The argument from the virtues of self-government.—Self-dependence is the source of self-reliance and of self-help. Leave Ireland to herself, and Ireland will (it is argued) develop the sense of responsibility and the power of self-government. Mr. Parnell or Mr. Davitt as Irish Prime Minister will be able to perform with ease feats beyond the reach of any English Cabinets. He will dare to be strong because he knows he is popular: he will punish conspirators with a severity unknown to modern English governments; he will feel that anarchy is the bane of his country, and he will not tolerate disorder. Boycotters, Moonlighters, Dynamiters or Assassins will find that they are called upon to meet a force of which they have had before no experience. They will discover that they are engaged in a contest with the will of the people, and deprived, as they will be, of the moral sympathy which has hitherto given them comfort and encouragement, will yield obedience to a law which is the expression of the national will. Self-government in Ireland means strong government, and strong government is the one cure for Irish misery.
This train of reflection has, unless I am mistaken, convinced many English Radicals that the installation of an Irish Ministry at Dublin will be the dissolution of every secret society throughout Ireland, and thus gained over to the cause of Home Rule men who detest anarchy even more than they love liberty.
This belief in the virtues of self-government is confirmed by the teaching of American critics, who hold that the recent experience of the United States presents a clue by which Englishmen may find a path out of the labyrinth of their present perplexities. Transactions known to every citizen of the States show conclusively that the hatred of law which in Ireland fills Englishmen with amazement has arisen among a people who, whatever their faults, cannot be charged with those inherited vices which English opinion freely and gratuitously imputes to Irish nature. In Connecticut, in New York, in Georgia, throughout all the Southern States, open or secret combinations, supported by public opinion and enforcing its decrees by violence and murder, have with success defied the law courts. Social conditions, and not the perversities of Irish character, are seen to be the true cause of phenomena which, if they are now a feature of Irish life, have appeared in countries where not an Irishman was to be found, and where the Irish had no appreciable influence. To this fact, which appears to me not to admit of question, Americans add the consideration that lawlessness when supported by public opinion has in America been successfully met, not by coercion, but by yielding to public sentiment. Hence they draw the conclusion that the proper mode of terminating the conflict between law and widespread sentiment is to yield to opinion, and, by conceding something of the nature of Home Rule, to turn law-breakers into law-makers. The application of this dogma to Ireland is obvious: the crucial instance by which its truth is supposed to be established is the treatment of the conquered South by the victorious North. From the termination of the War of Secession up to 1876 the fixed policy of the Northern Republicans was to maintain order in the South by the use of Federal troops. This policy began and ended in failure: in 1876 the troops were withdrawn; the endeavour to enforce law by means of the Federal armies was given up—as if by magic chaos gave place to order. Local self-government has given peace to the United States, why should it not restore concord to the United Kingdom?[21]
It has been freely admitted in the foregoing pages[22] that the historical connection between England and Ireland has brought upon the weaker country the evils involved in the suppression of internal revolution by external force. This admission contains the main ground for the argument in favour of Home Rule drawn from the good effects of self-government, but is not in reality a sound foundation on which to place the suggested conclusion.
For the argument under consideration, even after the concession that Ireland has suffered from not having been left to herself, is vitiated by more than one flaw.
Home Rule, as it is again and again necessary to point out, is not national independence, nor anything like independence. Home Rule gives Ireland at most semi-independence—that is to say, it leaves Ireland at least half dependent upon England. It is vain to argue that the position of the member of a confederacy or of a colonial dependency will give to Irishmen the sense of independence and responsibility which belongs to a self-governing nation.
Grant, however (though the assumption is a hazardous one), that the creation of an Irish government and an Irish Parliament would of itself give to Ireland, even though she were still in many respects dependent on England, such a new sense of power and of responsibility as would enable her to create for herself a strong executive. This concession is not enough to make out the argument in favour of Home Rule. Laws ought to be not only strong but just, and Englishmen must consider whether rulers who had come to the head of affairs solely because they represented the strongest among many Irish factions or parties would he able to rule with justice. The "Jacobin Conquest" installed a strong executive in power, but England could not be an accomplice in inaugurating a reign of terror. The connection which under any form of Home Rule would bind together the parts of the present United Kingdom would be, it may be suggested, a guarantee against the supremacy of an Irish Robespierre or Danton. Granted: but if so, Home Rule would restrain an Irish revolution. The strongest, in other words the most reckless leaders, would be prevented from coming to the front. Ireland would not follow her own course, and since she would not be in truth self-governed, she would not reap the good fruits of self-government.
