A FOOL'S PARADISE
 
 A FOOL'S PARADISE 
 
 BEING A CONSTITUTIONALIST'S CRITICISM 
 ON THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912 
 
 BY A. V. DICEY, K.C., HON. D.C.L. 
 
 FELLOW OF ALL SOULS* COLLEGE J FORMERLY VINERIAN I-ROFESSOR OF 
 
 ENGLISH LAW; AUTHOR OP "ENGLAND'S CASE AOAINST HOME Rl'I.K," 
 
 "A LEAP IN THE DARK," " AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF 
 
 THE LAW OF THE CONSTITUTION*' 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W, 
 
 1913
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 PREFACE 
 
 A FOOL'S PARADISE is no general dissertation on the 
 inexpediency of granting to Ireland a separate 
 Parliament and a separate Executive. The con- 
 troversy over Home Rule has now continued for 
 more than a quarter of a century. Any general argu- 
 ment or fallacy put forward, whether by Unionists or 
 by Home Rulers, in support of their own opinions, 
 is trite and well-worn, and hardly repays repetition. 
 I have therefore not aimed, as I did in 1886, at 
 setting forth in detail the general objections to the 
 policy of Home Rule. 
 
 A Fool's Paradise is a criticism upon the Home 
 Rule Bill of 1912 ; but my book cannot claim to be 
 a minute and searching criticism of the whole Bill. 
 I have not attempted to deal with all the many and 
 patent defects of a measure framed throughout to 
 secure a party triumph rather than to provide a 
 new form of government which might amend the 
 relations between Great Britain (or, in popular 
 language, England) and Ireland. My purpose is 
 to achieve a much humbler end, namely, to set forth 
 in as plain language as I can, a line of argument 
 against the present Home Rule Bill which, if 
 accepted, must make it impossible for any British
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 elector to support a measure which, if the House 
 of Lords does its duty, cannot pass into law before 
 May 1914. My reasoning is contained in Chapters 
 II. and III. of this book, and consists in the estab- 
 lishment of three propositions which I hold to be 
 undoubted truths : 
 
 First, the Bill, if passed into law, will not secure 
 to England any one of the benefits which English 
 Home Rulers, who, from the Premier downwards, 
 are the dupes of credulous optimism, expect or hope 
 it will produce. The Bill will not maintain in 
 Ireland the true supremacy of the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment. It will not relieve the Imperial Parliament 
 from the burden of considering Irish affairs. It 
 will not conciliate Ireland. 
 
 Secondly, the Bill will work great evil to Eng- 
 land, and indeed to every part of the now United 
 Kingdom. Hence 
 
 Thirdly, it is the duty of Unionists, and indeed 
 of all patriots, to make sure that the Home Rule 
 Bill never passes into law. 
 
 The substance of this argument is contained in 
 Chapters II. and III., and does not fill as much as a 
 hundred pages. The Introduction to the book is 
 an attempt to analyse from the point of view of an 
 old Unionist of 1886 the state of opinion which 
 alone makes it possible to pass, even through the 
 House of Commons, a Bill which in its conception 
 is far inferior to the Home Rule Bill of 1886, and 
 for the most part exaggerates the patent defects of 
 the Home Rule Bill of 1893. Chapter I. deals with 
 arguments which, in fact, weigh with honest English 
 Home Rulers, and apparently convince them that
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 any Home Rule Bill, however objectionable in its 
 details, is preferable to the refusal of something like 
 parliamentary independence to the Irish people 
 by which term, in reality, is meant at most only 
 3,000,000 out of the 4,000,000 of the inhabitants of 
 Ireland. 
 
 Experience of something more than twenty-five 
 years of political controversy entirely preserves me 
 from the delusion that the force of argument, however 
 strong, will make any converts among convinced 
 Home Rulers. My appeal is made to that body of 
 men, far more numerous than party managers in 
 general believe, who are secretly alarmed at the 
 progress of revolutionary schemes brought forward 
 without adequate consideration, forced through the 
 House of Commons without anything like real 
 discussion, and intended to be driven through the 
 House of Lords without the assent of their Lord- 
 ships, and to be enrolled on the Statute Book without 
 any appeal to the electorate of the United Kingdom. 
 These men may possibly give me a hearing. They 
 will admit that, however feebly my arguments may 
 be expressed, I rely upon the force of argument 
 alone, and have tried to avoid the personalities 
 which in Parliament perplex the result of what 
 is supposed to be discussion. 
 
 As an old controversialist of 1886, I venture to 
 refer to two points in my position which may seem 
 open to criticism. 
 
 It may, in the first place, be said that I have not 
 dwelt with such emphasis as heretofore on the 
 general objections to Home Rule. My answer is 
 that I am concerned in attacking a specific Home
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 Rule Bill which, even if I were convinced that 
 Home Rule must be conceded to Ireland, achieves 
 this end by the most vicious and dangerous of all 
 methods. I am as firmly convinced as in 1886 that 
 there are only three policies with regard to the 
 relation between England and Ireland which 
 deserve consideration. The first and best is the 
 firm maintenance of the Act of Union. The second 
 is the boldly conferring upon Ireland colonial 
 independence, as in New Zealand. The last is the 
 separation of Ireland from Great Britain, or, in 
 other words, the national independence of Ireland. 
 Nor am I at all certain that if the Act of Union 
 is to be virtually repealed, the independence of 
 Ireland might not be more conducive both to the 
 power of England and to the prosperity of Ireland 
 itself than the concession to Irishmen of colonial 
 independence. 
 
 It may, in the second place, be said that I regard 
 Home Rule simply from the English, or rather the 
 British, point of view. This is in one sense true. 
 I am convinced that it is best that, in a great 
 controversy, the advocate of each side should 
 speak of the matters which he understands. I 
 know England thoroughly. My knowledge of Ire- 
 land, though I have always had many Irish friends, 
 is of course comparatively small. But there is 
 another reason for my pressing forward the interest 
 of England. It is the conviction that every scheme 
 of Home Rule that is, of political partnership 
 between England and Ireland must affect the 
 interest of both countries. But the inhabitants of 
 Ireland are about 4,000,000, whilst the inhabitants of
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 Great Britain are about 40,000,000. I am an old, an 
 unconverted, and an impenitent Benthamite. I hold 
 to the belief that where, in one State, the welfare of 
 40,000,000 has to be weighed against the welfare 
 of 4,000,000, the welfare of the greater number ought 
 to prevail, and in this case my utilitarianism is 
 confirmed by the reflection that of the 4,000,000 
 residents in Ireland 1,000,000 do not demand, but 
 on the contrary abominate, Home Rule, I must 
 on this subject speak plainly, but if any one 
 supposes that I have ever in my life entertained 
 a thought, or countenanced an act, of oppression, 
 or even unfriendliness towards Ireland, he does me 
 gross injustice. My strongest desire has always 
 been to break down the barriers which delay the 
 complete moral union of Great Britain and Ireland ; 
 my wish and hopeiare that gradually Ireland should 
 come, like Scotland, while developing whatever 
 is good and great in her special national character, 
 to recognise also the claim on her allegiance of 
 the great British nation, and the even greater 
 British Empire. Nor am I at all disposed to place 
 on Ireland the blame of the delayed moral unifica- 
 tion of the United Kingdom. In the words of 
 A. G. Richey, by far the fairest, and, had his life 
 been prolonged, by far the greatest of Irish his- 
 torians, " A study of Irish history teaches us 
 sympathy for all Irish parties." 1 
 
 For every opinion contained in this book, as for 
 every statement of fact, I am solely responsible, but 
 
 1 A. G. Richey, A Short History of the Irish People, Introd. 
 pp. 1-3. The noble expression of Mr. Ridley's impartiality deserves 
 a study which it has in England never as yet received.
 
 x PREFACE 
 
 I cannot refrain from thanking friends who have 
 helped me in the composition of a short work which 
 was in some respects full of difficulty. To Mr. S. 
 Rosenbaum I am deeply indebted for his sug- 
 gestions as to some of the financial features in 
 the Bill. To Mr. Philip G. Cambray, whose 
 knowledge of recent Irish politics is greater than 
 my own, I owe much valuable information. 
 
 A. V. DICEY. 
 
 OXFORD, 
 January 1913.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 (A) THE RISE OF A NEW GENERATION .... xvii 
 
 (B) THE NEW CONDITIONS xx 
 
 First. Absence of enthusiasm xx 
 
 Secondly. Full development of British Democracy . . xxvii, 
 
 Thirdly. Diversion of the enthusiasm originally excited by 
 
 Unionism to other matters xxx 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ENGLISH ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY i 
 
 ARGUMENT i. From the long continuance of the Home 
 
 Rule movement (1870 1913) 2 
 
 Answer : 
 
 1. Effect of ParnelPs system of agitation .... 6 
 
 2. Right of minority to obtain everything asked for con- 
 
 tinuously has no foundation 8 
 
 3. Confusion between alleged right of Irish majority to 
 
 change of Constitution and the so-called principle of 
 Nationality 10
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ARGUMENT 2. From the burden imposed by Irish affairs 
 
 on the Imperial Parliament . . . . . .14 
 
 Answer : 
 
 1. Exaggeration as to extent of burden . . . .15 
 
 2. Complaint factitious 16 
 
 3. The Home Rule Bill of 1912 would not remove burden 17 
 
 ARGUMENT 3. From the success of Home Rule as Federalism 1 7 
 
 I . The old line of reasoning : 
 
 Federalisation for Great Britain and Ireland . . .17 
 
 Answer: 
 
 1. Federalism means division of political power, and weak- 
 
 ness .......... 18 
 
 2. Federalism means government by law courts . . 18 
 
 3. Federalism creates divided allegiance . " . . . 19 
 
 4. Federalism never successful except as a step towards 
 
 national unity ........ 19 
 
 5. Federalism would not meet Irish demand for Home 
 
 Rule 19 
 
 I 1 . The new line of reasoning : 
 
 Federalisation of the British Empire . . . .21 
 Answer. This idea a delusion, and a dangerous delusion . 22 
 
 ARGUMENT 4. From the success of Home Rule as Colonial 
 
 Independence 26 
 
 Answer. Conditions which make relation between England 
 and Dominions, e.g., New Zealand, successful, do not 
 exist in the case of Ireland 27
 
 CONTENTS xiii 
 
 / 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SCHEME OF ARGUMENT 33 
 
 FIRST LEADING PROPOSITION. THE HOME RULE 
 BILL GIVES NO BENEFIT WHATEVER TO ENGLAND . 34 
 
 (A) The Bill does not maintain supremacy of Imperial 
 
 Parliament 35 
 
 (B) The Bill does not relieve Imperial Parliament from 
 
 burden of Irish affairs 45 
 
 This may be seen from 
 
 I. The retention of Irish Members in Imperial Parliament 46 
 
 II. The financial arrangements between the United King- 
 dom and Ireland 52 
 
 FIRST CHARACTERISTIC. No effective security for con- 
 tribution by Ireland towards the common expen- 
 diture of the United Kingdom 54 
 
 SECOND CHARACTERISTIC. The complexity of the 
 financial arrangements .61 
 
 THIRD CHARACTERISTIC. The creation of the Joint 
 
 Exchequer Board 66 
 
 FOURTH CHARACTERISTIC. The complexity of the 
 
 financial arrangements is unnecessary . . .72 
 
 I. The Character and the Plan of the Committee oj 
 
 Experts 73 
 
 (a) Character of the Committee .... 73 
 
 (b) The Plan of the Committee 74 
 
 1 1 . Comparison of the financial plan of the Government 
 
 with the financial plan of the Committee , .75
 
 xiv CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 (c) The Bill does not promote Reconciliation with Ireland 81 
 
 SECOND LEADING PROPOSITION. THE HOME 
 RULE BILL THREATENS THE GRAVEST DANGERS TO 
 
 ENGLAND 95 
 
 1. Enfeeblement of the English Government ... 95 
 
 2. England unaccustomed to Federalism . . -97 
 
 3. Prolongation of Home Rule conflict and increased 
 
 power of Irish parliamentary agitation ... 99 
 
 4. Peril to English finance 102 
 
 5. Encouragement of spurious Nationalism . . . 104 
 General Conclusions 107 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS no 
 
 SPECIAL DUTIES OF UNIONISTS 114 
 
 First Duty. Unity of action 114 
 
 Second Duty. To prevent the Home Rule Bill becoming 
 the Home Rule Act before an appeal to people at 
 General Election 115 
 
 Third Duty. If, under the Parliament Act, the Bill is trans- 
 formed into the Home Rule Act without an appeal to 
 the people, it is the right and duty of Unionists to treat 
 the Home Rule Act as lacking constitutional authority . 117 
 
 I. Why the Act will lack constitutional authority . .117 
 (i) Violation of fundamental principle of Constitution . 117 
 
 (ii) Even Nationalists believe that the Bill is not sanc- 
 tioned by the electors 121
 
 CONTENTS xv 
 
 PACK 
 
 (Hi) The Parliament Act itself gives no sanction to forcing 
 the Bill through without assent of nation . . . .122 
 
 (iv) The Home Rule Act involves unconstitutional conse- 
 quences 122 
 
 II. How Unionists should treat the Home Rule Act of 1914 
 
 when lacking constitutional authority . . .123 
 
 Fourth Duty. To avoid errors both of optimism and of 
 pessimism and to be guided by faith in common sense 
 and common justice .129
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 " WE know . . . that the country is threatened again 
 with the same calamity [namely, a Home Rule Bill] 
 from which it has twice escaped. It is the old 
 danger, but it has to be faced by a new generation 
 and under new conditions." 1 
 
 These are the words with which our Unionist 
 leader boldly and wisely cheered the Unionists of 
 Ulster. In this introduction I take them for my 
 text. Let us examine the effect of a rise, since 1886, 
 of a new generation. Let us consider the new con- 
 ditions under which the battle for the preservation 
 of our national and political unity must be for the 
 third, and in my belief for the last time, fought out. 
 If these conditions are fully recognised the victory 
 of Unionism will be as complete as in 1886 or in 
 1895 ; it will also be final. 
 
 (A) THE RISE OF A NEW GENERATION 
 
 Thousands of the present electorate must be 
 persons of not more than thirty years of age. The 
 political memories of such men cannot extend further 
 back than fifteen or twenty years ; they can have no 
 personal recollection of the great political campaign 
 carried on from 1886 to 1895. They may never have 
 
 1 Mr. Bonar Law in Ulster, Times, April 10, 1912, p. 8. 
 b xvii
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 known, or may entirely have forgotten, that it ended 
 
 with the rout, and, as it was thought at the time, the 
 
 final defeat of the English and Irish Home Rulers 
 
 who were inspired with the enthusiasm and led by 
 
 the genius of Gladstone. When first the younger 
 
 among our present electors turned their thoughts 
 
 towards politics Unionism was triumphant, and for 
 
 that very reason was little talked about. Of the 
 
 war in South Africa, of the controversy between 
 
 Free Traders and Tariff Reformers, these men may 
 
 remember something. They know nothing about 
 
 the brutal and bloody tyranny of the Land League, 
 
 the sudden conversion of Gladstone to Home Rule, 
 
 the disruption of the old Liberal Party, the Parnell 
 
 Commission, the fall of Parnell, his desertion by the 
 
 mass of his followers, and his political ruin through 
 
 the overwhelming power of the Irish priesthood, 
 
 which he Irish Protestant as he was gravely 
 
 underrated. All these things are, to Englishmen of 
 
 thirty, ancient history. It is proverbial that each 
 
 generation is specially ignorant of the transactions 
 
 in which their fathers were engaged. There are 
 
 scores of learned youths fresh from the universities, 
 
 who, though they be voters, know less about Palmer- 
 
 ston, and even Gladstone, than they do about 
 
 Chatham, William Pitt, or Peel. They have learned 
 
 the lives of the great commoner, of his son, and of 
 
 Sir Robert Peel from books ; but the statesmanship 
 
 of the last generation, whilst it fills no part of the 
 
 daily press, is not as yet (for youthful students) 
 
 enshrined in the pages of exhaustive or exhausting 
 
 historians. Many among our electors, I doubt not, 
 
 imagine that Gladstone was a lifelong advocate of 
 
 Home Rule, who extended his youthful sympathies
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 to O'Connell's agitation for Repeal of the Union. 
 Most of them certainly do not know that Gladstone 
 in 1862, when a Minister of the Crown, used words 
 of unmistakable sympathy with the leaders in that 
 War of Secession, the aim whereof was the destruc- 
 tion of the greatest among democratic Republics. 1 
 Half the labour thrown upon the Unionists of to-day 
 arises from the need of explaining to electors, who 
 neither know what Home Rule means nor remember 
 the crimes which characterised the agitation for 
 Home Rule, the reasons why some of the wisest 
 and most public-spirited of England's statesmen felt 
 it a duty to defend at all costs the Union between 
 England and Ireland. Death, it must be added, 
 which has deprived Home Rulers of the inestimable 
 aid of Gladstone, has fallen with special severity 
 upon the Liberal Unionists. This is no accident. 
 Even in 1886 the Liberal Unionists who had, up to 
 the date when Gladstone went over to the Home 
 Rulers, been the 'glory of the old Liberal Party, 
 were for the most part elderly men. The Duke of 
 Devonshire (known better to his followers as Lord 
 Hartington), John Bright, Lord Selborne, Lord 
 Goschen, have been taken from us. Joseph Cham- 
 berlain still lives; but, to the deep regret of all 
 Englishmen, is by the unkindness of fate shut out 
 from the political conflict in which he was the most 
 
 1 " We know quite well that the people of the Northern States 
 have not yet drunk of the cup they are still trying to hold it far 
 from their lips which all the rest of the world see they nevertheless 
 must drink of. We may have our own opinions about slavery ; 
 we may be for or against the South ; but there is no doubt that 
 Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an 
 army ; they are making, it appears, a navy ; and they have made 
 what is more than either they have made a nation," 
 Lift of IVillian: E. Gladstone (IQII ed.), ii. p. 61,
 
 XX 
 
 effective of fighters. And Liberal Unionism can now, 
 from the nature of things, hardly obtain youthful 
 recruits. A Liberal Unionist was a man who, before 
 the unity of the country was menaced, had been a 
 member of the old Liberal Party. The youthful 
 Unionist of to-day may be a Tory, a Conservative, 
 a Radical, or a Socialist, but he cannot in strictness 
 be a Liberal Unionist such as were the Liberals who, 
 in 1886, gave new intellectual and moral strength to 
 Unionism. 
 
 These may be summed up under several heads : 
 First The absence of public excitement or enthu- 
 siasm. 
 
 From 1886 to 1895, when the battle over Home 
 Rule raged furiously, the question of Home Rule was 
 a burning question : it governed the whole course 
 of English public life. Few, if any, Englishmen or 
 Irishmen regarded it with indifference. The pro- 
 posal to repeal, in effect, the Act of Union, and 
 revive a separate Government and Parliament in 
 Ireland, aroused on all sides vehement emotion 
 or passion. No one can now say, or at any rate 
 could have said until Ulster happily revived enthu- 
 siasm for national unity, that in Great Britain, at 
 any rate, Home Rule has aroused in 1912 either 
 passionate faith or passionate detestation. The 
 contrast between the two eras is, to an old Unionist 
 of 1886, as strange as it is noteworthy. From 1886 
 to 1895 feeling, emotion, enthusiasm or faith it 
 does not matter much what word you use equally 
 characterised Home Rulers (accurately described as 
 Separatists), and Unionists.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 The faith of Gladstonian Home Rulers was 
 coloured by the nature of Gladstone. He was a 
 born enthusiast, he was an orator and a statesman 
 of extraordinary gifts and influence ; but his power 
 over his followers, and even over his opponents, 
 mainly depended on the ease with which he first 
 convinced himself, and then convinced many of his 
 hearers, that any cause which he had in hand was 
 the cause of truth and of righteousness. Unionists 
 who listened to his introduction of his first Home 
 Rule Bill into the House of Commons felt that they 
 had listened to an orator who, for the moment, at 
 any rate, entertained the " evident conviction that 
 to support or to reject his proposals was to make 
 choice not merely between what was politic or the 
 reverse, but to decide between right and wrong, 
 good and evil." l The effect of genuine political, as 
 of genuine religious conversion, is to change the 
 convert's whole view of life and also to give him, 
 especially if gifted with high rhetorical talent, 
 an almost magical capacity for enlisting the sym- 
 pathy of his followers. Every claim of the Irish 
 Nationalists became, with the converted Gladstone, 
 transmuted into the demand of "Justice to Ireland." 
 Parnell was transformed from an enemy to the 
 United Kingdom into a trustworthy ally, whose 
 language must always be accepted as the words of 
 truth. 2 Critics, further, who wish to be fair to a 
 
 1 See Life of Lord Goschen, by the Hon. Arthur D. Elliot, p. 40. 
 The whole passage, from which I have quoted but a few words, is 
 well worth reading. It gives the impression made upon a Unionist 
 of high public spirit, of singularly firm judgment, and of great 
 ability. 
 
 See especially Bernard Holland's Life of the Duke </ Devon- 
 e^ vol. i. pp. 355, 356. 
 
 6*
 
 xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 statesman whom they cannot pretend to admire, 
 must always bear in mind that Gladstone had in 
 middle life adopted, in an absolute form, that 
 doctrine of Nationality which, between 1848 and 
 1870, fascinated men of much calmer temperament 
 and judgment than Gladstone. He assuredly 
 thought, when he allied himself with the Par- 
 nellites, as when he eulogised the President of 
 the Slave-owning Confederacy, that he was fight- 
 ing for that principle of Nationality which, in his 
 mind, was connected with his efforts to deliver 
 Neapolitan Liberals from tortures inflicted by the 
 cruelty of Bomba. Of course, Gladstonians caught 
 up the enthusiasm of their leader. They tried to 
 forget the Phoenix Park murders ; they ignored the 
 lessons taught them by the judicial inquiry of 
 the Parnell Commission; they learned to call boy- 
 cotting exclusive dealing, and they shut their eyes, 
 and certainly their mouths, so as neither to see nor 
 denounce, for example, the cruelties to animals 
 which have been the special disgrace of Irish 
 agitation under the leadership of Parnell. The 
 crowning proof of Gladstone's influence is that, 
 after the defeat of Home Rule in 1886, he was 
 in 1893 allowed to carry a second Home Rule Bill 
 through the House of Commons. 1 
 
 English Unionists, on their side, fought for the 
 Union with an enthusiasm Home Rulers would 
 say with a passion which equalled the fervour of 
 Gladstonians. This ardent Unionism was stimulated 
 by various causes which have now ceased to produce 
 their full effect. From 1886 to 1895 it was common 
 
 1 In 1893 he did not obtain a majority in Great Britain in favour 
 of Home Rule.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 knowledge that since 1800 every statesman, includ- 
 ing Gladstone, whose name carried weight in Great 
 Britain, had been the avowed opponent of Repeal. 1 
 Bright's declaration that the Parnellites were the 
 " Rebel Party " came home to every Englishman 
 and Scotsman throughout Great Britain, as also 
 to every Irish Unionist. Above all, in 1886, every 
 man throughout the United Kingdom remembered 
 May 6, 1882, and the ghastly tidings of the Phoenix 
 Park murders. At that moment, and at every 
 moment up to the date of Gladstone's formal 
 announcement that he had become a Home Ruler, 
 it seemed to many ardent Gladstonians a moral 
 impossibility that Gladstone should form a close 
 political connection with a man who, though 
 innocent of these murders, had formed a close 
 connection with conspiracies organised by Fenians 
 and subsidised by sympathisers who, like Patrick 
 Ford, advocated, as against England, the use of 
 dynamite and assassination. Remember, too, what 
 is now forgotten, that, though it may be with plausi- 
 bility maintained that Gladstone entertained, earlier 
 than 1886, proclivities towards the policy of Home 
 Rule, this fact was entirely unknown to the ordinary 
 English public. They judged his statesmanship, as 
 they had a right to do, by his actions and his public 
 speeches, and thus came to the probably unfair 
 conclusion that the trusted leader of the Liberal 
 party had gone over to Home Rule simply to obtain 
 the 86 Irish votes which were at Mr. Parnell's 
 disposal. No one can wonder that moral repro- 
 
 1 See Macaulay's speech against Repeal, February 6, 1833. It 
 expressed the sentiment of the vast majority of the House of 
 Commons.
 
 xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 bation of Gladstonian statesmanship added to the 
 sternness of every Unionist's determination that no 
 Minister should be allowed to dissolve, or even to 
 loosen, the political links which bound together 
 Great Britain and Ireland. The whole attitude of 
 Gladstone, and the course of events from 1886 to 
 the end of 1893, added fire to the indignation 
 of Unionists. The cruelties deliberately inflicted 
 by boycotting on men and women guiltless of any 
 crime whatever, and the torturing by boycotters of 
 innocent animals, were then known to every reader 
 of the newspapers. This last outrage on humanity 
 was, I am certain, hateful to Gladstonians, and, I 
 believe, to the vast majority of Irish Nationalists ; 
 but it never met from any leading Home Ruler with 
 the public and impressive denunciation which it 
 deserved. Gladstone's attack on the so-called Crimes 
 Act of 1887, a much more moderate measure than 
 his own Coercion Act of 1882, and his " Remember 
 Mitchelstown," were, in the ears of every Unionist, 
 the defence of outrageous lawlessness. The Parnell 
 Commission, though it disposed of one libel on 
 Parnell, convicted Parnell and the most distin- 
 guished among the Irish Nationalists of undoubted 
 and terrible crimes. 1 The sordid scandals of the 
 O'Shea divorce case, the rally of the Nationalist 
 Party round Parnell, followed almost immediately 
 by the scenes in Committee Room No. 15, and the 
 desertion, at the bidding of Gladstone, by the ma- 
 jority though not, I am glad to say, by the whole of 
 the Parnellite M.P.'s damaged not only Parnell, 
 but Gladstone himself in the eyes of Unionists. 
 
 1 See Life of the Duke of Devonshire, by Bernard Holland, vol. ii. 
 p. 202, and Dicey, The Verdict, pp. 189-93.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 But the last blow to any confidence they might 
 have felt in the judgment or the fairness of a states- 
 man who had once been the idol of British Liberals, 
 was really dealt by that Home Rule Bill of 1893 
 which proved Gladstone's power over his disciples. 
 It showed Unionists that he had lost, in his enthu- 
 siasm for Irish Home Rule, all sense of fairness to 
 England, for the Home Rule Bill of 1893, as 
 indeed does the Home Rule Bill of 1912,* withdrew 
 the one benefit which the Home Rule Bill of 1886 
 had offered to England namely, the withdrawal 
 of every parliamentary representative of Ireland 
 from the Parliament at Westminster. The enthu- 
 siastic indignation or the indignant enthusiasm of 
 Unionists in 1886, and still more truly in 1893, might 
 be summed up in the lines : 
 
 Ask me what provocation I have had : 
 The strong antipathy of good to bad. 
 
 But the enthusiasm of Unionists during the 
 conflict with Gladstonian Separatists was allied 
 with a sense of new and triumphant hope. During 
 the years immediately preceding the introduction 
 of the first Home Rule Bill Englishmen were 
 haunted by the dread that Parnellite intrigue had 
 corrupted our public life. The explanation of this 
 fear is to be found in the Maamstrasna Debates of 
 1884. This episode ot parliamentary life is pro- 
 bably quite unknown to most of my readers, or 
 
 1 The Home Rule Bill of 1912 reduces the representation of 
 Ireland from 103 to 42 on all ordinary occasions (see Bill, cl. 13) ; 
 but the Bill will also, as things now stand, raise the Irish repre- 
 sentation, whenever the financial arrangements between Great 
 Britain and Ireland are in question, to some 65 members : see 
 Bill, cl. 26 (3).
 
 xxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 forgotten by them. It may be summed up in a 
 few words. Lord Spencer was engaged in the 
 manful effort to support the supremacy of the law 
 in Ireland. He was a true patriot ; he might at any 
 moment, as every man knew, be the victim of a crime 
 as atrocious as that which still makes, to many 
 Englishmen, the name of the Phcenix Park a word 
 of horror. He was accused, in the ominous and 
 calamitous Maamstrasna Debates, of allowing the 
 judicial murder of innocent men. The accusation, 
 every one now feels, was absolutely groundless. 
 Lord Spencer had a right to the most unhesi- 
 tating support and vindication. The defence 
 delivered by his colleagues was adequate, but not, 
 as we read it to-day, as warm as it ought to have 
 been. Some Conservatives betrayed a disposition 
 to throw over an official who deserved sympathy 
 and applause. The diplomacy which enabled 
 Conservatives and Parnellites to act together 
 during the election of 1885 excited among English- 
 men of all classes grave suspicion ; they feared that 
 Parnellite intrigue was corrupting the public life 
 of England. The nation called for a moral rally 
 which might restore to the action of English 
 statesmen its frankness and its wholesomeness. 
 The formation of the Unionist Party (caused by the 
 alliance between Gladstone and Parnell) was the 
 answer to this national demand. It promised to 
 thousands of Unionists the renovation of our public 
 life and public virtue. Tories, such as Lord 
 Salisbury, intimate friends of Gladstone's, such as 
 the Duke of Argyll and Lord Selborne, Whigs, 
 such as Lord Hartington, Radicals of the old 
 school, such as John Bright, and Radicals of the
 
 INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 new school, such as Joseph Chamberlain, were 
 seen standing together and prepared to act with 
 energy and harmony for the one object of pre- 
 serving the political unity of the United Kingdom. 
 This was much more than the creation of a new 
 party. It was the revival of the old and noble 
 conviction that, when England was in danger, 
 partisanship would at once yield to patriotism. 
 Conservatives and Liberal Unionists were equally 
 prepared to make, and many of them did make, 
 great personal sacrifices. Lord Hartington sacri- 
 ficed for ever the certainty of being enrolled 
 among the Premiers of England. Lord Salisbury 
 was equally willing to surrender the Premier- 
 ship to Lord Hartington if only the sacrifice 
 might best serve the cause of national unity. 
 The moral enthusiasm of Unionists, or rather of 
 England, found its most appropriate representative 
 in John Bright. He had been through life, as he 
 remained till his death, the warmest friend of 
 Ireland ; he had, long before any other English 
 statesman, foreseen the necessity for legislation 
 which might enable Irish tenants to purchase, 
 as owners, the land of which they were the occu- 
 piers. He had, in 1870, introduced clauses in 
 favour of such purchase into the Land Act of 
 that year. But John Bright denounced the whole 
 policy of the Home Rule Bill of 1886. The enthu- 
 siasm of Unionists, if kindled by indignation at 
 wrongdoing, was doubled by the conviction that 
 Unionism was the representative of national 
 morality. In 1913 the passionate or the romantic 
 element in the conflict over Home Rule has, as 
 any one can see, yielded to feelings of prudence,
 
 xxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 of lassitude, or of despair. Not the most reckless 
 slander imputes enthusiasm to Mr. Asquith. The 
 Home Ruler of to-day knows little or nothing 
 about the " union of hearts." Sentimental appeals 
 to the blessings of Home Rule in the Austro- 
 Hungarian Empire, in the relation between Norway 
 and Sweden, or in Iceland, have quite gone out 
 of fashion. Rarely does any one evoke the memory 
 of Gladstone. He belongs to 1886; he is out of 
 place in the world of to-day. Home Rule, by its 
 English advocates at least, is treated rather as a 
 wearisome necessity than as the glorious building 
 up of an Irish nation. Unionists, I admit, have 
 also lost something of their fervour, and with it 
 something of their strength. It is well that their 
 faith should have been rekindled by the passionate 
 Unionism of Ulster. 
 
 Secondly The full development of the British de- 
 mocracy. 
 
 In 1884 the reign of democracy was secured by 
 the full establishment of household suffrage. In 
 Ireland it gave every seat outside Ulster to the 
 Parnellites. In Great Britain it produced less 
 immediate result than might have been expected 
 by a well-informed foreign critic. Up to 1895 
 English statesmen themselves did not, in general, 
 fully appreciate the character of the revolution 
 which they themselves had carried through by 
 legislation extending from 1866 to 1884. They were 
 all politicians whose experience had been mainly 
 gained in the middle-class Parliament elected by the 
 Ten-pound Householders (1832-1866). Gladstone 
 had sat in the unreformed Parliament. Ancient 
 habits fixed for a time the working of new insti-
 
 INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 tutions. After 1895 it became clear that British 
 democracy was betraying two characteristics, neither 
 of which has, in fact, been favourable to Unionism. 
 The first was the immense increase in the power of 
 the Party Machine. In 1886 members of Parliament 
 practised considerable freedom of voting according 
 to their own judgment for or against Home Rule. 
 In 1893 party discipline was becoming rigid, but it 
 was conceivable, though not probable, that a vote 
 here and there might be turned in the House of 
 Commons by the weight of argument. In 1913 
 parliamentary discussion and the delay which it 
 entails may conceivably affect the course of public 
 opinion outside the House, but it would be a moral 
 miracle if the power of reasoning or of eloquence 
 should decide the result of any parliamentary 
 debate on the Home Rule Bill of 1912. The simple 
 truth is that the existence of the Coalition, whereof 
 the Premier is at least the nominal head, and the 
 passing of the Parliament Act, which not only gags 
 the House of Lords but threatens to prevent the 
 submission of the Home Rule Bill to the verdict 
 of the electors, are the triumph of the Party 
 Machine. The second characteristic of the British 
 democracy is the growth of the feeling that fun- 
 damental changes in the Constitution are matters 
 which may be undertaken with a light heart, and 
 may be carried through as thoughtlessly as laws of 
 merely temporary importance. It may be doubted, 
 indeed, whether constitutional questions interest the 
 electorate of 1913 as they used to interest the Ten- 
 pound Householders. It would rather seem that 
 such questions interest the electors only in so far 
 as they may affect the material interests of the
 
 xxx INTRODUCTION 
 
 class or the party to which he belongs. The pledges 
 lightly given, and as lightly to be broken, in favour 
 of the gigantic innovation involved in the bestowal 
 of the parliamentary suffrage upon women, the 
 reckless rapidity with which Old Age Pensions 
 were provided for the poor, and the unearned 
 payment of 400 a year was bestowed, or thrust 
 upon, members of Parliament, whether rich or poor, 
 the grant to Trade Unions of privileges denied to 
 every other body of citizens, provide abundant 
 evidence of the ease with which the elector of 
 to-day tolerates or applauds rapid changes which, 
 whether bad or good, touch the foundations, not 
 only of the English Constitution, but of English 
 social life. 
 
 Thirdly Diversion of the enthusiasm originally 
 excited by Unionism to other matters. 
 
