Home Rule / Second Edition

HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES

ULSTER

CHAPTER V.

HOME RULE DIFFICULTIESToC

"Sooner or later," said a wise man to me the other day, "always sooner or later in the Home Rule question you bump up against religion." That is, unhappily, still true, though not so true to-day as in 1886 or in 1893. No one who visits Ireland to-day can doubt that the religious hatreds of the past are being softened; but, unhappily, this process, as recent events have vividly shown us, is still fiercely resisted by a small minority.

It may almost be said that in Ireland religious intolerance is a political vested interest. It would indeed be impossible to justify the immense preponderance of salaried power and place still given at the centre to the Protestant minority[47] unless you could maintain the idea that the Catholic is a dangerous man when in a place of power. That consideration, doubtless largely unconscious, may yet partly explain the immense amount of energy devoted in the north-east of Ireland to the encouragement of religious prejudice—honest in many of the rank-and-file, artificial, I fear, in many of the organisers.

BELFAST

Belfast, so like a great modern city in its magnificent outward aspect, is still largely mediæval at heart. Its chief social energies are thrown into that vast and powerful organisation known as the "Orange Society"—still wearing the badges of the seventeenth century, still uttering its war-cries, and still feeding on its passions. This immense religious club has to support in the modern age that theory of religious incompatibility which nearly every other community has long ago abandoned. It has to justify itself in excluding from the municipal honours of Belfast almost every Roman Catholic. It has to justify the majority of 300,000 Belfast Protestants in giving a small and inadequate representation among the rulers of this great wealthy town to the minority of 100,000 Catholics. To maintain this policy of Ulster ascendancy the Orange chiefs watch every document that comes from Rome with a lynx eye, and try to catch a glimpse of the "Scarlet Woman" behind every Latin rescript.

All this may appear to some good politics; but surely it is past tolerance when these manufacturers of intolerance talk of the intolerance of others.

In all these respects Belfast stands almost alone in Ireland. A canon of the Catholic Church—a man of winning manners and charming personality, who lives on quite friendly terms with his Protestant neighbours in the South of Ireland—told me that on the only occasion when he visited Belfast he was spat at in the streets. The story is quite credible to those who have watched the deliberate manipulation of the worst religious passions by the party organisers of Ulster, not always unassisted by their colleagues in London.

One result is that if you ask any question as to the character of a man in the city of Belfast, the answer will always come to you in terms of religion. In the South the reply will be, "He is a Nationalist," or "He is a Unionist." But in Belfast it will be, "He is a Catholic," or "He is a Protestant."

So fierce is this feeling in Belfast that until recently all political and social differences were submerged by it, and every fresh effort towards local progress was broken up by the revival of religious prejudice. Things have been somewhat changed by the wonderful social and political crusade, quite independent of all religious differences, carried on by that remarkable young citizen of Belfast, Mr. Joseph Devlin, who captured the constituency of West Belfast in 1906 and retained it in 1910 largely on a social reform policy. He has for the first time given Ulster a glimpse of something better than religious fanaticism—a social policy based on the unions of religions for the good of all.[48]

This break in the dark clouds must surely spread until a better spirit prevails.

For Belfast, perhaps, has more to gain than any other great Irish city by a policy that would pacify Ireland. If Belfast could once shake off the memory of her immigrant origin, and look to Ireland rather than Great Britain as her native country, she would perceive that the gain of Catholic Ireland must be her gain also. Her prosperity can never be sure or certain as long as it stands out against a background of Irish poverty. The linen industry can never rest secure as long as there are so few industries to support it. The linen merchants cannot really gain by their isolation. Belfast at present has a great export trade. She clothes Great Britain in fine linen. But what about her home trade? Would not Belfast be even more prosperous if she could clothe Ireland too?—if Ireland could afford to put aside her rags and replace them with "purple and fine linen" from the factories of the North?

Might not Belfast, in that case, be able not merely to enrich her merchants but to raise the social conditions of her own people? For it is unhappily the case that the researches of the Women's Trade Unions have disclosed in Belfast conditions of sweated labour that have surprised and alarmed even the most hardened investigators. The lofty buildings and humming mills of Belfast are revealed to be resting on a swamp of social misery. Nor is this at all remarkable, for the mass of the people are kept helpless and divided by their religious divisions, which are too often used as a weapon to prevent them from combining for higher wages and shorter hours. Religious fanaticism is not quite so self-sacrificing in its commercial results as superficial observers might suppose.

