TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN'S CONFESSION.
WE cannot understand the Home-rulers. They ap- pear to us, even the shrewdest and soberest of them, to think it quite natural and right to treat Ireland so completely as the centre and substance of the United Kingdom, that they are entitled to alter the whole Constitution of the Kingdom in the most essential and revolutionary manner, out of mere respect for political symmetry, in order to make it correspond with the new proposals for Ireland,—and yet to treat all these changes as if they were practically mere matter-of- course inferences from the proposal which the House of Commons has carried by a very narrow majority for Ireland alone. Now, this question of " Home-rule all round" has never been even so much as seriously broached to the constituencies of Great Britain,— or, for that matter, to those of Ireland, either, for no Irish orator has even thought of so wild an idea as suggesting to an Irish constituency that it matters a single straw to them whether the rest of the United Kingdom is injured or ruined by any change consequent on the concession of the Irish demand. Yet here is Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, the Secretary for War, as cool-headed a man as any to be found in the three Kingdoms, deliberately following Mr. Asquith's lead as regards the assumption that Home-rule in Ireland must soon lead to Home-rule all round, but never dreaming that that assumption is an argument against Home-rule for Ireland, or so much even as a reason for pausing on the edge of so tremendous a leap in the dark, and considering it a little before taking it. On the con- trary, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman slips the remark in quite parenthetically, just as Mr. Asquith did, and then goes on to pour out his indignation at the monstrous state- ment, as he regards it, that the discussion of the Irish Bill in the Commons was incomplete, and at the con- tention of the Unionists that the whole issue had never been fully and fairly submitted to the constituencies. Did the House of Commons ever give a single night's,—nay, single hour's,—debate to the new Federalism for Scotland, Wales, and Great Britain ? Did any one of the advocates of the Irish Bill venture to descant on the revolution which a Federal Constitution would involve in this country, or on the probable consequence that it might necessitate cutting up England into cantons more nearly approaching the magni- tude and power of Ireland, Scotland, and even Wales ? Did a single speaker ever place Switzerland or the United States before this country, as supplying the model which our Constitution and institutions must in future copy ? Are there so many as a dozen constituencies in the whole country that have ever heard of this astounding corollary from the Home-rule Bill ? Has any single local Liberal Association so much as glanced at the portentous difference between Ireland and every portion of Great Britain in respect of the kind and degree of the local self-govern- ment desired, and at the immense danger of making a precedent of Ireland in such a policy ? It seems to us that the Home-rulers have ceased to regard England as the substance and core of the United Kingdom. They are as willing to accept-" consequential" amendments of the Constitution for Great Britain as the logical result of what they are proposing for Ireland, as if it had never entered their heads that there is such a thing as an ad absurdum proof, and that if it follows from Home-rule for Ireland. that we are to have Home-rule all round, with a regular Administration and Viceroy, on the proposed Dublin system, for Scotland, Wales, and perhaps a number of English cantons in a crumbled England, the only safe conclusion would be the conclusion of Euclid's ad absurdum demonstrations, "which is absurd." The presumed neces- sity for such inferential changes should be, of course, a final reason against the Irish change, instead of in favour of the consequential changes which are suggested for this Island without so much as a hesitation or a doubt, and even in the same breath in which Gladstonian orators maintain, as a self-evident proposition, that discussion, so far from having been stifled, has been excessive and redundant. If this change for Ireland really involves Home-rule all round, ought not the English democracy to have had some slight notice of that tremendous consequence, and ought not the English people to have been fairly asked whether they are willing to embark on a series of the most fundamental changes which they do not desire and never so much as contemplated, only because they must make the arrangements of the United Kingdom symmetrical with those of Ireland ? It seems to us that a sort of dull political fatalism is taking possession of the Home-rulers, when they calmly assure us that we must expand our political ideas of devolution, and do in Great Britain what is to be done in Ireland, without so• much as first discussing whether that is not a much better reason for not doing it in Ireland, than it is for following suit in Great Britain. Just conceive the vastness of the change from one Central Government for the United Kingdom to at least four, and probably seven or eight, Cantonal Governments, federated. at Westminster into a loosely-knitted supreme Directory ! Yet that is the system which the abler and younger Cabinet Ministers suggest in mild parentheses in the course of their speeches, and while- the scornful accents in which they have repudiated the notion that this mighty change has not been adequately discussed, have not yet died away,—indeed, while their audience is still on the broad grin at their description of the gross hypocrisy of that suggestion. Another section of the Cabinet, of which Lord Rosebery and Mr. Fowler are the representatives, speak in a. very different tone. They ask for a conference of parties, and suggest that the Unionists should be invited to propose such safeguards as they might think necessary in order to avoid any revolutionary consequences of the Irish policy. And we see with great regret that Mr. Bompas, Q.C., writing- as the organ of the Nonconformist Unionists, is inclined to grasp at some such suggestion, and is willing to concede to the Irish what they don't want, in order to put an end to the controversy by compromise. The objection to that course is twofold; first, that it will not for a moment stop the Irish agitation,—not nearly so effectually, indeed, as- a flat denial of their demand, and a positive assurance- that beyond perfect equality with England on the present system we cannot and will not go,—and next, that it will give Ireland fresh weapons for extorting more. It is a great and even a fatal mistake to suppose that Ireland loves compromise as England noes. She will take a com- promise, but never abide by it ; she will use it only to wrench out of our hands all that is withheld. That was- Mr. Parnell's frank avowal of what he had intended if ever he bad carried the Bill of 1886; and the Bill of 1886 was far in advance of anything that Mr. Bompas would con- sent to. What the Irish profess to desire is national separateness and distinctness, something to bring out their aspirations and genius as altogether outside those of the English people, and indeed in contrast to them. It is simply impossible to concede this without breaking-up the United Kingdom ; and that is precisely what the Irish agitators want. It was only because no means were provided or so. much as suggested by the Government, short of civil war, for enforcing the will of the Imperial Parliament, that the majority of the Irish Members accepted the Bill of last Session. They knew that civil war would only be declared in the last resort ; and they knew that they could foil any Imperial interference with their wishes, in nine cases out of ten, without bringing civil war upon themselves. They would not care a farthing for Home-rule (apart from its probable effect on the Land question) unless they could ignore and defeat the tactics of the Imperial Parliament. Compromise between the Unionists' policy and the Irish Home-rule policy is simply impossible. Either we must satisfy the Irish that they can't have what they want, and will never gain it, or we must give them frankly a Colonial Government. The former course is the only one for Unionists ; the latter means repeal of the Union, with all its dangers.
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