X.—SHOULD HOME RULE BE GRANTED TO IRELAND?
The question of Irish self-government is for the present the greatest that concerns the Liberal party, and in current politics, as Mr. Gladstone has truly and tersely put it, Ireland blocks the way. This, of course, is not so simply because Mr. Gladstone said it, and even less is it so because he wished it. The question stands in the path of all other great measures of legislative reform, for the sufficient reason that, at the first opportunity after the franchise was enjoyed by every householder, Ireland declared emphatically, and by a majority unparalleled in modern political history, in favour of freedom to manage her own domestic affairs.
It must be obvious that, when all the popularly-elected members for three out of four provinces into which one of the countries which form this kingdom is divided, pronounce against the existing system of government, and when a majority of those for the other province side with them, that that system cannot continue to exist with the good will of those whom it most intimately affects, and can only be maintained by force. Such as have followed Mr. Gladstone in this matter do not believe in the maintenance of a government against the constitutionally declared will of the governed, and are agreed that the Irish demand for the management of purely domestic affairs ought to be granted on the grounds of justice, expediency, and sound Liberal principles.
They hold that to grant the demand would be just, because under the present system the vast majority of Irishmen have no practical control over those by whom they are governed; that it would be expedient, because the kingdom is weakened by the continual disaffection of one of its component parts; and that it would accord with sound Liberal principles, in that the overwhelming majority of the Irish electorate have asked for Home Rule through the constitutional medium of the ballot-box.
“The liberty of a people,” says Cowley, “consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatever form it be of government.” This definition, which applies strictly to England, applies not at all to Ireland. The English system of government has broken down there so completely that all parties profess to be agreed that something must be devised in its place. Liberals have always held that a people or a class knows better what is good for it than any other people or any other class, however enlightened or well-meaning. That has been one of the main reasons for giving the suffrage to the poor, the ignorant, and the helpless, because the experience of ages has taught that the rich, the educated, and the powerful, while well able to take care of themselves, are either too careless or have too little knowledge to take the same care of others. And as with the suffrage, so with self-government. Any extension must be granted upon broad principles: small concessions grudgingly given are always accepted without gratitude, and used to extort greater.
“Well,” it may be said, “I am willing to give Ireland a large measure of self-government, but I won’t yield to agitators.” This is one of the oldest of all replies to demands for reform. How could anything be gained in politics without agitation? The Tories swear they will yield nothing until agitation has ceased; and if it ceases, if only for a moment, they declare it is evident there is no popular wish for reform. “Proceed, my lords,” said Lord Mansfield, when the American colonies revolted—“proceed, my lords, with spirit and firmness; and when you shall have established your authority, it will then be time to show lenity.” And their lordships proceeded; but the “time to show lenity” never came, for it was such counsels which lost the American colonies to the British Crown.
“But,” it will be added, “this is not an ordinary agitation; it is a revolutionary one.” In some of its phases that is true, and it is all the more reason why its cause should be closely examined. It is the English themselves who have taught the Irish that ordinary constitutional agitation gains them nothing. If it had not been for the organization of the Volunteers, Grattan’s Parliament of 1782 would never have been granted; the Duke of Wellington in 1829 admitted that he yielded Catholic Emancipation to the threat of civil war; it needed the terrible crimes of the early “thirties” to arouse England to the necessity for abolishing an iniquitous system of levying tithe; the Fenian outbreaks, the attack on a prison van at Manchester, and the blowing up of a gaol in London, opened the eyes of the English to the need for disestablishing the Irish Church and clipping the claws of the Irish landlords; the fearful winter of 1880 led to the granting of still further protection to the tenants; and to the “plan of campaign” of the winter of 1886 was it owing that a Tory Government felt compelled to still further encroach upon the property and privileges of the landlords of Ireland. As long as Ireland has held to constitutional agitation—as witness that for Catholic Emancipation from 1801 to 1825, and that for tenant right from 1850 to 1868—so long has England refused to grant a single just demand; and this is exactly what the Tories are doing now. Is it any wonder that Irish agitation should have become revolutionary when that is the only kind we have rewarded? In the relations between the governing classes and popular movements there has all through been this difference—in England, revolution has been staved off by reform; in Ireland, reform has been staved off till there was revolution.
