TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD LANSDOWNE'S SPEECH.
"We have pressed, and mean to go on pressing, for a general election. From the speeches of his Majesty's Ministers it seems clear that they intend to refuse one, but that they are prepared to consider changes in the Bill which would, to use Mr. Winston Churchill's words, "make Protestant Ulster somehow or other satisfied and contented." May I say to you with absolute frank- ness that the idea of settlement based on the exclusion of Ulster does not at all attract me ? For five-and-twenty years some of us have been fighting Home Rule, not merely because of our respect and admiration for Ulster and the Ulster people, but because we were convinced that Home Rule was grossly unjust to the Unionists of all parts of Ireland, because we believed it would be a set-back to the country in the path of advancing prosperity along which she has travelled with such rapid strides during the last few years, and, finally, because we believed that a Nationalist Government in Ireland would be a source of weakness and danger to the United Kingdom, if not to the Empire. None of those objections would be removed merely by the special treatment of Ulster. But I am bound to add that there are reasons for which it seems to me impossible that, if an overture of this kind is made to us, we should decline altogether to examine it. I will tell you what those reasons are. In the first place I believe most of us would sacrifice a great deal in order to avoid the disaster for which 'believe we ars at this moment heading. I am not thinking merely of the blood which may be shed, or of the lives which may be lost, if there is civil war in Ulster. But there are some scars which time cannot heal, and I am afraid that if this thing were to happen the society in which we live would be shaken to its very base. I believe our country would never be the same again in our time or in the time of our children. There is another reason which weighs with me and leads me to the same conclusion. If Ulster is to be excluded from the Bill, it appears to me inevitable that the Bill should be revised, and should take a shape suited to the alteration in its framework. It seems to me not inconceivable that that revision may have the effect of rendering the measure one which might, perhaps, be made applicable in a suitable shape to other parts of the United Kingdom, and one which would bear less unjustly on, and be more tolerable to, the Unionists of Ireland.
We hold, and shall go on holding, that the proper solution of this question is reference to the electors of this country. Failing that we are ready to consider special terms for Ulster, accompanied by such changes in the Bill as the special treatment of Ulster may render necessary. If both of these things are refused, then we shall give Ulster, in and out of Parliament, all the encouragement we can in her resistance, and we shall hold his Majesty's Ministers responsible for any disasters which may result from their conduct. Thirdly, we shall regard a settlement thus imposed as lacking in authority, and we shall hold ourselves free to reopen it should the opportunity arise."
THE passages from Lord Lansdowne's speech which we have placed at the head of this article represent the view of an overwhelming majority of the Unionist Party. It is the view which we have again and again set forth in these columns. We, like Lord Lansdowne, feel no attraction whatever towards the policy of exclusion per se. Indeed we go further than Lord Lansdowne, and say that per se we detest exclusion. Of necessity it breaks up that legislative Union which we regard as essential to the national welfare. Exclusion means the inclusion of the South and West under the Home Rule Bill. Now we have always insisted that exclusion cannot possibly turn a bad Bill into a good Bill or alter the great fact that the Union is the only system which offers any hope for a permanently beneficial regulation of the political relations between the two islands. "Why then," it will be said, "all this talk about exclusion in the Spectator?" Our answer is clear : Because, bad as exclusion is, there is something infinitely worse, and that is civil war. We admit that our advocacy of exclusion is based on opportu- nism. But we say this without shame, for who would not be an opportunist if a chance is open of saving one's country from the supreme evil of civil war?
Let us recall for a moment bow we reached the demand for exclusion as the last dike left against civil war. If eleventh-hour discussions like that which is now going on over the Home Rule Bill are to be of any use, one must attempt to meet one's opponents on their own ground. Merely to re-state one's own abstract arguments, though they may remain as absolutely conclusive as before, is useless. If you have a fellow lodger who is so mad that he believes that he will consolidate the foundations of the building by exploding a large charge of dynamite in the centre of the house, and if you find him entirely impervious to arguments combating the beneficial effects of dynamite, the sensible thing is not to go on arguing with him on that point, but to do your best to persuade him, at any rate, to take the dynamite into a portion of the annexe occupied by a. person who shares his views as to the uses of dynamite and explode it there. It will, no doubt, do harm there, but far less harm than under the central roof.
