The Framework of Home Rule

by Erskine Childers

It would be worth the reader's while to study with some care the terms of the despatch announcing that decision.[36] He will feel himself in contact with fundamental principles, undisturbed by individual bias; for no one could suspect Mr. Lyttelton, the genial and popular Secretary of State who penned the despatch, of any violent prejudices. Yet the spirit of the whole despatch, though gentle and persuasive in its terms, is the spirit of Fitzgibbon's brutally outspoken argument for the extinction of the Irish Parliament, and the complete exclusion of Irish Roman Catholics from influence over their country's affairs. The despatch begins, it is true, by explaining that the proposed Constitution is only intended to be temporary; that it had been the invariable custom to grant freedom to the Colonies by degrees, and that the custom must be followed; but the reasons adduced for following it, if we consider that they were adduced in the year 1905, instead of a century and a half back, constitute one of the strangest of all the strange inversions of historical cause and effect which a Home Rule controversy has ever suggested to the human brain. Instead of inferring from our bitter experiences in Upper and Lower Canada, which are mentioned in the despatch, and in Ireland, which is not, that race distinctions increase instead of lessening the necessity for responsible government, Mr. Lyttelton complacently quotes bi-racial Lower Canada as a precedent for his Transvaal Constitution. Quite frankly, though in curiously misleading terms,[37] he records the fact that a similar Constitution there led to deadlock and rebellion. Without intention to deceive, he ignores the fact that wholly British Upper Canada reached the same pass for the same reasons; and he appears to look forward with equanimity to the passage of the unfortunate Transvaal through an identically painful phase of history toward the same sanguinary climax. The radical error in the official version of events in Canada appears in the comparison between the rebellions of 1837 and the South African War of 1899-1902. To contrast the "brief armed rising" in Canada with the three years' war in South Africa, and to argue that a degree of freedom could safely be given after the former, which would involve great danger after the latter, was to show ignorance of the chain of historical events and blindness to their true moral. The underlying idea is the one applied to the old American Colonies and for centuries to Ireland, namely, that the more mutinous a dependency is, the less reason for giving it Home Rule, with the paradoxical corollary applied even to this day in Ireland, that if it is not disorderly it does not need Home Rule. So from age to age statesmen run their heads against facts, perpetuate the errors of their forefathers, and do their unconscious best to intensify the evils they deplore. It was erroneous to regard either the Canadian Rebellions or the Boer War as events which rendered responsible government more or less dangerous. Each of these events was itself the climax of a long period of irresponsible misgovernment dating from about the same period, the second decade of the nineteenth century, and demanding the same remedy. In the Boer case, continuity was twice broken by grants of independence, and the climax proportionally delayed, but the origin of the trouble was the same. If the Boers had not trekked en masse from Cape Colony in order to escape from misgovernment, both movements—in the Cape and Canada—might have come to a head in exactly the same year, 1837.

In sober, weighty, tactful phrases, carefully chosen to avoid giving needless offence to the Dutch, the despatch laboriously overthrows the Liberal theory of government, and works out the negation of all Imperial experience. It deplores the "bitter memories" of war, which free institutions, by tending to "emphasize and stereotype the racial line," will make more, not less bitter, and which can be effaced only by the "healing effect of time." We think of the Durham Report, of Ireland, and marvel. We recollect the bulky Blue-Book at Mr. Lyttelton's elbow as he wrote, full of speeches and articles by Englishmen, showing quite correctly, as has since been proved, that the "racial line" in Johannesburg was growing fainter daily with the mere prospect of responsible government. These men were not afraid of the Dutch, and said so. The answer was that they ought to be, or, in the persuasive language of diplomacy, as follows:

"His Majesty's Government trust that those of British origin in the Transvaal who, with honest conviction, have advocated the immediate concession of full responsible government, will recognize the soundness and cogency of the reasons, both in their own interests and in those of the Empire, for proceeding more cautiously and slowly, and that under a political system which admittedly has its difficulties they will, notwithstanding a temporary disappointment, do their best to promote the welfare of the country and the smooth working of its institutions."

Then came a chivalrous compliment to the Dutch for their "gallant struggle" in the war, coupled with a reminder that they are not to be trusted with political power, a reminder so courteously worded that it, too, becomes a compliment:

"The inhabitants of Dutch origin have recently witnessed, after their gallant struggle against superior power, the fall of the Republic founded by the valour and sufferings of their ancestors, and cannot be expected, until time has done more to heal the wound, to entertain the most cordial feelings towards the Government of the Transvaal. But from them also, as from a people of practical genius, who have learned by long experience to make the best of circumstances, His Majesty's Government expect co-operation in the task of making their race, no longer in isolated independence, a strong pillar in the fabric of a world-wide Empire. That this should be the result, and that a complete reconciliation between men of two great and kindred races should, under the leading of Divine Providence, speedily come to pass, is the ardent desire of His Majesty the King and of His Majesty's Government."

