TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ACT OF 1:1N-ION.
fINE might imagine from the majority of Liberal V.7 speeches and newspaper articles that the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland was a piece of pure political "cussedness," based upon nothing but "the Bntish lust of domination" or even the desire of English- men and Sootchmen to oppress, torture, and fleece their Irish fellow subjects. " Now that the inhabitants of the bigger of the two islancla that make up the United Kingdom have become more moral and more civilised, it is their duty to undo a great wrong, and repeal in shame and contrition the predatory and wicked acts of their ancestors." A more futile, a more misleading, and a more utterly untrue view of the grounds upon which the Act of Union was established cannot be conceived. If Liberals would only take the trouble to pause and ask -what produced the Act of Union, they would soon recognise how sophistical are the pleas set forth by Mr. Asquith, Mr. Birrell, and the other advocates of Home Rule. They are but attempts to conceal the essential fact, which is that the grant of the Nationalist demands is the only condition upon which the Liberal Party can retain Office. The true ground for the passing of the Act of Union was not, as we have said, political " cussedness " or malignity, or the desire to exploit Ireland, but the experience of some four hundred years, which showed that an incorporating Union was the only way in which the relations between the two islands could be fairly, peaceably, and effectively adjusted and the best interests both of Ireland and of Great Britain be secured. Every other plan had been tried and failed. The Act of Union was passed because it had become an absolute necessity. People talk as if their nostrum of an Irish Parliament dealing with purely Irish affairs plus an Irish Executive—a Parliament, however, subor- dinate to the Parliament at Westminster—was a new device. Yet, in fact, it is a device which was given a long trial. It was proved conclusively that it could not either bring peace to Ireland or security to Great Britain. For a short time after the Revolution, Ireland had a Separatist Parlia- ment, dominated by the Celtic and Roman Catholic elements, and its acts were acts of tyranny and oppression to the Protestant and Saxon minority. It was followed, after the battle of the Boyne, by a subordinate Parliament which was constitutionally very much in the position which Mr. Asquith now proposes. It dealt with purely Irish affairs and there was an Irish Executive in Dublin, but at the same time the Parliament at Westminster maintained its supremacy and could not only legislate over the head of the Irish Parliament but could annul Irish acts. The result was not to give good government to Ireland or to make the relations between the two nations peaceful and secure.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century came the agitation for freeing Ireland from the hateful domination of the British Parliament, a domination, we admit, of the worst kind, for the Parliament at Westminster had power without responsibility. Under armed pressure from Ire- land at a time when we had been weakened by an unsuc- cessful war, a completely independent Parliament- Grattan's Parliament—was established. What was the result ? The internal condition of Ireland showed no real improvement, unless the filling of Dublin with excellent examples of eighteenth-century architecture in which the Corinthian order was the dominant feature can be called an improvement. In the end there came the bloody Rebellion of '98, marked by atrocities such as those at the Bridge of Wexford—burnings and slayings, and the spearing of women and children on pikes, which resembled the atrocities of the French Revolution—a rebellion which was put down with almost equal atrocities, but atrocities, remember, committed not by English troops or under the orders of the English Executive, but by one section of the Irish population, supported and condoned by Acts of the Dublin Parliament. (If our memory serves, the Dublin Parliament passed Acts of Indemnity, not for unlaw- ful acts which had been committed, but in regard to those which might be committed by the magistrates and the troops while dealing with the Rebellion.) Every form of governing Ireland by local Parliaments, subordinate and insubordinate, had thus failed. In despair, Pitt resolved to fry the only plan which had not been tried—an incorpor- ating Union under which Ireland should become part of a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. From that moment not only did the great danger to this Island from the risk of foreign intervention in the Sister Island pass away, but the internal condition of Ireland began to improve. In spite of the torrents of Irish rhetoric, and in spite of the many bad things and foolish things done in Ireland since the Union, we say without hesitation that the Act of Union has given Ireland far more justice and far more prosperity than any other system of rule which she has ever enjoyed in her history. The famine was no fault of the British connection, but was due rather to the manner in which the Irish population increased after the Union, while the industries of Ireland did not increase at a similar ratio. If in the Highlands of Scotland there had been a similar phenomenon, similar horrors must have been the result. No doubt the greater part of Ireland remains a poor country, but that again is not due to the connection with Great Britain, but arises from the fact that Ireland'has not any great natural resources, such as a productive soil or a genial climate, but still more from the fact that she has not for the most part a diligent, a. thrifty, or an enter- prising population. These may seem harsh words, but they are true. The proof is easy. There is one part of Ireland which, though it has no natural advantages of any kind over the rest of Ireland, is inhabited by a diligent and enter- prising population. In that part of Ireland the advance in material progress and industrial prosperity has been little less than miraculous. Belfast and the counties of north- east Ulster have received no special help from Government, and its industries have had none of the pampering which has been bestowed upon agricultural Ireland. Yet Belfast is one of the richest and most flourishing cities of the United Kingdom. It has grown with astonishing rapidity, and has all the rush and vigour of an American town. Its ship- building yards are the wonder of the world, and there is hardly a trade it has undertaken which does not flourish. Yet, as we have said, it is utterly impossible to repre- sent it as the spoilt child of the connection. No one can say that Belfast owes its marvellous development to British patronage. Take it altogether, the Act of Union has been an immense success, and that success has of late years been developing at an increasing ratio. The Parliament of the United Kingdom has shown that it can do absolute justice to Ireland. The credit of the whole of the United Kingdom, usually so jealously guarded, has been freely used to help the farmers of Ireland. Such help has been extended to no other part of the United Kingdom. It has been recognised that the Union is an incorporating Union, and that the richer parts of the Kingdom ought to come to the assistance of the poorer. There has been no attempt to say that Ireland must work out her own economic salvation. Instead, it has been readily admitted that Ireland, because she is poor, has a right while she remains united to us to share our prosperity and claim our assistance to the full. Now, as we have said, we are asked to forget the grounds of absolute necessity upon which the Act of Union was founded. We are, in fact though not in name, to tear up Pitt's great work, and to go back to that system of nominally subordinate but actually insubordinate Parliaments in Ireland which proved so disastrous in the past. Because it is for the moment politically convenient for Mr. Asquith and his Ministry to forget their history, they are going to try to persuade the British people that they have a new and infallible remedy for Irish discontent. Yet if we look at the bottle we shall see it is only the stale mixture which we discarded long ago, though a certain amount of water and colouring matter has been added.
