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Title: The Framework of Home Rule
Author: Erskine Childers
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THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE
BY
ERSKINE CHILDERS
AUTHOR OF
"THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS," "WAR AND THE ARME BLANCHE," "GERMAN INFLUENCE
ON BRITISH CAVALRY"; EDITOR OF VOL. V. OF THE _TIMES_ "HISTORY OF THE
WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA," ETC.
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1911
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGES
INTRODUCTION vii-xvi
I. THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA 1-20
II. REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND 21-41
III. GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT 42-59
IV. THE UNION 60-71
V. CANADA AND IRELAND 72-104
VI. AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND 105-119
VII. SOUTH AFRICA AND IRELAND 120-143
VIII. THE ANALOGY 144-149
IX. IRELAND TO-DAY 150-187
X. THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE 188-229
I. The Elements of the Problem 188-197
II. Federal or Colonial Home Rule 198-203
III. The Exclusion or Retention of Irish Members
at Westminster 203-213
IV. Irish Powers and their Bearing on Exclusion 213-229
XI. UNION FINANCE 230-257
I. Before the Union 230-231
II. From the Union to the Financial Relations
Commission of 1894-1896 232-239
III. The Financial Relations Commission of 1894-1896 239-257
XII. THE PRESENT FINANCIAL SITUATION 258-279
I. Anglo-Irish Finance To-day 258-264
II. Irish Expenditure 264-274
III. Irish Revenue 274-279
XIII. FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE 280-306
I. The Essence of Home Rule 280-281
II. The Deficit 281-286
III. Further Contribution to Imperial Services 286
IV. Ireland's Share of the National Debt 286
V. Ireland's Share of Imperial Miscellaneous Revenue 287
VI. Irish Control of Customs and Excise 287-294
VII. Federal Finance 294-300
VIII. Alternative Schemes of Home Rule Finance 300-306
XIV. LAND PURCHASE FINANCE 307-321
I. Land Purchase Loans 307-319
II. Minor Loans to Ireland 319-321
XV. THE IRISH CONSTITUTION 322-338
CONCLUSION 339-341
APPENDIX 342-347
INDEX 348-354
INTRODUCTION
My purpose in this volume is to advocate a definite scheme of
self-government for Ireland. That task necessarily involves an
historical as well as a constructive argument. It would be truer,
perhaps, to say that the greater part of the constructive case for Home
Rule must necessarily be historical. To postulate a vague acceptance of
the principle of Home Rule, and to proceed at once to the details of the
Irish Constitution, would be a waste of time and labour. It is
impossible even to attempt to plan the framework of a Home Rule Bill
without a tolerably close knowledge not only of Anglo-Irish relations,
but of the Imperial history of which they form a part. The Act will
succeed exactly in so far as it gives effect to the lessons of
experience. It will fail at every point where those lessons are
neglected. Constitutions which do not faithfully reflect the experience
of the sovereign power which accords them, and of the peoples which have
to live under them, are at the best perilous experiments liable to
defeat the end of their framers.
I shall enter into history only so far as it is relevant to the
constitutional problem, using the comparative method, and confining
myself almost exclusively to the British Empire past and present. For
the purposes of the Irish controversy it is unnecessary to travel
farther. In one degree or another every one of the vexed questions which
make up the Irish problem has arisen again and again within the circle
of the English-speaking races. As a nation we have a body of experience
applicable to the case of Ireland incomparably greater than that
possessed by any other race in the world. If, from timidity, prejudice,
or sheer neglect, we fail to use it, we shall earn the heavy censure
reserved for those who sin against the light.
For the comparative sketch I shall attempt, materials in the shape of
facts established beyond all controversy are abundant. Colonial history,
thanks to colonial freedom, is almost wholly free from the distorting
influence of political passion. South African history alone will need
revision in the light of recent events. When, under the alchemy of free
national institutions, Ireland has undergone the same transformation as
South Africa, her unhappy history will be chronicled afresh with a
juster sense of perspective and a juster apportionment of responsibility
for the calamities which have befallen her. And yet, if we consider the
field for partisan bias which Irish history presents, the amount of
ground common to writers of all shades of political opinion is now
astonishingly large. The result, I think, is due mainly to the good
influence of that eminent historian and Unionist politician, the late
Professor Lecky. Indeed, an advocate of Home Rule, nervously suspicious
of tainted material, could afford to rely solely on his "History of
Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," "Leaders of Public Opinion in
Ireland," and "Clerical Influences,"[1] which are Nationalist textbooks,
and, for quite recent events, on "A Consideration of Ireland in the
Nineteenth Century," by Mr. G. Locker-Lampson, the present Unionist
Member for Salisbury. A strange circumstance; but Ireland, like all
countries where political development has been forcibly arrested from
without, is a land of unending paradox. It is only one of innumerable
anomalies that Irish Nationalists should use Unionist histories as
propaganda for Nationalism; that the majority of Irish Unionists should
insist on ignoring all historical traditions save those which in any
normal country would long ago have been consigned by general consent to
oblivion and the institutions they embody overthrown; and that Unionist
writers such as those I have mentioned should be able to reconcile their
history and their politics only by a pessimism with regard to the
tendencies of human nature in general, or of Irish nature in particular,
with which their own historical teaching, founded on a true perception
of cause and effect, appears to be in direct contradiction.
The truth is that the question is one of the construction, not of the
verification, of facts; of prophecy for the future, rather than of bare
affirmation or negation. No one can presume to determine such a question
without a knowledge of how human beings have been accustomed to act
under similar circumstances. Illumination of that sort Irish history and
the contemporary Irish problem incontestably need. The modern case for
the Union rests mainly on the abnormality of Ireland, and that is
precisely why it is such a formidable case to meet. For Ireland in many
ways is painfully abnormal. The most cursory study of her institutions
and social, economic, and political life demonstrate that fact. The
Unionist, fixing his eyes on some of the secondary peculiarities, and
ignoring their fundamental cause, demonstrates it with ease, and by a
habit of mind which yields only with infinite slowness to the growth of
political enlightenment, passes instinctively to the deduction that
Irish abnormalities render Ireland unfit for self-government. In other
words, he prescribes for the disease a persistent application of the
very treatment which has engendered it. Whatever the result, there is a
plausible answer. If Ireland is disorderly and retrograde, how can she
deserve freedom? If she is peaceful, and shows symptoms of economic
recuperation, clearly she does not need or even want it. In other words,
if all that is healthy in the patient battles desperately and not in
vain, first against irritant poison, and then against soporific drugs,
this healthy struggle for self-preservation is attributed not to native
vitality, but to the bracing regimen of coercive government.
This train of argument, so far from being confined to Ireland, is as old
as the human race itself. Of all human passions, that for political
domination is the last to yield to reason. Men are naturally inclined to
attribute admitted social evils to every cause--religion, climate, race,
congenital defects of character, the inscrutable decrees of Divine
Providence--rather than to the form of political institutions; in other
words, to the organic structure of the community, and to rest the
security of an Empire on any other foundation than that of the liberty
of its component parts. If, in one case, their own experience proves
them wrong, they will go to the strangest lengths of perversity in
misreading their own experience, and they will seek every imaginable
pretext for distinguishing the case from its predecessor. Underlying all
is a nervous terror of the abuse of freedom founded on the assumption
that men will continue to act when free exactly as they acted under the
demoralizing influence of coercion. The British Empire has grown, and
continues to grow, in spite of this deeply rooted political doctrine.
Ireland is peculiar only in that her proximity to the seat of power has
exposed her for centuries to an application of the doctrine in its most
extreme form and without any hope of escape through the merciful
accidents to which more fortunate communities owe their emancipation.
Canada owes her position in the Empire, and the Empire itself exists in
its present form to-day, owing to the accident that the transcendantly
important principle of responsible government advocated by Lord Durham
as a remedy for the anarchy and stagnation in which he found both the
British and the French Provinces of Canada in 1838, did not require
Imperial legislation, and was established without the Parliamentary or
electoral sanction of Great Britain. Lord Durham was derided as a
visionary, and abused as unpatriotic for the assertion of this simple
principle. Far in advance of his time as he was, he himself shrank from
the full application of his own lofty ideal, and consequently made one
great, though under the circumstances not a capital, mistake in his
diagnosis, and it was to that mistake only that Parliament gave
legislative effect in 1840. By one of the most melancholy ironies in all
history Ireland was the source of his error, so that the Union of the
Canadas, dissolved as a failure by the Canadians themselves in 1867, was
actually based on the success of the Anglo-Irish Union in repressing a
dangerous nationality. Did the proof of the error in Canada induce
Englishmen to question the soundness of the precedent on which the error
was based? On the contrary, the lesson passed unnoticed, and the Irish
precedent has survived to darken thought, to retard democratic progress,
and to pervert domestic and Imperial policy to this very day. It even
had the truly extraordinary retrospective effect of obliterating from
the minds of many eminent statesmen the significance of the Canadian
parallel; for it is only six years ago that a Secretary of State for the
Colonies penned a despatch recommending for the Transvaal a form of
government similar to that which actually produced the Canadian
disorders of 1837, and supporting it by an argument whose effect was not
merely to resuscitate what time had proved to be false in Durham's
doctrine, but to discard what time had proved to be true. As for
Ireland herself, I know no more curious illustration of the strong
tendency, even on the part of the most fair-minded men, to place that
country outside the pale of social or political science, and of the
extreme reluctance to judge its inhabitants by the elementary standards
of human conduct, than the book to which I referred above--Mr.
Locker-Lampson's "A Consideration of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century."
For what he admits to be the ruinous results of British Government in
the past, the author in the last few pages of a lengthy volume has no
better cure to suggest than a continuance of British government, and he
defends this course by a terse enumeration of the very phenomena which
in Durham's opinion rendered the grant of Home Rule to Canada
imperative, concluding with a paragraph which, with the substitution of
"Canada" for "Ireland," constitutes an admirably condensed epitome of
the arguments used both by politicians at home, and the minorities in
Canada, in favour of Durham's error and against the truth he
established.
Mr. Lecky represents a somewhat different school of thought, and reached
his Unionism by reasoning more profound and consistent, but, on the
other hand, wholly destructive of the Imperial theory as held by the
modern school of Imperialists. His fear and distrust of democracy in all
its forms and in all lands[2] was such that he naturally dreaded Irish
Nationalism, which is a form of democratic revolt suppressed so long and
by such harsh methods as to exhibit features easily open to criticism.
But the gist of his argument would have applied just as well to the
political evolution of the self-governing Colonies. Indeed, if he had
lived to see the last Imperial Conference, the pessimism of so clear a
thinker would assuredly have given way before the astounding contrast
between those countries in which his political philosophy had been
abjured, and the only white country in the Empire where by sheer force
it had been maintained intact.
If my only object in writing were to contribute something toward the
dissipation of the fears and doubts which render it so hard to carry any
measure, however small, of Home Rule for Ireland, I should hope for
little success. Practical men, with a practical decision to make, rarely
look outside the immediate facts before them. Extremists, in a case like
that of Ireland, are reluctant to take account of what Lord Morley
calls "the fundamental probabilities of civil society." Sir Edward
Carson would be more than human if he were to be influenced by a
demonstration that the case he makes against Home Rule is the same as
that made by the minority leaders, not only in the French, but in the
British Province of Canada. Most of the minority to which he appeals
would now regard as an ill-timed paradox the view that the very vigour
of their opposition to Home Rule is a better omen for the success of
Home Rule than that kind of sapless Nationalism, astonishingly rare in
Ireland under the circumstances, which is inclined to yield to the
insidious temptation of setting the "eleemosynary benefits"--to use Mr.
Walter Long's phrase[3]--derived from the British connection above the
need for self-help and self-reliance. The real paradox is that any
Irishmen, Unionist or Nationalist, should tolerate advisers who, however
sincere and patriotic, avowedly regard Ireland as the parasite of Great
Britain; who appeal to the lower nature of her people; to the fears of
one section and the cupidity of both; advising Unionists to rely on
British power and all Irishmen on British alms. A day will come when the
humiliation will be seen in its true light. Even now, I do venture to
appeal to that small but powerful group of moderate Irish Unionists who,
so far from fearing revenge or soliciting charity, spend their whole
lives in the noble aim of uniting Irishmen of all creeds on a basis of
common endeavour for their own economic and spiritual salvation; who
find their work checked in a thousand ways by the perpetual maintenance
of a seemingly barren and sentimental agitation; who distrust both the
parties to this agitation; but who are reluctant to accept the view
that, without the satisfaction of the national claim, and without the
national responsibility thereby conferred, their own aims can never be
fully attained. I should be happy indeed if I could do even a little
towards persuading some of these men that they mistake cause and effect;
misinterpret what they resent; misjudge where they distrust, and in
standing aloof from the battle for legislative autonomy, unconsciously
concede a point--disinterested, constructive optimists as they are--to
the interested and destructive pessimism which, from Clare's savage
insults to Mr. Walter Long's contemptuous patronage, has always lain at
the root of British policy towards Ireland.
In the meantime, for those who like or dislike it, Home Rule is
imminent. We are face to face no longer with a highly speculative, but
with a vividly practical problem, raising legislative and administrative
questions of enormous practical importance, and next year we shall be
dealing with this problem in an atmosphere of genuine reality totally
unlike that of 1886, when Home Rule was a startling novelty to the
British electorate, or of 1893, when the shadow of impending defeat
clouded debate and weakened counsel. It would be pleasant to think that
the time which has elapsed, besides greatly mitigating anti-Irish
prejudice, had been used for scientific study and dispassionate
discussion of the problem of Home Rule. Unfortunately, after eighteen
years the problem remains almost exactly where it was. There are no
detailed proposals of an authoritative character in existence. No
concrete scheme was submitted to the country in the recent elections.
None is before the country now. The reason, of course, is that the Irish
question is still an acute party question, not merely in Ireland, but in
Great Britain. Party passion invariably discourages patient constructive
thought, and all legislation associated with it suffers in consequence.
Tactical considerations, sometimes altogether irrelevant to the special
issue, have to be considered. In the case of Home Rule, when the balance
of parties is positively determined by the Irish vote, the difficulty
reaches its climax. It is idle to blame individuals. We should blame the
Union. So long as one island democracy claims to determine the destinies
of another island democracy, of whose special needs and circumstances it
is admittedly ignorant, so long will both islands suffer.
This ignorance is not disputed. No Irish Unionist claims that Great
Britain should govern Ireland on the ground that the British electorate,
or even British statesmen, understand Irish questions. On the contrary,
in Ireland, at any rate, their ignorance is a matter for satirical
comment with all parties. What he complains of is, that the British
electorate is beginning to carry its ignorance to the point of believing
that the Irish electorate is competent to decide Irish questions, and
in educating the British electorate he has hitherto devoted himself
exclusively to the eradication of this error. The financial results of
the Union are such that he is now being cajoled into adding, "It is your
money, not your wisdom, that we want." Once more, an odd state of
affairs, and some day we shall all marvel in retrospect that the Union
was so long sustained by a separatist argument, reinforced in latter
days by such an inconsistent and unconscionable claim.
In the meantime, if only the present situation can be turned to
advantage, this crowning paradox is the most hopeful element in the
whole of a tangled question. It is not only that the British elector is
likely to revolt at once against the slur upon his intelligence and the
drain upon his purse, but that Irish Unionism, once convinced of the
tenacity and sincerity of that revolt, is likely to undergo a dramatic
and beneficent transformation. If they are to have Home Rule, Irish
Unionists--even those who now most heartily detest it--will want the
best possible scheme of Home Rule, and the best possible scheme is not
likely to be the half measure which, from no fault of the statesman
responsible for it, tactical difficulties may make inevitable. If the
vital energy now poured into sheer uncompromising opposition to the
principles of Home Rule could be transmuted into intellectual and moral
effort after the best form of Home Rule, I believe that the result would
be a drastic scheme.
Compromise enters more or less into the settlement of all burning
political questions. That is inevitable under the party system; but of
all questions under the sun, Home Rule questions are the least
susceptible of compromise so engendered. The subject, in reality, is not
suitable for settlement at Westminster. This is a matter of experience,
not of assertion. Within the present bounds of the Empire no lasting
Constitution has ever been framed for a subordinate State to the
moulding of which Parliament, in the character of a party assembly,
contributed an active share. Constitutions which promote prosperity and
loyalty have actually or virtually been framed by those who were to live
under them. If circumstances make it impossible to adopt this course for
Ireland, let us nevertheless remember that all the friction and enmity
between the Mother Country and subordinate States have arisen, not from
the absence, but from the inadequacy of self-governing powers. Checks
and restrictions, so far from benefiting Great Britain or the Colonies,
have damaged both in different degrees, the Colonies suffering most
because these checks and restrictions produce in the country submitted
to them peculiar mischiefs which exist neither under a despotic regime
nor an unnatural Legislative Union, fruitful of evil as both those
systems are. The damage is not evanescent, but is apt to bite deep into
national character and to survive the abolition of the institutions
which caused it. The Anglo-Irish Union was created and has ever since
been justified by a systematic defamation of Irish character. If it is
at length resolved to bury the slander and trust Ireland, in the name of
justice and reason let the trust be complete and the institutions given
her such as to permit full play to her best instincts and tendencies,
not such as to deflect them into wrong paths. Let us be scrupulously
careful to avoid mistakes which might lead to a fresh campaign of
defamation like that waged against Canada, as well as Ireland, between
1830 and 1840.
The position, I take it, is that most Irish Unionists still count,
rightly or wrongly, on defeating Home Rule, not only in the first
Parliamentary battle, but by exciting public opinion during the long
period of subsequent delay which the Parliament Bill permits. Not until
Home Rule is a moral certainty, and perhaps not even then, do the
extremists intend to consider the Irish Constitution in a practical
spirit. Surely this is a perilous policy. Surely it must be so regarded
by the moderate men--and there are many--who, if Home Rule comes, intend
to throw their abilities into making it a success, and who will be
indispensable to Ireland at a moment of supreme national importance.
Irretrievable mistakes may be made by too long a gamble with the chances
of political warfare. Whatever the scheme produced, the extremists will
have to oppose it tooth and nail. If the measure is big, sound, and
generous, it will be necessary to attack its best features with the
greatest vigour; to rely on beating up vague, anti-separatist sentiment
in Great Britain; to represent Irish Protestants as a timid race forced
to shelter behind British bayonets; in short, to use all the arguments
which, if Irish Unionists were compelled to frame a Constitution
themselves, they would scorn to employ, and which, if grafted on the Act
in the form of amendments, they themselves in after-years might
bitterly regret. Conversely, if the measure is a limited one, it will be
necessary to commend its worst features; to extol its eleemosynary side
and all the infractions of liberty which in actual practice they would
find intolerably irksome. Whatever happens, things will be said which
are not meant, and passions aroused which will be difficult to allay on
the eve of a crisis when Ireland will need the harmonious co-operation
of all her ablest sons.
If, behind the calculation of a victory within the next two years, there
lies the presentiment of an eventual defeat, let not the thought be
encouraged that a better form of Home Rule is likely to come from a Tory
than from a Liberal Government. Many Irish Unionists regard the prospect
of continued submission to a Liberal, or what they consider a
semi-Socialist, Government as the one consideration which would
reconcile them to Home Rule. No one can complain of that. But they make
a fatal mistake in denying Liberals credit for understanding questions
of Home Rule better than Tories. That, again, is a matter of proved
experience. Compare the abortive Transvaal Constitution of 1905 with the
reality of 1906, and measure the probable consequences of the former by
the actual results of the latter. Let them remember, too, that every
year which passes aggravates the financial difficulties which imperil
the future of Ireland.
The best hope of securing a final settlement of the Irish question in
the immediate future lies in promoting open discussion on the details of
the Home Rule scheme, and of drawing into that discussion all Irishmen
and Englishmen who realize the profound importance of the issue. This
book is offered as a small contribution to the controversy.
For help in writing it I am deeply indebted to many friends on both
sides of the Irish Channel, in Ireland to officials and private persons,
who have generously placed their experience at my disposal; while in
England I owe particular thanks to the Committee of which I had the
honour to be a member, which sat during the summer of this year under
the chairmanship of Mr. Basil Williams, and which published the series
of essays called "Home Rule Problems."
E.C.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The two latter works were written by Mr. Lecky in his Nationalist
youth the first and greater work after he had become a Unionist. They
form a connected whole, however, and are not inconsistent with one
another.
[2] See "Democracy and Liberty."
[3] "Did the people of Ireland understand that the destruction of the
Union, so lightly advocated by Lord Haldane, must result in the
cessation of those largely eleemosynary benefits to which the progress
of Ireland is due, her 'dissatisfaction' would be unmistakably directed
towards her false advisers?"--Letter to the _Belfast Telegraph_, October
7, 1911, criticizing Lord Haldane's preface to "Home Rule Problems."
ERRATA
Since this book went to press the Treasury has issued a revised version
of Return No. 220, 1911 [Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland, and
Ireland)], cancelling the Return issued in July, and correcting an error
made in it. It now appears that the "true" Excise revenue attributable
to Ireland from _spirits_ in 1910-11 (with deductions made by the
Treasury from the sum actually collected in Ireland) should be
L3,575,000, instead of L3,734,000, and that the total "true" Irish
revenue in that year was, therefore, L11,506,500, instead of
L11,665,500. In other words, Irish revenue for 1910-11 was
over-estimated in the Return now cancelled by L159,000.
The error does not affect the Author's argument as expounded in Chapters
XII. and XIII.; but it necessitates the correction of a number of
figures given by him, especially in Chapter XII., the principal change
being that the deficit in Irish revenue, as calculated on the mean of
the two years 1909-10 and 1910-11, should actually be L1,392,000,
instead of L1,312,500.
The full list of corrections is as follows:
Page 259, line 9, _for_ "L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000."
Page 260, table, third column, line 6, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_
"L9,952 500"; last line, _for_ "L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000."
Page 261, table, last column, last line but one, _for_ "L321,000,"
_read_ "L162,000"; last line (total), _for_ "L329,780,970," _read_
"L329,621,970."
Page 262, line 7, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_ "L9,952,500"; line 10,
_for_ "L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000."
Page 275. table, last column, line 2, _for_ "L3,734,000," _read_
"L3,575,000"; line 7, _for_ "L10,371,000," _read_ "L10,212,000"; line
14, _for_ "L11,665,500," _read_, "L11,506,500"; in text, last line but
one of page, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_ "L9,952,500."
Page 276, line 5, _for_ "L500,000," _read_, "L340,000"; table, last
column, line 2, _for_ "L3,316,000," _read_ "L3,236,500"; line 3, _for_
"L6,182,000," _read_ "L6,102,500"; line 9, _for_ "L8,737,500," _read_
"L8,658,000"; last line, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_ "L9,952,500."
Page 277, line 2, _for_ "L1,672,500," _read_ "L1,752,000"; line 7, _for_
"L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000"; line 8, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_
"L9,952,500"; line 12, _for_ "L1,672,500," _read_ "L1,752,000";
footnote, line 1, _for_ "L1,793,000," _read_ "L1,952,000."
Page 279, line 8, _for_ "70.75," _read_ "70.48."
Page 282, sixth line from bottom, _for_ "L1,312,500," _read_
"L1,392,000."
* * * * *
Page 246, line 8 and footnote, and page 295, lines 21-31: A temporary
measure has been passed (Surplus Revenue Act, 1910), under which the
Surplus Commonwealth Revenue is returned to the States on a basis of L1
5s. per head of the population of each State.
* * * * *
Page 288, line 2, _omit_ "like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands."
These islands have distinct local tariffs, but they cannot be said to be
wholly under local control.
THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE
CHAPTER I
THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA
I.
Ireland was the oldest and the nearest of the Colonies. We are apt to
forget that she was ever colonized, and that for a long period, although
styled a Kingdom, she was kept in a position of commercial and political
dependence inferior to that of any Colony. Constitutional theory still
blinds a number of people to the fact that in actual practice Ireland is
still governed in many respects as a Colony, but on principles which in
all other white communities of the British Empire are extinct. Like all
Colonies, she has a Governor or Lord-Lieutenant of her own, an Executive
of her own, and a complete system of separate Government Departments,
but her people, unlike the inhabitants of a self-governing Colony,
exercise no control over the administration. She possesses no
Legislature of her own, although in theory she is supposed to possess
sufficient legislative control over Irish affairs through representation
in the Imperial Parliament. In practice, however, this control has
always been, and still remains, illusory, just as it would certainly
have proved illusory if conferred upon any Colony. It can be exercised
only by cumbrous, circuitous, and often profoundly unhealthy methods;
and over a wide range of matters it cannot by any method whatsoever be
exercised at all.
To look behind mere technicalities to the spirit of government, Ireland
resembles one of that class of Crown Colonies of which Jamaica and Malta
are examples, where the inhabitants exercise no control over
administration, and only partial control over legislation.[4]
Why is this?
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, always frank and fearless in his political
judgments, gave the best answer in 1893, when opposing the first reading
of the second of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills. "Does anybody doubt,"
he said, "that if Ireland were a thousand miles away from England she
would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" Now this
was not a barren geographical truism, which might by way of hypothesis
be applied in identical terms to any fraction of the United
Kingdom--say, for example, to that part of England lying south of the
Thames. Mr. Chamberlain never made any attempt to deny--no one with the
smallest knowledge of history could have denied--that Ireland, though
only sixty miles away from England, was less like England than any of
the self-governing Colonies then attached to the Crown, possessing
distinct national characteristics which entitled her, in theory at any
rate, to demand, not merely colonial, but national autonomy. On the
contrary, Mr. Chamberlain went out of his way to argue, with all the
force and fire of an accomplished debater, that the Bill was a highly
dangerous measure precisely because, while granting Ireland a measure of
autonomy, it denied her some of the elementary powers, not only of
colonial, but of national States; for instance, the full control over
taxation, which all self-governing Colonies possessed, and the control
over foreign policy, which is a national attribute. The complementary
step in his argument was that, although nominally withheld by statute,
these fuller powers would be forcibly usurped by the future Irish
Government through the leverage offered by a subordinate Legislature and
Executive, and that, once grasped, they would be used to the injury of
Great Britain and the minority in Ireland. Ireland ("a fearful danger")
might arm, ally herself with France, and, while submitting the
Protestant minority to cruel persecution, would retain enough national
unity to smite Britain hip and thigh, and so avenge the wrong of ages.
Even to the most ardent Unionist the case thus presented must, in the
year 1911, present a doubtful aspect. The British _entente_ with France,
and the absence of the smallest ascertainable sympathy between Ireland
and Germany, he will dismiss, perhaps, as points of minor importance,
but he will detect at once in the argument an antagonism, natural enough
in 1893, between national and colonial attributes, and he will remember,
with inner misgivings, that his own party has taken an especially active
part during the last ten years in furthering the claim of the
self-governing Colonies to the status of nationhood as an essential step
in the furtherance of Imperial unity. The word "nation," therefore, as
applied to Ireland, has lost some of its virtue as a deterrent to Home
Rule. Even the word "Colony" is becoming harmless; for every year that
has passed since 1893 has made it more abundantly clear that colonial
freedom means colonial friendship; and, after all, friendship is more
important than legal ties. In one remarkable case, that of the conquered
Dutch Republic in South Africa, a flood of searching light has been
thrown on the significance of those phrases "nation" and "Colony."
There, as in Ireland, and originally in Canada, "national" included
racial characteristics, and colonial autonomy signified national
autonomy in a more accurate sense than in Australia or Newfoundland. But
we know now that it does not signify either a racial tyranny within
those nations, or a racial antipathy to the Mother Country; but, on the
contrary, a reconciliation of races within and friendship without.
Would Mr. Chamberlain recast his argument now? Unhappily, we shall not
know. But it does seem to me that recent history and his own temperament
would force him to do so. As in his abandonment of Free Trade, it was a
strong and sincere Imperialist instinct that eventually transformed him
from the advocate of provincial Home Rule into the relentless enemy of
Home Rule in any shape. Take the Imperial argument, shaken to its
foundations by subsequent events, from the case he stated in 1893, and
what remains? Two pleas only--first, the abnormality of Irishmen;
second, Ireland's proximity to England. The first expresses the old
traditional view that Ireland is outside the pale of all human analogy;
the exception to all rules; her innate depravity and perversity such
that she would abuse power where others respect it, derive enmity where
others derive friendship, and willingly ruin herself by internal
dissension and extravagant ambitions in order, if possible, at the same
time to ruin England. Unconnected, however loosely, with the high
Imperial argument, I do not believe that this plea could have been used
with sincerity by Mr. Chamberlain even in 1893. He was a democrat,
devoted to the cause of enfranchising and trusting the people; and this
plea was, after all, only the same anti-democratic argument applied to
Ireland, and tipped with racial venom, which had been used for
generations by most Tories and many Whigs against any extension of
popular power. Lord Randolph Churchill, the Tory democrat, in his
dispassionate moments, always scouted it, resting his case against Home
Rule on different grounds. It was strange enough to see the argument
used by the Radical author of all the classic denunciations of class
ascendancy and the classic eulogies of the sense, forbearance and
generosity of free electorates. It was all the stranger in that Mr.
Chamberlain himself a few years before had committed himself to a scheme
of restricted self-government for Ireland, and in the debates on Mr.
Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill of 1886, when the condition of Ireland
was far worse than in 1893, had declared himself ready to give that
country a Constitution similar to that enjoyed by Quebec or Ontario
within the Dominion of Canada. But politics are politics. Under the
inexorable laws of the party game, politicians are advocates and swell
their indictments with every count which will bear the light. The system
works well enough in every case but one--the indictment of a
fellow-nation for incapacity to rule itself. There, both in Ireland and
everywhere else, as I shall show, it works incalculable mischief. Once
committed irrevocably to the opposition of Mr. Gladstone's Bills, Mr.
Chamberlain, standing on Imperial ground, which seemed to him and his
followers firm enough then, used his unrivalled debating powers to
traduce and exasperate the Irish people and their leaders by every
device in his power.
One other point survives in its integrity from the case made by Mr.
Chamberlain in 1893, and that is the argument about distance. Clearly
this is a quite distinct contention from the last; for distance from any
given point does not by itself radically alter human nature. Australians
are not twice as good or twice as bad as South Africans because they
are twice as far from the Mother Country. "Does anybody doubt"--let me
repeat his words--"that if Ireland were a thousand miles from England
she would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" The
whole tragedy of Ireland lies in that "if"; but the condition is,
without doubt, still unsatisfied. Ireland is still only sixty miles away
from the English shores, and the argument from proximity, for what it is
worth, is still plausible. To a vast number of minds it still seems
conclusive. Put the South African parallel to the average moderate
Unionist, half disposed to admit the force of this analogy, he would
nevertheless answer: "Ah, but Ireland is so near." Well, let us join
issue on the two grounds I have indicated--the ground of Irish
abnormality, and the ground of Ireland's proximity. It will be found, I
think, that neither contention is tenable by itself; that a supporter of
one unconsciously or consciously reinforces it by reference to the
other, and that to refute one is to refute both. It will be found, too,
that, apart from mechanical and unessential difficulties, the whole case
against Home Rule is included and summed up in these two contentions,
and that the mechanical problem itself will be greatly eased and
illuminated by their refutation.
II.
Those sixty miles of salt water which we know as the Irish Channel--if
only every Englishman could realize their tremendous significance in
Anglo-Irish history--what an ineffectual barrier "in the long result of
time" to colonization and conquest; what an impassable barrier--through
the ignorance and perversity of British statesmanship--to sympathy and
racial fusion!
For eight hundred years after the Christian era her distance from Europe
gave Ireland immunity from external shocks, and freedom to work out her
own destiny. She never, for good or ill, underwent Roman occupation or
Teutonic invasion. She was secure enough to construct and maintain
unimpaired a civilization of her own, warlike, prosperous, and
marvellously rich, for that age, in scholarship and culture. She
produced heroic warriors, peaceful merchants, and gentle scholars and
divines; poets, musicians, craftsmen, architects, theologians. She had a
passion for diffusing knowledge, and for more than a thousand years sent
her missionaries of piety, learning, art, and commerce, far and wide
over Europe. For two hundred years she resisted her first foreign
invaders, the Danes, with desperate tenacity, and seems to have absorbed
into her own civilization and polity those who ultimately retained a
footing on her eastern shores.
With the coming of the Anglo-Normans at the end of the twelfth century
the dark shadow begins to fall, and for the first time the Irish Channel
assumes its tragic significance. England, compounded of Britons,
Teutons, Danes, Scandinavians, Normans, with the indelible impress of
Rome upon the whole, had emerged, under Nature's mysterious alchemy, a
strong State. Ireland had preserved her Gaelic purity, her tribal
organization, her national culture, but at the cost of falling behind in
the march of political and military organization. Sixty miles divided
her from the nearest part of the outlying dominions of feudal England,
150 miles from the dynamic centre of English power. The degree of
distance seems to have been calculated with fatal exactitude, in
correspondence with the degrees of national vitality in the two
countries respectively, to produce for ages to come the worst possible
effects on both. The process was slow. Ireland was near enough to
attract the Anglo-Norman adventurers and colonists, but strong enough
and fair enough for three hundred years to transform them into patriots
"more Irish than the Irish"; always, however, too near and too weak,
even with their aid, to expel the direct representatives of English rule
from the foothold they had obtained on her shores, while at the same
time too far and too formidable to enable that rule to expand into the
complete conquest and subjugation of the realm.
"The English rule," says Mr. Lecky, "as a living reality, was confined
and concentrated within the limits of the Pale. The hostile power
planted in the heart of the nation destroyed all possibility of central
government, while it was itself incapable of fulfilling that function.
Like a spear-point embedded in a living body, it inflamed all around it
and deranged every vital function. It prevented the gradual reduction
of the island by some native Clovis, which would necessarily have taken
place if the Anglo-Normans had not arrived, and instead of that peaceful
and almost silent amalgamation of races, customs, laws, and languages,
which took place in England, and which is the source of many of the best
elements in English life and character, the two nations remained in
Ireland for centuries in hostility."
From this period dates that intense national antipathy felt by the
English for the Irish race which has darkened all subsequent history. It
was not originally a temperamental antipathy, or it would be impossible
to explain the powerful attraction of Irish character, manners, and laws
for the great bulk of the Anglo-Norman colonists. Nor within Ireland,
even after the Reformation, was it a religious antipathy between a
Protestant race and a race exclusively and immovably Catholic. It was in
origin a political antipathy between a small official minority, backed
by the support of a powerful Mother Country struggling for ascendancy
over a large native and naturalized majority, divided itself by tribal
feuds, but on the whole united in loathing and combating that
ascendancy. Universal experience, as I shall afterwards show, proves
that an enmity so engendered takes a more monstrous and degrading shape
than any other. Religion becomes its pretext. Ignorance makes it easy,
and interest makes it necessary, to represent the native race as savages
outside the pale of law and morals, against whom any violence and
treachery is justifiable. The legend grows and becomes a permanent
political axiom, distorting and abasing the character of those who act
on it and those who, suffering from it, and retaliating against its
consequences, construct their counter-legend of the inherent wickedness
of the dominant race. If left to themselves, white races, of diverse
nationalities, thrown together in one country, eventually coalesce, or
at least learn to live together peaceably. But if an external power too
remote to feel genuine responsibility for the welfare of the
inhabitants, while near enough to exert its military power on them,
takes sides in favour of the minority, and employs them as its permanent
and privileged garrison, the results are fatal to the peace and
prosperity of the country it seeks to dominate, and exceedingly
harmful, though in a degree less easy to gauge, to itself. So it was
with Ireland; and yet it cannot fail to strike any student of history
what an extraordinary resilience she showed again and again under any
transient phase of wise and tolerant government.
Such a phase occurred in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII.,
when, after the defeat of the Geraldines, for the first time some
semblance of royal authority was established over the whole realm; and
when an effort was also made, not through theft or violence, but by
conciliatory statecraft, to replace the native Brehon system of law and
land tenure by English institutions, and to anglicize the Irish chiefs.
The process stopped abruptly and for ever with the accession of Mary, to
be replaced by the forcible confiscation of Irish land, and the
"planting" of English and Scotch settlers.
Ireland, for four hundred years the only British Colony, is now drawn
into the mighty stream of British colonial expansion. Adventurous and
ambitious Englishmen began to regard her fertile acres as Raleigh
regarded America, and, in point of time, the systematic and State-aided
colonization of Ireland is approximately contemporaneous with that of
America. It is true that until the first years of the sixteenth century
no permanent British settlement had been made in America, while in
Ireland the plantation of King's and Queen's Counties was begun as early
as 1556, and under Elizabeth further vast confiscations were carried out
in Munster within the same century. But from the reign of James I.
onward, the two processes advance _pari passu_. Virginia, first founded
by Raleigh in 1585, is firmly settled in 1607, just before the
confiscation of Ulster and its plantation by 30,000 Scots; and in 1620,
just after that huge measure of expropriation, the Pilgrim Fathers
landed in New Plymouth. Puritan Massachusetts--with its offshoots,
Connecticut, New Haven and Rhode Island--as well as Catholic Maryland,
were formally established between 1629 and 1638, and Maine in 1639, at a
period when the politically inspired proscription of the Catholic
religion, succeeding the robbery of the soil, was goading the unhappy
Irish to the rebellion of 1641. While that rebellion, with its fierce
excesses and pitiless reprisals, was convulsing Ireland, the united
Colonies of New England banded themselves together for mutual defence.
A few years later Cromwell, aiming, through massacre and rapine, at the
extermination of the Irish race, with the savage watchword "To Hell or
Connaught," planted Ulster, Munster, and Leinster with men of the same
stock, stamp, and ideas as the colonists of New England, and in the
first years of the Restoration Charles II. confirmed these
confiscations, at the same time that he granted Carolina to Lord
Clarendon, New Netherlands to the Duke of York, and New Jersey to Lord
Berkeley, and issued fresh Charters for Connecticut and Maryland.
Finally, Quaker Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1682, and in 1691 William
III., after the hopeless Jacobite insurrections in favour of the last of
the Stuarts, wrung the last million acres of good Irish land from the
old Catholic proprietors, planted them with Protestant Englishmen, and
completed the colonization of Ireland. Forty years passed (1733) before
Georgia, the last of the "Old Thirteen Colonies," was planted, as Ulster
had been planted, mainly by Scotch Presbyterians.
During the greater part of this period we must remember that conquered
Ireland herself was contributing to the colonization of America. Every
successive act of spoliation drove Catholic Irishmen across the Atlantic
as well as into Europe, and gave every Colony an infusion of Irish
blood. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century this class of
emigration was for the most part involuntary. Cromwell, for example,
shipped off thousands of families indiscriminately to the West Indies
and America for sale, as "servants" to the colonists. The only organized
and voluntary expedition in which Irish Catholics took part was that to
Maryland under Lord Baltimore. The distinction in course of time became
immaterial. In the free American air English, Scotch, and Irish became
one people, with a common political and social tradition.
It is interesting, and for a proper understanding of the Irish question,
indispensable, briefly to contrast the characteristics and progress of
the American and Irish settlements, and in doing so to observe the
profound effects of geographical position and political institutions on
human character. I shall afterwards ask the reader to include in the
comparison the later British Colonies formed in Canada and South Africa
by conquest, and in Australia by peaceful settlement.
Let us note, first, that both in America and Ireland the Colonies were
bi-racial, with this all-important distinction, that in America the
native race was coloured, savage, heathen, nomadic, incapable of fusion
with the whites, and, in relation to the almost illimitable territory
colonized, not numerous; while in Ireland the native race was white,
civilized, Christian, numerous, and confined within the limits of a
small island to which it was passionately attached by treasured national
traditions, and whose soil it cultivated under an ancient and revered
system of tribal tenure. The parallel, then, in this respect, is slight,
and becomes insignificant, except in regard to the similarity of the
mental attitude of the colonists towards Indians and Irish respectively.
In natural humanity the colonists of Ireland and the colonists of
America differed in no appreciable degree. They were the same men, with
the same inherent virtues and defects, acting according to the pressure
of environment. Danger, in proportionate degree, made both classes
brutal and perfidious; but in America, though there were moments of
sharp crisis, as in 1675 on the borders of Massachusetts, the degree was
comparatively small, and through the defeat and extrusion of the Indians
diminished steadily. In Ireland, because complete expulsion and
extermination were impossible, the degree was originally great, and,
long after it had actually disappeared, haunted the imagination and
distorted the policy of the invading nation.
In America there was no land question. Freeholds were plentiful for the
meanest settlers and the title was sound and indisputable. In the
"proprietary" Colonies, it is true, vast tracts of country were
originally vested by royal grants in a single nobleman or a group of
capitalists, just as vast estates were granted in Ireland to peers,
London companies, and syndicates of "undertakers"; but by the nature of
things, the extent of territory, its distance, and the absence of a
white subject race, no agrarian harm resulted in America, and a healthy
system of tenure, almost exclusively freehold, was naturally evolved.
In Ireland the land question was the whole question from the first. If
the natives had been exterminated, or their remnants wholly confined,
as Cromwell planned, to the barren lands of Connaught, all might have
been well for the conquerors. Or if Ireland had been, in Mr.
Chamberlain's phrase, a thousand miles away, all might have come right
under the compulsion of circumstances and the healing influence of time.
That the Celtic race still possessed its strong powers of assimilation
was shown by the almost complete denationalization and absorption of a
large number of Cromwell's soldier-colonists in the south and south-east
under what Mr. Lecky calls the "invincible Catholicism" of the Irish
women. But the Irish were not only numerous, but fatally near the seat
of Empire. The natives--Irish or Anglo-Irish--were still more than twice
as numerous as the colonists; they were scattered over the whole
country, barren or fertile, and that country was within a day's sail of
England. The titles of the colonists to the land rested on sheer
violence, sometimes aggravated by the grossest meanness and treachery,
and these titles were not recognized by the plundered race. Even with
their gradual recognition it would have been difficult to introduce the
English system of tenure, which was radically different and repellent to
the Irish mind. The bare idea of one man absolutely owning land and
transmitting it entire to his heirs was incomprehensible to them.
The solution for all these difficulties was unfortunately only too easy
and obvious. England was near, strong, and thoroughly imbued with the
policy of governing Ireland on the principle of antagonizing the races
within her. It was possible, therefore, by English help, under laws made
in England, to constitute the Irish outlaws from the land, labourers on
it, no doubt, that was an economic necessity, precarious occupiers of
plots just sufficient to support life; but, in the eyes of the law,
serfs. The planters of the southern American Colonies imported African
negroes for the same purpose, with irretrievably mischievous results to
their own descendants. Nor is it an exaggeration to compare the use made
of the Irish for a certain period to the use made of these negroes, for
great numbers of the Irish were actually exported as slaves to
Barbadoes, Jamaica, and even to Carolina.
The outlawed multitude in Ireland were deprived, not only of all rights
to the land, but, as a corollary, of all social privileges whatsoever.
"The law," said an Irish Lord Chancellor, "does not suppose any such
person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." The instrument of ostracism
was the famous Penal Code, begun in William's reign in direct and
immediate defiance of a solemn pledge given in the Treaty of Limerick,
guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Catholics, and perfected in
the reign of Anne. This Code, ostensibly framed to extirpate
Catholicism, was primarily designed to confirm and perpetuate the
gigantic dislocation of property caused by the transference of Irish and
Anglo-Irish land into English and Scotch ownership. Since the rightful
owners were Catholic, and the wrongful owners Protestants, the laws
against the Catholic religion--a religion feared everywhere by
Englishmen at this period--were the simplest means of legalizing and
buttressing the new regime. I shall not linger over the details of the
Code. Burke's description of it remains classic and unquestioned: "A
complete system full of coherence and consistency, well digested and
composed in all its parts ... a machine of wise and elaborate
contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and
degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature
itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man."
The aim was to reduce the Catholics to poverty, ignorance, and
impotence, and the aim was successful. Of the laws against priests,
worship, education, and of the bars to commerce and the professions, I
need not speak. In the matter of property, the fundamental enactments
concerned the land, namely, that no Catholic could own land, or lease it
for more than thirty years, and even then on conditions which made
profitable tenure practically impossible. This law created and sustained
the serfdom I have described, and is the direct cause of the modern land
problem. It remained unaltered in the smallest respect for seventy
years, that is, until 1761, when a Catholic was permitted to lease for
sixty-one years as much as fifty acres of bog not less than four feet
deep. Long before this the distribution of landed property and the
system of land tenure had become stereotyped.
This system of tenure was one of the worst that ever existed on the face
of the globe. It has been matched in portions of India, but nowhere
else in this Empire save in little Prince Edward Island, where we shall
meet with it again. In Ireland, where it assumed its worst form, violent
conquest by a neighbouring power not only made it politic to outlaw the
old owners, but precluded the introduction of the traditional English
tenures, even into the relations between the British superior landlord
and the British occupying colonist. The bulk of the confiscated Irish
land, as I have mentioned, had been granted in fee to English noblemen,
gentlemen, or speculators, who planted it with middle or lower-class
tenants. A number of Cromwell's private soldiers settled in Leinster and
Munster, and, holding small farms in fee, formed an exception to this
rule. But the greater part of Ireland, in ownership, as distinguished
from occupation, consisted of big estates, and a large number of the
English owners, being only a day's sail from England, became, by natural
instinct, habitual absentees. Others lived in Dublin and neglected their
estates. Absenteeism, non-existent in America, assumed in Ireland the
proportions of an enormous economic evil. In England the landlord was,
and remains, a capitalist, providing a house and a fully equipped farm
to the tenant. In Ireland he was a rent receiver pure and simple,
unconnected with the occupier by any healthy bond, moral or economic.
The rent-receiving absentee involved a resident middleman, who
contracted to pay a stipulated rent to the absentee, and had to extract
that rent, plus a profit for himself, out of the occupiers, whether
Catholic serfs, Protestant tenants, or both, and usually did so by
subdivision of holdings and disproportionate elevation of rents. Over
three of the four Provinces of Ireland--for a small part of Ulster was
differently situated--the middleman himself frequently became an
absentee and farmed his agency to another middleman, who by further
subdivisions and extortions made an additional private profit, and who,
in his turn, would create a subsidiary agency, until the land in many
cases was "subset six deep."[5] The ultimate occupier and sole creator
of agricultural wealth lived perpetually on the verge of starvation,
beggared not only by extortionate rents, partly worked out in virtually
forced labour, but by extortionate tithes paid to the alien Anglican
Church, in addition to the scanty dues willingly contributed to the
hunted priests of his own prescribed religion. His resident upper
class--though we must allow for many honourable exceptions--was the
Squirearchy, satirized by Arthur Young as petty despots with the vices
of despots; idle, tyrannical, profligate, boorish, fit founders of the
worst social system the modern civilized world has ever known. The
slave-owning planters of Carolina were by no means devoid of similar
faults, which are the invariable products of arbitrary control over
human beings, but there the physiological gulf between the dominant and
subject race was too broad and deep to permit of substantial
deterioration in the former. In Ireland the ethnological difference was
small; the artificial cleavage and deterioration great in inverse
proportion.
For the greater part of a century, in every part of Ireland, tenancies
of land, whether held by Catholic or Protestant, by lease or at will,
were alike in certain fundamental characteristics. The tenant had
neither security of tenure nor right to the value of the improvements
which were invariably made by his own capital and labour. Even a
leaseholder, when his lease expired, had no prescriptive claim to
renewal, but must take his chance at a rent-auction with strangers, the
farm going to the highest bidder. If he lost, he was homeless and
penniless, while the fruits of his labour and capital passed into other
hands. The miserable Catholic cottier was, of course, in a similar case,
though relatively his hardship was less, since his condition, being the
lowest possible in all circumstances, could scarcely be worse.
Obviously, in a case where the landlord was neither the capitalist nor
the protector and friend of the tenant, the possession of those
elementary rights, security of tenure and compensation for improvements,
was the condition precedent to the growth of a sound agrarian system.
Their denial was incompatible with social order. Yet they were denied,
and for one hundred and eighty years an intermittent struggle to obtain
them by violence and criminal conspiracy degraded and retarded Ireland.
But a marked distinction grew up between a small portion of Ireland and
the rest. James I.'s plantation of Ulster had been far more drastic and
thorough than any operation of the kind before or since. Later
immigrants had flowed in, and at the beginning of the eighteenth
century in the north-eastern portion--the predominantly Protestant
Ulster of to-day--Scotch Protestant tenants, mainly Presbyterian, were
thickly settled, and formed an industrious community of strong and
tenacious temper. In the original leases granted by the concessionaires
in the seventeenth century, fixity of tenure was implied, and a nominal
rent levied, somewhat after the American model; but under the example of
other Provinces, and the economic pressure exerted by the growth in the
Catholic population, these privileges seem to have been almost wholly
obliterated. The absentee landlords, reckless of social welfare, exacted
the rack or competitive rent. As in the south and west, tithes to the
Established Church and oppressive and corrupt local taxation for roads
and other purposes, aggravated the discontent. For agrarian reasons
only--and there were others which I shall mention--many thousands of
Protestants left Ireland for ever. It required a long period of outrage
and conspiracy, attaining in 1770 the proportions of a small civil war,
and at the end of the century, by the anti-Catholic passions it
inspired, wrecking new hopes of racial unity, to establish what came to
be known as the Ulster Custom of Tenant Right. If Protestant freemen had
to resort to these demoralizing methods to obtain, and then only after
irreparable damage to Ireland, the first condition of social stability,
a tolerable land system, the effect of the agrarian system on Catholic
Ireland, prostrate under the Penal Code, may be easily imagined.
In addition to excessive subdivision of holdings and excessive tithes,
rents, and local burdens, another agrarian evil, unknown in the vast and
thinly populated tracts of America intensified the misery of the Irish
peasantry of the eighteenth century. This was the conversion of the best
land from tillage into pasture, with the resulting clearances and
migrations, and the ultimate congestion on the worst land. Lecky quotes
a contemporary pamphlet, which speaks of the "best arable land in the
kingdom in immense tracts wantonly enjoyed by the cattle of a few
individuals, and at the same time the junctions of our highways and
streets crowded with shoals of mendicant fellow-creatures." This change
from arable to pasture has been a common and often in the long run a
healthy, economic tendency in many countries, England and Scotland
included, though temporarily a fruitful source of misery. Under normal
conditions the immediate evils right themselves in course of time.