It is impossible, indeed, that Belfast can continue for ever in a prosperity isolated and aloof from the country in which she is situated. Either she must throw in her lot with Ireland or Ireland must drag Ireland down into one common pit of adversity. Lord Pirrie, the enterprising and fearless director of the great shipbuilding works on Queen's Island—works which maintained their pre-eminence and continued their output through the dark days of the shipbuilding trade on the Clyde and the Thames—has been converted to Home Rule. Other business men will follow his example, for Belfast, as much as any other town in Ireland, suffers in Private Bill legislation from the remoteness of the Legislature and the Administration. She, too, has too often to endure a financial policy not suited to her needs. She, like the rest of Ireland, has everything to gain and nothing to lose by a policy that will enable Ireland to obtain legislation better fitted to the needs of the Irish people.

In spite, indeed, of her outcries, Ulster has already gained more from the policy of the Nationalists at Westminster than from that of the Orange reactionaries who represent half the province at Westminster. Those Orangemen have identified the robust Radicalism and Presbyterianism of Ulster with the narrowest demands of the Anglican landlords and Tories of England. Happily for Ulster, they have been defeated. The farmers of Ulster are at present buying their farms under the policy of Land Purchase which the Orange Ulstermen resisted. These farmers have freely used the Land Courts which their representatives denounced as revolution and the "end of all things." They are profiting by the triumphs of Nationalist policy even while they denounce the Nationalists in terms which are reserved by other people for criminals and wild beasts.

The best men in Ulster will probably think twice before prolonging a campaign of rebellion. We have heard of late threats of refusal to pay taxes or rents to the Irish Parliament. But what could be more dangerous to a city like Belfast than a no-rent campaign under the guidance of English lawyers? If the farmers are advised not to pay their rents to Dublin, is it not likely that the working-class tenants of Belfast may refuse to pay their rents to their own landlords? At their own peril, indeed, will a class which largely lives on rent and interest strike a blow at the habits and customs which enforce such payments. The kid-glove revolution of linen merchants might suddenly and swiftly turn into something nearer to the real, red thing. It is dangerous to set examples in revolution.

As Ulster gradually swings round to the inevitable, she will discover that there is a very bright silver lining to what seems to her so black a cloud. Ulster, while still represented at Westminster, will send 59 members to Dublin under the 1912 Bill. Thus she will have no small or mean representation in the future Irish Parliament. She may have far more power than she imagines, if she uses it with wisdom. A strong Progressive section from the industrial North may hold the balance between the parties of the South and centre. It would be rash to predict the future. But there are many causes—education, Free Trade, enlightened local government, to take a few—in which Ireland will gain immensely by a strong, clear progressive lead. "The best is yet to be." Why should not Belfast—Belfast Protestant united with Belfast Catholic—have in these matters a greater and nobler part to play under Home Rule than under the present system of distant, ignorant, absent-minded, rule?

As for religious persecution, the thing would be absurdly impossible under any Home Rule Bill that possessed the guarantees and safeguards of the 1912 Bill. But, beyond those safeguards, Ulster will always have, in any such extreme and improbable event, an appeal to all the forces of the Empire—an appeal which would certainly not be in vain.

The conviction of these truths will gradually penetrate the shrewd brain of Ulster and save her from the madness of rebellion or secession. The patience and moderation of the Government will gradually disarm these men. Who knows whether in the end the majority in Belfast, as in Ulster, as a whole may not voluntarily prefer to join rather than hold aloof from a great national restoration?

In one of his 1893 Home Rule speeches, Mr. Gladstone reminded the House of Commons, with impressive power, of the splendid reception given in 1793 to the Protestant delegates from Grattan's Parliament at Dublin, who had come to plead for the concession of their rights to the Catholics of Ireland.

It was the Act of Union that destroyed all that generous feeling, and revived again the passions of ascendancy and fanaticism among the Orangemen of North-east Ulster.

But the old, generous feelings may yet return again.

SOUTHERN ULSTER

The great majority of the Protestants in Ireland stand outside this ring. They have no more share in the good things than the average Catholic. Those men, Irishmen first and Protestants afterwards, are now taking their part in public life and earning their proper share in the rewards of public zeal.

