The Viceroys of Ireland

by Charles Kingston O'Mahony

The spirit of conciliation

In the ordinary course of events Lord Dudley resigned with the Conservative Ministry, and on the appointment of a successor departed from Ireland. A few months' previously—September 21, 1905, to be exact—he had escaped death in the waters of Lough Erne, where, with a small party, he was unlucky enough to see his yacht capsize during a race. It was one adventure of many he has experienced in his comparatively brief life. Following his resignation, he still evinced a keen interest in Ireland, and when the Liberal premier asked him to preside over the deliberations of a Royal Commission on Congestion, he accepted it as one who has never allowed his actions to be guided and controlled solely by party motives. The work of the Commission finishing, he went to the other end of the world as Governor-General of Australia, holding the post for three years, when Lady Dudley's ill-health compelled him to return home in 1911. This willingness to serve the Liberal party has been taken by some as additional evidence of his lukewarm Unionism, but Lord Dudley remains a member of the party that made him Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and he is a Unionist at heart, though he permits himself the luxury of thinking on the subject. It is certain that while in Ireland he examined the claims and pretensions of the Home Rule party, and endeavoured to arrive at an understanding. The fact that he was not hounded out of the country by his fellow-Unionists is proof positive of the fact that a new spirit of conciliation has arisen, and that Irish political controversialists are aware that there can be two sides to every question, even an Irish one.

CHAPTER XXII

Lord Aberdeen's return

Lord Aberdeen's return to Ireland, twenty years after his first entry into Dublin as Lord-Lieutenant, was announced immediately after the resignation of Mr. Balfour's ministry. It was to a new Ireland that the viceroy came. Much history had been made since the days when the 'Union of Hearts' presaged a smooth passage to popularity for the Earl of Aberdeen. Successive Tory Governments had laboured upon Irish affairs, and if they had stopped short at Home Rule they had come very near it. The Nationalist party was inclined to be sullen, realizing their futility, and compelled to wait humbly upon Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's pleasure. He was independent of them. They were free to join the Opposition if they chose to do so, although the Prime Minister, always consistent, hinted that a Home Rule Bill was about to appear on the Parliamentary horizon. There was the South African business to be got through first; then the fiscal question seemed capable of wasting more public time, and questions of Empire and home finance all blocked the way to the ambitions of the group led by Mr. John Redmond. Astute Nationalists quickly understood that they must wait for another General Election, perhaps two, before their hopes could be realized, and therefore they stood aside while the country blinked its eyes at the unusual sight of Liberals sitting in the seats of the mighty, and new men with even newer names flocking to the Cabinet room in Downing Street.

Meanwhile, the Viceroy of Ireland took possession of his high office. For nearly eight years he had lived in retirement, his Governor-Generalship of Canada beginning in 1893 and ending in 1898. The Canadian period was another record of success for the viceregal pair, who were undoubtedly the most valuable at the disposal of the Government for viceregal positions requiring a long pedigree, a long purse, and the royal attribute of being all things to all men.

The position of a Lord-Lieutenant nominated by a Liberal Prime Minister is the most anomalous and difficult in the Government. He is selected because he is a member of the party in power, and asked to fill a post in which, as the representative of the king, he must not display any political leanings. His Majesty is above politics, and the man who is accorded royal honours in Ireland must represent the king non-politically. Even in this attempt he must needs lay himself open to the charges—eagerly laid against him—of showing favour to either political party, for even a Viceroy of Ireland cannot help being aware of the politics and religion of some of those upon whom he bestows office. In the case of a Liberal Lord-Lieutenant he dwells in a country where Liberalism has been buried for more than a generation, where a religious motive colours every political action, and where bones of contention provide the only food for the hungry politicians.

But the severest handicap to which a Liberal Lord-Lieutenant is subjected arises out of the prevalent notion that Nationalism and disloyalty are almost interchangeable terms. This enables every Unionist to charge the viceroy with pandering to the prejudices of the disloyal majority, and thereby degrading the dignity of his office by condoning insults to the king whom he represents. From time to time Nationalist politicians have declined to drink the king's health, or have marched out of a hall or room at the sound of the first bars of 'God save the King.' Instances readily occur to all acquainted with Ireland. Unionists naturally make the most of this, and the Lord-Lieutenant finds himself criticized by all, the fiercest being those who ought to support him. Had Daniel O'Connell and his fiery successors bred a spirit of personal devotion to the throne of England, Home Rule might have been an accomplished fact thirty years ago, but the attitude adopted by Home Rule's leading propagandists has alienated the sympathies of the voters of Great Britain. Comfortable politicians in Westminster can legislate and talk of Ireland far from the centre of the problem, and unhampered by the local difficulties that are to be met with in Ireland. They know nothing, or else conveniently forget that, while Liberalism in England can, and does, hold Home Rule compatible with loyalty to the king, such an amalgamation of ideas has not been recognized hitherto in Ireland. The viceroy, however, has to face the music, and as the embodiment of kingly rule in Ireland he has to remain a Liberal and a Home Ruler despite the knowledge that Nationalists feel bound to hold aloof from the king's representative until self-government is granted.