Yale University Library.

HOME RULE

JUSTICE TO IRELAND.

A LETTER

EDITOR OF "THE TIMES:

BY

THE HON. GEORGE C. BRODRICK,
WAEDEN OF MERTON COLLEGE,
OXFORD.

OXFORD :
PRINTED BY E. BAXTER.
1886.

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HOME RULE AND JUSTICE TO IRELAND.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE TIMES."
Sir, — There is a question which surely lies at
the root of the Home Rule problem, but which
seems to have been hitherto strangely neglected.
It is the question whether, apart from all Imperial
considerations, Ireland is fit to govern herself, and
whether the concession of Home Rule would be
a real benefit to her people or, on the contrary,
the greatest wrong which Great Britain could
inflict upon them. In discussing this question,
abstract theories are worthless. It is worse than
vain to argue with a man who regards all nations
as equally capable of self-government, and studiously
ignores all the facts which prove that some nations
lack the primary conditions upon which self-
government depends for its success. Those who
propose a Repeal of the Union, and a reversal
of the policy which all parties in the State have
maintained since the beginning of this century,
are bound to justify their action by reasons de
rived from experience. What light, then, does
experience throw on the capacity of Ireland for
Home Rule?

4
The failure of " Grattan's Parliament " is admitted
on all hands ; but it is alleged that no fair inference
can be drawn from that experiment, since Grattan's
Parliament represented only the Protestant minority,
and was largely composed of mere nominees. I
allow this allegation, though I wish I could believe
that a Parliament mainly returned by the National
League would be more honest, enlightened, and
public-spirited, than Grattan and his Protestant
associates. The utter profligacy of Irish rule
in American cities is equally notorious ; but it
may perhaps be explained away by reference
to some peculiarity in the American atmo
sphere. Let us, then, resort to other tests, and
ask ourselves how far the conduct of popular
and elective bodies in Ireland encourages us to
intrust an Irish Legislature with an absolute con
trol of Irish affairs. No one disputes the capacity
of Irishmen for the discharge of public duties.
Mr. Gladstone lays great stress on the loyalty and
courage of the Irish constabulary, to whom he
might have added the Irish Judges and resident
magistrates. But it happens that all these officials
are non-elective, and, like Irish officers in the Army,
hold their commissions from the Imperial Crown ;
for which reason Mr. Gladstone proposes ultimately
to dispense with their services. We must look
elsewhere for examples of Irish management, as it
would be under a system of Home Rule. In
Ireland, as in England, there are three important
administrative areas — the County, the Union, and

the municipality. In the County, the chief local
authority is the Grand Jury, a very anomalous
body, mainly nominated by the High Sheriff, and
anything but representative. This body, since it
largely consists of more or less independent gentle
men, is admitted to do its work honourably and
efficiently, even by those who most violently —
and not unreasonably — condemn its constitution.
It would, of course, disappear under Home Rule.
In the Union, the local authority is the Board of
Guardians, partly consisting of magistrates, sitting
ex officio, partly of elective members. In the
corporate towns, the local authority is the Town
Council, entirely consisting of elective members.
Can any man who knows Ireland point to Irish
Boards of Guardians and Town Councils as favour
able, or as otherwise than deterrent, examples of
Irish self-government ? Are not their proceedings
constantly disgraced by rowdyism, jobbery, and
sedition ? Do not many of them act shamelessly
as committees of the National League, making a
predatory use of their rating powers, prostituting
their patronage to subsidize Nationalist agents, and
getting rid of chairmen who object to abuse their
functions by putting disloyal resolutions ? Is there
any improvement in these respects, or, rather, has
there not been a steady degeneracy in proportion
as the Irish gentry have been overborne or driven
out by the creatures of the National League ? In
a word, could any man who has ever filled the
office of Irish Secretary contemplate without dismay

6
the creation of an Irish Legislature resembling the
Irish Boards of Guardians and Town Councils ?
But it is said that self-government has been
hitherto applied on too modest a scale, and it
is suggested that what has been so noxious in
small doses might prove a sovereign remedy if
administered wholesale. I might be content to
ask what conceivable reason can be produced in
support of so extravagant an assumption. I might
dwell on the signal dearth in Ireland of all the
social and commercial elements which might pre
vent Home Rule from lapsing into anarchy; on
the want of any stable or substantial middle class;
on the subservience of the priests to agitators who
have the power of cutting off their means of sub
sistence ; on the ruinous influence of a Press which
stands alone in Europe for scurrilous mendacity,
which propagates atrocious doctrines without re
serve, and which has devoted itself for many years
past to educating the people into lawlessness and
violence. But all these objections, however power
ful, are no more than illustrations of a broader
and more fundamental objection to Irish Home
Rule — that it is hopelessly inconsistent with Irish
liberty, in any true sense of the word. For there
can be no greater delusion than to confound
national emancipation from British control with
the enjoyment of individual independence in Ire
land, or to imagine that an Irish peasant, relieved
from British "coercion," would be free to act and
vote according to his conscience. Coercion, indeed!

