Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question

by Unknown

The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament was maintained by an express provision excepting from any interference on the part of Irish Legislature all imperial powers, and declaring any enactment void which infringed that provision; further, an enactment was inserted for the

purpose of securing to the English Legislature in the last resource the absolute power to make any law for the government of Ireland, and therefore to repeal, or suspend, the Irish Constitution.

Technically these reservations of supremacy to the English Legislature were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of constitutional law that a sovereign Legislature, such as the Queen and two Houses of Parliament in England, cannot bind their successors, and consequently can repeal or alter any law, however fundamental, and annul any restrictions on alteration, however strongly expressed. Practically they were never likely to be called into operation, as it is the custom of Parliament to adhere, under all but the most extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances, to any compact made by Act of Parliament between itself and any subordinate legislative body. The Irish Legislature was subjected to the same controlling power which has for centuries been applied to prevent any excess of jurisdiction in our Colonial Legislatures, by a direction that an appeal as to the constitutionality of any laws which they might pass should lie to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This supremacy of the imperial judicial power over the action of the Colonial Legislatures was a system which the founders of the American Constitution copied in the establishment of their supreme Court, and thereby secured for that legislative system a stability which has defied the assaults of faction and the strain of civil war.

The Executive Government of Ireland was continued in her Majesty, and was to be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on her behalf, by the aid of such officers and such Council as her Majesty might from time to time see fit. The initiative power of recommending taxation was also vested in the Queen, and delegated to the Lord Lieutenant. These clauses are co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local powers on the Irish Legislature,

while it preserves all imperial powers to the Imperial Legislature. The Governor is an imperial officer, and will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny, and to veto any Bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided by the advice of the Irish Executive Council. The system is self-acting. The Governor, for local purposes, must have a Council which is in harmony with the Legislative Body. If the Governor and a Council, supported by the Legislative Body, do not agree, the Governor must give way, unless he can, by dismissing his Council, and dissolving the Legislative Body, obtain both a Council and a Legislative Body which will support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case is different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and in the last resort a determination of the Executive Council, backed by the Legislative Body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act of rebellion on the part of the Irish people, and be dealt with accordingly.

In acceding to the claims of the National Party for Home Rule in Ireland another question had to be considered: the demands of the English garrison, as it is called—or, in plain words, of the class of Irish landlords—for protection. They urged that to grant Home Rule in Ireland would be to hand them over to their enemies, their tenants, and to lead to an immediate, or to all events a proximate, confiscation of their properties. Without admitting the truth of these apprehensions to the full extent, or indeed to any great extent, it was undoubtedly felt by the framers of the Home Rule Bill that a moral obligation rested on the Imperial Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a question so fraught with danger, so involved in difficulty, to be determined by the Irish Government on its first entry on official existence.

Hence the Land Bill, the scheme of which was to frame a system under which the tenants, by being made owners of the soil, should become interested as a class in the maintenance of social order, while the landlords should be enabled to rid themselves on fair terms of their estates, in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the responsibilities of ownership. Of the land scheme brought into Parliament in 1886, it need only here be said that it proposed to lend the Irish Government 3 per cent. stock at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, the Irish Government undertaking to purchase, from any Irish landlord desirous of selling, his estate at (as a general rule) twenty years' purchase on the net rental. The money thus disbursed by the Irish Government was repaid to them by an annuity, payable by the tenant for forty-nine years, of 4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times the gross rental; the result being that, were the Bill passed into law, the tenant would become immediate owner of the land, subject to the payment of an annuity considerably less than the previous rent—that the Irish Government would make a considerable profit on the transaction, inasmuch as it would receive from the tenant interest calculated on the basis of the gross rental, whilst it would pay to the English Government interest calculated on the basis of the net rental—and that the English Government would sustain no loss if the interest were duly received by them.

The effect of such a plan appears almost magical: Ireland is transformed at one stroke from a nation of landlords into a nation of peasant proprietors—apparently without loss to any one, and with gain to everybody concerned, except the British Government, who neither gain nor lose in the matter. The practicability, however, of such a scheme depends altogether on the security against loss afforded to the British tax-payer, for he is industrious and heavily burdened, and

cannot be expected to assent to any plan which will land him in any appreciable loss. Here it is that the plan of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill differs from all other previous plans. Act after Act has been passed enabling the tenant to borrow money from the British Government on the security of the holding, for the purpose of enabling him to purchase the fee-simple. In such transactions the British Government becomes the mortgagee, and can only recover its money, if default is made in payment, by ejecting the tenant and becoming the landlord. In proportion, then, as any existing purchase Act succeeds, in the same proportion the risk of the British taxpayer increases. He is ever placed in the most invidious of all lights; instead of posing as the generous benefactor who holds forth his hand to rescue the landlord and tenant from an intolerable position, he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the still more hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant of his holding, is seeking to introduce another man into property which really belongs to the ejected tenant. Such a position may be endurable when the number of purchasing tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform in Ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable difference in the relations of landlord and tenant; still more, if it become general. Now, what is the remedy of such a state of things? Surely to interpose the Irish Government between the Irish debtor and his English creditor, and to provide that the Irish revenues in bulk, not the individual holdings of each tenant, shall be the security for the English creditor. This was the scheme embodied in the Land Act of 1886. The punctual payment of all money due from the Government of Ireland to the Government of Great Britain was to have been secured by the continuance in the hands of the British Government of the Excise and Customs duties, and by the appointment of an Imperial Receiver-General, assisted by subordinate officers,

and protected by an Imperial Court. This officer would have received not only all the imperial taxes, but also the local taxes; and it would have been his duty to satisfy the claims of the British Government before he allowed any sum to pass into the Irish Exchequer. In effect, the British Government, in relation to the levying of imperial taxes, would have stood in the same relation to Ireland as Congress does to the United States in respect to the levying of federal taxes. The fiscal unity of Great Britain and Ireland would have been in this way secured, and the British Government protected against any loss of interest for the large sums to be expended in carrying into effect in Ireland any agrarian reform worthy of the name.