THE UNDER-REPRESENTATION OF ENGLAND.
MR- JOHN' REDMOND is entirely mistaken when he suggests that the righting of the electoral injustice now done to England by its under-representation will not be taken in hand, and that therefore the necessary reduction of the Irish Members will not take place. That the wrong done by the present system to the English electors will be put right we have no doubt whatever. If Mr. Redmond relies on the weakness of the Government and their reach. ness to shrink from disagreeable tasks, he will soon find out his mistake. The matter is one upon which the people of England mean to insist that right shall be done. The decision in the matter may, in truth, be said to hare passed out of the hands of the Government as soon as the Census figures were published and had made plain to the English voters the injustice of the present system. IS in the course of next Session it should not be voluntarilv announced that before the present Parliament is dissolved the under-representation of England will be remedied, the Government would find themselves face to face with a condi- tion Of public opinion which would compel them, willing or unwilling, to adopt the policy of redistribution. But, in truth, there is no fear of any such pressure being needed, for what amounts to a pledge on the subject has already been given. The speeches made at Blenheim by Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain, and the fact that Mr. Winston Churchill's open declaration on the subject gave occasion for no official protest or denial, make it certain, as we pointed out at the time, that the Government have no inten- tion to shirk their plain duty on the subject. The remedying of the dangerous and indefensible anomaly involved in the under-representation of England has become an essential part of Unionist policy, and could not now be abandoned without the party losing its con- fidence in the sincerity of its leaders. We doubt, how- ever, whether in reality Mr. Redmond is as confident as he pretends to be that nothing will be done, for we note that he goes on to say that even if his party were reduced to sixty determined, men or less, they could still make the position of the British Government as embarrassing and as dan- gerous as ever it was. He is, we expect, prepared to accept the reduction as inevitable, and only tries to make the best of it by telling his countrymen that the Nationalist cause will not be injured thereby. We are_ quite pre- pared to agree with him. Granted that the desire of the Irish Members is to embarrass, as no doubt it is, they can do that work as well with their fair as with their unfair share of Members. But the fact that Irish obstruction will not be any the less .strong even when justice is' done to the English electors- makes no • difference whatever ia the keenness of our demand for a sound and fair distribu- tion of electoral power. We have never asked for a reduc- tion of the over-representation of Ireland as a punishment to Ireland, but solely on the ground of justice to England. The misbehaviour of the Irish Members may have drawn men's attention to the facts, but it in reality has nothing to do with the main issue, and we desire most strongly to urge on all Unionists the necessity for insisting that the rights of England are the origin of the demand for redis, tribution, and not the action of the Irish Members. This matter is in truth of real importance, for we see many indications that in the coming controversy an attempt will be made by the Irish and the Opposition to declare that the aim of the Government is merely to get rid of disagree- able opponents. We shall be told, that is, that as they cannot deal with Irish argument they are trying to silence it by banishing the Irish Members. The way to meet these misstatements is for all Unionists to insist, as we have just said, that what they desire is not the punishment of the Irish, but justice to England. If the Irish Members were ten times more obstructive than they are, we should have no right to reduce their numbers provided that they only had their fair share of representation. On the other hand, if the Irish Members were as loyal. to the House of Commons as they are in fact disloyal, and were in every the —best conducted of Members, they ought not to be waY • f • allowed more than their au share of electoral power. The question of the reduction of the Irish representa- tion has given rise to a good deal of newspaper contro- versy, but very little of real importance has been said on the subject. The main point debated in the newspapers has been whether Parliament has the right to reduce the over-representation of Ireland. 'Unquestionably Parliament has the right. It is admitted that it had morally and legally the right to disestablish the Irish Church, though it was specially stipulated in the Act of Union that the Church establishment should be maintained as a fundamental. while no such special stipulation was included in regard to the representation of Ireland, and though the Irish representation was once altered in favour of Ireland. The Union was an incorporating Union, and. the will of the majority in the Parliament of the United Kingdom must prevail m Ireland as it must in London or Wales. We would ask those who have been puzzled by the sophis- tical arguments of persons who desire that England shall be so greatly and so unjustly under-represented in the House of Commons, to clear their minds on the subject by looking at the matter in the following way. Ireland by the Act of Union received a hundred Members. Suppose that instead of reducing this number, England and Scotland received the additional number of Members required to give them a share of electoral power propor- tionate to that enjoyed by Ireland. No one would, we presume, say that this was a breach of the Act of Union, or plead that it was essential to good faith that England should always be under-represented. But this could not actually hedone becausethe increasein the number °Members would be highly inconvenient. This physical fact, however, should not prevent a proportional adjustment of electoral power by reducing the Members from Ireland instead of in- creasing those from England and Scotland. In truth, if we are to have a just and democratic system of government there is no possible defence for the under-representation of England. Nothing but rank English stupidity will continue to tolerate a plan which gives Galway as much voting power as Wandsworth.
The plain fact is there is absolutely no case for submit- ting to the under-representation of England because its maintenance is supposed to be one of the inalienable rights conferred upon Ireland by that sacred and inviolable Act of Union which every Nationalist desires to tear up as con- stituting the charter of Ireland's wrongs. But we may say one word in regard to the assertion that the Act of Union could properly be altered to increase the Irish representa- tives or to disestablish the Irish Church because "Ireland" was in favour of those changes, but cannot be altered in order to do justice to England because " Ireland " is against any such proposal. In other words, the Act of Union may be altered when Ireland chooses, but not when she does not. The true answer to this sophistical impertinence is, of course, that which we have noted above,—namelv, that the Union when completed was an incorporating Union, and that the Parliament of the United Kingdom became, not, like the Congress of the United States, a body strictly limited and confined within a written Constitution, but a body absolutely supreme in the United Kingdom. Besides, to talk about Ireland agreeing to this or that is an absurdity. Some Irish representatives, or even the majority, may desire certain things, but other Irish representatives desire different things, and neither section can pretend to speak for all Ireland. A great many Irish representatives did not wish the Irish Church to be disestablished, and, as has been often pointed out, the Irish Parliament of 1800 would never have passed the Act of Union if they had believed that it would lead to disestablishment. Yet in spite of that the Irish Church was most rightly and properly disestablished.
In truth, the case is eminently one in which it is the duty of Englishmen and Scotsmen, and of all Irishmen who do not honestly consider themselves the enemies of the United Kingdom and frankly desire its ruin, to clear their minds of cant on the whole subject. It is cant—i.e., the confusing of the mind with meaningless and con- ventional notions—to say that the Act of Union requires us to maintain the under-representation of England. It is cant, however well meaning, to say that it is only right that Ireland should have more than her fair share of Members because the Irish constituencies are further away from the seat of government than those of England. It is cant to say that the object of reducing the Irish representation is to stifle the voice of Ireland. It is cant to say that the Irish over-representation and English under-representation does no harm and had better be tolerated lest its righting should be called another wrong to Ireland. Fortunately the English people have already begun to clear their minds on this subject, and we have not the slightest fear as to tho way in which they will finally deal with the matter. They will insist on strict electoral justice being done to Ireland, but they will also insist that England shall have her fair share in the Imperial Parliament, and not send some forty Members less than she has a right to send to Westminster.
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