Assembly which is, and must be, absolutely governed by a party majority, and which, through that majority, controls the Executive. It "passed the wit of man," said Mr. Gladstone, to separate in practice the Legislative and Executive functions in the British Constitution. At present a hostile vote in the House of Commons overturns the Ministry of the day and changes the whole British and Imperial administration. A hostile vote, therefore, determined by the Irish Members, on a question affecting Ireland, such as the application to Ireland of a British Bill, would seriously embarrass the Ministry, if it did not overturn it. The log-rolling and illicit pressure which this state of things would encourage may be easily imagined. A Ministry might find itself after a General Election in the position of having a majority for some purposes and not for others. That was actually the case in 1893, when Mr. Gladstone, with a majority, including the Irish Nationalists, of only 40, was carrying his Bill through Parliament. It is actually the case now, in the sense that if the Irish Nationalists voted with the Opposition, the Ministry would be defeated. Any change for the better in Irish sentiment towards Great Britain would _pro tanto_ mitigate the difficulty, but would not remove it, and might, as I suggested above, increase it, by the creation of a solid Irish vote. If Great Britain resents the present system, she alone is to blame. As long as she insists on keeping the Irish Members out of Ireland, where they ought to be, she thoroughly deserves their tyranny, and would be wise to get rid of it by the means they suggest. Until they are given Home Rule, they are not only justified in using their power, but are bound, in duty and honour, to use it. To reproduce in the Home Rule Bill, albeit in a modified form, conditions which might lead to the same results as before would surely be a gratuitous act of unwisdom. 3. Inclusion in reduced numbers for all purposes. By "reduced numbers" is meant numbers less than the population of Ireland warrants. For the sake of argument we may assume the number to be 35, that is, approximately half the proper proportion; but directly we desert a scientific principle of allocation, the exact figure we adopt is a matter of arbitrary choice. Mr. Gladstone appears to have contemplated this plan for a brief period in 1889; but he dropped it. Clearly it cannot be defended on any logical grounds, but only as a compromise designed, as it avowedly was, to conciliate British opinion. It would minimize but not remove the difficulties inherent in No. 1; and so far as it did lessen these difficulties, the representation given would be impotent and superfluous. That is why I have taken it last in order of the three possible methods of inclusion. It raises in the sharpest and clearest form the important question underlying the whole of the discussion we have just been through--namely, what are to be the powers delegated to the Irish Parliament and Executive, and what are to be the powers reserved to the Imperial Parliament and Executive? If the powers reserved are small, it will be possible to justify not merely a small Irish representation in the House of Commons, but even under certain conditions the total exclusion of Irish members. Indeed, if the figure 35 corresponded to the facts of the case, one might as well abandon these painful efforts to "conciliate British opinion," accept total exclusion, and substitute Conference for representation. If the powers reserved are large, full representation in spite of all the crushing objections to it, will be absolutely necessary, in order to safeguard Irish interests. Here is the grand dilemma, and it says little for our common sense as a nation that we should submit to be puzzled and worried by it any longer. Half the worry arises from the old and infinitely pernicious habit of regarding Ireland as outside the pale of political science, of ignoring in her case what Lord Morley has called the "fundamental probabilities of civil society." Let us break this habit once and for all and take the logical and politic course of total exclusion, with its logical and politic accompaniment, a measure of Home Rule wide enough to justify the absence of Irish representation at Westminster. That will be found to be the path both of duty and of safety. Let it be clearly understood that lapse of time has not diminished appreciably the power of the arguments against the inclusion of Irish Members in the House of Commons. On their merits, these arguments are still unanswerable, and we had better recognize the fact. Mr. Balfour said, in 1893, "Those questions" (of representation at Westminster) "are not capable of solution, and the very fact that they are incapable of solution affords, in our opinion, a conclusive argument against the whole scheme, of which one or other of the plans in question must form a part." Speaking as a Unionist, Mr. Balfour was right, and, as Home Rulers, we should be wise to remember it. Lastly, even if the question of inclusion in the House of Commons were "capable of solution," as it is not, there would remain the problem raised by the House of Lords. It is idle to ignore the fact that the bulk of the Irish peerage, and the Assembly of which it forms part, has been for a century in consistent and resolute opposition to the views of the vast majority of Irishmen. The recent curtailment of its powers, whether a right or a wrong measure in itself, does not make it any the more suitable as an Upper Chamber, under a Home Rule scheme, for the decision of important Irish questions reserved for settlement at Westminster; indeed, the bare proposal is the best imaginable example of the extraordinary complications which would ensue from the introduction of a quasi-Federal element into a unitary Constitution. Federal Upper Chambers, so far from being hostile to State rights, are almost invariably framed on the principle of giving disproportionately large representation to the smaller States. In the United States and Australia, for example, every State, however small, has an equal number of Senators. It will be clear now that there are two distinct ways of approaching the question of the framework of Home Rule. One may begin with the nature and extent of the powers reserved or delegated, and proceed from them to the inclusion and exclusion of Irish representation at Westminster, or one may begin with the topic of inclusion or exclusion and proceed from it to the nature and extent of powers. While premising that we must trust Ireland and evoke her sense of responsibility, I chose the latter of the two courses, because I believe it to be on the whole the most illuminating and trustworthy course. It is also the more logical course, though I should not have adopted it for that reason alone; and I have already given, I hope, some good reasons to show that in this matter logic and policy coincide. Englishmen pride themselves on the lack of logic which characterizes their slowly evolved institutions, but they may easily carry that pride to preposterous extremes. Faced now with the necessity of making a written Constitution which will stand the test of daily use they would commit the last of innumerable errors in Irish policy if, with full warning from experience elsewhere, they were to frame a measure whose unprecedented and unworkable provisions were the outcome of a distrust of Ireland which it was the ostensible object of the measure itself to remove. IV. IRISH POWERS AND THEIR BEARING ON EXCLUSION. I pass to what I suggest to be the right solution: Total exclusion, as proposed by Mr. Gladstone in 1886, though he shrank from recommending what he knew to be its financial corollary. Mr. Bright regarded exclusion as the "best clause" of a dangerous scheme, and Mr. Chamberlain has admitted that he attacked it, as he attacked the proposals for Land Purchase, which he knew to be right, in order to "kill the Bill."[79] I propose only to recapitulate the merits of exclusion before dealing with the alleged difficulties of that form of Home Rule, and in particular with the point on which the controversy mainly turns--Finance. To give Ireland Colonial Home Rule, without representation in London, is to follow the natural channel of historical development. Ireland was virtually a Colony, and is treated still in many respects as an inferior type of Colony, in other respects as a partner in a vicious type of Union. We cannot improve the Union, and it is, admittedly, a failure. Let us, then, in broad outline, model her political system on that of a self-governing Colony. History apart, circumstances demand this solution. It is the best solution for Ireland, because she needs, precisely what the Colonies needed--full play for her native faculties, full responsibility for the adjustment of her internal dissensions, for the exploitation, unaided, of her own resources, and for the settlement of neglected problems peculiar to herself. As a member of the Imperial family she will gain, not lose. And the Empire, here as everywhere else, will gain, not lose. These ends will be jeopardized if we continue to bind her to the British Parliament, and restrict her own autonomy accordingly. Reciprocally, we damage the British Parliament and gratuitously invite friction and deadlock in the administration either of British or of Imperial affairs, or both. Of the difficulties raised we can mitigate one only by bringing another into existence. Endeavouring to minimize them all by reducing the Irish representation to the lowest point, we either do a gross injustice to Ireland, by diminishing her control over interests vital to her, or, by conceding that control, remove the necessity for any representation at all. Most Irish Unionists would, I believe, prefer exclusion to retention. One gathers that from the debates of 1893, and the view is in accordance with the traditional Ulster spirit, and the spirit generally displayed by powerful minorities threatened with a Home Rule to which they object on principle. It was the spirit displayed by the Upper Canadian minority, in 1838-39 (_vide_ p. 101), in threatening to leave the Empire rather than submit to Home Rule, and by the Transvaal minority in the lukewarm and divided support given to the half-baked Constitution of 1905, and in the hearty welcome given to the full autonomy of 1906. How the Colonists expressed themselves matters nothing. We must make generous allowance for hot party feeling and old prejudices. The Canadian minorities did not really mean to call in the United States, nor does it signify a particle that some of the Johannesburgers vowed that anything could be borne which freed them from the interference of a Liberal Government. These opinions are transient and negligible. The spirit is essentially healthy. Paradox as it may seem, the uncompromising attitude of Ulster Unionists, as voiced by the ablest representative they ever had, Colonel Saunderson,[80] is hopeful for the prospects of Home Rule. They fight doggedly for the Union, but I believe they would prefer a real Home Rule to a half-measure, and in making that choice they would show their virility and courage at its true worth. Where are the dangers and difficulties of exclusion? The dangers first. I believe, from a study of events in the last twenty-five years, that the strongest opposition to it was founded, not so much upon a reluctance to give Ireland powers full enough to render needless her representation at Westminster, but on a jealous desire to keep Irish Members under surveillance, as a dangerous and intractable body of men who would hatch mischief against the Empire if they were allowed to disappear from sight; the same kind of instinct which urged revolutionary Paris to stop the flight of Louis and to keep him under lock and key. In the case of Ireland it is possible to understand the prevalence of this instinct in 1886, though even then it was irrational enough. But in 1911 we should be ashamed to entertain it. Irish plots against the Empire have passed into electoral scares, and if they had not, representation in London would be no safeguard. We should also dismiss the more rational but groundless view that Imperial co-operation necessitates representation in a joint Assembly. Conference is a better method. Anyone who studies the proceedings of the last Imperial Conference and observes the number and variety of the subjects discussed and the numerous and valuable decisions arrived at, will realize how much can be done by mutual good-will and the pressure of mutual interest.[81] It may be objected that, with one or two exceptions of quite recent date, the Colonies have contributed nothing to the upkeep of the Empire, except in the very indirect form of maintaining local military forces, that their present tendency --unquestionably a sound tendency--is to co-operate, not by way of direct money contribution to Imperial funds, but by the construction of local Navies out of their own money, and, in time of peace, under their own immediate control, and that Ireland cannot be allowed to follow their example. The objection has no point. Ireland, through no fault of her own, has reached a stage (if we are to trust the Treasury figures) where she no longer pays any cash contribution to Imperial expenses, nor is it possible to look back with any satisfaction upon the enormous total of her cash contributions in the past. They were not the voluntary offerings of a willing partner, but the product of a joint financial system which, like all consequences of a forced Union, was bad for Ireland. If we consider that a similar attempt to extort an Imperial contribution from the American States led to their secession; that the principle was definitely abandoned in the case of the later Colonies; that, on the contrary, large annual sums raised in these islands were, until quite recent times, spent for purposes of defence within these Colonies; that in the South African War two hundred and fifty million pounds were spent in order to assist British subjects in the Transvaal to obtain the rights of freemen in a self-governing Colony; and that to this day indirect colonial contributions in the shape of local expenditure are small in proportion to the immense benefit derived from the protection of the Imperial Navy, Army, and Diplomacy, and from the assistance of British credit; if we then reflect that before the Union Ireland was, in the matter of contribution, somewhat in the same position as Canada or Australia to-day--that is, paying no fixed cash tribute, but voluntarily assuming the burden, very heavy in time of war, of certain Army establishments; that for seventeen years after the Union contributions fixed on a scale grossly inequitable drove her into bankruptcy; that from 1819 until two years ago, she paid, by dint of excessive taxation and in spite of terrible economic depression, a considerable share, and sometimes more than her proportionate share, of Imperial expenditure;[82] if, finally, we remember that, cash payments apart, Irishmen for centuries past have taken an important part in manning the Army and Navy, have fought and died on innumerable battle-fields in the service of the Empire, and have contributed some of its ablest military leaders; if we consider all these facts soberly and reasonably, we shall, I believe, agree that it would be fair and right to place a Home Ruled Ireland in the position of a self-governing Colony, with a moral obligation to contribute, when her means permit, and in proportion to her means, but without a statutory and compulsory tribute. What form should that contribution eventually take? Does it necessarily follow that Ireland should be given power to construct her own Navy, and raise and control her own troops? Let us use our common sense, and use it, let me add, fearlessly. If Ireland really _wanted_ full colonial powers, if, like Australia and Canada, she would be discontented and resentful at their denial, we should be wise to grant them, and rely on common interests and affections to secure friendly co-operation. Does it not stand to reason that a friendly alliance even with a foreign power, such as France, to say nothing of the far more intimate relations with a consanguineous Colony, is better business than any arrangement for common forces unwillingly or resentfully acceded to? But, as I pointed out in Chapter VIII., all these uneasy speculations about independent Irish armaments are superfluous. Ireland does not want separate armaments. The sporadic attempts to discourage enlistment in the Imperial forces are, as every sensible person should recognize, the results of refusing Home Rule. They would have occurred in every Colony under similar circumstances, and they do occur in one degree or another wherever countries agitate vainly for Home Rule. If Russia misinterprets such phenomena, we have, let us hope, more political enlightenment than Russia. Ireland's strategical situation bears no analogy to that of Australia and Canada, which, for geographical reasons, are compelled, as South Africa will be compelled, to make a certain amount of independent provision, not only for military, but for naval defence, and would be wanting in patriotic feeling if they did otherwise. New Zealand, on the other hand, is too small to be capable of creating a Navy, and rightly contributes to ours. We have arrived at an interesting psychological point when Australia and Canada both seem to be inclined to reserve, in theory, a right to abstain from engaging their Navies in a war undertaken by Great Britain, but nobody will be alarmed by this theoretical reservation. It is an insignificant matter beside the Naval Agreement reached at the last Conference (1911)--an agreement worth more than volumes of unwritten statutes--to the effect that the personnel of the colonial fleets is to be interchangeable with that of the Imperial fleet and that in a joint war colonial ships are to form an integral part of the British fleet under the control of the Admiralty. With such an agreement in existence, it becomes superfluous to lay stress upon the fact that without formal and complete separation from the Mother Country in time of peace, the neutrality of a Colony would not be recognized by a belligerent enemy of Great Britain in time of war. In any case these developments have no concern for Ireland, which does not want, and need not be given, power to raise a local Navy. Nor, with regard to the regular land forces, will anything be changed. Troops quartered in Ireland will be, as before, and as in the Colonies now, under complete Imperial control. So will Imperial camps, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards. On the other hand, arrangements should certainly be made to permit the raising of Volunteer forces in Ireland. There are large numbers of Irishmen in the British Territorial Army, and Ireland sent five companies to the South African War. Though the poverty of the country will for a long time check the growth of Volunteer forces, it is the Union which presents the only serious obstacle to their establishment. No surer proof of the need for Home Rule could be adduced than the fact that it was held to be impossible to extend the Territorial system to Ireland. One of the objects of Home Rule is to remove this suspicious atmosphere. Whether local power to organize and arm Volunteers in Ireland should be given to the Irish authority, or, as in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, reserved to the Imperial Government, is, if we trust Ireland, as we must, a secondary and not a vital matter, which would not affect the question of representation at Westminster.[83] Probably it would be most convenient to leave the matters in the hands of the Irish Legislature. In any case, the Command-in-Chief of all forces in Ireland, regular or volunteer, would, as in the Colonies,[84] be vested in the King. The control of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police does not affect the question of representation at Westminster. With or without representation, Ireland should be given the control of all her own police forces from the first, without the restrictions imposed by the Bills of 1886 and 1893 with regard to Imperial control of the existing forces.[85] With the important exception of taxation, with which I shall deal last, no other power which should properly be reserved to the Imperial Parliament, or delegated to the Irish Parliament, has any appreciable bearing upon the exclusion of Irish Members from the House of Commons. Nor do any of them raise issues which are likely to be troublesome. Common sense and mutual convenience should decide them. The Army, Navy, and other military forces I have already dealt with. The Crown, the Lord-Lieutenant, War and Peace, Prize and Booty of War, Foreign Relations and Treaties (with the exception of commercial Treaties), Titles, Extradition, Neutrality,[86] and Treason, are subjects upon which the Colonies have no power to legislate or act, and of which it would be needless, strictly, to make any formal statutory exception in the case of Ireland, though the exception no doubt will be made in the Bill. Naturalization, Coinage, Copyright, Patents, Trademarks, are all matters in which the Colonies have local powers, whose existence, and the limitations attaching to them, are determined either solely by constitutional custom or with the addition of an implied or express statutory authority.[87] The two former would, I should think, be wholly reserved to the Imperial Parliament. In the case of the latter three, which were wholly reserved in the Bill of 1886 and 1893, Ireland might be placed in the position of a self-governing Colony.[88] In Trade and Navigation it would be wise to take the same course. The Home Rule Bill of 1886, without giving Ireland representation at Westminster, denied her all powers over Trade and Navigation. The Bill of 1893 gave her powers over Trade within Ireland and Inland Navigation, and these powers at any rate should be given in the coming Bill, together with the larger functions also; though Ireland would naturally leave in operation the great bulk of the statutes concerned, since they intimately affect the commercial and industrial relations of the two countries. For the rest, Ireland no more than the Colonies can be freed from a measure of Imperial control maintained by Acts like the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894. The Postal Service in Ireland should, as in the Bill of 1886, come under Irish control. In the Home Rule Bill of 1893 (Section 34) it was laid down that for three years the Irish Legislature should not "pass an Act respecting the relations of landlord or tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of land generally." Such a provision repeated in the coming Bill would be inconsistent with the absence of Irish Members from Westminster. But I take it for granted that there is no question of its repetition. At first it might appear that Land Purchase should be distinguished from other branches of land legislation and reserved to the Imperial Government on the ground that it needs Imperial credit. I shall deal with this point fully in Chapter XIV., and only need here to express the view that Land Purchase cannot be separated from other branches of land legislation, or from the Congested Districts Board, or even from the control of the police, and that we are bound to give, and shall be acting wisely in giving, all these powers to the Irish Legislature from the first. It is necessary perhaps to add that non-representation at Westminster does not in the smallest degree affect the complete legal supremacy of the Imperial Parliament over the subordinate Irish Legislature. This Legislature will in legal language be a "local and territorial" body, like those of the Colonies. It will be the creature of Parliament, and could be amended or even extinguished by it in a subsequent Act. The Bill of 1886 (perhaps because it never reached the Committee stage) said nothing explicit about the supremacy, though the Bill of 1893, while providing for representation at Westminster, repeatedly (and sometimes quite superfluously) affirmed it--in the Preamble, for example, and in a rider to Clause 2. The King's authority, through the Lord-Lieutenant, will be supreme in Ireland, as, through the Governors, it is supreme in the Colonies. Every Irish Bill, like every Colonial Bill, will require the Royal Assent, given through the Lord-Lieutenant, who will correspond to the Colonial Governors. The Lord-Lieutenant, like his colonial counterpart, will have to exercise both his Executive and Legislative functions in a double capacity: in the first instance by the advice of his Irish Cabinet, but subject to a veto by the British Cabinet. This dual capacity has belonged to all Colonial Governors ever since the principle of responsible government was established. As I showed in earlier chapters, it was regarded even by Lord John Russell as impossible and absurd as late as 1840; but it ought by now to be understood by every educated man, and we may hope to be spared the philosophical disquisitions and hair-splitting criticisms which it evoked from men who should have known better in the Home Rule debates of 1893. Laws framed at Westminster will be applicable to Ireland, as they are frequently made applicable to the Colonies.[89] Conversely, only through the express legislative authority of Westminster will an Irish, like a Colonial Act,[90] be held to operate outside the borders of Ireland. Apart from the strict legal omnipotence of Imperial sovereignty, it is, of course, impossible to say now what the exact constitutional position of Ireland will be under any form of Home Rule. No Bill can state it fully in set terms. Time, custom, and judicial decisions will build up a body of doctrine. It is so with the Colonies, whose exact constitutional relations with the Mother Country are still a matter of juristic debate, and are only to be deduced from the study of an immense number of judicial decisions and of Imperial Acts passed subsequently to the grant of the original Constitutions. Some of these Acts I have already illustrated. The one Act of general application, namely, the Colonial Laws Validity Act, cannot be read without the rest, though in form it appears to contain a complete set of rules. While giving general power to a self-governing Colony "to make laws for the peace, welfare, and good government of the Colony" (words which will also necessarily appear in the Home Rule Bill), the Act makes void all colonial laws or parts of laws which are "repugnant to the provisions of any Act of Parliament extending to the Colony to which such law shall relate," and this provision will no doubt, be applied, _mutatis mutandis,_ to Ireland, as it was in Section 32 of the Home Rule Bill of 1893. The Irish Legislature, that is, will be able "to repeal or alter any enactments in force in Ireland except such as either relate to matters beyond the power of the Irish Legislature, or, being enacted by Parliament after the passing of this Act, may be expressly extended to Ireland." It will be noticed that the words "beyond the power of the Irish Legislature" referred to the subjects expressly excepted in the Bill itself. This is one of the points in which the Irish Constitution will bear at any rate a superficial resemblance to that of a Province or State within a Federation rather than to that of a self-governing Colony. The practice of expressly, and in the text of a Constitution, forbidding a self-governing Colony to legislate upon certain subjects, or of expressly reserving concurrent or exclusive powers of legislation to the Mother Country, has fallen into disuse since the establishment of the principle of responsible government. Such restrictions were inserted in the Canadian Union Act of 1840, where the old right of the Mother Country to impose customs duties in the Colonies for the regulation of commerce was reaffirmed, and even in the Acts of 1855 for giving full powers of self-government to the Australian Colonies, which were forbidden to impose intercolonial customs, though they were expressly granted the power of imposing any other customs duties they pleased,[91] but they do not appear in modern Constitutions, for example in the Transvaal Constitution of 1906. As I have indicated, this implies no change in the strict legal theory of Colonial subordination to the Mother Country; for, although the tendency of modern juristic thought is to ascribe "plenary" power to a Colony, restrictions nevertheless do exist in practice, and are contained, express or implicit, in a number of disjointed Acts. A Federating Colony, on the other hand, like a foreign Federation, has in its own self-made, domestic Constitution to apportion powers with some approach to precision between the federal and the provincial authorities, and in this respect the Irish Bill, in reserving certain powers to the Imperial Parliament, will resemble a federating Bill, and it should follow the American and Australian precedents in leaving residuary powers to the subordinate or Irish Legislature, not, in accordance with the Canadian precedent, to the Parliament at Westminster. That is an indispensable corollary of excluding Irish Members from Westminster. In speaking of powers reserved or delegated, and of residuary or unallocated powers, I have thus far referred only to powers which must be exercised, or at any rate may need to be exercised, if not by the subordinate legislature, then by the superior Parliament. Those restrictions on the Irish Legislature which are imposed in order to protect the religious or economic interests of a minority within the State, or as a recognition that there are certain kinds of laws which it is morally wrong to pass, fall into an altogether different category. By implication they morally bind the superior Parliament too, and are irrelevant, therefore, to the question of representation. They will be necessary, no doubt, in the coming Irish Bill, though they need not be so extensive as those which are to be found in Clause 4 of the Bill of 1893, some of which are borrowed from the famous anti-slavery amendments of 1865-1869 to the Constitution of the United States.[92] In inserting them we shall again be following the "Federal" rather than the "Colonial" model. No such restrictions have been imposed by the Mother Country upon any self-governing Colony. The nearest approach, perhaps, to such a tendency was the provision in the Transvaal Constitution of 1906 (Section 39), that "any law whereby persons not of European birth or descent may be subjected or made liable to any disabilities or restrictions to which persons of European birth or descent are not also subjected or made liable" should be specially "reserved"--that is, sent home by the Governor--for the signification of the Royal pleasure; but no similar provision appeared in the Act of 1909 for constituting the South African Union. In Federal systems, on the other hand, such restrictions, taking the form of self-denying ordinances, are common, whether appearing in the Federal Constitution itself or in the subordinate State Constitutions. The Constitution of the United States, for example, in addition to the anti-slavery provisions noted above, enacts that the National Government cannot (by Amendment I.) establish any religion or prohibit its free exercise, or (by Amendment V.) take private property for public use without just compensation, or (by Article 1, § 9) grant a title of nobility. Neither (by Amendment XIV. and Article 1, § 10 respectively) can a State do these things. By Article 1, § 10, a State cannot pass a law impairing the obligation of a contract. Exactly similar restrictions appear in many of the individual State Constitutions. Others forbid the establishment of any church or sect; the introduction of armed men "for the suppression of domestic violence"; "perpetuities or monopolies," and a variety of other things. Analogous provisions are to be found in the British North America Act, 1867 (constituting the Dominion of Canada), where the provincial Legislatures are forbidden to interfere with certain rights and privileges of religious bodies in the matter of education. There are no limitations of the kind in the Australian Commonwealth Act of 1900. Australia, no doubt, correctly represents the tendency of modern thought on this matter. Some of the American safeguards have produced great inconvenience. Nor can it be denied that the most elaborately contrived legal safeguards are of less value than the moral safeguard afforded by the sense of honour, justice, and prudence in the community. The existence of these qualities in Ireland, as in other white countries, is the true foundation of Home Rule. Some day Irishmen will ask, as a united country, for the repeal of these statutory safeguards. That brings me to the penultimate point of importance, which may be held to affect the inclusion or exclusion of Irish Members at Westminster--I mean the question of future constitutional amendment. Here the colonial analogies are a little complicated. Since the Australian Colonies Act of 1850, in the new grant of a Constitution to a self-governing Colony, power has invariably been given to amend its own Constitution, without, of course, detracting from any powers specified in it for preserving the sovereignty of the Mother Country. Canada, when federating in 1867, took the somewhat singular course of making no provision in her Federal Constitution for its subsequent amendment, though, by Section 92 of the British North America Act, she gave her Provinces the exclusive right to amend their own Constitutions, a right which three of them have used to abolish their Upper Chambers. The Dominion Constitution, then, cannot be amended otherwise than by an Imperial Act. Such amending Acts are promoted by the Dominion Government without any specially devised machinery for ascertaining the public opinion of Canadians. Australia, on the other hand, when federating in 1900, made elaborate arrangements, which have been put several times into operation, for the amendment of the Federal Constitution by the Australian people itself, without an Imperial Act. Now, it will follow as a matter of course that Ireland will be given powers, as in both the previous Bills,[93] to amend her own Constitution within certain defined limits, after a certain lapse of time, and without encroaching upon Imperial authority. For my part I would strongly urge that the powers now to be conferred should be much wider; for I believe that Ireland alone can make a really perfect Constitution for herself. But, that point apart, the question arises of the further amendment, outside such permissive powers, of the Home Rule Act itself, which will, of course, contain within its four corners the whole of the Irish Constitution, so far as it can be written down. No special arrangements were made for such a contingency in the Bill of 1893, presumably because Ireland was to be represented at Westminster and would have a share in the making of any amending act. In the Bill of 1886, which excluded the Irish Members, Mr. Gladstone proposed (in Clause 39) that no alteration of the Act should be made (apart, of course, from points left for Irish alteration) except (1) by an Imperial Act formally assented to by the Irish Legislature, or (2) by an Imperial Act for the passing of which a stated number of Members of both branches of the Irish Legislature should be summoned to sit at Westminster. It will be clear, I think, now, in 1911, that this latter proposal is not worth revival. No substantial amendment of the Act should properly be made without the formal consent of the Irish Legislature, representing Irish public opinion, and the prior consultation with the Irish Cabinet which such consent would imply. If the lamentable necessity ever arose of amending the Act against the wishes of Ireland, the sudden invasion of Westminster by a body of angry Irish Members, too small to affect the result (for otherwise the attempt to amend would not be made) and large enough to revive the old political dislocation and passion, would not simplify the process of amendment or be of value to anybody concerned. The proposal was probably only suggested by a vague leaning towards the Federal principle, which, in the present case, we should certainly reject. It serves indeed as one more illustration of the anomalies which might result from the inclusion of Irish Members at Westminster. No more unhealthy position could be imagined than one which would render it possible for an amendment of the Home Rule Act, whether in the direction of greater latitude or of stricter limitation, to depend solely upon the Irish vote in an Assembly predominately non-Irish. That is not to the discredit of Ireland. The system would be just as indefensible, whatever the subordinate State concerned. It would be Federalism run mad, and would make Alexander Hamilton turn in his grave. It is worth while to note that, even under a sane and normal Federal system, the Irish Constitution would be less easily alterable in either direction than under the plan of treating her as a self-governing Colony. In the latter case action is direct and simple, while most Federal Constitutions are extraordinarily difficult to amend. The Dominion of Canada is only an apparent exception. I turn lastly to Finance, the point which most closely affects representation at Westminster, and which distinguishes any form of quasi-Federal Home Rule most sharply from its alternative, "Colonial" Home Rule. All Federal systems necessarily involve a certain amount of joint finance between the superior and the inferior Government. The distribution of financial powers varies widely in different Federations, but all have this feature in common--that the central or superior Government controls Customs and Excise, and is to a large degree financed by means of the revenue derived from those sources. The United States Government, as distinguished from that of the individual States, pays in this way for almost its entire expenditure.[94] So does the Dominion of Canada;[95] while in the Australian Commonwealth the receipts from Customs and Excise alone more than cover the whole Commonwealth expenditure.[96] Finance makes or mars Federations. Some Federations or organic Unions of independent States have come into being through a strong desire in the separate States to have, among other things, a common system of Customs, and in the case of the German Empire and the South African Union a Customs Union or _Zollverein_ has preceded Federation. These phenomena are the most marked illustration of the general truth that a common desire to federate, or unite, on the part of individual States is a condition precedent to a sound Federation or Union. On the other hand, finance, especially the question of joint Customs, has sometimes presented obstacles to a Federation which, on other grounds, was earnestly desired. The long delay in achieving the Australian Federation was largely due to the desire of New South Wales to maintain her Free Trade system, while the financial arrangements generally caused most of the practical difficulties met with in arranging the Federation both of Canada and Australia, and in their subsequent domestic relations. Nova Scotia in the former case, and Western Australia in the latter, held out to the last instant, and the former subsequently had to receive exceptionally favourable treatment. In both Federations some measure of friction is chronic, and in neither has a perfectly satisfactory system been evolved. The Union of Ireland and Great Britain in 1800 was in this respect, as in all others, a flagrant departure from sound principle. The Customs Union which followed it was a forced Customs Union, and, together with the other financial arrangements between the two countries, has produced results incredibly absurd and mischievous. Some of these results I briefly indicated in Chapter V. In the following chapters I shall tell the whole story fully, and I hope to convince the reader that we should follow, not only historically, but morally and practically, the correct line of action if, in dissolving the Legislative Union, we dissolve the Customs Union also. That would involve a virtually independent system of finance for Ireland, and place her fiscally in the position of a self-governing Colony. If and when a real Federation of the United Kingdom becomes practical politics, she would then have the choice of entering it in the spirit and on the terms invariably associated with all true Federations or Unions. That is, she would voluntarily relinquish, in her own interest, financial and other rights to a central Government solely concerned with central affairs. I need scarcely point out in this connection the vital importance of the question of representation at Westminster. Ireland resembles the self-governing Colonies, and differs from Great Britain, in that the greater part of the revenue raised from her inhabitants is derived from Customs and Excise--that is, from the indirect taxation of commodities of common use. If she is denied control of these sources of revenue under the coming Bill, it will be absolutely necessary, in spite of all the concomitant difficulties, to give her a representation at Westminster which is as effective as it can be made. But let it be realized that we could not make her control over her own finance as effective as that exercised by a small State within a Federation, because such a State, however small, has equal, or at any rate disproportionately large, representation in the Federal Upper Chamber, and Federal Upper Chambers can reject Money Bills. The Upper Chamber in Ireland's case would be the House of Lords, where she could scarcely be given effective representation, and which, in any case, cannot reject Money Bills. Let us now examine Ireland's claim for fiscal autonomy. FOOTNOTES: [73] See p. 140. [74] The Bill set up a Council of eighty-two elected and twenty-four nominated members, with the Under-Secretary as an _ex-officio_ member. So far it resembled the abortive Transvaal Constitution of 1905 (see p. 130), but the Irish Council was only to be given control of certain specified Departments, and was financed by a fixed Imperial grant. It was to have no power of legislation or taxation, and was under the complete control of the Lord-Lieutenant. [75] This arrangement, which is peculiar to the Canadian Federation, is regarded by some authorities as a somewhat serious infraction of the Federal principle, since it seems to imply executive control of the Province by the central Government. The Governors of the States in the Australian Federation are appointed by the Home Government. [76] The Judicial Committee has ruled "that the relation between the Crown and the Provinces is the same as that between the Crown and Dominion in respect of such powers, executive and legislative, as are vested in them respectively." (Maritime Bank of Canada _v._ Receiver-General of New Brunswick, 1892). [77] They are governed by Executive Committees, the members of which need not be members of the Councils. [78] In writing upon this subject, I am indebted to an able paper by Mr. Basil Williams, which is to be found in "Home Rule Problems." [79] "Life of Parnell," R. Barry O'Brien, pp. 149 and 139-141. [80] _E.g._, in 1893, on Clause I. of the Home Rule Bill (Hansard, p. 490): "The Irish minority were willing to be treated on the footing of a Colony, but they protested against a supremacy which would enable the honourable gentleman who formed the Irish Government to appeal to the Imperial Parliament for the assistance of the Army and Navy to compel the Irish minority to obey their behests." [81] Cd. 5741, 1911. Some of the subjects discussed were Commercial Relations and Shipping, Navigation Law, Labour Exchanges, Uniformity in Copyright, etc., Emigration, Naturalization, Compensation for Accidents, etc. [82] I am summarizing facts fully narrated in Chapters XI. and XII. [83] In the Federal Constitutions of Australia and Canada the central Federal Parliament is responsible for the colonial defences, but the Provinces or States are, of course, represented in the Federal Parliament. [84] Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, Sec. 58, and British North America Act, 1867, Sec. 15. Until quite recently it was the custom always to give the command of the Canadian Militia to a British officer lent to Canada. The present Commander, however, is a Canadian. [85] See Appendix. [86] A Colony may make local regulations to carry out an Imperial Law about extradition and neutrality, but may not touch the law. [87] For the constitutional position of self-governing Colonies, the author owes much to Mr. Moore's "Commonwealth of Australia." [88] The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, and the British North America Act, 1867, in order to delimit the respective powers of the Federal and Provincial Legislatures, set out a list of subjects on which the Federal Parliament has exclusive or collateral power to legislate. There is implied, of course, a pre-existing right on the part of the Colony, as a whole, _qua_ Colony, to legislate on the matters referred to in the list. But the pre-existing right is subject to any pre-existing constitutional or statutory limitations. _E.g.,_ "Naturalization and Aliens" is in the list of Commonwealth powers (Sec. 51, xix.), and of the Canadian powers (Sec. 91, xxv.), but the power of any Colony is limited by Acts of 1847 and 1879 to giving naturalization within its own borders. (At the Imperial Conference of 1911 a scheme was foreshadowed for standardizing naturalization throughout the Empire.) "Copyright" is also in both lists, but the colonial power is limited by the International Copyright Act of 1886, which, by Sec. 8, implies that a "British possession" may only make laws "respecting the Copyright within the limits of such possession of works produced in that possession." This Copyright Act is an example of implied limitation and sanction together. The Coinage Act of 1853 is an example of implied sanction only, in empowering a Colony to legislate as if the Act had not been passed. Another class of Imperial Acts confers _direct_ powers to legislate on certain subjects--_e.g.,_ the Australian Colonies Custom Duties Act of 1873 (removing the restrictions imposed upon intercolonial duties in 1850). The Naturalization Acts are partly of this character, and other examples are the Colonial Naval Defence Act of 1865, and certain provisions of the Army Act of 1881, and the Colonial Courts of Admiralty Act of 1890. [89] _E.g.,_ Colonial Attorneys Belief Act, 1857; Colonial Probates Act, 1892; parts of the Finance Act, 1894; and Wills Act, 1861. [90] _E.g.,_ Colonial Laws made under sanction of the following Imperial Acts: Colonial Prisoners Removal, 1869; Merchant Shipping, 1894; Sections 478 and 736, Colonial Marriages, 1866. [91] _E.g.,_ 18 Vict. Ch. 55, Sections 42 and 43. [92] See Appendix, under the head of restrictions on "Irish Matters." For convenience, land legislation is included in the list, though it clearly belongs to a different category, and I have so dealt with it above. [93] In the Bill of 1886 (Clause 11, Subsec. 7) and in the Bill of 1893 (Clause 8, Subsec. 3) power was given to alter the qualifications of the franchise, etc., for the Lower House--in the former Bill after the first dissolution, in the latter after six years. [94] In 1910, of the total Federal revenue of 675,511,715 dollars, 623,616,963 dollars were raised in this way, or twelve-thirteenths. (Postal revenue, which balances Postal receipts, is excluded.) [95] In 1909-10 Dominion revenue from Customs and Excise was 75,409,487 dollars. Total ordinary expenditure (excluding capital accounts), 79,411,747 dollars. [96] Estimate for 1910-11. Total Federal revenue, £16,841,629; revenue from Customs and Excise, £111,700,000. Total Federal expenditure £11,122,297. £5,267,500 will be available for return to the State exchequers (see pp. 245-246). CHAPTER XI UNION FINANCE I ask the reader to follow with particular care the following historical summary of Anglo-Irish finance. None of it is irrelevant, I venture to say. It is not possible to construct a financial scheme, or to criticize it when framed, without a fairly accurate knowledge of the historical facts. I. BEFORE THE UNION.[97] Before the Union Ireland had a fiscal system distinct from that of Great Britain, a separate Exchequer, a separate Debt, a separate system of taxation, a separate Budget. Yet she can never truly be said to have had financial independence, because she was never a truly self-governing country. Until 1779, when the Protestant Volunteers protested with arms in their hands against the annihilation of Irish industries in the interest of British merchants and growers, her external trade and, consequently, her internal production, were absolutely at the mercy of Great Britain. As I showed in Chapter I., Ireland was treated considerably worse than the most oppressed Colony, with permanently ruinous results. On the other hand, her internal taxation, never above a million a year, and her Debt, never above two millions in amount, were not heavy. But from 1779, through Grattan's Parliament to the Union, a short period of twenty-one years, Ireland, though still governed on the ascendancy system by an unrepresentative and corrupt Parliament of exactly the same composition as before, nevertheless had financial independence in the sense that her Parliament had complete control of Irish taxation, revenue, and trade. It was, moreover, in these financial matters that the Parliament showed most genuine national patriotism, together with a greatly enhanced measure of the Imperial patriotism traditional with it. Internal taxation, except in time of war, was still comparatively light; depressed home industries were judiciously encouraged by bounties; no attempt was made at vindictive retaliation upon British imports, though Irish exports to Great Britain were still unmercifully penalized; and sums, growing to a relatively enormous size during the French War, which began in 1793, were annually voted for the Imperial forces. This voluntary contribution, which had averaged £585,000 in the eleven years of peace, from 1783 to 1793, rose to £3,401,760 in 1797,[98] and in 1799, when Ireland was paying the bill for British troops called in to suppress her own Rebellion, to £4,596,762, out of a total Irish expenditure for the year on all purposes, military and civil, of £6,854,804. Not more than half, on the average, of these war expenses were met out of the annual taxes. Debt was created to meet the balance; but neither the debt, heavy as it was, nor the taxes, were intolerably burdensome--that is, if we regard Ireland as financially responsible for Imperial wars and for the suppression of a Rebellion which was provoked by scandalous misgovernment. Tax revenue rose from £1,106,504 in 1783, when the free Parliament first prepared a Budget, to £3,017,758 in 1800, and averaged a million and a half. In the same period the total amount of the funded and unfunded Irish Debt rose from £1,917,784 to £28,541,157, almost the whole of this increase having taken place in the seven years of war immediately preceding the Union. In Great Britain both Debt and taxation had risen in a larger ratio, and were relatively far greater. For example, in the six years, 1793-1798 inclusive, £186,000,000 had been added to the British Debt, only £14,000,000 to the Irish Debt. In 1801 the British Debt stood at £489,127,057; the Irish Debt at £32,215,223. II. FROM THE UNION TO THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION OF 1894-1896. The Union of 1800, therefore, could not be justified on the ground that a poor country would profit by fiscal amalgamation with a rich country, and Pitt and Castlereagh, when framing the Union Act, recognized that truth by leaving Ireland with a separate fiscal system, as before; though the administration of this system was, of course, now to be wholly in British hands. There were to be separate Exchequers, Debts,[99] taxes, and balance-sheets, with the following restrictions: That prohibitions against imports and bounties on exports (corn excepted), should cease reciprocally in both countries; that, with the exception of 10 per cent. ad valorem duties on a variety of articles named, there should be mutual free trade; and that no tax on any article of consumption should be higher in Ireland than in Great Britain. But although Pitt and Castlereagh ostensibly carried out the principle of separate fiscal systems, they laid the foundations for a fiscal amalgamation which was disastrous to Ireland. Since his Commercial Propositions of 1785, Pitt had never abandoned the idea of obtaining from Ireland an obligatory annual contribution to Imperial services based on some fixed principle. By Clause 7 of the Act of Union he achieved his aim. It was settled that for twenty years Ireland should contribute in the proportion of 1 to 71/2 (or 2 to 15)--that is, that Great Britain should pay 15/17, or 88.24 per cent., of common Imperial expenses, including the charge for debt contracted for Imperial services, and Ireland 2/17, or 11.76 per cent. Nobody now denies that this ratio was grossly unjust to Ireland. It took no account of the relative pre-Union Debts; it took no account of the tribute of nearly four millions paid in rents to absentee English proprietors; it was based on superficial deductions from inadequate and misleading data, and the Act was hardly passed before its absurdity became manifest. Fifteen years of almost incessant war followed the Union. Ireland, even by raising taxation to the highest possible point, was unable to pay her contribution without contracting a Debt colossal in proportion to her resources. While Great Britain only doubled her Debt, and paid 71 per cent. of her expenses out of current taxation, the Irish Debt quadrupled, and in 1817 reached the portentous total of £112,634,773; while only 49 per cent. of Irish expenditure was paid for out of revenue. Here is a little table which shows the effect upon Ireland of Clause 7 of the Act of Union: Five Years. Average Average Revenue. Expenditure. £ £ { 1785-1790 1,246,000 1,247,000 Before Union ---{ 1790-1795 1,340,000 1,646,000 { 1795-1800 2,100,000 4,601,000 { 1801-1806 3,643,000 7,270,000 After Union ---{ 1806-1811 4,885,000 9,061,000 { 1811-1816 5,927,424 13,188,000 The scandal could no longer be overlooked. It was impossible to raise the Irish taxes. Their yield was already showing signs of diminishing. But the Act of Union had provided for the situation which had arisen. One of the sections of the famous Clause 7 enacted that if and when the separate Debts of the two countries should reach the proportion of their respective Imperial contributions, Parliament might, if it thought fit, declare that all future expenses of the United Kingdom should be defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in both countries, "_subject only to such exemptions and abatements in favour of Ireland as circumstances may appear from time to time to demand_." The framers of this section had anticipated that the English Debt would sink to the level of the Irish Debt. Anglo-Irish finance teems with grim jokes of this sort; but the section was useful in either event. With its terms before them, a Committee sat to consider the state of Ireland, with the result that, by an Act which came into operation on January 5, 1817, the Exchequers, Debts, revenues, and expenditures, but not as yet the taxes, of the two countries were amalgamated. In Professor Oldham's words,[100] "the corpse of Ireland's insolvency was huddled into the grave, and no questions were to be asked." The whole expenditure, Imperial and local, of the United Kingdom, Ireland included, was to be defrayed out of a Consolidated Fund, and the arrangements, therefore, for a separate Irish contribution on a fixed basis to Imperial services were cancelled. Henceforth her Imperial contribution, for anyone who troubled to calculate it, was represented by the excess of revenue raised within Ireland over the expenditure in Ireland. A mutual free trade was also established, not instantaneously, but in the course of a few years. By 1824 all duties, as between Ireland and England, had ceased, and in 1826 the custom-houses ceased to record the transit of goods between England and Ireland, except in articles such as spirits, on which a different excise duty was charged. No statistics were compiled, therefore, of Anglo-Irish trade until ninety years later, when the Irish Department of Agriculture began to prepare returns. Such was the origin of our Customs Union against the world (for, needless to say, those were still the days of high Protection), and it is instructive to compare it with the voluntary pacts of the German States and South African Colonies, and with their political results. In one important point unification was left incomplete. It was impossible in 1817 to equalize internal taxation in the two countries, though it was held desirable to do so, because Ireland could not have borne the higher British scale, and suffered enough under her own. Regard, too, was had at first to those important words in the Act of Union which guaranteed to Ireland such "exemptions and abatements" as might appear fair. But they were soon forgotten. Without any inquiry into the taxable capacity of Ireland, the stamp, tea, and tobacco duties were equalized early in the period, the enhancement in Ireland of the last duty from 1s. to 3s. on raw tobacco, and from 1s. to 16s. on manufactured tobacco, laying an exceptionally heavy burden on the Irish poor. Meanwhile the abolition, after the close of the war, of taxes representing about sixteen millions a year, and purely affecting Great Britain, gave a relief to her which Ireland did not feel. But it was not until 1853, when Mr. Gladstone extended the income-tax to Ireland, and raised the Irish spirit duty, that the principle of "exemptions and abatements" was most seriously infringed. Mr. Disraeli followed in 1855 with a further elevation of the spirit duty, which was finally equalized with the British duty in 1858, at 8s. a gallon; while in 1860 both duties were raised to 10s. In the seven years 1853-1860 the taxation of Ireland was raised by no less than two and a half millions per annum. It will be recalled that the great famine had taken place in 1846-47, and that between the Census of 1841 and that of 1861 the population sank from eight to six millions, while the British population rose from eighteen and a half to twenty-three millions. The statistical result of the increased taxes, therefore, was to show a rise in taxation per head of the Irish people from 13s. 11d. in 1849 to £1 5s. 4d. in 1859, while in Great Britain it rose only from £2 7s. 8d. to £2 10s. during the same period. Equality of taxation has never been wholly established, for to this day a few quite unimportant taxes are not levied, or are levied on a lower scale in Ireland;[101] but from 1858 onward we may regard the taxation of the two countries as almost identically the same. In the meantime a great revolution, also beginning at the time of the famine, had taken place in the fiscal system of the United Kingdom. Free Trade with the outside world had been established, and whatever we may conclude about its effect, it had been established, as we know, with a special view to British industrial interests, and without the smallest concern for Irish interests, which were predominantly agricultural. It was certainly followed by an immense industrial expansion and prosperity in Great Britain; it was certainly initiated at the lowest point of Ireland's moral and physical wretchedness. Opinions differ as to the precise economic effect upon Ireland. Miss Murray, in her thoughtful and exhaustive study of the commercial relations between England and Ireland, holds that, as agricultural producers, the Irish lost far more than they have gained as consumers of foodstuffs, while a number of small and struggling rural industries, whose powerful counterparts in Great Britain could easily withstand foreign competition, did undeniably succumb in Ireland. My own opinion is that the past influence upon Ireland of free trade, in the first instance with Great Britain, and later with the outside world, though a highly interesting and important topic in itself, is commonly exaggerated, to the neglect of the vastly more important question of the tenure of land. Free trade did not cause the famine. On the contrary, the presage of the famine was one of the minor causes which induced Peel to take up Cobden's policy for the free importation of foodstuffs. The effect of that policy upon Ireland sinks into insignificance beside an agrarian system which had reduced the mass of the Irish peasants to serfs, kept them near the borders of destitution, and in a state of sporadic crime for a century and a half before, and for forty years after the repeal of the Corn Laws, and, at the climax of a period of high protection for agricultural products, rendered it possible for a mere failure of the potato-crop to cause death to three-quarters of a million persons. These things do not happen in properly governed, in other words in self-governed, countries, whatever their fiscal system, and they have never happened to Irishmen in any other part of the world but in their own fertile island. Manufacturing industries stand on a different footing. Most of the staple industries of Ireland, notably the woollen industry, and the aptitudes which brought them into being, were deliberately destroyed long ago by fiscal measures imposed by England, and their destruction aggravated the misery and exhaustion produced by a bad land system. How far their partial revival under the fiscal Home Rule of Grattan's Parliament was genuine, and might, with a continuance of fiscal Home Rule, have been permanent, it is impossible to say. The retarding effect of the Rebellion, and the long start already obtained by Great Britain in the industrial race, are factors beyond accurate calculation. But one thing is certain, that the revival of industries was, at that stage, of trivial importance beside the rural regeneration of Ireland, and that Grattan's Parliament had not the remotest influence for good upon the land question, which it neglected as heartlessly as its predecessors for a century before and its successors for seventy years afterwards.[102] Industries are valuable assets for any country; but countries almost wholly agricultural, like Denmark, can prosper remarkably, and without Protection, provided that they possess or evolve a sound system of agrarian tenure, in other words, a sound relation between tenant and landlord, or, in default of that, peasant ownership. In every country in the world that has been a _sine qua non_ of prosperity. Suppose that English labourers had built out of their own money and by their own hands the factories, docks, and railways in which they worked, and that the resulting profits, wages deducted, went solely to ground landlords. That gives us some idea of the old Irish land system, whose overthrowal began only in 1870; a system under which the landlord put no capital into the land, though his rent represented the full profits of the tenant's capital and labour, less an amount equivalent to a bare subsistence wage, governed by competition. The present influence upon Ireland of the Imperial fiscal system, now that peasant proprietorship has been half accomplished, is another matter upon which I shall have to say more presently, when we have completed our review of Anglo-Irish finance. Let us return to the point we had reached: that free trade with the outside world and the equalization of taxation between Great Britain and Ireland approximately coincided in point of time, and were also contemporaneous with rapid and continuous growth in the wealth and population of Great Britain, and a steady and continuous decline in the Irish population. We know now, moreover, though nobody knew it then, because the calculation was not yet made, that Ireland was paying a large contribution to Imperial services, over and above her local expenditure. In the half-century between 1810 and 1860 she had paid an average yearly sum of nearly four millions, and a total sum of nearly two hundred millions. In the year 1859-60, when the now equalized spirit duties were raised to 10s., she paid £5,396,000; a sum considerably more than double the expenditure on Irish services, and equivalent to no less than five-sevenths of the revenue raised in Ireland. Parliament gave no serious attention to any of these phenomena from the time of the fiscal union in 1817 until after the introduction of Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill in 1893. No settled conclusions were arrived at as to the relative wealth of the two countries, as to the capacity of Ireland to bear the British scale of taxation, or even as to the amount of revenue derived from and expended in the countries respectively, with the consequent contributions made to common Imperial services. A Committee sat in 1864-65, which compiled some interesting information and heard some important witnesses, but ignored the main questions at issue and produced what Sir Edward Hamilton described later as an "impotent" Report. Sir Joseph MacKenna, an able Irish banker, again and again, between 1867 and 1876, pleaded for an inquiry into Anglo-Irish finance, alleging gross injustice in the incidence of Irish taxation, and obtained nothing more than a rough return showing that between 1841 and 1871 the gross tax revenue per head of the population had risen in Ireland from 9s. 6.7d. to £1 6s. 2.2d. and had fallen in Great Britain from £2 9s. 9.5d. to £2 4s. 1.6d. For the first time also it was shown that the national beverages of England and Ireland, beer and whisky, respectively, were taxed in a ratio unfair to Ireland. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone, in preparing his first Home Rule Bill, had to re-open the question of the relative resources of Ireland and Great Britain for the first time since the Union, because he proposed a fixed annual contribution, unchangeable for thirty years, from Ireland towards the Imperial services. He fixed the contribution at one-fifteenth or approximately half that of two-seventeenths fixed by Pitt in 1800, and the new figure was certainly not too low. In 1888 the question was again incidentally raised by Mr. Goschen, who apportioned certain equivalent grants towards local taxation in England, Scotland, and Ireland, in the proportion of 80, 11, 9, apparently on the principle that those were the proportions in which each country respectively contributed to Imperial expenditure. Mr. Gladstone, in preparing the Home Rule Bill of 1893, made investigations which threw additional light on the true amount of revenue derived from Ireland, with allowance made for revenue from dutiable goods taxed in Ireland but consumed in Great Britain, and _vice versa_, but his financial scheme, as revised in the course of the Session and passed by the House of Commons, evaded the crucial issue by making Ireland's contribution to Imperial services a quota, one-third, of her true annual revenue. This quota, moreover, was indirectly reduced by temporary subsidies in aid of Irish charges (_e.g._, for Police) and was estimated, with these deductions, not to exceed at the outset one-fortieth. III. THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION OF 1894-1896. It was now apparent that, with or without Home Rule, the whole subject needed serious investigation, and in 1894, after the defeat of Mr. Gladstone's Bill, a Royal Commission under the Presidency of Mr. Hugh Childers was appointed to consider the "Financial Relations between Great Britain and Ireland." Their Report deserves careful study, because it contains within it all the essential materials for forming a judgment upon the financial problem of to-day. All that it lacks are the complementary figures of the subsequent seventeen years, and these figures, which I shall presently add, do not affect the conflict of principles, though they throw into more vivid relief than ever the outcome of conflicting principles. In composition it was a very strong Commission; it consulted the highest financial authorities in the Kingdom; it made for two years an exhaustive examination, historical and practical, of the questions submitted to it, and although the members disagreed on some important points, the conclusions upon which they were unanimous cannot be impugned. The terms of reference were: "1. Upon what principles of comparison, and by the application of what specific standards, the relative capacity of Great Britain and Ireland to bear taxation may be most equitably determined. "2. What, so far as can be ascertained, is the true proportion, under the principles and specific standards so determined, between the taxable capacity of Great Britain and Ireland. "3. The history of the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland at and after the Legislative Union, the charge for Irish purposes on the Imperial Exchequer during that period, and the amount of Irish taxation remaining available for contribution to Imperial expenditure; also the Imperial expenditure to which it is considered equitable that Ireland should contribute." It will be observed that Questions 1 and 2 deal with abstract points, No. 3 (except the last clause) with concrete facts.[103] In their short unanimous Report the Commissioners began by stating that "Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purposes of this inquiry, be considered as separate entities." To Question 1 they made no unanimous answer. This was immaterial, because, as a result of numerous tests (assessment to estate duties and income-tax, consumption of commodities, population, etc.) all arrived unanimously at an answer to the next question. Answer to Question 2 (and incidentally, as will be seen, to part of Question 3): "That whilst the tax revenue of Ireland is about _one-eleventh_ of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is very much smaller, _and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding one-twentieth_." The wording of the answer needs to be explained by reference to the text of the Report. (_a_) In saying "tax revenue" the Commissioners meant to exclude non-tax revenue--_e.g._, Post Office receipts, etc.--but the Commissioners in their various separate Reports generally employed the figures of total revenue. Taking these as our basis, the Irish revenue then raised would have been nearly one-twelfth instead of one-eleventh of the British revenue. In other words, of the total revenue of the United Kingdom, Ireland paid nearly _one-thirteenth_. (_b_) As to the true Irish taxable capacity of "one-twentieth," some confusion arises owing to the use of the phrase by different Commissioners in different senses. Mr. Childers and Sir David Barbour appear to have meant one-twentieth of the United Kingdom's taxable capacity, the others one-twentieth of Great Britain's. In order to be on the conservative side, I shall adopt the former estimate. The discrepancy is not material to the conclusions of the Commissioners, as, for reasons which I need not go into, they agreed that the minimum amount of over-taxation was two millions and three-quarters. This was the main outstanding conclusion of the Royal Commission. Translated into figures, it showed the following facts: In 1893-94 the total revenue of the United Kingdom from all sources was £96,855,627. Of this sum the revenue contributed by Great Britain from all sources was £89,286,978; by Ireland, £7,568,649--that is, between one-eleventh and one-twelfth of the British revenue. If Ireland in 1893-94 had paid in proportion to her true taxable capacity of one-twentieth, the maximum arrived at by any member of the Commission, the revenue derived from her would have been £4,842,781. In other words, there was held to be an excess payment from Ireland of £2,725,868. It was not suggested by any member of the Commission that Ireland, since the Union, had grown richer at a more rapid rate than England, and was therefore more capable of bearing taxation. On the contrary, it was admitted that she had grown, relatively, much poorer. On the most moderate estimate, therefore, the over-taxation of Ireland since the Union, computed strictly on the principle laid down, could be represented as amounting in 1894 to something like two hundred and fifty millions, or, if we date from the fiscal union of 1817, two hundred millions. The answer given by the Commissioners to Question 3, so far as it goes, is explanatory of the previous answer. "That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events showed, she was unable to bear. "That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 was not justified by the then existing circumstances." And they added the opinion "that identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of burden." Their answers, so far as they were complete, to the other inquiries contained in Question No. 3 about the tax revenue of Ireland and the net contribution of Ireland in the past to Imperial services, are to be found in figures included in the body of the Report, and these figures formed, of course, the basis of their unanimous conclusion as to the over-taxation of Ireland. These figures, to which I have often alluded in this volume, necessitate a short digression, because they and subsequent Returns of the same sort form the only official data upon which to estimate the present financial position of Ireland. They were extracted partly from annual Returns originally issued by the Treasury for the Home Rule Bill of 1893, and entitled "Financial Relations (England, Scotland, and Ireland)," and partly from a new document known as the "Pease" Return, No. 313 of 1894. These Returns, taken together, represented the first serious attempt by the Treasury to construct an account covering a period from 1819-20 to 1890-91, and showing (_a_) the exact revenue derived from Ireland and Great Britain respectively; (_b_) the local expenditure in Ireland and Great Britain respectively, as distinguished from Imperial expenditure incurred for the benefit of the whole United Kingdom; (_c_) the net contribution of Ireland and Great Britain respectively to this latter expenditure for Imperial services only. Since 1894 two regular annual Returns have been compiled, the one showing the revenue, local expenditure, and net Imperial contribution of Scotland, Ireland, and England (including Wales), the other giving an historical summary of similar figures for Great Britain and Ireland only, from 1819-20 to the current date. Two insoluble problems have had to be grappled with by the Treasury in preparing these Returns: first, to differentiate Imperial expenditure from local expenditure; second, to arrive at the "true" net revenue of the partners as distinguished from the revenue collected within their respective limits. Both these problems arise whenever an attempt is made to look behind a system of unitary finance into the burdens and contributions of different portions of a united realm, and the latter, though not the former, of the two may arise in just as acute a form if the realm consists of federated States with a common system of Customs and Excise. With regard to the first problem, it is, of course, easy, in the case of a Federation, to distinguish between central, or Federal, expenditure and local, or State, expenditure, because the functions of the Federal Government and State Governments are delimited in the Constitution, and the separate expenditures form the subject of separate balance-sheets. But in a Union, and above all in a Union to which one part of the realm is an unwilling party, like that of the British Isles, it is clear that no absolutely accurate line can be drawn between Imperial and local expenditure. The Army, the Navy, and a number of other things are clearly enough Imperial, but there are many debatable items. For example, Is the upkeep of the Lord-Lieutenant an Irish or an Imperial charge? Is a loss on Post Office business in Ireland to be charged against Ireland, or should Ireland be credited with a proportion of the profits of the whole postal business of the United Kingdom? More searching questions still: Is the enormous charge for the Irish Police, which is under Imperial control, and exists avowedly for the purpose of forcibly maintaining, in the Imperial interest, an unpopular form of government in Ireland, to be charged against Ireland? Or, again, should Ireland be debited with the cost of the machinery for carrying out Land Purchase, a policy admittedly rendered necessary by the enforced maintenance in the past of bad land laws? Obviously such questions can never be answered so as to satisfy both Irishmen and Englishmen, because they go to the root of the political relations between Ireland and Great Britain. The Royal Commission, therefore, was naturally unable to give a unanimous answer to the last clause of Question No. 3 of their Terms of Reference--namely, "What is the Imperial expenditure to which Ireland should equitably contribute?" Some members held that under the Union even a theoretical classification was unjustifiable, while it was obvious that under the Union no effect could be given to it. Still, the classification had to be made, in order to arrive at a theoretical estimate of the financial situations of Great Britain and Ireland respectively, and the Treasury, charged with the preparation of this estimate, took the only course open to it in reckoning as Irish expenditure all expenditure which would not have to be incurred if Ireland did not exist. It was the perfectly correct course for the Treasury to take in dealing with the task set before them, and, as we shall see, it provides the only basis on which to construct the balance-sheet of a financially independent Ireland. The insolubility of the second problem--that of discovering the "true" revenue of Ireland and Great Britain respectively--arises from the difficulty of tracing the passage of dutiable articles from one part of the kingdom to the other, and of tracing the incidence of direct imposts such as income-tax and stamps. The great bulk of Irish revenue is derived from indirect taxes on commodities, liquor, tobacco, tea, sugar, etc. Since the consumer pays the tax, revenue is rightly credited to the country of consumption. The tax, for example, on tobacco manufactured in Ireland may be collected in Ireland, but the revenue from Irish-made tobacco exported to and consumed in Great Britain is rightly credited to Great Britain. The converse holds true. Half the tea consumed in Ireland has paid duty in London, but the whole of the revenue from tea consumed in Ireland must be credited to Ireland. Now, since 1826, no official records had been kept by the Customs-houses of the transit of goods between Ireland and England, except in the solitary case of spirits. The data, therefore, did not exist, and do not exist now, except in the case of spirits, for an accurate computation. This is frankly confessed by the Treasury officials. They base their published figures on certain arbitrary methods of calculation which have never been submitted to any public inquiry, and which, as they admit, contain an element of guesswork. The matter is an exceedingly important one to Ireland, because ever since 1870 an increasingly heavy deduction has been made by the Treasury from her "collected" revenue, and her "true" revenue has proportionately diminished. Part of this deduction is no doubt due to the fact that her exports of tobacco and liquor have, in recent times, much exceeded her imports, but the margin for error is nevertheless large. Mr. Gladstone, in framing his Home Rule Bill of 1886, was so sensible of the inherent difficulties of the calculation that, while retaining Customs and Excise under Imperial control, he credited to the Irish Exchequer the whole of the revenue collected within Ireland. On the balance of Anglo-Irish exchange in dutiable articles, as roughly estimated at that time, this provision meant an annual allowance to Ireland of nearly a million and a half pounds, the principal reason being that Ireland, which is a larger manufacturer of spirits and tobacco, was exporting more than she consumed of these commodities. In the Bill of 1893, as part of a wholly different financial scheme, Mr. Gladstone abandoned the plan just described, and provided for the annual calculation of "true" Irish revenue, as distinguished from "collected" revenue; but it is a proof of the obscurity and intricacy of the whole business that the Treasury officials made a mistake of £400,000 in the initial calculation, with the result that Mr. Gladstone had to recast his financial scheme from top to bottom. In the Return of 1894, as presented to the Royal Commission, this error was eliminated, but the method of calculation remained imperfect. Nobody knows now what the true figures are, and there is good reason to think that Irish revenue has always been, and still is, substantially underestimated. The same obscurity shrouded, and still shrouds, the "true" Irish revenue from income-tax and stamps, whose proceeds it is exceedingly difficult to trace under a system of unitary finance, and which are traced by the Treasury in a fashion again admittedly unreliable.[104] In regard to taxes on consumption the same difficulty has been met with in Australia since the federation of the Colonies and the delegation to the Commonwealth Government of exclusive control over Customs and Excise. The product of these duties makes up the bulk of Australian revenue, and is far too large for the needs of the Commonwealth Government. The Constitution of 1900 provided that the surplus should be returned to the individual States in proportion to their "true" contributions to the revenue, and for the calculation of these "true" contributions an elaborate system of book-keeping was instituted, in order to trace the ultimate place of consumption of dutiable articles. Each State was then credited with its "true" revenue, and debited, among other things, with a proportionate share of the expense of any Department transferred by the Constitution from the State to the Commonwealth. The system caused general dissatisfaction, owing, as the Australian Official Year Book puts it, "to the practical impossibility of ensuring that in every case a consuming State will be duly credited with revenue collected on its behalf in a distributing State." That is the well-founded complaint of Ireland in regard to the Treasury returns. Hitherto in Australia efforts to change the system for another allocating the surplus on a basis of population have not been successful.[105] The Canadian Federal Constitution uses the basis of population for the distribution of small subsidies to the Provinces, but complaints have arisen as to its fairness. British Columbia, for example, for a long time complained that her subsidy was too small, one of the grounds being that her consumption of dutiable goods was unusually large. No means existed of verifying this complaint by figures.[106] With this explanatory digression about a very important feature of Anglo-Irish finance, I return to the findings of the Royal Commission of 1894-1896. The figures supplied to them were as shown on the opposite page. It will be noticed that the average "true" revenue of Ireland was stationary at a little over five millions from 1820 to 1850, rose with a bound to seven and a half millions with the equalization of taxes in the decade 1850-1860, and remained stationary at that figure for the remaining thirty-four years. Expenditure in Ireland quadrupled in the whole sixty-four years; and the net contribution to Imperial services, after rising from three and a half millions (in round numbers) in 1820 to five and a half millions in 1860, fell automatically, as the expenditure rose, and had stood at two millions from 1890 afterwards. Population had fallen by two millions, but the "true" revenue raised per head of population rose from 15s. 5d. in 1819 to £1 13s. 5d. in 1894, while the local expenditure rose from 4s. 7d. per head in 1820 to £1 5s. in 1894. STATEMENT SHOWING THE ESTIMATED LOCAL EXPENDITURE INCURRED IN IRELAND, AND THE BALANCE OF TRUE REVENUE WHICH IS AVAILABLE FOR IMPERIAL SERVICES AFTER SUCH EXPENDITURE HAS BEEN MET: Revenue as Adjustment Estimated Estimated Balance Population Collected (+) or (-) True Local available Revenue Expenditures for Imperial Services Decadal figures. £ £ £ £ £ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1819-20 5,253,909 + 2,655 5,256,564 1,564,880 3,691,684 6,801,000 1829-30 4,161,217 +1,040,908 5,502,125 1,345,579 4,156,576 7,767,401 1839-40 4,571,150 + 841,739 5,412,889 1,789,567 3,626,322 8,175,124 1849-50 4,338,091 + 523,374 4,861,465 2,247,687 2,613,778 6,574,278 1859-60 7,097,994 + 602,430 7,700,334 2,304,334 5,396,000 5,798,967 1869-70 7,331,058 + 95,274 7,426,332 2,938,122 4,488,210 5,412,377 1879-80 7,831,316 - 550,520 7,280,856 4,054,549 3,226,307 5,174,836 1889-90 9,005,932 -1,271,254 7,734,678 5,057,708 2,676,970 4,704,750 Annual figures. £ £ £ £ £ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1890-91 9,301,463 -1,506,988 7,734,475 5,723,399 2,071,076 -- 1891-92 9,639,344 -1,671,226 7,968,105 6,021,810 1,946,295 -- 1892-93 9,425,177 -1,986,780 7,438,397 5,540,508 1,897,880 -- 1893-94 9,650,649 -2,082,000 7,568,649 5,602,555 1,966,094 1,638,000 In 1893-94, the last year under review, Ireland, in round figures, was producing a net revenue of seven and a half millions, was costing five and a half millions, and was, therefore, contributing to Imperial services a surplus of two millions. In the same year, while contributing her two millions, she was overtaxed, according to the lowest estimate of the Commissioners, by two and three-quarter millions. But the significance of these figures cannot be discerned without an examination of their counterparts on the British side of the account. In the whole period Great Britain's "true" revenue had risen from £51,445,764 to £89,286,978; her local expenditure from £4,439,333 to £30,618,586, and her net contribution to Imperial services from £47,006,431 to £58,668,392. Her population had increased from 13,765,000 in 1820 to 33,469,000 (estimated) in 1893, but her "true" revenue had _fallen_ per head of the population from £3 13s. to £2 13s. 4d. (approximately), although her local expenditure had risen from 4s. 7d. to £1 2s. (approximately). In other words, a great increase of wealth had enabled the British taxpayer to pay far more while feeling the burden far less. The converse was true of Ireland. The current state of the account in 1893-94 was as follows: Great Britain Ireland 1893-94 (Population, (Population, Totals. 33,469,000). 4,638,000). £ £ £ "True" Revenue 89,286,978 7,568,649 96,855,627 Local Expenditure 30,618,586 5,602,555 36,221,141 Net contribution to Imperial Services 58,668,392 1,966,094 60,634,486 Great Britain, though raising in "true" revenue between eleven and twelve times as much as Ireland, was costing only between five and six times as much to administer as Ireland, and was therefore contributing to Imperial services twenty-eight times as much as Ireland. Now the Commissioners had stated that the taxable capacity of Ireland was not one-eleventh, but, at the utmost, one-twentieth --in other words, that she ought to contribute not more than one-twentieth of the United Kingdom revenue. On that basis she should as we have seen, have been showing a revenue in 1893-94 not of £7,568,649, but of £4,842,781. But, if her local expenditure had also been proportionate to her true taxable capacity of one-twentieth, instead of standing at £5,602,555, it would have stood at £1,811,057, or two-thirds less, while if her net contribution to Imperial services had likewise been a twentieth, instead of paying £1,966,094, she would have had to pay £3,031,724, or a million more. The conclusion, therefore, might be extracted from the figures that, although by hypothesis overtaxed, Ireland was drawing a balance of profit, because, by having more spent on her--or, to put it in another way, by costing more to govern, she paid a million less to the common purse than if she had been taxed according to her capacity. This was precisely the conclusion drawn by one member of the Commission, Sir David Barbour, and implicitly acquiesced in by one other member, Sir Thomas Sutherland. All the other Commissioners agreed that there was something seriously amiss, and declined to regard the disproportionately high expenditure on Ireland as compensation for the over-high taxation. The O'Conor Don, as successor in the chairmanship to Mr. Childers, and four others contented themselves with setting forth the facts, but made no recommendations, on the ground that the Commission had not been asked to make any. Mr. Childers, who died before the completion of the inquiry, left a Draft Report recommending that a special grant, amounting to two millions a year, should for the future be allocated to Ireland. The other six members, dividing into two groups of three, under Lord Farrer and Mr. Sexton respectively, and stating their views in two different Reports, all agreed that a form of Home Rule giving financial independence to Ireland was the only solution of the difficulty. The questions at issue were not at all obscure. Any apparent obscurity was caused by the terms of reference to the Commission, which assumed the permanence of the Union, while it was absolutely impossible for the Commission, divided though its members were in politics, to start work at all without, as they said, considering Great Britain and Ireland as "separate entities." The reader must be on his guard against exaggerating the "over-taxation of Ireland" in its purely cash aspect. The really important points were: (1) The suitability of the Irish taxes and the responsibility for levying them; (2) the amount and suitability of the expenditure in Ireland and the responsibility for its distribution. In order to see conflicting principles stated in their clearest form the reader should compare the terse and vigorous reports of Sir David Barbour on the one hand, and of Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, and Mr. Currie on the other. It was Sir David Barbour's great merit that he was not afraid of his own conclusions. He frankly stated, like all the other Commissioners, that Ireland's taxation, considered by itself, without regard to Irish expenditure, was unsuitable and unjust. He recognized that a system of taxation which was suitable for a rich, industrial, and expanding country like Great Britain was unsuitable for a poor, agricultural, and economically stagnant country like Ireland. He had before him the figures showing that two-thirds of the Irish population was rural, and that between three and four-fifths of the English population was urban.[107] He laid special stress on the fact that five-sevenths of Irish revenue, as compared with less than half the British revenue, was derived from taxes on commodities of general consumption, pressing heavily on the poor, and set forth the figures showing that the product of these taxes represented a charge of £1 2s. 0.95d. per head of the population in Ireland, and £1 1s. 0.05d. in Great Britain, although the wealth per head of Great Britain, as he admitted, "was much greater than the wealth of Ireland per head."[108] His conclusion was that this state of affairs, though regrettable, could not be helped, because, under the Union, whose permanence he took for granted, a change of general taxation to suit Ireland was simply impracticable. He did, it is true, point out incidentally that the same hardship might be said to affect poor localities in Great Britain and poor individuals in Great Britain, but he recoiled from the absurd fallacy involved in saying that on that account Ireland was not unjustly taxed. If he had gone to that length he could never have signed the unanimous Report. I only mention this latter point because some outside critics have been bold enough to assert the fallacy in its completeness, proving, as they easily can, that the purchase of a pound of tea or a pint of beer is as great an expense to a man with 10s. a week in Whitechapel as to a man with 10s. a week in Connemara. Such reasoning nullifies the whole science of taxation. It would be as sensible to say that our whole fiscal system might wisely be transplanted in its entirety to any foreign country or to any self-governing Colony absolutely irrespective of their social and economic conditions and of their habits. Yet Ireland in these respects has always differed from Great Britain at least as much as any self-governing Colony and many European countries. The tea-tax produces scarcely anything in France; it produces an enormous amount relatively in Ireland, and is a greater burden there than in Great Britain. The wine-tax is not felt by Ireland; it is felt more by England; it would cause a revolution in France. Beer is taxed lightly in the United Kingdom, but the Irishman drinks only half as much beer as the Englishman. Meat is untaxed, but the Irish poor eat no meat. Spirits and tobacco are highly taxed, and they are consumed more largely in Ireland than in England. And so on. The whole Commission recognized that the circumstances of the two countries were different, and stated "that identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of burden." Nor could Sir David Barbour have dissociated himself from these conclusions without destroying the rest of his argument. He pointed out with truth that merely to reduce Irish taxation to its correct level, and to leave Irish expenditure where it was, would be to wipe out Ireland's contribution to Imperial purposes and leave her with a subsidy from Great Britain of three-quarters of a million. On the other hand, he held, as I have already indicated, that unduly heavy taxation in Ireland was already compensated for by an excess of local expenditure in Ireland as compared with Great Britain. But how, on its merits, and apart from the question of taxation, could such an excess be justified? The Act of Union had provided for indiscriminate expenditure in the event of a fiscal union. Most of the other Commissioners, indeed, had objected to the idea of distinguishing between "Imperial" expenditure and "local" expenditure, and striking a balance called an "Imperial contribution," without, at the same time, distinguishing politically between Ireland and Great Britain. In other words, they took up the not very logical position that Ireland must be considered as a separate entity for purposes of finance owing to the phrase about "abatements and exemptions," but not for purposes of expenditure. Whether this was a correct interpretation of the Act of Union has always been a matter of dispute, but the practical problem is little affected thereby. Sir David Barbour thought it an incorrect interpretation, and reached the more logical position that Ireland, both for revenue and expenditure, could be regarded as a separate entity. This view enabled him to put forward an argument which, while ostensibly palliating the over-taxation of Ireland, in reality condemned the whole of the political system established by the Union. We can, he said, in effect, rightly distinguish between Imperial and local expenditure, and it is permissible to spend more on Ireland than on Great Britain. By so spending more we not only cancel our debt to Ireland, but make her a present of a million which would otherwise go to swell her contribution to Imperial purposes. Now, to get at the pith of this argument, the reader must bear in mind what Sir David Barbour thought it needless to remark upon, that Ireland had, and has, a separate quasi-colonial system of administration of her own, but outside her own control, a system of which he approved. In other words, besides having to be considered in finance as a "separate entity," she was to a large extent in actual fact, politically, a "separate entity," though not a self-governing entity, to which through the channel of the Irish Government Departments a special large quota for local expenditure could be easily allocated. As an economist, therefore, and as an upholder of the strangely paradoxical system set up by the so-called "Union," Sir David Barbour was absolutely consistent. So were Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, and Mr. Currie in coming to diametrically opposite conclusions. The crux of the discussion, stripped of academical reasoning, was simple. Everything turned, obviously, on the nature, amount, and origin of Irish expenditure. Sir David Barbour had passed lightly over these vital points, recommending only that any future _saving_ of expenditure in Ireland ought to be used for Irish purposes--a further admission of Ireland's separate political existence--and shutting his eyes to future _increases_ of expenditure. Lord Farrer and his colleagues, while agreeing that it was impossible to alter the taxation of Ireland so long as the Union lasted, agreed that additional local expenditure in Ireland could not be regarded as a set-off to undue taxation, not only because such a doctrine was inherently fallacious on economic grounds, and would hardly be listened to in the case of any other country than Ireland, but because Irish expenditure was subjected to no proper means of control. Both Irish revenue and Irish services, the former being only theoretically, the latter actually, distinct and separate, were outside the control of Irishmen, who had therefore no motive for economy. Nor was there any proper measure of determining what expenditure was good for Ireland and what was bad, though they held that there was reason to believe that much of Irish administration was both bad and costly. With regard to the extensive system of Imperial loans, whose charge swelled the Irish expenditure, they quoted the unchallenged evidence of Mr. Murrough O'Brien[109] to the effect that the system of Imperial loans for temporary emergencies and charity loans--"made to keep the people quiet or to keep them alive"--tends to increase the poverty of Ireland, "does not prevent the recurrence of famine, distress, and discontent," and that "a great deal of the money nominally meant to be spent on productive works has been misspent and wasted." They also dwelt, with emphasis, on official figures showing the extravagance of Civil Government in Ireland, the cost having risen from 1s. 10d. per head of the population in 1820 to 19s. 7d. per head in 1893, whereas the cost of Civil Government in Great Britain had only risen from 1s. 7d. to 11s. 5d. The charge for legal salaries and five principal Departments in Ireland was double the right figure according to population, and represented an excess cost of nearly £200,000. In wealthy and progressive Belgium, Civil Government cost 10s. per head, or little more than half as much per head as in Ireland.[110] The absurdity of representing such excess charges and the wasteful expenditure of a blundering philanthropy, as a recompense for over-taxation, was manifest. Meanwhile, the rise in the cost of Irish Government, coupled with a stagnant revenue, had decreased the annual contribution of Ireland to Imperial services, which had fallen from five and a half millions in 1860 to two millions in 1894; unless, indeed, half the cost of Irish police, virtually a branch of the Imperial Army, and costing double the amount of Scottish and English police, were to be reckoned, not as an Irish expense, on the principle adopted by the Treasury, but as a part of Imperial expenditure. In any case both partners suffered from excessive and unwise expenditure in Ireland. The gist of their conclusions was as follows:[111] 1. It is impossible, under the Union, to vary taxation for the benefit of Ireland. 2. Additional benevolent expenditure in Ireland is not a remedy for over-taxation.[112] "We entertain a profound distrust of benevolences, doles, grants-in-aid, by whatever name they are called, ... or by whatever machinery it is proposed to distribute them, convinced, as we are, that in some form or other political influence or personal interest will creep in so as to defeat, in part at any rate, the attainment of the objects for which the expenditure is made." 3. "We believe that the expenditure of public funds cannot be wisely and economically controlled unless _those who have the disposal_ of public money are made _responsible_ for raising it as well as spending it." Grants of money "tend to weaken the spirit of independence and self-reliance," the absence of which qualities "has been the main cause of the backward condition" of Ireland. 4. "One sure method of redressing the inequality which has been shown to exist between Great Britain and Ireland will be to put upon the Irish people the duty of levying their own taxes and of providing for their own expenditure." 5. "If it is objected that the course we suggest may lead to the imposition of new Customs duties in Ireland, we might reply that in this case, as in that of the Colonies, _freedom is a greater good than free trade._ We doubt, however, whether Irishmen, if entrusted with their own finance, would attempt to raise fiscal barriers between the two countries; for we are satisfied that Ireland, and not Great Britain, would be the loser by such a policy. The market of Great Britain is of infinitely greater importance to Ireland than that of Ireland to Great Britain." The only point on which the three Commissioners differed concerned Ireland's contribution to Imperial services. Lord Farrer and Mr. Currie, taking Home Rule as the foundation of their argument, and prophesying, quite correctly, that under the Union, in a few years, Ireland's contribution would disappear altogether, recommended that no such contribution should be exacted by law until Ireland's taxable capacity approximately reached that of Great Britain. Lord Welby, regarding Home Rule as an essential but a distant ideal, was for an immediate reorganization of Anglo-Irish finances which should provide for a large reduction of Irish Civil expenditure, the saving to be devoted, on Sir David Barbour's principle, to Irish purposes, and for a fixed contribution from Ireland to the Army, Navy, National Debt, etc. How Lord Welby, consistently with his previous argument, could count upon any reduction of expenditure in Ireland under the existing political system it is difficult to see. At any rate, subsequent events proved both him and Sir David Barbour signally wrong on this important point.[113] In every other point the wisdom of the three Commissioners has been abundantly proved by lapse of time. Do not the conclusions set forth above bear upon them the stamp of common sense? If it were not for the inveterate prejudice against Home Rule on other than financial grounds, no one would dream of disputing them; for they are based on principles universally accepted in every part of the British Empire but Ireland, and in most parts of the civilized world. They constitute, in fact, financially, one of the strongest arguments possible for political Home Rule. There, at any rate, lies a clear issue. Seventeen years have not altered the essential principles involved. On the contrary, it will be seen that every year of the seventeen has strengthened the argument of Lord Farrer and his colleagues, and weakened the argument of Sir David Barbour. But, before proceeding to this final demonstration, let me in general terms describe what befell the Royal Commission's Report, which was published in 1896. For a moment all Ireland, irrespective of class or creed, was alight with patriotic excitement. Few listened to Sir David Barbour's view, namely, that so long as Irish expenditure came near Irish revenue there could be no Irish grievance. Home Rulers and Unionists met on friendly platforms to denounce the over-taxation of Ireland and to display figures showing the hundreds of millions of profit made by Great Britain out of an unconscionable fiscal bargain. This criticism missed the real point and the unanimity was short-lived. No change could be made in the system without Home Rule, and the dissension about Home Rule was strong enough to prevent Irishmen from uniting against a fiscal system which was not only unjust but demoralizing to Ireland. A Unionist Government was in power for nine more years after 1896, and a Liberal Government, pledged temporarily not to give Home Rule, for four further years. The natural result was that, in default of Home Rule, all parties in Ireland embraced Sir David Barbour's insidiously attractive reservation, and have ever since fallen into the habit of regarding additional expenditure on Ireland, not only on its merits, but as a set-off to excessive taxation and as something having no relation whatever to the taxable resources of the country. Nobody took seriously Sir David Barbour's counsel of perfection about the reduction of the cost of Irish Civil Government and the allocation of the saving to Ireland, because such a process was, humanly speaking, impossible. Expenditure is never reduced except by those who raise the money for it. On the other hand, in the face of the findings of the Royal Commission, and in the face of Ireland's economic condition, no Government which refused Home Rule could have refused large additional Irish expenditure. Much of it, indeed, was merely an automatic reflection of the immense growth of national expenditure in the wealthy and expanding partner-country over the water, and took the form of "equivalent grants," whether for the corresponding British head of expense or for something totally different. No doubt some of the money was well spent, but all of it came in a wrong form, through wrong channels, and was regarded in Ireland in a false light. Lastly came Old Age Pensions applied on the British scale to a far poorer population. Every word of Lord Welby's and Lord Farrer's condemnation was justified by events; every prophecy they made has been fulfilled. And the worst of it is that the delay has damaged the prospects of Home Rule. The habit of dissociating income from revenue becomes inveterate. The habit of nursing an old grievance and of expecting "restitution" for funds unwarrantably levied in the past is hard to shake off. Restitution has gone too far already. Perpetuated, it would ruin Ireland. Home Rulers worth their salt must leave this cry to those Unionists who descend to use it; but it is surely amazing that any Irishman, least of all those who claim to represent the wealth and intelligence of the country, should tolerate a political system which inexorably involves a fiscal system so humiliating to Ireland. Until three years ago it could easily have been put an end to without affecting the independent solvency of Ireland, even on the basis of an enormously swollen civil expenditure, and with the inclusion of services strictly Imperial in origin and character. Now it is a different matter, and we are faced with the opposition of British statesmen who, by sustaining the Union, drove Ireland to the verge of insolvency, and now use insolvency as an argument against Home Rule. One respects the clean and honest side of Unionism, but there can be nothing but reprobation for the meanness of this latter-day argument. For generations Ireland herself has asked to be free both from coercion and bribes, sanely conscious in her soul that both are equally demoralizing. The aim--though in the past not generally the conscious aim--of Unionism was to sap the moral fibre of Ireland now by one means, now by the other. At last the aim is avowed, so that men who applauded Mr. Chamberlain in 1893 for sneering at Irish patriotism as a "sickly plant which needed to be watered by British gold" merely because her contribution under the Home Rule Bill was to be small are now urging Ireland to maintain the Union--in Mr. Walter Long's words--for its "eleemosynary benefits."[114] Ireland herself must and will rise to a higher moral level than that, when she is fully awake to the gravity of the situation. Those who love her most will not lose a minute in explaining that situation. Too much time already has been lost. FOOTNOTES: [97] The Treasury Returns of 1869, "Public Income and Expenditure," in two volumes, are the basis of all information up to that date. [98] Mr. Secretary Pelham in this year estimated that Ireland, though contributing nothing in money to the Navy, had furnished no less than 38,000 men to the Navy since the beginning of the war. [99] Pre-Union Debts were to be separate. Post-Union Debt _contracted for Imperial services_ was to be regarded as joint, and its charge was to be borne by the two countries in the proportions of their respective contributions (see below); but post-Union Debt contracted by Ireland for domestic services was to be kept separate. [100] Eight lectures delivered in the National University, Dublin, in 1911. [101] Inhabited house duty, railway passenger tax, carriages, armorial bearings, etc. The license for dogs is half the English scale. [102] On Foster's Corn Law of 1784, see p. 51. [103] The text of the unanimous conclusions was as follows: 1. That Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purpose of this inquiry, be considered as separate entities. 2. That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events showed, she was unable to bear. 3. That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 was not justified by the then existing circumstances. 4. That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of burden. 5. That, whilst the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventh of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is very much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding one-twentieth. [104] Detailed criticism of the current Treasury accounts under this head will be found on pp. 276-278. [105] A referendum taken on April 13, 1910, defeated the new proposals. See "Report of Premiers' Conference held at Brisbane, May, 1907" (Commonwealth Parliamentary Sessional Paper, No. 13, 1907), and for a clear statement of the whole subject, the "Year-Book (1911) of the Commonwealth of Australia." (The relevant clauses of the Constitutional Act are Nos. 88 to 93.) The reasons for the failure of the system were summarized as follows: "1. The trouble and expense which the necessary record entails. "2. The practical impossibility of ensuring that in every case a consuming State will be duly credited with revenue collected on its behalf in a distributing State. "3. The difficulty involved in equitably determining the amount to be debited to the several States in respect of general Commonwealth expenses. "4. The uncertainty on the part of the State Governments as to the amount which will become available. "5. The impossibility of securing independent State and Commonwealth finance." See also pp. 295-299. [106] See Proceedings of the Conference of Provincial Premiers, 1906, at Ottawa (Canadian Sessional Papers, vol. xl.), especially McBride's Memorandum for British Columbia. Numerous other grounds for special treatment were alleged--_e.g.,_ abnormal cost of civil government, due to vast extent of Province. [107] Final Report, p. 24 (Census figures of 1891). [108] Final Report, p. 122. [109] Final Report, p. 50. [110] Ibid., pp. 48, 49. [111] Ibid., pp. 51-54. [112] They were at issue here with Mr. Childers, who, in his Draft Report, proposed halving the rates on Irish railways and further endowing the Congested Districts Board. But Mr. Childers, though a Home Ruler, felt himself bound by the Terms of Reference not to suggest a Home Rule solution. [113] Lord Welby (Final Report, p. 54) compared his proposal for Ireland with the system in the Isle of Man, where the proceeds of a tariff distinct from that of Great Britain were devoted in the first instance to the payment of a fixed Imperial contribution and the surplus to local needs. But in the Isle of Man the whole point was that the tariff was a local tariff, chosen by Manxmen to suit themselves, while the administration was under Manx control. [114] Letter to the _Belfast Telegraph_, October 7, 1911. CHAPTER XII THE PRESENT FINANCIAL SITUATION I. ANGLO-IRISH FINANCE TO-DAY. The finances of Ireland since the Union, when reviewed by the Royal Commission in 1894-1896, exhibited five principal features: 1. A declining population. 2. An estimated true taxable capacity falling as compared with that of Great Britain, and standing in 1893-94 at a maximum of 1 to 19. 3. A revenue stationary for thirty-four years, and showing in 1893-94 a ratio of 1 to 12 with that of Great Britain. 4. A growing local expenditure (though stationary for the last four years). 5. A dwindling net contribution to Imperial services (though stationary for the last four years). If we review the subsequent seventeen years, we find: 1. A population still declining, though at a slower rate. 2. An estimated true taxable capacity still falling as compared with that of Great Britain, and now standing at a maximum of 1 to 24.[115] That is, Ireland ought strictly to be paying no more than one-twenty-fifth of the United Kingdom revenue. 3. A revenue rising, but very slowly and inelastically as compared with that of Great Britain, and now showing a ratio of 1 to 15; so that the "over-taxation" of Ireland, as reckoned on the Royal Commission's principles, is still at least three millions.[116] 4. A local expenditure growing rapidly and disproportionately to Irish revenue; now just double the expenditure of 1893-94. 5. A net contribution to Imperial services automatically diminishing with the growth of Irish expenditure, disappearing altogether in 1909-10, and now converted into an adverse balance against Ireland of £1,312,500. In Great Britain during the same seventeen years, population, taxable capacity, revenue, expenditure, and net contribution to Imperial services have all grown steadily, and, what is more important, in healthy proportions to one another. On the next page will be found the comparative figures for Ireland and Great Britain of revenue, expenditure, and contribution for 1893-94 and 1910-11. Let me remark at the outset _(a)_ that they and other official figures given in this chapter are taken from the annual Treasury returns alluded to at p. 242, "Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland, and Ireland)" and "Imperial Revenue (Collection and Expenditure) (Great Britain and Ireland)." For the current year 1910-11 the official numbers of these Returns are 220 and 221, and the latter of the two is virtually a continuation of the original return, No. 313 of 1894; _(b)_ that the non-collection of a large part of the revenue of 1909-10, owing to the delay in passing the Budget, makes the revenue figures of the last two years, regarded in isolation, misleading; those of the first year being abnormally low, those of the last abnormally high. I therefore give the mean figures of the two years. Expenditure is, of course, unaffected, _(c)_ That the Irish revenue shown as "true" is reduced by heavy deductions from the revenue as actually collected in Ireland. At p. 244 I explained that this adjustment can be regarded only as approximately correct, owing to the admittedly unreliable methods adopted by the Treasury, _(d)_ That the revenue shown includes non-tax as well as tax revenue. Ireland. Great Britain. 1893-94. 1910-11. 1893-94. 1910-11. Population 4,638,000 4,381,951 33,469,000 40,834,790 (estimated) "Collected" revenue £9,650,649 £11,704,500 £88,728,428 £156,574,250 (including non-tax (mean of two (mean of two revenue) years, 1910- years, 1910- 11, 1909-10) 11, 1909-10) "True" revenue £7,568,649 £10,032,000 £89,286,978 £155,137,250 (including (mean of two (mean of two non-tax revenue) years, 1910- years, 1910- 11, 1909-10) 11, 1909-10) Local Expenditure £5,602,555 £11,344,500 £30,618,586 £60,544,000 Contribution to £1,966,094 Nil[A] £58,668,392 £94,593,250 Imperial Services [A] Local Expenditure in excess of "true" revenue (as averaged for years, 1910-11, 1909-10): £1,312,500. Irish expenditure has been rapidly overtaking Irish revenue during the last three years. In 1907-08 there was a balance available for Imperial services of £1,811,000; in 1908-09, of only £583,000; and in 1910-11, on the basis of a mean of that and the previous year, the deficit shown above of £1,312,500. The principal cause is the Old Age Pensions Vote, which began in 1908. If all the elements of the problem be considered together, it will be seen that the fiscal partnership is as ill-matched as ever, and has produced results increasingly anomalous. Each of the partners and their united interests suffer. Ireland is still more heavily taxed relatively to Great Britain, yet Ireland's contribution to Imperial services has been converted into a minus quantity. Why? Because Irish expenditure, paid out of the common purse, has doubled, while Irish revenue has increased by less than a third. Let me give the final survey of Anglo-Irish finance since the Union, in the tabular form shown by Professor Oldham at the meeting of the British Association in September, 1911: NET BALANCES PAID BY IRELAND TO GREAT BRITAIN. Single Irish "True" Expenditure Balance Decadal Year. Revenue. in Ireland. One Year. Balance. £ £ £ £ 1819-20 5,256,564 1,564,880 3,691,684 36,916,840 1829-30 5,502,125 1,345,549 4,156,576 41,565,760 1839-40 5,415,889 1,789,567 3,626,322 36,263,220 1849-50 4,861,465 2,247,687 2,613,778 26,137,780 1859-60 7,700,334 2,304,334 5,396,000 53,960,000 1869-70 7,426,332 2,938,122 4,488,210 44,882,100 1879-80 7,280,856 4,054,549 3,226,307 32,263,070 1889-90 7,734,678 5,057,708 2,676,970 26,769,700 1899-1900 8,664,500 6,980,000 1,684,500 16,845,000 Averaged Balances for 90 years 315,603,470 Add, Actual Balances, 1900-09 16,214,000 Net Payments, in 99 years 331,817,470 Deduct Drawings, deficit of 1909-10 2,357,500 Net Payments, in 100 years 329,459,970 Add, Actual Balance, 1910-11 321,000 Net Balances paid by Ireland to Great Britain, 1809-1911 329,780,970 What has become of Sir David Barbour's argument in favour of the existing fiscal system? He admitted that Ireland was overtaxed by two millions and three-quarters. But he showed, it will be remembered, that if not only the revenue, but the expenditure and contribution to Imperial services had all been in proportion to Ireland's real taxable capacity of one-twentieth, she would have been a loser by a million.[117] Ireland, therefore, he argued, had certainly no grievance, while Great Britain received the substantial, though not strictly sufficient, sum of two millions as Ireland's contribution to Imperial expenses. Let us apply the same reasoning to the present situation. Ireland, by hypothesis, is "overtaxed" by three millions,[118] but if not only the revenue, but the expenditure and contribution to Imperial services of Ireland were all in proportion to her real taxable capacity, which we may estimate now at one-twenty-fifth, we find that she would be a loser by five millions. Her "true" revenue from all sources _ought_ on this supposition to be £6,605,900; it _is_ £10,032,000. Her local expenditure _ought_ to be £2,875,540; it _is_ £11,344,500. Her contribution to Imperial services _ought_ to be £3,730,360; it _is_ a minus quantity of £1,312,500. Sir David Barbour's reasoning, then, leads us to this astounding paradox, that Ireland, while overtaxed by three millions, gains five millions by the arrangement. Moreover, whether we accept Sir David Barbour's reasoning or not, it is a fact that to-day Ireland, which contributed to Imperial services five and a half millions in 1860, and two millions in 1894, now, so far from contributing anything, costs a million and a quarter more than she brings in. This, certainly, was not a result he either anticipated or would have approved of. On the contrary, he anticipated a reduction in Irish civil expenditure, to be saved for Irish purposes, without prejudice to the Imperial contribution. It makes the brain dizzy to compare his anticipation with the reality. How, on the other hand, stands the argument of Lord Farrer and Mr. Currie? They prophesied a great increase in Irish expenditure and the disappearance of the contribution to Imperial services. That has come true. Lord Welby (and indeed the majority of the Commission) was with them in declining to regard excessive local expenditure as a set-off to excessive and unsuitable taxation, and in condemning root and branch the system of grants, aids, and doles as wasteful in itself and as sapping the self-reliance of Irishmen. There again they were right. They were at one with all their colleagues in holding that under the Union it was impossible to differentiate between the taxation of Ireland and Great Britain, and they prescribed, as the only sound remedy, Home Rule. Once more they were right. The figures of to-day constitute the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the Union. For over a century in Ireland we have defied the laws of political economy, but they have conquered us at last. Sound finance demands that revenue and expenditure should be co-related. Ireland's economic circumstances are widely different from those of Great Britain, but she has been included, without any regard to her needs and without any reference to Irish expenditure, in a system of taxation designed exclusively for the capacities and needs of Great Britain. Hence Irish revenue is both excessive and inadequate. "Excessive"? "Inadequate"? What do these terms really mean? Let us once and for all clear our minds of all obscurity and look the facts in the face. No one knows what Irish revenue and expenditure ought to be, or would be, if Irishmen had controlled their own destinies. It is useless to parade immense sums as the cash equivalent of over-taxation; it is idle to array against them rival figures of over-expenditure. Normal Irish revenue and normal Irish expenditure are matters of speculation. For all we know, Ireland, had she been permitted normal political development, would be raising a larger revenue, and feeling it less; while it is absolutely certain that she would be paying her own way and contributing to Imperial services more, in proportion to her resources, than she did before the Union. The political and therefore the economic development of Ireland have been deliberately and forcibly arrested. I do not say malignantly, because there was no malignant intention. But the action, if mistaken, was deliberately and consistently sustained. Much of Irish industrial talent was lost irrevocably before the old industrial restrictions were removed. There remained the land, an immense source of potential wealth, if properly developed under a rational system of agrarian tenure. For the best part of a century after the Union, the agrarian tenure, dating from the first genuine colonization of Ireland, when the land was confiscated wholesale and the peasantry enslaved, was maintained by force of arms. Thirty years ago (if we date from the Land Act of 1881) we began to change this tenure into another equally defective, though far more favourable to the tenant. A little later, but only eight years ago, on a thorough and systematic scale, we began the parallel policy of Land Purchase. Even now, having transferred half the land to peasant ownership, and placed the other half under judicial rents, many of our statesmen are unwilling to give Ireland the control of its own affairs. On the contrary, step by step with the economic enfranchisement of the farmers, has gone the policy of destroying their personal and political independence, and forcing them to look outside their own country for financial aid, by spending money upon Ireland which Irishmen have no direct responsibility for raising. What a travesty of statesmanship! First, having assisted the farmer to buy his own land, to clap him on the back with "Now, my fine fellow, you are a free man." In the same breath to tell him that he is not fit to have a direct voice in the management of his own country's affairs, and to try and reconcile him to this insult by sapping that very independence of character which the acquirement of a freehold has begun to instil in him. I described in Chapter IX. how a number of patriotic Irishmen, working both at industrial and agricultural development, have striven to counteract this fatal tendency, and to persuade their countrymen to rely on themselves alone. But I venture to repeat what I said then, that without the bracing discipline of Home Rule, and, above all, of the financial Home Rule, these efforts are doomed to comparative failure. It is absolutely necessary to produce an equilibrium between revenue and expenditure in Ireland, as in every other country in the world. Whatever the temporary strain upon Ireland, whatever the sacrifices involved, the thing must be done, and done now or never. Great Britain's interest is something, but it is trivial beside that of Ireland. The situation is growing worse, not better, and Irishmen should unite to insist that the whole system should stop. II. IRISH EXPENDITURE. Let us look a little more closely at Irish expenditure, as disclosed in the Treasury returns. For purposes of comparison, I set out first the main heads of Civil Expenditure for England, Scotland, and Ireland in the year 1910-11:[119] Population. England, Scotland, Ireland, 36,075,269. 4,759,521. 4,381,951. £ £ £ Civil Government Charges, 1910-11: (_a_) On Consolidated Fund: (1) Civil List, Salaries, Pensions, and Miscellaneous Charges 340,500 148,000 138,500 (2) Development and Road Improvement Funds (3) Payments to Local Taxation Accounts, etc. 7,199,500 1,204,500 1,477,500 (_b_) Voted 26,121,500 4,180,500 8,026,000 Total Civil Government Charges 33,661,500 5,533,000 9,642,000 Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue 3,157,000 464,000 298,000 Post Office Services 15,798,500 1,930,000 1,404,500 Total Expenditure 52,617,000 7,927,000 11,344,500 £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. Per head of population 1 9 2 1 13 31/2 2 11 9 The totals, if we consider relative populations, appear startling. Look at the third, or Irish, column, and set aside the two last items, "Customs, Excise, and Inland Revenue," and "Post-Office Services," which represent the cost of collecting Irish Revenue and maintaining the Irish postal, telegraph, and telephone services. We may note in passing, however, that the Post-Office receipts in Ireland in 1910-11, according to the Treasury estimate, were less than the outgoings by £249,000 (receipts, £1,155,500; outgoings, £1,404,500). The Civil Government Charges are the most important heads of expense, and these are divided into two main classes: (_a_) charged on Consolidated Fund; (_b_) Voted. Class (_a_) consists of (1) Salaries, Pensions, etc.; (2) Development and Road Improvement Funds; (3) Payments to Local Taxation Accounts. In other parts of Return No. 220 will be found the details of expenditure in these various classes: (1) The Salaries and Pensions need not detain us long. The principal item is judicial salaries, £102,000, as compared with £282,000 for England, which has more than eight times the population of Ireland. Another item, £20,000 for the Lord-Lieutenant, is double the sum allotted to any Colonial Governor, even of the Dominion of Canada, which has nearly twice the population of Ireland. But the extravagance lies, not in the cash amount, but in the fact that the Irish Lord-Lieutenancy is, under present conditions, an anomalous institution. No Irishman would grudge a penny of the sum if the Lord-Lieutenant, like a Colonial Governor, presided over a responsibly governed Ireland. (2) Road Improvement and Development Funds. This category is blank for the year 1910-11. There will be payments for the current year which will swell the Irish expenditure. (3) Payments to Local Taxation Accounts, £1,477,500. This raises an intricate subject, into which I cannot enter in great detail. It is well known that the whole system of relieving local taxation out of Imperial taxation needs thorough revision. Meanwhile Ireland, like other parts of Great Britain, has been allotted at various times a multitude of different grants under various Acts, but principally under the Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, and the Finance Acts of recent years. Local Government on the British pattern was, as I have already described, extended to Ireland only in 1898. The money now raised in Ireland by Local Taxation is about £4,800,000, exclusive of the Grants in Aid which we are now considering, and which appear, rightly, on the national balance-sheet because they come from the common purse.[120] They are based on different principles, and originated in many different ways. Some are fixed annual sums, determined either by some arbitrary standard or (as in the case of the Licence Duty grants and the Customs and Excise grants[121]) on the Irish proceeds of certain duties in a year taken as standard. The Estate Duty grants still vary with the total product of duties in the United Kingdom, and are still allocated on the proportion settled by Mr. Goschen in 1888--namely, 9 parts to Ireland, 11 to Scotland, and 80 to England.[122] If the proportion were to be revised now, and, on Mr. Goschen's method, made to correspond to the respective estimated contributions to Imperial Services, Ireland, instead of getting £418,000, would get nothing at all. The largest item in the list--namely, the "Agricultural Grant," a fixed annual sum of £728,000, dating from the Local Government Act of 1898--was designed partly to reconcile Irish landlords to the passage of that Act. Nearly half of it represented the remission of the landlord's half-share of the poor-rate on agricultural land, as estimated in the standard year 1896-97. The English precedent for this was the Agricultural Rates Act of 1896, which relieved the English owner of agricultural land in a similar way. Irish conditions were so different, however, that it was felt necessary in this case to balance the landlord's boon with an equivalent boon to the tenant; so that half the tenant's share of the county cess was also remitted. The result was a disproportionately large grant as compared with those received by England and Scotland.[123] We must remark, as one of the minor intricacies of Irish finance, that all these grants do not actually go in relief of Local Taxation. Some of them are diverted to public Departments, such as the Board of Intermediate Education, the Congested Districts Board, and the Department of Agriculture. All these grants will cease, as such, after Home Rule, while their amount must be reckoned as part of the cost of Irish Government. The Irish Parliament will have to revise the whole system of relief to Local Taxation and establish it on some simple and rational basis. Meanwhile, it is important to remember that the Irish grants form the major part of the Guarantee Fund set up by the Land Purchase Acts, and, until the last amending Land Act of 1909, were chargeable--the Estate Duties Grant, hi the first instance, the Agricultural Grant in the second instance--with the increasingly heavy losses incurred in floating Land Stock below par. In 1908-09 the sums so withdrawn amounted to £90,000. That liability was removed by Mr. Birrell's Act, and they now remain chargeable only with any arrears in the annuities paid by the purchasing tenants. This is a negligible liability, and should properly be placed upon the Irish Government as a whole, which, if it pleased, could recover the money from localities.[124] We now reach the category _(b)_ "Voted," and find in the Irish column the truly enormous sum of £8,026,000--nearly double that of Scotland (£4,180,500), which has a population slightly greater, and more than a third of that of England (£26,121,500), which has a population eight times as great. When we search the various tables of detailed expenditure, three prominent items arrest our attention: Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police[125] £1,464,500 Old Age Pensions £2,408,000 Public (_i.e._, Primary) Education £1,632,000 £5,504,500 Those three items may be said to epitomize the history of Ireland under the Union--coercion, pauperization, deficient education. The first two are, of course, intimately connected. The existing cost of police, surviving needlessly at the monstrous figure shown, represents the past cost of enforcing laws economically hurtful to Ireland. The economic hurt is reflected in the cost of Old Age Pensions paid to a disproportionately large number of old people, below the official standard of wealth, in a country drained by emigration for seventy years past of its strongest sons and daughters. Police in Ireland costs twice as much as in England and Scotland, where (with the exception of the _London Metropolitan Police_) it is a local, not a national charge, while Irish Old Age Pensions cost in 1910-11 more than twice as much as Scottish Pensions, and amounted to two-fifths of English Pensions.[126] With full allowance for excess payments owing to the lack of all birth records prior to a certain date, the Irish figure is relatively enormous. It is £100,000 greater than the whole cost of Irish Government in 1860, and, with the addition made in the estimates of the present year, it is just a million more than what, according to Sir David Barbour's reasoning, would have been the whole cost of Irish Government in 1893-94, had Irish expenditure, like Irish revenue, been in proportion to the taxable capacity of Ireland. I touched upon the Irish aspect of the policy of Old Age Pensions at p. 181. Whatever the pecuniary charge, I suggest that it is absolutely necessary for Ireland in the future to control both payment and policy, and she might find it in her best interest, with due notice and due regard to present interests, to halve the scale of pensions. It is not a question of the general policy of Old Age Pensions, but of the applicability of a certain scale to Ireland, where agricultural wages (for example) average only 11s. 3d. as compared with 18s. 4d. for England, and 19s. 7d. for Scotland.[127] Of all ways of remedying a backward economic condition, that of excessive pensions is the worst. The cost of Irish Primary Education--£1,632,000, as I pointed out in Chapter IX.--is at once too high and too low; too high in the sense that much of it is wasted owing to the lack of popular control, too low in the sense that it is a scandal to spend nearly as much on police as on the education of children, and £800,000 more on Old Age Pensions than on the education of children. If part or even the whole of the additional expense eventually necessary is raised by rates, so much the better. Accurate comparison is difficult with the English and Scottish expenditure on elementary education, because the greater part of the cost in those countries is borne by private endowments and local rates, whereas in Ireland no local rate is raised for elementary education, there are no endowments, and private subscriptions are very small.[128] It is certain, however, that far greater sums, in proportion to population, are spent in England and Scotland than in Ireland. This is little to be wondered at if we consider the painful history of education in Ireland; but we cannot recall the past, and, as I urged in Chapter IX., one of the first duties of a free Ireland will be to improve the education of the children. The Irish vote for Universities and Colleges, £166,000, has been swelled by the recent establishment of the National University. No item in the whole list represents money better spent. With regard to other Irish services, I shall make use, with Professor Oldham's consent, of some interesting tables compiled by him, showing the principal variations in Irish expenditure since the year 1891-92.[129] They include certain expenses which I have already alluded to, and others which I shall have to remark upon further, besides giving a general view of the growth in the cost of Irish government. Neither of lists A or B is exhaustive: A. INCREASES OF EXPENDITURE. 1910-11. 1891-92. £ £ 1. Old Age Pensions 2,408,000 -- 2. Primary Education 1,632,000 843,755 3. Universities and Colleges 166,000 26,000 4. Payments to Local Taxation Account 1,477,500 399,260 5. Ireland Development Grant 191,500 -- 6. Post Office 1,404,500 749,046 7. Cost of collecting Irish Revenue 298,000 223,362 8. Surveys of the United Kingdom 81,000 47,603 9. Land Commission 414,500 91,826 10. Department of Agriculture 415,000 44,630 11. Other items (five[130]) 240,500 172,918 --------- --------- 8,728,500 2,598,400 Nos. 1 to 4 I have already dealt with, but it is interesting to note the contrasting figures of 1893-94. No. 5. The Ireland Development Grant of £191,500 is interesting as an example of the haphazard methods of Anglo-Irish finance. It is an annual sum voted for various development purposes, and was originally established (at the figure of £185,000) in 1903 as an equivalent for the capitation grants for school attendance in England, given under the Education Act of 1902 in lieu of school fees. In allotting the Irish equivalent, Mr. Goschen's proportion of 80, 11, 9 was for the first time condemned by all parties. What the proportion ought to be was a matter of dispute, but it was fixed in this case on the basis of population. Since the English grant has now risen to £2,500,000, the Irish proportion therefore is now, strictly speaking, inadequate. Nos. 6, 7, and 8 are examples of charges debited by the Treasury against Ireland which are open to criticism as long as the Union lasts, and which meet with much complaint in Ireland. Obviously, however, the first two at any rate are charges which an Ireland financially independent would have to bear. No. 9. The Land Commission vote of £414,500 is of course the direct result of an abnormally bad system, necessitating abnormal and costly remedial administration. Ireland herself is not morally responsible for a penny of it, but if she is wise she will shoulder the cost as a corollary of responsible government. Small administrative economies may be made, and the cost will disappear altogether with the completion of Land Purchase, say in fifteen years, but in the immediate future no reduction can be counted on with certainty. The figure given includes the cost of the Land Commission proper, which deals with Judicial Rents and manages finance, as well as the cost of the Estates Commissioners who conduct the machinery of Land Purchase. It also includes losses on the flotation of Land Stock at a discount, and the interest and sinking-fund on the Stock raised to pay the bonus to landlords. No. 10. The vote of £415,000 for the Department of Agriculture, whose origin and functions I described in Chapter IX., does not accurately show the actual cost of the Department, because it excludes the greater part of an Endowment Income of £166,000 a year, derived partly from the Irish Church Fund, partly from the Irish Local Taxation Account, and partly from the interest on a capital endowment of £200,000, as well as other small miscellaneous grants. But it includes a sum of about £44,000 for some museums, colleges, gardens, etc., whose English counterparts are subsidized under different votes, as well as the sum of £144,000 for the Congested Districts Board.[131] Nor does this latter sum represent the full cost of the Congested Districts Board, which has also an Endowment Income from the Irish Church Fund of £41,250, a subsidy from the Ireland Development Grant, and a fluctuating income from various sources--rents, etc. Part of the expense of the Department itself must be regarded as abnormal, in view of the extraordinarily backward economic condition of the country when it was founded. Nor, valuable as the Department's work is, can it be safely assumed that the cost is not extravagant. As long as any Department relies on an Imperial vote there can be no certainty that the expenditure will be economical. The whole cost of the Congested Districts Board is abnormal. Its very existence is evidence of the failure of external government in Ireland, and, as I urged in Chapter IX., the whole question of the treatment of the congested districts needs thorough investigation at the hands of a responsible Irish Government. B. REDUCTIONS IN EXPENDITURE. 1910-11. 1891-92. £ £ 1. Relief of Distress 5,000 183,675 2. Pauper Lunatics Grant 111,655 3. Teachers' Pensions Grant 90,000 4. Railways (Ireland) Grant 61,000 341,934 5. Local Government Board 92,500 132,748 6. Chief Secretary's Offices 27,500 39,681 7. Registrar-General's Office 13,000 29,926 8. Justice and Police 2,090,500 2,129,849 --------- --------- 2,289,500 3,059,468 Most of these reductions are deceptive. No. 1 is the saving of an abnormal grant, Nos. 2 and 5 signify mere transfers to Grants in Aid of Local Taxation, No. 7 a transfer of duties to the Department of Agriculture. The table shows a total reduction of £769,968, while Table A shows a total increase of £6,130,000. Together they account for an increase since 1891-92 of £5,360,032. Here is a similar table, confined to Justice and Police: C. EXPENDITURE ON JUSTICE AND POLICE. 1910-11. 1891-92. £ £ 1. Judicial Salaries ... ... ... 102,000 110,244 2. Dublin Metropolitan Police ... 93,500 91,998 3. Royal Irish Constabulary ... ... 1,371,000 1,362,348 4. Judicial Pensions, etc. ... ... 15,000 18,656 5. Law Charges ... ... ... ... 65,500 71,977 6. Superior Courts Offices ... ... 110,500 116,851 7. County Courts Offices ... ... 109,000 112,895 8. Prisons, etc. ... ... ... ... 112,000 134,429 9. Reformatories, etc. ... ... ... 112,000 110,451 2,090,500 2,129,849 To Nos. 1, 2, and 3 I have already referred. The whole charge of two millions, though it shows a slight decrease in twenty years, is grossly out of proportion to the resources of Ireland. Under heads 6 and 7 are included a number of posts which are notoriously little more than sinecures. To sum up once more, the cost of the Irish Government as paid out of the common purse in the last completed financial year was £11,344,500, or £2 11s. 9d. per head of the population, as compared with a cost per head of £1 9s. 2d. in England, and in Scotland of £1 13s. 31/2d. But this is not the minimum figure with which we have to reckon in considering the Home Rule scheme; some items show a marked increase in the Estimates of the current year: (1) The increase in Old Age Pensions, not certain yet, will be at least £250,000. (2) The Land Commission is £544,000, as compared with £414,500. (3) Universities and Colleges, £186,256, as compared with £166,000. (4) Department of Agriculture, £426,609, as compared with £415,000. (5) Registrar-General's Office, £29,020, as compared with £13,000. (6) Valuation and Boundary Survey, £44,581, as compared with £30,000. (7) Public Works and Buildings in Ireland, £273,370, as compared with £215,000. Even with allowance for over-estimates, especially in the last of these items,[132] we must anticipate an increase of nearly half a million under the above heads, to which we must add £150,000 recently allocated by the Road Board to Ireland for the year 1911-12, and £34,750 already allocated by the Development Commissioners. If Ireland comes prematurely into the National Insurance scheme, and assumes eventual financial responsibility for her share of the cost, that will be an additional source of expense; but it is to be hoped that her leaders, in common prudence, will henceforth endeavour to stem the rising flood of Irish expenditure, and so facilitate the retrenchments imperatively necessary under Home Rule. As it is, the total outgoings of the current year (1911-12), swelled by the increases shown above, will probably amount to £12,000,000, while this total will in its turn be added to by the office costs of the Irish Legislature and the salaries of Ministers. The scheme framed cannot assume immediate economies, and a responsible Ireland alone can decide the nature and extent of the drastic economies which must be made in the future. Beyond the brief remarks and hints made in the course of this chapter, I myself venture only to lay down the broad proposition that, to the last farthing, Irish revenue must govern and limit Irish expenditure. For any hardship entailed in achieving that aim Ireland will find superabundant compensation in the moral independence which is the foundation of national welfare. She will be sorely tempted to sell part of her freedom for a price. At whatever cost, she will be wise to resist. If Irish revenue is to be the measure of Irish expenditure, it follows that it must be wholly, or at any rate predominately, under Irish control. Let us look a little more closely, therefore, into its amount and composition. III. IRISH REVENUE. As I have already pointed out, in order to arrive at the present revenue of Ireland, our best course is to take the mean tax revenue of the two years 1909-10 and 1910-11, and to add to it the non-tax revenue of 1910-11, which was, of course, unaffected by the delay in passing the Budget of 1909. For clearness, however, I first set out separately the Irish figures of these two years, distinguishing between tax revenue and non-tax revenue, and giving the "collected" revenue and the "true" revenue in different columns: 1909-10. 1910-11. Revenue as Revenue as Collected. "True." Collected. "True" TAX REVENUE. £ £ £ £ Customs 2,742,000 2,755,000 3,103,000 2,977,000 Excise 4,487,000 2,898,000 5,826,000 3,734,000 Estate, etc., Duties 684,000 684,000 1,144,000 1,144,000 Stamps 293,000 315,000 326,000 351,000 Income Tax 388,000 451,000 1,825,000 2,164,000 Land Value Duties -- -- 1,000 1,000 Total Irish Revenue from Taxes 8,594,000 7,103,000 12,225,000 10,371,000 NON-TAX REVENUE. Postal Service 900,000 900,000 935,000 935,000 Telegraph Service 180,000 180,000 185,500 185,500 Telephone Service 30,000 30,000 35,000 35,000 Crown Lands 26,000 26,000 24,500 24,500 Miscellaneous 116,000 116,000 114,500 114,500 Total Irish Non-Tax Revenue 1,252,000 1,252,000 1,294,500 1,294,500 Aggregate Irish 9,846,000 8,355,000 13,519,500 11,665,500 Revenue Percentage of the Aggregate Revenue of the United Kingdom 7.52 6.38 6.57 5.67 On p. 276 are the details of the mean tax revenue, "collected" and "true," of the two years 1909-10, 1910-11, with the non-tax revenue of the latest year, 1910-11, added to them. PRESENT IRISH REVENUE (MEAN OF THE LAST TWO YEARS). Details of Revenue. Mean Collected Mean "True" or Tax "Contributed" Tax Revenue of the Revenue of the Years 1909-10, Years 1909-10, 1910-11. 1910-11. TAX REVENUE. £ £ Indirect{Customs 2,922,500 2,866,000 Taxation{Excise 5,156,500 3,316,000 (incl. licences £284,500) Total Indirect Taxation 8,079,000 6,182,000 {Estate Duties 914,000 914,000 Direct Taxation{Stamps 309,500 333,000 {Income Tax 1,106,500 1,307,500 {Land Value Duties 1,000 1,000 Total Direct Taxation 2,331,000 2,555,500 Total Tax Revenue 10,410,000 8,737,500 NON TAX REVENUE (1910 11). Postal Service 935,000 935,000 Telegraph Service 185,500 185,500 Telephone Service 35,000 35,000 Crown Lands 24,000 24,500 Miscellaneous 114,500 114,500 Total Non Tax Revenue (1910 11) 1,294,500 1,294,500 Collected "True" or Revenue "Contributed" at the Revenue at the Present Day. Present Day, Aggregates 11,704,500 10,032,000 The two aggregate figures at the bottom, £11,704,500 and £10,032,000, approximately represent the Treasury estimate of the "collected" and the "true" revenue of Ireland, respectively, at the present day. They are confirmed by the figures of previous years; for the average revenue of the five years, 1904-09, was as follows: "collected," £11,320,000; "true" or "contributed," £9,612,400, the new taxation of 1909-10 having added £500,000 to the "true" revenue. I must again remind the reader, however, that the figures are open to the criticism that the adjustment between the "collected" tax revenue and the "true" revenue is inaccurate owing to the methods employed by the Treasury. It will be observed that the resulting net deduction from the "collected" tax revenue of to-day, a deduction attributable, on the balance of the various figures, almost exclusively to Excise,[133] and mainly to the Excise duty on spirits, amounts to £1,672,500, and makes all the difference between the solvency and insolvency of Ireland regarded as an independent financial unit. Her expenditure, it will be remembered, was £11,344,500, her "collected" revenue £11,704,500, leaving a surplus of £360,000, which becomes a deficit of £1,312,500 if we reckon only the "true" or "contributed" revenue of £10,032,000. On the other hand, the principle, as distinguished from the methods of adjustment, is perfectly sound if we wish to arrive at a correct idea of the financial position of Ireland. The £1,672,500 virtually represents the duties on goods exported from Ireland, and consumed in Great Britain, or rather the excess of these duties over those levied on goods exported from Great Britain and consumed in Ireland. The consumer pays the tax on dutiable commodities, and a financially independent Ireland could not raise revenue twice over from the same commodity. She would, for example, have to give a drawback from the Excise duty on spirits exported to England, since a Customs duty would be levied on its import into England. On the other hand, she would be entitled to every penny of revenue derived from the tea and sugar imported into and consumed within her borders, and to the full income tax on property held by Irishmen. Now, for two reasons, I do not propose to make any exhaustive inquiry into the accuracy of Treasury adjustments for "true" revenue. My first reason is, that full material for calculation cannot be obtained by any private individual, and could not be obtained and worked up even by the Treasury without an enormous expenditure of time and trouble. The most careful inquiry I have seen is embodied in an exceedingly able pamphlet by "an Irishman," entitled "The Financial Relations of Ireland with the Imperial Exchequer," and I mention below a few of the criticisms made by the writer. His and other investigations seem to prove that Irish revenue is considerably underestimated, perhaps by half a million.[134] My second reason is that errors of adjustment in either direction cannot affect in any substantial way the kind of financial scheme we are to adopt in the Home Rule Bill. Let us fix our attention, then, on the second of the two columns in the table on p. 276, showing the aggregate "true" revenue of Ireland at the present day. Disregard the non-tax revenue from the various postal services (which represents payment for services rendered, and is swallowed up by an excess on the expenditure side of £249,000), and examine the heads of tax revenue shown in the upper half of the column. It will be seen that 70-75 per cent. of Irish "true" revenue is derived from Customs and Excise duties, which, with the exception perhaps of licence duties, may be classed as indirect taxation. The deduction for "true" revenue, it will be observed, has considerably modified the proportion, which for "collected" revenue works out at 77.61 per cent., or nearly four-fifths. As the reader is aware, this is not a new feature in Irish finance. It formed the basis of the Report of the Financial Relations Commission with regard to the over-taxation of Ireland. Much the greater part of Irish revenue, even since the abolition of protective duties and the substitution of direct taxation, has always been derived from taxes on articles of common consumption, the simple reason being that Ireland is a country where there is little accumulated wealth from which to extract direct taxation. In Great Britain, whose circumstances dictate the finance of the United Kingdom, no less than 54.79 per cent. of the tax revenue is derived from direct taxation, only 45.21 per cent. from Customs and Excise.[135] The Irish figures show that to retain in the hands of the Imperial Parliament the control of Irish Customs and Excise will be to retain almost paramount control over Irish revenue; to deny Ireland the main lever she needs for co-ordinating her expenditure and her revenue, and for making her taxation suitable to her economic conditions. It will be to preserve the framework of a fiscal system which the highest financial authorities have pronounced to be unfair to Ireland, and which incontrovertible facts show to be uneconomical both for Ireland and Great Britain. Meanwhile that system has at length produced a deficit, with which I shall deal in the next chapter. Its amount, probably exaggerated, must necessarily remain uncertain under the present fiscal Union. One thing alone is certain, that it will grow as long as that Union lasts. FOOTNOTES: [115] _I.e._, on the generally accepted basis of (1) assessment to death duties, (2) assessment to income-tax. With regard to (1), in the last report of the Inland Revenue Commissioners, the figure for the United Kingdom was £371,808,534; for Ireland, £15,872,302, or 1/234. With regard to (2), the figure for the United Kingdom was 1009.9 millions; for Ireland, 39.7 millions, or 1/254. Deduct a small allowance for the difference between resources and taxable capacity, and the result approximately is one-twenty-fifth. [116] Total revenue (including non-tax revenue) of United Kingdom (mean of two years. 1909-10, 1910-11) £165,147,500 One-twenty-fifth £6,605,900 Actual "true" revenue contributed by Ireland (mean of two years, 1909-10, 1910-11) £10,032,000 ----------- "Over-taxation" £3,426,100 If only the tax-revenue be taken, the over-taxation amounts to £3,109,800 (total revenue for United Kingdom, £140,680,000; one-twenty-fifth=£5,627,200; actual Irish revenue, £8,737,000). Some members of the Royal Commission made certain allowances for education grants, etc., which it would be useless to parallel now. [117] See pp. 248-249. [118] See p. 259, footnote. [119] Treasury Return, No. 220, 1911. [120] A list is given at p. 10 of Return 220 (1911), and an admirable exposition of the whole subject from the Irish standpoint will be found in Professor Oldham's seventh published lecture on the "Public Finances of Ireland" (1911). [121] The "Whisky Money" was so treated under the Finance Act of 1910. [122] See p. 238. [123] Between 1896 and 1898 the equivalent grants to Scotland and Ireland were based on the Goschen proportion, 80, 11, 9, the English grant being taken as standard. Scotch grants are now determined by special legislation. [124] See Chapter XIV. [125] Only part of the Dublin Metropolitan Police is paid out of State Funds, the rest by the City of Dublin. [126] The relative figures were: Ireland, £2,408,000; Scotland, £1,064,000; England, £6,325,500. The recent removal of the disqualification for Poor Law Relief adds considerably to these amounts. [127] In the poorest parts of Ireland they range as low as 9s. [128] See pp. 174-176. In 1908, England and Wales spent £21,987,004 on elementary education, and raised £10,467,804 for it in rates. Of the rest, £11,104,305 came from Parliamentary grants. Fees and endowment incomes of voluntary schools are not included (Statistical Abstract of United Kingdom, 1910). The actual Parliamentary Votes, as they appear in the accounts for 1910-11, are: England (Class IV.), "Board of Education," £14,166,500; Scotland, "Public Education," £2,250,000; Ireland, "Public Education," £1,632,000. But the English Votes include sums devoted to technical education, museums, etc., whose counterparts in Ireland come under other departments. [129] Two years earlier than the date I have chiefly used for the purposes of comparison, but the difference is not material. In point of fact, the expenditure was £300,000 less in the later than in the earlier year. [130] (1) Rates on Government Buildings; (2) Superannuation; (3) Government Printing; (4) Board of Works; (5) Home Office. [131] Department of Agriculture, Endowment Fund: { (1) Local Taxation Account £78,000 Income from --{ (2) Irish Church Fund £70,000 (3) Interest on Capital sum of £200,000. Also (in 1909-10): From Ireland Development Fund £7,000 Under an Act of 1902 £5,000 [132] The amount _voted_ for Public Works in 1910-11 was £259,848 [see "Civil Service Estimates" for 1911-12 (No. 63--1911)]; the amount _spent_, according to Return No. 220, £215,000. [133] Under the heads of Excise, the principal deduction is in Spirits (£1,793,000 in 1910-11) and Beer (£309,000 in 1910-11). The items of Irish tax revenue in which the Treasury make _no_ adjustment are: Excise Licenses (£356,000 in 1910-11); Club Duty (£2,000 in 1910-11); "other items" (£10,000 in 1910-11); Cards and Patent Medicines (£10,000 in 1910-11); "Estate, etc., Duties" (£1,144,000 in 1910-11); Income Tax (Schedules A and B) (£694,000 in 1910-11--abnormally large figure owing to non-collection in previous year); Land Value Duties (£1,000 in 1910-11). All the heads of Customs revenue are subject to adjustment, though the total result is only a small deduction from Ireland (£126,000 in 1910-11). In all but two the adjustment is in favour of Ireland. The two exceptions are "Foreign Spirits," where a deduction of £25,000 is made in 1910-11, and Tobacco, where a deduction of £620,000 is made in 1910-11. [134] _Income Tax_, Schedules C and D (dividends from Government Stocks, public companies, foreign dividends, etc.). The Treasury estimate (as stated in a side-note to the Return) is based on statistics of _Estate Duty_ for the five years ending 1908. But what light can Estate Duty throw on (for example) the dividends collected at the source from British or foreign securities held by Irish banks? Schedule C deals with "Government Stocks, etc.," Schedule D with "Public Companies, Foreign Dividends, etc.," but in the adjustment for "true" revenue no distinction is made between them. Now the Banking Statistics (Ireland) of 1910 show that dividends were payable at the Bank of Ireland on £38,732,000 of Government securities, and that, in addition, a debt bearing interest was due to the Bank from the Government of 21/2 millions. Income Tax on these items alone would be £65,000, less rebates; but the whole of Schedule C, which includes Foreign and Colonial Government Stocks, is given in 1909-10 as only £30,000. No attempt is made to credit Ireland with a share of the profits made by English and Scottish companies through business done in Ireland. The only reliable items in Income Tax are those of A and B (Land, Houses, and Occupation of Land), where in 1908-09 Ireland contributed about 6 per cent. of the total; under other heads, according to the Treasury, only 3.5 per cent. The writer estimates the true contribution as several hundred thousand pounds more. _Post Office_.--The Treasury give no clue as to how they calculate the profit and loss on Postal Services. Figures of letters, telegrams, parcels, etc., delivered in Ireland are known from the Postmaster-General's report, but the report does not distinguish Irish from English postal orders, of which 1211/2 millions were issued in the United Kingdom in 1909-10. There is good reason to believe that a part of the postal profit now wholly credited to England should in reality be credited to Ireland. _Stamps_.--Far too little allowance is made by the Treasury for stamps on transfers executed through English and Scottish exchanges for shares bought or sold by Irishmen, and for bonds, deeds, insurances, issues of capital, etc. _Tea and Sugar_.--The Treasury base their calculation "on quantities inter-changed between Great Britain and Ireland in 1903-04," and I learn from the Inland Revenue Department that by this means the consumption per head of the population was arrived at, and that the present official figures are based on the assumption that the relation of consumption per head in Ireland to consumption per head in the United Kingdom as a whole has not altered since 1903-04. The unreliability of this assumption is manifest. It is probable that the heavy additional duty on spirits has raised the consumption of tea in Ireland more than in Great Britain, and the figures of Imports compiled by the Department of Agriculture seem to confirm this view. [135] On the basis of the mean revenue of 1909-10 and 1910-11. CHAPTER XIII FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE I. THE ESSENCE OF HOME RULE. Let us now sum up this financial question, and give its place in the general problem of Home Rule. In Chapter X. I argued that, on broad grounds of political policy, Ireland, in her own interest, and in the general interest of the United Kingdom, should have "Colonial" Home Rule without representation in the Imperial Parliament. Leaving finance temporarily aside, while observing that any substantial Imperial control over Irish finance would defeat the "colonial" solution of the problem, I endeavoured to show that there were no tenable grounds of a non-financial character for retaining Irish Members at Westminster, nor any dangers to be feared from excluding them. I have now reviewed the history of Anglo-Irish finance up to the present day, and I hope in so doing to have proved that, so far from presenting an obstacle to "Colonial" Home Rule, the financial conditions demand such a solution. Finance and policy are inseparably one. All the considerations which render Home Rule desirable lead irresistibly to the financial independence of Ireland, with complete control assigned to her over all branches of taxation. Without financial independence it is impossible to realize the objects of Home Rule. It would be a miracle were the case otherwise. Ireland would, indeed, be abnormal if, after her history, she could reach prosperity and stability without passing through a phase of financial independence. No parallel, even in the most distant degree, could be found for any such metamorphosis in the whole of the British Empire. If we study Ireland's interest, we shall promote Imperial interests. The main object of Home Rule is to make Ireland self-reliant. Lord Welby and his colleagues were right in 1896 when they declared that ideal to be impracticable without giving Ireland entire responsibility both for her revenue and her expenditure. This declaration is as true as ever. The situation has changed only in one respect: that financial independence will now mean a financial sacrifice to Ireland, whereas in 1896 it would have meant a financial gain to Ireland--that is, if Lord Welby's recommendation in favour of remitting the Irish contribution to Imperial services had been carried out. At that time Ireland contributed two millions. Now Great Britain contributes over a million to Ireland. Sooner or later that subsidy must stop, and the sooner it stops the better. But it is of vital importance that Ireland should understand the situation. The present position is dangerous, because the Irish people at large are ignorant of the facts, and their leaders are taking no steps to enlighten them. The reasons are intelligible, but they are not sound reasons. Paced with the facts and the choice, Ireland would not hesitate, but she must know the facts and understand the nature of the choice. II. THE DEFICIT. Let us deal at once with the question of the deficit. It is inconceivable surely that the existence of a deficit should be used as an argument against financial independence, much less as an argument against Home Rule in general. Will anyone be found to say that an island with a fertile soil, several nourishing industries, and a clever population of four and a half millions, is to be regarded, whatever its past history, as incapable of supporting a Government of its own out of its own resources? Let nobody be tempted by the fallacy that, given time, Ireland will regain financial stability under the fiscal Union, and at a later stage, perhaps, be more fitted to bear the burden of fiscal independence. The supposition is chimerical. The present system, besides being radically vicious in a purely scientific sense, undermines the moral power of Ireland to secure her own regeneration. It is now 1911. The deficit, once a large surplus, came into being only two years ago. It was the direct and inevitable result of a fiscal Union against which Ireland has for generations unceasingly protested, and it was a result actually foretold in 1896 by Lord Welby and his two colleagues. It could have been averted, as they pointed out, only by a form of Home Rule giving financial independence to Ireland. But the warning was older than the Report of the Financial Relations Commission. Mr. Gladstone told the House of Commons in 1886, when introducing his Home Rule Bill, that no limit could be set to Irish expenditure under the Union; he and Sir William Harcourt repeated the warning in 1893, and if the reader will study the debates on the financial clauses of the Bill of 1893,[136] he will find pages of bitter diatribe founded on the small net contribution from Ireland to Imperial services for which the revised financial scheme provided. Ireland, said the Opposition, was to make money out of Great Britain, and escape her fair proportion of Imperial charges. Mr. Chamberlain showed that, with allowance for payment from the Imperial purse of part of the cost of Irish police, the net initial contribution was about one-fortieth, and asked: "Is Irish patriotism a plant of such sickly growth that it has to be watered with British gold?" The taunt was as pointless as it was cruel, for although the Union had kept Ireland poor, Irish leaders, in spite of that poverty, had asked for a financial independence which Mr. Gladstone in neither of his Bills felt disposed to give her. Mr. Chamberlain had his way; the Union was maintained, and as a result Ireland's actual contribution of two millions at that date has been replaced by a subsidy from Great Britain. Are we to be told now by Unionists that the Union must be maintained in order to maintain this subsidy? or by Home Rulers that the Irish deficit is an argument for the perpetuation of the financial dependence which caused it, and an insuperable bar to the financial independence which alone can extinguish it? No; let us look the facts in the face. Here is a deficit officially given as £1,312,000. It is probably less, owing to an underestimate of Irish revenue. But it may grow to be more, even with allowance for an automatic growth of revenue, owing to the increased votes of the present year, and the expenses peculiar to the establishment of the new Irish Legislature and Government. What her really healthy and normal revenue should be only Ireland herself can discover in the future. What her right expenditure should be she alone can determine. We can only work upon the data we have before us. Economy cannot be instantaneous, either in Ireland or anywhere else. Assume, then, an initial deficit in the Irish balance-sheet on the basis of present taxation. Its exact size cannot affect the manner of dealing with it. How are we to deal with it? Let us dismiss at once the theory of "restitution" with the earnest hope that we shall hear nothing of it in the coming controversy. No Irishman will argue that a subsidy to the extent of, or exceeding the deficit, is a good thing in itself, and should be large and lasting because it will represent compensation for money unfairly exacted in the past. It is, indeed, true that the Union impoverished Ireland, but the most grievous wrong was moral, and for that wrong alone is reparation possible. Home Rule is not worth fighting for if it has not as its end and aim a self-reliant and self-supporting Ireland. Nor does it improve the argument in the least to represent the subsidy as productive expenditure for the purpose of raising Ireland's taxable capacity and improving her economic position. No money raised outside of Ireland will have that effect. Once admit the principle of restitution, and where are you to stop? What rational or scientific limit can be set to it? More pertinent question still, what are the conditions which will inevitably be imposed in exchange? Ireland cannot have it both ways. She must either hold out for financial independence or, for every financial boon, submit to a corresponding deduction from her political liberty. If there were no alternative between financial independence without a farthing of temporary aid, and permanent financial dependence with a permanent loss of liberty, it would pay Ireland a thousandfold in the future to choose the former scheme, remodel taxation promptly to meet the initial deficit, and with equal promptitude set on foot such a drastic reduction of expenditure as would ensure the rapid attainment of a proper financial equilibrium. When once the Irish realized the issue, they would accept the responsibility with all its attendant sacrifices, which would no doubt be severe. But there is an alternative, and that is to make good the initial deficit, whatever the financial authorities finally pronounce it to be, with an initial subsidy of equal size, or perhaps of somewhat greater size so as to admit of a small initial surplus, _but destined to diminish by stated amounts, and within a few years to terminate_. To such assistance, given unconditionally, Ireland has an unanswerable claim, and to such assistance she ought, in my opinion, to limit her claim. Until two years ago she contributed uninterruptedly, and sometimes excessively, to the support of the Empire. With men and money she has made efforts for the common weal which no self-governing Colony has made, though she has been treated, politically and financially, as not even a Crown Colony has been treated. Just at the point where the self-governing Colonies, thanks to the liberty allowed them, are beginning to contribute indirectly to the defence of the Empire, Ireland, as the ultimate result of a century of coercive government, ceases to contribute. She can claim honourably, if she wills, to be placed, by temporary financial aid from the authority which is responsible for her undoing, in the financial position of a self-governing Colony. From the British point of view it is difficult to see any valid objection to the course suggested. There will be no stinginess in the settlement. Even if there were any disposition in that direction, it would be idle to grudge the initial subsidy, because an equivalent sum is already being paid. The Union will infallibly continue to accentuate the deficit and increase the resulting burden on the taxpayers of Great Britain. The plan proposed would eventually remove that burden. But, obviously, its success hinges on the concession of full financial powers to an Ireland unrepresented at Westminster. In their own interests, if not for very shame, Englishmen should decline to make use of the old adage, that "he who pays the piper should call the tune." For more than a century Ireland paid the piper and England called the tune--and what a tune, and with what results! Representation has nothing to do with the case. Precedents are needless, but there are, as a fact, many. Crown Colonies have frequently received free grants for the relief of distress--Jamaica and other West Indian islands, for example. The Transvaal and Orange River Colony received several millions after the war to enable the ruined farmers to start business on a footing of solvency. During the whole period of their adolescence, and, indeed, until quite a recent date, all the self-governing Colonies were virtually subsidized by the allocation of British forces for local defence, maintained at the Imperial charge. And Ireland paid her share of this charge. Similar garrisons were, are, and will be, maintained in Ireland. Yes, but Ireland contributed to their cost, and in course of time will, it is to be hoped, resume her contributions with a gladder heart and a freer conscience than ever before. Canada was economically stagnant under coercion. If, in her case, we had carried coercion as far as we carried it in Ireland, it would have been necessary to give her a temporary subsidy in order to enable her to assume the position of a self-governing Colony. Ireland's proximity does not alter economic laws. "Facts are stubborn things," and these are the Irish facts. Duty apart, no more profitable investment could possibly be made by the British tax-payer than a subsidy designed to enable Ireland to stand on her legs again. The present tribute to her is a dead loss. The subsidy, if given, ought, I submit, on no account to be earmarked, on the bad precedent set by the Bills of 1886 and 1893,[137] for any particular head of expenditure in Ireland, as for Police, Pensions, Land Commission, or Education. As I have shown previously, nothing is easier than to pick out items of excessive expenditure, or of under-expenditure, for which Ireland is not herself responsible. But to allocate a grant specially to any of these purposes would be superfluous unless the intention were to maintain Imperial control over the service in question. As I urged in Chapter X., none of the services mentioned above ought to be retained under Imperial control. Extravagance in the first three will not be properly checked, save by a responsible Ireland. Nor will extra money on Education be properly spent until it is raised and spent by Ireland. There are no other services, with the possible exception of Posts, to which a subsidy could possibly be applicable. Even in that case an earmarked subsidy would be out of place. But Posts are outside the point we are discussing. If for mutual convenience they were to be kept under Imperial control--a step which would not render imperative Irish representation at Westminster--their finance would remain, as at present, common to the whole United Kingdom. There is officially held, on bad evidence, to be a loss on Irish Posts of £249,000, and this loss is debited against Ireland, and goes to swell the deficit we have been considering. With the Posts under Imperial control, the initial deficit to be made good by subsidy would be reduced by the amount of the loss. Should it, however, be decided that Ireland is fairly entitled to a share of the large general profit earned by the Postal Services of the United Kingdom, the annual profit so attributable to Ireland would be set off against the annual subsidy as long as the subsidy lasted, and after it was at an end would be a clear item of revenue to Ireland. My own opinion, as I stated in Chapter X., is that the Irish postal system, whether standing by itself it shows a profit or a loss, ought to be under Irish control. III. FUTURE CONTRIBUTION TO IMPERIAL SERVICES. This must be left a voluntary matter for Ireland, as it is for the self-governing Colonies. There is no contribution from Ireland at present, and to fix a future date at which a fixed contribution, like that from the Isle of Man, should begin, is a course hardly practicable even if it were desirable. IV. IRELAND'S SHARE OF THE NATIONAL DEBT. Until two years ago Ireland, of course, contributed, _inter alia_, to the annual interest and sinking fund, amounting in 1910-11 to £24,554,000, on the National Debt of the United Kingdom. It is impossible to estimate her share of the capital of the Debt, and I scarcely think that anyone would seriously propose to encumber the new Ireland with an old Debt, based on some arbitrary estimate. For the great bulk of Debt created in the past she has little moral responsibility--no more, at any rate, than the self-governing Colonies. In this respect she must begin, like them, with a clean sheet. V. IRELAND'S SHARE OF IMPERIAL MISCELLANEOUS REVENUE. On the other hand, Ireland, in consideration of the remissions mentioned, must renounce the share to which she is technically entitled of the Imperial Miscellaneous Revenue, derived mainly from Suez Canal shares and the Mint, and amounting altogether in 1910-11 to £2,769,500.[138] VI. IRISH CONTROL OF CUSTOMS AND EXCISE. Let us now come to close quarters with this important issue. The grand argument on the affirmative side is that the products of these duties represent nearly four-fifths of the tax revenue collected in Ireland. What are the objections? We need scarcely consider the general objection, sometimes made ostensibly in the interests of Ireland, that her public men have little financial experience. The fact is true, and it is not their fault. But the financial scheme cannot reasonably be based on a recognition of a temporary lack of experience. I place Customs and Excise together because I believe there is no serious question of making a distinction between the two, and of allowing Ireland to levy and collect her own Excise duties, while denying her authority over Customs. It is true that until 1860 such a distinction was made, and a lower Excise duty levied upon Irish than upon British spirits;[139] but the tendency in all modern States is to make the authority over Customs the same as that over Excise, and any departure from that principle, in the case of modern Ireland, is likely to cause considerable inconvenience. License Duties, which are included under the head of Excise, may, no doubt, without much inconvenience, be differentiated from the rest, but their Irish proceeds (£284,000) are too small to influence the question. Excise, then, follows Customs. What are the objections to giving Ireland, like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, control over her own Customs? Without doubt, the establishment of a new Customs barrier between Ireland and Great Britain is in itself a drawback. The Custom-house machinery exists, of course, at present, because Ireland is an island; nor would the additional function of checking British as well as foreign imports into Ireland cause any great increase of expense; but since the great bulk of Irish external trade is with Great Britain, there will unquestionably be a certain amount of inconvenience and expense both to Ireland and Great Britain in submitting merchandise on both sides of the Irish Channel to the passage of a Customs barrier. That seems to be the limit to which criticism can justly go in the case of Ireland and Great Britain. That is as far as it goes in the analogous case of New Zealand and the Australian Commonwealth, where a small island State has a separate Customs system from that of a large, wealthy, and populous neighbour of the same race, and with many identical interests. That is as far as it goes in the parallel case of little Newfoundland and the great Dominion of Canada. Neither the Dominion nor the Commonwealth claim that proximity, power, and racial identity give them the right to control the trade and taxation of their small independent neighbours, nor does the smallest friction result from the mutual independence. On the contrary, both the Dominions and the Commonwealth were founded on that vital principle of a pre-existent State independence surrendered voluntarily for larger ends. The whole Empire depends on the principle of local autonomy, and, above all, on the principle of local financial autonomy. Endeavours in America to sustain the opposite theory led to disaster. We have for generations regarded it as perfectly natural that the self-governing Colonies should have Customs systems of their own, even when they are used for the purpose of imposing heavy duties on goods coming from the Mother Country, and we know that that liberty has borne fruit a hundredfold in affection and loyalty to the Imperial Government. Until the Union of Great Britain and Ireland it was regarded as equally natural that Ireland should have control of her own Customs, along with all other branches of revenue. Even after the Union, although there was no Irish control over anything Irish, it was recognized, until the fiscal unification of the two countries in 1817, that Irish conditions required a separate Customs system, which, in fact, existed until 1826.[140] How fiscal unification and the subsequent abolition of separate Customs was brought about I have told in Chapter XI. It is not a pleasant story. To say the least, the conditions, moral and material, were not such as to warrant the inference that there is any inherent necessity for joint Customs between Ireland and Great Britain. The presumption raised by all subsequent events is in the opposite direction. But the tradition of unified Customs, now nearly a century old, has immense potency, and unless it is fearlessly scrutinized and challenged, may be able, reinforced by the passions excited by the great controversy over Free Trade and Protection, to defy the warnings writ large upon the page of history. The tradition must be so challenged. Say what we will about the proximity of Ireland and Great Britain, descant as we will in law-books, pamphlets, leading articles, debates, on what ought theoretically to be the fiscal relations of the two countries, we cannot escape from the fact that, in this as in so many other respects, both the human and economic problem before us is fundamentally a colonial problem, and that its being so is not the fault of Ireland, but of Great Britain. Belief in Home Rule seems to me necessarily to involve a willingness to give Ireland her Customs. Great Britain has no moral right to lay it down that her views about trade shall govern the course of Irish policy; and if Great Britain believes sincerely in Home Rule, she should be willing to trust Ireland, regardless of the economic consequences, and regardless of the effect upon the great Tariff controversy. The effect upon that controversy I shall not discuss. It seems to me to possess only a tactical and electioneering interest, and that side of the Home Rule problem I have rigidly avoided, while expressing in general terms my belief that sound policy and sound tactics in reality coincide. The Home Rule Bill is far more likely to be wrecked by timidity than by boldness, by precautions and compromises than by a fearless accommodation of British policy to Irish facts and needs. As to the danger to Great Britain of separate Irish Customs, it seems to me to be greatly exaggerated. Ireland's own interests will primarily dictate her action. What she will decide her interest to be, nobody can foretell with certainty beyond a limited point, because Irish public opinion is not formed. Ireland has taken little or no part in the fiscal controversy, for the simple reason that she has been absorbed in the task of getting Home Rule, and until she gets it she is precluded from formulating a trustworthy national opinion on most of the great subjects which agitate modern societies. There is, however, no tradition in favour of high Protection, even from Grattan's commercially free Parliament. The question of a low protective or purely revenue tariff on imports has not received any serious investigation. Let us frankly admit at the outset that no country in the world, economically situated as Ireland is, dispenses with a general tariff of some sort, and undoubtedly there are to-day a good many Irishmen outside political life who advocate the encouragement of infant Irish manufacturing industries by sufficient protective duties directed against Great Britain as well as against the outside world. It would be strange if there were not, in view of the distressing past history of Ireland's throttled industries, and in view of the strenuous efforts now being made by the Development Associations to push the manufacture and sale of Irish goods in all parts of the world. There are many avowed Free Traders also; nor are the Development Associations themselves officially protectionist. The opinion is sometimes expressed that Ireland, which could easily be self-supporting in the matter of food, occupies an unhealthy position in exporting a large proportion of her own agricultural produce, butter, bacon, meat, etc., and in importing for her own consumption inferior British and foreign qualities of some of the principal foodstuffs; but, so far as it is possible to ascertain it, the predominant opinion seems to be that an agricultural tariff would not be a good remedy for this weakness, if it be one, and that Ireland's future development, like that of Denmark, lies in the increasingly scientific organization of her agricultural industries, and in the better cultivation of her own soil. "Better farming, better business, better living," to use the admirable motto invented by Sir Horace Plunkett for the I.A.O.S. In the absence of an Irish Legislature, no special importance can be attached to individual expressions of opinion. Yet a measure of prophecy is permissible. The Irish Legislature will have to study the national interest, and it is possible to say with certainty at least this--that Ireland's interest lies in maintaining close and friendly trade relations with Great Britain. Unfortunately, we have no means of accurately ascertaining the amount of trade done by Ireland with Great Britain and with foreign and colonial countries respectively. Irish commerce takes, of course, three forms: _(a)_ Direct trade with countries outside Great Britain; _(b)_ indirect trade with these countries via Great Britain; _(c)_ direct local trade with Great Britain. The statisticians of the Irish Department of Agriculture make only an imperfect attempt to distinguish between these classes, but their figures, so far as they go, prove beyond question that the great bulk of Irish external commerce belongs to Class _(c)_--local trade with Great Britain. The total value of Irish trade in 1909 is estimated at £125,675,847, of which £63,947,155 was for imports, £61,728,692 for exports. Probably 80 per cent., at least, of this trade was strictly local. Certainly Great Britain is the market for very nearly the whole of Irish agricultural produce, and for most of her exports of linen, ships, tobacco, liquor, etc. Any aggressive action likely to provoke a tariff war would be ruinous to Ireland, while it would hurt Great Britain far less in proportion. But, in fact, both countries would suffer, Great Britain from the loss of an easily accessible food-supply of extraordinary value, not only for economic, but for strategical reasons; Ireland from the loss of an excellent and indispensable customer. On the other hand, whatever Ireland's trade policy may be, she certainly needs the power of fixing her own duties upon commodities like tea and sugar, which are of foreign origin, and are now merely transported to her through British ports. Taxation of this sort is a matter of the deepest concern to a country where agricultural wages average only eleven shillings a week, and which cannot reduce its exorbitant Old Age Pensions Bill without giving some compensatory relief to the classes concerned. Tobacco, of which in its manufactured forms Ireland is a considerable producer as well as a large consumer, belongs to the same category. Liquor is an important article of production in Ireland, as well as of consumption, and the Irish Legislature ought to be able to form and carry out its own liquor policy. Ireland is just as able and willing to promote temperance as Great Britain, and just as competent to reconcile a temperance policy with due regard to producing and distributing interests. The Customs tariff is an Irish question, not an Ulster question. The interests of the Protestant farmers of North-East Ulster are identical with those of the rest of Ireland, and obviously it will be a matter of the profoundest importance for Ireland as a whole to safeguard the interests of the shipbuilding and linen industries in the North in whatever way may seem best. The Industrial Development Associations, which are affiliated in a national organization, and are far above petty sectarian jealousies, may be trusted to see that Ireland steers a safe financial course in her trade policy. If there is little or no danger that a Home-Ruled Ireland will commit tariff follies of her own, she has unquestionably a right to escape from further entanglement in the tariff policy of Great Britain. What may be the issue of Great Britain's great fiscal controversy nobody can foretell. But as long as a protective tariff remains the cardinal point in the constructive policy of one of the British parties, there is a strong likelihood of such a tariff, which would be uniform for the whole United Kingdom, being carried into law. Free Traders, like myself, may deplore the possibility, but we cannot shut our eyes to it. That tariff, if and when it is framed, will, like the Free Trade tariff of the past, be framed without regard to Irish interests, which are predominantly agricultural, and with exclusive regard to British interests, which are mainly industrial. Whatever may have been the original ideal of the Conservative Protectionists, however highly they may once have valued the protection of agriculture, irresistible political forces have driven them in the direction of a tariff framed mainly to secure the adhesion of the great manufacturing towns. The electoral power of these towns, the growing resentment of the working classes in most parts of the world at the increasing cost of living, the fact that Great Britain cannot under any conceivable circumstances feed her own population, have been reflected in the definite abandonment by the party leaders of the proposed small duty against colonial imports, and in the admission by Mr. Bonar Law at Manchester, during the last General Election, that the proposed tariff would not benefit the farmers. Nor will the failure of the Reciprocity Agreement between Canada and the United States appreciably diminish the obstacles to food-taxes in the United Kingdom. Any practicable protective tariff, therefore, on the ground of its injustice to Ireland, would cause strong and legitimate resentment in that country, which is subjected to the most formidable competition from foreign and colonial foodstuffs, but whose great competition in manufactured goods is Great Britain herself. The one Irish industry which might favour it is the linen industry of the North. It would have no attraction for the shipbuilding industry, which in no part of the British Isles has anything to gain by Protection, as I believe all parties to the controversy agree. Other small manufacturing industries would complain that they gained nothing; while the agricultural population would complain that, as consumers, they would be damaged by higher prices for clothing and other manufactured articles, while as producers they were ignored. The difficulty is only one further proof of the dissimilarity of economic conditions between Great Britain and Ireland, and of the artificial and unnatural character of the present fiscal union. Justice to Ireland demands its dissolution. The dangers are imaginary. Liberals, however firm their belief in Free Trade, should hold, with Lord Welby and his Home Rule colleagues on the Financial Relations Commission, that "even if Ireland initiates a protective policy, in this case, as in that of the Colonies, freedom is a greater good than Free Trade." As for the Protectionists, I have never seen an argument from that source, and I do not see how any consistent or plausible argument could possibly be framed, to show that a uniform tariff for the United Kingdom could be fair to Ireland. Professor Hewins, the leading Tariff Reform economist, virtually acknowledges the impossibility in his Introduction to Miss Murray's "Commercial Relations between England and Ireland." There were two sound lines of policy, he points out, which might have been adopted towards Ireland in the period prior to the Union: (1)To have placed her on a level of equality with the Colonies, applying the mercantile system indiscriminately and impartially to the Colonies and to her; or (2) to have aimed from the first at the financial and commercial unity of the British Isles. Neither of these courses was taken. Ireland, while kept financially and commercially separate, "was in a less favourable position than that of a Colony." With regard to the present, "Most of the difficulties of an economic character," says the Professor, "in the financial relations between England and Ireland, arise from the differences of economic structure and organization between the two countries. If Ireland were a highly organized, populous, manufacturing country, the present fiscal system would probably work out no worse than it does in the urban districts of Great Britain. But whatever be the virtues or demerits of that system, it was certainly not framed with any reference to the economic conditions which prevail in Ireland." We wait for the seemingly unavoidable political inference, but in vain. Professor Hewins is a Unionist. "A 'national' policy for Ireland ... is never likely to be possible." Well, that is plain speaking, and the more plainly these things are said the better. Let Unionists, if they will, tell Ireland frankly that she must eternally suffer for the Union, but let them not pretend, as they do pretend, that Ireland profits by the Union. VII. FEDERAL FINANCE. Directly we leave the simple path of financial independence, and endeavour to construct schemes which on the one hand disguise the financial difficulties of Ireland, and on the other provide for Imperial control of Irish Customs and Excise, we involve ourselves in a tangle of difficulties. A brief examination of these schemes will throw into still stronger relief the merits of the simpler solution. First of all, let us dispose finally of the Federal analogy. In Chapter X. I showed that the framework of Home Rule cannot be Federal, because the conditions of Federation do not exist in the United Kingdom. One of the invariable features of a Federation is the Federal control of Customs and Excise, but I pointed out that an equally invariable condition precedent to Federation was the willingness on the part of a self-supporting State, previously possessing complete financial independence, to abandon its individual control over this realm of taxation to a Federal Government of its own choosing,[141] and that no such condition existed in the case of Ireland. But some features of Federal finance undoubtedly may be made to show a superficial analogy to Anglo-Irish conditions, and may therefore have an attraction for those who shrink from giving Ireland financial independence. In the first place, it is possible to find Federal precedents for the payment out of the common purse of certain large items of Irish expenditure. There is no precedent for the payment of Police, but Old Age Pensions, for example, are paid in Australia by the Commonwealth, not by the States. The chief point of interest, however, is the mechanism of Federal finance. The Australian and Canadian Federations are the only two which suggest even a remote parallel. There the subordinate States are actually "subsidized" by regular annual payments out of Federal revenues, mainly derived from Customs and Excise, and in the case of Australia, as I observed at p. 245, the process at present entails an elaborate system of bookkeeping to distinguish between the "collected" and "true" revenue of the several States, similar in kind to the calculations now made by the Treasury for ascertaining the "collected" and "true" revenue derived from Ireland, Scotland, and England.[142] In Australia this system of bookkeeping is discredited, although the recent attempt by a Commonwealth Referendum to abolish both it and the financial system of which it forms a part just failed. It is to be hoped that, whatever financial scheme is adopted for Ireland, this bad colonial precedent, together with the precedent of the Home Rule Bill of 1893, will not be made pretexts for perpetuating a system whose defects are so glaring, and which is a source of continual dissatisfaction to Ireland. If Irish Customs and Excise are to be outside Irish control, while their proceeds are to be credited to Ireland, let her whole collected revenue from those sources be credited to her, in spite of the excessive allocation that step would involve. Apart from this point of similarity in mechanism, the Australian and Canadian subsidies to the States and Provinces respectively are of no value as models for a Home Rule Bill. Let us examine the case of Australia. There the Commonwealth, besides having exclusive control of Customs and Excise, has general powers of taxation concurrently with the States, though in practice Commonwealth taxation is almost entirely confined to Customs and Excise. All surplus Commonwealth revenue is, by the present law, returnable to the States, and the total annual amount so returned must not be less than three-fourths of the total proceeds of Customs and Excise; so large are these proceeds, and so small, relatively, the expenses of the Commonwealth Government.[143] Here at the outset is a feature which places Australian Federal Finance in an altogether different category to that of the United Kingdom, where only 47.6 per cent, of the revenue is from Customs and Excise. Nor are the distributions of surplus revenue to the States really "subsidies," even in the case of the poorest States, but repayments, on a method laid down in the Constitution, of that part of the State contribution to Federal services which the Federal Government does not want. Here the system of bookkeeping is of some service to us, because it reveals, approximately, at any rate, both the contribution and the actual repayment, which is based on a calculation of the amount saved to the State by the transference of certain departments to the Federal Government, set off by a _per capita_ charge for new Federal expenditure, as, for example, for Old Age Pensions (see Table on p. 297). The great bulk of the tax revenue shown comes, as I have said, from Customs and Excise, and it is unnecessary to set out the respective figures of revenue derived from these duties.[144] It will be seen, after deducting repayments from contributions, that even the poorest States make a substantial net contribution to Federal purposes. On the other hand, the relative proportion of revenue contributed by Western Australia and Tasmania is diminishing. In Western Australia it was 12-49 per cent. of the whole in 1905, 8-13 per cent. of the whole in 1909. In the same period, not only relatively, but actually, the gross contribution of Western Australia has diminished from £1,431,624 in 1905 to £1,166,126 in 1909, while the repayment to her has also diminished from £1,031,223 in 1905 to £627,933. Tasmania's repayment is also diminishing, though her gross contribution has increased. These circumstances suggest a slight resemblance to the growing disproportion between the resources of Ireland and Great Britain, but they do not assist us towards a solution of the Irish problem. Each Australian State, while contributing the whole of its Customs and Excise to the Federal Government, receives back at least half, and in some cases two-thirds,[146] and adds that sum to its own independent revenue for the maintenance of the State Government. The sum refunded amounts on the average to a little below a quarter of the total State revenue--to be accurate, 23.01 per cent. Of the remaining 76.99 per cent., only 10 per cent, on the average is derived from direct taxation; 10.10 per cent from public lands, 4.15 per cent, from miscellaneous services, and no less than 52.55 per cent, from Public Works--railways, tramways, harbours, etc. CONTRIBUTIONS OF, AND REPAYMENTS TO, THE STATES OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMMONWEALTH, 1908-09.