Government of Ireland

“ By all admissions we have made a mess of Ireland. With singular and unwonted perverseness we have refused for more than a hundred years to apply to Ireland the principles of self-government that have justified their application in every province of the Empire that is mainly inhabited by people of our own race. We have risked and we have incurred the disaffection of the Irish themselves; we have imposed on them and on ourselves untold suffering and expense; we have imperilled the whole fabric of our Parliamentary institutions. ”

“ Should she be left out, the argument that she is being treated unequally and unfairly, as compared with England, would gain immense force; because the present local government of Ireland is admittedly less popular, less efficient, altogether less defensible, than even that of England which we are going to reform. If, therefore, the theory that the Imperial Parliament is both anxious and able to do its duty by Ireland is to be maintained, Ireland, too, must have her scheme of local government. ”

“ The Irish Executive and the Irish Parliament become under the new constitution the true and real Government of Ireland. But the Irish Government and the Irish people are fettered by Restrictions which would not be borne by the Government or the people of a self-governing colony. ”

“ In logical and literary aspects you are quite right; but I must tell you that since 1832 Ireland has been a main object of all my political career.... I am not without hope that the House of Commons will pass a reasonable Land Bill, and adhere to the plan of national education, which has been in force now for nearly forty years. At all events, the present government of Ireland gives no proofs of the infallibility of our rulers. Tell Lizzy that it is not a plate of salted cherries, but cherries ripe, without any salt, which I propose to lay before the Irish. ”

“ I trust that the opportunity of making a great advance on this question of Irish government will not long be delayed, and when that opportunity comes my firm belief is that a greater measure of agreement than hitherto as to the ultimate solution will be found possible, and that a keener appreciation will be felt of the benefits that will flow to the Irish communities and British people throughout the world, and that Ireland, from being disaffected, impoverished, and discouraged, will take its place as a strong, harmonious, and contented portion of the empire. ”

“ It will be a Bill which, save possibly for a pious expression of hope in the preamble, will deal with Ireland only. It will set up in Ireland an Irish legislature and executive responsible for the "peace, order, and good government" of Ireland, subject to certain restrictions and limitations. It will assign to Ireland the whole of the Irish revenues, though probably retaining the control of customs and excise, and in that case retaining some Irish representatives at Westminster. ”

“ The legislature of Ireland, like all legislatures, ought to frame its laws to suit the people and the circumstances of the country, and not any longer to make it their whole business to force the nature, the temper, and the inveterate habits of a nation to a conformity to speculative systems concerning any kind of laws. Ireland has an established government, and a religion legally established, which are to be preserved. It has a people, who are to be preserved too, and to be led by reason, principle, sentiment, and interest to acquiesce in that government. ”

“ Impossible to refuse any request compatible with the general safety of the United Kingdom, which Ireland as a nation might prefer. Impossible to establish that system of Crown Colony Government which we had come to perceive was the only real and solid alternative to self-government. To those of us who had been feeling that the Irish difficulty was much the greatest of all England's difficulties, this stood out beyond the agitation of the autumn and the compromise of the winter as the great political event of 1884. ”

“ That, in carrying out these resolutions, the representatives of the Irish people should always keep in mind the adopting such a prudent and wise course as shall enable them to realise for the Irish nation the greatest possible quantity of good, and as shall also enable them to support and sustain in office, without any violation of principle, the first and only true and honest government that has ever been known in Ireland. ”

“ First, there is no other civilized nation which is so conceited of its own institutions, and of all its modes of public action, as England is; and secondly, there is no other civilized nation which is so far apart from Ireland in the character of its history, or so unlike it in the whole constitution of its social economy; and none, therefore, which if it applies to Ireland the modes of thinking and maxims of government which have grown up within itself, is so certain to go wrong. ”

“ No one will dispute the proposition that the government of Ireland, or of any other country, should be resolute, but twenty years of resolute government, in the narrow sense in which it came to be interpreted, needed for its success, what cannot be had under party government, twenty years of consistency. ”

“ It is the right of every civilized and progressive people, the grant of which to its dependencies is the glory of the British Empire, and in preparation for which it governs its subject races in India or Africa. Is Ireland less fit after nine centuries of English government to rule itself on constitutional lines than Canada or the South African Union? ”

“ BY common consent the problem of Irish Government is at once the most urgent and the most complex of all the dilemmas which face the statesmen of Britain. Englishmen are at last convinced that it cannot be satisfactorily dealt with by any generalisation, on a priori principles, or purely British ideas, but must be settled by Irish ideas, in accordance with Irish traditions, and especially by an intimate grasp of the facts and realities of Ireland. ”

“ 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? ”

“ If we withdraw the Irish Government from Ireland, and put an end to its separate local existence,—surely we should place its management as a portion of the general government, not merely on a footing of equality, but on that of identity, with the executive for other parts of the United Kingdom. ”

“ Ireland will feel, when those rights of self-government have been secured for which she has pleaded so long, that she owes them, not only to her own tenacity and courage, but to the magnanimity, the justice, and the freely given sympathy of the English and Scottish people. ”

