Harold Spender

“ Look to the West, and note how, in the freest countries of the world—in the United States and Canada, where there is not even a shadow of an establishment for any form of religion—every kind of human faith lives together in simple human brotherhood, and draws from that brotherhood new food for the refreshment of mankind. In Ireland the one reason why the religious quarrel has been maintained is to be found in the absence of civil liberty. At every crisis of Ireland's fate the passion of religious hatred has been worked—then as now—in order to prolong civil and political despotism. ”

“ Because at the present moment two systems of government are existing in Ireland side by side—the old and the new. The old is for the most part an encumbrance and an impediment, but the new is required for doing the work of land purchase and agricultural development. Ireland is like a household into which a new staff of servants is being imported, while nobody dares to disturb the old. Could there be a more extravagant way of governing a country? ”

“ We must believe, as we have every right to believe, that liberty will bring to Ireland a new power over her resources, and a new skill in using them—that her magnificent harbours will no longer be silent, or her rivers empty; that her factories will hum once more with a new life and industry; that the grass will cease to grow in her streets and on her wharves, and that the rich and strong will cease to fly from her shores. ”

“ It is also that, on surveying the past, we find not merely that Home Rule has often saved Ireland, but that always the wider and the more generous the form of Home Rule the more it has helped Ireland. The wiser course of accepting Irish advice in Irish affairs has always turned the tide of disaster, and brought the hope of a new happiness for Ireland. Surely here we have a convincing proof that the logical consummation of this policy by the restoration of Home Rule is the only means of bringing back Ireland to a full and secure enjoyment of lasting well-being. ”

“ Ireland is so poor that each new Act for the relief of poverty increases the disproportion between the expenditure of Great Britain and Ireland. There is no way out of that vicious circle. If England were to increase Irish taxation she would simply increase the poverty which she has to relieve. During the last fifty years, in fact, the British Government has had to give back in some form of relief an equivalent for almost every increase of taxation enforced upon Ireland. If Ireland cannot pay, England must pay. ”

“ Any country that is an island, and possesses a social organisation of its own, with a definite relationship between rich and poor, must necessarily be a financial unit. But even if that were not so, it is too late to argue the question with any honour. For we must never forget that the whole financial legislation of the United Kingdom in regard to Ireland is based upon the Act of Union, which was practically a solemn treaty between the two countries, passed—we will not say how—by both the British and the Irish Parliaments. ”

“ For Belfast, perhaps, has more to gain than any other great Irish city by a policy that would pacify Ireland. If Belfast could once shake off the memory of her immigrant origin, and look to Ireland rather than Great Britain as her native country, she would perceive that the gain of Catholic Ireland must be her gain also. Her prosperity can never be sure or certain as long as it stands out against a background of Irish poverty. The linen industry can never rest secure as long as there are so few industries to support it. The linen merchants cannot really gain by their isolation. ”

“ What is even more refreshing is the evidence which goes to show that the population left behind in Ireland has become more prosperous. For the first time since 1841, the Census now shows an increase—small, indeed, but real—of inhabited houses in Ireland, and a corresponding increase in the number of families [14] .
It is the first slight rally of a country sick almost unto death. We must not exaggerate its significance. Ireland has fallen very low, and she is not yet out of danger. There is no real sign of rise in the extraordinarily small yield of the Irish income tax. ”

“ Many who entered upon that tour with doubts as to the power of the Irish people to take up the burden of self-government came back convinced that her increase in material prosperity would form a firm and secure basis on which to build the new fabric.
What does this new prosperity amount to? The new Census figures leave us in no doubt as to its existence. For the first time there is a real check in that deplorable wastage of population that has been going on for more than half a century. The diminution of population in Ireland revealed by the 1901 Census amounted to 245,000 persons. ”

“ No one who visits Ireland to-day can doubt that the religious hatreds of the past are being softened; but, unhappily, this process, as recent events have vividly shown us, is still fiercely resisted by a small minority.
It may almost be said that in Ireland religious intolerance is a political vested interest. It would indeed be impossible to justify the immense preponderance of salaried power and place still given at the centre to the Protestant minority [47] unless you could maintain the idea [64] that the Catholic is a dangerous man when in a place of power. ”

“ It is just as foolish to err from lack of faith as it is to blunder from excess of credulity.
For here, indeed, we have an excellent precedent to give us hope. It was the common evidence of all experts at the time that Ireland grew greatly richer under the twenty years of Grattan's Parliament. The future Irish Parliament will, just as it will be more representative, so supply Ireland with a machine even more efficient than Grattan's Parliament. If so, we have every reason to suppose that within twenty years we shall have a richer Ireland, with a far greater taxable capacity. ”

“ It was Great Britain that compelled them to remain as full voters in full strength at the British Parliament. As long as they are there the Irish must be expected to vote for the interests of their own religion and their own people. But what of the sincerity of the people who, after using the aid of the Irish to endow the Catholic and Anglican schools in England, now raise this outcry about "Rome Rule" in Ireland? ”