Why, Ireland is now groaning under the most exe
crable form of coercion recorded in hex history,
and the despotism of S.trafford or of Cromwell,
though it may have been more imposing, was not
so oppressive, as the despotism of the National
League. We are told, forsooth, that 85 per cent.
of the Irish constituencies have declared in favour
of National League candidates. Can we doubt
that if a plebiscite had been taken in Paris a few
weeks before Robespierre's fall, 85 per cent, would
have declared in favour of the great dictator and
the "Terror," or that if a similar plebiscite had
been taken a few days after his fall, 85 per cent.
would have declared in favour of those who had
the courage to put him down ? Such is the value
of plebiscites in communities where a tyrannical
convention rules supreme in the outraged name
of liberty. In a country where trial by jury is
a farce, if the criminal is a favourite of the
dominant faction, and where political courage is
an almost unknown virtue, what is the moral
value of a popular verdict procured through the
machinery of household suffrage ? Indeed, house
hold suffrage, like trial by jury itself, is an es
sentially English institution, for which Ireland is
at present totally unfit, and which no one would
have dreamed of extending to Ireland except upon
the ground — urged again and again by the very
men who are now for repealing the Union — that
she was an integral and inseparable part of the
United Kingdom. Disguise it as we may, there

is no such thing as manly and intelligent public
opinion in Ireland, and to consult the mass of the
people on the question of Home Rule is much
the same as to consult them on the doctrine of
the Immaculate Conception. They are the victims,
and a section of the Liberal party is the dupe,
of a compact and perfectly unscrupulous con
spiracy — a conspiracy organized and supported by
foreign enemies of Great Britain, which has not
shrunk from complicity with deeds of blood that
shock humanity, and which has only been too
successful in demoralizing, not Irish peasants only,
but English statesmen.
It is difficult to read without shame and in
dignation the apologies made for handing over the
destinies of Ireland to men who have exhibited
the worst features of Irish character, and made,
too, by those who called Heaven to witness that
they were incapable of being parties to a Kil-
mainham Treaty far less ignoble and disastrous.
If we protest against Home Rule, we are challenged
to produce an alternative, and reminded with in
solent cynicism that after the offer has once been
made by a leader of the Liberal party, it will
be almost hopeless to govern Ireland on any other
terms. This is as if it were proposed to repudiate
the National Debt, and those who resisted it were
taunted with the question, " What is your alter
native ? Will you repudiate half of it or three-
quarters, and do you imagine that taxpayers, after
being promised total repudiation, will ever be

satisfied with anything less ? " We are told, again,
that if the Home Rule experiment should fail,
which is admitted to be very possible, we shall
retain all "the resources of civilization," and can
reduce Ireland to submission. What does this
mean ? It means that, being destitute of the
courage, statesmanship, and public spirit to under
take a difficult task in government, we are to
bequeath to our successors — not the same task,
but one infinitely aggravated by our cowardice,
and requiring a far higher effort of political virtue
than we are now declining. We are assured that
Home Rule is inevitable. Why "inevitable," except
that politicians are slavishly bowing down to a
political necessity of their own creation, instead
of manfully resolving to act upon their real con
victions ? We are exhorted to make a final
reparation for our cruel misgovernment of Ireland
in the past by allowing her to govern — to misgovern
— herself in the future. This appeal, which seems
to impose on many persons ignorant of Irish history,
bristles with so many fallacies that it deserves a
separate examination.
It is false that all the evils of Ireland and faults
of Irish character are the products of English
misgovernment. For some three centuries after
the so-called conquest of Ireland, that country,
outside the English Pale, enjoyed the blessings of
Home Rule. After the visit of John, no English
King, except Richard II., set foot in Ireland for
nearly five centuries; no English army, worthy

10
of the name, except that of Richard II., crossed
the Channel between the reign of Henry II. and
that of Henry VIII.; while English law was prac
tically confined to four counties. The result was,
as it was sure to be, a state of savagery and disorder
disgraceful to Christianity. From this state it was
partially rescued by the intervention of England,
and those who trace all the miseries and vices
of the people to confiscations made in the 17th
century, and penal laws passed in the 18th, would
do well to study contemporary descriptions of
Ireland, as it was in the 16th. However inde
fensible may have been the system of English rule
in Ireland between the rebellion of 1641 and the
year 1782, it is none the less true that whatever
civilization or political institutions Ireland possesses
it owes to England, and that since 1800 English
policy towards Ireland, though often unwise, has
been guided by the sincerest desire to promote
the good of the country. But, even were it other
wise, how could past injustice be repaired by present
injury, and how could Ireland fail to be injured
by Home Rule, if, as I contend, she is demonstrably
unfit for it ? Repentance is an excellent thing,
but that is a cheap and mischievous form of penance
which consists in vilifying our fathers and burdening
our posterity, by forcing a boon known to be fatal
upon those to whom atonement is supposed to
be due.
If atonement is really due at all, if Great Britain
must needs reproach herself for wrongs done to