The delegates of the Eighty Club made a special public appeal for information as to cases of religious intolerance. They received a great many responses to this appeal, but it is hardly any exaggeration to say that they found no genuine cases of religious intolerance outside the North-east corner of Ulster, where they received some conspicuous examples of the religious persecution of Liberal Protestants by their Orange co-religionists.[49]

Journeying southwards, however, the Eighty Club delegates passed with every mile into a serener atmosphere. They received deputations at every wayside station from the public bodies in the south of Ulster. These presented documents stating the bare facts as to the representation of these two forms of the Christian religion—so often, alas! belying the doctrine of Christian love by the practice of mutual hatred—on their public bodies. They found, for instance, in Monaghan, a predominantly Catholic town, that seven seats on the local Council went to the Unionist and Protestant Party, a considerable concession from a majority large enough in numbers to pack the whole of the council if they so desired. That little town might give a good lesson to some of the boroughs of our great county of London, where it is an almost universal practice for either party to seize the whole of the seats if they are capable of doing so.

Take one more instance in that district—out of the many—in the town of Cavan, a preponderantly Catholic borough. There, out of twenty-three candidates at the last election standing for eighteen seats, four Unionists were elected by a similar method of compromise. Where is the evidence of the Orangemen in their strongholds meting out similar measure to the Catholics?

Passing further south they found that although the great majority of the public bodies was naturally Nationalist and Catholic, there was no sign of that spirit of rigid exclusiveness extended towards the Catholics by the Protestants in the city of Belfast. Of course, a large number of the Protestant officials found so frequently in the service of these public bodies are appointed in Ireland by the Crown, and not, as in England, by the local authorities. But the Protestants are not confined to those offices. Dublin has several times freely elected a Protestant to the Lord Mayoralty of that city. In other parts of southern Ireland the Eighty Club found Protestants as masters in the county schools, surveyors of taxes, local registrars, clerks of the works, rate collectors, and public librarians. The Catholics on the local bodies recognise that the Protestants in the south possess, owing to their superior advantages in education, a great proportion of the brains, and they are not slow to do justice to this fact in filling public posts.

In regard to elections, let us be quite candid. It is not to be expected that an Irish elector will return at the head of the poll men who hurl abuse and calumny at the Irish race and at the religion held by the great majority of the Irish race. Treachery to one's cause and one's faith is not required by any proper doctrine of tolerance. Surrender is not the same thing as compromise. We do not, for instance, expect in England that a Unionist constituency should return a Liberal, or a Liberal constituency should return a Tory. We expect men to live up to their faith, and even admire them for doing so. In Ireland, similarly, Nationalist voters, as a whole, prefer Nationalist members, and will continue to do so until this great issue of Home Rule is settled.

CHANCES OF PEACE

But when a Unionist or a Protestant comes forward with a single eye to the public good, and displays in public affairs a broad and generous spirit, he finds no difficulty in securing his place in public life. In county Cork and Tipperary we found Protestant landlords who had sold their estates. Having ceased to be rent collectors, they are becoming real leaders of their people. These landlords are reorganising co-operative societies, encouraging agricultural experiments, looking after schools, and helping generally in the regrowth of Ireland with a real good will. Many of these men are Devolutionists. Take, for instance, Sir Nugent Everard, the public-spirited squire who, with great enterprise, enthusiasm, and perseverance, is reviving that old Irish tobacco industry which once played so big a part in the prosperity of Ireland. Sir Nugent Everard is a Protestant, but he has been elected to his county council. On that council, too, he has been appointed chairman of several committees by his Catholic fellow county councillors.

There is, indeed, at the present moment throughout the south of Ireland a new spirit of willingness, amounting almost to eagerness, to accept the services of all distinguished Protestants who will work for the common good of Ireland. That is not at all surprising when we remember that the Irish Party have, in the past, numbered among their leaders at least three distinguished Protestants—Grattan, Butt, and Parnell—and at the present day always return a steady percentage of Protestant representatives to the Imperial Parliament.[50]

The plain fact is that, except in the north-east corner, religious intolerance is a dying cause in Ireland, and even in Belfast it is mainly kept alive by artificial respiration frequently administered by English Unionist leaders.

