THE THREEFOLD IMPOSSIBILITY.
ON Monday the House, if it does not go into Committee, will at least consider what kind of instructions it shall give to the Committee on the Bill which is so perversely entitled "A Bill to amend the provision for the government of Ireland." It becomes desirable, therefore, to point out at once where the Bill must be wrecked, if the Committee show the smallest determination not to pass anything which is for the worse government of the United Kingdom. Now, there is one clause in the Bill with relation to which Mr. Gladstone has not concealed his own very serious diffi- culties. He is quite ready, he says, to modify the Ninth Clause in any way in which Parliament is disposed to modify it, But it seems that he has no more than three possible courses before him. He may keep the clause which provides for the relation between Ireland and the Imperial Parliament as it is,—i.e., he may empower Irish representatives to vote on all Irish and Imperial questions, and forbid them to vote on any questions which are neither Irish nor Imperial. This is what we may call the burlesque arrangement. It makes a comedy of the Constitution, and brings in one majority to determine the legislation and administra- tion of Great Britain, while a quite different majority, co-existing with it, determines the legislation and adminis- tration of the United Kingdom. If that Comedy of Errors is not to the mind of Parliament, then there are only two other arrangements possible. The Irish Members, or some of them, may be retained for all purposes,—i.e., both to vote on the questions in which they have no repre- sentative interest at all, and also on those in which their constituents are interested,—an arrangement which we may call the one that secures Irish supremacy over the people of Great Britain, by deliberately transforming the Irish Members into political pluralists. Or, in the third place, the Irish Members may be excluded alto- gether,—an arrangement which is tantamount either to Separation, or to treating Ireland as a Crown Colony, which is not precisely what is expected from the Bill "to amend the provision for the government of Ireland." One of these courses must be followed ; and we think it is easy to show that every one of them is a political impossibility of the most inconceivable kind.
Now, let us consider first the burlesque on the Constitu- tion which at present stands in the Bill. The Irish repre- sentatives are not to vote on any purely British question. A Radical like Mr. Labouchere, in an Assembly denuded of its Irish Members, proposes, let us suppose, a reso- lution not against the policy of all religious Establish- ments,—which, without the assistance of the Irish Members, he could not carry in the existing House of Commons,—but of want of confidence in the Govern- ment. This restores the Irish Members to their privileges ; the Government is defeated and resigns. A Radical Government is formed pledged to Disestablishm.ent, and immediately proceeds to disestablish the Church in Wales and Scotland, or even, it may be, in Great Britain as a whole. But this policy has been no sooner announced than the Irish Members evacuate their positions, and the Government is defeated ; but it then declares this a ques- tion on which it will stand or fall, whereupon, as by a mere stamp of the foot, the Irish brigade reappears, and the policy of Disestallishment is carried. But this is no sooner done than the majority disappears, and for all the details of Disendowment the minority have to struggle against a majority which they can only defeat by declaring it a question of confidence and recalling the Irish contingent. What would Ms come to, except that on the most important of purely British questions, the British representatives would be either able to keep the Government of the day absolutely impotent, or would only be overpowered by the Government's sum- moning to its aid a non-representative body, totally uninterested in the issue,—a foreign legion,—to override British wishes and baffle British resolve ? Would any Assembly in the world tolerate such a state of things ? "Irishmen to the rescue I" would be the constant cry, and the victorious cry, so long as the purely British majority could endure so gross a travesty on true con- stitutional principles. But, as every one knows, they would not bear it. Nothing could be imagined more - than the rooting-up of a great historical Church by the help of foreigners, summoned under the most pre- posterously unconstitutional of anomalous provisions, to aid in the defeat of the locally popular policy. Mr. Glad- stone might just as well propose that, whenever the Irish Legislature chose to turn out an Irish Ministry, a number of English Members should be summoned from this side of the Channel to defeat the designs of the Irish majority. The plan is simply absurd,—perhaps the most absurd which it ever entered into the heart of a statesman to put on record. It would be a comedy of political errors which would keep the