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

by A. V. Dicey

The first inducement is that the presence of eighty Irish members at Westminster is an outward and visible sign of the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament.[46] On this point it is needless to say much; few Englishmen will on consideration think it worth while to dislocate all our system of government in order that the British Parliament may retain in Ireland the kind of sovereignty which it retains in New Zealand. We are rightly proud of our connection with our colonies, but no one would seriously propose to retain nominal sovereignty in Canada at the price of a perilous and injurious change in the constitution of England.

The second inducement is that Great Britain will be allowed the exclusive management of British affairs.

This sort of spurious Home Rule for England turns out however to be as illusory a blessing as the maintenance of parliamentary supremacy.

Great Britain is, under the new constitution, not allowed to appoint the British Cabinet. Great Britain is forbidden to determine for herself any matter of legislation or administration which, however deeply it concerns British interests, trenches in the least degree on any Irish or Imperial interest. Any matter of finance, which comes within the wide head of Imperial liabilities, expenditure, and miscellaneous revenue,[47] falls within the competence of the Irish members. Questions of peace or war, our foreign relations, every diplomatic transaction, is a matter on which the Irish delegation may pronounce a decision. The conjecture is at least plausible[48] that Irish members will have a right to discuss and vote upon any subject debated in the Parliament at Westminster which involves the fate of a British Cabinet. Let it be granted that, if the provisions of the Home Rule Bill be observed, no Irish representative can vote 'on any Bill, or motion in relation thereto, the operation of which Bill or motion is confined to Great Britain.'[49] But then when is the operation of a Bill confined to Great Britain, or, to use popular language, what is a British Bill? This is an inquiry in the decision whereof the Irish members will take part. The Irish members, therefore, at Westminster will be judges of their own rights, and in the only cases in which it is of practical importance to Great Britain that the Irish representatives should not vote, will be able with the aid of a British minority to fix the limits of their own jurisdiction.[50] Let the Irish members and a British minority boldly vote that the operation of a Bill, say for the Disestablishment of the English Church, is not confined to Great Britain, and they can boldly vote that the Bill do pass, and no Court in Great Britain or the British Empire can question the validity of a law enacted in open defiance of the spirit or even the words of the Constitution.[51] The right of British members to the management of even exclusively British affairs will depend not upon the law of the land, but upon the moderation and sense of equity which may restrain the unfairness of partisanship.

For a parliamentary minority will, if only it throw scruples to the winds, be constantly able to transform itself into a majority by the unconstitutional admission of the Irish vote. This is not a power which any party, be it Conservative or Radical, English, Scottish, or Irish, ought to possess. Partisanship knows nothing of moderation. And the reason of this blindness to the claims of justice is that the spirit of party combines within itself some of the best and some of the worst of human passions. It often unites the self-sacrificing zealotry of religious fanaticism with the recklessness of the gambling table. Let an assailant of the Contagious Diseases Act, a fanatic for temperance, a protectionist who believes that free trade is the ruin of the country, an anti-vivisectionist who holds that any painful experiment on live animals is the most heinous of sins; let any man who has come to believe that his own credit, no less than the salvation of the country, depends on the success of a particular party, know that the triumph of his cause depends upon his voting that a particular measure operates beyond Great Britain, and we know well enough in which way he will vote. He will vote what he knows to be untrue rather than sacrifice a cause which he believes to be sacred. He will think himself both a fool and a traitor if he sacrifices the victory which is within his grasp to the maintenance of technical legality, or rather to respect for a rule of constitutional procedure.