Every phase of Irish life is expressed in Irish humour. Two Irish stories commonly related to-day in the south really throw some light on the change of feeling in Ireland. One is that of a Protestant parson in the south who found that the Bishop was about to visit his parish for a confirmation. But, unhappily, it so happened that there were no young people to confirm. The parson was in despair. After long reflection, he took a great decision. He went across to the Catholic priest and described his unhappy plight. "Indeed," he said, "I shall be a ruined man." "Sure," said the priest sympathetically, "I will lend you a congregation." "How will you do that?" said the parson. "Faith! I'll tell the boys and girls to go across." And the story relates that when the Bishop came down he actually found the church full of "boys and girls" who, for the moment, figured as Protestants.

The second story comes from Ulster, and seems to show that there is some softening even in the rigour of that climate. It is said that "once upon a time," when July 11th came round one of the Orange drummers found that on the last occasion he had broken his drum, and could not get it mended. Finding himself faced with disgrace, he wandered through the town after a drum, and finally found himself looking at a very beautiful specimen of its kind standing in a Catholic schoolroom. After much heart-searching, the Orangeman at last went in, and timidly told the Catholic priest the extremity of his Protestant need. "You shall have the drum," said the priest; "but you must not break it this time." And so, on that condition, the drum was handed over.

Perhaps if such relations were to become more common the drums would actually beat more softly in the north of Ireland.

FOOTNOTES:

HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES

ROME RULE or HOME RULE?

CHAPTER VI.

HOME RULE DIFFICULTIESToC

Those who watch closely the exploitation of the religious cry against Home Rule will have observed that its exploiters always endeavour to make the best of both worlds. One world is expressed in the phrase, "Home Rule means Rome Rule." The other by the watchword, "Priest-ridden Ireland." Those who use the first of these cries are always trying to persuade themselves that the gift of Home Rule will increase the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland and produce a kind of religious tyranny over the Protestant minority. How that could be done under a measure so carefully safeguarded as, for instance, the Bill of 1912,[51] they never condescend to tell us. It is part of their policy never to enter into details, but to produce a general atmosphere of distrust and unreason.

But it is often these very same people who draw terrible pictures of the power of the Roman Catholic Church already existing in Ireland at the present moment. They do not explain how both of these propositions can be true—how, if Ireland is already "priest-ridden"—a superlative phrase—without Home Rule, there is any room for an increase of that evil under Home Rule. They never seem to contemplate the possibility that the proper and natural corrective to the power of the priest, if it be excessive, is the creation of a strong rival civil power.

Is it, indeed, so certain that "Home Rule" would increase the power of Rome in Ireland? I have even heard it said that the Home Rule cause finds its headquarters at Rome, and that it is part of a gigantic conspiracy of the Vatican to break up a Protestant Empire. Do those who reason thus ever reflect how it is that the English Catholics are often among the most formidable opponents of the Home Rule cause?

Why are the English Catholics so often opposed to Home Rule? The answer was given by Cardinal Manning in the famous phrase quoted by Lord Morley: "We want every one of their eighty votes."

UNIONISM AS "ROME RULE"

Those who fear Home Rule as "Rome Rule" in Ireland had better, indeed, examine themselves as to whether their action in defeating the Home Rule Bill of 1893 has not, so far as it goes, led to this very same effect in England. It must never be forgotten that it was with the help of the 80 Irish votes, pressed back to Westminster by the Irish Bishops in sympathy with the Catholic Bishops in England, that the British Parliament passed those clauses of the 1902 Education Act which are most offensive to English Nonconformists. Dr. Clifford has coined the expression "Rome on the rates." It is not, perhaps, a phrase that tells the whole story. We cannot forget how many of the poorer Catholics in our great cities are the descendants of the unhappy Irishmen who were evicted between 1840 and 1880 from the cabins of Ireland. Those poor exiles have a special call on our purses. But Anglicanism—rich Anglicanism—has also been placed on the rates. It has been placed there through a working alliance between the English Church and Rome, carrying out its aims by means of the votes of the Catholic Irish members. Those members only acted up to their principles in so voting. It was Great Britain that compelled them to remain as full voters in full strength at the British Parliament. As long as they are there the Irish must be expected to vote for the interests of their own religion and their own people. But what of the sincerity of the people who, after using the aid of the Irish to endow the Catholic and Anglican schools in England, now raise this outcry about "Rome Rule" in Ireland?

