The articles upon the Ulster question by Lord Londonderry and Mr. Sinclair show that the Northern province still maintains her historic opposition to Irish Separatism and Irish intrigue. She stands firmly by the same economic principles which have enabled her, in spite of persecution and natural disadvantages, to build up so great a prosperity. She knows well that the only chance for the rest of Ireland to attain to the standard of education, enlightenment and independence which she has reached, is to free itself from the sinister domination under which it lies, and to assert its right to political and religious liberty. Ulster sees in Irish Nationalism a dark conspiracy, buttressed upon crime and incitement to outrage, maintained by ignorance and pandering to superstition. Even at this moment the Nationalist leagues have succeeded in superseding the law of the land by the law of the league. We need only point to the remarks which the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland and Mr. Justice Kenny have been compelled to make to the Grand Juries quite recently, to show what Nationalist rule means to the helpless peasants in a great part of the country.
But the differences which still sever the two great parties in Ireland are not only economic but religious. The general slackening of theological dispute which followed the weary years of religious warfare after the Reformation, has never brought peace to Ireland. In England the very completeness of the defeat of Roman Catholicism has rendered the people oblivious to the dangers of its aggression. The Irish Unionists are not monsters of inhuman frame; they are men of like passions with Englishmen. Though they hold their religious views with vigour and determination, there is nothing that they would like more than to be able to forget their points of difference from those who are their fellow Christians. It is perhaps necessary to point out once again that the Roman Catholic Church is a political, as well as a religious, institution, and to remind Englishmen that it is by the first law of its being an intolerant and aggressive organisation. All Protestants in Ireland feel deep respect for much of the work which is carried on by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. They gladly acknowledge the influence of its priesthood in maintaining and upholding the traditional morality and purity of the Irish race. They venerate the memories of those brave Irish priests who defied persecution in order to bring succour to their flocks in time of need. But they are bound to deal with the present political situation as they find it. They are determined that no Church, however admirable, and no creed, however lofty, should be forced upon them against their wills. There is a dark side to the picture, on which it is unnecessary to dwell. We have only to ask the Nonconformists of England what would be their feelings were a Roman Catholic majority returned to the British House of Commons.
In most of the articles in this book which deal with the religious question; special stress is laid upon recent Papal legislation. The Ne Temere and the Motu Proprio decrees have constituted an invasion of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the minority in Ireland, and they are even more significant as an illustration of the policy of the Roman curia. Those who have watched the steady increase of Roman aggression in every Roman Catholic country, followed as it has been by passionate protest and determined action by the civil Governments, must realise the danger which Home Rule would bring to the faith and liberty of the people of Ireland. It is not inconsistent to urge, as many of us have urged, that Home Rule would mean alike a danger to the Protestant faith and a menace to Catholic power. The immediate result of successful Papal interference with civil liberties in every land has been a sweeping movement among the people which has been, not Protestant, but anti-Christian in its nature. If we fear the tyranny which the Roman Catholic Church has established under British rule in Malta and in Quebec, may we not fear also the reaction from such tyranny which has already taken place in France and Portugal.
But we are told that there are to be in the new Home Rule Bill safeguards which will protect the minority from any interference with their civil and religious liberties. It is not necessary for me to go over again in detail the ground which is so admirably covered by Mr. George Cave and Mr. James Campbell. They show clearly that the existence of restrictions and limitations upon the activities of a Dublin Parliament, whether they are primarily intended to safeguard the British connection or to protect the liberties of minorities, cannot be worth the paper on which they are printed. Let us take, for instance, an attempt to prevent the marriages of Irish Protestants from being invalidated by an Irish Parliament. We may point out that an amendment to the 1893 Home Rule Bill, designed to safeguard such marriages, was rejected by the vote of the Irish Nationalist party. But even were legislation affecting the marriage laws of the minority to be placed outside the control of a Dublin Parliament, the effect would not be to reassure the Protestant community. Mr. James Campbell mentions a case which has profoundly stirred the Puritan feelings of Irish Protestantism. A man charged with bigamy has been released without punishment because the first marriage, although in conformity with the law of the land, was not recognised by the Roman Catholic Church. However justifiable that course may have been in the exceptional circumstances of that particular case, the precedent obviously prepares the way for a practical reversal of the law by executive or judicial action. We must remember that, since the Ne Temere decree has come into force, the marriages of Protestants and Roman Catholics are held by the Roman Catholic Church to be absolutely null and void unless they are celebrated in a Roman Catholic Church. We have also to bear in mind that these marriages will not be permitted by the priesthood except under conditions which many Irish Protestants consider humiliating and impossible. No more deadly attack upon the faith of the Protestant minority in the three provinces in Ireland can be imagined than to make a denial of their faith the essential condition to the enjoyment of the highest happiness for which they may look upon this earth.