[145] ----------------------------------------------------------- Contributions to Repayments from Revenue. Commonwealth. ----------------------------------------------------------- £ £ New South Wales 5,621,958 3,326,276 Victoria 3,750,161 1,987,435 Queensland 1,989,540 1,027,047 South Australia 1,307,621 716,957 Western Australia 1,166,126 627,938 Tasmania 515,387 244,747 ------------------------------- Total Common- Total wealth Revenue. Repayments. -------------------------------- 14,350,793 7,930,395 ----------------------------------------------------------- Here are the details of revenue for 1908-1909 in the richest and the poorest State, respectively: Particulars. New South Wales. Tasmania. £ £ Refunded by the Commonwealth 3,377,213 232,342 Taxation (direct) 907,249 250,835 Public Works and Services 7,309,062 329,192 Land 1,778,002 96,519 Miscellaneous 274,600 25,017 Totals 13,646,126 934,405 Now, Ireland raises no public revenues at all from Public Works, only £24,500 out of a total of ten millions from public lands; while 29.25 per cent, of her "true" tax revenue comes from direct taxation and 70.75 per cent, from Customs and Excise. To take away even a third of her receipts from Customs and Excise would be to leave her with a deficit of three millions and a half, which would have to be made up by additions to a direct taxation, which is already vastly higher than in any part of Australia. She needs every penny of her revenue from whatever source derived, and there is no possibility of extracting from her a contribution to Imperial services, unless it be an illusory contribution based on faked figures. The real moral to be derived from the Australian comparison is that both Australia and Ireland are countries where accumulated wealth is comparatively small, and where the importance of indirect taxation is very great. All the more reason for giving Ireland control of her own indirect taxation. Canada, and, indeed, all the self-governing Colonies, suggest the same moral. In Canada the Federal or Dominion Parliament has an unlimited power of taxation, the Provinces being vested only with the concurrent right of direct taxation within their respective borders (B.N. America Act, Clauses 91 and 92). In practice, nearly the whole Federal tax revenue is derived from Customs and Excise. We have no materials for a comparison of gross and net provincial contributions, because no records are compiled. Under an Act of 1907, revising the former arrangements, two small subsidies, forming a fixed charge on the gross Federal revenue, and bearing no specific proportion to the income from Customs and Excise, are given to each Province. 1. A subsidy (from £20,000 to £40,000) based on the total provincial population. 2. A payment of 80 cents per head of the provincial population. Both together are very small by comparison with the Australian payments. Neither is really a subsidy, though it is given that name, but the return of a surplus indirectly contributed. It is, indeed, conceivable that a new and poor Province might actually contribute less than she received back. One Province, British Columbia, having long complained that she contributed far more than her share, and received back too little, obtained an exceptional grant of £20,000 under the Act of 1907.[147] The sums raised independently in each Province for the support of the provincial administration are, as in Australia, derived to a very slight extent from direct taxation, and to a very large extent from public property; not, as in Australia, from railways, tramways, etc., but mainly from vast tracts of public land. In this respect the Provinces resemble the Dominion, which derives a large revenue from the same source. In three vital points, then, Anglo-Irish finance differs from that of the Colonial Federations. Ireland's whole net income comes from taxes; she needs it all; and her economic conditions are totally different from those of Great Britain. So far from borrowing anything from Federal finance, we should deduce from it the moral of financial independence for Ireland. With all the powerful centripetal forces, moral and material, which originally united, and now hold together, the federated States of Australia and Canada, there is continual controversy, and sometimes considerable friction, over finance, generally in connection with the position of the poorer Provinces or States. Some problems are still unsolved. Good authorities, among them Sir Arthur Bourinot, think that the Canadian subsidies are unsound. Australia is dissatisfied with her system. The American States, while giving up Customs and Excise, are self-supporting entities; but that system has its drawback, in Federal extravagance. We must remember, too, that even if these examples were of any use to us, the weak States or Provinces in a Federation have a greater control over Federal financial policy than Ireland could have under any scheme which reserved Customs and Excise to the Imperial Parliament; because the Federal principle, partially infringed only in the case of Canada, is to give them disproportionately high representation in the Upper Federal chamber, which can reject money Bills.[148] On all counts, Ireland's position is that of a country which imperatively needs fiscal isolation similar to that enjoyed by States prior to Federation, before it can dream of embarking on the perilous sea of quasi-Federal finance. Trouble enough comes from the present joint system. We should make a clean sweep of it, permit Ireland, with a minimum of temporary assistance, to find her own financial equilibrium, and so lay the foundation, perhaps, for a genuine Federation in the future. VIII. ALTERNATIVE SCHEMES OF HOME RULE FINANCE[149] Historically, these fall into two classes; though, as I shall show, they are for all intents and purposes merged in one to-day. The two classes are--(1) The Gladstonian; (2) the "Contract." 1. _Mr. Gladstone's Schemes_.--It is unnecessary to examine these in close detail, though, if the reader cares to do so, he will find details set forth in the Appendix. Four outstanding features were common to the schemes both of 1886 and 1893: (_a_) Permanent Imperial control over the imposition of Customs and Excise; (_b_) Irish control over all other taxation; (_c_) an annual Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure; (_d_) Imperial payment of part cost of the Irish Police. With regard to (_a_), the most important point of difference in the two Bills was that under the first Ireland was credited with her whole "collected" revenue from Customs and Excise, under the second (as amended) with only her "true" revenue, which was less than the former by £1,700,000. Another point in which the two Bills differed was the permission to Ireland, under the Bill of 1893, after six years, to collect her own Excise. Both imposition and collection were wholly reserved under the Bill of 1886. I have already given grounds for the impolicy of retaining control over Customs and Excise. Let me only ask the reader, in conclusion, to figure the situation. How could Ireland frame a financial policy? Three-quarters of the revenue, as at present levied, of a country profoundly dissimilar economically from Great Britain, and in need of drastic reforms of expenditure and marked changes in taxation, would be permanently outside the reach of an Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, in spite of the representation at Westminster which Imperial control would entail, would in the long-run fluctuate according to British needs and notions. In the long-run, I repeat; but incidentally there would be sharp and damaging conflicts. Occasions might occur like that of 1909, when the majority of Irishmen, rightly or wrongly, resented the form of new taxation, and would have secured the rejection of the Budget had not that step been hurtful to the prospects of Home Rule. It will be useless to blame either Ireland or Great Britain. Every country is bound to study its own circumstances. A similar crisis would have imperilled even the strongest Federation. We are not in the least concerned at the moment with the goodness or badness of that famous Budget. We are concerned with the effect on the relations of the two countries, and with the indefeasible right of Ireland and Great Britain to do what they consider best for their own interests. With regard to (_b_), the Bill of 1893 differed from that of 1886 in the provision of a suspensory period of six years, during which all existing taxation in Ireland was to be under Imperial control, though Ireland could impose additional taxes of her own. After six years--and, under the Bill of 1886, from the outset--Ireland was to have control over all taxation other than Customs and Excise. Where is the wisdom in selecting direct taxation as peculiarly suitable to Irish control? It is already higher in Ireland than in any country economically situated as Ireland is. Yet Ireland's power to reduce it will be very small and very difficult to use, if she is rigidly excluded from changes in the indirect taxation which presses mainly on the poor. Would she naturally be inclined to increase direct taxation? Land Value Duties produce next to nothing in Ireland, and their extension would be unpopular. The existing rates of Income-Tax and Estate Duties cannot be raised, though their incidence might be extended to cover poorer elements of the population, as, for example, the small farmers. That is a kind of measure which the farmers would, if necessary, willingly agree to, in order to balance the accounts of a financially independent Ireland, but it is not the kind of measure they would care about when their national finance was dictated by Great Britain. If one cared to make a dialectical point, one could add that a common argument against Home Rule is a fear of oppressive taxation of the rich or oppressive taxation of North-East Ulster, at the hands of an Irish Parliament, through high direct imposts. The fear is one of those which scarcely need serious discussion. If Irish statesmen were as black as their most industrious traducers paint them, they could not by any ingenuity invent any new direct tax which would not hit all the provinces equally, saving perhaps a tax on pasture ranches, which would hit North-East Ulster least; while super-taxes on the exceptionally rich, if they were worth the trouble of collecting, would drive wealth out of a poor country at the very moment when it was most urgently necessary to gain the confidence of investors and the few wealthy residents. With regard to (c), Mr. Gladstone's various devices for obtaining from Ireland a contribution to Imperial services possess now only a melancholy and academical interest, because, without an elaborate manipulation of the accounts, so as to disguise their true significance, no such contribution can possibly be obtained. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone provided for an annual payment from Ireland, fixed in amount for thirty years; in 1893 for the contribution of a _quota_--namely, one-third--of her "true" annual revenue from Imperial taxes, to run for six years, and then to be revised. His calculations were conditioned to some extent by _(d),_ the part payment from the Imperial purse of the cost of Irish Police, coupled, of course, with continued Imperial control of that Police, pending its replacement by a new civil force. It is easy enough in ways like this to show a balance in Ireland's favour, and, at the same time, to cripple the responsibility of the Irish Legislature by transferring selected services from the Irish to the Imperial side of the account. We can extend the process to Old Age Pensions, the Land Commission, and what not. As I have repeatedly urged, this course is radically unsound. As for the Police, there can be no responsible government without control of the agents of law and order. By crediting Ireland with her whole "collected" revenue, we can give her at once a balance of half a million. By freeing her from the payment of Old Age Pensions, we can make the balance three millions. With the elimination of the Land Commission and the Police, we can make it five millions. Then we can postulate an imaginary taxable capacity, an ideal contribution to Imperial services, and a hypothetical share of the National Debt, and so arrive at a Budget which will look well on paper, but which will deceive nobody, and be open to crushing criticism. 2. "_Contract_" _Finance_.--It will be seen that both Mr. Gladstone's schemes set up in Ireland--though under the Bill of 1893 only after six years--a dual system of taxation, Imperial and Irish, after the Federal model. The revenue, "collected" or "true," derived from Imperial taxes levied in Ireland, was to be paid, after the deduction of sums due to the Imperial Government on various accounts, into the Irish Exchequer. And into the same Exchequer went the proceeds of taxes levied by Ireland herself. The distinguishing feature of "Contract" finance is that it maintains the fiscal unity of the British Isles. All taxation in Ireland would be permanently levied and collected, as before, by the Imperial Parliament, Ireland being allowed only the barren and illusory privilege of levying new additional taxes of her own. Out of the Imperial Exchequer a lump sum of fixed amount, or a sum equivalent to the revenue _collected_ in Ireland, would be handed over to Ireland, by contract, as it were, for the maintenance of the Administration. The simplicity of this scheme seems to me to be its only merit. It disposes of all complicated bookkeeping, all heart-burnings over "true" and "collected" revenue, and all controversies, for a long time at any rate, over an Irish contribution to the Empire; while it involves and immensely facilitates a subsidy based on the reservation of selected Irish services for Imperial management and payment. On the other hand, it is not Home Rule. It annihilates the responsibility of Ireland for her own fortunes, and is, indeed, altogether incompatible with what we know as responsible government. Its germ appeared in the Irish Council Bill of 1907--a Bill which did not pretend to set up anything approaching responsible government, and to which the scheme was therefore in a sense appropriate, though it must, I think, have produced mischievous results if it had been carried into law.[150] I wish to speak with the utmost respect of Lord MacDonnell and the other patriotic Irishmen who have advocated this kind of financial solution. There was a time when it might have been good policy for Ireland to obtain any--even the smallest--financial powers of her own as a lever, though a very bad lever, for the attainment of more. But we ought now to make a sound and final settlement, and I do earnestly urge upon all those who have Irish interests at heart to reject schemes which merely evade, if they do not actually aggravate, some of the pressing difficulties of the Irish problem of to-day. The fact that Contract finance works well in India is _prima facie_ a reason why it should not work well in Ireland. It does not exist, and it could not be made to show good results, in any community of white men. If anyone is disposed to trace a faint analogy--which in any case would be a false analogy--with the lesser of the two small subsidies given by the Dominion of Canada in aid of the Provincial administrations,[151] let him imagine what the moral and practical consequences would be if, instead of constituting a small fraction of the provincial income, this subsidy were increased to a lump sum calculated by the Dominion Government as correct and sufficient for the whole internal government of the Province. And the pernicious results in a Canadian Province would be trivial beside the pernicious results in Ireland, where the whole system of expenditure and revenue needs to be recast; where large economies are needed, together with additional outlay on education; and where above all, the sense of national responsibility, deliberately stifled for centuries, needs to be evoked. Nothing could be more cruel to Ireland than to give her a fictitious financial freedom, and then to complain that she did not use it well. No nation could use freedom well under the Contract system of finance, whether based on a fixed grant or on revenue derived from Ireland. It is not in human nature to reduce expenditure unless the reduction is reflected in reduced taxation. Every official threatened with retrenchment, even in the services under Irish control and, _a fortiori,_ in the services outside Irish control, would have a grievance in which the public would sympathize, while resentment at an unequal fiscal union would be unabated. Irish statesmen, like any other men in the same position, would be exposed unfairly to the continual temptation of preserving institutions and payments as they were, of making changes only of personnel, and of annually appealing to Great Britain for more money for new expenditure. These appeals could not possibly be refused. If Great Britain chooses to place Ireland in a position of financial dependence, she must take the consequences and pay the bill, as in the past, even if the bill exceeds the revenue derived from Ireland. But, indeed, under Contract finance, attempts to make Irish expenditure conform to Irish revenue would necessarily be abandoned. Bad as the results must be, we are inexorably driven to some form of Contract finance directly we relinquish its anti-type, financial independence. There is very little practical difference between the Gladstonian and later plans. We may be drawn along the downward path either by considerations of revenue, or considerations of expenditure, or by both combined. To retain Imperial control of Customs and Excise, while crediting the Irish proceeds to Ireland, is in itself equivalent to making three-quarters of Irish tax revenue take the form of an annual money grant fixed by Great Britain. If Englishmen also want to retain control over Irish Police, and Irishmen are short-sighted enough to desire Imperial control, as a corollary of Imperial payment, of Old Age Pensions, National Insurance, or Land Purchase, there at once are four millions, or more than a third of present Irish expenditure, withheld from Irish authority. To cover the remaining seven millions by a Contract allowance, instead of going through the pretence of allotting items of revenue and of deducting a contribution to Imperial services, is a step which is only too likely to commend itself to harassed statesmen. But it would not be Home Rule. This is not a matter of speculation, but of experience. As long ago as 1818, in the case of Canada, we discarded as vicious the old doctrine that a dependency ought not to be allowed to provide for the whole cost of government out of its own taxes, for fear that its Legislature would control policy. If we are going to remove features which make Ireland resemble a Crown Colony now, do not let us import others which recall the ancient fallacies of a century ago. There remains to be considered the important question of loans, and to that I shall devote a separate chapter. FOOTNOTES: [136] Hansard, July 21 and 25, 1893. [137] Both Bills provided for part payment of the cost of Irish Police from Imperial funds. [138] Return No. 220. [139] See p. 234. [140] See p. 234. [141] I need scarcely point out that the newly-created Provinces of the Dominion of Canada are exceptions to this rule. But there is no analogy with Ireland. Such Provinces are carved out of newly settled public territory and given local government. [142] See pp. 244-245, and 277-278. [143] Until two years ago even the remaining one-fourth, added to other small items of Commonwealth revenue, was too large for the expenditure, and a part of it was returned annually to the States. [144] The other principal source of revenue is from Posts, but that is almost exactly balanced by expenditure, so that it barely affects the amount of the repayment to the States. [145] These figures are taken from the Official Year-Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, No. 3, 1901-1909. [146] It must be understood that the law requiring three-quarters of the Commonwealth revenue from Customs and Excise to be returned to the States does not imply that each State should have three-quarters of its contribution returned, but that the total amount returned should be at least three-quarters. [147] See p. 244. [148] Except perhaps in the case of Canada. [149] The Author is indebted, here and elsewhere, to papers by Messrs. C.R. Buxton, P. MacDermot, and R.C. Phillimore, in "Home Rule Problems." [150] By Clause 5 the following sums were allocated to the Irish Council for five years: (1) £3,750,000 for the maintenance of eight Government Departments; (2) £300,000 for public works; (3) £114,000 supplemental. [151] See p. 299. Under the Act of 1867, No. 2 was earmarked for this purpose. CHAPTER XIV LAND PURCHASE FINANCE[152] I. LAND PURCHASE LOANS. The data of the land problem are as follows: The superficial area of Ireland is 20,350,725 acres, and in 1909 it was utilized as follows:[153] Acres. Percentage. Area under tillage, hay and fruit 4,582,697 22.5 Area under pasture 9,997,445 61.6 Grazed mountain land 2,548,569 Woods, etc. 301,444 1.5 Bog, barren mountain, water, roads, townlands, etc. 2,925,570 14.4 Total 20,350,725 100.0 The agricultural area, calculated by the exclusion of the last item in the above column, works out at 17,425,155 acres, but since bog forms part of a large number of farms, we may, for the purposes of Land Purchase, place the agricultural area of Ireland at 18,739,644 acres, the figure given in the Census of 1901, and its annual value for rating purposes, as given in the same census, at £10,061,667. This area is divided into 603,827 agricultural holdings, which are in the hands of 554,060 occupiers, and vary in size from vast pasture ranches to the tiny plots of miserable rock-sown soil, which abound in the congested districts of the west. But small holdings largely predominate. More than two-thirds do not exceed 30 acres; 153,565 are between 5 and 15 acres, and 147,580 are below 5 acres. Size, however, is by itself an imperfect index to value. The effects of the ancient confiscations and of the extraordinarily unequal distribution of land which they and the bad Irish agrarian system produced may be gauged by the valuation figures of the Census of 1901, which showed that 335,491, or 68.5 per cent, of the total number of holdings had an annual value (for rating purposes) not exceeding £15, while they covered only a little more than a third of the total agricultural area; 134,182 of these holdings were rated below £4, and covered only 1,360,000 acres. All farms rated below £4, and a large number of those below £15, may be regarded as "uneconomic"--that is, incapable by themselves of supplying a decent living to the farmer and his family. I shall say no more here about the legislation beginning forty years ago, which revolutionized the agrarian tenure derived directly from the Penal Code, and converted the Irish tenant into a "judicial" tenant with a rent fixed by the Land Commission, with security of tenure, and free sale of the tenant-right.[154] There are now in Ireland two distinct classes of occupying tenants, "judicial" tenants, and purchasing tenants, and it is upon the question of the State-aided transference of the land from the landlord to the tenant that I wish to concentrate the reader's attention. The principle of Land Purchase is this: The State advances money, raised by a public loan, to the tenant, who pays off the landlord with it, and becomes for a fixed period the tenant of the State. During this period he pays, in lieu of rent, an annuity, which represents both interest and sinking-fund on the capital sum advanced to him. At the end of the period, which, of course, will vary with the fixed annual amount of the sinking-fund, he becomes owner in fee-simple of his farm. There is no charity to the tenant. He borrows the money and pays it back in a perfectly regular way, and the State has made a temporary investment of a profitable character. And now, for the last time, I must trouble the reader with a little indispensable history. There are four phases in the history of Irish Land Purchase. 1. John Bright was the first British statesman to maintain that no healthy and lasting readjustment of the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland could ever be made by law. He advocated State-aided purchase; and in the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869 and the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, clauses were inserted allowing the State to advance money for Land Purchase. The conditions, however, were so onerous, both to landlord and tenant, that only 7,665 tenants out of more than half a million were able to avail themselves of these purchase clauses. 2. The Ashbourne Act of 1885 was the first successful measure of the kind. Five millions were advanced under it, and five millions more under an extending Act of 1887. Next came the Act of 1891, empowering the loan of thirty-three millions, followed by the amending and simplifying Act of 1896. These Acts form a body of legislation by themselves, of which I need refer only to a few salient characteristics. They were all alike in settling the tenant's annuity (in lieu of rent) at 4 per cent, on the purchase money, though the proportions allocated to interest and sinking-fund varied. Under the first two Acts the period for final redemption of his loan by the tenant was forty-nine years, under the third forty-two years, though this period was extended to seventy years if the tenant availed himself of decadal reductions in the annuity, proportionate to the capital paid off by the sinking-fund. The average price of the holdings sold under these Acts represented seventeen and a half years' purchase, and the tenant's great inducement to buy was that, by the aid of cheap State credit, the annuity he paid, even over so short a period as forty-nine years, represented a reduction of more than 20 per cent, on his existing judicial rent. Under the first Act, that of 1885, the landlord received the purchase money in cash, under the other two, in guaranteed 3 per cent, or 2| per cent, stock, an arrangement which suited him very well as long as Government stocks maintained the high level which they reached in the period preceding the South African War. With the heavy fall in stocks during and after the war, purchase came to a standstill. The net result of the operations under the Acts of 1885 to 1896 was that close upon twenty-four million pounds were advanced to 72,000 tenants, occupying about two and a half million acres, out of the total of 18,739,644 acres which constitute the agricultural area of Ireland. 3. Once begun, purchase had to be continued, if for no other reason than that a purchasing tenant paid in annuity a substantially lower sum than the non-purchasing judicial tenant paid in rent, with the additional, if distant, prospect of an absolute fee-simple in the future. Mr. Wyndham, acting on the recommendation of a friendly Conference between landlords and tenants, took the bull by the horns in 1903, and carried the great Land Act of that year. Under the Wyndham Act the system of cash payment to the landlord, dropped since 1891, was resumed, on a basis calculated to give a selling landlord a sum which, invested in gilt-edged 3 or 31/4 per cent. stocks, would yield him as much as the second term judicial rents on the holdings sold, less 10 per cent., representing his former cost of collection; while the annuity payable by the tenant in lieu of rent was reduced from 4 to 31/4 per cent., of which 21/2 per cent, was interest on the purchase money advanced, and 1/2 per cent, was sinking-fund. This reduction involved an extension of the period of redemption from forty-nine to sixty-eight and a half years. The annuity was calculated to represent an average reduction of from 15 to 25 per cent, on second-term judicial rents. Since the gross income of the landlord was to be reduced only by 10 per cent. on a basis of 3 per cent. investments, while the annual payment by the tenant was to be reduced by an average of 20 per cent., clearly there was a gap to be filled up, and this gap was filled by a State bonus to the selling landlord of 12 per cent, on the purchase money, a bonus which went wholly to him personally, clear of all reversionary rights under settlements. A sum of twelve millions altogether was to be expended on the bonus. In addition to direct sales between landlord and tenant through the Estates Commissioners, large powers were also given both to the Land Commission and the Congested Districts Board for the purchase and resale of certain classes of estates--land in congested districts, untenanted land, etc. The Act was enormously popular. The landlord, in view of the manifold insecurities of land tenure in Ireland, made an excellent bargain, and the tenant, tempted by the immediate transformation of his rent into an annuity of reduced amount, ignored the extension by twenty years of the period of redemption, and was willing to agree at high prices for the purchase of his land. The average price of land sold rose from the seventeen and a half years' purchase under the old Acts to over twenty years' purchase, and the soil of Ireland rapidly began to change hands. But the Act broke down on finance, as adapted to what were then estimated as the requirements of the purchase operation. The estimate for the total sum required was one hundred millions, and the purchase money was to be raised by successive issues of 2-3/4 per cent. Guaranteed Land Stock. Sums needed from time to time for payment of the landlord's bonus were also raised by stock, and were placed to an account known as the Land Purchase Aid Fund. Now, any loss on flotation, due to stock being issued at a discount, was to be borne, in the first instance, by the Ireland Development Grant,[155] and, if and when that was exhausted, by the ratepayers of Ireland through deduction from the grants in aid of Local Taxation.[156] The stock, like all Government stocks at that period, fell heavily from the first, and in 1908 the point was reached when further issues would have entailed a heavy loss payable out of Irish rates, growing ultimately, as it was calculated, to an annual charge of more than half a million. The infliction of such a burden upon the ratepayers of Ireland was felt to be inequitable. Ireland was not responsible for the evils which necessitated purchase, and even if she were, the ratepayers were not the right persons to be mulcted. Meanwhile, purchase was at a complete standstill. 4. This serious situation led to Mr. Birrell's Land Act of 1909, which was based upon the Report of a Treasury Committee which sat in the previous year.[157] The problem was twofold: (a) how to deal with future agreements to purchase, between landlord and tenant;(6) how to deal with agreements to purchase pending under the Act of 1903, but as yet uncompleted. (a) With regard to future agreements, there are four main points:(1) The old policy of payment in stock, instead of in cash, is reverted to, and the stock is a 3 per cent. stock. (2) The tenant's annuity is raised from 31/4 to 31/2 per cent. (3) The period of redemption is reduced from sixty-eight and a half years to sixty-five and a half years. (4) The landlord's bonus is allocated on a graduated scale, under which the higher the price the land is sold at, the less is the bonus conferred. These changes, though no doubt somewhat prejudicial to the prospects of Land Purchase, were absolutely necessary, owing to a cause beyond human control--the condition of the money-market. (b) In regard to pending purchase agreements arrived at under the old Act, no alteration is made in the terms of the bargains already concluded between landlord and tenant; but changes are made in the method of financing these agreed sales. Briefly, parties can obtain priority in treatment among the enormous mass of cases awaiting the decision of the Land Commission by agreeing to accept 2-3/4 per cent. stock at a price not lower than 92 per cent, (which means, at present prices, that the loss on flotation is split between the landlord and the State), or, by waiting their turn, they can obtain half the price in stock at 92, and half in cash. Payments elected to be made wholly in cash come last of all. Bonus to be paid in cash as before. Losses caused by the flotation of stock at a discount no longer fall upon the Irish rates. Any loss not capable of being borne by the Ireland Development Grant is to be borne by the Imperial Exchequer. Other important clauses gave compulsory powers of purchase to the Congested Districts Board, and, in the case of "congested estates" and untenanted land outside the jurisdiction of the Board, to the Estates Commissioners. Otherwise Purchase and Sale remained voluntary. So much for the history of Land Purchase. How exactly do we stand at the present moment? In round numbers, nearly 24 millions have actually been advanced under the old Acts prior to 1903, and up to March of this year (1911) a further sum of 421/4 millions had actually been advanced under the Wyndham Act of 1903 and the Birrell Act of 1909.[158] That makes a total of 661/2 millions actually advanced to 165,133 tenants up to March of 1911, covering the purchase of nearly 6 million acres of land, or nearly a third of the total agricultural area of Ireland. The tenants of the land are now quasi-freeholders, and will eventually be complete freeholders. In addition, agreements for the purchase of properties by 150,490 tenants, under the Wyndham and Birrell Acts, at a total price of 461/2 millions, for 41/2 million acres, were pending in March, 1911, though the sale and vesting were not yet completed. The properties represented by these agreements will be duly transferred in the course of the next few years, though the congestion of business is very great. That will make a total of 113 millions advanced to 315,623 tenants for the purchase of 11 million acres under all Acts up to and including that of 1909. Now, how much more will be required? We have only one recent official estimate--that made by the Land Commission in 1908 for the Treasury Committee which sat to consider the crisis in Land Purchase. It did not pretend to give an accurate forecast, but only to estimate the maximum amount which would be needed, on the assumption that all unsold land would eventually be sold at the average price reached under the Act of 1903.[159] It is certain that the amount so calculated, covering as it does all classes and descriptions of agricultural land, and including land farmed by the landlord himself, as well as short-term pasture tenancies,[160] will considerably exceed the actual requirements. Some of the unsold land, especially of the pasture land, will never need to be sold; nor is the average purchase price likely to remain permanently as high as that obtained under the Act of 1903. Still, this speculative estimate gives us an outside figure which is useful. The conclusion from it is that 95 millions may be required to finance all future sales initiated under the Act of 1909. But if we want to know how much cash may be wanted, dating from March, 1911, onwards, to finance Land Purchase, we must add the 461/2 millions needed for sales now agreed upon, and waiting to be carried through, but not yet completed. That brings the total to 1411/2 millions. For the reasons given above, I think we might very well strike off 20 from the 95 millions of future sales, and so reduce the total to 1211/2 millions. Two further questions remain to be considered: (1) Can we assume that in the future purchase will proceed smoothly? (2) Who pays for the machinery of Land Purchase, and what is the security for the money advanced? 1. The Act of 1909 is still young. At the end of March, 1911, applications had been lodged for the direct sale of 5,477 holdings at a price of £1,623,526, representing an average of 20-8 years' purchase, and negotiations were in progress for the purchase by the Congested Districts Board of estates worth another 11/2 millions. Total, a little over 3 millions--a substantial amount of business in view of the artificial acceleration caused by events in 1907 and 1908, the subsequent reaction, and the enormous arrears of business still remaining to be cleared up. We should naturally expect a slight check to purchase under the Act of 1909, since the inducement both to landlord and tenant is less. The tenant would be inclined to hold out for a lower price because his annuity is higher (though signs of this check are not yet apparent), and the landlord is paid in a stock whose market price seems to be slowly but steadily falling. It is now (November, 1911) at 861/4. On the other hand, the wise change in the allocation of the bonus places a much-needed premium on sales of poor land at low prices, and reverses the process by which a wealthy landlord of good land sometimes obtained the largest reward for submission to sale.[161] Moreover, there is constant pressure towards purchase owing to the better financial position of the purchasing tenant over the non-purchasing or judicial tenant, while the fear in the landlord's mind of further periodical reductions in the judicial rents tends to induce him to meet this pressure halfway. Still, there is a point beyond which such pressure might not be strong enough to carry on voluntary Purchase, especially if the 3 per cent, stock continued to fall. Wide powers of compulsion,[162] covering considerably more than a third of Ireland, and including the poorest areas, where purchase is most needed, already exist under the Act of 1909. Some think that general compulsion will be needed. Other well-informed men count with confidence on completing all the necessary part of the purchase of Irish land in from twelve to fifteen years under the existing system. On the other hand, it is necessary to contemplate the possible need for universal compulsion. 2. Cost of the working of Land Purchase, and security for the money advanced. It is just as well to make these points perfectly clear, in view of the legends which obtain circulation about the "giving" of British money for the purchase of Irish land. The cost of the Land Purchase machinery falls at present on the taxpayers of the whole United Kingdom, including, of course, those of Ireland. It amounted in 1909-10, as I showed in the last chapter, to £414,500, and for 1911 the estimate is £544,395. This sum includes the administrative cost of the Land Commission and Estates Commissioners, the temporary losses on flotation caused in financing, under the Act of 1909, the balance of agreements made under the Act of 1903, and the bonus to landlords. The Treasury, in their returns estimating the revenue and expenditure of various parts of the United Kingdom, debit the whole of this sum against Ireland, and, moral responsibility apart, I regard it as necessary that, under Home Rule, Ireland should assume both the cost and the management of Purchase. Apart from the annual vote I have mentioned, Land Purchase pays for itself. The security for the individual holders of the Guaranteed Land Stock by means of which the purchase money is raised is the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but the Consolidated Fund has never been called upon for a penny, either for interest or capital, and never will be. At present the initial security of the Government which controls the Consolidated Fund--in other words, the initial security of the United Kingdom taxpayers--is the Irish rates; for the grants in aid of Irish local taxation still form a guarantee fund chargeable with the unpaid annuities of defaulting tenants, though they have escaped the liability for losses on the notation of stock at a discount. The ultimate security is the purchased land itself; for, in the last resort, a defaulting tenant who, it must be remembered, is a State tenant, can be sold up. But the really important security is the tenant himself. The Irish tenants, treated properly, pay their debts as honestly and punctually as any other class of men in the world. Annuities in arrear are negligible. The last Report of the Land Commission shows that out of two million pounds of annuities due from 165,133 purchasing tenants, and close upon another two millions of interest (in lieu of rent) upon holdings agreed to be purchased by 150,490 tenants--a total of nearly four million pounds--only £28,084 were uncollected on March 31 last. The cases of hopeless default, leading to a sale of the land, were only fifty-four. Not a penny has actually been lost. The State, then, or, if we choose so to put it, the United Kingdom taxpayers, are safe from loss, and make a good investment. There has never been the faintest symptom of a strike against annuities, and the only cause which could conceivably ever suggest such a strike would be the irritation provoked by a persistent refusal to grant Home Rule. Even that possibility I regard as out of the question, because there is a sanctity attaching to annuities which it would be hard to impair. Still, to speak broadly, it is true that Home Rule will improve a security already good, and that Home Rule, with financial independence, will make it absolutely impregnable. Let me sum up. More than half the agricultural land of Ireland is sold to the tenants, or agreed to be sold. Eleven million acres out of 183/4 million acres have changed hands, or will soon change hands; 315,623 out of 554,060 occupiers now pay annuities or interest in lieu of rent, to the amount of nearly 4 million pounds. In regard to value, out of a total value of 208 millions for the whole agricultural land of Ireland, 661/2 millions have actually been advanced for purchase, 461/2 millions are due to be advanced under signed agreements; and, on the extreme estimate of the Land Commission, based on the supposition that all the remaining land will ultimately be sold, 95 millions more will have to be advanced. Total future liability on the extreme estimate, 1411/2 millions; or, if we take the more moderate and reasonable figure I suggested, 1211/2 millions. Now, two conditions must be laid down-- 1. Purchase ought to continue. 2. Cheap Imperial credit is necessary for it. These conditions ought not to entail, beyond a strictly limited point, the continued control of Purchase by the Imperial Government. That step, as I suggested at p. 221, might involve Imperial control over (1) the Congested Districts Board; (2) the whole work of the Land Commission, outside Purchase, and all Irish land legislation; (3) the Irish police; because the power of distraint for annuities, the last resource of the creditor Government, rests, of course, with the arm of the law. Any one of these consequences, as I have urged, would be inconsistent with responsible government in Ireland. What are the objections to Irish control over Purchase, with its corollary, Irish payment of the running costs of Purchase? Two distinct interests have to be considered: (1) That of the British taxpayer; (2) that of the landlord. 1. If we carry out the plan I have advocated, the British taxpayer, as soon as he ceases to contribute to the diminishing subsidy suggested at p. 284 in order to meet the initial deficit in the national Irish balance-sheet, will cease to contribute anything towards the running costs, landlord's bonus, and flotation losses of a Purchase operation for the necessity of which Great Britain, in the past, was in reality responsible. Great Britain is under a moral obligation to continue to support Land Purchase with her national credit, which is indispensable. She is also entitled to demand whatever reasonable conditions she thinks fit, for example, a share in the nomination of Land and Estates Commissioners; while any new legislation will, in the ordinary course, need her assent. The security, as I said above, will be impregnable. The purchasing tenant would become the tenant of the Irish State. The Irish Government, as a whole, instead of the individual annuitants, would, of course, be responsible to the Imperial Government, would collect the annuities itself, and bear any contingent loss by their non-payment. To repudiate a public obligation of that sort would be as ruinous to Ireland as the repudiation of a public debt is to any State in the world. In point of fact, the Irish Government would find it good policy to popularize Irish Land Stock in Ireland. At present prices the 3 per cent, stock is among the cheapest and safest in the world, and would return to the farmer thrice as much interest as the average bank deposit which he now favours. Mercifully, there is no exact historical precedent for such a case as Ireland, though, on a small scale, Prince Edward Island is an instructive parallel.[163] But if precedents, in the shape of guaranteed loans to self-governing Colonies, are needed, they exist. The most relevant and recent is the Imperial guaranteed loan of 35 millions made to the Transvaal by Mr. Balfour's Government in 1903 after the great war. Why it should be a heresy to do for Ireland what we did for the Transvaal, I am at a loss to conceive. The loan became, of course, an obligation of the Colony when it received Home Rule, and in 1907 a further guaranteed loan of 5 millions was authorized, of which 4 millions has been issued. Like Irish Land Stock, these loans are secured on the Consolidated Fund; but I do not think a fear is now suggested that the Consolidated Fund is in danger on that account. Prophecies of that sort were common enough in the mouths of those who opposed Transvaal Home Rule, but they did not long survive its enactment. Another precedent is a guaranteed railway loan to Canada in 1873 of £3,600,000, which is just now becoming redeemable, while the Crown Colony of Mauritius received a guaranteed loan of £600,000 in 1892. The British and Irish taxpayers have also made themselves responsible for £9,424,000 on account of Egypt; £6,023,700 on account of Greece; and £5,000,000 on account of Turkey. The total nominal amount of the guaranteed loans to countries, colonial or foreign, outside the United Kingdom is £63,647,700. The total amount outstanding on March 31, 1911, was £59,474,200, and the Government holds securities only to the value of £4,800,556 against these liabilities, leaving the net liability of the taxpayer at £54,673,644. The net liability of the taxpayer at the same date on account of Irish Guaranteed Land Stocks of all descriptions was £65,764,054.[164] Ireland has a claim to Imperial credit far superior to any of the Colonies, dependencies, or foreign Powers mentioned, and the credit should not entail control, or the representation of Ireland at Westminster. Incidentally, it goes without saying that Ireland, in common with the Colonies, should receive the very valuable privilege of having independent loans raised by herself inscribed at the Bank of England, and made trustee securities. 2. It may be argued that the Congested Districts Board and the Land Commission, and through them Irish statesmen, may be subjected to local pressure hostile to the landlord's interests, and that the Irish Government would feel itself more free for social and other reforms if the land question were placed legally outside their purview. My answer is, in the first place, that Great Britain would cease to lend if her conditions were unfulfilled; in the second place, that in this, as in all matters, we are bound to place faith in the self-respect and sense of justice of a free Ireland--in its common prudence, too; for it would be a disaster whose magnitude is universally recognized in Ireland if any course were to be taken which prevented the landlord class from joining in the great work of making a new Ireland. Fair treatment of the landlords by a free Ireland, as distinguished from fair treatment at the hands of an external authority, would do more than anything else to bring about a reconciliation. That is human nature all the world over. II. MINOR LOANS TO IRELAND. It remains only to refer briefly to two other cases where Ireland benefits from Imperial credit. (1) The Labourers (Ireland) Act of 1906 sanctioned the advance of money through the Land Commission to Rural Councils for building labourers' cottages--a class of loans previously made by the Public Works Commissioners of Ireland. £3,111,816 had been advanced under this head on March 31, 1911, and £1,138,184 had been applied for. The money is raised by guaranteed 23/4 per cent, stock in the same way as the money for Land Purchase. (2) In addition, there are the loans granted by the Irish Commissioners of Public Works. In their capacity as lenders, which is only one of a multitude of capacities, the Commissioners are really a subordinate branch of the Treasury, and fulfil the same function as the Public Works Loans Commissioners in Great Britain. They lend principally to local authorities for all manner of public works and public health requirements, also to private individuals, mainly for the improvement of land, and, to a small extent, to Arterial Drainage Boards and to railways. They get their money from the National Debt Commissioners, and in 1909-10 issued loans to the amount of £293,233--a figure which shows a considerable reduction on that of the previous two years.[165] The total amount of 35,000 outstanding loans on March 31, 1910, was £9,608,110, of which between two-thirds and three-quarters were due from local authorities. The interest varies, as in Great Britain, from 23/4 to 5 per cent., according to the nature of the security, and in 1909-10 averaged £3 10s. 6d. Most of the loans are secured on local rates, where the interest payable is either 31/2 or 33/4 per cent., according to the period of the loan; others on undertakings such as harbours; and others on the land for the improvement of which the money is borrowed. Here, then, are two small and secondary problems. Under Home Rule Ireland will have no claim to further Imperial credit for loans of either of the above classes. On the other hand, there is no reason why the Treasury, if it pleases, and on its own terms, should not lend as before, though not directly, as it virtually does now, but indirectly, by loan to the Irish Government. The security will be just as good, and probably better. If a negligent Local Government Board under Irish control sanctions reckless loans by local authorities, and a negligent Irish Government advances for such loans money borrowed from Great Britain, the Irish Treasury will suffer. Such eventualities need not seriously be considered. The analogy with the Transvaal and Canada loans, which were mainly for public works, is very close. FOOTNOTES: [152] Parts of this chapter have appeared in a paper by the Author in "Home Rule Problems." [153] Agricultural Statistics of Ireland, 1909. [154] See pp. 10-17, 66-71. [155] See p. 270-271. [156] See p. 267. [157] Cd. 4005, 1908. [158] This and subsequent figures are taken from an answer to question in the House of Commons, July 25, 1911, and from the current Exports of the Land Commission and Estates Commissioners. [159] Cd. 4412, 1908. The basis taken was the Poor Law valuation of the lands unsold, multiplied by the number of years purchase of the lands sold under the Act of 1903. On this basis the value of the land neither sold nor agreed to be sold in 1908 was £103,931,848. On the basis of acreage, the estimate worked out at £102,078,448, and on the basis of holdings (regarded as unreliable by the Commissioners) at £92,660,694. The total sum required from first to last, including sums already advanced under all the various Acts, was £208,366,175. [160] Pasture land let on eleven months' tenancies (a common form of tenure) counts as untenanted land, and is subject to purchase by the Land Commissioners, compulsorily, if necessary. [161] But not always. Heavily mortgaged landlords profited most, perhaps, under the Act of 1903. [162] Only once exercised up to October, 1911: over Lord Inchiquin's estate in Clare, to be acquired for the relief of congestion. [163] See p. 75. There the loan for compulsory Land Purchase was ultimately raised by the Dominion of Canada, as one of the conditions upon which Prince Edward Island entered the Federation in 1873. Under the Land Purchase Act, passed in 1875 by the Island Legislature, with the assent of the Dominion, three Commissioners adjudicated upon the sales; representing the Island Government, the Landlords, and the Dominion Government respectively. [164] Finance accounts of the United Kingdom, 1911. [165] Report of the Commissioners of Public Works, 1910. The amount in 1907-08 was £434,796; in 1908-09, £361,282. The Commissioners have been lending since 1819, and have lent since that date £48,792,319. CHAPTER XV THE IRISH CONSTITUTION[166] I have dealt with the major issues of Home Rule. The exclusion or retention of Irish Members at Westminster, and the powers--above all, the financial powers--of the Irish State, are the two points of cardinal importance. As I have shown, they are inseparably connected, and form, in reality, one great question. I have endeavoured to prove that from whatever angle we approach that central issue, whether we argue from representation to powers, or from powers to representation, and whether the particular powers we argue from be financial, legislative, or executive; whether we place Irish, British, or Imperial interests in the forefront of our exposition--we are led irresistibly to the colonial solution--that is, to the cessation of Irish representation at Westminster, coupled with a concession to Ireland of the full legislative and executive authority appropriate to that measure of independence, and, above all, with fiscal autonomy. All the other provisions of the Bill are secondary. They may be divided into two categories, which necessarily overlap: 1. Provisions concerning Ireland only. 2. Provisions defining the Imperial authority over Ireland. The structure of the Irish Legislature, the position of the Irish Judiciary, the safeguards for minorities, the provision made for existing servants of the State, the statutory arrangements, if any, for the future reorganization of the Irish Police--these and other questions are of great intrinsic importance, and need the most careful discussion; but they are altogether subordinate to those we have already considered. If it be over-sanguine to hope, in Ireland's interest, that they will be discussed in a calm and dispassionate way, we can at least demand that those provisions belonging to the second category, which present no appreciable difficulty, will not excite bitter and barren disputes like those of 1893. It is not within the scope of this volume to discuss exhaustively the secondary provisions of the Bill, or to suggest the exact statutory form which those provisions, major or minor, should take. In this chapter I shall deal briefly with matters which I have hitherto left aside, and incidentally give more precision to the points upon which I have already suggested a conclusion, in both cases indicating, so far as possible, the most useful precedents and parallels from other Constitutions. The result will be the rough sketch of a Home Rule Bill. PREAMBLE. "Whereas it is expedient that _without impairing or restricting the supreme authority of Parliament_, an Irish Legislature should be created, etc." So ran the opening sentence of the Home Rule Bill of 1893. The words I have italicized are harmless but superfluous. They have never appeared in the Constitutions granted to Colonies, even at periods when the Colonies were most distrusted. Nothing can impair the supreme authority of Parliament. EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY. In all parts of the Empire, power emanates from the Sovereign, and is wielded locally in his name. Section 9 of the British North America Act of 1867 runs as follows: "The Executive Government and authority of and over Canada is hereby declared to continue and be vested in the Queen." Similar words are used in the South Africa Act of 1909, and in the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act of 1900. Curiously enough, these were Acts to legalize the Federation, or Union, of separate Colonies, and were passed at a time when the principle embodied needed no affirmation. In earlier Acts for granting Colonial Constitutions, the principle was taken for granted, and implied in numerous provisions, but not stated explicitly. The most recent unitary Constitution, that of the Transvaal (Section 47), was even more reticent, though the principle was none the less clear. The point is unimportant, and the words used in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893 (Clauses 5 and 7 respectively), modified to meet a change of Sovereign, will serve very well: "The Executive power in Ireland (or the Executive Government of Ireland) shall continue vested in His Majesty...." Thereon follow the provisions for delegation of the Royal authority, first to the Sovereign's personal Representative in Ireland, and then through him to the members of the Irish Executive. The simpler these provisions are, the better. What we know as responsible government has never been defined in any Act of Parliament. The phrase "responsible government" has only once appeared in any Constitution--namely, in the preamble of the Transvaal Constitution granted in 1906, and even then no attempt was made at definition, though certain sections, like certain sections in the Australian Constitutions of 1855 and in the later Federal Acts, inferentially suggested features of responsible government. The system is two-sided. Ministers are responsible on the one hand to the King direct, as in Great Britain, or to the King's Representative, as in the Colonies, and, on the other hand, to the elected Legislature. Ireland will resemble a Colony in being a dependent State under a Representative of the King--namely, the Lord-Lieutenant. This personage, corresponding to the Colonial Governor, will also have to act in a dual capacity. On the one hand he will be responsible to the King, or, virtually, to the British Cabinet, and, on the other hand, he will be bound by an unwritten law to nominate for the Government of Ireland persons acceptable to the elected Legislature, and in Irish matters to act by their advice in all normal circumstances. Let us dispose first of the relation of the Ministers and of other public officials to the Legislature. There will be no question, presumably, of giving statutory power to this relation. It is an unwritten custom--(1) that Ministers must be members of one branch of the Legislature; (2) that they must hold the confidence of the elected branch; (3) that, as a Cabinet, they stand or fall together; and, lastly, (4) that all non-political officials are excluded from the Legislature. The first and the last of these conventions have taken legal form in some isolated cases;[167] the other two appear in no statute that has yet been framed.[168] Neither have the functions in practice exercised by the Ministry or Cabinet, nor the relations which in practice exist between it and the King's Representative, ever had statutory definition. Whatever form the Home Rule Bill takes, it cannot give legal precision to these things. The King's Representative always nominates an Executive Council--that is, a Cabinet to "advise" him in the Government, and whether, as in the Bill of 1893, that Council is called an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland by analogy with the Dominion of Canada, where it is the "King's Privy Council for Canada," or whether it is merely an Executive Council is immaterial. That it is, nominally, the constitutional duty of the King's Representative (like that of the King himself) to perform executive acts on the advice of his Ministers is never stated expressly. He is always, and generally in the text of the Constitution, vested with the power of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Legislature, and of giving or withholding the Royal Assent to Bills. He also, by unwritten law, wields the prerogative of Pardon, and appoints all public servants; and in all these cases, except in the case of appointing non-political officials, he occasionally has to act on his own personal responsibility. This personal responsibility cannot be distinguished in practice from his responsibility to the Crown, which appoints and can remove him. Cases have arisen where the Governor of a self-governing Colony has written home for special guidance on some specific point, and where the answer given has been that he must act on his own responsibility, or follow the advice of his Ministers. All Colonial Governors, however, whether or not their powers are defined in the Constitution, are appointed by Commission from the Crown with powers defined in Letters Patent and Instructions as to their exercise. These Letters Patent and Instructions are not of much importance in the case of a self-governing Colony where responsible advice so largely controls the action of the Governor. Sometimes the executive powers given by Instructions to the Governor are indirectly alluded to in the Constitution, as in the South Africa Act of 1909, where, by Clause 9, under the head of "Executive Government," the Governor-General is "to exercise such powers and functions of the King as His Majesty may be pleased to assign to him." In the Australian and Canadian Acts of 1900 and 1867 respectively, the words do not appear. I name this point because in Clause 5 of the Home Rule Bill of 1893, and Clause 7 of the Bill of 1886, a similar course was taken in providing that the Lord-Lieutenant should "exercise any prerogatives, or other executive power of the Queen, the exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty." The words are not strictly necessary. The Lord-Lieutenant will, of course, have his Letters Patent and Instructions, but the powers of the Crown are theoretically absolute. If the Crown, acting under responsible British advice, should wish to defy the Irish Legislature, it could do so whatever the terms of the Bill. Naturally, there will be certain Imperial and non-Irish matters in which the Lord-Lieutenant will act primarily under the orders of the British Cabinet, and the Departmental British Minister primarily responsible for Irish-Imperial matters would be the Home Secretary.[169] The question may be raised, as in 1893 (July 3, Hansard), whether a staff of Imperial officials ought not to be set up to conduct any Imperial business which has to be done in Ireland, on the analogy of the Federal staff in the United States. I hope Mr. Gladstone's answer will still hold good--that no such staff is needed; that the Irish officials will be responsible, and ought, on the Home Rule principle, to be trusted, as they are trusted in the Colonies. The Royal Assent to Bills is always a matter for express enactment in the Constitution, but here the "instructions" of the Governor, and even his personal "discretion," have generally been alluded to in recent Constitutions, whether conferred by Act or Letters Patent. The typical form of words is that the Governor "shall declare his Assent according to his discretion, but subject to His Majesty's instructions."[170] The Home Rule Bill of 1893 left out reference to "discretion," and, on the other hand, is, I think, the only document of the kind in which the "advice of the Executive Council" has ever been expressly alluded to, although the practice, of course, is that the Assent, normally, is given or withheld on that advice. The Transvaal Constitution of 1906 (Section 39) was unique in prescribing that special instructions must be received by the Governor in the case of each proposed law, before the Assent is given. I hope that will not be made a precedent for Ireland. Such precautions only irritate the law-makers, and serve no useful purpose. Colonial Governors, besides the power of Assent and Veto, may "reserve" Bills for the Royal pleasure, which is to be signified within two years. Moreover, Bills which have received the Governor's Assent may be disallowed within one or two years.[171] Neither of these provisions appeared in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, and neither appear to be strictly necessary, owing to the proximity of Ireland. Whatever is done, we may hope that the practice now established in Canada, where the Federal Government never disallows a provincial law on any other ground than that it is _ultra vires_, and, _a fortiori_, the similar practice as between Great Britain and the Dominions, may be imitated in the case of Ireland. To sum up, the terse and simple words of the Bill of 1886 really enunciate all that is necessary: [Sidenote: Constitution of the Executive Authority.] "7.--(1) The Executive Government of Ireland shall continue vested in (Her) Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord-Lieutenant on behalf of (Her) Majesty with the aid of such officers and such council as to Her Majesty may from time to time seem fit. "(2) Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by (Her) Majesty, the Lord-Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of (Her) Majesty to Bills passed by the Irish Legislative Body, and shall exercise the prerogatives of (Her) Majesty in respect of the summoning, proroguing, and dissolving of the Irish Legislative Body, and any prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to him by (Her) Majesty." LORD-LIEUTENANT AND CIVIL LIST. The restriction as to the religion of the Lord-Lieutenant will, of course, be removed. There is no reason why his term of office should be limited by law. His salary, payable by Ireland, should perhaps be stated in the Act, as in the case of Canada and South Africa, though not in that of Australia. Australia, on the other hand, has a statutory Civil List, and a fixed Civil List was an invariable feature of the old Constitutions given to self-governing Colonies. Canada and South Africa are under no such restrictions, and it would be very inexpedient to impose them upon Ireland. LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY. The Irish Legislature will be given power, according to the historic phrase, "to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland," subject to restrictions afterwards named. That the laws should be only "in respect of matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some part thereof" goes without saying, and need not be copied from the Bill of 1893 (Clause 2). Nor need the superfluous proviso in the same clause be reproduced, asserting the "supreme power and authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom." The supreme power becomes none the more supreme for such assertions. Clause 2 of the Bill of 1886 is simple and decisive: "2. With the exceptions of and subject to the restrictions in this Act mentioned, it shall be lawful for (Her) Majesty (the Queen), by and with the advice of the Irish Legislative Body, to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland, and by any such law to alter and repeal any law in Ireland." With the restrictions on the powers of the Legislature I dealt fully enough in Chapter X.,[172] and I need only summarize my conclusions: 1. _Reservations of Imperial Authority._--The Irish Legislature should _not_ have power to make laws upon-- {The Crown or a Regency. {Making of War or Peace. {Prize and Booty of War. {Army or Navy. {Foreign Relations and Treaties (excepting Commercial Treaties). {Conduct as Neutrals. {Titles and Dignities. {Extradition. {Treason. Coinage. Naturalization and Alienage. Reservation of the nine subjects included in the bracket is implied, without enactment, in all colonial Constitutions, but in the Irish Bill it is no doubt necessary that all reserved powers should be formally specified. All powers not specifically reserved will belong to the Irish Legislature, subject to those restrictions, constitutional or statutory, which in matters like Trade and Navigation, Copyright, Patents, etc., bind the whole Empire. Section 32 of the Bill of 1893, borrowed from the Colonial Laws Validity Act, will no doubt be applied. 2. _Minority Safeguards_.--This point, too, I dealt with in Chapter X.[173] Let the Nationalist Members come forward and frankly accept any prohibitory clauses which the fears of the minority may suggest, provided that they do not impair the ordinary legislative power which every efficient Legislature must enjoy. Almost every conceivable safeguard for the protection of religion, denominational education, and civil rights was inserted in the Bill of 1893, including even some of the "slavery" Amendments to the United States Constitution. The list may require revision--(_a_) in view of the recent establishment of the National University, and the disappearances of all apprehension about the status of Trinity College, Dublin; (_b_) in regard to an extraordinarily wide Sub-clause (No. 9) about interference with Corporations; (_c_) in regard to the words, "in accordance with settled principles and precedents," which appeared in Sub-clause (No. 8) (Legislature to make no law "Whereby any person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law[174] _in accordance with settled principles and precedents_," etc.). A debate on this question may be found in Hansard, May 30, 1893. The words italicized were added in Committee on the motion of Mr. Gerald Balfour, though the Attorney-General declared that they gave no additional strength to the phrase "due process of law," while they certainly appear calculated to provoke litigation. Sir Henry James appeared to think that they made the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act _ultra vires._ If that is their effect, there is no reason why they should be inserted. Even a Canadian Province, whose powers are more limited than those of the subordinate States in any other Federation, has "exclusive" powers within its own borders over "property and civil rights,"[175] and can, beyond any doubt, suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, if it pleases. The same superfluous words appeared in Sub-clause (No. 9) about Corporations. THE IRISH LEGISLATURE.[176] As I urged in Chapter X., this is a subject in which large powers of constitutional revision--much larger than those contained in either of the Home Rule Bills--should be given to the Irish Legislature itself, corresponding to the powers given by statute to the self-governing Colonies, and to the powers always held by the constituent States of a Federation. In the Bill itself it would be wisest to follow beaten tracks as far as possible, and not to embark on experiments. Present conditions are, unhappily, very unfavourable for the elaboration of any scheme ideally fit for Ireland. _A Bi-Cameral Legislature._--Working on this principle, we must affirm that Ireland's position, without representation in the Imperial Parliament, would certainly make a Second Chamber requisite. Three of the Provinces within the Federation of Canada (Manitoba, British Columbia, and Ontario) prefer to do without Second Chambers--so do most of the Swiss Cantons--but all the Federal Legislatures of the world are bi-cameral, and all the unitary Constitutions of self-governing Colonies have been, or are, bi-cameral. _The Upper Chamber._--One simple course would be to constitute the Upper Chamber of a limited number of Irish Peers, chosen by the whole of their number, as they are chosen at present for representation in the House of Lords. Historical and practical considerations render this course out of the question, though some people would be fairly sanguine about the success of such a body in commanding confidence, on the indispensable condition that all representation at Westminster were to cease. It has been membership, before the Union of an ascendency Parliament, and after the Union of an absentee Parliament, which has kept the bulk of the Irish peerage in violent hostility to the bulk of the Irish people. Those Peers who seek and obtain a career in an Irish popular Legislature--to both branches of which they will, of course, be eligible--will be able to do valuable service to their country. The same applies to all landlords. Now that land reform is converting Ireland itself into a nation of small landholders, who, in most countries, are very Conservative in tendency, the ancient cleavage is likely to disappear. Indeed, an ideal Second Chamber ought perhaps to give special weight to urban and industrial interests, while aiming, not at an obstructive, but at a revising body of steady, moderate, highly-educated business men. We have to choose one of two alternatives: a nominated or an elective chamber. The choice is difficult, for second chambers all over the world may be said to be on their trial. On the other hand, nothing vital depends upon the choice, for experience proves that countries can flourish equally under every imaginable variety of second chamber, provided that means exist for enabling popular wishes, in the long-run, to prevail. The European and American examples are of little use to us, and the widely varied types within the Empire admit of no sure inferences. Allowance must be made for the effect of the Referendum wherever it exists (as in Australia and Switzerland), as a force tending to weaken both Chambers, but especially the Upper Chamber of a Legislature. It does, indeed, seem to be generally admitted, even by Canadians, that the nominated Senate of the Dominion of Canada, which is added to on strict party principles by successive Governments, is not a success, and it was so regarded by the Australian Colonies when they entered upon Federation, and set up an elective Senate. The South African statesmen, who had to reckon with racial divisions similar to those in Ireland, compromised with a Senate partly nominated, partly elected, but made the whole arrangement revisable in ten years.[177] It would be desirable, perhaps, on similar grounds of immediate policy, to let those who now represent the minority in Ireland have a deciding voice in the matter. No arrangement made otherwise than by a free Ireland herself can be regarded as final, and I suggest only that a nominated Chamber would be the best expedient at the outset, or in the alternative a partly nominated, partly elected Chamber. If and in so far as the Upper Chamber is elective, should election be direct or indirect? There is a somewhat attractive Irish precedent for indirect election, namely, the present highly successful Department of Agriculture, whose Council and Boards the County Councils have a share in constituting,[178] and I have seen and admired a most ingenious scheme of Irish manufacture for constructing the whole Irish Legislature and Ministry on this principle. But the objections appear to be considerable. Local bodies in the future should not be mixed up in national politics. That has been their bane in the past. Besides, the principle of indirect election is under a cloud everywhere, most of all in the United States. Australia rejected it in 1900, and the South Africans, while giving it partial recognition in the Senate, made the expedient provisional. _The Lower House_.--The Lower House might very well be elected on the same franchise and from the same constituencies as at present, subject to any small redistributional modifications necessitated by changes of population. This is certainly a matter which Ireland should have full power to settle for itself subsequently. Lord Courtney's proposals for Proportional Representation[179] merit close consideration and possess great attractions, especially in view of their very favourable reception from Nationalists in Ireland. My own feeling is that such novel proposals may overload a Bill which, however simply it be framed, will provoke very long and very warm discussion. If the system were to be regarded by the present minority as a real safeguard for their interests, its establishment, on tactical grounds alone, would be worth any expenditure of time and trouble; but, if they accept the assumption that existing parties in Ireland are going to be stereotyped under Home Rule, and then point to the paucity of Unionists in all parts of Ireland but the north-east of Ulster, they can demonstrate that no _practicable_ enlargement of constituencies could seriously influence the results of an election. My own view, already expressed, is that, provided we give Ireland sufficient freedom, wholly new parties must, within a short time, inevitably be formed in Ireland, and the old barriers of race and religion be broken down, and, therefore, that all expedients devised on the contrary hypothesis will eventually prove to be needless and might even prove unpopular and inconvenient. On the other hand, merits are claimed, with a great show of reason, for Proportional Representation, which are altogether independent of the protection of minorities from oppression. It is claimed that the system brings forward moderate men of all shades of opinion, checks party animus, and steadies the policy of the State. But I think that a free Ireland should be the judge of these merits. At present the bulk of the people do not understand the subject, and need much education before they can appreciate the issue. Meanwhile, the conventional party system, based on conventional constituencies, will, to say the least, do no more harm to Ireland than to any other State in the Empire. Any minor defects will be infinitesimal beside the vast and beneficial change wrought by responsible government. DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN THE TWO HOUSES. It is essential to provide for this, and it would be difficult to better the proposal in the Bill of 1893: that after two years, or an intervening dissolution, the question should be decided by a joint vote in joint session. MONEY BILLS AND RESOLUTIONS. To originate in the Lower House on the motion of a Minister. POLICE. The Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police should be under Irish control from the first. The former force will undoubtedly have to be reconstituted, and its reconstitution, as an ordinary Civil Police, ought to be undertaken by the Irish Government, but the financial interests of "retrenched" officers and men should be safeguarded in the Bill itself. JUDGES. All future appointments should be made by the Irish Government, without the suspensory period of six years named in the Bill of 1893. Present Irish Judges should retain their appointments, as in both previous Bills. The precedent of Canada, where provincial Judges, unlike the State Judges of Australia, are appointed and paid by the Federal Government, is certainly not relevant. LAW COURTS. The Federal analogy, except in one particular noticed under the next heading, has no application to Ireland. Only one provision of any importance is needed, namely, that Appeals, in the last resort, should be to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council instead of to the House of Lords. The Judicial Committee is the final Court of Appeal for the whole Empire, and, strengthened by one or more Irish Judges, should hear Irish Appeals. It is true that the tribunal has been subjected to some criticism lately, especially from Australia. Federal States naturally wish to secure pre-eminent authority for their own Supreme Courts. But the tribunal is, on the whole, popular with the colonial democracies, and the argument from distance and expense does not apply to Ireland. At the end of an interesting discussion at the last Imperial Conference, in which suggestions were put forward for strengthening the Judicial Committee by Colonial Judges, it was agreed that new proposals should be made by the Imperial Government for an Imperial Final Court of Appeal in two divisions, one for the United Kingdom, another for the Colonies. If that step is taken, the position of Ireland will need fresh consideration.[180] DECISION OF CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS.[181] The validity of an Irish Act which has received the Royal Assent will, like that of a Colonial Act which has received the Royal Assent, be determined in the ordinary course by the Irish Courts, with an ultimate appeal to the Judicial Committee, which should be strengthened for the occasion by one or more Irish Judges. But both the previous Home Rule Bills made the convenient provision that the Lord-Lieutenant should have the power of referring questions of validity arising on a Bill, before its enactment, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for final decision. There is a useful Canadian precedent for this provision, in the Imperial Act passed in 1891, for giving the Governor-General in Council power, in the widest terms, to refer, _inter alia_, questions touching provincial legislation to the Supreme Court of Canada, with an appeal from it to the Judicial Committee.[182] To follow this precedent would not involve any Federal complications. EXCHEQUER JUDGES. If Ireland controls her own Customs and Excise, no provision for this tribunal appears to be necessary, unless it be that some counterpart is needed for the Colonial Courts of Admiralty.[183] The Bill of 1886 (Clause 20) limited the jurisdiction to revenue questions. The Bill of 1893 (Clause 19) widened it to include "any matter not within the power of the Irish Legislature," or "any matter affected by a law which the Irish Legislature have not power to repeal or alter." The minds of the authors of this clause were evidently affected by the Federal principle which involves two judicial authorities--one for Federal, one for provincial matters. There seems to be no reason for embarking on any such complications in the case of Ireland. SAFEGUARDS FOR EXISTING PUBLIC SERVANTS IN IRELAND.[184] Retrenchment, and in some departments drastic retrenchment, will be needed in the Irish public service, just as it was needed in the Transvaal after the grant of Home Rule to that Colony. It is highly desirable that statutory provision should be made safeguarding existing interests. No such provision was made in the case of the Transvaal, and some bad feeling resulted. The past responsibility for excessive Civil expenditure lies, of course, on Great Britain, as it lay in the case of the Transvaal, and on grounds of abstract justice it would have been fair in that case for Great Britain to have assumed a limited part of the expense of compensating retrenched public servants. The practical objections to such a policy are, however, very great. In this, as in all matters, Ireland will gain more by independence than by financial aid, however strongly justified. All payments should be a direct charge upon the Irish Exchequer, not, as in some cases under the Bill of 1893, upon the Imperial Exchequer in the first instance, with provision for repayment from Ireland. FINANCE. I summarize the conclusions already indicated in previous chapters: 1. Fiscal independence, with complete control over all Irish taxation and expenditure. 2. Initial deficit to be supplied by a grant-in-aid, diminishing annually and terminable in a short period, say, seven years. 3. Future contribution to Imperial services to be voluntary. 4. Remission to Ireland of her share of the National Debt, and relinquishment by Ireland of her share of the Imperial Miscellaneous Revenue. 5. Imperial credit for Land Purchase to be extended as before, by loans guaranteed on the Consolidated Fund, under any conditions now or hereafter to be made by the Imperial authorities. Loans to the Public Works Commissioners to be optional. REPRESENTATION AT WESTMINSTER. To cease. CONFERENCE BETWEEN THE IRISH AND IMPERIAL AUTHORITIES. This is a very important point, because friendly consultation, as at present with the Colonies, will take the place of Irish representation in the Imperial Parliament, and will prove a far more satisfactory means of securing harmony and co-operation. Arrangements similar to those of the Imperial Conference, only more precise and efficient, and of a permanent character, should be made for consultation between the Irish and British authorities on all subjects where the interests of the two countries touch one another. The need for more frequent consultation with the Colonies is being felt with increasing force, and although no permanent consultation body has yet been created, special _ad hoc_ conferences have recently been held--for Defence in 1909, and for Copyright in 1910--in addition to the quadrennial meetings, where a vast amount of varied topics are discussed, and the most valuable decisions arrived at.[185] What the precise machinery should be in the case of Anglo-Irish relations I do not venture to say. The Ministers of the respective countries will be so easily accessible to one another that there would seem to be no need for the frequent attendance of a powerful personnel at joint meetings. But a Standing Committee, with a small official staff, would be necessary. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.[186] For amendment of the Home Rule Act itself it is not possible to make any statutory provision. Like all Constitutional Acts, it will only be alterable by another Imperial statute, which, if it were needed, should be promoted by Ireland. But one of the most important clauses in the Act itself will be that defining Ireland's power to amend her own Constitution without coming to Parliament. I venture to repeat the view that this power should be as wide as possible, consistently with the maintenance of the Imperial authority, and subject, of course, to provisions prescribing--(1) a time-limit for the initial arrangements; (2) the method of ascertaining Irish opinion; and (3) the majority in the Legislature, or in the electorate, or in both, necessary to sanction a constitutional change.[187] If a Home Rule Constitution, passed into law in the heat of a party fight at Westminster, proves to be perfect, a miracle will have been performed unparalleled in the history of the Empire. At this moment a Committee of Ireland's ablest men of all parties should be at work upon it, with an instructed public opinion behind them. So only are good Constitutions made, and even the very best need subsequent amendment. FOOTNOTES: [166] For details of prior Home Rule Bills, see the Appendix. [167] The Victorian and South Australian Constitutions of 1855 state in clear terms that the Ministry must be members of the Legislature, and all the Australian Constitutions of the same date, except that of Tasmania, formally exclude all other officials from the Legislature. The Transvaal Constitution of 1906 made no reference to either point; nor do the Federating Acts of 1867, 1900, and 1909 for Canada, Australia, and South Africa. [168] A fifth custom, very common, of compelling new Ministers to seek re-election is incorporated in most of the Australian Constitutions, but was expressly ruled out in Section 47 of the Transvaal Constitution of 1906. [169] See Hansard, July 3, 1893, Speech of Mr. John Morley. [170] The words "subject to this Constitution" or "subject to this Act" are sometimes added, but have no special significance. The Australian Commonwealth Constitution Act does not mention the Governor's "instructions," but only his "discretion." [171] British North America Act, 1867, Sects. 55-57; Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, Sects. 58-60. [172] See especially pp. 213-229. [173] See pp. 223-225. [174] Taken from Amendment XIV. to the United States Constitution, passed July 28, 1866. [175] British North America Act, 1867, Sect. 92 (13). But the Province may not encroach on powers reserved to the Dominion--e.g., in bankruptcy (Gushing v. Depuy [before Jud. Comm. of Privy Council]). See the "Constitution of Canada," J.E.C. Munro, pp. 247-253. There has been much litigation over points where Dominion and Federal powers overlapped. (See "Federations and Unions of the British Empire," H.E. Egerton, pp. 151-153). [176] For the proposals of the Bills of 1886 and 1893, see Appendix. [177] South Africa Act, 1909, Sects. 24 and 25. [178] See pp. 155-162. [179] See Pamphlet No. 17, published by Proportional Representation Society, and an excellent paper by Mr. J.F. Williams in "Home Rule Problems." [180] Cd. 5741, 1911, pp. 46-51. [181] See Appendix and the Bill of 1886, Clause 25; Bill of 1893, Clause 22. [182] 54 and 55 Vict., Ch. 25, Sect. 4. [183] Courts of Admiralty in the Colonies are regulated by Imperial Acts, though by an Act of 1890 large powers were conferred on the Colonies of declaring ordinary Courts to be Courts of Admiralty (see Moore's "Commonwealth of Australia," pp. 11 and 251). [184] See Clauses 27-30 of the Bill of 1886, and Clauses 25-28 of the Bill of 1893. [185] See the Precis of Proceedings, Cd. 5741, 1911. [186] See pp. 225-227. [187] See Section 128 of the Australia Constitution Act, 1900, and Section 152 of the South Africa Act, 1909. CONCLUSION Is it altogether idle to hope that some such body will yet come into existence, if not in time to influence the drafting of the Bill, at any rate to bring to bear upon its provisions the sober wisdom, not of one party only in the State, but of all; and so, if it were possible, to give to the charter of Ireland in her "new birth of freedom" the sanction of a united people? Home Rule will eventually come. Within the Empire, the utmost achieved by the government of white men without their own consent is to weaken their capacity to assume the sacred responsibility of self-government. It is impossible to kill the idea of Home Rule, though it is possible, by retarding its realization, to pervert some of its strength and beauty, and to diminish the vital energy on which its fruition depends. And it is possible in the case of Ireland, up to and in the very hour of her emancipation, after a struggle more bitter and exhausting than any in the Empire, to heap obstacles in the path of the men who have carried her to the goal, and on whom in the first instance must fall the extraordinarily difficult and delicate task of political reconstruction. They will be on their mettle in the eyes of the world to prove that the prophets of evil were wrong, to show sympathy and inspire confidence in the very quarters where they have been most savagely traduced and least trusted, and they will have to exhibit dauntless courage in attacking old abuses and promoting new reforms. They will need their hands strengthened in every possible way. The help must come--and it cannot come too soon--from the working optimists of Ireland, from the hundreds of men and women, of both parties and creeds, who are labouring outside politics to extirpate that stifling undergrowth of pessimism which runs riot in countries denied the light and air of freedom. All these people agree on the axiom that Ireland has a distinct individual existence, and that her future depends upon herself. No one should dare to stop there. Let him who feels impelled to stop there at any rate act with open eyes. In expecting to realize social reconstruction without political reconstruction--however divergent the aims may now seem to be--he expects to achieve what has never been achieved in any country in the Empire, and to achieve this miracle in the very country which has suffered most from political repression, and possesses the most fantastic system of government to be found in the King's dominions. The thing is impossible, and if at bottom he feels it to be so, and inclines sadly to the view that political servitude is but the least of two evils, I would only venture to suggest this: Is it not a finer course to stake something on a risk run in every white community but Ireland rather than to face the certainty of half achievement? And is it not, after all, a sound risk to trust the very men who now respond to the appeal for self-reliance, mutual tolerance, and united effort in their private affairs, not to renounce these qualities and abuse the rights of citizenship when the public affairs of their country are under their own control? As for the risk to Great Britain, I have only this last word to say: Let her people, not for the first time, show that they can rise superior to the philosophy, as fallacious in effect as it is base and cowardly in purpose, which sets the safety of a great nation above the happiness and prosperity of a small one. Within the last few weeks the wheel has turned full circle, and the almost inexplicable contradiction which has existed for so long between Unionism and Imperialism has been illuminated with a frank cynicism rare in our public life. It is being said that the freedom given to Canada cannot be given to Ireland, because the separation from the Empire theoretically rendered possible by such a step would be immaterial in the case of Canada, which is distant, but perilous in the case of Ireland, which is near. If this be Imperialism, it should stink in the nostrils of every decent citizen at home and abroad. It is true, to our shame, that, by little more than an accident, Canada obtained the freedom which gave her people harmony, energy, and wealth in the teeth of this mean and selfish doctrine. But Lord Durham took a higher view. Let me recall the memorable words which he added to his long and brilliant argument for liberty as a source, not only of domestic regeneration, but of affection and loyalty to the Motherland: "_But at any rate our first duty is to secure the well-being of our colonial countrymen;_ and if, in the hidden decrees of that wisdom by which this world is ruled, it is written that these countries are not for ever to remain portions of the Empire, we owe it to our honour to take good care that, when they separate from us, they should not be the only countries on the American continent in which the Anglo-Saxon race shall be found unfit to govern itself." Lord Durham was doubly right; in his prophecy of the closer union liberty would promote, and in elementary law which he laid down, of moral obligation which, whatever the result, he held superior to dynastic calculations. It is a fact of ominous significance that the intellectual successors of the men who most hotly repudiated both these doctrines in 1838 are being driven by pressure of their Irish views to revive that repudiation in 1911, and to revive it in the midst of the most effusive protestations of the need for still closer union with a Colony which would either have undergone the fate of Ireland or have ceased to be a member of the Empire if their philosophy had triumphed. I do not believe there is any conscious cant in that flagrant contradiction, but I do firmly believe that so long as their error about Ireland poisons in them the springs of Imperial thought, some element of fallacy lies in any Imperial policy they undertake. In common prudence, at any rate, they should avoid telling Canada, while beckoning her nearer to the heart of the Empire, that they only gave her freedom because she was so far. But I rely still on an awakening, on a fundamental change of spirit. The Empire owes everything to those who have disputed, sometimes at the cost of their lives, illegitimate authority. Some day the politicians who now spend sleepless nights with paste and scissors in ransacking the ancient files of the world's Press for proofs that Mr. Redmond once used words signifying that he aimed at "separation"--whatever that phrase may mean--will regret that they ever demeaned themselves by such petty labour, and will place Mr. Redmond among the number of those who have saved the Empire from the consequences of its own errors. APPENDIX COMPARATIVE TABLE, SHOWING THE PRINCIPAL PROVISIONS OF THE HOME RULE BILLS OF 1886 AND 1893 HOME RULE BILL OF 1886. HOME RULE BILL OF 1893. THE IRISH LEGISLATURE. To consist of the Crown and _Two To consist of the Crown and Orders_, sitting together, and _Two Houses_, sitting separately. unless either Order demands a separate vote, voting together. 1. _First Order_, to consist of 1. _Council_, of 48 Councillors _(a)_ 75 members elected on a £25 elected on a £20 franchise from franchise from a new set of a new set of constituencies. constituencies. Term of office, Term of office, eight years. ten years. _(b)_ 28 Peerage members, to give place by degrees to elective members as in _(a)_. _2. Second Order_, 204 members 2. _Assembly_ of 103 members elected as at present. Two from each elected as at present. constituency (with an alteration in the case of Cork). Dissolution at least every five Dissolution at least every five years. years. _Money Bills_ and votes to originate in the Assembly. DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN ORDERS OR HOUSES. After three years or a After two years or a dissolution question to be dissolution question to be decided by joint vote. decided by joint vote in joint session. ESTRICTIONS ON IRISH LEGISLATURE. 1. _Imperial Matters_. _No power to make laws about_-- _Nor_ with: the Lord-Lieutenant, The Crown, War or Peace, Army or conduct as Neutrals, Extradition, Navy, Volunteers or Militia, Trade-marks, nor (for six years) Prize or Booty of War, Treaties, Post Office in or out of Titles, Treason, Naturalization, Ireland. Trade or Navigation, Lighthouses, etc., Coinage, But Trade _within Ireland_ and Copyright, Patents, Post Office _inland_ Navigation conceded to (except within Ireland). Ireland. 2. _Irish Matters. No power to make laws for the purpose of_-- (1) _Establishing or endowing (1) Ditto, ditto, but more any religion_ or imposing explicit and far-reaching. disabilities or conferring privileges on account of _religion_, or affecting the undenominational constitution of National schools, etc. (2) Impairing rights or property (2) Ditto, ditto, or "without of corporations, without address for due process of law" and both Orders and consent of Crown. compensation. (3) Depriving anyone of _life, liberty, or property_ without due process of law in accordance with settled precedents, or denying _equal protection of laws_, or taking property without _just compensation_. (4) Imposing disabilities or conferring privileges on account of _birth, parentage, or place of business_. (5) (_For three years_) respecting relations of _landlord and tenant_ or the purchase and letting of _land_ generally. IRISH REPRESENTATION IN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT. To cease altogether (except in Ireland to send 80 members to the case of a proposed Westminster (instead of 103). alteration of the Home Rule Act). Peers as before. EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY. The Crown, as represented by the Lord-Lieutenant, acting in Irish affairs with the advice of an Irish Cabinet responsible to the Irish Legislature. POWER OF VETO ON IRISH LEGISLATION. To be held by Lord-Lieutenant To be held by Lord-Lieutenant, (acting normally on the advice _acting on advice of Irish of Irish Cabinet?), but subject Cabinet_, but subject to to instructions from Imperial instructions from Imperial Government. Government. FINANCE. 1. _Taxation_. _Customs and Excise_ still to be (1) _For six years_ all existing levied by Imperial Parliament and taxes to continue to be imposed collected by Imperial officers. by Imperial Parliament and All other taxes to be under Irish collected by Imperial officers. control. Ireland to have power to impose additional taxes of her own. (2) _After six years_, Customs and Excise to remain Imperial taxes; all others to be under Irish control. But Excise to be collected, though not levied, by Ireland. 2. _Ireland's Revenue_. _Gross_ revenue collected in (1) _True_ Irish revenue from Ireland from Imperial and Irish Imperial taxes (_i.e._, with taxes and Crown Lands, etc.; allowance made for duties _plus_ an Imperial grant towards collected in Ireland on the cost of Irish Police. (Total articles consumed in Great cost at that time £1,500,000: Britain, and _vice versa_). Ireland to pay £1,000,000, Treasury any surplus over (2) Revenue from Irish taxes £1,000,000, until cost reduced and Crown Lands. to that point.) (3) Imperial grant of one-third of annual cost of Irish Police (equal in first year to £486,000). 3. _Ireland's Contribution to Imperial Exchequer_. (1) _For thirty years_ Ireland (1) _For six years_ Ireland to to pay fixed annual maximum sums, pay _one-third of the "true" representing Ireland's share of revenue raised in Ireland from (a) Army, Navy, Civil List, etc.; Imperial taxes and Crown (b) National Debt. Payments not Lands_. (Estimated share for to be increased, but might be first year, £2,276,000, or diminished. Share for Army, Navy, about one-twenty-eighth of etc., never to exceed total Imperial expenditure.) one-fifteenth of total cost. Total payments under these heads for first year, £3,242,000. (2) _After thirty years_, (2) _After six years_, both contribution _to be revisable_. method and amount of Ireland's contribution to be revised and settled afresh. 4. _Contribution to Special War Taxes_. Optional to Ireland. For six years compulsory on Ireland to pay her proportional share of any such tax levied. _5. Post Office_. To be taken over by Ireland For six years to remain under under Irish Act. Imperial control. Profit or loss on Irish posts to be credited to or debited _against_ Ireland. POLICE. Dublin Police to be under Both Dublin Police and Imperial control for two years. Constabulary, as long as they Constabulary, "while that force should exist, to be under subsists," to be under Imperial Imperial control. control, but Ireland to have power to create a new force Meanwhile an ordinary locally under control of local controlled civil police to be authorities. gradually established by Irish Government, and to take the place of the old forces. But _for six years_, Imperial Government to have the power to maintain in existence the old forces, if considered expedient. JUDGES. _Present Irish Judges to Remain_. All future Irish Judges to be For six years future Irish appointed by Irish Government. Supreme Court Judges (not County Court Judges, etc.) to be appointed by Imperial Government. After six years by Irish Government. LAW COURTS. _Constitution to Remain the Same_. But appeals to the House of Lords to cease; instead, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS. _(As to Validity of Irish Laws, etc.)_. To be decided by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (including one or more Irish Judges). EXCHEQUER JUDGES. Legal proceedings in Ireland All legal proceedings in or against Imperial revenue land Ireland _which touch any authorities to be referred, if matter_ (financial or either party wishes, to the otherwise) _not within the Exchequer Division Judges of power of the Irish the United Kingdom. Legislature_ to be referred, if either party wishes, to two Exchequer Judges appointed and paid by the Imperial Government. Appeal to be to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. LORD-LIEUTENANT _Might be of any Religion_. Term of office indefinite. Term of office six years. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. After the first dissolution, After six years, Legislature Legislature to have power to to have power to reconstitute reconstitute Second Order. Assembly. REMARKS ON THE FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS. The arrangements differed widely in the two Bills. The main points of likeness were: (1) That from the first there was to be a _separate Irish Exchequer_; (2) that for all time Ireland was to be _denied control over the imposition of Customs and Excise_--that is to say, over about _three-quarters of her revenue_ as then raised; (3) that about _a third of the cost of the Irish Police_ was to be paid by the Imperial Government; (4) that payments due from Ireland to the Imperial Government were to be made a first charge on proceeds of Imperial taxes in Ireland. The principal points of difference were: 1. Under the Bill of 1886, apart from the very important restriction of Customs and Excise, Ireland was at once to have freedom to control her own taxation. Under the Bill of 1893 (as amended) there was to be a suspensory period of six years during which all existing taxes were to continue to be imposed by the Imperial Government; but with power to Ireland to add taxes of her own. _Amounts_ of Imperial taxes might be varied, but _no new ones_ imposed, except specially for war. After six years, financial freedom, except in Customs and Excise. Excise, however, was to be _collected_, though not levied, by Ireland. 2. "_Collected" and "True" Revenue_.--In 1886, Ireland was credited with all the revenue _collected in Ireland_ from Customs and Excise _(i.e.,_ the "gross" revenue from those taxes), but she had to pay the cost of collection herself. In 1893 allowance was made for duties collected in Ireland on articles consumed in Great Britain, and _vice versa,_ Ireland being credited only with her "true" revenue--that is, revenue from dutiable articles _consumed in Ireland._ Similar allowances made in the Income Tax account. A joint Anglo-Irish Committee was to settle these adjustments. This system involved a deduction from the first year's gross Irish revenue of nearly two millions. (In 1886 the corresponding sum, credited to Ireland, was £1,400,000.) On the other hand, in 1893 the greater part of the cost of collection (£235,000) was not to be borne by Ireland. 3. _Imperial Contribution by Ireland._--In 1886, a fixed annual maximum, which might be diminished, but could not be exceeded, revisable in thirty years. In 1893 (for six years) an annually ascertained _quota_--namely, a third of Ireland's "true" revenue (exclusive of taxes imposed by herself). 4. _Ireland's Budget._--Note the important point that under both Bills three-quarters of Irish revenue was derived from Customs and Excise, over which, in 1886, Ireland could exercise no control; in 1903 only the control given by the presence of eighty members in the House of Commons. In both cases Ireland was to be wholly responsible for her own civil expenditure (except for the existing Police). Under both Bills Ireland was intended to start with a surplus of about half a million, which may be regarded roughly as the equivalent, in both cases, of the Imperial share of the cost of the Irish Police. But note that, in 1886, Ireland being pledged to pay a fixed million of the cost of Police, would obtain no relief until the cost was reduced below a million; while in 1893, paying two-thirds of the annually ascertained cost, she would obtain relief from any annual reduction. The Police referred to was, of course, the then existing Police, imperially organized and controlled. The new civil Police eventually set up in substitution would be financed and controlled by the Irish Government. The charges, therefore, on the British taxpayer would, it was expected, be a rapidly diminishing one. The loss on Irish posts in 1893, debited against Ireland, was estimated at £52,000. 5. _Special War Taxes._--Ireland's contribution optional in 1886; in 1893, compulsory (at any rate, for six years, which would have included the beginning of the South African War). INDEX Abercromby, Sir R., 57, 129 Absentee taxes, in Ireland, 23-30; in Australasia, 116 Absenteeism, in Ireland, 12, 51; in Prince Edward Island, 75-76; in Upper Canada, 80; in Lower Canada, 85; in Australia, 110 Acadia. See Maritime Provinces Act of Union, 1800, 60-64, 232-233 Administrators, in South Africa, 197 Agricultural Co-operation. See Irish Agricultural Organization Society, also 168, 177 Agricultural Grant, Ireland, 267 Agricultural Rates Act, 1896, 267 Agricultural Statistics, Ireland, 150, 306-308 Amendment of Constitution, Ireland, 225-227, 338; Colonies, 225-226, 338 American Colonies, colonization of, 8-9; land tenure in (see Land Tenure); mercantile system, 17-18, 30; government of, 22-23, 33; Revolution in, 30-35, 72, 74. See also United States Anglo-Normans, in Ireland, 6-7 Annuities, tenant's. See Land Purchase Armagh, Peep o' Day Boys in, 55 Army Act, 1881, 220 (footnote) Army and Navy, 218-219, 329 Arnold, Benedict, 40 Ashbourne Act, 1885, 309. See also Land Acts Australian Colonies Act, 1850, 107, 225 Australian Colonies Customs Duties Act, 1873, 220, footnote Australian Colonies, history of, See Chapter VI., and under names of the various States; federation of, as Commonwealth of Australia, 119, 196, 198; finance in, 227-228, 245-246, 288, 295-298. See also Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, Constitutions, Federal Systems, Customs and Excise, Subsidies Baldwin, Robert, in Upper Canada, 82, 103 Balfour, Arthur,138, 152, 172, 212 Balfour, Gerald, 152, 158, 338 Baltimore, Lord, 21 Barbour, Sir David, on Anglo-Irish Finance, 249-257 Barry, Sir Redmond, 114 Belfast, 45, 146, 162, 170, 175 Belgium, cost of Government in, 253 Berkeley, G.F.H., 178 Bidwell, B., in Upper Canada, 82 Birrell, Augustine, his Land Act of 1909. See Land Acts, Land Tenure, Land Purchase Bloemfontein, Convention of, 123 Boer War of 1880-1881, 125; of 1899-1902, 128-129, 133,216 Bonus to landlords, 310-312, 317. See also Land Purchase Boomplatz, battle of, 1848, 123 Botha, General, 143 Brand, President, 124 Bright, John, 69, 71, 213, 308 British Columbia, finances of, 246, 299; Upper Chamber in, 331 British North America Act, 1867, citations from, 219, 220 (footnote), 225, 299, 323, 325 (footnote), 327, 330 (footnote); 1891, 335. See also Canada Buller, Charles, 87, 89, 94-95 Burgh, Hussey, 36 Burke, Edmund, 12, 27-29, 34, 59, 74, 77 Burke, Robert O'Hara, 114 Butt, Isaac, 71, 135, 171 Canada, Upper and Lower, history of, (see Chapter V. and Introduction, viii, 340-341); relations of, with American Colonies, 72; with United States, 80, 87, 92, 101; Union of the two Provinces proposed, 76-78, carried out, 96-104, 106, 192, 194, 198, 200-201, 223, and Introduction, viii; comparison of history with that of Transvaal, 132-135; confederation of, as the Dominion of Canada, proposed, 82, 96, carried out (1867), 97, 193-196; finance in, 227-228, 298-299, 304. See also Constitutions, Federal Systems, Customs and Excise, Subsidies, Guaranteed Loans, British North America Acts, 1867, 1891 Carleton, Sir Guy, 73, 129 Carnarvon, Lord, 123-124 Carolina, plantation of, 9, 10, 23 Carson, Sir Edward, Introduction, x Casey, Judge, 115 Castlereagh, Lord, 62, 134, 135 Catholic Relief Act, 1778, 36; 1793, 52-53, 55 Chamberlain, Joseph, 1-4, 11, 103, 206, 257, 282 Channel Islands, finance, 288 Charlemont, Lord, 16, 46-47, 61 Charles II., King, 9 Chartist movement, 88 Chatham, Lord, 27, 29-31, 34, 74 Chief Secretary, 64,160; compared with Canadian Governor, 102 Childers, Hugh, in Prince Edward Island, 76 (footnote); as Chairman of Royal Commission on finance, 239-257 Church Funds, Irish, 271-272 Civil List, 328 Civil servants, Ireland, 336; Transvaal, 336 Clare, Earl of, See Fitzgibbon Clergy Reserves, Upper Canada, 82; Lower Canada, 84-85 Cockburn, Sir John, 85 Coinage, colonial and Irish powers over, 219, 220 (footnote); Act of 1853, 220 (footnote) Collins, Francis, in Upper Canada, 82 Colonial Attorneys Relief Act, 1857, 222 (footnote) Colonial Courts of Admiralty Act, 1890, 220 (footnote), 336 (and footnote) Colonial Defence forces, 215-219 (and footnote) Colonial Laws Validity Act, 222 Colonial Marriages Act, 1866, 222 (footnote) Colonial Naval Defence Act, 1865, 220 (footnote) Colonial Office, 79 Colonial Prisoners' Removal Act, 1869, 222 (footnote) Colonial Probates Act, 1892, 222 (footnote) Commercial Propositions of 1785, 43, 232 Commercial Restrictions, Ireland, 17-19, 30, 37, 236, 294; American Colonies, 17-18, 30; Canada, 78 Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, citations from, 219, 220 (footnote), 296, 324-325 (footnote), 338 (footnote), 332 Conferences, Imperial, 205, 215, 337; suggestions for, with Ireland under Home Rule, 205, 215, 337 Congested Districts Board, 152, 176-167; in Land Purchase, 310, 314; under Home Rule, 176-177, 317, 319 Connecticut, 8-9, 23 Constitutional Act, 1791, Canada, 76-79, 80 Constitutional Doubts, settlement of, 335 Constitution, Irish, summary of proposed, Chapter XV. Constitutions: Transvaal, of 1905, 130-137; of 1906, 137-139, 223-224, 323-324, 325 (footnote); United States, 191, 193-197, 224-225, 227; Dominion of Canada, 219, 220, 227, 327, 328, 330, 331, 334; Australian States, 107-108, 325 (footnote); Commonwealth of Australia, 196, 213, 219, 220, 227, 332; South African Union, 197, 224. See also Federal Systems and individual Colonies Continental Congress. 1774, 35 "Contract" finance, 300, 303-306 Contribution of Ireland to Imperial services; in the eighteenth century, 26, 231; during the Union, 216, 234, 237-239, 247, 253-254, 282; under Home Rule, 216, 282, 286-287, 302-303,337 Convict system, Australia, 74 Copyright, 219-20 (footnote); Imperial Conference on, 337 Corn Laws, Repeal of, 236 Cornwallis, Lord, 35, 62 Courtney, Lord, 333 Cromwell, Oliver, 9 Crown Colony, features of, in Irish Government, 1-2, 64, 144, 157, 179, 188, 213, 284, 306 Crown Lands, revenue from, 275 Currie, B.W., 249, 252 Customs and Excise, Ireland, control of, under Home Rule, 227-229, 231-234, 275-279, 287-294, 300-301; Australia, 227-228, 245-246, 288, 295-299; Canada, 227-228; United States, 227-228; in Colonies generally, 254, 288. See also Finance, Federal Systems Debt, Irish public, until 1816, 230-233 Danish invasions, 6 Declaration of Independence, Irish, 38; American, 35 Declaratory Acts for America and Ireland, 23-24, 31, 34, 45 Defender Society, 55-56 Deficit, in Irish Revenue, amount of, 259-260, 277, 279; method of dealing with, 281-286, 337 Denmark, agricultural policy in, 237, 290 Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, 152; founding of, 155-162; allusions to, 234, 274, 291, 332 Derby, Lord, 123 Derry, Bishop of, 47 Development Commissioners, grants to Ireland, 274 Devolution movement, 152 Devon Commission, 1845, 69 Dillon, John, 146 Disagreement between two Chambers of Irish Legislature, 334 Disestablishment of Irish Church, 70, 103, 154 Disraeli, Benjamin, 109, 235 Dissenters, in Ireland, 9, 19-20, 24, 31; in American Colonies, 9, 20; in Canada, 80-82 Dublin, 170, 173, 186 Duffy, Sir C. Gavan, 114-116 Dunraven, Lord, 152, 178 Durban, Conference at, for Closer Union, 156-157, 192 Durham, Lord, Introduction, viii, 88-91, 94-99, 104, 126 Durham Report, 94-99, 104, 133 Dutch East India Company, 120 Education, Ireland, 71, 170, 174-176, 285; finance of, 268-269; England, 269; Scotland, 269 Egerton, H.E., 31, 330 Elgin, Lord, 93, 102-103, 105 Emancipation, Catholic, 52-53, 57, 62-63, 88 Emigration, from Ireland, 19-20, 31, 87, 111, 148, 156, 186 Emmett, Robert, 83, 86, 135, 171 Encumbered Estates Act, 1849, 69, 111 Equalization of taxes, in Ireland and Great Britain, 234-235, 246 Estate duties, assessment to, as test of taxable capacity, 240, 238; yield of, in Ireland, 275-276 Estates Commissioners. See Land Purchase Eureka Stockade, 1854, 112-113 Evicted tenants, 177 Executive authority, in Colonies, 221-222, 323-328; in Ireland, under Home Rule, 221-222, 323-328 Executive Council, in Upper Canada, 79, 81, 100; in Lower Canada, 79, 84, 100 Extradition, Colonial powers over, 219 (and footnote); Irish powers over, 219, 329 "Family Compact," in Upper Canada, 81; in the Maritime Provinces, 88 Famine, Irish, 1847, 69, 103, 236 Farrer, Lord, 249, 252-256 "Federal" Home Rule, 188, 192-206, 226-227, 294-300 Federal systems, in general, 192-197; Upper Chamber in, 212-213, 229, 300, 331-332; division of powers, as in Home Rule Bill, 223, 330; Amendment of Constitution, 225-227; finance, 227-229, 242-246, 294-300; judiciary, 334-336; settlement of constitutional questions, 335. See also Canada, Australian Colonies, South Africa, United States, Switzerland, Germany, Constitutions Fenianism, 70 Financial relations of Ireland and Great Britain (see Chapters XI., XII., XIII.); before the Union, 230-231, 290; from the Union to 1896, 232-57; Royal Commission on, 1894-1896, 239-57; present situation, 178-181, and Chapters XII. and XIII. Finance, of the Home Rule Bill, Chapter XIII., and summary, 337 Finance, Colonial. See Federal Systems, and under names of Colonies Finance Act, 1894, 222 (footnote) Finance Act, 1909, 259, 301 Finlay, Father T.A., 165 Fiscal amalgamation, 1817, 233, 289 Fisher, J., author of "The End of the Irish Parliament," 13, 54 Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, Introduction, xi, and 49, 58-9, 60, 62, 65, 97, 126, 131, 134, 146 Fitzgibbon, James, 81 Fitzwilliam, Lord, 53-54 Flood, Henry, 46-47 Ford, Patrick, 149 Fortescue, Hon. J.W., 39-40 Foster's Corn Law, 51, 236 (footnote) Fox, Charles James, on Canada, 78-79; on Ireland, 91 France, Seven Years' War with, 26; in Canada, 72-73; in American War of Independence, 35; effect of, on Ireland, 35; effect of French Revolution on Ireland, 54-55; invasions of Ireland, 56 Franklin, Benjamin, 31, 33-34 Free Trade, opinion in Ireland on, 170, 290; influence of, on Ireland, 235-237. See also Tariff Reform, Customs and Excise French-Canadians. See Chapter V., especially pages 72-78, 83-87, 96-97; also 121 Frere, Sir Bartle, 124 Gaelic League, 166-168 Geelong, 114 Georgia, 9, 21 Germany, 147; Federal Constitution of, 195, 228 (Zollverein) Gladstone, W.E., Irish land reform, 68, 70, 99; on colonial liberty, 109-111; his Transvaal and Irish policies, 125, 128; on representation of Ireland at Westminster, 203-211; taxation of Ireland, 234-235; on Irish expenditure, 282; financial schemes in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, 300-303, and Appendix; for details of the Bills generally, see Appendix and in the text _passim_ Gourlay, William, in Upper Canada, 82 Governors, in American Colonies, 23, 33; in the Canadas, 79, 102; in the Dominion of Canada, 195, 199; in the Commonwealth of Australia, 195 (footnote), 196, 221 Grattan, Henry, 44, 45, 46, 50, 53 Grattan's Parliament, Chapter III. Greene, General, 40 Greville's "Memoirs," 94, 103 Grey, Sir George, in Australasia, 115-117; in South Africa, 123-124, 194 Grote, George, 89, 92 Guarantee Fund, 267. See also Land Purchase Guaranteed Loans, to Ireland (see Land Purchase); to the Transvaal and Canada, 318; to Crown Colonies and Foreign Powers, 318-319 Habeas Corpus Act, 330 Hamilton, Sir Edward, 238 Hancock, John, 35 Henderson, Professor G.C., 116 Henry VIII., Ireland in the reign of, 8 Hewins, Professor W.A.S., 293-294 Holland, Bernard, 33 Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. For details, see Appendix, allusions in text _passim_ "Home Rule Problems," edited by Basil Williams, Introduction, xiv, and pp. 178, 203, 307, 333 House of Lords: under the Union, 64; after Home Rule, 212, 229, 300 Howe, Joseph, in Nova Scotia, 88 Hume, philosophy of, 59 Hume, Joseph, 89, 90, 109 Hyde, Dr. Douglas, 166 Imperial Federation, 204-205 "In and Out" Clause, 209 Income Tax, first imposition of, in Ireland, 234-235; assessment to, as test of taxable capacity, 240, 258; yield of, in Ireland, 275-276; errors in computing Irish yield, 278 (footnote) India, 12 Indians, in America, 10 Industrial Development Associations, 165, 168, 290, 292 Insurance, National, 178, 274, 306 International Copyright Act, 1886, 220 (footnote) Ireland Development Grant, 311 Irish Agricultural Organization Society, 162-165 Irish Council Bill, 1907, 192, 304 _Irish Homestead_, 165 Irish Members at Westminster. See Representation at Westminster Irish Universities Act, 1908, 153, 173 Isle of Man, finance of, 255, 288 Jamaica, 1, 284 James, Sir Henry, 330 Jebb, Richard, 117-118 Johannesburg, 131, 133 Judges, Irish, under Home Rule, 334-5; Exchequer Judges, 336 Judicial salaries, Ireland, 273 Kilmore, 114 Kitchener, Lord, 129 Kruger, President Paul, 124 Kyte, Ambrose, 114 Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1906, 153, 320 Labour questions, in Ireland, 170, 178 Lafontaine, Sir Louis, 103 Laing's Nek, 125 Lalor, Peter, 112-113 Land Acts, Irish, of 1870, 16-17, 68, 70-71, 151, 309; 1881, 16-17, 70, 103, 151, 309; 1885, 309; 1887, 70, 151; 1891, 70, 152, 309-310; 1896, 70, 152, 309; 1903, 71, 103, 152-153, 155, 310-321; 1909, 153, 311-321. See also Land Tenure, Land Purchase Land Commission, 70; cost and control of, 273, 303, 317-319 Land League, 70 Land Purchase in Ireland, Chapter XIV., 71, 151, 152-153, 177, 243, 285, 337; in Prince Edward Island, 75, 318 Land Tenure, in Ireland, 11-17, 51, 55-57, 65, 66-70, 143, 151-152, 177, 236-237; in America, 10, 15; in Prince Edward Island, 13, 75-76, 115, 143; in Upper Canada, 80; in Lower Canada, 84-85; in Australia, 115-116; in New Zealand, 116. See also Land Acts, Land Purchase Lanyon, Sir Owen, 124, 127 Law, Bonar, 293 Law Courts, Ireland, 334-335 Lecky, Professor W.H., Introduction, vi and ix, and 6, 13, 16, 19, 29, 49, 57, 183 Legislative Councils, in America, 23; in Upper Canada, 79, 81, 100-102; in Lower Canada, 79, 84, 100 Legislature, Irish, powers of, general, 213-229, 328-330; financial powers, Chapter XIII., and 317-321, 337; composition of, 330-334. For restrictions on, see also Safeguards for Minorities Legislatures, Colonial, powers and limitations of, general, 215-229. See also Constitutions, Federal Systems, and under names of Colonies Leinster, plantations in, 9 Lieutenant-Governors, in Dominion of Canada, 195, 221 Limerick, Treaty of, 12, 63 Local Government Board, cost of, 272 Local Government, working of, in Ireland, 103, 172-174 Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, 103, 154, 158 Local taxation, Ireland, 266; grants in aid of, 266-267, 311 Locker-Lampson, G., Introduction, vi, and 65 Londonderry, Lord, 61 Long, Walter, Introduction, x, xi, and 142, 152 Lord-Lieutenant, before the Union, 22-23, 32-33; under the Union, 64; under Home Rule, 192, 199, 219, 221, 266, 324-327, 328, 335 Louisburg, capture of, 73 Lyttelton, Mr. Alfred, 131-132, 135 MacDonnell, Lord, 61, 152, 304 Mackenzie, W.L., in Upper Canada, 74, 82, 86-87, 94, 105 McKenna, Sir J., 238 McManus, T.B., 115 Maine, 8 Majuba, 125, 128 Malta, 1 Manitoba, 331 Maritime Provinces, 72, 75, 88, 95, and Chapter V. See also Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island Maryland, 8-9, 21 Massachusetts, 8, 10, 22-23 (and footnote), 35 Meagher, T.F., 113-114 Melbourne, Lord, 94 Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, 220, 222 Mill, John Stuart, 67, 69, 89, 95 Milner, Lord, 129, 131, 138-139, 142 Miscellaneous revenue, Imperial, Ireland's share of, 286-287 Mitchel, John, 113-114 Molesworth, Sir William, 89, 93-94, 109 Molyneux, on Irish liberty, 31 Montreal, 74-75, 103 Montgomery, General, 35, 75 Moore, W. Harrison, author of "The Commonwealth of Australia," 219 Morgan's Riflemen, 73 Morley, Lord, his "Life of Gladstone," Introduction, x, and 109, 125; on Irish Members at Westminster, 209; on Clause 7 of the Bill of 1886, 326 Municipal Technical Institute, Belfast, 162, 175 Municipal Reform Act, 1840, 103 Munster, plantations in, 9 Murray, Miss A.E., 17, 235, 293 Natal, 140, 196 National Debt, Ireland's contribution to, 286-287, 337 Naturalization, 219, 220 (footnote), 329 Naval Agreement, 1911, 218 Navigation Acts, 17-18 Navies, Colonial. See Colonial Defence Forces Neilson, John, in Lower Canada, 85 Nelson, Wilfred, in Lower Canada, 85 Netherlands Government, 121 Neutrality, 219, 329 New Brunswick, Chapter V., and 72, 75-76, 88, 97, 194 New England, 9, 21, 120 Newfoundland, 73, 193-197, 288 New Haven, 8 New Netherlands, plantation of, 9 New South Wales, 106-107, 114, 117, 120, 194, 196; finance in, 297-298, 300 New Zealand, 106, 108, 115-117, 147, 193, 197, 217, 288 Ninety-two Resolutions, Lower Canada, 86 Nixon, Captain John, 35 North Carolina, 21 (footnote) Nova Scotia, Chapter V., and 72, 76, 88, 97, 102, 194 Oakboys, in Ulster, 16 O'Brien, Barry, 178, 213 O'Brien, Murrough, 253 O'Brien, Smith, 83, 103, 114, 171 O'Brien, William, 177, 181 O'Callaghan, Dr., in Lower Canada, 85 O'Connell, Daniel, 70-71, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 99, 123 O'Conor Don, the, 249 Octennial Act, 168, 357 O'Hara, James, 81 Old Age Pensions, 153, 178-179, 181, 273, 285, 291, 303 Oldham, Professor C.H., on Irish finance, 234, 262, 270 O'Loughlen, Sir Brian, in Victoria, 114 "Omnes Omnia" Clause, 209 Ontario, Province of, prior to 1867, See Canada; after 1867, see Canada, Confederation of, and 194, 196, 331 Orange Free State, 120, 123-124, 126, 135, 196, 285 Orange Society, in Ireland, 55, 137, 155, 184, 187; in Canada, 87, 103, 184; in Australia, 114, 184 O'Shanassy, Sir John, in Victoria, 114 Paley, Dr., Philosophy of, 59 Papineau, Louis, in Lower Canada, 47, 85-87, 94, 105 Parliamentary parties, Irish, 181-182 Parliament, Irish (pre-Union), 24, 43, 50-58, 61, 62; finance under, 230-231, 290 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 135, 151, 171 Patents, 219 Peace of Paris, 26 Peel, Sir Robert, on the Repeal of the Union, 91-92, 99, 236 Peep o' Day Boys, 55 Penal Code, 12-14, 26, 36, 55, 57, 65, 72, 156, 183, 308 Penn, William, 9 Pennsylvania, 9, 21 Pilkington, Mrs., 165 Pitt, William, 50, 53, 54, 62, 74, 96, 106, 135, 232 Plantations, of Ireland and America, 8-9 Plunkett House, 164 Plunkett, Sir Horace, 155, 159 (footnote), 160, 165 Police, Irish, present position and cost of, 253, 273; under Home Rule, 180, 219, 285, 334 Poor Law (Ireland), 71, 174 Port Phillip. See Victoria Postal Services, Irish, powers over, 220; loss on, 243, 275, 286 Poynings' Act, 24, 45 Preamble, Home Rule Bill, 323 Prince Edward Island, 13, 72, 74, 88, 97, 115. See also Land Tenure, Land Purchase Prize and Booty of War, 219, 329 Proportional Representation, 333 Proprietary Colonies of America, 10, 23 Public Works, Commissioners of, Ireland, 319-321, 337 Quakers, 9, 21 _Quarterly Review_, 99 Quebec, town of, 74 Quebec, Province of, prior to 1791, 72-78; from 1791 to 1867, see under names of Lower Canada and Canada; after 1867, see Canada, Confederation of, and 194, 196, 198-200, 208; present Constitution of, compared with Irish Home Rule, 198-200, 206, 209 Quebec Act, 1774, 73-74 Queensland, 109, 196; finance in, 297 Railways, Ireland, 71, 174 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 8 Rebellions, Irish, of 1798, 55, 56; of 1848, 83, 103 Recess Committee, action and report of, 155-162 Reciprocity Agreement, 293 Redmond, John, 141, 148, 156, 181, 341 Reform, Parliamentary (Ireland), 45-46, 50-58; Great Britain, 48, 53, 59, 88 Repeal of the Union, 70, 91 Representation at Westminster, of Ireland, 203-229, 284, 337; of American Colonies (proposals for), 34, 205; of Canada (proposals for), 77 Residuary powers, under Home Rule, 223. See also Federal Systems Retief, Piet, 122 Revenue, from Ireland. See Financial Relations, Estate Duties, Income Tax, Customs and Excise Revenue, "true" and "collected," method of estimating in United Kingdom, 242-246, 275-278 (and footnotes); in Australia, 242-246, 296 Revolution, Irish, 1780-2, Chapter II.; American, 1775, Chapter II Rhode Island, 8, 23 (footnote) Road Board, grants to Ireland, 274 Roebuck, J.A., 89, 90, 94 Rose, Holland, 75 Royal Assent, 221, 326-327 Ruskin, John, 106 Russell, George W., 165 Russell, Lord John, on Canada, 87, 90, 91, 92, 99, 100, 102, 221; on Australia, 109-110 Russell, T.W., 159 (and footnote) Rutland, Lord, 54, 77 Safeguards for Minorities, Ireland, 191, 223-225, 329-330; United States, 224, 329-330; Canada, 225; Australia, 225 St. Lawrence, River, 75 Salaberry, Colonel, 83 Sand River Convention, 1852, 123 Saunderson, Colonel, 156 (footnote), 215 (and footnote) Scotland, 104, 159 (footnote); Home Rule for, 200-203; revenue from, and expenditure on, 238, 242; police in, 253; education in, 269 Selborne, Lord, 142 Seventh Report of Grievances (Upper Canada), 82, 86 Seven Years' War, 26, 72 Sexton, T., 249 Shepstone, Sir T., 124 Sinn Fein, 168 Smith, Adam, 51 Smith, Sir Harry, 123 Socialism, in Ireland, Introduction, xiv, 144, 170 South Africa Act, 1909, citations from, 140-141, 323, 326, 332, 338 South African Colonies, history of, see Chapter VII., and under Cape of Good Hope, Transvaal, Orange Free State, Natal; Federal Union, proposed (1859), 117, 123; Conference for Closer Union (1908), 140, 156-157; Union of 1909, 140-143, 196-197; see also South Africa Act, 1900, Constitutions, Federal Systems South Australia, 106-107, 116, 196; finance in, 297 Spanish Colonies, 25 Spirit duty, 234-235, 237-238, 244 Stamp Act (1765), and Revenue Duties (America), 27, 34-35, 72 Stanley, Lord, 90-92 Steelboys, in Ulster, 16 Subsidies, to Ireland, under Home Rule, 281-286, 337; to Colonies, 284-285; by Federal Governments to subordinate States or Provinces, 296-300, 304 Suez Canal shares, revenue from, 287 Supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, 204, 221-225, 323, 328 Supreme Court, of Australia, 196, 334-335; of South Africa, 197, 334-335; of Canada, 195, 334-335 Sutherland, Sir T., 249 Swift, Dean, 32 Switzerland, Federal Constitution of, 195, 331 _Sydney Bulletin_, 117, 143 Tariff Reform, opinion in Ireland on, 170; effect of, on Ireland, 289, 292-293; opinion of Professor Hewins on, for Ireland, 293-294 Tariffs. See Customs and Excise, Free Trade, Tariff Reform Tasmania, 106-107, 113, 196; finance in, 297-298, 300 Taxable capacity of Ireland: in 1800, 232; in 1894, 238-257; in 1911, 258-260 Technical Instruction, Ireland, 161, 175 Temperance Reform, Ireland, 177-178, 292 Tenant League, 70 Ten Resolutions (1837), 87 Territorials, Ireland, 118, 218 Thompson, Poulett, Lord Sydenham, 102 Titles, power of conferring, 219, 329 Tone, Wolfe, 54, 56, 57, 62, 73, 76, 86, 135 Toronto, 81 Townshend, Lord, 25, 32 Townshend, Charles, 27 Town Tenants Act, 153 Trade, external, of Ireland, 147-148, 291 Trade and Navigation, Colonial and Irish powers over, 220, 329 Trade-mark, Irish, 165; Colonial and Irish powers over, 219 Transvaal, Introduction, xiv, 120, 123-143, 196, 318, 336, and whole of Chapter VII. See also South African Colonies, Constitutions Treason, 219, 329 Treasury, Committee on Land Purchase, 1908, 311; Returns (Financial Relations), 242-246, 259-260, 264-279 Treaties, power of making, 219, 329 Trek, the Great, 120-123, 128, 133 Trimleston, Lord, 25 Ulster, plantation of, 8, 9; land tenure in, 15, 52, 55-7; emigration from, 15, 19-20, 31, 186; Orange Society in (see Orange Society); comparison with Canadian minorities, 92, 97-9, 100-2, 214; with Transvaal minority, 139, 186, 214; views of, with regard to representation at Westminster, 214-215; under Home Rule, Introduction, x, xii, 170, 182-187, 302, 333 Ulster Custom. See Ulster, Land Tenure in "Umpirage," of Great Britain, in Canada, 101, 155; in Ireland, 155, 208 "Undertakers," 25, 81 Union, of Ireland and Great Britain, Chapter IV.; compared with that of the two Canadas, Introduction, viii, 77-78, 96-104, 106, 192, 194, 198, 200-201; of the Canadas (see Canada) United Empire Loyalists, 74-75, 80 United Irishmen, 54, 56, 76 United States, relations with Canada, 80, 87, 92, 101; emigration to, from Ireland, 111, 148; feeling towards Ireland, 148-149; Constitution of, 193-195. See also Federal Systems, Constitutions, Safeguards for Minorities, Customs, and Excise Universities, Irish, 153, 273, 329 Upper Chamber, Irish, under Home Rule, 331-332. See also Federal Systems Van Diemen's Land. See Tasmania Vereeniging, Peace of, 129 Victoria, Chapter V., and 106-107, 114-115, 194, 196, 198, 208; finance in, 297 Virginia, 8, 22 Volksraad, 124 Volunteers, Ireland (1778-1783), 37, 44-45, 52, 54, 60-61, 73, 103, 135, 187, 230. See also Territorials Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, in Canada, 89, 94-95, 104; in Australia, 108-109, 116 Wakefield, Vicar of, 107 Wales, Home Rule for, 199-200 War and Peace, power of making, 219, 329 Washington, General George, 40 Welby, Lord, on Anglo-Irish finance, 249-256, 280-281, 282, 293 Wellington, Duke of, on Ireland and Canada, 70, 88, 90, 126 Wentworth, William, in Australia, 107, 114, 120 Western Australia, 106-108, 115, 196, and Chapter V. West Indies, banishment of Irish to, 9; grants-in-aid to, 284 Whiteboys, 16, 51, 56, 67, 107 Willcocks, Stephen, in Upper Canada, 82 William IV., on Canada, 99 Williams, Basil, Editor of "Home Rule Problems," Introduction, xiv, 203 Wills Act, 1861, 222 (footnote) Wilmot, Samuel, in New Brunswick, 88 Wyndham, George, 152; his Land Act of 1903, 71, 152, 310, etc. Young, Arthur, on Ireland, 14, 32, 69 Young Ireland movement, 71, 114, 135 
29710	----	* * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | The original book for this e-text is full of inconsistent | | hyphenation, punctuation and capitalization, which has | | been preserved. This e-text contains Irish dialect, with | | unusual spelling. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * IRELAND AS IT IS AND AS IT WOULD BE UNDER HOME RULE. SIXTY-TWO LETTERS WRITTEN BY THE SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF THE BIRMINGHAM DAILY GAZETTE, BETWEEN MARCH AND AUGUST, 1893. _With Map of Ireland showing the places visited._ BIRMINGHAM: BIRMINGHAM DAILY GAZETTE COMPANY, LIMITED, HIGH STREET. LONDON: 47, FLEET STREET, E.C. PRINTED BY THE BIRMINGHAM GAZETTE CO., LTD., 52 AND 53, HIGH STREET, BIRMINGHAM. [Illustration] SPECIAL COMMISSIONER'S PREFACE. Irish Loyalists will not soon forget the early part of 1893. Arriving in Dublin in March, it at once became evident that the industrial community regarded Home Rule, not with the academical indifference attributed to the bulk of the English electorate, but with absolute dismay; not as a possibility which might be pleasantly discussed between friends, but as a wholly unnecessary measure, darkly iniquitous, threatening the total destruction of all they held dear. English lukewarmness was hotly resented, but the certainty that England must herself receive a dangerous if not a mortal wound, was scant comfort to men who felt themselves on the eve of a hopeless struggle for political, nay, even for material existence. This was before the vast demonstrations of Belfast and Dublin, before the memorable function in the Albert Hall, London, before the hundreds of speakers sent forth by the Irish Unionist Alliance had visited England, spreading the light of accurate knowledge, returning to Ireland with tidings of comfort and joy. The change in public feeling was instant and remarkable. Although from day to day the passage of the Bill through the Commons became more and more a certainty, the Irish Unionists completely discarded their fears, resuming their normal condition of trust and confidence. Mr. H.L. Barnardo, J.P., of Dublin, aptly expressed the universal feeling when he said:-- "We have been to England, and we know three things,--that the Bill will pass the Commons, that the Lords will throw it out, and that the English people don't care if they do." This accounted for the renewed serenity of the well-doing classes, whose air and attitude were those of men thankful for having narrowly escaped a great danger. The rebound was easily observable in cities like Dublin and Belfast, where also was abundantly evident the placid resignation of the Separatist forces, whose discontent with the actual Bill and profound distrust of its framer, superadded to an ever-increasing qualmishness inevitably arising from acquaintance with the prospective statesmen of an Irish Legislature, caused them to look forward to the action of the Lords with ill-disguised complacency. In regions more remote the scattered Loyalists lacked the consolation arising from numbers and propinquity to England, and accordingly their tremors continued, and, in a smaller degree, continue still. To them the Bill is a matter of life and death; and while their industry is crippled, their mental peace is destroyed by the ever-present torture of suspense. As to the merits of the case for Home Rule, I would earnestly ask fair-minded opponents to remember that during my wanderings I met with numbers of intelligent and honourable men, both Scots and English, who having come to Ireland as earnest, nay, even by their own confession, as bigoted Gladstonians, had changed their opinions on personal acquaintance with the facts, and strove with all the energy of conscientious men who had unwittingly led others astray, to repair, so far as in them lay, the results of their former political action. And it should be especially noted that of all those I so met who had arrived in Ireland as Home Rulers, not one retained his original faith. A very slight process of inductive reasoning will develop the suggestiveness of this incontestible fact. Readers will hardly require to be reminded that the letters were written, not in studious retirement with ample time at command, but for a Daily Paper, at the rate of nearly eight newspaper columns a week, in the intervals of travel and inquiry, often under grave difficulties and with one eye on the inexorable clock. The precepts of the Master were of necessity ignored:-- _Sæpe stylum vertas, iterum quæ digna legi sint Scripturus; neque, te ut miretur turba labores Contentus paucis lectoribus._ But before committing them to paper, the facts were sifted with scrupulous care, and where personal investigation was impracticable, nothing was adduced except upon evidence of weight and authority sufficient to prove anything. And as during a six months' hue and cry of the Nationalist press of Ireland, aided and abetted by some English prints, no single statement was in any degree shaken, the letters have re-appeared precisely as at first. R.J.B., Special Commissioner of the _Birmingham Daily Gazette_. [Illustration] [Illustration] EDITOR'S REVIEW. The _Birmingham Daily Gazette_ of August 18, 1893, thus summed up the labours of its Special Commissioner:--We publish to-day the last of our Special Commissioner's letters on "Ireland As It Is." His task has been an arduous one, and not without a strong element of personal danger. That he has been kept under the close observation of the Irish police; that they have frequently given him timely warning of personal danger; that he has dared to go to places in County Clare when the police warned him to refrain, and his native car-driver refused to venture, are facts which he has modestly abstained from bringing into the prominence they deserved. We must necessarily speak of the merits of his labour with a certain measure of reserve, but the many letters which lie before us are at least a gratifying proof that his work has been appreciated, and that it has cast new lights upon the Irish problem. To the simple direction, "State nothing that you cannot stand by," he has been faithful even beyond our most sanguine hopes. A stranger in a strange land seeking information wherever it can be found, and compelled on many occasions to accept the statements made to him, may easily be led into error. It is to the credit of our Commissioner that he has withheld some of the most sensational stories retailed to him, because he had not an opportunity of verifying them in detail. The notorious Father Humphreys, of Tipperary, will not soon forget his experience of giving the lie to the _Gazette_; neither will those who organised an "indignation" meeting at Tuam be likely to congratulate themselves upon having stung our Commissioner into retaliation. It may be recalled as an illustration of the desperate efforts made to discredit him that after he had attended a Nationalist meeting at Dundalk he was denounced as a "liar" and a "pimp" because he had stated that he was invited to address the score of persons who had "met in their thousands" to shake the foundations of the British Empire. His assailants fiercely declared that he was not invited to speak; he was only informed that he might address the meeting if he desired to do so! Our Commissioner has travelled about four thousand miles since he started last March. He has taken no lop-sided view of Ireland. The prosperous North has been contrasted with the stagnant South, and the causes of their difference have been explained. The splendid work of industrial development inaugurated in the poverty-stricken West by that greatest of all Irish Secretaries, Mr. Balfour, has been compared with the mischievous encouragements of idleness, the lavish professions of sentimental sympathy, and the dogged refusals of substantial help since the present Government took office. Above all, our Commissioner has provided conclusive evidence that Irish Nationalism is a mere delusive sham--a paltry euphemism for the predatory passion which a succession of professional agitators have aroused in the hearts of the people. If the Land Question could be settled, there would be an end of the clamour for independence and of the insensate shrieking against British rule. With a definite stake in the country the peasantry upon whom the Nationalist agitation mainly relies would cease to place their faith in the impecunious and blatant scoundrelism which fattens upon the discord and misery which it provokes in the name of Patriotism. Our Commissioner believes that the priests, who have an even stronger hold upon the people than the politicians, would find their power weakened if it were possible to greatly extend the system of peasant proprietary which it was the purpose of the Land Purchase of 1891 to foster. Land hunger lies at the root of Irish disaffection, and the Romish hierarchy have found in the deep-rooted prejudices and the ignorant superstitions of the people a foundation upon which they have reared an appalling superstructure of social and spiritual tyranny. Politicians have taught the peasantry to believe that they have been robbed of the land which is their only means of subsistence in a country that is destitute of mineral wealth, that lacks capital, and is overshadowed by the enormous commercial energy of Great Britain. The priests have adopted the theses of politicians, and have brought the terrors of their sacred calling into play in order to make themselves the masters of the people. Home Rule would be the signal for a ghastly civil war, ruinous to Ireland, and fatal to that spirit of religious toleration by which the Roman Catholics and the Protestants have obtained equal rights of citizenship under the rule of the Queen and the Imperial Parliament. The cultured Roman Catholics of England and Ireland look with pain and regret at the insensate bigotry and domineering intolerance which made the exposures in County Meath possible. They see in these wild claims of absolutism in the domain of temporal as well as spiritual affairs, a grave danger to all pure religion. They perceive that the revival of the old sectarian passions in Ireland cannot fail to react on Great Britain, and even if the Keltic priesthood triumphed over the Ulster Protestants their victory would be a fatal one to all who hold by the Roman Catholic faith in England. Home Rule would bring misery and disaster in its train, and even the Parnellite section of the Irish people, who have shaken off clerical domination, tremble at the prospect of it while nine-tenths of their co-religionists are destitute of personal freedom. We must find the solution of Ireland's disaffection in another way, and mainly by a bold handling of the agrarian question, which lies at the root of all. The task before the Unionist party is not a light one. They must crush the Nationalist conspiracy, and uproot the fantastic hopes which unscrupulous men have implanted in the minds of an ignorant and credulous people. They must extend the noble system of practical aid to Ireland so successfully inaugurated by Mr. Balfour in his light railway, fishery, and agricultural development schemes. And they must mitigate the friction between owners and occupiers of the soil by making it easy and profitable for tenants and landlords alike to avail themselves of British credit in terminating a relationship which has been fraught with occasions of bitter hostility and mistrust. Under such a policy we can see bright prospects of a happy future for the sister island, but under the policy of Home Rule we see only the lowering clouds of civil war and the dark shadows of reawakened religious animosity. [Illustration] CONTENTS. PAGE No. 1.--The Spirit of the Capital Dublin, March 28th 1 No. 2.--Panic and Disaster Dublin, March 30th 7 No. 3.--Ulster's Preparations for War Belfast, April 1st 13 No. 4.--Mr. Balfour's Welcome Belfast, April 4th 20 No. 5.--Has Mr. Morley Lied? Ballymena, April 6th 27 No. 6.--The Exodus of Industry Dublin, April 8th 34 Mr. Balfour in Dublin Dublin, April 8th 40 No. 7.--Bad for England, Ruinous to Ireland Limerick, April 11th 43 No. 8.--Terrorism at Tipperary Tipperary, April 12th 48 No. 9.--Tyranny and Terrorism Oolagh, Co. Tipperary, April 15th 54 No. 10.--Defying the Land League Cork, April 20th 61 No. 11.--The Cry for Peace and Quietness Tralee, Co. Kerry, April 20th 67 No. 12.--English Ignorance and Irish Perversity Limerick, April 22nd 75 No. 13.--The Curse Of County Clare Rathkeale, Co. Limerick, April 24th 81 No. 14.--Lawlessness and Laziness Killaloe, Co. Clare, April 27th 89 No. 15.--The Peril to English Trade Ennis, Co. Clare, April 29th 96 No. 16.--Civil War in County Clare Bodyke, Co. Clare, May 2nd 102 No. 17.--Rent at the Root of Nationalism Bodyke, Co. Clare, May 2nd 109 No. 18.--Hard Facts for English Readers Gort, Co. Galway, May 6th 116 No. 19.--Indolence and Improvidence Athenry, Co. Galway, May 6th 123 No. 20.--Religion at the Bottom of the Irish Question Tuam, Co. Galway, May 9th 128 No. 21.--Mr. Balfour's Fisheries Galway Town, May 13th 135 No. 22.--The Land League's Reign at Loughrea Loughrea, May 16th 142 No. 23.--The Reign of Indolence Salthill, May 18th 149 No. 24.--The Aran Islands Galway, May 20th 156 No. 25.--The Priests and Outrage Moycullen, Connemara, May 23rd 163 No. 26.--The Connemara Railway Oughterard, Connemara, May 23rd 169 No. 27.--Cultivating Irish Industry Athenry, May 27th 177 No. 28.--Could we Reconquer Ireland? Barna, Co. Galway, May 30th 184 No. 29.--What Rack-Rent Means Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, June 1st 190 No. 30.--The "Union of Hearts" Athlone, June 3rd 197 No. 31.--The "Union of Hearts" Westport, June 6th 203 No. 32.--Home Rule and Irish Immigration Castlebar, June 8th 209 No. 33.--Tuam's Indignation Meeting Ballina, June 10th 217 No. 34.--Why Ireland does not Prosper Oughewall, June 10th 223 No. 35.--In a Congested District Newport, Co. Mayo, June 15th 230 No. 36.--Irish Improvidence the Stumbling Block Mulranney, Co. Mayo, June 17th 237 No. 37.--On Achil Island Achil Sound, June 20th 244 No. 38.--The Achil Islanders Dugort, Achil Island, June 22nd 251 No. 39.--Irish Unfitness for Self-Government Castlereagh, June 24th 259 No. 40.--Object Lessons in Irish Self-Government Roscommon, June 27th 265 No. 41.--The Changed Spirit of the Capital Dublin, June 29th 271 No. 42.--At a Nationalist Meeting Dundalk, July 1st 279 No. 43.--In the Prosperous North Newry, July 4th 285 No. 44.--The Prosperous North Armagh, July 6th 291 No. 45.--A Picture of Romish "Toleration" Monaghan, July 8th 298 No. 46.--A Bit of Foreign Opinion Enniskillen, July 11th 304 No. 47.--The Loyalists and the Lawless Clones, July 13th 310 No. 48.--A Search for "Orange Rowdyism" Belfast, July 15th 317 No. 49.--The Constitution of the Orange Lodges Portadown, July 18th 324 No. 50.--The Hollowness of Home Rule Warrenpoint, July 20th 331 No. 51.--The Irish Press on "Finality" Strabane, July 22nd 337 No. 52.--How the Priests Control the People Raphoe, Co. Donegal, July 25th 345 No. 53.--What they think in County Donegal Stranorlar, Co. Donegal, July 27th 351 No. 54.--A Sample of Irish "Loyalty" Killygordon, July 29th 358 No. 55.--A Truly Patriotic Priest Donegal, August 1st 365 No. 56.--Do-Nothing Donegal Donegal, August 3rd 371 No. 57.--Barefooted and Dilatory Ballyshannon, August 5th 378 No. 58.--The Truth about Bundoran Sligo, August 8th 383 No. 59.--Irish Nationalism is not Patriotism Birmingham, August 11th 390 No. 60.--Land Hunger: its Cause, Effect, and Remedy Birmingham, August 14th 396 No. 61.--Clerical Domination and its Consequences Birmingham, August 16th 403 No. 62.--Civil War a certainty of Home Rule Birmingham, August 18th 409 [For a General Index the reader is referred to the end of the volume.] IRELAND AS IT IS AND AS IT WOULD BE UNDER HOME RULE. IRELAND AS IT IS AND AS IT WOULD BE UNDER HOME RULE No. 1.--THE SPIRIT OF THE CAPITAL. By the Spirit of the Capital I do not mean, as an Irishman would tell you, Jameson's whiskey, nor yet the vivifying soul of Guinness's double stout, but the mental posture of the dwellers in Dublin with reference to Home Rule. There can be no doubt of the interest prevailing in the Irish metropolis. The people are wrought into a fever-heat of expectancy and intense nervous excitement. Home Rule is the only topic of conversation. In hotels, on the steamers, in railway carriages, on tramcars, in the market-place, on the steps of the temples, at the corners of the streets, in the music halls, the wondering stranger hears of Home Rule, Home Rule, Home Rule, first, last, midst, and without end. Obviously so much discussion shows difference of opinion, divergency of conception, conflicting interests. It is borne in upon you that the Irish people are far from agreed as to what Home Rule means, and that every individual has his own pet notion, the various theories differing as widely as the education and social position of their proposers. But the most striking feature in the attitude of Dublin is undoubtedly the intense, the deep-rooted, the perfervid hatred of the bill shown by the better sort of people, the nervous anxiety of the law-abiding classes, the undisguised alarm of everybody who has anything to lose, whether commercial men, private traders, manufacturers, or the representatives of learning and culture. The mere shadow of Home Rule has already seriously affected stocks and securities, has brought about withdrawal of capital, and is sending both English and Irish commercial travellers home empty-handed. Sir Howard Grubb, maker of the great telescope of the Lick Observatory, America, an Irishman whose scientific and commercial successes are a glory to his country, and whose titular honours have been won by sheer force of merit, declares that the passing of the Home Rule Bill will be the signal heralding his departure to England, with plant and working staff, and that he has been preparing for this since 1886. One of the largest booksellers in the city tells me that, acting in conjunction with others of the trade, during the last six weeks no orders have been given to English travellers, adding--and thoughtful people should find this highly suggestive--"The Dublin Unionists are the people who have the money and the education. The people who have money to spend are becoming excessively careful. They know not what may be in store, but they fear that if Home Rule becomes law they will be ruined, and more than ninety-five per cent. of my customers are Unionists." Further inquiry confirmed the statement that the book-buying community are practically Unionists to a man. The same figures hold good among the Irish Quakers. Ninety-five per cent. is the proportion given to me by an eminent Friend, no stranger to Birmingham, intimately known to Alderman White and three generations of the Cadbury family. He said, "Irish Quakers are Unionists, because they are on the spot, because they understand the subject, because they know what will follow, because they share the dangers of the threatened revolution. What may be the proportion of Home Rulers among the English Friends I do not know, but probably the Gladstonians have a majority, for precisely opposite reasons to those I have stated, that is,--they are not on the spot, do not understand the matter, are unable to see what will take place, and regard themselves as safe, whatever happens." The Irish Quakers have issued a manifesto which should weigh with their English brethren and with the country at large. The Quakers know their way about. Their piety has not blunted their perceptive faculties, has not taken the edge off their keenness. Their reputation for shrewdness is equal to their reputation for integrity, which is saying a good deal. With them the innocence of the dove is happily combined with considerable wisdom of the serpent. And at least ninety-five per cent. of the Irish Quakers are earnest Unionists. But although the deep concern of the respectable classes of the Irish capital is calculated to fill the wandering Englishman with grave uneasiness, it is not all tragedy. The Dubliners must have their fun, and, like the Parisians, will sport with matters of heaviest import. The poorer classes treat the universal subject lightly, as beseems men who have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The prevailing trait in their mental attitude is incredulousness. You cannot make them believe that the bill will pass. "We'll get Home Rule when a pair o' white wings sprouts out o' me shoulders an' I fly away like a blackbird," said an old market woman with great emphasis; and a Dublin jackeen, piloting an American over the city, said: "This, Sorr, is College Green, an' that, Sorr, is Thrinity College, an' that Sorr,"--here he pointed to the grand pile opposite the College--"that Sorr, is the grate buildin' in which the Irish Parliament is _not_ going to meet!" At one of the music halls an old woman (Ireland) is represented as buying a coffin for a deceased son named "Home Rule" Bill, when the following conversation occurs:-- "Is it an oak or an elm coffin ye want?" "Ah, thin, just a chape deal coffin, shure--wid a few archangels on the lid." "Will ye want any trimmings?" "Arrah, what d'ye mane by trimmin's?" "Trimmings for the coffin." "Bad luck to yer trimmin's. What would I want wid them? Sure 'twas 'trimmin's' that kilt him!" It is hoped that Saxon readers will see this subtle joke when I explain that "delirium" should come before "trimmin's." Underneath the incredulity of the lower classes--and be it observed that their incredulity is obviously based on an instinctive feeling that the claims and arguments of their own party are alike preposterous--underneath this vein of unbelief is a vein of extraordinary credulity. Poverty is to be at once and for ever abolished. "The millions an' millions that John Bull dhrags out iv us, to kape up his grandeur, an' to pay soldiers to grind us down, we'll put into our own pockets, av you plaze," was the answer vouchsafed to an inquiry as to what advantages were expected from the passing of the Home Rule Bill. The speaker was a political barber. Another of the craft said, in answer to the same query, "Well, Sorr, I think we have a right to our indipindence. Sure, we'd be as sthrong as Switzerland or Belgium." A small farmer from the outlying district thought that rents would be lowered, that money would be advanced to struggling tenants, that great public works would be instituted, and plainly intimated that all these good things and many more had been roundly promised by the Home Rule leaders, and that he, for one, fully believed that all would duly come to pass, once the Bill were carried, which happy event he never expected to see. Every man was to be a kind of king in his own country, evictions were to be utterly unknown; the peasantry were to live rent free, under a visionary scheme of which he had all the absurd particulars; the old sporting maxim reminding farmers that landlord shooting begins on January 1st and ends on December 31st was to become obsolete by reason of a complete extinction of the species--only an odd one being occasionally dug out of the bogs along with trunks of bog-oak and skeletons of the great Irish elk; while the family pig, which, having for ages occupied a responsible position in the matter of "Rint," is understood to be an inveterate landlord-hater, will be released from his delicate situation, will be relieved from his harassing anxieties, will no longer be sacrificed to the exigencies of the occasion; but, on the contrary, will peacefully expire of old age, surrounded by every tribute of respect. The dirtiest of the Dubliners hold opinions as to the marvellous results of Home Rule more adapted to their own positions and pursuits, but apparently on the same plane, no whit higher in the scale of intelligence. They regard the English as their natural enemies, and the lower you go the more truculent they become. One and all they hold the belief, industriously instilled by agitators, that the poverty of Ireland is due to the aggrandisement of England, that the bulk of Irish taxation flows into English coffers, and is used for English purposes to the exclusion of Ireland, and this they have swallowed and insist upon, in defiance of common reason and the evidence of their senses. The instinct of patriotism is not _en évidence_. The dominant passion is cupidity, and nothing higher; sheer greed of gain, lust of possession, and nothing nobler. Selfishness and the hope of plunder are the actuating impulses at the poll; crass ignorance and bitter prejudice the mental disposition of the lower class of voters. Four hours' slumming convinced me of this, and must convince anyone. "We'll bate the English into the say," said a resident in the sweet region yclept Summer Hill. "Whin we get the police in our hands an' an army of our own, we'd sweep them out o' the counthry av we only held cabbage-shtalks. Ireland for the Irish, an' to hell wid John Bull! Thim's my sintiments." And those are the "sintiments" of his class. I have spent days among the Irish Home Rulers without having once heard of the Union of Hearts. The phrase serves well enough to tickle the simple souls of the long-eared but short-headed fraternity of pseudo-philosophical-philanthropists across the water, but it has no currency in Ireland. Like the country folks the city slummers believe that unheard-of advantages would follow the great Bill, and, unconsciously parodying Sancho Panza, say in effect, "Now blessings light on him who first invented Home Rule! it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot." The bare thought of the coming Paradise illuminates their dirty visages. Like the lunatic, the lover, and the poet, they are of imagination all compact, and, unlike the character mentioned by the Bard, they "can hold a fire in their hands, By thinking on the frosty Caucasus, And cloy the hungry edge of appetite By bare imagination of a feast; And wallow naked in December snow By thinking on fantastic summer's heat." Meanwhile, they lounge about in idleness, hugging their misery, discussing the "bating" of the Unionist party, or, as I saw them yesterday evening, listening to the crooning of an ancient female gutter-snipe, a dun-coloured heap of decrepit wretchedness, chanting the great future of the Irish Parliament in a picturesque and extraordinary doggerel anent the "larned reprisintatives of the Oirish na-a-tion. Promiscu-o-ous they shtand in em-u-la-a-tion." The small shopkeepers, once ardent Nationalists, seem to be changing their minds. One of them confided to me the fact that he and his fellows, brought actually face to face with the possibility that the end of their aspirations and agitations would be attained, were beginning to ask whether, after all, taxation would be remitted, whether indeed the rates would not be heavier, and whether the moneyed people would remain in the country at all. Hearing on all sides these and similar confessions, accompanied by urgent admonitions of secrecy, you begin to ask whether the past conduct of these enlightened voters had any more substantial basis than a cantankerous and unreasonable discontent, superadded to an Irishman's natural love of fighting. The leaders of the Separatist party have made the most frantic efforts to win over the police, but apparently without much success. The Dublin constabulary, a body of 1,300 men, is totally separate and distinct from the Royal Irish Constabulary, but I have reason to believe that the feeling of both forces is averse to Home Rule. Said a sergeant yesterday, "John Bull may have faults, but," and here he winked expressively, "but--he pays!" Then he went on--"I am a Westmeath man, a Roman Catholic, an' as good an Irishman as any of thim; an' I'd like Home Rule if it was local self-government, what they call the gas an' wather management, or the like of that. But although I've the highest respect for my counthry, an' for my counthrymen, I'd like to feel that my pay was in better hands, and--what is of more importance--my pension, afther 30 years' service." Here was a complete lack of confidence, but my friend had more to say. He referred to the provisions of the bill, spoke of the six years' arrangement, and on this point exhibited great native shrewdness. "How do we know we'll be employed for six years, once the Irish leaders get matters in their own hands? They may promise fairly enough, but they would be subject to several influences which might prevint thim kaping their promise. First of all, when they had the power, they would naturally like to manage things their own way--an' not to be altogether bound down so hard an' fast by their engagement with the English Parliament. Then, although they profess such friendship, they don't altogether like us. We may tell them we are Nationalists, an' that we're runnin' over with patriotism; but they'll tell us that we stood by at evictions, an' that we fired on the people at Mitchelstown. But the greatest thing of all is this--all their counthry friends, all the terrorisers, the men that mutilated the cattle, the village ruffians that for years have been doin' their work, an' actin' as their spies--all these will have to be provided for. The same with our officers, but their case is still worse. They have had to pass a regular military examination, which means an expensive education. They will get the go-by an' the dirty kick-out, in order that the friends of the ruling party, who have been so long in the desert, may be furnished with posts. 'Tis human nature, Sorr." Wherefore, the constabulary, it would seem, may be trusted to take care of themselves, but the situation is suggestive of serious complications, once the bill were passed. A full private this morning told me that without the security of the British Exchequer the force would not hold together for four-and-twenty hours, a statement which, whatever be its value, is at least an indication of the amount of trust which some of the Irish people, and those not the worst informed, are disposed to place in the distinguished assembly which, according to the authority hereinbefore-mentioned is _not_ to meet on College Green. A never-ending complaint which follows you everywhere is the supineness of the English electorate. Men whose interests are seriously threatened, such as the better class of shopkeepers, are unable to understand the comparative calmness of the British public at large. Passionately they ask why England leaves them to their fate, and strongly they urge that prompt and decided action should be taken, if not for the sake of Ireland, then in the interests of England herself. Disruption, pure and simple, the breaking up of the Empire, with panic and general ruin, are in their opinion the sure and certain concomitants of the bill now before the House. They declare that Englishmen as a whole, whether Gladstonians or Unionists, fail to realise the gravity of the situation, and they lose no opportunity of saying whenever they hear an English accent, "WE DON'T WANT IT, WE DON'T WANT IT!" Not always do they trouble to say what is the thing they so emphatically reject. "Pardon me, Sir, but are you English?" Receiving an affirmative the rejoinder comes at once, and forcefully, "We don't want it, we don't want it! Tell the English people that if they knew all they would not entertain the idea for a moment." The phrase meets you everywhere, is roared at you in chorus in commercial rooms, haunts you in your sleep, and, if they would own it, must be painfully suggestive to Gladstonian visitors. But there are none so blind as those who will not see, none so deaf as those who will not hear. It is impossible to withhold sympathy with the indignation and mental anxiety of these industrious men, who have made Dublin what she is, and whose only notion of happiness is the fulfilment of duty, their sole means of acquiring wealth or middleclass comfort, hard and honest work. That the backbone of the city should stand with their fortunes subject to the will of a few unscrupulous agitators is indeed, as they say, an inscrutable dispensation of Providence. Help, however, is at hand. As Hercules hangs backward in their need they have determined to help themselves. During the Easter recess both Ireland and England will be made to ring with denunciations of Home Rule, denunciations uttered for the most part by Irishmen. Orators will go forth throughout the length and breadth of both islands, with the object of laying the truth of the matter before the people--demonstrating the dire results which the most intelligent almost unanimously predict. There will be no lack of funds--Catholics and Protestants are subscribing, among the former the grandson of Daniel O'Connell, the great Liberator of Ireland. Money is literally pouring into the offices of the Irish Unionist Alliance. Little Roman Catholic Tralee, in the heart of Kerry, one of the most disturbed districts, has sent several hundreds. In three weeks the subscriptions have reached £20,000. That ought to be enough to enable Irish Unionists not, as one said to me, "to enlighten the English people. We do not presume to so much. But we will try to let some of the Darkness out." Dublin, March 28th. No. 2.--PANIC AND DISASTER. The situation is becoming hourly more serious. The over-excited condition of men's minds is rapidly ripening into a panic. The impending Second Reading is driving the respectable population of Ireland into absolute despair. The capital is inundated by men from all parts of the kingdom anxious to know the worst, running hither and thither, asking whether, even at the eleventh hour, anything may be done to avert the dreaded calamity. An eminent solicitor assures me that during the last four-and-twenty hours a striking change of opinion has taken place. Red-hot Home Rulers when confronted with the looming actuality are on all sides abandoning their loudly proclaimed political opinions. My friend's business--he is, or has been, an ardent Home Ruler--is chiefly connected with land conveyancing, and he declares that his office is besieged by people anxious to "withdraw their charges" on land and house property, that is, to recall their money advanced on mortgage, however profitable the investment, however apparently solid the security. He instanced the case of an estate in Cavan, bearing three mortgages of respectively £1,000, £3,000, and £4,000, and leaving to the borrower a clear income of £1,700 a year after all claims were paid. The three lenders are strenuously endeavouring to realise, the thousand-pounder being prostrate with affright, but although the investments under normal conditions would fetch a good premium, not a penny can be raised in any direction. The lenders are Home Rulers, and eighty per cent. of the population of Cavan are Roman Catholic. The same story is heard everywhere, with "damnable iteration." The cause of charity is suffering severely. The building of additions to the Rotunda Hospital and the Hospital for Consumptives, at a cost of twenty thousand pounds, has been definitely abandoned, although three-quarters of the money has been raised. The building trade is at a complete standstill. On every hand contracts are thrown up, great works are put aside. Mr. Kane, High Sheriff of Kildare, declines to proceed with the building of his new mansion, which was to cost many thousand pounds. Mr. John Jameson, the eminent distiller, who also contemplated the construction of a palatial residence, which would take years to build, has dropped the idea. The project for the formation of a great Donegal Oyster-bed Company, which long bade fair to prosper, and to confer a boon on the starving peasantry of the coast, has been cast to the winds. Among the shoals of similar occurrences which confront you at every turn, some contain an element almost of humour. A Dublin architect tells a quaint story of this kind. It may not be generally known in England that the Roman Catholics of Ireland can borrow money from John Bull for the erection of "glebe-houses," at 4 per cent., repayable in 49 years. In a certain recent case the priest thought the builder's estimate too high, and, without absolutely declining the contract, intimated that he would "wait a while." Said the architect, "Better make up your mind before June, or you may have the Irish Legislature to deal with." This argument acted like magic. The good Father instantly saw its cogency, and, like every other patriotic Nationalist whose personal interest is involved, preferred to place himself in English hands rather than in those of his own countrymen, and incontinently accepted the contract, begging the architect to proceed with all haste. A run on the Post Office Savings Bank threatens to clear out every penny of Irish money, and why? Because it has dawned on the small hoarders, the thrifty and industrious members of the lower classes, that the Post Office is to be transferred to the Irish Legislature. A friend tells me that yesterday his Catholic cook begged for an interview. She had money in the Post Office Savings Bank, and thereanent required advice, asking if it would be safe till to-morrow! Following up this hint, pregnant with meaning, though delivered in jest, I found that the feeling of insecurity is spreading like wild fire, to the intense indignation of those patriots who have no savings, and who are alive to the fact that under the provisions of the proposed Act the four millions supposed to be lying in the Post Office Savings Bank would constitute the entire working capital, as distinguished from current income, of the College Green Legislature. The master of a small sub-office told me that the withdrawals at his little place amounted to £200 per week, rising latterly to £70 per day, and that it was necessary to get money from London to meet the demands. Concurrently with this I learn that the Dublin Savings Bank, an institution managed by merchants of the city, for the encouragement of thrift, is receiving the money so withdrawn, and this confidence is explained by the well-known fact that the directors have publicly declared that on the passing of the Home Rule Bill they will pay 20s. in the pound and close the bank, in addition to which significant ultimatum they have, in writing, declared to Mr. Gladstone, that this course of action is due to the fact that they repudiate the security of the proposed Irish Legislature. To put the thing in a nutshell it may be said that not a single Irishman in or out of the country is willing to trust the Irish Legislature with a single penny of his own money. A curious feature of the Nationalist character is the profound contempt expressed for Nationalist M.P.'s. Englishmen are accustomed to speak of their own members, representing their own opinions, with respect. Not so in Dublin. A rabid Nationalist said to me, "I am an Irishman to the backbone. I am a Home Ruler out-and-out. But do you think I'd trust my property with either of the two Tims? Do you think such men as Tim Harrington and Tim Healy are fit to be trusted with the spending of 2-1/2 millions of money per annum? They have their job, and they work well at their job, and the Irish people have backed them up out of pure divilment. 'Tis mighty fine to take a rise out of John Bull, to harass him, to worry him, to badger him out of his seven sinses. The half of the voters never were serious, or voted as they were told by men who expatiated on the wrongs which have been dinned into them from infancy. But to trust these orators with their money! Bedad, we're not all out such omadhauns (idiots) as that! Paddy is not altogether such a fool as he looks." Although public feeling has suddenly deepened in intensity, the change has been for some time in progress. I am enabled to state on irrefragable authority, that Lord Houghton's sudden departure from Dublin on Sunday week was entirely due to his alarm at the shifting aspect of affairs, which rendered instant conference with Mr. Gladstone a matter of urgent necessity. And it should be especially noted that this change is most apparent not in the Protestant North, not among the irreconcilable black and heretic Ulsterites, but in Nationalist Dublin, in the Roman Catholic south--not simply among the moneyed classes and well-to-do shopkeepers of Dublin, but among the industrious poor, and the small farmers of the region round about. The opinions and feelings of the better classes have ever been dead against the Bill, and the best portion of the poorer people are assuredly moving in the same direction. That such is the simple fact is undeniable. It is thrust upon you whether you will or no. You are compelled to believe it, whatever your political creed. It manifests itself in a variety of ways. Mr. Love, of Kildare, a landed proprietor, now in Dublin, says that on Sunday last Dr. Gowing, parish priest of Kill, denounced Home Rule from the altar, and advised the people to have none of it. The Dubliners are beginning to publicly ridicule their Nationalist members. A bog-oak carving represents a typical Irishman driving a "conthrairy pig," which is supposed to stand for Tim Harrington. The interesting animal is deviating from the right way, gazing fixedly at a milestone which bears the legend, "IX. miles to College Green." His master gives him a cut of the whip and a jerk of the rope, and thus addresses the wayward Tim, "Arrah, don't be wastin' yer larnin', radin' milestones. Ye're not goin' to Dublin--ye're goin' to BRAY!" A Phoenix Park orator who sang amusing songs finished his appeal for coppers thus, "Sure, Home Rule is a splindid thing--an iligant thing intirely, an' a blind man could see the goodness iv it wid his two eyes. Didn't ye all know Tim Harrington whin he hadn't the price iv his breakfast? Didn't ye know him whin he would dhrop on his two marrowbones and thank God for the price of a shmell of calamity-wather" (whiskey). "An' now look at him! D'ye mind the iligant property he has outside Dublin? An ye'll all get the like o' that, every bosthoon among yez, av ye get Home Rule. But yez must sind _me_ to Parlimint. Sure I have ivery quollification. Wasn't I born among yez? Wasn't I rared among yez? Don't I know what yez wants? An' didn't I go many a day widout a male? Aye, that I did, an' could do it again! Sind _me_ to Parlimint, till I get within whisperin' distance of Misther Gladstone--within whisperin' distance, d'ye mind me? Ye'll all get lashins of dhrink, an' free quarthers at the Castle. An' all ye have to do is to pay me, an' pay me well." Here the speaker laid his finger along his nose and broke into a comic song having reference to "the broad Atlantic," which he chanted in a brogue almost as broad as the Atlantic itself. The better class of vacillating Nationalists are ready to give a plausible reason for the faith that is in them. You cannot catch an Irish Home Ruler napping, nor will he admit that he was ever wrong. He will talk to the average Englishman about Irish rights and Irish wrongs, Irish virtues and Irish abstinence from crime with a reckless disregard for truth that can only be born of a firm belief that Irish newspapers are never read outside Ireland, and will then walk off and plume himself on the assumption that because he met no point-blank contradiction he has duped his victim into believing the most absurd mass of wild misinformation that was ever crammed down the throats of the most gullible of his rustic countrymen. It must be admitted that they are shrewd critics of the Bill, of which every individual citizen, whatever his conviction, has an annotated copy in his tail-pocket. The Dublin change of front is ascribed to the "insulting manner in which the Bill is drafted." The Nationalists, one and all, roundly declare, in terms which admit of no qualification, that the present bill means no less than separation, and while admitting that this is their dearest aspiration, declare that England will only have herself to thank. They complain that the word "Parliament" is never used in the Bill when referring to the Irish Legislature, but console themselves with the reflection that the supremacy of Parliament proper is only mentioned in the preamble, which they rejoice to believe is not part of the bill, and therefore is not binding in law. The Treasury clauses they declare to have been drawn by a deadly enemy of Ireland, but here again they find salvation in the alleged inconsistency of the various provisions of the bill. They accept with exceeding great joy the provision which will enable them to deprive of their property, rights, and privileges all existing Corporations whether incorporated under Royal Charter or otherwise, pointing out that this means ownership and control of the Bank of Ireland, Trinity College, and all the churches and cathedrals, which hereafter are to be wrested from Protestant hands and devoted to the propagandism of the Roman Catholic faith; and that the Bill confers these powers is, they say, made clearly evident by the clause that places these matters in the hands of an executive "directed by Irish Act." By virtue of his position they have already nominated Archbishop Walsh on this executive, with other ecclesiastics of like kidney. This they admit is a good mouthful, but they scornfully assert that while Mr. Gladstone has left them income-tax to pay, he has also loaded them with the Post Office, a Greek gift, which under the best English management is worked at a loss of fifty thousand pounds a year! The two Home Rulers who in my hearing so ruthlessly dissected the Bill made merry over the clause which excludes the Irish Government from all control of the "foreign mails or submarine telegraphs or through-lines in connection therewith," pouring on the unhappy sentence whole cataracts of ridicule. "We have the thing in our hands, and we are not to control its working," said they. "The cable between England and America passes through Ireland, will be worked by our servants, by people who will look to us as their paymasters, and we are to have no control!" The preposterous absurdity of the notion tickled the entire company. "But if England does not please us, can we not cut the cable? Can we not order our own paid servants to cease transmitting messages, or to transmit only such as have survived the inspection of the accredited officials of the Irish people?" It was thought that this was reasonable and a possible, nay a probable conjuncture, and might be used as a weapon to damage English trade. "Let them go round or lay another cable," said one patriot. This sort of discussion, more or less reasonable, is everywhere heard, and should be of some value in indicating the use Irishmen expect to make of the Act. Not a single friendly syllable, not a word of amicable fellowship with England, not a scintilla of gratitude for favours past or to come, nothing but undisguised animosity, and a fixed resolution to make every clause of the Act a battlefield. I speak that I do know and testify that I have seen. My personal relations with the Irish people have been and continue to be of the most gratifying kind. In the homes of the highest, in the great manufactories, even in the lowest slums I have seen much that is attractive in the Irish character--much that excites warm interest, and is calculated to attach you to the people. I have conversed with scores of Home Rulers of all shades, and to the query as to whether ultimate separation is hoped for, I have received an invariable affirmative. True it is that the answer varied in terms from the blunt "Yes" of the uncompromising man to the more or less veiled assent of the more cautious, but the result was in substance ever the same. Talk about the Union of Hearts, the pacification of Ireland, the brotherly love that is to ensue, and the Unionists turn away with undissembled impatience, the Home Rulers with a chuckle and a sneer. As well tell reasonable Irishmen that the world is flat, or that a straight line between two given points is the longest, or that the sun moves round the moon, or any other inane absurdity contrary to the evidence of science and their senses. The English Gladstonians who babble about brotherly love and conciliation should move about Dublin in disguise. Disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for Paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species of visitor, whom he calls "the slobbering Saxon." Then if they would return and still vote for Home Rule they are no less than traitors to their country and enemies to their fellow-country men. The weather is very fine, and the fashionable resorts are fairly well frequented, but trade daily grows worse. Wholesale houses, says a high authority, are "not dull, but stone dead." The pious Irish fast and pray during the week, and the great Roman Catholic Retreat at Milltown is crowded to the limits of its accommodation. The ladies wear a kind of half-mourning, a stylish sort of reminder of original sin. Sackcloth and ashes in Catholic Dublin consist of fetching brown, grey, or tan costumes, set off with huge bunches of fragrant violets, tied with a bow the exact shade of the flower, or a dull shade of purple, a sort of Lenten lugubriousness particularly becoming to blonde penitents. The ladies are indefatigable in their efforts against Home Rule, and one distinguished canvasser for signatures to the Roman Catholic petition has been warned by the police, as she values her life, to leave Dublin for a time. The ruffian class, needless to say, has undergone no change, but still demands the bill, and this delicate lady, for years foremost in every good and charitable work, is driven from her home by threatening letters--that accursed resort to anonymous intimidation which so discredits the Irish claim to superior courage and chivalry. The Catholics of Dublin are signing numerously, but the number of signatories by no means represents the opponents of the Bill. Englishmen cannot be brought to realise for one moment the system of terrorism and intimidation which prevails even in the very heart of the capital. Parnellite spies are everywhere and know everything, and woe to the helpless man who dares to have a mind of his own. And not only are the poor coerced and deprived of the liberty of the subject, but the wealthiest manufacturers--men whose firms are of the greatest magnitude--will caution you against using their names in connection with anything that could give a clue to their real sentiments. This difficulty arises everywhere and information can only be extracted after a promise that its source shall never be disclosed. The priests are credited with unheard-of influence among the poor. "At the present moment the ruffians are held in leash. The order has gone forth that pending the Home Rule debate they are to 'be good.' But if I sign that petition, although here in Dublin, the thing would be known at Tralee, 200 miles away, before I reached home--and a hundred to one that the first blackguard that passed would put a match in my thatch, would burn my stacks, would hough or mutilate my cattle." The speaker was a Roman Catholic farmer from Kerry. Mr. Morley, in stating that the prosecution of the Rev. Robert Eager had ceased and determined, was utterly wrong. The rector's cousin, Mr. W.J. Eager, also of Tralee, told me that threatening letters with coffins and cross-bones were still pouring in in profusion. Mr. Eager was calmly requested to give up land which he had held for 15 years to a man who had previously rented it, and as the good parson failed to see the force of this argument he is threatened with a violent death. In England such a thing could only happen in a pantomime, but some of the Irish think it the quintessence of reasonable action. These are the class that support the Bill; these are the men Mr. Gladstone and his conglomeration of cranks and faddists hope to satisfy. A brilliant kind of prospect for poor John Bull. Mr. John Morley should accompany me in my peregrinations among the intelligent voters who have placed him and his great chief in power, along with the galaxy of minor stars which rise with the Grand Man's rising and set at his setting. "The British Government won't allow us to work the gold mines in the Wicklow mountains. Whin we get the Bill every man can take a shpade, an' begorra! can dig what he wants." "The Phaynix Park is all cramfull o' coal that the Castle folks won't allow us to dig, bad scran to them. Whin we get the Bill wu'll sink thim mines an' send the Castle to Blazes." But the quaintest, the funniest, the most sweetly ingenuous of the lot was the reason given by a gentleman of patriarchal age and powerful odour, whom I encountered in Hamilton's Lane. He said, "Ye see, Sorr, this is the way iv it. 'Tis the Americans we'll look to, by raison that they're mostly our own folks. They're powerful big invintors, but bedad, they haven't the wather power to work the invintions. Now _we_ have the wather power, an' the invintions 'll be brought over here to be worked. An' that'll give the poor folks imploymint." The poor man's ignorance was doubtless dense, his credulity amusing, his childlike simplicity interesting. But the darkness of his ignorance was no blacker, the extent of his credulity no more amazing, than the ignorance and credulity of English Gladstonian speakers, who, with a Primitive Methodist accent and a Salvation Army voice, proclaim, with a Bible twang, their conviction that Home Rule means the friendship of Ireland. Dublin, March 30th. No. 3.--ULSTER'S PREPARATIONS FOR WAR. Ulster will fight, and fight to the death. The people have taken a resolution--deep, stern, and irrevocable. Outwardly they do not seem so troubled as the Dubliners. They are quiet in their movements, moderate in their speech. They show no kind of alarm, for they know their own strength, and are fully prepared for the worst. They speak and act like men whose minds are made up, who will use every Constitutional means of maintaining their freedom, and, these failing, will take the matter in their own strong hands. Meanwhile they preserve external calm, and systematically make their arrangements. If ever they went through a talking stage, that is now over. They have passed the time of discussion, and are preparing for action. If ever they showed heat, that period also is past. They have reached the cold stage, in which men act on ascertained principles and not in the frenzy of passion. There is nothing hysterical about the Belfast men. They are by no means the kind of people who run hither and thither wringing their hands. Neither are they men who will sit down under oppression. And oppression is what they expect from a Dublin Government. Mr. Gladstone and his tribe may pooh-pooh this notion, but the feeling in Ulster is strong and immovable. The tens of thousands of Protestants thickly scattered over other provinces feel more strongly still; as well they may, for they have not the numbers, the organisation, the unity which is strength, that characterise the province of Ulster. They hold that Home Rule is at the bottom a religious movement, that by circuitous methods, and subterranean strategy, the religious re-conquest of the island is sought; that the ignorant peasantry, composing the large majority of the electorate, are entirely in the hands of the priests, and that these black swarms of Papists have a congenital hatred of England, which must bring about separation. These are the opinions of thousands of eminent men whose ability is beyond argument, who have lived all their lives on the spot, who from childhood have had innumerable facilities for knowing the truth, whose interests are bound up with the prosperity of Ireland, and who, on every ground, are admittedly the best judges. Said Mr. Albert Quill, the Dublin barrister:-- "Mr. Gladstone, who in eighty-four years has spent a week in Ireland, puts aside Sir Edward Harland, who has built a fleet of great ships in an Irish port, and sneers at the opinion of the Belfast deputation who have lived all their lives in Ireland." A Roman Catholic Unionist, an eminent physician, said to me:-- "I fear that Catholicism would ultimately lose by the change, although at first it would undoubtedly obtain a strong ascendant. The bulk of the Irish Catholics have a deep animosity to the English people, whom they regard as heretics, and the Protestants of Ireland would in self-defence be compelled to band themselves together, for underneath the specious surface of the Home Rule movement are the teeth and claws of the tiger. Persecution would follow separation, which is inevitable if the present bill be carried. A Dublin Parliament would make a Protestant's life a burden. This would react in time, and Catholicism would suffer in the long run. And for this reason, amongst others, I am against Home Rule." But what are the Belfast men doing? _Imprimis_ they are working in what may be called the regular English methods. Unionist clubs are springing up in all directions. The Earl of Ranfurly opened three in one evening, and others spring up almost every day. The Ulster Anti-Repeal and Loyalist Association will during the month of April hold over three hundred meetings in England, all manned by competent speakers. The Irish Unionist Association and the Conservative Association are likewise doing excellent work, which is patent to everybody. But other associations which do not need public offices are flourishing like green bay trees, and their work is eminently suggestive. By virtue of an all-powerful introduction, I yesterday visited what may be called the Ulster war department, and there saw regular preparation for an open campaign, the preliminaries for which are under eminently able superintendence. The tables are covered with documents connected with the sale and purchase of rifles and munitions of war. One of them sets forth the particulars of a German offer of 245,000 Mauser rifles, the arm last discarded by the Prussian Government, with 50,000,000 cartridges. As the first 150,000 Mausers were manufactured by the National Arms and Ammunition Company, Sparkbrook, Birmingham, it may be interesting to record that the quoted price was 16s. each, the cartridges being thrown in for nothing. Another offer referred to 149,000 stand of arms, with 30,000,000 cartridges. A third document, the aspect of which to a native of Brum was like rivers of water in a thirsty land, was said to have been summarily set aside by reason of the comparative antiquity of the excellent weapon offered, notwithstanding the tempting lowness of the quoted price. A novel and unexpected accession of information was the revelation of a deep and sincere sympathy among the working men of England, who, with gentlemen of position and rifle volunteers by hundreds and thousands, are offering their services in the field, should civil war ensue. The letters were shown to me, all carefully filed, and sufficient liberty was permitted to enable me to be satisfied as to the tenour of their contents. Among the more important was a short note from a distinguished personage, offering a contribution of £500, with his guarantee of a force of two hundred men. This also was from England, a fact which the scoffers at Ulster will do well to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. The guarantee fund for the first campaign now amounts to nearly a million and a half, which the best financial authority of Belfast tells me is "as good as the Bank of England." What the Dublin police-sergeant said of John Bull may also be said of the Ulsterman--"He may have faults, but--he Pays!" Funds for current purposes are readily forthcoming, £50,000 being already in hand, while promises of a whole year's income seem thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa. No means is left untried, no stone is left unturned to render abortive what the dry and caustic Northerners call the Home Ruin Bill, or the Bill for the _Bitter_ Government of Ireland. Moving hourly among people accurately and minutely acquainted with the local position, you cannot fail to be struck by the marvellous unanimity with which all Irish Unionists predict the exact result of such a bill as constitutes the present bone of contention, and their precise agreement as to concerted action should the crisis arise. They ridicule the English notion that they intend to take the field at once. Nothing of the kind. They will await the imposition of taxes by a Dublin Parliament, and will steadfastly refuse to pay. The money must then be collected by force of arms, that is, by the Royal Irish Constabulary, who will be met by men who under their very noses are now becoming expert in battalion drill, having mastered company drill, with manual and firing exercise; and whose numbers--I love to be particular--amount to the respectable total of one hundred and sixty-four thousand six hundred and fourteen, all duly enrolled and pledged to act together anywhere and at any time, most of them already well armed, and the remainder about to be furnished with splendid and effective weapons, which before this appears in print will have been landed from a specially chartered steamer, and instantly distributed from a spot I am forbidden to indicate, by an organisation specially created for the purpose. All these particulars--and more--were furnished by gentlemen of high position and unimpeachable integrity, whose statements, of themselves sufficient, were abundantly confirmed by the exhibition under restrictive pledges, of undeniable documentary proofs, with partial but satisfactory glimpses of the work actually in hand. No vapouring here, no breathless haste, not a suspicion of excitement. Nothing but a cold, emotionless, methodical, business-like precision, a well-considered series of commercial transactions, conducted by men specially acquainted with the articles required and regularly trained to office routine. English Home Rulers, unable to see a yard in front of them, whose training and instincts are of the goody-goody, milk and water type,--the lily-livered weaklings, who measure the courage of others by their own,--may be excused their inability to conceive the situation. They cannot understand the dour, unyielding spirit of the Ulsterman in a matter which affects his property, his religion, his freedom. A party backboneless as the Globerigina ooze, and, like that sub-Atlantic production, only held together by its own sliminess, must ever fail to realise the grit which means resistance, sacrifice, endurance; cannot grasp the outlines of the Ulster character and spirit, which resemble those which actuated the Scottish Covenanters, the Puritan army of Cromwell, or even--and this illustration should be especially grateful to Gladstonians--the Dutch Boers of the Transvaal. But although the surface is placid the depths are turbulent. If Dublin is simmering, Belfast is boiling. The breed is different. The Northerner is not demonstrative, is slow to anger, but being moved is not easily appeased. The typical Irishman, with his cutaway coat, his pipe stuck in his conical caubeen, his "sprig of shillelagh," or bludgeon the Donnybrook Fair hero who "shpinds half a-crown, Mates wid a frind An' (for love) knocks him down" is totally unknown in these regions. The men who by their ability and industry have lifted Ireland out of the slough, given her prosperity and comparative affluence, marched hand in hand with the English people, have only seen, with wonder, the rollicking Kelt, devoid of care, forethought, and responsibility, during their trips to the South and West--or wherever Home Rulers most do congregate. Strange it is, but perfectly true, that in most cases an Irishman's politics may be determined by outward and visible signs, so plain that he who runs may read. In Dundalk, which should be a thriving port, you see in and around the town long rows of low thatch-covered cabins, with putrid dunghills "convaynient," dirty, half-fed, barefooted children, and--magnificent Catholic churches. Home Rule rules the roost. As you move northwards, the symptoms of poverty gradually disappear. Scarva, the annual meeting ground of 5,000 to 10,000 Orangemen, who on July 13, the day after the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, fight the battle o'er again, with a King William and a King James, mounted respectively on their regulation white and bay chargers--Scarva is neat, clean and civilised. Bessbrook, the Quaker colony, is, as might be expected, a model community. Lurgan is well built, smart, trim, and delightful, a wealthy manufacturing place with the general aspect of Leamington. As the train steamed into the station an American traveller took a general survey of the district, and said to the general company-- "I reckon this is a Unionist place." A fierce-looking man from Dundalk admitted the soft impeachment. "Thought so. Can spot a Home Rule town far off as I can see it. Mud huts, whitewashed cabins with no upstairs, muck-heaps, and bad fences. Can spot a Home Ruler as far as I can see him. Darned if I couldn't track him by scent, like a foxhound. That's the rank and file--very rank, I should say, most of them. And old J. Bull concludes to let the dunghill folks, powerful lazy beggars they seem, come top-sawyer over the fellows that built a place like this, eh?" The Newry man, taking off his hat, revealing a head of hair like a disorderly halo, took from the lining a little paper which called upon the Irish peasantry to remember their wrongs, referred to the time when Englishmen could murder Irishmen with impunity, stated that the thing had often been done, and called upon every male from fifteen to fifty to enrol himself in the Irish Independent Army--referring to the Protestants as "a cruel and bloody minority." The Yankee returned the bill contemptuously. "You think this a question of counting noses. Now, I'm a sympathiser of Home Rule, but if I was J.B. it would be different. I'm hanged if I would not stick to my clean, clever, faithful friends, though they were outnumbered by twenty to one. An' I'm a Republican, mind ye that. Ye might ask me to put the muck-heap men at the head of affairs--ye might ask till doomsday, but ye'd never get it. An' any man's a fool that would do it." A placard announcing the formation of an Irish Army of Independence, and calling on the people to enrol themselves, has been extensively circulated, and it is said that the Roman Catholics, like the Protestants, are industriously drilling, north, south, east and west. I am careful to use the term Protestants, as the force available is drawn from the general body of Nonconformists. Orangemen are members of the Church of Ireland, and have always been regarded as Conservative. On the contrary, Presbyterians and Methodists are considered to be advanced Liberals, and herein lies a popular English fallacy--Gladstonians often refer to the Orange agitation against the disestablishment of the Irish Church, which they would fain compare with the present opposition to Home Rule, forgetting or ignoring the fact that the strength of Ulster resides in the Nonconformist bodies, and that these were all in favour of disestablishment, leaving the Orangemen in a hopeless minority. Now, however, the Nonconformists have joined their forces with those of the Orange bodies, which creates a very different aspect of affairs. The English Home Rulers say the opposition will end in smoke. It is said that the most insane are sometimes wiser than they dream, just as liars sometimes speak truth by accident. The movement will end in smoke, but it will be the smoke of battle. Every man who supports the Home Rule Bill incurs the stigma of blood-guiltiness. The bill that succeeds Home Rule will be the Butchers' Bill. No doubt Mr. Gladstone will explain away the "painful occurrences which we all deplore," and will endeavour to transfer the blame to other shoulders. His talent for explanation is unapproachable, but unhappily he cannot explain the slain to life again. In a former letter I pointed out how cleverly the Nationalists dissect the bill, how they point out that its proposals are insulting to Ireland, how they prove that its provisions are inconsistent and unworkable, how they propose to discount the trumpery restrictions and the gimcrack "safeguards" of the proposed measure, how in short, they tear the bill to rags, laugh its powers to scorn, and hold its authors in high derision. The Belfast men do not discuss the bill, do not examine it clause by clause, do not quibble over the purport of this or the probable effect of that, do not ask how the customs are to be collected, or who is to pay for this, that, or the other. They descend to no details, enter into no particulars, point out no minor fallacies, argue no questions of the ultimate effect of any one section of the bill. They reject the measure as a whole. The principle is bad, radically rotten, and cannot be amended. With the Home Rulers they agree that the bill means Separation, and therefore they put it away _en bloc_. They will have no part with the unclean thing, but cast it to the winds, bundle it out neck and crop, kick it downstairs, treat it with immeasurable contempt. They are well versed in the broad principles of Constitutional law, as it at present exists; will tell you that the Irish Constabulary is the only force that can be brought against them for the collection of the taxes, which they will absolutely refuse; declare that the military can only be used against them for this purpose by Act of Parliament; cite the preamble of the Army Bill, which shows that there is no standing army, but only a force renewed in its functions from year to year; show that the monarch has ceased to be generalissimo of the British troops since such a year, refer to the sad case of Charles I., who would fain have collected Ship-money from a certain John Hampden, and endeavoured to use the English army for this laudable purpose, meeting a fate at once horrible and instructive. Then comes the application. Similar causes, say they, will bring about similar effects, and if the quality and temper of the people be considered their arguments seem reasonable. The Irish army of Independence is already a subject of mockery. "Ten of our men would make a hundred of them run like hares. On the 27th ult. a party of Orangemen were fired upon near Stewartstown, and although unarmed they stormed the hill whence came the shots, while the heroic riflemen who had fired 14 bullets, luckily without effect, showed that if too cowardly to fight, they were not too lazy to run." This occurrence, of which I had the description from authority, would have excited some attention in England, but here it is lightly passed over as nothing exceptional. "We are holding back our men. The other party are egging us on to outbreak, in the hope that our cause will be discredited, and that Lord Salisbury's visit in May might be hindered." There is a mutual repugnance between the two peoples, but the character of the repulsion is different. The Roman Catholics manifest an unmistakable hatred--the term is no whit too strong--a hatred of the social and intellectual superiority of their fellow-countrymen, who in turn look upon the Catholics (as a whole) with mistrust, mingled with contempt. As well ask Brother Jonathan to submit to the rule of the negro, as well ask the London trader to put his interests in the hands of a Seven Dials' syndicate, as well ask Mr. Gladstone and his followers to listen to reason or to talk common sense, as to expect the powerful and influential Protestants of Belfast and Ulster generally to entrust their future to a Legislature elected by the most illiterate electorate in the three kingdoms, and under the thumb of the priests--who wield a despotic power which people in England cannot be made to understand. A short time ago the Dublin Freemasons held a bazaar in aid of a charity whose object was the complete care of orphan children. The Catholic Archbishop immediately fulminated a decree that whosoever patronised the show would incur the terrors of the church, which means that they would perish everlastingly. Some poor folks, servant girls and porters and the like, who were sent by their mistresses or called by their honest avocations, dared to enter the accursed precincts, and emerging alive, rushed to confession, that the leprosy of Masonic charity might be washed from their souls by absolution. Absolution was refused. The wretched outcasts were referred to the Bishop, who in this dire emergency had sole power to unlock the gates of heaven. Do English people know what an Irish Catholic feels when refused absolution? I trow not, and that therefore they cannot justly estimate the power of the priests. Another illustration. A friend of mine made some purchases and sent a man for them, one of five hundred Catholics in his employ. The poor fellow halted two hundred yards from the contaminating circle, and by the aid of a policeman, got the parcel brought to him--without risking his immortal soul. The bazaar realised twenty-two thousand pounds. The Ireland of the harp and vesper bell, free from the dominion of England, having the prestige of an independent Catholic State, the Ireland of excommunication by bell, book, and candle, the Ireland of the priest and Pope--that, and no other, according to Ulstermen, is the ultimate end of Home Rule. They will have none of it, their determination is announced, and they will stand by what they say. From what I have seen and heard I am convinced that Ulster means business, and also has the power to win. The Irish Unionists are worthy co-partners in the great fight, and Englishmen should stand with them shoulder to shoulder. But with or without English aid, Ulster may be trusted to hold its own. Belfast, April 1st. No. 4.