Nor in truth does the American version of our argument give much help to Home Rulers.
In more than one instance popular sentiment has in the United States defied the law of the land. Nothing can be a better example of such defiance than the anti-rent war which raged in New York between 1839 and 1846.[23] The struggle exhibited all the recklessness of a no-rent agitation in Ireland with none of the excuses which can be urged in palliation of outrage by half-starving tenants; it produced a "reign of terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law and the payment of rent throughout the district" which was the field of the anti-rent movement; it ended in a nominal compromise which was a real victory for the anti-renters. In this instance, be it remarked, no sentiment of nationality or State right came into play. The law was hated, not because it was "foreign," but because it enforced the obligation of an unpopular contract. Landlords, it is now all but admitted, are not entitled to the full rights of citizens. The triumph therefore of the anti-renters at New York may command a certain amount of sympathy. The popular sentiment which in 1833 induced the people of Connecticut to boycott Miss Prudence Crandall cannot be brought under the sanction of any "higher law." Her crime was that she chose, obeying the dictates of her conscience, to open a school for negro girls in Connecticut. She was subjected to every annoyance and insult which the most reckless boycotter could invent. Legislation itself was turned against her, and the State failed utterly in the duty of protecting one of the most meritorious, and now, one is happy to think, one of the most honoured among the women of America. The Lyman Riots at Boston, as indeed every stage in the noble struggle of the American Abolitionists against popular injustice, tell the same tale, namely, that law in the United States has once and again failed to assert its due supremacy over injustice backed by public approval. This melancholy failure may possibly support the proposition that England cannot enforce the law in Ireland. It far more conclusively shows that even in countries deeply imbued with the spirit of legality self-government has no necessary tendency to produce just government or just legislation.
Let us, however, examine with care the lessons to be drawn from the treatment of the Southern States of America by the North.
The natural and most obvious moral of modern American history is that the majority of a nation have both the right and power to coerce a minority who claim to break up the unity of the State. The most distinguished English Liberals, such as Bright and Mill, held, and as I conceive on sound grounds of reason and justice, that the Southern States were neither legally nor morally justified in their claim to secede from the Union; but no fair-minded man can deny that a plausible constitutional case could be made out in favour of Secession, nor that the citizens of the Southern confederacy demonstrated their wish and determination to secede by far more cogent evidence than the return of eighty-six Secessionists to Congress. The primâ facie arguments which may be alleged in favour of Secession were tenfold stronger—unfounded as I hold them to have been—than the primâ facie arguments in favour of Ireland's right to Home Rule. Moreover, in studying the history of the United States, an Englishman is at the present moment more concerned with the results than with the justification of the suppression of the Southern rebellion. The policy of the North attained its object: the Union was restored, and its existence is now placed beyond the reach of peril. The abolition of slavery took away the source of disagreement between the Northern and Southern States, and the tremendous exhibition of the power of the Republic has finally, it is supposed, destroyed the very idea of Secession. There is certainly nothing in all this which discourages the attempt to maintain the political unity of Great Britain and Ireland. We are told, however, to forget the force employed to suppress Secession, and to recollect only the policy of the Republicans after the close of the Civil War. That policy was a failure as long as it involved the denial to the Southern States of their State autonomy, and became a success from the moment when it recognised to the full the sacredness of State rights. This, or some statement like this, represents the mode in which the annals of the Union must be read if they are to be interpreted in favour of Home Rule. The reading is a strained interpretation of events which are known to every one. The North, once and for all, settled that the matters which lay at the bottom of the Civil War should be settled in the manner which conform to Northern notions of justice and of expediency. The abolition of slavery, and the final disposal of the alleged right to Secession, gave to the North, all the requisite securities against attacks on the unity of the Republic. The Republicans, influenced in part by considerations of party, but partly (it must in fairness be admitted) by the feeling that it was a duty to secure for Negro citizens the full enjoyment of the civil and political rights given them, under the constitutional amendments supported for years the so-called Carpet Bag Governments, that is to say, the rule of Northern adventurers who were kept in office throughout the South by the Negro vote. The Federal Government, in short, up to 1876 gave by its arms authority in the South to the unscrupulosity of Northern scoundrelism supported by the votes of Negro ignorance. Such a policy naturally