Hitherto Government had offered “a little thing in a great way.”[138] “Justice to Ireland” had been long cried on the housetops. What was the meaning of that cry? It only signified a forced identity of English institutions with Irish. Identity, however, was just what Ireland resented with disgust.
What were her stumbling-blocks and stones of offence? What was “the Irish question”? “One says it is a physical question, another a spiritual. Now it is the absence of the aristocracy, now the absence of railroads. It is the Pope one day, potatoes the next. Let us consider Ireland as we should any other country similarly situated.... Then we shall see a teeming population, which, with reference to the cultivated soil, is denser to the square mile than that of China; created solely by agriculture, with none of those sources of wealth which are developed with civilisation, and sustained, consequently, on the lowest conceivable diet; so that, in case of failure, they have no other means of subsistence upon which they can fall back. That dense population in extreme distress inhabit an island where there is an Established Church which is not their Church, and a territorial aristocracy, the richest of whom live in distant capitals. Thus you have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church; and, in addition, the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish question. What were the remedies?
“To begin with, and before anything else, you must have a representative, a responsive, a strong Executive. Ireland is an exceptional piece of the United Kingdom, and she alone demands what is foreign to the English spirit—centralisation of government. Next, the administration must be impartial. There must be no exclusion and no favouritism. You must also have ecclesiastical equality. The Church in Ireland must change the tone of its temper. And you must ‘reconstruct the social system’ of Ireland. ‘All great things are difficult;’ but it is more difficult to reconstruct a society than a party. Agitation only unsettles: it does not settle; and it means the incompetence of a Government. You must ‘create public opinion instead of following it; lead the public instead of always lagging after and watching others.’
“... What, then, is the duty of an English minister? To effect by his policy all those changes which a revolution would do by force.... It is quite evident that, to effect this, we must have an Executive in Ireland which shall bear a much nearer relation to the leading classes and characters of the country than it does at present. There must be a much more comprehensive Executive, and then, having produced order, the rest is a question of time. There is no possible way by which the physical condition of the people can be improved by Act of Parliament.”[139]
So I read this pregnant deliverance. So, I believe, will read it any one who scans it closely in relation to its time and setting. In 1868, when there was capital to be made out of it, Mr. Gladstone did not so read it. Mr. Gladstone contended—and he had full right to contend—that, with regard to the Church, at any rate, it spelled out “Destruction.” Disraeli contented himself with retorting: “... There are many remarks which, if I wanted to vindicate ... myself, I might legitimately make.... But I do not care to say it, and I do not wish to say it, because in my conscience the sentiment of that speech was right....” My view is that it spelled out “Reconstruction.” It would have settled Ireland and the Irish question by the principles of 1636 and on the lines of 1792, and not either by the Orange lodges of 1795, which answered Pitt’s abortive schemes of improvement, or by the undemanded spoliation of 1868, which trebled the discontent it designed to allay. All Pitt’s proposed measures were against exclusion. He tried to grant Ireland that free outlet for her manufactures to England which had proved her main source of discontent throughout the eighteenth century. He tried to include the Protestant Dissenters as well as the Roman Catholics in the avenues to political power. He was foiled by the selfishness and corruption of an Irish caste, and by the spread of the French Revolution to the Irish multitude. But in each case inclusion was his principle; development, not destruction. Disraeli followed him. It was his hatred of exclusiveness that prompted his aversion alike to the Whiggism of the Grenvilles and the Toryism of Eldon. It was his devotion to wide and popular as opposed to democratic and class principles that drew him to the Toryism of Bolingbroke and Wyndham, and enabled him to reconstruct the Tory party on its first but forgotten foundations.