--MR. BALFOUR'S WELCOME. Arriving in the northern capital from Dublin you are apt to experience a kind of chill, akin to that felt by the boy of easy-going parents who, visiting the house of a staid and sober uncle, said to his little cousins, "At home we can fight with pillows, and let off crackers in the kitchen, and ride on the poker and tongs across the dining-room tables, and shy oranges at the chimney ornaments, and cut the sofas and pull out the stuffing, but here we get no fun at all!" The effervescence of the sunny south is conspicuous by its absence, and be it observed that the political south and the geographical south of Ireland are entirely different, the Ulstermen invariably using the term to denote an imaginary line across the country just above Dundalk. The mention of this town reminds me of a Cork commercial traveller's description of the Dundalk festivities in connection with the visit of our famous citizen, Mr. Egan, on the occasion of his release--"There was a murtherin' big crowd o' the greatest ruffians ye ever clapped your two eyes on. Some o' them had long sticks with a lump o' tow on the end, steeped in petroleum or something equally inflammable, an' whin they got the word to march--the hero was in a brake--they lit up and walked away in procession without looking at him at all, or taking any notice of him, which was moighty strange, I thought. They went on an' on, a lot o' rapscallions ye wouldn't like to meet in a lonely lane, and whin the brake stopped, for some reason or other, the whole o' them were unconscious of it, an' marched on without the grate man, leaving him an' his brake alone. I had the curiosity to go to the meetin'. There were two factions in the town, an' only one of them was riprisinted, the others stood aloof. They are at daggers drawn, flyin' at each other's throat, although Catholics and Home Rulers, an' this meetin' was the funniest thing at all! The chairman was a common fellow that made money some way, an' ye may say he liked to hear himself spake. An' be the powdhers o' war, he had the convaniences for speech-makin', for he had a jaw like a bulldog, an' a mouth on him ye couldn't span with your two hands." Further description proceeded in the same strain, and even allowing for the exuberancies of my friend's southern imagination, and his wide command of figurative language, this account of the kind of people who constitute ninety-nine hundredths of Mr. Gladstone's allies should give Home Rulers pause. There is no lack of enthusiasm here, but the people mind their work, and do not bubble over every five minutes. They certainly showed warmth on Monday morning, and never was popular ruler, victorious general, or famous statesman welcomed with more spontaneous burst of popular acclaim. York Street was literally full of all classes of people, save and except the typical Irish poor. Of the tens of thousands who filled Royal Avenue, Donegal Place, and the broad road to the North Counties Railway, I saw none poorly clad. All were well dressed, orderly, respectable, and wonderfully good-humoured, besides being the tallest and best-grown people I have ever seen in a fairly extensive European experience. I was admitted to the station with a little knot, comprising the Marquess of Ormonde, Lord Londonderry, the gigantic Dr. Kane, head of the Ulster Orangemen, and Colonel Saunderson, full as ever of fun and fight. It was at first intended to keep the people outside, and a strong detachment of police guarded the great gates, but in vain. They were swept away by mere pressure, and the people occupied the place to the number of many thousands, mostly wearing primroses. As the train steamed in there was a tremendous rush and cheering--genuine British cheering, such as that with which Birmingham used on great occasions to greet John Bright--rendering almost inaudible the numerous explosions of fog-signals which perhaps by way of salute had been placed at the entrance to the station. There was a mocking shout of "Dynamite," followed by a roar of laughter, and despite the frantic efforts of the railway men, who humanely struggled to avoid the seemingly impending sacrifices _à la_ Juggernaut, the more active members of the crowd storming the train, instantly sprang aloft and manned the tops of the carriages with a solid mass of vociferating humanity. Soon Mr. Balfour's face appeared, and a moment after he was standing amidst the throng, swayed hither and thither by loyalists who shook his hands, patted him on the back, deafened him with their cheers. Out came the horses, dashing through the people, snorting and plunging like so many Gladstonians, but happily injuring no one. In went the men, Mr. Balfour laughing merrily, and looking uncommonly fit, lifting his soft brown hat in mute recognition of the magnificent welcome accorded by men who are perhaps among the most competent judges of his merit as a benefactor of Ireland. Away went the carriage, amid tumultuous shouting of "No Home Rule," and "God save the Queen." This went on for miles, from the Northern Counties' Terminus to Victoria Street, when Lord Londonderry signalled to quicken the pace, and after a short speech at the Albert Memorial, the _cortége_ disappeared over the bridge, and I returned to meet the English working men who arrived an hour later. Splendid it was to hear the six hundred miners from Newcastle-on-Tyne shouting "Old Ireland for ever!" while the generous Irishmen responded with "Rule Britannia" and cheers for Old England. Cheers for Belfast and Newcastle alternated with such stentorian vigour, each side shouting for the other, that you might have been excused for imagining that the Union of Hearts was an accomplished fact, and that brotherly love had begun and must ever continue. Said a miner, "We're all surprised to see that the people here are just like Englishmen. An' I'm blest if they aren't more loyal than the English themselves." From Monday morning the city has been resounding with beat of drum and the shrill sounds of the fife. The houses are swathed in bunting, and the public buildings were already covered with banners when I arrived on Friday last. This, however is not characteristic Belfast form. The Belfasters _can_ rejoice, and whatever they do, is thoroughly done, but work is their vocation, as befits their grave and sober mood. They are great at figures, and by them they try to show that they, and not the Dubliners, should be first considered. They are practical, and although not without sentiment, avoid all useless manifestation of mere feeling. They are mainly utilitarian, and prefer mathematical proof, on which they themselves propose to rely, in proving their case. Here is an instance. A Belfast accountant, who is also a public officer, has collected a number of comparative figures on which he bases the claims of Belfast to prior consideration. The figures are certainly exact, and are submitted as evidence of the superior business management, and larger, keener capacity of Protestant Belfast as compared with those of Catholic Dublin. Beginning with the functions of the Dublin Lord Mayor, secretary, and so forth, which cost £4,967 a year, it is shown that the same work in Belfast--which is rather larger than Dublin--costs only £176. Let us tabulate a few representative cases:-- Dublin. Belfast. Mayor, &c. £4,967 £176 Town Clerk, secretaries of committees, law agents 5,659 2,752 Treasurer, accountants, stock registrar 3,402 2,168 Fire Brigade, salaries and lighting 3,616 1,247 Coroners, sanitary officials 3,530 1,310 Wages of sanitary staff 2,233 1,130 Surveyors (borough & waterworks) and Secretaries 6,070 4,472 Clerks of Peace and Revision Officers 2,451 1,552 ------ ------ Totals £31,928 £14,807 This discrepancy is everywhere observable. The Dublin Gas Management costs £14,850 against £8,060 in Belfast, with the result that the Ulster City Gasworks yielded in 1891 a profit of £27,105, charging 2s. 9d., while the Dubliners charge 3s. 6d. and make no profit at all. The Belfast markets yield a profit of about £3,500, while on the Dublin markets and abattoir there was a deficit of £3,012 to be made good by the ratepayers. Dublin, with property amounting to £20,000 a year and old-established Royal bounties, owes nearly twice as much as Belfast, which latter city spends more on what may be called the advance of civilisation. In 1892 Belfast spent £8,000 on a public park--Government providing for this matter in Dublin--£5,686 on public libraries, and £4,100 on baths and workhouses, against £1,217 and £1,627 for like purposes in Dublin. "Therefore," say the Belfast men, "we will not have our affairs managed by these incompetent men, who, besides their demonstrated incapacity to deal with finance, are dependent for their position on the illiterates of the agricultural districts, who are to a man under the thumb of the priests, and who, moreover, have shown that their rapacity is equal to their lack of integrity, and whose leading doctrine is the repudiation of lawful contracts," a point on which commercial Ulster is excessively severe. One thing is certain--Ulster will never pay taxes levied by an Irish Legislature in which Ulster would be utterly swamped. All classes are of this opinion, from the Earl of Ranfurly, who during a long interview repeatedly expressed his conviction that the passing of any Home Rule Bill would be fraught with most lamentable results, to the humble trimmer of a suburban hedge who, having admitted that he was from the county Roscommon, and (therefore) a Catholic Home Ruler, claimed to know the Ulster temper in virtue of 28 years' residence in or near Belfast, and said-- "What they say they mane, an' the divil himself wouldn't tur-r-n thim. Ah, but they're a har-r-d-timpered breed, ivery mother's son o' them. Ye can comether (gammon) a Roscommon man, but a Bilfast man, whillaloo!" He stopped in sheer despair of finding words to express the futility of attempting to take in a Belfast man. "An' whin ye ax thim for taxes, an' they say they won't pay--ye might jist as well whistle jigs to a milestone! 'Tis thrue what I tell ye." As for to-day, the magnificence of the pageant beggars description. Whether regarded from a scenic point of view or with respect to numbers and enthusiasm, never since Belfast was Belfast has the city looked upon a sight approaching it. From early morning brass bands and fife bands commenced to enter the city from every point of the compass, and wherever you turned the air resounded with the inspiring rattle of the drum. Monday's display of bunting was sufficiently lavish to suggest the impossibility of exhibiting any more, but the Belfasters accomplished the feat, and the bright sunshine on the brilliant colours of the myriad banners was strongly reminiscent of Paris _en fête_ under the Empire. The Belfast streets are long, straight, and wide, and mostly intersect at right angles. Much of the concourse was thus visible from any moderate coign of vantage, and from the Grand Stand in Donegal Place the sight was truly wonderful. The vast space, right, left, and front, was from 10 o'clock closely packed with a mighty multitude that no man could number, and locomotion became every moment so painful as to threaten total stagnation. The crowd was eminently respectable and perfectly orderly, and submitted to the passage of innumerable musical organisations with charming good humour. Never have I seen or heard of such an assemblage of bands, all uniformed, all preceded by gorgeous banners bearing all kinds of loyal and party mottoes, all marching in splendid military fashion, and of themselves numerous enough to furnish a very considerable demonstration. Many of the tunes were of a decidedly martial character, and strange to English ears, such as the "Boyne Water," the "Orange Lily" and the "Protestant Boys," the last being a version of the "Lillibulero" so often mentioned by Scott. All these tunes, more or less distasteful to Nationalists, were interspersed with others less debatable, such as "Rule Britannia," "The Old Folks at Home," "The Last Rose of Summer," "God Save the Queen," and "See the Conquering Hero comes," which last generally accompanied the portrait of Orange William, the "Glorious, Pious, and Immortal," mounted on his famous white charger, which noble animal is depicted in the attitude erroneously believed to be peculiar to that of Bonaparte when crossing the Alps. The Earl of Beaconsfield was also to the fore with primroses galore; indeed, the favourite flower was invariably worn by the ladies, who were greatly in evidence. "Our God, our Country, and our Empire" was the motto over Mr. Balfour, with a huge "Welcome" in white on scarlet ground, the whole surrounded by immense Union Jacks. The familiar red, white, and blue bore the brunt of the decorative responsibilities, although here and there the green flag of Ireland hung cheek by jowl with the English standard, emphasising the friendliness of the present Union. As time went on the crowd became more and more dense, and a breathless pressman, who reached his post at twelve o'clock, stated that the seething myriads of Donegal Place and the adjacent streets were "hardly a circumstance" to what he had seen in the York Road, where the people awaited the hero of the hour. Things were getting serious at 12.15, and then it was that the active members of the crowd swarmed on the railings, balancing themselves in most uncomfortable situations, and maintaining their spiky seats with a tenacious martyrdom which spoke volumes for the determination of the Ulster character. On and ever on went the bands in seemingly endless procession, although merely assembling for the great march past, and therefore only a fraction of the impending multitude. Some enterprising men climbed the trees bordering the square, driving away the little flocks of sparrows which till then had conducted a noisy committee meeting in the branches, heedless of the drumming and general uproar, but which now dispersed without so much as a vote of thanks to the chair. At 12.30 a foam of white faces broke over the roofs of the lofty buildings around, protected by stone balustrades. At the same moment a shout of "They are coming" was heard, followed fey a thunderous roar of cheering. Mr. Balfour slowly emerged from York Road, amid immense acclamation, his carriage, piloted by the Corporation, moving inch by inch through the solid mass with inconceivable difficulty. Over and over again the line of vehicles stopped dead, and it was clear that the horses had much trouble to maintain their gravity. As the carriage with Sir Daniel Dixon (the Lord Mayor of Belfast), Sir Samuel Black (Town Clerk), and Lord Londonderry neared the Grand Stand, the pressmen agreed that nothing equal to this demonstration had ever before been held within the British Islands. Mr. Balfour having gained the platform the procession proper commenced, headed by the banner of the Belfast Harbour Commissioners, while the people broke into a chorus, asserting that Britons never, never shall be slaves. This at 12.35 precisely. Next came the Belfast Water Commissioners, the Belfast Board of Guardians, the provincial Corporate bodies, and the provincial Boards of Guardians. A tremendous tumult of voices accompanied all these, but when the Trinity College graduates arrived the din became overpowering. Their standard was halted opposite Mr. Balfour, and the young fellows burst into wild and uncontrollable enthusiasm. The medical students of Queen's College, Belfast, with the _alumni_ of the Methodist and Presbyterian College succeeding, gave "God Save the Queen" with great vigour, and came in a close second; but nothing quite touched the Trinity College men. The Scottish Unionist clubs, a fine body, two thousand strong, confirmed the statement that Scots who understand the situation are against Home Rule. Most of these men work in the shipbuilding yards of Belfast. The Belfast Unionist Clubs and the Provincial Unionist Clubs were, of course, heartily greeted, returning the applause with interest, and the Independent Order of Rechabites showed that their alleged exclusive partiality for cold water had not diminished their lung power. The British Order of Ancient Free Gardeners, the Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds, and the Independent Order of Oddfellows reminded the Brutal Saxon who might be present of his native shore, the men being of the familiar sturdy type, marching in dense columns, all gloriously arrayed. There was none of the artful spreading over the ground which I observed in the great Birmingham demonstration which was to "end or mend" the Lords; and another point of divergency consists in the fact that the Belfast demonstration, which was incomparably larger, was perfectly spontaneous, and not due to organisation. Baronets and other gentlemen of distinction headed the Unionist clubs, walking through the streets in such manner as was never known before. Magistrates and Presbyterian ministers tramped with the rank and file. Sir William Ewart, Bart., Mr. Thomas Sinclair, J.P.--a great name in the city--and the Rev. Dr. Lynd were especially prominent. Some of the teetotallers wore white sashes, which were perhaps more conspicuous than the gaudy colours affected by the Orangemen, and one body of Unionists from the suburban clubs waved white handkerchiefs, a feature which for obvious reasons can never occur in Nationalist processions. The Shepherds have a pastoral dress, each man carrying a crook, and the marshals of the lodges bore long halberds. The van of each column was preceded by a stout fellow, who dexterously raising a long staff in a twirling fashion peculiar to Ireland, shouted, "Faugh-a-Ballagh," which being interpreted signifies "Clear the way." The Oddfellows marched to the tune known in England as "We won't go home till morning," which is the same as "Marlborough goes to war," the favourite air of the Great Napoleon. All this time Mr. Balfour is standing at my elbow as I write, bareheaded, acknowledging the finest reception ever accorded to any man in Ireland, not excepting Dan O'Connell and Parnell. The funeral of the uncrowned king was a comparatively small affair, while the respectability of the crowd was of course immeasurably below that of the Belfast concourse. An old man somehow got near the platform and presented Mr. Balfour with a bunch of orange lilies, saying that was the flower the people would fight under. The Young Men's Christian Association cheered lustily for the Union to the tune of three thousand strong. The Central Presbyterian Association marched past singing "God is our refuge and our strength," and the Church of Ireland Young Men's Society, headed by the clergy, superintended by the Bishop of the diocese from the stand, made a brave and gallant show. Hour after hour glides by, and still the teeming multitude moves on, and still Mr. Balfour stands uncovered. No joke to be a hero nowadays. The "Young Irelands" gave a grand cheer, and passed in brave array, singing with the Y.M.C.A. "Hold the Fort" and "God Save the Queen." Dr. Kane, the Bishop of Clogher, Captain Somerset Maxwell, Colonel Saunderson, and the Earl of Erne, Grand Master of the Orangemen of Ireland, received a stupendous reception as they followed the Young Men Christians, mustered in overwhelming force. The "Marseillaise" here broke out with considerable severity, and Mr. Balfour broke out into a broad smile, which ran over into a laugh, as the too familiar strains of "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay" made the welkin ring. Then came "The March of the Men of Harlech," mixed with "Home Sweet Home" and "The Boyne Water," till the senses reeled again. At 3.35 the two miles of Orangemen seemed likely to go on for ever, and Mr. Balfour said to me, "I think this demonstration undoubtedly the greatest ever seen, and if you like you may convey that as my message to the Unionists of Birmingham. They will know what the effect of this will be. I need say no more." I asked Mr. Balfour if he thought the bill would pass, and he replied, "Tell the Birmingham men what I have said already. They will require no more." At 4.10 the procession was in full swing, but Mr. Balfour seemed to have had about enough and showed symptoms of making a move, and, as a preliminary, put on his hat. This was the signal for cheering, which perhaps surpassed anything that had gone before. The great ex-Irish-Secretary effaced himself; and Colonel Saunderson, backed by Lord Salisbury's son and several Irish peers, essayed to fill the gap. I ventured in my timid way to tap the gallant Colonel on the shoulder with a view to tapping his sentiments, which proved to be exultant. He told me of the wire he had received from Lord Salisbury, and spoke of the meeting in the Botanic Gardens which had taken place while I had watched the procession. Then he said, "Tell the Birmingham people through the _Gazette_ that as we have the last Prime Minister and the present Chief of the Opposition with us, we cannot be called revolutionary. As for this meeting, it will speak for itself. I think it the biggest thing ever known." During the procession a copy of the Home Rule Bill was burnt on the top of a pole in front of the Grand Stand. After exactly four hours of watching, I accepted the proffered aid of an Irish friend who agreed to lead me by roundabout ways to the telegraph office. After many narrow passages and devious turns, we struck the Royal Avenue, a long, long way from our starting place. Here we took the still advancing procession in flank. It was now 4.45, and my friend said, "By jabers, there's forty million more of them. I believe the procession reaches all round the world, and moves in a continuous band." And, sure enough, they were coming on as fresh as ever, but I felt that four hours and a quarter of bands and drums was enough at once, so I made a dash for the wires before they should be absolutely blocked. My account is not, perhaps, quite perfect, but it was pencilled under extraordinary circumstances--ten people talking to me at once, a lady's umbrella in my side, a thousand people leaning on my right elbow, and five hundred bands sounding in my ear. Surely it may be said to have been written under fire. Belfast, April 4th. No. 5.--HAS MR. MORLEY LIED? Before leaving Belfast I obtained incontrovertible evidence anent the growing fears of Mr. Gladstone's Government. Mr. Morley has denied the existence of any such nervousness, and has repudiated the assertion that precautions have been taken. But what is the truth of the matter? Let us see whether his statement is borne out by facts. In February certain military officers received a confidential communication having reference to the defence of the Belfast barracks. They were requested to examine and report upon the possibility of these buildings being tenable against a _coup de main_, were ordered to examine the loop-holes for musketry, to prepare plans of the same, and to duly submit them to the proper authorities, giving their opinion as to the practicability and sufficiency of existing arrangements in the event of the buildings being assaulted by organised bodies of armed civilians, during the absence of soldiers who might be about the city, taking their walks abroad, after the regulation manner permitted to Mr. Thomas Atkins under ordinary circumstances. The order was executed, the plans were duly furnished, and if Mr. Morley is still unaware of the fact, I have much pleasure in imparting the information which I have on the best authority attainable in an imperfect world. He may rely on this statement as being absolutely undeniable, and to descend to particulars, I will add that plans were made of the Tram Stables Barracks, the Willow Bank Barracks, and the Victoria Barracks. As I have said, the instructions were marked Confidential, and the Irish Secretary may have relied on this magic word in formulating his denials. The alternative hypothesis is, of course, obvious enough. The work may have been ordered and executed without Mr. Morley's knowledge, but it has been done, and, after proper inquiry, he will not venture to deny it. The circumstance is a curious commentary on the Gladstonian affectation of perfect security, and the scornful references of Home Rulers to the alleged determination of Ulstermen, in the last resource, to push matters to extremity. I could tell him more than this. It would be easy to adduce other instances of Governmental nervousness, but prudential and confidential considerations intervene. However, while in the vein, let me submit for serious contemplation the fact that up to the morning postal delivery of Wednesday, April 5, 1893, written offers of personal assistance in the matter of armed resistance to the exact number of ten thousand and five have reached a certain Ulster organisation from England and Scotland, the roll including five generals, with a percentage of Victoria Cross men. This statement is made on the authority of the Earl of Ranfurly, who told me that the matter was within his personal knowledge, and that the whole of these communications were entirely spontaneous and altogether unsolicited, and that nobody in Ireland was in any way responsible for their existence. Lord Ranfurly also said that while the hearty friendship and co-operation of these gentlemen were warmly appreciated by Irish Loyalists, he was quite certain that their generous aid would never be required, for that Home Rule was now defunct, dead, and buried, and beyond the possibility of resurrection. It may be remarked, in passing, that this is the feeling of the best-informed Irish Home Rulers, and that many in my hearing have offered to back their opinion by laying odds. The rejection of the Bill so far from exasperating the Nationalist party, would positively come as a relief. To say that they are lukewarm is only to fairly indicate a state of feeling which is rapidly degenerating into frigidity. They declare that the Bill is unworkable, and while maintaining their abstract right to demand whatever they choose, believe that, taking one consideration with another, the lot of autonomic Ireland would not be a happy one. Mr. Richard Patterson, J.P., the great ironmonger of Belfast, observes that "according to Mr. Gladstone the only people who really understand Ulster are those who have never been in it." My interview with him was both instructive and interesting. He is one of the Harbour Commissioners, and a gentleman of considerable scientific attainments, as well as a great public and commercial man. He belongs to the Reform Club and, with his fellow-members, was up to 1886 a devoted follower of Mr. Gladstone. The name of his firm, established in 1786 on the very ground it now occupies, is a household word in Ireland, and Mr. Patterson himself has the respect and esteem of his bitterest political opponents. He pointed out the unfairness and injustice of Mr. Gladstone's reference to religion, when turning a deaf ear to the Belfast deputation. "The report of the Chamber of Commerce," he said, "was a purely business statement, and had no element of party feeling. The fact that the Protestant members of the Chamber outnumber the Catholics is in no respect due to religious intolerance, which in this body is totally unknown. Anybody who pays a guinea a year may be elected a member, whatever his religion, whatever his circumstances, providing he is a decent member of society, which is the only qualification required. Members are certainly elected by ballot, but during the many years I have belonged to the Chamber not a single person has been black-balled. If the Protestants are more numerous, the fact simply demonstrates their superior prosperity, arising only from their more steady application to hard work. We live on terms of perfect friendship with our Catholic countrymen, and we assiduously cultivate the sentiment. It is only when a weak and ignorant pandering to disloyalty excites opposition that enmity begins. Only let us alone, that is all we ask. We were going on beautifully until Mr. Gladstone and his accomplices upset everything." Speaking of the difference between the Ulster men and the Irish Kelts, Mr. Patterson said, "Prosperity or the reverse is indicative of the breed. The Southern Irish had more advantages than the Ulstermen. They had better land, better harbours, a far more productive country, and yet they always seethe in discontent. Put 20,000 Northerners in Cork, and in twenty years the Southern port could knock Liverpool out of time." Addressing himself to the Home Rule Bill, he declared that the practical, keen-witted merchants of Belfast dismissed the whole concoction as unworthy of sober consideration, and declared that an awful responsibility rested on Mr. Gladstone. Said this experienced J.P.: "The Belfast riots of 1886 were terrible. Forty people were killed in the streets, and what I saw in my capacity of magistrate was dreadful in the extreme. The injuries from gun-shot wounds were almost innumerable, and many a local doctor gained experience in this line which is unknown to many an army surgeon. The riots began with the ruffian class, from which this great city is not entirely free, and gradually rose upwards to the shipbuilding yards. All this disturbance and awful loss of life were entirely due to the production of Mr. Gladstone's first bill. And now they tell us that a worse bill--for it is a worse bill--might become law without any inconvenience. I submit to any reasonable man that if the mere menace of a bill cost forty lives in Belfast alone, the loss of life all over Ireland, once the bill were passed, would be enormous. And all this will be attributable to the action of Mr. Gladstone, who has never been in Ulster." Walking down Royal Avenue I met Colonel Saunderson, radiant after the great demonstration of two days ago, wearing a big bunch of violets in place of Tuesday's bouquet of primroses. He stopped to express good wishes to the _Gazette_, and said that the Belfasters were proud of Birmingham, which city he regarded as being the most advanced and enlightened in the world. While he so spake, up came the mighty Dr. Kane, idol of the Ulsterites, towering over the gallant Colonel's paltry six feet one, and looking down smilingly from his altitude in infinite space on my own discreditable five feet ten. He agreed with the Colonel as to the merits of Birmingham, and added that every Unionist in Belfast cherished a deep sentiment of gratitude to the hardware city, requesting me to explode the misleading statements of the Separatist press, which asserts that Tuesday's procession consisted of Orangemen. "The first two hours," said the Reverend Doctor, "consisted of bodies who do not processionise, and who never perform in public, in or out of Belfast, Methodists, Presbyterians, and the like, while the 25,000 or 30,000 Orangemen who came in at the tail of the show were a mere fraction of the whole. Colonel Saunderson, the Earl of Erne, and myself stood up in our carriage and cheered the Radical Reform Club, a thing we certainly have never done before." Here the Colonel laughed, and said-- "The union of hearts, Doctor." "Yes, the union of hearts and no mistake, as the Grand Old Man will find--to his cost. All classes are united against the common enemy" (Mr. Gladstone). "But tell me something--How is it that the English people are deceived by that arch-professor of cant? Tell me that!" I requested the good doctor to ask me something easier, and he doubtless would have done so, but at this moment up came the famous Dr. Traill, the Admirable Crichton of Ireland, and with my usual thirst for knowledge, I ventured to suggest that the mathematical intellect of the Trinity College Examiner might possibly grapple with the problem. The learned professor smiled, gripped my unworthy fin, shook out some words of greeting, wagged his head hopelessly, and--bolted like a rocket. Dr. Traill is said to be equally versed in Law, Physic, and Divinity, to sport with trigonometry, and to amuse his lighter moments with the differential calculus. But "this knowledge was too wonderful for him, he could not attain unto it," and to avoid confession of defeat, he fled with lightning speed. This erudite doctor is well known in England, especially among riflemen. Colonel Saunderson describes him as a wonderful shot at a thousand yards, and thinks he was once one of the Irish Eight at Wimbledon. I met him on the stand on Tuesday, when he amusingly described his adventures on the Continent. "The poor Poles," he said, "wished to take me to their collective bosom, and to fall on my individual neck, the moment they found I was an Irishman. They said we were brothers in misfortune!" Whereat this learned pundit laughed good-humouredly. It may be that Dr. Traill is the long-range rifleman of whom a Land League man remarked, on hearing that the marksman had made a long series of bull's eyes-- "The saints betune us an' harm--but wouldn't he make an iligant tenant!" Dr. Kane was not surprised to see the professor run away. He said, "I cannot understand it all. I must and will cross the Channel immediately to investigate this strange phenomenon. I have always considered the English a people of superior mental force, men who could not be easily deceived. That they should pin their faith to a man who has proved to demonstration that Home Rule is impossible, who more than any other has branded the Nationalist party with ignominy, I cannot understand." The Doctor perhaps momentarily forgot that the English do not pin their faith to Mr. Gladstone, that the adverse majority are dead against him, and that this majority is daily increasing by leaps and bounds. Gallant Captain Leslie, whom I saw earlier in the day, more accurately hit the situation. This splendid old soldier said, "The English people are not to be blamed. Living under social conditions of perfect freedom and friendship they do not understand the conditions prevailing in Ireland; they cannot be expected to understand a state of things differing so widely from anything within the circle of their own experience. But all the same, if they grant Home Rule, if they listen to the disloyal party rather than to their loyal friends, if they truckle to treason rather than support their own supporters, the consequences will be disastrous to England, and where the disasters will stop is a piece of knowledge which 'passes the wit of man.'" Running up to Ballymena, I encountered several interesting personalities, each of whom had his own view of the all-absorbing subject, and looked at the matter from his own standpoint. An Irish-American of high culture, a man of science, looked up from what he regarded as "the most interesting book in existence," which turned out to be Thompson's "Evolution of Sex," and said that once Home Rule were in force the blackguard American-Irish would return in shoals, and that the Fenians of America might be expected to "boss the show." "How is it," he asked, "that the English people listen to what appears the chief argument of Separatist orators--that agitation will come to an end, that the Irish will be content to rest and be thankful? Clearly while money and power can be had by agitation, so long will agitation continue. That seems so obvious to me, that I wonder at the patience of the North of England men--I was among them during the general election--in listening quietly to this argument, if it be one at all. And with all their experience of the past to enlighten them into the bargain. Was not the disestablishment of the Church to remove all cause of discontent? Then it was the land. You gave several Land Acts, most favourable laws, very one-sided, all in favour of the tenant, far beyond what English, Scotch, or Welsh farmers hope to get. Have you satisfied Irishmen yet? No, and you never will. The more you give, the more they ask. They never will be content. ''Tis not their nature to.' England now suffers for her own weak good nature. The true curse of Ireland is laziness. I left Belfast at twenty, but I am well acquainted with Ireland. In the North they work and prosper. In the South they do nothing but nurse their grievances. Twenty years' firm government, as Lord Salisbury said, would enrich the country. Do the right thing by them--put them level with England and Scotland, and then put down your foot. Let them know that howling will do no good, and they'll stop it like a shot. Paddy is mighty 'cute, and knows when he has a _man_ to deal with. Put a noodle over him and that noodle's life will be a burden. And serve him right. Fools must expect fools' reward." A Catholic priest I met elsewhere was very chary of his opinions, and confined himself to the "hope that England would see her way to compensate the Church and the country for centuries of extortion and oppression." This he thought was a matter of "common honesty." He did not exactly suggest a perpetual church-rate for the benefit of the Catholics of Ireland, but the thing is on the cards, and may be proposed by Mr. Gladstone later on. Something ought to be done, something substantial, for the gentlemen educated under the Maynooth Grant. Mr. Bull has admitted the principle, and his sense of fair play will doubtless lead him to do the right thing, always, of course, under compulsion, which is now usually regarded as the mainspring of that estimable gentleman's supposed virtuous actions. Ballymena is a smart looking place, trig and trim, thriving and well-liking, a place to look upon and live. The people are all well-clad, and prosperous, well-fed and well-grown. The men are mostly big, the women mostly beautiful; the houses are of stone, handsome and well-built. On the bleaching grounds you see long miles of linen--Irish miles, of course--and all the surroundings are pleasant. After this, no need to say the place is one of the blackest, most Unionist, Protestant, and loyal in the whole country. A number of buff placards issued by Nationalists attract respectful attention. The same bill is stuck all over Belfast--in the High Street, on the hoardings facing the heretic meeting houses, everywhere. It purports to present the sentiments of the great Duke of Wellington _re_ the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and is to the effect that in moments of danger and difficulty the Roman Catholics had caused the British Empire to float buoyant when other Empires were wrecked; that the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and they only, had saved our freedom, our Constitution, our institutions, and in short that it is to the Irish Roman Catholics that we owe everything worth having. Alone they did it. The priest, in short, has made Mr. Bull the man he is. Can anybody in England "go one better" than this? These extracts are plainly taken from some speech on the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill, and refer to the valour of the Irish soldiery, whose bravery in fighting for a Protestant cause was doubtless invaluable to the cause of liberty. There is an apocryphal story concerning Alfred de Musset, who on his death-bed is reported to have conveyed to a friend with his last breath his last, his only wish, to wit:-- "Don't permit me to be annotated." The Iron Duke might have said the same if he had thought of it. He could not know that, shorn of his context, divorced from his drift, he would be placarded in his native land as an agent in the cause of sedition and disloyalty. This truly Grand Old Man, who, in his determination to uphold the dignity and unity of the Empire "stood four-square to all the winds that blew," would scarcely have sided with the modern G.O.M. and his satellites, Horsewhipped Healy and Breeches O'Brien. One word as to the alleged "intolerance of the fanatic Orangemen of Belfast." The placards above-mentioned were up on Tuesday last. They are large and boldly printed, and attracted crowds of readers--but not a hand was raised to deface them, to damage them, to do them any injury whatever. I watched them for four-and-twenty hours, and not a finger was lifted against any one in the High Street or elsewhere, so far as I could ascertain. There are twenty thousand Orangemen in the city, and the Protestants outnumber the Papists by three to one. Yet the placard was treated with absolute respect, and although I entered several groups of readers I heard no words of criticism--no comment, unfavourable or otherwise, no gesture of dissent. The people seemed to be interested in the bill, and desirous of giving it respectful consideration. I have seen Liberal Birmingham, when in the days of old it assembled round Tory posters--but the subject becomes delicate; better change our ground. It is, however, only fair to say that the Gladstonians of Birmingham, who, as everybody knows, formed the extreme and inferior wing of the old Radical party, can hardly teach the Belfast men tolerance. Ballymena, April 6th. No. 6.--THE EXODUS OF INDUSTRY. Derry is a charming town, unique, indescribable. Take equal parts of Amsterdam and Antwerp, add the Rhine at Cologne, and Waterloo Bridge, mix with the wall of Chester and the old guns of Peel Castle, throw in a strong infusion of Wales, with about twenty Nottingham lace factories, stir up well and allow to settle, and you will get the general effect. The bit of history resulting in the raising of the siege still influences Derry conduct and opinions. The 'Prentice Boys of Derry, eight hundred strong, are ardent loyalists, and having once beaten an army twenty-five thousand strong, believe that for the good of the country, like the orator who had often "gone widout a male," they too could "do it again." They do not expect to be confronted with the necessity, but both the Boys and the Orangemen of Derry, with all their co-religionists, are deeply pledged to resist a Dublin Parliament. "We would not take the initiative, but would merely stand on our own defence, and offer a dogged resistance. We have a tolerable store of arms, although this place was long a proclaimed district, and we have fifteen modern cannon, two of which are six-pounders, the rest mostly four-pounders, and one or two two-pounders, which are snugly stored away, for fear of accident." Thus spake one who certainly knows, and his words were amply confirmed from another quarter. Derry makes shirts. The industrious Derryans make much money, and in many ways. They catch big salmon in the middle of the town, and outside it they have what Mr. Gladstone would call a "plethora" of rivers. They ship unnumbered emigrants to the Far West, and carry the produce of the surrounding agriculturists to Glasgow and Liverpool. They also make collars and cuffs, but this is mere sport. Their real vocation is the making of shirts, which they turn out by the million, mostly of high quality. Numbers of great London houses have their works at Derry. Welch, Margeston and Co. among others. The Derry partner, Mr. Robert Greer, an Englishman forty years resident in the town, favoured me with his views _re_ Home Rule, thus:-- "The bill would be ruinous to Ireland, but not to the same extent as to England. Being an Englishman, I may be regarded as free from the sectarian animosity which actuates the opposing parties, but I cannot close my eyes to the results of the bill, results of which no sane person, in a position to give an opinion, can have any doubt. We are so convinced that the bill would render our business difficult, not to say impracticable, that our London partners say they will remove the works, plant, machinery, and all, to the West of Scotland or elsewhere. "About 1,200 girls are employed in the mill, and 3,000 to 4,000 women at their own homes all over the surrounding country. "Mr. Gladstone may think he knows best, but here the unanimous opinion is that trade will be fatally injured. Ireland is no mean market for English goods, and the market will be closed because Ireland will have no money to spend. Go outside the manufacturing towns and what do you see? Chronic poverty. Manufacturers will remove to the Continent, to America--anywhere else--leaving the peasantry only. The prospective taxes are alarming. We know what would be one of the very first acts of a Dublin Parliament. They would curry favour with the poor, the lazy districts, by an equalisation of the poor rate. In Derry, where everybody works for his bread, the rate is about sixpence in the pound. There are districts where it runs to ten shillings in the pound. The wealthy traders, the capitalists, the manufacturers of the North will have to pay for the loafers of the South. The big men would gather up their goods and chattels and clear out. There are other reasons for this course." Here Mr. Greer made the inevitable statement that Englishmen out of Ireland did not understand the question; and another large manufacturer chipped in with:-- "Leave us alone, and we get on admirably. There is no intolerance; everybody lives comfortably with his neighbour. But pass the bill and what happens? The Catholic employés would become unmanageable, would begin to kick over the traces, would want to dictate terms, would attempt to dominate the Protestant section, which would rebel, and trouble would ensue. They would not work together. It is impracticable to say: Employ one faith only and Home Rule means that Catholicism is to hold the sway. The Nationalist leaders foster this spirit, otherwise there would be no Home Rule. The workpeople would act as directed by the priest, even in matters connected with employment. You have no idea what that means to us. It means ruin. The people do not know their own mind, and their ignorance is amazing. My porter says that when the bill becomes law, which will take place in one month from date, he will have a situation in Dublin at a thousand a year, and both he and others sincerely believe in such a changed state of things for Catholics alone." I went over Welch, Margetson's works, a wonderful place, where were hundreds of women, clean and well-dressed, working at the various departments of shirt-making. The highest class of mill hands I ever saw, working in large and well-ventilated rooms, many getting a pound a week. Another firm over the way employs one thousand five hundred more. And according to the best authority, that of the owners, all this is to leave the country when Ireland gets Home Rule. A very intelligent Catholic farmer living a few miles out of Donegal said, "Farmers look at the bill in the light of the land question. We're not such fools as to believe in Gladstone or his bill for anythin' else. Shure, Gladstone never invints anythin' at all, but only waits till pressure is put on him. Shure, iverythin' has to be dhragged out iv him, an' if he settles the land question, divil thank him, 'tis because he knows he's bate out an' out, an' _has_ to do it, whether he will or no. An' now he comes bowin' an' scrapin' an' condiscindin' to relave us--whin we kicked it out o' his skin. Ah! the divil sweep him an' his condiscinshun." Ingratitude, thy name is Irish Tenant! Misther O'Doherty proceeded to say that landlords were all right now, under compulsion. But the tenantry demanded that they should be released entirely from the landlords' yoke. He said that the agriculturists were not in touch with the whole question of Home Rule, nor would they consider any subject but that of the land. The Nationalists had preached prairie value, and the people were tickled by the idea of driving out landowners and Protestants. All the evicted tenants, all the men who have no land, all the ne'er-do-weels would expect to be satisfied. Ulster is tillage--the South is mostly grazing. Ulster had been profitably cultivated by black Protestants, and their land was coveted by the priests for their own people. My friend admitted that, although born a Catholic, his religious opinions were liberal. I asked him if the Protestant minority would be comfortable under a Dublin Parliament. He shook his head negatively--"Under equal laws they are friendly enough, but they do not associate, they do not intermarry, they have little or nothing to do with each other. They are like oil and wather in the same bottle, ye can put them together but they won't mix. And the Protestant minority has always been the best off, simply because they are hard workers. A full-blooded Irishman is no worker. He likes to live from hand to mouth, and that satisfies him. When he has enough to last him a day through he drops work at once. The Protestants have Scotch blood, and they go on working with the notion that they'll be better off than their father, who was better off than their grandfather. And that's the whole of it." Mr. J. Gilbert Kennedy, of Donegal, holds similar views of Irish indolence. He told me that although living in a congested district he could not obtain men to dig in his gardens, except when thereto driven by sheer necessity, and that having received a day's pay they would not return to work so long as their money lasted. "They will put up with semi-starvation, cold, and nakedness most patiently. Their endurance is most commendable. They will bear anything, only--don't ask them to work." Mrs. Kennedy said that with crowds of poor girls around her, she was compelled to obtain kitchen maids and so forth from Belfast. "They will not be servants, and when they afford casual help, they do it as a great favour." A Scotsman who employs five hundred men in the mechanical work said: "I have been in Ireland fifteen years, and have gone on fairly smoothly, but with a world of management. For the sake of peace I have not five Protestants in the place; and I would have none if I could help it. It is, however, necessary to have Protestant foremen. Irishmen are not born mechanics. In Scotland and England men take to the vice and the lathe like mother's milk, but here it is labour and pain. Irishmen are not capable of steady, unremitting work. They want a day on and a day off. They wish to be traders, cattle-drovers, pig-jobbers, that they may wander from fair to fair. My men have little to do beyond minding machines; otherwise I must have Scots or English. Discharge a man and the most singular things occur. In a late instance I had seven written requests from all sorts of quarters to take the man back, although before discharge he had been duly warned. The entire neighbourhood called on me--the man's father, wife, mother, the priest, a Protestant lady, three whiskey-sellers, two Presbyterians, the Church of Ireland parson, God knows who. This lasted a fortnight, and then threatening letters set in; coffins, skulls, and marrow-bones were chalked all over the place, with my initials. Indeed you may say they are a wonderful people." Mr. E.T. Herdman, J.P., of Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone, should know something of the Irish people. The model village above-named belongs to him. Travellers to Londonderry viâ the Great Northern will remember how the great Herdman flax-spinning mills, with their clean, prosperous, almost palatial appearance, relieve the melancholy aspect of the peaty landscape about the Rivers Mourne and Derg. Mr. Herdman pays in wages some £30,000 a year, a sum of which the magnitude assumes colossal proportions in view of the surrounding landscape. The people of the district speak highly of the Herdman family, who are their greatest benefactors, but they failed to return Mr. E.T. Herdman, who contested East Donegal in 1892. The people were willing enough, but the priests stepped in and sent a Nationalist. Said Mr. Herdman, "Home Rule would be fatal to England. The Irish people have more affinity with the Americans or the French than with the English, and the moment international difficulties arise Ireland would have to be reconquered by force of arms. And complications would arise, and in my estimation would arise very early." A landowner I met at Beragh, County Tyrone, held somewhat original opinions. He said, "I refused to identify myself with any Unionist movement. If we're going to be robbed, let us be robbed; if our land is going to be confiscated, let it be confiscated. The British Government is going to give us something, if not much, by way of compensation; and my opinion is, that if the Grand Old Man lives five years longer he'll propose to give the Irish tenants the fee-simple of the lands without a penny to pay. That's my view, begad. I'm a sportsman, not a politician, and my wife says I'm a fool, and very likely she knows best. But, begad, I say let us have prairie value to-day, for to-morrow the G.O.M. will give us nothing at all." The most extraordinary curiosity of Derry, the _lusus naturæ_ of which the citizens justly boast, is _the_ Protestant Home Ruler of brains and integrity who, under the familiar appellation of John Cook, lives in Waterloo Place. Reliable judges said, "Mr. Cook is a man of high honour, and the most sincere patriot imaginable, besides being a highly-cultured gentleman." So excited was I, so eager to see an Irish Home Ruler combining these qualities with his political faith, that I set off instanter in search of him, and having sought diligently till I found him, intimated a desire to sit at his patriotic feet. He consented to unburden his Nationalist bosom, and assuredly seemed to merit the high character he everywhere bears. Having heard his opinion on the general question, I submitted that Mr. Bull's difficulty was lack of confidence, and that he might grant a Home Rule Bill, if the Irish leaders were men of different stamp. He said they were "clever men not overburdened with money," and admitted that a superior class would have been more trustworthy, but relied on the people. "If the first administrators of the law were dishonest, the people would replace them by others. The keystone of my political faith is trust in the people. The Irish are keen politicians, and may be trusted to keep things square." I submitted that the patriots were in the pay of the Irish-Americans, who were no friends of England-- "The present Nationalist members are not purists, but to take money for their services, to accept £300 a year is no more disgraceful than the action of the Lord Chancellor who takes £10,000. The American-Irish cherish a just resentment. They went away because they were driven out of the country by the land system of that day. And the Irish people must be allowed to regenerate themselves. It cannot be done by England. Better let them go to hell in their own way than attempt to spoon-feed them. But the injustice of former days does not justify the injustice to the landlords proposed by the present bill. It is a bad bill, an unjust bill, and would do more harm than good. England should have a voice in fixing the price, for if the matter be left to the Irish Parliament gross injustice will be done. The tenants were buying their land, aided by the English loans, for they found that their four per cent. interest came lower than their rent. But they have quite ceased to buy, and for the stipulated three years will pay their rent as usual, and why? Because they expect the Irish legislature to give them even better terms--or even to get the land for nothing. Retributive justice is satisfied. For the last twenty years the landlords have suffered fearfully. The present bill is radically unsound, and I trust it will never become law." And this was all that the one specimen of a Protestant Home Ruler I have found in Ireland could say in favour of his views! His intelligence and probity compelled him to denounce Mr. Gladstone's Bill as "unjust" and radically unsound, and his patriotism caused him to pray that it might never become law! I left him more Unionist than ever. The great Orange leader of Derry, Mr. John Guy Ferguson, once Grand Ruler, and of world-wide fame, deprecated appeal to arms, except under direst necessity. "I should recommend resistance to all except the Queen's troops. Before all things a sincere loyalist, I should never consent to fire a shot on them. Others think differently, and in case of pressure and excitement the most regrettable things might happen. The people of Derry are full of their great victory of 1688, and believe that their one hundred and five days' resistance saved England from Catholic tyranny. The Bishop of Derry, as you know, had ordered that the troops of King James should be admitted when the thirteen Prentice Boys closed the gate on the very nose of his army." I saw the two white standards taken from the Catholic troops flanking the high altar of the Cathedral; which also contains the grandly-carved case of an organ taken from a wreck of the Spanish Armada in 1588, just a century before the siege. The people have ever before them these warlike spoils, which may account for their martial spirit. An old Prentice Boy told me of the great doings of 1870, how a Catholic publican, one O'Donnell, endeavoured to prevent the annual marching of the Boys, who on the anniversary of the raising of the siege, parade the walls, fire guns, and burn traitor Lundy in effigy; how 5,000 men in sleeve-waistcoats entered the town to stop the procession, how the military intervened, and forbade both marching and burning; how the Boys seized the Town Hall, and in face of 1,700 soldiers and police burnt an effigy hanging from a high window, which the authorities could not reach; how Colonel Hillier broke down the doors and stormed the hall at the bayonet's point, to search both sexes for arms. Gleefully he produced an alphabetical rhyme, which he thought rather appropriate to the present time, and which ended as follows:--"X is the excellent way they (the authorities) were beaten, and exceeding amount of dirt they have eaten. Y is the yielding to blackguards unshorn, which cannot and will not much longer be borne. Z is the zeal with which England put down the Protestant boys who stood up for the crown." In 1883 Lord Mayor Dawson of Dublin wished to lecture at Derry, but the Boys took the Hall and held it, declining to permit the "colleague of Carey" (on the Dublin Town Council) to speak in the city. There you have the present spirit of Derry. Two miles outside the town I came on a fine Home Ruler, who had somewhere failed to sell a pig. "Sorra one o' me 'll do any good till we get Home Rule." He paid £5 a year for two acres of land with a house. "'Tis the one-half too much, Av I paid fifty shillings, I'd be aisy," he said. Truly a small sum to stand between him and affluence. I failed to sympathise with this worthy man, but my spirits fell as I walked through a collar factory, and thought of Mr. Gladstone. The dislocation of the shirt trade is less serious. Few Irish patriots have any personal interest in this particular branch of industry. Dublin, April 8th. MR. BALFOUR IN DUBLIN. Mr. Balfour is the most popular man in Ireland, and his Dublin visit will be for ever memorable. The Leinster Hall, which holds several thousands, was packed by half-past five; ninety minutes before starting time, and the multitude outside was of enormous proportions. The people were respectable, quiet, good-humoured, as are Unionist crowds in general, though it was plain that the Dubliners are more demonstrative than the Belfast men. The line of police in Hawkins Street had much difficulty in regulating the surging throng which pressed tumultuously on the great entrance without the smallest hope of ever getting in. The turmoil of cheering and singing was incessant, and everyone seemed under the influence of pleasurable excitement. As you caught the eye of any member of the crowd he would smile with a "What-a-day-we're-having" kind of expression. The college students were in great form, cheering with an inexhaustible vigour, every man smoking and carrying a "thrifle iv a switch." Portraits of Mr. Balfour found a ready sale, and Tussaud's great exhibition of waxworks next door to the hall was quite unable to compete with the living hero. Messrs. Burke and Hare, Parnell and Informer Carey, Tim Healy and Breeches O'Brien, Mr. Gladstone and Palmer the poisoner, with other benefactors and philanthropists, were at a discount. The outsiders were waiting to see Mr. Balfour, but they were disappointed. Lord Iveagh's carriage suddenly appeared in Poolbeg Street at the pressmen's entrance, and the hero slipped into the hall almost unobserved. Inside, the enthusiasm was tremendous. The building is planned like the Birmingham Town Hall, and the leading features of the auditorium are similar. The orchestra was crowded to the ceiling, the great gallery was closely packed, the windows were occupied, and every inch of floor was covered. A band played "God Save the Queen," "Rule Britannia," and the "Boyne Water." The word "Union," followed by the names of Balfour, Abercorn, Iveagh, Hartington, Chamberlain, and Goschen, was conspicuous on the side galleries, and over Mr. Balfour's head was a great banner bearing the rose, thistle, and shamrock, with the Union Jack and the English crown over all. Boldly-printed mottoes in scarlet and white, such as "Quis Separabit?" "Union is strength," "We Won't submit to Home Rule," and "God Bless Balfour," abounded, and in the galleries and on the floor men waved the British flag. The people listened to the band, or amused themselves with patriotic songs and Kentish fire, till Mr. Balfour arrived, when their cheering, loud and long, was taken up outside, and reverberated through the city. The preliminaries being over, the principal speaker rose amid redoubled applause, which gradually subsided to the silence of intense expectation. Mr. Balfour's first words fell like drops of water in a thirsty land, and never had a speaker a more eager, attentive, respectful audience. Now and then stentorian shouts of assent encouraged him, but the listeners were mostly too much in earnest for noise. It was plain that they meant business, and that the demonstration was no mere empty tomfoolery. Parnellites were there--a drop in the ocean--but their small efforts at interruption were smilingly received. True, there was once a shout of "Throw him out," but a trumpet-like voice screamed "Give him a wash, 'tis what he mostly needs, the crathur," upon which a roar of laughter proclaimed that the offender was forgiven. The outsiders continued their singing and cheering, and when Mr. Balfour concluded sent up a shout the like of which Dublin has seldom heard, if ever. Succeeding speakers were well received, the audience holding their ground. Mr. J. Hall, of Cork, evoked great cheering by the affirmation that Protestants desired no advantage, no privilege, unshared by their Catholic brethren. Similar points made by other speakers met with an instant and hearty confirmation that was unmistakable. Lord Sligo pointed out that firmness and integrity were nowhere better understood than in Ireland, and said that while William O'Brien, the great Nationalist, visited Cork under a powerful escort of police, who with the utmost difficulty prevented the populace from tearing him to pieces; on the other hand, Mr. Balfour had passed through the length and breadth of the land, visiting the poverty-stricken and disturbed districts of the West, with no other protection beyond that afforded by "his tender-hearted sister." Mr. Balfour rose to make a second speech, and the enthusiasm reached its climax. The great ex-Secretary seemed touched, and although speaking slowly showed more than his usual emotion. When he concluded the people sent up a shout such as England never hears--an original shout, long drawn out on a high musical note, something like the unisonous tone of forty factory bulls. The students went outside, and with their friends formed in military columns--the outside files well armed with knobby sticks as a deterrent to possible Parnellite enterprise. An extemporised arch of Union Jacks canopied Mr. Balfour in his carriage, which was drawn by hundreds of willing hands linked in long line. The column, properly marshalled, moved away, keeping step amid loud shouts of "Right, left, right, left," until perfect uniformity was attained, and the disciplined force marched steadily on to College Green, following the triumphal chariot with alternate verses of "God Save the Queen" and "Rule Britannia," each verse interpolated with great bursts of applause. At Trinity College the glare of torches appeared, and simultaneously an organised attempt at groaning boomed in under the cheering. Heedless of the rabble the column marched merrily on, not with the broken rush of an English mob, but with the irresistible force of unity in a concrete mass, with the multitudinous tramp of an army division. The yelling slummers hovered on each flank, frantic with impotent rage; willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, knowing that to themselves open conflict meant annihilation. A savage, unsavoury horde of rat-like ruffians, these same allies of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley, a peculiarly repulsive residuum these Dublin off-scourings. They screamed "To hell with Balfour," "To hell with the English," "To hell with your Unionists," "To hell with Queen Victoria." Some of them sang a doggerel, beginning:-- Let the English remember, We'll make them surrender, And chase them to their boats, And cut their ---- throats, And make a big flood Of their bad black blood-- not precisely a poem to herald the famous "Union of hearts" so confidently expected. The Unionists tramped on cheering triumphantly, rejoicing in their strength, ignoring the taunting and jeering of the Parnellite scum as beneath contempt. An old Home Ruler expressed disapprobation of his party. "What's the use of showing your teeth when you can't bite?" he said. "Wait till we get the bill and then we will show them and the English what we can do." On through Grafton Street, Nassau Street, and into Dawson Street, always with great shouting and singing of "God Save the Queen," and "Rule Britannia," the torches still glaring in front. At Morrisson's Hotel, where Parnell was arrested, a man shouted "Three cheers for Gladstone," but nobody responded. The rabble may use him, but they refused a single shout. On the other hand groans were given with leonine force both for Morley and his master. Arrived at St. Stephen's Green, the procession halted at Lord Iveagh's residence, and Mr. Balfour came on the balcony, receiving a welcome right royal. He made another speech amid cheering and groaning of tremendous energy, making himself tolerably well heard under abnormal conditions. When he said "This day shall never fade from my recollection," the lamp beside him was removed and all was over. Back tramped the column, with its clouds of camp-followers, on the way cheering and sending to hell the member for South Tyrone, with other prominent politicians who live on the line of march. The students held their sticks aloft, striking them together in time to their singing. A shindy had been predicted on the return to College Green, and little groups of Scots Greys and Gordon Highlanders, the latter in their white uniforms, lounged about smoking their pipes in happy expectation, but beyond cheering at the statue of Orange William in Dame Street, nothing whatever occurred, and presently the crowd began to disperse. Seeing this, the police, who until now had been massed in strong force broke up into units, and moving leisurely about said, "Good night, boys; you have had enough fun for one day. Get to bed, all of you." Then the young men who had composed the great loyalist column left the square in little bands, each singing "God save the Queen," and every man feeling that he had deserved well of his country. The bill may be stone dead, but there is a satisfaction in the act of shovelling earth on the corpse. Dublin, April 8th. No. 7.--BAD FOR ENGLAND, RUINOUS TO IRELAND. Home Rule for Ireland means damage and loss to English working men. During the late general election the working men candidates of Birmingham, and of England generally, argued that once Ireland were granted Home Rule the distressful land would immediately become a Garden of Eden, a sort of Hibernian El-Dorado; that the poverty which drove Irishmen from their native shores would at once and for ever cease and determine, and that thenceforth--and here was the bribe--Irishmen would cease to compete with the overcrowded artisans and labourers of England. That these statements are diametrically opposed to the truth is well known to all persons of moderate intelligence, and the personal statement of several great capitalists with reference to their course of action in the event of Home Rule becoming law tends to show that multitudes of the industrious classes of Irish manufacturing towns will at once be thrown out of employment, and must of necessity flock to England, increasing the congestion of its great cities, competing with English labour, and inevitably lowering the rate of wages. Hear what comfortable words Mr. Robert Worthington can speak. Mr. Worthington is no politician; never has interfered with party questions; has always confined his attention to his business affairs. It was because of this that Mr. Balfour sent for him to confer anent the light railways, which have proved such a blessing to the country. It was Mr. Worthington who carried out most of these beneficent works. Besides this, Mr. Worthington has built railways to the amount of three-quarters of a million in Ireland alone. He has employed 5,300 men at one time, and his regular average exceeds 1,500 all the year round. He may therefore be said to know what he is talking about. I called on him at 30, Dame Street, before I left Dublin, and he said, "The bill would be bad for England in every way, and would ruin Ireland. The question is certainly one for the English working man. If he wishes to avoid the competition of armies of Irish labourers and artisans he must throw out the bill. And this is how it will work-- "All the railways I have constructed in Ireland have been built on county guarantees assisted by special grants from the Imperial Treasury. Without these special grants the work could never have been undertaken at all. If Home Rule becomes law those special grants from the Imperial Treasury will be no longer available; and what will be the result? Clearly that the work will not be undertaken; that the building of railways will come to an end, and that the Irish peasants who have devoted themselves to railway work will go to England and try to find employment there. Once a railway navvy, always a railway navvy, is a well-known and very true saying. "For my own part I shall be compelled to compete in England, having nothing to do in Ireland, and I shall of course transport my staff and labourers across the Channel. "The railways of Ireland, fostered by English capital, resting on England's security, have given vast employment to my countrymen. But they would do so no longer. Let us give an example to prove my point. "Before the introduction of the Home Rule Bill the railway stock to which I have referred stood at a premium of 27 per cent. Since the bill became public and has been the subject of popular discussion, I brought out the Ballinrobe and Claremorris Railway--with what result? Not one-seventh of the sum required has been subscribed, although in the absence of the bill the amount would certainly have been subscribed four times over, at a premium of 20 per cent. What does this prove? "Simply this--that the farmers and small shopkeepers who invest in this class of security will not trust their savings in the hands of the proposed Irish Legislature. The bill, therefore, stops progress, retards enterprise, drives away capital, and the workers must follow the money. That seems clear enough. Everybody here concedes so much. More than this. I can say from my own experience, and from the reports of my agents and engineers in the South and West of Ireland, that the Nationalists do not want this bill. I do not speak of Home Rule, but of this bill only. All condemn its provisions, and universally concur in the opinion that once it were passed it would be succeeded by a more violent agitation than anything we have yet seen--an agitation having for its object the radical amendment of the measure. "There is a complete cessation of railway work. Already the men are thinking of moving. But this is not all. I am now at a standstill, pulled up short by the bill. What is the effect on England? Under ordinary circumstances I buy largely all kinds of railway material--steel rails, sleepers, fasteners, engines, and carriages. Every year I send thousands and thousands of pounds to England for these things, and surely most of the money goes indirectly into the pockets of English working men, who are now suffering the loss of all this by reason of their apathy in this matter. I speak only as a man of business, anxious for the prosperity of my country. I do not discuss Home Rule; never did discuss it and never will. But I end where I began, and I repeat the bill will ruin Ireland, will be bad for England, and I will add that the British Government will soon be compelled to intervene to stave off Irish bankruptcy. Home Rulers are now becoming afraid of the bill; artisans, farmers, and labourers think it a good joke. They relished the hunt, but they don't want the game. "Returning to my own affairs, I say without hesitation that though the mere threat of the bill has paralysed my business, and that the passing of the bill would drive my men to England, yet--throw out the bill, deliver us from the impending dread, and during the next two years I shall myself expend £150,000 in railway material manufactured by British artisans. Emphatically I repeat that Home Rule to the British working man means increased competition and direct pecuniary loss." Mr. S. McGregor, of 30, Anglesea Street, Dublin, has been located in the city for 34 years, and seems to have been a politician from the first. Coming from the Land o' Cakes, he landed an advanced Radical, and a devoted admirer of the Grand Auld Mon. Once on the spot a change came o'er the spirit of his dream. His shop has the very unusual feature of indicating his political views. Her Gracious Majesty, Lord Beaconsfield, and Mr. Balfour look down upon you from neat frames. I am disposed to regard Mr. McGregor as the pluckiest man in Ireland. A quiet, peaceful citizen he is, one who remembers the Sawbath, and on weekdays concentrates his faculties on his occupation as a tailor and clothier. I did not seek the interview, which arose from a business call not altogether unconnected with a missing button, but his opinions and his information are well worth recording. Mr. McGregor said, "I thrust my opinions on none, but I have a right to my opinions, and I do not affect concealment. The great defect of the Irish Unionists is want of courage. They dare not for their lives come forward and boldly state their convictions. If Lord Emly or some other Irish Roman Catholic nobleman had come forward earlier, it might have induced weak-kneed members of the party to do likewise. The Unionists do not exercise the great influence they undoubtedly possess. They allow themselves to be terrorised into silence. Let them have the courage of their opinions and they have nothing to fear. The masses of the industrial population are not in favour of Home Rule. The corner-men, who want to spend what they never earned, and the farmers, who hope to get the land for nothing, are the only hearty Home Rulers in Ireland. I employ ten people, all Roman Catholics, some of them with me for twenty-five years. None of these are Home Rulers. I became a convert to Conservatism by my intimate knowledge and personal acquaintance with many of the leaders of the Fenian movement. I saw through the hollowness of the whole thing, and declined any connection therewith. Poor Henry Rowles, who was to be told off by signal to shoot Mr. Foster, was one of my workmen. He died in prison, some said from sheer fright, but two or three of his friends were hanged. He was mixed up by marriage with the Fenian party, and was drawn on and on like many another. I would rather not name the Fenian leaders I knew, and the reason is this. I knew them too well. Speaking of the Unionist lack of courage, you must not be too much surprised. During the last fourteen years Unionists have had to maintain a guerilla warfare for existence. But the strangest feature of the present position is this--the Home Rulers are kicking at the bill! A great Home Ruler of my acquaintance (Mr. McGregor referred me to him) is getting quite afraid. He is a farmer holding 300 acres under Lord Besborough, and says that he trusts things will remain as they are. He has a good landlord, borrows money by the subvention, and has a perfect horror of the class of men who will obtain the upper hand in Ireland. A Nationalist over the way was about to extend the buildings you see there. Plans were drafted, and offices were to be built. Out comes the bill and in goes the project. He has no confidence in the Irish Nationalist leaders; but, strange to say he believes in Mr. Gladstone. He admits that the Irish M.P.'s are not quite up to his ideal, but believes that the Grand Old Man's genius for accommodation and ingenious dovetailing of Imperial interests will pull the country through. Meanwhile he lays out no penny of money. "I am a Presbyterian, and what is more a United Presbyterian, belonging to the Presbyter of Scotland. All Scotch Presbyterians are advanced Radicals. We have four hundred members here. They came here worshippers of Gladstone and Home Rulers to the tune of 97 per cent. The congregation is now 99 per cent. Unionist or Conservative out and out. Of the four hundred we have only three Home Rulers. What will the English people say to that? Tell them that our minister, who came here a Home Ruler, is now on a Unionist mission in Scotland--the Rev. Mr. Procter, brother of Procter, the cartoonist of _Moonshine_ and the _Sketch_, to wit. My workpeople, all steady, industrious people, ask but one thing--it is to be let alone." Here Mr. G.M. Roche, the great Irish wool-factor and famous amateur photographer, said-- "Ah! we must have the bill. 'Tis all we want to finish us up. We're never happy unless we're miserable; the bill will make us so and we'll never be properly discontented till we get it!" Passing through the Counties of Louth, Dublin, Londonderry, Monaghan, Tyrone, Donegal, and Fermanagh, I met with many farmers whose statements amply confirmed the words of the descendant of the great Sir Boyle Roche. These unhappy men had been divested of their last grievance, stripped of their burning wrongs, heartlessly robbed of their long-cherished injuries. It was bad enough before, when Irishmen had nothing except grievances, but at least they had these, handed down from father to son, from generation to generation, along with the family physiognomy, two precious, priceless heirlooms, remarkable as being the only hereditary possessions upon which the brutal Saxon failed to cast his blood-shot, covetous eye. And now the grievances are taken away, the _Lares_ and _Penates_ of the farmer's cabin are ruthlessly removed, and the melancholy peasant looks around for the immaterial antiquities bequeathed by his long-lost forefathers. "Ah; don't the days seem lank and long, When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, And isn't our life extremely flat, When we've nothing whatever to grumble at." The Irish farmer is with the poet, who hits his harrowing anguish to a hair. He folds his hands and looks about, uncertain what to do next. His rent has been lowered by 35 per cent., he has compensation for improvements, fixity of tenure, and may borrow money to buy the land outright at a percentage, which will amount to less than his immortal Rint. What is the unhappy man to do? His grievances have been his sole theme from boyhood's happy days, the basis of his conversation, his actuating motive, the very backbone of his personal entity. Now they are gone, the fine gold has become dim, and the weapons of war have perished. Once he could walk abroad with the proud consciousness that he was a wronged man, a martyr, a brave patriot struggling nobly against the adverse fates, a broth of a boy, whose melancholy position was noted by the gods, and whose manly bearing under proffered slavery established a complete claim to high consideration in Olympus. But now, with heart bowed down with grief and woe, he walks heavily, and even as a man who mourneth for his mother, over the enfranchised unfamiliar turf. He peeps into the bog-hole, and does not recognise himself. He could pay the rent twice over, but he hates conventionalities, and would rather keep the money. He is constructed to run on grievances, and in no other grooves, and the strangeness of his present position is embarrassing. The tenants of Lord Leitrim, Lord Lifford, and the Duke of Abercorn make no complaint of their landlords. On the contrary, they distinctly state that all are individually kind and reasonable men, and while attributing their own improved position to the various Land Acts given to Ireland, which leave the actual possessor of the land small option in the matter, they freely admit that these gentlemen willingly do more than is ordained by any act of Parliament, and that over and above the provisions of the law, all three are fair-minded men, desirous of doing the right thing by their people and the country at large. Other landlords there were on whose devoted heads were breathed curses both loud and deep. The late Lord Leitrim was exalted to the skies, but his murdered father was visited with blackest malediction. At Clones, in the County Monaghan, I met a sort of roadside specimen of the _Agricola Hibernicus_, who explained his position thus:--"Ye see, we wor rayduced 35 per cent., an' 'tis thrue what ye say; but then produce is rayduced 50 per cent., so we're 15 per cent. worse off than iver we wor before. We want another Land Act that'll go to the root. An' that we'll get from an Oirish Parliament an' only from that. 'Tis not the tinints that's always the worst off. Many's the time I seen thim that had a farrum of their own go to the dogs, while thim that had rint to pay sthruggled and sthrived an' made money an' bought the freeholders out. For whin they had nothin' to pay they did no work, an' then, bedad ivery mortial thing wint to the divil. An' that's how it'll be wid the lazy ones once we get Home Rule, which means the land for nothin' or next to nothin'. Barney will kick up his heels and roar whirroo, but call again in a year an' ye'll see he hasn't enough money to jingle on a tombstone." My next from the New Tipperary, whither I journey viâ Kildare, Kilkenny, and Limerick, _en route_ for Cork and the Blood-taxed Kerry, where Kerry cows are cut and carved. Now meditation on marauding moonlighters makes melancholy musing mine. Limerick, April 11th. No. 8.--TERRORISM AT TIPPERARY. Tipperary is Irish, and no mistake. Walking into town from Limerick the first dwellings you reach are of the most primitive description, whether regarded as to sanitary arrangements or otherwise. The ground to the right slopes downwards, and the cabins are built with sloping floors. The architects of these aboriginal erections stuck up four brick walls, a hole in, a hole out, and a hole in the top, without troubling to level the ground. Entering, you take a downward step, and if you walk to the opposite exit, you will need to hold on to the furniture, if any. If you slip on the front step you will fall head first into the back yard, and though your landing might be soft enough, it would have a nameless horror, far more killing than a stony fall. The women stand about frowsy and unkempt, with wild Irish eyes, all wearing the shawl as a hood, many in picturesque tatters, like the cast-off rags of a scarecrow, rags and flesh alike unwashed and of evil odour. The children look healthy and strong, though some of them are almost _in puris naturalibus_. Their faces are washed once a week; one of them said so, but the statement lacks confirmation, and is opposed to the evidence of the senses. Scenes like these greet the visitor to Old Tipperary, that is, Tipperary proper, if he enter from Limerick. The town is said to be old, and in good sooth the dunghills seem to possess a considerable antiquity. In this matter the Tipperary men are sentimental enough--conservative enough for anything. At Tipperary, of all places, the brutal Saxon will learn how much has been bequeathed to Irishmen by their mighty forefathers. The eastern side is better. A grand new Roman Catholic church has just been built at a cost of £25,000, and in front of the gilded railings--for they are gilt like the railings of Paris--were dreadful old women, like Macbethian witches, holding out their skinny hands for alms. Smartly dressed young ladies, daughters of publicans and shopkeepers, passed in jauntily, took a splash in the holy water, crossed themselves all over, knocked off a few prayers, and tripped merrily away. The better parts of the town belong to Mr. Smith-Barry, the knock-me-down cabins to Mr. Stafford O'Brien, whose system is different. As the leases fall in the former has modern houses built, while the latter is in the hands of the middlemen, who sub-let the houses, and leave things to slide. The _laissez-aller_ policy is very suitable to the genius of the genuine Irish, who may be said to rule the roost in Tipperary. I interviewed all sorts and conditions of men, but every individual bound me down to closest secrecy. And although nobody said anything approaching high treason, their alarm on finding they had ventured to express to a stranger anything like their real opinion was very significant. The conversations took place last evening, and this morning before breakfast a young man called on me at the Station Hotel, Limerick Junction, three miles from Tipperary, "on urgent business." "Me father thinks he said too much, an' that ye moight put what he said in print, wid his name to it. Ye promised ye wouldn't, an' me father has confidence, but he wishes to remoind ye that there's plinty in Tipperary would curse him for spakin' wid an Englishman, an' that dozens of thim would murther him or you for the price of a pot of porter." Another messenger shortly arrived, bearing a letter in which the writer said that any mention of his name would simply ruin him, and that he might leave the country at once. And yet these men had only said what Englishmen would account as nothing. New Tipperary adjoins the old, to which it is on the whole superior. All the descriptions I have seen of the Land League buildings are untrue and unfair. Most of them were written by men who never saw the place, and who paraphrased and perpetuated the original error. It was described as a "mile or two from Tipperary," and the buildings were called "tumble-down shanties of wood, warped and decaying, already falling to pieces." The place adjoins and interlocks with the old town; it is not separated by more than the breadth of a street, is largely built of stone, and comprises a stone arcade, which alone cost many thousands. Some of the cottages are of wood, but they look well, are slated, and seem in good condition. The butter mart, a post and rail affair, with barbed wire decorations, is desolate enough, and nearly all the shops are shuttered. Enamel plates with Dillon Street and Emmett Street still attest the glory that has departed, but the plate bearing Parnell Street escaped my research. The William O'Brien Arcade is scattered to the winds, save and except the sturdy stone walls, which (_à la_ Macaulay's New-Zealander) I surveyed with satisfaction, sketching the ruins of the structure from a broken bench in Dillon Street. A full and true history of the New Tipperary venture has never been written. As in the present juncture the story is suggestive and instructive, I will try to submit the whole in a form at once concise and accurate. The particulars have been culled with great pains from many quarters and carefully collated on the spot, and may be relied on as minutely exact and undeniable. Everyone admits Mr. Smith-Barry's claim to the title of a good landlord, an excellent landlord, one of a thousand. Before the _casus belli_ was found by William O'Brien all was prosperity, harmony, and peace. Mr. Smith-Barry owns about 5,000 acres of land situate in the fat and fertile plain of Tipperary, known as the Golden Vale, with the best part of the county town itself. Tipperary is a great butter centre. The people are ever driving to the butter factory, which seemed to be worked in the Brittany way. Donkey-carts driven by women, and bearing barrels of milk, abound on the Limerick Road. The land is so rich, grand meadows, and heavy dairy-ground, that the place prospered abundantly, and was by commercial men reckoned an excellent place for business. But they have changed all that. The Tipperary folks were once thought as good as the Bank of England. Now they dislike to pay anything or anybody. Their delicate sense of _meum_ and _tuum_ is blunted. They take all they can get, and pay as little as they can. They affect dunghills and dirt, and have a natural affinity for battle, murder, and sudden death. How did all this come about? First, as to Mr. Smith-Barry's character. The most advanced Nationalists, the Fenian papers, the Catholic clergy, all concurred in blessing him. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Cloyne, Canon Hegarty, P.P., and Tim Healy spoke of him in the character of a landlord in highest terms. Sir Charles Russell, Tim Harrington, Mr. O'Leary (Chairman of the Clonakilty Town Commissioners, a violent Nationalist), and Canon Keller (R.C.) unanimously agreed that Mr. Smith-Barry must be exempted from the general condemnation of Irish landlords. They said he was the "kindest of landlords," and that his tenants were "comfortable, respectable, and happy." They proclaimed his "generous and noble deeds," declaring that "there have been no cases of oppression or hardship, and the best and most kindly relations have existed." All these sayings are gathered from Nationalist papers, which would supply thousands of similar character, and up to the time of O'Brien's interference, none of an opposite sort. But, as Serjeant Buzfuz would have said, the serpent was on the trail, the viper was on the hearthstone, the sapper and miner was at work. Thanks to the patriot's influence, the Paradise was soon to become an Inferno. A Mr. Ponsonby wanted his rents, or part of them. His tenants had lived rent-free for so long--some of them were seven years behind--that they naturally resented the proposed innovation. Mr. Smith-Barry and others came to Mr. Ponsonby's assistance, and, endeavouring to settle the thing by arbitration, proposed that the landlord should knock off £22,000 of arrears, should make reductions of 24 to 34 per cent. in the rents, and make the tenants absolute owners in 49 years. This was not good enough. Judge Gibson thought it "extravagantly generous," but the Tipperary folks resented Mr. Smith-Barry's connection with such a disgracefully tyrannical piece of business, and, at the instance of William O'Brien, determined to make him rue the day he imagined it. They sent a deputation to remonstrate, and Mr. Smith-Barry, while adhering to his opinion as to the liberality of the proposition, explained that he was only one of many, and that whatever he said or did would not change the course of events. The Tipperary folks required him to repudiate the arrangement, to turn his back on his friend and himself, and--here is the cream of the whole thing, this is deliciously Irish--they soberly, seriously, and officially proposed to Mr. Smith-Barry that in addition to the 15 per cent. abatement they had just received on their rent he should make a further remittance of 10 per cent. to enable them to assist the Ponsonby tenants in carrying on the war against their landlord, on whose side Mr. Smith-Barry was fighting. They said in effect, "You have given us 3s. in the pound, to which we had no claim; now we want 2s. more, to enable us to smash the landlord combination, of which you are the leader." This occurred in the proceedings of a business deputation, and not in a comic opera. Mr. Smith-Barry failed to see the sweet reasonableness of this delightful proposition, and then the fun began. O'Brien to the rescue, whirroo! He rushed from Dublin, and told the Tipperary men to pay Smith-Barry no rent. If they paid a penny they were traitors, slaves, murderers, felons, brigands, and bosthoons. If they refused to pay they were patriots, heroes, angels, cherubim and seraphim, the whole country would worship them, they would powerfully assist the Ponsonby folks in the next county, they would be saviours of Ireland. And besides all this they would keep the money in their pockets. But this was a mere detail. The people took O'Brien's advice, withholding Mr. Smith-Barry's rent, keeping in their purses what was due to him, in order that somebody's tenants in the next county might get better terms. Still Mr. Smith-Barry held out, and the Land League determined to make of him a terrible example. He owned most of the town. Happy thought! let the shopkeepers leave his hated tenements. Let their habitations be desolate and no man to dwell in their tents. The Land League can build another Tipperary over the way, the tenants can hop across, and Mr. Smith-Barry will be left in the lurch! The end, it was thought, would justify the means, and some sacrifice was expected. Things would not work smoothly at first. The homes of their fathers were void; new dunghills, comparatively flavourless, had to be made, the old accretions, endeared by ancestral associations, had to be abandoned, and the old effluvium weakened by distance was all that was left to them. The new town was off the main line of trade and traffic, but it was thought that these, with the old Tipperary odour, would come in time. Streets and marts were built by the Land League at a cost of £20,000 or more. The people moved away, but they soon moved back again. The shopkeepers could do no business, so with bated breath and whispering humbleness they returned to Mr. Smith-Barry. The mart was declared illegal, and the old one was re-opened. But while the agitation continued, the town was possessed by devils. Terrorism and outrage abounded on every side. The local papers published the names of men who dared to avow esteem for Mr. Smith-Barry, or who were supposed to favour his cause. The Tipperary boys threw bombshells into their houses, pigeon-holed their windows with stones, threw blasts of gun-powder with burning fuses into their homes. They were pitilessly boycotted, and a regular system of spies watched their goings out and their comings in. If they were shopkeepers everything was done to injure them, and people who patronised them were not only placed on the Black List but were assaulted on leaving the shops, and their purchases taken by violence and destroyed. Broken windows and threats of instant death were so common as to be unworthy of mention, and the hundred extra armed policemen who were marched into the town were utterly powerless against the prevailing rowdyism of the Nationalist party. Honest men were coerced into acting as though dishonest, and one unfortunate man, who had in a moment of weakness paid half-a-year's rent, pitifully besought Mr. Smith-Barry's agent to sue him along with the rest, and declared he would rather pay it over again than have it known that the money had been paid. "Ye can pay a year's gale for six months, but ye can't rise again from the dead," said this pious victim to circumstances. At last the leaders were prosecuted, but before this the Boys had great divarshun. These good Gladstonians, these ardent Home Rulers, these patriotic purists, these famous members of the sans-shirt Separatist section, set no limits to their sacrifices in the Good Cause, stuck at nothing that would exemplify their determination to bring about the Union of Hearts, were resolved to take their light from under a bushel and set it in a candlestick. They wrecked many houses and sorely beat the inmates. They burnt barns, and stacks, and homesteads, and in one case a poor man's donkey-cart with its load of oats. They exploded in people's homes metal boxes, leaden pipes, and glass bottles containing gun-powder, in such numbers as to be beyond reckoning. They burnt the doors and window sashes of the empty houses, knocked people down at dark corners with heavy bludgeons, and fired shots into windows by way of adding zest to the family hearth. Poor John Quinlan escaped five shots, all fired into his house. Mr. Bell, of Pegsboro, beat this record with six. He was _believed_ to sympathise with Mr. Smith-Barry! Men with white masks pervaded the vicinity from the gentle gloaming till the witching morn, and woe to the weak among their opponents, or even among the neutrals, whom they might meet on their march! The tenants were great losers. A commercial man from Dublin assured me that the agitation cost him £2,000 in bad debts. The people were inconvenienced, unsettled, permanently demoralised, their peaceful relations rudely interrupted, themselves and their commercial connections more or less discredited and injured, and the whole prosperous community impoverished, by the machinations of O'Brien and Bishop Croke of Thurles, a few miles away. The inferior clergy were of course in their element. Father Humphreys and others were notorious for the violence of their language. Gladstonians who think Home Rule heralds the millennium, and who babble of brotherly love, should note the neat speech of good Father Haynes, who said, "We would, if we could, pelt them not only with dynamite, but with the lightnings of heaven and the fires of hell, till every British bulldog, whelp, and cur would be pulverised and made top-dressing for the soil." This is the feeling of the priests, and the people are under the priestly thumb. That this is so is proved by recent events in Dublin. None but the Parnellites could make head against the Catholic Party. In the recent conflict the Parnellites were squelched. Tim Healy kicked and bit, but Bishop Walsh got him on the ropes, and Tim "went down to avoid punishment." The priest holds Tim in the hollow of his hand. Tim and his tribe must be docile, must answer to the whistle, must keep to heel, or they will feel the lash. Should they rebel, their constituencies, acting on priestly orders, will cast them out as unclean, and their occupation, the means by which they live, will be gone. Tim and his congeries hate the clerics, but they fear the flagellum. They loathe their chains, but they must grin and bear them. They have no choice between that and political extinction. The opinion of Tipperary men on the question of religious toleration is practically unanimous. Pass Home Rule and the Protestants must perforce clear out. As it is, they are entirely excluded from any elective position, their dead are hooted in the streets, their funeral services are mocked and derided by a jeering crowd. The other day a man was fined for insulting the venerable Protestant pastor of Cappawhite, near Tipperary, while the old man was peacefully conducting the burial service of a member of his congregation. Foul oaths and execrations being meekly accepted without protest, a more enterprising Papist struck the pastor with a sod of turf, for which he was punished. But, returning to our muttons, let me conclude with three important points: (1) Mr. Smith-Barry built the Town Hall of Tipperary at a cost of £3,000, and gave the use thereof to the Town Commissioners for nothing. He spent £1,000 on a butter weigh-house, £500 on a market yard, and tidied up the green at a cost of £300. He gave thirty acres of land for a park, and the ground for the Catholic Cathedral. He offered the land for a Temperance Hall (I think he promised to build it), on condition that it was not used as a political meeting-house. The Catholic Bishop declined to accede to this, and the project was abandoned. (2) Several dupes of the Land League, for various outrages, were sentenced to punishment varying from one year's hard labour to seven years' penal servitude. (3) O'Brien, M.P., and Dillon, M.P., who had brought about the trouble, were with others convicted of conspiracy, and were sentenced to six months' imprisonment. But this was in their absence, for soon after the trial commenced, being released on bail, they ran away, putting the salt sea between themselves and their deservings. Heroes and martyrs of Ireland, of whom the brutal Briton hears so much, receive these patriots into your glorious company! The spirit of Tipperary is ever the same. No open hostility now, but the fires of fanaticism are only smouldering, and only a breath is needed to revive the flame. Every Protestant I saw, and all the intelligent and enlightened Catholics, concur that this is so, and that Home Rule would supply the needful impulse. These men also submit that they understand the matter better than Mr. Gladstone and his patch-work party. Tipperary April 12th. No. 9.--TYRANNY AND TERRORISM. The peasantry and small shopkeepers of this district can only be captured by stratagem, and this for two reasons. Their native politeness makes them all things to all men, and their fear of consequences is ever before them. Their caution is not the Scotsman's ingrained discretion, but rather the result of an ever-present fear. English working men of directly opposite politics chum together in good fellowship, harbouring no animosity, agreeing to differ in a friendly way. It is not so in Ireland. The Irish labourer is differently situated. He dare not think for himself, and to boldly speak his mind would mean unknown misfortunes, affecting the liberty and perhaps the lives of himself and those nearest and dearest to him. That is, of course, assuming that his opinions were not approved by the village ruffians who watch his every movement, of whom he stands in deadly terror, and whom he dreads as almost divining his most secret thoughts. A direct query as to present politics would fail in every case. As well try to catch Thames trout with a bent pin, or shoot snipe with a bow and arrow. My plan has been to lounge about brandishing a big red guide-book, a broad-brimmed hat, and an American accent; speaking of antiquities, shortest roads to famous spots, occasionally shmoking my clay dhudeen with the foinest pisantry in the wurruld and listening to their comments on the "moighty foine weather we're havin', Glory be to God." They generally veer round to the universal subject, seeking up-to-date information. Discovering my ignorance of the question, they explain the whole matter, incidentally disclosing their own opinions. The field workers of this district are fairly intelligent. Most have been in England, working as harvesters, and some of the better-informed believe that in future they will be compelled to live in England altogether. A fine old man, living by the roadside near Oolagh, said:--"I wint to England for thirty-four years runnin', and to the same place, in North Staffordshire, first wid father, thin wid son. Whin I got too ould an' stiff I sent me own son. First it was old Micky, thin it was young Micky. He's away four months, and brings back enough to help us thro' the winter, thanks be to God. The other time he mostly works at the big farrum beyant there. Whin they cut up the big farrums into little ones, nayther meself nor Micky will get anything, by raison we're dacent, harmless people. 'Tis the murtherin' moonlighters will get the land, an' me son wouldn't demane himself by stoppin' in the counthry to work for them. First 'twas the landlords dhrove us away, next 'twill be the tenants. We're bound to be slaughtered some way, although 'twas said that when we 'bolished the landlords we'd end our troubles. But begorra, there's more ways o' killin' a dog than by chokin' him wid butther." There is a growing feeling among the farmers that the land will be heavily taxed to raise revenue, and that this means expatriation to the labouring classes, who will swarm to England in greater numbers than ever. Another grand old man, named Mulqueen, spoke English imperfectly, and it was only by dint of frequent repetition that his meaning could be mastered. Well clothed and well groomed, he stood at his cottage door, the picture of well-earned repose. Thirty-two years of constabulary service and twenty-one years in a private capacity had brought him to seventy-five, when he returned to end his days on his native spot, among Irish-speaking people, and under the noble shadow of the Galtee Mountains. Divested of the accent which flavoured his rusty English, Mr. Mulqueen's opinions were as follows:-- "I am a Home Ruler and I voted for a Nationalist. But I am now doubtful as to the wisdom of that course. I see that Irishmen quarrel at every turn, that they are splitting up already, that the country under their management would be torn to pieces, that the people would suffer severely, and that England would have to interfere to keep our leaders from each other's throats. It was Irish disputes that brought the English here at first. In the event of an Irish Legislature Irish disagreements would bring them here again. We'll never be able to govern ourselves until the people are more enlightened." I left this sensible and truly patriotic Irishman with the wish that there were more like him. He was a pious Catholic, and regretted to learn that I was otherwise, admitting in extenuation that this was rather a misfortune than a fault, and, with a parting hand-shake, expressing an earnest hope that "the golden gates of glory might open to receive my sowl, and that we might again convarse in the company of the blessed saints in the peaceful courts of heaven." This old-fashioned pious kindliness is hardly now the mode, and isolated instances can rarely be met with even in remote country districts. Running down to Limerick, I witnessed a warm contention between a Unionist from Belfast and a commercial traveller from Mullingar, a hot Home Ruler, the latter basing his arguments on alleged iniquitous treatment of his father, a West Meath farmer, and defending boycotting as "a bloodless weapon," which phrase he evidently considered unanswerable. The Land League he contended was a fair combination to protect the interests of the tenants, and avowed that all evictions were unwarrantable acts of tyranny. The Belfast man showed that these arguments were equally applicable to the other side, and asked the patriot if eviction were not likewise "a bloodless weapon," to which inquiry the Mullingar man failed to find the proper answer, and, not coming up to time, was by his backers held to have thrown up the sponge. This incident is only valuable as showing the poor line of country hunted by the more brainy Nationalists. A County Clare man boasted of his collection of Irish curiosities. "I have the pistol O'Connell shot So-and-So with, I have the pistol Grattan used when he met Somebody else, I have the sword of Wolfe Tone, the pike that Miles O'Flanagan--" Here the Ulsterman broke in with-- "Excuse me, Sir. There's one thing I'd like to see if ye have it. Like you, I am a pathriotic Irishman, and take deloight in relics appertaining to the histhory of me counthry. Tell me now, have ye the horsewhip, the thunderin' big horsewhip, that young McDermot, of Thrinity College, used when he administhered condign punishment to Tim Healy? Have ye that, now?" The County Clare man was completely knocked out. He discontinued the recital of his catalogue, and surveyed the scenery in dignified silence. His own friends chuckled. This was the most unkindest cut of all. Irishmen love to see a splendid knockdown blow. They are full of fight, and their spirit must have vent. They fight for fun, for love, for anything, for nothing, with words, with blows, with tongues, with blackthorns, anywhere, anyhow, only let them fight. Remove Mr. Bull, they will fight each other. Heaven help the right when nobody stands by to see fair play! A Mr. Magrath, of Killmallock, was inclined to take a jocose view of the situation. "Faix, the English could never govern Ireland, an' small blame to thim for that same. Did ye see the Divil's Bit Mountains as ye came down from Dublin? Ye did? Av coorse, ye couldn't help but see them. Did ye see the big bite he tuk out o' the range--ye can see the marks o' the divil's own teeth, an' the very shape of his gums, divil sweep him! Shure, I seen it meself whin I wint to the Curragh races wid Barney Maloney; an' by the same token, 'twas Barney axplained it to me. Didn't the divil take his bite, an' then didn't he dhrop it on the plain out there forninst ye, the big lump they call the rock iv Cashel? Av coorse he did. An' if the divil himself found Ireland too hard a nut to crack, how can the English expect to manage us? Anyway, 'tis too big a mouthful for Misther Bull." One gentleman stood at his shop door, and having looked carefully around, said, "Ye niver know who ye're spakin' wid, an' ye niver know who's spyin' ye. Ah, this is a terrible counthry since we all got upset wid this Home Rule question. Did ye hear of Sadleir, of Tipperary? Ye didn't? He was a savin', sthrivin' man, an' he married a woman wid money. He had a foine shop, wid ploughs, an' sickles, an' spades for the whole counthry round. 'Twas a grand business he had, an' he made a powerful dale o' money. He was a quiet man, an' niver wint to the whiskey shops, where the boys they would be quarrellin' an' knockin' hell out iv each other. He introduced a timprance lecturer that towld the boys the poteen was pizenin' thim, an' 'twas wather they must dhrink. Ha! Ha! Will I tell ye what owld Sheela Maguire said to the timprance man?" I admitted a delirious delight in discursive digression. "The timprance man had a wondherful glass that made iverything a thousand million times as big. What's this he called it? Ye're right, 'twas a my-cross-scrope; ye hit it to a pop; bedad 'tis yerself has the larnin.' An' the people looked through it at the wather he put in a glass, an' they seen the wather all swimmin' wid snakes an' scorpions; 'twas enough to terrify the mortal sowl out o' ye. An' so Sheela looked in an' saw them. An' the man put in the wather a good dhrop o' whiskey, an' he says, says he, 'Now ye'll see the effect on animal life,' says he. An' Sheela looked in again, an' she seen the snakes all doubled up, an' kilt, an' murthered an' says Sheela, says she:-- "'May the divil fly away wid me,' says she, 'if I ever touch wather again till I first put in whiskey to kill them fellows!' "'Twas poor Sadleir, of Tipperary town, brought the man down. Sadleir must howld land; nothin' less would sarve him, an' he tuk from Smith-Barry a big houldin', an' paid the out-going tenant five thousand pounds for his interest. Whin the throubles began he refused to join the Land League, by raison that he'd put all his money in the land. They sent him terrible letthers wid skulls an' guns, an' coffins, an' they said Will ye join? An' he said No, once. They smashed ivery pane o' glass in his house, an' they said Will ye join? An' he said No, twice. They bate his servants next, an' said Will ye join? An' he said No, three times. They threw explosives into the house, an' said Will ye join? An' he broke down. He was afeard for his life. He wint in wid the rest, an' refused to pay rint', an' iv coorse he got evicted, an' lost his five thousand pounds he put into the farm, an' then he lost his business, an' before long he died with a broken heart. An' where did he die? Just in the workhouse. 'Twas all thro' William O'Brien, the great frind iv Oireland, that this happened. An' if O'Brien an' his frinds got into power, why wouldn't it happen again? But we're afeard to breathe almost in this unfortunate counthry, God help us!" Amid the varying opinions of the Irish people there is one point on which they are unanimous. They have no confidence in their present leaders, whom they freely accuse of blackguardism, lying, and flagrant dishonesty. Business men, although Home Rulers, agree that the destinies of the country should not be trusted to either or any of the jarring factions, which like unclean birds of evil omen hover darkling around, already disputing with horrid dissonance possession of the carcase on which they hope to batten. At the Station Hotel, Limerick Junction, a warm Nationalist said to me, "The country will be ruined with those blackguards. We have a right to Home Rule, an abstract right to manage our own affairs, and I believe in the principle. But I want such men as Andrew Jameson, or Jonathan Hogg, or that other Quaker, Pym, the big draper. There we have honourable gentlemen, whom we or the English alike might trust, either as to ability or integrity. We might place ourselves in the hands of such men and close our eyes with perfect confidence. Our misfortune is that our men, as a whole, are a long way below par. They inspire no confidence, they carry no weight, and nobody has any respect for them." Here my friend mentioned names, and spoke of an Irish M.P.'s conduct at Sligo. I give his story exactly as I heard it, premising that my informant's _tout ensemble_ was satisfactory, and that he assured me I might rely on his words:--"At the Imperial Hotel a discussion arose--a merely political discussion--and blows were exchanged, the 'honourable gentleman' and others rolling about the floor like so many savage bull dogs in a regular rough-and-tumble fight. The poor 'boots' got his face badly bruised, and for some days went about in mourning. I see that this same member is bringing in a Bill in the House of Commons, and I read it through with great interest, because I remembered the row, which was hushed up, and never appeared in the papers. Imagine any Irishman, with any respect either for himself or his country, trusting either to a parcel of fellows like that." My friend spoke more moderately of the objectionable Irish M.P.'s than they do of each other, but his opinions were obviously strong enough for anything. The attitude of the _Freeman's Journal_ moved him to contempt, and its abject subjection to the priesthood excited his disgust. He said, waving the despised sheet with indignity--"We have no paper now. We lost all when we lost Parnell. He was a Protestant, and could carry the English people, and with all his faults he had the training of a gentleman. Look at the low-bred animals that represent us now. Look at Blank-Blanky and his whole boiling. I swear I am ashamed to look an Englishman in the face. The very thought of the Irish members makes me puke." The mention of Mr. Jonathan Hogg reminds me that this eminent Dubliner submitted to me a point which I do not remember to have seen in print. Said Mr. Hogg: "When the Irish Legislature has become an accomplished fact, which is extremely improbable, the land will be divided and sub-divided until the separate holdings will yield incomes below the amount required for the payment of income-tax. The effect of this will be that a large number of incomes now paying tax will disappear, each leaving a number of small incomes paying no tax, so that a larger tax must be levied on the remaining incomes to meet the deficiency. Then the large manufacturers who can move away will certainly do so, and the country will suffer severely. Employment will be scarce or altogether lacking, and the people will go to England, by their competition lowering the rate of wage." The mention of Mr. Andrew Jameson reminds me of his opinion _re_ Customs. He said to me "The bill nominally deprecates Separation, and yet proposes to establish a Custom House between the two countries, making Ireland a foreign country at once." Mr. John Jameson, who was present along with Mr. Arundel, the business manager of the great J.J. concern, then expressed his fears anent the practicability of Customs' collections on the Irish coast. He said, "We have 1,300 coastguards at present, and this force is ample when backed by the Royal Irish Constabulary, marching and patrolling in the interior. But when the constabulary are no longer engaged in the direct protection of British interests the little force of thirteen hundred coastguards must prove quite insufficient, and I doubt if even thirteen thousand would prove an adequate force. The Irish people will have no interest in protecting the British Government. Their interest will be exactly the other way. Grave difficulties attend the proposition having regard to the Customs duties between the two countries." Another eminent authority then present referred to the encouragement which the Act would give to the enterprising smuggler, and thought that a small fleet of American steamers, smart built, fast little boats, would instantly spring into existence to carry on a splendidly paying trade--a trade, too, having untold fascination for the Yankees, while the average Irishman, as everybody knows, is a smuggler by nature, disposition, heredity, and divine right. It was also pointed out that, whereas huge quantities of spirits now pass to Ireland through the ports of Bristol and London, under the new dispensation Irish merchants would order direct, which would inflict loss on England. The details of this loss were fully explained, but I omit them for the reason that experts will understand, while lay readers may safely accept a statement uttered in the presence of the two Jamesons and receiving their assent. But my friend's conversation reminded me of something more, and I remembered a little story I heard in Dublin respecting a daily disseminator of priest-ordered politics. It owed some rent for the premises it occupies on the thymy banks of the odorous Liffey. It owed, I say, for owing, not paying, is the strong suit of the party it represents. It was pressed to pay, coaxed to plank down, soothered to shell out. A registered letter with premonitory twist of the screw "fetched" the patriot laggards. They or "It" paid up, but failed to look pleasant. In his hurry the glad recipient of the cash gave a receipt up to date instead of up to the time the rent was due. The immaculate organ of highly-rectified morality wished to hold the writer of the receipt to his pen-slip, to nobble the rent; and being reproached backed out with:-- "We thought you wanted to give it as a present." The landlord is a strong Unionist. The rottenness of repudiation is spreading everywhere. Lying and theft, under other names, would be, the dominant influences under the new _régime_. But it may be objected--If Irishmen have no respect for their members, why did they elect them? If they object to Home Rule, why did they vote for it? And so on, and so on. These queries at first blush seem unanswerable, but they are not really so. Attentive readers of later letters will discover the reason why. Further, it may be remarked, in passing, that questions are more easily asked than answered. Here is an instance. The facts are undeniable, staring us in the face:-- The base and bloody Balfour, unaccompanied by men who have been called his black and brutal bloodhounds, moves about in Ireland unmolested, with no other protection than that of his sister. The bright and brilliant O'Brien, the purist-patriot, visiting the constituency of which he is the senior member, is with difficulty protected by a powerful force of the police he has so often affected to despise. Other Nationalist members dare not appear in Nationalist quarters. How is this? To return to the objections given above. Since the appearance of the bill, Irishmen have been changing their minds. Day by day they dread it more and more. They still believe that under certain conditions Home Rule would be a good thing for Ireland. But they begin to see that the required conditions do not exist. They begin to see that they have been used by such men as O'Brien and Healy, they see the incompetency which has reduced the party paper to so low an ebb, they see the misery and degradation which the Land League inflicted on the once thriving districts of Tipperary; they saw their neighbours, poor, unlettered men, dupes of unscrupulous lying eloquence, men whom it was murder to deceive--they saw these men sentenced to long terms of penal servitude, while the instigators of the crimes for which they had suffered, availing themselves of the liberal English law, broke their bail, and, travelling first-class to Paris, lived in the best hotels of that gay city on the plunder they had wiled from ignorant servant girls, being clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day, while their friends the felons trod the tireless wheel and the housemaids went on with their scrubbing. The Irish people have seen these things and many more, and, as the French say, they have reflected. A very considerable proportion of the lower classes have already changed their minds, but--they dare not own it. So the process of education is comparatively slow. A small farmer said to me, "Not an hour's walk from here, a small tinant like meself was suspicted to be a thraitor to the cause. He was a sthrivin' man, an' he had really no politics, an' only wanted to get lave to work his land, an' earn his bit an' sup. "He had two sthrappin' daughters, as nice, dacent young girls as ye'd see in a summer's day. They were seen spakin' to a pliceman--that was all they done--an' four men came that night, four ruffians wid white masks, an' havin' secured the father, they dhragged the young girls out of bed at the dead hour, an' stripped them to the skin. Thin they cut off their hair close wid a knife, the way ye'd cut corn, an' scarified their bodies wid knives. Would ye wondher we're careful?" I asked him whether a Protestant could in his district hope to be elected to any public position, the Board of Guardians for instance (he was a good Catholic). His answer was an unqualified No. Then he took time, and shortly proposed the following statement of the position, which I present on account of its gem-like finish:-- "I wouldn't say but they'd put on a Protestant av he paid for it by settlin' wid the priest that for certain considerations he would be contint wid a seat on the boord. An' thin he must renounce his political ideas, or promise never to mintion thim in public. But, begorra, he'd have to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage by makin' a decoy duck of himself!" In adding this great specimen to the immortal list of memorable mixed metaphors, I feel that my visit to Ireland has not been quite in vain. Oolagh, (Co. Tipperary), April 15th. No. 10.--DEFYING THE LAND LEAGUE. "Burn everything English except English coals." That was the first sentiment I heard in "rebel Cork," and it certainly expresses the dominant feeling of the local Nationalist party, who do not seem to have heard of the proposed Union of Hearts, or, if they have heard, they certainly have not heeded. Nor will anyone who knows for one moment assert that the Corkers entertain the idea. My hotel is a hotbed of sedition. It is the southern head-quarters of the Parnellite party. The spacious entrance hall is a favourite resort of the leading Cork Nationalists, who air their views in public with much excited gesture, having its basis in whiskey-nourished hatred of English rule. They walk to the bar, suck in the liquid bliss, and return to the spot whence they may look upon the beauteous promenaders of Patrick Street. They prefer the kaleidoscopic change of the streets to the stationary beauty of the bar, and while admitting the unfleeting quality of the fixed stars they worship the procession of the equinoxes. On Saturday last, the day O'Brien died, the Mayor of Cork, with Mayoral chain and hosts of satellites, might have been seen under the familiar portal, discussing the proposed public funeral of the lamented friend, once Mayor of the City, and described as "a gentleman who had, by his courageous and outspoken utterances, obtained the distinguished honour of imprisonment by the British Government." Particulars were not given, as the first two incarcerations occurred under Forster and Trevelyan. The third, under Balfour, was a term of fourteen days for assaulting a policeman. The Corporation discussed the patriot's merits without descending to detail. Outside, the newspaper boys were yelling "Arrest of Misther Balfour-r-r," but the Corporation were no buyers. The populace might be taken in, but official Cork know it was the "wrong 'un," and clave to its hard-earned pence. Public opinion here is much the same as in Dublin, only hotter. Respectable people who have anything to lose are, if possible, more seriously alarmed. The lower classes are, if possible, more bitter, more implacable in their animosity to everything English. Nevertheless, the feeling against Home Rule is assuredly gaining ground, even among the most ardent Nationalists. The great meeting of last Wednesday showed what the Unionists could do, how they could crowd a great platform with the intelligence of the country, and fill a great hall with the Unionist rank and file. The Loyalists have astonished themselves. They knew not their own strength. Now they are taking fresh heart, determined to hold out to extremity. The Separatists--for the Corkers are Separatists _au naturel_--are somewhat disconcerted, and try to minimise the effect of the meeting by sneering and contumely; but it will not do. They affect hilarity, but their laughter is not real. Perhaps nothing shows the shallowness of men more than the tricks they think sufficient to deceive. And then the leaders are accustomed to a credulous public. The place is eminently religious. Cork is the Isle of Saints--with a port and a garrison to enhance its sanctity. At certain seasons a big trade is done in candles, on which names are written, which being blessed and burnt have powerful influence in the heavenly courts. It costs a trifle to hallow the tallow, but no matter. A friend has seen a muddy little well, which is fine for sore eyes. Offerings of old bottles and little headless images were planted around, but the favourite gift was a pin, stuck in the ground by way of fee. Jolly Mr. Whicker, of Dublin, who represents three Birmingham houses, saw Father McFadden, of Gweedore, waving his hat when in custody. A policeman insisted that this should cease, when a man in the crowd said to Mr. Whicker:-- "Arrah, now, look at the holy man. He puts on his hat widout a wurrud, whin he could strike the man dead wid jist sayin' a curse. 'Tis a good saint he is, to go wid the police, whin if he sthretched out his hand he could wither thim up, an' bur-rn thim like sthraws in the blazin' turf!" These people have votes, and to a man support the Nationalist party. It is proposed to place Ireland under a Government governed by these good folks, who are in turn governed by their sacred medicine-men. A member of the firm of Cooke Brothers, a native of Cork, in business in this city fifty years, said:-- "There can be no doubt that the bill means ruin for Ireland, and therefore damage to England. The poor folks here believe the most extravagant things, and follow the agitators like a flock of sheep. They are undoubtedly wanting in energy. We have the richest land in Ireland, wonderful pastures that turn out the most splendid cattle in the world, big salmon rivers, a most fruitful country, a land flowing with milk and honey. As the rents are judicially fixed there can be no ground for complaint, but the people will not help themselves. Whether it is in the climate I cannot say, but I must reluctantly admit--and no one will gainsay my statement--that the people of the South, to put it mildly, are not a striving sort. "They want somebody else to do something for them. They get on a stick and wait till it turns to a horse before they ride. No Act of Parliament will help them, for they will not help themselves. "Look at the magnificent country you saw from Dublin to this city. Compare it with the black and desolate bogs of Ulster, and then ask yourself this question--How is it that the Ulster people, with far worse land, worse harbours, worse position, and having the same laws, are prosperous and content to have no change? If the Northerns and Southerns would swop countries, Ireland must develop into one of the most prosperous countries in the world. The Ulster men are tremendously handicapped as against the Munster folks, but--they are workers. Some say that if they were here the climate would enervate them, but I do not find that my experience countenances this supposition. Fifty years ago all the leading merchants and tradesmen of Cork were Catholics. It is not so now. What does that prove? I withhold my own opinion. "The Southerners are better fixed than the Ulstermen, but they are idle, and--this is very important--extremely sentimental." An avowed Nationalist, one Sullivan, completely bore out this last statement. "We want to manage our own business, and be ruled by Irishmen. You say in England that we shall be poor, and so we may, but that is no argument at all. It might influence a nation of shopkeepers, but it has no weight with Irishmen, who have a proper and creditable wish to make their country one of the nations of the world. The very servant girls feel this, and the poorest peasant woman now having what she calls a 'tay brakefast' is willing to go back to porridge if the country was once rid of the English. Never you mind what will happen to us. Cut us adrift, and that will be all we ask. If we need help we can affiliate with America or even France. The first is half our own people, the second understands the Irish nation, which fought for centuries in the French armies, and, under Marshal Saxe, an Irishman, routed the English at Fontenoy." This gentleman was civil and moderate in tone, but he did not promise to walk down the ages arm-in-arm with England, attesting eternal amity by exchanging smokes and drinks. "We'll be very glad to see the English as tourists," he said. "And they will have to behave themselves, too," he added, reflectively. A large trader of Patrick Street has most serious misgivings as to the effect of the bill. He said:-- "I had just been over to England to make purchases. Arriving here, I found the bill just out. I read it, and at once cancelled half my orders. We are reducing stock. What Home Rule would do for us I cannot contemplate. The mere threat amounts to partial paralysis. What the Cork people want with Home Rule is beyond me. They have everything in their own hands. The city elections of all kinds are governed by the rural voters of five miles round. Wealth and commercial capital are completely swamped by these obedient servants of the priests. Mr. Gladstone talks of an Upper House, with a £20 qualification. Why, the qualification for the Grand Jury is £40. Many of the twenty-pounders round here cannot read or write, and yet they will be qualified for the Irish House of Lords. A customer came up and said:--"Gladstone wants to hand the capital and commerce of this country to men like Tim Healy, who expects to be Prime Minister, and who will succeed, if the bill passes and he can eat priestly dirt enough. I knew where he was reared in Waterford, in a little tripe and drischeen shop." I rose to a point of order. Would the honourable member now addressing the House kindly explain the technical term "drischeen shop?" "Certainly. The drischeen is a sort of pudding, made of hog's blood and entrails, with a mixture of tansy and other things. Tim would know them well for he was reared on them, which accounts for his characteristic career. Do you know that the Queenstown Town Commissioners call each other liars, and invite each other to come out and settle it on the landing? Get the _Cork Constitution_, look over the file, and you'll drop on gems that will be the soul of your next letter. Don't miss it. And that's the sort of folks Mr. Gladstone would trust with the fate of England as well as Ireland, for their fates would be the same. You cannot separate them. The people of England do not seem to see through that. They will have an awful awakening. And serve them right. They make a pact with traitors; they offer their throats to the murderer, and they say, 'Anything to oblige you. I know you won't hurt us much.' "The Southern Irish are the most lovable people in the world, with all their faults, if they were not led astray by hireling agitators, who ruin the country by playing on the people's ignorance, exciting the Catholic hope of religious domination, and trusting to damage England as a great spreader of Protestantism. A lie is no lie if told to a Protestant. To keep a Protestant out of heaven would be a meritorious action. And they would readily damage themselves if by doing so they could also damage England. Englishmen hardly believe this, but every commercial traveller from an English house knows it is true." I tested a number of English commercials on this point. All confirmed the statement above given. Many had been Gladstonians, but now all were Unionists. None of them knew an English or Scotch commercial who, having travelled in Ireland, remained a Home Ruler. Such a person, they thought, did not exist. Admitted that for business purposes the apparent _rara avis_ might possibly, though not probably, be found, all agreed that no Englishman in his senses, with personal knowledge of the subject, could over support Home Rule. Two Gladstonians went from Chester to Tipperary to investigate the troubles: both returned converted. Six men from a shop-fitting establishment in Birmingham worked some weeks in Dublin: all returned Unionist to the core. This from Mr. Sibley, of Grafton street, Dublin, in whose splendid shop I met the Duchess of Leinster, handsomest woman in Ireland, and therefore (say Irishmen) handsomest in the world. She was buying books for Mr. Balfour, who, she said, was a great reader of everything connected with Ireland or Irish affairs. Mr. Sibley is a partner of Mr. Combridge, of New street, Birmingham, and is a leading Irish Unionist. Returning to the cancelling of orders, I will add that Mr. Richard Patterson, J.P., of Belfast, the largest buyer of hardware in Ireland, has cancelled very largely, together with two other large firms, whose names he gave me. You will remember Mr. John Cook, the Protestant Home Ruler, of Derry. His manager, Mr. Smith, has written the Birmingham factor of the house, to omit his usual visit, as the firm will have no orders for him. A strange comment on Mr. Cook's theories of confidence. Mr. Cook is an excellent, a high-minded man. He asked me how I would class him among his party. I called him a Visionary in Excelsis. Every self-respecting Saxon visitor to Cork visits the famous castle of Blarney, seven miles away, to see the scenery and kiss the Blarney Stone, the apparent source of Home Rule inspiration. There is a stone there That whoever kisses Och! he never misses To grow eloquent. 'Tis he may clamber To a lady's chamber, Or become a member Of Parliament. A clever spouter He'll sure turn out, or An out-an'-outer To be let alone! Don't hope to hindher him Or to bewildher him-- Sure, he's a pilgrim From the Blarney stone! The walk is delightful, not unlike that from Colwyn Bay to Conway, but more beautiful still, as instead of the London and North Western Railway a lovely river runs along the valley on your right. The Cork and Muskerry Light Railway occupies the roadside for the first four miles, relic of the beneficent Balfour--winding by the river side for the rest of the journey, through fat meadows dotted with thriving kine, and having a background of richly-wooded hills. At Carrickrohane your left is bounded by a huge precipitous rock, covered from base to summit with ivy and other greenery, a great grey building on the very brink of the abyss, flanked by Scotch firs, peering over the precipice. A fine stone bridge, garrisoned by salmon-fishers, leads to the Anglers' Rest, and here I found a splendid character, one Dennis Mulcahy, who boasted of his successful resistance to the Land League. Having told me of his adventures in America, and how his oyster-bar experiences in the Far West had opened his eyes to the fact that the Irish people were being humbugged, he narrated his return to his native land, on his succession to a small farm left him by "an ould aunt he had." His language was so forcible and picturesque that I despair of conveying its effect, more especially as no pen can describe the rich brogue, which, notwithstanding his two years' residence in the States, was still thick enough to be cut with a knife. Apart from its amusing side, his story has a moral, and may be instructively applied. "'Twas at Ballina I was, the toime o' the Land Lague. 'Twas there Captain Moonlight started from, an' the whole disthrict was shiverin' in their shoes. I refused to subscribe to the Land Lague, an' they started to compil me, but, be the powers, they tackled the wrong tom-cat whin they wint to coarce Dennis Mulcahy. Threatenin' letthers, wid pictures o' death's-heads, an' guns, an' pikes, an' coffins, was but a thrifle to the way they wint on. But they knew I had a thrifle of a sivin-shooter, an' bad luck to the one o' thim that dared mislist me at all. At last it got abroad that I was to get a batin' wid blackthorn sticks, for they wor tired the life out o' them, raisonin' wid me. Well, says I, I'm here, says I, an' the first man that raises a hand to me, I'll invite him to his own inquist, says I, for, bedad, I'll perforate him like a riddle, says I. Well, it wint on an' on, till one day I was stayin' at a bit of a shebeen outside the place, when a slip o' a girleen kem to me--I was sittin' on a bench in the back garden, the way I'd enjoy my pipe in the fresh air, an', says she, 'Get out o' this, for there's a whole crew o' thim inside going to bate you.' That was six or seven o' a fine summer's night, an' I walked into the house an' took a look at thim--a thievin' heap o' blayguards as iver ye seen wid your two eyes." "I wint out again an' sat in the haggard, where I could kape my eye on the dure. Prisintly out comes one o' thim, to commince the row, I suppose. "He spoke o' the Land Lague, an' I towld him I didn't agree wid it at all, and 'twas a thievin' invintion o' a set o' roguish schamers. "'Ye'd betther mind yer manners,' says he, 'onless ye have yer revalver,' says he, lookin' at me maningly. "Faix, 'tis here, says I, pullin' out the tool. "'But can ye handle it?' says he. "Begorra, says I, I'd shoot a fly off yer nose; an' wid that I looked round for a mark, an' I seen in a three foreninst me a lump o' a crow sittin' annoyin' me. 'Will ye quit yer dhrimandhru?' says I, to the botherin' ould rook. "'Caw, caw, caw,' says he, vexin' me intirely. "Bang! says I, an the dirty blackburd comes fluttherin' down, an' dhropped in the haggard like a log o' limestone. "Ye should have seen that fellow! The landlord wid the whole rout o' thim runs out. 'What's the matter?' says he, starin' round like a sick cod-fish. "'I'm afther charmin' a burd out iv a three; 'tis a way I have,' says I, shovin' in a fresh cartridge from my waistcoat pocket, fair an' aisy, an' kapin' me back to the haystack. "'Was it you kilt the jackdaw?' says he. "''Twas meself,' says I, 'that did it,' says I. "'An' ye carry a murdherin' thing like that in a paceful counthry,' says he. ''Tis yer American thrainin' says he, sneerin'. "I tuk off me hat an' giv' him a bow an' a scrape. 'Is it yerself would insinse me into the rudiments o' polite larnin'?' says I. Thin I looked him straight into the white iv his eye, an' give him the length o' my tongue. Me blood was up whin I seen this spalpeen wid his dirty set o' vagabones waitin' to murther me if they ketched me unbeknownst. 'Michael Hegarty,' says I, 'where did ye scour up yer thievin' set o' rag-heaps?' says I. 'Ye'd bate me wid blackthorns, would ye? Come on, you and your dirty thribe, till I put sivin shots into yez. Shure I could pick the eye out o' yez shure I could shoot a louse off yer ear,' says I. 'Anger me,' says I, 'an' I'll murther the whole parish; raise a stick to me, an' I'll shlaughter the whole counthry side.' An' wid that I cocked me little shootin'-iron. "Ye should have seen that shebeen-keeper; ye should have seen the whole o' them whin I raised me voice an' lifted me little Colt! "They tumbled away through the dure, crossin' each other like threes ye'd cut down, lavin' the landlord, struck all iv a heap, the mug on him white as a new twelve-pinny, staggerin' on his two shin-bones, an' thrimblin' an' shiverin' wid fright, till ye'd think he'd shake the teeth out iv his head. "The murdherin' vilyans want shtandin' up to, an' they'll rispict ye. I had no further trouble. That was the last o' thim. 'Tis the wake an' difinceless people they bate an' murther. I heerd there was talk o' shootin' me from the back iv a ditch; an' that one said, 'But av ye missed?' says he. 'What thin?' says he. "Ye should sind ould Gladstone an' Morley an' the other ould women to Carrignaheela till I give them a noggin' o' right poteen an' insinse thim into the way iv it. The only way o' managin' me counthrymin is to be the masther all out, an' 'tis thrue what I spake, an' sorra one o' me cares who hears me opinion. I'm the only man in the counthry that dares open his teeth, an' yet they all thrate me well now, an' the priest invites me to his house. An' all because I spake me mind, an' don't care three thraneens for the whole o' thim. 'Twas in America I larned the secret." Cork, April 20th. No. 11.--THE CRY FOR PEACE AND QUIETNESS. "What's the next place to this?" I asked, as the Southern and Western Railway deposited me at Tralee. I was uncertain as to whether the place was a terminus, but the gintleman who dhrove the cyar I hailed marvelled greatly at my ignorance. He surveyed me from top to toe with a compassionate expression. No doubt he had heard much of the ignorance of the uncivilised English, but this beat the record. Not to know that Tralee was on the sea, not to know that the little port frowned o'er the wild Atlantic main, as Mr. Micawber would have said. He struggled for a moment with his emotion and then said, "Musha, the next parish is Amerikay!" I apologised for my imperfect geographical knowledge, but the cyar-man was immovable. No pardoning look stole over his big red face, which was of the size and complexion of a newly cut ham. Nor would he enter into conversation with the inquiring stranger. He cursed his horse with a copiousness which showed his power of imagination, and with a minute attention to detail which demonstrated a superior business capacity. Put him in the House amongst the Nationalist members, and he is bound to come to the front. The qualifications above-mentioned cannot fail to ensure success. We have the examples before us, no need to mention names. A hard cheek, a bitter tongue, and a good digestion are the three great steps in the Irish Parliamentary _gradus ad Parnassum_, the cheek to enable its happy possessor to "snub up" to gentlemen of birth and breeding, the tongue to drip gall and venom on all and sundry, the digestion to eat dirt _ad libitum_ and to endure hebdomadal horsewhippings. Such a man, I am sure, was the dhriver of my cyar, who may readily be identified. His physiognomy is very like the railway map of Ireland, coloured red, with the rivers and mountain ranges in dark-blue or plum-colour. As a means of ready reference he would be invaluable in the House of Commons. How interesting to see Mr. Gladstone poring over his cheek (Connaught and Leinster), his jaw (Munster, with a pimple for Parnellite Cork), and his forehead (Ulster, with the eyes for Derry and Belfast). The G.O.M. would find the Kerry member invaluable. Like the rest he would probably be devoid of shame, untroubled by scruples, and a straight voter for his side, so long as he was not allowed to go "widout a male." Who knows but that, like the Prime Minister's chief Irish adviser, he may even have been reared on the savoury tripe and the succulent "drischeen"? All the Tralee folks are shy of political talk. They eye you for a long time before they commit themselves, but when once started they can hardly stop, so warm are they, so intensely interested in the great question. Running down the line, a Cork merchant said "The Kerry folks are decent, quiet folks by nature. Do not believe that these simple villagers are the determined murderers they would seem to be. No brighter intellects in Ireland, no better hearts, no more hospitable hosts in the Emerald Isle. They are very superstitious. There you have it all. 'Tis their beautiful ingenuousness that makes them so easily led astray. What do these simple country folks, living on their farms, without books, without newspapers, without communication with large centres--what do they know about intricate State affairs? What can they do but listen to the priest, regarded as the great scholar of the district, reverenced as almost--nay, quite infallible, and credited with the power to give or withhold eternal life? For while in England the people only respect a parson according to the esteem he deserves as a man, in Ireland the priestly office invests the man with a character entirely different from his own, and covers everything. These poor folks felt the pinch of hard times, and the agitators, backed by their Church, saw their opportunity and commenced to use it. Hence the Kerry moonlighters, poor fellows, fighting in their rude and uncouth way for what they believed to be patriotism and freedom. They should be pitied rather than blamed, for they were assuredly acting up to their light, and upon the advice of men they had from childhood been taught to regard as wise, sincere, and disinterested counsellors. "Ah me, what terrible times we had in Cork! Belfast may boast, but Belfast is not in it. We were in the centre of the fire. The shopkeepers of Patrick Street deserve the fullest recognition from the British nation. They had to furnish juries to well and truly try the moonlighters of Kerry, Clare, and several other counties. They sat for eight months, had to adjourn over Christmas, and those men returned true bills at the peril of their lives. The venue was changed to Cork for all these counties, and every man jack of the jury knew full well that any day some fanatic friend of the convicted men might shoot or stab him in the street. The loyalty of Belfast is all the talk, but it has never undergone so severe a test. There the Loyalists have it all their own way. Here the Loyalists, instead of being three to one, are only one to three. The Ulstermen are the entrenched army; the Cork Unionists are the advanced picket. More judges got promotion from Cork than elsewhere. We changed the barristers' silk to ermine, too. All this shows what we went through. Everything is quiet now; Balfour terrified the life out of them, and Captain Moonlight at the mention of that name would skip like spring-heeled Jack." The Kerry folks turned out bright as their reputation. It was hard to believe that these simple, kindly peasants had ever stained their beautiful pastoral country with the bloodiest, cruellest deeds of recent times. They have a polite, deferential manner without servility, and a pious way of interpolating prayer and thanksgiving with their ordinary conversation. "Good morning, Sir." "Good mornin', an' God save ye, Sorr." "Fine weather." "'Tis indeed foine weather, glory be to God." "Nice country." "Troth, it is a splindid country. The Lord keep us in it." A prosperous-looking shop with a portly personage at the door looked so uncommonly Unionistic that I ventured to make a few inquiries _re_ the antiquities of the district. The inevitable topic soon turned up, and to my surprise my friend avowed himself a Home Ruler and a Protectionist. His opinions and illustrations struck me as remarkable, and with his permission I record them here. "Yes, I am a Home Ruler--in theory. I think Home Rule would be best for both. Best for you and best for me, as the song says; but mark me well--NOT YET. "You are surprised that I should say Not Yet so emphatically, but the fact is I love my country, and, besides, all my interests and those of my children are bound up with the prosperity of the country. This ought to sharpen a man's wits, if anything could do it, and I have for many years been engaged in thinking out the matter, and my mind is now made up. "Home Rule from Gladstone will ruin us altogether. We must have Home Rule from Balfour. We _must_ have Home Rule, but we must have it from a Conservative Government. You smile. Is that new to you? It is? Just because Home Rulers in this country cannot afford to express their views at this moment. But the hope is entertained by all, I will say all, the most advanced Irish Home Rulers. By advanced I mean educated, enlightened. Let me give you an illustration which I heard from a friend in Cork. "Here is Ireland, a delicate plant requiring untold watching and careful training. Around it on the ground are a number of slugs and snails. Or call them hireling agitators if you like. I sprinkle salt around the roots to kill off the brutes and save my darling plant. That salt is Conservatism. It is furnished by people of property, by men who have interests to guard. Salt is a grand thing, let me tell you! Balfour is the man to sprinkle salt. Home Rule from him would be safe. He is the greatest man that ever governed Ireland, but that must be stale to you. You must have heard that everywhere. He put his foot on rebellion and crushed it out of existence. On the other hand the poor folks of the West coast would lie down and let him walk over them. They hold him in such esteem that they would regard it a favour if he would honour them by wiping his feet on them. He might walk unarmed and unattended through Ireland from end to end with perfect safety. But which of the Nationalist members could do that? Not one. The city scum, the criminal, irreclaimable class, shout 'Hell to Balfour,' but these poor readers of the _Freeman's Journal_ and such-like prints, prepared for their special use and written down to their level, must not be classed with the people of Ireland at all. Every country has its ruffian element, every country has its poisonous press. Ireland is no worse than other countries in these respects." My Irish Conservative Home Ruler would have gone on indefinitely, furnishing excellent matter, for he improved as he warmed up, but unhappily a priest called on him to make some purchase, and he had to leave me without much notice. "Over the way," he said. "Trip across to the opposite shop, and you'll find another Tory Home Ruler." As I "tripped" across I thought of the Pills and Ointment man who amassed a colossal fortune by fifty years' advertising of the fact that wonders never will cease. Mr. Overtheway was not quite so Tory as might be supposed, after all. He said:-- "I have no objection to Home Rule, but, although a Catholic, I have the greatest objection to Rome Rule, which is precisely what it means. I object to this great Empire being ruled from Rome. The greatest Empire that the world ever saw to be bossed by a party of priests! Do the English know what they are now submitting to? "Let me put the thing logically, and controvert me if you can. "If Mr. Gladstone wished to go to war to-morrow, is he not at the mercy of the Irish Nationalist party? Could he get votes of supply without their aid? In the event of any sudden, or grave emergency, any serious and critical contingency, would they not hold the key of the position, would they not have the power to make or mar the Empire? Surely they would. And are not these men in the hands of the priests? Surely they are. That is a matter of common knowledge, as sure as that water will drown and fire will burn. A pretty position for a sensible man like John Bull to be placed in by a blethering idiot, who can argue with equal volubility on either side, but with more conviction when in the wrong. Bull must have been drunk, and drunk on stupid beer, when he placed his heart strings between the finger and thumb of a quack like that, who, whatever the result, whether we get Home Rule or not, has ruined the country for five-and-twenty years. "Yes, I am a Home Ruler. But for heaven's sake don't thrust self-government on an unfortunate country that is not ready for it. That country cries for it, you say. The snuffling old air-pump across the Channel says the same thing. Says he: 'Beloved brethren, I greet you. I fall on your neck and kiss your two ears, and give you all you ask. For why, beloved brethren? Why do I this thing. Let us in a spirit of love enquire. Because it is the wish of the country; because it is the aspiration of the people; because I feel a deep-seated, internal affection for your beautiful land, in whose affairs, during my eighty-four years' pilgrimage in this vale of tears, I have, as you know, always shown the strongest, the warmest, the most passionate interest, and on whose lovely shores I have during my seven dozen years spent (altogether) nearly a week. It has been said that I have never been in Ulster, and that, therefore, I am unable to appreciate the situation. An atrocious falsehood. I have spent two hours (nearly) in the northern province, having landed from Sir Somebody's yacht to see the Giant's Causeway. I have studied the Irish question by means of mineral specimens gathered from the four provinces, and I am, therefore, competent to settle the Irish question for ever. Do you know a greater man than myself? I confess I don't. Bless you, my children. You ask for Home Rule. Enough. The fact that you ask proves a Divine right to have what you ask for. You are a people rightly struggling to be free,' says owld Gladstone. 'Hell to my sowl,' says he, 'but that's what ye are,' says he. "And he starts to murder us by giving what the most ignorant, unthinking, unpatriotic, self-seeking people in the country have asked for, and swears that because they ask they must have. "As well give a razor to a baby that cried for it. "Ireland must be treated as an infant. "An Irish Legislature would lead to untold miseries. We might arrive there some day, but not at a jump. The change is too sudden. We want a little training. We want to grow, and growth is a thing that cannot be forced. It takes time. Give us time for heaven's sake. Give us Home Rule, but also give us time. Give us milk, then fish, then perhaps a chop, and then, as we grow strong, beefsteak and onions. A word in your ear. This is certain truth, you can go Nap on it. Tell the English people that the people are getting sick of agitation, that they want peace and quietness, that they are losing faith in agitators, having before them a considerable stretch of history, which, notwithstanding the scattered population, is filtering down into the minds of the people, with its morals all in big print. The Irish folks are naturally quick-witted. They are simple and confiding, many of them very ignorant, if you will, but they find out their friends in the long run. Look at Balfour. Not a man in the whole world for whom the people have so much affection. Which do you think would get the best welcome to-morrow--Balfour or Morley? Balfour a hundred thousand times. Ah, now; my countrymen know the real article when they see it. Home Rule we want for convenience and for cheapness. We don't want to be compelled to rush to London before we can build a bridge. But rather a million times submit to expense and inconvenience than hand the country over to a set of thieves who'd sell us to-morrow. We're not such fools as ye take us for. Don't we know these heroes? And when we see them and Gladstone and Morley and Humbug Harcourt with his seventeen chins, all rowling together in Abraham's bosom (as ye may say)--Harcourt licking Harrington's boots, when only yesterday Tim was spittin' in his eye--we say to ourselves 'Wait yet awhile, my Boys, wait yet awhile.' But when ye've finished yer slavering and splathering, and when Tim Healy can find time to take his heel off Morley's neck, then, and not before, we'll have something to say to you. "But you should call on my friend on the right. He is also a Home Ruler--like myself." Number three had powerfully-developed opinions. He said--"Home Rule on Conservative lines is my ticket. We'll get it on no other. I console myself with that idea. Otherwise it would be a frightful business, and what would become of us, I cannot tell. But I do not believe that even Gladstone would be so insane as to give it us. I cannot believe that the middle class voters of England would stand by and see the corresponding class in this country exterminated. Home Rule as much as you like, if we had the right men. The very poorest peasants are becoming alive to the fact that under present circumstances the thing would never do for them. They want the right men, that is, men of money and character, to come forward. And I declare most solemnly, that I am convinced that the Irish people would fall into line, and see the bill thrown out with perfect quietude. Now the push has come, they really do not want Home Rule, and, what is more, they absolutely dread it, and I firmly believe that a general election at the present moment would send a majority of Unionists to power. The priests are working for life and death. They see that this is their best chance, perhaps their very last opportunity. I am a Catholic; but then I am a Parnellite, a Tory Parnellite. And I have no intention of bartering away my political freedom to my Church, which, in my opinion, should keep clear of politics. The clergy have now advised payment of rent, so that the Government may not be embarrassed at a very critical juncture. And the tenants are paying their rent, although the present period is one of great agricultural depression. Look at this: The Ulster farmers are terribly hard up, are complaining that they cannot pay. This is the Protestant province, where the priests have little scope. But in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, the people are paying the landlord. The word has gone round--pay the landlord, whomever else you don't pay! The oilcake man, the implement man, the shopkeeper, are not getting their dues, but notwithstanding the pinch of the present moment, the landlord (who knows all about it) is paid. And the priests in some cases are actually remitting the clerical dues to enable the small men to pay the rint. Pay the rint, say they, if you pledge your very boots, if you have to go to the gombeen man (money-lender), if you have almost to rob the Church. They want to get possession, they want to get power, they want to get Home Rule; and then they know that, as Scripture says, 'All these things shall be added unto them.' Let them once get the upper hand, and they can very soon recoup themselves. "The priests are showing England their power, with a view to future good bargains. 'You see what we can do,' say they. Arrange the matter with us. We are the boys. The Reverend Father O'Codling is the man. Have no dealings, except such as are authorised by us, with the red-headed Tim Healy Short. The Clergy have only one idea; that is, of course, the predominance of their Church. Very natural, and, from their point of view, very proper. I find no fault with them, but I say their object hardly commends itself to my undivided admiration, and, being still friendly, we on this subject part company. I wish to let the priests down easy. They are mostly very good men, apart from politics. They are good customers to me, and they pay very promptly. They spend their money in the country, and I'd have no fault to find if they'd lave politics alone. Mind that owld Gladstone doesn't become a Papist all out. 'Twould be better for him, no doubt, and as the whole jing-bang that turned round with him before would no doubt still follow at his heels, we'd get a considerable quantity of converts, if we could say little about the quality. D'ye hear what that owld woman's singing?" I listened with interest. The minstrelsy of Ireland seems to have drifted into the hands of the most unpoetical people in the green isle. The poor old creature walked very, very slowly along the gutter, ever and anon giving herself a suggestive twitch, which plainly indicated some cutaneous titillation--the South is a grazing country. This was all I heard-- Owld Oireland was Owld Oireland Whin England was a pup. Oireland will be Owld Oireland Whin England's bur-r-sted up! If my friends are right as to the change of feeling _re_ Home Rule, the dear old lady was hardly up to date. But the great author of "Dirty Little England"--I judge of the author by the internal evidence of sentiment, style, and literary merit--certainly composed the above beautiful stanza in the sure and certain hope that the present bill would become law. Number Three qualified his remarks on rent, when speaking of the County Clare. "There they embarrass the Government by refusing to pay, and by shooting people in the good old way, just at the most ticklish time." He said, "Clare has always been an exceptional county. Clare returned Daniel O'Connell, by him secured Catholic Emancipation, and from that time has called itself the premier county of Ireland. They are queer, unmanageable divils, are the Clare folks, and we are only divided from them by the Shannon. So the Kerry folks go mad sometimes by contagion. I should advise you to keep away from Clare. You might get a shot-hole put into you. Every visitor is noticed in those lonely regions, and the little country towns only serve to disseminate the arrival of a stranger to the rural districts. Suppose you walk five miles out of Ennis the day after you arrive there, I would wager a pound the first woman that sees you pass her cottage will say, 'That's the Englishman that Maureen O'Hagan said was staying at the Queen's Hotel.' The servants are regular spies, every one of them. I couldn't speak politics in my house because I've a Catholic nurse. Good bye, I hope ye won't get shot." I thanked him for the interest expressed, but failed to share his nervousness. After having mingled with the Nationalist crowd that followed the Balfour column in the Dublin torchlight procession, after having escaped unhurt from the blazing Nationalists who swarm in the Royal Victoria Hotel, Cork, having walked down the Limerick entrance to the balmy Tipperary, a little shooting, more or less, is unworthy a moment's consideration. Besides which, my perpetual journeying and interviewing and scribbling have made me so thin that Captain Moonlight himself would be bound to miss. However, it is well to be prepared for the worst, so--_Pax vobiscum_, and away to County Clare. Tralee (Co. Kerry), April 20th. No. 12.--ENGLISH IGNORANCE AND IRISH PERVERSITY. A most enchanting place when you have time to look at it. My flying visit of ten days ago gave the city no chance. Let me redeem this error, so far as possible. There are two, if not three Limericks in one, a shamrock tripartition, a trinity in unity,--English-town, Irish-town, and New Town Perry. New Limerick is a well-built city, which will compare favourably with anything reasonable anywhere. Much of it resembles the architecture of Bedford Square, London. The streets are broad and rectangular, the shops handsome and well furnished. But it is the natural features of the vicinity which "knock" the susceptible Saxon. The Shannon, the classic Shannon, sweeps grandly through the town, winding romantically under the five great bridges, washing the walls of the stupendous Castle erected by King John, the only British sovereign who ever visited Limerick--serpentining through meadows backed by mountains robed in purple haze, reflecting in its broad mirror many a romantic and historic ruin, its banks dotted with salmon-fishers pulling out great fish and knocking them on the head, its promenades abounding with the handsomest women in the world. For the Limerick ladies are said to be the most beautiful in Ireland, and competent English judges--I know nothing of such matters--assure me that the boast is justified. Get to Cruise's Royal Hotel, which for a hundred years has looked over the Shannon, take root in its airy, roomy precincts, pleasant, clean, and sweet, with white-haired servitors like noble earls in disguise to bring your ham and eggs, Limerick ham, mind you, which at this moment fetches 114s. per cwt. in London; and with the awful cliffs of Kilkee within easy distance, where the angry Atlantic Ocean, dashing with gigantic force against the rock-bound coast, sends spray two or three miles inland, the falls of Castleconnel with the salmon-fisheries under your very nose, and the four hours river-steamer to Kilrush, with more Cathedrals, statues, antiquities, curiosities, novelties, quaintnesses than could be described in a three-volume novel--do all those things, and, while on your back in the smoke room, after a hard day's pleasure, you will probably be heard to murmur that in the general Fall some of us dropped easily enough, and that, all things considered, Adam's unhappy collapse was decidedly excusable. The Limerick folks are said to be the most Catholic people in Ireland. They are more loyal than the Corkers. Why is this? The more Catholic, the more disloyal, is the general experience. Nobody whose opinion is worth anything will deny this, and however much you may wish to dissociate religion from politics, you cannot blink this fact. In dealing with important matters, it is useless to march a hair's-breadth beside the truth. Better go for it baldheaded, calling things by their right names, taking your gruel, and standing by to receive the lash. You are bound to win in the long run. I say the Catholic priests are disloyal to the Queen. Men of the old school, the few who remain, are loyal, ardently loyal. The old-timers were gentlemen. They were sent to Douai or some other Continental theological school, where they rubbed against gentlemen of broad culture, of extensive view, of perfect civilisation. They returned to Ireland with a personal weight, a cultivation, a refinement, which made them the salt of Irish earth. These men are still loyal. The Maynooth men, sons of small farmers, back-street shopkeepers, pawnbrokers, and gombeen men, aided by British gold, these half-bred, half-educated absorbers of eleemosynary ecclesiasticism, are deadly enemies to the Empire. This is Mr. Bull's guerdon for the Maynooth grant. My authority is undeniable. The statement is made on the assurance of eminent Catholics. Two Catholic J.P.'s yesterday concurred in this, and no intelligent Irish Catholic will think otherwise. Surely this consideration should be a factor in arguments against Home Rule. Then why are the Limerick Catholics loyal? Because the Limerick Bishop is loyal. Bishop O'Dwyer is opposed to Home Rule. Said Mr. James Frost, J.P., of George's Street: "When the Bishop first came here he invited some four hundred Catholics to a banquet at the palace. After dinner he proposed the health of the Queen, and all the company save two or three rose and received the toast with enthusiasm, waving their handkerchiefs and showing an amount of warmth that was most gratifying to me. I need not tell you that an average Home Rule audience would not have accepted the toast at all. This shows you the feeling of the most intelligent Catholics. The people of education and property are loyal. It shows also that they are opposed to Home Rule." "But if the best Catholics are opposed to Home Rule, why don't they say so publicly?" "A fair question, which shall have a precise answer. But first, we must go back to Mr. Balfour's great Land Act, and the lowering of the franchise, and observe the effect of these two enactments. "The people were at one time terribly ill-used. That is all over now, but the memory still rankles. The Irish are great people for tradition. The landlords have for ages been the traditional embodiment of tyranny and religious ascendency. The Irish people have long memories, very long memories. Englishmen would say: 'No matter what happened to my great-grandfather; I am treated well, and that is enough for me.' Irishmen still go harping on the landlord, although he no longer has any power. The terrible history of the former relationship between landlord and tenant is still kept up and remembered, and will be remembered for ages, if not for ever. Presently you will see the bearing of all this on your question--Why do not the best Catholics come forward and speak against Home Rule? "When the franchise was lowered the rebound from repression was tremendous, like a powerful spring that has been held down, or like an explosive which is the more destructive in proportion as it is more confined. People newly made free go to the opposite extreme. Emancipate a serf and he becomes insolent, he does not know how to use his freedom, and becomes violent. The great majority of the people are smarting from the old land laws, which have left a bitter animosity against English rule, which is popularly denounced as being responsible for them. "To speak against Home Rule is to associate yourself with the worst aspects of the land question. The bulk of the people are incapable of making a distinction. And while they entertain some respect for a Protestant opponent, they are irreconcilable with Unionist Catholics, just as the English Gladstonians have a far more virulent dislike for the Liberal Unionists than for the rankest Tories. They say to the Protestants, 'We know why you uphold Unionism'--that is, as they believe, landlordism--'for the landlords are English and Protestant; your position is understandable.' But to the Catholic they say, 'You are not only an enemy, but a renegade, a traitor, and a deserter.' And whatever that man's position may be, the people can make things uncomfortable for him." Another Catholic living near, said: "'How would Home Rule work?' you ask. Most destructively, most ruinously. Under the most favourable circumstances, whether Home Rule passes or not, the country will not recover the shock of the present agitation for many a year; not, I think, in my lifetime. I was over in the North of England last year, and I found that the people there knew nothing of the question, literally nothing. Clever men, intelligent men, men who had the ear of the people, displayed a profundity of ignorance on Irish questions, conjoined with a confidence in discussing them, surpassing belief. They changed their minds on hearing my statements, and on obtaining exact information. I must give them credit for that. I believe the English Gladstonians are only suffering from ignorance. Their leader is certainly not less ignorant than the bleating flock at his heels. They smugly argue from the known to the unknown on entirely false premises. They know that when Englishmen act in this or that way, such and such things will happen. They know what they themselves would do in certain conjunctures, and when they are told by Irishmen that Irishmen under similar conditions would act quite differently, they snort and say 'nonsense.' They are too dense to appreciate the radical difference between the two races. The breeds don't mix and don't understand each other. It was miserable to hear these men--I am sure they were good men--prattling like bib-and-tucker babies about Irish affairs, and speaking of Gladstone as possessing a quality which we Catholics only ascribe to the Pope. Ha! ha! They think that vain old cataract of verbiage to be infallible. He knows nothing of the matter, does not understand the tools he is working with, any one of whom could buy and sell him and simple, clever Morley twenty times over. Both Gladstone and Morley _are_ clever in books, in words, in theories, adepts in debating, smart and adroit in talk. But they know no more of Paddy than the babe unborn. I say nothing of Harcourt and the other understrappers. They'll say anything that suits, whatever it may be. We reckoned them up long since. Cannot the English people see through these nimble twisters and time-servers, this crowd of lay Vicars of Bray?" Catholic Home Ruler Number Three said, "I agree with all who say that the priests would do their best to secure a dominating influence in political affairs. And although I think we ought to have an Irish Legislature, although I believe it would be good for us, yet if the priestly influence were to become supreme for one moment of time--if you tell me that the Catholic Church is to hold the reins for one second, then I say, away with Home Rule, away with it for ever! Better stay as we are." This gentleman seems to have about as much logical foresight as some of those he criticises. He dreads priestly domination above everything, and yet would approve of giving the priests a chance of being masters. He continued:-- "The present Irish leaders are the curse of the movement, which, should it succeed, would in their hands bring untold sorrows on the country. As a Catholic Home Ruler, I put up my hands in supplication, and I beg, I implore of the English people to withhold their assent. For God's sake don't give it us at present. We must have it sooner or later, but wait till we have leaders we can trust. Have you met a decent Home Ruler who trusts the present men? No. I knew you would say so. Such a man cannot be found in Ireland. Then why send them to Parliament, say you? That is just what you Englishmen do not understand. That is one of the points old Gladstone is wrecking the country on. You think it unanswerable. Listen to me. "When the franchise was lowered, then the mistake was made. You let in an immense electorate utterly incapable of discussing any question of State; and, rushing from the extreme of abject servility to a sort of tyrannical mastery, they elected as their representatives, not the most able men, not the most orderly men, not the men of some training and education, not the men who had some stake in the country, but the most violent men, the glibbest men, the most factious, the most contumacious, the most pragmatical men were the men they elected. Look at the Poor-Law Boards. See the set sent there. Those are the men who will be sent to the Dublin Parliament. Are they men to be trusted with the affairs of State? Look up your Burke, and observe the qualifications he thinks necessary to a statesman. Then look at the blacksmith who represents the county Tipperary, the mason who represents Meath, the drapers' assistants and bacon factors' clerks who represent other places. You don't quite see this in England. These men perhaps tell you that they are kings in their own country. Ireland is a long way off, and far-away hills are green. "Reverse the situation. Let Dublin be the seat of Empire and London wanting Home Rule. You really want it, and think it would be best for both--a convenience for yourself and a saving of time for all. Would you not draw back at the last moment if under the circumstances I have named, your country was to be handed over to fellows whose sole income was derived from their political work, artisans, clerks, and shopkeepers' assistants? What would these men do with their power? Make haste to be rich--nothing more. Patriots are they? Rubbish; they are mere mercenaries. Parnell knew that. He said to me:-- "'Under the circumstances I must use these men, whom I would not otherwise touch with a forty-foot pole. Adversity makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows. Any port is good in a storm. These men will fight well--for their pay, and will work the thing up. But when we get the bill, when we come into power, their work is done. They will be dropped at once, or furnished with places where they may get an honest living.'" Catholic Home Ruler Number Four said: "The Meath election shows the feeling of the priests, and what they would do if they could. They loathed Parnell, but he was too strong for them. And weren't they glad to give him the slip on the ground of morality. Home Rule was comparatively a safe thing while Parnell lived. Now I would not advise it for some years. We must have better men to the fore. We in Limerick are loyal, although Catholics and Home Rulers. Don't laugh at that. It is a fact, though I admit it is hard to believe. Put it down, if you like, to the influence of the Bishop. The young priests I say nothing about. Their loyalty is a negligeable quantity. They do not object to Protestants _qua_ Protestants, but they object to them as representatives of English rule." This reminded me of Dr. Kane, of Belfast, who said to me, "They hate us, not because we are Protestants, not because we are Orangemen, not because we are strangers in the land, but because we are the hated English garrison." Here I am bound to interpolate a word of qualification. The Mardyke promenade of Cork, a mile-long avenue of elms, has many comfortable seats, whereon perpetually do sit the "millingtary" of the sacrilegious Saxon, holding sweet converse with the Milesian counterparts of the Saxon Sarah Ann. The road is full of them, Tommy's yellow-striped legs marching with the neat kirtle of Nora, Sheela, or Maureen. As it was in the Isle of Saints, so it was in Ulster, is now in Limerick, and shall be in Hibernia _in sæcula sæculorum_. A Limerick constable said, "A regiment will come into the city at four o'clock, and at eight they'll every man walk out a girl. The infatuation of the servant-girl class for the military is surprisin'. Only let them walk out with a soldier, and they 'chuck' everything, even Home Rule." The hated garrison are not among the people who never will be missed. Wherever Tommy goes he seems to be able to sample the female population. The soldiers always have a rare good time. A carman who drove me to Castleconnel proved the most interesting politician since Dennis Mulcahy, of Carrignaheela. He knew all about the average English voter, and resented his superior influence in Irish affairs. "Shure, we're all undher the thumb o' a set o' black men that lives undher the bowils o' the airth. Yer honner must know all about thim miners in the Black Counthry, an' in Wales, an' the Narth o' England? Ye didn't? Ah, now, ye're jokin' me, ye take me for an omadhaun all out. Ye know all about it; ye know that these poor men goes down, an' down, an' down, till ye'd think they'd niver shtop, an' that they stay there a whole week afore they come up agin. An' then they shtand in tubs while their wives an' sweethearts washes an' scrubs thim, an' makes white men out o' the black men that comes up, an' thin walks thim off home. Now, shtandin' in a tub at the mouth o' the pit to be washed by yer wimmenfolks is what we wouldn't do in this counthry--'tisn't black naygurs we are--an' these men that lives in the dark and have no time to think, an' nothin' to think wid, these are the men ye put to rule this counthry, men that they print sich rubbish as _Tit-Bits_ for, because they couldn't understand sinse. An' the man that first found out that they couldn't understand sinse, an' gave thim somethin' that wanted no brains, they say has made a fortune. Is that thrue, now? "As for owld Gladstone, I wouldn't trust him out o' me sight. We'll get no Home Rule, the owld thrickster doesn't mane it. 'Tis like a man I knew that was axed to lind a friend £100. He didn't like to lind, an' he was afeared to say No, an' he was in a quondairy intirely. So, says he 'I'll lind ye the money,' says he, 'if ye'll bring the securities down to the bank,' says he, 'an' get the cash off me banker.' Thin he went saycretly to the banker, an' says he, 'This thievin' blayguard,' says he, 'wants the money, and he'll never repay me; I wouldn't thrust him,' says he. 'Now, will ye help me, for I couldn't say No, by raison he's a relative, an' an owld acquaintance,' says he. "'An' how'll I do that?' says the banker. "'Ye can tur-rn up yer nose at the securities.' "'Ha, Ha,' says the banker, 'is it there ye are? Ye're a deep one; begorra ye are. Nabocklish,' says he, 'I'll do it for ye,' says he. "So whin the borrower wint for the money, the banker sent out word that the securities wor not good enough, an' that he wouldn't advance a farden. "Then the borrower goes to his frind an' complains, an' thin the frind acts all out the way Gladstone'll act when the bill's refused at the Lords, or may be at the Commons. 'Hell to him,' he roars, 'the blayguard thief iv a thievin' banker. I'll tache him to refuse a frind, says he. 'Sarve him right,' says he, 'av I bate his head into a turnip-mash an' poolverise him into Lundy Foot snuff. May be I won't, whin I meet him, thrash him till the blood pours down his heels,' says he. That'll be the way iv it. That's what Gladstone will say whin the bill's lost, which he manes it to be, the conthrivin' owld son o' a schamer. "A gintleman axed me which o' them I like best o' the two Home Rule Bills, an' I towld him that whin I lived at Ennis, an' drove a car at the station there, the visithors, Americans an' English, would be axin' me whin they lepped on the car which was the best hotel in Ennis. Now, whiniver I gave them my advice they would be cur-rsin' an' sinkin' at me whin they met me aftherwards in the sthreet, be raison that there was only two hotels in the place, an' nayther o' thim was at all aiqual to what they wor used to in their own counthries. So I got to know this, an' iver afther, whin they would be sayin' to me, "'Which is the best hotel in Ennis?' says they, an' I would answer, "'Faix, there's only two o' thim, an' to whichiver one ye go ye will be sorrowin' that ye didn't go to the other,' says I. "An' that's my reply as to which of the two Home Rule Bills I like best." In the city of Limerick itself all is quiet and orderly. Outside, things are different. Disturbed parts of the County Clare are dangerous to strangers, and, what is more to the point, somewhat difficult of access. The country is not criss-crossed with railways as in England, and vehicles for long journeys are rather hard to get. However, I have chartered a car for a three-day trip into what may be called the interior, have fired several hundred cartridges from a Winchester repeating rifle, and written letters to my dearest friends. I start to-morrow, and if I do not succeed in bottoming the recent outrages--which are hushed up as much as possible, and of which the local newspaper-men, both Nationalist and Conservative, together with Head-Constable MacBrinn, declare they cannot get at the precise particulars--if I cannot get to the root of the matter, I shall in my next letter have the honour of stating the reason why. Limerick, April 22nd. No. 13.--THE CURSE OF COUNTY CLARE. Once again the difference between Ireland and England is forcibly exemplified. It was certain that several moonlighting expeditions had recently been perpetrated in the neighbourhood of Limerick, which is only divided by the Shannon from the County Clare. You walk over a bridge in the centre of the city and you change your county, but nobody in Limerick seems to know anything about the matter. The local papers hush up the outrages when they hear of them, which is seldom or never. The people who know anything will not, dare not tell, and even the police have the utmost difficulty in establishing the bare facts of any given case. English publicity is entirely unknown. Local correspondents do not always exist in country towns, and the distances are so great, in comparison with the facilities for travel, that newspaper-men seldom or never visit the scene of the occurrence. And besides the awkward and remote position of the country hamlets and mountain farms, there are other excellent reasons for journalistic reticence. The people do not wish to read such news, the editors do not wish to print these discreditable records, and the police, although eminently and invariably civil and obliging, are debarred by their official position from disclosing what they know. The very victims themselves are often silent, refusing to give details, and almost always declining to give evidence. That the sufferers usually know and could easily identify the cowardly ruffians who so cruelly maltreat them is a well-ascertained fact. That they usually declare they have no clue to the offenders is equally well known. The difficulty of arresting suspected men is enhanced by the fact that the moonlighters have a complete system of scouts who in this bare and thinly populated district, descry the police when miles away, giving timely warning to the marauders; these, besides, are readily concealed by their neighbours and friends, who in this display an ingenuity and enthusiasm worthy a better cause. Suppose the villains are caught red-handed; even then the difficulties are by no means over. In Ireland a felon once in the hands of the police, by that one circumstance at once and for ever becomes a hero, a martyr, a man to be excused, to be prayed for, to be worshipped. No matter how black his offence, the touch of the constabulary washes him whiter than snow, purifies him from every earthly taint, surrounds him with a halo of sanctity. Those whom he has injured will not bear witness against him, because their temerity might cost them their lives, the loss of their property, the esteem of their fellow-men. What this means we shall shortly see. The cases I have examined will speak for themselves. And let it be remembered that close proximity to the scenes described produces an incomparably stronger effect than any description, however minute, however painstaking. The utter lawlessness of the districts I have visited since penning Monday's letter has produced a profound, an indelible impression. I pass over the means employed to get over the ground, merely stating that horseflesh has borne the brunt of the business. That and pedestrianism are the only means available, with untold patience and perseverance to worm out the true story. People will not show the way, or will direct you wrongly. Their ignorance, that is, their assumed ignorance, is wonderful, incredible. They are all sthrangers in those parts. They never knew a family of that name, never heard of any moonlighting, swear that the amusement is unknown thereabouts, assert that the whole thing is a fabrication of the police. All the people round are decent, honest, hard-working folks, without a fault; pious, virtuous, immaculate. You push on, and your friend runs after you. Stay a moment, something has struck him. Just at the last distressing hour, his brain displayed amazing power. Now he comes to think of it, something was said to have happened over there, at Ballygammon, ten miles in the opposite direction. A stack was fired, and they said it was the Boys. It was the police who burnt the hay, but they deny it "av coorse." He is suspiciously anxious to afford all the information he can. Ballygammon is the spot, and Tim Mugphiller your man. Mention Mike Delany and you will get every information, and--have ye a screw of tobacky these hard times. You pursue your way certain that at last you are on the right track, and Mike's jaw drops to his knees. Too late he sees that his only chance of altering your course was to point out the right one. Dropping for once scenery and surroundings, let us at once plunge, as Horace advises, _in medias res_. The district in Mr. Balfour's time was pleasant and peaceable. Curiously enough its troubles commenced with the change of Government. From March 18 to April 18 the police of Newcastlewest received tidings of fifteen outrages. How many have been perpetrated no man living can tell, for people often think it wisest to hold their peace. Ireland is often said to be almost free from crime, except of the agrarian kind, and moonlighting is partly condoned by reason of its alleged cause. How must we class the following case? On February 19, 1893, four armed men with blackened faces and dressed as women, attacked the dwelling of T. Donoghue, of Boola, not far from Newcastle. They burst open the door and entered, not to revenge any real or fancied wrong, but purely and simply to obtain possession of a sum of £150, which Donoghue's daughter had brought from America. They believed they would have an easy prey, but they were mistaken; there were two or three men in the house, and the heroes decamped instanter, followed, unknown to themselves, by one of Donoghue's family. Having duly run them to earth, he informed the police, who caught them neatly enough, their shoes covered with fresh mud, and with every circumstance of guilt. The Donoghue folks identified them. The case was perfectly clear--that is the expressed opinion of everybody I have met, official and otherwise. It was tried at the Limerick Spring Assizes, and the jury returned a verdict of "Not guilty!" These patriotic jurors had doubtless much respect for their oaths, more for the interests of justice, more still for their own skins. This case is public property, and is only cited to prove that when the difficulty of arrest and the greater difficulty of obtaining evidence are with infinite pains overcome, the jury will not convict, no matter what the crime. Before he commences his career of crime, the moonlight marauder knows the chances of being caught are immensely in his favour, that should luck in this matter be against him, his very victim will decline to identify him, nay, will affirm that he is not the man, and that when the worst comes to the worst, no jury in the counties of Kerry, Clare, or Limerick will convict. Here are some results of my researches. The particulars of these cases now first appear in print. A man named James Dore, who keeps a public-house in Bridge Street, Newcastlewest--I can vouch for his beer--also held a small farm of forty-nine acres from the Earl of Devon, for which he paid the modest rent of £11 10s. per annum--the land maintaining sixteen cows and calves, which, on the usual local computation of £10 profit on each cow, would leave a gain of £148 10s.