THE DUNDEE ELECTION[ToC]
Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, May 14, 1908
A new Government has come into being under a Prime Minister who, like his predecessor, is tied to Scotland by strong and intimate bonds. Give him a fair chance. Give the Government which he has brought into being the opportunity of handling the great machinery of State. Be assured that, if you do, they will employ it for the greatest good of the greatest number. I am well satisfied at what has taken place since I have been in Dundee. I see a great concentration of forces throughout the constituency. I see the opportunity of retrieving, and more than retrieving, the injury which has been done to the cause of progress and reform by elections in other parts of our island.
Ah, but, a very sad thing has happened; an awful thing has happened—the Liberal Party has gone in for Home Rule. The Scotsman is shocked, The Times is speechless, and takes three columns to express its speechlessness; The Spectator, that staid old weekly, has wobbled back to where it never should have wobbled from; the Ulster Unionists declare that the Government has forfeited all the confidence that they never had in it, and thousands of people who never under any circumstances voted Liberal before are saying that under no circumstances will they ever vote Liberal again. And I am supposed to be responsible for this revolution in our policy.
Why, the statements I have made on the Irish question are the logical and inevitable consequence of the Resolution which was passed by the House of Commons, in which every member of the Government voted, which was carried by an enormous majority—more than 200—a month ago[9]—a Resolution which, after explaining the plain and lamentable evils which can be traced to the existing system of government in Ireland, affirmed that the remedy for those evils would be found in a representative body with an Executive responsible to it, subject to the supreme authority of the Imperial Parliament.
The Irish question at the present time occupies a vastly different position to what it did in the year 1886. Ever since 1880 the attention of Parliament has been devoted constantly to Ireland, and the attention of Parliament, when devoted constantly to one object, is rarely fruitless. The twenty-five years that have passed have seen great changes in Ireland. We have seen a great scheme of local government, which Lord Salisbury said would be more disastrous than Home Rule itself, actually put into force. We have seen the scheme of land purchase, which in the year 1886 did more to injure the Home Rule Bill than anything else, actually carried, not indeed to a complete conclusion, but carried into practical effect by a Unionist Administration. These are great events; and their consequences, I think, ought to encourage us to move forward, and not to move back. They have produced results in Ireland which are beneficent, and the Irish question no longer presents itself in the tragic guise of the early eighties. They have produced an effect on Great Britain too. All over our country people have seen Bills which they were told beforehand would be ruinous to the unity and integrity of the United Kingdom—Land Bills and Local Government Bills—passed into law; and so far from the dire consequences which were apprehended from these measures, they have found—you here have found—that great good has resulted from that legislation. Many people are encouraged by what has taken place to make a step forward in the future; and I think if we need to look for any further encouragement, we should find it in the great and undisputed triumph which, under the mercy of Heaven, has attended our policy in South Africa, and has resulted in bringing into the circle of the British Empire a strong and martial race, which might easily have been estranged for ever.
The Irish polity finds its fellow nowhere in the world. It is a Government responsible neither to King nor people. It is not a democratic Government, nor an autocratic Government, nor even an oligarchical Government. It is a Government hag-ridden by forty-one administrative Boards, whose functions overlap one another and sometimes conflict with one another. Some are fed with money from the Consolidated Fund, some are supplied by vote of the House of Commons, some are supplied from savings from the Irish Development grant. Some of these Boards are under the Viceroy, some under the Chief Secretary, some under Treasury control, and some are under no control at all. The administration resulting from that system is costly, inefficient, unhandy beyond all description: a mighty staff of officials and police; a people desperately poor; taxation which rises automatically with every increase in the expenditure of this vast and wealthy island; and a population which dwindles tragically year by year. Add to all this a loyalist caste, capable and well-organised, who are taught generation after generation to look for support not to their own countrymen, but to external force derived from across the sea. There exists in effect in Ireland at the present time almost exactly the same situation which would have grown up in South Africa, if we had not had the wit and the nerve to prevent it. Take the whole of this situation as I have described it, thrust it into the arena of British politics to be the centre of contending factions, and the panorama of Irish government is complete.
With these facts before us, upon the authority of men like Lord Dunraven, Sir Joseph West-Ridgeway, Sir Antony MacDonnell, Lord Dudley, and others who have served the Crown in Ireland—is it wonderful that we should refuse to turn our eyes away from the vision of that other Ireland, free to control her own destiny in all that properly concerns herself, free to devote the native genius of her people to the purposes of her own self-culture—the vision of that other Ireland which Mr. Gladstone had reserved as the culminating achievement of his long and glorious career? Is it wonderful that we should refuse to turn our eyes away from that? No; I say that the desire and the aim of making a national settlement with Ireland on lines which would enable the people of that country to manage their own purely local affairs, is not an aim that can be separated from the general march of the Liberal army. If I come forward on your platform here at Dundee it is on the clear understanding that I do not preclude myself from trying to reconcile Ireland to England on a basis of freedom and justice.
I said just now that this was an important election. Yes, the effect upon his Majesty's Government and upon the Liberal Party for good or ill from this election cannot fail to be far-reaching. There are strong forces against us. Do not underrate the growing strength of the Tory reaction now in progress in many of the constituencies in England. I say it earnestly to those who are members of the Labour Party here to-day—do not underrate the storm which is gathering over your heads as well as ours. I am not afraid of the forces which are against us. With your support we shall overwhelm them—with your support we shall bear them down. Ah, but we must have that support.
It is not the enemy in front that I fear, but the division which too often makes itself manifest in progressive ranks—it is that division, that dispersion of forces, that internecine struggle in the moments of great emergency, in the moments when the issue hangs in the balance—it is that which, I fear, may weaken our efforts and may perhaps deprive us of success otherwise within our grasp.