next day if we pleased, to establish between this country and Ireland the relations subsisting between the provincial legislatures and the dominion parliament of Canada.[200] As to the first proposal, anybody could see that federation was a vastly more revolutionary operation than the delegation of certain legislative powers to a local parliament. Moreover before federating an Irish legislature, you must first create it. As to the second proposal, anybody could see on turning for a quarter of an hour to the Dominion Act of 1867, that in some of the particulars deemed by Mr. Chamberlain to be specially important, a provincial legislature in the Canadian system had more unfettered powers than the Irish legislature would have under the bill. Finally, he urged that inquiry into the possibility of satisfying the Irish demand should be carried on by a committee or commission representing all sections of the House.[201] In face of projects so strangely fashioned as this, Mr. Gladstone had a right to declare that just as the subject held the field in the public mind—for never before had been seen such signs of public absorption in the House and out of the House—so the ministerial plan held the field in parliament. It had many enemies, but it had not a single serious rival.
The debate on the second reading had hardly begun when Lord Salisbury placed in the hands of his adversaries a weapon with which they took care to do much execution. Ireland, he declared, is not one nation, but two nations. There were races like the Hottentots, and even the Hindoos, incapable of self-government. He would not place confidence in people who had acquired the habit of using knives and slugs. His policy was that parliament should enable the government of England to govern Ireland. “Apply that recipe honestly, consistently, and resolutely for twenty years, and at the end of that time you will find that Ireland will be fit to accept any gifts in the way of local government or repeal of coercion laws that you may wish to give her.”[202] In the same genial vein, Lord Salisbury told his Hottentot fellow-citizens—one of the two invictæ gentes of Mr. Pitt's famous quotation—that if some great store of imperial [pg 318] treasure were going to be expended on Ireland, instead of buying out landlords, it would be far more usefully employed in providing for the emigration of a million Irishmen. Explanations followed this inconvenient candour, but explanations are apt to be clumsy, and the pungency of the indiscretion kept it long alive. A humdrum speaker, who was able to contribute nothing better to the animation of debate, could always by insinuating a reference to Hottentots, knives and slugs, the deportation of a million Irishmen, and twenty years of continuous coercion, make sure of a roar of angry protest from his opponents, followed by a lusty counter-volley from his friends.
V
The reception of the bill by the organs of Irish opinion was easy to foretell. The nationalists accepted it in sober and rational language, subject to amendments on the head of finance and the constabulary clauses. The tories said it was a bill for setting up an Irish republic. It is another selfish English plan, said the moderates. Some Irishmen who had played with home rule while it was a phrase, drew back when they saw it in a bill. Others, while holding to home rule, objected to being reduced to the status of colonists. The body of home rulers who were protestant was small, and even against them it was retorted that for every protestant nationalist there were ten catholic unionists. The Fenian organs across the Atlantic, while quarrelling with such provisions as the two orders, “one of which would be Irish and the other English,” did justice to the bravery of the attempt, and to the new moral forces which it would call out. The florid violence which the Fenians abandoned was now with proper variations adopted by Orangemen in the north. The General Assembly of the presbyterian church in Ireland passed strong resolutions against a parliament, in favour of a peasant proprietary, in favour of loyalty, and of coercion. A few days later the general synod of the protestant episcopal church followed suit, and denounced a parliament. The Orange print in Belfast drew up a Solemn League and Covenant for Ulster, [pg 319] to ignore and resist an Irish national government. Unionist prints in Dublin declared and indignantly repelled “the selfish English design to get rid of the Irish nuisance from Westminster, and reduce us to the position of a tributary dependency.”[203]
The pivot of the whole policy was the acceptance of the bill by the representatives of Ireland. On the evening when the bill was produced, Mr. Parnell made certain complaints as to the reservation of the control of the constabulary, as to the power of the first order to effect a deadlock, and as to finance. He explicitly and publicly warned the government from the first that, when the committee stage was reached, he would claim a large decrease in the fraction named for the imperial contribution. There was never any dissembling as to this. In private discussion, he had always held that the fair proportion of Irish contribution to imperial charges was not a fifteenth but a twentieth, and he said no more in the House than he had persistently said in the Irish secretary's room. There too he had urged what he also declared in the House: that he had always insisted that due representation should be given to the minority; that he should welcome any device for preventing ill-considered legislation, but that the provision in the bill, for the veto of the first order, would lead to prolonged obstruction and delay. Subject to modification on these three heads, he accepted the bill. “I am convinced,” he said in concluding, “that if our views are fairly met in committee regarding the defects to which I have briefly alluded,—the bill will be cheerfully accepted by the Irish people, and by their representatives, as a solution of the long-standing dispute between the two countries.”[204]
It transpired at a later date that just before the introduction of the bill, when Mr. Parnell had been made acquainted with its main proposals, he called a meeting of eight of his leading colleagues, told them what these proposals were, and asked them whether they would take the [pg 320] bill or leave it.[205] Some began to object to the absence of certain provisions, such as the immediate control of the constabulary, and the right over duties of customs. Mr. Parnell rose from the table, and clenched the discussion by informing them that if they declined the bill, the government would go. They at once agreed “to accept it pro tanto, reserving for committee the right of enforcing and, if necessary, reconsidering their position with regard to these important questions.” This is neither more nor less than the form in which Mr. Parnell made his declaration in parliament. There was complete consistency between the terms of this declaration, and the terms of acceptance agreed to by his colleagues, as disclosed in the black days of December four years later. The charge of bad faith and hypocrisy so freely made against the Irishmen is wholly unwarranted by a single word in these proceedings. If the whole transaction had been known to the House of Commons, it could not have impaired by one jot or tittle the value set by the supporters of the bill on the assurances of the Irishmen that, in principle and subject to modification on points named, they accepted the bill as a settlement of the question, and would use their best endeavours to make it work.[206]
Chapter VII. The Political Atmosphere. Defeat Of The Bill. (1886)
Everything on every side was full of traps and mines.... It was in the midst of this chaos of plots and counterplots ... that the firmness of that noble person [Lord Rockingham] was put to the proof. He never stirred from his ground; no, not an inch.—Burke (1766).