--not a bad investment, as Irish farming goes. So it was considered, and when the tenant-right was announced as for sale by auction, two cousins of Dore, who held farms contiguous, agreed to jointly bid for the tenant-right, and having secured the land, to arrange its partition between themselves. They went to £400, but this was not regarded as enough, and the tenant-right was for a specified time held over for purchase by private agreement. A farmer named William Quirke offered £590, which was accepted, and the money paid. After this, the two cousins came forward and said they would purchase the tenant-right, offering £40 more than Quirke had paid. They were told that they were too late, and the Earl's agent (Mr. Curling) said nothing could now be done. This was on the 13th of the present month of April. On the 14th, Mr. James Cooke, Lord Devon's bailiff, was seen showing the purchaser Quirke over the newly-acquired holding. Poor Quirke little knew what was at that moment hanging over him. He had not long to wait. The dastard demon of moonlight ruffianism was on his track. Quirke had a son aged fourteen years, but looking two years younger, a simple peasant lad, who cannot have injured his country very much. He was tending a cow, which required watching, his father and mother taking their rest while the child sat out the lonely hours in the cowhouse. He heard something, and listened with all his ears. Not voices, but a subdued whispering. It was the dead hour of night, two or half-past two, and the boy was frightened. The place is lonely, seven miles or more from Newcastlewest, and up towards the mountains. He listened and listened, and again heard the mysterious sounds. He says he "thought it was the fairies." He stole from the byre and went to the house. A horrible dread had crept over him, and father and mother were there. As he opened the door a terrible blow from behind struck him down. He was not stunned, though felled by the butt-end of a gun. They beat and kicked him as he lay. He gave an anguished cry. The mother heard and recognised her boy's voice, and, waking the father, said "Go down, they're killing my lad." The old man, for he is an old man, went down the stairs naked and unarmed. The foul marauders met him half-way up, and served him as they had served the boy, throwing him down, kicking him, and beating him with butt-ends of guns; with one terrible blow breaking three of his ribs; and saying, "Give it up, give it up." He said he would "give it up"; promised by all he held sacred, begged hard for his life, and implored them at least to spare the young lad. Their reply to this was to fire a charge of shot into the boy's legs, a portion of the charge entering the limbs of an old woman--his grandmother, I think--who was feebly trying to shield the lad. This was such excellent sport that more was thought expedient. A charge of shot was fired into the father's legs, and as one knee-joint is injured, the elder Quirke's condition is precarious even without his broken ribs and other injuries. The cowardly hounds then left, in their horrid disguise adding a new terror to the lonely night. The evening's entertainment was not yet over. They crossed a couple of fields to a house where dwelt Quirke's married son. They burst open the door of his cottage and dragged the young fellow--he is about twenty-five--from his bed, beating him sorely, and in the presence of his wife firing a charge of shot into his legs. Then they went home, each man to his virtuous couch, to dream fair dreams of the coming Paradise, when they and their kind may work their own sweet will, free from the fear of a hireling constabulary, and under the ægis of a truly national senate, given to a grateful country by a Grand Old Man. The Quirkes know their assailants, but they will not tell. "What good would it do me to have men imprisoned?" says William Quirke, senior. "My lad's life might pay for it, and perhaps my own." The most influential people of the district have remonstrated with him, argued, persuaded, all in vain. William Quirke has a wish to remain in this sublunary sphere. His spirit is not anxious to take unto itself the wings of a dove, that it may fly away and be at rest. Like the dying Methodist, whose preacher reminded him of the beauties of Paradise, he likes "about here pretty well." Mr. Heard, Divisional Commissioner in charge of the constabulary organisation of the Counties of Cork, Limerick, and Kerry can get nothing out of William Quirke. County-inspector Moriarty can stir nothing, nor Major Rolleston, Resident Magistrate, nor Inspectors Wright, Pattison, and Huddy, all of whom have done their level best. These gentlemen assert that obviously Quirke knows the moonlighters, and for my own part, I am certain of it. The married son is equally dumb. "They were disguised," he says. "But you would recognise their voices." Then comes the strangest assertion, "They never spoke a word." In other words, he affirms that a number of men, not less than seven or eight, burst open his door, dragged him from bed, maltreated and shot him, to the accompaniment of his wife's terrified screaming and his own protestations, without uttering a single syllable! The bold Gladstonians whose influence removed Mr. Balfour from office and delivered the country into ruffian hands, will say: And serve the people right! If they will not bear witness let the victims suffer. You cannot help people who will not help themselves. The police are there, the magistrates are there, the prisons are there, the hangman, if need be, is there. If they will not avail themselves of the protection provided, let them suffer. Let them go at it. All their own fault. Nobody but themselves to blame. All very plausible and reasonable--in theory. Let us look a little closer into this matter. What does William Quirke say:--"Nobody can help an Irish farmer in a lonely part of Ireland. There are too many ways of getting at him. Suppose I gave such evidence as would satisfy anybody--I do not say I could--I don't know anything; but suppose I knew and told, would a Limerick jury convict? Certainly not. Everybody knows that. The police, the magistrates, will tell you that, every one of them. Nobody will say anything else. Then, why rouse more enmity? I shall give up the land even if I lose the money, the savings of a life-time, added to a loan, which I can repay in time. That is settled. What good would the land do me, once I were dead? I value my life more than my money, and more especially do I think of those belonging to me. Suppose I held on, and kept the land. Every time the lad went out I'd expect him to be brought in shot to his mother and me. And when I saw the lad's dead face, what would I think? And what would I say when his mother turned round and said, 'Ye have the land, haven't ye, William?' Our lives would not be worth twopence if I held on. Do you remember Carey, the informer? The British Empire couldn't protect him, though it shipped him across the world. How would I be among the mountains here? I could be shot going to or coming from market, my cattle houghed or mutilated, nobody would buy from me, nobody would sell to me, nobody would work on my farm. My stacks would be burnt. Look at the hay burnt in the last few weeks! You say I'd get a presentment against the county--and if I did I'd have to wait till next March for the money. Where's the capital to carry on? Suppose I wanted thirty tons of hay between this and that. That would cost £90. Where would I get the money? But that's not it. Life is dear, and life might at any moment be taken. If my stacks were burnt in July I'd have to wait a year for my money. I'd be cut off from all communication with the people, and shunned as if I'd the plague. If I went to market the people would leave the road to me, would cross over to the other side when they saw me coming. You never saw boycotting; you don't know what it means." In a lonely stretch of gorse-bordered road, steep and rough, I came upon two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, with rifles, sword-bayonets, and bâtons. We had a chat, and I examined their short Sniders while they admired the humble Winchester I carried for company, and which on one occasion had acted like a charm. They carried buckshot cartridges and ball, and had no objection to express their views. "Balfour was the man to keep the country quiet. Two resident magistrates could convict, and the blackguards knew that, if caught, it was all up with them. They are the most cowardly vermin on the face of the earth, for although if any of our men (who never go singly, but always in twos or threes) were to appear unarmed, they'd be murdered at sight. Yet although they often fire on us, they mostly do it from such distances that their bullets have no effect, so that they can run away the moment they pull the trigger. Lately things have been looking rather blue over there." One pointed to the hills dividing the county from Kerry. "The Kerry men are getting rifles. I know the 'ping' of the brutes only too well. Let them get a few men who know their weapons, and we'll be potted at five hundred yards easily enough. Yes, they have rifles now, and what for? To shoot sparrows? No. You can't guess? Give it up? Ye do? Then I'll tell you. To carry out the Home Rule Bill. Yes, I do think so. Will you tell me this? Who will in future collect rates and taxes? The tenants do not think they will have any more rent to pay. Lots of them will tell you that. These very men have the members of the Irish Parliament in their hands. That is; they can return whomsoever they choose. The representation of the country is in their hands. And the priests agree with them. No difference there, their object is one and the same, and when the priests and the farmers unite, who can compel them to pay up? Is the Irish Legislature which will be returned by these men--is it a likely body to compel payment of tribute to the hated Saxon at the point of the bayonet? When the British Government, with all the resources of Gladstonian civilisation, failed to put down boycotting, how do you suppose a sympathetic Government, returned by the farmers, consisting of farmers' sons, with a sprinkling of clever attorneys, more smart than honest, will proceed with compulsory action? Why they could do nothing if they wished, but then they will have no desire to compel. The English people are only commencing their troubles. They don't know they're born yet. Gladstone will have some explaining to do, but he can do it, he can do it. He'd explain the shot out of the Quirke family's legs. Ah! but he's a terrible curse to this country." The other officer said:--"Our duty is very discouraging. We are hindered and baffled on every side by the people, whose sympathies are always against the law. Now in England your sympathies are with the law, and the people have the sense to support it, knowing that it will support them, so long as they do the right thing. It was bad enough to have the people against us, but now things are a hundred times worse. When Balfour was in power, we felt that our labour was not in vain. We felt that there was some chance of getting a conviction--not much, perhaps, but still a chance. Now, if we catch the criminals redhanded, we know no jury will convict. We try to do our duty, but of course we can't put the same heart into it as we could if we thought our work would do any good. And another thing--we knew Balfour, so long as we were acting with integrity, would back us up. Now we never know what we're going to get--whether we shall be praised or kicked behind. This Government is not only weak but also slippery. Outrages are increasing. News of three more reached the Newcastlewest Barracks this very day. We had a man on horseback scouring the mountains for information. The outraged people sometimes keep it close. What's the good, they say. We hear of the affair from other people, and the principals, so to speak, ask us to make no fuss about it, as they don't want to be murdered. The country is getting worse every day. We'll have such a bloody winter as Ireland never saw." Another small moonlighting incident, now appearing for the first time on this or any other stage. Some tenants years ago were evicted on the Langford estates. Negotiations were proceeding for their proximate restoration, but nothing could be settled. A few days ago a small farmer named Benjamin Brosna, aged 55, agreed with the proper authorities to graze some cattle on the land in question pending the arrangement of the matter. A meeting at Haye's Cross was immediately convened by two holy men of the district, to wit, Father Keefe, P.P., and Father Brew, C.C., both of Meelin, and under the guidance of these good easy men, it was resolved that any man grazing cattle on the Langford land was as bad as the landlord, and must be treated accordingly. On the same day, April 18, or rather in the night succeeding the day of the meeting, eleven masked and armed men entered Brosna's house, and one of them, presenting a gun, said, "We have you now, you grass-grabber." Brosna seized the gun, and being hale and active, despite his 55 years, showed such vigorous fight that he fell through the doorway into the yard along with two others, where he was brutally beaten, and must have been killed--it was their clear intention--but for the pitchy darkness of the yard and the number of his assailants, who in their fury fell over each other, enabling Brosna, who being on his own ground knew the ropes better than they, in the darkness to glide under a cart and escape over an adjacent wall, where he hid himself. They lost him, and returned to the house, firing shots at whatever they could damage, and smashing everything breakable, from the windows upwards. Brosna will lose the sight of one eye, which is practically beaten out. His servants, named Larkin, have been compelled to leave by means of threatening letters. Their father has also been threatened with death unless he instantly removes them from Brosna's house. I could continue indefinitely, continuing my remarks to the occurrences of one month or so; and if I abruptly conclude it is because time presses, my return to civilisation having been effected at 3.30 this morning, after a ten miles' mountain walk, followed by three hours' ride in the blissful bowels of an empty cattle-truck. But for the good Samaritan of a luggage train I must last night have camped beneath the canopy of heaven. No scarcity of fun in Ireland--which beats the world for sparkling incident. Rathkeale (Co. Limerick), April 24th. No. 14.--LAWLESSNESS AND LAZINESS. The fruits of Gladstonian rule are ripening fast. Mr. Morley's visit to Cork _en route_ for Dublin corresponds with Inspector Moriarty's visit to the Irish capital. Mr. Moriarty is the county inspector in whose district most of the recent outrages have been perpetrated, and is therefore able to give the Irish Secretary plenty of news. His report will doubtless remain secret, as it is sensational. Mr. Morley has too much regard for the sensibilities of Mr. and Mrs. Bull, and when the Limerick inspector, entering the State confessional of Dublin Castle, advances and says, "I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine,"--when Mr. Moriarty utters the familiar and appropriate words the Irish Secretary will say with deprecatory gesture, "Enough, enough. 'Twas ever thus. This is the effect of kindness. What ho, my henchmen bold! A flagon, a mighty flagon of most ancient sack. I feel that I am about to be prostrated. Such is the fate of greatness. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. It is a great and glorious thing, To be an Irish Sec. But give to me my hollow tree, A crust of bread and liberty. The word is porpentine, not porcupine, Mr. Inspector. A common corruption. Verify your quotations. Have them (in future) attested by two resident magistrates. And now to work. All in strict confidence. Let not the world hear of these things. Let not the people know that violence and rapine walk hand-in-hand with my administration. Nameless in dark oblivion let it dwell. Let it be _sub rosâ, sub sigillâ confessionis, sub-auditer, sub_ everything. Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in Askalon, for behold, if the people heard, they would marvel, and fear greatly; and--be afraid." The officer would then produce his budget, with its horrors, its indecencies, its record of trickery, treachery, cowardly revenge, and midnight terrorism. The local press correspondents of the rural districts are nearly all Nationalists, and they either furnish garbled reports, or none at all. The reporters of Conservative papers, comparatively Conservative, I mean, are also Nationalists. The Irish themselves know not what is taking place ten miles away. How is England to learn the precise state of things? I have fished up a few recent samples of minor occurrences which will form part of Mr. Moriarty's news. These smaller outrages invariably lead up to murder if the victim resist. They are so many turns of the screw, just to let the recalcitrant feel what can be done. In the large majority of cases he gives way at the first hint. Let us relate some neighbouring experiences. David Geary, of Castlemahon, late in the evening heard an explosion at the door of his cottage. He ran out, and found a fuse burning, lying where it had been cast, while a volley of large stones whizzed past his head. There had been some litigation between a man named Callaghan and a road contractor, and Geary had allowed the road contractor's men to take their food in wet weather under his roof. On April 15, at two in the morning, a party of masked moonlighters visited the cottage of Mrs. Breens, of Raheenish, and having fired two shots through the parlour window, shattering the woodwork by way of letting the widow know they were there, fired a third through her bed-room window to expedite the lady's movements. Almost paralysed with fear, she parleyed with the besieging force, which, by its spokesman, demanded her late husband's gun, threatening to put "daylight through her" unless it were instantly given up. It was in her son's possession, and she hurried to his room. The young dog came on the scene, and instead of handing out the gun, fired two shots from a revolver into the darkness. Whereupon the band of Irish hero-patriots outside fled with electric speed, and returned no more. At Ardagh the police found a haystack burning. They saved about ten tons, but Patrick Cremmin claims £88 from the county. He had offended somebody, but he declares he knows not the motive. In other words, he wants to let the thing drop--bar the £88. Another stack of hay, partly saved by the police, was burnt because evictions had taken place: damage £20, which the county must pay. R. Plummer, a labourer with Brosna, whose case was given in my last, has received a letter threatening him with death unless he left Brosna's employ. Some say the name is Brosnan or Bresnahan. Beware of the quibbling of Irish malcontents, who on the strength of a misprint or a wrongly-spelt name, boldly state that no such person ever existed, and that therefore the case is a pure invention. Here is a specimen of the toleration Loyalists and Protestants may expect:--A special train having been run from Newcastle to Limerick to enable people to attend a Unionist meeting in the latter city, the Nationalists took steps to mark their sense of the railway company's indiscretion, and a train soon afterwards leaving Newcastle for Tralee, they hurled a great stone from the Garryduff Bridge, smashing the window of the guard's van and doing other injury. At Gurtnaclochy, to deter a witness in a legal case, a threatening letter was sent, sixty yards of a sod fence thrown down, and a coffin and gun neatly cut on the field. On the Roman Catholic Chapel wall at Ashford a notice was posted threatening with death anyone who bought hay or turnips from a boycotted man, and the same day a man named Herlihy received a threatening letter. On April 15 a party of armed, disguised men with blackened faces, called on a poor man at Inniskeen, and having smashed the windows, tried to force the door, but stopped to parley. They called on "Young Patrick" to hand out the father's gun, and the young man complied. Being twitted with this he said, "I want to live. If I had refused the gun my life would not be worth twopence. I would be 'covered' from a bush or a fence when I walked out, or shot dead in the door as I looked down the lane, as was done in another case. I know the parties well, but I would not give evidence. Neither will I give the police any more information. It would not hurt the criminals, but it would hurt me. For while the jury would not convict, the secret tribunal that sat on me would not be so merciful, and many a man would like the distinction of being singled out to execute the secret decrees of the Moonlight fraternity." Another person standing by said, "What happened at Galbally, near Tipperary? A priest denounced a Protestant named Allen from the altar, and a week after the man was shot dead in his tracks. Everybody knew perfectly well who did the deed. All knew the man who wanted Allen's land, and it was thought that there was evidence enough to hang him twenty times. He is alive and well, and if you go any Saturday to the Tipperary market Father Humphreys will introduce you to him. He was discharged without a stain on his character, and brass bands met him on his return, also a torchlight procession." In Ireland, even more than in England, brass bands are necessary to the expression of the popular emotion. Brass bands met Egan, the liberated, everywhere. Brass bands accompanied the march of O'Brien's mourners at the Cork funeral last week. Not a murderer in Ireland whose release would not be celebrated with blare of brass bands, and glare of burning grease. Mr. Morley could not land in Cork, however privately, for he did not wish to speak, without a brass band being loosed on his heels. The great philosophical Radical, the encyclopædia of political wisdom, the benefactor, the saviour, the regenerator of Ireland, left Cork to the strains of the Butter Exchange Band--_con amore_, _affetuoso_, and doubtless _con spirito_. Yet some will say that the Irish are not grateful! Mr. Morley stayed at the hotel I had just left, the Royal Victoria, which I justly described as a hot-bed of sedition. It was here, in room No. 72, that Dalton so terribly punched the long-suffering head of Tim Healy. At the Four Courts, Dublin, I saw a waiter who witnessed the famous horsewhipping in that city. I asked him if it were a severe affair, or whether, as the Nationalist papers affirmed, only a formality, a sort of Consider-yourself-flogged. How that waiter expanded and enjoyed the Pleasures of Memory! "It was a most thrimindious affair, Sorr. McDermott was a fine, powerful sthrip of a boy, an' handled the horsewhip iligant. Ye could hear the whack, whack, whack in the refreshment room wid the doors closed, twenty yards away. It was for all the world a fine, big, healthy kind of batin' that Tim got. An' the way he wriggled was the curiousest thing at all. 'Twas enough to make yer jump out of yer skin wid just burstin' with laffin'." Leaving outrages and violence to Messrs. Morley and Moriarty, let me narrate the effect of the impending Home Rule Bill on some of the commercial community. A well-known tradesman says: "A man in Newcastlewest owed me £24 for goods delivered. He had a flourishing shop and also an excellent farm. He was so slow in paying, and apparently so certain that in a little while he would escape altogether, that I sued him for the amount. It was a common action for a common debt, between one Irish tradesman and another. But I am a Unionist, and therefore fair game. I got judgment, but no instalments were paid. I remonstrated over and over again, and was from time to time met with solemn promises, the debtor gaining time by every delay. At last I lost patience, and determined to distrain. Everybody laughed at me. 'Where will you get an auctioneer, and who will bid? they asked. I determined to carry through this one case, if it cost a hundred pounds. I got a good revolver, and succeeded in bringing an auctioneer from a distance. The debtor said he would brain me with a bill-hook if I put my foot on his ground, and another man promised to shoot me from a bed-room window. It was necessary, to carry out the sale at all, to have police protection. I went to the barracks and submitted the case. Had I a sheriff's order, &c., &c., &c.? All difficulties overcome I went to the 'sale.' We seized a cow, a watch, and some of my own goods, and commenced the auction. Nobody bid but myself, and when I had covered the amount due the sale ceased, the aspect of the people being very menacing. Remember, this was not agrarian at all. The debt was for goods delivered to be sold in the way of trade. Most of them were there before my face. The debtor came and said, 'You can't take the things away. But we like your pluck, and if you will settle the matter for £5 I will give you the money.' I declined to take £5 for £24 and costs, although the police looked on the offer as unexpectedly liberal, and the bystanders shed tears of emotion and said that Gallagher was 'iver an' always the dacent boy.' When I wished to remove the things the troubles began. I had my revolver, the police their rifles, but things looked very blue. I drove the cow to the station and got her away, but the other things could not walk aboard, and how to get them there was hard to know. I asked people I knew to lend me their carts--people who were under some obligation to me, men I had known and done business with for years. They all refused; they feared the evil eye of the vigilance committee of a Fenian organisation still in full swing among us, and keeping regular books for settlement when they have the power. I was determined not to be beat, so I went to Limerick, nearly thirty miles away, to get a float or wagon. The news was there before me, not a wheel to be had in the city. At last, by means of powerful influence, I got a cart, on condition that the owner's name should be taken off, and my name painted on. Then I returned to Newcastle and bore away the goods in triumph. Alas! my troubles were only beginning! I had been told that the goods were not the debtor's, but belonged to someone else. The cow, they said, was a neighbour's, who had 'lent' it to my debtor. The watch, they said, was the property of a friend, who had handed it to my debtor that he might take it somewhere to be repaired. The landlord of the house claimed that he had previously seized everything, but had allowed things to remain out of kindness. I was cited in four actions for illegal distraint, all of which were so evidently trumped-up that they were quashed. But the time they took! And the annoyance they caused. The expense also was considerable, and the idea of getting expenses out of these people--but I need add nothing on that score. "There were six witnesses in one case, and they could never be found, so long as the judge could have patience to wait. Every lie, trick, subterfuge you can imagine, was practised on poor me. At last all was over, but at what a cost! The big chap who had threatened me with the bill-hook came humbly forward and said: "Plase yer honner's worship, I'm very deaf, an' I'm short sighted, and I'm very wake intirely, an' ye must give me toime to insinse meself into the way of it." And that rascal had everything repeated several times, until I was on fifty occasions on the point of chucking up the whole thing. "Before the Home Rule Bill had implanted dishonest ideas in his head, before the promises of unscrupulous agitators had unsettled and demoralised the people, that man was a straightforward, good, paying fellow. Only he thought that by waiting till the bill was passed he would have nothing to pay. The ignorant among us harbour that idea, and the disloyalty of the lower classes is so intense that you could not understand it unless you lived here at least two years." English friends who praise the affection of the Irish people, and who speak of the Union of Hearts, may note the lectures of the popular Miss Gonne, who is being enthusiastically welcomed in Nationalist Ireland. No doubt the local papers expurgated the text; at the present moment the word has gone round:--"Let us get the bill, let us get the bill, and then!" But enough remains to show the general tone. Addressing the Irish National Literary Society, of Loughrea, Miss Gonne said that she must "contradict Lord Wolseley in his statement that England was never insulted by invasion since the days of William the Conqueror. It would be deeply interesting to the men and women of Connaught to hear once again how a gallant body of French troops, fighting in the name of Liberty and Ireland, had conquered nearly the whole of that province at a time when England had in her service in Ireland no less than one hundred and fifty thousand trained troops. She would remind them that France was the one great military nation of Europe that had been the friend of Ireland"--a remark which was received with loud and prolonged applause. "And it would be a matter of some pride to us to reflect that in these military relations the record of the Irish brigades in the service of France compared not without advantage with the military services which France had been able to render to Ireland." This passage clearly refers to the aid the two countries have afforded each other as against England, and the whole lecture seems to have aimed at the heaping of ignominy on the British name. The stronger the denunciation of England, the more popular the speaker. The Union of Hearts gets "no show" at all. The phrase is unknown to Irish Nationalists. However deceitful they may be, it cannot yet be said that they have sunk thus low. Looking over Wednesday's _Cork Examiner_, I observe that amid other things the Reverend John O'Mahony attributes the fact that "The teeming treasures of the deep were almost left untouched," that is, off the Irish coast, and that this is "a disgrace and a dishonour to the people through whose misrule and misgovernment the unhappy result was brought about." Father O'Mahony is a Corker, and should know that he is talking nonsense. Let me explain. In Cork I met a gentleman for twenty-five years engaged in supplying fishermen with all their needs. He said, "The Irish fishermen are the laziest, most provoking beggars under the sun." He showed me two sizes of net-mesh and said, "This is the size of a shilling, this is the size of a halfpenny. The Scotsmen and Shetlanders use the shilling size. The difference seems small, but it is very important. The Irishmen use the halfpenny size, and will use no other. They say that what was good enough for their fathers is good enough for them. When the fish are netted they make a rush, and many of them escape the larger mesh, which they can get through, unless of the largest size. The small mesh catches them by the gills and hangs them. This, however, is a small matter. The most important thing is the depth of fishing. The Scotsmen and Shetlanders come up to the Irish coast, which is remarkably rich in fish, and when they meet a school of fish they fish very deep and bring them up by tons, while the Irishmen are skimming the tops of the shoals, and drawing up trumpery dozens, because their fathers did so. Years ago I used to argue the point, but I know better now. When the water is troubled, when the wind is blowing, and things are a trifle rough, then is the time to fish. The herrings cannot see the net when the water is agitated. The Scotsmen are on the job, full of spirits and go, but Paddy gets up and takes a look and goes to bed again. He waits for fine weather, so as to give the fish a chance. The poor Shetlanders come over long leagues of sea, catch ling a yard long, under Paddy's nose, take it to Shetland, cure it, and bring it back to him, that he may buy it at twopence a pound. At the mouth of the Blackwater are the finest soles in the world, but the Irish are too lazy to catch them;--great thick beggars of fish four inches thick, you never saw such soles, the Dover soles are lice to them, they'd fetch a pound apiece in London if they were known. Change the subject. Every time I come round here I get into a rage. The British Government finds these men boats. The Shetlanders sometimes land, and when they contrast the fat pastures and teeming south coast of Ireland with their own cold seas and stony hills they say with the Ulstermen, 'Would that you would change countries!'" I asked him how he accounted for this extraordinary state of things. He said:-- "As an Irishman I am bound to answer one question by asking another. Was there ever a free and prosperous country where the Roman Catholic religion was predominant?" I could not answer him at the moment, but perhaps Father O'Mahony, who knows so much, may satisfy him on the point. Or in the absence of this eloquent kisser of the Blarney Stone some other black-coated Corker may respond. Goodness knows, they are numerous enough. All are well clothed and well fed, while the flock that feed the pastor are mostly in squalid poverty, actually bending the knee to their greasy task-masters, poor ignorant victims of circumstances. Among the many nostrums offered to Ireland, nobody offers soap. The greatest inventions are often the simplest, and with all humility I make the suggestion. Ireland is badly off for soap, and cleanliness is next to godliness. Father Humphreys, of Tipperary, boasts of his influence with the poor--delights to prove how in the matter of rent they took his advice, and so on. Suppose he asks them to wash themselves! The suggestion may at first sight appear startling. All novelties are alarming at first; but the mortality, except among old people, would probably prove less than Father Humphreys might expect. He would have some difficulty in recognising his flock, but the resources of civilisation would probably be sufficient to conquer this drawback. Persons over forty might be exempted, as nothing less than skinning would meet their case, but the young might possibly be trained, against tradition and heredity, to the regular use of water. But I fear the good Father will hardly strain his authority so far. An edict to wash would mean blue ructions in Tipperary, open rebellion would ensue, and the mighty Catholic Church would totter to its fall. The threat to wash would be an untold terrorism, the use of soap an outrage which could only be atoned by blood. And Father Humphreys (if he knew the words) might truly say _Cui bono_? Why wash? Is not soap an enemy to the faith? Do not the people suit our purpose much better as they are? _Thigum thu_, brutal and heretic Saxon? Killaloe (Co. Clare), April 27th. No. 15.--THE PERIL TO ENGLISH TRADE. As the great object of public interest in the city of Limerick is the Treaty Stone, a huge block of granite, raised on a pedestal on the Clare side of Thomond Bridge, to commemorate the Violated Treaty so graphically described by Macaulay, and to keep in remembrance of the people the alleged ancient atrocities of the brutal Saxon--so the key-note of Ennis is the memorial to the Manchester Martyrs, erected outside the town to commemorate the people who erected it. That is how it strikes the average observer. For while the patriotic murderers of the Manchester policemen, to wit, O'Brien, Allen, and Larkin, have only one tablet to the three heroes, the members of the committee who were responsible for this Nationalist or rather Fenian monument have immortalised themselves on three tablets. But although party feeling runs high, and the town as a whole appears to be eminently disloyal and inimical to England, there are not wanting reasonable people who look on the proposed change with grave suspicion, even though they nominally profess to support the abstract doctrine of Home Rule. Naturally, their main opinions are very like those I have previously recorded as being prevalent in the neighbouring counties of Limerick, Cork, and Kerry. They believe the present time unseasonable, and they have no confidence in the present representatives of the Nationalist party. They believe that the Irish people are not yet sufficiently educated to be at all capable of self-government, and they fail to see what substantial advantages would accrue from any Home Rule Bill. More especially do they distrust Mr. Gladstone; and although in England the Nationalist leaders speak gratefully of the Grand Old Man, it is probable that such references would in Ireland be received in silence, if not with outspoken derision. A well-known Nationalist thus expressed himself on this point:-- "Gladstone's recent attack on Parnell was one of the meanest acts of a naturally mean and cowardly man, whose whole biography is a continuous story of surrender, abject and unconditional. Parnell was his master. With all his faults, Parnell was much the better man. He was too cool a swordsman for Gladstone, and, spite of the Grand Man's tricky dodging and shifting, Parnell beat him at every point, until he was thoroughly cowed and had to give in. What surprises me is that the English people are led away by a mere talker. They claim to be the most straightforward and practical people in the world. Answer me this:--Did you, did anybody, ever know Gladstone to give a straightforward answer to any one question? Straight dealing is not in him. He is slippery as an eel--with all his 'honesty,' his piety, his benevolence. But as he reads the Bible in Hawarden Church, the English believe in him. They have no other reason that I can see. Have you heard any Irishman speak well of Gladstone? No, and you never will. How long in the country? Five weeks only? You may stay five years, and you will not hear a word expressing sincere esteem. About separation? Well, most of the unthinking people, that is, the great majority, would vote in favour of it to-morrow. All sentiment, the very romance of sentimentality. I have been in England, I have been in America, and you could hardly believe the difference in the people's views. The Irish are not practical enough. 'Ireland a nation' is bound to be the next cry, if Home Rule become law under the present leaders of the Nationalist party." "But how about the pledges, the solemn and reiterated pledges, of Michael Davitt and the rest?" "I suppose you ask me seriously? You do? An Irishman would regard the question as a joke. The pledges are not worth a straw. Their object is to deceive, and so to carry the point at issue. Would John Bull come with an injured air and say, with tears in his voice, 'You said you'd be good. You promised to be loyal. You really did. Did you not, now?' Don't you think John would cut a pretty figure? Davitt knows where to have him. He knows that a quiet, moderate, reasonable tone fetches him. Parnell, too, knew that the method with John was a steady, quiet persistence without excitement. John listens to Davitt, and says to himself, 'Now this is a calm, steady fellow. Nothing fly-away about _him_. No shouting and screaming there. This is the kind of man who _must_ boss the show. Give him what he wants.' "Look how Morley was taken in. And so, no doubt, was many another. "If England trusts the assurances of these men, and if the bill under present conditions becomes law, we shall have two generations of experiment, of corruption, of turmoil, of jobbery such as the British Empire has never seen. "Yes, I am a Home Ruler--at the proper time. But Home Rule in our present circumstances would mean revolution, and, a hundred to one, the reconquest of Ireland. And in the event of any foreign complication you would have all your work cut out to effect your purpose." A gentleman from Mallow said, "The Gaelic clubs all over the country are in a high state of organisation, and a perfect state of drill. The splendid force of constabulary which are now for you would be against you. The Irish Legislature, from the first, would have the power to raise a force of Volunteers, and the Irish are such a military nation that in six months they could muster a very formidable force. I am a Unionist, a Protestant too, but I find that my Catholic and Home Rule friends, that is, the superior sort, the best-read, the most thinking men, agree with me perfectly. But while I can understand Irish Home Rulers, even the most extreme sort, I cannot understand any sensible Englishman entertaining such an insane idea. As manager of one of the largest concerns in Cork I have made many visits to England, and I found the supporters of Mr. Gladstone so utterly misinformed, so credulous, so blankly ignorant of the matter, that I forbore to debate the thing at all. And their assumption was on a level with their ignorance, which is saying a good deal." Mr. Thomas Manley, the great horse dealer, a famous character throughout the three kingdoms, said to me, "The Limerick horse fair of Thursday last was the worst I ever attended in forty years. There is no money in the country. The little that changed hands was for horses of a common sort, and every one, I do believe, was bought for England and Scotland, tramcar-horses and such like. Home Rule is killing the country already. I farmed a thousand acres of land in Ireland for many a long year, and since I went more fully into the horse-dealing business I kept two hundred and fifty acres going. I have horsed the six crack cavalry regiments of the British army, and I know every nook and corner of Ireland; know, perhaps, every farmer who can breed and rear a horse, and I also know their opinions. Give me the power and I would do four things. Here they are:-- "I would first settle the land question, then reform the poor-laws, then rearrange the Grand Jury laws, then commence to reclaim the land, which would pay ten per cent. "The Tories should undertake these measures. They would then knock the bottom out of the Home Rule agitation. The people are downright sick of the whole business. They expected to be well off before this. They find themselves going down the nick." Mr. Abraham P. Keeley said: "There is much fault found with the landlords, but they are by no means so much to blame as is supposed. Put the saddle on the right horse. And the right horse is the steam horse. The rapid transit of grain and general farm produce has lowered the value of land more rapidly than the landlords could lower the rent. Every year the prairie lands of America are further opened up by railways; India and Egypt and Australia are now in the swim, and Ireland, as a purely agricultural country, must suffer. A curious illustration of the purely rural condition of the country was mentioned the other day. Nearly all the great towns drink the water of the rivers upon which they stand. Cork drinks the Lee; Limerick drinks the Shannon; you can catch trout from the busiest quay in Limerick. Now, the towns of England don't drink their own rivers. You don't drink the Rea at Birmingham, I think?" I was obliged to admit that the pellucid waters of the crystal Rea were not the favourite table beverage of the citizens of Brum, but submitted that Mr. Joseph Malins, the Grand Worthy Chief Templar, and his great and influential following might possibly use this innocent means of dissipation. Mr. Thomas Manley continued: "The tenant farmer has cried himself up, and the Nationalists have cried him up as the finest, most industrious, most honest, most frugal, most self-sacrificing fellow in the world. But he isn't. Not a bit of it. The landlords and their agents have over and over again been shot for rack-renting when the rents had been forced up by secret competitions among neighbours and even relations. "Ask any living Irish farmer if I am right, and he will say, Yes, ten times yes. "The Irishman has a land-hunger such as is unknown over the water. And why? Because the land is his sole means of living. We have no enterprise, no manufactures to speak of. The Celtic nature is to hoard. The Englishman invests what the Irishman would bury in his back garden, or hang up the chimney in an old stocking. So we have no big works all over the country to employ the people. And as we are very prolific, the only remedy is emigration. Down at Queenstown the other day I saw 250 Irish emigrants leaving the country. A Nationalist friend said, 'If they'd only wait a bit till we get Home Rule, they needn't go, the crathurs.' What's to hinder it? How will they be better off? Will the land sustain more with Home Rule than without it? And when capital is driven away, as it must and will be the moment we pass the bill, instead of more factories we'll have less, and England and Scotland will be over-run with thousands of starving Irish folks whose means of living is taken away. "As an Irish farmer, and an Irish farmer's son, living on Irish farms for more than sixty years, having an intimate acquaintance with the whole of Ireland, and almost every acre of England, I deliberately say that the Irish farmer is much better off than the English, Scotch, or Welsh farmer, not only in the matter of law, but in the matter of soil. "In many parts of England the soil must be manured after every crop. Every time you take out you must put in. Not so in Ireland. Nature has been so bountiful to us that we can take three, and even six, crops off the land after a single dose of manure. Of course the farmer grumbles, and no wonder. The price of stock and general produce is so depressed that Irish farmers are pinched. But so they are in England. And yet you have no moonlighting. You don't shoot your landlords. If the land will not pay you give it up and take to something else. An Irishman goes on holding, simply refusing to pay rent. His neighbours, who are in the same fix, support him. When the landlord wishes to distrain, after waiting seven years or so, he has to get a decree. The tenants know of it as soon as he, and they set sentinels. When the police are signalled the cattle are driven away and mixed with those of other farmers--every difficulty that Irish cleverness can invent is placed in the way. Then the landlord, whether or not successful in distraining, is boycotted, and the people reckon it a virtue to shoot him down on sight. Conviction is almost, if not quite, impossible, for even if you found a willing witness--a very unlikely thing I can tell you--even then the witness knows himself marked for the same fate. If he went to America or Australia he would be traced, and someone would be found to settle him. Such things have happened over and over again, and people know the risk is great. But about rack-rents. "I have told you of Irish avariciousness in the matter of land, and have explained the reason of it. Rents have been forced up by people going behind each other's backs and offering more and more, in their eagerness to acquire the holding outbidding each other. Landlords are human; agents, if possible, still more human. They handed over the land to the highest bidder. What more natural? The farmers are not business men. They offered more than the land could pay. You know the results. But why curse and blaspheme the landlords for what was in many cases their own deliberate act?" On Friday last I had a small object-lesson in Irish affairs. Colonel O'Callaghan, of Bodyke, went to Limerick to buy cattle for grazing on his estate. The cattle were duly bought, but the gallant Colonel had to drive them through the city with his own right hand. I saw his martial form looming in the rear of a skittish column of cows, and even as the vulture scenteth the carcase afar off, even so, scenting interesting matter, did I swoop down on the unhappy Colonel, startling him severely with my sudden dash. He said, "I'm driving cows now," and, truth to tell, there was no denying it. Even as he spoke, a perverse beast of Nationalist tendencies effected a diversion to the right, plainly intending a charge down Denmark Street, _en route_ for Irish Town, and the gallant Colonel waiving ceremony and a formidable shillelagh, hastened by a flank movement to cut off this retreat, and to guide the erring creature in the right way to fresh woods and pastures new. I fired a Parthian arrow after the parting pair. "Appointment?" I shouted, but the Colonel shook his head. It was no time for gentle assignations. The cursed crew in front of him absorbed his faculties, and then he half expected to be shot from any street abutting on his path. Perhaps I may nail him yet. He has been attempting to distrain. If the Colonel refuses to speak I will interview his tenants. I have said I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil--with the readers of the _Gazette_. _Dixi._ I have spoken! There is much shooting on the Bodyke estates, and in Ennis they say that sixty policemen are stationed there to pick up the game. Nobody has been bagged as yet, but the Clare folks are still hoping. To-morrow a trusty steed will bear me to the spot. Relying on a carefully-considered, carefully-studied Nationalist appearance, an anti-landlord look, and a decided No-Rent expression in my left eye, I feel that I could ride through the most dangerous districts with perfect impunity. "Base is the slave that pays," says Ancient Pistol. That is my present motto. One touch of No Rent makes the Irish kin. The English people should be told that nearly all Irishmen, whether Unionist or otherwise, are strong Protectionists. The moment Home Rule becomes law a tremendous attempt will be made to shut out English goods. "The very first thing we do," said to me an influential Dubliner I met here, "is to double the harbour dues; you can't prevent that, I suppose? The first good result will be the choking-off of all the Scotch and Manx fishermen who infest our seas. At present they bring their fish into Dublin, whence it is sent all over Ireland, competing against Irish fishermen. Then we'll tax all manufactured goods. We will admit the raw material duty-free, but we must be permitted to know what suits us best, and we must, and will, tax flour, but not wheat. We in Ireland, forsooth, must submit to having all our flour mills closed to suit the swarming populations of Manchester and Birmingham. They must have a cheap loaf. Dear me! and so flour comes here untaxed, having given employment to people in America, while our folks are walking about idle. Go down the river Boyne, from Trim to Drogheda. What do you see? Twelve mills, with machinery worth £100,000 or more, lying idle. One of those mills once employed fifty or sixty men. Now it employs none. Tax flour, I say, and so says everybody. We must have Protection, and very stringent Protection. Irish manufacturers must be sustained against English competition. Twenty years ago Dublin was a great place for cabinet work. Now nothing is done there, or next to nothing. Everything must come from London. At the same period we did a great trade in leather. The leather trade is gone to the devil. We did a big turnover in boots and shoes. Now every pair worn in the city comes from Northampton. Ireland and Irish goods for the Irish, and burn everything English but English coals. Give us Home Rule, and all these trades will be restored to us." Thus spoke the great Home Ruler, who declined to permit his name to appear, as he said it might affect his business. His sentiments are universal, and, as I have said, his opinions are shared by the great majority of Irishmen, even though professedly Unionist. A word of comment on the patriotic sentiments of my friend. I went to Delany, of George Street, Limerick, for a suit of Blarney tweed. He had not a yard in the place. He was indicated as the leading clothier and outfitter of the city, but the Mahony Mills were not represented amongst his patterns. He had Scotch tweeds, Yorkshire tweeds, West of England tweeds, but although the Blarney tweeds are said to be the best in the world as well as the handsomest, I had to seek them elsewhere. An English friend says, "The Irish politicians are rather inconsistent. They came into this hotel one evening, six of them, red-hot from a Nationalist meeting, cursing England up hill and down dale, till I really felt quite nervous. I hadn't got a Winchester like that. (I hope it won't go off.) They agreed that to boycott English goods was the correct thing, and of course they were for burning all but English coals, when the leader of the gang said, 'Now, boys, what will you drink,' and hang me! if they didn't every one take a bottle of Bass's bitter beer! Did you ever know such inconsistency?" The quirks and quips of the Irish character would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer. Spinning along the lane to Killaloe, with Mr. Beesley, of Leeds, and Mr. Abraham Keeley, of Mallow, balanced on opposite sides of a jaunting car, we came on a semi-savage specimen of the genuine Irish sort. Semi-savage! he was seven-eighths savage, and semi-lunatic, just clever enough to mind the cows and goats which, with a donkey or two, grazed by the way-side. He might be five-and-twenty, and looked strong and lusty. His naked feet were black with the dirt of his childhood, and not only black, but shining and gleaming in the sun. His tattered trousers were completely worn away to the knee, showing his muscular legs to perfection. The rags that clothed his body were confusing and indefinite. You could not tell where one garment ended and another began, or whether there were more than one at all. Cover a pump with boiling glue, shake over it a sack of rags, and you will get an approximate effect of his costume. His tawny, matted hair and beard had never known brush, comb, or steel. It was a virgin forest. He scratched his head with the air of the old woman who said "Forty years long have this generation troubled me;" and ran after the car with outstretched hand. I threw him a penny, upon which he threw himself at full length, his tongue hanging out, a greedy sparkle in his eye. My Irish friend instantly stopped the car. "Now I'll show you something. This man is more than half an idiot, but watch him." Then he cried: "Come here, now, I'll toss you for the penny." The man came quickly forward. "Now then, put down your penny, and call. What is it? Head or harp, speak while it spins!" "Head," shouted the savage, and head it was. He picked up the second penny with glee, and said with a burst of wild laughter. "Toss more, more, more; toss ever an' always; toss agin, agin, agin." The car-driver was disgusted. "Bad luck to ye for a madman. Ye have the gamblin' blood in ye. Bedad, ye'd break Monty Carly, ye would." Then looking at the gambler's black and polished feet, he said:-- "Tell me, now, honey, is it Day an' Martin's ye use?" Ennis (Co. Clare), April 29th. No. 16.--CIVIL WAR IN COUNTY CLARE. The name of Bodyke is famous throughout all lands, but few people know anything about the place or the particulars of the great dispute. The whole district is at present in a state of complete lawlessness. The condition of matters is almost incredible, and is such as might possibly be expected in the heart of Africa, but hardly in a civilised country, especially when that country is under the benignant British rule. The law-breakers seem to have the upper hand, and to be almost, if not quite, masters of the situation. The whole estate is divided into three properties, Fort Ann, Milltown, and Bodyke, about five thousand acres in all, of which the first two comprise about one thousand five hundred acres, isolated from the Bodyke lands, which latter may amount to some three thousand five hundred acres. Either by reason of their superior honesty, or, as is sometimes suggested, on account of their inferior strategic position, the tenants of the Fort Ann and Milltown lands pay their rent. The men of Bodyke are in a state of open rebellion, and resist every process of law both by evasion and open force. The hill-tops are manned by sentries armed with rifles. Bivouac fires blaze nightly on every commanding eminence. Colonel O'Callaghan's agent is a cock-shot from every convenient mound. His rides are made musical by the 'ping' of rifle balls, and nothing but the dread of his repeating rifle, with which he is known to be handy, prevents the marksmen from coming to close quarters. Mr. Stannard MacAdam seems to bear a charmed life. He is a fine athletic young man, calm and collected, modest and unassuming, and, as he declares, no talker. He has been described as a man of deeds, not words. He said, "I am not a literary man. I have not the skill to describe incident, or to give a clear and detailed account of what has taken place. I have refused to give information to the local journalists. My business is to manage the estate, and that takes me all my time. You must get particulars elsewhere. I would rather not speak of my own affairs or those of Colonel O'Callaghan." There was nothing for it but to turn my unwilling back on this veritable gold mine. But although Mr. MacAdam could not or would not speak, others were not so reticent, and once in the neighbourhood the state of things was made plainly evident. The road from Ennis to Bodyke is dull and dreary, and abounds with painful memories. Half-an-hour out you reach the house, or what remains of it, of Francis Hynes, who was hanged for shooting a man. A little further and you reach the place where Mr. Perry was shot. A wooded spot, "convaynient" for ambush, once screened some would-be murderers who missed their mark. Then comes the house of the Misses Brown, in which on Christmas Eve shots were fired, by way of celebrating the festive season. From a clump of trees some four hundred yards from the road the police on a car were fired upon, the horse being shot dead in his tracks. The tenantry of this sweet district are keeping up their rifle practice, and competent judges say that the Bodyke men possess not less than fifty rifles, none of which can be found by the police. Said one of the constabulary, "They lack nerve to fire from shorter distances, as they think MacAdam is the better shot, and to miss him would be risky, as he is known to shoot rabbits with ball cartridge. At the same time, I remember Burke of Loughrea, who was shot, had also a fine reputation as a rifleman, but they settled him neatly enough. I saw him in the Railway Inn, Athenry, just before he was killed, with a repeating rifle slung on his back and a revolver on his hip. I saw him ride away, his servant driving while Burke kept the cocked rifle ready, the butt under his armpit, the trigger in his hand. He sat with his back to the horse, keeping a good look-out, and yet they shot both him and his servant as they galloped along. The horse and car came in without them. To carry arms is therefore not a complete security, though no doubt it is, to some extent, a deterrent. But my opinion is that when a man is ordered to be shot he will be shot. Clare swarms with secret societies, and you never know from one moment to another what resolutions they will pass. I don't know what the end of it will be, but I should think that Home Rule, by giving the murderers a fancied security, would in this district lead to wholesale bloodshed. The whole country would rise, as they do now, to meet the landlord or his agent, but they would then do murder without the smallest hesitation." His companion said--the police here are never alone--"The first thing Morley did was to rescind the Crimes Act. When we heard of that we said 'Now it's coming.' And we've got it. Every man with a head on him, and not a turnip, knew very well what would happen. The police are shot at till they take no notice of it. Sometimes we charge up the hills to the spot where the firing started, but among the rocks and ravines and hills and holes they run like rabbits, or they hand their arms to some fleet-footed chap to hide, while they stay--aye, they do, they actually stand their ground till we come, and there they are working at a hedge or digging the ground, and looking as innocent and stupid as possible. They never saw anybody, and never heard any firing--or they thought it was the Colonel shooting a hare. We hardly know what to do in doubtful cases, as we know the tenants have the support of the Government, and it is as much as our places are worth to make any mistake under present circumstances. The tenants know that too, so between them and Morley we feel between two fires." The trouble has been alive for fifteen years or so, but it was not until 1887 that Bodyke became a regularly historic place. The tenants had paid no rent for years, and wholesale evictions were tried, but without effect. The people walked in again the next day, and as the gallant Colonel had not an army division at his back he was obliged to confess himself beaten at every point. He went in for arbitration, but before giving details let us first take a bird's eye view of his position. I will endeavour to state the case as fairly as possible, premising that nothing will be given beyond what is freely admitted by both parties to the dispute. The Colonel, who is a powerfully-built, bronzed, and active man, seemingly over sixty years old, left the service just forty years ago. Four years before that his father had died, heavily in debt, leaving the estate encumbered by a mortgage, a jointure to the relict, Mrs. O'Callaghan, now deceased (the said jointure being at that time several years in arrear), a head rent of a hundred guineas a year to Colonel Patterson, with taxes, tithe rent-charges, and heaven knows what besides. In 1846 and 1847 his father had made considerable reductions in the rents of the Bodyke holdings, but the tenants had contrived to fall into arrears to the respectable tune of £6,000, or thereabouts. Such was the state of things when the heir came into his happy possessions. A Protestant clergyman said to me--"Land in Ireland is like self-righteousness. The more you have, the worse off you are." Thus was it at Bodyke. Something had to be done. To ask the tenants for the £6,000 was mere waste of breath. The young soldier had no agent. He was determined to be the people's friend. Although a Black Protestant, he was ambitious of Catholic good-will. He wanted to have the tenants blessing him. He coveted the good name which is better than rubies. He wished to make things comfortable, to be a general benefactor of his species; if a Protestant landlord and a Roman Catholic tenantry can be said to be of the same species at all, a point which, according to the Nationalist press, is at least doubtful. He called the tenants together, and agreed to accept three hundred pounds for the six thousand pounds legally due, so as to make a fresh start and encourage the people to walk in the paths of righteousness. When times began to mend, the Colonel himself a farmer, commenced to raise the rents until they reached the amount paid during his father's reign. The people stood it quietly enough until 1879, when the Colonel appointed agents. This year was one of agricultural depression. A Mr. Willis succeeded the two first agents, but during the troubles he resigned his charge. The popular opinion leans to the supposition that his administration was ineffective, that is, that he was comparatively unused to field strategy, that he lacked dash and military resource, and that he entertained a constitutional objection to being shot. The rents came under the judicial arrangement, and reductions were made. Still things would not work smoothly, and it was agreed that bad years should be further considered on rent days. This agreement led to reductions on the judicial rent of 25 to 30 per cent., besides which the Colonel, in the arbitration of 1887, had accepted £1,000 in lieu of several thousand pounds of arrears then due. After November, 1891, the tenants ceased to pay rent at all, and that is practically their present position. The Colonel, who being himself an experienced farmer is a competent judge of agricultural affairs, thinks the tenants are able to pay, and even believes that they are willing, were it not for the intimidation of half-a-score village ruffians whose threatened moonlighting exploits, when considered in conjunction with the bloody deeds which have characterised the district up to recent times, are sufficient to paralyse the whole force of the British Empire, when that force is directed by the feeble fumblers now in office. That they can pay if they will, is clearly proved by recent occurrences. Let us abandon ancient history and bring our story down to date. The number of incidents is so great, and the complications arising from local customs and prejudices are so bewildering that only after much inquiry have I been able to sort from the tangled web a few clear and understandable instances, which, however, may be taken as a fair sample of the whole. New brooms sweep clean. The new agent, Mr. MacAdam, began to negotiate. Pow-wows and palavers all ended in smoke, and as meanwhile the charges on the estate were going on merrily, and no money was coming in to meet them, writs were issued against six of the best-off farmers; writs, not decrees, the writ being a more effective instrument. One Malone was evicted. He was a married man, without encumbrances, owed several years' arrears, had mismanaged his farm, a really good bit of land, had been forgiven a lot of rent, and still he was not happy. A relative had lent him nearly £200 to carry on, but Malone was a bottomless pit. What he required was a gold mine and a man to shovel up the ore, but unhappily no such thing existed on the farm. The relative offered to take the land, believing that he could soon recoup himself the loan, but Malone held on with iron grip, refusing to listen to the voice of the charmer, charmed he never so wisely. The relative wished to take the place at the judicial rent, and offered to give Malone the house, grass for a cow, and the use of three acres of land. Malone declined to make any change, and as a last resort it was decided to evict him. On the auspicious day MacAdam arrived from Limerick, accompanied by two men from Dublin, whom he proposed to instal as caretakers in Malone's house. The Sheriff's party were late, and MacAdam, waiting at some distance, was discovered and the alarm given. Horns were blown, the chapel bell was rung, the whole country turned out in force. Anticipating seizure, the people drove away their cattle, and shortly no hoof nor horn was visible in the district. A crowd collected and, observing the caretakers, at once divined their mission, and perceived that not seizure, but eviction, was the order of the day. They rushed to Malone's house, and, with his consent and assistance, tore off the roof, smashed the windows, and demolished the doors. The place was thus rendered uninhabitable. This having been happily effected, the Sheriff's party arrived an hour or so late, in the Irish fashion. Possession was formally given to the agent, who was now free to revel in the four bare walls, and to enjoy the highly-ventilated condition of the building. The crowd became more and more threatening, and if they could have mustered pluck to run in on the loaded rifles, Sheriff, agent, and escort must have been murdered without mercy. The shouting and threatening were heard two miles away. But the tenants had taken other measures. A firing party was posted on a neighbouring hill, and as the Sheriff left the shelter of the walls a volley was poured in from a clump of trees four hundred yards away, one bullet narrowly missing a man who ducked at the flash. The riflemen were visible among the trees, and the Sheriff returned the fire. Several policemen also fired into the clump, but without effect, and their fire was briskly returned from the hill, this time just missing the head of a policeman covered by a bush, a bullet cutting off a branch close to his ear. The police then prepared to charge up the hill, when the firing party decamped. No arrests were made, although the marksmen must have been dwellers in the neighbourhood. A policeman said, "We know who they are; you can't conceal these things in a country place; but we have no legal evidence, and although we saw them at four hundred yards, who will accept our identification at such a distance? And of course no jury would convict. We have no remedy in this unfortunate country. So long as Gladstone and such folks are bidding for the people's votes so long we shall have lawlessness. But for the change of Government all would long have been settled amicably. But I heard a young priest say to the people, 'Hold on a bit till the new Government goes in.'" To return to the Malone affair, Mr. MacAdam applied to the police for resident protection not for himself, but for the caretakers, whom he now proposed to instal in a farmhouse in the occupation of one of the Colonel's servants, and from which no one had been evicted. The authorities refused protection on the very remarkable plea that the situation of the aforesaid premises was so dangerous! so that had the place been quite safe, they would have consented to protect it. MacAdam determined to carry out his plan, with or without protection. He left Limerick at midnight with an ammunition and provision train of seven cars, with two caretakers and four workmen, with materials to fortify the place. He had previously given the authorities notice that he meant to occupy Knockclare, the house in question, and before he started they sent a police-sergeant from Tulla, a twenty miles drive, to formally warn him off, for that his life would assuredly be taken, and the officer also demanded that he should be permitted to personally warn the caretakers of the risk they ran. This was granted, but the men stuck to their guns. At the eviction a man had funked, frightened out of his seven senses. The police declined all responsibility, but offered to guard the farm for a shilling per man per day. MacAdam thought this proposal without precedent, and left the police to their own devices, driving along the twenty miles of hilly road, with sorry steeds that refused the last hill, so that the loads had to be pushed and carried up by the men. This was at eight or nine in the morning, after many hours' toilsome march. The fun was not over yet. Like the penny show, it was "just a-goin' to begin." The crowd turned out and with awful threats of instant death menaced the lives of the party, who, with levelled rifles, at last gained the building. The people brought boards, and showed the caretakers their coffins in the rough. They spoke of shooting, and swore they would roast them alive that night by burning the house in which they were sheltered. A shot was fired at MacAdam. A sergeant with one man arrived from Tulla police-barracks and urged the party to leave before they were murdered. MacAdam would hold his post at all risks. Later eight armed policemen arrived, and then two carmen started to go home. A wall of stones blocked the road. They somehow got over that, and found a second wall a little further on. Here was a menacing crowd, and the police who followed the car drew their revolvers, and with great determination advanced on the mob, saving the carmen's lives, for which they were publicly praised from the Bench. But the jarveys returned, and by a circuitous route reached Limerick viâ Killaloe, thanking Heaven for their whole skins, and vowing never to so risk them again. The County Inspector who refused the party police protection explained that he did so "out of regard for the safety of his men." He said, "I had more than Mr. MacAdam and his party to consider. I must preserve the lives of the men in my charge." At present the two caretakers hold the citadel, which is also garrisoned by a force of sixteen policemen regularly relieved by day and by night, every man armed to the teeth. Now and then the foinest pisintry in the wuruld turn out to the neighbouring hills and blaze away with rifles at the doors and windows of the little barn-like structure. The marksmen want a competent instructor. Anyone who knows anything of shooting knows the high art and scientific knowledge required for long-range rifle practice. These men are willing, but they lack science. Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, has ne'er unrolled. Mr. Gladstone might bring over from the Transvaal a number of the Boers whose shooting impressed him so much to coach these humble Kelts in the mysteries of rifle shooting. Such a measure would perceptibly accelerate the passage of the Home Rule Bill. Such is the state of things in Bodyke at this moment. Colonel O'Callaghan has had no penny of rent for years--that is, nothing for himself. What has been paid by the tenants of Fort Ann and Milltown has been barely sufficient to meet the charges on the estate. The Colonel thinks that the more he concedes the more his people want. He has had many narrow escapes from shooting, and rather expects to be bagged at last. He seems to be constitutionally unconscious of fear, but the police, against his wish, watch over him. In the few instances in which Mr. MacAdam, his agent, has effected seizures, the people have immediately paid up--have simply walked into their houses, brought out the money, and planked down the rent with all expenses, the latter amounting to some 20 or 25 per cent. They _can_ pay. The Colonel, who lives by farming, having no other source of income, knows their respective positions exactly, and declines to be humbugged. The tenants believe that they will shortly have the land for nothing, and they are content to remain in a state of siege, themselves beleaguering the investing force, lodged in the centre of the position. The fields are desolate, tillage is suspended, and the whole of the cattle are driven out of sight. Armed men watch each other by night and by day, and bloodshed may take place at any moment. The farming operations of the whole region are disorganised and out of joint. Six men have been arrested for threats and violence, but all were discharged--the jury would not convict, although the judge said the evidence for the defence was of itself sufficient to convict the gang. A ruffian sprang on MacAdam with an open knife, swearing he would disembowel him. After a terrible struggle the man was disarmed and secured, brought up before the beak, and the offence proved to the hilt. This gentleman was dismissed without a stain on his character. MacAdam asked that he should at least be bound over to keep the peace. This small boon was refused. Comment is needless. How long are the English people going to stand this Morley-Gladstone management? I have not yet been able to interview Colonel O'Callaghan himself, but my information, backed by my own observation, may be relied on as accurate. The carman who drove me hither said "The Bodyke boys are dacent fellows, but they must have their sport. Tis their nature to be shootin' folks, an' ye can't find fault with a snipe for havin' a long bill. An' they murther ye in sich a tinder-hearted way that no raisonable landlord could have any objection to it." I have the honour of again remarking that Ireland is a wonderful country. Bodyke (Co. Clare), May 2nd. No. 17.--RENT AT THE ROOT OF NATIONALISM. The tenants of the Bodyke property stigmatise Colonel O'Callaghan as the worst landlord in the world, and declare themselves totally unable to pay the rent demanded, and even in some cases say that they cannot pay any rent at all, a statement which is effectually contradicted by the fact that most of them pay up when fairly out-generalled by the dashing strategy of Mr. Stannard MacAdam, whose experience as a racing bicyclist seems to have stood him in good stead. The country about Bodyke has an unfertile look, a stony, boggy, barren appearance. Here and there are patches of tolerable land, but the district cannot fairly be called a garden of Eden. Being desirous of hearing both sides of the question, I have conversed with several of the complaining farmers, most of whom have very small holdings, if their size be reckoned by the rent demanded. The farmers' homes are not luxurious, but the rural standard of luxury is in Ireland everywhere far below that of the English cottar, who would hold up his hands in dismay if required to accommodate himself to such surroundings. Briefly stated, the case of the tenants is based on an alleged agreement on the part of Colonel O'Callaghan to make a reduction of twenty-five per cent. on judicial rents and thirty-seven and a half per cent. on non-judicial rents, whenever the farming season proved unfavourable. This was duly carried out until 1891, when the question arose as to whether that was or was not a bad year. The tenants say that 1891 was abnormally bad for them, but that on attending to pay their rent, believing that the reductions which had formerly been made, and which they had come to regard as invariable, would again take place, they were told that the customary rebate would now cease and determine, and that therefore they were expected to pay their rents in full. This they profess to regard as a flagrant breach of faith, and they at once decided to pay no rent at all. The position became a deadlock, and such it still remains. They affect to believe that the last agent, Mr. Willis, resigned his post out of sheer sympathy, and not because he feared sudden translation to a brighter sphere. They complain that the Colonel's stables are too handsome, and that they themselves live in cabins less luxurious than the lodgings of the landlord's horses. There is no epithet too strong to express their indignation against the devoted Colonel, who was described by one imaginative peasant, who had worked himself up to a sort of descriptive convulsion, as a "Rawhacious Vagabone," a fine instance of extemporaneous word-coining of the ideo-phonetic school, which will doubtless be greedily accepted by Nationalist Parliamentarians who, long ago, exhausted their vocabulary of expletives in dealing with Mr. Gladstone and each other. The Bodykers have one leading idea, to "wait yet awhile." Home Rule will banish the landlords, and give the people the land for nothing at all. The peasantry are mostly fine-grown men, well-built and well-nourished, bearing no external trace of the hardships they claim to have endured. They are civil and obliging, and thoroughly inured to the interviewer. They have a peculiar accent, of a sing-song character, which now and then threatens to break down the stranger's gravity. That the present state of things is intolerable, and cannot last much longer, they freely admit, but they claim to have the tacit sympathy of the present Government, and gleefully relate with what unwillingness police protection was granted to the agent and his men. They disclaim any intention of shooting or otherwise murdering the landlord or his officers, and assert that the fact that they still live is sufficient evidence in this direction. Said one white-headed man of gentle, deferential manner:-- "The days o' landlord shootin' is gone by. If the Boys wanted to shoot the Colonel what's to hinder them? Would his double-barrel protect him, or the four dogs he has about him, that he sends sniffin' an' growlin' about the threes an' ditches. If the word wint out he wouldn't live a day, nor his agint nayther. An' his durty emergency men, that's posted like spies at the house beyant, could be potted any time they showed their noses. An' couldn't we starve thim out? Couldn't we cut off their provisions? Why would we commit murther whin we have only to wait till things turn round, which wid the help of God will be afore long. We're harassed an' throubled, always pullin' the divil by the tail, but that won't last for ever. We'll have our own men, that ondershtands Oireland, to put us right, an' then O'Callaghan an' all his durty thribe'll be fired out of the counthry before ye can say black's the white o' my eye; an' black curses go wid thim." The caretakers are not accessible. Stringent orders forbid the giving of information to any person whatever. This is unfortunate, as a look at their diaries would prove amusing. They must feel like rabbits living in a burrow bored in a sporting district, or the man in the iron mask, or the late respected Damocles, or the gentleman who saw the handwriting on the wall. Their sleep must be troubled. They must have ugly dreams of treasons, stratagems, and spoils, and when they wake, swearing a prayer or two, they doubtless see through the gloom, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN (I quote from memory), in lurid letters on the ceiling of their stronghold. Their waking visions and their daily talk must be of guns and pikes, of graves and coffins, shrouds and skeletons. Perhaps they, like Mr. MacAdam and some others, have received missives sprinkled with blood, and ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, those famous national emblems which the Irish tenant sketches with a rude, untutored art; bold, freehand drawings, done in gore by hereditary instinct. It may be that they see the newspapers, that they learn how the other day the house of a caretaker at Tipperary was, by incendiaries, burned to the ground, the poor fellow at the time suffering from lockjaw, taking his food with difficulty, owing to his having some time previously been shot through the face. Or they may read of the shooting case at Castleisland, and how Mr. Magilicuddy suggests that such cases be made public, that the people may know something of the present lawlessness of the country, or of the narrow squeak of Mr. Walshe, a schoolmaster, living just outside Ennis, who barely escaped with his life from two bullets, fired at him, because his wife had been appointed mistress of the girls; or the sad affair of Mr. Blood of the same district, who being an admittedly kind and amiable man, is compelled to be always under the escort of four armed policemen for that he did discharge a herdman without first asking permission from the local patriots. Or they may meditate on the fate of the old man near Clonmel, who was so beaten that he has since died, his daughter, who might have aided him, having first been fastened in her room. These and a hundred similar instances of outrage and attempted murder have crept into print during the last few days. Red ruin and the breaking-up of laws herald the Home Rule Bill. And if the premonitory symptoms be thus severe, how shall we doctor the disease itself? The other day I stumbled on Mr. Lynn, of Dublin, whom I first met at the Queen's Hotel, Portadown, County Armagh. He said, "We ought to know what the Home Rule Bill will do. We know the materials of which the dish is composed, we have seen their preparation and mixing, we now have the process of cooking before us, and when we get it it will give us indigestion." The Bodykers have a new grievance, one of most recent date. They had found a delightful means of evasion, which for a time worked well, but the bottom has been knocked out of it, and their legal knowledge has proved of no avail. To pay rent whenever a seizure was effected was voted a bore, a calamitous abandonment of principle, and a loss of money which might be better applied. So that when MacAdam made his latest seizures, say on the land of Brown and Jones, these out-manoeuvred tenants brought forward friends named Smith and Robinson who deeply swore and filed affidavits to the effect that the cattle so seized belonged to them, Smith and Robinson to wit, and not to the afore-mentioned Brown and Jones, on whose land they were found. Here was a pretty kettle of fish. Colonel O'Callaghan, or his agent, were processed for illegal distraint, and the evidence being dead against the landlord, that fell tyrant had on several occasions to disgorge his prey, whereat there was great rejoicing in Bodyke. The new agent, however, is a tough customer, and in his quality of Clerk of Petty Sessions dabbles in legal lore. He found an Act which provides that, after due formalities, distraint may be made on any cattle found on the land in respect of which rent is due, no matter to whom the said cattle may belong. The tenants are said to have been arranging an amicable interchange of grazing land, the cows of Smith feeding on the land of Brown, and _vice versâ_, so that the affidavit agreement might have some colour of decency. The ancient Act discovered by the ardent MacAdam has rendered null and void this proposed fraternal reciprocity, and the order to conceal every hoof and horn pending discovery of the right answer to this last atrocity has been punctually obeyed, the local papers slanging landlord and agent, but seemingly unable to find the proper countermine. No end of details and of incident might be given, but no substantial increase could be made to the information, given in this and my preceding letter. The tenants say that the landlord perversely refuses the reductions allowed in better times, and the landlord says that as a practical farmer he believes that those upon whom he has distrained or attempted to distrain are able to pay in full. He declares that he has not proceeded against those who from any cause are unable to meet their obligations, but only against the well-to-do men, who, having the money in hand, are deliberately withholding his just and reasonable due, taking advantage of the disturbed state of the country and the weakness of the Government to benefit themselves, regardless of the suffering their selfishness entails on innocent people. In striking contrast to the turbulence of the Bodyke men is the peaceful calm of the Castleconnel people. I have had several pleasant interviews with Lady de Burgho, whose territory embraces some sixty thousand acres, and who, during a widowed life of twenty-two years, has borne the stress and strain of Irish estate administration, with its eternal and wearisome chopping and changing of law, its labyrinthine complications, its killing responsibilities. Lady de Burgho is, after all, very far from dead, exhibiting in fact a marvellous vitality, and discoursing of the ins and outs of the various harassing Land Acts, and the astute diplomacy needful to save something from the wreck, with a light, airy vivacity, and a rich native humour irresistibly charming. The recital of her troubles, losses, and burdens, the dodgery and trickery of legal luminaries, and the total extinction of rent profits is delivered with an easy grace, and with the colour and effervescence of sparkling Burgundy. To be deprived of nine-tenths of your income seems remarkably good fun; to be ruined, an enviable kind of thing. Lady de Burgho commenced her reign with one fixed principle, from which nothing has ever induced her to deviate. Under no conceivable circumstances would she allow eviction. No agent could induce her to sign a writ. "I could not sleep if I had turned out an Irish family," says Lady de Burgho, adding, with great sagacity, "and besides eviction never does any good." So that this amiable lady has the affections of her people, if she handles not their cash. And who shall estimate the heart's pure feelings? Saith not the wisest of men that a good report maketh the bones fat? Is not the goodwill of the foinest pisintry in the wuruld more to be desired than much fine gold? Is it not sweeter also than honey or the honeycomb? Certain mortgagees who wished to appropriate certain lands offered liberal terms to Lady de Burgho on condition that she would for three years absent herself from Ireland, holding no communication with her tenants during that period. Lady de Burgho objected. She said, "If I accepted your terms my people on my return would believe, and they would be justified in believing, that I had been for three years incarcerated in a lunatic asylum." Tableau! Three American gentlemen visiting Castleconnel told Lady de Burgho that the success of the present agitation in favour of Home Rule would be the first step towards making Ireland an American dependency, a pronouncement which is not without substantial foundation. The feeling of the masses is towards America, and away from England. To the New World, where are more Irish than in Ireland (so they say) the poorer classes look with steadfast eye. To them America is the chief end of man, the earthly Paradise, the promised land, the El Dorado, a heaven upon earth. Every able-bodied man is saving up to pay his passage, every good-looking girl is anxious to give herself a better chance in the States. Nearly all have relatives to give them a start, and glowing letters from fortunate emigrants are the theme of every village. The effect of these epistles is obvious enough. Home Rule, say the Nationalists, will stop emigration. That this is with them a matter of hope, or pious belief, is made clear by their conversation. They give no good reason for their faith. They are cornered with consummate ease. The plausibilities gorged by Gladstonian gulls do not go down in Ireland. They are not offered to Irishmen. "Made in Ireland for English gabies" should be branded upon them. The most convincing arguments against the bill are those adduced by Home Rulers in its favour. Here is a faithful statement of reasons for Home Rule, as given by Alderman Downing, of Limerick, and another gentleman then present whose name I know not:-- "When you allow the Irish Legislature to frame its own laws, disorder and outrage will be put down with an iron hand. We have no law at present. Put an Irish Parliament in Dublin, and we would arrange to hang up moonlighters to the nearest tree. Everybody would support the law if imposed from Dublin. They resent it as imposed by Englishmen in London." "I am not in favour of handing over the government of Ireland to the present leaders of the Irish party. I believe that, once granted Home Rule, they would disappear into private life, and that we should replace them by better men. What reason for believing this? Oh, I think the people would begin to feel their responsibility. Do I think the idea of 'responsibility' is their leading idea? Perhaps not at this moment, but they will improve. You think that the people may be fairly expected to return the same class of men? Perhaps so. I hope not. I should think they would see the necessity of sending men of position and property. Why don't they send them now? Simply because they won't come forward; that class of men do not believe in Home Rule." I humbly submitted that this would prevent their coming forward in future, and that if Home Rule were admittedly bad under the present leaders, there was really no case to go to a jury, as there was no evidence before the court to show that the leaders would be dropped. On the contrary, there was every probability that the victorious promoters of the bill would be returned by acclamation. Further, that if Home Rule be gladly accepted as a pearl of great price, to drop the gainers thereof, to dismiss the men who had borne the burden and heat of the day, would be an act of shabbiness unworthy the proverbial gratitude and generosity of the Irish people. Alderman Downing would only exclude them from Parliamentary place, and would not exclude all even then. The bulk of them might be found some sort of situation where decent salaries would atone for the dropping. Would that be jobbery? "Ah, you ask too many questions." Let it be noted that although the greater part of the Irish Nationalist members are everywhere rejected beforehand by superior Home Rulers, as unfit for an Irish Parliament, they are apparently for that very reason sent to the House of Commons as the best sort to tease the brutal Saxon. The bulldog is not the noblest, nor the handsomest, nor the swiftest, nor the most faithful, nor the most sagacious, nor the most pleasant companion of the canine world, but he is a good 'un to hang on the nose of the bull. The Great Unknown said: "You must admit that English Rule has not been a success. Home Rule is admittedly an experiment--well, yes, I will accept the word risk--Home Rule is admittedly, to some extent, a risk, but let us try it. And if the worst comes to the worst we can go back again to the old arrangement." The speaker was a kindly gentleman of sixty or sixty-five years, and, like Alderman Downing, spoke in a reasonable, moderate tone. Doubtless both are excellent citizens, men of considerable position and influence, certainly very pleasant companions, and, to all appearance, well-read, well-informed men. And yet, in the presence of Unionist Irishmen, the above-mentioned arguments were all they ventured to offer. Arguments, quotha? Is the hope that the ignorant peasantry of Ireland will return "the better class of men," who "do not believe in Home Rule" an argument? Is the as-you-were assertion an argument? What would the Irish say if Mr. Bull suggested this movement of retrogression? We should have Father Hayes, the friend of Father Humphreys, again calling for "dynamite, for the lightnings of heaven and the fires of hell, to pulverise every British cur into top-dressing for the soil." We should have Father Humphreys himself writing ill-spelt letters to the press, and denouncing all liars as poachers on his own preserves. We should have Dillon and O'Brien and their crew again leading their ignorant countrymen to the treadmill, while the true culprits stalked the streets wearing lemon-coloured kid gloves purchased with the hard-earned and slowly-accumulated cents of Irish-American slaveys. The Protestants would be denounced as the blackest, cruellest, most callous slave-drivers on God's earth. And this reminds me of something. Doctor O'Shaughnessy, of Limerick, is the most wonderful man in Ireland. His diploma was duly secured in 1826, and Daniel O'Connell was his most intimate friend, and also his patient. The Doctor lived long in London, and was a regular attendant at the House of Commons up to 1832. Twice he fought Limerick for his son, and twice he won easily. The city is now represented by Mr. O'Keefe, and Mr. O'Shaughnessy is a Commissioner of the Board of Works in Dublin. The Doctor has conferred with Earl Spencer on grave and weighty matters, and doubtless his opinion on Irish questions is of greatest value. His pupil and his fellow-student, Dr. Kidd and Dr. Quain (I forget which is which), met at the bedside of Lord Beaconsfield, and medical men admit the doctor's professional eminence. His eighty-four years sit lightly upon him. He looks no more than fifty at most, is straight as a reed, active as a hare, runs upstairs like a boy of fourteen, has the clear blue eye and fresh rosy skin of a young man. He would give the Grand Old Man fifty in a hundred and beat him out of his boots. He might be Mr. Gladstone's son, if he were only fond of jam. The Doctor said several hundred good things which I would like to print, but as our many conferences were unofficial this would be hardly fair. However, I feel sure Doctor O'Shaughnessy will forgive my repeating one statement of his--premising that the Doctor is a devout Catholic, and that he knows all about land. "The Protestants are not the worst landlords. The hardest men, the most unyielding men the tenants have to meet are the Roman Catholic landlords, the new men." Here is some food for thought. These few words, properly considered, cover much ground. The Doctor is a Home Ruler, an ardent lover of his country, one of the best of the many high-minded men I have met in Ireland. Were such as he in the forefront of the battle, John Bull might hand the Irish a blank cheque. The consciousness of trust is of all things most binding on men of integrity. But for Mr. Gladstone to hand the honour of England to Horsewhipped Healy and Breeches O'Brien, showing his confidence in them by permitting it to be taken round the corner--that is a different thing. I forgot to mention a remarkable feature in the history of Limerick City, a parallel of which is found in the apocryphal castle in England for which the unique distinction is claimed that Queen Elizabeth never slept there. And so far as I can learn, Tim Healy has not yet been horsewhipped in Limerick. Bodyke (Co. Clare), May 2nd. No. 18.--HARD FACTS FOR ENGLISH READERS. Cort is a quiet wayside country town about forty miles from Limerick, a little oasis of trees and flowers, with a clear winding trout-stream running all about it. The streets are wide, the houses well-built, the pavements kerbed and in good condition. Trees are bigger and more numerous than usual, and the place has a generally bowery appearance such as is uncommon in Ireland, which is not famous for its timber. Trees are in many parts the grand desideratum, the one thing needful to perfect the beauty of the scenery, but Ireland as compared with England, France, Holland, Belgium, or Germany may almost be called a treeless country. Strange to say, the Home Rule Bill, which affects everything, threatens to deprive the country of its few remaining trees. A Scotsman resident thirteen years in Ireland said to me:-- "The timber you see lying there is not American, but Irish. The people who have timber are in many cases cutting it down, because they foresee a state of general insecurity and depression, and they need all the cash they can command. But there is another reason for the deforesting of the country, which is--that if Home Rule becomes law, the landowners are disposed to believe that no allowance will be made for the timber which may be on the land when the land is sold to the tenant under some unknown Act to be passed at some future day." This fits into the point raised by a tenant farmer living just outside the town, an extraordinary character said to rise at seven o'clock in the morning. He said:-- "They say the farmer is to get the land--but what then? Somebody must own the land, and whoever has it will be reckoned a bloody tyrant. Won't the owner be a landlord? No, say they, no more landlords at all, at all. But isn't that nonsense, says I? If ye split up the land into patches as big as yer hand and give every man a patch, wouldn't some men have twenty or a hundred, or maybe a thousand patches in five years? An' thin, thim that was lazy an' wasteful an' got out o' their land would be for shootin' the savin', sthrivin' man that worked his way up by buying out the drones. For wouldn't he be a landlord the moment he stopped workin' all the land himself. An' that would be sure to happen at wanst. Lord Gough is landlord here, an' ye'll not better him in Ireland. Look at the town there--all built of stone an' paved, wid a fine public well in the square, an' a weigh-house, an' the groves of lilac an' laburnums all out in flower an' dippin' in the wather; where ye may catch mighty fine trout out iv yer bedroom window, bedad ye may, or out of yer kitchin, an' draw them out iv the wather an' dhrop thim in' the fryin' pan off the hook with the bait in their mouths, an' their tails waggin', finishing their brakefasts thimselves while they get yours ready! Throth ye can. None iv us that has any sinse belaves in Home Rule. 'Tis only the ignorant that'll belave anything. No, we're quiet hereabouts, never shot anybody, an' not likely to. Yes, the Protestant Church is iligant enough, but there's very few Protestants hereabouts. It's the gentry an' most respectable folks that's Protestants. Protestants gets on because they kape their shops cleaner, an' has more taste, an' we'd sooner belave thim an' thrust thim that they'd kape their word an' not chate ye, than our own people. Yes, 'tis indeed quare, but it's thrue. The very priests won't deny it. An' another thing they wouldn't deny. The murtherin', sweatin' landlords that'll grind the very soul out of ye--who are they? Tell me now. Just the small men that have got up out of the muck. 'Tisn't the gintry at all. The gintry will wait a year, three years, five years, seven years for rint. The man that bought his farm or two wid borrowed money won't wait a day. 'Out ye go, an' bloody end to ye,' says he. Ye don't hear of thim evictions. The man that sint it to the paper would get bate--or worse. "An' some of the little houldhers says, 'Pat,' says they, 'what'll we do wid the money whin we've no taxes to pay?' 'Tis what they're tould, the crathurs. God help them, but they're mighty ignorant." Those who ridicule the assertions of Protestants and Catholic Unionists with reference to the lack of liberty may explain away what was told me by Mr. J.B. Barrington, brother of Sir Charles Barrington, a name of might in Mid-Ireland. He said, "Someone in our neighbourhood went about getting signatures to a petition against the Home Rule Bill. Among others who signed it was Captain Croker's carpenter, who since then has been waylaid and severely beaten. Another case occurring in the same district was even harder. A poor fellow has undergone a very severe thrashing with sticks for having signed the bill when, as a matter of fact, he had refused to sign it! Wasn't that hard lines? Both these men know their assailants, but they will not tell. They think it better to bear those ills they have than fly to others that they know not of. They are quite right, for, as it is, they know the end of the matter. Punish the beaters, and the relations of the convicted men would take up the cause, and if they could not come on the principal, if he had removed, or was awkward to get at, they would pass it on to his relations. So that a man's rebelling against the village ruffians may involve his dearest friends in trouble, may subject them to ill-usage or boycotting. A man might fight it out if he only had himself to consider; but you see where the shoe pinches." A decent man in Ennis thus expressed himself anent the Bodyke affair. (My friend is a Catholic Nationalist.) "The Bodyke men are not all out so badly off as they seem. But their acts are bad, for they can pay, and they will not. No, I do not call the Colonel a bad landlord. We know all about it in Ennis; everybody agrees, too. The farmers meet in this town and elsewhere. Two or three of the best talkers lead the meeting, and everything is done _their_ way. The more decent, sensible men are not always the best talkers. Look at Gladstone, have ye anybody to come up to him? An' look at his character--one way to-day an' another way to-morrow, an' the divil himself wouldn't say what the day afther that. But often the most decent, sensible men among these farmers can't express themselves, an they get put down. An' all are bound by the resolutions passed. None must pay rent till they get leave from all. What would happen a man who would pay rent on the Bodyke estate? He might order his coffin an' the crape for his berryin, an' dig his own grave to save his widow the expense. Perhaps ye have Gladstonian life-assurance offices in England? What praymium would they want for the life of a Bodyke man that paid his rint to the Colonel?" The "praymium" would doubtless be "steep." Boycotting is hard to bear, as testified by Mr. Dawson, a certain Clerk of Petty Sessions. He said:--"The Darcy family took a small farm from which a man had been evicted after having paid no rent for seven years. The land lay waste for five years, absolutely derelict, before the Darcys took it in hand. They were boycotted. Their own relations dare not speak to them lest they, too, should be included in the curse. A member of the Darcy family died. "Then came severe inconveniences. Friends had secretly conveyed provisions to the Darcys, and, at considerable risk to themselves, had afforded some slight countenance and assistance. But a dead body, that was a terrible affair. No coffin could be had in the whole district, and someone went thirty miles and got one at the county town by means of artful stratagem. Then came the funeral. It was to take place at twelve one day, but we found there would be a demonstration, and nobody knew what might happen. The corpse, that of a woman, might have been dragged from the coffin and thrown naked on the street. In the dead of night a young fellow went round the friends, and we buried the poor lady at four in the morning." The laziness of the Irish people was here exploited with advantage. A great French chief of police, who had made elaborate dispositions to meet a popular uprising, once said, "Send the police home and the military to their barracks. There will be no Revolution this evening on account of the rain." A very slight shower keeps an Irishman from work, and you need not rise very early to get over him. A police officer at Gort said to me, "The people are quiet hereabouts, but I couldn't make you understand their ignorance. They do just what the priest tells them in every mortal thing. They believe that unless they obey they will go to Hell and endure endless torture for ever. They believe that unless they vote as they are told they will be damned to all eternity. But oh! if you could see their laziness. They lie abed half the day, and spend most of the rest in minding other people's business. Before you had been in the town half-an-hour every soul in the place was discussing you. They thought you had a very suspicious appearance, like an agent or a detective or something. Laziness and ignorance, laziness and ignorance, that's what's the matter with Ireland." The farmers of this truly rural district distinctly state that they do not want Home Rule. They only want the land, and nearly all are furnished with Tim Healy's statement that "The farmer who bought his own land to-day would, when a Home Rule Parliament was won, be very sorry that he was in such a hurry." Just as the men of Bodyke are getting the rifles for which Mr. Davitt wished in order to chastise the Royal Irish Constabulary, by way of showing these "ruffians, the armed mercenaries of England, that the people of Ireland had not lost the spirit of their ancestors." Well may a timid Protestant of Gort say, "These men are deceiving England. They only want to get power, and then they will come out in their true colours. All is quiet here now, but the strength of the undercurrent is something tremendous. The English Home Rulers may pooh-pooh our fears, but they know nothing about it. And, besides, _they_ are quite safe. That makes all the difference. The change will not drive them from all they hold dear. I do not agree with the nonsense about cutting our throats in our beds. That speech is an English invention to cast ridicule on us. But we shall have to clear out of this. Life will be unendurable with an Irish Parliament returned by priests. For it _will_ be returned by priests. Surely the Gladstonian English admit that? To speak of loyalty to England in connection with an Irish Parliament is too absurd. Did not the Clan-na-Gael circular say that while its objects lay far beyond anything that might openly be named, the National Parliament must be first attained by whatever means? Then it went on to say that Ireland would be able to command the working plant of an armed revolution. Do you not know that the Irish Army of Independence is already being organised? What do you suppose the men who join it think it means? Did not Arthur O'Connor say that when England was involved in war, that would be the time? Did he not say that 100,000 men were already prepared, and that at three days' notice Ireland could possess double that number, all willing to fight England for love, and without any pay? If the English Home Rulers lived in Galway they would remember these things as I do. _You think the Bill can never become law. If you could assure me of that, I would be a happy man this night._ I would go to my pillow more contented than I have been for years. _I and my family would go on our knees and thank God from our hearts._" Mr. Wakely, of Mount Shannon Daly, said:--"I live in one of the wildest parts of Galway, but all went on well with us until this Home Rule Bill upset the country. Now I am completely unsettled. Whether to plant the land or let it lie waste, I cannot tell. I might not be able to reap the harvest. Whether to buy stock to raise and fatten, or whether to keep what cash we have with a view to a sudden pack-up and exit, we do not know. And I think we are not the only timid folks, for the other day I took a horse twenty-four miles to a fair where I made sure of selling him easily. I had to take him back the twenty-four miles, having wasted my trouble and best part of two days. The franchise is too low, that is what ruined the country." Another desponding Galwegian found fault with the Liberal party of 1884. He said, "They were actuated by so much philanthropy. Their motto was "Trust the people." We know what was their object well enough, They let in the flood of Irish democracy. The Radicals got forty, but the Nationalists gained sixty, and then part of the Radicals--the steady, sensible party among them--ran out a breakwater to prevent both countries being swamped. A break-water is a good thing, but there was no necessity for the flood. They cannot altogether repair the damage they have done. Look at the Irish members of twenty years ago, and look at them now. Formerly they were gentlemen. What are they to-day? A pack of blackguards. Their own supporters shrink from entrusting them with the smallest shred of power. Mr. Gladstone must be as mad as a March hare. The idea of a Dublin Parliament engineered by men whom their own supporters look upon as rowdies would be amusing but for the seriousness of the consequences. Have you been in Ennis? Did you see the great memorial to the Manchester murderers--'Martyrs' they call them? Their lives were taken away for love of their country, and their last breath was God save Ireland! That's the inscription, and what does it mean? Loyalty to England? Would such a thing be permitted on the Continent? Why, any sensible Government would stamp out such an innuendo as open rebellion. It teaches the children hatred of England, and they are fed with lies from their very cradle. Every misfortune--the dirt, the rags, the poverty of the country, are all to be attributed to English rule. Take away that and the people believe they will live in laziness combined with luxury." The lying of the Home Rulers is indeed unscrupulous. An Irish newspaper of to-day's date, speaking of the opening of the Chicago Exposition, says that "it is fitting to remember that our countrymen have in the United States found an asylum and an opportunity which they have never found at home, that there they have been allowed untrammelled to worship God as they thought right," clearly implying that in Ireland or in England they have no such liberty. A car driver of Limerick, one Hynes, a total abstainer, and a person of some intelligence, firmly believed that England prevented Ireland from mining for coal, which disability, with the resulting poverty, would disappear with the granting of Home Rule. Everywhere this patent obliqueness and absurd unreason. A fiery Nationalist in white heat of debate shook his fist at an Ulsterman, and said, "When we get the bill, you'll not be allowed to have all the manufactories to yourselves," an extraordinary outburst which requires no comment. This burning patriot looked around and said, with the air of a man who is posing his adversary, "Why should they have all the big works in one corner of the island?" In opposition to the melancholy carman was the dictum of Mr. Gallagher, the great high-priest of Kennedy's tobaccos. He said-- "The poverty of Ireland is due to the fact that she has no coal. Geologists say that tens of thousands of years ago a great ice-drift carried away all the coal-depositing strata." "Another injustice to Ireland," interrupted a sacrilegious Unionist. "And doubtless due to the baleful machinations of the Base and Bloody Balfour," said another. It is easy to bear other people's troubles. He jests at scars who never felt a wound. That the Irish nation has untold wrongs to bear is evidenced by a Southern Irish paper, which excitedly narrates the injuries heaped on the holy head of Hibernia by the scoffing Yankee, the wrongful possessor of the American soil. A meeting of distinguished Irish emigrants, who have from time to time favoured the States with their notice, was recently convened in New York, not on this exceptional occasion to metaphorically devour the succulent Saxon, nor to send his enemies a dollar for bread, and ten dollars for lead, nor yet to urge the Gotham nurses and scullerymaids to further contributions in favour of patriot Parliamentarians, but to protest with all the fervour of the conveners' souls, with all the eloquence of their powerful intellects, with all the solemnity of a sacred deed, against the irreverent naming of the animals in the Central Park Zoological Gardens after Irish ladies, Irish gentlemen, Irish saints. Misther Daniel O'Shea, of County Kerry, stated that the great hippotamus had actually been named Miss Murphy! A hijeous baste from a dissolute counthry inhabited wid black nagurs, to be named after an Oirish gyurl! Mr. O'Shea uncorked the vials of his wrath, and poured out his anger with a bubble, the meeting palpitating with hair-raising horror. Some other animal was called Miss Bridget. And Bridget was the name iv an Oirish saint! This must be shtopped. Mr. O'Shea declared he would rather die than allow it to continue. No further particulars are given, but it is understood that the viper had been christened "Tim Healy," the rattlesnake "O'Brien," the laughing hyæna John Dillon, and so on. The Chairman wanted to know why the Yankees did not call the ugly brutes after Lord Salisbury and Colonel Saunderson? Nobody seemed to know, so eight remonstrants were appointed a committee of inquiry. Mr. O'Shea also denounced the American people as unlawfully holding a country which properly belonged to the Irish, an Irish saint, St. Brengan, having discovered the New World in the _sixteenth_ century! Enough of Ireland's wrongs; there is no end to them. As one of her poets sings, "The cup of her bitterness long has overflowed, And still it is not full." The great bulk of the intelligent people of Ireland regard Home Rule with dread, and this feeling grows ever deeper and stronger. The country is at present exploited by adventurers, paid by the enemies of England, themselves animated by racial and religious prejudices, willing to serve their paymasters and deserve their pay rather by damaging England than by benefiting Ireland, for whose interests they care not one straw. Ignorance manipulated by charlatanism and bigotry is, in these latter days, the determining factor in the destinies of the British Empire. Intelligence is dominated by terrorism, by threats of death, of ill-usage, of boycotting--the latter I am told an outcome of an old engine of the Roman Catholic Church, improved and brought up to date. Humphreys, of Tipperary, may know if this is true. It was from one of the "Father's" feculent family, in the heart of his own putrescent parish, that I heard of the local chemist who dare not supply medicine urgently needed by a boycotted person, who was suspected of entertaining what the learned Humphreys would spell as "Brittish" sympathies. Gort (Co. Galway), May 6th. No. 19.--INDOLENCE AND IMPROVIDENCE. Mr. James Dunne, of Athenry, is an acute observer and a shrewd political controversialist. He said: "The people about here, the poor folks such as the small farmers and labourers, have really no opinion at all. They know nothing of Home Rule, one way or the other. If they say anything, it is to the effect that they will obtain some advantage in connection with the land. Beyond that they care nothing for the matter. Not one has any sentiment to be gratified. They only want to live, if possible, a bit more easily. If they can get the land for nothing or even more cheaply, then Home Rule is good. They can see no further than their noses, and they cannot be expected to follow a long chain of argument. They believe just what they are told. Yes, they go to the priest for advice under all circumstances. They ask him to name the man for whom they are to vote, or rather they would ask him if he waited long enough. They vote as they are told; and as the Catholic priest believes that the Catholic religion is the most important thing in the world, which from his point of view is quite proper and right, he naturally influences his people in the direction which is most likely to propagate the true faith, and give to it the predominance which he believes to be its rightful due. "The people round here are harmless, and will continue so, unless the agitators get hold of them. They are ignorant, and easily led, and an influential speaker who knew their simplicity could make them do anything, no matter what. No, I couldn't say that they are industrious. They do not work hard. They just go along, go along, like. They have no enterprise at all, and you couldn't get them out of the ways of their fathers. They'd think it a positive sin. "Look at the present fine weather. This is a very early season. No living man has seen such a spring-time in Ireland. Two months of fine warm weather, the ground in fine working condition, everything six weeks before last year. Not a man that started to dig a day earlier. No, the old time will be adhered to just as if it was cold and wet and freezing. You could not stir them with an electric battery. They moon, moon, moon along, in the old, old, old way, waiting for somebody to come and do something for them. "If they had the land for nothing they would be no better off. They would just do that much less work. They live from hand to mouth. They have no ambition. The same thing that did for their fathers will do for them, the same dirtiness, the same inconvenience. If their father went three miles round a stone wall to get in at a gate they'll do it too. Never would they think of making another gate. They turn round angrily and say, 'Wasn't it good enough for my father, an' wasn't he a betther man than ayther me or you?' If you lived here, you would at first begin to show them things, but when you saw how much better they like their own way you'd stop it. You'd very soon get your heart broke. You couldn't stir them an inch in a thousand years. What will Home Rule do for them? Nobody knows but Gladstone and the Divil." A bystander said: "Down at Galway there was a man wid a donkey goin' about sellin' fish, which was carried in two panniers. Whin he had only enough to fill one pannier, he put a load o' stones into the other pannier to balance the fish an' make the panniers stick on, an' ride aisier. "Well, one day an Englishman that had been watchin' Barney for some time comes up to him an' he says, says he-- "'Whin ye have only fish for one pannier why do ye fill up the other wid stones off the beach?' says he. "'Sure, 'tis to balance it,' says Barney, mighty surprised an' laffin widin himself at the Englishman's ignorance. 'Sure,' says Barney, 'ye wouldn't have a cock-eyed load on the baste, all swingin' on one side, like a pig wid one ear, would ye?' says he. "But this Englishman was one of thim stiff sort that doesn't know whin he's bate, an' he went on arguin'. Says he-- "'But couldn't you put the half of the fish in one pannier, and the other half in the other pannier, instead of putting all the fish in one, and filling up the other with stones?' says he. 'Wouldn't that balance the load?' says he. 'And wouldn't that be only half the load for the poor baste?' says he. An' Barney sthruggled a bit till he got a fair grip iv it, d'ye see, but by the sivin pipers that played before Moses, he couldn't see the way to answer this big word of the Englishman; so he says, says he, 'Musha, 'twas me father's way, rest his sowl,' says he. 'An' would I be settin' meself up to be bettherin' his larnin'?' says he. 'Not one o' me would show him sich impidence and disrespect,' says he. 'An' I'll carry the rocks till I die, glory be to God,' says he. "Now what could ye do with the like iv _him_?" Mr. Armour, who lived five years near Sligo, said:--"The Connaught folks have no idea of preparing for to-morrow. They are almost entirely destitute of self-reliance. So long as they can carry on from one day to another they are quite content. The bit of ground they live on is not half cultivated. In the summer time you may see two or even three crops growing up together. If they had potatoes on last, they got them up in the most slovenly way, leaving half the crop in the ground. They just hoak out with a stick or a bit of board what they require for that day's food, picking the large ones and leaving the small ones in the ground. Oats or something else will be seen half-choked with weeds and the growth from the potatoes so left. The slovenliness of these people is most exasperating. Of course they are all Home Rulers in effect, though not in theory. By that I mean that they have no politics, except to produce politicians by their votes. They know no more of Home Rule than they know of Heidsieck's champagne, or Christmas strawberries, or soap and water, or any other unknown commodity. They are precisely where their ancestors were, except for the crop of potatoes, which enables them to exist in greater luxury and with less trouble. Their way is to plant the potatoes, dig them as required, and live on them either with the aid of a cow or with the butter-milk of a neighbour who has a cow. No provision for the future is attempted, because the relatives are sure to provide for the worn-out and sickly. That shows their goodheartedness, but it does away with self-dependence. There are some things so deeply ingrained in the Irish character that nothing and nobody can touch them. The very priests themselves cannot move them. Although these people believe that the priests could set them on fire from head to heel, or strike them paralytic, or refuse them entrance into heaven, yet the force of habit is so great, and the dread of public opinion is so powerful, that the people, so long as they remain in Ireland, will never depart a hair's-breadth from the old ways." A woman who washed and tidied her children would be a mark for every bitter tongue in the parish. A striking case came under my own observation. A woman of the place was speaking most bitterly of another, and she finished up with,-- "She's the lady all out, niver fear. Shure, she washes and dhresses the childer ivery mornin', and turns out the girls wid hats on their heads an' shoes on their feet. Divil a less would sarve her turn! She has a brick flure to her house, an' she washes it--divil a lie I tell ye--she washes it--wid wather--an' wid soap an' wather, ivery Sattherday in the week! The saints betune us an' harm, but all she wants now is to turn Protestant altogether!" Four miles away is the village of Carnaun, and there I met Philip Fahy, with his son Michael, and another young fellow, all three returning from field work, wearily toiling along the rocky road which runs through the estate of Major Lobdell. The party stopped and sat down to smoke with me. The senior took the lead, not with a brogue but with an accent, translating from the Irish vernacular as he went on. "Long ye may live! We're glad we met ye, thanks be to God. Yer honner's glory is the foinest, splindidist man I seen this twinty year. May God protect ye! 'Tis weary work we does. That foine, big boy ye see foreninst ye, has eighteenpence a day, nine shillin' a week. 'Tis not enough to support him properly. I have a son in England, the cliverist lad ye seen this many a day. Sich a scholar, 'twould be no discredit to have the Queen for his aunt, no it wouldn't. No, he's only just gone, an' I didn't hear from him yet. I didn't tell ye where he'd be, for I wouldn't know meself. But me other boys is goin', for they tell me things will be afther getting worse. God help us, an' stand betune us an harm! Did ye hear of the Home Rule Bill? What does it mane at all, at all? Not one of us knows, more than that lump of stone ye sit on. Will it give us the land for nothin'? for that's all we hear. We'd be obliged av ye could axplain it a thrifle, for sorra a one but's bad off, an' Father O'Baithershin says, Howld yer whist, says he, till ye see what'll happen, says he. Will we get the bit o' ground without rint, yer honner's glory?" Philip was dressed for agricultural work in the following style, which is clearly considered the correct thing in Galway. One tall "top-hat," with a long fur like that of a mangy rabbit, waving to the jocund zephyrs of Carnaun; one cut-away coat of very thick homespun cloth, having five brass buttons on each breast; breeches and leggings and stout boots completed the outfit, which fitted like a sentry-box, and bore a curiously caricatured resemblance to the Court suit of a Cabinet Minister in full war-paint. The spades with which the labourers till the ground are strange to the English eye, and seem calculated to get through the smallest amount of work with the greatest amount of labour. That they were spades at all was more than I could make out. "What are those implements?" I asked, to which the answer came, "Have ye no shpades in England thin!" The business end is about two feet long and not more than three inches broad, with a sort of shoulder for the foot. The handles are about six feet long and end like a mop-stick, without any crossbar. A slight alteration would turn these tools into pikes, a much more likely operation than the beating of swords into plough-shares and spears into pruning-hooks. Meanwhile the length of the handle keeps the worker from too dangerous proximity to his work. There is a broader pattern of blade, but the handle is always of the same sanitary length. The children of the soil turn it over at a wholesome distance. They keep six feet of pole between the earth and their nobility. Small blame to them for that same! Shure the wuruld will be afther thim. Shure there's no sinse at all, at all, in workin' life out to kape life in. "Ah, no," said Misther Fahy. "That tobacky has no strinth in it. We get no satisfaction out iv it. We shmoked a pipe iv it to make frinds, but we'd not shmoke another. 'Tis like chopped hay or tay-leaves, it is. Will we walk back wid yer honner's glory? 'Tis only four miles, it is. No, we bur-rn no powdher here. But on the other side, above Athenry, 'tis there ye'll see the foin shootin'. Thims the boys for powdher an' shot! 'Tis more than nine they shot, aye, and more than tin it was. An' sarve thim right, if they must turn the people out, an' have their own way. May the Lord protect ye! May angels make yer bed this night! Long may ye live, an' yer sowl to glory!" I had written so far, when glancing through the window, I saw a familiar form, a rosy, healthy, florid gentleman parading on the lawn which fronts the Railway Hotel, puffing a cigarette, briskly turning and returning with something of the motion of a captive lion. I knew that pinky cheek, I knew that bright blue eye; yet here, in the wilds of Galway who could it be? He plays with two sportive spaniels, and cries "Down, Sir, down." Thy voice bewrayeth thee, member for North Galway! The Parnellitic Colonel Nolan, thou, _in propriâ personâ_. What makes he here? When the great Bill impends, why flee the festive scene? I'll speak a little with this learned Theban. I board him, as the French say. For a moment he regards me with suspicion--with a kind of vade-in-retro-Satanas air--but presently he goes ahead. A fair at Tuam, which he never misses. Has paired with somebody, Pierpoint he thinks is the name. His vote will therefore not be lost to his side. "Nothing will now be done before Whitsuntide. Both parties will be on their best behaviour. The Conservatives and obstruction, the Liberals and closure. Strategy to obtain some show of advantage at the recess is now the little game. Knows not what will happen _re_ Home Rule. The English Liberals not now so confident as they were. The Government may be ruined by liquor. 'Tis the fate of Liberal Governments to be ruined by drink. The Government of 1874 and the next Liberal Cabinet went to the dogs on liquor. And if the English people are called upon to give a verdict on a local option bill, the result is rather uncertain. Chances perhaps against Mr. Gladstone. The Home Rule question is now quite worked up. The English people are now satisfied to have Home Rule, but some intervening question might delay its final settlement. No, the agitation of the past four or five months had not changed the position one bit. No amount of agitation would now make any difference at all." From the probable wrecking of the Gladstonian Cabinet on "liquor" to the question of Customs, or, as Colonel Nolan preferred to call it, of Excise, was but an easy step. By a simple _adagio_ movement I modulated into the Customs question, mentioning the opinion given to me by Mr. John Jameson himself. The Colonel did not deny, nor admit, that the Irish people were excellent smugglers, but thought the fears of the Unionists exaggerated. He was well aware that smuggling might be carried on--say, on the coast of Connemara and elsewhere, where were roads and bays and natural harbours galore, with a wild and lonely shore far from the centres of Government. Probably at first some money might be lost that way; some little chinks would doubtless be found; there would be some little leakage. But suppose an initial loss of £100,000 or £200,000, it was not likely that such a state of things would be allowed to continue. As to the argument that the rural police would not then assist the 1,300 coastguards, who with the police have been sufficient, there was little or no solidity in this assumption. The Irish Parliament would order the police to assist, and if they did not execute their orders, or if they allowed themselves to be bribed, and the Irish Parliament did not prosecute them for accepting bribes, then the English Government would step in and put matters right. This is just a typical Home Rule argument, the confidence trick all over. The Colonel thought that after a certain amount of shaking down, everything would work sweetly enough. He said nothing about the Union of Hearts, nor have I yet heard the phrase from an Irishman. A keen observer resident at the Athenry Hotel says:--"Of those who come here the proportion against Home Rule is not less than twenty to one. Now mark my figures, because they are based on careful notes extending over the last six months. When you have all the money in the country, and all the best brains in the country, against the bill, what good could the bill do if it became law? And while I can see, and all these people can see, no end of risk, disturbance, upset, loss, ruin, and everything that is bad, we cannot see anything at all to compensate for the risk. Nobody can put his finger on anything and say, 'There, that's the advantage we'll get from the bill.' 'Tis all fancy, pure fancy. Ireland a nation, and a Roman Catholic nation, is the cry. We may get that, but we'll be bankrupt next day. 'Tis like putting a poor man in a grand house without food, furniture, or money, and without credit to raise anything on the building. There now, ye might say, ye have a splendid place that's all your own. But wouldn't the poor man have to leave it, or die of starvation? Of course I wish to respect my clergy, but I think they should not interfere with politics." Colonel Nolan said to me: "The priests wield an immense, an incalculable power. All are on the same path, all hammer away at the one point. It is the persistency, the organisation, that tells. In some cases they have been known to preach for a year and a half at a stretch on political subjects. What is going to stand against that?" With these golden words I close my letter. The priest holds the sceptre of the British Empire. Circumstances have placed in his hands an astonishing opportunity. Nearly every priest in Ireland is using his supernatural credit with one solitary aim. We know their disloyalty, we know they are no friends of England--we know their influence, their organisation, their perseverance, their unscrupulousness, their absolute supremacy in Ireland--and it is high time that England asked herself, in the words of Colonel Nolan-- "What is going to stand against that?" Athenry (Co. Galway), May 6th. No. 20.--RELIGION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE IRISH QUESTION. Tuam has two cathedrals but no barber. You may be shriven but you cannot be shaved. You may be whitewashed but you cannot be lathered. "One shaves another; we're neighbourly here," said a railway porter. They cut each other's hair by the light of nature, in the open street, with a chorus of bystanders. The Tuamites live in a country of antiquities, but they have no photographer. Nor could I find a photograph for sale. The people are sweetly unsophisticated. A bare-footed old lady sat on the step of the Victoria Hotel, sucking a black dhudeen, sending out smoke like a factory chimney, the picture of innocent enjoyment. The streets were full of pigs from the rural parts, and great was the bargaining and chaffering in Irish, a language which seemed to be composed of rolling r's and booming gutturals. A sustained conversation sounds like the jolting of a country cart over a rocky road, a sudden exclamation like the whirr of a covey of partridges, an oath like the downfall of a truck-load of bricks. I arrived in time for the great pig fair, and Tuam was very busy. It is a poor town, of which the staple trade is religion. The country around is green and beautiful, with brilliant patches of gorse in full bloom, every bush a solid mass of brightest yellow, dazzling you in the sunshine. Many of the streets are wretchedly built, and the Galway Road shows how easily the Catholic poor are satisfied. Not only are the cabins in this district aboriginal in build, but they are also indescribably filthy, and the condition of the inmates, like that of the people inhabiting the poorer parts of Limerick, is no whit higher than that obtaining in the wigwams of the native Americans. The hooded women, black-haired and bare-footed, bronzed and tanned by constant exposure, are wonderfully like the squaws brought from the Far West by Buffalo Bill. The men look more civilised, and the pig-jobbers, with their tall hats, dress coats, and knotty shillelaghs, were the pink of propriety. Now and then a burst of wild excitement would attract the stranger, who would hurry up to see the coming homicide, but there was no manslaughter that I could see. A scene of frantic gesticulation near the Town Hall promised well, but contrary to expectation, there was no murder done. Two wild-eyed men, apparently breathing slaughter, suddenly desisted, reining in their fury and walking off amicably together. An Irish-speaking policeman explained that one having sold the other a pig the buyer was asking for twopence off, and that they now departed to drink the amount between them. People who had done their business went away in queer carts made to carry turf--little things with sides like garden palings four or five feet high. Three or four men would squat on one, closely packed, looking through the bars like fowls in a hen-coop. The donkeys who drew these chariots had all their work cut out, and most of their backs cut up. The drivers laid on with stout ash-plants, sparing no exertion to create the donkey's enthusiasm. Prices ruled low. "'Tis not afther sellin' thim I am," said a peasant who had got rid of his pigs, "'tis bestowin' thim I was, the craythurs. The counthry is ruinated intirely, an' so it is. By the holy poker of Methesulum, the prices we got this day for lowness bangs Banagher, an' Banagher bangs the divil." The Tuamites spare a little time for politics and boycotting. The public spirit and contempt for British law are all that could be desired by Irish patriotism. Mr. Strachan has recently bought some land. The previous owner, Mr. Dominick Leonard, brother of Dr. Leonard of Athenry, and of Judge Leonard of London, had raised money on the property, and failed to pay interest or principal. An English insurance company determined to realize, and the affair went into the Land Court, Mr. Strachan buying part of the estate for £2,765. It was easy enough to buy, and even to pay, but to get possession was quite another thing. Precise information is difficult to get, for while some decline to say a word, others are mutually contradictory, and a State Commission would hardly sift truth from the confusing mass of details, denials, assertions, and counter-assertions. This much is clear enough. A tenant named Ruane was required to leave a house, with ground, which he had held on the estate bought by Mr. Strachan. He had paid no rent for a long time. Of course he refused to leave, and, a decree having been obtained, he was duly evicted. But, as Lady de Burgho said, evictions do no good. When the officers of the law went home to tea, Mr. Ruane went home also, breaking the locks, forcing the doors, reinstating himself and his furniture, planting his Lares and Penates in their old situations, hanging up his caubeen on the ancestral nail, and crossing his patriotic shin-bones on the familiar hearth. Pulled up for trespass, he declared that if sent to prison fifty times he would still return to the darling spot, and defied the British army and navy--horse, foot, and artillery--ironclads, marines, and 100-ton guns, to keep him out. For three acts of trespass he got three weeks imprisonment. The moment he was released Mr. Ruane walked back home, and took possession once again. There he is now, laughing at the Empire on which the sun never sets. When a certain bishop read "Paradise Lost" to a sporting lord, the impatient auditor's attention was arrested by some bold speech of Satan, whereupon he exclaimed "Dang me, if I don't back that chap. I like his pluck, and I hope he'll win." Something like this might be said of Ruane. And Ruane will stick to his land. A public meeting held on Sunday week determined to support him, and to show forth its mind by planting the ground for him. Mr. Strachan seems to have seen the futility of looking to the law, on the security of which he invested his money. Too late he finds that his savings are not safe, and he endeavours to make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. He has offered Ruane five acres of land and a house, and Ruane would have accepted with thanks had he been allowed. But he went to a meeting in some outlying village, and received his orders from the Land League. For, be it observed, that the people of these parts speak of the Land League as existing in full force. Ruane declined the handsome offer of the kind-hearted Strachan. Ruane will hold the house and land from which he has been evicted, _because_ he had been evicted, and that the people may see that they have the mastery. Ruane would prefer the proffered land, but private interests must give way to the public weal. England must be smashed, treated with contumely; her laws, her officers, her edicts treated with contempt, laughed at by every naked gutter-snipe, rendered null and void. That this can be done with perfect impunity is the teaching of priests, Fenians, Nationalists, Federationists--call them what you will--all alike flagrantly disloyal to the English Crown. Not worth while to differentiate them. As the sailor said of crocodiles and alligators, "There's no difference at all. They're all tarnation varmint together." Mr. Strachan is boycotted, and goes about with a guard of three policemen. What will happen from one day to another nobody can tell. Since I last mentioned Mr. Blood, of Ennis, that most estimable gentleman has been again fired on, this time at a range of 400 yards, and when guarded by the four policemen who accompany him everywhere. Three shots were fired, and the police found an empty rifle cartridge at the firing point. A Protestant in Tuam said to me:-- "Home Rule would mean that every Protestant would have to fly the country. Why should there not be a return to the persecutions of years ago? When first I came to the place the Protestants were hooted as they went to church, and I can remember seeing this very Strachan going to worship on Sunday morning, his black go-to-meeting coat so covered with the spittle of the mob that you would not know him. His wife would come down with a Bible, and the children would run along shouting 'Here comes mother Strachan, with the devil in her fist.' Why, the young men got cows' horns and fixed them up with strings, so that they could tie them on their foreheads. Then with these horns on they would walk before and behind the Protestants as they went to church or left it, to show that the devil was accompanying them. They always figure the devil as being horned. One of the little barefooted boys who ran after these Protestants is now a holy priest in Tuam. And what the people were then, so they will be now, once they get the upper hand. The educated Catholics are excellent people, none better anywhere, none more tolerant. Nothing to fear from them. But how many are there? Look at the masses of ignorant people around us. The density of their ignorance is something that the people of England cannot understand. They have no examples of it. The most stupid and uninformed English you can find have some ray of enlightenment. These people are steeped in ignorance and superstition. Their religion is nothing but fetichism. Their politics? well, they are blind tools of the priests: what else can be said? And the priests have but one object. In all times, in all countries, the Roman Catholic Church has aimed at absolute dominion. The religious question is at the bottom of it all." No matter where an educated Irishman begins, that is where he always ends. Catholics and Protestants alike come round to the same point at last, though with evident reluctance. The Protestant Unionists especially avoid all mention of religion as long as possible. They know the credal argument excites suspicion. They attack Home Rule from every other point of view, and sometimes you think you have encountered a person of different opinion. Wait till he knows you a little better, has more confidence in your fairness, stands in less fear of a possible snub. Sooner or later, sure as the night follows the day, he is bound to say-- "The religious question is at the bottom of it all." The people of Ireland do not want an Irish Parliament, and the failure of the bill would not trouble them in the least. They do not care a brass farthing for the bill one way or the other. The great heart of the people is untouched. The masses know nothing of it, and will not feel its loss. They are in the hands of priests and agitators, these poor unlettered peasants, and their blind voting, their inarticulate voice, translated into menace and mock patriotism. Everybody admits that the people would be happy and content if only left alone. Half-a-dozen ruffians with rifles can boss a whole country side, and the people must do as they are told. They do not believe in the secrecy of the ballot. They believe that the priests by their supernatural powers are able to know how everybody voted, and I am assured on highly respectable authority that the secrecy of the ballot in Ireland is, in some parts, a questionable point. At the same time, there is everywhere a strong opinion that another election will give very different results in Ireland. And everywhere there is a growing feeling that the Bill will not become law. This explains the slight rise in the value of Irish securities. Just outside Tuam I came upon a neatly built, deep-thatched villa, with a flower garden in front, a carefully cultivated kitchen garden running along the road, trim hedges, smart white palings, an orchard of fine young trees, a general air of neatness, industry, prosperity, which, under the circumstances, was positively staggering. I had passed along a mile of cabins in every stage of ruin, from the solitary chimney still standing to the more recent ruin with two gables, from the inhabited pig-sty to the hut whereon grew crops of long grass. I had noted the old lady clad in sackcloth and ashes, who, having invested the combined riches of the neighbourhood in six oranges and a bottle of pop, was sitting on the ground, alternately contemplating the three-legged stool which held the locked-up capital and her own sooty toes, immersed in melancholy reflections anent the present depression in commercial circles. The Paradisaic cottage was startling after this. I stopped a bare-legged boy, and found that the place belonged to a Black Protestant, and, what was worse, a Presbyterian, and, what was superlatively bad, a Scots Presbyterian. Presently I met a tweed-clad form, red-faced and huge of shoulder, full of strange accents and bearded like the pard. Berwickshire gave him birth, but he has "done time" in Ireland. "I'm transported this forty-three years. I thought I'd end my days here, but if this bill passes we'll go back to Scotland. We'll have Catholic governors, and they'll do what they like with us. Ye'll have a tangled web to weave, over the Channel there. Ye'll have the whole island in rebellion in five-and-twenty minutes after ye give them power. Anybody that thinks otherwise is either very ignorant of the state of things or else he's a born fule. No, I wouldn't say the folks are all out that lazy, not in this part of Galway. They will work weel enough for a Scots steward, or for an Englishman. But no Irish steward can manage them. Anybody will tell you that. No-one in any part of the country will say any different. Now, that's a queer thing. An Irish steward has no control over them. They don't care for him. And he runs more risk of shooting than an English or Scots steward. "There was an Irish bailiff where I was steward, and he saw how I managed the men, and thought he'd do it the same way. So once when he and a lot of diggers went in for the praties and buttermilk, the praties were not ready, and he gives the fellow who was responsible a bit of a kick behind with the side of his foot, like. "The very next night he got six slugs in his head and face and one of his front teeth knocked out. That taught him to leave kicking to foreigners. Once two men were speaking of me. I overheard one say, 'Ah, now, Micky, an' isn't it a pity that Palmer's a Black Protestant, an' that his sowl will blaze in hell for ever, like a tur-rf soddock ye'd pick up in the bog?'" "Settle the land question and you settle Home Rule. The bad times made Parnell's success. He was backed by the low prices of produce, and the general depression of agricultural interests. The rent has been reduced, but not enough to compensate the drop in the prices of produce. Why, cattle have been fetching one-half what they fetched a short time ago. Potatoes are twopence-halfpenny a stone! Did you ever hear of such a thing? Yes, it enables the people to live very cheaply, but how about the growers? If every man grew his own potatoes and lived on them, well and good, but he must have no rent to pay. That price would not pay for labour and manure. Oats are worth sixpence to ninepence a stone,--a ridiculous price; and we have not yet touched the bottom. "The land question should be settled. No, it is not satisfactory. People have to wait seven years for a settlement, and meanwhile they could be kicked out of their holdings at one day's notice. The people who bought under Ashbourne's Act are happy, prosperous, and contented. The people who are beside them are the contrary. Home Rulers, bosh! Farmers know as much about Home Rule as a pig knows about the Sabbath Day. The land, the land, the land! Let the Tories take this up and dish the Liberals. Easiest thing alive. How? Compulsory sale, compulsory purchase. Leave nothing to either party. Then you'll hear no more of Home Rule. Let the Unionists hold their ground a bit, till it dies out, or until the rival factious destroy each other. Loyalty? Why those Nationalist members have themselves told you over and over again that they are rebels. Don't you believe them? Some few may be inspired with the idea that the thing is impracticable, but they will all preach separation when the right time comes. 'Pay no taxes to England,' they'll cry. The people can follow that. Tell them that any course of action means non-payment of anything, and they're on it like a shot. Why, the Paying of Tribute to England is already discussed in every whiskey shop in Galway, and every man is prepared to line the ditches with guns and pikes rather than pay one copper. When you can't give Strachan the farm for which he paid last February, when you can't keep a small farmer who won't pay rent from occupying his farm and getting his crops as usual, for he _will_ do so, how are you going to raise the famous Tribute Money?" Near the Town Hall was a great crowd of people listening to a couple of minstrels who chanted alternate lines of a modernised version of the _Shan van vocht_. "Let me make the songs of a people, and I care not who makes its laws." Mr. Gladstone is appreciated now. The heart of the Connaughtman throbs responsive to his pet appellation. This is part of the song-- Oi'm goin' across the say, says the Grand Old Man, Oi'll be back some other day, says the Grand Old Man; When Oireland gets fair play We'll make Balfour rue the day,-- Remimber what I say, says the Grand Old Man. Whin will ye come back? says the Grand Old Man, Whin will ye come back? says the Grand Old Man, Whin Balfour gets the sack Wid Salisbury on his back, Or unto hell does pack, says the Grand Old Man. Will ye deny the Lague? says the Grand Old Man, No, we'll continue to the Lague, says the Grand Old Man. John Dillon says at every station, 'Twill be his conversation Till Oireland is a nation, says the Grand Old Man. There are three more verses of this immortal strain. The _Shan van vocht_ was the great song of the '98 rebellion, and possibly the G.O.M.'s happy adaptability to the music may put the finishing touch to his world-wide renown. Other songs referred to the arrest of Father Keller, of Youghal. "They gathered in their thousands their grief for to revale, An' mourn for their holy praste all in Kilmainham Jail." These ballads are anonymous, but the talented author of "Dirty little England" stands revealed by internal evidence. The voices which chanted these melodies were discordant, but the people around listened with reverential awe, from time to time making excited comments in Irish. Altogether Tuam is a depressing kind of place, and but for the enterprise of a few Protestants, the place would be a phantasmagoria of pigs, priests, peasants, poverty, and "peelers." Perhaps Galway would have more civilization, if less piety. You cannot move about an Irish country town after nightfall without barking your shins on a Roman Catholic Cathedral. This in time becomes somewhat monotonous. Tuam (Co. Galway), May 9th. No. 21.--MR. BALFOUR'S FISHERIES. A clean, well-built town, with a big river, the Corrib, running through the middle of it, splashing romantically down from the salmon weir, not far from the Protestant Church of Saint Nicholas, a magnificent cathedral-like structure over six hundred years old. There is a big square with trees and handsome buildings, several good hotels, a tramway, and, _mirabile dictu!_ a veritable barber's shop. The Connaught folks, as a whole, seem to have fully realised the old saying that shaving by a barber is a barbarous custom, but there is no rule without an exception, and accordingly Mr. McCoy, of Eyre Square, razors and scissors her Majesty's lieges, whether gentle or simple, rebel or loyal, Unionist or Separatist, Catholic or Protestant. The good Figaro himself is an out-and-out Separatist. He swallows complete Independence, and makes no bones about it. He believes in Ireland a Nation, insists on perfect autonomy, and, unlike the bulk of his fellow Nationalists, has the courage of his opinions. His objection to English interference with Irish affairs is openly expressed, and with an emphasis which leaves no doubt of his sincerity. According to Mr. McCoy, the woes of Ireland are each and all directly attributable to English rule. The depopulation of the country, the lack of enterprise, of industry, of the common necessaries of life, of everything to be desired by the sons of men--all these disagreeables are due to the selfishness, the greed, the brutality of Englishmen, who are not only devoid of the higher virtues, but also entirely destitute of common fairness, common honesty, common humanity. Mr. McCoy holds that England exploits Ireland for her own purposes, is a merciless sucker of Hibernia's life-blood, a sweater, a slave-driver, a more than Egyptian taskmaster. Remove the hated English garrison, abolish English influence, let Ireland guide her own destinies, and all will at once be well--trade will revive, poverty will disappear, emigration will be checked, a teeming population will inhabit the land, and the Emerald Isle will once more become great, glorious, and free, Furst flower o' the airth, Furst gem o' the say. No longer will the gallant men of Connaught bow their meek heads to American shears, no longer present their well-developed jaws to Yankee razors; but, instead of this, flocking in their thousands on saints' days and market days to their respective county towns, and especially to Galway, will form _en queue_ at the door of Mr. McCoy, to save the country by fostering native industries. No longer will it avail the Chinaman of whom he told me to sail from New York to Ireland, because the latter is the only country wherein Irishmen do not monopolise all the good things, do not boss the show--have, in fact, no voice at all in its management. "But," said my friend, "we'll get no Home Rule, we'll get no Parlimint, we'll get nothin' at all at all till Irishmen rise up in every part o' the wuruld an thrash it out o' ye. What business have the English here at all domineering over us? Didn't one o' their great spakers get up in Parlimint an' say we must be kept paupers? Didn't he say that 'the small loaf was the finest recruiting sergeant in the wuruld?' There ye have the spirit o' the English. We want the counthry to ourselves, an' to manage it our way, not yours. An' that thievin' owld Gladstone's the biggest scut o' thim all. No, I'm not grateful to Gladstone, not a bit iv it. Divil a ha'porth we have to thank him for. Sure, he was rakin Parnell out iv his grave, the mane-spirited scut, that cringed and grinned whin Parnell was alive. Sure, 'twas Gladstone broke up the party wid his morality. 'Ah,' says he, 'I couldn't associate wid such a person, alanna!' An' he wouldn't let it be a Parlimint at all--it must be a leg-is-la-ture, by the hokey, it must, no less. Let him go choke wid his leg-is-la-ture, the durty, mane-spirited owld scut." Mr. McCoy declines to regard Mr. Gladstone as a benefactor of Ireland, but in this he is not alone. His sentiments are shared by every Irishman I have met, no matter what his politics. The Unionist party are the more merciful, sparing expletives, calling no ill names. They admire his ability, his wonderful vitality, versatility, ingenuity of trickery. They sincerely believe that he is only crazy, and think it a great pity. They speak of the wreck of his rich intellect, and say in effect _corruptio optimi pessima est_. There is another monkish proverb which may strike them as they watch him in debate, particularly when he seems to be cornered; it runs, _Non habet anguillam, Per caudam qui tenet illam_, which may be extemporaneously rendered, He has not surely caught the eel, Who only holds him by the tail. Every Nationalist I have met entertains similar opinions, but few express them so unguardedly. Mr. McCoy must be honoured for his candour and superior honesty. If his brethren were all as frankly outspoken as he England would be saved much trouble, much waste of precious time. The secret aspirations of the Irish Nationalist leaders, if openly avowed, would dispose of the Home Rule agitation at once and for ever. No risk of loss, no possible disadvantage, daunted Mr. McCoy. He accepted the statement of a rabid Separatist, quoted in a previous letter, that the Irish would prefer to go to hell their own way. That was his feeling exactly. Not that there was any danger. Great was his confidence, implicit, sublime, ineffably Irish. His was the faith that removes mountains. Not like a grain of mustard seed, but like the rock of Cashel. _Floreat_ McCoy! Mr. Athy, of Kinvarra, has very little to say. He thinks the bill would make Ireland a hell upon earth for all Protestants living in Catholic communities, and that a settlement of the land question would settle the hash of the agitators. Mr. Kendal, of Tallyho, an Englishman twenty-five years resident in Ireland, agrees in the latter opinion. I forgot to question him _re_ toleration. He thinks the Home Rule Bill simply insane, absurd, not worth serious discussion by sensible men. "No intelligent man who knows the country would dream of such madness. The simplicity of the English people must be incredible. Pity they cannot come over and examine for themselves." Mr. Beddoes, traffic manager of the Limerick and Waterford Railway, came to Ireland an enthusiastic Gladstonian. He had worked with might and main to send Mr. Price to Parliament, and was largely instrumental in returning him. He is now a staunch Unionist, admits the error of his ways, and rejoices that a personal acquaintance with the subject at once led him into the true fold. I had this confession of faith from Mr. Beddoes himself, a keen, successful man of eminently Conservative appearance, a scholar, a traveller, and a great favourite with his men. "How long were you in Ireland before you changed your mind?" I asked. "Well," said Mr. Beddoes, "to tell the truth, I began to have my doubts during the first week." A prosperous Presbyterian of Galway said:--"To say that the Irish people, the masses, want an Irish Parliament is the height of absurdity; and to argue that their aspirations are expressed by their votes is a gross perversion of the truth. The ignorance of the people explains everything. They voted as the priests told them to vote, without the smallest conception of what they were voting for, without the smallest idea of what Home Rule really means. They are quite incapable of understanding a complicated measure of any kind, and they naturally accept the guidance of their spiritual advisers, whom they are accustomed to regard as men of immense erudition, besides being gifted with power to bind and loose, and having the keys of heaven at command. You know how they canvass their penitents in the confessional, and how from the altar they have taught the people to lie, telling them to vote for one man and to shout down the streets for another. The Irish priests are wonderfully moral men in other respects, and cases of immorality in its ordinary sense are so rare as to be practically unknown. I could forgive their politics, and even their confessional influence, if they were not such awful liars. Their want of truthfulness reacts on the people, and if you send a man to do a job, he will return and get his money when he has only half done it. 'Oh, yes,' he'll say, as natural as possible, 'I've done it well, very well.' And they are not ashamed when they are proved to be liars. They think nothing of it. And the way they cheat each other! A few days ago I met a man who pulled out a bundle of one-pound notes, and said, 'I'm afther selling thirteen cows, an' I'm afther buying thirteen more. I sowld me cows to Barney So-and-So, afther givin' him six noggins of poteen, an' I got out of him twenty per cint. more than the price that was goin', thanks be to God!' They are so pious--in words." "What they want is emancipation from the priests and from the superstitions of the dark ages. They believe in the fairies still, and attribute all kinds of powers to them. Look at the _Tuam News_ of yesterday evening. Perhaps the English people would hesitate before conferring self-government on the poor folks who read that paper, if they could only see the rag for a week or two." I secured the _Tuam News_ for Friday, May 12, 1893, and found the sheet instructive, suggestive, original. There is a big advertisement in Irish, an ancient Irish poem with translation, and a letter from Mr. Henry Smyth, of Harborne, Birmingham, addressed to the National Literary Society of Loughrea, under whose auspices Miss Gonne the other day delivered the rebel lecture quoted in the Killaloe letter. Our fellow-citizen speaks of "the spirit of revival that is abroad amongst you, of your new society rising phoenix-like from the ashes of the old, not uninspired, we may suppose, by the project of your being in the near future masters in your own house, the arbiters of your own destiny, for you will be governed by the men of your own choice." Side by side with this heart-felt utterance let us print another letter appearing in the same issue of the same hebdomadal illuminator:-- TO THE EDITOR OF THE TUAM NEWS. Sir,--Permit me a little space in the next issue of the _Tuam News_, relative to my father being killed by the fairies which appeared in the _Tuam News_ of the 8th of April last. I beg to say that he was not killed by the fairies, but I say he was killed by some person or persons unknown as yet. Hoping very soon that the perpetrators of this dastardly outrage will be soon brought to light, I am, Mr. Editor, yours obediently, DAVID REDINGTON. Kilcreevanty, May 8th, '93. What would be thought of an English constituency which required such a contradiction? The people who believe in the fairies form the bulk of the Irish electorate. Their votes have sent the Nationalist members to Parliament; their voice it is which directs the action of Gladstone, Morley, and Tail; their influence ordains the course of legislation; in their hands are the destinies of England and Englishmen. The people themselves are innocent enough. If they hate England it is because they have been so taught by priests and agitators for their own ends. The only remedy is enlightenment, but the process must be slow. The accursed influences are ever at work, on the platform, in the press, at the altar, and I see no countervailing agency. The people are 'cute enough, and would be clever, if once their bonds were broken. They are not fettered by English rule. They are bound down by Ignorance, rank Ignorance, in an Egyptian darkness that may be felt. They are poor in this world's goods, although seemingly healthier and stronger than the English average. Much of their poverty is their own fault. Much more is due to the teachings of agitators. The Land League has mined whole communities. Poverty and Ignorance made the Irish masses an easy prey. Their ancient prejudices are kept alive, their ancient grievances industriously disinterred, their imagination pleased with an illimitable vista of prosperity artfully unrolled before their untutored gaze. We have the result before us. The Gladstonian party in England are responding to the dictates of a handful of hirelings and sacerdotalists, and not to the aspirations of a people. Credulity is the offspring of Ignorance, and accordingly we see that the Irish people believe in Tim Healy and the priests, the Grand Old Man and the fairies. They must be saved from themselves. The harbour of Galway is very picturesque. A massive ivy-covered arch marks the boundary line of the ancient walls, some of which are still extant. The raggedness and filthiness of the fisher-wives and children must be seen to be understood. A few sturdy fishermen sat gloomily beside two great piles of fish, thrown out of the boats in heaps. Large fish, like cod, and yet not cod; bigger than hake, but not unlike the Cornish fish. To ask a question at a country station or in the street is in Connaught rather embarrassing, as all the people within earshot immediately crowd around to hear what is going on. Not impudent, but sweetly unsophisticated are the Galway folks, openly regarding the stranger with inquiring eye, not unfriendly, but merely curious. Having no business of their own, they take the deepest interest in that of other people. And they make a fuss. They are too polite. They load you with attentions. No trouble is too great. Give them the smallest chance and they put themselves about until you wish you had not spoken. However, I wanted to know about the fish, so I strolled up to two men who were lying at full length on the quay, and said-- "What do you call those fish?" Both men sprang hastily to their feet, and said-- "Black pollock, Sorr." "Where do you catch them?" At this juncture two or three dozen urchins galloped up, most of them, save for a thick skin of dirt, clad in what artists call the nude. They surrounded us, and listened with avidity. "Outside the Aran Islands." Here several women joined the group, and more were seen hastening to the scene of excitement from every point of the compass. "How far away is that?" "Thirty miles, Sorr." "What are they worth?" "A shilling a dozen." "That is, a penny a pound?" "No, but a shilling for a dozen fish, and there's thirteen to the dozen." "And how heavy is the average fish?" He picked up one by the jaws, and weighing him on his hand, said-- "That chap would be nigh-hand fourteen pounds. Some's more, some's less." It was even so. The agent of the Congested Districts Board, Mr. Michael Walsh, of Dock Street, confirmed this startling statement. Thirteen huge codlike fish for a shilling! More than a hundredweight and a half of fish for twelve pence sterling! And, as Father Mahony remarks, still the Irish peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel English yoke, still turns his back on the teeming treasures of the deep. The brutal Balfour supplied twenty-five boats to the poor peasants of the western seaboard, and these, all working in conjunction under direction, have proved both a boon and a blessing. "Yesterday I sent sixty boxes of mackerel to Messrs. Smith, of Birmingham, and to-day I think I shall send them a hundred," said Mr. Walsh. "These Balfour boats have been a wonderful success. You'll hear the very ignorant still cursing him, but not the better-informed, nor the people he has benefited. I think him a great man, a very great man, indeed. I am no politician. I only look at the effect he produced and the blessing he was to the people. On Wednesday last the Duras steamer brought in 400 boxes of fish, which had been caught in one day. We thought that pretty good, but Thursday's consignment was simply astonishing, 1,100 boxes coming in. We sent them all to England. Mackerel have fetched grand prices this year. Early in the season we sold them to Birmingham at tenpence apiece wholesale, with carriage and other expenses on the top of that. Better price than the pollock? Well, that fish is not very good just now. Sometimes it fetches six shillings a dozen fish, nearly sixpence each. No, not much for twelve or fourteen pounds of good fish. Half-a-crown a dozen is more usual. There's no demand. Yes, they're cheap to-day. A dozen pounds of fish for a penny would be reckoned 'a cheap loaf' in Birmingham." A shopkeeper near the harbour complained of the unbusiness-like ways of the Galway townsmen:--"They have no notion of business management. Take the Galway Board of Guardians. They resolved that any contractor furnishing milk below a certain standard should have his contract broken if he were caught swindling the authorities three times in six months. What would they think of such a resolution in England? Well, one fellow was caught three times or more. His milk was found to contain forty-four per cent. of water. Instead of kicking him out at once there was a great debate on the subject. It was not denied that the facts were as I have stated them. His friends simply said, 'Ah, now, let the Boy go on wid the conthract; shure, isn't he the dacent Boy altogether? An' what for would ye break the conthract whin he put in a dhrop of clane wather, that wouldn't hurt anybody. Shure, 'tis very wholesome it is intirely.' As Curran said, 'we are ruined with to-day saying we'll do some thing, and then turning round and saying to-morrow that we won't do it.' Another Guardian named Connor stuck up for the right thing, and another named Davoren gave the contractor's friends a good tongue-thrashing. The milkman was sacked by fifteen votes to nine. The right thing was done, but my point is that a lot of time was wasted in trying to bolster up such a case, and nine men actually voted for the defaulter, whose action was so grossly fraudulent, and who had been caught at least three times in six months. "The bag factory has just been closed. The Home Rule Bill is at the bottom of this mischief. It was the only factory we had in Galway, and what the people here are to do now God only knows. It gave employment to the working classes of the town, who will now have to go further afield. Some are off to America, some to England, some to Scotland. Curious thing I've noticed. A Scotsman lands here with twopence, next day has fourpence, in five years a house and farm of his own, in twenty-five years an estate, in thirty years is being shot at as a landowner, in forty years has an agent to be deputy cock-shot for him. But Irishmen who go to Scotland nearly always return next year swearing that the country is poor as the Divil. Now, how is that? "The bag works was just short of money and management. Irishmen are not financiers. They are always getting into holes, and waiting for somebody to get them out. They have no self-reliance. You may hold them up by the scruff of the neck for years and years, and the moment you drop them they hate you like poison. Many shooting cases would show this if impartially looked into. Pity the English do not come over here more than they do. The people get along famously with individual Englishmen, and sometimes they wonder where all the murdering villains are of whom they hear from their spiritual and political advisers. A priest said in my hearing, 'Only the best men come over here. They are picked out to impose on you.' And the poor folks believed him. We want to know each other better. The English are just as ignorant as the Irish, in a way. They know no more of the Irish than the Irish know of them. The poor folks of Connaught firmly believe that they would be well off and able to save money but for the English that ruin the country. And here this Jute Bag Company is bursted up because it had not capital to carry on with. Belfast men or Englishmen would have made it a big success. It stopped because it could not raise enough money to buy a ship-load of jute, and was obliged to buy from hand to mouth from retailers. "Take the wool trade. Everywhere over Ireland you will see Wool, Wool in big letters on placards for the farmers--notices of one sort or another. We are the centre of a wool district. Not a single wool factory, although the town is in every way fitted for excelling in the woollen trade. We have a grand river, and the people understand wool. They card and spin, and make home-made shawls and coat-pieces at their own homes, just for themselves, and there they stop. They are waiting for Home Rule, they say. Pass the bill, and factories will jump out of the ground like mushrooms. Instead of taking advantage of the means at their disposal, they are looking forward to a speculative something which they cannot define. The English are the cause of any trouble they may have, and an Irish Parliament will totally change the aspect of things. Everybody is going to be well off, and with little or no work. The farmers are going to get the land for nothing, or next to nothing, and all heretics will be sent out of the country, or kept down and in their proper place." Thus spake a well-to-do Protestant, born in Galway some sixty years ago, a half-breed Irish and Scotchman. I have now heard so many exasperating variations of this same tune, that I should be disposed, had I the power, to take a deep and desperate revenge by granting the grumblers Home Rule on the spot. It would doubtless serve them right, but England has also herself to consider. Galway Town, May 13th. No. 22.--THE LAND LEAGUE'S REIGN AT LOUGHREA. This is the most depressing town I have seen as yet. Except on market and fair days, literally nothing is done. The streets are nearly deserted, the houses are tumbling down, gable-ends without side-walls or roofs are seen everywhere, nettles are growing in the old chimney corners, and the splendid ruins of the ancient abbey are the most cheerful feature of the place. A few melancholy men stand about, the picture of despondent wretchedness, a few sad-eyed girls wander about with the everlasting hood, hiding their heads and faces, a few miserable old women beg from all and sundry, and the usual swarm of barefooted children are, of course, to the fore. The shopkeepers display their wares, waiting wearily for market day, and dismally hoping against hope for better times. Everybody is in the doleful dumps, everybody says the place is going down, everybody says that things grow worse, that the trade of the place grows smaller by degrees and gradually less, that enterprise is totally extinguished, that there is no employment for the people, and no prospect of any. Those whose heads are just above water are puzzled to know how those worse off than themselves contrive to exist at all, and look towards the future with gloomiest foreboding. Like the man who quoted Christmas strawberries at twelve dollars a pound, they ask how the poor are going to live. The young men of the place seem to have quite lost heart, and no longer muster spirit enough to murder anybody. Loughrea is disloyal as the sea is salt. The man in the street is full of grievances. His poverty and ignorance make him the mark of lying agitators, who arouse in his simple soul implacable resentment for imaginary wrongs. A decent civil working-man named Hanan thus expressed himself:-- "The town was a fine business place until a few years ago, whin the Land League ruined it. Ah, thim was terrible times. We had murthers in the town an' all round the town. Perhaps the people that got shot desarved it, they say here that they did; but, all the same, the place was ruined by the goin's on. It's no joke to kill nine or ten people in and about a quiet little place like this. An' ever since thin the place is goin' down, down, down, an' no one knows what will be the ind iv it. 'Tis all the fault of the English Governmint. The counthry is full of gowld mines, an' silver mines, an' copper mines, an' we're not allowed to work thim. Divil a lie I spake. The Government wouldn't allow us to bore for coal. Sure, we're towld by thim that knows all about it, men that's grate scholars an' can spake out iligant. Why wouldn't we be allowed to sink a coal mine in our own counthry? Why wouldn't we be allowed to get the gowld that's all through the mountains? 'Tis the English that wants iverything for thimsilves, an' makes us all starvin' paupers intirely." This serves to indicate the kind of falsehoods palmed off upon these poor people in order to make them agitators or criminals. Hanan went on-- "Look at the Galway Bag Factory. I'm towld that's shutting up now. What'll the people do at all, at all, that was employed in it? An' the English Parlimint ordhers it to be closed because it turns out bags chaper than they can make thim in England, an' betther, and the English maker couldn't compate. Ye know betther? I wouldn't conthradict yer honour's glory, ye mane well; but I have it from them that knows. Look at the Galway marble quarries. There's two sorts o' marble in one quarry, an' tis grand stone it is, an' the quarries would give no ind iv imploymint to the poor men that's willin' to work. God help thim, but they're not allowed to cut a lump of stone in their own counthry. What stops them? Sure 'tis the English Government, an' what would it be else? A gintleman isn't allowed to cut a stone on his own land. All must come from England. Ye make us buy it off ye, an' us wid millions of pounds' worth of stone. Ah, now, don't tell me 'tis all rubbish. Sure, I have it sthraight from mimbers of Parlimint. Didn't the English Governmint send out soldiers an' policemen, wid guns an' swords, an' stop the men that wint to cut the stone in the marble quarries I was afther mintionin' to yer honour? Yes, 'twas the Land League that ruined this place, but 'twas the Governmint that made the Land League by dhriving the people into it. No, I wouldn't trust Gladstone or any other Englishman. They'll take care of thimselves, the English. We'll get no more than they can help. What we got out o' Gladstone we bate out o' him. We get nothing but what we conquered. Small thanks we owe, an' small thanks we'll give." A small farmer said, "The rints isn't low enough. The judicial rints is twice too much, an' the price of stock what it is. We must have a sliding scale, an' pay rint according to the price of produce. We must have the land for half what we pay now. I wouldn't say anythin' agin' the English. I have two brothers there an' they come over here sometimes, an' from what they tell me I believe the English manes well. An' the English law isn't bad at all. 'Tis the administhration of the law that's bad. We have the law, but 'tis no use to us because the landlords administhers it. Divil a bit o' compinsation can we get. An' if we want a pump, or a fence, or a bit o' repairs, we may wait for seven years, till our hearts break wid worryin' afther it. Thin we've our business to mind, an' we've not the time nor the money to go to law, even whin the law is with us an we have a clear case. The landlord has his agint, that has nothin' else to do but to circumvint us, so that the land laws don't do us the good that ye think over in England. Ye have grand laws, says you, an' 'tis thrue for you; but who works the laws? says I. That's where the trouble comes in. Who works the laws? says I. "Thin ye say, ye can buy your farms all out, says you. But the landlords won't sell, says I. Look at the Monivea disthrict. French is a good landlord enough, but he won't sell. The tinants want to buy, but if ye go to Monivea Castle ye'll have your labour for your pains. The agint is the landlord's brother, an' a dacent, good man he is. I have a relative over there, an' sorra a word agin aither o' thim will he spake. But when he wint to buy his farm, not an inch would he get." This statement was so diametrically opposed to that of Mr. John Cook, of Londonderry, who said that the farmers had ceased to buy, owing to their belief that the land would shortly become their own on much better terms than they could at present obtain, that I tramped to Monivea, a distance of six miles from Athenry, for the purpose of ascertaining, if possible, how far my Loughrea friend's assertion was borne out by facts. Monivea is a charming village, built round a great green patch of turf, whereon the children play in regiments. Imagine an oblong field three hundred yards long by one hundred wide, bounded at one end by high trees, at the other by a great manor house in ruins, the sides closed in by neat white cottages and a pretty Protestant Church, and you have Monivea, the sweetest village I have seen in Ireland. Here I interviewed four men, one of whom had just returned by the Campania from America, to visit his friends after an absence of many years. This gentleman was a strong Unionist, and ridiculed the idea of Home Rule as the most absurd and useless measure ever brought forward with the object of benefiting his countrymen. "What will ye do wid it when ye've got it?" he said; "sure it can never do ye any good at all. How will it put a penny in yer pockets, an' what would ye get by it that ye can't get widout it?" Two farmers thought they would get the land for a much lower rent. They said that although the landowner, Mr. French, was an excellent, kind, and liberal man, and that no fault at all could be found with his brother, the agent, yet still the land was far too dear, and that a large portion of it was worth nothing at all. "I pay eight and sixpence an acre for land that grows nothing but furze, that a few sheep can nibble round, an', begorra, 'tis not worth half-a-crown. Most iv it is worth just nothin' at all, an' yet I have to scrape together eight and sixpence an acre," said he. "'Tis not possible to get a livin' out iv it." "Thin why don't ye lave it?" said the man from Missouri. "Why thin, how could I lave the bit o' ground me father had? Av ye offered me a hundhred acres o' land for nothin' elsewhere, I vow to God I would rather stay on the bit o' rock that grows heath and gorse, if I could only get a crust out iv it, far sooner," said the grumbler. "An' d'ye think Home Rule will enable ye to do betther? Ye'll believe anythin' in Monivea. Ye are the same as iver ye wor. It's no use raisonin' wid yez at all. Sure, the counthry won't be able to do widout loans, an' who'll lind ye money wid an Irish Parlimint?" "Why would we want money whin there's gowld to be had for the diggin', av we got lave to dig it?" said the man of Monivea. The villagers believe that England prevents their mining for coal, gold, silver, copper; that the British Government tyrannically puts down all enterprise; that Home Rule will open mines, build railways, factories, institute great public works; that their friends will flock back from America; that all the money now spent out of the country will be disbursed in Ireland for Irish manufactures; that the land must and will become their own for nothing, or next to nothing; and in short, that simultaneously with the first sitting of an Irish Parliament an era of unprecedented prosperity will immediately set in. The two farmers confirmed what I have been told of the reluctance of the landlords to part with an acre of the land, and said that men had returned from America with money to buy farms, and after having wandered in vain over Ireland were fain to go back to the States, being unable to purchase even at a fancy price. They have been told this by persons in whom they had implicit trust, and I am sure they believed it. A fairly educated man, who had travelled, and from whom I expected better things, has since assured me that the stories about compulsory closing of mines and quarries had been dinned into him from infancy, and that he was of opinion that these assertions were well founded, and that they could not be successfully contradicted. Everywhere the same story of English selfishness and oppression. He cited a case in point. "Twenty years ago there was a silver mine in Kinvarra. It gave a lot of employment to the people of those parts, and was a grand thing for the country at large. The Government stepped in and closed it. I'm towld by them I can believe that 'twas done to keep us poor, so that they could manage us, because we'd not be able to resist oppression and tyranny, we'd be that pauperised. England does everything to keep us down. They have the police and the soldiers everywhere to watch us that we'd get no money at all. So when they see us starting a factory, or a fishery, or opening a mine or a quarry, the word comes down to stop it, and if we'd say No, this is our own country, and we'll do what we like in it, they'd shoot us down, and we couldn't help ourselves. I'm not sayin' that I want Home Rule or anything fanciful just for mere sentiment. We only want our own, and Home Rule will give us our own." The Home Rule party, the Nationalist patriots who know full well the falsity of these and such-like beliefs, are responsible for this invincible ignorance. Hatred and distrust of England are the staple of their teachings, which the credulous peasantry imbibe like mother's milk. The peripatetic patriots who invade the rural communities seem to be easy, extemporaneous liars, having a natural gift for tergiversation, an undeniable gift for mendacity, an inexhaustible fertility of invention. Such liars, like poets, are born, not made, though doubtless their natural gifts have been improved and developed by constant practice. Like Parolles, they "lie with such volubility that you would think Truth were a fool." The seed has been industriously sown, and John Bull is reaping the harvest. Is there no means of enlightenment available? Is there no antidote to this poison? I am disposed to believe that if the country were stumped by men of known position and integrity much good would be done. Leaflets bearing good names would have considerable effect. The result might not be seen at once, but the thing would work, and the people have less and less confidence in their leaders. The most unlettered peasant is a keen judge of character, and, given time, would modify his views. The truth about the mines, given in clear and simple language, would have a great effect. Education is fighting for the Union. Time is all the Loyalists require. The National Schools must, in the long run, be fatal to political priestcraft and traitorous agitation. To return to Loughrea. I walked a short distance out of the town to see the place where Mr. Blake, Lord Clanricarde's agent, was so foully murdered. A little way past the great Carmelite Convent I encountered an old man, who showed me the fatal spot. A pleasant country road with fair green meadows on each side, a house or two not far away, the fields all fenced with the stone walls characteristic of the County Galway. "'Twas here, Sorr, that the guns came over the wall. Misther Blake was dhrivin' to church, at about eleven o'clock o' a foin summer's mornin'. His wife was wid him, an' Timothy Ruane was runnin' the horse--a dacent boy was Tim, would do a hand's turn for anybody. The childer all swore by Tim, be raison he was the boy to give them half-pince for sweets and the like o' that. So they dhrove along, and whin they came tin yards from this, says Tim, sittin' in front wid the reins, says he, 'Misther Blake, I see some men at the back iv the ditch,' says he. 'Drive on, Tim,' says Misther Blake, 'sure that's nothin' to do with aither you or me.' An' the next instant both of thim wor in Eternity! Blake and poor Tim wor kilt outright on the spot, an' nayther of them spoke a word nor made a move, but jist dhropped stone dead, God rest their sowls. An' the wife, that's Misthress Blake, a good, kind-hearted lady she was, was shot in the hip, an' crippled, but she wasn't kilt, d'ye see. Blake was a hard man, they said, an' must have the rint. An' poor Tim was kilt the way he wouldn't tell o' the boys that did it. 'Twas slugs they used, an' not bullets, but they fired at two or three yards, an' so close that the shot hasn't time to spread, an' 'tis as good as a cannon ball. Who were they? All boys belongin' to the place. Mrs. Blake dhropped, an' they thought she was dead, I believe. Some thinks she was shot by accident, an' that they did not mane to kill a wake woman at all. But whin they shot Tim, to kape his mouth shut, why wouldn't they shoot the woman?" Seven men were arrested, and everybody in the place was believed to know the murderers. The police had no doubt at all that they had the right men. All were acquitted. No evidence was offered. No witness cared to meet the fate of Blake. Silence, in this case, was golden, and no mistake about it. Walking from the railway station along the main street, in the very heart of the town, you see on your left the modest steeple of the Protestant church, some fifty yards down Church Street. The town is built on two parallel streets, and Church Street is the principal connecting artery, about a hundred yards long. Exactly opposite the church the houses on the right recede some five or six feet from the rank; and here poor Sergeant Linton met his death. He was an Antrim man, a Black Presbyterian, and a total abstainer. His integrity was so well known that he was exempted from attendance at the police roll-call. He was death on secret societies, and was thought to know too much. In the soft twilight of a summer's eve he left the main street and sauntered down Church Street. When he reached the indentation above-mentioned a man shot him with a revolver, and fled into the main street. The unfortunate officer gave chase, pursuing the assassin along the principal thoroughfare, his life-blood ebbing fast, until, on reaching the front of Nevin's Hotel, he fell dead. Arrests were made, and, as before, the criminal was undoubtedly secured. Again no evidence. The murderer was liberated, but he wisely left the country, and will hardly return. A policeman said: "There was no doubt about the case. The criminal was there. Everybody spotted the man, even those who did not see him shoot. But nobody spoke, and if they had spoken he would have got off just the same. The people of this happy country have brought the art of defeating the law to its highest perfection. The most ignorant peasants know all its weak spots, and they work them well, very well indeed, from their own point of view. Suppose ten of Linton's comrades had seen the shot fired, and that they had immediately caught the assassin, with the revolver in his hands. The jury would not have convicted him. Yes, I know that the judge in certain cases can set aside the verdict of the jury. If you did that in Ireland it would cost some lives. Wouldn't there be a shindy! And then there's strong judges and weak judges. Judges don't like being shot more than other people. And Irish judges are made of flesh and blood. Look at O'Halloran's case. I was in the Court when it was tried. A moonlighting case. The police caught a man on the spot, with a rifle having a double load. The thing was clear as the sun at noonday. Acquitted. The jury said, 'Not guilty'; and the man went quietly home. The administration of justice with a weak judge, or with a strong judge who feels a weak Government behind him, is a farce in Ireland. "What will happen if we do not get the Bill? I think there will be some disturbance--the ruffians are always with us--although the people do not want Home Rule. I mean, they don't care about it. The bulk of the people would not give sixpence for Home Rule. They have been told it will pay them well, and they go in for that. Not one of them would have Home Rule if it cost him a penny, unless he believed he'd get twopence for his outlay. It's the land, and nothing else. The party that puts the land question on a comfortable footing will rule Ireland for ever. That's the opinion of every man in the force, in Loughrea or elsewhere. We have a curiosity here--a priest who goes against Home Rule. A very great man he was, head of a college or something, not one of the common ruck, and he's dead against it, and says so openly. The _Tuam News_ used to pitch into him, but he didn't care, so they got tired of it. No good rowing people up when they laugh at you." An old woman of the type too common in Ireland came up as the officer left me, and said:-- "Musha, now, but 'tis the foin, handsome man ye are, an' ye've a gintleman's face on ye, bedad ye have, an,'" here she showed a halfpenny in her withered claw, "this is all I got since I kem out, and me that's twistin' wid the rummatacks like the divil on a hot griddle; the holy Mother o' God knows its thrue, an' me ould man, that's seventy or eighty or more--the divil a one o' him knows his own age--he's that sick an' bad, an' that wake intirely, that he couldn't lift a herrin' wid a pair o' hot tongs; 'tis an ulster he has, that does be ruinin' him, the docthor says; bad luck to it for an ulster wid a powltice, an' he's growlin' that he has no tobacky, God help him. (Here I gave her something.) Almighty God open ye the gates in heaven, the Holy Mother o' God pour blessin's upon ye. 'Tis Englishmen I like, bedad it is; the grandest, foinest, greatest counthry in the wuruld, begorra it is--an' why not?" This outburst somehow reminded me of a certain gentleman I met at the Railway Hotel, Athenry. He said, "I'm a Home Ruler out and out. The counthry's widin a stone's throw o' Hell, an' we may as well be in it althegither." "Now, Mr. Kelly," said the charming Miss O'Reilly, "you are most inconsistent; you sometimes say you are a Conservative----" "Aye, aye," assented Mr. Kelly, "but that's only when I'm sober!" The Loughreans are quiet now, but the secret societies which dealt so lightly with human life are still at work, and the best-informed people believe that the murderous emissaries of the Land League, whose terrorism ruined the town, are only kept down by a powerful and vigilant police. I have only described three of the murders which took place in the town and neighbourhood during a comparatively short period. Add Mr. Burke and driver Wallace; both shot dead near Craughwell. J. Connor, of Carrickeele, who had accepted a situation as bog-ranger, _vice_ Keogh, discharged. Shot. Three men arrested. No evidence. Patrick Dempsey, who had taken a small farm from which Martin Birmingham had been evicted. Shot dead in the presence of his two small children, with whom he was walking to church. No evidence. No convictions, but many more crimes, both great and small. So many murders that outrages do not count for much. It is to the men who are directly responsible for all these horrors that Mr. Gladstone proposes to entrust the government of Ireland. Loughrea, May 16th. No. 23.--THE REIGN OF INDOLENCE. I have just returned from Innishmore, the largest of the Aran islands, the population of which have been lifted from a condition of chronic starvation and enabled to earn their own livelihood by the splendid organisation of Mr. Balfour for the relief of the congested districts. Postal and other exigences having compelled a hasty return to the mainland, I defer a full account of this most interesting visit until my next letter, when I shall also be in possession of fuller and more accurate information than is attainable on the island itself. Meanwhile, let us examine the state of Irish feeling by the sad sea waves of Galway Bay. Salthill is a plucky little bathing place; that is, plucky for Ireland. It is easily accessible from Galway town, and looks over the bay, but it is more like a long natural harbour without ships. There is a mile or so of promenade with stone seats at intervals, a shingle dotted with big rocks, a modicum of slate-coloured sand, like that of Schevening, in Holland, and blue hills opposite, like those of Carlingford Lough. The promenade is kerbed by a massive sea wall of limestone, and here and there flights of stone steps lead to the water's edge. Facing the sea are handsome villas, with flower gardens, tidy gravelled walks, shrubberies, snowy window blinds and other appurtenances of a desperately Protestant appearance. No large hotels, no villas with "Apartments" on a card in the fanlight, no boatmen plying for hire, no boats even, either ashore or afloat; no bathing-machines no anything the brutal Saxon mostly needs, except fresh air and blazing sunshine. The Galway end of this fashionable resort has a few shady houses, aggressively Anglicised with names like Wave View House and Elm Tree View, the first looking at a whitewashed wall, the second at a telegraph post. But although some of these houses announce "Furnished Lodgings," no English tourists would "take them on." If you want to bathe you walk into the sea as you stand, or hand your toga virilis to the bystanders, if any. The Connaught folks have no false modesty. A white-haired gentleman descends from a wagonette and promenades for a while. Then he sits down beside me. The conversation turns on Home Rule. My friend is impatient, has been spending a few days in Belfast. The ignorance of the poor people is astonishing. A Roman Catholic of the Northern city told him that the first act of the Irish Parliament would be to level Cave Hill, and on the site thereof to build cottages for the poor. The hill was full of diamonds, which Queen Victoria would not allow the poor Irish folks to get. The country would be full of money. Didn't Mr. Gladstone say we'd have too much?--a clear allusion to the "chronic plethora." The people would have the upper hand, as they ought to have, and the first thing would be to evict the evictors. The only question was, would they clear out peaceably, or would it be necessary to call in the aid of the Irish Army of Independence? "This poor man evidently believed that every respectable person, everybody possessing means and property, was an enemy to the commonwealth. An ardent Home Ruler asked me if the majority had a right to rule. He thought that was a triumphant, an unanswerable question. I replied that during a long and busy life I had always observed how, in successful enterprises, the majority did not rule. The intelligent minority, the persons who had shown their wisdom, their industry, their sagacity, their integrity, that they were competent and reliable, those, I said, were the people who were entrusted with the management of great affairs, and not the many-headed mob. The management of Irish affairs promises to be a task of tremendous difficulty, and those to whom you propose to entrust this huge and complicated machinery stand convicted of inability to manage with even tolerable success such comparatively simple affairs as the party journal, or the rent collection of new Tipperary. Both these enterprises turned out dead failures owing to the total incapacity of the Irish Parliamentary party. And we are asked to entrust the future of the country to these men, whose only qualifications are a faculty for glib talk and an unreasonable hatred of everything English. "Mr. Gladstone has shown to demonstration that statesmen are no longer to direct the course of legislation; are no longer to lead the people onward in the paths of progressive improvement. The unthinking, uneducated masses are in future to signify their will, and statesmen are to be the automata to carry out their behests, whatever they may be. The unwashed, unshorn incapables who have nothing, because they lack the brains and industry to acquire property, are nowadays told that they, and they alone, shall decide the fate of empires, shall decide the ownership of property, shall manipulate the fortunes of those who have raised themselves from the dirt by ability, self-denial, and unremitting hard work. Look at the comparative returns of the illiterate electorate. In Scotland 1 in 160, in England 1 in 170, in Ireland 1 in 5. In one quarter of Donegal, a Catholic one, more illiterates than in all Scotland. Not that there is so much difference as these figures would seem to show. But if men who can write declare themselves illiterate, so that the priests and village ruffians may be satisfied as to how they individually voted, is not this still more deplorable? The conduct of the English Gladstonians passes my comprehension. They do not examine for themselves. They say Mr. Gladstone says so-and-so, and for them this is sufficient. Do they say their prayers to the Grand Old Man?" Another Salthill malcontent said:--"An English visitor sneeringly asked me how it was that the Irish could not trust one another. I said, 'We cannot trust these men, and we can give you what ought to be a satisfactory reason for our distrust. They have been condemned as criminals by a competent tribunal, presided over by three English judges, one of them a Roman Catholic. They have been found guilty of criminal conspiracy, of sympathy with crime, and of having furnished the means for its committal, and that after the fairest trial ever held in the world. By a law passed in 1787 by Grattan's Parliament they would have suffered the punishment of death for this same criminal conspiracy. And, apart from Home Rule, leaving the present agitation altogether out of the question, the respectable classes of Ireland entirely object to be represented by such men, either at Westminster or College Green. Their conduct has done more to ruin Ireland than any other calamity which the country has endured for long ages. They have displayed an ingenuity of torture, and a refinement of cruelty, worthy of the Inquisition. Look at the case of District-inspector Murphy, of Woodford, in this county. Not by any means the worst of the tens of thousands of cases all over the country, but impressive to me because it came under my own observation. At the trial of Wilfrid Blunt, Mr. Murphy deposed upon oath that so severely was he boycotted for the mere performance of his duty, that his children were crying for bread, and that he was unable to give them any. Policemen had to bring milk from miles away. In other cases the pupils of these patriots, the preachers of the Land League, poured human filth into the water supply of their victims, who were in many cases ladies of gentle birth and children of tender years. Go up to Cong, and walk out to the place where Lord Mountmorres was murdered, near Clonbur. His whole income was £150 or £200, a poor allowance for a peer, one of the noble house of De Montmorency. He was shot in broad daylight, a dozen houses within call, and an open uncovered country, save for low stone walls, all around. The people danced in derision on the spot where he fell, and threw soil stained with his life blood in the air. He wanted his due, and, goodness knows, he was poor enough to satisfy oven an Irish agitator. His name was down for the next vacancy among the resident magistrates. The people who were guilty of inciting to those outrages are the most prominent of the Nationalist party. Is this the class of men you wish to set over us as governors?" An artist named Hamilton, a Guernsey man, said, "The English people do not understand what stonethrowing means in Ireland. They read of rows, and so long as no shooting is done, they do not think it serious. The men of Connaught are wonderful shots with big stones, and you would be surprised at the force and precision with which they hurl great lumps of rock weighing three or four pounds. Poor Corbett, a man in Lord Ardilaun's employ, was killed outright by one of these missiles, and only the other day I was reading of the Connaught Rangers in Egypt, the old 88th, how they were short of ammunition at the battle of Aboukir, and how they tore down a wall and actually stopped the French, who were advancing with the bayonet." A Galway merchant said:--"Balfour is the man for Ireland. A Nationalist member told me he was the cleverest man in the House. He said, 'Chamberlain goes in for hard hitting, and he is very effective, but nobody ever answered the Irish members so readily and smartly as Balfour. We thought twice before we framed our questions, and although we of course disapprove of him, we are bound to admire him immensely.' And as a business man I think Balfour was fully up to the mark. He it was who subsidised the Midland and Western Railway to build the light line now being made between Galway and Clifden. No company would have undertaken such a concern. As a mere business transaction it could not pay. But look at the good that is being done. The people were starving for want of employment, and no unskilled labour is imported to the district, so that the Connemara folks get the benefit of the work, and also a permanent advantage by the opening up of the Galway fisheries, which are practically inexhaustible. We have the Atlantic to go at. And the fish out of the deep, strong, running water are twice as big as those just off the coast, on herring-banks and shoals. The fishermen know this, and they call these places the mackerel hospitals and infirmaries. These fishermen always knew it, but they had no boats to go out to the deep seas, no nets, no tackle. They have them now, and they got them from Balfour. They get nothing but Home Rule from Morley and Gladstone, and they find it keeps them free from indigestion, although it puts their livers out of order. Amusing chaps, these fishermen. I was in a little country place on the coast, where the judicial and magisterial proceedings are of a very primitive character, and where most of the people speak Irish as their vernacular. One old chap declined to give evidence in English, and asked for an interpreter. The magistrate, who knew the old wag, said, 'Michael Cahill, you speak English very well,' to which the old man replied, ''Tis not for the likes o' me to conthradict yer honner, but divil resave the word iv it I ondhersthand at all, at all.' There was a great roar from the Court, and the interpreter was trotted forward. Another witness was said to have been drunk, but he claimed to be a temperance man. 