"HOME-RULE ALL ROTTND."
most notable thing said during the course of the Election has passed with comparatively little notice. This was Mr. Lloyd George's answer at Bangor on Friday week to a question put to him in regard to Home-rule. Home-rule would, he declared, be introduced "at the first available moment." It was absolutely essential for the efficiency of the Imperial Parliament :— "It is not merely extending self-government to Ireland. Wales wants self-government. Scotland wants self-government. England wants self-government. We are treading on each other's toes in Parliament, and are not doing any work because the Imperial Parliament looks after matters of the greatest moment which could concern Councils, and is attending to trivial matters which would be beneath the attention of many a County Council. After disposing of the veto of the House of Lords, the first thing will be to reconstruct our present Imperial machinery in such a way as to free the House of Commons from trivial local and provincial details which can be attended to so much better in the districts concerned, in order to leave Parliament untaxed for the purpose of attending to the immense Imperial questions that are awaiting consideration."
These words clearly cannot be regarded as a piece of platform rhetoric. They show conclusively that what the Government have in their minds is not a special and separate measure for Ireland, but" Home-rule all round,"— a comprehensive plan for altering our present system of government which, according to the extent of the powers devolved, will be either a system of Federalism—something in the nature of that which exists in the United States, in the cantons of Switzerland, or, to get a closer analogy, in the Dominion of Canada or the Commonwealth of Australia—or else a system of Devolution which will establish wider local government than that which exists now, and with much larger areas, but which nevertheless will in its essence be local government.
In regard to these two schemes, either of which will fit Mr. Lloyd George's words, we venture to lay down the following proposition. If the principles of the Govern- ment Bill—whatever they may be—are honestly and impartially applied to Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and to Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria, and Strathclyde, or what- ever may be the names of the cantons into which England will be split, one of two things must happen. Either the type of self-government given to Ireland will be wholly unsatisfactory to her, will not meet her national aspirations, and consequently will be rejected by her with scorn as " gas-and-water " Home-rule, or else the powers given to Scotland, Wales, and the four English cantons will be so large that the voters will quickly recognise that the United Kingdom is being destroyed, and the safety and welfare of the realm put in deadly jeopardy. This is no mere dialectical dilemma, but a very real difficulty, with which the Government will at once find themselves face to face when they begin to draw their Bill for "Home-rule all round." Theoretically no doubt it might be met by applying a totally different system to Ireland, but we venture to say that in practice this will be found impos- sible, provided that the Government are to proceed by means of a. Bill applicable to the whole of the United Kingdom. If they are going to treat Ireland on a different footing, they will have to introduce a Bill dealing with Ireland alone, and to leave Home-rule for the other parts of the United. Kingdom over for further and better con- sideration. We need not, however, argue on the pre- sumption that the Government will take this course, for Mr. Lloyd George has told us distinctly that the intention of the Government is "Home-rule all round," and at once.
We are bound, then, to assume that the Government proposal will be for "gas-and-water" Home-rule, or glorified local government for the various units into which the United Kingdom is to be divided. The first difficulty which such a scheme will encounter, and it is a difficulty of a very grave kind, is that the Irish Nationalists will, as we have said above, utterly refuse to accept any scheme which will be suitable to the rest of the United Kingdom. It is not, remember, enough to get Mr. Redmond's consent while he is at Westminster. The consent of Mr. Redmond in Ireland and also of Mr. Redmond in America will be necessary, and, as the history of Mr. Birrell's Councils Bill showed, these are very ,different things. To illustrate the kind of reception which " gas-and-water " Home-rule for Ireland is likely to meet, we may point to an article in a New York newspaper, the Gaelic.. American of December 3rd, which.was quoted in the Daily Mail of Wednesday under the heading of '11The Clan-na-Gael Denounces Surrender." Our readers must remember that the Clan-na-Gael is not what English Home-rulers are often inclined to call a "phantasm of Unionist imagination," but a very real and a very important body of extremists both in America and in Ireland. Here are the words of the New York Clan-na-Gael Manifesto :— " We, the Clan-na-Gael of New York, assembled to honour the
memory of the men judicially murdered on the scaffold in Man- chester on November 23, 1867, for their devotion to Ireland, reaffirm our allegiance to the cause of Irish National Independ- ence for which the martyrs gave up their lives. We pledge to the people of Ireland our continued support to enable them to shake off the English yoke, to sever all political connection with England, and to erect on Irish soil an Independent National Government, under which all Irishmen, irrespective of creed, race
or class, shall have equal rights, and whose sole object shall be to protect the interests and uphold the honour of the whole Irish people. We denounce as a deliberate betrayal of Ireland the statements recently made in the United States and Canada by John E. Redmond and T. P. O'Connor—evidently by prearrange- ment with the British Government—that Ireland is willing to renounce her God-given right to nationhood and to accept in lieu thereof, as a final settlement of her differences with England, a petty local legislative Assembly having no power over the most vital interests of the country and subordinate to the British Imperial Parliament, and we brand as a shameless falsehood the assertion that such a beggar's pittance would be, either in form or substance, the same as the Home Rule which Charles Stewart Parnell was willing to accept as a first instalment of Ireland's rights. We warn our American fellow-citizens that all money contributed to the party of which these men are the leaders is used for the purpose of suppressing the free expression of public opinion in Ireland, of dominating conventions by fraudulent delegates and controlling elections by improper methods. The sending of money to Ireland to support the anti-National pro- gramme, now openly avowed by Redmond and O'Connor, is aiding the enemies of Ireland in an attempt to destroy Irish nationality and to corrupt the public life of Ireland."
