In plain truth we have all of us forgotten the meaning of necessity. Gladstonians have come honestly to confuse the needs of a party with the necessities of the country. This is a delusion that at all times and in all lands affects great political connections which, having once rendered high services to the nation, have outlived the valid reasons for their existence. The Republicans saved the United States from disruption. Hence in 1888, when Secession was an historical memory, many of the most to be respected among Americans believed that the rule of an honest Democrat was a worse evil than the rule of a corrupt Republican. Thousands of Frenchmen, amidst the moral bankruptcy of Republican politicians, still hold that, because Republicans years ago saved France from ruin, even reconciled Conservatives cannot in the year 1893 be placed in office without danger to the commonwealth. So it is abroad; so it has been in England. In 1760 the best and wisest of English statesmen deemed it impossible that England should be rightly governed by any politicians but the representatives of the Revolution Families. In 1829 honest citizens trembled at the thought of power passing into the hands of the Whigs; for the Tories had ruled for nearly sixty years, and the Tories had preserved England from revolution and invasion. So at this moment to many well-meaning Liberals the long predominance of the Liberal party makes the possibility of a Cabinet containing politicians who may in any sense be called Tories seem a monstrous calamity, which it is a necessity to avert. Vain to point out that Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour are such Tories as Eldon would have called Jacobins and Lord Melbourne Radicals, and that, they are allied with the best and most trustworthy of living Liberal leaders. Their is no arguing with sentiment; it is necessary to keep the Gladstonian Liberals in office, and the constitution must be sacrificed in order that Lord Salisbury may not resume the Premiership. But there is a deeper cause than all this for our strange ideas of necessity. Habitual ease and unvarying prosperity have for a moment lowered the national spirit. Englishmen confuse inconveniences with dangers; they have forgotten what real peril is; they cannot understand the calmness with which, not a century ago, their fathers resisted at once insurrection in Ireland and the most powerful foreign enemy who has ever challenged the power of England, and this too at a time when the population of Great Britain was not above nine millions and the people of Ireland numbered more than four millions, when France was the leading military power of the world, and Ireland might at any moment receive the aid of a French army led by one of the best French generals. The men of 1798 or 1800 would mock at our ideas of necessity. Ireland has not an eighth of the population of the United Kingdom; our Home Rulers are not Ireland; they are a very different thing—the Irish populace. Let us yield everything which ought to be yielded to justice; let us obey the dictates of expediency, which is only justice looked at from another side; let us concede much to generosity; but in the name of common sense, of honesty, and of manliness, let us hear no more of necessity. Once in an age necessity may be the defence of statesmanship forced to confess its own blindness, but it is far more often the plea of tyranny, of ambition, of cowardice, or despair.
B. No danger in Home Rule.
The arguments which are employed to show that the policy of Home Rule and the new constitution which embodies it involve no danger for England are in the main drawn from the 'Safeguards' or Restrictions contained in the Bill—from the alleged precedent of Grattan's Constitution—from the success of Home Rule in other parts of the world—and, generally, from the expediency of trustfulness.
i. The Safeguards.
The Restrictions on the power of the Irish Parliament are, it is asserted, sufficient and more than sufficient to reassure Unionists, and an intimation is sometimes added that, if further security is wanted, further safeguards may be provided.
This ground of confidence may be briefly dismissed; its answer is in effect supplied by the foregoing pages.
On the action of the Irish Executive the Restrictions place, and from the nature of things can place, no restraint whatever, and yet both England and the Irish Loyalists have far more reason to dread the abuse of executive than of legislative authority. On the legal action of the Irish Parliament the Restrictions do place a certain restraint, but the Restrictions are, as already shown, not in reality enforceable. They are for good purposes a nullity; they are effective, if at all, almost wholly for evil; they exhibit the radical and fatal inconsistency of Gladstonian policy. The policy of Home Rule is a policy of absolute and unrestricted trust; the safeguards are based on distrust. There is something to be said for generous confidence, and something also for distrustful prudence; there is nothing to be said for ineffective suspicion.