A Leap in the Dark / A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the / Bill of 1893

by A. V. Dicey

For even the occasional presence[38]—which will in practice be the frequent presence—of the Irish members at Westminster destroys every hope that Ireland will be governed by her best citizens. The reasons why this is so are various; some of them may be shortly stated. The system, in the first place, of double representation, under which members of the Irish Parliament must flit to and fro between Ireland and England, and debate one day about Irish matters in Dublin, and the next about Imperial, or in truth British, matters in England, makes it impossible for quiet hard-working Irishmen, who carry on the real business of Ireland, to take part in politics. The political centre of interest, in the second place, will after, as before, the passing of the Home Rule Bill, be placed in London and not in Dublin. The humdrum local business which under a system of Home Rule ought to be discussed in the Irish Parliament, may vitally concern the prosperity of every inhabitant of Ireland, but it will not in general lend itself to oratory, or arouse popular excitement. The questions, on the other hand, to be discussed in the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, as, for example, whether Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury shall be head of the British Cabinet, whether the royal veto on Irish legislation shall be exercised on the advice of the English or of the Irish Ministry, are matters which do not in reality greatly affect the happiness of ordinary Irishmen. But they give room for management, for diplomacy, for rhetoric, and are certain on occasions to arouse both the interest and the passions of the Irish people. We may take it for granted that the character of the Irish representation at Westminster will govern the character of the Parliament at Dublin.[39] Hence arises a third and fatal obstacle to the active participation in Irish public life of Irishmen who are not professional politicians. The Home Rule Bill of 1893 professes to restrain on every side the action of the Irish government and Parliament. These Restrictions are the comfort of English Gladstonians; they are thought to be safeguards, though in reality there is nothing which they make safe. But Restrictions which delight Gladstonians are hateful to Irish Home Rulers. Their watchword is, 'Ireland a nation.' To this cry every Home Ruler will rally, and so too will, if once the Union is broken up, many an ardent loyalist, converted by anger at England's treachery into an extreme Nationalist. Irishmen will wish for an Irish army; they will wish for a protective policy; they will desire that Ireland shall play a part in foreign affairs, and will claim for her at least the independence of such a colony as New Zealand. To all these wishes, and to many more, some of which under a system of Home Rule are quite reasonable, the terms of the Home Rule Bill are opposed. Home Rulers, and probably enough the whole Irish people, will insist that the Bill, which will then have become an Act, must be modified. How is the modification to be obtained? How is Home Rule to be made a reality? By one method only: that is, by the freest use of those arts Of intrigue and obstruction by which Home Rule will have been gained. But for the carrying out of such a policy the agitators and intriguers who for the last twenty years have weakened and degraded the Imperial Parliament are the proper agents. For this work they, and they alone, are fit. The quiet, industrious, stay-at-home merchants or lawyers, who might be sent to Dublin for a month or two in the year to manage Irish business on business-like principles, will not be sent to Westminster to hold the balance between English parties. They cannot leave their every-day work; were they willing to forsake their own business, they are not the men to conduct with success the parliamentary game of brag, obstruction, and finesse. Keep, in short, the Irish members at Westminster, and you ensure the supremacy in Ireland of professional politicians. By a curious fatality the Gladstonian policy which weakens England ruins Ireland. Let no one fancy that this is the delusion of an English Unionist. Sir Gavan Duffy is an Irish Nationalist of a far higher type than the men who have drawn money from the Clan-na-Gael. In '48 he was a rebel, but if he was disloyal to England, he was always careful of the honour and character of Ireland. He, at least, perceives the danger to his country of retaining Irish members in a Parliament where they had ceased to have any proper place. 'For my own part,' he says, 'I should not care if they did not attend [the Imperial Parliament] for a generation, which will be needed for the manipulation of their own affairs.'

All this, I shall be told, is prophecy; Gladstonian hopes are as reasonable as Unionist fears. So be it. But in this matter my predictions have a special claim on the attention of the Ministry, they coincide with the forecast, or the foresight, of the present[40] Chief Secretary for Ireland.