 The strength of the Unionist position lay, from 
 1886 to 1895, in the conviction of every Unionist that 
 the maintenance of the Union with Ireland was in 
 fact a matter of absolutely predominant importance 
 which for the time overshadowed and reduced to 
 relative insignificance every other question which 
 could possibly divide loyal English citizens. A 
 genuine Unionist who maintains the faith of 1886 
 must be convinced that, in resisting the Home Rule 
 Bill of 1912, he is fighting on behalf of the unity of 
 the nation. He must feel that the contest in which 
 he is engaged requires his whole-hearted service, 
 and that he must resist Home Rule with the un- 
 divided zeal which enabled the Republicans of the 
 Northern States during the War of Secession to 
 withstand in Congress, and on the field of battle, 
 every attempt of the South to break up the great
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 American Republic. Now this unity of conviction 
 necessary for triumphant unity of action has clearly 
 been, since 1895, threatened by the rise into pro- 
 minence of any question which might divide the 
 Unionist Party. The growth of new ideas, even 
 though in themselves quite unconnected with the 
 expediency or inexpediency of creating a separate 
 Irish Government responsible to a separate Irish 
 Parliament, has naturally tended towards the dis- 
 union of Unionists. Let me give a few illustra- 
 tions of my meaning. Socialism, which for my 
 present purpose may be roughly described as the 
 belief that the powers of the State such, for 
 example, as taxation may be rightly employed 
 for directly increasing the material comforts of 
 wage-earners, has assuredly acquired a new in- 
 fluence in England. It is not my business to 
 discuss the merits or demerits of Socialistic theories. 
 It is hardly within the scope of my argument to 
 point out the way in which the growth of Socialistic 
 beliefs was, whether logically or not, encouraged by 
 the Irish Land Purchase Acts. All I need insist 
 upon is that a Unionist may be an ardent Socialist 
 or an ardent Individualist, and therefore the rise of 
 Socialistic ideas has a tendency to distract Unionists 
 from their struggle for national unity which is the 
 proper work of Unionism. Imperialism, again, 
 means (in the sense in which it is now generally 
 used) the belief and, in my judgment, the well- 
 founded belief that the maintenance of the British 
 Empire and of a cordial alliance between England 
 and her self-governing Colonies or, as they are now 
 generally called, Dominions is an immense benefit 
 both to England and to the civilised world. But
 
 xxxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 this belief is itself, compared with the condition of 
 opinion in, say, 1850 or even in 1886, a more or 
 less new idea. It is an idea, moreover, which in 
 itself is congenial to Unionism. Hence a Unionist 
 Government was able to carry through, with splendid 
 bravery and ultimately with victorious success, the 
 war in South Africa. For that war was waged by 
 England and her Dominions to prevent a form of 
 secession which tended to break up the British 
 Empire. Yet, assuredly, the war itself diverted 
 attention from the necessity for active resistance to 
 the Home Rule movement, and gave birth to the 
 delusion that " Home Rule was dead." The war 
 had another and an unexpected effect. One of the 
 many ambiguities which lie concealed in the term 
 Imperialism suggested to Home Rulers to obtrude 
 upon the public, whether with perfect honesty or 
 not, their intense loyalty to the British Empire whilst 
 they still desired to break the United Kingdom into 
 fragments ; and this attitude was taken up at a time 
 when some Irish Nationalists were applauding, if not 
 aiding, the successes of the Boers. But neither the 
 rise of Socialism nor the growth of misinterpreted 
 Imperialism worked half as much injury to the 
 Unionist cause as was wrought by the difference 
 of opinion among Unionists on the subject of 
 fiscal policy. It is not my wish, at this moment, to 
 take any part whatever in this controversy. My 
 deliberate conviction, on which I earnestly insist, is 
 that Free Traders and Tariff Reformers alike com- 
 mitted a grievous error. They imagined that Home 
 Rule was dead, and, under this delusion, 1 they 
 
 1 This delusion was fostered by some agreement, understanding, 
 or pledge supposed to be entered into by Campbell- Bannerman and
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxiii 
 
 thought they might risk a battle among themselves 
 on behalf of each party's economical dogma. They 
 thereby allowed the defeated and disunited forces of 
 Home Rule to effect a rally. It is, I presume, clear 
 enough now to every Unionist that no Unionist 
 ought in 1906, either by his vote or by his abstention 
 from voting, to have kept a Cabinet of Home Rulers 
 in office. However this may be, the object of my 
 brief historical survey has, I trust, been accom- 
 plished. It explains the extent to which the rise of 
 a new generation and the existence of conditions 
 unknown both to the Gladstonians and to the 
 Unionists of 1886-95 have affected the fortunes of 
 Unionism. 
 
 his colleagues, that, if the General Election of 1896 kept them in 
 office, no measure of Home Rule for Ireland should be brought in 
 by the Government during the existence of that Parliament. This 
 arrangement, whatever its nature, was violated in spirit by the 
 introduction of the Irish Councils Bill, 1906.
 
 A FOOL'S PARADISE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ENGLISH ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 MY object in this chapter is to state and also to 
 supply the answer to the main arguments, which in 
 fact, and in this year of grace 1913, weigh with 
 British electors in favour of the policy of Home 
 Rule. I purposely have omitted arguments, how- 
 ever weighty in themselves, which tell little upon 
 the electors of Great Britain. It must always be 
 borne in mind that the movement in favour of 
 Home Rule has now taken a very definite shape. 
 The coalition between English Home Rulers and 
 Irish Nationalists which at present holds office 
 and parliamentary power, has laid before Parlia- 
 ment the definite Home Rule Bill of 1912 l ; and the 
 substantial question at issue is whether that Bill 
 
 1 The Bill, if ever passed by Parliament, will become the Irish 
 Government Act, 1913, or more probably 1914. 
 
 Any reader who has not mastered the Parliament Act, 1911, 
 must bear in mind that : the Home Rule Bill can be ultimately 
 passed into law by the House of Commons without the assent of 
 the House of Lords. 
 
 But he must also remember that : 
 
 (1) The Bill cannot be so passed until and unless it has been 
 three times, in three successive sessions, passed by the House of 
 Commons and been rejected by the House of Lords. 
 
 (2) The Bill cannot be so passed until the lapse of two full years 
 from the day, in this instance May 14, 1912, when the Bill 
 passed its Second Reading in the House of Commons, i.e. the
 
 2 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 ought or ought not to pass into law and become the 
 Home Rule Act of, say 1913 or 1914. The arguments 
 which we have to consider are four in number. 
 
 ARGUMENT i. From the long continuance of the 
 Home Rule movement (1870- 191 3). l 
 
 More than forty years have passed since Isaac 
 Butt formally opened the movement in favour oi 
 Home Rule. 2 When he addressed the House 
 of Commons he was heard with politeness, but his 
 proposals excited little attention. He was an advo- 
 cate of talent, but he was no second O'Connell, and 
 to English politicians " Home Rule " seemed simply 
 a feeble revival of Repeal. Yet this very circum- 
 stance, Home Rulers may with force urge, increases 
 the significance of the steady continuance of the 
 Home Rule movement. No doubt the boldness, 
 the fanaticism, or the recklessness by which 
 Parnell forced it into prominence accounts for 
 the success, as also for the immediate failure, of 
 the movement : for Parnell's policy, whilst it 
 kindled the strenuous zeal of his followers, 
 aroused the indignant anger of all Englishmen. 
 But then the circumstances which told against the 
 movement did not lead to its discontinuance. The 
 Phoenix Park murders (1882), the Report of 
 the Parnell Commission (1889), the mean and 
 sordid details of the O'Shea divorce case in which 
 Parnell was co-respondent, the desertion of Parnell 
 (at the bidding of Gladstone) by the mass of 
 
 Bill cannot, without the assent of the House of Lords, become an 
 Act of Parliament until the I4th, or perhaps 15th, of May 1914. 
 
 (3) The Act, if passed without the assent of the House of Lords, 
 must be in substance the same as the Bill when it shall have been 
 first sent up to the House of Lords, e.g. about Christmas 1912. 
 
 1 See May's Constitutional History of England, 1860-1911, 
 vol. iii. pp. 92-96, and ch. iii. pp. 142-200. 
 
 * The Home Government Association, which was afterwards the 
 Home Rule League, was founded in August 1870. See Acland 
 and Ransome, A Handbook of the Political History of England 
 (loth impression), p. 213.
 
 O'CONNELL AND SMITH O'BRIEN 3 
 
 his supporters just after they had renewed their 
 allegiance to their leader, in spite of the scandals re- 
 vealed in the Divorce Court, Parnell's defeat by the 
 Irish priesthood, and even his death, hardly affected 
 the number or the votes of Irish Home Rulers. The 
 parliamentary feud between the two sections of 
 the Nationalists, marked though it was by extreme 
 bitterness, came in a short time to nothing. Re- 
 conciliation was achieved by placing at the head of 
 the party Mr. John Redmond, the most faithful of the 
 minority who to the last had stood firmly by Parnell. 
 The impressiveness of these facts is increased by a 
 comparison of the Home Rule movement with the 
 history of Repeal under O'Connell and the move- 
 ment lor national independence associated with the 
 name of Smith O'Brien. O'Connell was a leader 
 whose gigantic exertions had gained for his fellow 
 Roman Catholics full political equality. This 
 achievement gave him, among Irish Catholics of all 
 classes, an authority as unbounded as it was well 
 deserved. He was an orator whose genius was 
 acknowledged even in the hostile Parliament at 
 Westminster. He gained the hearts of the Irish 
 people. He threw himself, heart and soul, into the 
 agitation for the restoration of Ireland's old Parlia- 
 ment. Yet even in the lifetime of O'Connell the 
 cause of Repeal was visibly doomed to failure. He 
 stood his trial for conspiracy, and his conviction by 
 an Irish jury, though on technical grounds it was 
 quashed by the House of Lords, gave a fatal blow 
 to O'Connell's practical influence in Ireland. To 
 Englishmen the effect of legal proceedings which led 
 to no punishment seems almost incomprehensible. 
 Yet the probable explanation lies near to hand. 
 The prosecution of O'Connell made it plain that, 
 though he was free from the vices, he did not possess 
 the boldness or the recklessness of a born revolution- 
 ist. He hated bloodshed. He loathed the memory 
 of the French Jacobins. He longed to restore the
 
 4 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 Parliament of Grattan. He was bent on retaining 
 the connection with England. He was passionately 
 loyal to the English Queen. He believed in moral 
 force. He was not the man to his honour be it 
 spoken who could ever have been the ally of boy- 
 cotters or of dynamiters. If the agitation for Repeal 
 failed, he was not prepared to head a revolution. 
 Hence he could not be the leader of those estimable 
 Nationalists and Republicans the true Girondins 
 of Ireland who in 1848 dreamed of an independent 
 Irish Republic to be established by a rising of the 
 Irish people against the alleged tyranny of England. 
 But the movement in favour of Irish Nationality 
 in its turn came to nothing. The virtuous Re- 
 publicans never obtained in Ireland an influence 
 anything like at all equal to their talents and their 
 highmindedness ; some of them were found guilty of 
 treason felony and condemned to transportation. 
 The most eminent of their number, and the historian 
 of an abortive movement, became in Australia, as 
 Sir Gavan Duffy, the servant of the British Crown, 
 and received a pension well earned by services to 
 the British Empire. The Irish Nationalists of 1848, 
 known then as Young Ireland, were, by their high- 
 mindedness and nationalist enthusiasm, prevented 
 from following the felonious advice of Lalor and 
 transforming a movement for the creation of an 
 Irish Republic into a murderous conflict between 
 landlords and tenants for the possession of Irish 
 land. The purest form of Irish Nationalism 
 perished with Smith O'Brien's futile attempt to 
 raise an insurrection against the Government of the 
 United Kingdom. The collapse first of the Repeal 
 movement under O'Connell, and, secondly, of the 
 endeavour, under the leadership of Smith O'Brien, to 
 carry through an armed revolution, certainly afford 
 an extraordinary contrast with the continuance for a 
 period rapidly approaching to half a century of the 
 reiterated demand in Parliament for Home Rule, 

 
 THE WORK OF THE UNIONISTS 5 
 
 supported by methods all of which menaced the 
 authority of Parliament and some of which were 
 nothing better than the organised commission of 
 outrageous crimes. Nor, in estimating the strength 
 of the Home Rule argument, can we leave out of sight 
 the fact that Unionists held power for at least sixteen 
 years and had the opportunity of giving full effect 
 to their policy. They rigorously enforced the law of 
 the land. They established in Ireland as liberal a 
 system of local self-government as exists in England. 
 They at last arranged a scheme of land-purchase 
 wide enough to ensure, as it has to a great extent 
 ensured, that by the aid of the State that is, in effect, 
 by loans from the Imperial Treasury Irish tenants 
 should become the owners of the land of which they 
 were the occupiers, and this revolution was, accord- 
 ing to Unionist policy, to be accomplished on terms 
 not meant to be unjust to Irish landlords. All this, 
 as a Home Ruler would assert, has profited nothing. 
 The Nationalists continue an unbroken party and 
 hold at least as many seats in Parliament as they 
 did when Parnell was a despot whom no Nationalist 
 dared to disobey. 
 
 These are facts which weigh heavily with an 
 English Home Ruler. He draws from them the 
 political inference that Ireland will never be con- 
 ciliated without the concession of Home Rule, 
 and he often, as a moralist, draws the further con- 
 clusion that " there is no evasion of the plain 
 duty" on the part of England to concede Home 
 Rule to Ireland. 1 Nor can any candid critic deny 
 that, under a democratic constitution, such as 
 now exists in England, there are many difficulties, 
 and sometimes considerable danger, in pursuing 
 a policy in this case the maintenance of the Union 
 between Great Britain and Ireland that is opposed 
 to the wishes and to the regularly expressed 
 demands of the majority of the citizens who inhabit 
 1 See Dr. Horton's letter to the Times, February 10, 1912, p. 8.
 
 6 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 a particular part, namely Ireland, of the United 
 Kingdom. 1 
 
 Answer. This line of reasoning is indefinitely 
 weakened or disposed of by the following considera- 
 tions, which explain the tenacity with which the 
 demand for Home Rule has been maintained by 
 Irish Nationalists. 
 
 i. Parnell invented, or adopted, a system which 
 combined the advantages of nominally constitutional 
 agitation with the encouragement of illegality which 
 amounted to heinous conspiracy. 2 Parnell also 
 linked the cause of Home Rule with an agitation, 
 carried on in many instances by methods both 
 dishonest and cruel, for the transfer of Irish land to 
 Irish tenants or occupiers. Hence Parnell and his 
 associates appealed to one of the strongest passions 
 of the Irish peasantry. Parnell was thereby enabled 
 to obtain for a time a dictatorial authority which 
 could enforce the most absolute discipline upon his 
 followers. What was of more permanent con- 
 sequence, the somewhat languid demand for Home 
 Rule, or national independence, was for the first 
 time identified in the minds of Irish tenants with 
 the passion for the possession of the land which 
 they occupied. 
 
 Since 1886 the agitation for Home Rule, identified 
 as it was with the land-hunger of the Irish people, 
 has been encouraged by the avowed willingness or 
 eagerness of a great English party to join in the 
 movement in favour of in effect repealing the Act 
 of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. The 
 
 1 This was Gladstone's view. '' Parnell's movement was different 
 [from Butt's]. It came to this : We granted a fuller franchise to 
 Ireland in 1884, and Ireland then sent eighty-five members to the 
 Imperial Parliament, That settled the question. When the 
 people express their determination in that decisive way, you must 
 give them what they ask" (Life of Parnell, ii. 365. See May, 
 Constitutional History of EnglandJ\\\. 169). 
 
 1 See Dicey, The Verdict^ * Findings of the Parnell Commission," 
 pp. 189-94.
 
 A POLICY OF LOG-ROLLING 7 
 
 Home Rule movement, at this moment, derives more 
 than half its vitality from the readiness of English- 
 men who call themselves Liberals to " enter into 
 a deal " (if I may use the slang of American politics) 
 with Nationalists who pay no regard to the interest 
 or wishes of England. Who can wonder that Mr. 
 Redmond and his followers should be inexpressibly 
 cheered in their last fight for Home Rule from the 
 knowledge that the Prime Minister of what is still 
 the United Kingdom is willing to join with the 
 Nationalists of Ireland in a policy of log-rolling 
 which the coalition of Englisn Liberals and Irish 
 Nationalists dare not submit to the judgment of the 
 electorate of England, Scotland, and Ireland ? This 
 description of the present state of affairs will be 
 treated by every Home Ruler or Separatist as the 
 language of a partisan or a zealot. But of two facts 
 my critics may rest assured. My words, in the first 
 place, are the words of a man who has for more 
 than a quarter of a century watched the fluctuations 
 of the conflict over Home Rule with careful and, 
 I may venture to add, with perfectly disinterested 
 attention. My words, in the second place, represent 
 the belief of thousands and tens of thousands of 
 Unionists throughput Great Britain and Ireland. 
 This belief in the intimate and unholy alliance be- 
 tween English Ministerialists and Irish Nationalists 
 is grounded, not on private information or popular 
 rumour, but on circumstances known to every 
 intelligent reader of the parliamentary debates 
 which have taken place since the ill-starred day 
 when a Cabinet of Home Rulers was allowed again 
 to occupy office. One fact must be, to many candid 
 judges, conclusive. This is the notorious determina- 
 tion of a Ministry of Home Rulers that the so-called 
 Crimes Act, 1887, shall not be enforced. This is, in 
 reality, the open relaxation of the authority of the 
 law ; it is little less than the proclamation that the 
 law enacted by Parliament is no law in Ireland.
 
 8 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 2. The dogma that the demand for a particular 
 form of government by a minority of the people 
 living under one constitution must, if it be made in 
 a legal manner and for many years, necessarily 
 be granted, is absolutely without foundation. It is 
 unknown to the English Constitution ; it is unknown 
 to any constitution whatever of the civilised world ; 
 it has no connection whatever with the so-called 
 principles of democracy. For these principles, 
 whether we regard them as true or false, or (as 
 reasonable Englishmen generally do) as containing 
 a mixture of valuable truth and palpable error, rest 
 on the fundamental assumption that the majority of 
 the citizens of a State have in general a right to 
 enforce their will upon a recalcitrant minority. 
 The citizens of federal, republican, and democratic 
 Switzerland, with the severest emphasis, repudiated 
 during the War of the Sonderbund, the rignt of the 
 Catholic Cantons to break up the Republic. The 
 American Commonwealth suppressed a similar 
 political heresy by the war against Secession, which 
 lasted for at least five years, and imposed untold loss 
 upon the country both of treasure and of blood. The 
 unitary and democratic Republic of France has never 
 for a moment tolerated the pretended right of a 
 minority to defy the will of the nation. The suppres- 
 sion of the Commune at Paris, when a large part of 
 France was still occupied by German soldiers and 
 the country seemed well-nigh at its last gasp, was the 
 expression of the resolution of Frenchmen that a 
 minority, even though it held in its hands the 
 capital of the country, should not usurp the supre- 
 macy of the nation. 1 do not argue for a moment, 
 for I do not believe, that every democratic principle 
 is true. Majorities, as also minorities, may be and 
 have been guilty of oppression which morally justi- 
 fies resistance or rebellion. My contention is that 
 the rule of a minority is not a democratic principle. 
 To any democrat, therefore, who argues that the
 
 PRIMARY RIGHTS OF A STATE 9 
 
 continuous demand for Home Rule by a majority 
 of Irishmen gives Ireland a right to Home Rule, 
 I confidently reply that the granting or the refusal 
 of this demand ought to depend upon the answer 
 to the inquiry whether the grant thereof is or is 
 not likely to be beneficial to the whole United 
 Kingdom. In any case, so-called democratic prin- 
 ciples give no countenance whatever to the idea 
 that there is any reason why the wishes of, say, 
 three million Irishmen, should be preferred to the 
 interest or the wishes of forty million and more of 
 the citizens of the United Kingdom. But an enthusi- 
 astic Home Ruler constantly adopts the tone of a 
 moralist or of a preacher. We are told that it is 
 the " plain duty " of England to concede Home Rule 
 to Ireland. When this allegation is made, as it con- 
 stantly is, by honest and good men, my astonishment 
 necessarily takes the form of a respectful inquiry : 
 Where is the supposed rule of morality to be found ? 
 Let me be referred to the teaching of any admitted 
 authority in the matter of morality or of religion. 
 Who, I ask, is the constitutional moralist who 
 sanctions the ethical rule on which Home Rulers 
 rely? Abraham Lincoln, the hero and the martyr 
 of modern democracy, has in so many words re- 
 pudiated this undemocratic delusion. " In what 
 consists," he says, "the special sacredness of a 
 State ? . . . I speak of that assumed primary right 
 of a State to rule all which is less than itself, and 
 ruin all which is larger than itself. . . . On what 
 rightful principle may a State, being not more than 
 one-fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, 
 break up the nation, and then coerce a proportion- 
 ally larger subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary 
 way? What mysterious right to play tyrant is 
 conferred on a district of country, with its people, 
 by merely calling it a State? Assuredly you 
 may search the Bible from the beginning of the 
 Book of Genesis to the end of the Book of Revelation
 
 io ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 without discovering a word which identifies the 
 wishes either of the majority or of the minority 
 of the electors, or even of a whole people, with 
 the will of Heaven or the dictates of righteousness. 
 Religion, thank Heaven, has no concern with Home 
 Rule or Unionism, and I would suggest to zealous 
 politicians, even when they are accustomed to the 
 religious inspiration of the pulpit, to abstain from 
 vehement appeals to religious principle which can 
 give us no direct guidance on a subject pre- 
 eminently of secular expediency. 
 
 3. The Irish Nationalist and the English Home 
 Ruler treat the movement for Home Rule as ex- 
 pressing the will of Ireland ; but here, as elsewhere, 
 accuracy of expression would greatly aid fairness 
 both of thought and of action ; the so-called will 
 of the Irish people means, as every man of sense 
 now knows, merely the will of the majority of the 
 inhabitants of Ireland. In answer to the cry from the 
 south of Ireland, " We will have Home Rule," goes 
 up the firm rejoinder of Ulster, " We will not have 
 Home Rule." And this difference in the wishes 
 of Irishmen is surely a matter which deserves, 
 at any rate, the respectful consideration of every 
 Englishman. No fair controversialist will trust 
 much to the argumentum ad hominem. Still, it is 
 worth while to point out that the English demo- 
 crat who holds that it is the " plain duty " of 
 the majority of the citizens of the whole United 
 Kingdom to concede Home Rule to Ireland in 
 deference to the will of a majority of Irishmen, 
 constituting after all a small minority of the citizens 
 of the United Kingdom, and who also holds that 
 Ulstermen are bound to acquiesce in Home Rule 
 (which they detest) because it is demanded by a 
 majority of the inhabitants of Ireland, will find that 
 he occupies an utterly inconsistent position : For, 
 as against Great Britain and the Protestants of 
 Ireland, he denies to the majority of the citizens
 
 RIGHTS OF MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES u 
 
 of the United Kingdom that sovereignty which the 
 democratic creed attributes to the majority of the 
 citizens of any State, but at the same time he, 
 as against Ulster, presses to the utmost extreme, 
 on behalf of the majority of Irishmen, the right to 
 demand absolute obedience from the minority of 
 Ulstermen. 1 The inconsistency of the English 
 Home Ruler's attitude is patent. It is the better 
 worth pointing out because it arises from a conflict 
 between his inherited democratic creed and his 
 modern sympathy with the so-called doctrine of 
 Nationality. 
 
 The effectiveness of the argument based on the 
 continuous demand for Home Rule by the majority 
 of Ireland's parliamentary representatives arises 
 to a much greater extent than English Home 
 Rulers of to-day perceive from its confusion with 
 the argument based on that principle of Nationality 
 which had so much weight with English Liberals 
 and democrats of an earlier generation from about 
 1845 to 1870 and notably with Mr. Gladstone and 
 the Gladstonians of 1886. It would be a matter of 
 much interest to examine what is the amount of 
 
 1 The inconsistency of such Home Ruler's position may be best 
 shown arithmetically. In round numbers, the population of the 
 United Kingdom is 45,000,000 ; the population of Great Britain 
 is 40,000,000 ; the population of Ireland is 4,000,000 ; the Pro- 
 testants of Ireland make up about 1,000,000. 
 
 On these facts the Home Ruler's argument stands thus: As 
 between Great Britain and Ireland, it is the "plain duty" of Great 
 Britain to concede Home Rule to Ireland because it is legally 
 demanded by, or on behalf of, in fact, 3,000,000 of Irishmen, or, as 
 he would perhaps say, 4,000,000 of Irishmen. Hence 40,000,000 of 
 the citizens of the United Kingdom are, in his opinion, morally 
 bound to yield to the demand of at most 4,000,000 of Irishmen ; 
 but, as between Ireland and the Irish Protestants or, in popular 
 language, Ulster he holds that 3,000,000 of Irishmen are under 
 no duty whatever to give heed to the protest against Home Rule of 
 1,000,000 of their fellow Irishmen. In short, as between Great 
 Britain and Ireland, he denies the moral right of a majority to 
 rule ; as between Ireland and Ulster, he denies in toto the moral 
 right of a minority to insist upon obedience to its demand.
 
 iz ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 truth contained in this famous principle, and what 
 are the causes which have, in England at any rate, 
 deprived it of so much of its original attractiveness 
 and glamour. From such an examination I have 
 deliberately abstained, and this for two reasons. 
 The one reason is that the principle of Nationality 
 has, whether rightly or wrongly, very little influ- 
 ence on the English electorate of to-day. The 
 other reason is that no man who honestly accepts 
 the Home Rule Bill of 1912 i.e. who accepts it as 
 anything else than the means for obtaining the inde- 
 pendence of Ireland can logically or fairly rely in 
 support of this Bill on the principle of Nationality. 
 This point deserves a moment's consideration. 
 The Bill itself is, on the very face of it, the denial of 
 Ireland's claim to national independence, or 
 even to colonial independence. No English Home 
 Ruler is willing to concede to Ireland the 
 national independence, say, of Belgium or Swit- 
 zerland. Few English Home Rulers are willing 
 to concede to Ireland the colonial indepen- 
 dence of New Zealand. The English electorate 
 are certainly not prepared to give a moment's 
 hearing to Ireland's claim, however made, for 
 independence of any kind. Irish Home Rulers are 
 doubtless many of them Nationalists, but they 
 profess to accept Home Rule as embodied in the 
 present Bill. Many of the parliamentary party, 
 especially those members thereof who hope to hold 
 office under the rule of an Irish Parliament, bona fide 
 accept Mr. Asquith's Home Rule policy. But even 
 zealous Nationalists are hardly prepared to welcome 
 the burdens, no less than the privileges, of any 
 form of independence. Would the shopkeepers of 
 Dublin, or the farmers of the south of Ireland, 
 continue to vote for Home Rule were they assured 
 that, from the moment when a Home Rule Act 
 came into force, Ireland would enjoy the inde- 
 pendence of New Zealand, but would, like New
 
 FINANCIAL CONSIDERATIONS 13 
 
 Zealand, receive no grants from the Imperial 
 Parliament, drawn from the pockets of the 
 British taxpayer? Even now they have become 
 aware of a fact which a careful student of the 
 Home Rule Bill must have soon perceived, that 
 the Bill gives them no security for the extension 
 of the policy of the Land Purchase Acts, and they 
 are apparently uneasy lest the Parliament at West- 
 minster, whilst willing to part with power, should 
 be unwilling, for the sake of a Home Ruled Ireland, 
 to part with money, or to let the credit of the 
 no longer United Kingdom be pledged for some 
 100,000,000 more needed for carrying into 
 effect Land Purchase Acts which bring consolation 
 to Irish landlords, and the joys of ownership to 
 Irish occupiers of land. The nation whose desire 
 for Home Rule is combined with a demand for the 
 payment of some 2,000,000 by British taxpayers 
 in order to make Home Rule a possibility is not in 
 a position to rely on the principle of Nationality. 
 Mazzini hated Austria, but Mazzini never asked, 
 nor for that matter did a single Italian patriot ask, 
 that a united Italy should for years receive from 
 the Austrian Empire some 2,000,000 needed 
 for meeting the necessary expenses of the Italian 
 Government. In plain truth, the position of 
 Ireland would be logically far stronger if Irish 
 Nationalists were demanding, as did the Irish 
 Nationalists of 1848, national independence, and 
 not Home Rule. A thorough-going Nationalist 
 may maintain, without inconsistency, that Ireland 
 has a right to national independence, even though 
 her demand involves injury to Great Britain. An 
 Irish Home Ruler in effect asks, in theory at 
 least, not for independence, but for a revision of the 
 terms of partnership between Ireland and Great 
 Britain. To this demand it is a decisive reply that 
 these terms cannot be settled in reference solely to 
 the wish of the member of the firm who is not the
 
 i 4 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 leading partner, and that the interest of the pre- 
 dominant partner, who assuredly is England, must, 
 as Lord Rosebery when leader of the Liberal 
 Party insisted, receive the utmost attention. Turn 
 it which way you will, the principle of Nationality 
 has no true application to tne Home Rule Bill of 
 1912, or to any Home Rule Bill which any Ministry 
 will ever venture to lay before the electorate of the 
 United Kingdom. 
 
 ARGUMENT 2. From the burden imposed by Irish 
 affairs on the Imperial Parliament. 
 
 The practice of systematic obstruction which, if 
 not strictly discovered, was certainly developed to 
 its evil perfection by Parnell, threatened, it is argued, 
 the Parliamentary Constitution of England with 
 ruin. The immensely increased authority of the 
 Speaker, it is added, the closure, the guillotine, the 
 curtailment of debate, the despotic authority which 
 has passed into the hands of the Cabinet, all the 
 different devices, in short, adopted to check parlia- 
 mentary obstruction have turned out almost as bad 
 as the evil which they were meant to cure. The 
 Parliament at Westminster is gradually losing much 
 of its authority and many of its traditional virtues. 
 As long as the members sent from Ireland to West- 
 minster can hold such a balance of power as to 
 bestow office, now upon the one and now upon the 
 other of the great English parties, these Irish 
 members will so disturb the working of English 
 institutions as to make sound and systematic legisla- 
 tion an impossibility. In any case, the burden 
 imposed upon the Imperial Parliament, or in strict- 
 ness upon the House of Commons, is too heavy to 
 be borne. It must be lightened, and relief, it is 
 inferred, from this inordinate burden can be obtained 
 only by relieving the Parliament at Westminster 
 from the necessity of governing Ireland, or of legis- 
 lating for Ireland. 
 
 This argument, which tells to-day for much more
 
 OBSTRUCTION 15 
 
 than it did either in 1886 or in 1893, weighs with 
 the ordinary English voter more heavily than any 
 appeal either to the respect which some democrats 
 imagine to be due to the persevering demand of the 
 people of Ireland, 1 or to that principle of Nationality * 
 which, if the unvarnished truth is to be spoken, has 
 with English electors lost much of its original 
 impressiveness and glamour. Yet this argument, 
 which may perhaps be called the argument in favour 
 of Devolution, will, on careful examination, be found 
 to contain a good deal less of pith and substance 
 than it at first sight seems to possess. And this for 
 reasons which may be the more summarily treated 
 because the subject of the relief to be obtained by 
 Parliament by the concession of Home Rule to 
 Ireland will receive further examination in my criti- 
 cism of the Home Rule Bill of I9i2. 3 
 
 Answer. Note that in this, as in other instances, 
 the reply to an argument may consist of different 
 reasons or objections. Their force is cumula- 
 tive. 
 
 i. The extent to which the affairs of Ireland impede 
 legislation is the subject of great exaggeration. 
 Throughout the existence both of the Unionist 
 Governments and of the present Home Rule Govern- 
 ment a very considerable amount some critics might 
 say an excessive number of important Acts have 
 been carried through Parliament. This assertion is 
 sufficiently proved by a mere reference to the Work- 
 men's Compensation Act, to the Act establishing 
 local government in Ireland, to the whole line of 
 Irish Land Purchase Acts and especially to the 
 statute connected with the name of Mr. Wyndham, 
 to the Trade Disputes Act, 1906, to the Old Age 
 Pensions Act, 1908, and to the National Insurance 
 Act, 191 1, i & 2 Geo. V. c. 55. 
 
 1 See Argument r, p. 2, ante. * Ibid. t p. II, ante. 
 
 5 See Chapter II. p. 45, post.
 
 1 6 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 2. The complaint about the hindrance to parlia- 
 mentary legislation is, as a plea for dissolving the 
 Union between Great Britain and Ireland, factitious. 
 It would be heard were every member from Ireland 
 withdrawn from the Parliament at Westminster. 
 A minority of Socialists, a minority of Labour 
 members, a minority of Suffragists, or a minority of 
 reactionary Tories might practise the arts of obstruc- 
 tion and intrigue as efficiently as Irish Nationalists. 
 The weak point of parliamentary government, of 
 which Parnell is, whether rightly or not, the reputed 
 discoverer, is now well known to the members of 
 every Parliament throughout the civilised world. 
 In resth, in Vienna, or in Washington and, for 
 aught I know, in Japan the arts of obstruction are, 
 or may be, as freely practised as at Westminster. 
 The factitious character of the complaint put forward 
 by English Home Rulers is patent. They never even 
 try the kind of remedies appropriate towards check- 
 ing the disease which they obtrude upon public 
 notice only in its accidental connection with Home 
 Rule. Home Rulers never consider whether it is 
 beyond the reach of the human intellect to invent for 
 the House of Commons a more rapid mode of voting ; 
 whether it might not be expedient to limit the length 
 of parliamentary speeches ; or whether a suggestion 
 made by so intelligent a Conservative as Lord 
 Salisbury, namely, that a Bill debated in one session 
 might, though not finally carried into an Act, be 
 with ad vantage further considered in the next Session, 
 may not deserye attention. Never does any Home 
 Ruler, or Radical, propose, as he well might do, 
 devolution of parliamentary powers to bodies un- 
 doubtedly subordinate (such as County Councils, or 
 conceivably Councils including several counties) 
 which neither would nor could defy the supremacy 
 of Parliament. It is a suspicious circumstance that 
 the devolution favoured by our Home Rulers is 
 invariably devolution to some authority, such as a
 
 FEDERATION 17 
 
 new Irish Parliament or a revived Parliament of 
 Scotland, which by its very name and traditions 
 will be tempted into conflict with the Imperial 
 Parliament. 
 
 3. The actual Home Rule Bill of 1912 does not 
 secure that its eccentric form of Home Rule for 
 Ireland shall materially relieve the labours of the 
 Imperial Parliament at Westminster. 
 
 In the mouth of a modern Home Ruler the cry 
 for Devolution is, in short, conscious or unconscious 
 cant. 
 
 ARGUMENT 3. From the success of Home Rule as 
 Federalism. 1 
 
 The argument in favour of uniting Great Britain 
 and Ireland under some form of federal government 
 consists of two entirely different lines of reasoning. 
 They ought to be carefully distinguished, and 
 each requires a separate answer. 
 