If, in spite of the teachings of history, Mr. Asquith and his colleagues insist upon destroying the Act of Union, they will be met by two problems which, we venture to say, will prove their ruin. The first is concerned with finance, and on this -point we will ask them one simple question : Are they prepared to abrogate the maxims that he who pays the piper calls the tune, and that when a Parlia- ment hands over money which it has collected from the taxpayers of the whole country to a local subordinate body, it is bound in duty to see that that money is properly spent and to inspe t and control the work of the spenders ? If the Liberals are going to maintain these InaTinlg, then most certainly we shall not get rid of that responsibility for Irish affairs and for the details of Irish government which Mr. Asquith and Mr. Birrell tell us imposes so terrible a burden on the Parliament at Westminster. If they are not going to act on the maxims, but are to hand the money over to the Irish Parliament to be spent exactly as it likes, then we venture to say that a plan so profligate and so unjust will not last more than three or four years. The scandal will be too great. Parliament will ultimately insist upon knowing where the money goes. The only sound financial policy, if Ireland is to have a Parliament of her own and an Executive of her own on the Colonial model, is to make her financially autonomous, exactly as are the Colonies. No British colony has ever dreamt of asking to be allowed to spend at her own sweet will the money of the British taxpayer. But unless Ireland is allowed to do this we are told that Ireland will be bankrupt. Therefore, in fact if not in theory, the Irish Parliament is to spend our money without giving any account of it. Ireland is to put her hand into the Imperial Exchequer. Apparently the only answer to this is that there will still be Irish representatives at West- minster. No doubt : but since there is to be no "in and out " clause, how can that be called a set off ? Ireland is to interfere in the home affairs of England and Scotland, but we are not to interfere in hers. That is to be our con- solation !
The other point upon which we desire to put a plain question to the Liberal Government is the problem of Ulster. On the principles on which they advocate Home Rule, how can they insist upon forcing those counties of north-east Ulster in which there is a Protestant majority under a Dublin Parliament and Executive ? The people of the North want to be let alone and to remain as they are, yet they are to be told in the name of the sacred right of local autonomy that they are to have no voice in the matter, but are to take their orders from Dublin. The only attempt to answer this question is to be found in the plea that the north-east counties of Ireland do not ask for separate treatment. This merely means that up till now the Ulster Protestants have refused to say that if driven to it they will ask for the lesser of two evils. That refusal, it is well known, is due to their unwillingness to appear to desert their co-religionists in the South.
But surely this matter cannot be wholly left to the men in the North. Unionists in England have a right to say, and will say : " We protest against your Home Rule scheme alto- gether, for it means ruin to the country. If, however, you insist on having it, then at least we have the right to demand that this ruinous thing shall come in the way of the lesser rather than the greater evil. You must at any rate give separate treatment to Ulster. If you do not, remember that you have not only immensely increased the moral right of Protestant Ireland to resist Home Rule and offer resistance, passive and active, to the decrees of the Dublin Parliament and the Dublin Executive, but, what is more, you have also vastly increased the moral right of Unionists in England and Scotland to sup- port north-east Ulster in a resistance which, depend upon it, will take place." If separate treatment is given to north-east Ulster, Unionists here, though they may detest the change, will at any rate say that the Ulster people have no right to resist, and they must endure their grievance till Home Rule can be repealed. If, how- ever, the demand for separate treatment has been refused, and the Liberal Party merely say to Ulster, " We will force you by the use of British bayonets to go under the Dublin Parliament," then the case for helping Ulster from here is placed upon a perfectly different footing.
We warn the present Government that here we are taking up no pedantic attitude, or one which will have no support in England and Scotland. The demand for separate treatment for Ulster cannot be refused merely on the technical ground that the Ulstermen have not asked for it. If not by them, at any rate by English Unionists the demand for separate treatment in order to avoid civil war will most certainly be made and pressed. If it is re- fused, English Unionists, who otherwise would support the carrying out of the law, however disagreeable to the people of Ulster, will not only refuse to do so, but will give their moral support to the active and passive resisters of Belfast and the neighbouring counties. The Liberals may at the moment think this an insignificant point. If they do, they will find themselves very much mistaken if ever they have to make an attempt to force Belfast and that part of north-east Ulster in which there is a Protes- tant majority to obey the laws of a Dublin Parliament and to carry out the orders of a Dublin Executive.
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