produced bitter irritation among the Southern Whites. Its reversal as naturally restored to the Whites at once power and contentment. Whether this reversal was as satisfactory to the Blacks is less clear. In any case it is hard to see how the restoration of the Southern States to their natural place in the Union tells in favour of giving Ireland a position quite inconsistent with the existing constitution of the United Kingdom. The case stands thus: Northern Republicans insisted that every State in the South should submit to the supremacy of the United States on every point which directly or indirectly concerned the national and political unity of the American people. Having secured this submission the Republican party restored to the Southern States the reality as well as the name of State rights; and allowed the same and no more than the same independence to South Carolina as is allowed to New York. No doubt something was sacrificed; this "something" was a matter which did not greatly concern the citizens of the North. It was the attempt to secure to the Black citizens of the South the political rights given them by the constitution. The sacrifice may have been necessary; many of the wisest Americans hold that it was so. But we may suspect that even amongst those who, as a matter of policy, approve the course pursued by the Federal Government in the South since 1876, qualms are occasionally felt as to some of its results. The able writer who sets American Home Rule before Englishmen as an example for imitation says with the candour which marks his writings: "I do not propose to defend or explain the way in which" the Native Whites "have since then" (1876) kept the Government "in their hands by suppressing or controlling the Negro vote. This is not necessary to my purpose."[24] It is however necessary for the purpose of weighing the effect of American experience to bear this "suppression" constantly in mind; it has deprived the Negroes of political rights which possibly they had better never have received, and has falsified the result of Presidential elections. When we are told that the South votes solid for a Democratic President, we must remember that in the Southern States the Negro vote is "controlled"; and that in reckoning the number of votes to which a State is entitled in virtue of its population, the Negro voters of the South are counted for as much as the uncontrolled White voters of the North. Whether this state of things will always be contentedly borne by the Northern States is a matter on which a foreigner can form no opinion. It is a condition of affairs which does not conduce to respect for law, and the satisfaction with which thoughtful Americans regard a policy founded on the tolerance of illegality confirms the belief suggested by other circumstances, that deference to opinion tends in the United States to undermine respect for law; it certainly does not tend to show that self-government has much connection with justice.
The argument, in short, from the good effects of self-government appears, when examined, either to be an argument which tells far more strongly in favour of Separation than of Home Rule, or else to be an argument which shows only that England might gain some immediate advantage from shutting her eyes to injustice committed by an Irish government.
The argument from the necessity for Coercion Acts.—Coercion Acts are (according to popular apprehension) enactments suspending the operation of the ordinary law, and conflicting therefore with the principles of the English Constitution. Order has been maintained in Ireland since the Union (we are told) mainly by means of Coercion Acts. The English democracy, it is argued, cannot acquiesce any longer in these violations of the Constitution; but since order must somehow be maintained in Ireland, and Coercion Acts must no longer be passed, the English democracy must surrender the duty of maintaining the law into the hands of the Irish people, who, as is assumed by Home Rulers, can exact obedience to the law of Ireland without the use of exceptional legislation.
A lawyer irritated by the folly of popular declamation is tempted to dismiss all objections to Coercion Acts, together with all arguments founded upon such objections, with one peremptory remark—namely, that since a law is merely a rule which men are compelled to obey by the power of the State, and Coercion is but another name for compulsory obedience to the law, to object to Coercion is in reality to object to law itself, or in effect to the existence of political society. The temptation to cut down a popular delusion by some such summary criticism as this is great, but it is a temptation which at all costs must be resisted. Vague ideas, which have obtained general currency, are, in spite of their inaccuracy, the outgrowth for the most part of reasonable feeling. Whoever wishes to meet, and, if need be, dispel the antipathy to Coercion Acts, must try to understand what is the meaning which sensible men attach to the word "Coercion," what is the conviction represented by the dislike to Coercion Acts, how this dislike may be lessened, and, for the purpose with which these pages are written, how far the disapproval of Coercion Acts provides a reason in favour of Home Rule.
Of all the terms which at the present moment confuse public judgment, none is more vague and misleading than the word "Coercion" when applied to every stringent attempt to enforce in Ireland obedience to the law of the land.
Coercion means and includes two different though closely connected ideas which the laxity of popular thought fails to distinguish.
