“The liberty of a people,” says Cowley, “consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatever form it be of government.” This definition, which applies strictly to England, applies not at all to Ireland. The English system of government has broken down there so completely that all parties profess to be agreed that something must be devised in its place. Liberals have always held that a people or a class knows better what is good for it than any other people or any other class, however enlightened or well-meaning. That has been one of the main reasons for giving the suffrage to the poor, the ignorant, and the helpless, because the experience of ages has taught that the rich, the educated, and the powerful, while well able to take care of themselves, are either too careless or have too little knowledge to take the same care of others. And as with the suffrage, so with self-government. Any extension must be granted upon broad principles: small concessions grudgingly given are always accepted without gratitude, and used to extort greater.
“Well,” it may be said, “I am willing to give Ireland a large measure of self-government, but I won’t yield to agitators.” This is one of the oldest of all replies to demands for reform. How could anything be gained in politics without agitation? The Tories swear they will yield nothing until agitation has ceased; and if it ceases, if only for a moment, they declare it is evident there is no popular wish for reform. “Proceed, my lords,” said Lord Mansfield, when the American colonies revolted—“proceed, my lords, with spirit and firmness; and when you shall have established your authority, it will then be time to show lenity.” And their lordships proceeded; but the “time to show lenity” never came, for it was such counsels which lost the American colonies to the British Crown.
“But,” it will be added, “this is not an ordinary agitation; it is a revolutionary one.” In some of its phases that is true, and it is all the more reason why its cause should be closely examined. It is the English themselves who have taught the Irish that ordinary constitutional agitation gains them nothing. If it had not been for the organization of the Volunteers, Grattan’s Parliament of 1782 would never have been granted; the Duke of Wellington in 1829 admitted that he yielded Catholic Emancipation to the threat of civil war; it needed the terrible crimes of the early “thirties” to arouse England to the necessity for abolishing an iniquitous system of levying tithe; the Fenian outbreaks, the attack on a prison van at Manchester, and the blowing up of a gaol in London, opened the eyes of the English to the need for disestablishing the Irish Church and clipping the claws of the Irish landlords; the fearful winter of 1880 led to the granting of still further protection to the tenants; and to the “plan of campaign” of the winter of 1886 was it owing that a Tory Government felt compelled to still further encroach upon the property and privileges of the landlords of Ireland. As long as Ireland has held to constitutional agitation—as witness that for Catholic Emancipation from 1801 to 1825, and that for tenant right from 1850 to 1868—so long has England refused to grant a single just demand; and this is exactly what the Tories are doing now. Is it any wonder that Irish agitation should have become revolutionary when that is the only kind we have rewarded? In the relations between the governing classes and popular movements there has all through been this difference—in England, revolution has been staved off by reform; in Ireland, reform has been staved off till there was revolution.
“But,” it may be continued, “it is not so much that the agitation is revolutionary as that it is criminal which makes me object.” But a movement ought not to be called criminal because of the excesses of a few of its extreme partisans. No great popular agitation has ever been free from lewd fellows of the baser sort, who have given occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. But did English Liberals hesitate to support Mazzini because he was accused of favouring assassination; to sympathize with the French Republicans because Orsini prepared bombs for the destruction of Napoleon III.; or to-day to wish well to those Russians who conspire for liberty because the wilder spirits among them have assassinated one Czar and attempted to assassinate another? In our own history, are the Covenanters to be condemned because some of them murdered Archbishop Sharpe; the early Radicals because Thistlewood and his fellows plotted to kill King and Cabinet; the Reformers of 1831 because of the Bristol riots and the destruction of Nottingham Castle; or those of 1866 because the Hyde Park railings were thrown down? When it is remembered that even such a man as Peel could, in the midst of a heated controversy, accuse such another as Cobden of conniving at assassination, we should be careful how we accept the testimony of any partisan concerning the criminality of an agitation to which he is opposed.
These objections touch, after all, only the fringe of the matter, and another which is frequently urged—that the Irish agitation is a “foreign conspiracy” because it receives aid from the United States—does not go much closer to the root. But this, like the others, may be disposed of by English examples. Did not Englishmen aid, both by men and money, in liberating Greece and uniting Italy? Did they not help by subscriptions the insurrections in Hungary and Poland, and, when the former failed, did not many of them take the refugees into their homes? Did they not even raise a fund to assist the slave-holding States when in rebellion? And in all these cases, except in a remote degree the last, they had no tie in blood, but only one in sympathy, with those concerned. That the Nationalist movement has been largely aided from the United States is undoubted; but that aid has mainly come from those of Irish birth or parentage who have been driven across the Atlantic to seek a home. And when it is said that, because of this help, a self-governed Ireland would rely upon the United States to the detriment of England, may we not ask why it is that Italy does not rely upon France, though it was France that struck the first effective blow for Italian unity; or Bulgaria upon Russia, though without the blood-sacrifice of Russia that principality would never have occupied a place on the European map? However much it may be to be regretted, gratitude does not play any large part in international affairs.
When the more serious objections to the granting Home Rule are urged they are no more difficult to meet. “Ireland is not a nation,” it is said; “its people are of different races.” The argument has been used before by the Tories, and the value of it may be judged by an example. The late Lord Derby, as leader of the Tory party, addressed the House of Lords in 1860 in savage denunciation of the efforts then being made to secure the unity of Italy; and to the contention that all the inhabitants of that peninsula were Italians, he answered, in the words of Macbeth to his hired murderers,
Aye, in the catalogue ye go for men;
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are cleped