Nothing was normal in Ireland, and any breath of economic change in the
outside world reacted cruelly on the wretched subject class, which
produced, though it did not enjoy, the greater part of the wealth of the
kingdom. Under an accumulation of hardships famine was periodic, and
from 1760, when the first Whiteboys appeared, disorder in one degree or
another was chronic. The motive, it is universally agreed now, was
material, not religious. The Whiteboys of the south and west were the
counterparts of the Protestant Steelboys and Oakboys of the north, and
even in the south and west there were Protestant as well as Catholic
Whiteboys. Lord Charlemont, the Protestant Irish statesman, denying this
now well-ascertained fact, was nevertheless explicit enough about the
cause of the disorders. "The real causes," he said, "were ... exorbitant
rents, low wages, want of employment, farms of enormous extent let by
their rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing land-jobbers,
by whom small portions of them were again let and relet to intermediate
oppressors, and by them subdivided for five times their value among the
wretched starvers upon potatoes and water; taxes yearly increasing, and
still more tithes, which the Catholic, without any possible benefit,
unwillingly pays in addition to his priest's money ... misery,
oppression, and famine."[6]
Agrarian crime, operating through an endless succession of secret
societies, Whiteboys and Rightboys in the eighteenth century; Terry
Alts, Rockites, Caravats, Ribbonmen, Moonlighters, in the nineteenth,
was rampant for nearly two centuries, long surviving the repeal of the
Penal Code; and its last echoes may be heard at this moment. In the
absence of all wholesome law, violence and terror were the only means of
self-defence. The remedy applied was retaliatory violence under forms of
law. Nothing whatsoever was done to remove the essential vices of
agrarian tenure during the eighteenth century; nothing tentative even
during the nineteenth century until the year 1870; nothing effective and
permanent until 1881, when, as far as humanly possible, it was sought
to give direct statutory expression to the Ulster Custom, with the
addition of the principle of a fair judicial rent. Englishmen should
realize this when they discuss Irish character. It is a very old story,
but nine out of ten Englishmen, when talking vaguely of Irish
discontent, disloyalty, and turbulence, forget, or have never learnt,
this and other fundamental facts. As for the Irish landlords, we must
remember that the founders of that class differed in no respect from
other English landlords, or from the aristocratic American
concessionaires, just as their compatriot tenants and lessees were
identical in stock with the American colonists. Their descendants and
successors have been the victims of circumstance. Each generation has
inherited the vested interests of the last, and it is not in human
nature to look far behind vested interests into the wrongful acts which
created them and the bad laws that perpetuate them. Doubly victimized
have been those resident landlords who at all periods, from the earliest
era of colonization, in spite of temptation and bad examples around
them, have acted towards their tenantry as humane and patriotic
citizens. A bad agrarian system infects the whole body politic. Good
landlords and contented tenants inevitably suffered with the rest.
In commerce and industry, as in land, the Irish Colony stood at a heavy
disadvantage by comparison with America. From the Restoration onward,
English statesmen took the same view of both dependencies, namely, that
their commercial interests should be wholly subordinate to those of the
Mother Country, and the same Department, the Board of Trade and
Plantations, made the fiscal regulations for Ireland and America. The
old idea that for trade purposes Ireland counted as an integral part of
the United Kingdom did not last longer than 1663. But it was not wholly
abrogated by the great Navigation Act of that year, which, though it
placed harsh restrictions on the Irish cattle trade with England, did
not expressly exclude Irish ships from the monopoly of the colonial
trade conferred upon English vessels, so that for seven years longer a
tolerably prosperous business was carried on direct between Ireland and
the American Colonies.[7] An Act of 1670, prohibiting, with a few
negligible exceptions, all direct imports from the Colonies into
Ireland, gave a heavy check to this business, arrested the growth of
Irish shipping, and, in conjunction with subsequent measures of
navigational, fiscal, and industrial repression, converted Ireland for a
century into a kind of trade helot. She was treated either as a foreign
country, as a Colony, or as something inferior to either, according to
the dictation of English interests, while possessing neither the
commercial independence of a foreign country nor the natural and
indefeasible immunity which distance, climate, variety of soil, and
unlimited room for expansion continued to confer, in spite of all
coercive restraints, upon the American Colonies. Though the British
trade monopoly was certainly a contributory cause in promoting the
American revolution, it was never, any more than the British claim to
tax, a severe practical grievance. The prohibition of the export of
manufactures, and the compulsory reciprocal exchange of colonial natural
products for British manufactured goods and the chartered merchandise of
the Orient, were not very onerous restrictions for young communities
settled in virgin soil; nor, with a few exceptions like raw wool, whose
export was forbidden, were the American natural products of a kind which
could compete with those of the Mother Country. The real damage
inflicted upon the Colonies by the mercantile system--one which its
modern defenders are apt to forget--was moral. To practise and condone
smuggling was habitual in America, and some of the English Governors set
the worst example of all by making a profit out of connivance at the
illicit traffic. "Graft" was their creation. The moral mischief done was
permanent, and it resembled in a lesser degree the mischief done in
Ireland both by bad agrarian and bad commercial laws. Ireland, owing to
her proximity, was in the unhappy position of being a competitor in the
great staples of trade, both raw and manufactured, and she was near
enough and weak enough to render it easy to stamp out this competition
so far as it was thought to be inimical to English interests. The cattle
and provision trade with England had been damaged as far back as 1663,
and was killed in 1666, though the export of provisions to foreign
countries survived, and became almost the sole source of Irish trade
during the eighteenth century. The policy with raw wool was to admit
just as much as would satisfy the English weavers without arousing the
determined opposition of the competitive English graziers. The Irish
manufactured wool trade, a flourishing business, for which Irishmen
showed exceptionally high aptitude, and which in the normal course of
things would probably have become her staple industry, was destroyed
altogether, avowedly in the interests of the English staple industry, by
prohibitory export duties imposed in 1698. Subsidiary
industries--cotton, glass, brewing, sugar-refining, sail-cloth, hempen
rope, and salt--were successively strangled. One manufacture alone, that
of linen, centred in the Protestant North, was spared, and for a short
period was even encouraged, not because it was a Protestant industry,
but because at first it aroused no trade jealousy in England, and was in
some respects serviceable to her. In 1708, when it was proposed to
extend the industry to Leinster, considerations of foreign trade
provoked an outburst of hostility, and harassing restrictions were
imposed on this industry also. On the whole, however, it suffered less
than the rest, and lived to become one of the two important
manufacturing industries of present-day Ireland.
English policy was as fatuous as it was cruel. Numbers of the Irish
manufacturers and artisans, both Catholic and Protestant, emigrated to
Europe, and devoted their skill and energy to strengthening industries
which competed with those of England. Within Ireland, since industry and
commerce formed the one outlet left by the Penal Code for Catholic
brains and capital--though even here the Code imposed harassing
disabilities--the commercial restrictions completed the ruin of the
proscribed sect. But at this period the main source of weakness to
Ireland, of strength to America, and of danger to the Empire as a whole,
was the Protestant emigration. Lecky estimates that 12,000 Protestant
families in Dublin and 30,000 in the rest of the country were ruined by
the suppression of the wool trade. The great majority of these
Protestants were Presbyterians belonging to North-East Ulster, and
descendants of the men who had defended that Province with such
desperate gallantry against the Irish insurgents under the deposed James
II. Political power in Ireland was wielded in the interests of a small
territorial and Episcopalian aristocracy, largely absentee. The
Dissenters belonged to the middle and lower classes, and were for the
most part tenants or artisans. Creed and caste antipathies were combined
against them. Their value as citizens was ignored. Though their right to
worship was legally recognized by an Act of 1719, they remained from
1704 to 1778 subject to the Test, were incapacitated for all public
employment, and were forbidden to open schools. Under an accumulation of
agrarian, economic, and religious disabilities, they naturally left
Ireland to find freedom in America. And it is beyond question that they
turned the scale against the British arms in the great War of
Independence.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Class C. in Sir William Anson's classification, "Law and Custom of
the Constitution," p. 253.
[5] J. Fisher, "End of the Irish Parliament" cited.
[6] MS. Autobiography cited by Lecky, vol. ii., p. 35.
[7] The best modern account of the commercial relations of Great Britain
Mid Ireland is Miss Murray's "Commercial Relations between England and
Ireland."
CHAPTER II
REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND
In the Old World and in the New, therefore, two societies, composed of
human beings similar in all essential respects, were growing up under
the protection of the British Crown; the one servile, the other free;
the one stagnant where it was not retrograde, the other prosperous,
progressive, and, by the magnetism of its own freedom, progress, and
prosperity, steadily draining its Irish fellow of talent, energy, and
industrial skill.
What was the ultimate cause of this glaring divergency? Religion, as a
spiritual force, was not the root cause. The American Colonies, with
three exceptions--the earliest Virginia, the latest Georgia, and the
Catholic community of Maryland--were formed by Dissenters,[8] exiles
themselves from persecution, but not necessarily forbearing to others,
and, in the case of the New England Puritans, bitterly intolerant. It is
interesting to observe that the Quakers and the Catholics, men standing
at the opposite poles of theology, set the highest example of tolerance.
Quaker Pennsylvania enforced absolute liberty of conscience, and Quakers
in all the Provinces worked for religious harmony and freedom. Catholic
Maryland, as long as its government remained in Catholic hands, and
under the guidance of the wise and liberal Proprietary, Lord Baltimore,
pursued the same policy, and attracted members of sects persecuted in
New England.[9] The parallel with Ireland is significant. At the end of
the seventeenth century, when a quarrel was raging between the Crown and
Massachusetts over the persecution of Quakers in that Colony, and for a
further period in the eighteenth century, Quaker missionaries and
settlers were conducting a campaign of revivalism in Ireland with no
molestation from the Catholics, though with intermittent obstruction
from magistrates and Protestant clergy. Wesleyans received the same
sympathetic treatment.[10] The tolerance shown by Irish Catholics, in
spite of terrible provocation, is acknowledged by all reputable
historians. Nor was Protestant intolerance, whether Anglican or
Nonconformist, of a deeper dogmatic shade than anywhere else in the
King's dominions. But in Ireland it was political, economic, and social,
while in America it was purely theological, and, moreover, purely
American. The Episcopalian ascendancy in Ireland represented foreign
interests, and therefore struck against Dissent as well as against
Popery, and estranged both. The root of the American trouble, leading to
the separation of the Colonies, was political and wholly unconnected
with religion. The root of the Irish trouble, adventitiously connected
with religion, lay, and lies still, in the Irish political system. Other
evils were transient and curable; this was permanent. The Penal Code was
eventually relaxed; the disabilities of the Dissenters were eventually
removed; the commercial servitude was abolished, but the political
system _in essentials_ has never been changed. Let us see what it was
and how it worked at the period we are considering, again by comparison
with America.
Though the word "plantation" was applied alike to the colonization of
Ireland and America, Ireland was never called a Colony, but a Kingdom.
The distinction was not scientific, and operated, like all other
distinctions, to the injury of Ireland. Neither country was represented
in the British Parliament. In both countries the representatives of the
Crown were appointed by England, and controlled, in America almost
completely, in Ireland absolutely, the Executive and Judges. In Ireland
the Viceroy was always an Englishman; in America, the Governors of a few
of the non-proprietary Colonies were colonials, but most Governors were
English, and some of the proprietary class were absentees.[11] In the
case both of Ireland and America the English Government claimed a
superior right of control over legislation and taxation, and in both
cases it was found necessary to remove all doubts as to this right by
passing Declaratory Acts, for Ireland in 1719, for America in 1766. The
great difference lay in the Legislature, and was the result of different
degrees of remoteness from the seat of power. America was profoundly
democratic from the beginning, outpacing the Mother Country by fully two
centuries. There was no aristocracy, and in most Colonies little
distinction between upper and middle classes. The popular Assemblies,
elected on the broadest possible franchise, were truly representative.
Some of the Legislative Councils, or Upper Chambers, were elective also.
Most of them, although nominated, and therefore inclined to be hostile
to the popular body, were nevertheless of identical social composition;
so that there was often an official, but never a caste, ascendancy. From
very early times there was occasional friction between the Home
Government, represented by the Governors, and the colonial democracies,
over such matters as taxation, official salaries, quartering of troops,
and navigation laws. Writs of _quo warranto_ were issued against
Connecticut, Carolina, New York, and Maryland, in the latter part of the
seventeenth century, and the Charter of Massachusetts, after long
wrangles with the Crown, was forfeited in 1684, and not restored until
1692, after a period of despotic government under Sir Edmund Andros. But
for a century or more the system worked well enough upon the whole.
Under the powerful lever of the representative Assembly, neutralized by
the ever-present need for military protection from the Mother Country,
and with the wholesome check to undue coercion set by the broad
Atlantic, civic freedom grew and flourished to a degree unknown in any
other part of the civilized world.
In Ireland civic freedom was unknown. There was no popular Assembly. A
wealthy aristocracy of English extraction and of Anglican faith, partly
resident, partly absentee, and wholly subservient to the English
Government, constituted the Upper House of that strange institution
known as Parliament, and to a great extent nominated and controlled the
Lower House through means frankly corrupt. Representation was almost
nominal; close pocket-boroughs predominated, and seats were bought and
sold in the open market. In the year 1790 more than a third of the
Members of the House of Commons were placemen, 216 Members out of 300
were elected by boroughs and manors, and, of these, 176 were elected by
individual patrons. Fifty-three of these patrons, nominating 123
Members, sat as Peers in the Upper House. Cash, places, and peerages,
were the usual considerations paid for maintaining a Government
majority. The Catholics, from three-quarters to five-sixths of the
population, had neither votes nor members; the Dissenters scarcely any
members and an almost powerless vote. The Irish Legislature, by an Act
as old as 1495, the famous Poynings' Law, could neither initiate nor
pass a measure without the consent of the English Privy Council, and the
Declaratory Act of 1719 confirmed the power of making English Acts
applicable to Ireland. Government in England itself was, no doubt,
unrepresentative and corrupt at that period, and the people paid the
penalty in full; but it was a national government, under the aegis of
the national faith, and resting, however remotely, on the ultimate
sanction of the people, just as American opinion, more democratically
ascertained, continued to control the major part of American affairs. In
Ireland the Government was systematically anti-Irish. There was no
career for Irishmen in Ireland. Both Catholics and Dissenters were
excluded from all civil and military offices; the highest posts were
generally given to Englishmen born and bred, and the country,
Episcopalian only to a fractional extent, was ruled by a narrow
Episcopalian oligarchy of wealthy landowners and prelates, who bartered
Irish freedom for the place and power of their own families and
dependents. The conditions of this sordid exchange were the ground of
the first important Anglo-Irish political struggle in the eighteenth
century, when the English Viceroy, Townshend, succeeded in 1770-71, at
the cost of half a million, in transferring the bribing power, and
therefore the controlling power, from the "Undertakers," as they were
known, direct to the Crown.
There seems to have been no continuous English policy beyond that of
making Ireland completely subservient to English interests and purposes,
and often to purposes of the most humiliating and degrading kind. The
Irish Pension List has earned immortal infamy. Jobs too scandalous to
pass muster in England were systematically foisted upon the Irish
establishment. Royal mistresses, a host of needy Germans, a Danish Queen
banished for adultery, lived in England or abroad upon incomes drawn
from the impoverished Irish Exchequer. Nor was it only a question of
pensions. Quantities of valuable sinecure offices were habitually given
to Englishmen who never came near the shores of Ireland. In short, the
English policy towards Ireland was similar to Spain's policy towards her
South American Colonies, minus the grosser forms of physical cruelty and
oppression. Yet Ireland, like the American Colonies until the verge of
the revolutionary struggle, was consistently loyal to the Crown both in
peace and war. The loyalty of Catholic Ireland, poverty-stricken,
inarticulate, almost leaderless, and shamefully misgoverned, does not,
from the human standpoint, appear worthy of admiration, but it was a
fact. The few Catholic noblemen outdid the Protestants in expressions of
devotion; the Whiteboy risings were as little disloyal as religious. Not
a hand stirred for James or his heirs when Jacobite plots and risings
were causing grave public danger in England and Scotland. Catholic Lord
Trimleston offered exclusively Catholic regiments with Catholic officers
to George III. for foreign service in 1762, though they were vetoed by
what his Viceroy Halifax called the "ill-bred bigotry" of the Irish
Parliament. Nor was it till thirty years after that date that Protestant
discontent, under intolerable provocation, assumed an anti-dynastic and
Republican form. To compare the Imperial spirit displayed by America and
Ireland in their views and action is difficult, partly because the
various American Colonies differed widely, partly because there existed
in Ireland no organ of government which could express popular feeling.
Neither country, of course, paid any cash contribution to Imperial
expenses, though both could fairly claim that the English monopoly of
trade imposed an indirect tribute of indefinite size, while Ireland, in
pensions, rents to absentees, and sinecure appointments, was drained of
many millions more. American patronage was an element of substantial
value to England, but it was not on the Irish scale. America on the
whole, perhaps, showed less patriotic feeling than Ireland. With full
allowance for the lack of sympathy and understanding shown by the
British regulars to the American volunteers in their co-operation in the
French wars, it can scarcely be denied that the colonists, together with
much heroism and public spirit, showed occasional slackness and
parsimony in resisting the penetration of a foreign Power which
threatened to hem in their settlements from the St. Lawrence to the
mouth of the Mississippi. Ireland during the Seven Years' War, and until
the Peace of Paris in 1763, maintained a war establishment of 24,000
troops. She maintained a peace establishment of 12,000 troops, and from
1767 onwards of 15,000 troops. There never seems to have been a whisper
of protest from the Catholic population against these measures, nor,
except in the matter of the American War, to which we shall come
presently, from the Protestants. It may be added that, after 1767,
Catholics in considerable numbers were surreptitiously enlisted in the
ranks, in spite of the Penal Code, and from then until the present day
have fought for the Flag as staunchly as any other class of the King's
subjects.
It never occurred to responsible English statesmen that here was ground,
firm as a rock in America, and firm enough in Ireland, on which, if only
they obeyed the instincts and maxims upon which England herself had
risen to greatness, they might build a mighty and durable Imperial
structure. That loyalty, to be genuine and lasting, must spring from
liberty was a truth they did not appreciate, and to this truth,
strangely enough, in spite of the lessons of nearly a century and a
half, a numerous school of English statesmen is still blind. It was no
doubt a fatality that the smouldering discontent both of America and
Ireland burst into flame in the reign of a monarch who endeavoured, even
within the limits of Britain, to regain the arbitrary power which had
cost their throne to the Stuarts; it was an additional fatality that the
standard of public morals among the class through which he ruled during
the period of crisis had fallen to lower depths than ever before or
since. Even incorruptible men were either weak and selfish or subject to
some cardinal defect of temper or intellect which, at times of crisis,
neutralized their genius. Chatham and Burke were the noblest figures of
the time, yet Chatham, in his highest mood a nobler and truer champion
of American liberty than Burke, was Minister--nominally, at any
rate--when the Revenue Duties imposed upon the American Colonies in 1867
destroyed in a moment the reconciliation brought about by the repeal of
the Stamp Act. Burke was surely false to his political philosophy in
founding his American argument on expedience rather than on principle.
Chatham was a thorough democrat, trusting the people, poor or rich, rude
or cultured, common or noble, American or British. Burke, at a time when
the reflection of the genuine opinion of the nation in a pure and free
Parliament might have saved us, as his splendid orations could not save
us, from a disastrous war, scouted Parliamentary reform, and took his
unconscious share in playing the game of the most narrow coercionist
Tories like Charles Townshend and George III.
Of the interminable chain of fatalities which sicken the mind in
following every phase of Ireland's history, Burke's rigid temperamental
conservatism always seems to me the most fatal and the most melancholy.
It is not that he, the greatest intellect Ireland has ever produced,
made his career in England. By the time one reaches the period in which
he lived one gets used to the expatriation of Irish brains and vigour,
not only to England and America, but to Spain, France, Russia, and
Germany. It is that his intellect was so constituted as in the long run
to be useless, and on some occasions absolutely harmful, to Ireland,
sincerely as he loved her, and often as he supported measures for her
temporary benefit, and rejoiced in their temporary success. An incident
occurred in 1773 which tested his worth to Ireland, and incidentally
threw into strong light English views of Ireland and America at the
period immediately preceding the revolutionary epoch. The Irish
Government, not with any high social aim, but in desperation at the
growing Treasury deficit, proposed a tax upon the rents of absentee
landlords, and the fate of the measure, like all Irish measures, had to
be decided in the first instance in England. North's Tory Ministry
actually consented to it. Chatham, far from the active world, and too
broken in health to influence policy either way, wrote a powerful plea
for it; but a strong group of Whig magnates, themselves wealthy absentee
proprietors of Irish land, signed a vehement remonstrance which carried
the day against it, and the author of this remonstrance, of all men in
the world, was the Irishman Burke, who, owning not an acre of Irish land
himself, devoted all his transcendent talents, all the subtlety and
variety of his reasoning, to clothing the selfish greed of others with
the garb of an enlightened patriotism.
He was wrong fundamentally about Ireland, and only superficially right
about America. In the terms of this celebrated remonstrance, as
illuminated by his own private correspondence, his consistency is
revealed. By the very nature of things, he maintained, the central
Parliament of a great heterogeneous Empire must exercise a supreme
superintending power and regulate the polity and economy of the several
parts as they relate to one another, a principle which, of course, would
have justified the taxation of America, and which, save on the ground of
expediency alone, he would certainly have applied to America. The
proximity of Ireland helped his logic, and surely logic was never
distorted to stranger ends. The "ordinary residence" of the threatened
Irish landowners was in England, "to which country they were attached,
not only by the ties of birth and early habit, but also by those of
indisputable public duties," as though these facts did not constitute in
themselves a damning satire on the system of Irish Government. They were
to be "fined" for living in England, as though that fine were not the
most just and politic which could be conceived, if it went even an inch
towards establishing the principle that Ireland's affairs were the
business of responsible resident Irishmen, or towards the further
principle, enshrined in Drummond's celebrated phrase of seventy years
later in regard to the agrarian system which these Whig noblemen shared
in founding, that "property has its duties as well as its rights."
Finally, argued Burke, heaping irony upon irony, the tax would lead
directly to the "separation" of the two Kingdoms both in interest and
affection. The Colonies would follow the Irish example, and thus a
principle of disunion and separation would pervade the whole Empire; the
bonds of common interest, knowledge, and sympathy which now knit it
together would everywhere be loosened, and a narrow, insulated, local
feeling and policy would be proportionately increased.[12] Such was
Burke's Imperialism, as evoked by an Irish measure which struck at the
root of a frightful social evil and of a vicious political system. But
the idea expressed by Burke--the spirit of his whole argument--went far
beyond this particular absentee tax or any similar tax proposed, as
happened in one instance, by a Colony. It was the superbly grandiose
expression, and all the more insidiously seductive in that it was so
grandiose, of a principle which all thinking men now know, or ought to
know, is the negation of Empire, which lost us America, which came
within an ace of losing us Canada, which might well have lost us South
Africa, and which has in very fact lost us, though not yet irrevocably,
the "affection," to use Burke's word, of Ireland. We may call local
patriotism "narrow and insulated," if we please, but we recognize now,
in every case save that of Ireland, that it is the only foundation for,
and the only stimulant to, Imperial patriotism.
Chatham, an Englishman of the English, was nevertheless a better
Irishman than Burke, and therefore a better Imperialist. "The tax," he
wrote, "was founded on strong Irish policy. England, it is evident,
profits by draining Ireland of the vast incomes spent here from that
country. But I could not, as a Peer of England, advise the King, on
principles of indirect, accidental English policy, to reject a tax on
absentees sent over here as the genuine desire of the Commons of Ireland
acting in their proper and peculiar sphere, and exercising their
inherent exclusive right by raising supplies in the manner they judge
best." Chatham, in short, applied precisely the same argument to Ireland
as, in his memorable speeches of the next year (1774), he applied to
America, and in both cases he was right. The only mistake he made was in
his estimate of that travesty of a representative assembly, the Irish
House of Commons, which, at the secret instigation of the Viceroy,
though without actual coercion, eventually threw out a tax so
distasteful to its English patrons. But the argument for financial
independence remained unassailable, and eventually the Irish Parliament
itself summoned up the courage to adopt and act upon it.
It may seem almost impossible that in a body so corrupt and exclusive a
national sentiment should have arisen. But every elective assembly,
however badly constituted, contains the seeds of its own regeneration,
and, under even moderately favourable circumstances, moves irresistibly
towards freedom. The pity was that circumstances, save for one brief and
invigorating interlude, were persistently unfavourable to Ireland. The
task was enormous, demanding infinitely more self-sacrifice than even
the ablest and most prescient of her Parliamentarians realized. Until it
was too late, in fact, they never awoke to the true nature of the task,
dazzled by illusory victories. Rotten to the core as the Irish
Parliament was, they sought, strengthened by popular influences, to make
it the instrument for freeing Ireland from a paralyzing servitude; and
up to a point they succeeded, but they did not see that the only
security for real and permanent success was to reform the Parliament
itself. There the inveterate spirit of creed and class ascendancy,
resting in the last resort on English military power, survived long
enough to nullify their efforts.
The American Revolution and the Irish revolutionary renaissance--the one
achieved by a long and bitter war, the other without
bloodshed--originated and culminated together, were derived from the
same sources, and ran their course in close connection. In Ireland the
movement was exclusively Protestant, in America unsectarian; but in both
cases finance was the lever of emancipation. America, resenting the
commercial restrictions imposed by the Mother Country, but not, until
passion had obscured all landmarks, contesting their abstract justice,
and suffering no great material harm from their incidence, fought for
the principle of self-taxation--a principle which did, of course,
logically include, as the Americans instinctively felt, that of
commercial freedom. Ireland, harassed by commercial restrictions far
more onerous, naturally regarded their abolition as vital, and the
control of internal taxation as subsidiary. Apart from concrete
grievances, both countries had to fear an unlimited extension of British
claims founded on the all-embracing Declaratory Acts of 1719 and 1766.
Unfortunately for herself, Ireland for seventy years or more had been
steadily supplying America with the human elements of resistance in
their most energetic and independent form, and robbing herself
proportionately Approximately, how many Protestants belonging mainly to
Ulster, whether through eviction from the land, industrial unemployment,
or disgust at social and political ostracism, left Ireland for America
in the course of the eighteenth century, it is impossible to say; but
the number, both relatively to population and relatively to the total
emigration, Catholic and Protestant, to all parts of the world, was
undoubtedly very large. Mr. Egerton, in his "Origin and Growth of the
English Colonies," reckons that in 1775 a sixth part of the thirteen
insurrectionary Colonies was composed of Scots-Irish exiles from Ulster,
and that half the Protestant population of that Province emigrated to
those Colonies between 1730 and 1770. As the crisis approached,
emigration became an exodus. Thirty thousand of the farming class are
said to have been driven west by the wholesale evictions of the early
seventies, and ten thousand weavers followed them during the disastrous
depression in the linen trade caused by interruption of commerce with
America. The majority went to the northern Colonies, especially
Pennsylvania, took from the first a vehement stand against the Royal
claims, and supplied some of Washington's best soldiers. A minority went
to the backwoods of Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina, and were little
heard of until as late in the war as 1780, when Tarleton began his
anti-guerilla campaign in the South. Then they woke up, and became, like
their compatriots of the North, formidable and implacable foes.
Ireland and America, therefore, embarked on their struggle with the
English Parliament in close sympathy. The treatise of Molyneux on Irish
liberty was read with wide approval in America. Franklin visited and
encouraged the Irish patriots, and the Americans in 1775 issued a
special address to them, asserting an identity of interest. Chatham, on
the eve of war, dwelt strongly in the House of Lords upon the same
identity of interest, and in doing so expressly coupled together Irish
Catholics and Protestants.
Although united by interest and sentiment, Ireland and America entered
on the struggle under widely varying conditions. The American Colonies
were thirteen separate units, with only a rude organization for common
action, and in each of these units there existed a cleavage of opinion,
based neither on class nor creed, between rebels and loyalists. In spite
of this weakness, the revolt was thoroughly national in the sense that
it was organized and maintained through the State Assemblies, resting on
a broad popular franchise. In Ireland, unbought and unofficial opinion
was united against England. On the other hand, there was no national
Legislature; only an enslaved and unrepresentative Legislature, tempered
by a band of exceptionally brilliant and upright men, and continually
thrust forward in spite of itself into bold and independent action by
unconstitutional pressure from the unrepresented elements outside.
Success so won, as we shall see, was delusive.
We may note two important additional circumstances: first, the dense
mist of ignorance in which, and largely in consequence of which, England
began her quarrel both with America and Ireland. The average Englishman
was probably even more ignorant of Ireland, which was sixty miles away,
than of America, which was three thousand miles away. I am not at all
sure that that fact is not true still. At any rate, it was true then.
Yet knowledge of Ireland was more necessary, because her condition was
bad in ways unknown in America. In all the essentials of material
well-being, America was supremely fortunate, while Ireland was in the
depths of misery. It is not that this misery went undescribed or
unlamented, or that it was not realized by a small number of Englishmen.
Some of the most famous writings of the time, from the mordant satire of
Swift to the learned and elaborate diagnosis of Arthur Young, laid bare
the hideous ravages wrought by misrule in Ireland; but they had little
or no effect upon English statesmen, and were unread by the only classes
from which, if they had had knowledge, proper practical sympathy might
have come. Until Townshend's Viceroyalty (1767-1772) most of the Irish
Viceroys were absentees for the greater part of their term of office,
leaving the conduct of Irish affairs to English Bishops and Judges, the
wisest and most humane of whom could make little or no impression on
English official indifference. American Governors were at any rate
resident, or mainly resident, and a few were good and popular
administrators, though the information which most of them supplied to
the Home Government showed a blindness to what was going on under their
very eyes which would be incomprehensible if we did not know by
experience that it is the invariable result of irresponsible rule over
white men, whether at home or abroad. If, without the presence of race
distinctions, it needed Parliamentary reform in England itself to force
the ruling class to study with real sympathy the needs, character, and
desires of their own people, naturally the same ruling class, sending
out its own members or dependents to America, obtained the most
grotesquely distorted notions of what Americans were and what they
wanted or resented. "Their office," wrote Franklin of the Governors,[13]
"makes them indolent, their indolence makes them odious, and, being
conscious that they are hated, they become malicious. Their malice urges
them to continual abuse of the inhabitants in their letters to
Administration, representing them as disaffected and rebellious, and (to
encourage the use of severity) as weak, divided, timid, and cowardly.
Government believes all, thinks it necessary to support and countenance
its officers," etc. The same spirit pervades the official correspondence
of even the best Irish Viceroys of the eighteenth century, and
ultimately had a far more disastrous effect in that there were at all
times in Ireland ancient elements of social dissension which needed only
skilful fomentation by her English rulers to ruin all hopes of
reconciliation and unity. That phase was to come after the first Irish
victories. For the present the system--for it can scarcely be called a
policy--was to irritate all Irishmen and all Americans alike,
irrespective of creed, class, or sentiment, and thus to create on each
side of the Atlantic that dangerous phenomenon, an united people.
The other noticeable point, admirably described by Mr. Holland in his
"Imperium et Libertas," is the confusion of political ideas in regard to
the status of white dependencies--a confusion greatly augmented by
loose and misleading analogies with India and the tropical Colonies.
Even a genius like Burke, as I have already pointed out, was misled.
Chatham came nearest to the truth, but, naturally, the actual outbreak
of war with America checked his political thinking, and threw him back
on the bare doctrine of supremacy, right or wrong. It was not fully
understood that there must be a radical difference between the
government of places settled and populated by white colonists and of
places merely exploited by white traders. All the prerogatives of the
Crown and Parliament were theoretically valid over both classes of
dependency, and to abandon any of them seemed to most men of that day to
be inconsistent with Imperial supremacy. Honest and fair-minded
politicians and thinkers tried in vain to reconcile local freedom with
Imperial unity. We have the key now, though we have made no use of it in
Ireland; but most of our forefathers not only had no glimmering of the
truth when the fratricidal war began, but learnt nothing from the war
itself, and remained unenlightened for sixty years more. If the
renunciation in 1778 of the right to tax the Colonies, and the
negotiations founded thereon, had led to a peace, it is quite certain
that friction would have subsequently arisen on other points. The idea
of what we now know as "responsible government" was unknown. Short of
coercive war, there seemed to be only two altogether logical
alternatives--complete separation and legislative Union. America
obtained the one, Ireland was eventually to undergo the other; but it is
interesting to remember that suggestions, rejected by Franklin as
useless, were made for the representation of the American Colonies in
the English Parliament, just as suggestions for a legislative Union
between Ireland and England appeared intermittently all through the
eighteenth century, long before such a Union was a question of practical
politics.
I need only briefly summarize the incidents which ended in the year 1782
with the final loss of the American Colonies, and the simultaneous
achievement by Ireland of an apparent legislative independence. To take
America first, the Stamp Act was passed in 1765, and, thanks to the
tumult it created, repealed by the Whigs in 1766, though the Declaratory
Act which accompanied the repeal neutralized its good results. The new
Revenue Duties on glass, paper, painters' colours, and tea were imposed
in 1767, reviving the old irritation, and all but that on tea were
removed, after a period of growing friction, in 1770. Another
comparative lull was succeeded by fresh disorder when in 1773 the East
India Company was permitted to send tea direct to America, and Boston
celebrated its historic "tea-party." The coercion of Massachusetts
followed, with Gage as despotic Military Governor, and, as a result, all
the Colonies were galvanized into unity. In September, 1774, the
Continental Congress met, framed a Declaration of Rights, and obtained a
general agreement to cease from all commerce with Britain until
grievances were redressed. Fresh coercion having been applied, war broke
out in 1775. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776,
by John Hancock, President of Congress and the descendant of an Ulster
exile, and was first read aloud in Philadelphia by Captain John Nixon,
the son of an evicted Wexford farmer. Another Irishman, General
Montgomery, led the invasion of Canada.[14] The war, with manifold
vicissitudes, dragged on for eight years; but the surrender of
Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, virtually ended the physical
struggle, while the resolution of the House of Commons on February 27,
1782, against the further prosecution of hostilities, ended the contest
of principle.
The turning-point had been the intervention of the French in 1778, and
the same event was to turn the scale in Ireland. There, for many years
past, the public finances had been sinking into a more and more
scandalous condition. Taxation was by no means heavy, but pensions and
sinecures multiplied, and the debt swelled. Inevitably there grew up
within Parliament a small independent opposition which would not be
bribed into conniving at the ruin of Ireland, while even bought placemen
were stung into throwing their votes into the Irish rather than the
English scale. Frequent efforts were made to use the insufficiency of
the hereditary revenue as a lever for gaining control of finance and for
obtaining domestic reform. An Octennial Act, passed in 1768, went a
little way towards transforming Parliament from a permanent privileged
Committee, under the control of the Executive, into the semblance at
least of a free Assembly, and the first dissolution under this Act, in
1776, produced the famous Parliament which, though elected on the same
narrow and corrupt basis as before, in the space of six years first
admitted the principle of toleration for all creeds, and wrested from
English hands commercial and legislative autonomy. It came too late to
avert--if, indeed, it could ever have averted--the implication of
Ireland in the American War, its predecessor of 1775 having, in defiance
of Irish opinion, subscribed an Address to the Crown, expressing
"abhorrence" of the American revolt and "inviolable attachment to the
just rights" of the King's Government, and having obediently voted four
thousand Irish troops for the war.
Nor, for all the impassioned eloquence of Grattan and Hussey Burgh, did
the real driving-power of the new Parliament come from within its own
ranks, but from the unrepresented multitude outside. A clause removing
the test from Dissenters was struck out of the Catholic Relief Act of
1778, mainly owing to dictation from England, but partly from resentment
against Presbyterian sympathy with the American cause. It was only in
1780, when the Presbyterians were enrolled in that formidable
revolutionary organization known as the Volunteers, that a test which
had excluded them from all share in the government of their adopted
country for seventy-four years was repealed. As for the Catholics, the
small measure of legal relief granted to them excited no opposition
anywhere. Parts of the Penal Code, especially the laws against worship
and the clergy, had become inoperative with time and the sheer
impossibility of enforcement. The religion, naturally, had thriven under
persecution, so that in spite of the Code's manifold temptations to
recant, only four thousand converts had been registered in the last
fifty years. The laws designed to safeguard the wholesale confiscations
of the previous century had long ago achieved their purpose, and men
were beginning to perceive the fatal economic effects of keeping the
great mass of the people poor and ignorant. The real spirit of
toleration shown in the enactments of 1778, the most important of which
enabled Catholics to obtain land on a lease of 999 years, was small
enough if we consider the quiescence of the Catholics for generations
past, the absence of all tendency in them towards counter-persecution,
or even towards intolerance of Protestantism in any of its forms,
Quaker, Huguenot, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Methodist, in spite of
their own overwhelming numbers and of the burning grievance of the
tithes. Politically they were a source of great strength to the
Government. When the Presbyterians condemned the American War, the
Catholic leaders memorialized the Government in favour of it as warmly
as the tame majority in Parliament.
Conservatives by religion, their devotion to authority annulled all
instincts of revenge for the hideous wrongs of the past. The Government,
now on the verge of a war with the two great Catholic Powers of Europe,
began to realize this, and to feel the wisdom of some degree of
conciliation. After all, only four years before they had not merely
tolerated, but established, the Catholic Church in the conquered
province of Quebec, with the result that the French Canadians remained
loyal during the American War. But neither the Government nor the finest
independent men in Parliament--not even Grattan--entertained the
remotest idea of admitting Irish Catholics to any really effective share
in the Government which their loyalty made stable. That noble but
hopeless conception originated later, as the dynamic impulse for
commercial freedom and legislative independence was originating now,
outside the walls of Parliament.
The rupture with France in 1778 denuded Ireland of troops, and called
into being the Protestant Volunteers; a disciplined, armed body, headed
by leaders as weighty and respectable as Lord Charlemont. This body,
formed originally for home defence, by a natural and legitimate
transition assumed a political aspect, and demanded from a dismayed and
terrorized Government commercial freedom for Ireland. For once in her
life Ireland was too strong to be coerced. Punishment like that applied
to Massachusetts was physically impossible. The bitter protests of
English merchants passed unheeded, and the fiscal claims of the
Volunteers, with their cannon labelled "Free Trade or this," were
granted in full early in 1780. The moral was to persist. From 40,000 the
numbers of the Volunteers rose in the two succeeding years to 80,000,
and they stood firm for further concessions. The national movement grew
like a river in spate; it swept forward the lethargic Catholics and
engulfed Parliament. In a tempest of enthusiasm Grattan's Declaration of
Independence was carried unanimously in the Irish House of Commons on
April 16, 1782, and a month later received legal confirmation in England
at the hands of the same Whig Government and Parliament which broke off
hostilities with America, and in the same session.
America took her own road and worked out her own magnificent destiny.
Most of us now honour Washington and the citizen troops he led. We say
they fought, as Hampden and their English forefathers fought, for a
sublime ideal, freedom, and that they were chips of the old block. But
let not distance delude us into supposing that they were without the
full measure of human weakness, or that they did not suffer
considerable, perhaps permanent, harm from the ten years of smothered
revolt and lawless agitation, followed by the seven years of open war
which preceded their victory. Washington's genius carried them safely
through the ordeal of the war, and the still more exacting ordeal of
political reconstruction after the war, but it is well known how nearly
he and his staunchest supporters failed. The Revolution, like all
revolutions, brought out all the bad as well as all the good in human
nature. Bad laws always deteriorate a people; they breed a contempt for
law which coercion only aggravates, and which survives the establishment
of good laws. As I have already indicated, the dislike and the
systematic evasion by smuggling of the trade laws during the long period
when the revolt was incubating harmed American character, and probably
sowed the seed of future corruption and dissension. However true that
may be, it is certainly true that the American rebels showed no more
heroism or self-sacrifice than the average Englishman or Irishman in any
other part of the world might have been expected to show under similar
conditions. Historians and politicians, to whom legal authority always
seems sacrosanct and agitation against it a popular vice, who mistake
cause and effect so far as to derive freedom from character, instead of
character from freedom, can make, and have made, the conventional case
against Home Rule for the Americans as plausibly as the same case has,
at various times, been made against Home Rule for Canada, South Africa,
and Ireland. Since all white men are fundamentally alike in their
faults as well as in their virtues, there is always abundant material
for an indictment on the ground of bad character. The Americans of the
revolutionary war, together with much fortitude, integrity, and public
spirit, showed without doubt a good deal of levity, self-seeking,
vindictiveness, and incompetence; and whoever chooses to amass, magnify,
and isolate evidences of their guilt can demonstrate their unfitness for
self-government just as well as he can demonstrate the same proposition
in the case of Ireland. Mr. J.W. Fortescue, the learned and entertaining
historian of the British Army, has done the former task as well as it
can be done. He denounces the whole Colony of Massachusetts--men of his
own national stock--as the pestilent offspring of an "irreconcilable
faction," which had originally left England deeply imbued with the
doctrines of Republicanism. Having gained, and by lying and subterfuge
retained, some measure of independence, they sank from depth to depth of
meanness and turpitude. They struggled for no high principle, and
refused to be taxed from England, simply because they were too
contemptibly stingy and unpatriotic to pay a shilling a head towards the
maintenance of the Imperial Army. It is always the "mob," the
"ruffians," the "rabble," of Boston who carry out the reprisals against
the royal coercion, and, like the Irish peasants of the nineteenth
century, they are always the half-blind, half-criminal tools of
unscrupulous "agitators." It has been, and remains, an obsession with
the partisans of law over liberty all the world over that the fettered
community, wherever it may be and however composed, does not really want
liberty, but that the majority of its sober citizens are dragged into an
artificial agitation by mercenary scribes and sham patriots--a view
which is always somewhat difficult to reconcile, as students of American
and Irish history are aware, not only with the facts of prolonged and
tenacious resistance, but with the other view, equally necessary to the
argument for law, that the whole community is sinfully unfit for
liberty; and Mr. Fortescue falls into the usual maze of
self-contradiction and obscurity when he tries to give an intelligible
account of a war which lasted seven long and weary years, and yet was
"factitious," initiated by an hysterical rabble, stimulated and
sustained by the basest and pettiest motives, and which, he contends,
was "the work of a small but energetic and well-organized minority
towards which the mass of the people, when not directly hostile, was
mainly indifferent." Happily, Mr. Fortescue's candour as an historian of
facts gives us the clue to this strange tangle. We find no evidence that
the sober loyalist majority who sustain one side of his argument, and
whom we should expect to find crushing the revolt with ease in
co-operation with the British regular troops, were, in fact, a majority,
nor that they were either better or worse men, or more or less ardent
patriots, than the mutinous minority, or the British regular soldiers
themselves. Their loyalty, like the disloyalty of the other side, is
sometimes interested and evanescent, more often sincere and tenacious;
they are given to desertion, like Washington's troops, like Lee's and
Grant's troops nearly a century later, like the Boer troops and like all
Volunteer levies, which have somehow to combine war with the duty of
keeping their homes and business afloat. We find, too, that a
counter-current of desertion flows from the British, and still more from
the German, regulars, also a natural enough phenomenon in what was
virtually a civil war for liberty; so that "General Greene was often
heard to say that at the close of the war he fought the enemy with
British soldiers, and that the British fought him with those of
America." And then Mr. Fortescue, ignoring the British side of the case,
exultingly quotes against the Americans "the cynical Benedict Arnold,
who knew his countrymen," and who said: "Money will go farther than arms
in America." Yet Arnold, whose opinion of his countrymen Mr. Fortescue
accepts as correct and conclusive, was himself, not a plain deserter,
but a perjured military traitor of the most despicable kind. We may
conclude, perhaps, after taking a broad view of the whole Revolution,
that Washington not only knew his countrymen, who were Mr. Fortescue's
countrymen, better than Arnold, but was a better representative of their
dominant characteristics.[15]
Mr. Fortescue is peculiar in the violence of his prepossession, and we
know the source of that prepossession, a passionate love of the British
Army, which does him great honour, while it distorts his political
vision. I should not refer at such length to his view of the American
War were it not that, whenever a concrete case of Home Rule comes up for
discussion, his philosophy is apt to become the typical and predominant
philosophy. Historical sense seems to vanish, and the same savage racial
bias supervenes, whether the unruly people concerned are absolutely
consanguineous, closely related, or of foreign nationality. Instead of a
general acceptance of the ascertained truth that men thrive and coalesce
under self-government and sink into deterioration and division under
coercion, we get the same pharisaical assumption of superiority in the
dominant people, the same attribution of sordid and ugly motives to the
leaders of an unruly people, the same vague idealization of the loyalist
minority, the same fixed hallucination that the majority does not want
what by all the constitutional means in its power it says it wants, and
the correspondingly fatal tendency to gauge the intensity of a
conviction solely by the amount of physical violence it evokes, while
making that very violence an argument for the depravity of those who use
it, and a pretext for denying them self-government.
All this is terribly true in the case of Ireland, and when I next revert
to the American continent, the reader will observe that the same ideas
were entertained towards Canada, the only white Colony left to the
British Empire after the loss of the thirteen States.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] The origin of North Carolina is, perhaps, debatable. Nearly all
historians have represented it as settled by Dissenting refugees; but
Mr. S.B. Weeks, a Carolina historian, has written an essay to prove that
this was not the case ("Religious Development in the Province of North
Carolina," Baltimore, 1892). The Charter contained a clause for liberty
of conscience on the instructive ground that, "by reason of the remote
distance of those places, toleration would be no breach of the unity and
conformity established in this realm."
[9] "Church and State in Maryland," George Petrie. Lord Baltimore, the
Catholic founder and Proprietary, enforced complete tolerance from the
first (1634), and secured the passage of an Act in 1649 giving legal
force to the policy, with heavy penalties against interference with any
sect. In 1654 Puritans gained control of the Assembly, and passed an Act
against Popery. A counter-revolution repealed this Act, but finally in
1689 the Church of England was established by law.
[10] Lecky, "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," vol. i., pp.
408-410.
[11] Until 1692 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, elected
their own Governors. Massachusetts continued to have Colonial Governors,
and sometimes New Jersey and New Hampshire. Proprietary Governments were
gradually abolished and converted into "Royal" Governments like the
rest. At the period of the Declaration of Independence two only were
left--Pennsylvania and Maryland (see "Origin and Growth of the English
Colonies," H.E. Egerton).
[12] Lecky, "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," vol. ii.,
pp. 124-126.
[13] Trevelyan, "The American Revolution," vol. i., p. 16.
[14] See "The Irish Race in America," by Captain Ed. O'Meagher Condore.
[15] "History of the British Army," vol. iii.
CHAPTER III
GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT
We left Ireland in 1782 apparently in possession of a triumph as great
as that of America, though won without bloodshed and without the least
tincture of sedition; for the Volunteers of 1782 were as loyal to the
Crown as the most ardent American royalists. In the light of political
ideas developed at a much later period, we know that the American
Colonies might have remained within the Empire, even if their utmost
claims had been granted. Had the idea of responsible government been
understood, it would have been realized that their exclusive control of
taxation and legislation was not inconsistent with Imperial Union, but
essential to it. Grattan and his Irish friends, ignorant of the true
solution, honestly thought, in the intoxication of the moment, that they
had solved the problem so disastrously bungled for America. The facts of
ethnology and geography seemed to have been recognized. Ireland and
England, united by a Crown which both reverenced, stood together, like
Britain and the Dominions of to-day, as sister nations, with the old
irritating servitude swept away, and the bonds of natural affection and
natural interest substituted. That the close proximity of the two
nations, however marked the contrast between their natural
characteristics, made these bonds far more necessary and valuable than
in the case of America, stood to reason, and, again, the fact was
recognized in Anglo-Irish relations. America had fought rather than
submit to a forced contribution to Imperial funds. Nobody in Ireland, in
or out of Parliament, had ever objected in principle to an indirect
voluntary contribution in troops, and now that the American War was
ended, non-Parliamentary objections to one particular application of the
principle had no further substance. Nor, as was shortly to be shown in
the reception given in Ireland to Pitt's abortive Commercial
Propositions of 1785, was there any objection to a direct contribution
in money on a fixed annual scale in return for a mutual free trade.[16]
The sun had surely risen over a free yet loyal Ireland.
Never was there a more complete delusion. It would have been far better
for Ireland if she had never had a Parliament at all, but had had to
seek her own salvation in the healthy rough-and-tumble of domestic
revolution. The mere name of "Parliament" seems perpetually to have
hypnotized even its best members, and the illusion was at its highest
now. Nothing essential had been changed. Commercial freedom was the most
real gain, because it involved the definite repeal of certain trade-laws
and the permission to Ireland to make what she liked and send it where
she liked; but it was a small gain without some means of finding out
what Ireland really liked, and translating that will, without external
pressure, into law. The Parliament was neither an organ of public
opinion nor a free agent. It was even more corrupt and less
representative than before. It was as completely under the control of
the English Government as before. The modern conception of a Colonial
Ministry serving under a constitutional Governor selected by the Crown,
but acting with the advice of his Ministry, was unknown. The English
Government, through its Lord-Lieutenant, still appointed English
Ministers in Ireland, and in the hands of these Ministers lay not only
that large portion of the national income known as the hereditary
revenue, but the whole machinery of patronage and corruption. Even the
legislative independence was unreal; for majorities still had to be
bought, Irish Bills had still to receive the Royal Assent, that is,
English ministerial assent; so that powerful English pressure could be,
and was, brought to bear upon their policy and construction. And the
worst of it was that English pressure here and elsewhere meant then what
it meant in the next century, and what it too often means now, English
party pressure exercised spasmodically and ignorantly, in order to serve
sectional English ends. In short, Ireland, so far from being a nation,
was still virtually a Colony, subjected to the worst conceivable form of
colonial Government, groaning under economic evils unknown in the least
fortunate of the Colonies, and without the numerous mitigating
circumstances and the hope of ultimate cure due to remoteness from the
seat of Empire. On the contrary, nearness to England, and, above all,
nearness to France, where the misrule and miseries of ages were about to
culminate in a fearful upheaval of social order, complicated immensely
the problem of regeneration in Ireland.
What was the remedy? Parliamentary reform. The Volunteers saw this
instantly. Parliament itself scouted the idea of reform, because it
threatened the Protestant ascendancy. Any weakening of the Protestant
ascendancy was unthinkable to Irish statesmen, even to Grattan, who in
1778 had coined the grandiose phrase that "the Irish Protestant could
never be free until the Irish Catholic had ceased to be a slave," and
who afterwards explained what he meant by saying that the liberty of the
Catholic was to be only such as was "entirely consistent with the
Protestant ascendancy," and that "the Protestant interest was his first
object." Ascendancy, then, in the mind of the ruling class in Ireland
was fundamental. What was its corollary? Dependence on England.