First.—Coercion means any attempt to enforce a law among people whose moral sympathies are at variance with the law itself. In this sense Coercion is opposed to that enforcement of ordinary law with which we are all familiar. Thus, to punish a Ritualist for not conforming to the judgment of the Privy Council, to enforce vaccination at Leicester, to compel a Quaker to pay tithes, to eject an Irish tenant from the farm he has occupied, to drag him into Court and seize his goods if he does not pay his rent, to punish severely resistance to the Sheriff's officer, or to the bailiff who gives effect to the rights of an Irish landlord, are in popular estimation proceedings which according to the nature of the law put in force are stigmatised as persecution or Coercion. They certainly differ from the compulsion by which common debtors are compelled to pay their debts, or thieves are prevented from picking pockets or breaking into houses. The difference lies in this. Where the enforcement of the law is called "Coercion," not only does the criminal think himself in the right, or at any rate think the law a wrongful law, but also the society to which he belongs holds that the law-breaker is maintaining a moral right against an immoral law. The anti-vaccinator is deemed a martyr at Leicester, the farmer who will not pay his rent is thought a patriot at Cork. Where the enforcement of the law is not popularly deemed coercion the law-breaker does not suppose himself to be in the right, and still less do his associates think him morally praiseworthy. A thief does not in general hold any theory about the rightness of larceny, and there is no society in the United Kingdom at least who deny the moral validity of the Eighth Commandment.
Secondly.—Coercion means the enforcement of law by arbitrary and exceptional methods which tend to diminish the securities for freedom possessed by ordinary citizens. Thus the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the abolition of trial by jury, the introduction of peculiar rules of evidence to facilitate convictions for a particular class of crimes, a suspension (speaking generally) of what would be called in foreign countries "constitutional guarantees," in order to secure obedience to particular laws, would be called coercion.
An enactment, then, which in ordinary language is called a Coercion Act, has one or both of the two following characteristics.[25] It is an Act which either enforces some rule of law (e.g., the law that tenants must pay their rent, or that trades unionists must not molest artisans who accept lower wages than the scale prescribed by the union), which does not command the moral assent of the society or people among whom it is enforced, or else constrains obedience to law by some exceptional and arbitrary mode of procedure. Now the general prejudice against an Act which has either or both of these characteristics is within certain limits justifiable on grounds of good sense. Laws derive three-fourths of their force not from the fears of law-breakers, but from the assent of law-keepers; and legislation should, as a rule, correspond with the moral sentiment of the people. The maxim quid leges sine moribus, though it should always be balanced by the equally important maxim quid mores sine legibus, is one which no legislator dares neglect with impunity, and a law permanently at variance with wide moral feeling needs repeal or modification. It is also true that exceptional and arbitrary legislation is, simply because it is exceptional and arbitrary, open to suspicion. If it be desirable that personal liberty should be protected by the writ of Habeas Corpus, a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act is on the face of it an evil. If it is not desirable that officers of the army should suddenly and without legal training exercise the power of judges, the establishment of martial law is in itself a great, though it may be a necessary calamity. Legislation, which has received the odious name of coercion, has frequently (though not always) exhibited one or both of the characteristics which render it fairly obnoxious to that designation. The objection, therefore, to Coercion Acts is on the face of it not unreasonable. What are the inferences which the objection supports is, of course, quite a different matter, and shall be considered in its due place.
It is most important, however, to note that the valid opposition to so-called Coercion Acts may and ought to be greatly mitigated by careful adherence to two maxims which are obvious, but are often neglected.
A Coercion Act in the first place, should be aimed, not at the direct enforcement of rules opposed to popular opinion, but at the punishment of offences which, though they may be indirectly connected with dislike of an unpopular law or with opposition to rights (for instance, of landowners) not sanctioned by popular opinion, are deeds in themselves condemned by the human conscience. Deliberate breaches of contract, insults to women and children, the murder or torture of witnesses who have given truthful evidence in support of a conviction for crime, brutal cruelty to cattle, may be methods of popular vengeance, or the sanctions which enforce an agrarian code; but one may feel certain that the man who breaks his word, who tortures or murders his neighbour or who huffs cattle, knows himself to be not only a criminal, but a sinner, and that the law, which condemns him to punishment, though it may excite temporary outcry, can rely on the ultimate sanction of the popular conscience.
A Coercion Act, in the second place, should as far as possible be neither a temporary nor an exceptional piece of legislation.
