BOOKS

A FOOL'S PARADISE.* VEOFESSOE DICEY has set himself a task which, to a man of his age and antecedents, cannot well be other than irksome. He has been a life-long opponent of the principle of Home Rule, and

for more than a quarter of a century he has stated and re-stated whet he holds to be its root error. In his latest book he for the most part puts this aspect of the question on one side. A Peors Paradise is not an argument against Home Rule in the

abstract; it is a criticism, and a very destructive criticism, of the particular Home Rule project which now awaits the mechanical operation of the Parliament Act. That project has, he thinks, and we thoroughly agree with him, the fatal

fault of achieving its end "by the most vicious and dangerous a all methods." The Bill, if it ultimately becomes law,

will not secure any one of the benefits which English Home

Rulers expect from it. It "will not maintain in Ireland the true supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. It will not relieve the Imperial Parliament from the burden of considering Irish affairs. It will not conciliate Ireland."- Upon the first of these points the language of the Home Rule Bill seems at first sight

fatal to his argument. CouldProfessor Dicey himself draft any more-effective provision than the clause which enacts that "not- withstanding the establishment of the Irish Parliament . . the supreme power and authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall be unaffected and undiminished within Ireland and every part thereof "? After the passing of the Bill on the 14th of May, 1914, the Imperial Parliament will "have, in theory at least, unlimited power to legislate for Ireland," and though the Irish Parliament will have power to repeal any 'Act of the Imperial Parliament passed before that day, the Imperial Parliament can at once re-enact it, and when so re-enacted it cannot be repealed by the Irish Parliament. Professor Dicey disposes of the safe- guards set up in these provisions by a reference to the relation in which the Imperial Parliament stands to the Parliaments of the self-governing Dominions. There are many laws which the Imperial Parliament might pass with reference to the Dominions which it is quite certain that it will not pass. In the same way the point of real moment in reference to the, Home Rule Bill is not what laws the Imperial Parliament may make for Ireland but what laws it is likely to make. Upon the answer to this latter question hangs the whole significance of Home Rule. Judged by the letter, the Bill creates merely a subordinate legislature. Then why call it a Parliament? If the object of the Bill is to convey a particular meaning why use a term which may carry either

that meaning or another ? Professor Dicey finds an answer to this question in the desire of the Government to postpone the moment when the English Home Rulers will discover that what they are really giving. Ireland is something altogether different from what they suppose, and from what the Irish Home Rulers intend to make it.

"Irish Nationalists will hardly tell the electors who have sent them to Parliament that the tradition of the legislative indepen- dence of the Parliament of Ireland which 3folynenx, Flood, Grattan, and O'Connell handed down to Parnell has been. formally rendered by the Home Rule Bill of 1912, and surrendered by Nationalists at the very moment when the representation of

• 1 Fiore Paradise. By A. V. Dicey. Loudon John Murray. Ns. Bd. net,1 Ireland at Westminster is to be reduced below the number of members which she could claim as part of the United Kingdom. Irish members will surely not announce at Dublin that they have in the Home Rule Bill acknowledged the Insh Parliament's legisl lative subordination to England.. . Au agreement between England and Ireland to which Englishmen already give one interpretation and Irishmen give another can beget nothing bat discord."

Professor Dicey sees, however, a real advantage in the nominal. maintenance in the Home Rule Bill of the supremacy of the-

Imperial Parliament. It will be useless for its apparent purpose,. but it will be of great value for a purpose which has probably not occurred to its authors. As the Bill stands it "leaves in

the hands of the Parliament at Westminster the constitutional right and the legal power to carry through a coup d'eiat under legal forms.. . If ever the existence or the safety of England is deemed by Englishmefi to be inconsistent with the maintenance of Home Rule in Ireland, England will

remember that an omnipotent Parliament can destroy the Constitution of which it was the creator." We have no

doubt that this forecast is absolutely accurate, and it may be convenient that the necessary coup d'itat should be "carried, through under legal forms." Professor Dicey goes on to argue that if the Unionists get a majority at the next general election they will be "under a constitutional and moral duty

to suspend, to modify, or to repeal in tote a' ome Rule Act passed against the will of the nation." We agree in principle, but differ as to the manner of carrying it out. If the terrible evil of the passing of a Home Rule Act were to come about, we are inclined to think that the better plan would be to allow any Irish counties, a majority of whose electors so desired, to contract themselves out of the Act and become English counties, a proportionate reduction being Made in the subsidy to Ireland. The immediate result would be the secession

of five or possibly six counties in the north. Later, other counties would, on economic grounds, probably follow suit,

till at last the whole ridiculous constitutional and fiscal machinery of the present Bill would break down. But though we hold that if repeal were to become necessaiy this would be the best way to carry it out, we do not believe

it will ever be necessary. Mischievous as, the Parliament Act is, we doubt whether it will prove strong enough to force on the nation a measure to which a majority of the English electorate is actively opposed. There will, we are convinced*, be a disiolution before the third time of asking.

