. . -,:::-.. 
 
 ■7'. ■:■■■■: Wrri-i : :7.'.v ■■ ' V :: / "i ': 
 
 - • ■ ?r-/ 
 
I 
 
 *^\ COLLEGIUM 
 BOSTONIENSE 
 
 3n JHemorg <©f 
 
~7I / 
 
 
THE TWO IRISH NATIONS 
 
THE 
 
 TWO IRISH NATIONS 
 
 AN ESSAY ON HOME RULE 
 BY W. F. MONYPENNY 
 / 
 
 " Sedulo curavi humanas actiones non ridere, non 
 lugere, neque detestari sed intelligere."— Spinoza 
 
 Cfc 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 
 1913 
 

 All Rights Reserved 
 
 169843 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Even while occupied with his great task of 
 writing the "Life of Lord Beaconsfield," William 
 Flavelle Monypenny was able, from time to time, 
 to make valued contributions to the columns of 
 The Times. He spent the earlier months of the 
 year 191 2 in Ireland as the paper's Special 
 Correspondent, and then wrote the series of 
 articles which form Part I. of this volume. The 
 articles were published in The Times between 
 the dates of January 27 and April 15, 1912; 
 under the title which they now bear, namely — 
 " Ireland and Home Rule." The articles which 
 form Part II. were published almost immediately 
 after the conclusion of the former series, namely 
 on April 26, 27, 29, and 30, 1912. In his work as 
 a journalist, Mr. Monypenny was always in- 
 tensely in earnest and inspired by high and 
 patriotic ideas. These fourteen articles represent 
 the last of a long series of public services which 
 he rendered with his pen. 
 
 It was his desire that they should be re-issued 
 in a more permanent form, an honour to which 
 their merit obviously entitles them. With this 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 end in view he had cursorily supervised and 
 made some slight alterations of phrase in the 
 first six articles, when his death interrupted the 
 work. In no case did he find it necessary to 
 alter or modify any view which he had expressed. 
 Possibly the events of the last few months, 
 during which the Bill has passed through the 
 House of Commons, would have prompted him 
 to make more changes in the matter included in 
 Part II. ("The Present Home Rule Bill"); but 
 it has been thought best to re-issue the articles 
 precisely as he wrote them. It is no slight 
 testimony to their excellence that they can be so 
 re-issued unchanged. The title under which 
 this volume is published and the quotation on 
 the title page are of his selection. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 IRELAND AND HOME RULE 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
 
 II. THE TWO NATIONS . 
 
 III. THE GENESIS OF HOME RULE 
 
 iv. mr. Gladstone's two bills 
 
 V. THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION 
 
 VI. IRELAND DURING THE TRUCE 
 
 VII. THE REVIVAL OF HOME RULE 
 
 VIII. THE ANTINOMIES OF HOME RULE 
 
 IX. THE COLONIAL ANALOGY . 
 
 X. IRELAND AND SOUTH AFRICA 
 vii 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 10 
 
 18 
 27 
 36 
 
 46 
 54 
 63 
 72 
 
 80 
 
Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART II 
 THE PRESENT HOME RULE BILL 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. GENERAL FEATURES OF THE BILL . . 89 
 
 II. THE NEW IRISH PARLIAMENT . . .98 
 
 III. THE EXECUTIVE POWER .... IO9 
 
 IV. THE FINANCIAL PROVISIONS . . . Il8 
 
 INDEX 131 
 
THE 
 
 TWO IRISH NATIONS 
 
 PART I 
 
 IRELAND AND HOME RULE 
 
 CHAPTER 1 
 
 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
 
 11 Irish policy is Irish history," said Disraeli once 
 in Parliament, "and I have no faith in any states- 
 man who attempts to remedy the evils of Ireland 
 who is either ignorant of the past or who will 
 not deign to learn from it." Disraeli himself 
 found time to study Irish history, but few are 
 the English statesmen who have followed his 
 example, and apparently his great rival, who 
 studied so many things, was not among their 
 number. Few indeed are the Irishmen who 
 have explored their national annals in the true 
 spirit ol inquiry, to find in the past a tolerant 
 and sympathetic understanding of the present. 
 
 Ireland is a land of long historical memories, 
 and nowhere else perhaps does the popular 
 imagination live so much in the past ; but it is 
 one of the many ironies and contradictions of 
 Irish life that nowhere is the past so grievously 
 distorted or has so little attempt been made 
 
2 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
 
 to tell its story truly. Irish history has still 
 to be rescued from the mire of politics. " You 
 will learn before long," said a Castle official once 
 to a newly-arrived English Minister anxious to 
 base his policy on a solid foundation of facts— 
 11 You will learn before long that there are no 
 facts in Ireland " ; and there is hardly such a 
 thing as a fact in Irish history that cannot be 
 made to assume two contradictory aspects. It is 
 not the least encouraging sign of healthy growth 
 in Ireland that a school of historians is arising 
 which endeavours to tell the truth. 
 
 Viewed through the mists of legendary senti- 
 ment, which sometimes obscure the vision even 
 of serious historians, the past assumes the guise 
 of a never-ending struggle between a devoted 
 Irish nation of saints, scholars, and heroes 
 and a company of malignant fiends representing 
 England. Such is Irish history in the versions 
 that are popular in Roman Catholic Ireland. 
 The literature of the Protestant side is less 
 copious in volume, and, of course, more restricted 
 in its chronological range ; but within its compass 
 it endeavours to produce a picture of the same 
 kind with the characters transposed. Histories 
 such as these of course refute themselves. 
 
 What will strike the student who goes to Irish 
 history that he may find in it light to illuminate 
 the present, rather than material to minister to 
 his prejudices or controversial weapons for the 
 politics of to-day, is not the righteousness of the 
 Irish and the wickedness of the English or any 
 inversion of these qualities, but the persistent 
 ill-fortune that has pursued Ireland from the 
 beginning and poisoned and perverted her re- 
 lations with the neighbouring island. He will 
 find England and Englishmen as often negligent 
 as criminal, and by their blunders as by their 
 crimes bringing trouble on themselves ; and he 
 
THE TWO CHURCHES 3 
 
 will find a strangely malign fate intervening at 
 every step to frustrate the purposes of statesman- 
 ship and prevent the growth of amity. Irish 
 history is a constant tragedy, a tragedy in the 
 deeper sense, not as the clash of right and wrong, 
 but as the clash of two rights. Proximity to 
 Great Britain forbade the free development of 
 Ireland on her own national lines, her compara- 
 tive distance and the strip of estranging sea 
 hindered unity and fusion, and in the actual 
 course of events no happy system of co-operation 
 on equal terms or dependence was ever evolved. 
 The original conquest was a conquest only 
 in name, effective to disable the growth of the 
 native civilization, not effective to secure its 
 supersession by another. The English Pale, in 
 Lecky's metaphor, was a spearpoint in a living 
 body, inflaming all around it and deranging every 
 vital function. When in the time of the Tudors 
 a serious attempt was begun to make conquest a 
 reality, the religious factor entered. The period 
 of the real conquest covered the second half of the 
 sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, and that was precisely the period of the 
 great religious struggles. Hitherto the distinction 
 between invaders and invaded, a distinction of 
 race and caste, had always in practice shown a 
 tendency to disappear ; but now religion erected 
 a more formidable and lasting barrier. 
 
 As Ireland had never been included within the 
 Roman Imperial system, so the old Celtic Church 
 had remained external to Catholic Europe, and 
 till the time of the Reformation the Church of the 
 English Pale had represented in Ireland the 
 Romanizing influence. Practically, however, 
 the Church, Celtic or Roman, had lost its hold 
 on the people, and Ireland in a sense was recon- 
 verted to Christianity by the Jesuit Mission in 
 the time of the counter-Reformation. The Roman 
 
4 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
 
 Church was then the bitter enemy of England, 
 and this fact of course helped to commend it to 
 the Irish, both Celtic and Anglo-Norman, who 
 were resisting the English conquest. It also 
 helped to give to the Roman Catholic Church in 
 Ireland an ultramontane character and a bias 
 against England that have survived to this day. 
 Ireland was thus swept into the vortex of the 
 religious struggle, and religion served to fix lines 
 of division which had hitherto been shifting. 
 Henceforward the English interest in Ireland 
 was Protestant and the Irish interest, which 
 included the bulk of the Anglo-Normans, was 
 fanatically Roman Catholic. 
 
 Irish Protestantism, now greatly strengthened 
 by the Plantation of Ulster, was from the first 
 Puritanic, and by the circumstances of its position 
 militant and aggressive. Atrocities on either 
 side, which were as much agrarian as religious in 
 origin; the rebellion of 1641, which was really 
 a protest against the wholesale confiscations of 
 the Plantation, and Cromwell's ruthless revenge 
 deepened the fissure between the religions, and 
 the two systems finally clashed at the time of the 
 English Revolution. Father Finlay, the eminent 
 Jesuit, addressing on one occasion an audience of 
 Orangemen at a co-operative meeting, wittily and 
 tactfully dismissed the famous fight on the Boyne 
 as a fight for their own interests between a Scots- 
 man and a Dutchman, which Irishmen of the 
 present day might very well forget. But they 
 have not yet forgotten it, and strange as were the 
 leaders, the rival factions in Ireland knew what 
 they were about. It was a struggle for pre- 
 dominance between their rival creeds, ideals, and 
 civilizations; and when the Protestant faction won 
 the conquest of Ireland was at last complete. 
 
 The great confiscations in the time of the early 
 Stuarts, of Cromwell and William III., which 
 
THE PENAL CODE 5 
 
 were incidents of the conquest, had finally broken 
 up the old tribal system and thus prepared the 
 way for a process that was to come later, the 
 welding of the Irish Roman Catholics under 
 the influence of their Church into a community 
 bound together by a #//<7s/-national sentiment. 
 But for almost a century after the Revolution the 
 Roman Catholic majority of the Irish population 
 lay asleep in the iron grip of the Protestant 
 Ascendancy. The Cromwellian settlement had 
 strengthened the Puritanic tendency of Protes- 
 tantism in Ireland, and other causes which had 
 little connexion with religion were at work to 
 give it an intolerant and persecuting spirit. Then, 
 as always in Ireland, the land was a dominant 
 motive. The land hunger of the Celt is visible 
 from the dawn of history, and among a people of 
 tenacious memories the lingering traditions of 
 the old tribal system have helped to keep it alive. 
 The troubles of the seventeenth century be- 
 queathed to later times as part of their heritage 
 of woe a vicious system of tenure neither English 
 nor Irish, in wmich the landlord was a mere 
 rent receiver with arbitrary powers of eviction. 
 The new proprietors who had been established 
 over nearly the whole of Ireland as a result of 
 the confiscations paid little regard to the vague 
 traditionary rights of the native cultivators where 
 they remained, and even the Protestant tenants, 
 though their position was never so bad, suffered 
 much under a system than which nothing has 
 done more to swell the turbid stream of Irish 
 wrong and discontent. The titles of the new pro- 
 prietors in the eighteenth century had no long 
 prescription behind them, and the old proprietors 
 or their heirs were often living on their former 
 lands among the discontented peasantry, a stand- 
 ing menace and reproach to their Protestant suc- 
 cessors. Fears for their property combined with 
 
6 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
 
 other motives that were perhaps less ignoble to 
 make the leaders of the Protestant Ascendancy 
 tyrants and oppressors, and the outcome was the 
 Penal Code. Burke has described it in a famous 
 sentence, which is at once its eulogy and its con- 
 demnation : — ' It was a machine of wise and 
 elaborate contrivance ; and as well fitted for the 
 oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of 
 a people, and the debasement in them of human 
 nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted 
 ingenuity of man.' The charity of history is not 
 easily provoked, and a wide survey of historical 
 forces may make intelligible the existence of even 
 this atrocious system ; but nothing can justify it, 
 and more than anything else in the long tale of 
 Irish wrong it has left its marks deep and visible 
 in the Ireland of to-day. 
 
 It is the purpose of this and the following 
 chapters to examine Home Rule, in the light of 
 Irish history and of the facts of Irish life, as what 
 its advocates proclaim it to be, a policy of atone- 
 ment and a solution of the Irish difficulty. The 
 demand for Home Rule is a demand for the 
 restitution of an Irish local Parliament, and it is 
 time to glance rapidly at the history of Parlia- 
 mentary institutions in Ireland. As Mr. 
 Redmond is fond of reminding us, Ireland had 
 a Parliament of her own for over 500 years, and 
 for the first two centuries as well as the last two 
 decades of its life this Parliament had, in theory 
 at all events, legislative independence. But 
 during those first two centuries it was not in 
 any sense an Irish, but an Anglo-Norman insti- 
 tution ; and when in the time of Henry VII. the 
 Anglo-Norman colony showed a spirit of inde- 
 pendence, its Parliament was bound hand and 
 foot by the well-known Poynings' Law, which 
 deprived it of all initiative and subjected it to the 
 rigid control of the King in his Council of Eng- 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT 7 
 
 land. Henceforward till nearly the close of the 
 eighteenth century the Parliament in Dublin re- 
 mained a pale shadow, or rather a sort of caricature, 
 of the Parliament at Westminster. In the course 
 of Constitutional development in England sub- 
 jection to the King in Council came to mean 
 subjection to the authority of the English Par- 
 liament, and the existence in Ireland of a large 
 hereditary revenue deprived the Legislature 
 in Dublin of any effective control even of local 
 finance. 
 
 Cromwell's great system of a common polity 
 for the three kingdoms perished with himself, 
 but at the time of the Union between England 
 and Scotland union with Great Britain would 
 have been hailed with joy by Ireland. Even 
 Molyneux, the father of modern Irish patriotism, 
 only advocated the independence of the Parlia- 
 ment in Dublin because representation at West- 
 minster was ' a happiness he could hardly hope 
 for.' Almost any time in the first half of the 
 eighteenth century union would have been wel- 
 comed if it had been accompanied, as in the case 
 of Scotland, by the removal of the restrictions 
 on Irish trade and industry. But the opportunity 
 was allowed to pass, and in the second half of 
 the eighteenth century the Protestant party in 
 Ireland, of which the Parliament was, of course, 
 the appanage, developed a quasi-national senti- 
 ment which became an obstacle to union. 
 
 Within the limits of the Protestant Ascendancy 
 a strange and interesting, though in some of its 
 features grotesque, civilization came into being. 
 It was based on the complete suppression of by 
 far the larger part of the inhabitants of Ireland, 
 and could thus have no permanence, but it showed 
 for a time no little vitality. There could hardly 
 be a better proof of its brilliant but fleeting lustre 
 than a roll of the famous men produced in the 
 
8 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
 
 eighteenth century by Trinity College, Dublin, 
 the centre of its intellectual life, and, for the 
 moment at all events, a truly national University. 
 The list would include such names as Berkeley 
 and Goldsmith and Burke, with Swift a little 
 earlier, and might very well dispute pre-eminence 
 with any similar list that Oxford or Cambridge 
 could produce during the same period. With 
 intellectual vigour local patriotism grew, and the 
 American Revolution gave to patriotism at once 
 an example and an opportunity. An army of 
 Protestant volunteers came into existence, and in 
 the hour of England's need, when she was hard 
 pressed by her foes, compelled her to recognize 
 the legislative independence of the Parliament in 
 College Green. 
 
 In the history of popular myths there is perhaps 
 nothing more curious than the growth in Nation- 
 alist and Catholic Ireland of the legend of 
 Grattan's Parliament as a national institution. 
 That Parliament was the organ of the Protestant 
 Ascendancy, its members exclusively Protestant. 
 It was brought into existence by a menace of 
 armed force applied by the very section of the 
 Irish population which is now bitterly opposed 
 to every thought of its revival. Its birth made 
 little difference to the actual course of Irish 
 government, for an independent executive sus- 
 tained by the English power held the Parliament 
 in check. It was managed throughout by cor- 
 ruption, and its patriotism, as Mr. Fisher, its 
 latest historian, remarks, consisted mainly in the 
 desire that the oligarchy should have the right to 
 divide the spoils of Irish politics without the 
 interference of England. It never enjoyed the 
 confidence either of the Irish revolutionaries or of 
 the Roman Catholic Church. Its concessions to 
 the Catholics were made under pressure from 
 England and were bitterly opposed by those who 
 
THE UNION 9 
 
 were afterwards strongest in their opposition to 
 the Union. Its total neglect of the real interests 
 of the Catholic population led to a ferocious 
 rebellion ferociously repressed, and that rebellion 
 speedily brought its inglorious career to an end. 
 When the hour of judgment came the whole 
 influence of the Church was thrown into the 
 scale against it, and though the dumb and pros- 
 trate multitude in all probability thought little 
 about the matter, the evidence seems to indicate 
 that as far as they thought at all they welcomed 
 its destruction. Finally it was destroyed, as was 
 only appropriate, by the same arts of corruption 
 by which it had always lived. Never were there 
 such strange materials for a posthumous glorifi- 
 cation. 
 
 Corruption played its part in the Scottish 
 Union also, but that Union was a part of a 
 statesmanlike scheme which was carried out in 
 its integrity, and the manner of its passage did 
 not affect its success. Pitt's policy for the Irish 
 Union was equally statesmanlike, but through no 
 fault of his it was not applied as a whole, and the 
 Irish Union in consequence long remained a 
 comparative failure. A measure which Pitt in- 
 tended to be the death of Protestant Ascendancy 
 gave to Protestant Ascendancy, which had been 
 hastening to its doom, a new lease of life. The 
 Roman Catholic majority were left unemancipated 
 for nearly thirty years, and their shackles were 
 only removed when, copying the example set 
 them by their recent masters, they resorted to 
 intimidation. The effect of this blunder in per- 
 petuating the division of Irishmen into two 
 camps which had resulted from the preceding 
 history we shall see in the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE TWO NATIONS 
 
 If the Union had been carried in the reign of 
 Queen Anne, Ireland, like Scotland, would have 
 shared in the prosperity that came to England in 
 the eighteenth century, and with the development 
 of a tolerant spirit as the century advanced the 
 better class of Roman Catholics would have 
 been admitted to political rights, and no distinct 
 Catholic interest in the political sense would ever 
 have arisen. Pitt's policy came late, but, even 
 late as it was, if it had only been applied in its 
 integrity it would probably have been successful. 
 In either case the land question in all its hideous 
 complexity would have remained for solution, 
 but with the advance to democracy in the nine- 
 teenth century a solution could have been found 
 without perpetuating the divisions of race and 
 religion. 
 
 At the time of the Union, Roman Catholic 
 Ireland had not yet become a single political 
 entity ; nor had hatred of England definitely 
 taken its place as an ingredient of national senti- 
 ment in the popular mind. It was the agitation 
 for Catholic relief led and organized by O'Connell 
 that first welded the Roman Catholics into a 
 single political body on a quasi-national basis. 
 By combining priests and people into one great 
 
 iq 
 
HATRED OF ENGLAND n 
 
 league against the existing order he made them 
 conscious of their strength, and the Church has 
 supplied the organization and the ideals that 
 have kept them together. As the awakening 
 Catholic nation began to look around, it naturally 
 saw in England the origin and fount of all its 
 sufferings and disabilities. Though no specific 
 pledge appears to have been given, the denial 
 of political rights after the Union was with some 
 reason regarded as a gross act of perfidy, and 
 there was little consolation to be extracted from 
 the reflection that Pitt's good intentions had 
 been frustrated by the mad King. All the memo- 
 ries of ancient wrong, buried deep in the minds 
 of the people, now rose to the surface. The evils 
 of absenteeism, the vices of the land system, the 
 monopoly of patronage by the party of the ascend- 
 ancy were all alike laid to the charge of the 
 ruling country. Finally and above all the terrible 
 calamity of the famine, the ineptitude with which 
 it was handled by the Whig Government of the 
 day, and the wholesale evictions that resulted 
 from that monument of English folly, the En- 
 cumbered Estates Act, all went to swell the 
 indictment. Newman, when he went to Ireland 
 in the fifties, was astonished at the disposition he 
 found among the people. ■ One sentiment,' he 
 wrote, ' of hatred against the oppressor manet alta 
 mente repostum. The wrongs which England has 
 inflicted are faithfully remembered ; her services 
 are viewed with incredulity or resentment ; her 
 name and fellowship are abominated ; the news 
 of her prosperity heard with disgust ; the antici- 
 pation of her possible reverses nursed and 
 cherished as the best of consolations.' 
 
 The progress of the Catholic movement re- 
 awoke fanaticism in the Protestant camp in 
 Ireland, and gave a great stimulus to the growth 
 of the Orange body. The Protestants had, of 
 
12 THE TWO NATIONS 
 
 course, inherited a sense of common interest 
 and of separate identity from the period of the 
 ascendancy; and the rise of Roman Catholic 
 Ireland as a menace to themselves and a force 
 hostile to England naturally tended to make them 
 forget their internal divisions. Forgetting also 
 the jealousy of England which had once animated 
 them, they were henceforward united in looking 
 to her as their protector against the coming 
 deluge. As disaffection increased and became 
 more explicit on the Roman Catholic side, their 
 loyalty to the United Kingdom grew ever more 
 passionate ; and the very fact that an instinct of 
 self-preservation lies at the root of this sentiment, 
 so far from justifying the sneer that the sentiment 
 is purely selfish, only makes it more real and 
 potent as a political force. The more you 
 analyse motives the more, it is said, they stink ; 
 but the stink is often manufactured in the process 
 of analysis. 
 
 The outcome of the strange history which has 
 been so rapidly sketched in the foregoing pages 
 is that in the Ireland of to-day we have not one 
 nation but two ; two nations with separate 
 religions, separate ideals, separate traditions, and 
 separate affinities. That is the cardinal fact of 
 Irish politics and Irish society, and a fact which 
 Englishmen, misled by the entirely false analogy 
 of their own party divisions, never deep enough 
 to be incompatible with a common national life, 
 very rarely understand. The two nations in 
 Ireland live side by side in all parts of the island 
 as if they were merely parties, and, though the 
 presence of a concentrated Protestant democracy 
 in the North is a notable feature of the situation, 
 there is no real geographical line of division ; 
 and let it be noted that, though there is a disparity 
 in size between the two communities, the smaller 
 is more numerous than the whole white popu- 
 
PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC 13 
 
 lation of the South African Union, which not 
 many years ago made some noise in the world. 
 The cleavage may be deplorable, and no one 
 certainly could desire to do anything to perpetuate 
 it ; but there it is at present, an ultimate fact of 
 Irish politics, and the first lesson an English 
 statesman should always be made to learn before 
 he is allowed to prescribe for the disorders of 
 the island. 
 
 The two nations may roughly be called the 
 Roman Catholic and the Protestant, but religion, 
 though it supplies a convenient line of demar- 
 cation, is far from exhausting the significance of 
 the division. We find, indeed, in Ireland re- 
 ligious animosities of a strength and virulence 
 such as are nowhere else to be found in the 
 Christian world to-day ; but that is just because 
 the feud is far more than religious in its origin 
 and import. Burke, who knew his Ireland well, 
 saw its true nature. Writing of the Penal Laws 
 passed after the Revolution he says in his Letter 
 to Sir Hercules Langrishe : 
 
 "The spirit of those proceedings did not com- 
 mence at that era, nor was religion of any kind 
 their primary object. What was done was not 
 in the spirit of a contest between two religious 
 factions ; but between two adverse nations. The 
 statutes of Kilkenny show that the spirit of the 
 popery laws, and some even of their actual pro- 
 visions, as applied between Englishry and Irishry, 
 had existed in that harassed country before the 
 words Protestant and Papist were heard of in 
 the world." 
 
 In fact, antipathies that had their source in 
 the long conflict between English and Irish have 
 deepened and intensified the religious division. 
 The struggle between landlords and tenants that 
 
i 4 THE TWO NATIONS 
 
 has raged for more than two centuries, often 
 breaking into open war, has also contributed to 
 the capital of the feud, adding to the animosities 
 of race and creed the still more deadly animosities 
 of caste. 
 
 Let it be noted that both nations are essentially 
 Irish, or, if any one prefers the alternative mode 
 of statement, that neither is essentially Irish. 
 You have the pre-Reformation English immi- 
 grants on the one side, the post-Reformation 
 immigrants on the other. The Protestants have 
 a certain strain of native Irish or Celtic blood, 
 and in spite of the habit of leaning politically on 
 England they are in temperament and outlook 
 widely different from the English. On the side 
 of the Roman Catholics the Celtic element may 
 be predominant, but there is a very large in- 
 fusion of Teutonic or English blood, Danish, 
 Norman, and Saxon. The Irishman of the Pale, 
 not the native Celt, is the typical Irishman whom 
 everybody knows ; and if the nation to which he 
 belongs is not truly Celtic in race, still less is it 
 in its framework and its spiritual elements. The 
 framework has been supplied by the Roman 
 Catholic Church ; the ideals which are the bind- 
 ing cement are mainly from the same source. 
 The language, of course, is English, and English 
 it is certain to remain, in spite of the efforts of 
 the Gaelic League — in some of their aspects 
 praiseworthy — to keep Gaelic alive. The inter- 
 esting endeavour to appropriate as the heritage 
 of the modern Anglo-Irish nations the literary 
 and artistic traditions of the Celts is of course 
 perfectly legitimate ; but the movement in a sense 
 is parallel to that by which Lowland Scotland, 
 though Saxon and Norman, has appropriated to 
 itself or to the common national fund the tradi- 
 tions of the Celtic Highlands. 
 
 The Roman Catholic nation, however, has, in 
 
CHANCES OF RECONCILIATION 15 
 
 spite of its Norman blood, appropriated as its 
 exclusive patrimony the ancient tale of wrong 
 which is a heritage from the Celts ; and in the 
 same way it has appropriated, in spite of the Pro- 
 testant democracy and the Protestant tenantry of 
 Ulster, the heritage of bitter class feeling be- 
 queathed by the long land war. Thus all the 
 animosities of race and class and creed have been 
 blended into a strange amalgam of rancour and 
 suspicion. Go into those counties of Central or 
 Southern Ulster where the two democracies are 
 most intermingled, and you will find these feel- 
 ings in their most intense development, ever 
 ready to blaze forth in an activity of hatred. 
 When the Home Rule Bill was passing through 
 the House of Commons in 1893 it was commonly 
 believed, and apparently not without warrant, 
 among the Protestants in those regions that their 
 Roman Catholic neighbours were holding secret 
 conclaves to apportion among themselves the 
 lands they believed they had lost nearly 300 
 years before. The fears on one side may have 
 been as chimerical as the hopes on the other, but 
 the mere fact of their existence may help the 
 Englishman to fathom the depths of suspicion 
 that lie between the two camps. 
 
 To bridge the gulf that separates these two 
 sectarian nations and combine them into one, to 
 unite the strength and practical ability and effec- 
 tiveness of the North to the sensibility and 
 imagination and enthusiasm of the South, is a 
 noble ideal for statesmanship ; its fulfilment 
 would heal a sore which has long poisoned 
 British politics. It is, moreover, an ideal which 
 is by no means unattainable from the nature of 
 the case ; for both nations, as has been said, are 
 essentially Irish, and between Irishmen of every 
 creed and class and province there is at bottom a 
 common ground of sympathy and intelligence. 
 
16 THE TWO NATIONS 
 
 In the very depths of their antagonism there is 
 something essentially Irish. But to the realiza- 
 tion of such ideals there is no royal road ; time 
 alone can do the work, and the problem for the 
 statesman is how best to co-operate with time in 
 its healing efficacy. Invariably hitherto when 
 the process of reconciliation has seemed to have 
 been begun a jealous fate has stepped in to arrest 
 or reverse it. We have seen the effect of the 
 religious wars of the seventeenth century ; when 
 towards the close of the eighteenth a new spirit 
 of tolerance and comprehension was in the air, 
 the French Revolution came to provoke reaction. 
 Fifty years later the great calamity of the famine 
 seemed for a moment to have brought North and 
 South together, but the institution of the Roman 
 Catholic hierarchy in Great Britain reawoke re- 
 ligious fanaticism and reopened the old wounds. 
 After the disestablishment of the Irish Church a 
 better spirit once more began to prevail, but it 
 fled before Parnell and his revolutionary organi- 
 zation. Instances might be multiplied ; and 
 history will perhaps record that not the least 
 sorrowful is the revival of Home Rule since 1909, 
 not owing to anything new in the circumstances 
 of Ireland, but to the exigencies of English politics 
 and the ambition of an English party. 
 
 The marriage policy of the Roman Church, 
 now by the recent Ne Temere decree made more 
 rigid and exclusive than ever, has powerfully 
 wrought against fusion ; and unfortunately the 
 course of politics for the last quarter of a century 
 has made the political line of division approxi- 
 mately coincide with the traditional or religious 
 line. In Ireland men are nearly always 
 Unionists or Nationalists, because they were 
 born into one or the other camp ; there are a few 
 Protestant Home Rulers, and perhaps a larger 
 number of Roman Catholic Unionists, but practi- 
 
UNIONIST AND NATIONALIST 17 
 
 cally the political line is also the religious. The 
 Home Rule struggle is a struggle between two 
 nations, the Protestant and the Roman Catholic, 
 or, as, to avoid even the semblance of ministering 
 to religious bigotry, they had better perhaps be 
 called, the Unionist and the Nationalist. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GENESIS OF HOME RULE 
 
 The Orangemen had been the fiercest opponents 
 of the Union, but their opposition did not endure ; 
 and the Protestants in general, whatever their 
 feelings at first, soon learnt to regard the Act as 
 the charter of their rights, and have never since 
 wavered in their allegiance to the United 
 Kingdom. The Roman Catholics had of course 
 witnessed with little regret the downfall of the 
 Protestant Parliament, and for nearly thirty years 
 afterwards their chief pre-occupation was the 
 question of the removal of their political dis- 
 abilities. O'Connell, however, from the first 
 had been sincerely hostile to the Union and had 
 never concealed his hostility ; and when he had 
 carried Emancipation he threw his great prestige 
 and the political forces under his command into 
 a movement for repeal. For the furtherance of 
 that object he founded two societies in rapid 
 succession in 1830, but they were both at once 
 suppressed. The agitation proceeded fitfully for 
 several years, but amid the excitements of English 
 politics in that eventful time attracted less atten- 
 tion than might have been expected. Even in 
 Ireland itself the tithe war which was raging had 
 more interest for the peasantry. When the 
 second Melbourne Government came into office 
 
 18 
 
O'CONNELL AND REPEAL 19 
 
 in 1835 dependent on the Irish vote, O'Connell 
 suspended the agitation, declaring that Repeal 
 was not an end but a means, and that he was 
 willing to accept the Union if it meant justice 
 from England. The Under-Secretary, Thomas 
 Drummond, was then the real ruler in Ire- 
 land, and a more successful ruler she has 
 very rarely had ; but Drummond died in 
 1840, and, anticipating a speedy return of the 
 Tories to power, O'Connell in that year founded 
 the Repeal Association and renewed his agi- 
 tation. 
 
 He had predicted that, as a result of Catholic 
 Emancipation, Protestants and Roman Catholics 
 would forget their ancient feud and unite in a 
 demand for the restoration of Grattan's Par- 
 liament. The Protestants, however, saw that 
 Grattan's Parliament would now mean a Roman 
 Catholic ascendancy and showed no disposition 
 to respond to his blandishments ; and in the 
 elections of 1 841 the Repealers were discomfited, 
 O'Connell himself losing his seat in Dublin. For 
 about a year there was a lull ; but in 1842 a group 
 of young men of literary talent, who came to be 
 known by the name of Young Ireland, founded 
 the Nation, and, inspired by enthusiasm for the 
 new ideas of nationality which were then begin- 
 ning to play their part in European politics, gave 
 fresh momentum to the flagging Repeal move- 
 ment. It soon, indeed, became so menacing that 
 the Peel Government resolved to strike. A great 
 meeting at Clontarf, which was to be the prelude 
 to victor}', was prohibited in the autumn of 1S43, 
 and O'Connell, who always shrank from violence 
 except in his language, accepted the prohibition. 
 His prestige suffered in consequence, and was 
 hardly restored even by the blunder of his sub- 
 sequent arrest and trial. His closing 3'ears were 
 embittered by dissensions in his party between 
 
20 THE GENESIS OF HOME RULE 
 
 the main body and Young Ireland, anxious for a 
 more forward policy, and when he died in 1847 
 Repeal was going to ruin in the great catastrophe 
 of the famine. Young Ireland flickered out in 
 the abortive rising of 1848; but the thought of 
 a separate Parliament as essential to the com- 
 pleteness of the national idea had found its way 
 into the minds of the Roman Catholic masses and 
 was not easily to be dislodged. 
 
 It was nearly a generation, however, before 
 another great leader appeared on the scene. For 
 many years after the famine Ireland remained 
 prostrate, and no one thought of the formidable 
 power now coming into existence in the masses 
 of disaffected Irishmen who were carrying hatred 
 of England to their new home in the United 
 States. But in 1858 the Fenian Brotherhood 
 was founded, and the abortive raid into Canada 
 at the close of the American Civil War opened 
 the eyes of Englishmen to the magnitude of the 
 new danger. Outrages in England deepened the 
 impression, notably the explosion at Clerkenwell, 
 which by the confession of Mr. Gladstone among 
 other things blew up the Protestant Establish- 
 ment in Ireland. The new democracy which the 
 Reform Act of 1867 had brought into existence 
 was disposed to be sympathetic in its attitude 
 towards Ireland, but it was puzzled and vague, 
 and Mr. Gladstone, who had himself never really 
 penetrated to the heart of Irish discontent, under- 
 took to be its guide and the interpreter of its 
 desire that Ireland should be governed according 
 to Irish ideas. He proclaimed the Irish Church 
 to be the upas tree that was fatal to healthy life 
 beneath its shadow, and carried a scheme for its 
 disestablishment in 1869. 
 
 Disestablishment did not prove to be the 
 sovereign remedy he sought, but under the 
 stimulus of his new policy political life revived 
 
ISAAC BUTT AND HOME RULE 21 
 
 in Ireland, and in 1870 Isaac Butt, a Dublin 
 lawyer who had been a Conservative member of 
 Parliament, founded an association for the pro- 
 motion of " Home Government," which was 
 presently developed into the Home Rule League. 
 Butt himself appears to have invented the phrase 
 11 Home Rule," which has since become so 
 famous. The new association was on a com- 
 prehensive basis, and included Protestants and 
 Roman Catholics, landlords and tenant-right 
 men, Orangemen disgusted with the Act of 
 disestablishment, and Fenians who had begun 
 to despair of attaining their ideal of complete 
 separation by the more direct road of a physical 
 force policy. Ostensibly Home Rule was the 
 revival of a federal plan with which O'Connell 
 in his endeavours to conciliate the North had 
 coquetted for a moment in 1844, but which the 
 feeling among his supporters had soon compelled 
 him to drop ; it was based, to quote a resolution 
 of 1873, on " the principle of a federal arrange- 
 ment which would secure to the Irish Parliament 
 the right of legislating for and regulating all 
 matters relating to the internal affairs of Ireland, 
 while leaving to the Imperial Parliament the 
 power of dealing with all questions affecting 
 the Imperial Crown and Government ... as 
 well as the power of granting and providing 
 the supplies necessary for Imperial purposes." 
 A majority of the Irish members returned in 
 the elections of 1874 were nominal Home Rulers ; 
 but Butt as a leader was weak and ineffective, 
 and at the end of several years in Parliament 
 could point to little but a series of academic 
 debates on an annual resolution which was, of 
 course, always rejected by an overwhelming 
 majority of both political parties. It is doubtful, 
 indeed, whether the bulk 01 his followers seriously 
 desired any other result. 
 
22 THE GENESIS OF HOME RULE 
 
 In 1S75, however, Parnell came into Parlia- 
 ment, and the extremists presently found in him 
 a leader to their taste, one who combined with 
 many of the instincts of the practical statesman 
 something like a genius for destructive revolution. 
 In combination with Joseph Biggar, who had 
 been longer in Parliament, he discovered how 
 to reduce obstruction to a system, and in the 
 course of the Session of 1877 he succeeded in 
 attracting the attention of all Ireland by the 
 resolution with which he acted on the plan 
 he had now formed of rendering Parliamentary 
 government impossible. Biggar was an Ulster 
 Protestant, Parnell a Protestant and a landlord, 
 and these facts are suggestive ; it is a rule in 
 Irish politics, to which there are few exceptions, 
 the most conspicuous being O'Connell, that even 
 revolution, if it aspires to be effective, must draw 
 its leaders from the side of the old Protestant 
 Ascendancy. Parnell's proceedings, however, in 
 Parliament and their reception in Ireland speedily 
 opened the eyes of the great majority of the 
 Protestants who had called themselves Home 
 Rulers, and for that matter of most of the 
 Catholic gentry also, to the real nature of the 
 forces which they had unwittingly been evok- 
 ing. 
 
 Subsequent developments completed their edu- 
 cation. The harvests had been good throughout 
 the early seventies, and Ireland had been prosper- 
 ous; but the harvests of 1877 and 1878 were 
 below the average, and that of 1879 was a disas- 
 trous failure. It was about this time, moreover, 
 that food began to be imported from America on 
 the great scale; so that, thanks to the fiscal policy 
 of 1846, for which Ireland was made the pretext, 
 but which was framed with so little regard to her 
 real and permanent interests, the farmer had to 
 contend not only with bad harvests but also with 
 
PARNELL AND THE LAND LEAGUE 23 
 
 low prices. As distress increased, the hydra of 
 agrarian trouble reared its head again, and 
 Michael Davitt, an ex-Fenian, renewed the design 
 first formulated by Fintan Lalor in the time of 
 Young Ireland of utilizing the land question for 
 supplying the political movement with the needed 
 momentum. He succeeded with some difficulty 
 in convincing Parnell, and in 1879 the Land 
 League was founded with Parnell as its president. 
 With Davitt's assistance an arrangement was also 
 made with the Clan-na-Gael, the organization of 
 the Fenians or physical-force party in America, 
 by which they promised their support to the 
 constitutional movement on certain conditions, 
 the most important being the substitution for 
 Butt's federal arrangement of a demand for self- 
 government in general terms. Strengthened by 
 this arrangement, which was known as the New 
 Departure, and by the funds which it made 
 available, Parnell went into the elections of 
 1880, and emerged with a personal following of 
 nearly thirty members pledged to strict obedience 
 and prepared to go all lengths in support of his 
 policy. 
 
 It is not necessary to tell in detail the story of 
 the long struggle between Parnell and the forces 
 of disorder on the one side, and the forces of 
 government on the other, that raged throughout 
 the period of Mr. Gladstone's second Ministry. 
 Ireland was soon in a state of social revolution 
 approaching to civil war. Crime and outrage 
 were rife, Government was often paralysed, and 
 obstruction at the same time rampant in Parlia- 
 ment. Ministers meanwhile vacillated between 
 conciliation and repression as a remedy for the 
 disorders; the Land Act of 1881 was passed 
 granting the so-called three F's, fixity of tenure, 
 fair rent, and free sale ; then came the lurid 
 episode of the Phoenix Park murders, which made 
 
24 THE GENESIS OF HOME RULE 
 
 so deep an impression on the public mind of 
 England ; the Land League was suppressed and 
 the National League succeeded ; but through all 
 Parnell remained the uncrowned king of Ireland. 
 Finally, as if desirous that his throne should be 
 established, the Government, deaf to every warn- 
 ing, insisted, when they passed the Franchise Act 
 of 1884, on extending to Ireland the blessings of 
 household suffrage; and thus made it possible, 
 when the dissolution came in the winter of 1885, 
 for Parnell to sweep the country. 
 
 Before that event arrived Mr. Gladstone's 
 Government had fallen and been succeeded by 
 Lord Salisbury's Government of Caretakers. 
 Mr. Gladstone had been overthrown with the 
 aid of Irish votes, and the attitude of the new 
 Ministry on the whole Irish question was not 
 altogether clear. But the traditions of the Con- 
 servative Party, as Lord Salisbury remarked on 
 a famous occasion, were clear enough and were 
 soon to assert themselves. Mr. Gladstone was 
 travelling fast, and his speeches before the elec- 
 tions indicated an open mind on the question of 
 Home Rule. At the same time, he made his 
 famous appeal for an absolute majority. It will 
 be a vital danger, he declared, to the country and 
 to the Empire if at a time when a demand from 
 Ireland for larger powers of self-government 
 is to be dealt with there is not in Parliament 
 a party totally independent of the Irish vote. 
 This appeal did not meet with the response he 
 had hoped for; there were 86 pledged Parnell- 
 ites after the elections and the Liberals were 
 barely equal to Conservatives and Parnellites 
 combined. 
 
 A generation is arising which is not familiar 
 with the dramatic history of the eventful year 
 that followed, the heroic epoch of modern English 
 politics. After the elections Mr, Gladstone soon 
 
MR. GLADSTONE'S IRISH POLICY 25 
 
 forgot the danger he had emphasized and only 
 moved forward the faster on the course on which 
 he had entered. Most of the political documents 
 of that critical time have now been published, 
 and we are able to see the inner working of his 
 tortuous mind and impetuous character in his 
 communications with his colleagues. The elec- 
 tions were in November, and in the middle of 
 December the world was startled by a statement 
 appearing in the newspapers which purported to 
 give his scheme for the settlement of the Irish 
 question, with an Irish Parliament as its main 
 feature. This statement, which came to be known 
 as the Hawarden kite, was easily traced to its 
 source in Mr. Herbert Gladstone, and, though 
 his father at once declared it to be unauthorized 
 and inaccurate, he gave it no explicit denial as 
 regards its substance. When the new Parliament 
 met in the middle of January 1886, his intentions 
 were still uncertain and the position still unde- 
 fined, but ten days later the Salisbury Government, 
 which in the meantime had reverted to the policy 
 of coercion, were defeated on a side issue by a 
 combination of Liberals and Parnellites, and 
 Mr. Gladstone accepted the task of forming a 
 Ministry. 
 
 The Ministry was formed not explicitly on the 
 basis of a Home Rule programme, but on the 
 basis of an inquiry whether Home Rule was 
 practicable. It was clear enough, however, that 
 the question had been prejudged, and Lord 
 Hartington, who had never wavered in his 
 opposition to Home Rule, refused to come in. 
 Many other old colleagues including Mr. Goschen 
 and John Bright, Sir Henry James and Lord 
 Selborne, followed his example. Mr. Chamber- 
 lain, who was committed to large ideas of local 
 government, joined reluctantly and on conditions ; 
 but he made it clear from the first that he was 
 
26 THE GENESIS OF HOME RULE 
 
 opposed to any scheme that would split the 
 United Kingdom, and he resigned as soon as the 
 Cabinet entered seriously on the task of preparing 
 a bill. A consideration of the bill that was ulti- 
 mately produced and of Mr. Gladstone's second 
 bill six years later will provide material for a 
 separate chapter. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 mr. Gladstone's two bills 
 
 The Home Rule Bills for which Mr. Gladstone 
 was responsible were both attempts to find for 
 Ireland a position that should be a middle term 
 between the existing system of the Union and 
 the almost completely detached status of a self- 
 governing Colony ; and that without resort to 
 the plan which alone could have made the inter- 
 mediate position logical in theory or tenable in 
 practice — the adoption of a federal polity for the 
 United Kingdom as a whole. The bill which he 
 introduced in April 1886 was the further removed 
 from federalism and the nearer to the type of 
 colonial constitution. It provided for the estab- 
 lishment of a Legislature in Ireland of a very 
 curious pattern. This body was to consist of 
 two Orders sitting together and voting together 
 also in the usual course : one Order composed of 
 103 members, the 28 representative peers, and 
 75 members elected for a term of ten years by 
 scheduled electoral districts on a £25 franchise ; 
 the other of 204 members, elected as at present, 
 two from each existing constituency. 1 With the 
 object of providing a safeguard for the rights of 
 the Irish minority, either Order was to be given 
 
 1 There are 103 Irish members, but two of them are returned by 
 Dublin University, which was to retain its present representation. 
 
 27 
 
28 MR. GLADSTONE'S TWO BILLS 
 
 the privilege of demanding a separate vote, so 
 that either should by a majority be able to 
 veto the action of the other. The veto, however, 
 was to be terminated after three years or a dis- 
 solution, and the question then to be decided by 
 a joint vote of the two Orders. 
 
 The new Legislature was to possess all powers 
 that were not expressly withheld — in that resem- 
 bling an American state rather than a Canadian 
 province— but the list of exceptions and restric- 
 tions was long. All matters of Imperial interest, 
 including defence and naturalization, trade and 
 navigation, coinage, copyright, and patents, and 
 the postal and telegraph service outside Ireland, 
 were withdrawn from its jurisdiction ; and within 
 the bounds of Ireland it was precluded from 
 establishing or endowing any religion, imposing 
 disabilities on account of religious belief, or im- 
 pairing freedom of access by children of all 
 denominations to schools in receipt of public 
 money. If any provision of an Irish Act seemed 
 to be ultra vires the Lord-Lieutenant or a Secre- 
 tary of State could refer it to the Judicial Com- 
 mittee of the Privy Council in London, and any 
 party to an action in which such a point arose 
 had the same right of reference. 
 
 There was, of course, to be an Irish executive 
 responsible to the Irish legislature, but the Royal 
 Irish Constabulary, while that force subsisted, 
 was to remain under the control of the Imperial 
 authorities. The Irish legislature was, however, 
 to have the power of providing for the establish- 
 ment of a local police force under the control of 
 local authorities ; and in the meantime Ireland 
 was to contribute £1,000,000 annually to the cost 
 of the Imperial police, the total cost at the time 
 being £1,500,000. 
 
 The financial arrangements were complex, but 
 it is only necessary to touch on a few of the 
 
IRISH MEMBERS AT WESTMINSTER 29 
 
 salient points. Customs and excise, which repre- 
 sented three-fourths of the Irish revenue, were 
 to be retained under the control of the Imperial 
 Parliament and Government ; but all other taxes 
 were to be under Irish control at once. The Irish 
 share of the National Debt was taken at £48,000,000, 
 and the contribution to Imperial expenditure, 
 defence, civil list, and so forth was reckoned 
 on the same scale as one-fifteenth part of the 
 whole, though Parnell had contended strenuously 
 for one-twentieth or one-twent}^first. The pro- 
 portion adopted would have meant a contribution 
 of about three and a quarter millions annually, 
 but, if allowance is made for excise paid in Ireland 
 on liquor and tobacco consumed in Great Britain, 
 Lord Morley has calculated that the net contribu- 
 tion would have been no more than £1,850,000. 
 
 With the Home Rule Bill was coupled a bill 
 for the settlement of the land question by the aid 
 of Imperial credit, on the basis of giving to land- 
 lords the option of sale at twenty years' purchase. 
 But this bill was stillborn, being unpopular in 
 all quarters, and it is not worth while to linger 
 over its complex provisions. 
 
 The most striking feature of the Home Rule 
 Bill of 1886 was the total exclusion of the Irish 
 members from the Imperial Parliament, except 
 for the purpose of a revision of the new con- 
 stitution. If the new constitution had been of 
 the pure Colonial type this would have been 
 logical enough, but as certain powers commonly 
 granted to the self-governing colonies were with- 
 held from the Irish legislature — for instance, the 
 right to deal with defence, fiscal policy, and 
 naturalization — the exclusion of the Irish members 
 deprived Irishmen of all voice in questions that 
 concerned them deeply and placed their country 
 to that extent in the position of a dependency. 
 The Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure, 
 
 3* 
 
30 MR. GLADSTONE'S TWO BILLS 
 
 in flagrant disregard of the old English principle 
 of no taxation without representation, helped to 
 bring the dependent status into clearer relief. 
 At the same time the absence of the Irish 
 members from Westminster gave to the whole 
 scheme viewed in its Imperial aspect a separatist 
 complexion ; and this was one of the main argu- 
 ments which Mr. Chamberlain pressed in the 
 Cabinet, and the overruling of which determined 
 his resignation. 
 
 From the day that he resigned the bill was 
 practically doomed. In spite of its exceptions 
 and restrictions it was regarded as a great and 
 revolutionary experiment. The recollection of 
 recent outrages and of Mr. Gladstone's denuncia- 
 tions of them was still fresh in the public mind, 
 and the policy of surrendering Ireland to the 
 control of the very men who had been the pro- 
 pagandists of disorder was too cynical to be 
 tolerated. Through the exertions and under the 
 leadership of Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen, 
 Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Bright, and other 
 prominent men, a large Liberal and Radical 
 secession was organised, and the bill, after a 
 memorable debate, was rejected on the second 
 reading by 343 against 313, 93 Liberals voting 
 in the majority. Mr. Gladstone met his Cabinet 
 on the following day with a list of twelve reasons 
 for dissolving rather than resigning, and dissolu- 
 tion was the course adopted. An arrangement 
 had been made by which the seats of seceding 
 Liberals were not to be contested by Conserva- 
 tives, and in the result, notwithstanding the 
 transfer of the Irish vote to Mr. Gladstone's 
 side, 316 Conservatives were returned, with 
 74 Liberal Unionists, the two together having 
 a majority of 1 10 over Home Rule Liberals and 
 Parnellites combined. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone was undisma3 r ed, and at the age 
 
THE BALFOUR POLICY 31 
 
 of seventy-seven set out to convert the country to 
 his newly found faith. Lord Salisbury, after 
 offering to serve under Lord Hartington, formed 
 a purely Conservative Ministry ; but all Govern- 
 ments dependent on a composite majority are in 
 a precarious position, and the new Government 
 at first did not seem to prosper. When it had 
 existed a few months Lord Randolph Churchill, 
 who had risen by a meteoric flight to the leader- 
 ship of the House of Commons, capriciously 
 resigned, and the blow at first seemed so serious 
 that Lord Salisbury offered to make way for 
 Lord Hartington as Prime Minister. Lord 
 Randolph's place, however, was filled by the 
 Liberal Unionist Mr. Goschen and the difficulty 
 overcome. Then came an attempt, promoted 
 by Sir William Harcourt and known as the 
 Round Table Conference, to bring back Mr. 
 Chamberlain and his Radical followers to the 
 orthodox Liberal fold, but it ended in failure. 
 Ireland in the meantime was again getting out 
 of hand, Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien having 
 launched in the autumn the famous Plan of 
 Campaign, a device by which rents, subject to 
 an abatement fixed by the tenants themselves, 
 were offered by them in a body as payment 
 in full, and if refused by the landlord handed 
 over to a committee for the purpose of the 
 struggle. 
 
 The turning point came when Mr. Balfour in 
 an auspicious moment was appointed Chief 
 Secretary in succession to Sir Michael Hicks 
 Beach, who had been compelled for reasons of 
 health to relinquish that office. By his steady 
 and fearless administration in Ireland and his 
 imperturbable demeanour in presence of the 
 Nationalists in Parliament Mr. Balfour obtained 
 the mastery in no long time of the forces of 
 disorder and made himself in the process one 
 
32 MR. GLADSTONE'S TWO BILLS 
 
 of the foremost men in politics. And when 
 peace had been restored in Ireland he turned 
 his attention to the material needs of the country 
 and laid the foundations of that happily named 
 Balfour policy which, continued by his successors 
 under his guidance and inspiration, has done 
 so much to give us the prospering Ireland of 
 to-day. 
 
 Then came the dramatic episode of the Parnell 
 Commission, followed by the divorce proceedings, 
 wmich led to a schism in the Nationalist Party 
 and the leader's dethronement and death. If 
 the former incident gave a stimulus to the Home 
 Rule cause the latter provoked reaction, and the 
 two may thus be said to have balanced each 
 other, rarnell died in 1891, and the General 
 Election came in the summer of 1892. In spite 
 of the success of the Conservative Administration 
 in Ireland, the swing of the pendulum destroyed 
 the Unionist majority and Mr. Gladstone came 
 back to power at the age of eighty-three at the 
 head of his fourth Government. He had expected 
 a great victory, but his majority was only forty- 
 two, even with the aid of over eighty|Nationalists, 
 Parnellites comprised. 
 
 In the Session of 1893 he introduced his second 
 bill and, in the face of many difficulties, succeeded 
 in carrying it through the House of Commons. 
 The steadiness of the small majority was the first 
 notable illustration of that power of party dis- 
 cipline to which we are now growing accus- 
 tomed ; though it was commonly said at the 
 time, and probably with truth, that many Liberals 
 would have revolted but for their knowledge of 
 the fact that the House of Lords would do the 
 work they feared to do themselves. The bill as 
 it left the House of Commons differed in some 
 important respects from the bill as it had been 
 introduced, and in many still more important 
 
THE BILL OF 1893 33 
 
 from the bill of 1886. The subordinate character 
 of the new Legislature was now emphasized by a 
 declaration that notwithstanding anything in this 
 Act contained, the supreme power and authority 
 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great 
 Britain and Ireland shall remain unaffected and 
 undiminished over all persons, matters, and 
 things within the Queen's dominions. The de- 
 vice of the two Orders sitting together was 
 abandoned, and there were to be two Houses 
 sitting separately — one a Council of 48 elected 
 by large constituencies on a £20 franchise for 
 a term of eight years ; the other an Assembly 
 of 103 members elected as at present. Questions 
 at issue between the Houses after two years or a 
 dissolution were to be decided by a joint vote. 
 The list of exceptions and restrictions was longer 
 and more explicit than in the previous bill and 
 included a disability on the part of the new 
 Legislature to deal with the land question for 
 a period of three years. The arrangement with 
 regard to the police was much the same as 
 before. 
 
 In the matter of finance the provisions were 
 less favourable from the Irish point of view than 
 those of 1886. For a period of six years all exist- 
 ing taxes were to remain under the control of the 
 Imperial Parliament and Government, though 
 the Irish Legislature was to have powers of addi- 
 tional taxation in aid of its special revenue. 
 Customs and excise were to be permanently 
 beyond its purview. F*or six years the contri- 
 bution to Imperial expenditure was to be one- 
 third of the Irish revenue raised on Imperial 
 taxation, after allowance had been made for taxes 
 raised in Ireland on articles consumed in Great 
 Britain and vice versa. This arrangement, it is 
 estimated, would have meant in the first year a 
 contribution of over two millions and a quarter, 
 
34 MR. GLADSTONE'S TWO BILLS 
 
 a good deal more, it will be seen, than the real 
 contribution of 1886. Ireland was also to pay 
 her share of any special taxation imposed by 
 Parliament for the purpose of a war ; and we 
 can imagine the situation that would have arisen 
 under this provision in 1899. But it is now 
 generally admitted that the financial arrange- 
 ments altogether would have proved completely 
 unworkable, and would in no long time have 
 landed Ireland in bankruptcy. 
 
 The most remarkable new feature of the bill of 
 1893 was the retention of the Irish members to 
 the number of 80 at Westminster. It was felt 
 that their total exclusion in 1886 had proved 
 indefensible, and opinion had been definitely 
 setting towards the other solution. All pretence 
 was now abandoned that a grant of Home Rule 
 would put an end to the Irish question, even to 
 the extent of withdrawing it from the daily con- 
 templation of the Parliament at Westminster, and 
 so enabling that Parliament to bury its head in 
 the sand. In the second bill as introduced, in 
 order to avoid the anomaly of allowing the Irish 
 to meddle in the affairs of England and Scotland 
 while Englishmen and Scotsmen were debarred 
 from meddling in theirs, the Irish members were 
 to be retained for Imperial purposes only. But 
 this, which came to be known as the In and Out 
 arrangement, still left the paradox that the 
 Government which was the local executive for 
 Great Britain would be at the mercy of Irish 
 votes ; and the plan of making the Imperial Par- 
 liament at once the central and a subordinate 
 Legislature in a federal system proved so 
 ludicrous when examined that it was abandoned 
 in Committee amid general laughter. The 80 
 Irish members were retained for all purposes, in 
 spite of the paradoxes and anomalies which this 
 course involved. 
 
