But if they are so base as to forget what is due to their friends and victims, what trust could England place in the permanence of any sentiment expressed by such men with however much temporary fervour and however much apparent honesty? If, as I am convinced, the Irish leaders are not prepared to betray the fanatics or ruffians who have trusted and served them, then with what content does England look on the prospect of a general amnesty for criminals or of lavish rewards for breach of contract and the defiance of law?
But in truth the new constitution provides for the general discontent, not of one class of Irishmen, but of the whole Irish people.
Home Rule is at bottom federalism, and the successful working of a federal government depends on the observation by its founders of two principles. The first is that no one State should be so much more powerful than the rest as to be capable of vying in strength with the whole, or even with many of them combined.[101] The second is that the federal power should never if possible come into direct conflict with the authority of any State. Each of these well-known principles has, partly from necessity and partly from want of skill, been violated by the constructors of the spurious federation which is to be miscalled the United Kingdom. The confederacy will consist of two States; the one, England, to use popular but highly significant language, in wealth, in population, and in prestige immensely outweighs the other, Ireland. And by an error less excusable because it might have been avoided, the power of the central government will be brought into direct conflict with the authority of the Irish State. Read the Bill as it should be read by any one who wishes to understand the working of the new constitution, and throughout substitute 'England' for the term 'United Kingdom.' Note then what must be the operation of the constitution in the eyes of an Irishman. The federal power is the power of England. An English Viceroy instructed by an English Ministry will veto Bills passed by an Irish Parliament and approved by the Irish people. An English court will annul Irish Acts; English revenue officers will collect Irish customs, and every penny of the Irish customs will pass into the English Exchequer. An English army commanded by English officers, acting under the orders of English ministers, will be quartered up and down Ireland, and, in the last resort, English soldiers will be employed to wring money from the Irish Exchequer for the rigorous payment of debts due from Ireland to England. Will any Irishman of spirit bear this? Will not Irishmen of all creeds and parties come to hate the constitution which subjects Ireland to English rule when England shall have in truth been turned into an alien power?
The new constitution does not in any case satisfy England.
That England is opposed to Home Rule is admitted on all hands; that England has good reason to oppose the new form of Home Rule with very special bitterness is apparent to every Unionist, and must soon become apparent to any candid man, whether Gladstonian or Unionist, who carefully studies the provisions of the new constitution, and meditates on the effect of retaining Irish representatives in the Parliament at Westminster. For my present purpose there is no need to establish that English discontent is reasonable; enough to note its existence.
A consideration must be here noticed which as the controversy over Home Rule goes on will come into more and more prominence. We are engaged in rearranging new terms of union between England and Ireland; this is the real effect of the Home Rule Bill; but for such a rearrangement Great Britain and Ireland must in fairness, no less than in logic, be treated as independent parties. Whether you make a Union or remodel a Union between two countries the satisfaction of both parties to the treaty is essential. Till England is satisfied the new constitution lacks moral sanction. That the Act of Union could not have been carried without, at any rate, the technical assent both of Great Britain and Ireland is admitted, and yet the moral validity of the Treaty of Union is, whether rightly or not, after the lapse of ninety-three years assailed, on the ground that the assent of Ireland was obtained by fraud and undue influence. But if the separate assent of both parties was required for the making of the treaty, so the free assent of both must be required for its revision, and the politicians who force on Great Britain the terms of a political partnership which Great Britain rejects, repeat in 1893 and in an aggravated form the error or crime of 1800.[102]
Secondly. The new constitution rests on an unsound foundation.
It is a topsy-turvy constitution, it aims at giving weakness supremacy over strength.
The main, though not the sole, object of a well-constituted polity is to place political power (whilst guarding against its abuse) in the hands of the men, or body of men, who from the nature of things, i.e. by wealth, education, position, numbers, or otherwise, form the most powerful portion of a given state. The varying forms of the English Constitution have, on the whole, possessed the immense merit of giving at each period of our history political authority into the hands of the class, or classes, who made up the true strength of the nation. Right has in a rough way been combined with might. Wherever this is not the case, and genuine power is not endowed with political authority, there exists a sure cause of revolution; for sooner or later the natural forces of any society must assert their predominance. No institution will stand which does not correspond with the nature of things. Vain were all the efforts of party interest or of philanthropic enthusiasm to give to the Blacks political predominance in the Southern States. Votes, ballot boxes, laws, federal arms, all were in vain. By methods which no man will justify, but which no power could resist, the Whites have re-acquired political authority. The nature of things could not be made obedient to the dogmas of democratic equality. Now the gravest flaw of the new constitution, the disease from which it is certain to perish, is that, in opposition to the forces which ultimately must determine the destiny of the United Kingdom, it renders the strong elements of the community subordinate to the weak.
In Ireland Dublin is made supreme over Belfast, the South is made not the equal, but in effect the master of the North; ignorance is given dominion over education, poverty is allowed to dispose of wealth. If Ireland were an independent state, or even a self-governed British colony, things would right themselves. But the politicians who are to rule in Dublin will not depend upon their own resources or be checked by a sense of their own feebleness. They will be constitutionally and legally entitled to the support of the British army; they will constitute the worst form of government of which the world has had experience, a government which relying for its existence on the aid of an external power finds in its very feebleness support for tyranny. Murmurs are already heard of armed resistance. These mutterings, we are told, are nothing but bluster. It is at any rate that sort of "bluster" at which the justice and humanity of a loyal Englishman must take alarm. I have not yet learnt to look without horror on the possibility of civil war, nor to picture to myself without emotion the situation of brave men compelled by the British army to obey rulers whose moral claim to allegiance they justly deny and whose power unaided by British arms they contemn. Civil warfare created by English policy and despotism maintained by English arms must surely be to any Englishman objects of equal abhorrence.