The Manifesto of the members of the Clan-na-Gael ends with a passage which deserves attention from another point of view. One of the arguments often used by English Home-rulers is that if we grant some moderate scheme of self-government to Ireland, we shall by that process convert millions of enemies of the British Empire now living either in the United States or in the Colonies into loyal and grateful friends. Mr. Winston Churchill used this argument on Tuesday night when he spoke for the Radical candidate in the Isle of Wight, Mr. Scarra- manga Rath. After declaring that the Irish people were only asking for a Legislature which should be definitely subordinate to the Parliament at Westminster, and subject, to use Mr. Redmond's own words, "to the overriding power of the Imperial Parliament," Mr. Churchill proceeded :— "What an advantage it would be if we could only make friends with the Irish race, a gifted race, and an influential race, widely scattered over the world, in our Colonies and in the United States. They had great influence in those places, and that influence had often been exerted through misunderstanding and quarrels which existed to the detriment of the democracy of this country. We now had a chance of settling the old quarrel, the same as in South Africa, and of putting behind us the hatred, disaster, and tragedy of generations.'
The only comment we shall make on these words is to quote the following passage from the Manifesto of the Clan-na-Gael :— "We thank our German fellow-citizens throughout the land for their splendid co-operation in frustrating all attempts to bring about an Anglo-American alliance. We pledge to them and to the Fatherland our utmost support, moral and material, in any struggle that may come between Germany and England, and assure them that neither Redmond, O'Connor, nor any man has the right to promise that Irish citizens of this Republic will forgo, or abate in the smallest degree, their opposition to an Anglo- American alliance, in consideration of any concessions whatever that may be made by England to Ireland. We oppose that alli- ance because we know it would be injurious to the best interests of the United States and fraught with disaster and dishonour for the American people, and we resent as an insult the imputation that the action of Irish citizens on American public questions is governed by any but American considerations, or can be influenced by the intrigues or manipulations of British politicians. We congratulate the Gaelic League on its victory in forcing an un- willing Senate appointed by the foreign Government to make Irish compulsory in the National University in 1913, and we pledge our continued support in its efforts to restore the old tongue of the Gael as the national language of Ireland."
In a word, these American Irishmen tell their German fellow-citizens that even if Home-rule is granted, the Irish will carry on the vendetta against Britain in the old spirit, and will oppose as fiercely as ever the promotion of good feeling between us and the United States.
We shall be told, no doubt, that no sensible person need attend to these fulminations of the Clan-na-Gael, and that we are utterly wrong in thinking that the Irish will, when it comes to the point, object to a form of Home-rule which will be applicable to Wales, Scotland, and England, either partitioned or unpartitioned. Let us for the purposes of argument assume that this is so, and that Devolution, or glorified local government, is all that is now expected, or even desired, by the Nationalists. If that is the case, it will surely be not unreasonable to demand that the North-Eastern portion of Ulster—that is, Belfast and those counties in which the anti-Home-rulers have a. majority—shall have separate treatment. If the Welsh counties, which are administratively nothing but portions of England, can have separate treatment, why should not certain counties of Ireland ? Under what prin- ciple of political equity can Cardiff receive treatment which cannot be given to Belfast ? If we are setting out to recognise national aspirations and to re-establish an independent or semi-independent Ireland, one can under- stand, even if one does not agree with, the argument that Ireland must not be broken up. But if one is simply establishing a, system of better local government and of Devolution in order to improve the legislative machine here, how is it possible to deny separate treatment to the North-Eastern counties of Ireland, especially when such separate treatment will clearly prevent many great incon- veniences,—to use the mildest possible word ? Granted that the Government scheme is to be a scheme of Devohi- tion, the case for separate treatment for the North-Eastern counties is unanswerable.
We have not dealt on the present occasion with the financial difficulties of a system of "Home-rule all round," but to this we shall return at a future date. We desire, however, once more to warn the people of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland that it will be absolutely impossible under a system of Devolution, or local self-government, or Federalism, or whatever else may be the name, to continue the practice, which is a, very proper one for a truly united kingdom, of making the richer portions of that kingdom help the poorer parts. If you pool finance, you must pool not only your administrative but also your legislative powers. The "power of the purse" and the maxim "He who pays the piper calls the tune" are not empty rhetoric, but the bed-rock foundations of civil government.
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