'What do you drink,' said the magistrate. 'Wather, yer honner,' said the total abstainer. 'Jist pure wather from the spring there beyant,' and then he looked round the Court, and slyly added, 'Wid jist as much whiskey as will take off the earthy taste, yer honner.' He was like the temperance lecturer who preached round Galway, and was afterwards seen crushing sugar in a stiff glass of the crathur at Oughterard. When he was caught redhanded, as it were, he said, 'To be sure I'm a timprance man, but, bedad, ye can't say that I'm a bigoted one'! "We want Morley to give us a light railway from Clifden to Westport, and then we'd have the whole coast supplied. But he's a tight-fisted one as regards practical work. We've no chance with him, except in matters of sentiment. He wants to give Home Rule, but we can't eat that. And my impression is that we are fast drifting into the position of the man who has nothing, and from whom shall be taken the little that he hath. As to arguments against Home Rule, I do not think it a case for argument. That the thing is bad is self-evident; and self-evident propositions, whether in Euclid or elsewhere, are always the most difficult to prove. Ask me to prove that two added to two make four, ask me how many beans make five, and I gracefully retire. Ask me to show that Home Rule will be bad for Ireland, and I will make but a slight departure from this formula. I say, on the supporters of Home Rule rests the _onus probandi_; they are the people who should show cause, let them prove their case in its favour. Here I am, quite satisfied with the laws as they now are. Show me, say I, how I shall benefit by the proposed change. That knocks them speechless. In England they may make a pretence of proving their case, but in this country they are dumb in the presence of Unionists. They cannot argue with enlightened people. They have not a leg to stand upon, and they know it. "Consider the fulminations of Archbishop Walsh with regard to that Dublin Freemason Bazaar in aid of orphan children. As you must have heard, the Sacraments were refused to any Catholic attending this purely charitable movement. The Church said in effect--Any one who aids the orphans of freemasons by going to this bazaar, or by patronising the function, whether directly or indirectly, will be damned everlastingly. And the Catholics kept away, frightened by this threat. What would you expect of a people who believe such rubbish? Do you think that a people powerfully influenced, supremely influenced, by the word of a priest are fit to govern themselves? Can you depend on the loyalty of the Catholic priesthood? You surely know better than that. Suppose you gave Ireland Home Rule, and the Church turned rusty? With matters in the hands of an Irish Parliament, who would have the pull in weight of influence, John Bull or the priests? You are walking into a snare with your eyes open. Soon you will be punching your own head and calling yourself a fool. And you will be quite right. England is giving herself away at the bidding of a crowd of fellows who in Ireland are not received into decent society, and few of whom could get 'tick' for a week's board or a week's washing. Not that the latter would be much hardship. Clean linen is a novelty to the bulk of them. And seventy-one out of eighty of these upstarts must do the bidding of the priests. "Poor old Bull! The fine fellow he was. Respected by everybody. Strong but good-humoured, never hurting a soul. Slapping his breeches pocket now and then, and looking round the world with an eye that seemed to say, 'I could buy and sell the lot of ye; look what a fine fellow I am!' And he was. And he knew it, too. His only fault. Ready to lend a deserving friend a trifle, and apt to poke his nose into what didn't concern him, especially when a small country was being put upon. Then John would come up and say, 'Let him alone, will yer.' A laughing-stock in his old age. But yesterday he might have stood before the world: now none so poor to do him reverence,--Shakespeare! That's what's coming. Poor old Bull! In his dotage making a rod to whip himself. Well, well." There are Presbyterians at Salthill. Wherever they are they always wear good coats, have good houses, well-clad children. To be comfortably off seems part of their creed. One of them said, "There never was a more faithful worshipper of the Grand Old Man than myself,--up to a certain time, I mean. I dropped him before he went over to Parnell. I gave him up on account of his inconsistency. What staggered me was a trick he tried to play the Queen's College arrangements in Ireland. It was a supplemental charter really changing the whole constitution of the thing, and he tried to carry his point by a dodge. I did not care much about the matter one way or the other, but I thought his underhanded trickery unworthy a statesman, or any other man. I tried not to believe it; that is, I would rather not have believed it. I had a sort of feeling that it couldn't be. But it was so. Then his pamphlet about Vaticanism, in which he said no Roman Catholic could be loyal, after which he appointed the Marquess of Ripon, a Catholic convert, or pervert, to the Governor-Generalship of India, the most important office in the gift of the Crown. Again, I had no objection to the action in itself, but I considered it from Mr. Gladstone's point of view, and then it dawned on me that he would say anything. You never know what he'll do next. What he says is no guide at all nowadays to what he'll do. He was my hero, but a change has come over him, and now he cannot be trusted. He ought to be looked after in some public institution where the keepers wouldn't contradict him. He was a great man before his mind gave way." A bustling Belfaster of fatiguing vitality told me this little story which my friends the Catholic clergy may disprove if they can. He said:--"Mr. McMaster, of the firm of Dunbar, McMaster and Co., of Gilford, County Down, conceived the idea of aiding his fellow-countrymen and women who were starving in the congested districts. This was some time ago, but it is a good illustration of the difficulty you have in helping people who will not help themselves. He drew up a scheme, well thought-out and workable, such as a thorough business man might be expected to concoct, and sent down his agent to the districts of Gweedore in Donegal and Maam in Galway, with instructions to engage as many families as possible to work in the mills of the firm, noted all over the world for thread, yarn, and linen-weaving. An enormous affair, employing a whole township. The agent was provided with a document emanating from the priest of the district into which they were invited to migrate, setting forth that no proselytism was intended, and that the migrants would be under the care of Catholic clergy. As they had neither money nor furniture worth moving, it was agreed to pay the cost of transit, and to provide clean, sweet cottages, ready furnished, and with every reasonable convenience. The furniture was to be paid for by instalments, but the cost of removal was to be a gift from Mr. McMaster, who was desirous of aiding the people without pauperising them. They were to work the ordinary factory hours, as enacted by statute, and to be paid the ordinary wages. But they were required to work regularly. No saints' days, no lounging about on the "pattherns" (patron saints' days), no in-and-out running, but steady, regular attendance. People who knew the Keltic Irish laughed at Mr. McMaster, but he had seen their poverty, their filth, their mud cabins, their semi-starvation, and he thought he knew. He offered them work, and everything they seemed to want, out of pure humanity. "How many people moved to Gilford out of the two counties?" "Peradventure there might be a hundred found, peradventure there might be fifty, thirty, twenty, ten." "Guess again. Give it up? Not a single solitary soul accepted Mr. McMaster's offer. These are the people who are waiting for Home Rule. Much good may it do them." A little Galway man became irate. "'Tis our birthright to hate England. That's why we want Home Rule that we may tache thim their place. I'd fight England, an' I'd do more." Here he looked sternly at the Ulsterman. "I'd do more, I say, I'd fight thim that'd shtand up for her. D'ye see me now?" The Belfast man proved an awkward customer. He said, "You're too busy to fight anybody just now, you Nationalists. Wait till you've settled your differences, wait till you've cut each other's throats, wait till you've fought over the plunder, like the Kilkenny cats, till there's nothing left of you but the tail. Then we'll send down an army of owld women with besoms to sweep ye into the Atlantic. 'Twill be the first bath your Army of Independence ever got. 'Twill cool their courage and clean their hides at the same time." The small Separatist was about to make an angry reply, when I interposed with an inquiry as to his estimate of Mr. Gladstone. "Ah," said the little man, with a pucker of his little nose, and a grand gesture of contempt, "sure he's not worth as much powdher as would blow him to hell." His sentiment lacks novelty, but I quote him for the picturesqueness of his style. Salthill, May 18th. No. 24.--THE ARAN ISLANDS. The Aran Islanders seem to have passed most of their time in a state of chronic starvation. The land seems to grow little but rock, and the burning of seaweed, the kelp trade, does not seem to have helped them much. True, the Atlantic was all before them, where to choose, but what Father Mahony would call the teeming treasures of the deep were practically left untouched. If we accept the plain meaning of the good priest's speech, we must believe that the Aran Islanders and Irish fishermen generally preferred to starve rather than to catch fish, unless an Irish Parliament were fixed on College Green. They had no objection to accept charitable aid, no matter from what quarter it came, and the Araners required assistance every other year. They were not unwilling to catch fish, but they had nothing to catch them with; and, strange as it may seem, these islanders, who could scarcely move five yards in any direction without falling into the sea, these amphibious Irishmen, did not know the art of catching fish! They tinkered and slopped around the shoals in the vicinity of the island, but they were never able to catch enough fish to keep themselves from starvation, much less to supply the Dublin and London markets. Their boats were the most primitive affairs imaginable, and showed the Irish spirit of conservatism to perfection. These coraghs are practically the same boat as the Welsh coracle, but much larger. Those I examined were from ten to fifteen feet long and three feet wide. Oak ribs, over which are nailed laths of white deal, two inches wide and half an inch thick. Cover this slight skeleton with tarred canvas, and the ship is nearly complete. It only needs two pairs of wooden thole-pins, and two pairs of oars, long, light, and thin, coming nearly to a point at the water-end, having a perforated block which works on the thole-pins before-mentioned. You want no keel, no helm, no mast. Stay! You need a board or two for seats for the oarsmen. With these frail cockleshells the Araners adventure themselves twelve miles on the Atlantic, and mostly come home again. These makeshift canoes are almost useless for catching fish. Having no helm, it is hard to keep them straight; having no keel, it is needful to sit still, or at any rate to maintain a perfect balance, or over you go. A gust of wind spins the canoe round like a top. These primeval boats are made on the island, thrown together out of fifteen-pennyworth of wood, a few yards of canvas, and a pitch-pot. They have some virtues. They are cheap, and they will not sink. The coraghs always come back, even if bottom up. And when they reach the shore the two occupants (if any) invert the ship, stick a head in the stem and another in the stern, and carry her home to tea. This process is apt to puzzle the uninformed visitor, who sees a strange and fearful animal, like a huge black-beetle, crawling up the cliffs. He begins to think of "antres huge and deserts vast, and anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." He hesitates about landing, but if he be on the Duras, Captain Neal Delargy, who equally scoffs at big beetles and Home Rule, will explain, and will accompany him to the tavern on the cliff side, where they charge ordinary prices for beer and give you bread-and-cheese for nothing. And yet the Araners profess to be civilised. In pursuance of his policy of helping the people to help themselves, Mr. Balfour determined to educate the Araners, and to give them sufficient help in the matter of boats and tackle to make their education of some avail. It was useless to give them boats and nets, for they knew not how to use them, and it is certain that any boat club on the Birmingham Reservoir, or any tripper who has gone mackerel fishing in Douglas Bay, could have given these fishermen much valuable information and instruction. Having once determined to attempt on a tolerably large scale the establishment of a fresh mackerel and fresh herring trade with England, Mr. Balfour set about the gigantic and discouraging task of endeavouring nothing less than the creation of the local industry. But how were the people to be taught the management of large boats, and the kind of nets that were used? After much inquiry, it was decided to subsidise trained crews from other parts of Ireland to show the local fishermen what earnings might be theirs, and at the same time to impart needful instruction to the Connemara and Aran people. It was also arranged to make loans for the purchase of boats and tackle to such persons as might prove likely to benefit by them. Accordingly arrangements were made with the crews of seven Arklow boats to proceed to the Aran Islands, and in order to indemnify them for the risk of working on an untried fishing ground, each crew received a bounty of £40 from the Congested Districts Board. But there was no use in catching fish unless it could be quickly put on the market, and again the necessary plant proved a matter involving considerable expenditure. A derelict Norwegian ship, which two or three years ago had been discovered at sea and towed into Queenstown Harbour, was purchased from the salvors, and anchored in Killeany Bay, outside the harbour of Kilronane, the capital city of the biggest Aran, as an ice-hulk. The Board then entered into an agreement with Mr. W.W. Harvey, of Cork, to market the mackerel at a fixed rate of commission, it being also arranged that he should pay the fishermen the English market price less by a deduction of 7s. a box to cover the cost of ice-packing, carriage, and English salesman's commission. The ice-hulk and boxes were provided by the Board, but Mr. Harvey was to purchase the ice and defray all the cost of labour except the salary of a manager. In addition to the seven Arklow crews two boats were fitted out by Miss Mansfield for training crews from the parish of Carna, in Connemara; and Miss Skerritt also placed two English-built boats at the Board's disposal for the training of crews from the pretty watering place of Clifden, also in Connemara. An Aran hooker, belonging to Innishmore, joined the little fishing fleet, bringing up the number to exactly a dozen boats. The Rev. W.S. Green, a Protestant parson, who is said to have first discovered these fishing grounds, and who threw himself into the work with wonderful enthusiasm, superintended the experiment in the steamer Fingal, which was specially chartered for the purpose. Mr. Green as a skilled Fisheries Inspector, knew what he was about, and he was empowered to lend nets, where advisable, to the Aran beginners. Away they went to sea, to start with a fortnight's heart-breaking luck. The water in those regions was cold, and the fish were amusing themselves elsewhere. The ice-hulk with its two hundred tons of Norwegian ice was waiting, and its staff of packers might cool their ardour in the hold. The mackerel would not come to be packed, and the dozen boats, with their master and apprentice crews, cruised up and down on the deep blue sea, with the blue sky overhead, and hope, like Bob Acres' valour, gradually oozing out of their finger-ends. The Arklow men began to talk of going home again. Altogether it was a blue look-out. At last the luck turned. On April 6th, 1892, six thousand mackerel were despatched to the English market. The weather during much of the season was stormy and unfavourable, but on May 18th, seventy-three thousand three hundred and fifty mackerel were sent to Galway, thirty miles away by sea, and were forwarded thence by two special trains. The Midland and Western Railway, under the management of Mr. Joseph Tatlow, has been prompt, plucky, and obliging, and runs the fish to Dublin as fast as they arrive in Galway. During the season of ten weeks the experienced Arklow crews made on an average £316 per boat, and the greenhorns who were learning the business earned about £70 per boat, although they could not fish at all at the beginning of the season. The total number of mackerel packed on the ice-hulk amounted to the respectable total of two hundred and ninety-nine thousand four hundred and eighty. The "teeming treasures of the deep" were not left untouched on this occasion, though, doubtless, "still the Irish peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel English yoke." Mr. Balfour's benefactions have not been confined to the Aran Islands. Every available fishing place from top to bottom of the whole west coast has been similarly aided, and the value of their produce has increased from next to nothing to something like fifty thousand pounds per month. This on the authority of Father P.J. McPhilpin, parish priest of Kilronane, Innishmore, who said:-- "We never had a Chief Secretary who so quickly grasped the position, who so rapidly saw what was the right thing to do, and who did it so thoroughly and so promptly. Strange to say the Liberals are always the most illiberal. When we get anything for Ireland it somehow always seems to come from the Tories." Having been carried from Galway to the ice-hulk in Killeany Bay, and having been duly put ashore in a boat, one of the first persons I saw was Father Thomas Flatley, coadjutor of Father McPhilpin, an earnest Home Ruler, like his superior, and like him a great admirer of Mr. Balfour. Father Flatley wore a yachting cap, or I might have sheered off under all sail--the biretta inspires me with affright--but his nautical rig reassured me, and yawing a little from my course, I put up my helm and boarded him. Too late I saw the black flag--I mean the white choker--but there was nothing of the pirate about Father Tom. He was kindly, courteous, earnest, humorous, hospitable, and full of Latin quotations. Before our acquaintance was two minutes old he invited me to dinner. Then I ran aground on an Arklow boatman, James Doyle by name, a smart tweed-suited sailor, bright and gay. The Post Office was near, and the letters were being given out. Three deliveries a week, weather permitting. The parish priest was there, grave, refined, slightly ascetic, with the azure blue eyes so common in Connaught, never seen in England, although frequently met with in Norway and North Germany. The waiting-women were barefoot, but all the men were shod. The Araners have a speciality in shoes--pampooties, to wit. These are made of raw hide, hair outwards, the toe-piece drawn in, and the whole tied on with string or sinew. The cottages are better built than many on the mainland. Otherwise the winter gales would blow them into the Atlantic main. The thatch is pegged down firmly, and then tied on with a close network of ropes. The people are clean, smart, and good-looking. Miss Margaret Flanagan, who escorted me in my search after pampooties, would pass for a pretty girl anywhere, and the Aran Irish flowed from her lips like a rivulet of cream. She spoke English too. An accomplished young lady, Miss Margaret Kilmartin, aged nineteen, said her father had been wrongfully imprisoned for two and a half years for shooting a bailiff. The national sports are therefore not altogether unknown in the Arans. Miss Kilmartin was _en route_ for America, per Teutonic, first to New York, and then a thousand miles by rail, alone, and without a bonnet. She had never been off the island. This little run would be her first flutter from the paternal nest. The Araners know little of politics, save that the Balfour Government lifted them out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and set their feet upon a rock and established their goings. The Balfour boats are there, the Balfour nets are full of fish, the Balfour boys are learning a useful occupation, and earning money meanwhile. If there is anything in the Aran cupboards, the Araners know who enabled them to put it there. If the young ladies have new shoes, new shawls, new brooches; if the Aran belles make money by mending nets; if the men sometimes see beef; if they compass the thick twist; if they manage without the everlasting hat going round, they have Mr. Balfour to thank, and they know it. They own it, not grudgingly or of necessity, but cheerfully. One battered old wreck raised his hat at every mention of the name. I saw no Morley boats. I saw no Gladstone nets. I saw no Home Rule fish. The Araners do not care for the Grand Old Mendacium. Perhaps they lack patriotism. It may be that they do not share what Mr. Gladstone calls the Aspirations of a people. So far as I could judge, their principal aspiration is to get something to eat. A pampootied native who has often visited the main-land, and is evidently looked upon as a mountain of sagacity and superior wisdom, said to me-- "Not a bit they care but to look afther the wife and childher an' pray to God for good takes o' fish. An' small blame to thim. Before Balfour the people were starvin', an' ivery other year Father Davis that's dead this six months would go round beggin' an' prayin' for a thrifle to kape life in thim. The hardships and the misery the poor folks had, God alone knows. An' would ye say to thim, 'tis Home Rule ye want? "There was a young fellow fishin' here from Dublin. He went out in the hookers an' injoyed himself all to pieces, a dacent sthrip of a boy, but wid no more brains than a scalpeen (pickled mackerel). He got me to be interpreter to an owld man that would spake wid him over on Innishmair, an' the owld chap wos tellin' his throubles. So afther a bit, the young fellow says, says he, "''Tis Home Rule ye want,' says he. "'No,' says the owld chap, shakin' his head, 'tis my dinner I want,' says he. "An' that young fellow was mad whin I thranslated it. But 'twas thrue, ivery word iv it. 'Ah! the ignorance, the ignorance,' says he. But then he was spakin' on a full stomach, an' 'tis ill arguin' betwixt a full man and a fastin'. "I wouldn't say but they'd take more notice afther a while. But they're not used to bein' prosperous, an' they don't know themselves at all. Ye can't cultivate politics on low feed. 'Tis the high livin' that makes the Parliamint men that can talk for twenty-four hours at a sthretch. An' these chaps is gettin' their backs up. In twelve months' time they'll be gettin' consated. 'Tis Balfour that's feedin' thim into condition. Vote against him? Av coorse they will, ivery man o' thim. Sure they'll be towld to vote for a man, an' they'll do it. How would they ondhersthand at all? Av 'twas Misther Balfour himself that wanted their vote he'd get it fast enough. But 'tisn't. An' they'll vote agin' him without knowin' what they're doin'." Father McPhilpin said, "It is very hard to get them to move. The Irish people are the most conservative in the world. They will not stir for telling, and they will not stir when you take them by the collar and haul them along. They are wedded to the customs of their ancestors; and yet, when once they see the advantage to be obtained by any given change, no people are so quick to follow it up. The difficulty is to start them. The Araners had actually less knowledge of the sea, of boats, nets, and fishing, than people coming here from an inland place. Surprising, but quite true." Speaking on the general question of Home Rule, I asked Father McPhilpin if the people of Ireland would be loyal. "Loyal to what?" said the Father, replying quickly. "Loyal to England, to the Crown, to Queen Victoria." "The Irish people have always been loyal--much more loyal than the English people. You have only to look at English history. How far shall I go back, Father Tom?" said my genial host to the coadjutor, who just then entered the room. "Shall we go back to Henry II.? Where shall we begin, Father Tom?" "Well," said Father Tom, "I'd not be for going back quite so far. I think if we began with Charles I.----" "Very good. Now, were not the Irish loyal when the English people disloyally favoured their Oliver Cromwell and their William the Third?" I proceeded with the imbibition of Father McPhilpin's excellent tea. The answer was obvious, but Father Tom clearly believed that his senior had me on the hip, and good-naturedly came in with a Latin quotation or two. Both clerics were deeply interested in the condition of the poor in their charge, and indeed all over Ireland, and their profound belief that a Home Rule Bill would benefit the poorer classes, by changing the conditions affecting the tenure or ownership of land, was apparently their chief reason for advocating a College Green Parliament. Father McPhilpin holds some honorary official position in connection with the Aran fisheries, and from him I derived most of my information. Another authority assured me that the Araners were not grateful to England nor to Mr. Balfour, and spoke of the viper that somebody warmed in his bosom with disagreeable results. But, as Father Tom would say, _Omnis comparatio claudicat_, and all my experience points to a proper appreciation of the great ex-Secretary's desire to do the country good. The people know how thoroughly he examined the subject; how he spent weeks in the Congested Districts; how he saw the parish priests, the head men of the districts, the cotters themselves. Every Irishman, whatever his politics, will readily agree that Mr. Balfour knows more about Ireland than any Englishman living, and most of them credit him with more knowledge of the subject than any Irishman. My thorough-going friend, Mr. McCoy, of Galway, hater of England, avowed Separatist, longing to wallow in the brutal Saxon's gore, thinks Mr. Balfour the best friend that Ireland ever had. "I'd agree with you there," said Mr. McCoy. "I don't agree with charity, but I agree with putting people in a way to do things for themselves, which is what Mr. Balfour has done." Back on the ice-hulk by favour of Thomas Joyce, of Kilronane, skipper and owner of a fishing smack. Mr. William Fitzgerald showed the factory, the great hold with the ice, the windmill which pumps the hulk, the mountains of boxes for fish, the mackerel in process of packing, sixty in a box, most of them very large fish. An unhappy halibut, which had come to an untimely end, stood on his tail in a narrow basket, his mouth wide open, looking like a Home Rule orator descanting on the woes of Ireland. He was slapped into a box and instantly nailed down, which summary process suggested an obvious wish. Mr. Fitzgerald said: "The fisheries have been a great success, and have done much good. The spring fishery paid well on account of the great price we got for the mackerel. It is not customary to catch fish so early, but when you can do it it pays splendidly. Just now the price is not up to the mark, but we hope for better times. The Arklow men are not subsidised this year. They didn't need it. The ground proved productive, and they were glad to come on their own hook. If they had required a second subsidy they would not have got it." "Why not?" "I'm no politician," said Mr. Fitzgerald. "The Araners are so strong and hardy that they would surprise you. They will stand all day on the ice, with nothing on but those pampooties, and you would think they'd need iron soles, instead of a bit of skin. They work hard, and come regularly and give no trouble. No, I could not find any fault with them. They mostly speak Irish among themselves. It's Greek to me, but I can make out that they think a great deal of Mr. Balfour." A week on the hulk would be refreshing, for on one side there is no land nearer than America. However, I have to go, for the Duras is getting uneasy, so I leave the hulk, the mackerel, the big sea trout which are caught with the mackerel, and steam back to Galway. A splendid fellow in the cabin discloses his views. "We must have complete independence. We shall start with 120,000 men for the Army of Independence. That will be only a nucleus. We shall attract all the brave, chivalrous, adventurous spirits of America. England has India to draw from. Trot your niggers over, we'll make short work of them. We draw from America, Australia, every part of the world. We draw from 24,000,000 of Irishmen all willing to fight for nothing, and even to pay money to be allowed to fight against England. An Irish Republic, under the protection of America. That's the idea. It's the natural thing. Work the two countries together and England may slide. We'll have an Independent Irish Republic in four years; perhaps in three years. Rubbish about pledges of loyalty. The people must be loyal to themselves, not to England. Our members will do what the people want, or they will be replaced by men who will. We have the sentiments of the people, backed by the influence of religion, all tending to complete independence. Who's going to prevent it? We'll have a Declaration of Independence on Saint Patrick's Day, 1897, at latest. Who'll stop it? Mr. Gladstone? Why long before that time we'll convert him, and ten to one he'll draw up the document. What'll you bet that he doesn't come over to Dublin and read it in THE HOUSE?" Galway, May 20th. No. 25.--THE PRIESTS AND OUTRAGE. THEY NEVER CONDEMNED IT. The people of Moycullen with whom I have spent a day are hardly patriotic. So far as I can gather, they have always paid their rents and worked hard for their living. They know nothing of Home Rule, and they do not murder their friends and neighbours. They send forth a strong contingent of men to work on Mr. Balfour's railway between Galway and Clifden, and find the weekly wages there earned very convenient. They vote as they are told, and do not trouble themselves with matters which are too high for them. If a candidate proposes to make the land much cheaper, or even to spare the necessity of paying any rent at all, the Moyculleners give him their voice. Like every Catholic villager in Ireland they look to Father Pat, Tom, Dick, or Harry for advice, and the good priest gives them the right tip. He points out that Micky O'Codlin promises to support such legislation as shall place the land in the hands of the tillers of the soil, while the Protestant Short declares that the thing is not honest, and cannot be done. The result is precisely what might be expected. The Nationalist members are returned, and Mr. Gladstone, with his most grandiose manner, and with the abject magnanimity he always shows when thoroughly beaten, comes forward and declares he can no longer resist the aspirations of a people. The Separatist sheep tumble over each other in their nervous anxiety to keep close on the heels of the bell-wether, and the Empire is threatened with disintegration to suit the convenience of a party of priests. An eminent Roman Catholic lawyer of Dublin, a Home Ruler, said to me:-- "I vote for Home Rule because the sooner the thing is settled the better, and it will never be settled until we get Home Rule in some form or other. The country is weary of the agitation of the last twenty years, and I am of opinion that Home Rule would do much to restore the freedom of Ireland. For Ireland is in a state of slavery--not to England, but to the priesthood. I believe in the fundamental doctrines of the faith, but I don't believe everything the priests choose to tell me. I am ready to admit that they have more spiritual gifts and graces than anybody else, but I will not believe that they know more about politics, and I will not submit to their dictation. They control the course of affairs both sacred and secular. At the present moment they are running the British Empire. You cannot get away from the fact that they return the Irish majority, and you will admit that the Irish majority is now the ruling power. Let me illustrate my point. "You in England think we have the franchise in Ireland. Nothing of the kind. There may be a hundred thousand in the North who vote as they think proper, but an overwhelming majority of the South are absolutely in the hands of the clergy, who in many cases lead or drive them in hundreds to the poll." Here an English civil engineer said:--"When I was engaged on a line at Mayo I actually saw the priest walking in front of some hundreds of voters brought into the town from the rural districts. I was driving along in a car, and my driver shouted 'Parnell for ever!' He was struck on the head and face, his cheek cut open, and himself knocked off the car. How the priestly party do hate the Parnellites! I wonder what would happen if the Nationalists got into power." "They would exterminate each other, if possible," said the Dublin man. "We should have an awful ferment, a chaos, an immediate bankruptcy. But let us have it. Let us make the experiment, and thus for ever settle the question. To return to the priests. The people of Ireland have not the franchise, which is monopolised by a few thousand priests and bishops. The Nationalist members, the dauntless seventy-one, are as much the nominees of the Catholic clergy as the old pocket-borough members were nominees of the local landlords. And the same thing will hold good in future. People tell you it will not be so, but that's all humbug. It may be different in five-and-twenty years, when the people are educated, when the National Schools have done their work, but half that time is enough to ruin England. Thanks to agitators, Ireland cannot be any worse off than she is." Some time ago there was a Convention in Dublin, a Home Rule Convention. There were five hundred delegates, sent up by the votes of the people. Four hundred and nine were priests, who had returned themselves. Can the English Gladstonians get away from the suggestiveness of this fact? Is it sufficiently symptomatic? Can they not diagnose the progress of the disease? One of the Galway Town Commissioners, also a Roman Catholic, declared that the Irish people, once the kindliest, most honest, most conscientious amongst the nations of the earth, had for years been taught a doctrine of malevolence. "They were naturally benevolent, but their nature has been changed, and I regret to say that in a large measure the priests are responsible for the change. Where once mutual help and perfect honesty reigned, you now find selfishness and mutual distrust. The priests have made the altar a hustings, and even worse than electioneering has been done on that sacred spot. From the altar have been denounced old friends and neighbours who had dared to have an opinion of their own, had dared to show an independent spirit, and to hold on what they thought the true course in spite of the blackguard population of the district. Take the case of O'Mara, of Parsonstown. He was the principal merchant of the place, a very kindly man, of decided politics, a Catholic Conservative, like myself. He sold provisions to what the local priest called the 'helmeted minions of our Saxon taskmasters.' In other words, he sold bread to the constabulary at a time when outrage and murder were being put down with a strong hand. The priest threatened him with boycotting, his friends urged him to give way, and let the police get their 'prog' from a distance, but O'Mara, who was an easy-going man, and who had never obtruded his politics on anyone, showed an unexpected obstinacy, and said he would do as he chose, spite of all the priests on earth. They denounced him from the altar, but, although they tried hard, they failed to ruin him. In other cases, clerical influence has dragged men from positions of competency and caused them to end their days in the workhouse. Then, again, the priests never denounced outrage. They might have stopped the fiendish deeds of the murderous blackguards whose evil propensities were fostered and utilised by the Land League, but they said no word of disapproval. On the contrary they tacitly favoured, or seemed to favour, the most awful assassinations. When the Phoenix Park murders took place, a Galway priest whom I will not name said that he had been requested to ask for the prayers of the faithful in favour of Mr. Burke, one of the murdered men, who belonged to an old Galway family. And what was the remark made by that follower of Jesus Christ? He said, 'I have mentioned the request. You can pray for his soul--_if you like_.' What he meant was plain enough." "Let me tell you of something even worse," said the Dublin lawyer. "In a certain Catholic church which I regularly attend, and on a Sunday when were present two or three eminent Judges, with a considerable number of the Dublin aristocracy, a certain dignitary, whom I also will not name before our Sassenach friend, actually coupled the names of honest people who had died in their beds with the names of Curley and the other assassins who were hanged for the Phoenix Park murders. We were invited to pray for their souls _en bloc_! And this, mind you, not at the time of the execution, but a year afterwards, on the anniversary of the day, and when the thing might well have been allowed to drop. Did you ever hear of anything more outrageous than the conduct of this priest, who took upon himself to mention these brutal murderers in the same breath with the blessed departed, whose friends and relations were kneeling around? The fact that this cleric could so act shows the immunity of the Irish priesthood, and their confidence in their influence over the people. Don't forget that this was in the capital of Ireland, and that the congregation was aristocratic. How great must be priestly influence over the unlettered peasantry. You see my point? What would the English say to such an exhibition? What would the relatives of decent people in England do if they had been submitted to such an insult by a Protestant parson?" I disclaimed any right to speak for the brutal Saxon with any degree of authority, but ventured to say that to the best of my knowledge and belief the supposititious reverend gentleman, when next he took his walks abroad, might possibly become acquainted with a novel but vigorous method of propulsion, or even might undergo the process so familiar to Tim Healy, not altogether unconnected with a horsewhip. The Galway Town Commissioner said:--"We respectable Catholics are in a very awkward position. We have to live among our countrymen who are of a different way of thinking, and unhappily we cannot express our honest opinions without embarassing consequences. In England, where people of opposite politics meet on terms of most sincere friendship, you do not understand our difficulties. We are denounced as unpatriotic, as enemies to our native land, and as aiders and abettors of the hated English rule. Now we know very well--my friend from Dublin, who understands law, will bear me out--we know very well that the English laws are good, excellent, liberal. We know that the English people are anxious to do what is fair and right, and that they have long been doing their best to make us comfortable. But we must keep this knowledge to ourselves, for such of us who are in business would run great risk of loss, besides social ostracism, if we ventured to boldly express our views. Moreover, we do not care to put ourselves in open conflict with the clergy, upon whom we have been taught to look from earliest childhood with reverence and awe. It is almost, if not quite, a matter of heredity. I declare that, in spite of what I might call my intellectual convictions, I am to some extent overawed by any illiterate farmer's son, who has been ordained a priest. I feel it in my blood. I must have imbibed it with my mother's milk. No use for Conservative Catholics to kick against it. We are too few, and we are bound hand and foot." So did the Galway man deliver himself. I was reminded of Mr. O'Ryan, of Larne, a devoted Catholic, who said, "I protest from my innermost heart against Home Rule. I protest not only for myself, but also on behalf of my co-religionists that dare not speak, because if they did speak their lives might not be worth an hour's purchase, not being situated, as I am, in the midst of a loyal, and law-abiding population. I believe that all that Ireland requires is a just settlement of the land question, and a fair, reasonable measure of local self-government. For several generations past England has been doing all the good she could for Ireland, and none have more reason than the Roman Catholics of Ireland to be thankful for that good. The loyal Roman Catholics of Ireland are convinced that Home Rule would be the ruin of Ireland in particular and of the British Empire in general, which would find itself deprived in a few hours of a Constitution the workmanship of centuries, and the admiration of the whole nineteenth-century civilisation." This is tolerably outspoken for an Irish Roman Catholic, but Mr. O'Ryan lives in Ulster, where people do not shoot their neighbours for difference of political opinion. He said more: "We loyal Catholics could never submit to Mr. Gladstone's ticket-of-leave men placed in power over us in this country, and rather than submit to them we are prepared for the worst, and ready, if need be, to die with the words, 'No surrender,' on our lips." Archbishop Walsh cursed the Dublin Bazaar for the Irish Masonic Orphanage until he was black in the face, but neither he nor any other Catholic Bishop denounced the perpetrators of outrage, of mutilation, of foul assassinations. When Inspector Martin was butchered on the steps of the presbytery at Gweedore; when Joseph Huddy and John Huddy were murdered and their bodies put in sacks and thrown into Lough Mask; when Mrs. Croughan, of Mullingar, was murdered because she had been seen speaking to the police, four shots being fired into her body; when Luke Dillon, a poor peasant, was shot dead as he walked home from work; when Patrick Halloran, a poor herdsman, was shot dead at his own fireside; when Michael Moloney was murdered for paying his rent; when John Lennane, an old man who had accepted work from a boycotted farmer, was shot dead in the midst of his family; when Thomas Abram met precisely the same fate under similar circumstances; when Constable Kavanagh was murdered; when John Dillon had his brains beaten out and his ears torn away; when Patrick Freely was murdered for paying his rent; when John Curtin was shot dead by moonlighters, to whom he refused to give up his guns; when John Forhan, a feeble old man of nearly seventy years, was murdered for having induced labourers to work on a boycotted farm; when James Ruane, a labourer who worked for a boycotted farmer, was murdered by three shots; when James Quinn was wounded by a bullet, and while disabled, killed by having his throat cut; when Peter McCarthy was murdered because it was thought he meant to pay rent; when James Fitzmaurice, aged seventy, was shot dead in the presence of his daughter Norah, because he had taken a farm which his brother had left, the latter declining to pay rent, although the landlord offered a reduction of 66 per cent.; when Margaret Macmahon, widow, and her little children were three times fired at because the poor woman had earned a few pence by supplying turf to the police; when Patrick Quirke, aged seventy-five, was murdered for taking a farm which somebody else wanted; when the wife of John Collins was indecently assaulted while her husband was being brutally beaten for caretaking; when John Curtin (another John Curtin), a school-master, was shot, and his wife received forty-two slugs in her face, neck, and breast for something they had not done, the school also being fired into, and all children attending it boycotted; when John Connor's wife was shot in the head by moonlighters who wished to vex the husband; when Cornelius Murphy was shot dead while sitting at his "ain fireside" chatting with his wife and children; when Daniel O'Brien, aged seventy-five, talking with his wife, aged seventy, was murdered by a shot; when Patrick Quigley had the roof of his skull blown away for taking some grazing; when David Barry was shot in the main street of Castleisland; when Patrick Taugney was murdered in the presence of his wife and daughters; when Edmund Allen was shot dead because of a right-of-way dispute--he was a Protestant; when young Cashman, aged twenty, was beaten to death for speaking to a policeman; when poor Spillane was murdered for acting as a caretaker; when Patrick Curtin, John Rahen, and a farmer named Tonery were murdered; when James Spence, aged sixty-five, was beaten to death; when Blake, Ruane, Linton, Burke, Wallace, Dempsey, Timothy Sullivan, John Moylan, James Sheridan, and Constable Cox were shot dead; when James Miller, Michael Ball, Peter Greany, and Bridget McCullagh were murdered--the last a poor widow, who was beaten to death with a spade; when Ryan Foley was brutally murdered; when Michael Baylan was murdered; when Viscount Mountmorres was murdered, and the dead body left on the road, the neighbouring farmers being afraid to give the poor corpse the shelter of a barn; when a car-driver named John Downey was killed by a bullet intended for Mr. Hutchins, J.P.; when young Wheeler, of Oolagh, whence I dated a letter, was shot dead, to punish his father, who was an agent--when all these murders took place, every one of them, and as many more, the work of the Land League, which also was responsible for more outrages, filthy indecencies, and gross brutalities than the entire _Gazette_ would hold, and which would in many cases be unfit for publication--then were the clergy SILENT. No denunciations from the altar; no influence exerted in the parish. In many cases a direct encouragement to persevere in the good path. When John Curtin's daughters attended church after their father's murder they were attacked by a hostile crowd. The police were compelled to charge the infuriated mob. Otherwise the pious Papists would in all probability have consummated the good work by murdering the remainder of the family, after having, in the presence of daughters who nobly fought the murderers, assassinated the father. What did the good priest, Father O'Connor, say to all this; how express his deep sense of this abject cowardice, this atrocious savagery, this unheard-of-sacrilege? He "took no notice of the occurrence"--good, easy man. But I am forgetting something. Mr. Curtin was killed by a gang of moonlighters, who knocked him up, and, presenting loaded rifles at the children, asked for the father's arms. Before the terrified boys and girls could comply the father appeared and shot a moonlighter dead in his tracks. The rest fled precipitately, but unhappily Curtin gave chase and was killed. Good Father O'Connor attended the funeral of the moonlighter, who did not belong to his parish, and refused to attend that of Mr. Curtin, who did! The Catholic Bishops of Ireland stood by and looked on all this without a word of censure. Silence gives consent. Had they fulminated against outrage and secret wholesale murder of poor working men, for nearly all those I have cited were of this class; had they used their immense influence to stem the murderous instincts of ruffians who in many cases took advantage of the prevailing disregard for human life to wreak their private revenge on their neighbours, satisfied that no man dare testify, and that the clergy would aid them to frustrate the law--had the Bishops done this, even the dull and sluggish brain of the brutal Saxon could have understood their action. They uttered no single word of condemnation. An eminent Catholic, a clever professional man, who reveres the faith in which he was bred, but holds its priesthood in lowest contempt, said to me:--"You cannot find a word of condemnation uttered by any Bishop during the whole period when brutal murders were of daily occurrence. I give you your best. I would stake anything on my statement. I have challenged people over and over again, but nobody has ever been able to produce a syllable of censure, of warning, of reprobation. The Bishops were strangely unanimous in their silence." But when the Irish Masons try to provide for the orphans of their brethren the Archbishop's back is up at once; for Masons have secrets which they may not tell even to priests; and therefore Dr. Walsh declares that whosoever gives sixpence to this cause of charity, or associates with its promoters, shall be cast into hell, there to abide in torture everlastingly--unless previously whitewashed by himself in person. And as I have clearly shown, the influence of Archbishop Walsh and his kind is at this moment supremely powerful in matters affecting the prestige and integrity of England and her people. Wherefore I do not wonder at the saying of an earnest Irishman of famous name, a baronet of long descent, whom I saw yesterday-- "When I see how the thing is being worked, and when, as a Catholic, I recognise the progress and character of the Church policy, and when I see England walking so stupidly into the trap, I don't know what to do--whether to swear, or to go out and be sick." Moycullen (Connemara), May 23rd. No. 26.--THE CONNEMARA RAILWAY. Mr. Balfour's railway from Galway to Clifden will be exactly fifty miles long, and will run through Crooniffe, Moycullen, Ross, Oughterard, and the wildest and most desolate parts of Connemara. The line has been in contemplation for thirty years at least, but the strong suit of its Irish projectors was talking, not doing, and the project might have remained under discussion until the crack of doom but for Mr. Balfour's energy and administrative power. The Irish patriots had no money, or they would not invest any. The Galway authorities would not authorise a county rate. Anybody who chose might make the line, but the local "powers that be" refused to spend a single penny on an enterprise which would for years provide employment for the starving people of Connemara, and would afterwards prove of incalculable benefit to the whole West of Ireland by opening up an attractive, an immense, an almost inaccessible tourist district, besides affording facilities of transit for agricultural stock and general market produce, and powerfully aiding the rapidly-developing fish trade of the western sea-board. Not a bit of it. The Western Irish are always standing about waiting for something. They talked about the line for a generation or two, but they cut no sod of turf. They harangued meetings convened to hear the prospective blessings of the line, but they declined to put any money on their opinions. The starving peasants of Connemara might have turned cannibals and eaten each other before Irishmen had commenced the railway. The people of the congested districts were unable to live on the sympathy of their fellow-countrymen, and nothing else was offered to them. The Connemarans have an occasional weakness for food. They like a square feed now and again. Their instincts are somewhat material. They think that Pity without Relief is like Mustard without Beef. They like Sentiment--with something substantial at the back of it. Their patriot-brethren, those warm-hearted, dashing, off-hand, devil-may-care heroes of whom we read in Charles Lever, sometimes visited the district, to rouse the people against the brutal Saxon, but they did no more than this. Sometimes, I say, not often, did the patriots patrol Connemara. There were two reasons for this. First, the Irish patriots do not speak their native language; and the Connemarans are not at home with English. Secondly, and principally, the Connemarans had nothing to give away. They cannot pay for first-class patriotism like that of Davitt, Dillon, O'Brien, and Tim Healy, who latterly have never performed out of London. And so the Galway folks went on with their railway discussions, and the poor Connemarans went on with their starving. Suddenly Mr. Balfour took the thing up, and the turf began to fly. The Midland and Western Railway Company, in consideration of a grant of £264,000, agreed to make the line, and to afterwards run it, whether it paid or not. The contractors were not allowed to import unskilled labour. The Connemarans were to make the line whether they knew the work or not. They had never seen navvy labour. They knew nothing outside the management of small farms. They had never done regular work. Their usual form is to plant their bit of ground and then to sit down till the crops come up, on which they live till next season. A failure of crops means starvation. This was their normal condition. They enjoyed what Mr. Gladstone would call a "chronic plethora" of hunger. The liverish tourist who adventured himself into these barbarous regions in hopeless quest of appetite for his breakfast, would see the Connemarans in hopeless quest of breakfast for their appetites. The region is healthy enough. As Justice Shallow would say, "Beggars all, beggars all. Marry, good air." The first thing you see is a twenty-thousand-pound bridge across the Corrib, not very far from the salmon weir, where are more fish than you can count splashing up the salmon stairs, which are arranged to save the salmon the effort of a long jump. Then the line running along the Corrib Valley on a high embankment, past the ruins of what was first a convent, then a whiskey distillery, now a timekeeper's office. An entire field is being dug up and carted away, the soil being excavated to a depth of eight or ten feet, over an area of several acres required for sidings and railway buildings. A strolling Galway man of Home Rule tendencies imparts information. He is eminently discontented, and thinks the way in which the work is conducted another injustice to Ireland. "The people are working and getting wages, but what wages! Thirteen and sixpence a week! Would English navvies work for that? You are getting the labour at starvation prices, and even then you bully the men. They work in gangs, each with a ganger swearing at them in the most offensive and outrageous way. See that gang over there. You can hear the ganger shouting and swearing even at this distance. The poor men are treated like dogs, and even then they can hardly keep body and soul together. They have to come miles and miles to the work, and some live so far away that they can only return home once a week. So they have to camp out in hovels. You are going down the line? Then you will be shocked at the slave-driving you'll see. It reminds me of Legree in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' I am surprised that the men do not drop dead over the work. Not a moment's rest or relaxation. Work, work, work from morning to night, for next to nothing. It ought not to be allowed in a civilised country. And on the top of all this slavery we are expected to be very much obliged for the opportunity of working at all. You chuck us a crust just as you would chuck a bone to a dog, and then you want us to go down on our knees and pour blessings on Balfour's head. We're tired of such stuff; but, thank God, we shall soon have things in our own hands. All these men are small farmers, or small farmers' sons. They can't get a living out of the land, and they are obliged to come to this. Bullied and driven from week's end to week's end, they are the very picture of starvation. A shame and disgrace to the English Government." I may as well say at once that all this proved to be untrue. No doubt the Galway Home Rulers invent and circulate these falsehoods to discount the effect of the good work of a Conservative Government, and it is, therefore, well that the facts should be placed on record. I pushed on to a cutting where fifty men were busily engaged in loading earth into trucks, having first dug it from a great bank of gravelly soil. An Irish ganger walked to and fro along the top, keeping his eye on the men, and occasionally shouting in an excited tone. But he was not swearing at, or otherwise abusing, the men, who were as fine a company of peasants as you could see anywhere, well-built, well-grown, and muscular. Not a trace of starvation, but, on the contrary, a well-fed, well-nourished look. The ganger, Sullivan, seemed good-tempered enough, only shouting to let off his superfluous vitality. He used no bad language. "Cheer up, my lads," he cried. "In wid the dirt. Look alive, look alive, look alive. Whirroo! Shove it up, my lads, shove it up. Away ye go. Look out for that fall of earth. There she goes. Whirroo!" English navvies would have preferred silence, would have requested him to hold his condemned jaw, would have spent some breath in applying an explosive mining term to his eyes, but these Irish labourers seemed to understand their superior officer, and to cheerfully accept the situation. Mr. Sullivan was civil and good-humoured. "These are a picked lot. Splendid set of fellows, and good workers. No, they do not walk for miles before they reach their work. The engine runs along the line to pick them up in the morning, and to drop them again in the evening. They have half-an-hour for dinner, and half-an-hour for tea. They get about fifteen shillings a week. Boys get less, but thirteen shillings and sixpence is the very bottom. Rubbish about low wages. Nine bob a week is the regular farmer's wage, and these men would have been glad to work for six bob. All have some land, every man of them. They have just come back from planting it. We have been very short of men. They went away at the beginning of April, and they were away for a fortnight or three weeks. Small blame to them. Half or three-quarters of them went to look after their bits of ground. But, barrin' that, they turn up very regularly. They get fifteen shillings a week, where they got nothing. And every man knows the convenience the line will be to him to get his bit of stuff to Galway market, and also that it will bring money into a country where there was none. They are as contented as can be, and we never hear a word of complaint. We have not heard a grumble since the line was started a year or two ago. These Home Rulers will say anything but their prayers, and them they whistle. Since the work came from the Tories it must be bad. There must be a curse on it. Now, my lads, shove it up, shove it up! (Excuse me, Sir.) Whirroo, my boys. Look out! In wid it, thin! Whirroo!" A big tank for engine water was being filled by an old man in shirt and trousers, his naked chest shining a hundred yards away. Luke Whelan was his name; a vigorous pumper, he. "'Tis hard work it is, ye may say it. I have another tank or two to fill, an' keep filled, but I have long rests, and time for a grain o' baccy, glory be to God! Thirteen-an'-sixpence it is, but I lost my place at Palmer's flour mills, the work gave out, an' but for this I'd have nothin' at all. Was in the Fifth Fusiliers, but lost me sight (partly) in Injee. Was in the army long enough to get a pension of ninepence a day. Me rint is two pounds a year, and I've only the owld woman to kape. Ah, but Balfour was a blessin' to us altogether! They talk about Home Rule, but what good will that do us? Can we ate it, can we dhrink it, can we shmoke it? The small farmers thinks they'll have the land for nothin', but what about the labourers? Everything that's done is done for the farmers, an' the workin' men gets nothin' at all. In England 'tis the workin' men gets all the consideration; but in this counthry 'tis the farmers, an' the workin' men that have no land may hang themselves. When the big farms is all done away who'll employ the labourers? The gintry that spint money an' made things a bit better is all driven out of the counthry by the Land League. Ye see all around ye the chimneys of places that once was bits of manufactories. All tumblin' down, all tumblin' down. Nobody dares invest money for fear he'd be robbed of his property, the same as the landlords was robbed, an' will be robbed, till the end of the chapther. 'Tis nothin' but robbery ye hear of, an' gettin' other people's property for nothin'. The Home Rule Bill would dhrive all the workin' men out of the counthry to England and America. They must have employment, an' they must go where it is to be had. Engineers have been threatenin' this line for forty years, first one route an' then another, but divil a spade was put in it. England found us the money to build the line, an' the labourers get work. Where will we get work whin nobody would lend us money to build lines? An Irish Parlimint wouldn't build a line in a thousand years. For nobody would thrust thim wid the cash. Yes, wid ninepence a day and thirteen shillings and sixpence a week, I'm comfortable enough. But begorra, the pump leaks, an' I have to pump a quarther more than I should. Av the pump worked right 'tis little grumblin' ye'd hear from Luke Whelan." Mr. George William Wood, contractors' agent, said:--"The men work as well as they can, but they do not get over the ground like English navvies. They are very regular, very quiet, very sober, and never give the least trouble. Of course, they had to be taught, and they did not like the big navvy shovels. They were used to the six-foot spades with no cross-bar. Yes, you might think it harder work with such tools, but then the Irish labourer dislikes to bend his back. The long handle lets him keep his back straight, there's the difference. However, we insist on the big, short shovels, and they have taken to them all right. These men are not so strong as they seem, and they are not worth nearly so much as English navvies. They may be willing, but they have not the same stamina. The English navvy eats about two pounds of beef for his dinner and washes it down with about two quarts of ale. These men never see meat from one year's end to another. They live on potatoes, and bits of dry bread and water. At three in the afternoon they are not worth much, clean pumped out--might almost as well go home. No, they don't live in hovels. Those who go home but once a week are housed in good wooden sheds, or corrugated iron buildings, with good beds and bedclothes. There are about forty of them in a hut, with a hut-keeper to look after them and to keep order. For this excellent lodging they are charged sixpence a week, and all their prog is supplied at wholesale prices. We buy largely in Dublin, bring it down, of course, carriage free, and both the men and their wives and families are supplied to any amount. They effect a saving of at least twenty per cent., but probably much more, as village stores are terribly dear. The whole district has found out this advantage, and they flock to the hut-store from all parts. So Balfour is a boon to the country at large." Next day I went down sixteen miles of line to a spot about a mile from Oughterard. It was pay-day, and I clung to the engine along with the engineer, Mr. Wood, and a pay-clerk, armed with several yards of pay-sheet, and a couple of black tin cash-boxes. A wild and stony country, a range of high mountains on the left, wide, flat plains on the right, through which the Corrib serpentined, with big rocks rising from the channel brilliantly white. "They whitewash the rocks, so that they can be seen by the boats and the Cong steamer. Englishmen would blow them up and have done with them, but Irishmen prefer to whitewash them and sail round them. More exciting I suppose, matter of taste." This from the engineer, a Saxon of the usual type. On through bogs, past nameless lakes, and a chaos of limestone rocks and huge granite boulders, lakes, bogs, rocks, in endless succession, with the long mountain reek beside us, and a still higher range in the purple distance. Now and then a green patch sternly walled in, a few cows grazing, a lonely donkey, a few long-tailed black sheep, or a couple of goats. Here and there acres of white blossom, looking like a snowfall. This was the bog bean, growing on a stem a foot high, a silvery tuft of silky bloom hanging downward, two inches long and the bigness of a finger. Sometimes we dashed past walled enclosures so full of stone that they looked like abandoned graveyards, and the only use of the fences, so far as I could see, was to keep thoughtless cattle out. Very little tillage. Just a few ridges of potatoes, but the people who had planted them seemed to have vanished for ever. At long intervals a diminutive white cot, but nothing else to break the succession of lake, rock, and bog. Moycullen, six miles from Galway, is to have a station; another will be built at Ross, ten miles, a third at Oughterard, sixteen and a half miles. Not a stone laid as yet. At Ross a great excavation. The men had just laid bare a huge boulder of granite, weighing some thirty tons, and Mr. Wood, observing my interest in this relic of the ice-age, gave it to me on the spot. "No granite _in situ_ hereabouts, the living rock is mountain limestone, but no end of granite boulders, which are blasted to the tune of half-a-ton of tonite per week." Ten miles from Galway a cutting was being regularly quarried for building purposes, and most of the sixteen or seventeen miles of line I saw was fenced with a Galway wall of uncemented stone four feet six inches high and eighteen inches thick. "The men build stone walls with great skill," said Mr. Wood, "but half the number of English navvies would do more excavating." The pay-clerk stopped the engine at every gang, and the men came forward for their money. All had the same well-nourished sturdy look, and all seemed well satisfied with their wages. They conversed in Irish, but they mostly understood English, even if they could not speak it themselves. Whole villages were there seemingly of the same name, and strange were the distinctive appellations. There was John Toole and John Toole Pat, John Pat Toole and Pat Toole John. Permutation was the order of the day. There was Tom Joyce Pat and Pat Tom Joyce, Tom Joyce Sally and Tom Joyce boy. Besides this change ringing a little colour was thrown in, and we had Pat Tom Joyce Red and Pat Tom Joyce Black, Red Pat Tom Joyce and Black Tom Joyce Pat. This is called Joyce's country, before Balfour's time depopulating to desolation, now thriving and filling up, re-Joyceing in fact. Nearly seventeen hundred men are at work here and at the other end, and in 1894 the great civiliser will steam from Galway to Clifden, inaugurating (let us hope) a new era of prosperity. In Oughterard I met an American tourist who said, "I should think Home Rule would about settle Old England. The Irish people show a most unfriendly spirit, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no such word as gratitude in the Irish language. There is some change in this district, and the people seem willing to work, but wherever the agitators have been everything is going to the bad. Nothing but distrust and suspicion. No Irishman would invest in Irish securities. They prefer South Americans! That startled me. I am told that Tim Healy is worth £30,000, all got out of Home Rule, and my informant says that Tim would not risk a penny in his own country. Tim is a blackguardly kind of politician, but he is mighty cute, and shirks Irish securities. Where are the business managers of the Irish nation coming from? That's what I want to know." I told him of the Galway Harbour Commissioners, who, having been forgiven a Government debt of nearly £10,000, conceived the idea of building a new, grand, splindid, iligant, deep dock, which should increase the trade of the place by allowing ships of great draught to unload in the harbour. Let me repeat the story for the readers of the _Gazette_. The Harbour Board consulted an eminent engineer, who said the right thing would cost £80,000. They sent him to the right about, and called in another man. "Now," said they, "we can only raise £30,000 by loans from the Board of Works. Will not that suffice? We give you 5 per cent. on the outlay, &c., &c., &c." The new man said £30,000 was ample, took the job, and the work was commenced. Ultimately they borrowed £40,000, which they spent, along with the £10,000 in hand. Then it was found that big ships could not get to the dock at all! No use in a deep dock unless you can swim up to it. To get the big vessels in you required to hoist them out of the water, carry them a few hundred yards, and drop them into the dock. As the Galway men still groan beneath the cruel English yoke, this operation was found impracticable. During some blasting operations a big rock was tumbled out of the dock in process of manufacture, dropping in front of another dock in full working order. The stone was just in the way of the vessels, but as there was no Parliament in College Green, the Harbour Board had not the heart to fish it up. So it crashed through the bottom of a Henderson collier, the owner of which sued the Harbour Board for damages, and was awarded a thousand pounds. The money never was paid, and never will be. The fortunate winner of the suit will sell his claim for £5 in English gold. He was thought to have done well in winning, and my informant, a typical Irishman, admired the complainant's successful attack on the Harbour Board. "But what good come of it at last," I ventured to put in. "Nay, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a glorious victory." The Galway Harbour Board spent £50,000 or so on a deep dock which they have not got, and the harbour is in pawn to the Board of Works, which collects the tolls, and otherwise endeavours to indemnify itself. The Harbour Board meets as usual, but it has no powers, no money, no credit, no anything. This is a fair specimen of the business management which characterises the breed of Irishmen who favour Home Rule. The party paper, once a fine property, has in their hands sunk below zero, and they built New Tipperary on land to which they had no title; so that the money was completely thrown away. Almost every Board of Guardians in the country is insolvent, except in those cases where the Government has kicked out the Poor Law Guardians elected by the Parish, and restored solvency by sending down paid men to run the concern for a couple of years. This has been done in several instances, and in every case the paid men, drawing salaries of several hundred a year, have in two years paid off debts, leaving all in good working order, with a balance in the bank. The inference is obvious. Would the Belfast folks have made such a fiasco of a dock? Would Englishmen have exposed themselves to the ridicule of a story which is curiously remindful of Robinson Crusoe and his big canoe? Would the Galway folks ever have built the railway they wanted so badly; or sans England and Mr. Balfour, would not the Connemara men have proceeded to starve until the end of time? A keen old railway man who had thravelled, and who had done railway work in California, said to me, "Whin we get an Oirish Parlimint the labourers may jist put on their hats and go over to England. Thank God, we'll know something besides farm work now, the whole of us. We can get railroad work in England. There'll be none in Oireland, for every mother's son that has money will cut the country. I could take ye fourteen Oirish miles from Galway, along a road that was spotted wid great jintlemen's houses, an' ivery one of thim's in ruins. The owners that used to live in them, and be a blessin' to the counthry, is all ruined by the land agitation. All are gone, an' their foin, splindid houses tumblin' down, an' the people worse off than iver. If the Bill becomes law the young men will all be off to England and America. There'll be no work, no money in the counthry. Did ye hear what the cyar-dhriver said to Mr. Morley?" I confessed that the incident escaped my recollection. "Why the cyar-man was a dacent boy, an Mister Morley axed him how was thrade, an' av he was busy." "No," says the dhriver, "things is quite, very quite," says he. "Ye'll be busy when ye get Home Rule," says Mister Morley. "But that'll only last a week," says the cyar-man. "An' why so?" says the Irish Secretary, bein' curious an' lookin' round at the dhriver. "Och," says Pat; "'twill only take a week to dhrive thim to the boats." "Who d'ye mane, wid yer dhrivin' to the boats?" says owld Morley. "All the dacent folks that has any money to pay for dhrivin'," says Pat, "for bedad they'll be lavin' the counthry." "That was a thriminjus rap for owld Morley, but 'twas thrue, an' the Divil himself couldn't deny it." "An' can ye tell me why the farmers should have all the land an' not the labourers? An' could ye say why them murdherin' Land Leaguers in Parliament wasn't hung up, the rampagious ruffians?" I could throw no light on these points. My friend had much to say about the Land League M.P.'s, and a score of times asked me why they had not been hanged. A hard question to answer, when you come to think of it. Does anybody know? Oughterard (Connemara), May 23rd. No. 27.--CULTIVATING IRISH INDUSTRY. The city of kings. Pronounced Athen-rye, with a bang on the last syllable. A squalid town, standing amid splendid ruins of a bygone time. "Look what English rule has brought us to," said a village politician, waving his hand from the ivy-covered gateway by which you enter the town to the mean-looking houses around. "That's what we could build when we were left to ourselves, an' this is what we can do afther sivin hundhred years of the Saxon." The ruins in question are the remains of fortifications erected after the Norman Conquest of Ireland by the Normans, a great entrance gate, and a strong, oblong keep. The ruins of the Dominican Friary, founded in 1241 by Meyler, of Birmingham, have a thrilling interest of their own, which has its pendant in the story of a Mayence verger, who holds British visitors to the cathedral of that city in breathless rapture as he tells how it is said that a Mayence bishop of eight hundred years ago was said to be of English extraction, or like the Stratford mulberry tree, which is said to be a cutting of a tree said to have grown on the spot where a tree is said to have stood which is said to have been planted by Shakespeare. Galway abounds in ruined fortalices, tumble-down abbeys, ivied towers and castles, none of which were built by the Irish race. The round towers which dot the country here and there, with a few ruined churches, are all that the native Irish can claim in the way of architecture. The people here are full of interest. The fair at Athenry is something to remember. A very good time it was, cattle selling higher than of yore. The men were queerly, quaintly dressed, speaking Irish, getting extremely drunk on vilest whiskey, leaving the town in twos and threes, tumbling in groups by the roadside, reeking heaps of imbruted humanity. The women were numerous, tall, decent, and modest. All wore the shawl as a hood, the shawls of strange pattern unknown in England. All tucked up the dress nearly to the waist, showing the invariable red kirtle. All, or nearly all, were shod with serviceable shoes, such as would astonish the Parisian makers of bottines. But these shoes were only for show. The ladies walked painfully about in the unaccustomed leather. They seemed to have innumerable corns, to wrestle with bunions huge and dire, to suffer from unknown pedal infirmities. Outside the town the ladies put on their shoes. Outside the town, after the fair, they took them off again, sitting on the roadside, stripping their shapely feet, bundling the obnoxious, crippling abominations into Isabella-colour handkerchiefs, which they tucked under their arms as they bounded away like deer. It was pleasant to watch their joy, their freedom, their long springy step as their feet once more struck their native heath. They do not spare their shoes by reason of economy, but because they walk better without them. Donned for propriety, doffed for convenience. The young lady who is "on the market" is expected to wear leather on high days and holidays, and she submits--another martyr to fashion. Yet even as the hart panteth for the water-brooks, so longeth her sole after her native turf. It was at Athenry that I first obtained a precise legal definition of the term Congested District, to the effect that wherever the land valuation amounts to less than 30s. per head of the population the district is held to be congested, and may receive assistance under the Act of 1891. The chief item of the Board's income is the sum of £41,250 a year, being interest at 2-3/4 per cent. per annum on the sum of £1,500,000 referred to in the Act as the Church Surplus Grant. The Board may, under certain conditions, use the principal, if needful. Two other smaller sums are also available, and the unexpended balance of the Irish Distress Fund has been applied to the completion of the Bealdangan Causeway in Connemara. This was Mr. Balfour's suggestion. There is a widespread idea that only the sea-board is touched, and that only fishermen have reaped the benefit of the Act. This is entirely erroneous. The Board works unceasingly at the development of agriculture, the planting of trees, the breeding of live stock and poultry, the sale of seed potatoes and seed oats, the amalgamation of small holdings, migration, emigration, weaving and spinning, and any other suitable industries, as well as in aid of fishing and fishermen. Besides the innumerable direct and indirect methods by which agriculture and industries are assisted in production, the Board has laboured successfully in the establishment of such means of communication, by railway, steamship, or otherwise, as will enable goods to be imported and exported at rates sufficiently low to make trade possible and profitable to producers and consumers in remote congested districts. Another popular error arises from regarding the work of the Board as merely a means of relief during periods of exceptional distress. Mr. Balfour would be the first to deprecate this notion. His scheme was constructed with a view to bringing about a gradual and lasting improvement in the poor districts of Ireland, by putting the people in a way to help themselves, and not by doling out large sums in charity. The works, which are wrongly called "relief works," are in every instance a well-considered effort to permanently and materially improve the trade and resources of a given area in connection with agriculture and miscellaneous industries. Such was the invariable principle of every action of the Board while under Mr. Balfour's administration. The people have been taught better methods, and helped to carry out the instruction they had received. The Royal Dublin Society has in some instances employed an instructor, whose duty it has been to teach the people the best system of cultivating portions or plots of their holdings, and to encourage them by gifts of seed and by giving prizes to those who were most successful in carrying out the instructions of their teacher. It is conceded that by proper management, by the adoption of modern methods of farming such as are well within the grasp of the smallest landowner, the produce of Irish farms might be increased from one-third to one-half. Consider the effect of this unassailable proposition on the eternal question of rent. The question can hardly be over-estimated. Compare the solidity, the practicability, the substantial usefulness of this kind of help, with the weak pandering to sentiment displayed by the present government. The Board admits that no matter how vigorously and constantly agricultural improvements are inculcated, the tenants of Ireland are tardy in their adoption. The small farmers dislike change, and at the present moment they are rapidly slipping back into their old grooves. They believe that the old system will pay when they have no rent-days to meet. The Balfour Administration encouraged honesty, industry, self-reliance. The Morley Government puts a premium on idleness, unthrift, retrogression, and dishonesty. It is easier to half-till the land, paying small rents or none at all, than to get the utmost out of the land with the object of paying the landlord his due. The Board is carrying on the afforestation of Ireland, which in many parts is almost without trees. When the potato crop failed in 1890 Mr. Balfour commenced to plant trees on the western sea-board. In 1891 a sum of £1,970 was spent in draining, fencing, and roadmaking, and in planting 90 acres of 960 acquired by the Tory Government for the purpose. In 1892 a further sum of £1,427 was spent in carrying on the work. It is said that a previous Liberal Government had rejected the scheme on the ground that trees would not grow in a situation exposed to the salt gales of the Atlantic, but Mr. Balfour's trees have thriven remarkably well. He tried all sorts, convinced that something should be done, and that an ounce of experiment was worth a pound of theory. Sycamore, ash, elm, beech, birch, poplar, alder, larch, Scotch fir, spruce, silver fir, sea buckthorn, elder, and willow--he gave them all a chance, some as main plantations, some as shelter belts. All proved successful except the silver fir. Besides this, three hundred and fifty holdings have been planted with shelter belts, and about six hundred and fifty more were being planted when Mr. Balfour loosed the reins. An eminent Irishman, a great authority on this subject, assures me that he could dictate similar facts for a week without stopping to search his memory. Mr. Gladstone proposes to place the poor people of Ireland under a Government utterly inexperienced in the administration of great matters, utterly unreliable where the handling of money is concerned, utterly ignorant of business methods and business routine. The fate of the destitute poor and the fortunes of the well-to-do classes are to be at the mercy of men whose business ventures have been absurdly unsuccessful, who believe that to aid the poor you must rob the rich, and that the No-rent Manifesto, the Plan of Campaign, and the Land League, with its story of outrage and murder, were the perfection of modern statesmanship. The Balfour system teaches men to help themselves. The Morley system teaches men to help themselves to their neighbour's goods. My friend gave a few more instances of useful assistance rendered by what the poor folks call the Blessed Board. Special arrangements have been made to enable the farmers to improve the breed of horses. The Queen presented an Arabian horse named Tirassan to the County Donegal. Bulls of superior breed have been sold to decent, honest farmers at one-third of their cost, and this small figure was payable in two yearly instalments. About two hundred black-faced Scotch rams and Cheviot rams have been located in Donegal and Galway free of charge, and young boars of the pure Yorkshire breed are sold to certain selected farmers at a nominal charge on certain conditions calculated to prove useful to the neighbourhood. The breeding and rearing of poultry has received a world of attention, and the poor folks who make a little money by the sale of eggs have been supplied with the best information and substantial assistance. In a former letter I described the Aran sea-fisheries, and before that I adverted to the fact that the Shetland fishermen came to the Irish Coast, caught ling, and brought it back salted to sell to Irish fishermen. The Board has engaged an experienced fish-curer from Norway to show Irishmen how the thing is done, and English and Scotch fish-curers have been sent to several stations to give instruction in mackerel and herring-curing. Fifteen fish-curing stations are now in full swing, and the poor Irish fishermen, instead of buying salt ling at 2d. a pound, are now selling it at £18 to £20 per ton. A big steamer has been chartered to carry the salt, the fish, and for other useful purposes. Contrast this work and these results with the work of the Irish agitators and with that of Messrs. Gladstone, Morley, and Co. Sentiment and starvation versus salt fish and satiety. A red-faced Yorkshireman who knows all about fish-curing, said:--"When first I came here I'm blest if the men wasn't transparent. You could see through 'em like lookin' through the rungs of a ladder. Now the beggars are growin' double chins. Now they're a-gettin' cheeky. They're like a hoss as has had a feed of corn. They was meek an' mild enough when I come over. Now they're a-gettin' perky, an' a-talkin' politics. They usen't to see no agitators. They never had no meetin's; why? there was no chance of a collection. Sometimes I gets down on 'em proper. 'Tother day I says, 'You chaps, wi' yer Home Rule, I says, reminds me of a character in the Bible, I says.' Bein' Catholics, they don't read the Bible for theirselves. The priests read it for 'em. But one of 'em cocks up his nose, an' he says, 'We're like a character in the Bible, are we? Well,' he says, 'who was he?' "'You're like the wild ass that sniffed up the wind instead of goin' in for sommat more substantial,' I says. That's what I told 'em. They did look down their noses, I tell you. An' they fell to talkin' i' Irish. They couldn't answer me, do what they would." Before leaving the Connemara district I paid a second visit to Oughterard in order that I might see the progress made by Irishmen in the art of railway making. A gang or two were engaged in the comparatively skilled work of rail-laying, and the way they got over the ground was truly surprising. Two trucks stood on the line already laid, one bearing sleepers, the other loaded with steel rails. Four or five couples of men shouldered sleepers and laid them on the track at spots marked by a club-footed Irishman, who swore at everything with a vigour which spoke well for his wind. Several men lifted a thirty feet length of rail, weighing nearly six hundred-weight, and laid it on the sleepers, when it was instantly bolted and secured. The same having been done on the other side, the trucks were pushed along the newly-laid ten yards, and the process was repeated, the Irish ganger above-mentioned swearing till the surrounding bogs seemed to quake. An unhappy Connemaran having dropped his end of the sleeper a few inches from the right spot, was cursed through the entire dictionary, the ganger winding up a solemn declaration that he had not seen anything so Blankly and Double-Blankly and forty times Blankly idiotic since "the owld goat died." An English ganger hard by never spoke at all, but no doubt his men felt lonely. A labourer who had hurt his foot, and was awaiting a friendly truck to take him home, said of the swearer:-- "He manes no harm, an' the Boys doesn't care a rap for his swearin'. These men want no elbowin' on, for they are paid by the piece, so that the harder they work the more they get. All Irish gangers swear like that. An' Irish farm bailiffs is jist the same. Onless they're cussin' an' rippin' an' tearin' they don't think they're doin' the work for which they're paid, an' they don't think their masthers would be contint wid thim. Av an Irish landlord that kept a bailiff didn't hear him swearin' three miles away, he'd discharge him for not workin'. English gangers an' bailiffs says very little, an' ye wouldn't think they wor doin' anythin'. 'Tis quare at first, but ye get used to it in time." Travelling in any country is always instructive, no matter how much about that country you previously knew. My lame friend may have unconsciously suggested an explanation of the speeches and conduct of the Irish Nationalist Parliamentary contingent. Unless they kept up the cursin' an' swearin', an' rippin' an' tearin', so that they can be heard across the Atlantic, their American paymasters might not be contint wid thim, and might withhold the sinews of war. Once it is understood that the Irish patriots must revile all and sundry to earn their pay, the situation is to some extent explained. Few of them are likely to fail in this supreme requirement. Six pounds a week for abusing the brutal Saxon is far better than the pound or thirty shillings of their pre-political days. They have no inducement to earn an honest living. The story of the Galway Bag Factory may serve as a pendant to the story of Mr. McMaster's effort to benefit the Catholic peasantry of the counties of Galway and Donegal. The concern had stopped for lack of funds, and Father Peter Dooley went round the town endeavouring to induce people to take shares in the concern, in order that the poor folks of the district might have employment. The mills were reopened, and at first, just at first, the people attended work with tolerable regularity. They then fell off, coming for half a day, coming not at all. The management actually instituted prizes for regularity of attendance. The people, who professed to be dying for employment, had to be bribed to come to work. Even this was ineffectual, and as a certain number of people were required to work a loom, the absence of one or two made the loom and the other workpeople idle, and as, in order to pay expenses, every loom required to be constantly worked, this skulking was not only annoying, but also a ruinous loss. Mr. Miller, the manager, was compelled to get people over from Scotland, after having long placarded the walls of Galway with notices of vacancies which no Galway girls attempted to fill up. Father Peter remonstrated, and pointed out that as he had been instrumental in reopening the factory, he thought Mr. Miller should oblige him by engaging Galway girls. The manager showed him the placards, and said that if Father Peter would bring the people he would find them employment. Father Peter Dooley went into the highways and hedges, but not a soul could he bring in, although Mr. Miller seems to have been so desperately beset that he would have jumped at the blind, the maimed, the halt, and the lame. The good Father was beaten, but then he had a reason--an excellent reason. When things go wrong in Ireland, it is always some other fellow's fault, just as when the French are beaten in battle they always scream _Nous sommes trahis_! Bad characters had been admitted to the looms. Manager was surprised. Let Father Peter point them out, and away they go--if Father Peter did not hesitate to cast them again on the streets of Galway. Two girls were dismissed. Some of the old workpeople returned to work intermittently, as before. Father Peter wanted the two girls reinstated. The manager declined to see-saw in this way, and sacrilegious Scotsman as he was, dared to say that nothing went well when bossed by priests! From that moment that manager was blighted. His sight grew dim, his hearing became dull, his liver got out of order, his corns grew more numerous and more painful, and a bald spot was seen on his crown. The people worked as before, by fits and starts, but more fitty and starty than ever. The factory was closed, and the manager died. They buried him about a week ago, a sort of human jackdaw of Rheims without the curse taken off. Protestants say the Galway workpeople wore him down, broke his spirit and broke his heart, but Catholics know better. The only wonder was that instead of being instantly consumed by fire from heaven, Miller was permitted to waste away by slow degrees. But that was Father Dooley's good nature. The Galwegians say that a Belfast firm has taken the mill, and that therefore its future success is assured. The cutest citizens say that this entirely depends on the manager's theory as to workpeople. If he brings them with him, well and good. The work will be done although the workpeople may be boycotted. And then the Irish will have another grievance. They will be able to point to the fact that of a large number of workpeople only a small proportion of Catholics are employed. This is the trick of Nationalists when speaking of the intolerance of Belfast. The officials of that city, and indeed, of every city in Ireland, are mostly Protestants, not because of this, but because they are better men. The Belfast merchants and the Belfast Corporation have a keen eye to the main chance, as is abundantly proved by their success, and in business matters they will have the best men, whether Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Turks, or Infidels. Whatever the cause, it is certain that Protestantism turns out a far larger proportion of able men, and in Ulster, at any rate, you rarely meet a Catholic who is worth his salt. The Catholics of Ulster lack, not toleration, but brains, industry, and business capacity. Anyone who compares the harbours of Cork and Galway with Belfast will at once appreciate the situation. Wherefore let not the Keltic Irish waste their time in clamouring for the redress of non-existent grievances, but buckle to and make their own prosperity. The destinies of nations, like those of individuals, are in their own hands. Honest work is never wasted work. Selah. Athenry, May 27th. No. 28.--COULD WE RECONQUER IRELAND? The country people call this place "the back of God-speed," "the back of the world," and "the divil's own hunting ground," but why they do it nobody seems to know. The village is on the road to nowhere, and I dropped on it, as it were, accidentally, during a long drive to the remotest end of Galway Bay. Yet even here I found civilised people who regard the proposed College Green Parliament with undisguised aversion. Not the inhabitants, but Irish tourists, bent on exploring the wildest and remotest nooks of their native land, among them a Dublin barrister, whose critical analysis of the powers proposed to be entrusted to the unscrupulous and self-seeking promoters of the Land League may prove useful and interesting to non-legal English readers. A Galway gentleman having during the drive pointed out a large number of desolate mansions rapidly falling into ruin, the conversation turned on the universal subject, and my legal friend embarked on a dissertation on the iniquity of the Gladstone land laws, which have had the effect of ruining a large number of the country gentry of Ireland, driving them from their native shores, impoverishing the landlords without any perceptible benefit to the tenants, who appear to be no better off than ever. What surprised him most was the arrant nonsense talked by the English Gladstonians, and the blindness and apathy of the English people generally, who in his opinion were being gradually led to the brink of a frightful abyss, which threatened to swallow up the prestige and prosperity of the British people. He said:-- "Have Englishmen forgotten the previous history of the men she is now on the point of entrusting with her future? Are Englishmen unacquainted with the traditional hatred of the Irish malcontents? Do they not know the aspirations of the Catholic clergy, and are they ignorant of their immense influence with the masses? Surely they are, or they would rise in their might and instantly trample out the present agitation, which has for its aim and end, not the benefit of Ireland, not the pacification of the people, who are perfectly peaceful if left alone, not the convenience of Ireland in matters which should be managed by local self-government, but the absolute independence of the country, the creation of a national army, and the affiliation of Ireland with some foreign Power hostile to England, such as either America or France, as occasion might serve. America is largely in the hands of the Irish electorate, and American politicians would not be particularly scrupulous how they purchased Irish support. No need to point out the embarrassing complications likely to result from giving large powers to men who are essentially inimical to England. You can do justice without putting your own head on the block. It has been my business to analyse the bill, in conjunction with other lawyers, Home Rule and otherwise in political colour, and we are all agreed that the so-called safeguards amount to nothing, and it would be incomparably safer for England to throw over the country altogether. Because that is what it must ultimately come to, and we think it would be better to avoid the inevitable agitation, the terrible difficulties foreshadowed by the measure, difficulties which would assuredly lead to the reconquest or the attempted reconquest of the country. "Gladstonians say this is an absurd idea, that Ireland could offer no resistance worth mentioning, that the British arms would prove instantly victorious over any show of resistance. But would you have Ireland alone to reckon with? Once give her the prestige of a spurious independence, once give to your enemies control over the resources of the country, and you would find the task of reconquest much more arduous than you think. The fact that England's distress would be Ireland's opportunity has been so often insisted upon, both by Unionists and the Nationalists themselves, that I need say nothing on this point, which, besides, is so obvious as to be in itself a sufficient answer to the Home Rule agitation under present circumstances. But even supposing that you had no Eastern and European difficulty--and we know not from one moment to another when war may break out--supposing you only had Ireland to reconquer, do you think this an agreeable prospect? Do you think that reconquest would settle the Irish question? Do you believe that the shooting of a few hundred patriots by the British Grenadiers would further what they call the Union of Hearts? "These followers of Mr. Gladstone who say, 'Let them have Home Rule to quiet the country, to relieve the House from the endless discussion of the Irish Question so that we can proceed with the disestablishment of the Church, the Local Option Bill, and the thousand-and-one other fads for which English Home Rulers have sold themselves'--the men who say this, and who also say 'If they kick over the traces we can instantly tighten the reins and reduce them to order,' surely these folks cannot be aware that the Gladstone-Morley Government is unable to give Strachan, of Tuam, the land which he has bought and paid for in the Land Courts. The British Government cannot collect the rents of Colonel O'Callaghan, of Bodyke; nor can it prevent the daily cases of moonlighting and outrage which are so carefully hushed up, and which hardly ever get into Irish newspapers. When the British Government cannot make a few farmers either pay their rent or leave the land, the said Government having control over the police and civil officers of the law, how is it going to collect the purchase money of the farms, in the form of rent, when it has not this control? "The new police will be in the hands of a Parliament, elected by these very farmers, who, so to speak, have tasted blood, have ceased to make efforts to pay rent, have been encouraged in their refusal to pay by the very men Mr. Gladstone proposes to entrust with the whole concern! Will these farmers suddenly turn round and say, 'We declined to pay when English rule would have forced payment, we shall be delighted to pay when nothing could make us do so?' I have been connected with Irish farmers and landowners for thirty years as a land specialist, and I tell you that the thing will work exactly as I have said. Put the Rebel party in power, and see what will happen to you. It is hard to believe that Englishmen will act so stupidly in a matter so vitally affecting their own interests. That is why educated people both in Ireland and England do not believe the bill will ever become law. They cannot conceive the final acceptance of anything so utterly preposterous. But call on me to-morrow, and I will go into the legal possibilities of the question." So I gathered posies of bog-bean bloom and walked round the big boulders with which this sterile region is thickly strewn. The natives know nothing of Home or any other Rule, and you might as well speak to them of the Darwinian theory, or the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, or the Homeric studies of the Grand Old Man, or the origin of the Sanskrit language. The only opinion I could glean was the leading idea of simple Irish agriculturists everywhere. A young fellow who appeared to be in a state of intellectual advancement so far beyond that of the other Barnans as to be almost out of sight, said:-- "I'm towld that there's to be a Parlimint in Galway city that's to find imploymint for the people, an' that ivery man is to have five acres of good land for nothin', and that if it isn't good land he is to have ten acres, and that there's to be an Oirish King in Dublin, an' that all the sojers an' pleecemen is to be put out o' the counthry, an' all Protestants is to go to England, an' that's all very good, but the Protestants might be allowed to stay, for they're dacent folks, but thin they say that nobody's to howld land but the Catholics." I met an old lady clad in the short skirt of the Connaught peasantry, walking bare-headed, bare-footed, and almost bare-legged from chapel, carrying a bottle of holy water, probably destined for some important purpose within the sacred precincts of the domestic circle. Perhaps the old man was rheumatic, or it may be that the fairies had spoilt the butther, or that the cow was bewitched, or that the shadow of a black Protestant had fallen across the threshold. She was a promising subject for original conversation, but unhappily she could speak no English. My Galway friend explained the bottle, and said "Here we have true religion. If you want the genuine, unadulterated article you must come to Galway, and especially to Barna. Look how she clings to it, how she holds it to her breast, how reverentially she looks down on it. Suppose she caught her foot on a stone, stumbled, and broke the bottle! Horrid thought, involving (perhaps) eternal damnation, (unless she were quickly absolved by the priest). There is piety for you! As a good Catholic I am ashamed of myself when I think how little religion (comparatively) there is in me. Education has been a curse. How happy I should be if I had that old woman's simple, strong belief in the virtues of holy water, especially when carried home in a well-washed whiskey bottle. But, somehow, the more we Catholics know the less we believe. We go regularly to mass, at any rate I do (my wife is very devout), but I fear that Catholics have less and less faith in proportion to their culture. But for the women Catholicism would not hold its ground among the higher classes of Irishmen for so much as five-and-twenty minutes." It seems to me that the belief of uncultured Irishmen as to the immense benefits to be derived from Home Rule is exactly on a par with the belief of uncultured Irishwomen as to the immense benefits to be derived from the sprinkling of holy water. No reasonable man, who has carefully examined the subject, will for one moment assert that there is a pin to choose between the two. The votes of these poor folks, admitted by thousands to the electorate, have sent to Westminster the hireling orators whose persistent clamour has turned a slippery statesmen from the paths of patriotism and propriety, and whose subterranean machinations--aided and abetted by men versed in Jesuistic and Machiavellian strategy, and who believe that the end justifies the means--threaten to undermine the British Empire, and to involve the citizens of England in political and financial ruin. A pretty pass for a respectable individual like John Bull. England to be worked by the wire-pulling of a few under-bred, half-educated priests! whose tincture of learning John himself has paid for--poor Bull, who seems to pay for everything, and who would gladly have paid for gentility, too, if the Maynooth professors could have injected the commodity by means of a hypodermic syringe, or even by hydraulic pressure. No use in attempting impossibilities. As well endeavour to communicate good manners or gratitude to a Nationalist M.P. My legal friend was full of matter, but many of his points were too technical for the general reader. He said:--"Absurd to ask what an Irish Parliament _will_ do, because we know the tendencies of the present men. We must ask what it _can_ do, for it is certain that its members will from time to time be replaced by men of more 'advanced' opinions. Appetite grows by what it feeds on, and the Irish people want to pose as an independent nation. Englishmen and Scotchmen say Ireland would never be so foolish, and I am not surprised that they should say this. But when did Irishmen act on the lines of Englishmen or Scotchmen? They never did; they never will. The peoples are actuated by entirely different motives. Englishmen look at what is going to pay. They act on whatever basis promises the most substantial return. Irishmen are swayed by sentiment." Here I remembered a remark of Father McPhilpin, parish priest of Kilronane, Aran Isles. He said:--"The Irish people act more for fancy and less for money than any nation on earth. The poorest classes have less sentiment than the middle classes. They are too closely engaged in securing a livelihood. But the great difficulty of the English in managing the Irish lies in the fact that the English people work on strictly business principles, and that the Irish do not. The English people do not at all understand the Irish; and the reason is perfectly clear to me. They do not appreciate the extent to which mere sentiment will move the Irish race, mere sentiment, as opposed to what you would call business principles." Returning to my barrister. He continued:--"The Dublin bar has decided--has formally decided--that so far as the action of the Executive is concerned the Irish Parliament will be a supreme and irresponsible body. The action of its officers will not be in any way subject to the review of the English Government. What does this mean? Simply that the life, the liberty, the property of every citizen will be entirely in the hands of the Irish Government. Do the English people know this? I think not. For if they did know, surely they would think twice before they committed decent people to the tender mercies of the inventors and supporters of the Land League, with its ten thousand stories of outrage and murder." "Give instances of what they can do, say you? They can refuse police protection to persons whose lives are in danger from the National League. And, as you know, scores of persons are at this moment under protection in Ireland. Mr. Blood, of Ennis, would be shot on sight; Mr. Strachan, of Tuam, would be torn to pieces, if without the three, or four policemen who watch over him day and night; the caretakers on the Bodyke estate would get very short shrift, once the sixteen policemen who guard the two men were removed. Blood discharged a labourer, Strachan bought a farm. If, under the now _régime_, a farmer paid rent against the orders of the National League; if a man persisted in holding land from which someone had been evicted years ago; if a man worked for a boycotted person or in any way supported him, although it were his own father, he would be in danger of his life. Would the new Government give police protection to such people? To do so would be to stultify themselves. "Then again the Irish Executive can refuse police protection to Sheriffs' officers who desire to execute writs for non-payment of rent. No, I do _not_ think they would refuse a police escort to Sheriffs' officers proceeding to distrain on the Belfast manufacturers. I think they would order a strong force to proceed, fully armed, and I am of opinion that the police would require all the weapons they could carry. Not a stiver would they get in Belfast, until backed by the Queen's troops. Then the Ulstermen would pay--to refuse next year. So the process will go on and on, with bloodshed and slaughter every time, the British army enforcing the demands of rebels, against loyalists who sing 'God save the Queen,' Quite in the opera bouffe style of Gilbert and Sullivan, isn't it? Can't you get Gilbert to do a Home Rule opera comique? The absurdities of the situation are already there. No invention required. Immense hit. Wish I knew Gilbert. Money in it. English people might see the thing in the true light, if presented in comic songs, with a rattling chorus. Friend of mine bringing out a Gladstone Suppression Company Unlimited, forty million shares at twopence-halfpenny each. At a premium already. Money subscribed ten times over." "And won't the new Parliament have a high old time with the new Land Commission. Messrs. Healy and Co. will have the appointment of the Land Commissioners, whose function will be to fix rent. Wouldn't you like to be a landlord under such conditions? Don't you think that the rents will be reduced until the landlords are used up? Remember that the total extinction of the landlords and their expulsion from the country have been over and over again promised by the very men in whose hands you, or rather Mr. Gladstone will place them. No; I exculpate the English people from returning him to power, I know that the brains of England as well as those of Ireland are against him. But the English people stand by and see the thing pressed forward, hoping for the best. They rely on their immense wealth and energy to get them out of any hole they may get into. I am reminded of Captain Webb, who said, 'I am bound to have a go at the Niagara rapids. I know it's infernal risky and therefore infernally foolish, but I must have cash, and I expect I shall pull through somehow.' And I once met a sailor who said that his skipper had not his equal for getting the ship out of a scrape, nor yet his equal for getting into one. Same with England. Webb did not come up again. Might be the same with Bull. England is risking all for peace, just as Webb risked all for money. "The Irish Parliament may, after three years, break every contract having regard to land, no matter when or how made. Think of the ferment during that three years of waiting. Think of the situation of farmers as well as that of landowners. Who will work the land and do the best for the country without security? Then the College Green folks will have power to establish an armed and disciplined force. The Irish Army of Independence is already recruiting all over the country. For what? Is it to assist England? Is it friendly to England? Why, the very foundation of its sentiment is undying animosity to England. And your English Home Rulers say, 'Quite right, too, the Irish have good reason for their hatred!' Gladstonians come over here, mingle with haters of their native land, and earn a little cheap popularity by slanging John Bull. They get excellent receptions when they speak in that vein, especially if they have any money to spend. But what do the Irish think of them? The poor fools make me sick, splashing their cash about and vilifying England for the cheers of Fenians and the patronage of Maynooth priests. A lady from Wolverhampton, a good, kind lady, was woefully imposed upon somewhere in Connemara. A priest told me; a priest you have met." Here the name was given. "He laughed at the simplicity of this well-meaning benefactor, who was shown nineteen processes for rent, and who shelled out very liberally at the sight." "Seventeen of them were old ones! The rent had already been paid. But whenever an English _gobemouche_ called around out came the old writs until they were clean worn out. They were a splendid source of income while they lasted." This reminded me of a Bodyker, who said:--"A man named Lancashire came here from Manchester or Birmingham--I think it was Birmingham--and said he was going into the next Parliament, and that he was a great friend of Mr. Gladstone. He was very kind, and seemed made of money, and said he'd make England ring with our wrongs. My son had his name on a card, but a lawyer in Limerick said the name hadn't got in. I forget it now. D'ye know anybody, Sorr, of the name of Lancashire that's a great friend o' Misther Gladstone, an' that lives in Birmingham, an' that didn't get in?" These Irish peasants ask more questions than anybody can answer. They have a keen scent for cash, especially when the coin is in the keeping of English Gladstonians. They believe with the Claimant that "Sum folks has branes, and sum folks has money, and them what has money is made for them what has branes." The Bodyke farmers and the peasantry of Connemara believe that English Home Rulers have money. Impossible to escape the natural inference. Barna (Co. Galway), May 30th. No. 29.--WHAT RACK-RENT MEANS. I am disposed to call this quiet inland place a fishing village. The people not only sell fish and eat fish, but they talk fish, read fish, think fish, dream fish. The fishing industry keeps the place going. Anglers swarm hither from every part of the three kingdoms. Last year there were five fishing Colonels at the Greville Arms all at once. Brown-faced people who live in the open air, and who are deeply versed in the mysteries of tackle, cunning in the ways of trout, pike, perch, and salmon, walk the streets clad in tweed suits, with strong shoes and knickerbockers. The Mullingar folks despise the dictum of the American economist who said that every town without a river should buy one, as they are handy things to have. They boast of three magnificent lakes, and they look down on the Athlone people, thirty miles away, with their trumpery Shannon, of which they are so proud, but which the Mullingar folks will tell you is not worth the paper it is written on. Lough Owel, five miles long by two or three wide; Lough Derravarra, six miles by three or four; and Lough Belvidere, eight miles by three, all of which are in the immediate vicinity, may be considered a tolerable allowance of fishing water for one country town. Lough Belvidere, formerly called Lough Ennell, with its thousands of acres of water, would perhaps meet with the approval of the Yankee who called the Mediterranean "a nice pond," not for its size, but for its exceeding beauty. And the most remarkable feature about the fisher-enthusiasts of Mullingar, is the fact, the undoubted, well-attested fact, that they actually catch fish. English anglers, who in response to the inquiries of new arrivals at any Anglican fishing resort state that they have caught nothing yet, having only been fishing for a fortnight, will hardly believe that at Mullingar their countrymen catch fish every day, and big fish too. The lake trout vary from five to twenty pounds in weight, but the latter are not often seen. Nine-pounders are reckoned fairly good, but this weight excites no remark. How big the pike may be I know not, but Mr. Herring, of London, on Monday last, fishing in Lough Derravarra, hauled out a specimen which looked more like a shark than a pike. He weighed over thirty-six pounds, and measured four feet three inches over all. _Hoc egomet oculis meis vidi._ Birmingham anglers who win prizes with takes of four-and-a-half ounces would have recoiled in affright from the monster, even as he lay dead in the entrance hall of the Greville Arms. Old women stand at the street corners with silver eels like boa-constrictors, for which they wish to smite the Saxon to the tune of sixpence each. I vouch for the pike and eels, but confess to some dubiety _re_ the story of a fat old English gentleman, who said, "I don't care for fishing for the sake of catching fish. I go out in a boat, hook a big pike, lash the line to the bow, and let the beggar tow me about all day. Boating is my delight. Towards evening I cut my charger loose, and we part with mutual regret. Inexpensive amusement; more humane than ordinary fishing." Mullingar is a thriving town situate in a fertile district. The land is very rich, and the rents are reasonable. The farmers are well off, and admit the soft impeachment. They are Home Rulers to a man, and they boldly give their reasons. "Did ye ever know a man who was contint wid a good bargain when he has a prospect of a better bargain still?" said a prosperous agriculturist residing a mile outside the town. The country around has a decidedly English appearance. Fat land, good roads, high hedges, daisied meadows, and decent houses everywhere. The main street is long, wide, clean, well-paved, well-built. The shopkeepers who live in the surrounding district make money, and when they "go before," cut up for surprising sums. Said Mr. Gordon, "Everybody here has money. The people are downright well off. Living in constant communication with Dublin, fifty miles away on the main line of the Midland and Western Railway, they have adopted the prevailing politics of the metropolis. They do not understand what Home Rule means, and they blindly believe that they will do better still under a Dublin Parliament. I am quite certain of the contrary. Suppose we want £500 for some improvement, who will lend us the money? I am satisfied that the prosperity of the place would immediately decline. The priests influence the people to an extent Englishmen can never understand. The Protestant clergy do not intervene in mundane matters, but the Catholic clergy consider it their duty to guide the people in politics as well as in religion. Given Home Rule, Protestantism and Protestants would be nowhere. There is no doubt in my mind on this point." Mr. Mason said:--"The whole agitation would be knocked on the head by the introduction of a severe land measure, which would have the effect of further reducing the rents. No doubt all previous land legislation has been very severe, and I do not say that a further measure would be just and equitable. I merely say that the people do not want Home Rule, but they want the advantages which they are told will accrue from Home Rule. If the measure is not to benefit them in a pecuniary sense, then they do not care two straws about it. Do the English people grasp the present position of landowner and tenant respectively? Let me state it in a very few words.-- "Formerly the landowner was regarded as the owner of the land. At the present moment, and without a line of further legislation, the tenant is the real owner, and not the nominal landlord at all. For owing to reduction of rent, fixity of tenure, free sale, and the tenant-right, the tenant is actually more than two-thirds owner. This is a matter of cash and not of theory, for the tenants' rights are at this moment worth more than double the fee-simple of the land itself. What will the Gladstonian party who prate about Rack-rents say to this?" This seems a suitable opportunity for calling attention to the term Rack-rents, which in England is almost universally misunderstood. Separatist speakers invariably use the term as denoting an excessive rent, an impossible rent--a rent, which is, as it were, extorted by means of the Rack. The term is purely legal, and denotes a rent paid by ALL yearly tenants, whether their rent, as a whole, be high or low. The lowest-rented yearly tenant in the country is paying Rack-rent. The whole case for the farmers has been obscured and a false issue raised by the constant use of this term, to which a new meaning has been given. Another common term is found in the word Head-rent, of which Gladstonians know no more than of Rack-rent. When Head-rent comes to be discussed in England we shall have Home Rulers explaining that the term refers to decapitation of tenants for non-payment of Rack-rent. This explanation will not present any appreciable departure from their usual vein. An English Home Ruler who supports Mr. Gladstone "because his father did," and who first landed in Ireland yesterday, said, "I do not approve of ascendency. Hang the rights of property! Give me the rights of intellect. Let us have equality. Treat the Irish fairly, even generously. They should have equal rights with Englishmen. Why keep them down by force of bayonets? Live and let live, that's what I say. Equal laws and equal rights for all." That is the usual patter of the self-satisfied Separatist, who, having delivered himself, looks around him with an air which seems to say--"What a fine fellow I am, how generous, fair, disinterested. Have I not a noble soul? Did you ever see such magnanimity? Can anybody say anything against such sentiments? Thank heaven that I am not as other men, nor even as this Unionist." He is plausible, but no more. The mob which applauds the hero and hisses the villain of a melodrama pats him on the back, while he looks upward with his hand on his heart and a heaven-is-my-home expression in his eye. Put him under the microscope--he needs it, and you will see him as he is. The platitudes in which he lives, and moves, and has his being have no foundation in fact. His talk is grand, but it lacks substance. It is magnificent, but it is not sense. Listen to what a statesman has said:-- "I have looked in vain for the setting forth of any practical scheme of policy which the Imperial Parliament is not equal to deal with, and which it refuses to deal with, and which is to be brought about by Home Rule." "There is nothing Ireland has asked, and which this country and this Parliament has refused. This Parliament has done for Ireland what it would have scrupled to do for England or Scotland." "What are the inequalities of England and Ireland? I declare that I know none, except that there are certain taxes still remaining, which are levied over Englishmen and Scotchmen, and which are not levied over Irishmen; and, likewise, that there are certain purposes for which public money is freely and largely given in Ireland, and for which it is not given in England and Scotland." I read this deliverance to my Gladstonian friend, who was staggered to learn upon incontrovertible evidence, to wit, the printed report of his speech, that these were the publicly expressed opinions of the Grand Old Man, whose pandering to Irish opinion as expressed by outrage dates from the time of the Clerkenwell explosion. That his conversion to Home Rule is entirely attributable to the endless murders and atrocities of the Land League, the Invincibles, and other Fenian organisations, is universally admitted in Ireland by Unionists and Nationalists alike. And once an Irish Parliament is granted, how will he resist the demand for Irish independence, for the Irish Republic affiliated with America? Query--if a given number of murders were required to bring about Home Rule, how many murders will be required to effect complete separation? A mere question in arithmetic. Concurrently with the compulsory withdrawal of the Union Jack displayed by my friend Mrs. Gibson, of Northern Hotel, Londonderry, another occurrence, this time in the South, will serve to attest the progress made by the inventor and patentee of the Union of Hearts. During the progress of a cricket match on the Killarney Athletic Grounds, between the clubs of Limerick and Kerry, on Whit-Monday, a Union Jack was hoisted, not as a political banner, but as an ornament, and the only banner available for the purpose. It was left flying when the cricketers went home, but in the morning it lay prone and dishonoured. The forty-foot spar had been sawn through, and in falling had smashed the palings. Let a chorus of musical Gladstonians march through Ireland bearing the Union Jack and singing "God save the Queen," let them do it, with or without police protection, and I will gladly watch their progress, record their prowess, and will have great pleasure in writing their obituary notice. The people, as a whole, are enemies to England. They are filled with a blind, unreasoning, implacable resentment for injuries they have never received, their dislike engendered and sustained by lying priests and selfish agitators, who are hastening to achieve their ends, alarmed at the prospect of popular enlightenment, which would for ever hurl them from power. The opinions of Cardinal Logue have been quoted by Lord Randolph Churchill. The _Freeman's Journal_ is still more absolute. Does this sound like the Union of Hearts? Does this give earnest of final settlement, of unbroken peace and contentment, of eternal fraternity and friendship? The _Freeman_ says, "We contend that the good government of Ireland by England is _impossible_, not so much by reason of natural obstacles, but because of the radical, essential difference in the public order of the two countries. This, considered in the abstract, makes a gulf profound, impassible--_an obstacle no human ingenuity can remove or overcome_." This promises well for the success of the Home Rule Bill; but why is the thing "impossible"? Why is the gulf not only profound but also "impassible"? Why is the good government of Ireland by England prevented by an obstacle beyond human ability to remove, and which, as Mr. Gladstone would say, "passes the wit of man." The _Freeman_ has no objection to tell us. The writer assumes a high moral standpoint, addressing the eminently respectable and religious Mr. Bull more in sorrow than in anger, but notwithstanding this, in a style to which that highly moral and Twenty-shillings-in-the-pound-paying person is not at all accustomed. The _Freeman_ goes on-- "We find ourselves bound by reason and logic to deny to English civilisation the glorious title of Christian." This is distinctly surprising. John always believed himself a Christian. The natural pain he may be expected to undergo after this disagreeable discovery is luckily to some extent mitigated by the information that although England is not Christian, Ireland is extremely so. The one people (the Irish) "has not only accepted but retained with inviolable constancy the Christian civilisation;" the other (the English) "has not only rejected it, but has been for three centuries the leader of the great apostacy, and is at this day _the principal obstacle to the conversion of the world_." Do the English Separatists see daylight now? Will they any longer deny what all intelligent Irishmen of whatever creed readily admit, namely, that religion is at the bottom of the Home Rule question? And is not Mr. Bull surprised to find that after all his missionary collections, he is without the right balm of Gilead, that his civilisation is not Christian, and that he is the principal obstacle to the salvation of the world? Is he not surprised to find that Ireland, with its thousand and ten thousand tales of horror, its brutal outrages on helpless women, its chronic incendiarism, its myriads of indecent anonymous letters addressed to young girls, such as I have seen filed by the ream in Irish police-stations--Ireland with its moonlighting atrocities, its barbarous boycotting of helpless children, its poisoning of wells and water supply, its mutilation of cattle, its unnumbered foul and cowardly murders, its habitual sheltering and protection of unspeakable felons--Ireland, one of the few remaining strongholds of the Catholic faith, has the true Christianity? Ireland would convert the world, but England stops her. The No-rent manifesto, the Plan of Campaign, and the Land League were sample productions of the genuine faith, to say nothing of Horsewhipped Healy, Breeches O'Brien, and T.D. Sullivan, who composed a eulogy on the murderers of Police-sergeant Brett, of Manchester (Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien), High upon the gallows tree Swung the noble-hearted three. That is all I can remember, but it may serve to show that Irish Christianity is the real stingo, and no mistake. A Mullingaringian who wishes to be nameless desires to know particulars of the gorging capacity of the average Gladstonian elector. The particular item that excites his wonder is the letter of Mr. J.W. Logan, M.P., on Irish rents. Briefly stated, Mr. Logan's point is this: That notwithstanding the complaints of Irish landlords they are getting more rent than ever! And he proceeds to adduce testimony thus: Income-tax valuation in Ireland, on land, in three years selected by himself stands as follows:-- 1861 £8,990,830 1877 £9,937,681 1891 £9,941,368 Then, after showing the amount of increase, he says:--"Rents continue to rise in Ireland as far as is indicated by the income-tax." My friend says:--"Mr. Logan is both culpably ignorant and flagrantly dishonest. He seems incapable of understanding the difference between an assessment, a mere valuation, and the actual payment of income-tax. He is dishonest, because he deliberately suppresses the explanation of the difference between the first and second row of figures. When I saw the curiously-selected years, I said, why 1861, 1877, and 1891? I knew there was some thimble-rigging. I looked at the twenty-eighth annual report of her Majesty's Commissioners, that for 1885, the latest I have, and behold, the year 1877 had an asterisk! It was the only starred number on the page. It referred to a foot-note, and that foot-note read as follows:-- "'_The large difference as compared with prior years is due to the value of farmhouses having been previously included under the head of messuages._' "The land up to '77 was called land, and the farm buildings were called messuages. But in '77 they began to reckon the buildings as land, shifting an amount from one column of figures to another. A mere matter of book-keeping. Mr. Logan writes to the papers for an explanation which is given in a footnote. He carries his point, for hundreds of people will follow his figures. Give a lie twenty-four hours' start and you can never overtake it. Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just, But four times he who gets his blow in fust. I suppose the Gladstonians claim that the Land Commission reduced rents by 25 to 30 per cent. But here Mr. Logan is proving that the landlords are drawing more money than ever! They wish they could believe it. Valuation is a queer thing. It fluctuates in the most unaccountable way. What an increase shows is the prosperity of the tenant who is putting up buildings and making other improvements. Mr. Logan's third figures show a further increase. Look at the figures in the authorised Report, not for '77 and '91, but between the two. What do you see there?" I looked, and this is what I saw:-- 1880 £9,980,543 1881 £9,980,650 1882 £9,980,215 1883 £9,981,156 1884 £9,982,072 1885 £9,982,031 1886 £9,954,535 So that Mr. Logan might have shown from these figures that during the No-Rent Campaign the landlords were enjoying an untold period of prosperity, for his chosen year, 1891, shows a _decrease_ as compared with any one of the seven years above-mentioned. The truth is that the figures prove nothing in support of Mr. Logan's case, which is based on fallacy and suppression of material facts. His comparison of 1861 with 1877, without reference to the explanatory footnote, is of itself sufficient to shoulder him out of court, and stamps him as little more scrupulous than Father Humphreys, of venerated memory. Mr. Logan's belief that assessment and tax-paying are one and the same thing is here regarded as ridiculous, and my friend thinks that if Mr. Gladstone should impose a tax on Brains, the Grand Old Man's followers will escape with an easy assessment. Mullingar (Co. Westmeath), June 1st. No. 30.--THE "UNION OF HEARTS." It was strange to hear the tune of "Rule Britannia" in the streets of Mullingar. The Irish madden at "God Save the Queen," and would make short work of the performer. It was market day, and the singer was selling printed sheets of poesy. The old tune was fairly correct, but the words were strange and sad. "When Britain first at Hell's command Prepared to cross the Irish main, Thus spake a prophet in our land, 'Mid traitors' scoff and fools' disdain, 'If Britannia cross the waves, Irish ever shall be slaves.' In vain the warning patriot spoke, In treach'rous guise Britannia came--Divided, bent us to her yoke, Till Ireland rose, in Freedom's name, and Britannia boldly braves! Irish are no longer slaves." The people were too busily engaged in selling pigs to pay much attention to the minstrel who, however, was plainly depending on disloyalty for custom. Westmeath was once the home of Whiteboyism, Ribbonism, Fenianism, and all the other isms which have successively ruined the country by banishing security; and a spice of the old leaven still flavours the popular sentiment. "They may swear as they often did our wretchedness to cure, But we'll never trust John Bull again nor let his lies allure. No we won't Bull, we won't Bull, for now nor ever more; For we've hopes on the ocean, we've trust on the shore. Oh! remember the days when their reign we did disturb, At Limerick and Thurles, Blackwater and Benburb. And ask this proud Saxon if our blows he did enjoy When we met him on the battlefield of France, at Fontenoy. Then we'll up for the green, boys, and up for the green! Oh! 'tis still in the dust and a shame to be seen! But we've hearts and we've hands, boys, full strong enough, I ween, To rescue and to raise again our own unsullied green." A group of farmers standing hard by paid some attention to this chant, and one of them, in answer to my inquiry as to how the Union of Hearts was getting on, chuckled vociferously and said, "Aye, aye, Union iv Hearts, how are ye? How are ye, Union iv Hearts?" The group joined in the laugh, and I saw that the joke was an old one. The Invincibles had a few recruits in Mullingar and district, and the Land Leaguers also made their mark. The stationmaster sued somebody for travelling without a ticket. He was shot dead in the street immediately afterwards. Miss Croughan did not meet popular opinion in the matter of farm management. She was shot as she walked to church one fine Sunday morning. Patrick Farrelly took land which somebody else wanted. Shot as he walked home from work. Mr. Dolan, of a flour mill in the neighbourhood, had some misunderstanding with his workmen. Shot, on the chance that his successor would take warning, and accommodate himself to the public sentiment. Miss Ann Murphy, who with her two brothers lives at a small farm a mile or two away, supplied a jug of milk, and said that things were quiet for the moment, but there was no telling what might happen. The house was roofed with corrugated iron. "Ah," said Miss Murphy, "we were nearly burned to death, myself an' my two brothers. An' this was the way iv it. Tramps and ruffians would call here at nightfall, an' would ask for a shelter an' a lie down, an' I would lay a few bags or something on the flure over beyant, an' they would sthretch themselves out till mornin', an' often and often I would wash their cheeks an' heads where they had been fightin', an' would be all cut an' hacked. One fellow was often here, an' my brothers had reason to refuse him free lodgin's, an' so the next mornin' we found the gate lifted off the hinges an' carried away down the lane. My brothers spoke to the police-sergeant about this, an' the very next thing was to try to burn us alive in our beds. Some ruffian came in the night an' put a match in the thatch, an' I woke almost suffocated. I ran out, an' there was the house on fire, and the cow-house, with a beautiful, lovely cow, all a solid piece of blazin' flames, till ye could see nothin' else. We saved the four walls an' some of the furniture, an' we got £50 from the County. That's the sort of people the Land League brought out all over the country." A sturdy farmer living near said:--"An' that's what we'll have to suffer again, once ye let Home Rulers have the upper hand. The only way ye can manage these scamps is to make them feel the lash. No good tomfooling with these murdherin' ruffians. With Home Rule they expect to do as they like. If I go into a whiskey shop on a market day, what do I hear? Ever an' always the same things. There is to be no landlords, no policemen, no means of enforcing the law. There ye have it, now. The respectable people who work and make money will be a mark for every robber in the country. An' in Ireland ye can rob and murther widout fear of consequences. See that hill there? Mrs. Smith had her brains blown out as she drove by the foot of it. They meant the shot for her husband, who was with her. They don't make many mistakes. They bide their time, avoid hurry, and do the work both nately an' complately. They track down their victims like sleuth hounds, an' there's one thing they never go in for,--that's executions. Mrs. Smith, Farrelly, Dolan, Miss Croughan, and the stationmaster, were all comfortably shot without anyone incurring evil consequences. It's devilish hard to catch an Irishman, an' when ye've caught him it's harder still to convict him. They're improvin' in their plannin', but they are not so sure o' their shootin' as they used to be. They fired at Moloney from both sides of the road at once. That was a good idea. But they failed to kill him, and seven of them are arrested. Of course, we'll have no convictions, but it looks better to arrest them, an' it ensures the man that's arrested a brass band an' a collection. So everybody's pleased an' nobody hurt. An' what would ye ask for more?" On Thursday last, at eleven in the morning, Mr. Weldon C. Moloney, solicitor, of Dublin, was driving near Milltown, on the Bodyke property, when he was wounded from the ankle to the thigh by several simultaneous shots from both sides of the road, and the horse so badly injured that it must probably be destroyed. Mr. Moloney believes that he will be able to identify his assailants, and the police are sure they have the right men. Nothing, therefore, is now wanting to the formalities accompanying the Morley administration of Justice but the march to Court, the cheers of the crowd, the twelve good men and true--who, having sworn to return a verdict in accordance with the evidence, will assuredly say Not Guilty--and the brass band to accompany the marksmen home. If the heroes of this adventure be liberated in the evening a torchlight procession will make the thing complete, and will be handy for burning the haystacks of anyone who may not have joined the promenade. Athlone is well built and beautifully situated. The Shannon winds round the town, and also cuts it in two, so that one-half is in County Westmeath, province of Leinster, the other in County Roscommon, province of Connaught. The people are fairly well clad, but dirt and squalor such as can hardly be conceived are plentiful enough. The Shannon Saw Mills, which for twenty years have given employment to two hundred men, will shortly be removed to Liverpool, and the Athloners are sad at heart and refuse to be comforted. The concern belongs to Wilson, of Todmorden, Lancashire; and the manager, Mr. Lewis Jones, says that all the timber within reasonable distance is used up, besides which the place is not well fixed for business purposes. The workpeople are manageable enough, but somewhat uncertain in their attendance. They require a half-hour extra at breakfast time every now and then, perhaps twenty times a year or more, that they may attend mass, on the saints' days and such like occasions. This reminded me of my first entrance to Galway. All the bridges and other lounging places were covered with men who looked as if they ought to be at work. It was Ascension Day, and nobody struck a stroke. My invasion of Athlone afforded a similar experience. There were sixty-five able-bodied men lounging on the Shannon bridge at three in the afternoon--all deeply anxious to know whence I came and whither I was going, all with an intense desire to learn my particular business. Other pauper factories were in full swing, and at the first blush it seemed that the Athloners lived by looking at the river and discussing the affairs of other people. It was Corpus Christi Day, and none but heathen would work. The brutal Saxon with his ding-dong persistency may be making money, but how about his future interests? When the last trump shall sound and the dead shall be raised, where will be the workers on saints' days? Among the goats. But the men who spend these holy seasons in smoking thick twist, with the Shannon for a spittoon, will reap the reward of their self-denial. Mr. Lewis Jones has always taken a strong interest in politics, and his present opinion is remarkable. "I came to Ireland a Gladstonian, a Home Ruler, and, what is more, a bigoted Home Ruler. How the change to my present opinion was brought about I hardly know. It was not revolution, but rather evolution. No-one can remain a Home Ruler when he understands the subject. The change in myself came about through much travelling all over the country and mixing with the people. I do not blame the English Home Rulers a bit. How can I do so, when I myself was just as ignorant? Had I remained in Liverpool I should have remained a Home Ruler. I am certain of that. Unless you actually live in the country you cannot gauge its feeling, and the Irish people are very difficult to understand. I have always got along with them famously, and I shall take ninety per cent. of our workmen with me to England. No, Home Rule has nothing to do with the removal of the works. "My cousin and I worked like horses to get in Mr. Neville for the Exchange Division of Liverpool. We actually won, for by a piece of adroit management we polled a number of votes which would certainly have remained unpolled, and we polled them all for our man, who won by a very small majority, eleven, I think. I would willingly go to Liverpool to undo that work, as I now see how completely I was mistaken in my views of the Irish question. I was always a great Radical, and such I shall always remain; but as a Radical I am bound to support what is best for the masses of the people, and I am convinced that Home Rule would reduce the country to beggary. Bankruptcy must and will ensue, and with the flight of the landowners and the destruction of confidence, employment will be unobtainable. Who will embark capital in Ireland under present circumstances?" A financial authority told me that poor Ireland has thirty-six millions of uninvested money lying idle in the banks. The Irish not only lack enterprise, but they will not trust each other. Great opportunities are lying thickly around, but they seem unable to avail themselves of the finest openings. Mr. Smith, of Athlone, makes twelve and a half miles of Irish tweed every week, and sells it rather faster than he can make it. He commenced with two shillings a week wages, and now he owns a factory and employs five hundred people. A Black Protestant, of course. Mr. Samuel Heaton, of Bradford, is about to go and do likewise. I went over his place an hour ago, and this is what he said:--"This was a flour mill which cost £10,000 to build. The machinery would cost £10,000 more, I should think. It did well for many years, and then it was left to three brothers, who disputed about it until the concern was ruined as a paying business, and the place was allowed to lie derelict. The water power alone cost them £100 a year, and goodness knows what these splendid buildings would be worth. The Board of Works had got hold of it, and it was understood that anybody might have it a bargain, but nobody came forward. I offered them £30 a year for the whole of the buildings, the waterpower, and the dwelling house hard by, also that other immense building yonder, which might prove handy for a store-house; and my offer was accepted. I took all at that rent for sixty years, with six months' free tenancy to start with, and I was also to have a free gift of all machinery and fittings in the place. Here we are going nicely, only in a small way, but we shall do. We make blankets, tweeds for men's suits and ladies' dresses. When the Athlone people saw us knocking about they were surprised they had never thought of it before. There are hundreds of derelict flour mills going to ruin all over the country, and the owners would gladly let anyone have them and grand water power for nothing for two or three years, just to get a chance of obtaining rent at some future day. We work from morning till night, and neither I nor my sons have ever tasted a spot of intoxicating liquor. Now there are many small mills going in the country, the proprietors of which go on the spree three days a week. If they can do, we can do. This is going to be a big thing. The only difficulty I have is to turn out the stuff. Irish tweeds have such a reputation that we simply cannot meet the demand. Mills and water power may be had for next to nothing, but the Irish have no enterprise, and the English are afraid to put any money in the country under present circumstances." The Lock Mills above mentioned are three or four stories high, with perhaps a hundred yards of front elevation, a grandly built series of stone buildings close to the Shannon, which is here about a hundred and twenty yards wide, and carries tolerably large steamers and lighters. Six months' occupancy for nothing, the old machinery a free gift, water power and buildings for sixty years at £30 a year. I have previously mentioned the twelve big mills abandoned on the Boyne. Twelve openings for small capitalists--but Irishmen put their money in stockings, under the flure, in the thatch. _They_ will not trust Irishmen, although they have no objection to John Bull's doing so. A bank manager of this district said:-- "Poor Connaught, as they call the province, is a great hoarder. And when Irishmen invest they invest outside Ireland. Seventy-eight thousand pounds in the Post Office savings bank in Mayo, the most poverty-stricken district--as they will tell you. There is Connaught money in Australia, in America, in England, and in all kinds of foreign bonds. Irishmen want to keep their hoardings secret. They like to walk about barefoot and have money in their stocking. An old woman who puts on and takes off her shoes outside the town has three sons high up in the Civil Service, and could lend you eight hundred pounds. You would take her for a beggar and might offer her a penny, and she'd take it. Have you noticed the appalling mendicancy of Ireland? Have you reflected on the 'high spirit' of the Irish people? Have you remembered their pride, their repugnance to the Saxon? And have you noticed the everlastingly outstretched hands which meet you at every corner? Beggary, lying, dirt, and laziness invariably accompany priestly rule, and are never seen in Ireland in conjunction with Protestantism? I wish somebody would explain this. The Irish masses are the dirtiest and laziest in the world, but there are no dirty, lazy Protestants. Nobody ever heard of such a thing. And yet because there are more dirty, lazy Catholics than clean, industrious Protestants Mr. Gladstone would give the Catholic party the mastery, and England in future would be ruled from Rome. "Mr. Gladstone is not responsible for his actions. The Civil Service will not employ a man after sixty-five. The British Government forbids a man to work in its service after that time. The consensus of scientific opinion has fixed sixty-five as the limit at which the control of an office or the execution of routine office work should cease. Slips of memory occur, and the brain has lost its keen edge, its firm grip, its rapid grasp of detail. At sixty-five you are not good enough for the Civil Service, but at eighty-four, when you are nineteen years older, you may govern a vast empire. It is an anomaly. Even the Nationalists think Mr. Gladstone past his work." This statement was fully borne out by a strong anti-Parnellite of Athlone. He said:--"The bill is a hoax, but it is better than nothing. We'll take what we can get, an' we'll get what we can take--afterwards. Ye wouldn't be surprised that the people's bitter about the bill. Sure, 'tis no Home Rule it is at all, even if we got it as it first stood. 'Tis an insult to offer such a bill to the Irish nation. We want complete independence. We have a sort of a yoke on us, an' we'll never rest till we get it off. Ye say 'This'll happen ye, and That'll happen ye,' an' ye care the divil an' all about it. We don't care what happens, once we get rid of that yoke. A friend of mine said yesterday, 'I never see an Englishman but I think I'd like to have him under my feet, an' meself stickin' somethin' into him.' There's murther in their hearts, an' ye can't wonder at it. An' owld Gladstone's a madman, no less. I'm towld he ordhers a dozen top hats at once, an' his wife gets the shop-keeper to take thim back. An' I'm towld he stales the spoons whin he goes out to dine wid his frinds, an' that his wife takes thim back in a little basket nixt mornin'. And I thought that was all nonsinse till I seen the bill. An' thin I felt I could believe it; for, bedad, nobody but a madman could have drawn up sich a measure, to offind everybody, an' plaze nobody. 'Tis what ye'd expect from a lunatic asylum. But, thin, 'tis Home Rule. 'Tis the principle; an' as the mimber for Roscommon says, ''Tis ourselves will apply it, an' 'tis ourselves will explain it. That's where we'll rape the advantage,' says he." The Athlone market is "now on," and several hundred cows and calves are lowing in front of the Royal, Mrs. Haire's excellent caravanserai. Sheep are bleating, and excited farmers are yelling like pandemonium or an Irish House of Commons. Athlone is a wonderful place for donkeys, which swell the nine-fold harmony with incessant cacophonous braying, so that the town might fairly claim the distinction of being the chosen home, if not the _fons et origo_, of Nationalist oratory. Athlone, June 3rd. No. 31.--THE "UNION OF HEARTS." Once again the Atlantic stops me. The eighty-three miles of country between here and Athlone have brought about no great change in the appearance of the people, who, on the whole, are better clad than the Galway folks. The difference in customs, dress, language, manners, and looks between one part of Ireland and another close by is sometimes very considerable. There is a lack of homogeneity, a want of fusion, an obvious need of some mixing process. The people do not travel, and in the rural districts many of them live and die without journeying five miles from home. The railways now projected or in process of construction will shortly change all this, and the tourist, with more convenience, will no longer be able to see the Ireland of centuries ago. The language is rapidly dying out. Not a word of Irish did I hear in Athlone, even on market day. The Westporters know nothing about it. The tongue of the brutal Saxon is everywhere heard. The degenerate Irish of these latter days cannot speak their own language. They preach, teach, quarrel, pray, swear, mourn, sing, bargain, bless, curse, make love in English. They are sufficiently familiar with the British vernacular to lie with the easy grace of a person speaking his mother-tongue. They are a gifted people, and a patriotic--at least they tell us so, and the Irish, they say, is the queen of languages, the softest, the sweetest, the most poetical, the most sonorous, the most soul-satisfying. And yet the patriot members speak it not. William O'Brien is said to know a little, but only as you know a foreign language. He could not address the people on the woes of Ireland, could not lash the brutal Saxon, could not express in his native tongue the withering outpourings of his patriotic soul. He always speaks in English, of which he thinks foul scorn. He is the best Gaelic scholar of the rout, and yet he could not give you the Irish for breeches. Westport is splendidly situated in a lovely valley watered by a nameless stream which empties itself into Clew Bay. A grand range of mountains rises around, the pyramidal form of Croagh Patrick dominating the quay. It was from the summit of this magnificent height that Saint Patrick sent forth the command which banished from the Green Isle the whole of the reptile tribe. "The Wicklow Hills are very high, An' so's the hill of Howth, Sir; But there's a hill much higher still, Aye, higher than them both, Sir! 'Twas from the top of this high hill Saint Patrick preached the sarmint, That drove the frogs out of the bogs An' bothered all the varmint. The toads went hop, the frogs went flop, Slap-dash into the water, An' the snakes committed suicide to save themselves from slaughter." Pity there is no modern successor of Saint Patrick to extirpate the reptilia of the present day, the moonlighters and their Parliamentary supporters, to wit. The Westport people are very pious. As I have previously shown by quotations from Irish authorities, Ireland has the true Christianity which England so sadly needs. Unhindered by England, Ireland would evangelise the world, and that in double-quick time. Every town I visit is deeply engaged in religious exercises. In Limerick it was a Triduum with some reference to Saint Monica. In Cork it was something else, which required much expenditure in blessed candles. In Galway the Confraternity of the Holy Girdle was making full time, and in Westport three priests are laying on day and night in a mission. A few days ago they carried the Corpus Christi round the place, six hundred children strewing flowers under the sacerdotal feet, and the crowds of worshippers who flocked into the town necessitated the use of a tent, from which the money-box was stolen. On Sunday last the bridge convaynient to the chapel was covered with country folks who could not get into the building, and a big stall with sacred images in plaster of Paris and highly-coloured pictures in cheap frames was doing a roaring trade. Barefooted women were hurrying to chapel to get pictures blessed, or walking leisurely home with the sanctified treasure under their shawls. A brace of scoffers on the bridge explained the surging crowd, and advised instant application, that evening being the last. "Get inside, wid a candle in yer fist, an' ye can pray till yer teeth dhrop out iv yer head." This irreverence is probably one of the accursed fruits of contact with the sacrilegious Saxon. "The people here are cowardly, knavish, and ignorant," said an Irishman twenty years resident in Westport. "They believe anything the priests tell them, and they will do anything the priests may order or even hint at. They would consider it an honour if the priests told them to lie down that they might walk over them. Politically they are entirely in the hands of the Roman Catholic clergy. They are totally unable to understand or to grasp the meaning of the change now proposed, which would place the country entirely at the mercy of the clerical party. We see the result of popular election in the return of Poor Law Guardians, who spend most of their time in calling each other beggars and liars. Patronage under the Home Rule Bill would mean the instalment of the relatives of priests in all the best offices. Once we have an Irish Parliament, a man of capacity may leave the country unless he have a priest for his uncle. "We want a liberal measure of Local Government, and a final settlement of the land question. The poor people are becoming poorer and poorer through this eternal agitation which drives away wealth and capital, and undermines the value of all Irish securities. Poor as we were, we were much better off before the agitation commenced. The poor themselves are becoming alive to the fact that continuous agitation means continuous poverty. We must now have some sort of Home Rule, but we shall be ruined if we get it from a Liberal Government. If we get it from a Tory Government, the English will run to lend us money, but if from a Morley-Gladstone combination they won't advance us a stiver. The present Irish Parliamentary representatives have the confidence of no single Irish party. They were well enough for their immediate purpose, and no better men would come forward. To entrust them with large powers is the very acme of wild insanity. Admitting their honesty, which is doubtful, they have had no experience in business affairs, and their class is demonstratedly devoid of administrative capacity. The Poor Law Guardians of Cork, Portumna, Ballinasloe, Swinford, Ballyvaughan, and many other towns and cities, have by their mismanagement brought their respective districts to insolvency. That every case was a case of mismanagement is clearly proved by the fact that the Government having superseded these Boards in each case by two paid Guardians, a period of two years has sufficed to wipe off all debts, to reduce expenses, and to leave a balance in hand. They then begin to drift again into insolvency. And where the guardians have not been superseded, where they have not yet become bankrupt, they still have a bank balance against them. You will scarcely hear of a solvent parish, even if you offer a reward. And that is the class of persons Mr. Gladstone would entrust with the administration of Irish finance. The result would be the country's bankruptcy, and England would have to pay the damage. Serve England right for her stupidity." What my friend said anent the class of men who compose the ranks of the Irish Parliamentary party reminds me of something I heard in Athlone. A great anti-Parnellite said:--"Poor Mat Harris was the splindid spaker, in throth! Parnell it was that sent him to the House of Commons. Many's the time I seen him on the roof of the Royal Hotel, fixin the tiles, an' puttin things sthraight, that the rain wouldn't run in. 'Tis a slater he was, an' an iligant slater, at that. An' when he came down for a big dhrink, the way he'd stand at the bar and discoorse about Ireland would brake yer heart. Many's the time I seen the ould waiter listenin' to him till the wather would pour out iv his two good-lookin' eyes. An, thin, 'twas Mat Harris had the gab, rest his sowl! Ye haven't anybody could come up to him barrin' owld Gladstone, divil a one." Another Athloner, speaking of an Irish Nationalist M.P., who luckily still lives, said:--"Mr. Parnell took him up because he was a wonderful fellow to talk, and so was popular with the mob of these parts. I think he was a blacksmith by trade. Parnell got him made M.P., and set him up with a blue pilot coat, but forgot to give him a handkerchief. So he used the tail of his coat alternately with his coat sleeve. He never had a pocket-handkerchief in his life, but he was a born legislator, and the people believed he could do much to restore the vaunted ancient prestige and prosperity of Ireland. He came to Athlone, and went to the Royal, but the waiter, who did not know he was speaking to a member of Parliament, and moreover one of his own kidney, declined to take him in, and recommended a place where he could get a bed for Thruppence! And the M.P. actually had to take it. This was only inconsistent with his new dignity, and not with his previous experiences. This is the kind of person who is to direct Irish legislation more efficiently than the educated class, who unanimously object to Home Rule as detrimental to the interests of both countries, and as likely to further impoverish poor Ireland. The men who now represent the 'patriotic' party will feather their own nests. They care for nothing more." The Westport folks may not deserve the strictures of their friend of twenty years, but two things are plainly visible. They are dirty, and they have no enterprise. The island-dotted Clew Bay and the sublime panorama of mountain scenery, the sylvan demesne of the Earl of Sligo, and the forest-bordered inlets of Westport Bay, form a scene of surpassing loveliness and magnificence such as England and Wales together cannot show. The town is well laid out, the streets are broad and straight, and Lord Sligo's splendid range of lake and woodland, free to all, adjoins the very centre. And yet the shops are small and mean, the houses are dirty and uninviting, and dunghills front the cottages first seen by the visitor. A breezy street leads upward to the heights, and all along it are dustheaps, with cocks and hens galore, scratching for buried treasure. At the top a stone railway bridge, the interstices facing the sea full of parsley fern, wild maidenhair, hart's-tongue, and a beautiful species unknown to me. The bracing air of the Atlantic sweeps the town, which is sheltered withal by miles of well-grown woods. The houses are dazzling white, and like the Rhine villages look well from a distance. Beware the interiors, or at least look before you leap. Then you will probably leap like the stricken hart, and in the opposite direction. You will be surprised at your own agility. Flee from the "Lodgings and Entertainment" announced in the windows. Your "Entertainment" is likely to be livelier than you expected, and you will wish that your Lodgings were on the cold, cold ground. The Westporters are too pious to wash themselves or their houses. "They wash the middle of their faces once a month," said a Black Methodist. For there are Methodists here, likewise Presbyterians and Plymouth Brethren--besides the Church of Ireland folks, who only are called Protestants. All these must be exempted from the charge of dirtiness. Cleanliness, neatness, prosperity, and Protestantism seem to go together. Father Humphreys himself would not deny this dictum. For the other clause of the indictment--lack of enterprise--the Westporters are no worse and no better than their neighbours. The Corkers make nothing of their harbour, spending most of their time in talking politics and cursing England. Commercial men speak of the difficulty of doing business at Cork, which does not keep its appointments, is slippery, and requires much spirituous lubrication. Cork ruins more young commercial men than any city in Britain, and owing to the unreliability of its citizens, is more difficult to work. Galway has scores of ruined warehouses and factories, and has been discussing the advisability of building a Town Hall for forty years at least. Limerick has a noble river, with an elaborate system of quays, on which no business is done. The estuary of the Shannon, some ten miles wide, lies just below, opening on the Atlantic; and a little enterprise would make the city the Irish head-quarters for grain. The quays are peopled by loafers, barefooted gossiping women, and dirty, ragged children playing at marbles. Great buildings erected to hold the stores that never come, or to manufacture Irish productions which nobody makes, are falling into ruin. I saw the wild birds of the air flying through them, while the people were emigrating or complaining, and nothing seemed to flourish but religious services and fowl-stealing. It was during my sojourn in Limerick that somebody complained to the Town Council of poultry depredations, which complaint drew from that august body a counter-complaint to the effect that the same complainant had complained before, and that he always did it during a Retreat, that is, when the town was full of people engaged in special religious services--so that the heretic observer, and especially the representative of the _Gazette_, referred to by name, might couple the salvation of souls with the perdition of hens, to the great discredit of the faith. But this is a digression. Westport should brush itself up, cleanse its streets, tidy up its shops, sanitate its surroundings, and offer decent accommodation to tourists. The latter does exist, but is scarce and hard to find. The people of Cork, Limerick, and Galway blame England and English rule for the poverty which is their own fault alone. They hate the Northerners as idle unsuccessful men hate successful industrious men. Belfast is a standing reproach. The people of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught have had the same government under which Ulster has flourished, with incomparably greater advantages of soil and climate than Ulster, with better harbours and a better trading position. But instead of working they stand with folded hands complaining. Instead of putting their own shoulders to the wheel they wait for somebody to lift them out of the rut. Instead of modern methods of agriculture, fishing, or what not, they cling to the ancient ways, and resent advice. The women will not take service; the men will not dig, chop, hammer. They are essentially bone-idle--laziness is in their blood. They will not exert themselves. As Father McPhilpin says, "They will not move. You cannot stir them if you take them by the shoulders and haul at them." What will Home Rule do for such people? Will it serve them instead of work? Will it content the grumblers? Will it silence the agitators? Will it convert the people to industry? Will it imbue them with enterprise? Will it make them dig, chop, fish, hammer? Will it make the factory hands regular day by day? Will it cause the women to wash themselves and cleanse their houses? Will it change their ingrained sluttishness to tidiness and neatness and decency? Father Mahony, of Cork, said that the Irish fisherman turned his back on the teeming treasures of the deep, because he groaned beneath the cruel English yoke. Since then I have seen him fishing, but I did not hear him groan. He wanted boats, nets, and to be taught their use. Mr. Balfour supplied him with plant and instructions. Father Mahony and his tribe of wind-bags feed the people on empty air. The starving poor ask for bread, and they get a speech. They are told to go on grumbling, and things will come all right. Nobody ever tells them to work. Murder and robbery, outrage and spoliation, landlord-shooting and moonlighting, are easier ways of getting what they want. The Plan of Campaign, the No Rent combination, the Land League brotherhood when rightly considered, were just so many substitutes for honest work. Ireland will be happy when Ireland is industrious, and not a moment before. No need to say that the Westporters are Home Rulers. The clean and tidy folks, the Protestant minority, are heart and soul against the bill, but the respectable voters are swamped all over Ireland, by devotees of the priests. "We think the franchise much too low," said a Presbyterian. "We think illiterate Ireland, with its abject servility to the Catholic clergy, quite unfit to exercise the privilege of sending men to Parliament. We think the intelligent minority should rule, and that the principles which obtain in other matters might well be applied to Parliamentary elections. These ignorant people are no more fit to elect M.P.'s than to elect the President of the Royal Society or the President of the Royal Academy. And yet if mere numbers must decide, if the counting of heads is to make things right or wrong, why not let the people decide these distinctions? The West of Ireland folks know quite as much of art or science as of Home Rule, or any other political question. They have returned, and will in future return, the nominees of the priests." One of the highest legal authorities in Ireland, himself a Roman Catholic, said to me:-- "You saw the elections voided by reason of undue priestly influence. That was because, in the cases so examined, money was available to pay the costs of appeal. If there had been money enough to contest every case where a Nationalist was returned, you would have seen every such election proved equally illegal, and every one would have been adjudicated void." The Westport folks are looking for great things from the great Parliament in College Green. A Sligo man who has lived in Dublin was yesterday holding forth on these prospective benefits, his only auditor being one Michael, an ancient waiter of the finest Irish brand. Michael is both pious and excitable, and must have an abnormal bump of wonder. He is a small man with a big head, and is very demonstrative with his hands. He abounds with pious (and other) ejaculations, and belongs to that popular class which is profuse in expressions of surprise and admiration. The most commonplace observation evokes a "D'ye see that, now?" a "D'ye tell me so, thin?" or a "Whillaloo! but that bates all!" As will be seen, Michael artistically suits his exclamations to the tone and matter of the principal narrator, mixing up Christianity and Paganism in a quaintly composite style, but always keeping in harmony with the subject. The Sligo man said:-- "I seen the mails go on the boat at Kingstown, an' there was hundhreds of bags, no less." "Heavenly Fa-a-ther!" said Michael, throwing up eyes and hands. "Divil a lie in it. 'Twas six hundhred, I believe." "Holy Moses preserve us!" "An' the rivinue is millions an' millions o' pounds." "The saints in glory!" "An' wid Home Rule we'd have all that for Oireland." "Julius Saysar an' Nibuchadnizzar!" "Forty millions o' goolden sovereigns, divil a less." "Thunder an' ouns, but ye startle me!" "An' we're losin' all that"-- "Save _an'_ deliver us!" "Becase the English takes it"-- "Holy Virgin undefiled!" "To pay peelers an' sojers"-- "Bloody end to thim!" "To murther and evict us"-- "Lord help us!" "An' collect taxes an' rint." "Hell's blazes!" Ten minutes after this conversation under my window Michael adroitly introduced the subject of postal profits in Ireland. I told him there was an ascertained loss of £50,000 a year, which the new Legislature would have to make up somehow. Michael bore the change with fortitude. The loss of forty millions plus fifty thousand would have upset many a man, but Michael only threw up his eyes and said very softly-- "Heavenly Fa-a-ther!" Westport, June 6th. No. 32.--HOME RULE AND IRISH IMMIGRATION. A bright country town with a big green square called The Mall, bordered by rows of great elm trees and brilliantly whitewashed houses. The town is about a mile from the station, and the way is pleasant enough. Plenty of trees and pleasant pastures with thriving cattle, mansions with umbrageous carriage-drives, and the immense mass of Croagh Patrick fifteen miles away towering over all. The famous mountain when seen from Castlebar, is as exactly triangular as an Egyptian pyramid, or the famous mound of Waterloo. Few British heights have the striking outline of Croagh Patrick, which may be called the Matterhorn of Ireland. Castlebar is always dotted with soldiers, The Buffs are now marching through the town, on their way to the exercise ground, but the sight is so familiar that the street urchins hardly turn their heads. The Protestant Church, square-towered, fills a corner of The Mall, and there stands a statue of General O'Malley, with a drawn sword of white marble. Lord Lucan, of the Balaklava Charge, hailed from Castlebar. The town and its precincts belong to the Lucans. There is a convent with a big statue of the Virgin Mary, and the usual high wall. The shops are better than those of Westport, and the streets are far above the Irish average in order and cleanliness. The country around is rich in antiquities. Burrishoole Abbey and Aughnagower Tower, with the splendid Round Tower of Turlough, are within easy distance, the last a brisk hour's walk from Castlebar. There in the graveyard I met a Catholic priest of more than average breadth and culture, who discussed Home Rule with apparent sincerity, and with a keener insight than is possessed by most of his profession. He said:-- "When the last explosion took place at Dublin, the first to apprise me of the affair was the Bishop of my diocese, whose comment was summed up in the two words 'Castle job!' Now that riled me. I am tired of that kind of criticism." Here I may interpolate the critique of Colonel Nolan, who was the first to apprise me of the occurrence.--"I do not say that the Irish Government officials are responsible for the explosion. That would not be fair, as there is no evidence against them. But I do say that if they did arrange the blow-up they could not have selected a better time, and if some mistaken Irish Nationalist be the guilty person he could not have selected a worse time from a patriotic point of view." Thus spake the Colonel, who has an excellent reputation in his own district. The stoutest Conservatives of Tuam speak well of him. "All the Nolans are good," said a staunch Unionist; and another said, "The Nolans are a good breed. The Colonel is good, and Sebastian Nolan is just as good. Nobody can find fault with the Nolans apart from politics." The Colonel is one of the nine Parnellites accursed of the priests. Perhaps he was present at the Parnellite meeting at Athenry, regarding which Canon Canton, parish priest of Athenry, declared from the altar that every person attending it would be guilty of mortal sin. English readers will note that the Parnellites resent priestly dictation. Another interpolation anent "the Castle job." I thought to corner a great Athlone politician by questions _re_ the recent moonlighting, incendiarism, and attempted murders in Limerick and Clare. He said-- "All these things are concocted and paid for by the Tories of England. The reason Balfour seemed to be so successful was simple enough when you know the explanation. Balfour and his friends kept the moonlighters and such like people going. They paid regular gangs of marauders to disturb the country while the Liberals were in power. When the Tories get in, these same gangs are paid to be quiet. Then the Tories go about saying, 'Look at the order we can keep.' Every shot fired in County Clare is paid for by the English Tories. Sure, I have it from them that knows. Ye might talk for a month an' ye'd never change my opinion. There's betther heads than mine to undershtand these things, men that has the larnin', an' is the thrue frinds of Ireland. When I hear them spake from the altar 'tis enough for me. I lave it to them. Ye couldn't turn me in politics or religion, an' I wouldn't listen to anybody but my insthructors since I was twelve inches high." Well might Colonel Winter, who knows the speaker above-mentioned, say to me, "He has read a good deal, but his reading seems to have done him no good." It is time I went back to Turlough's Tower and my phoenix priest who was riled to hear his Bishop speak of the Dublin explosion as a "Castle job." He claimed that "the clergy are unwilling instruments in the hands of the Irish people, who are unconquerable even after seven hundred years of English rule. The Irish priesthood is so powerful an element of Irish life, not because it leads, but because it follows. Powerful popular movements coerce the clergy, who are bound to join the stream, or be for ever left behind. No doubt at all that, being once in, they endeavour to direct the current of opinion in the course most favourable to the Catholic religion. To do otherwise would be to deny their profession, to be traitors to the Church. They did not commence the agitation. The Church instinctively sticks to what is established, and opposes violent revolutionary action. History will bear me out. The clergy stamped out the Smith-O'Brien insurrection. The Catholic clergy of the present day, mostly the sons of farmers, are perhaps more ardently political than the clergy of a former day, a little less broad in view, a little more hot-headed; yet in the main are subject to the invariable law I laid down at first--that is, they only follow and direct, they do not lead, or at any rate they only place themselves in the front when the safety of the Church demands it. The bulk of the clergy believe that the time to lead has now come. My own opinion, in which I am supported by a very few,--but I am happy to say a very distinguished few,--is this: The Roman Catholic Church is making immense progress in England; a closer and closer connection with England will ultimately do far more for the Church than can be hoped from revolutionary and republican Ireland. We should by a Home Rule Bill gain much ground at first, but we should as rapidly lose it, while our hold on England would be altogether gone. Many of the so-called Catholic Nationalists are atheists at heart, and the tendency of modern education is decidedly materialistic. So that instead of progressive conquest the Church would experience progressive decline, which would be all the more striking after the great but momentary accession of prestige conferred by the Home Rule Bill. My theory is--Let well alone. The popular idea is to achieve commanding and lasting success at a blow." The Castlebar folks have diverse opinions, the decent minority, the intelligence of the place, being Unionist, as in every other Irish town. A steady, well-clad yeoman said:--"I've looked at the thing in a hundred ways, and although I confess that I voted for Home Rule, yet when we have time to consider it, and to watch the debate on every point, we may be excused if we become doubtful as to the good it will do. The people round here are so ignorant, that talking sense to them is waste of time. They will put their trust in coal mines and the like of that. Now, I have gone into the subject of Irish mines. I have read the subject up from beginning to end. Wicklow gold would cost us a pound for ten shillings' worth. The silver mines wouldn't pay, and the lead mines are a fraud; while the copper mines would ruin anybody who put their money into them. I know something about Irish coal. Lord Ranfurly did his best for Irish coal at Dungannon. Mines were sunk and coal was found, but it was worthless. Well, it fetched half a crown a ton, and people on the spot went on paying a guinea a ton for Newcastle coal because it was cheaper in the end. We may have iron, but what's the good when we have no coal to smelt it? The Irish forests which formerly were used for this purpose are all gone. Then the people put their trust in wool and cotton manufactures. They may do something with the wool, because England is waking up to the superior quality of Irish woollen productions; but in the cotton England is here, there and everywhere before us. 'Oh,' say some who should know better, 'put a duty on English goods, and make the Irish buy their own productions.' What rubbish! when England buys almost every yard of Irish woollen stuff, and could choke us off in a moment by counter-tariffs. Without English custom the Irish tweed mills would not run a single day. "As an Irishman, I should like to have a Parliament of my own. I suppose that is a respectable ambition. At the same time, I cannot see where it would do us any substantial good. No, I do not think the present Nationalist members loyal to the English Crown. Nor are they traitors. A priest explained that very well. There's a distinction. 'A man may not be loyal and yet not be a traitor, for how can a man be a traitor to a foreign government?' said he. That sounded like the truth. I thought that a reasonable statement. For, after all, we _are_ under foreign rule, and we have a perfect right to revolt against it and throw off the English yoke if we could do it, and if it suited us to do it. How to do it has been the talk since my childhood, and many a year before. It is the leading idea of all secret societies, and hardly any young man in Kerry and Clare but belongs to one or other of them. The idea is to get rid of the landlords who hold the country for England. There it is, now. We'll never be a contented conquered province like Scotland. We'd be all right if we could only make ourselves content. But the Divil is in us. That's what ye'll say. The Divil himself is in Irishmen." The Mayo folks are great temporary migrants. From the County Mayo and its neighbour Roscommon come the bands of Irish harvesters which annually invade England. Latterly they are going more than ever, and the women also are joining in large numbers. The unsettled state of the country and the threat of a College Green Parliament have made work scarcer and scarcer, and the prevailing belief among the better classes that the bill is too absurd to become law, is not sufficient to counteract the chronic want of confidence inspired by the presence of Mr. Gladstone at the helm of state. Five hundred workers went from Westport Quay to Glasgow the other evening. More than two-thirds were women from Achil Island, sturdy and sun-burnt, quaintly dressed in short red kirtle, brilliant striped shawl, and enormous lace-up boots, of fearful crushing power. Though not forbidding, the women were very plain, ethnologically of low type, with small turn-up noses, small eyes, large jaws, and large flat cheekbones. The men were ugly as sin and coarse as young bulls, of which their movements were remindful. A piper struck up a jig and couples of men danced wildly about, the women looking on. Five shillings only for forty hours' sea-sickness, with permission to stand about the deck all the time. Berths were, of course, out of the question, and the boat moved slowly into the Atlantic with hundreds of bareheaded women leaning over the sides. Another boat-load will land at Liverpool, to return in September and October. The best-informed people of these parts think that under the proposed change the young female population of Mayo would be compelled to stay in England altogether, and that their competition in the English labour market would materially lower the rate of factory wage. "They live hard and work like slaves when away from Ireland," said an experienced sergeant of the Royal Irish Constabulary. "And yet they are lazy, for on their return they will live somehow on the money they bring back until the time comes to go again, and during the interval they will hardly wash themselves. They will not work in their own districts, nor for their friends, the small farmers. Partly pride, partly laziness; you cannot understand them. The man who attempts to explain the inconsistencies of the Irish character will have all his work before him. Make the country a peasant-proprietary to suit the small farmers, and the labouring class will go to England and Scotland to live. The abolition of the big farmers will cut the ground from under their feet. You will have Ireland bossing your elections, as in America, and cutting the legs from under your artisans. For let me tell you that once Paddy learns mechanical work he is a heap smarter than any Englishman." If Home Rule should become law, and if England should be over-run by the charming people of Connaught, the brutal Saxon will be interested to observe some of the ancient customs to which they cling with a touching tenacity. Marriage with the Connaught folks is entirely a matter of pecuniary bargain. The young folks have no act or part in the arrangements. The seniors meet and form a committee of ways and means. How much money has your son? How much has your daughter? The details once understood, the parties agree or disagree, or leave the matter pending while they respectively look about for a better bargain. And even if the bargain be ostensibly agreed to, either party is at liberty to at once break the match, on hearing of something better. The prospective bride and bridegroom have nothing to say in the negotiations, and may never have seen each other in their lives. Previous acquaintance is not considered necessary, and the high contracting parties are frequently married without having met before they meet at the altar. This was hard to believe, but careful inquiry established the fact. Never was a case of rebellion recorded. The lady takes the goods the gods provide her, and the gentleman believes that the custom yields all prizes and no blanks. Marriage is indeed a lottery in Connaught. The system works well, for unfaithfulness is said to be unknown. The Connaught funerals are impressive. One of these I have seen, and one contents me well. The coffin arrived on a country cart, the wife and family of the deceased sitting on the body, after the fashion attributed to English juries. To sit elsewhere than on the coffin would in Connaught be considered a mark of disrespect. The children sit on the head and feet, the wife jumps on the chest of the dear departed, and away goes the donkey. The party dismount at the churchyard gates, and as the coffin enters they raise the Irish cry, a blood-curdling wail that makes your muscles creep, while a cold chill runs down your spine, and you sternly make for home. You may as well see it out, for you can hear the "Keen" two miles away against the wind. The mourners clasp their hands and move them quickly up and down, recounting the deceased's good deeds, and exclaiming, in Irish and English, "Why did ye die? Ah, thin, why did ye die?" To which very reasonable query no satisfactory answer is obtainable. The widow is expected to tear her hair, if any, and to be perfectly inconsolable until the churchyard wall is cleared on leaving. Then, and not before, she may address herself to mundane things. Good "Keeners" are in much request, and a really efficient howler is sure of regular employment. The Connaught folks are somewhat rough-and-ready with their dead. Colonel Winter, of the Buffs, told me that he came across a donkey-cart in charge of two men, who were waiting at a cross-road. A coffin had been removed from the cart, and stood on its end hard by. "I thought it was an empty coffin," said the Colonel, "but it wasn't. The men were waiting, by appointment, for the mourners, and meanwhile the old lady in the coffin was standing on her head. Wonderful country is Ireland. "An old woman died in the workhouse of typhus fever, or some other contagious disorder. The corpse was placed in a parish coffin, and was about to be buried, when a relative came forward and offered to take charge of the funeral, declining to accept the workhouse coffin. The authorities consented, on condition that the proposed coffin should be large enough to enclose the first one, explaining that the body was dangerously contagious. The relative, a stout farmer, duly arrived at the workhouse with the new coffin, which was found to be too small to include the first one, and the authorities thereupon refused to have the coffins changed. So the mourner knocked down two men, and, making his way into the dead-room, burst open the receptacle containing his revered grandmother, whipped her out of the parochial box, planked her into the family coffin, and triumphantly walked her off on his shoulder. There was filial piety for you! They arrested that man, locked him up, and, for aught I know, left the old lady to bury herself, which must have been a great hardship. What Englishman would have done as much for his grandmother? And yet they say that Connaught men have no enterprise!" A Protestant of Castlebar said:--"If the English people fail to correctly estimate the supreme importance of the present crisis it is all over with us, and, I think, with England. If the Unionist party persevere they must ultimately win. The facts are all with them. Enlightenment is spreading, and if time to spread the truth can be gained Home Rule will be as dead as a door-nail. If, on the other hand, the English people fail to see the true meaning of Home Rule, which is revolution and disintegration, England, from the moment an Irish Parliament is established, must be classed with those countries from which power has dwindled away; her glory will have commenced to wane, her enemies will rejoice, and she will present to the world the aspect of a nation in its decadence. The Irish leaders and the Irish people alike, who support Home Rule, are ninety-nine hundredths disloyal. Already the leaders are cursing England more deeply than before, this time for deceiving them about the Home Rule Bill. Their most respectable paper is already preparing the ground for further agitation. The _Irish Independent_ says that the Irish people are being marched from one prison to another, and told that is their liberty. Such is the latest criticism of the Home Rule Bill, as pronounced by the Nationalist party. The same paper ordered the Lord Mayor of Dublin and the City Council to refuse an address of congratulation on the marriage of the Duke of York and Princess May, and they refused by more than four to one. They refused when it was the Duke of Clarence. We could understand that, but why refuse now, when Home Rule is adopted as the principal measure of the Government whose only aim is the Union of Hearts? The English people must indeed be fools if they cannot gauge the feeling that dictated a vote so mean as this. Surely the English will at the eleventh hour draw back and save us and our country, and themselves and their country from unknown disaster. If they allow this ruinous measure to become law I shall almost doubt the Bible where it says, 'Surely the net is set in vain in the sight of any bird.'" I met a very savage Separatist in Castlebar. They are numerous in Mayo and Galway. The more uncivilised the district, the more ignorant the people, the more decided the leaning to Home Rule. My friend was not of the peasant class, but rather of the small commercial traveller breed, such as, with the clerks and counterskippers of the country stores, make up the membership of the Gaelic clubs by which the expulsion of the Saxon is confidently expected. He said, "I am for complete Independence, and I do not believe in what is called constitutional agitation. Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow. Every country that has its freedom has fought for it. I would not waste a word with England, which has always deceived us and is about to deceive us once again. England has always wronged us, always robbed us. England has used her vast resources to ruin our trade that her own might flourish. The weakest must go to the wall--that is the doctrine of England--which thrives by our beggary and lives by our death. You have heaps of speakers in England who admit this. Gladstone knows it is true. The Irish people have let the English eat their bread for generations. The Irish people have seen the English spending their money for centuries. This must be stopped as soon as possible, and Ireland grows stronger every day. Every concession we have obtained has been the result of compulsion, and I am for armed combination. Every Irishman should be armed, and know the use of arms. The day will come when we shall dictate to England, and when we may, if we choose, retaliate on her. We shall have an army and navy of our own; all that will come with time. We must creep before we walk, and walk before we run. The clubs already know their comrades; each man knows his right and left shoulder man, and the man whose orders he is to obey. Merely a question of athletic sports, at present. But when we get Home Rule the enthusiasm of the people will be whetted to such an extent that we shall soon enroll the whole of the able-bodied population, and after then, when we get the WORD, you will see what will happen. Where would be your isolated handfuls of soldiery and police, with roads torn up, bridges destroyed, and an entire population rising against them? Yes, you might put us down, but we'd first have some fun. In a week we'd not leave a red coat in the island." The gratitude, the warm generosity of the Irish people is very beautiful. The Union of Hearts, however, as a paying investment seems to have fallen considerably below par. Castlebar, June 8th. No. 33.--TUAM'S INDIGNATION MEETING. Here I am, after two hours' journey by the Midland and Great Western Railway, which leads to most of the good things in Ireland, and is uncommonly well managed, and with much enterprise. By the Midland and Great Western Railway you may cover the best tourist districts in quick time and with great comfort. By it you may tackle Connemara either from Galway or Westport, and the company, subsidised by Mr. Balfour, will shortly open fifty miles of line between Galway and Clifden. Then we want a thirty-mile continuation from Clifden by Letterfrack and Leenane to Westport, and the circle will be complete. For that, Paddy must wait until the Tories are again in office. As he will tell you, the Liberals spend their strength in sympathetic talk. Mr. Hastings, of Westport, said:--"I care not who hears me say that the Tories have instituted the public works which have so much benefited the country. The Liberals have always been illiberal in this respect. Mr. Balfour did Ireland more good than any Liberal Irish Secretary." Mr. Hastings is as good a Catholic Home Ruler as Father McPhilpin, who said substantially the same thing. Ballina is on the Moy--every self-respecting town in Ireland has a salmon river--and the Midland and Great Western Railway gives fishing tickets to tourists, who anywhere on this line should find themselves in Paradise. From the three lakes of Mullingar to the Shannon at Athlone, from the Moy at Ballina to the Corrib at Galway, the waters swarm with fish. The salmon weir at Galway is worth a long journey to see. The fish literally jostle each other in the water. They positively elbow each other about. Sometimes you may stand against the salmon ladder in the middle of the town, and although the water is clear as crystal you cannot see the bottom for fish--great, silvery salmon, upon whose backs you think you might walk across the river. The Moy at Ballina is perhaps fifty yards wide, and the town boasts two fine bridges, one of which is flanked by a big Catholic church. The streets are not handsome, nor yet mean. Whiskey shops abound, though they are not quite so numerous as in some parts of Ennis, where, in Mill Street, about three-fourths of the shops sell liquor. Castleisland in Kerry would also beat Ballina. Mr. Reid, of Aldershot, said:--"The population of Castleisland is only one thousand two hundred, but I counted forty-eight whiskey-shops on one side of the street." Of a row of eleven houses near the main bridge of Ballina I counted seven whiskey-shops, and one of the remaining four was void. There were several drink-shops opposite, so that the people are adequately supplied with the means of festivity. The place has no striking features, and seems to vegetate in the way common to Irish country towns. It probably lives on the markets, waking up once a week, and immediately going to sleep again. The Post Office counter had two bottles of ink and no pen, and the young man in charge was whistling "The Minstrel Boy." The shop-keepers were mostly standing at their doors, congratulating each other on the fine weather. A long, long street leading uphill promised a view of the surrounding country, but the result was not worth the trouble. It led in the direction of Ardnaree, which my Irish scholarship translates "King's Hill," but I stopped short at the ruins of the old workhouse, and after a glance over the domain of Captain Jones went back through the double row of fairly good cottages, and the numerous clans of cocks and hens which scratched for a precarious living on the King's highway. The people turned out _en masse_ to look at me, and to discuss my country, race, business, appearance, and probable income. The Connaught folks have so little change, are so wedded to one dull round, that when I observe the interest my passage evokes I feel like a public benefactor. A bell rings at the Catholic church. Three strokes and a pause. Then three more and another pause. A lounger on the bridge reverently raises his hat, and seeing himself observed starts like a guilty wretch upon a fearful summons. I ask him what the ringing means, and with a deprecatory wag of his head he says:-- "Deed an' deed thin, I couldn't tell ye." The Town Crier unconsciously launched me into business, and soon I was floating on a high tide of political declamation. What the crier cried I could not at all make out, for the accent of the Ballina folks is exceedingly full-flavoured. When he stopped I turned to a well-dressed young man near me and said, "He does not finish, as in England, with God save the Queen." "No," said my friend with a laugh, "he has too much regard for his skin." "What would happen if he expressed his loyalty?" "He would be instantly rolled in the gutter. The people would be on him in a moment. He'd be like a daisy in a bull's mouth. He might say "God save Ireland," just to round the thing off, but "God save the Queen"! My friend was a Home Ruler, and yet unlike the rest. He said: "I am a Home Ruler because I think Home Rule inevitable now the English people have given way so far. Give Paddy an inch and you may trust him to take an ell. We must have something like Home Rule to put an end to the agitation which is destroying the country. It is now our only chance, and in my opinion a very poor chance, but we are reduced so low that we think the bottom is touched. The various political agencies which have frightened away capital and entirely abolished enterprise will continue their work until some measure of Home Rule is given to the country, and then things will come to a head at once. It is barely possible that good might ultimately result, but young men would be gray-headed before things would work smoothly. The posture of the poorer classes is simply absurd. They will have a dreadful awakening, and that will also do good. They are doing nothing now except waiting for the wonderful things they have been told will take place when Irishmen get into power. You must have heard the extraordinary things they say about the mines and factories that will be everywhere opened. Some of their popular orators tell them of the prosperity of Ireland before the Union. That is true enough, but the conditions are totally changed. We did something in the way of manufacturing, but we could not do it now. We had no Germany, no America to compete against. Those who tell us to revive that period of prosperity by the same means might just as well tell us to revive the system of tribal lands or the chieftainship of Brian Boru. "The people need some tremendous shock to bring them to their senses. They used to work much better, to stand, as it were, on their own feet. Now they make little or no exertion. They know they will never be allowed to starve. They know that at the cry of their distress England and America will rush to their succour. And they have tasted the delights of not paying. First it was the rent, the impossible rent. In this they had a world-wide sympathy, and a very large number of undeserving persons well able to pay chummed in with the deserving people who were really unable to meet their engagements. And at the meetings of farmers to decide on united action, the men who could pay but would not were always the most resolute in their opposition to the landlord. This was natural enough, for they had most to gain by withholding payment. The landlords always knew which was which, and would issue ejectment processes against those able to pay, but what could be done against a whole county of No-rent folks? And never have these people been without aid and sympathy from English politicians. We have had them in Ireland by the dozen, going round the farmers and encouraging them to persevere. "The great advantage of Home Rule in the eyes of the farmers is this and this only--that an Irish House would settle the land question for ever. The people would take a good bill from the House of Commons at Westminster if they could get it, but they can't. They believe that their only hope is with an Irish Parliament. The most intelligent are now somewhat doubtful as to the substantial benefits to come. They fear heavy taxation. They say that everything must come out of the land, and they wonder whether the change would pay them after all. On the whole, they will risk it, and under the advice of the clergy, who have their own little ideas, they will continue to vote for Home Rule. Throw out this bill, let Mr. Balfour settle the land question, and the agitators will not have a leg left to stand on." All this I steadfastly believe. No farmer wants Home Rule for anything beyond his personal interests. Mr. Patrick Gibbons, of Carnalurgan, is one of the smartest small farmers I have met, and he confirms the statements of his fellows. "Give the farmers the land for a reasonable rent," said he, "and they would not care two straws for Home Rule." The small traders admit that they would like it, as a mere matter of fancy, and because they have been from time to time assured that the English Parliament is the sole cause of Ireland's decadence. They are assured that an Irish Parliament by instituting immense public works would prevent emigration, and that the people staying at home and earning money would bring custom to their shops. Nearly everybody insists on an exclusive system of protective tariffs. England, they say, competes too strongly. Ireland cannot stand up to her. She must be kept out at any cost. According to a Ballina Nationalist this is where the "shock" will come in. He said:-- "The bill is being whittled down to nothing. Gladstone is betraying us. It is doubtful if he ever was in earnest. 