It is vital, indeed, to point out that in these matters Home Rule for Ireland is the only possible road to Home Rule for England also. Under the 1912 Bill the Irish vote at Westminster is reduced to 42, and will, if English self-government be also extended, be excluded from education altogether. Thus the first plain and practical result of Irish Home Rule would be not so much to give the Roman Catholics more power in Ireland as to give the Protestants more liberty in England. But who can doubt that it would also introduce a new element of civil power into the schools of Ireland?[52]

NATIONALISM AND RELIGION

As to Ireland itself, indeed, there can be no doubt that the great national wrongs of the Irish people have immensely strengthened the hold of the Roman Catholic Church over that island during the last century.

Let us look back for a moment at the historic relations between Roman Catholicism and the Irish National cause.

No doubt the iron hammer of Cromwell—in England the rebel, in Ireland the conqueror—and the long torture of the penal laws both contributed to weld together the religious and political faith of Ireland. During those dark days, Nationalism and Catholicism were almost identical terms. It has been shrewdly remarked that Henry VIII. and Elizabeth might probably have converted Ireland to Protestantism if they had preached the reformed faith in the Irish language. However that may be, it is quite certain that Protestantism stood throughout the eighteenth century as the sign and uniform of the conqueror and the devastator. Catholicism remained as the hope and sign of the conquered. Any Irishman who became a Protestant was naturally suspected of being a traitor, not merely to his religion but also to his nation.

Yet at the end of the eighteenth century the British Government had a great opportunity of dividing the national from the religious cause. Grattan's Parliament, with all its brilliancy and efficiency, was, after all, a Parliament from which every Catholic was excluded. That Parliament, indeed, as we have noted, granted the franchise to the Catholic peasant and abolished the penal laws. But it was part of the policy of the British Government to show that Grattan's Parliament could not grant Catholic emancipation in its full sense. The grant was to be kept as a bribe by which to achieve the policy of the Union. Anyone who reads the story in the pages of Lecky[53] must see how that motive ran like a sinister thread throughout the whole working of British policy from 1795 to 1800.

Well, that policy succeeded only too thoroughly for the time. Among the various forms of bribery which induced the Irish Parliament to give a vote for the Union at the second time of asking, the gift of money and titles were, perhaps, less powerful than the offer of Catholic emancipation. Recent researches have shown that that offer led to the conversion of Bishops and their clergy throughout the whole of Ireland, besides winning over the great body of Catholic Peers.

It is now known, indeed, to be the fact that the British Government actually induced the Vatican to bring pressure upon the Irish leaders and the Irish bishops in order to achieve their object. It is almost certain that unless that offer had been made, and unless the Catholic Party in Ireland had been informed that the Act of Union was the inevitable price for Catholic emancipation, Lord Castlereagh would never have succeeded in closing the Irish Parliament.[54]

That bargain was broken. It is unhappily the case that the British Ministers must have given their pledge to the Catholic Party in Ireland with the conscious knowledge of their inability to carry it out. For over them all was their King, George III., still with the Royal privilege of dismissal for his Ministers, and resolutely, fiercely resolved not to grant Catholic emancipation. Pitt relieved his conscience by a two-years' resignation, but he returned to Parliament without achieving his pledge. For another thirty years the struggle went on. It is the Duke of Wellington himself who has handed down to history the testimony that Catholic emancipation was only finally granted in 1829 in order to save Ireland from a second rebellion.

It is that record that has driven Ireland into the arms of Rome, and who can wonder?

England has now only paid the price of that great betrayal of 1800—a betrayal almost as great as the broken treaty of Limerick. Those who read the story of 1800 to 1830, and especially the brilliant sketch of O'Connell's life in Lecky's "Leaders of Irish Public Opinion," will know that it was in the course of this prolonged struggle for Catholic emancipation that the forces of religion and politics were first thrown into close alliance in Ireland. It was not until after 1820 that the Catholic priest took the place of the Irish landlord, and became what he was throughout most of the nineteenth century, the political leader of his district. It was O'Connell who first carried out that great revolution in political strategy. It was he who first placed the flocks of the Irish people under the guidance of shepherds who carried the crook and not the rent-book. If the Home Rule movement has been assisted by religious fervour, that has been the fault of British statesmen. If the Irish have stood apart from the rest of Europe by a steadily deepening loyalty to their faith, the reason is largely to be found in the British policy of 1800.