11
Ireland, those wrongs have assuredly not been on
the side of over-government, and cannot be re
dressed by leaving Ireland to anarchy. Having
under our charge one of the most backward
populations in Europe, richly endowed with in
tellectual and social virtues but singularly deficient
in the political virtues, we have persisted in dealing
with it as if it needed no stronger government
than Great Britain. We have declined to pay
the priests, we have stickled with pedantic obstinacy
for a make-believe unsectarian education, we have
upheld the freedom of the Press and the right
of public meeting, we have stiffly adhered to the
dogmas of laissez /aire as concerns the develop
ment of Irish industries, we have established an
uniform franchise throughout Great Britain and
Ireland, and all because Ireland was an integral
part of the United Kingdom and must not be
treated exceptionally. On the other hand, with
ludicrous inconsistency, we have recognised the
exceptional requirements of Ireland by abolishing
the Irish branch of the Established Church ; we
have given Ireland a land-system not only ex
ceptional but unique in its one-sided complication
among the land-systems of the civilized world ;
we have rewarded murder and outrage in Ireland
by enriching the class on whose behalf they were
practised at the expense of that against which they
were practised ; and we listen with respect to
demands from Ireland which, if they proceeded
from England and Scotland, would be received

12
with derision. It is this pitiful inconsistency —
it is this imbecility and vacillation — in the Imperial
government of Ireland which constitutes by far
the gravest of all Irish grievances. " We have
tried everything " — yes, " everything by turns, and
nothing long." We have never tried a firm, just,
and consistent policy. We pass Acts necessary
for the protection of life and property (miscalled
Coercion Acts) for periods skilfully contrived to
elapse when the difficulty of renewing them shall
be greatest, instead of fixing no time for their
expiration and leaving them to operate until they
can be safely repealed. Our foremost statesman
denounces the leaders of the Nationalist conspiracy
as apostles of " public plunder," consigning some
of them to Kilmainham Gaol, and then professes
unlimited confidence in their patriotism and mode
ration. He invites all classes of Irishmen to co
operate harmoniously for the good of their common
country, and in the same breath he invites the
most capable and loyal class to expatriate itself
on ruinous terms lest it should be robbed by the
majority. No ! we have tried, it is true, every
shift of time-serving expediency, but we have not
tried far-sighted statesmanship, impartial justice,
and a continuous enforcement of law and order.
This is the one inestimable benefit which Ireland
cannot realize for herself, which Great Britain
could bestow upon her, but which party spirit
and popularity-hunting have as yet deterred us
from granting her. Let men of both parties, not

13
yet pledged to Home Rule, agree to withdraw
Ireland, like India, from the ordinary sphere of
party warfare ; let the aim of Parliament be, not
to silence clamour, but to restore a sense of per
manent security in Ireland ; let us think more
of protecting honest men in their rights than of
reconciling irreconcilable enemies of the law ; let
us study Irish interests rather than Irish demands ;
and let this policy be maintained until the Irish
nation shall have unlearned the evil lessons of
the last few years. In other words, let us at
last give Ireland what has always been the one
thing needful for her — a strong Executive Govern
ment. Under the shelter of such a Government,
it would be found possible to allow a much greater
elasticity of administration, and even a much larger
measure of local autonomy, than would otherwise
be compatible with Imperial rule. But the main
tenance of a continuous policy and a strong Govern
ment for Ireland certainly involves one serious
difficulty which some regard as insuperable. It
would require a great sacrifice of party spirit to
patriotism, and a vigorous display of that capacity
for Empire by which England in times past won
her place among the nations. This objection
must be admitted ; but does it not tell, with still
greater force, against Home Rule ? Will it require
a less sacrifice of party spirit and less capacity for
Empire to work a " dog-collar union " with Ireland,
under Mr. Gladstone's Bill, than to preserve the
existing legislative Union and the supremacy of

14
the Imperial Parliament ? And, if Home Rule
should fail, as fail it must under the control of
Irish-American adventurers, will not the hasty
concession of it be remembered in history as a
consummation of the wrongs endured by Ireland
at the hands of Great Britain, and may not the
next generation of Irishmen rise up and curse us
for it, with far better reason than can be shown
by those who have so freely cursed us before ?
I remain, Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
George C. Brodrick.
Merton College, Oxford,
May, 1886.

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