An Act which increases the efficiency of the criminal law should, like other statutes, be a permanent enactment. The temporary character of Coercion Acts has needlessly increased their severity, for members of Parliament have justified to themselves carelessness in fixing the limits of powers conferred upon the executive under the insufficient plea that these powers were intended to last but for a short time. It has also deprived them of moral weight. An Act which is a law in 1881, but will cease to be a law in 1882, has neither the impressiveness nor the certainty which gives dignity to the ordinary law of the land. Coercion Acts, again, should be general—that is, should apply, not to one part, but to the whole, of the United Kingdom. Powers needed by the Government for constant use in Ireland must occasionally be wanted in England, or, if they do not exist there, in Scotland. It were the strangest anomaly for the law to sanction a mode of procedure which convicts a dynamiter in Dublin, and not to give the Government the same means for the conviction of the same criminal for the same offence if he has crossed to Liverpool. The principle forbidding exceptional or extraordinary legislation suggests that Coercion Acts should in the main give new stringency to the criminal procedure, and should not invade the liberties of ordinary citizens. The object of a Coercion Act is to facilitate the punishment of wrongdoers, not to restrict the liberty of citizens who have not broken the law. This is a point legislators are apt to neglect. The distinction insisted upon will be understood by any one who compares the Act for the Better Protection of Person and Property in Ireland, 44 Vict. c. 4, of 1881, with the Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act, 1882, 45 & 46 Vict. c. 25. They were each denounced as Coercion Acts: the earlier enactment was in many ways the more lenient of the two; yet in principle the Act of 1881 was thoroughly vicious, whilst in principle the Act of 1882 was, as regards its most effective sections, thoroughly sound. The Act of 1881 in effect gave the Irish executive an unlimited power of arrest: it established in theory despotic government. The Act of 1882 was in principle an Act for increasing the stringency of criminal procedure. The one could not be made permanent, and applied to the whole United Kingdom, without depriving every citizen of security for his personal freedom. The main enactments of the other might extend through the whole of Great Britain and Ireland, and produce only the not undesirable effect of making the whole United Kingdom a less pleasant residence than at present for criminals or conspirators.
An Act which should be permanent, which should apply to the whole United Kingdom, which should deal, not indeed exclusively but in the main, with criminal procedure, could hardly contain injudicious, harsh or tyrannical provisions. The passing of one such good Criminal Law Amendment Act would, though its discussion occupied a whole Session, save our representatives in Parliament an infinite waste of time, and would make unnecessary half-a-dozen Coercion Acts for Ireland. To enlarge the power of examining persons suspected of connection with a crime, even though no man is put upon his trial; to get rid of every difficulty in changing the venue; to give the Courts the right under certain circumstances of trying criminals without the intervention of a jury; to organise much more thoroughly than it is organised at present in England the whole system of criminal prosecutions; to enable the executive to prohibit public meetings which might provoke a breach of the peace, would in many cases be an improvement on the criminal law of England itself, and would in several instances be simply an extension to the whole United Kingdom of laws which exist without exciting any disapproval in some one division of it.[26] Without special experience it would be presumptuous to assert that these or similar changes in criminal procedure would suffice for the enforcement of the law in Ireland during a period of disturbance. That such improvements in procedure would go a good way to make special Coercion Acts unnecessary, is in the highest degree probable. There is, moreover, nothing objectionable or anomalous in increasing as time goes on the stringency of criminal procedure. The law against crimes is the protection of men who are not criminals. Civilisation raises our estimate of the protection which good citizens ought to receive from the State; it also places new means of attack in the hands of cheats and ruffians. An elaborate criminal code is as necessary for a civilised society as are elaborately trained armies and scientific arms both of defence and offence.
No adherence, however, to sound maxims of criminal jurisprudence would, it must be frankly admitted, entirely take away, though it might greatly mitigate, the justifiable distaste for Coercion Acts. The necessity for these Acts points to discord in Ireland between the law of the land and the law of the people; they are the outward and visible sign of internal discontent and disloyalty; they give good ground for supposing that the law or some part of it requires amendment, and to many persons laws which admit the existence of a bad social condition will appear to be themselves odious. But the necessity for amending bad laws or vicious institutions is no reason why just laws, or any law which cannot rightly be repealed, should not be enforced. The fallacies of protection afforded no reason for not punishing smugglers, though the existence of smuggling gave good ground for considering whether the customs law did not require revision. There seems to the thoughtless crowd—whether rich or poor, and all men are thoughtless about most things, and many men about all things—to be a certain inconsistency between reform and coercion; there is something absurd in the policy of "cuffs and kisses." But the inconsistency or absurdity is only apparent. The necessity for carrying through by legal means an agrarian revolution—and the passing of the Irish Land Act was in effect an admission by the English Parliament, that this necessity exists—is a solid reason for the strict enforcement of justice. Reform tends, as its immediate result, to produce lawlessness. A wise driver holds his reins all the tighter because he is compelled to drive along the brink of a precipice. Whether Coercion Acts, which it must be remembered have been known before now in England, and were known in Ireland during the era of her Parliamentary independence, and which are the sign of the difficulty of enforcing the law, are or are not to be tolerated as a necessary evil, depends on the answer to the inquiry, whether the Government of the United Kingdom can by just administration, and by just legislation, remove the source of Irish opposition to the law? Answer the question affirmatively, and the outcry against coercion becomes unmeaning; answer the question negatively, and you produce an argument which tells with crushing power in favour not of Home Rule, but of Separation.