Ascendancies, whether based on creed or property, or, as in Ireland, on
both, cannot last in any white community without external support, and
the external support for ascendancy in Ireland was English force without
and English bribes within. There was the chain of causation, the vicious
circle rather; and yet Grattan, who never touched a bribe, thought he
had freed his beloved Ireland from the English influences which were
throttling her. He could not see that the more he wrestled for the
independence of a sham Parliament, while resisting its transformation
into a real Parliament, the more he strengthened those influences,
because he inevitably widened the gulf between Parliament and the Irish
people. The glamour his brilliant gifts had thrown over the Irish
Parliament only served to divert his own mind and the minds of other
talented and high-minded men from the seat of disease in Ireland. Time
and talent were wasted from the first over points of pride, trivialities
which seemed portentous to over-sensitive minds; metaphysical puzzles as
to the exact nature of the relations now existing between Ireland and
England; whether the repeal of the Poynings' Act and the Declaratory Act
were sufficient guarantees of freedom; whether Ireland herself should
nominate a Regent or accept the nomination from England. Meanwhile, the
sands were running out, and Ireland was a slave to a minute but powerful
minority of her sons and, only through them, to England.
Yet the heart of Ireland was sound. All the materials for regeneration
were there. The Catholics, whom by an old inherited instinct Grattan
professed to dread, were the most Conservative part of the population,
so Conservative as to be unaware of the source of their miseries,
without the smallest leaning towards a counter-ascendancy, and without a
notion of sedition or rebellion. Paradox as it seems, if they leaned in
any political direction, it was dimly towards the constituted authority
of the day, the Irish Parliament. But the truth is that they were
without political consciousness, behind the times, unappreciative of the
new forces operating round them. In sore need of courageous and
enlightened guidance from men of their own faith, they were almost
leaderless. The leeway to be made up after the destructive action of the
penal laws was so enormous that Catholic philanthropists had no time or
will for high politics, and devoted their whole energy to the further
relaxation of those laws, to the education of their backward
co-religionists, and to the mitigation of poverty. For relief they
instinctively looked towards the only legal source of relief, though the
source of secular oppression, Parliament. But this was habit. The
Catholics at this time were like clay in the hands of the potter, open
to any curative and ennobling impulse. That impulse came, as was right
and natural, from the Protestant side. The only healthy political
organization in Ireland in 1782 was that of the Volunteers of the North,
with their headquarters at Belfast. They represented all that was best
in the Protestant population. They had won the practical victory, such
as it was, Parliament, with all its flaming rhetoric, only the titular
victory. They grasped the essential truth that Parliament was rotten,
and that Ireland's future depended on its reform. Numbering some 80,000
or 100,000, they at once began to press for reform, and, since they had
no constitutional resources, to overawe Parliament. Parliament at once
stood on its dignity and on its civil rights against the "Pretorian
bands." "And now," said Grattan in his magnificent way, "having given a
Parliament to the people, the Volunteers will, I doubt not, leave the
people to Parliament, and thus close specifically and majestically a
great work."
But the work was not begun. Parliament was the enemy of the people, and
the Volunteers knew it. Now, what was the "people" in the minds of the
Volunteers? Undoubtedly they did not, after a century of racial
ascendancy, perform the miracle of accepting at once in its entirety the
principle of absolute political equality for all Irishmen, Catholic and
Protestant alike. Such mental revulsions rarely occur among men, and
when they do occur are apt to produce reactionary cataclysms. But they
did from the first give a real meaning to Grattan's vague rhetoric about
Catholic slaves; from the first they made overtures towards the
Catholics, and ventilated proposals for the Catholic franchise as a part
of their scheme of reform ten years before that enfranchisement, without
Parliamentary reform and therefore valueless, became a practical issue.
For the present these proposals were outvoted, and the effective demand
of the Volunteers, as framed in the great Convention held at Dublin in
November, 1783, was for a purification and reconstruction of Parliament
on a democratic Protestant basis. The Catholic franchise had been
strongly supported, but by the influence of Charlemont and Flood
rejected. It is, of course, easy to maintain in theory that a democratic
Protestant ascendancy so designed was as incompatible with Irish freedom
as an aristocratic and corrupt ascendancy; but nobody with faith in
human nature or any knowledge of history, will care to affirm that the
process of reform would have ended with the enactment of the Volunteer
Bill. No present-day Protestant Ulsterman should entertain such a
dishonouring doubt. Mercifully, men are so made that, if left to
themselves, they go forward, not backward. A pure Assembly, formed on
the Volunteer plan, stimulated by the enlightened conscience which such
an Assembly invariably develops, by the discovery of the fundamental
identity of interests between the great bulk of Catholics and
Protestants, and by the manly instinct of self-preservation against
undue English encroachment, would have moved rapidly towards tolerance
and equality.
But the Assembly which might have saved Ireland never came into being.
The Volunteers were in weak and incompetent hands. The metamorphosis
they had undergone from a body formed for home defence into a militant
political organization found them at the critical moment unprovided with
the right stamp of leader. Flood, who helped to draft their Bill, was a
brilliant but unscrupulous and discredited Parliamentarian, and a
fanatical advocate of an unimpaired Protestant ascendancy. Lord
Charlemont, one of the most influential founders of the movement, and a
man of the highest integrity, was lukewarm for reform, an aristocrat and
an ascendancy man to the finger-tips, dreading the mysterious forces he
had helped to call into being, and desirous to keep them, as he said,
"respectable." Was it respectable for armed men to dictate to a
Parliament, however just their cause? As often happens in the ferment of
popular movements, the one leader who spoke undiluted truth and sense
spoke it in florid and unmeasured language and was himself of a figure
and behaviour little likely to inspire permanent confidence. This was
the famous Bishop of Derry, called by Charlemont a blasphemous Deist, by
Wesley an exemplary Divine, by Fox a dishonest madman, and by Jeremy
Bentham "a most excellent companion, pleasant, intelligent, well-bred,
and liberal-minded to the last degree." He was certainly vain and
ostentatious, certainly a democratic free-thinker, but a full knowledge
of his character is not of much concern to us. The point is that he was
right about Ireland's needs, though the wrong man at the moment to drive
home her claims. Many finer agitators than he have failed in causes just
as good. Many without half his merits have succeeded. We shall find his
Canadian counterparts later in the figures of Mackenzie and Papineau.
The crisis came on November 29, 1783, when the Reform Bill reached
Parliament, and was introduced by Flood, wearing the Volunteer dress. It
was rejected on the first vote. No doubt the circumstances were
humiliating, and if there had been any serious inclination in Parliament
towards self-reform and the relinquishment of an odious and mischievous
monopoly, we should freely forgive rejection. But there was little or
none, as after-events proved, and the real humiliation lay, not in the
dictation of the Irish Volunteers, but in the fact that the Volunteers
themselves were overawed by a strong body of British regular troops,
mustered for the occasion under General Burgoyne. The vicious circle was
complete. Forced to choose between reform and dependence on England,
Parliament chose the latter. And only a year and a half before Grattan
had dazzled his hears with the words: "Ireland is now a nation ... _esto
perpetua_."
There are very few critical dates in Irish history, and of those few the
night of November 29, 1783, was the most critical of all. It marked the
climax of a brief and bright renaissance from the long stagnation of the
eighteenth, and heralded a decline into the long agony of the nineteenth
century, a decline concealed by the fictitious lustre which still hangs
over the first decade of Grattan's unreformed Parliament, but none the
less already present. The Volunteers, their grand opportunity lost,
slowly broke up. Should they have used force, even under the threat of
Burgoyne's guns? It would have been infinitely better both for England
and Ireland if they had. Nothing but force could avail. Never would
force have been better justified, for the very soul of a people "rang
zwischen Tod und Leben."
It is hard, nevertheless, to blame the Volunteers for not appreciating
the full magnitude of the crisis and acting accordingly. They were ahead
of their time as it was in the political instinct which taught them the
vital importance of a reformed Parliament. They were far ahead of
England, where the younger Pitt had failed to carry Reform a few months
before, and was to fail again two years later when he urged reform for
Ireland. They were even ahead of their time in religious
tolerance--witness the Gordon riots in London two years before. Their
Parliament wore the crown and spoke the regal language of a patriot
Assembly. For five years they themselves had glorified justifiably in
the perfect discipline and sobriety with which they had used their
irregular power. Their most trusted leaders suggested that they would
yet achieve their ends without violence, while the large majority of the
Volunteers themselves were still as loyal to the Crown as the
Catholics, and were inclined, therefore, to shrink from action which,
although in itself not in the remotest degree connected with dynastic
questions, involved a theoretical conflict with the Crown, and perhaps
an actual collision with Royal troops. One of the last acts of the
Volunteer Convention, before its dissolution, was to pass an address to
the King expressing fervent zeal for the Crown, reminding him of their
quiet and dignified behaviour in the past, and praying that "their
humble wish to have certain manifest perversions of the Parliamentary
representation of this kingdom remedied by the Legislature in some
reasonable degree, might not be imputed to any spirit of innovation in
them, but to a sober and laudable desire to uphold the Constitution, to
confirm the satisfaction of their fellow-subjects, and to perpetuate the
cordial union of the two kingdoms." This document might have been copied
_mutatis mutandis_ from the American petitions prior to the war, and was
to be reproduced almost word for word in Canadian petitions dealing with
less serious grievances whose neglect at the hands of the Government did
actually lead to armed rebellion. It must be taken, as Mr. Lecky truly
says, as the "defence of the Convention before the bar of history."
Drawn up by the most moderate and least prescient leaders, it was a
vindication of the past, not a pledge for the future; for "from that
time," as Mr. Lecky writes, "the conviction sank deep into the minds of
many that reform in Ireland could only be effected by revolution, and
the rebellion of 1798 might be already foreseen."
The story of that transition, with all its disastrous consequences in
the denationalization of Ireland, in the arrest of healing forces, in
the reawakening of slumbering bigotries and hatreds, in the artificial
transformation of Catholics into anti-English rebels, and Protestants
into anti-Irish Loyalists, in the long agony of the land war, the tithe
war, the Church war, and the loathsome savageries of the rebellion
itself, is one of the most repulsive in history. It is repulsive because
you can watch, as it were, upon a dissecting-table the moral fibre of a
people, from no inherent germ of decay, against reason, against nature,
visibly wasting under a corrosive acid. Typical figures stand out: the
strong figure of Fitzgibbon, voicing ascendancy in its crudest and
ugliest form; at the other extreme the ardent but inadequate figure of
Wolfe Tone, affirming in words which expressed the literal truth of the
case that "to subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break
the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our
political evils, and to assert the independence of my country--these
were my objects." Midway stands Grattan, the defeated and disillusioned
"Girondin," as Mr. Fisher aptly calls him,[17] blind until it was too
late to the errors which plunged his country into anarchy, and retiring
in despair when he saw that anarchy coming. And on the other side of the
water, Pitt, dispassionately prescribing for Ireland in 1784, while
there was yet time, the radical remedy, Reform, patiently turning, when
that was refused, to palliatives like mutual free trade in 1785 and the
Catholic franchise in 1793; and meanwhile, with an undercurrent of cool
scepticism, preparing the ground for the only alternative to Reform,
short of a revolutionary separation of the two countries, legislative
Union, and remorselessly pushing that Union through by the only
available means, bribery.
In this wretched story we seek in vain for individual scapegoats.
Tracing events to their source, we strike against two obstructions,
proximity and ignorance, and we may as well make them our scapegoats. If
proximity had implied knowledge and forbearance, all would have been
well, but it implied just the reverse, and prohibited the kind of
solution which, after very much the same sort of crisis, and in the
teeth of ignorance and error, was afterwards reached in the case of
Canada and South Africa.
The immediate cause is clear. The failure of Reform is the key to the
Rebellion and the Union. In a patriotic anxiety to idealize Grattan's
Parliament, with a view to justifying later claims for autonomy,
Irishmen have generally shut their eyes to this cardinal fact, and have
preferred to dwell with exaggerated emphasis on the little good that
Parliament did rather than on the enormous evils which it not only left
untouched, but scarcely observed. We must remember that it was not only
a Protestant body, but a close body of landlords, with an infusion of
lawyers and others devoted to the interest of landlords. In that
capacity it was incapable of diagnosing, much less of remedying, the
gravest material ills of Ireland. In the very narrow domain where the
landlord interest was not concerned, as in industrial and commercial
matters, Parliament seems to have acted on the whole with wisdom. It
endeavoured to encourage industries, while refusing to squander its
newly won commercial powers in waging tariff wars with Great Britain,
where prohibitive duties against Irish goods still continued to be
imposed. But Ireland was no longer an industrial country. All the
encouragement in the world could not replace lost aptitudes or bring
back the exiled craftsmen who, during a century past, had left Ireland
to enrich European countries with their skill. The favoured linen
industry alone survived to reach its present flourishing condition. The
revival in other manufactures, even in that of wool, which was
remarkably rapid and strong, seems to have been artificial and
transient. No wonder; for, while Ireland had been stagnant for a
century, her great competitor, England, had been steadily building up
that capacity for organized industry which, under the inventive genius
of Arkwright, Hargreaves, and Watt, and the economic genius of Adam
Smith, made the last twenty years of the eighteenth century such a
marvellous period of industrial expansion, and eventually converted
England from an agricultural into a manufacturing nation. Ireland was
hopelessly late in the race. On the other hand, the fertile land of
Ireland remained as the indestructible source of wealth and the prime
means of subsistence for the great bulk of the four and a half million
souls who inhabited the country. Parliament seems to have been almost
indifferent to the miseries of the agricultural population, wholly
indifferent, certainly, to their source, the vicious agrarian system
which it was the interest of its own members to sustain. Foster's famous
Corn Law without doubt increased tillage, and, in conjunction with the
inflated prices for produce caused by the French War, gave a powerful
though a somewhat unhealthy impulse to the trade in corn. But it
enriched only the landlords, and left untouched the real abuses,
absenteeism, middlemanism, insecurity of tenure, rack-rents, and tithes.
The Whiteboy risings of the sixties and seventies recurred, and were met
with Coercion Acts as stupid and cruel as those of the nineteenth
century. The tithe grievance, which festered and grew into civil war in
the nineteenth century, was never touched. While tenants in North-East
Ulster were painfully and forcibly establishing their custom of tenant
right in the teeth of the law, the inhuman system of cottier tenancy,
which was to last until 1881, became more and more firmly rooted in
other parts of Ireland.
None but a democratic Assembly could possibly have grappled with these
evils; nor is there any reason to suppose that in the existing condition
of Ireland a Protestant democratic Assembly, even if temporarily it
retained its sectarian character, would have grappled with them less
boldly and drastically than an Assembly composed of Catholics and
Protestants. The material interests of nineteen-twentieths of the people
were the same, while the education and intelligence belonged mainly to
the Protestants. Ulster tenants had as much need of good land laws as
other tenants. Tithes were as much disliked in the north as in the
south. The Established Church was the Church of a very small minority,
and its clergy, numbers of whom were absentees, were as unpopular as the
absentee landlords and the absentee office-holders and pensioners.
But with no redress, and, what is more important, no prospect of redress
for the primary ills of Ireland, the centrifugal forces of religion and
race had full scope for their baneful influence. And it was at the very
moment when tolerance was steadily gaining ground among all classes that
these spectres of ancient wrong were summoned up to destroy the good
work.
How did this come about? Let us remember once more that everything
hinged on Reform. Reform gained a little, but suffered far more, by its
association with the question of Catholic franchise, which was useless
without Reform, while it was the corollary of Reform. Nothing is more
remarkable than the growth of academic tolerance during this period,
doubtful and suspect as the motives sometimes were. It is true that the
great Relief Act of 1793, giving Catholics the vote and removing a
quantity of other disqualifications, would scarcely have been sanctioned
by the Parliamentary managers without the stern dictation of Pitt, whose
mind was strongly influenced by the violent anti-Catholic turn just
taken by the French Revolution; but, once sanctioned, it passed
rapidly, and was received with universal satisfaction in the country at
large. Without "Emancipation," that is, the permission to elect
Catholics to sit in Parliament and hold office, the franchise was
illusory and even harmful. In the counties the forty-shilling "freehold"
vote ("freehold" was an ironical misnomer) encouraged Protestant
landlords for another generation, before and after the Union, still
further to subdivide already excessively small holdings, while the
benefits to be derived from the admission to power of propertied
Catholics, with all their intensely Conservative instincts, were thrown
away. Emancipation apart, the franchise without Reform was a complete
farce, for the boroughs, which controlled the Parliamentary balance,
were the personal property of Protestant landlords, and the 110
Parliamentary placemen were indirectly their tools. As usual, the men of
light and leading contributed unconsciously to the strength of a system
which, in their hearts, as honest men, they condemned. Each of them had
some fatal defect of understanding. Grattan became a strong Emancipator,
but remained an academic and ineffectual reformer striving in vain to
reconcile Reform with a passionate abhorrence of democracy and a
determination to keep power in the hands of landed property. In England,
which was Protestant in the Established sense, he would have done no
more harm than Burke, who for the same reason fought Reform as strongly
as Pitt and his father Chatham had advocated it. But in Ireland, which
was Catholic and Nonconformist, landed property signified Episcopalian
landed property, that is, the narrowest form of ascendancy. Charlemont
was an even stranger paradox. He was an academic Reformer before
Grattan, but not an Emancipator, arriving at the same sterility as
Grattan through a religious bias which Grattan ceased to feel, a bias
inspired, not by a fanatical fear of democracy in itself, but by a fear
of Catholic revenge for past wrongs. These men and their like, admirable
and lovable as in many respects they were, were useless to Ireland in
those terrible times. Whether Emancipation, unaccompanied by Reform, had
any real chance of passing Parliament in 1795, when the Whig Viceroy
Fitzwilliam, the one Viceroy in the eighteenth century who ever
conceived the idea of governing Ireland according to Irish ideas, came
over from England with the avowed intention of proposing it, is a matter
of conjecture. Fitzwilliam was snuffed out by Pitt, and recalled under
circumstances which still remain a matter of controversy. All we can say
with certainty is that the opinion of Ireland at large was absolutely
ignored, and that English party intrigues and English claims on Irish
patronage had much to do with the result. On the whole, however, I agree
with Mr. Fisher that too much importance has been given to this episode,
especially by Mr. Lecky, who devotes nearly a volume to it.
The anti-national Irish Parliament was past praying for. Long before
1795 the Irish aristocracy had lost whatever power for good it ever
possessed, and most of the resolute reformers of Wolfe Tone's
middle-class Protestant school had turned, under the enthralling
fascination of the French Revolution, into revolutionaries. Reform had
been refused in 1782; again, and without coercion from the Volunteers,
in 1783. It was refused again in 1784, against the advice of Pitt and at
the instigation of Pitt's own Viceroy, Rutland, whom Pitt had
urged--what a grim irony it seems!--to give "unanswerable proofs that
the cases of Ireland and England are different," and who answered with
truth that the ascendancy of a minority could only be maintained "by
force or corruption." Every succeeding year showed the same results.
Wolfe Tone was more than justified, he was compelled, to convert his
Society of United Irishmen, founded in 1791, into a revolutionary
organization and to seek by forcible means to overthrow the Executive
which controlled Parliament and, through it, Ireland. Since the symbol
of the Irish Executive was the British Crown, he, of course, abjured the
Crown, though he had no more quarrel with the Crown as such than had the
American or Canadian patriots. He simply loved his country, and from the
first saw with clear eyes the only way to save her. Tolerance to him was
not an isolated virtue, but an integral part of democracy. He took
little interest in the Parliamentary side of Catholic relief, realizing
its hollow unreality, and, in the case of the Bill of 1793, actually
ridiculing the absurd spectacle of the Catholic cottiers being herded to
the poll by their Protestant landlords. Nor was he even an extreme
Democrat, for he advocated a ten-pound, instead of a forty shilling
franchise. His original pamphlet of 1791 contains nothing but the most
sober political common sense.
His aim was to unite Irishmen of all creeds to overthrow a Government
which did not emanate from or represent them, and which was ruinous to
them. It is not surprising that he failed. Ireland was very near
England. French intervention had been decisive in distant America, and
the French Revolution in its turn had been hastened by the American
example. But the intervention in Ireland of Republican France, for
purely selfish and strategic reasons, without effective command of the
sea, and with the stain of the Terror upon her, was of little material
value and a grave moral handicap to the Irish Revolutionists. It is the
manner of Tone's failure and the consequences of his failure that have
such a tragic interest. A united Ireland could have dispensed with the
aid of France. What prevented unity? Tone laboured to bring both creeds
together, and to a certain degree was successful. Until the very last it
was the Catholics, not the Protestants, who shrank most from revolution.
Yet, in the Rebellion of 1798, the North never moved, while Catholic
Wexford and Wicklow rose.
The root cause is to be found in those agrarian abuses whose long
neglect by the Irish Parliament constituted the strongest justification
for Reform. The Orange Society, founded under that name in 1795,
originated in the "Peep o' Day Boys," a local association formed in
Armagh in 1784 for the purpose of bullying Catholics. There is no doubt
that the underlying incentive was economic. Even when the Penal Code had
lost in efficacy, its results survived in the low standard of living of
the persecuted Catholics. As I pointed out in a former chapter, the
reckless cupidity of the landlords in terminating leases and fixing new
rents by auction, with the alternative of eviction, threw those
Protestant tenants who did not emigrate into direct competition with
Catholic peasants of a lower economic stamp, who because they lived on
little could afford to offer fancy rents. Hence much bitter friction,
leading to sordid village rows and eventually to the organized
ruffianism of the Peep o' Day Boys. The Catholic Franchise Act of 1793,
unaccompanied by Emancipation, actually intensified the trouble by
removing the landlord's motive to prefer a Protestant tenant on account
of his vote. Under ill-treatment, the Catholics naturally retaliated
with a society known as the "Defenders," and in some districts were
themselves the aggressors. Defenderism, in its purely agrarian aspect,
spread to other parts of Ireland, where Protestants were few, and became
merged in Whiteboyism. This had always been an agrarian movement,
directed against abuses which the law refused to touch, and without
religious animus, although the overwhelming numbers of the Catholics in
the regions where it flourished would have placed the Protestants at
their mercy. In Ulster both the contending organizations necessarily
acquired a religious form and necessarily retained it. But at bottom bad
laws, not bigotry, were the cause. There was nothing incurable, or even
unique, about the disorders. Analogous phenomena have appeared
elsewhere, for example, in Australia, between the original squatters on
large ranches and new and more energetic colonists in search of land for
closer settlement. Under a rational system of tenure and distribution
there was plenty of good land in Ireland for an even larger population.
Tone, who was a middle-class lawyer, seems never to have appreciated
what was going on. So far from healing the schism, he appears to have
widened it by throwing the United Irish Committee of Ulster into the
scale of the Catholics against the Orangemen. But, in truth, he was
helpless. Good administration only could unite these distracted
elements, and without the Reform for which he battled, good
administration was impossible. The dissension, widening and acquiring an
increasingly religious and racial character, paralyzed Ulster, which
originally was the seat of the Revolution. The forces normally at work
to favour law and order--loyalty to the Crown, dislike of the French
Revolution, and resentment at Franco-Irish conspiracies--gathered
proportionately greater strength.
The Southern Rebellion of 1798--a mad, pitiful thing at the best, the
work of half-starved peasants into whose stunted minds the splendid
ideal of Tone had scarcely begun to penetrate--was a totally different
sort of rebellion from any he had contemplated. It was neither national
nor Republican. The French invasions had met with little support; the
first with positive reprobation. Nor was it in origin sectarian,
although, once aflame, it inevitably took a sectarian turn. Several of
the prominent leaders were Protestants. Priests naturally joined in it
because they were the only friends the people had had in the dark ages
of oppression. In so far as it can be regarded as spontaneous, it was of
Whiteboy origin, anti-tithe and anti-rack-rent. But it was not even
spontaneous; that is another dreadful and indisputable fact which
emerges. The barbarous measures taken to repress and disarm, prior to
the outbreak, together with the skilfully propagated reports of a coming
massacre by Orangemen, would have goaded any peasantry in the world to
revolt, and the only astonishing thing is that the revolt was so local
and sporadic. General Sir Ralph Abercromby retired, sickened with the
horrors he was forbidden to avert. "Within these twelve months," he
wrote of the conduct of the soldiery at the time of his resignation,
"every crime, every cruelty that could be committed by Cossacks or
Calmucks has been transacted here.... The struggle has been, in the
first place, whether I was to have the command of the Army really or
nominally, and then whether the character and discipline of it were to
be degraded and ruined in the mode of using it, either from the facility
of one man or from the violence and oppression of a set of men who have
for more than twelve months employed it in measures which they durst not
avow or sanction."
Abercromby's resignation, in Mr. Lecky's opinion, "took away the last
faint chance of averting a rebellion." Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare, was now
supreme in the Government, and henceforth represents incarnate the
forces which provoked the Rebellion and founded upon it the Union. He
had bided his time for a decade, watching the trend of events,
foreseeing their outcome, and smiling sardonically at the ineffectual
writhings of the men of compromise. He stands out like a block of black
granite over against the slender figure of Wolfe Tone, who was his
anti-type in ideas and aims, his inferior in intellect, his superior in
morals, but no more than his rival in sincerity, clarity, and
consistency of ideas. Clare was a product of the Penal Code, the son of
a Catholic Irishman who, to obtain a legal career, had become a
Protestant. He himself was not a bigot, but a very able cynic, with a
definite theory of government. Tolerance, Emancipation, Reform, were so
much noxious, sentimental rubbish to him, and he had never scrupled to
say so. Ireland was a Colony, English colonists were robbers in Ireland,
and robbers must be tyrants, or the robbed will come by their own again;
that was his whole philosophy,[18] his frigid and final estimate of the
tendencies of human nature, and his considered cure for them. Racial
fusion was a crazy conception not worth argument. Wrong on one side,
revenge on the other; policy, coercion. As he put it in his famous
speech on the Union, the settlers to the third and fourth generation
"were at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island." "Laws must be
framed to meet the vicious propensities of human nature," and laws of
this sort for the case of Ireland should, he held with unanswerable
logic, properly be made in England, not by the travesty of a Parliament
in Ireland, which, in so far as it was in any degree Irish, had shown
faint but ominous tendencies towards tolerance and the reunion of
Irishmen. He never took the trouble to demonstrate the truth of his
theory of revenge by a reasoned analysis of Irish symptoms. He took it
for granted as part of a universal axiomatic truth, and, like all
philosophers of his school, pointed to the results of misgovernment and
coercion as proofs of the innate depravity of the governed and of their
need for more coercion. Anticipating a certain limited class of Irishmen
of to-day, often brilliant lawyers like himself, he used to bewail
English ignorance of Ireland, meaning ignorance of the incurable
criminality of his own kith and kin. He was just as immovably cynical
about the vast majority of his own co-religionists as about the
conquered race. If, as was obvious, so far from fearing the revenge of
the Catholics, their unimpeded instinct was to take sides with them to
secure good government, they were not only traitors, but imbeciles who
could not see the doom awaiting them. Yet Fitzgibbon's admirers must
admit that his consistency was not complete. He was perfectly cognizant
of the real causes of Irish discontent. He was aware of the grievances
of Ulster, and his description of the conditions of the Munster
peasantry in the Whiteboy debates of 1787 is classical. If pressed, he
would have answered, we may suppose, that it was impolitic to cure
evils which were at once the consequence of ascendancy and the
condition of its maintenance. That other strange lapse in 1798, when he
described the unparalleled prosperity of Ireland since 1782 under a
Constitution which, in the Union debates of 1800, he afterwards covered
with deserved ridicule as having led to anarchy, destitution, and
bankruptcy, must be attributed to the exigencies of debate; for he was
an advocate as well as a statesman, and occasionally gave way to the
temptation of making showy but unsubstantial points.
These slips were rare, and do not detract from the massive coherence of
his doctrine. He remains the frankest, the most vivid, and the most
powerful exponent of a theory of government which has waged eternal
conflict with its polar rival, the Liberal theory, in the evolution of
the Empire. The theory, of course, extends much farther than the
bi-racial Irish case, to which Fitzgibbon applied it. It was used, as we
shall see, to meet the bi-racial circumstances of Canada and South
Africa, and it was also used in a modified form to meet the uni-racial
circumstances of Australia and of Great Britain itself. Anyone who reads
the debates on the Reform Bill of 1831 will notice that the opposition
rested at bottom on a profoundly pessimistic distrust of the people, and
on the alleged necessity of an oligarchy vested with the power and duty
of "framing laws to meet the vicious propensities of human nature." In a
word, the theory is in essence not so much anti-racial as
anti-democratic, while finding its easiest application where those
distinctions of race and creed exist which it is its effect, though not
its purpose, to intensify and envenom. Fitzgibbon is a repulsive figure.
Yet it would be unjust to single him out for criticism. Like him, the
philosophers Hume and Paley believed in oligarchy, and accepted force or
corruption as its two alternative props. Burke thought the same, though
the Pitts thought otherwise. Fitzgibbon's brutal pessimism was only the
political philosophy of Paley, Hume, and Burke pushed relentlessly in an
exceptional case to its extreme logical conclusion. But we can justly
criticize statesmen of the present day who, after a century's experience
of the refutation of the doctrine in every part of the world, still
adhere to it.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Pitt's original scheme was accepted in Ireland, but defeated in
England, owing to the angry opposition of British commercial interests.
The scheme, as amended to conciliate these interests, was deservedly
rejected in Ireland.
[17] J. Fisher, "The End of the Irish Parliament." The author is much
indebted to this brilliant study, which appeared only this year (1911).
[18] See Fitzgibbon's Speeches in the Irish House of Lords, on the
Catholic Franchise Bill, March 13, 1793, and on the Union, February 10,
1800.
CHAPTER IV
THE UNION
The worst feature of Fitzgibbonism is that it has the power artificially
to produce in the human beings subject to it some of the very phenomena
which originally existed only in the perverted imagination of its
professors. Some only of the phenomena; not all; for human nature
triumphs even over Fitzgibbonism. There has never been a moment since
the Union when a representative Irish Parliament, if statesmen had been
wise and generous enough, to set such a body up, would have acted on the
principle of revenge or persecution. Nor, in spite of all evidences to
the contrary, has there ever been a moment when Protestant Ulstermen,
heirs of the noble Volunteer spirit, once represented in such a
Parliament, would have acted on the assumption that they had to meet a
policy of revenge. Nevertheless, Fitzgibbonism did succeed, as it was to
succeed in Canada, in making pessimism at least plausible and in
achieving an immense amount of direct ascertainable mischief.
The rift between the creeds and races, just beginning to heal three
generations after the era of confiscation, but reopened under the
operations of economic forces connected with race and religion, yet
perfectly capable of adjustment by a wise and instructed Government,
yawned wide from 1798 onwards, when Government had become a soulless
policeman, and scenes of frenzy and slaughter had occurred which could
not be forgotten. Swept asunder by a power outside their control,
Protestants and Catholics stood henceforth in opposite political camps,
and it became a fixed article of British policy to govern Ireland by
playing upon this antagonism. The flame of the Volunteer spirit never
perished, but it dwindled to a spark under the irresistible weight of a
manufactured reaction. Dissenters and Anglicans united, not to lead the
way in securing better conditions for their Catholic fellow-countrymen,
not for the interests of Ireland as a whole, but under the ignoble
colours of religious fanaticism. Hence that strangely artificial
alliance between the landlords of the South and West and the democratic
tenantry, artisans, and merchants of the North; an alliance formed to
meet an imaginary danger, and kept in being with the most mischievous
results to the social and economic development of Ireland. Since the
Protestant minority had made up its mind to depend once more on the
English power it had defied in 1782, the old machine of Ascendancy,
which had showed certain manifest signs of decrepitude under Grattan's
Parliament, was reconstructed on a firmer, less corrupt, and more
lasting basis.
The Legislative Union is not a landmark or a turning-point in Irish
history. It reproduced "under less assailable forms" the Government
which existed prior to 1782. The real crisis, as I have said, came at
the end of 1783, when the Volunteers tried, by reforming Parliament, to
give Irish Government an Irish character. It is essential to
remember--now as much as ever before--that Ireland has never had a
national Parliament. She has never been given a chance of
self-expression and self-development. It is useless, though Home Rulers
frequently give way to the temptation, to advocate Home Rule by arguing
from Grattan's Parliament. O'Connell, in the Repeal debate of 1834,
devoted hours to praising that Parliament, and had his own argument
turned against him with crushing force by the Secretary to the Treasury,
who easily proved that it was the most corrupt and absurd body that ever
existed. The same game of cross-purposes went on in the Home Rule
debates of 1886 and 1893, and reappeared but this year in a debate of
the House of Lords (July 4, 1911), when the Roman Catholic Home Ruler,
Lord MacDonnell, eulogized Grattan's Parliament in answer to Lord
Londonderry, the Protestant Unionist landlord, who painted it in its
true colours. Yet Lord Londonderry springs from the class and school of
Charlemont, who, by refusing to act as an Irishman, hastened the ruin of
the Parliament which Lord Londonderry satirizes, and Lord MacDonnell
from the race which was betrayed by that Parliament. The anomaly need
not surprise us. It is not stranger than the fact that the Union would
never have been carried without Catholic support in Ireland.
The point we have to grasp is that Ireland was a victim to the crudity
and falsity of the political ideas current at the time of the Union,
persistent all over the Empire for long afterwards, and not extinct yet.
Between Separation, personified by Tone, and Union, personified by
Fitzgibbon, and carried by those milder statesmen, Castlereagh and Pitt,
there seemed to be no alternative. Actually there was and is an
alternative: a responsible Irish Parliament and Government united to
England by sympathy and interest.
The Parliamentary history of the Union does not much concern us.
Bribery, whether by titles, offices, or cash, had always been the normal
means of securing a Government majority in the Irish House of Commons.
Corruption was the only means of carrying the vote for the Union, and
the time and labour needed for securing that vote are a measure of the
rewards gained by those who formed the majority. Disgusting business as
it was, we have to admit that a Parliament which refused to reform
itself at the bidding of all that was best and healthiest in Ireland
did, on its own account, deserve extinction. The sad thing is that the
true Ireland was sacrificed.
Pitt and Castlereagh, though they plunged their hands deep in the mire
to obtain the Union, quite honestly believed in the policy of the Union.
They were wrong. They merely reestablished the old ascendancy in a form,
morally perhaps more defensible, but just as damaging to the interests
of Ireland. In addition to absentee landlords, an alien and a largely
absentee Church, there was now an absentee Parliament, remote from all
possibility of pressure from Irish public opinion, utterly ignorant of
Ireland, containing within it, for twenty-nine years, at any rate,
representatives of only one creed, and that the creed of the small
minority. Pitt had virtually pledged himself to make Catholic
Emancipation an immediate consequence of the Union, and his Viceroy,
Cornwallis, had thereby obtained the invaluable support of the Catholic
hierarchy and of many of the Catholic gentry. The King, half mad at the
time, refused to sanction the redemption of the pledge, and Pitt, to his
deep dishonour, accepted the insult and dropped the scheme.
Fitzgibbonism in its extreme form had triumphed. It was a repetition of
the perfidy over the Treaty of Limerick a century before. Indeed, at
every turn of Irish history, until quite recent times, there seems to
have been perpetrated some superfluity of folly or turpitude which shut
the last outlet for natural improvement. It cannot be held, however,
that the refusal of Emancipation for another generation seriously
damaged the prospects of the Union as a system of government. After it
was granted, the system worked just as badly as before, and in all
essentials continues to work just as badly now. Inequalities in the
Irish franchise were only an aggravation. In order to cripple Catholic
power, Emancipation itself was accompanied in 1829 by an Act which
disfranchised at a stroke between seven and eight tenths of the Irish
county electorate, nor was it until the latest extension of the United
Kingdom franchise, that is, eighty-five years after the Union, that the
Irish representation was a true numerical reflection of the Irish
democracy. But these were not vital matters. In the Home Rule campaigns
of 1886 and 1893, Irish opinion, constitutionally expressed, was
impotent. The vital matter was that the Union killed all wholesome
political life in Ireland, destroyed the last chance of promoting
harmony among Irishmen, and transferred the settlement of Irish
questions to an ignorant and prejudiced tribunal, incapable of
comprehending these questions, much less of adjudicating upon them with
any semblance of impartiality.
The Legislative Union was unnatural. The two islands, near as they were
to each other, were on different planes of civilization, wealth, and
economic development, without a common tradition, a common literature,
or a common religion. Each had a temperament and genius of its own, and
each needed a different channel of expression. Laws applicable to one
island were meaningless or noxious in the other; taxation applicable to
a rich industrial island was inappropriate and oppressive for a poor
agricultural island. And upon a system comprising all these
incompatibilities there was grafted the ruinous principle of ascendancy.
There is nothing inherently strange about the difference between England
and Ireland. Artificial land-frontiers often denote much sharper
cleavages of sentiment, character, physique, language, history. A
sea-frontier sometimes makes a less, sometimes a more, effective line of
delimitation. Denmark and Sweden, France and England, are examples.
Nor, on the other hand, did the profound differences between Ireland and
England preclude the possibility of their incorporation in a political
system under one Crown. We know, by a mass of experience from Federal
and other systems, that elements the most diverse in language, religion,
wealth, and tradition may be welded together for common action, provided
that the union be voluntary and the freedom of the separate parts be
preserved. The first conditions of a true union were lacking in the case
of Ireland. The arrangement was not voluntary. It was accompanied by
gross breach of faith, and it signified enslavement, not liberty.
A true Union was not even attempted. The Government of Ireland, in
effect, and for the most part in form, was still that of a conquered
Colonial Dependency. It was no more representative in any practical
sense after the Union than before the Union. The popular vote was
submerged in a hostile assembly far away. The Irish peerage was regarded
rightly by the Irish people as the very symbol of their own degradation,
the Union having been purchased with titles, and titles having been for
a century past the price paid for the servility of Anglo-Irish
statesmen. But the peerage, in the persons of the twenty-eight
representatives sent to Westminster, still remained a powerful nucleus
of anti-Irish opinion, infecting the House of Lords with anti-Irish
prejudice, and often opposing a last barrier to reform when the
opposition of the British House of Commons had been painfully overcome.
In truth the cardinal reforms of the nineteenth century were obtained,
not by persuasion, but by unconstitutional violence in Ireland itself.
There was still a separate Executive in Ireland, a separate system of
local administration, and until 1817 a separate financial system, all of
them wholly outside Irish control. The only change of constitutional
importance was that the Viceroy gradually became a figure-head, and his
autocratic powers, similar to those of the Governor of a Crown Colony,
were transferred to the Chief Secretary, who was a member of the British
Ministry. Gradually, as the activity of Government increased, there grew
up that grotesque system of nominated and irresponsible Boards which at
the present day is the laughing-stock of the civilized world. The whole
patronage remained as before, either directly or indirectly, in English
hands. If it was no longer manipulated in ways frankly corrupt, it was
manipulated in a fashion just as deleterious to Ireland. Before, as
after, the Union there was no public career in Ireland for an Irishman
who was in sympathy with the great majority of his countrymen. To win
the prizes of public life, judgeships, official posts, and the rest, it
was not absolutely necessary to be a Protestant, though for a long time
all important offices were held exclusively, and are still held mainly,
by Protestants; but it was absolutely necessary to be a thoroughgoing
supporter of the Ascendancy, and in thoroughgoing hostility to Irish
public opinion as a whole. In other words, the unwritten Penal Code was
preserved after the abolition of the written enactments, and was used
for precisely the same pernicious purpose. It was a subtle and sustained
attempt "to debauch the intellect of Ireland," as Mr. Locker-Lampson
puts it, to denationalize her, and to make her own hands the instrument
of her humiliation. The Bar was the principal sufferer, because now, as
before, it was the principal road to humiliation. Fitzgibbons
multiplied, so that for generations after the Union some of the ablest
Irish lawyers were engaged in the hateful business of holding up their
own people to execration in the eyes of the world, of combating
legislation imperatively needed for Ireland, and of framing and carrying
into execution laws which increased the maladies they were intended to
allay.
Let nobody think these phenomena are peculiar to Ireland. In many parts
of the world where Ascendancies have existed, or exist, the same methods
are employed, and always with a certain measure of success. Irish moral
fibre was at least as tough as that of any other nationality in
resisting the poison.
But the results were as calamitous in Ireland as in other countries. No
country can progress under such circumstances. The test of government is
the condition of the people governed. Judged by this criterion, it is no
exaggeration to say that Ireland as a whole went backward for at least
seventy years after the Union. Even Protestant North-East Ulster, with
its saving custom of tenant-right, its linen industry, and all the
special advantages derived from a century of privilege, though it
escaped the worst effects of the depression, suffered by emigration
almost as heavily as the rest of Ireland, and built up its industries
with proportionate difficulty. Over the rest of Ireland the main
features of the story are continuous from a period long antecedent to
the Union. A student of the condition of the Irish peasantry in the
eighteenth and in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth centuries
can ignore changes in the form or personnel of government. He would
scarcely be aware, unless he travelled outside his subject, that
Grattan's Parliament ever existed, or that subsequently a long
succession of Whig and Tory Ministers, differing profoundly in their
political principles, had alternately sent over to Ireland Chief
Secretaries with theoretically despotic powers for good or evil. These
"transient and embarrassed phantoms" came and went, leaving their
reputations behind them, and the country they were responsible for in
much the same condition.
It is not my purpose to enter in detail into the history of Ireland in
the nineteenth century, but only to note a few salient points which will
help us to a comparison with the progress of other parts of the Empire.
It is necessary to repeat that the basis upon which the whole economic
structure of Ireland rested, the Irish agrarian system, was inconsistent
with social peace and an absolute bar to progress. I described in
Chapter I. how it came into being and the collateral mischiefs attending
it. During the nineteenth century, by accident or design, these
mischiefs were greatly aggravated. Until 1815 high war prices and the
low Catholic franchise stimulated subdivision of holdings, already
excessively small, and the growth of population. With the peace came
evictions, conversions into pasture, and consolidation of farms. The
disfranchisement of the mass of the peasantry which accompanied
Emancipation in 1829 inspired fresh clearances on a large scale and
caused unspeakable misery, with further congestion on the worst
agricultural land. "Cottier" tenancy, at a competitive rent, and
terminable without compensation for the improvements which were made
exclusively by the tenant, was general over the greater part of Ireland.
Generally it was tenancy-at-will, with perpetual liability to eviction.
Leaseholders, however, were under conditions almost as onerous. The
labourer, who was allowed a small plot, which he paid for in labour,
was in the worst plight of all. In addition, burdensome tithes were
collected by an alien Church and rents were largely spent abroad. If
Irish manufactures had not been destroyed, and there had been an outlet
from agriculture into industry, the evil effects of the agrarian system
would have been mitigated. As it was, in one of the richest and most
fertile countries in the world the congestion and poverty were
appalling. Competition for land meant the struggle for bare life. Rent
had no relation to value, but was the price fixed by the frantic bidding
of hungry peasants for the bare right to live. The tenant had no
interest in improving the land, because the penalty for improvement was
a higher rent, fixed after another bout of frantic competition.
"Almost alone amongst mankind," wrote John Stuart Mill,[19] "the cottier
is in this condition, that he can scarcely be either better or worse off
by any act of his own. If he were industrious or prudent, nobody but his
landlord would gain; if he is lazy or intemperate, it is at his
landlord's expense. A situation more devoid of motives to either labour
or self-command, imagination itself cannot conceive. The inducements of
free human beings are taken away, _and those of a slave not
substituted_. He has nothing to hope, and nothing to fear, except being
dispossessed of his holding, and against this he protects himself by the
_ultima ratio_ of a defensive civil war. Rockism and Whiteboyism were
the determination of a people, who had nothing that could be called
theirs but a daily meal of the lowest description of food, not to submit
to being deprived of that for other people's convenience.
"Is it not, then, a bitter satire on the mode in which opinions are
formed on the most important problems of human nature and life, to find
public instructors of the greatest pretension imputing the backwardness
of Irish industry, and the want of energy of the Irish people in
improving their condition, to a peculiar indolence and insouciance in
the Celtic race? Of all vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration
of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most
vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character
to inherent natural differences."
The "civil war" referred to by Mill as the _ultima ratio_ of the
cottier tenant went on intermittently for ninety years of the nineteenth
century, as it had gone on during the eighteenth century, and was met by
coercive laws of the same general stamp. Until Mr. Gladstone took the
question in hand in 1870, no reformer could get a hearing in Parliament.
Bill after Bill, privately introduced, met with contemptuous rejection
in favour of some senseless measure of semi-military coercion. There
can, I believe, be no doubt that responsible Irish opinion, made
effective, would have grappled with the evil firmly and conscientiously.
Until the peasant class was driven to the last pitch of desperation,
their leaders did not conceive, and, indeed, never wholly succeeded in
implanting, the idea of a complete overthrowal of landlordism. The
peasant was not unwilling to pay rent. He had, and still has, a deep,
instinctive respect for a landed aristocracy, and was ready, and is
still ready, to repay good treatment with an intensity of devotion
difficult to parallel in other parts of the United Kingdom. In that
veritably cataclysmic dispersion of the Irish race which ensued upon the
great famine, rent continued to be paid at home out of sums remitted
from relatives in America. No less than nineteen millions of money were
thus remitted, according to the Emigration Commissioners of 1863,
between 1847 and that date. The Roman Catholic Church, as in every part
of the world, was strongly on the side of law and order, and, indeed, on
many occasions stepped in to condemn disorder legitimately provoked by
intolerable suffering. The wealthy and educated landlord class, face to
face in a free Parliament with the tenant class, including, be it
remembered, the Ulster Protestant tenants, with grievances less acute in
degree, but similar in kind, would have consented to meet reform halfway
under the stimulus of patriotism and an enlightened self-interest.
Against the great majority of Irish landlords there was no personal
charge. They came into incomes derived from a certain source under
ancient laws for which they were not responsible. But, acting through
the ascendancy Parliament far away in London, they remained, as an
organized class--for we must always make allowance for an enlightened
and public-spirited minority--blind to their own genuine interests and
to the demands of humane policy. Their responsibility was transferred to
English statesmen, who were not fitted, by temperament or training, to
undertake it, and who always looked at the Irish land question, which
had no counterpart in England, through English spectacles. We cannot
attribute their failure to lack of information. At every stage there was
plenty of unbiassed and instructed testimony, Whig and Tory, Protestant
and Catholic, independent and official, as to the nature and origin of
the trouble. Mill and Bright, in 1862, only emphasized what Arthur Young
had said in 1772, and what Edward Wakefield, Sharman Crawford, Michael
Sadler, Poulett Scrope, and many other writers, thinkers, and
politicians had confirmed in the intervening period, and what every
fair-minded man admits now to be the truth. Commission after Commission
reported the main facts correctly, if the remedies they proposed were
inadequate. The Devon Commission, reporting in 1845, on the eve of the
great famine, condemned the prevalent agrarian tenure, and recommended
the statutory establishment of the Ulster custom of tenant right. A very
mild and cautious Bill was introduced and dropped.
Next year came the famine, revealing in an instant the rottenness of the
economic foundations upon which the welfare of Ireland depended. The
population had swollen from four millions in 1788 to nearly eight and a
half millions in 1846, an unhealthy expansion, due to the well-known law
of propagation in inverse ratio to the adequacy of subsistence. What
happened was merely the failure of the potato-crop, not a serious matter
in most countries, but in Ireland the cause of starvation to
three-quarters of a million persons, and the starting-point of that vast
exodus which in the last half of the nineteenth century drained Ireland
of nearly four million souls. The famine passed, and with it all
recollection of the report of the Devon Commission. Hitherto most of the
land legislation had been designed to facilitate evictions. Now came the
Encumbered Estates Act of 1849, whose purpose was to facilitate the
buying out of bankrupt Irish landlords, and whose effect was to
perpetuate the old agrarian system under a new set of more mercenary
landlords, pursuing the old policy of rack-rents and evictions. In the
three years 1849-1852, 58,423 families were evicted, or 306,120 souls.
Aroused from the stupor of the famine, the peasants had to retaliate
with the same old defensive policy of outrage. Peaceful agitation was
of no use. The Tenant League of North and South, formed in 1852, claimed
in vain the simplest of the rights granted under pressure of violence in
1870 and 1881.
Violence, indeed, was the only efficient lever in Ireland for any but
secondary reforms until the last fifteen years of the century, when a
remedial policy was spontaneously adopted, with the general consent of
British statesmen and parties. Fear inspired the Emancipation Act of
1829, which was recommended to Parliament by the Duke of Wellington as a
measure wrong in itself, but necessary to avert an organized rebellion
in Ireland. Tithes, the unjust burden of a century and a half, were only
commuted in 1838, after a Seven Years' War revolting in its incidents.
Mr. Gladstone admitted, and no one who studies the course of events can
deny, that without the Fenianism of the sixties, and the light thrown
thereby on the condition of Ireland, it would have been impossible to
carry the Act--again overdue by a century--for the disestablishment of
the Irish Church in 1869, or the Land Act, timid and ineffectual as it
was, of 1870. Without the organized lawlessness of the Land League it
would have been equally impossible to bring about those more drastic
changes in Irish land tenure which, amidst storms of protest from vested
interests affected, were initiated under the great Land Act of 1881,
and, after another miserable decade of crime and secret conspiracy,
extended by the Acts of 1887, 1891, and 1896.
Briefly, the effect of these Acts was to establish three principles: a
fair rent, fixed by a judicial tribunal, the Land Commission, and
revisable every fifteen years; fixity of tenure as long as the rent is
paid; and free sale of the tenant-right.
The remedy eventually brought widespread relief, but, from a social and
economic standpoint, it was not the right remedy. There is no security
for good legislation unless it be framed by those who are to live under
it. Constructive thought in Ireland for the solution of her own
difficulties and the harmonizing of her own discordant elements had been
systematically dammed, or diverted into revolutionary excesses, which,
in the traditional spirit of Fitzgibbonism, were made the pretext for
more stupid torture. Thus, O'Connell, whose attachment to law was so
strong that in 1843, when the Repeal agitation had reached seemingly
irresistible proportions, he deliberately restrained it, was tried for
sedition. So, too, were dissipated the brilliant talents of the Young
Ireland group and the grave statesmanship of Isaac Butt. Fits intervened
of a penitent and bungling philanthropy which has left its traces on
nearly all Irish institutions. For example, it was decided in 1830 that
the Irish must be educated, and a system was set up which was
deliberately designed to anglicize Ireland and extirpate Roman
Catholicism. Four years later, in defiance of Irish opinion, a Poor Law
pedantically copied from the English model was applied to Ireland. The
railway system also was grossly mismanaged. And so with the land. When
reform eventually came, the evil had gone too far, and it was beyond the
art of the ablest and noblest Englishmen, inheriting English conceptions
of the rights of landed property, to devise any means of placing the
relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland, inhuman and absurd as
they were, on a sound and durable basis. The dual ownership set up by
the Land Acts was more humane, but in some respects no less absurd and
mischievous. It exasperated the landlord, while, by placing before the
tenant the continual temptation of further reductions in rent, it tended
to check good cultivation.