END OF THE STRUGGLE 35 
 
 Everybody knew that this fantastic constitution 
 had no chance of survival. Feeling in Ulster had 
 been running higher, if possible, than in 1886, 
 and the province was organized for resistance if 
 the need should arise ; but even apart from the 
 opposition of Ulster and the Irish Unionists, the 
 scheme was condemned in advance. There was 
 a certain air of unreality about the whole pro- 
 ceeding, and on the side of the bill probably no 
 one but Mr. Gladstone was very much in earnest. 
 When the Bill went to the House of Lords it was 
 at once rejected on the second reading by an 
 enormous majority. Mr. Gladstone we now 
 know wanted shortly afterwards, when the House 
 of Lords had asserted itself on a couple of other 
 bills, to take up the challenge and go to the 
 country ; but the great majority of his colleagues 
 showed a truer appreciation of the temper of 
 the public, and a little later he retired. Under 
 Lord Rosebery as Prime Minister the Liberals 
 struggled on for another twelve months, the new 
 leader beginning his career by promulgating the 
 doctrine that Home Rule was impossible till 
 the predominant partner should be converted, a 
 condition, it may be noted, which has not yet 
 been fulfilled. When the dissolution finally came 
 in 1895 the action of the House of Lords was 
 ratified by a great majority, and the first Home 
 Rule struggle came to an end. It had lasted, 
 like the war of Troy, if we reckon from the 
 general election of 1885 to that of 1895, for a 
 period of ten years. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION 
 
 The peculiar system of land tenure which pre- 
 vailed in Ireland before the legislation of the 
 last forty years was, like many other evils, a 
 heritage from the troubled history and abnormal 
 social conditions of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries. The wholesale confiscations of the 
 seventeenth century, the presence of a conquered 
 race kept in a state of serfage by the barbarous 
 Penal Laws of the eighteenth, the excessive 
 pressure on the land and minute subdivision 
 of holdings that were caused by growth of 
 population, by absence of industrial openings, 
 by the natural land hunger of the peasantry, and 
 by the frequent clearances for pasture ; and, 
 finally, the fact that as often as not the real 
 proprietor was an absentee who let the land to 
 a middleman or left to an agent on the spot the 
 task of extorting the utmost from the miserable 
 tenants — all these things combined to build up 
 a system of which rack rents, arbitrary evictions, 
 and the habitual confiscation of the tenant's 
 improvements were the inevitable incidents. 
 The Irish landlord as a rule was nothing but a 
 mere rent receiver who let bare land, not farms 
 in the English sense, so that the tenant's improve- 
 ments usually included everything from the 
 
 36 
 
evils of the land system 37 
 
 dwelling downwards that formed the equipment 
 of the holding ; yet, as the tenant was usually a 
 tenant at will, all was at the landlord's mercy. 
 Human nature, indeed, showed itself better than 
 the system, and the bad landlords who pushed 
 their legal rights to the point of tyranny were 
 always in a minority ; but laws must be judged 
 by what they render possible, and judged by this 
 test the Irish land laws were thoroughly bad. 
 
 The Scottish and English farmers who had 
 settled in Ulster suffered for a time hardly less 
 than their neighbours, and landlord oppression 
 was one of the main causes that drove them 
 in shoals in the eighteenth century across the 
 Atlantic, there to be the bitterest and most potent 
 enemies of England when her hour of trial came. 
 But by the time of the Union the Protestant 
 farmers of the North had, not without resort to 
 violence, succeeded in establishing the well-known 
 Ulster custom, which acted as a barrier against 
 arbitrary eviction, and recognized on the part of 
 the tenant a right to a certain saleable interest 
 in his holding created by his own improvements. 
 This was the beginning of the dual ownership 
 which was to become the general rule in Ireland ; 
 and, indeed, the history of the land question in 
 the nineteenth century is to a great extent the 
 history of efforts, in the end successful, to make 
 the Ulster custom general. In 1845 the Devon 
 commission appointed by the Peel Government 
 discovered that the root of the whole agrarian 
 mischief was the confiscation of the tenant's 
 improvements by the process of raising the 
 rent, and recommended legislation. A Bill was 
 introduced • by Lord Stanley in the House of 
 Lords, but it was speedily dropped. Then came 
 the famine, followed by the Encumbered Estates 
 Act, passed in 1849, in the heyday of laisser-faire 
 and the contractual ideas which were so long the 
 
38 THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION 
 
 gospel of English Liberalism, but of such evil 
 import for Ireland. The act was inspired by 
 Peel, who is often described as the typical 
 English statesman, and was certainly typical in 
 his inability to understand the Irish question, 
 an inability which some think he transmitted to 
 his pupil Gladstone. His intentions in this case 
 were excellent, but the effect was to sweep away 
 many of the old proprietors who had kindly 
 relations with their people and had stood by 
 them in the famine, and to substitute a new race 
 of mercenary landlords who thought only of 
 extorting their legal pound of flesh and ignored 
 all customary and traditional rights in the process. 
 Wholesale evictions followed, affecting in three 
 years over 300,000 people. The Encumbered 
 Estates Act helped to make agrarian revolution 
 inevitable ; and the bitterness of that time has 
 done as much as anything in all the bitter 
 memories of Irish suffering and woe to swell 
 the hatred of England both in Ireland itself and 
 among the Irish who carried their wrongs to 
 America. 
 
 The tyranny of the exterminators, as the evict- 
 ing landlords were called, led to a tenant-right 
 movement which united North and South in a 
 short-lived combination, but nothing was accom- 
 plished. During the brief Derby-Disraeli Govern- 
 ment of 1852 a bill granting to the tenant com- 
 pensation for his improvements was read a second 
 time in the House of Commons ; but the Govern- 
 ment fell, and it was heard of no more. Then 
 came reaction, and in i860 the Deasy Act pushed 
 the fanaticism of contract and of freedom to evict 
 to its furthest limits. Ten years later, however, 
 the revolution began, the Gladstone Act of 1870 
 recognizing the Ulster custom, and similar 
 customs where they existed, and awarding com- 
 pensation for disturbance and improvements ; 
 
THE THREE PS 39 
 
 but the act was so hedged in with exceptions 
 and limitations that it proved a comparative failure. 
 The failure was for a time disguised by the 
 prosperity of the early seventies, but when bad 
 times came the act did not prevent a land war, 
 which was intensified by the fact that the preced- 
 ing prosperity had led to an increase of rents. 
 The land war soon extorted, as Mr. Gladstone 
 himself confessed, the act of 1881, which estab- 
 lished dual ownership without any disguise as 
 the basis of the Irish land system. This act 
 conceded the so-called three F's — fair rents fixed 
 by a judicial tribunal and revised at intervals of 
 fifteen years ; fixity of tenure as long as the rent 
 was paid ; and free sale of the tenant's interest. 
 Two judicial terms have now been com- 
 pleted since the act came into operation, and 
 the total reduction of the old rental shown by 
 the second-term rental after two judicial hearings 
 is about 36 per cent. Acts passed by Mr. Balfour 
 in 1887 an d l %9 1 extended to leaseholders the 
 benefits of judicial rents; and, in spite of the great 
 progress of state-aided land purchase, nearly half 
 the land of Ireland is still held under the system 
 of dual ownership established by the act of 1881, 
 with its subsequent amendments. 
 
 To land purchase we now come ; it is the 
 distinctive Unionist policy for the solution of the 
 Irish land problem. John Bright was one of 
 the first to urge the creation of a peasant pro- 
 prietary, and through his influence clauses were 
 introduced into the Church Act of 1869 and the 
 Land Act of 1870 making public money available 
 for the furtherance of this policy. The tenant, 
 however, was to find a substantial proportion of 
 the purchase money, and this and the onerous 
 terms made the clauses of little effect. The 
 purchase provisions of the act of 1881 were no 
 more successful ; and the first really happy 
 
4o THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION 
 
 ■ 
 
 attempt to find a solution of the problem was the 
 Ashbourne Act passed by Lord Salisbury's first 
 Government in 1885. It advanced five millions 
 on the principle of the state providing the whole 
 of the purchase money and the tenant repaying 
 by an annuity at the rate of 4 per cent, for 49 
 3jears, 3 per cent, interest and 1 per cent, sinking 
 fund. On the average number of years' purchase 
 this represented a substantial reduction of the old 
 permanent rent, and the act was so popular that 
 the money was soon all applied for. When Lord 
 Salisbury came back to power a second Act was 
 passed in 1887 providing another five millions; 
 and by the operation of the two 25,000 tenants 
 out of a total in Ireland of 550,000 became tenants 
 of the State with no remote prospect of possess- 
 ing their land in freehold. 
 
 Experience of the Ashbourne Acts showed that 
 the Irish " purchasing" tenant paid his annuities 
 with marvellous regularity and that the risk of 
 loss to the State was infinitesimal. Emboldened 
 accordingly, Mr. Balfour carried his great Act of 
 1 89 1 empowering the loan of £33,000,000 for the 
 extension of the purchase policy. The landlord 
 was now to be paid in 2| per cent. Guaranteed 
 Land stock, exchangeable for Consols, and as the 
 tenant's annuity was to remain at 4 per cent, of 
 the purchase money, i£ per cent, was now avail- 
 able for sinking fund and the term of redemption 
 was reduced to 42 years. The same act created 
 the Congested Districts Board, with special 
 powers and special funds, which has done so 
 much to change the face of the West of Ireland. 
 Under this act and an amending act of 1896, 
 nearly ^14,000,000 was advanced for the benefit 
 of 47,000 purchasers. 
 
 When these acts were passed Government 
 Stock was at its apogee, and payment in stock 
 therefore popular, but with the fall of the 2% per 
 
THE WYNDHAM ACT 4 t 
 
 cent, stock decidedly below par, that began about 
 the time of the South African war, purchase came 
 to a standstill. The tenants who had already 
 purchased were in a privileged position, and the 
 cry of compulsion began to be raised against the 
 landlords. Another method, however, was found. 
 Sir Horace Plunkett, greatly daring, had tried 
 in the Recess Committee of 1895 the experiment 
 of a conference between Irishmen of all parties 
 for practical and constructive work, and carried 
 it to a successful issue; and in 1902, on the initia- 
 tive of Captain Shawe-Taylor, the experiment 
 was repeated in the form of a conference between 
 leading representatives of landlords and tenants. 
 Within a few weeks the conference had produced 
 a unanimous report urging the completion of the 
 work of purchase as the only solution of the 
 land problem, and suggesting a scheme by which, 
 without resort to compulsion, the work might be 
 completed on terms satisfactory both to landlords 
 and tenants. Mr. Wyndham, who was Chief 
 Secretary, took the matter up and carried his 
 famous Act of 1903. As compulsion against the 
 landlord was out of the question, the method of 
 inducement was tried in its place. He was now 
 to be paid in cash, and was to receive for his own 
 use, clear of rights under settlements, a cash bonus 
 of 12 per cent, on the amount of the purchase 
 money, a sum of £12,000,000 being provided as a 
 free gift from the Imperial Exchequer for the 
 payment of this bonus. Estates Commissioners 
 were appointed for the administration of the act, 
 and estates were to be sold as a whole or in such 
 units as the Commissioners might agree to accept, 
 the tenants acting in a body. Everything possible 
 was done to make the procedure automatic and 
 to eliminate the technical difficulties of proving 
 title and so forth which had impeded the working 
 of previous acts. It was estimated that the total 
 
42 THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION 
 
 sum required under the act would be £100,000,000, 
 and this sum, which can now be seen to have 
 been a serious under-estimate, was to be advanced 
 at the rate of £5,000,000 annually, the money to 
 be raised by the issue of two-and-three-quarters 
 per cent. Guaranteed Land Stock. The annuity 
 paid by the tenant was now to be 3^, not 4 per 
 cent., and as only J per cent, was thus available 
 for sinking fund, the period of redemption was 
 extended to 6S% years. 
 
 The act was enormously popular, both with 
 landlords and tenants, and agreements were 
 speedily lodged far beyond the powers of the 
 Estates Commissioners to deal with them, and 
 still farther beyond the powers of the Treasury 
 to advance the money. At the date of the latest 
 return well over £40,000,000 had actually been 
 advanced for the benefit of 120,000 tenants; and 
 agreements representing nearly the same amount 
 and the same number of purchasers were " pend- 
 ing " till the money should be available for their 
 completion. But for the great fall in the price 
 of Government securities, the Wyndham Act 
 would have supplied a final settlement of the Irish 
 land problem, and the end of the long and weary 
 story would now be well within sight. But the 
 act, if not needlessly generous in its terms, can 
 certainly now be seen to have been improvident 
 in its finance. The abandonment 01 the old 
 four per cent, annuity, which had proved so 
 successful and to which Ireland had grown accus- 
 tomed, was probably unnecessary, and, if un- 
 necessary, a mistake. Experience, indeed, has 
 shown that the Irish tenant cares little about the 
 length of the period of redemption ; he thinks 
 a great deal of the immediate reduction which 
 the annuity offers on his rent, not of whether it 
 is to cease in the time of his son or of his grand- 
 son. But 4 per cent, offered an ample reduction 
 
THE ACT OF 1909 43 
 
 on the rent, and with 4 per cent, in hand it would 
 have been easy to solve the problem created by 
 the fall in Land Stock by an extension of the 
 period of redemption. As it is, a standard was 
 set up which it has not been possible in practice 
 to maintain, and which it may not be easy ever to 
 restore. 
 
 It had been assumed that Irish Land stock 
 would not fall below 95 ; it is now 78. To 
 save the Treasury from loss through the issue 
 of stock below par, differences were to be made 
 good out of the fund called the Development 
 Grant, and when that was exhausted out of 
 various grants in aid of rates. The two-and- 
 three-quarters per cent. Land Stock fell so 
 heavily from the first that by 1909 the Develop- 
 ment Grant was on the point of exhaustion, 
 and if the Irish ratepayer was to be saved it 
 became necessary to legislate. The Birrell Act 
 was accordingly passed revising the terms for 
 future agreements. The landlord was now to 
 be paid in three per cent, stock at its nominal 
 value, the tenant's annuity to be raised to 3J per 
 cent., the period of redemption to be slightly 
 reduced, and the bonus to be awarded on a new 
 set of principles. A proposal to give the Estates 
 Commissioners general powers of compulsion 
 was abandoned in committee, but large com- 
 pulsory powers were given to the Congested 
 Districts Board, with extension of its jurisdiction 
 to a new statutory area representing a third of 
 Ireland. 
 
 It is commonly said in Ireland that the act was 
 intended to stop land purchase, and except in the 
 congested area where compulsion can be applied 
 it has certainly had that effect. The financial 
 situation called imperatively for changes, and the 
 changes introduced were based on the report of 
 a Treasury committee ; but the committee did 
 
44 THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION 
 
 their work in the spirit of accountants, and no 
 attempt was made to revise their recommenda- 
 tions in the spirit of the statesman. The act, 
 which was forced through with very little dis- 
 cussion, was rather Mr. Dillon's than Mr. Birrell's 
 Act, and Mr. Dillon had never concealed his 
 dislike of the Wyndham Act and his anxiety to 
 obstruct its working. It was this attitude of his 
 that led to the revolt of Mr. O'Brien, for 
 Mr. O'Brien was a member of the Land Con- 
 ference of 1902 and has remained loyal to his 
 engagements. 
 
 It is obvious, however, that land purchase 
 must in no distant future be carried to a con- 
 clusion. The present position is one of most 
 unstable equilibrium. On this side of a fence 
 there is a judicial tenant paying, say, a rent of 
 £30 in perpetuity ; on that, a purchasing tenant 
 paying for a similar holding an annuity perhaps 
 of £20 for a limited number of years, with the 
 knowledge that he is in the fair way towards the 
 acquisition of the freehold. About £200,000,000 
 from first to last will be required to purchase 
 Ireland. About £70,000,000 has been already 
 advanced and nearly £40,000,000 more will be 
 advanced under the act of 1903 as the funds 
 become available. Thus, if we include pending 
 agreements, more than half the land of Ireland 
 is dealt with already, and means will have to be 
 found for dealing with the remainder. 
 
 But, whatever the means adopted for carrying- 
 it to a conclusion, the agrarian revolution, even 
 in the stage it has reached, has produced effects 
 in Ireland of which it is impossible to exaggerate 
 the significance. Materially and morally, socially 
 and politically, it is changing the face of the 
 country and transmuting all the elements that 
 compose the Irish problem. The land question 
 has always been the principal spring of Irish 
 
A CHANGED SITUATION 45 
 
 discontent, and supplied the real driving power 
 of Irish agitation ; but it has now lost most of its 
 virus as a poison and its energy as a motive 
 power. Habit is strong, and a little time will be 
 required for the political consequences to declare 
 themselves in full. But if the present attempt 
 to unsettle everything by a policy of despair 
 fails, as it assuredly will, the Irish problem, on 
 the next occasion when it calls for our attention, 
 will have assumed a very different and far more 
 hopeful aspect. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IRELAND DURING THE TRUCE 
 
 Until a quarter of a century ago Ireland could 
 never succeed in getting her grievances redressed 
 except when she called attention to them by out- 
 rage and agitation. Since the Unionist party 
 came into existence in 1886, and especiall} 7 since 
 it first began to look to Mr. Balfour for guidance 
 on Irish matters, it has shown not only a readi- 
 ness to redress grievances when presented, but 
 an eagerness to seek them out ; and has evolved 
 a great constructive policy which, as has already 
 been said, is changing the face of Ireland. It is 
 the tendency of Liberalism to place constitutional 
 reform, or what it is pleased to regard as con- 
 stitutional reform, before the less show}' and 
 ambitious work of improving the condition of the 
 people ; and in Ireland more than elsewhere this 
 has always been an inversion of the true order of 
 procedure. The Unionist party have never made 
 any similar mistake. " Of the remedial measures," 
 said Lord MacDonnell on a recent occasion, 
 11 that have been introduced in the course of the 
 last twenty years the great majority were intro- 
 duced by the Unionists, who should get the 
 credit. From Mr. Balfour's arrival in Ireland up 
 to the present day a great succession of beneficial 
 acts have been passed, and we should admit that, 
 
 46 
 
THE RECESS COMMITTEE 47 
 
 however Ireland has suffered in the past, the day 
 of her regeneration has now arrived. ' 
 
 From 1892 to 1895 the Liberals did nothing for 
 Ireland but pass through the House of Commons 
 a Home Rule bill which, as few would now care 
 to deny, would have proved a disastrous failure. 
 When the Unionists came back to power in 1895 
 they proceeded with the development of their 
 positive and constructive policy. The conditions 
 were favourable in Ireland itself. All parties 
 were exhausted by the long struggle over Home 
 Rule, and were ready to turn their attention from 
 questions of abstract politics to concrete measures 
 of practical reform. One of the earliest ex- 
 pressions of the new spirit in the air was Sir 
 Horace Plunkett's Recess Committee, of which 
 mention has already been made, and on which 
 Protestants and Roman Catholics, Orangemen 
 and Nationalists worked harmoniously together. 
 It led to the creation, by an act carried a few 
 years later under Mr. Gerald Balfour, of the 
 Department of Agriculture and Technical In- 
 struction, which has done admirable work for 
 Ireland. 
 
 In the meantime Sir Horace Plunkett's volun- 
 tary movements for the promotion of co-operation 
 and the organization 01 agricultural credit were 
 making steady progress in the favourable atmo- 
 sphere which land purchase was creating; and 
 the country, as was shown by every test that 
 could be applied, was growing in prosperity. All 
 these things tended to induce a better feeling ; 
 and even the report of a commission on the 
 financial relations between Great Britain and 
 Ireland which had been appointed by the Liberal 
 Government in 1894, but which did not finish its 
 labours till 1896, helped in its way to bring men 
 together and fix their attention on questions of 
 material interest. This now famous report was 
 
48 IRELAND DURING THE TRUCE 
 
 a very curious document. It was founded on the 
 Home Rule principle of looking not to the in- 
 cidence of taxation on the individual or even on 
 classes, but to its incidence on Ireland as a 
 distinct financial unit ; and yet, while regarding 
 Ireland as a separate fiscal entity for purposes of 
 taxation, it declined so to regard her for purposes 
 of expenditure. Ireland, according to the com- 
 mission, was contributing an excessive share of 
 the revenue of the United Kingdom ; her share 
 of the expenditure was also excessive, but this 
 fact, which is more conspicuously a fact at the 
 present moment, they refused to admit as a set- 
 off. A report framed on such principles is not of 
 much value ; but it has become one of the sacred 
 books of Nationalist Ireland, and has not been 
 without influence even on the Unionist side. 
 The real grievance which underlay the muddled 
 conclusions of the commission, but which it failed 
 to discern, is, as is shown by Miss Alice Murray, 
 the author of the classical work on the commercial 
 and financial relations between England and Ire- 
 land, the fact that taxation in the United Kingdom 
 as a whole presses with undue weight on the 
 class of the very poor which is so numerous in 
 Ireland ; and the true remedy would be such a 
 reduction of the taxes on tea, sugar, and tobacco 
 as Tariff Reformers propose. 
 
 The Financial Relations report gave to Home 
 Rule a new motive and a new bias which will be 
 very far from facilitating the task before the 
 present Government. But it was, of course, 
 ignored by the Unionist Government of the day, 
 and the excitement caused by its appearance soon 
 died away. The chief measure of the following 
 years was Mr. Gerald Balfour's Local Govern- 
 ment Act of 1898, which extended to Ireland the 
 reformed English system of local administration. 
 As regards the county councils, at all events, it 
 
DEVOLUTION 49 
 
 may be said that the new system has not been 
 a failure, but the rural district councils have a far 
 more dubious record. 
 
 During the years of the Boer War Irish politics 
 received little attention, though the Nationalist 
 factions came together in 1900, under the leader- 
 ship of Mr. Redmond. The fine performance of 
 the Irish regiments which led to the famous visit 
 of Queen Victoria to Ireland in the last year of 
 her life had the effect, indeed, of presenting 
 Irishmen in their best light to the democracy of 
 Great Britain, and was followed with admiration 
 by many in Ireland, whose admiration would 
 have been even greater if the regiments had 
 fought on the other side. 
 
 After the war came the Land Conference, of 
 which the story has already been told. Lord 
 Dunraven had been its chairman, and its success 
 prompted him to found an Irish Reform Associa- 
 tion, of which he became the president and which 
 proceeded to develop a scheme of devolution. 
 Under this scheme the control of Irish internal 
 expenditure was to be handed over to an Irish 
 Council, and at the same time an Irish Assembly 
 was to be established in Dublin with the initiative 
 in Irish Bills. The scheme was known to enjoy 
 the patronage of the Under-Secretary, Sir Antony, 
 now Lord, MacDonnell, and Mr. Wyndham, the 
 Chief Secretary, was believed at first to be sym- 
 pathetic. But a storm among the Irish Unionists 
 and their supporters in Great Britain compelled 
 its abandonment, and led in no long time 
 to Mr. Wyndham's resignation. Unionist devo- 
 lution had been overtaken by the fate that has 
 invariably pursued middle movements in Irish 
 politics. 
 
 The Nationalists meanwhile had remained 
 profoundly indifferent, but they were soon them- 
 selves to be assailed in the rear by the extremists 
 
5 o IRELAND DURING THE TRUCE 
 
 of their own side. They had become suspect 
 of being Laodicean ; and a party which called 
 itself Sinn Fein, " Ourselves Alone," and which in 
 a sense carried on the tradition of Young Ireland 
 and the Fenians, arose to preach independence in 
 a more aggressive spirit. The aim of the Sinn 
 Feiners was the establishment of a national 
 Government in Ireland ; or, as they themselves 
 preferred to say, the re-establishment of a national 
 Government, though when in the history of the 
 country such a Government had existed they did 
 not explain. They proposed to achieve their 
 purpose not by physical force but by a policy 
 of national boycott. The principle of Ireland for 
 the Irish was to be asserted in every way, 
 recruiting was to be stopped, English goods were 
 not to be bought, nor as far as possible any 
 articles paying duty to the English exchequer. 
 Above all, profoundly distrusting the Parlia- 
 mentary movement, Sinn Fein insisted on the 
 complete withdrawal of the Irish members from 
 Westminster and the institution in Dublin of an 
 annual assembly invested, if not at first with legal, 
 at least with moral authority. 
 
 This programme of course was a counsel of 
 perfection, but for some time Sinn Fein met 
 with great success and seemed to be becoming for- 
 midable. It was helped by the General Election 
 of 1906, which brought the Liberals back to 
 power with a majority independent of the 
 Nationalist vote. Before the election Home 
 Rule had been formally excluded from the pro- 
 gramme of legislation during the period of the 
 coming Parliament. Lord Rosebery had repudi- 
 ated it many years before, and his followers, 
 Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and Mr. Haldane, 
 had reduced it to something that fell very far 
 short of the conception of " national self-govern- 
 ment." Thus the admission of the Liberal 
 
HOME RULE BY INSTALMENT 51 
 
 Leaguers to the Campbell-Bannerman Cabinet 
 was regarded in Ireland as a blow to Parlia- 
 mentary Nationalism. Home Rule, however, 
 was still, in Mr. Churchill's phrase, " the adopted 
 child " of the Liberal party, though it might be 
 treated as a foundling ; and it was thought 
 necessary to make a show of performing parental 
 duties. " Home Rule by instalment " was re- 
 garded as consistent with the pledges that had 
 been given before the elections, and in 1907 Mr. 
 Birrell introduced an Irish Council Bill con- 
 taining a scheme of devolution. The hand of 
 Lord MacDonnell, the great apostle of this 
 remedy, was once more apparent. An Irish 
 Council was to be created of 107 members, 82 
 of them elected, and was to have control of local 
 government, the Congested Districts Board, the 
 Department of Agriculture, Public Works in 
 Ireland, and the systems of primary and inter- 
 mediate education. For these and other minor 
 purposes it was to have the administration of 
 an annual revenue of over £4,000,000. 
 
 Mr. Redmond blessed the bill, but he reckoned 
 without Ireland. The Unionists were, of course, 
 opposed to a policy which they regarded as a 
 first step in the direction of Home Rule ; but 
 from its opposite point of view Sinn Fein, which 
 was now at the height of its influence, was no 
 less opposed and denounced the bill as com- 
 promising the national demand. The Roman 
 Catholic Church disliked the proposal to transfer 
 the control of education to a popularly elected 
 body, and when a Nationalist convention 
 assembled to consider the new proposal Mr. 
 Redmond, who, it is said, came down with two 
 speeches, found the feeling so strong that he 
 was compelled to swallow his pride and move 
 the rejection of the bill. Lord MacDonnell is 
 still found preaching his favourite remedy, like 
 
52 IRELAND DURING THE TRUCE 
 
 a prophet in the wilderness ; but the Liberal 
 experience ot 1907 teaches the same lesson as 
 the Unionist experience of 1904, that, whatever 
 its merits or demerits in the abstract may be, 
 devolution is the line oi greatest, not the 
 line of least, resistance in Irish politics. It is 
 despised and suspected by both the Irish nations. 
 Unionist Ireland fears it as the first step towards 
 Home Rule ; while Nationalist Ireland turns 
 away with suspicion and contempt from a 
 measure falling so far short of the " national " 
 ideal. 
 
 In the following year Mr. Birrell succeeded in 
 carrying a measure in satisfaction of the demand 
 of Roman Catholic Ireland for University educa- 
 tion, the only solid contribution made by the 
 Liberal Party to the settlement of the Irish 
 question since Mr. Gladstone's Land Act of 1881. 
 The problem was difficult and Mr. Birrell's solu- 
 tion very far from perfect. The success of the 
 new Roman Catholic University in Dublin is 
 still open to doubt, and by establishing a 
 separate University in Belfast Mr. Birrell's Act 
 emphasized the isolation of the North. But it 
 at least put an end to the last genuine grievance 
 of the Roman Catholics in Ireland, and one could 
 wish that this had been done by a Unionist 
 Government. 
 
