The New Irish Constitution: An Exposition and Some Arguments

by Unknown

Moreover, there is a further evil effect arising from the inevitable indifference of constituents to much of the legislation which does not apply to the country [pg 405] in which they live. In view of the divergence of interests and diversity of classes represented in every Parliament, there is probably no legislature in which there is not a tendency to “log-rolling,” by which I mean arrangements among Members to support measures about which they do not care in return for help with measures in which they are particularly concerned. This temptation will be greater when the Parliament is not only overworked, as is the case here, but the struggle is intensified by the rivalry between English, Scottish, and Irish claims upon its attention. In the resultant situation, indeed, arrangements of a “log-rolling” character are likely to be made even upon the wider issues, and the fact should not be overlooked that they are rendered more easy because so many laws are passed separately for England, Scotland, and Ireland. In theory, of course, as Professor Dicey claims, it is the duty of a Member, whencesoever returned, to consult for the interests of the whole nation, and not to safeguard the interests of particular localities or countries; but in practice he cannot do it. The subjects for legislation are so complicated that he cannot make himself acquainted with them as they affect each of the three countries, and the pressure upon Parliament is so tremendous that he is almost bound to try to get for his own country a fair share of such time as is available. It is, therefore, wiser to bow to the inevitable, and enable the English, Scottish, or Irish Member, as the case may be, to look after his own concerns in his own Parliament, untroubled by the presence of others who do not understand his business and will not be called to account by their constituents for what they may do, while leaving the control of all common affairs, as at present, to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

There are, however, valid reasons why Ireland has a pre-eminent claim to priority of treatment. Ireland has been much less successful than England or Scotland in securing that Parliamentary action should be in accordance with the wishes of the majority of its Members in the House of Commons. Where the representatives of three countries together constitute a legislative body, it is probable that each of these countries will at some time or other be under the sway of a majority different from that which would be formed if its own representatives alone decided upon its composition; but it is clear that this fate is less likely to overtake the country which has a great numerical preponderance in the legislature in question. Thus, taking the period since 1885, England, holding 465 of the 670 seats in the House of Commons, was only in this position from 1892-5, for at the two elections in 1910 there was almost a tie in the return of 226 Ministerialists and 239 supporters of the Opposition. And this great preponderance of one of the countries adds to the likelihood that the others may have the majority of their own representatives in a minority of the whole representation. I have not been discussing the separate case of Wales, and so I will only say that, of the 30 Welsh Members, on no occasion in the twenty-seven years have the Unionists been able to muster more than 8; and Scotland has scarcely responded more closely to the swing of the pendulum in England. Though the Unionists were in power for fifteen out of the twenty-seven years, they had a majority in Scotland, and that a very small one, only in the Parliament of 1900. But Scotland on the whole does not come off badly, since it is not the practice of the Members from the other countries to vote down the Scottish representatives. Where Scotland does suffer is in their inability, [pg 407] owing to their numerical weakness, to secure a fair share of attention for Scottish domestic concerns. A law on Scottish Education, for instance, though it got into the Queen's Speech for 1900, was not enacted until 1908, and the Scottish Members never have more than one day in the Session for the discussion of all the Scottish Estimates. When we pass to Ireland, it is difficult to make any similar comparison, for, though the Nationalists sit permanently in opposition in the House of Commons, it does not follow that they should be classed as being opposed to the Liberals as well as to the Unionists. If we regard them as opposed to both of the principal parties, then, when the Liberals have been in power, every Irish Member with one single exception must be reckoned to have been among their opponents. But, if we prefer to base our calculations upon the sort of informal understanding which has existed during most of the time between the Liberals and the Nationalists, we must confine our attention, from the present point of view, to the years of Unionist Government, and we find that, of the 103 Irish representatives, the number of Irish Unionists during those periods has never exceeded 23 and has been as low as 19. Thus, putting the various figures which have been quoted into percentages, it becomes evident that England has had to live under a Liberal Government when the Unionists (in 1892-5) had 58 per cent. of the total English representation; Scotland has had to live under a Unionist Government when the Liberals (in 1886-92) had 60 per cent. of the total Scottish representation; whereas Ireland has had to live under a Unionist Government when the Nationalists had as much as 81 per cent. of the total Irish representation. And it must be borne in mind that, while England and Scotland are only rarely governed in opposition to the wishes [pg 408] of the majority of their representatives, Ireland has continued to be preponderantly Nationalist irrespective of party fluctuations in Great Britain.

