England's Case Against Home Rule

by A. V. Dicey

Federalism, in short, would mean the weakness of Great Britain, both at home and abroad. As the head of a Confederacy, England, as the head also of the British Empire, would meet undiminished responsibilities with greatly diminished power.

Thirdly.—Federalism is at least as likely to stereotype and increase the causes of division between England and Ireland as to remove them.

A Federal Government is, of all constitutions, the most artificial. If such a government is to be worked with anything like success, there must exist among the citizens of the confederacy a spirit of genuine loyalty to the Union. The "Unitarian" feeling of the people must distinctly predominate over the sentiment in favour of "State rights." To require this is to require a good deal more than the mere general submission to the Government which is requisite for the prosperity of every State, whatever be the nature of its polity. In a Federation every citizen is influenced by a double allegiance. He owes fealty to the central Government; he owes fealty also to his Canton or State. National allegiance and local allegiance divide and perplex the feelings even of loyal citizens. Unless the national sentiment predominate, the Federation will go to pieces at any of those crises when the interest or wishes of any of the States conflict with the interest or wishes of the Union. So keen an observer and profound a critic as De Tocqueville believed that both the American and the Swiss Federations would make shipwreck on this rock. He was mistaken; he did not allow for the rapid development of national sentiment. But his error was pardonable. The leaders of the Sonderbund did prefer the interest of Lucerne to the unity of Switzerland. Lee and Jackson were disloyal to the Union, because they were loyal to Virginia. Leading officers of the United States army, soldiers educated at Westpoint, trained the armies of the Confederates. They were men of unblemished honour; they were, some of them, not originally zealous in the cause of secession, but they believed that their duty to their State—to Virginia, to South Carolina, or to Georgia—was paramount over their duty to the Government at Washington. If Virginia had stood by the Union, General Lee might, in all probability, have been the conqueror of the Confederate States, of which he was the hero. Ireland has had far graver causes for disaffection towards the English Government than any of the reasons alleged for the secession of Virginia; but Irish officers and Irish soldiers have always been perfectly loyal to England. The reason of the difference is obvious; the officers of the English army have never been distracted by the difficulties of divided allegiance. Make Ireland one of the States of a Confederacy, and these difficulties will at once arise. Irish officers and Irish soldiers, members of the Irish State—paid by and to a certain extent under the command of the Irish Government—can hardly be blamed if in times of civil differences, leading it may be to civil war, they should feel more loyalty to their State than to the Union. This Union, be it remembered, would in such a case be nothing but Great Britain under a new and less impressive title.

The existence and nature of the Federal bond is calculated to supply both the causes and occasions of such differences.

Home Rulers, it is clear, form already most exaggerated hopes of the benefits to be conferred on Ireland by Home Rule; and, further, in their own minds (naturally enough) confound Federalism with national independence.

"Give Ireland," writes Mr. Finch,[^[35]] "the management of her own affairs, and you will see called into her service the ablest and most capable of her sons; while, as things now stand, the intellect of Ireland is shut out from all share in the administration. With careers at home worthy of the best and ablest of the people, much of the wealth which is now drained off from Ireland without any return, will be expended in developing the industrial resources of the country; industry will revive, and with the revival of industry will come employment for the people. 'It is the difficulty of living by wages in Ireland,' says Sir G.C. Lewis, 'which makes every man look to the land for maintenance.' With employment for the people, half the difficulty of the land question will be solved. If, then, we wish to promote the moral and material welfare of the Irish people, let us make them masters of their own affairs."

"I have indicated what I believe," writes Mr. O'Neill Daunt,[^[36]] "to be the radical disease of Ireland: the want of a domestic legislature racy of the soil, and acting in harmony with the national sentiment. God has created Ireland with the needs of a separate nation, and with the needs are associated the rights. 'Our patent to be a State, not a shire,' said Goold in 1799, 'comes direct from Heaven. The Almighty has in majestic characters signed the great charter of our independence. The great Creator of the world has given our beloved country the gigantic outlines of a kingdom.'

"If Ireland had been left the unfettered use of the natural materials of wealth in her soil and in her people, and of the facilities of internal and external commerce supplied by her physical configuration and her geographical position—if her interests were protected by a Parliament sitting in her capital, securing the expenditure at home of her annual revenue, both public and private, rendering impossible that destructive hæmorrhage of her income by which she is impoverished, aiding the development of her industries, and resisting all aggression on her commercial and political rights—in a word, if the Irish Constitution had not been treacherously undermined and overthrown, we should now have been the best support of the Empire, instead of being its scandal and its weakness."

Politicians who write thus expect far more from national independence than nationality itself can give. More than fifty years have elapsed since Spain expelled the foreign invader; but Spain has not yet succeeded in expelling ignorance, prejudice, superstition, or oppression. But whatever be the miracles of nationality, Ireland would not, under Federalism, be a nation. Rhode Island has all the freedom demanded for his country by an eminent Home Ruler, whose expressions I have cited. He surely does not consider the inhabitants of Rhode Island to be a nation.

Whatever else Home Rule might give to Ireland, one gift it assuredly would not bring with it. It would not endow the country with wealth. To Irish enthusiasm and patriotism illusions on this matter are pardonable. In the English advocate of Home Rule they are unpardonable. Ireland is, and must, under any form of government conceivable, for a length of time remain a poor country. Capital knows nothing of patriotism or sentiment. Commerce has no partiality for the masses. Credit cherishes no trust towards the people. The one prediction which we may make with confidence is that a measure of Home Rule would not increase Irish capital, and would shake Irish credit. The rumour of Home Rule has already, it is said, disturbed the course of business in Ireland. From the nature of things, then, the establishment of Federalism would lead to bitter disappointment. The country would not enjoy the dignity of independence; it would not enjoy the comfort of wealth. Every Irishman would feel that he had been cheated of his hopes, and this not because he is an Irishman, but because he is a man. It is human to expect far more from even the most beneficial of revolutions than any political change can bring. The unity of Italy was well worth all the price it cost. The unity of Germany gave intense gratification to natural feelings of national pride. Yet there are probably many even in the Italian Kingdom who sigh for the light taxes of the Bourbon or Papal rule, and Germans who glory in the greatness of the Empire flee by thousands to the United States that they may escape the burden of conscription. The disappointment which naturally attends a great change would in the case of Ireland be specially bitter. To what cause would the disappointment be attributed? The answer is easy to find. If taxation increased—as it probably would; if wealth did not increase—as it certainly would not; if the sense of semi-independence did not produce the hope, the energy, the new life, the regeneration which enthusiasts consider to be the natural result of nationality—if anything, in short, failed to go according to the hopes of men who had formed hopes which a miracle itself could hardly satisfy—the blame for the non-fulfilment of groundless anticipations would rest upon the Confederacy—that is in other words, upon England. To suppose this, is not to attribute special unreasonableness to Irishmen. If Italy had been forced to accept, instead of her longed-for independence, the local self-government which might be conceded to the State of an Austrian Federation, we may be quite sure that the Grist Tax, the Sicilian Banditti, the intrigues of France in Tunis, the perversity of the Pope, the poverty of Italian workmen, the factiousness of Italian politicians, every evil, in short, real or imaginary, under which Italy now suffers, or has suffered since 1870—would have been attributed to her connection with a Union presided over by the Austrian Emperor. National independence, like every other form of independence, has at least this merit, that it compels men to take their fate into their own hands, and to feel that they themselves or the circumstances of the world are the causes of their misfortunes. Semi-independence makes it easy for men to attribute every mishap to the absence of absolute freedom.