The Oppressed English

by Ian Hay

(3) About forty Irish members were to be retained in the House of Commons.

There were many other clauses, but these three will suffice to show the difference between a Home Ruler indulging in sentimental aspirations and the same gentleman engaged in the transaction of business. The second clause might have passed muster; for the Englishman, with all his faults, has never been niggardly. But Clause Three broke the camel's back.

To the average Englishman the one redeeming feature of Home Rule was the prospect it offered of getting rid, once and for all, of the Irish members from Westminster. The gentle intimation that forty of these would still remain, to assist in the counsels of England and Scotland, and incidentally to glean such further pickings for Ireland as could be secured by the help of forty skilfully manipulated votes, was too much even for the much-enduring Englishman. The worm turned, and the storm broke. It is difficult to understand why such an astute leader as Mr. Redmond should have insisted upon such a condition; for it automatically destroyed the claim upon which he based his plea for the sympathy of the United States and the Dominions—namely, the plea that Ireland should be permitted to govern herself after the fashion of Canada and Australia, neither interfering with or being interfered with by the Parliament at Westminster.

Further into the political merits of the case we need not go. As already stated, the purpose of this disquisition is not to prove a case for or against Home Rule, but to point out to friends whose knowledge of the subject has been derived almost entirely from the perfervid orations of imaginative gentlemen with Irish surnames and (too often) German salaries, who have abandoned their beloved land for the more sympathetic and lucrative atmosphere of New York—firstly, that England during the past fifty years has stopped at nothing, short of the disintegration of the United Kingdom, to remove and assuage the ancient grievance of Ireland; and secondly, that the chief bar to a complete and speedy settlement of the affair is, and always has been, the inability of a lovable but irresponsible people to agree amongst themselves as to what they really want.

The task of redressing wrongs has not been confined to one Party. Fifty years ago the Church of England was the Established Church of Ireland—an obvious injustice to a people of whom the great majority were Catholics. Therefore the Church of England in Ireland was disestablished, by a Liberal Government under Mr. Gladstone. Again, for generations the cry had gone up from Ireland that Irish land was owned by great landlords of English descent, who spent most of their time in London, and confined their energies as lords of the manor to evicting such of their tenants as could not or would not pay their rent. This was obviously a very wrong state of affairs, and fifteen years ago a Unionist Government set out to put it right. Parliament passed George Wyndham's Land Purchase Act, the object of which was to enable the tenant-farmers of Ireland to buy their farms from the landlords. The tenant was invited to state the sum which he could afford to pay for his farm, and the landlord was invited to state the sum which he was prepared to accept. This was indeed a gorgeous opportunity for both tenant and landlord. The two amounts, having been stated, were adjusted and confirmed by a Board, and the intervening gap—no small gap, as may be imagined—was bridged by the English taxpayer. This little experiment in philanthropy cost the tyrannical English considerably more than five hundred million dollars. Under its provisions every Irish peasant is now his own proprietor. Evictions are a thing of the past. Yet how often is this fact so much as admitted by soulful exploiters of Erin's wrongs in America or the Dominions?

Then, as regards Ireland's inability to express her desires with a single voice. Roughly, Irish political parties fall under the following heads:

(1) The official Nationalist Party, under Mr. John Redmond.

(2) The Protestants of the North.

(3) The Unionists of the South and West.