In these circumstances, Ireland, whether in its Nationalist or its Unionist constituencies, never expresses any other opinion than for or against Home Rule. We regret the confusion at all elections in the United Kingdom between Imperial and domestic issues, but at least we get an idea of the views of the electorate in Great Britain on some big Imperial question, or as between Free Trade and Protection. In Ireland we get nothing of the kind; it is impossible to say, for instance, whether Ireland is in favour of Tariff Reform or not; and the votes of the great majority of its representatives in the House of Commons are usually given, not with reference to the views of their constituents on the question under discussion, but solely in relation to the attainment of Home Rule. Now, this attitude of the Nationalists is evidently adopted because Irish domestic concerns are decided in the House of Commons by men who are not Irish representatives; and it may be remarked that Scotsmen, and even, to some extent, Englishmen, are also liable to have their wishes on purely domestic affairs over-ridden by the representatives of the other countries, but that they do not, on that account, subordinate everything else to the effort to release themselves from this anomaly.

But, apart from the consideration, as we have seen above, that the Irish have been the principal sufferers, the Irish electorate are entitled, if this is a free country, to choose the issue which shall be put forward, and we should sympathise with them when they ask to be allowed to manage their domestic affairs without interference, in accordance with the principles of representative government. It is immaterial how [pg 409] far the Irish Nationalists have actually been able to get their own way in the House of Commons, for their efforts have usually been in vain until after a lawless agitation in Ireland, which, as a means of securing redress for grievances, is as demoralising to the legislator as to the elector. And when the law for which the Irish have asked has been passed without any such outside pressure, it is evident that the votes of the majority of the Irish representatives would have been useless unless sufficient English and Scottish Members had been willing to fall in with their wishes. Every Irish Nationalist knows, therefore, that a majority of the Irish representatives is by itself utterly unable to carry a purely Irish measure through the House of Commons, however often it may have been advocated, and however large may have been the Irish majorities in its favour; and representative government cannot fail to be brought into disrepute in Ireland, on account of its futility under existing conditions. Moreover, if representative institutions are to work well, there should be, so far as is possible, in every constituency supporters and opponents of the Government on the current questions of the day, for it is only by constant discussion and interaction that we can secure a sound relation between Parliament and the country. But nothing of the kind takes place in Ireland. Through their dissociation from the division into parties that prevails in Great Britain, the bulk of the Irish people are not informed as to the views on topics other than Home Rule of the Liberals, Unionists, or Labour men. In the greater part of Ireland, the Nationalist candidate is returned unopposed or is opposed only by another Nationalist; and when this is so, the party in power, whether it be Unionist or Liberal, is usually without any machinery by which its case is put before [pg 410] the electorate. Elsewhere, in Ireland, the Unionists have their organisation against Home Rule, and so far the Liberals are even in a worse position, for, though they have had the supreme control of affairs for the last six years, there are not half a dozen constituencies in Ireland where they have any means by which they can learn the views of the people or explain the policy of the Government. And yet Ireland, like the rest of the United Kingdom, is supposed to live under representative institutions! No doubt I may be reminded that the Nationalist Members are in touch with local opinion in Ireland, and that they are the informal allies of the Liberals; but the Nationalist attitude is concerned with little else but Home Rule, and it is just because, in existing circumstances, the Irish do not declare themselves, or perhaps even form an opinion, on ordinary political issues, that our representative system has broken down so much more severely in Ireland than in England or in Scotland.

And thus I conclude my survey of the practical working of the Act of Union. I have shown that the domestic affairs of the three countries are, in continuance of what was done before the Union of the Parliaments, or as the result of subsequent developments, ordered in many respects separately for England, Scotland, and Ireland, and that there is no question in any quarter of the elimination of these separate arrangements. But they have led, as has been further demonstrated, to many difficulties in connection with our system of Parliamentary government, and it is only by the sub-division of the responsibilities between two or more Parliaments that such difficulties can satisfactorily be overcome. We have, therefore, valid grounds for the advocacy of Home Rule, apart from the particular claims of Ireland, [pg 411] though they, of course, serve to strengthen the argument; and, in considering what form the proposals should take, we cannot do better than study carefully how far England, Scotland, and Ireland are now governed in common and how far each of the three countries is governed separately. For the subjects in which there is now separate treatment are those which would be transferred under Home Rule with the smallest breach of continuity, or rather, in the natural course of our constitutional evolution.