Men came to realize at last that the complete expropriation of the
landlords through the State-aided purchase of the land was the only
logical resource, and this process, begun tentatively and on a very
small scale as far back as 1870, under the inspiration of John Bright,
and extended under a series of other Acts, was eventually set in motion
on a vast scale by the Wyndham Act of 1903.
I leave a final review of Purchase and of other quite recent remedial
legislation, as well as the far more important movements for
regeneration from within, to later chapters. Meanwhile, let us pause for
a moment and pronounce upon the political system which made such havoc
in Ireland. All this havoc, all this incalculable waste of life, energy,
brains, and loyalty, was preventable and unnecessary. Ethics and honour
apart, where was the common sense of the legislative Union? Would it
have been possible to design a system better calculated to embitter,
impoverish, and demoralize a valuable portion of the Empire?
Let us now turn our eyes across the Atlantic, and observe the effects of
an Imperial policy founded on the same root idea.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] "Principles of Political Economy," vol. ii., p. 392.
CHAPTER V
CANADA AND IRELAND
In comparing the history of Canada with the closely allied history of
Ireland, we must bear in mind that in the last half of the eighteenth
century the present British North America consisted of three distinct
portions: Acadia, or the Maritime Provinces, which we now know as
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island,
colonized originally by a few Frenchmen and later by Scotch and Irish;
Lower Canada, extensively colonized by the French, which we now know as
the Province of Quebec; and Upper Canada, which we now know as Ontario,
colonized last of all by Americans under circumstances to be described.
In 1763, before the repeal of any part of the Penal Code against Irish
Roman Catholics, the French Catholic Colony of Lower Canada, with a
population of about seventy thousand souls and the two small towns of
Quebec and Montreal, passed definitely into British possession under the
Treaty of Paris, which brought to a conclusion the Seven Years' War.
Fortunately, there was no question, as in Ireland, of expropriating the
owners of the soil in favour of State-aided British planters, and hence
no question of a Penal Code, even on the moderate scale current in Great
Britain at the same period. On the contrary, it became a matter of
urgent practical expediency to conciliate the conquered Province in view
of the growing disaffection of the American Colonies bordering it on the
South. This disaffection, assuming ominous proportions on the enactment
of the Stamp Act in 1765, was itself an indirect result of the conquest
of Canada a few years before; for the claim to tax the Americans for
Imperial purposes arose from the enormous expense of the war of conquest
and of the subsequent charges for defence and upkeep. It was forgotten
that American volunteers had captured Louisburg in 1745, and had borne
a distinguished part in later operations, and that to lay a compulsory
tax upon them would banish glorious memories common to America and
Britain. Henceforward, conquered French Canada was made a political
bulwark against rebellious America. The French colonists, a peaceable,
primitive folk, as attached to their religion as the Irish, and devoted
mainly to agriculture, retained, as long as they desired it, the old
French system of law known as the Custom of Paris and the free exercise
of their religion. Like the Irish, they were strongly monarchical and
strongly conservative in feeling, and as impervious to the Republican
propaganda emanating from their American neighbours as the Catholic
Irish always at heart remained to the revolutionary principles of Wolfe
Tone's school. Unmolested in their habits and possessions, they
philosophically accepted the transference from the Bourbon to the
Hanoverian dynasty, and became an indispensable source of strength to
George III. when that monarch was using his German troops to coerce his
American subjects and his British troops to overawe the Ulster
Volunteers.
In 1774, immediately before the outbreak of a war against which Ireland
was protesting, and in which, with the soundest justification, the
Irish-Americans, Catholic and Protestant, took such a prominent part
against the British arms, the Quebec Act was passed giving formal
statutory sanction to the Catholic religion, and setting up a nominated
legislative Council, whose members were subject to no religious test. In
Ireland it was not till six years later, and, as we have seen, by means
of precisely the same pressure--British fear of America--that the Irish
Protestant Volunteers obtained the abolition of the test for Dissenters,
while Catholics in Ireland were still little more than outlaws, and had
to wait for nearly sixty years for complete emancipation. The result of
the Quebec Act, together with the sympathetic administration of that
great Irishman, Sir Guy Carleton, was the firm allegiance of the French
Province in spite of an exceedingly formidable invasion, during the
whole of the American War, and even after the intervention of European
France. It is part of the dramatic irony of these occurrences that some
of the invading army was composed of Morgan's Irish-American riflemen,
and that one of the two joint leaders of the invasion was the
Irish-American, General Richard Montgomery, who fell at the unsuccessful
assault of Quebec on December 31, 1775.
In spite of Burke's noble appeal in the House of Commons, toleration in
the abstract had nothing to do with the treatment of the French
Catholics. British Catholics in the neighbouring Prince Edward Island
were denied all civil rights in 1770, and only gained them in 1830. In
England, the Quebec Act with difficulty survived a storm of indignation,
in which even Chatham joined. The small minority of British settled in
Quebec and Montreal made vehement protests, while the American Congress
itself in 1774 committed the irreparable blunder of making the
establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Canada one of its
formally published grievances against Great Britain. When war broke out,
and the magnitude of the mistake was seen, efforts were made to seduce
the Canadians by hints of a coming British tyranny, but the Canadians
very naturally abode by their first impressions.
The peace of 1783 and the final recognition of American Independence led
to results of far-reaching importance for the further development of the
British Empire. Out of the loss of the American Colonies came the
foundation of Australia and of British Canada. Before the war it had
been the custom to send convicts from the United Kingdom to penal
settlements in the American Colonies. The United States stopped this
traffic. Pitt's Government decided, after several years of doubt and
delay, to divert the stream of convicts to the newly acquired and still
unpopulated territory of New South Wales, made known by the voyages of
Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks. At the same period a very different
class of men, seeking a new home, were thrown upon the charity of the
British Government. These were the "United Empire Loyalists," as they
styled themselves, some 40,000 Americans, with a sprinkling of Irishmen
among them, such as Luke Carscallion, Peter Daly, Willet Casey, and John
Canniff,[20] who had fought on the Royalist side throughout the war, and
at the end of it found their fortunes ruined and themselves the objects
of keen resentment. Pitt, with a "total lack of Imperial imagination,"
as Mr. Holland Rose puts it,[21] does not seem to have considered the
plan of colonizing Australia with a part of these men, 433 of whom were
reported to be living in destitution in London three years after the
war. No more alacrity was shown in relieving the distress of those still
in America. In 1788, however, a million and a quarter pounds were voted
by Parliament for relief, and large grants of land were made in Canada,
whither most of the Loyalists had already begun to emigrate. Some went
to the Maritime Provinces, notably to the region now known as New
Brunswick; a few went to the towns of the Quebec Province, for the
country lands on the lower reaches of the St. Lawrence were already
monopolized by the French "habitants"; the rest, estimated at 10,000, to
the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence and along the shores of the Lakes
Ontario and Erie, in short, to what we now know as the Province of
Ontario, and to what then became known as Upper Canada.
From this moment the three Canadas gain sharp definition. To the west
Upper Canada, exclusively American or, as we must now say, British in
character; next to the east, and cutting off its neighbour from the sea,
the ancient Province of Lower Canada, predominantly French, with a
minority of British traders in the two towns Quebec and Montreal; last
of all the Maritime Provinces, small communities with an almost
independent history of their own, although, like Upper and Lower Canada,
they eventually presented a problem similar fundamentally to the Irish
problem on the other side of the Atlantic. Prince Edward Island is the
closest parallel, for, besides the Catholic disabilities of 1770, in
1767 the whole of its land had been granted away by ballot in a single
day to a handful of absentee English proprietors, who sublet to
occupiers without security of tenure, with the result that a land
question similar to that of Ireland arose, which inflamed society and
retarded the development of the island for a whole century. Ultimately,
moreover, statesmen were driven to an even more drastic
solution--compulsory and universal State-aided land purchase.[22] Before
the period we have now reached, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island,
which was carved out of it, had been given rude systems of
representative Government, and New Brunswick, also at one time a part of
Nova Scotia, received a Constitution in 1784.
The great question after the American War was how to govern the two
contiguous Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, the one newly settled by
men of British race and Protestant faith, the other also under the
British flag, but overwhelmingly French and Catholic, both, in the
critical half-century to come, to be reinforced by immigrants from the
Old World, and to a large extent from misgoverned Ireland. But let the
reader once and for all grasp this point, that, once out of Ireland,
there ceases, not immediately, but in course of time, to be any racial
or political distinction between the different classes of Irishmen,
whose antagonism at home, artificially provoked and fomented by the bad
form of government under which they lived, so often made Ireland itself
a very hell on earth. I want to dwell on this point in order to avoid
confusion when I speak of the bi-racial conditions of Lower Canada and
Ireland respectively.
To return to the question of Government. The American Colonies were
lost. Here in Canada was an opportunity for a new Imperial policy,
better calculated to retain the affections of the colonists. Three
distinct problems were involved:
1. Was French or Lower Canada, with its small minority of British, to be
given representative Government at all?
2. If so, was it to be left as a separate unit, or was it to be
amalgamated in a Union with its neighbour, Upper Canada?
3. Whichever course was taken, what was to be the relation between the
Home Government and Canada?
All these questions arise in the case of Ireland itself, and the
parallel in each case is interesting. In Canada they were determined for
the space of half a century by the Constitutional Act of 1791, passed at
the period when Grattan's unreformed Parliament was hastening to its
fall, and Wolfe Tone was founding his Society of United Irishmen. Let us
take in turn the three questions posed above.
1. The British minority in Lower Canada, supported by a corresponding
school in England, were strong for an undisguised British ascendancy,
without any recognition of the French. They urged, what was true, that
the French were unaccustomed to representative government, and implied,
what was neither true nor politic, that they could not, and ought not
to, be educated to it. If there was to be an Assembly at all, it should,
they claimed, be wholly British and Protestant, or, in the alternative,
the Protestant minority only should be represented at Westminster. In
other words, they wished either for the pre-Union Irish system or for
the post-Union Irish system, both of them, as time was just beginning to
prove, equally disastrous to the interests of Ireland. We are not
surprised to find these ideas supported by the Irishman Burke, in whom
horror of the French Revolution had destroyed the last particle of
Liberalism. If Pitt lacked "Imperial imagination," he knew more than
most of his contemporaries about the elementary principles of governing
white men. It was only a few years before that he had urged upon his
Irish Viceroy, Rutland, a reform of the Irish Parliament which might
have united the races and averted all the disasters to come, and in this
very year (1791) he was pressing forward the Catholic franchise in
Ireland. The French in Canada must, he said, be represented in a popular
Assembly equally with the British, and on the broadest possible
franchise, and they were.
2. The next question was that of the union or separation of Upper and
Lower Canada. Here, and from the same underlying motive, the British
minority in Lower Canada were for the Union, partly on commercial
grounds, but mainly as a step in the direction of overcoming French
influence. Upper Canada, wholly British, was, on the whole, neutral.
Pitt, on high principle, again took correct ground. He did not, indeed,
foresee that separation, for geographical reasons, would cause certain
inconveniences; but he did understand--and experience in both Provinces
ultimately proved him right--that it was absolutely hopeless to try and
avert social and racial discord by artificially swamping the French
element. He declared, then, for the separation of the two Canadas into
two distinct Provinces. Note the beginnings of another, though a
distant, analogy with the relations of Ireland and Great Britain,
distant because the French at this time largely outnumbered the British
of both Provinces, and in after-years maintained something very near a
numerical equality. But the same underlying principle was involved.
Pitt, in the Legislative Union of Ireland and Great Britain nine years
later, constructed without geographical necessity, indeed, in defiance
of geography and humanity, the very system which, in a form by
comparison almost innocuous, he had condemned for Canada; but not, we
must in fairness remember, before doing his part at an earlier date to
arrive at a solution which, given a fair chance, would have rendered the
Union of Ireland and England unnecessary.
3. So far, good. But there still remained a further question far
transcending the other in importance--What was to be the relation
between the Home Government and the new Colonies? Here all British
intellects, that of Fox alone excepted, were as much at a loss as ever.
One simple deduction was made from what had happened in America, namely,
that the new Colonies must not be forced to contribute to Imperial funds
by taxes levied from London. That claim had already been abandoned in
1778 by the Colonial Tax Repeal Act, which nevertheless expressly
reserved the King's right to levy "such duties as it may be expedient to
impose for the regulation of commerce," the sum so raised to be retained
for the use of the Colony. No one made the more comprehensive deduction,
even in the case of wholly British Upper Canada, that Colonial affairs
should be controlled by Colonial opinion, constitutionally ascertained,
and that the British Governor should act primarily through advisers
chosen by the majority of the people under his rule. We must bear in
mind that, had Grattan's Parliament been reformed, and the warring races
in Ireland been brought into harmony, it would still have had to pass
through the crucial phase of establishing its right to choose Ministers
by whose advice the Lord-Lieutenant should be guided, that is, if it
were to become a true Home Rule Parliament of the kind we aim at to-day.
From the date of the Constitutional Act passed for Canada in 1791, it
took fifty-six troubled years and an armed rebellion in each Province to
establish the principle of what we call "responsible Government" for
Canada, and, through Canada, for the rest of the white Colonies of the
Empire. During these fifty-six years, which correspond in Irish history
to a period dating from the middle of Grattan's Parliament down to the
great Famine, ascendancies, with the symptoms of disease which always
attended ascendancies, grew up in Canada, as they had in Ireland, in
spite of conditions which were far more favourable in Canada to healthy
political growth. Canada started with this great advantage over Ireland,
that instead of a corrupt parody of a Parliament, each of her Provinces,
under the Constitutional Act of 1791, had a real popular Assembly,
elected without regard to race or religion. It was the Upper House or
Legislative Council, as it was called, that interposed the first
obstacle to the free working of popular institutions. In both Provinces
this Council was nominated by the Governor, and could be used, and was
naturally used, to represent minority interests and obstruct the popular
assembly. Fox had correctly prophesied that it would soon come "to
inspire hatred and contempt." But he did not mean that such a chamber
was in itself an insuperable bar to harmony. Nominated or hereditary
second chambers are not necessarily inconsistent with popular
government, provided that the Executive Government itself possesses the
confidence of the representative Assembly. Under that lever, obstruction
eventually gives way. But this idea of a tie of confidence between the
Governors and the governed was exactly what was lacking.
The Executive Council in each Province was also chosen by the British
Governor or Lieutenant-Governor, generally a military man, from persons
representing either his own purely British policy or the ideas of a
privileged colonial minority, and without regard to the wishes or
opinions of the Colonial Assembly, just as the Executive officers in
Ireland, both before and after the Union, were chosen out of
corresponding elements by the Lord-Lieutenant or Chief Secretary, acting
under the orders of the British Government, and without any regard to
the wishes or opinions of the majority of Irishmen. Behind all, in
remote Downing Street stood the British Government, in the shape of the
Colonial Office for Canada and the Irish Office for Ireland, both
working in dense ignorance of the real needs of the countries for which
they were responsible, and permeated with prejudice and pedantry. To
complete the parallel, there was now a foreign Power in the close
neighbourhood of each dependency, the United States in the case of
Canada, France in the case of Ireland, both of them Republican Powers,
and both able and willing to take advantage of disaffection in the
dependencies in order to further a quarrel with the Mother Country. We
have seen the results in Ireland. Let us now observe the results in
Canada, taking especial care to notice that an ascendancy Government
gives rise to the same type of evil in a uni-racial as in a bi-racial
community.
Let us glance first at what happened in Upper Canada, which was
uni-racial, that is, composed of settlers from the United Kingdom
(including Ireland) and America. Here the original settlers, the "United
Empire Loyalists" from America, formed from the first, and maintained
for half a century, an ascendancy of wealth and religion over the
incoming settlers, who soon constituted the majority of the population.
As in Ireland, though in a degree small by comparison, there was a land
question and a religious question, closely related to one another.
Happily, it was not a case of robbery, but of simple monopoly.
Excessively large grants of land, nine-tenths of which remained
uncultivated, were obtained by the original settlers, most of whom were
Episcopalian in faith, and, under the Act of 1791, further tracts of
enormous extent, which for the most part lay waste and idle, were set
apart in each township, under the name of "Clergy Reserves" for the
Episcopalian Church. Since the majority of the incoming settlers were
Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, or Roman Catholics, many of them
from the Protestant and Catholic parts of Ireland, some from America,
some even from Germany, these conditions caused intense irritation,
checking both the development of the country and the growth of solid
character among the colonists. Absentee ownership was a grave economic
evil, though happily it was not complicated and embittered by a vicious
system of tenure. Education suffered severely through the diversion of
the income from public lands to private purposes.
The ascendancy was maintained on lines familiar in Ireland--through the
mutual dependence of the colonial minority and the Home Government
acting through its Governor. A few leading Episcopalian families from
among the United Empire Loyalists, installed at Toronto, with the
support of a succession of High Tory Lieutenant-Governors, monopolized
the Executive Council, the Legislative Council, the Bench, the Bar, and
all offices of profit, denying a Canadian career to the vast majority of
Upper Canadians, just as Irishmen were excluded from an Irish career.
For a long time the Assembly itself, which retained its original
Constitution long after the influx of immigrants had rendered necessary
its enlargement on a new electoral basis, was a subject of monopoly
also. Even when enlarged in 1821 it was helpless against the nominated
Council and Executive, backed by Downing Street. The oligarchy came to
be known by the name of the "family compact," and, as the reader will
observe, it bore a close resemblance in form to the "undertaker" system
in Ireland before the Union, and to the monopoly of patronage obtained
by certain families, notably the Beresfords.
While the Colony was still small, the system worked tolerably well; but
from the second decade of the nineteenth century onwards, when the
population grew from 150,000 to 250,000 in 1832, and to 500,000 a few
years later, and the Episcopalians sank into a numerical minority as low
as a quarter, troubles of the Irish type became proportionately acute.
The Colony was in reality perfectly content with its position under the
Crown, and in the war with America in 1812 all classes and creeds united
to repel invasion with enthusiasm. One of the prominent leaders was an
Irishman, James Fitzgibbon, and a poor Irish private, James O'Hara, won
fame by refusing to surrender at the capture of Toronto Fort. As usual,
however, a fictitious standard of "loyalty," which, in fact, meant
privilege, was set up, obscuring those questions of good government
which were the only real matters at issue in Canada, as in Ireland.
There were Republican immigrants of many denominations from America,
Radicals of Cobbett's school from England and Scotland, tenants of a
democratic turn from Ulster, and a growing stream of Catholic cottiers
flying from the "clearances" and tithe war in other Irish Provinces. All
these classes of men made excellent settlers, and only wanted fair and
equal treatment to make them perfectly peaceable citizens. To the
official oligarchy, however, even their moderate leaders came to be
viewed as rebels, and were often subjected to imprisonment or to
banishment.
Among others William Gourlay, a Scotsman, Stephen Willcocks and Francis
Collins, Irishmen, all three perfectly respectable reformers, suffered
in this way. Bidwell, the great Robert Baldwin, and other good men were
rendered powerless for good. As invariably happens in any part of the
world where a course is pursued which estranges moderate men and
embitters extreme men, agitators came to the front lacking that
self-control and sense of responsibility which the sobering education of
office alone can give, and generally ruining themselves while they
benefit humanity at large. Chief of these was W.L. Mackenzie, a
Presbyterian Scot from Dundee. All this man really wanted was what
exists to-day as a matter of course in all self-governing
countries--responsible government. He even conceived that great idea of
the Confederation of British North America, which came to birth in 1867.
Thwarted in his attacks on the oligarchy, he degenerated into violent
courses, and ultimately organized, or rather was provoked into
organizing, the rebellion of 1837. The grievances which led to this
outbreak were genuine and severe, and were all in course of time
admitted and redressed. One, the powerlessness of the Assembly, owing to
the control by the Executive of annual sums sufficient to pay the
official expenses of Government, corresponded to a pre-Union Irish
grievance, and was remedied by an Act of 1831. Most of the other
grievances were incurable by constitutional effort. They may be found
summarized in the "Seventh Report of Grievances," a temperate and
truthful document drawn up by a Committee of the Assembly in 1835. The
huge unsettled Clergy Reserves and Crown Lands were the worst concrete
abuse, and matters had just then been aggravated by the sudden
establishment of scores of sinecure rectories. Jobbery,
maladministration, and the dependence of the judges on the Executive
were other complaints; but the main assault was made quite rightly on
the form of the Colonial Government, which rendered peaceful reform of
any abuse as impossible as in Ireland, and the cardinal claim was that
the Executive should act, not under the dictation of Downing Street, of
an irresponsible Governor, or of a narrow colonial oligarchy, but in
accordance with popular opinion. Mackenzie's rebellion of 1837 was a no
more formidable affair than the similar efforts in Ireland made under
incomparably greater provocation by Emmett in 1803 and Smith O'Brien in
1848, and was as easily suppressed; but, unlike the Irish outbreaks, and
in conjunction with a revolt arising in the same year and from similar
causes in the adjoining Province of Lower Canada, it led to a complete
change of system.
In Lower Canada the same preposterous system of government was
aggravated by the presence of the two races, French and English. Yet
there was nothing inherently dangerous or unwholesome about this
situation. The French, like the Catholics in Ireland, never showed the
smallest tendency towards religious intolerance, nor were they less
loyal at heart than the Radicals of Upper Canada or the Tories of either
Province. They took the same energetic part in repelling the American
invasion of 1812, and produced at least one remarkable leader in the
person of Colonel Salaberry, who commanded the French-Canadian
Voltigeurs. Like their co-religionists in Ireland, they were
temperamentally averse to Republicanism in any shape, whether on the
American model over the border or on the model of revolutionary France,
where Republicanism since 1793 was anti-Catholic and the result of
miseries and oppressions as bad as those in Ireland; whence, moreover,
many priests and nobles fled from persecution to Lower Canada. As in
eighteenth-century Ireland, we find that the Roman Catholic clergy, the
_seigneurs_ or aristocrats, and the _habitants_ or peasants, were of a
Conservative cast, throwing their weight, often even against their own
interests, into the scale of the established Government, while the
lawyers and journalists alone produced determined agitators. The racial
cleavage, moreover, as in Ireland, was artificially accentuated by the
political system. There was in reality a strong community of interest
between the British lower class and the French lower class against the
tyranny of an official clique, and to the end a substantial number of
Englishmen worked with the French for reform; but with the failure of
their efforts came that inevitable tightening of the bonds of race, even
against interest, which we have seen operating with such lamentable
effect in Ireland. And, as in Ireland, we find the best instincts of
the people withered and perverted into rebellion by "Fitzgibbonism," the
policy of distrust and coercion.
The British official ascendancy, supreme from the first, became
extraordinarily rigid. The Executive Council and Legislative Council
were almost entirely British, the Assembly overwhelmingly French. There
were no regular heads of departments, so that the Governor had no
skilled advice, much less responsible advice. The Councils blocked all
legislation they disliked, and for more than forty years, by means of
unrestricted control over a large part of the provincial revenues, were
able to defy the Assembly. It will be observed that, although Ireland
never had anything worth calling an Assembly, her structure both before
and after the Union was essentially the same, in that Irish public
opinion, whether voiced by the Volunteers against the unreformed
Parliament or after the Union by the Nationalist party at Westminster,
was powerless. The existence of a popular Assembly in Canada only made
the anomalies more obvious.
There were, of course, marked divergencies of character and less marked
divergencies of interest between the French majority and the British
minority in Canada. The French, by comparison, were a backward and
conservative race, less well educated and less progressive and energetic
both in agriculture and commerce than the British. On the other hand,
subsequent experience showed that, under free constitutional government,
British intelligence, wealth, and energy would, here as elsewhere, have
preserved their full legitimate influence. Under a system which
throttled French ideas and aspirations, and treated the most harmless
popular movements as treasonable machinations, deadlock and anarchy were
in the long run inevitable.
The popular demands were much the same as those in Upper Canada: control
of the purse, the independence of the judges, an elective Legislative
Council, and a curtailment of the arbitrary powers and privileges of the
Executive, which led to gross jobbery, favouritism, and extravagance. As
in Upper Canada, the greatest practical grievance, though it assumed a
somewhat different form, was the disposal of the public lands. Here,
too, there were extensive and undeveloped Clergy Reserves for the
Episcopalian Church, as well as free grants on a large scale to
speculators. The estates of the Jesuit Order had been confiscated, so
that disputes about their disposal were tinged with religious
bitterness. But most of the friction over the land question came from
the operations of a chartered land company, which, under the protection
of the Government, and with financial and political support from
England, dealt with the unsettled land in a manner very unfair and often
corrupt, and promoted here, as in Upper Canada and Ireland, absentee
ownership.
The popular agitation ran the same course as in Upper Canada, reached
its crisis at the same moment, threw into prominence the same types of
men, moderate and extreme, and produced the same waste of good human
material and distortion of human character, both in the ascendant and
the subject classes. As Sir John Cockburn tells us in his "Political
Annals of Canada" (p. 177), some of the most incendiary speakers and
writers (in 1836) were "most able and worthy men, who in the subsequent
days of tranquillity occupied most prominent and distinguished positions
in the public service, revered as loyal, true, and able statesmen by all
classes." The popular movement was by no means wholly French. A Scot,
John Neilson; an Englishman, Wilfred Nelson; and an Irish journalist,
Dr. O'Callaghan, were prominent members of a kind of Radical party; but
the ablest and most influential among the agitators, and in every
respect more admirable than Mackenzie, was the Frenchman, Louis
Papineau, who first became Speaker of the Assembly in 1817, and retained
that high position until the verge of the rebellion of 1837. By no means
devoid of superficial faults, but eloquent, honest, accomplished and
adored by his compatriots, here was a man who, if he had been given
reasonable scope for his talents, and steadied by official
responsibility, would have been a tower of strength to the Colony and
the British connection. He corresponds in position and aims, and to a
certain extent in character and gifts, to his great Irish contemporary,
O'Connell. But O'Connell was too conservative to produce great results.
Papineau, dashing himself in vain for twenty years against the
entrenched camp of the ascendancy, finally degenerated, like Mackenzie,
into a commonplace rebel.
The phases through which the agitation passed before it reached this
disastrous point need only a brief review. Naturally enough, owing to
the bi-racial conditions, friction had arisen earlier in Lower than in
Upper Canada, yet the first recognition of the flagrant defects of the
Constitution was not made till 1828, when a Committee of the British
House of Commons published a Report which, though its recommendations
were mild and inadequate, was in effect a censure of the whole political
system of the Province and an admission of the justice of the agitation.
There was no result for four years, while matters went from bad to worse
in the Colony. At last, in 1832, under an Act similar to that passed for
Upper Canada, all the provincial revenues were placed under the control
of the Assembly in return for the voting of a fixed Civil List. This
well-meant half-measure made matters worse, because it left the Assembly
just as powerless as before over the details of legislation and
administration, while giving it the power to paralyze the Government by
refusing all, instead of only part, of the supplies. This it proceeded
to do, and in the next five years large deficits were piled up, and the
Colony became insolvent.
Meanwhile, in February, 1834, a year before the publication of the
"Seventh Report of Grievances" in Upper Canada, and three months before
O'Connell's celebrated motion in the House of Commons for the Repeal of
the Union between England and Ireland, the Assembly of Lower Canada, at
Papineau's instance, passed the equally celebrated "Ninety-two
Resolutions." Bombastic and diffuse, like parts of O'Connell's speech,
this historic document nevertheless was as true in all really essential
respects as Mackenzie's manifesto and as O'Connell's tremendous
indictment of the system of Government in Ireland. All three men,
O'Connell with far the most justification, demanded the same thing, good
government for their respective countries under a responsible Parliament
and Ministry. They all occasionally used wild language, O'Connell the
least wild. O'Connell, who nine years later deliberately quenched a
popular revolt he could have headed, failed in his aim as completely as
Tone, Emmett, and Smith O'Brien, who pressed their efforts to the point
of violence. Mackenzie and Papineau, who took to arms, succeeded in
their aim.
The crisis in Lower Canada was precipitated, and, indeed, provoked, by a
challenge thrown out in March, 1837, from the British House of Commons,
where, at Lord John Russell's instance, the Ten Resolutions were agreed
to, which amounted in effect to a denial of all the colonial claims and
a declaration of war upon those who made them. Papineau had to eat his
words or make them good, and he chose the latter course. His
insurrection was arranged in concert with that of the Upper Province,
broke out simultaneously in the winter of 1837, and was extinguished
with little difficulty. The men who made it suffered. Canada and the
Empire profited. Both Papineau and Mackenzie, following the precedent of
Wolfe Tone with France, endeavoured with little success to engage
American sympathy and the aid of her army, though Canada had as little
desire for American rule as Ireland had for French rule.
Let us remark, as an interesting fact for those who imagine that
Irishmen are always instinctively on the side of turbulence and
disorder, that the Irish immigrants who poured into Canada at the
average annual rate of 20,000 in the years--terrible years in
Ireland--preceding the rebellions,[23] acted much as we might expect. In
the Lower Province, following the lead of the French Catholic hierarchy,
they declared in November, 1837, against Papineau's party, and thus
strengthened the hands of the Government when the crisis approached.[24]
In the Upper Province Catholics were strongly on the side of reform, but
took no part in the rebellion. Orangemen in both Provinces, as we might
guess, sided as strongly with the ascendancy parties, but colonial air
seems to have taken some of the theological venom out of Orangeism. If
Charles Buller is to be trusted, some Catholics joined the societies in
Upper Canada, which were more Tory than religious, and the healths of
William of Orange and the Catholic Bishop Macdonnell were drunk in
impartial amity.[25]
In the meantime, three of the four outlying Provinces of North
America--Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island--where the
same form of Constitution prevailed as in Upper and Lower Canada, had
been passing through a similar phase of misgovernment and agitation
during the previous thirty years. Each suffered under a little
monopolist ascendancy, called by the same name, "the family compact,"
and sustained, against the prevailing sentiment and interest, by the
British Governor, and in each had arisen, or was arising, the same loud
demand for responsible government. Samuel Wilmot in New Brunswick,
Joseph Howe in Nova Scotia, were the best-known spokesmen. There was no
violence, but a growing dislocation. In five Provinces of North America,
therefore, the Colonial Government had broken down or was tottering, and
from exactly the same cause as in Ireland, though under provocation
infinitely less grave. For the moment, however, attention was
concentrated upon the Canadas, where, as a result of the rebellion, the
Constitution of Lower Canada was suspended early in 1838. In the summer
of 1838 Lord Durham, the Radical peer, was sent out by Melbourne's
Ministry as Governor-General, with provisionally despotic powers, and
with instructions to advise upon a new form of government.
Before we come to Durham's proposals, let us pause and examine the state
of home opinion on the Irish and Colonial questions. The people of Great
Britain at large had no opinion at all. They were ignorant both of
Canada and Ireland, and had been engaged, and, indeed, were still
engaged, in a political struggle of their own which absorbed all their
energies. The Chartist movement in 1838 was assuming grave proportions.
The Reform, won in 1832 under the menace of revolution and in the midst
of shocking disorders, was in reality a first step toward the domestic
Home Rule that Ireland and the five Provinces of North America were
clamouring for. Tory statesmen were quite alive to this political fact,
and condemned all the political movements, British, Irish, and Colonial,
indiscriminately and on the same broad anti-democratic grounds. The Duke
of Wellington, who was not a friend of the Reform Act, and had only
adopted Catholic Emancipation in order to avoid civil war in Ireland,
speaking about Canada in the House of Lords on January 18, 1838, coupled
together the United States, British North America, and Ireland as
dismal examples of the folly of concession to popular demands. Pointing
to the results of the Canada Act of 1831, to which I have already
alluded, and which gave the Assemblies control of the provincial
revenue, and with an eye, no doubt, on the tithe war barely at an end in
Ireland, he said: "Let noble lords learn from Canada and our other
dominions in North America what it is to hold forth what are called
popular rights, but which are not popular rights here or elsewhere, and
what occasion is given thereby to perpetuate a system of agitation which
ends in insurrection and rebellion."
The Whig statesmen who, if we except Peel's short Administration of
1834-35, were in power from 1830 to 1841, though by no means democratic
men, were clear enough about Reform for Great Britain, but nearly as
ignorant and quite as wrong about Ireland and Canada as the Tories. The
only prominent Parliamentarian who, as after events proved, correctly
diagnosed and prescribed for the disease in both countries was
O'Connell. Not fully alive to the Irish analogy, but correct from first
to last about Canada, was a small group of independent Radicals, of whom
Roebuck, Hume, Grote, Molesworth, and Leader were the principal
representatives. After the insurrections in Canada came John Stuart
Mill, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Charles Buller, and with them Lord Durham
himself.
No one can understand either Irish or Colonial history without reading
the debates of this period in the Lords and Commons on Canada and
Ireland. Alternating with one another with monotonous regularity, they
nevertheless leave an impression of an extraordinary lack of
earnestness, sympathy, and knowledge, and an extraordinary degree of
prejudice and of bigotry in the Parliament to whose care for better or
worse the welfare of nearly ten millions of British citizens outside
Great Britain was entrusted. Save for an occasional full-dress debate at
some peculiarly critical juncture, the debates were ill-attended. The
prevailing sentiment seems to have been that Ireland and Canada,
leavened by a few respectable "loyalists" and officials, on the whole,
were two exceedingly mutinous and embarrassing possessions, which,
nevertheless, it was the duty of every self-respecting Briton to dragoon
into obedience. Both dependencies were assumed to be equally expensive,
though, in fact, Ireland, as we know now, was showing a handsome profit
at the time, whereas Canada was costing a quarter of a million a year.
For the rest, the pride of power tempered a sort of fatalistic apathy.
In the case of Ireland the element of pure selfishness was stronger,
because the immense vested interests, lay and clerical, in Irish land
were strongly represented. The proximity of Ireland, too, rendered
coercion more obvious and easy. Otherwise, her case was the same as that
of Canada. "The Canadas are endeavouring to escape from us, America has
escaped us, but Ireland shall not escape us," said an English member to
O'Connell just before the Repeal debate of 1834. Such was the current
view.
Yet, as in the case of Ireland and of the lost American Colonies, the
materials for knowledge of Canada were considerable. Petitions poured
in; Committees and Commissions were appointed, and made reports which
were consigned to oblivion. Roebuck, one of the small Radical group, was
himself a Lower Canadian by birth, and acted as agent at Westminster for
the popular party in that Province. He was as impotent as O'Connell, the
spokesman of the Irish popular party. If the Colonial Office was not
quite the "den of peculation and plunder" which Hume called it in
1838,[26] it was an obscure and irresponsible department, where jobbery
was as rife as in Dublin Castle. In the ten years of colonial crisis
(1828-1838), there were eight different Colonial Secretaries and six
Irish Chief Secretaries.
Over and above all this apathy and arrogance was the perfectly genuine
incapacity to comprehend that idea of responsible government which even
the most hot-headed and erratic of the colonial agitators did
instinctively comprehend. Until Durham had at last opened Lord John
Russell's eyes, the great Whig statesman was as positive and explicit as
the Tories, Wellington and Stanley, in declaring that it was utterly
impossible for the Monarch's Representative overseas to govern otherwise
than by instructions from home and through Ministers appointed by
himself in the name of the King. One constitutional King ruled over
Great Britain, Canada, and Ireland. He could not be advised by two sets
of Ministers. The thing was not only an unthinkably absurd nullification
of the whole Imperial theory, but, in practice, would destroy and
dissolve the Empire. William IV. himself told Lord Melbourne that it was
his "fixed resolution never to permit any despatch to be sent ... that
can for a moment hold out the most distant idea of the King ever
permitting the question even to be entertained by His Majesty's
confidential servants of a most remote bearing relative to any change of
the appointment of the King's Councils in the numerous Colonies." Lord
Stanley said, in 1837, that the "double responsibility" was impossible,
that there must either be separation or no responsible government, and
that it was "no longer a question of expediency but of Empire." Lord
John Russell, polished, sober, scorning to descend to the mere vulgar
abuse of the colonials which disfigured the utterances of many of his
opponents, struggling visibly to reconcile Liberalism with Empire,
nevertheless arrived at the same conclusion. In a debate of March 6, for
example, in the same year, in proposing the defiant Resolutions which
provoked the rebellion in Canada, he argued at length that a responsible
Colonial Ministry was "incompatible with the relations of a Mother
Country and a Colony," and would be "subversive of the power of the
British Crown," and again, on December 22, that it meant "independence."
O'Connell rightly replied to the former speech that Russell and his
followers were supporting "principles that had been the fruitful source
of civil war, dissension, and distractions in Ireland for centuries."
The Radical group pushed home the Irish parallel. Hume quoted, as
applicable to Canada, Fox's saying: "I would have the whole Irish
Government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices, and I firmly
believe ... that the more she is under Irish Government the more she
will be bound to English interests." Molesworth declared, what was
perfectly true at that moment of passion and folly, that his extreme
political opponents wanted to make the reconquest of Ireland a precedent
for the reconquest of Canada.
It would repay the reader to turn back from this debate to the Irish
Repeal Debate of three years earlier, and listen to Sir Robert Peel
stating as one of the "truths which be too deep for argument," that the
Repeal of the Union "must lead to the dismemberment of this great
Empire, must make Great Britain a fourth-rate Power, and Ireland a
savage wilderness," which, as a matter of fact, it was at the very time
he was speaking, after thirty years of the Legislative Union, and seven
hundred years of irresponsible government. We must listen to him
claiming that the beneficent and impartial British Government was
"saving Ireland from civil war" between its own "warring sects,"
whereas, in fact, it was that Government which had brought those warring
sects into being, which had fomented and exploited their dissensions,
which had provoked the rebellion of 1798, and by its shameful neglect
and partiality in the succeeding generation had flung Ireland into a
social condition hardly distinguishable from "civil war." And we must
realize that closely similar arguments, with special stress on the right
of taxation, had been used for the coercion of the American Colonies,
and that exactly the same arguments, founded on the same inversion of
cause and effect, were used to defend the coercion of Canada. There,
also, the Fitzgibbonist doctrine of revenge and oppression by a majority
vested with power was freely used, even by Lord John Russell, in his
speech of March 6, 1837, and of December 22 in the same year, when he
spoke of the "deadly animosity" of the French and "of the wickedness of
abandoning the British to proscription, loss of property, and probably
of lives." He ignored the fact that the same state of anarchy had been
reached in uni-racial Upper Canada as in bi-racial Canada, and that the
"loyalists" in both cases were not only in the same state of unreasoning
alarm for their vested rights, but, in the spirit of the Ulstermen of
that day and ever since, were threatening to "cut the painter," and
declare for annexation to the United States if their ascendancy were not
sustained by the Home Government. Then, as to-day, the ascendant
minority were supported in their threats by a section of British
politicians. Lord Stanley's speech of March 8, 1837, where he boasted
that the "loyal minority of wealth, education, and enterprise" would
protect themselves, and, if necessary, call in the United States, is
being matched in speeches of to-day. In all the debates of the period it
is interesting to see the ignorance which prevailed about the troubles
in Upper Canada. The racial question in Lower Canada, owing to the
analogy with Ireland, was seized on to the exclusion of the underlying
and far more important political question in both Provinces.
Against the policy of the two great political parties in England the
little group of Radicals struggled manfully, and in the long run not in
vain, although for years they had to submit to insult and contumely in
their patriotic efforts to expose the vices of the colonial
administration and to avert the rebellion they foresaw in the Canadas.
What they feared, with only too good cause, was that the American and
Irish precedents would be followed, and war made for the coercion of the
Canadas, to be followed, if successful, by a still more despotic form of
government, which would in its turn provoke a new revolt. Rather than
that such a catastrophe should take place, they went, rightly, to the
extreme point of saying that an "amicable separation" should be
arranged, maintaining, what is indisputable, that the claims of humanity
should supersede the claims of possession. With Russell himself
declaring till the eleventh hour that responsible government was out of
the question because it meant "separation," they were quite justified in
demanding that separation, if indeed inevitable, should come about by
agreement, not as the possible result of a fratricidal war. For such a
war, though Russell could not see it until Durham made him see it, was
the only alternative to the grant of responsible government. But the
Radicals never used this argument unless circumstances forced them to.
Molesworth, in a debate of March 6, 1838, denounced the prevailing view
of the Colonies, insisted that we should be proud of them and study
their interests, that reform, not separation, should be our aim. The
Radicals were fully aware of the alternatives, and were unwearied in
pointing out the justice and policy, in the Imperial interests, of
acceding to the colonial popular demands. Grote had expressed the truth
in the December debate of 1837, when he implored the House "not to use a
tone of triumph at the superior power of England," but to remember that
the colonists, "though freemen, like ourselves," desired to remain, "if
they could do so with honour, in connection with England as the Mother
Country." He was followed by a gentleman named Inglis, who said that "it
was in Canada as in Ireland," a faction called itself Canada, and that
we must bring "back the colonists," like the Irish, "to subordination."
Roebuck, who led the Radicals in Canadian matters, had some of the
faults of Papineau and Mackenzie; yet posterity should give him and his
comrades credit for a constructive Imperialism which the great men of
his day lacked. It is now known that he and Sir William Molesworth
powerfully influenced Durham's policy. In a paper he drew up at Durham's
request on the eve of that nobleman's departure for Canada he sketched a
plan, imperfect in some details, but wise in broad conception, for
pacifying the Canadas, and went further in elaborating a scheme, also
defective, for the Confederation of British North America under the
Crown on the lines conceived by the despised demagogue, Mackenzie.[27]
But the two men who, by influencing Durham, probably did most to save
Canada for the Empire and to lay the foundations of the present Imperial
structure, were Charles Buller, the Radical M.P., and Edward Gibbon
Wakefield, both of whom accompanied the new Governor-General to Canada,
and who are generally believed to have inspired, if they did not
actually write, the greater part of the celebrated Report which became
the Magna Charta of the self-governing Colonies of the Empire.
A word about the events which ended in the publication of this Report.
Durham reached Canada at the end of May, 1838, and in November was
recalled in disgrace for exceeding--strange as it seems!--the almost
absolute powers temporarily entrusted to him. He was an extraordinary
mixture of a despot and a democrat, an extreme Radical in politics, an
autocrat in manners, as vain and tactless as he was generous and
sincere, making bitter enemies and warm friends in turn. He began by
winning and ended by estranging almost every class in both Provinces of
Canada, and returned to England to all appearances a spent and
extinguished meteor. There is some truth, perhaps, in Greville's
observation that, had he been "plain John Lambton," he would never have
been chosen for Canada. It is certain that those who sent him there
little dreamed of the consequences of their action. Lord Melbourne, the
Prime Minister, in a letter to the Queen, charged him with magnifying
the Canadian troubles "in order to give greater _eclat_ to his own
departure."[28] Still, he did his work of investigation faithfully, and
formed his conclusions sanely, and there were plain men of greater
ability at his elbow in the persons of Wakefield and Buller, by whose
advice he was wise enough to be guided. All opinion was against him when
news came of his recall, and even Roebuck was denouncing him in the
_Spectator_ for his autocratic excesses; but a brilliant article by John
Stuart Mill in the _Westminster Review_, pleading for time and
confidence, arrested the tide of obloquy.
Durham's long Report, and the events which followed it, ought to be
studied carefully by every voter, however lowly, who has a voice in
deciding the fate of Irish Home Rule. After an exhaustive discussion of
the causes of disorder in Canada, Durham made two recommendations, the
first of incalculable importance, and proved by subsequent experience to
be right; the second of minor consequence, and proved by subsequent
experience to be wrong.
The first was that responsible government should be inaugurated both in
Canada and in the Maritime Provinces of North America, whose
constitutional troubles Durham also discussed. His proposal was that the
Governor should govern in accordance with advice given by Colonial
Ministers in whom the popular Assembly reposed confidence, and who,
through that Assembly, were in touch with popular opinion; for it was to
the strangulation of popular opinion that Durham attributed all the
disorders and disasters of the past. This recommendation was eventually
adopted, not in the Act subsequently passed, but by instructions to the
Governors concerned; instructions which were first interpreted in the
full liberal spirit by Lord Elgin in 1847. The Maritime Provinces at
various dates and under various Governors received full responsible
government by 1854. Responsible government proved the salvation of
Canada and the Empire, as it would have proved, if given the chance, the
salvation of Ireland and a source of immensely enhanced strength to the
Empire.
The second and less important recommendation, afterwards embodied in the
Act of 1840, was the Union of the two Provinces of Upper and Lower
Canada. Here Lord Durham, misled unhappily by the Irish precedent, fell
into an error. During his visit to Canada he came near to accepting
that higher conception of a Federal Union with local Home Rule for each
Province, outlined by Roebuck and Mackenzie, and eventually consummated
thirty years later. When he came home to London he made a _volte face_,
rejecting the Federal idea and accepting its antitype, that Legislative
and Administrative Union of the two Provinces which had been rejected by
Pitt in 1791. There were, of course, economic arguments for Union apart
from the racial factor; but they do not seem to have been decisive with
Durham. At the last moment he gave way to a dread of predominant French
influence in Lower Canada, similar at bottom to his dread of the
unchecked influence of the British minority. While he feared that the
latter, if let alone, would inaugurate a reign of terror, he added also:
"Never again will the present generation of French-Canadians yield a
loyal submission to a British Government." The argument is inconsistent
with the whole spirit of the Report, which attributes the friction in
both Provinces to bad political institutions. It is probable that Durham
was really more influenced by the quite reasonable recognition that the
French were relatively backward in civilization and ideas. He sought,
therefore, both to disarm them politically and to anglicize them
socially, by amalgamating their political system with that of wholly
British Upper Canada. His calculation was that in a joint assembly the
British would have a small but sufficient majority. The estimated
population of Lower Canada was 550,000, of whom 450,000 were French, and
100,000 British and Irish; that of Upper Canada 400,000, all British and
Irish. That is to say, that in both Provinces together there was a
British and Irish majority of 100,000. The calculation over-estimated
the British element, but in the event this mistake proved to be
immaterial. Though Durham himself appears to have intended
representation to be in strict accordance with population, the Union
Act, passed in 1840, allotted an equal number of representatives in the
Joint Assembly to each of the old Provinces. The assumption here was
that the British Members from Upper Canada would unite with those of old
Lower Canada to vote down the French, just as the Ulster Protestants
voted with English members to vote down the Irish majority.
In practice the Union, after lasting twenty-six years, eventually broke
down. Durham's fear of French disloyalty proved to be as groundless as
his ideal of complete anglicization was futile. It was neither
necessary, sensible, nor possible to extinguish French sentiment, and
human nature triumphed over this half-hearted effort to apply in
dilution the medicine of Fitzgibbonism to the Colonies. Little harm was
done, because the introduction of responsible government, far
transcending the Union in importance, worked irresistibly for good.
Parties did not run wholly on racial lines, but racialism was encouraged
by the equal representation of the two Provinces in the Assembly, in
spite of the greater growth of population in the Upper Province. The
system was unhealthy, and at last produced a state of deadlock, in which
two exactly equal parties were balanced, and a stable Government
impossible. When that point was reached, men began to observe the strong
and supple Constitution of the adjacent United States, and to recognize
that a politically feeble Canada was courting an absorption from that
quarter which all Canadians disliked. The Legislative Union was
dissolved by the mutual consent of the Provinces with the approval of
the Mother Country, and in 1867, under the British North America Act,
the Federal Union was formed which exists in such strength and stability
to-day. Fear of French disloyalty or tyranny was a night-mare of the
past, even with the British minority in Lower Canada. It was realized
that French national sentiment was perfectly consistent with racial
harmony under the British flag. Upper Canada became Ontario, Lower
Canada Quebec. Each Province reserved a local autonomy for itself, and
each at the same moment voluntarily surrendered certain high powers to a
supreme centralized Government, in which both had confidence. Such a
political system is capable of indefinite expansion. Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick joined the Federation at the outset, Prince Edward Island and
British Columbia a little later, and were followed in turn by the
successively developed Provinces which now form the united and powerful
Dominion of Canada.
Turn back to Ireland and weigh well the analogy. _Mutatis mutandis_,
almost every paragraph of the Durham Report applied with greater force
to the Ireland of his day. The ascendancy of a caste and creed minority
in Upper Canada; of a race minority in Lower Canada; "the conflict of
races, not of principles"; the consequent obliteration of natural
political divisions, and the substitution of unnatural and vindictive
antagonisms demoralizing both sides to every quarrel; the universal
disgust with and distrust of the British Government, though for reasons
diametrically opposite; the hopelessness of true reforms; the
perpetuation of abuses; the stagnation of trade and agriculture; the
re-emigration to America, and the abuses of a Church Establishment with
endowments from sources by right public--all these phenomena and many
others had their counterpart in Ireland. Some have disappeared. The
Church is disestablished. The land question is on the way to settlement.
The old ascendancy is mitigated. But many of the political, and all the
psychological, features of the situation which Durham described do,
alas! exist to-day in Ireland. Ireland, like the Canada of 1838, is a
land of bewildering paradox. There is a similarly unwholesome arrest of
free political life, the same unnatural division of parties, the same
suppression of moderate opinion, and the same inevitable maintenance of
a Home Rule agitation, harmful in itself, because it retards the country
and accentuates for the time being the very divisions it seeks to cure,
but absolutely necessary for the final salvation of Ireland. Durham, in
the case of Canada, saw the truth, and swept into the limbo of
discredited bogies the old figments of the coercionists. In a singularly
noble and profound passage (p. 229), revealing the ethical basis on
which his philosophy rested, he declared that even if the political
freedom of the Colony were to lead in the distant future to her
separation from the Empire, she nevertheless had an indefeasible moral
right to the blessings of freedom; but he prophesied correctly that the
connection with the Empire "would only become more durable and
advantageous by having more of equality, of freedom, and of local
administration."
If only Irish and British Unionists would realize that these words came
from a profound knowledge of human nature in the mass, and are
applicable to Irishmen in Ireland just as much as to Irish, British,
French, and Dutch in the Colonies!
