England's Case Against Home Rule

by A. V. Dicey

This train of reflection has, unless I am mistaken, convinced many English Radicals that the installation of an Irish Ministry at Dublin will be the dissolution of every secret society throughout Ireland, and thus gained over to the cause of Home Rule men who detest anarchy even more than they love liberty.

This belief in the virtues of self-government is confirmed by the teaching of American critics, who hold that the recent experience of the United States presents a clue by which Englishmen may find a path out of the labyrinth of their present perplexities. Transactions known to every citizen of the States show conclusively that the hatred of law which in Ireland fills Englishmen with amazement has arisen among a people who, whatever their faults, cannot be charged with those inherited vices which English opinion freely and gratuitously imputes to Irish nature. In Connecticut, in New York, in Georgia, throughout all the Southern States, open or secret combinations, supported by public opinion and enforcing its decrees by violence and murder, have with success defied the law courts. Social conditions, and not the perversities of Irish character, are seen to be the true cause of phenomena which, if they are now a feature of Irish life, have appeared in countries where not an Irishman was to be found, and where the Irish had no appreciable influence. To this fact, which appears to me not to admit of question, Americans add the consideration that lawlessness when supported by public opinion has in America been successfully met, not by coercion, but by yielding to public sentiment. Hence they draw the conclusion that the proper mode of terminating the conflict between law and widespread sentiment is to yield to opinion, and, by conceding something of the nature of Home Rule, to turn law-breakers into law-makers. The application of this dogma to Ireland is obvious: the crucial instance by which its truth is supposed to be established is the treatment of the conquered South by the victorious North. From the termination of the War of Secession up to 1876 the fixed policy of the Northern Republicans was to maintain order in the South by the use of Federal troops. This policy began and ended in failure: in 1876 the troops were withdrawn; the endeavour to enforce law by means of the Federal armies was given up—as if by magic chaos gave place to order. Local self-government has given peace to the United States, why should it not restore concord to the United Kingdom?[^[21]]

Criticism.

It has been freely admitted in the foregoing pages[^[22]] that the historical connection between England and Ireland has brought upon the weaker country the evils involved in the suppression of internal revolution by external force. This admission contains the main ground for the argument in favour of Home Rule drawn from the good effects of self-government, but is not in reality a sound foundation on which to place the suggested conclusion.

For the argument under consideration, even after the concession that Ireland has suffered from not having been left to herself, is vitiated by more than one flaw.

Home Rule, as it is again and again necessary to point out, is not national independence, nor anything like independence. Home Rule gives Ireland at most semi-independence—that is to say, it leaves Ireland at least half dependent upon England. It is vain to argue that the position of the member of a confederacy or of a colonial dependency will give to Irishmen the sense of independence and responsibility which belongs to a self-governing nation.

Grant, however (though the assumption is a hazardous one), that the creation of an Irish government and an Irish Parliament would of itself give to Ireland, even though she were still in many respects dependent on England, such a new sense of power and of responsibility as would enable her to create for herself a strong executive. This concession is not enough to make out the argument in favour of Home Rule. Laws ought to be not only strong but just, and Englishmen must consider whether rulers who had come to the head of affairs solely because they represented the strongest among many Irish factions or parties would he able to rule with justice. The "Jacobin Conquest" installed a strong executive in power, but England could not be an accomplice in inaugurating a reign of terror. The connection which under any form of Home Rule would bind together the parts of the present United Kingdom would be, it may be suggested, a guarantee against the supremacy of an Irish Robespierre or Danton. Granted: but if so, Home Rule would restrain an Irish revolution. The strongest, in other words the most reckless leaders, would be prevented from coming to the front. Ireland would not follow her own course, and since she would not be in truth self-governed, she would not reap the good fruits of self-government.

Nor in truth does the American version of our argument give much help to Home Rulers.

In more than one instance popular sentiment has in the United States defied the law of the land. Nothing can be a better example of such defiance than the anti-rent war which raged in New York between 1839 and 1846.[^[23]] The struggle exhibited all the recklessness of a no-rent agitation in Ireland with none of the excuses which can be urged in palliation of outrage by half-starving tenants; it produced a "reign of terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law and the payment of rent throughout the district" which was the field of the anti-rent movement; it ended in a nominal compromise which was a real victory for the anti-renters. In this instance, be it remarked, no sentiment of nationality or State right came into play. The law was hated, not because it was "foreign," but because it enforced the obligation of an unpopular contract. Landlords, it is now all but admitted, are not entitled to the full rights of citizens. The triumph therefore of the anti-renters at New York may command a certain amount of sympathy. The popular sentiment which in 1833 induced the people of Connecticut to boycott Miss Prudence Crandall cannot be brought under the sanction of any "higher law." Her crime was that she chose, obeying the dictates of her conscience, to open a school for negro girls in Connecticut. She was subjected to every annoyance and insult which the most reckless boycotter could invent. Legislation itself was turned against her, and the State failed utterly in the duty of protecting one of the most meritorious, and now, one is happy to think, one of the most honoured among the women of America. The Lyman Riots at Boston, as indeed every stage in the noble struggle of the American Abolitionists against popular injustice, tell the same tale, namely, that law in the United States has once and again failed to assert its due supremacy over injustice backed by public approval. This melancholy failure may possibly support the proposition that England cannot enforce the law in Ireland. It far more conclusively shows that even in countries deeply imbued with the spirit of legality self-government has no necessary tendency to produce just government or just legislation.

Let us, however, examine with care the lessons to be drawn from the treatment of the Southern States of America by the North.