The second decree prohibits, under pain of excommunication, any Roman Catholic from bringing an ecclesiastical officer before a Court of Justice. Even under the Union Government this decree is a danger to the liberty of the subject. Under an independent Irish Government, nothing except that vast anti-clerical revolution which some people foresee could possibly reassure the people as to the attitude of the Executive Government in dealing with a large and privileged class. These considerations make one more reason for refusing the Colonial analogy which is so ingeniously pressed by such apologists for Home Rule as Mr. Erskine Childers. Mr. Amery analyses the confusion of thought between Home Rule as meaning responsible Government and Home Rule as meaning separate government which underlies the arguments of Liberal Home Rulers. Ireland has Home Rule in the sense of having free representative institutions. She is prevented by geographical and economic conditions from enjoying separate government under the same terms on which the Colonies possess it. As Mr. Amery points out, the United Kingdom is geographically a single island group. No part of Ireland is so inaccessible from the political centre of British power as the remoter parts of the Highlands, while racially no less than physically Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom. Economically also the two countries are bound together in a way which makes a common physical policy absolutely necessary for the welfare of both countries. The financial arguments which might have made it possible to permit an independent fiscal policy for Ireland under free trade, have disappeared with the certain approach of a revision of the tariff policies of England. There can be no separate tariffs for the two countries, or even a common tariff, without a common Government to negotiate and enforce it. If there were no other objection to the establishment of a separate Government in Dublin, it would be impossible because legislative autonomy can only be coupled with financial independence.
The financial difficulties in the way of any grant of Home Rule are fully explained by Mr. Austen Chamberlain. Three attempts at framing schemes for financing Home Rule were made by Mr. Gladstone in the past. All the powers of this great and resourceful dialectician were employed in defending these various schemes in turn. He was not deterred from pressing any scheme by the fact that in important details it was inconsistent with or even opposed to what had been previously recommended. But if there was one principle on which Mr. Gladstone never turned his back it was in demanding a contribution from Ireland for Imperial services. At one time he demanded a cash payment, at another the assignment of the Customs, and on yet another occasion the payment to the Imperial Exchequer of a quota—one-third—of the tax-revenue in Ireland.
The effect of recent social legislation, such as Old Age Pensions, Labour Exchanges, and Sickness and Unemployment Insurance has been to confer on Ireland benefits much greater in value than the Irish contribution in respect of the new taxation imposed. In consequence of this change the present Irish revenue falls short of the expenditure incurred for Irish purposes in Ireland. Mr. Chamberlain shows that if any scheme even remotely resembling any of those put forward on previous occasions by Mr. Gladstone is embodied in the new Bill, and if a moderate contribution for Imperial services is included, the Irish deficit must range from £2,500,000 to £3,500,000. If by any process of juggling with the figures the Irish Parliament is again to be started with a surplus the deficit must have been made good by charging it against the Imperial taxpayer. But again there is no permanence in such a surplus. It must disappear if the ameliorative measures which are long overdue in Ireland are undertaken by an Irish Parliament; and previous experience has already illustrated that even without the adoption of any such new schemes surpluses would long ago have made room for deficits. It will be the duty of the Nationalists party to say definitely what are the fiscal reserves upon which they can draw in order to establish permanent equilibrium between revenue and expenditure in Ireland.
Not only does Unionist policy for Ireland involve considerations of national safety and national honour, but it is also necessary for the economic welfare of both countries. The remarkable success which has attended Mr. Wyndham's Land Act of 1903 has alarmed the political party in Ireland, which depends for its influence on the poverty and discontent of the rural population of Ireland. Mr. Wyndham in his article upon Irish Land Purchase shows clearly the blessings which have followed wherever his Act has been given fair play, and the evils which have resulted in the suppression of Land Purchase by Mr. Birrell's Act of 1909. The dual ownership created by Mr. Gladstone's ill-advised and reckless legislation led to Ireland being starved both in capital and industry and brought the whole of Irish agriculture to the brink of ruin, and under these circumstances, Conservative statesmen determined, in accordance with the principles of the Act of Union, to use a joint exchequer for the purpose of relieving Irish distress. Credit of the State was employed to convert the occupiers of Irish farms into the owners of the soil. The policy of the Ashbourne Acts was briefly that any landlord could agree with any tenant on the purchase price of his holding. The State then advanced the credit sum to the landlord in cash, while the tenant paid an instalment of 4 per cent. for forty-nine years. It is important to notice that the landlord received cash and that the tenants paid interest at the then existing rate of interest on Consols, namely, 3 per cent. The great defect in these Acts was that they applied only to separate holdings and not to estates as a whole; but their success can be estimated by the fact that under them twenty-seven thousand tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over ten million pounds. Under Mr. Balfour's Acts of 1891 and 1896, the landlord was paid in stock instead of cash, and the tenants still paid 4 per cent., the interest being reduced to the then rate on Consols—2-3/4 per cent.—and the Sinking Fund being proportionately increased. It will be noticed that these Acts began the practise of paying the landlord in stock, though at that time Irish Land Stock with a face value of £100 became worth as much as £114. The exchequer was, moreover, permitted to retain grants due for various purposes in Ireland and to recoup itself out of them in case of any combined refusal to repay on the part of tenants.