The tenacity of the old superstition is extraordinary, and we can see it
in the case of Canada. It remains a wonder to this day how responsible
government was ever introduced. There can be no question that the Act of
1840 only secured a smooth passage because, in providing for the Union
of the French and British Provinces, it represented a superficial
analogy to that Union of Britain and Ireland which had paralyzed Irish
aspirations. Durham himself had actually quoted both the Irish and
Scotch Unions as successful expedients for "compelling the obedience of
a refractory population," and thus arrived at the outstanding and
solitary defect of his otherwise noble scheme. And O'Connell, in a
debate upon the Report on June 3, 1839, opposed the Canadian Union for
Irish reasons, and in language which after-experience proved to be
perfectly correct. Happily, as we have seen, the defect was small and
curable, because the analogy with Ireland, where there was no
responsible, but, on the contrary, a separate and wholly irresponsible
Executive Government, and whose interests were upheld by only 100
Members in a House of 670, was exceedingly remote. On responsible
government itself the Canadian Act of 1840 was entirely silent. We may
thank Providence for the fact. Durham's cardinal proposals had received
unbridled vituperation as sentimental rubbish where they were not
treasonable poison, the whole controversy taking precisely the same form
as in 1886 and 1893 over Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills for Ireland.
The _Quarterly Review_ spoke of "this rank and infectious Report,"
though it is fair to say that Peel and Wellington did not join in such
wild language. Five months after the issue of Lord Durham's Report, Lord
John Russell, in the debate of June 3, was denying, with the approval of
all but the Radicals, the possibility of responsible government as
emphatically as ever. Durham seems to have partially converted him in
the summer, for in introducing the Act itself in 1840 he cautiously
committed himself to the plan of instructing the Canadian Governor to
include in his Executive Council, or Cabinet, men expressly chosen
because they possessed the confidence of the Assembly. But the Act as it
stood, ignoring this vital change, was impeccably Conservative, and on
that account went through. In some points it seemed, without good
reason, to be even reactionary, and was regarded in that light with
displeasure by the Radicals, with satisfaction by Whigs and Tories.
While confirming the control of revenue by the Assembly, in return for a
fixed civil list, it took away from the Assembly, and vested in the
Executive, the power of recommending money votes, and it also retained
the Legislative Council or Upper Chamber as a nominated, not as an
elective, body. Provided that the Executive had the confidence of the
representative Assembly or Lower House, the first point was perfectly
sound, and the second was not vital; but there was no security for the
condition precedent other than Russell's vague outline of subsequent
policy. While the supreme power of the King, acting with or without the
Governor, was reaffirmed in the most vigorous terms, there was not a
word in the Act about the composition of the Executive Council or its
relation to the Assembly.
In Canada much the same misconceptions prevailed, and promoted the
acceptance of the Act by the supporters of the old ascendancies. The
question of the Union and the question of responsible government, both
raised by Lord Durham's Report, became inextricably confused, and the
various petitions and resolutions of the time reflect this confusion.
The French opposed the Union and supported responsible government on the
same grounds, and in almost identical terms, as the Irish opposed, and
still oppose, their Union with Great Britain, and ask for responsible
government in Ireland. Moderate Britishers supported both proposals, but
the extremists of the old ascendancy bitterly denounced the whole theory
of responsible government, Union or no Union. Their views are ably and
incisively set forth by a Committee of the old Legislative Council of
Upper Canada, that is, by the members of the "family compact," in a
protest signed and transmitted to London, where it was quoted with
approval by Lord John Russell. It may be found, together with other
petitions of the time, in the "Canadian Constitutional Development" of
Messrs. Grant and Egerton. With a few unessential changes and
modifications, the whole document might be signed to-day by a Committee
of Ulster Unionists, and I heartily wish that every Ulsterman would read
it in a spirit of reason and generosity, and observe how every line of
it was falsified by history, before he declares that the situation of
Ulster is peculiar, and sets his hand or gives his adhesion to a
similar document. The signatories, who, it must be remembered, were a
small ruling minority of the colonists, whose power was artificially
sustained by the British Governor, claim that they alone, in glorifying
and in battling for "colonial dependence," are the true Imperialists.
They hold dear the "unity of the Empire." Responsible government within
their own Colony would lead to the "overthrowal" of that Empire, and the
reduction of Britain to a "second-rate Power." A colonial Cabinet is
absurd; the local and sectional interests are too strong; the British
Government must remain as "umpire" to keep the parties from flying at
one another's throats. The majority, who are themselves a prey to
divisions (and one thinks of Nationalist splits), are seeking only for
illegitimate power; the minority are for "justice and protection, and
impartial government." Yet in the same breath we are told that all is
happy and peaceable as it is. Why subject the Colony to the dissensions
of party? Why foster a spirit of undying enmity among a people disposed
to dwell together in harmony? The signatories argue from the history of
Ireland and Scotland, "which never had responsible government, yet
government became impracticable the moment it approached to equal
rights." Hence a Union, because "government must be conducted with a
view to some supreme ruling power, which is not practicable with several
independent Legislatures." Finally, Loyalists and Imperialists as they
are, they are not going to stand an attempt to "force independence" on
them. They will take the matter into their own hands, and, if necessary,
call in the United States to "replace the British influence needlessly
overthrown."
I do not quote this sort of thing in order to add any tinge of
bitterness to present controversies. The signatories lived to see their
errors and to be ashamed of what they wrote. They, like the Irish
Unionist leaders of to-day, were able and sincere men, unconscious, we
may assume, that their pessimism about the tendencies of their
fellow-citizens was really due to the defective institutions which they
themselves were upholding, and to the forcible suppression of the finer
attributes of human nature; unconscious, we may also assume, of
identifying loyalty with privilege, and "the supreme ruling power" with
their own ruling power; unconscious that what they called "Imperial
Unity" was in reality on the verge of producing Imperial disruption; and
wholly unconscious, certainly, of the ghastly irony of their analogy
drawn from the brutally misgoverned, job-ridden, tithe-ridden,
rack-rented Ireland of their day, living, for no fault of its own, under
a condition of intermittent martial law, and hurrying at that moment
towards the agony of the famine years. Less severe in degree, analogous
abuses perpetuated in their own interest existed in their own Colony,
and were only abolished under the new regime which they attacked with
such vehemence before it came, and which, because it transformed and
elevated their own character and that of their fellow-citizens, while
drawing them closer to the old country, they afterwards learned to
regard with pride and thankfulness.
As an effective contrast to the mistaken views of the Upper Canadian
statesmen, the reader cannot do better than study the letters of Joseph
Howe, the brilliant Nova Scotia "agitator," to Lord John Russell, in
answer to that statesman's speech of June 3, 1839, when he argued
against responsible government, and quoted the Upper Canadian manifesto
as his text. These letters make a wonderful piece of sustained and
humorous satire, of which every word was true and every word applicable
to Ireland. Howe's portrait, for example, of the average Colonial
Governor applies line for line to the average Chief Secretary, coming at
an hour's notice to a country he has never seen, and knows nothing of,
vested with absolute powers of patronage, and often pledged to carry out
a policy in direct conflict with the wishes of the vast majority of the
people whose interests he is supposed to guard.
The Act of 1840 went through, but it had little to do with the
regeneration and reconciliation of Canada. Poulett Thompson, the first
Governor, peremptorily declined to admit the principle of Ministerial
responsibility. Some good reforms were, indeed, made in the early years,
but the Act was on the verge of breaking down when Lord Elgin, Durham's
son-in-law, came to Canada as Governor-General in 1847. After many party
changes and combinations, French influence was temporarily in the
ascendant, and in 1849 a Bill was on the stocks for compensating French
as well as British subjects for losses in the rebellion of 1837. Elgin,
following the advice of his Ministers, of whom Baldwin was one,
Lafontaine another, gave the Royal Assent to the Bill. The British, with
the old cry of "loyalism," and with Orangemen in the van, rioted, mobbed
the Governor, and burnt down the Parliament House at Montreal. Elgin,
expostulating with Lord John Russell, who was as pessimistic as ever,
and threatened with recall, stuck to his guns under fierce obloquy, and
the principle of responsible government was definitely established. It
was applied at about the same period to the other British Provinces of
North America, with the ulterior results I have described, and in a few
years to Australia.
The great year, then, was 1847, the year of the Irish famine, and the
year before the pitiful rebellion of Smith O'Brien, surrendering in the
historic cabbage-garden. Our thoughts go back sixty-four years to 1783,
when the American War of Independence ended; when, as a result of that
war, British Canada and Australia were founded, and when, at the
crisis--premature, alas!--of Ireland's fortunes, the Volunteers in vain
demanded the Reform which might have saved their country. Look into
historical details, read contemporary debates, and watch the contrast.
Within five years of responsible government Canada solved all the great
questions which had been convulsing society for so long, and turned her
liberated energies towards economic development. In Ireland the abuses
of ages lingered to a point which seems incredible. The Church was not
disestablished, amid outcries of imminent ruin and threats of a
Protestant rebellion, till 1869, when Canada had already become a
Federated Dominion. The Irish land question, dating from the seventeenth
century, was not seriously tackled until 1881, not drastically and on
the right lines till 1903. Education languishes at the present day.
Canada started an excellent system of municipal and local government in
the forties. In Ireland, while the minority, in Greville's words, were
"bellowing spoliation and revolution," an Act was passed in 1840 with
the utmost difficulty, removing an infinitesimal part of the gross
abuses of municipal government under the ascendancy system, and it was
not till 1898 that the people at large are admitted to a full share in
county and town government. Even this step inverted the natural order of
things, for the new authorities are hampered in their work by the
incessant political agitation for the Home Rule which should have
preceded their establishment, as it preceded it in Great Britain and
Canada. Home Rule, the tried specific, was resisted, as those who read
the debates of 1886 and 1893 will recognize, on the same grounds as
Canadian Home Rule, in the same spirit, and often in terms absolutely
identical.
Was it because Ireland, unlike Canada, was "so near"? Let us reflect.
Did Durham advocate Canadian Home Rule because Canada was "so far"? On
the contrary, it was a superficial inference, drawn not merely from
Ireland, but from Scotland, and since proved to be false both in Canada
and South Africa, that made him shrink from the full application of a
philosophy which was already far in advance of the political thought and
morality of his day. Is it to be conceived that if he had lived to see
the Canadian Federation, the domestic and Imperial results of South
African Home Rule, and the consequences of seventy more years of
coercive government in Ireland, he would still have regarded the United
Kingdom in the light of a successful expedient for "compelling the
obedience of refractory populations"? In truth, Durham, like ninety-nine
out of a hundred Englishmen of his day, knew nothing of Ireland, not
even that her political system differed, as it still differs, _toto
coelo_ from that of Scotland, and came into being under circumstances
which had not the smallest analogy in Scotland. So far as his knowledge
went, he was a student of human nature as affected by political
institutions. Wakefield, who advised him, was a doctrinaire theorist who
put his preconceived principles into highly successful practice both in
Australia and Canada. They said: "Your coercive system degrades and
estranges your own fellow-citizens. Change it, and you will make them
friendly, manly, and prosperous." They were right, and one reflects once
more on the terrible significance of Mr. Chamberlain's admission in
1893, that "if Ireland had been a thousand miles away, she would have
what Canada had had for fifty years."
FOOTNOTES:
[20] "The Irishman in Canada" (N.F. Davin), a book to which the author
is indebted for much information of the same character.
[21] "William Pitt and the National Revival."
[22] Canadian Archives, 1905; "History of Prince Edward Island," D.
Campbell; "History of Canada," C.D.G. Roberts. In 1875, after a long
period of agitation and discontent, the Land Purchase Act was passed,
and the Dominion Government asked Mr. Hugh Childers to adjudicate on the
land-sale expressly on the ground that he had been associated with the
Irish Land Act of 1870 ("Life of Mr. Childers," by Lieut.-Col. Spencer
Childers, vol. i., p. 232).
[23] Canadian Archives, 1900. Note B. Emigration (1831-1834). Irish
immigrants in 1829, 9,614; in 1830, 18,300; in 1831, 34,155; in 1832,
28,024; in 1833, 12,013; in 1834, 19,206: about double the immigration
of English and Scottish together in the same period.
[24] "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 96 _et seq_.
[25] "Durham Report," p. 130.
[26] Hansard, January 23.
[27] "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 17.
[28] "Letters of Queen Victoria," vol. i., November 22, 1838.
CHAPTER VI
AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND
I have described the Canadian crisis at considerable length because it
was the turning-point in Imperial policy. Yet policy is scarcely the
right word. The Colonists themselves wrenched the right to
self-government from a reluctant Mother Country, and the Mother Country
herself was hardly conscious of the loss of her prerogatives until it
was too late to regret or recall them. The men who on principle believed
in and laboured for Home Rule for Canada were a mere unconsidered
handful in the country, while most of those who voted for the Act of
1840 thought that it killed Home Rule. No general election was held to
obtain the "verdict of the predominant partner" on the real question at
issue, with the cry of "American dollars" (which had, in fact, been
paid); with lurid portraits of Papineau and Mackenzie levying black-mail
on the Prime Minister, and quotations from their old speeches to show
that they were traitors to the Empire; with jeremiads about the terrors
of Rome, the abandonment of the loyal minority, and the dismemberment of
the Empire, to shake the nerves and stimulate the slothful conscience of
an ignorant electorate. Had there been any such opportunity we know it
would have been used, and we can guess what the result would have been;
for nothing is easier, alas! than to spur on a democracy with such cries
as these to the exercise of the one function it should refrain
from--interference with another democracy, be it in Ireland or anywhere
else. As it was, a merciful veil fell over Canada; Lord Elgin's action
in 1849 passed with little notice, and a mood of weary indifference to
colonial affairs, for which, in default of any Imperial idealism, we
cannot be too thankful, took possession of Parliament and the nation.
It was in this mood that the measures conferring self-government on the
Australasian Colonies, 12,000 miles away from the Mother Country, and
exciting proportionately less concern than Canada, were passed a few
years later.
From the landing of the first batch of convicts at Botany Bay in 1788,
New South Wales, the Mother Colony, was a penal settlement pure and
simple, under military Government, for some thirty years. The island
Colony, Tasmania, founded under the name of Van Diemen's Land in 1803,
was used for the same purpose. Victoria, originally Port Phillip, just
escaped a like fate in 1803, and remained uncolonized till 1835, when
the free settlers set their faces against the penal system, and in 1845,
acting like the Bostonians of 1774 with the famous cargo of tea, refused
to allow a cargo of convicts to land. South Australia, first settled in
1829, also escaped; so did New Zealand, which was annexed to the Crown
in 1839. Western Australia, dating from 1826, proceeded on the opposite
principle to that of Victoria. Free from convicts until 1849, when
transportation to other Colonies was checked at their own repeated
request, and came to an end in 1852, this Colony, owing to a chronic
shortage of labour, actually petitioned the Home Government to divert
the stream of criminals to its shores, with the result that in ten
years' time nearly half the male adults in the Colony, and more than
half in the towns, were, or had been, convicts. It was not until 1865,
under strong pressure from the other Colonies, that the system was
finally abolished which threw Western Australia forty years behind its
sister Colonies in the attainment of Home Rule.
The transportation policy has been unmercifully criticized, and with all
the more justice in that Pitt, when the American war closed the
traditional dumping-ground for criminals, had the chance of employing
the exiled loyalists of America, many of whom were starving in London,
as pioneers of the new lands in the Antipodes. "The outcasts of an old
society cannot form the foundations of a new one," said a Parliamentary
Report of July 28, 1785. But they could do so, and did do so. Ruskin's
saying, _a propos_ of Australia, that "under fit conditions the human
race does not degenerate, but wins its way to higher levels," comes
nearer the truth. In an amazingly short time after the transportation
policy was reversed the taint disappeared. We must remember, however,
that, sheer refuse as some of the convicts were, especially in the later
period, a large number of the earlier convicts were the product of that
"stupid severity of our laws" which the Vicar of Wakefield deplored, and
to this category belonged many an unhappy Irish peasant, sound in
character, but driven into Whiteboyism, or into the rebellions of 1798
and 1803 by some of the worst laws the human brain ever conceived.
Hundreds of these men survived the barbarous and brutalizing ordeal of a
penal imprisonment to become prosperous and industrious citizens.
It was not until 1825, or thereabouts, that free white settlers, many
Irishmen among them, came in any substantial number to the Mother Colony
of New South Wales, and not until 1832 that these men began to press
claims for the management of their own affairs, under the inspiration of
an Irish surgeon's son, William Wentworth, the Hampden of Australia. The
later Colonies rapidly came into line, Western Australia, for the reason
given above, remaining stationary. The first representative institutions
were granted in 1842 to New South Wales, and in 1850 to Victoria, South
Australia, and Tasmania. At that date, therefore, these settlements
stood in much the same constitutional position as the Canadas had stood
in 1791 (although technically their Constitutions were of a different
kind), but with this important difference, that the Act of 1850, "for
the better Government of Her Majesty's Australian Colonies," gave power
to those Colonies to frame new Constitutions for themselves. This they
soon proceeded to do, each constructing its own, but all keeping in view
the same model, the British Constitution itself, and aiming at the same
ideal, responsible Government by a Colonial Cabinet under a Government
representing the Crown. Since responsible Government in Great Britain
itself was not a matter of legal enactment, but the product of slowly
evolved conventions and precedents, to which political scientists had
not yet given a scientific form, it is no wonder that the colonial
Constitution-makers found great difficulty in expressing exactly what
they wanted in legal terms, and, indeed, none of them came near
succeeding; but time, their own political instinct, a succession of
sensible Governors, and the forbearance of the Home Government solved
the problem, and evolved home-ruled States legally subordinate to the
Crown, but with a Constitution closely resembling our own. The
Constitutions became law by Acts of the Imperial Parliament passed by a
Liberal Ministry in 1855. They are of unusual interest because they
represent the first rude attempt to put into legal language a small part
of the theory of the British Constitution as applied to dependencies of
the Crown.
In the most vital point of all, the relation of the dependency to the
Home Government (as distinguished from questions of internal political
structure), they are almost as reserved as the Canadian Act of 1840,
which, as we have seen, did not recognize by a word the duty of the
Governor to govern through a Colonial Cabinet. In certain clauses they
hint, by distant implication, at the existence of such a Cabinet,
responsible to the colonial popular Legislature--the Canadian Act did
not assume even that--but they do not anywhere imply that the Governor
is bound normally to place himself in the hands of that Cabinet, while
they expressly and rightly reaffirm the supreme power of the Crown,
whether acting through the Governor or not, over colonial legislation.
How far this reticence about responsible Government facilitated the
passage of the Australian Acts in the British Parliament, as it
certainly facilitated the Canadian Act of 1840, it is difficult to
decide. It was probably a factor of some importance. At any rate, it is
true to say that Home Rule, as in Canada, was mainly a result of
practice rather than of statutory enactment. The case of New Zealand is
a striking example of this. In 1852 New Zealand obtained from a Tory
Government a Constitutional Act, which resembles the Canadian Act of
1840 in abstaining from any expression, direct or indirect which implies
the existence of a Colonial Cabinet, and it is probable that the framers
of the Act intended no such development, but on the contrary
contemplated a permanent, irremovable Executive. But the Act was no
sooner passed than an agitation began for responsible government, under
the leadership of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, part-author of the Durham
Report, and at that time a member of the New Zealand Assembly. By 1855,
when the Australian Acts were passed, New Zealand, without further
legislation, had obtained what she wanted.
To complete the story, Queensland, carved out of New South Wales in
1859, entered upon full responsible government at once, and Western
Australia, retarded for so long by the servile system of convict-labour,
gained the same rights in 1890.
Reading the debates of the middle of the nineteenth century, one is left
with the impression that the Australasian Colonies obtained Home Rule by
virtue of their distance, and because most politicians at home could not
be bothered to fight hard against a principle which at bottom they
disliked as heartily for the Colonies as for Ireland. The views of the
various parties were not much changed since the days of the crisis in
Canada. There were some able Colonial Secretaries who thoroughly
understood and believed in the principle of responsible government. On
the other hand, some Liberals were not yet converted, though Liberal
Governments fathered the Constitutional Acts of 1850 and 1855.
Disraeli's well-known saying in 1852 that "these wretched Colonies will
all be independent, too, in a few years, and are a mill-stone round our
necks," was typical of the Tory attitude.[29] Lord John Russell, in the
same year, 1852, was complaining, as Lord Morley tells us,[30] that we
were "throwing the shields of our authority away," and leaving "the
monarchy exposed in the Colonies to the assaults of democracy." A group
of Radicals, headed by Sir William Molesworth and Hume in Parliament,
and by Wakefield from outside, still pushed the policy of emancipation
energetically and persistently on the principle which they had urged in
the case of Canada, that freedom was better both for the Colonies and
the Mother Country.
But Molesworth and Wakefield gained one illustrious convert and
coadjutor in the person of Mr. Gladstone, whose speeches on the Colonies
at this period, 1849 to 1855, placed him, in regard to that topic, in
the Radical ranks, and in veiled opposition to the Whig leaders. Lord
Morley quotes a minute from his hand, written in 1852 in answer to the
view of Lord John Russell, referred to above, where he says "that the
nominated Council and independent Executive were not 'shields of
authority,' but sources of weakness, disorder, disunion, and
disloyalty." His Parliamentary and platform speeches, passing with
little notice at the time, nevertheless remain the most eloquent and
exalted expression of wise colonial policy that is to be found in our
language. If it was not till a generation later that he applied the same
arguments to the case of Ireland, the arguments nevertheless did apply
to Ireland almost word for word. Proximity to the Mother Country does
not affect them. Mr. Gladstone attacks the problem on its human side,
showing that coercive government is always and everywhere bad for those
who administer it, and bad for those who live under it, expensive,
inefficient, demoralizing, and that the longer it is maintained the more
difficult it is to remove. He condemns the fallacy of preparing men by
slow degrees for freedom, and the "miserable jargon about fitting them
for the privileges thus conferred, while in point of fact every year and
every month during which they are retained under the administration of a
despotic Government renders them less fit for free institutions." As to
cost, "no consideration of money ought to induce Parliament to sever the
connection between any one of the Colonies and the Mother Country," but
the greater part of the cost, he urged, was due to the despotic system
itself. His words are more applicable to the Ireland of to-day than the
Ireland of the middle of the nineteenth century, for it is one of the
many painful anomalies of Irish history that that country, at the lowest
point of its economic misery, was paying a relatively enormous
contribution to Imperial funds, and, incidentally, to the colonial vote,
while the Colonies were maintained at a loss correspondingly large, and
at times even larger.[31] But cost is, after all, a very small matter.
The first consideration is the character and happiness of human beings,
and here Gladstone's words, like Durham's, have a universal application.
If the reader cannot study them at length in Hansard, he should read
the great speech on the New Zealand Bill in 1852, and Lord Morley's
masterly summary of others. I conclude with a passage quoted by him from
a platform speech at Chester in 1855, the year when the Australian
Constitutions were sanctioned. "Experience has proved that if you want
to strengthen the connection between the Colonies and this country, if
you want to see British law held in respect, and British institutions
adopted and beloved in the Colonies, never associate with them the hated
name of force and coercion exercised by us at a distance over their
rising fortunes. Govern them upon a principle of freedom." At that
moment, after half a century of coercion and neglect under what was
called the "Union," Ireland was bleeding, as it seemed, to death.
Scarcely recovered from the stunning blow of the famine, she was
undergoing in a fresh dose of clearances and evictions the result of
that masterpiece of legislative unwisdom, the Encumbered Estates Act.
Her people were leaving her by hundreds of thousands, cursing the name
of England as bitterly as the evicted Ulster farmers and the ruined
weavers of the eighteenth century had cursed it, and bearing their
wrongs and hatred to the same friendly shore, America. For the main
stream of emigration, which before the Union had set towards the
American States, and from the Union until the famine towards Canada,
reverted after the famine towards the United States, impregnating that
nation with an hostility to Great Britain which in subsequent years
became a grave international danger, and which, though greatly
diminished, still remains an obstacle to the closer union of the
English-speaking races. On the other hand, it is interesting to observe
that among the Irish emigrants to countries within the Empire, and a
very important part of this emigration was to Australasia, the
anti-British sentiment was far less tenacious, though the affection for
their own native country was no less passionate.
Whatever we may conclude about the motives behind the concession of Home
Rule to Australia and New Zealand, we may regard it as fortunate that
they lay too far away for any close criticism from statesmen at home,
whether before or after the attainment of self-government. Most of these
statesmen would have been scandalized by the manner in which these
vigorous young democracies, destitute of the patrician element, shaped
their own political destiny by the light of nature and in the teeth of
great difficulties. Almost to a man their leaders in this great work
would have been regarded as "turbulent demagogues and dangerous
agitators," and often were so regarded, when the rumour of their
activities penetrated to far-off London. The old catchwords of
revolution, spoliation and treason, consecrated to the case of Ireland,
would have been applied here with equal vehemence, and were in fact
applied by the official classes in the Colonies themselves, round whom
small anti-democratic groups, calling themselves "loyal," crystallized,
as in the Provinces of Upper Canada and in Ireland, and with whom the
ruling classes at home were in instinctive sympathy. There were stormy,
agitated times, there were illegal movements against the reception of
convicts, struggles over land questions, religious questions, financial
questions, the emancipation of ex-convicts, and the many difficult
problems raised by the discovery of gold and the mushroom growth of
digger communities in remote places. There was in the air more genuine
lawlessness--irrespective, I mean, of revolt against bad laws--than ever
existed in Ireland, though there was never at any time any practical
grievance approaching in magnitude to the practical grievances of
Ireland at the same period. But, could the spirit of English
statesmanship towards analogous problems in Ireland have been maintained
in Australasia, systematically translated into law and enforced with the
help of coercion acts by soldiers and police, communities would have
been artificially produced presenting all the lawless and retrograde
features of Ireland.
The famous affair of the Eureka Stockade in 1854 is an interesting
illustration. A great mass of diggers collected in the newly discovered
Ballarat goldfields had petitioned repeatedly against the Government
regulations about mining licences, for which extortionate fees were
levied. This was before responsible government. The goldfields were not
represented in the Legislature, and there was no constitutional method
of redress. The authorities held obstinately to their obsolete and
irritating regulations, and eventually the miners revolted under the
leadership of an Irishman, Peter Lalor, and with the watchword "Vinegar
Hill." There was a pitched battle with the military forces of the
Crown, ending after much bloodshed in the victory of the soldiers. Lalor
was wounded, and carried into hiding by his friends. Other captured
rioters were tried for "high treason" before juries of townsmen picked
by the Crown on the lines long familiar in Ireland; but even these
juries refused to convict, as they so often refused to convict in cases
of agrarian crime in Ireland. The State trials were then abandoned, a
Royal Commission reported against the licence system, and Parliamentary
representation was given to the goldfields. It came to be universally
acknowledged that the talk of "treason" was nonsense, that the outbreak
had been provoked by laws which could not be constitutionally changed,
and that the moral was to change them, not to expatriate and persecute
those who had suffered under them. Lalor reappeared, entered political
life, became Speaker of the reformed Assembly of 1856, and lived and
died respected by everyone. He now appears as a prominent figure in a
little book entitled "Australian Heroes," and it is admitted that the
whole episode powerfully assisted the movement for responsible
government in the Colony. Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Mitchell, and others
concerned in the Irish rebellion of 1848 were at that moment languishing
in the penal settlement of Tasmania for sedition provoked by laws fifty
times worse; laws, too, that a Royal Commission three years earlier had
shown to be inconsistent with social peace, and which others
subsequently condemned in still stronger terms. From their first
establishment far back in the seventeenth century it took two centuries
to abolish these laws. In the Australian case it took one year.
As for the Irishmen of all creeds and classes who took such an important
part in the splendid work of building up these new communities, and who
are still estimated to constitute a quarter of the population, one can
only marvel at the intensity of the prejudice which declared these men
"unfit" for self-government at home, and which is not yet dissipated by
the discovery that they were welcomed under the Southern Cross, not only
as good workaday citizens in town, bush, or diggings, but as barristers,
judges, bankers, stock-owners, mine-owners, as honoured leaders in
municipal and political life, as Speakers of the Representative
Assemblies, and as Ministers and Prime Ministers of the Crown.[32] is
true, and the fact cannot surprise us, that the intestinal divisions of
race and creed in Ireland itself, stereotyped there by ages of bad
government, were at first to a certain extent reproduced in Australia,
as in Canada. Aggressive Orangeism was to be found sowing discord where
no cause for discord existed. But the common sense of the community and
the pure air of freedom tended to sterilize, though they have not to
this day wholly killed, these germs of disease. A career was opened to
every deserving Irishman, whether Catholic or Protestant. Hungry,
hopeless, listless cottiers from Munster and Connaught built up
nourishing towns like Geelong and Kilmore. Two Irishmen, Dunne and
Connor, were the first discoverers of the Ballarat goldfields. An
Irishman, Robert O'Hara Burke, led the first transcontinental
expedition, and another Irishman, Ambrose Kyte, financed it; Wentworth
was the father of Australian liberties. An Irish Roman Catholic, Sir
Redmond Barry, founded the Public Library, Museum, and University of
Melbourne. In the political annals of Victoria and New South Wales the
names of Irish Catholics, men to whom no worthy political career was
open in their own country, were prominent. Sir John O'Shanassy, for
example, was three times Prime Minister of Victoria, Sir Brian
O'Loughlen once. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, a member of O'Shanassy's
Cabinets, and at last Prime Minister himself, is the colonial statesman
whose career and personality are the best proof of what Ireland has lost
in high-minded, tolerant, constructive statesmanship, through a system
which silenced or drove from her shores the men who loved her most, who
saw her faults and needs with the clearest eyes, and who sought to unite
her people on a footing of self-reliance and mutual confidence. One of
the ablest of O'Connell's young adjutants, editor and founder of the
_Nation_, part-organizer of the Young Ireland Movement which united men
of opposite creeds in one of the finest national movements ever
organized in any country, Duffy's central aim had been to give Ireland a
native Parliament, where Irishmen could solve their own problems for
themselves. He saw the rebellion of 1848 fail, and Mitchell, Smith
O'Brien, Meagher, McManus, and O'Donoghue transported to Tasmania; he
laboured on himself in Ireland for seven years at land reform and other
objects, and in 1855 gave up the struggle against such hopeless odds,
and reached Melbourne early in 1856 in time to sit in the first
Victorian Parliament returned under the constitutional Act of 1855. From
the beginning to the end of an honourable political career which lasted
thirty years, he made it his dominant purpose to ensure that Australia
should be saved from the evils which cursed Ireland; from government by
a favoured class, from land monopoly, and from religious inequality and
the venomous bigotries it engenders, and he took a large share in
bringing about their exclusion. His Land Act of 1862, for example, where
he had another Roman Catholic Irishman, Judge Casey, as an auxiliary,
put an end in those districts where it was fairly worked to the grave
abuses caused by the speculative acquisition of immense tracts of land
by absentee owners, and promoted the closer settlement of the country by
yeoman farmers.
In Australia, as in Canada, we see the vital importance of good land
laws, and can measure the misery which resulted in Ireland from an
agrarian system incalculably more absurd and unjust than anything known
in any other part of the Empire. The stagnation of Western Australia was
originally due to the cession of huge unworkable estates to a handful of
men. South Australia was retarded for some little time from the same
cause, and Victoria and New South Wales were all hampered in the same
way. It was not a question, as in Ireland, and to a less degree in
Prince Edward Island, of the legal relations between the landlord and
tenant of lands originally confiscated, but of the grant and sale of
Crown lands. Yet the after-results, especially in the check to tillage
and the creation of vast pasture ranches, were often very similar.[33]
Duffy was not the only colonial statesman to apply Irish experience to
the problems of newly settled countries. An Englishman who became one of
the greatest of colonial statesmen and administrators, the Radical
Imperialist, Sir George Grey, began life as a Lieutenant on military
service in Ireland in the year 1829, and came away sick with the scenes
he had witnessed at the evictions and forced collections of tithes
where his troops were employed to strengthen the arm of the law.
"Ireland," his biographer, Professor Henderson, tells us,[34] "was to
him a tragedy of unrealized possibilities." The people had "good
capacities for self-government," but Englishmen "showed a vicious
tendency to confuse cause and effect," and attributed to inherent
lawlessness what was a revolt against bad economic conditions. "All that
they or their children could hope for was to obtain, after the keenest
competition, the temporary use of a spot of land on which to exercise
their industry"; "for the tenant's very improvements went to swell the
accumulations of the heirs of an absentee, not of his own." "Haunted by
the Irish problem," Grey made it his effort first in South Australia,
and afterwards in New Zealand, where he was both Governor and Premier at
various times, to secure the utmost possible measure of Home Rule for
the colonists, and, in pursuance of a policy already inaugurated by
Edward Gibbon Wakefield, to establish a land system based, not on
extravagant free grants, or on private tenure, but on sales by the State
to occupiers at fair prices. The aim was to counteract that excessive
accumulation of people in the large cities which, thanks to imperfect
legislation, still exists in most of the Australian States. Subsequent
New Zealand land policy has been generally in the right direction, and
is acknowledged to be highly successful. In the Australian mainland
States the absentee and the squatter caused constant difficulties and
occasional disorder. The Commonwealth at the present day is suffering
for past neglect, and has found itself within the last year compelled to
imitate New Zealand in placing taxes on undeveloped land, with a higher
percentage against absentees.
Let us add that Grey, like Duffy and most of the strongest advocates of
Home Rule for the Colonies, was a Federalist long before Federation
became practical politics, seeing in that policy the best means of
achieving the threefold aim of giving each Colony in a group ample local
freedom, of binding the whole group together into a compact, coherent
State, and of strengthening the connection between that State and the
Mother Country. As Governor at the Cape from 1854 to 1861 he vainly
urged the Home Government to promote a Federal Union of the various
South African States, Dutch and British, in order, as he said, to create
"an United South Africa under the British flag," a scheme which, it is
generally agreed, could then have been carried out, and which would have
saved South Africa from terrible disasters. And he wished to apply the
same Federal principle to the Australian Colonies, and to the case of
Ireland and Great Britain.
He realized earlier than most men that the talk of "separation" and
"disloyalty" was, in his own words already quoted, the result of a
"vicious tendency to confuse cause and effect," and that to govern men
by their own consent, to let them work out their own ideals in their own
way, to encourage, not to repress, their sense of nationality, is the
best way to gain their affection, or, if we choose to use that very
misleading word, their loyalty.
Australia and New Zealand present remarkable examples of this beneficent
process, Australia in particular, because there, for a long time even
after the introduction of responsible government and, indeed, until a
dozen years ago, there was a large party of so-called "disloyalists" who
were never weary of decrying British influences and upholding Australian
nationality. Mr. Jebb, in his "Colonial Nationalism," gives an
interesting account of this movement and of its organ, the widely
circulated _Sydney Bulletin_, with its furiously anti-British views, its
Radicalism, its Republicanism, and what not. He shows amusingly how
entirely harmless the propaganda really was, and what a healthy effect
it actually had in promoting an independence of feeling and national
self-respect among Australians, to such a degree that when the South
African War broke out, there was a universal outburst of patriotism and
a universal desire, which was realized, to share to the full as a nation
in the expense, danger, and hardships of the war. Mr. Jebb adds the
interesting suggestion that the reluctance of New Zealand to enter the
Australian Federation may be partly due to the strong individual
sentiment of nationality evoked within her by the war and the
exceptional exertions she made to aid the Imperial troops.
His book is a psychological study of men in the mass. What he sets out
to prove, and what he does successfully prove, is that the encouragement
of minor nationalities is not merely consistent with, but essential to,
the unity of the Empire. Yet he never mentions Ireland, not even for the
purpose of proving her an exception to the rule, and I do not think I
ever gauged the full extent of the prejudice against that country until
I realized that in such a book such a topic did not receive even a line
of notice; yet one would naturally suppose that it was as important to
the Empire, morally and strategically, to possess the affection and
respect of four and a half million citizens within 60 miles of the
British coast as of the same number of citizens at the Antipodes.
Mr. Jebb is a Unionist. How he reaches his conclusion I do not know. It
would seem to be beyond human power to construct a case against Home
Rule for Ireland, with its strongly marked individuality of character
and sentiment, which did not textually stultify his case for the more
distant dependencies. His party generally is in sympathy with the views
expressed in his book, and has done much to further them. How do they
reconcile them with opposition to Home Rule for Ireland? How do they
explain away the support for that policy in the Dominions? It seems to
me that their only resource would be to say: "We are bound to maintain,
and we have the necessary physical force to maintain, the present
political system in Ireland, because to alter it would impair the formal
legislative 'unity' of the United Kingdom; but let us frankly admit that
as long as we take this view there can be no 'Union' in the highest
sense of the word. Ireland must be retarded and estranged. We cannot
raise Territorial Volunteers within her borders; on the contrary, we
must keep and pay for a standing army of police to preserve our
authority there. Her population must diminish, her vital energy ebb away
to other lands; as a market for our goods and as a source of revenue for
Imperial purposes she must remain undeveloped and unprogressive. She
will continue rightly to agitate for Home Rule, and this agitation will
always be baneful both to her and to us. It will distract her energies
from her own economic and social problems. It will embitter and degrade
our politics, and dislocate our Parliamentary institutions. She must
suffer, we must suffer, the Empire must suffer. It is sad, but
inevitable."
Morality aside, is that common sense? Is it strange that the Colonies
themselves regard such logic, when applied to Ireland, as perverted and
absurd?
Before leaving Australia we have only to recall the fact that at the
close of the last century, after a generation of controversy and
negotiation, the Canadian example of 1867 was at length imitated, and
the Federal Union formed which amalgamated all the mainland States,
together with Tasmania, in the Commonwealth of Australia, and that the
Union was sanctioned and legalized by the Imperial Act of 1900. New
Zealand preferred to remain a distinct State. The Australians departed
in some important respects from the Canadian model, the main difference
being that a greater measure of independence was retained by the
individual States, and smaller powers delegated to the central
Government. This was a matter of voluntary arrangement as between the
States themselves, the Home Government standing wholly aside on the
sound principle that Australia knew its own interests best, and that
what was best for Australia was best for the Empire.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Letter to Lord Malmesbury, August 13, 1852 ("Memoirs of an
Ex-Minister," by the Earl of Malmesbury, vol. i., p. 344).
[30] "Life of Gladstone," vol. i., p. 363.
[31] Annual Treasury Returns ["Imperial Revenue (Collection and
Expenditure)"]. According to these returns, Ireland's Imperial
contribution in 1839, before the famine, was L3,626,322; in 1849, after
the famine, L2,613,778, and in 1859-60 no less than L5,396,000. At the
latter date the Colonies were estimated to cost three and a half
millions a year, of which nine-tenths were contributed by the taxpayers
at home, British and Irish.
[32] Full information may be found in "The Irish in Australia," by J.F.
Hogan.
[33] For an excellent historical description of the various Australian
land systems, see the official "Year-Book of the Commonwealth," 1909.
[34] "Life of Sir George Grey," Professor G.C. Henderson.
CHAPTER VII
SOUTH AFRICA AND IRELAND
In the years 1836-37, when Wentworth was agitating for self-government
in New South Wales, and when Canada was in rebellion for the lack of it,
thousands of waggons, driven by men smarting under the same sort of
grievance, were jolting northward across the South African veld bearing
Dutch families from the British Colony of the Cape of Good Hope to the
new realms we now know as the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal. The
"Great Trek" was a form of protest against bad government to which we
have no parallel in the Empire save in the wholesale emigrations from
Ireland at various periods of her history--after the Treaty of Limerick,
again after the destruction of the wool trade, again in 1770-1777, after
the Ulster evictions, and lastly after the great famine. The trekkers,
like the Irish emigrants, nursed a resentment against the British
Government which was a source of untold expense and suffering in the
future. Indeed, the whole history of South Africa bears a close
resemblance to the history of Ireland. In no other part of the Empire,
save in Ireland, was the policy of the Home Government so persistently
misguided, in spite of constantly recurring opportunities for the repair
of past errors. Fatality seems from first to last to have dogged the
footsteps of those who tried to govern there. Before the British
conquest the Dutch East India Company and the Netherlands Government
were as unsuccessful as their British successors, whose legal claim to
the Cape, established for the second time by conquest in 1806, was
definitely confirmed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The Dutch
colonists were a fine race of men, whose ancestors, like the Puritan
founders of New England, had fled in 1652 from religious persecution,
and who retained the virile qualities of their race. Though in many
respects they resembled the backward and intensely conservative
French-Canadian inhabitants, they differed from them, and resembled
their closer relatives in race, the New Englanders, in an innate passion
for free representative government. They had rebelled repeatedly against
their Dutch oppressors, and had gone through a brief Republican phase.
It is an example, therefore, of the thoughtless inconsequence of our old
colonial policy that we gave the French-Canadians, who were the least
desirous of it, the form, without the spirit, of representative
institutions, while we denied, until it was too late to avert racial
discord, even the form to the Cape Dutch. In truth, the Colony seems to
have been regarded purely in the light of a naval station, while the
British and Irish inflow of settlers, dating from about the year 1820,
contemporaneously with the advent of free settlers in Australia,
suggested the possibility of racial oppression by the Dutch majority.
Yet if there was little real reason to fear oppression by the French in
Canada, there was still less reason to fear such oppression in the Cape,
where Dutch ideals and civilization were far more similar to those of
the British. In America the absorption of the Dutch Colonies in the
seventeenth century had led to the peaceful fusion of both races, nor
was there any reason why, under wise rule, the same fusion should not
have occurred in South Africa. Until 1834 authority was purely military
and despotic. In that year was established a small Legislative Council
of officials and nominated members, with no representative element. In
1837 came the Great Trek.
No one disputes that the Dutch colonists had grievances, without the
means of redress. As usual, we find a land question in the shape of
enhanced rents charged by Government after the British occupation; the
Dutch language was excluded from official use, and English local
institutions were introduced with unnecessary abruptness; but the
principal grievance concerned the native tribes. Slavery existed in the
Colony, and its borders were continually threatened by these tribes. The
Dutch colonists were often terribly brutal to the natives; nevertheless
there is little doubt that a tactful and sympathetic policy could easily
have secured for them a more humane treatment, and the abolition of
slavery without economic dislocation. But a strong humanitarian
sentiment was sweeping over England at the time, including in its range
the negro slaves of Jamaica and the unconquered Kaffirs of South Africa,
but absolutely ignoring, let us note in passing, the economic serfdom of
the half-starved Irish peasantry at our very doors. Members of this
school took too little account of the tremendous difficulties faced in
South Africa by small handfuls of white colonists in contact with hordes
of savages. The Colonial Government, with a knowledge of the conditions
gained only from well-meaning but somewhat prejudiced missionaries,
endeavoured from 1815 onwards to enforce an impracticable equality
between white and coloured men, and abolished slavery at one sudden
stroke in 1833 without reasonable compensation. A large number of the
Dutch, unable to tolerate this treatment, deserted the British flag.
Those that remained were under suspicion for more than thirty years, so
that political progress was very slow. It was not till 1854 that the
Colony received a Representative Assembly, and not until 1872, eighteen
years later than in Australia, and twenty-five years later than in
Canada, that full responsible government was established.
Piet Retief, one of the leaders of the voluntary exiles, had published a
proclamation in the following terms before he joined the trek: "We quit
this Colony under the full assurance that the English Government has
nothing more to require of us, and will allow us to govern ourselves
without its interference in the future. We are now leaving the fruitful
land of our birth, in which we have suffered enormous losses and
continual vexation, and are about to enter a strange and dangerous
territory; but we go with a firm reliance on an all-seeing, just, and
merciful God, whom we shall always fear and humbly endeavour to obey."
This was high language, yet after-events proved that a steady,
consistently fair treatment on our part would even then have reconciled
these men to a permanent continuance of British sovereignty.
Unfortunately, our policy oscillated painfully between irritating
interference and excessive timidity. First of all attempts were made to
stop the trek by force, then to compel the trekkers to return by cutting
off their supplies and ammunition, then to throttle their development of
the new lands north of the Orange and Vaal Rivers by calling into being
fictitious native States on a huge scale in the midst of and around
them, then tardily to repair the disastrous effects of this policy; but
not before it had led to open hostilities (1845). Hostilities, however,
had this temporarily good result, in that it brought to the front one of
the ablest and wisest of the Cape Governors, Sir Harry Smith, who
defeated the Boers at Boomplatz in 1848, established what went by the
name of the Orange River Sovereignty, and in a year or two secured such
good and peaceful government within its borders as to attract
considerable numbers of English and Scotch colonists. The malcontents
retired across the Vaal. Then came an abrupt change of policy in the
Home Government, a sudden desire actuated mainly by fear of more native
wars, to cancel all that was possible of our commitments in South
Africa. The Transvaal, by the Sand River Convention, was declared
independent in 1852, the Orange Free State, by the Convention of
Bloemfontein, in 1854. This was to rush from one extreme to the other.
It was as though in 1847 we had erected Quebec into a sovereign State
instead of giving it responsible government under the Crown, or as if in
1843 we had been so deeply convinced by O'Connell's second agitation for
repeal that we had leapt straight from coercive government to the
foundation of an independent Republic in Ireland, instead of giving her
the kind of Home Rule which she was asking for.
It was not yet too late to mend. In 1854, when the cession of the Free
State had just been carried out, Sir George Grey, whom we have met with
in Australia and New Zealand, came as High Commissioner to the Cape. In
1859 he made the proposal I alluded to in the last chapter for
federating all the South African States, including the two new
Republics. There is little doubt that the scheme was feasible then. The
Orange Free State was willing to join, and, indeed, had initiated
proposals for Federation. Its adhesion would have compelled the
Transvaal, always more hostile to British rule, to come in eventually,
if not at once; for the relations of the two Republics were friendly
enough at the time to permit one man, Pretorius, to be President of both
States.
The scheme was rejected by Lord Derby's Tory Cabinet, and Grey, a
"dangerous man," as Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, dubbed him,
was recalled.
Sixteen years later, in 1875, Lord Carnarvon himself, as a member of the
Disraeli Ministry, revived the project. Converted in his views of the
Colonies, like many of his Tory colleagues at this period, he had
carried through Parliament the Federation of Canada in 1867, and hoped
to do the same with South Africa. But it was too late. The Cape
Parliament, now in possession of a responsible Ministry, was hostile,
while twenty years of self-government, for the most part under the great
President Brand, had changed the sentiments of the Free State.
Federation, then, was impossible. On the other hand, the Transvaal was
in a state of political unrest and of danger from native aggression,
which gave a pretext for reversion to the long-abandoned policy of
annexation, and to that extreme Carnarvon promptly went in April, 1877.
He took this dangerous course without ascertaining the considered wishes
of the majority of the Boers, acting through his emissary, Sir T.
Shepstone, on the informal application of a minority of townsmen who
honestly wished to come under British rule.
Rash as the measure was, lasting good might have come of it had the
essential step been taken of preserving representative government. The
promise was given and broken. For three years the Assembly, or
Volksraad, was not summoned. Once more home statesmanship was blind, and
local administration blunderingly oppressive. Shepstone was the wrong
man for the post of Administrator. Sir Owen Lanyon, his successor, was
an arrogant martinet of the stamp familiar in Canada before 1840, and
painfully familiar in Ireland. The refusal of an Assembly naturally
strengthened the popular demand for a reversal of the annexation, and
this demand, twice pressed in London through a deputation headed by Paul
Kruger, obscured the whole issue, and raised a question of British
national pride, with all its inevitable consequences, where none need
have been raised. There was a moment of hope when Sir Bartle Frere, who
stands, perhaps, next to Sir George Grey on the roll of eminent High
Commissioners, endeavoured to pacify the Boer malcontents, and drafted
the scheme of a liberal Constitution for the Transvaal. But one of the
last acts of the Tory Government, at the end of 1879, was to recall
Frere for an alleged transgression of his powers in regard to the Zulu
War, and to pigeon-hole his scheme. Mr. Gladstone, who in opposition
had denounced the annexation with good enough justification, though in
terms which under the circumstances were immoderate, found himself
compelled to confirm it when he took office in April, 1880. But he, too,
allowed the liberal Constitution to sleep in its pigeon-hole. He was
assured by the officials on the spot that there was no danger, that the
majority were loyal, and only a minority of turbulent demagogues
disloyal; and in December, 1880, the rebellion duly broke out, and the
Transvaal Republic was proclaimed. What followed we know, war, Laing's
Nek, Majuba, and one more violent oscillation of policy in the
concession of a virtual independence to the Transvaal.
Whatever we may think of the policy of this concession, and Lord Morley
has made the best case that can be made for Mr. Gladstone's action, it
is certain that it was only a link in a long chain of blunders for which
both great political parties had been equally responsible, and of which
the end had not yet come. The nation at large, scarcely alive until now
to the existence of the Colonies, was stung into Imperial consciousness
by a national humiliation, for so it was not unnaturally regarded,
coming from an obscure pastoral community confusedly identified as
something between a Colony, a foreign power, and a troublesome native
tribe. The history of the previous seventy years in South Africa was
either unknown or forgotten, and Mr. Gladstone, who in past years had
preached to indifferent hearers the soundest and sanest doctrine of
enlightened Imperialism, suddenly appeared, and for ever after remained
in the eyes of a great body of his countrymen, as a betrayer of the
nation's honour. Resentment was all the greater in that it was
universally believed that Laing's Nek and Majuba were unlucky little
accidents, and that another month or two of hostilities would have
humbled the Boers to the dust.
This illusion, which is not yet eradicated, and which has coloured all
subsequent discussion of the subject, lasted unmodified until the first
months of the war in 1899, when events took place exactly similar to
Laing's Nek and Majuba, and were followed by a campaign lasting nearly
three years, requiring nearly 500,000 men for its completion, and the
co-operation of the whole Empire. It is impossible to estimate the
course events would have taken in 1881 had the war been prolonged. If
the Free State had joined the Transvaal, it may be reasonably
conjectured that we should have been weaker, relatively, than in 1899.
Though the Boers were less numerous, less well organized, and less
united as a nation in 1881, they were even better shots and stalkers
than in 1899, because they had had more recent practice against game and
natives; nor was there a large British population in the Transvaal to
counteract their efforts and supply magnificent corps like the Imperial
Light Horse for service in arms against them. Our army, just as brave,
was in every other respect, especially in the matter of mounted men and
marksmanship, less fitted for such a peculiar campaign, and could have
counted with far less certainty upon that assistance from mounted
colonial troops without which the war of 1899-1902 could never have been
finished at all. Our command of the sea was less secure; the Egyptian
War of 1882 was brewing, and Ireland, where the Great Land Act of 1881
was not yet law, was seething with crime and disorder little
distinguishable from war itself, and demanding large bodies of troops.
If the further course of a war in 1881 is a matter of speculation, what
we all know for certain is, first, that the conditions which led to war
were produced by seventy years of vacillating policy, and, second, that
war itself would have been a useless waste of life and treasure, unless
success in it had been followed, as in 1906, by the grant of that
responsible Government which all along had been the key to the whole
difficulty, the condition precedent to a Federal Union of the South
African States, and to their closer incorporation in the Empire.
Few persons realized this at the time. The whole situation changed
disastrously for the worse. Arrogance and mutual contempt embittered the
relations of the races. Then came a crucial test for the Boer capacity
for enlightened and generous statesmanship. Gold was discovered in the
Transvaal, and a large British population flocked in. The same problem,
with local modifications, faced the Boers as had been faced in Upper and
Lower Canada, and for centuries past in Ireland. Were they to trust or
suspect, to admit or to exclude from full political rights, the
new-comers? Was it to be the policy of the Duke of Wellington or of the
Earl of Durham, of Fitzgibbon or the Volunteers? They chose the wrong
course, and set up an oligarchical ascendancy like the "family compact"
of Upper Canada and Nova Scotia. Can we be surprised that they, a rude,
backward race, failed under the test where we ourselves, with far less
justification, had failed so often? Their experience of our methods had
been bad from first to last. Their latest taste of our rule had been the
coercive system of Lanyon, and they feared, with only too good reason,
as events after the second war proved, that any concession would lead to
a counter-ascendancy of British interests in a country which was legally
their own, not a portion of the British dominions. We had suffered
nothing, and had no reason to fear anything, from the Irish and
French-Canadian Catholics, nor from the Nonconformist Radicals of Upper
Canada. It would have been well if a small fraction of the abuse
lavished on the tyrannical Boer oligarchy six thousand miles away had
been diverted into criticism of the government of a country within sixty
miles of our shores, where a large majority of the inhabitants had been
for generations asking for the same thing as the Uitlander minority in
the Transvaal--Home Rule--and were stimulated to make that demand by
grievances of a kind unknown in the Transvaal.
But the British blood was up; the Boer blood was up. Such an atmosphere
is not favourable to far-seeing statesmanship, and it would have taken
statesmanship on both sides little short of superhuman to avert another
war. The silly raid of 1895 and its condonation by public opinion in
England hastened the explosion. Can anyone wonder that public opinion in
Ireland was instinctively against that war? Only a pedant will seize on
the supposed paradox that a war for equal rights for white men should
have met with reprobation from an Ireland clamouring for Home Rule.
Irish experience amply justified Irishmen in suspecting precisely what
the Boers suspected, a counter-ascendancy in the gold interest, and in
seeing in a war for the conquest of a small independent country by a
mighty foreign power an analogy to the original conquest of Ireland by
the same power. It is hard to speak with restraint of the educated
men--men with books and time to read them, with brains and the wealth
and leisure to develop them--who to this very day abuse their talents in
encouraging among the ignorant multitude the belief that the Irish
leaders of that day were, to use the old hackneyed phrase, "traitors to
the Empire." If we look at the whole of these events in just
perspective, if we search coolly and patiently for abiding principles
beneath the sordid din and confusion of racial strife, we shall agree
that in some respects Irishmen were better friends to the Empire than
the politicians who denounced them, and sounder judges of its needs. Yet
there can be no doubt that the Transvaal complications, followed
unhappily by the Gordon episode in the Soudan, reacted fatally on
Ireland, and that the Irish problem in its turn reacted with bad effect
on the Transvaal. When the statesman who refused to avenge Majuba in
1881 proposed his Irish Home Rule Bills in 1886 and 1893, it was easy
for prejudiced minds to associate the two policies as harmonious parts
of one great scheme of national dismemberment and betrayal. Boers,
Irish, and Soudanese savages, all were confusedly lumped together as
dangerous people whom it was England's duty to conquer and coerce.
The South African War of 1899-1902 came and passed. People will discuss
to the end of time whether or not it could have been avoided. Parties
will differ to the end of time about its moral justification. For my own
part, I think it is pleasanter to dwell on the splendid qualities it
evoked in both races, and above all on the mutual respect which replaced
the mutual contempt of earlier days. I myself am disposed to think that
at the pass matters had reached in 1896 nothing but open war could have
set the relations of the two races on a healthy footing.
But bold and generous statesmanship was needed if the fruits of this
mutual respect were to be reaped. The defeated Republics were now
British Colonies, their inhabitants British subjects. After many
vicissitudes we were back once more in the old political situation of
1836 before the Great Trek, and the policy which was right then was
right now. Bitter awakening as it was to our proud people after a war
involving such colossal sacrifices, it was still just as true as of old
that in Ireland, Canada, Australia, South Africa, or anywhere else, it
is utterly impossible for one white democracy to rule another properly
on the principle of ascendancy. It was physically possible, thanks to
Ireland's proximity, to deny that country Home Rule, but it would not
have been even physically possible in the Transvaal and Orange River
Colony. Yet the idea was conceived and the policy strongly backed which
could only have had the disastrous effect of bringing into being two
Irelands in the midst of our South African dominions. It is not yet
generally recognized that we owe the defeat of this policy in the first
instance to Lord Kitchener. From the moment he took the supreme military
command in South Africa at the end of 1900, while prosecuting the war
with iron severity and sleepless energy, he insisted on and worked for a
settlement by consent, with a formal promise of future self-government
to the Boers. In this he was in sharp opposition to Lord Milner, who
desired to extort an unconditional surrender. Of these two strong, able,
high-minded men, the soldier, curiously enough, was the better
statesman. In temperament he recalls the General Abercromby of 1797 on
the eve of the Irish rebellion, still more perhaps General Carleton, who
administered French Canada in the critical period after its conquest and
during the American War. Lord Milner, in political theory, not in
personality, corresponds to Fitzgibbon. His view was that British
prestige and authority could only be maintained in the future by thus
humbling the national pride of our adversaries, who, moreover, by the
formal annexations of 1900, carried into effect when the war was still
young, were by a legal fiction rebels, not belligerents. Lord Kitchener,
besides seeing, as the responsible soldier in the field, the sheer
physical impossibility of lowering the Boer national pride by any
military operations he had the power to undertake, from the beginning of
the guerilla war onwards, was a truer judge of human nature and a better
Imperialist at heart in realizing that the self-respect of the Boers was
a precious asset, not a dangerous menace to the Empire, and that the
whole fate of South Africa depended on a racial reconciliation on the
basis of equal political rights, which would be for ever precluded by
compelling the Boers to pass under the Caudine Forks.
Fortunately Lord Kitchener was supported by the Home Government, and the
Peace of Vereeniging took the form of a surrender on terms, or,
virtually, of a treaty, formally guaranteeing, among other things, the
concession "when circumstances should permit" of "representative
institutions leading up to self-government." The next ordeal of British
statesmanship came when the time arrived in 1905 to redeem this promise.
There were two distinctly defined alternatives: one, to profit by
experience and to give responsible government at once; the other, for
the time being, to copy one of the constitutional models which had long
been obsolete curiosities in the history of all the white Colonies,
which had never failed to produce mischievous results, whether in a
bi-racial or a uni-racial community, and which were in reality suited
only to groups of officials and traders living in the midst of
uneducated coloured races in tropical lands. The Government, and we
cannot doubt that their traditional policy toward Ireland warped their
views, declared for the latter alternative, and issued under Letters
Patent a Constitution which happily never came into force. Like the Act
of Union with Ireland, it gave the shadow of freedom without the
substance. It set up a single Legislative Chamber, four-fifths elective,
but containing, as _ex-officio_ members, the whole of the Executive
Council as nominated by the Crown. Executive power, therefore, together
with the last word in all legislation, was to remain wholly in the hands
of the Crown, acting through a Ministry not responsible to the people's
representatives. It would have been difficult to design a plan more
certain to promote friction, racialism, and an eventual deadlock,
necessitating either a humiliating surrender by the Government under
pressure of the refusal of supplies, or a reversion to despotic
government which would have produced another war. With wide differences
of detail and with the added risk of financial deadlock, it was sought
to establish the kind of political situation prevalent in Ireland after
the Act of Union. The executive power in that country, and, with the
exception of the Department of Agriculture, the policy and personnel of
the host of nominated Boards through which its affairs are administered,
still stand wholly outside popular control, while legislation in
accordance with Irish views is only possible when, in the fluctuation of
the British party balance, a British Ministry happens to be in sympathy
with these views, and only too often not even then.
Statesmen who looked with complacency on the history of a century in
Ireland under such a system naturally took a similar view of the
Transvaal, deriving it from the same low estimate of human tendencies.
The literature, despatches, and speeches of the period carry us straight
back to the Canadian controversies of 1837-1840, and beyond them to the
Union controversy of 1800. In one respect the parallel with the Irish
Union is closer, because, while British opinion in Lower Canada was
predominantly against responsible government, there was in Ireland a
strong current of unbribed Protestant opinion against the Union.
Similarly, in the Transvaal, there was a strong feeling among a section
of the British population, coinciding with the general wishes of the
Dutch population, in favour of full responsible government. In other
words, the mere prospect of self-government lessened racial cleavage,
brought men of the two races together, and began the evolution of a new
party cleavage on the normal lines natural to modern communities. The
whole question was keenly canvassed at public meetings and in the Press
from November, 1904, to February 5, 1905, and in Johannesburg a British
party of considerable strength took the lead in demanding the fuller
political rights, and formed the Responsible Government Association. The
controversy was embodied in a Blue-Book laid before Parliament,[35] and
at every stage of its progress the facts were cabled home by Lord Milner
to the Government, who thus had the whole situation before them when
they came to their decision.
It would be worth the reader's while to study with some care the terms
of the despatch announcing that decision.[36] He will feel himself in
contact with fundamental principles, undisturbed by individual bias; for
no one could suspect Mr. Lyttelton, the genial and popular Secretary of
State who penned the despatch, of any violent prejudices. Yet the spirit
of the whole despatch, though gentle and persuasive in its terms, is the
spirit of Fitzgibbon's brutally outspoken argument for the extinction of
the Irish Parliament, and the complete exclusion of Irish Roman
Catholics from influence over their country's affairs. The despatch
begins, it is true, by explaining that the proposed Constitution is only
intended to be temporary; that it had been the invariable custom to
grant freedom to the Colonies by degrees, and that the custom must be
followed; but the reasons adduced for following it, if we consider that
they were adduced in the year 1905, instead of a century and a half
back, constitute one of the strangest of all the strange inversions of
historical cause and effect which a Home Rule controversy has ever
suggested to the human brain. Instead of inferring from our bitter
experiences in Upper and Lower Canada, which are mentioned in the
despatch, and in Ireland, which is not, that race distinctions increase
instead of lessening the necessity for responsible government, Mr.
Lyttelton complacently quotes bi-racial Lower Canada as a precedent for
his Transvaal Constitution. Quite frankly, though in curiously
misleading terms,[37] he records the fact that a similar Constitution
there led to deadlock and rebellion. Without intention to deceive, he
ignores the fact that wholly British Upper Canada reached the same pass
for the same reasons; and he appears to look forward with equanimity to
the passage of the unfortunate Transvaal through an identically painful
phase of history toward the same sanguinary climax. The radical error
in the official version of events in Canada appears in the comparison
between the rebellions of 1837 and the South African War of 1899-1902.
To contrast the "brief armed rising" in Canada with the three years' war
in South Africa, and to argue that a degree of freedom could safely be
given after the former, which would involve great danger after the
latter, was to show ignorance of the chain of historical events and
blindness to their true moral. The underlying idea is the one applied to
the old American Colonies and for centuries to Ireland, namely, that the
more mutinous a dependency is, the less reason for giving it Home Rule,
with the paradoxical corollary applied even to this day in Ireland, that
if it is not disorderly it does not need Home Rule. So from age to age
statesmen run their heads against facts, perpetuate the errors of their
forefathers, and do their unconscious best to intensify the evils they
deplore. It was erroneous to regard either the Canadian Rebellions or
the Boer War as events which rendered responsible government more or
less dangerous. Each of these events was itself the climax of a long
period of irresponsible misgovernment dating from about the same period,
the second decade of the nineteenth century, and demanding the same
remedy. In the Boer case, continuity was twice broken by grants of
independence, and the climax proportionally delayed, but the origin of
the trouble was the same. If the Boers had not trekked _en masse_ from
Cape Colony in order to escape from misgovernment, both movements--in
the Cape and Canada--might have come to a head in exactly the same year,
1837.
In sober, weighty, tactful phrases, carefully chosen to avoid giving
needless offence to the Dutch, the despatch laboriously overthrows the
Liberal theory of government, and works out the negation of all Imperial
experience. It deplores the "bitter memories" of war, which free
institutions, by tending to "emphasize and stereotype the racial line,"
will make more, not less bitter, and which can be effaced only by the
"healing effect of time." We think of the Durham Report, of Ireland, and
marvel. We recollect the bulky Blue-Book at Mr. Lyttelton's elbow as he
wrote, full of speeches and articles by Englishmen, showing quite
correctly, as has since been proved, that the "racial line" in
Johannesburg was growing fainter daily with the mere prospect of
responsible government. These men were not afraid of the Dutch, and said
so. The answer was that they ought to be, or, in the persuasive language
of diplomacy, as follows:
"His Majesty's Government trust that those of British origin in the
Transvaal who, with honest conviction, have advocated the immediate
concession of full responsible government, will recognize the soundness
and cogency of the reasons, both in their own interests and in those of
the Empire, for proceeding more cautiously and slowly, and that under a
political system which admittedly has its difficulties they will,
notwithstanding a temporary disappointment, do their best to promote the
welfare of the country and the smooth working of its institutions."
Then came a chivalrous compliment to the Dutch for their "gallant
struggle" in the war, coupled with a reminder that they are not to be
trusted with political power, a reminder so courteously worded that it,
too, becomes a compliment:
"The inhabitants of Dutch origin have recently witnessed, after their
gallant struggle against superior power, the fall of the Republic
founded by the valour and sufferings of their ancestors, and cannot be
expected, until time has done more to heal the wound, to entertain the
most cordial feelings towards the Government of the Transvaal. But from
them also, as from a people of practical genius, who have learned by
long experience to make the best of circumstances, His Majesty's
Government expect co-operation in the task of making their race, no
longer in isolated independence, a strong pillar in the fabric of a
world-wide Empire. That this should be the result, and that a complete
reconciliation between men of two great and kindred races should, under
the leading of Divine Providence, speedily come to pass, is the ardent
desire of His Majesty the King and of His Majesty's Government."
The tone recalls the tone of Pitt and Castlereagh in proposing the
Union. But Fitzgibbon went more directly to the point in saying outright
that, Ireland having been conquered and confiscated, the colonists "were
at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island," and that laws must
be framed by an external power to "meet the vicious propensities of
human nature." Let us recognize unreservedly that the words of the
Transvaal despatch were the outcome of deep and sincere conviction. That
is the worst of it. From age to age Ireland has to suffer for the depth
and sincerity of these convictions. There, too, the cleavage of race and
religion, never complete, always defying the official efforts to
"stereotype and emphasize it," to quote the despatch of 1905, grows
fainter with time, and will grow fainter as long as the national
movement lives to draw men together in the common interest of Ireland.
The Volunteers, Wolfe Tone, Emmet, many of the Young Irelanders, Isaac
Butt, Parnell, were Protestants. And there is a strong band of
Protestant Home Rulers to-day in Ulster and out of it, landlords,
tenants, capitalists, labourers, Members of Parliament, and clergymen,
who declare that they are not afraid of Catholic oppression, and who are
told by Unionists that they ought to be. And in Ireland, too, the Roman
Catholic majority are told, rarely, it is true, in the courteous phrases
of Mr. Lyttelton's despatch, that they "cannot be expected to entertain
the most cordial feelings towards the Government." In Ireland, also, is
a "political system which admittedly has its difficulties," ironical
euphemism for a system whose analogue in the Transvaal could have been
used by the subject race, had they so willed, to bring civil government
to a standstill, without the means of furnishing anything better, and
which under the Act of Union can be, and has been, used to dislocate the
Parliamentary life of the United Kingdom. The Boers were asked "as a
people of practical genius" to assist the "smooth working" of an
unworkable Constitution, so as to promote the "reconciliation of two
great and kindred races." The Irish are pursued with invective for
legitimately using the constitutional power given them in order, while
freeing Parliament from an intolerable incubus, to gain the right to
elicit character and responsibility in themselves by shouldering their
own burdens and saving their own souls.
If the official view of the Transvaal was mistaken, the summit of error
was reached in the view taken of the Orange River Colony. In that
Colony, which was almost wholly pastoral and Dutch, and which until the
war had enjoyed free institutions uninterruptedly for half a century,
and had made remarkably good vise of them, representative government,
even of the illusory kind designed for the Transvaal, was to be
indefinitely postponed, postponed at any rate until the results of the
"experiment" in the Transvaal had been observed.
The Government "recognize that there are industrial and economic
conditions peculiar to the Transvaal, which make it very desirable in
that Colony to have at the earliest possible date some better means of
ascertaining the views of the different sections of the population than
the present system affords. The question as regards the Orange River
Colony being a less urgent one, it appears to them that there will be
advantage in allowing a short period to intervene before elective
representative institutions are granted to the last-named Colony,
because this will permit His Majesty's Government to observe the
experiment, and, if need be, to profit by the experience so gained."
What is the train of reasoning in this strange specimen of political
argument? It was important to "ascertain the views" of the bi-racial
Transvaal, but needless to ascertain the views of the practically
homogeneous Orange River Colony. The "question" there is a "less urgent
one." What question? Why less urgent? Is it that the British minority,
being so very small, is more liable to oppression by the Dutch? That is
a tenable point, though by parity of reasoning it would seem to make the
question more, not less, urgent, and the importance of "ascertaining the
views" of the different sections of the population, greater, not less.
Or is it the diametrically opposite train of thought, namely, that an
assumed improbability of disorder owing to the homogeneity of the
population is a reason, not for giving Home Rule, but for withholding
it? These contradictions and confusions are painfully familiar in
anti-Home Rule dialectics all over the world. A quiet Ireland does not
want Home Rule; a turbulent Ireland is not fit for it. If the Unionist
element in Ireland is strong, that is clearly an argument for
withholding Home Rule in deference to the wishes of a strong minority.
If the minority, on the other hand, is proved to be small, all the
greater reason for withholding it, because oppression by the majority
will be easier. So the sterile argument swings back and forth, and men
still talk of "experiments" and "profiting by experience," while the
demonstration of their errors is written in the blood and tears of
centuries, and while masses of facts accumulate, demonstrating the great
truth that free democratic government, whatever its disadvantages and
dangers--and it has both--is the best resource for uniting,
strengthening, and enriching a community of white men.
The Transvaal Constitution of 1905 was cancelled on the incoming of the
Liberal Ministry at the end of that year, and in the following year full
responsible government was granted both to the Transvaal and Orange
River Colony, with the results that we know. Instantaneously there
permeated the bi-racial urban society in the Transvaal a new sense of
brotherhood. Men of different race, as far apart in spirit as the
members of the Kildare Street Club, the Orange Societies, and the
Ancient Order of Hibernians, met and made friends because it was not
only natural but necessary to make friends, since on all alike lay the
burden of doing their best for their country on a basis of equal
citizenship. Nobody out there called the new system an "experiment." The
wrench once over, the thing once done, there was general unanimity that
whatever the difficulties--and there were great difficulties--it was the
right thing to be done under the circumstances, and if this unanimity
was combined, rightly or wrongly, with a good deal of resentment against
the Liberal attitude at home towards Chinese labour, nobody is any the
worse for that. The day will come when even that burning question will
be seen in its true perspective as an infinitesimally small point beside
the great principle of responsible government, which includes the
decision of labour questions, together with all other branches of
domestic policy.
Conservative opinion at home has been slower to change than British
opinion in the Transvaal. But, again, this was natural. Parties had long
been divided on the South African question. The abrupt reversal of
policy was felt as a humiliation, and the ingrained mental habits
engendered by the traditional policy towards Ireland yielded slowly,
grudgingly, and fearfully to the proof of error in South Africa. It is
not for the sake of opening an old wound, but solely because it is
absolutely necessary for the completion of my argument, that I have to
recall the angry and violent speeches which followed the announcement of
the new policy; the dogmatic prognostications of Imperial disruption, of
financial collapse, and of a cruel Boer tyranny in the emancipated
Colonies; the charges of wanton betrayal of loyalists, of disgraceful
surrender to "the enemy." Some of the leading actors in these scenes,
notably Mr. Balfour and Mr. Lyttelton, have since acknowledged that they
were wrong, while apparently feeling it their duty as honourable and
loyal men to give a somewhat misleading turn to an old controversy in
their praise of Lord Milner's services to South Africa. That Lord
Milner, in his administration during and after the war, did, indeed, do
a vast amount of sound and lasting work for South Africa is perfectly
true, and he deserves all honour for it. Probably no public servant of
the Empire ever laboured in its service with more unstinted devotion and
a higher sense of duty. But good administration is not an adequate
substitute for knowledge of men, and that knowledge Lord Milner lacked.
He did no service to the British colonists of South Africa in telling
them that they had been shamefully betrayed by the Home Government in
1906. It would have been wiser to advise them to rely on themselves and
on the justice and wisdom of their Dutch fellow-citizens. His violent
speeches in 1906-1908 about the calamitous results of permitting Dutch
influences free play in South Africa--speeches breathing the essential
spirit of Fitzgibbonism--would have wrought incalculable mischief had
they coincided with effective British policy; while his view, as
expressed in the House of Lords,[38] that a preparatory regime of
benevolent despotism, showing "the obvious solicitude of the Government
for the welfare of the people," and taking shape "in a hundred and one
works of material advancement," would "win us friends and diminish our
enemies," evinces an ignorance of the ordinary motives influencing the
conduct of white men, which would be incredible if we had not Irish
experience before us. "Twenty years of resolute government," said Lord
Salisbury. "Home Rule will be killed by kindness," said many of his
successors. In later chapters I shall have to show what well-meant
kindness and resolute government have done for Ireland. If even at this
late hour Lord Milner would frankly acknowledge his error, I believe he
would enormously enhance his reputation in the eyes of the whole Empire.
As practical men, let us remember that the Constitutions of 1906 would
not have become law if, instead of being issued under Letters Patent,
they had had to pass through Parliament in the form of a Bill. The whole
Conservative party, following Lord Milner, was vehemently against the
Letters Patent. Those who witnessed the debate upon them in the House of
Commons will not forget the scene. I recall this fact without any desire
to entangle myself in the current controversy about the Upper House, but
with the strictly practical object of showing that because a Home Rule
Bill is defeated in Parliament, as the Irish Bills of 1886 and 1893 were
defeated, it does not necessarily follow that its policy is wrong. Nor
does it follow that its policy is wrong if that defeat in Parliament is
confirmed by a General Election. Home Rule for Canada never had to pass,
and would not have passed even the Parliamentary test. Skilful and
determined organization could have wrecked even the Australian
Constitutions. No one, certainly, could have guaranteed a favourable
result of a General Election taken expressly upon the Transvaal and
Orange River Constitutions of 1906, with the whole machinery of one of
the great parties thrown into the scale against them. We know the case
made against Ireland on such occasions, and the case against the
conquered Republics was made in Parliament with ten times greater force.
If anyone doubts this, let him compare the speeches on Ireland in 1886
and 1893 with the speeches on South Africa in 1905-06. With the
alteration of a name or two, with the substitution, for example, of
Johannesburg for Ulster, the speeches against South African and Irish
Home Rule might be almost interchangeable. For electioneering purposes,
evidences, in word and act, of Boer treason, rapacity, and
vindictiveness, could have been made by skilful orators to seem damning
and unanswerable. All the arts for inflaming popular passion under the
pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that
patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises. The material would have
been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient
numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped
by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the
speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the
Peace Conference, would have been ready for the hoardings and the
fly-sheets, and they would have had an appreciable effect.
Am I weakening the case for democracy itself in pressing this view?
Surely not. One democracy is incapable of understanding the domestic
needs and problems of another. Whenever, therefore, a democracy finds
itself responsible for the adjudication of a claim for Home Rule from
white men, it should limit itself to ascertaining whether the claim is
genuine and sincere. If it is, the claim should be granted, and a
Constitution constructed in friendly concert with the men who are to
live under it. That way lies safety and honour, and, happily, the
democracy is being educated to that truth. If this be a counsel of
perfection; if the difficult and delicate task of settling the details
of Irish Home Rule is to be hampered and complicated by the
resuscitation of those time-honoured discussions over abstract
principles which ought long ago to have been buried and forgotten, let
every patriotic and enlightened man at any rate do his best to sweeten
and mollify the controversy, to extirpate its grosser manifestations,
and to substitute reason for passion.
The grant of responsible government to the Transvaal and Orange River
Colony reacted with amazing rapidity on South African politics as a
whole. It took the Canadian Provinces twenty-seven years (if we reckon
from 1840), and the Australian States forty-five years (if we reckon
from 1855), to reach a Federal Union. Hardly a minute was wasted in
South Africa. Under very able guidance, the scheme was canvassed almost
from the first, and in two years trusted leaders of both races,
representing Natal, Cape Colony, and two newly emancipated
Colonies--men, some of whom had been shooting at one another only five
years before--were sitting at a table together hammering out the details
of a South African Union. Here, indeed, was shown the "practical genius"
which the Government of 1905 had piously invoked for their abortive
Constitution. In the spirit of forbearance, of sympathy, of wise
compromise, which governed the proceedings of this famous Conference,
was to be found the measure of the longing of all parties to extinguish
racialism and make South Africa truly a nation. The Imperial Act
legalizing the arrangements ultimately arrived at by the agreement of
the colonists was passed in 1909. The political system constructed
cannot be called Federal. The framers rejected the Australian model, and
went much beyond the Canadian model in centralizing authority and
diminishing local autonomy; nor can there be any doubt that the
strongest motive behind that policy was that of securing the harmony of
the two white races.
All this was the result of trusting the Dutch in 1906. "We cannot expect
you to trust us, and we shall not trust you," said the despatch of 1905.
We know what the consequences of that policy would have been. It is not
a question of imagination or hypothesis. It is a question of the
operation of certain unchanging laws in the conduct of all white men.
Good or bad, our government would have been detested. We should have
manufactured sedition, lawlessness, and discord. Then the tendency would
have been strong to follow the old Irish precedent, and make the evil
symptoms we had ourselves educed the pretext for tightening the screw of
anti-popular government. It would have been said that we must sustain
our prestige to the end and at all costs, a phrase which often cloaks
the obstinacy of moral cowardice. Or, too late to escape the contempt of
the Boers, we might have abruptly surrendered to clamour. It would have
taken a long time to reach union then. Contempt is a bad foundation.
It brings one near despair to see the Union of South Africa used by men
who should know better as an argument against Irish Home Rule. The chain
of causation is so clear, one would think, as to be incapable of
misconstruction. But there seems to be no limit in certain minds to the
prejudice against the principle of Home Rule. If it is seen to work
well, the phenomenon is hurriedly swept into oblivion, and its results
attributed with feverish ingenuity to any cause but the true one. The
very speed with which the antidote pervades the body politic and expels
the old poison helps these untiring propagators of error to suppress the
history of recuperation, and to ascribe the cure of the patient to a
treatment which, if applied long enough, would have killed him. The
Conservative party appear to have now reached this amazing conclusion:
that they and Lord Milner were the authors of the South African Union,
and that that Union is a weapon sent them by Providence for combating
the Irish claims. This is what Ireland has to pay for being the sport of
British parties. Individual statesmen may point at past mistakes; but a
party, as a party, can never admit error: it is against the rules. To
make things easier, there is that question-begging phrase, the "Union."
If South Africa, like Australia, had been federalized, this windfall
would have been lost, because the word "Federal" might have suggested
some form of Federal Home Rule for Ireland. Labels mean an enormous
amount in politics.
There is not the slightest doubt that Mr. Walter Long, and even Lord
Selborne, who, as High Commissioner, actually witnessed the whole
evolution from responsible government in the two conquered States to the
Union of South Africa, are perfectly sincere in their opposition to
Irish Home Rule. But, I would respectfully suggest, it is their duty to
use their knowledge and convictions in the right and fair way. Let them
say, if they will, ignoring the intermediate and indispensable phase of
Home Rule in South Africa: "Here are two Unions; never mind how they
arose. Both are good: all Unions are good. The modern tendency to unify
is sound; do not let us react to devolution." Let them, in other words,
confine their argument to the domain of political science. What, I
submit, they should refrain from, is the imputation of sordid motives to
Nationalist leaders, the prognostications of religious and racial
tyranny in Ireland, and all those inflammatory arguments against the
principle of Home Rule which have been used all the world over, from
time immemorial, for the maintenance of Unions based on legal, not on
moral, ties, which were used against responsible government for the
Transvaal, and which, I venture to affirm, degrade our public life.
I am assuming for the moment that most Conservatives will elect to use
the South African parallel in the way that Mr. Long and Lord Selborne
have used it, that is, while tacitly approving in retrospect of the Home
Rule of 1906, to argue from Union to Union. But it is of no use to blink
the fact that there are pessimists who will put forward an antithetical
case, boldly declaring that we were wrong ever to trust the Boers, that
racialism is as bad as ever, that General Botha's loyalty is cant, the
Cullinan diamond an insult, and that South Africa will go from bad to
worse under a Dutch tyranny. Party propaganda is quite elastic enough to
permit the two opposite views to be used to convince the same electorate
at the same election. Pessimists are always active in these affairs, and
they can always produce something in the nature of a plausible case,
because it stands to reason that the evils of generations cannot be
swept away in a moment, either in South Africa or Ireland. Miracles do
not happen, and the pessimists, who are the curse of Ireland to-day,
will be able to demonstrate with ease that the free Ireland of to-morrow
will not enter instantaneously upon a millennium. It is useless to
attempt to convert these extremists. For a century back, Hansard and the
columns of daily papers have been full of their unfulfilled jeremiads
about Canada, about Australia, and about the very smallest and most
tardy attempts to give a little responsibility to the majority of
citizens in Ireland. The vocabulary of impending ruin has been exhausted
long ago; there is nothing new to be said. But those who care to study
in a cool temper the course of recent South African politics in the
columns of the _Times_, or, better still, in those of that excellent
magazine for the discussion of Imperial affairs, the _Round Table_, will
conclude that extraordinary progress has been made towards racial
reunion, and that in this respect no serious peril threatens South
Africa. The settlement, by friendly compromise at the end of the last
session, of the very thorny question of language in the education of
children, is a good example of what good-will can accomplish under free
institutions. By a laboured construction of fragments of speeches culled
from the utterances of exceptionally vehement partisans, it would be
still possible to make up a theory of the "disloyalty" of the South
African Dutch. It would have been equally possible for a painstaking
British student of the _Sydney Bulletin_ within recent memory to start a
panic over the imminent "loss" of Australia. Some people think that
Canada is as good as "lost" now. Yet the Empire has never been so strong
or so united as to-day.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Cd. 2479, 1905.
[36] Cd. 2400, 1905.
[37] "It is true that in the case of Canada full responsible government
was conceded, a few years after a troublous period culminating in a
brief armed rising, to a population composed of races then not very
friendly to each other, though now long since happily reconciled. But
the Canadas had by that time enjoyed representative institutions for
over fifty years, the French-Canadians had since the year 1763 been
continuously British subjects, and the disorders which preceded Lord
Durham's Mission and the subsequent grant of self-government could not
compare in any way with a war like that of 1899-1902. It is also the
fact that in the United Colony of Upper and Lower Canada, during the
period of 1840-1867, parties were formed mainly upon the lines of races,
and that, as the representatives of the races were in number nearly
balanced, stability of Government was not attained, a difficulty which
was not overcome until the Federation of 1867, accompanied by the
relegation of provincial affairs to provincial Legislatures, placed the
whole political Constitution of Canada upon a wider basis."
Few would gather from the first sentence that the races were "not very
friendly to each other" precisely because they lived under a coercive
political system; and that, in the long-run, they were "happily
reconciled" because they received responsible government. Nor could it
be deduced from the obscure reference lower down to the union of the two
Provinces that the Union was the one blot upon Durham's scheme, the one
point in which, fearing the predominance of a French majority in Lower
Canada, he shrank from his own principles and recommended an unworkable
Union which tended to encourage the formation "of parties on the lines
of races." From the further allusion to the Federal Union of 1867, no
one would imagine that that great scheme was founded on a cessation of
racial antipathy inside the Quebec Province, and on a voluntary
recognition among all races and parties that it was best for that
Province to have a local autonomy of its own, parallel with that of the
Ontario Province and under the supreme central authority of the
Dominion.
[38] February 26, March 27, 1906.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ANALOGY
Let the reader endeavour to see the closely related stories of Ireland
and of these more distant communities as a whole, undistracted by the
varying degrees of their proximity to the Mother Country, making his
study one of men and laws, and remembering that Ireland was the first
and nearest of the British Colonies. Does not she become a convex
mirror, in which, swollen to unnatural proportions, the mistakes of two
centuries are reflected? Principles of government universal in their
nature, transcending geography, and painfully evolved in more distant
parts of the Empire, we have thrown to the winds in Ireland. Economic
evils, resembling, in however distant a degree, those of Ireland, have
irritated and retarded every community in which they have been allowed
to take root. A sound agrarian system has been the primary need of every
country. To take the closest parallel, if absentee proprietorship and
insecurity of tenure kept little Prince Edward Island, peacefully and
legally settled, backward and disturbed for a century, it is not
surprising that Ireland, submitted to confiscation, the Penal Code, and
commercial rum, did not flourish under a land system beside which that
of Prince Edward Island was a paradise. Tardy redress of the worst Irish
abuses is no defence of the system which created them and sustained them
with such ruinous results. No white community of pride and spirit would
willingly tolerate the grotesque form of Crown Colony administration,
founded on force, and now tempered by a kind of paternal State
Socialism, under which Ireland lives to-day. Unionism for Ireland is
anti-Imperialist. Its upholders strenuously opposed colonial autonomy,
and but yesterday were passionately opposing South African autonomy.
To-day colonial autonomy is an axiom. But Ireland is a measure of the
depth of these convictions. There would be no Empire to idealize if
their Irish principles had been applied just a little longer to any of
the oversea States which constitute the self-governing Colonies of
to-day. As it is, these principles have wrought great and perhaps
lasting mischief which, in the righteous glow of self-congratulation
upon what we are accustomed to call our constructive political genius,
we are too apt to overlook. It was bad for America to pass through that
phase of agitation and discord which preceded the revolutionary war. It
was demoralizing for the Canadas to be driven into rebellion by the
vices of ascendancy government. Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Australian
autonomy, was right in satirizing the "miserable jargon" about fitting
men for political privileges, and in demonstrating the harm done by
withholding those privileges. And the Irish race all over the world,
fine race as it is, would be finer still if Ireland had been free.
The political habits formed in dealing with Ireland have disastrously
influenced Imperial policy in the past. Cannot we, by a supreme national
effort, reverse the mental process, and, if we have always failed in the
past to learn from Irish lessons how not to treat the Colonies, at any
rate learn, even at the eleventh hour, from our colonial lessons how to
treat Ireland? Must we for ever sound the old alarms about "disloyalty"
and "dismemberment" and "abandonment of the loyal minority to the tender
mercies of their foes"; phrases as old as the Stamp Act of 1765? Must we
carry the "gentle art of making enemies," practised to the last point of
danger in the Colonies, to the preposterous pitch of estranging men at
our very doors, while pluming ourselves on the friendship of peoples
12,000 miles away? These are anxious times. We have a mighty rival in
Europe, and we need the co-operation of all our hands and brains. On a
basis of mere profit and loss, is it sensible to maintain a system in
Ireland which weakens both Ireland and the whole United Kingdom, clogs
the delicate machinery of Parliamentary government, and, worked out in
hard figures of pounds, shillings, and pence, has ceased even to show a
pecuniary advantage?
Have Unionists really no better prescription for the constitutional
difficulties caused by the Union than to reduce the representation of
Ireland in Parliament so as to give Ireland still less control than at
present over her own affairs? Is that seriously their last word in
statesmanship, to exasperate Nationalist Ireland without even providing
in any appreciable degree a mechanical remedy for disordered political
functions? The idea has only to be stated to be dismissed. It is not
even practical politics. Some things are sheer impossibilities; and to
leave the Union system as it is, while reducing representation, is one
of them.
We revert, then, to a contemplation of the well-tried expedient, "Trust,
and you will be trusted." But then we have to meet pessimists of two
descriptions, the honest and the merely cynical. The honest pessimist
(often, unhappily, an educated Irishman) says: "The Irish in Ireland are
an incurably criminal race. They differ from Irishmen elsewhere and from
Anglo-Saxons everywhere. Air and soil are unaccountable. The Union
policy has been, and remains, a painful but a quite inevitable
necessity. It is sound, now and for all time." The cynical pessimist, on
the other hand, admits the errors of past policy, but says frankly that
it is too late to change. "We have gone too far, raised passions we
cannot allay." I shall not try further to confute the honest pessimist.
The preceding chapters have been written in vain if they do not shatter
the theory of original sin. And to the cynical pessimist, who is a
reincarnation of our old friend Fitzgibbon (for that clear-headed
statesman frankly imputed original sin to the conquerors of Ireland, as
well as to the conquered), I would only say: "Use your common sense."
These panics over the vagaries and excesses of an Irish Parliament,
always groundless, are beginning to look highly ridiculous. In 1893,
when the last Home Rule Bill was being discussed, a Franco-Irish
alliance was the fear. Now it is the other way, and the _Spectator_ has
been writing solemn articles to warn its readers that Mr. Dillon, in a
speech on foreign policy, has shown ominous signs of hostility to
France. In the election of January, 1910, an ex-Cabinet Minister
informed the public that Home Rule meant the presence of a German fleet
in Belfast Lough--at whose invitation he did not explain, though he
probably did not intend to insult Ulster. This wild talk has not even
the merit of a strategical foundation. It belongs to another age.
Ireland has neither a fleet nor the will or money to build one. Our
fleet, in which large numbers of Irishmen serve, guarantees the security
of New Zealand, and if it cannot maintain the command of home waters,
including St. George's Channel, our situation is desperate, whether
Ireland is friendly or hostile. We guarantee the independent existence
of the kingdom of Belgium, which is as near as Ireland, with military
liabilities vastly more serious than any which Ireland could conceivably
entail; but we do not claim, as a consequence, to control the Executive
of Belgium and remove her Parliament to Westminster, in order to be
quite sure that the Belgians are not intriguing against us with Germany.
Germany, our alarmists fear, is to invade Ireland, and Ireland is to
greet the invaders with open arms. The same prophecy was being made not
more than three years ago of the South African Dutch. After asking for a
century and a half to manage her own affairs, the Irish are not likely
to ask to be ruled by Germans. The German strategists are men of common
sense. If they were fortunate enough to gain the command of the sea,
they could make no worse mistake than to dissipate their energies on
Ireland.
Perhaps it is a waste of time to attempt to destroy these foolish myths.
Let those that are sceptical about the effect of Home Rule in producing
friendlier feelings between Ireland and Great Britain consider in a
reasonable spirit the commonplace question of mutual interests. What is
the really practical significance of Ireland's proximity to England?
This, that their material interests are indissociably intertwined. If it
is "safe," as the phrase goes, to entrust Australia with Home Rule,
surely it is safer still to entrust Ireland with it. Has Ireland
anything to gain by separation? Clearly nothing. Has she anything to
lose? Much. Most of her trade is with Great Britain. British credit is
of enormous value to her. The Imperial forces are of less proportionate
value to her because her external trade is small; but she willingly
supplies a large and important part of their personnel; she shares in
their glorious traditions; and if it is a case of protection for her
trade, she will get no protection elsewhere.
How idle are these calculations of profit and loss! The truth is that
Ireland has taken her full share in winning and populating the Empire.
The result is hers as much as Britain's. Mr. Redmond spoke for his
countrymen last May[39] in saying: "We, as Irishmen, are not prepared to
surrender our share in the heritage [that is, the British Empire] which
our fathers created." That is sound sentiment and sound sense. It is the
view taken by the Colonies, where Irishmen are known, respected, and
understood, and where the support for Home Rule, based on personal
experience of its blessings, has been, and remains, consistent and
strong. Indeed, we miss the significance of that support if we do not
realize that Irish Home Rule is an indispensable preliminary to the
closer union of the various parts of the Empire. Let us add the wider
generalization that it is an indispensable preliminary to the closer
union of all the English-speaking races. It may be fairly computed that
a fifth of the present white population of the United States is of Irish
blood.[40] American opinion, as a whole, so far as it is directed
towards Ireland and away from a host of absorbing domestic problems, is
favourable to Home Rule. Irish-American opinion has never swerved,
although it has become more sober, as the material condition of Ireland
has improved, and the interests of Irish-Americans themselves have
become more closely identified with those of their adopted country.
Fenianism is altogether extinct. The extreme claim for the total
separation of Ireland from Great Britain is now no more than a
sentimental survival among a handful of the older men, of the fierce
hatreds provoked by the miseries and horrors of an era which has passed
away.[41] Even Mr. Patrick Ford and the _Irish World_ have moderated
their tone, and where that tone is still inflammatory it is not
representative of Irish-American opinion. I have studied with a good
deal of care the columns of that journal for some months back, smiling
over the imaginary terrors of the nervous people on this side of the
Atlantic who are taught by their party Press to believe that Mr. Patrick
Ford is going to dynamite them in their beds. Any liberal-minded student
of history and human nature would pronounce the whole propaganda
perfectly harmless. But the sane instinct that Ireland should have a
local autonomy of her own, an instinct common to the whole brotherhood
of nations which have sprung from these shores, lasts undiminished and
takes shape, quite rightly and naturally, as it takes shape in the
Colonies, in financial support of the Nationalist party in Ireland.
Anti-British sentiment in the United States, once a grave international
danger, is that no longer; but it does still represent an obstacle to
the complete realization of an ideal which all patriotic men should aim
at: the formation of indestructible bonds of friendship between Great
Britain and the United States. Nor must it be forgotten that the calm
and reasonable character of Irish-American opinion is due in a large
degree to confidence in the ultimate success of the constitutional
movement here for Home Rule. Every successive defeat of that policy
tends to embitter feeling in America.
Oh, for an hour of intelligent politics! The old choice is before us--to
make the best or the worst of the state of opinion in America; to
disinter from ancient files of the _Irish World_ sentences calculated to
inflame an ignorant British audience; or to say in sensible and manly
terms: "The situation is more favourable than it has been for a century
past for the settlement of just Irish claims."
FOOTNOTES:
[39] At Woodford, May 27, 1911.
[40] This is a very general statement. No figures exist for an accurate
computation. The Census of 1910 gives the total population of the United
States, white and coloured, as 91,272,266, of whom nearly 9,000,000 are
negroes. The figures about countries of origin are not yet available.
The statistical abstract of the United States (1908) gives the total
number of immigrants from Ireland from 1821 to 1908 as 4,168,747 (the
large majority of whom must have been of marriageable age), but does not
estimate the subsequent increase by marriage, and takes no account of
the immigration prior to 1821, which was very large, especially in the
period preceding the Revolutionary War of 1775-1782. At the Census of
1900 Irishmen actually _born in Ireland_ and then resident in the United
States are stated to have been 1,618,567, as compared with 93,682 from
Wales, 233,977 from Scotland, and 842,078 from England.
[41] I am especially indebted for information to Mr. Hugh Sutherland, of
the _North American_ (Philadelphia), to Mr. Rodman Wanamaker, of the
same city, to Mr. Frank Sanborn, of Concord, and to Mr. John
O'Callaghan, of Boston.
CHAPTER IX
IRELAND TO-DAY
Why does present-day Ireland need Home Rule? I put the question in that
way because I am not going to question the fact that she wants Home
Rule. She has always said she wanted it: she says so still, and that is
enough. There is a powerful minority in Ireland against Home Rule. There
always have been minorities more or less powerful against Home Rule in
all ages and places. That does not alter the national character of the
claim. If once we go behind the voice of a people, constitutionally
expressed, we court endless risks. National leaders have always been
called "agitators," which, of course, they are, and non-representative
agitators, which they are not. To deny the genuineness of a claim which
is feared is an invariable feature of oppositions to measures of Home
Rule. The denial is generally irreconcilable with the case made for the
dangers of Home Rule, and that contradiction in its most glaring shape
characterizes the present opposition to the Irish claims. But Unionists
should elect to stand on one ground or the other, and for my part I
shall assume that the large majority of Irishmen, as shown by successive
electoral votes, want Home Rule. Precisely what form of Home Rule they
want is another and by no means so clear a matter, on which I shall
presently have a word to say. But they want, in the general sense, to
manage their own local affairs. Her best friends would despair of
Ireland if that was not her desire.
What, in the Colonies, Ireland, and everywhere else, is the deep
spiritual impulse behind the desire for Home Rule? A craving for
self-expression, self-reliance. Home Rule is synonymous with the growth
of independent character. That is why Ireland instinctively and
passionately wants it, that is why she needs it, and that is why Great
Britain, for her own sake, and Ireland's, should give it. If that is not
the reason, it is idle to talk about Home Rule; but it is the reason.
Character is the very foundation of national prosperity and happiness,
and we are blind to the facts of history if we cannot discern the
profound effect of political institutions upon human character.
Self-government in the community corresponds to free will in the
individual. I am far from saying that self-government is everything. But
I do say that it is the master-key. It is fundamental. Give
responsibility and you will create responsibility. Through political
responsibility only can a society brace itself to organized effort, find
out its own opinions on its own needs, test its own capabilities, and
elicit the will, the brains, and the hands to solve its own problems.
These are such commonplaces in every other part of the Empire, which has
an individual life of its own, that men smile if you suggest the
contrary. But ordinary reasoning is rarely applied to Ireland. There
"good government" has been held to be "a substitute for self-government"
and a regime of benevolent paternalism to be a full and sufficient
compensation for cruel coercion and crueller neglect. In this paternal
regime it is impossible to include those great measures of land reform
passed in 1870, 1881, and 1887, which revolutionized the agrarian
system, and converted the cottier tenant into a judicial tenant.[42]
Although these measures, which fall into an altogether different
category from the subsequent policy of State-aided Land Purchase,[43]
were inspired by an earnest desire to mitigate frightful social evils,
they cannot be regarded as voluntary. They were extorted, shocking as
the reflection is, by crime and violence, by the spectacle of a whole
social order visibly collapsing, and by the desperate efforts of a
handful of Irishmen, determined at any cost, by whatever means, to save
the bodies and souls of their countrymen. The methods of these men were
destructive. They were constructive only in this, the highest sense of
all, that while battling against concrete economic evils, they sought to
obtain for Ireland the right to control her own affairs and cure her own
economic evils. It is often said that Parnell gave a tremendous impetus
to the Home Rule movement by harnessing it to the land question. True;
but what a strange way of expressing a truth! Anywhere outside Ireland
men would say that self-government was the best road to the reform of a
bad land system.
With the tranquillity which was slowly restored by the alterations in
agrarian tenure and the immense economic relief derived from the
lowering of rents, a change came over the spirit of British
statesmanship. With the exception of the short Liberal Government of
1892-1895, which failed for the second time to carry Home Rule,
Conservatives were responsible for Ireland from 1886 to 1905. They felt
that opposition to Home Rule could be justified only by a strenuous
policy of amelioration in Ireland, and the efforts of three Chief
Secretaries, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Gerald Balfour, and Mr. George
Wyndham--efforts often made in the teeth of bitter opposition from Irish
Unionists--to carry out this policy, were sincere and earnest. The Act
of 1891, with its grants for light railways, its additional facilities
for Land Purchase, and its establishment of the Congested Districts
Board to deal with the terrible poverty of certain districts in the
west, may be said to mark the beginning of the new era. The Land Act of
1896 was another step, and the establishment of a complete system of
Irish Local Government in 1898 another. In the following year came the
Act setting up the Department of Agriculture, and in 1903 Mr. Wyndham's
great Land Purchase Act. Then came the strange "devolutionist" episode,
arising from the appointment of Sir Antony (now Lord) MacDonnell to the
post of Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, the Government who selected
him being fully aware that he was in favour of some change in the
government of Ireland. He entered into relations with a group of
prominent Irishmen, headed by Lord Dunraven, who were thinking out a
scheme for a mild measure of devolution. When the fact became known,
there was an explosion of anger among Irish Unionists. Mr. Wyndham, who
had been a popular Chief Secretary, resigned office, and was succeeded
by Mr. Walter Long; perhaps the most dramatic and significant example in
modern times of the policy of governing Ireland in deliberate and direct
defiance of the wishes and sentiments of the vast majority of Irishmen.
The Liberal Government of 1906, coming into office under a pledge to
refrain from a full Home Rule measure, confined itself to the
introduction of the Irish Council Bill of 1907, which, rightly, in my
opinion, was repudiated by the Irish people, and accordingly dropped.
But the Government was in general sympathy with Nationalist Ireland, so
that a number of useful measures were added to the statute books; for
example, the Labourers (Ireland) Act of 1906, empowering Rural Councils,
with the aid of State credit, to acquire land for labourers' plots and
cottages; the Town Tenants Act, extending the principle of compensation
for improvements at the termination of a lease to the urban tenant; the
very important Irish Universities Act of 1908, which gave to Roman
Catholics facilities for higher education which they had lacked for
centuries, and, lastly, Mr. Birrell's Land Act of 1909, which was
designed partly to meet the imminent collapse of Land Purchase, owing to
the failure of the financial arrangements made under the Wyndham Act of
1903, and partly to extend the powers of the Congested Districts Board.
To these measures must be added another which was not confined to
Ireland, but which has exercised a most potent influence, and by no
means a wholly beneficial influence, on Irish life and Irish finance,
the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, under which the enormous sum of two
and three-quarter millions is now allocated to Ireland.[44]
The best that can be said of the legislation since 1881 is that it has
laid the foundations of a new social order. Agrarian crime has
disappeared and material prosperity has greatly increased. Government in
the interests of a small favoured class has almost vanished. It survives
to this extent, that civil administration and patronage, which are
still, be it remembered, removed from popular control, remain, in fact,
in Protestant and Unionist hands to an extent altogether
disproportionate to the distribution of creeds, classes, and opinions.
And, of course, in the major matter of Home Rule, the power of the
Unionist minority, as represented in the Commons by seventeen out of the
thirty-three Ulster representatives, and in the House of Lords by an
overwhelming preponderance of Unionist peers, is still enormous. But
within Ireland itself, central administration apart, the exceptional
privileges and exceptional political power of Protestants and landlords,
which lasted almost intact until forty years ago, is now non-existent.