'Let us suppose that these Irish representatives for Imperial purposes are not chosen by the legislative body, but are chosen directly by Irish constituencies. You have already, according to our plan, two sets of constituencies. You have the 103 constituencies that return the popular branch of the legislative body, and you have those other constituencies up to seventy-five which return the elective members of the other branch of the legislative body. You have, therefore, got already on our plan two sets of constituencies. Now, if you are going to send members to Westminster for Imperial purposes to the number of forty-five or to the number of ninety-five, you must mark out a third set of constituencies—you must have a third set of elections. A system of that kind does not strike me at least as being exactly the thing for a country of which we are assured that before everything else its prime want is a profound respite from political turmoil. There are plenty of other objections from the Irish point of view, which I am not now going to dwell upon. Depend upon it that an Irish Legislature will not be up to the magnitude of the enormous business that is going to be cast upon it unless you leave all the brains that Irish public men have got to do Irish work in Ireland. Depend upon this, too, that if you have one set of Irish members in London it is a moral certainty that disturbing rivalries, disturbing intrigues would spring up, and that the natural and wholesome play of forces and parties and leaders in the Irish Assembly would be complicated and confused and thrown out of gear by the separate representatives of the country. All this is bad enough.'[41]

These are the words of my friend Mr. Morley.[42] They were spoken at Newcastle on April 21, 1886. He was then, as now, responsible for the government of Ireland. Nothing can add to their gravity; nothing can add to their force; they were true in 1886, they remain as true to-day as they were seven years ago.[43]

As to England.—The presence of the Irish members at Westminster is on the face of it a gross and patent injustice to Great Britain. It is absurd, it is monstrous, that while the Irish Parliament and the Irish Parliament alone settle whether Mr. Healy, Mr. M'Carthy, Mr. Redmond, or Mr. Davitt is to be head of the Irish government, and England, though vitally interested in the character of the Irish Executive, is not to say a word in the matter, eighty Irishmen are to help in determining, and are often actually to determine, whether Lord Salisbury or Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Balfour or Mr. Chamberlain, is to be Prime Minister and direct the policy of England. Here again I can rely on the invaluable aid of Mr. Morley. He has denounced the effect on England of retaining Irish members at Westminster with a strength of language and a weight of authority to which it is impossible for me to make any pretension.

'But there is a word to be said about the effect on our own Parliament, and I think the effect of such an arrangement—and I cannot help thinking so till I hear of better arrangements—upon our own Parliament would be worse still. It is very easy to talk about reducing the number of the Irish members; perhaps it would not be so easy to do. It is very easy to talk about letting them take part in some questions and not in others, but it will be very difficult when you come to draw the line in theory between the questions in which they shall take a part and those in which they shall not take a part. But I do not care what precautions you take; I do not care where you draw the line in theory; but you may depend upon it—I predict—that there is no power on the earth that can prevent the Irish members in such circumstances from being in the future Parliament what they were in the past, and what to some extent they are in the present, the arbiters and the masters of English policy, of English legislative business, and of the rise and fall of British Administrations. You will have weakened by the withdrawal of able men the Legislature of Dublin, and you will have demoralized the Legislature at Westminster. We know very well what that demoralisation means, for I beg you to mark attentively the use to which the Irish members would inevitably put their votes—inevitably and naturally. Those who make most of the retention of the Irish members at Westminster are also those who make most of there being what they call a real and effective and a freely and constantly exercised veto at Westminster upon the doings at Dublin. You see the position. A legislative body in Dublin passes a Bill. The idea is that that Bill is to lie upon the table of the two Houses of Parliament in London for forty days—forty days in the wilderness. What does that mean? It means this, that every question that had been fought out in Ireland would be fought out over again by the Irish members in our Parliament. It means that the House of Lords here would throw out pretty nearly every Bill that was passed at Dublin. What would be the result of that? You would have the present block of our business. You would have all the present irritation and exasperation. English work would not be done; Irish feeling would not be conciliated, but would be exasperated. The whole efforts of the Irish members would be devoted to throwing their weight—I do not blame them for this—first to one party and then to another until they had compelled the removal of these provoking barriers, restrictions, and limitations which ought never to have been set up. I cannot think, for my part I cannot see, how an arrangement of that sort promises well either for the condition of Ireland or for our Parliament. If anybody, in my opinion, were to move an amendment to our Bill in the House of Commons in such a direction as this, with all these consequences foreseen, I do not believe such an amendment would find twenty supporters.'[44]