 I. The Old Line of Reasoning 
 
 Many Gladstonians in 1886 argued that the 
 establishment of a federal relation between Great 
 Britain and Ireland would give Ireland, as the 
 member of a confederacy, the kind of Home Rule 
 which she required, namely, the right to manage 
 purely Irish affairs, and would also be a practical 
 recognition of Irish Nationality ; whilst it would not 
 diminish, but might even, as regards the affairs of 
 the whole Empire, increase the authority of England. 2 
 Nor was this idea unnatural to statesmen who had 
 
 1 See Federalism and Home Rule, by " Pacificus " ; Dicey, Eng- 
 land's Case against Home Rule, 3rd ed. chap, vii.; Home Rule as 
 Federalism, pp. 160-99. Contrast Childers, Framework of Home 
 Rule, chaps, i. to ix., and especially chap. x. ; Federal or Colonial 
 Home Rule, pp. 189-203 
 
 1 This idea lay at the basis of the Home Rule Bill of 1886.
 
 1 8 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 not studied minutely the working of federal institu- 
 tions and were impressed by the success of the 
 United States during the War of Secession in 
 asserting their national unity, as well as by the way 
 in which the victory of Germany in the war of 
 1870-71 enabled Germany, as a federated Empire, 
 to become, for the first time in history, a powerful 
 and firmly united country. The success of the 
 Federal Constitution framed for Canada, and at the 
 wish of Canada, already showed that a federation of 
 Colonial States might be as willing to recognise the 
 authority, if prudently exercised, of the Crown, i.e. 
 of the British Government and British Parliament, 
 as any single self-governing Colony or Dominion ; 
 and this satisfactory conclusion has been con- 
 firmed by the relation established between England 
 and the Australian Commonwealth, and between 
 England and the Union of South Africa. 
 
 Answer. The idea, however plausible, that the 
 demand of Ireland for Home Rule can be met by 
 creating some federal relation between Great 
 Britain and Ireland is open to the gravest objections. 
 
 1. Federalism by its very nature means the 
 division of political power between the Federal 
 Government and the Government of every State 
 belonging to the Federation, and such division would 
 from the nature of things, be a source of weakness 
 to the country which is now the United Kingdom of 
 Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 2. A Federal Government, at any rate as carried 
 on by Englishmen, or under the influence of Eng- 
 lishmen,! must of necessity be a Government in 
 which the decision of political or constitutional 
 questions is left, to a great extent, to the law courts, 
 and such a Government can flourish only among 
 people thoroughly imbued with the spirit of 
 legalism. No one can assert that deference for law, 
 as enunciated by the law courts, is a marked 
 characteristic of Irishmen, and in a federation con-
 
 NATURE OF FEDERATION 19 
 
 sisting of Great Britain and Ireland the supreme 
 Federal Court would necessarily be, in fact, a British 
 or an English court, and no man of judgment can 
 expect that Ireland would be specially zealous in 
 obeying the judgments of a Federal Court which 
 Irishmen felt to be an English tribunal. Nor 
 can any fair-minded Englishman feel sure that 
 the judgments of a Federal Court, if they went 
 against the view of federal law entertained by 
 English lawyers and in favour of the view adopted 
 by Irish lawyers, would always meet with full 
 acceptance in England. 
 
 3. Federal Government inevitably, and from its 
 very nature, creates divided allegiance. As the 
 history of the American War of Secession shows, 
 even military officers of the highest honour and 
 the highest sense of duty, though educated in the 
 military school of the United States, and though 
 they had received their commissions from the 
 Government of the United States, yet were dis- 
 tracted by doubts whether they owed allegiance 
 to the united States or to their own State. 
 General Lee felt that duty demanded of him 
 absolute loyalty to his own State of Virginia. 
 General Scott felt that duty demanded of him 
 loyalty, not to his own Virginia, but to the United 
 States. Each officer followed the dictates of his 
 conscience ; each of them was placed in a position 
 where his conscience was distracted by doubts as to 
 whether his allegiance was primarily due to the 
 United States or to Virginia. 
 
 4. Federalism, wherever it can really flourish, 
 must be a step towards national unity ; it is not a 
 device properly fitted for relaxing the consciousness 
 of common patriotism. 
 
 5. There is the gravest reason to doubt whether 
 the grant to Ireland of the position occupied by the 
 State of a Federation would really meet the desire, 
 such as it is, of Irishmen for Home Rule. The
 
 20 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 statesmen, such as Gladstone, who thought that 
 Great Britain and Ireland could form, as they were 
 intended to do under the Home Rule Bill of 1886, a 
 federal union of which the one State would be Great 
 Britain and the other State would be Ireland, seem 
 never to have realised that the power of the Federal 
 Government would seem in reality, to Ireland, the 
 very supremacy of England from which Irish 
 Nationalists desire to escape. 
 
 The ablest apology for Irish Home Rule which 
 has appeared is assuredly Mr. Childers's Framework 
 of Home Rule. He establishes to his own satis- 
 faction, and I believe to that of his readers, that 
 Ireland is a country quite unprepared and unfit to 
 adopt a system of Federalism/ 
 
 "There is . . . no question," he writes, " of Federal 
 Home Rule, and the term ' Federal,' as applied to 
 Irish Home Rule at the present time, is meaningless. 
 Nor can the coming Bill for Ireland make any 
 preparation technically for a general Federation. 
 Morally, as I shall show, it might have an im- 
 portant effect in stimulating local sentiment, not 
 only in England, Scotland, and Wales, but in 
 Ireland, towards a general Federation in the future ; 
 but in its mechanical structure it must be not merely 
 non-Federal, but anti-Federal. 
 
 " The Bill, I repeat, must be anti-Federal, centri- 
 fugal. In the case of Ireland we have first to 
 dissolve an unnatural union, and then to revive 
 
 1 I am most anxious to do justice to Mr. Childers. He is an 
 ardent Home Ruler, and, as far as I can judge, he thinks that at 
 some future time the formation of some great federal system for 
 the government of the Empire may be expedient. He, to my 
 surprise, supports the present Home Rule Bill (see " The Home 
 Rule Bill and the Unionist Alternative A Contrast," Contem- 
 porary Review, June 1912, p. 771). But not only the sentences I 
 have quoted, but the whole tenor of his book, which I recommend 
 every Unionist to read, proves that he does not believe that Home 
 Rule, as Federalism, can meet the wants of Ireland.
 
 HOME RULE AND FEDERALISM 21 
 
 an old right to autonomy, before we can reach a 
 healthy Federal Union." l 
 
 1 1. The New Line of Reasoning 
 
 Some Imperialists of to-day advocate Home Rule 
 for Ireland as the first step towards building up a 
 grand Federal Constitution for the whole Empire, 
 or at any rate for Great Britain and her self- 
 governing Colonies. The Home Rulers of 1886, 
 if they were in any way in favour of Federalism, 
 advocated a Federal Government as the best means 
 of giving to Ireland a kind of Home Rule which 
 was suited to her circumstances and which pre- 
 served her special connection with Great Britain. 
 The difference between the two views can hardly 
 be exaggerated. The Imperialist of to-day, when 
 he is also a Home Ruler, wishes to make Ireland 
 one among the many States of an Imperial Federa- 
 tion and flatters himself that Irish Home Rule is a 
 step towards Federal Unity. 
 
 It is difficult for any ordinary Unionist of common 
 sense to state the line of reasoning which is sup- 
 posed to support the paradox that to relax the bond 
 of political union between Great Britain and Ireland 
 is the statesmanlike method for forming a closer 
 federal union between the different parts of the 
 British Empire. The ingenuity, the plausibility, 
 and the vagueness of " Pacificus " have never maae 
 clear to his readers why the unity of the British 
 Empire should be increased or created by the dis- 
 unity of the now United Kingdom. It is worth 
 while, however, to note that this strange procedure 
 for unifying the Empire generally and logically 
 
 1 Childers, pp. 200, 201. I hope that my readers will carefully 
 peruse Mr. Childers's pages 192-203 on Federal Home Rule as a 
 solution of the Irish Question.
 
 22 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 leads its advocates to breaking up the United 
 Kingdom into at least four different States, viz. 
 England, in the narrowest possible sense of that 
 word, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, each of which 
 States will presumably possess a separate Cabinet 
 and a separate Parliament, and all of which will be 
 subject to some as yet uncreated and almost un- 
 imagined supreme Federal Parliament. A just 
 critic, however, must suppose that those Im- 
 perialists who, in regard to Ireland, are both Home 
 Rulers and Federalists, have adopted two some- 
 what singular beliefs. The one is that a Federal 
 Government is, in itself, an improvement upon 
 every other form of popular government ; the 
 other is that Federalism, when once introduced 
 into the United Kingdom, will, by its own ex- 
 cellence, commend itself to all the countries of 
 which George V. is sovereign. 
 
 Answer. My criticism on this, to me almost in- 
 comprehensible creed is that it is, at bottom, a 
 delusion, and a delusion dangerous not only to 
 England but to the whole British Empire. 
 
 This form of Imperialism which treats the grant 
 of Home Rule to Ireland as the first step towards 
 the increased unity of the Empire is a delusion 
 because it does not even tend towards fairly meeting 
 the wants of Ireland which have given rise to the 
 demand for Home Rule. It is a delusion, further, 
 because the attempt to deal at once with the problem 
 of granting Home Rule to Ireland, and the problem of 
 creating a new constitution for the Empire, makes 
 the solution of either problem all but an impossibility. 
 It is admitted on all sides, and by Irish Home Rulers 
 urged with emphatic vehemence, that the condition 
 of Ireland is in every sense peculiar, and that 
 historically she has suffered from an accumulation 
 of difficulties and disasters both greater and more 
 complicated than the perplexities or the misfortunes 
 which have impeded itne progress of any other
 
 DELUSIONS OF FEDERALISTS 23 
 
 civilised country in Europe. 1 It is hardly con- 
 ceivable that the terms of federation which should 
 meet the necessities and the desires of Ireland would 
 be suitable to the wants and desires of, say England, 
 Wales, and Scotland ; it is even more strictly in- 
 conceivable that the terms of federation which would 
 be suitable to all the States of the federated Empire, 
 e.g. the Canadian Dominion, the Australian Com- 
 monwealth, or the Dominion of New Zealand, would 
 meet the wishes of Irishmen. The perplexities 
 presented by Irish Home Rule have as yet received 
 no intelligible solution except the solution to which 
 all Unionists adhere, namely, the maintenance of 
 the political unity of the United Kingdom and the 
 determination to govern each part of the United 
 Kingdom with equal justice. I do not ask that any 
 Home Ruler should accept the fundamental doctrine 
 of Unionism. What, as a man of sense, I do ask is 
 that the question of Home Rule for Ireland should 
 not be still further confused and complicated by 
 muddling it together with the attempt to make 
 Irish Home Rule the stepping-stone towards 
 Imperial Federalism. 
 
 The delusion that the disuniting of the United 
 Kingdom will turn put to be a method for increasing 
 the unity of the British Empire is full of dangers ; and 
 they are numerous. Two of these dangers deserve 
 special notice : the first is that Imperialists should 
 be led, in their zeal for the unity and the strength of 
 the Empire a sentiment which I completely share 
 to overlook the immense difficulty of constructing 
 a Federal Constitution for the British Empire, or 
 even for the United Kingdom and for England's 
 self-governing Dominions. This is a task which 
 demands the genius, and, one must add, the singular 
 good-fortune which, in the circumstances of the time, 
 were granted by Providence to the great statesmen 
 
 1 See Sydney Brooks, Aspects of Home Rule.
 
 24 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 of England and of Scotland who in 1707 created that 
 glory of British statesmanship, the United Kingdom 
 of Great Britain, and to the even greater statesmen 
 of the thirteen independent and allied Colonies who 
 in 1787 created the united States of America. This 
 combination of statesmanship and of happy oppor- 
 tunity is a blessing on which no country can 
 confidently count. Nor let it be forgotten that the 
 attempt in any formal manner to turn England and 
 her self-governing Colonies into a Federal State is, 
 if attempted rashly, or in untoward circumstances, 
 certain to raise the most dangerous of questions. 
 Some of these inquiries need only be mentioned 
 in order to exemplify the difficulty and the perils 
 which they will create. What is to be the relation of 
 India to the new Federal Power ? What will be the 
 relation of the Colonies which are not, as yet, self- 
 governing Dominions ? Are such countries as the 
 Canadian Dominion or the Australian Common- 
 wealth willing to surrender to the Federal Govern- 
 ment their unlimited power of self-taxation ? Is the 
 existing Imperial Parliament to be increased by the 
 addition of members from each of the Dominions, or 
 is the ordinary Parliament at Westminster to sink 
 into a local English Legislature and hand over its 
 supremacy to some new-fangled Federal Parliament 
 representing the whole Empire? To ask these 
 questions is to prove, not the impossibility, but the 
 extreme difficulty of giving to them any satisfactory 
 reply. 
 
 The second of the two dangers inherent in the 
 Imperialistic delusion is that zealous Imperialists 
 should overlook the fact, full of hope though it be, 
 that the unity of the Empire does not require the 
 formation of a brand-new Constitution. I yield to 
 no man in my passion for the greatness, the strength, 
 and the unity of the British Empire. As a stern 
 Imperialist I approved, and do approve, of the war 
 in South Africa which forbade secession ; but, as a
 
 TRUE IMPERIALISM 25 
 
 student of the British Constitution, I venture to 
 assert that the Constitution of the Empire ought to 
 develop, as it is actually developing, not by arduous 
 feats 01 legislation, but by reasonable understandings 
 between England and the Dominions, and, as far as 
 possible, between England and the Colonies which 
 are not as yet self-governing countries. There are 
 two objects which every Imperialist has in view. 
 The first is that each part of the Empire should 
 contribute in a fair measure towards the defence 
 of the Empire. The British taxpayer cannot, and 
 certainly will not, go on for a long or for an indefinite 
 period paying the whole cost of Imperial defence. 
 The second object is to provide for consultation 
 between England and her Colonies. The Dominions 
 cannot go on for a long or indefinite period bearing 
 the risks of Imperial wars without having a voice in 
 the decision whether such wars should be begun or 
 not, or on what terms they should be brought to an 
 end. The whole aim of British and of colonial 
 statesmen should be, and I fully believe is, to come 
 on these two points to a satisfactory understanding. 
 Imperial statesmanship is rapidly advancing in the 
 right direction. Within a few years the system 
 of Colonial Conferences in England and other modes 
 of intercommunication between England and her 
 Colonies will, one may hope, have resulted in under- 
 standings which may regulate the contribution of 
 the Dominions towards the defence of the Empire, 
 and determine the best methods for consulting the 
 Colonies on the policy of any war which has an 
 Imperial character. No doubt there will inciden- 
 tally arise other questions, political and fiscal, which 
 will call for decision ; but tne two objects of states- 
 manship which I have insisted upon are the matters of 
 primary and supreme importance. Everything else is 
 secondary and subordinate. An Imperial Constitu- 
 tion, based on good-will and fair understandings, 
 may easily provide for the decision of every question,
 
 26 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 whether great or small, which vitally concerns the 
 interests of the Empire, and such a Constitution 
 may well come into real existence before Englishmen 
 have realised that the essential foundations of 
 Imperial unity have been laid ; it may be created it 
 is, I venture to say, in the course of creation with 
 no change, or with little change, in any colonial or 
 British statute. If any one asks for the grounds 
 of my belief, my answer is, that if my hopes and 
 expectations are fulfilled, the Constitution of the 
 Empire will have grown up rather than have been 
 created ; it will, like the Constitution of England 
 itself, be found not to rest on parliamentary statutes, 
 but upon a course of gradual and often unnoted 
 development. 
 
 ARGUMENT 4. From the success of Home Rule as 
 colonial independence. 1 
 
 The relation between England and her self- 
 governing Colonies or Dominions has for the last 
 fifty or sixty years, at any rate, worked admirably. 
 The relation, on the other hand, between England 
 and Ireland has been for centuries unsatisfactory, 
 though, as every Unionist fully believes, the relation 
 between the two countries under the Act of Union 
 (1800-1913) has been on the whole better than at 
 any other period. From these facts the inference 
 is naturally enough drawn that the difficulties of the 
 Home Rule question can be met by giving to Ireland 
 the position of a Dominion such, e.g., as New 
 Zealand. This position is maintained elaborately 
 in Mr. Childers's Framework of Home Rule. He 
 maintains " that it would be fair and right to place a 
 Home Ruled Ireland in the position of a self-govern- 
 ing Colony, with a moral obligation to contribute, 
 when her means permit, and in proportion to her 
 means, but without a statutory and compulsory 
 
 1 See Childers, pp. 198-229, and especially pp. 200-202, 203-217, 
 with which compare Dicey, England's Case against Home Rule 
 (3rd ed.), pp. 197-218.
 
 IRELAND AND NEW ZEALAND 27 
 
 tribute." * In his treatise he carries his doctrine to its 
 logical result namely, first, the total exclusion of 
 Irish members from the Parliament at Westminster 
 (which is to have the same Imperial supremacy over 
 Ireland as over New Zealand), and, secondly, the 
 freedom of Ireland from all legal liability to contri- 
 bute towards the defence of the Empire. Up to a 
 certain extent I have for more than twenty-five years 
 felt the force of the kind of argument put forward 
 by Mr. Childers. I have always admitted that " the 
 colonial system remains, in spite of its immense 
 defects as a scheme of Home Rule for Ireland, out 
 and out the least objectionable of the models which 
 have been proposed to us for our imitation," 2 and 
 have insisted upon the necessity (if colonial inde- 
 pendence should be tried) of carrying the experiment 
 out with consistency, viz. by the total exclusion of 
 Irish members from the Imperial Parliament and by 
 releasing Ireland from all Imperial taxation. 5 
 
 Answer. The reason why to most Englishmen it 
 is all but impossible to expect that the endowment 
 of Ireland with the colonial independence of New 
 Zealand will produce the happy and prosperous 
 connection which exists between England and her 
 Dominions may be summed up in one sentence : 
 The conditions which have made the independence 
 of New Zealand a blessing both to the mother- 
 country and to herself do not exist in the case of 
 Ireland. This statement, however, needs further 
 illustration. 
 
 Compare, then, the circumstances which, in the 
 
 1 Childers, p. 217. On what grounds Mr. Childers defends, in 
 the Contemporary Review of June 1912, p. 777, the Home Rule Bill 
 of 1912, which is opposed to the principles of colonial independence, 
 as expounded by him, I do not profess to understand. 
 
 1 England's Case against Home Rule, p. 215. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 217. With all its evils colonial independence is, 1 
 believe, far preferable to any scheme of Home Rule which has 
 as yet been proposed for Ireland, and certainly preferable to 
 the Home Rule Bill of 1912.
 
 28 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 case of New Zealand, have made the English 
 colonial system a very noteworthy, though not 
 absolutely perfect, success as regards her relation 
 to England with the conditions, in the case of Ireland, 
 which make it in the highest degree improbable 
 that the application of the same system should, as 
 regards England's relation to Ireland, lead to any- 
 thing but failure. 
 
 New Zealand is situate thousands of miles away 
 from England. New Zealand is, like most of our 
 Dominions, a new, a wealthy, and a prosperous 
 country. The European settlers in New Zealand 
 are not divided among themselves into hostile 
 factions the mutual hostility whereof is embittered 
 and increased by differences of race, of religion, and 
 of historical traditions. 1 Above all, there is no 
 hostility between New Zealand and England. 
 Hence the English colonial system admirably suits 
 the two countries. New Zealand enjoys as much 
 of independence as is compatible with her forming 
 part of the British Empire. This independence 
 increases day by day. The Imperial Parliament 
 imposes not the slightest taxation upon New Zealand. 
 New Zealand, on the other hand, claims no grants 
 from the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. Not 
 a single member from New Zealand sits, or ever 
 has sat, in the Parliament at Westminster. No doubt 
 Parliament occasionally, though very rarely, and 
 with very great unwillingness, may pass Acts which 
 affect New Zealand, and the Crown which 
 means, in effect, the British Cabinet occasionally, 
 though with great and increasing unwillingness, 
 may veto Acts of the New Zealand Parliament 
 
 1 The limited number of Maoris, now about 43,000, are becoming 
 gradually assimilated to the colonists, and are better governed 
 than are most of the aboriginal native races in countries where 
 political power lies in the hands of European settlers. Differences 
 of race have in any case little to do with the public life of New 
 Zealand.
 
 NEW ZEALAND 29 
 
 which more or less directly interfere with the policy 
 of England on some point of Imperial importance. 
 England and the colonists alike know that the 
 relation between England and a Dominion must be 
 regulated on a common system of give and take. 
 But, as things now stand, the giving or the con- 
 cession generally comes from the side of England, 
 whilst the " taking," which really means the claiming 
 of further independence, comes from the side 
 of New Zealand. The plain truth is that the 
 Parliament of neither country is at all tempted to 
 interfere with the affairs of the other. Our colonial 
 system does not work perfectly. Occasionally 
 England is, in some Dominion or other, compelled 
 to shut her eyes to conduct on the part of the 
 Government or the people of a self-governing Colony 
 which would be strictly intolerable l if pursued by 
 any European country under the rule of George V. 
 It is possible, in other words, for the Government 
 of England to leave generally the maintenance of 
 public order in, e.g. New Zealand, wholly to the 
 Ministry and Parliament of New Zealand, whilst, 
 if public order were disturbed which is hardly 
 credible in the Isle of Man, the British Govern- 
 ment might find it necessary to interpose for the 
 maintenance of peace. Here, as elsewhere, the 
 duties of a Government are measured by the extent, 
 not of its theoretical, but of its actual power. 
 Assuredly the Government of the United Kingdom 
 may be trusted in all matters that concern any 
 Dominion, to lean strongly some critics would say 
 too strongly towards the policy of non-interference. 
 However this may be, the Imperial Parliament 
 assuredly does not discourage, but rather hails with 
 immense satisfaction the willingness of every 
 Dominion to provide for its own defence, and looks 
 upon such provision as a step towards the unity 
 ot the Empire. In plain truth the relation between 
 1 See p. 48 post.
 
 30 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 England and her Dominions is, owing to the favour- 
 able conditions I have mentioned, on the whole 
 admirable. Our system of colonial self-government 
 is the last and greatest triumph of laissez faire. 
 This doctrine of letting things alone was, some sixty 
 years ago, the subject of exaggerated eulogy. It is 
 now the mark of far more exaggerated and undis- 
 criminating censure. But it has in our Dominions 
 produced its perfect work. It has assuredly in 
 Kew Zealand, as elsewhere, removed most causes 
 of irritation or dispute between England and her 
 self-governing Colonies. This removal has had an 
 effect which the original advocates of laissez Jaire 
 could not foresee. It has given the opportunity 
 for the spontaneous growth of that sane Imperialism 
 which is based, not on mere sentimentality, but on 
 the recognition of patent facts. We in England 
 are perceiving that the greatness and strength of 
 the Empire may preserve for us a freedom and 
 independence which may easily be menaced by the 
 huge armies and navies of modern European States. 
 Our colonial fellow citizens are coming to see that 
 the greatness and strength of the British Empire is 
 the security for the peace, for the liberty, and for 
 the independence of each and all of the self-govern- 
 ing Colonies of the British Crown. 
 
 Turn now from New Zealand to Ireland. 
 
 Ireland lies not quite sixty miles from England ; a 
 traveller from London may easily reach Dublin in 
 nine hours. Ireland is situate within some twenty 
 miles of Great Britain. Ireland is, by the unkind- 
 ness of nature, a poor country. Even a fanatic 
 for Home Rule can hardly maintain that any 
 constitutional revolution will give her natural 
 riches, or endow her with coal-mines. A judicious 
 but candid Home Ruler gravely doubts whether 
 the acquisition of the whole land of Ireland by 
 Irish tenants will of itself avail to save the mass 
 of the Irish people from crushing poverty. Ireland
 
 3> 
 
 is divided into parties which hate one another with 
 a hostility grounded on differences of wealth, on 
 differences of race, on terrible historical traditions, 
 and on different and opposed political ideals. Ire- 
 land has for more than a century sent members 
 and for certainly more than half a century sent 
 more than her fair share of members to the Imperial 
 Parliament. Ireland has been accustomed to take 
 her part in the defence of the Empire. Ireland has 
 also received, especially during recent years, 
 vast aid from tne Imperial Exchequer. The 
 whole policy of Land Purchase cannot possibly be 
 carried out without gigantic loans made by British 
 taxpayers for the advantage of Irish tenants. How 
 can any man seriously maintain that this condition 
 of things has any likeness to the condition of any 
 of our Colonial Dominions ? Surely if ever there 
 were a case to which the policy of merely letting 
 things alone were inapplicable it is supplied by the 
 relation between England and Ireland. Englishmen 
 know instinctively that, while the national inde- 
 pendence of New Zealand would not materially 
 endanger the power of England, the national 
 independence of Ireland might be a deadly peril 
 to England. Few indeed are the English Home 
 Rulers who would even hear for a moment of 
 complete separation. The present Home Rule 
 Bill deprives Ireland of any control over an Irish 
 army. English electors would fight very shy of 
 any scheme for raising a Territorial Force l which 
 would, in substance, be an Irish army. Could 
 England, in the case of a foreign war, tolerate an 
 Irish Parliament which declared its sympathy with 
 our foreign foes ? Are Irish Nationalists themselves 
 prepared to face the consequences of Colonial Home 
 Rule ? I greatly doubt it. They are, as a matter 
 of fact, demanding that the British taxpayer shall 
 P a y 2,000,000 per annum to give Home Rule a 
 1 See pp. 99- 1 02, post.
 
 32 ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE 
 
 chance of working successfully, and of retaining 
 any popularity in Ireland. Already Nationalists 
 perceive that the credit of the United Kingdom is 
 absolutely necessary for carrying out the policy of 
 Land Purchase. Add to all this that Belfast hates 
 the Home Rule which the populace, at least of 
 Dublin, applaud. I do not wish here to force 
 further a consideration which I shall have to 
 develop in my criticism of the Home Rule Bill of 
 191 2. 1 Whilst I believe that Home Rule as in New 
 Zealand is by far the most promising form of Home 
 Rule for Ireland, I doubt whether a single Home 
 Ruler, either in Ireland or in England, dares to 
 welcome such Home Rule. If such a man can be 
 found, he will be a dreamer who mistakes hopes for 
 certainties, and is ready to enter into the pleasing 
 but dangerous realm known as a Fool's Paradise. 
 
 1 I use the name by which the Bill is now known. i
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 SCHEME OF ARGUMENT. The Home Rule Bill, 1912, 
 it is said, creates a new Irish Constitution. 1 This 
 statement is misleading. The Bill in truth creates, 
 as did the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893,* a 
 new Constitution for the whole of what is now the 
 United Kingdom. This Bill, further, may, in conse- 
 quence of the Parliament Act, 191 1, 3 pass into law 
 even though it be thrice rejected by the House of 
 Lords, and a matter of far greater consequence 
 even though it may not have obtained the sanction of 
 the electorate of the United Kingdom. The Govern- 
 ment, meanwhile, all but avow the intention to pass 
 the Bill without having submitted it to the electors 
 by a Dissolution for their approval or rejection. 4 And 
 this policy of neglecting or overriding the will of 
 the people is to be carried out in the face of the 
 
 1 See The New Irish Constitution, edited by J. H. Morgan. 
 
 * See A Leap in the Dark, 2nd ed. chap. i. No "Bill," 
 a reader should bear in mind, as contrasted with an "Act," in 
 strictness " creates " anything, or produces any legal effect what- 
 ever. I have, however, constantly throughout this book treated 
 the Home Rule Bill as producing the effect which it will produce 
 if turned into an Act of Parliament. The expressions, e.g., " the 
 Home Rule Bill creates," or " the Home Rule Bill enacts," must 
 be read as meaning " the Home Rule Bill will, if it becomes the 
 Home Rule Act, create or enact," etc. 
 
 * See, as to the effect of the Parliament Act, Rights of Citizen- 
 ship, chap, iv., especially pp. 87-91. 
 
 4 This intention is the inevitable inference from the refusal of 
 the Government to give any pledge that a Dissolution shall take 
 place before the Bill is submitted to the King for his acceptance. 
 A reader unacquainted with the Parliament Act must note that 
 
 3 33
 
 34 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 fact that the people of the United Kingdom have 
 twice formally and undeniably condemned the whole 
 policy of Home Rule. In these circumstances my 
 criticism of the Bill will take a peculiar form. I 
 shall not here discuss the general, and for the 
 moment unimportant, question whether some con- 
 ceivable form of Home Rule might or might not 
 be reasonably granted to Ireland by the Imperial 
 Parliament. What I shall discuss is the advisability 
 of passing into law the specific Home Rule Bill which 
 our Ministers have been forcing through the House 
 of Commons. I shall, however, not even endeavour 
 to examine the greater number of the hundred 
 and more objections which can be urged against 
 one part of the Bill or another. I shall insist upon 
 the truth of two criticisms alone. The first is that 
 the Bill gives to England no one of the advantages 
 promised to her by Home Rulers ; the second is 
 that the Bill threatens the gravest dangers to Eng- 
 land, or rather to the whole of the United Kingdom. 
 The establishment of these conclusions provides to 
 every one but an extreme Irish Nationalist decisive 
 reasons for the rejection of the Bill. 
 
 FIRST LEADING PROPOSITION. THE HOME RULE 
 BILL GIVES NO BENEFIT WHATEVER TO ENGLAND. 
 
 Few, indeed, are the Englishmen who hold that 
 Home Rule is in itself desirable. Ministerialists, 
 however, and the great body of English Home 
 Rulers, assert, and for the most part believe, that 
 the Home Rule Bill, 1912, will confer at least three 
 benefits on England, or (if you prefer the expres- 
 sion) Great Britain. These are the maintenance of the 
 supremacy of the Imperial Parliament *; the relief of 
 
 the occurrence of a Dissolution will not, under the Parliament 
 Act, section 2, make it necessary to bring in a new Bill supposing 
 the newly elected House of Commons is still prepared to support 
 the Home Rule Bill. 
 
 1 That is, the Parliament now sitting at Westminster, and modified 
 as to its constitution by the provisions of the Home Rule Bill.
 
 SUPREMACY OF IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 35 
 
 the Imperial Parliament from the consideration of 
 Irish affairs and the evils of Irish intrigue ; the 
 final settlement of the Irish question, i.e. the recon- 
 ciliation of England and Ireland, or the so-called 
 " Union of Hearts." 
 
 My contention is that England will, under the 
 Bill, not obtain any one of these benefits. 
 
 (A) THE BILL DOES NOT MAINTAIN THE SUPREMACY 
 OF THE IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT l 
 
 The Bill on its very face definitely enacts that, 
 "notwithstanding the establishment of the Irish 
 Parliament, or anything contained in this Act, the 
 supreme power and authority of the Parliament of 
 the United Kingdom shall be unaffected and un- 
 diminished over all persons, matters, and things 
 within Ireland and every part thereof." The 
 Bill also provides that, after the passing of the 
 Home Rule Bill, the Imperial Parliament shall 
 have power to enact laws for Ireland, and that the 
 Irish Parliament shall not have power to repeal or 
 alter the provisions of the Home Rule Act, except as 
 provided in that Act, or to repeal or alter any Act 
 of the Imperial Parliament passed after the passing 
 of the Home Rule Act. 3 The supremacy, therefore, 
 
 1 See England's Case against Home Rule, pp. 197-211, espe- 
 cially as to great extent of Colonial Independence ; A Leap in the 
 Dark (2nd ed.), pp. 22-31 ; Dicey, Law of the Constitution (7th 
 ed.), pp- 98-116, and compare as to limitations on every sovereign 
 power, ib. pp. 74-82 ; Pollock, New Irish Constitution, pp. 8i-<; ; 
 Parliamentary Debates, June 18, {1912, Asquith as to Irish Parlia- 
 ment, cols. 1567, 1568 ; June 19, 1912, especially Asquith, col. 1742 ; 
 and see July i, 1912, as to the expression "subordinate" in regard 
 to Irish Parliament, Solicitor-General, col. 805. 
 
 1 See Bill, cl. 41. The broad effect of this clause will be that 
 the Parliament of the United Kingdom (which may be termed 
 the Imperial Parliament) will, after the passing of the Act, have, 
 in theory at least, unlimited power to legislate for Ireland, but 
 that the Irish Parliament will have power to repeal any Act of 
 the Imperial Parliament passed before the day on which e.g.
 
 36 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 of the Imperial Parliament is, in words at least, 
 distinctly retained. But I confidently contend that 
 the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament will 
 virtually and in truth (but lor one purpose to be 
 hereinafter explained) l be destroyed as regards 
 Ireland from the moment that the Home Rule Bill 
 passes into law. 
 
 This assertion needs justification. The term 
 "supremacy of the Imperial Parliament " is ambigu- 
 ous, and bears a totally different meaning as regards 
 different parts of the King's dominions. 
 
 Such supremacy now means, as regards England, 
 Scotland, and Ireland, the possession by Parliament 
 of as much power as can in fact fall to any sovereign, 
 however despotic. Our Parliament can and does 
 exercise throughout the United Kingdom authority 
 as wide and as great as ever was wielded in France 
 by Louis XIV. or by Napoleon I. 2 This assertion 
 may startle an ordinary reader not accustomed to 
 consider the strict meaning of legal terms. To a 
 trained constitutionalist it is a mere truism, and 
 amounts simply to saying that the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment can, not only in theory but in fact, pass any 
 law which it sees fit to pass in regard to any part of 
 the United Kingdom, and can there use for the 
 enforcement of such law the whole authority of the 
 State and give effect to it by the law courts, the 
 
 May 14, 1914 the Home Rule Bill is passed and becomes the 
 Home Rule Act. Hence, take the following illustration : The 
 Irish Parliament may repeal the so-called Crimes Act (the 
 Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887, 50 & 51 Viet, 
 c. 20) ; but the Imperial Parliament may immediately re-enact it, 
 and the Irish Parliament cannot then repeal it. So, too, the 
 Imperial Parliament might repeal the whole or any part of the 
 Home Rule Act, and the Irish Parliament would have no legal 
 power to re-enact or to revive the Act. 
 
 1 See pp. 43, 44, post. 
 
 3 I, of course, bear in mind that even so-called "absolute sove- 
 reignty" is always limited by certain external or internal restrictions. 
 As to such limitations see Law of the Constitution, 7th ed. pp. 
 74-82.
 
