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

by A. V. Dicey

Where then lies the path of safety? The road is difficult, but it is clearly marked; it is at any rate to be found, not by any exercise of subtlety or of extraordinary acuteness, but by obeying the plain dictates of common sense and sound public morality. The characteristics of Unionist policy must be seriousness, simplicity, and reliance upon an appeal to the nation.

Seriousness is essential.

The need of the time is to impress on the mass of the people the intense gravity of the crisis. Far too much was said before the general election about the weaknesses and the inconsistencies of the Gladstonians, and far too little about the causes of their strength and the absolute necessity for arduous efforts to defeat the Separatists at the polling-booths. The error must not be repeated.

The people must be told, as they may be told with absolute truth, that the fate of England is in question, and that nothing but the efforts of every Unionist throughout the land can save the country from destruction. The contest has, without either party being aware of the change, shifted its character since 1886. Then the names of Unionists and Separatists expressed the whole difference between the opponents and supporters of the Home Rule Bill. The Gladstonians for the most part meant the Bill to affect, as far as possible, the condition of Ireland alone. They did not mean to change the constitution of the United Kingdom. It is now plain, as has been shown throughout these pages, that the measure of so-called Home Rule is a new constitution for the whole United Kingdom. In 1886 the Gladstonians bona fide intended to close the period of agitation. In 1893 many Gladstonians see in Home Rule for Ireland only the first step towards an extended scheme of federalism. In 1886 no Gladstonian had palliated crime or oppression, no Gladstonian statesman had discovered that boycotting was nothing but exclusive dealing, no Gladstonian Chancellor had made light of conspiracy. All this is changed. Alliance with revolutionists or conspirators has imbued respectable English statesmen with revolutionary doctrines and revolutionary sentiment. The difference between Unionist and Separatist remains, but it is merged in the wider difference between Constitutionalists and Revolutionists. The question at issue is not merely, though this is serious enough, whether the Act of Union shall be repealed or relaxed, but whether the United Kingdom is morally a nation, and whether as a nation it has a right to insist upon the supreme authority belonging to the majority of its citizens. A similar question was some thirty-two years ago put to the people of the United States; it was decided by the arbitrament of battle.

The terrible calamity of an appeal to the test of force Englishmen may avoid, but if it is to be avoided the national rights of the whole people of the United Kingdom must be asserted as strenuously by their votes as the rights of the citizens of the United States were vindicated by their arms. The people of England again must be solemnly warned that errors in policy or acts of injustice may snatch from us the power of determining a political controversy at the ballot-box instead of on the battle-field. It is folly to raise cases on the constitution; it is always of the most doubtful prudence to handle the casuistry of politics. Nothing will tempt me to discuss in these pages what are the ethical limits to the exercise of constitutionally unlimited sovereignty, or at what point legal oppression justifies armed resistance. Two considerations must at this crisis be kept in mind. The one is that, until oppression is actually committed, the maintenance of order is the duty of every citizen, and, like most political duties, is also a matter of the most obvious expediency; the other is that the compulsion of loyal citizens to forgo the direct protection of the government whose sovereignty they admit, and to accept the rule of a government whose moral claim to their allegiance they deny, is a proceeding of the grossest injustice. Let the people of England also be solemnly warned that the Gladstonian policy of 1893 repeats the essential error of the condemned policy of Protestant ascendency. Gladstonians hold that the democracy of England may ally itself with the democracy of Ireland, and may treat lightly the rights and the wishes of a Protestant and Conservative minority. In bygone times the aristocratic and Protestant government of England allied itself with the Protestant and aristocratic government of Ireland, and held light the rights and the wishes of the Catholic majority. Each policy labours under the same defect. The enforced supremacy of a class, be it a minority or a majority, is opposed to the equitable principle of the supremacy of the whole nation. There is no reason to suppose that Catholic ascendency will be found more tolerable than was Protestant ascendency.

The policy of Unionism should be marked by simplicity.

