TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE UNIONIST CASE.
WE remember no debate in the House of Commons in which the Opposition have so completely failed to elicit any answer from the Government, as the debate on the first reading of the Home-rule Bill. And the failure is all the more remarkable because the Government have continually repeated that all the important criticisms of the Opposition were made in ignorance of the Bill, and would be sufficiently removed by the production of tho Bill. Now, the Bill has since been produced, and not one of the more serious arguments of the Opposition is touched at all. Besides, as Ministers had the Bill in their hands, and the Opposition had not, nothing, we should think, would have been more agreeable to the Administra- tion than to answer from their own full knowledge of the measure the criticisms which, if their statements were to be trusted, the Opposition leaders levelled in ignorance at a proposal the true nature of which they had not grasped. But far from attempting any such answer, the note of all the Ministerial speeches was extreme vagueness, and a tendency to condemn the Opposition speakers for assuming that the measure of the Government, if it were ever carried, might be interpreted and administered in a spirit hostile to Great Britain by the Irish Administration of the future. Now, for the purposes of this discussion at least, what other assumption could have been made, seeing that the issue was this, and this only,—whether Mr. Glad- stone's guarantees against any abuse of the new powers to be conferred are adequate or inadequate ? Supposing you want to know whether a railway-bridge will bear the strain of a given number of heavily laden trucks passing over it at full speed. What would be the use of asserting that it is very unfair to assume that so many heavily laden trucks would ever be taken over the bridge at all ? That may be so ; but that does not tell us whether, if such a number of heavily laden trucks ever were taken over the bridge, the bridge would stand the shock. That is just the point to be determined. And it cannot be determined by inveighing against the engineers who take for granted that the maximum weight may, sometime or other, be driven over the bridge at full speed, and that in that event there ought to be no danger of a catastrophe. Yet Mr. Campbell-Bannerman Mr. Blake, and Mr. Morley almost confined themselves to assailing the Opposition leaders for demanding that the guarantees against the misuse by Ireland of the powers conferred on her should be real guarantees, and should be found adequate to stop the mischief, if mischief should. be attempted. If there were perfect security in the Irish character and history against any straining of Irish powers and privileges, what is the need of guarantees ? Guarantees are not put into a. Constitution for the purpose of never being used, but for the purpose of securing efficient control in case that efficient control is needed. What Mr. Gladstone says is that, in his belief, Imperial unity will be strengthened, instead of weakened, by his Bill ; that the supremacy of the Westminster Parliament over the statutory Dublin Parliament will be secured by it ; and that Irish minorities will be protected by it against anything like oppression. Well, to teat that, you must assume that some attempt will be made to break away from Imperial unity, and you must be able to show that such an attempt, if made, would be triumphantly defeated ; that Ireland might, in some possible case, ignore the authority of the supreme Parliament, and that if she did, the persons who showed this disposition would be forced to bow at once to its decisions ; that a minority might be ridden over roughshod, and, that if it were, it would by a very easy and certain process be put in possession of its rights. but the moment Mr. Chamberlain makes these very needful and, for the purpose, absolutely essential hypo- theses, he is simply lectured by Mr. Blake and Mr. Morley for not giving the Irish credit for needing no guarantees at all. For example, Mr. Chamberlain says, in case of a great struggle with a Foreign Power,—say, the United States, or France, or Russia,—shall we or shall we not have the same command of the resources of Ireland after Home- rule as we have now ? And he shows that if Ireland were in the mood in which she has so often been lately, when she rejoiced in our disasters and murmured at our suc- cesses, we &mid and the greatest difficulty in the world in avoiding serious resistance to our requisitions in Ireland and in securing any efficient help. But what does Mr. Morley say ? Oh, he says, Mr. Chamberlain means nothing by "Imperial unity" but "centralisation." That is, we imagine, he thinks that there may under Home- rule be more difficulty, perhaps much more, in putting down disloyalty, if there is disloyalty, and in getting the resources we want ; that we shall have lost power at the centre, and increased the independence of the extremities ; but he holds that we must look for that if we are to decentralise at all. Well, if that be' so, we submit that Mr. Gladstone, so far from having strengthened the unity of the Empire, will have greatly diminished it. What is said of the body, when any- thing happens to it which delays greatly the power of the will to move the hand or foot ? The doctors call it " locomotory ataxia," which is a grand name for the loss of power in ordering the movements of the body. Is not that loss of unity ? No, says Mr. Morley, it is only loss of centralising power. Well, if the United Kingdom in that sense loses centralising power, it loses unity for al) intents and purposes, for without the power of the head to' rule the extremities, and of the extremities to serve the head, there can be no unity in the body. If that is not loss of unity, we cannot conceive what loss of unity is. Then, again, as to the supremacy of Parliament, Mr. Chamberlain goes on to point out that, with a local Parliament and Administration favourable to the "Plan of Campaign," he does not see how a supreme Parlia- mentary veto on the "Plan of Campaign" could be enforced, except by suspending the whole Irish Consti- tution and resuming the direct control of Ireland. Is not that a vast loss of supremacy by the supreme Parliament ? No, again says Mr. Morley ; it is only the gain by the Irish of self-government. Well, if the gain of self- government means that the will of the supreme power can only be enforced at the cost of suspending an existing constitution and substituting the constitution which pre- ceded it, we think it is a very modest description of that formidable process ta say that, for ordinary and practical purposes, supremacy has disappeared. Once more Mr. Chamberlain asks what security there is against Protestant children in Ireland having to conform to educa- tional regulations which their parents will disapprove, and Mr. Morley replies that that is another way of asking that the minority, backed by England, shall retain their ascendency,—in other words, that Catholic children shalt be subjected to regulations which Catholics disapprove,— the conscience clause, we presume. Well, it is very possible that some Catholics do disapprove, pr, under Home-rule, will disapprove, the conscience clause ; but if the con- science clause is another name for Protestant ascen- dency, the suppression of the conscience clause is another name for the persecution of Protestants.