“ I admit that one of the reasons why we rejoice is this, that whatever local government they establish in Ireland must assist the Irish people in the demand for their national rights. Every popularly-elected body in Ireland, whatever you may call it, will be a new focus of thought, and will give a new vent for its expression. ”

“ One of the greatest evils of Ireland is the disaffection to the government which undeniably exists, and it is our duty to do everything in our power to correct this state of feeling, by removing all just causes of complaint. ”

“ My answer is, that you will act in Ireland as you would act here in any of the situations of this Government; that the line is perfectly easy to be defined to every man's understanding, though not reduced to a written rule, and the limits easily seen, where the King's recommendations cease to be the casual exertions of private favour, and begin to be systematic interferences with the power entrusted to his servants. ”

“ In a passage which contained a reference to Hottentots and Hindus, he declared that the Irish were incapable of self-government. His policy was "that Parliament should enable the Government of England to govern Ireland. Apply that recipe honestly and resolutely for twenty years, and at the end of that time you will find that Ireland will be fit to accept any gifts in the way of local government or repeal of coercion laws that you may wish to give her. What she wants is government—government that does not flinch, that does not vary." ”

“ The notion which has possessed most Englishmen, that Irish self-government would be another name for anarchy, is curiously erroneous. Conflicts there may be, but a vigorous rule will emerge.
Lastly, as to local government. If a popular system is established in Ireland—one similar to that which it is proposed to establish in England—the control of its assemblies and officials will, over four-fifths of the island, fall into Nationalist hands. Their power will be enormously increased, for they will then command the machinery of administration, and the power of taxing. ”

“ Judging by the time that Irish affairs now occupy in Parliament, when there are so many other important things to be considered, the regulation of the internal affairs of Ireland alone is a sufficient task for any representative body, and I am sure that most people in this room will agree with me when I say that the domestic government of some 30,000,000 of Englishmen, a business which is now very much left on one side, would give ample scope to the energies and talents of any body of legislators, however energetic, and however capable. ”

“ The power which gave the planters their land could laugh at their constitutional pretensions. So the Dublin Parliament idly strove to emulate its exemplar at Westminster, and clamoured in vain for responsible government, for control of the [pg 263] Irish Executive. In spite of its Irish Parliament, Ireland has never been given the chance of governing itself. ”

“ At the least the Irish tribal scheme of government contained as much promise of human virtue and happiness as the feudal scheme which became later the political creed of England, but which was never accepted in Ireland. Irish history can only be understood by realising this intense national life with its sure basis on the broad self-government of the people. ”

“ I understand that it is the intention of the British Government to introduce a bill for conscription. Since I left Ireland, I notice many strange changes have come over the National leaders of Ireland. They are not as fearless as they were in the days of Parnell and they completely lost or destroyed their independence. ”

“ This Liberal Government was the first English Government which ever set itself to legislate for Ireland according to Irish ideas, to recognize the essential differences between the two countries, to establish in Ireland what it would not maintain in England, and to destroy in Ireland those English institutions which had been erected by the egoism of its predecessors. ”

“ The perfect tranquillisation of Ireland, whether by Whig or Tory, is, I fear, impossible, until the united Legislature shall be disposed to give the majority in Ireland, under the restraint which the influence of [560] property may justly create for the minority, what that majority would be able to obtain if Ireland had a Legislature of her own; but at the same time, the more the Imperial Government manifests its desire to conciliate those interests it cannot satisfy, the more it is likely to maintain in that long-distressed country a state of peace, if not of content. ”

“ It is true, that some cities, counties, and boroughs, have lately assured the government of their attachment, and of their gratitude for the favors granted to Ireland, but there is a great deal wanting before all the people will be equally satisfied. The most enlightened part of the nation regard these same favors as granted to necessity, and purely precarious as long as the British legislature shall have the right to make laws for Ireland. Some magistrates have even already refused to execute the laws passed by the [24] Parliament of Great Britain ”

“ Nor do they realize, I venture to think, that any Irish Government, however composed, will be a patriotic Government pledged and compelled for its own credit and safety to do its best for the interests of Ireland. ”

“ Catholic Emancipation, the extension of the franchise, and secret ballot, have within the last sixty years completely shifted the balance of political power in Ireland. Land legislation has revolutionised the conditions of ownership. These vast and vital changes in Ireland have been accompanied by the transfer of decisive power from aristocracy to numbers in Great Britain, and Great Britain is arbiter. Is it fatalism, or is it common sense, to perceive that one new effect of new causes so potent must be the necessity of changing the system of Irish government? ”

“ While firmly maintaining that the parliamentary union between Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the political stability of the Empire, and to the prosperity of the two islands, we believe that such union is compatible with the devolution to Ireland of a larger measure of local government than she now possesses. ”

“ It would be a deep disgrace to us, that having the choice of, on the one hand, a peaceful legislative revolution in the laws and rules affecting the relation of the inhabitants to the soil, or on the other, of abandoning a task beyond our skill, and leaving Ireland to rule herself, incapacity for the better of the two courses should drive us to the worse. For that it would be greatly the worse even for Ireland, many Irishmen, even Irish Catholics, are probably still calm enough to perceive, if but good government can be had without it. ”