 Meanwhile a curious and interesting fermenta- 
 tion, full of promise for the future, was visible 
 in Irish life. The country was steadily advanc- 
 ing in prosperity, religious passions were abating, 
 old barriers breaking down ; new forces were at 
 work, new ideals taking shape, and the various 
 spiritual elements involved in the fermentation 
 seemed likely to coalesce into a genuine national 
 sentiment. The Gaelic League was endeavouring, 
 with much extravagance, it is true, but with 
 much also that was praiseworthy in its purpose 
 
NEW FORCES AT WORK 53 
 
 and methods, to revive the Irish language and 
 kindle interest in the lore and traditions of 
 Celtic Ireland. The Irish literary movement and 
 the Irish movement in art — for such a thing there 
 is— were less dubious products of the same fruit- 
 ful spirit. Sinn Fein itself, however sinister or 
 impracticable its aim of complete political in- 
 dependence, was preaching moral independence 
 with tonic effect, and was bringing into con- 
 tempt the barren politics of Nationalism. With 
 the growth of an independent spirit, the weaken- 
 ing of central control, and diminished financial 
 support, the Nationalist Party itself, that great 
 and effective weapon of political disintegration 
 which had been forged by Parnell, was losing 
 its potency. Even in the Unionist camp new 
 tendencies were visible. Liberalism in Ulster 
 reared its head again, and among the Orangemen 
 themselves the new spirit was at work effacing 
 traditional lines and confusing traditional issues. 
 Sir Horace Plunkett's beneficent movement, which 
 was as much moral as economic in its purpose 
 and significance, was active in the North as well 
 as in the South, breaking down barriers of race 
 and class and religion, and uniting Irishmen of 
 every type in practical and constructive work 
 for the real good of their country and to the 
 neglect of abstract politics. We shall see in the 
 next chapter how this picture has been darkened 
 by the revival of Home Rule. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE REVIVAL OF HOME RULE 
 
 When in April, 1908, Mr. Asquith succeeded 
 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as Prime 
 Minister and Leader of the Liberal Party Home 
 Rule seemed to have been given the last and 
 fatal blow and to have passed out of the domain 
 of practical politics. The new leader had never 
 repudiated the policy expressly, like his political 
 mentor Lord Rosebery, but in his Liberal League 
 days he had made it an affair of " two governing 
 principles" — "the necessity of maintaining the 
 universal, absolute, and unimpaired supremacy 
 of the Imperial Parliament, and, subject to that 
 condition, the policy of giving as large and as 
 liberal a devolution of local powers and local 
 responsibility as statesmanship can from time to 
 time devise." This fell very far short of Glad- 
 stonian Home Rule, and still further short of the 
 Irish ideal of " national self-government." 
 
 Just before he became Prime Minister, in a 
 speech in the House of Commons on a motion of 
 Mr. Redmond's, Mr. Asquith had defined his 
 Home Rule faith as a conviction that " the ulti- 
 mate solution of the Irish problem can only be 
 found in a system of self-government in regard to 
 purely local affairs." The speech and the whole 
 debate caused bitter disappointment in the 
 
 54 
 
MR. ASQUITH'S SURRENDER 55 
 
 Nationalist camp, for Mr. Asquith had the reputa- 
 tion of being a hard man, and the malleability 
 which he has since shown was not then suspected. 
 But there was soon for those who noted it to be 
 a portent of future weakness. In the Ministerial 
 shuffle that accompanied the change of Prime 
 Minister Mr. Churchill entered the Cabinet, and, 
 under the stress of the by-election at Manchester 
 that followed, he made an audacious bid for the 
 Nationalist vote which went far beyond the 
 warrant that had been furnished by his leader. 
 He told an audience that " very erroneous and 
 unjustifiable conclusions had been drawn from 
 Mr. Asquith's speech," that " the assumption that 
 Home Rule had been abandoned or shelved by 
 the Liberal Party was altogether without founda- 
 tion," and that he himself had become convinced 
 that " a national settlement of the Irish difficulties 
 on broad and generous lines must be indispensable 
 to any harmonious conception of Liberalism." He 
 ended with the words as subsequently revised : — 
 
 " When this Parliament has reached its conclu- 
 sion I am strongly of opinion, and I say this with 
 the full concurrence and approval of the Prime 
 Minister, that the Liberal Party should claim full 
 authority and a free hand to deal with the pro- 
 blem of Irish self-government without being 
 restricted to mere measures of administrative 
 devolution of the character of the Irish Council 
 Bill." 
 
 When questioned in the House of Commons 
 the Prime Minister hardly succeeded in concealing 
 his embarrassment and annoyance ; but he con- 
 tented himself with saying, " I did not authorize 
 my right hon. friend, and I am satisfied, after 
 acquainting myself with the substance of his 
 speeches, that he did not make any statement in 
 Manchester which is in any way inconsistent 
 
56 THE REVIVAL OF HOME RULE 
 
 with the previous declarations of the Government." 
 He had thus allowed his hand to be forced by his 
 subordinate. 
 
 Mr. Churchill's pledge, however, though it 
 satisfied the Nationalists, did not save his seat, 
 and for a time, under pressure of the religious 
 education controversy, the Irish Roman Catholics 
 voted freely with the Unionists in by-elections in 
 Great Britain. As the prestige of the Govern- 
 ment declined during the first twelve months of 
 Mr. Asquith's leadership, Home Rule seemed to 
 recede ever further into the political distance. 
 Then came the famous Budget of 1909. It was 
 profoundly unpopular in Ireland, both because of 
 the spirit duties and, in a country with hundreds 
 of thousands of virtual peasant proprietors, be- 
 cause of the attack on the land ; but Mr. Redmond, 
 having obtained some concessions in Committee, 
 had the nerve to give his support to the Finance 
 Bill on its third reading. Its rejection by the 
 House of Lords was followed by a General 
 Election, and at the opening of the campaign 
 Mr. Asquith made his famous Albert Hall 
 declaration : — 
 
 " Speaking on behalf of the Government in 
 March of last year, I described Ireland as the 
 one undeniable failure of British statesmanship. 
 I repeat here to-night what I said then : ' Speaking 
 on behalf of my colleagues, and I believe of m} T 
 party, the solution of the problem can be found 
 only in one way — by a policy which, while 
 explicitly safeguarding the supreme and inde- 
 feasible authority of the Imperial Parliament, will 
 set up in Ireland a system of full self-government 
 in regard to purely Irish affairs.' There is not 
 and there cannot be any question of separation. 
 There is not and cannot be any question of 
 rivalry or competing supremacy, but subject to 
 
THE NATIONALIST-LIBERAL ALLIANCE 57 
 
 these conditions that is the Liberal policy. For 
 reasons which 1 believe to be adequate the present 
 Parliament was disabled in advance from pro- 
 posing any such solution. But in the new House 
 of Commons the hands of the Liberal Government 
 and the Liberal majority will be in this matter 
 entirely free." 
 
 In his speech of the previous year on Mr. 
 Redmond's motion which has already been 
 quoted, and to which he here made reference, 
 Mr. Asquith's phrase had been " a system of 
 self-government." There was no mention, as 
 Mr. Chaplin has recently pointed out, of " full 
 self-government," and the addition of the adjective 
 in December, 1909, may be taken to mark a step 
 towards the national self-government which 
 Nationalist Ireland really demands. In other 
 respects the declaration was so vague as to bind 
 the Liberals to nothing. It certainly did not bind 
 them to the introduction of a Home Rule Bill, 
 and did not even indicate that such a step was 
 likely. It only made them free to deal with 
 Home Rule if circumstances should so require ; 
 and if circumstances had been different we can 
 be as certain as of anything in hypothetical 
 politics that the question would have been left 
 severely alone. Mr. Redmond, however, pro- 
 fessed to see in the declaration a clear promise 
 of a Home Rule Bill as soon as the House of 
 Lords should be deprived of its independence, 
 and in the elections that followed he threw the 
 Irish Nationalist vote in English constituencies 
 on to the side of the Government. In consequence, 
 if we ignore the Labour Party, Unionists and 
 Liberals emerged exactly equal, and Mr. Red- 
 mond's hour was come. 
 
 The Prime Minister was believed to have a 
 deep aversion to remaining in office at the head 
 
58 THE REVIVAL OF HOME RULE 
 
 of a Government dependent on the Nationalists, 
 and it was thought for a moment that he might 
 insist on resignation ; but he overcame his 
 scruples, if they had ever existed, and remained 
 in office. For a couple of months, however, the 
 position of the Government was highly precari- 
 ous, not to say ridiculous. The Budget, which 
 was the inspired expression of the will of the 
 people, and for which the House of Lords had 
 been denounced for daring to tamper, could not 
 be passed without the aid of the Nationalists, and 
 the Budget had not ceased to be unpopular in 
 Ireland. Mr. Redmond kept repeating that the 
 Government was pledged to the introduction of 
 a Home Rule Bill, and not obscurely indicated 
 what the penalty of any attempt to evade the 
 pledge would be. The helpless Prime Minister 
 dared not contradict the interpretation thus 
 placed on the Albert Hall speech, and eventually, 
 after much hesitation and conferring, the Budget 
 was passed by Mr. Redmond's aid. The Govern- 
 ment have always resented any suggestion of a 
 bargain, exactly as Lord Melbourne disliked every 
 reference to the Lichfield House Compact, or as 
 Mr. Gladstone was impatient of any mention of 
 the Kilmainham Treaty. But, as Lord Morley 
 bluntly puts it in his account of Kilmainham, 
 " the nature of the proceedings was plain enough " 
 nevertheless. 
 
 The alliance thus established enabled the 
 Government to proceed with their campaign 
 against the Lords ; in this matter, indeed, the 
 Nationalists, who had not forgotten 1893, were as 
 eager as the Radicals. The campaign was inter- 
 rupted by the sudden death of King Edward, and 
 then came the attempt to find an amicable settle- 
 ment in the Constitutional Conference. 
 
 The secrets of the Conference have not been 
 revealed, but it was obvious enough that a 
 
THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONFERENCE 59 
 
 Government dependent on the Nationalist vote 
 would have a difficulty in accepting any settle- 
 ment under which the House of Lords should 
 retain the power of referring a Home Rule Bill 
 to the decision of the people. Before the end 
 came, and in the belief that Home Rule blocked 
 the way to an agreement, proposals were mooted 
 in The Times and other Unionist papers for 
 broadening the constitution and the scope of the 
 Conference so as to permit of the discussion of 
 a scheme of federation. This has been oddly 
 represented as an abandonment by Unionists of 
 their cardinal principles; though, if proposals to 
 discuss Home Rule had been rejected, Unionists, 
 we may be certain, would promptly have been 
 accused of lack of faith in their own cause. 
 Discussion, in any case, could only have been 
 academic ; for it would soon have become ap- 
 parent that what Nationalist Ireland wants is 
 not any mild measure of Federal Devolution, 
 but a (7//<7s/-independent national position, while 
 Unionist Ireland, on the opposite side, would 
 have proved no less unyielding. While the 
 Conference was sitting, Mr. Redmond had been 
 making speeches reminding the Prime Minister 
 that he was pledged to something more than mere 
 Devolution or Home Rule all round — to full self- 
 government for Ireland; and, as a matter of fact, 
 many Unionists welcomed the prospect of dis- 
 cussion, in the belief that it would demonstrate 
 the impossibility of Home Rule, and, by com- 
 pelling the Nationalists to unmask their position, 
 put an end to the understanding between them 
 and the Liberal Party. 
 
 The proposals, however, for broadening the 
 basis of the Conference led to no result, and the 
 Conference broke down. A General Election 
 followed — the second of 19 10 — and in the course 
 of it very little was heard of Home Rule. The 
 
6o THE REVIVAL OF HOME RULE 
 
 Prime Minister, in a speech at Hull before the 
 pollings began, dismissed the subject with a 
 reference to his Albert Hall speech. In his elec- 
 tion address he did not mention it at all, but when 
 two-thirds of the House had been elected and 
 all possibility had disappeared of a Liberal 
 majority independent of the Nationalists, he went 
 down to his own constituency, and there, in 
 response to a heckler, stated that if the Liberal 
 party were returned on this occasion " they in- 
 tended to grant Ireland a measure of Home Rule." 
 This was the first definite announcement that 
 the Government meant business, and was accord- 
 ingly hailed by Mr. Redmond with unaffected 
 joy. The pretence that it added nothing to the 
 Albert Hall speech will not for a moment bear 
 examination. But the announcement had come 
 too late to be used with any effect by the 
 opponents of Home Rule, and at the close of the 
 elections the pre-existing state of parties was 
 practically reproduced. The hereditary prin- 
 ciple—the irresponsiveness of the House of 
 Lords to public opinion, its non-elective charac- 
 ter — were the pretexts advanced for the attack 
 on its position ; but no attempt was made to 
 reform its constitution so as to meet these objec- 
 tions. The real object of assault was the prin- 
 ciple of a Second Chamber independent 01 the 
 Liberal caucus ; the animating purpose of the 
 majority of the assailants the removal of the only 
 obstacle to the registration of party decrees with- 
 out appeal to the people. As a concession to the 
 weaker brethren reform of the House of Lords 
 found its place in the Parliament Bill, but only 
 in the preamble ; limitation of the powers of the 
 existing Second Chamber was the only motive of 
 the operative provisions. Before the elections a 
 promise to create peers in any number required 
 to secure the acceptance of the Government 
 
PRESENT APATHY IN IRELAND 61 
 
 policy had been extorted from the Crown ; and 
 by the aid of this promise the bill was forced 
 through. The barrier which had proved effective 
 in 1893, and had given a sense of security to 
 Unionist Ireland ever since, had now been broken 
 down, and the way for the passage of a Home 
 Rule Bill was clear. 
 
 We are now ! at the beginning of the Session 
 which is to witness the attempt to carry such 
 a bill through the temporary breach in the 
 Constitution. It will be observed from the pre- 
 ceding account that the revival of Home Rule 
 has been brought about by nothing new in the 
 circumstances of Ireland. If the Liberals had 
 been defeated in January 1910, or had retained 
 their old majority, we should have heard nothing 
 of the question, and Ireland would have remained 
 profoundly indifferent. Nothing, indeed, is more 
 remarkable in the Ireland of to-day than the fall 
 of political temperature on the Nationalist side 
 and the decline of enthusiasm for the so-called 
 national cause. The present attitude of the Irish 
 peasant towards Home Rule is exactly described 
 in the story which is going round in Ireland and 
 which was told in Punch last week, though 
 marred in the telling : — " All our lives the priests 
 tell us that Heaven's a grand place, and we look 
 forward to the time when we'll find ourselves 
 there ; but when the time draws near we're never 
 in a hurry." Mr. Redmond has confessed that the 
 Nationalist cause would be bankrupt if it depended 
 for support on Ireland alone ; and on the eve of 
 the last elections he crossed the Atlantic with 
 Mr. T. P. O'Connor in order to raise the funds 
 needed for the campaign. There, while Mr. Red- 
 mond preached in the United States national 
 independence, Mr. O'Connor in Canada preached 
 local government, Home Rule all round, and 
 
 1 Written in February, 1912.— Ed. 
 
THE REVIVAL OF HOME RULE 
 
 Imperial Federation. M I have come here to- 
 
 said Mr. Redmond at Buffalo, " to ask you 
 
 to give us your aid in the supreme believe, 
 
 the final effort to dethrone, once and for all, the 
 English government of our country."' " 1 only 
 ask.' said Mr. O'Connor in Montreal a few days 
 later, " that Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales 
 be governed on Canadian principles." So Janus- 
 d is the great policy which is to regenerate 
 Ireland, restore efficiency to the House of 
 Commons, and federate the Empire. 
 
 In Ireland itself the effect of the revival of 
 Home Rule is worth observing. Some of the 
 elements of hope and renovation that were 
 visible a few years ago were enumerated in the 
 last article ; all are now again lost or obscured. 
 Religious passions have been re-awakened, North 
 and South riven asunder, and we see the two 
 nations confronting each other again in battle 
 array for the coming political struggle. Sinn 
 Fein is for the moment practically in abeyance, 
 though it may well emerge again as a force of 
 some destructive potency when the Home Rule 
 Bill is produced. The Gaelic movement is lag- 
 g g or beginning to recede. We see the energies 
 of Ireland concentrated on a question of abs: 
 politics, and the co-operative movement assailed 
 and endangered by Nationalist politicians. We 
 see everything that is poetical or spiritual in 
 Irish life yielding to the prose oi Nationalist 
 agitation. Any one who believes that Home 
 Rule is the expression of a genuine national de- 
 mand, the product of a genuine national awaken- 
 ing, and that its establishment would be a great 
 and really constructive political work, may find 
 reason to suspect the soundness of his opinion 
 when he realizes the shrivelling and devastating 
 effect which the mere menace of Home Rule has 
 on all that is best and most promising in Ireland. 
 
CHAPTER Vlll 
 
 THl 
 
 ts n which Home 
 Rule can be regs 
 
 ent, and 
 from the poi 
 stitutior. 
 
 Kingdom and of the British Empire : 
 Rega in eithei v . it involves 
 
 ant;:. ./ 
 
 the two antim j no 
 
 -!ents of t;. Mr. 
 
 , but a: 
 nature and : problem 1 
 
 as real and p in the time of Mr. 
 
 le; an< d both 
 
 tempts to embody Home Rule in a workable 
 plan, so they r. eck the more perfunctory 
 
 irted attempt to be made 
 Government 
 
 To be£ th the Iri let the wi 
 
 at once pre 
 
 argument which ba e for the Union 
 
 on ' d incurable- perversity of 
 
 the Irish ; Lt Mr. r . 
 
 the theory of a. se of or 
 
 If-Government in the Ii 
 pie. Such an argument proves too much for 
 
 03 
 
64 THE ANTINOMIES OF HOME RULE 
 
 the purposes of those who use it ; it not only 
 compels belief in the impossibility of Home Rule, 
 but would equally make us despair of the success 
 of the Union. There are, indeed, many defects 
 in the character of Irishmen, and not confined to 
 those who live south of the Boyne; but of all 
 such defects history, and that too, comparatively 
 recent history, supplies the sufficient explanation. 
 To fix our eyes for the moment on the larger 
 Irish nation, if the people of that nation are prone 
 to violence and deficient in respect for law, it is 
 because for a long period law was for them 
 constituted injustice and violence their only 
 resource ; if they are idle, it is because they were 
 denied the fruits of their industry; if in politics 
 they are wanting in the practical spirit, it is 
 because they were so long shut off from the 
 realities of government ; if they surrender them- 
 selves too readily to demagogues and agitators, 
 it is because they were deprived of the guidance 
 of their natural leaders ; if their patriotism takes 
 other forms than allegiance to the kingdom or 
 empire in which they live, it is because they 
 were long taught to feel as aliens within them. 
 " Tout comprcridre c'est tout pardonuer" and the 
 student of Irish history will be able to extend 
 some tolerance even to their crimes. 
 
 The more enlightened Home Rulers, indeed, 
 recognizing the historical causes that have pro- 
 duced Irish deficiencies and Irish discontent, 
 plead for Home Rule as a remedial policy, 
 because they see in it, as they think, the most 
 absolute breach with the past. They point to 
 what experience, especially in the British Empire, 
 has taught us of the healing efficacy of freedom 
 and self-government ; and, oddly persuading 
 themselves that Ireland has at present neither 
 freedom nor self-government, though she is an 
 incorporated part of a free and self-governing 
 
IRELAND'S INTERNAL FEUD 65 
 
 country, and a part over-represented and with 
 a greatly excessive voice in the government of 
 the whole, they demand for her a grant of 
 national self-government and a status of more 
 or less detachment from Great Britain. In this 
 way they hope that the sound Liberal principles 
 which they are in the habit of invoking will have 
 fuller scope for their remedial activity. 
 
 Now the first and greatest antinomy of Home 
 Rule is this, that it cannot be applied to Ireland 
 without at the same time violating those very 
 principles to which its advocates appeal. In 
 Ireland, as we have seen, there are two nations, 
 not one, and self-government for either in the 
 isolated Home Rule sense means subjection for 
 the other. It was so when the Protestant 
 ascendancy existed ; it will be so when, to use 
 the least invidious term, a Nationalist ascendancy 
 is substituted in its place. I have shown how 
 deep is the feud between the two nations, how 
 it has contrived to draw its bitterness from all 
 the various animosities of race and class and 
 religion, and maintains itself on the memories 
 of centuries of struggle. We may regret that 
 there is such a cleavage in Irish society ; we may 
 look forward to the day when it will have ceased 
 to exist ; but at present it is as much an ultimate 
 fact of the situation as the Irish Sea itself. Mr. 
 Churchill, in the speech which he delivered in 
 Belfast, was compelled almost against his will 
 to give it recognition. He devoted the greater 
 part of the speech to what he called the " Irish 
 argument"; and the time so spent was divided 
 between an enumeration of the fetters that are 
 to be placed on one of the Irish nations to save 
 the other from oppression, and an appeal to 
 that other, varying in tone from entreaty to 
 expostulation, to sink its own identity. 
 
 It is highly characteristic of the Radical 
 
66 THE ANTINOMIES OF HOME RULE 
 
 doctrinaire to suppose that he can alter incon- 
 venient facts by argument or expostulation, or 
 even eloquent appeals to them not to stand in 
 the way of his preconceived theories. But facts 
 are stubborn things, and the dualism in Irish 
 society will not be overcome by any amount of 
 missionary effort on the part of English poli- 
 ticians. There is no question of right or wrong, 
 of reasonableness or unreasonableness, involved 
 in the matter ; it is a case of separate traditions, 
 separate creeds, separate ideals — in a word, 
 separate nationalities. If the British Government 
 were to throw its whole power and resources 
 into a policy of Ottomanizing or Magyarizing 
 in Ireland, it might conceivably succeed in alter- 
 ing the facts by extinguishing the lesser of the 
 two nationalities. But the effort would have to 
 be at once sustained and ruthless, and even then 
 the teaching of all recent history is against the 
 chances of success. Nor does any one believe 
 that the group of party politicians of the familiar 
 opportunist type who form the British Govern- 
 ment would have either the nerve or the cynicism 
 to embark on such an enterprise in the name of 
 Liberal principles, much less to see it through. 
 
 11 I have lived my life in Ireland," wrote Mr. 
 Richard Bagwell in a letter to The Times a few 
 months ago, " spending much time in the study 
 of Irish history, and the great lesson I have 
 learnt is that no local faction or party can be 
 safely trusted with power over the rest." The 
 faults are not all on one side and the virtues 
 on the other ; in both nations the past has left 
 its marks on character. Few Irishmen of either 
 are wholly averse to violence, or are endowed 
 with the Englishman's instinctive love of order; 
 if among the Roman Catholics there is still some- 
 thing of the spirit of revolted slaves, there is also 
 among the Protestants something of the spirit 
 
BOTH NATIONS TO BLAME 67 
 
 of overthrown oppressors. It may even be ad- 
 mitted that Roman Catholic fanaticism has always 
 in Ireland been tempered by the native chivalry 
 and geniality of the Celt, and that in its darkest 
 exhibitions it has never approached the Puritanic 
 insolence which created the Penal Code. But 
 grant, if any one likes, that the Protestants have 
 to bear the greater load of guilt for the crimes 
 of the past, the memory of their own ascendancy 
 only makes them dread the more a Roman 
 Catholic ascendancy established in its place. 
 Grant even that in their very fears there may 
 be an element of unreason, the unreasonableness 
 of a community is a political fact like any other, 
 and it cannot be got rid of, as Radical news- 
 papers seem to think, by scolding and vitupera- 
 tion. All national rivalries are based to a great 
 extent on prejudice and misapprehension, but 
 their political significance is none the less 
 profound. 
 
 If the two nations were one the whole policy 
 of Home Rule would wear a different aspect. 
 A Constitutional problem of the greatest diffi- 
 culty and complexity would still, indeed, remain ; 
 but it could at all events be approached as a 
 mere matter of convenience and efficiency in 
 institutions. We might even in that case ignore 
 with some hope the argument from the dis- 
 affection that is rooted in Irish Nationalism, and 
 trust to the healing and reconciling efficacy of 
 liberal treatment. But as it is, Home Rule would 
 bring to divided Ireland not peace, but a sword. 
 Under the shelter of the Union the growth of 
 a true and all-embracing Irish national sentiment 
 will be a process slow enough ; under a system 
 which would give to one of the two rival nations 
 supremacy over the other it would become utterly 
 impossible. Adam Smith, in his " Wealth of 
 Nations," written in the time of the Protestant 
 
68 THE ANTINOMIES OF HOME RULE 
 
 Ascendancy, gave it as his opinion that " without 
 an Union with Great Britain the inhabitants of 
 Ireland are not likely for many ages to consider 
 themselves as one people." The Union is, in- 
 deed, the only hope of unity. Instead of placing 
 the power of Great Britain at the disposal of 
 either Irish nation for the subjugation of the 
 other, as was and would be the effect of Home 
 Rule, it uses British influence to neutralize their 
 antagonism, and so enables them to live together 
 in tolerable and ever-increasing amity and peace. 
 It may be said, indeed, that the Union has existed 
 for more than a century, and that we are still 
 very far from Adam Smith's ideal ; but it is only, 
 it must be remembered, during the last quarter 
 of a century that the Union has been made a 
 reality, and has begun to stand for justice to 
 both the Irish nations. 
 
 As I shall endeavour to show hereafter, some- 
 thing remains to be done ; but, as the result of 
 what has been done already, the two nations 
 were coming together, as was seen in a former 
 article, and only the revival of the menace to the 
 Union rent them asunder again. Home Rule, 
 granted now, would mean the abandonment of 
 an experiment the success of which is in sight 
 in order to try another discredited in advance. 
 The Union stands for equality between the two 
 Irish nations, Home Rule for ascendancy, and 
 only from equality can harmony result. To come 
 back to where we began, the first antinomy of 
 Home Rule is that, the more it takes the shape 
 of " national self-government," the more it must 
 mean for a large section of the Irish people 
 national subjection and national effacement. 
 
 The second or Constitutional antinomy is like 
 unto it. A national Parliament and Government 
 are to be set up in Ireland, and yet Great Britain 
 and Ireland are to remain one kingdom. To put 
 
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PARADOX 69 
 
 it in another way, the Home Rule Parliament, 
 as the Prime Minister especially is never weary 
 of assuring us, is to be strictly subordinate and 
 is to leave to the Imperial Parliament a "uni- 
 versal, absolute, and unimpaired" supremacy; 
 and yet in some mysterious way this subordinate 
 Parliament is also to be national, to satisfy a 
 craving for national existence, to be the fulfil- 
 ment of an ideal which in its most characteristic 
 expression has always been an ideal of national 
 independence. If the high-sounding adjectives 
 of the Prime Minister are to mean anything, and 
 the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is 
 not to be the merely legal and theoretical 
 supremacy which it retains over the legislatures 
 of the self-governing colonies, the antinomy is 
 absolute. The Nationalists demand national 
 self-government ; their English allies offer a 
 subordinate Parliament. The two are wholly 
 incompatible, as may not improbably be found 
 when the bill has been produced, as will be found 
 with absolute certainty if it should ever come 
 into operation. To apply Lord Hartington's 
 famous saying about Mr. Gladstone and himself, 
 the Nationalists and the Government do not 
 mean the same thing. 
 
