LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
PROFESSOR DICEY ON UNIONIST DELUSIONS.—IL [To Tar Boma or Tar .Brzerrrox..] Sts,—No idea more disastrously weakens the hands of Unionists than the belief that the Home-role controversy can be closed by a compromise; that the wishes of Nationalists may be gratified by the creation of an Irish Parliament, whilst the fears of Unionists are assuaged by precautions which deprive the Irish Parliament of all independent and effective authority ; that, in short, Unionists, Gladstonians, and Parnellites may all alike accept with satis- faction a new edition of Mr. Gladstone's Government of Ireland Bill, re-edited, amended, expurgated, and, as lawyers say, " settled " by Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain.
The belief is plausible ; it is encouraged by the loose talk of leaders who aim at conciliating opposition, it appeals to English love of moderation, it snits our lax habits of thought, it harmonises with the indolence or cowardice of the day. But for all this, the notion that human ingenuity can find a satisfactory half-way house lying somewhere between the maintenance of the Union and the concession to Ireland of genuine Home-rule, is a delusion. It is based on two suppositions neither of which rests on any solid foundation.
The first of these assumptions is that the difference which divides Unionists from Separatists is one which admits of adjustment. To hold this is to shut one's eyes to the nature of the matter in dispute. The maintainers of the Union believe that the United Kingdom is a nation, and has a right to be governed by the voice of its citizens. Home.rulers believe that the claims of Irish nationality are morally superior to the rights of the United Kingdom. The refusal to Ireland of a separate Parliament is the outward and visible sign of the unity of the United Kingdom. The creation of an Irish Parliament endowed with even the most limited powers, would be an open acknow- ledgment that the Home-role controversy had been morally determined in favour of the Irish Nationalists. No doubt the measure which embodied this decision might be filled with provisos, limitations, and guarantees ; it might be called a compromise; but in reality it would be no compromise at all, but simply a surrender masked under the form of grudging and ungracious concession.
The reason why Englishmen fail to see the impossibility of a compromise is worth notice. They have for many years been accustomed to a policy of quiet progressive reform; hence, as regards foreign no less than domestic affairs, they find it difficult to recognise the existence of those revolu- tionary crises which divide men into hostile camps, between whom arrangement, transaction, or accommodation is im- possible. It took the lifetime of a generation to teach England why it was that Austria and Italy could not come to terms as long as a single German soldier remained in Lombardy. Sensible men used to wonder that France should be dividedinto Imperialists and Irreconcilables. The War of Secession took Englishmen by surprise and filled them with perplexity. Why ehould the South, it was asked, break up the Union? Why should the North not let the South part in peace ? The one thing which in Italy, in France, in America, English good sense failed to perceive, was the existence of an "irrepressible con- flict." The blindness which has made us the worst judges of foreign affairs now vitiates our judgment of domestic policy. We cannot recognise revolution, and we confound a violent demand for revolutionary innovation with constitutional agitation for practical reform. The matter, however, is not one on which at this moment I care to insist farther. For though it be, for the sake of argument, granted that a Parliament may be conceded to Ireland without conceding the very principle which makes it worth while to fight for the Union, the belief in the merits of a compromise involves a second supposition less tenable, if possible, than the belief that essential differences of principle admit of accommodation.
This second assumption is that an incomplete, a limited, a restricted, or narrow form of Home-rule is less injurious to England than such a large and ample measure of Parliamentary independence as, for the moment at least, fully meets the demands of Irish Home-rulers. To put the same thing in another shape, it is assumed that if a Parliament be conceded to Ireland, the more restricted the powers given to it, the better for England. This idea is natural, and commends itself to many Unionists. At first eight, the supposition seems reasonable that whatever is refused to the Parnellites is gained by Unionists, and that if the Act of Union cannot be maintained, the next best thing to its maintenance is to relax as little as possible the bonds which bind together the islands which still make up the United Kingdom. And this notion would be true as well as plausible, if statesmanship were regulated by the principles of trade. But in matters of national policy we must free ourselves from the ideas of the counting-house ; we must adopt broad, liberal, and comprehen- sive views. Now, in the eyes of a Unionist the policy of Home-rule is so full of danger, that it ought to be resisted by every weapon of constitutional warfare. But if ever resistance should become vain, the object of every Unionist, as, indeed, of every man who cares for the welfare of the nation, should be to make sure that the country reaps all the gains which can by any possibility accrue from a rash experiment. The benefits which Home-rule offers, or affects to offer, are fourfold,—the close of agitation through the satisfaction of Irish demands; the strengthening of England through the increased power of the British Parliament, both in Great Britain and throughout the E mpire;—the fostering of Irish self-reliance ;—and, lastly, should the Home-rule experiment fail, such an absolute demonstration of its futility as may convince the English democracy that there is no choice between Separation and Union. No one, it need scarcely be said, is less inclined than myself to hope for these or any other blessings from any measure of Home-rule. What I do assert is, that the hope, well or ill founded, of attaining these benefits is the sole inducement which can be offered to England for adopting a scheme of government which the good sense and the conscience of the nation disapprove. Now, a moderate or limited form of Home-rule deprives England of every chance of obtaining the benefits for the sake of which Parliamentary independence will be granted, if at all, to Ireland. If the authority of the Irish Parliament be curtailed within the very narrowest possible limits, if the Irish Executive be placed under the real and substantial control of the English Cabinet, if the richest and most powerful portion of Ireland be placed outside the jurisdiction of the authority which rules at Dublin, ill- timed caution will produce all the worst effects of rashness. Ireland's