The Disestablishment Act of 1869, while immensely enhancing the moral
power and religious zeal of the Church of Ireland, and even
strengthening its financial position, took away its political monopoly,
and through the final abolition of tithes, its baneful and irritating
interference with economic life. The successive measures of land
legislation, culminating in the transfer of half the land of Ireland
from landlord to peasant proprietorship, and the Local Government Act of
1898, surrendering at a stroke the whole local administration of the
country into popular control, destroyed the exceptional political
privileges of the landlord class.
Ascendancy, then, in the old sense, is a thing of the past. What has
taken its place? What is the ruling power within Ireland? Is it a public
opinion derived from the vital contact of ideas and interests, and
taking shape in a healthy and normal distribution of parties? Is thought
free? Has merit its reward? Is there any unity of national purpose,
transcending party divisions? If it were necessary to give a categorical
"Yes" or "No" to these questions, the answer would be "No." Sane
energizing politics, and the sovereign ascendancy of a sane public
opinion, are absolutely unattainable in Ireland or anywhere else without
Home Rule. It is all the more to the credit of Irishmen that, in the
face of stupendous difficulties, and in a marvellously short space of
time since the attainment, barely twenty years ago, of the elementary
conditions of social peace, they have gone so far as they have gone
towards the creation of a self-reliant, independently thinking, united
Ireland. The whole weight of Imperial authority has been thrown into the
scale against them. Whatever the mood and policy of British upholders of
the Union, whether sympathetic or hostile, wise or foolish, their
constant message to both parties in Ireland has been, "Look to us. Trust
in us. You are divided. We are umpires," and the reader will no doubt
remember that the theory of "umpirage" was used in exactly the same way
in the Colonies, notably in Upper Canada,[45] to thwart the tendency
towards a reconciliation of creeds, races, and classes. Fortunately,
there have been Irishmen who have laboured to counteract the effects of
this enervating policy, and to reconstruct, by native effort from
within, a new Ireland on the ruins of the old. Whether or not they have
consciously aimed at Home Rule matters not a particle. Some have, some
have not; but the result of these efforts has been the same, to pull
Irishmen together and to begin the creation of a genuinely national
atmosphere.
It is not part of my scheme to describe in detail the various movements,
agricultural, industrial, economic, literary, political, which in the
last twenty years have contributed to this national revival. Some have a
world-wide fame, all have been excellently described at one time or
another by writers of talent and insight.[46] My purpose is to note
their characteristics and progress, and to estimate their political
significance. In the first place it must be remembered that some of the
most important of the modern legislative measures have been initiated
and promoted by Home Rulers and Unionists, Roman Catholics and
Protestants, acting in friendly co-operation and throwing aside their
political and religious antagonisms. Such was the origin of the great
Land Purchase Act of 1903, which Mr. Wyndham drafted on the basis of an
agreement reached at a friendly conference of landlords and
representatives of tenants. But a far more interesting and hopeful
instance of co-operation had taken place seven years earlier. One of the
very few really constructive measures of the last twenty years, the Act
of 1899 for setting up the Department of Agriculture and Technical
Instruction, was the direct outcome of the recommendations of the Recess
Committee brought together in 1895 and 1896 by Sir Horace Plunkett; a
Committee containing Nationalist and Unionist Members of the House of
Commons, Tory and Liberal Unionist peers, Ulster captains of industry,
the Grand Master of the Belfast Orangemen, and an eminent Jesuit.[47] In
its reunion of men divided by bitter feuds, it was just the kind of
Conference that assembled in Durban in 1908, six years after a
devastating war, to discuss and to create the framework of South African
Union. That Conference was the natural outcome of the grant of Home Rule
to the defeated Boer States. The Irish Conference, succeeding a land-war
far more destructive and demoralizing, was brought together in spite of
the absence of Home Rule, and the prejudice it had to overcome,[48] is a
measure of the fantastically abnormal conditions produced by the denial
of self-government. There lay Ireland, an island with a rich soil and a
clever population, yet terribly backward, far behind England, far behind
all the progressive nations of Europe in agriculture and industry, her
population declining, her land passing out of cultivation,[49] her
strongest sons and daughters hurrying away to enrich with their wits and
sinews distant lands. There, in short, lay a country groaning for
intelligent development by the concentrated energies of her own people.
"We have in Ireland," runs the first paragraph of the Report of the
Committee, "a poor country practically without manufactures--except for
the linen and shipbuilding of the north, and the brewing and distilling
of Dublin--dependent upon agriculture, with its soil imperfectly tilled,
its area under cultivation decreasing, and a diminishing population
without industrial habits or technical skill."
The leeway to make up was enormous. To go no farther back than the
institution of the Penal Code and the deliberate destruction of the
woollen industry, two centuries of callous repression at the hands of an
external authority had maimed and exhausted the country whose condition
the Committee had met to consider. These facts the members of the
Committee frankly recognized in that part of the Report which is
entitled with gentle irony "Past Action of the State." Here, then, was a
purely Irish problem, intimately concerning every Irishman, poor or
rich, Roman Catholic or Protestant, a problem of which Great Britain,
though responsible both for its existence and its solution, knew and
cared little. The really strange thing is, not that representative
Irishmen should have met together to consider and prescribe for the
deplorable economic condition of their country, but that they should not
also, like the South African Conference, have drafted a Constitution for
Ireland, on the sound ground that a system of government which had
promoted and sustained the evils they described could never, with the
best will in the world, become a good government for Ireland. Yet for a
brief space of time these men actually had Home Rule, and by virtue of
that privilege they did better work for Ireland in six months than had
been done in two centuries.
What is more, they used the Home Rule principle in their recommendations
for the establishment of a Department of Agriculture and Technical
Instruction. "We think it essential," they reported on p. 101, "that the
new Department should be in touch with the public opinion of the classes
whom its work concerns, and should rely largely for its success upon
their active assistance and co-operation." Its chief, they added, should
be a Minister directly responsible to Parliament, and on p. 103 they
advocated a Consultative Council, whose functions should be--(1) To keep
the Department in direct touch with the public opinion of those classes
whom the work of the Ministry concerns; and (2) to distribute some of
the responsibility for administration amongst those classes. Now these,
in Ireland, were revolutionary proposals. The idea of any part of the
Government "being in touch with public opinion" was wholly new. The idea
of "distributing responsibility for administration" amongst the subjects
of administration was startlingly novel. Ireland, both before and after
the Union, had always been governed on a diametrically opposite
principle. Since the Union, when Irish departmental Ministers, never
responsible to the people, disappeared, not one of the host of nominated
Irish Boards was legally amenable to Irish public opinion. Not one had
a separate Minister responsible even to the Parliament at Westminster,
which was not an Irish Parliament. _A fortiori_, not one relied on the
co-operation and advice of the classes for whose benefit it was supposed
to exist.
Proposed, nevertheless, by a group of representative Irishmen, the
scheme for a democratically constituted Department of Agriculture passed
smoothly into law as soon as the machinery for ascertaining public
opinion on the matters at issue had been brought into existence. Mr.
Gerald Balfour, the Chief Secretary, was engaged at the time upon his
measure for the extension of Local Government to Ireland. This measure
became law in 1898, and the Department Act in 1899. Under that Act, the
duty was laid upon each of the new County Councils of electing two
members to serve upon a Consultative Council of Agriculture, to which a
minority of nominated members was added, and this Council in its turn
elects two-thirds of the members of an Agricultural Board, and supplies
four representatives to a Board of Technical Instruction, which, like
the Council and the Agricultural Board, has a predominantly popular
character.[50]
At the summit stands the Minister, or Vice-President, as he is called
(for in accordance with ancient custom, the Chief Secretary is nominally
in supreme control of this as of all other Irish Departments), and a
large and efficient staff of permanent officials. He and his staff have
a large centralized authority, but this authority is subject to a
constitutional check in the shape of a veto wielded by the Boards over
the expenditure of the Endowment Fund. What is more important, policy
tends to be shaped in accordance with popular views by the existence of
the Council and the Boards.
Here, then, is the germ of responsible government. At first sight a
critic might exclaim: "Why, here is democracy pushed to a point unknown
even in Great Britain, where Government Departments are wholly
independent of Local Councils." That is in a limited sense true, and it
is quite arguable that British Departments would be the better for an
infusion of local control. But we must not be misled by a false analogy.
Great Britain reaches the Irish ideal by other means. Her departmental
Ministers are directly responsible to a predominantly British House of
Commons where a hostile vote can at any moment eject them from
office.[51] There is no Irish Parliament, nor any kind of predominantly
Irish body which is vested with the same power. The Vice-President of
the Irish Department of Agriculture, an institution concerned
exclusively with Irish affairs, whether he sits in the House of Commons
or not (and for two years Mr. T.W. Russell had not a seat at
Westminster), could not be ejected from office even by a unanimous vote
of Irish Members of the House, with the moral backing of a unanimous
Irish people.[52] That is one of the anomalous results of the Union, and
it was a recognition, though rather a confused one, of this anomaly,
that inspired the ingenious compromise invented by the Recess Committee
for introducing an element of popular control. But what a light the
compromise throws on the anomaly which evoked it! Is it common sense to
make these elaborate arrangements for promoting an Irish Department on
an Irish popular basis while recoiling in terror from the prospect of
crowning them with a Minister responsible to ah Irish Parliament? The
consequence is that even in this solitary example of an Irish
Department under semi-popular control we see the subtle taint of Crown
Colony Government. Popular opinion, acting indirectly, first through the
Council and then through the Boards, can legally paralyze the Department
by declining to appropriate money in the way it prescribes, while
possessing no legal power to enforce a different policy or change the
personnel of administration. This is only an object-lesson. I hasten to
add that such a paralysis has never taken place, though some acrimonious
controversy, natural enough under the anomalous state of things, has
arisen over the office of Vice-President. There is now only one means by
which Irish opinion can, if it be so disposed, displace the holder of
the office, and that is a thoroughly unreliable and unhealthy means,
namely, through pressure brought to bear by one or other of the Irish
Parliamentary parties upon a newly elected British Ministry.[53] But why
in the world should the British party pendulum determine an important
Irish matter like this? Why, _a fortiori_, should it determine the
appointment to the office of Chief Secretary, the irresponsible Prime
Minister, or, rather the autocrat of Ireland? It is the _reductio ad
absurdum_ of the Union.
The Department commands a large measure of confidence. It would command
far greater confidence if it were responsible to an Irish Parliament;
but Irishmen are sensible enough to perceive that as long as the Union
lasts, everyone is interested in making the existing system work
smoothly and well. The general policy as laid down in the first
instance, by the first Vice-President, Sir Horace Plunkett, has been
sound and wise;[54] to proceed slowly, while building up a staff of
trained instructors, inspectors, organizers; to devote money and labour
mainly to education, both industrial and agricultural, and to evoke
self-reliance and initiative in the people by, so far as possible,
spending money locally only where a local contribution is raised and a
local scheme prepared. The last aim met with a fine response. Every
County Council in Ireland raises a rate, and has a scheme for
agricultural and technical instruction. I can only enumerate some of the
multifarious functions which the Department evolved for itself or took
over from various other unrelated Boards and concentrated under single
control. It gives instruction in agriculture and rural domestic economy
(horticulture, butter-making, bee-keeping, poultry-keeping, etc.)
through schools, colleges, or agricultural stations under its own
direction, through private schools for both sexes, and through an
extensive system of itinerant courses conducted (in 1909) by 128 trained
instructors. It gives premiums for the breeding of horses, cattle,
asses, poultry, swine. It conducts original research, it experiments in
crops, and, among other things, is slowly resuscitating the depressed
industry of flax-growing, and starting a wholly new industry in the
southern counties, that of early potatoes. It sprays potatoes,
prescribes for the diseases of trees, crops, and stock, advises on
manures and feeding-stuffs, teaches forestry, and gives scholarships at
various colleges for proficiency in agricultural science. On the side of
Technical Instruction it teaches and encourages all manner of small
industries, such as lace-making. It superintends all technical
instruction in secondary schools, and organizes and subsidizes similar
instruction in a multitude of different subjects under schemes prepared
by local authorities, while at the same time carrying on an important
and extensive system of training teachers. It also superintends
sea-fisheries and improves harbours.
The material results have been great; the moral results perhaps even
greater. Just as we should expect, wherever education goes, and wherever
men work together for economic improvement, unnatural antagonisms of
race and religion tend to disappear. This is not the result of any
direct influence wielded by the Department, which never finds it
necessary to lecture people on the duty of mutual tolerance; it is the
result of common sense and a small experience in Home Rule. High
officials of the Department have informed me that their work, for all
intents and purposes, is unhampered by local religious prejudices. A
spirit of keen and wholesome rivalry permeates the people. County and
Borough Committees in districts almost wholly Roman Catholic, with large
powers of patronage, almost invariably appoint the best men, regardless
of creed and local influence. Anyone who wishes to gain a glimpse of the
real Belfast of the present and the future, as distinguished from the
ugly, bigoted caricature of a great city which some even of its own
citizens perversely insist on displaying to their English friends, a
Belfast as tolerant and generous as it is energetic and progressive,
should visit the magnificent Municipal Technical Institute, where 6,000
boys and girls, Roman Catholic and Protestant, mix together on equal
terms, and derive the same benefit from an extraordinary variety of
educational courses in a building furnished with lecture-rooms,
laboratories, experimental plant, and gymnasia, of a perfection hardly
to be surpassed in any city of the United Kingdom.
Here is something grand and fruitful accomplished in eleven years, and
it is the outcome, be it remembered, of original, constructive thought
devoted by Irishmen to the needs of their own country.
Let us also remember that it represents the application of State-aid to
economic development. But with the utmost caution, and the utmost
efforts to elicit self-help, one may go too far in the direction of
State-aid, and even in this sphere it is by no means certain that
Ireland is free from danger. Let us pass to another movement whose
essence is self-help: I mean the movement for Agricultural Co-operation.
Here again Sir Horace Plunkett was the originator. Indeed, with him and
his able associates and advisers, of whom Lord Monteagle and Mr. R.A.
Anderson, the Secretary of the I.A.O.S., were the first, the twin aims
of self-help and State-aid were combined as they should be, in one big,
harmonious policy. Self-help must, indeed, they held, be antecedent to,
and preparatory for, State-aid. The position confronting them was that
half a million unorganized tenant farmers, for the most part cultivating
excessively small holdings, and just beginning to emerge after
generations of agrarian war from an economic serfdom, were face to face
with the competition of highly organized European countries, and of vast
and rapidly developing territories of North and South America. It was as
far back as 1889 that the first propaganda was begun, and in 1894, a
year before the Recess Committee met, the Irish Agricultural
Organization Society was formed. By unwearied pains and patience,
seemingly hopeless obstacles had been overcome, apathy, ignorance, and
often contemptuous opposition from men of both political parties. For,
with that ruinous pessimism always endemic in countries not politically
free, and exactly paralleled in the Canada described by the Durham
Report of 1839, extremists were inclined to suspect any movement which
drew recruits from both political camps. Nevertheless, the island is now
covered with a network of 886 co-operative societies, creameries,
agricultural societies (for selling implements, foodstuffs, etc.),
credit banks, poultry societies, and other miscellaneous organizations.
The total membership is nearly 100,000, the total turnover nearly two
and a half millions.[55] Nearly half the butter exported from Ireland is
made in the 392 co-operative creameries, and at the other end of the
scale extraordinarily valuable work is done by the 237 agricultural
credit banks, which supply small loans, averaging only L4 apiece, for
strictly productive purposes on a system of mutual credit.
Moral and material regeneration go together. The aim is to build up a
new rural civilization, to put life, heart, and hope into the monotony
of country life and unite all classes in the strong bonds of sympathy
and interest: a splendid ideal, applicable not to Ireland alone, but to
all countries, and Ireland may truly be said to be pointing the way to
many another country, Great Britain included.
The Co-operative movement attracts the most intelligent and progressive
elements of the rural population. Strictly non-political itself, it
unites creeds and parties. It is as strong in predominantly Roman
Catholic districts as in predominantly Protestant districts, strongest
of all in Catholic Wexford. Probably two-thirds or more of the
co-operators are Home Rulers, but that only accidentally reflects the
distribution of Irish parties. On the local committees political animus
is unknown. The governing body contains members, lay and clerical, of
all shades of opinion. Step into Plunkett House, that hospitable
headquarters of the Organization Society, and if you have been nurtured
in legends about inextinguishable class and creed antipathies, which are
supposed to render Home Rule impossible and the eternal "umpirage" of
Great Britain inevitable, you will soon learn to marvel that anyone can
be found to propagate them. Here, just because men are working together
in a practical, self-contained, home-ruled organization for the good of
the whole country, you will find liberality, open-mindedness,
brotherhood, and keen, intelligent patriotism from Ulsterman and
Southerners alike. The atmosphere is not political. But you will come
away with a sense of the absurdity, of the insolence, of saying that a
country which can produce and conduct fine movements like this is
_unfit_ for self-government. I should add a word about a new
organization which only came into being this year, and which also has
its home at Plunkett House, the United Irishwomen, whose aim, in their
own words, is to "unite Irishwomen for the social and economic advantage
of Ireland." "They intend to organize the women of all classes in every
rural district in Ireland for social service. These bodies will discuss,
and, if need be, take action upon any and every matter which concerns
the welfare of society in their several localities. So far as women's
knowledge and influence will avail, they will strive for a higher
standard of material comfort and physical well-being in the country
home, a more advanced agricultural economy, and a social existence a
little more in harmony with the intellect and temperament of our
people." Anyone who wants to understand something of the spirit of the
new self-reliant Ireland which is springing up to-day should read the
thrilling little pamphlet (I cannot describe it otherwise) from which I
quote these words, and which introduced the United Irish-women to the
world, with its preface by Father T.A. Finlay, and its essays by Mrs.
Ellice Pilkington, Sir Horace Plunkett, and Mr. George W. Russell,
better known as "AE," poet, painter, and Editor of the Co-operative
weekly, the _Irish Homestead_. Nor can I leave this part of my subject
without referring to that amazing little journal. No other newspaper in
the world that I know of bears upon it so deep an impress of genius.
There are no "politics," in the Irish sense, in it. It would be
impossible to infer from its pages how the Editor voted. What fascinates
the reader is the shrewd and witty analysis of Irish problems, the high
range of vision which exposes the shortcomings and reveals the
illimitable possibilities of a regenerated Ireland and the ceaseless and
implacable war waged by the Editor upon all pettiness, melancholy, and
pessimism.
What the Agricultural Organization Society is doing for agriculture the
Industrial Development Associations, formed only in quite recent years,
are doing, in a different way, for the encouragement of Irish
industries. The Associations of Belfast, Cork, and other cities work in
harmony, and meet in an annual All-Ireland Industrial Conference. Their
effort is to secure the concentration of Irish brains and capital on
Irish industrial questions, to promote the sale of Irish goods, both in
Ireland, Great Britain, and foreign countries, and to protect these
goods against piracy and illicit competition.[56] Here again
co-operation for Irish welfare brings together the creeds and races, and
tends to extinguish old bigotries and antipathies. Here again the truth
is recognized that Ireland is a distinct economic entity whose
conditions and needs demand special study from her citizens. In a
country of which that basal truth is recognized it would seem
inexplicable that Protestants and Catholics who meet in committee-rooms
and on platforms to promote, outside Parliament, the common interests of
Ireland, should not unite as one man to demand an Irish Legislature in
which to focus those interests and make them the subjects of direct
legislative enactment, free both from the paternal and the coercive
interference of a country differently situated, and absorbed in its own
affairs.
I pass from the agricultural and industrial movements to another
powerful factor in the reconstruction of Ireland, namely, the Gaelic
League, founded in 1893, whose success under the Presidency of Dr.
Douglas Hyde in reviving the old national language, culture, and
amusements, is attracting the attention of the world. Fortunately the
League encountered some ridicule at the outset and prospered
proportionately. Some of its work is not above criticism, but few
persons--and none who have the least knowledge of such intellectual
revivals elsewhere--now care to laugh at it. The League is non-political
and non-sectarian. Strange, is it not, that such a movement should have
to emphasize the fact? Strange paradox that in a country which is being
re-born into a consciousness of its own individuality, which is
regaining its own pride and self-respect, recovering its lost literature
and culture, and vibrating to that "iron string, Trust thyself," the
conflict for self-government, that elementary symbol of self-trust,
should still retain enough intestinal bitterness to compel men to label
national movements as non-political and non-sectarian! It would be idle,
of course, to pretend that this national movement, like all others in
Ireland, does not strengthen, especially among the younger generation,
which grows increasingly Nationalist, the sentiment for Home Rule. If it
did not, we should indeed be in the presence of something miraculously
abnormal.
Meanwhile the Celtic revival does visible good. The language is no
longer a fad; it is an envied accomplishment, a mark of distinction and
education. Wherever it goes, North and South, it obliterates race and
creed distinctions, and all the terrible memories associated with them.
There are Ulstermen of Saxon or Scottish stock in whom the fascination
of Irish art and literature has extirpated every trace of Orangeism and
all implied in it. The language revivifies traditions, as beautiful as
they are glorious, of an Ireland full of high passions and stormy
domestic feuds, but united in sentiment, breeding warriors, poets,
lawgivers, saints, and fertilizing Europe with her missionary genius.
However far those times are, however grim and pitiful the havoc wrought
by the race war, it is nevertheless a fact for thinkers and statesmen
to ponder over, not a phantasy to sneer at, that Celtic Ireland lives.
Anglicization has failed, not because Celts cannot appreciate the
noblest manifestations of English genius in art, letters, science, war,
colonization, but because to repress their own culture and nationality
is at the same time to repress their power of appreciation and
assimilation. Until comparatively recent times, it was only the worst of
English literature and music, the cheapest newspaper twaddle, the
inanest music-hall songs, which penetrated beyond a limited circle of
culture into the life of the country. The revolt against this
sterilizing and belittling side of anglicization is strong and healthy.
It affects all classes. Farmers, labourers, small tradesmen, who had
never conceived the idea of learning for learning's sake, and who had
grown up, thanks to the national system of education, in all but
complete ignorance of their own country's history and literature, spend
time on reading and study and in the practice of the old indigenous
dances and music, which was formerly wasted in idleness or dissipation.
Temperance and social harmony are irresistibly forwarded. Nor is it a
question of a few able men imposing their will on the many, or of an
artificial, State-aided process. Though the language has obtained a
footing in more than a third of the State schools and in the National
University,[57] the motive force behind it comes from the people
themselves. In the country district, with which I am best acquainted,
boys and girls from very poor families are clubbing together to pay
instructors in the Irish language and dances, and the same thing is
going on all over Ireland.
The brilliant modern school of poets and playwrights who, steeped in the
old Celtic thought and culture, have found for it such an exquisite
vehicle in the English tongue, speak for themselves and are winning
their own way to renown. The only criticism I venture to make is that
some of them are too much inclined to look backward instead of forward,
to idealize the far past rather than to illuminate the future, and to
delineate the deformities of national character produced by ages of
repression, rather than to aid in conjuring into being a virile, normal
nation.
The name of the last movement to be referred to sums up all the others,
Sinn Fein. Unlike the others, it had a purely political origin, and for
that reason, probably, never made the same progress. Yet the explanation
is simple. In pursuance of the general purpose of inspiring Irishmen to
rely on themselves for their own salvation, economic and spiritual, Sinn
Feiners, like John Mitchel and others in the past, and like the
Hungarian patriots, attacked, with much point and satire, the whole
policy of constitutional and Parliamentary agitation for Home Rule. The
policy, they said, had failed for half a century; it was not only
negative and barren, but positively harmful. Nationalists should refuse
to send Members to Westminster and abide by the consequences. Sensibly
enough, most Irishmen, while recognizing that there was an element of
indisputable and valuable truth in this bold diagnosis, decided that it
was premature to adopt the prescription. Public opinion in Britain was
slowly changing, and confidence existed that this opinion would be
finally converted. If the Sinn Fein alternative meant anything at all,
it meant complete separation, which Ireland does not want, and a final
abandonment of constitutional methods. If another Home Rule Bill were to
fail, Sinn Fein would undoubtedly redouble its strength. Its ideas are
sane and sound. They are at bottom exactly the ideas which actuate every
progressive and spirited community, and which in Ireland animate the
Industrial Development Associations, the Co-operative movement, the
thirst for technical instruction, the Gaelic League, the literary
revival, and the work of the only truly Irish organ of government, the
Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.
Now, where do we stand? Are the phenomena I have reviewed arguments for
Home Rule or against Home Rule? Do they tend to show that Ireland is
"fitter" now for Home Rule, or that she manages very well without Home
Rule? These are superfluous questions. They are never asked save of
countries obviously designed to govern themselves and obstinately denied
the right. Who would say now of Canada or Australia that they ought to
have solved their economic, agrarian, and religious problems and have
evolved an indigenous literature before they were declared fit for Home
Rule, or--still more unreasonable proposition--that their strenuous
efforts after self-help and internal harmony in the teeth of political
disabilities proved, in so far as they were successful, that external
government was a success?
Yet these questions were, as a fact, asked of the Colonies, as they are
asked of Ireland. And misgovernment increased, and passions rose, and
blood flowed, while, in the guise of dispassionate psychologists, a
great many narrow, egotistical, and bullying people at home propounded
these arid conundrums. Where is our common sense? The Irish phenomena I
have described arise in spite of the absence of Home Rule, and the
denial of Home Rule sets an absolute and final bar to progress beyond a
certain point.
That is certain; one cannot live in Ireland with one's eyes and ears
open without realizing it. All social and economic effort, successful as
it is up to a certain point, and strong as its tendency is to promote
nationalist feeling of the noblest kind, has to struggle desperately
against the benumbing influence of abstract "politics." Suspicion comes
from both sides. Both Unionists and Nationalists, for example, at one
time or another have looked askance on the Co-operative movement and on
the Department of Agriculture as being too Nationalist or too Unionist
in tendency. Unionists caused Sir Horace Plunkett to lose his seat in
Parliament in 1905; and Nationalists, though with some constitutional
justification, secured his removal from office in 1907. At this moment
there is friction and suspicion in this particular matter which seems to
the impartial observer to be artificial, and which would not exist, or
would be transmuted into something perfectly harmless, and probably
highly beneficial, were there any normal political life in Ireland and a
central organ of public opinion. As long as Great Britain insists, to
her own infinite inconvenience, upon deciding Irish questions by party
majorities fluctuating from Toryism to Radicalism, and thereby compels
Ireland to send parties to Westminster whose _raison d'etre_ is, not to
represent crystallized Irish opinion on Irish domestic questions--that
is at present wholly impossible--but to assert or deny the fundamental
right for Ireland to settle her own domestic questions, so long will
these dislocations continue, to the grave prejudice of Ireland and the
deep discredit of Great Britain. Ireland, like Canada in 1838, has no
organic national life. Apart from the abstract but paramount question of
Home Rule, there are no formed political principles or parties. Such
parties as there are have no relation to the economic life of the
country, and all interests suffer daily in consequence. In a normal
country you would find urban and agricultural interests distinctly
represented, but not in Ireland. We should expect to rind clear-cut
opinions on Tariff Reform and Free Trade. No such opinions exist. On the
other hand, agreement on important industrial and agricultural questions
finds not the smallest reflection in Parliamentary representation.
Education, and other latent issues of burning importance, are not
political issues. A Budget may cause almost universal dissatisfaction,
but it goes through, and the amazing thing is that Unionists complain of
its going through! Most of the Parliamentary elections are uncontested,
though everybody knows that a dozen questions would set up a salutary
ferment of opinion if they were not stifled by the refusal of Home Rule.
The Protestant tenant-farmers of Ulster have identical interests with
those of other Provinces, and have profited largely by the legislation
extorted by Nationalists; but for the most part, though by no means
wholly, they vote Unionist. The two great towns, Dublin and Belfast, are
divided by the most irrational antagonism. Labourers, both rural and
urban, have distinct and important interests; the rural labourers have
no spokesman, the town-labourers only one. It was admitted to me by a
Unionist organizer in Belfast that that city, but for the Home Rule
issue, would probably return four labour members. Nor have parties any
close relation to the distribution of wealth. In the matter of incomes
the prosperous traders of Cork, Limerick, and Waterford are in the same
case as regards taxation with those of Londonderry and Belfast.
Publicans are Unionists in England, Nationalists in Ireland, both in
Ulster and elsewhere. Before the Home Rule issue was raised, Ulster was
largely Liberal. Ulster Liberalism is almost dead. Extreme Socialism may
almost be said to be non-existent in Ireland, yet Ireland is not only
administered on semi-collectivist principles, but continually runs the
risk of being involved in legislation of a Socialistic kind, which,
rightly or wrongly, she heartily dislikes.
As for the landed aristocracy all over Ireland, their historic alliance
with the intensely democratic tenant-farmers of one small corner of
Ireland, North-East Ulster, against those of all the rest, presented
strange enough features in the past, and is now becoming artificial in
the highest degree. Thanks to Land Purchase, no landed aristocracy in
the world now has a better chance of throwing its wealth and
intelligence into public life for the good of the whole country, of
thinking out problems, of conciliating factions, and of ennobling public
life. The landlord who has sold his land is a free man, far freer than
the English landlord from misgivings caused by divergency of interest.
The opportunity is still there. Will they profit by it? One thing is
essential: they must become Nationalists, and in breathing that phrase,
one is conscious of all the misleading implications and the bitter
historical feuds it suggests. Yet a small but powerful group of
landlords is already leading the way. And the way, even before Home
Rule, in reality is so simple. I speak from close observation. If a man
is a good man, and worthy to represent a constituency, he has only to
declare his belief that he thinks that he and his own fellow-citizens
are fit to govern themselves. Irishmen, especially in Roman Catholic
districts, and, indeed, as an indirect result of Catholicism, have never
lost their belief in aristocracy. When a landlord, or any other
Protestant, comes forward as a Nationalist, he is welcomed. His
religion, whatever it may be, does not count. Parnell and Smith O'Brien
were Protestant landlords. Many of the most trusted popular leaders,
Tone, Robert Emmet, John Mitchel, Isaac Butt, and others in the past
have been Protestants. Ten Members of the present Nationalist party are
Protestants. The Home Rule issue would have lost some of its bitterness
if a Unionist electorate had ever elected a Catholic to Parliament.
Still, it is unfortunately true that the great bulk of the landlords and
ex-landlords stand aloof from the Home Rule movement. The collateral
result is that far too many of them instinctively stand aloof even from
those purely economic and intellectual movements which tend to make a
living united Ireland out of chaos. The national loss is heavy; the
waste of talent and of driving-power, for Ireland needs driving-power
from her leisured and cultured classes, is melancholy to contemplate.
Everywhere one sees waste of talent in Ireland. The land abounds in men
with ideas and potentialities waiting for those normal chances of
development which self-governed countries provide. Much of this good
material is crushed under unnatural political tyrannies caused by
ceaseless agitation for and against an abstract aim which should have
been satisfied long ago, so that the energies it absorbed might have
been diverted into practical channels. There is too much moral
cowardice, too little bold, independent thought and action. Nobody knows
what Ireland really is, and of what she is capable. Nobody can know
until she has responsibility for her own fate.
Local government, where popular opinion is nominally free, suffers from
the absence of free central government. Is it not on the face of it
preposterous to give complete powers of local taxation and
administration to a country while withholding from it, as unsafe and
improper, central co-ordinating control? For any country but Ireland--at
any rate, in the British self-governing Colonies and the United
States--such a policy would be regarded as crazy. Still more
unreasonable is it to complain that local authorities under such a
system spend part of the energy which should be devoted wholly to local
affairs in abstract politics. I forbear from engaging in the statistical
war over the numbers of Catholics and Protestants employed and elected
by local bodies. One must remember, what Unionists sometimes forget,
that Ireland is, broadly speaking, a Roman Catholic country, and that
until thirteen years ago local administration and patronage were almost
exclusively in Protestant hands. We should naturally expect a marked
change; but, with that reminder, I prefer to appeal to the reader's
common sense. Deny national Home Rule, and give local Home Rule. What
would one expect to happen? What would have happened in any Colony? What
would Mr. Arthur Balfour himself have prophesied with certainty in the
case of any other country but Ireland? Why, this, that each little local
body would become an outlet for suppressed agitation, and that national
or anti-national politics, not urgent local necessities, would enter
into local elections and influence the composition of local bodies. And
what would be the further consequence? That numbers of the best local
men would stand aloof or be rejected, and that favouritism would find a
congenial soil.
In point of fact, Irish local authorities, under the circumstances, are
wonderfully free from these evils, only another proof of the resilience
and vitality of the country under persistent mismanagement. On the whole
they bear comparison with British local authorities in thrift, purity,
and efficiency. None of them has ever yet had a scandal like that of
Poplar. All of them have shown sense and spirit in forwarding sanitation
and technical education. They vary widely, of course, the lowest units
in the scale being the least efficient, as in England. County Councils,
for example, are better than Rural District Councils. On the other hand,
Dublin Corporation, though not so bad as it is sometimes painted,
occasionally sets a very bad example. The standard of efficiency is
higher in the Protestant north than in the Catholic south, the standard
of religious toleration lower. But at bottom it is not a question of
theology, as every well-informed person knows, but a question of
politics. The same causes that keep the landed gentry out of Parliament
keep them, although not to the same degree, out of local politics.
Sometimes this is their own fault, for declining to take part in them;
for many of the Protestant upper class in Nationalist districts obtain
election in spite of being Unionists. Tolerance is slowly growing in
Nationalist, though not, it is to be feared, in Unionist, districts;
again a quite intelligible fact.[58] But when all is said and done, it
is an undeniable fact that Irish local authorities, especially those in
the poverty-stricken west, where all social activities are more
retrograde than elsewhere, are capable of great improvement, and that
improvement can come only by allowing them to concentrate on local
affairs, and obtain the co-operation of all classes and religions. The
very existence of a central Government of which Irishmen were proud
would influence the tone and standard of all minor authorities to the
bottom of the scale.
Meanwhile, obvious and urgent problems, which no Parliament but an Irish
Parliament can deal with, cry aloud for settlement. The Poor Law,
railways, arterial drainage, afforestation, are questions which I need
only refer to by name, confining myself to the greater issues.
Education, primary and intermediate, is perhaps the greatest. The
present system is almost universally condemned, and its bad results are
recognized. It has got to be reformed. By no possibility can it be
reformed so long as the Union lasts, not only because the Boards,
National and Intermediate, which control education, are composed of
unelected amateurs, but because there is no means of finding out what
the national opinion is as to the course reform is to take. Meanwhile
the children and the country suffer. The Intermediate Board is a purely
examining and prize-giving body, and its system by general agreement is
imperfect. In the National or Primary schools the percentage of average
daily attendance (71.1 per cent.), though slowly improving, is still
very bad.[59] Many of the school-houses are, in the words of the
Commissioners, "mere hovels," unsanitary, leaky, ill-ventilated. The
distribution of schools and funds is chaotic and wasteful. Out of 8,401
schools (in 1909-10)[60] nearly two hundred have an average daily
attendance of less than fifteen pupils. In 1730 the number is less than
thirty, and it is not only in sparsely inhabited country districts, but
in big towns, that the distribution is bad. The power of the
Commissioners to stop the creation of unduly small schools, and even
semi-bogus establishments which come into being in the great cities, is
imperfect. Another example of the curious mixture of anarchy and
despotism that the system of Irish government presents may be seen in
the Annual Report of the Commissioners. With a mutinous audacity which
would be laughable, if the case were one for laughing, the Commissioners
openly rail at the Treasury for the parsimony of its grants, and, in
order to stir its compassion, paint the condition of Irish education in
black colours. Imagine the various Departmental Ministers in Great
Britain publicly attacking in their Annual Reports the Cabinet of which
they were members! The Treasury, needless to say, is not to blame. It
pays out of the common Imperial purse all but a negligible fraction of
the cost of primary education in Ireland. Nothing is raised by rates,
and only L141,096 (in 1909-10) from voluntary and local sources, as
compared with L1,688,547 from State grants. The Treasury has no
guarantee that this money is well spent; on the contrary, it knows from
the Reports of the Commissioners themselves that a great deal of it is
very badly spent. The business is a comic opera, but it has a tragic
significance for Ireland. Primary education is so bad that a great
number of the pupils are absolutely unfit to receive the expensive and
excellent technical instruction organized by the Department of
Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and contributed to by the
ratepayers. The Belfast Technical Institute, for example, has to go
outside its proper functions, and spend from its too small stock in
providing introductory courses in elementary subjects, so as to equip
children for the reception of higher knowledge.[61] All over the country
the complaint is the same. No machinery whatever exists for
co-ordinating primary, secondary, technical, and University education,
and opportioning funds in an economical and profitable manner.
Religion is the immediate cause of the trouble; absence of popular
control the fundamental cause. The national system of primary education,
designed originally in 1831 to be undenominational, has become rigidly
denominational. Out of 8,401 primary schools, 2,461 only are attended by
both Protestants and Roman Catholics. The rest are of an exclusively
sectarian character. Even the Protestants do not combine. The Church of
Ireland, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and other smaller
denominations, frequently have small separate schools in the same
parish. The management (save in the model schools, which are attended
only by Protestants) is exclusively sectarian, the local clergyman,
Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland, or Nonconformist having almost
autocratic control over the school.
This education question has got to be thrashed out by a Home Ruled
Ireland, and the sooner the better. After Home Rule the Treasury grant
will stop, and Ireland will have to raise and apportion the funds
herself, and set her house in order. At whatever sacrifice of religious
scruples, and, it is needless to add that to the Roman Catholic
hierarchy the sacrifice will be the greatest, the Irish people must
control and finance its schools, whether through a central department
alone, or through local authorities as well. There is no reason in the
world why a compromise should not be arrived at which would secure
vastly increased efficiency and leave the teaching of denominational
religion uninjured. Other countries, where the same religions exist side
by side, have attained that compromise. Ireland will be judged by her
success in attaining it.
Another important question is the treatment of the Congested Districts.
More than a third of Ireland is now under the benevolent jurisdiction of
a despotic Board.[62] So long as its funds are raised from general
Imperial taxation, the inevitable tendency is to shirk the thorough
discussion of this grave subject, to lay the responsibility on Great
Britain, to acquiesce in a policy of extreme paternalism, and to appeal
for higher and higher doles from the Treasury. This cannot go on.
Whoever, in the eyes of Divine Justice, was originally responsible for
the condition of the submerged west, and for the ruin of the evicted
tenants, Ireland, if she wants Home Rule, must shoulder the
responsibility herself, and think out the whole question independently.
The Congested Districts Board has done, and continues to do, good work
in the purchase and resettlement of estates; but even in this sphere
there are wide differences of opinion as to the proper methods and
policy to be employed, especially with regard to the division of
grasslands and the migration of landless men. Its other remedial work
(part of which is now taken over by the Department of Agriculture under
the Land Act of 1909), in encouraging fisheries, industries, and farm
improvements out of State money, is open to criticism on the ground of
its tendency to pauperize and weaken character. I do not care to
pronounce on the controversy, though I think that there is much to be
said for the view that money is best spent by encouraging agricultural
co-operation. Many able and distinguished men have devoted their minds
to the subject, but it is plain that Ireland as a whole has not thought,
and cannot think, the matter out in a responsible spirit, and that the
only way of reaching a truly Irish decision is through an Irish
Parliament, which both raises and votes money for the purpose.[63] The
reinstatement of evicted tenants teems with practical difficulties which
can only be solved in the same way. As long as Great Britain remains
responsible, errors are liable to be made which one day may be deeply
regretted.
The same observation applies to all future land legislation, not
excepting Land Purchase, which I deal with fully in a later chapter.[64]
That great department of administration must, for financial reasons, be
worked in harmonious consultation with the British Government; but it
ought to be controlled by Ireland, and a free and normal outlet given to
criticisms like those emanating from Mr. William O'Brien, whatever the
intrinsic value of these criticisms. Purchase itself settles nothing
beyond the bare ownership of the land. It leaves the distribution and
use of the land, except in the "resettled" districts, where it was, with
a third or a quarter of the holdings so small as to be classed as
"uneconomic." Ireland is not as yet awake to the possibilities of the
silent revolution proceeding from the erection of a small peasant
proprietorship. The sense of responsibility in these new proprietors
will be quickened and the interests of the whole country forwarded by a
National Parliament.
Temperance will never be tackled thoroughly but by an Irish Parliament.
All Irishmen are ashamed in their hearts of the encouragement given to
drunkenness by the still grossly excessive number of licensed houses,
which in 1909 was 22,591, and of the National Drink Bill, which in the
same year was L13,310,469,[65] or L3 11d. per head of a population not
rich in this world's goods. Temperance is not really a party or a
sectarian question. All the Churches make noble efforts to forward
reform, and in a rationally governed Ireland reform would be considered
on its merits. At present it is inextricably mixed up with Nationalist
and anti-Nationalist politics, and with irrelevant questions of Imperial
taxation.
The latest examples of the embarrassment into which Ireland without Home
Rule is liable to drift from the absence of a formed public opinion and
the means to give it effect, are the labour troubles and the National
Insurance scheme. There are signs that English labour is thrusting
forward Irish labour in advance of its own will and in advance of
general Irish opinion. In all labour questions Ireland's position as an
agricultural country is totally different from that of Great Britain.
The same legislation cannot be applicable to both. Ireland should frame
her own. Under present conditions it is impossible to know the
considered judgment of Ireland. There is certainly much opposition to
Insurance, and if all Irishmen thoroughly realized that the scheme might
complicate the finance of Home Rule and involve a greater financial
dependence on Great Britain than exists even at present, they would
study it with still more critical eyes,[66] as they would certainly have
studied the Old Age Pensions scheme with more critical eyes.
Here I am led naturally to the great and all-embracing questions of
Irish finance and expenditure, which lie behind all the topics already
discussed and many others. The subject is far too important and
interwoven with history to be dealt with otherwise than as an historical
whole, and that course I propose to take in a later part of the book. It
is enough to say that all the arguments for Home Rule are summed up in
the fiscal argument. Every Irishman worth his salt ought to be ashamed
and indignant at the present position.
The whole machinery of Irish Government, and the whole fiscal system
under which Ireland lives, need to be thoroughly overhauled by Irishmen
in their own interests, and in the interests of Great Britain. Among
many other writers, Mr. Barry O'Brien, in his "Dublin Castle and the
Irish People," Lord Dunraven in "The Outlook in Ireland," and Mr. G.F.H.
Berkeley in a paper contributed to "Home Rule Problems," have lucidly
and wittily described the wonderful collection of sixty-seven
irresponsible and unrelated Boards nominated by the Chief Secretary, or
Lord-Lieutenant, which, with the official services beneath them,
constitute the colonial bureaucracy of Ireland; the extravagance of the
judicial and other salaries, and the total lack of any central control
worthy of the name. By omitting a number of insignificant little
bureaux, the figure 67, according to Mr. Berkeley's classification, may
be reduced to 42, of which 26 are directly under Castle influence, and
the rest either branches of British Departments or directly under the
Treasury. In 1906, out of 1,611 principal official posts, 626 were
obtained purely by nomination, and 766 by a qualifying examination only.
In an able-bodied male population, which we may estimate at a million,
there are reckoned to be about 60,000 persons employed by the State, or
1 in 18. If we add 180,000 Old Age Pensioners, we reach the figure of
nearly a quarter of a million persons, out of a total population of
under four and a half millions, dependent wholly or partially for their
living on the State, exclusive of Army and Navy pensioners; again about
1 in 18. Four millions of money are paid in salaries or pensions to
State employees, and two and three-quarter millions to Old Age
Pensioners.
It is so easy to make fun about Irish administration that one has to be
cautious not to mistake the nature or exaggerate the dimensions of the
evil. The great defect is that the expenditure is not controlled by
Ireland and has no relation to the revenue derived from Ireland. The
Castle is not the odious institution that it was in the dark days of the
land war; but it is still a foreign, not an Irish institution, working,
like the Government of the most dependent of Crown Colonies, in a world
of its own, with autocratic powers, and immunity from all popular
influence. Beyond the criticism that one religious denomination, the
Church of Ireland, is rather unduly favoured in patronage, there is no
personal complaint against the officials. They are as able, kindly,
hard-working, and courteous as any other officials. Some of the
principal posts are held by men of the highest distinction, who will be
as necessary to the new Government as to the old. It is absolutely
essential, but it will not be easy, to make substantial administrative
economies at the outset, not only from the additional stress of novel
work which will be thrown upon a Home Rule Government, but from the
widespread claims of vested interests. It will require courageous
statesmanship, backed by courageous public opinion, to overhaul a
bureaucracy so old and extensive. Take the police, for example, the
first and most urgent subject for reduction. Adding the Royal Irish
Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police together, we have a
force of no less than 12,000 officers and men, a force twice as numerous
in proportion to population as those of England and Wales, and costing
the huge sum of a million and a half; and this in a country which now is
unusually free from crime, and which at all times has been naturally
less disposed to crime than any part of Great Britain. It is the
forcible maintenance of bad economic conditions that has produced Irish
crime in the past. Irishmen hotly resent that symbol of coercion, the
swollen police force, which is as far removed from their own control as
a foreign army of occupation. On the other hand, the force itself is
composed of Irishmen, and is a considerable, though an unhealthy,
economic factor in the life of the country. It performs some minor
official duties outside the domain of justice; it is efficient, and its
individual members are not unpopular. Reduction will be difficult. But
drastic reduction, at least by a half, must eventually be brought about
if Ireland is to hold up her head in the face of the world.
The difficulty will extend through all the ramifications of public
expenditure. Ireland, through no fault of her own, against her
persistent protests, has been retained in a position which is
destructive to thrifty instincts. A rain of officials has produced an
unhealthy thirst for the profits of officialdom. No one feels
responsibility for the money spent for national purposes, because no one
in Ireland _is_, in any real sense, responsible. There is no Irish
Budget or Irish Exchequer to make a separate Irish Government logically
defensible. The people are heavily taxed, but, rightly, they do not
connect their taxes with the expenditure going on around them. On the
contrary, their mental habit is to look to Great Britain as the source
of grants, salaries, pensions.
And the worst of it is that they are now at the point of being
financially dependent on Great Britain. After more than a century of
Union finance, after contributing, all told, over three hundred and
twenty millions of money to the Imperial purse over and above
expenditure in Ireland, they have now ceased to contribute a penny, and
are a little in debt. As we shall see, when I come to a closer
examination of finance, the main factor in producing this result has
been the Old Age Pensions. The application of the British scale,
unmodified, to Ireland is the kind of blunder which the Union
encourages. Ireland, where wages and the standard of living are far
lower than in England, does not need pensions on so high a scale, and
already suffers too much from benevolent paternalism. It was an
unavoidable blunder, given a joint financial system, but it has gravely
compromised Home Rule finance.
For acquiescing in this and similar grants, beyond the ascertained
taxable resources of the country; for the general deficiency of public
spirit and matured public opinion in Ireland; for the backwardness of
education, temperance legislation, and other important reforms, the
Irish Parliamentary parties cannot be held responsible. They are
abnormal in their composition and aims, and, beyond a certain limited
point, they are powerless, even if they had the will, to promote Irish
policies. That is the pernicious result of an unsatisfied claim for
self-government. It is the same everywhere else. While an agitation for
self-government lasts, a country is stagnant, retrograde, or, like
Ireland, progressive only by dint of extraordinary native exertions.
Read the Durham report on the condition of the Canadas during the long
agitation for Home Rule, and you will recognize the same state of
things. The leaders of the agitation have to concentrate on the abstract
and primary claim for Home Rule, and are reluctant to dissipate their
energies on minor ends. Yet they, too, are liable to irrational and
painful divisions, like that which divides Mr. O'Brien from Mr. Redmond;
symptoms of irritation in the body politic, not of political sanity.
They cannot prove their powers of constructive statesmanship, because
they are not given the power to construct or the responsibility which
evokes statesmanship. The anti-Home Rule partisans degenerate into
violent but equally sincere upholders of a pure negation.
Many of the able men who belong to both the Irish parties will, it is
to be hoped, soon be finding a far more fruitful and practical field for
their abilities in a free Ireland. But the parties, as such, will
disappear, on condition that the measure of Home Rule given to Ireland
is adequate. On that point I shall have more to say later. If it is
adequate, and Irish politicians are absorbed in vital Irish politics,
the structure of the existing parties falls to pieces, to the immense
advantage both of Ireland--including the Protestant sections of
Ulster--and of Great Britain. At present both parties, divided normally
by a gulf of sentiment, do combine for certain limited purposes of Irish
legislation, but both are, in different degrees and ways, sterile. The
policy of the Nationalist party has been positive in the past, because
it wrung from Parliament the land legislation which saved a perishing
society. It is essentially positive still in that it seeks Home Rule,
which is the condition precedent to practical politics in Ireland. More,
the party is independent, in a sense which can be applied to no other
party in the United Kingdom. Its Members accept no offices or titles,
the ordinary prizes of political life. But they themselves could not
contend that they are truly representative of three-quarters of Ireland
in any other sense than that they are Home Rulers. Half of the wit,
brains, and eloquence of their best men runs to waste. Some of them are
merely nominated by the party machine, to represent, not local needs,
but a paramount principle which the electors insist rightly on setting
above immediate local needs.
The purpose of the Irish Unionist party in the Commons is purely
negative, to defeat Home Rule. It does not represent North-East Ulster,
or any other fragment of Ireland, in any sense but that. It is
passionately sentimental and absolutely unrepresentative of the
practical, virile genius of Ulster industry. The Irish Unionist peers,
in addition to voicing the same negative, are for the most part the
spokesmen of a small minority of Irishmen in whom the long habit of
upholding landlord interests has begun to outlive the need.