ROME AND HOME RULE

What is the moral of all this? Some of the Unionists themselves give a shrewd though cynical comment on the situation when they suggest, in the intervals of crying "Home Rule means Rome Rule," that probably the Roman Catholic priests have no great zeal for Home Rule. I do not, myself, for a moment believe that that is the case. The Roman Catholic priests of Ireland have themselves been elevated and purified by the great struggle, both social and political, through which they have passed. They stand apart from the rest of the priesthood of Europe, distinguished above all others by their deep and strong democratic sympathies. When all others deserted the people of Ireland in the black times of the '98 Rebellion, in the dark and evil days of the famine of 1847, or through the murderous retaliations that followed, the Irish priesthood stood staunchly by Ireland. Those who remained faithful then are not likely to desert the cause of their people now that it is on the verge of success. A broader and more enlightened view of the future was expressed to me by that distinguished man the Vice-president of Maynooth College, when he said:—"We do not expect any direct gain for our faith, but as Irishmen we are with Ireland, and as Catholics we cannot but believe that the prosperity of a Catholic nation must redound to the glory of Catholicism." That is the view of a good Catholic who is also a good citizen.

But though we may believe in their resisting power to this great temptation, we must remember that the failure to settle the Home Rule question would give to the bishops and priests a great power in Ireland. They would remain the great, pre-eminent centre of national authority. Look at their position now. They are public men; they are allowed, without envy or opposition, to maintain an unchallenged control over the schools; they have a voice in all great public decisions of policy, even in regard to such matters as old-age pensions, insurance, or agriculture. The present position plays into their hands. "Rome Rule" is far more powerful without "Home Rule."

So much for the Irish clergy. But what of Rome itself? Looked at from the distance of the Seven Hills, and viewed from the standpoint of a Church that contemplates all forms of human government with equal indifference, always regarding only the good of their Church, is it not possible that the acute diplomatists of the Eternal City may think that they stand to gain more by prolonging than by satisfying the present hunger of Ireland? At present Rome holds Ireland in fee. As long as Ireland possesses no strong secular central power she must always lean on the authority of her bishops and archbishops. But Rome thinks probably more of the 40,000,000 people of Britain than of the 4,000,000 of Ireland. As long as England persists in holding Ireland in bondage she must pay to Rome some compensation. The eighty votes at Westminster are still doing the work which Cardinal Manning required of them. Is it likely that Rome is so beset with anxiety to drive them across the Channel? Is it altogether unlikely that some of the more shrewd Italian or Spanish diplomatists at the Vatican—advised, perhaps, by their English bishops and dukes—may hope to affect the issue rather in the Unionist than in the Home Rule direction? Such suspicions may be entirely baseless, but it will be impossible to disregard them entirely during the events of the next few years.

It would not be the first time, nor the latest since Castlereagh, when the extreme Protestant Unionists of this country conspired with the Tory Ultramontanes of the Vatican to traffic away the liberties of Ireland.[55]

Amid all these doubts and perplexities we shall be wise to stick fast to the central doctrine that civil liberty and religious liberty stand together. This is the one truth that emerges from the history of Europe during the last three centuries. Wherever we look—whether in Germany, France, Holland, Scotland, or England—we see that these two rights have always gone hand in hand.

Is there, indeed, a single instance in human history when the grant of civil liberty has led to the forging of religious chains? Look to the West, and note how, in the freest countries of the world—in the United States and Canada, where there is not even a shadow of an establishment for any form of religion—every kind of human faith lives together in simple human brotherhood, and draws from that brotherhood new food for the refreshment of mankind. In Ireland the one reason why the religious quarrel has been maintained is to be found in the absence of civil liberty. At every crisis of Ireland's fate the passion of religious hatred has been worked—then as now—in order to prolong civil and political despotism.

May we not be sure that Home Rule, instead of strengthening this evil tendency, will weaken it? May we not be equally sure that it will take no blood or muscle from the cause of true religion, certain to flourish with greater richness and power where Christian love prevails?

Is it possible, in short, that in Ireland alone, of all countries, freedom should mean persecution? On the contrary, is it not far more likely that Home Rule for Ireland will mean neither Rome Rule nor Orange Rule, but the "rule of the best for the good of all"?