Home Rule / Second Edition

by Harold Spender

But it is often these very same people who draw terrible pictures of the power of the Roman Catholic Church already existing in Ireland at the present moment. They do not explain how both of these propositions can be true—how, if Ireland is already "priest-ridden"—a superlative phrase—without Home Rule, there is any room for an increase of that evil under Home Rule. They never seem to contemplate the possibility that the proper and natural corrective to the power of the priest, if it be excessive, is the creation of a strong rival civil power.

Is it, indeed, so certain that "Home Rule" would increase the power of Rome in Ireland? I have even heard it said that the Home Rule cause finds its headquarters at Rome, and that it is part of a gigantic conspiracy of the Vatican to break up a Protestant Empire. Do those who reason thus ever reflect how it is that the English Catholics are often among the most formidable opponents of the Home Rule cause?

Why are the English Catholics so often opposed to Home Rule? The answer was given by Cardinal Manning in the famous phrase quoted by Lord Morley: "We want every one of their eighty votes."

UNIONISM AS "ROME RULE"

Those who fear Home Rule as "Rome Rule" in Ireland had better, indeed, examine themselves as to whether their action in defeating the Home Rule Bill of 1893 has not, so far as it goes, led to this very same effect in England. It must never be forgotten that it was with the help of the 80 Irish votes, pressed back to Westminster by the Irish Bishops in sympathy with the Catholic Bishops in England, that the British Parliament passed those clauses of the 1902 Education Act which are most offensive to English Nonconformists. Dr. Clifford has coined the expression "Rome on the rates." It is not, perhaps, a phrase that tells the whole story. We cannot forget how many of the poorer Catholics in our great cities are the descendants of the unhappy Irishmen who were evicted between 1840 and 1880 from the cabins of Ireland. Those poor exiles have a special call on our purses. But Anglicanism—rich Anglicanism—has also been placed on the rates. It has been placed there through a working alliance between the English Church and Rome, carrying out its aims by means of the votes of the Catholic Irish members. Those members only acted up to their principles in so voting. It was Great Britain that compelled them to remain as full voters in full strength at the British Parliament. As long as they are there the Irish must be expected to vote for the interests of their own religion and their own people. But what of the sincerity of the people who, after using the aid of the Irish to endow the Catholic and Anglican schools in England, now raise this outcry about "Rome Rule" in Ireland?

It is vital, indeed, to point out that in these matters Home Rule for Ireland is the only possible road to Home Rule for England also. Under the 1912 Bill the Irish vote at Westminster is reduced to 42, and will, if English self-government be also extended, be excluded from education altogether. Thus the first plain and practical result of Irish Home Rule would be not so much to give the Roman Catholics more power in Ireland as to give the Protestants more liberty in England. But who can doubt that it would also introduce a new element of civil power into the schools of Ireland?[52]

NATIONALISM AND RELIGION

As to Ireland itself, indeed, there can be no doubt that the great national wrongs of the Irish people have immensely strengthened the hold of the Roman Catholic Church over that island during the last century.

Let us look back for a moment at the historic relations between Roman Catholicism and the Irish National cause.

No doubt the iron hammer of Cromwell—in England the rebel, in Ireland the conqueror—and the long torture of the penal laws both contributed to weld together the religious and political faith of Ireland. During those dark days, Nationalism and Catholicism were almost identical terms. It has been shrewdly remarked that Henry VIII. and Elizabeth might probably have converted Ireland to Protestantism if they had preached the reformed faith in the Irish language. However that may be, it is quite certain that Protestantism stood throughout the eighteenth century as the sign and uniform of the conqueror and the devastator. Catholicism remained as the hope and sign of the conquered. Any Irishman who became a Protestant was naturally suspected of being a traitor, not merely to his religion but also to his nation.