TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE HOME RULE DEBATE.
IT would be difficult to produce a more striking example of impotence in debate than that displayed by the Liberal Party in the third reading of the Home Rule Bill. Owing to the restrictions of time placed upon the discussion, the Opposition had to make use of one, and only one, of the many overwhelming arguments against Home Rule. Very wisely they chose the Ulster argument. Their choice was wise, for this reason. In all controversies that argument is strongest and most likely to convince which least challenges the premises of your opponent. Choose the argument which is destructive of the enemy's contention even though you accept his facts. It is always better, if you can, to show a man that he has reached a false conclusion on his own facts than to dispute about those facts, for men can and must agree as to logic even though they disagree absolutely as to circumstances. Therefore Mr. Bonar Law rightly chose the -Ulster argument. And never was that argument more clearly or more convincingly stated.
The Liberals are not destroying the -Union, breaking up the legislature at Westminster, putting an end to the Customs union between the two islands, and generally turning the Constitution inside out on some abstract and pedantic point or out of sheer love of change. They are admittedly making this tremendous revolution in the relations between the various parts of the United King- dom because the local majority in that portion of the United Kingdom called Ireland demands that Ireland's domestic affairs shall be governed by a Dublin Parliament and Ministry, and declares that it is unjust not to establish such self-government. But in Ireland there is in the north-east corner a locality which, with quite as great sincerity and quite as great energy as is shown in southern Ireland, demands that it shall decide for itself under what system its domestic affairs shall be governed—demands that it shall be accorded either separate treatment or, better still, shall be left as it is. The Protestants of North-East Ulster, who in race, religion, and manners differ quite as much from the rest of Ireland as the south of Ireland differs from England or Scotland, declare that if the principle of the will of the local majority is to be applied to the south of Ireland, it must be applied also to them, because they fulfil every one of the conditions upon which the Irish demand can with any justice or accuracy be based. They have got plenty of arguments, as we have got plenty of arguments, based on Imperial policy, based on financial policy, based on a hundred points of expediency, which forbid any break-up of the legislative union, quite apart from the Ulster argument. But for the moment they do not press these. Least of all do they attempt to say that North-East Ulster by itself has a right to veto a scheme of Home Rule for the southern Irish and for a separate Parliament and a separate Executive for the south of Ireland. They think the scheme injurious, but they admit that they cannot claim a moral right to prevent it if the rest of the United Kingdom desires to grant it. All they say is that the United Kingdom has no moral right to force them under a Dublin Parliament in the name of the right of the southern Irish to local self-government. The Union exists and holds the field. If Ireland has the right to demand self-government from the rest of the United Kingdom, then North-East Ulster has clearly as good a right to demand it on the same grounds from Ireland. " We cannot and do not claim the right to dictate how the south of Ireland is to be governed, but we do argue that if we are not to be governed from Westminster we ought to be allowed to regulate our own domestic affairs, and not have them regulated for us by a Dublin Parliament dominated by men who differ from us in religion, in race, and in civic ideals." That is the case of the Protestants of North-East Ulster.
We desire to deal with Mr. Asquith's attempt to answer this case with all possible moderation and fairness. We have read and re-read every word of his speech in order that we may not misrepresent his argument. The result of the anxious attention we have given to his contentions is the conviction that he has no argument to bring forward, that he can only meet the Ulster argument by an evasion. Since the speaker was Mr. Asquith, who is one of the greatest masters of Parliamentary dialectic, the evasion was concealed with extraordinary plausibility. None the less, it was evasion pure and simple. In effect Mr. Asquith argued : "It is not true to say that you do not attempt to dictate to the United Kingdom how the people of the rest of Ireland are to be governed, and do not attempt to prevent the United Kingdom, as a whole, enacting that the will of the local majority shall prevail in Ireland. The proof that you are so dictating is to be found in the fact that the men of North-East Ulster will not, if exclusion or separate treatment is granted, agree to Home Rule for the rest of Ireland." It is on their refusal, or rather patent inability, to say that such exclusion would justify the destruction of the Union or make a bad Bill into a good Bill that Mr. Asquith has the audacity to pre- tend that he has a moral, or if you will a logical, right to deny the demand of North-East Ulster.
The complete failure and the tyrannical injustice of Mr. Asquith's contention that the Ulstermen have no right to ask for exclusion and separate treatment unless they are also willing to swear that his Bill is a good Bill and that the Union ought to be broken up may best be exposed by an illustrative apologue. " A " is an inventor who designs a very bad and dangerous type of steam roller which he declares is the finest thing in the world, and which he insists on placing on the streets. "B" warns him that the engine is utterly wrong in design, that it is terribly costly, that the brakes will not act properly downhill, and that it is sure to cause an accident. "A" refuses to admit any of these criticisms, but defends his design with the utmost determination. " B " thereupon says : "It is clear we shall never agree about the virtues of your machine, but, at any rate, let me implore you to fit it with a safety valve. If you do not, a terrible explosion is sure to take place almost at once. Even granted that your machine is all you say it is in other respects, you ought not to expose the people in the streets to such a risk." " A " thereupon in effect admits that safety valves are good things, and that his machine would be the better for one, and he goes on to propose a bargain to "B" in these terms. " Perhaps there is something in what you say about safety valves. At any rate I will agree to fit one to my engine if you ask me to do so, but only on one condition. If I agree to putting in a safety valve, you and your friends must sign a paper withdrawing all your criticisms of my engine, admitting that it is as good as possible, agreeing that it ought to be put upon the streets at once, and sharing the responsibility for whatever happens to it when it is working." "B" of course replies : "I and my friends cannot possibly do that. With a safety valve fitted we shall have got rid, of the danger of an instant explosion, but the design of the engine will of course still remain faulty and dangerous in a high degree. It is most unreasonable and most unjust of you to suppose that we can make what we know to be false statements in order to bribe you to do your admitted duty in the matter of the safety valve. You must not use our anxious insistence on your obligation to do a plain duty in one particular to blackmail us into saying what we believe to be utterly untrue." Now if such a conversation had taken place, what should we say if " A " thereupon declared that he would not have any more discussion of the subject, that "B" was obviously acting in bad faith, and that the argument for the safety valve had been defeated on its merits ?
Yet this is what Mr. Asquith is doing. He tries to ride clown the arguments for exclusion and separate treat- ment because—on the assumption that Home Rule must be enacted—those who urge the exclusion of North- East Ulster as a safety valve will not undertake to express approval of Home Rule for the rest of Ireland. A more shameless attempt to confuse the issue 1N-as never made. One would imagine that Mr. Asquith did not know that there are such things as degrees of badness. It is perfectly fair and perfectly reasonable in argument to say : " You have no right to cut down that tree at all, but if you insist on doing so, at any rate cut it down in such a way that it will not fall on to the roof of the house underneath it, but will only fall across the road, where, though it will do harm, it will do less harm." Mr. Asquith would have us believe that a proper answer to this is to say "I will only spare the house if you will agree to the tree falling on the road and declare that there is no harm in its doing so." In a word, Mr. Asquith could meet the Ulster contention only by a line of argument of which we may be certain that a man of his great ability and penetration of mind must at heart have been utterly ashamed.
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