TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WHAT HINDERS A SETTLEMENT.
THE country as yet seems hardly to have grasped the statesmanship, the moderation, and the far-reaching character of the offers which Mr. Boner Law made in his speech in the House on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill. He began by an offer to unclose the door which Mr. Asquith had slammed, or thought he had slammed, upon a General Election before the enforcement of the House Rule Rill upon Ulster. We all know why Mr. Asquith will not grant an appeal to the country before the Bill is passed. He will not grant it because some three years ago an undertaking, probably only verbal, but none the less binding, was given to the Nationalists that there should not be a General Election or an appeal to the people by way of a Referendum till the Bill had been put upon the statute-book. But no such reason for refusing an appeal to the people can be satis- factory to those who declare that, even if we accept all the Government's premisses and look at the matter from their point of view as convinced Home Rulers, it is an outrage to use the bayonet to coerce Ulster before the very efficient form of coercion exercised by the ballot has been tried. Under the Parliament Act Mr. Asquith has, how- ever, a kind of answer to the question : "Why do you not coerce Ulster by getting a clear order from the people, rather than by coercing her with horse, foot, artillery, battleships, and destroyers ? " He says in effect: "You are asking something totally unreasonable in asking us to appeal to the country before the Bill is on the statute- book. A General Election now would undo the work of the last two years, and we should have to begin all our legislation over again. The Parliament Act makes the proposals of the Opposition for trying coercion by ballot instead of by bayonet impossible.' Now, however, Mr. Bonar Law has made an offer which entirely deprives Mr. Asquith of this excuse. The Leader of the Opposition, after consultation with Lord Lansdowne, and with his authority, has pledged himself—and Mr. Asquith knows that the pledge will be absolutely redeemed—that if an appeal is now made to the country by a General Election, and if that appeal is successful—that is, if the Government after a General Election are still in a position to bring in the present Home Rule Bill—the Lords will hold themselves bound by the decision of the electors and will pass the Home Rule Bill. They promise that they will act as if the Parliament Act did not contain a specific requirement that a Bill under it must be passed in three consecutive Sessions. That is an offer which no one can assert to be made in bad faith or to be in any sense impracticable. Mr. Boner Law might very well have stopped here, but he went further, and gave even a stronger proof of his moderation and his refusal to make any party advantage out of the present situation. He told the Government that if, owing to the agreement with the Nationalists, they could not accept this offer to abide by the will of the people expressed at a General Election, and if they were also bound not to take a Referendum, he would do his best to facilitate the third way of escape which is open to the Government. Here Mr. Bonar Law's offer must be given in his own words, for it is a matter of vital importance :— " The other way of escape is by the Exclusion of Ulster, and here again we have done and we are prepared to do everything to make that solution possible. The Government have made us an offer. They have said, and the hon. Member for Waterford repeated it this afternoon, that we rejected it with scorn and contempt. We did nothing of the kind. My right hon. friend who speaks for the Ulster Unionists and I said that if the proposal of the Government meant that the people of Ulster were not to be compelled to submit to an Irish Parliament against their will we accepted it as a basis of discussion. I go further now. I say that we would welcome the introduction of that proposal into this House in a form in which it could be discussed, bemuse I am con- vinced that the time-limit that the Government propose is so inherently unjust and even absurd that it could not stand the lest of discussion, even in the present House of Commons. Why do the Government propose to exclude Ulster at all just now? Because they are not willing to come in. If it is not right to compel them to come in against their wishes to-day, how can it be right to compel them six years hence ?"
This passage shows that the Opposition, provided that the perfectly ridiculous • and indefensible time-limit is not inserted, are willing to try to find a solution even in the gerrymandering proposal of the Government. Such, in fact, is the proposal for holding a Referendum by counties rather than in that well-defined and homogeneous area or community formed by the six Protestant counties. By this offer Mr. Bonar Law has gone, and we think rightly gone, to the very limits of concession. He has deliberately tried to help the Government to find a solution which shall not clash with their desperate bargain with the Nationalists.
Perhaps the best way of understanding how the Govern- ment's agreement with the Nationalists may easily turn out to bean agreement for shedding the blood of the Ulstermen, and how again and again it has prevented reasonable solutions of the problem of avoiding civil war—the most urgent problem which is now before us—is to ask a very simple question. Suppose two sensible and reason- able statesmen, one a Unionist and one a Home Ruler, were asked to draw up a scheme for avoiding civil war, what is the kind of scheme they would draw up ? Let us suppose that their instructions forbade them to discuss the question as to how to find the best possible Government for Ireland or the best way of regulating the relations between the two islands. Theirs would be the narrower task. We must suppose them acting on the assumption that a Bill for establishing a Parliament and an Executive in Ireland was bound to pass, but that arrangements must be made under which the Bill when passed should not cause civil war. Their problem, stated in brief, would be "Home Buie without bloodshed." The first conclusion they would reach would be that which, in the abstract, has already been admitted by Mr. Asquith and the Liberal Party. They would agree that, though that portion of Ireland in which the local majority desire Home Rule must have it, that portion in which the local majority do not desire Home Rule, but desire to remain under the Parliament and Executive at Westminster, must be excluded till the local majority have changed their minds, or Parliament is willing to declare that not only that part of Ireland which wants Home Rule is to have it, but also that part which does not want it.
