Frederic W. Pim

“ There is another direction in which federal devolution would open the way for a very much needed improvement in our parliamentary system. At any time, on short notice—or, conceivably, without any notice at all—a hostile vote of the House of Commons, perhaps on some quite secondary matter of administration irrelevant to the general scope of the Government policy, may compel the resignation of the Cabinet, and break in upon the continuity of its procedure, to the detriment of measures of vital importance to the nation and the Empire. ”

“ It is therefore not to be inferred, from the result of the recent election, that the Irish farmers are convinced republicans. They have probably no settled convictions as to forms of government, but they are obsessed with a sort of parody of the Monroe doctrine, and are ready to shout, and vote, for the party that asserts this insular aloofness from any form of Weltpolitik, and resolutely stands between them and conscription, with its resultant of an enforced participation in foreign complications which they are determined to keep out of at all hazards. ”

“ Eminent students of parliamentary and constitutional history, who have given much thought to the evolution of the English governmental system, are of opinion that the intimate and direct combination of legislative and executive functions in the House of Commons is, in principle, unsound and logically indefensible, and that, in practice, it has seriously hampered the action of Parliament, and impaired its usefulness, and they strongly recommend that in any constitutional reconstruction this feature should, as far as possible, be eliminated. ”

“ It is, at all events, important, in discussing its application to Ireland, to bear in mind that circumstances differ widely between England and Ireland. In England, where the party system has come down to our time by gradual descent, "broadening slowly down from precedent to precedent," public opinion has learnt to accommodate itself to the exigencies of the process, and the working of the party system is vastly different from what it was in its earliest stages. ”

“ But in Ireland everything is poisoned by our unquenchable religious animosities, in combination with the perennial ineptitude of our oscillatory Government. There can be no chance of conciliation or stability in Ireland so long as its Government is bound up with the English party system, by which continuity of general policy and steadfastness of administration are rendered hopeless. ”

“ With these contingencies always present to their minds, Ministers are rarely free to present their measures to Parliament in the form best calculated to realise their conception. To save time they must take the line of least resistance, rather than that which would be the best, and must often omit or curtail essential features of their design, lest they should lead to long debate and so cause the loss of their Bill, or squeeze out other business of equal or greater importance. ”

“ The application of the principle of Proportional Representation to all elections in Ireland would have, to some extent, the effect of making the Irish Parliament more representative of such independent opinion as may exist, either within or apart from the two extreme political sects which now divide the electorate, and would tend to make the Parliament more of a deliberative Assembly, and less of a mere machine for registering the foregone conclusions of the majority. ”

“ Without going further in detailed criticism of the Act of 1914, it may be remarked that this third section is not, as a protection for the Protestant minority, of the slightest value. It is not unequal laws in regard to religious matters that the Unionists of Ireland fear; but inequalities of administration on the part of the Executive, and the unchecked action of local authorities. The Irish politician is an adept in the art of evasion of laws and regulations, and against irregularities such as are feared statutory prohibitions are of no avail. ”

“ As long as this disproportion exists—and there is no visible probability of any change—the working of the party system must be vastly different in Ireland from what it is in England. There will be no swinging of the pendulum, no alternation of the "Ins" and "Outs." The Government of the country will be fixed in the hands of the majority party, and there will be no change to be looked for, except through a revolution, which, if it comes, can only be achieved by overthrowing the ascendancy of the Catholic Church. ”

“ In considering proposals for the devolution of much of the work of the British Parliament upon subordinate legislative or administrative bodies, the great preponderance of England over the other countries seems to create a difficulty, which some critics deem fatal. Similar disproportions amongst the American States do not, however, disturb the harmony of the confederation; New York State is forty times the size of Rhode Island, and has close on seventeen times the population; and Pennsylvania is nine times as large as Connecticut, and has seven times the population. ”

“ As has already been remarked, there is no spirit of compromise amongst Irish political parties. In England, though religious considerations are not without influence on politics, they are very rarely the deciding factor in the division of parties. In Ireland, the religious element is the ruling consideration in politics, and enters also into every department of life, social and mercantile, as well as political. There are Roman Catholic Unionists, and there are Protestant Home Rulers ”

“ It is not only that with every change of Ministry at Westminster there is a similar change at the Castle—as likely as not entailing a radical change of policy in the Irish Administration—but that the frequent changes of personnel in the principal offices of the State render impossible the mutual knowledge of one another between rulers and ruled, so especially desirable in Ireland, where traces of the old patriarchial clan system still influence popular feeling. ”