'Twould be no Home Rule Bill at all, if even it was passed. An' what d'ye mane by refusing us the right to put on whatever harbour dues we choose? An' what d'ye mane by sayin' we're not to impose protective tariffs to help Irish industries? Ye wish to say, 'Here's yer Parlimint. Ye're responsible for the government of the counthry, for the advancement of the counthry, for the prosperity of the counthry; but ye mustn't do what ye think best to bring about all this. When we have a Parlimint we'll do as _we_ choose, an' not as _you_ choose, Ye have no right to dictate what we shall do, nor what we shan't do. We'll do what we think proper, an' England must make the best of it. England has always considered herself: now we'll consider ourselves. If we're not to govern the counthry in every way that _we_ think best, why on earth would we want a Parlimint at all? Tell me that, now. If Ireland is to be governed from England, if we are to have any interference, what betther off will we be? An' Protection is the very first cry we shall raise." The good folks at Tuam have held an indignation meeting to protest against the statements contained in my Tuam letter, which they characterise as "vile slanders" which they wish to "hurl back in my teeth" (if any). The meeting took place in the Town Hall on Sunday, which day is usually selected by the Tuamites to protest against the brutal Saxon, and to hold meetings of the National League, a colourable successor to the Land League. All these meetings are convened by priests, addressed by priests, governed by priests. The Tuamites are among the most priest-ridden people in Ireland, and, after having seen Galway and Limerick, this is saying a good deal. The meeting was from beginning to end a screaming farce, wherein language was used fit only for an Irish House of Commons. The vocabulary of Irish Town Commissioners and Irish Poor Law Guardians was laid under heavy contribution. The speakers hurled at the _Gazette_ the pet terms they usually and properly reserve for each other. The too flattering terms which in a moment of weakness I applied to Tuam and its people are described as "lying, hellish, mendacious misrepresentations." Misther MacCormack said the English people would know there was "not a wurrud of thruth in these miserable lies." The report of the _Tuam Herald_ reads like a faction fight in a whiskey-shop. You can hear the trailing of coats, the crack of shillelaghs on thick Irish skulls, the yells of hurroosh, whirroo, and O'Donnell aboo! Towards the end your high-wrought imagination can almost smell the sticking plaister, so vivid is the picture. "The bare-faced slanders of this hireling scribe from the slums of Birmingham" were hotly denounced, but nobody said what they were. The clergy and their serfs were equally silent on this point. I steadfastly adhere to every syllable of my Tuam letter. I challenge the clergy and laity combined to put their fingers on a single assertion which is untrue, or even overstated. Let them point out a single inaccuracy, if they can. To make sweeping statements, to say that this "gutter-snipe," this "hireling calumniator," this "blackguard Birmingham man" has made a series of "reckless calumnies," "devoid of one particle of truth," is not sufficiently precise. I stand by every word I have uttered; I am prepared to hold my ground on every single point. Most of my information was obtained from Catholics who are heart-weary of priestly tyranny and priestly intimidation; who are sufficiently enlightened to see that priestly power is based on the ignorance of priestly dupes, that priestly influence is the real slavery of Ireland, the abject condition of the poor is its unmistakable result, and that where there are priests in Ireland there are ignorance and dirt in exact proportion. They have compared the clean cottages of the North with the filthy hovels of the South, and they have drawn their own conclusions. But to descend to detail. What do the Tuamites deny? "Not a particle of truth in the whole letter!" Father Humphreys said my Tipperary letter was "a pure invention," without a syllable of truth. Since then Father Humphreys has been compelled to admit, in writing, that all I said was true, and that he "could not have believed it possible." That was his apology. Turning to the Tuam letter, I find these words-- "The educated Catholics are excellent people--none better anywhere, none more tolerant." This is construed into "a gross insult on our holy priests, and particularly on our Archbishop," who, by the way, was not mentioned or made the subject of any allusion, however remote. Do the Tuamites deny that "many of the streets are wretchedly built," and "the Galway road shows how easily the Catholic poor are satisfied?" Do they deny that the cabins in this district are "aboriginal in build, and also indescribably filthy," and that "the condition of the inmates is not one whit higher than that obtaining in the wigwams of the native Americans?" Do they deny that "the hooded women, barefooted, bronzed, and tanned by constant exposure, are wonderfully like the squaws brought from the Far West by Buffalo Bill?" All this I reiterate and firmly maintain, with the addition of the statement that the squaws were in a condition of compulsory cleanliness the like of which seems never to be attained by the ladies of the Galway Road, Tuam. The meeting is called a "monster" meeting. How many people does the Tuam Town Hall hold? The fact is that the Town Hall of Tuam, with the entire population of Tuam thrown in, could be put into the Town Hall of Birmingham. Do the Tuamites deny that Mr. Strachan, one of their most worthy citizens, is unable to walk the streets of the town wherein live the people he has benefited, without a guard of policemen to protect him from the cut-throat emissaries of the Land League? So it was when I visited Tuam, Mr. Strachan's crimes being the purchase of a farm in the Land Court and his Protestant creed. Do they deny the scenes of persecution I described as having taken place in former days? All this I had from a source more reliable than the whole Papist hierarchy. The Tuamites can deny nothing of what I have written. The tumbledown town is there, the filthy cabins and degraded squaws of the Galway Road are still festering in their own putridity, and probably the police are still preserving Strachan from the fate of the poor fellow so brutally murdered near Tuam a few weeks ago. The priests called a town meeting to protest against insult to the Church. Great is Diana of the Ephesians! When the tenants refused to pay their lawful dues the priests called no meeting. When the country from end to end echoed with the lamentations of widows and the wailing of helpless children whose natural protectors had been murdered by the Land League, the Tuamites suppressed their indignation, the Tuam priests made no protest. When scores of men were butchered at their own firesides, shot in their beds, battered to pieces at their own thresholds, these virtuous sacerdotalists never said a word, called no town's meeting, used no bad language, spoke not of "hirelings," "calumniators," "blackguards," and "liars." Two of the speakers threatened personal injury should I again visit the town. That is their usual form,--kicking, bludgeoning, outraging, or shooting from behind a wall. When they do not shoot they come on in herds, like wild buffaloes, to trample on and mutilate their victim. From the strong or armed they run like hares. Their fleetness of foot is astonishing. The _Tuam News_, owned and edited by the brother of a priest, exhibits the intellectual status of the Tuam people. Let us quote it once again:-- TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TUAM NEWS." Sir--Permit me a little space in the next issue of the _Tuam News_, relative to my father being killed by the fairies which appeared in the _Tuam News_ of the 8th of April last. I beg to say that he was not killed by the fairies, but I say he was killed by some person or persons unknown as yet. Hoping very soon that the perpetrators of this dastardly outrage will be soon brought to light, I am, Mr. Editor, yours obediently, DAVID REDINGTON. Kilcreevanty, May 8th, '93. After this I need add nothing to what I have said except a pronouncement of Father Curran, who said that "Tuam could boast as fine schools as Birmingham, and that he would then and there throw out a challenge that they boast more intelligence in Tuam than Birmingham could afford." Poor Father Curran! Poor Tuam! Poor Tuamites with their rags, pigs, filth, priests, fairies, and Intelligence! I shall visit them once more. A few photographs from the Galway Road would settle the dispute, and render null and void all future Town's meetings. They have sworn to slay me, but in visiting their town I fear nothing but vermin and typhoid fever. Their threats affect me not. As one of their own townsmen remarked,-- "You cannot believe a word they say. They never speak the truth except when they call each other liars. And when they are in fear, although too lazy to work, they are never too lazy to run. They have no independence of thought or action. Their religion crushes all manhood out of them. They are the obedient servants of the priests, and no man dare say his soul's his own. Any one who did not attend that meeting would be a marked man, but if it had been limited to people who know the use of soap it would necessarily have been small, even for the Tuam Town Hall." Everywhere in Connaught I hear the people saying, "When you want to roast an Irishman you can always find another Irishman to turn the spit." Thrue for ye, ma bouchal! Ballina, June 10th. No. 34.--WHY IRELAND DOES NOT PROSPER. A community of small farmers with a sprinkling of resident gentry. All sorts of land within a small compass, rock, bog, tillage, and excellent grazing. The churchyard is a striking feature. A ruined oratory covered with ivy is surrounded by tombstones and other mortuary memorials strange to the Saxon eye. The graves are dug east and west on a rugged mound hardly deserving to be called a hill, although here and there steep enough. Huge masses of sterile mountain form the background, and from the ruin the Atlantic is seen, gleaming in the sun. Patches of bog with diggers of turf, are close by the untouched portions covered with white bog-bean blooms, which at a short distance look like a snowfall. On a neighbouring hill is a fine old Danish earthwork, a fort, called by the natives "The Rath," fifty yards in diameter, the grassy walls, some ten feet high and four yards thick, reared in a perfect circle, on which grow gorse and brambles. The graveyard is sadly neglected. Costly Irish crosses with elaborate carving stand in a wilderness of nettles and long grass. Not a semblance of a path anywhere. To walk about is positively dangerous. Ruined tombstones, and broken slabs which appear to cover family vaults, trip you up at every step. Every yard of progress is made with difficulty, and you move nervously among the tall rank nettles in momentary fear of dislocating your ankle, or of being suddenly precipitated into the reeking charnel house of some defunct Mayo family. The Connaught dead seem to be very exclusive. Most of the ground is enclosed in small squares, each having a low stone wall, half-a-yard thick, with what looks like the gable-end of a stone cottage at the west end. Seen from a distance the churchyard looks like a ruined village. At first sight you think the place a relic of some former age, tenanted by the long-forgotten dead, but a closer inspection proves interments almost up to date. Weird memorials of the olden time stand cheek by jowl with modern monuments of marble; and two of suspiciously Black Country physiognomy are of cast-iron, with I.H.S. and a crucifix all correctly moulded, the outlines painted vermilion, with an invitation to pray for the souls of the dead in the same effective colour. The graveyard shows no end of prayer, but absolutely no work. No tidiness, order, reverence, decency, or convenience. Nothing but ruin, neglect, disorder, untidiness, irreverence, and inconvenience. _Ora et labora_ is an excellent proverb which the Irish people have not yet mastered in its entirety. To pray _and_ work is as yet a little too much for them. They stop at the first word, look round, and think they have done all. This graveyard displays the national character. Heaps of piety, but no exertion. Any amount of talk, but no work. More than any people, the Irish affect respect for their dead. You leave the graveyard of Oughewall smarting with nettle stings, and thankful that you have not broken your neck. The place will doubtless be tidied, the nettles mowed down and pathways made, when the people get Home Rule. They are clearly waiting for something. They wish to be freed from the cruel English yoke. When this operation is happily effected, they will clean their houses, move the dunghills from their doors, wash themselves, and go to work in earnest. The Spanish Queen vowed she would never wash herself till Gibraltar was retaken from the English. Seven hundred years ago the Irish nation must have made a similar vow--and kept it. A passing shower drove me to the shelter of a neighbouring farmhouse, where lived a farmer, his wife, and their son and daughter. The place was poor but tolerable, the wife being far above the Irish average. The living room, about ten feet square, was paved with irregularly-shaped stones of all sizes, not particularly flat, but in places decidedly humpy; the interstices were of earth, the whole swept fairly clean, but certainly not scrubbed. The rafters, of rough wood, were painted black, and a rough ladder-like stair, open at the sides, led to the upper regions. To have an upstairs is to be an aristocrat. The standard of luxury is much lower than in England, for almost any English agricultural labourer would have better furniture than that possessed by this well-to-do but discontented farmer. An oak cupboard like a wardrobe, a round deal table, and four rough rush-bottomed chairs of unstained wood comprised the paraphernalia. The kitchen dresser, that indispensable requisite of English farm kitchens, with its rows of plates and dishes, was nowhere to be seen. The turf fire on the hearth needed no stove nor grate, nor was there any in the house. A second room on the ground floor, used as a bed room, had a boarded floor, and although to English notions bare and bald, having no carpet, pictures, dressing table, or washstand, it was clean and inoffensive. The churning and dairy operations are carried on in the room first described, where also the ducks and hens do feed. The farmer holds fifty acres of good land, for which he pays fifty pounds a year. His father, who died thirty years ago, paid twenty-four pounds, which he thinks a fair rent to-day. Has not made application to the Court, although he _might_ benefit by twenty-five to thirty-five per cent. Is aware that the Judicial Rent is sometimes fixed at a sum above what the tenant had been paying, and admits that this might happen to him. "Yes, the land round the house is very good, very good indeed, but what can be seen from here is by far the best of it. That is always the way in this world, the best at the front." From this and other remarks of like tendency I gather that the noble landlord is in the habit of placing all the best land of his estate along the high read, concealing the boggy, rocky portions in the remote interior, fraudulently imposing on the public, and alienating sympathy from the tenant, thereby inflicting another injustice on Ireland. "The English laws are right enough, as far as they go," said the farmer, "but the English will not do the right thing about the land. Now we know that an Irish Parliament will settle the matter forth-with. That's why we support Home Rule. We know the opinions of the men who now represent us, and we can trust them in this matter if in no other. The land is the whole of it. If that were once put on an unchangeable bottom I would rather be without Home Rule. Some say that even if our rents are reduced by one-half, the increased taxes we must pay would make us nearly as poor as ever, and that all this bother and disturbance would not really save us a penny piece. And I think this might be true. So that if something could be done by the English Parliament I should prefer it to come that way. And so would we all, a hundred times. For with the English Parliament we know where we are, and what we're doing. I'm not one to believe that the land will be handed over to us without payment. Plenty of them are ignorant enough to believe even that. My view is just this: If the English Parliament would settle the land question, I would prefer to do without an Irish Parliament. That's what all the best farmers say, and nothing else. No, I wouldn't invest money in Ireland. No, I wouldn't trust the bulk of the present members for Ireland. Yes, I would prefer a more respectable class of men who had a stake in the country. But we had to take what we could catch, for people who have a stake in the country are all against Home Rule. What could we do? We had no choice. We sent Home Rulers because an Irish Parliament is pledged to meet our views about the land. We know they will fulfil their pledges, not because they have promised, nor because they wish to benefit us, but because they wish to abolish landlordism and landlords from the country. The landlord interest is English interest, and that they want to get rid of. Their reasons for settling the land question are not the farmers' reasons, but so long as it _is_ settled the farmer will reap the benefit, and will not care _why_ it was settled. Give us compulsory sale and compulsory purchase, at a fair price, and you will find the farmers nearly all voting against Home Rule. No, the priests would not be able to stir us once we were comfortably settled. Why, we'd all become Conservatives at once. Sure anybody with half-an-eye could see that in a pitch-dark night in a bog-hole." My friend assured me that secret societies are unknown in Mayo, or at any rate, in the Westport district. The young men of Clare, he thought, were Fenians to a man. "They are queer, blood-thirsty folks, enemies to Ireland. Why, they object to other Irishmen. They will not allow a poor fellow from another county to work among them as a harvest-man. They would warn him off, and if he would not go, they'd beat him with sticks, and when once they begin, you never know where they'll stop. They should be put down with a strong hand." But where is the strong hand? Mr. Morley, recently replying to Mr. Arnold Forster, said that "it was admitted that the police were working as faithfully and as energetically under the present as under the late Government, and added that the authorities concerned were taking all the steps which experience and responsibility suggested." Mr. Morley is right in attributing faithfulness to the police, and their energy is doubtless all that can be reasonably expected under very discouraging auspices. Mr. Morley speaks more highly of the police than the police speak of Mr. Morley. From Donegal to Bantry Bay, from Dublin to Galway and Westport, north, south, east, west, right, left, and centre, the police of Ireland condemn Mr. Morley's administration as feeble, vacillating, and as likely to encourage crime. They speak of their duties in despondent tones. I have from time to time given their sentiments, which are unvarying. They know not what to do, and complain that while they continue to be held responsible they dare not follow up their duties with the requisite energy. Only yesterday an experienced officer said:--"The men are disheartened because they do not know how their action will be taken, and because they feel that anything in the nature of enterprise is very likely to injure themselves individually. They feel that in the matter of arrests it is better to be on the safe side, and then they know how unavailing all their efforts must be in the disturbed districts of Kerry, Clare, and Limerick, where the arm of the law has been paralysed by Mr. Morley's rescision of the salutary provisions so necessary in those counties. Outrages and shooting are every-day occurrences, for many cases are never reported to the police at all. If the police caught the criminals in the act there would be no result, for the juries of those three counties would not convict, and the venue cannot now be changed to Cork. "Some of the Nationalist members were the other day asking in the House whether the Cork magistrates had not been presented with white gloves, and so on, to bring out the fact that there was no crime to punish on a recent occasion; but what does this prove? Merely that Mr. Balfour's action in changing the venue of three counties to the city of Cork, where moonlighters are tried by a jury of independent traders of Patrick Street was wise and sagacious. The white gloves of Cork were a tribute to Tory administration. The Cork juries convicted their men, and stood by the consequences. They have escaped so far, as all bold men escape. If the Limerick moonlighters must have been tried in Cork there would have been no moonlighting. The police can always catch them, when there is any use in catching them. In country districts the movements of people are pretty well known, and these fellows are always ready to betray each other. Mr. Morley may talk fine, and may mean well, but the people who have been riddled with shot have Mr. Morley to thank. Of course he is under compulsion. He has to please the Irish Separatists. Old women and children are outraged and shot in the legs because of Mr. Morley's political necessities." I think my friend was right as to the effect of boldness in action. There is too much truckling to the ruffian element, not only by Mr. Morley, but by most Unionists resident in Ireland. Opinions on this point vary with varying circumstances. Several shopkeepers in a Mayo town were utterly ruined for expressing their political opinions, or for being suspected of harbouring opinions contrary to the feeling of the majority. They were boycotted, and had to shut up shop. Others, older-established, or in possession of a monopoly, weathered the storm, but their opinions cost them something. These are the milder cases. Yet shooting or bludgeoning are likely enough to follow overt political action, such as refusing to join a procession or to illuminate. It was hard to find a Protestant farmer in this district, but I succeeded at last. His notions were strange, very strange indeed. He thought his rent fair enough, and was of opinion that the tenant must be prepared to take the good years with the bad years. "These countrymen of mine, like somebody I've read of, never learn anything and never forget anything. They do not half farm the land. They don't understand any but the most elementary methods. They do not put the land to its best use. When they had prosperous years, and many a one they had, they put nothing by for a rainy day. They are very improvident. I have been in both England and Scotland, and I know the difference in the people. They have more self-reliance, and they are keen after improvements. They are not satisfied to have just enough, to live from hand to mouth. They must have comfort, and they like to be independent. Now, Paddy is content to just scrape along. If he can barely exist he's quite satisfied. He's always on the edge of the nest, but he feels sure that when the worst comes to the worst, somebody or something will step in and save him from starvation. "Nearly every man in this county has been in England, many of them twenty times or more, working for months and months in the best farmed districts. Have they got any wrinkles? Divil a one. They have not planted a gooseberry or currant tree, they have no pot-herbs, no carrots or parsnips--nothing at all but potatoes and turnips. The farmers have no system of winter feeding, and they won't learn one. There is a great and growing demand in England for Irish butter, which, properly put up in a tasty way, would fetch fine figures, but the lack of system in winter feeding and winter calving prevents the supply from being kept up. The farmers will make no change in their habits, and they don't work as if they meant it. They lounge about all day, waiting for the crops to grow and the cattle to get fat, and then they wonder they are so poor. The only hope of the Irish people is their absorption in America. They work well enough when surrounded by new influences. Once get them away from the priests, and away they go; you can't stop them. They have great natural abilities, but somehow they won't bloom in Ireland. If they put forth the same energy in Ireland as in America they would do well. But they never will. Their religion keeps them down, and they can't get out of their old habits." I observed that the Earl of Sligo had obtained eighty-two decrees of possession against tenants for non-payment of rent, and that the _Mayo News_, while censuring his action, admitted that most of the tenants owed two years' rent at least. My Black Protestant friend might tell me whether the heading "Another Batch of Death Sentences" was a fair description of this legal action, and whether the tenants were, in his opinion, totally unable to pay the rent. "To call them sentences of death is absurd, The people are not evicted and left homeless, but merely deprived of their rights as tenants. In England, if a man does not pay his rent, he is thrown out, and nobody says Nay. In Ireland a man may pay no rent for seven years, and yet, when he is evicted, the people cry Shame on the landlord, who, in most cases, has been patient to the limit of human endurance. The landlord has watched the tenant neglecting the land, and living more expensively on the money he ought to have paid as rent. Now, let me submit a point which never seems to strike the English Unionist speakers. And yet it is plain enough. The Separatists say evictions are cruel and tyrannical because the people cannot pay the awful, exorbitant rents. Now notice my point! "A rent may be too high, but the land must be worth _something_. Now these people have paid _nothing at all for two years or more_. "Talk to these defaulters, and they will usually say 'The land is worth just one-half.' "Why don't they pay that half? "Then they would be only one year behind, instead of two, and they would get no notice to quit. "But instead of paying the one-half which they themselves say the land is worth, they pay nothing at all. Does that look honest? Does it look genuine? Don't you think anybody could see that they are taking advantage of the unsettled state of things to avoid any payment whatever? They await Home Rule, which is to give them the land, and they are anticipating its advantages. "They all know Hennessy's brandy, and can tell you the difference between the one-star and the three-star brands. "In England everybody is at work. In Ireland most are at play. A man who has been taught to work in England feels inclined to follow them up here with a whip, they look so idle even when at work. They move about as if half-dead. They are as lazy as Lambert's dog, that leaned his head against the wall to bark. The young women won't work either. My sister in Athlone is obliged to give her servants three nights a week off from five to ten, or she could have nobody. Then they are always going to mass or keeping some festival of the Church. Speak a word of reproof and away they go. They are as proud as Lambert's other dog, that took the wall of a muck-cart and got squelched for his pains. "Home Rule would never do Ireland any good. Quite the contrary. What can do a man good who tries to get his dinner by standing about and saying how hungry he is? "As to the agitators, they will always agitate. When one source is dried up they'll invent another. They have their living to get, and agitation is their trade. And a paying trade it is. Are they disloyal to England? I believe them Fenians at heart--that is, Fenians in the matter of loyalty. They would use any power they might get to damage England, and if England gives them power she'll bitterly rue the day. Paddy may be lazy, but put your finger in his mouth and he'll bite. The English Separatists don't see this, but when I see the fox in the hen-roost I can guess what brought him there. If I put the cat in the dairy I should expect her to taste the cream. Trust the Irish Nationalist members! I'd as soon trust a pack of wolves with my lambs." My friend is a scientific gardener, and descanted on the wonderful climate of Ireland, where plants that will not grow in England nourish luxuriously. I told him I had seen bamboo growing in the open air at Dundalk, and asked him if the Bonds of Brotherhood (_Humbugis Morleyensis_) or the Union of Hearts (_Gladstonia gammonica gigantica_) would come to perfection in Hibernia. He thought the soil and climate unsuitable, and was sure they would never take root. The _gammonica_ had been tried, but it withered and died. It could not be "budded" for want of an Irish "stock." A scrap-book, fifty years old, revealed a condition of things so strangely like that of the present day that I obtained permission to copy the following skit, which, but for the mention of the old convict colony, might have been written last week. It is headed "Extract from the forthcoming history of the Irish Parliament." The Home Rule project is therefore ancient enough:-- One blow and Ireland sprang from the head of her Saxon enslaver like a new Minerva! Proudly and solemnly she then sat down to frame a Republic worthy of Plato and Pat. Her first President had been a workhouse porter, who was also a night watchman. He was, therefore, eminently fitted for both civil and military administration. The speech of President Pat on opening Congress developes his policy and his well-digested plans of legislative reform. Here are a few quotations:-- The Key-stone of Government is the Blarney-stone. Political progress may always be accelerated by a bludgeon. Our institutions must be consolidated by soft-soap and whacks. The People's will is made known by manifesto, and by many fists too. Every man shall be qualified to sit in Congress that is a ten-pound pig-holder, provided that the pig and the member sleep under the same roof. Members of Congress will be paid for their services. Gentlemen wearing gloves only to have the privilege of shaking the President's hand. The unwashed members to be paid at the door. Pipes will not be allowed on the Opposition benches, nor may any member take whiskey until challenged by the President. Under no circumstances will a member be suffered to sit with his blunderbuss at full cock, nor pointed at the President's ear. Our Ambassadors will be chosen from our most meritorious postmen, so that they may have no difficulty in reading their letters. The Foreign Office will be presided over by a patriotic editor who has travelled in New South Wales and is thoroughly conversant with the language. Instead of bulwarks, the island will be fortified with Irish Bulls, our engineers being of opinion that no other horn-works are so efficient. To prevent heartburnings between Landlord and Tenant, a Government collector of rents shall be appointed, and Tenant-right shall include a power to shoot over the land and at anyone on it. And this was written half-a-century ago. It reads like yesterday! Oughewall, June 10th. No. 35.--IN A CONGESTED DISTRICT. This is the first station on the Balfour line which is to run from Westport to Achil Sound--now in process of construction by Mr. Robert Worthington, the great Dublin contractor, who has built about a million pounds' worth of Irish railway, and who is of opinion that Home Rule means the bankruptcy of Ireland, and that the labouring population of the country would by it be compelled to emigrate to England, bringing their newly-acquired skill as railway workers into competition with the navvies and general working population. The seven miles of line between here and Westport are not yet packed and ballasted, and the ride hither on an engine kindly placed at the disposal of the _Gazette_, was not lacking in pleasurable excitement. The bogey engine kicked and winced and bucked and cavorted in a fashion unique in my experience. She seemed to be exhilarated by the pure mountain air, charged with ozone from the Atlantic main. Watching her little eccentricities, it was hard to believe her not endued with animal vitality. She walked the railway like a thing of life. She ducked and dived and plunged and snorted and reared and jibbed like a veritable cocktailed nag of the true old Irish breed. Sometimes she seemed to go from under you as she suddenly dipped into a slight depression. Sometimes she rolled like a ship at sea, and you began to wonder if sea-sickness were possible on land. The scenery is not striking, and the surrounding country, though poor and desolate, is by no means sterile. No tracts of black bog, no impassable morasses, no miles of rocks and boulders, but a fairly good grazing country, with here and there, at long intervals, a white cottage. The engine slows at one point, where the rails are twisted into serpentine convolutions by yesterday's tropical heat. Both sides are considerably displaced, but they still bear the right relation to each other, and the faithful machine, sniffing and picking her way carefully, glides safely over the contorted path. A short tunnel, with sides of solid masonry and roof-arch of brick, again demands extra care, and it is well that the pace is slowed, for half-way through, a man becomes dimly visible running a trolley off the line. Mountains arise on the left and in front, and my old friend Croagh Patrick puts in his Nationalist appearance. Then Newport heaves in sight, a cemetery on high ground opposite the site of the station, and overhanging the line, kept in its place by an immense retaining wall, without which the "rude forefathers of the hamlet" would fall from their narrow cells and block the progress of the civilising train. A handsome viaduct ends the run, _finis coronat opus_, and I walk a hundred yards to see the awkward spot which at first seemed to have no bottom, but which energy and industry have conquered, as they conquer everything. The line was going on happily until this point was reached, when a soft bog was broached, which threatened to swallow everything, opening its cavernous jaws with appetite which long seemed insatiable. The engineer choked it off with a hundred thousand cubic yards of earth, a quantity which to the untechnical ear sounds like a little kingdom, or at least like a decent farm, and the bog cried, Hold! enough. The total length of the line will be twenty-six-and-a-half miles, the cost, exclusive of the permanent way, which is an extra of some £1,800 a mile, being £110,000, most of which is dispensed among the labourers of the district, who thank the Balfour Administration for a great work which would never have been undertaken as a merely commercial speculation. The congested areas here, as elsewhere, have been powerfully assisted and benefited by the sagacity which at once afforded relief, improved the country, and opened the way to great markets. Temporary assistance is succeeded by a solid and permanent benefaction. And still the people are not happy. Most of them are rather below the Irish average. Their isolated position in the extreme west, and their want of means of communication, may partly account for this. Few ever see a newspaper, and when they do they only read stuff concocted for them by unscrupulous people who write down to their level, and deliberately endeavour to keep them in total darkness. The men employed on the line work well, and Mr. William Ross, civil engineer, tells me they are even better workers than the Galway men, to whom I gave due credit for industry. The townsfolk are great politicians. That is, they echo the absurdities they hear, and are ready to believe anything, provided it is unlikely enough. The country papers of Ireland are poor and illiterate beyond belief, but their assumption of knowledge and superior information is amazing. One of the Galway rags recently treated its readers to a confidential communication having reference to the real sentiments of Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour as opposed to those ostensibly affected by those statesmen and to those with which they are popularly credited. Lord Salisbury is really dying for Home Rule, and Mr. Balfour would depart in peace if he could once behold a Dublin Parliament bossed by Tim Healy and William O'Brien. Lord Salisbury is not so bad as he seems, nor is Balfour altogether beyond hope of salvation. Both are under a kind of Tory terrorism which makes them say the thing that is not, compels them against their wishes to fight, forces them reluctantly to make a show of opposition. But both of them wink the other eye and have doubtless unbosomed themselves--in strict confidence--to the editor of the Galway paper. The poor folks of Ireland swallow this stuff, and will quote it gravely in argument. The _Irish Catholic_ has a large circulation, and a glance over its columns, particularly its advertising columns, is highly suggestive at the present juncture. People offer to swop prayers, just as in _Exchange and Mart_ people wish to barter a pet hedgehog for a lop-eared rabbit, or a cracked china cup for a gold watch and chain. Gentleman wishes someone to say fifteen Hail Marys every morning at eight o'clock for a week, while he, in return, will knock off a similar number of some other good things. The trade in masses is surprising. For a certain sum you get one mass a week for a year, for a higher figure you get two masses a week _and_ an oleograph, for a trifle more you get mentioned in special prayers for benefactors, with a rosary that has touched the relics of Thomas-a-Becket or has been laid on the shrine of Blessed Thomas More. One advertisement sets forth the proviso that unless the payment is regular the supplications will be stopped. No pay, no prayer. _Point d'argent, point de prêtre._ Prayers and advice, political or otherwise, at lowest terms for cash. No discount allowed. A reduction on taking a quantity. A very knowing Newport man explained the present political position. "'Tis as simple as Ah, Bay, Say. Parnell wint over to France an' Amerikay, an' explained to thim how the English was oppressin' and ruinin' the poor Irish people; an' whin the Saxon seen he was found out, an' whin the Americans sent thousands an' thousands of pounds to pay the cliverist men in Ireland to fight the English in Parlimint, thin the English begun to give us back part of what they robbed us of. Every bite ye get in England manes that much less in an Irish mouth, an' the counthry is all starvin' becase England is fattenin'. All the young folks is gone out of the counthry; an' why did they go? Becase England makes the laws, an' becase she makes the laws to suit herself, an' to ruin us. Sure nine-tenths of the land is owned by Englishmen, who make us pay twice, aye, an' four times the rint the land is worth; an' that's what England thinks us good for, an' nothin' else. We're just slaves to the Saxon, as many's the time I heard the priest sayin' it. An' it was thrue for him. Sure, the counthry is full of coal, an' if we wor allowed to get it we'd be as rich as England in five years. Sure, Lord Sligo's estate is made of coal, an' although he's a Conservative, an' a Unionist, an' a Protestant, the English Parlimint wouldn't allow him to get it because it was in Ireland, an' they wor afraid the Irish would get betther off. An' sure they want to keep us paupers, so that we'll be compelled to 'list for sojers, an' fight for England against Rooshia and Prooshia, an' Injy, an' foreign parts, that the English is afraid to do for themselves." His opinions are not below the intellectual average of those held by the majority of the Irish electorate. The ignorance of the rank and file of the Irish voters is exasperating to Englishmen, who are quite unable to understand their credulity, to combat their bitter prejudices, or to make headway against their preconceived notions. English Gladstonians who believe that Home Rule ought to be a good thing will stagger with dismay when confronted with the people who will rule the roost. For the intelligent are nowhere in point of numbers. The thick-witted believers in charms, in fairies, in the curative and preservative virtues of holy water, will have the country in their hands. The poor benighted peasants, who firmly believe that Mr. Balfour has the moonlighters in his pay, and that the murders of the Land League were ordered by Lord Salisbury to cast discredit on the national cause--these are the people who, voting as they are told by the priests, would govern the action of the Irish Parliament. They believe that Home Rule by some magic process will supply the place of industry and enterprise, will open up innumerable sources of boundless wealth, and will bring about Mr. Gladstone's "chronic plethora" of money. But, above all, the people are to be for ever delivered from the "English yoke." What the phrase means they know not. They only repeat what they have heard. The dogs around Newport are muzzled. It would be well for the people if their advisers were muzzled too. Public feeling is well organised in Ireland. Although the people are not readers of daily news, the kind of sentiment ordered at head-quarters is immediately entertained. How it spreads nobody knows, unless it is spread from the altar. A change has come over the public sentiment. Among the more intelligent farmers there is a revolt against Home Rule. At a Unionist meeting held the other day at Athenry, all the speakers agreed on this point. One said that the change might be inoperative, because the farmers dare not avow their true opinions, because they have little or no faith in the secrecy of the ballot, and because they dread the unknown consequences of ruffian vengeance. The ignorant masses have also experienced a change. They have been undergoing a process of preparation for the next agitation. The poor folks at first believed that when they got Home Rule all would be well. That consummation devoutly to be wished, was to enrich them all. The agitators have to guard against the resentment of the disappointed people. They are hedging industriously. If Home Rule should come it will do no good, because it is not the right brand. John Bull has spoilt it all, as he spoils everything. Home Rule would have done all they promised, but this is not the Home Rule they meant! They took it at first as a small instalment of what they would afterwards kick out of the Saxon, but those outrageous Unionists have shaved it down to almost nothing. It is not worth having, and the only thing to do, say some Newport politicians, is for the Irish Nationalist party to rise in a body an' lave the House, an' not put a fut back into it till they get what they want. I wish my Newport friends could make their counsel prevail. The latest phase of feeling, then, is an affected indignation at this supreme treachery of the English people. Over and over again I have quoted the opinions of people who said Mr. Gladstone meant to hoax Ireland again. This was when all seemed to be going quite smoothly. The Government concessions and the moderate use of the closure have convinced the doubters that they were right, and they breathe battle and slaughter. Irishmen like fighting debates, decided measures, tremendously hard hitting. As a people they do not believe in constitutional agitation. They would prefer sudden revolutions, cannons roaring, blood and thunder. They openly avow their preference, and say that this would have been their method, but that England has elaborately disarmed the country, which declaration clashes with the popular opinion, often exultantly expressed, that Ireland is full of arms. The truth is with the revolutionaries, who would certainly prefer battle but for its well-known danger. If Ireland could be freed by moonlighters firing at long ranges from behind stone walls, with an inaccessible retreat within easy reach, the English yoke would have but a short shrift. A frantic Newporter said:--"We never got anything by love, but always by fear, and compulsion should be our motto. I've no patience wid thim that'll stand hat in hand, or be going down on their knees to England for every bit an' sup. John Mitchel an' James Stephens was the only men of modern times who properly understood how to manage the English. Of coorse, Parnell did something to advance the cause, an' 'tis thrue that he had no revolution nor insurrection of the old sort. But the Land League was arranged to include all the secret associations and to make use of thim all. Ye had Whiteboys, an' Fenians an' Ribbonmen agin ye, an' ye can't say but what the secret societies did the business, an' not what they call the constitutional agitation. Ye might have talked to the English Parlimint till doomsday an' ye'd not make it move a hair's-breadth for Ireland. But follow up yer talk wid a bit of shootin' an' then ye'll see what ye will see. 'Twas very bad, an' no man could agree wid it; but it did what no talkin' would ever have done. Compulsion is the right idea. An' what about dynamite? If ye look properly at the thing, why wouldn't we use dynamite? Haven't we a right to do as _we_ choose in Ireland? Ought not the Irish people to be masters of Ireland? We say clear out--lave us to ourselves, take away yer landlords, yer sojers, yer police, an' _thin_ we'll not have recoorse to dynamite. We have a right to free ourselves by any means that comes handy. All's fair in love an' war. No, I'm not sayin' that I'd do it meself personally. But whin ye come to look into it, why wouldn't we be justified in usin' dynamite? Ye pitched shells into Alexandria whin it suited ye. Why wouldn't we blow up London wid dynamite, if it suited us?" The Newport people have not heard of the Union of Hearts. A decent old man who was trying to sell home-spun tweed of his own making, said:--"The English has been hittin' us for many a year, but whin we git Home Rule we'll be able to hit thim back. God spare me to see that day!" And he raised his hat, just as the people mentioned by Mr. A.M. Sullivan, M.P., "raised their hats reverentially" when they heard that a landlord or agent was shot. Whenever I hear a friendly sentiment, a friendly wish, a friendly aspiration in connection with England from the lips of any Nationalist I will gladly record it, if possible, in letters of gold. I do not expect this to happen. Speakers who attack England are most popular. The more unscrupulous and violent they are, the better their reception. Nationalist M.P.'s who in England have spoken well of Mr. Gladstone or of the English people are sharply hauled over the coals. The fighting men are the patriot's glory. The Irish people believe that the introduction of a Home Rule Bill is due to the action of their bullies, rather than to the persuasive argument of their civilised men. A very small minority desire to give John Bull some credit for fair play, an opinion hotly resented by the mob. "Ah, now, listen to me, thin." "Sure, I'm lookin' at ye." "Don't I know we bate the Bill out of Bull." "An' how would ye know, at all, at all?" "How would I know, is it? D'ye take me for a fool?" "Arrah, thin, sure I would not judge ye by yer looks!" That is a model bar spar, the combatants drinking dog's-nose, sometimes called "powdher an' ball"--a drink of neat whiskey washed down by a pot of porter. The Connaught folk drink whiskey neat, but usually follow the spirit with water. They take up both glasses at once, and after a loving sniff at the poteen they pour it slowly down, the shebeen stuff tasting like a torchlight procession. Then they hastily toss off the water, making a wry face, and mostly addressing to the despised fluid the remark-- "Ye'll find IT gone on before!" The desperate appeal of the Parnellite party for funds has evoked much merriment among Irish Unionists, and much burning scorn from anti-Parnellites--who themselves have much need of the money. A young friend has sent me the following parody, adapted from an old and well-known, melody:-- The patriot came down like a wolf on the fold, And all that he asked was their silver and gold; And he pocketed all that he got, as his fee, From the shores of the Liffey to rocky Tralee. Tho' Pat looked as naked and bleak as his soil, Yet there stood the patriot to sack up the spoil. And from parish to parish the box went its rounds-- If we give you our speeches you must give us your pounds. The coming golden time is neatly hinted at. Home Rule will pay for all:-- When it comes, you no longer shall lie in a ditch, Every beggar among you at once shall be rich; The hedger and ditcher shall have an estate, And drive his four horses, and dine off his plate. What! you won't? And your champion in want of a meal, With his coat out at elbows, his shoes down at heel; With his heart all as black as his speeches in print! Boys, I know what you'll do: you'll just keep back the Rint. Now down with your cash, never think of the jail, For Erin's true patriots the Virgin is bail; She'll rain down bank notes till the bailiff is blind-- Still you're slack! Then I'll tell you a piece of my mind. The priest is invoked to compel unwilling subscribers:-- Would you like to be sent, in the shape of a ghost, To be pokered by demons and browned like a toast? Or be hung in a blaze with a hook in your backs, Till you all melt away like a cake of bees'-wax? Would you like to be pitchforked down headlong to Limbo, With the Pope standing by with his two arms akimbo? No matter who starves, plank down on the spot, Pounds, shillings, and pence; we'll take all that you've got. The poem breathes the true spirit of Separatism-cum-Sacerdotalism. Newport (Co. Mayo), June 15th. No. 36.--IRISH IMPROVIDENCE THE STUMBLING BLOCK. The further journey from Newport to Mulranney on the _Gazette_ special engine was yesterday delayed for a few hours by the announcement that during the night part of the line had sunk into a bog--a circumstance which might have seemed unusual and ominous to English engineers, but which Mr. Lionel Vaughan Bennett regarded as a mere matter of daily routine, hardly worth more than a passing mention. There was nothing for it but to take another walk round Newport, and after further admiring the great wall holding up the embankment opposite the station--a colossal work executed under great difficulties--to look at the surrounding landscape. Those who are interested in engineering may like to know the dimensions of this wall, which is two hundred feet long, thirty-five feet high, and ten feet thick at the base, tapering off to a thickness of five feet at the top, and is built of a fine limestone quarried from the railway cutting a little further out. The view from either of the ridges between which the town is built, is magnificent, mountain, valley, sea, and river contributing to the effect. From one ridge you see Clew Bay and the Croagh Patrick range, with an immense tract of country of varied appearance. From the other, immediately above the station, an enormous valley stretches away to the Bogagh mountain in front and the peaked summit of Lettermoughra on the left. At the latter point of view are some wooden cabins which the Saxon might mistake for pigsties or small cowsheds until he discovered they were inhabited by patriots, keen on Home Rule and charitable coppers. Beware of civility in these parts. From casual passers-by it nearly always means an appeal for alms, and after a few days' experience you are apt to fall into misanthropy. Some of these beggars have a fine dramatic way of opening the conversation. A hale and seemingly able-bodied man of fifty or thereabouts came up carrying a wheel, which he dropped when about ten yards away with the fervently uttered exclamation-- "God help the poor--owld--man!" This adjuration falling short of its aim, he came up and asked for "a few coppers," at the same time invoking about sixpennyworth of blessings in advance, a sort of sprat to catch a mackerel. "Got no coppers," I said, rather impatiently. "May ye never have one till the day of yer death," said the good old man, this time with an unmistakable accent of sincerity. He hobbled off with the wheel, muttering something which may have been blessings, and a fine healthy young fellow came up. "Good mornin', an' 'tis a foin bit of scenery, but we can't ate it, an' we'd die afore we'd go into the poorhouse, an' a thrifle of money for a dhraw at the pipe would be as welkim as the flowers of May, an' 'tis England is the grate counthry, and thim that was in it says that Englishmen is tin per cint. betther than Irishmen, aye, twinty per cint."--and so forth, and so forth. There were six more applications in a hundred yards, one of them from a well-dressed boy of fourteen or fifteen, who gracefully reclined on a bank with his legs crossed, his arms under his head. Begging to the Irish race is as natural as breathing. They have an innate affinity for blessing and begging, and they beg without need. Anything to avoid work. They are for the most part entirely destitute of a spirit of independence. They will not dig, and to beg they are not ashamed. According to a Newport authority they are growing worse than ever. While I awaited the fishing up of the line he said:-- "The conduct of the poorer classes is becoming more and more a disgrace to the country. There is poverty, of course, but not so much, nor in so great a proportion, as in England. This line has been in progress for two years and a half, and the people of this district have received many thousands of pounds without any perceptible improvement of position, either as to solvency or personal appearance. They are as ragged as ever, as dirty as ever, and decidedly more dishonest than ever. They are more extravagant in their eating and drinking, and the women spend more in ridiculous finery; but in spite of the wages they have earned, they have not paid their way one bit better than before. They usually sow the land and live on the crops, selling the surplus to pay the rent, which is usually very moderate, and well within what the land will pay. For thirty months many hundreds of them, thanks to Mr. Balfour, have enjoyed an additional income of fifteen shillings a week, but they have not paid their rents any better than before. They have so many people agitating for them, both here and in England, that whatever they do or fail to do, they know they are sure of substantial support. While Irishmen only were working for them, they felt less secure, but now Mr. Gladstone and his following have taken their cause in hand, they feel more sure of their ground, and accordingly they have lapsed into confirmed laziness and dishonesty. They have found out the strength of combination, and the possibility of withholding payment of rent, and year by year they are falling lower and lower. Their morality is sapped at the root. They have the utmost confidence in their clergy, and their conduct being supported, and even advised from the altar, they spend all their money quite comfortably, sure that in case of eviction the country will be up in arms for their assistance, and that weak but well-meaning English tourists, seeing their apparent condition, will help them liberally. The English tourist has much to answer for. He couples dirt and nakedness with misfortune and poverty, and nine times out of ten he is altogether wrong. People with five hundred pounds in the bank will go about barefoot, unwashed, and in rags. No Englishman can possibly know his way about until he has lived for some time in the country, remaining in one spot long enough to find out the real state of things. He runs about hurriedly from place to place, observing certain symptoms which in England mean undeserved poverty and suffering. His diagnosis would be right for England, but for Ireland it is hopelessly wrong. What he sees is not so often symptomatic of undeserved misfortune, as of laziness, improvidence, and rank dishonesty. The Irish are a complaining people. Self-help is practically unknown among them, at any rate, among the Catholic population. They have reduced complaining to a system, or, if you will, they have elevated it to the level of a fine art. The recent agitations have demolished any rudimentary backbone they ever had, and the No-rent Campaign, with its pleas of poverty and financial inability, has done more to pauperise the people than all the famines Ireland ever saw. "You can do nothing for them. One great argument for Home Rule is the fact that the people are leaving the country. Best thing they can do. Let them get to some country where they must work or starve. Then they will do well enough. They work like horses in America, and their native cuteness conies out in trade with surprising results. The Irish race make a splendid mixture, but you must not take them neat. I am looked upon as a monster when I say, Let them go. I think it would be best. Let them clear out of the country, and leave it to people who can make it pay. Let Ireland be populated by Englishmen or Scotsmen, or both, and in twenty years the country would be one of the most prosperous in the world. Those are my opinions, and few Irishmen will gainsay them. They think them cruel, but their truth is generally admitted. Mr. Balfour has helped the people, and in a way which was best calculated to put them permanently on their feet. All to no purpose. You can't go on making lines that will not pay. You can't go on doling out charity for ever. Take the boats, nets, and so on, given to the congested districts. When those are gone you may give them more. The people will be exactly where they were. A few have been taught fishing, you say. But it will not spread. Those who have learned the art have been taught almost by compulsion, and at the first opportunity they will fall back into their own ways. The farmers will not change their methods. If one among them did so he would be a mark for derision. No Irish villager has the pluck to say, I will do this or that because it is the best thing to do. He must do as the others do, even to planting his farm, selling the produce, and also in disposing of the proceeds. Nowhere is public opinion so powerful, so tyrannical, or so injuriously conservative as in Ireland. I challenge contradiction. Any intelligent Irishman who has lived in an agricultural and Roman Catholic neighbourhood will admit every statement I have made." Later in the day I laid these observations before three Irish gentlemen dining at the Mulranney Hotel. All three readily and fully concurred, and there can be no doubt that these sentiments will be unanimously confirmed by any competent tribunal in or out of Ireland, Such being the case, the absurdity of the Home Rule agitation becomes evident at once. At last the sportive young engine whose playfulness and prankishness were mentioned in my last, came whinnying up, harnessed to an empty truck in which was a bench with a green cloth, emblematic of Ireland. This was better than convulsively clinging to the engine while she madly careered along narrow and dizzy precipices, every kick threatening to be your last, and emerging from the fiery ordeal, begrimed and swarthy, your knees half cooked by the engine fire. All this happened on my journey from Westport to Newport, but now the truck promised Sybaritic luxury, and if the rail should again give way, if the bog-hole, "still gaping to devour me, opened wide," I should at least disappear with dignity, should take my _holium cum dignitatis_ in a truck, on a green-covered seat, and with the consciousness that I was doing something to fill up the gap, to solace the aching void in Ireland's bosom. Away we went, thundering along between the quivering bogs, as through a land of brown-black calves'-foot jelly. The line itself is sound, well-made and firm. I had this from Mr. Hare, engineer of the Board of Works, who said that Mr. Worthington's railways have an excellent name for solidity and thorough, conscientious work. Mr. Hare was formally taking over the last bit of line, that between Mulranney and Achil Sound, with which the Midland and Great Western Company will at present have nought to do. The company will work from Westport to Mulranney, although some portions of the line have a gradient of one in sixty, and the directors are shy of anything steeper than one in a hundred by reason of the wear and tear involved to rolling stock and permanent way by gradients requiring so much brake power. But the last seven miles they decline to touch on the terms offered by the Government at present. No doubt the line will be worked, and by the company aforesaid, but the contracting parties are for the moment at a deadlock. No line between Mulranney and the Sound could possibly pay. England is building Irish railways to give the people a chance, as the splendid quays of Newport, Limerick, and Galway were built. Nothing, or next to nothing, is done on these quays. The Channel, as it is called at Newport, is a fine expanse of water about one hundred and twenty yards wide, leading through Newport Bay directly into the Atlantic. Only one boat, I was told, comes into the port. I saw it there, unloading a hundred and eighty tons of Indian corn--a Glasgow vessel, the Harmony, a sailer, which had taken three weeks to the voyage, which a steamer easily runs in thirty six to forty hours. Galway was busier, but not by Irish enterprise, and Limerick was mostly fast asleep. The people cry aloud and shout for quays, harbours, piers, and railways; and when they are built they ask for something else. They are without the faculty of industrial enterprise. They are always waiting for weather, wind, and tide. They lack resourcefulness, energy, invention. When the flour mills ceased to pay they had no notion of using the buildings and water-power for some other purpose. When the Coventry ribbon trade went to the dogs the people found salvation in bicycles. If Coventry had been in Ireland the people would have starved and murmured to the end of time. Two miles out we came to Deradda, where eighty men were at work. Next came Shellogah and the squeamish bit of bog. A number of men were busy on the line, and right in front of us was a gap in the rails, the platelayers laying the steel for dear life while the engine came up. We slackened speed, but made no stop, and the last rail was finally bolted as we ran upon it. Carefully and gingerly we pushed along, my triumphal chariot in front of the engine, over the shivering embankment, on each side of which were deep-cut channels which seemed to have been hewn through acres of Day and Martin's blacking, so jetty and oily seemed this Irish bog. The subsidence of yesterday had forced the boundary walls of the line into wide semicircles, and it seemed likely to be touch-and-go with the engine, truck, and your humble commissioner. I took a last look at the landscape, and made a final note, but, while inly wondering whether I should be ultimately consumed in the form of peat or dug up and exhibited to future ages as a bog-preserved brutal Saxon, with a concluding squash we passed the rotten spot, and it was permissible to breathe again. "We prefer it to sink at once," said Mr. Bennett. "Then we know the 'hard' is not far off, and we can fill up till the line becomes solid as a rock. When it goes down by degrees, sinking a foot to-day and a foot to-morrow, we find our work more difficult. We never leave a bad bit till we are assured, by careful examination and severe and repeated tests, that all is solid and secure." He told me how much earth had been dumped on this spot, which, like the soft place mentioned in my last, has given Mr. Balfour's _protégés_ a world of employment. I forget the quantity, but it sounded like an island or a small range of mountains. Soon on the left we saw the great expanse of Clew Bay, with its three hundred and sixty-five considerable islands, nearly all with cottages, cattle, and pasture, but without a tree. The Yankee breezes blew refreshingly, and the scenery around became of wildest grandeur. High mountains hemmed us in on every side, rising one over another, huge masses of rock impending over untrodden passes, unknown to any guide-book, and leading no man knows whither. Some mountain sheep on the line scaled the embankment and leaped the five-foot wall like squirrels. Then a group of obstinate black cattle, one of which narrowly escaped sudden transformation into beef. Then the station of Mulranney, or rather its site, for the foundations are not yet dug out. Some neat wooden cottages attested the contractor's care for his workmen, and the beautiful bay with its extensive sands and lovely surroundings came into view far below. A steep descent brought us to the hotel, an unlicensed house kept by a Northern Protestant. A quaint and charming place, known and prized by a select few. The Board of Works gave Mulrannoy a pier, but the whole bay boasted only a single boat. The people make no use of their pier. It stretches into the sea in a lonely, melancholy way, and, so far as I could see, without a boat near it, without a soul upon it or within half-a-mile. The Mulranians cannot do anything with the pier until they get Home Rule. In Limerick one day I saw a dead cat before a cottage door, in a crowded part of Irishtown. A week later pussy was diffusing an aromatic fragrance from the self-same spot. The denizens of this locality are waiting for Home Rule. They cannot move their dead cats while smarting 'neath the cruel English yoke. The Home Rulers of Mulranney are not original. They say the same things over and over again, merely echoing what they have been told by others. They believe that their country has unlimited good coal, and that the English Parliament prevents the mines being sunk for fear of losing Irish custom. "We wish it were trap," said Mr. Bennett. "We are always looking for it, but although we have made a million's worth of railway, we have never seen a vestige of coal. It is safe to say that there is no coal in Ireland, except in one or two well-known spots, where it exists, and is mined, in small quantities." Another enlightened Irishman, of wide experience in many lands, expressed the conviction of the majority of his countrymen that the proposed Parliamentary change will never take place. "The thing is too ridiculous to be possible. The respectable portion of the community were alarmed at first, as well they might be, knowing as they do precisely what it means. But as time went on that alarm has to a great extent subsided, not, as some will say, because the people are in any degree reconciled to the idea, but purely and simply because they see that the bill must perish when exposed to the light of criticism. The people as a whole do not want the bill. The poorer classes do not know in the least what it means, nor what all the bother is about. They are told that they will be hugely benefited, but nobody can tell them how. Of course they vote for Home Rule, because in these parts the priest stands at the door of the polling booth and tells them as they go in how they are to vote. He also questions them as they come out, and they know beforehand that he will do so, and act accordingly. They dare not tell him a lie, for fear of spiritual trouble. They believe that the priest has their eternal future in his hands, and this belief is encouraged by the well-known argument used by the Roman Catholic clergy, a very familiar phrase in Ireland, "You must do as I tell you, for _I_ am responsible. God will require your soul of _me_ at the day of judgement!" What can the poor folks do? Even the higher classes are not exempt from this superstitious fear. They may be more or less freethinkers--freethinking is common among educated Catholics who are yet compelled by custom to conform to the outward observances of their faith--but yet, when the pinch comes, they are influenced by the prepossessions of their childhood and environments, and they mostly vote as they are told. They dread to offend the priest, though not to the same extent as the poor peasantry, who believe that confession of a wrong vote would entail the refusal of extreme unction, and that this would mean untold and endless torture in the world to come. And the priests preach politics every Sunday. The people like it better than the old style of Instruction. They call their sermons Instructions, you know, and they instruct the people to some tune. No doubt they have a right to persuade their flocks to follow a certain course. The temptation to preach something which at once catches the people's attention and furthers their own views is very great, and perhaps excusable. But is their teaching designed or calculated to suit England? The English may not understand the Irish question, but they may be sure that whatever suits the Papal power does not suit them. The modern Irish priest is a sworn foe to England. It cannot be otherwise. He springs from the small farmer class, which has sworn to extirpate landlordism, which, to their minds, is synonymous with British rule. The English Parliament, hoping to win over the farmers, who are the strength of Ireland, has made one concession after another, with what result? Absolutely none. The property of the landlord has been sacrificed bit by bit, in fruitless endeavour to please these people, who are more discontented than ever. And so they will continue to be as long as discontent pays. In Ireland the landlord is nothing, the tenant is everything. The policy of England with regard to Irish landlords reminds me of the man who, having to dock a dog's tail, cut off half-an-inch every day to gradually accustom him to the loss, and to minimise the 'suffering of the baste.'" You can go nowhere in Ireland without meeting an Ulsterman. There was one at Mulranney. You may know them by their accent, by their size, by a general effect of weight, decision, and determination. They are mostly big men, large-boned and large-limbed, of ruthless energy, of inexhaustible vitality. They are demons in argument, tenacious and crushing. They bowl straight over-hand and dead on the middle stump. The lithe and sinuous Celt is no match for them. No matter how he twists and turns they grab him up, and, will he, nill he, fix him in front of the argument. They are adepts in cornering an opponent by keeping him to the point. You cannot catch them napping, and you cannot turn their flank. They are contented enough, except that they sigh for more worlds to conquer. They delight in difficulties, and demolish Home Rulers with a kind of contempt as if the work were only fit for children. They seem to be fighting with one hand, with great reserve of power, and, after doubling up an opponent, they chuck him over the ropes, and look around, as if, like Oliver, asking for "more." My Mulranney friend said:-- "Bull confessedly does not know what to do, and he calls in two sets of Irish experts (we'll say) and asks for their opinions. One set of Irishmen never quarrel with anybody and always pay their debts. The other set quarrel with everybody and don't pay what they owe. One set are successful in everything, the other set are successful in nothing. One set have always been friendly and helpful to Bull, the other set have always been unfriendly and obstructive to him. He proposes to reject the advice of the successful, amicable, helpful men, who have always stuck up for him, and to follow the advice of the quarrelsome, unsuccessful, unfriendly men, who have always spoken ill of him and have spent their energies in trying to damage him. Bull must be a fool--or rather he would be if he meant to act in this foolish way. He will not do so; that can never be. But why waste so much time?" I submitted that this waste was due to Mr. Gladstone, and not to England at all. He said-- "There is no England now. There's nothing left but Gladstone." Of course he was wrong, but the mistake is one that under present circumstances any loyal Irishman might easily make. Mulranney (Co. Mayo), June 17th. No. 37.--ON ACHIL ISLAND. The final spurt from Mulranney to Achil Sound was pleasant, but devoid of striking incident. This part of the line is packed and ballasted, and the _Gazette_ engine sobered down to the merely commonplace, dropping her prancing and curveting, with other deplorable excesses of the first two runs, and pushing my comfortable truck with the steadiness of a well-broken steed. No holding on was required, as we ran between the two ranges of mountains which guard the Sound, and along the edge of a salt-water creek, which seemed to be pushing its investigations inland. Barring the scenery the ride became uninteresting by its very safety. The line for the most part is based upon the living rock, and there were no exciting skims over treacherous bogs, no reasonable chance of running off the line, no ups and downs such as on our first flight were remindful of the switchback railway, no hopping, jumping, or skipping. Anybody could have ridden from Mulranney to Achil. There was no merit in the achievement. All you had to do was to sit still and look about. You could no longer witch the world with noble truckmanship. We ran over a bridge built to replace one washed away by a mountain torrent. The engineer who constructed the first had failed to realise that the tinkling rivulet of summer became in winter a fiercely surging cataract. The Achil Mountains loomed in full view, Croaghaun to the left, Sliebhmor (pronounced Slievemore) the Great Mountain, in front, with many others stranger still of name. Then the Sound came in sight, with the iron viaduct-bridge which has turned the island into a peninsula. Then the final dismount, and a scramble among rusty rails, embankments, sleepers, and big boulders strewn about in hopeless chaos. Then the little inn, with a stuffed fox and a swan in the porch. A glance at the day-before-yesterday's paper, which has just arrived, and is considered to serve up news red-hot; and then invasion of the island. A few hookers are anchored near the swivel-bridge of the viaduct, in readiness for their cargoes of harvesters for England and Scotland, and now and then big trout and salmon throw themselves in air to see what is going on in the world around them. A group of men who are busily engaged in doing nothing, with a grace and ease which tells of long experience, manifest great interest in the stranger, whom they greet civilly and with much politeness. Men, women, and children are digging turf in a bog beside the road. All suspend operations and look earnestly in my direction. This is one of the amenities of Irish life. Driving along a country road you see men at work in a field. They stop at the first rumble of the car, and leaning on their spades they watch you out of sight. Then they resume in leisurely style, for work they will tell you is scarce, and, to their credit be it observed, they show no disposition to make it scarcer still. They husband it, hoard it up, are not too greedy, leave some for another day. They dig easily, with a straight back, and take a long time to turn round. The savage energy of the Saxon is to them unknown. Why wear themselves out? "Sweet bad luck to the man that would bur-rst himself as if the wuruld wouldn't be afther him. Divil sweep the omadhaun that would make his two elbows into a windmill that niver shtops, but is always going. Fair an' aisy goes far in a day. Walkin' is betther than runnin', an' standin' is betther than walkin', an' sittin' is betther than standin', an' lyin' is betther than any o' thim. Twas me owld father said it, an' a thrue wurud he shpoke, rest his sowl in glory." The Achil folks are ardent politicians. They have been visited by Michael Davitt, Dr. Tanner, and others, and most of the population, all the Catholics in fact, became members of the Land League. The area of the island is about forty thousand acres, a vast moorland, with miles of bog, and hills and mountains in every direction. There are also several large lakes, which abound with white trout. The cultivated portions of the land only seem to dot the great waste, which nevertheless supports a population of some five thousand persons. The houses are mostly filthy, the people having cattle which live with the family. I approached a house to make inquiries, and was driven from the open door by the smell issuing from the interior. The next was sweeter, having perhaps been more recently cleaned out. Only one room, with a big turf fire, creating an intolerable atmosphere. A bed filled one-third of the floor, most of the remainder being occupied by two cows. A rough deal table near the bed comprised the furniture, and visitors, therefore, must sit on the sleeping arrangement. A civilised Irishman said:--"Two cows, two clean cows only, and you're surprised at that! Where have you been? Where have you been brought up? Let me tell you something, and when you get to Dugort ask the doctor there whether I am correct. A family not far away were stricken down with typhus fever. The people are mostly healthy and strong, although living under circumstances which would soon kill people not used to them, or not enjoying the same splendidly pure air. Well, the poor folks, eight of them, were all down at once, and no wonder, for when I visited them I never saw such a sight in my life. There were three in one bed in one corner, three in one bed in another corner, and two in shake-down beds on the floor. In the same room were a mare and foal, three cows, one pig under a bed, and a henroost above, on the ceiling. What would the sanitary authorities of Birmingham say to that menagerie in a sick room? Somebody wrote to the Local Government Board, and the Board referred the matter to the Poor Law Guardians. But the Guardians themselves kept cattle in their houses. It is the prevailing custom. Wherever you go in Achil, you will find cattle in the houses, along with the family, sharing the same room. The people cannot be moved from this custom. A large landowner built some good cottages for them, and offered them rent free, on condition that they would not live with the cattle. The people would not accept, so they got the houses at last on their own terms, and took the cows with them as before. They say that the cows enjoy the warmth and give better milk. They also say that the big turf fire stands them in lieu of feed to some extent. The Achil folks are hopeless in the direction of improvements. They have had the Protestant Colony at Dugort before them for more than sixty years--a well-housed, well-clad community, living clearly and respectably, paying their way, and keeping at peace with all men, but they have not moved an inch in the same direction. They bury their dead in the old savage way, without any funeral rites, except such as the relatives may have in their minds. The priest says no prayer, reads no service, does not attend in his official character, unless specially engaged and paid. Usually he does not attend funerals at all, although he may sometimes join the procession as a mark of respect. And the weddings are arranged in a way you might think barbarous. A young man fancies a girl he sees at mass, or at a funeral. He gets a bottle of whiskey and goes to see the father, who nearly always wishes to get the daughter off his hands, without any regard whatever for the poor girl's feelings. I was present at one of these negotiations. 'What will you give with her?' said the young fellow, a boy of eighteen or so. 'Three cows and a calf,' said the father. 'So-and-so got three cows and a calf and a sheep.' said the suitor. The father pondered a bit, but eventually, not to be behind, conceded the sheep. The lover tried a bit further. Somebody else had three cows and a calf and a sheep and a lamb, but the old man stood firm, and the bargain was struck, with mutual esteem, after several hours' haggling and a second bottle of whiskey. I called in the evening to learn the girl's fate. She had been two years in service and had got unorthodox notions. She screamed with affright when the father brought the fellow forward and told her what was arranged. She had seen him before, but had never spoken to him, and the sight of him had always been most repugnant to her. She ran away into the bogs, but the country was up, and she was soon found. Then after a sound beating she was handed over to the ardent swain along with the cows, and so forth, nominated in the bond. "They marry early or go to America. The boy is usually seventeen or eighteen, the girl fifteen or sixteen. I have known girls marry at thirteen. Not long ago a boy I knew well, a mere weakling, unable to do even a boy's work, got married. He was seventeen, or nearly seventeen, but he didn't look it. They believe that their poverty, such as it is, is due to the predominance of England. Their hatred of the English is very pronounced, but a casual visitor will not see it. He has money to spend, and they flock round him in a friendly way. But let him live among them! They tried to boycott the Protestant settlement, and if their priests had ruled on that occasion they would have starved us out or would have made things so unpleasant that we must have left the field. That was during the Land League agitation. The Protestants declined to join and vengeance was declared, but Bonaventure, head of the monastery, forbade it. He is a splendid fellow, not like the ordinary priests at all. So they were saved. But let this change come about, once let that bill become law, and all Protestants must leave the island, must give up the land they have tilled and tended until it is like a garden, and seek their fortunes elsewhere. That is a certainty. Ask everyone you meet, and you will find that each will say just the same thing." A smart car driver, named Matthew Henay, was dubious as to the benefits accruing from Home Rule. His driving was a study, and his conversations with Maggie, his little mare, were both varied and vigorous. "Now me little daughter, away ye go. That's the girl now. Me little duck, ye go sweetly. There's the beauty, now. Maggie me love, me darlint, me pride; ye know ivery word I spake. Yes, she does, Sorr. She ondhershtands both English an' Irish. I can dhrive her in both, but I have an owld woman o' me own that can only dhrive her in Irish. Home Rule will do no good at all. Twinty years I wint to England to harvest, an' eighteen iv it to the same masther an' on the same farm. An' ye don't get me to belave all I hear widout thinkin' a bit. An' I say, get out o' that wid yer talk o' mines an' factories, an' rubbish. Where's the money to come from? says I. That's what nobody knows. Sure, we'd be nothin' widout England. A thousand goes from this part every year, an' even the girls brings back ten to fifteen pounds each. That's all the circulation of money we have. An' as all we get's from England, I say, let us stick to England, but nobody agrees wid me. There's the girl, now. Away ye go, me little duck, me daughter, me beauty, me--bad luck to ye, _will_ ye go? What are ye standin' there for? Will ye get out o' that, ye lazy brute? Take that, an' that, an' _that_, ye idle, good-for-nothin', desavin', durty daughter of a pig. _Now_ d'ye ondhershtand who's masther, ye idle, skulkin', schamin', disrespictable baste?" Misther Henay was favourably disposed towards the Protestant settlers of Dugort, but another Sounder was very bitter indeed. "A set of Soupers an' Jumpers an' Double-Jumpers. What's the manin' iv it ye ask? Soupers is Catholics that's turned Protestants for the sake of small pickin's sich as soup. That's what they are at Dugort. An' Jumpers is worse than Soupers. For Soupers only changed once, but Jumpers is thim that turned once an' then turned back again, jumpin' about from one religion to another. Ye can have Jumpers in anythin'. Ye can have thim in politics. Owld Gladstone is a Jumper and a Double-Jumper an' a Double-Thribble Jumper. An' if we get a Parlimint for ourselves, 'tis because he daren't for the life of him say No--an' divil thank him. Yes, we'll take the bill; what else will we do? We can amend it whin once we get it. But afther so much jumpin', owld Gladstone's a man I wouldn't thrust. A man that would make so many changes isn't to be thrusted. I wouldn't be surprised if he wouldn't bring in a coercion bill at any minute. Ah, the thricks an' the dodges iv him! An' the silver tongue he has in his head! Begorra, I wouldn't lave him out o' me sight. 'Tis himself would stale the cross off a donkey's back." The Achil ditches are full of ferns, and a hundred yards from the sea are clumps of _Osmunda regalis_--otherwise known as the Royal fern--spreading out palm-like fronds four feet long. Other ferns, usually regarded as rare, abound in every direction, and potatoes and cabbages grow at the very water's edge. The vast plains are treeless save for the plantations round the house of Major Pike, who has shown what can be done to reclaim the land, but his excellent example has attracted no imitators. Except in the Major's grounds there is not a tree on the island, unless we count the hedges of fuchsias, twelve to fifteen feet high, which fence in some of the gardens. The Post Office, engineered by Mr. Robins, of Devonshire, an old coastguardsman, is surrounded by fuchsia bloom, and every evidence of careful culture. Here I met some Achil folks who did not understand English, and a mainland man who does not believe in the future of the race. He said:-- "I think their civilisation has stood still for at least five centuries. They are so wedded to their ancient customs that nothing can be done for them. They are not so poor as they look, and the starvation of which you hear in England is totally unknown. As an object of charity Achil is a gigantic swindle. When the seed potatoes were brought here in Her Majesty's gunboats the people were too lazy to fetch them ashore. I was there and heard an Irish bluejacket cursing them as a disgrace to his country. They do just what the priests tell them from week to week. Every Sunday they get their instructions. They keep up the cry of distress when there is no distress, for fear of breaking through the custom. They have been helped on all sides, but they will not utilise their advantages. The sea is before them, swarming with fish, which they will not catch. They said, we have no pier, no quay. They were set up with these and everything they needed. What did they do with them? Nothing at all. The work is falling to pieces and they let it go. They sometimes go out in coraghs, and catch enough fish for the day's food, but that is all. They don't pay their rents, and their rents would amuse you. Twenty-five shillings a year for a decent house and a good piece of land is reckoned a heavy responsibility. One man I know named McGreal has twenty acres of good land and a house for seventeen shillings and sixpence a year. They will not sell you butter, they will not sell you milk. They say they want it for themselves. None of them has ever paid a cent for fuel. All have turf for the digging, and much of the Achil turf is equal to coal. The sea is in front of them, and all round them, and the lakes are full of fish. And yet the hat is sent round every other year. "They used to pay their debts. Now they will pay nothing, and their audacity is something wonderful. A gentleman over there has bought some land, and the people turn their cattle on it to graze. He remonstrates, and they say, 'What business have you here? Keep in your own country.' He sued them for damages. They had nothing but the cattle aforesaid, and, as he could not find heart to seize, he had no remedy. They keep their cattle on his land, although he has, since then, processed them for trespass. They have already divided the spoils of the Protestants; that is, in theory. They are anticipating the Home Rule Bill in their disposal of the land. They have marked out the patches they will severally claim, and are already disputing the future possession of certain desirable fields. "English Gladstonians ridicule the fears of Irish Protestants, who declare unanimously their conviction that Home Rule means oppression. This ridicule is absurd in face of the fact that every Protestant sect, without exception, has publicly and formally announced its adherence to this opinion. The Church of Ireland believes in Catholic intolerance; the Methodists believe it; the Baptists believe it; the Plymouth Brethren believe it; the Presbyterians believe it; the Unitarians, the most radical of all the sects, believe it; the Quakers, who never before made a public deliverance of opinion in any political matter, believe it; and all these have issued printed declarations of their belief. The Roman Catholic laity, the best of them, believe it; but the Catholic Bishops say No, they will not admit the soft impeachment. And Englishmen who are Gladstonians believe these Bishops in preference to all the sects I have enumerated. Could anything be more unreasonable? But it is of a piece with the whole conception of the bill, which seems to contain every possible absurdity, and is based on extravagant assumptions of amity on the part of Irish Catholics, of which there is not one particle of evidence in existence. All the evidence points the other way, and Irish Protestants know that under Home Rule their fate is sealed. There would be no open persecution, but we should be gently elbowed out of the country. All who could leave Ireland would do so at once, and England would lose her most powerful allies in the enemy's camp. For it is the enemy's camp, and this fact should be borne in mind. Mr. Gladstone and his followers would be horrified to hear such a statement, which they would regard as rank blasphemy. But every Irishman knows it, and every Englishman knows it who lives here long enough to know anything. Irish Nationalists have two leading ideas--to get as much out of England as possible, and to damage her as much as possible by way of repayment. Mr. Gladstone wants to put England's head on the block, to hand an axe to her sworn enemy, and to say, 'I'm sure you won't chop.' People who have common sense stand amazed, dumbfounded at so much stupidity." A pious Catholic bore out the statements of my first Achil friend with reference to the comparative comfort of the Islanders. He said:--"We live mostly on bread and tea. Of course we have plenty of butter and eggs, and now and then we go out and get some fish. I had a go at a five-pound white trout to-day, with plenty of butter and potatoes. At Dugort people who live in cabins have money in the bank, aye, some of them have several hundred pounds. And yet they took the seed potatoes sent by England. Well, they wanted a change of seed, and they must do the same as their neighbours. It would not do to pretend to be any better off than the rest. They are compelled to do as the majority do in everything, or they would be boycotted at once. They cease work when a death occurs in the parish. If an infant three days old should give up the ghost, every man shoulders his spade and leaves the field. And he does not return till after the funeral. If another death occurred on the funeral day, he would leave off again, and so on. No matter how urgent the state of the crop, he must leave it to its fate, or leave the country, for no one would know a person who would work while a corpse lay in the parish. They would look upon him as an infidel, and, if possible, worse than a Protestant. Luckily we don't often die hereabouts, or we'd never get the praties set or the turf cut. Sometimes they won't go to work because someone is expected to die, and they say it isn't worth while to begin. I have known a lingering case to throw the crops back a fortnight or more. Oh, they don't grumble; any excuse for laziness is warmly welcomed. They complain when people die at inconvenient times, and will say the act might have been delayed till a more convenient season, or might have been done a little earlier. The whole population turn out for the funeral, but they don't dig the grave until the procession reaches the graveyard. Then the mourners sit around smoking, both men and women, while a couple of young chaps make a shallow hole, and cover the coffin with four to six inches of earth. No, it is not severely sanitary, but we are not too particular in Achil." These unsophisticated islanders are decidedly interesting. Their customs, politics, manners, morals, odours seem to be strongly marked--to have character, originality, individuality. I fear they are mostly Home Rulers, for in Ireland Home Rule and strong smells nearly always go together. Achil Sound, June 20th. No. 38.--THE ACHIL ISLANDERS. Dugort, the capital city of Achil, is twelve miles from the Sound, a terrible drive in winter, when the Atlantic storms blow with such violence as to stop a horse and cart, and to render pedestrianism well-nigh impossible; but pleasant enough in fine weather, notwithstanding the seemingly interminable wastes of bog and rocky mountain, dotted at infrequent intervals with white cottages, single or in small clusters of three or four. After Major Pike's plantations, near the Sound, not a tree is visible all the way to Dugort, although at some points you can see for ten miles or more. Here and there where the turf has been cut away for fuel, great gnarled roots of oak and fir trees are visible, bleached by exposure to a ghastly white, showing against the jetty soil like the bones of extinct giants, which indeed they are. The inhabitants say that the island was once covered by a great forest, which perished by fire, and Misther Patrick Toolis, with that love of fine words which marks the Irish peasant, said that the charred interior of the scattered remains proves that the trees were "desthroyed intirely by a grate confiscation." The heather, of two kinds, is brilliantly purple, and the Royal fern grows everywhere in profusion, its terra-cotta bloom often towering six feet high. The mountains are effectively arranged, and imposing by their massiveness, height, and rugged grandeur. Some of the roads are tolerable, those made by Mr. Balfour being by far the best. Others are execrable and dangerous in the extreme, and in winter must be almost impassable. Sometimes they run along a narrow ridge which in its normal condition was of barely sufficient width to carry the car, and it often happens that part of this has fallen away, so that the gap must be passed by leading the horse while the car scrapes along with one wheel on the top and one clinging to the side of the abyss. The natives make light of such small inconveniences, and for the most part ride on horseback with saddles and crupper-bands of plaited rye-straw. Every householder has a horse or an ass, mostly a horse, and young girls career adown the mountain sides in what seems the maddest, most reckless way, guiding their half-broken, mustard-coloured steeds with a single rein of plaited straw, adjusted in an artful way which is beyond me to describe. Very quaint they look, on their yellow horses, which remind you of D'Artagnan's orange-coloured charger, immortalised by Dumas in the "Three Musketeers;" their red robes floating in the breeze, their bare feet hanging over the horse's right flank. When they fall off they simply get on again. They seldom or never are hurt. They are hard as nails and lissom as cats. Dr. Croly, of Dugort, saw a girl thrown heels over head, turning a complete somersault from the horse's back. She alighted on her feet, grabbed the rein, bounded up again, and gaily galloped away. During my hundred miles riding and walking over the island I saw many riderless horses, fully accoutred in the Achil style, plodding patiently along the moorland roads, climbing the steep mountain paths. At first I thought an accident had occurred, and spent some time in looking for the corpse. There was no occasion for fear. The Achil harvesters going to England and Scotland ride over to the Sound, where lie the fishing smacks which bear them to Westport, and then turn their horses loose. The faithful beasts go home, however long or devious the road, sometimes alone, sometimes in company, only staying a moment at the parting of the ways to bid each other good-bye, then going forward at a brisker pace to make up for lost time. The hamlet of Cashel, not to be confused with Cashel of the Rock, is the first sign of life after leaving the Sound. A ravine, with white cabins, green crops, and huge boulders, on one of which seven small children were sitting in a row, unwashed, unkempt, with little calico and no leather. Bunnacurragh has a post-office run by a pensioner who grows roses, and keeps his place like a picture, the straw ropes which secure the thatch against the western gales taut and trig, each loose end terminated by a loop holding a large stone. The stones are used in place of pegs, and very queer they look dangling all round over the eaves. Not far from here is an immense basin-like depression of dry bog. Then a monastery, in the precincts of which the ground is reclaimed and admirably tilled, the drainage being carried over ingenious turf conduits, the soil lacking firmness to hold stone or brick. The vast bulk of Slievemore soon looms full in front, and after a long stretch of smooth Balfour road and a sharp turn on the edge of a deep ravine on the right with a high ridge beyond it, the Great mountain on the left, Dugort, with Blacksod Bay, heaves in sight. A final spurt up the hilly road and the weary, jolted traveller, or what is left of him, may (metaphorically) fall into the arms of Mr. Robert Sheridan, of the Sea View Hotel, or of Mrs. Sheridan, if he likes it better. There are two Dugorts, or one Dugort divided against itself. The line of demarcation is sharp and decided. The two sections stand but a short distance apart, each on an opposite horn of the little bay, but the moral distance is great enough for forty thousand leagues. The Dugort under Slievemore is Protestant, the Dugort of the opposite cliff is intensely Roman Catholic. The one is the perfection of neatness, sweetness, cleanliness, prettiness, and order. The other is dirty, frowsy, disorderly, and of evil odour. The Papists deny the right of the Protestants to be in the island at all, speak of them with acerbity, call them the Colonists, the perverts, the Soupers, the Jumpers, the heretics; and look forward to the time when a Dublin Parliament will banish law and order, so that these interlopers may be for ever swept away, and their fields and houses become the property of the Faithful. They complain that the Protestants have all the best land, and that the Papist population were wrongfully driven from the ground now occupied by the colony. Like other Catholic poor all over Ireland they will tell you that they have been ground down, harried, oppressed, grievously ill-used, habitually ill-treated by the English Government, which has never given them a chance. They explain the prosperity of their Protestant neighbours by knowing winks and nods, and by plain intimations that all Irish Protestants are secretly subsidised by England, that they have privileges, that they are favoured, petted, kept in pocket money. To affect to doubt this is to prove yourself a dissembler, an impostor, a black-hearted enemy of the people. Your Achil friend will drop the conversation in disgust, and by round-about ways will call you a liar. He is sure of his facts, as sure as he is that a sprinkling of holy water will cure rheumatism, will keep away the fairies from the cow, will put a fine edge on his razor, will keep the donkey from being bewitched. He knows who has had money and how much, having reasoned out the matter by inference. He could sell himself to-morrow, but is incorruptible, and will remain a strong rock to the faith, will still buttress up the true hierarchy of heaven. He cannot be bought, and this is strange, for he never looks worth twopence. It was during a famine that one Mr. Nangle, a Protestant parson from the North, went to Achil and found the people in deepest distress. They were dying of starvation, and their priests had all fled. Mr. Nangle had no money, but he was prompt in action. He sent a thousand pounds' worth of meal to the island on his own responsibility, and weighed down by a sense of the debt he had incurred, went to London to beg the money. He was successful, and afterwards founded the Achil mission at Dugort, now called the Colony. Needless to say that all the land belonging to the mission was duly bought and paid for, and that the Protestants have been the benefactors of Achil. The stories of wrong-doing, robbery, and spoliation, which the peasantry repeat, are of course totally untrue. The example of a decently-housed community has produced no perceptible effect on the habits of the Achilese. The villages of Cabawn, Avon (also known by its Anglicised name of River), Ballyknock, Slievemore, and Ducanella are dirty beyond description. Some of the houses I saw in a drive which included the coastguard station of Bull's Mouth were mere heaps of stones, with turf sods for tiles, whereon was growing long grass which looked like a small instalment of the three acres and a cow. Some had no windows and no chimney, the turf reek filling the hovel, but partly escaping by a hole in the roof. The people who live in this look as it painted in umber by old Dutch masters. These huts are small, but there is always room for a pig or two, which stalk about or stretch themselves before the fire like privileged members of the family. This was very well for the Gintleman that paid the Rint. But he merits the title no longer. His occupation's gone. A sturdy Protestant said:--"Suppose Home Rule became law, then we must go away. We are only here on sufferance, and every person in the Colony knows it and feels it only too well. Our lives would not be endangered: those times are over, but we could not possibly stay in the island. Remove the direct support of England, and we should be subject to insult and wrong, for which we should have no earthly remedy. What could they do? Why, to begin with, they could pasture their cattle on our fields. If we turned them out they could be turned in again; if we sue them we have a day's journey to take to get the cause heard, and if we get the verdict we can recover nothing. Shoot a cow or two! Then we should ourselves be shot, or our children. No, there has been no landlord-shooting on the island. This kind of large game has always been very scarce on Achil. Just over the Sound we had a little sport--a really merry little turn it was--but the wrong man was shot. "A Mr. Smith came down to collect rents. The Land League was ruling the country, and its desperadoes were everywhere. It was decided to shoot Mr. Smith, after duly warning him to keep away. Smith was not to be deterred from what he thought his duty (he was a Black Protestant), and away he went, with his son, a neat strip of a lad about seventeen or so. When they got half-way to the house which Smith had appointed as a meeting-place a man in the bog which bordered the road called out, and waved a paper, which he then placed on a heap of turf. Young Smith went for it, and it read. YOU'LL NOT GO HOME ALIVE THIS NIGHT. 'Drive on, Tom,' said the father. 'We'll do our work, whether we go home alive or dead.' Coming back the same evening the father was driving, the son, this young lad, sitting at the side of the car, which was furnished with a couple of repeating rifles and a revolver. Suddenly three men spring up from behind a fence and fire a volley at the two Smiths, but as they rose the horse shied and plunged forward, and hang me! if they didn't all miss. The elder Smith still struggled with the frightened horse, which the shooting had made ungovernable, but the boy slipped off the car, and, seizing one of the rifles, looked out for a shot in return. It was growing dusk, and the bog was full of trenches and ups and downs, of which the three fugitives cleverly availed themselves. Besides, to be shot at from a point-blank range of three or four yards, scrambling down afterwards from behind a frantic horse, is not the best Wimbledon method of steadying the nerves. The boy put the rifle to his shoulder, and bided his time. Presently up came one of the running heroes, and young Smith shot him through the heart, as neat a kill as ever you saw. The dead man was identified as a militiaman from Crossmolina, up Sligo way. The League always brought its marksmen from a distance, and it is known that most of them were persons who had received some military training. Then the youngster covered another, but missed, and was about to fire again when his father shouted, 'Hold hard, Tom, that's enough sport for one day.'" My friend was wrong. The second shot lacerated the man's shoulder, and laid him up for many a long week. I had the fact, which is now first recorded, on _undoubted authority_. Young Smith may be gratified to learn, for the first time, that his second bullet was not altogether thrown away. This may console him for the loss of the third reprobate, whom he had got "exactly between the shoulders," when the elder Smith ordered him to desist. The occurrence was such a lesson to the Land League assassins that they for ever after forswore Achil and its immediate surroundings. As Dennis Mulcahy remarked, "The ruffians only want shtandin' up to, an' they'll not come nixt or near ye." Mr. Morley would do well to apply this moral to the County Clare. The best authority in Achil said:--"The hat is always going round for the islanders, who are much better off than the poor of great English cities. They have the reputation of being in a state of chronic famine. This has no foundation in fact. They all have land, one, two, or three cows, and the sea to draw upon. For their land and houses they pay nothing, or next to nothing; for good land in some cases is to be had for a shilling an acre. The lakes also abound with fish. They glory in their poverty, and hail a partial failure of crops with delight. They know they will be cared for, and that provisions will be showered upon them from all sides. They say, 'Please God, we'll have a famine this year,' and when the contributions pour in they laugh and sing, and say, 'The distress for ever! Long live the famine!' The word goes round at stated intervals that they are to 'have a famine.' They jump at the suggestion, act well together, and carry out the idea perfectly. The Protestants never have any distress which calls for charitable aid. They live on the same soil, under the same laws, but they never beg. They pay their rents, too, much more regularly than the others, who of late years can hardly be got to pay either rent or anything else. The Protestants are all strong Unionists. The Catholics are all strong Home Rulers. Their notions of Home Rule are as follows:--No rent, no police, a poteen still at every door, and possession of the land now held by Protestants, which is so much better than their own because so much more labour has been expended on it, and for no other reason. Who tells them to 'have a famine'? Why, the same people who arouse and keep alive their enmity to the Protestants; the same people who tell them lies about the early history of the Colony--lies which the tellers know to be lies, such as the stories of oppression, spoliation, and of how the mission took the property of the islanders with the strong hand, aided by England, the home of robbery, tyranny, and heresy. The people would be friendly enough but for their priests. Yet they have marched in procession before our houses, blowing defiance by means of a drum and fife band, because we would not join one or other of their dishonest and illegal combinations. They opened a man's head with a stone, producing a dreadful scalp wound, and when Doctor Croly, the greatest favourite in the whole island, went to dress the wound, five or six of them stopped his horse, with the object of giving him a 'bating,' which would have ended nobody knows how. The doctor produced a revolver, and the heroes vanished like smoke." The good doctor is himself a Unionist, but more of a philanthropist than a politician. He is the parish doctor, with eight thousand people to look after, the whole being scattered over an immense area. I accompanied him on a twenty-mile drive to see a girl down with influenza, much of the road being almost impracticable. Some of his experiences, coming out incidentally, were strange and startling. He told me of a night when the storm was so wild that a man seeking him approached the surgery on all-fours, and once housed, would not again stir out, though the patient was his own wife. The doctor went alone and in the storm and blackness narrowly escaped drowning, emerging from the Jawun, usually called the Jordan, after an hour's struggle with the flood, to sit up all night in his wet clothes, tending the patient. On another occasion a mountain sheep frightened his horse just as the doctor was filling his pipe. The next passer-by found him insensible. Nobody might have passed for a month. A similar misadventure resulted in a broken leg. Then on a pitchy night he walked over the cliffs, and was caught near the brink by two rocks which held him wedged tightly until someone found him and pulled him up, with the bag of instruments, which he thinks had saved him. And it was as well to pause in his flight, for the Menawn Cliffs, with their thousand feet of clean drop, might have given the doctor an ugly fall. Two girls, whose male relations had gone to England, had not been seen for three days. Nobody would go near the house. The doctor found them both on the floor insensible, down with typhus fever, shut up with the pigs and cows, the room and its odour defying description. The neighbours kept strictly aloof. Dr. Croly swept and garnished, made fires, and pulled the patients through. "Sure, you couldn't expect us to go near whin 'twas the faver," said the neighbourly Achilese. Mr. Salt, the Brum-born mission agent, was obliged to remain all night on one of the neighbouring islands--islands are a drug hereabouts--and next morning he found an egg in his hat. Fowls are in nearly all the houses. Sometimes they have a roost on the ceiling, but they mostly perch on the family bed, when that full-flavoured Elysium is not on the floor. I saw an interior which contained one black cow, one black calf, some hens, some ducks, two black-and-white pigs, a mother, and eleven children. Where they all slept was a puzzle, as only one bed was visible. The hens went whir-r-r-up, and perched on the bedstead, when the lady smiled and wished me Good Evening. She looked strong and in good going order. The Achilese say Good Evening all day long. A young girl was grinning in the next doorway, a child of fourteen or fifteen she seemed. "Ye wouldn't think that was a married woman, would ye now," said a neighbour, with pardonable pride. "Aye, but she is, though, an' a foin lump iv a son ye have, haven't ye, Maureen." Mr. Peter Griffin, once a land commissioner, told me that a boy having applied for the fixing of a judicial rent, the commissioners expressed their surprise upon learning that he was married. "Arrah, now," said the applicant, "sure 'tis not for the sake of the bit that the crathur would ate that a boy need be widout one o' thim!" In Achil, as elsewhere, the better people are certain that the Home Rule Bill will never become law. From their point of view, the thing seems too absurd to be possible. They are face to face with a class of Irishmen, among whom civilisation seems to have made no perceptible progress for centuries, who scorn every improvement, and are so tied and bound down by aboriginal ignorance and superstition as to be insensible to everything but their ancient prejudices. It cannot be possible, they argue, that Ireland should be given over to the dominion of these people, who, after all, are in the matter of advancement and enlightenment fairly representative of the bulk of the voters for Home Rule all over the country. The civilised community of Achil are unable to realise the possibility of such a surrender. They do not discuss the measure, but rather laugh at it. An able business man said:-- "We get the daily papers a little old, no doubt, but we follow them very closely, and we concur in believing that Mr. Gladstone will in the long run drop the bill. We think he will turn round and say, 'There now. That's all I can do. Haven't I done my best? Haven't I kept my promise? Now, you can't blame me. The Irishmen see it coming, and they will get out of it as much dramatic effect as possible. The party organs are already urging them to open rupture with the Government. Compulsion is their game, and no doubt, with Gladstone, it is the most likely game to pay. But he might rebel. He might grow tired of eating Irish dirt; he might pluck up spirit enough to tell these bullies who are jockeying him, and through him the British Empire, to go to the Divil. Then we'd have a fine flare-up. Virtuous indignation and patriotic virtue to the fore! The Irish members will rush over to Ireland, and great demonstrations will be the order of the day. The Irish love demonstrations, or indeed anything else which gives a further excuse for laziness. The priests will orate, the members will prate, the ruffians elate will shoot or otherwise murder a few people, who will have Mr. Gladstone to thank for their death. For what we wanted was twenty years of resolute government, just as Lord Salisbury said, and if Mr. Balfour had been left to carry it out Ireland would have come her nearest possible to prosperity and contentment. But with steady rule one day, and vacillation, wobbling, and surrender the next, what can you expect? The Irish are very smart, cute people, and they soon know where they can take advantage of weakness. The way these poor Achil folks, those who have been to England, can reckon up Mr. Gladstone! They call him a traitor now. And yet he promises to let the Irish members arrange their own finance! 'Here, my boys,' says he, 'take five millions and spend it your own way.' Will John Bull stand that? Will he pay for the rope that is to hang himself? Will he buy the razor to cut his own throat? Where are his wits? Why does he stand by to witness this unending farce, when he ought to be minding serious business? This Irish idiocy is stopping the progress of the Empire. Why does not Bull put his foot on it at once? He must do so in the end. Where are the working men of England? Surely they know enough to perceive that their own personal interests are involved. "In Achil we have practically peasant proprietary and nothing else. Eleven hundred men and women are at this moment in England and Scotland from Achil alone. They will return in October, each bringing back ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds, on which they will live till next season. The Irish Legislature would begin by establishing peasant proprietary all over Ireland. The large farmers would disappear, and men without capital, unable to employ labour, would take their place. Instead of Mayo, you would have the unemployed of the whole thirty-two counties upon you. Ireland would be pauperised from end to end, for everybody who could leave it would do so--that is, every person of means--and as for capital and enterprise, what little we have would leave us. Which of the Irish Nationalist party would start factories, and what would they make? Can anybody tell me that?" I submitted that Mr. William O'Brien, the member for Cork, might open a concern for the making of breeches, or that Mr. Timothy Healy, the member for Louth, who was reared in a tripe shop, might embark his untold gold in the cowheel and trotter business, or might even prove a keen competitor with Walsall in the manufacture of horsewhips, a product of industry of which he has had an altogether exceptional experience. "Is not this true?" I enquired. My friend admitted the fact, but declined to believe in the factory. Dugort (Achil Island), June 22nd. No. 39.--IRISH UNFITNESS FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT. There stands a city neither large nor small, Its air and situation sweet and pretty. It matters very little if at all. Whether its denizens are dull or witty. Whether the ladies there are short or tall, Brunettes or blondes--only there stands a city. Perhaps 'tis also requisite to minute, That there's a castle and a cobbler in it. It is not big enough to boast a barber. These indispensable adjuncts of civilisation exist in Connaught, but only at rare intervals. Roughly speaking, there is a space of about a hundred miles between them. From Athlone to Dugort, a hundred and thirty miles, there is only one, both towns inclusive. Castlereagh is a deadly-lively place for business, but keenly awake to politics. The distressful science absorbs the faculties of the people, who care for little else. Like all the Keltic Irish, they are great talkers, and, surely, if talking were working the Irish would be the richest nation in the world. "Words, words, words," and no deeds. The Castlereagh folks are growing despondent. The Irish Parliament that was to remit taxation, present every able-bodied man with a farm, do away with landlords and police, and reduce the necessity for work to a minimum, seems to them further off than ever. They complain that once again the people of Ireland have been betrayed. Mr. Gladstone has done it all. To be sure they never trusted him, but they thought him an instrument in the hands of Fate and the Irish Parliamentary party. Spite of all he is supposed to have done for the Irish, Mr. Gladstone is not popular in Ireland, and, as I pointed out months ago, they from the first declined to believe in his sincerity. They rightly regarded his action anent Home Rule as the result of compulsion, and, rightly or wrongly, believed that he would take the first opportunity of throwing over the whole scheme. That he should act thus treacherously (they say) is precisely what might be expected from an impartial review of his whole career, which presents an unequalled record of in-and-out running--consistent only in its inconsistency. Having apparently ridden straight for awhile, it is now time to expect some "pulling." His shameful concessions to the Unionist party may be taken as a clear indication of his congenital crookedness, and the refusal of the Nationalists at Killybegs, on the visit of Lord Houghton, the other day, to give a single shout for the Grand Old Man, bears out my previous statement as to the popular feeling. Amid the carefully organised show of enthusiasm and mock loyalty which greeted the visit of the Viceroy, not a cheer could be raised for Mr. Gladstone. The local wirepullers did their best, but the priests who for weeks have been arranging their automata, at the last moment found that the dummies would not work. There were rounds of cheering for this, that, and the other, and when the mob were in full cry, someone shouted, "Three cheers for Mr. Gladstone." Dead silence. The Gladstonian Viceroy and his following were left high and dry. The flood of enthusiasm instantly receded, and the beating of their own hearts was the only sound they heard. Mr. Morley's name would have obtained a like reception. The people were doubtless willing to obey their leaders, and to make some slight sacrifice to expediency, but every man left that particular cheer to his neighbour. Hence the fiasco for which the people have already been severely reprimanded. Someone should have called for cheers for Balfour. Anyone who knows the West of Ireland knows there would have been an outburst of hurrahs, hearty and spontaneous. The Irish are delightfully illogical. A respectable old Fenian had a poor opinion of the present Home Rule agitation. He said:--"I am of the school of Stephens and Mitchel. When a people or nation is radically discontented with its rulers it should throw them off by force. If the Irish could hold together long enough to maintain an armed insurrection for two weeks only, help would be forthcoming from all quarters. When a young man I cherished the hope that this would be accomplished, but I have long abandoned the notion that anything of the kind will be possible in my time. For individual Englishmen I have as much friendship as anybody, not being himself an Englishman, can entertain. What I dislike is English rule, and the present movement does not interest me, because its leaders profess allegiance--for the present, anyhow. No doubt the general idea is to obtain as much advantage as possible, and to gradually increase the strength of Ireland; but, in my opinion, the Fenian movement was the true and legitimate method, and the one best suited to the genius of the Irish nation. Notwithstanding all that has been said and written by English speakers and writers, the movement was worthy of honour, and had it been successful, would have received high praise and commendation from every country except England. To be respectable, revolutions or insurrections must be successful, or at any rate, must have a certain amount of success to commence with. The English people never properly understood the Fenian movement. To begin with, the name of Fenians was not assumed by the Irish body of conspirators. The Fenians proper were entirely confined to America, where they acted under the instructions of John O'Mahony, with Michael and Colonel Corcoran as lieutenants. The Colonel commanded the Irish brigade of the American army, and was pledged to bring over a strong contingent at the right moment. The Irish party in Ireland under Stephens was called the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, to which I am proud to say I belonged. That is all over now, and I am content to be loyal, under compulsion. There is nothing else for it. The young men are all gone to America, and the failure of the enterprise has damaged the prestige of the cause. The organisation was very good, and you might say that the able-bodied population belonged to it, almost to a man. England never knew, does not know even now, how universal was the movement. The escape of James Stephens, the great Number One, from Richmond Bridewell, was something of an eye-opener, but not half so astonishing as some things that would have happened if the general movement had been successful. It was Daniel Byrne and James Breslin, who let him out. Byrne was a turnkey, Breslin was hospital superintendent, and both held their posts on account of their well-known loyalty. Byrne was found out, or rather it was discovered that he was a Fenian, but they could not prove his guilt in the Stephens affair, and he never rounded on Breslin, who went on drawing his screw from the British Government for many a long day, until he took a trip to America, where his services to the cause landed him in a good situation. So he stayed there, and told everything, and that was the first the British Government knew about it, beyond suspicion of Byrne. "If Stephens had made up his mind for an outbreak the funeral of MacManus was the right occasion. He missed his tip then, and no mistake. There never was another chance like that. He said the arrangements were not complete, and from that moment the thing dwindled away, and we who were working it up in the rural districts began to think he did not really mean business. We were short of arms, but a small success would have improved our condition in that respect. Lots of the country organisers went to Dublin to see his funeral, and when we saw the crowds and the enthusiasm we all agreed that such a chance was not likely to occur again. MacManus had been a chief of the insurrectionary movement of 1848, and had been transported for life to Botany Bay, I think. He escaped to America, and died there in 1861. Mahony, the Fenian commander-in-chief, proposed to spend some of the revolutionary funds in bringing the body to Ireland, there to give it a public funeral. This was a great idea, and as the Government did not interfere, it turned out a greater success than anyone had anticipated. There were delegates from every city in America, and from every town in Ireland. It took about a month to lug MacManus from the Far West to Dublin, and the excitement increased every day. In my little place we collared all the timid fellows who had been holding back before, until there was not a single man of the peasant class outside the circle. MacManus was worth more dead than alive. "A hundred thousand men followed the hearse through the streets of Dublin. At the critical moment Number One held back. If the streets had been barricaded on the evening of the funeral the country would have stood an excellent chance of obtaining its independence. The moment was missed, and such chances never come twice. The French would have made a big thing of that affair. Stephens was great at organisation, but he had not the pluck to carry out the enterprise. He had not the military training required, nor the decision to act at the right moment. So here we are and here we shall remain, and I am your humble, obedient, loyal servant to command. "No, I do _not_ believe in the present leaders at all. I think they want to be paid big salaries as Irish statesmen, and that they are unfit to clean the boots of the men with whom I acted thirty years ago. The Fenians, or rather the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, had no wish to make money by their patriotism, and what is more, they were ready to risk their skins, whenever called upon to do so. They were willing to fight. These chaps do nothing but spout. The I.R.B. agreed among themselves, and obeyed orders. These fellows can't agree for five minutes together, and their principal subject of quarrel is--Who shall be master? Gladstone is fooling them now, and good enough for them. A pretty set of men to attempt to govern a country! They don't know what they want. We did. We swore every man to obedience to the Irish Republic. That was straightforward enough. The young 'uns round here have the same aspirations, but they dislike the idea of fighting. They expect to get round it some other way. "John Kennedy, of Westport, damaged the cause in Mayo more than any man in Ireland. He was a young fellow of about five-and-twenty, only a few years in the constabulary, but somehow he got into sworn meetings in disguise, and burst the whole thing up. The queerest feature about this business is the fact that although everybody knew the man not a shot was ever fired at him. That shows the fairness of the Fenians. A member of the Brotherhood would have been promptly dealt with, you bet. But Kennedy was an open enemy, and had a right to circumvent us if he could. Give us credit for some chivalrous feeling. We certainly deserved it, as this case amply proves. "The Land League? The Ruffian League, the Burglar League, the Pickpocket League, the Murder League--that's what I always called it. A hole-and-corner way of carrying on the fight, which had been begun by MEN, but which the latest fashion of Irishmen have not the courage to canduct as men. The Fenian conception was high-souled, and had some romance about it. We had a green flag with a rising sun on it, along with the harp of Erin. Our idea was an open fight against the British Empire. There's as much difference between the Fenians and their successors as between the ancient Romans and the Italian organ-grinders with monkeys. Good morning, Sir, and--God save the Queen." This was a jocosity if not a mockery, but it was the first time I had heard the words in Ireland. The tune is almost unknown, and the current issue of _United Ireland_ ridicules the notion that the Irish are going to learn it. The band of the Royal Irish Constabulary, playing in front of their barracks in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, on Friday evenings, sometimes include the tune in their programme, but when I heard them it was led up to and preceded by "St. Patrick's Day in the Mornin'," to which it was conjoined by one intervening chord. A Castlereagh Protestant said:-- "The children here are taught to curse the Queen in their cradles. Don't know how it is, but hatred to England seems bred in the bone of the Catholic Irish. They make no secret of their hopes of vengeance. The Protestants will have to levant in double-quick time. The people here hate Protestants, whether English or Irish, likewise anybody who holds a Government appointment. Some few days ago I was at Westport, and while in the post office there, a beggar asked Mr. Hildebrand for alms. You know that every western town swarms with beggars. He said No, and this tramp immediately turned round and said:-- "'We'll very soon have ye out o' that, _now_.' "A relative of mine, who holds a sub-office, has been told the same thing fifty times. There you have the spirit of the poorer people. And don't forget that the illiterates have the power in their hands. Just think what this means. "In England, with all your agricultural districts, with all your back slums of cities, there was only one person in each hundred and seventy who could not write his name, or at all events, one in a hundred and seventy who was unable to manage his voting paper. "In Ireland the figures were one in every five, and of the remainder two at least were barely able to perform so simple an operation as making a cross against the right name. Are these people fit to govern themselves? "There were two polling booths in Westport. There were three priests at each door. Tell the English people that, and see what they think of it. "A Scotch gentleman staying in Westport during the late 'mission' was stopped at the door of the Roman Catholic Church. He was not permitted to enter, because the priests are ashamed to show civilised people the credulity and crass ignorance of their congregation. At one of these services everybody held a lighted candle, and at a given signal, Puff! out went out the lights, and with them away went the sins of the people. "A priest was sent for in Achil. The case was urgent. A man was dying, and without Extreme Unction his chances in the next world were reckoned shady. The priest was enjoying himself in some festivity, and the man died before his salvation arrived. A relative declared he would tell the bishop. The priest reassured him with a scrap of paper, whereon were written these words, signed by himself, 'Saint Peter. Admit bearer.' 'Stick that in the dead man's fist,' said he. The man went away delighted. These are the intelligent voters whose influence is now paramount in the Parliament of England. It is by these poor untutored savages, manipulated by their priests, that the British Empire is now worked. The semi-civilised peasants of Connaught, with the ignorant herds of Leinster and Munster, at the bidding of their clergy have completely stopped the course of legislation, and left the long-suffering and industrious working men of England and Scotland to wait indefinitely for all the good things they want. The cry is, Ireland stops the way. Why doesn't England kick it out of the way? "Turn about is fair play. Let England have a turn now. Fair play is a jewel, and Ireland has fair play. Ireland has privileges of which neither England nor Scotland can boast. The Protestants of Ireland are everywhere prosperous and content. The Catholics of Ireland are everywhere impoverished and discontented. Wherever you go you find this an invariable rule. The two sects may hold their farms from the same landlord, on precisely similar terms, and you will find that the Protestants pay their rent, and get on, while the Catholics don't pay, and go from bad to worse." "Is this extraordinary difference the result of British rule?" Many a time I have asked Catholics this question. They cannot explain the marked difference on the ground of alien government, as both are subject to the same. They will say, 'Oh, Protestants are always well off,' as if the thing were a matter of course, and must be looked upon as inevitable. But why? I ask. That they can never tell. Stand on a big hill near Tipperary and you will see four Roman Catholic churches of modern build, costing nearly a hundred thousand pounds. Father Humphreys will tell you how the money was raised, will show you over Tipperary Cathedral, and will let you see the pig-styes in which the people are housed. That is the man of God who wrote to the papers and complained that it had been reported that the Catholic clergy of Tipperary had done all they could to stop boycotting. Father Humphreys said:--"I protest against this libel on me. _I am doing nothing to stop boycotting._" A neighbour of my friend spoke of many changes he had witnessed in the political opinions of people who had become resident in Ireland, having previously been Gladstonians in England. He said:--"When the Achil Sound viaduct was opened, chiefly by the efforts of a Northern Protestant who gave £1,500 towards the cost, a Scotchman named Cowan was chief engineer. He came over a rabid Home Ruler, and such a worshipper of Mr. Gladstone as cannot be found out of Scotland. In six months he was Unionist to the backbone, and not only Unionist but Conservative. The Achil folks, when once the bridge was built and given to them, decided to call it Michael Davitt Bridge. It had not cost them a penny, nor had they any part in it. At the priest's orders they rushed forward to christen it; it was all they were good for. They put up a big board with the name. Cowan went down alone, he could not get a soul with pluck to go with him, and chopped the thing down, the Achil Nationalists looking on. In the night they put up another board, a big affair on the trunk of a tree, all well secured. Cowan went down and felled it as before, watching it drift away with tide. Then they gave it up. They wouldn't go Three! Carnegie, the Customs man, came here a strong Home Ruler. Looking back, he says he cannot conceive how he could be such an ass. A very cute Scotchman, too. Some of the Gladstonians mean well. I don't condemn them wholesale, like father does. You should hear him drop on English Home Rulers. He understands the Irish agitator, but the English Separatist beats him. I have been in England, and several times in Birmingham, and I have heard them talk. Father is very peppery, but I moderate his transports. Speaking of the English Home Rulers he'll say-- "'Pack o' rogues.' "'No, no,' says I, 'only fools.' "'Infernal idiots,' says he. "'No, no,' says I, 'only ignorant.' "As I said, I have been in England, and have heard them talk, so I know." He asked me if I had noticed the external difference between Irish communities which support Home Rule and those which support the Union. I said that a contrast so striking must impress the most casual observer, for that, on the one hand, Unionism is always coupled with cleanliness and decency, while on the other the intimate relationship apparently existing between Home Rule and dunghills is most suggestive and surprising. Unionism and order: Separatism and ordure--that is about the sum. Castlereagh, June 24th. No. 40.--OBJECT LESSONS IN IRISH SELF-GOVERNMENT. A small town with a great name, about one hundred miles west of Dublin. There is a ruined castle, and one or two ruined abbeys, but nothing else of interest, unless it be the herons which stalk about the streams in its environs, and the Royston crows with white or gray breast and back, which seem to be fairly numerous in these parts. Ireland is a wonderful country for crows and ravens, which hop about the village streets as tame as barndoor fowls. A King of Connaught is buried in Saint Coenan's Abbey, but dead kings are almost as common as crows, and Phelim O'Connor seems to have done nothing worthy of mention beyond dying in 1265. I had hardly landed when I met a very pronounced anti-Home Ruler, a grazier, apparently a smart business man, and seemingly well up in the controversy. He said:--"I have argued the question all over Ireland, and believe I have made as many converts as anybody. Many of my countrymen have been carried away by the popular cry, but when once they have the thing put to them from the other side, and have time to think, they begin to have their doubts. Naturally they first lean to the idea of an Irish Parliament. It flatters Irish feeling, and when men look around and see the country so poor and so backward they want to try some change or other. The agitators see their opportunity, and say, 'All this results from English interference. If we managed our own affairs we should be better off all round.' This sounds plausible, and agrees with the traditional distrust of England which the people have inherited from past ages. Men who are fairly intelligent, and fairly reasonable, will say, 'We can't be worse off than we are at present.' That is a stock argument all over the country. The people who use it think it settles the business. The general poverty of the people is the strength of the Home Rule position. The priests tell them that a Government composed of Irishmen would see them right, and would devote itself to looking after their interests; and really the people have nobody to tell them anything else. Nor are they likely to hear the other side, for they are only allowed to read certain papers, and if Englishmen of character and ability were to attempt to stump the country they would not get a hearing. The clergy would make it warm for anybody who dared to attend a Unionist meeting. So _that_ process is altogether out of the question. Isolated Roman Catholic Unionists like myself need to be in a very strong and independent position before they dare to express their views. Roman Catholics of position are nearly all Unionists at heart, but comparatively few of them dare avow their real convictions. To do so is to couple yourself with the obnoxious land question. The people, as a whole, detest landlords and England, and they think that an opponent of Home Rule is necessarily a sympathiser with British rule and landlordism, and therefore a foe to his country and a traitor to his countrymen. Few men have the moral courage to face this indictment. That is why the educated Catholic party, as a whole, hang back. And then, they dislike to put themselves in direct opposition to their clergy. Englishmen do not care one jot what the parson thinks of their political opinions, but in Ireland things are very different. I am against Home Rule because I am sure it would be bad for Ireland. The prosperity of the country is of some importance to me, and for my own sake and apart from sentimental considerations, and for the credit of Ireland, I am against Home Rule. We should be poorer than ever. I would not trust the present Irish party to manage anything that required management. They have not the training, nor the business capacity, nor sufficient consistency to work together for a single week. They cannot agree even at this critical moment, when by their own showing, the greatest harmony of action is required in the interests of Ireland. I say nothing about their honesty, for the most scrupulously honest men could not succeed without business ability and united action. They are a set of talkers, good for quibbling and squabbling and nothing more. "They are M.P.'s because they can talk. Paddy loves a glib talker, and a fellow with a good jaw on him would always beat the best business man, even if Paddy were allowed his own choice. Of course he has no choice--he votes as the priest tells him; but then the selected men were all good rattling talkers, not in the House, perhaps, but in their own country district in Ireland. Paddy thinks talking means ability, and when a fellow rattles off plenty of crack-jaw words and red-hot abuse of England, Paddy believes him able to regenerate the world. These men are not allowed to speak in the House. They only vote. But let me tell you they are kings in their own country. "Since Parnell ordered his followers to contest all the elective Boards in Ireland, the Nationalist party have almost monopolised the Poor Law Boards, with the result that nearly every one has been openly bankrupt, or else is in a state of present insolvency. Mr. Morley has been asked for particulars but has declined to give them. He knows that the list of insolvent Poor Law Boards in Ireland, if once given with particulars, to the British public, would show up the prospects of Home Rule in such a damaging way that 'the cause' would never survive the shock. Why does not the Unionist party bring about this exposure? Surely the information is obtainable, if not from Mr. Morley, then from some other source. "Why are they bankrupt? you ask. Partly through incompetence; partly through corruption. In every case of declared bankruptcy Government has sent down vice-Guardians receiving three hundred pounds to five hundred pounds a year, and notwithstanding this additional burden to the rates the vice-Guardians in every case have paid off all debts and left a balance in hand inside of two years. Then they retire, and the honorary Guardians come back to scuttle the ship again. Tell the English people that. Mr. Morley cannot deny it. You have told them? Then tell them again, and again. "In the Killarney Union the Nationalists ran up the rates from one thousand seven hundred pounds to three thousand six hundred pounds. More distress? Not a bit of it. But even admitting this, how would you account for the fact that the cost ran up from sixteen shillings a head to twenty-five shillings a head for every person relieved? "The Listowel Union was perhaps the biggest scandal in the country. The Unionist Guardians relieved the people at a cost of five shillings a head. The Nationalists got in and relieved them at a cost of fifteen shillings a head. And there wasn't a reduction on taking a quantity, for the Unionists only had two hundred on the books, while the Nationalists had two thousand or more. "At the same period exactly those Unions which remained under the old rule showed little or no increase in the rates. Kenmare remained Unionist, and when the great rise in poor-law expenses followed the election of Nationalist Guardians Kenmare spent less money than ever. "The Nationalist Guardians have been vising the poor rates to reward their friends and to punish the landlords. They have been fighting the landlords with money raised from the landlords by means of poor rates. Evicted tenants generally received a pound or twenty-five shillings a week out-door relief. This punishes the landlords, and saves the funds of the Land League, now called the National League. Ingenious, isn't it? These are the men who form the class furnishing the Irish Parliamentary party. These bankrupt, incompetent, and fraudulent Guardians are the men with whom English Gladstonians are closely allied. The Board meetings are usually blackguardly beyond description. You have no idea to what extremes they go. No Irishman who loves his country would trust her to the tender mercies of these fellows." I have not yet been present at any meeting of an Irish Poor Law Board, and probably, as my friend remarked, I "do not know to what extremes they go." The _Mayo News_ of a week or two ago reported an ordinary meeting of the Westport Board, and I noticed that one Guardian accused his colleagues of stealing the potatoes provided out of the rates for the paupers. This was reported in a Nationalist print edited by a gentleman who has had the honour of being imprisoned for Land League business. The report was evidently verbatim, and has not been contradicted. The Westport folks took no notice of the affair, which may therefore be assumed as representing the dead level of an Irish Poor Law debate. To what sublime altitudes they may occasionally rise, to "what extremes" they sometimes go, I know not. The College Green Parliament, manned by such members, would have a peculiar interest. The Speaker might be expected to complain that his umbrella (recently re-covered) had mysteriously disappeared. The Chancellor of the Exchequer might accuse the President of the Board of Trade of having appropriated the National stationery, and the Master of the Rolls might rise to declare that a sanguinary ruffian from Ulster had "pinched his wipe." The sane inhabitants of the Emerald Isle affirm that Home Rule would be ruinous to trade, but the vendors of shillelaghs and sticking-plaster would certainly have a high old time. An Englishman who has had exceptional opportunities of examining the matter said:--"I don't care so much for Irish interests as for English interests, and I am of opinion that no Englishman in a position to form a correct judgment would for one moment support the bill. The tension is off us now, because we feel that the danger to a great extent is over. The bill could not be expected to survive a public examination. The Gladstonians themselves must now see that the scheme was not only absurd and impossible, but iniquitous. Under a Home Rule Bill their native land would cut a sorry figure, such as would almost shame the milk-sop Radical party, 'friends of every country but their own.' A Government with a sufficient majority to carry a British measure might at any time be turned out of office by the eighty Irish members, who could at any time make their votes the price of some further concession. And you know the character of the men, how thoroughly unscrupulous they are. All are enemies of England, and yet we who know them and the feeling of their constituencies are asked to believe that they would never abuse their powers. Why give them the temptation? Then, whatever debts Ireland might incur England would have to pay, should Ireland repudiate them? The bill provides that England shall be ultimately responsible for three-quarters of a million annually for the servants of the Crown in Ireland, such servants being at the orders of the Irish Legislature. It is a divorce case, wherein the husband is to be responsible for the wife's debts incurred after separation. This is Mr. Gladstone's fine proposition. And then England will have no police under her control to make defaulters pay up. You can't make the people pay rent and taxes with all your present force. How are you going to collect the two or three millions of Ireland's share in Imperial expenditure without any force at all? The police will be at the orders of the Irish Parliament, which will be returned by the very men who will owe the money. 'Oh yes!' say Dillon, Healy, O'Brien, and all the rest of the No Rent and Land League men. 'We'll see that the money is paid.' The previous history of these men ought to be enough for Englishmen. But if Tim Healy and Co. wished the money to be paid, they would have no power. They must take their orders from the people. How would you collect the interest on the eighteen or twenty millions Ireland now owes? The police and civil officers would, under a Home Rule Bill, be the servants of the Irish Government, and would have no sympathy with England. A hitch would very soon arise between the two Parliaments either on the interpretation of this or that clause, or else because the Irish Parliament fell short of its duty in collecting the tribute. The Irish Government would stand firm, and would be supported by priests and people. The British Grenadiers would then come in, and where would be the Union of Hearts? Irishmen are fond of a catch-word. Like the French, they will go to death for a phrase. But the Union of Hearts never tickled them. The words never fell from Irish lips except in mockery. "Protection would be the great rallying cry of a Home Rule Government. The bill refuses power to impose protective duties, but Ireland would commence by conceding bounties to Irish manufacturers, who would there and then be able to undersell English traders. No use going further into the thing, there is not a good point in it for either country. No use flogging a dead horse. There never will be any Home Rule, and there's no use in discussing it. A liberal measure of Local Self-Government will be the upshot of this agitation, nothing more. And that will come from the Tory party, the only friends of poor Ireland." The Parnellites are strong in Roscommon, and to hear them revile the priests is both strange and sad. These are the only Catholics who resent clerical dictation. They seem in a quandary. Their action seems inconsistent with their expressed sentiments. They plainly see that Home Rule means Rome Rule, and, while deprecating priestly influence, they do their best to put the country into priestly hands. They speak of the Anti-Parnellites with contempt and aversion, calling them rogues and vagabonds, liars and traitors, outside the pale of civilisation, and yet they work for Home Rule, which would put their beloved Ireland in the power of the very men whose baseness and crass incompetence they cannot characterise in terms sufficiently strong. For the Anti-Parnellites outnumber the Parnellites by eight to one; so that the smaller party, although monopolising all virtue, grace and intellect, would have no show at all, unless, indeed, the Nationalists were further subdivided, on which contingency the Parnellites probably count with certainty. I interviewed a champagny little man whose views were very decided. He said:-- "I think the seventy-three Federationists, as they want to be called, are not only traitors to the greatest Irishmen of the age, but also mean-spirited tools of the Catholic bishops. A man may have proper respect for his faith, and may yet resent the dictation of his family priest. I admit his superior knowledge of spiritual matters, but I think I know what politics suit me best, and I send him to the rightabout. Let him look after the world to come. That's his business. I'm going to look after this world for myself. The main difference between the Parnellites and the Anti-Parnellites is just this--the Parnellites keep themselves independent of any English party; the Anti-Parnellites have identified themselves with the English Liberals, and bargain with them. My view is this, that the English Radicals will use the Irish party for their own ends, that they want to utilise them in carrying out the Newcastle programme, and that having so used them the Irishmen may go and hang themselves. 'We give you Home Rule and you give us the Newcastle budget'--that's the present arrangement. But after that? What then? Ireland will want the Home Rule Bill amended. The first bill (if ever we get it) must be very imperfect, and will want no end of improvement. It is bound to be a small, mean affair, and will want expansion and breadth. Then the Radicals will chuck over the Anti-Parnellites, who will be equally shunted by the Tories, and we shall be left hanging in the air. The Parnellites aim at getting everything on its merits, and decline to identify themselves with any party. They wish to be called Independents. And they one and all decline to be managed by the priests. The seventy-three Anti-Parnellites are entirely managed by the Clerical party. They have no will of their own any more than the pasteboard men you see in the shop windows, whose legs and arms fly up and down, when you pull a string. They are just like Gladstonians in that respect." The Parnellites are hard up, and their organ asks America for cash. The dauntless nine want six thousand pounds for pocket-money and hotel expenses. The cause of Ireland demands this sacrifice. After so many contributions, surely America will not hold back at the supreme moment. The Anti-Parnellites are bitterly incensed. To act independently of their faction was of itself most damnable, but still it could be borne. To ask for money from America, to put in a claim for coppers which might have flowed into Anti-Parnellite pockets, shows a degradation, an unspeakable impudence for which the _Freeman_ cannot find adequate adjectives. The priest-ridden journal speaks of its fellow patriots as caluminators and liars, tries to describe their "baseness," their "inconceivable insolence and inconceivable stupidity," and breaks down in the effort. A column and a half of space is devoted to calling the Parnellites ill names such as were formerly applied by Irish patriots to Mr. Gladstone. And all because they compete for the cents of Irish-American slaveys and bootblacks. The Parnellites are not to be deterred by mere idle clamour. Both parties are accustomed to be called liars and rogues, and both parties accept the appellations as a matter of course. Nothing can stop them when on the trail of cash. Is Irish sentiment to be again disappointed for a paltry six thousand pounds? Is the Sisyphean stone of Home Rule, so laboriously rolled uphill, to again roll down, crushing in its fall the faithful rollers? Will not some American millionaire come forward with noble philanthropy _and_ six thousand pounds to rescue and to save the most beautiful, the most unfortunate country in the world from further disappointment? Only six thousand pounds now required for the great ultimate, or penultimate, or antepenultimate effort. Another twopence and up goes the donkey! Roscommon, June 27th. No. 41.--THE CHANGED SPIRIT OF THE CAPITAL. The Dubliners have quite given up the bill. The Unionist party have regained their calm, and the Nationalists are resigned to the position. Nobody, of whatever political colour, or however sanguine, now expects the measure to become law. The Separatist rank and file never hoped for so much luck, and their disappointment is therefore anything but unbearable. My first letter indicated this lack of faith and also its cause. The Dublin folks never really believed a British Parliament would so stultify itself. The old lady who, on my arrival, said "We'll get Home Rule when a pair of white wings grows out o' me shoulders, an' I fly away like a big blackburd," finds her pendant in the jarvey, who this morning said, "If we'd got the bill I would have been as much surprised as if one o' me childhren got the moon by roarin' for it." Distrust of Mr. Gladstone is more prevalent than ever, and the prophets who all along credited that pious statesman with rank insincerity are now saying "I towld ye so." The Lord-Lieutenant is making his Viceregal progress in an ominous silence. The Limerick people let him go without a cheer. At Foynes something like a procession was formed, with the parish priest at its head; but the address read by his Rivirince reads very like a scolding. It points out that "our rivers are at present without shipping, our mills and factories are idle, and it is a sad sight to see our beautiful Shannon, where all her Majesty's fleet could safely ride on the estuary of its waters, without almost a ship of merchandise on its surface on account of the general decay of our trade and commerce." The address further shows that "we enjoy a combination of natural advantages in the shape of a secure, sheltered anchorage, together with railway and telegraph in immediate proximity to the harbour and the pier, and postal service twice daily, both inwards and outwards, and a first-class quality of pure water laid on to the pier. The facility for landing or embarking troops, or for discharging or loading goods or stores is as near perfection as possible, and having a range of depth of water of twenty-five feet at low-water spring tide, the harbour can accommodate ships of deep draught at any state of the tide." These advantages, mostly owing to British rule, with others, such as the "unique combination of mountain and river scenery," were not enumerated as subjects for thankfulness, but rather by way of reproach, the effect of the whole address being a veiled indictment of British rule. No doubt Lord Houghton's first impulse would be to exclaim, "Then why on earth don't you use your advantages? With good quays, piers, storehouses, and a broad deep river, opening on the Atlantic, why don't you do some business?" But he promised to do his best to send them a guard-ship, in order that the crew might spend some money in the district. The Galway folks asked him to do something for them. My previous letters have shown the incapacity of the Galwegians to do anything for themselves, and how, being left to their own devices--having, in fact, a full enjoyment of local Home Rule--their incompetence has saddled the city with a debt of fifty thousand pounds for which they have practically nothing to show, except an additional debt of one thousand pounds decreed against them for knocking the bottom out of a coaling vessel during their "improving" operations, which sum they never expect to pay, as the harbour tolls are collected by the Board of Works, which thus endeavours to indemnify itself for having lent them the "improvement" funds. The Killybegs folks showed the poor Viceroy their bay and told him what wonderful things they could do if they only had a pier, or a quay, or something. The Achil folks formerly said the same thing. Two piers were built but no man ever goes near them. The Mulranney folks pointed out that while Clew Bay, and particularly the nook of it called Mulranney Bay, was literally alive with fish, the starving peasants of the neighbourhood could do nothing for want of a pier. The brutal Saxon built one at once--a fine handsome structure, at once a pier, a breakwater, and a harbour, with boat-slips and three stages with steps, so that boats could be used at any tide. I stepped this massive and costly piece of masonry, and judged it to be a hundred yards long. There were six great mooring posts, but not a boat in sight, nor any trace of fishing operations. A broad new road to the pier was cut and metalled, but no one uses it. The fishing village of Mulranney, with its perfect appointments, would not in twelve months furnish you with one poor herring. The pier of Killybegs would probably be just as useful to the neighbourhood. The Dublin Nationalist prints make some show of fight, but the people heed them not. They know too well that their inward conviction that Home Rule is for the present defunct is founded on rock. In vain the party writers use the whip. Your Irishman is cute enough to know when he is beaten. The new-born regard of the Irish press for Parliamentary purity is comical enough. Obstruction is the thing they hate. Ungentlemanly conduct in the House stinks in their nostrils. Fair play is their delight, and underhand dealing they particularly abhor. Mr. Gladstone is too lenient, and although his failings lean to virtue's side, his action is too oily altogether. He is old and weak, and lubricates too much. They in effect accuse him of fatty degeneration of the brain. Something heroic must be done. Those low-bred ruffians, the Unionists, must be swept from the path of Erin, while her eloquent sons, actuated by patriotism and six pounds a week, and spurred on by the hope of even a larger salary, obtain after seven centuries some show of justice to Ireland. The Irish wire-pullers demand decisive action. They declare that they will no longer submit to the "happy-go-lucky policy of the gentlemen who survey life from the Ministerial benches." They must "put themselves in fighting form and show their supporters that they mean business." "Unless the Ministry mean to throw up the sponge they had better begin the fighting at once." The Irish party "are looking for the action of the Government which is to make it evident to the Opposition that the majority mean to rule in the House of Commons, for unless this be done Parliamentary government becomes a farce." If Mr. Gladstone continues the policy of hesitation and waiting on Providence, the fate of Home Rule, and with it the fate of the Liberal party, are sealed. "Obstruction" (says the Parnellite paper) cannot be permitted!" It is the revelation of the impotency of Parliament, and Parliamentary procedure must be replaced by some quicker means of effecting reform. Mr. Gladstone's feebleness is an incitement to revolution. The Dublin press would manage these things better. An autumn session must not be adventured. If the House should rise before the bill has passed the Commons such a confession of weakness would fatally damage the Government prestige. The House must "be kept in permanent session, and not kept too long," which sounds like a bull, but the next sentence is plain enough. "The obvious policy is to at once take the Opposition by the throat. That will excite enthusiasm, and convince the people that a Liberal Government is good for something." The Nationalist prints are assuming the office of candid friend, a part which suits them admirably, and in the performance of which they make wonderful guesses at truth. The Gladstonian Ministry "are helpless and impotent in the hands of their opponents. The reforms so ardently desired by the people are seen to be mere mirages, called up to win the votes of the people for men who, once in office, make no real effort to enforce the mandate given to them by the country." The Liberal Ministry will be "swept out of existence because the people will come to recognise that their promises and programmes are so many hollow phrases, incapable of ministering to the needs or satisfying the aspirations of the multitude." "The real tug of war," says this Home Rule sheet, "will come in the next election." If Irish Separatists talk like this, what do Irish Unionists say? Very little, indeed. They are disposed to rest and be thankful. They only want to be let alone. They are quiet and reserved, and thank their stars that the worst is over. The nervousness, the high-strung tension of three months ago, is conspicuous by its absence. They feared that the thing would be rushed, and that Mr. Bull would stamp the measure without looking at it, would be glad to get rid of it at any price, would say to Ireland, "Take it, get out of my sight, and be hanged to ye!" Thanks to the Unionist leaders, whose ability and devotion are here warmly recognised, the Dubliners know no fear. The ridiculous abortion has been dragged into the sunlight, and ruthlessly dissected. John's commonsense can be trusted, once he examines for himself, and worthy Irishmen lie down in peace. The graver Dubliners prefer to speak of something else. The young bloods still make fun of the "patriots," and conjure up illimitable vistas of absurd possibilities under an Irish Government. They invariably place the hypothetic Cabinet under the direct orders of Archbishop Walsh, and continue to make fun of that great hierarch's famous malediction on Freemasonry. The good Archbishop, they say, takes a large size in curses. They declare that his curse on the Masonic bazaar for orphans was a marvel of comprehensive detail; that it cursed the stall-holders, the purchasers, the tea-pot cosies and fender-stools, the five-o'clock tea-tables and antimacassars, the china ornaments, and embroidered slippers, with every individual bead; the dolls, both large and small; the bran that stuffed the dolls, and the very squeaks which resulted from a squeeze on the doll's ribs. Never was heard such a terrible curse. But what gave rise to no little surprise, nobody seemed one penny the worse. These scoffers propose to discontinue the habit of swearing. When the Archbishop produces no effect, what's the good of a plain layman's cursing? They declare that the dentists of Dublin are all Home Rulers, and that the selfishness of their political faith is disgustingly obvious. These mocking Unionists discuss probable points of etiquette likely to arise in the Legislature of College Green, and dispute as to whether members will be allowed to attend with decidedly black eyes, or whether they will be excluded until the skin around their orbs has arrived at the pale yellow stage. Some are of opinion that no Cabinet Minister should be allowed to sit while wearing raw beefsteak, and a story is going the rounds to the effect that some of the Irish members recently wished to cross the Channel for half-a-crown each, and to that end called on a boat agent, a Tory, who knew them, when the following conversation took place:-- "Can we go across for half-a-crown each?" "No, ye can't, thin." "An' why not?" "Because 'tis a cattle boat." "Never mind that, sure we're not particular." "No, but the cattle are." There was a great rush for Dynamitard Daly's letter, and some of his sentences were made subjects of leading articles in the Nationalist press. One paragraph seems to have been neglected. He writes--"Friend Jack, you amazed me when you mentioned the names of ex-felons now honourable members of the Imperial Parliament. And so they seem to forget the days when _they_ were felons? Ah, well, thank God, the people did not forget them in their hour of need, and though some of them may try to palm off their own selfish ambitions on the people to whom they owe everything as genuine patriotism--oh, it won't do!" John Daly holds the same opinion of his fellow patriots as is expressed in a remarkable letter to the Separatist _Dublin Evening Herald_, wherein the writer says that his party is "disgusted with the duplicity of Mr. Gladstone," and goes on to say that "No one now believes that the bill will pass, and almost everyone believes it was never intended to pass. I have not yet met anybody who expressed themselves as even remotely satisfied with it. Peace to its ashes." I quote this as proving two points I have always endeavoured to urge--first, that the Irish distrust Mr. Gladstone, and are not grateful to him or his party; and, second, that no bill short of complete independence will ever satisfy the Irish people. It is what they expect and look forward to as the direct outcome of Home Rule, which they only want as a stepping-stone. This cannot fail to impress itself on any unbiassed person who rubs against them for long. The teaching of the priests is eminently disloyal, and although the utmost care is taken to prevent their disloyalty becoming public, instances are not lacking to show the general trend. Father Sheehy, an especial friend of the Archbishop Walsh aforesaid, thus delivered himself anent a proposed visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Ireland:--"There is no need for a foreign prince to come to Ireland. The Irish people have nothing to say to the Prince of Wales. He has no connection with Ireland except that link of the Crown that has been formed for the country, which is the symbol of Ireland's slavery." This priest said he hated landgrabbers; all except one. "There is but one landgrabber I like, and that is the Tsar of Russia, who threatens to take territory on the Afghan border from England." Father Arthur Ryan, of Thurles, the seat of Archbishop Croke, has printed a manifesto, in which he says:--"Ever since the Union the best and most honourable of Irishmen have looked on rebellion as a sacred duty, provided there were a reasonable chance of success. It has never occurred to me to consider acquiescence to the Government of England as a moral obligation or as other than a dire necessity. We have never, thank God, lied to our oppressors by saying we were loyal to them. And when we have condemned the rebels whose heroism and self-sacrifice we have loved and wept over, we condemned not their want of loyalty, but their want of prudence. We thought it wrong to plunge the land into the horrors of war with no hope of success." So much for our trusty and well-beloved fellow-subjects of this realm of England. Father Ryan is candid, truthful, and outspoken, and commands respect. Better an open enemy than a false friend. His summing-up of Irish feeling to England is both concise and accurate, but one of his sentences is hardly up to date. He thanks God that the Irish have never lied by saying they were loyal. How many Irish members can make this their boast? Compared with them, the Ribbonmen were heroes. The glorious prototypes of the modern member murdered their foes themselves, did their slaughtering in person, and took the risk like men. They hated Englishmen, _qua_ Englishmen, and made no secret of it. The modern method is easier and more convenient. To murder by proxy, to have your hints carried out without danger to yourself, and to draw pay for your hinting, is a triumph of nineteenth-century ingenuity. To pose as loyal subjects and to disarm suspicion by protestations of friendship and brotherly love may be a more effective means of attaining your end, but it smacks too much of the serpent. The Ribbonmen were rough and rugged, but comparatively respectable. The Irish Separatists are just as disloyal, and infinitely more treacherous. The parchment "loyalty to Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen," which Lord Houghton is in some places receiving, is revolting to all who know the truth. The snake has succeeded the tiger, and most people hate sliminess. Nationalist Ireland is intensely disloyal from side to side, and from end to end. Disloyal and inimical she has been from the first, and disloyal and inimical she remains, and no concessions can change her character. She is religious with a mediæval faith, and she follows her spiritual guides, whose sole aim is religious ascendancy. So long as the Roman Catholic Church is not predominant so long the Irish people will complain. You may give them the land for nothing; you may stock their farms--they will expect it; you may indemnify them for the seven hundred years of robbery by the English people--they say they ought to be indemnified; you may furnish every yeoman with a gun and ammunition, with _carte blanche_ as to their use with litigious neighbours; you may lay on whiskey in pipes, like gas and water, but without any whiskey rate; you may compel the Queen to do Archbishop Walsh's washing, and the Prince of Wales to black his sacred boots, while the English nobility look after the pigs of the foinest pisintry in the wuruld, and still the Irish would be malcontents. The Church wants absolute predominance, and she won't be happy till she gets it. Parnell was Protestant and something of a Pope. Tim Healy tried to wear the leader's boots, but Bishop Walsh reduced him to a pulp. This good man rules Dublin, and through Dublin, Ireland. You cannot walk far without running against his consecrated name. At present the city is labelled as follows:-- "By direction of his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, the annual collections for our Holy Father the Pope will take place on July the second." The National League and Our Holy Father the Pope between them cut very close. No wonder that poor Paddy has hardly a feather left to fly with. "An ardent Nationalist" thus expresses himself in the Separatist _Herald_:--"I fear we must reluctantly abandon hope of a Home Parliament for a few more years. For the present we will have to content ourselves with Local Government, an ample measure of which will be given by the _Conservatives_. On the whole, ardent Nationalist as I am, I do not look on this as an unmixed evil. What kind of Government would be possible under six or seven factions?" This should be a staggerer for the English Home Rule party. The italics are in the original, and the writer goes on to say, "It is open to doubt that we should be able to at once manage our own affairs without some preliminary training." The whole letter is a substantial repetition of the sentiments emanating from a Home Ruler of Tralee, recounted in my letter from that town of Kerry. Parnell is still worshipped in Dublin. He looks big beside his successors. His grave in the splendid cemetery of Glasnevin is well worth a visit, although there is no monument beyond a cast-iron Irish cross painted green, which serves to hang flowers upon. The grave is in a rope-enclosed circle, some twenty yards in diameter, and most of the space is occupied by big glass shades, with flowers and other tributes of respect and affection. I counted more than a hundred, many of them elaborate. The Corkmen send the biggest, a small greenhouse with two brown Irish harps and the legend DONE TO DEATH. An Irish harp worked in embroidery lies sodden on the earth. Green shamrock leaves of tin, with the names of all the donors--this is important--obtrude themselves here and there. A six-foot cross of white flowers, like a badge of purity, lies on the grave, labelled Katherine Parnell, in a lady's hand. The place is swamped with Irish harps, and it occurs to me that the badge would not be so popular if the patriots knew that the harp was imposed as an emblem of Ireland by English Henry the Second. The name PARNELL in iron letters is on the turf, flowers growing through them, a poetical idea. As I walk past they vibrate with a metallic jingle, which reminds me of the shirt of mail the living man wore to preserve himself from his fellow-patriots. Tay Pay's life of the dead leader proves that his sole secret of success was inflexible purpose, and that his notion of party management was to treat the patriot members as dirt. Parnell was an authority in Irish matters, and his example should be useful to Messrs. Gladstone, Morley, and Co. An eminent Irishmen to-day said:--"With your wibble-wobble and your shilly-shally, your pooh-pooh and your pah-pah, you are ruining the country. Put down your foot and tell the Irish people that they will not now nor at any future time get Home Rule, and not a word will come out of them." A word (to the wise) is enough. Dublin, June 29th. No. 42.--AT A NATIONALIST MEETING. The most remarkable feature of Dundalk life is the fact that the people are doing something. Not much, perhaps, but still something. The port is handy for Liverpool and Glasgow, and a steam packet company gives a little life to the quays. The barracks, not far from the shore, indicate one large source of custom, for wherever you find a British regiment you find the people better off. The Athlone folks say that but for the soldiers the place would be dead and buried, and the Galway people are complaining that the garrison, the hated English garrison, has been withdrawn. This inconsistency at first surprises you, but you soon grow familiarised with the strange inconsistencies of this wonderful island. Dundalk has vastly improved during the three dozen years which have elapsed since first I visited the town. There is a Catholic church for every hundred yards of street, and on Thursday last one of them at least was full to overflowing. It was the festival of Saints Peter and Paul, and England was being solemnly dedicated to Rome. There was no getting inside to witness the operation, for the kneeling crowds extended into the street and flopped down on their marrow-bones on the side walks. The men with the collection plates could hardly hold their ground in the portals, and many worshippers were sent empty away, raising their hats as they reluctantly turned from the sacred precincts. This was between eleven and twelve in the forenoon, so that the day's work was hopelessly broken. Ireland has endless customs demanding cessation of labour, but none demanding the pious to go to work. The Methodist and Presbyterian churches were closed, and possibly their adherents were stealing a march on the Catholics in the matter of business. The Church of Ireland has a bright green spire, which at first puzzles the unlearned. Its hoisting of the national colour is due to the fact that the whole structure is covered with copper, which in its turn is covered with verdigris. The surroundings of the town are pleasant, and, although thatched cottages abound, they are very superior to the dirty dens of Tipperary. Nearly all have the half-doors so convenient for gossiping, and the female population of these cabins spend much of their time in leaning over the lower half. The superiority of Dundalk is by most people attributed to the strong mixture of Northerners there resident, and the favourable position of the port. Earnest Unionists are by no means scarce, and, as usual, they are the pick of the population. The Parnellites are also present in strong force, and this may account for the fact that Mr. Timothy Healy, the respected member for North Louth, is unable to visit the chief town of his constituency without a guard of two hundred policemen, paid and commanded by his life-long foe--the base and brutal Saxon. A prominent citizen said:-- "We have a number of Englishmen coming over here, and most of them are Unionists. But a few birds of passage I have seen have vexed me with their confident ignorance, and caused me to believe that English Gladstonians are the densest donkeys under the sun. They are so self-opiniated, and so full of self-satisfaction, that it is hard to be patient with them. Not a few say simply that they are content to leave the matter in the hands of Mr. Gladstone, and that as they followed him so far, they will follow him to the end. They decline to examine for themselves, although facilities are offered on the spot. This must be the ruling temper of the English Home Rule party, for if they stopped to examine for themselves, or even to hear the evidence submitted by men of position and integrity they could never tolerate the insane proposition of an Irish Parliament for a day. They sometimes say that Irishmen should govern their own land, and that no one could venture to dispute this proposition. This is their principal argument, and some are led away by its show of reason. But what is the truth? "Irishmen _do_ govern Ireland. Listen. Is England governed by Englishmen? Now Ireland has a far greater number of members in proportion to her population than England has. These men have far more power in the English Parliament than England herself, for they hold the balance of parties. In every question, Irish or English, they have the casting vote. So that they can almost always decide what is to become law. "Dundalk is at this moment placarded with a request that all men should join in the glorious struggle for freedom. Unless the Irish people were constantly told they were slaves, they would never know it. They are fed on lies from their infancy. The current issue of _United Ireland_ states in a leader that the prison authorities have three times tried to get rid of John Daly, the dynamitard, by poisoning him in prison. As if they could not do it if they liked! And a few weeks ago, at an amnesty meeting at Drumicondra, a speaker stated, in the presence of two or three members of Parliament, that five of the thirteen political prisoners still locked up had been driven mad by horrible tortures. What freedom do the Irish want? Have they not precisely the same freedom as that enjoyed by England, the freest country in the world? Have they not the same laws, except where those laws have been relaxed in favour of Ireland? Have they not religious equality, free trade, a free press, and vote by ballot? And with all this they are told at every turn that they are the most down-trodden nation of slaves on earth. Supposed they groaned under conscription like France and Germany, what then? "The English people have seen the results of the influence exercised by the present Irish leaders. One would think that sensible Britons would decline to entrust such men with power. Did they not bring about the rule of the Land League, with its stories of foul murder which sound like a horrible dream of the tyranny of the Middle Ages? Are these men not hand and glove with the clerical party, which hates England as heretic and excommunicate? It is not proposed by Home Rule to put in office men who are the mere tools of the Catholic church, the most unyielding and intolerant system in the world!" I remembered the leader in the _Irish Catholic_, which sings a pæan of triumph over alleged successes against the Freemasons of Italy. British Masons may be interested to learn that this authority couples them with Atheists, Fenians, and Ribbonmen, and holds up the craft to contumely and scorn. The acceptance by Mr. Gladstone of the principle of Home Rule seems to rejoice the Papist heart. "Never was it more clear than it now is that the indestructible Papacy exercises an authority over the hearts and minds of humanity which nothing, neither fraud, nor oppression, nor misrepresentation, can weaken or destroy. How near may be the day of its inevitable triumph no man can say, while that its coming is as certain as the rising of the morning sun ... none will doubt or deny. That in the moment when the Vicar of Christ is vindicated before the nations, and the reign of right and truth and justice re-established throughout Christendom, Ireland can claim to have been faithful when others were untrue, will be the proudest trophy of an affection which no temptation and no tyranny was ever able to weaken or destroy." The Freemasons are expressly stated to lie under "the terrible penalty of excommunication," but they are afterwards lightly dealt with. They are regarded with an amused tolerance by Irish Catholics, who only laugh to see them "hung with a number of trumpery glass and Brummagem metal trinkets about their persons, and generally indulging in an amount of fantastic and childish adornment which would turn the King of the Cannibal Islands green with envy." Their profanation of God's holy name and their sacrilegious oaths are regretted, but they will never do much harm in Ireland, where the people laugh at their "fantastic tomfoolery." A parallel column advises the public to join in the present pilgrimage to Saint Patrick's Purgatory, where the saint saw, by special favour of God, the purgatorial fires. Another column advertises prayers at fixed prices--a reduction on taking a quantity. The men who hold these beliefs and opinions are the sole governors of Irish action, the sole creators of Irish opinion. For the lay agitators who from time to time have dared to oppose the clerics have been mostly suppressed, and the few still in existence will probably disappear before long. Colonel Nolan must hold this opinion, for when canvassing in Headford, the parish priest came up and cut his head open with a bludgeon. The gallant militarian submitted to this, and would fain have passed the affair in silence. How many Englishmen would have stood it? This incident, properly considered, should enlighten Britons on the dominant influences of Irish Parliamentary action. On the way to Dundalk I met Major Studdert, of Corofin, County Clare. He spoke of the disturbed state of the district, and thought the present condition of things scandalous and intolerable. He mentioned the case of Mr. J. Blood, who has been four times fired at for dismissing a herdsman. He said:--"Mr. Blood is universally admitted to be one of the most amiable and benevolent of men. His herdsman had a son who would not work, and who was reckoned one of the greatest blackguards in the county, which is saying a good deal in County Clare. Mr. Blood told him to send away this son, or he himself must leave his situation. He refused, and Mr. Blood discharged his herdsman, but with an extraordinary liberality gave him one hundred pounds as consolation money. Since then Mr. Blood is everywhere protected by four policemen. One of the bullets aimed at him passed between his back and the back of the chair he was sitting in." "I have only one argument for the country folks who talk of Home Rule. I challenge them to show me a single industrious man in the whole country who is not well off. They can't do it. What Ireland wants is not Home Rule but industry. When they are at work they do not go at it like Englishmen. I go over to Cheshire every year for the hunting season, and it is a treat to see the English grooms looking after the horses. They pull off their coats and roll up their sleeves in a way that would astonish Irishmen. It is worth all they get to see them at work. They get twice as much as Irish grooms, and they are worth the difference. The people around me, the working people, do not perform five months' work in a year." And these are the people who are surprised at their own poverty, and who monopolise the attention of the British Parliament, which toils in vain to give them an Act which will improve their worldly position. The Irish farmer is petted and spoiled, and a victim of over-legislation. Do what you will you can never please him. Mr. Walter Gibbons, of South Mall, Westport, told me of a case which came under his own observation, as follows:--Rent, five pounds a year. _None_ paid for seven years. Tenant refused possession. Landlord paid tenant twenty pounds in cash, and formally remitted all the rent, thirty-five pounds to wit. "I saw the money paid," said Mr. Gibbons, a fine specimen of the British sailor, present in the Cornwallis at the bombardment of Sebastopol. "And was the landlord shot?" I inquired. "Not that I know of," said the old sailor. Most people will agree that if ever a landlord deserved shooting this was the very man. The walls of Dundalk were placarded with a flaming incitement to Irishmen to meet in the Labourers' Hall at eight o'clock, to "join in the onward march to freedom." The meeting was to be held under the auspices of the Irish National Federation--Featheration, as the Parnellites call it and most of its members pronounce it--and therefore it was likely to be a big thing, especially considering the Parliamentary tension existing at the present moment. I determined to be present, To beard the lion in his den, The Douglas in his hall; to see the labouring Irish in their thousands marching onward to Freedom. A friend attempted to dissuade me from the project. "You'll be spotted in a moment, and as you are very obnoxious to the priests, to be recognised at such a meeting might be unpleasant." A public official who pointed out the place followed me up with advice. "Unless you are connected with the party, it would be better to keep away. These people are very suspicious." These were fine preliminaries of a public meeting. The building is poor, but not squalid, and seems to have been built within the last few years. A gateway leads to the yard and the Hall blocks the way. All the rooms are small, and I looked in vain for anything like an assembly chamber. Two roughish-looking men, who nevertheless had about them a refreshing air of real work, stood at the gateway, and from them I learned that the meeting would take place upstairs. Twenty-four steps outside the building almost gave me pause. At the top was an open landing, whence the Saxon intruder might be projected with painful results. Trusting in my luck, I entered a narrow corridor, some fifteen feet long, with doors on each side, and one at the opposite end. That must open on the assembly room. No, it only led to another flight of outside steps, and here it was comforting to observe that the drop might be into the soft soil of a garden, instead of a bricked yard. But where was the great meeting? Once more I left the Hall and spoke my rugged friends. Yes, it was after eight, but the people wanted a bit of margin. Half-past eight was the time intended. Half-an-hour's march around, and back again. The crowd was swelled from two to three persons. Fifteen minutes more, and further inquiry. "When will the meeting begin." "When the people comes." "But they're an hour late already." "Sure ye can't hurry thim." At 9.15 I went again. "Meeting begun yet?" I asked. "Just startin' now. The praste's afther goin' in." "You're rather unpunctual." "Arrah, how would we begin widout his Rivirince!" This was unanswerable. Once more into the breach, up the lonely shivery steps. This time I heard voices, and opening a door found a narrow room with about twenty people therein. The show was just agoing to begin, for, as I entered, somebody proposed that the Priest should take the chair. A short, stout, red faced man, with black coat and white choker, seemed to expect no less, and moved into the one-and-ninepenny Windsor with alacrity. He spoke with the vilest, boggiest kind of brogue, and the hideous accent of vulgar Ulster; calling who "hu" with a French u, should "shoed," and pronouncing every word beginning with un as if beginning with on--ontil, onless, ondhersthand, ondhertake. "Ye'll excuse me makin' a spache, fur av I did I'd make a varry bad one," said the holy man, and the audience seemed to believe him. Enrolment was the order of the day, and the thousands were requested to come forward. A man next me went to the front and paid a shilling, receiving in return a green ticket, with Ireland a Nation printed at the top. He twirled it round and round, and seemed disappointed to find there was nothing on the other side. The secretary encouraged the meeting by the official statement that the local Featheration now numbered nearly sixty members, whereat there was great rejoicing, the masses (to the number of twenty) working off their emotion by thumping their heels on the floor. The meeting, after this exultant outburst, got slower and slower, and threatened to expire of inanition. Divil a mother's son could be got to shpake a single wurud. Some malevolent influence overhung the masses. His Rivirince sent down a messenger to me with the request that I would say a few wuruds. Declined, with thanks, as being no speaker. Uncertainty as to my colour and object still prevailed; and silence, not loud, but deep, succeeded this artful feeler. Father O'Murtagh (or words to that effect) to the rescue! The Rivirind Gintleman arose and delivered a bitter attack on Parnell, whom he characterised as mean, base, untruthful, treacherous, and contemptible. The foinest pisintry in the wuruld could not be soiled by contact with anybody like Parnell, and therefore the Catholic bishops had been compelled to give him up, and to say, Get thee behind me, Satanas. The dear Father did not tell the meeting why the bishops waited sixteen days after the verdict of the Court, and until Mr. Gladstone had delivered judgment, before deciding to cut Parnell adrift. Father O'Murtagh (I think that was the name) made some allusion to the present crisis of public affairs--(he called it cresses)--and assured his masses that the Tories were about to be for ever plucked from the pedestal on which they had long been planted by ascendency and greed! This was not so racy as the mixed metaphor of a Galway paper, which assures its readers that "the Unionist party will soon be compelled to disgorge the favouritism which for so long has been centred in their hands;" but it might pass. His Rivirince made some feeble jokes, and the audience tried to laugh, but failed. "They say that whin we luck at ourselves in the lucking lass, we see nothin' but Whigs," said the funny Father, and the audience sniggered. This was his masterpiece. He finished with "It's wondherful what a spache ye can make whin ye have nothin' to say;" and the masses sniggered again. Ten minutes more of silence broken only by whispered confabulations of the secretary and chairman, and I grew tired of obstructing the march to Freedom. I left the chair, the only one at my end of the room, with considerable regret. Part of the back, one upright, was still remaining, and although the thing had evidently been used in argument at some previous meeting, it hung together, and good work might still have been done with the legs. A gentleman with a complexion like a blast furnace, and a facial expression which looked like a wholesale infraction of the Ten Commandments, was smoking moodily on the steps. "Did ye injy the matein?" he inquired. "Thought it rather dead," I replied. "Faix, 'twas yerself that kilt it." I feared as much. What happened after I left no man will tell, though doubtless the resolutions adopted by the twenty men sitting on the forrums of ellum would vibrate through the Empire, and shake the British monarchy to its iniquitous base. Irish meetings must be taken with a grain of salt. A Westport man long drew fees for reports of mass meetings which never took place. Three or four Nationalists met in a back parlour, and their speeches, reported verbatim, rang through Ireland. Gallant Mayo was praised as heading the charge of Connaught, and Westport was lauded for its public spirit. And all the while the Westport folks knew nothing about it. The Dundalk folks will doubtless be equally astonished to learn that the cause is advancing so powerfully in their midst. This hole-and-corner meeting, waiting for the priest, addressed by the priest, bossed by the priest, is a fair sample of the humbug which seems inseparable from the Irish question. A very short acquaintance with the country and its people is sufficient to convince any reasonable person that the whole movement is based on humbug, sustained by humbug, and is itself a humbug from beginning to end. To see the English Parliament managed and exploited by these groups of low-bred and ignorant peasants, nose-led by ignorant and illiterate priests, is enough to make you ashamed of being an Englishman. The country has come to something when Britons can be worked like puppets by mean-looking animals such as I saw in the Dundalk Labourers' Hall, where the only respectable thing was an iron safe bearing the stamp of Turner, of Dudley. And this meeting, in status, numbers, and enthusiasm, was quite representative of Nationalist meetings all over Ireland. The English people are waiting for their turn while Papal behests are executed. John Bull stands hat in hand, taking his orders from Father O'Baithershin. The Irish say that England is in the first stage of her decadence, and they say it with some reason. England, the land of heroes, sages, statesmen, is the mere registrar of the parish priest and his poor, benighted dupes. Raleigh, Cromwell, Burleigh, Pitt, Palmerston, are succeeded by Healy, Morley, Sexton, Harcourt, Gladstone. England is Ireland's lackey, and must wait till her betters are served, must toil and moil in her service, receiving in return more kicks than halfpence. Britannia is the humble, obedient servant of Papal Hibernia. To what base uses we may return! Dundalk, July 1st. No. 43.