5. It is argued that Home Rule on Mr. Gladstone's
plan would not work, because it follows in some respects the colonial system, whereas the conditions at the root of the success of the system in the Colonies do not exist in Ireland. They are distant, Ireland is near; they are prosperous, Ireland is poor; they are proud of the connection with England, Ireland resents it. But the question is not whether the conditions are identical with those of any colony; it is enough if in themselves they seem to promise a certain basis for government. It might justly be contended that proximity is a more favourable condition than distance; without it there could not be that close and constant intercommunication which binds the material interests of Ireland to those of Great Britain, and so provides the surest guarantee for union. If Ireland were suddenly to find herself as far off as Canada, then indeed one might be very sorry to answer for the Union. Again, though Ireland has to bear her share of the prevailing depression in the chief branch of her production, it is a great mistake to suppose that outside of the margin of chronic wretchedness in the west and south-west, the condition not only of the manufacturing industries of the north, but of the agricultural industry in the richer parts of the middle and south, is so desperately unprosperous as to endanger a political constitution. Under our stupidily [Transcriber: sic] centralized system, Irishmen have no doubt acquired the enervating trick of attributing every misfortune, great or small, public or private, to the Government. When they learn the lessons of responsibility, they will unlearn this fatal habit, and not before.
I do not see, therefore, that the differences in condition between Ireland and the Colonies make against Home Rule. What I do see is ample material out of which would arise a strong and predominant party of order. The bulk of the nation are sons and daughters of a Church which has been hostile to revolution in every country but Ireland, and
which would be hostile to it there from the day that the cause of revolution ceased to be the cause of self-government. If the peasantry were made to realize that at last the land settlement, wisely and equitably made, was what it must inexorably remain, and what no politicians could help them to alter, they would be as conservative as the peasantry under a similar condition in every other spot on the surface of the globe. There is no reason to expect that the manufacturers, merchants, and shopkeepers of Ireland would be less willing or less able to play an active and useful part in the affairs of their country than the same classes in England or Scotland. It will be said that this is mere optimist prophesying. But why is that to be flung aside under the odd name of sentimentalism, while pessimist prophesying is to be taken for gospel?
The only danger is lest we should allot new responsibilities to Irishmen with a too grudging and restrictive hand. For true responsibility there must be real power. It is easy to say that this power would be misused, and that the conditions both of Irish society and of the proposed Constitution must prevent it from being used for good. It is easy to say that separation would be a better end. Life is too short to discuss that. Separation is not the alternative either to Home Rule or to the status quo. If the people of Ireland are not to be trusted with real power over their own affairs, it would be a hundred times more just to England, and more merciful to Ireland, to take away from her that semblance of free government which torments and paralyzes one country, while it robs the other of national self-respect and of all the strongest motives and best opportunities of self-help. The status quo is drawing very near to its inevitable end. The two courses then open will be Home Rule on the one hand, and some shy bungling underhand imitation of a Crown Colony on the other. We shall have either to listen to the Irish repre
sentatives or to suppress them. Unless we have lost all nerve and all political faculty we shall, before many months are over, face these alternatives. Liberals are for the first; Tories at present incline to the second. It requires very moderate instinct for the forces at work in modern politics to foresee the path along which we shall move, in the interests alike of relief to Great Britain and of a sounder national life for Ireland. The only real question is not Whether we are to grant Home Rule, but How.
FOOTNOTES:
[71] The following pages, with one or two slight alterations, are extracted, by the kind permission of Mr. James Knowles, from two articles which were published in the Nineteenth Century at the beginning of the present year, in reply to Professor Dicey's statement of the English case against Home Rule.
[72] The late J.E. Cairnes, after describing the clearances after the famine, goes on to say, "I own I cannot wonder that a thirst for revenge should spring from such calamities; that hatred, even undying hatred, for what they could not but regard as the cause and symbol of their misfortunes—English rule in Ireland—should possess the sufferers.... The disaffection now so widely diffused throughout Ireland may possibly in some degree be fed from historical traditions, and have its remote origin in the confiscations of the seventeenth century; but all that gives it energy, all that renders it dangerous, may, I believe, be traced to exasperation produced by recent transactions, and more especially to the bitter memories left by that most flagrant abuse of the rights of property and most scandalous disregard of the claims of humanity—the wholesale clearances of the period following the famine."—Political Essays, p. 198.