 SUPREMACY OF PARLIAMENT 37 
 
 police, and the army. Parliament, in short, consti- 
 tutes the true Government of the United Kingdom. 
 This supremacy of the Imperial Parliament ex- 
 tends in theory to every country whatever that is 
 subject to the King of England. But in the self- 
 governing Colonies, or Dominions, such as the 
 Dominion of New Zealand, or the Australian 
 Commonwealth, the expression has in fact a very 
 different meaning from that which it bears in rela- 
 tion to the United Kingdom. In New Zealand, for 
 example, the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament 
 signifies little beyond the limited, and rarely 
 exercised, power of the Parliament at Westminster 
 to legislate occasionally for New Zealand, or in the 
 name of the Crown to veto, through the English 
 Cabinet, an Act passed by the Parliament of New 
 Zealand. But this power, as is well understood, 
 will be exerted only when New Zealand desires its 
 exertion, or in those very rare cases when the action 
 of the Imperial Parliament is absolutely necessary 
 for the protection of Imperial interests. Then, too, 
 there are many laws which, in regard to any 
 Dominion, the Imperial Parliament will never pass, 
 or, to speak plainly, has not the power to pass. No 
 English statesman will ever advise the Parliament 
 at Westminster to impose by its own authority a 
 penny of taxation upon New Zealand. The Imperial 
 Parliament will never change the Constitution of 
 the Australian Commonwealth, except at the desire 
 of the people of the Commonwealth. No doubt the 
 Crown, acting on the advice of a British Ministry, 
 will occasionally veto, in one way or another, a Bill 
 passed by the legislature of New Zealand. But 
 such a step is nowadays rarely taken unless a 
 proposed colonial law is inconsistent with some 
 Imperial statute applying to the colony, or directly 
 interferes with the interest and policy of the Empire. 
 Within what narrow limits the nominally supreme 
 power of Parliament will be employed to the 
 
 3*
 
 38 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 hindrance of colonial legislation is shown by one 
 significant fact. For fifty years and more, prior to 
 1906, England has heartily accepted the whole 
 principle of Free Trade. But the English Parlia- 
 ment has not denied to any self-governing Colony 
 the right to impose protective duties on imports, 
 even when those duties told against England. 
 
 The ambiguity of the term " supremacy of the 
 Imperial Parliament " needs no further illustration ; 
 but it raises, with regard to the Home Rule Bill, 
 this serious question : What meaning is to be 
 attached to that "supremacy of the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment" which the Bill is supposed to maintain or 
 secure? Does it mean the full sovereignty now 
 exercised by Parliament throughout the United 
 Kingdom, or does it mean the limited, the almost 
 theoretical, and the constantly declining authority 
 exercised by the Imperial Parliamentin New Zealand? 
 Or, lastly, does it mean some undefined power 
 less than the Imperial Parliament now exercises 
 in every part of the United Kingdom, but a good 
 deal greater than the authority which the Parliament 
 at Westminster in fact exercises in New Zealand or 
 the Australian Commonwealth ? Common sense 
 requires that the Home Rule Bill itself should give 
 a clear answer to an inquiry on which the whole 
 colour of the measure depends. But the Bill gives 
 no such reply, and the policy of the Coalition by 
 whom we are governed will not admit of any clear 
 answer being given. The fairest answer a constitu- 
 tionalist can give may be expressed as follows : The 
 Home Rule Bill clearly takes away, and is meant to 
 take away, most of the authority which the Imperial 
 Parliament can now exercise in Ireland. That 
 absolute supremacy or sovereignty which Parlia- 
 ment now exercises throughout the United Kingdom 
 is assuredly destroyed by the Home Rule Bill. 
 Every member of Parliament, if he is a man of 
 average intelligence, must know, and every elector
 
 SUPREMACY OF PARLIAMENT 39 
 
 throughout the United Kingdom ought to know, 
 that under the Bill x the sovereignty of the Imperial 
 Parliament in Ireland will suffer an immense diminu- 
 tion. But we must go a step further than this, and 
 acknowledge that divers and contradictory views 
 are maintainable as to the amount of authority in 
 Ireland which the Bill leaves to the Parliament at 
 Westminster. There exists on this point a most 
 ominous and enormous difference of opinion. Many 
 English Home Rulers, and, it may be, some Unionists, 
 persuade, or try to persuade, themselves that, under 
 the Home Rule Bill, the Imperial Parliament is 
 intended to retain something like the substance of 
 sovereignty, and to interfere actively in the govern- 
 ment of Ireland whenever it appears to the Parlia- 
 ment at Westminster (which must from the nature 
 of things be in the main an English Parliament), 
 that such interference is desirable. Politicians who 
 take, or affect to take, this view hold that the Bill 
 gives to Ireland a strictly subordinate Legislature, 
 and, I must add, a subordinate Executive, liable at 
 any moment to find their action controlled by the 
 Parliament and the Government of England. This, 
 however, is not the view held by Irish Nationalists 
 or by clear-headed Unionists, or, as far as I can 
 understand the diplomatic ambiguities or prevarica- 
 tions of Ministers, by Mr. Asquith, or his colleagues. 
 Irish Nationalists will hardly tell the electors who 
 have sent them to Parliament that the tradition of 
 the legislative independence of the Parliament of 
 Ireland which Molyneux, Flood, Grattan, and 
 O'Connell handed down to Parnell has been 
 formally surrendered by the Home Rule Bill of 
 1912, and surrendered by Nationalists at the very 
 moment when the representation of Ireland at 
 Westminster is to be reduced below the number of 
 members which she could claim as part of the 
 United Kingdom. Irish members will surely not 
 1 See note 2, p. 33, ante.
 
 40 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 announce at Dublin that they have in the Home 
 Rule Bill acknowledged the Irish Parliament's 
 legislative subordination to England. 
 
 Nor can Irish Nationalists greatly be blamed if 
 they speak much more plainly of the consequences 
 than of the words of the Home Rule Bill. For 
 Nationalists assuredly hold that the Home Rule 
 Bill will give to Ireland something coming near 
 to colonial independence, and that Ireland will by 
 means of the Home Rule Bill obtain, and perhaps 
 at no distant date, as much independence as can 
 be possessed by any country which forms part of 
 the British Empire. Nor ought any clear-headed 
 Unionist to blind himself to the fact that this may 
 most probably be the effect of the Home Rule Bill, 
 nor fail to observe that Ministers to whom ambiguity 
 is a necessary feature of their policy have in every 
 way that was possible by the arts of diplomatic 
 mystery and of dubious candour, tried to favour, 
 though not absolutely to endorse, the interpretation 
 of the Bill which approves itself to the Nationalists 
 or Separatists who keep the Ministry in office. 
 Whereas Gladstone, for example, refused to the 
 Irish Legislature the name of a " Parliament," Mr. 
 Asquith holds that no other name is sufficiently 
 dignified for that Irish Legislature which he is about 
 to create or revive. Ministers, again, distinctly refuse 
 to let the Bill contain the term " subordinate " in con- 
 nection with the Irish Parliament, and their very able 
 Solicitor-General is put forward to explain, with his 
 usual lucidity, that it was not desirable l to make 
 the meaning of the Bill plain in reference to an impor- 
 tant point on which its expressions are admittedly 
 ambiguous. Perhaps, after all, my friend Sir John 
 Simon is right. The Home Rule Bill is one of those 
 measures made to pass and not made to work, and 
 I fully admit the possibility that a little clearness 
 of expression might at any moment have made it 
 1 See Parliamentary Debates ; July i, 1912, cols. 805, 806.
 
 "A SUBORDINATE BODY" 41 
 
 impossible that the Home Rule Bill of 1912 should 
 fuml the object of its creation, namely, the getting 
 through Parliament. 
 
 The plain truth is that, if English Home Rulers 
 are sincere in their determination to maintain the 
 supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, then they 
 ought, in common honesty, to call the Parliament of 
 Ireland by its proper name, namely " a subordinate 
 legislative body." If they do not mean that the 
 supremacy of the Imperial Parliament shall be in 
 fact maintained, then they ought to cease from pro- 
 fessing to maintain it. In any case, it is madness for 
 Ministers to try to soothe the fears of Unionists by 
 canting about the maintenance of the Imperial 
 Parliament's supremacy and at the same moment 
 encourage the hopes of honest Nationalists by re- 
 fusing to call the Irish Legislature "subordinate," 
 and by decking it out with the name of a Parliament 
 whereof every tradition points towards indepen- 
 dence at least as complete as that of New Zealand. 
 No doubt the ambiguities of the Bill will cause 
 deception, but the dupes of Ministerial diplomacy 
 will probably be English Home Rulers. The 
 cynicism of official Liberalism may apply to them 
 the maxim populus vult decipi et decipiatur. 
 
 It is a comfort to turn from the oracular 
 obscurities of parliamentary politicians to the plain 
 language of so eminent a constitutionalist, and now 
 so convinced a Home Ruler, as my friend Sir 
 Frederick Pollock : 
 
 " Whenever [he writes] Home Rule is enacted 
 and established for Ireland!, Parliament must harden 
 its heart against all endeavours, from whatever 
 quarter they may proceed, to obtain any alteration 
 in the scheme save as it may be required by the 
 regularly expressed will of Ireland as a whole. 
 This should be an understanding outside and above 
 all party divisions, British or Irish ; and it is equally
 
 42 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 necessary whether or not a certain number of Irish 
 members continue to sit at Westminster" 1 
 
 These words mean that the supremacy of the 
 Imperial Parliament will, under the Home Rule 
 Bill and as regards Ireland, have vanished away. 
 The Imperial Parliament will have lost the moral 
 right to change, on i,ts own authority, a single word 
 of our new Constitution. The authority of Par- 
 liament is, in Sir Frederick Pollock's opinion, in 
 no sense increased by the presence therein of 
 members from Ireland. His language, moreover, 
 implies to my ear more than his words directly 
 express. He thinks, as a Home Ruler, that the 
 spirit of the Bill must be strictly observed, and 
 that the Imperial, or in truth the British, Par- 
 liament must not, under a system of Home Rule, 
 interpose to prevent legislative or executive action 
 of the Irish Parliament or the Irish Government 
 which is not strictly opposed to the words of the 
 Bill itself, and that England must not interpose 
 even to prevent action of the Irish Parliament 
 or the Irish Cabinet which the vast majority of 
 Englishmen may feel to be impolitic and unjust. 
 Sir F. Pollock's interpretation of the Bill is a fair 
 one from the Home Kule point of view, and may 
 give the only chance of a system of Home Rule in 
 Ireland attaining any tolerable success. Whether 
 Englishmen will ever display the excessive toler- 
 ance of conduct which they hold to be unwise and 
 iniquitous is a question which I will not at this 
 point of my argument consider. All that I here 
 press upon my readers is that the Home Rule 
 Bill is clearly intended by Home Rulers, and by 
 a Government of Home Rulers, to destroy that 
 
 1 "The Judicial Committee," etc., by Sir F. Pollock in The New 
 Irish Constitution, p. 85, edited by J. H. Morgan. Sir Frederick 
 Pollock's language may be sound political advice. I do not un- 
 reservedly agree with it as a statement of constitutional law. I 
 have myself underlined an important sentence.
 
 THE ACT CAN BE REPEALED 43 
 
 supremacy of the Imperial Parliament which it 
 hypocritically preserves. A policy based on am- 
 biguity or equivocation is full of danger. An 
 agreement between England and Ireland to which 
 Englishmen already give one interpretation and 
 Irishmen give another can beget nothing but 
 discord. The supremacy or sovereignty of the 
 Imperial Parliament, 1 which for centuries has been 
 the strength of our whole system of government, 
 will be transformed by the Home Rule Bill into 
 a delusion which may easily become the most 
 dangerous of snares. Many Unionists will add 
 that the nominal maintenance by the Home Rule 
 Bill of the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament 
 is not worth the paper on which the Bill is written. 
 From this criticism I dissent. The Bill has at least 
 one valuable effect which no one at the present 
 moment cares to note. 2 It leaves in the hands of the 
 Parliament at Westminster the constitutional right 
 and the legal power to carry through a coup d'etat 
 under legal forms. If at any crisis, say during a 
 war with some foreign power, the existence or 
 the safety of England is deemed by Englishmen 
 to be inconsistent with the maintenance of Home 
 Rule in Ireland, England will remember that an 
 omnipotent Parliament can destroy the Constitution 
 of which it was the creator. I know my country- 
 men. I have for years studied both their virtues 
 and their faults. If Home Rule in Ireland is once 
 seen to threaten danger to England, the Imperial 
 Parliament will assuredly modify, suspend, or 
 repeal the Home Rule Act with a decision and a 
 
 1 It is worth notice that the constant misunderstandings between 
 Cromwell and the Parliaments of the Protectorate arose from the 
 absolute refusal or incapacity of any English Parliament to ac- 
 knowledge that, under any constitution, it possessed less than 
 sovereign power. 
 
 1 As to the question whether under the Bill the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment retains the real power of at its will taxing Ireland for Imperial 
 purposes, see pp. 57-6 \,post.
 
 44 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 rapidity whereof Irish Nationalists have forgotten 
 the possibility. It is well that the Home Rule 
 Bill, under its studied ambiguities, should retain 
 for the Imperial Parliament a legal method for the 
 exertion of a supremacy bestowed, not by law, but 
 by the nature of things. 
 
 The day, however, may be nearer than any one 
 at this moment expects when every fair-minded 
 man throughout the United Kingdom will be called 
 upon to determine what are the occasions on which 
 Parliament possesses a moral no less than a con- 
 stitutional right to exert, as regards Ireland, the 
 supremacy maintained for it by the Home Rule 
 Bill. If in the madness of partisanship the Coali- 
 tion should, in virtue of the Parliament Act, convert 
 the Home Rule Bill of 1912 into the Home Rule 
 Act of 1914 without having made any appeal to 
 the people by a dissolution of Parliament, the 
 Home Rule Act will, in the eyes of every Unionist, 
 lack moral authority. The question will at once 
 arise whether revolution, achieved by intrigue or 
 fraud, may not be reversed or arrested by reaction 
 carried out in strict conformity with the legal pro- 
 visions of the Home Rule Act ? May it not be 
 a duty to use the supremacy of the Imperial Par- 
 liament in order to assert the authority of the 
 nation? 1 The patriotism or prudence which for 
 two hundred years at least has in England tempered 
 the violence of party warfare will, I hope, rather 
 than anticipate, prevent Mr. Asquith and his col- 
 leagues from even raising a question the answer 
 to which may shake the foundations of those reason- 
 able understandings which alone make constitutional 
 government work with success. However this may 
 be, the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament has 
 a meaning to which no man who values in the least 
 degree the welfare of the United Kingdom must 
 be allowed to shut his eyes. 
 1 See this question further considered, chap. iii. pp. 1 1 7, 1 2$-<) t post.
 
 NO RELIEF TO PARLIAMENT 45 
 
 (B) THE BILL DOES NOT RELIEVE THE IMPERIAL 
 PARLIAMENT FROM THE BURDEN OF IRISH AFFAIRS. 
 
 The Home Rule Bill presents one immense attrac- 
 tion to the electors of ureat Britain. It rouses the 
 hope that, when Home Rule shall have been granted 
 to Ireland, they will hear no more about Ireland's 
 grievances or about Irish business. A political con- 
 flict maintained for more than thirtyyears haswearied 
 out thousands of Englishmen, and the English elector 
 I am ashamed to say it is sick of the Irish 
 Question. He flatters himself that, after the passing 
 of the Home Rule Bill, neither the Parliament at 
 Westminster nor English voters will hear more 
 about the affairs of Ireland than they now hear about 
 the affairs of Canada or of New Zealand. Our 
 Premier may not be a far-sighted statesman nor 
 an impressive orator, but he is a first-rate advocate. 
 He understands mankind, as studied in the law 
 courts. Possibly he knows a little too much of 
 human weaknesses and not quite enough of human 
 virtues. " Men may be read as well as books, too 
 much." The old " Union of Hearts" no longer kin- 
 dles hope or raises applause, but the prospect of 
 deliverance from the bother of Irish affairs and Irish 
 obstruction appeals to the low common sense and the 
 selfish apathy of a disillusioned generation. This 
 political indifference is never with Englishmen 
 thank Heaven ! of long duration ; but an appeal to 
 it, whilst the feeling of lassitude lasts, may win a 
 transitory verdict in favour of a permanent and 
 disastrous alteration of our old Constitution. An 
 orator who instinctively knows how closely allied 
 is good-nature with indolence, invents a phrase 
 which assuredly meets the desires of thousands of 
 electors. " There has been reserved for this Parlia- 
 ment, this House of Commons, the double honour 
 of reconciling Ireland and emancipating herself." 1 
 1 Parliamentary Debates , April n, 1912, col. 1422.
 
 46 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 These are the last words of the speech with which 
 Mr. Asquith introduced the third Home Rule Bill 
 to the House of Commons. They combine a faint 
 echo of the desire for the " Union of Hearts " with 
 the strong hope of throwing off for ever the burden 
 of taking part in the government of Ireland. The 
 best reply to them, in the circumstances of to-day, is 
 that the unmanly hope which fascinates the elector- 
 ate is, through the very provisions of the Home Rule 
 Bill itself, doomed to disappointment. For the 
 establishment of this conclusion there is no necessity 
 to go through all the tangled provisions of a 
 measure which literally teems with obscurities, with 
 ambiguities, and with inconsistencies. I shall rest 
 this part of my case wholly upon two main pro- 
 visions of the Home Rule Bill of 1912. 
 
 I. The Retention q/ the Irish Members in the Imperial 
 Parliament * 
 
 Under the Home Rule Bill 42 representatives of 
 Irish constituencies will retain seats in the Parlia- 
 ment at Westminster. 2 This presence of an Irish 
 delegation from a country entrusted under the Home 
 Rule Bill with self-government is an outrageous 
 and most perilous anomaly. No Dominion, how- 
 ever powerful, no one of the British islands, such as 
 the Isle of Man or Jersey, which has a Government 
 of its own, has the remotest right or makes the 
 remotest claim to be represented in the Imperial 
 Parliament at Westminster. These 42 members 
 will have the right to speak and to vote on every 
 question of any kind which comes before our House 
 of Commons. They will assuredly not keep silence 
 on any Irish affair which might happen to cause in 
 
 1 See Bill, cl. 13, and compare cl. 26, sub-cl 3. 
 
 * They will, when the financial arrangements between Great 
 Britain and Ireland are matters of debate under cl. 26, be raised 
 to some 65 members or more.
 
 RETENTION OF IRISH MEMBERS 47 
 
 Ireland a violent division of opinion. Does any 
 one think, for instance, that if the conduct of some 
 ardent Protestants at Belfast were treated by the 
 Irish Government as treasonable, and if a Protestant 
 leader, being put on his trial, were found guilty of 
 treason by a Dublin jury, the whole matter would not 
 be discussed at Westminster, or that Irish business 
 would not interrupt the work of the Imperial 
 Parliament? One must remember that the Lord- 
 Lieutenant will occupy an almost impossible posi- 
 tion. 1 He is to be at once the servant of the English 
 Crown, compelled, from the nature of things, at a 
 great crisis to listen to the advice, or rather the 
 injunctions, of the British Ministry from whom he 
 receives his appointment. He is also an Irish 
 official, bound in Irish matters to act on the advice 
 of his Irish Ministry. How if the people of Great 
 Britain demand that the Protestant rebel, or convict, 
 should receive a pardon for action which may 
 command a good deal of British sympathy, whilst 
 the Irish Ministry maintain that his condign punish- 
 ment is absolutely necessary for the maintenance 
 of order in Ireland, and enforce their protest by 
 declining to hold office unless a pardon is refused? 8 
 How is the Lord-Lieutenant, or how, in the last 
 resort, is the British Cabinet, or the Imperial 
 Parliament on which the existence of the British 
 Cabinet depends, to act? No one, I think, will 
 venture to say that the imagined situation is a 
 practical impossibility. The most plausible of 
 answers is that similar difficulties may and do arise 
 in any one of the Dominions and that they are 
 
 1 See Parliamentary Debates, October 24, 1912, cols. 2401-2514. 
 
 1 But a few years have passed since the British Cabinet was 
 compelled, in deference to colonial opinion expressed by a colonial 
 Ministry, to allow the instant execution of natives, though the 
 colonial Governor thought them entitled to a pardon. See Keith, 
 Responsible Government in the Dominions, vol. i. pp. 291-6. 
 
 The transaction must cause some anxious reflections alike to 
 Unionists and Home Rulers.
 
 48 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 somehow overcome. The rejoinder is conclusive. 
 The constitution of Ireland under the Home Rule 
 Bill is utterly different from the constitution of any 
 self-governing colony, and no colony whatever has 
 any representatives at Westminster, and every one 
 of the Dominions is thousands of miles away from 
 England. Strange irregularities may be passed 
 over in a distant country simply because they are not 
 known to the British public. They are not mentioned 
 by Government officials ; they are quietly ignored. 
 
 Not so many years 1 have passed since a few 
 Irishmen were violently prevented from landing 
 in Victoria because they had rendered a great 
 service to the Crown by giving information which 
 led to the conviction of men rightly accused of 
 heinous crime. Would the Parliament at West- 
 minster not insist upon saying something about 
 such a kind of popular Lynch law if it were applied 
 to informers who had fallen into the hands of a 
 Dublin mob ? Let us suppose that, contrary to all 
 the experience of centuries, the grant of Home Rule 
 were to be followed in Ireland by a period of un- 
 expected peace and order. Would even such a 
 happy result ensure the freedom of Parliament from 
 Irisn affairs ? Look at what has gone on before 
 our eyes. Irish cattle either are, or have just been, 
 excluded from England on account of an outbreak 
 of cattle disease in some Irish county. At 
 this moment Irish Nationalists are unwilling to 
 embarrass the Government, yet complaints on 
 this matter have already been heard. If action 
 which threatened ruin to Irish farmers were taken 
 after the establishment of Home Rule, the 42 
 members would certainly not keep silence. I shall 
 show, in a later part of my argument, 8 that the 
 Home Rule Bill itself contains many provisions 
 which Irishmen will wish to have altered. 
 
 1 See England's Case against Home Rule, 3rd ed., p. 207 n. 
 ' See pp. 81, 85-95.
 
 IRISH AND SCOTTISH MEMBERS 49 
 
 No one supposes that the 42 members from 
 Ireland will not strive to get the Bill amended. 
 Let no one fancy that the representatives of Ireland, 
 though reduced to 42, will not possess the means 
 of olten enforcing their will upon an English 
 Cabinet. The 45 members from Scotland some- 
 how or other contrived, even before the great 
 Reform Act, to get from English Governments 
 pretty much what they wanted for themselves or 
 lor Scotland. Within a very few years after the 
 Act of Union they had learnt how, by a studied 
 abuse of their vote on the validity of elections, to 
 exclude permanently from public life an English 
 member who had used language insulting to Scots- 
 men, and a Scottish member who, to gain a private 
 advantage, had refused to vote in the same way as 
 other Scottish representatives. 1 The particular 
 device by which Scotsmen showed their power 
 no longer exists, but the Irish delegation have 
 been well trained in the arts by which a compact 
 and well-disciplined minority may make their 
 strength felt. The very unwillingness of a British 
 Ministry to interfere in Irish affairs will, from one 
 point of view, increase the illegitimate influence of 
 the 42 members. They will have no proper place 
 in the Imperial Parliament. Their existence there 
 will be the permanent sign that, while England 
 cannot interfere with Irish legislation, the Irish 
 delegation can effectively interfere with British 
 legislation, and, what is of equal consequence, 
 with the existence of the British Cabinet. Forty- 
 two votes have often been enough to maintain a 
 Ministry in office, or to expel a Government from 
 power. More often than not the only thing necessary 
 for giving to the Irish representatives a casting vote 
 on any great question which divides English opinion 
 will be that they should act together and should 
 studiously ally themselves with the party which 
 1 Porritt, Unreformed House of Commons, vol ii. p. 13.
 
 50 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 most needs their help and can pay for it. In other 
 words, policy and even patriotism, if looked at from 
 a merely Irish point of view, will induce the Irish 
 delegation of forty-two to kdep in office the party 
 which does not command the support of England. 
 Nor let any one fancy that a course of action which 
 undermines our parliamentary system will, under 
 Home Rule, be opposed by the representatives of 
 Protestant Ulster. The men of Ulster ask for nothing 
 more than to enjoy, under the constitution of the 
 United Kingdom, the full rights of citizenship. If this 
 claim is denied them they may well turn into the 
 most vigorous and the most bitter of Irish 
 Nationalists. During the whole Home Rule contro- 
 versy far too much has been said about Irish nature 
 and far too little has been thought about human 
 nature. Ulstermen, treated with gross injustice, 
 will not be the allies of England which has wronged 
 them. Assume, if you like, that Home Rule may, 
 from one point of view, lighten for the Parliament 
 at Westminster the burden of Irish affairs, though 
 personally I dispute the truth of the assumption. 
 It will, from another point of view, stimulate the 
 energy and increase the bitterness of Irish intrigue. 
 I insist upon the absolute truth of words, which I 
 have again and again cited, from a speech by the 
 most sincere and most logical of English Home 
 Rulers, my friend Lord Morley : 
 
 " But there is a word to be said about the effect 
 on our own Parliament, and I think the effect of 
 such an arrangement and I cannot help thinking 
 so till I hear of better arrangements upon our own 
 Parliament would be still worse. It is very easy 
 to talk about reducing the number of the Irisn 
 members ; perhaps it would not be so easy to do. 
 It is very easy to talk about letting them take 
 part in some questions and not in others, but it 
 will be very difficult when you come to draw the
 
 POWER OF IRISH MEMBERS 51 
 
 line in theory between the questions in which they 
 shall take a part and those in which they shall not 
 take a part. But I do not care what precautions 
 you take ; I do not care where you draw the line in 
 theory; but you may depend upon it I predict 
 that there is no power on the earth that can prevent 
 the Irish members in such circumstances from being 
 in the future Parliament what they were in the past, 
 and what to some extent they are in the present 
 the arbiters and the masters of English policy, of 
 English legislative business, and of the rise and fall 
 of British Administrations. You will have weakened, 
 by the withdrawal of able men, the Legislature of 
 Dublin, and you will have demoralised the Legis- 
 lature at Westminster." 1 
 
 These words were spoken by Mr. John Morley 
 in April 1886, and are as true now as they were 
 then. They are the permanent condemnation of 
 every scheme which, while establishing Home Rule 
 in Ireland, retains Irish representatives at West- 
 minster. Nor is their force lessened by the reflection 
 that, as Mr. Morley then argued, 8 and as I still 
 assert, the retention of Irish members at West- 
 minster under a system of Home Rule, while it 
 demoralises the Parliament at Westminster, weakens 
 the character of the Parliament at Dublin. It is a 
 gain, at any rate, I shall be told, for England that 
 the 103 representatives of Ireland are, under the Bill, 
 reduced to 42. So be it. They ought, in any case, to 
 be reduced to not more than 70, and will, I trust, be 
 so reduced the moment that a Unionist majority is 
 returned to the House of Commons. The 33 members, 
 moreover, lost by Ireland should be added to the 
 representation of England. But, in considering 
 the representation of Ireland at Westminster under 
 
 1 Mr. (now Lord) Morley at Newcastle, cited in A Leap in the 
 ark^ 2nd ed. pp. 41, 42. See The Times, April 22, 1886. 
 1 See pp. 91, 92, post*
 
 52 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 the Home Rule Bill, it must be remembered that the 
 42 Irish representatives will be backed up by 
 the moral support of the Irish Parliament at Dublin. 
 This is no small matter. Add, further, that under 
 the Home Rule Bill the 42 Irish members will, 
 when the revision of the financial arrangements 
 between Great Britain and Ireland takes place, be 
 increased to somewhere about 65 members who 
 will take part in the decision of the one kind of 
 question most likely to cause deep differences of 
 opinion between Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 Nor does the effect of the occasional increase l of 
 the Irish delegation from 42 to 65 members 
 or more end here. It will certainly suggest the 
 claim, on the part of Ireland, that the delegation 
 should be increased in the same degree whenever 
 it is proposed in any respect to alter any provision 
 of the Home Rule Act. 
 
 II. The Financial Arrangements between the United 
 Kingdom and Ireland* 
 
 No effort will here be made to criticise the finance 
 of the Home Rule Bill as a whole. My comments are 
 those of a constitutionalist, not of a financial expert ; 
 but, happily, my conclusions have on some main 
 points the advantage of being reinforced by the 
 Report of the Financial Committee of Experts, 
 whose advice the Government wisely sought and 
 
 1 A matter which Mr. Asquith did not deem it worth while 
 to mention in his introduction of the Home Rule Bill to the 
 House of Commons, though in that speech he reiterated that 
 the number of Irish members would be reduced to 42. 
 
 1 Home Rule Bill, cl. 14-26 ; Outline of Financial Proposals ; 
 Report of Committee on Irish Finance (cd. 6153); Asquith's 
 speech on introduction of Bill, Parliamentary Debates .April 1 1, 1912, 
 especially cols. 1410-17; Mr. Steel- Maitland on ''The Finance 
 of the Home Rule Bill," National Review, June 1912, p. 620 ; 
 "The Home Rule Bill," Quarterly Review, July 1912, pp. 265-98, 
 especially pp. 281-98.
 
 THE FINANCIAL PROBLEM 53 
 
 without any explanation unwisely rejected. 1 My 
 whole aim is to emphasise four characteristics pre- 
 sented by the finance of the Home Rule Bill. They 
 are in some respects grossly unjust to England and 
 ultimately injurious to Ireland. They, at any rate 
 and this is my special point make it impossible 
 for the Imperial Parliament at Westminster ever 
 to be delivered from the consideration of Irish 
 business. 
 
 The financial problem 2 which a Government of 
 Home Rulers was and is forced to meet is, how 
 to give to the Irish people Home Rule or, in other 
 words, full control of so-called Irish affairs at a 
 moment when, if Ireland were looked upon as 
 anything like an independent country e.g. if 
 Parliament granted to her Home Rule as in New 
 Zealand it would be found that the cost of the 
 government of Ireland amounts to about 12,350,000, 
 whilst the true revenue of Ireland amounts to about 
 10,840,000. Whence the indubitable results follow 
 that, if Parliament conferred upon Ireland Home 
 Rule as in New Zealand, she would be called upon 
 to meet a deficit of at least 1,500,000, and Home 
 
 1 See p. 73, post. 
 
 ' This problem, it should be observed, arises in an acute form 
 from the conduct of the Cabinet. A Ministry of Home Rulers must 
 surely have contemplated the possibility, or the probability, of 
 their bringing in a Home Rule Bill when they passed the Old Age 
 Pensions Act, 1908, and the National Insurance Act, 1911. Surely 
 common foresight ought to have led them to exclude Ireland from 
 the operation of these Acts until the country had, at any rate, 
 determined whether or not to accept any Home Rule Bill. If 
 this course had been followed the revenue of Ireland would at 
 this moment all but balance the cost of the government of Ireland. 
 According to the Government Memoranda on " Irish Finance," the 
 Irish revenue is ^10,839,000, the Irish expenditure ^12,354,000. 
 With the expenditure there is included the cost of Old Age 
 Pensions, ,2,664,000, and the cost of National Insurance and 
 Labour Exchanges, 191,500, a total of ^2,855,500. Therefore 
 legislation by a Government of Home Rulers has wiped out the 
 surplus of Irish revenue over Irish expenditure and has created 
 a deficit. 
 
 4*
 
 54 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 Rule, therefore, would mean either an immediate 
 and heavy increase in the taxation of Ireland, or, 
 what is far more probable, the bankruptcy of 
 Ireland. The Ministerial solution of the problem 
 which the Cabinet had to meet is, looked at broadly 
 and in its general result, a solution of extraordinary 
 simplicity. The Home Rule Bill will, in the first 
 place, relieve Ireland for an indefinite period from 
 any obligation to contribute a penny towards the 
 pecuniary cost of defending the Empire, including 
 Ireland herself. The Home Rule Bill will also 
 impose upon England that is, upon the British 
 taxpayers first, the duty of meeting the Irish 
 deficit, and, next, the duty or the pleasure, as you 
 may call it of making a present to Ireland of 
 500,000 per annum. In other words, the Irish 
 deficit is, under the Bill, to be turned into a surplus 
 by imposing upon the British taxpayer a payment 
 of 2,000,000 per annum for starting a system of 
 Home Rule which the majority of British electors 
 have always hitherto disliked and which a large 
 and most influential minority of Irishmen abso- 
 lutely abhor. I have stated this result in the 
 broadest and plainest terms. It ought to be made 
 manifest to every elector throughout the United 
 Kingdom. There is, as I have said, no great 
 originality in the end aimed at by the financial 
 arrangements of the Home Rule Bill. The origin- 
 ality of their method, and the special injury they may 
 work to England, may be made intelligible by exa- 
 mining four characteristics of the financial scheme 
 by which Mr. Ascmith and his colleagues aim at 
 setting up Home Rule in Ireland at the expense 
 to the British taxpayers of 2,000,000 per annum. 
 
 FIRST CHARACTERISTIC. No effective security for 
 contribution by Ireland towards the common expenditure 1 
 of the United Kingdom? 
 
 1 Often called " Imperial expenditure." 
 1 See Clause 26, sub-cl. (2).
 
 THE REVENUE OF IRELAND 55 
 
 Such security must arise either under the distinct 
 words of the Bill or from the undeniable construc- 
 tion or inferred meaning of the Bill : 
 
 (a) Under the words of the BUI. Ireland (looked 
 at as a separate country) does not at the present 
 moment contribute anything towards such common 
 expenditure, since the revenue of Ireland falls by 
 some 1,500,000 below the whole cost of the govern- 
 ment of Ireland. Ireland is, under clause 26 of 
 the Bill, freed for an indefinite period from the 
 obligation to make any pecuniary contribution 
 whatever towards the common expenses of the 
 United Kingdom (e.g. the cost of the defence of the 
 United Kingdom). This period of freedom from 
 contribution is the time which may elapse from the 
 passing of the Home Rule Act till the day when the 
 revenue of Ireland shall exceed for each of three 
 consecutive years the cost of the government of 
 Ireland. This day, when the Irish deficit will cease 
 to exist, has been popularly called in debate "the 
 happy day." The expression is a convenient one. 
 Whether the happy day will ever occur, or whether 
 it may occur within a few years say ten years or 
 within many years say twenty or thirty years is 
 a matter of pure conjecture. A Ministerial optimist 
 will take one view, a pessimist of the Opposition will 
 take another. The Bill further provides a method 
 by which when, if ever, the happy day shall arrive, 
 the Imperial Parliament, in whicn the representation 
 of Ireland will for this particular purpose be in- 
 creased to some sixty-five members or so, may, if 
 it see fit, provide for securing a proper contribution 
 from Irish revenues towards common or Imperial 
 expenditure. 1 The essence of the whole arrange- 
 
 1 I have attempted to give, in popular language, the general 
 effect of clause 26, which is the only clause that directly 
 refers to Ireland's contribution towards the common expenditure 
 of the United Kingdom. As to the method of obtaining such 
 contribution after the happy day see clause 26. Note that the 
 terms "revenue of Ireland" and "cost of the government
 
 $6 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 ment provided for by clause 26 is, in substance, 
 that as regards Ireland's contribution towards 
 the common expenses of the United Kingdom 
 the status quo shall continue to exist, and that, 
 as regards at any rate the provisions of that clause, 
 Ireland shall be under no obligation to contribute 
 towards common expenditure until the happy day 
 arrives. Whether Ireland will be under any temp- 
 tation to hurry on the arrival of that happy day 
 when she may undergo the obligation to share in 
 the common expenditure of the United Kingdom 
 is a point as to which opinions may differ. This 
 period of Ireland's financial freedom from obliga- 
 tion to make any pecuniary contribution towards, 
 e.g. the defence of the United Kingdom, is a new 
 thing. It was unknown to Mr. Gladstone. It has 
 never been dwelt upon during the whole of the 
 Home Rule controversy by any Home Ruler. This 
 immunity from contribution to the general ex- 
 penses of the State is absolutely unknown to any 
 state, canton, or province of any Federal Govern- 
 ment. It is some pleasure to me to reflect that in 
 1887 a then unknown writer suggested, 1 and in my 
 judgment wisely suggested, that, if Ireland were 
 granted colonial independence, i\. might be a dictate 
 of expediency or generosity that she should receive 
 immunity from the burden of contribution towards 
 Imperial expenditure. But the idea, whatever its 
 worth, that Ireland under a system of Colonial 
 Home Rule ought to receive, like every other 
 Dominion, immunity from taxation towards the 
 cost of defending the Empire must always be 
 coupled with the two other leading features of our 
 
 of Ireland " must be taken in their very widest sense. Com- 
 pare clause 26, sub-cl. (i), and see speech of Mr. Balfour, 
 Parliamentary Debates, December 2, 1912, and remarks of 
 Mr. Herbert Samuel, cols. 1964 to 1970. Mr. H. Samuel is a 
 parliamentary Micawber who identifies money borrowed with 
 revenue or income. 
 
