HOME-RULE AS IT IS. T HE great political controversy of the
hour would make considerable progress towards that simplification which is the first necessity of controversy, if each side would put in clear language its answer to the question : 'What is it in our adversary's case that we regard as an error of policy and statesmanship,—an error, therefore, which we repudiate only so far as we lay claim to the character of politicians ; and what is it which we condemn and call upon others to condemn, as men seeking to be just and claim justice ? ' The present seems a time specially fitted for such an endeavour. Till quite recently, it was barred by a hopeless discrepancy as to the matters of fact on which judgment was to be given. An honest Home- ruler cannot give to newspaper accounts of Nationalist outrages the place which an honest Unionist cannot with- hold from them ; the very causes which make him a Home-ruler diminish in his eyes the credibility of those who assert, as well as the criminality of those who perpetrate them. When we asked our opponents, Do you justify this ? ' they often answered with perfect sincerity, 'We do not believe it.' And while we do believe that what Unionists allege is for the most part true (which is merely another way of saying that we are Unionists), we do not dream of denying that exaggerations on their side, and under-statements of facts on their opponents' side, may have crept into their most effective speeches. Till February of this year, it seemed as if the materials were lacking for an issue between men not prepared to speculate as to varying possibilities, but ready to judge of what was right and wrong in deeds actually committed. The two sides seemed divided, not so much by a chasm as by a bog ; to attempt to reach common ground was to sink in a hopeless antagonism of accusations, where the only certainty seemed hate and woe. That black quagmire is now crossed by a causeway ready for the tramp of an army. For the first time in history, the question of the day has been reviewed by men who have tried to see it with the disinterestedness of posterity. The view which finds in their Report a belated and insignificant contribution to the evidence for or against Home-rule, may almost be called an inversion of the truth. If any one should say that the time is not yet come for appreciating it, there would be this much of truth in his assertion,—that its value will be felt most strongly whenever the time comes to write the history of the struggle. Of all printed material from the last decade, it is the decision of Sir James Hannen, Sir John Day, and Sir Archibald Smith which the historian will least be able to afford to neglect. There may be error in their decision, as in all human decisions. But if it exist, it is the error of men who have had no object whatever but that of arriving at an accurate opinion as to matter of fact. There is nothing else extant bearing on the question of which we may say as much as this. Indeed, it is very rarely that so much might be said of any decision bearing on human affairs. To be able to say it of a decision bearing on matter of passionate controversy, is indeed a wonderful advantage, which history will bring into clearer light, but which we may profit by at once.
That a document which the historian will accept as guaranteed material should lack pungency for the reader of newspapers, is a matter of course ; and it is a natural illusion to suppose that what is flavourless is stale. Because the verdict is a storehouse of fact, it does not tell as ready-made polemic. Of some supposed facts, which seemed very telling to Unionists on their own side, the three Judges have said with no doubt- ful accents : These charges are false.' To others, not so effective perhaps, but more important in our opinion, they have appended the decision, unique as far as English law is concerned, These charges are doubtful.' It is of the most important of all that they have recorded their opinion that these charges were true. Their findings, till the publica- tion of Mr. Dicey's little volume (the upshot of which was stated and criticised in these columns on July 19th, and which we are glad to see has reached a second edition) were not easy to appreciate in their full bear- ings. Since that publication, no one has an excuse for not clearly understanding what the Commission has established. We cannot believe that men who are trained to know what they mean, and what others mean, can ever have really supposed they were answering opponents who point out that certain persons have sanctioned cruel tyranny, by the reply : 'Nothing that you say matters, because you have believed a false charge.' But there are so many who feel without thought, that we can quite believe some persons to have believed what they were told,—that a verdict which established the primary contentions of Unionists was really a decision against them.