The argument from the inconvenience to England.[27]—Apologies for Home Rule drawn from foreign experience, deference due to the popular will, from the historical failure of England to govern Ireland with success and the like, have about them when employed by English members of Parliament a touch of unreality; they are reasons meant to satisfy the hearer, but do not convince the speaker. When however we come to the argument for Home Rule drawn from the inconvenience of the present state of things to England generally, and to English members of Parliament in particular, we know at once that we are at any rate dealing with a real tangible serious plea which has (if anything) only too much weight with the person who employs it. There is nothing in the whole relation of England to Ireland about which politicians are so well assured, as that the presence of a body of Parnellites at Westminster is an unutterable nuisance, and works intolerable evil. Of the reality of their conviction we have the strongest proof. The sufferings of Irish tenants, the difficulties or the wrongs of Irish landlords, the evils of coercion, the terror of assassination, but slightly ruffled the composure with which English statesmen faced the perplexities of the Irish problem. They first began to think that the demand for Home Rule might have something in it when the refusal to erect a Parliament at Dublin meant the continuance of obstruction in the Parliament at Westminster. The terror of obstruction has to speak the plain truth, done more to effect the bonâ fide conversion of English M.P.'s into advocates of Home Rule than any other single influence.
What then is the harm which a body of eighty or ninety Irish members can work in Parliament? This is the answer. They may (it is said) in the first place delay, obstruct, and render impossible the carrying through of important measures; London may go without a municipality; widowers may wait for years without being able to marry their deceased wives' sisters; we may not during this generation get the blessing of a good criminal code, if Mr. Parnell and his followers sit in Parliament prepared to practice all the arts of obstruction. The Irish members, in the second place, perturb and falsify the whole system of party government. The majority of Great Britain wish to be ruled say by Lord Salisbury; the Parnellites do not care whether Lord Salisbury or Mr. Gladstone is Premier, but they do care for making the English executive feeble, and ridiculous. They can, therefore, by the practice of a very little art, seize some opportunity of putting Lord Salisbury in a minority, and turning him out of office. Mr. Gladstone comes back into what is ironically called power. The same game begins again. The Parnellites coalesce with the Tories, we have a change of Cabinet, and possibly a dissolution. Nor are changes of Ministry the whole of the evil. The high tone of party politics is degraded. English or Scottish members of Parliament are but men; they are liable to be tempted; the Parnellites have the means of offering temptation; and temptation, members of Parliament intimate to us, will in the long run be too great for their virtue. The presence, in short, at Westminster of eighty-six gentlemen who do not respect the dignity or care for the efficiency of Parliament is absolutely fatal to the success of Parliamentary government, and to the character of Parliamentary statesmanship. We must, it is inferred, let the Parnellites have a Parliament of their own in Ireland, or else we shall soon cease to have any Parliament worth keeping in England.
The force of this line of argument, as far as it goes, cannot be denied. The presence in the House of Commons of politicians disloyal to Parliament causes immense inconvenience; but to anyone not a member of the House of Commons, it appears singular that men of sense should think the inconveniences of obstruction a sufficient ground for breaking up the Constitution. The whole thing is a question of proportion. The nation suffers a good deal from obstruction, but the suffering is not of a kind to justify revolution. A toothache is a bad thing, but a severe toothache hardly suggests suicide; and though life might not be worth having, if toothache were to last for years, the thoughts of putting an end to one's existence are removed by the knowledge that an aching tooth can be drawn by a dentist. Now the more obvious evils of obstruction can clearly be removed by changes of procedure. Members of Parliament appear to think that to alter the rules of the House of Commons; to curtail and limit the power of debate; to confer, if necessary, upon the Speaker, or upon the bare majority of members present, authority to bring every debate summarily to a close, is something like overthrowing the monarchy, a thing not to be dreamt of by the wildest of innovators. Plain men outside the walls of Parliament can assure our representatives, that the world would bear with infinite calmness the imposition of stringent restrictions on the overflow of Parliamentary eloquence. If even the great debate on Home Rule had been finished say in a week, the outer world would have been well pleased; and measures such as the Government of Ireland Bill happily do not come before Parliament every year. The more subtle evils arising in part at least from the presence of the Irish members must be met by more searching remedies. Parnellite obstruction has revealed rather than caused the weakness of government by Parliament. The experience, not of England only, but of other countries, shows the great difficulty of working our present party system of government in a representative assembly which is divided into more than two parties. The essential difficulty lies in the immediate dependence of a modern ministry for its existence on every vote of the House of Commons. If you see the difficulty, you can also see various means by which it may be removed. In more than one country, and notably in the United States and in Switzerland—states, be it remarked, in which popular government flourishes—the executive, though in the long run amenable to the voice of the people, and though in Switzerland actually appointed by the legislature, is not like an English Cabinet dependent on the fluctuating