“ The remedy for this state of things which suggests itself to every one is the adoption for Ireland of some form of self-government; but no plan has yet been devised which is capable of being carried out without causing at least as much evil as it might conceivably cure. ”

“ The unavoidable result of this overwhelming pressure on the available time of the House is an increasingly frequent resort to some form of closure, and the cutting down of important measures by dropping out provisions which, however valuable, seem to invite contention, with a view to reducing them to a form in which they may be likely to pass without that clause-by-clause discussion which is the raison d'etre of Parliamentary Committees; while many much-desired projects are put off from session to session or passed in such a weakened form as to be of little value. ”

“ As the federalisation of the United Kingdom cannot be brought about without considerable lapse of time, whilst the settlement in Ireland is very urgent, involving as it must the substitution of a new scheme for the unworkable Act of 1914, it may be necessary to proceed by stages, taking care that in settling the Irish portion of the scheme nothing is done to prejudice or hinder the arrangements for the other sections of the Kingdom. ”

“ In a federation of States, each having powers approximately like those of the provinces of Canada, or the constituent members of the United States, in which Ireland should take her place on equal footing with England, Scotland, or Wales, the Ulster counties would have in everything equal rights and privileges with those of England and Scotland, so that their primary objection would no longer be of much force ”

“ The results of the war call for new departures in many directions, for which our existing machinery is unsuitable and inadequate, and public opinion daily tends more and more to look for a remedy to the devolution of powers legislative or administrative, or both, now exercised by Parliament, to subordinate Assemblies on the principle of the relations of the American States to the Federal Government. ”

“ Unless we are to accept the belief that the congenital incompatibility between Ulster and the rest of Ireland can never, by any means, be overcome, one or other of the methods referred to ought to afford a ground-work for mutual accommodation. ”

“ In view of this permanent disproportionate division of parties amongst the people of Ireland, and the consequent impediment to the working of the strict party system, it is desirable that anything that could mitigate this evil should be adopted. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the sweeping majorities by which Sinn Fein has replaced Nationalism in Ireland were largely due to the enthusiastic votes of the women in the country constituencies, given in the belief that Sinn Fein had saved their men from conscription, in regard to which the old politicians were looked on as weak and untrustworthy. ”

“ Over and above this general popular tendency to look for miracles, the Irish voters have been indoctrinated with a belief—the seeds of which were unfortunately sown too freely in the long past—that English greed and trade jealousy still operate to prevent the expansion of Irish commerce and the development of Irish resources. ”

“ Major Wood's recent motion in the House of Commons for a committee to consider a measure of Federal Devolution may not have brought within the region of practical politics the idea of the substitution of a quasi-federal constitution for the absolute incorporation of the three countries into one United Kingdom—which, though it has subsisted uneasily for 120 years, has, during the latter half of that period, admittedly failed in its primary object. ”

“ I have always thought it more than doubtful whether the intelligent and energetic women who have brought this change about would not, in the result, find that, in obtaining access to the ballot-box, they had lost more than they gained; but the Democracy has decided the matter, and the results are for the future. ”

“ The very first section of the Act of 1914 challenges the susceptibilities of the enthusiasts whom it is intended to placate by a declaration of general limitation, which would be unnecessary had the Bill been framed on the positive principle of defined powers, instead of the negative one of a general right of legislation, whittled down by limitations and provisos. ”

“ It is not essential that the Constitutions of all the States of a federation shall be identical, but it is highly important that, if the work must be carried out piece-meal, nothing shall be done in the earlier stages which will be incompatible in its working with the settlements which are later on to be made with the other partners in the undertaking. ”

“ The consequence of this distribution of population is that, whilst in Ulster there may, from time to time, be some oscillation of the pendulum, varying the representation fractionally, there will be in the rest of the country a permanent solid majority of at least three to one for the representatives of the Roman Catholic population of the agricultural counties in the south and west in the Irish Parliament. ”

“ There are frequent occasions when the way opens for compromise, in varying degree; and we have seen in recent experience how, on critical occasions, party differences have given way to patriotic unity. ”

“ Moreover, whether by chance or ex necessitate rei, in England the two great parties divide the State with so near an approach to equality that what is called "the swing of the pendulum" constantly tends to bring them alternately into power, at irregular intervals it is true, but with a certain approach to equality of opportunity which greatly tends to mitigate the acerbity of feeling on occasion of such changes, by the expectation that it will not be very long before the "Ins" will be out, and the "Outs" will be in, in their turn. ”