Self-government must be based on representation, and the right of majorities. Recognized universally in the Empire, this simple dictate of justice is to be denied to Irishmen in their own land, because the great majority is Roman Catholic. “It is not constitutional” [pg 480] said Gladstone in 1886, “to refuse the demand of five-sixths of the duly elected representatives of a country”; and ever since then the representation has never changed nor has the demand abated. That it is resisted in the name of Religion, not Politics, we are not allowed for one moment to forget; and no one in Protestant circles is unfamiliar with the assertion, how ardently Home Rule would be welcomed if it were not for the Priest in politics and the dread of “Rome Rule.” But let it be recognized that under free institutions it is the right of the majority to rule, irrespective of their religious creed; and that to deny that right in Ireland is to establish a tyranny of the minority—an oligarchy in these days of Democracy! Nothing can exceed the sincerity of men, good but blinded by prejudice, when on Belfast platforms they declare their desire for equality and hatred of ascendency. But what a ludicrous fallacy they fall into when with the same breath they assert their resolve never to submit to the Government of the great majority of their fellow countrymen. In other words they, a small minority, contend for a union with the Parliament of another country for this express purpose, that by the aid of its votes they may override the unanimous wish of three-fourths of the people of their own land. This is the very gist of the Anti-Home Rule demonstration in Belfast on April 9th. It was not Irish in any true sense. The platforms crowded with sixty members of Parliament representing British Constituencies, presided over by noblemen such as a Grand Master of Orangemen and a great coal owner who has practically ceased to be an Irish landowner, addressed by eminent counsel who have transferred their services to the English bar for reasons best known to themselves, ex-ministers and aspirants to office in a Unionist administration—it was a brave [pg 481] show of party political force; but nothing can hide or minimize the fact that it is all avowedly an effort to support and intensify the claim of about half the population of Ulster, and one-fourth of the population of Ireland, to resist and overthrow the rights of Irishmen to the privileges of representative government. If the Unionists of Ireland sincerely desire equality and disavow ascendency in their own country, let them prove it by being willing to accept the conditions of life and legislation naturally imposed by the will of a majority, in the discussion of which they will possess and exercise a fair, or according to their ability, a preponderating degree of influence. But let them cease to demand in their country the predominance of social, political and religious ideals, natural perhaps to England and Scotland now, but alien to Ireland, and secured only by foreign, that is non-Irish, votes.
The representation of minorities on a complete system of proportional voting is an absolute necessity in Ireland. Considering the number of the population, there is very marked and wide-spread variety of opinion. The Orangemen of the cities are often democratic Radicals, however much evil associations may at times corrupt their good manners; Catholic Irishmen, even the clergy (notwithstanding the semper eadem cry), are sharply divided by lines of severance that will appear when the present unnatural combinations pass out of sight, Unionist and Nationalist becoming meaningless; Nonconformists here, as elsewhere, differ from Episcopalians on important subjects; Molly Maguires, Sinn Feiners, Gaelic Leaguers have something to say as regards Irish life worth hearing; and all must find a voice in any true representation of the country's thought and purpose. The United Kingdom, too, probably needs such a reform in representation, and cannot [pg 482] do better than witness the trial of the experiment on the political body of the sister island.
It is on such fundamental principles of government the argument for Home Rule stands, and Liberalism at all events would be untrue to its very genius in hesitating to confer the boon. Irish Home Rule has been the touchstone of Liberalism, and it is not by any accident that Unionists, who abandoned their old creed to refuse Ireland's plea, became arrant Tories, and have ceased to exist as a political party.
The objections made by Protestants are formidable and specious. They appeal to passion rather than to reason; they exploit religion in opposition to Christianity; they ignore history and flourish on journalism; they forget humanity's claims in their zeal for sectional interests.
The stock argument in Belfast appears to be that in the interests of “Empire” Home Rule is impossible. Yet Ireland was under the British Crown when 42,000 volunteers were enrolled under Lord Charlemont and the Duke of Leinster to protect her shores from foreign foes; the stigma of the word “Separatist” has been repudiated by every responsible Irish statesman; and so long as Britain's naval and military power lasts, the secession of 4 millions of people within one hour's sail is an absolute impossibility, should any one desire “the dismemberment of the Empire.” Let candid Englishmen consider a simple question; which is the more likely and the more intimidating, menace to the Empire: a discontented, disloyal and impoverished Ireland, or one proud in its self-dependence, grateful to its benefactor, and united by every consideration of mutual protection and benefit? Or which will be of most credit to Britain in the estimation of her Colonies and of the civilized world?
Timid Ulstermen deplore “the loss of their birthright in the Empire”; their civil and religious liberties, they say, are imperilled, their commercial prosperity is sure to suffer. It is hard even to imagine the conception they have formed of their countrymen. Is it as fools or rogues, slaves or tyrants, they wish to caricature the inhabitants of the land, in which they so reluctantly dwell, for the delectation of ignorant foreigners? For none other can be imposed on by such diatribes. Are Irishmen engaged in a struggle for 150 years to gain independence and the rights of men, to signalize their victory by denying civil and religious liberty to their fellows; or are a people whose own industries have been ruined in the past by legal restraints on trade, whose enterprise and efforts to establish new industries and foster old ones are being rewarded with a few gleams of prosperity, dull or wicked enough to wish to injure commercial or manufacturing triumphs in the north of which they are proud? Ask the commercial travellers from Ulster, who enter every town in Ireland, whether their wares are scouted and themselves insulted because of Orange bluff or threats. No! Irishmen are neither fools nor bigots.