Professor Dicey hal3 no difficulty in proving that if the Home Rule Bill is not passed in a way to recommend it to English- men it less calculated to conciliate nisittnen.. Ireland is a poor country," and if her revenue" does not meet her wants it can only be permanently increased in one of two ways. Either Irish expenditure must be cub down or. Irish,

taxation must be increased. Under the former head there is probably a good deal to be done, thoUgh whether Irish- men will be any more inclined to. -restrain their passion for

State doles than Englishmen have lately shown themselves. may well be doubted. If 'an Irish Finance Minister' borroiva his policy from Mr. Lloyd George, a growing expenditure will necessitate a growing taxation, and in this :direction the Irish.

Parliament will find its bands tied in ways and to an extent., which can hardly be other than provoking. It is-only natural.

that a newly made Parliament should wish to share the power of levying its own taxes for its own purpOses which its creator, exercises so freely. If Ireland is fit to govern herself she "will not long submit to an irritating financial disability. What ia the expedient for raising money to which every colony ilea resorted as a matter of course when it has found itself face to face with the problem how to make two ends meet ? ; The taxation of imports. That is a policy which from 184.i: to 1908 England has rejected for herself, . but .she haa never attempted to exact a similar rejection from . her daughter communities. "The English Parlianient has. not denied to any self-governing colony the right, to impose, protective duties on imports, even. when those duties told against England." Yet this elementary right, the right of, raising the local revenue in whatever way seems most convenient or most fruitful to the local Parliament, is denied to Ireland by the Home Rule Bill of 1912. Moreover, this restriction is imposed in circumstances which make it specially offensive. "The cost of the government of Ireland amounts to about;

£12,350,000, whilst the true revenue of Ireland amounts to about £10,840,000." Consequently, "if Parliament conferred: upon Ireland Home Rule as in New Zealand, she would be called upon to meet a deficit of at least £1,500,000." But if Home Rule in Ireland meant the same thing as Home Rule in New Zealand, Ireland would be free to do what has been done by every one of the Dominions. In that case she would almost certainly impose duties on imports. As it is, the Imperial Government ostentatiously leaves the Irish Parlia- ment free to cut its financial coat in any fashion it pleases, but it strictly limits the amount of the cloth from which it is to be made. There is an additional insult in the fact that

this deficit is the creation of the English Government.. In the estimated Irish expenditure is included the cost of Old Age Pensions and of National Insurance, making a total of R2,855,500. But instead of leaving Ireland free to adopt or go without these measures a Government of English Home Rulers has imposed theth upon her, and has thus " wiped out the surplus of Irish revenue over Irish expenditure and created a deficit." The complicated arrangements which the Bill makes to meet this deficit seem expressly devised to cause equal displeasure in Ireland and in Great Britain.

Upon what is perhaps the worst feature of the Bill Professor Dicey is content to quote once more the words of "the sincerest of English Home Rulers, Lord Morley of Blackburn," and we cannot do better than follow his example :-

" Depend upon it that an Irish legislature will not be up to the magnitude of the enormous business that is going to be cast upon it unless you leave all the brains that Irish public men have got to do Irish work in Ireland. Depend upon this, too, that if you have one sot of Irish members in London it is a moral certainty that disturbing rivalries, disturbing intrigues, would spring up, and that the natural and wholesome play of forces and parties and leaders in the Irish Assembly would be complicated and confused and thrown out of gear by the separate representation of the country."

This was said in 1886, but Lord Morley has never been able to answer his own arguments, nor has he found anyone else .sufficient for the task.

Considerations of space have compelled us to notice only a few of Professor Dicey's positions. But the whole volume

is not a large one—deserves the most careful study by Home Rulers at least as much as by Unionists. Professor Dicey has done notable service for the Union in the past, but we venture to say that he has never done better work than in this masterly analysis of that nightmare of legislation, the Home Rule Bill of 1913. His book is a magnificent piece of political anatomizing: