HOME-RULE AND THE DUTY OF UNIONISTS.
IN our view, as our readers know, the action of Free-trade Unionists in opposing a Government who, whatever they may call themselves, owe their main support to Protectionists, and encourage Protectionist candidates, does not endanger the Union. A section of the leaders of the Liberal party may still pay a nominal allegiance to Home-rule, but as a whole, and in the country, the party entirely ignore the Home-rule issue. An ordinary Liberal Member who went down to an English constituency and preached Home-rule, or filled his speeches with the wrongs of Ireland and the need of righting them by the grant of a separate Legislature, would be regarded as hardly sane. The Liberal voters have, in fact, resolutely turned their faces away from Home-rule, and mean to fight the present battle on the issue of Protection. They will not, of course, require or expect the old Home-rulers to go up and down the country explaining what a mistake they made ever to advocate it. The Liberals will simply allow Home-rule to fade quietly out of their programme, and to be swallowed up in the new and greater issue of Chamberlainism. If, therefore, when Free-tradeS has triumphed at the polls, we conceive a Liberal Government with a small majority, under pressure from the Irish party, considering the introduction of a Home-rule Bill, we may be certain that the notion would soon be banished as un- practical. The Irish would be told that they could not have a Home-rule Bill, that Parliament had no mandate for such legislation, that the country would therefore support the Lords in the rejection of the measure, and so in forcing a Dissolution, and that a Dissolution on the Home-rule issue would mean certain ruin. In truth, there would be very little real risk to the Union even if the Irish did hold the balance of power. They might, no doubt, sell their votes to the highest bidder, but we know, and they know in their calmer moments, that the country, acting through the House of Lords, will never allow either party to pay the bill thus incurred. There is, of course, a conceivable chance that if the Protectionist party bought the Irish party at the price of a Home-rule Bill, they might persuade the Lords to settle the account, but for ourselves we decline to believe that a majority of Peers could be obtained to sup- port any such bargain. That the House of Lords would help the Liberal party to meet their obligations is incon- ceivable. The Irish party, therefore, as one of their poets might say, can only take fairy gifts from the Liberals. The moment any attempt is made to handle them they will fade away. It is a curious position. We are, we admit, a dull, stupid, muddle-headed people, while the Irish are bright, clever, ingenious, and full of resource in every species of • litical combination. And yet our luck, and what Lord onsfield called" the instincts of an ancient people," will enable us to make all these advantages of no avail. The Irish, in our belief, will not be in a position to sell themselves to either party in the next Parliament, so large will be the Free-trade majority ; but even if they are in a position to do so, it will avail them nothing. Whatever pattern comes out in the political kaleidoscope, the Irish party are certain to be mocked by the shadow without the substance of Parliamentary power.
But the majority of Protectionist and Ministerial Unionists do not, we are well aware, at all take this view. They tell us, on the contrary, that there would be a great danger to the Union in the triumph of Free-trade. In that case, then, the Protectionist and Ministerialist Unionists ought to do everything in their power to secure the Union, and to make the grant of Home-rule impossible. How can they do this? By adopting a policy which has been again and again advocated in the Spectator, though, we regret to say, with very little success. Those who think the Union in peril owing to the possibility of the Irish holding the balance should surely be the first to demand that the over-representation of Ireland be at once abated, and the scandal under which the power of an Irish vote is so infinitely greater than that of an English vote be done away with. If Ireland had taken away from her the thirty or so votes she has in excess of her fair share, there would be little fear of the Irish party holding the balance, for the excess of representation in Ireland is almost entirely in the Nationalist strongholds of the South and West. It is places like Newry, not the divisions of Belfast, that return Nationalists. If, then, the Protectionist Unionists are sincere in their dread of Home-rule, and in their fears of a Free-trade Government purchasing the Irish vote, they will surely join in the demand that the Government shall take up the case of the over-representation of Ireland, even at the eleventh hour. We shall be told, no doubt, that the Government could not possibly find time for such work in the present Session, that it is too contentious a matter for the fag-end of a Parliament, and generally that the proposal is impracticable. If these are the excuses given, as we expect they will be, we should next like to ask how it comes that a Unionist Government have so long overlooked a plain duty. They have the cause of the Union on their lips, but can they have it in their hearts if these are their actions on so vital a matter ? They found time last Session to divide many millions of public money between the landlords and tenants of Ireland. We agreed to that policy, and believe on the balance of evidence that it was a sound one ; but we always held that it required to be supplemented by a policy of electoral justice to England. Surely if the Government had been as anxious about the safety of the Union as they now profess to be, they would have made the Irish understand that the Land Bill would be followed by a Bill to reduce the monstrous surplusage of Irish Members and to take away Ireland's prerogative voice in the Commons. That it is dangerously late now to make the attempt we cannot, of course, deny. But whose fault is that ? Certainly not the fault of Unionists who, like ourselves, called year by year on an unheeding Government to do their duty. Yet even now the Government ought, we hold, to make the attempt. If they would only display half the tenacity and ingenuity in forcing through a Redistribution Bill that they now display in concealing their real attitude on the fiscal question, they would find that the obstacles they dread would vanish very quickly. In any case, they owe it to their professions of loyalty to the Unionist cause to make the attempt. All those who now upbraid the Free-trade Unionists for helping Home-rule must surely be specially anxious to urge Ahem on in such a course and to promise them their support. That the Free-trade Unionists would support the abatement of the over- representation of Ireland goes without saying. They are true both to the Union and to Free-trade, and both causes they know would be made the safer by the reduction of the Irish vote, which is in essentials Protectionist as well as Separatist.
Here, then, is a great opportunity to test the sincerity and strength of the convictions of the present Government. If they and their Protectionist and retaliationist supporters feel so strongly about Home-rule, let them introduce this Session a Bill doing away with the over-representation of Ireland, and treating England with justice. If they will do that, they will show Free-trade Unionists once more a way to co-operate with them, and they will strike a really effective blow for the Union. By the action of the Government in this matter we shall be able to judge the depth of the Unionist spirit that inspires them.
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