TOPICS OF THE DAY.
STILL A QUESTION OF AREA.
IN spite of all the talk, all the amendments, and all the warnings that concession on this or that point is impossible, the outlook remains unchanged. What we said a month ago, six months ago, a year ago, is still the fact—the question is a question of area. Everyone now acknowledges that, in order to prevent the supreme evil of civil war, some portion of Ulster must be excluded from the operation of the Home Rule Bill. The remainder problem is, what part ? The time-limit has been given up by universal consent. Whatever part is excluded must remain excluded till it changes its mind and desires to go under the Dublin Parliament.
In discussing the question of area there is a preliminary but dominating consideration which must never be left out of sight. The object of amending the Home Rule Bill by altering the area to which it is to apply is a very simple and a very narrow one, but it is one which is imperative. The object is the avoidance of civil war. We have not got to consider what is geographically, or morally, or religiously, or even politically, the best area for Exclusion. We might find an ideal area on abstract considerations, and yet it might be perfectly useless to us, since it would not avoid civil war. To put it in another way, the area that has to be discovered is the area which, if included, would bring civil war. Not an acre more and not an acre less must that area be. Next, the excluded area must be one in which it is certain that a majority of the inhabitants would give their votes in favour of Exclusion. It is no good for either side to propose an area which does not satisfy both these con- ditions. Three months ago in all probability the Ulster- men would have accepted the six Protestant Plantation counties as the " Ulster area." It is to be feared, however, that now things have gone too far for that, and that they will agree to nothing but the exclusion of the whole Province of Ulster. In other words, civil war will not be prevented unless the whole Province is excluded. As our readers know, we regret this decision, and we still hope against hope that it may be modified. We take this line, not because we think that it is per se unreasonable to treat the whole of Ulster as the essential unit for Exclusion purposes, but because we should like the excluded area to be overwhelmingly Unionist—one in which the local majority for Exclusion should be so large as not to make it worth while to challenge it on any future occasion. However, it is obviously useless for us to press this matter against the Covenanters. If the -Ulstermen persist in saying that nothing but the exclusion of the whole of the Province can now prevent civil war—and they are the persons alone competent to give an opinion on the point—then, unless we doubt their bona fides, which we do not, we must reluctantly accept such a delimitation as an essential condition, for, let us say once more, nothing could be more useless than to go through all the trouble of devising an Amending Bill and settling the area of Exclusion and then to find the new boundary too closely drawn to accomplish its purpose. If the whole of Ulster is excluded, the second condition— that there shall be a majority of the inhabitants, taking the excluded area as the unit, in favour of Exclusion—will be met. There is no danger whatever, if a poll of the electors is demanded and taken for the Province, that there will not be a conclusive majority in favour of Exclusion.
Our statement that in existing circumstances the area must be the whole Province will be met by the extreme Home Rulers by the declaration that Liberals can accept nothing but the vote by counties and boroughs. We can only say of this proposal that it is a, form of sophistical gerrymandering. Neither the Westminster Gazette nor anybody else really regards the county or Parliamentary borough area as some- thing so sacred that it must be taken as the one and only area in which men have a right to declare under which Parliament their lives and liberties are to be controlled. This sudden affection for the county area— w Lich by its other name of " shire" means "division," or " share," and not a unit—is, of course, due to the fact that it reduces the plea for Exclusion to an absurdity, kills it while it appears to yield to it. The people who demand the vote by county and borough do so because they know that the Ulstermen could not possibly accept it without a desertion of their fellow- Loyalists and fellow-Protestants which would stultify not only the Covenant, but the whole movement in favour of Exclusion. Exclusion by counties is impossible because it will not stand the first and essential test of preventing civil war. It is no solution, and if it is all the Liberals have to offer, then it is a mere waste of time to consider it further. If it is retorted that there is nothing sacred about the Province as an area, and we are asked for reasons why a vote in the Province of Ulster as a whole should be considered as decisive and a vote in the county or borough as not decisive, our answer is that we attach no superstitious veneration to the area of the Province, but that, as the exclusion of the Province will prevent civil war, and will fulfil the other condition that in the excluded area there shall be a local majority in favour of Exclusion, we regard it as meeting the demands of common-sense.
