The safeguards provided by the measure deal specifically with the subjects as to which fears of religious inequality exist: establishment and endowment, education and marriage; as compared with them, the provisions in the Canadian and Australian Acts are very imperfect. They guard, in explicit terms, against the dangers to religious liberty and equality in a way in which probably no other Constitution does.
A necessary supplement to any Legislature with limited jurisdiction is a Court of Appeal. Under the proposed constitution, the Irish Courts will be free to determine the constitutional character of any measures passed by the Irish Parliament; and from their decisions an appeal will lie to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which will decide questions similar to those determined by it with reference to the Canadian and Australian constitutions, and by the Supreme Court of the United States reviewing the constitutional character of State legislation. It may be surmised that the Court will be faithful to the principles which it has laid down in dealing with the powers of the Parliaments of the Dominions. It has not hesitated to interfere in Canada with ecclesiastical sentences or censure which it believed invalid (see e.g., Brown v. Curé de Montreal). It will, we may assume, do likewise in Ireland.
To conclude: He who believes in political freedom will believe also that religious oppression cannot long [pg 111] co-exist with it. Never, so far as I know, has ecclesiastical tyranny been enduring under democratic institutions; and I see no reason why the result should be different in the new Ireland which the Land Acts and the Local Government Act have created. Full and free political life is the best, perhaps the only, solvent of intolerance.
V.—Financial Relations[99] By Lord Welby
“The Channel forbids Union, the Ocean forbids separation. I demand the continued severance of the Parliament with a view to the continued everlasting unity of the Empire.”
Terse words in which a great statesman summed up the relation of Ireland to England. The Home Rule Bill will give the sanction of law to Grattan's aphorism. It bids Ireland manage her own affairs, freeing her in her own house from official bondage to an unsympathetic consort. If the Act of Enfranchisement is drawn in a trustful and large spirit, it will, we may feel assured, end the feud of centuries, and create unity where the Act of Union has created enmity.
The policy of Home Rule is wise in itself, and worthy the statesmanship of a nation always bold in the hour of need, and, as experience of its working is gained, it will commend itself more and more to the commonsense of a practical people, but the immediate success of the first Home Rule Act will depend greatly on the skill and wisdom with which the details of a complicated measure are devised, facing fairly the financial [pg 113] evils consequent on Tory obstinacy, and avoiding, in reasonable degree, offence to popular prejudice and existing interests.
The provisions which will adjust the financial relations between the two nations are not among the least difficult of those details, and Parliament must solve the puzzling problem without delay. It must begin by temporarily giving local government in Ireland a fair start at the cost of the British tax-payer.