I have said little directly about the problem of modern Ulster, not
because I underrate its importance, which is very great, but because I
have some hope that my arguments up to this point may be perceived to
have a strong, though indirect, bearing upon it.[67] The religious
question I leave to others, with only these few observations. It is
impossible to make out a historical case for the religious intolerance
of Roman Catholics in Ireland, or a practical case for the likelihood of
a Roman Catholic tyranny in the future. No attempt which can be
described as even plausible has ever been made in either direction. The
late Mr. Lecky, a Unionist historian, and one of the most eminent
thinkers and writers of our time, has nobly vindicated Catholic Ireland,
banishing both the theory and the fear into the domain of myth.[68]
He has shown, what, indeed, nobody denies, that, from the measures which
provoked the Rebellion of 1641, through the Penal Code, to the middle of
the nineteenth century, intolerance, inspired by supposed political
necessities, and of a ferocity almost unequalled in history, came from
the Protestant colonists. In that brilliant little essay of his
Nationalist youth, "Clerical Influences" (1861), he described the
sectarian animosity which was raging at that period as "the direct and
inevitable consequence of the Union," and wrote as follows: "Much has
been said of the terrific force with which it would rage were the Irish
Parliament restored. We maintain, on the other hand, that no truth is
more clearly stamped upon the page of history, and more distinctly
deducible from the constitution of the human mind, than that a national
feeling is the only check to sectarian passions." He was himself an
anti-Catholic extremist in the sense of holding (with many others) that
"the logical consequences of the doctrines of the Church of Rome would
be fatal to an independent and patriotic policy in any land." But he
insists in the same passage "that nothing is more clear than that in
every land where a healthy national feeling exists, Roman Catholic
politicians are both independent and patriotic."
He never recanted these opinions (which are confirmed by the subsequent
course of events) even after his conversion to Unionism, but derived his
opposition to Home Rule from a dread of all democratic tendencies,[69]
the only ground on which, if men would be willing to confess the naked
truth, it can be opposed. There the matter ought to rest. If the
doctrines of the Church of Rome are, in fact, inconsistent with
political freedom--I myself pronounce no opinion on that point--it is
plain to the most superficial observer that the Church, as a factor in
politics, stands to lose rather than to gain by Home Rule. British
statesmen have often accepted that view, and have endeavoured to use the
Roman Catholic hierarchy against popular movements, just as they
enlisted its influence to secure the Union. The Roman Catholic laity
have often subsequently rejected what they have considered to be undue
political dictation from the seat of authority in Rome.
If I may venture an opinion, I believe that both of these mutually
irreconcilable propositions--that Home Rule means Rome Rule, and that
Rome is the enemy to Home Rule--are wrong.[70] Such ludicrous
contradictions only help to destroy the case against trusting a free
Ireland to give religion its legitimate, and no more than legitimate,
position in the State. Ireland is intensely religious, and it would be a
disaster of the first magnitude if the Roman Catholic masses were to
lose faith in their Church. The preservation of that faith depends on
the political Liberalism of the Church.
Corresponding tolerance will be demanded of Ulster Protestants. At
present passion, not reason, governs the religious side of their
opposition to Home Rule. It is futile to criticize Ulster Unionists for
making the religious argument the spear-head of their attack on Home
Rule. The argument is one which especially appeals to portions of the
British electorate, and the rules of political warfare permit free use
of it. It was pushed beyond the legitimate point, to actual violence, in
the Orange opposition to responsible government in Canada in 1849. And
it has more than once inflamed and embittered Australian politics, as it
inflames the politics of certain English constituencies. But it is
hardly to be conceived that Ulster Unionists really fear Roman Catholic
tyranny. The fear is unmanly and unworthy of them. To anyone who has
lived in an overwhelmingly Catholic district, and seen the complete
tranquillity and safety in which Protestants exercise their religion, it
seems painfully abnormal that a great city like Belfast, with a
population more than two-thirds Protestant, should become hysterical
over Catholic tyranny. It would be physically impossible to enforce any
tyrannical law in Ulster or anywhere else, even if such a law were
proposed, and many leading Protestants from all parts of Ireland have
stated publicly that they have no fear of any such result from Home
Rule.[71]
"Loyalty" to the Crown is a false issue. Disloyalty to the Crown is a
negligible factor in all parts of Ireland. Loyalty or disloyalty to a
certain political system is the real matter at issue. At the present day
the really serious objections to Home Rule on the part of the leading
Ulster Unionists seem to be economic. They have built up thriving trades
under the Union. They have the closest business connections with Great
Britain, and a mutual fabric of credit. They cherish sincere and
profound apprehensions that their business prosperity will suffer by any
change in the form of government. To scoff at these apprehensions is
absurd and impolitic in the last degree. But to reason against them is
also an almost fruitless labour. Those who feel them vaguely picture an
Irish Parliament composed of Home Rulers and Unionists, in the same
proportion to population as at present, and divided by the same bitter
and demoralizing feuds. But there will be no Home Rulers after Home
Rule, that is to say, if the Home Rule conceded is sufficient. I believe
that Ulster Unionists do not realize either the beneficent
transformation which will follow a change from sentimental to practical
politics in Ireland, as it has followed a similar change in every other
country in the Empire, or the enormous weight which their own fine
qualities and strong economic position will give them in the settlement
of Irish questions.
Nor do they realize, I venture to think, that any Irish Government,
however composed, will be a patriotic Government pledged and compelled
for its own credit and safety to do its best for the interests of
Ireland. I have never met an Irishman who was not proud of the northern
industries, and it is obvious that the industrial prosperity of the
north is vital to the fiscal and general interests of Ireland, just as
the far more wealthy mining interests of the Rand are vital to the
stability and prosperity of the Transvaal, and were regarded as such and
treated as such by the farmer majority of the Transvaal after the grant
of Home Rule. Those interests have prospered amazingly since, and in
that country, be it remembered, volunteer British corps raised on the
Rand had been the toughest of all the British foes which the peasant
commandos had to meet in a war ended only four years before.
If the fears of Ulster took any concrete form, it would be easier to
combat them; but they are unformulated, nebulous. Meanwhile, it is hard
to imagine what measure of oppression could possibly be invented by the
most malignant Irish Government which would not recoil like a boomerang
upon those in whose supposed interests it was framed. I shall have to
deal with this point again in discussing taxation, and need here only
remind the reader that Ulster is not a Province, any part of which could
possibly be injured by any form of taxation which did not hit other
Provinces equally.
It is the belief of Ulster Unionists that their prosperity depends on
the maintenance of the Union, but the belief rests on no sound
foundation. Rural emigration from Ulster, even from the Protestant
parts, has been as great as from the rest of Ireland.[72] It is easy to
point to a fall in stocks when the Home Rule issue is uppermost, but
such phenomena occur in the case of big changes of government in any
country. They merely reflect the fact that certain moneyed interests do,
in fact, fear a change of government, and whether those fears are
irrational or not, the effect is the same. It is an historical fact, on
the other hand, that political freedom in a white country, in the long
run invariably promotes industrial expansion and financial confidence.
Canada is one remarkable example, Australia is another. The Balkan
States are others. Not that I wish to push the colonial example to
extremes. Vast undeveloped territories impair the analogy to Ireland;
but it is none the less true that when a country with a separate
economic life of its own obtains rulers of its own choice, and gains a
national pride and responsibility, it goes ahead, not backward.
Intense, indeed, must be the racial prejudice which can cause Ulstermen
to forget the only really glorious memories of their past. Orange
memories are stirring, but they are not glorious beside the traditions
of the Volunteers. The Orange flag is the symbol of conquest,
confiscation, racial and religious ascendancy. It is not noble for
Irishmen to celebrate annually a battle in which Ireland was defeated,
or to taunt their Catholic compatriots with agrarian lawlessness to
which their own forefathers were forced to resort, in order to obtain a
privileged immunity from the same scandalous land laws. Ulstermen
reached spiritual greatness when, like true patriots, they stood for
tolerance, Parliamentary reform, and the unity of Ireland. They fell,
surely, when they consented to style themselves a "garrison" under the
shelter of an absentee Parliament, which, through the enslavement and
degradation of the old Irish Parliament, had driven tens of thousands of
their own race into exile and rebellion.
They cherish the Imperial tradition, but let them love its sublime and
reject its ignoble side. It is sublime where it stands for liberty;
ignoble--and none knew this better than the Ulster-American
rebels--where it stands for government based on the dissensions of the
governed.
The verdict of history is that for men in the position of the Ulster
Unionists, the path of honour and patriotism, and the path of true
self-interest, lies in co-operation with their fellow-citizens for the
attainment of political freedom under the Crown. It is not as if they
had to create a tradition. The tradition lives.
FOOTNOTES:
[42] See pp. 13-17 and 66-71.
[43] Dealt with fully in Chapter XIV.
[44] In 1910-11, L2,408,000 (Treasury Return No. 220, 1911); plus
L225,000 estimated increase owing to removal of Poor Law
disqualification (Answer to Question in House of Commons, February 15,
1911).
[45] See p. 101.
[46] See particularly "Ireland in the New Century," Sir Horace Plunkett;
"Contemporary Ireland," E. Paul-Dubois; "The New Ireland," Sydney
Brooks.
[47] "Report of the Recess Committee," New Edition (Fisher Unwin).
[48] Colonel Saunderson, for example, the leader of the Irish Unionists
in the Commons, refused publicly to be a member of a committee on which
Mr. Redmond sat. Mr. John Redmond himself wrote that he could not take a
very sanguine view of the Conference, but that he was "unwilling to take
the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful
legislation in Ireland."
[49] Area under cultivation in 1875, 5,332,813 acres; in 1894, 4,931,011
acres (in 1899, 4,627,545 acres; in 1900, on a system of classification
dividing arable land more accurately from pasture, there were only
3,100,397 acres arable, and in 1905 the figures were 2,999,082 acres)
(Official Returns). Population in 1841, 8,175,124; in 1851, 6,552,385;
in 1861, 5,798,976; in 1871, 5,412,377; in 1881, 5,174,836; in 1891,
4,704,750; in 1892, 4,633,808; in 1893, 4,607,462; in 1894, 4,589,260;
in 1895, 4,559,936 (in 1901, 4,458,775; in 1905, 4,391,543).--Census
Returns and _Thoms' Directory_.
[50] _Council of Agriculture_: 68 members elected by County Councils; 84
appointed by the Department from the various provinces. Total 102.
_Board of Agriculture_: 8 members elected by Council of Agriculture; 4
appointed by the Department. Total 12.
_Board of Technical Instruction_: 10 members appointed by County
Boroughs; 4 elected by Council of Agriculture; 6 appointed by the
various Government Departments; 1 by a joint Committee of Dublin
District Councils. Total 21.
[51] I am not forgetting Scotland. Her few local departments are
theoretically, but not practically, at the mercy of English votes and
influence. Scotch opinion, broadly speaking, governs Scotch affairs.
Precisely to the extent to which it does not so govern them, is a demand
for Home Rule likely to grow.
[52] Even the Recess Committee (and we cannot wonder) but dimly grasped
the constitutional position when they laid stress on the necessity for
an Agricultural Minister "directly responsible to Parliament."
Logically, they should have first recommended the establishment of an
Irish Parliament to which the Minister should be responsible. To make
him responsible to the House of Commons was absurd; and a Departmental
Committee of 1907 has, in fact, recommended that the Vice-President
should not have a seat in Parliament, but should remain in his proper
place, Ireland. Meanwhile, the original mistake has caused friction and
controversy. Soon after the Liberal Ministry took office in 1906, Sir
Horace Plunkett, the first Vice-President, as a Unionist, was replaced
by Mr. T.W. Russell, a Home Ruler. On the assumption that such an Office
was Parliamentary, its holder standing or falling with the British
Ministry of the day, the step was quite justifiable, and even necessary.
On the opposite assumption, confirmed by the Departmental Committee, the
step was unjustifiable, that is, on the theory of the Union. An Irish
Parliament alone should have the power of displacing Irish Ministers.
[53] See footnote, p. 159.
[54] "Organization and Policy of the Department," Official Pamphlet.
[55]
STATISTICS OF THE IRISH AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT TO DECEMBER
31, 1909, WITH NUMBER OF SOCIETIES IN EXISTENCE ON DECEMBER 31, 1910
(SUPPLIED BY THE I.A.O.S.):
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Description. |Number of |Membership.|Paid-up |Loan |Turnover.
|Societies. | |Shares. |Capital. |
|-----------| | | |
|1910.|1909.| | | |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Creameries | 392 | 380 | 44,213 | 138,354 | 111,365 | 1,841,400
Agricultural | 169 | 155 | 16,050 | 6,253 | 40,326 | 112,222
Credit | 237 | 234 | 18,422 | -- | 56,469 | 57,641
Poultry | 18 | 18 | 6,152 | 2,292 | 4,026 | 64,342
Industries | 21 | 21 | 1,375 | 1,267 | 1,450 | 7,666
Miscellaneous| 37 | 15 | 4,633 | 15,015 | 2,864 | 48,987
Flax | 9 | 9 | 589 | 482 | 5,796 | 2,286
Federations | 3 | 3 | 227 | 6,753 | 6,360 | 259,925
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| 886 | 835 | 91,661 | 170,416 | 228,656 | 2,394,469
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[56] An Irish Trademark has been secured, and has proved of great value
"Irish Weeks," for the furtherance of the sale of Irish products, are
held. The organ of the Association is the _Irish Industrial Journal_,
published weekly in Dublin.
[57] On December 31, 1909, Irish was taught as an "extra subject" in
3,006 primary schools out of 8,401, and in 161 schools in Irish-speaking
districts in the West a bi-lingual programme of instruction was in force
(Report of Committee of National Education, 1910). Forty-six thousand
pupils passed the test of the inspectors. Irish in 1910 was made a
compulsory subject for matriculation at the National University.
[58] The election by Nationalist votes of Lord Ashtown, a militant
Unionist peer of the most uncompromising type, in the spring of 1911 to
one of the Galway District Councils is a good recent example of this
tendency.
[59] Permissive powers exist for County Councils to enforce compulsory
attendance.
[60] Including 342 convent, 54 monastery, 125 workhouse, and 71 model
schools.
[61] See "Prospectus of the Municipal Technical Institute, Belfast,"
1910-11, pp. 55 and 57-58. Reading, Grammar, and Simple Arithmetic are
taught.
[62] See Report of the Congested Districts Board, 1909-11.
[63] See Report of Royal Commission on Congestion in Ireland (Cd. 4097);
especially a Memorandum by Sir Horace Plunkett, published as a separate
pamphlet by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.
[64] See Chapter XIV.
[65] Annual Report (1910) of the "Irish Association for the Prevention
of Intemperance." The estimate is that of Dr. Dawson Burns. By the
Licensing (Ireland) Act of 1902, the issue of any new licenses was
prohibited.
[66] I write before the scheme has been fully discussed in Parliament.
[67] It is scarcely necessary for me to remind the reader that the word
"Ulster," as used in current political dialectics, is misleading. Part
of Ulster is overwhelmingly Catholic; in part the population is divided
between the two creeds, and in two counties it is overwhelmingly
Protestant. In the whole province the Protestants are in a majority of
150,000, but since a number of Protestants vote Nationalist, the
representation of the province is almost equal, the Unionists holding
seventeen seats out of thirty-three.
[68] "Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," "Leaders of Public Opinion in
Ireland," "Clerical Influences."
[69] See "Democracy and Liberty."
[70] Many Unionists are to be found in the same breath prophesying
Catholic tyranny under Home Rule and averring without any evidence that
clerical influence caused the repudiation in 1907 of the Council Bill,
because it placed education under a semi-popular body.
[71] "Religious Intolerance under Home Rule: Some Opinions of Leading
Irish Protestants," pamphlet (1911) compiled by J. McVeagh, M.P.
[72] The Census of 1911 shows that the population of Ireland is still
falling. The province of Leinster, mainly Catholic, alone shows a small
increase, derived from the counties of Dublin (including Dublin City)
and Kildare. In Ulster, Down and Antrim, which include the city of
Belfast, alone show an increase, but not so great as that of County
Dublin.
CHAPTER X
THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE
I.
THE ELEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM.
It was not only to support the principle of Home Rule for Ireland that I
followed in some detail the growth of the Liberal principle of
government as applied to outlying portions of the British Empire. The
historical circumstances which moulded the form of each individual
Colonial Constitution, the Constitutions themselves, and the
modifications they have subsequently undergone, supply a mass of
material rich in interest and instruction for the makers of an Irish
Constitution. Nor is the analogy academical. Ireland is at this moment
under a form of government unique, so far as I know, in the whole world,
but resembling more closely than anything else that of a British Crown
Colony where the Executive is outside popular control, and the
Legislature is only partially within it; with this additional and
crowning inconvenience, that the Irish Crown Colony can obstruct the
business of the Mother Country. What we have to do is to liberate Great
Britain and to give Ireland a rational Constitution--not pedantically
adhering to any colonial model, but recognizing that, however closely
her past history resembles that of a Colony, Ireland, by her
geographical position, has a closer community of interest with Great
Britain than that of any Colony.
Three main difficulties have to be contended with: first, that the
system to be overthrown is so ancient, and the prejudice against Home
Rule so inveterate; second, the Irish are not agreed upon any
constructive scheme; third, the confusion in the popular mind between
"Federal" and other systems of Home Rule.
A.
With regard to the first of these obstacles, we have got to make a big
national effort to take a sensible and dispassionate view of the whole
problem. We must cease to regard Ireland as an insubordinate captive, as
a "possession" to be exploited for profit, or as a child to be humoured
and spoiled. All this is _vieux jeu_. It belongs to an utterly
discredited form of so-called Imperialism, which might more fitly be
called Little Englandism, masquerading in the showy trappings of
Bismarckian philosophy. We have gone too far in the "dismemberment" of
our historic Empire, and near enough to the dismemberment of what
remains, to apply this worn-out metaphor to the process of making
Ireland politically free.
In Ireland we must build on trust, or we build on sand.
What is best for Ireland will be best for the Empire.
Let us firmly grasp these principles, or we shall fail. They may be
carried to the extreme point. If it were for Ireland's moral and
material good to become an independent nation, it would be Great
Britain's interest to encourage her to secede and assume the position of
a small State like Belgium, whose independence in our own interests we
guarantee. Since nobody of sense, in or out of Ireland supposes that her
interest lies in that direction, we need not consider the point; but it
is just as well to bear in mind that a prosperous and friendly neighbour
on a footing of independence is better than a discontented and backward
neighbour on a footing of dependence. The corollary is this--that any
restrictions or limitations upon the subordinate Irish Government and
Parliament which are not scientifically designed to secure the easy
working of the whole Imperial machinery, but are the outcome of
suspicion and distrust, will serve only to aggravate existing evils.
When the supreme object of a Home Rule measure is to create a sense of
responsibility in the people to whom it is extended, what could be more
perversely unwise than to accompany the gift with a declaration of the
incompetence of the people to exercise responsibility, and with
restraints designed to prevent them from proving the contrary?
Centuries of experience have not yet secured general acceptation for
this simple principle. In this domain of thought the tenacity of error
is marvellous, even if we make full allowance for the disturbing effect
on men's minds of India and other coloured dependencies where despotic,
or semi-despotic, systems are in vogue. Since the expansion of England
began in the seventeenth century, it cannot be said that the principle
of trusting white races to manage their own affairs has ever received
the express and conscious sanction of a united British people. It has
been repeatedly repudiated by Governments in the most categorical terms,
and repudiated sometimes to the point of bloodshed. In other cases it
has met with lazy retrospective acquiescence on the discovery that
powers surreptitiously obtained or granted without formal legislation
had not been abused. The Australian Acts of 1850 and 1855 were the first
approach to a spontaneous application of the full principle; but even
then many statesmen were not fully alive to the consequences of their
action, while there was no public interest, and very little
Parliamentary interest, in the fate of these remote dependencies. The
fully developed modern doctrine of comradeship with the great
self-governing Dominions, a doctrine which we may date from the
accession of Mr. Chamberlain to Colonial Secretaryship in 1895, was not
the natural outcome of a belief in self-government, but a sudden and
effusive acceptation of its matured results in certain definite cases.
Irish Home Rule itself had, in the preceding decade, twice been rejected
by the nation. With the first opportunity, after 1895, of testing belief
in the principle, namely, in the Transvaal Constitution of 1905, the
Government failed. Finally, in 1906, when, to redeem that failure, for
the first time in the whole history of the Empire a Cabinet
spontaneously and unreservedly declared its full belief in the
principle, and translated that belief into law, the whole of the
Opposition, representing nearly half the electorate, washed their hands
of the policy, and, if the constitutional means had existed, would,
admittedly, have defeated it, as they had defeated the Home Rule Bills
of 1886 and 1893. The change of national opinion has, I believe, been
considerable; but the circumstances remain ominous for the dispassionate
discussion of the Irish Constitution. Patriotic people can only do their
best to ensure that the grant of Home Rule shall not be nullified by
restrictions and limitations which, if they are designed merely to
appease opposition, are destined to create friction and discontent.
I am far from implying that restrictions are bad things in themselves.
All Constitutions, whether the sole work of the men who are to live
under them, like that of the United States, or the gift of a Sovereign
State to a dependency, or the joint work of a Sovereign and a dependent
State, contain restrictions designed for the common good. The criterion
of their value is the measure of consent they meet with from those who
have to live under and work the Constitution, and it is that
circumstance which makes it urgent that Irish opinion should be evoked
upon their future Constitution, and that the Irish Nationalist party
should think out its own scheme of Home Rule. The Constitution of the
United States contains many self-imposed restrictions upon the powers
both of the Central and the State Governments, in the interest of
minorities; and nobody accuses the Americans of having insulted
themselves.
It will be no slur on Ireland, for example, if the most elaborate
safeguards against the oppression of the Protestant minority are
inserted in the Bill, provided that Nationalist Ireland, recognizing the
fears of the minority, spontaneously recommends, or, at any rate, freely
consents to their insertion--a consent which could not, of course, be
expected if their tendency was to derange the functions of Government or
cripple the Legislature.
On the other hand, it would be a slur on Ireland which she would justly
resent, besides being a highly impolitic step, to deny to the Irish
Executive an important power, such, for example, as the control of its
own police.
B.
It is a grave difficulty that there is no public opinion in Ireland as
to the form of the Irish Constitution. That is an almost inevitable
result of political conditions past and present. Violent intestinal
antagonisms are not favourable to constructive thought. The best men of
a country, working in harmony, are needed to devise a good Constitution,
and if any Irishman could succeed in convening a Conference like that
which created the South African Union, he would be famous and honoured
for ever in the annals of the future Ireland. That Conference, we must
remember, was itself the result of the grants of Home Rule two years
previously, and these grants in their turn were greatly facilitated by
the co-operation of Britons and Dutchmen.[73] Canada, in 1840, is a
warning of the errors made in constructing a Constitution without such
co-operation. Eventually it had to be torn up and refashioned. The best
way of avoiding any such error in Ireland's case is to expel the spirit
of distrust which animated the framers of the Canadian Union Act of
1840.
C.
So much for the spirit in which we should approach the problem, and I
pass to the consideration of the problem itself. What is to be the
framework of Home Rule? I take it for granted that there must, in the
broad sense, be responsible government, that is to say, an Irish
Legislature, with an Irish Cabinet responsible to that Legislature, and,
through the Lord-Lieutenant, to the Crown. So much is common ground with
nearly all advocates of Home Rule, for I take it that there is no
question of reverting to anything in the nature of the abortive Irish
Council Bill of 1907.[74] But agreement upon responsible government does
not carry us far enough. What are to be the relations between the
subordinate Irish Parliament and Government, and the Imperial Parliament
and Government?
We immediately feel the need of a scientific nomenclature. In popular
parlance, two possible types of Home Rule are recognized--"Federal" and
"Colonial." Both, of course, may be "Colonial," because there are
Colonial Federations as well as Colonial Unitary States. But,
nomenclature apart, the two possible types of Irish Home Rule correspond
to two distinct types of subordinate Constitution. The "Colonial" type
is peculiar to the British Empire, the other is to be found in many
parts of the world--the United States, for example, and Germany, and
Switzerland.
Let us examine these types a little more closely, confining ourselves as
far as possible to the British Empire, past and present, because within
it we can find nearly all the instruction we need. As I showed in my
sketch of the growth of Colonial Home Rule, all the Colonies now classed
as self-governing, together with the American Colonies before their
independence, were originally unitary States, subordinate to the Crown,
each looking directly to Great Britain, possessing no constitutional
relation with one another, and gradually obtaining their individual
local autonomies under the name of "Responsible Government." New Zealand
and Newfoundland alone have maintained their original individualities,
and their Constitutions, from an historical standpoint, are the best
examples of the first of the two types we are considering. Now for the
Federal type. Very early in the history of the American Colonies (in
1643) the New England group formed amongst themselves a loose
confederation, which was not formally recognized by the British
Government, and which perished in 1684. In the next century the War of
Independence produced the confederation of all the thirteen Colonies,
but this was little more in effect than a very badly contrived alliance
for military purposes, and it was a keen sense of the inadequacy of the
bond that stimulated the construction of the Great Constitution of 1787,
the first Federal Union ever devised by the English-speaking race. All
the States combined to confer certain defined powers upon a Federal
Parliament, to which each sent representatives, and upon a Federal
Executive whose head, the President, all shared in electing. At the same
time, each State preserved its own Constitution and the power to amend
it, with the one broad condition that it must be Republican, and subject
to any limitation upon its powers which the Federal Constitution
imposed.
Eighty years elapsed before any similar Federal Union was formed by
Colonies within the British Empire. As we have seen, all the various
North American Colonies which received Constitutions in the last quarter
of the eighteenth century, and all the Australasian Colonies similarly
honoured in the nineteenth century, were placed in direct relation to
the British Crown and in isolation from one another. Upper Canada had no
political ties with Lower Canada, Nova Scotia none with New Brunswick,
Victoria none with Tasmania. Several abortive schemes were proposed at
one time or another for the Federation of the North American Colonies,
but the first measure of amalgamation, namely, the union of the two
Canadas in 1840, was a step in the wrong direction, and bore, as I have
shown, a marked resemblance, particularly in the motives which dictated
it, to the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. It was a compulsory
Union, imposed by the Mother Country, and founded on suspicion of the
French. So far from being Federal, it was a clumsy and unworkable
Legislative Union of the two Provinces, which lasted as long as it did
only because the principle of responsible government, established in
1847, covered a multitude of sins. The somewhat similar attempt in
Australia in 1843 to amalgamate the two settlements of Port Phillip,
afterwards Victoria, and New South Wales, at a time when each had
evolved a distinct individuality of its own, was defeated by the
strenuous opposition of the Port Phillip colonists, and revoked in 1850.
Meanwhile, all aspirations after Federation in the outlying parts of the
Empire were discouraged by the home authorities. The most practical plan
of all, Sir George Grey's great scheme of South African Federation in
1859, was nipped in the bud. Canada eventually led the way. The failure
of the Canadian Union brought about its dissolution in 1867 by the
Provinces concerned, under the sanction of Great Britain (an example of
really sensible "dismemberment"), and their voluntary Federation as
Ontario and Quebec, together with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, under
the collective title of the Dominion of Canada, and the subsequent
inclusion in this Federation of all the North American Provinces with
the exception of Newfoundland.
Note, at the outset, that this Federation differed from that of the
United States in being founded on the recognition of an organic relation
with an external suzerain authority--an authority which the Americans
had abjured in framing their independent Republic. In the matter of
constitutional relations with Great Britain, the Dominion of Canada now
assumed, in its collective capacity, the position formerly held by each
individual Province, and still held by Newfoundland. Direct relations
between the individual Provinces of the Federation and the Mother
Country practically ceased, and were replaced by a Federal relation with
the Dominion. Provincial Lieutenant-Governors are appointed by the
Dominion Government acting in the name of the Governor-General, not
directly by the British Government,[75] and, although in constitutional
theory the Crown, as in every least fraction of the Empire, is the sole
and immediate source of executive authority, and an indispensable agent
in all legislation, not only in the Dominion, but in the Provinces,[76]
in actual practice the only organic connection left between a Province
and Great Britain is the right of appeal directly to the King in
Council, that is, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,
without the intervention of the Supreme Court of Canada.
So much for the external relations of the Dominion. In respect to the
domestic relations between the Provinces and the Dominion, the Federal
principle used in Canada is fundamentally the same as that which obtains
in the United States and in every true Federation in the world, whether
Monarchical or Republican, whether self-contained, like the United
States, Germany, and Switzerland, or linked, as in the British Empire,
to a supreme and sovereign Government centred in London. Each Province,
as in every genuine Federation, is an _imperium in imperio_, possessing
a Constitution of its own, and delegating central powers to a Federal
Government. The nature and extent of the powers thus delegated or
reserved, and the character of the Federal Constitution itself, vary
widely in different Federations, but we need not consider these
differences in any detail. Let us remark generally, however, that the
powers of the Canadian Province are much smaller than those of the
American State, and that what lawyers call "the residuary powers"--that
is, all powers not specifically allotted--belong to the Dominion,
whereas in the United States and Switzerland they belong to the State or
Canton.
The Australian Commonwealth of 1900 came into being in the same way as
the Dominion of Canada, by the voluntary act of the several Colonies
concerned--Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western
Australia, Queensland--under the sanction of the British Crown and
Parliament. New Zealand stood out, and remained, like Newfoundland, a
unitary State directly subordinate to Great Britain. Nor, in the matter
of relations with the Mother Country, were the federating Colonies
merged so completely in the Commonwealth as the Provinces of Canada in
the Dominion. The Canadians had not only to construct the Dominion
Constitution, but new Constitutions for two of the federating
Provinces--Ontario and Quebec--and it was natural, therefore, that they
should identify the Provinces more closely with the Dominion. The
Australians, having to deal with six ready-made State Constitutions,
left them as they were, subject only to the limitations imposed by the
Commonwealth Constitution. One of the results is that the State
Governors are still appointed directly by the British Government, not by
the Commonwealth. This constitutional arrangement, however, has no very
practical significance. The right of appeal direct from a State Court to
the King in Council, without the intervention of the High Court of
Australia, remains, as in Canada, the only direct link between the
individual States and the British Government.
The Federal tie between the States and the Commonwealth, as defined in
the Act of 1900, is looser than that between the Provinces of Canada and
the Dominion, and bears more resemblance to the relation between a State
and the Federal Government of the United States. As in that country and
in Switzerland, residuary powers rest with the State or Canton
Governments, not with the Federal Government.
The South African Union of 1909, comprising the Colonies of the Cape of
Good Hope, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony, had a
Federal origin, so to speak, in that the old Colonies agreed to abandon
a great part of their autonomies to a central Government and
Legislature; but the spirit of unity carried them so far as almost to
annul State rights. The powers now retained by the provincial
Legislatures are so small, and the control of the Union Government is so
far-reaching, that the whole system is rightly described as a Union, not
as a Federation. The Provinces, which are really little more than
municipalities, have no longer any relation except in remotest
constitutional theory with the Mother Country, their Administrators are
appointed by the Union, and, unlike the Provinces of Canada and the
States of Australia, they have not even an internal system of
responsible government.[77] No direct appeal lies to the King in Council
from the provincial Courts, which are now, in fact, only "divisions" of
the Supreme Court of South Africa. The Provinces, in short, do not
possess "Constitutions" at all. Their powers can be extinguished without
their individual assent by an Act of the Union Parliament, whereas the
Canadian Dominion has no power to amend either the Dominion or the
Provincial Constitutions, and in Australia constitutional amendments
must be agreed to by the States separately as well as by the
Commonwealth Parliament. But these revolutionary changes in the status
of the old South African Colonies were brought about, let us remember,
by the free consent of the inhabitants of South Africa, after prolonged
deliberation.
The United States, the Australian Commonwealth, and the Canadian
Dominion are, then, the three genuine Federations which the
English-speaking races have constructed. The two last are included in
the present British Empire, and they stand side by side with the three
unitary Colonies--South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland. The
constitutional relation of each of these five bodies to the Mother
Country is precisely the same, although they differ widely in internal
structure, as in wealth and population. Within each of the two
Federations, as we have seen, there exists a nexus of minor
Constitutions, State or Provincial, which have virtually no relations
with the Mother Country, but are integral parts of the major Federation.
II.
FEDERAL OR COLONIAL HOME RULE?
We are now in a position to pose our main question, and the simplest
course is to pose it in an illustrative form. Broadly speaking, is the
relation between Ireland and Great Britain to resemble that between the
Province of Quebec and the Dominion of Canada, or that between the
Dominion of Canada and the United Kingdom? One might equally well
contrast the relation of Victoria to the Australian Commonwealth with
the relation of New Zealand or Newfoundland to the United Kingdom. I
choose the Canadian illustration because it is more compact and
striking, and because it corresponds more closely to the history and to
the realities of the case. Moreover, Quebec, although she had a no more
stormy domestic history, owing to lack of Home Rule, than Ontario, is
bi-racial, and on that account underwent in 1840 compulsory amalgamation
with her wholly British neighbour, just as Ireland, originally
bi-racial, was forcibly amalgamated with Great Britain in 1800. The
Canadian partners agreed to break this bond, to fashion a better one on
the Federal principle, in the manner vaguely adumbrated by advocates of
the "Federal" principle for Irish Home Rule, and, as regards their
relations with the Mother Country, to pool their interests and accept
representation by the Dominion alone.
Quebec Home Rule or Dominion Home Rule? Needless to say, these are only
broad types chosen expressly to illustrate two possible types of
relation between Ireland and Great Britain, which I shall henceforth
refer to as "Federal" and "Colonial." There is no reason why we should
not profit in other respects by both examples, nor is there any
possibility of copying either faithfully.
Both types fulfil the fundamental condition laid down at the beginning
of our discussion--both, that is to say, are consistent with responsible
government in Ireland. Quebec, in its inner working, is a microcosm of
the Dominion, and the Dominion system of responsible government is
almost an exact copy of the unwritten British Constitution. In Quebec
(as in all the Provinces and States of Canada and Australia) there is a
Cabinet, headed by a Prime Minister, composed of Members of the
Legislature, and responsible at once to that Legislature and to the
Lieutenant-Governor as representing the Crown. Ireland, under a similar
system (and, _a fortiori_, if she were put in the position of the
Dominion), would have a Cabinet responsible at once to the Irish
Legislature and to the Lord-Lieutenant representing the Crown. The
parallel is more apposite in the case of the Province of Quebec than in
the case of an Australian State, because, as I noted above, the
provincial Lieutenant-Governor is actually appointed by the Dominion
Government, and is in his turn responsible in the first instance to that
Government, just as the Irish Governor, or Lord-Lieutenant, who, under
Home Rule, will for the first time justify his existence, is, and will
still be, appointed by the British Government.
But with the possibility of responsible government granted, it must be
confessed that the arguments against "Quebec Home Rule" as a measure of
practical politics at the present moment, are insuperable. In the first
place there is no question in the coming Bill of federalizing the United
Kingdom on the lines of the Dominion of Canada--that is, of constructing
a new Federal Parliament elected by the whole realm, together with new
local Legislatures elected by the various fractions of the realm.
Scottish and Welsh Home Rule are in the air, but they are not practical
issues. English Home Rule is not even in the air. I mean that
Englishmen, whatever their views on the congestion of Parliamentary
business owing to the pressure of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish affairs,
have not seriously considered the idea of a subordinate Legislature
exclusively English, which would be just as essential a feature of a
completely federalized kingdom as subordinate Legislatures exclusively
Irish, Scottish, and Welsh.
Not that it is essential to the federalization of the United Kingdom
that Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales, should all have separate
Legislature. Any one of these fractions could coalesce with another or
others in a joint Legislature. It would be technically possible, though
highly unreasonable, to go to the extreme of giving Great Britain,
regarded as one Province, a separate Legislature; Ireland, regarded as
another Province, a separate Legislature; and, above these two
subordinate bodies, a new Imperial Parliament representing the whole
realm. Such a dual Federation was nearly coming about in Canada, when
Ontario and Quebec dissolved their Union and resolved to federate. It
became a quadruple Federation, owing to the adhesion of Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick; but in a dual form it would have worked just as well. It
is scarcely necessary to say that the disparity in population,
resources, and power between Ireland and Great Britain render a dual
Federation, which, of course, involves three Legislatures, chimerical.
What I want to insist on is that, whatever subdivisions are adopted, it
is absolutely essential to every Federation that there should be a
division of powers between a central and at least two local
Legislatures--three altogether. That is the minimum. Other things are
also essential, but for the moment we can confine ourselves to the
outstanding requirement. Now, there is no question in the coming Bill of
any such Federation. Later years may see such a development, whether
from pressure of work on the Imperial Parliament or from irresistible
demand for Home Rule from Scotland or Wales, or both, but not next year.
The Bill will contemplate two Parliaments, not three, namely, the
existing Imperial Parliament and the Irish Legislature. There is,
therefore, no question 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
important 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. One often hears it carelessly propounded
that Irish Home Rule, so devised as to be applicable in later years, if
they so desire, to Scotland, Wales, and England, will give us by smooth
mechanical means a General Federation. This is a fallacy. At one stage
or another, the earliest or the latest, we should have to create a
totally new central Parliament, still elected by the whole people, but
exclusively devoted to Imperial affairs, and wholly exempt from local
business, before we possessed anything in the nature of a Federation.
But, whatever the future has in store, it would be a scandal if Irish
Home Rule were to be hampered or delayed by the existence of Scotch or
Welsh claims, and it is earnestly to be hoped that no action of that
kind will be taken. The case of Ireland is centuries old, and more
urgent than ever. It differs radically from any case that can possibly
be made for Scotland and Wales.
The Bill, I repeat, must be anti-Federal, centrifugal. In the case of
Ireland we have first to dissolve an unnatural union, and then to revive
an old right to autonomy, before we can reach a healthy Federal Union.
Such, exactly, was the history of Canada. If, in that case, the
dissolution of the Legislative Union and the construction of the Federal
Union were consummated simultaneously in the British North America Act
of 1867, they were nevertheless two distinct phases, and of these two
phases the first, implying the revival of the old separate autonomies,
was the indispensable precursor of Federal Union. This antecedent
recognition of autonomy was not peculiar to Canada. Every Federation in
the world arose in the same way, by the voluntary act of States under
one Crown or suzerainty, but independent of one another, and it is of
the essence of Federalism that this psychological condition should
exist. Compulsory Federation would not last a year. It would indeed be
practicable to federalize the United Kingdom by one Legislative Act, but
the prior right to and fitness for complete Home Rule on the part of
each of the component parts would have to be implicitly recognized.
It needs only a moment's consideration of Anglo-Irish history to see the
special applicability of the psychological rule to Ireland. The evils of
the Canadian Union, during the twenty-seven years of its duration, are
infinitesimal beside the mischief, moral and material, which have been
caused to both partners by the forcible amalgamation of Great Britain
and Ireland; the waste of indigenous talent, industrial and political;
the dispersion all over the globe of Irishmen; the conversion of friends
into enemies, of peaceable citizens into plotters of treason, of farmers
into criminals, of poets and statesmen into gaolbirds; the check to the
production of wealth and Anglo-Irish commerce; the dislocation and
demoralization of Parliamentary life; and, saddest results of all, the
reactionary effect upon British statesmanship, domestic and Imperial,
and the deterioration of Irish character within Ireland. The voluntary
principle--at any rate, among the English-speaking races--is as
essential to a true Union, like that of the South African Colonies or
that of Scotland and England, as to a Federation. It is a sheer
impossibility to create a perfect, mechanical Union on a basis of hatred
and coercion; witness the strangely anomalous colonial features
surviving in Irish Government--the Lord-Lieutenancy, the separate
administration, and the standing army of police.
Persons inclined to reckon the advantages, whether of Federation or of
Union, in pounds, shillings, and pence, may regard the psychological
requirement as fanciful. It is not fanciful; on the contrary, it is
related in the clearest way to the concrete facts of the situation.
Before there is any question of Federation Ireland needs to find
herself, to test her own potentialities, to prove independence of
character, thought, and action, and to discover what she can do by her
own unaided will with her own resources. As I endeavoured to show in the
last chapter, these are the true reasons for Home Rule.
Home Rule is neither a luxury nor a plaything, but a tremendously
exacting duty which must be undertaken by every country conscious of
repression and valuing its self-respect, and which Ireland is praying to
be allowed to undertake. When a people has learnt to understand the
extent of its own powers and limitations, then it can safely and
honourably co-operate on a Federal basis with other peoples, and, in the
interests of efficiency and economy, can delegate to a central
Government, partly of its own choice, functions hitherto locally
exercised. Once more, that is the origin of all true Federations,
British and foreign, in all parts of the world.
If, then, the Home Rule Bill cannot in legal form be a federating or
unifying measure, it must be one of a precisely opposite character, and
a measure of devolution. It is a proof of the need for a scientific
nomenclature that the word "devolution" has to Irish ears come to mean
something similar in kind to "Federal" Home Rule, but less in degree,
and something different in kind from "Colonial" Home Rule, and
infinitely less in degree. What a tangle of truth and fallacy from the
misuse of a single word! It is associated rightly with the ill-starred
Irish Council Bill of 1907, and it has been universally but wrongly used
to indicate a small measure of local government in contradistinction to
the Home Rule Bills of Mr. Gladstone and, _a fortiori_, to any more
liberal schemes.
Nevertheless, the problem before us is one of devolution pure and
simple, and the question is, how far is devolution to go? It may go to
the full length of Colonial Home Rule, that is, Ireland may be vested
with the full freedom now enjoyed by a self-governing Colony (for the
grants of Colonial Home Rule were measures of devolution), or it might
at the other extreme take the form of a petty municipal government. By
hypothesis, however, we are precluded from considering any scheme which
does not admit of responsible government in Ireland. That condition
commits us to something in the nature of "Colonial" Home Rule, now
enjoyed by States widely varying in size, wealth, and population, from
the Dominion of Canada, with over seven million inhabitants, to
Newfoundland, with under a quarter of a million inhabitants and very
slender resources. It is worth notice also (to shift our analogy for the
moment) that little Newfoundland, which, owing to divergency of
interest, has declined both federation with the Dominion and union with
any of the constituent parts of the Dominion, subsists happily and
peacefully by the side of her powerful neighbour; and that New Zealand,
for the same reason, prefers to occupy the same independent position by
the side of Australia.
III.
THE EXCLUSION OR RETENTION OF IRISH MEMBERS AT WESTMINSTER.[78]
We have discarded the "Federal" solution as wholly impracticable, and
have arrived at the "Colonial" solution. And at this point I feel it
necessary to plead for the reader's patient, if reluctant, attention to
what follows. The solution I suggest is unpopular, mainly, I believe,
because prejudice has so beclouded the issue in the past, and because
for the eighteen years since the last Home Rule Bill, while prejudice
has diminished, the subject of Irish Home Rule has ceased to be studied
with scientific care.
Where is the crux of the problem? In what provision of the coming Bill
will the difference between Federal Home Rule and Colonial Home Rule
arise? The answer is clear: in the retention or exclusion of Irish
Members at Westminster. No Colony has representatives at Westminster.
The Federal solution, on the other hand, whether it be applied to the
whole Empire or to the United Kingdom alone, involves an exclusively
Federal Parliament unconcerned with State or provincial affairs. That we
have not got. What we have got is an absolutely supreme and sovereign
Parliament which has legal authority, not only over all Imperial affairs
within and without the United Kingdom, but over the minutest local
affairs. Unrepresented though the Colonies are, they can legally be
taxed, coerced, enslaved at any moment by an Act passed by a party
majority in this Parliament. Such measures, though legal, would be
unconstitutional; but, both by law and custom, and in actual daily
practice, Parliament passes and enforces certain Acts affecting the
self-governing Colonies, and wields potential and actual authority of
all-embracing extent over the Empire and over the local affairs of the
United Kingdom.
When we set up an Irish Legislature, then, we have to contemplate four
different classes of affairs in a descending scale: (1) Affairs of
common interest to the whole Empire; (2) affairs of exclusive interest
to the United Kingdom; (3) affairs exclusively British; (4) affairs
exclusively Irish.
With regard to (1), the prospects of Imperial Federation do not affect
the Irish issue. It is no doubt illogical and sometimes highly
inconvenient that the British Cabinet and Parliament, representing
British and Irish electors only, should decide matters which deeply
concern the whole Empire, including the self-governing Colonies, but it
is the fact. In the meantime we are securing very effective consultation
with the self-governing Colonies by the method of Imperial Conference. A
Federal Parliament for the whole Empire is a possible though a remote
alternative to that system. Colonial representation in the present
Imperial Parliament is an altogether impracticable alternative. The
suggestion had often been made for the American Colonies at the height
of their discontent, later for Canada as an alternative to the Act of
1791, and in recent times also. The same fallacious idea underlay the
Union of Ireland with Great Britain and her representation in
Parliament, while retaining colonial institutions. At present the
prospects of Imperial Federation seem to be indifferent. On the other
hand, the affection between all branches of our race which is the
indispensable groundwork of Federation becomes visibly stronger, and
will become stronger, provided that we do not revert to the ancient and
discredited policy either of dictating to the Colonies or taking sides
with one or another of the parties within them, provided also that the
Colonies in their growing strength do not dictate to us or take sides
with one or other of our parties.
But, whatever the prospects of Imperial Federation, so long as the
present situation lasts, there is no reason for giving a self-governing
Ireland more control over Imperial matters affecting the self-governing
Colonies than the self-governing Colonies themselves possess. The
present position is illogical enough; that would be to render it doubly
illogical. Representation of Ireland, therefore, at Westminster, on the
ground that she should take part in settling matters of the widest
Imperial purport, is indefensible. The alternative and much more
effectual method, as with the Colonies, is Conference.
(2-4) But it is when we come to regard the United Kingdom as a
self-contained entity that the difficulty of retaining Irish Members at
Westminster appears most formidable. If we discard the Federal solution
we must discard it wholeheartedly, not from a pedantic love of logic,
but to avoid real, practical anomalies which might cause the whole
political machine to work even worse than it does at present. From what
I have written, it will be seen at once that to retain the Irish Members
in the House of Commons, while giving Ireland responsible government,
would be to set up a kind of hybrid system, retaining the disadvantages
of the Union without gaining the advantages of Federalism. A Federal
system needs a Federal Parliament, which we have not got, and shall not
get for a long time yet. To introduce into it a quasi-Federal element is
to mix oil with water.
I state the proposition in this broad way at first in order to push home
the truth that Irish representation at Westminster will involve
anomalies and dangers which, beyond a certain very limited point, cannot
be mitigated. Methods of mitigation I will deal with in a moment. Let me
remark first upon the strange history of this question of Irish
representation at Westminster. Obviously it is the most fundamental
question of all in the matter of Home Rule. The whole structure of the
Bill hangs on it. It affects every provision, and particularly the
financial provisions. Yet Mr. Gladstone went no farther than to call it
an "organic detail," and in popular controversy it is still generally
regarded in that light, or even in a less serious light. As a matter of
history, however, it has proved to be a factor of importance in deciding
the fate of the Home Rule Bills. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone, in proposing to
exclude Irish Members altogether, roused a storm of purely sentimental
opposition. In 1893, in proposing to retain them--first with limited
functions, then on the old terms of complete equality with British
Members--he met with opposition even more formidable, because it was not
merely sentimental, but unanswerably practical. On both occasions Mr.
Chamberlain took a prominent part in the opposition: in 1886 because he
was then a Federalist, advocating "Quebec" Home Rule for Ireland, and
regarding the exclusion of Irish Members from Westminster as
contravening the Federal principle; in 1893 because, having ceased to be
a Home Ruler, he had no difficulty in showing that the retention of
Irish Members, either with full or limited functions, was neither
Federation nor Union, but an unworkable mixture of the two.
These facts should be a warning to those who trifle thoughtlessly with
what they call "Federal" Home Rule. It was through a desperate desire to
conciliate that Mr. Gladstone caught at the Federal chimera in 1893, and
produced a scheme which he himself could not defend. And it was one of
the very statesmen that he sought to conciliate--a statesman, moreover,
possessing one of the keenest and strongest intellects of the time--who
snatched at the chimera in 1886, and argued it out of existence in 1893.
We Home Rulers do not want a repetition of those events. We want Home
Rule, and if we are to be defeated, let us be defeated on a simple
straightforward issue, not on an indefensible complication of our own
devising.
Now to details. There are five ways of dealing with the question, and of
these I will take first the four different ways of including Irish
Members in the House of Commons, leaving their total _exclusion_ to the
last.
1. Inclusion of Irish Members in their full numbers for all
purposes--that is, with a right to vote upon all questions--British,
Irish, and Imperial. [By "full numbers" I mean, not the existing figure
of 103, but numbers fully, and no more than fully, warrantable according
to the latest figures of population--say 70.]
2. Inclusion in full numbers for limited purposes.
3. Inclusion in reduced numbers for all purposes. [By "reduced numbers"
I mean in numbers less than population would warrant.]
4. Inclusion in reduced numbers for limited purposes.
Now (4) I only set out for symmetry. It has never been proposed by
anybody, and hardly needs notice.
The three others are alike in two respects--that they leave untouched
the question of representation in the House of Lords, and that they
directly infringe both the Federal principle and the Union principle by
giving representation, both in a unitary and a subordinate Legislature,
to one portion of the realm.
Let us look at No. 1--inclusion in full numbers for all purposes. This
was Mr. Gladstone's revised proposal of 1893, and it formed part of the
Bill thrown out by the Lords. The number of Irish Members was to have
been 80. But reduction, as Mr. Gladstone admitted, would scarcely affect
the inherent difficulties of inclusion. Nor must it be forgotten that
reduction from 103 to 70 can be justified only by the concession of a
large measure of Home Rule. It is one of the paradoxes of an unnatural
Union that, over-represented as Ireland is, she has not now power enough
to secure her own will. To reduce her numbers, while retaining large
powers over Irish affairs at Westminster, would be unjust. For the time
being I shall defer the consideration of those powers, and argue the
matter on broad principle, assuming that the powers retained in Imperial
hands are small enough to warrant a reduction from 103 to 70.
Now let us apply our touchstone to this question of inclusion in "full"
numbers. Will it be good for Ireland? Surely not.
(_a_) It will be bad for Ireland, in the first place, to have her
energies weakened at the outset by having to find two complete sets of
representatives, when she will be in urgent need of all her best men to
do her own work. There is no analogy with Quebec, Victoria,
Massachusetts, or Wuertemburg, which had all been accustomed to
self-government before they entered their respective Federations.
Ireland has to find her best men, create her domestic policies,
reconstruct her administration, and the larger the reservoir of talent
she has to draw from the better. When true Federation becomes practical
politics it will be another matter. By that time she will have men to
spare.
(_b_) More serious objection still, retention in full numbers will, it
is to be feared, tend to counteract the benefits of Home Rule in Ireland
by keeping alive old dissensions and bad political habits. If, after
long and hot controversy, a system is set up under which Great Britain
can still be regarded as a pacificator--half umpire and half
policeman--of what Peel called the "warring sects" of Ireland, it is to
be feared that the Members sent to London may fall into the old
unnatural party divisions; a Protestant minority seeking to revoke or
curtail Home Rule, and a Nationalis 
The Framework of Home Rule / Childers, Erskine, 1870-1922