 It was the attempt to combine in an Irish 
 Parliament and Government subordination with 
 a national character, hardly less than the attempt 
 to ignore the existence of two Irish nations, that 
 wrecked both the Home Rule Bills produced by 
 Mr. Gladstone. The crucial difficulty arose on 
 the question which Mr. Gladstone described as 
 an M organic detail," the question whether Irish 
 members were to be included, and on what 
 footing, in the Parliament at Westminster. In 
 the first bill, as we saw, they were entirely 
 excluded ; but as complete national powers were 
 not given to the Irish Parliament and revenue 
 
7o THE ANTINOMIES OF HOME RULE 
 
 was to 'be exacted by the Parliament at West- 
 minster, this arrangement reduced Ireland to the 
 position of a tributary dependency and violated 
 the historic principle of no taxation without 
 representation. In the bill of 1893, as it left the 
 House of Commons, inclusion for all purposes 
 was the arrangement adopted ; but this in its 
 turn, by Lord Morley's confession, was " to allow 
 the Irish to meddle in our affairs while we were 
 no longer to meddle in theirs." It is rumoured 
 that the " In-and-Out " plan of inclusion for 
 limited purposes which figured in the Bill of 
 1893 as originally produced is to be revived in 
 the coming Bill. If so, we shall be involved 
 in the greatest paradox of all ; for while the 
 Irish members will have a voice in what is the 
 first domestic concern of the people of Great 
 Britain, the choice of their Executive Govern- 
 ment, that Government will be left, the instant 
 it comes to deal with purely British affairs, 
 without its Irish supporters and possibly without 
 its majority. 
 
 There are indeed two different plans, by the 
 adoption of either of which Home Rule for Ireland 
 could be made logical and self-consistent from 
 the constitutional point of view, and the purely 
 theoretical difficulties, at all events, be overcome. 
 One would be to place Ireland in the position of 
 a self-governing colony; the other would be to 
 establish a complete and coherent system of 
 federal devolution for the whole of the United 
 Kingdom. The adoption of the colonial plan 
 would mean the abandonment of all pretence of 
 subordination in the Irish Parliament and of all 
 attempt to preserve the unity of the United 
 Kingdom ; the adoption of the federal plan would 
 mean the abandonment of all pretence of national 
 self-government and of all attempt to conciliate 
 the sentiment in favour of Irish independence, 
 
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE BILL 71 
 
 Neither plan, as we know from the assurances of 
 Ministers, will in practice be adopted; Great 
 Britain protests against one, Nationalist Ireland 
 against the other. The Home Rule Bill will 
 hover, like Mr. Gladstone's two bills, between 
 the Union and separation, between federalism 
 and colonialism, between the supremacy of the 
 Imperial Parliament and national self-govern- 
 ment ; and the Government will find themselves 
 floundering once more among the paradoxes and 
 contradictions that beset the middle position. 
 
 But, though we shall not in practice be given 
 either the colonial or the federal solution, the 
 advocates of Home Rule do not shrink from 
 attempts to enlist in its favour the sentiments and 
 arguments, congruent or not, that lie behind both. 
 These attempts would appear to be partly dis- 
 ingenuous, partly the result of sheer confusion of 
 thought and inability to face facts ; but in view 
 of their persistency it will be worth while to 
 devote the immediately succeeding chapters to an 
 examination at greater length of the colonial 
 analogy and the federal idea. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE COLONIAL ANALOGY 
 
 In the last chapter I dealt with the antinomies 
 inherent in Home Rule and pointed out that, 
 while the difficulty arising from the existence of 
 two nations in Ireland is at present insuperable, 
 there are two different plans by the adoption of 
 either of which the purely theoretical difficulties 
 could be overcome and Home Rule for Ireland be 
 made logical and self-consistent from the consti- 
 tutional point of view. One of them would be to 
 place Ireland in the position of a self-governing 
 colony, and in the present and another chapter I 
 propose to examine this solution and to inquire 
 generally into the value of the colonial analogy. 
 
 In the course of the nineteenth century a 
 peculiar polity was evolved for those of the 
 British possessions over-sea which contain any 
 large white population. Before their revolt the 
 North American Colonies had, in theory at all 
 events, only had the status of subject dependencies, 
 though in practice the wide Atlantic and the easy 
 English temper both did much to make the system 
 tolerable. But when the British Government 
 tried to make the theory a reality the system 
 broke down, and subsequent experience soon 
 proved that its failure was not to be regarded as 
 a merely accidental or isolated occurrence. Every 
 
 72 
 
THE GROWTH OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 73 
 
 attempt in fact to maintain a white community in 
 a dependent position produced the same friction 
 and difficulties that had led to the American 
 Revolution ; though, with more enlightened 
 statesmanship and a better will on both sides, a 
 happier issue was found on subsequent occasions. 
 The turning point came with the Canadian rebel- 
 lion of 1837; this rebellion led to the Durham 
 Report, and eventually, though not at once, as is 
 commonly supposed, to the institution of " re- 
 sponsible government," a form of autonomy that 
 approaches independence. It is independence 
 only limited in practice by the fact that the 
 Mother Country retains control of foreign rela- 
 tions and with it the main burden of maritime 
 defence ; subject to this qualification, which itself 
 in some respects has now to be qualified, the 
 great self-governing colonies are, whatever the 
 theory, in practice on an equal footing with the 
 United Kingdom in the British Empire — allies, 
 not inferiors, subordinates, or dependencies. 
 
 The grant of responsible government proved 
 in every instance a solvent for the immediate 
 difficulties that had arisen in the relations 
 between the Mother Country and the colonies ; 
 but it is by no means clear that even at the time 
 the system was evolved it was the ideally best 
 solution of the problem that presented itself. 
 When the colonies were placed in their position 
 of quasi independence it was in the full expecta- 
 tion that it would speedily develop into inde- 
 pendence absolute ; nay, even on the part of 
 some of the statesmen concerned, with the 
 deliberate intention of bringing about this result. 
 The command of the sea, the pressure of outside 
 States, and the binding effect of language, 
 British ideals, and British sentiment defeated the 
 carelessness or malevolence of statesmen and 
 preserved the connexion between the daughter 
 6 
 
74 THE COLONIAL ANALOGY 
 
 States and the Mother Country. But even to-day, 
 if any colony or group of colonies insisted, with 
 some approach to a unanimous voice, on with- 
 drawing from the Empire, we should sorrowfully 
 acquiesce, bid them Godspeed, and allow them 
 to depart without molestation. It is only in such 
 a case as arose in South Africa, where one half 
 the population in its efforts for secession was 
 endeavouring morally or physically to coerce 
 the other, that we should be likely to intervene 
 or to have any real chance of successful inter- 
 vention. 
 
 It is arguable that any striving after a more 
 effective unity in the middle of the last century 
 might have led to disruption, and it is perhaps 
 therefore more reasonable to praise the states- 
 men of responsible government for the good 
 they accomplished than to blame them for failing 
 to accomplish something more. The system 
 they evolved has at least kept the w T hite com- 
 munities of the Empire members of one political 
 body with a common Sovereign and a common 
 citizenship, and left to the statesmen of the 
 present or the future the problem of devising 
 some closer permanent relationship. But it is 
 also possible to argue that, if the statesmen of 
 the Mother Country had not been so completely 
 dominated by the anti-Imperial spirit of laisser- 
 faire Liberalism when the self-governing colonies 
 were given their present status, and if they had 
 not been unnerved by memories of the American 
 Revolution, they might have devised a system 
 w r hich, while allaying discontent by an adequate 
 grant of self-government to the colonies in their 
 local affairs, would have vastly simplified the 
 task that now confronts their successors. It 
 would not have been difficult, it would seem, at 
 the first to draw the outline of a scheme of 
 federal representation at the centre of the 
 
THE BOND OF EMPIRE 75 
 
 Empire, or to establish, if not a Customs Union, 
 closer trade relations. All was left to chance ; 
 and, though it would be easy to underrate the 
 strength of the ties that bind the Empire 
 together, the fact remains that it is at present 
 very little more than a union of consent. The 
 existing system, being founded neither on any 
 principle of authority and subordination nor on 
 any due co-ordination of privilege and burden 
 between the component states, is obviously 
 lacking in elements of permanence, and the final 
 outcome remains to be seem. A political 
 organism with five different centres of national 
 life vaguely related is a new phenomenon in the 
 history of the world ; and, though it is in many 
 respects a phenomenon of the greatest interest 
 and promise, and though we all hope and believe 
 it may develop in time into a higher organic 
 unity, it can hardly be said to supply a model in 
 its present stage of evolution to which states 
 already unified should endeavour to conform. 
 
 But by a certain school of theorists we are 
 asked to remould the Constitution; of the United 
 Kingdom, which is the solid nucleus of the 
 Empire, in imitation of this model. We are 
 told that Ireland is our oldest colony, that the 
 principle of responsible government has never 
 been applied to her, and that if it is applied 
 even now it will produce the same happy results 
 as in the self-governing colonies. Let us for the 
 sake of argument suppose that it did. Does any 
 one really believe that even a contented Ireland 
 could be placed in that position of detachment 
 and isolation of " Stay or go, as you please," 
 occupied by a colony ? That we would say to 
 her as we say to a colony, " Set up for yourself, 
 attend to your own defences, impose your own 
 tariffs, accept the colonial position of a practic- 
 ally independent State within the British Imperial 
 
76 THE COLONIAL ANALOGY 
 
 system, and if you find even these light ties to 
 be irksome, declare your independence or seek 
 the protection of another Power " ? That would 
 be the full application of the colonial analogy, 
 but history, geography, and mere common sense 
 all alike protest. The whole scheme is so un- 
 thinkable that I have never yet met any one, 
 Irishman or Colonist, who, whatever his vague 
 and unthinking prepossessions, did not yield 
 under a gentle application of the Socratic method 
 and admit its absurdity. 
 
 " I confess it seems to me to be almost impos- 
 sible to believe that Ireland can safely be placed 
 in the position of a British colony, or that Eng- 
 land can tolerate the loyalty tempered by threats 
 of dissolution of the connecting tie that passes 
 current in communities who live on the other 
 side of the world." That, it may be said, is an 
 unsympathetic account of the loyalty of the 
 colonies ; but on the value of the colonial ana- 
 logy for Ireland it expresses the opinion of a 
 colonial statesman of great experience, of marked 
 Liberal tendencies, and of no strong prejudices 
 in favour of Jingoism or Imperialism. It is an 
 extract from a letter written by Mr. Merriman to 
 the late Lord Goschen in 1886. The fanatics of 
 colonialism try to ignore the argument from 
 proximity, but it will not be ignored. It has 
 asserted itself throughout the tangled history of 
 the two countries. The American Revolution 
 led directly to the nearest approach to Home 
 Rule that Ireland has enjoyed. Why did it not 
 develop into responsible government before or 
 simultaneously with the development in Canada ? 
 Because proximity forbade. Burke, during the 
 discussions that preceded the rebellion of the 
 Thirteen Colonies, had foreseen that representa- 
 tion in the Imperial Parliament would be a 
 solution of the difficulties if distance permitted. 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM PROXIMITY 77 
 
 Distance in the case of Ireland permitting this 
 solution, the quasi Home Rule experiment was 
 speedily abandoned and the Union established. 
 It is nothing to our present purpose that it was 
 not a true Union and temporarily failed ; though it 
 is much to our present purpose that since it began 
 to be a true Union it has begun to succeed. 
 
 The argument from proximity asserts itself to- 
 day. It told with Mr. Gladstone, as can be seen 
 in both his bills ; and it tells with the present 
 Government, for unless they violate their pledges 
 and falsify all the indications they have hitherto 
 given as to the nature of their scheme they will 
 not propose the colonial status for Ireland. 
 
 11 The separation of Ireland from Great Britain 
 is absolutely impossible. The interests and 
 affairs of the two islands are eternally inter- 
 woven. . . . The whole tendency of things, the 
 whole irresistible drift of things, is towards a 
 more intimate association. The economic de- 
 pendence of Ireland on England is absolute and 
 quite apart from naval, military, and constitu- 
 tional arguments. . . . The two nations are 
 bound together till the end of time by the natural 
 force of circumstances." 
 
 That is not the language of a fanatical Unionist, 
 but an extract from Mr. Churchill's speech in 
 Belfast. He was arguing, indeed, that you could 
 meet the Irish demand for separation half-way or 
 do anything else you pleased without danger to 
 the connexion : but it is a curious kind of fatal- 
 ism or political antinomianism that tells you an 
 interest is so great that you can afford to neglect 
 it, and common sense will prefer to see in the 
 words quoted an argument for jealously guarding 
 the connexion. We may believe with Mr. 
 Churchill that Nature will prevail against the 
 foolish attempt of the Government to defy her 
 6* 
 
78 THE COLONIAL ANALOGY 
 
 decrees, but that is hardly a reason for encour- 
 aging them in their folly. 
 
 All the arguments that tell against the colonial 
 solution are, of course, greatly strengthened by 
 the existence of the disaffection in which Irish 
 Nationalism is rooted. Great Britain could never 
 tolerate an Ireland at her doors in the position 
 of practical independence occupied by a colony, 
 even if this Ireland entered on her new career 
 with a perfect disposition of loyalty and good 
 will ; still less can she tolerate an Ireland in that 
 position beginning in a spirit of hatred and dis- 
 affection, cherishing an ideal of complete in- 
 dependence, and basing her hopes of attaining it, 
 as she has based the Home Rule agitation, on 
 assistance from another Power. 
 
 Mr. Redmond, indeed, assures the people of 
 Great Britain that Home Rule will be a treaty 
 of peace, and that they can place Ireland in a 
 position to do them much harm with no fear for 
 the consequences. But Mr. Redmond has little 
 influence in Ireland itself and cannot be counted 
 on to make good his assurances ; and even he is 
 often constrained to adopt a different tone when 
 addressing his fellow-countrymen in Ireland and 
 America. For Irish disaffection there are excel- 
 lent historical reasons, and I have not in these 
 articles emphasized unduly this aspect of the 
 problem. But though to see the historical reasons 
 for a contemporary fact may help us to view it 
 with tolerance, and even give us hope of altering 
 its complexion, we are not therefore justified in 
 ignoring its existence. Things are what they are 
 and their natural consequences must follow ; and 
 to place Ireland as she is to-day in the position 
 of a self-governing Colony with all the powers 
 which that implies to be wielded by the National 
 League would be an act of deliberate folly with- 
 out parallel in the annals of civilized States. 
 
WHAT IRISHMEN WOULD LIKE 79 
 
 In Ireland itself, where the driving force of 
 Home Rule is the desire for independence, the 
 colonial solution is popular, of course ; popular 
 at all events for what it gives, if not for what it 
 withholds. The practically complete powers of 
 a colonial Parliament would be welcomed, and 
 they would be welcomed all the more if combined 
 with other things which the Government have 
 already promised, a large subsidy from Great 
 Britain and the retention of a number of Irish 
 members at Westminster. Irishmen naturally 
 like the idea of fiscal independence in the sense 
 that they should control their own Customs and 
 Excise ; they do not like it at all in the sense 
 that they should pay their own way. They like 
 the legislative independence the colonial statics 
 would give them, but they would be glad also to 
 retain their representatives at Westminster as a 
 means of extorting further favours from the 
 neighbouring island. Mr. Gladstone's Home 
 Rule Bill of 1886 would, as has often been pointed 
 out, have made Ireland a tributary dependency of 
 Great Britain ; Home Rule on the terms that are 
 now being discussed would make Great Britain 
 a tributary dependency of Ireland. 
 
 In the next chapter I will consider a little more 
 closely the arguments in favour of Home Rule 
 that are drawn from the dramatic and successful 
 experiment in granting self-government to the 
 conquered colonies in South Africa after the war, 
 the form in which the colonial analogy presents 
 itself most forcibly to the mind of the present 
 generation. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 IRELAND AND SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Nothing has done more to weaken the aversion 
 with which Home Rule was at one time regarded 
 by the vast majority of thinking people in Great 
 Britain than the striking success that has at- 
 tended the bold policy of granting self-govern- 
 ment to the conquered colonies in South Africa 
 within a very few years after the conclusion of 
 the war. Here, we are told — and the man in the 
 street can hardly see the answer — was a crucial 
 experiment for testing the validity of Liberal 
 principles, and if they survived that test they 
 can be trusted to survive any other that can be 
 applied. If self-government proved a solvent for 
 the difficulties of a problem which had just cul- 
 minated in a long and devastating war, we need 
 not hesitate to apply it to Ireland, and even 
 the age-long rancour and bitterness that are 
 at the root of what is called the Irish question 
 must yield to its benign and reconciling in- 
 fluence. 
 
 It may be worth while endeavouring to ex- 
 amine this analogy a little more closely, and the 
 present writer has what will perhaps be accepted 
 as a double qualification for the task. He is, on 
 the one hand, an Irishman by birth and education, 
 and was, on the other, a resident in South Africa 
 
 80 
 
SOUTH AFRICA AFTER THE WAR 81 
 
 for many years, and those the most critical years 
 in South 'African history. He had left South 
 Africa before the actual grant of self-government 
 to the Transvaal, but he was in full sympathy 
 with the policy which dictated that bold and 
 fortunate step. He has thus no illiberal pre- 
 judices against self-government as such, and can 
 claim to have foreseen, if not the precise issue, the 
 general wisdom of its application in the circum- 
 stances that prevailed in South Africa at the time 
 when the experiment was made. 
 
 When self-government was conceded to the 
 Transvaal in 1907, the position was this. South 
 Africa was divided, with certain qualifications 
 irrelevant for our present purpose, into four 
 distinct colonies — the Cape, Natal, the Trans- 
 vaal, and the Orange River Colony. A long 
 and devastating war which had raged in all of 
 these colonies and had been brought to a con- 
 clusion five years before had vindicated the 
 supremacy of British principles of government 
 and of British power in South Africa. Two of 
 the colonies which had been British before the 
 war had retained their constitutions during and 
 after the war, and even during the war no one 
 had ever believed that the two annexed colonies 
 could be permanently governed on any other 
 basis. The only ultimate choice was between 
 the status of a dependency under a system of 
 despotic rule and full self-government, and the 
 wildest Jingo well knew that the status of depen- 
 dency could not long be maintained. So clearly 
 was this recognized that when the Liberal Govern- 
 ment came into power in 1905 they found ready 
 for promulgation a scheme framed by their 
 predecessors with the full consent of the British 
 inhabitants of the Transvaal for granting to that 
 colony an elective and independent Legislature 
 as a half-way house to complete self-government. 
 
82 IRELAND AND SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 It has been the invariable practice in British 
 colonial history for colonies to pass through this 
 intermediate stage on the way to responsible 
 government ; and what the Liberals decided to 
 do in the case of the Transvaal, under stress of 
 the difficulties in which they had been involved 
 by the problem of Chinese labour, was to dis- 
 pense with the usual resting-place and effect the 
 transition from Crown Colony government to re- 
 sponsible government in one giant stride. Their 
 policy was carried through with a certain lack 
 of tact and in such a manner as to cause some 
 temporary alarm among the British population 
 lest the settlement arrived at should be one-sided 
 and unfair. But there was never any real opposi- 
 tion to the principle, and in the event a bold 
 experiment has been justified by success. 
 
 Now in two different ways the success of this 
 experiment is supposed to convey a lesson applic- 
 able to Ireland. On the one hand, we are told, 
 it shows us how we may hope to reconcile Ire- 
 land to Great Britain and the Empire ; on the 
 other, how to put an end to the secular feud 
 between the two Irish nations. Let us take the 
 former aspect first. From this point of view the 
 healing effect of the grant of self-government to 
 the Transvaal, as of every other such grant, was 
 derived from the fact that it meant the elevation 
 of the colony from a dependent status to one of 
 freedom and dignity, the substitution of home 
 rule for the arbitrary rule of an outside autho- 
 rity in the constitution of which the colony had 
 no voice. This was the very essence of the whole 
 situation. But Ireland is not a dependency ; she 
 is an integral portion of the central State of 
 the Empire, a portion not only represented but 
 greatly over-represented in the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment. For the last two years, indeed, her 
 representatives have held trie balance in that 
 
IRELAND NOT A COLONY 83 
 
 Parliament, and have been masters of the 
 Government of the United Kingdom and the 
 Empire. To place Ireland in the position that 
 was accorded to the Transvaal would mean a 
 lowering, not a raising, of her political status, 
 and this is felt so strongly by one of the two 
 nations in Ireland itself as to supply a principal 
 motive for their opposition to the project. 
 
 The manifest destiny of South Africa was to 
 become one of those great self-governing States 
 which cannot now be regarded as holding a 
 subordinate position, but in reality are co- 
 ordinate with the United Kingdom itself in the 
 British Imperial system. No such destiny could 
 await a separated Ireland ; the best it could hope 
 for would be the position of a Newfoundland 
 beside the Dominion of Canada. The grant of 
 self-government to the conquered colonies in 
 South Africa was not the mutilation of an 
 existing state or constitution, it was their ele- 
 vation to the political status of the two neigh- 
 bouring colonies of the Cape and Natal and 
 the first and necessary step towards the creation 
 of a new political unity on a wider and grander 
 scale. Almost the first use the people of the 
 conquered colonies made of their newly-acquired 
 freedom was to surrender the Constitution that 
 had just been given them and to merge their 
 independence in the greater independence of a 
 United South Africa. Home Rule for Ireland 
 would be a momentous and perhaps irretraceable 
 step in the opposite direction at the vital centre 
 of the Empire. 
 
 Great Britain, if she were foolish enough to 
 make this rash experiment, could never tolerate 
 its results. Ireland under Home Rule would, 
 whatever the theory, be virtually a dependency. 
 She was always so in theory until the time of the 
 Union, for she never, even under Grattan's Par- 
 
8 4 IRELAND AND SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 liament, possessed an independent executive ; 
 and if her Home Rule executive showed real 
 independence Great Britain would be compelled 
 to find means of reducing it to a condition of 
 dependence, whether by the old method of cor- 
 ruption, by intimidation, or by actual force. 
 Could such a state of things make for peace or 
 amity? The problem of Irish discontent is diffi- 
 cult enough, but the only hope of solving it is by 
 a system of complete equality between the two 
 islands. Nothing but the Union can give us such 
 a system ; and just when the Union is within 
 sight of success we are asked in the name of 
 a false analogy to undo it and revert to the old 
 system of inequality that failed. 
 
 So much for the lessons of South Africa as 
 regards the best means of reconciling Ireland 
 and Great Britain ; but what has it to teach us 
 as to the reconciliation of the two nations in 
 Ireland? In South Africa Dutch and English 
 are certainly coming together ; but the feud 
 between them, though it so lately found expres- 
 sion in a war, was never so bitter nor so deeply 
 rooted in historic memories of wrong and conflict 
 as the corresponding feud in Ireland. The 
 religious motive which tells so powerfully in 
 Ireland is entirely absent in South Africa ; and 
 the presence of a native population greatly out- 
 numbering the two white races supplies an over- 
 whelming reason for co-operation between them. 
 It may even be said that the war itself, by allow- 
 ing the rival races to expend their bitterness and 
 teaching each to understand and feel respect for 
 the other, has helped to bridge the gulf between 
 them. But the cardinal point of difference be- 
 tween the South African situation and that which 
 now confronts us in Ireland is the fact that self- 
 government was accepted by Dutch and English 
 alike as both inevitable and desirable. The 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ULSTER 85 
 
 opposition in Johannesburg was little more than 
 the opposition of an oligarchic clique — just the 
 sort of opposition that, in such cases, can always 
 safely be ignored. The great bulk of the English 
 democracy on the Witwatersrand not only re- 
 garded self-government as inevitable but wel- 
 comed it as a boon ; whereas in Ireland we have 
 a numerous and powerful democracy which 
 denounces Home Rule as a measure for subject- 
 ing it to the rule of a majority whose domination 
 it dreads. The attitude of Protestant Ulster is a 
 factor in the Irish problem without parallel in the 
 history of self-government in our Colonies ; and 
 certainly colonial history lends no encouragement 
 to the odd Liberal theory that peace can be 
 secured in Ireland by ignoring Ulster altogether 
 or trampling down her opposition. 
 
 If, indeed, Ireland could be withdrawn from 
 the influence of Great Britain and left to her 
 own devices, then it is possible that after what 
 a Home Ruler cheerfully described as " twenty 
 years of hell" a position of stable equilibrium 
 between the two nations of the island might 
 finally be established. But the disturbing influence 
 of Great Britain cannot be eliminated. It was 
 by acting in her name and employing her power 
 that the Protestant Ascendancy was able to 
 maintain itself in the eighteenth century; and it 
 is to Great Britain that the new Nationalist 
 Ascendancy will look for the means of coercing 
 Ulster and holding her in subjection. If England 
 had consented before the war in South Africa to 
 stand idly by and allow the Dutch to compel the 
 English to accompany them in a movement of 
 secession from the Empire, there would have 
 been some resemblance to the situation which 
 will be created in Ireland under Home Rule ; 
 only that England would then have been only 
 negatively culpable, whereas now she will be 
 
86 IRELAND AND SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 asked to accept positive responsibility and to be 
 active in ill-doing. 
 
 In the circumstances of Ireland, inhabited by 
 two nations and with Great Britain so near, 
 Home Rule must mean the ascendancy of one 
 of the two nations ; and South Africa has much 
 to teach us as to the evil effects of ascendancy on 
 the relations between two races living in one 
 country. On a basis of equal rights Dutch and 
 English in the Cape Colony were living happily 
 side by side when the Kruger system was 
 established ; but the denial of political rights to 
 the English in the Transvaal soon destroyed the 
 possibility of a national life between the two 
 races even in the British colony. It became the 
 settled policy of the Dutch in the Cape Colony 
 to thrust the English into the position of second- 
 class citizens ; and it was only when the Dutch 
 ascendancy was broken by the war and equality 
 restored that amicable relations again became 
 possible. At present Irishmen of both nations 
 enjoy equal rights as citizens of the United King- 
 dom and the certainty of equal treatment from 
 the United Kingdom Parliament; under a Home 
 Rule system Irish Unionists would have to be 
 content with a second-class citizenship, and all 
 chances of harmony between them and their 
 masters would then be at an end. 
 
 If we seek for an analogy for Irish Home Rule 
 in its bearing on the relations between Protestant 
 Ulster and the rest of Ireland, we shall find per- 
 haps the best in the history of Canada. Pitt's 
 Constitutional Act of 1791 treated the French and 
 English provinces of Lower and Upper Canada, 
 now Quebec and Ontario, as two separate 
 colonies. In the Act of 1840, which followed the 
 Durham report, the blunder was committed of 
 uniting them into one, but the experiment was so 
 unsuccessful that in 1867 they were separated 
 
A PARALLEL IN CANADA 87 
 
 again, and at the same time merged in the larger 
 unity of the Dominion. If we put Ulster in the 
 place of Ontario, Nationalist Ireland of Quebec, 
 and the United Kingdom of the Dominion of 
 Canada, the analogy is complete. Irish ani- 
 mosities are at present lost or held in check in 
 the larger unity of the United Kingdom ; the 
 Government proposes to unchain them by going 
 back from the Canadian position of 1867 to that 
 of 1840, segregating Ireland and compelling her 
 two nations to live alone together, precisely as 
 French and English when they were united in a 
 single colony before the formation of the 
 Dominion. An attempt has been made to utilize 
 what was done in Canada in 1867 as an argument 
 for Home Rule; but it could only serve that pur- 
 pose if Home Rulers contemplated a federal 
 system for the United Kingdom in which Ulster 
 and the rest of Ireland were separate units, a 
 system which no one desires or imagines to be 
 possible. 
 
PART II 
 THE PRESENT HOME RULE BILL 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 GENERAL FEATURES OF THE BILL 
 
 For two or three } T ears since the revival of the 
 Home Rule menace Unionists have been on the 
 defensive, defending a definite position, attacking 
 a shadow, defending the present system of govern- 
 ing Ireland as an incorporated part of the United 
 Kingdom, attacking the alternative proposal that 
 was embodied in the phrase " Home Rule," but 
 otherwise remained shapeless, intangible, and 
 elusive. It is hard for those who have been so 
 engaged to restrain a feeling of exultation at the 
 thought that the production of the Home Rule 
 Bill has completely reversed the situation, that 
 Unionists are now the attacking party ; Home 
 Rulers on the defensive, that the vague and 
 elusive shadow has now become a tangible 
 scheme presenting a broad front for criticism and 
 attack ; that Home Rule has at last taken shape 
 as an alternative plan for the government of 
 Ireland which its promoters are bound to show to 
 be not only feasible and safe but an improvement 
 on the present system. 
 