From the premisses we have just outlined it is clear that the first essential point for our two statesmen would be a, question of area—the area to which the option of staying in or going out of the Home Rule Bill ought to be given. It is clear also that the option could not be given parish by parish, or even constituency by constituency, because if that were done you would not get what it is necessary to get for administrative convenience—Exclusion in one self-contained area with a clean-cut edge. You would get, not a homogeneous block of excluded territory, but a chequer-board of tiny hostile units. But just as the parishes or constituencies would be too small units where- with to attain the object of avoiding civil war, so the province of Ulster would be too big a unit. It in clear that the excluded area, though it will necessarily contain a certain proportion of Nationalists, ought not to contain too many, ought, in fact., te be one in which the voice of the majority will speak with a very certain sound. The majority should be something a great deal more than, say, a bare fifty-five per cent, of the population. But Ulster would not give you the homogeneous unit speaking with a sufficiently strong voice. Again, taking the vote county by county would not give you the area you want, for, owing to the lie of the population, you would get a piece of most dangerous debatable ground in the two counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh. In those counties it is certain that the majority would be very narrow either way. It is conceivable, for example, that Tyrone might exclude itself by a hundred votes, while Fermanagh might include itself under the Dublin Parliament by a hundred votes. This is clearly a system of applying the principle that the will of the local majority shall prevail which must secure, not the maximum of peace, but the maximum of discord.
If this problem of the area is to be settled by the dictates of common-sense and in the way best calculated to avoid friction, an area bigger than the county, as well as bigger than the parish or constituency, must be taken, though an area less than the province. Such an area is to be found in the six counties combined. These counties grouped together form an area which is homogeneous by religion, by race, by history, by tradition, and by the political
aspirations of its inhabitants. It is an area in which, taken as a whole, the will of the local majority is clearly marked. It is an area, that is, in which the majority would fulfil our condition of speaking with no uncertain voice, and for which there would be a clear and ascertainable and already demarcated boundary. It is an area which forms a clean- cut community, and one in which the minority would not form too large a proportion of the total inhabitants. It is true that there would be certain difficulties remaining over in the case of portions of Donegal, and even of Cavan and Monaghan, but in these cases the Protestant minorities would bear about the same proportion to the Roman Catholic majorities that the Roman Catholic minority in the six- county area taken as a whole would bear to the Protestant majority. Unquestionably, then, the two statesmen of our thought, if they were not hampered by agreements, and could proceed by defining the best and most reasonable area in which the majority were to be given the option of Exclusion, would agree to adopt the homogeneous area formed by grouping the six counties. Our Unionist statesman would no doubt begin by declaring that the whole province of Ulster must be the area, while the Home Ruler would begin by demanding a vote county by county. In the end, however, granted always that they were men of reason and common-sense, they would split the differ- ence by taking the six-county area, and thereby avoid the intolerable disadvantage of Exclusion or Inclusion being settled by a few odd votes. The method by which our two unpledged and moderate statesmen would settle the question of the time-limit is plain. Knowing that no Parliament can bind its successors, or can even bind itself not to change its mind, they would not attempt to put any time-limit into the Bill. In truth, to do so is to beg the Constitutional question. If, however, they were anxious to save the face of those who have clamoured for a time-limit, they might say that Exclusion should be for six years certain, and after that, unless Parliament should direct otherwise, another refer- ence should be made to the voters within the excluded area.
What is it that blocks an agreement such as this— in virtue of which that portion of Ulster where there is a clear majority for going under a Dublin Parliament shall go under that Parliament, and that portion of Ulster where the majority is determined to remain under the Westminster Parliament shall remain under it ? Here is a settlement without civil war and without a breach of the pledge given by the Government to the Nationalists, for no one asserts that the Government pledged themselves that the Home Rule Bill should apply to the whole of Ireland. [The first clause of the Bill might, indeed, almost be said to be an ostentatious preparation for some form of Exclusion, since it only declares that there shall be after a fixed date a Parliament and Executive in Ireland, but not a Parliament and Executive for all Ireland.] No doubt from the point of view of Unionists like ourselves a very bad system for regulating the relations between the two islands would be set up under the scheme we have sketched—one which, in our opinion, must very soon break down—but that is not the question. We can never say too often that what we are now in search of is not an ideal form of government for Ireland, but a system which will avoid civil war. This the Exclusion of the six counties would give us.
We have already shown in these columns what a com- paratively easy task it is to draft amendments consequential on leaving out the six counties and allowing them to remain under the Westminster Parliament. The only thing that blocks the way to this settlement is that Mr. Redmond and his paymasters in America would netlike it. But, after all, have they an absolute right to dictate to the British people in this matter? Conceivably they may dictate for that portion of Ireland in which there is a clear local majority of Roman Catholics and Nationalists. The notion that they have a right to dictate what is to happen when the local majority is against them, and that we must bow to their demand, is surely not reasonable. Such a claim is a denial of the right of local self-government upon 'which the whole Irish case is based. If it ignores the plea of the homogeneous Ulster, it is a demand for domination, not for self-government. Finally, if the right Of the local majority to decide is disallowed, then Ireland's claim against the United Kingdom for self-government goes by the board.
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