CHAPTER II
THE ELECTORATE AND HOME RULE
We profess to be a democratic country in which the "will of the people" is the ultimate authority in determining questions of policy, and the Liberal Party has been accustomed to regard itself as the most zealous guardian of democratic principles. Yet there is this curious paradox in relation to the problem which more than any other taxed British statesmanship during the thirty-five years immediately following the enfranchisement of the rural democracy in 1884, that the solution propounded by the Liberal Party, and inscribed by that party on the Statute-book in 1914, was more than once emphatically rejected, and has never been explicitly accepted by the electorate.
No policy ever submitted to the country was more decisively condemned at the polls than Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule proposals in the General Election of 1886. The issue then for the first time submitted to the people was isolated from all others with a completeness scarcely ever practicable—a circumstance which rendered the "mandate" to Parliament to maintain the legislative union exceptionally free from ambiguity. The party which had brought forward the defeated proposal, although led by a statesman of unrivalled popularity, authority, and power, was shattered in the attempt to carry it, and lost the support of numbers of its most conspicuous adherents, including Chamberlain, Hartington, Goschen, and John Bright, besides a multitude of its rank and file, who entered into political partnership with their former opponents in order to withstand the new departure of their old Chief.
The years that followed were a period of preparation by both sides for the next battle. The improvement in the state of Ireland, largely the result of legislation carried by Lord Salisbury's Government, especially that which promoted land purchase, encouraged the confidence felt by Unionists that the British voter would remain staunch to the Union. The downfall of Parnell in 1890, followed by the break-up of his party, and by his death in the following year, seemed to make the danger of Home Rule still more remote. The only disquieting factor was the personality of Mr. Gladstone, which, the older he grew, exercised a more and more incalculable influence on the public mind. And there can be no doubt that it was this personal influence that made him, in spite of his policy, and not because of it, Prime Minister for the fourth time in 1892. In Great Britain the electors in that year pronounced against Home Rule again by a considerable majority, and it was only by coalition with the eighty-three Irish Nationalist Members that Gladstone and his party were able to scrape up a majority of forty in support of his second Home Rule Bill. Whether there was any ground for Gladstone's belief that but for the O'Shea divorce he would have had a three-figure majority in 1892 is of little consequence, but the fall of his own majority in Midlothian from 4,000 to below 700, which caused him "intense chagrin,"[[3]] does not lend it support. Lord Morley says Gladstone was blamed by some of his friends for accepting office "depending on a majority not large enough to coerce the House of Lords"[[4]]; but a more valid ground of censure was that he was willing to break up the constitution of the United Kingdom, although a majority of British electors had just refused to sanction such a thing being done. That Gladstone's colleagues realised full well the true state of public opinion on the subject, if he himself did not, was shown by their conduct when the Home Rule Bill, after being carried through the House of Commons by diminutive majorities, was rejected on second reading by the Peers. Even their great leader's entreaty could not persuade them to consent to an appeal to the people[[5]]; and when they were tripped up over the cordite vote in 1895, after Gladstone had disappeared from public life, none of them probably were surprised at the overwhelming vote by which the constituencies endorsed the action of the House of Lords, and pronounced for the second time in ten years against granting Home Rule to Ireland.
If anything except the personal ascendancy of Gladstone contributed to his small coalition majority in 1892 it was no doubt the confidence of the electors that the House of Lords could be relied upon to prevent the passage of a Home Rule Bill. It is worth noting that nearly twenty years later Lord Crewe acknowledged that the Home Rule Bill of 1893 could not have stood the test of a General Election or of a Referendum.[[6]]
During the ten years of Unionist Government from 1895 to 1905 the question of Home Rule slipped into the background. Other issues, such as those raised by the South African War and Mr. Chamberlain's tariff policy, engrossed the public mind. English Home Rulers showed a disposition to hide away, if not to repudiate altogether, the legacy they had inherited from Gladstone. Lord Rosebery acknowledged the necessity to convert "the predominant partner," a mission which every passing year made appear a more hopeless undertaking. At by-elections Home Rule was scarcely mentioned. In the eyes of average Englishmen the question was dead and buried, and most people were heartily thankful to hear no more about it. Mr. T.M. Healy's caustic wit remarked that "Home Rule was put into cold storage."[[7]]
Then came the great overthrow of the Unionists in 1906. Home Rule, except by its absence from Liberal election addresses, contributed nothing at all to that resounding Liberal victory. The battle of "terminological inexactitudes" rang with cries of Chinese "slavery," Tariff Reform, Church Schools, Labour Dispute Bills, and so forth; but on Ireland silence reigned on the platforms of the victors. The event was to give the successors of Mr. Gladstone a House of Commons in complete subjection to them. For the first time since 1885 they had a majority independent of the Nationalists, a majority, if ever there was one, "large enough to coerce the House of Lords," as they would have done in 1893, according to Lord Morley, if they had had the power. But to do that would involve the danger of having again to appeal to the country, which even at this high tide of Liberal triumph they could not face with Home Rule as an election cry. So, with the tame acquiescence of Mr. Redmond and his followers, they spent four years of unparalleled power without laying a finger on Irish Government, a course which was rendered easy for them by the fact that, on their own admission, they had found Ireland in a more peaceful, prosperous, and contented condition than it had enjoyed for several generations. Occasionally, indeed, as was necessary to prevent a rupture with the Nationalists, some perfunctory mention of Home Rule as a desideratum of the future was made on Ministerial platforms—by Mr. Churchill, for example, at Manchester in May 1909. But by that date even the contest over Tariff Reform—which had raged without intermission for six years, and by rending the Unionist Party had grievously damaged it as an effective instrument of opposition—had become merged in the more immediately exciting battle of the Budget, provoked by Mr. Lloyd George's financial proposals for the current year, and by the possibility that they might be rejected by the House of Lords. This the House of Lords did, on the 30th of November, 1909, and the Prime Minister at once announced that he would appeal to the country without delay.
Such a turn of events was a wonderful windfall for the Irish Nationalists, beyond what the most sanguine of them can ever have hoped for. The rejection of a money Bill by the House of Lords raised a democratic blizzard, the full force of which was directed against the constitutional power of veto possessed by the hereditary Chamber in relation not merely to money Bills, but to general legislation. For a long time the Liberal Party had been threatening that part of the Constitution without much effect. Sixteen years had passed since Mr. Gladstone in his last speech in the House of Commons declared that issue must be joined with the Peers; but the emphatic endorsement by the constituencies in 1895 of the Lords' action which he had denounced, followed by ten years of Unionist Government, damped down the ardour of attack so effectually that, during the four years in which the Liberals enjoyed unchallengeable power, from 1906 to 1910, they did nothing to carry out Gladstone's parting injunction. Had they done so at any time when Home Rule was a living issue in the country an attack on the Lords would in all probability have proved disastrous to themselves. For there was not a particle of evidence that the electors of Great Britain had changed their minds on this subject, and there were great numbers of voters in the country—those voters, unattached to party, who constitute "the swing of the pendulum," and decide the issue at General Elections—who felt free to vote Liberal in 1906 because they believed Home Rule was practically dead, and if revived would be again given its quietus, as in 1893, by the House of Lords. But the defeat of the Budget in November 1909 immediately opened a line of attack wholly unconnected with Ireland, and over the most favourable ground that could have been selected for the assault.