 1 See England's Case against Home Rule, p. 216.
 
 IMPERIAL EXPENDITURE 57 
 
 colonial system, namely, that Ireland gives up all 
 claim for, or expectation of, grants from the Im- 
 perial Exchequer, and also sends no members to the 
 imperial Parliament at Westminster. Every line 
 of the Home Rule Bill proves that our modern 
 Home Rulers, while they all but exempt Ireland from 
 liability for contribution towards Imperial expen- 
 diture, mean her to retain two privileges unknown 
 to any one of the Dominions. But these very 
 privileges make it impossible that the Imperial 
 Parliament should be freed from the consideration 
 of Irish affairs. 
 
 (") Under the construction of the Bill. According 
 to trie Government's interpretation of the Bill, the 
 Imperial Parliament will, when the Bill has passed 
 into law, i.e. under the Home Rule Act, have 
 immediately and at all times, not only the theoretical 
 right, but me practical and rightful authority, to tax 
 Ireland in respect of any new common or Imperial 
 expenditure imposed upon the United Kingdom 
 after the passing of the Act. This rightful authority 
 and power is quite independent of the terms of 
 clause 26. It will be exercised by a Parliament to 
 which Ireland returns only forty-two members. It 
 may be rightly exercised before the happy day has 
 arrived. The doctrine of the Government, as stated 
 by the Solicitor-General with his usual clearness 
 and precision, is quite unmistakable. He clearly 
 lays down that the mere fact of the passing of the 
 Home Rule Bill should not " in itself, disentitle the 
 [Imperial] Chancellor of the Exchequer, not as a 
 matter of technicality, but as a matter of substance, 
 from laying before the Imperial House of Commons 
 proposals which involve taxing of the Irish 
 people, supposing the general purposes of the 
 country require additional revenue," * and this, on 
 his view, is a power which the Parliament at West- 
 minster has a substantial right to exercise before 
 1 Parliamentary Debates, December 2, 1912,00!. 1946.
 
 58 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 the arrival of the happy day, and whilst the repre- 
 sentation of Ireland in such Parliament amounts 
 only to forty-two members. 1 The Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, to prevent all mistake, distinctly 
 explains that in any new emergency arising after 
 the passing of the Home Rule Act (e.g. a great 
 naval emergency which required the addition of 
 twopence to the Income Tax) it would be not only 
 the right of the Imperial Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer, but also his duty, to see that the charge 
 should be borne by the whole United Kingdom. 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer himself raises the 
 question, What would be the difference between 
 the time before the happy day when the deficit has 
 come to an end, and alter the happy day in respect 
 of Ireland's contribution towards the common or 
 Imperial expenditure of the United Kingdom? The 
 difference, according to this high authority, would 
 be as follows : Before the happy day Ireland could 
 not, in fairness, be called upon to contribute to the 
 meeting of any Imperial burden which was an old 
 burden, i.e. had arisen before the passing of the 
 Home Rule Act. But after the happy day she 
 might be called upon to contribute her share towards 
 any common or Imperial burden, whether old or 
 new. 8 The doctrine of the Government as to the 
 right of the Imperial Parliament (independently of 
 the Home Rule Bill, clause 26) to tax Ireland for 
 the common expenditure of the United Kingdom 
 was never stated with clearness, if it was ever 
 stated at all, till December 2, 1912, when the debates 
 on the Bill were drawing to a close, and the Bill 
 
 1 Compare Mr. Balfour's interpretation of the view of the 
 Government, Parliamentary Debates, cols. 1967, 1968. 
 
 3 See speech of Mr. Lloyd George, Parliamentary Debates, 
 December 2, 1912, cols. 1971, 1972. I believe I have given the true 
 meaning of his words. On his view Ireland could not uuder the 
 Bill, in fairness, be called upon to contribute towards any expen- 
 diture which is not common expenditure, but benefits only Great 
 Britain or some part thereof.
 
 ILLUSORY POWERS OF TAXATION 59 
 
 had been before the country for at least eight 
 months. It certainly caused astonishment to most 
 Unionists. 
 
 " I am convinced," said the leader of the Unionist 
 party, " every one thought, when this Bill was 
 introduced certainly the speeches of the Prime 
 Minister and of every one else on the Second Read- 
 ing led us to suppose that what the Government 
 were doing was to stereotype the existing financial 
 relations between Ireland and England. They saw 
 Ireland was not paying her way, that we were 
 giving her a contribution to enable her to pay her 
 way, and that, until she paid her way, she was to 
 have no additional burdens thrown upon her. That 
 was how I understood the Bill." 1 And we may be sure 
 most Home Rulers understood it in the same sense. 
 
 There are one or two most important points 
 in respect to the new construction placed by the 
 Government 2 on the financial provisions of the 
 Home Rule Bill which deserve most careful atten- 
 tion. This construction rests, I presume, on clause i, 
 sub-clause 2, which lays down that "the supreme 
 power and authority of the Parliament of the United 
 Kingdom shall remain unaffected and undiminished 
 over all persons, matters, and things in Ireland and 
 every part thereof." 3 
 
 No aoubt the supremacy of the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment is nominally retained in Ireland, 4 as it is retained 
 in New Zealand, in the Commonwealth of Australia, 
 and in every part of the British Empire. But 
 Parliament has no real authority to tax either New 
 Zealand or the Australian Commonwealth. Ireland, 
 it is true, does not, under the Home Rule Bill, stand 
 
 1 Mr. Bonar Law, Parliamentary Debates, December 2, 1912, 
 col. 1974. 
 
 1 To this construction no Nationalist leader has, I think, before 
 or on December 2, 1912, expressed his assent. 
 
 1 With which should be read clause 41, as to the concurrent 
 legislation of the Imperial Parliament and the Irish Parliament. 
 
 4 See pp. 35, 36, ante.
 
 60 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 in the same position as one of the Dominions. The 
 Bill, moreover, certainly means that the Imperial 
 Parliament retains the effective right to tax Ireland 
 for common or Imperial purposes under the terms 
 of clause 26. But the very existence of this clause 
 suggests that, as the Unionist leader believed, the 
 Bill is not intended to give to Parliament the power 
 to tax Ireland until the conditions of that clause are 
 fulfilled. Will any Government of Home Rulers 
 ever, in reality, attempt to tax Ireland even for 
 common purposes except under that clause ? I am 
 not prepared to give an affirmative answer to this 
 question. It is even more than doubtful whether 
 a Government of Unionists would do wisely to act 
 upon the construction which Mr. Asquith and his 
 colleagues have suddenly placed upon the Home 
 Rule Bill. A Government at Westminster may well 
 find it necessary and right to alter or repeal the 
 Home Rule Bill if ever it becomes the Home Rule 
 Act. To this conviction I adhere with the utmost 
 firmness. 1 But such a Government would hardly be 
 wise to take their stand upon a constructive right 
 of the Imperial Parliament to tax Ireland which 
 would be hardly consistent with the tenor of the 
 Home Rule Act. An inevitable conflict between 
 the authority of the Imperial and the authority of 
 the Irish Parliament could not be fought out on a 
 worse ground than on reliance upon the constitu- 
 tional doctrine on which it has pleased Mr. Asquith 
 and his colleagues to rely. The doctrine, in snort, 
 however well expounded by the Solicitor-General, 2 
 is of no real value whatever. Unfortunately, a 
 political dogma which lacks any essential worth 
 may be a cause of much evil. The right of the 
 Imperial Parliament to tax by its own authority 
 a Home Ruled Ireland, at any rate before the con- 
 ditions of clause 26 are fulfilled, puts an end to the 
 
 1 See pp. 43, 44, ante. 
 
 3 See pp. 57-59, ante.
 
 COMPLEXITY OF FINANCE 61 
 
 hope of reconciliation between England and Ireland. 
 Every man outside the Cabinet must wonder what 
 are the motives which have induced a Government 
 of Home Rulers to put forward a new claim to 
 
 Earliamentary supremacy whereof nothing was 
 eard till the Home Rule Bill was all but passing 
 up to the House of Lords. What, we ask, is the 
 true meaning of clause 26, taken in combination 
 with the doctrine that the Imperial Parliament may 
 tax Ireland before that clause can come into opera- 
 tion ? Our Unionist leader has given the right 
 answer. 
 
 " What is the object of the clause ? It only has 
 one object. It is a part of the make-belief which 
 characterises the Bill from beginning to end. Its 
 one object is to make people in England and Scot- 
 land believe the Government are going to insist 
 on a contribution from Ireland, and, on the other 
 hand, to enable hon. members from Ireland to say, 
 1 We will never make a contribution until we 
 choose, and we will never choose as long as we can 
 spend the money in Ireland.'" 1 
 
 SECOND CHARACTERISTIC. The complexity of the 
 financial arrangements. 
 
 The aim of all these arrangements is, as I have 
 pointed out, simple enough, but they are marked in 
 their details by a kind of complexity which makes 
 them all but incomprehensible to any ordinary 
 elector. Let me give a few examples of their 
 complication. 
 
 The cost of the government of Ireland, which is 
 computed at about i2,35o,ooo, 2 is distributed 
 among different services or objects of expenditure. 
 These are divided into Reserved Services, 3 which, 
 
 1 Mr. Bonar Law, Parliamentary Debates, December 2, 1912, 
 col. 1976. 
 
 ' See Mr. Asquith's speech, Parliamentary Debates, April 11, 
 1912, col. 1411. 
 
 8 See Bill, cl. 4 (6) ; cl. 5 (2) ; cl. 2, proviso.
 
 62 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 it is computed, will amount to 5,292,000, and for 
 which the Imperial Exchequer will be responsible, 
 and Irish Services, for which the Irish Exchequer 
 to be constituted under the Bill will be responsible. 
 The cost of the Irish Services will, it is computed, 
 amount to 7,062,000.* Every penny levied by 
 taxation in Ireland 2 will be paid over by the Irish 
 Exchequer to the Imperial Exchequer. 3 But the 
 Imperial Exchequer will, out of the revenue re- 
 ceived from Ireland, transfer or repay annually * to 
 the Irish Exchequer the expenses which the Irish 
 Services are found 5 to cause at the date when the 
 Bill passes into law (i.e. at the establishment of 
 Home Rule say in May, 1914) to the Imperial 
 Exchequer, and added thereto the sum of 500,000, 
 which is a present from the people of Great Britain 
 enabling Ireland to start in tne career of Home Rule 
 with a surplus instead of a deficit. This sum, 
 
 gartially repaid and partially given, is termed in the 
 ill the Transferred Sum. Two points should be 
 noted : first, the Transferred Sum is not the sum 
 which the Irish Services may cost to Ireland at any 
 future time, but the sum which, at the date of 
 Home Rule, they are found to be costing to the 
 United Kingdom ; secondly, the Transferred Sum, 
 which will, it is conjectured, amount to 6,127,000, 
 will, prima facie, not be variable, but several con- 
 tingencies are contemplated by the Bill under 
 
 1 Outline of Financial Proposals, p. 3. There is no discrepancy 
 between this sum and the Transferred Sum, amounting to 
 .6,127,000, immediately mentioned. The difference arises from 
 the fact that, in addition to the Transferred Sum, the Irish Govern- 
 ment retain the postal revenues, estimated to amount to i,354,ooo, 
 and fee stamps, amounting to 81,000, making a total of 
 1,435,000 of Irish revenue which was not to be handed over to 
 the Imperial Exchequer. This sum, together with the Transferred 
 Sum, amounts to 7,562,000, showing a surplus of 500,000. 
 
 1 Except the Post Office revenue. 
 
 1 See Bill, cl. 14 (2). 
 
 4 See Bill, cl. 14 (2) (a) and (6). 
 
 * By the Joint Exchequer Board.
 
 COST OF GOVERNING IRELAND 63 
 
 which it may be either increased or decreased. 
 Thus, to give examples of this variation, the Irish 
 Government may, it it pleases, take over from the 
 Imperial Exchequer the liability of any of the 
 Reserved Services^, the payment of Old Age 
 Pensions and thereupon the imperial Government, 
 as it escapes from paying Old Age Pensions, will 
 add to the Transferred Sum the expense thereby 
 saved at the time of transference to the Imperial 
 Exchequer. The proceeds, again, of any new tax 
 imposed by the Irish Parliament upon Ireland, 
 though they will be paid over to the Imperial 
 Exchequer, will be repaid to the Irish Exchequer 
 by an addition to the Transferred Sum. As, further, 
 the 500,000, which is an annual gift from the 
 British taxpayers to Ireland, will, after three years 
 from the passing of the Home Rule Act, be dimin- 
 ished annually by 50,000, until it is reduced to the 
 sum of 200,000, at which amount it will remain, the 
 Transferred Sum will to this extent be gradually 
 reduced by 50,000 a year. 
 
 Very strict limitations * are imposed by the Bill 
 on the Irish Parliament's power to tax Ireland ; 
 but it is not for my purpose necessary to go into 
 the nature of these limitations, and it should be 
 particularly noted that the Imperial Parliament 
 retains under the Bill the power to tax Ireland. 
 Hence the Irish Parliament and the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment have each concurrent powers of legislation. 
 
 One other matter should be clearly borne in mind. 
 The object of the Bill is that the whole of the Irish 
 revenue should be employed for meeting the cost of 
 the government of Ireland. The Transferred Sum 
 meets the cost of the so-called Irish Services. The 
 sum which is not transferred, or paid back to the 
 Irish Exchequer, meets, as far as it goes, the cost of 
 the Reserved Services. But the aggregate cost of 
 governing Ireland exceeds, by some 1,500,000, the 
 1 See Bill, els. 15 and 17.
 
 64 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 revenue from Ireland. This deficit is, in effect, paid 
 by the British taxpayers as part of the cost of the 
 Reserved Services. The British taxpayers give 
 also, for at least three years, to Ireland a present of 
 500,000. The net result of all these complicated 
 arrangements, and many other provisions of the Bill 
 which I have omitted, is exactly what I have already 
 insisted upon, namely, that the Irish deficit of 
 1,500,000 is turned into a surplus of 500,000 
 simply by the British taxpayers taking upon them- 
 selves a payment of 2,000,000. 
 
 These statements will be made more compre- 
 hensible by the tables on page 65 taken from Mr. 
 Steel- Maitland's article on the Finance of the Home 
 Rule Bill in The National Review for June 1912, p. 624. 1 
 
 No doubt if, as the authors of the Bill flatter 
 themselves, the revenue of Ireland increases with 
 rapidity, the burden imposed upon the British tax- 
 payers (which at the date of the passing of the 
 Home Rule Act will amount to the annual payment 
 of 2,000,000) will be gradually lightened or con- 
 ceivably removed since the amount of Irish 
 revenue, so far as it depends upon Imperial 
 taxation, 2 will be paid into the Imperial Exchequer, 
 and go to diminish the cost to the British taxpayers 
 of the Reserved Services, e.g. of Old Age Pensions. 
 But then, it must be remembered that the cost of 
 these services may increase, and there is no certainty 
 that the revenue from taxes levied in Ireland by 
 Imperial taxation may not decrease. In the finance 
 of the Home Rule Bill the tendency of our Govern- 
 ment to trust to hopes rather than to experience 
 
 1 Compare also the Outline of Financial Provisions (Cd. 6154), 
 pp. 3 and 4. Many Unionists add to the cost caused by the 
 government of Ireland to the British taxpayer the amount, say, of 
 3,000,000, which under the Home Rule Bill Ireland will not, but 
 ought, to contribute towards meeting Imperial expenditure. 
 
 3 An increase of Irish revenue by the proceeds of Irish taxation 
 will not benefit the British taxpayer, since it will be added to the 
 Transferred Sum.
 
 COST OF IRISH SERVICES 
 
 O O 
 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 
 
 o o o o o o 
 
 
 
 
 o o o 
 
 
 O vo O vo O O 
 
 
 o o 
 
 o o o 
 
 
 ( T? t-T i-T rCoo" w" 
 "\ vo ON VO t""^ ON ON 
 
 
 S3 N" o" 
 
 ^ vo O 
 
 * cf pf 
 
 vO O vo 
 
 
 VO M t> fO N N 
 
 
 r^vO 
 
 O vo vo 
 
 
 T M" vo 
 
 
 10 M" 
 
 tC tC 
 
 
 ? 
 
 H 
 
 
 S^ 
 
 
 T3 ' 
 
 
 tli ' * 
 
 i . 
 
 
 C 
 
 w 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 rt y, 
 4> 4J 
 
 i 
 
 <L> 
 
 H 
 
 
 ,,, bfi 3 
 
 <j 
 
 ^ 
 
 * r 1 * " 
 
 
 C 
 
 Sl 1 -a 
 
 ii| s '<S | 
 
 c c 7; cj >^<*- H 
 
 <U Hi J- J2 O 
 
 PH H-g c 
 
 <U -3 JD 32 
 
 3P c J1 * " 
 "^ .2 o 1 
 
 rr-t *-" C ~ 
 
 2 ci rt O 
 
 OX JUU 
 
 hH 
 
 i 
 
 PH 
 
 M 
 
 i 
 
 H- 1 
 
 u 
 
 1 
 
 O 
 
 C 
 
 VI 
 
 flj 
 O 
 
 cu <u 
 
 'O t/3 U 
 
 <u ^ o 
 
 i2 
 
 Total of Services 
 ms (provided by Britisl 
 payer) 
 
 Total 
 
 
 
 cL 
 
 
 
 B 
 
 
 
 2 S 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 O 
 000 
 
 w 
 o 
 
 H PH 
 
 
 1 
 
 <O tC xo ef 
 
 fe 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 N* ft ^ 
 
 5 
 
 O O O 
 
 o 
 
 ~ 
 
 - ~ 
 
 si 
 
 o o o 
 
 o 
 
 .^> 
 
 o o 
 
 C/3 
 
 M 
 
 u 
 
 S^ N 1000 
 
 VO 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 g 
 
 VO*" H? 
 
 13 
 
 rf 
 
 ^ l?f 
 
 M 
 
 M 
 
 
 s? 
 
 c 
 
 o w 
 
 W 
 
 ... 
 
 
 ^; 
 
 r ^ 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 ONVO 
 
 U 
 
 
 
 ^! 
 
 
 01 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 bO V T3 J3 
 
 a 
 
 ... 
 
 
 1 
 
 C .w g ,52 
 
 HH 
 
 
 
 
 *3 ^ ti 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 C/3 
 
 |l K 
 
 i 
 PQ 
 
 II 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 <u rt o ^ 
 
 w 
 
 3 
 C 
 
 3 
 
 
 ^^^ (-f 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 J> iTl fe * ** 
 
 il 1 li ^ 
 
 I 5 H Is: 
 
 a 1 1 1 rs 
 
 S 
 
 3 
 
 18.1 
 
 elf 
 
 H 
 
 
 ^ PH CO '5 H 
 
 
 "S^OT 
 
 C j-> 
 
 
 
 .2 S * 
 
 
 rt OT 4) 
 i- O 0> 
 
 
 
 HH tJ Q 
 
 
 

 
 66 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 i.e. to enjoy the blessings of a fool's paradise is 
 particularly visible. The cost, however, of such 
 indulgence in over-sanguine expectations will fall, 
 not upon any Minister, but upon the taxpayers of 
 Great Britain. 
 
 The Bill provides a scheme for the readjustment 
 of the financial arrangements between the United 
 Kingdom, or in reality Great Britain, and Ireland. 
 It, in substance, enacts that when (if ever) the whole 
 of the Irish revenue, whether imposed by an Imperial 
 Act or by an Irish Act of Parliament, shall for three 
 successive years have exceeded the cost of the 
 government of Ireland, the financial provisions of 
 the Home Rule Bill may undergo a revision 1 in 
 accordance with the rules laid down by the Bill. 
 But the mode and nature of this revision cannot be 
 understood without studying the third characteristic 
 of its financial arrangements. It is indeed the 
 strangest of all the strange provisions of the Home 
 Rule Bill. 
 
 THIRD CHARACTERISTIC. The creation of the Joint 
 Exchequer Board. 2 
 
 Constitution of Board. The Board will consist of 
 a chairman and four other members. The chairman 
 is to be appointed by the King, i.e. presumably by 
 the British as contrasted with the Irish Prime 
 Minister. Two members are to be appointed by 
 the British Treasury that is, I presume, by the 
 English Cabinet and two members by the Irish 
 Cabinet. It would seem at first sight certain that 
 every member of the Board is to hold his office on 
 the same tenure as our Judges. The importance 
 of the Board's position is so great that, even inde- 
 pendently of the words of the Bill, 3 the judicial status 
 
 1 See Bill, cl. 26, especially sub-els, i and 3. 
 
 ' Bill, cl. 22, and cl. 26. 
 
 * " Any vacancy arising in the office of a member of the Board, 
 owing to the death, resignation, or incapacity of any member of 
 the Board, shall be filled by the authority by whom the member 
 whose place is vacant was appointed " (Bill, cl. 22 (3)).
 
 THE JOINT EXCHEQUER BOARD 67 
 
 of its members would seem to be almost a matter 
 of course, for it must surely be necessary that every 
 member of the Board should hold office free from the 
 fear of dismissal either by the Government of England 
 or by the Government of Ireland. But our Ministers 
 think otherwise. The Board, the Attorney-General 
 has announced, 1 will be a body of financial experts, 
 and not in any sense a legal tribunal. The Board 
 will decide questions of fact, and probably consist of 
 officials of the British Treasury, and, one must 
 presume, of the Irish Treasury. The Board's deci- 
 sions will, on matters of fact at any rate, be final, but 
 the Board will have the power of obtaining a 
 decision, if desirous of doing so, on any question 
 of law by an appeal to the Privy Council : 2 what the 
 true character of the Board may be remains in truth 
 a problem to which the Bill gives no answer. The 
 Board may possibly be ultimately organised as a 
 quasi-judicial body. It is more likely that the Board 
 may turn out a sort of council of conciliation meant 
 to harmonise, if that be possible, the ideas of the 
 British Treasury and of the Irish Treasury in 
 regard to such financial questions as may come 
 before the Board. 
 
 Functions of the Board. The Board will be called 
 upon to determine the following (among other) 
 financial problems : 
 
 i. The Board must determine the sum which at 
 
 1 See speech of Sir Rufus Isaacs, Parliamentary Debates, 
 November 27, 1912, cols. 1319, 1321, 1322. 
 
 * " If the Joint Exchequer Board, in the execution of their duties 
 under this Act, are desirous of obtaining the decision of any 
 question of the interpretation of this Act, or other question of law, 
 which arises in connexion with those duties, the Lord-Lieutenant, 
 Secretary of State, or Board, as the case may be, may represent 
 the same to his Majesty in Council, and thereupon, if his Majesty 
 so directs, the said question shall be forthwith referred to and 
 heard and determined by the Judicial Committee of the Privy 
 Council, constituted as if hearing an appeal from a Court in 
 Ireland " (Clause 29, sub-cl. i (part) ).
 
 68 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 the date of Home Rule represents the true cost to 
 the Imperial Exchequer of the Irish Services, or, in 
 other words, the amount of the Transferred Sum 
 which the Imperial Exchequer will be called upon 
 annually to pay to the Irish Exchequer. This is 
 a matter of extreme importance. Let it be noted 
 that the calculations, or the conjectures, of the 
 Cabinet as to the amount of this Transferred Sum 
 are mere guesses which do not bind any man. 
 Ministers may be right in thinking that it will 
 amount to, say, 6,127,000* but they may be quite 
 out in their reckoning. The amount of the Trans- 
 ferred Sum at the date of Home Rule say May 
 1914 must be determined, not by the Ministry, not 
 by Parliament, nor by any Parliamentary Committee, 
 but by the Joint Exchequer Board. The decision of 
 the Board (that is, possibly, of three members there- 
 of) will, subject to an appeal to the Privy Council 
 on questions of law, be final and conclusive. 2 If the 
 Board determine that the Transferred Sum amounts 
 only to s ,000,000, which is highly improbable, or that 
 it amounts to 7,000,000, which is not inconceivable, 
 there will be, in truth, no power in existence which 
 can practically upset their determination. The Irish 
 Government and Irish people may be aggrieved if 
 the sum is smaller than they expected ; the English 
 Government and the English people will be ag- 
 grieved if it is larger than they expected. In any 
 case, the parties aggrieved must bear disappointment 
 as they may. 
 
 2. The Board will have to determine what are the 
 true proceeds of an Irish tax. This is a matter of 
 the utmost importance to the Irish Exchequer, as it 
 really determines how much in respect of a particular 
 tax is to be returned or repaid by the Imperial 
 Exchequer to the Irish Exchequer. 3 
 
 1 See pp. 62, 65, ante. 
 
 2 Bill, cl. i4(2),(a), cl. 17(1), cl. 22(2),cl. 29,andp. 67, note 2, ante. 
 
 3 Bill, cl. 14 (i) (c).
 
 JOINT EXCHEQUER BOARD 69 
 
 3. The Board will have to determine perhaps the 
 most important question which can arise between 
 England and Ireland in reference to finance, namely, 
 whether the conditions have been fulfilled whicn, 
 under the Home Rule Bill i.e. the new Constitution 
 of the so-called United Kingdom authorise the 
 Imperial Parliament to enter upon the revision of the 
 financial arrangements between the two countries, 1 
 for the iBoard will be called upon to determine 
 whether, during three successive years, the total 
 proceeds of Irish revenue have exceeded the cost of 
 the government of Ireland ; or, in other words, 
 whether during these three years the amount of the 
 Transferred Sum, together with the cost of the 
 Reserved Services, has or has not exceeded the cost 
 of the government of Ireland. 2 If the Board reports 
 in the affirmative, but not otherwise, Parliament can, 
 under the Bill, proceed to the revision of the financial 
 arrangements embodied in the Bill ; and here it 
 should be noted what ought never for a moment 
 to be forgotten that for the purpose of such revision 
 the Imperial Parliament means, not the body which 
 will ordinarily meet at Westminster, and which is 
 to contain only 42 members from Ireland, but a Par- 
 liament consisting of an Irish delegation, to which 
 is added such a number of the members of the Irish 
 House of Commons as will make the representation 
 of Ireland in the Imperial House of Commons 
 equivalent to the representation of Great Britain 
 on the basis of population. In other words, the 
 42 ordinary Irish representatives will be increased 
 to at least 65 by members of the Irish House of 
 Commons, who clearly must be chosen by the party 
 which has a majority in such House. Hence the 
 decision of the Board will, in fact, determine not only 
 whether the Imperial Parliament can constitution- 
 
 1 Cl. 26(1). 
 
 1 See as to the meaning of " cost of the government of Ireland " 
 p. 55, especially note i, ante.
 
 70 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 ally attempt the revision of the financial arrange- 
 ments contained in the Home Rule Bill, but also by 
 its report or decision make necessary a change in 
 the constitution of the Imperial Parliament itself. 
 
 4. The Board will have, under the Bill, other 
 powers than those I have specifically mentioned. 
 The Board may in many ways deal with questions 
 of Irish taxation, but, in addition to all specific 
 powers given to the Board in different clauses of the 
 Bill, the Board is called upon to determine any other 
 matter in connection with the Transferred Sum, or 
 Irish revenue, or expenditure, or the cost of any 
 reserved service which may be referred to them for 
 determination by the Treasury of the United King- 
 dom and the Irish Treasury jointly. 1 
 
 All the matters to be decided by the Board are of 
 the utmost importance, and many of them of great 
 nicety. They may constantly give rise to differences 
 of opinion between England and Ireland. The 
 answers to the all-important questions which will 
 come before the Board must, from the nature of 
 things, depend upon the inclination I must add the 
 perfectly honest inclination of the Board, or rather 
 the majority thereof, either on the one hand to con- 
 strue the Home Rule Act so as to restrain the 
 power of the Irish Parliament, or on the other hand 
 to construe the Home Rule Act so as to restrain the 
 authority in Ireland of the Imperial Parliament. In 
 other words, the practical working of the financial 
 arrangements between England and Ireland I 
 might almost say the practical working of our new 
 Constitution created by the Home Rule Bill will 
 
 1 " It shall be the duty of the Joint Exchequer Board to deter- 
 mine any matter which is to be determined by the Board under 
 this Act, and also to determine any other matter in connec- 
 tion with the Transferred Sum, or Irish revenue or expenditure, or 
 the cost of any reserved service, which may be referred to them for 
 determination by the Treasury and the Irish Treasury jointly, and 
 the decision of the Board on any matter which is to be determined 
 by them shall be final and conclusive" (Bill, cl. 22 (2) ).
 
 DIFFICULTIES OF THE BOARD 71 
 
 depend upon the answer to the inquiry which time 
 alone can give, whether three memDers of the Board 
 lean towards the doctrine of Unionism or towards 
 the doctrine of Irish Nationalism. It may be allow- 
 able to conjecture that, if three members of the Board 
 are appointed by the present Prime Minister of the 
 United Kingdom and two members by the future 
 Prime Minister of Ireland, e.g., Mr. John Redmond, 
 the Board will consist of competent lawyers and 
 competent financiers, but the majority thereof will 
 hardly be Unionists. If, on the one hand, the Board 
 should, contrary to the apparent design of the 
 Government, be turned into a Court, or at any rate 
 into a quasi-judicial body, I am sure its members 
 will try to the utmost of their ability to act as 
 Judges and avoid all charges of unfairness.. But 
 though no more august, and, on the whole, fairer 
 Court has ever existed than the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, the tendency of its decisions has leaned 
 at one period towards increasing the authority of 
 the separate States which make up the Union, and 
 at another period towards the extension of the 
 authority of the Federal Government. The fairest 
 of Judges are, after all, only the fairest among human 
 beings. A Board therefore whereof the majority are 
 Home Rulers will assuredly show some bias in favour 
 of any decision which seems to extend the power of 
 the Irish Government and the Irish Parliament. 
 Nor is it credible that the decisions of the Board 
 will ever command the respect both of Ireland and 
 of Great Britain. If in a case where the popular 
 opinion of the two countries is divided, the Board 
 takes the Irish view, the British people will be 
 irritated and will assuredly take means to express 
 their vexation in the Imperial Parliament. If the 
 Board takes the British view, its judgment will be 
 denounced in the Parliament of Ireland. It is al- 
 ways undesirable, though it is sometimes inevitable, 
 that a judicial, or quasi-judicial, body should be the
 
 72 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 final arbiter on questions not of private, but of social 
 or religious interest. It is still more undesirable 
 that such a body should arbitrate on matters which 
 involve the antagonistic feeling of different portions 
 of one State, which to a certain extent, though not 
 forming different nations, consider themselves to be 
 of different nationalities. The Joint Exchequer 
 Board will, 1 trust, be as independent and as 
 impartial as a law court ; but neither in England 
 nor in the United States, the two most law-abiding 
 countries of the civilised world, can the most august 
 of tribunals fail to excite occasional indignation 
 when compelled to deal with religious or social 
 questions, and a fortiori when they are asked to 
 decide points which arouse the spirit of Nationalism. 
 Even now the English clergy can with difficulty 
 tolerate the judgment of the Privy Council ; even 
 now trade unionists complain of gross injustice when 
 any law court gives a decision unfavourable to a 
 trade union. But if, on the other hand, the Govern- 
 ment have finally their way, and the Board should 
 be turned into a committee of Treasury officials, it 
 is idle to hope that such a body will be treated with 
 the respect due to a high tribunal. Expediency 
 rather than justice, compromise rather than the 
 establishment of a fixed rule, will be the instinctive 
 tendency of such a committee. This ill-starred 
 Board will be called upon to determine questions 
 on which the real or apparent interest of England 
 may be set against the real or apparent interest of 
 Ireland ; it is past praying for that the decisions of 
 such a body, if Court' it be, or the compromises 
 of such a governmental committee, though it be a 
 committee of conciliation, will obtain the moral 
 acquiescence either of Englishmen or of Irishmen. 
 
 FOURTH CHARACTERISTIC. The complexity of the 
 financial arrangements is unnecessary} 
 
 This assertion is made with great confidence. 
 1 See clauses 14-26.
 
 THE COMMITTEE OF EXPERTS 73 
 
 The Government, in a moment of foresight, appointed 
 and consulted a Committee of Experts on the finance 
 suitable to a measure of Home Rule ; the Govern- 
 ment, in a moment of blindness, rejected the advice 
 of their own Committee. Ministers, further, delayed 
 the production of the Committee's Report, and 
 refused to produce the evidence on which the Report 
 was grounded. If any one wishes to see that the 
 financial arrangements of the Home Rule Bill are, 
 even from a Home Rule point of view, unnecessary, 
 he may assure himself of their needlessness by 
 considering the character and the Report of the Com- 
 mittee, and, lastly, by comparing the plan of the 
 Government 1 and the plan of the Committee. 2 
 
 I. The Character and the Plan of the Committee of 
 Experts 
 
 (a) Character of the Committee. It consisted of finan- 
 cial experts, most of whom, I imagine, were Home 
 Rulers, and certainly were not opposed to Home 
 Rule. However this may be, they were instructed 
 " to consider, in the event of Irish local affairs being 
 entrusted to an Irish Assembly with a responsible 
 Executive, how the revenue required to meet the 
 necessary expenditure should be provided." In other 
 words, they were asked to report as to the financial 
 arrangements which, in their judgment, were best 
 suited to a scheme of Home Rule. They examined 
 witnesses and produced what, from a Home Rule 
 point of view, is a masterly report. It should be read 
 and studied by every reader interested in the Home 
 Rule controversy. 8 
 
 1 See clauses 14-26. 
 
 1 Report of Committee on Irish Finance, especially Summary of 
 Conclusions and Recommendations, pp. 28, 129. See Appendix, 
 post. Readers are especially advised to read this summary. 
 
