“Dangerous innovations” also is a phrase at which no one should be alarmed. No great good has ever been accomplished without many excellent persons considering it a “dangerous innovation.” The Scribes and the Pharisees, and, after them, the Roman Empire, denounced and persecuted the Christian religion upon this ground; the most powerful Church in Christendom, with similar belief and similar lack of success, used every engine at its command to suppress the Reformation. As in religious so in political affairs. King John would doubtless have described Magna Charta in just such terms; the partisans of Charles the First certainly held that opinion concerning the demand of Parliament to control the Church, the army, and the monarchy itself; the opponents of every measure of reform—political, social, or religious—have used the phrase. From the greatest to the smallest reform it has been the same. In the early years of this century a Parochial Schools Bill, because it did not give all power to the clergy, was opposed by the then Archbishop of Canterbury with the words, “Their lordships’ prudence would, and must, guard against innovations that might shake the foundations of religion.” When, in later times, gas was introduced, the aristocratic dwellers in western London protested with equal force against such an innovation as the new illuminant; and Lord Beaconsfield, in the opening chapters of the last of his novels, sketched with ironic pen the attempts of high-born ladies to prevent the spread of light. Thus, in things sublime and in things ridiculous, the cry of “dangerous innovation” has been raised until it has been rendered contemptible.
Equally futile is the fear that the Liberals are about to propose “the impossible.” There is nothing in politics to which that word can be applied, as even the most cursory study of our history will show. When men say that certain measures can “never” be carried, they are more likely to be wrong than right. In 1687 it would have been deemed impossible to place the Crown upon a strictly parliamentary basis; in 1689 this was accomplished. In 1830 the most sanguine reformer scarcely dared hope that borough-mongering would in his lifetime be destroyed, and the first popularly elected Parliament was chosen in 1832. In 1865, none could have dreamed that household suffrage in the boroughs was near; in 1867 it was adopted by a Tory Government. In 1867 he would have been a hardy prophet who would have foretold the speedy downfall of the Irish Episcopal Establishment; and the Act of Disestablishment was placed upon the statute book in 1869. Such instances should of a surety teach men to be modest in their forecasts of what is possible in politics.
In, therefore, pursuing our search into the why and the wherefore of the politics of the future, we must put aside phrases and come to facts. The phrases will die, but the facts will remain; and the more closely we grasp these latter the more certain will those Liberal principles which have done so much for the past, do even more for the future.
And, when we come to the facts, we must not forget that a political question is not necessarily unpractical because it cannot be immediately dealt with; for good is accomplished by the calm discussion of points which are bound some time to be raised, and which, if undebated now, may be settled in a gust of popular passion. As Mr. John Morley has well observed—“The fact that leading statesmen are of necessity so absorbed in the tasks of the hour furnishes all the better reason why as many other people as possible should busy themselves in helping to prepare opinion for the practical application of unfamiliar but weighty and promising suggestions, by constant and ready discussion of them upon their merits.”
X.—SHOULD HOME RULE BE GRANTED TO IRELAND?
The question of Irish self-government is for the present the greatest that concerns the Liberal party, and in current politics, as Mr. Gladstone has truly and tersely put it, Ireland blocks the way. This, of course, is not so simply because Mr. Gladstone said it, and even less is it so because he wished it. The question stands in the path of all other great measures of legislative reform, for the sufficient reason that, at the first opportunity after the franchise was enjoyed by every householder, Ireland declared emphatically, and by a majority unparalleled in modern political history, in favour of freedom to manage her own domestic affairs.
It must be obvious that, when all the popularly-elected members for three out of four provinces into which one of the countries which form this kingdom is divided, pronounce against the existing system of government, and when a majority of those for the other province side with them, that that system cannot continue to exist with the good will of those whom it most intimately affects, and can only be maintained by force. Such as have followed Mr. Gladstone in this matter do not believe in the maintenance of a government against the constitutionally declared will of the governed, and are agreed that the Irish demand for the management of purely domestic affairs ought to be granted on the grounds of justice, expediency, and sound Liberal principles.
They hold that to grant the demand would be just, because under the present system the vast majority of Irishmen have no practical control over those by whom they are governed; that it would be expedient, because the kingdom is weakened by the continual disaffection of one of its component parts; and that it would accord with sound Liberal principles, in that the overwhelming majority of the Irish electorate have asked for Home Rule through the constitutional medium of the ballot-box.