LORD DERBY AT BIRMINGHAM.
ONE of the most characteristic of Home-rulers' criti- cisms on Lord Derby's singularly able and lucid speech at Birmingham ran in the following terms :- " What can be more unlike the man who brings the habits of a scientific economist to the consideration of political problems than this banal piece of cant ?—‘ We say that Ireland enjoys every right, every privilege, that belongs to any other part of the British Islands.' Granting, for the sake of argument, that this is technically accurate, surely Lord Derby will not maintain for a moment that it is accurate in reality. What is the fundamental difference between the government of Ireland and the government of every other part of the British Islands ? Obviously this, that in every other part of the British Islands the local populations get their own way, adjust their laws to suit their necessities, and are governed in accordance with the views of the majority of their freely elected representatives. In Ireland alone the local popula- tion does not get its own way, is not allowed to adjust its laws to suit its necessities, and is governed in absolute defiance of the views of the majority of its freely elected representatives. That is to say, the majority of the Irish people are governed against their consent, according to the views and opinions of other people, whereas the majority of all the other peoples in these islands are governed by their consent, according to their own views and opinions." Now, is it true that in any State that can boast of orderly government at all, any part of the population gets its own way without reference to the good of the whole ? If it were true, would it be creditable to the State ? Ask the Scotch Crofters whether under the recent Crofters' Act they got their own way ? or only so much of it as Par- liament thought to be not inconsistent with the welfare of the country at large. Ask the Welsh farmers who are grumbling about their tithes, whether they get their own way, or even so much of it as many of their countrymen would claim to be consistent with the good of the whole. Ask the Leicester Anti-Vaccinators, ask the Local Optionists in fifty places whether they get their own way, or whether their aspirations are con- stantly blighted by a Parliament which thinks that their own way would involve a much greater injury to their fellow-citizens than it would confer benefit upon them. It is of the very essence of well-ordered government that sectional desires shall be sacrificed to the welfare of the whole ; and the great merit of Lord Derby's masterly speech was that he brought out so impressively that the true object of the Irish agitators is to gain their own way for the Irish without regard to the welfare of Great Britain ; and that it is mere imbecility to give the Irish as much of their own way as will enable them to stand out for a great deal more, unless the intention is to give them that great deal more, in which case it had much better be granted at once, and not doled out piecemeal accompanied with feeble declarations upon every fresh surrender, that " this must positively be the last." Mr. Parnell has said as lately as in the autumn of 1885,- " We will never accept, either expressly or impliedly, anything but the full and complete right to arrange our own affairs, to make our land a nation, to secure for us, free from outside control, the right to our own course among the nations of the world." Do we not all know that that represents to this hour the real meaning of the Irish Nationalists, and that to give them an Irish Parlia- ment shorn of half the privileges here claimed would and could mean nothing but giving them the leverage by which they would be able either to wrench the other privileges from us, or to plunge us into civil war ? It is childish to allege that Mr. Parnell and his colleagues agreed in 1886 to accept very stringent restrictions on their own way. Of course they did, and would have been very helpless politicians if they had not eagerly accepted Mr. Glad- stone's terms. But, of course too, they neither could nor did bind the nation as to what should be done after that gift had been appropriated ; and no states- man who has watched the course of events in Ireland can doubt for a moment that the more Ireland obtains, the more it craves in the direction of separate national existence, and that if a stand is to be made at all, it can only be made on the " Paper-Union," which, much as it is derided, is, after all, a very substantial affair. While the " Paper- Union " is maintained, there can be no separate Irish Army or Navy, no separate Irish tariff, no formidable rebellion, no dangerous civil war, no confiscation of property, no vengeance on the police and constabulary, no reign of terror. All these, no doubt, are ex.ceedingly negative blessings. But negative blessings are often relatively very great blessings. Establish in power au Irish Parliament and Administration, and Ireland would be safe from none of these dangers. As Lord Derby put it, there could be no reason why Ireland should be grateful for a half- measure of national independence extorted by agitation from English fears ; and the honest Nationalists would be very foolish if they did not use what they had got, to obtain what they had not got.
The truth is, that in no part of the British Islands do the local populations govern themselves without relation to the welfare of the whole ; and though for a long time that was the desire of many portions of Scotland as well as of a great part of Ireland, the nation as a whole has always ignored that desire, and insisted that only by legislative methods which secure the supremacy of the whole over the parts, ought the grievances of the parts to be redressed. We do not want the Irish people to have their own way, but only to have so much of it as is perfectly compatible with the United Kingdom's unity and safety. Very likely that may involve, and will involve, a greater delay in the redress of some of the Irish grievances than there would be if an Irish Parliament and Administration had been granted. That is only saying that the welfare of a part is subordinated to the welfare of the whole, as it always has been till these latter days, when the disruptive forces have gained so much more consideration than the cohesive, that it is thought pure tyranny to veto any reform sup- posed to be locally beneficial, only because it threatens the existence of the State. If it is safe to give Ireland a separate Legislature and separate Administration, why should it be denied a separate tariff and a separate religious Establishment ? The former involve far greater conces- sions of principle than the latter. A great deal could be said in favour of the latter which would not tell in favour of the former, and it would seem like straining at a gnat after we had swallowed a camel, to insist on Mr. Gladstone's self-denying ordinances for Ireland, when we had accepted the concessions which make these self-denying ordinances look ludicrous. There is no logical standing- ground short of complete separation under the same throne, except the standing-ground on which the Unionists have taken up their position. If the Irish are " to have their own way," complete separation of institutions and policy is what they will one day insist on, and what we cannot see any reason why they should not insist on. But at present we do not intend any part of the United Kingdom to have its own way, without regard to the welfare of the rest. No one would dream of claiming it for England, which is far the most powerful element in the whole, and why it should be demanded for the feebler elements when it is not even asked for the stronger,—for the one, too, which at the present moment sacrifices most of its own interests to the eternal discussion of the interests of the weaker elements, —no one who is not a Gladstonian or a Parnellite is able to conjecture. It is very singular that we should be living in a time when it appears to be the most natural thing in the world to maintain, virtually at least if not expressly, in politics, that the part is greater than the whole.
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