We in common with other Unionists have pointed out that the first duty of the Government is to refer the Bill to the electorate by a Poll of the People. To this the Govern- ment and the Liberal Party reply that nothing will induce them to take a Referendum. We are unfortunately bound to accept that answer, because we know that they know that the Referendum would go against the Bill, and that their Irish supporters absolutely forbid this form of the happy despatch being applied to Home Rule. We have next asked for a general election. This the Government refuse on grounds which we cannot disguise from ourselves must appear conclusive to party politicians situated as they are. The general election would, they say, destroy Bills for which they have, as they put it, "sacrificed so much," that is, the Welsh Church Bill and the Plural Voting Bill. As a, matter of fact, if they were to come back, as they say they could, as strong as ever after a general election, the Welsh Bill would not suffer any delay, and they would have greater, not less, power with which to pass the Plural Voting Bill. In reality, however, they know that they would not come back after a general election. Therefore the log-rollers who have secured the Welsh Disestablishment Bill and hope to secure One Man One Vote without One Vote One Value will not hear of a. general election. It is not toe much to say, indeed, that the Government would rather risk any amount of blood- shed in Ulster than have either a Referendum or a general election on the Home Rule Bill. That being so, we hold, and it is clear Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Bonar Law also hold, that while not forgoing any of our opposition in principle to Home Rule, we are bound to make one more effort, no matter how great the party sacrifice, to stave off civil war. The only door that has not been absolutely banged, bolted, and barred against us is the exclu- sion of Ulster, and therefore, unattractive as it must necessarily be to Unionists to open that door, we are bound, if we have the chance, to help the Government to use it. It is the only escape that remains from civil war, and we must make this fact clear to the nation. To go back to our metaphor, it is better to see that the dynamite is exploded in the outhouse where it will do the minimum of damage than to abet by acquiescence its explosion in the central building.
In the circumstances we have described we should press the duty of exclusion, i.e., the duty of exploding the dynamite with the minimum rather than the maximum of harm, even if we felt sure that the Government would. instantly accept the offer to help them choose the lesser evil. But difficult though it is to state the matter without laying oneself open to misrepresentation, the policy of the explosion in the outhouse has a double appeal to Unionists. If exclusion is adopted by the Government, at any rate we can feel that the worst, namely, civil war, will not happen. At the same time, it is perfectly legitimate for us to take note that the policy of exclusion, though less bad than civil war, is so bad in itself that it is quite possible that even if the Government were to adopt it in principle they would be unable to carry it through, and that accordingly it and the whole Home Rule policy would have to be abandoned.
Unionists have no " privity " with the Nationalist Party, and are not concerned with their relations with the Liberal Party. Still they are not unaware that there is a strong probability that if public opinion here forces the Govern- ment to accept the Unionist offer to help the Cabinet to explode their dynamite in the outhouse, the Nationalists - will refuse to sanction the arrangement. They will most likely say, "No, thank you," to a Home Rule Bill from which -Ulster is excluded. What would happen would be something of this kind. If exclusion is adopted Mr. Redmond will call a convention of all the Irish Nationalist parties and ask them their opinion, as he did about the Councils Bill. We shall then, if Ireland is still Ireland, see the O'Brienites joining with the Devlinites and with a third party which, though it is nameless and leaderless, nevertheless exists below ground, the party of those Irishmen who are still strongly Nationalist in the abstract and in sentiment, but who now in the concrete greatly dread Home Rule and its consequences. These are the Nationalists who have bought their farms, and the men who, having capital invested in Ireland, are frightened on one side by the possibilities of Larkinism dominating an Irish Parliament, and on the other of the Church getting possession of it and squeezing the last drop out of the land. These men, as it is, dare not now stand up against Home Rule. They would stand up against it fast enough, however, if they could do so on the ground that "the, will never allow the sacred soil of Ireland to be divided, &c., &c." In that way they can escape from the nightmare of Home Rule without the loss of face which they must incur if they backed out of Home Rule merely on the ground that they had ceased to desire it. In a word, the Convention would in all probability fling back into the face of the Liberals a Home Rule Bill from which Ulster had been excluded. Though it would be mad for Unionists to agree to exclusion if they hated it worse than civil war, and merely on the chance of it being rejected, the considerations which we have just put must naturally weigh with them. With regard to exclusion they can feel that if the worst comes to the worst, it will save us from civil war, and there is always the chance that by it we shall not only escape civil war, but also escape from Home Rule altogether.