nation either in a permanent roar of laughter or a permanent pet. But the second proposal, which seems for the moment to be more in favour with the Gladstonians than the plan in the Bill,—the proposal which we have called that of con- fessed Irish supremacy,—is only less absurd because it is more frankly cynical. The Irish are to remain and vote on all subjects on which they choose to attend, whether they be matters that concern them, or matters that do not concern them at all. Mr. Gladstone, however, suggests that they will not attend ; they will be too busy in Dublin. Did any statesman ever advance such a plea in the world before ? Give a body of non-representative delegates from a foreign country the right to meddle in what does not concern them, in the confidence that they will not use that right ! You might as well make a meddlesome neighbour one of your family trustees, and then suggest to him that if he is a man of fastidious taste he will never attend the meetings of the trustees. Of course, he will say at once, 'Then why did you make me trustee ?' Indeed, nothing is more certain than that people value their privileges more than their rights ; and to the Irish bilembers the power of meddling in English affairs with- out any constitutional claim to do so, would be a privilege rather than a right. What would they enjoy so much as the power to snub and irritate their ancient foe, especially when they could use it so as to get a considerable quid pro quo for the use they make of it ? Mr. Gladstone suggests i that ▪ f we said to the Irish, We are going to give you the power to throw us all into confusion, but please stay away and don't use it,' they would stay away. That is certainly attri▪ buting to them a double dose of prevenient grace, in- stead of a double dose of original sin. We never heard before of embodying in a Constitution an " aside " re- questi▪ ng the trustees of a. great political power to let it always remain dormant Then we come to the third mode of settling the ques- tion,—to exclude the Irish from the Supreme Parliament altogether. Well, in the first place, we understand that a considerable section of the Gladstonians, with at least two Cabi▪ net Ministers at their head, are pledged against that policy. Mr: Asquith, in his speech on the second reading, said so for hna iserf with perfect explicitness, and Sir George . Trevelyan, intimating that he accepts this Bill as a first step to Federalism, has implied the same political attitude. It would not be a fir,st step to Federalism if the Irish Mem- bers were excluded from the Parliament of Westminster. And, indeed, if the Irish Members were to be excluded alto- gether, that could only mean that we either intended to abandon the supremacy of the Westminster Parliament and Administration altogether, or that if we intended to maintain and assert it, we intended to maintain and assert it on despotic principles, and without asking the advice or listening to the counsels of the Irish representatives. We do not think that the Gladstonians, to say nothing of the Unionists, are in the least disposed to adopt either course. The former course is the first step to Separation, and the latter is the policy of Parliamentary despotism, which is about as inconsistent with the principle of Home-rule as any course could be. The former course gives up the Irish minority finally to the rule of the majority ; the latter proposes to modify that rule only by spasms of arbitrary interference which could only be enforced by the help of the Army. We do not think that either course will be even seriously advocated in Parliament. The great difference between Ireland and any self-governing Colony is twofold. In the first place, she is so near us that we .cannot afford to be indifferent or neutral in relation to her policy and the equity of her rule. In the next place, she is so profoundly divided within herself that if we ignore that difference we shall have civil war breaking out at once. The exclusion of all Irish Members from the Supreme Parliament is inconsistent alike with both Glad- stonian and Unionist principles ; indeed, so utterly incon- sistent with both that it is, in our opinion, simply out of the question. No majority for that solution could. be obtained at all.
Now, a fourth solution of the problem is not conceivable. Of course, the number of Irish representatives in the Supreme Parliament might be so much reduced as to render the difficulty relatively less imposing. But with the narrow and heterogeneously composed majority of 43, on which alone Mr. Gladstone can rely, it would be practically, impossible greatly to reduce the Irish contingent and yet keep a majority at all, and we do not believe that this will be attempted. All three courses seem to us equally unconstitutional and equally hopeless. If the House of Commons shows any political head, the Ninth Clause will wreck the Bill. It cannot be carried as it is. And no equivalent for it is less absurd than the clause as it now stands.
Previous page
