[To THE EDITOR on THE “fhownrOs."] SIR,—Professor Dicey has written
so powerfnl an argument against Home-rule, that many Liberals who maintain their allegiance to the cause are obliged reluctantly to admit that he has not yet been answered ; and that when Ireland is righted, we shall have to encounter some, at all events, of the risks to our Constitution which he has stated with such legal accuracy and literary force.
Anything that Professor Dicey says upon the subject claims the respectful attention of all earnest Liberals. As one of those, I beg your permission to enter a protest against the earlier portion of his letter on " Unionist Delusions," in your impression of August 6th.
Mr. Dicey reasons thus The abandonment of the Land- purchase Bill is not a concession which should please any honourable man, because it means that the Irish landlord's property is to be " taken from him for the benefit of the State" without compensation ; whereas even the English Abolitionists (of West Indian slavery) " rightly preferred that England should pay twenty millions, rather than that the emancipation of the slaves should be tarnished by the suspicion of injustice to slave- owners." Sir, I venture, with the sincerest respect for Professor Dicey, to question both the assumptions involved in this argument. That the Irish Parliament will want to acquire the Irish land for the Irish people is likely enough, though I doubt whether our expectations on that point ought to be made part of an argument which, both in its parts and in its form, has the appearance of strict legality. But if Gladetonian Liberals share this expectation with Professor Dicey, that affords no ground for the supposition that Irish landlords are to be subjected to violence or spoliation. Mr. Gladstone has offered Home-rule coupled with Land-purchase. The offer was rejected. If, now, Home- rule be offered without Land-purchase, it does not mean that the land is to be stolen, but that the policy and the conditions of purchase are to be left to the Irish people, of whom the land- lords are a part.
The other assumption, in respect of the English Abolitionists, I believe to be historically inaccurate. They were so much in earnest about emancipation that they were willing to pay twenty millions for it rather than not have it. Their object was aboli- tion, and compensation was forced on them, as some kind of compromise is always forced on political reformers in England. Bat on what evidence does Professor Dicey say they " preferred" the policy of compensation, or assume that England would have been dishonoured if they had not done so P Were the United States dishonoured when they abolished slavery without com- pensation? Yet slavery was a domestic institution in some of them, as it never was in England, and the commercial value of the slaves much greater than in the West Indies.
The second part of Professor Dicey's argument, that relating to the continued presence of Irish Members at Westminster, I must leave to wiser people, only remarking, with regret, about the cock-sure tone of it, that it but poorly illustrates the judi- cious and weighty sentence with which the author closed his most important work," England's Case," a sentence which sank deep into my memory, and which I desire to recall to his remem- brance :—" At this great crisis in the fortunes of our country, when every course is involved in undeniable perplexity, and surrounded by admitted danger." When every course is attended by perplexities and dangers, it is the duty of a prac- tical statesman to compare andweigh them. It is not sufficient to say or to show, with whatever skill, that a particular course brings its special risks. The worst course of all, because the most dangerous to the highest interests of the State, may well be to leave things alone.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Tontresina, Grimm?, August 10th. Cautrus BRANCH.
[1. The Land-pnrchase Bill was described as intended to meet an "obligation of honour." The failure to meet such an obligation may be rightly described as "dishonour- able." If this obligation existed in 1886, it still exists in 1887. Nothing which has happened has lessened its moral force. No one can seriously contend that an Irish landlord sacrificed any fair claim for compensation by the fact that, in common with the majority of the electors of the United Kingdom, he voted for the maintenance of the Union. Owners of land in Ireland are still members of the United Kingdom, and have still a claim to be treated on the principles which are held just when applied to the owners of land or other property in Middlesex or in Midlothian. We cannot believe Mr. Branch to contend that an Irish Parliament, elected by Irish tenants, and guided by Mr. Dillon or Mr. Davitt, would take the land of Irish landlords on terms which Englishmen or Scotchmen would deem fair. To leave the "policy and conditions of purchase to the Irish people," is in effect to let Irish tenants fix the price at which they will purchase their landlords' property. There is no great difficulty in conjecturing the amount of the price which will be paid. 2. That the English nation paid twenty millions to slave-owners, in compensation for the loss of their property, has always been cited as a noble example of English fair-dealing. There is no reason for denying to the Abolitionists of the United States their share of credit for an act of national justice. The Civil War affected the whole conditions under which slavery was abolished in the United States. 3. Letters written to a newspaper belong to a class of composition which, as it demands above all things brevity and clearness, does not admit of the qualifications and reservations proper to a treatise. The statement, however, that the retention of Irish representatives at Westminster destroys the advantages hoped for from their banishment to Dublin, is so nearly self-evident, that a writer may allowably make it in a tone of confidence.—En. Spectator.]
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