will of a legislative assembly. If it were necessary to choose between modifications in the relation of the executive to Parliament, and the repeal of the Act of Union, most Englishmen would think that to increase the independence of the executive—a change probably desirable in itself—was a less evil than a disruption of the United Kingdom, which not only is in itself a gigantic evil, but may well lead to others. A modification, however, in the practice would, for the moment at least, save the real principles of Parliamentary government. Were it once understood that a Ministry would not retire from office except in consequence of a direct vote of want of confidence in the House of Commons, the political power of the Parnellite, or of any other minority, would be greatly diminished. Meanwhile, members of Parliament may be reminded that it is on them that the duty lies of removing the obstacles which from time to time impede the working of Parliamentary machinery, and that the existence of temptation to political turpitude is not an admitted excuse for yielding to it. In one way or another a majority of 584 members must, if they choose, be able to make head against the minority of 86. Their failure already excites astonishment; the time is coming when it will excite contempt. The English people, moreover, have the remedy in their own hands. By giving to either of the great parties an absolute majority they can terminate all the inconveniences threatened by Parnellite obstruction. The remedy is in their hands, and recent experience suggests that they will not be slow to use it.
A survey of the arguments in favour of Home Rule suggests the following reflections:
The arguments, taken as a whole, do undoubtedly show that the present state of things is accompanied by considerable evils or inconveniences. They show what no one who has given a thought to the matter ever doubted, that the relation between England and Ireland is unsatisfactory. They are, as far as they go, objections to the maintenance of the Union, but neither the feelings which favour Home Rule, nor the reasons by which they are supported, tell in reality in favour of Home Rule policy. They scarcely tend to show that Home Rule would cure the evils complained of; they certainly do not show, they only assume, that Home Rule in Ireland would not be injurious to England. They are, in short, arguments in favour of Irish independence; every one of them would be seen in its true character if the Irish demand should take the form of a claim that Ireland should become an independent nation. Meanwhile, even on the Home Rule view, the case stands thus: the present condition of things excites Irish discontent, and involves great evils. We have before us but three courses:—Maintenance of the Union; the concession of Irish independence; the concession of Home Rule to Ireland. The Home Ruler urges that the last is the best course left open to us. To decide whether this be so or not requires a fair examination of the possibilities which each course presents to England.
CHAPTER V.
THE MAINTENANCE OF THE UNION.
Eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of the Treaty of Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do not yet form an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more wretched (for the whole European world has made progress, and Ireland with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness; and Irish disaffection to England is, if not deeper, more wide-spread than in 1800. An Act meant by its authors to be the source of the prosperity and concord which, though slowly, followed upon the union with Scotland, has not made Ireland rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the feud between Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of Irish tenants, has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and has therefore not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment which can fairly be brought against the Act of Union. It is, however, of importance to notice that the main charges to which the Act of Union is liable are negative. It has not removed (its foes, say that it has not mitigated) great evils; but the mass of ills for which the Union is constantly made chargeable were in existence before the days of Pitt or Cornwallis. Destitution, sectarian animosities, harsh evictions, met by savage outrages, the terror of secret societies, the stern enforcement of law which to the people represented anything but justice, are phenomena of Irish society, which, as they existed before the Volunteers established the Parliamentary independence of the country, and continued to exist when Ireland was subject to no laws but those passed by an Irish Parliament, cannot be attributed to the Act of Union. That enactment introduced a purely political change. It could not, except very indirectly, either increase or remove evils which it did not affect to touch. To two charges its authors are indeed, with more or less of justice, liable; they committed the intellectual error of supposing that a change or improvement in the form of the Constitution would remove evils due to social and economical causes; they committed the moral error of thinking that a beneficial enactment might allowably be passed by means which outraged all the best moral feeling of Ireland. Their mistakes are worth notice. England is again told that a Constitutional change is the remedy for Irish misery. Ethical considerations (in this case the moral rights of a loyal minority and the legal rights of Irish landlords) are, it is again intimated, to be held of slight account compared with the benefit to Ireland and to England which is to be expected from an experiment in Constitution-making. To impartial observers it may appear that the proposed policy of 1886 threatens to reproduce in its essence the errors and the vices of the policy of 1800. Be this as it may, the reflection that the ill results of the Act of Union are mainly negative suggests the conclusion that the good results (if any) of its repeal would probably be negative also, and clears the way for the question with which we are immediately concerned, namely, What are the actual and undoubted evils to England of maintaining a legislative union with Ireland?