It is perhaps useless at the present moment to write further on the question of what is to be the area of Exclusion, for it may be that after all the Prime Minister is going to fall back upon his old position, and, following Lord Morley's speech in the Lords on Tuesday evening, to declare that the Peers' amendments are wholly unaccept- able. It may be that Mr. Redmond has already said the last word, and will refuse to agree to the exclusion of any area sufficiently large to do its work and prevent civil war. If Mr. Asquith yields to that pressure, then of course the position will be hopeless, and the Government will be left with the task of forcing the Ulster Protestants under a Dublin Parliament. Till, however, the contrary has been proved, we must continue to believe that Mr. Asquith has no intention of shouldering so tremendous a burden. Our first reason for believing this is that, if Mr. Asquith meant in the end to offer a form of Exclusion which he must have known would be unaccept- able, he would not have bothered about the Amending Bill ; he would not have risked raising the false hopes, and therefore creating the bitter disappointments, which must be the result if the Amending Bill fails. Unquestionably his position would then be worse than if he had persisted in taking up the attitude that the Bill as it stood was perfect and needed no amendment. As it is, he has admitted in the strongest way possible that the Bill needs amendment, and yet he has not amended it. This is strong ground for thinking that he must mean to make a real effort to exclude the danger zone. Another ground for this belief can hardly fail to be noticed by anyone who recalls Mr. Asquith's speeches during the past year. In the first place, Mr. Asquith has never derided the Ulstermen's claim to Exclusion, and has never indulged in any talk about bogus threats and wooden rifles. On the contrary, he has always admitted that in Ulster lies the crux of the whole problem. Further, it is to be noted that, though he has shut every other door of compromise in succession, and bolted and barred them, he has never closed the door of Exclusion. On the contrary, be has always left it open as a means of retreat from an impossible situation. Con- ceivably all this may prove to have meant nothing. Not every open door is used. Till it is proved, however, that Mr. Asquith means nothing by his Amending Bill, we shall maintain our belief that in his heart of hearts he has always realized that the Home Rule Bill can only, at present at any rate, be applied to a portion of Ireland, and that he is in the last resort an Exclusionist. Of course circumstances may not allow him to carry out his Exclusionist belief. In our opinion, however, he means to make an effort to do so. That he can do so if he likes is clear, but it seems that in order to get his way, if it is his way, he will have to part company, temporarily at any rate, with Mr. Redmond, and obtain Exclusion by leaning upon Unionist support. Dare he do this ? On that we can express no opinion. What we do know, however, is that it is physically possible for him to do so. He could quarrel on this point with Mr. Redmond and yet not instantly be put out of office. If Mr. Asquith accepts Exclusion by the aid of Unionist votes, but accepts it only in the very last days of the present Session—that is, somewhere about August 15th-- after all the essential business of the Session has been transacted, and when the Home Rule Bill has matured, he might still find a way out. He could pass the Amending Bill with the aid of the Unionists as afore- said ; then pass the Home Rule Bill itself under the terms of the Parliament Act ; and, finally, having obtained the Royal Assent for them both on the same day, instantly prorogue Parliament. This would not leave the Nationalists time to put him in a minority. It will be said, of course : "What is the use of all this ? The Irish would be burning for revenge, and when Parliament reassembled in November they would despatch Mr. Asquith's Government." But would they ? We think it quite possible that Mr. Asquith may be inclined to gamble on the fact that after nearly three months' holiday the Nationalists' ardour will have cooled, and they will begin to ask themselves whether it is really worth while to turn out the Liberals and let in the Unionists. No doubt they will hold that the Liberals have betrayed them by delivering only three-fourths instead of the whole of the goods, but, on the other hand, there would be a very great advantage in having the Liberals in power when the Dublin Parliament was brought into being. To turn the Liberals out would mean an immediate General Election, and that might result in a Unionist victory, and that Unionist victory in a repeal of the Act in the three included provinces. In a word, there is quite a good chance that the Nationalists in November would not do what they could be prevented from doing now only by a prompt prorogation. In all probability, indeed, the worst that the Irish would do after they had cooled down would be to stop away from the autumn Session. But this would still leave the Government a small majority if the Labour people remained true, as no doubt they would. They never give any serious trouble. But, even if the Government did not after all weather the autumn Session, they would be in better trim for the General Election than they are now. They would through their new Budget schemes be able in the autumn Session to dress the window very attractively, or what they consider very attractively, for a Dissolution in January. They would bring in their Bills, and if beaten on some vote in the middle of December they could adjourn for Christmas and then have an appeal to the country on the new register. But though a case can be made out on these lines, we fully admit that matters may go very differently, and that the Government may prefer simply to put the Bill on the statute book and then at once appeal to the country against what they would call "rebellious Ulster," believing that on such an appeal they would get a renewed majority. If that is their view, we Unionists are perfectly ready to meet them and beat them.
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