THE LIBERAL PARTY AND HOME-RULE.
MR. ISAAC BUTT is greatly offended with Lord Harting- ton for saying that no English party can afford to take up Home-rule, and that in point of fact, if the Home-rulers have any special affinities with one party rather than another in the State, it is certainly not with the Liberals that that affinity exists. He illustrated this by taking the case of de- nominational education, which he regards, we suppose, as one of the first results which Home-rule would secure for Ireland. Now certainly the Conservatives have always been, in England at least, more disposed to approve denomintational education than the Liberals. We admit that it does not quite follow that because they defend denominational education when it means education directed by English Protestant or Anglican clergymen, they would equally defend it when it means education directed by Irish Roman Catholic priests. The Conservatives are hardly the logical party. It is rather the Liberals than the Conserva- tives who are disposed to apply principles once conceded against the grain of their own sympathies and tastes. And we are quite ready to admit that of those Liberals and Conservatives who had once accepted the principle of denomi- national education, a larger proportion of Liberals, and a smaller proportion of Conservatives, would probably be ready to extend it to the case of Ireland. So far, we do not quite go with 'Lord Hartington. But it must be admitted at once, so far as regards the principle alone, and not its application to Ireland, that there is much more affinity between the principle of the Conservative party on Education and the Education policy in which the system of Irish Home-rule would pro- bably issue, than between the principle of the Liberal party on Education and the same policy. A great number of Liberals wish for a State secular education absolutely divorced
from all religious teaching ; a good number more, among whom we should reckon ourselves, prefer greatly unsectarian religious teaching in State schools, with a conscience-clause for the protection of those whose parents object to it ; but very few Liberals heartily like thoroughly denominational education, paid for by public rates and taxes. If, then, there be any point on which the Liberal party are likely to object strongly to the results of an Irish Home-rule policy, it would be on the point of denominational education. And so far, Lord Hartington's remark is certainly justified.
But it might very well be argued that Liberals have largely accepted Mr. Gladstone's admission, that in matters not of Imperial, but of local concern, the true Liberal policy, because the policy which gives the largest scope to the principles of self-government, is to let Ireland be governed by Irish ideas,— and that if this be admitted, we cannot go behind the principle,
and quarrel with the unpleasant results it brings about in a certain case, on the score of distaste for these results. And
this we should admit. But the Home-rulers make too much
of this admission, when they argue that, because it gives a fuller scope to the principle of self-government, Home-rule is a
more truly Liberal policy than the Parliamentary rule of the whole United Kingdom. Before we can accede to that, we must consider how far 'Particularist policies' in general really contribute to the progress of the cause which the Liberal party have chiefly at heart. Was the Particularist, or States- rights policy Liberal or reactionary in the United States ?
Notoriously reactionary, for it was defended in the interest of the institution of Slavery, and put forward as the only decent disguise of that interest. Again, has the Particularist policy in any part of Europe been the policy of the Liberals of that part of Europe ? Were the Particularists of Italy, for instance,—the friends of a separate Tuscany, and Lom- bardy, and Naples, before 1859-60,—among the Liberals of Italy ? Are the Particularists of Germany,—the friends of a separate Bavaria, and Saxony, and Hanover,—among the Liberals of Germany ? Are the friends of the extreme provincial rights of Spain,—the apologists for mere Federation ,—among the Liberals of Spain ? Of course, in all of these instances, the answer is at once and absolutely 'No,' though possibly it may be main- tained with plausibility that the Home-rule party in Austria, —the friends of the Hungarian autonomy,—were, and are, among the Liberals of Austria. But the difference, we take it, is simply this,—that in Austria, where the genius of the different component parts of the kingdom is so very different, progress is far more easy under the Home-rule principle than under a system of pseudo-centralisation, where the central power was always injuring feelings of which it understood nothing, and enforcing arrangements of the applicability or inapplicability of which to the condition of the- people affected by them, it had no conception. But in all the other cases we have mentioned, it is clear that there is enough community of genius, language, and political aim to make it a very great step backwards instead of forwards, to give up the unity of the nation for the sake of the self- will of a certain number of molecular constituents of the nation.
And is not precisely the same thing true of Ire1an4 ? • Home- rule would clearly involve a reactionary policy, in a great many.
respects. It would, to begin with, retard the social fusion between Great Britain and Ireland, and foster that old sepa- rateness of feeling which is now greatly reduced, and would in another century disappear as far as it has disappeared already in Scotland. It would tend to promote rivalry between Irish and British ideas of home policy, by which neither of the two would profit ; it would lead to the recruiting
of an Irish army, which would soon be eager to employ itself, not in forwarding, but in thwarting Imperial purposes ; it
would make the difference of aim in British and in Irish foreign policy a constant source of active grievance, instead: of a mere source of tacit regret ; it would lead (and very fairly)
to the establishment of the Catholic Church in Ireland.as a set-off against the Anglican Establishment in England ; it would establish, in all probability, krival school of Irish finance ; it would make every quarrel bilterer and more import- ant ; and it would give quite a new-loose to local animosities.
Now whatever policy is Liberal, this cannot be described As Liberal. It is not Liberal to diminish the area covered by any national development, but rather to increase it, for wide national aspirations are the very essence of Liberal growth. It is not Liberal to give local organisations the means of im- peding national purposes, for the growth of all _sorts of sub- ordinate varieties of type, without hindrance to the national: unity of the whole, has always been one of the favourite ideas of Liberal politicians ; it is not Liberal even needlessly to increase the number of local jurisdictions, and so to multi- ply those hindrances to intercourse which too often end in almost preventing intercourse. And certainly it would not be Liberal to introduce a system which would almost certainly end in fomenting religious disputes, and making the Catholic suspicious of the Protestant, and the Protestant envious of the Catholic. All these results would be like certain evil condi- tions of the past, which only the most bigoted Tories would desire to recall. And therefore, if Home-rule could attract any English party, which it could not, it would certainly not be the Liberals. In spite of all Mr. Butt can say, Particularism, except in the most favourable cases, and always when it represents a return to a condition of isolation which has passed away, is really the very antithesis of a Liberal policy, and the Irish Home-rule policy means Parti- cularism, if it means anything. It would tend to reproduce many of the political phenomena of the last century, and a British leader must indeed be in love with times gone by, if he wishes in any form, knowing what they were, to re- produce them. We should say to the Liberal party, with all our hearts,—better stay out of office for a generation, than win a majority by making any concession, beyond the soberest municipal limits, to the very dangerous policy of "Irish Home-rule."
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