There is another aspect of the policy of exclusion which renders it useful. Exclusion is, in the last resort, a reductio ad absurdum of Home Rule. If it can be shown to the people of England and Scotland that Home Rule can only be carried out without civil war and without violating the Home Rule principle itself, by the exclusion of Ulster, which not a single soul in the country wants on its merits, neither the Unionists, nor the Liberals, nor the Ulstermen, nor the Nationalists, it will no doubt have a very great educational effect. It will make the ordinary voter realize that Home Rule is a chimera, a dream, an impossibility, and that the incorporating Union, even if it has inconveniences, is the only possible solution. Exclu- sion, indeed, from the point of view of logic, is nothing but a. resort to Euclid's well-worn method. The logical pro- cesses applied to the Bill bring us down to the exclusion of Ulster. Having reached that point we are con- fronted with that old friend of our youth—" Which is absurd."
To sum up. You cannot from the point of view of logic or justice or expediency or opportunism have Home Rule without excluding Protestant Ulster.
But exclusion in the opinion of all sides is absurd— though, of course, a political absurdity is always infinitely better than civil war.
Therefore you cannot have Home Rule.
On only one point do we disagree with Lord Lansdowne's speech. One would gather from his words that he thinks that if the Government would consent to recast their Bill, some system might be evolved which would prove the solution of the Irish question as a whole. Though we are most anxious to maintain a close front in the party at this moment, sincerity obliges us to say that we cannot believe that any solution is to be found in this direction. Federalism is excellent, as in Australia, to bind closer loosely united or disunited fragments of Empire. It is hopeless to use it as a method of decentralisa- tion. Federalism, when applied to these islands, partakes too much of the plan of the general who described how his troops, "fired with martial ardour, executed a strategic advance to the rear." Federalism, even if it is only a label stuck on the back of our old friend Devolution or increased local government, is certain to end as a snare and a delusion. You cannot have both Federalism and the Common Purse. But nobody is going to give up the common purse, nor do we ask anybody to do so, though pecuniarily it would have such enormous advantages for England. The rich parts of the United. Kingdom must help the poor, and must let all share in the prosperity of the most prosperous. But if there is to be a common purse there must be common legislation and a common administration. Devolution is a delightful abstraction, but the whole of the forces at work in a modern democratic community tend to centralisation. For these reasons we are not afraid, of local autonomy, even under the description of fedoralism, ever winning the day. The battle between it and centralisation is too unequal. Still, we do see the possibility of a great waste of the nation's resources under a sham Federal system. However, this is not the moment to argue on such a point. We will go further and say that as long as the alternative remains — civil war or some system of federalism—we would infinitely rather have federalism. As long as civil war hangs in the balance, we shall do nothing to prevent the building of a federal bridge of escape, however wasteful and however useless the structure. We would counsel other Unionists who feel with us in regard to federalism to resolve on a similar reticence. Let us keep our eye upon the object of the moment. That object is the avoidance of civil war.
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