demands will not have been satisfied ; hence Irish agitation will not even for a time come to an end ; hence, further, England will not be delivered from the embarrassments and weakness resulting from Irish discontent; and let it be noted that even were the British Parliament freed from the obstruction of the Irish Members, English constituencies would still be influenced by the Irish vote. England cannot at once retain the practical control of the Irish administration and be quit of the harassing responsibility for the government of Ireland. if the power of the Irish Parliament is small, if the jurisdiction of the Irish Executive is limited, the English Parlia- ment must still legislate for Ireland, and the English Cabinet must still govern Ireland. Home-rule limited by restrictions, means, in short, nothing else than dual control. Dual control in Ireland will, as in Egypt, prove the most unworkable of arrange- ments. Dual ownership of land is now admitted to be almost an impossible system of tenure. It were hardly rash to anticipate that an Irish Parliament will not have sat for two years before all the world perceives that dual government is as dangerous a system as dual ownership. In any case, a scheme which Irish Nationalists may, indeed, accept for the moment, because it gives them, at any rate, an Irish Parliament, but which they will accept under protest, is as unfortunate a basis for concord as the imagination can picture. Half-measures are not safe measures. Concessions intended to extinguish discontent must, just because they do not satisfy the demands of the die- contented, stimulate and strengthen agitation. We need not look far afield to see the result of bit-by-bit innovation. The tale of experiments in reforming Irish land tenure is fall of warning against the danger which may attend hesitating experiments in Constitution-making. The Land Act of 1870 was intended, I presume, to be a final arrangement. The Land Act of 1881 was assuredly framed as a final settlement. The Land Act of 1881 is now scouted by its authors. The Land Act of 1887 is avowedly a stop-gap. The agitations of seventeen years leave the law as to the ownership of land in Ireland still in effect unsettled ; and men of all parties, who agree in nothing else, are now so far of a mind as to be convinced that bit-by-bit reform in the tenure of land is a mistake, and that a change in the law governing the right to the eoil of a country is a revolution which, if attempted at all, must be carried through with boldness, with decision, with rapidity. It were pedantry to force further the parallel between the attempt to reform the tenure of land in Ireland by measures which might not alarm English landowners, and the en- deavour to inaugurate Home-rule by a compromise which might soothe the fears of English Constitutionalists. Such a measure, again, cannot from the nature of things stimulate Irish self-reliance, and this for two reasons,—the talents, in the first place, which Irish statesmen should direct to curing the diseases under which Ireland suffers, will, if the powers of the Irish Parliament be limited, be turned towards the easier and more congenial occupation of extracting further concessions from England; any failure, in the second place, of a native Government to ensure the prosperity of the country, will be attributed by Irish and by English opinion also, to the restrictions placed on the Parliamentary independence of Ireland. Hence, lastly, and this is a matter of supreme importance, the experiment of Home-rule will from the first be vitiated, and should it fail, will yield no decisive instruction. If Unionists attribute the failure to the inherent defects of a policy which they have never approved, Home-rulers will as cer- tainly believe, and from their own point of view not without good reason, that the breakdown of the system which they have advocated is due to the fact that their plan has never had a full trial, and that the Parliament granted to Ireland has been restrained from exercising the authority claimed for an Irish. Parliament by Irish patriots. I am no admirer of Mr. Gladstone; but in this matter Mr. Gladstone seems to me to see further than converts to Gladstonianism,who, anxious to conceal from them- selves their own changes of opinion, try to extort from their leader concessions essentially inconsistent with the spirit of his policy. The last Gladstonian formula I have read—namely, the necessity of granting to Ireland "the powers necessary for Home-rule to a nationality "—has, indeed, the vagueness of other formulae which have proceeded from the same source, but it contains an element of truth. If Home-rule is to be conceded to Ireland, then the majority of Irishmen must assuredly be given the powers necessary to make them rulers at home. From this point of view, the Bill for the Government of Ireland may be censured not because it went too far, but because it did not go far enough. Its safeguards, its restrictions, its provisos, were worthless; they hampered the action of England without placing any salutary control on the action of Ireland. If the day should come, ominous of misfortune to England and Ireland alike, when Ireland receives a Parliament of her own, the best model for statesmanship to follow in framing a Constitution for a country which will, in fact, be a Dependency, is afforded by the Constitution of such colonies as Victoria. The gift to Ireland of Colonial independence would make Home-rale a reality, would free the Parliament of Westminster from Irish representatives, and would leave to the Parliament at Westminster the only power worth retaining,—the power of annulling by Act of Parliament a Constitution which an Act of Parliament has created. If any one urges that the grant of Colonial independence to Ireland may bring heavy trouble on England, I am not con- cerned to contradict him ; for Home-rule in all or any of its shapes is, in my judgment, full of peril to Great Britain. If any objector urges that to give real authority to the Irish Parliament involves injustice to large bodies of loyal Irishmen, I admit the force of the objection, and take leave to point out that any argument against the justice or wisdom of entrusting true power to an Irish Legislature, is, in fact, an argument against every form of Home-rule.
The case, then, stands thus:—The demand for Home-rule is one which must either be honestly refused or honestly granted. A compromise between maintenance of the Union and the concession of Parliamentary independence to Ireland is, of all courses, the worst. The so called compromise is in principle a surrender, and the surrender, because it pretends to be a compromise, is made on terms which deprive concession at once of its grace and of its possible benefits. Turn the matter which way you will, honest Unionists must dismiss all thoughts of negotiation, and fight on for the maintenance of the Union.—I am, Sir, die., A. V. DICEY.
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