The Unionist leaders have a clear though a difficult duty to perform. Their one immediate function is resistance to a dangerous revolution. Logically and politically, there was a good deal to be said for the deliberate refusal to discuss, or to vote upon, any of the details of the Home Rule Bill. There is always a danger lest the attempt to amend a radically and essentially vicious measure should promote the delusion that it is amendable. And any success in debate would be dearly purchased if it led the electors to suppose that the Government of Ireland Bill, which in fact embodies a policy, so fundamentally perverse that no alteration of details can render it tolerable, is a measure which, though faulty in its execution, is sound in principle. The Unionists leaders, however, whom we can absolutely trust, have decided that abstention from debate would be an error. As far as the matter is to be looked at from a parliamentary point of view their judgment is decisive, and since the policy of combating the Bill point by point has been adopted it should be carried out, as it is being carried out, with the utmost stringency. Minute discussion of the clauses of the Bill is elaborate instruction for the mass of the nation.

To the cry of obstruction no heed whatever need be paid. As long as there is real discussion obstruction becomes, when the matter in debate is the formation of a new constitution for the United Kingdom, an impossibility. The business needs the most careful consideration. Ministers themselves are uncertain as to what are the essential principles of their own scheme. Every detail involves a principle, and in a Bill where clearness is of vital importance, every clause involves an ambiguity. Each part moreover of the new constitution must be considered with regard to the rest, and the expression of different views as to the meaning of the Bill is of itself of utility, when it is of the greatest importance that Englishmen and Irishmen, Conservatives and Radicals, should be agreed as to the meaning of the new Fundamental Law. When, in short, a constitution for the country is being drawn up, no discussion which is rational can be obstructive. If a week or a fortnight of parliamentary time is expended in defining the meaning of the supreme authority of Parliament, or in deciding whether the Irish delegacy is or is not to be retained at Westminster, not a moment too much is devoted to points of such transcendent importance. 'But the debate,' it is urged, 'will at this rate last for months.' Why not? 'No other Bills,' it is added, 'can be passed.' What Bills, I answer, ought to be passed whilst the constitution of England is undergoing fundamental alteration? 'But the principles of the measure,' it is objected, 'might have been discussed and settled during the last seven years.' So, I reply, they might, if it had pleased the Gladstonians either to produce their Bill or to announce its general principles. Their silence was politic; it won them a majority at the general election, but you cannot from the nature of things combine the advantages both of reticence and of outspokenness. Silence may have been justified as a piece of clever party tactics; it is a very different question whether the concealment of seven years has turned out high statesmanship. Gladstonians, like other men, cannot, as the saying goes, have their cake and eat it. They have had the advantages, they are now paying the inevitable price of reserve. Unionists in any case are bound to turn this invaluable time to account. Discussion of the constitution is the education of the people.

In order, however, that this political training may be effective, our parliamentary teachers must take care that the public are not confused by the prominence necessarily given to details. Minute criticism of the Bill is important, but at the present moment it is important only as enforcing the radical vice of its main principles. No effort must be spared to keep the mind of the nation well fixed upon these principles. The surrender by the British Parliament and the British Government of all effective part in the government of Ireland, the ambiguities of such a term as 'Imperial supremacy' and all that these ambiguities involve, the inadequacy and the futility of the Restrictions, the errors and impolicy of the financial arrangements, above all the injustice to England and the injury to Ireland of retaining, under a system of Home Rule, even a single Irish representative at Westminster, these broad considerations are the things which should be pressed, and pressed home, upon the electors. Minor matters are good topics for parliamentary discussion, but should not receive a confusing and illusory prominence.

The electors again must be made to feel that it is the essential principle of Home Rule, the setting up of an Irish Government and an Irish Parliament, to which Unionists are opposed. The least appearance of concession to Home Rulers, or any action which gives increased currency to the delusion, certainly cherished by some moderate Gladstonians, that Home Rule can be identified with or cut down to extended local self-government,[136] will be fatal to the cause of Unionism. The concession to Ireland of a petty, paltry, peddling legislature, which dare hardly call itself a Parliament, and is officially designated say as a national council, combined with some faint imitation of a Cabinet, called say a committee, would disappoint and irritate Home Rulers; it would cheat their hopes, but it would afford them the means of gaining their end. It would not give assurance to Unionists, it would not be a triumph of Unionist policy, it would rather be the destruction of Unionism. The one course of safety is to take care that at the next general election the country has laid before it for determination a clear and unmistakable issue. The question for every elector to answer must be reducible to the form Aye or No; will you, or will you not, repeal the Union and establish an Irish Executive and an Irish Parliament in Dublin? If the question be so raised Unionists have no reason to fear an answer.