 3 See Appendix for Committee's " Summary i of Conclusions 
 and Recommendations."
 
 74 
 
 (b} The Plan oj the Committee. This may be 
 reduced to three proposals, each of which is 
 elaborately explained and defended in the Com- 
 mittee's Report. 
 
 is/. The power of imposing and levying all 
 taxation in Ireland should rest with the Irish 
 Government (i.e. of course the Irish Parliament and 
 Executive) subject to such reservations as may be 
 necessary to guard against the raising of tariff 
 questions which might prejudice relations with 
 foreign powers or trade and commerce between 
 Great Britain and Ireland, 1 and the (Irish Govern- 
 ment should take over the whole of the Irish local 
 expenditure, amounting probably to 12,400,000, 
 whilst the revenue of the Irish Government would 
 probably be about 1 0,3 5 0,000. 2 
 
 2nd. To meet this deficit and to provide the Irish 
 Government with a working balance and also a 
 margin for immediately accruing charges in respect 
 of future Old Age Pensions, the Imperial Exchequer 
 should take over the liability for all Old Age 
 Pensions already granted at the date when the 
 transfer of the powers (i.e. the date of Home Rule) 
 takes place. 
 
 This amount is calculated by the Committee at 
 about 3,000,000 annually, and the Committee 
 recommend that, should the amount so provided 
 appear at the time of settlement to be in- 
 sufficient, the Imperial Exchequer should take over 
 a further liability for so much of the charge for 
 constabulary pensions as might be found to be 
 necessary. 3 
 
 yd. The obligation of Ireland to contribute to 
 the general expenditure of the realm (e.g. for the 
 defence of the United Kingdom) should be affirmed, 
 
 1 Recommendation i. and Report, pars. 38, 42, pp. 28, 29. 
 
 1 Report, Recommendations iii. and iv. p. 28, and pars. 36, 37. 
 
 * Report, Recommendation v. par. 37, p. 17.
 
 DIFFERENT FINANCIAL PLANS 75 
 
 but a settlement of the amount of the contribution 
 should be allowed to remain in abeyance. 1 
 
 II. Comparison of the Financial Plan of the Govern- 
 ment with the Financial Plan of the Committee 
 
 The plan of the Government is, on the mere face 
 of it, infinitely complex. It is unjust to England. 
 It leaves on England a permanent responsibility 
 (which certainly cannot be limited to any definite 
 time) for a large part of the cost of the government 
 of Ireland. It places upon England the hard and 
 unpopular duty of collecting every tax raised in 
 Ireland, even though it be a tax imposed by the 
 Irish Government. It makes a purely artificial 
 distinction between " Reserved Services " paid by 
 the Imperial Exchequer and "Irish Services " paid 
 by the Irish Exchequer, and this division rests on 
 no principle whatever, since it leaves among Irish 
 services the maintenance of the Post Office, which 
 certainly ought to have been a reserved, or Imperial, 
 service if any department of the Government of 
 Ireland deserves that name. The whole arrange- 
 ment about the Transferred Sum, taken together 
 with the division between Reserved Services and 
 Irish Services, conceals from the British taxpayer 
 the amount of his contribution under a system of 
 Home Rule towards the cost of the government 
 
 1 Report, Recommendation i. p. 28, par. 37, p. 17. The con- 
 jecture by the Committee as to the amount of Irish revenue and 
 Irish expenditure at the date of the Home Rule Bill does not agree 
 precisely with the conjecture of the Government. This difference 
 apparently arises partly from the years taken as the basis of calcu- 
 lation being different, and partly from the fact that the Committee 
 forms, on the whole, a less hopeful expectation than does the 
 Government of the future revenue of Ireland. But the difference 
 is for the present purpose unimportant, for the Committee have 
 even a more difficult position to meet than that which has to b 
 met, on their own showing, by the Government.
 
 76 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 of Ireland. It conceals from the Irish taxpayer the 
 liberality in financial matters one might say gene- 
 rositywith which England contributes 2,000,000 
 per annum towards meeting the expense of the 
 government of Ireland, and towards giving Irish 
 Home Rule a chance of success. A further injustice 
 to England is that no limit, in point of time, is fixed 
 to the liability of England to continue paying, at 
 lowest, 1,700,000 towards the cost of Irish govern- 
 ment. No doubt this liability may be lowered 
 whenever the happy but uncertain day dawns on 
 which the cost 01 the government of Ireland shall, 
 for three successive years, have fallen indubitably 
 below the revenue derived by taxation from Ireland. 
 It is at least conceivable some critics would say 
 highly probable that the Irish Government will not 
 be eager to hurry on the day when contributions 
 towards Irish expenditure shall cease to flow from 
 the Imperial Exchequer that is, from the British 
 taxpayers. The plan of the Government does not 
 contain anything like a definite assertion of the 
 right of the Imperial Parliament, which will contain 
 only forty-two representatives of Ireland, to exact 
 a contribution from Ireland towards the common 
 expenses of the realm. The Bill does not state the 
 principle regulating such contribution. On Decem- 
 ber 2, IQI2, 1 indeed, the Solicitor-General and the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer suggested such a 
 principle ; but their suggestion is not part of the Bill. 2 
 This omission implies that Ireland, and Ireland alone 
 of any country forming part of the British Empire, 
 may claim, and claim for an indefinite period, heavy 
 grants paid by the British taxpayers without the 
 
 1 See pp. 57-61, ante. 
 
 1 The Bill certainly suggests to an ordinary reader that contribu- 
 tions towards the common expenditure of the United Kingdom will 
 be from time to time obtained from Ireland, under clause 26, by a 
 law passed by the Imperial Parliament when containing for this 
 purpose some sixty-five representatives of Ireland.
 
 THE GOVERNMENT PLAN 77 
 
 contribution of a penny towards the general 
 expenditure of the realm, even though it be ex- 
 penditure incurred for the defence of ureat Britain 
 and Ireland. Above all, the Government plan 
 necessitates the creation of this astounding body 
 termed the Joint Exchequer Board. The authority 
 of this Board is, on the very face of it, really if not 
 theoretically destructive of the so-called supremacy 
 of the Imperial Parliament. For the contemplated 
 revision of the financial arrangements of the Bill 
 cannot be constitutionally considered unless three 
 out of five of the members of the Board are 
 prepared to report in its favour. The plan of 
 the Government will be found, in the long run, as 
 injurious to Ireland as it is palpably unjust to 
 England. It gives many privileges to Ireland, 
 some of which Ireland ought not to enjoy; but, 
 while professing to give, and intended, I believe, to 
 give, Ireland independence in all Irish affairs, it 
 gives Ireland very limited independence indeed in 
 matters of taxation. Consider, for a moment, the 
 limitations placed on the taxes which the Irish 
 Parliament can impose by clauses 15 to 17 of the 
 Bill. These are limitations totally unknown to any 
 Dominion. They may be necessary limitations, but 
 they assuredly may hamper the action of any Irish 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer. What is a far worse 
 evil than this, the independence given to Ireland by 
 the virtual repeal of the Act of Union involved 
 in the Home Rule Bill, is independence without 
 responsibility; it does not teach Irishmen that, in 
 matters of finance, their fate must depend upon their 
 own conduct and patriotism, which may sometimes 
 be the offspring of poverty, but is never the child of 
 pauperism. The Bill does not even tell them that, 
 within an assignable number of years, grants from 
 the British Exchequer will come completely to an 
 end. It does not proclaim that Ireland will ulti- 
 mately be required to contribute to the expenditure
 
 78 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 of the realm and of that United Kingdom which is 
 still, thank Heaven ! our common country. I know 
 as well as any man that the patriotism, the energy, 
 and the genius of Irishmen have again and again 
 contributed, not only to the glory, but to the 
 preservation of the United Kingdom and of 
 the British Empire. All I do assert is that the 
 financial plan of the Government denies to Ireland 
 the responsibility which is the life-blood of colonial 
 independence, and must dull that patriotic senti- 
 ment of liability for the defence of the United 
 Kingdom and of the Empire to which the mass 
 of Irishmen, and above all Irish soldiers, have 
 always been fully alive. 
 
 Turn now to the plan of the Committee. 
 
 The plan of the Committee avoids, with extra- 
 ordinary sagacity, the special defects to be found in 
 the plan of the Government. The plan of the 
 Committee is perfectly simple and intelligible. It 
 gets rid at one stroke of all the outrageous intrica- 
 cies of the Governmental financial scheme, or rather 
 financial puzzle. The Transferred Sum, the Re- 
 served Services, the Joint Exchequer Board, and a 
 mass of unknown phraseology and the things that 
 they signify make no appearance in the Report 
 delivered by the experts in finance. These men, 
 who knew what they were about, were bound by 
 no pledges, public or private, given to any faction 
 or to its leaders. They had nothing to do with 
 bargains, intrigues, or mystifications, many of them 
 as hard to understand as they are impossible for 
 any Unionist to sanction. The first leading prin- 
 ciple 1 of the Committee's plan is that, under a 
 system of Home Rule, the Irish Government shall 
 have the management of the revenue and be 
 responsible for the taxation of Ireland. This 
 combination of authority and responsibility ex- 
 plains much of our colonial system, and is the 
 1 See p. 74, ante.
 
 PLAN OF THE COMMITTEE 79 
 
 dictate ot common sense. A Unionist may justly 
 urge that this authority ought not to be entrusted 
 to any Parliament but the Imperial Parliament at 
 Westminster. But this objection, if sound, is an 
 objection to the whole system of Home Rule, and 
 does not lie in the mouth of a Home Ruler. Such 
 combination of power and liability, at any rate, 
 frees Great Britain from the enforcement of taxes 
 many of which she may not have imposed and the 
 expenditure whereof she cannot control. The 
 second leading principle l is that, to meet a tem- 
 porary deficit, and to give Home Rule a chance of 
 success, the British taxpayers should take upon them- 
 selves the payment of Old Age Pensions which 
 have been already granted at the date when the 
 transfer of powers takes place that is, as I under- 
 stand the proposal, at the moment when the Home 
 Rule Bill comes into force, say May 1914. This, no 
 doubt, is a heavy burden of 3,000,000 per annum 
 imposed on the British taxpayers, and the burden 
 may, as the Committee points out, need some increase 
 which must be met by the British taxpayers under- 
 taking in part the payment of the Irish constabulary 
 pensions. It is, a critic may say, a heavier burden 
 than the 2,000,000 per annum imposed on the 
 British taxpayers by the Home Rule Bill, yet it 
 would be tar better for British taxpayers to pay 
 3,000,000, or even 4,000,000, on the terms sug- 
 gested by the Committee than to pay 2,000,000 
 which might sink in the course of nine years to 
 1,700,000 on the conditions contained in the Home 
 Rule Bill. The payment of the 3,000,000 is re- 
 commended by that kind of fairness which may be 
 identified with expediency. The Imperial House 
 of Commons has, in fact, granted Old Age Pensions 
 to a definite number of Irishmen. No doubt, as 
 I have already pointed out, the Old Age Pensions 
 Act ought, by Ministers who entertained the least 
 1 See p. 74, ante.
 
 8o THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 intention or hope of bringing in a Home Rule Bill, 
 never to have been extended to Ireland. But with 
 this individual pensioners have no concern. The 
 honour of the Imperial Parliament is at stake ; it 
 is certainly desirable that pensioners to whom 
 pensions have been granted should not lose by 
 the Home Rule Bill. Nor need British taxpayers 
 be without consolation. The liability to the 
 .3,000,000 payable to Irish pensioners will of 
 itself die off. In eight or ten years it will have 
 been .reduced almost to nothing ; in twenty years 
 it will practically have ceased to exist. The plan 
 of the Committee does not touch that supremacy of 
 the Imperial Parliament which the creation and the 
 powers of the Joint Exchequer Board practically 
 undermine. The provisions of the Home Rule 
 Bill retaining such supremacy, for whatever they 
 are worth, remain untouched by the financial 
 proposals of the Committee. The great and 
 crowning merit of the Committee's plan is that 
 it stimulates among Irishmen the sense that their 
 fortunes depend upon themselves. The third 
 leading principle 1 01 the Committee's plan is that 
 the obligation of Ireland to contribute to the 
 general expenditure of the realm is to be definitely 
 affirmed. 2 This, too, is all to the good. It recog- 
 nises a fact which no loyal Irishman can deny, that 
 the defence of Great Britain and Ireland is their 
 common concern. 
 
 The attitude of a Unionist towards every part of 
 the Home Rule Bill must be one of condemnation. 
 For he rightly contends that the grant of Home Rule 
 to Ireland is itself to be strenuously resisted. But 
 he may quite consistently maintain that, if Home 
 Rule is granted to Ireland, the financial policy of 
 the Committee is far preferable to the financial 
 
 1 See p. 74, ante, 
 
 * See Report of Committee, s. 62, (ii) p. 28. No Unionist need 
 admit that the recommendation is embodied in the Bill.
 
 RECONCILIATION RETARDED 81 
 
 policy of the Government. Nor can I doubt that 
 there will be found sincere Home Rulers who 
 assent to this conclusion. 
 
 My object in this part of my argument has been 
 to ascertain whether our new Constitution will 
 relieve the Imperial Parliament at Westminster 
 from the burden of dealing with Irish business. 
 The result of examining two leading features of 
 this Constitution is as follows : The presence of the 
 Irish delegation, consisting normally of 42 members, 
 and on the most critical occasions of some 65 
 members, provides a body who assuredly will, and 
 from their own point of view must, employ their 
 power at Westminster, reinforced as it will be by 
 the authority of the Irish Parliament at Dublin, 
 for the attainment of two objects, the first whereof 
 will be to abolish the restrictions placed by the 
 Home Rule Bill on the authority of the Irish Parlia- 
 ment, and the next will be to obtain for Ireland 
 additional subsidies or grants from Great Britain. 
 The financial policy of the Home Rule Bill of itself 
 provides for perpetual disputes between England 
 and Ireland which will mainly be decided by a 
 Board which will exercise powers inconsistent with 
 the real supremacy of the imperial Parliament, and 
 cannot command tne confidence at once of England 
 and of Ireland. 
 
 Perpetual demands made the subject of perpetual 
 debates or intrigues will hardly do much to lighten 
 the burden imposed upon the Imperial Parliament 
 by the need for managing Irish affairs which is by 
 far the most popular of modern arguments in favour 
 of Home Rule. 
 
 (c) THE BILL DOES NOT PROMOTE RECONCILIATION 
 WITH IRELAND 
 
 Few, indeed, are the Englishmen who would not 
 heartily welcome the Home Rule Bill, whatever it% 
 
 6. '
 
 82 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 intricacies or defects, if it gave a reasonable expecta- 
 tion of terminating the secular misunderstanding 
 between England and Ireland. But, to a reasonable 
 man, the Bill holds out no such hope. English 
 Home Rulers imagine that the opening of an Irish 
 Parliament will meet with Irish gratitude and be 
 greeted with Irish applause. In one sense this fore- 
 cast will be justified. Parliamentary Nationalists 
 will for the moment be pleased. On the opening of 
 the new Parliament, which Nationalism will identify 
 with the old Parliament of Ireland, there will at 
 Dublin be plenty of cheers. Green flags will be 
 hoisted far and wide ; a stray Union Jack or two 
 which witnesses the submission, and not the 
 triumph, of England will possibly be cheered by 
 the mob. The Lord Mayor will welcome the pre- 
 sence of George V., or even of the Lord-Lieutenant, 
 and will perhaps join in singing " God save the King," 
 if indeed he happens to know the tune. But, amid 
 all the cheers and raptures of the mob a reader of 
 history may call to mind the enthusiastic belief 
 of Grattan that the parliamentary independence of 
 Ireland would put an end for ever to every mis- 
 understanding between Ireland and England ; and 
 some old man here and there may painfully recall 
 the 6th of May, 1882, and the tragedy of the Phoenix 
 Park. Even the most light-hearted of politicians 
 will be compelled to recollect that the cheers of the 
 populace at Dublin will be met by the solemn 
 curses of the Protestants of Belfast. The cheers 
 of the Dublin mob will not be hypocritical. 
 The expressions of a crowd always in a sense 
 savour of truth, but the plaudits of the masses at 
 Dublin must mean very little. They will echo the 
 unfounded belief that Ireland has obtained that 
 national independence of which, let the Prime 
 Minister say what he will, the Home Rule Bill, with 
 its supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, with its 
 admission that the Imperial Parliament has the
 
 BILL BASED ON COMPROMISES 83 
 
 right to legislate for Ireland, with its restrictions on 
 Irish legislation unknown to every one of the British 
 Dominions, is the formal denial. Every revolution 
 must, for a moment, be popular with its advocates. 
 Yet it always is succeeded by disappointment. 
 No measure was ever more truly sanctioned by the 
 vast majority of the people than the Reform Act of 
 1832. It had agitated the country for about four 
 years. Yet Sydney Smith, even before the Bill 
 passed into law, warned his hearers in a speech as 
 sagacious as it was humorous against the pressing 
 peril of exaggerating the blessings which would 
 flow from one of the wisest pieces of legislation ever 
 passed by Parliament. He was right. Within two 
 years of the passing of the Reform Act the Whigs 
 had lost their popularity, and Peel, as the leader of 
 the Conservatives, was felt to be the most powerful 
 of our living statesmen. Gratitude is a personal 
 virtue or grace. It has no true application to 
 politics. 1 
 
 But there are special reasons why the Home Rule 
 Act can never command true popular enthusiasm. 
 It is based on compromises concealed by ambiguity. 
 It cannot and does not touch the roots of Ireland' s 
 sufferings and complaints. Ireland is a poor 
 country; the Home Rule Bill cannot give her riches. 
 The immediate effect of Home Rule, in spite of the 
 liberal donation of 2,000,000 presented to Ireland 
 by the British taxpayers, 2 will make Irishmen more 
 sensible than ever of the difficulty of their country 
 " living on its own." The Irish people have for now 
 more than forty years been led by fanatics and 
 zealots, who have dangled before the eyes of 
 Nationalists the freedom, the happiness, and the 
 prosperity to be created by Home Rule. There can 
 be nothing but disappointment when it is found that 
 
 1 See A Leap in the Dark, pp. 115, 116. 
 * See p. 64, ante.
 
 84 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 Home Rule introduces a system of economy suit- 
 able to the position of a country poor in natural 
 resources, which, as many Irishmen have been 
 taught to believe, need State aid for their develop- 
 ment. Economy means retrenchment. The cost 
 of the Post Office, for example, must be cut 
 down. Savings may possibly be effected in the 
 Irish judicial establishment. The cost of national 
 education must be diminished or at best must 
 not be suffered to increase. This reign of 
 economy or of parsimony must begin at a time 
 when the government of every civilised country 
 in Europe is carried on at a yearly increasing cost. 
 And Ireland suffers from one special difficulty 
 arising, not from bad laws or from short-sighted 
 statesmanship, but from the decrees of pro- 
 vidence. Ireland lies close to England, and Irish- 
 men of ability can obtain pecuniary rewards in 
 England which they cannot gain in the service 
 of Ireland. 1 Thrift, economy, and self-help are 
 high virtues, but they are not pleasant virtues ; 
 they never will gain, and never have gained popu- 
 larity for any form of government. Home Rule, 
 even under the strange shape which it assumes in 
 the Bill of 1912, does in some degree cut Ireland off 
 the resources of the Imperial Exchequer. It is, for 
 example, by no means plain that British taxpayers 
 will be, when Ireland shall have gotaGovernment and 
 Parliament of her own, under any constitutional or 
 moral obligation to carry further the policy of the 
 Irish Land Purchase Acts. If this be so, Irish ten- 
 ants may soon regret the day when the wealth of 
 the United Kingdom facilitated their purchase of the 
 land which they occupied. An Irish Cabinet may 
 conceivably come to doubt whether it was prudent 
 to take the Irish Post Office, which does not pay its 
 
 1 This fact is, at any rate, the cause, if it be not the entire vindi- 
 cation, of the necessity for offering to the Civil Service of Ireland 
 salaries perhaps out of proportion to the wealth of Ireland.
 
 THE IRISH REVENUE 85 
 
 way, out of the list of Reserved Services whereof 
 the cost falls on the Imperial Exchequer, and an 
 Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer will soon realise 
 that the 6,000,000, or more, of the Transferred Sum 
 on which Ireland has to count for the payment of 
 Irish Services will not increase with the increasing 
 cost of such services or with the diminishing pro- 
 ceeds of Irish revenue. 1 
 
 One conclusion is certain. If the revenue of 
 Ireland does not meet her wants it can be per- 
 manently increased only by the cutting down of 
 Irish expenditure or by the increase of Irish taxa- 
 tion. Neither process will be popular; the increase 
 of taxation may well render Home Rule, as estab- 
 lished by the Home Rule Bill of 1912, the object of 
 popular abhorrence. 2 
 
 Here we reach the very root of my difficulty in 
 believing that the Home Rule Bill will, in the long 
 run, conciliate the good-will of Ireland. If the pros- 
 perity which Home Rulers look for does not quickly 
 arise, and if ordinary Irishmen find that Home Rule 
 does not fulfil their expectations, it is easy enough 
 to see that their disappointment will be attributed 
 
 1 The policy of the Home Rule Bill is in reality based on the 
 assumptions that, under Home Rule, the revenue of Ireland will 
 constantly increase, and that the cost of the government of Ireland 
 admits of considerable and rapid diminution. These assumptions 
 may be hopes of a fatuous optimism, but are certainly not 
 supported by ascertained facts. 
 
 1 Bonaparte, when he seized power by the Coup (PEtat which 
 made him First Consul, showed his extraordinary sagacity by 
 his absolute refusal to increase the taxation of France, and this 
 at a time when the French Treasury was so empty of money that 
 even government officials could only with the greatest difficulty 
 obtain payment of their scanty salaries. He knew that France 
 was a rich country, and his refusal to levy new taxes ensured the 
 popularity of the Consulate and of the Empire. The Provisional 
 Government of 1848, in order to meet far smaller financial diffi- 
 culties, imposed a new tax upon the French people. The tax was 
 the ruin of the Republic : the small landowners rallied round 
 Louis Napoleon, sanctioned the Coup (PEtat of December 2, and 
 welcomed the revived Empire. 
 
 6*
 
 86 
 
 to the limitations, real or supposed, imposed by the 
 Home Rule Act on the independence of Ireland. 
 Every complaint which an Irish Nationalist could 
 direct against the Home Rule Bill of 1893 may, in 
 substance, be turned against the Home Rule Bill 
 of 1912, and in some respects the Home Rule Bill 
 now before Parliament is even more objectionable, 
 from a Nationalist point of view, than the Hpme 
 Rule Bill of I893. 1 Let us consider for a moment 
 some of the objections which Nationalists such 
 as Mr. J. Redmond or Mr. Sexton might bring 
 against the Bill which ministers are forcing through 
 Parliament without obtaining the assent of the 
 people. Such satisfaction as Nationalists may feel 
 absolutely depends on the new Constitution being 
 worked exactly in the way which they desire; 
 but there is no security whatever that this is the 
 way in which the Parliament at Westminster will 
 or can make the Bill work, for the Bill is based, 
 as I have proved, 2 on a monstrous piece of political 
 equivocation. The supremacy of the Imperial Par- 
 liament means, to Englishmen, even though Home 
 Rulers, some form of real power or sovereignty. 
 To Irish Nationalists it is an empty phrase, of 
 little meaning. But this ambiguity itself will often 
 fill Nationalists with sometimes reasonable and 
 sometimes unreasonable fears. The Imperial Par- 
 liament will, they may think, assert its power in 
 Ireland. The use of the veto to annul the effect 
 of an Irish Bill or the passing of any legislation 
 by the Parliament at Westminster which extends 
 to Ireland will fill every Irish Nationalist with 
 indignant resentment. 
 
 We may go further than this. The new Consti- 
 tution creates new elements of future discord. It 
 denies to Ireland the rights of a nation. It does 
 
 1 See Leap in the Dark, chap. iii. pp. 112-31. 
 * See pp. 35-41, ante.
 
 ELEMENTS OF DISCORD 87 
 
 not concede to her the full privileges of colonial 
 independence. It imposes upon her Government 
 and Parliament restrictions absolutely unknown to 
 New Zealand or any other Dominion. The Home 
 Rule Bill further, as interpreted by its authors, 1 
 violates the parliamentary traditions dearest to Irish 
 patriotism, for it gives to the Imperial, or British 
 Parliament, the effective power of repealing statutes 
 passed by the Irish Parliament, and also of im- 
 posing taxes upon Ireland. If these powers be not 
 a mere sham, Irish agitators will soon allege that 
 the authority conferred on the Imperial Parliament 
 revives at once the injustice of Poynings' Law, and 
 in substance re-enacts the Declaratory Act of 
 6 Geo. I. c. 5, the repeal whereof was the glory 
 of Grattan. Nor can any genuine Nationalist 
 acquiesce in the prohibition of Ireland arming, 
 even in self-defence. Mr. Childers, the ablest de- 
 fender of Irish Home Rule, though not, I imagine, 
 himself by birth an Irishman, asserts, on his own 
 authority, that Ireland does not want separate 
 armaments, and tells us that "the sporadic attempts 
 to discourage enlistment in the Imperial forces 
 are, as every sensible person should recognise, 
 the results of refusing Home Rule." 2 He, how- 
 ever, asserts and, from his own point of view, 
 most reasonably asserts that arrangements should 
 certainly be made to permit the raising of volunteer 
 forces in Ireland, and intimates the opinion that it 
 would be most convenient to leave matters with 
 regard to the organising and arming of volunteers 
 in Ireland in the hands of the Irish Legislature. 
 This is not the opinion of the men who have framed 
 the Home Rule Bill. They have studiously pro- 
 vided that the Irish Parliament shall not have 
 power to make laws with 'regard to "the Navy, 
 
 1 See Sir J. Simon, Parliamentary Debates, Dec. 2, 1912, col. 
 1946, and p. 57, ante. 
 1 Childers, Framework, etc., pp. 217-19
 
 88 
 
 the Army, the Territorial Force, or any other naval 
 or military force, or the defence of the realm, or 
 any other naval or military matter." : The reason 
 is obvious. Even Liberal Ministers must remember 
 the history of the Volunteers of 1782. The so-called 
 " policy of trust " is not found compatible with the 
 creation of an army which might take its commands 
 from the Irish Cabinet. Irishmen, whether Home 
 Rulers or Unionists, are generally, in regard to 
 Ireland, Protectionists. 2 It is certain that Irishmen 
 will not easily acquiesce in restrictions which pre- 
 vent the attempt to give prosperity to their country 
 by a protective policy. 
 
 Note, further, that our new Constitution has, to 
 a limited extent, a federal character ; but note, at the 
 same time, that the relation between England and 
 Ireland contemplated by the Home Rule Bill 
 involves the consequence that every act of the 
 Federal power which restrains Irish independence 
 will seem to Irishmen, and to a certain extent will 
 really be, the action of England. 
 
 The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 
 which determines whether an Irish Bill or an Irish 
 Act is unconstitutional, and therefore void, will be 
 to any Irishman not a Federal, but an English 
 Court. The extraordinary Joint Exchequer Board 3 
 will, to him, be in substance an English Board. 
 The Federal power, in short, will be to him the power 
 of England. To him a Viceroy who, instructed by 
 an English Ministry, vetoes Bills passed by an Irish 
 Parliament and approved of by the Irish people, will 
 be simply an English official who resists the will 
 of Ireland. The Imperial Parliament, whenever it 
 ventures to impose laws upon Ireland which may 
 not be popular with Irishmen, and, above all, if it 
 
 1 Cl. 2, sub-cl. 3. 
 
 * Such, for example, was that most distinguished Unionist, 
 Mr. Lecky. 
 8 See pp. 66-72, ante.
 
 PROBABILITIES OF FRICTION 89 
 
 tries to impose a new tax upon Ireland, will be re- 
 garded in Ireland, not as a Federal Assembly, but as 
 an English Parliament in which Ireland is inade- 
 quately represented. The collectors of every tax 
 levied in Ireland will be English officials, and just 
 for that reason specially unpopular. It is singularly 
 unlucky that the whole revenue of Ireland should, in 
 the first instance, be paid over to the Imperial, or, 
 as an ordinary Irishman will think, to the English 
 Exchequer. It is ten to one that the complicated 
 arrangement about the repayment to the Irish 
 Exchequer will never be properly understood by 
 Irish electors. They will certainly imagine that 
 any sum not paid back is, in reality, appropriated 
 by the Englisn Exchequer to English uses. And 
 even among the small body of Irishmen, who really 
 understand a needlessly complicated transaction, 
 there will be many persons who will maintain that 
 all the questions of finance which concern the re- 
 lation between England and Ireland are determined 
 by the Joint Exchequer Board whereof the majority 
 are officials of the English Government, who in fact 
 act as an English Board. This Board is quite as 
 likely to incline towards the Irish view of any 
 question brought before it as towards the English 
 view; but this statement is quite compatible with 
 the risk, that the Board will not command, on critical 
 occasions, the perfect confidence either of England or 
 of Ireland, and it needs little knowledge either of 
 English or of Irish history to feel assured that such 
 a Board will in Ireland, whenever it gives any de- 
 cision opposed to the feeling or the apparent 
 interest of Ireland, be denounced as a body of 
 Englishmen who are oppressing Ireland. 
 
 The Board, further, is absolutely certain to raise 
 discontent, and discontent of a very bitter kind, if 
 ever it decides that the condition of the Irish revenue 
 is such l that there ought to be a revision of the 
 
 1 See Home Rule Bill, cl. 26.
 
 9 o THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 financial arrangements laid down by the Home 
 Rule Bill for the purpose of securing a proper 
 contribution from Irish revenues towards the com- 
 mon expenditure of the United Kingdom, i.e. in 
 substance towards the common expenses of Ireland 
 and England. Is it possible to imagine that the 
 announcement that Ireland ought to support the 
 burden of taxation from which she may have been 
 long exempt will not excite the vehement protests 
 of Irishmen ? And the mere fact that the power 
 (which ought never to have been committed to any 
 Board whatever) of in effect determining whether 
 an occasion has arisen on which the Irish repre- 
 sentation at Westminster should be increased by 
 thirty members or more, is exercised by the Board 
 in regard to finance will, as I have already pointed 
 out, 1 all but inevitably raise the most burning of 
 questions between England and Ireland. It requires 
 no great foresight to perceive that, if the representa- 
 tion of Ireland ought to be increased whenever the 
 question arises whether Ireland is called upon to 
 contribute to the cost of Imperial expenditure, the 
 demand may be made that Gladstone's old idea 
 should be revived in another form, and that when- 
 ever any material change in the Home Rule Bill is 
 contemplated Ireland should have the same addition 
 to the number of her representatives in the Imperial 
 Parliament. True it is that Gladstone's idea abso- 
 lutely excluded representatives of Ireland from the 
 Parliament at Westminster unless a question arose 
 as to some change in the Home Rule Bill of 1886. 
 True it also is that, to grant the Irish demand for 
 additional representatives whenever the Bill is to 
 be modified, would be the sacrifice of the only benefit 
 which the Home Rule Bill confers upon England. 
 But it is not at all certain that it might not obtain 
 support from a majority of Liberals who were also 
 
 1 See p. 69, ante.
 
 FUTURE UNPOPULARITY OF BILL 91 
 
 Home Rulers. Partisanship has the keenest pre- 
 vision as to the effect of any measure on party 
 interests, and it is quite conceivable that some 
 Radicals and Socialists may already somewhat fear 
 the diminution of the number of Irish representa- 
 tives on whose co-operation the Coalition can at this 
 moment count. 
 
 However this may be, it is certain that the 
 Home Rule Bill, wnen it has passed into law, 
 will not be long popular in Ireland. It may be 
 the cause of an evil which the mass of Irish 
 Nationalists will not at first perceive. The Bill, 
 while it breaks up the political unity of the United 
 Kingdom, still chains together the two countries 
 which it forbids to continue one country. It thus 
 mixes up the government of Ireland with the 
 fluctuations of British party conflicts, and makes 
 impossible the one benefit which Home Rule might 
 conceivably confer upon the Irish people. I prefer 
 to quote, as ; I have often quoted, the words of 
 the sincerest of English Home Rulers, Lord 
 Morley of Blackburn. They were spoken in 1886. 
 They refer, indeed, to a scheme more compli- 
 cated in several respects than the present Home 
 Rule Bill; but they hit the evil of any scheme 
 of Home Rule which sends Irish representatives 
 to Westminster : 
 
 " Depend upon it that an Irish Legislature will 
 not be up to the magnitude of the enormous business 
 that is going to be cast upon it unless you leave all 
 the brains that Irish public men have got to do Irish 
 work in Ireland. Depend upon this, too, that if you 
 have one set of Irish members in London it is a 
 moral certainty that disturbing rivalries, disturbing 
 intrigues would spring up, and that the natural and 
 wholesome play of forces and parties and leaders in 
 the Irish Assembly would be complicated and con- 
 fused and thrown out of gear oy the separate
 
 92 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 representatives of the country. All this is bad 
 enough." l 
 
 Englishmen who hold that the Home Rule Bill 
 will, at any rate, conciliate Ireland are apt to assume 
 that the opinion of Parliamentary Nationalists repre- 
 sents the whole, or by far the most important, part 
 of the opinion of Ireland. This delusion may now 
 be dispelled by the one word " Ulster." On this 
 topic words published by me in 1893 represent my 
 matured belief in 1913 : 
 
 " Ulster, Protestant Ireland, and indeed, speaking 
 generally, all men of property in Ireland, whether 
 Protestant or Catholic, detest Home Rule. They 
 hate the new Constitution, they protest against the 
 new Constitution, they assert that they will to the 
 utmost of their ability resist the introduction and 
 impede the working of the new Constitution. Their 
 abhorrence of Home Rule may be groundless, their 
 threats may be baseless ; their power to give effect 
 to their menaces may have no existence. All that I 
 now contend is that the strongest, and the most 
 energetic, part of Irish society is in fact and in truth 
 bitterly opposed, not only to the details, but to the 
 fundamental principle, of the new polity. It avails 
 nothing to urge that the Protestants and the educated 
 Catholics are in a minority. This plea shows that 
 in Parliament they can be outvoted ; it does not 
 show that they will, or can, be pacified by a policy 
 which runs counter to their traditions, their interests, 
 and their sentiment. You cannot vote men into 
 content, you cannot coerce them into satisfaction." 2 
 
 The events of to-day add strength to my convic- 
 tions of 1893. The Covenant of Ulster, whether we 
 
 1 Mr. Morley at Newcastle, The Times, April 22, 1886. See 
 the whole passage cited in A Leap in the Dark, 2nd ed. pp. 39, 40. 
 * See A Leap in the Dark, 2nd ed. pp. 113, 114.
 