 It is too much indeed to hope that the Govern- 
 7 89 
 
90 GENERAL FEATURES OF THE BILL 
 
 ment and their supporters will now abandon the 
 tactics they have followed throughout of employ- 
 ing contradictory arguments in a single breath 
 and appealing at the same moment to incom- 
 patible sentiments. We shall continue, no doubt, 
 to be told that the new system will at once 
 satisfy an Irish national demand and yet leave 
 the United Kingdom united as before under a 
 Parliament whose prestige and authority will 
 remain undiminished ; that it will provide ample 
 safeguards for the protection of Ulster, without 
 impairing the national prerogatives of the College 
 Green Parliament ; that it will have all and more 
 than the appeasing and reconciling influence of 
 colonial self-government without a colonial con- 
 stitution ; that it will have all the advantages of 
 federalism without its disadvantages and without 
 even the necessity of erecting federal institutions ; 
 and that it will liberally endow the Government 
 of an insolvent country without appreciable cost to 
 the taxpayers of Great Britain. It is vain to hope 
 that we have heard the last of such claims, for the 
 Bill has obviously been constructed with the 
 primary object of rendering it possible to main- 
 tain them. But in future they will have to sub- 
 mit to a practical test, and the application of that 
 test can hardly fail in most cases to be fatal 
 to both the opposing contentions. We have at 
 last emerged from the twilight atmosphere of 
 deceptive analogies, high-sounding platitudes, 
 and plausible assurances into the light of day. 
 
 Indeed, the Government, in their anxiety to 
 appeal to every sentiment and conciliate every 
 interest, have manifestly overreached themselves. 
 The cardinal vices of the Bill, as of its prede- 
 cessors of 1886 and 1893, are due to the fact that 
 its framers have thought more of enlisting support 
 during its passage or silencing opposition than 
 of producing a scheme which should be successful 
 
A BILL OF COMPROMISES 91 
 
 in the working. To recall an expressive word 
 from the dialect that was familiar during the 
 South African War, the dominant characteristic 
 of the bill is its "slimness," and slimness is not 
 statesmanship. We have had, for instance, Mr. 
 Acland naively boasting that the Ulster threat 
 to refuse to pay taxes to the Home Rule Govern- 
 ment is rendered nugatory by the arrangement 
 under which all taxes are to be collected by the 
 Imperial authorities and paid into the Imperial 
 Exchequer. It is worthy of an Under-Secretary 
 to suppose that the resistance of the great 
 Unionist community of the North can be so 
 childishly frustrated ; but there is more of the 
 Under-Secretary than of the statesman in the 
 bill throughout. 
 
 In its main features it is another attempt to 
 seek out a compromise where compromise is 
 impossible, to find a middle term where none 
 such exists, to harmonize principles that are 
 irreconcilable. It is the old tertium quid, neither 
 Unionism nor dualism, neither federalism nor 
 colonialism, neither subordination of the new 
 Parliament nor a co-ordinate position with the 
 freedom and independence that would develop 
 a sense of responsibility. There is everything 
 to be said for the present system of the Union. 
 There is much also to be said for colonial self- 
 government, though little of it is applicable to 
 the circumstances of Ireland ; and there is some- 
 thing, though not much, to be said even for the 
 project of giving the United Kingdom a federal 
 constitution. But whatever merits it is con- 
 ceivable a Home Rule scheme might possess 
 have been sacrificed in the bill to the timidity 
 which shrank from espousing any definite prin- 
 ciple. The Government have sought safety by 
 clinging resolutely to the via media, regardless 
 of the fact that in this case it leads straight into 
 
92 GENERAL FEATURES OF THE BILL 
 
 a quagmire. The via media is an excellent and 
 honoured English tradition, but the English 
 people showed in 1886 and 1893 that with a 
 quagmire in front they prefer to go round ; and 
 the striking thing about the present proposal 
 is its resemblance in all essentials to the policy 
 which on those occasions was so emphatically 
 rejected by the electorate of the United Kingdom. 
 A new generation has since come upon the scene, 
 but there is no reason for suspecting that the 
 English people have lost their discernment ; nor 
 can there be any doubt whatever that if they are 
 given the chance they will reject the present bill 
 as emphatically as its predecessors. 
 
 The Bill of 1886 was little more than a hasty 
 draft intended to secure the affirmation of a 
 principle ; but the Bill of 1893 was carried 
 through the House of Commons and I shall use 
 it in the following articles as a basis of com- 
 parison in noting the salient features of Mr. 
 Asquith's present scheme. One interesting point 
 of difference meets us at the very outset. The 
 Bill of 1893 contained a brief preamble setting 
 forth the expediency of creating an Irish Legis- 
 lature "without impairing or restricting the 
 supreme authority of Parliament " ; the Bill 
 of 191 2 contains no preamble whatever. The 
 omission seems to be a tacit recognition of the 
 fact that that particular form of political manifesto 
 has now fallen into discredit. It requires some 
 faith to believe that the supremacy of the Imperial 
 Parliament would remain unimpaired by the 
 passage of the Home Rule Bill; but a preambular 
 supremacy would have been too reminiscent of 
 the preambular Second Chamber for which we 
 are already indebted to the humour of the Liberal 
 Party. 
 
 Of the more substantial variations from the 
 model of 1893 it may be said at once that they are 
 
CHANGES FOR THE WORSE 93 
 
 most of them changes for the worse. The 
 nominated Senate already stands condemned and 
 if the Bill reaches Committee will probably 
 disappear. Some may think the notable declara- 
 tion of the Prime Minister in his introductory 
 speech that Home Rule for Ireland is to be the 
 first step in a policy of Home Rule all round a 
 change for the better ; but when the enthusiasts 
 of federal devolution turn to the Bill itself they 
 will find their hopes disappointed. Federations 
 may vary greatly in the closeness of their cohesion 
 and in the distribution of powers between the 
 central and subordinate Governments ; but as 
 far as I am aware every existing federation is in 
 the matters of Customs and postal arrangements 
 a unitary State. Yet the first step in the appli- 
 cation of the federal principle to the United 
 Kingdom commits us to a Customs line between 
 Great Britain and Ireland and to separate Post 
 Offices. By the time these things came to be 
 settled the Government, we may suppose, had 
 forgotten their great principle of federal devo- 
 lution, which they had, of course, only espoused 
 as a matter of political tactics, never as a real 
 guide. The result is characteristic at once of the 
 shifty opportunism and the logical incoherence 
 that are conspicuous throughout the Bill ; and 
 when we come to analyse the powers of the 
 new Irish Parliament we shall find further 
 illustrations. 
 
 The most glaring change for the worse in the 
 present measure of Home Rule as compared with 
 earlier proposals is, of course, to be found in the 
 new financial arrangements. They will call for 
 separate treatment later ; here only their broad 
 features need to be indicated. The Bill of 1886 
 provided for an Irish contribution to Imperial 
 services reckoned on the basis of one-fifteenth 
 of the total cost; the Bill of 1893 fixed the 
 
 7* 
 
94 GENERAL FEATURES OF THE BILL 
 
 contribution at one-third of the true Irish revenue 
 raised on Imperial taxes; the Bill of 1912 not 
 only does not ask for any contribution, but 
 retains a number of local Irish services as 
 Imperial and makes an Imperial contribution to 
 the remaining Irish services of half a million 
 annually. The net result is that, while under 
 either of the former Bills Ireland would have 
 contributed to Imperial expenditure about two 
 millions annually she will now receive from 
 Imperial sources more than two millions annually ; 
 and this is in spite of the fact that Ireland is to-day 
 a far richer country than she was twenty years 
 ago. The Irish debt, which at the time of the 
 Union was over thirty millions, and at the time 
 of the amalgamation of the Exchequers in 18 17 
 over a hundred millions, is wiped out altogether ; 
 and in addition the British taxpayer retains the 
 expensive privilege of financing Irish land 
 purchase on account of which he is already 
 committed to a liability of a hundred millions 
 sterling, with a contingent liability of a hundred 
 millions more. 
 
 If the arrangement is objectionable for its 
 prodigality and gross inequity it is perhaps not 
 less objectionable for its total lack of simplicity 
 and of real generosity in everything but money. 
 At the maximum of cost it will cause the minimum 
 of satisfaction and the maximum of friction. The 
 Government seem deliberately to have aimed at 
 complexity in the hope of concealing from the 
 British taxpayer the extent to which he is to 
 be penalized and in order also to present the 
 appearance of conceding something to the Irish 
 demand for fiscal independence without granting 
 the reality. The result is a scheme which, in 
 spite of its costly extravagance, will, as is clear 
 enough already, breed discontent in Ireland ; 
 which will give to the Irish Parliament just 
 
IRISH MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT 95 
 
 enough power to enable it to make confusion, 
 not enough to enable it to follow any fiscal or 
 financial policy of its own ; and which will so 
 inextricably entangle the finances of the two 
 countries as to nullify at once what in the eyes 
 of many Home Rulers is the chief purpose of the 
 Bill. Home Rule is to relieve the congestion of 
 business at Westminster; but under this scheme 
 the forty-two Irish members who are still to be 
 retained will consume more time over financial 
 questions alone than the one hundred and three 
 at present consume over all Irish business. 
 
 The Bill of 1886 excluded the Irish members 
 from Westminster altogether; the Bill of 1893 
 retained them, but reduced their number to 
 80 in rough accordance with population. The 
 further reduction to 42 in the Bill of 191 2 will 
 be regarded in many quarters as one of its best 
 features. It is difficult indeed to found this 
 compromise between total exclusion and reten- 
 tion in the numbers to which population entitles 
 on any logical principle ; and the provision by 
 which the number is to be raised to the popula- 
 tion quota when the financial arrangements come 
 up for revision is a confession to that effect, and 
 an awkward reminder of the provisional character 
 that is stamped on the whole Bill. But from 
 the point of view of Unionist Ulster and the 
 opponents of Home Rule the reduction to 42 
 has one great merit. At present Ireland yields 
 the Government a net majority of 65 ; with the 
 new constituencies as defined in the first 
 schedule of the Bill, there would probably be 
 ten Unionists and 32 Nationalists, a net majority 
 of 22, or a net loss for the Government of 43 
 supporters. This loss would be felt at once after 
 " the appointed day " on which the Irish Parlia- 
 ment met, and it would probably be sufficient, if 
 the appointed day came, say early in 191 5, to cause 
 
96 GENERAL FEATURES OF THE BILL 
 
 the immediate downfall of the United Kingdom 
 Government or a dissolution of Parliament. The 
 elections would then be fought at a moment 
 when the burning question was the employment 
 of British troops for the coercion of Unionist 
 Ulster into a recognition of the authority of the 
 Home Rule Government, and we can imagine 
 the Ministry's chances of obtaining a favourable 
 verdict. 
 
 But it is clear enough in other ways to any 
 one who studies this highly complex Bill that 
 the Parliament Act must fail to fulfil the chief 
 purpose for which it was intended, of enabling 
 its authors to carry Home Rule in defiance of 
 the predominant partner. " It is of the essence 
 of the Parliament Act, both in its letter and 
 spirit," the Prime Minister has told us, "that a 
 Bill which becomes law under its operations 
 must have commanded during three consecutive 
 Sessions the unswerving support of the House 
 of Commons, dependent directly in its turn upon 
 a stable and consistent public opinion in the 
 constituencies." A Bill which is in effect a new 
 Constitution both for the United Kingdom and 
 for Ireland, bristling with detail, touching 
 multitudinous interests, presenting multitudinous 
 faces for attack, and provoking by its endless 
 compromises more dissatisfaction than en- 
 thusiasm in every quarter, can never fulfil the 
 Prime Minister's conditions. Still less can it do 
 so when we remember that a stable and con- 
 sistent public opinion will be needed not only 
 in Great Britain but in Ireland itself, and perhaps 
 it may be added among the Irish in America. 
 It is safer to assume that the majority in the 
 House of Commons will prove servile to the 
 Government ; but if the Bill reaches the House 
 of Lords its rejection will at once convert it into 
 a corpse, and there is no political antiseptic that 
 
UNLIKELY TO BECOME LAW 97 
 
 will preserve it from putrefaction for a space of 
 two years. Let any one try and imagine an 
 attempt to galvanize into life the Bill of 1893 
 when it had been dead two years, and he will 
 have a measure of the difficulty of the task before 
 the Government. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NEW IRISH PARLIAMENT 
 
 The Home Rule Bill of 1893 provided for the 
 establishment of "an Irish Legislature" of two 
 Houses, which were to be known as the Legis- 
 lative Council and the Legislative Assembly ; 
 the new Bill provides for the establishment of 
 "an Irish Parliament" whose two Houses are 
 to be known as the Irish Senate and the Irish 
 House of Commons. " What's in a name ? " In 
 Ireland there is much, and this change of no- 
 menclature is highly significant. The w r ord 
 11 Parliament " has a ring of national independ- 
 ence, and will set sentiments aglow which the 
 word " Legislature " would leave cold. It will 
 appeal also to historic memories ; and " Mr. 
 Redmond's Parliament" will sound far better in 
 history as a pendant to " Grattan's Parliament" 
 than " Mr. Redmond's Legislature" would. Even 
 to the mind of the severely practical Saxon an 
 Irish House of Commons will be a body of higher 
 prestige, and one calling for more deference, than 
 an Irish Legislative Assembly. 
 
 The Legislative Council of 1893 was to consist 
 of 48 members elected by large constituencies 
 on a £20 franchise; the new Irish Senate is to 
 consist of 40 nominated Senators holding office 
 for eight years independently of a dissolution, 
 
 98 
 
THE TWO HOUSES 99 
 
 though one-fourth are to retire every second 
 year. The original nominations are to be made 
 " by the Lord Lieutenant subject to any instruc- 
 tions given by his Majesty"; that is to say, 
 by Mr. Birrell under orders from the potent 
 Nationalist " boss," Mr. Devlin ; afterwards by the 
 Lord Lieutenant on the advice of the new Irish 
 Cabinet ; that is to say, by Mr. Devlin acting 
 directly. As a safeguard for the minority a body 
 so constituted would be utterly worthless. For 
 nomination for life, as in the case of the Canadian 
 Senate, there is something to be said ; it secures 
 to a Second Chamber, if not collective prestige, 
 a measure of independence in the individual 
 members. Nomination for a term, especially in 
 the early critical years, when the average term was 
 short, would place the Irish Senators, if they cared 
 for a renewal of their mandate, in a position of 
 complete subservience to the new Irish Govern- 
 ment. But the principle of nomination has excited 
 the ire of the Radicals, and, if the Bill reaches 
 Committee, will probably disappear. 
 
 The Legislative Assembly of 1893 was to 
 consist of 103 members returned by the existing 
 constituencies ; the new House of Commons is 
 to consist of 164 returned by scheduled con- 
 stituencies. The increase in the number of mem- 
 bers is to be regarded in connexion with the 
 provision for determining disagreements between 
 the Houses by means of a joint Session. In in- 
 troducing the Bill Mr. Asquith said that this 
 provision followed the South African precedent. 
 As a matter of fact, a similar provision appeared 
 in the Bills of 1886 and 1893 ; but whereas in 
 1886 there was a first Order of 103 members to 
 a second Order of 204, and in 1893 a Council of 
 48 to an Assembly of 103, there will now be a 
 Senate of 40 to a House of 164 ; and, unless on 
 the question at issue there is an overwhelming 
 
100 
 
 THE NEW IRISH PARLIAMENT 
 
 majority of the Senate against a small majority 
 of the House, the Senate will have little power 
 of influencing the decision. 
 
 Irish Ministers are to have the right of sitting 
 and speaking in both Houses, though only of 
 voting in one, and all Peers, Irish or other, are 
 to be qualified for membership of either the 
 Senate or House of Commons. It is worth 
 noticing that in accordance with the principles 
 of the Parliament Act the Senate is expressly 
 debarred from amending or rejecting Money 
 Bills. The Irish Parliament after three years is 
 to have powers of redistribution, provided that 
 the total number of members shall not be 
 altered and that " due regard shall be had to 
 the population of the constituencies." In the 
 schedule, which in the meantime defines the Irish 
 constituencies, regard is had to population in a 
 manner that leads to some very curious results. 
 Mr. Asquith explained that the unit of population 
 was to be 27,000, and that no constituency was to 
 have less ; from a comparison of the schedule 
 with the returns of the last Census it has appar- 
 ently also been a principle that when a consti- 
 tuency reaches 40,000 it is entitled to two members, 
 and in the case of County Cork the outcome is as 
 follows : — 
 
 
 Population, 
 
 No. of 
 
 
 1911. 
 
 Members. 
 
 North Cork . 
 
 42,342 
 
 2 
 
 North-east Cork 
 
 44,276 
 
 2 
 
 Mid Cork 
 
 4^,251 
 
 2 
 
 East Cork 
 
 43,264 
 
 2 
 
 West Cork . 
 
 39*57° 
 
 I 
 
 South Cork . 
 
 38,848 
 
 I 
 
 South-east Cork 
 
 39,365 
 
 I 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF PARLIAMENT 101 
 
 When we come to the powers granted to the 
 new Irish Parliament we find that, as in 1893, 
 the first limiting condition is that, notwithstand- 
 ing its establishment, " the supreme power and 
 authority of the Parliament of the United King- 
 dom shall remain unaffected and undiminished 
 over all persons, matters, and things within his 
 Majesty's dominions." Mr. Asquith has always 
 insisted with great emphasis on the supremacy 
 of the Imperial Parliament herein asserted, but 
 what does this supremacy mean ? It may mean 
 something very real, or it may mean as little as 
 the formula which introduces the arrangements 
 for the new Irish Executive; "The executive 
 power in Ireland shall continue to be vested in 
 His Majesty the King." In theory the Imperial 
 Parliament possesses supreme power and autho- 
 rity in London and Melbourne alike ; but in 
 London, in spite of the existence of the London 
 County Council, the supreme power and autho- 
 rity are real and effective, in Melbourne they are 
 merely formal, devoid of substantial content, 
 little more than a legal figment, indicative at 
 most of a theoretical sovereignty, the existence 
 of which is tolerated because it is practically 
 non-effective. Is Ireland under Home Rule to 
 be in a position in this respect of London or of 
 Melbourne? The Bill is ambiguous. Is the 
 Prime Minister speaking as a statesman or a 
 lawyer when he uses his sonorous phrases about 
 the supremacy of Parliament ? He has probably 
 never dared to ask himself the question. 
 
 At one moment he seems to be speaking purely 
 as a lawyer. " We are here in the Imperial 
 Parliament," he said in his introductory speech, 
 "and the Imperial Parliament can neither sur- 
 render nor share its supreme authority to or 
 with any other body in any other part of his 
 Majesty's Dominions. That is the cardinal 
 
102 THE NEW IRISH PARLIAMENT 
 
 principle upon which this Bill proceeds." Under 
 that cardinal principle the United Kingdom Parlia- 
 ment may be as impotent in Dublin as it is in 
 Montreal. Elsewhere the Prime Minister seemed 
 to contemplate a more definite and positive autho- 
 rity. " There is," he said, " and must remain, 
 and is expressly recognized here, the over-riding 
 force of the Imperial Legislature, which can at 
 any time nullify, amend, or alter any Act of the 
 Irish Parliament," and then he quoted part of a 
 clause on concurrent legislation which appears 
 for the first time in the present Home Rule 
 Bill :— 
 
 "41. — (1) The Irish Parliament shall not have 
 power to repeal or alter any provision of this 
 Act (except as is specially provided by this Act), 
 or of any Act passed by the Parliament of the 
 United Kingdom, after the passing of this Act 
 and extending to Ireland, although that pro- 
 vision deals with a matter with respect to which 
 the Irish Parliament have powers to make laws. 
 
 " (2) Where any Act of the Irish Parliament 
 deals with any matter with respect to which the 
 Irish Parliament have power to make laws which 
 is dealt with by any Act of the Parliament of the 
 United Kingdom passed after the passing of this 
 Act and extending to Ireland, the Act of the Irish 
 Parliament shall be read subject to the Act of 
 the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and so 
 far as it is repugnant to that Act but no further, 
 shall be void." 
 
 The language of the clause is less emphatic, as 
 will be seen, than that of the Prime Minister, and 
 one would like to be told whether it is intended 
 only for show and will remain in practice a dead 
 letter, or whether the United Kingdom Parlia- 
 ment will really exercise its powers of concur- 
 rent legislation. In legal theory the same right, 
 
AMBIGUITY OF THE BILL 103 
 
 whether expressly reserved or not, exists in the 
 case of the self-governing Colonies ; and if in the 
 case of Ireland, as is probable, it remains equally 
 a dead letter, it will also be at once as useless 
 and innocuous. If, on the other hand, the Im- 
 perial Parliament makes effective use of its powers, 
 it will mean a renewal of the position which was 
 so productive of discord between the two Parlia- 
 ments in the eighteenth century. Without the 
 backing which it will now possess of an inde- 
 pendent Irish Executive the Irish Parliament 
 then emerged victorious from the struggle. It 
 won complete independence, and independence 
 speedily led to its extinction. We may look for- 
 ward to a reproduction of these phases in the 
 struggle which will begin anew on the " appointed 
 day " when the Irish Parliament is re-established. 
 The fact is, the Bill leaves the ambiguity in 
 the meaning of the supremacy of the United King- 
 dom Parliament to be determined by the play of 
 forces. If it is determined in one sense, the 
 centre of gravity of Irish affairs will continue to 
 be in London ; the Union will remain a reality ; 
 the new Legislature will be subordinate — or 
 probably insubordinate will be found to be the 
 appropriate word. Ireland, on the other hand, 
 will have a feeling of exasperation at having 
 been defrauded ; discontent, so far as it is based 
 on a genuine aspiration after national self- 
 government, will be more rampant than ever ; 
 and the principal change will be that we shall 
 have armed discontent with new and power- 
 ful weapons and endowed with machinery for 
 producing confusion. If, on the contrary, the 
 ambiguity is determined in the sense adverse to 
 the Imperial Parliament, it will mean the destruc- 
 tion of the Union and the institution of a system 
 of dualism at the centre of the Empire with the 
 dangers incident thereto ; the colonial status for 
 
io4 THE NEW IRISH PARLIAMENT 
 
 Ireland without its advantages; a Legislature 
 practically independent, but harassed by restric- 
 tions which, though nugatory for good, will act 
 powerfully as irritants and in weakening responsi- 
 bility. These alternative evils we shall owe to 
 the inability of the Government to make up their 
 minds as to what they mean, to their unwilling- 
 ness to follow the guidance of any definite 
 principle, to their awkward attempt to straddle 
 between the federal and colonial solutions — be- 
 tween British supremacy and Irish nationhood. 
 As Mr. Balfour said, they are giving privileges 
 which, if Ireland be a nation, are not enough, 
 and, if Ireland be not a nation, are far greater 
 than they ought ever to have given. 
 
 The same halting between two opinions and lack 
 of guiding principle are visible when we come to 
 the more precise definition of the powers of the 
 new Parliament. The Irish Parliament is to have 
 power to make laws for the peace, order, and good 
 government of Ireland. There is no need to 
 dwell on what Mr. Asquith magniloquently de- 
 scribed as the territorial limitation ; but this once 
 accepted, let it be noted that the Bill proceeds D3 7 
 the vicious method of a general grant of powers 
 subject to certain enumerated exceptions and 
 restrictions, instead of assigning specified sub- 
 jects, such as education, public works, local 
 government, and so forth, to the competence of 
 the Irish Parliament, and then proceeding on the 
 assumption made in the Canadian Constitution 
 that everything that is not conceded is withheld. 
 The retention of the right of concurrent legisla- 
 tion by the United Kingdom Parliament, if it 
 means anything in practice, would place the 
 Irish Parliament in a worse position than that in 
 which the Legislature of a Canadian Province 
 stands to the Parliament of the Dominion ; but 
 this grant of the residuary powers raises Ireland 
 
POWERS AND DISABILITIES 105 
 
 far above a province of the Dominion to the 
 dignity of an American State. It is one of the 
 points in which the Bill clearly shows a leaning 
 towards national dualism rather than federal 
 devolution. 
 
 The list of exceptions and restrictions, how- 
 ever, is long and entirely inconsistent with the 
 dignity of nationhood. Ireland, as Mr. Healy 
 plaintively remarked, is to have no flag, no mint, 
 no army, no navy. All of these the Colonies 
 have, even the flag, which, though common, is 
 the flag of their choice ; and in addition they have 
 powers of dealing with naturalization, copyright, 
 patents, and external trade which are all denied 
 to Ireland. External trade, indeed, which was 
 excluded in 1893 without qualification, is now 
 excluded with the qualification, "except so far as 
 trade may be affected by the exercise of the 
 powers of taxation given to the Irish Parliament 
 or by the regulation of importation for the sole 
 purpose of preventing contagious disease." 
 
 The Irish Parliament is also debarred from 
 dealing with the collection of taxes, Irish or 
 imperial, with the management and control of 
 the constabulary for six years, and with the 
 general subject-matter of the Acts relating to 
 land purchase, old-age pensions, and national 
 insurance. The last three disabilities are new 
 since 1893, but on the other hand, as already 
 noted, the Irish Parliament will now have con- 
 trol of the Irish Post Office, which was previously 
 withheld. The clause restraining the Irish Legis- 
 lature from violating the principles of civil and 
 religious equality, which in the Bill of 1893 
 covered more than a folio page, is now reduced to 
 the following : — 
 
 " 3. In the exercise of their power to make 
 laws under this Act the Irish Parliament shall 
 8 
 
106 THE NEW IRISH PARLIAMENT 
 
 not make a law so as either directly or indirectly 
 to establish or endow any religion, or prohibit 
 the free exercise thereof, or give a preference, 
 privilege, or advantage, or impose any disability 
 or disadvantage, on account of religious belief or 
 religious or ecclesiastical status, or make an}' 
 religious belief or religious ceremony a condition 
 of the validity of any marriage." 
 
 The provision copied from the United States 
 Constitution against any person being deprived 
 of life, liberty, or property without due process 
 of law has now disappeared ; and it will be 
 noticed that among the exceptions and restric- 
 tions there is none debarring the Irish Parliament 
 from dealing with criminal law and procedure, so 
 that on the principle of residuary powers these 
 matters must be assumed to be within its 
 jurisdiction. 
 
 The exceptions and restrictions embodied in 
 the new Constitution imply judicial machinery 
 to make them effective. When a question arises 
 as to whether an Irish Act is ultra vires, it will 
 be decided in the ordinary course of litigation by 
 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 
 which now becomes the final Court of Appeal for 
 Irish cases. But, in addition, the curious pro- 
 vision of the last Bill is retained, whereby the 
 Privy Council on an application from the Lord 
 Lieutenant or a Secretary of State can declare an 
 Irish Act void even before it has become operative 
 or given rise to litigation. The application is to 
 be referred to the judicial Committee, but, as 
 Professor Dicey has pointed out, the procedure 
 is wholly foreign to the spirit of English law, 
 and the Privy Council in tnis case would really 
 be taking action as an administrative body. 
 Viewed in this light the proposed arrangement 
 seems admirably contrived for bringing the central 
 
THE IMPERIAL VETO 107 
 
 power, as represented by the Privy Council, into 
 conflict with the new Parliament. 
 
 There is another check w T hich is frankly execu- 
 tive or administrative, and which will probably 
 be no less unworkable in practice, the Imperial 
 Veto. " We reserve," said the Prime Minister, 
 "completely unimpaired the supremacy and the 
 responsibility of the Executive here, and the 
 power of vetoing or postponing any legislation 
 which the Irish Parliament may pass." By the 
 Bill of 1893 the Lord Lieutenant was, on the 
 advice of the new Irish Government, to give or 
 withhold the assent of the Crown to Bills passed 
 by the two Houses of the Irish Legislature, 
 " subject nevertheless to any instructions given 
 by her Majesty in respect of any such Bill." The 
 reference to the advice of the Irish Government 
 now disappears and we get the following 
 clause : — 
 
 "7. The Lord Lieutenant shall give or with- 
 hold the assent of His Majesty to Bills passed 
 by the two Houses of the Irish Parliament, 
 subject to the following limitations ; namely — 
 
 " (1) He shall comply with any instructions 
 given by His Majesty in respect of any such 
 Bill; and 
 
 "(2) He shall, if so directed by His Majesty, 
 postpone giving the assent of His Majesty to 
 any such Bill presented to him for assent for 
 such period as His Majesty may direct." 
 