(III) Colonial Forms Of Home Rule. By Sir Alfred Mond, Bart., M.P.

One of the most important elements in the problem of Home Rule must be the relation between the spheres of legislation to be retained by the existing Parliament, and those to be allocated to the subordinate Irish Legislature. Such demarcation will be applied later to the other local Parliaments which may be created for England, Scotland and Wales. The creation of subordinate legislatures, together with the retention of a central Parliament, must necessarily lead to the study of federal systems already in existence in the Empire, and of the mutual relations of similar bodies within such federations. It is true that a certain influential school of political thought is rather disposed to compare the position of the future Irish Parliament to that of the Dominion Parliaments in their relations with the Parliament at Westminster. The effort, however, to draw an analogy between Ireland in her relations with Great Britain, and the relations existing between the three Dominions and the United Kingdom is most misleading. The difference between those dominions and Ireland is indeed far more striking than the similarity, whether they are compared either from the point of view of area, of present and future population, or of geographical position. The narrowness of the strip [pg 413] of sea that separates Ireland from Great Britain places it from a military and naval standpoint in a very different position to that of Canada, Australia, or South Africa. Whereas the great distance at which these Dominions are situated imposes upon them the necessity of creating their own defensive forces, a separate Irish Navy or Army would have no raison d'etre. Again, not only the distance but the different environment and climate of these Dominions, and, particularly in the cases of Canada and South Africa, their greater non-British population, naturally promote the development of a sense of national entity and therefore of a desire for a greater measure of national independence than is felt or demanded by Ireland, in spite of her strong national sentiment. Supposing for argument's sake, that the whole of the Canadian, Australian, and South African Dominions formed geographically with Great Britain one continuous territory such as the United States of America, it is clear that there would have been no call for granting the various Dominions the almost sovereign powers which they now enjoy. What would most probably arise in such a hypothetical case would be a single federal complex, comprising a central authority or parliament and a large number of state legislatures.

As a matter of fact the form of government of these various Dominions and their relations to the Mother Country are largely a geographical accident. It is impossible to conceive a system of “Home Rule all round” in which England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland would have the same positions and powers as Canada, Australia and South Africa, and would maintain the same relations towards each other as all three Dominions now occupy towards the United Kingdom. Nor could such an idea be entertained by any one [pg 414] framing a constitution, intended to be the commencement of the federalisation, first of the United Kingdom and afterwards in due time of the British Empire, when circumstances and the growth of public opinion render it possible to secure the representation of the Dominions in an expanded Imperial Parliament.

In a truly federal system such as those of Canada and Australia, the citizens who elect representatives direct to the Federal Parliament to deal with the broader issues and interests of the Commonwealth, are naturally fully represented. If the Irish Legislature is to be precluded from dealing with Imperial matters, it is obviously only just that the Irish people, as citizens of the Empire, should send a proportionate number of representatives to the Imperial Parliament to express their views on Imperial subjects, and, under a perfect federal system, the expression of their views would be confined to Imperial subjects. This would consequently necessitate the continued presence of a certain number of Irish members at Westminster. In view of the fact that the “in and out” system, which caused so much criticism of Mr. Gladstone's Bill, has been in force for over forty years in the Hungarian Parliament at Budapest, in which the Croatian representatives are only entitled to vote on matters affecting the whole Kingdom, while precluded from voting on those affecting Hungary alone, it is evident that the practical inconvenience cannot be anything like so great as has been imagined. But whatever inconvenience might result to the Government from the presence of Irish representatives in such circumstances, it certainly cannot be allowed to outweigh the injustice of leaving such a large section of the British electorate, as is the Irish people, unrepresented in a chamber which deals with matters that may very seriously affect their [pg 415] interests. Mr. Asquith's hint at the possibility of such a change in the Standing Orders of the House of Commons as will distribute legislative business between English and Scotch Standing Committees, suggests a method of combining the retention of the Irish members at Westminster, with their exclusion from participation in other than Imperial matters.