The ordinary method of producing prejudice on these topics is to recount the crimes and outrages that have darkened the past of Irish agrarian life. No one can deny their existence, or palliate their enormity. They were the inevitable incidents of war; one of the most bitter ever waged over such a period of years. It was a war of rebellion against misgovernment, of revenge for political crimes, a frantic struggle for life and home on the part of a peasantry down-trodden, ejected, starved; it was the last and successful phase of a great agrarian movement to secure the rights of free born men in the land they tilled. Many crimes [pg 484] have been committed, but who can distribute the blame? and any fair historian will recollect the exasperation under which they were committed, the failure of every attempt at redress, the findings of Royal Commissions disregarded and the promises of politicians forgotten, the evictions and legalized tyranny of rack-renting landlords, and the steady decrease of this violence as constitutional agitation has gained a hearing and a more humane spirit has inspired Parliamentary action. But such crimes as were committed were never acts of religious persecution or violations of the civil liberties of Protestants as such. Roman Catholics who opposed the national movement, or sided with the party accountable for the wrong, suffered also; and it is absolutely unjust and unhistorical to quote the violence of an angry and a maddened people as prophetic, or even suggestive, of similar wrongs likely to be perpetrated under an Irish Government. If the Irish Roman Catholics desired to persecute Protestants, there has been plenty of opportunity to do so; and, in three-fourths of the country, life could have been made intolerable and impossible to farmers and merchants dependent on the goodwill of their neighbours. Yet a universal testimony to the contrary is borne by Protestants of every class and party in the middle and southern counties where Romanism is predominant. The charges of intolerance freely levelled at the Protestant of the north in connection with certain notorious incidents of the political campaign have been repelled and, it was supposed, answered by reference to the boycotting outrages of the land struggle; but what unprejudiced critic would ever admit that such incidents could be paralleled with, or afford any justification for, the petty tyranny to which men have been subjected in Ulster, because they dared [pg 485] to differ in opinion from the majority and to utter the expression of their deliberate convictions?
One of the most curious arguments relied on now against Home Rule, is the prosperity of Ireland under the Union. It used to be Ireland's miserable poverty and thriftlessness that were assigned as proof of its unfitness for self-government; now the blessed effects of the self same Union have produced such prosperity that self-government is not needed or even wanted!
A daring orator in Belfast proclaimed “the independent Parliament of Ireland a dismal failure, and the Imperial Parliament a distinct success.” The improved condition of Ireland is a matter of deep gratification, specially as a foretaste of a better future. But to boast of the prosperity of a country with its population reduced by one-half in fifty years, with its poor little agricultural holdings of a £10 valuation extending to one-half of the total, its sodden fields and ill-drained lands, its treeless hills and undeveloped mineral resources, its famished peasants and shoeless children carrying sods of peat to the village school, is a heartless jibe emanating from the wealthy capital of the North. The “distinct success” of a century of so-called Union government is an equally audacious flight of fancy. Most people would wish to find a contented people, living under the ordinary laws of constitutional government, advancing industries, growing population, and plentiful food as the tokens of a distinct success under a government of ever-increasing wealth and power: but seven famines desolated the land during the century; “for thirty-five years after the Union, Ireland was ruled for three years out of every four by laws giving extraordinary powers to the Government; and in the next fifty years (1835-1885) there were only three [pg 486] without Coercion and Crime Acts.”[166] That for the boasted success of Unionism in Ireland! The present prosperity is due to the National movement, in response to which Gladstone secured the tenant right for the farmer, and disestablished the Church, commencing that long series of beneficent but belated reforms which have inspired the Irish people with hope, and of which the last and crowning gift of independent self-government awaits completion.
To return to the more distinctly religious aspects of the question, though all that means liberty and progress ought to appeal to every Protestant's warmest sentiments, let us examine briefly the alleged dangers arising from the power of the Roman Catholic priesthood and their influence on a national government. It is ungenerous to forget all but the seamy side of the Priest's influence in Ireland. In many a dark day he was the poor man's only champion, and he has won a place of love in the people's heart not lightly granted or easily lost. But no one familiar with Irish life fails to notice a change in the relations of priest and people whether it be a portent of good or evil. The spread and consolidation of democratic feeling, the many ties between the cabin in Ireland and the children's home in America, the spread of education and the influence of the Press, are exercising in Ireland, as similar causes do elsewhere, a deep influence on the simple piety, or as some call it, the superstition of the people. The cry “no priest in politics” prevails as never before; and that their sphere of influence in limited to questions of faith and morals is being widely recognized by the clergy themselves. Influences at work in European Catholic countries must more and more reach Ireland, and possibly its danger is not from clericalism but from [pg 487] a slackening hold of the only form of Christianity that has ever won the heart of the people. At all events Roman Catholicism in Ireland has never been an aggressive force forcing its faith on other communions, but seems content to be let alone and to minister to its own adherents unmolested, as it has not been in the past.