 ULSTER 93 
 
 approve of it or not, is no trifle. It is no matter 
 for jocosity; it is the voice of Protestant Ireland, 
 and in effect the voice of every Irish Unionist ; it 
 is a solemn protest against an act of outrageous 
 injustice. The bitterness of the men of Ulster is 
 explained and increased by a thought to which I 
 will only allude. It is the thought that, in a really 
 independent Ireland, they would nave the moral and 
 physical strength to hold their own. There is much 
 in nistory, both ancient and modern, which at any 
 rate proves that such an idea rests on something 
 much more solid than any form of braggadocio. 
 
 The position, then, of the Ulstermen in their own 
 eyes is this : Our fathers objected to the Act of 
 Union ; experience has taught us that the absolute 
 political unity of Great Britain and Ireland is the 
 guarantee of the maintenance of justice throughout 
 the United Kingdom. We are completely loyal to 
 the King and to the Parliament of the United King- 
 dom. We ask only to remain what we have been 
 for a century and more citizens of the United 
 Kingdom, subject to no Parliament but the Parlia- 
 ment of the United Kingdom. The proclamation, 
 " We will not have Home Rule," is a protest against 
 a double injustice. The one wrong is that we are 
 deprived ol the rights of citizens of the United 
 Kingdom ; the other wrong is that the power of the 
 United Kingdom is to be used for compelling us to 
 obey a Parliament to which we owe no allegiance, 
 and which, were Ireland an independent country, 
 would not dare to oppress us. This is assuredly an 
 ominous line of thought ; it may lead to very dis- 
 astrous results. 
 
 To the English Home Ruler who really and 
 seriously believes that the Home Rule Bill will 
 pour benefits and blessings on the whole United 
 Kingdom I have nothing to say but to deplore his 
 blindness and to warn him to think twice before 
 he assumes that the reconciliation of Ireland and
 
 94 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 England can in reality be achieved by a policy which 
 has already revived animosities which were dying 
 away, and, if it receives plaudits from the mob at 
 Dublin, provokes the stern indignation of all that is 
 best and strongest in Ireland. But in addressing 
 any Unionist I must add that no man who does not 
 feel absolutely convinced that the Home Rule Bill 
 will certainly tend towards the welfare of the 
 whole United Kingdom can for any minor object, 
 such as the maintenance of Free Trade, or the 
 promotion of Tariff Reform, dare to sanction, by 
 his vote or by his abstention from voting, a measure 
 which a quarter of the inhabitants of Ireland resent 
 as a gross injustice. 
 
 It is well, however, not to forget that, besides the 
 men of Ulster, there exists a small but energetic 
 body of Irishmen who, from the nature of things, 
 cannot accept the Home Rule Bill of 1912. What 
 may be the influence of the Sinn Fein, or of the 
 Gaelic League, it is not for me to determine. One, 
 at least, among the most eminent of Irish Unionists, 
 and one of the most patriotic of Irishmen, who is 
 now, to the great loss both of England and Ireland, 
 taken from us, feared that the influence of the Sinn 
 Fein might greatly increase. Each of the two bodies 
 represents a fanatical form of Nationalism. They 
 may, from fair-minded Englishmen, command a 
 certain respectful hostility because these two associa- 
 tions have seized hold of the true idea that Irishmen 
 can and should trust in their own energy and not 
 rely on advantages to be wrung from the Exchequer 
 of the United Kingdom. That each of these societies 
 is filled with hatred of England, or Great Britain, no 
 sane man will dispute. I cast my eyes upon a 
 pamphlet giving various answers to the question, 
 What is the use of reviving Irish ? The reply may 
 be summed up in one sentence. The revival of the 
 Irish language will promote separation from England. 
 Enthusiasm for this object blinds the pamphleteer
 
 GRAVE DANGER TO ENGLAND 95 
 
 to the plain fact that the men who have given real 
 fame to Ireland, such as Burke, or Grattan, wrote 
 and spoke English, and most of them could speak 
 no other tongue. Note, too, that the revival of the 
 Irish language is merely a step towards an agitation 
 which shall forbid the use of any but Irish goods, 
 and further that a system of voluntary protection 
 as rigid as public opinion will enforce, will, as the 
 Gaelic League declares, "give rise to abuses for 
 which it will be incumbent upon Irishmen to devise 
 a remedy." Is it possible to express in plainer 
 words the wish that British goods should first be 
 boycotted, and then be excluded from Ireland by a 
 protective tariff? There can be no man so blind 
 as not to see that the fanaticism of Nationalism 
 will certainly not be conciliated by a Home Rule 
 Bill which denies to an Irish Parliament the freedom 
 of taxation possessed by every Dominion through- 
 out the Empire. The optimist who believes that 
 either the Loyalists of Ulster, or the Nationalists to 
 whose sentiments the Sinn Fein and the Gaelic 
 League appeal, will be conciliated by the Home Rule 
 Bill of 1912 is at best a dreamer who has wandered 
 into, and cannot be induced to flee from, a fool's 
 paradise. 
 
 SECOND LEADING PROPOSITION. THE HOME RULE 
 BlLL THREATENS THE GRAVEST DANGERS TO ENGLAND. 
 
 (i) Enfeeblement of English Government. The 
 Home Rule Bill will produce the enfeeblement of 
 the Government of England. 
 
 The strength of our Government depends on the 
 admitted and real sovereignty of Parliament through- 
 out every part of the United Kingdom, and, in fact, 
 also throughout every island, such as Man or Jersey, 
 adjacent to England. Hence, at great crises, parlia- 
 mentary government has with us exhibited as much 
 energy as the most despotic ruler to be found on the 
 European Continent. Parliament could, and would 
 were the necessity acknowledged by the country,
 
 96 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 within twenty-four hours suspend the Habeas 
 Corpus Act. A Premier worthy of his position 
 would, if need be, act in a moment as if the Act 
 were suspended, and trust to a statute of Indem- 
 nity. In its action towards Foreign Powers a 
 Parliamentary Cabinet has at times shown the 
 same startling authority as the Parliament on 
 which its existence depended. The seizure by 
 armed force in 1807 of the Danish fleet, when 
 Denmark was at peace with this country, was the 
 salvation of England. The stroke was necessarily 
 carried out without parliamentary sanction. At a 
 later day l the purchase of the Suez Canal shares, 
 also a triumphant stroke of statesmanship, was 
 carried through in effect without parliamentary 
 sanction by a statesman convinced that his boldness 
 would receive the ratification of an omnipotent 
 Parliament. The Home Rule Bill, conceal the fact 
 as you may, strikes at the root of the supremacy of 
 the British Parliament. In Ireland, at least, it 
 establishes a system of dual control. Such control 
 necessarily means diminished strength. It, in fact, 
 introduces into the government of the United King- 
 dom an ill-regulated form of federalism. But federal 
 government, which inevitably involves distribution 
 of sovereign power, means at bottom comparatively 
 weak government. No country contains within 
 itself more force and power than do the United States 
 of America; but in 1861, when the very existence of 
 that Democratic Commonwealth was at stake, the 
 temporary feebleness of a Government created by 
 the Federal Constitution deprived the United States 
 of the power of defending Fort Sumter against the 
 rebels of South Carolina. I do not doubt that, 
 under Home Rule, the British Cabinet and the Irish 
 Cabinet might pursue the same united course of 
 action. So be it." But there is no certainty of this, 
 
 1 See Ajinual Register > 1875, pp. 119-126
 
 ENGLAND AND FEDERALISM 97 
 
 harmony, and disagreement will mean compromise 
 and feebleness. 
 
 (2) England unaccustomed to Federalism. England 
 herself, unaccustomed as she has always been to 
 any form of federalism, will find the greatest 
 difficulty in paying the respect which is due to 
 what may be called the federal spirit, or, in other 
 words, to the spirit of the Home Rule Bill. 
 
 Let my readers peruse with care the words of 
 Sir Frederick Pollock which I have already quoted. 1 
 They exactly express the ideas of a fair-minded 
 English convert to Home Rule. He believes that 
 the Home Rule Bill, when it comes into force, will 
 morally compel the Imperial Parliament, in spite of 
 its nominal supremacy, to " harden its heart against 
 all endeavours, from whatever quarter they may 
 proceed, to obtain any alteration in the scheme, 8 
 save as it may be required by the regularly 
 expressed will of Ireland as a whole. This 
 should be an understanding outside and above all 
 party divisions, British or Irish." And he holds 
 that the necessity for this understanding is not 
 affected by the fact that forty-two members from 
 Ireland will continue to sit at Westminster. I do 
 not accept his interpretation of the Bill. The excuse 
 for the retention of the Irish delegation was the 
 desire even of English Home Rulers to strengthen 
 the supremacy, weak though in fact it may be, of 
 the Parliament at Westminster. Grant, however, 
 for the sake of argument, that the Home Rule Bill 
 embodies the understanding suggested by this emi- 
 nent jurist. It is a self-denying ordinance to which 
 the Parliament at Westminster will never, in the 
 long run, submit. Will English Free Traders 
 tolerate the promotion in Ireland of Protection by 
 the means of bounties ? Will English humanitarians, 
 
 1 See p. 41, ante. 
 
 1 "Scheme," I suppose, means the Home Rule Act.
 
 98 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 manufacturers, or artisans bear with equanimity 
 the repeal in Ireland of factory laws if it offend 
 English humanity and may give some advantage 
 to Irish manufacturers over their English rivals? 
 Would English moralists see with equanimity a 
 quite possible attempt to add to Irish revenue by 
 me foundation of lotteries or the creation at Dublin 
 of a rival to Monte Carlo ? What will be the feeling 
 of the Nonconformist conscience if the Irish 
 Government contrives, without technically violating 
 the prohibition of laws which interfere with religious 
 equality, to confer pecuniary emoluments on the 
 Roman Catholic Church, which is after all the Church 
 of the majority of Irish people ? l What will be the 
 feelings of the British elector should British troops, 
 under British officers, be marched into Belfast to 
 enforce obedience to laws passed by the Parliament 
 at Dublin? I will not give any answer to these 
 questions. But I make one further inquiry, and 
 ask each of my readers to give it his own answer. 
 Is it credible that in any one of the cases I have 
 raised, and of a thousand more, where the preju- 
 dices, the moral convictions, the generosity of 
 Englishmen, or their sense of justice, are touched, 
 the Imperial Government and the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment will pay no more attention to what is taking 
 place in Ireland than they do to acts of oppression 
 or impolicy committed in, and sanctioned by, the 
 Government or the Legislature of some province 
 belonging to the Canadian Dominion or the Union 
 of South Africa? For note that this philosophic 
 indifference to the conduct of the Government of 
 Ireland will be required of a Parliament of which 
 the Home Rule Act itself will have declared that 
 " notwithstanding the establishment of the Irish 
 Parliament, or anything contained in this Act, the 
 
 1 It is not at all clear that, by a little judicious drafting, such a 
 law might not be made so as not to fall within the Home Rule Bill, 
 cl.3.
 
 PROLONGATION OF CONFLICT 99 
 
 supreme power and authority of the Parliament of 
 the United Kingdom shall remain unaffected and 
 undiminished over all persons, matters, and things 
 in Ireland and every part thereof." : 
 
 (3) Prolongation of the Home Rule conflict. The 
 Home Rule Bill) 2 is not the close, but the beginning, 
 of a lengthy conflict between England and Ireland. 
 I have already dwelt upon the kind of alterations 
 which even the most moderate of Irish Home 
 Rulers, and still more certainly every Irishman 
 who is a genuine Nationalist, will sooner or later 
 put forward. Ireland under Home Rule will insist 
 upon the rights or privileges, at lowest, of one of 
 our self-governing Dominions, and Irishmen in- 
 spired by genuine faith in the blessings of 
 Nationality will feel that even the practical inde- 
 pendence of a Dominion falls short of the just 
 claim of Ireland to independence, such as is pos- 
 sessed by Switzerland or Italy as an independent 
 nation. If Norway, without the proof of any serious 
 oppression on the part of her powerful neighbour, 
 could separate peaceably from Sweden, why, it will 
 be said, should England object to the separation of 
 Ireland from Great Britain? Irishmen are and 
 always have been for the most part Protectionists ; 
 they will soon demand for their Parliament that 
 power to introduce Protection into Ireland which 
 is possessed and may be exercised by the Parliament 
 of each one of the Dominions in regard to the 
 country which it governs. Irishmen and the Irish 
 Government will assuredly soon ask for an Irish 
 Army, and there are already English Home 
 Rulers who consider the claim to be just. Now the 
 perils involved in the grant of an armed force to 
 a semi-independent Ireland are so great, and may 
 soon become so pressing, that the matter is worm 
 
 1 See cl. i (2). 
 * See pp. 81-95,
 
 ioo THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 special consideration. The Home Rule Bill, as it 
 stands, does not permit the Irish Parliament to 
 pass a law for the raising of an Irish Army or even 
 an Irish force of Volunteers. 1 What, however, 
 would be the position of Mr. Asquith and his 
 colleagues if one of the first steps taken by an Irish 
 Parliament filled, be it remarked, as Mr. Asquith 
 hopes, with the " traditions " of the old Parliament 
 of Ireland were to pass resolutions that the raising 
 of a body of Irish Volunteers is as absolutely 
 necessary in, say 1914, as it was in 1782 ? This 
 end, be it remarked, may be attained without any 
 technical change of law. True it is that the Volun- 
 teer Acts do not apply to Ireland, but the Territorial 
 and Reserve Forces Act, 1907, does in strictness 
 extend to Ireland. 3 The Act has, I believe, not been 
 as yet applied to Ireland, but, with the assent of the 
 Army Council, it can assuredly be applied to Ireland 
 or to any part thereof. Now the Army Council is a 
 body pretty well under the control of a Secretary of 
 State in other words, of the Cabinet of the day. 
 A Government influenced by the spirit of Home 
 Rule could therefore at any moment, apply the 
 Territorial and Reserve Forces Act to Ireland, and 
 thereby, if the Home Rule Act were in existence, 
 create an Irish force or army composed in effect of 
 resident Irishmen. No doubt this Territorial Force 
 would be technically an army or force of the King, 
 but does any one really believe that this force 
 would not, in Ireland, be controlled by the Irish 
 Cabinet? Here we come round again to one of 
 those terrible ambiguities which make the Home 
 Rule Bill full of peril to every part of the United 
 Kingdom. The Lord-Lieutenant would, no doubt, 
 under instructions from England, try to carry out 
 
 1 See Bill, cl. 2 (3). 
 
 * See Territorial and Reserve Forces Act, 1907, sec. i, sub- 
 sec, i, and sec. 2.
 
 IRELAND AND THE ARMY 101 
 
 in regard to the Territorial Forces the instructions 
 of the British Cabinet ; but what would be the state 
 of things if an Irish Cabinet, supported by the Irish 
 Parliament, offered their resignation unless the 
 Cabinet were in reality allowed to control every 
 question having reference to what they would rightly 
 enough call the Irish Army? Our Ministers have 
 again and again been pressed with questions as to 
 how a Lord-Lieutenant would act if the instructions 
 received from London were diametrically opposed 
 to the advice given him by the Irish Cabinet. To 
 these inquiries no Minister has given, and no 
 Minister can give, a reply. But the silence or the 
 ambiguities of a Minister cannot get rid of the clear 
 answer given to any one who consults the history 
 of colonial constitutionalism. It is certain that the 
 Governor of every Dominion is more and more 
 guided or controlled by the advice in other words, 
 by the commands of the colonial Cabinet. The 
 reason is obvious. No colonial constitution could 
 be kept in working order if the Governor could not 
 find a Cabinet supported by the legislature of the 
 Dominion. The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland will 
 assuredly find himself very nearly in the position of 
 a colonial Governor. He, too, will find himself 
 driven to follow the advice of the Irish Cabinet, for 
 if he does not take this course the whole Home 
 Rule Constitution will, as regards Ireland, break 
 down. 
 
 Here we are forced upon a question which I 
 would willingly have avoided, but which I am com- 
 pelled to ask, and to the best of my ability answer. 
 Can we feel any confidence that an army raised 
 in Ireland, which is not only an army of Irishmen, 
 butaverydifferent thing an Irish Army, will support 
 the Government of what will still, I suppose, be mis- 
 called the United Kingdom, and the Parliament at 
 Westminster in any matter where there is a division 
 of opinion between the Government and the people 
 
 7*
 
 loa THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 of Ireland and the Government of Great Britain or, 
 as it will surely be called in Ireland, the English 
 Government? I know as well as any man how 
 much the military genius of Ireland has contributed 
 to the glory and the triumphs of British armies. I 
 know how faithfully Irish officers and Irish soldiers 
 have served the King of England; but then, the 
 United Kingdom has never known the spirit of 
 federalism. Under the Home Rule Bill, with all 
 its semi-federalism, the officers and soldiers alike 
 of an Irish Army may doubt whether their allegiance 
 is due to the Irish or to the Imperial Government, 
 or, as they would put it, to the King and Parliament 
 of Ireland, or to the King and Parliament of Eng- 
 land. 1 The officers, in short, and the soldiers of the 
 Irish Army would, each man, find his allegiance 
 divided and his conscience distracted by the very 
 problem which tormented the conscience of General 
 Lee, and the solution whereof led him to take up 
 arms against the United States. 2 This is a per- 
 plexity which has never hitherto harassed any Irish 
 soldier of the King. 
 
 In these circumstances, even our present Ministers 
 may naturally hesitate to yield to any demand for 
 an Irish Army. But they or their successors will, 
 under the Home Rule Act, find themselves in a 
 terribly difficult position. Concession to this de- 
 mand will endanger the peace of the United 
 Kingdom ; the refusal to grant it will mean the 
 renewal, under a singularly bitter form, of the old 
 conflict over Home Rule. 
 
 (4) The peril to English finance. It is for financiers 
 to examine with minuteness the finance of the Home 
 
 1 It is quite possible that matters connected with the administra- 
 tion of the Army in Ireland maybe transferred by the Government 
 of the United Kingdom, i.e. the British Cabinet, to the Govern- 
 ment of Ireland, i.e. the Irish Cabinet, under Clause 40. See 
 Birrell's answer to Amery, Times, November 6, 1912, p. 10. 
 
 * See p. 19, ante.
 
 PERIL TO ENGLISH FINANCE 103 
 
 Rule Bill, yet a mere constitutionalist may note that 
 in two cases, at least, Home Rule finance may shake 
 the credit of England. The security, in the first 
 place, for payment into the Imperial Exchequer of the 
 2,000,000 and more due as instalments or annuities 
 from purchasers under the Irish Land Purchase Act 
 is lessened by the Home Rule Bill. Under the Bill 
 the security is the Transferred Sum ; this replaces the 
 present security, which consists of the grants made 
 from the Imperial Exchequer in aid of local taxation. 
 The material difference is this : the deductions to- 
 day in respect of defaulters are made county by 
 county, so that the defaulter brings about a decrease 
 in the grant and a consequent increase in the rates 
 of the county. Hence the local ratepayers have an 
 inducement to bring pressure to bear on all annuity- 
 payers in the county to keep up their payments. This 
 personal inducement is lost under the Bill. There 
 is a great risk, at least, that the Irish Parliament 
 may make up the deductions, caused through the 
 defaulters, by way of a general tax imposed on the 
 whole of Ireland. But then, again, if there were a 
 considerable default made by the annuity-payers, 
 amounting, say, to a million, the deduction of this 
 sum from the Transferred Sum would throw out the 
 whole plan of Irish finance. If, as might probably 
 be the case, the Irish Parliament passed a resolution 
 that, on account of a bad season, the payment of the 
 annuities ought to be remitted, there would arise a 
 moral impossibility of the enforcement thereof by 
 the Imperial Parliament. In other words, under the 
 Home Rule Bill the payment of annuities under 
 the Land Act would constantly turn rather into 
 a national dispute than a question between the 
 Imperial Government and a limited number of Irish 
 farmers. 
 
 Turn now to another instance of the way in 
 which the finance of the Home Rule Bill may 
 affect English credit. If Ireland raised a loan
 
 io 4 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 on the security of the Transferred Sum the Joint 
 Exchequer Board a body created under an Act 
 of the Imperial Parliament would see to the 
 payment of the interest thereof from the Trans- 
 ferred Sum. 1 Suppose that Ireland were to fail 
 in the due payment of such interest, is it not certain 
 that creditors would hold that the credit of England 
 was pledged for Irish solvency ? From whichever 
 side the matter is looked at, Irish finance is, under 
 the Bill, hopelessly mixed up with the finances of 
 the United Kingdom. 
 
 (5) The encouragement of spurious Nationalism. 
 When Home Rule was, some twenty-six years ago, 
 offered to the acceptance of England by the eloquence 
 of Gladstone, it was presented to the people as the 
 one means of closing the secular controversy 
 between England and Ireland, and as the only 
 method for meeting the special wants and desires 
 of the Irish people. No one, I venture to say, in 
 1886, seriously proposed to disturb that Union with 
 Scotland which was the greatest triumph of Whig 
 statesmanship, and has, in fact, brought about the 
 complete political unity of Great Britain. I doubt 
 whether, in 1886, twenty Members of Parliament 
 from among the English or Scottish supporters of 
 Gladstone's Home Rule Bill were prepared to 
 advocate the creation of a Scottish Cabinet and 
 a Scottish Parliament. Few indeed were the 
 Gladstonians who in 1886 had any serious thought 
 of granting Home Rule to Wales. To-day an 
 English Premier wishes not only to relax or de- 
 stroy the union with Scotland, as well as the union 
 with Ireland, but also to put an end to that unity 
 between England and Wales which has been the 
 work of centuries. In a strange fit of historical 
 forgetfulness or ignorance, Mr. Asquith wishes 
 to renew the traditions of the old Parliament of 
 
 1 See cl. 23.
 
 SPURIOUS NATIONALISM 105 
 
 Scotland, 1 and apparently also of the Parliament 
 of Ireland. Englishmen of good education are often 
 totally ignorant as to the history of the Scottish 
 Parliament, and are under strange delusions as to 
 the parliamentary history of Ireland. One meets 
 gentlemen of intelligence who find it hard to dis- 
 tinguish between the union of Crowns under James I. 
 of England and the union of Parliaments under Anne. 
 But I had not expected to hear an English Prime 
 Minister express tne wish to revive the " traditions" 
 of the ancient Parliament either of Scotland or of 
 Ireland. Does he know that the tradition of the 
 Scottish Parliament was to look upon England as 
 a foreign and hostile country, and that, not two 
 years before the passing of the Act of Union, that 
 Parliament had passed Acts intended, on the death 
 of Anne, to destroy the personal union of Crowns 
 and to prepare for war with England? Does he 
 know that the Union with Scotland for the first 
 time established a spirit of peace throughout the 
 whole of Great Britain ? Does he know, or has he 
 ever reflected, on the undoubted fact that the true 
 genius of Scotland never earned the recognition of 
 Europe till the Union with England had appeased 
 animosities which were the growth of centuries ? 
 Does he remember, or has he ever noted, that Adam 
 
 1 " When," he says, " we go on, as I hope we shall go on, in time 
 to deal with this problem in relation to Scotland, I think Scotch 
 sentiment will also demand that whatever body is created there 
 shall go by the name of Parliament,' and recall such traditions as 
 are venerable in the institution which was extinguished by the Act 
 of Union between England and Scotland. Historical associations 
 and recent precedent seem to favour this name, and, as the 
 serious question is not by what name the body shall be called, 
 but what shall be the powers with which it shall be vested and 
 its relation to the Imperial Parliament, I think the Committee 
 will agree that on the whole this change in nomenclature pro- 
 posed in the Bill is a good one/' (Parliamentary Debates, June 18, 
 1912, col. 1568). Compare Asquith, Par/. Deb., May 9, 1912, 
 cols. 692-4, and comment by Mr. Ronald M'Neill, ibid. June 18, 
 1912, col. 1568, and Mr. Sandys, col. i >;6.
 
 io6 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 Smith, David Hume, Burns, and Walter Scott 
 were the fruit of a happy condition of things under 
 which the true national spirit of Scotland was at 
 last, in consequence of the Union, diverted from 
 animosity towards England? Has Mr. Asquith, I 
 wonder, ever read a letter written by Scott in which 
 that greatest and truest of Scottish Nationalists 
 tells Miss Edgeworth that, had he lived in 1707, he 
 would have resigned his life to have prevented the 
 Union between England and Scotland, but that in 
 1825 he is sensible that it was a wise scheme? 1 
 Never did I witness a more perverse change of opinion 
 than is displayed by the so-called Liberals of to- 
 day, who are attempting, under the influence of 
 partisanship, to arouse in Scotland and in Wales 
 the cry for a Scottish and a Welsh Parliament. Has 
 Mr. Asquith entirely forgotten that the tradition of 
 the Irish Parliament was the constant denial of and 
 opposition to the right, which the Home Rule Bill 
 deliberately sanctions, of the Parliament at West- 
 minster to legislate in any way for Ireland ? The 
 Home Rule Bill is likely to raise up a new form of 
 Nationalism far more dangerous than any spirit 
 which Mr. Redmond and his allies can invoke. It 
 is more than possible that Ulstermen, filled with just 
 anger at English desertion, may bethink themselves 
 that an independent Ireland loosed entirely from 
 the English party system, an Ireland in which 
 Ulster would play a leading part, may be better 
 than a scheme of Home Rule which denies the 
 equality of English citizens to the classes most 
 capable of governing Ireland. The most formidable 
 of Irish leaders was Parnell. He was a landlord. 
 He was a Protestant. England may dread the day, 
 which I trust may never dawn, when Ulstermen 
 join hands with the fanatics of the Sinn Fein, and 
 a party of true Nationalists is headed by men whose 
 
 1 Scott's Familiar Letters, il pp. 311, 312.
 
 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 107 
 
 attachment to England, being changed into hatred, 
 turn against England the strength of Parnell without 
 its being diminished by his weaknesses or his vices. 
 General conclusions. The folly and the danger 
 of the attempt to introduce into the relation be- 
 tween England and Ireland an artificial Federalism 
 is patent. The federal system has no solid basis in 
 the history or the wants of either country. It has 
 no real value to any man inspired with the spirit of 
 Irish Nationalism, except as one of the means for 
 carrying further the agitation for Home Rule, and 
 obtaining, first, colonial, and ultimately national inde- 
 pendence. The peril of the introduction of Federal- 
 ism into the United Kingdom is the greater because 
 it involves the assumption that this Home Rule Bill, 
 bad enough in itself, affords a sort of model for the 
 proper government of Scotland and of Wales. Nor 
 does the evil to be expected from this Bill end here. 
 Ireland, though for an indefinite time she is not to 
 contribute towards the cost of defending the Empire, 
 is to be granted forty-two representatives in the Par- 
 liament at Westminster. What will our Liberals 
 say if they find that they have roused up in the 
 Australian Commonwealth or in the Canadian 
 Dominion a demand that Canada and Australia 
 shall be directly represented in the Imperial Par- 
 liament ? It would not surprise me to find that the 
 perfectly rational effort to create a real alliance 
 between England and her self-governing Dominions 
 under which they shall each and all join with 
 England in defence of our common Empire may be 
 delayed, thwarted, or, though it now has great 
 chances of success, be rendered abortive by the 
 senseless attempt to mix up so-called Imperial 
 Federalism, which I should prefer to term Imperial 
 Alliance, with the attempt to federalise the United 
 Kingdom. In any case, I am well assured that the 
 spirit of Nationalism is too serious a matter to be 
 made the plaything or the tool of partisanship.
 
 io8 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 
 
 There must be many patriots who, if they in any 
 measure agree with my criticism on our new Con- 
 stitution, will join with me in one reflection which 
 should never be long absent from our minds. 
 Honest Home Rulers must admit that the policy 
 of Home Rule involves a gigantic change in the 
 whole character of our Constitution. It is a policy 
 which, when once understood, will be to every 
 foreigner a policy which weakens the whole United 
 Kingdom. Federalism, Home Rule, the colonial 
 independence of Ireland, or whatever be the name 
 by which a Home Ruler may prefer to describe the 
 aim of the Home Rule Bill, bears on its very face one 
 characteristic. It is assuredly not a step towards 
 national unity ; it is a very long step towards 
 separation. Every foreign rower will see in the 
 enactment of the Home Rule Act a sign, not of 
 England's power, but of England's feebleness. The 
 times are critical. Europe is dominated by great 
 military Powers. A patriot may well ask himself 
 whether this is a period when the oldest and 
 hitherto the most powerful among the free States 
 in Europe can wisely show to all the world signs 
 of decrepitude. Something may here be learned 
 from recent experience. Many of us can remember 
 the time when we were all told, and some of us 
 believed, that generous concessions to a foe after 
 England's defeat at Majuba would be a moral 
 victory and impress upon the world the greatness 
 of England's magnanimity. These prophecies of 
 credulous optimists have been utterly confuted by 
 events. Majuba remains the disgrace, not the glory, 
 of England. The war in South Africa was the price 
 of ill-timed concessions ; victory restored the credit 
 of our country, and victory alone made possible a 
 policy of magnanimity. The final acceptance by the 
 English people of the Home Rule Bill of 1912, or 1914, 
 will be our, political Majuba. Whether England 
 will be able to retrieve her honour and thus regain
 
 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 109 
 
 her power must depend upon events which cannot 
 be predicted by the boldest of statesmen or by the 
 most impudent of soothsayers. 
 
 My criticism of our new Constitution is ended ; 
 it leads to two distinct conclusions. 
 
 First, the Home Rule Bill bestows no material 
 benefit whatever on England. 
 
 The Bill in reality does not preserve, but destroys, 
 the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, and it 
 achieves this end in such a form as to create con- 
 stant controversy between the so-called Imperial 
 Parliament and the newly created Parliament of 
 Ireland. The Bill does not free the Parliament at 
 Westminster from the burden of governing Ireland, 
 for it ties England and Ireland together, not by the 
 link of an equal union, but by bonds which, because 
 of their injustice to each country, will irritate English- 
 men as much as Irishmen. The Bill produces no 
 reconciliation between England and Ireland ; it 
 prolongs and embitters the controversy over Home 
 Rule, and places weapons in the hands of Irish 
 agitators which, as far as constitutional arrange- 
 ments can deprive the stronger of two countries of its 
 superiority, secure the victory of Irish Nationalism. 
 
 Secondly, the Bill threatens England, and indeed 
 the whole United Kingdom, with pressing danger, for 
 it encourages spurious Nationalism, and will be to 
 all foreign nations the sign of England's declining 
 power.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. At this supreme crisis, 
 which for good or bad must affect the whole fortune 
 of England, it will be well, before considering what 
 may be the specific duties of Unionists, to insist 
 upon two or three preliminary observations. 
 
 The policy of Unionists must absolutely coincide 
 with their duty as patriots. Their one effort 
 ought to be to preserve by every lawful means the 
 political unity of the still United Kingdom. This 
 was their duty and their policy in 1886 and in 1893 ; 
 it is still their duty and their policy in 1913. There 
 is no possibility of compromise between the policy 
 of Unionism and the policy of Home Rule. 
 Unionists themselves often find it hard to face 
 this plain fact. They are daunted by the bold 
 assertion, hazarded by Home Rulers or Separat- 
 ists, that the Act of Union has brought no benefit 
 whatever to the United Kingdom. This allega- 
 tion is untrue. The Act of Union has brought 
 great advantages to the whole of our common 
 country. This Act has for now more than a century 
 been the safeguard of Great Britain and Ireland 
 against any rebellion even faintly resembling the 
 savage rising of 1798, and its almost equally savage 
 suppression. The Act of Union has slowly but for 
 ever given to all Roman Catholics, whether English 
 or Irish, the political rights of every citizen of the
 
 ULSTER AND THE UNION in 
 
 United Kingdom. It has secured the strenuous 
 loyalty to the Union of every Protestant throughout 
 Ireland and of hosts of Roman Catholics. We are 
 called upon, especially by Home Rulers, to remember 
 many of the traditions of Irish history which for 
 the peace and prosperity of Ireland ought to be 
 allowed to fall into oblivion ; but an Englishman is 
 hardly ever reminded of one circumstance which 
 is no tradition, but an indisputable historical fact 
 namely, that the loyalty of Ulster has been the indu- 
 bitable result of that Union with Great Britain of 
 which in 1800 Ulstermen were the most dangerous 
 and the most serious opponents. Many of the men 
 of Ulster had strengthened the resistance of the 
 Thirteen Colonies to the authority of the British 
 Parliament. The terrible calamity of 1798 was, it 
 must be remembered, the result of that misgovern- 
 ment of Ireland by an Irish Parliament whereof 
 Mr. Asquith wishes to revive the traditions. 1 But 
 the true peril of 1798 was the possibility that the 
 men of Ulster might be found ranged in the ranks 
 of the rebels. No one can now doubt that the Ulster 
 of 1913 demands nothing but the maintenance of the 
 Union with Great Britain. Gladstone himself was 
 perplexed by the question, why it was that Ulster- 
 men whose grandfathers were the opponents of the 
 Union had become the strongest of Unionists ? He 
 was puzzled because he refused to see that the 
 cause of this revolution in opinion was to be found 
 in the Act of Union itself. The true vindication, 
 then, of that great statute is that the Act has 
 created the loyalty of Ulster. The Act of Union 
 has, step by step, yet certainly, removed most of 
 Ireland's grievances. 2 The Act of Union has made 
 
 1 See p. 105, ante. 
 
 1 Irish Home Rulers, in common with most advocates of change, 
 whether it be desirable or undesirable, constantly confuse griev- 
 ances that is, wrongs caused by bad laws with sufferings or 
 misfortunes with which law has little concern.
 
 ii2 THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 it possible to use the credit and wealth of the whole 
 United Kingdom for the advantage of Ireland, and 
 thus, without the violence and injustice of revolution, 
 turn the tenants of Ireland into the owners of the land 
 of which they have been the occupiers. This stroke 
 of statesmanship is grounded on the Act of Union. 
 But it is in a special sense the glory of Unionist policy. 
 It is a joy to remember that John Bright, the most 
 strenuous of Unionists, was almost the first English 
 Minister whose broad good sense convinced him 
 that the policy of the Land Purchase Acts was the 
 fair, though indirect, answer to the demand for 
 Home Rule or Repeal. The gradual indifference of 
 the peasant proprietors, or small land-owners, of 
 Ireland to the cry for Home Rule, which never met 
 their real needs, is the vindication of the Land 
 Purchase Acts, and these statutes are the fruit of 
 the Union between Great Britain and Ireland. A 
 law must be judged by its results. There is no 
 reason why any Englishman should, at this time of 
 day, fear to speak of 1800 or of the Act of Union. 
 
 If some Unionists are discouraged by the delusion 
 that the Act of Union has not been fruitful of good 
 results, honest Home Rulers fail to understand why 
 it is that, among all Unionists, the Home Rule Bill 
 of 1912 excites intense hostility. Our enmity is 
 caused in part by the sense that the Home Rule 
 Bill of 1912 is more unfair to England than were 
 the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and of 1893. But the 
 bitterness of our opposition is intensified by 
 the conduct of the Coalition by whom England 
 has the misfortune to be governed. A combina- 
 tion of discordant parties is attempting to drive 
 through Parliament, without an appeal to the 
 electors, a policy which has been twice deliberately 
 rejected by the electorate of the United Kingdom. 
 