Nothing is plainer, then, than that at heart Mr. Morley- concedes completely Mr. Chamberlain's three points. He thinks the United Kingdom will lose in unity, only he prefers to call it losing in the control of the centre over the extremities, which sounds better. He thinks it will be difficult, if not impossible, to prevent the resumption of the "Plan of Campaign" without a com- plete suspension of the new Irish Constitution, but he pre- fers to speak of that as the concession of local self-govern- ment. He thinks there can be no absolute security that Protestant children may not have to suffer ; but he prefers to call that merely the loss of Protestant ascendency. And his only reply to Mr. Chamberlain is, in effect, that if the guarantees are not effective, effective guarantees are not wanted ; that Ireland with Home-rule will do nothing but what reasonable Englishmen will be willing to tolerate ; that Irishmen will support us, if we are in difficulties, a great deal more generously than we could now compel them to support us ; that they will make no attempt to cheat the landlords so soon as we give them the power to cheat them if they please ; that the priests will be a hundred times more liberal to the Protestants than the Protestants ever were to the priests. Well, then, the talk of guarantees is all nonsense. There are no real guarantees, to Mr. Morley's mind, simply because no guarantees were needed. But why pretend that they were needed, and make such a. parade of mere mockeries and shams ? As Mr. Goschen very wittily, put it : "The Government have proceeded upon this principle, that what light they would throw upon the Bill should be a kind of revolving-light, green some- times when it was shown to the Irish Party, and at other tim ,s red to other sections of the House." The guarantees are all red while the Liberal Unionists are making objec- tions, and all green while the Nationalists are asking for proof that they may govern Ireland as they please. When Mr. Chamberlain asked how the "Plan of Campaign" could be put down without a suspension of the whole Con- stitution, it is notable that the Nationalists cheered lustily.
A great deal too little attention has been drawn to Mr. Courtney's very remarkable speech. He brought out with great power how much the Union has done and is doing for Ireland, and how completely it has reunited the Irish middle-class to the English democracy, and he insisted that the same process has only to be continued, to reunite the Irish farmers and labourers to the English democracy. That process we are now asked to break off for ever. Mr. Courtney also showed that the security of a Legislative Council is DO security at all for the minority, that if the minority are to be protected, it must be in the popular Assembly, and not in an Assembly which is only invented for purposes of delay. And, most important of all, he in- sisted that if we had had few serious quarrels with our self- governing Colonies, it is all due to our having no money bargains with them, and that the very complex financial relations with Ireland proposed under this Bill would alone wreck the new Constitution, if there were no other serious hitches, whereas there are others still more serious. He showed how, under the old New Zealand Constitution, the troubles arose in the shape of money quarrels between the Central Legislature and the Provinces, and that the Constitution was wrecked by their quarrels. And in the relations of Ireland with England, the difficulties would be greater in every way, more embarrassed by new jealousies, and more complicated by financial moot-points. Mr. Courtney was, as he usually is, almost ostentatiously candid to the Government ; but, on that very account, his masterly speech was all the more damaging. On the whole, the Home-rule Bill has been riddled through and through by the most convincing criticism, and virtually the reply has been nothing but this : Trust the Irish in everything, and it will be wonder- ful how reasonable and friendly they will become. The guarantees may be moonshine, but then they will not b3 wanted.' Our answer is, that we should be fools to trust even Yorkshire or East Anglia with such direct encouragements to ask for their own way and get it ; and Ireland is not Yorkshire or East Anglia. Ireland is very capricious, very keen, and very little disposed to love us. If we prepare to go to sea in a ship leaking at every pore, what can we expect except to get water-logged and go to the bottom ?
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