“ Thus property in Ireland came to mean, not merely a division of classes, but also a division of creeds. In spite of all the great reforms, the descendants of these Protestants still retain most of the wealth and most of the Government offices in Ireland. [8] Their resistance to any change is not, therefore, altogether surprising; and we must remember amid all the various war-cries of the present agitation that these gentlemen are fighting, not merely for the integrity of the Empire, but also for position, income and power.
This state of affairs has varied very little for the last half-century. ”

“ The best men in Ulster will probably think twice before prolonging a campaign of rebellion. We have heard of late threats of refusal to pay taxes or rents to the Irish Parliament. But what could be more dangerous to a city like Belfast than a no-rent campaign under the guidance of English lawyers? If the farmers are advised not to pay their rents to Dublin, is it not likely that the working-class tenants of Belfast may refuse to pay their rents to their own landlords? ”

“ It was impossible, indeed, for Great Britain to be indifferent, for she had suffered almost as much as Ireland. The hostility of the Irish Party formed a perpetual source of danger to her Governments, both Liberal and Tory, and a chronic source of instability in her administration. The democratic movement in England was continually weakened by the necessity of keeping Ireland down. That necessity largely broke the strength of the great reform movement of the thirties. ”

“ City may think that they stand to gain more by prolonging than by satisfying the present hunger of Ireland? At present Rome holds Ireland in fee. As long as Ireland possesses no strong secular central power she must always lean on the authority of her bishops and archbishops. But Rome thinks probably more of the 40,000,000 people of Britain than of the 4,000,000 of Ireland. As long as England persists in holding Ireland in bondage she must pay to Rome some compensation. The eighty votes at Westminster are still doing the work which Cardinal Manning required of them. ”

“ Pitt's judgment was disturbed by the existence of a war with France, which created in him an intense desire to unite the two countries. Otherwise he would probably have foreseen that for a rich partner to unite his finances with a poor partner certainly meant bankruptcy for the one, and probably, in the end, also ruin for the other. Taking the nineteenth century as a whole, the fundamental financial error has been this—that Ireland has been taxed on the theory of equality with England in point of wealth. ”

“ What is the reason that a people with so bountiful a soil, with such enormous resources (as the Irish) , lag so far behind the English in the race? Some say that it is to be found in the character of the Celtic race, but I look to France, and I see a Celtic race there going forward in the path of prosperity with most rapid strides—I believe at the present moment more rapidly than England herself. Some people say that it is to be found in the Roman Catholic religion ”

“ Everywhere there is the same revival. New labourers' cottages dot the landscape, and the old mud cabins are crumbling back—"dust to dust"—into nothingness. Cultivation is improving. The new peasant proprietors are putting real work into the land which they now own, and there is an advance even in dress and manners. Drinking is said to be on the decline, and the natural gaiety of the Irish people, so sadly overshadowed during the last half-century, is beginning to return. ”

“ It has been said that there is no human hatred so great as that felt towards men whom one has wronged. The [8] planters of Ulster inflicted upon Ireland many grievous wrongs and endured some fierce revenges. The result is that even to-day there is a section of them that still stands apart from the other colonisers of Ireland—a race still distinct and apart. Is it impossible that even there the binding and unifying principle of Irish life may begin to work? ”

“ When all others deserted the people of Ireland in the black times of the '98 Rebellion, in the dark and evil days of the famine of 1847, or through the murderous retaliations that followed, the Irish priesthood stood staunchly by Ireland. Those who remained faithful then are not likely to desert the cause of their people now that it is on the verge of success. ”

“ But the second of the two great renovating measures—the Irish Land Purchase Act of 1903—has contributed even more powerfully than the first to the recovery of Ireland during the last ten years. There again we have a great instance of the supremacy of the spirit of Parliament over the prejudices of Party. The whole tendency of democratic government is so rootedly opposed to coercion that it is difficult for any party to continue on purely coercive lines for any long period. ”

“ The British Parliament has hitherto been regarded as a model to be imitated; if it continues to attempt the impossible task of transacting in detail both local and Imperial business, it will end as an example to be avoided. In the last fifty years the amount of work demanded for particular portions of the United Kingdom, for the United Kingdom as a whole, or for the Empire has increased enormously; in all three categories the work is still increasing and will increase: one Parliament cannot do it all. ”

“ Crises arise. Accidents happen. There is always a shadow of coming doom hanging over the most powerful Parliamentary Governments. With it comes an anxiety to settle matters in their own way, before they can be settled in a way which they dislike. Thus it is that we find that between 1895 and 1905, during that ten years of Unionist power, two great steps were taken towards a peaceful settlement of the Irish question.
One was the Irish Local Government Act of 1898, which extended to Ireland the system of local government already granted in 1889 to the country districts of England. ”

