IRELAND, AMERICA, AND OURSELVES.
Li VLNG dealt in the preceding article with the revealed
attempt of the Sinn Feiners to co-operate with the enemies of the whole human race, we want to say something now on the reactions of this situation upon American feeling and upon our own domestic affairs. The interest of Americans in the status and condition of Ireland is proverbial. Ever since the early days of the nineteenth century, the Irish element in the United States has regularly organized sym- pathy with Ireland and collected money for the cause of Inch Nationalism. It is not to be wondered at that from the first stages of this movement Americans, who of course after the War of Independence retained bitter feelings about the oppressive faculties of the British nation, were inclined, without going very deeply if at all into the evidence, to believe that Ireland was a glaring example of the small oppressed nationality. This quite intelligible, and in a way creditable if rather loose, sentiment has prevailed up to the time of the present war. Any time during the past three years it was possible to trace the sentiment still at work in the many hints add suggestions and invocations from America to the effect that Anglo-American co-operation would be made all the easier if only Great Britain would consent to " treat Ireland fairly." Soon after the United States declared war on Germany a great many intelligent American soldiers came over here and made use of their opportunities to inform themselves about Ireland, and they learned a great deal that surprised them. They discovered that Ireland, instead of being in distress and requiring funds from the United States—far from being " the distressful country " of their vision—was never more prosperous. They found that the farmers were receiving the whole advantage of the great rise in agricultural prices, and that they had no shortage of labour, from whioh every other part of the United Kingdom was suffering. They found that Military Compulsion was not applied to Ireland. They also discovered that Ireland, instead of being held down by oppressive laws, was allowed to do as she pleased in a manner absolutely unheard of in any other part of the United Kingdom. They discovered, again, that the Irish people received very light sentences in the Courts when convicted of offences, if indeed they were convicted at all ; that they paid less in taxation ; that they were grossly over- represented in Parliament ; and that they held their land on secure and easy terms which are the envy of farmers in other parts of the kingdom. Our only concern now is not that the revelation of the facts to all Americans may not be complete, but that Americans, when they have found out all that there is to know, may suffer such a violent re- vulsion that they may think too harshly, of Ireland as a whole. They may be inclined to speak and act in the manner of people who have been "sold."
We do not suggest such a possibility without historical reason. The whole history of the American people shows that when they are animated by a common purpose, by a sweeping sentiment, they are moved to vehement courses. Readers of the history of the American Civil War know that the majority of the Americans of the North were driven to the last degree of anger, contempt, and hatred by the conduct of those men in the North who were known as Copperheads. The nickname " Copperhead " was taken from the poisonous copperhead snake. Now it is to be remembered that the Copperheads were not necessarily, or even characteristically, adherents of the Southern cause. Large numbers of them were men who, believing it to be impossible to conquer the South, wanted a peace by negotiation. Compare the tenets of the Copperheads with the horrible political professions of faith which are now being uttered by the Sims Feiners. The Sinn Feiners are not mere deluded politicians, who earnestly desire general peace and goodwill, and are willing for the sake of these things to trust the Germans and shake hands with them to-morrow ; they are self-styled and openly professing friends of the Germane and enemies of the Allies. They desire the " sovereign independence of Ireland," but from all their platforms they declare that they are willing to gain this thing at the expense of the rest of the world. They are willing that democracy should utterly perish from the face of the earth, and that Germany should be everywhere supreme— outside Ireland. We can only hope that Americans will remember that these Sinn Feiners are still a very uncertain quantity in Ireland ; that the British Government have just announced their intention of dealing with them ; and that neither the constitutional Nationalists of Ireland nor the Unionists should for a moment be allowed to suffer in esteem because of the Sinn Fein operations. In conclusion, we desire to say a few words about the decision of the Government as to the treatment of Ireland under the Representation of the People Bill. They are committed to a scheme of Redistribution for Ireland on the basis of the present representation. That is to say, the proposal is to effect Redistribution on the basis of a hundred and three Irish Members. When we wrote on this subject last week we said that for practical reasons we were inclined to believe that the Government would do well to let Irish Redistribution wait a little longer, and mean- while pass the Bill which will benefit Great Britain. We took that view because we have always regarded the Bill as a compromise and an agreed measure which ought to be got through for the benefit of Great Britain as quickly as possible. But on Thursday of last week, after we had written, Sir George Cave announced, as we have said above, that the Government would adopt a Redistribution scheme for Ireland. What we must say now is that for the Government to adopt Redistribution without " One vote one value " is the worst of all possible solutions. It is ridiculous to proceed on the assumption that Ireland has a right to one hundred and three Members, when Scotland, with a larger total electorate, will have under the new plan only seventy-three MemberJ, and Wales, with more than half the population of Ireland, will have only thirty-one Members. As for the comparison between England and Ireland, each Irish elector will still have nearly twice the voting-power of the English elector. Redis- tribution in Ireland ought to be the occasion of doing away with this scandal. Further, though the Government proposal is to be condemned as wholly wrong in principle, the work done is also sure to be wasted. If the Convention should produce a settlement, there would certainly no longer be one hundred and three Irish Members at Westminster, and therefore Redistribution would have been empty work. If, on the other hand, the Convention should fail, the over-representation of Ireland would still have to be remedied, because there are some forty-three too many Members for Ireland. In either case Redistribution on the hundred and three Members basis must prove a useless undertaking. It would be much better for the Government to cut Ireland entirely out of the Reform Bill than to adopt their present course, which is bad both in principle and practice. In our opinion, however, there is a golden opportunity now to get rid of the over- representation of Ireland.
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