TOPICS OF THE DAY
• THE BIRMINGHAM PROPOSAL.
WE sincerely hope that the article in the Birmingham Daily Post suggesting a new policy for the Radical -wing of the Unionists, is only a feeler, and does not, as so many imagine, represent Mr. Chamberlain's matured con- victions. It is, we feel sure, based upon an error which must prove fatal to the best hope of an ultimate renewal of confidence between the two islands, a renewal absolutely essential, though in different degrees, to the future well- being of both. The Post suggests, in language, we quite admit, of just temperance and caution, that the power of the National League being now seriously weakened, and order of a certain kind nearly restored in Ireland, the time has arrived when remedial legislation should recommence, and should take four distinct and, so to speak, practical directions,—(1), There should be a large measure of Land- purchase, to be based upon Irish credit and managed through Irish County Boards ; (2), public works should be sanctioned on a great scale—ten millions, for example, being advanced for arterial drainage, the railways should become, either directly or indirectly, State property, and the har- bours, fisheries, and commercial advantages of Ireland should be developed to the uttermost ; (3), municipal freedom, as in England, should be conceded to the counties ; and (4), Provincial Governments should be set up, with a strictly defined and, of course, subordinate " legislative " power. These are definite proposals wholly unlike the ideas of irresponsible sympathisers with agitation, and we will try to indicate reasons for approving or disapproving each in succession.
(1.) As to the principle of a Land-purchase scheme, we probably go much further than the Birmingham paper. We have for more than a quarter of a century contended that the root of Irish disaffection is a tenure opposed to the wishes, the prejudices, and the economic situation of the people ; that no solution will be final which does not make of the tiller of the soil the ultimate owner ; and that, as an English blunder has been the cause of the divorce between the existing Irish tenure and the Irish idea of rightful ownership, it would be right as well as generous in the English people to assist in the reform. We stand up, in the face of our own best friends and of many repug- nances in ourselves, to plead for a large grant in aid of peasant-proprietorship in Ireland. But the method of effecting the change suggested by the Post seems to us at once immoral and inadequate. It is inadequate, because it will involve a long process of time, and therefore years of angry friction ; and it is immoral, because it hands over to the debtor the appraisement of his creditor's rightful claims. Elective local authorities in Ireland must represent the farmers, and to allow them to assess, or even to control, the payment of landlord's claims, would be to legalise pillage. We would not trust English or Scotch farmers with such a power, and they have not been oppressed by exorbitant rents, or embittered by ages of social strife, or corrupted by teaching so bad that it has at last been con- demned by the Catholic Church as radically immoral. What is done for the reform of Irish tenure—and we wish the thing done to be large, to be immediate, and to be final—must be done by the only authority at once impartial and available,—the Imperial Parliament.
(2.) The question of public works is one entirely for experts. Our own belief is incurable that advances for remunerative public works are of necessity either unneces- sary or eleemosynary, and in the long-run do much harm ; but we will not press that opinion against either statesmen or engineers. It may well be that there are works of great advantage the outcome of which capitalists do not foresee and less interested persons do, and in which, therefore, the State may beneficially lend the aid of its superior credit. If there are such works, and the drainage of the Shannon may be one, let them be completed, care being only taken that if there is failure, the loss shall not fall with undue weight upon the future taxpayer. If we are to speculate, still more if we are to waste, let us do it with our own money, and not with that of our children. In other words, if we give grants, let them be grants ; but if we give loans, let us borrow nothing not repayable within thirty years. (3 and 4.) It is on the grant of what are called local liberties that we part company with the Birmingham proposal. The first named, the concession of County Councils, is, it is true, a mere question of opportune- ness ; but then, the inopportuneness of the suggestion is on the face of affairs. Order is partly restored in Ireland, but the feelings which have produced social war there, the bitter hatred of England, the savage antipathies of caste, the belief that law is a hostile- instead of a protecting power, show no sign of abatement. The virulence of the quarrel differs in degree in different districts ; but throughout the South the farmers hold that the landlords are their enemies, that it is just to coerce them into reductions, that a competitor who will pay their demands is a criminal, and that the assassination of such a criminal is to be defended not only in village assemblies, but in the church and the jury-box. So acute is still agrarian hate, that it overpowers not only moral feeling, but that reverence for the Church which for ages past has been not only a habit with Irish Catholics, but a matter of patriotic pride. How is it possible that men burning with such sentiments should, as electors, nominate impartial representatives, or that representatives similarly influenced should even perceive in any question between the "rich" and the poor, what is just and what is unjust ? Grant even that the farmers are essentially in the right, and still they are inflamed parties to a long and bitterly fought suit, and ought not to be trusted till passion has subsided with the destinies of their opponents. That passion will subside with a change of tenure, we have no doubt whatever ; and that fact once ascertained, we would not delay the grant of County Councils to Ireland for an hour ; but till then, their creation can but make the still raging quarrel more dangerous and envenomed. That, however, is only a dispute as to time; but we would not concede Provincial Legislatures either now or hereafter, and this for a reason which some of our readers will receive with a feeling of surprise. The one demand of the present Irish agitators which seems to us untainted either with crime or sordidness, is the demand for Home-rule. We hold that to concede it would be dangerous to the Empire, fatal to the future of Ireland— which is not a homogeneous nation, but an island occupied by two nations—and a treacherous betrayal of the non- Celtic population ; would, in fact, be immoral for us ; but there is no immorality in the demand itself. Indeed, what of nobility there is in the whole struggle consists in the element of old Nationalist feeling, the desire of Irish- men that their country should have a separate place, history, and responsibility before the world. We have always regarded this feeling with respect, wretchedly unwise as we think its manifestation, and hold that it is part of the historic ill-luck of a most unlucky country that Nationalism, which is but an exaggerated development of patriotism, should have been poisoned at its source by its admixture with an agrarian revolt the whole object of which, when all is said, is to secure money by a combination against contracts. To impoverish and debase the feeling of Nationalism, by granting legislative power to Provincial Councils, seems to us at once reckless and mean, —reckless, because every atom of power conceded would be used to secure the larger end ; mean, because if we are morally entitled to yield at all—which we deny —and still more if we are bound to yield, we are bound to yield the nobler and not the pettier of Irish requests. Independence might benefit Irishmen by enabling them to wade through a sea of suffering to a firm social constitution ; but Provincial Councils could do no good whatever. They would not satisfy Irish pride, they would not teach Ireland what responsibility means, they would not afford an arena on which the social forces could fight out their battle and ascertain their strength. The gain to the United Kingdom would be absolutely nil, and might be a minus quantity, for Scotland and Wales, Yorkshire and London, might be asking the same thing; and the loss to Ireland would be extreme, the suppression of the one impulse which evokes her nobler qualities. Nobody would be benefited and nobody content, for, to do the Irish disaffected justice, they are not fighting through a veiled rebellion in order to settle their " private- Bill legislation " through jobbing little Boards.
Previous page