 Apparently the Lord Lieutenant is to be some- 
 thing more than the representative of a constitu- 
 tional Sovereign, which is practically the position 
 of the Governor of a self-governing colony ; like 
 the Governor of a Crown Colony, he is also to 
 be the representative of an arbitrary Imperial 
 Government. The Imperial Veto is tolerated in 
 the self-governing Dominions because it is practi- 
 
108 THE NEW IRISH PARLIAMENT 
 
 cally inoperative, and the attempt to use a 
 Colonial Governor as the agent of the Imperial 
 Government for the protection of natives broke 
 down even in the case of little Natal. The 
 attempt to use the Lord Lieutenant for the pro- 
 tection of the Irish minority would end in the 
 same way, in the local Ministry making the 
 exercise of all his prerogatives subject to their 
 advice. This question of the position of the 
 Lord Lieutenant leads naturally to the subject 
 of the Irish Executive, which will be considered 
 in the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE EXECUTIVE POWER 
 
 A Parliament appeals to the popular imagina- 
 tion ; the question of the Executive is often 
 lightly dismissed, but it is really of greater 
 practical significance, as Unionist Ulster has 
 divined. No one in Ulster attaches any impor- 
 tance to theoretical safeguards against unjust 
 legislation. It is the power of an Irish Execu- 
 tive not responsible to the Imperial Parliament 
 that is dreaded as a menace to their security and 
 well-being. 
 
 The Bill endows Ireland with a separate 
 Executive responsible to the Irish Parliament. 
 Unless we are to reckon two brief periods in 
 the seventeenth century when she was in open 
 rebellion against the Government of Great 
 Britain, Ireland has never through all her che- 
 quered history possessed anything that could be 
 called a national Executive of her own. It is at 
 this point that historical experience entirely fails 
 us, and that the Home Rule experiment becomes 
 a leap in the dark. The Protestant ascendancy 
 was tempered in its harshest hour by the de- 
 pendence of the Irish Executive on Great Britain ; 
 and even during the short and troubled life of 
 the Grattan Parliament, when in theory the Irish 
 Legislature was completely independent, the 
 8* 109 
 
no THE EXECUTIVE POWER 
 
 Irish Executive remained under the control of 
 the Government and Parliament in London. 
 Theorists, indeed, tell us that it was the absence 
 of an Executive responsible to the Irish Parlia- 
 ment that prevented Grattan's experiment from 
 achieving all the success of colonial self-govern- 
 ment. But I have alread}^ considered the ques- 
 tion how far the colonial analogy could ever have 
 been applicable to Ireland, and there is no need 
 to labour the matter again, especially as no one 
 can pretend that this Home Rule Bill gives to 
 Ireland a colonial constitution, or reproduces even 
 approximately the conditions which have won suc- 
 cess for responsible government in the Colonies. 
 
 We have seen already how the new Parliament 
 is trammelled and restricted, endowed with 
 powers too small for the free development of a 
 national life, too great if it is intended to take 
 its place in a general system of federal devolu- 
 tion. Precisely the same remarks apply to the 
 new Executive. It is too strong for subordina- 
 tion, not strong enough for the development of 
 responsibility and the satisfaction of a national 
 demand. It will either extort complete freedom 
 by a continuance of the old process of obstruction, 
 agitation, menace, and violence ; or it will have 
 to be reduced to submission by an exercise of 
 the arbitrary power of the United Kingdom 
 Government. 
 
 The opening sections of the first of the two 
 clauses that are expressly devoted to the subject 
 of executive authority run as follows : 
 
 "4. — (1) The executive power in Ireland shall 
 continue vested in His Majesty the King, and 
 nothing in this Act shall affect the exercise of that 
 power except as respects Irish services as defined 
 for the purposes of this Act. 
 
 "(2) As respects those Irish services the Lord 
 
A DUAL EXECUTIVE m 
 
 Lieutenant or other chief executive officer or 
 officers for the time being appointed in his place, 
 on behalf of His Majesty, shall exercise any pre- 
 rogative or other executive power of His Majesty 
 the exercise of which may be delegated to him by 
 His Majesty. 
 
 " (3) The power so delegated shall be exercised 
 through such Irish Departments as may be estab- 
 lished by Irish Act, or, subject thereto, by the 
 Lord Lieutenant, and the Lord Lieutenant may 
 appoint officers to administer those Departments, 
 and those officers shall hold office during the 
 pleasure of the Lord Lieutenant. 
 
 11 (4) The persons who are for the time being 
 heads of such Irish Departments as may be deter- 
 mined by Irish Act or, in the absence of any such 
 determination, by the Lord Lieutenant, and such 
 other persons (if any) as the Lord Lieutenant may 
 appoint, shall be the Irish Ministers." 
 
 These sections must be read in the light of the 
 Prime Minister's comment : 
 
 " The Lord Lieutenant will be advised in regard 
 to all Irish matters by an Irish Executive ; and I 
 wish to make it perfectly clear that as far as the 
 Executive in Ireland is concerned the area of its 
 authority will be co-extensive with the legislative 
 power of the Parliament, neither greater nor less, 
 whatever matters are for the time being within 
 the legislative competence of the Irish Parliament 
 will be for administrative purposes within the 
 ambit of the Irish Executive ; what is outside will 
 remain under the control and subject to the 
 administration of the Imperial Executive." 
 
 Speaking in 1893 on the second reading of the 
 Home Rule Bill, Mr. Asquith expressly repudiated 
 the idea of setting up in Ireland two independent 
 and separate executives ; but that is precisely 
 
ii2 THE EXECUTIVE POWER 
 
 what the new Bill will give us. There will be 
 the present Imperial executive retaining most of 
 its present power, and there will be an Irish 
 executive with the Lord Lieutenant as its nominal 
 head, while the real depositaries of power will be 
 the Irish Ministry responsible to the Irish Parlia- 
 ment. The Irish Executive will have control of 
 all the " Irish services " : Local Government, 
 Public Works, the Irish Post Office, the Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture, Public Education, Law, 
 Justice, and Prisons, and, as we glean from the Out- 
 line of Financial Provisions issued with the Bill 
 — for the Bill itself is silent — the Dublin Metro- 
 politan Police. The Congested Districts Board 
 also appears in the Outline as an Irish service, 
 but we must assume that as regards its important 
 land purchase powers it will remain under the 
 control of the Imperial Executive. The Imperial 
 Executive will collect all the taxes, administer 
 old-age pensions and national insurance, manage 
 the savings banks, appoint the Land Judges and 
 Estates Commissioners, direct and finance the 
 operations of land purchase, hold half the land of 
 Ireland in mortgage, and, even apart from any 
 extension of its present obligations, collect the 
 purchase annuities till near the close of the 
 present century, control the Royal Irish Con- 
 stabulary for the first six years, exercise immense 
 powers of patronage in all these relations, and 
 finally veto at will the Acts of the Irish Parlia- 
 ment. This indeed will mean for Ireland some- 
 thing very different from national self-government; 
 and if it is federal devolution it is hard to trace 
 the resemblance to any existing system of federal 
 administration. It is really a haphazard system 
 of dual control, with the powers distributed on 
 no intelligible principle and in such a manner 
 that conflict of jurisdiction and chaos must 
 inevitably result. 
 
ELEMENTS OF CONFUSION 113 
 
 Look for a moment at some of the elements 
 of confusion. Old-age pensions, which are to 
 remain an Imperial service, are administered at 
 present through the Local Government Board 
 and the Post Office, both of which are at once to 
 pass under Irish control. The Post Office is 
 transferred regardless of the fact that unity of 
 administration throughout the United Kingdom 
 would in war time be of vital importance 
 in the interests of Imperial strategy. The 
 Post Office also plays no small part in the 
 business of recruiting for the Army ; it cannot 
 continue to do so only by favour of the Irish 
 Government. Again, land purchase is to remain 
 a strictly Imperial service; but the rent-fixing 
 functions of the Irish Land Commission are to be 
 placed at once under the control of the Irish 
 Government regardless of the fact that rent is 
 the basis of the whole business of land purchase, 
 and that the Irish Executive could by an extreme 
 policy as regards rent compel the sale of all the 
 estates still unsold in Ireland at any terms 
 obtainable. But it is not necessary to credit 
 the Irish Executive or the Irish people with any 
 spirit of ill-will in order to see that the proposed 
 arrangements are impossible ; by their very 
 nature they must lead to conflict and confusion, 
 and to what is worst of all in Ireland, executive 
 impotence. In England, said Disraeli in one of 
 his pithy phrases, Government is weak because 
 society is strong; in Ireland, on the contrary, 
 where society is weak, Government should be 
 strong. It is hard indeed to see how Govern- 
 ment can be strong under the provisions of the 
 Home Rule Bill. 
 
 With all the immense powers retained by the 
 Imperial Government the question at once arises 
 of Ministerial responsibility for Irish affairs in 
 the Parliament at Westminster. The Chief 
 
ii 4 THE EXECUTIVE POWER 
 
 Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant will now, we 
 may assume, disappear, but who is to take his 
 place? It shows in what a perfunctory spirit 
 the Government have prepared their plan, if plan 
 it can be called, and how little they have en- 
 deavoured to envisage its practical working, that 
 when Mr. Birrell the other day was questioned 
 on this point he could only answer that it would 
 be necessary, of course, that some Minister of the 
 United Kingdom Government should be respon- 
 sible for the Irish business which still rested with 
 that Government. " Whether," he airily added, 
 11 there should be more than one such Minister, 
 or what the description of that Minister should 
 be are matters on which I can give no answer at 
 present." It would seem that neither he nor the 
 Government had ever even thought of the sub- 
 ject; yet to take the police alone, and, as Mr. 
 Balfour pointed out, not a peasant can be 
 evicted in far Connemara without the eviction 
 being an act for which the Imperial Government 
 is technically responsible and liable to arraign- 
 ment in the Imperial Parliament. Every incident 
 in Ireland in the enforcement of the law will have 
 its echoes at Westminster; everything question- 
 able in the conduct of the police by the way 
 either of action or inaction is certain to be 
 questioned. It is hard, indeed, to say where the 
 power will be, but the responsibility at all events 
 will be with the Imperial Government. 
 
 The Dublin Police, as we have seen, will from 
 the first be an Irish service ; but what will be 
 the real position of the Royal Irish Constabulary 
 during the six years that they are to remain in 
 theory an Imperial Service ? Mr. Samuel en- 
 deavoured to explain in reply to Mr. Balfour. 
 11 The police," he said, " will be under the orders 
 of their own Inspector-General of Constabulary, 
 and he in turn will be under the orders of the 
 
CONTROL OF THE POLICE 115 
 
 Lord Lieutenant." The Opposition laughed, as 
 well they might. It looks, indeed, as if the con- 
 trol of the police by the Imperial Government 
 would only mean in practice its right to pay for 
 them. The Bill of 1893 contained the provision : 
 11 The said two forces [Metropolitan Police and 
 Irish Constabulary] shall, while they continue, 
 be subject to the control of the Lord Lieutenant 
 as representing his Majesty." Nothing is said in 
 the present Bill of the Lord Lieutenant in this 
 matter representing his Majesty, and, even if 
 there were, we may doubt whether it would 
 make much difference in practice. The Common- 
 wealth of Australia Act contains a provision that 
 " the command-in-chief of the naval and military 
 forces of the Commonwealth is vested in the 
 Governor-General as the Queen's representative," 
 and there are similar provisions in the Constitu- 
 tions of the Canadian Dominion and the South 
 African Union ; but we can imagine the con- 
 sequences that would follow an attempt by a 
 Governor-General to exercise his legal powers 
 independently of his local advisers. We may 
 take it for granted that the Lord Lieutenant will 
 be the obedient servant of his Irish Ministers, 
 and that in practice the Irish Government will 
 control the Constabulary from the first. Any 
 other solution is, indeed, inconceivable ; for an 
 Irish Executive which was left without power to 
 enforce the laws of the Irish Parliament or its 
 own administrative decrees would be in a ludi- 
 crous position. Yet, on the other hand, with the 
 police (from the first or very shortly) and the 
 administration of justice under the control of 
 the Irish Government, what will be the position 
 of the Imperial Executive charged with the 
 duties of collecting all the revenue and land 
 purchase annuities over the greater part of Ire- 
 land ? 
 
n6 THE EXECUTIVE POWER 
 
 The Lord Lieutenant, like a Colonial Governor, 
 is now to hold office for a fixed term of six years, 
 not to change, as in the past, with Administra- 
 tions in Great Britain. This would appear to 
 confirm the other indications that he is to be a 
 Constitutional Governor not charged with the 
 execution of Imperial policy in Ireland. Yet in 
 theory, as we have seen, he is not only to control 
 the Constabulary, but to exercise the Imperial 
 veto on the instructions of the Imperial Govern- 
 ment, and to have the power of referring Irish 
 Acts of doubtful validity to the United Kingdom 
 Privy Council. As to what his relations are to 
 be to the Imperial Executive in Ireland as regards 
 its general duties the Bill is completely silent. 
 Mr. Samuel, indeed, made a bold attempt to face 
 the metaphysics of his position. "The Lord 
 Lieutenant," he said, "like all Colonial Gover- 
 nors, has a dual capacity. So far as Imperial 
 services are concerned he is under the general 
 direction of the Imperial authorities, and so far as 
 local government is concerned he acts upon the 
 advice of his Constitutional Ministers as an Im- 
 perial officer." With some inconsequence he 
 added, apparently harking back to the police, 
 u This is a temporary provision during the first 
 six years " ; it is not likely to have any reality for 
 even six months. The dual capacity of the 
 Governor of a self-governing colony is almost 
 wholly theoretical, except in such a case as the 
 Union of South Africa, where the Governor- 
 General as High Commissioner has jurisdiction 
 in Imperial territories outside the Union. Within 
 the jurisdiction of his Ministers a Colonial 
 Governor finds it impossible to move without 
 them, and we may be fairly certain that in 
 Ireland the Lord Lieutenant will be in the same 
 position. 
 
 The problem of the Lord Lieutenant and the 
 
A HYBRID SCHEME 117 
 
 Executive arrangements generally well illustrate 
 the jumble of federal and colonial ideas which 
 we find in the Bill throughout, as in the speeches 
 of Ministers since the controversy began. At 
 one moment Ireland seems to hold towards 
 Great Britain the same relation that the Dominion 
 of Canada holds towards the United Kingdom ; 
 at another moment Ireland holds in the United 
 Kingdom the same position that Ontario holds 
 in the Dominion of Canada. If the Government 
 had been serious in their adoption of the federal 
 principle the Lord Lieutenant would have been 
 given the status of a mere provincial Governor, 
 having nothing whatever to do with Imperial 
 administration, and the powers of his Ministry 
 would have been limited and defined according 
 to some considered plan of federal devolution. 
 But the Government have been obsessed by fear 
 of the Nationalist Convention and of the Irish 
 " national " idea, and, while shrinking from the 
 reality of the colonial solution, have endeavoured 
 to produce a hybrid which could be presented 
 as federal devolution in Great Britain and dis- 
 torted into the semblance of something larger 
 in Ireland. The result is a crude and incoherent 
 scheme of which no one can predict anything 
 with certainty, except that it must lead to hope- 
 less confusion. Its authors seem content to leave 
 its outcome to chance and its problems to a 
 process of solvitur ambulando ; and only in that 
 way could its real significance be determined. 
 But it is fairly safe to assume that the drift from 
 the first, through endless friction and complica- 
 tion, would be away from federalism and towards 
 the colonial solution ; until Nature reasserted 
 herself in her own good time and Ireland was 
 forcibly reannexed to Great Britain. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FINANCIAL PROVISIONS 
 
 One may well be allowed to pause and shiver 
 on the brink before plunging into the finance 
 of the third Home Rule Bill. No smooth surface 
 hides its dark and treacherous depths, which are 
 sufficient to appal even the most venturesome. 
 In statesmanship, as in most other departments 
 of human activity, simplicity is the note of every 
 great and lasting achievement, and simplicity 
 certainly cannot be predicated of the financial 
 arrangements. Complexity, entanglement, and 
 obscurity are their characteristics. No strong 
 conception appears to have dictated them, no 
 intelligible principle appears to underlie them ; 
 and it is hard to acquit the Government of the 
 suspicion of having deliberately tried to make 
 confusion worse confounded in the hope of 
 concealing the fundamental vice and inequity 
 of their proposals. 
 
 Let us begin from the point of view of the new 
 Irish Government. As we have seen already, all 
 taxes are to be collected by the Imperial Govern- 
 ment and paid into the Imperial Exchequer, but 
 a separate Irish Exchequer is now to be estab- 
 lished from which will be defrayed the cost of 
 Irish government as regards the Irish services. 
 The distinction already noted between these Irish 
 
 uS 
 
THE TRANSFERRED SUM 119 
 
 services, which are to be placed under the control 
 of the new Irish Government, and the reserved 
 services, which are to remain under the control 
 of the Imperial Government, now becomes of 
 vital importance. The Irish Government, whose 
 province is co-extensive with the Irish services, 
 is to be run on what the Committee of Experts 
 appointed to advise the Cabinet, but whose advice 
 has been disregarded, condemned as the " contract 
 S3'stem." A definite sum, which is to be calculated 
 at such amount as will cover the present expendi- 
 ture on all Irish services, including the deficit on 
 the Post Office, and will provide a surplus of 
 £500,000 for the benefit of the new Irish Govern- 
 ment, is to be paid over annually to the Irish 
 Exchequer. This sum, which is to be known as 
 the " transferred sum," and which is estimated 
 provisionally at £6,127,000, is to be determined 
 precisely by the Joint Exchequer Board, a new 
 body created for the purposes of the Bill, to 
 which we shall revert. The transferred sum, 
 once determined, is to be maintained for three 
 years at the original amount, so as to yield the 
 paper surplus of £500,000 to the Irish Govern- 
 ment ; afterwards it is to diminish by £50,000 
 annually till, at the end of nine years, the surplus 
 has fallen to £200,000, at which amount it is to 
 stand. 
 
 Subject to certain liabilities, which will rank 
 as first charges, but which need not now detain 
 us, the transferred sum, once determined, will be 
 completely at the disposal of the new Irish 
 Government. The subvention remaining fixed, 
 any savings effected in expenditure on Irish 
 services will accrue to the benefit of the Irish 
 Exchequer, and may be used by the Irish Parlia- 
 ment either for the increase of expenditure in 
 other directions or for the remission of taxation. 
 If taxes are lowered, a less sum will be collected 
 
i2o THE FINANCIAL PROVISIONS 
 
 by the Imperial authorities, and the transferred 
 sum will be diminished by a corresponding 
 amount. On the other hand, as we shall see, 
 the Irish Parliament will have considerable 
 powers of increasing taxation, and, if it chooses 
 to utilize them, the Imperial authorities will 
 collect a larger revenue on Irish account and 
 the transferred sum will be swollen by the 
 amount of the increase. Except as regards these 
 powers over taxation, the whole arrangement is 
 similar in principle to that which was proposed 
 under Mr. Birrell's Irish Council Bill of 1907, 
 and not very widely different in scope ; for under 
 that Bill an annual sum of £4,164,000 was to be 
 handed over by the Treasury to defray the cost 
 of the Irish services proposed to be transferred. 
 
 In the text of the present Bill specific figures 
 are avoided for the obvious reason that before it 
 could have a chance of becoming law under the 
 provisions of the Parliament Act they would be 
 hopelessly out of date ; but we can get specific 
 figures from the Outline of Financial Provisions 
 issued simultaneously. For the current financial 
 year the total cost of the Irish services which are 
 transferred to the Budget of the new Irish 
 Government is estimated at £5,627,000, the amount 
 which we obtain by deducting from the trans- 
 ferred sum the £500,000 to be paid over by the 
 Treasury to launch the new Irish Government 
 on its career with a surplus. The total Irish 
 expenditure for the same period, however, in- 
 cluding the excess expenditure on the Post Office, 
 is estimated at £10,919,000. The difference, 
 £5,292,000, represents the cost of the reserved 
 services for which the Imperial Government 
 retains responsibility. The true Irish revenue 
 is estimated for the } r ear at £9,404,000, which, 
 after the transferred sum has been paid over to 
 the Irish Exchequer, leaves a balance of £3,277,000 
 
THE IMPERIAL DEFICIT 121 
 
 in the hands of the Imperial Treasury for meet- 
 ing the cost of the reserved services, £5, 292,000. 
 This leaves an Imperial deficit on Irish account 
 of £2,015,000. As the Outline of Financial Pro- 
 visions naively puts it, the Imperial Govern- 
 ment's receipts and expenditure on Irish account 
 would M balance " as follows : 
 
 Revenue 
 
 £ 
 
 Irish Revenue (excluding Post Office 
 
 and fee stamps). . . . 9,404,000 
 Deficit 
 
 J_/C11<~11 ..... 
 
 
 ^^0)^° 
 
 Total . 
 
 £ 
 
 [1,419,000 
 
 Expenditure 
 
 
 £ 
 
 Transferred Sum 
 
 
 6,127,000 
 
 Old-Age Pensions . 
 
 
 2,664,000 
 
 National Insurance and Labour Ej 
 
 
 
 changes .... 
 
 . 
 
 191,500 
 
 Land Purchase — 
 
 
 
 (1) Land Commission . 
 
 . 
 
 592,000 
 
 (2) Other Charges 
 
 , 
 
 169,000 
 
 Constabulary .... 
 
 . 
 
 1,377,5°° 
 
 Collection of Revenue 
 
 • 
 
 298,00a 
 
 Total . 
 
 & 
 
 1 1,419,000 
 
 The deficit of £2,015,000 represents the real 
 cost of Home Rule Ireland to the taxpayer of 
 Great Britain, and nothing can disguise it. We 
 are told, indeed, that with the exception of the 
 £500,000 provided as an Irish surplus the whole 
 of this cost falls on him at present ; but as any 
 parent would feel, it is one thing meeting the 
 expenses of children who remain members of the 
 family living in the household, another setting 
 them up in separate establishments of their own. 
 
 9 
 
122 THE FINANCIAL PROVISIONS 
 
 We are told also that the deficit has been 
 rapidly growing, and that it will continue to 
 grow under the Union, but that Home Rule not 
 only enables us to " cut our future loss," but 
 places us in a fair way towards ultimately getting 
 rid of the deficit altogether. Let us examine 
 this contention. 
 
 The true Irish revenue, including non-tax 
 revenue, has grown from £7,569,000 in 1893-4 to 
 £10,839,000 in 191 2-1 3. The growth was, of 
 course, mainly owing to higher taxation, but 
 Mr. Samuel notes in the revenue of last year il a 
 most remarkable and satisfactory increase " which 
 is not wholly to be so explained and which 
 encourages him to hope for an average increase 
 in future years of £200,000. That, as he admits, 
 is " perhaps an over-sanguine estimate," but if it 
 is realized the whole of "the existing Irish 
 deficit " will disappear in ten years. The estimate 
 is certainly over-sanguine under Home Rule. 
 The growth of Irish revenue is one of the many 
 signs of the increased prosperity which the 
 security of the Union and the Balfour policy are 
 together bringing to Ireland ; can any one hope 
 that it will be maintained under a system which 
 the section of the Irish population industrially 
 most advanced views with hatred and dread and 
 is determined to resist even to the point of vio- 
 lence ? It is under the Union that we have a 
 prospect of the Irish deficit being gradually ex- 
 tinguished by the growth of Irish prosperity ; if 
 Home Rule were carried the prospect would be 
 at an end. 
 
 But if the Irish revenue has been growing the 
 local expenditure in Ireland has been growing 
 at a much faster rate. It has grown from 
 £5,602,000 (Exchequer issues) in 1893-4 to 
 £12,354,000 (estimated) in 1912-13, thus converting 
 a surplus of nearly two millions in the year of 
 
THE GROWTH OF EXPENSES 123 
 
 the last Home Rule Bill into a deficit of over a 
 million and a half in the year of the present. 
 What are the chances of the growth of expenditure 
 being checked in such a way that the taxpayer in 
 Great Britain shall reap the benefit? Will the 
 financial arrangements of the present Home Rule 
 Bill have that effect ? The services, be it noted, 
 of which the cost is practically stationary and 
 which even perhaps offer opportunities for re- 
 trenchment are assigned to the Irish Govern- 
 ment, and any saving thereon will accrue to the 
 benefit of the Irish Exchequer. For the services, 
 on the contrary, of which the cost is rapidly 
 growing, the Imperial Government remains re- 
 sponsible, and the burden of the increase will fall 
 on the British taxpayer. The amount which he 
 pays in order to provide the Irish Government 
 with a surplus will diminish in nine years from 
 £500,000 to £200,000 ; and the Government also 
 claim that the cost of old-age pensions will 
 diminish in twenty years by £200,000. The 
 Committee of Experts appear to take a different 
 view. " The expenditure (of Ireland) includes," 
 they affirm, " certain growing services, notably 
 land purchase and old-age pensions, while there 
 are not at present visible any declining services 
 that might lead to counterbalancing economies." 
 The Government themselves admit that the 
 charges under the existing Land Purchase Acts 
 will in ten or fifteen years increase by £450,000, 
 and that in the same period the charges under 
 the National Insurance Act will increase by 
 £300,000. There are strong reasons for believing 
 that the growth of expenditure on national 
 insurance is greatly underestimated ; but even 
 if we accept their estimates throughout and 
 ignore the certainty of further land purchase 
 legislation, we have to face a prospective growth 
 of Imperial expenditure on Irish account by 
 
i2 4 THE FINANCIAL PROVISIONS 
 
 ^250,000 annually, more than sufficient to swallow 
 up Mr. Samuel's " over-sanguine " estimate of the 
 possible average increase of revenue. 
 
 That, however, is not all. It is impossible to 
 believe that the Parliament at Westminster has 
 yet closed the chapter of social legislation, and 
 every Act that it passes making for increased 
 expenditure will tend to swell the deficit in the 
 Imperial account with Ireland. An argument 
 in favour of Home Rule that I have frequently 
 heard used by thinking Nationalists in Ireland, 
 and especially by those whose opinions are most 
 swayed by the genius of the Roman Church, is 
 drawn from the danger under the present system 
 of Ireland being dragged in the wake of Great 
 Britain into Socialistic experiments for which 
 her own people have no real desire. Old-age 
 pensions and national insurance are, of course, 
 the capital instances, but the present Home Rule 
 Bill seems to have been framed expressly for 
 depriving this argument of all point and weight. 
 As regards old-age pensions and national in- 
 surance Ireland remains linked to Great Britain 
 as before ; and when Mr. Lloyd George has his 
 next inspiration and proceeds to reduce the 
 pension age to sixty-five or sixty, or to endow 
 widows and orphans at the expense of the State, 
 Ireland, we may be sure, will have to be included, 
 the tide of Social legislation will continue to roll 
 over her, and the deficit in her account with 
 Great Britain will be swollen. There can be 
 nothing more certain than that under Home Rule 
 the deficit will grow at least as rapidly as before. 
 The forty-two Irish members will have every 
 motive for devoting their energies to fostering its 
 growth. 
 