--IN THE PROSPEROUS NORTH. This is a blessed change from dirt and poverty to tidiness and comfort. After the West of Ireland the North looks like another world. After the bareheaded, barelegged, and barefooted women and children of Mayo and Galway, the smartly-dressed people of Newry come as a surprise. You can hardly realise that they belong to the same country. There are no mud cabins here, no pigs under the bed, no cows tethered in the living room, no hens roosting on the family bedstead. The people do not follow the inquiring stranger about, as in Ennis or Tuam, where they seem to have nothing better to do. The Newry folks are minding their own business, and they have some business to mind. Three extensive flax spinning mills, two linen weaving factories, and an apron factory, give large employment to girls. There are several flour mills, some of them possessing immense power, and having the most modern machinery. Two iron foundries of long-established reputation, two mineral water factories, salt works, stone polishing mills, seven tanneries, cabinet furniture manufactories, and coachbuilding works cater for the town and surrounding district. Granite quarries of high repute, such as the Rostrevor green granite, exist in the vicinity, and are worked energetically, the products forming a valuable addition to the exports. The town is beautifully situated on a continuation of Carlingford Lough, the choicest bit of sea around Great Britain. Thackeray says that if England possessed this beautiful inlet it would be reckoned a world's wonder. Twenty miles of winding sea running inland like a league-wide river, mountains on both sides, many of them wooded to the furthest height. Rostrevor is a bijou watering place such as only France here and there can boast. You walk on the cliff side, steep verdurous heights above and below, looking through tree-tops on the shimmering sea and the purple mountains beyond, for ten miles at a stretch, wondering why nobody else is there. Newry is encompassed by mountains, one range above another. Even as the hills stand round about Jerusalem, so stand the hills about Newry. A big trade is done with Liverpool and Glasgow by means of the Dundalk and Newry Packet Company's fine service of boats. For this inland place has been made into a thriving seaport, and these Northerners make the water hum. At low tide the artificial cutting of the navigation works looks unpromising enough, but the people of these parts would be doing business if they had to float the boats on mud. The hills are cultivated to the topmost peak, or planted with trees where tillage is impossible. The people seem to have made the most of everything. They are digging, hammering, chopping, excavating, building, mining, and generally bustling around. They break up the mountains piece-meal, and sell the fragments in other lands. To make you buy they show you how it looks when polished, and they are ready to earn an extra profit by polishing all you want by steam power. The streets are clean, well-paved, kept in perfect order. The houses are well-built and far superior to the English average. A little cockney from 'Ackney, who has sailed the six hundred and seventeen miles between London and Cork and has explored most of the South and West, is quite knocked over by Newry. Leaning on the "halpenstock" with which he was about to tackle Cloughmore, he confessed that Newry hupset his hideas of Hireland and the Hirish. "The folks round 'ere," he said, "are hexactly like hus." He would have accorded higher praise, had he known any. Why this great difference? Look around the shop-keepers' signs in Tipperary or Tuam and note the names. Ruane, Magrath, Maguire, O'Doherty, O'Brien, O'Flanagan, O'Shaughnessy, and so _in sæcula sæculorum_. In Newry you see a striking change. Duncan, Boyd, Wylie, MacAlister, Campbell, McClelland, McAteer, and so on, greet you in all directions. You are in one of the colonies. The breed is different. You are among the men who make railways, construct bridges, invent engines, bore tunnels, make canals, build ships, and sail them over unknown seas. You are among a people who have the instincts of achievement, of enterprise, of invention, of command, who depend upon themselves, who shift for themselves, and believe in self-help rather than in querulous complaint. The Newry folk belong to Ulster, where as a whole the people can take care of themselves. A careful perusal of the addresses presented to Lord Houghton on his current Viceregal tour accentuates the difference in the Irish breeds. The aborigines all want to know what is going to be done for them. We want a pier, we want a quay, we want a garrison or a gunboat to spend some money in the district. Will your Excellency use your influence with the powers that be to get us something for nothing? And let it be something to enrich us, or at least to keep us alive without work. We can't be expected to do anything while groaning 'neath the cruel English yoke. The Newry folks, and all of their breed, abstain from whining and cadging. The Westport people have endless quarries of hard blue marble, which they are too lazy, or too ignorant, or both, to cut. The Ulster breed would have quarried, polished, exported a mountain or two long since. The universal verdict of employers of labour proves that a northern Irishman is worth two from any other point of the compass, will actually perform double the amount of work, and is, besides, incomparably superior in brains and general reliability. The worthless hordes who approach the Viceroy with snuffling petitions are invariably headed by Father Somebody, without whose permission they would not be there, and without whose leave they dare not raise the feeble and intermittent cheers which here and there have greeted the Queen's representative. The lying expressions of loyalty referred to in a previous letter are severely censured by the Nationalist papers. One of the leading lights says: "Judging from a sentence in the address presented by the Mullingar Town Commissioners to the Lord-Lieutenant on Thursday last, it would appear that these gentlemen are looking forward eagerly to the day when they can write themselves down West Britons. This is what they said: 'In your presence as the representative in this island of her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, we wish to give expression to our fealty to the throne, convinced as we are that the day will soon be at hand when we can with less restraint, and in a more marked manner, testify our admiration for the Sovereignty of the British Isles.'" The more sincere newspaper which falls foul of these expressions goes on to say:-- "It is true that Ireland is described in the map made by Englishmen as one of the British Isles, but it is not so written in the true Irishman's heart, _and never will be_, in spite of the toadyism of gentlemen like the Town Commissioners of Mullingar." This pronouncement embodies the sentiments of every Nationalist Irishman. The Union of Hearts is not expected to succeed the Home Rule, or any other bill, and to do Irishmen justice, they never use the phrase, neither do they profess to look forward to friendliness with England. I have conversed with hundreds of Home Rulers, and all looked upon the bill as a means of paying off old scores. The tone of the Nationalist press should be enough for sensible Englishmen. Nobody who regularly reads the leading Irish Separatist papers can ever believe in the friendship supposed to be the inevitable result of the proposed concession. Once the present agitation is crowned with success, a tenfold more powerful agitation will at once arise. The Irish people will have more grievances than ever. Already they are complaining of insult and betrayal. And their reproaches are directed against the G.O.M. and his accomplices, or rather against Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley, for they know as well as Englishmen know that the rest count for nothing; that, in fact, they resemble the faithful and unsophisticated baa-baa of whom we heard in our early infancy. "Mary had a little lamb, Whose fleece was white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went, The lamb was sure to go." This is the attitude of the English Gladstonian party, and the Irish people know it. A Home Ruler I met to-day disavowed loyalty except to Ireland, and asked what was the Queen and the rest of the British Royal pauper party to him or to Ireland that he should be loyal? He said:-- "All interest is over here, whether among Nationalists or Unionist. The fate of the bill affects us no longer. The new financial proposals are the last straw that breaks the camel's back. Where is the managing of our own affairs? Where does the Nationalism come in? And Gladstone, in allowing himself to make in the first proposal a mistake of one thousand pounds a day, damaged his prestige as the framer of the bill, and fatally damaged the bill itself. Anybody can now say that if he was so grossly mistaken in an ascertainable matter like revenue and figures he stands to be equally wrong (at least) in matters which are not demonstrable, but which are at present only matters of opinion and argument. I am not sure that he ever intended to give us any Home Rule at all. We are being fooled because we have no leader. The bill, as it stood at first, would never have been prepared for a man like Parnell. Gladstone dare not have done it. The whole bill is a series of insults. As a reasonable, fair-minded man you will not deny that. It purports to come from friends who confide in us, and yet every line bristles with distrust and suspicion. There is not one spark of generosity in the whole thing from beginning to end. Better have no bill at all. For as a business man, I foresee that the passing of any such bill would lead to a complete upset of trade. We should have a most tremendous row. The safeguards would only invite to rebellion. Tell a man he must not have something, must not do something, and that is the very thing he wants to do. He might not have thought of it if you had not mentioned it; but the moment you point it out, and particularise the forbidden fruit, from that very moment he is inspired with a very particular wish for that above all things. So with a nation. We want our independence. We want to do as we like. Otherwise, why ask for a Parliament? Gladstone says, Yes, my pretty dear, it shall have its ickety-pickety Parliament; it shall have its plaything. And it shall ridy-pidy in the coachy-poachy too; all round the parky-warky with the cock-a-doodle-doo. But it mustn't touch! Or if it touches it mustn't be rough, for its plaything will break so easily. We don't want this tomfoolery, nor to be treated like children. We want a real Parliament, and not one that can be pulled up every five minutes by London. For if the English Parliament have the power to veto our wishes, where's the difference? We might have just as well stayed as we were. That's perfectly clear. "So that I for one will be glad when the farce is over. The present bill at best was but a fraud, a tampering with the national sentiment. And I am beginning to think that we have no chance of a National Legislature until the coming of the next great Irishman. I am not so disappointed or broken-hearted as you might suppose. For the prospect of an Irish Parliament under present auspices is not very enticing. The country might be made to look ridiculous, and the thing, by bursting up in some absurd way, might make a repetition of the attempt impossible for a century. I would rather wait for a better bill, and also for better men to work it. We are not proud of the Irish members. But we didn't want Tories, and all the propertied men are Tories. What were we to do? We know the want of standing and breeding which marks most of our men, but we did the best we could, and came within an ace of succeeding. Let me tell you the exact feeling of the respectable Home Rule party of Ireland at this moment. "Having exerted ourselves with enthusiasm, and having undergone considerable pecuniary sacrifice with good chances of success, we now see clearly that all our efforts are for the present thrown away. It is the fortune of war. The fates were against us, and we rest content with the hope that we have furthered the ultimate success of the movement. For the moment, we make our bow, and hope to call on Mr. Bull at a more propitious season. Of course we expect to win in the end." The next politician whose opinions I noted was a horse of quite a different colour. He bore a Scottish name, and had the incisive, argumentative style of the typical Ulsterman, who unites the cold common-sense and calculating power of the Scot with the warmth and impulse of the Irish nature. He said:-- "The bare existence of Belfast is, or should be, enough to negative all arguments in favour of Home Rule. The agitators say that Ireland is decaying from political causes, while all the while this Ulster town is getting richer and more powerful and influential. While the people of Cork are begging the Viceroy to please to do something for their port, to please to be so kind as to ask Mr. Bull to favour the city with his patronage, the Belfast people, with a far inferior harbour, an inferior climate, an incomparably inferior position, surrounded by far worse land, are knocking out the Clyde for shipbuilding, and running the Continent very close in linen-weaving. Belfast is actually the third in order of the Customs ports in the United Kingdom. The Belfast people flourish without Home Rule, and what is more, they know their neighbours. They've reckoned these gentry up. "How is it that the Catholic population, as a rule, are merely the hewers of wood and drawers of water? They have precisely the same opportunities as their Protestant countrymen. Where-ever you go you will find the Protestants coming to the top. Cork is a very bigoted Catholic city, and the huge majority of the population are Catholics. How is it that most of the leading merchants are Protestants? Why do heretics flourish where the faithful starve? Transfer the populations of Cork to Belfast and _vice versâ_, and, as everybody knows perfectly well, Belfast would at once begin to decay, while Cork would at once begin to prosper. Therefore it is absurd to say that Home Rule would cure the poverty existing in Catholic districts. Yes, there is a party of ascendency. The Protestants are distinctly the party of ascendency. They have the ascendency which ability and education and industry will always have over incapacity and ignorance and laziness. Now, I know something about the linen trade, and also something about the growth and preparation of flax. "Linen has made the North, and flax is grown in the North. But it would grow much better in the South. If they would grow it we would be very glad to buy it. But they won't. And why not? Because it needs care and skill, and a lot of watching and management. The beggars are too lazy to grow anything that wants tending from day to day. It would pay them splendidly, and the advantages of flax growing and dressing have over and over again been drummed into them without effect. The climate and soil of Southern Ireland are far more suitable for flax growing than the North, and as about three-quarters of all the flax woven in Belfast is grown on the Continent, it is clear that the market is waiting for the stuff. The Belfast merchants have done all that in them lay to bring about flax cultivation in the South. They have sent out lecturers and instructors, they have planted patches and grown the stuff, and shown the pecuniary results, and with what effect? Absolutely none. The people won't do anything their grandfathers didn't do. They won't be bothered with flax, which wants no end of attention. Why, if they grew flax, they'd have to work almost every day! And nobody who knows Irishmen, real Keltic Irishmen, ever expects them to do that, or anything like it. I've been in India, and I deliberately say that I prefer the Hindoo to the Southern Irishman for industry and reliability. "These people, who are too lazy to wash themselves, expect their condition to be improved by a Home Rule Parliament. Can anything be more unreasonable or more unlikely? And because there are more of them, their wishes are to be taken into account, and the opinions and wishes of men of whom each one is worth a hundred are to be disregarded. Where is the English sense of the eternal fitness of things? "What the Irish really seek is some effective substitute for work. They have no idea of developing the resources which lie nearest to them. Carlyle says a country belongs to the people who can make the best use of it, and not the people who happen to be found there. Ireland for the Irish is a favourite cry. Why? Is not England for the Irish, America, Australia, New Zealand? My ancestors came here in the time of Henry the Second, and I am told that I have no business in the country. Wherever English and Scots settlers have been located, there the country is well worked and the people are thriving. If we can thrive, why can't they thrive? If we can get on without Home Rule, why can't they get on without Home Rule? If it were going to be a good thing for the country we'd all be on it like a shot. If it were good for them, it ought to be good for us. We have shown by our success that our judgment is sound. Their failure in everything they undertake, their dirt, their general habits and character, should cause their statements and opinions to be looked upon with very great suspicion. Does it stand to reason that merely by Home Rule, by the exercise of the privilege of making Irish laws by Irishmen in Dublin, that these people would gain all we have attained by hard and honest labour? That is what they expect up here. "The Catholics are our servants, and in selecting them we seldom ask their religion. Our employés in most cases expect by the bill to take the place of their masters. That is their conception of Home Rule. They have been told from infancy that the British Government keeps them down because of their religion. They know that the British Government is Protestant, and they believe that in some occult way the superior position held by the Protestants in Ireland is due to favouritism. Under a Home Rule Parliament, that is, a Catholic Parliament, this condition of things will be reversed, and they will at once, and by their own innate force, as faithful believers, spring to the top of the tree, and exchange positions with their former masters and mistresses." The general effect of my friend's discourse was well summed up by Mr. James Mack, of Galway, who said:-- "When I see that the Belfast men who would make fortunes out of river mud, and who would skin a flea for his hide and tallow, turn their backs on Home Rule, and declare they will have nothing to do with it, I feel sure it can be no good. Then my own experience and observation assure me that, instead of a settlement, it will only be the beginning of trouble for both countries. Firmness is wanted, and equal laws for all. At present everything is in favour of Ireland." _United Ireland_ says:--"It would be better to go on for twenty years in the old miserable mill-horse round of futile and feverish and wasting agitation than to accept this bill as a settlement of national claims. And if the bill passes now it cannot deflect the national agitation by a hair's breadth, or cause its intermission for a day." Nobody who knows the Irish people ever expected anything else. Agitators who live by agitation will always agitate, and only a few namby-pamby Radicals ever thought otherwise. Those who would fain have sold their souls for the Newcastle Programme also stand to be taken in. This Home Rule Bill will not do. Another must be brought forward immediately. Where is this dreary business going to end? When will Mr. Gladstone consider that England has eaten dirt enough? Newry, July 4th No. 44.--THE PROSPEROUS NORTH. This famous historical city must be eminently offensive to Irish Nationalists. It is so clean and sweet and neat and tidy that you can at once see the hopelessness of expecting Home Rule patriotism from the place. There are no dunghills for it to grow in, and my somewhat extensive experiences have long ago taught me that Home Rule and Nationalist patriotism will not flourish in Ireland without manure, and plenty of it. Anyhow, it is mostly associated with heaps of refuse and pungent odours arising from decomposing matter, and in the south and west is scarcely ever found flourishing side by side with modern sanitation. Home Rule not only, like pumpkins and vegetable marrows, requires a feculent soil, but like them, and indeed like all watery and vaporous vegetables, it needs the forcing-frame. Left to its own devices the movement would die at once. There is nothing spontaneous about it. It is a weedy sort of exotic, thriving only by filth and forcing. It cannot live an hour in the climate of Armagh. The cold, keen air of these regions nips it in the bud. The peculative patriots who are now monopolising Westminster have from time to time made descents on the district, to sow the good seed, as it were, by the wayside. But next day came a frost, a killing frost. The Northerners are too mathematical. They have taken Lord Bacon's advice. They "weigh and consider." They want logic, and will not be content with mere rhetoric. They require demonstrations, and have opinions of their own. Before accepting a theory they turn it round and round, and test it with the square, the level, and the line. They care nothing for oratory unless there is sense at the back of it. They know that fine words butter no parsnips, and they know the antecedents of the patriotic orators. They do not believe that a paid Parliament-man is necessarily a self-sacrificing patriot, and they note that Nationalist members are making their patriotism much more profitable than their original and legitimate pursuits, if any. The Armagh folks believe in work, and in keeping things in order. The Scots element is dominant. Not so much in numbers, as in influence. The Kelts are easily traceable, but the races are partly amalgamated, and the genuine Irish are greatly improved. I paraded the streets for many hours, but I saw no dirt, rags, wretchedness. It was market day, and the country people came streaming in from all sides, everyone well dressed and respectable, and in every way equal to the farmers and their wives who on market days drive into Lichfield or Worcester. It was a pleasure to see them, and my Cockney friend, quoted in the Newry letter, might have been tempted to discard his affected superiority, and drawing himself proudly up, to smite himself on the chest, and to say "And hi, too, ham a Hirishman." The country between Newry and Armagh is very beautiful from a pastoral point of view. After the savage deserts of the West it "Comes o'er my soul like the sweet south That breathes upon a bank of violets." Every yard of ground is going at its best pace. The valleys stand so thick with corn that they laugh and sing. Immense vistas of highly cultivated country unroll themselves in every direction. The land is richly timbered, and tall green hedges spring up everywhere. You are reminded of Dorsetshire, of Cheshire, of Normandy, of Rhineland. The people at the wayside stations are all well-dressed and well-shod. Achil Island seems to be at an immeasurable distance. The semi-savages who in Mayo demand autonomy have no supporters here. The Ulster folks eschew them and all their works, and would no more associate with them than with Hottentots. I use the term because the Irish people have ten thousand times been told, and told untruthfully, that Lord Salisbury had applied the term to the nation at large. The people of Mayo and some other parts of Connaught are for the most part worthy of the name, if, indeed, it be not a libel on the Africans. The disgusting savagery of their funeral customs is of itself sufficient to stamp them as lowest barbarians. I am prepared to prove this to the hilt. Let their defenders come forward if they dare. And so it happens that the inhabitants of Armagh city are mostly Conservatives. They ought to be religious, too, for they have not only two cathedrals and an archbishop, but also a cardinal archbishop, Dr. Logue, to wit. I saw this distinguished ecclesiastic at Newry. He wore the scarlet robe, the extraordinary hat, the immensely thick gold ring of the cardinalate, in a railway carriage. An ordinary sort of man, with the round face and mean features of the typical Keltic farmer. He holds that the people should take their political faith from their priests, but the Northerners hardly agree, and are not so proud of their cardinal as they should be, seeing that he has been raised from the ranks, his father (so they say) having been Lord Leitrim's coachman, and the coachman who was driving when Lord Leitrim was shot. The Roman Catholic Cathedral of Armagh has an imposing position on the summit of a steep hill. The portal is approached by sixty or seventy steps in flights of five and ten with steep terraces between, extending over a great space, so that the flights of steps, seen from the bottom of the hill, seem continuous, and have a fine Gustave Doré effect of vastness and majesty. On a neighbouring steep stands the Protestant Cathedral, with its sturdy square tower, memorial of remote antiquity. The city is piled up between the two cathedrals, but mostly around the heretic structure, and away from the Papist pile, which stands among the fields. The Presbyterians have a very beautiful church, apparently of the Armagh marble of which the city is built, the perennial whiteness of the stone making the old place appear eternally young. The market-place, behind the market-hall, and on the steep slope to the Protestant Cathedral, was very busy indeed. Market gardeners were there with young plants, useful and ornamental, for sale. Home-made chairs with rushen seats were offered by their rural makers. Wooden churns, troughs for cattle, and agricultural implements were there galore. Crockery was artfully disposed in strategetical corners, and gooseberry stalls were likewise to the fore. None of these features are visible in the Western markets. A vendor of second-hand clothing stood on a cart well loaded with unconsidered trifles, and this gentleman was especially interesting. A number of poor women stood around while the salesman, who knew his clientèle to their smallest tricks, displayed his wares and recklessly endeavoured to ruin himself for the good of the country. Holding up an article, he would turn it round and round, expatiating on its excellent qualities, and then, after naming the very lowest price consistent with common business principles, would run down the figure to one-tenth or less, with a pause or two here and there for critical comment on his audience, of which he professed to entertain the most unfavourable opinion. Then with a final thump, punching the article contemptuously, he would offer it, regardless of consequences, for half his previous offer. Sometimes he refused to accept the money because the customer was not quick enough. Neither might the people examine his goods. He was master, and more, and found his account in it. He took up a frowsy old gown. "There ye are. Ten shillin's worth of stuff in that. An' ten for the makin'. An' that's twinty. I'll take ten, an' I couldn't afford to take a penny less. Will ye have it? Don't all spake at once. Ye won't. But I'll make ye. I'll take five shillin', four, three, two, one, I'll take sixpence. (Thump.) Take it away. Here! Have it for thruppence. Ye won't? Sweet bad luck to the one of ye is worth thruppence. Ye wouldn't raise tuppence in the crowd of ye. Ye want me to clothe ye for nothin'. An' thin ye'd want me to give ye lodgin' and washin'. 'Twas a black day on me whin I come among such a ruinatin' lot. Here now, sure this ought to timpt ye. A lady's jacket, an' a large, big, roomy jacket at that--fit for a lady that can ate a stone of praties at a male. Thurty shillin's ye'll be offerin' me, but I won't take it. Ye can give me ten, av ye're only quick enough. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two shillin's. Eighteenpence. (Thump.) Take it for a shillin'! Ye won't? Ye didn't sell yer ducks well. Ye didn't get the money for yer eggs. Will I lind ye a trifle? What d'ye take me for? Am I to stand rammin' me bargains down yer throats like wagon wheels? Do yez iver buy any clothes at all, or do yez beg them? Me heart's bruk to pieces wid blayguardin' and bullyraggin. Luk at this. A boy's coat. An it's lined wid woollen linin'; that's the only fault wid it. An' here's a bonnet. A fortin to any young woman. Will ye be plazed to take what ye want for nothin'? Tis charity ye want, ye poor misguided crathurs. 'Tis a pack of paupers I'm discoorsin', God help me." The Armagh shopkeepers are prosperous and content. "No Home Rule," they say. They are no longer angry with the Nationalists. The snake is scotched, if not killed outright, they think. The whole absurdity has received such a damning exposure that it cannot be revived for another generation. The Separatist party will be perforce compelled to wait until the people have forgotten what Home Rule really means. Therefore, to work again! Useless to waste more time. Ulster will sleep with one eye open, bearing in mind the favourite Northern saying which advises men to put their trust in Providence, but to keep their powder dry. For, like the Achilese, they believe that prayer is effective in shaving, only the Ulstermen prefer to pray over a keen razor. A genial citizen of Armagh said:-- "We would be as ready for Home Rule as any other Irishmen if it meant what we are asked to believe it means. But we know better. We are convinced that it will bring, not prosperity and peace, but bankruptcy and war, intolerance and social retrogression, robbery and spoliation, not only of the landlord but also of everybody else who has anything. The propertied Roman Catholics are just as dead against Home Rule as any Protestants. Only they dare not say so. "England ought to have sense enough to see that instead of freedom from Irish difficulties, the old grievances will be intensified, and any bill whatever will at once generate a fresh series of complications, so that the English Parliament will be crippled in perpetuity, to the detriment of British interests. The Empire, as a whole, must be weakened, because the Irish masses are most unfriendly, and the more England concedes the more unfriendly Ireland becomes. For Ireland regards all concessions as being wrung from England by superior force and skill, and as being, in short, the fruits of compulsion. Therefore, the more Ireland gets the more exacting she will always become. Ask any Englishman or Scotsman resident in Ireland if the Irish masses are friendly, and everyone will laugh at you. The English Home Rule party say, 'Just so. Let us cure this. This is the principal argument for Home Rule.' They think this sounds very fine. Just as if in private life, a man to whom you have given his due, and more than his due, should continue to abuse you, while you strain every nerve to satisfy him, and go out of your way to obtain peace and quietness, he all the time becoming more and more exacting and more and more discontented. And then as if you were to say, 'I must continue my concessions, my efforts, my sacrifices. I _must_ contrive to satisfy this amiable person.' What a fool any man would be to adopt such a course. A sensible man would say 'You have your due, and you'll get no more.' Treat Ireland so, and all will be well. Be firm and the trouble will amount to nothing. Paddy will soon drop shouting when he sees it has no effect. The agitators will soon dry up, or waste their sweetness on the desert air. But so long as there is a prospect of success, so long as you have a weak-kneed old lunatic in power, so long as Paddy sees a prospect of obtaining substantial advantages, such as reduction of rent or rent-free farms, so long the row will be kept up. If Englishmen could only realize that, the whole movement would cease. For Gladstonian Englishmen mistakenly think that they can settle the thing by further concession and get to their own business. Few of them care for Home Rule on its own merits. They want Ireland out of the way. They are going the wrong way about it. To give this is to give everything. And let me tell you something new. Once the bill becomes law, and the exactions of a Home Rule Government were enforced by England a great part of Ulster would in pure self-protection, being no longer bound to England by the ties of loyalty, sympathy, and mutual dependence--a great part, practically the whole of Ulster, would box the compass and go in for complete independence, as the best thing possible under the circumstances. England would then feel something in her vitals, something serious and something astonishing. The only rebellion that ever gave England any trouble was worked by Ulstermen. The most effective agitators have nearly always been renegade Protestants. Let England think what she is about before she, at the bidding of a foolish old man, turns her back on her faithful friends to throw herself into the arms of her sworn enemies." Another Conservative, for I met none other in Armagh, said:--"Surely the minority are worth some consideration. There are one million two hundred thousand loyal Protestants, and certainly many thousand Roman Catholics, who are against the Bill. As Sir George Trevelyan said, 'We must never forget that there are two Irelands,' and as John Bright said, 'There are more loyal men and women in Ireland than the whole population of men and women in Wales.' Yet Mr. Gladstone is so very considerate of Wales. Ireland can point to fully one-third of the entire population, who view with abhorrence the very name of Home Rule, and are pledged to resist it to the last. These people have been and are the friends of England, and England can be proud of them as having flourished under her rule. They have been and are the English garrison in Ireland, and England sorely needs a garrison here. Mr. Gladstone cares nothing for their opinions. On the other hand, he spends his life in pandering to disloyal Ireland, led by men who have openly avowed and gloried in their hatred of England, and who have hundreds of times publicly declared their determination to secure complete independence; men who have broken the law of the land, and have incited others to break it; men who turned a peaceful country into a perfect hell, and have for ever upset the people's notions of honesty. Parnellites and anti-Parnellites have only one end and aim, and only one sentiment. They hate British rule and British loyalists, and aim at the ultimate repeal of the Union, and the absolute separation of the two countries. And they would always be unfriendly. The party of lawlessness, outrage, and rebellion would never hold amicable relations with a law-abiding and peaceful commercial country. There would be no peace for Ireland either. The factions of the Irish party are yearly becoming more and more numerous. In all except hatred to England they are bitterly opposed. All very well to set up Ulster as being the ugly duckling, as being the one dissentient particle of a united Ireland. If every Protestant left the country Ireland would still be divided, and hopelessly divided. Personal reviling, riot, and blackguardism are already common between the factions, united though they try to appear, so far as is necessary to deceive the stupid Saxon. And if the Saxon cannot see the result of trusting the low blackguards who form the working plant of the Nationalist party he is stupid indeed, and deserves all that will happen to him. "Have you noticed how the Irish people are gulled?" Yes, I have noticed it. The _Freeman's Journal_, as the representative paper of the party and the chosen organ of the Church, is run on a pabulum of falsehood. Englishmen would hardly believe such lying possible, but the _Freeman_, as a liar, has, by constant practice, attained virtuosity. What Rubinstein is on the piano, what Blondin was on the tight-rope, what the Bohee Brothers are on the banjo, what Sims Reeves was in the ballad world, what Irving is in histrionic art, what Spurgeon was as a preacher, what Patti is in opera, what Gladstone is as a word-spinner, what Tim Healy is as a whipping-post, what the Irish peasant is as a lazybones, what Harcourt is as a humbug, what the member for Kilanyplace is as a blackguard, so is the _Freeman's Journal_ as a liar. When quoting great masters examples of their work are always interesting. The late Chamberlain-Dillon episode is fresh in the minds of all newspaper readers. Dillon wanted the date. The date was given him. He promised to answer the charge, but anybody can see that no answer was possible. He failed to come up to time. Being lugged to the front by the scurf of the neck, he explained that he _had_ used the words, namely, that when the Irish party got power they would remember their enemies, but--much virtue in But--he used the words under the influence of exasperation arising from the Mitchelstown affair--which took place a year later! Mr. Chamberlain pointed this out, and referring to this incident the _Freeman_ says:-- "Mr. Chamberlain literally grew pale under the succession of exposures, and wriggled in his seat, while he attempted to meet them, now by wriggling equivocations, now by reckless denial." "Mr. Goschen, prompted by Mr. Bolton," horrified the _Freeman's_ delicate taste by "jocose allusions to watertight compartments and to the vessel's toppling over, which grated horribly on the members of the House, with the memory of the recent terrible calamity fresh in their minds." I was in Dublin when the news of the Victoria disaster arrived, and I heard a typical Nationalist express a wish that the whole fleet had perished. Such sentiments are the natural result of the lying literature provided by the "patriot" press of Dublin and the provinces. Well may Home Rule opinion in Ireland be rotten through and through! Mirabeau said of a very fat man that his only use was to show how far the skin would stretch without bursting. The _Freeman_ exists to show to what lengths human fatuity can go. Lying and slander and all uncleanness, envy and hatred and malice and all uncharitableness, are its daily bread. With Home Rule in Ireland, this sheet would be the ruling power. To support Home Rule is for the _Freeman_ to breathe its native air. Under an Irish Parliament, nutriment "thick and slab" would abound, and the patriot print would wax in strength and stature day by day. Enlighten the popular mind, and the _Freeman's_ hours are numbered. It would vanish as a dream, forgotten by all except some old diver into the history of the past, who having read its pages, will shake his head sadly when he hears of Liars, and remembering its Parliamentary notes will say-- "There were Giants in those days." Armagh, July 6th. No. 45.--A PICTURE OF ROMISH "TOLERATION." The country from Armagh to Monaghan is a very garden of Eden, undulating, well wooded, well watered, and in a high state of cultivation. The intervening towns and villages are neat and sweet, and the people seem to be hard workers. Monaghan itself, during the last generation, has wonderfully improved. It suffers by reason of its position on an almost inaccessible branch line, and the complete absence of manufactories, but it has no appearance of poverty. The Diamond is a well-built square, and the whole town, mostly built of stone, some of the streets on terraces, many of them thickly planted with trees, has a shady and sylvan look. The gaol, an enormous building crowning a steep hill, looks like the capitol of a fortress, and appears to have exercised a salutary effect on the neighbourhood, for it has long been disused. The district did not furnish malefactors enough to make the establishment pay. The gaol officials stood about with folded hands wishing for something to do, and probably locked up each other in turn by way of keeping up a pretence of work. The governor had nothing to govern, and the turnkeys sighed as they thought of old times. The thing was growing scandalous, and the ever-diminishing output of convicts marked the decadence of the country. Day by day the officials climbed to the topmost battlement in the hope that rural crime-hunters might be descried bringing in some turnip-stealer, some poacher, some blacker of his neighbour's eye, and day by day these faithful prison-keepers sadly descended to renew the weary round of mutual incarceration, so necessary if they wished to keep their hands in, and to apply somebody's patent rust-preventer to the darling locks, which formerly in better times they had snapped with honest pride. At last the authorities intervened, discharged the turnkeys, and locked up the place. It was a case of _Ichabod_. The fine gold had become dim and the weapons of war had perished. The officials departed in peace, each vowing that the country was going to the Divil, and each convinced that such a state of things would never come to pass under Home Rule. All became earnest Nationalists in the sure and certain hope that under an Irish Parliament business would revive, that the old place would be re-opened, that its venerable walls would again re-echo the songs of happy criminals, that the oakum-picking industry would revive and flourish, and that the treadwheel (which they identify with the weal of the country) would continuously revolve. Meanwhile, Armagh extends hospitality to stray wrong-doers and Monaghan boards them out to the manifest injury of the local turnkey industry. The new Roman Catholic Cathedral is said to be the finest in Ireland. It was over thirty years in building, and although the stone of the main fabric cost nothing, the structure cost more than a hundred thousand pounds. The interior is more gorgeous than beautiful, and the money seems to have been expended with execrable taste. The marble mosaic of the chancel floor is beautifully done, the work having been entrusted to Italian workmen, who were engaged on it for several years. The numerous statues of Carrara marble are well executed, and other items are also of the best. But the effect of the whole is inharmonious, and the great lines are obscured by over-ornamentation. You are reminded of an over-dressed woman. The pulpit, surmounted by a lofty conical canopy richly gilt, is supported on four lofty pillars of coffee-coloured marble highly polished. The baldacchino is a glittering affair, forty or fifty feet high, and big enough for a mission church. This also rests on marble columns. The sacristy, chapter-house and other offices are splendidly furnished, and the furniture of the doors, brass branches spreading all over them, massive as mediæval work, were remindful of Birmingham. The oak drawers of the robing room contain sacerdotal raiment to the tune of two thousand pounds, and the banners, many in number, and of richest work, must also represent a small fortune. Beautiful oil paintings from Italy hang around, and the bishop's throne is a marvel of gold lace and luxury. A queer-looking utensil, like a low seat, but with round brass bosses at each corner, proved to be merely a sort of crinoline whereon the bishop might extend his robes, so as to look inflated and imposing. So does the noble turkey-cock extend himself when bent on conquest of his trustful mate, gobbling the while strange-sounding incantations. To describe in detail would require a book. The confessionals are snug, with rich external carving. Plenty of accommodation for penitents here. Amid such surroundings to be a miserable sinner must be indeed a pleasure. The spire is two hundred and fifty feet high. I mounted and saw the great bell, over three tons in weight. I also saw the bishop's robes of wondrous richness and penetrative virtue, the consecrated slippers which the acolytes wear, with their scarlet robes, remindful of Egyptian flamens and African flamingoes; the blessed candle-box and the seven-times blessed candles, which at once drop tallow on the holder's clothes and benison on his sin-struck soul. All this expense in poor Ireland, all these advantages for poor Ireland. And still the Irish are not happy. With Roman Catholic cathedrals on every hand, with monasteries, nunneries, seminaries, confraternities, colleges, convents, Carmelites, Christian brothers, and collections whichever way they turn, the Irish people should be content. What could they wish for more? The principal shopkeepers of Monaghan have unpatriotic names. Crawford, Jenkins, Henry, Campbell, Kerr, McEntee, Macdonald, and their like must in some way be accountable for the smartness of the town and for the emptiness of the prison on the hill. And you soon see that the Cathedral was needed, for besides the Protestant church, the town is polluted by two Presbyterian churches, to say nothing of a schism-shop used by the Wesleyan Methodists. A Monaghan man said:-- "The respectable people are nearly all Protestants, and all the Protestants, and most of the respectable Catholics, if not all, are Unionists. In point of numbers the Catholics have the pull, and in the event of a Home Rule Parliament, which, God forbid, our position as Protestants would be no longer tenable. We should have to knock under, and to become persons of no consideration. The small farmers among the Protestant population would have an especially hard time of it. They mostly held aloof from the Land League and such-like associations; and when the other party get the upper hand they will have to smart for it. What Mr. Dillon said about remembering in the day of their power who had been their enemies, is always present to the minds of the lower classes of the Irish people. It is that they may have the power of punishing all sympathisers with England that some of them say they want Home Rule. No doubt they have other temptations, but certainly that is one great incentive. So keenly are they bent on getting power that they in some cases quite disregard any possible disadvantages accruing from the success of the movement. 'Let us get the power,' they say, 'never mind the money.' I have heard the remark made more than once, and it represents the dominant feeling in the minds of many. Rubbish about struggling for equal rights. Where are the disabilities of Irish Catholics? "Ascendency is their game. Would they be tolerant? Why ask such a question? When was Roman Catholicism tolerant, and where? Is not the whole system of Popery based on intolerance, on infallibility, on strict exclusiveness? Let me give you a few local facts to show their 'tolerance.' "In the old times the Monaghan Town Commissioners were a mixed body. Catholics and Protestants met together in friendly converse, and the voting went anyhow, both religions on both sides, according to each man's opinion of the business. Nowadays, wherever in Ireland the two sects are represented the thing is worked differently, and you may know the voting beforehand by reference to the members' religion. We are not troubled with this in Monaghan, and for the very best of reasons--all the members but one are Roman Catholics, and the solitary Protestant is a lawyer who has always been identified with them, and has always managed their legal business. He is practically one of themselves, having always acted with them. "When the modern political agitation became rife, the Romans of Monaghan, under the orders of their priests, at once ousted all Protestants, except the one I have mentioned, who does not count, and monopolised the Town Council ever since. They forgot something--Lord Rossmore has a claim on the market-tolls and other similar payments which amount to about three hundred pounds a year, but so long as the Town Council was worked by a mixed body of Catholics and Protestants he consented to forego this claim, and made the town a present of the money, which was expended in various improvements. Three hundred a year is a large sum in a small country town where labour is cheap, and in fifty years this sum, carefully laid out in ornamental and sanitary arrangements, quite changed the aspect of the place. When, however, the priests came on the scene and determined to have things exclusively in their own hands, Lord Rossmore did not quite see why he should any longer give the money to the town. And let it be understood that his agent had always been a prominent figure on the Monaghan Town Council, which was very right, having regard to the three hundred pounds given by Lord Rossmore, and to the agent's superior knowledge and business experience. He had been kicked out with the rest, and so it was made known that in future my lord would keep the money in his own pocket. They were astonished and suddenly cast down. 'Fear came upon them, and sorrow even as upon a woman,' &c.--you know the text. They said the money belonged to them, and really they had had it so long that they might be excused for believing this. Lord Rossmore was firm. They fought the thing out; but where was the good? They were beaten at every point. They had no case. So the town is three hundred pounds a year worse off, and Lord Rossmore three hundred pounds better. And still they will not allow a Protestant on the Council, although nearly all the best business men are of that persuasion. How's that for tolerance? And if such a thing be done in the green tree what will be done in the dry? If they flog us now with whips, won't they flog us then with scorpions?" Another thraitor to his counthry's cause, said:--"A great idea with the priests is this--to get hold of the education of the country. They do not like the present system of National education. They do not approve of their youthful adherents growing up side by side with Protestant children. At first the Catholic bishops welcomed the scheme of National education, but now they are averse to it. They have seen how it works. It goes against them. It has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. The Catholic children grew up in amity with their neighbours, and got dangerously liberal ideas on the subject of religion. They were getting to believe that it mattered little whether Catholic or Protestant so long as a man's life was right. I went to school with Catholics, grew up with them, was always friendly with them, and we keep up the friendship to this day. The Catholic bishops disapprove of this. They want the line of cleavage sharp and distinct. Fifty years ago mixed marriages were common enough. Such a thing never happens now-a-days. It is most stringently forbidden by the Catholic Church. A priest told me that emigrants to America, such as had been educated in Irish National schools, along with Protestant children, were very apt to drop their Romanism when once separated from their native parish, and to become Protestants. I suppose he meant to say that long familiarity with the unclean thing had undermined the wholesome dislike of heresy which every Catholic should feel, and that therefore such familiarity should be, if possible, avoided. Years ago the priest would be friendly with his Protestant neighbours. We all lived together pretty comfortably. Of late a great change has taken place. The clergy as far as possible leave us, and cause us to be left, out in the cold. The question of Home Rule is entirely a religious question. Parnell was actuated by what might fairly be called patriotism; that is, comparatively speaking. The clergy saw in his fall a grand opportunity to use the movement he had created for the furtherance of their own ends. Home Rule is a purely Roman Catholic movement, and has had the most regrettable results on the amity of neighbours everywhere. Formerly the question of religion never arose. Now nothing else is considered. The Papists are almost unbearable, while they as yet have only the hope of power. What they would become if once they grasped the reality God only knows. I am not prepared to stand it, whatever it be. My arrangements to leave the country have long been made. At my age it will be a great grief, but I have always lived in a free country, and I will die in a free country. I was born in the town, and hoped to end my days at my birthplace. But I shall go, if it almost broke my heart, rather than see myself and the worthy men who have made the place domineered over and patronised by Maynooth priests. _Ubi bene, ibi patria._ Where I'm most happy, that will be my country." The road to Kilmore is through a beautiful park-like country heavily timbered with oak, ash, beech, chestnut, and fir. Tall hedgerows twenty feet high line most of the way, which in many parts is completely overhung with trees in green arches impervious to rain. The country is undulating, with sharp descents and long clumps of beeches and imposing pine woods, bosky entrances to country seats and grassy hills, covered with thriving kine. From the church itself an extensive landscape is seen on every side. A deep valley intervenes between the church and a pretty farmhouse. I find a narrow lane with high hedges, covered with honeysuckles, which seems to lead thitherward. A man is toiling in a field hard by, digging for dear life, bare-armed and swarthy. I mount the gate and make for him. He remains unconscious, and goes on digging like mad. His brow is wet with honest sweat, and he seems bent on earning whate'er he can. Perhaps he wishes to look the whole world in the face, having an ambition to owe no rent to any man. I woke him and asked why the flags were flying on Kilmore steeple. "To the pious, glorious, and immortal memory of William of Orange, who gave us an open Bible, and delivered us from Popery brass money, and wooden shoes. We put them up on the first of July and fly them till the twelfth, when we walk in procession through Monaghan." "An Orangeman, and a black Protestant, I fear?" He laughed merrily, and said he was proud and thankful to be both. "If we didn't hold together, and associate in some way, we might quit the country at once. By banding together we hold our ground, and we will do so until Home Rule comes on us. Then we'll have to give in, about here. We're in a minority." "Don't you think the Papists would be tolerant?" "Aye, aye! Toleration indeed. As tolerant as a cat to a mouse. As tolerant as I am to this thistle, bad scran to it," said my friend, fetching up the obnoxious weed with a vigorous stroke, and chopping it to pieces with the spade, after which he shovelled it to the bottom of the trench. "Why, sir, the Papists are beginning to assume mastership already. Before this Government had been a fortnight in office the dirty scum began to give themselves airs. I mean, of course, the lowest of them. They were not so civil as before. Tolerant, ye say! Sure anybody that heard ye say the like of that would know ye were a stranger in the counthry." The farm house was a model of cleanliness and neatness, James Hanna a model of a hard-working, debt-paying, honourable farmer. The living rooms had every accommodation required for the decent bringing-up of a family; and the parlour, with its carpets, knick-knacks, and highly-polished solid furniture, showed both taste and luxury. Mrs. Hanna, a buxom lady of middle age, was hard at work, but for all that, the picture of comeliness and neatness. The children were just coming in from school, well clad and good-looking, the boys ruddy and strong, the girls modest and lady-like. Mr. Hanna was hard at it in some contiguous field, but he came round and told me that he held twenty acres of land, that the rent was £24 10s., that his father had the farm for more than fifty years, that he was a Protestant, a Unionist, and a strong opponent of Home Rule. I have visited two other farms of the same size in Mayo and Achil, both held by Catholic Home Rulers. The rent of the Achil farm described by its holder, Mr. McGreal, as "very good land," was seventeen-and-sixpence for the whole twenty acres. McGreal was very poor, and looked it. His house was of the type described in my previous letters. Mr. James Hanna pays more for each acre than McGreal for his whole farm, and yet the Kilmore man is prosperous, his house, his family, all his belongings suggestive of the most enviable lot. A gun was hanging over the fire-place, which was a grate, not a turf-stone. I asked him if he used the shooting-iron to keep his landlord in order. He said No, he was no hunter of big game. I may be accused of too favourable an account of this farmhouse and its inmates, but I have (perhaps somewhat indiscreetly) given the name and address, and Monaghan people will agree with me. A more delightful picture of Arcadia I certainly never saw. Cannot Englishmen reckon up the Home Rule agitation from such facts as these, the accuracy of which is easily ascertainable by anybody? Everywhere the same thing in endless repetition. Everywhere laziness, ignorance, uncleanliness, dishonesty, disloyalty, ask for Home Rule. Everywhere industry, intelligence, cleanliness, honesty, loyalty, declare that to sanction Home Rule is to open the floodgates to an inrush of barbarism, to put back the clock for centuries, to put a premium on fetichism, superstition, crime of all kinds, to say nothing of roguery and rank laziness. What are Englishmen going to do? Which party will they prefer to believe? When will John Bull put on his biggest boots and kick the rascal faction to the moon? Monaghan, July 8th. No. 46.--A BIT OF FOREIGN OPINION. The military call and spell the name Inniskilling, which corruption is probably due to the proverbial stupidity of the brutal Saxon, and is undoubtedly another injustice to Ireland. The Inniskilling Dragoons have won their fame on many a stricken field, and to them the town owes any celebrity it may possess. From a tourist's point of view it deserves to be better known. It is a veritable town amidst the waters, and almost encircled by the meandering channels that connect Upper and Lower Lough Erne. It consists almost entirely of one long, irregular, but tolerably-built street, at both ends of which you cross the river Erne. A wooded knoll, crowned by a monument to Sir Lowry Cole, who did good service under Wellington, is a conspicuous object, and through openings purposely cut through the trees, affords some very pleasing views. A hundred steps lead to the top, and the ascent repays the climb. The Cuilgach range, source of the Shannon, the Blue Stack mountains of Donegal, the ancient church and round tower of Devenish, an island in the Great Lough Erne, and due west the Benbulben hills, are easily visible. Devenish island is about two miles away, and, although without a tree, is very interesting. Some of the Priory still remains, and I have found a Latin inscription in Lombardic characters which, being interpreted, reads Mathew O'Dughagan built this, Bartholomew O'Flauragan being Prior, A.D. 1449. There is a graveyard next the ruins, and a restored Round Tower, eighty-five feet high, not far away, the door of which is ten feet from the ground. These towers are sprinkled all over the country, and in nearly all the door is eight feet to twenty feet from the ground. The process of eviction seems to have been present to the minds of the builders. The sheriffs' officers of a thousand years ago must have been absolutely powerless in presence of a No Rent manifesto. Steamers are running on the Lower Lough from Enniskillen to Belleek, about twenty-two miles. You can sail there and back for eighteen-pence. The Upper Lough is said to be still more beautiful, the tourist agents have recently been trying to open up this lovely island-studded lake. The beauties of Ireland are as unspeakable as they are unknown. The strip of sea holds some tourists back, and others seek the prestige of holiday on the Continong. A German traveller, hight Bröcker, declares that Ireland beats his previous record, and that the awful grandeur of the Antrim coast has not its equal in Europe, while the wild west with its heavy Atlantic seas, is finer far than Switzerland. Germans are everywhere. The Westenra Arms of Monaghan boasted a waiter from the Lake of Constanz, and I met a German philologist at Enniskillen who had his own notions about Irish politics. He ridiculed the attitude of England, or rather of Gladstonian England, and rated Home Rulers generally in good set terms. "The business of England is to rule Ireland. Justly, of course, but to rule. That is if England has any regard for her own reputation. A colonel must rule his regiment, a teacher must rule his class, the captain must rule his crew, or disorder and damage to all parties will be the inevitable result. England stands to her acquisitions, whether conquered or peacefully colonised, in the relationship of head of the family. She has one member who is troublesome. There is always one black sheep in the flock. There was a Judas among the twelve. England has one, only one, at present, of her numerous family who gives extraordinary anxiety. And why? "Difference of race and difference of religion. The double difference is too much. The races would amalgamate but for the religious difference. They would intermarry, and in time a sufficient mixture would take place; would have taken place long since but for the action of Rome. Rome keeps open the old wound, Rome irritates the old sores. Rome holds the two nations apart. We in Germany see all this quite plainly. We have no interests at stake, and then, you know, lookers-on see better than players. Rome keeps Ireland in hand as a drag on the most influential disseminator of Protestantism in the world. Ireland suits her purpose as a backward nation. We have quite snuffed out the Pope in Germany. Education is fatal to the political power of Rome. Ireland is not educated, and suits her purpose admirably. You will not succeed in satisfying Ireland, because Rome will not allow the Irish to remain quiescent. Rome will not permit Ireland to rest and be thankful, to fraternise with England, to take the hand of friendship, and to work together for good. This would not do for the Church. Any Romish priest will tell you that his Church is destined to overspread and conquer every country in the world, and that of all possible events that is a thousand times the most desirable. An independent Ireland, whose resources would be in the hands of the Romish Clergy, and whose strategetical position would be the means of aiding some Catholic power to crush the prestige of England--that is not a possibility too remote for the imagination of Romish wirepullers. Are Englishmen acquainted with the history of Papal Rome? Have they adequate knowledge of the subtlety, the craft, the dissimulation, the foresight of this most wonderful religious system? I think not, or they would be more on their guard against her Jesuitical advances. The idea of your Gladstone going to your Parliament to hand over this country to Rome under the specious pretence of remedying Irish grievances, is too ridiculous. I ask myself where is the English commonsense of which we have heard so much in Germany? "England must be master. Not with tyranny; of that there is no danger, but with a judicial firmness. Your system of party government has good points, but it has weak points, and the Irish make you feel them. You pay too much attention to Irish clamour. I have been partly living in England for twenty-two years, and I have seen your Gladstone 'finally' contenting the Irish three or four times. Now, if he understood the subject at all, he ought to know that for the reason I have stated satisfaction is impossible. No use healing and dressing a wound which is constantly re-opened. No use in dressing a sore which is deliberately irritated. Rome will keep England going. With your Home Rule Bills, your Irish Church Bills, your successive Land Bills, how much have you done? How far have you succeeded in pacifying Ireland? Are you any nearer success now than ever you were? On the other hand, does not appetite grow with what it feeds on? The more you give, the more they want. They are far more discontented than they were before the passage of the three Land Bills, by each of which your Gladstone, your amusing Gladstone, declared he would pacify and content the Irish. And now your Gladstone is at it again. Funny fellow! He is like the Auctioneer with his Last time, for the Last time, for the very Last time, for the very _very_ Last time. And the grave English nation allows itself to be made a sport. It is mocked, derided, by a number of lawyers' clerks and nonentities from third-rate Irish towns. It is bullied by a handful of professional politicians, paid by your American enemies, and governed by the flabby-looking priests you see skulking about the Irish railway stations and parks and pleasure resorts. As I said before, England must be master, as the captain is of his crew, as the tutor of his class, as the colonel of his regiment; or she will go down, and down, and down, until she has no place nor influence among the nations. And she will deserve none, for she knew not how to rule. "England is at present like a ship's captain, who in his futile endeavours to please one of his crew first neglects the management of the ship, and, then (if she grants Home Rule) allows the discontented person to steer the course. And all to please one silly old man, who should long ago have retired from public life. What man at eighty-four would be reckoned competent to manage a complicated business enterprise such as a bank, or an insurance business, or a big manufacturing affair, or a newspaper office? Yet you allow Gladstone to manage an Empire! Where, I ask is the English sense, of which we hear so much in Germany? You want a Bismarck to make short work of these Popish preachers of sedition. You want a Bismarck to rid your country of the Irish vermin that torment her. The best Irishmen are the most brilliant, polite, scholarly men I ever met. None of them are Home Rulers. That should be enough for England without further argument. Your House of Lords has sense. That will be your salvation against Gladstone and Rome." At the _Imperial_ was a warm discussion anent the propriety of keeping alive the memory of the Battle of the Boyne, which the Orangemen celebrate with great pomp on July 12. "The counthry's heart-sick of Orange William an' his black-mouths," said a dark-visaged farmer. By black-mouths he meant Protestants. "The blayguards are not allowed to shout To Hell wid the Pope now-a-days. In Belfast they'd be fined forty shillin's. An' they know that, and they daren't shout To Hell wid the Pope, so they roar To Hell wid the Forty Shillin's. That's what I call a colourable evasion. But the law favours them." A man of mighty beard looked on the speaker with contempt. "Sure, 'tis as raisonable to celebrate King William, who _did_ live as a Saint like Patrick, Phadrig as ye call him, who never existed at all. At laste, that's what some of them say. Ye mix the life an' work of half-a-dozen men, an' ye say 'twas all Saint Patrick. Sure, most of him is a myth, a sort of a fog, jist. Ye can't agree among yerselves as to whin he was born." Turning to me, the bearded man said, "Did ye ever hear the pome about Saint Patrick's birthday?" I regretfully admitted that the masterpiece in question had escaped my research, but pleaded in extenuation that I came from England, where the rudiments of polite larnin' and the iliments of Oirish litherature have not yet permeated the barbarian population. Barbatus then recited as follows:-- "On the eighth day iv March, as sum people say, St. Patrick at midnight he furst saw the day. While others declare on the ninth he was born, Sure, 'tis all a mistake between midnight and morn! Now, the furst faction fight in Oireland, they say, Was all on account of St. Patrick's birthday. Some fought for the eighth, for the ninth more would die-- Who didn't say right, they would blacken his eye. At length both the parties so positive grew, They each kept a birthday, so Patrick got two. Till Father Mulcahy (who showed them their sins) Said, No man can have two birthdays (barrin' he was twins). An' boys, don't be fightin' for eight or for nine; Don't be always disputin', but sumtimes combine. Combine eight wid nine, seventeen is the mark, Let that be his birthday." "AMEN," said the clerk. "Tho' he wasn't a twin, as history does show-- Yet he's worth any other two saints that we know. So they all got blind drunk, which complated their bliss, An' they kept up the custom from that day to this." "An' why wouldn't we remimber King William? An' why wouldn't we remimber that the Enniskillen Protestants went out an' smashed up the Papists under Lord Mountcashel, at Newtownbutler, on August 1, 1689? The very day of the relief of Derry--so it was. An' more than ever now we need to keep our heads above wather. Ye've an old fule over there that's thryin' to upset the counthry wid his fulery an' his Home Rule. But we'll not have it! Never will we bow the neck to Rome. In the name of God, we'll resist to the last moment. Every man will stand to his arms. Leave us to settle with the Papists, and we'd hunt them like flies. Thim an' their Army of Independence! 'Twas an' Army of Independence they levied to help the French invasion. The poor parleyvoos landed at Killala (ye can see where they entrenched their camp), and marched with the Irish Army of Independence to Castlebar, where the English smashed them up, the Irish Catholic levies bolting at first fire or before it." Four or five nameless stones mark the graves of French officers killed in this engagement. I saw them on my way from Castlebar to Turlough's Tower. My Orange friend went on:--"We'll send a hundred Orangemen to fight their Army of Independence. They shall be armed with dog-whips, to bring the brutes to heel. No, we'll not send a hundred, either. We'll send thirty-two, one for each county of Ireland. 'Twould be a trate to see the Army of Independence hidin' thimsilves in the bogs, an' callin' on the rocks an' hills to fall down an' cover thim, an' the airth to swallow them up." A political tradesman recommended to me as a perfect encyclopædia of argument on the Home Rule question, said:--"The great difficulty is to get the English people to understand the duplicity of this sacerdotal movement. Of course, you understand that the agitation is really religious, and not, strictly speaking, political at all. In England the Romish priests are a better class of men, and no doubt they are loyal enough for practical purposes. And then they have neither numbers nor influence. You look upon the Catholic laity of England very much as we look upon the Plymouth Brethren of Ireland--that is, as a well-meaning, well-conducted body of people with whom you don't agree. The Catholic laity of Ireland would be all right if they were left alone, if they were allowed to follow the dictates of their natural humanity. My Catholic neighbours were very good, none better, until this accursed agitation began. Left to themselves the Irish people would agree better and better every year. But that would not suit Rome. The Church, which is very astute, too much so for England, sees in agrarian agitation a means of influence and the acquisition of power; and once an Irish Parliament became dominant, intolerance would make itself felt. Not as of old by the fires and tortures of the Inquisition, for nineteenth-century public opinion would not stand that; and not by manifestly illegal means either, but by boycotting, by every species of rascality. How can you expect tolerance from a church the very essence of whose doctrine is intolerance? When everybody outside the pale of that Church is outside the pale of salvation, condemned beforehand to eternal damnation, anything and everything is permissible to compel them to come in. That is their doctrine, and they, of course, call it benevolence. "Mr. Gladstone has said,--'My firm belief is that the influence of Great Britain in every Irish difficulty is not a domineering and tyrannising, but a softening and mitigating influence, and that were Ireland detached from her political connection with this country and left to her own unaided agencies, it might be that the strife of parties would then burst forth in a form calculated to strike horror through the land.' There is the passage, in my scrap-book. The speech was made in the House. The English Home Rulers believe that their troubles will be over when once Irishmen rule from College Green, and they trust the Irish Catholic members, who from childhood have been taught that it is not necessary to keep faith with heretics. That is a fundamental tenet of the Church of Rome. Still, England will have no excuse for being so grossly deceived, for these men have at one time or other been pretty candid. William O'Brien said that the country would in the end 'own no flag but the Green Flag of an independent Irish nation,' and J.E. Redmond in March last said that it was the utmost folly to talk of finality in connection with the Home Rule Bill. Then you must remember what Parnell said about taking off his coat. He would not have done it for anything short of independence. Mr. Gladstone himself saw through this, and with all other Liberals consistently and determinedly opposed every demand for Home Rule until his desire for power compelled him to surrender unconditionally to Parnell. At Aberdeen the G.O.M. said,--'Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this time of day we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of the country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of all mankind?' No sane man ever supposed it, no honest man ever believed that Mr. Gladstone would ever sell himself to Irish traitors for a short period of power. The thing was incredible. In another speech Mr. Gladstone said he would never consent to give Ireland any principle which could not be given on equal terms to Scotland or any other part of the Kingdom. So we may expect Scotch and Welsh Home Rule bills after this, and then a separate Parliament for every country that wants it. There's the speech, you can copy the reference. "England is like an old-established business with a shop over the way which only just pays, and is an awful lot of trouble; in fact, more trouble than it's worth. You might say, let it go then. But if you let it go somebody else will take it, and run in opposition. Home Rule means the immediate return of the Irish-American ruffians who were here during the Fenian agitation, or their successors. Home Rule means that armed rebellion can be organised with much more reasonable chances of success. The police will be under the control of traitors, and it took you all your time to keep the country in order when the police were in your own hands. Whatever happens to John Bull will be the proper reward of his asinine stupidity. He'll have his hands full, with an Irish Parliament against him. And if he gets a big quarrel on his hands with Russia or France, or any other powerful military nation, that is the time he'll feel it. Are you going to put into the hands of your enemies the power to ruin you merely by biding their time?" I saw several other Enniskilleners, but they added nothing to the disquisitions of those already quoted. A feeling of deep disgust was the prevailing sentiment. Encamped in the enemy's country, from childhood conversant with the tortuous windings of Papal policy, and the windy hollowness of the popular cries, they stand amazed that Englishmen can be deceived by such obvious imposture, that they will listen to such self-convicted charlatans, that they will repose confidence in such ten-times-exposed deceivers. The history of the Home Rule movement will in future ages be quoted as the most extraordinary combination of knavery, slavery, and credulity the world has ever seen. And yet some Englishmen believe in it. After all, this is not so wonderful. There were people who believed in Cagliostro, Mormon Smith, Joanna Southcote of Exeter, Mrs. Girling, the Tichborne Claimant, General Boulanger, electric sugar, the South Sea Bubble, and a thousand other exploded humbugs. No doctrine could be invented too absurd for human belief. No impostor would fail to attract adherents, except through lack of audacity. Thousands of people believe in the winking virgin of Loretto, and tens of thousands, a few months ago, went to worship the holy coat of Tièves. So people are found who vote for Home Rule as a means of settling the Irish Question, and rendering justice to Ireland. _Populus decipi vult._ Doubtless the pleasure is as great, In being cheated as to cheat. Enniskillen, July 11th. No. 47.--THE LOYALISTS AND THE LAWLESS. Clones, which must be pronounced as a dissyllable, is a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid. Viewed from the railway the clustered houses surround the church spire like an enormous beehive. Like other ancient Irish towns, it possesses the ancient cross, the ancient round tower, and the ancient abbey, without which none is genuine. It has not the sylvan, terraced, Cheltenham-cum-Bath appearance of its neighbour Monaghan, though it somewhat resembles Bath in its general outline. The ruins want tidying up, and no doubt they will be looked after when the demand is greater. Ruins are a drug in Ireland, and as Mark Twain would say--most of them are dreadfully out of repair. The Irish have no notion of making them attractive, of exploiting them, of turning an honest penny by their exhibition. The inhabitants of any given neighbourhood can never give information as to their date, use, decay, general history, beyond the stereotyped "They were built by the owld ancient folks long ago." The Clones people are no exception to the general rule. The town is on the main line from Dublin to Londonderry, but is little troubled by tourists. The place is quiet and tidy enough, and like many other Irish country towns seems to live on the surrounding country, which sends in a strong contingent on market days. The people are also quiet, civil, and decent, and the land in the neighbourhood seems fertile and well cultivated. Industry is evident on every side. Everybody has something to do. A farmer living just outside the town said he experienced the greatest difficulty in getting extra hands for harvest time. In his opinion the people were incomparably better off than in the days of his youth, some thirty years ago. He said "The labouring classes are far better housed, better clothed, and better fed, than in old times. They live far better than the well-to-do farmers of a generation ago. And the queerest thing about it is the fact that the better off they are, the more discontented they seem; and during the last few months they are becoming unbearable. They are giving themselves airs in advance. And no wonder, when they see the British Parliament entirely occupied with their affairs, to the exclusion of all English business. They may well feel important. They boast that they have compelled this attention, and that they shortly will have their own way in everything. Last Sunday a drunken fellow was making a row near my house. I told him to go away, and he said, 'Before long you'll have to go away and every Blackface in the country. We'll be masters in another month.' He was alluding to Mr. Gladstone's gagging motion, which the poor folks here in their ignorance believe to mean that Home Rule will set in about the beginning of August. They are acting accordingly, and they expect to have the land which the Protestant farmers now hold--at once. It is to be divided amongst them by ballot. We feel very anxious about here, for we feel that we are only staying on sufferance, and we have no confidence in the support of the present Government. We have expended our labour and our substance on the land, and if we lose these we lose all. You may say there is no fear of that, as such a piece of iniquity would never be tolerated by the English people. But when I see them tolerating so much, I think we have good reason to feel uneasy and unsettled. For my part, I have no heart for hard work, when I feel that somebody else may reap the reward. And with a Catholic Parliament in Dublin we should very soon have to give up. They can get at the farming class in so many ways. We Protestants are pretty strong about here, and all the way to Monaghan, but still we are in a considerable minority. The mountain folks are Catholics, every one, and that is where we are outnumbered. We could hold our own if the country were like the town. We should be bound under Home Rule to suffer a large increase of taxation, because all grants from Imperial sources are to cease upon the passing of the bill. Then the country will be more disturbed than over, because the bill is only valued as a stepping-stone to an Irish Republic, and the success of the agitators in obtaining the bill will encourage them and their supporters to persevere. Instead of the end of the trouble it would only be the beginning. It is a black look-out for both Ireland and England. "Most of the Protestant farmers think that land purchase would be stopped. If that could go steadily on, there would be in time prosperity and contentment. The people would like this well enough, and would be quiet enough, if they were let alone. But where is the money to come from to purchase land? Who would lend money on Irish securities? Who would trust an Irish Parliament with millions? Then the better classes, who have money to spend, would leave the country, and we should be poorer all round. "The loyal party in an Irish Parliament would always be in a minority, and for any good they could do, might as well stay away. For no matter how the Nationalist factions might quarrel among themselves, the priestly party would always have the pull. The English Protestants ought to believe that we know the reality of the danger that threatens us better than they can possibly do. There are nearly three thousand Protestant ministers in Ireland, and only six or seven are in favour of Home Rule. Are these men all infatuated? Are they all liars? Are they in a position to know the facts? Of course they are truthful men, and they understand if anybody does. Then why not take their advice? The Meath election petitions ought to have settled Home Rule. Englishmen cannot have read the reports of these trials. Mr. Gladstone is fooling the people on both sides the water. He is satisfying nobody, whether Home Rulers or not. The Nationalists round here say the bill is an insult, but that they will take it as an instalment. The end will be that both loyalists and traitors will be more discontented than ever--a poor result after so much fuss and waste of precious time." If my friend had known of it he might have quoted Mr. William Heath, an Englishman resident for six months in Tyrone. He arrived in Ireland a bigoted Home Ruler, but six months in the country knocked his nonsense out of him. He said:--"I have seen enough of Romanism to convince me that Protestantism would be crushed if Home Rule became law. I have seen the men who demand it, and I have seen the men who are determined to oppose Home Rule--the one set idle, dissolute, poverty-stricken, disloyal, and priest-ridden; the other industrious, thrifty, comfortable, and loyal to England. I go back to England a Unionist, and will do all I can to spread the light on the true state of affairs in this unhappy country. If the people of England and Scotland saw Nationalists as I have seen them they would not force Home Rule on the Loyalists of Ulster so as to leave them at the mercy of such a party." A Primitive Methodist Minister, the Rev. J. Angliss, who came to Ireland a faithful follower of Mr. Gladstone, changed his mind when acquainted with the facts, and confessed himself a convert to Unionism. He said that he had used his influence against the return of Sir Richard Webster, the late Attorney-General, but since his visit to Ireland he had come to the conclusion that the Bill would be a tremendous evil. He was "prepared to go back to the very platform in the Isle of Wight from which he had supported Home Rule and to tell the people he was converted. English people who come here to investigate for themselves must be forced to the conclusion that the Bill means confiscation and robbery." A thriving tradesman of Clones said:--"I am surprised that any Englishmen can be found to pin their faith to Mr. Gladstone, or to any man with such an extraordinary record of change. Mr. Bright used to say he could not turn his back on himself, but Mr. Gladstone spins round and round like a teetotum. I should think that such an instance has never been known since that good old parson who sung, 'Whatsoever king may reign, Still I'll be Vicar of Bray, Sir.' Downing Street is the Grand Old Man's vicarage, and he endeavours to cling to it at all costs. In 1886 he said, 'I will not be a party to giving Ireland a legislative body to manage Irish concerns and at the same time have Irish members in London acting and voting on English and Scottish concerns.' In seven years and one month he insists on that very thing, and votes for it, with his crowd of noughts behind him. For I reckon all his Parliamentary supporters as noughts, to which a value is given by the figure 1 at their head. Isn't that true? What would the rest be without him? The bulk of his adherents are precisely the kind of men nobody ever pays any attention to. There's Morley, a good writer, but not a man of business. Then there's Harcourt. How can Englishmen stand such a hollow humbug? He'll say anything, any blessed thing. I prefer Tim Healy, even, to Harcourt. Tim was roughly brought up, and, as he gets his living by politics, he is to some extent excusable. The way that Harcourt attacked the Irish party, so long as Mr. Gladstone attacked them! The things he said, the strong language he used so long as that course pleased Mr. Gladstone! Now he turns round and calls them beauties; and for that matter so they are. It's what I mostly call them myself. Beauties. "The arrangement to keep the Irish Nationalists at Westminster is something for Englishmen to consider. If they can swallow that they can swallow anything. They can have no pride about them, or else they are taking no further interest in their own affairs. To give the Irish members power to vote on all questions coming before the Imperial Parliament, while conceding to them the privilege of managing their own affairs without interference, is indeed an eye-opener. The British Parliament had sunk low enough when it began to heed the clamour of a set of American-paid blackguards such as the bulk of the Irish members are, by their own supporters, admitted to be. But how much lower has England sunk when she accepts the dictation of these men, and says, 'You can manage your own affairs and direct my business too.' These fellows are to be masters of Ireland _and_ masters of England. For of course, they can always exert a preponderating influence in British affairs, holding as they do the balance of voting power. And Englishmen will submit to this; and will let their members be gagged and the clauses shoved through the House by hydraulic power. Englishmen are so fond of boasting of their Freedom and Independence. Why, they are being treated like fools and slaves. And by such a low set of fellows. Some of the Nationalist members wipe their noses on the tails of their coats, and when those are worn out they use their coat-sleeves. One of them was staying in an hotel where I was, and I saw him eat eggs. He cut off the top, and worked up the yolk with the handle of his spoon, mixing pepper and mustard. Then he cut his bacon into dice, and dipped each square in the egg before stoking himself. That is a sample of the class now working the British Parliament. There was an Irish patriot M.P. "Dillon is comparatively respectable, and if you knew Dillon you wouldn't think that meant much. Chamberlain showed him up, but why stop at one quotation? I see the judge is now in Tipperary. That was the place Dillon, along with O'Brien, got to conspire against the law with such frightful results. You remember they were sentenced to six months' imprisonment, but breaking their bail they both ran away, while the poor men who had got into trouble, without funds to bolt with, went to hard labour. Dillon once said that if certain people had cattle on land '_the cattle wouldn't prosper very much_,' and sure enough a number of cattle near Tipperary have had their tails cut off. Dillon, I say, is reckoned one of the most respectable. That does not say much for the others. You are giving these men power. Will they use that power to wring further concessions? They have often declared that they will. The English Home Rulers say that they won't, that Irishmen will be too grateful. They know not what they say. You'll have a hostile Government at your very doors. What did Parnell say? 'When England is at war and beaten to her knees, the idea of the Irish Nationalists may be realised.' And Sexton, this very Sexton who is now so much to the front, said that the 'one prevailing and unchangeable passion between Ireland and England is the passion of hate.' Then what hope is there of friendship in a Home Rule Bill which will infinitely increase the number of points of dispute? And these men don't mean to be pleased, either. They don't mean to try to be content. It wouldn't pay them. They have their living to get. Well, they have shown themselves clever. They can work England." A friend has furnished me with a few gems from the orations of the Dillon aforesaid, whose threat of what would be done to loyalists under an Irish Parliament has recently attracted so much notice. He tried to show that this was said in a moment of warmth, in a fit of exasperation at the "Mitchelstown massacre," which took place a year afterwards. What had annoyed him when at Limerick he said that any man who stood aside from the national movement was "a dastard and a coward, and he and his children after him would be remembered in the days that are near at hand, when Ireland was a free nation?"--Date September 20th, 1887. Dillon delights in dates. Again, what had ruffled the patriot soul, when at Maryborough he spoke of dissentients in the following terms:--"When the struggle is ended and the people of this country have obtained that control over their own affairs which must come very soon, he will be pointed out to his neighbours as a coward and a traitor?"--January 15th, 1889. It was on November 1st, 1887, at Limerick, that the same friend of England said "let the people of Ireland get arms in their hands," and promised to "manage Ulster." It was at Dublin on August 23rd, 1887, that Mr. Dillon said:--"If there is a man in Ireland base enough to back down, to turn his back on the fight, I will denounce him from public platforms _by name_, and I pledge myself to the Government that, let that man be who he may, his life will not be a happy one, either in Ireland or across the seas." All this, be it observed, was after the promulgation of the Union of Hearts. Well might Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Mr. Dillon, who is now one of his closest allies, say in the House of Commons:-- "The honourable gentleman comes here as the apostle of a creed which is a creed of force, which is a creed of oppression, which is a creed of the destruction of all liberty, and of the erection of a despotism against it, and on its ruins, different from every other despotism only in this,--that it is more absolutely detached from all law, from all tradition, and from all restraint." Sir William Harcourt also referring to Mr. Dillon in the House once said, "The doctrine of the Land League, expounded by the man who has authority to explain it, is the doctrine of treason and assassination;" and in addition to this strong pronouncement Sir William called it "a vile conspiracy." Both Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt are now hand-and-glove with the men of whom Mr. Gladstone said at Leeds:--"They are not ashamed to point out in the press which they maintain how the ships of her majesty's navy ought to be blown into the air, and how gentlemen they are pleased to select ought to be the object of the knife of the assassin and deprived of life because they do not conform to the new Irish Gospel." Mr. Chamberlain's exposure of Dillon has brought down the thunders of the Nationalist press. Did he ever say anything stronger than this? One Nationalist paper, speaking of the member for West Birmingham, says:--"There was something devilish in the exultation of the strident voice and pale malignant face." The Home Rule penmen are always describing him as "livid with impotent rage," "trembling with ill-concealed vindictive passion," "hurrying from the House to escape the mocking laughter of the amused Senate." The member for Bordesley is dealt with more lightly. "Mr. Jesse Collings occupied some minutes with his usual amusing inanity" and so forth. According to these writers the House rapidly empties when Mr. Balfour or Mr. Chamberlain would fain hold forth, and fills to suffocation to hear the noble periods of Dillon, Sexton, and Healy. Mr. Deasy, M.P. for West Mayo, has recently been before the public rather prominently, and his opinion of the Irish question may be interesting at the present juncture. I heard much of this gentleman at Westport, where he is well known. He is disgusted with the show of loyalty to which his colleagues have treated Mr. Gladstone, who boasts of their "satisfactory assurances." He knew that the Nationalist members, speaking in England, made use of amicable expressions which no Irish Nationalist audience would tolerate, and speaking of this he said:--"I have never said on an English platform what I would not say here this night. I have not been saying that we all want to be part and parcel of the British Empire--with the lie on the top of my tongue, I am not going to disgrace my constituency by going over to England and uttering falsehoods there, and coming back and saying that I was deceiving England at the time." This speech was made in 1891, only two years ago. Is not this big print enough? Surely no reasonable person will any longer believe in the loyal friendship of Nationalist Ireland. To do so is to violate common sense. Only the fatuous Gladstonians, Whose eyes will scarcely serve at most To guard their wearers 'gainst a post, can be expected to take it in. It is hard to find a decent person in favour of the bill. Its supporters are eminently unsatisfactory, inasmuch as they furnish no readable matter, and content themselves with saying that Ireland will have her freedom, and that prosperity will follow, as the night the day, in the wake of the bill. But they can never indicate wherein is their want of freedom, nor can they ever say _how_ the bill will bring about prosperity. Then, as a rule, the voters for the bill are persons whose opinion no sane person would act upon in the most unimportant matter. They never know the population of their own town, nor the distance to the next. They are mostly sunk fathoms deep in blackest ignorance, and characterised by most cantankerous perversity, now rapidly merging, as the bill proceeds, into insolent bumptiousness. The Lord-Lieutenant has returned to Dublin after having endured such snubs and slights as Mr. Balfour never encountered. And yet Lord Houghton waved the olive-branch. Everybody seems to have asked him for a pier. I have given many instances of useless piers on the Western Irish Coast. The parish priests who met the Viceroy asked for more, and again more. Mr. Morley has been asked in the House what is going to be done about the piers the priests have asked for. Let him appoint a Commission to inquire into the history of Western Irish piers. The report will be startling, and also instructive. A Glengariff man admitted to me that the people of that famous town would make no use of the pier if they had it. "But," said he, "the building of it would bring a thousand pounds into the village." The English people are said to dearly love a lord. The Irish people dearly love a pier. Clones, July 13th. No. 48.--A SEARCH FOR "ORANGE ROWDYISM." Belfast is still of the same mind. Its citizens will not have Home Rule. They are more than ever determined that the fruits of their industry shall not be placed at the mercy of men who have consistently advocated the doctrine of plunder. The law-abiding men of Belfast will never submit to the rule of law-breakers, many of whom have expiated their offences in the convict's cell. This debt-paying community will not consent to be under the thumb of men whose most successful doctrine has been the repudiation of legal contracts. The famous merchants and manufacturers of the true capital of Ireland decline to place their future fortunes in the hands of the unscrupulous and beggarly adventurers who would form the bulk of a College Green Parliament. The hard-working artizans of Belfast are firm in their determination to resist the imposition of a legislature which will drive capital from the country, diminish the sources of employment, strangle all beneficial enterprise, and by destroying security undermine and wreck all Irish industry. They know how the agitation originates, and by whom it is directed. They have the results of Papal influence before their eyes. While Belfast as a whole is clean, open, airy, with splendid streets and magnificent buildings, the Catholic portions of the city are as much like the pestilent dens of Tuam and Tipperary as the authorities will permit. The uninstructed stranger can pick out the Home Rule streets. In Belfast as elsewhere, sweetness, light, and loyalty are inseparably conjoined, while evil smells and dinginess are the invariable concomitants of disloyalty and separatism. Fortunately for the Ulster city, the loyalists number three to one, which fact accounts for its general cleanliness, the thriving aspect of its commercial concerns, the decency and order of its well-kept thoroughfares. And whatever Belfasters want they pay for themselves. Belfast receives no Government grants for any municipal purpose, while disloyal Dublin, screaming for equality of treatment, is largely subsidised from Imperial sources. The Belfast people entirely support their hospitals. The Dublin hospitals are largely supported out of the public revenues. The Belfast Botanic Gardens are kept going by Belfast. The Dublin Botanical Gardens are wholly supported by Government. Further examples are needless, the facts being simple as they are undeniable. Dublin gets everything. Belfast gets absolutely nothing. Disloyalty is at a premium. Motley's the only wear. The screamers are always getting something to stop their mouths, a sop, not a gag. Steady, quiet, hard-working folks are of no account. The Belfast men ask for nothing, and get it. They want no pecuniary aid, being used to self-help, and liking it best. Stiff in opinion, they know their own minds, and are accustomed to victory. They do not in turn threaten and complain and cringe and curse and fawn. They keep a level course and run on an even keel. They are bad to beat, and can do with much letting alone. They are pious in their way, and talk like Cromwell's Puritans. They abhor Popery, judging the tree by its fruits, a test recommended by their chiefest classic. They believe that Protestantism is daylight, that Popery is darkness, and that the sun is rising. They believe with Carlyle that "Popery cannot come back any more than paganism, which also lingers in some countries." They also believe with the sage that "there is a perennial nobleness and even sacredness in Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man who actually and earnestly works; in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair." So they work every day and all the day, save on rare occasions, and for these holidays they make up by overtime. They think Home Rule is useless at best, and not only useless, but dangerous. They declare it would affect their liberties, and this notion is ineradicable. Touch them in their freedom and the secold Northerners become aflame. And while the Irish Kelts burn like straw--a flame and a puff of smoke, and there an end--these Scots settlers are like oaken logs, slow to take fire, but hard to extinguish. They prosper under the Union, and therefore, say they, the Union is good. What the poor Irish need is industry, not Acts of Parliament. The land is rich, the laws are just, the judges are honest, and industry is encouraged. The fault is in the people themselves, and in their pastors and masters. The convergence of Ulster opinion reminds me of an old line, which fitly illustrates the position of the Irish malcontent party-- _Heu mihi! quam pingui macer est mihi taurus in arvo._ Quaint old Thomas Fuller (as I remember) has rendered this-- My starveling bull, Ah, woe is me, In pasture full How lean is he! I am almost disposed to believe that Horace anticipated the case; or that, like Mr. John Dillon, he had the gift of remembering occurrences before they took place. Much has been spoken and written in England concerning "Orange rowdyism." I saw the twenty thousand Orangemen who walked through Belfast to Knocknagoney on Wednesday last. They had nearly five miles to march on a hot day before they reached the meeting-place, some hours to stand there listening to speeches, and then the long march back again. Large numbers went to the Orange Halls, there to conclude the day. I followed them thither, heard their speeches, noted their modes of enjoyment, watched them unnoticed and unknown, save in one instance, until they finally dispersed. Next day I went to Scarva, forty miles away, to see the great sham fight which annually takes place there between representatives of King James and King William of Orange. There were sixty-four special trains, at cheap fares, running to Scarva, besides the ordinary service, and let it be remembered that Scarva is on the main line from Dublin to Belfast. Now let me state precisely what I saw. The Belfast procession was very like the tail of the Belfast Balfour demonstration, and with good reason, for both consisted of twenty thousand Orangemen. But on Wednesday the Orangemen, instead of being preceded by a hundred thousand citizens of Ulster, had it all to themselves. The authorities know the character of Orangemen. They know that scorching weather and long dusty marches are apt to lead to copious libations, especially in holiday time. They know that political feeling runs high, and that the present moment is one of undue excitement. They know that the Papist party have taunted Orangemen with the supposed progress of the bill, and that the same people say daily that Orangeism will be at once abolished, and that this year sees the last Orange procession in Belfast. "This is yer last kick before we kick ye to hell," said a broken-nosed gentleman at the corner of Carrick Hill. The authorities knew all these things, and taking into account the known character of Orangeism, with the special exasperation of the moment, and remembering their own responsibility in the matter of order, how many extra policemen were drafted into the city? Not one. The men who really know Orangemen knew that no precautions were needed. There were brass bands, drum and fife bands, and bands of bagpipes. The drums were something tremendous. The Belfast drumming is a thing apart, like a Plymouth Brother. We have nothing like it in England. The big drums run in couples, borne by stout fellows of infinite muscle, and tireless energy. The kettle-drums hunt in packs, like beagles. The big drums are the biggest the climate will grow, and the drummers lash them into fury with thin canes, having no knob, no wrapper of felt, no softening or mitigating influence whatever. The bands played "God save the Queen," "Rule Britannia," "The Boyne Water," and "The Death of Nelson." The fifes screamed shrilly, the brass tubes blared, and every drummer drummed as if he had the Pope himself under his especial care. The vigour and verve of these marching musicians is very surprising. You cannot tire them out. The tenth mile ended as fresh as the first, though every performer had worked like a horse. There is a reason for this. Their hearts are in the work. To them it means something. The scarves and busbies and uniforms and desperate paroxysms of drumming are somewhat comical to strangers, but the people looked earnest, and as if engaged in serious business. Thousands of well-dressed people walked with the procession, or looked gravely on. There was no horse-play, and no noise other than the music. No bare feet, no bare heads, no rags, no dirt, no disorder. A Papist sprang from his lair in a side street and tried to snatch the scarf from a young man, who promptly drove him back to his den. Nothing else happened. At midnight there were for the whole city twenty police cases against thirty-nine for last year's twelfth. So much for Orange rowdies in the streets. Let us look upon their private orgies. At seven o'clock I went to the Orange Hall, Clifton Street, the headquarters of the body. The various lodges were dispersed in several rooms, where they seemed to be taking tea with their sisters and their cousins and their aunts. A turn outside landed me opposite Saint Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, and here was a strong guard of police. The neighbouring streets of Carrick Hill, North Street, and another, literally swarmed with filthy, bare-footed women, wearing the hooded shawl of Limerick, of Tuam, of Tipperary. The men had a dangerous look. Many were drunk, and some had bandaged heads. More policemen half-way down Carrick Hill, and more still at the end. The people who pay no taxes cost most to keep in order. I have somewhere seen a body of returns showing that while the Unionist population requires only ten or twelve policemen to every ten thousand people, the Home Rule provinces take from forty-eight to fifty-two to manage the same number. Returning to the Orange Hall a number of dirty, bare-footed children walked in procession past the door singing vociferously. They sung with great spirit to the tune of "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," and seemed to enjoy it amazingly. I did not catch the words. They stopped as I came up, but a young fellow on guard at the hall said, "They grind up the children in songs of a party nature, and send them here to annoy us. Of course, we can't notice little children." This time I dropped in the thick of the entertainment. A mild, mild man occupied the chair, young men and maidens, old men and children sitting around. They were inebriating on ginger beer and biscuits, and their wildest revelry was the singing of "The Old Folks at Home" by a young lady in white. Mr. E.J. Fullwood, of Birmingham, who was there as a visitor, made a rattling speech, and received a great ovation. A quiet gentleman, by special request, made a few remarks on the political situation. He said:--"We will resist a Home Rule Parliament at any cost and at every cost. We will not have it. Our faith is plighted, and we are not the men to go back of our word." His manner was very subdued, and the audience also kept very quiet. What these men say they say in their sober senses, and not by reason of excitement. Another room was livelier. An English gentleman was holding forth. Then the band played "No surrender," after which a lady sang "Killarney's hills and vales." In a third room a brother was calling on the brethren to give three cheers for "our beloved Queen," under whose benignant reign blessings had been shed upon the British Empire, "to which we belong, and to which we still belong, so long as they will have us." In a fourth room the listening Orangemen sat under a discourse on the efficacy of prayer, which they were urged to make a living part of their everyday life. All this was very disappointing, and when in Royal Avenue the helmeted watchman of the night assured me that nothing had happened, and that nothing was likely to happen, I abandoned all hope of Orange rowdyism. Next day at ten, I went to Scarva, or, as the natives spell it, Scarvagh. A neat little place full of Black Protestants. The houses are clean and tidy, and the people have a well-to-do look. There was a great crowd at the station, and a band of drummers were laying on with such thundering effect that my very coat sleeves vibrated with the concussion. A big arch of orange lilies bore the one word WELCOME, and the roadside was lined with stalls selling provisions and ginger beer. The church on the hill flew the Orange flag with the Union Jack. The Presbyterian meeting-house and a Methodist Chapel complete the tale of worship-houses. The place is without rags, dirt, beggars, or any other symptoms of Home Rule patriotism. Neither is there a Roman Catholic Chapel. The signboards bore Scots and English names. Mr. J. Hawthorne stood at his door, big-boned and burly, with a handsome good-humoured face. "Ye'll gang up the brae, till ye see an avenue with lots of folk intil it," said this "Irishman," whose ancestors have lived at Scarva from time immemorial. "Yes, we pit up the airch o' lilies to welcome our friends. They come every year, and a gude mony o' them too, so we pit up that bit thing oot o' friendship like." I told him this was to be the last occasion, as Mr. Dillon was determined to manage Ulster. He laughed good-naturedly. "Mon alive, d'ye tell me that any mon said sic a fuleish speech? Mon, its borne in on me that we'll tak a dooms lot of managin'. These chaps dinna ken ower weel what they're talkin' aboot. An' they maun say somethin' to please the fellows that keep them in siller. These things hae gane on in Scarva sin' auld lang syne, an' nothin' e'er stappit them. They went on when the Party Processions Act was law, an' tho' the sojers ance cam frae Dublin to stop the demonstration, the Orangemen mustered in sic force that they never interfered aifter all. An' in Ulster we'll hauld our own, d'ye mind that? We've tauld them oor mind, an' that we wunna hae Home Rule. We've tauld them that, an' we'll stand by it. They've gotten oor ultimatum, an' they can mak a kirk or a mill o' it." I gangit up the brae through dense crowds constantly increasing as the sixty-four specials gradually came in. The way was sylvan and pretty, big beech trees and elms meeting overhead, the road running along the side of a steep hill sloping down to a small river, the slope carefully tilled, and showing good husbandry. Then a beautifully wooded and extensive demesne, and a mile of avenue, with many thousands of well-dressed orderly people, the ladies forming about half the company. Then a large low, brown mansion with a gravelled quadrangle, around which marched fife and drum bands playing "No Surrender" and "The Boyne Water." And everywhere incessant drumming and drinking of ginger beer. Banners were there of every size, shape, and colour, many with painted devices, more or less well done. The Lurgan Temperance Lodge exhibited Moses in the wilderness, holding up the brazen serpent. "Three-fourths of the Orange Lodges are based on temperance principles," said an Orange authority standing by, "and what is more, they don't allow smoking. We Orange rowdies are to a great extent temperance men." I remembered that the three meetings of the night before were smokeless concerts, and that the fourth resembled a Methodist love-feast, with an old brother telling his experiences. Also that Captain Milligen, a leading Plymouth Brother of Warrenpoint, had told me that he had been present at a Scarva meeting, and that from beginning to end he never heard a bad word, nor saw anything objectionable. The sham fight took place on a hill hard by. Two fine young fellows fenced with old cavalry swords, and King James, with green coat and plumes, succumbed to King William with orange coat and plumes, while their respective armies to the number of about thirty, fifteen on each side, fired in the air. I noticed that while a few had ancient brass-bound muskets, which looked as if converted from flint locks, most were armed with Snider rifles of army pattern. The drums excelled themselves, and the fifers shrieked martial airs. The people waved their hats and cheered, and that was the whole of it. Returning to the station, a good young man gave me a tract, wherein I found myself addressed as a Dear Unsaved Reader, and later as a Hell-deserving Sinner. Then a Salvation Army man telling a crowd to Escape for their lives, which I was just doing, and that once he had loved pleasure, which seemed likely enough. Then a big banner whereon was depicted David in the act of beheading Goliath with a yeomanry sword, the Wicklow mountains in the distance. Then an old man on the bridge declaring to the multitude that he would not be a Papist for all that earth could give, and that nothing could induce his fellow-citizens to submit to Home Rule for one second of time. "No, never, never, never. Rather than accept of Popish rule, we'll take arms in our hands as our fathers did, and like them we will conquer. Have we not their example before us? Are we such dastards as to give up that for which they shed their blood? Shall the sons be unworthy of the sires? Never shall it be said that the children were unworthy their inheritance of Freedom. Old as I am, I would take a musket, and go forth in the name of the Lord. Shame on the Scots and English if they desert us in our hour of need. Are they not our own kith and kin? But whether they aid us, or whether they desert us, we will stand firm, and be true to ourselves. Our cause is good, and we are bound to win, as we won before. Only stand firm, shoulder to shoulder. Shall we bow down to Popery? No, by the God that made us, No. Shall we truckle to Rome, shall we become slaves to Popish knaves, shall we become subservient to priestcraft and lying and roguery and trickery? Never shall it be said of us. We claim to be part and parcel of the glorious British Empire. We have helped to upbuild that Empire, and we claim our inheritance. We will NOT sell our birthright, we will NOT connive at the destruction of Britain's greatness, we will NOT have Home Rule. 'Shall we from the Union sever? By the God that made us, never!'" The people listened silently, with grave, earnest faces. They mean business. During my first visit to Belfast I interviewed the leading citizens, the clergy, nobility, and gentry. This time I spoke with artisans and craftsmen, and I found the same feeling, a deep and immovable resolve to fight till the last extremity. It should be remembered that all Ulstermen are not Orangemen. But the religious bodies which have held aloof from Orangeism are just as determined. On the Irish Church question the Orange body stood alone. The dissenting sects were against them everywhere. All are united now, and the attempt to force Home Rule on these resolute men would be attended by the most awful consequences. They are not of a breed that easily knocks under. They remind you of the Scottish Covenanters. They are men with whom you would rather dine than fight. In Belfast, besides Mr. Fullwood, of Birmingham, previously mentioned, I met with Mr. Lyons, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who in his walks abroad in the city had put down in his pocket-book the names of all streets he judged to be exclusively Catholic. He was right save in three cases, where the people were mixed. He also observed that in the poorer quarters the windows of all Protestant places of worship were protected by wire netting, but that the Catholic chapels were not so protected. As the Protestants are three to one, he thought this a curious commentary on the statements anent Orange rowdyism. Mr. Deacon, of Manchester, and the Englishmen hereinbefore mentioned were present at the Orange Hall, and all saw what I have related. Mr. Henry Charlton, J.P., of Gateshead-on-Tyne, agrees with them that the religious question is the secret of the whole agitation, and that the sooner a leading statesman meets the Home Rule movement on this, the true ground, the better for the country. "We are too squeamish in England. We fear to offend our Catholic friends, with whom there is no fault to be found. But we want an influential speaker to say at once that the conflict is reality between Protestantism and Popery. The best plan would be to state things as they are, and to meet the enemy directly." So spoke one of these visitors, a gentleman of great political experience. Is this opinion not well worth consideration? Is not the time for soft speaking nearly over? Mr. Dillon says he will manage Ulster. He will need the British Army at his back. His Army of Independence will not avail him much. The position of the Nationalist members towards Ulster is not unlike that of the Chinaman who wanted an English sailor punished. "There he stands," said the skipper, "go and punch his head." "No, no," said the Celestial complainant, "me no likee-pikee that way. But spose three, five, 'leven big sailors tie him up, hold him fast, then very much me bamboo he." And that is how the Dillonites would hope to manage Ulster. Belfast, July 15th. No. 49.--THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ORANGE LODGES. Portadown is another of the clean, well-built towns of Ulster dependent for its prosperity on the linen trade. The River Bann flows through it, a fine stone bridge spanning its waters in the principal street. Everybody seems comfortably off, and dirty slums are nowhere to be found. Some of the shops are very much larger than the size of the town would seem to warrant, and one ironmonger's store is far larger than any similar shop in Birmingham. The Presbyterian meeting-house, on the right as you enter, and the Protestant Church, which occupies a conspicuous position at the meeting of two main thoroughfares, are plain, substantial buildings without any striking architectural pretensions, and the Orange Hall, which seems an indispensable adjunct of all "settler" towns, is also modest and unassuming. The meadows bordering the Bann are spread with miles of bleaching linen, for which the river is especially famous, its waters having a very superior reputation for the production of dazzling whiteness. The town is half-a-mile from the station, which is an important junction, and the number of cars in waiting show that the people expect the coming of business men. When first I visited the town, placards announcing drill meetings at the Orange Hall were everywhere stuck up, but I saw none during my last march round. Perhaps the Orangemen have completed their arrangements. The Portadown people have no intention of accepting Home Rule. On the contrary they are determined to have none of it. At present they are quiet enough, because they are confident that the bill can never pass, and they do not wish to meet trouble halfway. The House of Lords is their best bower anchor, and for the present they leave the matter with the peers. So they mind their work, and spend their time in making linen. When they demonstrate they do it with a will, but they cannot live by demonstrations, and they are used to paying their way. They see what happens in so-called "patriotic" districts, how neglect of duty accompanies eternal agitation, and how the result is poverty and failure to meet the ordinary obligations of social life. The artisans of Portadown go to work every day, and the farmers do their level best with the land, which all about this region is highly cultivated. They claim to belong to the party of law and order, and they agree with the great orator who once said:--"The party of law and order includes every farmer who does not want to rob the landlord of his due and who does not want to be forced to pay blackmail to agitation--every poor fellow who desires to be at liberty to earn a day's wages by whomsoever they are offered him, without being shunned, insulted, beaten, or too probably murdered." The orator in question bears the well-known name of William Ewart Gladstone, now intimately associated with the names of Dillon, O'Brien, Sexton, O'Connor, Tim Healy, and the rest of the agitators to whom he was referring in the above-quoted speech, delivered at Hawick just ten years ago. A Portadown Orangeman complained bitterly of the attitude of the English Gladstonian party with reference to his order. He said:--"We have been denounced as rowdies and Orange blackguards until the English people seem to believe it. They never think of comparing our record with the record of the party denouncing us, nor do they know anything of the history and constitution of the order. We have always been loyal, always friends of England, and that is why the Nationalist party so strongly disapprove of us. We have never occupied the time of the English Parliament, nor have we leagued ourselves with the enemies of England. We have maintained order, and taken care of English interests in Ireland, besides looking after our own personal affairs. We have not stood everlastingly hat in hand, crying, like the daughter of the horse-leech, Give, give. And great is our reward. We are to be handed over to a pack of Papist traitors and robbers, who for years have made the country a perfect Hell. Mr. Gladstone would fain give rich, industrious Ulster into the hands of lazy, improvident Connaught. Let them try it on. Let them impose their taxes, and let them try to collect them. They'll find in Ulster something to run up against. We prefer business to fighting and disturbance, but when once we make up our minds for a row we shall go in for a big thing. Most of our people have a deep sense of religion, and they will look upon it as a religious war. It will be the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. We never will bow down to Popery. And that is what Home Rule means. We see the abject condition of the Papists, and we know their slavish superstitions. The bulk of them are body and soul in the hands of the priests, and that is the secret of their non-success in life. The poorest among them are taxed to death by the Church. A fee must be paid for christening, and unless you pay a stiff figure you won't have a priest at your funeral. The poor Catholics are buried without any religious service whatever. They are taken to the churchyard by their friends and put in a hole, like a dog. Pay, pay, pay, from the cradle to the grave. And when the priests wish to raise money, they dictate how much each person is to give. They do not believe in free-will offerings, otherwise their receipts would be very small indeed. There you have one explanation of Papist poverty. Are we to put our necks under the heels of a Parliament worked by Bishop Walsh of Dublin? Never, as long as we can strike a blow for freedom. We look to England at present. If England fails us, we shall look to ourselves. Our fathers died to preserve us from King James and Popery, and we are not going back to it at this time of day. "English Home Rulers have actually taken up the cry of Equality, and down with Protestant ascendency. Such foolish ignorance almost amounts to crime. Where are the Roman Catholic disabilities? For two generations the Papists have had absolute equality. Every office is open to them on the judicial bench. There have been Roman Catholic Lord Chancellors, and Lord Chief Justices. O'Laughlin, O'Hagan, Naish, Pallas, Barry, O'Brien, Keogh, and many others are all Roman Catholic judges. The Papists have an overwhelming preponderance in Parliamentary representation. They are looked after in the matter of education, whether elementary, intermediate, or University. The system of the National Board was introduced to meet the objections of the Roman Catholics. They objected to the use of the Bible. As you know the Papists object very strongly to the Bible, and as it came out some time since, before the Commissioners of Education, of four hundred Maynooth students only one in forty had a Bible at all. Theological students without a Bible! But each was compelled to have a copy of some Jesuit writer. "Where is the inequality? The Romanists have their own college, this very Maynooth, entirely under the control of their own bishops, where they educate the sons of small farmers and peasants and whiskey-shop keepers by means of funds very largely taken from the Protestant Church of Ireland. They do not desire equality, they are resolved on ascendency. We who live in Ireland know and feel the spirit of intolerance which marks the Romanist body. It is proposed to make of Ireland a sort of Papal state. We have the declarations of Cardinal Logue, of Archbishop Walsh, of Archbishop Croke before us. We need to know no more. The English people pay no attention to them, or have forgotten them. We bear them in mind, and we shall act accordingly." My friend's statements anent the raising of money by the Roman Catholic clergy and the alleged poverty of Ireland reminded me that a year ago at the opening of the Redemptorist Church of Dundalk the collections of one day realised twelve hundred pounds, and that in the same town a priest refused to baptise the child of a poor woman for less than five shillings. She tendered four shillings and sixpence, but the man of God sent her home for the odd sixpence. She then went to the Protestant minister, who baptised the child for nothing. In Warrenpoint the priest decided what subscriptions each and every person should pay to the funds of the new Catholic Church, and in Monaghan three well-to-do Papists had their cheques returned, as being insufficient. The Romanist Cathedral of that poor little town is currently reported to have cost half a million, but that it cost at least a hundred thousand pounds, exclusive of the stone, which was given by the Protestant landowner, Lord Rossmore, is admitted by the most reliable authorities. The landlord agreed to give the stone on condition that the quarry should be filled up and the land levelled as it was found at first. Stone for the cathedral, a convent, and many other buildings was taken, but the conditions were not fulfilled, and a hole with forty feet of water was left, so that the field was dangerous for cattle. The Catholic party refused to level, and a lawsuit was the result. My Monaghan letter related the total exclusion of Protestants, including Lord Rossmore's agent, from the Town Council. So much for Papal tolerance and gratitude. The English prejudice against Orangemen is ill-founded. Their sheet-anchor is an open Bible, and their principles, as expressed by their constitution, are such as ought to ensure the approval and support of Englishmen. They read as follows:--"The institution is composed of Protestants resolved to the utmost of their power to support and defend the rightful Sovereign, the Protestant religion, the laws of the country, the Legislative Union, and the succession to the Throne being Protestant, and united further for the defence of their own persons and properties and the maintenance of the public peace. It is exclusively an association of those who are attached to the religion of the Reformation, and _will not admit into the brotherhood persons whom an intolerant spirit leads to persecute, injure, or upbraid any man on account of his religious opinions_. They associate also in honour of King William the Third, Prince of Orange, whose name they bear, as supporters of his glorious memory." I have italicised a few words which clear the association from the charge of organised intolerance, which is made alike by English and Irish Home Rulers. The Portadown folks are especially well-versed in the history of the movement, and in the perils which impelled their forefathers to band themselves together. According to Froude, it was on the 18th September, 1795, that a peace was formally signed at Portadown between the Peep-o'-Day Boys and the Defenders, and the hatchet was apparently buried. But the incongruous elements were drawn together only for a more violent recoil. The very same day Mr. Atkinson, a Protestant, one of the Defender subscribers, was shot at. The following day a party of Protestants were waylaid and beaten. On the 21st both parties collected in force, and at a village in Tyrone, from which the event took the name by which it is known, was fought the battle of the Diamond. The Protestants won the day, though outnumbered. Eight and forty Defenders were left dead on the field, and the same evening was established the first lodge of an institution which was to gather into it all that was best and noblest in Ireland. The name of Orangemen had long existed. It had been used by loyal Protestants to designate those of themselves who adhered most faithfully to the principles of 1688. Threatened now with a general Roman Catholic insurrection, with the Executive authority powerless, and determined at all events not to offer the throats of themselves and their families to the Roman Catholic knife, they organised themselves into a volunteer police to prevent murder, and to awe into submission the roving bands of assassins who were scaring sleep from the bedside of every Protestant household. They became the abhorrence of traitors whose crimes they thwarted. The Government looked askance at a body of men who interfered with the time-honoured policy of overcoming sedition by tenderness and softness of speech. But the lodges grew and multiplied. Honest men of all ranks sought admission into them as into spontaneous Vigilance Committees to supply the place of the constabulary which ought to have been, but was not, established; and if they did their work with some roughness and irregularity, the work nevertheless was done. By the spring of 1797 they could place twenty thousand men at the disposition of the authorities. In 1798 they filled the ranks of the Yeomanry, and beyond all other influences the Orange organisation counteracted and thwarted the progress of the United Irishmen in Ulster, and when the moment of danger arrived, had broken the right arm of the insurrection. After this brief sketch of the origin of the movement it would not be surprising if the constitutions of the body inculcated intolerance, or even revenge. On the contrary, both these things are sternly prohibited, and their contraries expressly insisted on. A pious Brother of Portadown said:--"As Protestants we endeavour to make the Bible our rule and guide. We endeavour to love our neighbour as ourselves, we obey the constituted authorities, we maintain and uphold the law, we fear God and honour the Queen. We are firmly resolved to maintain our present position to the British Crown, and we deny the right of Mr. Gladstone to give us away, or to barter us for power. By the confession of his own followers, all his previous legislation for Ireland has been a failure, for if it be not so, why the present measure? We claim no ascendency, and we will submit to none. It was from our ancestors that ascendency received its death-blow. Ever since 1681 our leading doctrine has been equality for all, without distinction of class or creed. By thrift and industry we have created a state of commercial prosperity which is a credit and an honour to the empire, while the Nationalist party under precisely similar conditions have discredited the empire, and by perpetual agitation, and not sticking to business, have brought every part of the country under their influence to degradation and poverty; besides which they have, by their repudiation of contracts, undermined the morality of their supporters all over Ireland. The Nationalist farmers prefer to have twenty-five per cent. off their rent by agitation or intimidation rather than to double or treble the productiveness of their land by hard work and the application of modern principles of farming. We have seen from the first that the whole movement was originated in roguery and sustained by roguery, and we see that it is carried on by roguery. We not only know the men who keep up the agitation, but we know the influences at work behind them. All their talk is of Protestant ascendency. Can they point out a single instance in which we have the upper hand, or state anything in which we as Protestants have any advantage whatever? Mr. Gladstone himself cannot do it. He has said so in as plain terms as he can be got to use. But the time for talking is over. We have said our say, and we are prepared to do our do. The Papists round here are very confident that before long they will have a marked ascendency. They expect no less. Let them attempt it. We shall be ready to stand our ground. As the poet says, Now the field is not far off When we must give the world a proof Of deeds, not words, and such as suit Another manner of dispute." A Home Ruler encountered casually showed some temper. He said:--"All the prosperity of which the Protestants boast is due to the fact that for centuries they have been the favoured party. England has petted them, and helped them, and encouraged them in every way. We were a conquered people, and these settlements of Methodists, and Presbyterians, and Quakers, and all the tag-rag-and-bob-tail of dissent, were thrown into the country to hold it for England, and to act as spies on the real possessors of the land, in the interests of England. They were, and are, the English garrison. They have no part with the natives, the original sons of the soil. What right, moral or legal, have these Colquhouns, these Galbraiths, these Andersons, to Irish soil? None but the right of the sword, the right of superior force. Other nations have succumbed to the yoke of England, the greatest tyrant with which the earth was ever cursed. The Scots and Welsh lick the boots of the English because it pays them to do so. The Irish have never given in, and they never will. For seven hundred years we have rebelled, and as an Irishman I am proud of it. It shows a spirit that no tyranny can break. What tyranny do we now undergo? The tyranny of a master we do not like, and in whom we have no confidence. We never agreed to accept the yoke of England. Now all we ask is to be allowed to govern Ireland according to Irish ideas, and after promising that we shall do so a bill is brought in which is a perfect farce, and which puts us in a far worse condition than ever. Some say that when once we get an Irish Parliament we can arrange these small details. And mind this, we shall exact considerably more because of English distrust and English meanness." I note in Saturday's issue of the party sheets a quotation from an Irish-American paper, the _Saint Louis Republic_, which thus opines as to the policy of the Irish leaders:-- "They would better hold off until they have the bill out of the woods before they start a scrimmage over small details. Ireland and America will think any bill which establishes local government a progressive step of glory enough for one year. If Ireland cannot improve the law after it gets a Legislature it needs a few American politicians, more than an extra fund." How does this promise for the peace that is to follow this great measure of "Justice" to Ireland? With the improved methods of the Irish-American politicians, who, on the establishment of an Irish Parliament, would inundate the country, finding in its chaotic and helpless state a fit subject for plunder, the meek-and-mild Radicals of the bread-and-butter type, who trollop through the lobbies after the Grand Old Bell-wether, would be highly delighted. How did the Items get into Parliament at all? Why did they desert the mothers' meetings, the Band-of-Hope committees, the five o'clock tea parties at which they made their reputations? There, indeed, they found congenial society, there they were listened to with rapt attention, there they could coruscate like Tritons among minnows. Among the blind a one-eyed man is King. The English Home Rule members are a collection of intellectual Cyclops. They can vote, though. They can walk about, and that suffices their leader. If weak in the head, they are strong in the legs. Legislation must in future be pronounced with a hard g, or to avoid confusion of terms, and to preserve a pure etymology, a new term is needed to describe the law-making of the Home Rule members. Pedislation might serve at a pinch. I humbly commend the term to the attention of my countrymen. Judged by classification of its friends and enemies, Home Rule comes out badly indeed. The capitalists, manufacturers, merchants, industrial community, professional men are against it. Six hundred thousand Irish Churchmen are against it. Five hundred thousand Methodists and Presbyterians are against it. Sixty thousand members of smaller denominations are against it. A hundred and seventy-four thousand Protestants in Leinster, and a hundred and six thousand in Munster and Connaught are against it. The educated and loyal Roman Catholic laity are against it. All who care for England and are willing to join in singing "God save the Queen" are against it. On the other hand amongst those who are for it, and allied with them, we find the dynamiters of America, the Fenians and Invincibles, the illiterate voters of Ireland, the idlers, the disloyal, the mutilators of cattle, the boycotters, the moonlighters and outragemongers, the murderers, the village ruffians, the city corner boys, and all the rest of the blackguards who have flourished and been secure under the Land League's fostering wing. Are we to stand quietly aside and see the destinies of decent people entrusted to the leaders of a movement which owes its success to such supporters? Are Englishmen willing to be longer fooled by a Government of nincompoops? Those who have studied the thing on the spot will excuse a little warmth. And then, I am subject to a kind of Dillonism. I am exasperated at the recollection of what may possibly take place next year. Portadown, July 18th. No. 50.--THE HOLLOWNESS OF HOME RULE. This beautiful watering place cannot be compared with the celebrated holiday resorts of England, Wales, Scotland, or France without doing it injustice. It is unique in its characteristics, and globe-trotters aver that earth does not show a spot with an outlook more beautiful. From the beach the view of the mountain-bordered Lough extends for many miles seaward. On the opposite slopes to the right are the fresh green pastures and woods of Omeath, backed by the Carlingford mountains. On the left are wooded hills a thousand feet high which lead the eye to the Mourne Mountains at Rostrevor, where is the famous Cloughmore (Big stone), a granite block nine feet high by fifteen feet long, poised on the very apex of the mountain in the most remarkable way. How it got there is indeed a puzzle, as it stands on a bed of limestone nine hundred and fifty-seven feet above sea level. You can see it from the square of Warrenpoint, four miles away, and no doubt good eyes would make it out at a much greater distance. Geologists talk about the glacial age, and say that the boulder was left there by an iceberg from the north; but the mountain peasants know better. They know that Fin McCoul heaved it at Brian Boru, jerking it across the Lough from the opposite mountain five or six miles away, as an indication that he didn't care a button for his rival. These modern mountaineers are almost as easily gulled as their ancestors. They believe in Home Rule because they will, under an Irish Legislature, "get all they want." They have votes, and they use them under clerical advice. "I don't know anything about Home Rule except that we are to get all we want." Those are the very words of an enlightened and independent elector resident near Cloughmore. Never was there more simple faith, or more concise _credenda_. The Newcastle programme is comparatively unpromising. The wildest Radical, the most advanced Socialist, never came up to this. The Grand Old Man himself in his most desperate struggles for place and power, never exactly promised everything that everybody wished. To get all you want is, indeed, the _summum bonum_, the Ultima Thule, the _ne plus ultra_ of political management. After this the old cries of peace, retrenchment, and reform sound beggarly indeed. Never was there such a succinct and complete compendium of political belief. Nobody can outbid the man who offers "all you want." For compactness and simplicity and general satisfactoriness this phase of Home Rule diplomacy takes the cake. Failure to fulfil the promise is of course to be charged to the brutal Saxon. Meanwhile the promise costs nothing, and like sheep's-head broth is very filling at the price. Not long ago the point in the Lough was a rabbit warren, whence the name. Before that the situation was too exposed to the incursions of rovers to tempt settlers, and Narrow-water Castle, built to defend the pass, was (and is) between the town and Newry. But times have changed. Settlers flocked across from Ayr, from Troon, from Ardrossan, and other Scots ports lying handy. A smart, attractive town has sprung up, starting with a square a hundred yards across. Big ships which cannot get up to Newry discharge in the Lough by means of lighters. An eight-hundred-ton barque from Italy is unloading before my window. There is a first-rate quay, with moorings for many vessels. The harbour is connected by rail with all parts of Ireland, and in it seven hundred to eight hundred ships yearly discharge cargoes. The grassy beach-promenade is half-a-mile long, and an open tramcar runs along the shore for three miles. The residents are alive to the importance of catering for visitors, and the Town Commissioners, a mixed body, have provided bathing accommodation for both sexes. Galway, with thrice the population, a fine promenade, good sands, and a grand bay, has no such arrangements; and Westport has very little accommodation for tourists. The contrast between the North of Ireland and the South and West comes out in everything. The Methodists and Presbyterians are strong in the town, to say nothing of the two Protestant Churches, one in Warrenpoint and another in the Clonallon suburb. The Catholic Chapel is counterbalanced by the Masonic Hall. Wherefore it is not surprising to learn that the bulk of the townsmen are staunch Unionists. The Nationalist papers have little sale hereabouts, the _Belfast News Letter_ and the _Irish Times_ having the pull. A business man, who has lived here for forty years, said:-- "We are fairly matched in numbers but the Conservatives have the wealth and respectability. The fishermen and labourers are nearly all Home Rulers, simply because they are Catholics. They are quite incapable of saying _why_ they are Home Rulers, and some of them even profess to regard the proposed change with alarm, and say they prefer that things should remain as they are. But although they speak so fairly, yet when the time comes to vote, they vote as the priest tells them. They have no option, with their belief. I don't blame the poor fellows one bit. I followed the report of the South Meath election petition very closely, and I know that the same kind of pressure was exerted here. At Castlejordan Chapel Father O'Connell commanded the people, in a sermon, to go to a Nationalist meeting, and said he would be there, and that their parish priest expected them to go. He said that if any were absent he would expect them to give a good and sufficient reason for their absence. On another occasion a priest met a number of men who were going to an opposition meeting, and turned them back with threats. These priests not only threatened to refuse extreme unction to persons who voted against the clerical party, but they also threatened personal violence, and then said, 'Don't hit back, for I have the holy sacrament on me.' Father John Fay, parish priest of Summerhill, County Meath, told his people that they must not look on him as a mere man; if they did they might have some prejudice against him, for all had their shortcomings. 'The priest is the ambassador of Jesus Christ, and not like other ambassadors. He carries his Lord and Master about with him, and when the priest is with the people Almighty God is with them.' That is what Father Fay reckoned himself. Almighty God, no less. He alluded to the consecrated wafers he had in his pocket. The doctrine of transubstantiation is here invoked to assist in carrying a Home Rule candidate of the right clerical shade. And all the awful language used from the altar, in the confessional, all the threats of eternal damnation, and burning in the fires of hell, all the refusals of mass, and to hear dying confessions, were directed against another section of the Home Rule party, and not against a Unionist at all. How does this promise for the working of an Irish Parliament? "I note that the English Home Rule papers say nothing good of the bill. They are always praising the management of the Old Parliamentary Hand. They beslaver him with fulsome adoration. They cannot point out anything good in the provisions of the bill, nor in the central idea of the bill, but they must fill up somehow, and they praise his artfulness, how he dodged this, and dexterously managed that. They have nothing but admiration for his jugglery and House-of-Commons tricks. They bring him down to the level of a practised conjuror or a thimblerigger. But, with all his wonderful cleverness, he is not admired or supported by any intelligent body of public men. The gag-trick ought to settle him. We in Ulster feel sure that a general election to-morrow would for ever deprive him of power. Of course the Old Hand knows that, and will not give the country an opportunity of pronouncing judgment. He and his flock of baa-lambs will put off the day of reckoning as long as ever they can. Either on the present or next year's register he is bound to be badly beaten. His course is clear. He used to have three courses open to him, but now he has only one. He must try to weather the storm until he has a chance of faking the voters' lists so as to improve his own chances. It is said that Mr. Henry Fowler is already preparing such a scheme. Like enough. If tricks will win, I back the G.O.M. There are more tricks in him than in a waggon-load of monkeys. The strangest thing I ever saw or ever heard of is the calmness with which the English people take the proposition that Ireland shall manage English affairs, while Ireland is to manage her own without any interference. I should have expected the British workman to processionise about this. I should have thought the British middle-classes would have been up in arms at the bare thought of so monstrous a proposition. And so they would if they thought it would become law. But, like us, they know there will never be any Home Rule. Then, they are not so nervous as we in Ireland are, because they don't know as we do what Home Rule really means. "No earthly power can assist the Irish peasantry so long as they remain under the dominion of the priests. Popery is the vampire that is sucking the life-blood of the country. It is fashionable nowadays to abstain from denouncing other religious systems, on the plea of toleration. I agree with perfect toleration, and I am not desirous of making reference to Romanism. But they force it upon us. The Papist clergy say that the poverty of the country is due to English rule. We who live here know that it is due to Romish rule. How is it that all Protestants are well off, and make no complaint? How is it that their children never run barefoot? How is it that their families are well educated, that their dwellings are clean, and that they pay their way? Home Rule may impoverish those whom the teachings and habits of Protestantism have enriched, but neither Home Rule nor anything else will enrich those whom Popery has impoverished. England should turn a deaf ear to the cry for Home Rule, which means the ruin of her only friends in Ireland, and unknown damage to herself. To give her enemies the means wherewithal to damage her is very midsummer madness." The difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic farmers was shown in striking contrast on the Marquess of Lansdowne's estate in Queen's County. Most of the tenants were non-judicial, and the total rents amounted to £7,000, of which the Marquess allowed £1,100 to be annually expended on the estate. In 1886 the tenants demanded thirty-five per cent. reduction on non-judicial and twenty-five per cent. on judicial rents, threatening as an alternative to adopt the Plan of Campaign. The Marquess refused to comply with this exorbitant demand, but offered reductions of fifteen to twenty-five per cent. on non judicial rents. The tenants declined to pay anything, and the landlord enforced his rights, Mr. Denis Kilbride, M.P., declaring that "these evictions differed from most of the other evictions to this extent,--that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight of intelligence against intelligence, a case of diamond cut diamond." Mr. Kilbride, who held a large farm at a rental of seven hundred and sixty pounds was one of the evicted. Another of these poor destitute, homeless tenants, brutally turned out on the roadside to starve, or die like a dog from exposure, was no sooner evicted than he entered a racehorse for the great contest of the Curragh. This victim of Saxon tyranny was named John Dunne, and his holding comprised more than thirteen hundred acres. Let us hope the colt did him credit. Let us trust that the evicted quadruped carried off the blue ribbon of Kildare. For under the Lansdowne "Rack-rents" the struggling farmer could barely keep one racehorse, which, like the fabled ewe-lamb of ancient story, was his little all. Perhaps Mr. Dunne's colt was related to that well-bred travelling horse, of which the picture adorned the walls of Limerick and its vicinity, and which gloried in the name of Justice to Ireland. There were no evicted Protestants on the Lansdowne estate. Every Protestant farmer paid his rent and steadfastly refused to join the Plan of Campaign. The injustice of an Irish rent largely depends on the question, To whom is it due? A good Nationalist may draw a higher rent than a Loyalist. A sound Home Ruler may ask for and insist on an exorbitant rent, but he is never denounced by the Nationalist press. The Corporation of Dublin is red-hot in the matter of patriotism. Its Parnellite members have from time to time comprised the pick of the Nationalist agitators. The Dublin "patriot" press has ever been foremost in denouncing Rack-rents. But the city of Dublin is a landlord. It has agricultural tenants who are never allowed under pain of eviction to get into arrears. The members of the Corporation fixed the rents, and, strange to say, the tenants at the first opportunity appealed to the Land Commissioners. Six of them holding four hundred and twenty-seven acres of land, were paying £883 16s. 4d. The rent was therefore over £2 an acre, which is perhaps double the average. The Government valuation was £625 10s. The new rent was finally settled at £683, being an all-round reduction of twenty-three per cent. Lord Clanricarde is frequently denounced by Nationalists for excessive rents, lack of conscience, and non-residence. The Land Commissioners were unable to deduct anything like twenty-three per cent. from the Clanricarde rent-roll. The Councillors of Dublin were never upbraided, nor put in danger of their lives. The Loughrea people shot Lord Clanricarde's agent, his driver, his wife, and several other people, in protest against the Clanricarde rents and to encourage the landlord to live on the estate. About a dozen were murdered altogether. Surely these parallel cases should demonstrate the utter hollowness of the Home Rule agitation. The Protestants of Warrenpoint, like those of Newry and Belfast, are confident of their ability to hold their own. Their attitude is very different from that of the trembling heretics of Tuam or Tipperary. They are strong in numbers, discipline, and resolution, and in addition to upholding their own personal cause they declare that their isolated co-religionists in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught shall not be forsaken nor left to their own shifts. A rough and ready farmer thus spoke forth his mind:--"England may give the Papists a Parliament to manage Papists, but not to manage Protestants. We should never begin to consider the advisability of submitting to it. The thing's clean impossible. What! Let Papists tax us! Pay for the spread of Popery! Did you ever hear anything so absurd? Not one farthing would _I_ ever pay. I'd leave the country first. So would all the decent, industrious folks. We know what happens in every country where Popery gets the mastery. Look at Spain, Italy, and the Catholic parts of Ireland. If England sends an army of redcoats to punish us for our loyalty, we shall give way at once. We've sense enough to know that we could do nothing against the Queen's troops, even if we wished to fight them. But to take arms against the soldiers of England would be quite against our principles. What we should ultimately do, under military compulsion, we have not yet decided, but we should never under any circumstances show fight against the Queen. We don't think the day will ever come when England would send the military to shoot us for sticking to England. As for the police of the Irish Parliament, that's another thing. They would have no assistance in Ulster. The sheriff's officers, when engaged in the compulsory raising of taxes, would have a lively time, and I am sure they would never get any money. We don't take it seriously yet. If the bill were actually on the statute book and an Irish House of Commons doing the Finnigan's wake business with the furniture legs of the College Green Lunatic Asylum, even then we would not take it seriously. We shall never think it worth while to be serious until we see the British army firing on us. It's too ridiculous. We pay no attention to the Irish Nationalist members, whom we regard as a bankrupt lot of bursted windbags. Why, hardly one of them could be trusted with the till of a totty-wallop shop. To how many of them would Gladstone lend a sovereign? How many of them could get tick in London for a new rig-out? Dublin is out of the question, of course, because in Dublin these statesmen are known. Would Englishmen let such men govern their country? Not likely. Nor will we." I submitted that, so far as at present enacted, these very heroes were really going to govern both England and Ireland. The great organ of English Roman Catholicism objecting to this has given great offence to the Irish Papists, and the Nationalist press is shrieking with futile rage. English Catholicism and Irish Catholicism seem to be entirely different politically. Englishmen are Englishmen first, and Catholics next. Irishmen look first to Rome, and cordially hate England,--there is the difference. The Conservative Catholic organ says, referring to the retention of members at Westminster:-- "With just as much reason might we import a band of eighty South Africans, and whether they were eighty Zulus or eighty Archangels in disguise, their presence in the British House of Commons would be a gross violation of the principles of representative government. At present, as members of the common Parliament of an United Kingdom, English and Irish members have correlative rights, but when Irish affairs are withdrawn from the Parliament at Westminster, on that day must the Irish members cease to take part in purely British legislation. We are asked to grant Home Rule to Ireland in deference to the wishes of the local majority, and then we are told we must let the local majority in Great Britain be dictated to by eighty men who have neither stake in the country nor business in her Parliament, and who do not represent so much as even a rotten borough between them." My Warrenpoint friend may well say that he cannot take it seriously. The dignity of the English Parliament is, however, a matter of great concern to Englishmen, and that for the present seems consigned to the charge of Dillon, Healy, and Co. And all to further the Union of Hearts. Yet Misther Tay Day Sullivan, not content with the management of both England and Ireland, proposes to oust us from India! The Irish faction will boss the wuruld from ind to ind. Begorra, they will. Tay Day says:-- England fears for India, For there her cruel work Was just as foul and hateful As any of the Turk. But when God sends us thither Her rule to overthrow, With fearless hearts rejoicing To work His will we'll go. Stupid little England Thinks to say us nay, But paltry little England Shall never stop our way. There is a tribute of affection! There is an outpouring of loyalty! There is an anthem to celebrate the Union of Hearts! It should be sung round a table, Gladstonians and Irish Home Rulers hand in hand, as in "Auld Lang Syne," and given out by Pastor W.E. Gladstone, as short metre, two lines at a time. Why not? Stranger things are happening every day. Warrenpoint, July 20th. No. 51.--THE IRISH PRESS ON "FINALITY." Englishmen who have any doubt remaining anent Home Rule should read the Irish Nationalist press. Those who propose to concede the measure for the sake of peace and finality should read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the _United Ireland_ leader, which commences: "Let it be pretended no more that the fate of the present Home Rule Bill is henceforth a matter of vital interest to us," and afterwards says, "We shall have to go on fighting--to go on fighting--without even a temporary intermission, and whether this bill pass or not, this year or next, or the year after, no matter what becomes of it." "Mr. Gladstone's bill in its present form is exactly such a Central Council as Mr. Chamberlain would have agreed to at the time of the Round Table Conference. If it pass it can be no more than a milestone on our march. To talk of finality any more would be simply grotesque, and yet the Gladstonians have urged, in season and out of season, that the bill would be nothing if not 'final, reasonably final.'" The English Home Rulers are dealt with as severely as the most hardened Unionist could wish. The writer speaks of their "disastrous fatuity in consuming the whole of this session of the Imperial Parliament, and the greater part of one or two more, over a Home Rule Bill which will settle nothing, no, not even for three years." Disastrous fatuity is a good phrase, an excellent good phrase, in sooth. I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word. Those who believe in the security of the Gladstonian safeguards, and the pacific disposition of the Nationalist party, will perhaps be able to put a friendly construction on the passage which begins:--"And it is already settled that no man in Ireland is to bear a rifle unless he be a soldier of the army of occupation, which will still be encamped on our soil 'to mak siccare.' This hateful and degrading prohibition is what no Parnellite can pretend to consent to for any reasonable or unreasonable fraction of a period of reasonable finality." Those who believe in the severe commercial morality and rigid honesty of the authors of the Plan of Campaign will doubtless find their favourable opinion confirmed by the succeeding remarkable complaint. "And the Irish Legislature--would it not be better policy now to refuse to regard it as a Parliament and to refuse to call it so?--is forbidden to take away any person's property except by process of law, in accordance with settled principles and precedents. There's trouble here." There is indeed trouble here. An Irish Parliament which could not "take away any person's property except by process of law" would be shorn of its principal functions, would fail to justify its existence, would fall immeasurably short of the popular expectation, would have, in fact, no earthly _raison d' être_. An Irish Parliament without power to take from him that hath, and give unto him that hath not, would be without functions, and the foinest pisintry in the wuruld would instantly rebel against such a nonentity. The farmers remember the oft-repeated statements of Mr. Timothy Healy to the effect that "landlordism is the prop of the British Government, and it is that we want to kick away." And the benefit accruing from this vigorous action was by the same eloquent patriot very plainly stated. "The people of this country ought never to be satisfied so long as a single penny of rent is paid for a sod of land in the whole of Ireland." And they never will be satisfied, with or without rent. Their dissatisfaction has enabled Mr. Healy to put money in his purse. The wail of a great people whose Parliament will not be allowed to rob from all and sundry is accounted for towards the close of the article. There will be trouble "as soon as the Dublin Legislature becomes hard pushed for money, which will be desperately often from the beginning, as is now plain." These considerations are closely observed by the people of Strabane, the best of whom are steady loyalists. The town is bright, brisk, thriving, and Scotch. Or rather the Scottish element is conspicuous in the main street, with its McCollum and Mackey, its Crawford and Aikin, its Colhoun and Finlay, its Lowry and McAnaw. There are several shirt factories, of which the biggest is run by Stewart and Macdonald. A number of names which may be either English or Scotch are equally to the front, Taylor, White, and Simms, cheek by jowl with doubtful cases like McCosker and McElhinney, which, however, smack somewhat of the tartan. Macfarlane issues a notice, which is printed by Blair, and besides White I notice Black and Gray. The establishment of Mr. Snodgrass, near the Scotch Boot Stores, was remindful of Charles Dickens, and the small flautist piping "Annie Laurie," put me in mind of Robert Burns, the hairdresser of Warrenpoint. It became difficult to realise that this was Ireland. Not far away are two mountains, named respectively Mary Gray and Bessie Bell. The hills round Strabane retain their Irish names, but the genius of the place is distinctly Scottish. There are Irish parts of Strabane, but they are unpleasant and unimportant. The Unionists pay three-fourths of the rates, but there is only one Loyalist on the Town Council, which has nine members, of which number three retire annually in rotation. The Town Commissioners, as a whole, are not highly esteemed by the people of Strabane. One of them, the leading light of the local Nationalist party, is rated at £8. Another, a working plasterer, is the accredited agent of the Home Rule party in this division of Tyrone, and is playfully called the Objector-General, on account of his characteristic method of working in the Registry Court. The Chairman, who occupies the position of Mayor, but without the title, is rated at £13. Two small publicans are rated at £12 and £27 respectively. The remainder, including the Conservative member, are rated sufficiently high to be regarded as having some stake in the country, and no objection is taken on this score. But the Strabane Town Commissioners are intolerant. Apart from the fact that they admit only one Unionist to a body which derives three-fourths of its funds from Unionists, they are distinctly intolerant in the matter of employment. They employ no Protestants. Their solicitor, Mr. William Wilson, is indeed of the proscribed faith, but he seems to have inherited the office from his father. No Protestants need apply for any situation, however small, under the Strabane Town Council, which pays its servants with the money of Protestants. This is the party which clamours for equality of treatment, and eternally complains of the exclusiveness of Protestantism. A well-known Strabaner said:-- "If we are shut out from the Town Council, it is, to some extent, our own fault. Two causes mainly contributed to this result--the apathy of the Unionist voters, and the unwillingness of our best men to rub up against some of the men put forward by the other party. I say some only, not all. We did not care to be mixed up with fellows of low class, especially when they are as ignorant as possible. Then again, we are well represented on the Poor Law Board, which really has all the power, attending as it does to sanitation and so forth. The Nationalists greedily snap at every shred and semblance of power, and leave no stone unturned to get the mastery. There has come a sad change over the poor folks, that is, the Roman Catholics. Formerly they were civil and kind, and we all got on famously together. If a Protestant was out in the country a mile or two away, and rain came on, they were hospitable with that beautiful old courtesy which was one of the best things the nation possessed. It was something to boast of. It was unique, and could not be found in such perfection out of Ireland. It's all over now. Since Mr. Gladstone commenced to destroy the country the poor folks hereabouts have changed very much for the worse, and if you now got caught in a shower while out in the country you might be drowned before they would ask you to take shelter. They expect to be enjoying our property very shortly. They fully believe that they will soon have the land and goods that we have worked for and earned by the sweat of our brows, while they have stood by complaining, instead of doing their best to get on. What shall I do if Home Rule becomes law? Just this--I shall get out of the country in double-quick time. There will be no security for life or property. The country will be a perfect Hell upon Earth." There are three rivers at Strabane, which, notwithstanding the neglect of the guide-books, is well worth the tourist's attention. The Mourne, a really beautiful river, runs beside the town, washing the very houses of a long street, and meeting the Finn, another fine river, in the meadows near Lifford, which is in Donegal, but for all that only ten minutes' walk from Strabane. From the confluence the river is called the Foyle, so that from the splendid bridge leading into Lifford may be seen the rare spectacle of three considerable rivers in one meadow. Lifford is very clean and very pretty. The gaol is the most striking building, and I wandered through its deserted corridors, desolate as those of Monaghan. There were some strange marks in the principal square; a number of parallel lines which puzzled me. I turned to the gaoler who had just liberated me for some explanation. "Faith, thin, it's the militia officers that made them." "Studying fortification?" "Divil a fortification, thin. 'Tis lawn tennis it is, jist." And so it was. Two courts of lawn tennis in the square of the county town of Donegal! That will give some idea of the business traffic. An experienced electioneerer said:--"We had an awful fight before we could return Lord Frederick Hamilton for North Tyrone. We had all our work cut out, for although we have on paper a majority of about one hundred, many of our people are non-resident landlords, or army and navy men, and they are not here to vote for us. So that our majority of forty-nine was a close thing, though not so close as we expected. The other side do not fight fair. Their tricks in the Registry Court are most discreditable. Both parties fight the register, the Nationalists expending any amount of time and money, and showing such enthusiasm as our people never show. And this is the reason. Our Scots farmers--for they are as Scottish as their ancestors of two hundred years ago--_will_ stick to their work, and persist in making their work the paramount concern of their lives. They cannot believe that objections will be made to their names on the register, and when such objections have been raised they must appear in person, and there comes the difficulty. For if it's harvest time, or if engaged on any necessary work, you cannot get them to the Court. At Newtonstewart where the bulk of the voters are Protestant, no less than five substantial farmers were objected to successively. The inspector, that is, the Nationalist agent who is supposed to look into the claims of the Unionist party, said that one had assigned the farm to his son, or that another was not the real tenant, or that something else was wrong, and as this statement established a _primâ-facie_ case, it became necessary for the persons whose votes were questioned to come into Court. Now, there is the rub. The objector calculates that some will not come, for he knows how hard it is to get them to come. Then they stuff the register with bogus names. They put down dozens of people who don't exist, with the object of polling somebody for them--if any of them should escape the scrutiny of the opposite party--and with the further object of causing the Unionist party expense and loss of time. For there is a stamp duty of threepence to be paid for every objection, and then the Loyalist lawyer and his staff are kept at work for six weeks, instead of a fortnight or three weeks, which should be the outside time taken. Then the annoyance and loss of time to the industrious Unionist voters, who have to leave their work. This does not hurt the opposite party, who have nothing else to do, and who in these wrangling affairs are in their native element, thoroughly enjoying themselves. What makes the work so hard for the Loyalist lawyer is the fact that our folks are all for business and look upon politics as a nuisance, while the other side make politics the principal business of their lives. They are tremendously energetic in this, but wonderfully supine in everything else. In politics they spare neither time nor money, nor (for the matter of that) swearing. The lying that goes on in the Registry Court would astonish Englishmen. The Papist party themselves admit that they are awful liars, but they laugh it off, and plead that all is fair in love and war. "The priest sits in the Revision Court all day long. In these Revision Courts every priest is an agent of the Separatist party. They watch the inspectors and witnesses, keeping a keen eye on those who do not swear hard enough, ready to reward or censure, as the case may be. Every Sunday the people are instructed from the altar as to their political action. This eternal elbowing-on keeps them up to their work, as well as the promises of the good things to come. Our folks are never worked up. That makes it very hard for us. They came up pretty well last time, though. But when one side is all for business, and the other side all for politics, the business folks are handicapped. "The Nationalists ran John Dillon on one occasion. We smashed him up. No respectable constituency would ever return any of his class, and we resented the attempt to couple us with a man of that stamp. He was beaten by several hundreds. Then they ran a Mr. Wylie, who had been a Land Commissioner for this district. We thought that positively indecent, and we wondered that any gentleman would put himself in such a position. He had been round here reducing rents, and then he came forward as a candidate. We accuse him of bad taste, nothing worse. He only made one speech, though, and that was to thank the people for placing him at the bottom of the poll. He confined himself to canvassing. If he had once mounted the hustings we would have heckled him about the Land Commission business. He knew that and never gave us a chance. It was a cute stroke of policy to bring him forward. He was a Presbyterian, and might be Land Commissioner again. At least the people thought so. Then they tried a Professor Dougherty, of Londonderry, another Home Rule Presbyterian; for there are a few, though you could count them off on your fingers, and they are a hundred times outnumbered by the Conservative Catholics. He belonged to Magee College, and we trotted out the whole of his co-professors against him. We never had a meeting without one or other of his colleagues pitching into him--a great joke it was. "Over the water Mr. E.T. Herdman tried to get in for East Donegal, a very popular man who pays thirty or forty thousand pounds a year in wages. The people promised to support him. The priests promised to support him. They asked what would they do else, and what did he take them for? They are so anxious about employment, these good men. All they want is the good of the people. You saw how they ran after the Lord Lieutenant saying: Only find us work! You see how they run after the Countess of Aberdeen, who is encouraging industry (and about whom there are some pickings). What did the people of East Donegal do, under the guidance of their clergy? They returned Arthur O'Connor, who never did anything for them, who never darkens their doors, and who is utterly unknown to them. What can you say for them after that?" The politician who was preferred to Mr. Herdman probably promised to give the people "all they want," while the Unionist was only paying them wages for working all the year round. And besides this, Mr. O'Connor's speeches were probably more full-flavoured, more soul-satisfying, than those of Mr. Herdman, who, being a practical man of business, and having a sense of responsibility, would only talk common-sense, and would promise no more than he could hope to perform. Mr. O'Connor speaks in the epic style. He reminds you of Bombastes Furioso, or Ancient Pistol, with a subtle admixture of Falstaff and Parolles. He belongs to the lime-light and blue fire school of oratory, and backs up a vivid imagination with a virulent hatred of England. The raging sea of sedition which surged around us is now silent enough. It Now hath quite forgot to rave While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. The reason why is plain or should be plain to anything above the level of a Gladstonian intellect. It cannot be amiss, though, to recall a specimen of Mr. Arthur O'Connor's style, that so we may judge of his superior acceptability to the people of East Donegal. Speaking after the Union of Hearts had been invented and patented (provisionally), Mr. O'Connor said:-- "I know it to be a fact that in whatever war Great Britain may be involved, whatever Power she may have to struggle with, that Power can count on a hundred thousand Irish arms to fight under her flag against Great Britain--(great cheering). Does not the Government of the United States know perfectly well that at three days' notice it could have a force, of which one hundred thousand would only be a fraction, a force willing to serve against Great Britain for the love of the thing, without any pay?--(renewed applause). And it is not amiss that the Government of England should know it also"--(continued applause). The M.P. who made this speech is one of the politicians now dominating the English Parliament at Westminster. It is in response to the clamour of him and his sort that the gag is put on men like Balfour, Goschen, Chamberlain. This little gem set in the silver sea, this isle, this realm, this England, is becoming a paltry concern, is fast being Gladstoned into drivelling imbecility. What does O'Connor mean by the 100,000 Irish arms? Does he mean 50,000 Irishmen? The point is obscure, as will be seen from the oratory of another distinguished patriot, who said, "Ten millions of Irish hearts are beating with high anticipation, ten millions of eyes are looking forward to the passing of the bill." A very large number of one-eyed Irishry. The _Irish Catholic_ makes a slip. The journal approves of Mr. Gladstone's closure, but with reference to the refusal of a newspaper to print a Dr. Laggan's letter about, something delivers itself thus:-- The application of the gag in polities has always been the resort of the stupid, incapable, and tyrannical politician. Whether tried in Russia, in France, or in England of old, it has invariably failed in its purpose. The stifling of the individual voice becomes of small advantage when the object-lesson of its possessor with a bandage across his mouth, and his hands tied behind his back, is presented to the populace. Just as the gag has failed elsewhere it is, we are glad to think, destined to fail in Ireland also, and, indeed, if it were not so destined, Ireland would be precisely the best country to live out of. So much for absent-mindedness. It is pleasant to be able to agree with the _Irish Catholic_ for once. On the whole, the confusion is deepening. The Grand Juries of Ireland are passing unanimous resolutions condemning the bill. The Nationalist party condemns the bill. The Scottish Covenanters, who have not delivered a political pronouncement for more than two hundred years, and who never vote either way, have risen in their might and cursed the bill, smiting the Papists hip and thigh with great slaughter, and denouncing the movement as purely in the interests of Romanist ascendency. Be it understood that these religionists live in Ireland and date their malediction from Coleraine. But nothing will stop the G.O.M.'s gallop over the precipice. Let him go, but let him not drag the country after him. And in after years his Administration will be described in words like those of Burke, who, speaking of the Gladstone of his day, said, "He made an Administration so checked and speckled, he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed, a cabinet so variously inlaid, such a piece of diversified mosaic, such a tesselated pavement without cement, that it was indeed a curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand upon. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards, stared at each other, and were obliged to ask, 'Sir, your name?' 'Sir, you have the advantage of me. Mr. Such-a-one, I beg a thousand pardons.' I venture to say that persons were there who had never spoken to each other in their lives until they found themselves together they knew not how, pigging together heads and points in the same truckle bed." This is prophecy. Have you heard that Mr. Balfour, who went through Ireland without an escort, is unable to move about England without the protection of a hundred and fifty mounted police to save him from English Home Rulers who are burning to avenge the wrongs of Ireland? No? England is badly served in the matter of news. They manage these things better in Ireland. A leading Dublin Nationalist print has a number of prominent headlines referring to the "facts." "The Arch-Coercionist Protected by Police. Caught in His Own Trap." The writer even goes into particulars and tells how "effusively" the ex-Secretary thanked the police for protecting his "frail personality." The Irish moonlight patriots are gratified. Balfour was their aversion. During his reign it could no longer be said that the safest place in Ireland, the one spot where no harm could befall you, was the criminal dock. Balfour stamped out midnight villainy, and helped the industrious poor. Wherefore he is honoured by honest Irishmen and hated by all rascalry. Ireland needs him again with his _suaviter in modo, fortiter in re_; his fairness and firmness, his hatred of tyranny, his determination to do right though the heavens should fall. With Balfour in office the Irish agitators have hard work to keep the broil agoing. They hate him because of the integrity which won the confidence of the Irish people, and because of the substantial benefit arising from his rule, a benefit there was no denying because it was seen and known of all men. The return of Balfour to power threatens to cut the ground from under the feet of those who live by agitation. They dread him above everything. They are horror-stricken at the prospect of a return to his light railways and heavy sentences. Hence this attempt to damage his prestige. Unhappy Mr. Balfour! To be protected by one hundred and fifty mounted police, and not to know of it! And the venal English press which conceals the fact, what shall be said of it? Where would England be but for Irish newspaper enterprise? Strabane, July 22nd. No. 52.--HOW THE PRIESTS CONTROL THE PEOPLE. This is a terribly Protestant place. The people are unpatriotic and do not want Home Rule. They speak of the Nationalist members with contempt, and say they would rather be represented by gentlemen. They are very incredulous, and refuse to believe in the honesty of "honest" John Dillon. They say that Davitt is a humbug and Healy a blackguard. They speak of O'Brien's breeches without weeping, and opine that Davitt's imprisonments and Healy's horse-whipping served them both right. These misguided Irishmen affect to believe that the English laws are good, that Ireland is a splendid country, and that things would be far better as they are. Raphoe is on the road to nowhere, and yet it runs a rattling tweed mill--the proprietor is a Unionist, of course. Queer it is to see this flourishing affair in the wilds of Donegal. Blankets, travelling rugs, and tweed for both sexes, of excellent quality and pretty patterns. Raphoe has a cathedral, but without features of note. The bishop's palace is in ruins. In 1835 the bishopric was annexed to Derry. The police of this district are sad at heart. There are but few of them, very few indeed, and they have no work to do. These Protestant districts afford no pleasurable excitement. Work, work, work, without any intervals of moonlighting and landlord shooting. These Saxon settlers have no imagination. Like mill horses, they move in one everlasting round, unvaried even by a modicum of brigandage. An occasional murder, a small suspicion of arson, might relieve the wearisome monotony of their prosaic existence, but they lack the poetic instinct. They have not the sporting tastes of their Keltic countrymen. They are not ashamed of this, but even glory in it. An Orangeman asked me to quote a case of shooting from behind a wall by any of his order. He says no such thing ever took place, and actually boasted of it! He declared that if the body had in future any shooting to do they would do it in the open. The Nationalist patriots are more advanced. They know a trick worth two of that. The Protestant party have no experience in premeditated murder, and must take a back seat as authorities in the matter. They have not yet discovered that shooting from behind a wall is comparatively safe, and safety is a paramount consideration. Landlords and agents carry rifles, and should they be missed unpleasant results might ensue. The case of Smith, quoted in a Mayo letter, shows the danger of missing. It is not well to place the lives of experienced and valuable murderers at the mercy of a worthless agent. The Nationalist party cannot afford to expose to danger the priceless ruffians whose efforts have converted Mr. Gladstone and his Tail. The patriots need every man who can shoot, and the stone walls of Ireland are a clear dispensation of Providence. To shoot in the open is a flying in the face of natural laws. The patriots are wedded to the walls, or, as they call them in Ireland, ditches. The "back iv a ditch" is a proverbial expression for the coign of vantage assumed for the slaying of your enemy. Like General Jackson, the Irish are Stone-wallers, but in another sense. They have brought the Art of Murder with Safety to its highest pitch of perfection. They are the leading exponents of mural musketry. A moderate Unionist said:--"To speak of tolerance in the same breath with Irish Roman Catholicism is simply nonsense. You will not find any believers in this theory among the Protestants of this district, although being more numerous they are not so much alarmed as the unfortunate residents in Romanist centres. We cannot believe anything so entirely opposed to the evidence of our senses. A Protestant farmer of my acquaintance, the only Protestant on a certain estate, has confided to me his intention of leaving the district should the bill pass, because he thinks he could not afterwards live comfortably among his old neighbours. A woman who had occupied the position of servant in a Protestant family for forty years, recently went to her mistress with tears in her eyes, and said her clergy had ordered her to leave, as further continuance in the situation would be dangerous to her eternal interests. A girl who had been four years in another situation has also left on the same plea. The progress of Romanism is distinctly towards intolerance. It becomes narrower and narrower as time goes on. This is proved by the fact that formerly dispensations were granted for mixed marriages--that is, Catholic and Protestant--on the understanding that the children should be brought up, the boys in the father's faith, the girls in the mother's. All that is now changed, and dispensations are only granted on condition that all the children shall be Roman Catholics. The absolute despotism of the Catholic clergy is every year becoming more marked. They rule with a rod of iron. A bailiff of my acquaintance who had paid all his clerical dues, was very badly treated because he was a bailiff and for no other earthly reason. No priest in Ireland would perform the marriage ceremony for his daughter, who actually went to America to be married. She was compelled to this, the bridegroom going out in another boat. The ceremony being performed, they returned to Ireland, and the girl's father assures me that the affair cost him fifty pounds. The case of Mrs. Taylor, of Ballinamore, was a very cruel one, which a word from the priest of the district would have altogether prevented. But that word was not spoken, for she was a Protestant. Her brother had discharged a cotter, I do not know whether justly or unjustly, but although Mrs. Taylor had nothing whatever to do with the affair--and it was not asserted that she had--she was severely boycotted. The brother, who was the guilty party, if anybody was guilty, was rather out of the way, and being a substantial farmer, quite able to hold his own, could not be got at. But Mrs. Taylor was a widow, and lived by running a corn mill. Nobody went near it, nobody would have anything to do with the widow, who, however, struggled on, until the mill was burnt to the ground. She was compensated by the County, and rebuilt the mill. This spring it was again burnt down, and she is ruined. Her property is now in the Receiver's hands, and she is going through the Bankruptcy Court. "The Home Rule Bill has produced, with much that is tragic, some comical effects. Since the passing of the Second Reading our servant has become unmanageable. She is evidently affected in the same way as many of the most ignorant Papists, believing that the time will soon come when, by the operation of the new Act, she will so far rise in the social scale as to be quite independent of her situation. This kind of thing is visible all around. There is work for everyone about here, but the farmers cannot get labourers. In many parts of Ireland the cry is 'There is no employment,' but here it is not so. There is plenty of work at good wages, waiting to be done, but men cannot be got to do it. The Sion Mills, which employ twelve hundred people, eight hundred Catholics and four hundred Protestants, would employ many more if they could be had. The labourers of this district are Catholic, and they prefer to stand loafing about to the performance of regular work. They believe that a perpetual holiday is coming, and that they may as well have a foretaste of the ease which is to come. Up to the times of the Home Rule Bill they were industrious enough. The Catholics of Tyrone and Donegal are not like those of the South and West. They are very superior, both in cleanliness and industry. Having for so long mingled with the Saxon settlers of the North, they have imbibed some of their industrial spirit, and until lately there was no reasonable ground of complaint. Their morale is unhappily now sadly shaken, and whether the bill passes or not it will be long, very long, before they resume their industrial pursuits with the energy and regularity of men who have nothing on which to depend but their own exertions. And whatever happens to the bill, the country will be the poorer for its introduction. Ireland is now an excellent country to live out of, and those who can leave it have the most enviable lot." A man of few words said:--"Under Home Rule the landlords may take their hook at once. Their property will disappear instanter. The tenant has already more lien on the land than the fee-simple _in toto_ is worth, and with a Nationalist Parliament he would pay no rent at all. The judges would not grant processes, and if they did their warrants could not be enforced. The destruction of the landlord class means the destruction of English influence in Ireland. A short time ago two men were talking together. One was doubtful, and said, 'Michael Davitt says we must have only five acres of land. Now you have twenty-five acres, you'll lose twenty.' 'Ye didn't read it right,' said the other. ''Tis the landlords and them that holds a thousand and two thousand acres that'll be dispossessed, and their land divided among the people. In six years we'll have the counthry independent, and then we'll do as we like. Every Saxon will be cleared out of the counthry. Only keep yer tongue between yer teeth. Be quiet and wait a bit till ye see what happens.' "'But,' said the objector, 'them Ulster fellows'll give us no peace. They have arms, and I'm towld they have a lot of sojers among them, and that they're drilled, and have officers, regular military officers. Sure, how would we do as we liked, wid an army of them fellows agin us? And they're devils to fight, they say.' "'Arrah now, sure, ye're mighty ignorant, thin. Sure, they say they'll not pay taxes. Thin the sojers comes in and shoots them down, and you and I stands by wid our tongues in our cheeks. 'Tis no consarn of ours. We have nothin' to say to it, one way or another. The Orangemen can shoot the troops, and the troops can shoot the Orangemen, and they can murdher each other to their heart's contint, and fight like Kilkenny cats, till there's nothin' left but the tail. And good enough for the likes of them. Sure, twill be great divarshun for them that looks on. And that's the way of it, d'ye mind me?'" This worthy politician must have been a perfect Machiavelli. His favourite saying was doubtless 'A plague on both your houses,' and with equal certainty his favourite quotation the bardic 'Whether Roderigo kill Cassio, or Cassio kill Roderigo, or each kill the other, every way makes my gain.' His theory of Nationalist progress was four-square and complete, and showed a neat dovetailing of means with the end. There is some justification for his simple faith. He has seen Mr. Gladstone and his supporters, converted _en bloc_, including the great Sir William Harcourt, styled by the Parnellite sheet "the new-born, emancipator of Ireland," the unambitious and retiring Labouchere, the potent Cunninghame Graham, the profound Conybeare, and the pertinacious Cobb--he has seen these great luminaries throwing in their lot with the sworn enemies of England, and doing all that in them lies to disintegrate and destroy the Empire, and the rude peasant may be pardoned for expecting that the British army will, at his call, complete what these worthies have so well begun. To narrow loyalist liberties, to tax loyalist industry, to create a loyalist rebellion, and to have the loyalists shot by other loyalists is an excellent all-round scheme. This is indeed a high-souled patriotism. Continuing, my friend said:--"A Romanist neighbour of mine had promised to vote for Lord Frederick Hamilton, for, as he said, he had no confidence in any Irish Parliament. Just before the battle he called and said he must vote the other way, for Father Somebody had called on him and said, 'I hear you are going to vote for Lord Frederick Hamilton.' Admitted. 'Then you may call in Lord Frederick Hamilton to visit you on your death-bed. You can get him to administer the Sacraments of the Church.' 'What could I do?' said the farmer. 'I couldn't go against the priest. I could not incur the anger of my clergy without imperilling my immortal soul. Besides that, I'd be made a mark and a mock of. Perhaps I'd be refused admission to Mass, like the men in South Meath who voted contrary to the orders of the priest. So to save my soul I'll have to vote against my conscience. No use in telling me we will vote by ballot. Them priests knows everything. They fix themselves in the polling booths, and they can read what way ye went in your face. Sure, they know us all inside and out, since we were So high. We couldn't desave them.' Then they always act as personation agents, and they order people who can read and write to say they can't do either. So they have to declare aloud whom they will vote for, and the priest hears for himself. This is the true explanation of the fearful illiteracy of Donegal, as revealed by the voting papers. Is it likely that in one quarter of Donegal--that is, in one-fourth part of one county--there should be more illiterates than in the whole of Scotland? Yet according to the election returns, it was even so. The fact that the people declared themselves illiterate at the orders of the priest, when they were not illiterate, shows how degraded are the people, and how completely they are under the thumb of the priests." A Protestant clergyman on his holidays, and not belonging to these parts, was very eloquent on the subject of political popery. In all my journeyings I have never interviewed a Protestant parson, save and except Dr. Kane, whom I met in the Royal Avenue, Belfast, along with the Marquess of Londonderry and Colonel Saunderson, as recorded in an early letter. I was disposed to believe that the English public might regard their evidence as being prejudiced, and therefore of little value. But my Raphoe acquaintance was a singularly modest and moderate man, upon whose opinion you at once felt you could rely. He said:--"My Catholic neighbours were friends until lately. Nobody could have been more kind and obliging. There was no sensible difference between us, except that they did not come to church. They would do anything for me and my family; we would do anything for them. Lately they have changed their manner. They have grown cold. Their children playing with mine have let out the secret. Through them we learn that the days of the Protestants are numbered. Father says this, and mother says that. My land is disposed of among my Papist neighbours. All my congregation have similar experiences. This makes things very unpleasant, and nothing can ever bring back the kind, neighbourly feeling of old. The Papist clergy are the cause of it all. Their church is nothing if not absolute, and dominancy is their aim. The Protestant party will get no quarter. I do not say we shall be murdered, or even personally maltreated. But when the large majority of a district want to see the back of you, with the idea of dividing your farm or your Church lands, they have many ways of making things so unpleasant that you would soon be glad to go. For my own part, I should endeavour to leave the country at the earliest possible moment. And that is what 999 Protestants out of 1,000 would tell you. The clergy are inimical to England. Here and there you find a Conservative, and, strange to say, the scholarly men, what you might call the gentlemanly party, are against Home Rule. These, unhappily, are very few. The Maynooth men are violently against England." This cleric called attention to the opinion of Dr. Wylie, of Edinburgh, who has made a special study of the matter. The learned professor says the more palpable decadence of Ireland dates from the erection of Maynooth. Before the institution of this school the Irish priests were educated in France, then the least ultramontane country in popish Europe. They could not be there without imbibing a certain portion of the spirit of "Gallican liberties." It was argued that by educating them at home, we should have a class of priests more national and more attached to British rule; at least we would have gentlemen and scholars, who would humanise their flocks. These have since been shown to be miserable sophisms. "Maynooth is a thoroughly ultramontane school. We have exchanged the French-bred priest, illread in Dens, with low notions of the supremacy, and proportionally high notions of the British Crown, for a race of crafty, Jesuitical, intriguing, thorough-trained priests of the ultramontane school, who recognise but one power in the world--the Pontifical--and who are incurably alienated from British interests and rule. The loud and fearful curses fulminated from the altar, which come rolling across the Channel, mingled with the wrathful howls of a priest-ridden and maddened people, proclaim the result. These are your Maynooth scholars and gentlemen! These are your pious flocks, tended and fed by the lettered priests of Maynooth! Better had we flung our money into the sea, than sent it across the Channel, to be a curse in the first place to Ireland, and a curse in the second place to ourselves, by the demoralising and anti-national sentiments it has been employed to propagate. The better a priest, the worse a citizen. And whom have Government found their bitterest enemies? Who are the parties who have invariably withstood all their plans for civilising Ireland? Why, those very priests whom they have clothed, and educated, and fed." Such, according to an expert, are the men who now manipulate the voting powers of the Irish people. The priests do not deny that they have this full control; they merely say they have a right to it. Bishop Walsh, of Dublin, says that as priests, and independent of all human organisations, they have an inalienable and indisputable right to guide the people in this momentous proceeding, as in every other proceeding where the interests of Catholicity as well as the interests of Irish nationality are involved. He suggested, and the suggestion was adopted, that at all the political conventions held in the various Irish counties an ex-officio vote should be given to the priests! This embodied the principle that if Home Rule became law the Irish priesthood would have privileges which would make them absolute rulers of Ireland. Cardinal Logue says:--"We are face to face at the present moment with a great disobedience to ecclesiastical authority." This was in view of the Parnellite rebellion against priestly dictation. "The doctrines of the present day," said the good Cardinal, "are calculated (horror!) to wean the people from the priests' advice, to separate the priests from the people, and (here the Cardinal must have shivered with unspeakable disgust) TO LET THE PEOPLE USE THEIR OWN JUDGMENT." These are Cardinal's words, not mine. To make any comment would be to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume o'er the violet. Well might Mr. Gladstone say nineteen years ago:--"It is the peculiarity of Roman theology, that by thrusting itself into the temporal domain, it naturally, and even necessarily, comes to be a frequent theme of political discussion." Archbishop Croke was the inspirer of the Tipperary troubles, worked out by his tools, Dillon, O'Brien, and Humphreys. Dr. Croke helped to found the Gaelic Athletic Association, which is well-known to be the nucleus of a rebel army. Dr. Croke gave £5 to the Manchester Murderers' Memorial Fund, and accompanied the gift with a letter stating that the men who murdered Police-sergeant Brett were "wrongfully arrested, unfairly tried, barbarously executed, and went like heroes to their doom." It was Dr. Croke who supported a movement to raise a pension for James Stephens, the Fenian Head-centre, the famous Number One, the general of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. We are asked to believe that this gentleman and his crew of subordinate clergy are eminently loyal, and that the moment a Home Rule Bill puts it into their power to injure England, from that very moment they will become friendly indeed, will cease to do evil and learn to do well, and that the altars from which England is now every Sunday hotly denounced will in future vibrate with the resonant expression of sacerdotal affection. These gentlemen must have a wonderful opinion of the gullibility of the great Saxon race. But as they see a certain portion believe in Mr. Gladstone they may expect them to believe in anything. To swallow the G.O.M. plus Harcourt, Healy, Conybeare, Cobb, O'Brien, and the Home Rule Bill is indeed a wonderful feat of deglutition. Raphoe, (Co. Donegal), July 25th. No. 53.--WHAT THEY THINK IN COUNTY DONEGAL. The Stranorlar people can be excessively funny. In a well-known public resort yesterday I witnessed a specimen of their sportive style. A young fellow was complaining that the examining doctor of some recruiting station had refused him "by raison of my feet." "I heerd tell they wouldn't take men wid more than fifteen inches of foot on thim," remarked a bystander. "The Queen couldn't shtand the expinse at all at all in leather." "Arrah, now, will ye be aisy," said another. "Sure, Micky isn't all out so bad as Tim Gallagher over there beyant, that has to get up an' go downstairs afore he can tur-rn round in bed. An' all on account iv the size iv his feet. 'Tis thrue what I spake, divil a lie I tell ye. The boy has to get up and go down shtairs, an' go into the sthreet, an' come up the other way afore he can tur-rn round, the crathur." "Hould yer whist, now, till I tell ye," said another. "Ye know Kerrigan's whiskey-shop. Well, one day Kerrigan was standin' chattin' wid his wife, when the shop-windy all at once wint dark, an' Kerrigan roars out, 'What for are ye puttin' up the shutters so airly?' says he. An' faix, 'twas no wondher ye'd think it, for ould Hennessy of Ballybofey had fallen down in the street, an' it was the two good-lookin' feet of him stickin' up that was darkenin' the shop. Ax Kerrigan himself av it wasn't." A roar of laughter followed this sally, and the rejected recruit was comforted. Stranorlar is pleasantly situated on the river Finn, in a fertile valley surrounded by an amphitheatre of green hills, beyond which may in some direction be seen the more imposing summits of the Donegal highlands. The walk to Meenglas, Lord Lifford's Irish residence, would be considered of wonderful beauty if its extensive views were visible anywhere near Birmingham; but in Ireland, where lovely scenery is so uncommonly common, you hardly give it a second glance. The tenantry are mostly Nationalist, if they can be said to be anything at all. They one and all speak highly of Lord Lifford, whose kindness and long-suffering are administered _con amore_ by genial Captain Baillie. They have no opinions on Home Rule or, indeed, on any other political subject, and will agree with anything the stranger may wish. Whatever you profess as your own opinion is certain to be theirs, and like Artemus Ward they might conclude their letters with "I don't know what your politics are, but I agree with them." Every man Jack of the Catholic peasantry votes as he is told by his priest, and no amount of argument, no amount of most convincing logic, no earthly power could make him do otherwise. He will agree with you, will swear all you say, will go further than you go yourself, will clinch every argument you offer in the most enthusiastic way. Then he will vote in the opposite direction. He thinks that in voting against the priest he would be voting against God, and his religion compels him to conscientiously vote against his conscience, if any. A burning and shining light among the Home Rulers of Stranorlar having been indicated, I contrived to meet him accidentally as it were, and after some preliminary remarks of a casual nature my friend informed me that he was agin Home Rule, as, in his opinion, it would desthroy the counthry; that the farmers believed they would get the land for nothing, and that they were told this by "priests and lawyers;" that he believed this to be a delusion from which the people would have a dreadful awakening; that Protestants were better off, cleaner, honester than Catholics; that they were much more industrious and far better farmers, and so forth, and so forth. This man is a red hot Nationalist, and was under the impression he was "having his leg pulled," hence his accommodating speech. When taxed with flagrant insincerity he only smiled, and tacitly admitted the soft impeachment. Farmers you meet in rural lanes will profess earnest Unionism, but--find out their religion--you need ask no more. Whatever they may say, whatever their alleged opinions may be, matters not a straw. They must and will vote as the priest tells them. So that the last franchise Act endows every priest with a thousand votes or so. Will anybody attempt to disprove this? Will any living Irishman venture to contradict this statement? The fact being admitted, Englishmen may be trusted to see its effect. Is there any class or trading interest which would be by working men entrusted with such enormous power? And these thousand-vote priests are unfriendly to England, as is proved by their own utterances and by innumerable overt acts. All of which merits consideration. The Stranorlar folks are warm politicians. At the present moment feeling runs particularly high, on account of the riot on King William's Day, to wit, July twelfth. Two Orangemen were returning from Castlefinn, a few miles away, where a demonstration had taken place, and passing through Stranorlar, accompanied by their sisters, they were set upon by the populace, and brutally maltreated. Several shots were fired, and some of the rioters were slightly wounded or rather grazed by snipe shot, but not so seriously as to stop their daily avocations. The Catholic party allege that the Orangemen assaulted the village in general, firing without provocation. The Protestant party say that this is absurd, and that it is not yet known who fired the shots. A second case, less serious, is also on the carpet. A solitary Orangeman returning from the same celebration is said to have been waylaid, beaten, and robbed by a number of men who went two miles to meet with him. This also is claimed as Orange rowdyism. A Protestant handicraftsman said:--"If we had a Catholic Parliament in Dublin we should not be able to put our head out of doors. Those who in England say otherwise are very ignorant. I have no patience with them. Only the other day I heard an Englishman who had been in the country six hours, all of which he had spent in a railway train, arguing against an Irish gentleman who has spent all his life in the country. 