“But,” it may be continued, “it is not so much that the agitation is revolutionary as that it is criminal which makes me object.” But a movement ought not to be called criminal because of the excesses of a few of its extreme partisans. No great popular agitation has ever been free from lewd fellows of the baser sort, who have given occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. But did English Liberals hesitate to support Mazzini because he was accused of favouring assassination; to sympathize with the French Republicans because Orsini prepared bombs for the destruction of Napoleon III.; or to-day to wish well to those Russians who conspire for liberty because the wilder spirits among them have assassinated one Czar and attempted to assassinate another? In our own history, are the Covenanters to be condemned because some of them murdered Archbishop Sharpe; the early Radicals because Thistlewood and his fellows plotted to kill King and Cabinet; the Reformers of 1831 because of the Bristol riots and the destruction of Nottingham Castle; or those of 1866 because the Hyde Park railings were thrown down? When it is remembered that even such a man as Peel could, in the midst of a heated controversy, accuse such another as Cobden of conniving at assassination, we should be careful how we accept the testimony of any partisan concerning the criminality of an agitation to which he is opposed.
These objections touch, after all, only the fringe of the matter, and another which is frequently urged—that the Irish agitation is a “foreign conspiracy” because it receives aid from the United States—does not go much closer to the root. But this, like the others, may be disposed of by English examples. Did not Englishmen aid, both by men and money, in liberating Greece and uniting Italy? Did they not help by subscriptions the insurrections in Hungary and Poland, and, when the former failed, did not many of them take the refugees into their homes? Did they not even raise a fund to assist the slave-holding States when in rebellion? And in all these cases, except in a remote degree the last, they had no tie in blood, but only one in sympathy, with those concerned. That the Nationalist movement has been largely aided from the United States is undoubted; but that aid has mainly come from those of Irish birth or parentage who have been driven across the Atlantic to seek a home. And when it is said that, because of this help, a self-governed Ireland would rely upon the United States to the detriment of England, may we not ask why it is that Italy does not rely upon France, though it was France that struck the first effective blow for Italian unity; or Bulgaria upon Russia, though without the blood-sacrifice of Russia that principality would never have occupied a place on the European map? However much it may be to be regretted, gratitude does not play any large part in international affairs.
When the more serious objections to the granting Home Rule are urged they are no more difficult to meet. “Ireland is not a nation,” it is said; “its people are of different races.” The argument has been used before by the Tories, and the value of it may be judged by an example. The late Lord Derby, as leader of the Tory party, addressed the House of Lords in 1860 in savage denunciation of the efforts then being made to secure the unity of Italy; and to the contention that all the inhabitants of that peninsula were Italians, he answered, in the words of Macbeth to his hired murderers,
Aye, in the catalogue ye go for men;
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are cleped
All by the name of dogs.
And those who remember the unbridgeable differences which then appeared to exist between the Sardinian and the Sicilian, the Florentine and the Neapolitan, the dweller in Venice and the resident in Rome, will know that the perfect unity between them which now makes Italy one of the Great Powers would have been considered as unlikely as any between a Belfast man and an inhabitant of Cork to-day.
“The Irish are not fit for self-government,” is the next contention. If this be so, the shame is ours in not having given them the opportunity for being trained. We did not refuse to liberate the slaves until they were proved to be fit for freedom; we did not decline to give the labourers the suffrage until they were proved to be capable of rightly using it; for we knew in each case that no such proof could be afforded until the opportunity was offered. No proof that the Irish are not able to manage a Parliament is given by the corruption of the semi-independent body which they enjoyed from 1782 to 1799; for that consisted entirely of Protestants, mainly chosen by a band of borough-mongers, whom Pitt had to buy out at a high price. The same thing exactly was said by the Tories—sneers about the pigs and all—of the Bulgarians in 1876; and they have had good reason since to change their minds. What reason is there to believe that the Irish would be less able to manage their own affairs than the people of Bulgaria?