What has been decided against the Parnellites by the Commission is simply the moral character of Home-rule. We are asked to sanction and perpetuate in Ireland a kind of government which would be new, certainly, as a Consti- tution guaranteed by English law, but which, as an actual fountain of authority sanctioned by penal enactments, has been at work for some time. There is a Home- rule Government . already established in Ireland, for the conduct of which the Parnellite Members are morally responsible, just as the members of every other Govern- ment, whether they disapprove of them or not. A Minister may disapprove of measures passed by the Government to which he belongs ; but if he prefers giving them his sanction to resigning his place, he must be regarded as responsible for them. The Parnellites are the members of two Governments,—one that assembles at Westminster, and centres in the Throne of Great Britain ; one which has its central offices in Dublin, and an agency in every Irish 'town. The latter Government, though it may change its name, is just as much a continuous unity as the first, or rather, far more so. The Government of Great Britain and Ireland is not nearly so permanent or consistent a body. The changes which would characterise our British policy if to-morrow the Premiership were to pass from the hands of Lord Salisbury to those of Mr. Gladstone, have nothing analogous to them in the management of the association which has constituted for the last decade the ruling power with which it most concerned the Irish peasant in a large part of Ireland to keep on good terms. It is the moral character of this Irish rule for which we would refer our readers to the pages of the Report. The Commissioners name three cases as "typical of the manner in which boycotting was practised," in which the Leaguers visited with penalties, which no system of English law could bring against any criminal, three persons connected with those who had offended against their laws. In 1887, a child of eleven, named Mitchell, was maimed for life, because he was found carrying bread to a father half-starved by the exclusive dealing of the butcher and the baker. In 1881, an aged man, named Herbert, was stoned and. wounded, because his son, the County-Court bailiff, had not refused to serve writs as his office bound him to do ; at the same date, the brother-in- law of a man named Hegarty had his house fired during the night, and a narrow escape of being burnt alive, because he continued intimate with Hegarty, who was himself nearly killed by various kinds of persecution. These three cases were not exceptional instances where personal hatred adopted the disguise of political zeal, but samples of ordinary procedure. "Instances of similar treatment of obnoxious persons are so numerous," say the Commissioners, "that we can only give examples." No Englishman can really believe, though a writer in the Daily News of August 21st appears to assert, that if Sir James Hannen and his colleagues had had more sympathy with Ireland, they would have discovered less evidence of little Mitchell being maimed for life, and old Herbert being stoned and wounded, or have questioned the connection of these facts with the actions of the son and the father of the victims respectively. And yet we are told of the evidence by which this system of government is proved, that it has "no political significance." We see before us the polity actually working which we are asked to perpetuate, and are bid to disregard all that we see as either trivial or irrelevant. We are asked to set up a Government whose respect for freedom and justice we may, we must estimate from samples such as these, and to disregard all that we see as proving nothing !
It is said that where the Leaguers are strongest there are fewest outrages, which means, so far as it is true, that where none dare disobey, none incur the penalties of disobedience. With no rival power left in Ireland, the Nationalist rulers would have no need of outrage, when once they had settled with those of the loyal minority who were unable to leave the country. But the notion of justice exemplified in the three cases we have cited, would be the notion of justice on which its laws would be passed and administered, when they were the only laws of the land.
What blinds those who care for justice, to the probable character of the Government to which they contemplate surrendering Ireland, is to a great extent the power of a delusive name. People know that self-government is the right aim for all education, and that we governed Ireland badly for a great many years ; and they think the obvious remedy is now to let Ireland govern itself. They never ask themselves : Do we mean by Ireland something that has the unity of a person ? ' If the case were that of a guardian who has always found any exercise of his influence produce irritation, and to whom it is suggested to let the ward manage his own affairs, we should not allow even then that the question in being so stated admitted of only one answer ; but we should not then say, as we do now, with all the emphasis we can command, that it is a question not of policy but of justice. If you look at it that way, you must imagine three people concerned, not two. The question IS: Shall we allow one set of Irishmen to govern another ? ' The cases of Mitchell, of Herbert, and of Hegarty are not illustrations of anything that can be called self-government ; they are illustrations of a tyranny which must strangle every capacity for self- government, and quench the very sense of freedom. No advocate of the Home-rule Party who urges that the responsibility for these crimes must be shared by the Government which imposes laws rejected by the conscience of the nation expected to obey them, should ever add that he is not apologising for crime. He is not necessarily justifying it. But if you say, These are deplorable actions which we do not defend, but those are accountable for them who withhold from the agents the rights they claim,' you might just as well, as far as the influence of your words goes, say that these actions are highly meritorious.' The effect is the same as if you had said so. It does not matter whether you call an action right or wrong, if you go on to urge that the right method of dealing with it is to make the concession for the sake of which it was done. The real condemnation of crime is the decision that it shall not prove helpful towards any aim of the criminal; that it shall be an argument against every cause in which it is employed. When you allow it to be an argument for any cause, you have given the criminal your verdict. "We too much forget," said, a few years ago, a wise Judge, to whom guilt was more terrible than suffering, a propos to some case in which the sympathies of the hour went in favour of an undoubted murderer,— " we too much forget that the purpose of punishment is to protect people under strong temptation." It is con- ceivable that ignorant peasants should be taught to regard the varying practices by which they have ended or rendered miserable the lives of their neighbours, as means by which their class has been enriched. Is this a lesson which any Englishman wishes to teach ? Shall the last of England's wrongs to Ireland be the greatest ? All the cruelty of England to Ireland has been mirrored in the cruelty of Irishmen to Irishmen. Is it by Englishmen that we are now asked to sanction the copy, when the model forms our bitterest regret ?
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