 We detest the Home Rule Bill, moreover, because 
 it inflicts upon Ulster an intolerable wrong ; for it 
 takes from the Protestants of that part of the United
 
 RISK OF CIVIL WAR 113 
 
 Kingdom the right to be really and directly governed 
 by the Imperial Parliament, and by the Imperial 
 Parliament alone. This hateful measure threatens 
 us all with the outbreak of civil war in Ireland. 
 This fact is one to which no Englishman, whatever 
 his own political convictions, has the right to shut 
 his eyes. When the Thirteen Colonies offered re- 
 sistance to laws actually passed by the British 
 Parliament there were plenty of arguments and 
 arguments not in themselves absurd for making 
 no concession to rebels. Burke's reply was summed 
 up in the dictum that, "No man will be argued into 
 slavery." His words passed unheeded. But Burke, 
 as every man now admits, was right. When I am 
 told that Ulster ought not to object to being forced 
 under the rule of a Government which every Ulster- 
 man abhors and contemns, and also to being 
 deprived of the protection of the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment at Westminster, to which they own allegiance, 
 I am reminded that men will not be argued into 
 slavery. But I do not wish for a moment to give 
 undue prominence to the protests, however just, or 
 the wishes, however strong, of Ulster. My whole 
 line of reasoning, as every reader of candour must 
 allow, is based upon the conviction, for which I tender 
 definite reasons, that Home Rule threatens to bring 
 ruin, not only upon Ulster, but upon Englishmen 
 and Irishmen alike. Every loyal citizen of the 
 United Kingdom ought in general, and as a para- 
 mount duty, to obey the law of the land, or, in 
 other words, the clearly and indubitably expressed 
 will of the nation. But this duty of absolute 
 obedience is qualified by two considerations to 
 which Unionists and Home Rulers alike must give 
 heed. For at a crisis which gives rise to the 
 horrible possibility of civil war laxity of thought 
 may be the source of infinite peril. The first 
 consideration is that such obedience can be due 
 only when a law is the clear and undoubted ex- 
 
 8
 
 n 4 THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 pression of the will of the nation. The second is 
 that there may exist acts of oppression on the part of 
 a democracy, no less than of a king, which justify 
 resistance to law, or, in other words, rebellion. It 
 is idle to suppose that the existence or non-existence 
 of these conditions can be determined by merely 
 technical rules. Grave indeed is the responsibility 
 of any one who excites rebellion ; graver still is the 
 responsibility of any man or any party of men by 
 whom acts of oppression are, even under legal 
 form, committed, which to the sufferers seem, not 
 unreasonably, to justify rebellion. These are 
 principles which I believe no Englishman, and 
 certainly no man who, like myself, has imbibed 
 Whig traditions, will ever deny. No doubt they are 
 difficult of application still I implore each of my 
 readers to bear them in mind, for they are principles 
 which must, to a great extent, control the action of 
 Unionists. 
 
 SPECIFIC DUTIES OF UNIONISTS. On this matter 
 my whole aim is to speak the truth as I see it, 
 whether it pleases or displeases my readers. I am 
 no politician. I have no constituency to dread or 
 to flatter. No man of sense, I trust, will blame me if 
 my opinion as to the conduct required at a perplexed 
 and terrible crisis leads on some points to definite 
 conclusions and on some other points suggests only 
 doubt and hesitation. 
 
 First duty. All sincere Unionists are bound to 
 close up their ranks and stand shoulder to shoulder 
 in resistance to the Home Rule Bill. 
 
 In this contest there should be no difference 
 whatever between Free Traders and Tariff Re- 
 formers. The unity of the nation is at stake. We 
 must resist Home Rule, as the Northern States of 
 America resisted Secession. Nowhere ought one 
 Unionist candidate to be found opposing another 
 Unionist candidate. We have paid too dear for the 
 blunder of 1906. It is for our leaders to provide
 
 THE COUNTRY SHOULD DECIDE n<; 
 
 the means by which differences of opinion on fiscal 
 and other subordinate questions may best be 
 removed. Unity, and again unity, and nothing but 
 unity, must be the watchword of Unionism. 
 
 Second duty. The object of all sincere Unionists 
 should be to secure at all costs that the Home Rule 
 Bill shall not be transformed into the Home Rule 
 Act until the plain issue, Shall or shall not the Home 
 Rule Bill, 1912, pass into law ? has been deliberately, 
 fairly, and squarely put before the present elector- 
 ate, and has received an unmistakable answer. 1 
 One main part of this duty, as far as British 
 Unionists are concerned, must be to spare no 
 labour or expense in making audible to every 
 elector throughout Great Britain the bitter cry of 
 Ulster. But, as every Ulsterman would agree, it 
 would be a dangerous error to allow any Home 
 Ruler to foster the delusion that the resistance of 
 Ulster was the sole, or even, from one point of 
 view, the main objection to a policy of Home Rule 
 for Ireland. The fatal objection to this policy, 
 apart from its gross injustice to Ulster, is, that it 
 threatens ruin to every part of the United Kingdom. 
 I doubt not that when the clear issue, Shall or 
 shall not the Home Rule, Bill, 1912, pass into law? 
 is laid before the present electorate, the people of 
 Great Britain will answer, with the people of ulster, 
 " We will not have Home Rule." 
 
 At this stage of my argument I shall be met by 
 
 1 Of course to turn the present Cabinet out of office would, were 
 it possible, be the best way of putting an end to the Home 
 Rule Bill. It would obviously lead rapidly to a General Election 
 which would make apparent to all the world whether the Home 
 Rule Bill was or was not accepted by the electorate. It may be 
 well to add, in order to prevent misunderstanding, that a Referen- 
 dum, carried out with absolute fairness, would be a much better 
 form of appeal to the people than even a General Election. But 
 it is hard to believe that, in the midst of this hot party conflict, a 
 thoroughly well considered form of Referendum could be enacted, or 
 that we could count upon a Referendum being fairly carried out 
 by the present Government.
 
 n6 THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 the question, What conduct are you prepared to 
 recommend if the electors should return to the 
 newly elected House of Commons a majority of 
 Home Rulers ? My reply is this : I will not raise 
 cases on the Constitution. I will not try to give 
 an opinion upon a case which has not yet arisen 
 and may probably never arise. The conduct of 
 Unionists, if defeated at the next General Election, 
 must depend upon circumstances which no human 
 being can foresee. The proper attitude of Unionists 
 would necessarily be dependent, for instance, upon 
 the number, the nature, and the character of the 
 majority by which they were defeated ; how far 
 Home Rule has been really placed before the country; 
 whether some question e.g. the position to be 
 taken up by England in a European war were 
 not the matter on which the election really and 
 substantially turned ; whether the dissolution was 
 not started upon the people by surprise without 
 giving them time to consider the result of their 
 vote in regard to Home Rule. These and possibly 
 many other matters would have to be weighed 
 and answered by an honest man called upon to 
 determine what might be the duties of Unionists 
 in a situation which has not yet arisen a defeat, 
 namely, of the Unionists on a dissolution before the 
 Home Rule Bill shall have passed into law. This 
 is a position of things which Ministers, to judge 
 from their conduct, are resolved shall never arise. 
 They are resolved, as everybody sees, that the 
 Home Rule Bill shall, under the Parliament Act, 
 be turned into the Home Rule Act before a 
 General Election shall provide any sort of appeal 
 to the people. I absolutely decline, in these circum- 
 stances, to answer inquiries which are at present 
 in strictness unanswerable. One statement alone 
 may, I think, reasonably be made. A General 
 Election, whilst the Home Rule Bill is nothing but a 
 Bill, a General Election fairly conducted and in which
 
 NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY 117 
 
 the sole and real issue before the electors shall have 
 been their approval or disapproval of the Home Rule 
 Bill, would, if such an appeal to the country were 
 answered by a return to Parliament of a large and 
 substantial majority of Home Rulers, manifestly 
 strengthen the case in favour of some form of Home 
 Rule. But the occurrence of this possible calamity 
 is highly improbable. Englishmen think and act 
 slowly, but they have never in the long run proved 
 deaf to the requirements of justice. There is little 
 risk that, when the whole nature and effects of the 
 Home Rule Bill are made clear to the mass of the 
 electors, they will expel from the United Kingdom 
 the most loyal of Unionists, who ask for nothing 
 else than that they should continue to be governed, 
 in common with Englishmen and Scotsmen, as 
 they have been for more than a hundred and ten 
 years, by the Imperial Parliament sitting at West- 
 minster, and by the Imperial Parliament alone. 
 
 Third duty. If the Government, without any dis- 
 solution of Parliament, avail themselves of the 
 Parliament Act to transform the Home Rule Bill 
 into the Home Rule Act, 1914, it will be in form a 
 law but will lack all constitutional authority, and 
 the duty of Unionists will be to treat it as a measure 
 which lacks the sanction of the nation. 
 
 To this conclusion I have come advisedly and 
 after due consideration. The grounds for it admit of 
 perfectly definite statement. 
 
 I. Why the Act will lack Constitutional Authority * 
 
 (i) The Act will violate the principle that no Bill 
 which changes the foundations of the Constitution 
 should pass into law until it has obtained, directly 
 or indirectly, the assent of the electors. 
 
 This principle has been tacitly but practically 
 recognised by statesmen and by the country for 
 
 1 See Rights of Citizenship, with Preface by the Marquess of 
 Lansdowne, K.G., chaps iv. and vi. 
 
 8*
 
 n8 THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 at least eighty years. Let me give a few examples 
 as illustrating its nature and application. 
 
 Take, first, the great Reform Act of 1832. The 
 leading facts, put shortly, are full of instruction. 
 Parliament, in consequence of the death of 
 George IV., was dissolved in 1830. The Ministry 
 of Lord Grey, which came into office in that year, 
 was pledged to carry Reform. From March i, 1831, 
 when Lord John Russell introduced the first and 
 carefully considered Reform Bill into Parliament, 
 till the passing of the Reform Act in its third form, 
 the principles of the reforms proposed by the Whigs 
 were known and discussed throughout the length 
 and breadth of the United Kingdom. The Bill was 
 carried to the watchword, " The Bill, the whole 
 Bill, and nothing but the Bill." To quote Macaulay's 
 words in 1831, an impartial observer could " see only 
 one question in the State the question of Reform ; 
 only two parties the friends of the Bill and its 
 enemies." 1 
 
 Even in the unreformed House of Commons 
 reformers obtained for the first reading a majority 
 of 302 to 301. A dissolution immediately followed. 
 In the new Parliament, still unreformed, the Bill 
 passed the Commons by 345 to 236 votes. The 
 reers exerted their whole power of opposition. 
 They rejected the second Bill on September 22, 
 1831, by 199 to 158. In March 1832 the third 
 Reform Bill was passed by the Commons. Of the 
 struggle carried on by the King, now alarmed by 
 reform, and the House of Lords, the majority 
 of whom thoroughly hated reform, it is not neces- 
 sary to state the details. The point to be noted 
 is that the whole position of affairs was known 
 to the whole people. A defeat of the Bill in the 
 House of Lords, May 7, 1832, caused the resignation 
 of the Whig Ministry. The Duke of Wellington 
 thereupon tried, and failed, to form a Tory Ministry. 
 1 Walpole, Hist, of England, vol. ii. p. 656.
 
 THE COUNTRY SHOULD DECIDE 119 
 
 The King consented to the creation of Peers. The 
 Whig Ministry returned to office. The Lords gave 
 way, and in June 1832 the great Reform Act was 
 passed. An impartial historian need not blame either 
 the reformers or the anti-reformers. The Reform Act 
 embodied an immense alteration in the Constitution. 
 It was right that it should be carried, for it in the 
 main corresponded to the needs of the country, 
 and represented the indubitable will of the nation. 
 But it was well also that a fundamental change 
 in the Constitution should not be carried through 
 until the will of the nation had been thoroughly 
 ascertained. The people fully ratified the reform 
 of 1832. To the first Reformed House of Commons 
 there were returned 486 Liberals against 172 Con- 
 servatives. What I cannot understand is how any 
 man can deny that the principles of the great Whig 
 Reform Bill met with the deliberate, direct, and 
 undoubted approval of the country. 1 
 
 Consider, again, the Act of 1869 which disestab- 
 lished the Irish Church. The measure may have 
 been wise or unwise. With this I am not concerned ; 
 the essential point, for my present purpose, is to note 
 that Gladstone, when leader of the Opposition in 
 1868, laid before the House of Commons resolutions 
 for the disestablishment of the Irish Church. Some 
 of these resolutions were carried, and a dissolution 
 of Parliament recommended by Mr. Disraeli, 
 then Premier, immediately followed. The Disestab- 
 lishment of the Irish Church was the primary 
 and leading question of the moment. The dissolu- 
 tion gave to Mr. Gladstone a decisive majority. 3 
 
 1 No one who gives any thought to constitutional contests can 
 doubt that, on any matter worth discussion, the will of the electors 
 or of the nation never represents strict unanimity. Of course 
 there existed, during the contest over the great Reform Bill, a Tory 
 minority of greater numbers and power than the Whig Reformers 
 were ready to recognise. 
 
 * The Third Reading of the Bill in the House of Commons was 
 carried by 362 to 247.
 
 izo THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 Disraeli, most rightly, at once resigned office. The 
 Bill for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church 
 was ultimately passed into law, though undoubtedly 
 modified after consultation with the Conservative 
 leaders. But it surely cannot be said that the Bill 
 was carried without the definite assent or against 
 the will of the electors. I take the Reform Act, 
 1832, and the Disestablishment of the Irish Church 
 Act, 1869, as examples of Acts carried with the 
 direct sanction of the electorate. But English 
 statesmen, when at their best, try to look much less 
 at forms than at facts, and there existed between 
 1830 and 1911 two processes by which it was often 
 possible, without unfairness, to infer the assent of 
 the electors even to Bills which had not been put 
 directly before the people !at a General Election. 
 The assent of the electorate might, to a certain 
 extent, and often almost necessarily, be inferred from 
 the ultimate agreement between trie leaders of two 
 great parties as to measures to which one party, 
 at any rate, was naturally opposed. Many critics 
 who objected to some of the manoeuvres by which 
 Household Suffrage was introduced into the Con- 
 stitution in 1866-7 would yet, even though they 
 were Conservatives or Moderate Whigs, assent to 
 the statement that these measures were clearly 
 supported by the mass of the electors. This kind of 
 indirect inference is always dangerous, but may 
 sometimes be perfectly fair. Another mode of 
 indirectly ascertaining the will of the electors has, 
 for the moment, been destroyed by the work of so- 
 called Liberals or Democrats. As long as the House 
 of Lords had the power to necessitate a dissolution 
 by the rejection of some Bill, say the Home Rule 
 Bill of 1893, their hesitation to use this power 
 afforded at least a strong presumption that their 
 Lordships themselves doubted whether the Bill was 
 not really supported by the electors. Here, again, 
 this indirect inference involved some risk of mis-
 
 BILL CONDEMNED BY THE ELECTORS 121 
 
 taking the will of the people. Still, in many cases it 
 gave effect to the wish of the nation. The plain 
 truth is that the Parliament Act has lessened in some 
 respects the moral authority of the House of 
 Commons by increasing the chance that a party 
 majority may grossly misrepresent the will of the 
 nation/ 
 
 Let me add that the constitutional doctrine for 
 which I am contending, though not formally 
 admitted by the unreformed Parliament before 
 1832, is much older than that date. 
 
 Let any fair-minded man acquainted with the 
 history of the conflict between Pitt and the Coalition 
 of 1783-4 consider the causes and the justification 
 of Pitt's triumph. Such a critic will soon perceive 
 that, according to the judgment of the greatest of 
 Whig historians, 8 Pitt's success was due to the 
 determination of even the unreformed electorate 
 that the party dominant in the House of Commons 
 should not override the will of the country. 
 
 (ii) The conduct of the Coalition of to-day proves 
 that its members more than half believe that the 
 Home Rule Bill is condemned by the electors. It is 
 greatly the interest of Home Rulers that the Home 
 Rule Bill, before it becomes an Act, should gain 
 the undoubted support of the electorate. Till this 
 is obtained our New Constitution will rest on a very 
 shaky foundation. Why, then, does not Mr. Red- 
 mond press for, or even command, a dissolution of 
 Parliament ? The reason is as plain as day. He 
 believes that the electors of England would, if once 
 appealed to, join the Protestants of Ulster in their 
 impassioned protest against the Home Rule Bill and 
 the whole policy which it represents. 
 
 1 This risk, combined with the gradual development of democracy, 
 adds immense force to the argument that in England it is as 
 necessary, as it is in the United States, that every great constitutional 
 change should receive the direct sanction of the electors. 
 
 f See "William Pitt," Macaulay's Writings and Sketches, ed. 
 1851, p. 395-
 
 122 THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 (iii) The Parliament Act gives no real sanction to 
 the coup d'etat meditated by the Coalition. That 
 Act was intended to prevent the House of Lords 
 from resisting the will of the people, i.e. of the 
 electors. The Act was not intended to enable the 
 majority of the House of Commons, which means, in 
 fact, the party leaders of a majority, to resist the will 
 of the nation. Does any one seriously maintain 
 that the people of England are prepared to enforce 
 Home Rule upon Ulster by means of civil war ? 
 
 (iy) The attempt to transform the Home Rule 
 Bill into a Home Rule Act without any appeal to 
 the electors involves the following astounding and 
 obviously unconstitutional result. Suppose that 
 the Home Rule Bill, in virtue of the Parliament 
 Act, becomes the Home Rule Act in May 1914. 
 The present Parliament was summoned to meet 
 and came into existence on January 30, 1911. It 
 might, if the Government chose, continue in exist- 
 ence till, at any rate, January 29, 1916. The present 
 Parliament might, even though it had ceased by 
 May 1914 to represent the will of the electors, at 
 any rate as regards Home Rule, continue in 
 existence for a year and a half. During that 
 period Irish Nationalists would keep urging 
 the Government to take every step which would 
 increase the difficulty of the repeal or modification 
 of the Home Rule Act by the new Parliament 
 of 1916. The Government might apply the Terri- 
 torial and Reserve Forces Act to Ireland, or to the 
 parts of Ireland where Nationalists were strongest. 
 The Government might nominate the members of 
 the Senate. The Government might convene the 
 Irish Parliament. The Government would, during 
 this strange interregnum, nominate the members of 
 the Exchequer Board. The Government might 
 make grants to Ireland for the purchase of the 
 buildings in which the old Parliament of Ireland 
 was accustomed to meet. In this, and in many
 
 POLICY OF UNIONISTS 123 
 
 other ways, the Government might, without the 
 assent of the people, throw up entrenchments, so 
 to speak, for the protection of the new Consti- 
 tution, which had never been assented to by the 
 electorate of the United Kingdom. The very possi- 
 bility of such action will be absolute proof, to many 
 of my readers, that to pass a Home Rule Act with- 
 out any appeal to the electorate violates the whole 
 spirit of our existing constitutional government. 
 
 II. How Unionists should treat the Home Rule Act 
 0/1914, when lacking constitutional authority 
 
 My opinion is that, in the circumstances sup- 
 posed, every Unionist should go to the poll at the 
 next General Election, after the passing of the Home 
 Rule Act, with the avowed determination and in- 
 tention to obtain by every legal means a Unionist 
 majority, and that such a majority would not only 
 have the legal right (which is certain), but also 
 would be under a constitutional and moral duty to 
 suspend, to modify, or to repeal in toto a Home 
 Rule Act, passed against the will of the nation. 
 
 Of course I shall be told that this mode of 
 proceeding is unconstitutional. It is, I admit, 
 unusual. But when the spirit of democratic and 
 constitutional government has been for the first 
 time violated, the defenders of popular govern- 
 ment are well within their rights if they set 
 aside the practice in order to save the principles of 
 our Constitution. But they will not, if the course 
 I suggest be followed, in reality violate any 
 established constitutional practice or custom. The 
 Parliament Act may, for my purpose, be a statute 
 as wise as I hold it to be unwise and unstatesman- 
 like. But, whatever be its merits, it changes the 
 whole of our constitutional usages. It logically 
 justifies far more frequent appeals to the electorate 
 than have hitherto been common, for it has struck
 
 i2 4 THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 away the one strong security that a majority of the 
 House of Commons shall not override tne deliberate 
 will of the nation. I shall be told, again, that I 
 suggest reaction. So be it. No one rates the evils 
 of a reactionary policy higher than I do. Peel set 
 a most statesmanlike precedent when he fully 
 accepted the results of the Reform Act, 1832. His 
 conduct was based on the clear and undoubted 
 ratification by the nation of an immense constitu- 
 tional change. It is because of this absence of 
 national consent that I hold the Home Rule Act to 
 be devoid of moral authority. When the attempt 
 is made to carry through revolution by fraud, -it is 
 rightly met by reaction which at the bottom is the 
 reassertion of the sovereignty of the nation. 
 
 My doctrine is full of encouragement to loyal 
 Unionists in every part of the United Kingdom. 
 The parliamentary battle will not end on the ill- 
 omened day, if ever it should arrive, when, without 
 the assent of the nation, the Home Rule Bill 
 becomes the Home Rule Act, 1914. The stress 
 of the fight will only then have begun. Every 
 Unionist will exert himself, body and soul, to 
 obtain a Unionist majority and destroy the Coali- 
 tion. For this end no breach of law will be 
 needed. There is nothing illegal in every Unionist 
 throughout Ulster refusing to send a member to the 
 Parliament at Dublin, whose moral authority we 
 shall all deny. Nor, myself, should I see with any 
 displeasure the peaceable non-payment of taxes 
 at Belfast until the General Election (which could 
 not be more than about a year distant) should 
 give, not so much to Unionists as to the whole 
 United Kingdom, the opportunity of repudiating 
 legislation which would lack the moral authority 
 which generally and rightly belongs to every estab- 
 lished law and statute. 
 
 This is no new doctrine of my own. Lord Hart- 
 ington (to use the name by which the men of 1886
 
 LORD HARTINGTON'S OPINION 125 
 
 knew him), was no Radical or enthusiast. He was 
 a Whig of the Whigs. Being dead he yet speaketh : 
 
 11 The people of Ulster believe, rightly or wrongly, 
 that, under a Government responsible to an Imperial 
 Parliament, they possess at present the fullest 
 security which they can possess of their personal 
 freedom, their liberties, and their right to transact 
 their own business in their own way. You have no 
 right to offer them any inferior security to that ; 
 and if, after weighing the character of the Govern- 
 ment which it is sought to impose upon them, they 
 resolve that they are no longer bound to obey a law 
 which does not give them equal and just protection 
 with their fellow subjects, who can say how, at all 
 events, can the descendants of those who resisted 
 King James II. say that they have not a right, if 
 they think fit, to resist, if they think they have the 
 power, the imposition of a Government put upon 
 them by force ? " 1 
 
 Note that his language, though I do not dissent 
 from it, goes further than anything necessary for me 
 to lay down, for it applies to a law passed by both 
 Houses of Parliament. In spirit, too, his lordship 
 merely restates the old Whig doctrine that oppres- 
 sion, and especially resistance to the will of the 
 nation, might justify what was technically conspiracy 
 
 1 See Bernard Holland's Life of the Duke of Devonshire^ vol. ii. 
 p. 250. Hear the language of John Bright in 1887. " For myself," 
 he wrote, " I do not discuss the question of a little more or a little 
 less of a Parliament in Dublin. A Parliament is a great weapon 
 if once created and opened ; not difficult to form, but dangerous to 
 deal with and suppress. . . . The 2,000,000 of loyal population in 
 Ireland are to be forgotten, and their claim to a voice in this crisis 
 of their fate is derided and rejected. . . . The Liberal party is 
 called to make this great surrender. It is to forget its noble past 
 and to adopt a future leading to a gulf, the depth of which no one 
 can sound " (cited in Protest against Home Rule Bill. Speech by 
 the Hon. Arthur Elliot, at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, October 30, 
 1912, p. u).
 
 126 THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 or rebellion. On the refusal of the House of Lords 
 to pass the great Reform Bill, Whigs, encouraged 
 by prominent English politicians, came to an agree- 
 ment to refuse the payment of taxes till the reform 
 of Parliament was secured, 1 and assuredly the story 
 was current among those who well remembered the 
 Reform Bill and its history, that public attention was 
 roused by a Whig Peer bidding a collector of taxes 
 wait and call again in a few weeks. Every one under- 
 stood that his lordship was preparing, in new circum- 
 stances, to play the part of Hampden. The Lords, 
 be it remembered, throughout the battle for Reform 
 acted strictly in accordance with their legal rights. 
 They kept well within the forms, and even within 
 the custom, of the Constitution ; but they defied the 
 will of the nation. This is the very offence of 
 which the majority of the House of Commons, if 
 they dare, in reliance on the Parliament Act, to 
 transform the Home Rule Bill into the Home 
 Rule Act without any appeal to the electorate, 
 will be guilty. The language of Lord Hartington, 
 the whole attitude of the Whigs when they fought 
 in support of the great Reform Bill, justify every ' 
 word I have used. The moral resistance which 
 may endure for a year, or a year and a half, to the 
 Home Rule Act will, from a constitutional point of 
 view, be fully justified. I do not even assert that it 
 may not rightly be carried by Ulstermen to extreme 
 lengths, but, m my judgment, it should for that 
 period, at any rate, be conducted with extreme atten- 
 tion to the preservation of order. It is one thing 
 for Unionists at Belfast to decline to go to the poll, 
 or to take part in the election of any member to the 
 so-called Parliament at Dublin ; it is another thing 
 to drive a Nationalist away by force from the polling 
 booth. But I will not pronounce any decisive 
 judgment upon the exact extent to which the 
 maintenance of order and peace is incumbent upon 
 1 See Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland,\o\. ii. p. 129.
 
 TYRANNY AND CIVIL WAR 127 
 
 men determined not to yield obedience to an Act of 
 Parliament which, from the existence of very special 
 circumstances, lacks constitutional authority, and, in 
 my own eyes, remains little more than a Bill. Until 
 a General. Election, resistance to the so-called Home 
 Rule Act should be carried out by legal and moral 
 means. I am assured that such a course of action 
 will appeal to the sympathies of every Englishman, 
 and be crowned with success. England has always, 
 in the long run, given a triumph to the party of 
 morality. As I have already stated, I will not give, 
 because I have not formed, any certain opinion as 
 to the right course to be pursued should the British 
 electorate sanction the monstrous iniquity of depriv- 
 ing the men of Ulster, who are loyal citizens of the 
 United Kingdom, of their right to remain subject 
 only to the Government of the Imperial Parliament 
 at Westminster. 
 
 What are the limits within which the tyranny 
 either of a king or of a democracy justifies civil war 
 is not an inquiry on which I will enter. It is for the 
 people of the United Kingdom to take care that 
 provocation recklessly offered by the Government 
 of the country to the most loyal of Irishmen shall 
 not be allowed to convert a conflict which ought 
 to be decided by free discussion, and by the vote of 
 the nation, into a campaign to be decided by soldiers 
 and cannon-balls. Meanwhile, I am assured that, 
 even in the case of the oppression with which Ulster 
 is menaced, no loyal citizen should, until all possi- 
 bility of legal resistance is exhausted, have recourse 
 to the use of arms. 
 
 The doctrine of which I am the defender contains 
 a warning which I must press upon the attention 
 of Nationalists. A Home Rule Bill (whether it be 
 called a statute or not) that has not received the 
 assent of the electorate provides no real security 
 for the continued existence of the Irish Govern- 
 ment and Parliament which the so-called Home
 
 128 THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 Rule Bill is intended to create. A Unionist majority 
 will, as I have insisted, be, in the case of such an 
 Act, under the duty to modify or destroy the un- 
 toward work of parliamentary conspirators who 
 defied the sovereignty of the nation. 
 
 Nor is this the sole insecurity to which Nationalists 
 will be exposed. Every Unionist holds now, as 
 every citizen of Great Britain will soon discover, 
 that the Home Rule Bill will impose monstrously 
 unfair burdens upon Great Britain. The labour of 
 Unionists will assuredly tend towards freeing the 
 inhabitants and taxpayers of Great Britain from 
 more than one unjust burden. Assume, for the sake 
 of argument, that it is well to grant Home Rule to 
 Ireland, the greatest care ought to have been taken 
 to ensure that benefit to Ireland should not work 
 wrong to England. As regards finance, the expert 
 Finance Committee of Home Rulers 1 framed a scheme 
 which, at any rate, was intended to be just to every 
 part of the United Kingdom, and, though it imposed 
 heavy burdens on the predominant partner, provided 
 that the weight of these burdens should be brought 
 within a comparatively short period to an end. The 
 Government deliberately rejected the proposals of 
 their own Committee, and is forcing the predominant 
 partner to pay for an indefinite period huge sums 
 for the pleasure of breaking up a partnership which 
 he does not wish to dissolve. Nor can it for a 
 moment be supposed that millions paid willingly 
 for the benefit of Ireland whilst she is part of the 
 United Kingdom will, with the assent of Unionists, 
 continue to be paid when she claims the inde- 
 pendence without the full responsibilities of a self- 
 governing colony. 2 
 
 1 See p. 74, ante. 
 
 3 This is apparently the view of the Unionist leaders : " So long 
 as Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom there will be 
 no difference in treatment between Ireland and any other part of 
 the Kingdom ; but if she chooses to put herself in the status 
 of a colony, then we will give her a preference, but we shall not
 
 "LOOK THE FACTS IN THE FACE" 129 
 
 It is, therefore, the interest of an honest Nationalist, 
 even more than of a strenuous Unionist, to take care 
 that the Home Rule Bill is not passed into law in 
 circumstances which make it possible to deny that 
 the Act has ever gained the deliberate assent of the 
 British electorate. An outsider would have thought 
 that a Nationalist would even now perceive that no 
 Home Rule Bill was worth passing unless it were 
 studiously just to England. One thing, at least, is 
 certain. No Home Rule Act can, in the present state 
 of the world, permanently hold its ground which has 
 not received the assent, and the undoubted assent, of 
 the vast majority of the British electorate. It is the 
 interest of every honest Nationalist, even more than 
 of every enthusiastic Unionist, to insist that the Home 
 Rule Bill, 1912, shall not become the Home Rule 
 Act until it has been without doubt submitted to 
 the verdict of the electorate of the United Kingdom. 
 
 Fourth duty, It is the duty of every Unionist, as 
 indeed of any man who cares at heart for the welfare 
 of the United Kingdom, to look facts in the face. 
 Pessimism is folly ; to suppose that every difficulty 
 which can reasonably be foreseen in the working of 
 an ill-prepared, incoherent, and in many respects 
 undiscussed measure, will certainly arise argues 
 timidity rather than foresight ; but it is a still graver 
 error when a statesman in office professes to be a 
 4 credulous optimist.' Any indignation which I might 
 feel at his levity is swallowed up in wonder at his 
 momentary want of wisdom. Credulous optimism, 
 
 treat her precisely as if she were a member of the United Kingdom. 
 I think it would be well that the people of Ireland should clearly 
 understand that that will be the attitude, not only of the party which 
 I represent, but I venture to say further, that if that change did 
 actually take place, honourable gentlemen opposite will be influenced 
 by the opinion of their own constituents, and, except to the extent of 
 the power of forty members who are still among them, will act pre- 
 cisely as we will act we shall think twice of our own people and 
 once of them." Mr. Bonar Law, Parliamentary Debates, Oct. 17, 
 1912, col. 1567 ; see also col. 1566.
 
 130 THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS 
 
 or optimistic credulity, may possibly be natural to 
 a Minister enjoying the power and all the other 
 advantages of office ; but it is not a condition of mind 
 in which any man of sense should transact the serious 
 business of the nation. Credulous optimism is, after 
 all, merely a decent name for the delight in a paradise 
 which is not the paradise of the wise. It is a duty 
 of every Unionist, and of every patriot, to avoid the 
 follies of pessimism no less than the follies of 
 optimism, and to base his political conduct on the 
 simple but sure rules dictated by faith in the 
 force of common sense and of common justice.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 REPORT BY THE COMMITTEE ON IRISH FINANCE 
 
 Summary of Conclusions and Recommendations 
 
 62. We may now summarise our final conclusions and 
 recommendations as follows : 
 
 (i) We recommend that the power of imposing and 
 levying all taxation in Ireland should rest with the Irish 
 Government, subject to such reservations as may be 
 necessary to guard against the raising of tariff questions 
 that might prejudice relations with foreign Powers or 
 trade and commerce between Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 (ii) We recommend that the obligation of Ireland to 
 contribute to the general expenditure of the realm be 
 affirmed, but that a settlement of the amount of the 
 contribution be allowed to remain in abeyance. 
 
 (iii) We recommend that an Irish Government should 
 take over the whole of the Irish local expenditure, the 
 amount of which some two years hence we put at 
 ^12,400,000. 
 
 (iv) We estimate that the revenue an Irish Government 
 might expect then to receive from existing taxes and from 
 non-tax sources would be about ^10,350,000. 
 
 (v) We recommend that, to meet the deficit and to 
 provide the Irish Government with a working balance and 
 also a margin for immediately accruing charges in respect 
 of future Old Age Pensions and Land Purchase, the 
 Imperial Exchequer should take over the liability for all 
 Old Age Pensions already granted at the date when the 
 transfer of powers takes place (the amount of which we 
 estimate at about ,3,000,000); and that should the
 
 132 APPENDIX 
 
 amount so provided appear at the time of settlement to 
 be insufficient, the Imperial Exchequer should take over a 
 further liability for so much of the charge for Constabulary 
 Pensions as might be found to be necessary. 
 
 (vi) We recommend that " double income-tax " be 
 avoided, and that each Government should bear one-half 
 of the cost that the concession will entail. 
 
 (vii) We consider that provision should also be made 
 for the avoidance of double death and stamp duties. 
 
 (viii) We recommend that the Guarantee of the Imperial 
 Exchequer in respect of Land Stock should remain, but 
 that the Irish Government should be made responsible 
 for securing to the National Debt Commissioners regular 
 payment of the sums due from Ireland in respect of 
 the Stock, and that for this purpose power be reserved 
 to his Majesty in Council to appoint a Receiver of Irish 
 Customs and Excise in the event of the collection of the 
 purchase annuities falling more than three months into 
 arrear. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 63. This completes what we have to say on the subjects 
 referred to us. We have endeavoured to confine ourselves as 
 closely as possible to the terms of our instructions, and, as we 
 said before, to treat the problem before us as a plain matter 
 of business. But finance is not merely a question of arithmetic. 
 It lies at the root of all government, and cannot be discussed 
 with entire disregard of general political considerations. This 
 must be our excuse if we may have seemed sometimes to 
 presume to trench on issues outside those with which we 
 are more directly concerned. 
 
 Printed by Hatell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbttry.
 
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