'Give 'em their civil rights,' says this English fellow. He could say nothing else. Give 'em their civil rights,' says he. 'What civil rights are they deprived of?' says the other. 'Give 'em their civil rights,' says he. That was all he could say. He was for all the world like a poll-parrot. He was one of these well-fed fellows, with about three inches of fat on his ribs and three inches of bone in his skull, and a power of sinse _outside_ his head. He turned round on me and asked me to agree with him. When I didn't he insulted me. 'I see by your hands,' says he, 'that you've been working with them, and not with your brains,' says he. Well, he was a man with a gray beard, but not a sign of gray hair on his head, so says I, 'Your beard,' says I, 'is twenty-five years younger than the rest of your hair, and it looks twenty-five years older.' I see,' says I, 'that _you_ have been working with your jaws and not with your brains.' That made him vexed. He didn't know what to say next, and 'twas well for him. He was too ignorant for this counthry, though he might do very well for them places where they vote for such men as Harcourt or the like of him. "The people of these parts are skinned alive by their religion. Not a hand's turn can be done without money. Money for christening, for confession, for everything from the cradle to the grave. And when they're dead the poor folks are still ruining the counthry, for their relatives run up and down begging money to get their souls out of purgatory. I have no objection to that; let them do it if they like, but let them not say they are poor because of England. The more money they pay the sooner their father's or mother's soul is out of torment. Of course they spend all they have. I was speaking with a priest lately, and I said, 'Suppose I fell into Finn-water, and a man who saw me drowning said, "I'll pull ye out for half-a-crown or a sovereign," what would ye think of him?' Says the priest, 'I'd think him a brute and a heathen.' 'But suppose, instead of Finn-water it was purgatory I was in, and the priest said, "I'll pull ye out for five pounds," what about him?' 'Good morning to ye,' says the sogarth aroon (dear priest). There was no answer for me." Another Stranorlar man said:--"When the bill passed the second reading, there was not a hill round about, for many a mile, without a blazing tar-barrel on it, and the houses were lit up till ye'd think the places were on fire. The people were rejoicing for they knew not what. Says one to me, 'Ye can pack up yer clothes,' says he. They think they will now get rid of the English, and have things all their own way. That's their general idea. All their rejoicing passed off without a word of dissent from any Unionist. But if we rejoiced--! Suppose the bill were thrown out, and we lit a tar-barrel. We'd be stoned, and, if possible, swept off the very face of the earth. On St. Patrick's Day, March 17, they march over the place, flags flying, drums beating, bands playing, and nobody says a word against it. But if we started an Orange procession on July 12 in Stranorlar, we'd be knocked into smithereens. And yet in the town we are about half-and-half. Of course, when you get out into the wild districts the Romanists greatly outnumber us. The plea of reduction of rent being required is very absurd when you come to examine the matter. Many of them pay three or four pounds a year only. What reduction on that sum would do them any real good?" A land agent of Donegal showed me one page of a rent book, that I might bear witness to indisputable facts. There were twenty-one annual rents on the page, and eleven of them were under two pounds--most of them, in fact, were under thirty shillings. One man held thirty-three acres for thirty-three shillings per annum. He had paid no rent for two years. Another estate in Donegal has two thousand tenants for a total rent of £2,800. The agent has to look after all these "farmers"--to conciliate, threaten, soother, bully, beg, pray, promise, cajole, hunt, treat, fight, curse, and comether the whole two thousand a whole year for, and in consideration of, the princely sum of a hundred and forty pounds. Many of the farmers have the privilege of selling turf enough to clear the rent several times over, and of course every man can shoot at the agent as much as he chooses, his sport in this direction being only limited by his supply of ammunition. Of late their powder has given out. Could not something be done for these deserving men? A superior Home Ruler, one of those honest visionaries sometimes met in Ireland, said:--"For my own part, I confess that I aspire to complete independence. Then, and not till then, would the two countries be friendly. We in Ulster are ten times more patriotic than Irishmen elsewhere, for it is in Ulster that we have been most deeply wronged. The Hamiltons of Abercorn planted the country round here with Scotch settlers, and various agencies between 1688 and 1715 are said to have brought over more than fifty thousand Scottish families to Ulster, which was already populated to its utmost extent. The Irish were dispossessed, kicked out, and they have been out ever since. The Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel took flight to save their heads, and six counties were declared confiscated--Londonderry, Donegal, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan, and Armagh. These were all 'planted' with English and Scotch colonists. The land was given to certain favourites by the English Government, which at that time was the stronger, and has remained so ever since When we ask for our own again you cry out 'Robbery, robbery!' _We_ are the people to say 'Stop thief!' You say the owners of the land rebelled, and their property was rightly confiscated. We say they had a right to rebel, and that rebellion was an honourable action. You took the country at first by force and fraud. We have, and always had, a right to regain what belongs to us, by any means in our power. We have never expressed affection for the English Crown. We have never affected loyalty. We have been open, honourable enemies, and have always said we were biding our time. We are accused of fraud, of duplicity. Never was any accusation so ill-founded. I can refer to a hundred, aye, to a thousand utterances of my countrymen which clearly set forth the sentiments which animate every single individual Irishman. These settlers are not Irishmen. Their best friends would never claim for them Irish nationality. Most of them came from the South-west of Scotland, where the most rigid and bigoted Presbyterianism flourished. Their creed, as well as ours, forbade any intermarrying. Separate they were, and separate they remain. You might as well try to mix dogs and cats. And the attitude of the two races is mutually antagonistic--exactly like dogs and cats. They have led a dog and cat life from the first, and if the Scots have thriven while the Kelts have made little progress, it is because the Scots have been favoured by the English Government, which is composed of Teutons like themselves. Let the Scots stick to England. It suits them, it does not suit us. The Welsh don't like you either, but they have not the pluck to spit it out. They will tell Irishmen what they think, and it is not flattering to England. They are quite as bitter as Irishmen, and, like them, look on England as the biggest humbug, hypocrite, and robber in the world. I never heard a Welshman speak well of England, and I have spoken with scores of them. Now, we have a religious difference with England, which Taffy has not. "We claim that our nation is more talented than stupid England, more sparkling, more brilliant. But we also say that as we are more sentimental, and as sentiment is to us a matter of life and death, we cannot develop our industries, we cannot do ourselves justice, while subjugated by England. Freedom is our watchword. We want an army, a navy, a diplomacy of our own. We do not admit that England has any right to control our action, and we defy any man to prove that any country has a right to dictate our laws. Independence must come in the long run. Everything is tending in that direction. We may not get Home Rule at present, but we _shall_ get it. Then we shall be able to report progress. I believe that the material prosperity of this country will increase by leaps and bounds in exact proportion to the loosening of Saxon restraint, and freedom from selfish English interference. Our trade has been deliberately strangled, our manufactures deliberately ruined, by English influence on behalf of English interests. Then you ask us to believe that we have benefited by our union with England! We do not believe it. England has been the greatest modern curse, spreading her octopus arms over every weak country in the world. She goes to make money, and says she only wishes to push forward civilisation. Read Labouchere's opinion of England, and you will see what she is--a greedy, whining hypocrite. She holds India by fear, at the point of the bayonet--all for greed. Then her speakers get up on their philanthropic platforms, and after shooting a few thousand niggers and poisoning off the rest with rum, they say that such and such a country is now under the blessed rule of England, which is established merely for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus. You make out that your rum, rifles, and missionaries are only instruments in the hands of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Away with such hypocrisy! England is a big bully, crushing the weak and truckling to the strong--truckling to the weak, even, when fairly taken to. Look at the Transvaal. When I see what a handful of Dutch farmers did with your grand army--when I see how a country with less than a quarter of the population of Ireland freed itself and knocked your bold army into a cocked hat, I am ashamed to be an Irishman submitting to foreign rule. You will at any rate see why we Irishmen in Ulster are even more rebellious than our southern countrymen. It is because these devilish plantations were in the North, and because we are outnumbered in the North by men who are really foreigners. Let them be loyal. No doubt it suits them best. But we will only be loyal to our country, which is Ireland, not England. And if these Scots, wrongly called Ulstermen, don't like the new arrangement, they can leave the country. No obstacle will be placed in the way of their departure. That I can promise you. They will leave the land, I suppose? That being so, we can spare the settlers. And as they got the land for nothing, they must be content to part with it on the same terms. Now you understand the No Rent cry. Now you understand the No Landlord cry. The land was stolen from the people, and the people carefully remember the fact. You hear Nationalists speaking ill of the Irish members. The members have done well for us. They have done grandly. Fourscore Irishmen have conquered the British Empire, and without firing a shot. That after all beats the record of the Boers, but they got complete independence. We are not yet there; but it will come, it will come." An equally intelligent Unionist, who bore a Scottish name, said:--"Does it suit England to throw us overboard? Because that means the giving up of the country. You can't hold Ireland without a friend in it. Twice the Protestant population have saved it for you. Its geographical position forbids you to give it up. That would ruin you at once. And yet immediate separation would be far better than a wasting agitation. Better plunge over a precipice than be bled to death. Better blow out your brains than be roasted at a slow fire. England is being kicked to death by spiders. And all in the interests of Rome. If the people here had any opinions I would not say a word against anything they might do, but they have none at all. They show their teeth because they are told to do so. All the disturbances which disgrace the country are excited by the priests, who pretend to disapprove of them, but who secretly approve. For the priests have the people thoroughly in hand, and whatever they really disapprove they can stop in one moment. "There is an organised clerical conspiracy to resist the law and to keep the agitation on foot, with the object of obtaining a complete Catholic ascendency. They bleed the poor people to death with their exactions, and the number of new buildings they have lately erected in Ireland almost exceeds belief. We have a splendid new Romanist Church in this little place. Well may the people say they can't pay rent. When Cardinal Logue's father died there was a collection for the general Church which realised more than eight hundred pounds. When a priest dies or when a priest's relative dies there is always a collection for the cause. Eight hundred pounds out of the starving peasantry of Donegal, for whose relief the English are always collecting money! Cardinal Logue's father was Lord Leitrim's coachman, and was on the spot when my lord was shot. The horse fell lame at the right moment. Curious coincidence--very. This Home Rule farce is growing rather stale. Cannot the English see that it is urged by a set of thieves and traitors? Cannot they see that brains and property are everywhere against it? And Gladstone's speeches show such ignorance of the subject that no Irishman can read or listen with common patience. To judge from his Irish orations I should say that he is not fit to be Prime Minister to a Parliament of idiots. What do you think?" I was sorry to dissent, but I said that to the best of my knowledge and belief Mr. Gladstone was of all men best fitted for such a post. Stranorlar (Co. Donegal), July 27th. No. 54.--A SAMPLE OF IRISH "LOYALTY." The country round here seems especially rich in minerals of all sorts. Bog-ore, to be spoken of as bog ore, is abundant, and manganese is known to exist in large quantities. Soapstone of excellent quality is also plentiful, and the peasantry will tell you that on the passing of the Home Rule Bill they will at once proceed to dig out the inexhaustible stores of gold, silver, lead, iron, tin, and coal, with which the district abounds. Ireland is a perfect El Dorado, and when the brutal Saxon shall have taken his foot off her throat, when Parlimint and the sojers allow the quarries to be worked, the mines to be sunk, the diamonds under Belfast to be dug up, the country will once more be prosperous, as in the owld ancient times, when the O'Briens and O'Connells cut each other's throats in peace, and harried their respective neighbourhoods without interference. Captain Ricky, of Mount Hall, is exploiting the bog-ore, and sending it to England by thousands of tons. The stuff is an oxide of iron and is used for purifying gas. The queerest feature of the use of bog-ore is the fact that when used up it is worth twenty-five per cent. more than before. Delivered to the gas companies at thirty shillings a ton, it fetches forty shillings when the gas-men have done with it. It seems to be composed of peat which by a few millions of years of saturation in water containing iron has become like iron-rust. The soapstone of Killygordon is used instead of fire-clay, and is also made into French chalk. Or rather it might be, but that the Captain declines to proceed with its extraction pending the Home Rule scare. There is much alder on the estate, which is watered by the river Finn. This is the right wood for the manufacture of clogs for the people of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Captain Ricky sends tons of these interesting articles to the sister isle. Men are turning out these favourite instruments of feminine correction, in a rough state, by boat loads. When the coster's done a-jumping on his mother, he should thank Ireland for his clogs. When the festive miner rejoices, his dancing would lack the distinguishing clatter which is its richest charm, without alder grown on the banks of the Donegal Finn. The countries were made to run in harness. One is the complement of the other. The brainy dwellers of Hibernia know this, and stick like limpets to England. Only the visionary, the lazy, the ne'er-do weels, the incompetent, the disorderly, the ignorant, the ambitious, want Home Rule. The contemners of law and order want to flourish and grow fat. The Healys and Sextons and all of that ilk know that while under an Irish Parliament their country would be ruined, yet that they themselves would pick up something in the general confusion, while Dillon, like Mrs. Gargery, could be ever on the rampage, carrying out his promises of dire revenge, and flourishing like a young bay tree. Nobody here rejoiced when the bill was reported amended. They are losing faith in its merits. Their simple faith received a severe shock after the return to power of the Three-acres-and-a-Cow Government. Then the Labourers' Dwellings Act proved a fraud. The peasantry asked the neighbouring landowners for an acre of ground and a new cottage. A neighbouring J.P. to-day told me that he had more than twenty applications from people who are now awaiting the gold mines, the great factories which the new Irish Government are about to open. If you would remain poor, vote for the Unionist candidate. If you would become rich beyond the dreams of avarice, if you would occupy the place of the Protestant landlords, if you would preserve your immortal soul from eternal flames, vote as instructed by Father Gilhooly. A patriot priest yesterday said that the Day of Independence would be the "Day of Ireland." He should have called it the _Dies Iræ_. A Scottish Covenanter, not of the straitest sect, has no faith in the Home Rule Bill. He said:--"The people up in the mountains, those who want Home Rule, or rather those who have voted for it and expect to benefit by it, are all of the class no Act of Parliament would ever help. They don't farm their land, and they don't want to farm it. Half of it lies to waste every year, and they cut turf which they get for nothing, and sell it in the small towns about for three or four shillings a load, instead of making the land produce all it will. Go to their houses at ten in the morning, and you will find them smoking over the fire. My people are up and at work by six o'clock every morning in the week. The Scots farmers round Strabane are that keen on getting on that you can't get them away from their work, which is their pleasure. They are so keen on making the most of the ground that they are doing away with the hedges, and substituting barbed wire, merely to gain the difference in area of ground to till. Look at yon brae-face. Every yard tilled right up to the top. The Papist peasantry would never do that. You want to know what's the reason? Goodness knows. All the Protestants round here have got on till they have farms. There are no Protestant labourers. If English working men, agricultural fellows, would settle in Ireland, they would soon get their Three acres and a cow. The people who can and will do the best with the land ought to have it, that's my theory. Ireland everywhere illustrates the principle of the survival of the fittest. The only way to succeed is by work. The Catholic Irish are so accustomed to leave everything to the priest that they have no self-reliance, and in worldly matters they always ask, who will help us? They are all beggars by nature. The Duchess of Marlborough and other kind but mistaken ladies have pauperised some districts of Donegal. The people have a natural indisposition to work, and a natural disposition to beg. As for loyalty and tolerance, they have none of either. You never saw industry without other virtues, you never saw laziness without other vices. These everlasting grumblers are a generation of vipers. They are a peevish and perverse set of lazy, skulking swindlers. They can pay. Every man could pay his rent and be comfortably off if he liked. The Protestant farmers pay and get along. And we agree that the landlords favour the other sect. They know that we will do the right thing, and they let us do it, but the Papists may do less--for less than the right thing is what the landlord expects from them. He thinks himself lucky if his Papist tenants come anyway near the mark. Therefore I say, and any Protestant will say, the Papists are favoured by the landlords." A staunch Conservative, though not a land-owner, said:--"We want amendment of the Parliamentary voting regulations. No clergyman should be allowed to sit in the Revision Court. Scandals without end could be cited to show the necessity of this. I would, of course, exclude all sects, though no Protestant preacher ever takes part directly or indirectly in any of our political meetings. When a man has to make oath as to the validity of his claim to the suffrage he will often look at the priest who sits watching him. He gets a nod, and he goes on with his swearing. The perjury of the Irish Revision Courts is something fearful, and no one pays any attention to it. The Papists swear just anything. They get absolved, but a Protestant has not this great advantage and that holds him back. That is the Papist explanation. In my presence the Home Rule inspector of this district--we call the people who watch and work the registers the inspectors--swore that James Kelly, of Cross Roads, Killygordon, was the present tenant, the holder of the license, and the freeholder of a public-house at the spot mentioned. Besides this he swore that the name James Kelly was on the signboard. He therefore proposed to poll a James Kelly. Now the person in question went to America in 1888, and never returned. His name was not on the signboard, and the license was for another person. The Judge declined to hear any further evidence from Inspector Francis McLaughlin. That was the only penalty enforced. Such things happen every day in Irish Revision Courts. "A man named James Burns put in a claim for a vote on behalf of land held at Stroangebbah. He had none there. What he had was at Aughkeely, and this was not sufficient to entitle him to vote. Yes, his name should be spelt Byrnes, but the Irish often prefer the Protestant form of the name. Well, nobody believed that he was the tenant of Stroangebbah; he was said to be a lodger only. The Judge asked him for proof. He presented a paper purporting to be a receipt for rent for Stroangebbah, but in reality the receipt was for the ground at Aughkeely, which did not qualify. He curled up the paper so as to show that his name was on it, and the Judge instantly passed his claim, and placed him on the roll. A young fellow named Robert Ewing at once exposed the trick, but the Judge declared that having placed Burns on the roll, he must remain there until next revision. Judge Keogh was his name. Yes, you would think an Irishman and a good Catholic would have seen through such a trumpery trick. "When an illiterate declares for whom he will vote, we sometimes have from twenty to thirty outsiders in the polling-booth. In England the Court is cleared, and even the policeman has to go outside. But in this favoured country any blackguard who likes to fill up a declaration of secrecy, and go before a magistrate, can be present at the whole of the proceedings. There is no secrecy for the illiterates. Any corner-boy, any ruffian, any blackguard in the district can come in and hear for whom men vote. These corner boys all get declarations in their fists, and they march in gangs from one booth to another. It's intimidation, no less. Get some M.P. to mention this as having taken place at Stranorlar. The people of whom I complain were not even voters. Anybody could be present. Ridiculous to talk of the ballot-box in Ireland. "The Morley magistrates are in many cases a disgrace to the country. We used to have an idea in these parts that a small publican could not legally sit on the Bench. James McGlinchy, J.P., is a small publican of Brockagh. Barring his trade, he's not so bad, as he can read and write. But if you saw the lists, and if you knew the men recommended----! Englishmen have no idea what low scoundrels have been placed on the Bench in this country. Imperfect education we do not so much mind when conjoined with character. O'Donnell is not a bad sort, but he couldn't write 'adjourned.' Two magistrates were needed, and nobody else arrived. Therefore the difficult word was necessary, and O'Donnell felt it was beyond him. He called up a policeman, and ordered him to do it. Whereat the county makes merry. There should be an education test. Can all the English magistrates spell 'adjourned'? You think so? That's very good. Not right that a man who can't spell 'adjourned' should give another man a spell of imprisonment." A Roman Catholic gentleman thus summed up the character of his particular neighbourhood:--"The upper classes of both sects are in every way equal. Among the lower classes I observe that the Protestants do as much work as they can, while the Papists do as little as they can. This accounts for the difference in their appearance and position. Then the Protestants are far better educated, and have arrived at the knowledge that everything that is good must be gained by exertion, and that there is for them at least no substitute. The others talk as if after the establishment of an Irish Parliament money would be found growing on the bushes. No one need try to change their opinion. When the time comes to vote they will vote as their priest tells them. Someone has said that the British Government might subsidise the Church, and so buy her off. It could not be done. The bishops want power. I do not agree with them, and I do not support or admit their claim to direct their flocks in political matters." The Marquess of Conyngham, whom I met at Strabane, said:--"The people of Donegal are pleasant, kind, and civil. Taking them all round, they are much more energetic than the Southerners, and we were making fair progress until these Home Rule Bills were brought in. The country was being opened up, and things were beginning to improve, when the bill came and blighted everything. Now the people are growing idle and discontented. They are all right when left alone. Everybody likes the Donegal peasants, and they deserve to be liked. Only leave them alone; that's what they want; and not Home Rule nor any other quackery." Strange things continue to happen in Ireland. This does not refer to the continuous cutting-off of cows' tails, the slitting of horses' tongues, and other similar expressions of impatience for the good time coming, but to some strange things that have happened in connection with agricultural affairs. Sir Samuel Hayes decided to abandon a farm which would not pay, although he had no rent to meet. He was his own landlord, but he did not work the farm. That was done by a bailiff, who, curiously enough, was the highest bidder for the land. He of all men should have known that if the farm would not pay expenses when there was no rent, it would not reward the man who had rent to pay. This reasoning proved fallacious. The farm which without rent proved a loss, in the same hands turned out when rent was charged a perfect gold-mine. In another case, a bailiff on leaving his employ expended on land the accumulated savings of his thrifty years, and--strange to say--his savings amounted to about three times the sum of his wages during his life's service. A man who, having a pound a week, can save three pounds, would in England be regarded as a prodigy. In Ireland such things happen every day. Particulars as to the cases hereinbefore-mentioned can be obtained from anybody in Killygordon, which is altogether a remarkable place--to say nothing of its name, which for obvious reasons has the misfortune to be unpleasant to the Grand Old Man. _Nomen, Omen?_ An octogenarian J.P. said:--"They talk of gold and silver mines, and lead and copper mines, and iron and quicksilver mines, but mining in Ireland cannot, as a rule, be made to pay. Everything exists in Ireland, but in such small quantities. The seams and veins are so small. Mr. Ritchie, of Belfast, spent several fortunes in mining for coal, iron, and other things. There was iron at Ballyshannon, but what was the good? It cost less to bring iron to England from Algiers. We had no railway to Donegal, fifteen miles away, and cartage was too expensive. So far from Home Rule doing us any good, it would be a cruel blow to the country, and especially to the poor. Employment would become very scarce, as everybody who had money invested in Ireland would be in haste to realise and get it away. There would be no new enterprises, although the poor folk say, "We'll get employment in big factories and mines." Where's the money to come from? From the Irish Parliament, they say. And where will they get it from? Oh, a Parliament always has money. All the money comes from Parliament, which, in fact, actually makes money. The English Parliament makes all the goold sovereigns, and when the Irish Parliament commences to manufacture goold sovereigns at Dublin, then Ireland must be rich. Did not Mr. Gladstone say there would be too much money? Did not he say that in Parliament? That's what the poorest and most ignorant people of Donegal say. The English Home Rulers, by their support of the movement are inflicting injury on the Irish poor. We want the country opening up with railways. The tourist district is unequalled in Europe. Good hotels now, but you reach them mostly by cars. Balfour was giving us rails. That one man in five years did more good to Ireland than all other agencies operating for the previous forty years. I have thought the thing out, and I can speak for that period with certainty. Why could not they let him alone? The blackguards of these parts still shout 'Hell to Balfour.' "Home Rule means to England a weakening, a loss of prestige, a new and a terrible danger. The _Independent_ says, 'When Ireland next fights England she will not fight alone?' Very true. There is a strong anti-English feeling among the lower American classes, who are largely Irish, who have votes, and by their votes can influence American policy. Let me point out the opinion of Lieutenant-Colonel Butler as recorded in 'The Great Lone Land.' Here it is:-- "You will be told that the hostility of the inhabitants of the United States is confined to one class, and that class, though numerically large, is politically insignificant. Do not believe it for one instant; the hostility to England is universal, it is more deep-rooted than any other feeling, it is an instinct and not a reason, and consequently possesses the dogged strength of unreasoning antipathy. I tell you, Mr. Bull, that were you pitted to-morrow against a race that had not one idea in kindred with your own, were you fighting a deadly struggle against a despotism the most galling on earth, were you engaged with an enemy whose grip was around your neck and whose foot was on your chest, that English-speaking cousin of yours over the Atlantic, whose language is your language, whose literature is your literature, whose civil code is begotten from your digests of law, would stir no hand, no foot, to save you, would gloat over your agony, would keep the ring while you were being knocked out of all semblance of motion and power, and would not be very far distant when the moment came to hold a feast of eagles over your vast, disjointed limbs. Make no mistake about it, and be not blinded by ties of kindred or belief." And, further, "You will find them the firm friend of the Russian, because that Russian is likely to become your enemy in Herat, in Cabul, in Kashgar, in Constantinople. Nay, even should any woman-killing Sepoy put you to sore strait by indiscriminate and ruthless slaughter, he will be your cousin's friend for the simple reason that he is your enemy." Without accepting the gallant Colonel's dictum, it is as well to bear it in mind. A pensive youth in Ballybofey was deeply engaged with a scrap of ballad literature, not by any means without literary merit. For and in consideration of a Saxon sixpence I became the proprietor of the lay, which is being circulated by thousands throughout Ireland. Those who uphold the reputation of their Irish allies for loyalty to the Queen, and friendship to the English nation, will, doubtless, find their convictions deepened and strengthened by the following sample verses addressed to intending recruits:-- Ye whose spirits will not bow In peace to parish tyrants longer, Ye who wear the villain brow, And ye who pine in hopeless hunger, Fools, without the brave man's faith, All slaves and starvelings who are willing To sell yourselves to shame and death, Accept the fatal Saxon shilling. Ere you from your mountains go To feel the scourge of foreign fever, Swear to serve the faithless foe Who lures you from your land for ever, Swear henceforth its tools to be To slaughter trained by ceaseless drilling, Honour, home, and liberty Abandoned for a Saxon shilling. Go--to find 'mid crime and toil The doom to which such guilt is hurried, Go--to leave on Indian soil Your bones to bleach, accursed, unburied, Go--to crush the just and brave Whose wrongs with wrath the world are filling, Go--to slay each brother slave, Or spurn the blood-stained Saxon Shilling. Irish hearts! why should you bleed, To swell the tide of English glory? Aiding despots in their need, Who've changed our green so oft to gory? None save those who wish to see The noblest killed, the meanest killing, And true hearts severed from the free, Will take again the Saxon Shilling. The British soldier is the meanest killing the noblest. The poet's name is Buggy. All this is very surprising. Painted by Paddy Mr. John Bull, J.P., will hardly recognise himself. Throughout the Nationalist literature he is represented as a liar, a coward, a bully, a hypocrite, a tyrant, and a robber. If he now consented to be made the instrument of persons whose ascertained opinions exactly harmonise with those enunciated above, the epithets of Fool and Idiot will doubtless be added to the list. And in this instance the evil speakers would be quite right. _Quod demonstrandum est._ Killygordon, July 29th. No. 55.--A TRULY PATRIOTIC PRIEST. The rhythmical rocking of the little engine of the West Donegal line running across from Killygordon seemed to say ceaselessly-- Here's a health to ye, Father O'Flynn, Slainthe (health), and slainthe, and slainthe agin-- Powerfullest pracher, an' tinderest tacher, An' kindliest crature in ould Donegal! Father O'Flynn must have been like a priest I met on Sunday, a Loyalist and a Conservative. Priests of the old school are becoming scarcer and scarcer every year, but one or two still exist. They do not "get on." It is understood that their political attitude forbids promotion. A priest who confesses to a respect for the Queen is not likely to be acceptable to the multitude. A priest who believes that the British laws are just and equitable, and that things would be better remaining as they are, is looked upon as a _lusus naturæ_. He said:--"I am a South of Ireland man, and was educated at Douai. I have no sympathy with the great bulk of the Maynooth men, who are mostly peasants and the sons of peasants. I do not think that the Maynooth course is sufficient in one generation to lift the sons to any great intellectual height above the besotted ignorance of the parents. I believe in heredity, and I say that most of my colleagues are only shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years. The low-bred men are now the dominant power. Instead of tranquillising the people, which I hold to be the duty of the clergy, they have done all they could to awaken and keep alive their most dangerous passions. And to rouse the Irish, especially the Southern Irish, is a matter of the greatest facility. I hold that the clergy by degenerating into mere political agents are strangely short-sighted. Their spiritual influence will in time be dangerously undermined, and in the long run they will take nothing by their motion. The Parnellite party will grow stronger and stronger, and the extreme party, the party of Revolution, which now lacks a leader, would on the passing of a Home Rule bill become the dominant power. That is a great and salient factor of which up to the present English politicians have taken no account. The party of Revolution is the party which under an Irish Parliament would be master of the situation. Leaders will not be lacking. But at present the party must from the necessity of the case be amorphous, and therefore, politically and as a power, practically non-existent. Pass the bill, and then you will see something. A new party, the party of Independence, or, as they will call it, of Freedom, will take shape and formidably influence events. The temptation to take the lead will be great. Independence and Separation will be a most popular cry. The present men must either join the swim or be denounced as traitors, and as Healy cannot now visit Dundalk without two hundred policemen to protect him, while William O'Brien was nearly torn to pieces at Cork--would, in fact, have been murdered but for the police--you may conceive what would be the state of things when we have a Revolutionary party and when the police were no longer under the fair and judicial control of the British Government. Pass the bill and look out for the Revolutionary party. They will have an immense backing in point of numbers. And numbers rule in Ireland, not intelligence. The bill will, of course, give nothing that the peasants expect. The fault will assuredly lie with John Bull. The expectations of the ignorant, that is, the great mass of the people, will be woefully disappointed. Who is to blame? they will ask. Numbers of politicians are waiting to tell them. Who but the brutal, greedy, selfish, perfidious Saxon? An agitation will succeed, compared with which the worst times of the Land League were preferable. I shudder to think of the chaos, the seething and weltering confusion of the time to come. The Irish people, the poor ignorants, will suffer most. And yet they are innocent in this matter. They have, indeed, been blamed with the excesses of a few of their number, but they are, if left to themselves, a most kindly and law-abiding people. The Donegal peasants are the best in the country. You will see poverty, but the degradation of filthiness and laziness is not nearly so marked as in the South and West, where the climate is warm, moist, enervating. "What, then, are my opinions, expressed in a concise form? I will tell you. They are what _you_ would call sound. They are the opinions of Balfour, of Lord Salisbury. I hold Mr. Balfour in profound esteem as a wise and sagacious administrator, a terror to evil-doers, and an encourager of those who do well. I have a real affection for Mr. Balfour, as for a great benefactor of my beloved country. For I love my country so well that I feel the keenest personal interest in her welfare. Perhaps I have a deeper affection for Ireland than even Tim Healy or Sexton or Harcourt or O'Brien. What do I think of Gladstone? I think him a scourge of Ireland, a curse, a destroyer far worse than Oliver Cromwell. A heaven-born statesman? Do his followers call him that? Well, I can only say that I hope and trust that heaven will not be blessed with any further family." A military officer resident in this region, an Irishman bred and born, said, "It's all a matter of religion. I was the other day reading Maxwell's account of the Irish rebellion of 1798, and I observed that although the Northern rebellion, which was the most dangerous, as being the best organised, was mainly led by Protestants, yet in other parts of Ireland, when a suspected person was captured by the rebels, the first question was, not are you in favour of the Irish Republic, but what is your religion? And the Protestants generally had their throats cut. The same thing would occur again, under similar circumstances. Religion would be the test. If a general state of lawlessness should at any time arise, the Protestants in lonely districts would not be safe from murder. Yes, I _do_ say it, and I stick to it. A very large number of outrages have been committed which would not have taken place but for the religion of the offending party. It is a virtue to lie to a heretic, to cheat him, to damage him, to keep him out of heaven if possible. Anybody who knows Catholic Ireland would agree with this most heartily. They believe that whosoever killeth heretics doeth God service. "Irish folks are better than the people of other nations, and also much worse. When they are good they are very good, and when they are bad they are very bad. They run to extremes in a way which cool-headed Britons do not understand. They are impulsive, and they jump to conclusions. Their great disadvantage is a crushing clerical influence. What's the use of thinking about anything when Father Pat does it for them? What's the use of listening to argument when you must in the end vote as Father Pat orders? "Englishmen have no idea what a splendid fellow the Irish peasant really is when his mind is not poisoned and his unfortunate ignorance exploited. I could give you instances of fidelity, affectionate self-sacrifice and devotion which would astonish you. Not isolated or sporadic cases, but arising from the average level of the Irish character. After considerable travel, and a painstaking study of the characteristics of various nations, I have come to the conclusion that, taking one consideration with another, I prefer Paddy, ignorant as he is. For after all his ignorance is not his own fault. He sees no newspapers except an occasional local sheet, which is almost certain to be a wretched, lying, priest-inspired rag. If he were seen looking at any other it would be bad for him. But newspapers are practically unknown in the agricultural districts. And men do not meet in crowds as in England. They have not the attrition which wears away the angularities. They live solitary among the mountains, or away in the fields, and they never hear lectures, have no Institutes, get no chance of improvement. The priest is their Clan Chieftain, their spiritual adviser, their temporal adviser, their newspaper, their only channel of superior information." At this point a tall, red-bearded man who was passing touched his hat to the Colonel, who said, "My gamekeeper. A fine, rough-coated Scotsman. Came over here a mad Gladstonian. Pinned his faith to the G.O.M. Followed him blindly, and owned he was content to do it. Get into conversation with him. Observe the change, the decided change in his opinions." Soon I had Velveteens in full cry. His opinions were indeed decided. Having admitted that they had boxed the compass during a six months' residence in this down-trodden country, he went on to say, "The only way ye could cure the discontent is to make no attempt at it. Then the agitation would stop. The people are the biggest fules I ever saw. Instead of returning a sound, advanced Radical like Emerson T. Herdman, a man who pays them thirty or forty thousand a year, and who spends all his money in their midst, the fules go and vote for a thing like Arthur O'Connor, who never was here but once, and who never did them the compliment of issuing an address. When Mr. Herdman came to Stranorlar the people stoned him and his friends. And yet nobody ever said, or could say, a word against the Herdmans, who are among the most popular people in Ireland, and who deserve the best that can be said of them. O'Connor costs these poor folks two hundred pounds a year. They raise it in the constituency. Mr. Herdman would have cost them nothing, and might have spent even more than he does at present. He has opened up the greatest industry in the North-west of Ireland, keeps a whole country-side going, and is an out-and-out Liberal. The greatest exertions were made to secure his return, and the Catholics promised to vote for him. He stumped the country, and left no stone unturned. The Nationalist candidate never came here till the last moment, and, as I said, issued no address. The people knew nothing of him, and had never heard of him. But they voted as the priests told them, and they would have voted for a stick. Ought such people to have the franchise? "What would I do to settle the Irish question? I've heard that somebody proposed sinking the country for twenty-four hours. That might do. Or you could withdraw the police and military, and in every market town open a depôt for the gratuitous distribution of arms and ammunition. In ten days there would only be a very small population, and you could then plant the country with people who would make the best of it, and mind their work, instead of spending their time standing about waiting for Home Rule to make them rich without work. Or you could make a law which required every priest in the country to clear out in twenty-four hours, on penalty of death. That is as impossible as sinking the island, but it would be quite as sure a cure. Those are my opinions, and those must be the opinions of every man who has lived here and looked about him for a reasonable length of time. The Scots Gladstonians are very decent folk. They mean well, and they are friendly to Ireland. Their only fault lies in following their hero, and in thinking that he cannot do wrong. If they knew what I know, they would be of my mind. For I was as great a Gladstonian as any of them." A Presbyterian farmer said:--"On this estate the whole of the tenants are Presbyterians. The agent told me that early in June the whole of the rents up to May were paid, and that he would think that there was not such another case in Ireland. How is that? Well, if the tenants had been Romanists they would have so many things to pay. The priests live like fighting cocks. Father McFadden, of Gweedore, makes from a thousand to fifteen hundred a year. That is the man on whose door-step Inspector Martin was murdered. The crowd beat out his brains with palings, and when he tried to get into the priest's house, the door was shut in his face. The clergy live well, and drink like troopers. The easiest job in Ireland, and--if your conscience would allow it--the best in every way. You are treated with great respect, you have great influence, you have nothing to do, and you are extremely well paid for it. Sometimes I think that humbug pays better than hard work. The priests do _not_ look after the poor. They do _not_ work among the destitute and ignorant after the fashion of the English clergy. They are always extracting, extracting, extracting. The poor are ground down by their exactions till they can't pay their rent. And that is why the agent said that probably no other estate in Ireland could show such a record as ours. "Home Rule will not satisfy the people. An Irish Parliament will do them no good, no, nor fifty Irish Parliaments. They are unfriendly to England because she is Protestant. People of the only true faith cannot bear to be governed by a heretic nation. The laws are all right, and they know it, but their animosity is excited by stories of wrong-doing in their forefathers' days, and while on the one hand they feel that they might easily be better off, on the other they are told that the brutal Saxon keeps them poor. All this is done by the priests. They actually admit that the English laws are excellent, but then they fall back on the allegation that their administration is corrupt. In vain you point to the Roman Catholic judges. In vain you go over England's successive attempts to pacify Ireland by conciliatory measures. The priest ruins all, for while your friend seems to agree with you--they are so easily led--yet the priest will secure his vote to a certainty. So long as a heretic power is at the head, so long Ireland will be discontented. If the country were under the rule of a Roman Catholic power, the people of Ireland would be satisfied with any laws whatever. They would not grumble at anything. The only alternative is the spread of education, and that goes on very slowly in Ireland. We are very, very backward in Donegal, but not nearly so bad as in the south and west. We have a bad name for poverty and ignorance, but we do not deserve it in the same degree as the Munster and Connaught folks. We dislike the Connaught people just as much as you do in England. We hate dirt, and lawlessness and disorder, and therefore we claim to be superior to the rest of the poor counties. This is, of course, the civilised part of Donegal. But wherever you go, you see nothing like the dirt of counties Galway and Mayo. "We want railways to open up the country. Balfour was building them for us, and his institution of the Congested Districts Board did wonderful things for us. Why, if he had done nothing but improve the breed of fowls he would still have been worthy of remembrance as a benefactor of this country. Before the Congested Board Committee introduced superior breeds of fowls, the chickens were like blackbirds. You could sit down and eat half-a-dozen of them. They were no bigger than your thumb. But now we can get fowls equal to anything you have in England. The same may be said of the horses, the pigs, the cows, and all kinds of domestic animals and poultry. The fishing industry has saved whole districts from starvation, and has done good all round. When we get an Irish Parliament the grants for all these purposes will be discontinued, and the tide of progress will be checked. The poor folks are quite unable to see that by sticking to England we have a wealthy neighbour to borrow from, and that this is an inestimable advantage to a poor country like Ireland. Not long ago I mentioned this to a priest, but he said, 'When we have a Parliament of our own we'll not need to borrow money, for we'll have more than we know what to do with. Did not Mr. Gladstone say we should have a chronic plethora of money? John Bull certainly sends some money over here, but he had it from here to begin with. He stole it from Ireland, and he is only like a thief whose conscience urges him to restore a portion, a very small portion, of the stolen goods. When we get Independence--he used the word Independence--we shall be in a position to lend money instead of needing to borrow!' The person who said all this is the most influential politician of this district. His word to his flock is law. Not one of them dare for his life vote otherwise than as he tells them. They do not think this a hardship. They have no political convictions, and would just as soon vote any one way as any other." A Donegal Home Ruler said that the poor folks were quite right in following the priests, and wanted to know if they would be right in following the Tories. He said:--"They are no more ignorant than the British working men, and not less independent. Don't the working classes follow their leaders, voting in heaps, just as they are told, without any notion of the Empire's greatness, and entirely with a view to their own interests? Could anybody be more stupid, more totally incapable of giving a valid reason for his action than your vaunted British workman? Why, if the specimens we get over here are any guide, if the samples are anything like the bulk, you might as well poll a flock of sheep as a crowd of British working men. I say the Irish peasantry are superior in intellect, conduct, and chayracther, and that in following the priest they are acting as reasonable as your British working-man, who follows his strike leaders and trade agitators, and is perpetually cutting off his nose to spite his face. No, we shall not get Home Rule now, but we must have it later on. Then we shall demand more. Every time we have to ask we shall want more and more. We shall wring it from England, and we shall make her pay for the trouble she gives. She must be charged a sort of war indemnity." The Dundalk press is on my track. I heard of this in Newry, but the Dundalk papers do not reach the next town to Dundalk, and not a sheet could be had for love or money. A friend having told me that the _Gazette_ was reviled, great efforts were made to obtain the reviling print, but in vain. At last I saw the _Dundalk Democrat_, which in a two-column comment on its colleague's maledictions of your humble commissioner cleared me of the charges brought by the original thunderer, which I have not yet been able to see. One of the said charges is based on the statement that I asked to be allowed to be present at the meeting, which permission was readily accorded. The meeting was public and was placarded from one end of Dundalk to the other. The public were invited to assemble in their thousands, and to join in the onward march to freedom. Not more than twenty people answered to the call, and the meeting was therefore a dead failure. The idea of asking leave to be present at a public meeting is absurd. The vituperative print says that I was _not_ asked to deliver an address, but was told that I could "do so if I liked." The truth is manifest by the admitted fact that I declined, as being no speaker. Such is the minute hair-splitting of Irish argumentation. The quips and cranks of Tipperary Humphreys will be remembered, the paltry quibbles by which he sought to establish a case, and his final retreat under cover of the statement that he could not have believed that "such a state of things was possible." The Dundalk marchers to freedom (to the number of twenty) were not precisely the pick of the local respectability, and my escape must be regarded as providential. As to their outpourings of abuse, my philosophy resembles that of the old whipper-in of the Meynell-Ingram Hounds:--"I bain't a cruel chap, I bain't. But when I puts the lash among the hounds I _dew_ like to hear 'em yowl; I _dew_ like to see 'em skip, and writhe, and look mad. For if ye don't make 'em feel, and if ye can't hear 'em yowl, there's railly no pleasure in thrashin' of 'em." Donegal, August 1st. No. 56.--DO-NOTHING DONEGAL. Donegal improves on acquaintance. At first dull, dreary, and disappointing, a more extended examination reveals much that is interesting. The river Eske runs through the town, rippling over a rocky bed of limestone like the Dee at Llangollen. Mountains arise on every hand, some in the foreground, green and pleasant, backed by sterile ranges having serrated summits, dark and frowning. The harbour has an old-world look, with its quaint fishing boats and groves of trees running down to the water's edge. The land is decidedly humpy, and the sea meanders among the meadows in long fillets like trout brooks, sometimes tapering off to narrow ditches over which you can easily step at highest tide. The land is fertile, mostly grazing, and the cattle are of large and superior breed. The country is well wooded, and the hedgerows are tall and well-kept. The ancient abbey, like Mr. Gladstone's reputation, is in ruins. There is a ruined castle on the river bank, and on the other side, exactly opposite, a Methodist church, bearing the legend, ALL ARE WELCOME. The principal "square" is triangular, and has some good shops, which do most of their business on market-days. An enormous anchor, half embedded in the mud of the harbour, was left there by the French fleet during "the throubles of the ruction." It is rather in the way, but three generations of Irishmen have not found time to remove it. "Like ourselves and our counthry it will stick in the mud until the end of time," said a native. There is much lounging at corners by men who are probably waiting for the Home Rule Bill, but the people compare favourably with those of the South and West. They have more grit, more industry, more perseverance. They are simple, civil, and obliging. They are also cleaner and more tidy than the Southerners, though decidedly poorer. "They get no price for their produce, no reasonable wages for their industry. Their patience and contentment are surprising, considering their circumstances. You can get work done for twopence a day. The Southerners get thrice the money for their farm produce. We have no ready means of getting things on the market. I have thirty tons of hay to sell, and nobody in the district would give me a pound for it." Thus spake one of the leading citizens, a Roman Catholic, dead against Home Rule. "The resident gentry are all we have to depend upon. Once plant a Parliament in Dublin, and there will be a general exodus of the moneyed classes. Then the poor folks will have nobody to look to, and they must follow them to England--which will certainly be overrun with destitute Irish. Things have grown worse and worse during the last ten years. Under a steady Government the country would gradually improve until the comfort of the people would give the agitators nothing to work upon. But with change upon change, with one final settlement upon another final settlement, we don't know where we are, nor what is going to happen next. How can we settle down to work? How can we launch out into industrial enterprises? Every man who has anything holds his hand for fear of loss. An Irish Parliament would be a Parliament of confiscation, and nobody knows where they would draw the line. Mr. Gladstone's land legislation has been a succession of swindles. The principle of judicial rents is an atrocious violation of the principles of business, one of which lays down the dictum that a thing is worth as much as it will fetch. Surely the landlord ought to be allowed to accept the offer of the highest bidder. And if you take from him that right, and say to him you shall only accept such a price, then you should at least guarantee the payment. But no, Mr. Gladstone says you shall only have a certain price, and you must recover the money as best you can. The judicial rent law, so much vaunted, is not so good as it looks. It is often a premium on indolence and a punishment of industry, and therefore grossly unjust. Let me tell you how it works in Donegal. "Thirty years ago two men took contiguous farms of exactly the same extent, at the same rent. There was not a pin to choose in the land, either. One of them worked continuously, improving the farm until he almost wrought himself to pieces. He and his children were at it night and day, and their industry did wonders, as it always does. The other was a lazy fellow, who lay in bed till mid-day and spent half his waking hours at fairs and dances. The land in his occupation deteriorated until it seemed to want reclaiming. The rent of both farms was ten pounds a year. The Land Commission had both cases before them, and, of course, based their estimate on the present value of the land, without reference to any other considerations. Now mark what happened-- "The industrious man, who should have received a premium as a benefactor of his country, had his rent raised from ten pounds to eighteen. "The lazy man, who should have been kicked out of the country as worthless, and an enemy to progress, had his rent reduced from ten pounds to two pounds fifteen shillings. "The judicial reductions have hardly ever been of real benefit. The average Irish peasant is so constituted that when he has less to pay he simply makes less effort, or spends the difference, and more than the difference, in extra whiskey. "The Donegal peasantry derive much benefit from the Irish practice of con-acre. Con-acre means that the land is rented for one crop. It pays the landowner well, and he always gets his money. The man who has no land hires a piece for his potatoes, or for his oats, takes possession when he puts in his seed, and delivers up possession when he gets his crop off the ground. They pay, I think, because they have not the land long enough to long for it altogether." I climbed the hill behind the Arran Hotel in company with the proprietor, Mr. Timony, who also runs several large shops in Donegal. The view is magnificent, extending in one direction to Carnowee and the Blue Stack mountains, in another far over the wood-fringed bay, and southward to the Benbulben range, terminated by a steep descent like the end of a house. Mr. Timony is a Romanist, but is strongly opposed to Home Rule, which in his opinion would lead to endless trouble and confusion, and would, bring distress on the district, and not prosperity. The hill was covered with mushrooms, which were rotting unregarded. Mine host confessed that he did not know the edible from the poisonous fungi, and said that the peasants of Donegal were in the same case. "There are tons of these things on the mountains, but no one gathers them. They would be afraid to go near them for fear they would drop down dead on the spot." He showed me a large stock of hand-woven cloth made by the peasantry, who, to their credit, have mastered the process from beginning to end, and with their rude appliances produce a good-looking article, of which the only fault is that it can never be worn out. Irishmen will not buy it, but England is an excellent customer, and the trade, already large, is rapidly increasing. Good tweed, twenty-seven inches wide, may be bought in Donegal for a shilling a yard, and stout twills for one-and-sixpence. The people shear the wool, card it, spin it, dye the yarn made from herbs growing on the sea-shore, on the rocks, in the meadows, and weave it into cloth, which is much in vogue for shooting suits and ladies' dresses. The pieces run from twenty to seventy yards long, and whole families are engaged on the work, which commands a ready sale at the wholesale depôts, the price being regulated by the fineness, evenness of texture, and equality of tint throughout. The Nationalist advice to burn everything English except English coals, is as hollow as other patriotic utterances. But for England the Donegal peasantry would have no market for their goods. "It isn't fine enough for Irishmen," said Mr. Timony. "They prefer English shoddy. They like the smooth-looking cloth such as I have seen made in Yorkshire, manufactured out of rags. There's not ten pounds of wool in a thousand yards of it. It looks more eyeable, but there is no length nor toughness in the thread, which is made out of old worn-out cloth. Our folks couldn't spin it. They must use good new yarn, or they couldn't work at all. The Yorkshire folks have machinery, and you can do anything with machinery." A good old Methodist said:--"The English people ought now to realise the pass their Grand Old Gagger has brought them to. The finest assembly of gentlemen in the world are bandying evil names and punching each other's heads. Just what you might expect when the Prime Minister has allied himself with blackguards and law-breakers. I used to be one of his staunchest supporters, but I draw the line at lunacy. When I saw him truckling to low-bred adventurers who are not worth sixpence beyond what they can wring from their dupes, I thought it time to change my course. When I saw the class of men with whom he acts and under whose orders he works, I changed my opinion of the man. For evil communications corrupt good manners, and a man is known by the company he keeps. The whole session has been a degradation of the British Parliament. Things have been going from bad to worse until we have reached the climax. If Mr. Gladstone remains in power we must change the qualifications of our members, and send the best fighting men and the hardest hitters. We must heckle candidates as to their 'science,' and ascertain if their wind is good, and whether they are active on their pins. And in course of time, if the G.O.M. still presides, we shall have the Speaker acting as referee, and calling out 'Time, gentlemen, Time!' Some Gladstonian or other will doubtless accept the post, and in that case we may expect him to sport a long churchwarden and a glass of beer. That is what Mr. Gladstone is bringing on the House, and the tendency has been visible for a long time. When you hear of people continually shouting 'Judas, Judas,' without a word of protest from the Prime Minister, you must admit that the dignity of the House is a thing of the past. When you see the general trend, you can judge what will be the result. When you see in which direction a man is going, you can judge where he will arrive at last. "For my part, and I can speak for all my friends, we have the greatest confidence in the English people's commonsense, and in the long run we know it will not fail. The Scotsmen, who are honest politicians and keen, are throwing over Mr. Gladstone and all his works, although he was for so long their greatest pride. And we are sure that the few Englishmen who at the last election followed in his wake will see their error, and that they will joyfully seize the first opportunity of repairing their mistake. What would happen if the bill became law? Nothing but evil. The Methodists would leave these parts in a body. We could not remain with a Catholic Parliament in Dublin. We should not be safe but for the English shield that covers us. The people, as a whole, are quiet enough--when left alone. But they are very excitable. Kind and civil as they may seem, they turn round in a moment. They will believe anything they are told, their credulity is wonderful, and their clergy have them entirely in their hands. The people might be tolerant, but the clergy never. And Irish priests are very bitter and very prejudiced. They say that we have bartered eternity for time, and that, although we all thrive and do well, we have sold our souls for earthly prosperity. My mind is made up. Once that bill becomes law you must find room for me in England. We shall be able to live in peace on the other side of the Channel." Another Methodist believed that the poverty of the people was somehow due to their religion. He knew not precisely why this was the case, but his observations left him no other conclusion. He instanced Strabane, the Scots settlement over the border, and although in Tyrone, yet only divided from Donegal by the river Mourne. "They have at Strabane an annual agricultural and horticultural exhibition, which does a great amount of good in educating the people. Last week they distributed eight hundred pounds in prizes, and there were two thousand two hundred entries. We have talked about a similar show in Donegal, but we never do more than talk. We shall never have a show until we get a sufficient number of Scotsmen to organise it and work it up. The necessary energy for such a big affair seems to be the private property of people holding the Protestant faith, for when we see an energetic Romanist we look upon it as something so remarkable as to merit investigation, and in nearly every case we find the person in question is, although Catholic, either Saxon or half-breed. Nearly all the Papists are Kelts. Is their want of energy due to breed, to religion, or to both? We hardly know. But I know a man's religion a mile off, so to speak. Only let me see him at work in a field. His religion comes out in his action. A Papist never works hard. He seems to be always doing as little as ever he can. Then he's very much surprised to find himself so poor, when the hard-working Protestant is getting on. Presently the Black-mouth gets a farm, while the other remains a labourer. Then the agitator comes round and says, 'Look how heretic England favours Protestants. _You_ are the children of the soil, but who has the farms?' 'Begorra,' says Michael, 'an' that's thrue, bedad it is now,' and thenceforward he cherishes a secret animosity against the successful man, instead of blaming his own want of industry. That's human nature. So he votes for Home Rule, for anything that promises the land to himself, as the son of the soil. He looks on the other man as an interloper, and his priest encourages that view. That is their feeling, as they themselves express it every day, and are we to believe against the evidence of our senses that when they have the power to injure us, to drive us out of the country, by making it too hot to hold us--are we to believe that they will not exert their power, but on the contrary, will treat us considerably better than before? That is what English Home Rulers ask us to believe. That is what Irish Nationalist speakers say in England: they would be laughed at here. Do not trust these men. They are what the Scripture calls 'movers of sedition'--and nothing better." After some search I found a fine young Parnellite, who roundly denounced the clergy of his own faith as enemies of their country. He said:--"I _was_ a Home Ruler, but although I hold the same opinion in theory, I would not at this juncture put it into practice. I am convinced that it would be bad for us. We are not ripe for self-government. We want years of training before we could govern ourselves with advantage. The South Meath election petition finally convinced me. When I saw how ignorance was used by the clergy for the furtherance of their own ends, I decided that we were not yet sufficiently educated to be entrusted with power; and if Home Rule were now offered to us, and the Home Rule that we ourselves have advocated, I for one would dread to accept it. We must serve an apprenticeship to the art of self-government. We must have a Local Government Bill, and see how we get on. Then it can from time to time be made larger and more liberal, entrusting us as we grow stronger with heavier tasks. Give us Home Rule at this moment and you ruin us. We should have several factions, more intent on getting power and in damaging each other, than on solving all or any of the very complicated and difficult questions which would come before them. There would be no spirit of mutual accommodation such as prevails in English assemblies. And our troubles would be your troubles. Keep it back for a few years, and lead us up to Home Rule by easy gradations. "My anti-Parnellite friends say they will not return the members now representing them. I believe they will. And if not, then they will send others of no better social standing, and with no Parliamentary training at all. They will send worse men, extreme men, men who have not pledged themselves to the British Government. The pledges of Dillon and Davitt--what are they worth? Surely nobody is so foolish as to rely on such 'safeguards' as these. "I am sure that three-fourths of the educated Catholics of Ireland are at this moment opposed to Home Rule in any shape or form, but--they dare not say so. Ireland is a land of tyranny, clerical tyranny. Ireland will not be free until the clergy withdraw their influence from politics. If they continue in their present course, there will be a reaction as education advances, and their last state will be worse than the first. I know that some of them would gladly drop politics, but they have to look to their bishops." A Nationalist tradesman said:--"The Protestants are favoured in every way. Statistics recently given in the _Freeman_ show that the money annually paid to the favoured few, who hold appointments which ought to be open to all, amount to five pounds a head for every Protestant man, woman, and child in the country. The same favouritism runs through everything. If a Catholic bids for a field of grass a Protestant bid is taken, even if lower. I saw it done yesterday." My friend lost his temper when I asked him to say why the heretic farmers were thriving while those of the true faith were starving, why the heretics were clean while the others were dirty. He at last said that the British Government subsidised all Soupers out of the secret service money, and making a contemptuous grimace, to express his opinion of such miscreants, curled up his hand and passed it behind his back, thus dramatically indicating the underhand way in which the money is conveyed to the favoured recipients. These people _will_ believe anything. But who tells them this? And why do not the clergy undeceive them? A final Black-mouth must be quoted. He said that the seller of the standing grass preferred the heretical bid, although lower, "because he felt more sure of the money," and pointing across the triangular square, yclept the Diamond, said:--"All those corner-men are Home Rulers. You never see a Unionist idling the day away at street-corners. We have no Protestant corner-boys in Donegal, nor anywhere else, so far as I know." The townsfolk are fairly industrious, that is, when compared with the people of Southern Irish towns, but there is a residuum--a Home Rule residuum. It sometimes happens that jaded men, worn out with overwork, are recommended to go to some quiet place and to do absolutely nothing. They can't do nothing, they don't know how to begin. They should go to Donegal. The place is silent as the tomb, and if they would learn to do nothing they will there find many eminent professors of the science, who, having devoted to it the study of a lifetime, have attained a virtuoso proficiency. Donegal, August 3rd. No. 57.--BAREFOOTED AND DILATORY. "The Ballyshannon foundered on the coast of Cariboo, And down in fathoms many went the captain and his crew. Down went the owners, greedy men whom hope of gain allured. O, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured." And thereby hangs a tale. Professor Crawford, of Trinity College, Dublin, says that when walking down Regent Street, London, with William Allingham, then editor of _Fraser's Magazine_, and a native of this Donegal town, the pair met Charles Dickens, who advanced with beaming countenance, and taking both Allingham's hands in his own, said in a hearty voice: "Well done, Ballyshannon!" This was in allusion to a recent article written by the _Fraser_ editor, who among his intimate friends and brother litterateurs was playfully named after his birthplace. W.S. Gilbert was especially fond of the sonorous appellation, and in the above-quoted Bab Ballad, his gem of gems, named the ship Ballyshannon in remembrance of Allingham. The Ballyshannon folks are "going to" erect a memorial to Allingham, of whose poems they have often heard. They are "going to" advertise their town, and make its beauties known to the world--some day. They are "going to" charter a steam dredger, and so improve the harbour, which is dangerous. They are "going to" utilise the enormous water-power of the River Erne, which runs to waste from Lough Erne to the sea. They are "going to" run a few tweed and blanket factories when they see their way quite clearly. They are "going to" start a fishery fleet and a number of fish-curing sheds, to give employment to the poor folks of the district. They need almost everything that man _can_ need, and they have especial facilities for supplying needs, but as yet they have lacked time and opportunity. The town is only a thousand years old, and its inhabitants have not yet had time to look about them. A number of English anglers stroll about with long salmon rods, or float their little barks on the broad bosom of the Erne, the population looking dreamily on from the long bridge over the river, which, like the Shannon at Athlone, flows through the heart of the town. Nobody seems to be doing anything, except a few old beggar woman squalid and frowsy as the mendicant hordes of Tuam, Tipperary, Limerick, and Galway. The beggars are pertinacious enough for anything, but theirs is the only enterprise the stranger sees. Compared with that of Donegal the salmon-fishing seems expensive. The landlord of the Arran Hotel in that town offers the Eske at half-a-crown a day, but in Ballyshannon you must pay four pounds a week and give up all the take except two. Salmon are scarce all over Ireland this year. Three English fishers on the Erne shared the universal bad luck, for in three days they had only captured one five-pounder. The unusual drought has made the water low. The weather of the past five months has been finer and dryer than any season for sixty years. Ballyshannon looks dirty and dingy in any weather. It lacks the smartness, the cleanliness, the width of thoroughfare, which mark the heretic towns. It lacks the factories, the large shops, the shipping which would infallibly be to the fore if its inhabitants were mainly of Teuton origin. On the other hand, the Ballyshannon folks are religious. They go to mass regularly, and confess themselves at frequent intervals. The confessional box is their only place to spend a happy day, and the act of confession, with the following penance, their pleasantest mode of passing away the time. They are mostly Home Rulers, and are deferring special effort to better themselves until the Irish Parliament does away with the necessity. That blessed institution once fairly settled at College Green will spare them the pains of enterprise, and will show how large industries can be created and sustained without capital, without business knowledge, without technical skill, and for the sole purpose of affording the shiftless population of Ballyshannon regular wages at the week's end. The gentlemen who lean over the quaint bridge, with its twelve arches and sharply-pointed buttresses, are merely waiting for the factories, which are to spring from the earth fully-equipped at a wave of the enchanter's hand, to be a blessing to the whole world while fulfilling their chief mission of finding employment for the people of Ireland. Meantime the Ballyshannoners are bitterly wroth with England because she has not hurried up with the desired factories long ages ago. They smoke thick twist and expectorate into the river, talking moodily of the selfish Saxon, who instead of looking after them looks after himself, and praising Tim Healy, whose spare cash is invested in a factory in Scotland. Tim knows his countrymen; but, although his cleverness is by them much admired, they do not know how really clever he is. If they could realise the fact that Tim declines to invest in Ireland they might admire him still more. The great drawback to Irish enterprise lies in the fact that Irishmen who have brains enough to make money have brains enough to invest it out of Ireland. They will not trust Irishmen, nor will they rely on Irish industry. Ballyshannon is waiting for the impersonal Somebody or the shadowy Something that is to come forward and put everything right. Galway is so waiting, Limerick is so waiting, Cork is so waiting, Westport, Newport, Donegal are so waiting. It never occurs to them to do something for themselves. When the suggestion is made they become irate, and excitedly ask, What could we do? How are we to begin? Where are we to find the money? Who is to take the first step? They fail to see that the settlement towns have long since answered these queries, and that the capacity to do so marks the difference in the breeds. These hopeless, helpless, Keltic Irishmen are unfit for self-government. They require the india-rubber tube and the feeding-bottle. They want to be spoon-fed and patted on the back when they choke. To instance the Scots settlements is to madden them. These thriving communities are a standing reproach, and cannot be explained away. Saxon Strabane flourishes, while Keltic Donegal declines, the latter having all the advantages of the former with the addition of a harbour and good fishing grounds. "Look at the condition of the country," say the Home Rulers. "Behold the poverty of the peasantry," they continually do cry. The visible nakedness of the land is their chief and most effective argument. The Unionist answer is conclusive, and of itself should be enough to demolish the Nationalists. See the Protestant communities of Ireland,--all, without exception, advancing in prosperity. They have no advantages which are denied to the Nationalists. On the contrary, they live in the comparatively bleak and unfertile North, which by their unceasing industry they have developed to its fullest extent. They have tilled the ground until it resembles a garden, they have deepened the rivers, built harbours, created industries, been in every way successful. And all under precisely the same laws, the same government. The richest spots of Ireland, if inhabited by Keltic Irish, are steeped in poverty. The poorest spots, if inhabited by men of Saxon blood, become fat and well-liking. The fate of men lies mostly in themselves. This comes out forcibly in Ireland. Race, breed, heredity, call it what you will, in Ireland thrusts its influence on you, whether you will or no. Neighbouring towns, neighbouring farms, neighbouring cottages, present a series of striking contrasts, ever in favour of the Saxon, ever against the Kelt. The latter has not yet discovered that the secret word, the open sesame of the difficulty, the charm which only can give permanent comfort, is--Work. Nor has his race the spirit of mechanical invention or industrial enterprise, without which College Green Parliaments may sit in vain. The pure-blooded Kelt is easily discouraged, and no man sooner knows when he is beaten. More than this, he always expects to be beaten, so that he is beaten before he begins. As a talker he is unequalled, and in this long-eared age, when the glibbest gabbler is reckoned the greatest man, his agitators have floated to the front. The Ballyshannon people can talk with the volubility of a Hebrew cheap Jack, but their jaw-power, like their water-power, mostly runs to waste. They have the silly suspicion and the childish credulity of the Donegal rural districts. A fluent politician said, "Why are all the Protestants Unionists? Perfectly simple, that. Because they are all well off. There you are. And being well off, they want no change. That's their selfishness. Now we, who are not Protestants (thank God), are for the most part poor. Our living is precarious. We don't know where to look, nor what to do, to improve our worldly position. We think it likely that an Irish Parliament would do something for us. In what way? Why, in the direction of public works and in the building of factories. Also in the protection of Irish industries. Where would the money come from? Why, from England, to be sure. And if England wouldn't lend it, plenty of other nations would; America, for instance. We shall have heaps of money. Mr. Gladstone has said it, and he is famous as a financier. There you have the reason why we want Home Rule, while the Protestants don't. They are well enough off already. "_Why_ are they well off, you ask? Also easy to answer. They have been the spoiled children of fortune. They have been petted and pampered by England for more than two hundred years. And although you will not of course admit it, yet we know, everybody here knows, that they have been secretly subsidised by every Tory Government. If they pay their rents, where do they get the money? From the Tory party. And Tory landlords give the best farms to Protestants, who having the pick of the land, ought to be well off. Wherever you go you will find the Protestants living on good land." I submitted that authentic records show that Ulster was formerly the most sterile, barren, unpromising part of Ireland, and that the change was entirely due to the two centuries of unremitting labour which the Scots settlers and their descendants had bestowed on the land; but, waiving this point, I asked him why the Unionist, that is, the Protestant, party were so much better educated, and why the heretics were so much cleaner. He had stated that the Black-mouths were subsidised by the Tory Party. Did the British Government also supply them with soap? At this point my friend's explanations became unintelligible, but his general drift seemed to indicate that the people were too downtrodden, too much oppressed, were groaning too painfully under the cruel British yoke, to have the spirit to look after the duties of the toilet. In other words, the Irish people will wash themselves when they get Home Rule. At the next election Mr. Gladstone will doubtless bring forward this aspect of the case as a sop to the soap-making interest. Another Ballyshannoner was of a diametrically opposite opinion. "We are poor because we have no notion of making money by modern methods. We have always lived on the land, selling our superfluity to pay the rent, and now that our arrangements are disturbed, we don't know which way to turn. The blame rests with America, whose competition has so lowered the price of produce that the farmer's superfluity, that is, what he does not consume himself, will no longer suffice to pay the rent. That is a general statement only. Landlords are generally reasonable, and meet their tenants fairly enough when the tenants are well-disposed and honest. The tenant-farmers of Ireland have no more to complain of than the tenant-farmers of England--much less in fact--but they have an army of agitators, an ignorant English press, and the G.O.M. on their side. That makes all the difference. We have occasional cases of unfair landlordism, but they are so rare as to be the talk of a county or two. "A Mrs. Hazlitt holds, with her farm, about twenty or thirty acres of slobland reclaimed from the Atlantic. Slobland is land reclaimed from the sea. This piece is on Donegal Bay. It was protected by a great dyke after the Dutch style. But the Atlantic is sometimes angry, and then he becomes unmanageable. He was ill-tempered one night (being troubled with wind), and he just washed down the dyke and inundated the reclaimed meadows, upon, which I have seen the most beautiful crops. The landlord, the Reverend James Hamilton, a Protestant rector, insists on rent being paid for this washed-away land. He does not rebuild the dyke, and the land lies waste--the widow paying rent for acres of useless salt marsh. That is pointed to by all the malcontents in Donegal as a specimen of landlordism, and Protestant landlordism, and more especially reverend Protestant landlordism. Nobody but a parson would exact the rent. These isolated examples are cited to bring discredit on Protestant landlords in general. "This town is asleep, and it will not awake till the last Judgment. In 1885 we had a manufacturer from Belfast looking about for the best place for a big cloth mill on the river. The town was in a ferment of excitement, and everybody began to wonder what he would do with his additional income. The shop-keepers expected that their customers would have twice the money to spend in future, and the working folks began to be cocky with their employers, saying that they would get much better wages at the great factory. Then Mr. Gladstone brought out his '86 bill, and the Belfast man drew in his horns. He told me that he would not risk a farthing in any speculative venture while the threat of Home Rule was held over us. He was quite right. The Ballyshannon men were relieved from the trouble of deciding how they would spend their surplus money, and they ranged themselves on the bridge or at their usual corners, where you may now see them, propping up the old houses with their lazy backs, and discussing the wrongs of Ireland. What they would do without their supposed, wrongs nobody knows. In English hands this would be a money-making place. We have enormous advantages of situation, and the water power is almost unequalled in Ireland. Yet from here to Belleek, a distance of four miles, there is nothing whatever being done with it. "The backwardness of the Irish and their poverty are, in my opinion, due to their inferiority as a race of men. Wherever there is a factory, you will find all the foremen Protestants--that is, Saxons. And Irishmen expect it. They will not work under Irish foremen, if they can help it. The Catholic labourer will work for the Protestant farmer, for choice, every time. The Catholic housekeeper goes to the Protestant shop, by preference. Where their own personal and earthly interests are concerned, the Papist population always prefer the guidance of the cursed heretic. And yet they express for the Black-mouths the greatest contempt and aversion, and would willingly put them out of the country to-morrow. That is because they wish to possess our goods. They vote for Home Rule in the belief that they are paving the way for a dismissal of Protestants, and the division of their property. They do not know the name of the man who represents them, the title of the Parliamentary division for which he sits, or even, in many cases, the name of the county in which they themselves reside. To talk reason to such people would be absurd. Trained from their infancy to regard England as an enemy, they would not listen to anyone speaking on her behalf. They declare that they are barefoot because England wears their shoes, that they are starving that England may be over-fed. The how, the why, the wherefore are not within their ken, but they are sure of the facts. They had them from Father Dick, Tom, or Harry, and the holy man would not tell a lie. Stupid people over the Channel, listening to this iterated complaint, are acting as though it were true. Gladstone took it up, and his followers followed. No doubt it was all that most of them could do. Result,--tumult, disturbance, confusion worse confounded. Home Rule means that the country will be deluged with blood, that civilisation will receive a shock which will send back the island for a century. The causes of Ireland's poverty are laziness and lack of enterprise, the latter accentuated by everlasting disturbance. Before the Nationalists we had the Fenians, the Whiteboys, the Ribbon-men, the United Irishmen, the Defenders, the goodness-knows-what, running back in continuous line up to the dawn of history. No wonder we are poor. Cannot Gladstonians read the records? If they did so, and if they were acquainted with the character of the Irish when in their native land, they would agree with my cook, herself a Kelt of Kelts, who says that Irishmen are leather, good leather, but fit only for the sole, and not for the uppers. "I used to regard Mr. Gladstone as an honest man. Now I think otherwise. As for the ruck that follow him--well, if they were intelligent when honest, or honest when intelligent, nobody could understand their deviation from the path of reason and rectitude. But the rogues will of course do anything they think will suit them best, no matter what befalls their country; and as for the rest, why of course no reasonable man would blame people for not thinking, when Providence has not provided them with the requisite machinery." Ballyshannon, August 5th. No. 58.--THE TRUTH ABOUT BUNDORAN. There is no railway between Donegal and Ballyshannon, fifteen miles away. The largest town in the county is not connected with the principal port. But you can steam from Ballyshannon to Bundoran, the favourite watering-place of Donegal, quaint and romantic, with a deep bay and grassy cliffs. The bathing-grounds have a smooth floor of limestone, and the Atlantic rolls in majestically, sending aloft columns of white spray as its waters strike the outlying islands of rock, each with a green crown of vegetation. The bare-headed and bare-legged natives walk side by side with the fashionably-dressed citizens of Dublin, Belfast, and Londonderry. The poorest folks are tolerably clean, and, unlike the Southerners, occasionally wash their feet. The town is small, but there is plenty of good accommodation for holiday makers. Bundoran is Catholic and intolerant. Although depending on their Protestant countrymen for nine-tenths of their livelihood, the people of Bundoran object to Protestantism, and the intensity of their antipathy to the Black-mouths has impelled them to quarrel with their bread-and-butter. Of late the question of tolerance has been much discussed. Sapient persons whose assumption is equal to their ignorance of the subject, affect to despise the fears of the scattered Protestant population whose alarm is based on the experience of a lifetime. English Home Rulers who wish to create effect unblushingly affirm that the Protestants are the only intolerants, and that the Papists are as distinguished for affectionate toleration as for industry and honesty. In direct opposition to daily experience and the evidence of history, they assert that the Papists are the persecuted party, and that they only practise their religion with fear and trembling. Notwithstanding the well-known doctrine of the Roman Church, which preserves heaven exclusively for those within its own pale, these eccentric politicians aver that under a Roman Catholic Parliament, elected by the clergy alone, the isolated Protestants of Catholic Ireland, known in the Papist vernacular as Black-faces, Black-mouths, Heretics, Soupers, and Jumpers, would be treated with perfect consideration, would enjoy the fullest freedom, the most indulgent toleration, would, in short, be placed in a position of equality with the predestined inhabitants of Paradise, or, to quote Catechism, the inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven. The persons most nearly concerned know better. The shrewd farmers of Ulster, like the Puritan brethren of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, are entirely devoid of faith in the promised Papist toleration. Protestant equality under a Home Rule Parliament! You might as well tell them to plant potatoes and expect therefrom a crop of oats. Men do not gather grapes off thorns nor figs off thistles. The Bundoran Protestants have evidence to offer. The date is recent. Not two hundred years ago, but in the year of grace eighteen-hundred-and-ninety-three. Seeing that the little seaside resort was full of holiday-makers from the Protestant counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone, two young Protestant clergymen determined to hold Gospel services in a tent which was pitched in a field the property of Mr. James A. Hamilton, J.P. For about a week beforehand handbills announcing the services for July 21 had been distributed in the town and suburbs, but no controversial topic was mentioned, nor was it intended that the services should be other than strictly evangelical. The tent was erected solely to accommodate the great influx of visitors, after the manner so familiar in England. Here was a test of Papal toleration. The tent was on private ground, and if Papists did not like it they could easily keep away, making a wry face and spitting out the abomination as they passed, after their liberal custom. This, however, was not enough. No sooner had the handbills been issued, than a most scurrilous placard appeared, calculated to inflame the passions of the ignorant, and to make them act after their kind. The Gospellers were accused of an attempt to poach on the Papal preserves, and it was mockingly stated that they had at last come to Christianise the benighted Papists. The effect of this placard was soon evident. It became known that the Roman Catholics of the district had determined that they would allow no Gospel services in Bundoran. The police authorities, who know all about Papist "tolerance," increased the small village force to twenty-five men, but, as the result proved, these were absolutely useless. A mob of more than a thousand pious ruffians gathered early in the evening, and attacked in a brutal and merciless manner every person they suspected of being on the way to the meeting. The two Evangelists went to the tent under the escort of the twenty-five policemen, but before they could commence the service the apostles of toleration made a desperate rush on the congregation, most of whom were struck with bludgeons and stones, knocked down, kicked, and otherwise maltreated. The constabulary with great determination, but with much difficulty, protected the two young clergymen, upon whom a most venomous attack was made. The Protestants defended themselves with umbrellas, walking-sticks, and the like, but being strongly charged these proved of little avail against the wild onslaught of the party of toleration. Well may the local paper say that "a regular panic pervades the resident and visiting Protestant families." Mr. Morley, replying to a question in the House, said the reports were exaggerated. The hapless Irish Secretary, unable to meet this and similar charges with denial, always relies on the plea of "exaggeration." The statement given above is derived from eye-witnesses of both creeds, and from an official source. One word as to the plea of exaggeration. When I had investigated the fifteen moonlighting atrocities of four weeks in County Limerick, the County Inspector, who had just returned from a conference with Mr. Morley, said to me:-- "Everything is ve-ry quiet. We're going on very nicely now." But the _Gazette_ gave particulars of the shooting in the legs of the four members of the Quirke family, and Mr. Morley was obliged to admit the fifteen outrages which constituted County Inspector Moriarty's idea of "quiet." Subordinates will say there is peace when there is no peace, if the master requires it. The Bundoran outrage is not susceptible of exaggeration. Call another witness. The _Sligo Independent_, which being published on the spot can speak with authority, says that "the intolerant and bigoted Roman Catholics of Bundoran and surrounding districts look upon Protestantism as a kind of leprosy which ought at all hazards to be stamped out," and further states that "even the ladies did not escape their fanatical hatred and fury. Several people were severely injured, and a clergyman who was coming to the meeting with his Bible in his hand, was thrown down and badly beaten, the Book being torn from him and destroyed. What may Protestants expect should the Home Rule Bill ever become law, when such disgraceful outbursts of religious bigotry are quite common under the existing _régime_? The natural conclusion is that all such Gospel meetings would be put down with a strong hand, and Protestant religious liberty trampled under foot by their unscrupulous Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen. And yet Loyalists are told to trust in them and all will be well!" Thus the Sligo journal; and its editor may perhaps, under the circumstances, be pardoned for suggesting that "it were better for Loyalists not to put themselves in the power of men who have proved themselves unfit even to associate with civilised beings. Bundoran will feel the evil effects of these insane attacks upon defenceless people next season when tourists and pleasure-seekers will avoid this seat of stupid bigotry, and visit some other summer resort where they will at least be allowed to worship their Maker according to their own desires." Exactly. Many visitors left at once, and will never return. During my six hours' stay I heard complaints of the falling-off of business. If the place be empty next summer the people will attribute the loss to the British Government, and especially to the machinations of the Tory party. An old fisherman said the fish had left the bay. I assured him they would return under a Dublin Parliament. He refused to be comforted, because they were not. There is no railway from Bundoran to Sligo, that is, no direct railway. The great lines mostly run from east to west, but the west lacks connecting links. Look at the map of Ireland. Cast your eye on the west coast. If you would go by rail from Westport to Sligo, you must first go east to Mullingar. If you would go by rail from Sligo to Bundoran, you must first go east to Enniskillen. If from Bundoran to Donegal, less than twenty miles, you must again go to Enniskillen, thence to Strabane, where you arrive after the best part of a day's journey, ten miles further away than when you started, thence to Stranorlar, changing there to the narrow-gauge railway for your final trip. Travelling on the west coast is tedious and expensive, whether you go round by rail or drive direct. Many of the most attractive tourist districts are almost inaccessible. To open them up is to enrich the neighbourhood. Few Englishmen know what the Balfour railways really mean. The following statement gives particulars respecting the Light Railways authorised by the Salisbury Government, and constructed either wholly or in part by the nation. These railways introduce tourists to those parts of Ireland which are best worth visiting, and the economy of time, money, and muscular tissue effected by them would be hard to overestimate. But this is not all, nor was this their primary purpose. They gave and still give employment to the people of the district, and besides bringing the money of the tourists into the country, enable the natives to send their produce out of it, to place it on the market, to turn it into gold. There is no railway from Dugort, in Achil, to any market. Fish caught in Blacksod Bay are therefore worth nothing except as food for the fisherman's family. Large crabs were offered to me for one halfpenny each. Does this fact impress the usefulness of Balfour's railways? Here they are complete:-- Length in Balfour's Name. miles. contribution. Donegal and Killybegs 17-3/4 £115,000 Stranorlar and Glenties 24-1/2 116,000 On this line you run for twelve miles from Stranorlar without seeing a single cottage. There are none within sight on either side. Downpatrick and Ardglass 7-1/4 £30,000 Galway and Clifden 50 264,000 This will run in connection with the splendid system of the Midland and Western Railway, opening up the grand scenery of Connemara, which to the average Britisher is like a new world. No end of fishing here among virgin shoals of trout and salmon, and nearly always for nothing. It was along the first sixteen miles of this line, still unopened, that I ran on the engine to Oughterard. Westport to Mulranney 18-1/4 £131,400 To which is added the Achil Island extension 8-1/4 65,000 This will enable travellers to steam from Dublin to Achil Island viâ Midland and Western, instead of the ten hours on an open car, which on their arrival at Westport now awaits visitors to Dugort. It was on this line that I had the startling adventures on a fiery untamed bogey engine, lent to the _Gazette_ by Mr. Robert Worthington, of Dublin. But I must condense. Claremorris and Collooney 47 £150,000 Ballina and Killala 6-1/2 44,000 Bantry extension 2 15,000 Baltimore extension 8 56,700 West Kerry and Valentia 27 85,000 Headford and Kenmare 20 50,000 Milltown, Malbay, Kilkee, and Kilrush 26 2% on 120,000 Tuam and Claremorris 17 2 " 97,000 Ballinrobe and Claremorris 12 2 " 71,664 Besides these, similar lines have been constructed, and are now working between Tralee, Dingle, and Castlegregory; Skibbereen and Skull; Ballinscarty, Timoleague, and Courtmacsherry. The Cork and Muskerry Railway, which runs through the groves of Blarney, owes its completion and success to Mr. Balfour's administration. Driving from Bray to the Dargle, my jarvey pointed to the ruins of a light railway undertaken without the aid of the British intellect. "'Tis a nice mess they made iv it, the quarrelin' pack o' consated eejits! They must run a chape little thing to the Dargle, about two miles away, along the roadside, just as Balfour showed them the way. What have they done? Desthroyed the road. Lost all the money they could raise. Got the maker to take back the rails (for they bought thim afore they wanted thim), an' the only thing they now have in the shape of shareholders' property is a lawsuit wid the Wicklow folks about desthroyin' the road. Faix, an iligant dividend is that same. An' them's the chaps that's to rule the counthry. That's the sort of thim, I mane. Many's the time I seen the Irish mimbers. Sorra a thing can they do, barrin' dhrink an' talk. I wouldn't thrust one of thim to rub down a horse, nor wid a bottle of poteen. Divil a one of thim but would dhrink as much whiskey as would wash down a car, an' if they could run as fast as they can talk, begorra, ye might hunt hares wid thim. Rule the counthry, would ye. Whe-w-w-w!" He whistled with a "dying fall," like the strain in _Twelfth Night_. I drove from Bundoran to Sligo, the sea on the right, the Benbulben mountains on the left, singularly shaped but splendid. The round towers and ancient Irish crosses, the lakes and rivers of Sligo, are full of interest and beauty. The Abbey ruins are exceptionally fine. The town is fairly well built, but it is easy to realise that once more it is Connaught. During a turn round Bridge Street, a country cart heaves alongside, steered by a stalwart man in hodden gray. He notes the stranger, and politely says, "Can I be of any use? I see you are a visitor." We fell into conversation. Presently I said, "Everything will be well when you get Home Rule." He stopped the cart and protested against this statement. Unknowingly I had tapped a celebrity. My hodden-gray friend was none other than the famous Detective James Magee, who arrested James Stephens, the Number One, the Head Centre of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood; also John O'Leary, editor of the Fenian _Irish People_, of which O'Donovan Rossa was business manager. O'Leary was a doctor hailing from Tipperary. He asked Magee if he might have his "night-cap," and his captor allowed him to call for the whiskey at a well-known Dublin resort, on parole of honour. Later, as a crowded street was reached, O'Leary said, "There are three thousand of my friends there. If you go that way I cannot save you. Better try a back street." "That was handsome," said Mr. Magee. "O'Leary was a gentleman. Stephens was only a 'blower.'" My friend was unalterably set against Home Rule, which he regards as an empty, foolish cry. Being a pensioner he wishes to be reticent, but his opinion is pronounced, and the Sligo people know it. He has a high opinion of the law-abiding instincts of his compatriots, and believes that "if they were left to themselves" the district would need no police. "A better-hearted, kinder, more obliging people never lived," said this excellent judge, who after twenty-seven years of police service, returned to end his days among them. And my short experience of the Sligo folks confirms this statement. They were not all so reserved as Detective-sergeant Magee. A thriving shopkeeper said:--"The majority, if you count noses, are for Home Rule, but if you count only brains and intelligence you would find an overwhelming majority against it. Mr. Gladstone and his set of blockheads seem quite impervious to reason, and even the constituencies of England seem to lack information. The reason is plain. While we have been minding our work the Nationalists have been agitating. For thirteen years they have been on the stump, and have stolen a march on us and they take a lot of catching up. We allowed them to empty their wind-bags, forgetting that the English people were not so conversant with the facts or with the character of the orators as we are. We thought that no precautions were required, and that their preposterous statements would be received in England as intelligent, enlightened people would receive them here. Their strength in Ireland is almost entirely among the illiterates, who in the polling booths are coerced by their priests. I have seen a man crying because he had not been allowed to vote for the candidate supported by his employer. Such a ridiculous thing could not happen in England, and Englishmen who do not know Ireland and the Irish will scarcely credit it. This shows how unable most Saxons are to understand Irish character and motive. "All our civilisation is from England, all our progress, all our enlightenment, and nearly all our money. As a poor, helpless, semi-barbaric country, we ought to cleave to England with all our might and main. A more and more complete and perfect unity is our best hope. To ask for separation is the wildest absurdity. And just as we were beginning to go along smoothly! That was entirely due to the just but firm administration of the Balfour period. "Among Irishmen justice with firmness is always appreciated in the long run. An Irish Secretary needs the hand of iron in the velvet glove. Paddy spots the philanthropic fumbler in a moment, and uses him, laughing the while at what he rightly calls his 'philandering.' Morley means well, but nobody here respects him. He knows no more of Irish character than a blind bull-pup. His master in my opinion is worse, if possible. He is deaf to all the arguments of Irish sense and Irish culture, and proposes to finally resolve the unresolvable, to settle the Irish difficulty by a Catholic Parliament. As well go out with a net to catch the wind. He listens to the representatives of ruffianism, counting them first. We kept silent too long. We thought the donkeys might bray for ever without shaking down the stars. We were wrong. Now we are almost powerless. For what are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd of blackguards with big sticks?" While conversing with Detective Magee, that astute gentleman pointed out The O'Connor, lineal King of Connaught, and a staunch Unionist! A devout Catholic and intensely Irish, yet the uncrowned King is a loyalist. But The O'Connor is a man of superior understanding. After this I saw three Home Rulers--yea, I conversed with four, one a positive person whom I mistook for a farm labourer, but who proved to be a National schoolmaster who absorbed whiskey like the desert sands. A decent farmer who thought the Land League the finest thing in the wuruld, complained that while the British Government have contracted for hay at £8 15s., yet he and his friends could only get £3 for "best saved." His idea of Home Rule was--No Rent to pay. A ferocious commercial traveller, whose jaw and cheekbones were as much too large as his eyes and forehead were too small, wanted to know "what right had England to rule Ireland? Ye have no more right to rule Ireland than to rule France." This was his only idea. He was a patriot of the sentimental type, and wished that Ireland might take her place as an independent nation with Belgium, Switzerland, Holland. His hero was Paddy O'Donnell, of Bedlam--_clarum et venerabile nomen_--who for five days held his house, since called the Fort, against a strong force of police. "If all was like O'Donnell, we'd soon have the counthry to ourselves," said my commercial friend. "An' if ye don't let us go, we'll make ye wish ye did. Wait till ye get into throuble with France. The Siam business may yet turn up thrumps." He was very voluble, very loud, very illiterate, and I declined to discuss the question except in Irish, which he did not speak. Like most of the patriot orators of Ireland, he was as ignorant of his native language as of his native literature, and every other. This is the class from whom the political speakers who infest country places are drawn. At first sight they seem unworthy of notice, but contempt may be pushed too far. Even wasps become dangerous when in swarms. And Hatred is like fire: it makes even light rubbish deadly. Sligo, August 8th. No. 59.--IRISH NATIONALISM IS NOT PATRIOTISM. My tour through Ireland having now come to an end, I propose to sum up the conclusions I have formed in this and the three following articles. In connection with the Home Rule Bill, we have heard much of the "aspirations of a people." Mr. Gladstone has taken up the cry, and his subservient followers at once brought their speeches and facial expressions into harmony with the selected sentiment. These anti-English Englishmen would fain pose as persons in advance of their time, determined to do justice though the heavens should fall. They agree with Mr. Labouchere that John Bull is a tyrant, a robber, and a hypocrite, and that it is high time justice should be done to Ireland. As no substantial injustice exists, it is necessary to fall back on sentiment, and to quote the "aspirations of a people." The desire for a system of Irish autonomy is praised as a manifestation of patriotism which in all ages of the world has been honoured by worthy men. The English supporters of Mr. Gladstone, with their assumption of superior virtue, their Pharasaic We are not as other men, nor even as these Tories, would have us believe that with the granting of self-rule Ireland will be satisfied, that the gratification of a laudable sentiment is all that is now required to bind together the peoples in an infrangible Union of Hearts, and that peace and prosperity will at once follow in the wake of this merely sentimental concession. The great mass of the Irish electorate know nothing of all this. Tap them wherever you will, north, south, east, or west, and you find one dominant thought--that of pecuniary gain. They know nothing of the proposed bill, and are totally incapable of comprehending its scope and effect. The peasantry of Ireland are actuated by motives entirely different from those affecting the rural constituencies of England. The Briton is proud of his country, believes in its might, justice, supremacy; and despite occasional grumbling is satisfied that the powers that be will do him right in the long run. The Irish peasant is essentially inimical to England. He is always "agin the Government"--that is, the rule of England. He regards the landlord as trebly an enemy--firstly as a heretic, secondly as the representative of British rule, and last, but by no means least, as the person to whom rent is due. He desires to abolish the landlord, not in the interests of religion--I speak now of the peasantry, and not the clergy--and not in the interests of patriotism, for if a Dublin Parliament were to cost him sixpence, the priests themselves could hardly drag him to the poll; but purely and simply to avoid any further payment of what he regards as the accursed impost on the land. Phillip Fahy, the leading light of Carnaun, near Athenry, is exactly typical of rural Irish Patriotism. "Did ye hear of the Home Rule Bill? What does it mane, at all, at all? Not one o' us knows more than that lump o' stone ye sit on. Will it give us the land for nothin', for that's all we hear? We'll be obliged av ye could explain it a thrifle, for sorra one but's bad off, an' Father O'Baithershin says 'Howld yer whist,' says he 'till ye see what'll happen,' says he. Will we get the bit o' ground widout rint, yer honner's glory?" Mr. Tynan, of Monivea, said that his landlord was liberal and good, and admitted that his land was not too highly rented, but, said he, "We have no objection to do better still." The run on the Irish Post Office Savings Banks at once illustrates the patriotism of the people and their confidence in the proposed Dublin Parliament. It was well known and understood, so far as the poorer classes are capable of understanding anything, that the floating balance of the Post Office Banks would constitute the only working capital of the Irish Legislature. Here was an opportunity for self-sacrifice. Here was a chance of manifesting the faith animating the lovers of their country. But at the same time it was made known that the Post Office would pass from the British control to that of the Irish people's chosen representatives. It might have been supposed that the electors would rejoice thereat with exceeding great joy, and that in order to show their trust in an Irish Parliament they would increase their deposits, and at considerable personal inconvenience refrain from withdrawals. Nothing of the kind. The "aspirations of a people" were at once strongly defined, but this time not in the direction of patriotism. It availed not to urge upon them the argument that the four millions of the Post Office Savings Banks were absolutely necessary to the successful administration of an Irish Parliament. In patriotic Dublin the run on the Post Office was tremendous. The master of a small sub-office told me that the withdrawals over his counter had for some time amounted to £200 per week, and that they were increasing to £70 per day. There was not enough gold in Dublin to meet the demands, and cash was being forwarded from London. The patriots who had no money deposited in the Post Office made no secret of their indignation, stigmatising their fellow-countrymen as recreants and traitors, but without perceptible effect. The Dublin Savings Bank became the trusted depositary of the money. This institution is managed by an association of Dublin merchants, not for profit, but for the encouragement of thrift, and the confidence reposed in them was doubtless due to the fact that the directors, on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, had publicly announced their intention, on the bill becoming law, to pay twenty shillings in the pound and at once to close the bank. The patriot depositors were not deterred by this announcement, nor by the directors' letter to Mr. Gladstone, in which they declared that their determination to wind up the affairs of the bank was due to the fact that in the interest of their depositors they felt themselves unable to accept the security of an Irish Legislature. Patriotism would surely have resented this imputation. But Nationalism in its present phase is nothing more than selfish cupidity and lust of gain. This is made abundantly manifest by the freely-uttered sentiments of all classes of the Nationalist party. The first answer I received to an inquiry as to what advantages would be derived from a patriot Parliament was elicited from an ancient Dubliner, whose extraordinary credulity was equal to anything afterwards met with in the rural districts:--"The millions an' millions that John Bull dhrags out iv us, to kape up his grandeur, an' to pay sojers to grind us down, we'll put into our own pockets, av you plaze." The complaint about the British Government veto on Irish mining, which I fondly believed to be sporadic, proved to be chronic, universal. Here again the notion of easily acquired wealth was the impulse, and not the pure and self-denying influence of patriotism. "The British Government won't allow us to work the gold mines in the Wicklow mountains. Whin we get the bill every man can take a shpade, an', begorra! can dig what he wants. The Phaynix Park is all cram-full o' coal that the Castle folks won't allow us to dig, bad scran to them! Whin we get the bill we'll sink them mines an' send the Castle to blazes." The coal under the Phoenix Park is a matter of pious belief with every back-slum Dubliner. The gold of the Wicklow mountains is proverbial all over Ireland. There is not a nobleman's demesne that does not cover untold wealth in some shape or form. It may be gold, silver, copper, lead, or only coal or iron. But it is there, and the people of the neighbourhood want an Irish Parliament in order that the treasures may be turned into money. The more intelligent Nationalists foster these beliefs, although they know them to be without foundation. They know that the treasures do not exist in paying quantities, and also that if they did exist their fellow-countrymen are too lazy to dig them up. The Nationalist orators never rely on patriotic sentiment. They promise the land for nothing. Mr. William O'Brien has unceasingly offered as a bribe the promise of prairie rents for the farmers, but Tim Healy went one better when at Limerick he said that "The people of this country never ought to be satisfied so long as a single penny of rent is paid for a sod of land in the whole of Ireland." Well might Sir George Trevelyan say that Irish agitators have done much to demoralise the country, and that in many parts of Ireland they gained their livelihood by criminal agitation. The same authority tells us that "an Irish Parliament will be independent of the Parliament of this country, but will be dependent on the votes of the small farmers, who have been taught that rent is robbery." That is a precise statement of the position so far as the agricultural voters are concerned. Their patriotism is nothing more nor less than a sure and certain hope of pecuniary advantage. The green flag of Ireland has no charms for them. The ancient glories of Hibernia are sung to them in vain. They care not for the Onward march to Freedom. They will make no sacrifices on the shrine of their country. The subscriptions furnished by the Irish peasantry for the furtherance of the cause amount to almost nothing, although extorted partly by compulsion and partly by the hope of future profit. The following facts will show how spontaneous is their patriotism. At a Sunday meeting at Gurteen in 1887, the Very Reverend Canon O'Donohoe in the chair, it was resolved, "That a collection for the defence of Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien be made during the ensuing week in this locality, and that not less than sixpence be accepted from any person. _Anyone not subscribing will be considered not in sympathy with the Branch._" Those only who know Ireland well will be able to appreciate the terrible significance of the last sentence of this resolution, which for the information of the peasantry was made public in the Nationalist _Sligo Champion_. A similar incentive to patriotism seems to have been required by the Kilshelan Branch, for at another Sunday Meeting, the Reverend Father Dunphy in the chair, it was unanimously resolved, "That all members who do not pay in subscriptions on or before the next meeting, which will be held on the last Sunday of this month, shall have their names published and posted on the chapel gate for two consecutive Sundays." This quotation is from the _Munster Express_, published in Limerick. At a meeting reported by the _Kerry Sentinel_ "the conduct of several members, who had not renewed their subscriptions, was strongly condemned, the reverend president, Father T. Enright, giving orders to have a list, with their names, sent to him before the next meeting." The chapel doors are used as instruments of boycotting. The priest sits in judgment on all who are not sufficiently patriotic. The people are compelled to subscribe to the cause, whether they like it or not. These cases could be multiplied to infinity. They not only give an excellent illustration of the conduct of the Irish clergy in political affairs, but they also furnish a curious commentary on the enthusiasm which is supposed to mark the Aspirations of a People, who, as Mr. Gladstone might say are "rightly struggling to be free." I have conversed with hundreds of Irish farmers and I never yet met one who was willing to sacrifice a sixpence on "the altar of his country," or to trust an Irish Parliament with his own property, or to invest a penny on purely Irish security. He loves his ease, no man likes it better, and No Rent means less exertion. Mr. O'Doherty, of County Donegal, a Catholic Home Ruler, said the landlords were all right now under compulsion, but what the tenantry demanded was to be released entirely from the landlords' yoke. The farmers, he said, cared nothing for Home Rule, but the Nationalists had preached prairie value, and the people expected to drive out the landowners and Protestants. Mr. John Cook, of Londonderry, a Protestant Home Ruler and a man of culture, did not claim patriotism for the Nationalists, and unconsciously put his finger on the real incentive when he said:--"The landlords will be wronged under the present bill. It is a bad bill, an unjust bill, and will do more harm than good. England should have a voice in fixing the price of the land, for if the matter be left to the Irish Parliament gross injustice will be done. The tenants were buying their land, aided by the English loans, for they found that their two-and-three-quarter per cent. interest came lower than their rent. But they have quite ceased to buy, because they expect the Irish Legislature to give them even better terms--or even to get the land for nothing." Patriotism had meanwhile received another sop. Mr. Healy advised the farmers to think twice before they bought their land, and hinted that their patience was likely to be well rewarded. Father J. Corcoran at Mullahoran, when consulted by a body of tenant farmers whose landlord offered to sell, distinctly advised them not to purchase, and gave a practical instruction on the subject, in which he endeavoured to prove that seventeen or eighteen years' purchase was at present unworthy of consideration, and advising the greatest caution in buying at all under present circumstances. The farmers' conception of Nationalism is plunder and confiscation. They vote for Home Rule because they thereby expect to make money, to become freeholders, landlords themselves, in short. They are taught that they have an inherent right to the land, and that an Irish Parliament will restore them their own. Father B. O'Hagan, addressing a meeting in company with William O'Brien, said:--"We have two classes of landlords, in brief. We have the royal scoundrels who took the land of our forefathers. I ask any of those noble ruffians to show me the title by which they lay claim to the soil of my ancestors. Then we have the landlords who have purchased their estates in the Land Courts. But they bought stolen goods, and they knew that the land was stolen. We must get rid of the landlords." Paddy is perfectly safe. The landlords who claim in descent and those who buy in the open market are equally denounced. Let him support the Nationalist party, and the land becomes his own. He does so, and his motive is by the unthinking called patriotism and by Mr. Gladstone the Aspirations of a People. There are of course other classes of Nationalists, but in comparison with the immense preponderance of rural voters they do not count for much. Mr. McGregor, of Anglesea Street, Dublin, once an earnest Gladstonian, said:--"The corner-men are Home Rulers because they want to spend what they never earned, and the farmers because they hope to get the land for nothing." The Dublin hotel-keepers are mostly Home Rulers, and the proprietor of Jury's, next door to the proposed House in College Green, is supposed to be consumed with patriotic fire. The hotel has recently been refitted. The Dublin shopkeepers, "those of the largest size," are strangely lacking in patriotism, and mostly support the Union. Patriotism is claimed for the Nationalist members, who, according to Nationalist sheets, were lifted from bog-holes, tripe shops, and small whiskey shops to decide the destinies of empires, to revel in comparative luxury, to enjoy a certain social distinction, to exchange their native bogs for the British metropolis, and to draw a salary beyond their wildest dreams. These questionable gentlemen, with the horse's tongue and cow's tail cutters, the firebrand priests and landlord-shooters, the moonlight marauders who shoot old women and children in the legs, burn the haystacks of their neighbours, refuse coffins and decent burial for the dead, apply the fiendish tortures of boycotting to innocent women and children, refusing them the means of subsistence, and poisoning their water supply with human filth--these _are_ patriots. Only their patriotism must cost them nothing, It must be cultivated at the expense of others. The patriots subscribe only under compulsion, and yet hope to make a profit by the transaction. As of a certain party of old, it may be said of them, "License they mean when they cry Liberty." Plunder they mean when they cry Patriotism. The sober and industrious portion of the Irish people, the pick of every part of Ireland, being opposed to Nationalism, are denied the virtue of patriotism. The merchants and manufacturers of Dublin and Belfast, the leading professional men of Ireland, the most learned scholars of her great University, her great soldiers, White, Wolseley, Roberts, her greatest living authors, the whole of her Protestant clergy of whatever sect, with their congregations, the pith and marrow of everything that is strong, stable, cultured, enlightened, prescient, must be pronounced unpatriotic--if Nationalism is Patriotism. Contrary to all human experience and to the course and constitution of nature, the people of England are asked to believe that love of their native land and desire to do the best for the commonweal, are the sole possession of the ignorant and rowdy classes of Irishmen, and notwithstanding the undeniable fact that Nationalist Irishmen of every colour accuse the Nationalist members of self-seeking, and of absolute indifference to everything: outside their own interests, we are asked to give to them exclusively the honour due to men who sacrifice all for their country and care for nothing but her welfare. Gladstonians themselves, in the deepest depths of their credulity, cannot in their hearts believe in Nationalist patriotism, except, perhaps, such as that of Mr. Kelly, of Athenry, who said, "I'm a Home Ruler out and out. The counthry's within a stone-throw of hell, and we may as well be in it altogether." Birmingham, August 11th. No. 60.--LAND HUNGER: ITS CAUSE, EFFECT, AND REMEDY. That Irish Nationalism is not Patriotism has been demonstrated by an appeal to admitted facts. The farmers hope to be relieved from payment of rent, the labourers hope to be employed in the mining of treasure at remunerative wages, the agitators hope for place and power, and everyone who has nothing hopes in the general confusion to make off with something. There is, in short, a shrewd popular notion that the foundering of the British ship of state would yield good wreckage. The false lights have done excellent service. Dillon, Davitt, O'Brien. Healy, and the rest of the would-be wreckers are shivering with excitement at the prospect of the crash which they fondly believe to be imminent. The helmsman is under their orders--will he be heaved overboard before he has done his work? If so, farewell to hope of plunder, farewell to hope of religions domination, to freehold farms for nothing, to gold mines, to every hope that made life pleasant, to all the fatuous beliefs that are the basis of Irish Nationalism. It has been shown that "patriotic" subscriptions could only be raised by threats, that the names of non-subscribers were posted on chapel gates, that resolutions fixing the minimum were passed, with a rider to the effect that persons not subscribing would be considered "out of sympathy," and that this fund was for the defence of the patriots Dillon and O'Brien, who afterwards ran away. The rush of the "patriot" depositors on the Post Office Savings Banks so soon as it was known that in the event of Home Rule the floating balance would constitute the working capital of the new Parliament, and would therefore be in the hands of brother "patriots," has been adduced as a fair measure of patriotic sincerity, and endless minor examples might have been given. We might have mentioned Delany, the principal clothier and outfitter of intensely patriotic Limerick, who had not a yard of Irish tweed in his stores; or the Dungannon folks, who think foul scorn of their own coal, and persist in buying the English product at double the cost; or Mr. Timony, of "patriotic Donegal," might have been quoted. "Irishmen," said the great draper, "will not wear Donegal tweed. But for England we should have no market at all." The patriots will not "part." "I'm sorry for you," said the kind old lady. "_How much_ are you sorry?" said the tramp. Tried by this test, Irish patriotism comes out very small. If "patriot" members had to live on the voluntary offerings of their constituencies, the trade would expire of inanition. The members would return to their bogs, their tripe shops, their shebeens, and patriotism would become a lost art. Irishmen will applaud with enthusiasm. They like a red-hot patriotic speech. But, like the crowd listening to the harp and fiddle at the street corner, they begin to shuffle off when the bag comes round. Irish land hunger is easy to understand and simple to define. The bulk of the population are agricultural, and closely wedded to custom. Their fathers lived on the land and by the land, and they expect to do likewise. _Sæva paupertas, et avitus apto cum lare fundus._ Their ideas of existence are inseparably connected with the land. Whatever knowledge they have relates to the land. Their farming skill is very limited; indeed, it may almost be said that they have none beyond that possessed by savages--but it is their only possession. They have no turn for mechanics. The rural Irishman is uneducated, and knows little beyond what he sees around him. So far as his experience goes, to be without land is to be without the one means of livelihood. The English small farmer is differently situated. If farming will not pay he has other resources. He can migrate to fifty towns having factories or great public works. And besides this, the Saxon is not crippled by an ignorant conservatism and a congenital inability to adapt himself to changed circumstances. Paddy is content with little, if he have his ease. He loves to put in the seed and then to sit down and wait for the crop, varying the proceedings with fairs and festive gatherings. Such is his conception of life. The ding-dong regularity of factory work does not suit him, so he clings to the land, which provides him with a bare subsistence, and that is all he wants. No ambition to be more luxurious than his father troubles him at all. Short spells of work, and long spells of play, are ensured to the fortunate holder of land. This is Paddy's conception of Paradise. Suppose the land held were at first sufficient to maintain his family. The boys grow up, and, according to custom, the paternal farm is divided, in the next generation again subdivided, until at last the amount of land remaining to each family is insufficient for its maintenance. Then the district becomes congested. The poverty of the people is attributed to the landlords, who are denounced as non-resident, notwithstanding the demonstrations of an affectionate tenantry, who now and then shoot one or two, _pour encourarger les autres_. If the people have food they have little or no money. The agitator comes and promises No Rent, the opening of gold mines and mighty factories, paying liberal wages, under the fostering wing of an Irish Parliament. The people are ignorant and credulous. They are, however, certain as to their own poverty, and they desire a change. The Roman Catholics regard themselves as the chosen people, the true sons of the soil, but they see that most of the great landowners are Protestant, that the Protestant farmers often hold uncommonly good land, and that if these were once dispossessed the righteous might again flourish as green bay trees. For while Papal Ireland is largely rock and bog, the heretical portion is reclaimed and tilled, the bogs drained, the primeval boulders rolled away, broken up, and made into fences. All this is tempting. Irish land hunger is foreshadowed in the story of Naboth and his vineyard. And Irish land hunger is largely responsible for Irish rents. Friends and neighbours--aye, even relatives near as brothers and sisters, compete against each other, and eagerly force up the price. Every Irish land agent will tell you of underhand intrigue in connection with land. Not only do brothers secretly strive to obtain advantage over each other by means of higher bidding, but bribery is tried. Mr. Robert Hare, of the Dublin Board of Works, said:--"My father was an agent, and on one occasion he was weighing the respective claims of two brothers to a piece of land which was about to become vacant and perhaps considering their respective offers, when one sent him a ten-pound note. He cut it in two and returned one-half, with an intimation that on receiving a receipt he would forward the other." I never met anyone in Ireland who would not readily admit that high rents were mainly due to the action of the tenants themselves, who, being actuated by what is called land-hunger, which is nothing more in the majority of cases than the necessity to live, had in their desperation bid more than the land was worth. Mr. Thomas Manley, of Trim, County Meath, said:--"The tenant farmer has cried himself up, and the Nationalists have cried him up as the finest, most industrious, most self-sacrificing fellow in the world. But he isn't. Not a bit of it. The landlords and their agents have over and over again been shot for rack-renting when the rents had been forced up by secret competition among neighbours and even relations. Ask any living Irish farmer if I am right, and he will say, Yes, ten times yes." As an Irish farmer and the son of an Irish farmer, living for sixty years on Irish farms, and from his occupation as a horse-dealer, claiming to have an intimate acquaintance with the whole of Ireland, and with almost every farmer who can breed and rear a horse, Mr. Manley is worth a hearing. Continuing, in the presence of several intelligent Irishmen, some of them Home Rulers, but all agreeing with the speaker, Mr. Manley said:--"Rents have been forced up by people going behind each other's backs and offering more and more, in their eagerness to acquire the holding outbidding each other. Landlords are human; agents, if possible, still more human. They handed over the land to the highest bidder. What more natural? The farmers offered more than the land could pay. But why curse the landlords for what was their own deliberate act?" Mr. Manley's knowledge of England enabled him to say that "the Irish farmer is much better off than the English, Scotch, or Welsh farmer, not only in the matter of law, but also in the matter of soil." The legal point is demonstrable. Let us see how the Irish tenant stands. The disinclination of the Irish for factory work, as exemplified in the closing of the Galway jute factory, because of irregularity of attendance, and the refusal of the starving peasantry of congested Donegal and Connemara to accept regular employment in the thread factory of Dunbar, MacMaster and Co., notwithstanding the most tempting inducements, as set forth in my letters from Ireland, has strangled enterprise, except in the North. The ceaseless agitation of the revolutionary party has given rise to a feeling of insecurity which deters capitalists from investing money in Ireland. And it is only fair to say that a large majority of the most intelligent men of every political colour concur in attributing much of the poverty of Ireland to unrestricted Free Trade. Thus a variety of causes have created land hunger, with its resulting land clamour, which has brought about extraordinary legislation--extraordinary because going far beyond the principles recognised by Republican America, which in the first article of its Constitution draws the line thus:--"_No State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts._" Well might Lord Salisbury, in extending the Land Purchase Act, carefully dissociate the Conservative party from the principle of interference with free contract in the open market. In England a thing is worth what it will fetch. It is not so in Ireland. A tenant can never be evicted unless a whole year's rent is due. The landlord might want the land for himself or for his son, but he cannot have it. The tenant must have six months' notice of eviction, and when actually evicted can recover possession by paying what he owes, and in that case the landlord becomes liable to the tenant for the crops on the land, and for the profits he (the landlord) _might_ have made. In America the length of notice preceding eviction varies from three days to thirty, the latter only in the State of Maine. Yet in Ireland, where we hear so much of brutal evictions, six months' notice is required, a year's rent being due, this boon having been conferred by a "Coercion" Government. An Irish tenant even when voluntarily leaving his farm must be compensated by the landlord for all improvements made by himself or his predecessors, or must be permitted to sell his improvements to the incoming tenant. The tenant-right of a small farm is sometimes a surprising sum. The moonlighting case I investigated at Newcastlewest, Co. Limerick, arose from a tenant-right transaction, William Quirke having bid £590 for the tenant-right of forty-nine acres formerly held by J. Dore who was selling, as against £400 bid by Dore's cousin. Quirke and three of his family were therefore shot in the legs, by way of impressing the advisability of joining in the Onward march to Freedom. But although the tenant is settled on the land for ever, and, so long as he owes less than a year's rent, cannot be molested, it must not be supposed that the rent he agreed to is unchangeable. Suppose the tenant to be paying a judicial rent, which is decided by three persons, one of them a lawyer, the other two acting respectively in the interests of landlord and tenant, having examined and valued the farm. Assume that the tenant gets more than a year behindhand. The landlord desires to evict. Even then the tenant, by applying for another "Fair Rent," can stay eviction. But while the rent may be lowered, the landlord can never raise it under any circumstances. The law is decidely one-sided. Leases may be broken. All leaseholders whose leases would expire within ninety-nine years after the passing of the Land Act of 1887 may go to Court, have their contracts broken, and a judicial rent fixed. No countervailing advantage is given to the landlords. When a tenant's valuation does not exceed £50, the Court before which proceedings are being taken for the recovery of any debt, whether for beef, bread, groceries, clothes, or whiskey, is empowered to stay eviction, can allow the debtor to pay by instalments, and can extend the time for such payment without limit. To the average British mind this will smack of over-legislation, and serious Irishmen make the same complaint. And still, to quote Father Mahony, of Cork, "still the Irish peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel English yoke." The fact is, he is almost killed with kindness. He is weighed down by the multitude of benefactions. He reminds you of the tame sparrow you once suffocated by overfeeding. So much has been done for him that he naturally expects more, and instead of being grateful he grumbles more than ever. He regards Mr. Gladstone as having acted under compulsion, and as being an opportunist. The peasantry of Ireland have no respect for the Grand Old Man. "Shure, we bate the bills out iv him. Shure, he never gave us anythin' till we kicked it out iv his skin. Divil thank him for doin' what we ordhered him to do." But perhaps the Tory Land Purchase Acts are most promising in, the direction of finality. Lord Ashbourne's Act, as it was called (1885), conferred on Irish tenants opportunities of purchasing their holdings of quite an exceptional kind, and its scope and advantages were enormously increased under the Land Purchase Act passed in 1891. If a tenant wishes to buy his holding and arranges with his landlord as to terms, he can change his position from an ordinary rentpayer into that of a payer of an annuity, terminable in forty-nine years, and actually less in amount than the rent! Most Irish landlords are willing to take less than twenty years' purchase, but the tenants are by their leaders advised not to buy. Otherwise the Government is prepared to advance the necessary purchase money, to be repaid at the rate of four per cent. per annum, which covers both principal and interest. Suppose the tenant's rent to be £50, and that he agreed to buy at the seventeen years' purchase so strongly discountenanced by the priest quoted in my last. His rent or rather the annual payment substituted for rent, would amount to £34, being a reduction of thirty-two per cent. If he bought at fifteen years' purchase, rent £50, he would only pay £30 a year, a reduction of forty per cent. If he bought at twenty years, rent £50, he would have £40 a year to pay, being a reduction of twenty per cent. In forty-nine years the holding would belong to him, or to his children. In any case he must largely benefit. His rent is lower, his share in the ownership is always becoming larger, and, if he chooses, he can at any time sell his interest in the concern. Mr. Palmer, of Tuam, said that those who had purchased under this Act were happy and prosperous. Lord Shannon's tenants bought at twelve years' purchase. In other words they exchanged their rent for one-half the amount, payable to Government, the land to be their own in forty-nine years. Lord Lansdowne's tenants agreed to buy at eighteen years' purchase, all arrears to be forgiven on payment of half a year's rent. These buyers are quiet and apparently contented. Their payments are regular, and if they were left alone they would doubtless continue in the path of rectitude. But the agitators, who find nick-names for everything, have already begun to call this repayment of purchase-money a Tribute to England; and the past history of Irish leaders leads honest Irishmen, as well as Englishmen, to the conviction that, once an Irish Parliament were established, with an Irish constabulary under its rule, a No Tribute campaign would ensue, which would lead to deplorable results. The privileges of Irish tenants are far more numerous than I have space to indicate, but perhaps enough has been said to give a clear idea of the chief causes and effects of land hunger in Ireland. The remedy, in the opinion of many advanced and enlightened Home Rulers, must come from a Tory Government. From the multitude of counsellors I met in the thirty-two counties of Ireland, I will select two who represent the vast majority of able men of every political party. Mr. Thomas Manley said:--"Settle the land question, reform the Poor Laws and the Grand Jury laws, and reclaim the land, which would pay ten per cent." Mr. Mason, of Mullingar, said:--"The whole agitation would be knocked on the head by the introduction of a severe land measure. Previous legislation has been very severe, and I do not say that a further measure would be just and equitable. I merely say that the people do not want Home Rule, but that they want the advantages which they are told will accrue from Home Rule." And so said everyone. To settle the land question is to settle everything. Religious animosity would be silenced by self-interest. The operation of the Land Purchase Act has undoubtedly done much to turn the people using its provisions into good Conservatives--law-abiding and law-supporting, as having a stake in the country. The people have not the land for nothing but they look forward to its becoming honestly their own, and meanwhile they enjoy the security insured by the Government of England. In any attempt to settle this great problem, a Conservative Government would probably be largely supported by the landlords themselves, while the rank and file of Ireland would look with respect and confidence on any bill bearing the honoured name of Balfour. But how shall we decide the scope and character of such a final Land Bill? I do not hesitate to say that it must contain a very strong infusion of the compulsory element. The great measure of 1891 is generous to a fault, but it is voluntary, and the result is that the tenants who give greatest trouble--the poor, idle, ignorant dupes of a scheming priesthood and a corrupt political conspiracy--never come under its benefits, because they unquestioningly accept the advice given them to wait until an Irish Parliament lets them have the land for nothing. Compulsion is not required for the landlords half so much as it is for the tenants. The conclusion arrived at may be stated in a few words. Perhaps it may be worthy the consideration of our brilliant and far-seeing Unionist leaders:-- The Land Purchase Act, 1891, should be amended by a Bill providing (1) That the existing Land Commission shall be strengthened in order to form a Court to which either Landlords or Tenants shall have the right to apply for an order of the Court placing them under the provisions of the Act of 1891, or such extension of that Act as may hereafter be made. (2) It should be the duty of the Court to inquire into the relations of landlord and tenant, the condition of the estate and of the tenants, and such other circumstances as may in the wisdom of the Court seem necessary. (3) If the Court decides to issue an order, the parties shall at once be placed in the same position as if they had entered into a mutual agreement under the Land Purchase Act, 1891; but it shall be the duty of the Court to fix the number of years' purchase; and it shall have power either to restrict or to enlarge the number of holdings over which its order shall take effect. This is offered as the mere germ of a suggestion. I am familiar with the arguments that may be brought against it. For the most part they can be urged with equal effect against the whole system of interference with that freedom of contract which prevails in England and Scotland, but which, as I have pointed out, has already been destroyed in Ireland. What I claim is that there _must_ be a means of defeating such a conspiracy to make the law inoperative as that practised--to the grave detriment of Irish tenants' interests--by the omnipresent agencies of the National League, ever since the Unionist party set itself to solve the agrarian sources of Irish discontent. Birmingham, August 14th. No. 61.--CLERICAL DOMINATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. Those who play at bowls must expect rubbers. The Roman priesthood of Ireland having assumed the manipulation of Irish politics, have laid themselves open to mundane criticism. Said Mr. Gladstone:--"It is the peculiarity of Roman theology that by thrusting itself into the temporal domain, it naturally, and even necessarily, comes to be a frequent theme of political discussion." Priestly pretensions to authority are without limit. The Catholic clergy of Ireland claim the right to coerce the laity in political matters, themselves remaining exempt from public criticism. They also claim to be exempt from civil jurisdiction, and to have the right of overruling the law of the land, with every moral obligation, when clashing with the interests of the Church. They distinctly teach that every political question is a question of morals, and that to vote against the priest's instructions is a deadly sin. Such being a few of the claims advanced by the Irish priesthood, let us see on what rests the hope of these extraordinary demands being recognised. A.M. Sullivan, a Roman Catholic Nationalist M.P., says:--"Of all Catholic nations or countries in the world--the Tyrol alone excepted--Ireland is perhaps the most Papal, the most ultramontane. In Ireland religious conviction--what may be called active Catholicism--marks the population, enters into their daily life and thought and action. The churches are crowded as well by men as by women, and in every sacrament and ceremony of their religion participation is extensive and earnest. Reverence for the sacerdotal character is so deep and strong as to be called superstition by observers who belong to a different faith; and devotion to the Pope, attachment to the Roman See, is probably more intense in Ireland than in any other part of the habitable globe, the Leonine city itself not excluded." In other words, the Irish are more Roman than the Romans themselves. Here we have on the one hand the claims of the Romish priesthood, and on the other the disposition of the Irish people. But as the alleged claims will to the majority of Englishmen appear monstrous and incredible, it becomes necessary to prove that these claims are actually made. The fall of Parnell brought the clergy into striking prominence. The powerful personality of the Irish leader, his great popularity, and his determination to rule alone, had to some extent forced the Church into the background. Parnell once removed, the Church at once aimed at undivided rule, directing all her energies to this end mercilessly and without scruple. Her instruments were worthy of the work. The modern Irish priest is usually low-bred, vulgar, and ignorant. The priest of Lever's novels, brimming over with animal spirits, full of _bonhomie_, sparkling with wit and abounding with jovial good-nature, is nowhere to be found. The men of the olden time were educated in France, and by rubbing against the cultured professors of Douai or Saint Omer, had acquired a polish, a breadth of view, a _savoir faire_, denied to the illiterate hordes of Maynooth. The olden priest was loyal, just as cultured Irishmen who have travelled, whether in America, England, or elsewhere, are loyal and averse to Home Rule. The modern priest, usually the son of an Irishman such as visits England at harvest time, brought up amidst squalor and filth, is in full sympathy with the limited ideas of the peasantry among whom he was reared. The conversation of his parents and associates would relate to the burden of the Saxon yoke, and his surroundings would perpetually re-echo the stories of Ireland's wrongs and woes. Any literature he might absorb would be a priest-written history of Ireland, with the rebel doggerel of 1798 and the more seductive sedition of later years. At Maynooth he meets a crowd of students like himself, crammed to the throat with his own prejudices, viewing everything from the same standpoint. He returns to the people a full blown ecclesiastic, saturated with a sense of his own importance and the absolute supremacy of the Church he represents; knowing nothing of mankind outside his own narrow sphere, profoundly ignorant of the world's political systems, and intensely inimical to England. Average Keltic priests fully bear out the description furnished by a loyal priest of Donegal, who, on alluding to their social status and Maynooth course, said:--"They are merely shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years." As to their exceptional claims. The attitude of omniscience and omnipotence has often been crudely stated by the Catholic hierarchy. Archbishop Walsh, of Dublin, has declared that there is no dividing line between religion and politics. Dr. Walsh has also laid down the dictum that, "As priests and independent of all human organisations, we have an inalienable and indisputable right to guide our people in every proceeding where the interests of Catholics as well as the interests of Irish nationality are involved." This prelate rescinded the wholesome rule enforced by his predecessors, forbidding the clergy to take part in political demonstrations. He went further. He ordered that at all political conventions an _ex-officio_ vote should be given to the priests. It is in view of this fact that the Unionists of Ireland not unreasonably declare that under a Home Rule Bill the Roman Catholic clergy would become endowed with civil privileges which would make them absolute rulers of Ireland. It may be urged that Bishop Walsh is discredited at Rome, and that therefore his utterances may be somewhat discounted. But what of the new Irish Cardinal, Archbishop Logue, of Armagh? He agrees with Dr. Walsh, and with reference to the Parnellite split, thus delivers himself:--"We are face to face with a grave disobedience to ecclesiastical authority! The doctrines of the present day are calculated to wean the people from the priests' advice, to separate the priests from the people, and _to let the people use their own judgment_!" Surely nothing could be clearer or more uncompromising than this. Bishop Nulty, alluding to the refusal of Mr. Redmond's political party to accept without question the political commands of the Church, thus hinted at the consequences to recalcitrant Papists:--"It is exclusively through us that the clean and holy oblation of the mass is offered daily for the living and the dead on the thousands of altars throughout our country. It is through our ministry that the poor penitent gets forgiveness of his sins in the Sacrament of Penance. The dying Parnellite will hardly dare to face the justice of his creator till he has been prepared and anointed by us for the last awful struggle and for the terrible judgment that will immediately follow it." This threat of eternal damnation was eagerly taken up and re-echoed by the inferior clergy. Father Patrick O'Connell speaking from the altar at Ballinabrackey said that no Parnellite could receive the sacrament worthily, and warned all parents against allowing their sons or daughters to attend a Parnellite meeting, as it was not a merely political matter, but a matter of their holy religion. In his sermon he referred to a meeting of the political party favoured by the Church, and said that every man, woman, and child must be present. All must assemble at the chapel, and all must be in time to walk in procession to the place of meeting. He would be there with Father McLoughlin, and the pair would go round to see who was absent. All absentees must let him know the reason why, and if the reason did not satisfy him he would meet them in the highways and in the byways, at the Communion rails, and would "set fire to their heels and toes." He would make it hot for them. There would be no compromise. All voters against clerical instruction he denounced as "infidels and heretics." Mr. Edward Weir, who was suspected of having opinions of his own, was denounced in Castlejordan Chapel as a 'Pigotted Guardian.' He was a member of the Poor Law Board. He was threatened to be 'met at the communion rails,' by which he understood that the sacrament would be refused to him. Two nights afterwards the hedge around his house was set on fire, and fire was placed on the gate in front of it. This was a gentle hint that the people were backing the priest, and that unless he complied his house might be next destroyed. When Mr. Michael Saurin, J.P., a member of the Ballinabrackey congregation, went to vote, the door of the booth was crammed to keep him out. The crowd booed and shouted at him, and he was spat upon. The priests were present in force. Nicholas Cooney was also spat upon, and so was his brother, both on their clothes and in their faces. Father Woods was looking on. Matthew Brogan, who was also thought to be against clerical dictation, was refused admission to mass; and not only poor Matthew himself, but his son, daughter-in-law, her children, and two friends who were suspected of sympathy. The woman insisted on entering the chapel, when one of the crowd of true believers "near cut the hand off her." Michael Kenny and Peter Fagan were served with the same sauce by these enthusiastic preachers of the Onward March to Freedom, poor Fagan exhibiting the touching devotion of the Irish peasantry by kneeling outside during the whole of the service. Englishmen do not realise what these refusals mean to Irish Catholics. They constitute the cruellest and most effective coercion possible. To be refused the sacraments, to be turned away from the door of his chapel, is to the Irish peasant a turning away from the gates of Paradise, a denial of the Kingdom of Heaven, a condemnation to everlasting torment, to say nothing of the accompanying odium in which he is held by his neighbours and associates, and the ever present dread of boycotting. Thomas Brogan dare not leave the polling-booth for his life, until Mr. Carew took him on his car. He had been threatened by the priest, who drew a circle round him with a walking stick, to show that he was cut off from his fellows, and that contamination must be feared. Patrick Hogan, whose views were not in accordance with those of the priest, was afraid to vote. He went to the booth, but feared to proceed. Thomas Dunn was more plucky, but his temerity resulted in a cut face and a black eye for his wife at the hands of a patriot named James Mitchell. Father McEntee tore down a party flag belonging to the station-master of Drumree, a Parnellite, and jumped on it, in a towering rage, saying that the owner must follow the instructions of the Bishop. He then threw the flag into a field. Father Crinnion, of Batterstown, standing in his vestments at the altar, called out the names of all persons supposed to be disaffected to the clerical cause, and ordered them to meet him in the vestry after mass. He asked for their votes, and showed a ballot paper. He had previously read in chapel the opinion of Bishop Nulty, quoted above. Father Tynan told Patrick King that unless he voted "straight" he would not receive the sacraments on his deathbed. The same priest told John Cowley, of Kilcavan, that unless he voted for the right candidate he would be expelled from the Church, and would be deprived of Christian burial when he died. Cases of this kind might be multiplied _ad infinitum_. Father Shaw, of Longwood, accentuated the horrible condition of the party who refused to vote under his orders by asking his congregation to pray for them. Father Cassidy sailed on the same tack, and besides thanked God that the "wrong 'uns" were so few. Father Fay, of Cool, said (between the Gospels) that his political opponents should be "treated like wild beasts," and that he would never forget the men who voted against his orders. Thomas Darby was canvassed by his priest, who, on finding that his parishioner was pledged the other way, curtly said, "Then you'll go to hell," to which Darby replied that he would at any rate have a few companions. James Guerin has no confidence in the secrecy of illiterate voting, for after voting in the presence of a priest he had to jump a wall and hide in a wood to escape the vengeance of the people. When he came out, at ten o'clock at night, he was stoned. Father O'Donnell, presumably in the interests of peace, advised his congregation to take their sticks to a certain meeting, and promised to be there with his own faithful blackthorn. The peasant Fagan, who said his prayers outside the chapel, was burned in effigy, but priestly displeasure was not satisfied until his cowshed, with a cart and harness were also destroyed by fire. To have independent opinions costs something substantial in Ireland. The aspirations of a People and the Onward March to Freedom are not kept up for nothing. The patriots are not afraid of their trouble. They will not spoil the Union of Hearts for want of a little incendiarism. Now and then, but very seldom, the priests meet their match. They presume on their spiritual immunity. The priest who refused to leave a house into which he had intruded was threatened by Colonel Dopping with expulsion. "Dare to touch my consecrated body," said the "shaved labourer." "Your consecrated body be hanged!" said the Colonel, and out went Father McFadden. Father Fay, of Summerhill, said in a sermon delivered at Dangan:--"You must not look upon me as a mere man! The priest is the ambassador of Jesus Christ, and not like other ambassadors either. He carries his Lord and master about with him, and when the priest is with the people, Almighty God is with them!" Father Fagan, of Kildalkey, was so vexed with the refusal of John Murtagh to vote according to clerical instructions that he said:--"May the landlords come and hunt the whole of ye to hell's blazes." Murtagh said, "Ye wish yer neighbour well, Sorr!" The man of God threatened to kick poor Murtagh into the ditch, to which the erring parishioner replied that in that case he would kick the good shepherd like a puppy. "Ah," said Father Fagan, "you ruffian, you'll want me at the Last Day," and refused to hear his wife's confession. The woman was dying, the husband had been for the priest, and on the way to what proved a death-bed, Father Fagan improved the shining hour by trying to nobble a straying vote. The clergy make the most of their opportunities. At Boardmills Father Skelly spread out a ballot paper on the altar at Sunday service. Having described the situation of the names, he pointed out where they were to make the cross. He then went on with the mass. He thought of something else! Some of them, he hinted, were pledged to the other side. They could shout for this candidate, but when they went to vote they must "wink the other eye," as advised by the music-hall song. Colonel Nolan, M.P., when canvasing at Headford, was violently assaulted by a priest, who cut open the Parnellite head with a stout blackthorn. Like a good Catholic, the Colonel would fain have endured this clerical argument; but the police authorities insisted on the matter seeing the light. Clerical domination and the means by which it is attained are therefore proven by undeniable evidence. The Papal hierarchy and their subordinates are resolved to be supreme. _Aut Cæsar, aut nullus._ And it is a striking fact that by none is this doctrine so strongly deprecated, so bitterly resented, as by the educated and enlightened portion of Roman Catholic Ireland. _Their_ aspirations are all on the side of toleration, harmony and peaceful progress. _They_ are not only law-abiding, but loyal, and unlike the ignorant clergy and their still more ignorant dupes, are ever ready to join in singing "God Save the Queen." From an English, even a Conservative point of view, the educated Catholics of Ireland, like all classes of English Catholics, are everything that can be desired. But what are they among so many? The consequences of clerical domination, obtained by spiritual and physical intimidation, are obvious enough. I have not space to show how the system has been carried into the confessional, but numerous examples are on record. Neither was it within the scope of this article to prove, as could easily be done, that the clergy of Rome claim to be above and outside the action of the statute law, and that their action is calculated to make the position of Protestants untenable. The moral degradation of the people, as exemplified by their dread of the priest, who escorts them in hundreds to the polling-booth, and by his persistent action and untiring vigilance exploits their electoral power for his own aggrandisement, and for the acquisition of Papal supremacy in Ireland, is to Englishmen of all considerations the most important. Recent events have demonstrated the fact that the politics of Ireland--and therefore the politics of England--can be almost completely controlled for any purpose by the thirty prelates who practically command the votes of an entire people. A Roman Catholic barrister said to me:--"I do not blame the priests for doing the best they can for themselves. They have the power, and they use it for their own purposes. I say they use it unfairly, and the Meath election petition has proved that they use it illegally. They think otherwise, but without arguing this point, I say that clerical domination will ruin the country. Irish election returns are for the most part worthless as an expression of public opinion." Another talented Irishman said:--"The glorious British Empire is now bossed by a party of priests." And that this is unhappily true must be conceded by every observant and impartial Englishman. Yet some there are, blind followers of the blind, obtuse to every argument, impregnable to incontrovertible facts, who have cast in their lot with the avowed enemies of England. They have their day--every dog has it--but their day is far spent, and their night is at hand. For England will never again submit to Romish rule. Nor will Ireland when her eyes are opened. Birmingham, August 16th. No. 62.--CIVIL WAR A CERTAINTY OF HOME RULE. English supporters of Mr. Gladstone affect to ridicule the fears of armed and organised conflict between the rival races and religions of Ireland. Their attitude in this respect is doubtless due to a slavish following of their master. They keep their eye upon their figure-head. When it frowns they become serious. When it smiles they try to be funny. When it assumes an aspect of virtuous indignation, the tears immediately spring to their eyes, and they go about saying what a shame it is. They remind you of Professor Anderson and his Inexhaustible Bottle. Like Paddy Byrne's barometer, they are "stuck fast at Changeable." They are always on the move. Like Virgil's lady, they are _varium et mutabile_. Like Shakespeare's gentlemen, they are Deceivers ever, One foot on shore and one foot on sea, To one thing constant never. Every morning they nervously scan the journals to see what change of sentiment is required. Without this precaution they would run the risk of meeting their political friends with the wrong facial expression. The reason for all this is well known. Their motto is _ad exemplum regis_. To-day Mr. Gladstone believes (or says he believes) that if Ireland were left to herself, and the disturbing, domineering, tyrannising influence of England were removed, the rival races and religions would live together in perfect harmony and brotherly love. His followers eagerly adopt this belief. But yesterday Mr. Gladstone believed (or said he believed) "That the influence of Great Britain in every Irish difficulty is not a domineering and tyrannising, but a softening and mitigating influence, and that were Ireland left to her own unaided agencies, it might be that the strife of parties would then burst forth in a form calculated to strike horror through the land." His followers believed that too, and they would believe it again to-morrow if their leader harked back. The quotation is from Hansard, and commences, "It is my firm belief." What do Mr. Gladstone's infirm beliefs resemble? Putting aside the changeable Premier, gyrating like a dancing dervish, and his Penny-in-the-slot party, let us call respectable evidence; let us hear the opinion of competent and trustworthy witnesses; let us examine the character of the forces which will be brought into antagonism; let us observe what steps have been taken in view of possibilities more or less remote; and then let us form our own conclusions. And first as to opinions and evidence, let us hear Mr. J.A. Froude, of all English historians the most famous expert on Irish subjects. "The effect of Grattan's Constitution was to stimulate political agitation and the conflict of the two races." That was a Home Rule Parliament. And again Mr. Froude says:--"Ireland is geographically and politically attached to this country, and cannot be allowed to leave us if she wishes. In passing over the executive power to an Irish Parliament we only increase the difficulty of retaining Ireland. We shall alienate the loyal part of the population, who will regard themselves as betrayed. The necessity of reconquest will remain, but the evils of it and the bloodshed to be occasioned by it will be infinitely enhanced. Such respect for law and order as exists in Ireland is entirely due to English authority. Remove it, and the old anarchy will and must return. If the Home Rule Bill is passed there will be a dangerous and desperate war, in which other countries may take part who would gladly see our power broken." In Mr. Froude's opinion, there would be war between England and Ireland, as well as between Ulster and the South. His last sentence is curiously confirmed by the _Irish Daily Independent_, which says:--"What England forgets is the fact that when next Ireland fights she will not fight alone." This is not a warning, like the prophecy of Mr. Froude, it is a threat, for the _Independent_ is not only a Nationalist, but an intensely anti-English paper. Another great historian, Mr. Lecky, thus expresses himself:--"The Parliament Mr. Gladstone proposes to set up would be in violent hostility to the richest and most industrious portion of the community. It is regarded with horror by nearly every man who is a leader of industry in Ireland. All the great names in Irish finance, manufacture, and trade are against it, and the men who would undoubtedly lead it are men whom Mr. Gladstone not long ago described with great justice as preaching the doctrine of public plunder." The state of feeling here indicated could have but one result; but Mr. Lecky is still more precise. "The assertion that Irish Catholics have never shown any jealousy of Irish Protestants is of a kind which I find it difficult to characterise with proper moderation. Jealousy, unhappily, is far too feeble a word to describe adequately the fierce reciprocal animosity which has dislocated Ireland for centuries. It blazed into a furious flame in the religious wars of Elizabeth, in the great rebellion of 1642, in the Jacobite struggle of 1689, in the religious war into which the rebellion of 1798 speedily degenerated. These facts are about as conspicuous in the history of Ireland as Magna Charta and the Commonwealth in the history of England. No one who knows Ireland will deny that the policy of Mr. Gladstone has contributed more than any other single cause to revive and deepen the divisions which every good Irishman deplores." Mr. Lecky believes that history repeats itself, and that the establishment of an Irish Parliament would lead to a great Irish convulsion, similar to those which he refers. My experience among Irish Churchmen convinces me that their feeling is understated in the petition signed by nearly fifteen thousand select vestrymen, and adopted by the general Synod, "That we regard the measure as fraught with peril to our civil and religious liberties, which are our prized inheritance; that conflicts of interest and collisions of authority would create a condition of frequent irritation and intolerable strain." The Methodists in full Conference gave it as their opinion "That in the judgment of this committee the bill, if it were to become law, so far from being a message of peace to Ireland, would be a most fruitful occasion of distressing discord and strife; that class would be arrayed against class and party against party with a virulence now rare and unknown; and that the inevitable result would be the overturning of all order and good government." What does this mean if not civil war? Be it understood that the existing feeling is now being demonstrated by appeal to the most reliable authorities, all speaking under a due sense of responsibility, and therefore with a studied moderation. The Presbyterians, a numerous and powerful body, speaking in the General Assembly, after declaring that the proposed measure imperils their civil and religious liberties, and expressing their determined opposition to an Irish Legislature and Executive, controlled by men "marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire," whom a Special Commission found to be guilty of a criminal Conspiracy, and who invented, supported, and tried to justify the Land League, the Plan of Campaign, and boycotting--after this preamble, the Presbyterians declare that the bill is "calculated to embitter the hostility of conflicting creeds and parties in Ireland." The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland resolved at a meeting of its Irish Presbytery "that Home Rule would greatly intensify the antagonism now existing between the two peoples inhabiting Ireland." The Quakers come out pretty strong. They first ask to be believed. They hope that Englishmen will give credence to the sincerity of their convictions and the disinterestedness of their motives, and then they say that Home Rule "cannot fail to be disastrous to Ireland, and must tend to perpetuate and intensify the strife and discord which we have so long lamented and which we earnestly desire, so far as in us lies, to mitigate and allay." These protests are not all from Ulster. Every Grand Jury in Ireland has expressed itself in similar terms. The leading mercantile men of the three southern provinces of Ireland have declared in writing that "the Bill of the Government throws amongst us a new apple of discord, and plunges Ireland again into a state of political and party ferment." Pages of quotation might be added. But if those already adduced are not sufficient to satisfy my readers as to the feeling of the Irish Unionist party, they would hardly be persuaded though one rose from the dead. The feeling of the other party is still stronger, and has been so often and openly expressed as to stand in no need of proof. Mr. Dillon has threatened to "manage Ulster;" and others have over and over again declared that the Protestant settlers are not Irishmen, and therefore have no right in the country. The lower classes of Irish Nationalists regard an Irish Legislature as an instrument to secure ascendency and plunder. The ruling idea is loot. The Unionists are determined at all costs to maintain religious equality and to hold their own. In Ulster masters and men, landlords and tenants, are of one mind. They do not bluster and brag. Those who represent them as rowdies do them grievous wrong. They are sober, thrifty, industrious, pious. In character they resemble Cromwell's Puritans, or the Scottish Covenanters of old, and no wonder, for they are of the same stock. They are by nature kindly and peaceful, but they become dangerous indeed on the points of liberty, religion, and property. We can partly judge their future by their past. In the dark and troublous days of rebellion they held the country for England, established a police, did for Ireland all that Government neglected to do, and then, having restored order, the small but mighty minority threw aside their arms and went back to their work. They are before everything industrial. Wars and rumours of wars they detest, as injurious to trade, as well as to higher interests. But when they take off their coats they always win. They put into their efforts, whether in war or peace, such a strenuous determination, such an unwavering resolution to succeed, that they become invincible. They have the confidence inspired by invariable success. Their opponents have the flabbiness and the lack of self-reliance resulting from seven hundred years of whining and querulous complaint. If Mr. Gladstone were to offer complete separation to-morrow the Irish leaders dare not take it. They know what would happen if Ulster took the field. Spite of their boasting, Dillon & Co. know full well that their vaunted numbers would avail them naught. The venerable William Arthur, a Nonconformist minister, says:--"We will not be put under a Parliament in Dublin. The Imperial franchise and all which that guarantees is our birthright. No man shall take it from us. We will never sell it. If Englishmen and Scotchmen will not let us live and die in the freedom we were born to, they will have to come and kill us. On that ground stands the strongest party in Ireland. For as sure as the Home Rule party is the larger, so surely is the Unionist party the stronger. Ask any military man who has spent a few years in the country. Settle the Irish question by putting the stronger party under the weaker! You would only change a count of heads into a trial of strength. Instead of the polling-booth, where nothing counts but heads, you would set for the two parties another trysting place. There brains count, education counts, purses count, habits of hard work count, habits of command and habits of obedience count, habits of success count, delight in overcoming difficulties count, northern tenacity counts, and there are other things which I do not mention that would count. Let not the two parties be summoned to that trysting place!" During my visit to Belfast I had exceptional opportunities of ascertaining the probabilities of armed resistance to the authority of a Dublin Parliament. I visited what might fairly be called the Ulster War Department, and there saw regular preparation for an open campaign, the arrangements being under the most able and expert superintendence. The tables were covered with documents connected with the sale and purchase of rifles and munitions of war. One of them set forth the particulars of a German offer of two hundred and forty-five thousand Mauser rifles, the arm lately discarded by the Prussian Government, with fifty million cartridges. As I had frequent opportunities of observing the manufacture of a hundred and fifty thousand of these weapons by the National Arms and Ammunition Company of Sparkbrook, I noted the present quotation, which was 16s. each, the cartridges to be thrown in for nothing. Another offer referred to a hundred and forty-nine thousand stand of arms with thirty million cartridges. There were numerous offers from Birmingham, and a large consignment of rifles and bayonets were about to be delivered in Ireland, the entire freight of a small steamer, at a place which I was then forbidden to mention, but which I may now say was Portaferry. An enormous correspondence was submitted to me in confidence, and I was surprised to see how deep and sincere was the sympathy of the working men of England, who with gentlemen of position and influence, and rifle volunteers by thousands were offering their aid in the field should the bill become law. I saw a letter from a distinguished English soldier with an offer of five hundred pounds and two hundred men. Money was coming in plentifully, and all the correspondence was unsought. The office had over fifty thousand pounds in hand, and promises for more than half a million. The forces at that moment, organised and drilled, numbered 164,614, all duly enrolled and pledged to act together anywhere and at any time, many of them already well armed, and the remainder about to be furnished with modern weapons. The Government was becoming nervous. An order from headquarters required a complete survey of the three barracks of Belfast, with an exhaustive report as to their defensive capabilities. Plans of existing musketry loopholes were to be made, and commanding officers were to state if it would be advisable to add to them. Suggestions were invited, and Mr. Morley, who at that very moment was telling Parliament that no precautions were being taken, wanted to know if the said barracks could be held against an organised force of civilians, arriving unexpectedly, and when Tommy Atkins was taking his walks abroad. At the same time, military officers were being secretly sworn in as magistrates. Does this look like the fear of civil war? These statements, made in the _Gazette_ five months ago, have not been contradicted. The rank and file of the English Home Rule party know nothing of this--and by what their priestly allies would call "invincible ignorance" they may be excused their inability to believe in stern resistance to anything. The party of surrender are totally incapable of understanding that men exist who would lay down their lives for a principle. Mr. Gladstone and his Items, like the Irish leaders and their dupes, are easily overmastered. You have only to stand up to them, and they curl up like mongrel curs. But for this fact were would be no Home Rule Bill. Of the two parties the Irish were the stoutest, and the weakest went to the wall. The English Home Rulers cannot conceive that their conquerors could be easily beaten, or even that men can be found to meet them on the field. On the contrary, the men of Ulster who know these heroes hold them in deepest contempt, and in the event of an appeal to arms would treat them as so many mice. Spite of their Army of Independence, the Nationalists tacitly admit this, and would defer separation until they have first by legislative enactments driven away "the English garrison," or compelled Ulster in self-defence to declare against English rule. And, strange to say, they propose to use to this end the force of English arms. They calculate on the resistance of Ulster as a measure of assistance to their own ultimate purposes. "All we have to do is to stand by while British soldiers shoot them down like dogs." That is their expectation, as expressed by one of themselves. Their plans are well hid. But "The best-laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft agley," as the priest-governed schemers may find to their cost. A second and more recent sojourn in Ulster deepened the impression given by my first visit. Throughout the province the feeling is still the same--an immovable determination to resist at all hazards the imposts of a Dublin Parliament. They will have no acts or part in it. They will send no members, they will pay no taxes, they will not accord to it one jot or tittle of authority. They will offer armed resistance to any force of police or Sheriff's officers acting under warrants issued by the College Green legislators. Resistance to the Queen's authority they regard as altogether out of the question. But it remains to be seen whether British troops will "shoot them down like dogs." The Ulstermen think not, and they have good reasons for this opinion. The mere threat of Home Rule in 1886 cost forty lives in the streets of Belfast alone. Who can say what would be the results of the bill becoming law? Surely every reliable test points in one direction. The Gladstonian party, without a shadow of reason, have affected to doubt the courage and resolution of the Northerners, but the breed of the men and their long history are a sufficient answer to these cavillers. True it is that their courage has not been demonstrated by murder, by shooting from behind a wall, or the battering out of a policeman's brains, a hundred against one, or the discharging of snipe-shot into the legs of old women and young children, after the fashion so popular with the party with whom Mr. Gladstone and his heterogeneous crew are now acting. But for all that, the pluck and tenacity of Ulstermen are undeniable. Their cause is good, and left to themselves they would win hands down. It is therefore demonstrated by a consensus of the weightiest authorities and by the results of personal investigation that not only would civil war between Irish parties be the inevitable result of Home Rule, but that there would also be war between Ireland and England; that Irish Unionists are determined to resist to the last, and that they possess the means of resistance. They are touched on the subjects they hold most sacred--religion, freedom, property; and despite the assurances of Mr. Gladstone, who desires to judge the Nationalist party by their future, the keen Ulstermen prefer to judge them by their past. And bearing these things in mind, it is not unreasonable to say that Englishmen who support the present policy of the Separatist party are at once enemies of Ireland and traitors to their native land. And now my task as your Special Commissioner in Ireland is at an end. Without fear or favour I have described the country as I found it, and have exposed the character and the motives of the men to whom Mr. Gladstone would entrust its future government. I was no bigoted partisan when my task began, but in a period of six months I have traversed the country from end to end, and at every step my first impressions have been deepened. It would be a folly--yea, it would be a crime--to withdraw from Ireland that mitigating influence of British rule which alone prevents a lovely island becoming the foul and blood-stained arena of remorseless sectarian strife. Birmingham, August 18th. FINIS. GENERAL INDEX ACHIL ISLANDS, 244. AGRICULTURE, Mr. Balfour's aids to, 179 and 370. "ALL YOU WANT," an Irish Programme, 331. AMERICAN Tourist's Opinion, 7 and 31; Help for Ireland, 329. ARAN ISLANDS, 156. ARMAGH, 291. ASHBOURNE ACT, Happy results of, 133. ATHENRY, 177. BALFOUR, Right Hon. A.J., reception in Belfast, 20; reception in Dublin, 40; Galway Fisheries, 135; Ditto, 140; The Man for Ireland, 152; Aids Agriculture, 179; Secret of Success, 210; List of his Light Railways, 387. BALLYMENA, Description of, 32. BANKS, Effects of Home Rule Bill on, 8. BEGGARS, Irish, 237, 360, and 378. BELFAST, Newcastle Miners in, 22; Belfast and Dublin Corporations compared, 22; Chamber of Commerce, 29; Riots of 1886, 29; Later Opinions, 317. BLARNEY STONE, The, 65. BODYKE, Visit to, 103; History of Estate, 105; Evictions at, 106 and 109; Tenants could Pay, 118. BOYCOTTING (_see also_ Outrage, &c.). The Darcy Family, 118; Mr. Strachan, of Tuam, 130; Children Starving, 151; For expressing Political Opinions, 227; Father Humphreys on, 264; Mrs. Taylor's Case, 346. BOYNE, Battle of the, 307. BUNDORAN, Attack on Protestants at, 384. CABLES, Nationalists and Atlantic, 11. CHAMBERLAIN, Right Hon. J., and Mr. Dillon, 297. CAPPAWHITE, Assault, 53. CAPITAL, Idle Irish, 200. CATHEDRALS, Tipperary, 48; Monaghan, 299. CATHOLICS, Roman, Opinion of Unionist, 14; Hatred of Protestants, 14 (_see also_ Intolerance); The Loyalist, 166 and 266. CATTLE in living rooms, 245. CHARACTER SKETCHES--A Kerry Shopkeeper, 69; Philip Fahy, 125; An Old Woman, 148; Local Names, 175; Ladies and their Boots, 178; Bailiffs and Gangers, 182; Achil Car Driver, 247. CHARITY, Effects of Home Rule Bill on, 7; Hopelessness of helping the Irish by, 238. CHURCHYARD, an Irish, 223. CLARE, "Unmanageable Devils," 74; the Curse of County, 81; Civil War in, 102. COERCION, Irish Legislature and, 114. CONGESTED DISTRICTS, a precise definition of, 178; Description of, 230. CORK, Sentiment in, 61. CREDULITY of Irish, 3, 13, and 119; Belief in Fairies, 138; Hill full of Diamonds, 150. CROKE, Archbishop, 351. CUSTOMS, Collection of, under Home Rule, 58. DE BURGHO, Lady, and Evictions, 113. DEGRADATION, Glimpses of Irish, 244. DILLON, John, convicted at Tipperary, 53. DISLOYALTY (_see also_ Union of Hearts); "To hell with Queen Victoria," 4; the Town Crier, 218; Cursing the Queen, 262; Father Ryan's Manifesto, 276; Irish Press admits, 287; Poem against joining the Army, 364; T.D. Sullivan's Verses, 337. DONEGAL, Do-Nothing, 371. DUBLIN, Opinions in, 1; compared with Belfast, 22. DUGORT, 251. DUNDALK, 278. DYNAMITE, Use of, justified, 235; Daly, 275. EDUCATION, Catholic designs on, 301. ELECTIONS (_see also_ Voting) in Ulster, 342; False Swearing, 360. ENGLAND, Apathy of Electors in, 6; Effects of Home Rule on English Industries, 43, also 213 and 372; English Ignorance of Ireland, 238; Not Governed by Englishmen, 279. EVICTIONS (_see also_ Bodyke). Sadleir case, 57; Ruane, 130; What They Mean, 228; In Queen's County, 334. FACTORIES, Galway Bag, 141; Ditto, 182; Flour Mills, &c., idle, 200. FAMINE in Achil, 253; "Please God we'll have a Famine," 255. FARMERS, English and Irish compared, 99; Irish Petted and Spoiled, 281. FENIANS, Opinion of, 260; O'Leary and Stephens, 388. FISHERIES, Priests' Falsehoods about, 94; Galway, 135; Price of Fish, 139; Aran Island, 158; Curing Taught, 181. FLAX-Growing Neglected, 290. FOREST Planting in Congested Districts, 180. FOWL Breeding Encouraged, 370. FRANCHISE, Effects of lowering, 78. FREEMASONS, Archbishop Walsh and, 19. FUNERALS in Connaught, 214. GAG, _Irish Catholic_ on, 343. GALWAY, Board of Guardians, 140; Harbour Folly, 175. GEOGRAPHICAL Necessity, 357. GLADSTONE, Right Hon. W.E., attacks Parnell, 96; "Oi'm goin' across the Say," 134; Mob Rule, 150; As a "Jumper," 248; his "firm belief," 309; "the party of law and order," 325. GLADSTONIANS converted in Ireland, 137, 154, and 312. GORT, Description of, 116. GRUBB, Sir Howard, 1. GUARDIANS, Boards of, and Rates, 267. HARRINGTON, "Tim," 9. HARVEST Hands for England, Irish, 247, 251, 258; _see also under_ England. HEALY, "Tim," his parentage, 64. HOLY WATER, 186. HOME RULE, a Coffin for, 3; Nationalist Opinions of Bill, 8; How Nationalists will work, 10; A Peasant's View of, 54; Not Yet, 70; Home Rule from Mr. Balfour, 70; Mr. Manley on, 98; Praying against, 120; Masses don't want, 137; "Let us have Chaos," 164; "Can we eat it?" 173; An Irish Criticism of, 215; Who oppose it? 249; _United Ireland_ on, 291; German View of, 305; Its Friends and Enemies, 330; Parnellites dread it now, 376. HOUGHTON, Lord, 272, 286, 316. HUMOROUS INCIDENTS narrated: The Phoenix Park Orator, 9; An "Iligant" Tenant, 31; "The Devil's Bite," 56; The Timprance Man, 56; A Lending Transaction, 80; The Galway Fisherman, 124; "When I'm sober," 148; "'Tis Home Rule ye want," 160; Mr. Morley and the Car-driver, 177; The Wild Ass, 181; Michael and the Postal Service, 208; The Cattle Boat, 275; A Question of Feet, 357; An Irish Retort, 364; Finn Water _v._ Purgatory, 354. IGNORANCE, the Kerry Folks', 68. IMMIGRATION, Effects of Home Rule on, 210. IMPROVIDENCE, in Connaught, 124; Irish Farmers', 227. INTIMIDATION (_see also_ Bodyke), Sadleir's Case, 57; How it is Done, 132. INTOLERANCE, Irish, 339, 349. IRELAND, Another Injustice to, 122. IRISH LANGUAGE, 203. IRISH NATIONAL FEDERATION, Commissioner attends a "Mass Meeting" of the, 282; Sequel thereto, 371. IRISH MEMBERS, Popular Opinions of, 8 and 57; Protected by Police, 60; Contempt for, 114; Why Distrusted, 151; Matt Harris, 205; Fenians on, 260. JURIES, The Cork, 69. LANDLORDS Must Exist, 117; Tim Healy on, 338. LAND (_see also_ Rent), Sub-division of, 58; Land Hunger, 99 (_see also_ Summary Article, 396); Tenants Real Owners, 192; a Farmer's View, 225; Must be Worth Something, 228; Land Commission Rewards Idleness, 373. LAND LEAGUE, Defying the, 65; Reign at Loughrea, 142; Overmatched, 254; Gladstone and Harcourt on, 315. LAND PURCHASE, Falsehoods about, 144. LAZINESS, Examples of, 36; Mr. James Dunn on Irish, 123; Mr. McMaster's Offer, 155; In England Work, in Ireland Play, 229; an Excuse for, 245; Death and, 250; "Going to," 378. LEGISLATION, with a Hard G, 330. LIES, Nationalist, about Daly, 279; about Westminster, 316; about Mr. Balfour, 344. LINEN TRADE of Londonderry, 34. LOCAL GOVERNMENT, A Nationalist on, 277. LOGAN, M.P., False Statements about Rents, 195. LOGUE, Cardinal, 293; his Father, 357. LONDONDERRY, Description of, 34. MACADAM, Mr., Bodyke Agent, 103. MCFADDEN, Father, his income, 369. MAGEE, Detective James, 388. MANSIONS IN RUINS, 184. MARRIAGE Customs in Connaught, 213; in Achil Islands, 246; Juvenile, 257. MAYNOOTH, Enemy of England, 76, 326; Dr. Wylie on, 350. MINES, Delusions about, 121, 145, 212, 233, 358, 362. MINORITY, The, 296, 312. MONAGHAN, 299. MORLEY, Right Hon. John, soliloquy, 89; on the side of crime, 104; tight-fisted, 153; the cab-driver and, 177; police on, 226; philandering, 389. MULLINGAR, 191. NATIONALISM, its real nature, 4; _see also_ summary article, 390. NEWRY, 285. NOLAN, Colonel, interview with, 126; a Parnellite, 210; assaulted by a priest, 281. O'BRIEN, WILLIAM, convicted at Tipperary, 53. O'CALLAGHAN, Colonel, 100. O'SHAUGHNESSY, Dr., on Home Rule, 115. ORANGE LODGES, their toleration, 33; demonstrations, 319; charged with rowdyism, 323; constitution of the, 324. OUTRAGES: Two girls brutally assaulted, 60; fifteen in County Clare, 83; hushing up, 89; dread of, 91; Loughrea, 142; a terrible list of, 167; a fire, 198; Mr. Moloney shot, 199; Castle explosion, 218; Mr. Blood fired at, 281. PARLIAMENT, an Irish, what it could do, 188; fancy picture of, 268. PARNELLITES and Anti-Parnellites defined, 270. PARNELL, Mr., Priests and, 79; secret of his success, 133; still worshipped in Dublin, 277. PEACE, Ireland needs, 72. PLEDGES and Promises, Value of Irish, 97. POLICE, The Dublin, 5; refuse protection at Bodyke, 107; Mr. Morley and the, 226. PONSONBY Rents, 50. POST OFFICE Savings Bank, Run on, 8. POTATO Seed Wasted, 248. POVERTY, English and Irish, 255. PRESS, The Irish, 272; on finality, 337. PRIESTS AND PEOPLE (_see also_ Voting): A terrible danger, 71; priests' one idea, 73; priests at Home Rule Convention, 164; never denounced outrage, 167; people believe anything priest tells them, 204; present day priests, 211; "I am responsible," 242; "admit bearer," 263; "pay, pay, pay, from the cradle to the grave," 325; spiritual tyranny, 332; refusing the sacrament, 348; a loyal priest, 365. PROTECTIONISTS, 269. PROTESTANTS, Attack on, at Cappawhite, 53; persecution of, at Tuam, 131; colony at Dugort, 246; why they are Unionists, 380; Bundoran outrage upon, 384. RAILWAYS--Mr. Balfour's--Cork and Muskerry, 65; the Connemara, 169; a ride on a new line, 174; an engine ride, 230; building on a bog, 231; a dangerous ride, 241; full list of Balfour Light Railways, 387. REGISTRATION FRAUDS, 341. RENTS, the Ponsonby, 50; rack renting, 100; quite low enough, 143; what rack rent means, 190; land must be worth something, 228; to whom is rent due? 335; Dublin Corporation tenants and Clanricarde tenants compared, 335; a Donegal rent book, 354. REPUBLIC, An Irish, 162; could we reconquer? 185. RIBBONMEN and Nationalists compared, 276. ROSSMORE, Lord, and Monaghan Town Council, 301. RUINS, Irish, 310. SALTHILL, 149. ST. PATRICK, 307. SCOTCH and Irish Compared, 286 and 375. SECURITIES, Effect of Home Rule Bill on, 7. SECRET Societies, 148. SENTIMENT, a Priest on Irish, 188. SMITH Barry, Mr., 50. SOAP as a remedy for Ireland's ills, 95. SOLDIERS, Irish Girls and, 79; complaint when withdrawn, 278. STRABANE Agricultural Show, 375. STRANORLAR, 352. STRIKE Leaders and Nationalists compared, 370. SULLIVAN, T.D., on India, 337. SUMMARY ARTICLES:-- 1--Irish Nationalism is not Patriotism, 390. 2--Land Hunger: Its Cause, Effect, and Remedy, 396. 3--Clerical Domination and its Consequences. 4--Civil War a certainty of Home Rule. SUPERSTITION (_see also_ Credulity), the Holy Man, 62. TENANTS' Losses, 52. TERRORISM in Dublin, 10; Rev. R. Eager, 12; at Tipperary, 48. TIPPERARY, New and Old, 48. TOLERATION, would Catholics show? 300 and 303. TRADE, Home Rule effects on (_see also_ England), 7 and 65. TRADITION, Effects of, 76. TUAM, 128; Indignation Meeting, 220. ULSTER, Feeling on Home Rule Bill in, 13; Preparation for War, 13; English Sympathy with, 15; Loyalist Programme, 16; Character of Ulstermen, 243; Articles on, 285; "tak a doom'd lot of managin'," 321. UNION of Hearts, Dublin mob on, 42; "When England's bur-r-sted up," 74; Miss Gonne, 93; Union Jack cut down, 191; "When Britons first at Hell's command" (_see also_ Disloyalty), 197. VICTORIA Disaster, Irish opinion of, 297. VOTING, Priests and, 263, 332; Priests endowed with a thousand votes, 353; Regulations wanted against priests, 360. WALSH, Archbishop, 274. WAR, Preparations for, in Ulster, 13; Mr. Morley's precautions, 27; Ireland's policy when England is at war, 314; Danger of civil war, 409. 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