Suppose, however, that I have underrated the equity of human nature, and that no faction in the House of Commons ever attempts to violate the spirit of the Constitution. The supposition is bold, not to say absurd; but even if its reasonableness be granted, this does not suffice for the protection of England's rights. The question whether a given Bill does or does not operate exclusively in Great Britain may often give rise to fair dispute, and (what should be noted) this dispute will always be decided against Great Britain in the only instances in which its decision is to Great Britain of any importance whatever. An example best shows my meaning. Let a Bill be brought forward for establishing Home Rule in Wales. Is the operation of the Bill confined to Great Britain? An English member, unless he is a Home Ruler, will answer with an undoubted affirmative. An English, or Irish, or Welsh Home Ruler will with equal certainty, and equal honesty, give a negative answer. The question admits of fair debate, but we know already how the debate will be decided. If the Unionists constitute a majority of the House, the Irish vote will be excluded. But in this case its exclusion is of no practical importance. If the Unionists constitute indeed a majority of British representatives, but do not constitute a majority of the House, the Irish vote will be included. The Irish representatives will decide whether Wales shall constitute a separate State, and the right of Great Britain to manage British affairs will not prevent the dismemberment of England. Home Rule, such as it is for England, means at best a totally different thing from Home Rule for Ireland. In the case of England it means a limited and precarious control of legislation for Great Britain by British members of Parliament. In the case of Ireland it means the real and substantial and exclusive government of Ireland by an Irish Ministry and an Irish Parliament.

But will the advantage of even this modified half-and-half Home Rule be really offered to England?

Gladstonians, it is rumoured (and before these pages are in print the rumour may turn out to be a fact), have their own remedy for some of the only too-patent absurdities of the 'in-and-out system' embodied in clause 9 of the Home Rule Bill. A suggestion is made which would be amusing for its irony, were it not revolting for its cynicism, that the difficulty of the double majority should be removed by the allowing members not only to remain at Westminster in their full number, but also to vote there on all matters whatever, including those affairs which exclusively concern the interests of Great Britain. This is no doubt a remedy for some of the evils of an unworkable proposal. It is a cure which to any Englishman of sense or spirit will seem tenfold worse than the disease. It is a cure in that sense only in which a traveller may be said to be relieved from the fear of robbery by a highwayman shooting him dead. The irregular interference of the Irish delegation in the formation of the British Cabinet, and other matters which indirectly concern England, is to be regularised (if I may use the term) by allowing to Irish members permanent despotism over England in matters which, on a system of Home Rule, concern England alone. Irish members may disestablish the Church of England, though England is to have no voice in the pettiest of Irish affairs. Irish members are to be allowed to impose taxes on England, say to double the income tax, though of these taxes no inhabitant of Ireland will pay a penny; the Irish delegation—and this is the worst grievance of all—is to be enabled, in combination with a British minority, to detach Wales from England, or to vote Home Rule for Scotland, or to federalise still further the United Kingdom by voting that Man, Jersey, and Guernsey shall send members to the Imperial Parliament. Note that all this may be done by the Irish delegation, though, under the new Constitution, England will not have a word to say on such questions as whether the right of electing members for the Parliament at Dublin shall or shall not be extended to every adult, or whether Ulster shall, or shall not, be allowed Home Rule of its own. The absurdity of this policy ought to prevent its ever being adopted; but in these days absurdity seems to tell as little against wild schemes of legislation as their injustice.

All this consideration of haggling and trafficking between Great Britain and Ireland is loathsome to every true Unionist who considers Englishmen and Irishmen as still citizens of one nation. But, when Gladstonians propose to divide the United Kingdom into two States, it is as essential as it is painful to weigh well what is the gain of Great Britain in the new scheme of political partnership. If the matter be looked at from this point of view, it is easy to see how miserable are the offers tendered to England. Compare for a moment the authority to be given her under the new constitution with the authority she has hitherto possessed or the authority tendered to her under the Home Rule Bill of 1886.

Up to 1782 the British Parliament held in its own hands the absolute control not only of every British affair, but every matter of policy affecting either Ireland or the British Empire. The British Parliament, in which sat not a single representative of any Irish county or borough, appointed the Irish Executive. The British Parliament, whenever it thought fit, legislated for Ireland; the British Parliament controlled the whole course of Irish legislation; every Act which passed the Parliament of Ireland was inspected, amended, and, if the English Ministry saw fit, vetoed in England. The system was a bad system and an unjust system. It is well that it ended. But as regarded the control of the British Empire it corresponded roughly with facts. The Empire was in the main the outcome of British energy and British strength, and the British Empire was governed by Great Britain.