The nature and extent of these evils has been considered in criticising the arguments in favour of Home Rule. A bare enumeration of them therefore may here suffice.
First.—The Union hampers and complicates English policy, and this even independently of the existing agitation for Home Rule. The tenacity of England during the war with America, her triumphant energy during the revolutionary struggle, were due to a unity of feeling on the part, at any rate, of her governing classes, which even under the most favourable circumstances can hardly exist in a Parliament containing, as the Parliament of the United Kingdom always must contain, a large body of Irish Roman Catholics. If it be urged that the presence of Roman Catholics is due to the Catholic Emancipation Act, and not to the Act of Union, the remark is true but irrelevant. No maintainer or assailant of the Union is insane enough to propose the repeal of the Emancipation Act.
Secondly.—The refusal of Home Rule involves a long, tedious, and demoralising contest with opponents will use, and from their own point of view have a right to use, all the arts of obstruction and of Parliamentary intrigue. The battle of the Constitution must be fought out in Parliament, and if it is to be won, Englishmen may be compelled to forego for a time much useful legislation, to modify the rules of party government, and, it is possible, even the forms of the Constitution.
Thirdly.—If the Union is to be maintained with advantage to any part of the United Kingdom, the people of the United Kingdom must make the most strenuous, firm, and continuous effort, lasting, it may well be, for twenty years or more, to enforce throughout every part of the United Kingdom obedience to the law of the land. This effort can only be justified by the equally strenuous determination (which must involve an infinity of trouble) to give ear to every Irish complaint, and to see that the laws which the Irish people obey are laws of justice, and (what is much the same thing) laws which in the long run the people of Ireland will feel to be just. To carry out this course of action is difficult for all governments, is perhaps specially difficult for a democratic government. To maintain the Union is no easy task, though it has yet to be proved that any form of Home Rule will give more ease to the people of England; nor can the difficulty be got rid of, though it may be somewhat changed, by abolishing the Irish representation in Parliament, or by treating Ireland as a Crown colony. Such steps, which could hardly be termed maintenance of the Union, might, as expedients for carrying through safely a course of reform, be morally and for a time justifiable. Their adoption is, however, liable to an almost insuperable objection. Democracy in Great Britain does not comport with official autocracy in Ireland. Every government must be true to its principles, and a democracy which played the benevolent despot would suffer demoralisation.
The Act of Union has been the aim of so much random invective that its good fruits (for it has borne good no less than evil fruits) are in danger of being forgotten. It ended once and for all an intolerable condition of affairs, and its scope will never be understood unless its enactments are read in the lurid light cast upon them by the rebellion of 1798. The hateful means used to obtain an apparently good end have cast a slur on the reputation of more than one high-toned statesman. Humanity, in the case of Cornwallis at least, had far more share than ambition in his determination to abolish the Irish Parliament. His anxiety in 1798 to save Catholics and rebels from oppression was as keen and as noble as the anxiety of Canning in 1858 to protect the natives of India from the resentments excited by the Mutiny. Every reason which in our own day after the Gordon riots made it necessary to abolish the ancient constitution of Jamaica told in 1800 in favour of abolishing the still more ancient Parliament of Ireland. If statesmen, bent on restoring at least the rule of law and peace in a distracted country, fancied that the corruption of the legislature might be counted a low price to pay for protecting the mass of the population from the rule or the vengeance of a faction, they committed a grave moral error. But their mistake was more pardonable than it seems to modern critics, and the lesson which it teaches—that you cannot base a just policy upon a foundation of iniquity—is one which the modern censors of Pitt may well lay to heart. However this may be, the transactions which discredited the passing of the Act of Union give no ground for repealing it, and, except to a rhetorician in want of an argumentum ad hominem, it will never appear that the philosophic historian who maintains that the Treaty of Union was ill-conceived and premature, contradicts the political philosopher who contends that to repeal the Union would be not to cancel but to aggravate the evils of an historical error. The considerations which recommend or require the maintenance of the Union are often forgotten, but are obvious.