“ If we look for its epitaph we shall find it, strangely enough, in the words spoken in 1798 by the man who pursued Grattan's Parliament with his venomous hate, and finally compassed its doom—the famous Irish Chancellor, Lord Clare:—
"There is not a nation on the face of the habitable globe which has advanced in cultivation, in agriculture, in manufactures, with the same rapidity, in the same period, as Ireland." [65]
But, great and splendid as was Grattan's victory, there were two points of weakness in the settlement of 1782, soon to be revealed by experience. ”

“ For Ireland requires time to recover from the impoverishment of the past, and it may be wise to give her that time. But once that time is over, the Irish Parliament will probably wish to follow in the steps of the Grattan Parliament, and contribute her honest due to the Empire of which she will be a part. But that due must be paid, not out of deficit, but out of surplus. As long as Ireland has a deficit produced by poverty, it is absurd to talk to her about Empire. Once she has a surplus—and a surplus will soon come with the working of Home Rule—then she will play her part in a manly way. ”

“ It is the sea which has made us give self-government to Canada, Australia, and South Africa. It is the sea which keeps Newfoundland apart from the Canadian Federation, and New Zealand apart from Australia. Even within the scope of these islands the same law prevails. It is the sea which makes us give self-government to the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Almost the only exception is Ireland. In Ireland we have defied this great law; and in Ireland that defiance is a failure. ”

“ For a long time—from 1840 to 1887—Canada made the experiment of governing these two provinces under one Parliament and from one centre. That experiment never succeeded. As long as they were under one government, the minority in each of these provinces insisted on appealing for help to the majority in the other. There arose the evil of "Ascendancy "—the government of a majority by a minority. At last the Canadians faced the problem. ”

“ It is a truism of history that the Englishman who settles in Ireland becomes more Irish than the Irish. The records of the past are filled with great examples. The Norman adventurers who spread into Ireland after the Conquest have become in modern times the chiefs of great Irish communities, until names like Joyce and Burke have come to be regarded as typical Hibernian surnames. It is a commonplace of modern history that the counties settled by Cromwellian soldiers have become most typically Irish. ”

“ A broader and more enlightened view of the future was expressed to me by that distinguished man the Vice-president of Maynooth College, when he said:—"We do not expect any direct gain for our faith, but as Irishmen we are with Ireland, and as Catholics we cannot but believe that the prosperity of a Catholic nation must redound to the glory of Catholicism." That is the view of a good Catholic who is also a good citizen. ”

“ They must remember always that the financial difficulty is simply another statement of the fact of Irish poverty, and that Irish poverty is due to the Act of Union. It is not any financial arrangement, but Home Rule itself, that will cure the difficulties of Irish finance.
On the one side, the English are being told that they are going to be bled white in order to please Ireland. On the other side, the Irish are being warned by their extremists that England hopes to undo the effects of Home Rule by a dowry of impoverishment. ”

“ We should have a similar situation in this country if England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were all under separate governments, with separate tariffs and separate policy. In that case the doctrine we should be preaching to-day would not be Home Rule, but Unionism. For these two tendencies throughout the world are like a see-saw. Both are required for efficient government. Both may be carried to excessive and exaggerated lengths. Our case in regard to the United Kingdom is that unionism has been carried to excessive lengths, and requires to be tempered by Home Rule. ”

“ For generations the Protestants of Ireland enjoyed all the offices of government, and had the sole right of inheritance. Thus both the land and the government slipped into their hands. Since no Catholic could inherit land under the penal laws, and since the penal laws lasted for nearly a century, it followed inevitably that the whole land of Ireland fell into the hands of the Protestants. That is why even at the present day the vast majority of the Irish landed and leisured classes are Protestants. ”

“ Why should not Belfast—Belfast Protestant united with Belfast Catholic—have in these matters a greater and nobler part to play under Home Rule than under the present system of distant, ignorant, absent-minded, rule?
As for religious persecution, the thing would be absurdly impossible under any Home Rule Bill that possessed the guarantees and safeguards of the 1912 Bill. But, beyond those safeguards, Ulster will always have, in any such extreme and improbable event, an appeal to all the forces of the Empire—an appeal which would certainly not be in vain. ”

“ Ulster, while still represented at Westminster, will send 59 members to Dublin under the 1912 Bill. Thus she will have no small or mean representation in the future Irish Parliament. She may have far more power than she imagines, if she uses it with wisdom. A strong Progressive section from the industrial North may hold the balance between the parties of the South and centre. It would be rash to predict the future. But there are many causes—education, Free Trade, enlightened local government, to take a few—in which Ireland will gain immensely by a strong, clear [69] progressive lead. ”

“ We have thus the illuminating fact that, with one single exception—and that an example eminent in English affairs, but certainly not to be followed in Irish—every great English ruler and monarch governed Ireland under a distinct Irish Home Rule Parliament up to the year 1800. If Home Rule is so certain to be ruinous to Empire, how, we may well ask, did these rulers build up the British Empire? ”