 "The Bill," as we are told in the Outline of 
 Financial Provisions, " makes no specific reference 
 to the powers of the Imperial Parliament to levy 
 
IMPERIAL TAXATION 125 
 
 taxation in Ireland. The provision in Clause 1 
 that the supreme power and authority of the 
 Parliament of the United Kingdom shall remain 
 unaffected retains the existing powers of the 
 Imperial Parliament in this regard." We have 
 seen reasons for doubting whether the supreme 
 power and authority of the Parliament of the 
 United Kingdom will mean much in practice ; 
 and we can be certain that every attempt by that 
 Parliament to exercise its powers of increasing 
 taxation in Ireland will lead to serious friction. 
 The 42 Irish members, as they will have every 
 reason for encouraging Imperial expenditure in 
 Ireland, will have the same reason for fiercely 
 opposing every increase of Imperial taxation, the 
 subvention to Ireland remaining in either case 
 unaffected. And if the Imperial Parliament im- 
 poses a tax which is unpopular in Ireland the 
 Irish Executive can make it impossible for the 
 Imperial authorities to collect it. 
 
 If the Imperial Parliament finds it difficult to 
 increase taxation in Ireland pari passu with ex- 
 penditure the deficit, of course, will grow faster 
 than ever. If, on the other hand, the power of 
 Imperial taxation is to be real and effective, what 
 justification is there for reducing the number of 
 the Irish members at Westminster ? It will 
 mean taxation of Ireland — not without repre- 
 sentation, but with inadequate representation. 
 As some one — was it Mr. Balfour ? — said in 
 debate, If Ireland is to govern herself they are 
 42 too many ; if she is not to govern herself they 
 are 42 too few. " We do not think," said the 
 Prime Minister, " that when Ireland has obtained 
 full control of her own affairs either justice or 
 policy requires that she should continue to be 
 represented here on the same footing as the 
 other component parts of the United Kingdom.'^ 
 Ireland under the Bill obtains powers that will 
 
 9* 
 
f2 6 THE FINANCIAL PROVISIONS 
 
 be dangerous to herself, to the United Kingdom, 
 and to the Empire at large ; whether she obtains 
 full control of her own affairs, whether even the 
 financial arrangements are in accord with what 
 the Committee of Experts call the keynote of the 
 policy of Home Rule, " freedom within its own 
 sphere for Irish nationality" is quite another 
 matter. 
 
 If we must have Home Rule there can be no 
 question that the financial arrangement suggested 
 by the Committee would have been far better 
 and in the long run far less costly than that 
 adopted by the Government. Subject to certain 
 restrictions intended to guard against the raising 
 of tariff questions that might prejudice relations 
 with foreign Powers or trade between Great 
 Britain and Ireland, they proposed to give the 
 Home Rule Parliament complete authority to 
 impose and levy taxation in Ireland. This would 
 certainly have increased the power of the new 
 Irish Government, but it would have increased 
 its responsibility in the same degree, and it 
 would have avoided the endless causes of friction 
 and the entanglement of Budgets which are the 
 worst features of the system adopted. Their 
 plan for meeting the deficit and gradually extin- 
 guishing it by an automatic process was simple 
 and ingenious. They proposed that the Imperial 
 Exchequer should accept the liability for all 
 existing old-age pensions granted in Ireland, 
 liability for future pensions remaining with the 
 Irish Government, who would, of course, have 
 had the option of reducing the scale or modify- 
 ing the conditions. It is easy to see why 
 Mr. Redmond and the Government refused to 
 have anything to do with this proposal. For 
 Home Rule there is at present little enthusiasm 
 in Ireland ; but if so broad a hint had been given 
 that it might mean the diminution of future old- 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT'S POWERS 127 
 
 age pensions the Ulster enthusiasm for the Union 
 would have received strong reinforcement from 
 Malin Head to Cape Clear. 
 
 Possibly as it becomes realized that the Home 
 Rule Bill sets up a new taxing power in Ireland,, 
 without removing the old, Ulster may yet find 
 allies. The Bill does not grant complete powers 
 of taxation to the new Irish Parliament, but the 
 powers it grants it are considerable. It may levy 
 any new taxes other than new Customs duties — a 
 far-reaching provision. It may add to the rates of 
 Excise duties, Customs duties on beer and spirits,, 
 stamp duties (with certain exceptions), land taxes, 
 or miscellaneous taxes imposed by the Imperial 
 Parliament. And it may add to an extent not 
 exceeding 10 per cent, to the income-tax, death 
 duties, or Customs duties other than the duties 
 on beer and spirits, imposed by the Imperial 
 Parliament. It may also reduce any tax levied 
 in Ireland with the exception of certain stamp- 
 duties. Mr. Samuel talks confidently of " the 
 economies in the cost of government which Home 
 Rule offers " ; but unless the Irish Government,, 
 unlike any new Government that one has ever 
 heard of, proves cheap and efficient from the 
 first, these economies will prove illusory and 
 the power of reducing taxation will remain a dead 
 letter. The " grave accusation " of the Standing 
 Committee of the General Council of Irish 
 County Councils "that increased taxation is the 
 key-note of the financial provisions of the Bill "" 
 seems better founded than Mr. Samuel cares to 
 admit. 
 
 There is a Free Trade provision that a Customs 
 duty shall not be raised in its relation to the 
 Excise duty to such an extent as to make for 
 protection ; but the Bill will nevertheless have 
 for one result the establishment of a Customs 
 line between Great Britain and Ireland, and 
 
128 THE FINANCIAL PROVISIONS 
 
 will so deprive the United Kingdom of the 
 fiscal unity which is an invariable feature of 
 -every national State and federation in the world. 
 
 The capital liabilities of the Post Office are 
 to be apportioned between the two Exchequers, 
 and as a result the Irish Parliament will begin 
 its career with a debt ; but not a penny of the 
 Irish Debt of over 30 millions as it stood at 
 the time of the Union, or of over 100 millions 
 as it stood at the time of the amalgamation 
 of the Exchequers, is debited to Ireland. In 
 1893, Mr. Asquith laid down two principles as 
 essential ; " first, that Ireland should pay a 
 fair contribution to the Imperial Exchequer, 
 and next that Ireland should be left with 
 adequate resources for the proper management 
 of its own affairs." Whether the second is 
 now fulfilled Irishmen may judge ; the first, at 
 all events, is forgotten. There is, of course, 
 no longer any question of a contribution to 
 Imperial expenditure, but there is an ironical 
 provision that if for three consecutive years 
 the total revenue from Ireland should exceed 
 the total expenditure, then the Parliament of the 
 United Kingdom shall revise the financial pro- 
 visions with a view to securing a contribution 
 from Ireland to Imperial expenditure, and ex- 
 tending the powers of the Irish Parliament and 
 Government with respect to the imposition and 
 collection of taxes. I have already taken note 
 of the bizarre proposal that for the purpose of 
 this revision the representation of Ireland should 
 be increased to the number to which her popula- 
 tion entitled her, a proposal which might lead to 
 a very curious situation in the Mother of Parlia- 
 ments. 
 
 The Board which is to be created for the 
 purpose of determining the amount of the trans- 
 ferred sum and other questions of fact arising 
 
THE RUSHING OF THE BILL 129 
 
 from time to time under the financial provisions 
 is to consist of four members, appointed two each 
 by the Imperial and Irish Treasuries, with a chair- 
 man of " high capacity and complete impartiality " 
 nominated by the King, that is to say, by the 
 Imperial Government. As Lord Hugh Cecil 
 pointed out, the existence of this Board and the 
 general nature of the financial arrangements are 
 fatal to the plea that Home Rule would bring 
 relief to the congestion of Parliament. The Board 
 would be charged with the decision of multitudin- 
 ous questions open to controversy and of the 
 nicest character, and every one of their decisions 
 could be brought under review by the 42 Irish 
 members, who, we may be reasonably certain, 
 would not neglect their opportunities. 
 
 Let me say that as a result of this attempt to 
 elucidate some of the main features of the Bill in 
 the foregoing pages I am more than ever im- 
 pressed with the unwisdom and unseemliness of 
 the Government policy of rushing the second 
 reading. There has been no sufficient time for 
 the public at large or the House of Commons 
 itself to appraise the significance of the measure, 
 and that not merely in points of detail that belong 
 to Committee, but in the larger aspects to which 
 a second reading debate is properly directed. 
 The Bill is dubious in its intention, halts between 
 principles, and is full of perplexing problems. 
 No man can say what it will mean in practice, nor 
 has there been any sufficient time for criticism 
 and inquiry to formulate anything like definite 
 conclusions. If passed it is intended to be a great 
 organic statute ; but no Constitution hatched like 
 this in secret intrigue and carried hastily over 
 the head of a puzzled and reluctant nation has a 
 chance of endurance. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Agrarian Revolution, the, 36 
 America and Home Rule, 61 
 American Colonies, the, 72 
 Ashbourne Acts, the, of 1885 
 
 and 1887, 40 
 Asquith, H. H., 50; his early 
 attitude to Rome Rule, 54 ; 
 his unsuspected malleabil- 
 ity, 55 ; and Mr. Churchill, 
 5 5 ; his Albert Hall declara- 
 tion, 56 ; his surrender to 
 Mr. Redmond, 58 ; in the 
 elections of 19 10, 60 ; on 
 " Home Rule all round," 93 ; 
 on the Parliament Act, 96 ; 
 on the new Irish Legisla- 
 ture, 99 ; on supremacy of 
 Imperial Parliament, 102 ; 
 on the new Irish Executive, 
 in ; on Ireland's contribu- 
 tion to the Imperial Ex- 
 chequer, 128 
 Australia, analogy between 
 Ireland and, 10 1 
 
 Bagwell, Richard, on Irish 
 factions, 66 
 
 Balfour, A. J., as Chief Secre- 
 tary, 31 ; his Land Acts of 
 1887 and 1 891, 39 ; on the 
 new Irish Parliament, 104 
 
 Balfour, Gerald, 47 ; his Local 
 Government Act of 1898, 48 
 
 Biggar, Joseph, 22 
 
 Birrell, Augustine, 43 ; his 
 Irish Council Bill of 1907, 
 51; his University Bill of 
 
 1908, 52 ; and Mr. Devlin, 
 99 ; on the new Irish execu- 
 tive, 1 14 
 Bright, John, 25, 29, 39 
 Burke, E., on the Penal Code, 
 6, 13; on Colonial represen- 
 tation at Westminster, 76 
 Butt, Isaac, 21 
 
 Canada, Fenian raid into, 20 ; 
 T. P. O'Connor in, 61 ; the 
 rebellion of 1837, 7^; analo- 
 gy between Ireland and, 86 
 Caretakers, the Government 
 
 of, 24 
 Cecil, Lord Hugh, 129 
 Chamberlain, Joseph, 25, 29 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 31 
 Churchill, Winston, 51 ; au- 
 dacity of, 55 ; in Belfast, 
 65 ; on separation, yy 
 Clan-na-Gael, the, 23 
 Colonial Analogy, the, 72 
 Colonies, the North American, 
 
 72 ; our self-governing, 7^ 
 Colony, Ireland considered as 
 a, 27, 29, 70, 72, sqq., 75 ; 
 the impossibility of her 
 being, 78 
 Commons, House of, new Irish, 
 
 99 
 Congested Districts Board, the, 
 
 40, 43 
 Conservative Party, the, and 
 
 Home Rule, 24 
 Constabulary, Royal Irish, the 
 28, 105, 114 
 
 131 
 
132 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Constitutional Conference, the, 
 
 58 
 Cromwellian Settlement, the, 
 
 5 
 Customs, Irish, the, 93, 127 
 
 Davitt, Michael, 23 
 
 Department of Agriculture, 
 the, 47, 112 
 
 Devlin, J., 99 
 
 Devolution, 49, 59 
 
 Devon Commission, the, 37 
 
 Dicey, Professor, on the Privy 
 Council, 186 
 
 Dillon, John, 31 ; and land 
 purchase, 43 
 
 Disestablishment of the Irish 
 Church, the, 16 ; Mr. Glad- 
 stone and, 20 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, on Irish 
 history, 1 ; on weakness of 
 English Government, 1 1 3 
 
 Drummond, Thos., 19 
 
 Dunraven, Lord, 49 
 
 Durham Report, the, 73 
 
 Empire, constitution of the 
 
 British, 75 
 Encumbered Estates Act, the, 
 
 ii, 37 
 
 England, hatred of, 10 ; Car- 
 dinal Newman on the, 1 1 
 
 Estates Commissioners, the, 
 created, 41 ; under Home 
 Rule, 112 
 
 Evictions, 38 
 
 Executive, the new Irish, 10 1, 
 109 sqq. 
 
 F's, the three, 23, 39 
 Famine, the, 11, 20 
 Fenianism, 20 
 Financial Provisions of Bill of 
 
 1886, 28 ; of the Bill of 
 
 '893, 33 ; of present Bill, 
 
 93, 118 sqq. 
 Financial Relations Committee, 
 
 the, 48 
 Finlay, Father, 4 
 
 Gaelic League, the, 14, 52 
 
 George, D. Lloyd, his inspira- 
 tions, 124 
 
 Gladstone, Herbert, 25 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 20 ; and 
 Parnell, 23 ; early attitude 
 towards Home Rule, 24 ; 
 his change of view, 25 ; 
 his two Home Rule Bills, 27 
 sqq. ; dissolves Parliament, 
 30 ; returns to power, 32 ; 
 his Bill of 1893, 3 2 ." re- 
 signs, 35 ; and the Land Act 
 of 1 88 1, 39; and the Lich- 
 field House compact, 58 ; 
 on the Irish character, 63 
 
 Goschen, Lord, 25, 29 
 
 Grey, Sir Edward, 50 
 
 Haldane, Lord, 51 
 Harcourt, Sir W. V., 31 
 Harrington, Marquis of, the, 
 
 25, 29 
 Ha war den Kite, the, 25 
 Healy, T., on the present Bill, 
 
 105 
 Home Rule Bill, the present, 
 
 89 sqq. ; contradictions of, 
 
 90 ; its " slimness," 91 ; 
 compared with former Bills, 
 92 ; financial provisions of, 
 94, 118 sqq. ; retains Irish 
 members at Westminster, 95 ; 
 can never become law, 96 
 
 Home Rule, origin of name, 21 ; 
 its principle, 21 ; division of 
 Liberal party on, 25 ; the 
 revival of, 54 sqq. ; indiffer- 
 ence to, in Ireland, 61 ; the 
 Antinomies of, 63 sqq. ; 
 sectional, not national, 68 ; 
 cost of, to Great Britain, 119 
 
 In-and-Out Plan, the, 70 
 Independence, full, impossible 
 
 for Ireland, 78 
 Ireland, conquest of, 3 ; the 
 new spirit in, 53 ; indifferent 
 to Home Rule, 61 ; in- 
 juriously affected by revi- 
 val of agitation, 62 ; the 
 cleavage in society, 65 ; 
 
INDEX 
 
 133 
 
 full independence for. 78 ; 
 compared with South Africa, 
 80 sqq. ; analogy to New- 
 foundland, 8$ ; and to 
 Canada, 86, 117 ; contribu- 
 tion of, to Imperial exchequer 
 under Home Rule, 94 ; 
 analogy to Australia, 10 1 
 
 Irish character, the, 64, 66 
 
 Irish debt, the, 94 
 
 Irish History, difficulty of 
 studying, 1 ; tragedy of, 3 ; 
 effect on Irish character, 64 ; 
 lesson of, 66 
 
 Irish Reform Association, the, 
 
 49 
 Irish services, the, no, 112 
 Irish soldiers, gallantry of, 49 
 Irishman, the typical, 14 
 
 James, Sir Henry, 25 
 
 King Edward VII., death of, 58 
 
 Lalor, Fintan, 23 
 
 Land League, formation of the, 
 
 23 
 
 Land Purchase, the Bill of 
 1885, 29, 40 ; of 1887, 40 ; 
 of 1891, 40 ; of 1903, 41 ; 
 of 1909, 43 ; future of, 44, 
 115 ; cost of, 44 
 
 Land Stocks, fall in price of, 42 
 
 Land tenure, Irish system of; 5, 
 36 
 
 Land war, the, 13, 23, 36 sqq. 
 
 Landlords, Irish, 37 
 
 Legislature, Irish, Mr. Glad- 
 stone's first proposed, 27 ; 
 his second proposed, ^3> 98 ; 
 as now proposed, 69, 98 sqq. ; 
 its relation to Imperial Par- 
 liament, 92, 10 1 ; " Legisla- 
 ture " or " Parliament," 98 ; 
 electoral unit for, 100 
 
 Lord-Lieutenant, the, under 
 Home Rule, 107, in 
 
 Lords, the House of, and the 
 Budget of 1907, 56 ; the 
 campaign against, 58, 60 ; 
 defeat of, 61 
 
 MacDonnell, Lord, 46, 51 
 Merriman, F. X., on Ireland, 76 
 Morley, Lord, on Irish finances, 
 29 ; on the Kilmainham 
 Treaty, 58 ; on Irish re- 
 presentation at Westminster, 
 70 
 Murray, Miss Alice, 48 
 
 Nation, The, 19 
 Nations, the two, growth of, 12 
 Ne Temere decree, the, 16 
 Newman, Cardinal, 1 1 
 
 O'Brien, W., 31, 44 
 O'Connell, D., 10, 18 ; his 
 
 closing years, 19 
 O'Connor, T. P., in Canada, 61 
 Old Age Pensions, 123, 127 
 Orange Society, the, 1 1 ; op- 
 posed to Union, 18 
 
 Pale, the English, 3 
 Parliament Act, the, 96 
 Parliament, Grattan's, 8, 83, 
 109 
 J Parliament, the Imperial, su- 
 premacy of, ^$, 69, 92, 10 1 ; 
 Mr. Asquith on, 102 ; Irish 
 representation in, 29, 34, 
 
 ! 69, 76, 95, 125 
 
 I Parliament, the new Irish. 
 See Legislature 
 Parliament, the old Irish, 6 
 Parnell Commission, the, 32 
 Parnell, Chas. S., 16 ; his rise 
 to influence, 22 ; the " un- 
 crowned king," 24 ; and 
 Irish finances, 29 ; death of, 
 32 
 Peel, Sir R., failure to under- 
 stand Ireland, 17 
 Penal Code, the, 6, 36 
 Pitt's Irish policy, 9, 10 
 Plan of campaign, the, 31 
 Plunkett, Sir Horace, 41, 47. 53 
 j Police, Dublin Metropolitan, 
 the, 112, 115 
 Police. See Constabulary 
 Post Office, Irish, the, 93, 105, 
 113 
 
134 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Privy Council, authority of, 
 
 1 06 
 Protestant Ascendancy, the, 5, 
 
 7,9 
 Protestants, loyalty of, 12, 16 ; 
 bitterness of, 67 
 
 Recess Committee, the, 41 
 Redmond, J., on the Irish 
 Parliament, 6 ; and the 
 Irish Councils Bill, 49 ; his 
 two speeches, 51 ; and the 
 Budget of 1909, 56 ; and 
 Mr. Asquith, 57 ; in America, 
 61 ; has little influence in 
 Ireland, 78 ; and Old Age 
 Pensions, 129 
 Religious animosity, 4, 12 ; in 
 Ulster, 15 ; and politics, 16 ; 
 latest reawakening of, 62 
 Repeal, O'Connell and, 19 
 Roman Catholic Church, the, 
 4 ; and Grattan's Parlia- 
 ment, 9 ; and O'Connell, 10 ; 
 hostility of, to England, 12 ; 
 and Home Rule, 51 ; less 
 bitter than Protestants, 67 
 Roman Catholic Nation, the, 
 
 Rosebery, Earl, as Premier, 
 
 35 ; and Home Rule, 50 
 Round Table Conference, the, 
 
 Salisbury, Marquis of, the, 24 ; 
 forms Conservative Ministry, 
 
 3i 
 Samuel, H., on the Irish police, 
 
 114, 116 ; on Irish revenues, 
 
 122 ; on economies of Home 
 
 Rule, 127 
 Secretary for Ireland, Chief, 
 
 the, under Home Rule, 1 14 
 
 Selborne, Lord, 25 
 Senate, proposed Irish, 93, 98 
 Shawe-Taylor, Capt., 41 
 Sinn Fein, 50, 51, 53, 62 
 Smith, Adam, on the Union, 67 
 South Africa, Ireland and, 
 
 80 sqq. ; situation in, in 1907, 
 
 81 ; the two races in, 84 ; 
 powers of Governor-General 
 of, 116 
 
 Taxation, Irish, under Home 
 
 Rule, 33, 105, 125 
 Transferred sum, the, 119, 129 
 Transvaal, the, independence 
 
 of, 81 
 Trinity College, famous sons of, 
 
 8 
 
 Ulster, bitterness in, 15, 35 
 
 Ulster custom, the, 37 
 
 Union, the, 7 ; how brought 
 about, 9 ; advantage of, to 
 Ireland, 67 ; on the point of 
 success, 84 
 
 Unionist policy towards Ire- 
 land, 46 
 
 Unionists, advantage of pre- 
 sent situation to, 89 
 
 Unionists, Liberal, 30 
 
 United States, emigration to 
 the, 37 ; Mr. Redmond in, 61 
 
 University, the National, 52 
 
 Veto, the Imperial, 107 
 
 Wyndham, G., as Chief Secre- 
 tary, 41 ; his Act of 1903, 
 41 ; his resignation, 49 
 
 Young Ireland movement, the, 
 19 
 
 Printed by Haxell, Watson & Viney, Ld. } London and Aylesbury. 
 
IRISH AFFAIRS AND THE HOME 
 
 RULE QUESTION. A Comparison of the Attitude of 
 
 Political Parties towards Irish Problems. By Philip G. 
 
 Cambray. With an Introduction by the Marquis of London- 
 
 derry, K.G. Crown 8vo. is. net. 
 
 " He certainly deals very clearly with every aspect of the Irish question, 
 and his conclusions are definite and convincing. His work should be 
 eagerly read by all who are anxious to educate themselves in the difficult 
 problems of Ireland." — World. 
 
 THE MILITARY DANGER OF HOME 
 RULE IN IRELAND. By Major-Genera! Sir Thomas 
 Fraser, K.C.B., C.M.G. 2s. 6d. net. 
 "We heartily commend this little book to all interested — and who are 
 
 not ? — in the Home Rule question. It deals forcibly and succinctly with 
 
 a side of the question too often ignored, and it will at least give Home 
 
 Rulers seriously to think." — Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 
 
 Two Important Works by Professor Dicey, 
 
 A FOOL'S PARADISE. Being a Constitu- 
 tionalist's Criticism of the Home Rule Bill of 19 12. Crown 
 8vo. 2S. 6d. net. 
 
 "Considerations of space have compelled us to notice only a few of 
 Professor Dicey's positions. But the whole volume — it is not a large one 
 — deserves the most careful study by Home Rulers at least as much as by 
 Unionists. Professor Dicey has done notable service for the Union in the 
 past, but we venture to say that he has never done better work than in this 
 masterly analysis of that nightmare of legislation, the Home Rule Bill of 
 19 1 3. His book is a magnificent piece of political anatomizing." — Spectator. 
 
 A LEAP IN THE DARK. Being a Criticism 
 
 of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the Bill 
 
 of 1893. Crown 8vo. u. net. 
 
 Professor Dicey's work on the Irish Question is admitted on all hands 
 to have had a great influence on the rejection of Mr. Gladstone's measures 
 in 1886 and 1893. The "Leap in the Dark" deals with the principles 
 of Home Rule. At the request of the leading Unionist Societies Professor 
 Dicey has prefaced this new edition of his book. 
 
THE NEW DEMOCRACY AND THE 
 
 CONSTITUTION. By William Sharp McKechnle, M.A. 
 LL.B., D.Phil., Lecturer on Constitutional Law and His- 
 tory in Glasgow University. Demy 8vo. 6s. net. 
 
 " It is not too much to say that no more masterly exposition of the 
 real meaning of the democratic theory of Government, as applied more 
 especially to our own institutions to-day, has ever been written. No 
 earnest well-wisher of his country, whether a democrat or not, can refuse 
 to study it." — Globe. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL WARFARE : The Aims 
 
 and Claims of Capital and Labour. By Charles Watney 
 and James A. Little. Crown 8vo. 6s. net. 
 
 Here is a book which ought to be at every journalist's elbow and on 
 erery legislator's bookshelf. It would be too much to hope that it will be 
 on the shelf of every reader of newspapers. Yet without some such key 
 as this the industrial problem must continue to defeat the understanding 
 of the busy citizen, whom the newspapers too often credit with a ful) 
 knowledge of labour personalities and aims." — Observer. 
 
 WHERE SOCIALISM FAILED: An 
 
 Actual Experience. By Stewart Grahame. Crown 8vo. 
 With Illustrations and Map. 6s. net. 
 
 " Tells the story of an item in the long list of futile attempts to estab- 
 lish Socialist communities. ' New Australia ' collapsed from mismanage- 
 ment, extravagance, indolence and heathenism, providing the world with 
 an object-lesson of the hopeless futility of Socialism. The book is one of 
 the best answers to Red Flag theories that have yet appeared." — Daily 
 Express. 
 
 THE CULT OF INCOMPETENCE. 
 
 By Emile Faguet. Translated from the French by Miss 
 Beatrice Barstow. With an Introduction by Thomas 
 Mackay. Crown 8vo. 51. net. 
 
 " If readers of this volume will take the trouble to annotate their 
 s.cpies with a record of the relevant incidents which meet them every day 
 of their lives, they cannot fail to acknowledge how terribly inevitable is 
 the rise of incompetence to political power. M. Faguet's book is terse, 
 witty, and interesting, and should be widely read in this very capable 
 English rendering." — Daily Telegraph. 
 

 Date 
 
 Due 
 
 
 \ trr 
 
 
 
 
 w *'-*- "a B3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 MAR 12 
 
 ?flnn 
 
 
 
 
 i.-.- ! , j 
 
 
 
 MAY b ?im 
 
 
 
 F3 " ? p /UU/ 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ; 
 
 ! 
 
 
lQ ^ p A3 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE 
 
 III II INI 111 III 111 
 
 3 9031 01587934 9 
 
 / 
 
 MAY is '3 1985 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS 
 
 CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. 
 
 Books may be kept for two weeks and may be 
 renewed for che same period, unless reserved. 
 
 Two cents a day is charged for each book kept 
 overtime. 
 
 tf you cannot find what you want, ask the 
 librarian who will be glad to help you. 
 
 The borrower is responsible for books drawn on 
 ba card and for all fines accruing on the same. 
 
■h--%-^- 
 
 ',■■'. .';'>:: ::V^; ^;fW 
 
 " ■ .- -,'. : . ; - ,- 
 
 . ' ' r 
 
 • ' ■ -•• '''■'■ 
 
 ...:■:■ ■ ■ !■:.-. . > 
 
 :■ 
 ■ 
 
 . ::;>:.: ■■■■■..... 
 
 - 
 
 ■ ■■:■ ■■:■:■■■■ : 
 
 ■ ■ . •; '..- - 
 
 
 • : 
 
 ■■ >:. ■. :■ 
 
 . ::.:.-\::':-.-rr-'.<'.i'.::r 
 
 ... : 
 
 ..:. ; .;; .. :■ 
 
 .' - :A,": 
 
 \ ■■■ :■ _•■:■; ■;f; 
 
 • - • 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 ■ - ■■; ■'. ■>. ■:-:.-: : ;:. 
 ■■■.■ •.; *;.; .:. ;.; ».;.., 
 
 • •!.•■•' 
 
 : ■ 
 . ■ : ..-.■-.-. , . 
 
 :. .■:■:■; ■::■:: \ : ■;,•■:■■ :•• 
 
 •-'•V .';';'." -i'f -.';;■'•'_.. 
 
 •'! ■••'■ 1 -.'-. ! : : • 
 - - " .. -■ 
 
 :i]+wl-:><]: ,.!;%*f;-;-:,^-;.,..: 
 
 f 
 
 ■ "V, 
 
 '• ■ . - - .: 
 
 :■..:■■ 
 
 ■''.'■ .- • •■' .' 
 
 ■/.'.-•■ •••■:. ■■■ 
 ; .•.;■■ .••,■■.••'.■•/■.. ' ■••.'•" ■:};:■,■ 
 :■■■•.■■■; •.:■.■■•■•:.■;.•■ .^-.-.-.v-.vvyvo 1 .