The Irish Land Act of 1903 was the product of the experience gained during eighteen years of the operation of the preceding Purchase Acts. It was founded upon an agreement made in 1902 between representatives of Irish landlords and tenants. Cash payments were resumed to the landlords, the tenants' instalments were reduced to 3-1/4 per cent., and a bonus, as it was called, of twelve millions of money was made available to bridge the gap between the landlords and the tenants at the rate of 12 per cent, on the amount advanced. That Act possessed the additional advantage of dealing with the estates as a whole instead of with individual holdings, and it substituted the principle of speedy purchase for that of dilatory litigation. This remarkable and generous measure initiated a great and beneficent revolution, but every popular and useful feature of the Act of 1903 was distorted or destroyed in the Land Act which the present Government passed at the instigation of the Irish Nationalist Party in 1909. In Mr. Wyndham's words "a solemn treaty framed in the interest of Ireland was torn up to deck with its tatters the triumph of Mr. Dillon's unholy alliance with the British Treasury." Under the Act of 1909, landlords, instead of cash payments, are to receive stock at 3 per cent. issued on a falling market. This stock cannot possibly appreciate because owing to the embarrassment of Irish estates a large proportion of each issue is thrown back upon the market at the redemption of mortgages. The tenant's annuity is raised from 3-1/4 per cent, to 3-1/2 per cent., a precedent not to be found in any previous experiment under Irish Land Purchase finance. The bonus is destroyed and litigation is substituted for security and speed. The results of the two Acts are instructive. Under the 1903 Act the potential purchasers amounted to nearly a quarter of a million; under the 1909 Act the applications in respect of direct sales being less than nine thousand. It is hardly necessary to go into the reasons advanced for this disastrous change. It has been brought about not in order to relieve the British Treasury, but in order to rescue from final destruction the waning influence of Irish Nationalism. Mr. Wyndham has the authority of the leader of the Unionist Party for his statement that the first constructive work of the Unionist Party in Ireland must be to resume the Land policy of 1903 and to pursue the same objects by the best methods until they have all been fully and expeditiously achieved. Unionist policy cannot, however, be confined to the restoration of Land Purchase. The ruin which Free Trade finance has inflicted upon Irish agriculture can only be remedied, as Mr. Childers saw at the time of the Financial Relations Commission in 1895, by a readjustment of the fiscal system of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Gerald Balfour shows us in one of the most able papers in the book the extraordinary development which has been seen in recent years in Irish agricultural methods. The revival of Irish rural industries dates from Mr. Balfour's chief-secretaryship. The Parliament which set up in Ireland the Congested Districts Board and sanctioned the building of light railways at the public expense, also witnessed the formation in Ireland of a Society which was destined to work great changes in the social conditions of the country. The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society represents the fruit of a work begun in the face of incredible difficulties and remorseless opposition by Sir Horace Plunkett in 1889. "Better farming, better business, better living"—these were the principles which he and Mr. Anderson set out to establish in Ireland. Their representatives were described as monsters in human shape, and they were adjured to cease their "hellish work." Now the branches of the Society number nearly 1000, with an annual turnover of upwards of 2-1/2 millions, and they include creameries, village banks, and societies for the purchase of seeds and manure and for the marketing of eggs. It is not necessary to tell again the story of the Recess Committee and the formation of the Department of Agriculture. The result of its work, crowned as it was by Mr. Wyndham's Purchase Act, is shown by the fact that Irish trade has increased from 103 millions in 1904 to 130 millions in 1910. The steady object which Sir Horace Plunkett has set before him is to counteract the demoralising effect of paternal legislation on the part of the Government, by reviving and stimulating a policy of self-help. The I.A.O.S. has done valuable work in enabling the Irish farmers, by co-operating, to secure a more stable position in the English market, to secure themselves against illegitimate and fraudulent competition and to standardise the quality of their product, but even more important has been the work of the Society in releasing the farmers from the bondage of the "Gombeen" man who has for so many years been the curse of Irish agriculture. The "Gombeen" man is alike trader, publican, and money-lender, and he is the backbone of official Nationalist influence. By lending money to the peasant proprietors at exorbitant rates, by selling inferior seeds and manures and by carrying on his transactions with the farmers chiefly in kind, the "Gombeen" man has grown fat upon the poverty and despair of the farmer. It is not surprising that he views the liberating work of the I.A.O.S. with the bitterest hostility—an hostility which has been translated into effective action by the Nationalist Party in Parliament.