“But they are naturally lawless.” Where is the proof? It is true that in certain mountainous districts of Kerry and Clare there have been outbursts of moonlighting, but these have been as nothing compared with the prevalence of brigandage in Greece before the Greeks were allowed to rule themselves, or in Italy before the Italians founded their united kingdom. Where there is little popular respect for the law, there lawlessness flourishes; where the people make their own laws, there lawlessness is put down with a strong hand.
“If they had the power they would persecute the Protestants.” This is a prophecy, and a prophet has the advantage of being able to soar above proofs. But the fact that every prominent defender of national rights in Ireland for the last century and a half, except O’Connell, from Dean Swift down to Mr. Parnell, has been a Protestant, should count for something. The fact that Protestants have again and again been returned to the Corporations of the most Catholic cities should count for much. And the fact that, when for years not a single one of the 450 English members was a Roman Catholic, several of the 103 Irish members, even from the most Catholic districts, were Protestants, should count for more. Such religious persecution as exists in Ireland is certainly more at Belfast than at Cork.
“Giving them a Parliament would break up the empire.” Why should the empire be broken up because there was extended to Ireland the principle we have granted to Australia and Canada, New Zealand and the Cape? How is it that the German Empire continues united, though the Reichstag, its Imperial Parliament, is one body, and the Prussian Parliament, the Saxon Parliament, the Würtemberg Parliament, and the Bavarian Parliament are quite others? Is there no union between Austria and Hungary, or between Sweden and Norway, though each has its Parliament, and are the United States disintegrated because every one of the States has its own Senate and House of Representatives? If one were asked to name two of the strongest nations outside our own, Germany and the United States would be the reply; and in each there is a system of Home Rule for the separate portions.
“But did not the United States crush the Confederates when secession was demanded?” Of course they did; the United States fought against the South separating from the North, as we should against Ireland separating from England. But every State which joined the Confederacy possessed as ample a measure of Home Rule as the Liberals now propose for Ireland; and, to the lasting honour of the Northern States, that measure was restored soon after the war. Home Rule the South had, and has still; separation the South asked for, and did not receive.
“The Irish are ungrateful people; whatever you give them they ask for more.” Would it not be well to first ask what the Irish have had to be grateful for? Granting that we yielded Catholic Emancipation, reformed the tithe system, disestablished the Church, and legalized tenant right; why, after all these things, should we expect gratitude? The old phrase that “gratitude is a lively sense of favours to come” may be unduly cynical; but is it not absurd to ask that recompense for the doing of acts of simple justice? Former generations of Englishmen deprived the Irish of their rights. To what thanks are later generations entitled for simply restoring to the Irish the rights of which they had been robbed? “Be just and fear not,” was said of ancient time: “Be just and expect not gratitude,” should be added to-day. And when it is stated that “the Irish ought to accept what we choose to give them,” it must be replied that this is the purely despotic argument which has already done England sufficient injury by losing her the United States.
It is only in this, the briefest, fashion that an answer has been sketched to the various arguments and assumptions against Home Rule. In determining to grant it, the Liberals are acting strictly according to their old policy of favouring struggling nationalities. The support given by Burke to the cause of America; by Fox to Ireland; by Canning (in this, as in some other matters, truly Liberal) to Greece; by Palmerston to Italy; and by Mr. Gladstone to Bulgaria, indicates with sufficient clearness the traditional Liberal position. For a century we have been telling the whole world the advantages of autonomy; are we now to decline to adopt, in similar circumstances, the remedy for discontent we have all along preached to, and sometimes forced upon, others?
The Liberals say with Landor, “Let us try rather to remove the evils of Ireland than to persuade those who undergo them that there are none.” They are utterly opposed to the idea that it is right to give a people free representation and then deliberately to ignore all that that representation asks. They are, it is true, in a minority at this moment, but they do not forget that all great causes have three stages—first to be laughed at, next to be looked at, and last to be loved. Home Rule has certainly reached the second stage; it will soon reach the third. The Liberals have been beaten before, but they have always won in the end. And it is well to be beaten sometimes. If life were all sunshine we should find it oppressive; an occasional cloud serves to temper the heat. To the Liberals, as to nature itself, a misty morning is often the prelude to the brightest day.