But if we want a practical comment on the speech of 1844, we have it in an utterance of 1868. In 1868 he defined the position: “... I said the other night, as I say now, that I think you might elevate the status of the unendowed clergy in Ireland.... My opinion is, that if this system of conciliation, founded on the principle that in Ireland you ought to create and not destroy, had been pursued, you might have elevated the Irish Church greatly to its advantage. You might have rendered it infinitely more useful.... I do not think it impossible that you might have introduced measures which would have elevated the status of the unendowed clergy, and so softened and terminated those feelings of inequality which now exist, so that you might have had the same equality in the state of Ireland which you have in England. There is perfect equality in the state of the Dissenter in England, although his is no established Church. That state of things might exist in Ireland, if you had taken measures which would, among a sensitive people, have prevented a sentiment of humiliation.... Without disestablishment, without the difficulties and dangers of concurrent endowment, there might have been a system of Government grants both to Romanists and Dissenters for education and other public objects. That is how I interpret the ‘ecclesiastical equality’ of 1844; ‘to create and not to destroy.’”[140] And, speaking again of his desire to supplement the educational means for the Roman Catholics, he said: “... That is in accordance with our uniform policy, ... a reconciliation between creeds and classes.”
After 1844 the Irish question still festered. Nowhere did the repeal of the Corn Laws inflict more immediate distress than in a country so dependent on native agriculture as Ireland was then and still remains. Pauperism became the crying evil of Ireland. Even in 1869, more than a quarter of the inhabitants were paupers. Pauperism defied “political palliatives.” The Government of Ireland, despite his warnings, remained a weak one, and, alluding to this in a famous speech of 1869, he pertinently brought into prominence the fact that what strength it has depends now on its connection with England. “... The Government of Ireland is not a strong one; its sanctions are less valid than those of the Government of England. It has not the historic basis which England rests upon. It has not the tradition which the English Government rests upon. It does not depend upon that vast accumulation of manners and customs which in England are really more powerful than laws or statutes.” What Disraeli felt all along was that Ireland needed security for capital and variety of employment; and that for these repose and order were requisite. In November, 1868, alluding to the naturalisation of Fenianism in Ireland at a time when Ireland was inherently contented and immeasurably superior to her plight in 1844—when she had begun to rest and be thankful—he made the following comment:—
“... In Ireland there was always a degree of morbid discontent which the Fenians believe they may fan into flame, and which might lead to the revolutionary result they desire. The whole nature of the race will account for it. An Irishman is an imaginative being. He lives in an island, in a damp climate and contiguous to the melancholy ocean. He has no variety of pursuit. There is no nation in the world that leads so monotonous a life as the Irish, because their only occupation is the cultivation of the soil before them.... The Irishman in other countries, where he has a fair field for his talents in various occupations, is equal, if not superior, to most races.... I may say with frankness that I think this is the fault of the Irish. If they led that kind of life which would invite the introduction of capital into the country, all this ability might be utilised; and instead of those feelings which they acquire by brooding over the history of their country, a great part of which is merely traditionary, you would find men acquiring fortunes, and arriving at conclusions on politics entirely different from those which they now offer.”
The same outlook prompted him in another speech to regret the cry of a “conquered people” which the manipulators of grievance perpetually raised. Ireland was no more a conquered country than England. In both there had been conquerors and conquests;[141] but in both a blend of races and institutions which had produced a nation in one, and made for nationality in the other.
Time went on. Ireland had improved by rest. There was even prosperity in her borders. Fenianism was subsiding.[142] Classes were less estranged. Emigration had increased, but the Liberals welcomed emigration. Disraeli had risen into supreme power, and had constitutionalised the democracy by his Bill of 1867. The Radicals were incensed at the measure, which they had coveted in another form and with sectional objects. The stiffer even of his own party stood aghast, and some seceded. The Liberals began to nibble at the Radical bait. It is a curious fact that the Whigs, when in political despair, usually resort to a revolutionary measure. Already, over thirty years before, they had done so in connection with Ireland. Suddenly, without warning, without a popular mandate, or even an Irish outcry for the upheaval, like a bolt from the blue came Mr. Gladstone’s first great conversion from principles firmly protested only a year before.[143] The question was sprung on both countries. He brought in, and in a manner so imperious that a solid portion of his own followers deserted him, his Act for the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Irish Church; not only for its severance from the State, but for its spoliation by the State.