The tone recalls the tone of Pitt and Castlereagh in proposing the Union. But Fitzgibbon went more directly to the point in saying outright that, Ireland having been conquered and confiscated, the colonists "were at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island," and that laws must be framed by an external power to "meet the vicious propensities of human nature." Let us recognize unreservedly that the words of the Transvaal despatch were the outcome of deep and sincere conviction. That is the worst of it. From age to age Ireland has to suffer for the depth and sincerity of these convictions. There, too, the cleavage of race and religion, never complete, always defying the official efforts to "stereotype and emphasize it," to quote the despatch of 1905, grows fainter with time, and will grow fainter as long as the national movement lives to draw men together in the common interest of Ireland. The Volunteers, Wolfe Tone, Emmet, many of the Young Irelanders, Isaac Butt, Parnell, were Protestants. And there is a strong band of Protestant Home Rulers to-day in Ulster and out of it, landlords, tenants, capitalists, labourers, Members of Parliament, and clergymen, who declare that they are not afraid of Catholic oppression, and who are told by Unionists that they ought to be. And in Ireland, too, the Roman Catholic majority are told, rarely, it is true, in the courteous phrases of Mr. Lyttelton's despatch, that they "cannot be expected to entertain the most cordial feelings towards the Government." In Ireland, also, is a "political system which admittedly has its difficulties," ironical euphemism for a system whose analogue in the Transvaal could have been used by the subject race, had they so willed, to bring civil government to a standstill, without the means of furnishing anything better, and which under the Act of Union can be, and has been, used to dislocate the Parliamentary life of the United Kingdom. The Boers were asked "as a people of practical genius" to assist the "smooth working" of an unworkable Constitution, so as to promote the "reconciliation of two great and kindred races." The Irish are pursued with invective for legitimately using the constitutional power given them in order, while freeing Parliament from an intolerable incubus, to gain the right to elicit character and responsibility in themselves by shouldering their own burdens and saving their own souls.

If the official view of the Transvaal was mistaken, the summit of error was reached in the view taken of the Orange River Colony. In that Colony, which was almost wholly pastoral and Dutch, and which until the war had enjoyed free institutions uninterruptedly for half a century, and had made remarkably good vise of them, representative government, even of the illusory kind designed for the Transvaal, was to be indefinitely postponed, postponed at any rate until the results of the "experiment" in the Transvaal had been observed.

The Government "recognize that there are industrial and economic conditions peculiar to the Transvaal, which make it very desirable in that Colony to have at the earliest possible date some better means of ascertaining the views of the different sections of the population than the present system affords. The question as regards the Orange River Colony being a less urgent one, it appears to them that there will be advantage in allowing a short period to intervene before elective representative institutions are granted to the last-named Colony, because this will permit His Majesty's Government to observe the experiment, and, if need be, to profit by the experience so gained."

What is the train of reasoning in this strange specimen of political argument? It was important to "ascertain the views" of the bi-racial Transvaal, but needless to ascertain the views of the practically homogeneous Orange River Colony. The "question" there is a "less urgent one." What question? Why less urgent? Is it that the British minority, being so very small, is more liable to oppression by the Dutch? That is a tenable point, though by parity of reasoning it would seem to make the question more, not less, urgent, and the importance of "ascertaining the views" of the different sections of the population, greater, not less. Or is it the diametrically opposite train of thought, namely, that an assumed improbability of disorder owing to the homogeneity of the population is a reason, not for giving Home Rule, but for withholding it? These contradictions and confusions are painfully familiar in anti-Home Rule dialectics all over the world. A quiet Ireland does not want Home Rule; a turbulent Ireland is not fit for it. If the Unionist element in Ireland is strong, that is clearly an argument for withholding Home Rule in deference to the wishes of a strong minority. If the minority, on the other hand, is proved to be small, all the greater reason for withholding it, because oppression by the majority will be easier. So the sterile argument swings back and forth, and men still talk of "experiments" and "profiting by experience," while the demonstration of their errors is written in the blood and tears of centuries, and while masses of facts accumulate, demonstrating the great truth that free democratic government, whatever its disadvantages and dangers—and it has both—is the best resource for uniting, strengthening, and enriching a community of white men.

The Transvaal Constitution of 1905 was cancelled on the incoming of the Liberal Ministry at the end of that year, and in the following year full responsible government was granted both to the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, with the results that we know. Instantaneously there permeated the bi-racial urban society in the Transvaal a new sense of brotherhood. Men of different race, as far apart in spirit as the members of the Kildare Street Club, the Orange Societies, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, met and made friends because it was not only natural but necessary to make friends, since on all alike lay the burden of doing their best for their country on a basis of equal citizenship. Nobody out there called the new system an "experiment." The wrench once over, the thing once done, there was general unanimity that whatever the difficulties—and there were great difficulties—it was the right thing to be done under the circumstances, and if this unanimity was combined, rightly or wrongly, with a good deal of resentment against the Liberal attitude at home towards Chinese labour, nobody is any the worse for that. The day will come when even that burning question will be seen in its true perspective as an infinitesimally small point beside the great principle of responsible government, which includes the decision of labour questions, together with all other branches of domestic policy.